So we wake up this morning to what feels like floodwaters rising.

The way we address the migration of people from other places, places we have sunk into poverty and criminality with our greed and indifference, falls into old familiar patterns, across administrations. So, once again, we turn a humanitarian question into one of security, this time pretending that disease is preventing us from exercising our humanity.

Many in this group would like to believe that, now that Trump is out of power, the struggle for migrant rights is over. The thing that got me involved, grabbed my attention, was family separation. I rushed down to the border, thinking i would add a voice to the cries for the policy to end.

But what I found was something different. The longer I have spent looking at the plight of people who migrate, the more I see that the issue is not one that restricts itself to one political party or leader.

Count up. Day 33 February 22

***ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED.***

Since Title 42 has been in place, the # of pedestrians and passengers crossing the border from Mexico approaches 100,000,000. No health checks. During that time, 440,000 migrants were expelled with no chance to assert their legal right to asylum because of health concerns. Logic?

Map: Decolonial Atlas

The history of humans is the history of migration.

From a place in Southern Africa, where one group of great apes we call hominids turned a particular evolutionary corner and became a resourceful wanderer, the modern human, Homo sapiens, we have invaded every corner of the planet.

ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 15 Feb 2021.

Week severely impacted by weather. Average daily flights are around 18 and this week the daily flights were M-F, 6, 7, 3, 3. This week there and 18, respectively. In a typical week there are 21 removal flights. This week there were only 12. In a typical week there are 89 total ICE Air legs. This week there were only 37.

We don’t have to reach very deep into our xenophobic souls to find an assumption that is resilient and persistent: the belief that the threat of contagious disease comes from foreigners, a greater threat, for instance, than the risk you might run at a basketball game at an American high school gym. This unfounded belief is based on no evidence at all that disease, like Covid, is any more prevalent in the migrant population than it is at an an all-American Thanksgiving dinner. It is simply not so.

Count up. Day 30 February 19

***ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED.***

Count up. Day 29 @JoeBiden @AliMayorkas 2/18/21.

ICE AIR FLIGHTS WON'T STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED. People are “expelled" based on a false excuse of health safety. #EndTitle42

It chills me to my bones to look out of my window at the falling snow, my mind going to Matamoros, Mexico, where perhaps a thousand people huddle in summer tents, wrapped as best they can against the freezing temperatures that have gripped them.

Count up. Day 28 Biden Administration, February 17

***ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED.***

Count up Day 27 Biden Admin 2/16/21. ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP & PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED. People “expelled” at the border are done so based on the excuse of health safety. #EndTitle42

Day 26, Biden Adminstration.

ICE Air Weekly Activity – Week of 8 Feb 2021.

 Business As Usual Continues. Average Weekly Removal Flights Last 3 months: 20.5. Average Weekly after Inauguration (last 3 weeks): 22.0.

 21 Removal flights to 6 different countries, 1 over the prior 6-week average.

 95 total ICE Air legs, 11 over the prior 6-week average.

 7 Removal flights to Haiti, bringing February already up to 11 removal flights, just 1 under the record month of 12.

Count up. Day 23 February 12

***ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED.***

I am at a loss every time I see this. Someone points out, as witnesses are asked to do, that policies are causing suffering among migrants. That the Biden administration is expelling people by the thousands. That people, often people we know, remain in squalor along the muddy banks of the river. People who send us messages pleading with us not to forget them. As if we could ever forget them.

Day 21, Biden Administration. #DeathFlights continue.

Day 20, Biden Administration. #DeathFlights continue.

Count up. Day 19, February 8

***ICE AIR FLIGHTS WILL NOT STOP, AND PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED TO MEXICO OR THEIR COUNTRIES, UNTIL THE CDC HEALTH ORDER (TITLE 42) IS RESCINDED.***

Let’s look at consequences. In this case the consequences of the Biden administration trying to thread a needle.

They have been slow-walking any decision about Title 42. What’s Title 42? It is a little determination that was arm-twisted out of the CDC, an order that allows the US (contrary to international law) to immediately, with no legal recourse or a ruling of any kind, expel anyone who comes to our border. Doesn’t matter where they come from. In practice, we are expelling lots of Mexicans to Mexico. But we are also expelling Central Americans to Mexico. Haitians to Mexico.