Opinion | America Didn't Always Lock Up Immigrants
Nytimes
Our current detention policies have very specific historical roots. By Ana Raquel Minian Dr. Minian is a professor of history at Stanford who has written extensively about Mexican migrants to the United States. Last Sunday, as Border Patrol agents were tear-gassing Central American asylum seekers, including parents with their toddlers, more than 40,000 other migrants were being held in detention facilities across the United States.
The latest horror at the border was centuries in the making | Michelle Garcia
The Baffler
The U.S.-Mexico border is the site of countless atrocities. The latest has resulted in some 3,000 children being taken from their parents by the U.S. government and then held hostage as a means of pressuring parents to give up claims for asylum.
What the Nazis driving people from homes taught philosopher Hannah Arendt about the rights of refugees
The Conversation
Facing a political revolt over immigration policies from the Christian Social Union partner in her coalition government, German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to a compromise, which would create "transit zones" or refugee camps along Germany's southern border. Under the agreement, migrants would be housed in designated transit areas, until German authorities determined their eligibility.
Perspective | Like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan tried to keep out asylum seekers. Activists thwarted him.
Washington Post
The Trump administration is working to make it impossible for people fleeing violence in Central America to gain asylum in the United States. If it succeeds, the family separations and family detentions we have already seen are only the beginning of the suffering, and even death, that will result from these brutal changes to U.S.
`We are only following the law' doesn't explain immigration policy during Nazi era or now
The Conversation
Holocaust historians' first impulse is to reject comparisons between those dark decades and our present. We don't want to be perceived as abusing history for political purposes, or engaging in overly emotional analyses. But then comes a moment when it's not possible to avoid parallels. For me, that moment came two weeks ago.
America Has Perfected the Art of Pretending It Isn't Discriminating in the Name of National Security By Paul Kramer
Slate Magazine
This week's Supreme Court decision to uphold the Trump administration's travel ban, in Trump v. Hawaii, hinges on a convenient and long-standing but faulty claim: the idea that the pursuit of national security can easily be separated from racial and religious prejudice.
The US government should cede territory back to Native Americans | Timothy Snyder
the Guardian
Does the federal government mean to cede the territory of the United States back to the Native Americans? The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has altered its mission statement, removing the characterization of America as a "nation of immigrants " in order to emphasize the new goal of "securing the homeland".
The travel ban decision echoes some of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history
Vox
Three times in American history, the Supreme Court has been asked to speak to a law, neutral on its face, yet rooted in a popular hatred or intolerance of minorities.
The Seventh Exclusion: Great Moments in American Racist Immigration History
Informed Comment
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - I had predicted after Trump's announcement that he wanted to try to keep Muslims out of the United States that he might well have some success in that endeavor. Courts, as SCOTUS just showed once again, are reluctant to micro-manage the Executive on things like who can enter the country.
