03 April 22
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One thing Russia has managed to defend quite effectively, however, is the value of its currency. The ruble plunged in the days after the Ukraine invasion, but it has since recovered almost all of its losses:
How did that happen, and what does it mean?
One thing worth noting is that Russia’s economic officials appear to be more competent than its generals. Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of Russia’s central bank — a role equivalent to that of Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve — is especially well regarded by her peers abroad. Nabiullina reportedly tried to resign after the invasion started, but Putin wouldn’t let her leave.
Unwilling as she may have been to stay in her job, Nabiullina and her colleagues pulled out all the stops to defend the ruble. They raised the key interest rate — more or less equivalent to the federal funds rate in the United States — from 9.5 to 20 percent, to induce people to keep their funds in Russia. They also imposed extensive controls to prevent capital flight: Russians have faced restrictions on moving their money into their foreign bank accounts, and foreign investors have been prohibited from exiting Russian stocks, and more.
But there’s a mystery here. No, it’s not puzzling to see the ruble recover given such drastic measures. The question is why Russia is willing to defend its currency at the expense of all other goals. After all, the draconian measures taken to stabilize the ruble will probably deepen what is already looking like a depression-level slump in Russia’s real economy, brought on by surprisingly wide and effective sanctions imposed by the free world (I think we can resurrect that term, don’t you?), in response to its military aggression.
Let’s take a brief excursion into economic theory here. One of the classic propositions in international economics is known as the “impossible trinity.” The idea is that there are three things a country might want from its currency. It might want stability in the currency’s value in terms of other currencies — for example, a stable value of the ruble in dollars or euros — to create greater certainty for businesses. It might want free movement of funds across its borders, again to facilitate business. And it might want to retain freedom of monetary action — the ability to cut interest rates to fight recessions or raise them to fight inflation.
The impossible trinity says that you can’t have it all, that you have to choose two out of three. You can, like Britain, have open capital markets and independent monetary policy, but that means allowing the value of the pound to fluctuate. You can, like countries that have adopted the euro, have free movement of capital and currency stability, but only by giving up monetary independence. Or you can, like China, have a stable currency and your own monetary policy, but only by maintaining capital controls. (Those controls, by the way, are one main reason the renminbi isn’t going to rival the dollar as a global currency for the foreseeable future.)
So what’s puzzling about Russia? Normally a country can choose two out of three legs of the trinity; Russia has decided to take only one. It has imposed severe capital controls, but it has also sacrificed monetary independence, drastically raising interest rates in the face of a looming recession.
In effect, Russia is taking a belt-and-suspenders (not to be confused with Belt and Road) approach to defending the ruble, and this has seemingly taken priority over all other economic goals. Why?
Let me offer a speculation, with the clear proviso that it’s only a speculation, not based on any direct evidence. My guess is that the value of the ruble has become a crucial target not so much because it’s all important but because it’s so clearly visible.
Suppose that, as seems highly likely, Russia sees a huge surge in inflation and a plunge in gross domestic product in the months ahead. Will Putin’s government admit that these bad things are happening? Quite possibly not. Authoritarian regimes often try to suppress unfavorable economic data. Recently, for example, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, responded to reports of high inflation by sacking the head of his nation’s statistical agency.
Some years ago researchers at M.I.T. created the Billion Prices Project using online price data to specifically track the consistent understatement of inflation by Argentina’s government at the time. The same approach also turned out to be very useful in the United States for the opposite reason — as a way to refute claims by right-wing “inflation truthers” that the Obama administration was cooking the books (it wasn’t).
If Russia’s economy deteriorates as badly as most expect in the near future, it seems all too likely that the nation’s muzzled media will simply deny that anything bad is happening. One thing they couldn’t deny, however, would be a drastically depreciated ruble. So defending the ruble, never mind the real economy, makes sense as a propaganda strategy.
A further thought: Among the people who might not be aware of deteriorating Russian economic conditions, as long as the ruble holds its value, might be Vladimir Putin himself. U.S. intelligence claims that Putin’s military advisers have been afraid to tell him how badly the war is going. Is there any reason to believe that his economic advisers will be any more courageous?
So Russia’s defense of the ruble, while impressive, isn’t a sign that the Putin regime is handling economic policy well. It reflects, instead, an odd choice of priorities, and may actually be a further sign of Russia’s policy dysfunction.
Local residents walk past buildings damaged by shelling, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Makariv, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 1, 2022. (photo: Serhii Mykhalchuk/Reuters)
As Russian troops regrouped for battles in east Ukraine, towns surrounding Kyiv bore scars of five weeks of fighting. Dead bodies laid scattered over streets, and President Volodomyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of leaving behind mines.
Ukraine’s troops have retaken more than 30 towns and villages around Kyiv since Russia pulled back from the area this week, Ukrainian officials said.
“The whole Kyiv region is liberated from the invader,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister, Hanna Malyar, wrote on Facebook. There was no Russian comment on the claim, which Reuters could not immediately verify.
At one recaptured town reached by Reuters, residents tearfully recalled brushes with death.
“The first time, I went out of the room and a bullet broke the glass, the window, and got stuck in the dresser,” said Mariya Zhelezova, 74, in the country town of Bucha. “The second time, shattered glass almost got into my leg.”
Bucha’s mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said more than 300 residents had been killed.
“We don’t want them to come back,” Zhelezova said. “I had a dream today - that they left, and didn’t come back.”
Ukraine’s armed forces reported diminished Russian air and missile strikes on Saturday but said retreating Russian forces were deploying mines.
Zelenskiy warned in a video address: “They are mining all this territory. Houses are mined, equipment is mined, even the bodies of dead people.” He did not cite evidence.
Ukraine’s emergencies service said over 1,500 explosives had been found in one day during a search of the village of Dmytrivka, west of Kyiv. It warned people to be vigilant.
Russia’s defense ministry did not reply to a request for comment on the mining allegations. Reuters could not independently verify them.
Putin-Zelenskyy talks?
Since sending troops on February 24 in what it calls a “special operation” to demilitarize its neighbor, Russia has failed to capture a single major city and has instead laid siege to urban areas, uprooting a quarter of Ukraine’s population.
Russia has depicted its drawdown of forces near Kyiv as a goodwill gesture in peace talks. Ukraine and its allies say Russia was forced to shift its focus to east Ukraine after suffering heavy losses near Kyiv.
Both sides described talks held this week in Istanbul and by video link as “difficult”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday the “main thing is that the talks continue, either in Istanbul or somewhere else”.
A new round of talks has not yet been announced. But Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said on Saturday that enough progress had been made to allow direct talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy.
“The Russian side confirmed our thesis that the draft documents have been sufficiently developed to allow direct consultations between the two countries’ leaders,” Arakhamia said. Russia has not commented on the possibility.
President Biden and Mr. Garland are managing a relationship between the White House and the Justice Department unlike any other in American history. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
Even though hundreds of people had already been charged, Garland asked to go over the indictments in detail, according to two people familiar with the meeting. What were the charges? What evidence did they have? How had they built such a sprawling investigation, involving all 50 states, so fast? What was the plan now?
The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Joe Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Garland said that he and the career prosecutors working on the case felt only the pressure “to do the right thing,” which meant that they “follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”
Still, Democrats’ increasingly urgent calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action highlight the tension between the frenetic demands of politics and the methodical pace of one of the biggest prosecutions in the department’s history.
“The Department of Justice must move swiftly,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a member of the House committee investigating the riot, said this past week. She and others on the panel want the department to charge Trump allies with contempt for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.
“Attorney General Garland,” Luria said during a committee hearing, “do your job so that we can do ours.”
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including officials in the Biden administration and people with knowledge of the president’s thinking, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said the president believed that Garland had “decisively restored” the independence of the Justice Department.
“President Biden is immensely proud of the attorney general’s service in this administration and has no role in investigative priorities or decisions,” Bates said.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
The Jan. 6 investigation is a test not just for Garland, but for Biden as well. Both men came into office promising to restore the independence and reputation of a Justice Department that Trump had tried to weaponize for political gain.
For Biden, keeping that promise means inviting the ire of supporters who say they will hold the president to the remarks he made on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, when he vowed to make sure “the past isn’t buried” and said that the people who planned the siege “held a dagger at the throat of America.”
Complicating matters for Biden is the fact that his two children are entangled in federal investigations, making it all the more important that he stay out of the Justice Department’s affairs or risk being seen as interfering for his own family’s gain.
The department is investigating whether Ashley Biden was the victim of pro-Trump political operatives who obtained her diary at a critical moment in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax avoidance and his international business dealings. Hunter Biden has not been charged with a crime and has said he handled his affairs appropriately.
Justice Department officials do not keep the president abreast of any investigation, including those involving his children, several people familiar with the situation said. The cases involving Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden are worked on by career officials, and people close to the president, including White House counsel Dana Remus, have no visibility into them, those people said.
Still, the situation crystallizes the delicate ground that Biden and Garland are navigating.
When it comes to Jan. 6, Justice Department officials emphasize that their investigation has produced substantial results already, including more than 775 arrests and a charge of seditious conspiracy against the leader of a far-right militia. More than 280 people have been charged with obstructing Congress’ duty to certify the election results.
And federal prosecutors have widened the investigation to include a broad range of figures associated with Trump’s attempts to cling to power. According to people familiar with the inquiry, it now encompasses planning for pro-Trump rallies before the riot and the push by some Trump allies to promote slates of fake electors.
The Justice Department has given no public indication about its timeline or whether prosecutors might be considering a case against Trump.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack can send criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but only the department can bring charges. The panel is working with a sense of urgency to build its case before this year’s midterm elections, when Republicans could retake the House and dissolve the committee.
Biden, a longtime creature of the Senate, is aghast that people close to Trump have defied congressional subpoenas and has told people close to him that he does not understand how they think they can do so, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
Garland has not changed his approach to criminal prosecutions in order to placate his critics, according to several Justice Department officials who have discussed the matter with him. He is regularly briefed on the Jan. 6 investigation, but he has remained reticent in public.
“The best way to undermine an investigation is to say things out of court,” Garland said Friday.
Even in private, he relies on a stock phrase: “Rule of law,” he says, “means there not be one rule for friends and another for foes.”
He did seem to acknowledge Democrats’ frustrations in a speech in January, when he reiterated that the department “remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.”
Quiet and reserved, Garland is well known for the job he was denied: a seat on the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama nominated him in March 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but Senate Republicans blockaded the nomination.
Garland’s peers regard him as a formidable legal mind and a political centrist. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appeals court judge and Justice William Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court before becoming a top official in the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno. There, he prosecuted domestic terrorism cases and supervised the federal investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing.
His critics say that his subsequent years as an appeals court judge made him slow and overly deliberative. But his defenders say that he has always carefully considered legal issues, particularly if the stakes were high — a trait that most likely helped the Justice Department secure a conviction against Timothy McVeigh two years after the Oklahoma City attack.
During the presidential transition after the 2020 election, Biden took his time mulling over candidates to be attorney general, according to a senior member of the transition team. He had promised the American people that he would reestablish the department as an independent arbiter within the government, not the president’s partisan brawler.
In meetings, the incoming president and his aides discussed potential models at length: Did Biden want a strong personality in the job, like Eric Holder, who held the post under Obama? The relatively quick consensus was no.
Did he want someone who would be seen as a political ally? Some in his circle suggested that might be a good model to follow, which is why then-Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, a longtime friend of Biden’s, was once on his shortlist.
But in the end, Biden went with Garland, who had a reputation for being evenhanded and independent.
Despite Biden’s private frustrations with the attorney general, several people who speak regularly to the president said he had praised Garland as among the most thoughtful, moral and intelligent people he had dealt with in his career.
The two men did not know each other well when Biden selected him for the job. Garland had a closer relationship with Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, than he did with the incoming president.
Officials inside the White House and the Justice Department acknowledge that the two men have less contact than some previous presidents and attorneys general, particularly Trump and his last attorney general, William Barr.
Some officials see their limited interactions as an overcorrection on the part of Garland and argue that he does not need to color so scrupulously within the lines. But it may be the only logical position for Garland to take, particularly given that both of Biden’s children are involved in active investigations by the Justice Department.
The distance between the two men is a sharp departure from the previous administration, when Trump would often call Barr to complain about decisions related to his political allies and enemies. Such calls were a clear violation of the longtime norms governing contact between the White House and the Justice Department.
Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, came to his job as president with a classical, post-Watergate view of the department: that it was not there to be a political appendage.
Still, there is unrelenting pressure from Democrats to hold Trump and his allies accountable for the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6. While there is no indication that federal prosecutors are close to charging the former president, Biden and those closest to him understand the legal calculations. What Garland is confronting is anything but a normal problem, with enormous political stakes before the next presidential election.
Federal prosecutors would have no room for error in building a criminal case against Trump, experts say, given the high burden of proof they must meet and the likelihood of any decision being appealed.
A criminal investigation in New York that examined Trump’s business dealings imploded this year, underscoring the risks and challenges that come with trying to indict the former president. The new district attorney there, Alvin Bragg, would not let his prosecutors present a grand jury with evidence that they felt proved Trump knowingly falsified the value of his assets for undue financial gain.
One of the outside lawyers who oversaw the case and resigned in protest wrote in a letter to Bragg that his decision was “a grave failure of justice,” even if he feared that the district attorney’s office could lose.
At times, Biden cannot help but get drawn into the discourse over the Justice Department, despite his stated commitment to stay away.
In October, he told reporters that he thought those who defied subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack should be prosecuted.
“I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally,” Biden said. When asked whether the Justice Department should prosecute them, he replied, “I do, yes.”
The president’s words prompted a swift statement from the agency: “The Department of Justice will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop.”
This story was originally published at nytimes.com. Read it here.
An abandoned Russian tank in Chernihiv region, Ukraine. (photo: Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters)
Horrifying accounts tell of Russian soldiers placing children on tanks to protect their vehicles when moving
Ukraine’s attorney general is gathering a dossier of claims about the Russian use of local children to avoid fire when in retreat from around Ukraine’s capital and elsewhere.
Coaches of children were said to have been placed in front of tanks in the village of Novyi Bykiv, close to the encircled city of Chernihiv, 100 miles north of Kyiv.
It was further alleged that children had been taken as hostages in a number of conflict hot spots around the country to ensure locals would not give the coordinates of the enemy’s movements to the Ukrainian forces.
“Cases of using children as cover are recorded in Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia oblasts [regions],” said Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.
Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, spokesman for Ukraine’s ministry of defence, said the cases were being investigated by the country’s attorney general, but he was unable to provide further details. He said: “Enemies have been using Ukrainian children as a living shield when moving their convoys, moving their vehicles.
“Russian soldiers have used Ukrainian children as hostages, putting them on their trucks. They’re doing it to protect their vehicles when moving.
“There have been cases of brutal behaviour against minors been recorded, documented by a Ukrainian and international institutions, and we’d like to emphasise that information in each and every case will be given to the national criminal courts and the occupiers will be brought to justice for each and every military and war crime they commit.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said at least 412 children had been injured or killed since the invasion began in February, of which 158 were dead.
In further developments:
Witnesses have told the Observer of alleged war crimes against civilians in Bucha, as the town was liberated by Ukrainian forces. In one account, a 33-year-old mother and her two sons, eight and four, were shot dead by troops in a Russian armoured vehicle, along with a 62-year-old man, as they had sought to flee in two cars.
The bodies of at least 20 men in civilian clothes, one of whom had his hands tied, have been found lying in a street in Bucha, as Russian forces made what authorities in Kyiv said was a “rapid retreat” from territory around the capital on Saturday.
Ukrainian forces took around 30 towns and villages around Kyiv, including Brovary, a key city east of the capital. But President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the retreating troops were creating “a complete disaster” by leaving mines in homes and corpses as they retreated.
Pope Francis has said he is considering visiting the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and for the first time implicitly criticised the Russian president Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. “We had thought invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past,” he said.
Ukrainian military intelligence reported that residents in Izium, a city in east Ukraine, had given Russian soldiers from the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the Russian Federation poisoned pies, killing two and putting 28 in intensive care.
Lithuania became the first EU country to ban the import of Russian gas.
With Russia continuing to withdraw some of its ground forces from areas around the capital on Saturday, Zelenskiy’s adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said it now appeared the Kremlin was beating a “rapid retreat”.
Podolyak warned, however, that the Kremlin had reverted to a plan to split the country.
He said: “After the rapid retreat of the Russians from Kyiv and Chernihiv, and if we analyse all the redeployment and concentration of occupying troops, it is clear that Russia has prioritised another tactic – to move east/south, to control large occupied territories (not only in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) and gain a strong foothold there. [Russia] will try to dig in there, put [in] air defence and thus sharply reduce the loss of his equipment and personnel.”
In the east and the south, Ukrainian troops were holding their line, with the besieged city of Mariupol facing renewed barrages and little prospect of the evacuation of any more citizens. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said they were sending a team to try to help those trapped, following the failure of many attempts to organise humanitarian corridors.
An ICRC spokesperson said: “The team departed Zaporizhzhia this morning. They are spending the night en route to Mariupol and are yet to reach the city.”
Workers at the Kellogg Company plant that makes Cheez-Its will receive 6 percent raises in the first year of their new contract, 5 percent raises the following year and 4.5 percent raises and a $500 bonus in the third year. (photo: Josh Funk/AP)
From Amazon to Starbucks, United States companies are seeing a revival in the power of worker unions and collective bargaining.
The wage and benefits improvements that 570 workers at the Kellogg’s plant secured this week are the largest that have been seen by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), it said Wednesday.
United States companies are struggling to fill the more than 11 million job openings across the country that represent nearly two openings for everyone unemployed, and workers are demanding more after keeping plants operating throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Job openings hovered at a near-record high for the second consecutive month in February, the US Department of Labor reported this week.
“This contract is further evidence of the power of a union voice and collective bargaining,” said RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum.
Kellogg’s, which is based in Battle Creek, Michigan in the US, didn’t immediately comment Wednesday on the contract it offered its workers in Kansas City, Kansas.
Besides the strike at Kellogg’s plants in Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee last fall, workers also walked out last year at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, and at five Nabisco plants nationwide. And meatpacking workers have been winning significant raises when their contracts come up at plants across the country.
Unions in other industries, including one that represents more than 10,000 John Deere workers, also went on strike last year. The John Deere workers received 10 percent raises and improved benefits after going on strike for a month.
Workers have also voted to unionise at more than a half dozen Starbucks stores across the country and unions are trying to organise at roughly 140 other stores nationwide. And Amazon is trying to stave off unions at two of its warehouses in New York and Alabama, where ballots are in the process of being counted now.
Experts say the ongoing labour shortages have given unions more leverage than they have had in decades during contract talks.
A spokeswoman for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that represents the Kellogg’s cereal plant workers said that strike and the others across the industry in the past year have helped it secure significant gains for workers at other companies.
The Cheez-Its workers will receive 6 percent raises in the first year of their new contract, 5 percent raises the following year and 4.5 percent raises and a $500 bonus in the third year. The workers will also see improved health and pension benefits with no increase in their health insurance premiums. And new hires will move up to higher pay rates more quickly.
“These wage increases will help us better provide for our families and improve the quality of our lives,” said Larry Smith, who leads the local union at the Kellogg’s plant.
Iconic rock band Pink Floyd, circa 1979. (photo: Capitol Records)
Lyrics Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall
Written by, Roger Waters
From the 1979 album, The Wall.
Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
Snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?
Daddy, what'd'ja leave behind for me?!?
All in all it was just a brick in the wall.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
"You! Yes, you! Stand still laddy!"
When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would
Hurt the children any way they could
By pouring their derision
Upon anything we did
And exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids
But out in the middle of nowhere
When they got home at night, their fat and
Psycopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave us kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
"Wrong, Do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"
[Sound of many TV's coming on, all on different channels]
"The Bulls are already out there"
Pink: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!"
"This Roman Meal bakery thought you'd like to know."
I don't need no arms around me
And I dont need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.
Goodbye, cruel world
I'm leaving you today
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Goodbye, all you people
There's nothing you can say
To make me change my mind
Goodbye
Some 300 Hondurans leave in a caravan to the United States, fleeing the violence and crisis caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Jan. 14, 2021. (photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images)
Angel Argueta Anariba fled a 1998 hurricane in Honduras, only to get lashed by one while detained by ICE two decades later.
More than 20 years earlier, another climate catastrophe had upended Argueta Anariba’s life. In November 1998, he had fled Honduras in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. Now he found himself confronting new climate nightmares in Louisiana, with no possibility of escape.
The privately run facility where Argueta Anariba was held was one of several new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Louisiana. The implications of caging thousands of people in a state that’s notorious for extreme weather crystallized with the intensifying wind.
In the days that followed the storm’s landfall, detainees throughout the state would endure appalling conditions caused in no small part by ICE’s lack of preparedness for climate disasters. An Intercept investigation found that more than half of ICE’s detention facilities, including Catahoula, are already facing significant climate risks.
“Climate change has already exacerbated extreme weather conditions, and we are seeing a direct impact on incarcerated people warehoused in immigration detention facilities across the country,” said Karla Ostolaza, managing director of the immigration practice at the Bronx Defenders, a public defense group that is representing Argueta Anariba. “We are very concerned that more extreme weather events caused by climate change will lead to further exploitation and disregard for detained immigrants at ICE facilities.”
On August 26, with Hurricane Laura lashing the Catahoula facility, the lights went out and the water stopped running, according to a court affidavit by Argueta Anariba. The services were down for five days. Several inches of water pooled on the ground. With the air conditioning down, the dorm felt like it was over 100 degrees. In the first days, facility employees brought in a few gallons to drink, twice a day, for more than 50 people.
“The toilets would not flush during this time, and some people were forced to defecate on the trays that they gave us for meals and then throw those in the trash,” Argueta Anariba said, adding that with staff avoiding the dorms, garbage piled up. The stench made Argueta Anariba feel sick and aggravated his asthma. “The smell was excruciating.”
People held by ICE in other parts of the state were experiencing similar problems, with protests arising among the detained.
2020 would soon set the record for the number of hurricanes that crashed into the continental U.S. Within weeks of Laura, wind and rain from another storm hit the Catahoula facility.
Evacuees from other facilities were bused to the detention center. Tensions were high in the overcrowded prison; Argueta Anariba said a pepper spray-like substance was frequently used as a means of crowd control. “I could not breathe and vomited several times,” he said. “My face felt like it was burning.”
When a third storm hit, electricity went out again, but with the heat less severe, the situation was more tolerable.
“In the three hurricanes that passed,” said Argueta Anariba, who is undocumented, “I lived the worst part of my life.”
The Next Disaster
The past decade has given rise to the notion of the “climate migrant,” a term that describes people like Argueta Anariba who are forced to leave their nation because of a climate-related disaster. The climate crisis means that migration to the U.S. is likely to increase in the years ahead. Around 680,000 climate migrants are expected to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between now and 2050, according to an analysis by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine.
“I traveled with many people who came from Honduras, escaping from the destruction that was the country,” Argueta Anariba told The Intercept in Spanish. “They’re still in this country, continuing forward, working to get ahead.”
For some climate migrants, the journey ends when they are ensnared in the U.S. immigration enforcement system. Many will find themselves in detention centers that are, an Intercept investigation found, especially vulnerable to climate risks.
To determine how the climate crisis impacts incarcerated people, The Intercept mapped more than 6,500 jails, prisons, and detention centers against heat, wildfire, and flood risk. ICE detainees were held in some 128 facilities as of 2020, according to research by the Carceral Ecologies team at UCLA. Catahoula Correctional Center is one of 72 immigration detention centers The Intercept identified as facing significant climate-related risks — risks that are poised to get more severe as the climate crisis deepens. (ICE did not provide answers to The Intercept’s questions for this article.)
The U.S. refugee system generally does not recognize climate disaster as a reason to grant asylum. In cases of environmental catastrophes, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has the power to designate a country for temporary protected status, a program that allows some of its citizens to temporarily live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation.
The designation, though, is rarely applied. The program, for instance, was not opened up to those fleeing Honduras when hurricanes Eta and Iota devastated the country in 2020. When TPS is applied, onerous conditions can thwart those seeking its protections. After Hurricane Mitch, Hondurans were afforded TPS status, but Argueta Anariba didn’t qualify in part because of a criminal conviction, his lawyer said.
If restrictive U.S. immigration policies go unchanged, more climate migrants will end up in detention facilities. Without either new investments in infrastructure or a rethinking of U.S. immigration policies, detained migrants will be facing worsening climate risks — this time without the chance to flee.
Prisons at Risk
No states have more ICE detention centers than sweltering, storm-prone Texas and Louisiana. All 10 immigration detention facilities in Louisiana and 19 in Texas are in counties that have historically experienced more than 100 days annually with a heat index over 90 degrees. Those temperatures are hot enough to cause health problems in places where medical care is lacking and air conditioning often breaks down, if it exists at all.
ICE’s detention standards include only vague references to maintaining comfortable temperatures and offering climate-appropriate clothing, and advocates say there’s minimal enforcement. Even in the much-cooler Northeast, extreme heat is already creating dangerous conditions. “ICE frequently exposes people in their custody to extreme heat conditions without air conditioning in the summer and freezing temperatures without adequate heat in the winter — leading to increased health risks among the people we represent,” said Ostolaza, of the Bronx Defenders.
It’s going to get worse, according to county-by-county heat projections from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Historically, no ICE detention centers were in counties where heat spiked above 105 degrees for more than a month annually — a level of heat the National Weather Service designates as dangerous. By 2100, the county where Catahoula is located is likely to see nearly two months annually over 105 degrees. Across the nation, every ICE detention facility will see longer periods of high heat.
When it comes to wildfires, it’s smoke as much as flames that causes problems for detained people. In addition to well-documented fires threatening the West and its detention centers, over one-third of the ICE facilities facing severe or extreme wildfire risks are located in the South, according to data from the U.S. Forest Service. Wildfires burned not far from a detention center in Texas in early March, and a holding facility in Florida, on the edge of the Everglades, has repeatedly been evacuated due to fires.
Shoddy infrastructure is already failing to keep up with snowballing climate-related problems. Catahoula has low flood risk, according to data from the First Street Foundation, and the water coming in during Hurricane Laura likely had more to do with structural problems than with flood vulnerability. ICE detention centers’ climate control systems are known for breaking down; summer after summer, public defenders have demanded that ICE address air-conditioning failures in a detention center in northern New Jersey.
For many immigrant advocates, the climate emergency lends new urgency for systemic changes that go beyond fixing buildings. “If we can foresee that these facilities are going to need infrastructure reworking, it’s a good sign that we need to end detention centers as a whole,” said Dagoberto Bailón, a coordinator for Trans Queer Pueblo, an Arizona-based organization that works with LGBTQ+ migrants.
In the cases of some risk-prone facilities, ICE is looking to scale up detention. In Georgia, the Folkston ICE Processing Center faces severe wildfire risk yet is in line for an expansion that would make it one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the nation, increasing its number of beds from 780 to 3,018.
Organizers have, however, scored victories. In New Jersey, the Hudson County Correctional Facility faces extreme flood risk and flooded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. As of this past November, under pressure, the facility no longer houses ICE detainees.
ICE and the Climate Crisis
ICE, for its part, is already preparing for the future. The Department of Homeland Security is evaluating detention facilities for climate risk and gearing up for the new migrant influx.
“Catastrophic events, such as floods, wildfires, and extreme drought, may prompt mass migration which has the capacity to overrun DHS facilities and infrastructure supporting the Nation’s immigration system,” the agency wrote in its Climate Action Plan, released in October 2021. “Climate change is likely to increase population movements from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean and impact neighboring countries.”
DHS lists increased migration among its top five climate vulnerabilities, but its climate action plan is light on details about what the agency will do about it. Department officials are working on creating a plan to predict and plan for future waves of mass migration, according to the climate report, hinting at more arrests and detention. “Increases in human migration may require more resources and operational capacity at the U.S. border to facilitate the application of immigration law, including the law governing claims for humanitarian protection,” DHS wrote.
And DHS is aware that many of its facilities could be at climate risk: “This risk could require relocating or even abandoning current infrastructure in certain circumstances,” the report says, calling for incorporating climate resiliency when expanding the detention infrastructure.
Until now, a main factor that ICE had used to choose where to locate detention centers was local communities’ demands for prisons to bolster their economies. In the case of Louisiana, criminal justice reforms led to fewer people being held in jails and prisons, creating economic gaps that were filled by new ICE contracts.
To Trans Queer Pueblo’s Bailón, it’s all part of a pattern that needs to be broken. “The U.S. is really good at solving problems by trying to put people away,” he said. “Investing in people looks like investing in other countries, investing in migration and having the means to have a smooth migration process, rather than having these detention centers where abuses happen.”
No Asylum
As a kid in Honduras, Argueta Anariba would spend four hours a day at school and eight hours planting and harvesting crops. He loved his classes, especially math, but he also appreciated learning at his father’s side in the fields. He knew from an early age that a bad harvest meant going to bed hungry. Today, climate-driven drought has pushed many Honduran farmers over the edge. In Argueta Anariba’s case, it was a storm.
Hurricane Mitch roared through Argueta Anariba’s community when he was 20. “We lost everything: property and land, jobs, crops,” he remembered. By then, he had two little children. “The government didn’t have capacity to help all the people that were affected. Due to the situation, I traveled to the United States to try to support my family.”
After passing through Guatemala and Mexico, Argueta Anariba made his way to Washington, D.C., where he joined a tight-knit community of Hondurans from his region.
His problems with ICE began after he demanded payment for one of his jobs. Argueta Anariba’s employer responded by threatening him, he said. In the weeks that followed, the conflict escalated until, according to Argueta Anariba, one of his former boss’s friends — who had gang ties — pulled a knife. Argueta Anariba stabbed him in self-defense, he says, and spent the next seven years in prison before being put in ICE custody.
An immigration judge ruled that Argueta Anariba cannot be released while he waits for the government to decide his asylum claim. By now, he has been in ICE detention — which is not supposed to be punitive — for seven years, a period equal to his prison term.
Last winter, he endured yet another climate change-related disaster, when a sudden cold snap struck Louisiana, leaving him shivering in a detention center with inadequate heat.
Despite it all, going to Honduras isn’t an option. Although a climate disaster drove Argueta Anariba to migrate, his asylum plea isn’t about a storm. While he was in prison, masked men broke into his mother’s home and beat her, demanding to know when Argueta Anariba would return to Honduras. Unable to rely on protection from a Honduran government with a reputation for corruption, Argueta Anariba is convinced that he will be murdered by associates of his Washington attacker if he returns.
In the coming weeks, Argueta Anariba may get the chance to leave confinement for the first time in more than 14 years. At a new bond hearing, a judge will reconsider whether Argueta Anariba should be released until his immigration case is decided.
More than anything, Argueta Anariba wants to be there for his kids again, the youngest of whom are U.S. citizens. “To be my own boss is my dream, and also I wish to help the community, to serve on some public projects. I would like to be part of pro-migrant organizations,” he said. “Maybe it’s for that reason that I’ve had to suffer and overcome some obstacles, if in the future I have the chance to get out and to show the public that we deserve one more opportunity.”
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