25 February 23
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This week we learned that House Speaker McCarthy turned over more than 40,000 hours of internal U.S. Capitol footage from January 6 exclusively to the conspiracy theorist and authoritarian propagandist Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
He’s still at it — repeating baseless theories that the federal government instigated the attack. He even gave airtime to former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon hours after Bannon was convicted of contempt. Carlson has also produced a three-part documentary, “Patriot Purge,” advancing a false claim that FBI operatives were behind the assault and arguing that the January 6 rioters were innocent.
New revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News expose the depth of the cynicism and greed behind Carlson and his Fox News colleagues. Emails from Carlson and the others reveal that they knowingly put guests on their shows — including Trump lawyer Sidney Powell — to make false claims to the viewing public about fraud in the 2020 election. Carlson and the other hosts knew that their guests were lying. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” wrote Carlson in an email.
Why did Carlson and the other Fox hosts do this? Not only or even primarily to promote Trump and fuel public anger at Democrats and the so-called “stolen election,” but to maintain their ratings lead over Trump’s more extreme right-wing media outlets (such as Newsmax and OAN) — and therefore the value of their Fox stocks and stock options.
In a text chain with Ingraham and Hannity, Carlson referred to a tweet in which Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a message from Trump and concluded there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion. “Please get her fired,” Carlson said, adding: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her tweet.
Having earned a fortune by getting their Fox viewers (and the ad revenue that came with them) revved up over false claims of election fraud, Carlson and his Fox colleagues feared losing those same viewers (and revenue) to even nuttier networks.
What will Carlson do with the 40,000 hours of videotape that Kevin McCarthy just turned over to him? Based on his history, he’ll probably use it to rev up Fox viewers (and ad revenue) to new heights of outrage and money.
How will he do this? By picking and choosing portions of the videotape, and presenting them out of context to create a misleading narrative that will discredit the January 6 investigators and absolve Trump and the insurrectionists.
The reason McCarthy turned over the videotape to Carlson was to appease the most extreme right-wing authoritarian elements of his narrow House majority — such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, the bonkers congresswoman from Georgia who pressured McCarthy to give Carlson the tapes.
Greene has now become a close advisor to McCarthy. She has already suggested that January 6, 2021, was a false-flag operation created by the U.S. government and that the rioters were patriots who got ensnared in the plot. Should anyone be surprised if Carlson’s narrative supports Greene’s view?
Carlson’s goal is not just to reward election deniers in the House, like Greene, nor to help Trump or a Trump-like candidate become President. It’s also to make lot of money for himself in the process — as Carlson and his colleagues did when fueling Trump’s big lie in the months after the 2020 election.
McCarthy’s Republican House’s mission is to attack President Biden along with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, discredit and attack the findings of the January 6 investigations and the likely upcoming indictments, and undermine the public’s confidence in our democracy and in any election results that don’t go their way. McCarthy has even named Greene to the House Homeland Security Committee.
McCarthy and his House Republicans need Fox News to amplify their bizarre views, hearings, and conclusions. Trump needs McCarthy’s House Republicans and Fox News to fuel his candidacy. Fox News needs them both to fuel its ratings and revenue.
The McCarthy-Trump-Fox complex is internally consistent — connecting authoritarianism, right-wing Republican hackery, GOP political fundraising, Trump-boosting ratings outrage, and greed. It’s a vicious cycle designed to sow anger and distrust while advancing the power and wealth of McCarthy, Greene, Trump, Carlson, and Fox News.
This is the same combination that fueled Trump’s presidency and led to his first attempted coup. Will it lead to a second?
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A prisoner. (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Guardian UK)
Ho is an unlikely candidate for this role. Since his appointment in 2018, he has gained notoriety as a hard-right firebrand eager to fight the culture wars from the bench. He fills his opinions with trollish partisan rhetoric, railing against abortion, gun control, vaccine mandates, cancel culture, and the “woke Constitution.” Recently, he announced that he would boycott clerks from Yale Law School, asserting (dubiously) that the school silenced conservative voices. As a rule, you would not want Ho to be in charge of protecting your constitutional rights, unless you have the kind of grievance that would resonate with Tucker Carlson.
And yet, in two of the most disturbing First Amendment cases of the decade so far—Gonzalez v. Trevino and Villarreal v. Laredo—Ho has emerged as an impassioned opponent of crass, carceral censorship. Start with Gonzalez. In 2019, 72-year-old Sylvia Gonzalez ran a successful campaign for city council in Castle Hills, Texas, a town of 5,000. She heard from residents that the current city manager, Ryan Rapelye, was doing a poor job. So, once on the council, Gonzalez launched a nonbinding citizen petition urging the council to replace Rapelye.
After a council hearing on the city manager, Gonzalez briefly placed the petition papers in her binder. When the mayor, Edward Trevino, asked her for the petition, she located the papers and handed them to him. At the time, both Gonzalez and Trevino said that her misplacement of the petition was a mistake. Yet this brief exchange formed the basis of an alleged conspiracy that would eventually place Gonzalez in jail.
Trevino, it turns out, saw Gonzalez as an enemy. As mayor, he had appointed Rapelye to be city manager, and he was infuriated that the new councilmember contested his decision. At this point, the city’s Police Chief John Siemens—whom Trevino had also appointed—deputized a friend, Alex Wright, to investigate Gonzalez. (Wright was not a detective or even a law enforcement officer of any kind.)
Wright claimed that, when Gonzalez placed the petitions in her binder, she violated an obscure Texas law that bars individuals from “conceal[ing]” any “government record.” Normally, a person charged with such a minor crime is asked to appear before a judge at a specific date. But Wright allegedly deployed a process that’s usually reserved for violent felonies, ultimately procuring an arrest warrant. So Gonzalez turned herself in at the local jail. There, she was forced to don an orange shirt and sit handcuffed to a metal bench for a day. Jail staff would not allow her to stand up or use the bathroom in privacy.
When the district attorney caught wind of these events, he dropped all charges. Gonzalez then sued the group said to be behind the arrest, accusing them of retaliating against her in violation of the First Amendment. In July, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit ruled against her. The panel reasoned that law enforcement had probable cause to arrest Gonzalez, and that she had not proven that “similarly situated individuals” had engaged in the same “criminal conduct” without getting arrested. Thus, she failed to demonstrate that the arrest was a retaliation against her free speech. The majority granted immunity to Trevino, Siemens, and Wright.
The 5th Circuit then considered rehearing the case en banc, with every judge weighing in. On Wednesday, the full court refused to revisit it by a 10–6 vote. Six judges dissented, including Dana Douglas, Joe Biden’s new addition to the court. Yet Ho was the only dissenter to write an opinion. He sounded furious. The 5th Circuit, he wrote, had left the American people “vulnerable to public officials who choose to weaponize criminal statutes against citizens whose political views they disfavor.” He decried Gonzalez’s “tormenters-in-office” for violating “the most fundamental value in American democracy” by using the “coercive powers of government to punish and silence their critics.” And he insisted that Gonzalez had every right to sue them for their “heinous” and “unconstitutional” scheme to arrest her for “stating unpopular viewpoints.”
“In America, we don’t allow the police to arrest and jail our citizens for having the temerity to criticize or question the government,” Ho declared. It turns out, though, that we do—at least in the 5th Circuit.
Gonzalez marked the second time that Ho has castigated his colleagues for flouting these principles. In another recent case, Villarreal v. Laredo, the 5th Circuit considered the plight of Priscilla Villarreal, a resident of Laredo, Texas. A citizen journalist, Villarreal puts her reporting on Facebook, often live-streaming from car crashes, crime scenes, and other events of public interest. She then provides her own unfiltered commentary on the footage.
Unsurprisingly, Villarreal has repeatedly earned the ire of Laredo officials. In one report, she noted that the district attorney dropped an arrest warrant for a relative of Marisela Jacaman, a member of his own staff. In another, she live-streamed police officers strangling a driver they had pulled over. Law enforcement expressed their contempt for her journalism.
In 2017, Villarreal uncovered the name of one local who died by suicide and another who died in a car crash. In both cases, she called a police officer to confirm their identities—a standard reporting practice. When Laredo officials discovered these calls, they secured a warrant for her arrest. Why? Prosecutors cited a provision of Texas law—one they had never before enforced—that criminalizes the act of soliciting or receiving nonpublic information “from a public servant” with “intent to obtain a benefit.” Prosecutors alleged that Villarreal violated this law because she sought the “benefit” of more Facebook followers.
Who approved the arrest warrant application? None other than Marisela Jacaman, the district attorney staffer whom Villarreal had criticized for allegedly helping to get a relative off the hook.
So Villarreal turned herself in. While the police booked her, officers allegedly took pictures of her in handcuffs and openly mocked her. She was then taken to a local jail. A judge threw out the charges, finding the law unconstitutionally vague.
Later, Villarreal filed a lawsuit alleging that Laredo officials violated her First Amendment rights. In August, a three-judge panel led by Ho ruled in her favor. In his majority opinion, Ho framed the case as a simple one: “If the First Amendment means anything,” he wrote, “it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned.” It should “be patently obvious to any reasonable police officer,” he continued, “that the conduct alleged in the complaint constitutes a blatant violation of Villarreal’s constitutional rights.” He therefore denied the officials immunity.
In a concurrence to his own majority opinion, Ho went further. “This is an exceedingly troubling case,” he opined. “It’s beyond the pale when law enforcement officials weaponize the justice system to punish their political opponents.” It is, in fact, downright “totalitarian.” Prosecutors’ view of Texas law would “condemn countless journalists” to arrest and incarceration. That, Ho concluded, cannot be squared with the First Amendment.
That wasn’t the end of the story. The full 5th Circuit voted to rehear the case—a sign that a majority of judges may disagree with Ho. During oral arguments in January, he questioned the defendants’ lawyers incredulously. “You can’t arrest people for asking questions of their government for information,” he said. The lawyer responded that, when an individual seeks the information outside of a formal public records request, they are, indeed, breaking Texas law. There is a real chance that the 5th Circuit will soon permit this criminalization of journalism.
A cynic might say that Ho has seized on this issue to prove he isn’t a partisan hack, or to draw accolades from a hostile media. The more straightforward explanation is that, on this issue, Ho is not a lunatic, and so he can see his colleagues’ lunacy with unusual clarity. It should not be difficult to understand why government conspiracies to jail critics are a danger to the First Amendment. It is only a tough task for far-right judges whose desire to back the blue at all costs overrides freedom of expression. It’s gravely concerning that Ho, of all people, has had to step up as the 5th Circuit’s voice of reason
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A man takes photos as a black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, as a result of a controlled detonation after a train derailment. (photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)
Using EPA data, Texas A&M scientists found elevated levels of some chemicals at the derailment site. But EPA officials say the levels pose no short-term risks and are likely to dissipate.
The analysis by Texas A&M University researchers stands in contrast to statements by state and federal regulators that air near the crash site is completely safe, despite residents complaining about rashes, breathing problems and other health effects.
In response on Friday, EPA officials said that air quality levels of 79 chemicals they are monitoring remain below levels of concern for short-term exposure, and that current concentrations are likely to dissipate.
But the data only adds to questions and concerns that have weighed on residents for weeks, as they wonder how contaminated their community has become.
In its examination of EPA data, the Texas A&M researchers found elevated levels of chemicals known to trigger eye and lung irritation, headaches and other symptoms, as well as some that are known or suspected to cause cancer.
It would take months, if not years, of exposure to the pollutants for serious health effects, said Weihsueh Chiu, one of the researchers.
EPA officials emphasized this point Friday. They stressed that the safety threshold the researchers used to analyze the data assumes constant exposure over a lifetime, and said they don’t expect the pollution to remain at high concentrations “anywhere near that long.”
The Texas researchers said it was “good news” that levels of benzene and related chemicals were not elevated in the air sampling. But they said EPA measured acrolein, a hazardous substance found in smoke, at concentrations that could have long-term health effects, along with other chemicals at lower levels that in combination could also raise health concerns if they remained at these levels for months or years.
Update (1/3) on @CAPS_CMU and @TAMUSuperfund partnership for air quality in East Palestine, OH. EPA’s air data for BTEX are compared to measurements by @TAMUSuperfund in NC in 2018-19 – good news is that BTEX levels appear “normal” (including Benzene, a known carcinogen). pic.twitter.com/2ZlLC0rJJk
— Texas A&M Superfund Research Center (@tamusuperfund) February 24, 2023
Of the cars that derailed from the Norfolk Southern train on Feb. 3, 11 of them were carrying chemicals used to make plastic. As temperatures inside one rail car rose to levels that authorities feared would cause a massive explosion, they carried out a “controlled release” of the chemicals on Feb. 6.
EPA collected the data between Feb. 4 and Feb. 21, and posted the data publicly but without context that shows “potential concern about long-term health effects,” said Chiu, a professor of veterinary physiology and pharmacology at Texas A&M. While some of the highest air pollution readings EPA reported were collected in the days after the controlled chemical release, some more recent samples still remain elevated, Chiu said.
“We can’t say whether these levels are causing the current symptoms,” Chiu said. EPA “would want to definitely make sure that these higher levels that are detected would be reduced before they left and declared everything cleaned up.”
EPA said it has conducted indoor air testing on about 570 homes and found no contaminants associated with the derailment inside them. The agency continues to test the air through 20 monitors around the East Palestine area, as well as via aircraft and other mobile detection equipment, and said it has not detected any levels of air pollution associated with the derailment that trigger health concerns from short-term exposure.
Experts say Texas A&M’s analysis is not a cause for immediate concern but that it highlights uncertainties about the derailment’s long-term effects.
“We don’t know enough about how those levels will change over time in order to rule out any concerns about long-term exposures or risks,” said Keeve Nachman, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “An evolving understanding of EPA’s exposure mitigation activities, and data to show they’re effective, would give us more confidence in trying to make a statement about potential risks.”
While the air pollution may not be surpassing levels of concern for short-term exposure, and even if it dissipates soon enough to avoid long-term health impacts, it could still pose risks, said Albert Presto, a research professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who is working with the Texas A&M researchers to study air pollution in East Palestine.
"We don’t know the health impact of a more chronic, low-level exposure,” he said.
At the same time, it’s relatively easy to understand the impacts of contamination coming from a factory or a power plant, for example, but harder to trace pollution coming from sources that are more widespread, Presto said.
Air pollution linked to the initial derailment and to the controlled release of chemicals has long since been blown away and dissipated, but some could still be emanating from contamination that spread across the East Palestine area and settled on the ground.
Meanwhile, other states are raising concern about toxic waste being sent outside of Ohio for disposal. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said she was surprised to learn contaminated soil was being moved by truck to a disposal site in Belleville, Mich., and planned to seek more information about it to ensure safety.
In Texas, communities near Houston voiced fears about 500,000 gallons of water contaminated with firefighting foam, a source of “forever” chemicals, sent there to be injected into a deep well for disposal.
In East Palestine, concerns about widespread toxicity continue to keep residents on edge. Some 150 gathered on Thursday night for a question-and-answer session with scientists at an arts center in East Palestine, and much of it was devoted to concerns that there is still no data on whether pollutants known as dioxins, produced when plastic is burned, might be present in the community.
One woman who said she has dealt with persistent breathing problems and a sore throat in recent weeks asked the panel of speakers how concerned she should be for her dog. Stephen Lester, science director for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, told her that it won’t be clear until EPA provides more clarity and takes action to assuage the community.
“You have to be concerned," he answered, "because of all the things you don’t know.”
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President Joe Biden. (photo: Ryan Collerd/NBC)
Mifepristone was approved more than 20 years ago to induce first-trimester abortions in combination with a second drug, misoprostol. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington state by a dozen Democratic state attorneys general, asks the FDA to lift additional layers of regulation above and beyond those for typical prescription drugs.
It accuses the FDA "singling out mifepristone...for a unique set of restrictions," and asks the court to declare the drug to be safe and effective, and invalidate the additional regulation, known as a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy or REMS.
In an interview with NPR, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who co-led the suit, noted that the REMS has been applied only to a few dozen high-risk prescription drugs — such as fentanyl and other opioids.
Regarding mifepristone, "what we're asking the court to do is remove those restrictions and make access to this important medication more available to women across the country," Ferguson says.
Since it was approved in 2000, mifepristone has been the subject of heated political debate surrounding abortion. For years, reproductive rights advocates and major medical groups have pushed for removing the REMS. In recent years, the Biden administration has loosened some requirements, allowing the drug to be delivered by mail and making it easier for major pharmacies to eventually dispense the drug. But prescribers are still subject to additional rules such as special certification requirements.
The lawsuit comes as a federal judge in a separate case in Texas is considering whether to overturn the FDA's approval of the abortion drug, setting up the possibility of conflicting rulings by different federal judges.
"So you'll have two federal judges potentially looking at the future of mifepristone, whether to expand access to it or eliminate access altogether," Ferguson says.
He says the question of how to regulate mifepristone could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a statement to NPR, Erik Baptist, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-abortion legal group leading the mifepristone challenge in Texas, noted that a group of Democratic attorneys general filed a brief in that case supporting the FDA's approval of the drug.
"We find it highly ironic that the same attorneys general who filed an amicus brief in our case two weeks ago arguing that the FDA's judgments must not be second-guessed have now filed a lawsuit in a different court arguing just the exact opposite," Baptist says.
Major medical groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association filed an amicus brief in the Texas case calling mifepristone "thoroughly studied" and "conclusively safe."
An FDA official says the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.
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A volunteer waits at St. Petersburg railway station before meeting Ukrainian refugees from the Kherson region on Jan. 12. (photo: Ksenia Ivanova/WP)
These volunteers are not linked to each other, and are not part of an organization. They often do not live in the same city and, for safety, most of them will never see each other in person. The common denominator is the risk they face from the Russian security forces, who are suspicious of citizen initiatives and have cracked down on all manner of civil society groups.
The independent volunteers do all kinds of things. Some work from home processing help requests. Others help care for pets, gather food, clothing and medicine, or deliver to makeshift warehouses. Hosts who open their doors to Ukrainians or drivers who transport them across the Russian border face the steepest risk as they are ones interacting directly with refugees and the authorities.
None of the volunteers’ activities are illegal but amid Russia’s wartime laws anything that involves Ukraine and does not fit with the current pro-war patriotic fervor is sensitive and regarded unfavorably by the security services.
“In our country, any volunteer organization or any kind of attempt to self-organize is like a red rag for a bull,” a Ukrainian-born volunteer in her late 50s, who has lived in Russia for most of her life and has a Russian passport, said. She was at a stop along the snowy highway on her way to bring nine Ukrainians to the Finnish border from St. Petersburg.
The Ukrainian-born volunteer said she makes the trip about five times a month, each time a gamble. A lot could go wrong: the car might swerve on the snow-covered road, its battery could die in the bitter cold, a tire could burst. The Russian border guard might be in a bad mood, a refugee might carry too much money through customs or do something else to attract undue attention.
Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus
The volunteer recalled one passenger, an older man, getting so drunk during the wait at the border that he tried to bum a cigarette from a Federal Security Service (FSB) guard, risking the whole operation.
“As long as you are here in my car and we have not reached the Finnish border, you listen only to me,” the volunteer strictly admonished her passengers as a family boarded her minivan at St Petersburg train station.
Whether refugees make it across the border in many ways depends on the volunteer.
At the same time it launched the war in Ukraine, Moscow tightened the few loose screws across civil society, demonstrating through dismantling opposition and human rights groups that it will not tolerate any dissent.
The Kremlin’s desire for total control in a wartime setting has targeted official volunteer movements, forcing some to work in exile or shut down completely.
Those now aiding Ukrainians are split into two contrasting camps: “official” groups, like the one run by the governing United Russia party, and “unofficial” networks with no hierarchy or affiliation.
The “official” groups help Russian authorities place Ukrainians in temporary shelters, where they are insistently offered Russian passports that make subsequent travel to the European Union nearly impossible. These groups deliver aid to occupied areas of eastern Ukrainian territories that the Kremlin now refers to as “liberated.”
Having passed the ideological check, they have no issue fundraising or talking publicly about their work.
Separated by war, a Ukrainian family balances safety, duty and love
The “unofficial” volunteers materialized primarily to close the gaps left by official aid groups: They bring phones to replace those seized by Russia at the border, find veterinarians for sick pets, obtain hard-to-find medicines, and do myriad other tasks, some mundane, others lifesaving. They also offer a lifeline for those seeking shelter in a country that invaded their own. They charter buses, buy train tickets or drive Ukrainian families to the border.
In some towns, the “unofficial volunteers’” were forced to halt their activities after pressure from local law enforcement. Last May, police came to a temporary shelter in Tver, northwest of Moscow. They questioned Ukrainians about an independent Russian volunteer, Veronika Timakina, 20, asking if she was “engaged in campaigning activities,” took photos of them or invited them to join any political party, Russian news outlets Verstka and Mediazona reported.
Tver’s Orthodox diocese was in charge of refugees there, and according to Timakina, Ukrainians were treated in a rather dismissive manner. It was difficult for them to get any support, including the $140 payment promised by Russian President Vladimir Putin to all Ukrainians relocating to Russia.
Timakina’s house and two other volunteers’ homes were later raided as part of a criminal probe into whether they were involved in spreading “fake information” about the Russian army, a criminal charge Russia created at the onset of the invasion. All three activists left Russia, fearing further persecution.
Irina Gurskaya, a retired economist and activist from Penza in western Russia in her late 60s, was helping people from the razed Ukrainian city of Mariupol reach the Estonian border. Soon, Gurskaya herself had to follow the same path.
Putin says Russia will suspend role in New START nuclear accord with U.S.
Late last spring, someone spray-painted “Ukro-Nazi enabler” on her door. Then, a few days later, police searched her house following “anonymous complaints” about the aid packages she was stocking in her hallway. They took her in for questioning, she recalled in a mini-documentary by journalist Vladimir Sevrinovsky.
The police wanted to know what organization was helping and financing Gurskaya. “I explained that [help comes from] complete strangers, even pensioners,” Gurskaya said. “One person will send 100 rubles, and the other will send 30,000 … But for them, it was strange.”
She was released from the police station, but a few minutes later, two men in balaclavas grabbed her, put a hat over her head, and threw her into a car. The men twisted her arms and screamed, demanding answers to all the same questions.
“They yelled: ‘What do you need Ukrainians for? … Let them sit here. If you escort at least one more out, we will find your children,’” Gurskaya said in the documentary. The activist was eventually told to burn the tickets she had bought for refugees and let go. Soon after, Gurskaya fled the country.
The targeted volunteers in Tver and Penza were outspoken about their opposition to the Kremlin policies or criticized the war. This public activity probably increased the likelihood of them being targeted. Most volunteers steer clear of conversations about politics.
“Overall, the main thing is not to conduct any conversations outside of the issue they need help with,” said another volunteer who helps Ukrainians with documents and transportation. “Watch your mouth. That’s the main safety rule.”
“To me, a human life is above all else, and I don’t do anything illegal,” this volunteer added.
Volunteers interviewed for this article said they felt helpless when the war began, and assisting Ukrainians in Russia was their only way of dealing with fear, guilt, despair and anger. “My relatives told me I need to go out to protest and I said I don’t think it’ll be easier for you if I’m fined and then jailed. They agreed with me,” the Ukrainian-born volunteer explained. “So volunteering was the only way for me.”
“My hope is that we will be able to create at least a tiny spot of light in this bloody mess,” she said. “Somewhere deep down I have this flicker of hope that maybe in 20 years, if I’m still alive, Ukraine will let me see my parents’ graves or see my siblings. Maybe I still have a chance. Maybe Ukraine will see this as a tiny sliver of light.”
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Belén Fernández being transported by van from Tapachula International Airport to the Siglo XXI migrant detention center in Tapachula, Mexico, in 2021. (photo: Courtesy of Belén Fernández)
An American writes about her time in the migrant prison city of Tapachula, where she is threatened with deportation from the other side of the fence.
I had come to Tapachula for four days with a vague plan to write something about migrants, of which there were plenty. During my initial excursion to the city centre, the woman who served me juice at a market stall reported that, out of every 10 people nowadays, five were Haitian, three were Cuban or something else, and two were chiapanecos (natives of Chiapas). Gesturing at the ground beyond the stall, she remarked: “Sometimes at night it seems like a hotel around here with people sleeping all over.” After attending to the licuado orders of the pair of Cuban men seated next to me in Brazil soccer tank tops and flip-flops, the woman proceeded to entertain me with stories of coronavirus dishwashing protocols and their effects on her now bleach-burned hands.
Plagued by an almost neurotic aversion to behaving like a journalist, I had spent the morning wandering awkwardly around and inventing pretexts to talk to people, like the young Haitian man on a bench who could not tell me how to get to the market but who patiently put up with me as I swung the conversation in other directions. He had arrived at Tapachula a month earlier from Brazil, a distance of several thousand kilometres, much of which he had travelled on foot. Obviously, he said, he would have preferred to be at home in Haiti; doesn’t everyone want to be in their own home? He gazed at a point over my shoulder and shrugged with a resigned smile – a shrug that better encapsulated the arbitrary cruelty of a world defined by borders than anything I could ever write.
Another of my interlocutors was a young Nicaraguan with “Juan 3:16” tattooed on the side of his neck – a reference, Google later informed me, to the Bible verse according to which “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. This young man had worked in radio in Nicaragua, and, putting on a deep voice, performed a rapid-fire dedication “to Belén in Tapachula” as he accompanied me in search of the Coppel department store that I urgently needed to find.
Our stroll was briefly interrupted when Juan 3:16 had to chase down the Mexican youth who had relieved a distraught schoolgirl of her mobile phone. Upon his return, he recounted to me the highlights of hitchhiking through Honduras and Guatemala to Mexico, where he was promptly apprehended on a minibus by Mexican immigration officers.
He would have liked to have made it somewhere cold, like Michigan, he said, but instead he ended up imprisoned for 23 days in Tapachula’s notoriously overcrowded and abuse-ridden estación migratoria – “migration station” – which had thanks to the either witting or unwitting irony of a previous Mexican government been christened Siglo XXI, meaning “21st century”. Inside, he had apparently contracted COVID – or at least that is what he had deduced from his inability to breathe for various days – but reckoned that the psychological torment had been just as bad or worse. He had since applied for asylum in Mexico and was now sleeping indefinitely on the streets of Tapachula awaiting his next appointment with COMAR, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, while also endeavouring to recuperate his confiscated video camera from the dark void into which it had been disappeared by immigration personnel.
I had heard, of course, of Siglo XXI, a facility listed on the website of the Geneva-based Global Detention Project as having these “inadequate conditions”: temperature, access to clean drinking water, showers and toilets, access to internet, access to telephones, bedding and clothing, cell space, food provision, hygiene, medical care, overcrowding, solitary confinement and protection from physical injury. In the “outcomes” section of the listing, the boxes corresponding to “reports of deaths” and “reports of suicide attempts” are both marked “yes”.
As The Associated Press reported back in 2019, Siglo XXI – said to be Latin America’s largest immigration detention centre – is a “secretive place off-limits to public scrutiny where cellphones are confiscated and journalists aren’t allowed inside”. The AP had itself been denied access but had heard testimony according to which “women slept in hallways or in the dining hall among rats, cockroaches and pigeon droppings as children wailed, mothers reused diapers and guards treated everyone with contempt”.
When I brought up Siglo XXI to the friends I was staying with in Tapachula – we’ll call them Diego and Polo, both employees of an immigrant rights organisation – Polo offered to drive me past the facility, located on the northern outskirts of the city towards the Tacaná volcano. Assuming that this would be the closest I’d ever get to 21st century barbarity, I peered through the car window at the looming complex – an appropriately symbolic landmark in a city Polo had dubbed “Atrapachula” based on its service, in his own unminced words, as an “imperial f****** holding pen” and trap for United States-bound migrants, with the US bullying Mexico into performing its dirty work against people often fleeing US-fuelled catastrophe in the first place.
I jotted down some notes about Siglo XXI as a migrant prison within the migrant prison of Tapachula and figured I had enough material for at least an article or two cataloging the latest migrant-related transgressions of my heinous homeland to the north. On the morning of my scheduled return to Oaxaca, I paid a guilty visit to that imperial outpost known as Walmart, where I acquired bread and a giant slab of industrial Manchego cheese for my trip as well as two bottles of wine, which I assumed Diego and Polo would assist in consuming prior to my departure. When they proved less than helpful on that front, occupied as they were with preventing the cat from devouring an injured bird in the backyard, most of the work fell to me – meaning that I was in spectacular shape by the time they dropped me off at the airport, and at first thought nothing of it when a female immigration officer requested my forma migratoria múltiple, or Mexican entry permit, something that had never before happened on a domestic flight.
I busied myself scrolling through Facebook on my phone while other passengers streamed past me to the security check and the immigration officer – we’ll call her Migra 1 – alternately inspected my passport, my forma migratoria and her computer. Through my wine-altered state, I eventually perceived that an extraordinary amount of time had elapsed and made eye contact with Migra 1, who with raised eyebrows advised me that neither my forma nor the June 2021 entry stamp in my passport were “in the system”. In fact, she said, my last appearance in the system was March 2020 – which was indeed the last time I had actually entered Mexico rather than lazily relying on some dude in Mexico City to provide me with a falsified forma migratoria and entry stamp after my initial visa had expired. In an effort to save my a**, I mustered my best self-righteous gringa demeanour, rolled my eyes in exaggerated fashion and requested that the “system” sort itself out as quickly as possible as I had places to be. I then retired a few metres and frantically phoned the Mexico City dude, who did not answer, and Diego, who did – and who said something to the effect of: “Oh, s***.”
The next thing I knew, I was being ordered to turn off my phone as Migra 1 and Migra 2, a man, escorted me to a small back room with a desk and Xerox machine. From that point on, my recollection of events is a blur, but I have been able to piece them together thanks to several pages of notes scribbled in real time. Granted, my decision to whip out a pen was perhaps a result not so much of foresight as of a need to project importance – and, in case Migras 1 and 2 had not adequately received the message, I announced that I was a journalist and would be writing about this whole episode. According to my notes, I also announced that I would just walk out of the airport and be done with it all but was told that such behaviour would occasion the summoning of the National Guard.
After reflecting for a couple of lines on the novelty of not having my way, I apparently switched gears and got a little bit excited about the inside view I had finagled of the migrant detention apparatus. Some notes ensued on the serendipity of my misfortune, interspersed with expressions of culpability re: the grotesque privilege obviously enjoyed by anyone who is able to experience excitement at being detained. I could not have asked for a better scoop on Atrapachula, I gushed to my notebook, than being atrapada (trapped) myself (or would it be atrapachulada?). I tried interrogating my interrogators, but this produced little information aside from that Migra 1 had worked in immigration for four years and liked it, that cross-border migration from Guatemala had indeed been on the rise and that some “illegal” migrants had attempted – like me – to fly out of Tapachula airport. When I asked if the migrant-trapping orders originated in the US, Migra 2 nodded but then revised his response to the noncommittal: “We do not have that information.” Nor was he cooperative when I sought to establish whether the “GOOOOOOOOLLLLL” that emanated from a television set somewhere in the airport corresponded to Italy or England and simply stared at the wall.
At some point, it occurred to me that I might be deported to the US – with this precise moment recorded in my notebook as: “f*** are they going to deport me can you imagine haha.” In addition to not having lived in the US since graduating college in 2003, I hadn’t set foot in the country in six years – not even transiting through its airports – as I found it to be irreparably creepy and hazardous to my mental health. The US is itself mentally ill, and there is perhaps no better indication of this than that it is the only place in the world where students are regularly massacred at school – a phenomenon that has to do with more than just the ludicrous ease with which armaments can be procured. When I was growing up in Austin, Texas, I thought it was entirely normal for eight-year-old me to be shooting beer cans off fence posts with my parents’ friend’s pistol. I also became well acquainted with the soulless consumerism that passes for culture in the US and the idea that life is a competition as opposed to a communal collaboration – a brutal dog-eat-dog arrangement that fuels individual alienation and is clearly not helped by the government’s penchant for spending trillions of dollars on wars abroad rather than on, say, physical and mental healthcare for the domestic population. But a sick society is ultimately more profitable for the arms and pharmaceutical industries that underpin US capitalism, and business proceeds as usual.
Resuming my state of panic in the back room of the Tapachula airport, I had begun sketching notes about how to sneak back into Mexico by land from Texas when Migra 1 declared that my ride had come. Motioning for me to gather my bags, she escorted me out of the airport to a waiting van, saying only that I would be taken to a centro migratorio where my “situation” would be “resolved”.
I climbed into the van, the back row of which was occupied by a young Honduran woman from San Pedro Sula, whose small son was sleeping in her lap. They had been travelling for five days straight, she told me, and had been detained on a bus outside Tapachula by immigration officials. The only hope now, she said, was to apply for asylum in Mexico as the excessive crime rate in Honduras ruled out the possibility of return. Giggling politely at my suggestion that even the Honduran president – US narco-buddy Juan Orlando Hernández – was a criminal, she shifted her son on her lap as I took a seat in the front row of the van and peered through the grated partition at Migra 3, the driver, and the member of the National Guard who was occupying the passenger’s seat.
Glancing back over his shoulder, the Guardia Nacional asked where I was from – and then swung fully around to stare at me in shock after hearing the answer, which didn’t do much to assuage my feelings of self-hatred at the superior value my passport automatically conferred upon my life.
“What are you doing here?” he inquired amusedly and went on to express his opinion that I would certainly be deported – but that, not to worry, it would be free of charge! First, however, my situation had to be resolved. I don’t recall the exact moment at which I realised where I was being taken, but it must have been shortly after Migra 3 put the van in motion. At any rate, the epiphany is forever preserved in my notebook as: “F***. SIGLO XXI.”
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Southern elephant seals on the beach with King penguins and Royal penguins on Macquarie Island, Australia. (photo: Auscape/Universal Images Group)
The expansion of the marine park would protect the entire Exclusive Economic Zone surrounding the island and expand Australia’s marine parks to 48.2 percent of its oceans.
“The proposal includes a new high protection zone larger than the area of Germany, an important contribution to our commitment to protect 30 per cent of our land and 30 per cent of our oceans by 2030,” Plibersek said in the press release. “Macquarie Island Marine Park is a remote wildlife wonderland.”
Millions of penguins — including southern rockhopper and royal penguins — as well as southern elephant seals and subantarctic fur seals breed in the island’s sub-Antarctic marine environment, which is also an essential feeding ground for them. Grey petrels and black-browed albatrosses also call the island — which lies halfway between Australia and Antarctica — and its surrounding waters home.
“The marine park has a Sanctuary Zone, providing the highest level of protection for birds and other marine life. The Sanctuary Zone is managed to minimise disturbance to the environment from human activities, so only scientific research is allowed,” according to the Macquarie Island Marine Park website. “The marine park also includes a Habitat Protection Zone. While some activities are allowed in the Habitat Protection Zone, others are restricted in order to protect important habitats.”
Macquarie Island was added to the list of World Heritage Sites in 1997, and the marine park was established in 1999. The expansion would bring the marine park up to nearly 149,808 square miles.
Australian Marine Conservation Society’s campaigns director Tooni Mahto said the area’s wildlife was having a difficult time adapting to threats like fishing, as well as rapidly warming ocean temperatures, reported The Guardian.
“If approved it will provide a refuge to help the island’s iconic species adapt to the changing climate,” said Antarctic conservation manager with WWF-Australia Emily Grilly, as The Guardian reported. “This announcement is an important contribution to conservation in the oceans of the southern hemisphere – a region where dramatic climate change impacts may threaten unique wildlife.”
Parks Australia manages a total of 14 marine parks under the South-east Marine Parks Network Management Plan 2013-2023, the press release said.
The continuation of Macquarie Island Toothfish Fishery would also be included in the new marine park design.
The statutory and public consultation periods on the proposed expansion of the marine park and the intention to prepare a new South-east Network management plan will begin in the coming weeks.
“I encourage everyone who, like me, cares deeply about the future of our oceans and of the industries and activities that rely on their health, to provide your input on the proposal to expand the Macquarie Island Marine Park and on the future of the South-east marine park network,” Plibersek said in the press release. “Expanding and increasing the protection of the waters surrounding Macquarie Island will allow us to better manage this important ecosystem for the future.”
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