Problems
Climate Justice Means No Borders
The session titled “Climate Justice Means No Borders” featured Sarra Tekola’s work on climate change and colonialism. Climate justice work often focuses on the impact that climate change has on those who contribute the least greenhouse gases. Still, climate change is not usually stated directly as a legacy of colonialism (Sealey-Huggins, 2017). Colonialism encompasses the era in which Western White countries penetrated the Global South and took resources, labor, and land, perpetuating unequal exchange on a global scale (Bulhan, 2015; Mignolo, 2011). Development for Western governments would have been impossible without usurping other countries’ resources (Gilio-Whitaker, 2019). Indeed, the West developed during the Industrial Revolution, and this required a surplus of labor and agricultural resources. Western countries ultimately generated surplus from colonies, a process Marx describes as “primitive accumulation” (Marx, 2013;1867). Also, the Industrial Revolution caused carbon dioxide levels to rise, initiating the connection between climate change and colonialism (Andres et al., 1999; Gilio-Whitaker, 2019; Hornborg, 2015). This connection begins with the theft of resources, land, and people, a process that continues today, furthering global inequality and demanding climate justice solutions (Banerjee and Linstead, 2001; Harvey, 2003; Jorgenson, 2006).
Western nations consume at a rate more extensive than the Earth’s capacity. For instance, it is believed that in the near future, at the rate at which Americans are consuming, there will not be enough resources in the world for everyone to consume (Brand, 2012; Meadows et al., 1972; Steffen et al., 2015; Warlenius, 2016). In fact, several studies reflect the notion that Western nations rely on and ultimately require a Third World for them to reign as the First World (Geisinger, 1999; Jorgenson, 2006; Siddiqui and Girdner 2008). In this regard, the call for climate justice must address the harms of the hegemonic Eurocentric colonial empire that is the West (Grosfoguel, 2015). Part of those harms includes creating false borders that deny the social or ecological relevance of Indigenous peoples experiencing a more nomadic and mutualistic relationship with the land rather than the West’s current parasitic and exploitative relationship (Burman, 2017; Miller, 2017; Walia, 2013). For these reasons, climate justice must include the removal of colonial borders.
As climate change worsens from the West’s inaction (Waugh, 2011), ecological collapse and resource scarcity become increasingly common (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2018). Now the same peoples colonized by Western nations are being starved to death by the West via climate change droughts, eventually increasing the likelihood of civil war due to government breakdowns (Gonzalez, 2021; Roberts and Parks, 2009). According to a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study, the possibility of civil violence will increase by about 11% per degree Celsius of warming (Burke et al., 2015). Climate refugees attempting to flee famine and conflict suffer even further from the lack of protection granted by the United Nations (Berchin et al., 2017). Climate justice must address massive, forced migration that is inevitable due to climate change (Gonzalez, 2021). The West is responsible for this imminent collapse (Hornborg, 2015), and has a responsibility to open its borders (Walia, 2013) to immigrants.
Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security
This session focused on Todd Miller’s 2017 book, Storming the Wall, and his investigation of the intersection of borders, displacement, and climate change as a global phenomenon. The session explored the impact and experiences of climate change and displacement by individuals forced to migrate across international borders. It focused on migrants’ challenges due to political behavior in the climate change arena. Issues faced by climate refugees are only going to increase with the warming of the globe. For instance, a dry corridor in Central America plagued approximately 400,000 people in Honduras, a condition that has continued for at least 10 years. More than 2 million people were in peril in the last two years due to climate change in this dry corridor alone.
Agricultural Missions, Inc.’s (AMI’s) 2019 Study Session centered on how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pressured Mexico and sent resources to train and assist the Mexican military with policing its border. Over the last 25 years, since the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s, the United States invested untold amounts of money into physical barriers, technology, and agents. These investments increased throughout the Obama administration, which continued to build borders, construct detention centers, and increase deportations. Additionally, the Trump administration persisted with the highest levels of enforcement yet.
The Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security are taking climate change into account with climate adaptation plans and are paying close attention to the future displacement that climate change will cause. Instead of seeing mass migration as a global problem and giving humanitarian aid and status in the United States, they choose to continue building border apparatuses. The Global North’s border regime, for the most part, refuses to recognize climate change as a primary factor in the ever-increasing forced migration. The 2003 Pentagon Commission Report described the worst-case scenario for climate change when it concluded that the United States has enough resources to take the climate shocks (Schwartz and Randall, 2003). However, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean will be severely affected, causing some of their citizens to attempt entering the United States, which will in turn prompt the United States to build defensive fortresses to stop unwanted refugees entering the United States (Schwartz and Randall, 2003; Miller, 2017).
Detention Centers
Rape, murder, and other forms of extreme violence are among the experiences of those in detention centers. The United States immigration policies since 1996 are representative of a criminal approach for many people who, for the most part, are merely seeking a better quality of life. Consider the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, which charged civil penalties for noncitizens and other stringent legislation reflective of xenophobic responses to nonWhite immigrants (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2019). The criminalization of illegal entry varies under different administrations. Still, illegal entry has increased since 1996 and, as of 2016, accounted for 52% of federal criminal prosecutions detrimentally impacting people of color, mainly from Latin America (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2019, p. 19). Furthermore, the zero-tolerance policy implemented by the U.S. Border Patrol and by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2018 established norms of separating children from families and caging them in detention facilities similar to those used for detaining adults (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2019, pp. 23-25).
Studies show that the prison-like detention model is slowly becoming the norm (Ackerman and Furman, 2013). Private corporations such as CoreCivic and the Management and Training Corporation (MTC) specialize in the idea of providing top-notch “corrections” businesses, ultimately appealing to the correctional nature of prisons for detention centers (Gilman and Romero, 2018, p. 6). For instance, electronic ankle monitors are secured in contracts between federal immigration agencies and private prisons to track released migrants, further perpetuating a prison-like culture for immigration (Gilman and Romero, 2018, p. 7). In this regard, the United States upholds a for-profit incarceration agenda that allows corporations to receive taxpayers’ dollars and exploit the labor of immigrants housed in detention centers. In particular cases, migrants themselves perform some of the work required to maintain prison operations (Gilman and Romero, 2018, p. 2).
Criticisms from the public and government officials pinpointing the homogeneity between immigration detention and criminal incarceration inspired the transition to standardized risk classification assessment (RCA). The RCA requires ICE officers to conduct interviews and observations first to identify any “special vulnerability,” then evaluate mandatory detention before using a criminal history database to score the person’s risk level to public safety (Evans and Koulish, 2020, p. 14). ICE officers perform a flight risk assessment to combine with other risk factors that determine recommendations based on the following categories: “release, supervisor to determine, detain-eligible for bond, or detain in the custody of DHS” (Evans and Koulish, 2020, p. 14). The idea is that the RCA would enable low-risk migrants to be free from treatment similar to that of incarcerated individuals. However, Evans and Koulish (2020) show that the RCA method was compromised from the beginning and ultimately manipulated over time based on enforcement choices rather than the risk of flight or public safety, thereby creating unconstitutional detention and failed policy achievement (p. 5). Since 2012, there have been numerous punitive changes to the scoring rubric, yet the RCA has been the primary tool for ICE recommendations on detainment or release for migrants. As a result of racially biased enforcement choices, countless migrants experience unlawful punishment that exacerbates immigration detention’s terror.