The essay below was written in May 2021 for "Issues in the News," a journalism course at Ithaca College in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. It is a piece of curatorial journalism.
There is a humanitarian emergency at the U.S./Mexico border. And while the influx of asylum seekers has dialed down in intensity, the so-called “border crisis” is far from over.
The long tail of the U.S. (pseudo) imperialism in Latin America has extended into the present day. Throughout the 21st century, the nation has failed to address the root causes of emigration and continues to support repressive regimes that preserve the export-oriented nature of Latin American economies — forcing impoverished people into low-wage labor jobs and funneling wealth to multinational corporations. Concurrently so, localized agriculture has gradually faltered under the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the majority of Latin Americans continue to face extreme poverty, criminal violence, widespread corruption and the intergenerational effects of the neoliberal economic model. Making matters worse, the dominance of monoculture has depleted biodiversity across Latin America while climate change has displaced thousands of people.
When reporting on immigration at the U.S./Mexico border, reporters plainly enumerated push factors and were reluctant to contextualize how these have contributed to instability throughout the region. On March 23, 2021, CBS News aired a broadcast titled “Biden administration working to handle migrant crisis at U.S.-Mexico border,” which featured national correspondent Manuel Bojorquez. The segment quoted Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Vice President Kamala Harris and a Honduran family that had just been denied asylum. Bojorquez said that the pandemic “decimated job opportunities” for Latin Americans but he did not explain that foreign-owned factories — known as maquiladoras — exploit laborers to maximize profits. Instead, he listed push factors without giving them much context. “There’s so many push factors, as they are called,” Bojorquez said. “Climate change, poverty and now the pandemic, so they’re looking to discuss ways to alleviate those problems.” Bojorquez, who is Latino, made it clear that parents with children emigrate from their home countries due to violence, adding that “the policy changes in the United States are less of a factor than what they were fleeing from back home,” (CBS News 3/23/21). To an extent, this nullified Senator Cruz’s comments from the first half of the broadcast. Although Bojorquez offered a surface-level glimpse into the subject of immigration, he narrowly evaded false balance by elevating the voices of asylum seekers and contextualizing GOP talking points.
National corporate media outlets were quick to call the influx of Latin American migrants at the U.S./Mexico border a “crisis.” As Julie Hollar noted in Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on March 25, 2021, these outlets — “eager for ratings-boosting controversy and crisis” — have peddled a narrative that sensationalizes “an out-of-control border,” which has impeded their ability to examine the “underlying drivers of increased migration,” (FAIR 3/25/21). CNN aired a “likely-fabricated clip” of a border crossing, and the aforementioned CBS News broadcast included a seconds-long video of an unaccompanied minor entering the United States. Mainstream sources have perpetuated and framed this narrative in a politicizing manner, capitalizing on right-wing controversy that detracts from constructive discourse. ABC News and MSNBC placed a distinct focus on the Biden administration’s messaging while failing to mention that immigrants have the right to asylum and due process.
Title 42, a policy enacted by the Trump administration during the pandemic, has been used to legally expel swathes of asylum seekers without granting them due process. As a result, “fewer than 1% of migrants have been able to seek protection,” (FAIR 3/25/21). This policy, which does not apply to unaccompanied minors, has continued under the Biden administration. Deportation can have deadly consequences for asylum seekers, as many become victims of human trafficking — often being held for ransom by cartels and criminal gangs. This too was an afterthought for corporate media talking heads like Martha Raddatz and Chuck Todd.
Meet the Press, which is hosted by Todd, aired a broadcast from NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff about how families of mixed citizenship status have not been able to receive pandemic relief. His piece focused on Anna, an American teenager with undocumented parents, and her family. Soboroff attempted to provide some background on the causes of immigration. He said that: “For years, hunger and poverty caused by climate extremes has been intensifying — driving Central Americans to the U.S.” (NBC News 5/4/21). Soboroff attributed “economic ruin” to the climate crisis but did not mention the United States’ contribution to this ruin. He even traveled to Guatemala, relying on local residents (and possibly a translator) to interpret for him. Soboroff, who does not speak Spanish fluently, spent his time in Guatemala alongside the World Food Programme (WFP). His reporting highlighted food shortages, but it did not illuminate the unsustainable agricultural practices that have — at least partially — contributed to crop devastation. Upon his return to the United States., he met with Anna and her parents. Soboroff interviewed Saul, Anna’s father, who is an auto mechanic; Saul displayed his greasy hands for Soboroff and the NBC News camera crew. “For all that hard work... you still find yourself in a situation where one day your family could be separated from each other,” Soboroff said, essentially implying that having a job makes some undocumented immigrants more deserving than others (who many Republicans say should not receive any of the benefits that they literally pay into). In the following segment, Chuck Todd said “here we are talking about the current crisis at the border, but we still haven’t resolved the issue of Dreamers,” to which Soboroff offered a slight rebuttal: “And it’s not just Dreamers, you know, it’s the 11 million undocumented people living in the country, Chuck,” (NBC News 5/4/21). During the discussion portion of the broadcast, NBC News correspondent Jennifer Ainsley argued that the President Biden should be applauded for ending the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). This Trump-era provision, which is commonly referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, offered protection and shelter to migrants — many of them from Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) — in Mexico. Ainsley criticized MPP for forcing asylum seekers to wait “in terrible conditions where they were often kidnapped... and held for ransom,” (NBC News 5/4/21). This is a false statement. Under MPP, migrants were largely shielded from this exploitation because they found security within the confines of the camps — a stark contrast to what they are currently facing on the streets of Northern Mexico. And while the conditions in these camp cities were poor, they allowed asylum seekers to create distance between themselves and the instability of their home countries while also protecting them from Mexican cartels and criminal gangs. The trade-off? “Uncertainty and chaos,” according to one Nicaraguan migrant (VICE News 3/12/21). Ainsley described how asylum seekers’ court hearings were repeatedly postponed under MPP. One asylum seeker who spoke with VICE News said that she had been in an MPP camp for 18 months. Ainsley went on to enumerate immigration reforms that the Biden administration still has not implemented. She specifically mentioned how President Biden has not repealed Title 42, committed to raising the national refugee “cap to the number that the President stated he would do on the campaign trail and, lastly, they have not ended family detention in ICE facilities,” (NBC News 5/4/21).
The Biden administration created the Family Reunification Task Force in an effort to ensure the safe reunification of families separated at the U.S./Mexico border under the Trump administration. Family reunification, so far, has been slow, and there are hundreds of families who remain separated. An article published in Left Voice by James Dennis Hoff reported that only “four families have been reunited so far of the roughly 5,500 families separated at the border since 2017,” (La Izquierda Diaro International Network 5/7/21). Despite the creation of this Task Force, family separation has continued with President Biden in office. Not only have migrants been denied their right to asylum as a result of Title 42, but desperate parents have sent their children to the border on their own because unaccompanied minors are guaranteed entry into the United States. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 19,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the southwest border in March 2021. VICE News correspondent Paola Ramos spoke with recently expelled families staying at a hotel in Reynosa, Mexico. Ramos, who is Latinx and speaks Spanish fluently, interviewed countless asylum seekers and found that while many were reluctant to send their children to cross by themselves, others felt like they had no choice. Ramos interviewed José and his teenage son, Heber, who are both from Guatemala. Heber recently crossed into the United States with the help of a human smuggler (commonly referred to as a coyote) and will be living with relatives who currently reside in the country. “Basically, [Biden] is doing the same thing Trump did,” José told Ramos, later adding that “I grew up having nothing. I don’t want my kids to grow up the way I did,” (VICE News 5/5/21). VICE News tracked Heber in his journey to the United States, methodically compiling his voice messages into a traceable thread. Ramos’ piece humanized the experience of asylum seekers who have been expelled from the United States and used that human connection to illustrate the structural faults of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. “The Biden Policy That’s Still Separating Families” depoliticized Title 42 and prioritized the testimony of vulnerable migrants over establishment mouthpieces. Ramos employed intelligent bias to examine how asylum seekers are faring in Northern Mexico and why their adversity is not isolated.
“The Reality of Biden Reversing Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy,” another piece featuring VICE News correspondent Paola Ramos, examined how reversing MPP will negatively impact migrants fleeing instability defined by poverty, violence and climate change. The episode began with Onelia Alonso, an asylum seeker who had just been granted asylum as a result of her active MPP case. VICE News obtained cellphone video of her leaving the refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, and met her on the other side of the border with their own camera crew. This is quite the opposite of simply hearing about the small number of people who the United States grants asylum to, as VICE News allowed its audience to actually see this process full circle — a rare depiction, especially within the mainstream fairway. Ramos then juxtaposed a statement from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — “We’re not saying don’t come, we’re saying don’t come now,” — with “but they’re still coming,” (VICE News 3/12/21). Several minutes into the piece, Ramos spoke with a gay asylum seeker from Guatemala who established a safehouse for LGBTQ migrants “who are particularly vulnerable” in Matamoros. One of the residents residing in the safehouse said that he was threatened for being gay and was robbed by a group of men. He said that “because of run-ins like that, we’re afraid to go outside.” Another resident chimed, calling the reversal of MPP “migrant destruction.” Ramos visited one of two official migrant shelters in Matamoros as well, noting that the facility has maximum shelter period of three days and a limited number of beds. Then during a press conference with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Ramos posed critical questions that many migrants had not been able to get answers to; she asked: “Will the hundreds of refugees staying in Matamoros be able to apply to access your resources?” to which the UNHCR official replied “This camp should not exist at all.”
After what appeared to be a series of dead-ends for asylum seekers, one man who had been trying to get into the United States for most of his adult life crossed the Rio Grande out of desperation. VICE News filmed the entirety of this crossing from start to finish. Other mainstream media outlets like CNN and CBS News have aired clips of border crossings from a distance, but VICE News essentially showed a genuine crossing from the perspective of an undocumented immigrant. Throughout Ramos’ reporting, the struggle of asylum seekers is on full display; they have begged for shelter and safety, fearing the danger that awaits them in the streets of Northern Mexico. Her storytelling made clear the seemingly inescapable risks that migrants face in their journey to the United States. And although Ramos was unable to enter Matamoros’ MPP camp itself, she managed to capture the perspectives of the people inside and revealed how U.S. immigration policy is in direct violation of migrants’ right to asylum.
Northern Mexico is a capitalist paradise. The region is home to Mexico’s maquiladora export industry whose neoliberal economic model conflated with the rise of globalization and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Thousands of foreign companies that run these factories have continued to overexploit laborers behind the “progressive,” thinly veiled façade of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Pablo Oprinari, a sociologist and author, documented the legacy of maquiladoras in an article published by Ideas de Izquierda, a leftist news site. To put it plainly, his piece explored frames “of capitalist barbarism in Mexico” and working-class resistance to the maquiladora export industry’s perpetuation of economic oppression. Oprinari wrote that this industry “employs 3 million workers,” and explained how Mexico “became a productive export platform oriented primarily to the United States, which accounted for 80% of the trade balance.” In other words, the majority of profits generated by maquiladoras end up in “corporate and transnational coffers,” (Ideas de Izquierda 5/31/20). Oprinari wrote from a position of obvious bias, but he employs this bias intelligently — using it to advocate for working-class Mexicans trying to get by with, what he calls, a “starvation wage.” He engaged in socialist advocacy by calling for a true unification of the working-class, writing “it is essential to unify the workers’ ranks and encourage the crisis to be paid for by those who caused it.” Oprinari used crisis language to emphasize the severity of the economic oppression inflicted by the maquiladora export industry. To remedy this, he called on employers to provide a livable salary to workers, adding that it should be “automatically increased in accordance with the real increase in the cost of living.” Oprinari went on to make connections between the maquiladora working-class and America’s “multi-ethnic proletariat,” resorting to Marxist language as he had done previously. Both groups are part of the same system, he argues, a system that “transcends borders.” From his vantage point, which is arguably a socialist and revolutionary perspective, the two groups are allies in the fight against “capitalist barbarism.” He sees anti-imperialism and internationalism as the foundations for which such a movement could come to fruition. Despite writing to the likes of Marxism, Oprinari’s language is a codified call for inherent human dignity.
The United States has largely engineered the conditions that cause Latin Americans to flee their home countries. Mainstream media outlets have demonstrated a reluctance to report on the nation’s historic role in this engineering. These outlets have prioritized partisan politics over the human impact of deleterious social, environmental and economic conditions. The United States has a contradictory history both domestically and on the global stage. The land of the free and home of the brave has “consistently intervened on the side of the powerful and wealthy to help crush [dissent], or looked the other way when [people] have been slaughtered.” Julian Borger of The Guardian amounted this intervention and the resulting conditions to a “hell that the US helped create,” (The Guardian 12/19/18). Published under the outlet’s News section, Borger’s article outlined the impact of U.S. foreign policy on Central America’s Northern Triangle. However, he was reluctant to place all of the blame on the United States. Rather, he reflected on Latin America’s colonial origins and writes that a great deal of the poverty and violence occurring in the Northern Triangle is “homegrown... [s]mall criminal elites have long prospered at the expense of the populations.” Not once did Borger mention “globalization,” nor did he specify the decentralization of transnational organized crime (TOC) that accompanied this global acceleration of movements and exchanges; free-market transformations in the global culture facilitated the expansion and ubiquity of illicit trade. Instead, he minced his words and implied that the decentralization of cartels and criminal gangs is solely a characteristic of long-standing, Central American culture. It should be noted that Borger may have decided to refrain from exploring this to maintain the focus on the effects of U.S. foreign policy in Central America. He went on to chronicle the destabilization occurring throughout the Northern Triangle. Borger linked the tragic death of a Guatemalan girl “who died of septic shock and cardiac arrest” in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the decline of small-scale agriculture in Guatemala’s northern highlands region, which has resulted from militaristic land-grabbing and the encroachment of the “agro-industry producing sugar and biofuels.” Land-grabbing occurs at the expense of impoverished populations. Members of organized crime displace rural Guatemalans by force, doing the dirty work for multinational corporations. Borger called this “an example of why it is often hard to distinguish between security and economic reasons for migration.” The forces of poverty and violence are inextricable, as they ostensibly create endless waves of desperate migrants.
Much of the instability in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have been imported by the United States. In his article for The Guardian, Borger breaks down the extent to which U.S. foreign policy has shaped each of these countries. For instance, he describes how the criminal gang MS-13 formed in the United States (largely in its prisons) and “rubbed salt in Central America’s wounds” after the U.S. government deported many of its members to El Salvador — “a country they barely knew,” (The Guardian 12/19/18). In Honduras, the Obama administration refused to call the overthrowing of former president Manual Zelaya a coup and even “worked with other Latin American governments to ensure [he] would not return to power.” Zelaya is affiliated with the leftist political party LIBRE, which staunchly opposes neoliberal economic model. The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), an independent advocacy group providing analysis on the impact of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, reported that incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández (backed by the United States) “announced a sweeping plan to privatize Honduras’s public health and education systems, while the government simultaneously agreed to a $311 million loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).” NACLA elevated the voices of Honduran critics who view the Hernández administration as a “narco-dictatorship,” citing President Hernández’s “complicity in a drug money scheme” that illegally funded his 2013 presidential campaign. Jared Olson, the article’s author, is an independent journalist based in Honduras. He used insider knowledge to craft a comprehensive analysis of the LIBRE opposition party and did not pull punches when criticizing ousted ex-President Manuel Zelaya. Olson denoted that opposition leaders “have also faced criticisms for being mere manipulators of electoral politics rather than consistent fighters for social justice,” (NACLA 9/5/19). Not only did his piece in NACLA impart a transparent account of Honduran resistance to privatization, but it alluded to the penetration of state institutions by narcotraffickers seeking to expand their political influence. Olson decisively combined testimonies from civilian victims of state violence with the dire need to address the roots of opposition through sweeping electoral reform. Overall, he paints a gritty picture of the Honduran opposition’s struggle for democracy and freedom from economic subordination — skillfully including the United States’ historic support for authoritarian leaders as a backdrop.
Echoing Olson’s critique was a Truthout by José Luis Granados Ceja, a writer and photojournalist based in Mexico. It should be noted that Truthout — a progressive, independent news organization focused on revealing systemic injustice to inspire transformative policy change and direct action — was a recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s (PCIM) 2021 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. Truthout received this commendation because of its in-depth reporting on the various inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. To digress, just as national corporate media have opted to focus on the Biden administration’s messaging, Granados Ceja did quite the opposite in his analysis of President Biden’s response to the influx of asylum seekers at the U.S./Mexico border and his plan for Latin America. In what appeared to be a synthesis of the aforementioned texts, he criticized mainstream news outlets for thrusting images of “children packed in ‘processing centers’ and families sleeping under bridges” into the public consciousness, which has provided “fodder to anti-immigrant politicians who accuse Biden of provoking the crisis,” (Truthout 4/7/21). Like Julie Hollar of FAIR, Granados Ceja argued that the Biden administration has not treated the “border crisis” at the U.S./Mexico border as humanitarian emergency; national corporate media have, evidently, followed suit.
Critics of U.S. foreign policy’s impact on Latin America have lambasted The Biden Plan to Build Security and Prosperity in Partnership with the People of Central America for its inattentiveness to the root causes of instability in the region. President Biden has articulated his vision for immigration reform both on the campaign trail and as the incumbent. He favors collaboration with Central American governments to curb immigration in its early stages through militarization and tighter, multiregional border control — going as far as to say that such measures would make the journey more difficult and allow for people to apply for asylum in their home countries. Granados Ceja explained that “Biden’s new plan is largely centered on increasing private investment in Guatemala and Honduras,” (Truthout 4/7/21). He went on to cite historian Aviva Chomsky who wrote that the plan would promote a model “Washington has imposed on the countries of Central America over the past century, one that’s left its lands corrupt, violent, and impoverished, and so continued to uproot Central Americans and send them fleeing toward the United States,” (TomDispatch 3/30/21). Granados Ceja and Chomsky demonstrated efficacy by shifting the conversation to the roots of immigration rather than the partisan politics that have obscured the subject matter. This trend has largely been replicated by independent media and even some foreign outlets in their reporting. What was different about Granados Ceja’s piece in Truthout was his decision to focus on the militarization of borders to dissuade migrants from fleeing their home countries. He interviewed Roxana Bendezú, executive director of Migrant Roots Media, reiterated that the desperation asylum seekers experience makes the Biden administration’s policies and messaging irrelevant. Chomsky, who wrote from a position of expertise, illustrated that “Biden’s plan actually promotes an old economic development model that has long benefited US corporations. It also aims to impose a distinctly militarized version of ‘security’ on the people of that region. In addition, it focuses on enlisting Central American governments and, in particular, their militaries to contain migration through the use of repression,” (TomDispatch 3/30/21). The United States’ maintenance of this exploitative model has conflated with its silence on the roots of emigration, particularly in Honduras. Like Olson and The Guardian’s Julian Borger, Granados Ceja highlighted the overthrowing of ex-President Manuel Zelaya and the United States’ failure to condemn President Juan Orlando Hernández. The dehumanization of Central Americans has been carried out in many ways, and “the mainstream media’s circulation of two-dimensional images of their suffering” has certainly contributed. Granados Ceja explained that this dehumanization detracts from not only the economic and social calamities plaguing the region, but also the politically-situated despair that has resulted from the 2009 coup — a despair that has led to a “lack of hope that the country’s conditions will improve,” (Truthout 4/7/21). This revealing sentiment has also been cast aside by national corporate media to make room for partisan politics, as the voices of the afflicted are often missing from these discussions.
In a searing article from the Turkish state-owned news outlet TRT World, Mexican-based journalist Tamara Pearson called the Biden plan “a cover-up for decades of the US’s looting and intervention in the region,” adding that the proposed policies “are a thin disguise for the US government’s patronage of its transnationals,” (TRT World 3/29/21). She identified the maquiladora export industry as a “corporate occupation,” and highlighted the starkly unequal trade relationship between the United States and Mexico (as well as Honduras). From coffee sales to t-shirts, Pearson provided clear examples of inequity that showed how the revenue generated from exploited labor is funneled to corporate and transnational coffers — essentially, the workers themselves receive breadcrumbs. Like Oprinari, she criticized the abhorrent working conditions of the maquiladoras and wrote from a position of obvious bias (though she employed it intelligently). Pearson, who wrote in a fiercely adamant tone, struck the structural faults of NAFTA; she explained that its purpose “is really about maintaining a very low-wage labour force so that the factory colonies can maximise their profits in a system of tolerated abuse,” (TRT World 3/29/21). She unpacked Biden’s plan to reveal the continuation of a perpetually destructive status quo. Due to NAFTA and similar agreements, it is unlikely that President Biden will wage a campaign against the legacy of corporatism in Central America. This has been made clear in the language of his plan, which seeks to reduce “barriers to private sector investment,” (The Biden Plan to Build Security and Prosperity in Partnership with the People of Central America). “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” then-Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden said during a heated interview with POLITICO last year (POLITICO 4/25/20). But Milton Friedman, arguably the father of hyper-free market capitalism, is a person and not an ideology. The obvious conflict between President Biden’s rhetoric and his vision for U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is striking. And as Pearson asserted, the dialing down of economic regulations will benefit corporations, the United States and American consumers at the expense of Latin Americans and Latin American economies.
The politicization of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border has detracted from the root causes of immigration, many of which have been exacerbated by the United States’ intervention in Latin America. Reporting by national corporate media has remained at the surface of these complex issues, whereas independent journalists — mostly those based in Latin America — have provided in-depth analyses of immigration, often focusing on the long-tail of U.S. foreign policy. The nation’s contradictory history is not a product of the past, it is a contemporary reality that mainstream news outlets have decided to ignore. The continuation of pseudo-colonialism under NAFTA must be included in the discourse. The parameters of this agreement and its implications for Latin Americans have been excluded from the mainstream fairway. News media must shift the focus to the corporations themselves so that laborers see their fair share of earnings. Independent media will need to persist in its pursuit of the whole truth, calling out national corporate media for its failure to accurately report on immigration and the plethora of factors causing instability in Latin America. Perhaps it is sensical that the mainstream media has failed in this regard. The pools of money that keep them in business can be traced back to these corporate and transnational coffers. And so, the cycle repeats itself. Through in-depth reporting from journalists like Granados Ceja, Chomsky, Pearson, Olson, Ramos and others, the public may remain hopeful about transparent journalism that holds the most powerful entities accountable.
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