The US ‘contingency plan’: Send Haitians to Guantanamo, again

 Al Jazeera English

In March, amid a flare-up in gang violence that prompted the declaration of a state of emergency in Haiti, the United States made it known that – as usual – Haitians fleeing for their lives would not be welcome on US shores.

To that end, preparations were being made to deal with a potential mass maritime migration of US-bound Haitian refugees by diverting them to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which is located on occupied Cuban territory and is of course better known for its illegal US prison-cum-torture centre.

A March 13 CNN article quoted General Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command, on the military’s preparedness for such an eventuality: “We did a full walkthrough of our contingency plan on Gitmo last summer with all of the interagency and all of my components.” The Stars and Stripes military magazine offered additional reassurance from Richardson: “Everything is refreshed – the equipment, everything is ready to go.”

And while media reports have been careful to specify that intercepted Haitians would be sent to a migrant processing facility in Guantanamo that is separate from the complex that houses “terrorist suspects”, it is hard to see the US’s “contingency plan on Gitmo” as anything but yet another racialised carceral undertaking. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

How I became a migrant trafficker in Mexico

 Al Jazeera English

In February 2024, far-right American activist and white nationalist Laura Loomer – whom former United States president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump once praised as “really very special” – descended upon Panama for a weeklong “investigative trip” to the Darién Gap to “report on the invasion of America” being staged thousands of kilometres south of the United States border.

The Darién Gap, of course, is the formidable stretch of roadless territory between Panama and Colombia that refuge seekers from around the world must navigate as they pursue a better life – pardon, as they seek to invade America. The Gap comprises a dense jungle where assault, rape and death are par for the course. And yet the US is somehow still the victim.

Loomer’s expedition brought her up close and personal with the enemy, including a number of “Venezuelan invaders”, some of whom told Loomer that Trump was a “bitch” and that they loved incumbent president Joe Biden. In other words, this was clearly war. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The criminal hypocrisy of Hernandez’s drug conviction in a US court

Al Jazeera English

On Friday, March 8, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted on three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy in a Manhattan federal court. Extradited to the United States shortly after completing his second presidential term in 2022, the 55-year-old Hernández is up against a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in jail.

Following the conviction, US Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Hernández of having run Honduras as a “narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity”. The US Department of Justice, Garland righteously bleated, has now shown its commitment to “disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go”.

And yet given the United States’ fundamental role in nurturing and sustaining this very ecosystem in the first place, the guilty verdict can safely be filed under the “Can’t Make This Up” category of imperial hypocrisy. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

‘Birthright’ in a time of genocide

 Al Jazeera English

In January, the Birthright Israel programme resumed operations following a brief suspension of activity. The hiatus was triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing Israeli-perpetrated genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has thus far killed well over 30,000 Palestinians.

Since 1999, Birthright has treated some 850,000 Jewish young adults from around the world to 10-day, all-expenses-paid trips to Israel, jointly funded by the Israeli government and private donors. Participants ride around on buses, see the sights, enjoy “hormonal encounters” with Israeli soldiers, and otherwise bond with stolen Palestinian land.

Rather than being a coincidental byproduct of the whole experience, hormones in fact serve a calculated purpose in Birthright expeditions. Consider a 2013 Haaretz article on the frequency of romantic hookups and marriage resulting from Birthright trips, which quoted a 24-year-old Israeli soldier assigned to accompany one of the groups: “We come in uniform and they make a big deal out of us… [T]hese Jewish programmes are very well thought out. They really know what to do to get Americans emotional and excited.”

And the more “emotional and excited” young American Jews get, to be sure, the better for the Zionist project, given the key role of the United States in abetting the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Of the more than 400 Birthright trippers who descended upon Israel in January 2024 – a drop in the bucket compared with the 23,000 individuals the programme had reportedly envisioned sending this year – the majority were from the United States. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.