External resources relating to Border militarisation

France’s interior minister has described images of police breaking up a refugee camp in central Paris, chasing people down streets and attacking journalists and others with truncheons and teargas as “shocking”.

In the early hours of 25 February 2020 hundreds of seaborne riot police arrived at the sleepy port of Mesta on the west side of the Greek island of Chios, on the EU-Turkey border. Their disembarkation was like an invading army, the police columns emerging in full riot gear out of specially chartered boats. There was a grotesque hint of a Star Wars scene in this otherwise forgotten corner of Europe’s war against refugees.

Clashes have broken out on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, where residents tried to prevent the arrival of riot police and excavating machines to be used to build new migrant detention camps. Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds that gathered early on Tuesday to try to prevent officers from disembarking from government-chartered ferries.

On Lesbos, protesters set fire to bins and used municipal rubbish trucks to try to block the port area. Police on Chios also used teargas and flash grenades. At least three people were treated in hospital for breathing difficulties caused by the extensive use of teargas, local officials said.

The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and highly trained law enforcement units to sanctuary cities across the country to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out immigration raids.

As first reported by the New York Times, 100 US Customs and Border Protection officers, including those from the SWAT-like Border Patrol Tactical Unit, will be deployed from February through May across nine sanctuary cities: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, and Newark, NJ.

On the surface, Noor Noor and Terry Burns don't have much in common. The former is a 28-year-old student at Cambridge, getting a degree in environmental conservation that he plans to use back home in Cairo, Egypt. The latter sells lawn ornaments and homegrown vegetables out of her house in the rolling farmlands of Jamestown, Pennsylvania, population 617. They've never met.

But Noor and Burns are linked by the global trade in nonlethal weapons, a growing industry that burst into the headlines recently when the U.S. Border Patrol tear gassed asylum-seekers on the country's southern border. It's the most recent, high-profile incident in a decade that has seen rising use of tear gas around the world.

The lucky ones escaped with only their mobile phones smashed. Those less fortunate say they were beaten with sticks, taunted or attacked with dogs. Many allege they had large sums of money stolen.

According to the testimony of migrants and monitoring groups, the Croatian police force is engaging in a systematic campaign of violence and theft against migrants and refugees attempting to find a route to western Europe through the country.

The Guardian spoke to dozens of men in the Bosnian border towns of Velika Kladuša and Bihać, who said they had been subjected to violence at the hands of Croatian police after crossing into the country. Most women interviewed said they had not been targeted, but had witnessed attacks on men in their groups, although a minority of women said they had been beaten or strip-searched.

Palmer Luckey, the virtual reality pioneer, left Facebook in 2017, six months after it was discovered that he had secretly funded a pro-Trump campaign group dedicated to influencing the US election through “shitposting” and “meme magic”.

The 25-year-old Oculus founder now has a new venture, Anduril Industries, this time supporting Trump’s immigration policies directly through the creation of a surveillance system designed to detect unauthorised crossings of the Mexican border.

Anduril Industries is one of a growing number of companies playing on the fear of “bad hombres” to cash in on government contracts for hi-tech virtual alternatives to physical wall. From drones and sensors to AI-powered facial recognition and human presence detection, these surveillance systems promise cheaper border control but at what cost to civil liberties?

In the last 15 years, agents with Customs and Border Protection have used deadly force in states up to 160 miles from the border, from Maine to California.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/02/fatal-encounters-97-deaths-point-to-pattern-of-border-agent-violence-across-america

Climate change, increased global migration, and expanding border enforcement are three linked phenomena guaranteed to come to an explosive head in this century.

A police operation is under way on Manus Island, with Papua New Guinean police and immigration officers entering the former detention centre in an effort to move detainees out, more than three weeks into a deteriorating humanitarian crisis. Refugees inside the centre have reported large numbers of officers, including the paramilitary police mobile squad, have entered and given them an hour to leave. The officers shouted at detainees and demanded they hand over their phones.

One year after the Jungle eviction, the hunt against migrants in Calais is as vicious as ever. People keep arriving, hoping to cross the channel to the UK. They are now met with a zero tolerance policy: shelters destroyed, demonstrations broken up, people rounded up in the streets, as deportations are scheduled to vicious states like Sudan, and the death count continues to mount. These days even charity food distributions are being targeted by police and dispersed with tear gas.

The calaisresearch website is a collaborative project to gather and analyse information about the Calais border...

Police militarization and border militarization go hand-in-hand. It's important to recognize this connection in the wake of two decisions recently made by President Donald Trump: to restore a program that provides surplus military gear to local law enforcement agencies, and to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects young undocumented people who meet certain qualifications from being deported. Both decisions represent a reversing of course on policy enacted by President Barack Obama...

In April 2016, European Council President Donald Tusk wrote that the EU needed a harsher plan to counter "uncontrolled migration".

The "unrestricted flow of people" reaching the European continent, Tusk argued, must be stopped through the implementation of "tougher policies" and a stricter control on "who crosses our borders, where and when"...

This is the third in the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) series of global reports documenting the number of lives lost during migration.

This briefing updates the July 2016 report ‘Border Wars: the arms dealers profiting from Europe’s refugee tragedy’ . It shows that the European policy response to the refugee tragedy continues to provide a booming border security market for Europe’s arms and security firms, some of whom are involved in selling arms to the Middle East and North Africa and all of whom encourage European policies focused on keeping refugees out. It’s a win-win for the security corporations, but the cost is a deadly toll for migrants forced into ever more dangerous routes as they flee wars, conflict and oppression.

I crawl out of the back of the pickup with my rifle in hand. “Keep your weapons nice and tight,” Captain Pain orders. I am traveling light. Unlike the others, I don’t view southern Arizona as a war zone, so I didn’t put steel plates in my chest rig. Next to everyone else’s commando-style AR-15s, my Ruger Mini-14 with a wood stock is slightly out of place. But everything else is square—I’m wearing a MultiCam uniform, desert tan combat boots, and a radio on my shoulder. I fit in just fine.

The eviction of the Calais jungle is about to begin, but who does this act of brutality serve? On the one hand, cynical politicians looking to the French presidential election next year, desperately trying to cling onto power with a show of toughness. But also, it will boost the profits of a host of private companies who supply the rubber bullets and barbed wire, bulldozers and deportation buses.

Calais Research Network, a research group formed this August in which Corporate Watch is participating, has compiled an expanded list of over 40 companies profiting from the border regime. These companies have an interest in building up ‘security’ in Calais and beyond, part of a flourishing industry surrounding everything from the privatization of lorry inspections to the manufacturing of tear gas canisters, and the constantly proliferating fences and walls along the highway.

Donald Trump has pledged to build a ‘beautiful wall’ – but America’s frontier with Mexico is already aggressively defended by the drones and fences of the US border patrol. It’s a strategy that is causing ever more migrants to die in hostile terrain.

The refugee crisis facing Europe has caused consternation in the corridors of power, and heated debate on Europe’s streets. It has exposed fundamental faultlines in the whole European project, as governments fail to agree on even limited sharing of refugees and instead blame each other. Far-right parties have surged in popularity exploiting austerity-impacted communities in putting the blame for economic recession on a convenient scapegoat as opposed to the powerful banking sector. This has been most potently seen in the UK, where leaders of the ‘Leave EU’ campaign unscrupulously amplified fears of mass migration to successfully mobilise support for Brexit.   Refugees fleeing terrible violence and hardship have been caught in the crossfire; forced to take ever more dangerous routes to get to Europe and facing racist attacks in host nations when they finally arrive.

However there is one group of interests that have only benefited from the refugee crisis, and in particular from the European Union’s investment in ‘securing’ its borders. They are the military and security companies that provide the equipment to border guards, the surveillance technology to monitor frontiers, and the IT infrastructure to track population movements.

This report turns a spotlight on those border security profiteers, examining who they are and the services they provide, how they both influence and benefit from European policies and what funding they receive from taxpayers. The report shows that far from being passive beneficiaries of EU largesse, these corporations are actively encouraging a growing securitisation of Europe’s borders, with some willing to provide ever more draconian technologies to do this.

The refugee crisis facing Europe has caused consternation in the corridors of power, and heated debate on Europe’s streets. It has exposed fundamental faultlines in the whole European project, as governments fail to agree on even limited sharing of refugees and instead blame each other. Far-right parties have surged in popularity exploiting austerity-impacted communities in putting the blame for economic recession on a convenient scapegoat as opposed to the powerful banking sector. This has been most potently seen in the UK, where leaders of the ‘Leave EU’ campaign unscrupulously amplified fears of mass migration to successfully mobilise support for Brexit.   Refugees fleeing terrible violence and hardship have been caught in the crossfire; forced to take ever more dangerous routes to get to Europe and facing racist attacks in host nations when they finally arrive.

However there is one group of interests that have only benefited from the refugee crisis, and in particular from the European Union’s investment in ‘securing’ its borders. They are the military and security companies that provide the equipment to border guards, the surveillance technology to monitor frontiers, and the IT infrastructure to track population movements.

This report turns a spotlight on those border security profiteers, examining who they are and the services they provide, how they both influence and benefit from European policies and what funding they receive from taxpayers. The report shows that far from being passive beneficiaries of EU largesse, these corporations are actively encouraging a growing securitisation of Europe’s borders, with some willing to provide ever more draconian technologies to do this.

As a part of measures to increase security on its border with Syria, Turkey begins building smart military towers that can warn and fire automatically.

On March 30 of this year, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) endorsed Donald Trump, effectively backing his bid for the presidency of the United States. NBPC president Brandon Judd heads the organization, which describes itself online as “the exclusive representative of approximately 18,000 Border Patrol Agents and support personnel assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol.” Judd himself published the NBPC’s pro-Trump communiqué, asserting that “if we do not secure our borders, American communities will continue to suffer at the hands of gangs, cartels and violent criminals preying on the innocent. The lives and security of the American people are at stake… There is no greater physical or economic threat to Americans today than our open border.”

Who Profits Research Center and the Coalition of Women for Peace have joined together to publish this up-to-date position paper on Palestinian women’s struggle against the Israeli control of population, manifested in the checkpoint industry. The following paper sheds light on both government and corporate practices and their repercussions on the ground. This will also be reflected through recent testimonies of Palestinian women confronting checkpoints on a day-to-day basis.

While many Civil Society Organizations have been addressing the political context that governs women’s lives under occupation, the economic factors that engineer the political system and perpetuate the power relations at hand are still in need of greater attention. The Israeli checkpoints, as military structures, have been a symbol of the Israeli control of the Palestinian population. Yet, underneath these structures lies an economic infrastructure generated by corporate profit. The vast checkpoints industry includes the construction of checkpoints, security personnel and equipment provided by Israeli and international companies.

The following pages address the checkpoint industry in the occupied West Bank as a case study of the integral part played by corporate stakeholders in oppressing Palestinian population and women specifically.

Idomeni: Macedonian police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at refugees trying to break through Greek border (video).

Despite proposed increases in spending on personnel and equipment for border enforcement, the complex geography of border militarization and the violence it produces require further examination. We take a geographical perspective to determine the role of violence in both its official forms, such as the incarceration and punishments experienced by undocumented migrants, as well as through abuses and violence perpetrated by agents in shaping border and immigration enforcement. By drawing on the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), which is a unique data source based on 1,110 surveys of a random sample of deportees, as well as research with family members and return migrants in Puebla, Mexico, we provide an innovative and robust account of the geography of violence and migration. Identifying regional variation allows us to see the priorities and strategic use of violence in certain areas as part of enforcement practice. We assert that understanding the role of violence allows us to explain the prevalence of various forms of abuse, as well as the role of abuse in border enforcement strategies, not as a side effect, but as elemental to the current militarized strategies.