They come with little but the clothes they’re wearing. They maybe carry a backpack with a few keepsakes, a plastic bottle of water turning soupy in the heat, and some bits of food for the kids, who are always hungry and falling behind, as the family shuffles through the wilderness.

They’re fleeing violence, repression, and pitiless poverty in their homelands. They’ve lost sisters and fathers to it, and the burning memories push them forward. There can be no going back.

Now, seeking safety and imagining it closer with each step, they begin to allow themselves to dream of a better tomorrow just over the border.

These are the desperate immigrants the United States of America once welcomed by the tens of millions – my own ancestors among them – “the homeless, tempest-tost” simply looking for the opportunity to build a new life.

Today, some Texas lawmakers want to hunt them down with vigilantes.

A bill in Texas – HB 20 – would create a new “Border Protection Unit” and allow the governor’s administration to fill its ranks by deputizing any “law-abiding” citizen.

These state-sponsored vigilantes would be empowered to “arrest, detain, and deter” people at the border with Mexico. Rough translation: unarmed, poor brown folks.

I highlight the racist undertones of this bill because Texas has a particularly grim history of raising armed citizen militias against certain groups of people and widespread lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans

And here’s the kicker: people serving in this new unit would be granted criminal and civil immunity against claims of wrongdoing. They could do just about anything they wanted without fear of punishment.

This may not lead immediately to “death squads,” as opposition politicians warn, but it seems way closer to that than anyone should feel comfortable with.

Without question, it’s a blueprint for abuses against vulnerable people, with armed thugs terrorizing them at will and allowed to get away with it.

Vigilante hate groups have already been formalizing relationships with border sheriffs in recent years, and that’s bad enough. Immunity from prosecution would take things to a new extreme.

Texas lawmakers need to back up and realize: even when people have nothing else, they still have rights.

How do you fight the destructive armed group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)?

Well, if you’re the authorities in Burkina Faso, you shut down a respected international TV news channel.

Burkina Faso’s transitional military government has announced the suspension of France 24. Authorities were unhappy with the channel for airing a 19-second clip of an interview with the self-proclaimed leader of AQIM, but their response is over the top. It violates the right to a free and independent media – and national law.

AQIM deserves zero sympathy, of course. Attacks on civilians by armed groups allied to AQIM and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been increasing over the past year, intensifying a humanitarian crisis in the country.

But they’re not the only ones causing the country’s slide. Military forces and pro-government militias committed abuses in counterterrorism operations, and political instability deepened as a result of two military coups.

Restricting the information people can receive in Burkina Faso is not going to solve any of the country’s problems.

And France 24 is not alone. Journalists in the country talk about “a climate of fear,” including intimidation, harassment, and surveillance by Burkinabé authorities, making their work difficult or impossible.

Authorities fighting armed groups should not fight free media as well.

(written by Alice Autin) 

The Olympic games should be associated with the beauty of sports and seeing our favorite athletes shine – not with serious threats to civic freedoms and democratic principles. 

Sadly, ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics games, the French National Assembly adopted a government bill that aims to legalize rights-endangering surveillance. It would use invasive, algorithm-driven cameras in public spaces.

There’s a reason why no other EU member state has legalized the controversial practice involving permanent monitoring, profiling, and tracking: such surveillance systems often lead to over-criminalization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. 

Now, the new surveillance measures are presented in the law as an experimental security precaution ahead of the Olympics. But, as my HRW colleague Elvire Fondacci writes, experience in France and elsewhere has shown these experiments often become the norm.

Let’s not play that game. 

(compiled by Emily Palomo)

• Pacific islanders hail UN vote on climate justice (The Guardian) 
• Mexico investigates migrant deaths in border city fire as homicide case (New York Times) 
• Namibian Communities Deserve a Say in German Reparations Deal (HRW) 
• The ICC’s arrest warrant against the Russian president was historic. But where will it lead? (The Nation)