Whip debate obscures deeper issues in treatment of Haitian migrants

+ lawyers may be key to keeping tenants facing eviction in their homes US Edition - Today's top story: Haitian migrants at the border: An asylum law scholar explains how US skirts its legal and moral duties [View in browser]( US Edition | 27 September 2021 [The Conversation]( Recent media reports over Haitian migrants crossing the border from Mexico to Texas have debated whether Border Patrol agents were carrying whips or not. Indeed, we chose the wording “whip-like cords” in our article to reflect the ambiguity. This may be missing the point: From the vantage point of the migrants, half-submerged in water and looking up at uniformed men on horses, the thing being swung must surely have looked like a whip. Moreover, the debate is a distraction from wider concern about what went down last week at the border. Karen Musalo, a refugee law expert at the University of California, Hastings, describes how the United States’ treatment of the migrants [circumvents its international obligations](. “It is entirely legal to approach U.S. borders and request asylum,” she writes. By relying on a Trump-era order to deport thousands, the Biden administration has replaced existing immigration law with a discriminatory public health order and eliminated due process protections that are integral to U.S. laws, she explains. Also today: - [Behind the CDC, FDA decisions to recommend booster shots]( - [Ötzi the Iceman and religious tattoos]( - [Ready for the next disaster? Time to prepare a go-bag]( Matt Williams Breaking News Editor U.S. envoy resigned over “inhumane” treatment of Haitian migrants. 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