Everyday Justice magazine

February 2025

Articles from Mercy:

National declaration of emergency in Bajo Aguán (Ana Siufi, RSM; Institute Justice Team)
Critical Considerations: Has the United States declared war on immigrants? (Karen Donahue, RSM)
What energy emergency? (Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team)

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National declaration of emergency in Bajo Aguánⁱ

Ana Siufi, RSM; Institute Justice Team

[A declaration issued on 01 February 2025 by activists in Honduras, including Mercy sisters and associates]

The organizations of the social, popular, feminist, human rights, indigenous, Garifuna, artistic, sexual dissident, Afro-indigenous, and student movements of Hondurasⁱⁱ declare the area of the campesino (poor farmer) cooperatives of Camarones, El Tranvío, and El Chile as an emergency territory due to mortal risk from armed attacks by groups of hired assassins (sicarios) – supported by guards [employed by] the DINANTⁱⁱⁱ Corporation – who are displacing and killing campesinos to evict them from the land they have organized to defend.

In this context we [the signing organizations] warn:

That this is a strategy to dismantle the campesino and indigenous struggle in this territory and throughout the country.
In these settlements there are women, men, boys, and girls who have been living in terror every day for months, which has worsened in these last days of January. The calls for help and solidarity through broadcasts and calls from people who are in the area have not touched this government headed by President Xiomara Castro, now complicit in what is happening there. The national police stationed in the area with a deployment of agents and equipment do not intervene in favor of the lives of the land defenders; and the supposed judicial mechanisms are not effective in capturing the leaders of these groups that keep campesino families terrorized. The ministers and government officials who should preserve life only justify themselves, publicly lament, and put off a reality in which people are already reported injured, kidnapped, and murdered.
The campesino movement of the Aguán, accompanied once again by the entire social movement of this country, is once again denouncing the lack of compliance with the agreements that President Xiomara Castro signed with the Agrarian Platform and COPA on February 22, 2022, to resolve the situation that should never have reached this level of extreme and historic violence in the Bajo Aguán region.
We point out from now on that the government of the president and its officials are complicit in the aggression, displacement, persecution, criminalization, and murder of the families who are under fire on the sacred soil of Honduras that they promised to defend, because despite being fully informed of the gravity of the situation, they do not respond to the level of this lethal crisis. At this moment making this declaration, we receive the terrible news of the murder of two people, members of the Gregorio Chávez Association: Suyapa Guillén, a member of the Network of Peasant Women, and her partner, José Luis Hernández Lobo.
The people of the Aguán are not alone. We call on all organizations and communities to join in to protect the lives of campesino families who are under fire today. We ask you to disseminate this call and follow up on the actions that we will be calling for.

Bajo Aguán – lower region of Aguán River valley, major agricultural producing region, 20% owned by DINANT
signatories’ logos listed below
DINANT Corporation: palm oil corporation of the Facusse family, heavily supported by World Bank, linked to numerous murders connected to land evictions and illicit drug trade, with a private army

Critical Considerations

Has the United States declared war on immigrants?

Karen Donahue, RSM

Since taking office on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has issued an avalanche of executive orders addressing a wide range of issues. While many of these orders are of dubious legal and/or constitutional standing, few are more problematic than those dealing with immigration.

Shortly after Donald Trump signed executive orders addressing immigration, the American Immigration Council, an organization that advocates for just and humane immigration policies, released After Day One: A High-Level Analysis of Trump’s First Executive Actions, a document which looks at the key policy changes the president is proposing, what’s already happened, what happens next and what does it all mean?

These policy changes can be summarized under the following four headings:

Turning the U.S. interior into an enforcement dragnet
“Sealing” the border—using the U.S. military and more
Rolling back existing legal protections—up to and including U.S. citizenship
Restricting future arrivals to the United States

The report notes that the president is following up on the record his first term and his campaign promises to redefine and limit who is an American. Even more troubling are novel legal arguments about using the military to repel asylum seekers, including invoking the Insurrection and Alien Enemies Acts.

The report warns immigrant advocates that “it is important to understand not just the scope of the executive orders, but also what precisely they aim to do, and on what timescale. The flurry of first-day activity was itself a signal to immigrant communities that they are under attack—but it is also a blueprint for future actions.”

What energy emergency?

Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team

Among the early executive orders that President Donald Trump signed soon after his second inauguration is a declaration of an “energy emergency.” This despite the fact that the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever, and exporting more than any other country.

The declaration provided a rationale for a slew of related executive orders that signal a distinct policy shift away from renewable energy expansion and toward fossil fuel development. These include opening up more oil and gas drilling in Alaska, reversing President Biden’s pause on new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals that threaten communities along the Gulf Coast, freezing congressionally allocated investments in renewable energy, and restricting wind energy and pausing approvals of renewable energy on public land and waters. The president also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, and revoked policy that was designed to ease the disproportionate burden of pollution on low-income and Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.

The energy emergency declaration specifically calls out obstacles to this agenda in the Northeast and West Coast, “where dangerous State and local policies jeopardize our Nation’s core national defense and security needs, and devastate the prosperity of not only local residents but the entire United States population.” It will be worth monitoring to see if this leads to attempts to overturn state and local laws and regulations that ban certain forms of energy development, such as fracking, and that restrict siting of pipelines and other infrastructure.

The emergency declaration also appears to indicate support for speeding up permitting of energy projects, electricity transmission lines, and mining for minerals used for renewable energy and the military. Members of Congress are working on bills that would loosen environmental regulations around mining and energy development and limit public input, including from communities located near pr0posed projects.

The Sisters of Mercy’s Awakening to a New Consciousness on Extractivism theological reflection process offers many examples of the harms of extracting natural resources, analysis of the impacts of this extraction, and calls to action.