Julian Hattem
LightNews LightNews
jmhattem.bsky.social
Julian Hattem
@jmhattem.bsky.social
340 followers 820 following 170 posts
SHELTER FROM THE STORM: HOW CLIMATE CHANGE IS CREATING A NEW ERA OF MIGRATION out January 2026: https://thenewpress.org/books/shelter-from-the-storm/
Editor of the Migration Information Source from the Migration Policy Institute: bit.ly/SourceSignUp
Posts Replies Media Videos
jmhattem.bsky.social
a classic segue for the ages
Air-quality alerts are becoming part of match prep. Athletes are used to adapting – it’s what we do. But adaptation is critical for us all in the face of climate change. That’s why I’ve joined Adapt2Win, a new global campaign backed by more than 40 athletes from around the world – from footballers to surfers, basketball players to runners, skiers to rugby players – calling on world leaders to invest in climate adaptation now. Because what’s happening on the pitch is only a glimpse of what’s happening off it.
November 19, 2025 at 6:35 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
To be clear, foreign-born players are not a rarity in the mens World Cup. In fact, they have been at every single World Cup since it began in 1930--often in sizable numbers

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/inte...
A graph showing Share of Athletes at FIFA Men’s World Cups Representing a Country in Which They Were Not Born, 1930-2018
November 17, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
dedicated AP reporting on some of the Venezuelans killed in US boat strikes basically comes to the conclusion that they were generally low-level guys in an impoverished part of a troubled country who, yes, occasionally moved cocaine

apnews.com/article/trum...
In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s breathtaking northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang. The peninsula is part of Sucre state, one of Venezuela’s poorest. Sucre was once home to several fish processing plants, an auto assembly plant and a large public university, all of which offered well-paying jobs. Most have shuttered. The peninsula is dotted by the unfulfilled promises of 26 years of a self-described socialist government, including an abandoned shipyard and the rusted infrastructure meant for a natural gas complex. With its proximity to the Caribbean Sea, the area is a popular transit hub for cocaine making its way from Colombia to Trinidad and other Caribbean islands before heading to Europe. Colombian cocaine destined for the U.S. is generally smuggled out of Colombia through the Pacific coast. The larger economic pressures — and Sánchez’s goal of owning a boat engine — are what pushed the fisherman to accept an offer to help traffickers navigate the tricky waters he knew so well, friends and relatives said.
November 7, 2025 at 3:49 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Zohran Mamdani did Perfectly Imperfect today and recommended a vintage Arsenal third kit, which is incredible layers of on-brand
⚽2009-10 Arsenal Third Kit My favorite third kit of all time. Nicklas Bendtner against Barcelona. Thomas Vermaelen’s left foot. The swaggering arrogance of Robin Van Persie, before he broke our hearts. Arsenal came in 3rd that season. On November 4th, I’m coming in first.
November 3, 2025 at 3:08 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Everyone knows that US deportations have ramped up from within the country under Trump

What @ruizags.bsky.social makes clear in this new analysis is that this is the FIRST TIME IN A DECADE that more people have been deported from within the US than from at the border
Screenshot: To achieve its goal of mass deportations, the administration has increased coordination among federal agencies, elevated cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies, rapidly accelerated the build-up of detention capacity, expanded the use of fast-track removal powers, tapped the U.S. military, and established new agreements to repatriate returnees to third countries. As a result, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recorded more deportations from within U.S. communities during FY 2025 than the Border Patrol apprehended people crossing the Southwest border illegally—the first time since at least FY 2014, according to available data.
October 30, 2025 at 9:29 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
For @migrationpolicy.bsky.social podcast on climate migration, I spoke w @marknevitt.bsky.social about the possibility climate change wipes entire countries off the map

What happens to those countries' inhabitants?
mpichangingclimatechangingmigration.podbean.com/e/climate-st...
Will Climate Change Push Some People into Statelessness?
October 30, 2025 at 2:23 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Albuquerque brought in the Nat'l Guard a while ago, but required them to be in plainclothes, get training, etc, says the city's police chief at #immconf, all of which led to local buy-in

More on ABQ'S experience : www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
October 9, 2025 at 6:35 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
I'm at #immconf today, and curious to hear whether the new conventional wisdom is that the current immigration reality -- intense enforcement coming from all sides, virtually zero irregular arrivals, and seemingly much reduced immigration overall -- is a temporary aberration or a new normal
October 9, 2025 at 1:27 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
I am so incredibly thrilled to say that my book is coming out in January!

Shelter from the Storm is a deep, sprawling overview of the ways that climate change is creating a new era of human migration
September 29, 2025 at 1:29 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
since May, almost all of the increase in US immigration arrests has been of people without prior criminal convictions
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
A chart: Daily ICE arrests by criminal history
August 21, 2025 at 1:56 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
for perspective, Columbia is one of the largest institutions for international students in the US. There were more than 20,000 enrolled international students in 2023-24

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/inte...
U.S. Institutions by Number of Enrolled International Students, 2023-24. Top schools: NYU, Northeastern, Columbia
August 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
nearly a decade after the 2016 peace deal, violence is on the rise again in Colombia
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/maps-and-gra...
Number of internally displaced people between 2016 and 2024
August 4, 2025 at 1:28 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
only 10 people crossed the remote Darien Gap between Colombia & Panama this June. Last June, more than 31,000 crossed

www.migracion.gob.pa/estadisticas/
TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2025 TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2024
August 1, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
In 2008, the Bush administration tried to convince some immigrants to "self-deport," just as the Trump admin is doing now

It, um, didn't go well
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trum...
Truly voluntary return is a common feature of the U.S. immigration system, as immigrants opt to return to their countries of origin or migrate elsewhere for a variety of reasons. However, coordinated attempts to incentivize and facilitate assisted returns have found little success. The most direct example in recent times was in 2008, when the Bush administration launched the Scheduled Departure pilot program for individuals with final orders of removal who remained in the country. The pilot, which ran for three weeks that August, was abandoned after only eight individuals took up the offer, out of the 457,000 estimated to be eligible. Critics noted that the program lacked real incentives for participation, however, so it is an imperfect comparison for the present effort.
June 18, 2025 at 4:23 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Having a lot of books in the home as a child makes people more likely to migrate as adults, according to new research

academic.oup.com/migration/ar...
Based on the Life in Transition-III data, we showed that the number of books in a childhood home was indeed positively related to adult migration intentions, net of individuals’ socio-economic characteristics, including individual and parental education, and self-perceived wealth. By controlling for wealth and education levels, we attempted to isolate the independent effect of books (e.g., through the openness to experience induced by them) from the effects of knowledge and status. We argue that childhood library size fosters childhood reading, which shapes one’s future spatial aspirations and results in higher migration intentions.
June 16, 2025 at 3:43 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Painting roofs a lighter color keeps buildings cooler, dramatically reducing the need for A/C and its energy use. But darker roofing material seems to be more profitable for companies, which have fought to kill policies

floodlightnews.org/this-little-...
But the weight of the scientific evidence is clear: On hot days, light-colored roofs can stay more than 50 degrees cooler than dark ones, helping cut energy use, curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. One recent study found that reflective roofs could have saved the lives of more than 240 people who died in London’s 2018 heatwave. At least eight states — and more than a dozen cities in other states — have adopted cool-roof requirements, according to the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a national group of public health and environmental groups that promote reflective roofs, trees and other solutions to make cities healthier. When Baltimore debated a cool roof ordinance in 2022, Thorp’s group and the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA) lobbied hard against it, arguing that dark roofs are the most efficient choice in “northern climates like Baltimore.”
June 4, 2025 at 2:55 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
potentially big news: A German court ruled that energy companies can be held liable for the damages attributed to climate change (altho it ruled against a Peruvian farmer in this particular case)

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
The high-profile case alleged that planet-warming emissions from German utility firm RWE had contributed to the melting of a glacier above Saúl Luciano Lliuya’s home city of Huaraz, making the company obligated to help pay for the cost of protecting the Andean community from a catastrophic outburst flood. Judges in the western German city of Hamm said Wednesday that the threat to Luciano Lliuya’s house wasn’t large enough for him to demand compensation. But they accepted his lawyers’ argument that major emitters can be held responsible for their contribution to climate change’s impacts — even when those effects are unfolding on the opposite side of the globe.
May 29, 2025 at 1:04 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
I think Denmark's one of the most intriguing cases for immigration policymaking today. Led by Social Democrats, the country has become a leader for restrictions to humanitarian protection

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/denm...
For now, Denmark is forging a path as a potential leader for more restrictive approaches to humanitarian migration in northern Europe. While other countries including Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Italy have implemented new restrictions as result of the far right’s growing political power, Denmark is an outlier for doing so under a Social Democrat-led government. International observers have sometimes viewed this dynamic as a curiosity, yet Danish officials have said their approach is necessary to protect the welfare system and ensure that benefits are only being offered to residents who fully contribute to tax revenue and other social structures.
May 22, 2025 at 2:37 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
People were internally displaced by disasters nearly 46 million times last year, per @idmc-geneva.bsky.social, more than 2x as many as by conflict

www.internal-displacement.org/global-repor...
An infographic showing 45.8 million disaster-related internal displacements in 2024 An infographic showing 20.1 conflict-related internal displacements in 2024
May 13, 2025 at 4:23 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Ending birthright citizenship would increase -- not reduce -- the number of people in the US without legal status to be here
A figure showing the projected unauthorized population of the US from 2025 to 2075; US-born children would account for the growth in the population
May 13, 2025 at 2:07 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Oh. In exchange for putting US deportees in CECOT, Bukele wanted specific alleged MS-13 members, seemingly potentially to avoid them detailing alleged ties between MS-13 and the Salvadoran government

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/u...
Mr. Bukele had his own request: a list of MS-13 leaders that he wanted released from U.S. custody and sent to El Salvador, where he said they could be interrogated by his security officers. Some U.S. law enforcement officials were alarmed over the prospect of sending back leaders of MS-13 now facing charges for alleged crimes in the United States. Both the Treasury Department and Justice Department have accused Mr. Bukele’s government of making a secret pact with MS-13, offering its leaders behind bars special privileges to keep homicides down in El Salvador. Mr. Bukele has denied the claims. “What Bukele is desperate for is to get these guys back in El Salvador before they talk in U.S. court,” said Douglas Farah, an El Salvador expert who between 2018 and 2022 collaborated with the Justice Department “Vulcan” task force, which targeted MS-13, as a U.S. military contractor. Nevertheless, U.S. officials agreed to send El Salvador around a dozen senior members of MS-13, including a high-ranking leader named César Humberto López-Larios, who had been in U.S. custody awaiting trial on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges. Mr. Bukele has so far not received everyone he sought, but U.S. officials say they still intend to send additional gang leaders he has requested. For Mr. Trump and his aides, the unconventional swap — getting a foreign country to take a group of Venezuelans migrants, along with Salvadoran-born MS-13 members — was a bargain price to pull off the kind of deportations they sought, even with the millions the United States agreed to pay to house the Venezuelans.
April 30, 2025 at 2:41 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
As @kathleenbush.bsky.social & Muzaffar Chishti explain, Trump's first 100 days have been arguably the most transformative in modern US immigration history

bit.ly/Trump100Days...
Greater border enforcement and mass deportations were two major pledges made by Donald Trump as he campaigned to reclaim the White House. In its first 100 days, his administration has raced to meet those goals and so many others, issuing a flurry of immigration-related executive actions—at a pace nearly sixfold greater than during the same period in the first Trump term. The administration has tapped the military, federal agencies and databases, and state and local law enforcement, as well as invoked archaic laws previously used only in wartime to accomplish the most sweeping immigration enforcement policy changes in U.S. history. It also has situated immigration enforcement at the heart of its dealings with Mexico, Canada, and other countries In all, the Trump administration has taken 175 immigration-specific executive actions through April 22, according to MPI analysis. That exceeds the 94 actions of the Biden administration’s first 100 days and is a nearly sixfold increase over the fewer than 30 actions during the same period in Trump’s first term. The breadth and reach of immigration activity in Trump’s first 100 days are the most sweeping since at least the period following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Many changes are, in fact, more expansive than the post-9/11 actions, which were designed to prevent terrorism and therefore were at least somewhat targeted in scope.
April 24, 2025 at 2:01 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
this story on Somaliland's efforts to charm the Trump White House reminds me of how Morocco got the US to acknowledge its claim to Western Sahara

Trump clearly doesn't care much about Africa, so it's a ripe opportunity for transactional politics to gain US legitimacy
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/w...
“Myself and my people are hopeful that the business-mindedness of President Trump will lead to the recognition of Somaliland,” President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said last month in an interview with The New York Times at the presidential palace in Hargeisa, the capital. “This is the biggest opportunity we’ve had.”
April 16, 2025 at 6:45 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
Great AP photo essay on before/after in the Darien Gap, which went from near-impassable rural jungle to high-traffic migration corridor and now has become something else

apnews.com/article/dari...
Dozens of people crossing a river in the Darien Gap The same river path, now empty
April 11, 2025 at 1:36 PM
jmhattem.bsky.social
New details about Australia's first-in-the-world climate migration visa for people from Tuvalu seems to leave room to expand it to other countries

theconversation.com/fresh-detail...
Screenshot: Secondly, the new visa does not specifically mention Tuvalu. This would make it simpler to extend it to other Pacific countries in the future.
April 10, 2025 at 12:54 PM