/2019

  • California Rings In The New Year With A New Data Privacy Law
    https://www.npr.org/2019/12/30/791190150/california-rings-in-the-new-year-with-a-new-data-privacy-law?t=1577803162511

    On Jan. 1, the toughest data privacy law in the U.S. goes into effect : the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA. That’s why you’re seeing a host of emails pop up in your inbox from various companies announcing updates to their terms of service, particularly their privacy policies. With no similar federal law on the horizon, this one is expected to set the standard nationally for some time to come. So what does it mandate ? "On Jan. 1, 2020, all Californians will be able to find out (...)

    #algorithme #CaliforniaConsumerPrivacyAct-CCPA #data #conditions #marketing #profiling #publicité (...)

    ##publicité ##santé

  • Remembering The 1989 #Massacre Of Jesuits In El Salvador : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/11/15/779628824/remembering-the-1989-massacre-of-jesuits-in-el-salvador

    HAJEK: The Jesuit murders drew the world’s attention to a crisis in El #Salvador, and Congress faced mounting pressure to end American support of a brutal military regime. A U.N.-sponsored report in 1993 concluded that the Jesuits were killed by a Salvadoran army battalion trained and equipped by the United States. As for Lucia Cerna, sitting in her living room 30 years later, she still wonders if she could have somehow changed the hearts of the soldiers who killed her friends.

    [...]

    HAJEK: During the 1980s, the United States sent over $4 billion to El Salvador’s anti-communist military regime. But El Salvador’s military, supported by the U.S., kidnapped, tortured and killed innocent civilians.

    #etats-unis #terrorisme #civils #victimes_civiles

  • Artist Dread Scott Organizes Reenactment Of 1811 Louisiana Slave Revolt : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/11/09/777810796/hundreds-march-in-reenactment-of-a-historic-but-long-forgotten-slave-rebellion

    More than 200 years ago, in January of 1811, a group of enslaved people on a plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans rose up, armed themselves and began a long march toward the city. Hundreds would join them along the way. Their goal: to free every slave they found and then seize the Crescent City.

    The #rebellion came to be known as the German Coast Uprising and it’s believed to be the largest slave rebellion in United States history. This weekend, hundreds of African Americans gathered in the streets of Louisiana to recreate the event, long an overlooked chapter in the story of America.

    #esclavage #etats-unis

  • How Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick The Habit : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/10/01/766057380/how-magic-mushrooms-can-help-smokers-kick-the-habit

    Magic mushrooms have been used by indigenous communities for thousands of years, and research on psilocybin isn’t all that new either. Work began in the 1950s and 1960s. But studies involving it and other psychedelics dropped off following the passage of the Controlled Substance Act in 1970, which outlawed hallucinogens and other drugs.

    [...]

    But there are some reasons to be cautious.

    First, don’t try this at home. The amount of #psilocybin Johnson administers in his trials is considered a high dose, and it’s paired with months of counseling. Nutt of Imperial College says that bad trips of the sort Chen-McLaughlin experienced can be common for those using the drug for treatment of diseases. Memories and experiences dredged up by the drug can be challenging and disturbing.

    “You need therapists to help guide them and also prevent those memories from turning into traumatic memories,” Nutt says.

    Second, the treatment is really expensive and the whole process takes months.

    Finally, not everybody should use psilocybin. People with predispositions for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses may be harmed by taking the drug.

    #psychédélique #hallucinogénes #santé

  • Transcript: Greta Thunberg’s Speech At The U.N. Climate Action Summit : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit?t=1569444614

    Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, addressed the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit in New York City on Monday. Here’s the full transcript of Thunberg’s speech, beginning with her response to a question about the message she has for world leaders.

    "My message is that we’ll be watching you.

    "This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

    "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

    "For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

    "You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

    "The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

    "Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

    "So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

    "To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

    "How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ’business as usual’ and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

    "There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

    "You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

    "We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

    “Thank you.”

    Greta-speeches - FridaysForFuture
    https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/greta-speeches

  • Sacklers Reject Demand That They Surrender Personal Wealth To Settle Opioid Claims : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758927743/sacklers-reject-demand-they-surrender-personal-wealth-to-settle-opioid-claims

    The family that owns Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin, has rejected a demand that they give up $4.5 billion of their personal wealth to settle opioid claims against the company, according to state attorneys general negotiating with the company.

    As a consequence, talks toward a national settlement with members of the Sackler family reached an impasse over the weekend, according to an email obtained by NPR.

    Two attorneys general directly involved in the talks predicted in the email that the company will now file for bankruptcy “imminently.”

    “States have already begun preparations for handling the bankruptcy proceedings,” wrote Josh Stein, North Carolina’s state attorney general, and Herbert Slatery, attorney general for Tennessee.

    “The Sacklers refused to budge,” the email concluded, “and have declined to offer any counterproposal.”

    The email, first reported by The Associated Press, was sent Saturday to other state attorneys general. It details an offer made to the Sacklers that would have forced them to pay billions of dollars to compensate states for their role helping to fuel the prescription opioid epidemic.

    The deal would also have forced Purdue Pharma into bankruptcy proceedings while dissolving the Sacklers’ overseas opioid business.

    But in a statement emailed to NPR Sunday night, the drug company suggested a deal might still be possible.

    “Purdue Pharma believes a settlement that benefits the American public now is a far better path than years of wasteful litigation and appeals,” the statement said. “Those negotiations continue and we remain dedicated to a resolution that genuinely advances the public interest.”

    Overdose deaths linked to prescription opioids have killed more than 218,000 Americans since the addiction crisis began in the late 1990s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    State and local governments have filed more than 2,000 lawsuits claiming Purdue Pharma played a central role marketing opioid medications, while downplaying the risks.

    Over two decades, opioid sales generated billions of dollars in profits for the company, making the Sacklers one of the richest families in the U.S.

    A spokesperson for Purdue Pharma declined an interview request by NPR and wouldn’t say whether the company is, in fact, considering an immediate bankruptcy filing. Last March, company officials acknowledged that filing for Chapter 11 protection is one strategy being considered.

    If Purdue Pharma does file for bankruptcy without first reaching some kind of structured deal, it could take years to sort out the remaining value of the company’s assets and then determine who’s first in line for compensation.

    Pressure to reach a settlement is also intensifying because a federal opioid trial involving Purdue Pharma and more than 20 other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains is set to begin next month in Cleveland.

    While that legal process moves forward, state attorneys general have promised to continue pursuing the Sacklers personally to recoup profits the family received from opioid sales, even if Purdue Pharma seeks Chapter 11 protection.

    “I won’t let them get away with their crimes,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote Saturday on Twitter. “I will sue them personally, so that we can dig into their personal pocketbooks.”

    The Wall Street Journal also reported Friday that the U.S. Justice Department is involved in separate talks with Purdue Pharma.

    According to the newspaper, those negotiations involve possible civil penalties tied to federal probes of Oxycontin sales, but could also include criminal charges using statutes normally used to prosecute drug dealers.

    #Opioides #Sackler #Procès

  • Scientists Unveil Weed Breathalyzer, Launching Debate Over Next Steps : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/757882048/scientists-unveil-weed-breathalyzer-launching-debate-over-next-steps

    With alcohol, you can figure out impairment by measuring the amount of alcohol in someone’s blood, which you can determine from a Breathalyzer using the “blood to breath,” or “partition,” ratio. Make that translation from breath to blood to brain, and you have a relatively accurate sense of how drunk someone is.

    “So when it comes to these #marijuana breath tests, that’s the million-dollar question right now,” says Chris Halsor, a Denver lawyer who focuses on issues around legal #cannabis.

    Is there a ratio that links the amount of #THC in someone’s breath to the amount in the person’s blood — and then to exactly how stoned that person is?

    No, says Sejdic. The correlation “is basically missing, from a scientific point of view.”

  • 16th Century Mexican Maps Blend Indigenous Tradition And Spanish Influence : NPR

    https://www.npr.org/2019/08/23/753114640/440-years-old-and-filled-with-footprints-these-arent-your-everyday-maps

    At the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, 19 maps, nearly 440 years old, are on display — and they look spectacular. “Works on paper are delicate so we’re only allowed to put them on display for nine months out of 10 years,” says Blanton Museum communications director Carlotta Stankiewicz.

    Pedro de San Agustín created this watercolor map of Culhuacán in 1580. He was a judge — a powerful figure in the town. “Before the conquest, nobles were the only ones trained as painters,” exhibit curator Rosario Granados explains. She notes that this map is made on bark paper, the traditional material used before the Spaniards arrived.
    Blanton Museum of Art

    The Mapping Memory exhibition contains work by indigenous mapmakers from the late 1500s. The maps demonstrate a very different sense of space than maps drawn by Europeans. They’re not drawn to scale; instead, they’re deeply utilitarian

    #cartographie_ancienne

  • U.S. Recycling Industry Is Struggling To Figure Out A Future Without China : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/750864036/u-s-recycling-industry-is-struggling-to-figure-out-a-future-without-china

    But as environmental groups like Greenpeace and Break Free From Plastic point out, just because something can technically be recycled doesn’t mean it will be. There has to be an industry robust enough to do it — and a profit at the end of the day. And, they say, building up recycling allows plastic producers to keep making 300 million tons of new plastic every year (half of which is for single use) and to put the burden of cleaning up the waste on someone else.

    Pochiro, of the Association of Plastic Recyclers, says recycling does need help — from consumers, for example. “We’re trying to make consumers understand that recycling isn’t just about putting your container in the bin,” she says. “You also need to buy recycled,” meaning products that contain recycled plastic.

    There’s a growing market for such products, stuff like bottles, clothing, packaging or bags, for example. But it’s tough to compete against cheap virgin plastic. Recycling companies need huge investments, and to get that, they have to show they have a market for their products. And for that, Pochiro says, they need commitments — voluntary or mandated by law — by consumer goods companies to buy recycled plastic.

    “If a recycler can’t be confident enough that they have a market for at least maybe six months to a year,” she says, “then they aren’t going to want to make that investment in their own facilities” to make more recycled plastic.

    But there’s a disconnect underlying all this talk by the plastics industry to help recyclers and the circular economy of plastic.

    A report from ICIS, a plastics market research company, says the petrochemical industry will likely double its plastic manufacturing capacity from 2016 to 2024. And the American Chemistry Council, which represents, among others, plastics manufacturers, says it expects industry to spend nearly $25 billion to build new plastic manufacturing capacity by 2025. (That compares with the $1.5 billion that the industry plans to spend on cleaning up plastic waste.) The World Economic Forum has issued a report on plastic that predicts a doubling of production in the next two decades.

    One thing driving that growth is the belief that demand for petroleum-based fuels will decline — the oil and gas industry is looking to produce more plastics from petrochemicals to take up the slack.

    So if a new circular plastics economy recycles — that is, reuses — more old plastic, why is the petrochemical industry spending billions of dollars for a boom in new plastic? Where is all that new plastic going to go? It seems the industry isn’t too worried. The American Chemistry Council’s analysis includes this statement about new plastic: “In a virtuous cycle, as the manufacturing renaissance accelerates, demand for plastic products will be generated, reinforcing resin [raw plastic] demand.”

    Essentially, go ahead and make it, and people will find a way to use it.

    #plastique

  • Users Can Sue Facebook Over Facial Recognition Software, Court Rules
    August 8, 2019, Sasha Ingber, for NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/08/08/749474600/users-can-sue-facebook-over-facial-recognition-software-court-rules

    The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Illinois-based Facebook users can sue the social network for using facial recognition software. Those Facebook users have accused the company of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act with its tag suggestions feature, which can analyze persons’ facial details from uploaded photos. The 9th Circuit judges wrote, “Once a face template of an individual is created, Facebook can use it to identify that individual in any of the other hundreds of millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each day, as well as determine when the individual was present at a specific location.” The American Civil Liberties Union said this is the first decision by a U.S. appellate court to address privacy concerns presented by the technology.

  • USA : Dublin façon frontière Mexique/USA

    Faute d’accord avec le #Guatemala (pour l’instant bloqué du fait du recours déposé par plusieurs membres de l’opposition devant la Cour constitutionnelle) et le #Mexique les désignant comme des « #pays_sûr », les USA ont adopté une nouvelle réglementation en matière d’#asile ( « #Interim_Final_Rule » - #IFR), spécifiquement pour la #frontière avec le Mexique, qui n’est pas sans faire penser au règlement de Dublin : les personnes qui n’auront pas sollicité l’asile dans un des pays traversés en cours de route avant d’arriver aux USA verront leur demande rejetée.
    Cette règle entre en vigueur aujourd’hui et permet donc le #refoulement de toute personne « who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border, but who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which he or she transited en route to the United States. »
    Lien vers le règlement : https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/07/15/dhs-and-doj-issue-third-country-asylum-rule
    Plusieurs associations dont ACLU (association US) vont déposer un recours visant à le faire invalider.
    Les USA recueillent et échangent déjà des données avec les pays d’Amérique centrale et latine qu’ils utilisent pour débouter les demandeurs d’asile, par exemple avec le Salvador : https://psmag.com/social-justice/homeland-security-uses-foreign-databases-to-monitor-gang-activity

    Reçu via email le 16.07.2019 de @pascaline

    #USA #Etats-Unis #Dublin #Dublin_façon_USA #loi #Dublin_aux_USA #législation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #El_Salvador

    • Trump Administration Implementing ’3rd Country’ Rule On Migrants Seeking Asylum

      The Trump administration is moving forward with a tough new asylum rule in its campaign to slow the flow of Central American migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Asylum-seeking immigrants who pass through a third country en route to the U.S. must first apply for refugee status in that country rather than at the U.S. border.

      The restriction will likely face court challenges, opening a new front in the battle over U.S. immigration policies.

      The interim final rule will take effect immediately after it is published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, according to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

      The new policy applies specifically to the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that “an alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which the alien transited en route to the United States is ineligible for asylum.”

      “Until Congress can act, this interim rule will help reduce a major ’pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States,” Homeland Security acting Secretary Kevin K. McAleenan said in a statement about the new rule.

      The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to file a lawsuit to try to stop the rule from taking effect.

      “This new rule is patently unlawful and we will sue swiftly,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

      Gelernt accused the Trump administration of “trying to unilaterally reverse our country’s legal and moral commitment to protect those fleeing danger.”

      The strict policy shift would likely bring new pressures and official burdens on Mexico and Guatemala, countries through which migrants and refugees often pass on their way to the U.S.

      On Sunday, Guatemala’s government pulled out of a meeting between President Jimmy Morales and Trump that had been scheduled for Monday, citing ongoing legal questions over whether the country could be deemed a “safe third country” for migrants who want to reach the U.S.

      Hours after the U.S. announced the rule on Monday, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said it was a unilateral move that will not affect Mexican citizens.

      “Mexico does not agree with measures that limit asylum and refugee status for those who fear for their lives or safety, and who fear persecution in their country of origin,” Ebrard said.

      Ebrard said Mexico will maintain its current policies, reiterating the country’s “respect for the human rights of all people, as well as for its international commitments in matters of asylum and political refuge.”

      According to a DHS news release, the U.S. rule would set “a new bar to eligibility” for anyone seeking asylum. It also allows exceptions in three limited cases:

      “1) an alien who demonstrates that he or she applied for protection from persecution or torture in at least one of the countries through which the alien transited en route to the United States, and the alien received a final judgment denying the alien protection in such country;

      ”(2) an alien who demonstrates that he or she satisfies the definition of ’victim of a severe form of trafficking in persons’ provided in 8 C.F.R. § 214.11; or,

      “(3) an alien who has transited en route to the United States through only a country or countries that were not parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol, or the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”

      The DHS release describes asylum as “a discretionary benefit offered by the United States Government to those fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

      The departments of Justice and Homeland Security are publishing the 58-page asylum rule as the Trump administration faces criticism over conditions at migrant detention centers at the southern border, as well as its “remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum-seekers who are waiting for a U.S. court date to do so in Mexico rather than in the U.S.

      In a statement about the new rule, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said that current U.S. asylum rules have been abused, and that the large number of people trying to enter the country has put a strain on the system.

      Barr said the number of cases referred to the Department of Justice for proceedings before an immigration judge “has risen exponentially, more than tripling between 2013 and 2018.” The attorney general added, “Only a small minority of these individuals, however, are ultimately granted asylum.”

      https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741769333/u-s-sets-new-asylum-rule-telling-potential-refugees-to-apply-elsewhere

    • Le journal The New Yorker : Trump est prêt à signer un accord majeur pour envoyer à l’avenir les demandeurs d’asile au Guatemala

      L’article fait état d’un projet de #plate-forme_externalisée pour examiner les demandes de personnes appréhendées aux frontières US, qui rappelle à la fois une proposition britannique (jamais concrétisée) de 2003 de créer des processing centers extra-européens et la #Pacific_solution australienne, qui consiste à déporter les demandeurs d’asile « illégaux » de toute nationalité dans des pays voisins. Et l’article évoque la « plus grande et la plus troublante des questions : comment le Guatemala pourrait-il faire face à un afflux si énorme de demandeurs ? » Peut-être en demandant conseil aux autorités libyennes et à leurs amis européens ?

      –-> Message reçu d’Alain Morice via la mailling-list Migreurop.

      Trump Is Poised to Sign a Radical Agreement to Send Future Asylum Seekers to Guatemala

      Early next week, according to a D.H.S. official, the Trump Administration is expected to announce a major immigration deal, known as a safe-third-country agreement, with Guatemala. For weeks, there have been reports that negotiations were under way between the two countries, but, until now, none of the details were official. According to a draft of the agreement obtained by The New Yorker, asylum seekers from any country who either show up at U.S. ports of entry or are apprehended while crossing between ports of entry could be sent to seek asylum in Guatemala instead. During the past year, tens of thousands of migrants, the vast majority of them from Central America, have arrived at the U.S. border seeking asylum each month. By law, the U.S. must give them a chance to bring their claims before authorities, even though there’s currently a backlog in the immigration courts of roughly a million cases. The Trump Administration has tried a number of measures to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country—from “metering” at ports of entry to forcing people to wait in Mexico—but, in every case, international obligations held that the U.S. would eventually have to hear their asylum claims. Under this new arrangement, most of these migrants will no longer have a chance to make an asylum claim in the U.S. at all. “We’re talking about something much bigger than what the term ‘safe third country’ implies,” someone with knowledge of the deal told me. “We’re talking about a kind of transfer agreement where the U.S. can send any asylum seekers, not just Central Americans, to Guatemala.”

      From the start of the Trump Presidency, Administration officials have been fixated on a safe-third-country policy with Mexico—a similar accord already exists with Canada—since it would allow the U.S. government to shift the burden of handling asylum claims farther south. The principle was that migrants wouldn’t have to apply for asylum in the U.S. because they could do so elsewhere along the way. But immigrants-rights advocates and policy experts pointed out that Mexico’s legal system could not credibly take on that responsibility. “If you’re going to pursue a safe-third-country agreement, you have to be able to say ‘safe’ with a straight face,” Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told me. Until very recently, the prospect of such an agreement—not just with Mexico but with any other country in Central America—seemed far-fetched. Yet last month, under the threat of steep tariffs on Mexican goods, Trump strong-armed the Mexican government into considering it. Even so, according to a former Mexican official, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is stalling. “They are trying to fight this,” the former official said. What’s so striking about the agreement with Guatemala, however, is that it goes even further than the terms the U.S. sought in its dealings with Mexico. “This is a whole new level,” the person with knowledge of the agreement told me. “In my read, it looks like even those who have never set foot in Guatemala can potentially be sent there.”

      At this point, there are still more questions than answers about what the agreement with Guatemala will mean in practice. A lot will still have to happen before it goes into force, and the terms aren’t final. The draft of the agreement doesn’t provide much clarity on how it will be implemented—another person with knowledge of the agreement said, “This reads like it was drafted by someone’s intern”—but it does offer an exemption for Guatemalan migrants, which might be why the government of Jimmy Morales, a U.S. ally, seems willing to sign on. Guatemala is currently in the midst of Presidential elections; next month, the country will hold a runoff between two candidates, and the current front-runner has been opposed to this type of deal. The Morales government, however, still has six months left in office. A U.N.-backed anti-corruption body called the CICIG, which for years was funded by the U.S. and admired throughout the region, is being dismantled by Morales, whose own family has fallen under investigation for graft and financial improprieties. Signing an immigration deal “would get the Guatemalan government in the U.S.’s good graces,” Stephen McFarland, a former U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, told me. “The question is, what would they intend to use that status for?” Earlier this week, after Morales announced that he would be meeting with Trump in Washington on Monday, three former foreign ministers of Guatemala petitioned the country’s Constitutional Court to block him from signing the agreement. Doing so, they said, “would allow the current president of the republic to leave the future of our country mortgaged, without any responsibility.”

      The biggest, and most unsettling, question raised by the agreement is how Guatemala could possibly cope with such enormous demands. More people are leaving Guatemala now than any other country in the northern triangle of Central America. Rampant poverty, entrenched political corruption, urban crime, and the effects of climate change have made large swaths of the country virtually uninhabitable. “This is already a country in which the political and economic system can’t provide jobs for all its people,” McFarland said. “There are all these people, their own citizens, that the government and the political and economic system are not taking care of. To get thousands of citizens from other countries to come in there, and to take care of them for an indefinite period of time, would be very difficult.” Although the U.S. would provide additional aid to help the Guatemalan government address the influx of asylum seekers, it isn’t clear whether the country has the administrative capacity to take on the job. According to the person familiar with the safe-third-country agreement, “U.N.H.C.R. [the U.N.’s refugee agency] has not been involved” in the current negotiations. And, for Central Americans transferred to Guatemala under the terms of the deal, there’s an added security risk: many of the gangs Salvadorans and Hondurans are fleeing also operate in Guatemala.

      In recent months, the squalid conditions at borderland detention centers have provoked a broad political outcry in the U.S. At the same time, a worsening asylum crisis has been playing out south of the U.S. border, beyond the immediate notice of concerned Americans. There, the Trump Administration is quietly delivering on its promise to redraw American asylum practice. Since January, under a policy called the Migration Protection Protocols (M.P.P.), the U.S. government has sent more than fifteen thousand asylum seekers to Mexico, where they now must wait indefinitely as their cases inch through the backlogged American immigration courts. Cities in northern Mexico, such as Tijuana and Juarez, are filling up with desperate migrants who are exposed to violent crime, extortion, and kidnappings, all of which are on the rise.This week, as part of the M.P.P., the U.S. began sending migrants to Tamaulipas, one of Mexico’s most violent states and a stronghold for drug cartels that, for years, have brutalized migrants for money and for sport.

      Safe-third-country agreements are notoriously difficult to enforce. The logistics are complex, and the outcomes tend not to change the harried calculations of asylum seekers as they flee their homes. These agreements, according to a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute, are “unlikely to hold the key to solving the crisis unfolding at the U.S. southern border.” The Trump Administration has already cut aid to Central America, and the U.S. asylum system remains in dire need of improvement. But there’s also little question that the agreement with Guatemala will reduce the number of people who reach, and remain in, the U.S. If the President has made the asylum crisis worse, he’ll also be able to say he’s improving it—just as he can claim credit for the decline in the number of apprehensions at the U.S. border last month. That was the result of increased enforcement efforts by the Mexican government acting under U.S. pressure.

      There’s also no reason to expect that the Trump Administration will abandon its efforts to force the Mexicans into a safe-third-country agreement as well. “The Mexican government thought that the possibility of a safe-third-country agreement with Guatemala had fallen apart because of the elections there,” the former Mexican official told me. “The recent news caught top Mexican officials by surprise.” In the next month, the two countries will continue immigration talks, and, again, Mexico will face mounting pressure to accede to American demands. “The U.S. has used the agreement with Guatemala to convince the Mexicans to sign their own safe-third-country agreement,” the former official said. “Its argument is that the number of migrants Mexico will receive will be lower now.”

      https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-poised-to-sign-a-radical-agreement-to-send-future-asylum-seekers-to
      #externalisation

    • After Tariff Threat, Trump Says Guatemala Has Agreed to New Asylum Rules

      President Trump on Friday again sought to block migrants from Central America from seeking asylum, announcing an agreement with Guatemala to require people who travel through that country to seek refuge from persecution there instead of in the United States.

      American officials said the deal could go into effect within weeks, though critics vowed to challenge it in court, saying that Guatemala is itself one of the most dangerous countries in the world — hardly a refuge for those fleeing gangs and government violence.

      Mr. Trump had been pushing for a way to slow the flow of migrants streaming across the Mexican border and into the United States in recent months. This week, the president had threatened to impose tariffs on Guatemala, to tax money that Guatemalan migrants in the United States send back to family members, or to ban all travel from the country if the agreement were not signed.

      Joined in the Oval Office on Friday by Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart of Guatemala, Mr. Trump said the agreement would end what he has described as a crisis at the border, which has been overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of families fleeing violence and persecution in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
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      “These are bad people,” Mr. Trump told reporters after a previously unannounced signing ceremony. He said the agreement would “end widespread abuse of the system and the crippling crisis on our border.”

      Officials did not release the English text of the agreement or provide many details about how it would be put into practice along the United States border with Mexico. Mr. Trump announced the deal in a Friday afternoon Twitter post that took Guatemalan politicians and leaders at immigration advocacy groups by surprise.

      Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, described the document signed by the two countries as a “safe third” agreement that would make migrants ineligible for protection in the United States if they had traveled through Guatemala and did not first apply for asylum there.

      Instead of being returned home, however, the migrants would be sent back to Guatemala, which under the agreement would be designated as a safe place for them to live.

      “They would be removable, back to Guatemala, if they want to seek an asylum claim,” said Mr. McAleenan, who likened the agreement to similar arrangements in Europe.
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      The move was the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to severely limit the ability of refugees to win protection in the United States. A new regulation that would have also banned most asylum seekers was blocked by a judge in San Francisco earlier this week.

      But the Trump administration is determined to do everything it can to stop the flow of migrants at the border, which has infuriated the president. Mr. Trump has frequently told his advisers that he sees the border situation as evidence of a failure to make good on his campaign promise to seal the border from dangerous immigrants.

      More than 144,200 migrants were taken into custody at the southwest border in May, the highest monthly total in 13 years. Arrests at the border declined by 28 percent in June after efforts in Mexico and the United States to stop migrants from Central America.

      Late Friday, the Guatemalan government released the Spanish text of the deal, which is called a “cooperative agreement regarding the examination of protection claims.” In an earlier statement announcing the agreement, the government had referred to an implementation plan for Salvadorans and Hondurans. It does not apply to Guatemalans who request asylum in the United States.

      By avoiding any mention of a “safe third country” agreement, President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala appeared to be trying to sidestep a recent court ruling blocking him from signing a deal with the United States without the approval of his country’s congress.

      Mr. Morales will leave office in January. One of the candidates running to replace him, the conservative Alejandro Giammattei, said that it was “irresponsible” for Mr. Morales to have agreed to an accord without revealing its contents first.

      “It is up to the next government to attend to this negotiation,” Mr. Giammattei wrote on Twitter. His opponent, Sandra Torres, had opposed any safe-third-country agreement when it first appeared that Mr. Morales was preparing to sign one.

      Legal groups in the United States said the immediate effect of the agreement will not be clear until the administration releases more details. But based on the descriptions of the deal, they vowed to ask a judge to block it from going into effect.

      “Guatemala can neither offer a safe nor fair and full process, and nobody could plausibly argue otherwise,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued against other recent efforts to limit asylum. “There’s no way they have the capacity to provide a full and fair procedure, much less a safe one.”

      American asylum laws require that virtually all migrants who arrive at the border must be allowed to seek refuge in the United States, but the law allows the government to quickly deport migrants to a country that has signed a “safe third” agreement.

      But critics said that the law clearly requires the “safe third” country to be a truly safe place where migrants will not be in danger. And it requires that the country have the ability to provide a “full and fair” system of protections that can accommodate asylum seekers who are sent there. Critics insisted that Guatemala meets neither requirement.

      They also noted that the State Department’s own country condition reports on Guatemala warn about rampant gang activity and say that murder is common in the country, which has a police force that is often ineffective at best.

      Asked whether Guatemala is a safe country for refugees, Mr. McAleenan said it was unfair to tar an entire country, noting that there are also places in the United States that are not safe.

      In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, 116,808 migrants apprehended at the southwest border were from Guatemala, while 77,128 were from Honduras and 31,636 were from El Salvador.

      “It’s legally ludicrous and totally dangerous,” said Eleanor Acer, the senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First. “The United States is trying to send people back to a country where their lives would be at risk. It sets a terrible example for the rest of the world.”

      Administration officials traveled to Guatemala in recent months, pushing officials there to sign the agreement, according to an administration official. But negotiations broke down in the past two weeks after Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled that Mr. Morales needed approval from lawmakers to make the deal with the United States.

      The ruling led Mr. Morales to cancel a planned trip in mid-July to sign the agreement, leaving Mr. Trump fuming.

      “Now we are looking at the BAN, Tariffs, Remittance Fees, or all of the above,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on July 23.

      Friday’s action suggests that the president’s threats, which provoked concern among Guatemala’s business community, were effective.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/world/americas/trump-guatemala-asylum.html

    • Este es el acuerdo migratorio firmado entre Guatemala y Estados Unidos

      Prensa Libre obtuvo en primicia el acuerdo que Guatemala firmó con Estados Unidos para detener la migración desde el Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica.

      Estados Unidos y Guatemala firmaron este 26 de julio un “acuerdo de asilo”, después de que esta semana el presidente Donald Trump amenazara a Guatemala con imponer aranceles para presionar por la negociación del convenio.

      Según Trump, el acuerdo “va a dar seguridad a los demandantes de asilo legítimos y a va detener los fraudes y abusos en el sistema de asilo”.

      El acuerdo fue firmado en el Despacho Oval de la Casa Blanca entre Kevin McAleenan, secretario interino de Seguridad Nacional de los Estados Unidos, y Enrique Degenhart, ministro de Gobernación de Guatemala.

      “Hace mucho tiempo que hemos estado trabajando con Guatemala y ahora podemos hacerlo de la manera correcta”, dijo el mandatario estadounidense.

      Este es el contenido íntegro del acuerdo:

      ACUERDO ENTRE EL GOBIERNO DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA Y EL GOBIERNO DE LA REPÚBLICA DE GUATEMALA RELATIVO A LA COOPERACIÓN RESPECTO AL EXAMEN DE SOLICITUDES DE PROTECCIÓN

      EL GOBIERNO DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA Y EL GOBIERNO DE LA REPÚBLICA DE GUATEMALA, en lo sucesivo de forma individual una “Parte” o colectivamente “las Partes”,

      CONSIDERANDO que Guatemala norma sus relaciones con otros países de conformidad con principios, reglas y prácticas internacionales con el propósito de contribuir al mantenimiento de la paz y la libertad, al respeto y defensa de los derechos humanos, y al fortalecimiento de los procesos democráticos e instituciones internacionales que garanticen el beneficio mutuo y equitativo entre los Estados; considerando por otro lado, que Guatemala mantendrá relaciones de amistad, solidaridad y cooperación con aquellos Estados cuyo desarrollo económico, social y cultural sea análogo al de Guatemala, como el derecho de las personas a migrar y su necesidad de protección;

      CONSIDERANDO que en la actualidad Guatemala incorpora en su legislación interna leyes migratorias dinámicas que obligan a Guatemala a reconocer el derecho de toda persona a emigrar o inmigrar, por lo que cualquier migrante puede entrar, permanecer, transitar, salir y retornar a su territorio nacional conforme a su legislación nacional; considerando, asimismo, que en situaciones no previstas por la legislación interna se debe aplicar la norma que más favorezca al migrante, siendo que por analogía se le debería dar abrigo y cuidado temporal a las personas que deseen ingresar de manera legal al territorio nacional; considerando que por estos motivos es necesario promover acuerdos de cooperación con otros Estados que respeten los mismos principios descritos en la política migratoria de Guatemala, reglamentada por la Autoridad Migratoria Nacional;

      CONSIDERANDO que Guatemala es parte de la Convención sobre el Estatuto de los Refugiados de 1951, celebrada en Ginebra el 28 de julio de 1951 (la “Convención de 1951″) y del Protocolo sobre el Estatuto de los Refugiados, firmado en Nueva York el 31 de enero de 1967 (el “Protocolo de 1967′), del cual los Estados Unidos son parte, y reafirmando la obligación de las partes de proporcionar protección a refugiados que cumplen con los requisitos y que se encuentran físicamente en sus respectivos territorios, de conformidad con sus obligaciones según esos instrumentos y sujetos . a las respectivas leyes, tratados y declaraciones de las Partes;

      RECONOCIENDO especialmente la obligación de las Partes respecto a cumplir el principio de non-refoulement de no devolución, tal como se desprende de la Convención de 1951 y del Protocolo de 1967, así como la Convención contra la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, firmada en Nueva York el 10 de diciembre de 1984 (la “Convención contra la Tortura”), con sujeción a las respectivas reservas, entendimientos y declaraciones de las Partes y reafirmando sus respectivas obligaciones de fomentar y proteger los derechos humanos y las libertades fundamentales en consonancia con sus obligaciones en el ámbito internacional;

      RECONOCIENDO y respetando las obligaciones de cada Parte de conformidad con sus leyes y políticas nacionales y acuerdos y arreglos internacionales;

      DESTACANDO que los Estados Unidos de América y Guatemala ofrecen sistemas de protección de refugiados que son coherentes con sus obligaciones conforme a la Convención de 1951 y/o el Protocolo de 1967;

      DECIDIDOS a mantener el estatuto de refugio o de protección temporal equivalente, como medida esencial en la protección de los refugiados o asilados, y al mismo tiempo deseando impedir el fraude en el proceso de solicitud de refugio o asilo, acción que socava su legitimo propósito; y decididos a fortalecer la integridad del proceso oficial para solicitar el estatuto de refugio o asilo, así como el respaldo público a dicho proceso;

      CONSCIENTES de que la distribución de la responsabilidad relacionada con solicitudes de protección debe garantizar en la práctica que se identifique a las personas que necesitan protección y que se eviten las violaciones del principio básico de no devolución; y, por lo tanto, comprometidos con salvaguardar para cada solicitante del estatuto de refugio o asilo que reúna las condiciones necesarias el acceso a un procedimiento completo e imparcial para determinar la solicitud;

      ACUERDAN lo siguiente:

      ARTÍCULO 1

      A efectos del presente Acuerdo:

      1. “Solicitud de protección” significa la solicitud de una persona de cualquier nacionalidad, al gobierno de una de las Partes para recibir protección conforme a sus respectivas obligaciones institucionales derivadas de la Convención de 1951, del Protocolo de 1967 o de la Convención contra la Tortura, y de conformidad con las leyes y políticas respectivas de las Partes que dan cumplimiento a esas obligaciones internacionales, así como para recibir cualquier otro tipo de protección temporal equivalente disponible conforme al derecho migratorio de la parte receptora.

      2. “Solicitante de protección” significa cualquier persona que presenta una solicitud de protección en el territorio de una de las partes.

      3. “Sistema para determinar la protección” significa el conjunto de políticas, leyes, prácticas administrativas y judiciales que el gobierno de cada parte emplea para decidir respecto de las solicitudes de protección.

      4. “Menor no acompañado” significa un solicitante de protección que no ha cumplido los dieciocho (18) años de edad y cuyo padre, madre o tutor legal no está presente ni disponible para proporcionar atención y custodia presencial en los Estados Unidos de América o en Guatemala, donde se encuentre el menor no acompañado.

      5. En el caso de la inmigración a Guatemala, las políticas respecto de leyes y migración abordan el derecho de las personas a entrar, permanecer, transitar y salir de su territorio de conformidad con sus leyes internas y los acuerdos y arreglos internacionales, y permanencia migratoria significa permanencia por un plazo de tiempo autorizado de acuerdo al estatuto migratorio otorgado a las personas.

      ARTÍCULO 2

      El presente Acuerdo no aplica a los solicitantes de protección que son ciudadanos o nacionales de Guatemala; o quienes, siendo apátridas, residen habitualmente en Guatemala.

      ARTÍCULO 3

      1. Para garantizar que los solicitantes de protección trasladados a Guatemala por los Estados Unidos tengan acceso a un sistema para determinar la protección, Guatemala no retornará ni expulsará a solicitantes de protección en Guatemala, a menos que el solicitante abandone la ‘solicitud o que esta sea denegada a través de una decisión administrativa.

      2. Durante el proceso de traslado, las personas sujetas al presente Acuerdo serán responsabilidad de los Estados Unidos hasta que finalice el proceso de traslado.

      ARTÍCULO 4

      1. La responsabilidad de determinar y concluir en su territorio solicitudes de protección recaerá en los Estados Unidos, cuando los Estados Unidos establezcan que esa persona:

      a. es un menor no acompañado; o

      b. llegó al territorio de los Estados Unidos:

      i. con una visa emitida de forma válida u otro documento de admisión válido, que no sea de tránsito, emitido por los Estados Unidos; o

      ii. sin que los Estados Unidos de América le exigiera obtener una visa.

      2. No obstante el párrafo 1 de este artículo, Guatemala evaluará las solicitudes de protección una por una, de acuerdo a lo establecido y autorizado por la autoridad competente en materia migratoria en sus políticas y leyes migratorias y en su territorio, de las personas que cumplen los requisitos necesarios conforme al presente Acuerdo, y que llegan a los Estados Unidos a un puerto de entrada o entre puertos de entrada, en la fecha efectiva del presente Acuerdo o posterior a ella. Guatemala evaluará la solicitud de protección, conforme al plan de implementación inicial y los procedimientos operativos estándar a los que se hace referencia en el artículo 7, apartados 1 y 5.

      3. Las Partes aplicarán el presente Acuerdo respecto a menores no acompañados de conformidad con sus respectivas leyes nacionales,

      4. Las Partes contarán con procedimientos para garantizar que los traslados de los Estados Unidos a Guatemala de las personas objeto del presente Acuerdo sean compatibles con sus obligaciones, leyes nacionales e internacionales y políticas migratorias respectivas.

      5. Los Estados Unidos tomarán la decisión final de que una persona satisface los requisitos para una excepción en virtud de los artículos 4 y 5 del presente Acuerdo.

      ARTÍCULO 5

      No obstante cualquier disposición del presente Acuerdo, cualquier parte podrá, según su propio criterio, examinar cualquier solicitud de protección que se haya presentado a esa Parte cuando decida que es de su interés público hacerlo.

      ARTÍCULO 6

      Las Partes podrán:

      1. Intercambiar información cuando sea necesario para la implementación efectiva del presente Acuerdo con sujeción a las leyes y reglamentación nacionales. Dicha información no será divulgada por el país receptor excepto de conformidad con sus leyes y reglamentación nacionales.

      2. Las Partes podrán intercambiar de forma habitual información respecto á leyes, reglamentación y prácticas relacionadas con sus respectivos sistemas para determinar la protección migratoria.

      ARTÍCULO 7

      1. Las Partes elaborarán procedimientos operativos estándar para asistir en la implementación del presente Acuerdo. Estos procedimientos incorporarán disposiciones para notificar por adelantado, a Guatemala, el traslado de cualquier persona conforme al presente Acuerdo. Los Estados Unidos colaborarán con Guatemala para identificar a las personas idóneas para ser trasladadas al territorio de Guatemala.

      2. Los procedimientos operativos incorporarán mecanismos para solucionar controversias que respeten la interpretación e implementación de los términos del presente Acuerdo. Los casos no previstos que no puedan solucionarse a través de estos mecanismos serán resueltos a través de la vía diplomática.

      3. Los Estados Unidos prevén cooperar para fortalecer las capacidades institucionales de Guatemala.

      4. Las Partes acuerdan evaluar regularmente el presente Acuerdo y su implementación, para subsanar las deficiencias encontradas. Las Partes realizarán las evaluaciones conjuntamente, siendo la primera dentro de un plazo máximo de tres (3) meses a partir de la fecha de entrada en operación del Acuerdo y las siguientes evaluaciones dentro de los mismos plazos. Las Partes podrán invitar, de común acuerdo, a otras organizaciones pertinentes con conocimientos especializados sobre el tema a participar en la evaluación inicial y/o cooperar para el cumplimiento del presente Acuerdo.

      5. Las Partes prevén completar un plan de implementación inicial, que incorporará gradualmente, y abordará, entre otros: a) los procedimientos necesarios para llevar a cabo el traslado de personas conforme al presente Acuerdo; b) la cantidad o número de personas a ser trasladadas; y c) las necesidades de capacidad institucional. Las Partes planean hacer operativo el presente Acuerdo al finalizarse un plan de implementación gradual.

      ARTÍCULO 8

      1. El presente Acuerdo entrará en vigor por medio de un canje de notas entre las partes en el que se indique que cada parte ha cumplido con los procedimientos jurídicos nacionales necesarios para que el Acuerdo entre en vigor. El presente Acuerdo tendrá una vigencia de dos (2) años y podrá renovarse antes de su vencimiento a través de un canje de notas.

      2. Cualquier Parte podrá dar por terminado el presente Acuerdo por medio de una notificación por escrito a la otra Parte con tres (3) meses de antelación.

      3. Cualquier parte podrá, inmediatamente después de notificar a la otra parte por escrito, suspender por un periodo inicial de hasta tres (3) meses la implementación del presente Acuerdo. Esta suspensión podrá extenderse por periodos adicionales de hasta tres (3) meses por medio de una notificación por escrito a la otra parte. Cualquier parte podrá, con el consentimiento por escrito de la otra, suspender cualquier parte del presente Acuerdo.

      4. Las Partes podrán, por escrito y de mutuo acuerdo, realizar cualquier modificación o adición al presente Acuerdo. Estas entrarán en vigor de conformidad con los procedimientos jurídicos pertinentes de cada Parte y la modificación o adición constituirá parte integral del presente Acuerdo.

      5. Ninguna disposición del presente Acuerdo deberá interpretarse de manera que obligue a las Partes a erogar o comprometer fondos.

      EN FE DE LO CUAL, los abajo firmantes, debidamente autorizados por sus respectivos gobiernos, firman el presente Acuerdo.

      HECHO el 26 de julio de 2019, por duplicado en los idiomas inglés y español, siendo ambos textos auténticos.

      POR EL GOBIERNO DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA: Kevin K. McAleenan, Secretario Interino de Seguridad Nacional.

      POR EL GOBIERNO DE LA REPÚBLICA DE GUATEMALA: Enrique A. Degenhart Asturias, Ministro de Gobernación.

      https://www.prensalibre.com/guatemala/migrantes/este-es-el-acuerdo-migratorio-firmado-entre-guatemala-y-estados-unidos

    • Washington signe un accord sur le droit d’asile avec le Guatemala

      Sous la pression du président américain, le Guatemala devient un « pays tiers sûr », où les migrants de passage vers les Etats-Unis doivent déposer leurs demandes d’asile.

      Sous la pression de Donald Trump qui menaçait de lui infliger des sanctions commerciales, le Guatemala a accepté vendredi 26 juillet de devenir un « pays tiers sûr » pour contribuer à réduire le nombre de demandes d’asile aux Etats-Unis. L’accord, qui a été signé en grande pompe dans le bureau ovale de la Maison blanche, en préfigure d’autres, a assuré le président américain, qui a notamment cité le Mexique.

      Faute d’avoir obtenu du Congrès le financement du mur qu’il souhaitait construire le long de la frontière avec le Mexique, Donald Trump a changé de stratégie en faisant pression sur les pays d’Amérique centrale pour qu’ils l’aident à réduire le flux de migrants arrivant aux Etats-Unis, qui a atteint un niveau record sous sa présidence.

      Une personne qui traverse un « pays tiers sûr » doit déposer sa demande d’asile dans ce pays et non dans son pays de destination. Sans employer le terme « pays tiers sûr », le gouvernement guatémaltèque a précisé dans un communiqué que l’accord conclu avec les Etats-Unis s’appliquerait aux réfugiés originaires du Honduras et du Salvador.

      Contreparties pour les travailleurs agricoles

      S’adressant à la presse devant la Maison blanche, le président américain a indiqué que les ouvriers agricoles guatémaltèques auraient en contrepartie un accès privilégié aux fermes aux Etats-Unis.

      Le président guatémaltèque Jimmy Morales devait signer l’accord de « pays tiers sûr » la semaine dernière mais il avait été contraint de reculer après que la Cour constitutionnelle avait jugé qu’il ne pouvait pas prendre un tel engagement sans l’accord du Parlement, ce qui avait provoqué la fureur de Donald Trump.

      Invoquant la nécessité d’éviter des « répercussions sociales et économiques », le gouvernement guatémaltèque a indiqué qu’un accord serait signé dans les prochains jours avec Washington pour faciliter l’octroi de visas de travail agricole temporaires aux ressortissants guatémaltèques. Il a dit espérer que cette mesure serait ultérieurement étendue aux secteurs de la construction et des services.

      Les Etats-Unis sont confrontés à une flambée du nombre de migrants qui cherchent à franchir sa frontière sud, celle qui les séparent du Mexique. En juin, les services de police aux frontières ont arrêté 104 000 personnes qui cherchaient à entrer illégalement aux Etats-Unis. Ils avaient été 144 000 le mois précédent.

      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/07/27/washington-signe-un-accord-sur-le-droit-d-asile-avec-le-guatemala_5493979_32
      #agriculture #ouvriers_agricoles #travail #fermes

    • Migrants, pressions sur le Mexique

      Sous la pression des États-Unis, le Mexique fait la chasse aux migrants sur son territoire, et les empêche d’avancer vers le nord. Au mois de juin, les autorités ont arrêté près de 24 000 personnes sans papiers.

      Debout sur son radeau, Edwin maugrée en regardant du coin de l’œil la vingtaine de militaires de la Garde Nationale mexicaine postés sous les arbres, côté mexicain. « C’est à cause d’eux si les affaires vont mal », bougonne le jeune Guatémaltèque en poussant son radeau à l’aide d’une perche. « Depuis qu’ils sont là, plus personne ne peut passer au Mexique ».

      Les eaux du fleuve Suchiate, qui sépare le Mexique du Guatemala, sont étrangement calmes depuis le mois de juin. Fini le ballet incessant des petits radeaux de fortune, où s’entassaient, pêle-mêle, villageois, commerçants et migrants qui se rendaient au Mexique. « Mais ça ne change rien, les migrants traversent plus loin », sourit le jeune homme.

      La stratégie du président américain Donald Trump pour contraindre son voisin du sud à réduire les flux migratoires en direction des États-Unis a mis le gouvernement mexicain aux abois : pour éviter une nouvelle fois la menace de l’instauration de frais de douanes de 5 % sur les importations mexicaines, le gouvernement d’Andrés Manuel López Obrador a déployé dans l’urgence 6 500 éléments de la Garde Nationale à la frontière sud du Mexique.
      Des pots-de-vin lors des contrôles

      Sur les routes, les opérations de contrôle sont partout. « Nous avons été arrêtés à deux reprises par l’armée », explique Natalia, entourée de ses garçons de 11 ans, 8 ans et 3 ans. Cette Guatémaltèque s’est enfuie de son village avec son mari et ses enfants, il y a dix jours. Son époux, témoin protégé dans le procès d’un groupe criminel, a été menacé de mort. « Au premier contrôle, nous leur avons donné 1 500 pesos (NDLR, 70 €), au deuxième 2 500 pesos (118 €), pour qu’ils nous laissent partir », explique la mère de famille, assise sous le préau de l’auberge du Père César Augusto Cañaveral, l’une des deux auberges qui accueillent les migrants à Tapachula.

      Conçu pour 120 personnes, l’établissement héberge actuellement plus de 300 personnes, dont une centaine d’enfants en bas âge. « On est face à une politique anti-migratoire de plus en plus violente et militarisée, se désole le Père Cañaveral. C’est devenu une véritable chasse à l’homme dehors, alors je leur dis de sortir le moins possible pour éviter les arrestations ». Celles-ci ont en effet explosé depuis l’ultimatum du président des États-Unis : du 1er au 24 juin, l’Institut National de Migration (INM) a arrêté près de 24 000 personnes en situation irrégulière, soit 1 000 personnes détenues par jour en moyenne, et en a expulsé plus de 17 000, essentiellement des Centraméricains. Du jamais vu.
      Des conditions de détention « indignes »

      À Tapachula, les migrants arrêtés sont entassés dans le centre de rétention Siglo XXI. À quelques mètres de l’entrée de cette forteresse de béton, Yannick a le regard vide et fatigué. « Il y avait tellement de monde là-dedans que ma fille y est tombée malade », raconte cet Angolais âgé de 33 ans, sa fille de 3 ans somnolant dans ses bras. « Ils viennent de nous relâcher car ils ne vont pas nous renvoyer en Afrique, ajoute-il. Heureusement, car à l’intérieur on dort par terre ». « Les conditions dans ce centre sont indignes », dénonce Claudia León Aug, coordinatrice du Service jésuite des réfugiés pour l’Amérique latine, qui a visité à plusieurs reprises le centre de rétention Siglo XXI. « La nourriture est souvent avariée, les enfants tombent malades, les bébés n’ont droit qu’à une seule couche par jour, et on a même recensé des cas de tortures et d’agressions ».

      Tapachula est devenu un cul-de-sac pour des milliers de migrants. Ils errent dans les rues de la ville, d’hôtel en d’hôtel, ou louent chez l’habitant, faute de pouvoir avancer vers le nord. Les compagnies de bus, sommées de participer à l’effort national, demandent systématiquement une pièce d’identité en règle. « On ne m’a pas laissé monter dans le bus en direction de Tijuana », se désole Elvis, un Camerounais de 34 ans qui rêve de se rendre au Canada.

      Il sort de sa poche un papier tamponné par les autorités mexicaines, le fameux laissez-passer que délivrait l’Institut National de Migration aux migrants extra-continentaux, pour qu’ils traversent le Mexique en 20 jours afin de gagner la frontière avec les États-Unis. « Regardez, ils ont modifié le texte, maintenant il est écrit que je ne peux pas sortir de Tapachula », accuse le jeune homme, dépité, avant de se rasseoir sur le banc de la petite cour de son hôtel décati dans la périphérie de Tapachula. « La situation est chaotique, les gens sont bloqués ici et les autorités ne leur donnent aucune information, pour les décourager encore un peu plus », dénonce Salvador Lacruz, coordinateur au Centre des Droits humains Centro Fray Matías de Córdova.
      Explosion du nombre des demandes d’asile au Mexique

      Face à la menace des arrestations et des expulsions, de plus en plus de migrants choisissent de demander l’asile au Mexique. Dans le centre-ville de Tapachula, la Commission mexicaine d’aide aux réfugiés (COMAR), est prise d’assaut dès 4 heures du matin par les demandeurs d’asile. « On m’a dit de venir avec tous les documents qui prouvent que je suis en danger de mort dans mon pays », explique Javier, un Hondurien de 34 ans qui a fait la queue une partie de la nuit pour ne pas rater son rendez-vous.

      Son fils de 9 ans est assis sur ses genoux. « J’ai le certificat de décès de mon père et celui de mon frère. Ils ont été assassinés pour avoir refusé de donner de l’argent aux maras », explique-t-il, une pochette en plastique dans les mains. « Le prochain sur la liste, c’est moi, c’est pour ça que je suis parti pour les États-Unis, mais je vois que c’est devenu très difficile, alors je me pose ici, ensuite, on verra ».

      Les demandes d’asile au Mexique ont littéralement explosé : 31 000 pour les six premiers mois de 2019, c’est trois fois plus qu’en 2018 à la même période, et juin a été particulièrement élevé, avec 70 % de demandes en plus par rapport à janvier. La tendance devrait se poursuivre du fait de la décision prise le 15 juillet dernier par le président américain, que toute personne « entrant par la frontière sud des États-Unis » et souhaitant demander l’asile aux États-Unis le fasse, au préalable, dans un autre pays, transformant ainsi le Mexique, de facto, en « pays tiers sûr ».

      « Si les migrants savent que la seule possibilité de demander l’asile aux États-Unis, c’est de l’avoir obtenu au Mexique, ils le feront », observe Salvador Lacruz. Mais si certains s’accrochent à Tapachula, d’autres abandonnent. Jesús Roque, un Hondurien de 21 ans, « vient de signer » comme disent les migrants centraméricains en référence au programme de retour volontaire mis en place par le gouvernement mexicain. « C’est impossible d’aller plus au nord, je rentre chez moi », lâche-t-il.

      Comme lui, plus de 35 000 personnes sont rentrées dans leur pays, essentiellement des Honduriens et des Salvadoriens. À quelques mètres, deux femmes pressent le pas, agacées par la foule qui se presse devant les bureaux de la COMAR. « Qu’ils partent d’ici, vite ! », grogne l’une. Le mur tant désiré par Donald Trump s’est finalement érigé au Mexique en quelques semaines. Dans les esprits aussi.

      https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Ameriques/Le-Mexique-verrouille-frontiere-sud-2019-08-01-1201038809

    • US Move Puts More Asylum Seekers at Risk. Expanded ‘#Remain_in_Mexico’ Program Undermines Due Process

      The Trump administration has drastically expanded its “Remain in Mexico” program while undercutting the rights of asylum seekers at the United States southern border, Human Rights Watch said today. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) – known as the “Remain in Mexico” program – asylum seekers in the US are returned to cities in Mexico where there is a shortage of shelter and high crime rates while awaiting asylum hearings in US immigration court.

      Human Rights Watch found that asylum seekers face new or increased barriers to obtaining and communicating with legal counsel; increased closure of MPP court hearings to the public; and threats of kidnapping, extortion, and other violence while in Mexico.

      “The inherently inhumane ‘Remain in Mexico’ program is getting more abusive by the day,” said Ariana Sawyer, assistant US Program researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The program’s rapid growth in recent months has put even more people and families in danger in Mexico while they await an increasingly unfair legal process in the US.”

      The United States will begin sending all Central American asylum-seeking families to Mexico beginning the week of September 29, 2019 as part of the most recent expansion of the “Remain in Mexico” program, the Department of Homeland Security acting secretary, Kevin McAleenan, announced on September 23.

      Human Rights Watch concluded in a July 2019 report that the MPP program has had serious rights consequences for asylum seekers, including high – if not insurmountable – barriers to due process on their asylum claims in the United States and threats and physical violence in Mexico. Human Rights Watch recently spoke to seven asylum seekers, as well as 26 attorneys, migrant shelter operators, Mexican government officials, immigration court workers, journalists, and advocates. Human Rights Watch also observed court hearings for 71 asylum seekers in August and analyzed court filings, declarations, photographs, and media reports.

      “The [MPP] rules, which are never published, are constantly changing without advance notice,” said John Moore, an asylum attorney. “And so far, every change has had the effect of further restricting the already limited access we attorneys have with our clients.”

      Beyond the expanded program, which began in January, the US State Department has also begun funding a “voluntary return” program carried out by the United Nations-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM). The organization facilitates the transportation of asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico back to their country of origin but does not notify US immigration judges. This most likely results in negative judgments against asylum seekers for not appearing in court, possibly resulting in a ban of up to 10 years on entering the US again, when they could have withdrawn their cases without penalty.

      Since July, the number of people being placed in the MPP program has almost tripled, from 15,079 as of June 24, to 40,033 as of September 7, according to the Mexican National Institute of Migration. The Trump administration has increased the number of asylum seekers it places in the program at ports of entry near San Diego and Calexico, California and El Paso, Texas, where the program had already been in place. The administration has also expanded the program to Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, even as the overall number of border apprehensions has declined.

      As of early August, more than 26,000 additional asylum seekers were waiting in Mexican border cities on unofficial lists to be processed by US Customs and Border Protection as part the US practice of “metering,” or of limiting the number of people who can apply for asylum each day by turning them back from ports of entry in violation of international law.

      In total, more than 66,000 asylum seekers are now in Mexico, forced to wait months or years for their cases to be decided in the US. Some have given up waiting and have attempted to cross illicitly in more remote and dangerous parts of the border, at times with deadly results.

      As problematic as the MPP program is, seeking asylum will likely soon become even more limited. On September 11, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Trump administration to carry out an asylum ban against anyone entering the country by land after July 16 who transited through a third country without applying for asylum there. This could affect at least 46,000 asylum seekers, placed in the MPP program or on a metering list after mid-July, according to calculations based on data from the Mexican National Institute of Migration. Asylum seekers may still be eligible for other forms of protection, but they carry much higher eligibility standards and do not provide the same level of relief.

      Human Rights Watch contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the US Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review with its findings and questions regarding the policy changes and developments but have not to date received a response. The US government should immediately cease returning asylum seekers to Mexico and instead ensure them meaningful access to full and fair asylum proceedings in US immigration courts, Human Rights Watch said. Congress should urgently act to cease funding the MPP program. The US should manage asylum-seeker arrivals through a genuine humanitarian response that includes fair determinations of an asylum seeker’s eligibility to remain in the US. The US should simultaneously pursue longer-term efforts to address the root causes of forced displacement in Central America.

      “The Trump administration seems intent on making the bad situation for asylum seekers even worse by further depriving them of due process rights,” Sawyer said. “The US Congress should step in and put an end to these mean-spirited attempts to undermine and destroy the US asylum system.”

      New Concerns over the MPP Program

      Increased Barriers to Legal Representation

      Everyone in the MPP has the right to an attorney at their own cost, but it has been nearly impossible for asylum seekers forced to remain in Mexico to get legal representation. Only about 1.3 percent of participants have legal representation, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, a research center that examined US immigration court records through June 2019. In recent months, the US government has raised new barriers to obtaining representation and accessing counsel.

      When the Department of Homeland Security created the program, it issued guidance that:

      in order to facilitate access to counsel for aliens subject to return to Mexico under the MPP who will be transported to their immigration court hearings, [agents] will depart from the [port of entry] with the alien at a time sufficient to ensure arrival at the immigration court not later than one hour before his or her scheduled hearing time in order to afford the alien the opportunity to meet in-person with his or her legal representative.

      However, according to several attorneys Human Rights Watch interviewed in El Paso, Texas, and as Human Rights Watch observed on August 12 to 15 in El Paso Immigration Court, the Department of Homeland Security and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which manages the immigration court, have effectively barred attorneys from meeting with clients for the full hour before their client’s hearing begins. Rather than having free access to their clients, attorneys are now required to wait in the building lobby on a different level than the immigration court until the court administrator notifies security guards that attorneys may enter.

      As Human Rights Watch has previously noted, one hour is insufficient for adequate attorney consultation and preparation. Still, several attorneys said that this time in court was crucial. Immigration court is often the only place where asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico can meet with attorneys since lawyers capable of representing them typically work in the US. Attorneys cannot easily travel to Mexico because of security and logistical issues. For MPP participants without attorneys, there are now also new barriers to getting basic information and assistance about the asylum application process.

      Human Rights Watch observed in May a coordinated effort by local nongovernmental organizations and attorneys in El Paso to perform know-your-rights presentations for asylum seekers without an attorney and to serve as “Friend of the Court,” at the judge’s discretion. The Executive Office for Immigration Review has recognized in the context of unaccompanied minors that a Friend of the Court “has a useful role to play in assisting the court and enhancing a respondent’s comprehension of proceedings.”

      The agency’s memos also say that, “Immigration Judges and court administrators remain encouraged to facilitate pro bono representation” because pro bono attorneys provide “respondents with welcome legal assistance and the judge with efficiencies that can only be realized when the respondent is represented.”

      To that end, immigration courts are encouraged to support “legal orientations and group rights presentations” by nonprofit organizations and attorneys.

      One of the attorneys involved in coordinating the various outreach programs at the El Paso Immigration Court said, however, that on June 24 the agency began barring all contact between third parties and asylum seekers without legal representation in both the courtroom and the lobby outside. This effectively ended all know-your-rights presentations and pro bono case screenings, though no new memo was issued. Armed guards now prevent attorneys in the US from interacting with MPP participants unless the attorneys have already filed official notices that they are representing specific participants.

      On July 8, the agency also began barring attorneys from serving as “Friend of the Court,” several attorneys told Human Rights Watch. No new memo has been issued on “Friend of the Court” either.

      In a July 16 email to an attorney obtained by Human Rights Watch, an agency spokesman, Rob Barnes, said that the agency shut down “Friend of the Court” and know-your-rights presentations to protect asylum seekers from misinformation after it “became aware that persons from organizations not officially recognized by EOIR...were entering EOIR space in El Paso.

      However, most of the attorneys and organizations now barred from performing know-your-rights presentations or serving as “Friend of the Court” in El Paso are listed on a form given to asylum seekers by the court of legal service providers, according to a copy of the form given to Human Rights Watch and attorneys and organizations coordinating those services.

      Closure of Immigration Court Hearings to the Public

      When Human Rights Watch observed court hearings in El Paso on May 8 to 10, the number of asylum seekers who had been placed in the MPP program and scheduled to appear in court was between 20 and 24 each day, with one judge hearing all of these cases in a single mass hearing. At the time, those numbers were considered high, and there was chaos and confusion as judges navigated a system that was never designed to provide hearings for people being kept outside the US.

      When Human Rights Watch returned to observe hearings just over three months later, four judges were hearing a total of about 250 cases a day, an average of over 60 cases for each judge. Asylum seekers in the program, who would previously have been allowed into the US to pursue their claims at immigration courts dispersed around the country, have been primarily funneled through courts in just two border cities, causing tremendous pressures on these courts and errors in the system. Some asylum seekers who appeared in court found their cases were not in the system or received conflicting instructions about where or when to appear.

      One US immigration official said the MPP program had “broken the courts,” Reuters reported.

      The Executive Office for Immigration Review has stated that immigration court hearings are generally supposed to be open to the public. The regulations indicate that immigration judges may make exceptions and limit or close hearings if physical facilities are inadequate; if there is a need to protect witnesses, parties, or the public interest; if an abused spouse or abused child is to appear; or if information under seal is to be presented.

      In recent weeks, however, journalists, attorneys, and other public observers have been barred from these courtrooms in El Paso by court administrators, security guards, and in at least one case, by a Department of Homeland Security attorney, who said that a courtroom was too full to allow a Human Rights Watch researcher entry.

      Would-be observers are now frequently told by the court administrator or security guards that there is “no room,” and that dockets are all “too full.”

      El Paso Immigration Court Administrator Rodney Buckmire told Human Rights Watch that hundreds of people receive hearings each day because asylum seekers “deserve their day in court,” but the chaos and errors in mass hearings, the lack of access to attorneys and legal advice, and the lack of transparency make clear that the MPP program is severely undermining due process.

      During the week of September 9, the Trump administration began conducting hearings for asylum seekers returned to Mexico in makeshift tent courts in Laredo and Brownsville, where judges are expected to preside via videoconference. At a September 11 news conference, DHS would not commit to allowing observers for those hearings, citing “heightened security measures” since the courts are located near the border. Both attorneys and journalists have since been denied entry to these port courts.

      Asylum Seekers Describe Risk of Kidnapping, Other Crimes

      As the MPP has expanded, increasing numbers of asylum seekers have been placed at risk of kidnapping and other crimes in Mexico.

      Two of the northern Mexican states to which asylum seekers were initially being returned under the program, Baja California and Chihuahua, are among those with the most homicides and other crimes in the country. Recent media reports have documented ongoing harm to asylum seekers there, including rape, kidnapping, sexual exploitation, assault, and other violent crimes.

      The program has also been expanded to Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros, both in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which is on the US State Department’s “do not travel” list. The media and aid workers have also reported that migrants there have experienced physical violence, sexual assault, kidnapping, and other abuses. There have been multiple reports in 2019 alone of migrants being kidnapped as they attempt to reach the border by bus.

      Jennifer Harbury, a human rights attorney and activist doing volunteer work with asylum-seekers on both sides of the border, collected sworn declarations that they had been victims of abuse from three asylum seekers who had been placed in the MPP program and bused by Mexican immigration authorities to Monterrey, Mexico, two and a half hours from the border. Human Rights Watch examined these declarations, in which asylum seekers reported robbery, extortion, and kidnapping, including by Mexican police.

      Expansion to Mexican Cities with Even Fewer Protections

      Harbury, who recently interviewed hundreds of migrants in Mexico, described asylum seekers sent to Nuevo Laredo as “fish in a barrel” because of their vulnerability to criminal organizations. She said that many of the asylum seekers she interviewed said they had been kidnapped or subjected to an armed assault at least once since they reached the border.

      Because Mexican officials are in many cases reportedly themselves involved in crimes against migrants, and because nearly 98 percent of crimes in Mexico go unsolved, crimes committed against migrants routinely go unpunished.

      In Matamoros, asylum seekers have no meaningful shelter access, said attorneys with Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG) who were last there from August 22 to 26. Instead, more than 500 asylum seekers were placed in an encampment in a plaza near the port of entry to the US, where they were sleeping out in the open, despite temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Henriette Vinet-Martin, a lawyer with the group, said she saw a “nursing mother sleeping on cardboard with her baby” and that attorneys also spoke to a woman in the MPP program there who said she had recently miscarried in a US hospital while in Customs and Border Protection custody. The attorneys said some asylum seekers had tents, but many did not.

      Vinet-Martin and Claire Noone, another lawyer there as part of the L4GG project, said they found children with disabilities who had been placed in the MPP program, including two children with Down Syndrome, one of them eight months old.

      Human Rights Watch also found that Customs and Border Protection continues to return asylum seekers with disabilities or other chronic health conditions to Mexico, despite the Department of Homeland Security’s initial guidance that no one with “known physical/mental health issues” would be placed in the program. In Ciudad Juárez, Human Rights Watch documented six such cases, four of them children. In one case, a 14-year-old boy had been placed in the program along with his mother and little brother, who both have intellectual disabilities, although the boy said they have family in the US. He appeared to be confused and distraught by his situation.

      The Mexican government has taken some steps to protect migrants in Ciudad Juárez, including opening a large government-operated shelter. The shelter, which Human Rights Watch visited on August 22, has a capacity of 3,000 migrants and is well-stocked with food, blankets, sleeping pads, personal hygiene kits, and more. At the time of the visit, the shelter held 555 migrants, including 230 children, primarily asylum seekers in the MPP program.

      One Mexican government official said the government will soon open two more shelters – one in Tijuana with a capacity of 3,000 and another in Mexicali with a capacity of 1,500.

      Problems Affecting the ‘Assisted Voluntary Return’ Program

      In October 2018, the International Organization for Migration began operating a $1.65 million US State Department-funded “Assisted Voluntary Return” program to assist migrants who have decided or felt compelled to return home. The return program originally targeted Central Americans traveling in large groups through the interior of Mexico. However, in July, the program began setting up offices in Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, and Mexicali focusing on asylum seekers forced to wait in those cities after being placed in the MPP program. Alex Rigol Ploettner, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Ciudad Juárez, said that the organization also provides material support such as bunk beds and personal hygiene kits to shelters, which the organization asks to refer interested asylum seekers to the Assisted Voluntary Return program. Four shelter operators in Ciudad Juárez confirmed these activities.

      As of late August, Rigol Ploettner said approximately 500 asylum seekers in the MPP program had been referred to Assisted Voluntary Return. Of those 500, he said, about 95 percent were found to be eligible for the program.

      He said the organization warns asylum seekers that returning to their home country may cause them to receive deportation orders from the US in absentia, meaning they will most likely face a ban on entering the US of up to 10 years.

      The organization does not inform US immigration courts that they have returned asylum seekers, nor are asylum seekers assisted in withdrawing their petition for asylum, which would avoid future penalties in the US.

      “For now, as the IOM, we don’t have a direct mechanism for withdrawal,” Rigol Ploettner said. Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned about the failure to notify the asylum courts when people who are on US immigration court dockets return home and the negative legal consequences for asylum seekers. These concerns are heightened by the environment in which the Assisted Voluntary Return Program is operating. Asylum seekers in the MPP are in such a vulnerable situation that it cannot be assumed that decisions to return home are based on informed consent.

      https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/25/us-move-puts-more-asylum-seekers-risk

      via @pascaline

    • Sweeping Language in Asylum Agreement Foists U.S. Responsibilities onto El Salvador

      Amid a tightening embrace of Trump administration policies, last week El Salvador agreed to begin taking asylum-seekers sent back from the United States. The agreement was announced on Friday but details were not made public at the time. The text of the agreement — which The Intercept requested and obtained from the Department of Homeland Security — purports to uphold international and domestic obligations “to provide protection for eligible refugees,” but immigration experts see the move as the very abandonment of the principle of asylum. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy analyst at American Immigration Council, called the agreement a “deeply cynical” move.

      The agreement, which closely resembles one that the U.S. signed with Guatemala in July, implies that any asylum-seeker who is not from El Salvador could be sent back to that country and forced to seek asylum there. Although officials have said that the agreements would apply to people who passed through El Salvador or Guatemala en route, the text of the agreements does not explicitly make that clear.

      “This agreement is so potentially sweeping that it could be used to send an asylum-seeker who never transited El Salvador to El Salvador,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director of refugee protection at the nonprofit organization Human Rights First.

      DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

      The Guatemalan deal has yet to take effect, as Guatemala’s Congress claims to need to ratify it first. DHS officials are currently seeking a similar arrangement with Honduras and have been pressuring Mexico — under threats of tariffs — to crack down on U.S.-bound migration.

      The agreement with El Salvador comes after the Supreme Court recently upheld the Trump administration’s most recent asylum ban, which requires anyone who has transited through another country before reaching the border to seek asylum there first, and be denied in that country, in order to be eligible for asylum in the U.S. Meanwhile, since January, more than 42,000 asylum-seekers who filed their claims in the U.S. before the ban took effect have been pushed back into Mexico and forced to wait there — where they have been subjected to kidnapping, rape, and extortion, among other hazards — as the courts slowly weigh their eligibility.

      Reichlin-Melnick called the U.S.-El Salvador deal “yet another sustained attack at our system of asylum protections.” It begins by invoking the international Refugee Convention and the principle of non-refoulement, which is the crux of asylum law — the guarantee not to return asylum-seekers to a country where they would be subjected to persecution or death. Karen Musalo, law professor at U.C. Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, called that invocation “Orwellian.”

      “The idea that El Salvador is a safe country for asylum-seekers when it is one of the major countries sending asylum-seekers to the U.S., a country with one of the highest homicide and femicide rates in the world, a place in which gangs have control over large swathes of the country, and the violence is causing people to flee in record numbers … is another absurdity that is beyond the pale,” Musalo said.

      “El Salvador is not a country that is known for having any kind of protection for its own citizens’ human rights,” Musalo added. “If they can’t protect their own citizens, it’s absolutely absurd to think that they can protect people that are not their citizens.”

      “They’ve looked at all of the facts,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “And they’ve decided to create their own reality.”

      Last week, the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro reported that the country’s agency that reviews asylum claims only has a single officer. Meanwhile, though homicide rates have gone down in recent months — since outsider president Nayib Bukele took office in June — September has already seen an increase in homicides. Bukele’s calculus in accepting the agreement is still opaque to Salvadoran observers (Guatemala’s version was deeply unpopular in that country), but he has courted U.S. investment and support. The legal status of nearly 200,000 Salvadorans with temporary protected status in the U.S. is also under threat from the administration. This month also saw the symbolic launch of El Salvador’s Border Patrol — with U.S. funding and support. This week, Bukele, who has both sidled up to Trump and employed Trumpian tactics, will meet with the U.S. president in New York to discuss immigration.

      Reichlin-Melnick noted that the Guatemalan and Salvadoran agreements, as written, could bar people not only from seeking asylum, but also from two other protections meant to fulfill the non-refoulement principle: withholding of removal (a stay on deportation) and the Convention Against Torture, which prevents people from being returned to situations where they may face torture. That would mean that these Central American cooperation agreements go further than the recent asylum ban, which still allows people to apply for those other protections.

      Another major difference between the asylum ban and these agreements is that with the asylum ban, people would be deported to their home countries. If these agreements go into effect, the U.S. will start sending people to Guatemala or El Salvador, regardless of where they may be from. In the 1980s, the ACLU documented over 100 cases of Salvadorans who were harmed or killed after they were deported from the U.S. After this agreement goes into effect, it will no longer be just Salvadorans who the U.S. will be sending into danger.

      https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/el-salvador-asylum-agreement

    • La forteresse Trump ou le pari du mur

      Plus que sur le mur promis pendant sa campagne, Donald Trump semble fonder sa #politique_migratoire sur une #pression_commerciale sur ses voisins du sud, remettant en cause les #échanges économiques mais aussi culturels avec le Mexique. Ce mur ne serait-il donc que symbolique ?
      Alors que l’administration américaine le menaçait de #taxes_douanières et de #guerre_commerciale, le Mexique d’Andres Lopez Obrador a finalement concédé de freiner les flux migratoires.

      Après avoir accepté un #accord imposé par Washington, Mexico a considérablement réduit les flux migratoires et accru les #expulsions. En effet, plus de 100 000 ressortissants centre-américains ont été expulsés du Mexique vers le #Guatemala dans les huit premiers mois de l’année, soit une hausse de 63% par rapport à l’année précédente selon les chiffres du Guatemala.

      Par ailleurs, cet été le Guatemala a conclu un accord de droit d’asile avec Washington, faisant de son territoire un « #pays_sûr » auprès duquel les demandeurs d’asiles ont l’obligation d’effectuer les premières démarches. Le Salvador et le #Honduras ont suivi la voie depuis.

      Et c’est ainsi que, alors qu’il rencontrait les plus grandes difficultés à obtenir les financements pour le mur à la frontière mexicaine, Donald Trump mise désormais sur ses voisins pour externaliser sa politique migratoire.

      Alors le locataire de la Maison Blanche a-t-il oublié ses ambitions de poursuivre la construction de cette frontière de fer et de béton ? Ce mur n’était-il qu’un symbole destiné à montrer à son électorat son volontarisme en matière de lutte contre l’immigration ? Le retour de la campagne est-il susceptible d’accélérer les efforts dans le domaine ?

      D’autre part, qu’en est-il de la situation des migrants sur le terrain ? Comment s’adaptent-ils à cette nouvelle donne ? Quelles conséquences sur les parcours migratoires des hommes, des femmes et des enfants qui cherchent à gagner les Etats-Unis ?

      On se souvient de cette terrible photo des cadavres encore enlacés d’un père et de sa petite fille de 2 ans, Oscar et Valeria Alberto, originaires du Salvador, morts noyés dans les eaux tumultueuses du Rio Bravo en juin dernier alors qu’ils cherchaient à passer aux Etats-Unis.

      Ce destin tragique annonce-t-il d’autres drames pour nombre de candidats à l’exil qui, quelques soient les politiques migratoires des Etats, iront au bout de leur vie avec l’espoir de l’embellir un peu ?

      https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/cultures-monde/les-frontieres-de-la-colere-14-la-forteresse-trump-ou-le-pari-du-mur

      #Mexique #symbole #barrières_frontalières #USA #Etats-Unis #renvois #push-back #refoulements

    • Mexico sends asylum seekers south — with no easy way to return for U.S. court dates

      The exhausted passengers emerge from a sleek convoy of silver and red-streaked buses, looking confused and disoriented as they are deposited ignominiously in this tropical backwater in southernmost Mexico.

      There is no greeter here to provide guidance on their pending immigration cases in the United States or on where to seek shelter in a teeming international frontier town packed with marooned, U.S.-bound migrants from across the globe.

      The bus riders had made a long and perilous overland trek north to the Rio Grande only to be dispatched back south to Mexico’s border with Central America — close to where many of them had begun their perilous journeys weeks and months earlier. At this point, some said, both their resources and sense of hope had been drained.

      “We don’t know what we’re going to do next,” said Maria de Los Angeles Flores Reyes, 39, a Honduran accompanied by her daughter, Cataren, 9, who appeared petrified after disembarking from one of the long-distance buses. “There’s no information, nothing.”

      The two are among more than 50,000 migrants, mostly Central Americans, whom U.S. immigration authorities have sent back to Mexico this year to await court hearings in the United States under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico program.

      Immigration advocates have assailed the program as punitive, while the White House says it has worked effectively — discouraging many migrants from following up on asylum cases and helping to curb what President Trump has decried as a “catch and release” system in which apprehended migrants have been freed in U.S. territory pending court proceeding that can drag on for months or years.

      The ever-expanding ranks pose a growing dilemma for Mexican authorities, who, under intense pressure from the White House, had agreed to accept the returnees and provide them with humanitarian assistance.

      As the numbers rise, Mexico, in many cases, has opted for a controversial solution: Ship as many asylum seekers as possible more than 1,000 miles back here in the apparent hope that they will opt to return to Central America — even if that implies endangering or foregoing prospective political asylum claims in U.S. immigration courts.

      Mexican officials, sensitive to criticism that they are facilitating Trump’s hard-line deportation agenda, have been tight-lipped about the shadowy busing program, under which thousands of asylum-seekers have been returned here since August. (Mexican authorities declined to provide statistics on just how many migrants have been sent back under the initiative.)

      In a statement, Mexico’s immigration agency called the 40-hour bus rides a “free, voluntary and secure” alternative for migrants who don’t want to spend months waiting in the country’s notoriously dangerous northern border towns.

      Advocates counter that the program amounts to a barely disguised scheme for encouraging ill-informed migrants to abandon their ongoing petitions in U.S. immigration court and return to Central America. Doing so leaves them to face the same conditions that they say forced them to flee toward the United States, and, at the same time, would undermine the claims that they face persecution at home.

      “Busing someone back to your southern border doesn’t exactly send them a message that you want them to stay in your country,” said Maureen Meyer, who heads the Mexico program for the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group. “And it isn’t always clear that the people on the buses understand what this could mean for their cases in the United States.”

      Passengers interviewed on both ends of the bus pipeline — along the northern Mexican border and here on the southern frontier with Guatemala — say that no Mexican official briefed them on the potential legal jeopardy of returning home.

      “No one told us anything,” Flores Reyes asked after she got off the bus here, bewildered about how to proceed. “Is there a safe place to stay here until our appointment in December?”

      The date is specified on a notice to appear that U.S. Border Patrol agents handed her before she and her daughter were sent back to Mexico last month after having been detained as illegal border-crossers in south Texas. They are due Dec. 16 in a U.S. immigration court in Harlingen, Texas, for a deportation hearing, according to the notice, stamped with the capital red letters MPP — for Migrant Protection Protocols, the official designation of Remain in Mexico.

      The free bus rides to the Guatemalan border are strictly a one-way affair: Mexico does not offer return rides back to the northern border for migrants due in a U.S. immigration court, typically several months later.

      Beti Suyapa Ortega, 36, and son Robinson Javier Melara, 17, in a Mexican immigration agency waiting room in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

      “At this point, I’m so frightened I just want to go home,” said Beti Suyapa Ortega, 36, from Honduras, who crossed the border into Texas intending to seek political asylum and surrendered to the Border Patrol.

      She, along with her son, 17, were among two dozen or so Remain in Mexico returnees waiting recently for a southbound bus in a spartan office space at the Mexican immigration agency compound in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

      Ortega and others said they were terrified of venturing onto the treacherous streets of Nuevo Laredo — where criminal gangs control not only drug trafficking but also the lucrative enterprise of abducting and extorting from migrants.

      “We can’t get out of here soon enough. It has been a nightmare,” said Ortega, who explained that she and her son had been kidnapped and held for two weeks and only released when a brother in Atlanta paid $8,000 in ransom. “I can never come back to this place.”

      The Ortegas, along with a dozen or so other Remain in Mexico returnees, left later that evening on a bus to southern Mexico. She said she would skip her date in U.S. immigration court, in Laredo — an appointment that would require her to pass through Nuevo Laredo and expose herself anew to its highly organized kidnapping and extortion gangs.

      The Mexican government bus service operates solely from the northern border towns of Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros, officials say. Both are situated in hyper-dangerous Tamaulipas state, a cartel hub on the Gulf of Mexico that regularly ranks high nationwide in homicides, “disappearances” and the discovery of clandestine graves.

      The long-haul Mexican busing initiative began in July, after U.S. immigration authorities began shipping migrants with court cases to Tamaulipas. Earlier, Remain in Mexico had been limited to sending migrants with U.S. court dates back to the northern border towns of Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez.

      At first, the buses left migrants departing from Tamaulipas state in the city of Monterrey, a relatively safe industrial center four hours south of the U.S. border. But officials there, including the state governor, complained about the sudden influx of hundreds of mostly destitute Central Americans. That’s when Mexican authorities appear to have begun busing all the way back to Ciudad Hidalgo, along Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

      A separate, United Nations-linked program has also returned thousands of migrants south from two large cities on the U.S. border, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.

      The packed buses arrive here two or three times a week, with no apparent set schedule.

      On a recent morning, half a dozen, each ferrying more than 40 migrants, came to a stop a block from the Rodolfo Robles international bridge that spans the Suchiate River, the dividing line between Mexico and Guatemala. Part of the fleet of the Omnibus Cristobal Colon long-distance transport company, the buses displayed windshield signs explaining they were “in the service” of Mexico’s national immigration agency.

      The migrants on board had begun the return journey south in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, after having been sent back there by U.S. immigration authorities.

      Many clutched folders with notices to appear in U.S. immigration court in Texas in December.

      But some, including Flores Reyes, said they were terrified of returning to Matamoros, where they had been subjected to robbery or kidnapping. Nor did they want to return across the Rio Grande to Texas, if it required travel back through Matamoros.

      Flores Reyes said kidnappers held her and her daughter for a week in Matamoros before they managed to escape with the aid of a fellow Honduran.

      The pair later crossed into Texas, she said, and they surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol. On Sept. 11, they were sent back to Matamoros with a notice to appear Dec. 16 in immigration court in Harlingen.

      “When they told us they were sending us back to Matamoros I became very upset,” Flores Reyes said. “I can’t sleep. I’m still so scared because of what happened to us there.”

      Fearing a second kidnapping, she said, she quickly agreed to take the transport back to southern Mexico.

      Christian Gonzalez, 23, a native of El Salvador who was also among those recently returned here, said he had been mugged in Matamoros and robbed of his cash, his ID and his documents, among them the government notice to appear in U.S. immigration court in Texas in December.

      “Without the paperwork, what can I do?” said an exasperated Gonzalez, a laborer back in Usulutan province in southeastern El Salvador. “I don’t have any money to stay here.”

      He planned to abandon his U.S. immigration case and return to El Salvador, where he said he faced threats from gangs and an uncertain future.

      Standing nearby was Nuvia Carolina Meza Romero, 37, accompanied by her daughter, Jessi, 8, who clutched a stuffed sheep. Both had also returned on the buses from Matamoros. Meza Romero, too, was in a quandary about what do, but seemed resigned to return to Honduras.

      “I can’t stay here. I don’t know anyone and I don’t have any money,” said Meza Romero, who explained that she spent a week in U.S. custody in Texas after crossing the Rio Grande and being apprehended on Sept. 2.

      Her U.S. notice to appear advised her to show up on Dec. 3 in U.S. immigration court in Brownsville.

      “I don’t know how I would even get back there at this point,” said Meza Romero, who was near tears as she stood with her daughter near the border bridge.

      Approaching the migrants were aggressive bicycle taxi drivers who, for a fee of the equivalent of about $2, offered to smuggle them back across the river to Guatemala on rafts made of planks and inner tubes, thus avoiding Mexican and Guatemalan border inspections.

      Opting to cross the river were many bus returnees from Matamoros, including Meza Romero, her daughter and Gonzalez, the Salvadoran.

      But Flores Reyes was hesitant to return to Central America and forfeit her long-sought dream of resettling in the United States, even if she had to make her way back to Matamoros on her own.

      “Right now, we just need to find some shelter,” Flores Reyes said as she ambled off in search of some kind of lodging, her daughter holding her mother’s arm. “We have an appointment on Dec. 16 on the other side. I plan to make it. I’m not ready to give up yet.”

      https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-15/buses-to-nowhere-mexico-transports-migrants-with-u-s-court-dates-to-its-far

      –---------

      Commentaire de @pascaline via la mailing-list Migreurop :

      Outre le dispositif d’expulsion par charter de l’OIM (https://seenthis.net/messages/730601) mis en place à la frontière nord du Mexique pour les MPPs, le transfert et l’abandon des demandeurs d’asile MPPS à la frontière avec le Guatemala, par les autorités mexicaines est présentée comme une façon de leur permettre d’échapper à la dangerosité des villes frontalières du Nord tout en espérant qu’ils choississent de retourner par eux-mêmes « chez eux »...

    • In a first, U.S. starts pushing Central American families seeking asylum to Guatemala

      U.S. officials have started to send families seeking asylum to Guatemala, even if they are not from the Central American country and had sought protection in the United States, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

      In July, the Trump administration announced a new rule to effectively end asylum at the southern U.S. border by requiring asylum seekers to claim protection elsewhere. Under that rule — which currently faces legal challenges — virtually any migrant who passes through another country before reaching the U.S. border and does not seek asylum there will be deemed ineligible for protection in the United States.

      A few days later, the administration reached an agreement with Guatemala to take asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. border who were not Guatemalan. Although Guatemala’s highest court initially said the country’s president couldn’t unilaterally enter into such an agreement, since late November, U.S. officials have forcibly returned individuals to Guatemala under the deal.

      At first, U.S. officials said they would return only single adults. But starting Tuesday, they began applying the policy to non-Guatemalan parents and children, according to communications obtained by The Times and several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.

      One family of three from Honduras, as well as a separate Honduran parent and child, were served with notices on Tuesday that they’d soon be deported to Guatemala.

      The Trump administration has reached similar agreements with Guatemala’s Northern Triangle neighbors, El Salvador and Honduras, in each case obligating those countries to take other Central Americans who reach the U.S. border. Those agreements, however, have yet to be implemented.

      The administration describes the agreements as an “effort to share the distribution of hundreds of thousands of asylum claims.”

      The deals — also referred to as “safe third country” agreements — “are formed between the United States and foreign countries where aliens removed to those countries would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection,” according to the federal notice.

      Guatemala has virtually no asylum system of its own, but the Trump administration and Guatemalan government both said the returns would roll out slowly and selectively.

      The expansion of the policy to families could mean many more asylum seekers being forcibly removed to Guatemala.

      Experts, advocates, the United Nations and Guatemalan officials say the country doesn’t have the capacity to handle any sizable influx, much less process potential protection claims. Guatemala’s own struggles with corruption, violence and poverty helped push more than 270,000 Guatemalans to the U.S. border in fiscal 2019.

      Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

      https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-12-10/u-s-starts-pushing-asylum-seeking-families-back-to-guatemala-for-first-time

    • U.S. implements plan to send Mexican asylum seekers to Guatemala

      Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States could be sent to Guatemala under a bilateral agreement signed by the Central American nation last year, according to documents sent to U.S. asylum officers in recent days and seen by Reuters.

      In a Jan. 4 email, field office staff at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) were told Mexican nationals will be included in the populations “amenable” to the agreement with Guatemala.

      The agreement, brokered last July between the administration of Republican President Donald Trump and the outgoing Guatemalan government, allows U.S. immigration officials to send migrants requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border to apply for protection in Guatemala instead.

      Mexico objects to the plan, its foreign ministry said in a statement late on Monday, adding that it would be working with authorities to find “better options” for those that could be affected.

      Trump has made clamping down on unlawful migration a top priority of his presidency and a major theme of his 2020 re-election campaign. His administration penned similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador last year.

      U.S. Democrats and pro-migrant groups have opposed the move and contend asylum seekers will face danger in Guatemala, where the murder rate is five times that of the United States, according to 2017 data compiled by the World Bank. The country’s asylum office is tiny and thinly staffed and critics have argued it lacks the capacity to properly vet a significant increase in cases.

      Guatemalan President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, who takes office this month, has said he will review the agreement.

      Acting Deputy U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a tweet in December that Mexicans were being considered for inclusion under the agreement.

      USCIS referred questions to DHS, which referred to Cuccinelli’s tweet. Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

      Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s immigration institute, said that since the agreement was implemented in November, the United States has sent 52 migrants to the country. Only six have applied for asylum in Guatemala, Mena said.

      On Monday, an additional 33 Central American migrants arrived on a flight to Guatemala City, she said.

      Unaccompanied minors cannot be sent to Guatemala under the agreement, which now applies only to migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, according to the guidance documents. Exceptions are made if the migrants can establish that they are “more likely than not” to be persecuted or tortured in Guatemala based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

      Numbers of Central American migrants apprehended at the border fell sharply in the second part of 2019 after Mexico deployed National Guard troops to stem the flow, under pressure from Trump.

      Overall, border arrests are expected to drop again in December for the seventh straight month, a Homeland Security official told Reuters last week, citing preliminary data.

      The U.S. government says another reason for the reduction in border crossings is a separate program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, that has forced more than 56,000 non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. immigration court hearings.

      With fewer Central Americans at the border, U.S. attention has turned to Mexicans crossing illegally or requesting asylum. About 150,000 Mexican single adults were apprehended at the border in fiscal 2019, down sharply from previous decades but still enough to bother U.S. immigration hawks.

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/us-implements-plan-to-send-mexican-asylum-seekers-to-guatemala-idUSKBN1Z51S
      #Guatemala

    • Mexico begins flying, busing migrants back to #Honduras

      Hundreds of Central American migrants who entered southern Mexico in recent days have either been pushed back into Guatemala by Mexican troops, shipped to detention centers or returned to Honduras, officials said Tuesday. An unknown number slipped past Mexican authorities and continued north.

      The latest migrant caravan provided a public platform for Mexico to show the U.S. government and migrants thinking of making the trip that it has refined its strategy and produced its desired result: This caravan will not advance past its southern border.

      What remained unclear was the treatment of the migrants who already find themselves on their way back to the countries they fled last week.

      “Mexico doesn’t have the capacity to process so many people in such a simple way in a couple of days,” said Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University studying how the caravans form.

      The caravan of thousands had set out from Honduras in hopes Mexico would grant them passage, posing a fresh test of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S. border by pressuring other governments to stop them.

      Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said 2,400 migrants entered Mexico legally over the weekend. About 1,000 of them requested Mexico’s help in returning to their countries. The rest were being held in immigration centers while they start legal processes that would allow them to seek refuge in Mexico or obtain temporary work permits that would confine them to southern Mexico.

      On Tuesday afternoon, Jesus, a young father from Honduras who offered only his first name, rested in a shelter in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with his wife and their baby, unsure of what to do next.

      “No country’s policy sustains us,” he said in response to hearing Ebrard’s comments about the situation. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat. (He) doesn’t feed us, doesn’t care for our children.”

      Honduran officials said more than 600 of its citizens were expected to arrive in that country Tuesday by plane and bus and more would follow in the coming days.

      Of an additional 1,000 who tried to enter Mexico illegally Monday by wading across the Suchiate river, most were either forced back or detained later by immigration agents, according to Mexican officials.

      Most of the hundreds stranded in the no-man’s land on the Mexican side of the river Monday night returned to Guatemala in search of water, food and a place to sleep. Late Tuesday, the first buses carrying Hondurans left Tecun Uman with approximately 150 migrants heading back to their home country.

      Mexican authorities distributed no water or food to those who entered illegally, in what appeared to be an attempt by the government to wear out the migrants.

      Alejandro Rendón, an official from Mexico’s social welfare department, said his colleagues were giving water to those who turned themselves in or were caught by immigration agents, but were not doing the same along the river because it was not safe for workers to do so.

      “It isn’t prudent to come here because we can’t put the safety of the colleagues at risk,” he said.

      Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that the government is trying to protect the migrants from harm by preventing them from traveling illegally through the country. He said they need to respect Mexican laws.

      “If we don’t take care of them, if we don’t know who they are, if we don’t have a register, they pass and get to the north, and the criminal gangs grab them and assault them, because that’s how it was before,” he said. “They disappeared them.”

      Mexican Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero commended the National Guard for its restraint, saying: “In no way has there been an act that we could call repression and not even annoyance.”

      But Honduras’ ambassador to Mexico said there had been instances of excessive force on the part of the National Guard. “We made a complaint before the Mexican government,” Alden Rivera said in an interview with HCH Noticias without offering details. He also conceded migrants had thrown rocks at Mexican authorities.

      An Associated Press photograph of a Mexican National Guardsman holding a migrant in a headlock was sent via Twitter by acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli with the message: “We appreciate Mexico doing more than they did last year to interdict caravans attempting to move illegally north to our southern border.”

      “They absolutely must be satisfied with (Mexico’s) actions because in reality it’s their (the United States’) plan,” said Correa Cabrera, the George Mason professor. “They’re congratulating themselves, because in reality it wasn’t López Obrador’s plan.”

      She said it is an complicated issue for Mexico, but the National Guard had no business being placed at the border to handle immigration because they weren’t trained for it. The government “is sending a group that doesn’t know how to and can’t protect human rights because they’re trained to do other kinds of things,” she said.

      Mexico announced last June that it was deploying the newly formed National Guard to assist in immigration enforcement to avoid tariffs that Trump threatened on Mexican imports.

      Darlin René Romero and his wife were among the few who spent the night pinned between the river and Mexican authorities.

      Rumors had circulated through the night that “anything could happen, that being there was very dangerous,” Romero said. But the couple from Copan, Honduras, spread a blanket on the ground and passed the night 20 yards from a line of National Guard troops forming a wall with their riot shields.

      They remained confident that Mexico would allow them to pass through and were trying to make it to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, where his sister lives.

      They said a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable.

      https://apnews.com/4d685100193f6a2c521267fe614356df

  • On ’This Land Is Your Land,’ Woody Guthrie’s Anthem To Finding Home : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/702792467/woody-guthrie-this-land-is-your-land-american-anthem

    “This Land Is Your Land” is sung in all kinds of settings: elementary schools, political campaigns, parades. During the tense period of President Trump’s proposed travel ban, protesters sang it to passengers who’d been detained at JFK and Philadelphia International Airport. Bruce Springsteen called it “one of the most beautiful songs ever written.” And although it’s been recorded hundreds of times, most people don’t learn it from a recording.

    When Woody Guthrie wrote the song in February 1940, he was 27 years old, sitting in his room in a fleabag hotel in midtown Manhattan called Hanover House. His daughter, Nora Guthrie, says her father was a no-frills kinda guy — but also a deeply curious wanderer, who would go out for a pack of cigarettes and not come home for a week or two. So when he sings “this land,” she explains, he’s not just talking about deserts and wheat fields.
    YouTube

    “The whole idea of a ’land’ is your spot on earth,” Nora says. “A spot where you can claim safety, sanity.”

    Growing up in Oklahoma, a young Woody Guthrie couldn’t claim much of either: Cyclones, dust storms and heartbreak disrupted his world over and over. A new house his father built burned to the ground. Later, when his older sister Clara was 14, she was ironing on a kerosene stove that caught fire.

    A choked-up Guthrie told the story to folklorist Alan Lomax in 1940 for the Library of Congress: “This one blowed up, caught fire, and she run around the house about twice before anybody could catch her,” he said. “And my mother, that was a little bit too much for her nerves.”

    Ten years later, Guthrie’s mother died in what was then referred to as a hospital for the insane. She suffered from Huntington’s disease — a genetic brain disorder that was misunderstood at the time (and the same disease that would later kill the singer himself). His father lost everything, and Guthrie and his siblings were sent to live with friends and family.

    He ended up in Pampa, Texas, and then, when the brutal dust storms hit, headed to California. Just as the song says, he “roamed and rambled” across the country: walking, hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, going by bus when he could afford it. Nora says that in a way, “the land” was Woody’s home. And he did not like to keep still, even when he recorded those sessions with Alan Lomax.

    “Alan would say, ’Come sit down and have something to eat.’ Woody would stand up and say, ’Oh, I don’t want to get too comfortable,’” she recalls. “Don’t get too comfortable because you never know who’s going to take your home away.”

    If you look at the original lyric sheet to “This Land Is Your Land,” Guthrie added a line at the bottom: “All you can write is what you see.” He wanted to sing the truth — and in fact, his song was a rebuttal to another one. Kate Smith’s version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” was on jukeboxes and radio everywhere during Guthrie’s journey across the country. He, apparently, hated it.

    He had seen a lot of the United States by then, from the prairies to the forests to the big cities. In his eyes, America was beautiful, but it was in trouble: He’d seen Dust Bowl refugees fighting for their lives and working people “living like rats,” as he put it. He originally called his song “God Blessed America” — as in, past tense. In one verse that rarely gets performed, he bristles at a “private property” sign.
    The Shifting Identity Of ’God Bless America’
    Author Interviews
    From Peace To Patriotism: The Shifting Identity Of ’God Bless America’
    The Story Of Woody Guthrie’s ’This Land Is Your Land’
    The NPR 100
    The Story Of Woody Guthrie’s ’This Land Is Your Land’

    The left-leaning politics of “This Land Is Your Land” are most likely lost on the millions of kids who have been learning the song for decades now. And yet, politics is partly how the song spread.

    Guthrie was pro-union, anti-war and a Communist sympathizer. He also, as he put it, “cussed out high rents ... and punk politicians.” There were consequences for his career: The late Pete Seeger, who became an icon of folk music, often appeared with Guthrie, and once told NPR the two were blacklisted as early as the 1940s.

    “We did one program on CBS Radio, and a newspaper reported out, said, ’Red minstrels try to get on the networks,’” Seeger said. “And that was the last job we got.”

    For some time, the only work Seeger could find was singing for young people. “And that’s how the song really became popularized — not by my father, but by people like Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted,” Nora Guthrie explains. “Basically every kid that went to summer school or kindergarten or college learned ’This Land Is Your Land.’”

    “That song was never on the hit parade,” Seeger elaborated to NPR. “It was never played on the radio. It was never played on TV. It was a nothing of a song as far as the commercial world was concerned. But practically everybody in America knew this song.”

    Seeger believed the song endures simply because people love to sing it. Nora says plenty of people have told her just that. “We’ve always gotten requests from so many thousands of people over the years, saying ’This should be the national anthem’ — because it’s filled with beauty and love of country,” she says.

    On that particular count, however, the Guthrie family says thanks but no thanks. The song, Nora says, “belongs to the people — not the government.”

    #Woody_Guthrie #Musique

  • Video : Watch Imogen Heap Perform At The Tiny Desk : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/733554054/imogen-heap-tiny-desk-concert

    Après nous avoir gratifié d’une belle démonstration du Theremin, voici que le Tiny Desk Concert nous propose avec doigté une musique réalisée avec un « gant musical » couplé à un ordinateur. Fascinant.

    In the course of a few songs at the Tiny Desk, Imogen Heap took us through her many musical talents. The concert began with her old Frou Frou musical partner, Guy Sigsworth — and their first new song in 17 years — and ended with an extraordinary demonstration and performance of her high-tech musical gloves.

    Imogen Heap not only has an enchanting voice but also the talents of a world-class audio engineer. She’s completely engrossed in a technology she’s helped to develop, one that makes it possible to alter sounds, create loops and compose tunes all with the wave of her glove-wearing hands. The high-tech gloves, now called Mi.Mu Gloves, were first shown at a TEDGlobal conference eight years ago. Her performances, with her sound-altering arm and hand gestures, resemble a summoning of spirits, a far more compelling live experience than what Imogen said used to look like she was standing behind her laptop checking email.

    #Musique #Gant_musical

  • UK: Johnson ordered to face accusations that he lied to the public ...
    https://diasp.eu/p/9129729

    UK: Johnson ordered to face accusations that he lied to the public

    Source: National Public Radio [US state media]

    “A British court is ordering Boris Johnson to face accusations that while holding public office, he lied in order to sway voter opinion on Brexit. The case was brought by a ‘private prosecutor’ who says Johnson abused the public’s trust while holding official posts. Johnson has quickly emerged as a front-runner to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, who is resigning next month. But with today’s ruling, he must also face charges of misconduct in public office. The case was brought by Marcus Ball — who has raised more than $300,000 to fund his effort. Ball says Johnson is guilty of ‘misleading the public by endorsing and making statements about the cost of European Union (...)

    • – lien propre :

      http://rationalreview.com/archives/337859

      – article relié :
      https://www.npr.org/2019/05/29/727832275/boris-johnson-is-ordered-to-face-accusations-that-he-lied-to-the-public

      #UK #EU #UE #Europe #Brexit

      A British court is ordering Boris Johnson to face accusations that while holding on Brexit. The case was brought by a “private prosecutor” who says Johnson abused the public’s trust while holding official posts.

      Johnson has quickly emerged as a front-runner to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, who is resigning next month. But with today’s ruling, he must also face charges of misconduct in public office. The case was brought by Marcus Ball — who has raised more than $300,000 to fund his effort.

      Ball says Johnson is guilty of “misleading the public by endorsing and making statements about the cost of European Union Membership, which he knew to be false.”

      Johnson is currently a member of Parliament. He resigned as the U.K’s foreign secretary last summer, in a protest against May’s plans to leave the European Union. He has also served as London’s mayor.

      Johnson has repeatedly made the false claim that Britain paid £350 million each week to be in the European Union. The claim was famously touted on a Vote Leave campaign bus during the run-up to the Brexit vote.

      In 2017, the head of the U.K.’s Statistics Authority sent Johnson a letter expressing his disappointment and telling Johnson it was “a clear misuse of official statistics” to say leaving the EU would free up £350 million (more than $440 million) weekly to spend on national healthcare.

      In 2018, Johnson acknowledged that the figure was inaccurate — but he said it was “grossly underestimated.”

      On his crowdfunding page, Ball stresses that he’s not trying to stop Brexit from happening. Instead, he’s targeting what he sees as the real threat facing society: lying, particularly the falsehoods that flow from those in power.

      “Lying in politics is the biggest problem. It is far more important than Brexit and certainly a great deal older,” Ball wrote. “Historically speaking, lying in politics has assisted in starting wars, misleading voters and destroying public trust in the systems of democracy and government.”

      He added, “When politicians lie, democracy dies.”

      Ball says he wants to set a precedent by making it illegal for an elected official to lie about financial matters. If he’s successful, he says, the case could have a wide ripple effect.

      “Because of how the English common law works, it’s possible that such a precedent could be internationally persuasive by influencing the law in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada and India.”

      In Britain’s legal system, private prosecutions can be started by any person or company with the time and money to do so.

      As the London-based law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon (which was once involved in Ball’s case) states, “Other than the fact the prosecution is brought by a private individual or company, for all other purposes they proceed in exactly the same way as if the prosecution had been brought by the Crown.”

  • Message de @isskein :
    procès de Scott Warren - délit de solidarité aux USA

    29 mai premier jour du procès de #Scott_Warren, membre du groupe #No_More_Deaths qui aide les migrants perdus dans le désert d’Arizona, arrêté le 17 janvier 2018
    il est accusé de « complot criminel de transport et d’hébergement de migrants illégaux » pour avoir hébergé deux migrants dans une grange. Il risque 20 ans de prison.

    à l’été 2017 9 volontaires de No More Deaths, la plupart ne venant pas d’#Arizona, laissent des bidons d’#eau dans le désert ; ils sont accusés d’utilisation frauduleuse de véhicule et d’abandon de possessions - bref de jeter des ordures - dans une réserve fédérale, délits susceptibles d’un maximum de 6 mois
    Scott Warren a été arrêté peu après la publication d’un rapport documentant des abus de la U.S. Border Patrol.
    https://theintercept.com/2018/01/23/no-more-deaths-arizona-border-littering-charges-immigration (article de 2018 ne mentionnant alors que des peines de 5 ans)

    #désert #mourir_dans_le_désert #mourir_aux_frontières #frontières #migrations #asile #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis #Mexique #procès #délit_de_solidarité #solidarité

    Plus sur le groupe No More Deaths sur seenthis :
    https://seenthis.net/tag/no_more_deaths

    Et #Scott_Warren est... géographe, « college geography instructor »

    • Extending ’Zero Tolerance’ To People Who Help Migrants Along The Border

      Arrests of people for harboring, sheltering, leaving food and water or otherwise protecting migrants have been on the rise since 2017, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to prioritize cases covered under the harboring statute.

      Scott Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor from Ajo, Ariz., works with a group called called No More Deaths or No Mas Muertes. The group’s volunteers leave water and food for migrants traversing the Arizona desert.

      Warren was arrested in 2017 and faces three felony counts including conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants. In its complaint, the government claims Warren was seen talking to two migrants who sheltered in Ajo. He denies being part of any sheltering plan.

      “It is scary to be intimidated like this and to be targeted but there really is no choice,” said Warren. He believes the government is violating his right to religious freedom by criminalizing his spiritual belief that mandates he help people in distress.

      “For the government, it’s kind of been an expansion of the interpretation of what it means to harbor,” he suggested.

      The stretch of desert near Ajo can be deadly. The Pima County Medical Examiner has documented 250 migrant deaths in the area since 2001. In the same time frame, thousands have died of dehydration and exposure in the Arizona borderlands.

      “It is life or death here. And a decision not to give somebody food or or water could lead to that person dying,” Warren said.

      ’Can I be compassionate?’

      Nine and half hours away by car from Ajo, in the west Texas town of Marfa, another case is unfolding that pits the government against a four-time elected city and county attorney, Teresa Todd.

      She is under investigation for human smuggling after stopping to help three migrants alongside the road at night in February, 2019.

      “I see a young man in a white shirt. He runs out toward the road where I am,” Todd recounted. She says the man was pleading for assistance. “I can’t just leave this guy on the side of the road. I have to go see if I can help.”

      The young man told Todd that his sister, 18-year-old Esmeralda, was in trouble.

      “I mean, she can hardly walk, she’s very dazed,” recalled Todd.

      The migrants took shelter in Todd’s car while she called and texted a friend who is the legal counsel for the local U.S. Border Patrol, asking for advice. Before that friend could reply, a sheriff’s deputy showed up. The deputy called in the U.S. Border Patrol.

      An agent was soon reading Todd her Miranda rights. Eight days later, a Department of Homeland Security investigator accompanied by a Texas Ranger arrived at Todd’s office with a search warrant for her cellphone. Todd says she was told she’d have the phone back in a matter of hours.

      “It makes people have to question, ’Can I be compassionate’?”

      Todd’s phone was returned 53 days later.

      The sheriff of Presidio County, Danny Dominguez, whose deputy called the Border Patrol, defended the action against Todd. He said anyone with undocumented migrants in their car risks arrest.

      A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the western district of Texas declined comment on Todd’s case.

      Todd is unrepentant: “I feel like I did the right thing. I don’t feel I did anything wrong.”

      Speaking by phone from the migrant detention center in Sierra Blanca, Texas, Esmeralda said of Todd, “I’m really grateful to her.” She said doctors told her she was on the brink of death by the time she got to the hospital.

      Figures confirmed to NPR by TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, show that in fiscal year 2018 there were more than 4,500 people federally charged for bringing in and harboring migrants. That is a more than 30% increase since 2015, with the greatest rise coming after Sessions’ order to prioritize harboring cases.

      “With these prosecutions, the government is saying, ’we’re extending our zero tolerance policy to Good Samaritans,’” said Ranjana Natarajan, director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. “People shouldn’t be helping migrants even if they might be at threat of death.”

      Accused of human smuggling

      Ana Adlerstein, a U.S. citizen and volunteer at a Mexican migrant shelter, has her own story to tell. Earlier this month, Adlerstein accompanied a migrant seeking asylum from Sonora, Mexico to the U.S. border crossing at Lukeville, Ariz. Adlerstein was present to observe the process. Instead, she says she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers for several hours.

      “I was accused of human smuggling,” she stated.

      Border officials had been forewarned that a migrant seeking asylum was coming that day, accompanied by a U.S. citizen. Under current law, once a migrant steps onto U.S. soil, he or she can request asylum.

      “If that’s not how you’re supposed to seek asylum at a port of entry, how are you supposed to seek asylum in this country?” Adlerstein asked.

      U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined comment on Adlerstein’s specific claims. In an email, a CBP spokesperson added:

      “All persons entering the country, including U.S. citizens, are subject to examination and search. CBP uses diverse factors to refer individuals for selected examinations and there are instances when this process may take longer than normal. CBP is committed to ensuring the agency is able to execute its missions while protecting the human rights, civil rights, and dignity of those with whom we come in contact.”

      Adlerstein has not been charged but has received subsequent calls from a DHS investigator.

      In Texas, Teresa Todd is waiting to find out if she will be indicted for human smuggling.

      As for Scott Warren, he faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all three felony counts, a prospect he can’t even contemplate.

      https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/725716169/extending-zero-tolerance-to-people-who-help-migrants-along-the-border?t=1559201
      #statistiques #chiffres

    • Scott Warren Provided Food & Water to Migrants in Arizona; He Now Faces Up to 20 Years in Prison

      An Arizona humanitarian aid volunteer goes to trial today for providing water, food, clean clothes and beds to two undocumented migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. If convicted, Scott Warren could spend up to 20 years in prison. Warren, an activist with the Tucson-based No More Deaths, is charged with three felony counts of allegedly “harboring” undocumented immigrants. For years, No More Deaths and other humanitarian aid groups in southern Arizona have left water and food in the harsh Sonoran Desert, where the temperature often reaches three digits during summer, to help refugees and migrants survive the deadly journey across the U.S. border. Warren was arrested on January 17, 2018, just hours after No More Deaths released a report detailing how U.S. Border Patrol agents had intentionally destroyed more than 3,000 gallons of water left out for migrants crossing the border. The group also published a video showing border agents dumping out jugs of water in the desert. Hours after the report was published, authorities raided the Barn, a No More Deaths aid camp in Ajo, where they found two migrants who had sought temporary refuge. We speak with Scott Warren and his fellow No More Deaths volunteer and activist Catherine Gaffney in Tucson.

      https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/29/scott_warren_provided_food_water_to

    • Daily Trial Updates

      Day 3 – June 3, 2019

      We began the day with a powerful press conference featuring immigrant justice advocates from across the country. Patty Miller (Arivaca, AZ,) spoke on behalf of People Helping People in the Border Zone and the Rural Border Communities Coalition, followed by James Cordero and Jacqueline Arellano from Border Angeles (San Diego), Ravi Ragbir of the New Sanctuary Coalition (NYC) and Kaji Douša, Senior Pastor at The Park Avenue Christian Church in Manhattan.
      The prosecution continued to build their “case” against Scott, spending most of the day playing video recordings of the testimony given by the two undocumented Central American men–José and Kristian–who were arrested with Scott. (Note we will be using only the first names of deposed witnesses to respect privacy).
      Prosecutors attempted to erase the hardships experienced by undocumented people crossing the borderlands. One of the two witnesses, Kristian, testified that he had been traveling since October 4th, 2017 from his home in El Salvador. By the time of the arrest, he had been traveling for over three months and walking in the desert for two days. This is very different from the government narrative which claims the men were traveling for mere hours before they encountered help.
      During their journey, José and Kristian experienced the routine and deadly Border Patrol apprehension method known as chase and scatter–a practice in which Border Patrol agents pursue migrants in vehicles, on foot, or in helicopters, forcing them to scatter into the desert. In the chaos, the two men lost their belongings, including “food and two gallons of water.” The No More Deaths Abuse Documentation Working Group has provided extensive documentation of the lethal impacts of this deadly apprehension method in our report series, The Disappeared.
      José and Kristian testified that after arriving at the Barn, Scott gave them food, water, blankets and a place to rest. There was no evidence that Scott made any plans to transport them, hide them from law enforcement, or instruct them on how to evade any Border Patrol checkpoints.
      Border Patrol Forensic Phone Analyst Rogelio Velasco gave a rundown of the contents of Scott Warren’s phone–he summarized 14,000 pages of emails and texts into a one page report. One part of his analysis showed the day José and Kristian arrived at the barn, Scott called a nurse and a doctor on the No More Deaths medical team. When asked why Velasco didn’t review the myriad other emails and texts discussing Scott’s humanitarian work, he replied, “I was looking for elements of criminality. If it wasn’t relevant then I skipped it.”

      Day 2 – May 30, 2019

      We began the day with Pastor Allison Harrington of Southside Presbyterian Church sharing the poem “Imagine the Angels of Bread” by Martin Espada along with a morning prayer.
      Court opened with Border Patrol Agent John Marquez being cross-examined by the defense. He made it abundantly clear that he relied on racial profiling to determine the two men at the barn were migrants, claiming “they matched the description” of two migrants BP was looking for. However, when pressed by the defense, Agent Marquez admitted that he did not know whether they were “short, tall, fat, skinny, bearded, young, old, or even male.” He stated “In my experience, they appeared to be “Other Than Mexican.”
      Agent Marquez also stated that January 17, 2018 was the first time Border Patrol agents in Ajo set up surveillance at the Barn. This happened just hours after No More Deaths released a report called The Disappeared Part 2: Interference on Humanitarian and video of agents destroying humanitarian aid supplies.
      Second to take the stand was Border Patrol Agent Brendan Burns, who was the one who first referred to the migrants as “toncs”.
      According to Agent Burns, when he approached the Barn that day, defendant Scott Warren told him that it was private property and a humanitarian aid space. He also asked the Agents to leave the property. Burns ignored him because, according to his surveillance, “the aliens didn’t appear to be in need of humanitarian aid.” When asked by the defense whether he has any medical credentials, the agent admitted to having none.
      Five days after the arrests, a search warrant was issued for the Barn. Evidence seized included a receipt for a cherry coke, banana nut muffin and chips, a fridge note saying “bagels from flagstaff!” and a list of supplies for a camping trip.

      Day 1 – May 29, 2019

      After a moving press conference in the morning, a jury was selected of 15 people — 12 jurors and 3 alternates.
      In his opening argument this afternoon, US Attorney Nathaniel Walters claimed that “this case is not about humanitarian aid,” urging jurors to ignore the realities of death and disappearance happening in the desert surrounding Ajo, Arizona.
      The prosecution’s entire case for the charge of “conspiracy to harbor and transport” undocumented migrants appeared to hinge on the fact that two undocumented men arrived at the Barn, “and then Scott showed up” a few hours later.
      The prosecution also harped on the fact that the men had “eaten food” prior to arriving at the Barn, apparently arguing that because the two men split one burrito after walking for two days through the desert, they were not in need of food or water
      Lawyers for the defense firmly asserted in their opening arguments that this case IS about humanitarian aid, and that Scott’s actions must be understood as a part of his deep knowledge of suffering throughout the desert and commitment to working to end it. “Scott intended one thing: to provide basic human kindness in the form of humanitarian aid.”
      The government also argued that Scott was pointing out known landmarks to the two migrants. “Defendant appeared to be pointing out different features, lots of hand motions. I could not hear them but there were hand gestures, up and down, in wave motions, rolling hills, pointing to known points of interest.” However, as the defense firmly stated “orientation is just as much of a human right as is food, water, and shelter.” In the context of death and disappearance in the desert, knowing where you are can save your life.
      The government called their first witness, Border Patrol Agent John Marquez. Marquez testified to setting up surveillance on the Barn on January 17, 2018 and seeing Scott speaking with two men, who he presumed were undocumented based on “ill-fitting clothing” and the fact that they were “scanning the horizon.” No evidence was presented that Scott intended to hide or conceal anyone. Judge Collins called an end to the day before the defense’s cross-examination of Marquez.


      http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/dailytrialupdates
      #procès

      –---------

      Trial continued this afternoon with video testimony from José, the other material witness arrested with Scott, who confirmed that he and Kristian were both hungry, cold, and very tired when they arrived at the barn.

      José also described their experience of being scattered by the #BorderPatrol, and how most of the men in his group had to stop walking because they were so beat up from spending just one day in the desert.

      Chase and scatter is just one of the deadly apprehension tactics used by BP which result in increased numbers of deaths and disappearances. “Prevention through Deterrence” is the name of the overall strategy of pushing migrants deep into the desert.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Ux__uVfNA

      https://twitter.com/NoMoreDeaths/status/1135690665399017473

    • In Scott Warren’s No More Deaths Trial, Prosecutors Attempt to Paint a Web of Conspiracy

      For nearly a year and a half, U.S. government prosecutors in Arizona have sought to make an example out of Scott Warren. The 36-year-old geographer and border-based humanitarian aid volunteer was arrested with two undocumented migrants on January 17, 2018, and accused of providing the men with food, water, and a place to sleep over three days. A month later, a grand jury indicted him on two counts of harboring and one count of conspiracy, bringing the total amount time he could spend in prison — if convicted on all counts and sentenced to consecutive terms — to 20 years.

      Warren’s trial began in Tucson on Wednesday, marking the start of the most consequential prosecution of an American humanitarian aid provider in at least a decade. On Monday, assistant U.S. attorneys Anna Wright and Nathaniel J. Walters, who together have spearheaded an aggressive and controversial prosecutorial campaign against immigrant rights defenders in the Sonoran Desert, called their final witness to the stand.

      Over three and a half days of testimony, the prosecutors presented the jury with two Border Patrol agents who arrested Warren, a third who examined his phone, and some three hours of video-taped testimony from the young migrants he was arrested with, recorded before their deportations. The arresting agents provided little information beyond the bare facts of their operation as it unfolded, while the agent who testified about phone evidence seemed to paint a more incriminating picture of a man who was not charged in the case than he did of Warren. The migrants who were held as the government’s material witnesses described Warren as a figure who was hardly present during their short time in the U.S., beyond giving them permission to eat, sleep, and drink at a property he did not own, after they showed up with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

      The conspiracy charge in particular has cast an ominous pall over Warren’s case. As a prosecutorial tool, conspiracy charges can afford government attorneys sweeping powers in criminal cases. While the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona was secretive about the nature of its theory of conspiracy with respect to Warren following his grand jury indictment, The Intercept revealed last month that the government considered Irineo Mujica, a prominent immigrants right advocate, a co-conspirator in the case. A dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, Mujica is the head of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an immigrant rights organization known for its role in organizing the migrant caravans that have drawn President Trump’s outrage. He also operates a migrant shelter south of Ajo, the unincorporated community where Warren lives and works.

      In opening arguments last week, Walters confirmed that the government considered Mujica a key figure in Warren’s alleged offenses. “They were in contact with Irineo Mujica,” the prosecutor told the jury, referring to 23-year-old Kristian Perez-Villanueva and 20-year-old Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday, the Central American migrants, from El Salvador and Honduras, respectively, whom Warren was arrested with. Not only that, Walters said, Mujica had driven the pair to “the Barn,” a property used by humanitarian volunteers operating in the area. Warren’s relationship to Mujica was that of a “shared acquaintance,” Walters said, and cellphone evidence would show that the two were in contact before the migrants arrived at the Barn.

      Mujica declined to comment for this story and has not been charged with a crime.

      On Monday afternoon, Rogelio Velasco, a Border Patrol agent in the Tucson sector’s intelligence unit, testified about the government’s telephonic evidence, describing how his work excavating cellphones is used to support the agency’s high-priority cases, often executed by its plainclothes “Disrupt” units. “We try to look for bigger cases where more people are involved,” he testified. Warren was arrested by a Disrupt unit.

      Wright and Walters’ interest in Warren and the humanitarian groups he volunteers with, particularly the faith-based organization No More Deaths, began in 2017, when the assistant U.S. attorneys brought federal misdemeanor charges against several members of the group — Warren included — for leaving water and other humanitarian aid supplies on public lands where migrants routinely die. Velasco explained how, after Warren’s arrest, the prosecutors directed him to focus on particular date ranges and communications included in Warren’s phone and a phone carried by Perez-Villanueva.

      As the Border Patrol agent carried out the prosecutors’ request, he said he found a series of communications between Perez-Villanueva and Mujica, beginning in December 2017 and extending through January 2018, when he and Sacaria-Goday, along with Warren, were arrested in Ajo. According to Velasco’s testimony, the messages showed that when the young migrants entered the U.S. on January 14, Perez-Villanueva texted Mujica, “We’re here.” To which Mujica replied, “I’m on my way.”

      The government’s efforts to tie alleged illegal activity between Mujica and Warren appeared to begin after Warren was taken into custody. Four months after Warren was indicted, Jarrett L. Lenker, a supervisory Border Patrol agent in the Tucson sector intelligence unit, submitted a search warrant affidavit for Warren’s iPhone, first uncovered by the Arizona Daily Star and obtained by The Intercept.

      Mujica was a central figure in Lenker’s affidavit. The Border Patrol agent described “a total of 16 phone calls or WhatsApp messages” exchanged between Perez-Villanueva and Mujica in the month before his arrest. Lenker’s affidavit also revealed that, through subpoenas, law enforcement identified two phone numbers “associated with Warren’s Verizon account” following his arrest: one belonging to Warren and the other belonging to his partner.

      In his testimony Monday, Velasco said that Mujica was a contact in Warren’s phone, and that the two had communications up through January 11, six days before his arrest. Warren also sent Mujica’s contact information to another person in his phone in the summer of 2017, Velasco testified.

      Following Velasco’s testimony, the prosecution called Border Patrol agent Brendan Burns, one of the Disrupt unit members principally involved in Warren’s arrest, to the witness stand. Burns described an incident a week after Warren’s arrest, in which Mujica was pulled over at a Border Patrol checkpoint outside Ajo. He drove to the scene and observed that Mujica’s van was the same vehicle featured in a selfie Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday took after they made it to the U.S. Inside the van were a number of items associated with illegal border crossings, Burns testified, including water jugs and foreign identification cards. The same incident was also described in Lenker’s affidavit, which noted that the ID cards belonged to individuals who had been removed from the U.S. Lenker also recounted an incident the following month, in which Mujica was again stopped at the same Border Patrol checkpoint and his passenger was arrested for being in the country illegally.

      Burns acknowledged having seen the photos of Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday in Mujica’s vehicle prior to his encounter with Mujica, and his knowledge that the vehicle belonged to Mujica. He testified that he did not, however, ask Mujica about the two young migrants, nor their alleged conspiracy with Scott Warren, nor did he place him under arrest.

      In opening statements last week, defense attorney Greg Kuykendall acknowledged that Warren had been in contact with Mujica days before his arrest, and that was because Mujica had information about a dead body outside Ajo. The remains of roughly 3,000 people have been recovered in the Arizona desert since 2000, the grim consequence of a government policy that deliberately funnels migrants into the most lethal areas of the U.S.-Mexico border. Since 2014, Warren has brought together a network of humanitarian groups working to confront the loss of life in the state’s deadliest region, the so-called west desert. Those efforts have yielded a historic increase in the number of bodies and human remains accounted for in the area.

      On cross examination Monday, Kuykendall zeroed in on the evidence Velasco’s examination of Warren’s phone had uncovered. The defense attorney first established, with Velasco’s admission, that there were no communications recorded between Perez-Villanueva and Warren (Sacaria-Goday tossed his phone while the pair were in the desert). He then focused on Warren’s communications with Mujica.

      “Are you aware that Scott and Irineo are involved in humanitarian aid efforts?” Kuykendall asked.

      “I think I might’ve heard something,” Velasco replied. “But I’m not exactly sure.”

      (Warren’s humanitarian aid work was noted in both internal Border Patrol reports and news accounts before and after his arrest — he and Mujica were featured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series in 2017 detailing their efforts to find dead and lost migrants in the desert.)

      Velasco admitted that he had no idea what Warren and Mujica discussed the week before Warren’s arrest, nor had he taken note of what Warren had Googled as soon as the pair got off the phone. Kuykendall informed the jury that those searches included information on backcountry areas south of Ajo, a news report on a humanitarian group conducting search and rescue operations in the region, and the English translation of a Spanish word for scratches. Following the Google searches, Kuykendall told the jury, Warren called Dr. Norma Price, a physician who has long provided medical advice to No More Deaths volunteers.

      Kuykendall questioned Velasco about his testimony regarding Warren’s communications with a woman named “Susannah.” Velasco admitted that he did not know who Susannah was and that he “saw nothing that directly suggested” she and Warren were communicating about criminal activity. Instead, he testified, they were messaging one another about “providing water in different areas.” Moving along, Kuykendall asked if Velasco was aware that Perez-Villanueva worked for Mujica while staying at his shelter in Mexico — a potential explanation for their repeated communications in the winter of 2017. Velasco appeared uncertain, and acknowledged that from January 10 to the afternoon of January 14, when the migrants arrived in Ajo, there were no communications between Perez-Villanueva and Mujica.

      “When he was crossing I didn’t come up with any messages,” Velasco testified.

      In opening arguments last week, Kuykendall explained how, in the days leading up to his arrest, Warren spent his time training new humanitarian volunteers, assisting sheriff’s deputies in the search for a body, and performing his duties as a new instructor at Tohono O’odham Community College, a school for residents of the Native American reservation outside Ajo. In early January 2018, five new No More Deaths volunteers had arrived in Ajo. As the local expert, it was up to Warren to show them the ropes and familiarize them with the organization’s protocols — protocols, Kuykendall said, that are intended to ensure the group’s work is “effective, responsible, and legal.”

      On Thursday, January 11, Warren was at home when Mujica called to inform him about the human remains he had heard about, Kuykendall said, noting that Warren had the experience and know-how to organize a grid search in the area. Efforts to coordinate a search were the extent of communications between Warren and Mujica, the defense attorney said. The following day, Warren took the new volunteers to a migrant shelter in Mexico, where they distributed “harm reduction” kits, consisting of chlorine to purify water, ointment for blisters, combs for removing cholla cactus spines, and lists of emergency numbers, including 911.

      “No More Deaths’ role is to reduce the harm,” Kuykendall told the jury, not to encourage people to cross a desert that has claimed thousands of lives.

      Warren spent much of the following weekend at home with the flu, Kuykendall said, coordinating rescue operations by phone and working to link up Pima County sheriff’s deputies with No More Deaths volunteers in the field. Warren’s responsibilities involved preparing new volunteers, operationally and emotionally, for the possibility of finding a dead body in the desert. On the night of Sunday, January 14, they also included making dinner for the new recruits at the Barn. Warren returned to the building with groceries that afternoon to find two young men — Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday — already inside.

      “Scott’s spooked,” Kuykendall said of Warren’s reaction.

      In the depositions played for the jury Monday, Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday described a harrowing journey through the desert that involved being chased by law enforcement and losing many of their supplies. Perez-Villanueva described fleeing problems in El Salvador and said that he had no intention to enter the U.S. until those problems cropped up in Mexico. The pair had crossed in a group of five but were quickly on their own, their companions slowed down by thorns in their feet. “Between the two of us, we made a good team,” Perez-Villanueva said. “We supported each other mutually.” The young men testified to crossing the desert and tossing their food and backpacks when they were chased by immigration agents. They eventually made it to a gas station outside Ajo, where “a gringo” drove them to second gas station in town.

      Neither of the migrants identified the man who then drove to the Barn, though Perez-Villanueva testified that the man told them not to describe his role in delivering them there, and that he honored that request. The pair let themselves in through an unlocked door. Warren arrived approximately 40 minutes later. “They tell him that they’re hungry,” Kuykendall told the jury. “They tell him that they’re thirsty. They tell him that they’re tired.”

      Warren grabbed a form No More Deaths uses to catalog medical evaluations of migrants encountered in the field, the defense attorney said. Warren, a certified wilderness first responder, found that Perez-Villanueva had blisters on his feet, a persistent cough, and signs of dehydration. Sacaria-Goday’s conditions were much the same, though he was also suffering from chest pain. In keeping with No More Deaths’ protocol, Warren called a nurse before starting dinner for the volunteers that were set to arrive — as well as their two new guests.

      “He gives food to hungry men,” Kuykendall told the jury. “They share a meal with the volunteers.”

      By phone, Dr. Price advised the two young migrants to stay off their feet for a couple days, to stay hydrated, and asked the volunteers to keep them under observation, Kuykendall told the jury. Warren came and went in the days that followed, as did other No More Deaths volunteers. “He hardly spent time there,” Sacaria-Goday testified. “I hardly spoke with him,” Perez-Villanueva said.

      On Tuesday, January 16, Warren had his first day teaching at the community college. The following day, he worked from home. A group of high school students were scheduled to visit the Barn that night. Warren pulled up to the Barn in the afternoon, Kuykendall said, as Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday were preparing to leave. The three spoke outside. Across a desert wash, two plainclothes Border Patrol agents were conducting “covert surveillance,” in the words of Walters, the government prosecutor.

      “Toncs at the barn,” agent Burns wrote in a group text, using a slang word for migrants known to reflect the sound a flashlight makes when it connects with a human skull.

      The lead agent on the arrest operation was John Marquez. In his testimony last week, Marquez’s narrative began the afternoon of Warren’s arrest, though he acknowledged doing a bit of “background research,” in Kuykendall’s words, on Warren before taking him into custody. In fact, texts messages The Intercept has previously reported upon show Marquez repeatedly communicating with local Fish and Wildlife agents about Warren’s whereabouts and No More Deaths’ humanitarian activity in the run-up to his arrest. In a report he filed after Warren was taken into custody, Marquez described him as a “recruiter” for the organization, who regularly comments publicly on immigration issues.

      Under questioning from the prosecution, Marquez highlighted hand gestures Warren allegedly made while standing outside with Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday as evidence that he was providing them directions north. Upon cross examination, however, he acknowledged that this apparently important detail was not included in his arrest report. Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday, meanwhile, both testified that Warren did not provide them directions for their journey. He never advised them to hide in the Barn, they said, and they were free to come and go as they pleased.

      Marquez and Burns descended on the Barn with backup provided by a law enforcement caravan that had mustered at a hotel down the road. Warren, Perez-Villanueva, and Sacaria-Goday were all placed under arrest. The migrants were held in government custody for several weeks before providing their testimony and being deported to their home countries.

      “There is one question in this case,” Kuykendall told the jury considering Warren’s actions in the days leading up to his arrest. “Did he intend to violate the law?” The government did not have the evidence to prove that he did, the defense attorney argued.

      “Scott intended one thing,” he said. “To provide basic human kindness in the form of humanitarian aid.”

      https://theintercept.com/2019/06/04/scott-warren-no-more-deaths-trial-conspiracy-phone

    • UN experts urge US authorities to drop charges against aid worker Scott Warren

      GENEVA (5 June 2019) – UN human rights experts* have expressed grave concerns about criminal charges brought against Scott Warren, a U.S. citizen who works for an aid organisation providing water and medical aid to migrants in the Arizona desert.

      Warren’s trial began on 29 May 2019, and if found guilty he faces up to 20 years in jail.

      “Providing humanitarian aid is not a crime. We urge the US authorities to immediately drop all charges against Scott Warren,” the experts said.

      Warren, 36, lives in the desert town of Ajo, Arizona, where he helped to establish the organisation No More Deaths, which provides humanitarian assistance along migration routes. For the past 10 years, he has helped migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the Arizona - Mexican border through the Sonora desert.

      Border Control agents arrested the human rights defender on 17 January 2018 at “the Barn”, a humanitarian shelter in the Sonora Desert, while he was providing assistance to two undocumented migrants. His arrest came hours after the release of a report from No More Deaths which documented the implication of Border Control agents in the systematic destruction of humanitarian supplies, including water stores, and denounced a pattern of harassment, intimidation and surveillance against humanitarian aid workers.

      Warren faces charges on two counts of “harboring” migrants and one count of “conspiring to transport and harbor” migrants.

      Arizona has some of the deadliest migrant corridors along the US border, accounting for more than a third of more than 7,000 border deaths recorded by US authorities over the last two decades. The actual numbers are likely to be higher, given the remains of many of those who die are not recovered.

      “The vital and legitimate humanitarian work of Scott Warren and No More Deaths upholds the right to life and prevents the deaths of migrants and asylum seekers at the US-Mexican border,” said the UN experts.

      “The prosecution of Scott Warren represents an unacceptable escalation of existing patterns criminalising migrant rights defenders along the migrant caravan routes.”

      The experts are in contact with the U.S. authorities on the issues.

      https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24675&LangID=E

    • Judge declares mistrial in Tucson trial of aid volunteer accused of harboring migrants

      Jurors in the high-profile felony trial against Scott Warren — a humanitarian-aid volunteer charged with harboring two undocumented immigrants in southwestern Arizona — were unable to reach a verdict, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial in the case.

      U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins brought the 12-person jury into the Tucson federal courtroom on the afternoon of June 11, after they indicated for a second time that they were deadlocked on all three charges Warren faced.

      The judge dismissed the jury after each member told him that additional time deliberating would not result in a verdict.

      Collins scheduled a status conference on the trial for July 2, when prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona will decide whether to try Warren again before another jury.

      Prosecutors declined to comment after the judge dismissed the jury, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona has not responded to a request for comment.

      Warren, 36, a volunteer with the group No More Deaths, faced up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.

      He’s accused of conspiring to transport two undocumented immigrants, Kristian Perez-Villanueva and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday, and of harboring them for several days in January 2018 in Ajo, Arizona.

      Speaking to reporters outside the federal courthouse, Warren acknowledged that he’d be back in court in a month’s time to learn if the legal case against him would continue.

      But he thanked his supporters who filled the courthouse to capacity on each of the seven days of testimony.

      “But the other men arrested with me that day, Jose Sacaria-Goday and Kristian Perez-Villanueva, have not received the outpouring of support that I have,” Warren said. “I do not know how they are doing now. But I desperately hope that they are safe.”

      Warren said that the need to provide humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border still is “as necessary” as ever.

      He pointed out that since his arrest on Jan. 17, 2018, the remains of 88 migrants were recovered from the Ajo corridor, a remote and notoriously rugged desert wilderness in southwestern Arizona.

      Greg Kuykendall, the lead attorney in his defense team, praised volunteers, such as Warren, for using their time and resources to help migrants in need.

      He declined to answer questions about the possibility of a retrial.

      “The government put on its best case, with the full force and countless resources, and 12 jurors could not agree with that case,” Kuykendall said. “We remain devoted today in our commitment to defend Scott’s lifelong devotion to providing humanitarian aid.”
      Volunteers say border humanitarian work will continue

      The hung jury in Warren’s felony trial follows the convictions of several other No More Deaths volunteers for carrying out humanitarian aid duties along protected wilderness areas along the Arizona border.

      In January, a federal judge in Tucson convicted four volunteers of misdemeanors for entering a wildlife refuge without a permit and dropping off food and water for migrants. He sentenced them to 15 months probation, ordered them to pay a fine of $150, and banned them from the refuge.

      The following month, four other No More Deaths volunteers pleaded guilty to a civil infraction of entering a wildlife refuge without a permit, and agreed to pay $280 in fines.

      Warren is also awaiting the outcome of a separate misdemeanor case brought against him for entering protected wilderness areas without a permit.

      Page Corich-Kleim, a longtime volunteer with No More Deaths, said despite these results, their work in providing humanitarian aid will continue along southwestern Arizona.

      “This evening, we have a group of volunteers driving out to Ajo to put water out,” she said. “So throughout this whole trial, we haven’t stopped doing our work and we’re not going to stop doing our work.”

      The jury began deliberations midday on Friday, after attorneys presented their closing arguments in Tucson federal court. But after nearly 15 hours of deliberations, they were unable to reach consensus on the three felony counts against Warren.

      The jurors first notified Collins late Monday afternoon that they were unable to reach a verdict in the case. But the judge asked them to try once again on Tuesday morning.

      But after deadlocking once again on Tuesday morning, Collins thanked them and dismissed them from jury duty.

      The jurors left the courthouse without speaking to the media.
      Prosecutors said Warren conspired to harbor migrants

      During the trial, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona argued that the two migrants were in good health and did not need medical care when they showed up to a building known as “the Barn” on Jan. 14, 2018.

      The prosecutors argued that Warren had conspired with Irineo Mujica, a migrants-rights activist who runs a shelter in nearby Sonoyta, Mexico, to take in the two migrants and shield them from Border Patrol. They also alleged that the humanitarian aid was used as a “cover” to help them further their journey illegally into the United States.

      Agents arrested Warren, as well as Perez-Villanueva and Sacaria-Goday, during a Jan. 17, 2018, raid of the Barn, after they had set up surveillance of the area.

      Defense attorneys for Warren said he had no idea that the two men would be at the Barn when he arrived, and that he had followed the protocols No More Deaths had established to provide a medical assessment, as well as food, water, shelter and orientation to the two migrants.

      Warren’s intent was not to break the law, but rather to provide lifesaving aid, his attorneys said.

      https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2019/06/11/scott-warren-verdict-aiding-undocumented-immigrants-on-us-mexico-border-no-more-deaths/1387036001

    • Jurors refuse to convict activist facing 20 years for helping migrants

      Jury could not reach a verdict against Scott Daniel Warren who was arrested in 2018 for giving migrants water, food and lodging.

      A US jury could not reach a verdict on Tuesday against a border activist who, defense attorneys say, was simply being kind by providing two migrants with water, food and lodging when he was arrested in early 2018.

      Scott Daniel Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor, was charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants in a trial that humanitarian aid groups said would have wide implications for their work. He faced up to 20 years in prison.

      Prosecutors maintained the men were not in distress and Warren conspired to transport and harbor them at a property used for providing aid to migrants in an Arizona town near the US-Mexico border.

      The case played out as humanitarian groups say they are coming under increasing scrutiny under Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

      Outside the courthouse, Warren thanked his supporters and criticized the government’s efforts to crack down on the number of immigrants coming to the US.

      “Today it remains as necessary as ever for local residents and humanitarian aid volunteers to stand in solidarity with migrants and refugees, and we must also stand for our families, friends and neighbors in the very land itself most threatened by the militarization of our borderland communities,” Warren said.

      Glenn McCormick, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Arizona, declined to comment on whether Warren would face another trial. The judge set a 2 July status hearing for the defense and prosecution.

      Warren is one of nine members of the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths who have been charged with crimes related to their work. But he is the only one to face felony charges.

      In west Texas, a county attorney was detained earlier this year after stopping her car on a dark highway to pick up three young migrants who flagged her down. Teresa Todd was held briefly, and federal agents searched her cellphone.

      Border activists say they worry about what they see as the gradual criminalization of humanitarian action.

      Warren has said his case could set a dangerous precedent by expanding the definition of the crimes of transporting and harboring migrants to include people merely trying to help border-crossers in desperate need of water or other necessities.

      Warren and other volunteers with the No More Deaths group also were targeted this year in separate federal misdemeanor cases after leaving water, canned food and other provisions for migrants hiking through the Cabeza Prieta national wildlife refuge in southern Arizona.

      In Warren’s felony case, the defense team headed by Greg Kuykendall argued that Warren could not, in good conscience, turn away two migrants who had recently crossed the desert to enter the US.

      Jurors said on Monday that they could not reach a consensus on the charges against Warren, but a federal judge told them to keep deliberating. They were still deadlocked on Tuesday and ultimately dismissed.

      Thousands of migrants have died crossing the border since the mid-1990s, when heightened enforcement pushed migrant traffic into Arizona’s scorching deserts.

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/11/arizona-activist-migrant-water-scott-daniel-warren-verdict

    • The gripping case of Scott Warren

      Is offering assistance to illegal immigrants a protected religious practice?

      ONE TROUBLE with liberty is that you never know what people will do with it. In recent years, American conservatives have been passionate defenders of individual religious freedoms, such as the right to have nothing to do with same-sex weddings. But Scott Warren (pictured), an idealistic geographer who is facing felony charges for succouring migrants in the Arizona desert, has now become a standard-bearer for a very different sort of conscientious objection.

      On June 11th his trial, which has been closely watched at the liberal end of America’s religious spectrum, reached deadlock after jurors failed to agree despite three days of deliberation. That was a better result than Mr Warren and his many supporters feared. Prosecutors may seek a retrial.

      https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/06/15/the-gripping-case-of-scott-warren

    • USA: Decision to retry Dr. Scott Warren is part of wider campaign against human rights defenders

      In response to US federal prosecutors deciding today to retry the human rights defender Dr. Scott Warren after a previous attempt to prosecute him ended in a mistrial, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director Amnesty International, said:

      “By deciding to mount an entirely new trial against Dr. Scott Warren, the Trump administration is doubling down on its attacks against human rights defenders who are doing necessary and life-saving work at the US-Mexico border.”

      “Amnesty International has documented that the criminalization of Dr. Warren is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger politically-motivated campaign of harassment and intimidation by the US government that is in clear violation of US and international law. The US government must immediately halt these campaigns, and Congress should hold authorities accountable for their abuse of power.”


      https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/07/usa-decision-retry-scott-warren-part-of-wider-campaign-against-human-rights

  • Patrick Syring Convicted Of Hate Crimes After Targeting Arab American Group : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/05/10/721864034/former-u-s-diplomat-convicted-of-threatening-arab-american-group

    The institute’s ordeal with Syring began in 2006, during Israel’s war with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Syring, at the time a long-serving State Department diplomat, saw Zogby interviewed on TV about the conflict and began sending him hate-filled emails and voicemails. Often, he spammed the whole office with his tirades, which included phrases such as, “Death to all Arabs.”

  • Federal Court Throws Out Ohio’s Congressional Map : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/05/03/720047669/federal-court-throws-out-ohios-congressional-map

    A federal court has ruled that Ohio’s congressional map is an “unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” and must be redrawn by the 2020 election.

    In the ruling Friday, a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio argues that the map was intentionally drawn “to disadvantage Democratic voters and entrench Republican representatives in power.” The court argues the map violates voters’ constitutional right to choose their representatives and exceeds the state’s powers under Article I of the Constitution.

    #cartographie #gerrymanding

  • President Trump Called Jimmy Carter To Talk About China : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713495558/president-trump-called-former-president-jimmy-carter-to-talk-about-china

    Earlier this year, Carter sent Trump a letter with some advice about managing the U.S.-China relationship. Carter oversaw the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries 40 years ago.

    On Saturday evening, Trump called Carter to talk about it. It was the first time they’d spoken, Carter said. He said Trump told him that he is particularly concerned about how China is “getting ahead of us.”

    Carter said he agreed with Trump on this issue.

    “And do you know why?” Carter said. “I normalized diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war,” he said. (China and Vietnam actually fought a brief border war in early 1979, weeks after U.S. relations with China were normalized.)

    Carter said the United States is “the most warlike nation in the history of the world”

    #guerres#élite#états-unis

  • What Does Bruce Springsteen’s ’Born In The U.S.A.’ Really Mean? : NPR
    https://www.npr.org/2019/03/26/706566556/bruce-springsteen-born-in-the-usa-american-anthem

    If you’re listening closely, the lyrics of “Born in the U.S.A.” make its subject pretty clear: The 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen describes a Vietnam War veteran who returns home to desperate circumstances and few options. Listen only to its surging refrain, though, and you could mistake it for an uncomplicated celebration of patriotism. You wouldn’t be the only one.

    At other times, Springsteen dropped the upbeat chorus — singing only the verses, forcing his audience to hear the dark story of the veteran. When the U.S. invasion of Iraq loomed in 2003, he told his audience the song was a prayer for peace.

    Onkey says the complexity of “Born in the U.S.A.” is why it endures: “It describes the ambiguities and challenges of the country that I have grown up in. And for me, it’s a rock-and-roll anthem: This singer, this scream, the sound of the guitar and the scale of the song suggest that rock and roll is big enough and important enough to tell that story.”

    Maybe the meaning of “Born in the U.S.A.” is the distance between the grim verses and the joyous chorus. It’s the space between frustrating facts and fierce pride — the demand to push American reality a bit closer to our ideals.

    #Musique #Bruce_Springsteen