• #Fonds_fiduciaire de l’UE pour l’Afrique : 90.5 millions d’euros supplémentaires pour renforcer la gestion des frontières et la protection des migrants en Afrique du Nord

    La Commission européenne a approuvé ce jour 3 nouveaux programmes relatifs à la migration en #Afrique_du_Nord, pour un montant total supérieur à 90 millions d’euros.

    Cette décision fait suite aux conclusions du #Conseil_européen de la semaine dernière, au cours duquel les dirigeants européens se sont engagés à intensifier l’aide le long de la route de la #Méditerranée_centrale. Les nouveaux programmes au titre du fonds fiduciaire de l’UE pour l’Afrique accroîtront l’aide de l’UE en faveur des réfugiés et des migrants vulnérables et amélioreront les capacités de gestion des frontières des pays partenaires.

    Mme Federica Mogherini, haute représentante/vice-présidente, a fait le commentaire suivant : « Les nouveaux programmes adoptés aujourd’hui intensifieront l’action que nous menons en vue de gérer les flux migratoires de manière humaine et durable, en sauvant et en protégeant la vie de réfugiés et de migrants et en leur fournissant une aide et en luttant contre les trafiquants et les passeurs. Notre approche intégrée combine une action en mer et une action conjointe avec des pays partenaires le long des routes migratoires, y compris en Libye et au Sahel. Ce travail a déjà porté ses fruits et en portera encore davantage si les États membres se conforment aux engagements qu’ils ont pris depuis la création du fonds fiduciaire à La Valette, en 2015. »

    M. Johannes Hahn, commissaire chargé de la politique européenne de voisinage et des négociations d’élargissement, a ajouté : « La formule du #partenariat est déterminante pour relever les défis posés par la migration irrégulière. En travaillant de concert avec nos voisins du sud, nous pouvons faire face à ce problème et procurer des avantages aux pays partenaires, aux migrants et à l’Europe. Les nouveaux programmes de ce jour aideront les autorités à améliorer la gestion des frontières, tout en assurant la protection des migrants vulnérables et l’octroi d’une aide d’urgence à ces derniers. »

    D’un montant de 90,5 millions d’euros, l’aide récemment adoptée financera 3 programmes, qui viendront compléter les efforts actuellement déployés par l’UE dans la région :

    Au moyen du programme de gestion des frontières de la région du Maghreb, d’une valeur de 55 millions d’euros, l’UE soutiendra les efforts consentis par les institutions nationales au #Maroc et en #Tunisie en vue de sauver des vies humaines en mer, d’améliorer la gestion des frontières maritimes et de lutter contre les passeurs opérant dans la région. Mis en œuvre par le ministère de l’intérieur italien et le #Centre_international_pour_le_développement_des_politiques_migratoires (#CIDPM), ce programme mettra l’accent sur le renforcement des capacités, ainsi que sur la fourniture d’équipements et leur entretien.
    En s’appuyant sur les programmes existants, l’UE accroîtra son aide en faveur de la protection des réfugiés et des migrants en #Libye aux points de #débarquement, dans les centres de #rétention, dans les régions méridionales désertiques éloignées et en milieu urbain. D’une valeur de 29 millions d’euros, le programme d’« approche intégrée de la protection et d’aide d’urgence aux migrants vulnérables et bloqués en Libye » sera mis en œuvre conjointement avec l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (#OIM) et le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés (#HCR). Il encouragera aussi les initiatives visant à ouvrir des perspectives économiques aux migrants sur le marché du travail national, en concertation avec le ministère libyen du travail.
    Avec 6,5 millions d’euros supplémentaires, l’UE renforcera son aide aux migrants vulnérables, à l’appui de la stratégie nationale du #Maroc en matière de migration, adoptée en 2014. L’accès des migrants vulnérables aux services de base en sera facilité et la capacité des associations et organisations locales à fournir efficacement ces services s’en trouvera améliorée. Les organisations de la société civile mettront en œuvre ce programme.

    Contexte

    Le fonds fiduciaire d’urgence de l’UE pour l’Afrique a été créé en 2015 en vue de remédier aux causes profondes des migrations irrégulières et des déplacements forcés. Le budget alloué s’élève jusqu’ici à 3,43 milliards d’euros et provient de l’UE, de ses États membres et d’autres donateurs. À ce jour, 164 programmes ont été approuvés pour les 3 régions concernées (Afrique du Nord, Sahel/lac Tchad et Corne de l’Afrique), pour un montant total d’environ 3,06 milliards d’euros.

    Avec l’enveloppe supplémentaire d’aujourd’hui, 461 millions d’euros du volet « Afrique du Nord » ont été mobilisés en faveur de 19 programmes satisfaisant aux multiples besoins dans la région et au-delà.

    Les programmes adoptés se conforment à l’engagement pris lors du Conseil européen du 28 juin 2018 d’intensifier l’aide le long de la route de la Méditerranée centrale en faveur des communautés côtières et méridionales, de conditions d’accueil humaines et d’une coopération avec les pays d’origine et de transit, tout en augmentant l’aide aux pays touchés par l’augmentation des flux migratoires le long de la route de la Méditerranée occidentale, et notamment le Maroc. L’UE maintient son soutien aux activités menées en Libye par l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations et le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés.

    http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4366_fr.htm
    #fonds_fiduciaire_d’urgence_de_l'Union_européenne_pour_l’Afrique #Afrique #fonds_fiduciaire #externalisation #frontières #asile #migrations #réfguiés #UE #EU #détention_administrative #désert #IOM

    cc @_kg_

  • Alors que les #Etats-nations (notamment l’#Italie dans ce cas précis) ferment les portes aux exilés, les #villes semblent aujourd’hui faire preuve de #solidarité.

    Il y a eu l’exemple de #Valence, mais #Barcelone et #Berlin se disent prêtes à accueillir les personnes sauvées par les navires des #ONG en #Méditerranée.

    Ici, des liens sur les #villes-refuge :
    http://seen.li/eh64

    Et ci-dessous, dans le fil de la discussion, des liens plus récents.

    #Etat-nation #villes #urban_matter #migrations #réfugiés #asile

    • Barcelona urges Spain to allow migrant ship to dock

      Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau is calling on Spain’s prime minister to grant the city docking rights to help a Spanish aid boat that rescued 60 migrants in the Mediterranean near Libya.

      The Open Arms boat, run by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, was the cause of a political row Saturday between Italy and Malta, who both rejected taking in the aid boat’s migrants.

      Mr Colau tweeted that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez should “save lives” because Barcelona “doesn’t want to be an accomplice to the policies of death of Matteo Salvini,” referring to Italy’s hard-line interior minister.

      Mr Salvini, head of an anti-migrant party in the Italian coalition government, has vowed that no more humanitarian groups’ rescue boats will dock in Italy.

      The Spanish vessel said it rescued the migrants Saturday — including five women, a nine-year-old child and three teenagers — after it spotted a rubber boat patched with duct tape floating in the sea. All the migrants appeared in good health.

      "Despite the hurdles, we continue to protect the right to life of invisible people,’ said Open Arms.

      Mr Salvini quickly declared that the rescue boat “can forget about arriving in an Italian port” and claimed the boat should go to Malta, the nearest port.

      But Malta swiftly pushed back, with its interior minister contending that the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, was closer to the boat.

      Earlier this month, Rome rejected the Aquarius ship carrying 630 migrants, forcing it to eventually dock in Spain.

      “For women and children really fleeing the war the doors are open, for everyone else they are not!” Mr Salvini tweeted.

      https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/barcelona-urges-spain-to-allow-migrant-ship-to-dock-1.745767
      #villes-refuge

    • Migrants rescue boat allowed to dock in Barcelona

      A Spanish rescue boat which plucked 60 migrants from a patched-up rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea near Libya has been given permission to sail to Barcelona, following another political row between Italy and Malta over where the vessel should dock.

      The boat, Open Arms, run by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, said it rescued the migrants – including five women, a nine-year-old child and three teenagers – after it spotted a rubber boat patched with duct tape floating in the sea. All the migrants appeared in good health.

      Italy’s right-wing interior minister Matteo Salvini quickly declared that the rescue boat “can forget about arriving in an Italian port”, and claimed it should instead go to Malta, the nearest port.

      Malta swiftly pushed back, with its interior minister contending that the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, was closer to the boat.

      http://www.itv.com/news/2018-06-30/migrants-rescue-boat-allowed-to-dock-in-barcelona

    • #Palerme:

      La Commission régionale de l’Urbanisme a rejeté le projet de pré-faisabilité du « #hotspot » à Palerme, confirmant l’avis du Conseil municipal de Palerme. L’avis de la Commission régionale reste technique. Le maire de Palerme a rappelé que "la ville de Palerme et toute sa communauté sont opposés à la création de centres dans lesquels la dignité des personnes est violée (...). Palerme reste une ville qui croit dans les valeurs de l’accueil, de la solidarité et des rencontres entre les peuples et les cultures, les mettant en pratique au quotidien. En cela, notre « non » à l’hotspot n’est pas et ne sera pas seulement un choix technique, mais plutôt un choix relatif à des principes et des valeurs".
      > Pour en savoir plus (IT) : http://www.palermotoday.it/politica/hotspot-zen-progetto-bocciato-regione.html

      – Leoluca Orlando, le maire de Palerme, continue de défier le gouvernement et les politiques migratoires de Salvini. La nouvelle querelle fait suite à une circulaire envoyée aux préfets et présidents de commissions sur la reconnaissance de la protection internationale. Matteo Salvini souhaite une accélération de l’examen des demandes et un accès plus strict au titre de séjour pour motif(s) humanitaire(s), un des avantages les plus accordés (cette année, ils représentaient 28% des trois titres de séjour prévus par la loi). La circulaire invite les commissions à être plus rigoureuses dans l’examen de la vulnérabilité.
      > Pour en savoir plus (IT) : www.palermotoday.it/politica/migranti-polemica-orlando-salvini-querela.html ?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

      – 8 Juillet, 18h : manifestation citoyenne des oppressé.es à Palerme.
      > Pour en savoir plus (IT), lien vers l’évènement : http://palermo.carpediem.cd/events/7342024-prima-le-oppresse-e-gli-oppressi-at-piazza-giuseppe-verdi

      –-> Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop

    • Migranti: parte l’offensiva degli amministratori locali contro la deriva xenofoba e razzista del Governo

      Primo firmatario dell’appello «inclusione per una società aperta» Nicola Zingaretti; tra gli aderenti Sala, Pizzarotti e De Magistris.

      Trentatré episodi di aggressioni a sfondo razzista da quando il governo Salvini - Di Maio si è insediato, tre solo nelle ultime ore; porti chiusi e criminalizzazione delle Ong; ruspe sui campi rom e una narrazione costante e diffusa che parla di invasione, sostituzione etnica, pericolo immigrazione: qualcuno ha deciso di non restare in silenzio e mostrare che esiste anche un’Italia che rifiuta tutto questo, rivendica lo stato di diritto e sostiene l’inclusione sociale come valore assoluto.

      Per questo oggi stato lanciato - e ha già raccolto più di 200 adesioni in tutta Italia - il manifesto «Inclusione per una società aperta», ideato e promosso dai consiglieri regionali del Lazio Alessandro Capriccioli, Marta Bonafoni, Paolo Ciani, Mauro Buschini e Daniele Ognibene e rivolto a tutti gli amministratori locali che rifiutino «la retorica dell’invasione e della sostituzione etnica, messa in campo demagogicamente al solo scopo di ottenere consenso elettorale, dagli imprenditori della paura e dell’odio sociale; rifiutino il discorso pubblico di denigrazione e disprezzo del prossimo e l’incitamento all’odio, che nutrono una narrazione della disuguaglianza, giustificano e fanno aumentare episodi di intolleranza ed esplicito razzismo», col fine di costruire «una rete permanente che, dato l’attuale contesto politico, affronti il tema delle migrazioni e dell’accoglienza su scala nazionale a partire dalle esperienze e dalle politiche locali, con l’obiettivo di opporsi fattivamente alla deriva sovranista e xenofoba che sta investendo il nostro paese», come si legge nell’appello diffuso quest’oggi.

      «In Italia viviamo una situazione senza precedenti», ha spiegato Alessandro Capriccioli, capogruppo di +Europa Radicali durante la conferenza stampa di lancio dell’appello insieme ai colleghi Paolo Ciani, Marta Bonaforni e Marietta Tidei. «Attraverso una strategia quasi scientifica è stato imposto un racconto sull’immigrazione che alimenta l’odio e lo sfrutta per ottenere consensi. Questo manifesto si rivolge agli amministratori locali che affrontano sul campo il tema dell’immigrazione con risultati virtuosi che spesso smentiscono quel racconto, ed è uno strumento per formare una rete istituzionale che potrà diventare un interlocutore autorevole e credibile in primo luogo di questo Governo, dettando indicazioni, strategie e proposte».

      Paolo Ciani, capogruppo di Centro Solidale, ha sottolineato come «questa narrazione distorta sta portando a un imbarbarimento della nostra società. Gli episodi di questi giorni rappresentano solo la punta dell’iceberg di un atteggiamento diffuso: sappiamo tutti che esistono degli istinti bassi che appartengono a tutti gli esseri umani e che, se trovano una loro legittimazione nelle istituzioni, diventano un problema». Marietta Tidei, consigliera regionale del Pd ha posto l’attenzione sul fatto che «oggi viene raccontato solo il brutto dell’immigrazione, ma noi siamo qui per dire che c’è anche molto che ha funzionato: il programma Sprar è un esempio virutoso», mentre la capogruppo della Lista Civica Zingaretti Marta Bonafoni ha sottolineato come ciò che conta sia «la quantità e la pronta risposta che stiamo avendo: la distribuzione geografica ci dice che c’è un’altra italia, che con questo appello diventa una rete istituzionale che si pone come interlocutrice del Governo».

      Oltre al Presidente della regione Lazio hanno già sottoscritto l’appello Beppe Sala, sindaco di Milano, Federico Pizzarotti, sindaco di Parma, Luigi De Magistris, sindaco di Napoli e più di 200 tra assessori e consiglieri regionali, sindaci, presidenti di municipi e consiglieri comunali e municipali da ogni parte d’Italia.

      http://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/immigrazione/2018/08/03/news/migranti_parte_l_offensiva_degli_amministratori_locali_contro_la_deriva_x
      #xénophobie #racisme #anti-racisme

    • Espagne : #Bilbao accueille de plus en plus de migrants

      Dernière étape avant la France ou une autre destination, Bilbao accueille de plus en plus de migrants débarqués sur les plages du sud de l’Espagne. Le Pays basque, connu pour être doté d’un réseau de solidarité citoyenne très développé, prend en charge le sort de ces migrants en transit. C’est le cas de l’association #Ongi_Etorri_regugiak - « Bienvenue réfugié » - qui depuis trois mois aide un groupe de 130 subsahariens livrés à eux-mêmes.

      Dans la cour de récréation, une vingtaine d’Africains jouent au football en attendant l’heure du dîner. C’est dans cette ancienne école primaire du quartier populaire de Santuxtu, transformée en centre social, que sont hébergés ces migrants âgés de plus de 18 ans. Tous ont débarqué en zodiac sur les côtes espagnoles, puis ont été transportés jusqu’à Bilbao dans des bus affrétés par les autorités espagnoles. Mais à leur arrivée, ils sont très vite livrés à eux-mêmes.

      La solidarité d’une centaine de personnes a permis d’aider ces migrants et de prendre la relève des autorités locales comme le souligne Martha, une des volontaires. « On a ouvert ce dispositif entre personnes qui n’ont aucun moyen économique, c’est autofinancé, et on apprend sur le tas un peu de tout, explique-t-elle. Il y a des gens qui restent dormir pour voir si tout se passe bien. On est là pour les accompagner, pour créer aussi le lien avec les gens d’ici, avec la ville. C’est très émouvant de voir comment s’est créée une chaîne de solidarité entre différents quartiers peu à peu, qui ne devrait pas s’arrêter là et on espère qu’elle ne va pas se rompre ».

      Parmi ces migrants, Zacharia, un Camerounais de 29 ans, désigné chef cuisinier. C’est lui qui prépare les repas pour les 130 personnes avec les vivres donnés par les habitants du coin. Il espère l’obtenir l’asile politique, mais il va devoir attendre six mois pour avoir son premier rendez-vous avec les autorités, ce qui le préoccupe.

      Les autorités basques ont promis de se pencher sur le sort de ces migrants, mais d’ordinaire, ils sont très peu à choisir de rester au Pays basque. La plupart décident de continuer leur périple vers le nord de l’Europe avec ou sans aide.

      http://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/11498/espagne-bilbao-accueille-de-plus-en-plus-de-migrants

    • #Atlanta says NO to detention and YES to increased legal services and support for family reunification:

      Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Issues Executive Order to Permanently End City of Atlanta Receiving ICE Detainees

      Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has signed an Executive Order directing the Chief of the Atlanta City Department of Corrections to take the necessary action to permanently stop receiving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees under the current agreement with the United States Marshals Service.


      https://t.co/9jZoIICiIi
      #détention_administrative #rétention

      #USA #Etats-Unis

    • How Cities Are Demanding a Greater Voice on Migration

      Cities are developing their own solutions to help fast-growing migrant and refugee populations in urban areas. Cities expert Robert Muggah describes the swell of initiatives by urban leaders and what it will take to overcome the barriers ahead.

      Most refugees and internally displaced people live in cities. Yet urban leaders are regularly excluded from international discussions about refugee response.

      Robert Muggah, cofounder of the Brazil-based think-tank the Igarape Institute and Canadian risk consultancy The SecDev Group, is among a growing chorus of city and migration experts calling for that to change. His recent paper for the World Refugee Council describes how cities are developing their own solutions and offers a blueprint for better cooperation.

      “Cities will need resources to scale up their activities,” Muggah told Refugees Deeply. “This may require changes in laws so that cities can determine their own residence policies and keep tax revenues generated by migrants who move there.”

      Refugees Deeply talked to Muggah about how city leaders are championing new approaches to displacement and the barriers they’re trying to overcome.
      Refugees Deeply: Are the global compacts on refugees and migration a missed opportunity for a smarter international approach to urban refugees and migrants?

      Robert Muggah: The international response to the urbanization of displacement has been woefully inadequate. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in particular, was remarkably slow to empower cities to assume a greater role in protecting and assisting refugees and other groups of concern. And while it has made some modest improvements, the UNHCR’s strategic plan (2017–21) makes just one reference to urban refugees – acknowledging that they constitute the majority of the agency’s caseload – but offers no vision or concrete recommendations moving forward.

      The global compacts on migration and refugees were never going to be revolutionary. But so far they have been a disappointment seen from the vantage point of cities. While still under review, the new compacts only tangentially address the central role of urban authorities, businesses and civic associations in supporting displaced populations. While they offer a suite of sensible-sounding proposals to ensure a more predictable approach to protection and care and “regularize” population movements more generally, they are silent on the role of cities. The global compact on refugees mentions the word “urban” just four times and “cities” just once. These omissions have not gone unnoticed: cities and inter-city networks are agitating for a greater voice.

      The global compacts on migration and refugees were never going to be revolutionary. But so far they have been a disappointment seen from the vantage point of cities.
      Refugees Deeply: What are some of the main political and institutional blockages to better equipping cities around the world to protect and care for migrants and refugees?

      Muggah: For most of the 20th and 21st centuries, nation states have actively resisted giving cities more discretion in responding to issues of cross-border and internal population displacement. Cities will not find recourse in international law, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also have nothing to say about urban displacement. More positively, the nonbinding New Urban Agenda offers more concrete direction on cooperation between national and subnational authorities to address the needs of refugees and internally displaced people.

      Cities have also received comparatively limited support from international organizations to support urban refugees and displaced people. On the contrary – the UNHCR has instead emphasized the need to reduce assistance and promote self-reliance. Under immense pressure from U.N. member states, and host states in particular, the UNHCR sought to limit refugees from moving to cities where possible. UNHCR made tentative gestures to move beyond the minimalist approach and advocate for refugee rights in cities in the 2000s, but a camp-based model prevailed. There were concerns that the focus on refugees in cities could antagonize host countries, many of whom saw displaced people as a threat to domestic and international security.
      Refugees Deeply: What are some of the factors common to the most proactive and innovative cities on these issues?

      Muggah: A growing number of cities are demanding a greater voice on issues of migration and displacement. Earlier in 2018 a small delegation of cities – led by New York – sent recommendations to improve the overall wording and content of the Global Compact. Likewise, in 2017, the International Organization for Migration, together with the United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), assembled 150 cities to sign the Mechelen Declaration demanding a seat at the decision-making table. And in 2015, Eurocities also issued a statement on refugees in the wake of the influx of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. They set up Solidarity Cities, which provides support to help cities deliver services and identify effective long-term solutions to protect social cohesion and integration.

      Cities are also getting on with developing legislative and policy frameworks to welcome refugees and promote protection, care and assistance. Good examples include more than 100 “welcoming cities” in the U.S. that have committed to promoting integration, developing institutional strategies for inclusion, building leadership among new arrivals and providing support to refugees. Meanwhile, some 500 jurisdictions describe themselves as “sanctuary cities.” Despite threats of cuts to funding, they are resisting federal efforts to enforce immigration law and are on the front line of supporting refugees. In the U.K., at least 80 “cities of sanctuary” offer another approach to providing compassionate solutions for refugees. Large and medium-sized cities across Europe are also adopting similar strategies, in cooperation with Eurocities – a network of major European cities founded in 1986.

      While it can generate tension with federal counterparts, these city-level responses can help contribute to greater safety and economic progress in the long run. Cities, states and countries with sanctuary policies tend to be safer and more prosperous than those without them. Sanctuary cities can build trust between law enforcement agencies and migrant communities. Likewise, the economies of sanctuary cities, towns and counties are largely more resilient than nonsanctuary counterparts, whether measured in terms of the population’s income, reliance on public assistance or labor force participation.
      Refugees Deeply: Many cities face financial and political limitations on their ability to respond to refugee crises. Where have you seen good examples of devolution of power and resources helping cities to respond better?

      Muggah: There are countless examples of cities strengthening their protection and care for urban refugees in a time of austerity. In New York, for example, city authorities launched ActionNYC, which offers free, safe legal assistance for migrants and refugees in multiple languages. In Barcelona, the SAIER (Service Center for Immigrants, Emigrants and Refugees) program provides free advice on asylum and return, while Milan works with the UNHCR and Save the Children to offer services for unaccompanied minors.

      Montreal established the BINAM (Bureau d’integration des nouveaux arrivants a Montreal) program to provide on-the-job training and mentoring to new arrivals, and Sao Paulo has created municipal immigration councils to help design, implement and monitor the city’s policies. Likewise, cities such as Atlanta and Los Angeles are requiring that migrants – in particular, refugees – have equal access to city facilities, services and programs regardless of their citizenship status.

      Cities are also banding together, pooling their resources to achieve greater influence on the urban refugee agenda. Today there are more than 200 intercity networks dedicated to urban priorities, ranging from governance and climate change to public safety and migration. Several of them have dedicated guidelines on how cities can protect and care for refugees. For example, the Global Parliament of Mayors, established in 2016, focuses on, among other things, promoting inclusive cities for refugees and advocating on their behalf. The International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities and the UCLG are others, having teamed up with think-tanks and international agencies to strengthen information-sharing and best practices. Another new initiative is Urban20, which is promoting social integration, among other issues, and planning an inaugural meeting in October 2018.
      Refugees Deeply: Most cities at the forefront of refugee crises are in the Global South. What recommendations would you offer to ensure that international responses to urban displacement do not become too North-centric?

      Muggah: This reality is often lost on Northern policymakers and citizens as they seek to restrict new arrivals and reduce overseas assistance. The Carnegie Mellon University’s Create Lab and the Igarape Institute have developed a range of data visualization tools to highlight these trends, but a much greater effort is required to educate the public. These outreach efforts must be accompanied with a dramatic scaling-up of assistance to redressing the “causes” of displacement as well as supporting front-line cities absorbing the vast majority of the world’s displaced populations.


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/09/21/how-cities-are-demanding-a-greater-voice-on-migration

    • Création de l’#association_nationale des #villes et #territoires accueillants

      À l’heure où l’échec des politiques migratoires européenne et nationale entraîne une montée des populismes tout en restreignant les droits humains fondamentaux, nous, élu.e.s de villes et collectivités, décidons de nous unir sous une bannière commune : celle de l’accueil inconditionnel.

      Nous demandons ainsi que l’Etat assume ses missions et assure les moyens pour créer des solutions d’accueil, d’hébergement et d’accompagnement plus nombreuses et plus qualitatives que celles existantes aujourd’hui. Cela doit passer par la mise en place d’une stratégie nationale d’accueil afin de répartir et d’accompagner l’effort de solidarité.

      Nous l’enjoignons à respecter le droit et ses engagements internationaux (Protocole de Quito de l’ONU, Convention de Genève), européens (Pacte d’Amsterdam) et nationaux (Code des Familles et de l’Action Sociale)

      Néanmoins, dépositaires d’une tradition d’accueil et de valeurs humanistes, nous, élu.e.s locaux et territoriaux, mettons en oeuvre et expérimentons déjà sur nos territoires, au quotidien, des réponses aux impératifs de l’urgence humanitaire et d’inclusion de tout un chacun, même quand l’Etat est défaillant.
      Surtout, nous agissons en responsabilité, conformément à nos obligations règlementaires et législatives.

      L’association que nous avons constituée à Lyon 1er le 26 septembre 2018, rassemble tout.e.s les élu.e.s promouvant l’hospitalité, source de politiques inclusives et émancipatrices. Fort.e.s de notre expérience, animé.e.s par la volonté d’agir collectivement, nous donnerons à voir que des solutions dignes sont possibles et adaptées à chaque situation locale. Il n’y a pas UNE politique d’accueil, mais autant que de particularismes locaux.

      Elle permettra de mettre en avant toutes les réussites locales en matière d’accueil sur notre
      territoire et les réussites que cela engendre lorsque chacun assume ses responsabilités.
      Elle permettra aussi, la mise en commun de bonnes pratiques, l’accompagnement de territoires volontaires, la mobilisation autour d’enjeux liés aux politiques migratoires, la proposition de mesures adaptées. En partenariat avec toutes les forces vives volontaires : acteurs associatifs, citoyen.ne.s, universitaires, juristes, militant.e.s, etc.

      Nous souhaitons la bienvenue aux élu.e.s de tous horizons et de tout territoire, qui, partageant nos valeurs humanistes et notre volonté politique, veulent rejoindre notre association.

      Damien CARÊME, Maire de #Grande-Synthe, Président de l’Association
      Catherine BASSANI, Représentante de la ville de #Nantes
      Philippe BOUYSSOU, Maire d’#Ivry-Sur-Seine
      Marie-Dominique DREYSSE, Maire-adjointe de #Strasbourg
      Gérard FROMM, Maire de #Briançon
      Corinne IEHL, Elue de #Lyon 7ème arrondissement
      Myriam LAÏDOUNI-DENIS, Elue de la #Région_Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
      Bernard MACRET, 4ème Adjoint aux Solidarités Internationales, #Grenoble
      Halima MENHOUDJ, Adjointe au Maire de #Montreuil
      Jaklin PAVILLA, 1ère Adjointe au Maire de #Saint-Denis
      Nathalie PERRIN-GILBERT, Maire du 1er arrondissement de Lyon
      Eric PIOLLE, Maire de #Grenoble
      Laurent RUSSIER, Maire de #Saint-Denis
      Bozena WOJCIECHOWSKI, Adjointe au Maire d’Ivry-sur-Seine

      https://blogs.mediapart.fr/fini-de-rire/blog/280918/creation-de-l-association-nationale-des-villes-et-territoires-accuei
      #villes_accueillantes #territoires_accueillants #France
      #ANVITA

    • How Cities Can Shape a Fairer, More Humane Immigration Policy

      National governments do not have all the answers on immigration says Bristol mayor Marvin Rees. Ahead of a mayors’ summit he outlines a better city-led response.

      People have always been on the move, both within nations and across borders, but increasingly migrants tend to settle in cities. This puts cities and their responses at the heart of the conversation, something we are looking to highlight at the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM) Summit here in Bristol.

      There is a steady upward trend in the number of people who have left their homelands voluntarily for economic or other reasons, or who are forced to leave their homes as refugees or displaced persons for reasons of conflict or environmental disaster. Population diversity in most developed countries can be attributed to international migration, whereas in developing nations it is mostly internal migration that contributes to this diversity.

      This is an important moment in the United Kingdom’s approach to the issue of migration. The upcoming Immigration Bill, expected toward the end of this year, will bring unprecedented reform of U.K. immigration policy. At the same time, the scandal over the treatment of the Windrush generation has brought to public consciousness the impact of this government’s “hostile environment” policy and the burdensome bureaucracy the Home Office is inflicting on individual human lives. A fairer, more compassionate system is needed, one in which no one is detained without knowing why and when they will be released. It is everyone’s legitimate right to enjoy a family life with loved ones and to realize the aspiration to provide for oneself and one’s family and contribute to society through employment.

      However, national governments clearly do not have all the answers. Around the world, it is cities that are increasingly collaborating nationally and across borders, learning from each other and replicating good practice. Cities’ experiences have to be included in the national debate on how to take advantage of the full potential of migration and drive a change in policies and mind-set to ensure that migration is embraced as an opportunity rather than seen solely as a challenge.

      That is why this will be high on the agenda at the GPM summit opening on October 21, with almost 100 mayors representing both developed and emerging states in attendance. Cities are where migrants interact with communities, society and, if only indirectly, with the host country. The social, economic, political and cultural activities in a city can play a crucial role in countering the anxiety and fears associated with migration, and help integration and inclusivity. Where the right policies and practices are in place, migration can bring huge benefits to communities and cities, fueling growth, innovation and entrepreneurship.
      City Responses

      City responses to migration and refugees have been varied and multifaceted but they are characterized by the theme of inclusion, with city leaders attempting to design and implement policies that allow newcomers to contribute to, and benefit from, the flourishing of their new communities. These responses are rooted in an approach that is both principled and pragmatic – seeking to uphold human rights and dignity while at the same time identifying practical solutions to the challenges affecting local residents. At a time when, at national and international level, migration has been used by some as a political weapon to stoke resentment and tension, this city perspective has never been more vital in bringing both humanity and reality back into public discourse.

      In seeking to develop inclusive solutions on migration, cities across the globe are innovating and developing new models of best practice.

      Amsterdam has adopted a programme called “Everyone’s Police,” which encourages the reporting of crimes in the interest of more effective policing and community engagement.

      New York City has created the I.D. NYC scheme, a government-issued identification card available to all residents regardless of immigration status that enables people to access a variety of services and discounts in the city.

      Barcelona supports children and families applying for family reunification by providing comprehensive and personalized guidance on the legal, practical and psychological aspects of the process.

      Sao Paulo has established the Coordination of Policies for Migrants’ Unite within its municipal structures to promote city policies for migrants across departments and disciplines and in a participative manner.

      Amman has welcomed almost 2 million migrants and refugees in the last two decades as a result of conflicts in neighboring countries. And cities in Uganda have played a key role in implementing national policies designed to allow refugees to own land and set up businesses.

      These are just a handful of examples of the great work already being done by many cities on these issues. These innovations will be examined in detail at the GPM summit, with city representatives sharing their valuable learning and experience.

      A number of initiatives and networks have been established to support and catalyze such innovations and share best practice across different city contexts, from the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Migration to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth – and many more. Together these networks provide a wealth of resources and insight for cities seeking to make inclusion a reality.
      A Voice for Cities on the Global Stage

      Despite this vital work on the ground, cities remain underrepresented on the global stage when it comes to key decision-making on migration and refugee issues. This is the challenge the GPM summit will address.

      The GPM has already been actively engaged in the negotiations on the United Nations global compacts on migration and refugees. As the mayor of Bristol I become the first city leader to speak in the deliberations on the compact on migration in May 2018.

      At the summit we will debate and decide how, collectively, we can take a leadership role for cities in the implementation of the global compacts. We will hear from other key international stakeholders, as well as from mayors with direct and varied experience. And we will agree on practical steps to enable cities to implement the compacts in their areas of influence.

      The price of inaction is huge – a critical global diplomatic process could once again largely pass cities by and leave national-level politicians bickering over watered-down commitments. The potential prize is just as significant – a recognized seat at the table for cities to review and implement global compacts, and a range of practical resources to maximize the contributions that migrants and refugees can bring to our communities.

      Our conversations in Bristol represent a critical opportunity to better grasp the key issues for cities related to migration and integration, and to amplify the voice of city leaders in international policymaking relating to migrants and refugees.


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/10/19/how-cities-can-shape-a-fairer-more-humane-immigration-policy

    • Migranti, «Venite al porto di Napoli, vi accogliamo»

      E sul fronte migranti: «Io faccio una proposta ai timonieri di navi: la prossima volta che avete un problema per le autorizzazioni avvicinatevi alle acque territoriali di una città povera ma dalla grande dignità. Avvicinatevi al porto di Napoli. Noi disponiamo di due gommoni come Comune, un po’ malandati ma funzionanti. Vi assicuro che ci sono pescatori democratici e tanta gente in grado di remare e venire a prendere. E mi metto io nella prima barca, voglio vedere se ci sparano addosso».

      https://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/12/01/news/incontro_con_de_magistris_a_roma_nasce_terzo_fronte_-213118777/?ref=fbpr

    • Italie : #Palerme, l’exception

      En juin, il a été l’un des premiers à proposer d’accueillir l’Aquarius et ses passagers indésirables : Leoluca Orlando, le maire de Palerme, s’affiche comme l’un des plus farouches opposants à la politique migratoire du gouvernement italien. Il milite entre autres, pour la disparition du permis de séjour et la libre-circulation des personnes.

      Ces trois dernières années, la capitale sicilienne a accueilli des dizaines de milliers de migrants. Ils sont nombreux à y être restés et, parmi eux, beaucoup de mineurs isolés. Pour les prendre en charge, une multitude d’associations travaillent main dans la main avec le soutien de la mairie.
      Reportage à Palerme, où les initiatives se multiplient, à contre-courant de la politique du ministre de l’intérieur, Mateo Salvini.

      https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/084352-000-A/italie-palerme-l-exception

      signalé par @sinehebdo
      https://seenthis.net/messages/743236

    • Le temps est venu pour des villes solidaires...


      https://twitter.com/seawatchcrew/status/1078595657051574272?s=19

      Stuck at Sea for over 6 days – the New Year for the rescued on Sea-Watch 3 must start ashore!

      Already on Saturday, the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 has saved 32 people from drowning, including four women, three unaccompanied minors, two young children and a baby. Five countries (Italy, Malta, Spain, Netherlands, Germany) refused to take responsibility and grant the rescued a port of safety for Christmas.
      In Germany only, more than 30 cities and several federal states have declared themselves to be safe havens and are willing to accept those rescued from distress at sea.

      https://sea-watch.org/en/stuck-at-sea-for-over-6-days-without-port-of-safety

    • NYC to Fund Health Care for All, Including the Undocumented, Mayor Says

      New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $100 million plan that he said would provide affordable “healthcare for all,” reaching about 600,000 people, including undocumented immigrants, low-income residents not enrolled in Medicaid and young workers whose current plans are too expensive.

      The plan, which de Blasio dubbed “NYC Care,” will offer public health insurance on a sliding price scale based on income, the mayor said during an interview Tuesday morning on MSNBC. It will begin later this year in the Bronx and will be available to all New Yorkers in 2021, and would cost at least $100 million once it reaches full enrollment, according to the mayor’s office.

      The proposed city-funded health insurance option would assign a primary care doctor to each plan participant and help patients find specialists if needed. De Blasio said the plan, which would be financed out of the city’s public health budget, would ultimately be cost effective by reducing hospital emergency room visits by uninsured patients and by improving public health.

      The program builds upon the city’s $1.6 billion a-year Department of Public Health and Mental Hygiene budget and the separately funded public hospital system, which already serves 475,000 under-insured and uninsured patients annually, including undocumented immigrants, in more than 11 hospitals and 70 neighborhood clinics. The city already has an insurance plan, MetroPlus, that will be used as the template for the coverage. The program may take two years to get “to full strength,” de Blasio said.

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/nyc-to-fund-health-care-for-all-including-the-undocumented

      #NYC #New_York

    • Avec la « ville-refuge », ce serait un nouveau concept de Ville qui pourrait émerger, un autre droit d’asile, une autre hospitalité qui transformerait le droit international

      Intervenant devant le Parlement international des écrivains pour répondre à un appel lancé en 1995 pour constituer un réseau de villes-refuges susceptibles d’accueillir un écrivain persécuté, Jacques Derrida s’interroge sur les implications de cette proposition. Une Ville peut-elle se distinguer d’un Etat, prendre de sa propre initiative un statut original qui, au moins sur ce point précis, l’autoriserait à échapper aux règles usuelles de la souveraineté nationale ? Peut-elle contribuer à une véritable innovation dans l’histoire du droit d’asile, une nouvelle cosmopolitique, un devoir d’hospitalité revisité ? Inventer cela peut être considéré comme une utopie, mais c’est aussi une tâche théorique et critique, urgente dans un contexte où les violences, les crimes, les tragédies, les persécutions, multiplient les réfugiés, les exilés, les apatrides et les victimes anonymes.

      Le droit d’asile est un vestige médiéval, qui a survécu aux guerres du 20ème siècle. Appeler les villes à renouer avec cette tradition en accueillant les réfugiés comme tels, sans leur proposer ni la naturalisation, ni le retour dans leur région d’origine, implique de déborder les limites fixés par les traités entre Etats souverains. On peut imaginer une nouvelle figure de ville, une ville franche qui bénéficierait d’un statut d’exemption, d’immunité, comparable à celui qui est encore parfois attaché à certains lieux, religieux ou diplomatiques.

      On trouve la notion de ville-refuge dans la bible, chez certains stoïciens grecs, chez Cicéron, Saint Paul (qui la sécularise), dans la tradition médiévale et religieuse (les églises comme lieu de « sauveté »). Les Lumières en héritent et Kant, dans son Article définitif en vue de la paix perpétuelle, en donne une formulation rigoureuse mais restrictive : (1) il limite l’hospitalité au droit de visite, excluant le droit de résidence ; (2) il la fait dépendre du droit étatique. Pour faire progresser le droit, il faut analyser ces restrictions. D’une part l’hospitalité selon Jacques Derrida est une Loi, un droit inconditionnel offert à quiconque, un principe irréductible ; mais d’autre part il faut répondre à l’urgence, à la violence et à la persécution. Cela peut ouvrir la possibilité d’une expérimentation - dans la pratique et dans la pensée, d’une autre idée du cosmopolitisme et de la démocratie à venir.

      En France, le droit d’asile est assez récent. La constitution de 1946 ne l’accorde qu’aux pesonnes persécutées à cause de leur action « en faveur de la liberté », une définition élargie en 1954 (par suite de l’adhésion à la Convention de Genève de 1951) à ceux dont la vie ou la liberté se trouve menacée « en raison de leur race, de leur religion ou de leurs opinions politiques ». L’application de cette Convention n’a été élargie aux personnes hors d’Europe et aux événements survenus après 1951 qu’en 1967. Mais les Etats-nations n’acceptent, en pratique, d’accorder ce droit que sous des conditions qui le rendent parfois presque impossible. En France, il faut que l’exilé ne puisse attendre aucun bénéfice économique de son immigration. Souvent, devant l’imprécision des règles, on laisse la police faire la loi - une confusion inquiétante, voire ignoble, comme le dénonçait Walter Benjamin, quand les limites de l’action de la police deviennent insaisissables, indéterminées. Le droit d’asile implique une subordination stricte de toutes les administrations policières au pouvoir politique.

      https://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-1308210805.html
      via @nepthys

    • #Jacques_Derrida und die Idee der Zufluchtsstädte

      Nach islamistischen Anschlägen in Algerien Anfang der 90er-Jahre flohen viele Kulturschaffende aus dem Land. Zusammen mit anderen internationalen Intellektuellen initiierte der französische Philosoph Jacques Derrida von Staaten unabhängige Zufluchtsorte für Verfolgte. Welche Kraft hat diese Idee heute?

      Der Exodus arabischer Intellektueller in den Westen hat eine lange Tradition. Vor über 20 Jahren wütete der islamistische Furor in Algerien. Viele Journalisten wurden damals ermordet, den Überlebenden blieb nur die Flucht ins westliche Ausland. Dieses Horrorszenario wiederholt sich heute in Syrien. Karim Chamoun, ein in Mainz lebender Radiojournalist, gibt den syrischen Flüchtlingen eine Stimme. Seine Landsleute informiert er über die eskalierenden Zustände in der Heimat. Offenbar – so berichtet Chamoun – läuft dem regierenden Assad-Clan die noch verbliebene Bildungselite davon:

      „In den letzten 18 Monaten sind sehr viele Pro-Assad-Intel­lektuelle ausgewandert und sind in Deutschland gelandet. Viele sind in der jetzigen Zeit ausgewandert, vor Angst, vor Terror. Die haben keine Organisation, die sie vereint.“

      Das Medieninteresse für Syrien lässt vergessen, dass schon vor über 20 Jahren islamistische Fanatiker eine tödliche Hetzjagd auf Journalisten und Künstler veranstalteten. Der Algerier Tahar Djaout war in den 80er-Jahren bekannt für seine Kommentare im Wochenmagazin Algérie-Actualité. Anfang 1993 gründete Djaout Ruptures – „Brüche“ –, eine Zeitschrift, die sich als Stachel im Fleisch einer autoritär regierten Gesellschaft verstand. Die Redakteure fürchteten allerdings nicht nur die Zensur, sie bangten um ihr Leben, da die „Islamische Heilsfront“ ihnen offen den Kampf angesagt hatte. Im Mai 1993 wurde Tahar Djaout vor seiner Haustür in Algier ermordet. Der Journalist war nicht das erste Opfer der Islamisten, aber das prominenteste. Unzählige andere folgten.

      Tahar Djaouts Ermordung war ein Fanal für die französische Intelligenz. Nicht länger wollte man sich auf den mutlosen internationalen PEN verlassen. Der Philosoph Jacques Derrida und der Soziologe Pierre Bourdieu, die lange Zeit in Algerien gelebt hatten, fühlten sich den Algeriern, den Opfern eines langen, erbitterten Bürgerkrieges gegen die französische Kolonialmacht, eng verbunden. Sie wollten den „Terrainverlust“ der Intellektuellen, einer Elite ohne Macht, wettmachen.
      Die Öffentlichkeit wachrütteln

      Christian Salmon, Gründer des Straßburger Zirkels „Carrefour de littérature“, startete eine Unterschriftenaktion. Weltweit verbündeten sich namhafte Schriftsteller mit den verfolgten Algeriern. Salmon schrieb:

      „Algerische Journalisten und Schriftsteller, die glücklich einem Attentat entkommen sind, müssen sich verbergen, während sie vergeblich auf ein Visum warten. Sie harren ungeduldig vor unseren Grenzen. Hunderte algerische Intellektuelle, dem Hass islamistischer Attentäter ausgeliefert, verdanken ihr Überleben entweder purem Glück oder der Überbeschäftigung der Henker. (…) Wir sagen jetzt: Es reicht! Genug der Morde in Algerien! Schriftsteller, Künstler und Intellektuelle zeigen ihren Widerstand. In aller Deutlichkeit sagen wir: Keine Demokratie ohne Solidarität, keine Zivilisation ohne Gastfreundschaft.“

      Aus Solidarität mit den algerischen Kollegen kamen im November 1993 im Straßburger „Carrefour de littérature“ zahlreiche internationale Autoren zusammen, um die Öffentlichkeit wachzurütteln. 200 Schriftsteller unterzeichneten den Appell. Bei einer rituellen Aktion wollte man es aber nicht belassen: Unter der Leitung des indischen Autors Salman Rushdie, der seit der Fatwa Ayatollah Chomeinis von den iranischen Häschern verfolgt wurde, gründeten sie das Internationale Schriftsteller-Parlament. Währenddessen rief Rushdie, zusammen mit Straßburgs Bürgermeisterin Catherine Trautmann und dem Generalsekretär des Europarats, zur Gründung von Zufluchtsstädten auf – von „villes- refuges“, um verfolgten Schriftstellern und Künstlern Asyl zu gewähren. Salman Rushdie schrieb das Gründungsdokument:

      „Heute widersetzt sich die Literatur ein weiteres Mal der Tyrannei. Wir gründeten das Schriftsteller-Parlament, damit es sich für die unterdrückten Autoren einsetzt und gegen ihre Widersacher erhebt, die es auf sie und ihre Werke abgesehen haben. Nachdrücklich erneuern wir die Unabhängigkeitserklärung, ohne die Literatur unmöglich ist, nicht nur die Literatur, sondern der Traum, nicht nur der Traum, sondern das Denken, nicht nur das Denken, sondern die Freiheit.“
      Kommunen können schneller auf neue Situationen reagieren

      Catherine Trautmann stellte später die Initiative der „villes-refuges“ vor, die zuvor vom Internationalen Schrift­steller-Parlament beschlossen wurde:

      „Es kommt darauf an, dass multikulturell sich verstehende Städte bereit sind, Gedankenfreiheit und Toleranz zu verteidigen. Die in einem Netz verbundenen Städte können etwas bewirken, indem sie verfolgte Künstler und Schriftsteller aufnehmen. Wir wissen, dass Euro­pa ein Kontinent ist, wo über alle Konflikte hinweg Intellektuelle leben und schreiben. Dieses Erbe müssen wir wach halten. Die bedrohten Intellektuellen müssen bei uns Bürgerrecht erhalten. Zu diesem Zweck sollte ein Netz der Solidarität geschaffen werden.“

      Das Projekt der „villes-refuges“ war anfangs äußerst erfolgreich: 1995 beschlossen Vertreter von mehr als 400 europäischen Städten die „Charta der villes-refuges“. Eine Resolution des Europäischen Parlaments förderte ein weltweites Netz von „villes-refuges“. Straßburg und Berlin gehörten zu den ersten „Zu­fluchts­städten“, es folgten Städte wie Venedig und Helsinki.

      Die Skepsis gegenüber den nationalen und überstaatlichen Organisationen wächst. Kommunen, die politische Macht auf lokaler Ebene ausüben, seien imstande, wesentlich schneller und flexibler auf neue, unvorgesehene Situationen zu reagieren, meint der amerikanische Politikwissenschaftler Benjamin Barber:

      „Der Unterschied zu Staaten liegt in der Eigenart der Städte: Sie sind zutiefst multikulturell, partizipatorisch, demokratisch, kooperativ. Städte interagieren und können viel erreichen, während Staaten eigensinnig sind und gemeinsames Handeln behindern. Die Welt globaler Demokratie führt uns nicht zu Staaten, sondern zu Städten. Demokratie entstand in der griechischen polis. Sie könnte ein weiteres Mal in der globalen kosmopolis entstehen.“

      Jacques Derrida ist im Oktober 2004 gestorben. Angesichts der unlösbar scheinenden Flüchtlingsprobleme wäre der Philosoph heutzutage ein verantwortungsvoller und sachkundiger Diskussionspartner. Vielleicht würde er darauf hinweisen, dass sich die Gesetze der Gastfreundschaft keineswegs geändert haben. Denn auch heute müssen Pflichten und Rechte, Grenzen und Freiheiten neu austariert werden. Im Interesse beider – der Gäste und der Gastgeber.

      https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/villes-refuges-jacques-derrida-und-die-idee-der.976.de.html?dr
      #Derrida
      via @nepthys

    • #ICORN

      The #International_Cities_of_Refuge_Network (ICORN) is an independent organisation of cities and regions offering shelter to writers and artists at risk, advancing freedom of expression, defending democratic values and promoting international solidarity.

      Writers and artists are especially vulnerable to censorship, harassment, imprisonment and even death, because of what they do. They represent the liberating gift of the human imagination and give voice to thoughts, ideas, debate and critique, disseminated to a wide audience. They also tend to be the first to speak out and resist when free speech is threatened.

      ICORN member cities offer long term, but temporary, shelter to those at risk as a direct consequence of their creative activities. Our aim is to be able to host as many persecuted writers and artists as possible in ICORN cities and together with our sister networks and organisations, to form a dynamic and sustainable global network for freedom of expression.

      https://icorn.org
      #réseau #art #artistes #liberté_d'expression #écrivains

    • #New_Sanctuary_Coalition

      The New Sanctuary Coalition of #NYC is an interfaith network of congregations, organizations, and individuals, standing publicly in solidarity with families and communities resisting detention and deportation in order to stay together. We recognize that unjust global and systemic economic relationships and racism form the basis of the injustices that affect immigrants. We seek reform of United States immigration laws to promote fairness, social and economic justice.

      http://www.newsanctuarynyc.org
      #New_York

    • #Eine_Stadt_für_Alle

      Eine Stadt, aus der kein Mensch abgeschoben wird, in der sich alle frei und ohne Angst bewegen können, in der kein Mensch nach einer Aufenthaltserlaubnis gefragt wird, in der kein Mensch illegal ist. Das sind die grundlegenden Vorstellungen von einer Solidarity City. In einer solchen Stadt der Solidarität sollen alle Menschen das Recht haben zu leben, zu wohnen und zu arbeiten. Alle Menschen soll der Zugang zu Bildung und medizinischer Versorgung gewährt werden. Alle Menschen sollen teilhaben und das Stadtleben mitgestalten können – unabhängig von Aufenthaltsstatus, finanziellen Möglichkeiten, Hautfarbe, Geschlecht, Sexualität, Religion,…
      In vielen Städten in Deutschland, Europa und der ganzen Welt ist der Prozess, eine Solidarity City zu werden schon in vollem Gang.

      https://solidarity-city.eu/de
      #solidarity_city

    • The Cities Refugees Saved

      In the cities where the most refugees per capita were settled since 2005, the newcomers helped stem or reverse population loss.

      Mahira Patkovich was eight years old in 1997 when her family left Bosnia. After a long and complicated war, Muslim families like hers had found themselves without jobs, food, and any semblance of safety. So they sought refuge in America.

      The first year in their new home in Utica, New York, Patkovich felt uprooted—torn from her childhood and everything she knew, and thrust into an alien environment. She knew no one and didn’t speak English. But as time went by, she began to acclimate.

      “The next thing you know, you’re home,”she says in a recent mini-documentary by New American Economy, a bipartisan immigration reform group, and Off Ramp Films. “This is home.”

      Patkovich, the film shows, is now thriving. She works at the office of the Oneida County Executive, owns a small business, and is on her way to a master’s degree. She is also pregnant, and excited to raise her first-born in a community she loves.

      Utica—it’s clear—saved Patkovich and her family. But the truth is: They’re helping to save this town as well. Like many Rust Belt cities, Utica suffered enormously in the second part of the 20th century, losing jobs and bleeding out residents as major employers like General Electric and Lockheed Martin shuttered or left the Mohawk Valley.

      Adam Bedient, director of photography and editor at Off Ramp Films grew up in the nearby town of Clinton in the 1980s and ’90s. He wasn’t tracking Utica’s trajectory too closely then, in part, because not much was happening there. What he remembers of Utica in that era is a typical fading factory town, a place where shuttered storefronts and exposed bricks belied neglect. “Foundationally, there were beautiful things there, they just didn’t look cared for,” he says.

      Now, he’s working on a full-length feature about the refugee communities in Utica, and when he drives through town, he finds it simmering with new life. Old buildings are getting refurbished. Construction cranes bob up and down. And at the center of town is a long-vacant historic Methodist church that has been renovated and converted into a beautiful mosque—a symbol of the new Utica.

      Without its new Bosnian community, Utica would have faced a 6 percent population drop.

      “It’s really symbolic—it was previously a church that was going to be torn down,” Bedient told CityLab. “The Bosnian community bought it from the city, and now it’s a part of the skyline.”

      For CityLab, NAE crunched the numbers on the 11 cities that have resettled the most refugees per capita between 2005 and 2017 to gauge how welcoming these newcomers affected overall population. In almost all cases, refugee resettlement either stemmed population loss or reversed it completely. Without its new Bosnian community, for example, Utica would have faced a 6 percent population drop. With them, the city saw a 3 percent gain.

      But what Andrew Lim, NAE’s director of quantitative research, found surprising was that this list didn’t just include industrial towns hungry for newcomers—places like Syracuse, New York, and Springfield, Massachusetts; it also features places in the South and Sunbelt. Take Clarkston, Georgia, for example, a diverse Atlanta exurb of 13,000 (whose young mayor you may recognize from a recent episode of Queer Eye). Since the 1970s, Clarkston has taken in tens of thousands of refugees from various parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. In Bitter Southerner, Carly Berlin recently explained how it gained its nickname as the “Ellis Island of the South.”

      As many white residents fled farther out to more fashionable developing Atlanta suburbs, Clarkston became perfect for refugees, with its hundreds of vacated apartments and access to public transportation, a post office, and a grocery store, all within walking distance. The little city became one of now 190 designated resettlement communities across the country.

      Using the data NAE extracted from the Census Bureau and from the Department of Homeland Services, CityLab’s David Montgomery created this nifty chart to show exactly how much refugees boosted or stabilized population in these 11 cities:

      But the pipeline that funneled refugees into cities like Utica is being closed up. In 2018, the Trump administration lowered the maximum number of refugees it takes in for the third year in a row—to 30,000, which is the lowest in three decades. Resettlement agencies, from Western Kansas to Florida, are having to close shop.

      Some places are already seeing the effects. In cities with large concentrations of refugees and refugee services, recent arrivals have been waiting for loved ones to join them. Because of the slash in numbers being accepted, some of these people have been thrust into uncertainty. Muslim refugees from countries listed in the final travel ban have been doubly hit, and may not be able to reunite with their families at all.

      But the effects of the Trump-era refugee policy don’t just affect individual families. In Buffalo, New York—another Rust Belt city that has been reinvigorated by new residents from refugee communities—medical clinics have closed down, housing developments have stalled, and employers have been left looking for employees, The Buffalo News reported. The loss for refugees hoping to come to America appears to also be a loss for the communities they might have called home

      The biggest argument for refugee resettlement is that it is a moral imperative, many advocates argue. Refugees are human beings fleeing terrible circumstances; assisting them is just the right thing to do. Foes of taking refugees—most notoriously, White House advisor Stephen Miller, who is quoted as saying that he would “be happy if not a single refugee foot ever touched American soil again” in a new book by a former White House communication aide—point to the perceived costs and dangers of taking in more. Past analyses shows little basis to that fear. In fact, cities with large refugee populations have seen drops in crime, per a previous NAE’s analysis. And according to NBC News, an intelligence assessment that included inputs from the FBI concluded that refugees did not pose a major national security threat. The Trump administration dismissed its findings.

      https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/01/refugee-admissions-resettlement-trump-immigration/580318
      #USA #Etats-Unis #démographie

  • Les détentions à la limite de la légalité

    Les pratiques concernant la détention administrative de requérants déboutés divergent selon les cantons. Le CF est appelé à mettre de l’ordre.

    Le recours à la détention administrative pour assurer le #renvoi d’un requérant d’asile peut être parfois à la limite de la légalité. Les cantons ont des pratiques très disparates. Le constat, tiré par les parlementaires, vaut aussi pour la détention de mineurs.

    Dans un rapport publié jeudi, la commission de gestion du National dénonce par ailleurs une grande gabegie dans le traitement des données. Le Conseil fédéral est appelé à mettre de l’ordre.

    Une détention administrative peut être ordonnée si l’on craint qu’une personne tente de se soustraire à son renvoi et que ce dernier est susceptible d’être exécuté dans un délai prévisible. Elle ne doit pas dépasser 18 mois. Les mineurs de plus de 15 ans peuvent être concernés, mais pas les moins âgés. La détention des mineurs est limitée à 12 mois.

    Problème de légalité

    Selon une évaluation menée par le Contrôle parlementaire de l’administration (CPA) sur les cas entre 2011 et 2014, la détention administrative est un moyen efficace pour assurer un renvoi. Elle n’était toutefois pas nécessaire dans tous les cas.

    Il s’agit d’une grave atteinte au droit fondamental à la liberté des personnes concernées. La détention administrative doit donc être proportionnée, relève la commission de gestion. Or l’enquête du CPA montre une grande divergence de pratiques entre les cantons.

    La commission « ne peut exclure que, dans certains cas, le principe de proportionnalité n’ait pas été suffisamment respecté et que, par conséquent, la détention ne soit pas légale ». Les requérants pourraient être traités différemment suivant le canton d’attribution.

    Divergences

    Les divergences peuvent en partie s’expliquer par l’âge, le sexe ou le pays d’origine des requérants. Ces facteurs une fois corrigés, il reste toutefois un fossé entre les 61% de détenus parmi les personnes à renvoyer dans le cadre de Dublin à Obwald et les 24% à Genève.

    Dans les cas non-Dublin (rejet de la demande ou non-entrée en matière), le taux varie de 4% à Genève et au Tessin à 20% à Obwald. Des différences apparaissent aussi concernant le succès de la mesure : le taux de départ des personnes détenues n’est que de 52% en Valais alors qu’il atteint 80% à Genève.

    La commission de gestion appelle le Conseil fédéral à veiller à une plus grande harmonisation des pratiques cantonale et au respect du principe de proportionnalité. Le gouvernement devra aussi vérifier si les bases légales assurent une protection suffisante des droits fondamentaux.

    Mineurs

    La question des mineurs détenus préoccupe aussi. Le CPA a constaté plus de 100 cas de moins de 15 ans détenus avec leurs proches et une prévalence énorme dans le canton de Berne. Le Secrétariat d’Etat aux migrations (SEM) a toutefois fait valoir des problèmes de saisie des données.

    Résultat : il n’a pas été possible d’établir clairement comment les détentions de mineurs détenus avec leurs parents sont enregistrées. Le gouvernement est appelé à examiner ce couac.

    Il n’en reste pas moins que cette pratique pose problème en soi. Genève, Vaud et Neuchâtel n’y recourent d’ailleurs pas. La commission invite le Conseil fédéral à exclure les mineurs de moins de 15 ans de la détention administrative et à favoriser d’autres possibilités d’exécution du renvoi des familles.

    Pour les plus de 15 ans, la mesure ne doit être ordonnée qu’en dernier ressort et il faudrait aménager des places de détention spécialement adaptées.

    #Gabegie

    Autre grande critique : la gabegie dans la gestion des données par la Confédération. Il n’est ainsi pas possible de savoir combien de personnes à renvoyer sont passées dans la #clandestinité. Le CPA estime que cela concerne environ un tiers des requérants déboutés.

    Des moyens appropriés doivent être mis en place pour une saisie en bonne et due forme, réclame la commission de gestion. D’autres mesures doivent être prises pour assurer un enregistrement correct des données.

    Le moment où il faut saisir une détention n’est par exemple pas clair. Il y a des divergences entre le remboursement des frais aux cantons et les informations obtenues par les SEM.

    Depuis octobre 2016, le SEM a l’obligation du surveiller l’#exécution_des_renvois. Des #sanctions_financières peuvent être infligées aux cantons. La commission de gestion attend de ces dernières qu’elles favorisent une #harmonisation_cantonale. Le CPA met toutefois en garde : on risque de ne pas respecter la réglementation Dublin qui a posé des règles plus strictes pour la détention depuis 2015.

    https://m.tdg.ch/articles/5b34c296ab5c3729ee000001
    #Suisse #mineurs #enfants #enfance #détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #familles #disparitions #expulsion #ça_dépend_du_canton #Dublin #proportionnalité #expulsion #droits_fondamentaux #droits_humains

    • Cesser la détention administrative de migrants mineurs : des cantons intelligents évitent les disparitions

      L’ « État des lieux de la détention administrative des migrant·e·s mineur·e·s en Suisse » vient d’être publié. Il révèle une utilisation peu efficace, peu pertinente et illégale de la détention administrative de migrants mineurs à des fins de renvoi.

      Le rapport se base sur les données statistiques encore trop brouillonnes et opaques des autorités cantonales et fédérales. Il dénonce la pratique de plusieurs cantons qui ordonnent trop légèrement la mise en détention de migrants mineurs alors que des solutions alternatives efficaces existent. Ces alternatives avaient déjà été proposées dans un premier rapport en 2016.
      Des dizaines d’enfants placés en détention avant leur renvoi

      Concrètement, de 2015 à 2017, huit cantons ont pratiqué la détention administrative de migrants mineurs. Selon les statistiques fournies ce sont 83 migrants mineurs qui ont été placés en détention administrative dont des enfants de moins de 15 ans. Ce chiffre pourrait être supérieur. Les statistiques obtenues révèlent aussi un taux de détention particulièrement élevé en 2017 par rapport au nombre total de migrants mineurs non-accompagnés dans un contexte de baisse générale des demandes d’asile en Suisse.

      Contraire au droit suisse et au droit international

      La détention administrative est une mesure de contrainte utilisée pour garantir l’exécution du renvoi de personnes étrangères dépourvues d’un droit de séjour. En résumé : la loi suisse autorise la détention administrative pour les 15 à 18 ans, sous certaines conditions mais l’interdit pour les moins de 15 ans même lorsqu’ils sont accompagnés d’un parent. En droit international, la détention administrative pour les enfants mineurs viole le devoir des Etats de protéger en tout temps l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant (article 3 de la Convention de l’ONU relative aux droits des enfants). Pour le Comité des droits de l’enfant de l’ONU et l’Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe, l’emprisonnement n’est jamais dans l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant (1).
      Pratique des cantons très variable

      L’attribution des migrants mineurs à l’un ou l’autre des cantons influence radicalement leur traitement. Alors que les cantons de Genève et Neuchâtel interdisent absolument la détention administrative de migrants mineurs, d’autres cantons essaient de ne pas l’appliquer par principe comme les cantons du Jura, Vaud et Bâle alors que beaucoup d’autres l’autorise comme les canton de Berne, Lucerne, Schaffhouse, Valais et Zoug.

      En juin 2018 la Commission de gestion du Conseil national (CdG-N) avait déjà dénoncé la pratique de certains cantons estimant qu’elle violait le droit suisse et le droit international. Ces critiques ont heureusement débouché sur des mesures d’urgence dans les cantons de Berne et de Zurich.
      Détermination de l’âge problématique

      La détermination de l’âge des jeunes est aussi problématique. Il arrive régulièrement que des requérants mineurs non-accompagnés soient considérés comme majeur. Dans le doute, précise le Tribunal administratif fédéral, les autorités doivent retenir la minorité afin que les migrants puissent bénéficier de la protection juridique applicable aux enfants. Terre de hommes et plusieurs ONG constatent en réalité que la pratique est souvent opposée.
      Les objectifs de la détention administrative ne sont pas atteints

      En outre l’objectif principal visé par la détention – l’exécution du renvoi – n’est de loin pas atteint. La crainte de la détention provoque la disparition des mineurs qui est constatée lors du transfert du centre fédéral d’enregistrement vers le canton d’attribution.

      Les statistiques disponibles montre un taux de disparition croissant en corrélation avec un taux de détention croissant. En 2015, sur 2’739 requérants mineurs non-accompagnés qui ont déposé une demande d’asile, 129 soit 4.7% ont disparu. En 2016, sur 1’999 requérants mineurs non-accompagnés qui ont déposé une demande d’asile, 400 soit 20% ont disparu. Le Rapport de la Commission de gestion du Conseil national (CdG-N) présenté en juin 2018 relève la même inquiétude.

      Ivana Goretta, attachée de presse à Terre des hommes m’explique :

      « Les jeunes mineurs non-accompagnés ont parcouru seuls des milliers de kilomètres pour arriver en Suisse, ils sont très indépendants. Pour éviter l’enfermement ils choisissent la clandestinité, un quotidien beaucoup plus précaire et ils sont des proies faciles aux réseaux criminels. »

      Développer et promouvoir la mise en œuvre de mesures alternatives à la détention

      Ce sont les mesures les moins invasives que les cantons doivent appliquer en priorité surtout lorsque cela concerne une famille avec des enfants mineurs scolarisés. Ils doivent privilégier le placement dans des centres d’hébergement adaptés aux mineurs et aux familles, ouverts ou semi-ouverts mais en tous les cas non carcéraux. Des exemples montrent que cela fonctionne. L’autorité cantonale peut par exemple exigé d’une personne frappée d’une décision de renvoi de se présenter quotidiennement à ses bureaux. Elle peut aussi exiger de la famille ou du mineur non-accompagné qu’il ne quitte pas le territoire qui lui est assigné ou ne pénètre pas dans une région déterminée. C’est assez courant. Pour les requérants mineurs non-accompagnés le placement en famille ou dans des structures d’accueil adaptées petites et encadrées permet de ne pas les perdre.
      Effet positif du rapport

      Le canton du Valais a été sensible aux recommandations de Terre des hommes et aimerait améliorer les choses a expliqué sur la RTS Frédéric Favre, conseiller d’Etat valaisan en charge de la Sécurité. Le Canton du Valais vient d’édicter une directive interdisant la détention de mineurs. La directive ressemble à celle toute récente du canton de Zurich. Le nombre de cas étant relativement modeste les cantons doivent justement pouvoir trouver des solutions alternatives. Ces cantons rejoignent le canton de Genève et de Neuchâtel. Chaque canton devrait suivre le mouvement pour garantir une meilleure prise en charge des migrant mineurs en procédure de renvoi.
      Améliorer le système de collecte de données

      Enfin Terre des hommes insiste sur le besoin d’améliorer au niveau cantonal et fédéral le système de collecte des données sur les détention administratives des migrants mineurs accompagnés ou non. Il n’y a pas aujourd’hui de statistiques détaillées, fiables et facilement accessibles. Cette mesure est urgente et indispensable.

      « La Suisse fait partie sur le plan européen de la moitié des pays qui ne disposent pas de données fiables, complètes et comparables. Il a été observé un manque de transparence sur les données statistiques, une irrégularité dans leur collecte ainsi que certaines contradictions dans les données obtenues. Cette lacune fait l’objet de la recommandation n°17 du Comité des droits de l’enfant adressée à la Suisse lors de son précédent examen périodique universel sur la situation des droits de l’enfant dans notre pays. Il est très inquiétant, alors que le problème est connu et dénoncé de longue date, de ne toujours pas pouvoir relever d’amélioration dans ce domaine : ni les autorités fédérales ni les autorités cantonales compétentes pour ordonner et respectivement exécuter la détention administrative de mineurs migrants ne disposent de statistiques fiables ou détaillées. De plus, les chiffres transmis par le SEM diffèrent très fortement de ceux fournis par les cantons. Terre des hommes exprime donc une fois de plus sa plus vive inquiétude, sachant l’impact qu’une telle situation peut avoir sur le destin des enfants concernés. »

      Pour Terre des hommes, la Confédération a tendance à mettre la faute sur les cantons. En réalité c’est à elle que revient la tâche de haute surveillance de l’application des lois et des engagements internationaux.

      https://forumasile.org/2018/12/14/cesser-la-detention-administrative-de-migrants-mineurs-des-cantons-intel

  • La détention d’enfants demandeurs d’asile dénoncée par une commission

    Lorsqu’une famille de requérants d’asile est incarcérée en vue de son renvoi, il peut arriver que des mineurs de moins de 15 ans soient mis en détention. Une pratique dénoncée jeudi par la commission de gestion du National.

    https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/9681850-la-detention-d-enfants-demandeurs-d-asile-denoncee-par-une-commission.ht
    #Suisse #mineurs #enfants #enfance #détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #familles

    • A mettre en lien avec :

      Statistiques | Mineurs en détention

      Début mai, Terre des hommes (TdH) relevait le « manque total de traçabilité » des mineurs détenus par la Suisse dans le cadre de mesures d’expulsion. Les chiffres publiés par le Secrétariat d’Etat aux migrations (SEM) concernant le nombre de mineurs en détention ont été revus et divisés par trois après que TdH ait publié un rapport sur la question. Selon le SEM, ce ne sont plus 142 mais 51 mineurs âgés de 15 à 18 ans qui auraient été privés de liberté en 2015.

      Une différence de taille que le SEM explique par des erreurs dans l’enregistrement des données par les cantons, notamment liées au calcul de l’âge : soit les personnes sont devenues majeures entre l’enregistrement de leur demande d’asile et la détention ; soit elles « se sont déclarées mineures mais s’avèrent majeures », explique son porte-parole. Sur la base de calculs douteux de l’âge osseux ? (voir article)

      « Que s’est-il passé avec presque 100 jeunes qui disparaissent du système ? Ce changement dans les données engendre un manque total de traçabilité de ces mineurs. Cela pose des questions sur l’objectivité et la clarté des statistiques », critique TdH. Qui rappelle que « le manque de données fiables et ventilées en Suisse a déjà été soulevé par le Comité [de l’ONU] des droits de l’enfant comme un obstacle au respect de [leurs] droits. » De fait, si on ne sait combien de mineurs sont détenus, comment s’assurer que leurs droits sont respectés ?

      https://asile.ch/2017/08/12/mineurs-en-detention

      Et avec le #rapport de Terre des Hommes (2016) :
      Détention illégale de mineurs migrants en Suisse : un état des lieux.
      https://www.tdh.ch/sites/default/files/tdh_plaidoyer-ch_fr_web_0.pdf
      –-> avec ce commentaire sur le site de @vivre :
      https://asile.ch/2016/06/17/terre-hommes-detention-illegale-de-mineurs-migrants-suisse-etat-lieux

    • Des enfants migrants enfermés : en Suisse aussi

      Des enfants sont emprisonnés alors qu’ils n’ont commis aucun délit. Ce qui nous semble humainement insupportable aux États-Unis ne l’est pas davantage sous nos latitudes. Au moment où vous lisez ces lignes, plusieurs cantons suisses enferment des mineurs au seul motif qu’ils sont migrants, dans la perspective d’un renvoi. Vous imaginez-vous, à l’âge où vous appreniez à lire, être retenu en détention ? Et votre adolescent qui pianote sur son smartphone, dans quel état reviendrait-il d’un enfermement qui peut aller jusqu’à douze mois ?

      https://www.tdg.ch/geneve/actu-genevoise/Des-enfants-migrants-enfermes-en-Suisse-aussi/story/14918172

  • Global Detention Project | Barrières physiques et fossés digitaux
    https://asile.ch/2018/06/08/global-detention-project-barrieres-physiques-et-fosses-digitaux

    Global Detention Project publie la première partie de son enquête sur l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux par les personnes migrantes sur leur chemin d’exil. La spécificité de cette ONG basée à Genève étant la détention, les lieux d’enfermement en Afrique du Nord et autour de la Méditerranée sont au cœur de l’attention. Les auteurs de cette […]

  • #Mauritanie : des #migrants_sénégalais renvoyés dans leur pays

    En Mauritanie, le gouvernement a ordonné l’expulsion de 53 migrants sénégalais arrêtés ces derniers jours à #Nouadhibou alors qu’ils tentaient de gagner l’archipel des Canaries, en Espagne en #pirogue.

    Les migrants avaient quitté la ville sénégalaise de Thiès, lundi 28 mai dernier, à bord d’une embarcation de fortune pour les îles Canaries avant de tomber en panne non loin des côtes mauritaniennes de Nouadhibou. Le capitaine a pris la fuite et les passagers ont été récupérés par la marine mauritanienne avant leur transfert à Nouadhibou d’où ils ont été acheminés vers Nouakchott.

    C’est là que la mesure d’expulsion a été exécutée. Un premier contingent vient de quitter le pays selon le président de l’association des ressortissants sénégalais en Mauritanie. « Lundi, un premier groupe de 21 migrants est parti pour le Sénégal, explique à RFI Assane Gueye. Les autres suivront bientôt. J’ai pu leur rendre visite, j’ai vu leurs conditions d’accueil. Elles sont acceptables ».

    Assane Gueye est le seul contact direct avec ses compatriotes. Il s’est dit étonné de voir le nombre élevé de Sénégalais à bord d’une seule embarcation. « Avant, vous trouviez à bord d’une pirogue diverses nationalités, gambienne, guinéenne et malienne. Mais cette fois, il y avait 53 Sénégalais, vraiment je suis étonné ». Les 32 autres Sénégalais du centre de rétention de Nouakchott seront rapatriés dans les prochains jours suivant la signature des arrêts d’expulsion les concernant.

    http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20180606-mauritanie-migrants-senegalais-renvoyes-leur-pays
    #it_has_begun #Sénégal #renvois #expulsions #Afrique_de_l'Ouest #migrations #Canaries #rétention #détention_administrative

    –-> vu que, selon ce qui est dit ici, il s’agirait de potentiels #candidats_à_l'émigration vers l’Europe... je me demande si il n’y a pas la petite main de l’UE derrière
    #externalisation #externalisation_des_contrôles_frontaliers #contrôles_frontaliers #frontières

  • Tomber entre les craques

    Les yeux de ces quatre enfants me hantent.

    En avril, ils attendaient un vol à Brownsville, au Texas, qui devait les réunir avec un membre de leur famille ou avec un tuteur légal avant de recevoir la décision du gouvernement américain quant à leur droit de rester (ou non) aux États-Unis.

    Aujourd’hui, qui sait où ils se trouvent ? Ces mineurs non accompagnés font partie des enfants placés sous la responsabilité du #Office_for_Refugee_Resettlement (#ORR). Or, cette agence fédérale américaine a perdu la trace de 1 475 enfants (sur 7 635) en 2017.

    Impossible de les retracer, car il est impossible de joindre les adultes qui en ont la charge. Ces enfants sont tombés entre les craques d’un système qui sacrifie leur sécurité au profit d’une lutte contre l’immigration « illégale ».

    Alors que l’ORR se défend qu’une fois l’enfant confié à un adulte (que celui-ci soit lié à l’enfant ou non), elle n’a pas de responsabilité de suivi, il n’en reste pas moins qu’aujourd’hui, l’état de ces 1 475 enfants ne peut pas être confirmé. Et cette incapacité à assurer la sécurité des enfants sous sa responsabilité survient à un moment où cette agence est de plus en plus sollicitée. L’annonce, le 7 mai dernier, d’une nouvelle directive obligeant des poursuites criminelles contre toute personne entrant sans autorisation aux États-Unis force la #séparation_des_familles, les enfants ne pouvant pas être détenus dans les prisons criminelles (jusqu’alors, les mères étaient détenues avec leurs enfants dans des centres de détention). Durant les 13 premiers jours d’application, cette directive a mené à la séparation de 658 enfants de leurs parents. Ces enfants sont placés auprès d’ONG (affiliées à l’ORR) qui ont pour tâche ou bien de localiser un membre de la famille (aux États-Unis) ou un tuteur légal, ou bien de s’occuper de l’enfant si un tel adulte ne peut pas être trouvé. L’entrée en vigueur de la nouvelle directive mènera inévitablement à plus de séparations.

    Penser que cette politique sera un véritable dissuasif à l’immigration dénote une incompréhension marquée de la réalité et des violences en Amérique centrale, moteurs principaux de la migration des enfants et des cellules familiales. La preuve ? Les tentatives de traversée n’ont pas diminué en mai.

    Éparpillés aux quatre coins des États-Unis, enfants et parents butent sur les obstacles bureaucratiques à la réunification. Celle-ci est mise en péril par l’absence de documents officiels d’identité : les enfants – et les parents – n’ont pas toujours de papiers prouvant le lien familial. Ces enfants perdus dans les entrailles bureaucratiques du système d’immigration américain pourront-ils être retrouvés ? Et les parents dont les enfants leur sont enlevés au moment de l’arrestation pourront-ils les retrouver lorsqu’ils seront relâchés ou avant d’être expulsés ? L’obsession pour le contrôle des frontières est telle que la séparation des enfants et de leurs parents est devenue une politique d’État, banalisée par l’administration Trump. Et ce sont ces enfants qui porteront les traumatismes de la séparation dans leurs yeux déjà trop marqués par la violence et par la peur.

    http://journalmetro.com/opinions/trajectoires/1602965/tomber-entre-les-craques
    #disparitions #enfants #USA #Etats-Unis #unité_familiale #mineurs #enfance #famille #détention_administrative #rétention #enfants_placés #dissuasion

  • New Specialized Transport Buses

    The expansion of the #Karnes_County_Residential_Center (#KCRC) was completed in early December 2015, and increased the capacity to 1,158 beds.

    The expansion created new demands to an already unique transportation mission by requiring larger capacity vehicles to provide offsite field trips. These field trips are part of the contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Field trips are provided to all children, ages four through seventeen enrolled in educational programs provided by the John H. Wood Charter School, located at KCRC. Field trips consist of going to a variety of places, such as the San Antonio Zoo, seeing a movie at the local theater, going to the park, etc.

    The transportation requirements to handle the increased school enrollment were presented to corporate officials at the end of the 3rd quarter 2015. On February 4, 2016, two new fleet vehicles were delivered to the KCRC to fulfill contractual obligations. The first vehicle is an eighteen-seat passenger #bus that is ADA compliant with rear wheelchair lift system and the second bus has twenty-six seats. These vehicles do not have standard GTI security equipment such as steel cages or window bars or screens. Both buses have camera systems and digital video recorders to record all activity during transport.

    Due to the unique transportation criteria, KCRC officials worked very closely with GTI Vice President Ed Stubbs and Corporate Fleet Manager Paul Gossard, to outfit and configure the bus cabins to meet ICE requirements and to be compliant with the terms of this unique contract. Both buses are outfitted with standard commercial grade cushioned seating. Each seat has a convertible child safety seat and is equipped with a DVD system with four drop down screens to provide entertainment to the children with onboard movies during transport missions.

    At every loading, children are assisted into the safety seat systems either by a nurse, a teacher, or case manager, and secured into the harness system. Once this is done, the GTI drivers check each child to ensure correct application and fit to the harness system. The GTI drivers have all received specialized training and are certified child restraint seat installers. All other passengers not required to be in a safety seat, are also checked for seat belt systems being latched and secure.

    For every offsite trip of this nature, an operational plan is developed and submitted to ICE for review and approval. Each trip, and vehicle, requires a minimum of one nurse, two teachers and one case manager. For control and security, GTI staff seat all adult chaperones evenly dispersed throughout the cabin to maintain order and safety of the children during transit.

    To date, the field trips have been a huge success and the frequency and numbers of school aged children being transported offsite for these sanctioned activities is expected to increase in the future.

    These specialized missions are in addition to normal transportation requirements for offsite medical appointments, offsite medical emergency transports and transports of residents to federal court in San Antonio, Texas or to the ICE Field Office appointments in San Antonio. The administration and transportation department are extremely proud and grateful to have these two new buses that are outfitted to meet sometimes unusual transportation requirements, added to the local fleet. The entire GTI team at the Karnes County Residential Center is dedicated to provide safe, secure and efficient transportation of our “precious cargo”-the children and mothers assigned to our facility.


    https://www.geogroup.com/News-Detail/NewsID/428
    #it_has_begun #asile #migrations #réfugiés #enfants #enfance #privatisation #USA #Etats-Unis #déshumanisation #sorties_éducative (sic) #GRACO #sécurité #surveillance #détention_administrative #rétention #sortie_de_classe #école #éducation #mineurs

    Je mets en évidence quelques horreurs :

    - Field trips are provided to all children

    - Field trips consist of going to a variety of places, such as the San Antonio Zoo, seeing a movie at the local theater, going to the park, etc.

    - These vehicles do not have standard GTI security equipment such as steel cages or window bars or screens. Both buses have camera systems and digital video recorders to record all activity during transport.

    - Each seat has a convertible child safety seat and is equipped with a DVD system with four drop down screens to provide entertainment to the children with onboard movies during transport missions.

    via @isskein

  • Détention d’enfants migrants : les premières photos du centre pour familles

    Des familles en situation irrégulière pourront être enfermées dès juillet, en vue de leur éloignement, annonce Theo Francken dans les colonnes de Sudpresse et Het Laatste Nieuws ce mardi. L’arrêté royal qui cadrera la détention a été envoyé au Conseil d’Etat après validation par le gouvernement.


    http://www.lesoir.be/156861/article/2018-05-15/detention-denfants-migrants-les-premieres-photos-du-centre-pour-familles
    #mineurs #enfants #enfance #asile #migrations #réfugiés #détention_administrative #rétention #familles

  • SPACE I 2016 – Faits & Chiffres

    De manière générale, les femmes représentent une partie relativement faible de la population carcérale . Il y a néanmoins quelqu es pays où les femmes détenues étaient surreprésentées (plus de 7% de l’ensemble de la population carcérale). Il s’agit de Monaco (18.8%), Andorre ( 12.8 %), Lettonie (8.4%), Malte (8.3%), Espagne ( niv. Etat) (7.8%), Finland e (7.5%), H ongrie (7.4%), et Ré publique Tchèque (7.3%). De plus, pendant les dernières années, la proportion d’étrangers au sein des détenus de sexe féminin a diminué. En 2013, les femmes étrangères représentaient 13% de l’ensemble de la population carcérale de sexe féminin, alors qu’en 2014 ce pourcentage baisse à 11.5% et en 2015 à 10.1%. en 2016 ce pourcentage augmente légèrement atteignant 11.2%. La proportion de femmes en détention pré ventive s’est maintenue stable de manière générale . En 2013, 24.3% des détenu es étaient en détention préventive, en 2014 ce pourcentage baisse à 22.5% ; néanmoins, en 2015, il augmente à 23.7%, et en 2016, 24.2% des détenus de sexe féminin sont en détention préventive. Ainsi, les pourcentages de 2013 et 2016 sont presque les mêmes.


    #détention_administrative #rétention #statistiques #chiffres #2016 #Europe

  • Anti-Torture Committee calls for a co-ordinated European approach to address mass migratory arrivals in Italy

    The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (#CPT) published today a report on an ad hoc visit conducted in Italy to examine the situation of foreign nationals deprived of their liberty in the so-called “hotspots” and immigration detention centres, in a context of large-scale arrivals from North Africa. The CPT recognises the significant challenges faced by the Italian authorities regarding the influx of new arrivals by sea. It also acknowledges the substantial efforts in carrying out rescue operations and in providing shelter and support to the hundreds of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants currently present in the country. In this framework, the CPT recalls the need for a co-ordinated European approach and support system to address the phenomenon of mass migratory arrivals.

    CPT’s delegation visited the “hotspots” in #Lampedusa, #Pozzallo and in #Trapani (#Milo), as well as a mobile “hotspot” unit at #Augusta ’s port. Further, it was able to observe a disembarkation procedure at Trapani’s harbour. The Council of Europe experts also visited the closed removal centres (Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri, CPRs) in #Caltanissetta, #Ponte_Galeria (#Rome) and #Turin, as well as holding facilities at #Rome Fiumicino’s Airport.

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/anti-torture-committee-calls-for-a-co-ordinated-european-approach-to-address-ma
    #hotspots #Italie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #rapport #mobile_hotspots #hotsports_mobiles #port #débarquement #CPR (ex #CIE) #détention_administrative #rétention #aéroport #santé

    Lien vers le rapport:


    https://rm.coe.int/16807b6d56

  • Opinion | When Migrants Are Treated Like Slaves

    People awaiting deportation are being forced to work for little or no pay. We have a name for that.

    We’re familiar with grim stories about black-shirted federal agents barging into apartment complexes, convenience stores and school pickup sites to round up and deport immigrants. We’ve heard far less about the forced labor — some call it slavery — inside detention facilities. But new legal challenges to these practices are succeeding and may stymie the government’s deportation agenda by taking profits out of the detention business.
    Yes, detention is a business. In 2010, private prisons and their lenders and investors lobbied Congress to pass a law ordering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to maintain contracts for no fewer than 34,000 beds per night. This means that when detention counts are low, people who would otherwise be released because they pose no danger or flight risk and are likely to win their cases in immigration court remain locked up, at a cost to the government of about $125 a day.
    The people detained at these facilities do almost all of the work that keeps them running, outside of guard duty. That includes cooking, serving and cleaning up food, janitorial services, laundry, haircutting, painting, floor buffing and even vehicle maintenance. Most jobs pay $1 a day; some work they are required to do pays nothing.
    Workers in immigration custody have suffered injuries and even died. In 2007, Cesar Gonzalez was killed in a facility in Los Angeles County when his jackhammer hit an electrical cable, sending 10,000 volts of direct current through his body. He was on a crew digging holes for posts to extend the camp’s perimeter.
    Crucially, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health ruled that regardless of his status as a detainee, Mr. Gonzalez was also an employee, and his employer was found to have violated state laws on occupational safety and health.
    Two of the country’s biggest detention companies — #GEO and #CoreCivic, known as #CCA — are now under attack by five lawsuits. They allege that the obligatory work and eight-hour shifts for no or little pay are unlawful. They also accuse the companies of violating state minimum wage laws, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and laws prohibiting unjust enrichment.
    The plaintiffs have a strong case. Forced labor is constitutional so long as it is a condition of punishment, a carve-out in the slavery prohibitions of the 13th Amendment. But in 1896, the Supreme Court held that “the order of deportation is not a punishment for crime.” Thus, while private prisons may require work to “punish” or “correct” criminal inmates, judges in three cases have ruled that immigration detention facilities may not. It’s as legal for GEO to force its facilities’ residents to work as it would be to make seniors in government-funded nursing homes scrub their neighbors’ showers.
    GEO’s own defense provides insights into just how much its profits depend on labor coerced from the people it locks up. In 2017, after Federal District Judge John Kane certified a class-action lawsuit on behalf of GEO residents in Aurora, Colo., the company filed an appeal claiming the suit “poses a potentially catastrophic risk to GEO’s ability to honor its contracts with the federal government.”
    Court records suggest that GEO may be paying just 1.25 percent to 6 percent of minimum wage, and as little as half of 1 percent of what federal contractors are supposed to pay under the Service Contract Act. If the plaintiffs win, that’s tens of millions of dollars GEO would be obligated to pay in back wages to up to 62,000 people, not to mention additional payments going forward. And that’s just at one facility.

    GEO’s appeal tanked. During oral arguments last summer, the company’s lawyer defended the work program by explaining that those held in Aurora “make a decision each time whether they’re going to consent to work or not.” A judge interjected, “Or eat, or be put in isolation, right? I mean, slaves had a choice, right?” The 10th Circuit panel in February unanimously ruled that the case could proceed.
    On top of that, last year GEO was sued for labor violations in its Tacoma, Wash., facility. In October, United States District Judge Robert Bryan, a Reagan appointee (!), denied GEO’s motions to dismiss these cases and for the first time allowed claims under the state minimum wage laws to proceed, as well as those for forced labor and unjust enrichment.
    On March 7, 18 Republican members of the House, 12 of whom have private prisons in or adjacent to their districts, sent a letter to the leaders of the departments of Labor, Justice and Homeland Security complaining about the lawsuits. They warned that if the agencies don’t intervene to protect the companies, “immigration enforcement efforts will be thwarted.”
    Those who cheer this outcome should feel encouraged. The measures the representatives asked for — including a statement by the government that those who work while locked up are “not employees” and that federal minimum wage laws do not apply to them — won’t stop the litigation. Agency pronouncements cannot overturn statutes. As long as judges follow the laws, more of the true costs of deportation will be put into the ledgers.
    If the price of human suffering does not deter the barbarism of rounding people up based on the happenstance of birth, then maybe pinched taxpayer wallets will.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/opinion/migrants-detention-forced-labor.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSour
    #néo-esclavage #esclavage_moderne #USA #sans-papiers #Etats-Unis #exploitation #travail #migrations #détention_administrative #rétention #privatisation

  • Manifestation féministe à Bruxelles : sous les pavés, l’humiliation policière ? RTBF - Vews - 5 Avril 2018
    https://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_manifestation-feministe-a-bruxelles-sous-les-paves-l-humiliation-policie

    Violences physiques, insultes, violences psychiques. Les participants à une manifestation #féministe organisée samedi 31 mars à #Bruxelles dénoncent une #répression abusive de la part des forces de police. Une intervention justifiée par une manifestation non autorisée mais cette interdiction excuse-t-elle les #abus dénoncés ? 

    Ils s’appellent Jean-Michel, Fred, Vincent et Rose (noms d’emprunts). Tous étaient présents samedi soir, tous s’attendaient à une présence policière mais pas nécessairement à une intervention aussi musclée : « On avait fait 150 mètres à peine lorsque la police a bouclé la rue de part et d’autre, ils nous ont pris en nasse, ont posé des barrières de chantier, on étouffait ».

    Une manif’ non autorisée, un déploiement de force impressionnant
    Samedi 31 mars, une manifestation féministe se tenait place Sainte Catherine, dans le centre de #Bruxelles. Un cortège d’une petite centaine de participants s’élance aux environs de 20h30 malgré l’absence d’autorisation des autorités. Il s’agit de la 5e Reclaim The Night, une marche qui s’organise dans plusieurs grandes villes européennes et américaines depuis 1977 avec comme objectif la réappropriation de l’espace public : "ça veut dire que pour les identifiées femmes et minorités de #genre, c’est pas safe de circuler dans la rue à tout moment de la journée. On risque d’être harcelé, on risque des #agressions physiques ou sexuelles, des #insultes", précise Fred. 

    Cette année, aucune demande d’autorisation de manifester n’a été introduite. De son côté, la #police de Bruxelles-Ixelles a fait savoir qu’elle n’aurait pas délivré de permission. En 2017, la même marche avait été émaillée d’incidents avec la police. Alors pourquoi ne pas demander d’autorisation afin de lever toute ambiguïté ?  "De toute façon, ces dernières années, autorisation ou pas, ça se termine toujours avec une répression policière violente", résume Jean-Michel. Dans un texte publié sur internet le 2 avril, les manifestant(e)s expliquent :  « Nous estimons que nous devrions avoir le droit de nous approprier la rue sans avoir à négocier. Nous estimons avoir le droit d’être présent(es) en nombre dans la rue. Notre #liberté ne se négocie pas, elle s’impose ». 

    Coups, insultes et humiliation
    La #manifestation fait long feu. Rapidement les forces de police interviennent, prenant les manifestants en étau et posant des barrières de chantier de part et d’autre de la rue. Une septantaine de personnes est embarquée en fourgonnette vers les casernes d’Etterbeek : « Nous ne sommes pas informés de nos droits, les seuls mots que l’on reçoit ce sont des insultes ». Rose explique avoir été étranglée au commissariat, Vincent avoir été giflé « sans raison », d’autres témoins déclarent s’être fait peloter la poitrine ou avoir reçu des coups de pied au visage. 

    A la #brutalité physique s’ajoute également la violence psychique : « Quand on porte atteinte à ton identité, c’est quelque chose qui peut être grave pour une personne, c’est une chose contre laquelle on se mobilisait et cela se reproduit dans l’espace de mobilisation, ça a des conséquences dramatiques » , détaille Rose.  

    Nous aurions aimé entendre la version de la police de la zone Bruxelles-Ixelles. Celle-ci a d’abord accepté de répondre à nos questions avant finalement de décliner l’invitation. Via communiqué ce lundi 2 avril, le porte-parole de la police invitait les manifestants à porter plainte. 
    #détention_administrative #Arrestations_administratives #féminisme #résistance #reclaim_the_night
    Suite de : https://seenthis.net/messages/681865

  • Bruxelles : 70 personnes interpellées lors d’une manifestation féministe non-autorisée RTBF - Belga
    https://www.rtbf.be/info/regions/detail_bruxelles-70-personnes-interpellees-lors-d-une-manifestation-feministe-n

    Une septentaine de personnes ont été interpellées samedi soir, dans le centre de #Bruxelles, lors d’une #manifestation_féministe non-autorisée, a-t-on appris auprès de la police locale.


    Cette manifestation intitulée « Reclaim the night » devait se tenir samedi soir, nuit de pleine lune, au Quai au Bois à Brûler, sous la forme d’une marche aux flambeaux. « La ’Reclaim the Night’ est une marche de nuit féministe, en #mixité choisie #sans_mecs, afin de se réapproprier la rue la nuit contre les #violences #sexistes et #policières », expliquent ses organisateurs sur leur blog.

    Il devait s’agir de la cinquième « Reclaim the Night » mais une précédente édition, en 2017, avait été émaillée d’incidents avec la police, ce qui explique que la manifestation n’ait pas été autorisée ce samedi soir.

    Les participantes à la manifestation se sont tout de même rassemblées samedi soir, Quai au Bois à Brûler, avant d’être cantonnées par la police à la rue Sainte-Catherine. « Nous leur avons dit d’arrêter leur action mais comme cela ne s’est pas produit, nous avons arrêté administrativement le groupe. Il s’agit de quelque 70 personnes », a explique le commissaire Olivier Slosse, de la police de Bruxelles.

    #détention_administrative #Arrestations_administratives

    • Les manifestantes féministes interpellées à Bruxelles dénoncent l’action policière RTBF avec Belga - 2 Avril 2018 _
      https://www.rtbf.be/info/regions/bruxelles/detail_les-manifestantes-feministes-interpellees-a-bruxelles-denoncent-l-action

      Les organisatrices et participantes à la manifestation féministe « Reclaim the Night » qui ont été interpellées par la police de Bruxelles samedi, affirment lundi avoir été traitées violemment et brutalement.

      Il devait s’agir de la cinquième « Reclaim the Night » mais une précédente édition, en 2017, avait été émaillée d’incidents avec la police, ce qui explique que la manifestation n’ait pas été autorisée samedi soir.


      Les participantes à la manifestation se sont tout de même rassemblées, avant d’être cantonnées par la police à la rue Sainte-Catherine, à Bruxelles. « Nous estimons que nous devrions avoir le droit de nous approprier la rue sans avoir à négocier. Nous estimons avoir le droit d’être présent(es) en nombre dans la rue. Notre liberté ne se négocie pas, elle s’impose », répondent les manifestantes dans un texte publié sur internet.

      « Vers 20h30, après avoir marché dix minutes au départ de la place Sainte-Catherine, un important dispositif policier nous a bloqué la route puis encerclé(es) », racontent les manifestantes. « Notre cortège, composé d’une centaine de personnes, s’est retrouvé comprimé entre des lignes de robocop armés de leurs boucliers-casques-matraques, rue bloquée de tous les côtés par plusieurs combis, camions, voitures de police. Pendant ce temps, des barrières Heras recouvertes de toiles ont été disposées tout autour de nous de manière à nous invisibiliser de la foule amassée aux alentours et des soutiens. Une fois à l’abri des regards, les flics ont commencé à extirper les personnes une à une de manière très brutale, plaquées au sol, tirées par les cheveux, fouillées, colsonnées et embarquées. Certaines personnes venues en soutien se sont vues brutalisées également. »

      Les manifestantes affirment également avoir été brutalisées ensuite à la caserne d’Etterbeek, où elles avaient été embarquées. « Nous avons été disposé(es) dans les cellules en nous distinguant bien entre ’assignée femme’ et ’assigné homme’ », ajoutent-elles, y voyant une « violence transphobe humiliante ». Les manifestantes parlent enfin d’"insultes, blagues sexistes, homo-trans-phobes."

      Selon les organisatrices, « la Police nous sort un discours faussement poli en amont en nous disant qu’elle veut simplement co-organiser l’événement avec nous. Nous trouvons extrêmement paradoxal de demander une autorisation à un État patriarcal pour pouvoir manifester contre lui. Nous refusons donc de négocier avec la milice répressive et liberticide de ce même État. »

    •  RECLAIM THE NIGHT BRUXELLES
      https://reclaimthenightbruxelles.wordpress.com

      Ce samedi 31 mars 2018, la répression s’est à nouveau abattue sur une manifestation bruxelloise.

      La Reclaim the Night est une marche féministe en mixité-choisie, pour dénoncer les violences sexistes dans l’espace public. Nous réclamons le droit de marcher librement dans les rues, où les femmes et personnes trans sont exclues, où nous subissons le harcèlement et la violence constamment. 
Après avoir subit une violence policière décomplexée lors de la précédente Reclaim the Night le 11 février 2017 ( https://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article13619 ), nous avons choisi de marcher à nouveau ensemble hier soir sans se résigner au bon vouloir d’un État autoritaire et patriarcal qui nous opprime quotidiennement


      Vers 20h30, après avoir marché dix minutes au départ de la place Ste-Catherine, un important dispositif policier nous a bloqué la route puis encerclé-e-s.
Notre cortège, composé d’une centaine de personnes, s’est retrouvé comprimé entre des lignes de robocop armés de leurs bouclier-casque-matraque, rue bloquée de tous les côtés par plusieurs combis, camions, voitures de police. 
Pendant ce temps, des barrières Heras recouvertes de toiles ont été disposées tout autour de nous de manière à nous invisibiliser de la foule amassée aux alentours et des soutiens. Une fois à l’abri des regards les flics ont commencé à extirper de la nasse les personnes une à une de manière très brutale, plaquées au sol, tirées par les cheveux, fouillées, colsonnées et embarquées. 
Certaines personnes venues en soutien se sont vues brutalisées également.

      Colsons serrés nous sommes entassé-e-s dans bus et camionnettes, au rythme de doux « Tout le monde déteste la police » scandés par les nombreux-ses copain-e-s venu-e-s en soutien et repris par les personnes arrêtées dans les véhicules. On chante, on hurle, on tape des pieds, on rit, on se soutien, on se rassure, on est ensemble. Et on se moque bien évidemment de la situation absurde, démesurée, et des ploucs en uniforme qui ont enlever leur cerveaux pour pouvoir mettre leur casque et képi. 

      Arrivé-e-s aux habituelles casernes d’Etterbeek, véritable village de bleus, le comité d’accueil est présent. Nous nous faisons sortir un-e à un-e, toujours attaché-e-s, une flikette filme chaque visage. Certaines personnes, refusant qu’on les prenne en photo, se penchent en avant, cheveux devant le visage ou capuche bien abaissée, un flic par militant-e, plusieurs se font brutaliser pour être mis-e face à l’appareil, une copine se fait étrangler dans un coin, d’autres plaquées violemment contre le mur, visages tenus de force en l’air, etc. 
Ensuite disposé-e-s dans les cellules en nous distinguant bien entre « assignée femme » et « assigné homme », logique binaire de la Police, violence transphobe humiliante. S’y ajoutant bien sur les insultes, blagues sexistes, homo-trans-phobes, … .
Les dernières personnes seront relâchées vers 1h du matin.

      Nous ne pouvons que constater que l’État et les autorités bruxelloises n’acceptent pas que de personnes puissent manifester, clamer leurs revendications sans passer par le processus d’ « autorisation » et de « négociation ». C’est à dire se voir imposer un parcours, un service d’ordre, des combis ouvrant et fermant le cortège.

      Nous estimons que nous devrions avoir le droit de nous approprier la rue sans avoir à négocier. 
Nous estimons avoir le droit d’être présent-e-s en nombre dans la rue.
Notre liberté ne se négocie pas, elle s’impose.

      La Police nous sort un discours faussement poli en amont en nous disant qu’elle veut « simplement co-organiser l’événement » avec nous. 
Nous trouvons extrêmement paradoxal de demander une autorisation à un État patriarcal pour pouvoir manifester contre lui. 
Nous refusons donc de négocier avec la milice répressive et liberticide de ce même État. De plus, la Police, les autorités, sont un combo concentré de toutes les oppressions contre lesquelles nous nous battons, sexiste, transphobe, raciste, homophobe, le pouvoir par l’autorité, pour n’en citer que quelques unes.

      Nous ne sommes pas à notre coup d’essai dans les milieux anar ou de gauche radicale, nous remarquons que de plus en plus les manifestations qui s’opposent à demander une autorisation à Bruxelles se font quasi systématiquement réprimées. Une semaine avant la RTN, la manifestation pour le droit au logement s’est faite avortée par un arsenal policier encore une fois complètement démesuré. Même schéma pour d’autres manifestations contre la loi anti-squat il y a plusieurs mois, à la dernière Reclaim the Night, à plusieurs rassemblement place Bara ou à la Bourse.

      Les autorités veulent nous décourager et nous affaiblir, elles veulent nous dissuader d’organiser de nouvelles manifestations ou rassemblements, elles veulent nous museler. Pour pouvoir atteindre cet idéal de ville ordonnée, où les personnes peuvent crier leur colère mais seulement un dimanche tous les six mois à 14h Gare du Nord, où nous pouvons habiter dans des bâtiments vides mais seulement légalement en passant par des gestionnaires, en faisant des beaux petits dossiers qui prennent des mois, en ayant plusieurs milliers d’euros sur un compte en banque.

      Il est important que rien ne cesse, que des groupes autonomes et autogérés continuent à fleurir pour encore organiser des événements non-négociés et non-négociables. 
Pour s’organiser ensemble face à l’Etat et ses clones. 
Nous continuerons à foutre notre délicieux désordre au milieux de tous ces carcans. 
Nous continuerons à désobéir, à se rassembler pour nos luttes, 
Contre tout Etat et contre tout pouvoir.

      Récupère la nuit, elle t’appartient !
      En 1976, Françoise d’Eaubonne écrivait : « il est un fait certain que c’est plutôt paradoxal et fâcheux d’aller chercher la justice-de-papa contre le viol-de-papa dans cette société de classe ET de sexe où règne papa ». Il en est de même pour les manifestations et rassemblements. La police que nous avions en face de nous hier soir n’a eu de cesse de nous rappeler le caractère « non autorisé » de la RTN. Comme si ce fait nous faisait instantanément plonger dans un Marvel où gentils policiers se sentent droit-e-s dans leurs bottes pour nasser, étouffer et embarquer de dangereux-ses et méchant-e-s manifestant-e-s. Mais les batmans se cachent. Nous avons marché exactement 300 mètres à une petite centaine de personnes avant que les robocops ne débarquent de part et d’autres de la rue Sainte-Catherine. L’année passée c’était les camionnettes qui tentaient de faire barrage aux regards curieux ou solidaires, cette année la police était équipée de barrières de chantier. « Couvrez cette rage que je ne saurais voir » voulait dire Molière. La répression opère partout avec un message similaire : ne vous renseignez pas, ne vous politisez pas, ne vous mobilisez pas, ne vous défendez pas…. la police et l’armée sont là, dans vos rues et dans vos vies pour mieux vous protéger chers enfants…. vous protéger de qui ? Mais de vous-même, quelle question !

      Seul papa-le-bourgemestre-de-la-ville-de-Bruxelles peut décider de quand tu sors, avec qui tu sors et comment tu sors. « Fallait mieux rester à la maison ! », lancent les policiers. Zont encore tout compris…

      C’en est tellement classique qu’on en vient à se poser la question de l’intérêt des témoignages. Ça peut être le REFUS de NORMALISER ces pratiques répressives et liberticides. La conviction que l’avenir dépend aussi des traces qu’on aura pu laisser. Comme le mot « Azâdi » (liberté) qui trône dans une des cellules collectives des casernes d’Etterbeek et qui donnera du courage à chaque personne qui se verra passer par là.

      Dans la loi, seules les manifestations « à caractère revendicatif » doivent faire l’objet d’une demande d’autorisation au préalable. Il n’y a pas plus évident comme moyen de contrôle de toutes formes de contestations. La Reclaim the night a comme particularité que son objet est de pouvoir se réapproprier l’espace public en tant que personnes exclues de cet espace ce qui rend d’autant plus aberrant de devoir demander une autorisation. Mais la contradiction peut s’étendre à tous les rassemblements.

      L’état actuel des choses est tel que si on veut faire entendre le maximum de nos voix, favoriser la participation d’un maximum de personnes à la redéfinition d’une société juste et égalitaire, il est difficilement possible d’échapper à ces demandes d’autorisation parce que la répression policière est imprévisible et dangereuse. Les rares moments où il est décidé de faire l’impasse sur le contrôle policier sont donc cruciaux.

      Soyons encore plus nombreux-ses la prochaine fois ! Et soyons surtout ponctuel-le-s.

      Merci à toutes les personnes qui étaient là en soutien. On vous a entendues derrière les barrières, on vous a vues depuis les vitres des fourgonnettes, on a reçu vos messages et sms. Ça devrait être comme ça partout et tout le temps !

      Procédure de fichage militant (pour avertir hein, pas pour faire peur ! On a plein de chansons et de super stratégies pour se booster jusqu’au bout) : 
 nasse 
 on est extrait-e-s un-e à un-e par la police et colçonné-e-s 
 embarqué-e-s dans une fourgonnette où on te demande une première fois ton identité 
 débarqué-e-s aux casernes d’Etterbeek et photographié-e-s avant d’être mis-es en cellule pendant 2h 
 sorti-e-s à condition de donner son identité 
 réembarqué-e-s et déposé-e-s à différents endroits de Bruxelles pour éviter nouveau rassemblement 
 pour les personnes qui ont refusé de donner leur identité, embarquement vers l’Amigo. 
 Là, on te menace : si tu ne donnes pas ton identité, on entame une procédure pour séjour illégal avec relevé s’emprunte et détention de 24h.

      Aucune présence de personnes sans papier pendant la RTN
      Témoignage – Reclaim the night
      CW : Propos sexistes (menaces de viols) et transphobes
      M., présente de le groupe de manifestant-e-s arrêté-e-s :
      « Je voulais juste partager quelques insultes sexistes et transphobes que j’ai entendues hier. Quand on était plus qu’une dizaine dans la nasse, ils disaient « je pense que maintenant on est assez de policiers pour qu’il y ait une fille pour chacun », ou alors ils arrêtaient pas de demander a une personne si c’était une fille ou un garçon en se demandant mutuellement « t’arrives à dire toi ? Parce que moi je sais vraiment pas » en rigolant, pour se moquer et l’humilier. »

    • La police invite les manifestantes féministes à porter plainte après l’action de samedi RTBF - Belga - 18h39 ce Mardi 2 Avril 2018
      https://www.rtbf.be/info/regions/detail_la-police-invite-les-manifestantes-feministes-a-porter-plainte-apres-l-a

      « Si les participantes à la manifestation ’Reclaim the Night’ se plaignent de l’action policière, nous les invitons à se faire connaître », a indiqué lundi le porte-parole de la police Bruxelles-Capitale/Ixelles, Olivier Slosse en réaction aux accusations des manifestantes qui affirment avoir été traitées violemment et brutalement samedi soir. Celles-ci peuvent introduire une plainte directement auprès de la police bruxelloise ou au Comité P. « L’intervention policière a été filmée », a ajouté le porte-parole.

      Une septantaine de personnes ont été interpellées samedi soir, dans le centre de Bruxelles, lors du rassemblement féministe. La précédente édition, en 2017, avait été émaillée d’incidents avec la police, ce qui explique que la manifestation n’avait pas reçu d’autorisation cette année.

      « Aucune demande pour une manifestation n’a été introduite », a expliqué le commissaire Slosse. « Quelques jours avant l’événement, nous avons tenté d’entrer en contact avec les organisateurs qui n’ont pas réagi. Samedi soir également, nous avons essayé de discuter avec eux, en vain. Etant donné qu’il y avait eu des incidents l’an dernier, il a été décidé de bloquer la manifestation et d’interpeller administrativement les personnes présentes. »

      Déploiement de barrières
      La police a fait usage de barrières Heras, comme l’avaient expliqué les militantes. _ « Elles ont en effet été déployées pour protéger les manifestantes et éviter un éventuel malaise parmi les badauds », a souligné M. Slosse. « Toute l’opération a été filmée par une de nos équipes spéciales, tant sur place, que lors de l’intervention et à la caserne. Les images pourront être utilisées pour enquêter sur les plaintes. » _

      #foutage_de_gueule , normal, c’est la #police #belge

  • Country Report : Italy

    The updated AIDA Country Report on Italy documents developments in the asylum procedure, reception conditions, detention of asylum seekers and content of international protection throughout 2017.
    The year 2017 has been chatacterised by media, political and judicial crackdown on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) saving lives at sea, and by the implementation of cooperation agreements with African countries such as Libya, while barriers to access to the territory have also been witnessed at the northern borders of the country, against the backdrop of increasing arrivals from Austria.
    Severe obstacles continue to be reported with regard to access to the asylum procedure in Italy. Several Police Headquarters (Questure) in cities such as Naples, Rome, Bari and Foggia have set specific days for seeking asylum and limited the number of people allowed to seek asylum on a given day, while others have imposed barriers on specific nationalities. In Rome and Bari, nationals of certain countries without a valid passport were prevented from applying for asylum. In other cases, Questure in areas such as Milan, Rome, Naples, Pordenone or Ventimiglia have denied access to asylum to persons without a registered domicile, contrary to the law. Obstacles have also been reported with regard to the lodging of applications, with several Questure such as Milan or Potenza unlawfully refusing to complete the lodging of applications for applicants which they deem not to be in need of protection.
    Since December 2017, Italy has established a specific Dublin procedure in Questure in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region bordering Austria and Slovenia, with support from EASO. According to that procedure, as soon as a Eurodac ‘hit’ is recorded, Questure move the lodging appointment to a later date and notify a Dublin transfer decision to the persons concerned prior to that date. Applicants are therefore subject to a Dublin transfer before having lodged their application, received information on the procedure or had an interview.
    Despite a continuing increase in the capacity of the SPRAR system, which currently counts over 35,000 funded places, the vast majority of asylum seekers are accommodated in temporary reception centres (CAS). CAS hosted around 80% of the population at the end of 2017. In Milan, for example, the ratio of SPRAR to CAS is 1:10.
    Destitution remains a risk of asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection. At least 10,000 persons are excluded from the reception system. Informal settlements with limited or no access to essential services are spread across the entire national territory.
    Throughout 2017, both due to the problems related to age assessment and to the unavailability of places in dedicated shelters, there have been cases of unaccompanied children accommodated in adults’ reception centres, or not accommodated at all. Several appeals have been lodged to the European Court of Human Rights against inappropriate accommodation conditions for unaccompanied children.
    Five pre-removal centres (CPR) are currently operational, while a new hotspot has been opened in Messina. However, substandard conditions continue to be reported by different authorities visiting detention facilities, namely the hotspots of Lampedusa and Taranto and the CPR of Caltanissetta and Ponte Galeria.
    The hotspots of Lampedusa and Taranto have been temporarily been closed as of March 2018.

    http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/report-download/aida_it_2017update.pdf
    #Italie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #procédure_d'asile #hotspots #Dublin #frontières #procédure_accélérée #vulnérabilité #pays_sûr #relocalisation #hébergement #logement #éducation #travail #santé #rétention #détention_administrative #naturalisation #liberté_de_mouvement #rapport #refoulement #push-back

    Intéressant, lien avec la #frontière_sud-alpine (#Côme #Milan #Vintimille) :

    Particularly as regards Taranto , as reported by the Senate , among the 14,576 people transiting through the hotspot from March to October 2016 , only 5,048 came from disembarkations while the majority (9,528 ) were traced on Italian territory, mainly at border places in Ventimiglia , Como and Milan , and forcibly taken to Taranto to be identified. Some o f them were asylum seekers accommodated in reception centre in the place they were apprehended and who, after being again identified, were just released out of the hotspot without any ticket or money to go back to their reception centres.

    v. aussi la carte de #Gwendoline_Bauquis, produite dans le cadre de son mémoire de master : « Géopolitique d’une crise de la frontière – Entre #Côme et #Chiasso, le système européen d’asile mis à l’épreuve » (2017)


    #cartographie #visualisation

  • Les prisons japonaises accueillent plein de dames âgées qui ont souvent tout fait pour arriver là
    http://mashable.france24.com/monde/20180319-prisons-japon-femmes-personnes-agees-pauvres

    ...près d’une femme sur cinq dans les prisons japonaises a 65 ans ou plus. Ces criminelles ont souvent commis des délits mineurs pour échapper à la pauvreté et à la solitude en passant par la case prison. Certaines sont même des récidivistes. 9 femmes senior sur 10 ont ainsi été condamnées pour vol à l’étalage.

    « La prison est une oasis pour moi – un lieu de détente et de confort »
    Une prisonnière de 78 ans qui se présente sous le nom de Madame O a volé des boissons énergétiques, du café, du thé, des boulettes de riz et une mangue. Elle explique à Bloomberg : « La prison est une oasis pour moi – un lieu de détente et de confort. Je ne suis pas libre ici, mais je n’ai à me soucier de rien, non plus. Il y a plein de gens avec qui parler. On nous fournit des repas nourrissants trois fois par jour. »

    Le situation sociale des femmes âgées au Japon est particulièrement inquiétante. 25 % d’entre elles vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté, contre « seulement » 10 % des hommes, écrit Quartz. La retraite des femmes célibataires ne leur permet pas de vivre au-dessus de ce seuil. Et ces femmes disent souvent n’avoir personne à qui se confier.

    Face à cette situation, le gouvernement japonais cherche des solutions. Il construit des prisons pensées pour les personnes âgées et a lancé un programme de soutien social aux seniors récidivistes. Il met également en place des politiques visant à augmenter le personnel soignant. Mais il y a un décalage notable entre le nombre grandissant de personnes âgées et le manque pregnant d’encadrement spécialisé acceptant ce contact permanent avec la vieillesse.

  • Rapport | Défendre les droits dans le contexte de la rétention et de l’expulsion des étrangers
    https://asile.ch/2018/03/11/rapport-defendre-droits-contexte-de-retention-de-lexpulsion-etrangers

    Au cours des dernières années, la pression politique exercée pour détenir et expulser les migrants a été accompagnée d’un développement jurisprudentiel important portant sur la légalité des procédures de renvoi forcé et la détention. Le séminaire PICUM et EuropeanMigrationLaw.eu « Défendre les droits des migrants dans le contexte de la détention et de l’expulsion des étrangers », […]

  • Enfants en rétention : le degré zéro de l’humanité

    Le gouvernement français a franchi un nouveau cap, avec un enfermement des enfants en rétention qui a pris ces dernières semaines des proportions démesurées. Cette pratique traumatisante est marquée par des violations de plus en plus graves des droits fondamentaux, au mépris de l’intérêt supérieur des enfants.

    https://www.lacimade.org/presse/enfants-retention-degre-zero-de-lhumanite
    #enfants #enfance #mineurs #détention_administrative #rétention #chiffres #statistiques #France #asile #migrations #réfugiés

    • Dans ce contexte de banalisation d’une violence organisée par l’État, certains magistrats de la cour d’appel de Paris ont prononcé des décisions stupéfiantes, considérant qu’ils n’avaient pas à appliquer la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme, qui protège notamment le droit au respect de la vie familiale et les risques de traitements inhumains et dégradants.

      Apparemment, cet autre article parle de cette décision :
      https://www.lacimade.org/tour-de-passe-passe-de-cour-dappel-de-paris
      On est dans une situation d’impunité totale pour ces relais de la politique de déportation raciale opérée par Macron au mépris du droit qui n’est pourtant déjà pas clément vis à vis des étrangers.

  • Separating children and parents at the border is cruel and unnecessary

    The Trump administration has shown that it’s willing — eager, actually — to go to great lengths to limit illegal immigration into the United States, from building a multi-billion-dollar border wall with Mexico to escalated roundups that grab those living here without permission even if they have no criminal record and are longtime, productive members of their communities. Now the administration’s cold-hearted approach to enforcement has crossed the line into abject inhumanity: the forced separation of children from parents as they fight for legal permission to remain in the country.

    How widespread is the practice? That’s unclear. The Department of Homeland Security declined comment because it is being sued over the practice. It ignored a request for statistics on how many children it has separated from their parents, an unsurprising lack of transparency from an administration that faces an unprecedented number of lawsuits over its failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for government — read: public — records. But immigrant rights activists say they have noticed a jump, and in December, a coalition of groups filed a complaint with Homeland Security over the practice.
    When parents and children cross the border and tell border patrol agents they would like to apply for asylum, they often are taken into custody while their request is considered. Under the Obama administration, the families were usually released to the care of a relative or organization, or held in a family detention center. But under President Trump, the parents — usually mothers traveling without their spouses — who sneak across the border then turn themselves in are increasing being charged with the misdemeanor crime of entering the country illegally, advocates say. And since that is a criminal charge, not a civil violation of immigration codes, the children are spirited away to a youth detention center with no explanation. Sometimes, parents and children are inexplicably separated even when no charges are lodged. Activists believe the government is splitting families to send a message of deterrence: Dare to seek asylum at the border and we’ll take your child.

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-immigrants-border-asylum-ice-201802305-story.html
    #frontières #unité_familiale #séparation #enfants #enfance #parents #asile #migrations #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis #détention_administrative #rétention #dissuasion

    • Familias rotas, familias vaciadas

      Es delgada y pequeña. No rebasa el 1.60. La habitación en la que duerme —en el segundo piso del albergue para veteranos deportados que creó Héctor Barajas— tiene una cama con un oso de peluche que ella misma confeccionó y una mesa para cuatro personas. La sonrisa que a veces asoma en su rostro nunca llega a sus ojos, oscuros y con marcadas ojeras. Se llama Yolanda Varona y tiene prohibido, de por vida, entrar a Estados Unidos, el país donde trabajó 16 años y donde viven sus dos hijos y tres nietos.


      https://www.revistadelauniversidad.mx/articles/d2c0ac01-e2e8-464f-9d4e-266920f634fc/familias-rotas-familias-vaciadas

    • Taking Migrant Children From Parents Is Illegal, U.N. Tells U.S.

      The Trump administration’s practice of separating children from migrant families entering the United States violates their rights and international law, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday, urging an immediate halt to the practice.

      The administration angrily rejected what it called an ignorant attack by the United Nations human rights office and accused the global organization of hypocrisy.

      The human rights office said it appeared that, as The New York Times revealed in April, United States authorities had separated several hundred children, including toddlers, from their parents or others claiming to be their family members, under a policy of criminally prosecuting undocumented people crossing the border.

      That practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, told reporters.

      Last month, the Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, saying that it would significantly increase criminal prosecutions of migrants. Officials acknowledged that putting more adults in jail would mean separating more children from their families.

      “The U.S. should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalizing what should at most be an administrative offense — that of irregular entry or stay in the U.S.,” Ms. Shamdasani said.

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      The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, clearly showed American irritation with the accusation in a statement released a few hours later.

      “Once again, the United Nations shows its hypocrisy by calling out the United States while it ignores the reprehensible human rights records of several members of its own Human Rights Council,” Ms. Haley said. “While the High Commissioner’s office ignorantly attacks the United States with words, the United States leads the world with its actions, like providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation.”

      Without addressing the specifics of the accusation, Ms. Haley said: “Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”
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      The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants — including those in families that are split apart — enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry. It has also said that some adults falsely claim to be the parents of accompanying children, a genuine problem, and that it has to sort out their claims.

      On Twitter, President Trump has appeared to agree that breaking up families was wrong, but blamed Democrats for the approach, saying that their “bad legislation” had caused it. In fact, no law requires separating children from families, and the practice was put in place by his administration just months ago.

      The Times found in April that over six months, about 700 children had been taken from people claiming to be their parents.

      The American Civil Liberties Union says that since then, the pace of separations has accelerated sharply. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the group’s immigrant rights project, said that in the past five weeks, close to 1,000 children may have been taken from their families.

      Last year, as Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly raised the idea of separating children from their families when they entered the country as a way to deter movement across the Mexican border.

      Homeland Security officials have since denied that they separate families as part of a policy of deterrence, but have also faced sharp criticism from President Trump for failing to do more to curb the numbers of migrants crossing the border.

      For the United Nations, it was a matter of great concern that in the United States “migration control appears to have been prioritized over the effective care and protection of migrant children,” Ms. Shamdasani said.

      The United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she noted, but the practice of separating and detaining children breached its obligations under other international human rights conventions it has joined.

      “Children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status. Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation,” she said, calling on the authorities to adopt noncustodial alternatives.

      The A.C.L.U. has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, calling for a halt to the practice and for reunification of families.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/us-un-migrant-children-families.html

    • U.S. policy of separating refugees from children is illegal, horrific

      Somewhere in #Texas, a 3-year-old is crying into her pillow. She left all her toys behind when she fled Guatemala. And on this day the U.S. government took her mother away.

      When we read about the U.S. administration’s new policy of trying to stop people from crossing its borders by taking away their children, we too had trouble sleeping.


      https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/06/05/us-policy-of-separating-refugees-from-children-is-illegal-horrific.html

    • What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated ?

      An expert on helping parents navigate the asylum process describes what she’s seeing on the ground.

      Everyone involved in U.S. immigration along the border has a unique perspective on the new “zero tolerance” policies—most notably, the increasing number of migrant parents who are separated from their children. Some workers are charged with taking the children away from their parents and sending them into the care of Health and Human Services. Some are contracted to find housing for the children and get them food. Some volunteers try to help the kids navigate the system. Some, like Anne Chandler, assist the parents. As executive director of the Houston office of the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, which focuses on helping immigrant women and children, she has been traveling to the border and to detention centers, listening to the parents’ stories. We asked her to talk with us about what she has been hearing in recent weeks.

      This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

      Texas Monthly: First, can you give us an overview of your organization?

      Anne Chandler: We run the Children’s Border Project, and we work with hundreds of kids that have been released from ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] care. We are not a legal service provider that does work when they’re in the shelters. To date, most of our work with that issue of family separation has been working with the parents in the days when they are being separated: when they’re in the federal courthouse being convicted; partnering with the federal public defenders; and then in the adult detention center, as they have no idea how to communicate or speak to their children or get them back before being deported.

      TM: Can you take me through what you’ve been seeing?

      AC: The short of it is, we will take sample sizes of numbers and individuals we’re seeing that are being prosecuted for criminal entry. The majority of those are free to return to the home country. Vast majority. We can’t quite know exactly because our sample size is between one hundred and two hundred individuals. But 90 percent of those who are being convicted are having their children separated from them. The 10 percent that aren’t are some mothers who are going with their children to the detention centers in Karnes and Dilley. But, for the most part, the ones that I’ve been working with are the ones that are actually being prosecuted for criminal entry, which is a pretty new thing for our country—to take first-time asylum seekers who are here seeking safe refuge, to turn around and charge them with a criminal offense. Those parents are finding themselves in adult detention centers and in a process known as expedited removal, where many are being deported. And their children, on the other hand, are put in a completely different legal structure. They are categorized as unaccompanied children and thus are being put in place in a federal agency not with the Department of Homeland Security but with Health and Human Services. And Health and Human Services has this complicated structure in place where they’re not viewed as a long-term foster care system—that’s for very limited numbers—but their general mandate is to safeguard these children in temporary shelters and then find family members with whom they can be placed. So they start with parents, and then they go to grandparents, and then they go to other immediate family members, and then they go to acquaintances, people who’ve known the children, and they’re in that system, but they can’t be released to their parents because their parents are behind bars. And we may see more parents that get out of jail because they pass a “credible fear” interview, which is the screening done by the asylum office to see who should be deported quickly, within days or weeks of arrival, and who should stay here and have an opportunity to present their asylum case before an immigration judge of the Department of Justice. So we have a lot of individuals who are in that credible fear process right now, but in Houston, once you have a credible fear interview (which will sometimes take two to three weeks to even set up), those results aren’t coming out for four to six weeks. Meanwhile, these parents are just kind of languishing in these detention centers because of the zero-tolerance policy. There’s no individual adjudication of whether the parents should be put on some form of alternative detention program so that they can be in a position to be reunited with their kid.

      TM: So, just so I make sure I understand: the parents come in and say, “We’re persecuted” or give some reason for asylum. They come in. And then their child or children are taken away and they’re in lockup for at least six weeks away from the kids and often don’t know where the kids are. Is that what’s happening under zero tolerance?

      AC: So the idea of zero tolerance under the stated policy is that we don’t care why you’re afraid. We don’t care if it’s religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you’re going to have your children taken away from you. That’s the policy. They’re not 100 percent able to implement that because of a lot of reasons, including just having enough judges on the border. And bed space. There’s a big logistical problem because this is a new policy. So the way they get to that policy of taking the kids away and keeping the adults in detention centers and the kids in a different federal facility is based on the legal rationale that we’re going to convict you, and since we’re going to convict you, you’re going to be in the custody of the U.S. Marshals, and when that happens, we’re taking your kid away. So they’re not able to convict everybody of illegal entry right now just because there aren’t enough judges on the border right now to hear the number of cases that come over, and then they say if you have religious persecution or political persecution or persecution on something that our asylum definition recognizes, you can fight that case behind bars at an immigration detention center. And those cases take two, three, four, five, six months. And what happens to your child isn’t really our concern. That is, you have made the choice to bring your child over illegally. And this is what’s going to happen.

      TM: Even if they crossed at a legal entry point?

      AC: Very few people come to the bridge. Border Patrol is saying the bridge is closed. When I was last out in McAllen, people were stacked on the bridge, sleeping there for three, four, ten nights. They’ve now cleared those individuals from sleeping on the bridge, but there are hundreds of accounts of asylum seekers, when they go to the bridge, who are told, “I’m sorry, we’re full today. We can’t process your case.” So the families go illegally on a raft—I don’t want to say illegally; they cross without a visa on a raft. Many of them then look for Border Patrol to turn themselves in, because they know they’re going to ask for asylum. And under this government theory—you know, in the past, we’ve had international treaties, right? Statutes which codified the right of asylum seekers to ask for asylum. Right? Article 31 of the Refugee Convention clearly says that it is improper for any state to use criminal laws that could deter asylum seekers as long as that asylum seeker is asking for asylum within a reasonable amount of time. But our administration is kind of ignoring this longstanding international and national jurisprudence of basic beliefs to make this distinction that, if you come to a bridge, we’re not going to prosecute you, but if you come over the river and then find immigration or are caught by immigration, we’re prosecuting you.

      TM: So if you cross any other way besides the bridge, we’re prosecuting you. But . . . you can’t cross the bridge.

      AC: That’s right. I’ve talked to tons of people. There are organizations like Al Otro Lado that document border turn-backs. And there’s an effort to accompany asylum seekers so that Customs and Border Patrol can’t say, “We’re closed.” Everybody we’ve talked to who’s been prosecuted or separated has crossed the river without a visa.

      TM: You said you were down there recently?

      AC: Monday, June 4.

      TM: What was happening on the bridge at that point?

      AC: I talked to a lot of people who were there Saturdays and Sundays, a lot of church groups that are going, bringing those individuals umbrellas because they were in the sun. It’s morning shade, and then the sun—you know, it’s like 100 degrees on the cement. It’s really, really hot. So there were groups bringing diapers and water bottles and umbrellas and electric fans, and now everyone’s freaked out because they’re gone! What did they do with them? Did they process them all? Yet we know they’re saying you’re turned back. When I was in McAllen, the individuals that day who visited people on the bridge had been there four days. We’re talking infants; there were people breastfeeding on the bridge.

      TM: Are the infants taken as well?

      AC: Every border zone is different. We definitely saw a pattern in McAllen. We talked to 63 parents who had lost their children that day in the court. Of those, the children seemed to be all five and older. What we know from the shelters and working with people is that, yes, there are kids that are very young, that are breastfeeding babies and under three in the shelters, separated from their parents. But I’m just saying, in my experience, all those kids and all the parents’ stories were five and up.

      TM: Can you talk about how you’ve seen the process change over the past few months?

      AC: The zero-tolerance policy really started with Jeff Sessions’s announcement in May. One could argue that this was the original policy that we started seeing in the executive orders. One was called “border security and immigration enforcement.” And a lot of the principles underlying zero tolerance are found here. The idea is that we’re going to prosecute people.

      TM: And the policy of separating kids from parents went into effect when?

      AC: They would articulate it in various ways with different officials, but as immigration attorneys, starting in October, were like, “Oh my goodness. They are telling us these are all criminal lawbreakers and they’re going to have their children taken away.” We didn’t know what it would mean. And so we saw about six hundred children who were taken away from October to May, then we saw an explosion of the numbers in May. It ramped up. The Office of Refugee Resettlement taking in all these kids says that they are our children, that they are unaccompanied. It’s a fabrication. They’re not unaccompanied children. They are children that came with their parents, and the idea that we’re creating this crisis—it’s a manufactured crisis where we’re going to let children suffer to somehow allow this draconian approach with families seeking shelter and safe refuge.

      TM: So what is the process for separation?

      AC: There is no one process. Judging from the mothers and fathers I’ve spoken to and those my staff has spoken to, there are several different processes. Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification. In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.” Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said, “Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. So the father just let the child go. So it’s a lot of variations. But sometimes deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may look like. We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th, and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of them had direct information from immigration on where their child was located. The one number they were given by some government official from the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know there are more parents who are being deported without their child, without any process or information on how to get their child back.

      TM: And so it’s entirely possible that children will be left in the country without any relatives?

      AC: Could be, yeah.

      TM: And if the child is, say, five years old . . .?

      AC: The child is going through deportation proceedings, so the likelihood that that child is going to be deported is pretty high.

      TM: How do they know where to deport the child to, or who the parents are?

      AC: How does that child navigate their deportation case without their parent around?

      TM: Because a five-year-old doesn’t necessarily know his parents’ information.

      AC: In the shelters, they can’t even find the parents because the kids are just crying inconsolably. They often don’t know the full legal name of their parents or their date of birth. They’re not in a position to share a trauma story like what caused the migration. These kids and parents had no idea. None of the parents I talked to were expecting to be separated as they faced the process of asking for asylum.

      TM: I would think that there would be something in place where, when the child is taken, they’d be given a wristband or something with their information on it?

      AC: I think the Department of Homeland Security gives the kids an alien number. They also give the parents an alien number and probably have that information. The issue is that the Department of Homeland Security is not the one caring for the children. Jurisdiction of that child has moved over to Health and Human Services, and the Health and Human Services staff has to figure out, where is this parent? And that’s not easy. Sometimes the parents are deported. Kids are in New York and Miami, and we’ve got parents being sent to Tacoma, Washington, and California. Talk about a mess. And nobody has a right to an attorney here. These kids don’t get a paid advocate or an ad litem or a friend of the court. They don’t get a paid attorney to represent them. Some find that, because there are programs. But it’s not a right. It’s not universal.

      TM: What agency is in charge of physically separating the children and the adults?

      AC: The Department of Homeland Security. We saw the separation take place while they were in the care and custody of Customs and Border Protection. That’s where it was happening, at a center called the Ursula, which the immigrants called La Perrera, because it looked like a dog pound, a dog cage. It’s a chain-link fence area, long running areas that remind Central Americans of the way people treat dogs.

      TM: So the Department of Homeland Security does the separation and then they immediately pass the kids to HHS?

      AC: I don’t have a bird’s-eye view of this, besides interviewing parents. Parents don’t know. All they know is that the kid hasn’t come back to their little room in CBP. Right? We know from talking to advocates and attorneys who have access to the shelters that they think that these kids leave in buses to shelters run by the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement Department of Unaccompanied Children Services—which, on any given day there’s like three thousand kids in the Harlingen-Brownsville area. We know there are eight, soon to be nine, facilities in Houston. And they’re going to open up this place in Tornillo, along the border by El Paso. And they’re opening up places in Miami. They’re past capacity. This is a cyclical time, where rates of migration increase. So now you’re creating two populations. One is your traditional unaccompanied kids who are just coming because their life is at risk right now in El Salvador and Honduras and parts of Guatemala, and they come with incredible trauma, complex stories, and need a lot of resources, and so they navigate this immigration system. And now we have this new population, which is totally different: the young kids who don’t hold their stories and aren’t here to self-navigate the system and are crying out for their parents. There are attorneys that get money to go in and give rights presentations to let the teenagers know what they can ask for in court, what’s happening with their cases, and now the attorneys are having a hard time doing that because right next to them, in the other room, they’ve got kids crying and wailing, asking for their mom and dad. The attorneys can’t give these kids information. They’re just trying to learn grounding exercises.

      TM: Do you know if siblings are allowed to stay together?

      AC: We don’t know. I dealt with one father who knew that siblings were not at the same location from talking to his family member. He believes they’re separated. But I have no idea. Can’t answer that question.

      TM: Is there another nonprofit similar to yours that handles kids more than adults?

      AC: Yes: in Houston it’s Catholic Charities. We know in Houston they are going to open up shelters specific for the tender-age kids, which is defined as kids under twelve. And that’s going to be by Minute Maid Stadium. And that facility is also going to have some traditional demographic of pregnant teenagers. But it’s going to be a young kid—and young kids are, almost by definition, separated. Kids usually do not migrate on their own at that age.

      TM: That’s usually teens?

      AC: Teens. Population is thirteen to seventeen, with many more fifteen-, sixteen-, and seventeen-year-olds than thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. They’re riding on top of trains. You know, the journey is very dangerous. Usually that’s the age where the gangs start taking the girls and saying “you’re going to be my sex slave”–type of stuff. I’ve heard that it’s going to be run by a nonprofit. ORR does not hold the shelters directly. They contract with nonprofits whose job it is to provide essential food, mental health care, caseworkers to try to figure out who they’re going to be released to, and all those functions to nonprofits, and I think the nonprofit in charge of this one is Southwest Key.

      TM: So how long do the kids stay in the facility?

      AC: It used to be, on average, thirty days. But that’s going up now. There are many reasons for that: one, these facilities and ORR are not used to working with this demographic of young children. Two, DHS is sharing information with ORR on the background of those families that are taking these children, and we’ve seen raids where they’re going to where the children are and looking for individuals in those households who are undocumented. So there is reticence and fear of getting these children if there’s someone in the household who is not a citizen.

      TM: So if I’m understanding correctly, a relative can say, “Well, I can pick that kid up; that’s my niece.” She comes and picks up the child. And then DHS will follow them home? Is that what you’re saying?

      AC: No. The kid would go to the aunt’s house, but let’s just imagine that she is here on a visa, a student visa, but the aunt falls out of visa status and is undocumented and her information, her address, is at the top of DHS’s files. So we’ve seen this happen a lot: a month or two weeks after kids have been released, DHS goes to those foster homes and arrests people and puts people in jail and deports them.

      TM: And then I guess they start all over again trying to find a home for those kids?

      AC: Right.

      TM: What is explained to the kids about the proceedings, and who explains it to them?

      AC: The Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement goes through an organization called the Vera Institute of Justice that then contracts with nonprofit organizations who hire attorneys and other specialized bilingual staff to go into these shelters and give what they call legal orientation programs for children, and they do group orientation. Sometimes they speak to the kids individually and try to explain to them, “This is the process here; and you’re going to have to go see an immigration judge; and these are your rights before a judge; you won’t have an attorney for your case, but you can hire one. If you’re afraid to go back to your country, you have to tell the judge.” That type of stuff.

      TM: And if the child is five, and alone, doesn’t have older siblings or cousins—

      AC: Or three or four. They’re young in our Houston detention centers. And that’s where these attorneys are frustrated—they can’t be attorneys. How do they talk and try to console and communicate with a five-year-old who is just focused on “I want my mom or dad,” right?

      TM: Are the kids whose parents are applying for asylum processed differently from kids whose parents are not applying for asylum?

      AC: I don’t know. These are questions we ask DHS, but we don’t know the answers.

      TM: Why don’t you get an answer?

      AC: I don’t know. To me, if you’re going to justify this in some way under the law, the idea that these parents don’t have the ability to obtain very simple answers—what are my rights and when can I be reunited with my kid before I’m deported without them?—is horrible. And has to go far below anything we, as a civil society of law, should find acceptable. The fact that I, as an attorney specializing in this area, cannot go to a detention center and tell a mother or father what the legal procedure is for them to get their child or to reunite with their child, even if they want to go home?

      And my answer is, “I don’t think you can.” In my experience, they’re not releasing these children to the parents as they’re deported. To put a structure like that in place and the chaos in the system for “deterrence” and then carry out so much pain on the backs of some already incredibly traumatized mothers and fathers who have already experienced sometimes just horrific violence is unacceptable.

      https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/whats-really-happening-asylum-seeking-families-separated

      Mise en exergue d’un passage :

      The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.”

    • Why the US is separating migrant children from their parents

      US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has defended the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border with Mexico, a measure that has faced increasing criticism.

      The “zero-tolerance” policy he announced last month sees adults who try to cross the border, many planning to seek asylum, being placed in custody and facing criminal prosecution for illegal entry.

      As a result, hundreds of minors are now being housed in detention centres, and kept away from their parents.
      What is happening?

      Over a recent six-week period, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their parents after illegally crossing the border, figures released on Friday said.

      Mr Sessions said those entering the US irregularly would be criminally prosecuted, a change to a long-standing policy of charging most of those crossing for the first time with a misdemeanour offence.

      As the adults are being charged with a crime, the children that come with them are being separated and deemed unaccompanied minors.

      Advocates of separations point out that hundreds of children are taken from parents who commit crimes in the US on a daily basis.

      As such, they are placed in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services and sent to a relative, foster home or a shelter - officials at those places are said to be already running out of space to house them.

      In recent days, a former Walmart in Texas has been converted into a detention centre for immigrant children.

      Officials have also announced plans to erect tent cities to hold hundreds more children in the Texas desert where temperatures regularly reach 40C (105F).

      Local lawmaker Jose Rodriguez described the plan as “totally inhumane” and “outrageous”, adding: “It should be condemned by anyone who has a moral sense of responsibility.”

      US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials estimate that around 1,500 people are arrested each day for illegally crossing the border.

      In the first two weeks of the “zero-tolerance” new approach, 658 minors - including many babies and toddlers - were separated from the adults that came with them, according to the CBP.

      The practice, however, was apparently happening way before that, with reports saying more than 700 families had been affected between October and April.

      Not only the families crossing irregularly are being targeted, activists who work at the border say, but also those presenting themselves at a port of entry.

      “This is really extreme, it’s nothing like we have seen before,” said Michelle Brané, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a New York-based non-governmental organisation that is helping some of these people.

      In many of the cases, the families have already been reunited, after the parent was released from detention. However, there are reports of people being kept apart for weeks and even months.

      Family separations had been reported in previous administrations but campaigners say the numbers then were very small.
      Whose fault is it?

      Mr Trump has blamed Democrats for the policy, saying “we have to break up the families” because of a law that “Democrats gave us”.

      It is unclear what law he is referring to, but no law has been passed by the US Congress that mandates that migrant families be separated.

      Fact-checkers say that the only thing that has changed is the Justice Department’s decision to criminally prosecute parents for a first-time border crossing offence. Because their children are not charged with a crime, they are not permitted to be jailed together.

      Under a 1997 court decision known as the Flores settlement, children who come to the US alone are required to be released to their parents, an adult relative, or other caretaker.

      If those options are all exhausted, then the government must find the “least restrictive” setting for the child “without unnecessary delay”.

      The case initially applied to unaccompanied child arrivals, but a 2016 court decision expanded it to include children brought with their parents.

      According to the New York Times, the government has three options under the Flores settlement - release whole families together, pass a law to allow for families to be detained together, or break up families.

      It is worth noting that Mr Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly - who previously served as the head of Homeland Security - said in 2017 that the White House was considering separating families as a means of deterring parents from trying to cross the border.
      What do the figures show?

      The number of families trying to enter the US overland without documentation is on the rise. For the fourth consecutive month in May, there was an increase in the number of people caught crossing the border irregularly - in comparison with the same month of 2017, the rise was of 160%.

      “The trends are clear: this must end,” Mr Sessions said last month.

      It is not clear, though, if the tougher measures will stop the migrants. Most are fleeing violence and poverty in Central American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and staying, for many, could mean a death sentence.

      Human rights groups, campaigners and Democrats have sharply criticised the separations, warning of the long-term trauma on the children. Meanwhile the UN Human Rights Office called on the US to “immediately halt” them.

      But Mr Sessions has defended the measure, saying the separations were “not our goal” but it was not always possible to keep parents and children together.
      What is the policy in other countries?

      No other country has a policy of separating families who intend to seek asylum, activists say.

      In the European Union, which faced its worst migrant crisis in decades three years ago, most asylum seekers are held in reception centres while their requests are processed - under the bloc’s Dublin Regulation, people must be registered in their first country of arrival.

      Measures may vary in different member states but families are mostly kept together.

      Even in Australia, which has some of the world’s most restrictive policies, including the detention of asylum seekers who arrive by boat in controversial offshore centres, there is no policy to separate parents from their children upon arrival.

      Meanwhile, Canada has a deal with the US that allows it to deny asylum requests from those going north. It has tried to stem the number of migrants crossing outside border posts after a surge of Haitians and Nigerians coming from its neighbour. However, there were no reports of families being forcibly separated.

      “What the US is doing now, there is no equivalent,” said Michael Flynn, executive director of the Geneva-based Global Detention Project, a non-profit group focused on the rights of detained immigrants. “There’s nothing like this anywhere”.

      Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled legislation to keep families together but it is unlikely to win the support of its own party or the White House.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44503514?platform=hootsuite

    • Les récits de la détresse d’enfants de migrants créent l’émoi aux Etats-Unis

      Plus de 2000 enfants ont été séparés de leurs parents depuis l’entrée en vigueur en avril de la politique de « tolérance zéro » en matière d’immigration illégale aux Etats-Unis. Ces jours, plusieurs témoignages ont ému dans le pays.

      http://www.rts.ch/info/monde/9658887-les-recits-de-la-detresse-d-enfants-de-migrants-creent-l-emoi-aux-etats-

    • Etats-Unis : quand la sécurité des frontières rime avec torture d’enfants mineurs

      Au Texas, dans un centre de détention, un enregistrement audio d’enfants migrants âgés entre 4 à 10 ans pleurant et appelant leurs parents alors qu’ils viennent d’être séparés d’eux, vient de faire surface.

      Cet enregistrement a fuité de l’intérieur, remis à l’avocate Jennifer Harbury qui l’a transféré au média d’investigation américain ProPublica. L’enregistrement a été placé sur les images filmées dans ce centre. Il soulève l’indignation des américains et du monde entier. Elles sont une torture pour nous, spectateurs impuissants de la barbarie d’un homme, Donald Trump et de son administration.

      Le rythme des séparations s’est beaucoup accéléré depuis début mai, lorsque le ministre de la Justice Jeff Sessions a annoncé que tous les migrants passant illégalement la frontière seraient arrêtés, qu’ils soient accompagnés de mineurs ou pas. Du 5 mai au 9 juin 2018 quelque 2’342 enfants ont été séparés de leurs parents placés en détention, accusés d’avoir traversé illégalement la frontière. C’est le résultat d’une politique sécuritaire dite de “tolérance zéro” qui criminalise ces entrées même lorsqu’elles sont justifiées par le dépôt d’une demande d’asile aux Etats-Unis. Un protocol empêche la détention d’enfants avec leurs parents. Ils sont alors placés dans des centres fermés qui ressemblent tout autant à des prisons adaptées.

      https://blogs.letemps.ch/jasmine-caye/2018/06/19/etats-unis-quand-la-securite-des-frontieres-rime-avec-torture-denfants

    • Aux États-Unis, le traumatisme durable des enfants migrants

      Trump a beau avoir mis fin à la séparation forcée des familles à la frontière, plus de 2 000 enfants migrants seraient encore éparpillés dans le pays. Le processus de regroupement des familles s’annonce long et douloureux.


      https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/aux-etats-unis-le-traumatisme-durable-des-enfants-migrants
      #caricature #dessin_de_presse

    • The Government Has Taken At Least 1,100 Children From Their Parents Since Family Separations Officially Ended

      “You can’t imagine the pain,” Dennis said. “If you’re not a dad, you don’t know what it’s like.” I reached Dennis by phone in a small town in the Copán Department of Honduras, where he lives with his wife and three children. For five months this year, the family was fractured across borders. Sonia, age 11, had been separated from Dennis after they crossed into the United States and turned themselves in to the Border Patrol to ask for asylum. Dennis was deported from Texas, and Sonia sent to a shelter in New York.

      The U.S. government is still taking children from their parents after they cross the border. Since the supposed end of family separation — in the summer of 2018, after a federal judge’s injunction and President Donald Trump’s executive order reversing the deeply controversial policy — more than 1,100 children have been taken from their parents, according to the government’s own data. There may be more, since that data has been plagued by bad record keeping and inconsistencies. The government alleges that separations now only happen when a parent has a criminal history or is unfit to care for a child, but an ongoing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that the current policy still violates the rights of children and families. Border Patrol agents, untrained in child welfare, make decisions that some parents are unfit to stay with their children based solely on brief interactions with them while they are held in custody.

      Dennis picks coffee during the harvest season and works other basic jobs when he can, but he struggles to put food on the table and pay for his kids’ school supplies. In April, unable to find steady work in the coffee fields and receiving regular threats from a creditor, he headed north, hoping to find safety and opportunity in the United States. “We were barely eating. I couldn’t give my kids a life,” Dennis told me. (He preferred that I only use first names for him and his family due to safety concerns.) Thinking that his two boys — ages 2 1/2 and 7 — were too young to travel, Dennis took Sonia and together they left Honduras. They trekked through Guatemala and Mexico by bus, train, and on foot. They were robbed once, terrified the whole way, and had to beg for food. They slept wherever they could — sometimes in the woods, along the tracks, or, when they could scrounge enough money together, in migrant flophouses.

      After about a month of travel, Dennis and Sonia crossed the Rio Grande in a small raft outside of McAllen, Texas, on the morning of May 17. They walked for hours before they turned themselves in to a Border Patrol agent and were taken to a processing center, where they were locked up in one of the freezing-cold temporary holding centers known as hieleras, or iceboxes. Only a few hours later, a Border Patrol agent took Dennis and Sonia and locked them in separate rooms. It was the last time he would see his daughter for five months.

      For the next 11 days, Dennis remained in the hielera, asking repeatedly to see his daughter. Border Patrol officers tried to get him to sign papers that were in English, which he couldn’t read. He refused. “You can’t see her,” a Border Patrol agent told him about his daughter. The agent said that she was fine, but wouldn’t tell him where she was. Border Patrol transferred Dennis to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Port Isabel, Texas. They told him that because of a previous deportation and a felony — a 10-year-old charge for using false work authorization papers — he was ineligible for asylum. For the next 30 days of his detention, he knew nothing of his daughter or her whereabouts. Finally, an agent called him over and told him that she was on the phone. The call was brief. They both cried. He told her to be strong. He told her that they were going to send him away. Two weeks later, without talking to his daughter again, he was deported back to Honduras. “I’m a man, but I cried. I cried,” he told me. “Oh, it was so hard.”

      Sonia was in New York in an Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, shelter, where she was living with a number of other children. In Honduras, after Dennis’s deportation, the rest of the family waited in agony for nearly 5 months, until October 9, when Sonia was released and then flown home. “My wife,” Dennis said, “she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. You can’t imagine the suffering. And, don’t forget,” he reminded me, “she had two other kids to raise.”

      In 2018, much of the world looked on aghast as U.S. immigration agents separated thousands of children from their parents in an unprecedented anti-immigrant crackdown. In one notorious instance captured on audio, Border Patrol agents laughed and joked at desperate children crying for their parents. The separations, part of a series of policy changes to limit total immigration and effectively shutter refugee and asylum programs, stemmed from the so-called zero-tolerance policy that began in El Paso in 2017 and was rolled out border-wide in the spring of 2018. The administration had announced that it would seek to prosecute all people who illegally crossed the border (despite the fact that, according to U.S. law, it is not illegal for an asylum-seeker to cross the border), but it later emerged that the government had specifically targeted families. A strict zero tolerance policy — prosecuting every individual who was apprehended — was always beyond capacity. The focus on families was part of a distinct effort by the Department of Homeland Security and the White House to try and dissuade — by subjecting parents and children to the terror of separation — more people from coming to the United States.

      After widespread uproar and international condemnation, Trump issued an executive order to halt the separations on June 20, 2018. Six days later, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued an injunction, demanding the reunification of parents with their children within 30 days. For children under the age of 5, the deadline was 14 days. For some, however, it was too late. Parents had already lost custody, been deported, or even lost track of their children. Even for those who were reunified, trauma had set in. In 2018, the number of publicly known separations was 2,800. In fact, as the government revealed this October after pressure from the ACLU lawsuit, that original count was over 1,500 children short. Furthermore, the government has admitted that more than 1,100 additional families have been separated since the executive order and injunction — bringing the total number of children impacted to at least 5,446. That number may still be an undercount and will continue to rise if immigration officials’ current practices continue.

      The grounds for the ongoing separations — the 1,100 new cases — stem from a carve-out in Sabraw’s injunction: that children should not be separated “absent a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.” That language, the ACLU and others allege in an ongoing lawsuit, is being interpreted too broadly by the government, resulting in unwarranted separations. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who has been litigating against the government on behalf of a class of separated families, called the ongoing separation policy “as shocking as it is unlawful.”

      The reason that Dennis and Sonia were separated, for example, goes back to 2008, when Dennis’s wife was pregnant with Sonia, and Dennis came to the U.S. to find work and support his family. He made it to Minnesota and was loaned false papers to get a job, but he was quickly picked up and charged with forgery. He spent three months in a federal prison before being deported. Eleven years later, that conviction led to Sonia being taken from him. “You could call any child expert from anywhere in the country, and they would tell you that these parents are not a danger to the child,” Gelernt said in a September 20 hearing. “The government is simply saying, ‘We are going to take away children because the court said we could.’”

      In a brief filed to the court in July, ACLU attorneys pointed out cases in which children were taken from their parents for “the most minor or nonviolent criminal history.” The reasons for separation cited in those cases included marijuana possession convictions, a 27-year-old drug possession charge, and a charge of “malicious destruction of property value” over a total of $5. An 8-month-old was separated from his father for a “fictitious or fraudulent statement.” A mother who broke her leg at the border had her 5-year-old taken from her while she was in emergency surgery, and ORR did not release the child for 79 days.

      In an example of a dubious determination made by the Border Patrol of a father being “unfit” to care for his 1-year-old daughter, an agent separated the two because the father left his daughter in a wet diaper while she was sleeping. She had been sick and, after caring for her and taking her to the hospital on two separate occasions for a high fever, the father “wanted to let her sleep instead of waking her to change her diaper,” according to the ACLU brief. Nonetheless, a female guard took his daughter from his arms, criticized him for not changing the diaper, and even called him a bad father. The government’s own documents show that the father has no other criminal history.

      In another instance, a 3-year-old girl was separated from her father due to Customs and Border Protection’s allegation that he was not actually her parent. Although the father’s name does not appear on the child’s birth certificate, he presented other documentation showing parentage and requested a DNA test as proof. Officials ignored his request and separated the family. After an attorney intervened, the family took a DNA test and confirmed paternity. Meanwhile, the daughter was sexually abused while in ORR care and, according to the brief, “appears to be severely regressing in development.”

      CBP did not respond to a request for comment.

      The ACLU’s brief received some coverage this summer, but many of the most egregious stories it collected went unmentioned. Overall, even as the separations have continued, media attention has flagged. From a high of 2,000 stories a month in the summer of 2018, this fall has seen an average of only 50 to 100 stories a month that mention family separation, according to an analysis by Pamela Mejia, head of research at Berkeley Media Studies Group. Mejia told me that the issue had “reached a saturation point” for many people: “The overwhelming number of stories that generate outrage has made it harder to keep anything in the headlines.”

      At first, the child victims of the government’s actions were easy to empathize with. There was no “crime frame,” as Mejia put it, to explain away the children’s suffering, in contrast to the way that immigration is often covered. Whether denominating migrants as “illegals,” seeing them as “hordes” or “invaders,” or using a broad brush to associate them with crime or terrorism, politicians and the media alike often wield anti-immigrant or dehumanizing language when discussing immigration. Young children, however, are something different. The broad consensus in 2018 was that the family separation policy was an outrageous and unnecessary cruelty.

      But, despite the outrage, the policy continued and now there’s a sense of “futility that this is going to keep happening,” Mejia said. Gelernt likewise attributed the lack of ongoing coverage to “media burnout,” noting especially that there are more than 200 kids under the age of 5 who have been separated from their families. It’s hard to cover so many heartrending stories, Gelernt said. And now, simply, “People think it’s over.”

      But it’s not. Sabraw, the southern California judge who issued the injunction in 2018, is expected to rule soon on the ACLU’s challenge to the continued separations. But even if he again orders the government to reunify families, or narrows immigration officials’ latitude in carrying out separations, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the government can, or will, comply. CBP, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, has already proven negligent in keeping track of the separated children — calling families who had undergone separation, for example, “deleted family units.” Some children still remain unaccounted for.

      “At this point, no government official can plausibly claim that they are unaware of the damage these separations are doing to the children,” Gelernt told me, “yet they continue to do it.”

      In late November, back in Copán, Sonia graduated from sixth grade. One of her favorite things to do, Dennis told me, is to draw with her younger brothers. She is also teaching the older of the two boys to read, practicing his letters with him. She’ll go into seventh grade soon, but her father worries about her growing up in what he described as a gang-ridden town. Honduras has one of the highest incidence rates of violence against women in the world. He also doesn’t know how he’ll be able to pay for her high school. “I know it’s desperate,” he said, “but I’m thinking of heading north again. I can’t see how else to do it.”

      Sonia doesn’t talk much about her time separated from her family, but Dennis notices that she’s changed, and he and his wife are worried: “She told me she didn’t feel good. She was just crying at first [while in the ORR facility]; that’s all she did.” Now when she goes quiet sometimes, her parents wonder if she’s still affected by the trauma. As Dennis contemplated aloud another potential trip north in search of personal and financial security, he reflected, “I just ask that we have enough food to eat every day. I just want my family to be safe.”

      https://theintercept.com/2019/12/09/family-separation-policy-lawsuit

  • Slovenia Immigration Detention

    To cope with increased numbers of arriving asylum seekers, Slovenia has tightened its immigration controls, erected wire fencing along its borders, and introduced stringent new asylum legislation. The number of people detained for immigration-related reasons rose from 337 in 2014 to 2,338 in 2015.

    https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/europe/slovenia

    #rétention #détention_administrative #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Slovénie

    • US : Poor Medical Care, Deaths, in Immigrant Detention

      Poor medical treatment contributed to more than half the deaths reported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a 16-month period, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center said in a report released today.

      Based on the analysis of independent medical experts, the 72-page report, “Code Red: The Fatal Consequences of Dangerously Substandard Medical Care in Immigration Detention,” examines the 15 “Detainee Death Reviews” ICE released from December 2015 through April 2017. ICE has yet to publish reviews for one other death in that period. Eight of the 15 public death reviews show that inadequate medical care contributed or led to the person’s death. The physicians conducting the analysis also found evidence of substandard medical practices in all but one of the remaining reviews.

      “ICE has proven unable or unwilling to provide adequately for the health and safety of the people it detains,” said Clara Long, a senior US researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Trump administration’s efforts to drastically expand the already-bloated immigration detention system will only put more people at risk.”

      12 people died in immigration detention in fiscal year 2017, more than any year since 2009. Since March 2010, 74 people have died in immigration detention, but #ICE has released death reviews in full or in part in only 52 of the cases.

      Based on the death reviews, the groups prepared timelines of the symptoms shown by people who died in detention and the treatment they received from medical staff, along with medical experts’ commentary on the care documented by ICE and its deviations from common medical practice. The deaths detailed in the report include:

      Moises Tino-Lopez, 23, had two seizures within nine days, each observed by staff and reported to the nurses on duty in the Hall County Correctional Center in Nebraska. He was not evaluated by a physician or sent to the hospital after the first seizure. During his second seizure, staff moved him to a mattress in a new cell, but he was not evaluated by a medical practitioner. About four hours after that seizure, he was found to be unresponsive, with his lips turning blue. He was sent to the hospital but never regained consciousness and died on September 19, 2016.
      Rafael Barcenas-Padilla, 51, had been ill with cold symptoms for six days in the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico when his fever reached 104, and nurses recorded dangerously low levels of oxygen saturation in his blood. A doctor, consulted by phone, prescribed a medication for upper respiratory infections. The ICE detention center didn’t have the nebulizer needed to administer one of the medicines, so he did not receive it, and he showed dangerously low oxygen readings that should have prompted his hospitalization. Three days later, he was sent to the hospital, where he died from bronchopneumonia on April 7, 2016.
      Jose Azurdia, 54, became ill and started vomiting at the Adelanto Detention Facility in California. A guard told a nurse about Azurdia’s condition, but she said that “she did not want to see Azurdia because she did not want to get sick.” Within minutes, his arm was numb, he was having difficulty breathing, and he had pain in his shoulder and neck – all symptoms of a heart attack. Due to additional delays by the medical staff, two hours passed before he was sent to the hospital, with his heart by then too damaged to respond to treatment. He died in the hospital four days later, on December 23, 2015.

      “Immigrant detention centers are dangerous places where lives are at risk and people are dying,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition that exposes the injustices of the US’ immigration detention and deportation system. “The death toll amassed by ICE is unacceptable and has proven that they cannot be trusted to care for immigrants in their custody.”

      In fiscal year 2017, ICE held a daily average of nearly 40,500 people, an increase of nearly 500 percent since 1994. The Trump administration has asked Congress to allocate $2.7 billion for fiscal year 2019 to lock up a daily average of 52,000 immigrants in immigration detention facilities, a record number that would represent a 30 percent expansion from fiscal year 2017.

      “To the extent that Congress continues to fund this system, they are complicit in its abuses,” said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nongovernmental group dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. “Congress should immediately act to decrease rather than expand detention and demand robust health, safety, and human rights standards in immigration detention.”

      The new report is an update of a 2017 Human Rights Watch report that examined deaths in detention between 2012 and 2015, as well as a 2016 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Detention Watch Network, and the National Immigrant Justice Center that examined deaths in detention between 2010 and 2012.

      The medical experts who analyzed the death reviews for the groups include Dr. Marc Stern, the former health services director for the Washington State Department of Corrections; Dr. Robert Cohen, the former director of Montefiore Rikers Island Health Services; and Dr. Palav Babaria, the chief administrative officer of Ambulatory Services at Alameda Health System in Oakland, California, and assistant clinical professor in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

      Six of the new deaths examined occurred at facilities operated by the following private companies under contract with ICE: #CoreCivic, #Emerald_Correctional_Management, the #GEO_Group, and the #Management_and_Training_Corporation (#MTC).

      “ICE puts thousands of people’s health and lives at risk by failing to provide adequate medical care to the people it detains for weeks, months, and even years,” said Victoria Lopez, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.


      https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/20/us-poor-medical-care-deaths-immigrant-detention
      #privatisation #mourir_en_rétention #mourir_en_détention_administrative

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9IKGoozII