17 January 20
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16 January 20
Nina Turner | While Bernie Sanders Has Always Stood Up for African Americans, Joe Biden Has Repeatedly Let Us Down
Nina Turner, The State
Turner writes: "In choosing between the two Democratic Party candidates atop the polls, African American voters have a consequential decision to make."
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President Donald J. Trump arrives at Miami Executive Airport, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. (photo: Shealah Craighead/White Hosue)
Nina Turner, The State
Turner writes: "In choosing between the two Democratic Party candidates atop the polls, African American voters have a consequential decision to make."
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President Donald J. Trump arrives at Miami Executive Airport, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. (photo: Shealah Craighead/White Hosue)
GAO Finds White House Violated the Law by Freezing Ukraine Aid
Andrew Desiderio, Kyle Cheney and Caitlin Emma, Politico
Excerpt: "The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report."
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Mercedes-Benz automobile production line. (photo: Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg)
Andrew Desiderio, Kyle Cheney and Caitlin Emma, Politico
Excerpt: "The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report."
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Mercedes-Benz automobile production line. (photo: Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg)
Trump Threatened UK, Europeans With 25% Car Tariffs Unless It Agreed to Accuse Iran of Breaking Nuclear Deal
Tom Embury-Dennis, The Independent
Embury-Dennis writes: "Donald Trump threatened the UK with a 25 per cent tariff on its cars unless the British government officially accused Iran of breaking the 2015 nuclear deal, it has been reported."
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The Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California, can currently house nearly 2,000 immigrant detainees, though it is set to expand under a new contract with the federal government. (photo: Chris Carlson/AP)
Tom Embury-Dennis, The Independent
Embury-Dennis writes: "Donald Trump threatened the UK with a 25 per cent tariff on its cars unless the British government officially accused Iran of breaking the 2015 nuclear deal, it has been reported."
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The Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California, can currently house nearly 2,000 immigrant detainees, though it is set to expand under a new contract with the federal government. (photo: Chris Carlson/AP)
Tom Dreisbach, NPR
Dreisbach writes: "The Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif., can currently house nearly 2,000 immigrant detainees, though it is set to expand under a new contract with the federal government."
hen a government expert in mental health visited one of the largest immigration detention centers in the U.S. in 2017, she knew the conditions that detainees there sometimes face. A past inspection had found that staff often failed to obtain adequate mental health histories, leading to faulty diagnoses and, in some cases, treatment plans that were incorrect.
Upon arrival at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Adelanto, Calif., a similar pattern emerged. One detainee she observed had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. When she asked an officer about him, she was told that the man "floods his cell, bangs his head."
She searched the man's medical chart for records from his recent stay at an inpatient psychiatric unit, but they appeared to be missing. He had been placed in what the government refers to as "segregation," a term known more commonly as solitary confinement.
Inside, the expert found, he was suffering from "active auditory hallucinations." Moreover, they appeared to worsening.
"I hate to be alone," he told the expert.
The detainee's case is detailed in a previously confidential report on the Adelanto facility obtained by NPR. Despite the report's findings — and repeated, scathing criticism of the facility from the federal government's own internal watchdogs — ICE decided at the end of 2019 to renew and expand a contract to keep the Adelanto facility open.
The report dates to late 2017, but attorneys and advocates say the problems identified in the report have persisted. ICE declined to respond to specific findings in the report.
Like many other detention centers, the Adelanto facility is operated by a for-profit company — in this case, the GEO Group. The U.S. government is GEO's single biggest customer, and the company has made nearly $1 billion in federal contracts over the past 12 months, according to government data.
The company's business has been threatened by a new California law that largely bans for-profit companies from operating prisons and immigration detention facilities in the state. Findings of inadequate care and treatment of detainees at the Adelanto facility and others were a driving force behind that law.
But by signing the new 15-year contract before the law could take effect, GEO and the Trump administration effectively circumvented the state of California until 2034. (GEO has also sued the state in federal court, arguing that the California law is unconstitutional.)
Advocates and attorneys for immigrants say the new contract — which also expands the Adelanto facility by more than 700 detention beds — demonstrates how ICE fails to hold contractors accountable for major problems in immigration detention centers.
Their concerns are echoed in the report obtained by NPR from the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, an internal oversight office.
Among the report's findings:
- The facility failed to meet ICE's own standards for using solitary confinement. One detainee, for instance, cumulatively spent nearly 2 1/2 years in solitary.
- Staff used pepper spray on immigrants held in detention but did not follow best practices when it came time to remove the spray from detainees — in some cases their efforts intensified the painful "burning effect."
- It was "more likely than not" that problems with medical care "contributed to medical injuries, including bone deformities and detainee deaths."
- And government experts were so alarmed that they recommended "immediately" transferring "at-risk" detainees to another facility to protect their health and safety.
The expert inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security found that, in several cases, ICE and GEO had been either unwilling or unable to fix problems despite repeated warnings over the years.
The report's findings provide a window into the types of challenges presented by the Trump administration's push to detain more immigrants who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. Under the president's hard-line immigration policies, the number of immigrants in detention has grown to all-time highs, with private companies like GEO playing a central role in that system. While defenders say the crackdown is needed to help stem what they call a crisis on the southern border, immigration advocates say the growing reliance on detention has stretched an already troubled system to the breaking point.
"These reports never see the light of day"
NPR has sought records regarding the facility for more than a year and obtained this report under the Freedom of Information Act. Sources familiar with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties say such reports almost always remain confidential.
"Normally, these reports never see the light of day," says Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator with the nonprofit watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, or POGO.
In September 2019, POGO released a version of the report after filing a public records lawsuit. But the government had more heavily redacted critical findings and recommendations.
"It's kind of confounding why they withheld some of this information [from us]," says Schwellenbach.
A representative for GEO said the company would "defer to ICE" on any response to the report.
Lori K. Haley, a spokesperson for ICE, also declined to comment on specific findings in the report.
In an email, Haley wrote, "The safety, rights and health of detainees in ICE's care are of paramount concern."
But, she noted, the agency "either did not concur or only partially concurred with roughly half their recommendations."
Haley declined to say which recommendations ICE agreed with and why, or what actions the agency took in response.
Lawyers, who regularly visit the facility and represent detainees there, say they have seen little evidence that ICE or GEO has followed through on the recommendations.
"I don't have reason to believe that many of these reports are being taken as seriously as they should by the facility or by ICE," says Pilar Gonzalez of the nonprofit Disability Rights California, which advocates for detainees at the facility.
Liz Jordan, an attorney with the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, says the issues identified in the report have persisted.
"ICE does not demand any sort of accountability from the contractors or force any changes or improvements," says Jordan, who is representing current and former Adelanto detainees in a lawsuit.
"Instead, they get rewarded to keep on keeping on."
"No correction was made"
The Adelanto ICE Processing Center holds nearly 2,000 adult detainees, most of whom have no criminal record.
Unlike prison, immigration detention is not meant as punishment. The government holds people in detention while deciding their immigration status.
In November 2017, the authors of the report — three Department of Homeland Security experts in health care, corrections and mental health — traveled to Adelanto, Calif., to inspect the ICE detention facility after a series of complaints. The names of the experts are redacted in the report.
All three experts found major problems, but the most serious findings in the documents obtained by NPR come from the report on health care.
"Overall, the medical care at the Adelanto facility is inadequate" and does not meet federal standards, the report found, citing "incompetent clinical medical leadership."
The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties had previously visited the facility in 2015 under the Obama administration and detailed "negligent" medical care at that time. But rather than seeing improvements in 2017, the experts found that medical care had gotten worse.
"No correction was made," the report states, noting that the number of complaints around detainee medical care had actually increased.
The medical expert cites multiple examples of poor medical care, including long delays in appointments for broken bones and a failure to provide needed antibiotics and other medications.
In at least one case, a detainee's death was "likely related" to failures by the facility's medical staff.
As a result, the expert recommended a drastic measure:
"At-risk detainees must be immediately removed from the facility (transferred to another facility with a well-functioning medical program)."
Given the problems at the facility, the expert defined "at-risk" as any detainee with a chronic medical problem like diabetes, as well as any detainee over 55 years old.
Attorneys for detainees told NPR that there's no indication that ICE or GEO actually followed this recommendation.
ICE declined to say whether it made changes to its medical staff in the wake of the report or transferred detainees.
Allegations of "verbal harassment" and "retaliation"
The allegations against the Adelanto facility went beyond medical care.
"Detainees suffer retaliation, verbal harassment and [are] treated with disrespect," the report found. Leadership "must hold facility staff accountable for substantiated abusive and disrespectful treatment of the detainees," the report went on, noting that this problem had not been addressed after previous inspections.
In another instance, detainees alleged even harsher measures.
In June 2017, a group of asylum-seekers from Central America went on hunger strike to protest conditions at the facility. When the group locked arms and refused to move, staff used pepper spray and physically removed them.
The corrections expert found that the use of pepper spray was "appropriate given the circumstances." But the expert saw a significant problem with the staff's subsequent actions.
Cold water is recommended to safely decontaminate pepper spray.
But, the corrections expert found, "The facility does not have any access to cold water. The facility only provides a mix of cold and hot water through a shower head." The expert warned that "warm water will exacerbate the burning effect of the OC pepper spray."
When the group of hunger strikers was placed in showers, they described "writhing" in pain as the water reactivated the spray. One detainee, Marvin Josue Grande Rodriguez, said that he fainted in the shower, because "the gas and the heat of the water ... It was far too much for me."
The report says the use of a hot shower was a "significant issue" and concluded that the facility "must provide access to a cold-water shower" in the future.
In response to a lawsuit filed by the group of hunger strikers, lawyers for GEO said that water "does reactivate the tingling sensation" from pepper spray but that it was "necessary to remove the spray" and was not intended to cause pain.
Because ICE and GEO declined to answer specific questions, it's unclear if they followed the recommendation on cold-water showers.
Attorneys for detainees told NPR that they were unsure whether any changes had been made.
But it is clear that the facility staff continue to use pepper spray. ICE statistics show that pepper spray has been used more than 25 times since the 2017 inspection.
An "inhumane" use of solitary confinement
Additionally, the government's experts found that the Adelanto facility was failing to meet federal standards for solitary confinement — known in ICE's bureaucratic language as "segregation."
Overall, the report found that GEO Group staff had "no current strategy" when it came to long-term use of solitary confinement and that people were suffering as a result.
In one case, inspectors found, a detainee was held in a "Special Management Unit," or SMU, for 426 days.
"No detainee should be held in the SMU for this amount of time," the report states. "Isolation alone can create physical safety concerns and can result in mental decompensation."
The expert inspectors were especially critical of the use of solitary confinement for immigrants with serious mental disorders. They found that about a third of the detainees held in solitary had a "serious mental illness."
Over the course of multiple stays, one detainee logged 904 days — or nearly 2 1/2 years — in solitary confinement, which the report calls "shockingly high."
The experts found that some detainees with serious mental illness were put in solitary confinement simply because it was the only available space where they could be closely watched. The report called that practice "inhumane."
"If strategies are not developed," the report warned, "the mental health and other long-term detainee cases will continue to decompensate, and the population of the SMU will continue to grow."
In response to NPR, an ICE spokesperson wrote that the agency "is compliant" with agency standards on the use of solitary confinement, citing a directive from 2013.
But again, critics of ICE say that is not true.
"You have these experts ... essentially screaming from the rooftops, 'You need to fix this problem!' " says Schwellenbach of POGO, which has also investigated the use of solitary confinement in ICE detention. "There's solutions that they're actually putting forward, but they're being ignored."
Ongoing oversight of immigration detention
The state of California has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration over immigration policy.
The office of California Sen. Kamala Harris, a former Democratic presidential candidate and former state attorney general, reviewed the documents obtained by NPR.
"It is unconscionable to subject detained persons to inhumane conditions," Harris' office said in a statement, "including issues arising from insufficient medical care as well as prolonged isolation and detention at immigrant detention facilities."
Criticism of conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center by Harris and others was one factor that led to the recent California law, largely banning the use of private contractors in prisons and immigration detention centers.
"State laws aimed at obstructing federal law enforcement are inappropriate and harmful," ICE's Haley wrote to NPR. "Policy makers who strive to make it more difficult to remove dangerous criminal aliens and aim to stop the cooperation of local officials and business partners, harm the very communities whose welfare they have sworn to protect."
In their lawsuit against the state, GEO argues that the law is a "transparent attempt by the State to shut down the Federal Government's detention efforts within California's borders" and "a direct assault on the supremacy of federal law."
California state legislator Rob Bonta, who championed the law, tweeted that the lawsuit was, "Exactly what you'd expect fr[om] a collapsing industry in its final death throes."
Tom Steyer, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren at Tuesday's debate. (photo: Getty)
Elizabeth Warren Once Again Notes Anti-Trans Violence in Debate
Trudy Ring, Advocate
Ring writes: "Elizabeth Warren used her closing statement at Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines to once again bring up violence against transgender people, especially women of color."
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Trudy Ring, Advocate
Ring writes: "Elizabeth Warren used her closing statement at Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines to once again bring up violence against transgender people, especially women of color."
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Tennessee governor Bill Lee. (photo: Mark Humphrey/AP)
Joe Jurado, The Root
Jurado writes: "So I guess the takeaway here is that Republicans don't like kids. I mean, how else do you explain this?"
NBC News reports that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has announced plans to sign a bill into law that would protect taxpayer funding of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies even if they discriminate against LGBT families and other groups. All they have to do is claim “religious beliefs” and they’re good. Under this law, a denied family couldn’t sue for damages if the reason for their denial was a religious belief.
The bill was approved by 20 Republicans, while five others voted present and only one, Sen. Steve Dickerson, joined his Democratic colleagues in voting “no” on the measure. Dickerson was quoted as saying, “This will have a direct fiscal impact on the state, not to mention the humanitarian impact and emotional impact on those children who...will now be in a foster setting for a longer time.”
It’s sad that the GOP’s war on the LGBTQ community has come to this. I’m really curious if the Republican Bible has a passage in which Jesus proclaims “Fuck these kids,” because this is just astoundingly cruel. It’s cruel to the people who want to start a family and it’s cruel to the children who probably want nothing more than to be a part of a family. This law effectively limits the number of families that are eligible to adopt children and removes any legal recourse for families unfairly discriminated against.
Impeached President Donald Trump is currently working on repealing an Obama-era ruling that denied federal funding to adoption agencies that serve specific religions. Over the summer he issued a waiver to allow agencies in South Carolina to deny adoptions to Jewish and LGBTQ families. This isn’t about freedom of religion, it’s state-sanctioned discrimination.
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A firefighter sprays foam retardant on a back burn ahead of a fire front in the New South Wales town of Jerrawangala on Jan. 1, 2020. (photo: Getty)
To Help Australia, Look to Aboriginal Fire Management
Abaki Beck, YES! Magazine
Beck writes: "Since September 2019, Australia has been ravaged by bushfires. You know the statistics: about 18 million acres burned, around 2,000 homes destroyed, and nearly 1 billion animals affected."
Abaki Beck, YES! Magazine
Beck writes: "Since September 2019, Australia has been ravaged by bushfires. You know the statistics: about 18 million acres burned, around 2,000 homes destroyed, and nearly 1 billion animals affected."
The fires have also affected Aboriginal communities and lands.
On January 3, the small Aboriginal community of Mogo, New South Wales, was destroyed, including the homes of five members of the local Aboriginal Land Council and the Land Council building. In Victoria, the Aboriginal community of Lake Tyer has been on high alert, as the East Gippsland bushfires burn just 20 kilometers away. Indigenous Protected Areas—reserved areas of land managed by local Indigenous people—have been devastated as well. Russell Irving, project coordinator at the Minyumai Indigenous Protected Area in New South Wales, noted in a November statement that, “We and many of our small-scale farmer neighbours are at threat of becoming members of the rapidly growing number of climate refugees in our own country.”
Historically, bushfires in Australia were a lot less common than they are today. Climate change is partially to blame. Temperatures have risen dramatically in Australia over the last century, causing more extreme droughts and unpredictable fire seasons. But the ongoing impacts of colonialism—including poor land management—is also part of the puzzle. For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians managed their environment through controlled burns. These fires continue to shape Australia’s landscape. In the Central Arnhem region in northern Australia, for example, a study found kangaroos were more abundant in areas that had been burned by Aboriginal people, because the grass in burned areas was more nitrogen-rich than grass in non-burned areas.
This intimate relationship with the land was violently interrupted by colonization. When colonizers first arrived in Australia, they took note of the Indigenous peoples’ use of fire. In 1889, British explorer Ernest Giles wrote: “The natives were about, burning, burning, ever burning; one would think they…lived on fire instead of water.”
Knowledge of cultural burning was suppressed through displacement from their homelands, forced assimilation, banning of Indigenous languages, and other practices over centuries. Until 1992, Aboriginal people had extremely limited rights to their own land: Australia had previously operated under the idea that the land was “unowned” before colonization and Indigenous people were not legally recognized as traditional stewards. Today, thanks to decades of activism and lawsuits, Aboriginal Australians control 6.1 million hectares of land. The land reclamation movement has in part focused on revitalizing traditional fire management.
Contemporary revitalization of traditional fire practices began in the 1990s in Cape York, Queensland, with elders Dr. Tomin George and Dr. George Musgrave. In an interview with the podcast Right Country, Right Fire, Tagalaka filmmaker and traditional fire practitioner Victor Steffensen reflected on the beginning of the movement: “Those old people are walking encyclopaedias and you know, they knew how to look after our own country. Yet no one was listening to them, the authorities weren’t listening…and the young people weren’t picking that knowledge up.” So he started to record Dr. George and Dr. Musgrave’s knowledge and educate others. In 2008, they hosted the first national Indigenous fire workshop based on the elders’ knowledge. Though Dr. George and Dr. Musgrave have passed away, activists such as Steffensen continue to hold the fire workshop, educating hundreds of Indigenous Australians and allies through national workshops, community-based trainings, podcasts, and partnering with universities.
Aboriginal fire management, also called cultural burning, involves an intimate relationship to the land. It is not one specific technique, but a localized understanding of what is needed for the environment at the time. If the fire is too hot, it may harm seeds and nutrients in the soil. Cultural burners often avoid burning logs or trees where animals and insects live. While the Aboriginal fire management is proactive, Western-style controlled burning, also called hazard reduction burning, is reactive.
Hazard reduction burning is often done by dropping incendiaries from planes, making it more cost effective, but less controlled. There is growing evidence that this style of burning may not even reduce bushfires, especially in times of extreme drought. A 2015 study in 30 bioregions in Australia found that controlled burns only reduced the amount of land damaged by bushfires in four of the bioregions, but overall, the study concluded, Western-style controlled burning had very little impact.
Cultural burning, on the other hand, strengthens ecosystems. The Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council in New South Wales implemented cultural burning in 2017. In 2018, intense bushfires were in the region, destroying nearly 100 homes and leaving the forest black and bare. Yet six months later, in areas where cultural burning had taken place both before and after the fire, regrowth had already begun. By burning after the fire, traditional fire practitioners were able to prevent invasive species from growing.
As bushfires in Australia continue to increase in intensity, Aboriginal land management—like cultural burning—may be a crucial part of the solution. “All these government departments, environmentalists, national parks, farmers and pastoralists have the best intentions but they all have their different interests,” said Steffensen in a December 17, 2019, interview with Insurance Journal. “Doing it our way on a continent-wide scale would be costly and take up a lot of working hours, but in the long run it could save billions.”
Climate change is a key factor in why these fires are so abrasive. Australia is hotter and drier than it once was. But Western-style land management—and the history of colonization and suppression of Aboriginal land management—has played a role as well.
“It’s our cultural obligation to do these sorts of things,” said Peter Dixon, a cultural burn crew member for the Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council, in an interview with ABC Australia. “And it has been for thousands of years.”
