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      DeSantis actions on migrants is ‘mini-ethnic cleansing’, expert warns

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      AnalysisDeSantis actions on migrants is ‘mini-ethnic cleansing’, expert warnsStephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington Philosophy professor says treating Republican’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt risks diminishing its ‘moral seriousness’Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week has been compared to a “mini-ethnic cleansing with genocidal precedence” by a philosopher who has closely studied dehumanization and its role in genocide and the Holocaust.“Of course this is not genocide, but it is somewhat reminiscent of awful things that have happened in the past. As soon as you start treating human beings as undesirable problems to dump on others, you are in very dangerous territory,” said David Livingstone Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of New England.“What frightens me most actually is that someone who does these sort of acts is capable of doing much worse,” he said.The remarks by Smith, who is the author of Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, come as dozens of more people, many of whom are migrants who are believed to have come from Venezuela, arrived in Washington DC on Saturday morning after being bused from Texas. The migrants, including a one-month-old baby, were dropped in front of the Naval Observatory, where Vice-President Kamala Harris resides.The shuttling of about 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard – with a stop in Florida – last week has been condemned by US president Joe Biden and human rights groups after it emerged that the migrants were misled and told they were being sent to Boston to find jobs and opportunities. Lawyers for the individuals have called on state officials in Massachusetts to investigate the incident, including the circumstances around the two charter flights that transported them to the Massachusetts island, which were arranged by DeSantis.The Florida Republican, who is expected to run for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, has claimed that “every community in America should be sharing in the burdens” of migrants and that he was seeking to draw attention to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration issues between the US and Mexico.But Smith warned that seeing the incident as merely a political “stunt” by an attention-seeking Republican politician risked diminishing the “moral seriousness and the possible future implications of what they are doing”.“In effect,” Smith said, “DeSantis is intimating that this is an ethnic cleansing operations, that he will take these so-called undesirables and pick them up and dump them in the lands of [his] political enemies.”Stone said he was also struck by the way in which both DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott appeared to see liberal American cities like Washington DC or the wealthy liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard as being like a foreign country.“You could say that’s no surprise: there’s often talk of ‘real Americans’ living in the heartland. But this takes it to a new level. To use a gross but apt analogy, it’s as if someone is taking their garbage and dumping it in their neighbors’ yard. DeSantis talks about it like that,” he said.Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who regularly engages in racist diatribes on his show, raised the idea of dropping migrants on Martha’s Vineyard in this summer. In a segment that aired on 26 July, he suggested sending “huge numbers” of migrants to the Massachusetts island, which he claimed must be “begging for diversity” since its major city was overwhelmingly white.“Let’s start with 300,000 and move up from there,” Carlson said.Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti did not respond to questions about whether Carlson had discussed the issue with DeSantis directly or whether Fox had any concerns about Carlson encouraging human trafficking.Carlson has also praised authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who argued in a speech earlier this year that Europeans should not become “peoples of mixed race”.TopicsUS immigrationRon DeSantisUS politicsRepublicansanalysisReuse this content More

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      DeSantis criticized for sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard: ‘It’s un-American’

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      DeSantis criticized for sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard: ‘It’s un-American’Democrats outraged at the ‘reckless’ and ‘soulless’ actions and question the legality of what some called a political stunt Joe Biden has accused Ron DeSantis of “playing politics with people’s lives” for flying Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal island community of Martha’s Vineyard without warning, while the legality of the Florida governor’s move is also under scrutiny.In what immigration activists and Democratic politicians have decried as a “political stunt”, DeSantis, who is expected to run for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, arranged for two charter planes of about 50 migrant adults and children to fly from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday. DeSantis sends migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, causing ‘humanitarian situation’ Read moreClaiming that “every community in America should be sharing in the burdens,” DeSantis told a press briefing he wanted to draw attention to what he claimed was a failure by the Biden administration to secure the US-Mexico border.The president attacked DeSantis’s action in a speech late on Thursday, also criticising Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.Abbott arranged for two buses from his state to drop off more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela at the Washington DC residence of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, on Wednesday, shortly before the Massachusetts planes landed.The leader of the anti-trafficking charity Polaris on Friday issued a strongly-worded statement that pointedly questioned whether the governors’ actions amounted to human trafficking, citing migrants’ claims that they were deceived about where they were going.“Acts of calculated deception were reportedly used to trick migrants onto buses and planes,” the statement from Polaris chief Catherine Chen said. “Unfortunately, this tactic is one that we know far too well in the anti-trafficking world. Migrants are regularly tricked and defrauded as part of their trafficking experience, with traffickers and exploiters taking advantage of their recent arrival, limited English proficiency, and unfamiliarity with our government systems and labor laws.”Chen added: “If migrants were defrauded, and if this fraud was intended as a vehicle for anyone’s material gain, including that of an elected official, then there is a case for investigating it as trafficking.”DeSantis, Abbott and Doug Ducey, governor of Arizona, have sent thousands of migrants to predominantly Democratic-run “sanctuary” states and cities they deem to be liberal over immigration, although Massachusetts has a Republican governor, Charlie Baker.Attack on asylum seeker in New York sparks outrage over conditions Read more“Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” Biden said at a gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington DC.“What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American, it’s reckless and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border. We’re working to make sure it’s safe and orderly and humane.“Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts,” he added.Veronica Escobar, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas, meanwhile, said DeSantis was “a soulless human being”.On Friday, as Baker said he had ordered up to 125 members of the Massachusetts national guard to help move the migrants to more secure accommodation at a military base in Cape Cod on the mainland, questions were mounting over the legality of DeSantis’s action.The US attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins, said she planned to speak with the justice department, and Nikki Fried, a member of the Florida cabinet and the only statewide-elected Democrat, wrote to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to demand a federal investigation into potential human trafficking.California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said he had also written to the justice department, which declined comment when contacted by the Guardian on Friday.Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, who will challenge DeSantis in November’s midterm elections, said he had filed a sunshine law request demanding information about the state’s legislature-approved “relocation programme”.Earlier this year politicians granted $12m (£10.5m) for DeSantis’s plan to relocate migrants to other states, but the language is specific to undocumented immigrants physically in Florida.Both flights to Massachusetts touched down briefly in Florida en route between San Antonio and Martha’s Vineyard, but DeSantis’s office did not say if that was an attempt to meet the requirement of the programme.The southern Republican governors have been transporting migrants who are, at least temporarily, legally in the US waiting for their immigration cases, such as seeking asylum from violent regimes, to be processed.Crist in a statement accused DeSantis of trafficking humans with Florida taxpayer money. “He owes the people of our state answers,” Crist added.In Edgartown, the Martha’s Vineyard county seat and old whaling port, on Friday, residents and aid groups were working to care for and relocate the Venezuelan families, many of whom speak no English and say they were not told of their destination when they boarded the plane.Several told journalists there was nobody at the airport to greet them, and they walked almost four miles to find help in the town, where they were put up in a church overnight.“They were told there was a surprise present for them, and that there would be jobs and housing awaiting for them when they arrived. This was obviously a sadistic lie,” Rachel Self, a Boston immigration attorney assisting with the migrants’ cases, said at a press briefing.Self said she believes the migrants in question were kidnapped and defrauded, and any who cooperate with investigators may become eligible for a visa granted to crime victims.On Friday afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Republican governors involved of lying to migrants, and said DeSantis did not notify Massachusetts that “migrant children, in need of food and shelter, were about to land on their doorstep”.“These vulnerable migrants were misled about where they were headed.”She condemned what she called Abbott and DeSantis “creating political theater [without] creating actual solution.She noted, however, that any legal challenge would have to come from the US Justice Department rather than the White House.Shaw Drake, senior policy counsel on border and immigration at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the Martha’s Vineyard case has raised “particular concerns about the level of coercion and lack of informed consent”.“The issue of consent is of core legal concern,” Drake added.Meanwhile, NBC News reported friction between the White House and the Department of Homeland Security about how to cope with the latest rise in unauthorized border crossings.TopicsUS immigrationJoe BidenRon DeSantisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Tale of two borders’: how a US Covid-era rule shapes fate of migrants

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      ‘Tale of two borders’: how a US Covid-era rule shapes fate of migrants Title 42 bans all migrants from entering the country over spread of Covid – but the rule is largely enforced against Mexicans and people from Guatemala, Honduras and El SalvadorAs hundreds of migrants line up along an Arizona border barrier at about 4am, agents try to separate them by nationality.“Anyone from Russia or Bangladesh? I need somebody else from Russia here,” an agent shouts. Then, quietly, almost to himself, he says: “These are Romanian.”It’s a routine task for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in this flat expanse of desert where the wall ends. People from at least 115 countries have been stopped here during the past year, with entire families from Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, India and Cameroon among those arriving in Yuma, south-west Arizona after wading through the perilous knee-deep Colorado River.It marks a dramatic shift away from the recent past, when migrants were predominantly from Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, escaping a mix of state sponsored and criminal violence, corruption and extreme poverty.People not from Mexico and the Northern Triangle accounted for 41% of detentions on the border from October to July – up from only 12% three years earlier, according to official figures. Meanwhile, Mexicans made up 35% of all border encounters – higher than three years ago but well below the 85% reported in 2011 and the 95% at the turn of the century.The changing demographics reflects how a controversial pandemic-era rule still shapes the fate of some migrants, even though much of the US has moved on from Covid.Migrants risk death crossing treacherous Rio Grande river for ‘American dream’ Read moreThe impact of Title 42, a Trump-era mandate barring migrants and asylum seekers from entering the country at land borders, is especially stark at some of the busiest crossings, such as Yuma and in Eagle Pass, Texas, close to where at least nine people died last week trying to cross the rain-swollen river.The only option for most Mexicans and Central Americans caught up in the Title 42 ban is to try to cross at more isolated and less militarized points, in hope of eluding detention – otherwise they are likely to be summarily expelled, and refused the opportunity to seek asylum.Mexicans still account for seven of every 10 encounters in the Tucson area in southern Arizona, where John Modlin, the CBP sector chief, said smugglers order them to walk at night with black-painted water jugs, camouflage backpacks and boots with carpeted soles to avoid leaving tracks in the sand.“[An] incredibly different tale of two borders, even though they’re within the same state,” said Modlin.In Yuma, migrants from Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East arrive having typically walked a short distance through tribal lands, and surrender to border patrol agents. They come wearing sandals and carrying shopping bags stuffed with belongings over their shoulders, expecting to be released to pursue their immigration cases. Some carry toddlers on their hips. On paper, Title 42 denies people of all nationalities the right to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of Covid. In reality, the rule has been selectively enforced against Mexicans and people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, who the Mexican government agreed to accept.Most other nationalities have been spared due to the US not wanting to pay for expensive flights and limited diplomatic options.“The challenge is what Mexico can accept,” Modlin said. “That’s always going to be a limiting factor.”So far, the Biden administration’s attempts to wind down Title 42 have been blocked by the courts. Yet its continuing use depends on where people come from and which port of entry they are trying to seek asylum. In Yuma, Title 42 was applied in less than 1% of of 24,424 stops in July, whereas in Tucson, it was used in 71% of detentions.It is unclear why.“What we know with absolute certainty is that the smuggling organizations control the flow,” Modlin said. “They decide who goes where, and when they go to the point. It’s almost like air traffic control of moving people around.”In Yuma, groups of up to two dozen or so migrants dropped off by bus or car on a deserted Mexican highway begin arriving in the US shortly after midnight. If English and Spanish fail, agents use Google Translate to question them, under generator-powered lights, take photos and load them on to buses.One recent morning, six Russians said they flew from Istanbul to Tijuana, Mexico, with a stop in Cancun, and hired a driver to take them four hours to the deserted highway where they crossed.A 26-year-old man who had flown from his home in Peru to Tijuana said the most difficult part of the journey was the anxiety about whether he’d make it to his destination in New Jersey.Nelson Munera, 40, said he, his wife and their 17-year-old son got off a bus on the highway and crossed into Yuma because fellow Colombians had taken the same route.Lazaro Lopez, 48, who came with his nine-year-old son from Cuba by flying to Nicaragua and crossing Mexico over land, chose Yuma because that’s where his smuggler guided him.Most will be released on humanitarian parole or with a notice to appear in immigration court.From here, the border patrol drops off hundreds of migrants each day at the Regional Center for Border Health near Yuma, that charters six buses daily to transport them almost 200 miles north-east to Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport. “We have seen families from over 140 countries,” said Amanda Aguirre, the clinic’s chief executive officer. “We haven’t seen one from Mexico, not through our processing.”The shift is also evident on the Mexican side of the border.The Don Chon migrant shelter in nearby San Luis Rio Colorado fills many of its roughly 50 beds with Central Americans expelled under Title 42.Kelvin Zambrano, 33, who arrived in a large group of Hondurans, said he fled threats of extortion and gang violence, but border agents were not interested in hearing his story. “I don’t know why, but they don’t want Hondurans,” he said.TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderUS politicsCoronavirusfeaturesReuse this content More

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      'A man without morals': Chicago mayor chides Texas governor for expelling migrants – video

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      Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, criticised Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, accusing him of cruelty and racism for expelling dozens of migrants from Texas by bus. ‘With these continued political stunts, Governor Abbott has confirmed, what unfortunately many of us had already known – that he is a man without any morals, humanity or shame,’ said Lightfoot at a press conference on Thursday. Seventy-nine Venezuelans arrived at Chicago’s Union Station late on Wednesday, officials said. ‘Last night, we showed our mettle, the best of who we are,’ Lightfoot continued, praising the city’s effort to welcome the new arrivals.

      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas More

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      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas

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      ‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by TexasLori Lightfoot offers ‘open arms’ as Governor Greg Abbott escalates political stunt of sending asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities01:37The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, has vowed to welcome immigrants bussed to the city from the Mexican border, as the hard-right governor of Texas opened a third front in his confrontation with the Biden administration and Democratic sanctuary cities.Lightfoot delivered a defiant speech on Thursday in which she accused Governor Greg Abbott of cruelty and racism, and pledged to respond to the Texan’s controversial scheme by greeting the released migrants with open arms.Pentagon rejects DC request for national guard help with migrants bussed to cityRead moreChicago received its first busloads of 79 migrants, in this case Venezuelans, on Wednesday night.They were dispatched by Abbott, who has already sent about 9,000 people who crossed the US-Mexico border without documents giving them entry to the US to Washington DC and New York City.The move is a point-scoring stunt designed to level blame for chaotic conditions on the southern border at the White House and Democratic-controlled cities.The Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, is pursuing a similar ruse albeit on a smaller scale.At a press conference, Lightfoot said she could not “fully make up for the cruelty that our new neighbours have experienced”. But she said: “We have and we will continue to welcome them with open arms. I refuse to turn our back on them at a time when they need support the most.”01:37She said that in opening up a new Chicago front, Abbott had shown himself to be a “cheap politician” and “a man without any morals, humanity or shame”. The migrants he was loading on to buses and carting across a strange country were “moms and dads, young children, elders who deserve our respect and dignity. They’re not cargo. They are not chattel. They are human beings.”Among the 75 arrivals to Chicago were seven infants, and a total of 20 children and teens, according to local authorities. They were met at the bus with an offering of food, clothes, a shower and shelter.Chicago is now bracing itself for the arrival of further busloads of migrants after the city became the third target of Abbott’s political gambit.It began in April when he initially targeted the nation’s capital, forcing Washington officials to scramble for ways to house the asylum seekers.The move was immediately controversial, inviting criticism even from fellow Republicans – some within the Texas assembly. The bussing was then expanded to New York earlier this month.Abbott has appeared on the conservative Fox News TV network presenting his ploy as a way of exposing the hypocrisy of Democratic leaders in northern “sanctuary cities”.He appeared on rightwinger Sean Hannity’s Fox News show at the time the New York scheme began and said: “These liberal leaders up in the north-east think, ‘That border crisis created by Joe Biden, that’s fine as long as Texas has to deal with it.’ But as soon as they have to deal with the real consequences of Biden’s border-caused crisis, they are up in arms.”The Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has counter-attacked by accusing the Texas governor of inhumanity. Migrants were having to endure bus rides lasting almost two days with restricted breaks and food.“I think that Governor Abbott, what he’s doing is just so inhumane,” Adams said.New York’s immigration commissioner, Manuel Castro, this week lamented the bussing as a “rightwing political extremist crisis”. He said Abbott was fomenting “anti-immigrant and anti-Latino hate, which impacts all of us whether we arrived here today or decades ago”.Under basic US immigration regulations, migrants passing through Mexico and crossing the border into the US who do not have documentation are released from custody after processing. They can move around the country while awaiting court decisions on their asylum applications.One of the paradoxical aspects of Abbott’s aggressive stance is that it is creating an additional burden on Texas taxpayers. The cost of travelling from the border state to another part of the US normally falls entirely on the migrants themselves, but under the bussing scheme the travel is provided free.Abbott has said the bus rides are voluntary for migrants, but that is also in dispute. They are often aiming to reach much closer destinations in the south-west, to join relatives, but do not have the money to get there and are offered the rides to northern cities and, apparently without liaison with those cities’ leaders, aid and prospects upon arrival.CNN used freedom of information powers to extract information from the Texas division of emergency management that showed that it has already spent more than $12m. The money went to Wynne Transportation, which provides the buses.Migrants arriving in Chicago will not be asked about their immigration status, and their information will not be shared with federal authorities or law enforcement, under city rules. They will be able to apply for a full range of public services.TopicsChicagoMigrationUS immigrationTexasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Four countries, six years, 7,000 miles: one Afghan family’s journey to the US

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      Four countries, six years, 7,000 miles: one Afghan family’s journey to the US Zahra Amiri is among 41,000 working-age Afghans who have resettled in the US and are set to contribute $1.4bn to the US economy in their first year of work, according to new data The distance from Afghanistan’s south-western province of Nimroz to Iran’s historical city of Yazd is 480 miles (773km). To survive the journey, Zahra Amiri and her family ate snow.Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, more than 76,000 Afghans have been resettled as part of the US government operation labeled Allies Welcome. Zahra, 21, and her family are among the newly arrived Afghans, relocating from the cities of Kabul and Nimroz to Yazd and Tehran in Iran, then to Ankara, Turkey, before finally resettling in Denver, Colorado, in February.Zahra and the rest of this new Afghan community are set to contribute nearly $200m in taxes and $1.4bn to the American economy in their first year of work, according to new data released this month by the International Rescue Committee (IRC).Since their arrival, more than 41,000 working-age Afghans have been placed into various industries including accommodation and food services, retail trade, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing. This new community of Afghans arriving in the US with a multitude of skills and degrees has the potential to contribute significantly to the American economy, especially as the country grapples with inflation and supply chain issues.Zahra Amiri’s trek, spanning four countries and more than 7,000 miles, illustrates what these refugees had to endure to begin their new life.Zahra’s father, who held a government-related job, was killed in a 2014 suicide attack. After her father’s death, Zahra and her four siblings in Kabul had lost not only a parent but also their family’s chief provider – and with that, the sense of peace that he helped shroud them with had been shattered.Being the eldest, Zahra was suddenly confronted with two options: either forcibly marry a husband who could financially support her or flee.“I did not want to end up … jobless and uneducated, so I chose to become a refugee,” Zahra told the Guardian.One day in 2016, Zahra sat down with her mom and revealed her plans to her.“Let’s move out of here,” she said about Afghanistan, where 65% of all civilian casualties from suicide attacks globally occur and where 57% of girls are married before the age of 16. “We are not in a situation where we can live out our lives in peace in Afghanistan.”Her mother agreed. That year, Zahra, her mother and her siblings – the youngest of whom was two at the time – journeyed from Kabul to Nimroz, a south-west Afghan province that lies east of Iran. From Nimroz, Zahra and her family traveled to Yazd, one of Iran’s largest cities, with scarcely any food or water, forcing them to eat snow in a desperate attempt to nourish themselves.Border officials in Yazd turned Zahra and her family away, deporting them back to Nimroz. They tried the trip a second time and finally made it through to Tehran where the next leg of the sojourn awaited: Ankara, Turkey.“They would just throw families in each truck,” Zahra said, recalling how she was separated from her family for nearly two weeks on the way from Iran to Turkey before finally reuniting with them in Ankara in March 2016.In Ankara, Zahra and her family filed for refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and submitted a visa application to the US. In the six years that it took for her family’s application to be approved by the US government, Zahra completed her high school education while working as a dishwasher and a coffee maker, earning between $1.10 to $1.93 daily.“It’s not unusual for an application to take that long, especially considering that she applied during [Donald Trump’s presidency] where refugee arrivals were repeatedly cut, where we had things like the travel ban that really damaged the US government’s ability to process refugee applications,” IRC spokesperson Stanford Prescott told the Guardian.The US government approved Zahra’s family’s visa application early this year. On 2 February, Zahra donned a knitted sweater and pushed two pink quilted suitcases across the terrazzo tiles of the Istanbul airport.She was finally bound for the United States.Federal immigration services chose Colorado as the state in which to resettle Zahra’s family. With the IRC’s assistance, Zahra and her family arrived in Denver, initially to stay at a hotel for two months before being relocated to an apartment.As with many of its refugee clientele, the IRC provided financial literacy classes, job training courses and an interpreter to Zahra and her family. The IRC helped Zahra lock down a job with the airline caterer Sky Chefs about a month and a half ago, building on the skills she had amassed while working in restaurants and kitchens.At Sky Chefs, Zahra earns $19 an hour as she takes orders, packages them and gives them to customers. She earned a promotion to a manager assistant’s position two weeks ago and now trains new hires.“I can move up positions here, unlike in Turkey where even when I gave my 100%, I could not move up because I am a woman and because of my refugee status,” she said.Top job titles held by newly arrived Afghans include general production, warehouse worker, food preparer, driver and security guard, according to data from the IRC.Typically, Afghan refugees are placed in their first jobs within 126 days of their arrival and earn an average of $16.67 an hour – which amounts to an annual income of $34,673.“For most of these families, this is their very first job,” the IRC’s director economic empowerment, Erica Bouris, told the Guardian. “They are getting lots of things situated in the first year.“In a lot of ways, this is very much step one in that much longer process of rebuilding their home, their life and integration into the communities.”Bouris added: “We see lots of really interesting pathways, whether it’s that they try to pursue a certification so that they can work in a job that’s similar to what they had back home, or they might, as they settle into a new community, see for example that there are a lot of jobs in healthcare in this community and they pay well so they might pursue education and training so that they can move into a healthcare job.“Each story is really individual, but people absolutely do take steps towards additional education, skills and training and have medium and long-term career goals that they pursue.”Zahra is currently taking English as a second language (ESL) classes as she prepares to enroll in Aurora University’s dentistry program at the start of next year.As many Afghans carve out new lives for themselves in the US, many still face the possibility of losing their legal right to reside in the country. The US government allowed them to enter the nation in attempts to bring thousands of fleeing Afghans to safety as quickly as possible.But humanitarian parole lasts only two years. It is not like the US’s refugee resettlement program, where participants have a clear path towards American citizenship.Afghans on humanitarian parole must seek other paths of obtaining permanent immigration status, such as asylum, at the end of the two-year period in question.However, without the assistance of specialized lawyers, the Byzantine asylum process is particularly difficult to navigate. Many Afghans who fled their country were also advised to destroy identification documents, professional certifications and other information that could support their asylum claims, further complicating their situation.Although organizations like the IRC have launched various programs and collaborate with pro-bono lawyers to assist Afghans with their asylum claims, there’s another hurdle: The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is facing its own mounting backlog of asylum applications.With the pandemic exacerbating processing delays, the USCIS is currently struggling with a backlog of nearly 5.2m cases and 8.5m pending cases. The backlog was significantly lighter – 2.7m cases – in July 2019.“This year, even though the [Joe Biden White House] set an ambitious goal of [admitting] 125,000 [refugees], they’re only going to admit a fraction of that amount and what that shows is that refugee admission is broken and needs a lot more work so that ambition can be reality,” the IRC’s senior director of resettlement, asylum and integration policy, JC Hendrickson, told the Guardian.As a result, the IRC has been calling on Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, a bipartisan bill introduced earlier this month that would provide Afghan refugees with a pathway to lawful permanent residence in the US.“This bipartisan legislation will provide a pathway to lawful permanent status for certain Afghan civilians, offering them a way out of legal limbo and the looming threat of deportation with great risk to their personal safety,” said senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a co-sponsor of the bill. “Congress has a track record of passing similar legislation on humanitarian grounds, and we must swiftly do so again.”Many Afghans remain optimistic as they settle into American society’s fabric and rebuild their lives. To Zahra, being in the US means more than just experiencing upward economic mobility.“I know I’m new,” she said. “I know at the moment I have no voice, but in the future, I would like to raise my voice and let people know that men and women can work equally.“If anyone needs help now or in the future, I’m willing to show them a way that they can pursue. I want to let Afghan women know that they can do what a man can do. It’s my dream to let Afghan women know that we are as equal as men.”TopicsAfghanistanUS politicsRefugeesUS immigrationfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US national guard soldier’s death marks at least eighth tied to border security mission

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      US national guard soldier’s death marks at least eighth tied to border security missionThe controversial Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021, is under federal investigation for possible civil rights violations A Texas national guard member assigned to a border security mission helmed by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, died this week at his unit’s hotel, leaving him as the latest of several soldiers to die while deployed on the controversial operation.Alex Rios Rodriguez, a 52-year-old sergeant, suffered a medical emergency from which first responders were unable to revive him while he was at his quarters in McAllen, Texas, said a news release Friday issued by officials with the agency that runs the state’s national guard.Homeland security secretary warns against crossing US-Mexico borderRead moreThose officials said Rios’s death was not considered to be directly related to Operation Lone Star. But, according to a report in the Army Times, Rios is at least the eighth Texas national guard soldier linked to Operation Lone Star to die since Abbott increased the number of deployments to the mission with thousands of involuntary call-ups last fall.Four guard members who were either sent to the border or tapped to deploy there died by suicide between October and December last year, the Army Times’ report said. Two more died in a pair of separate accidental shootings reported in January and February. And in April, a 22-year-old soldier named Bishop Evans drowned while trying to save two people he believed were struggling to swim across the Rio Grande.About two months before the death of Evans, who earned a posthumous promotion to sergeant, those running Texas’ national guard had ordered rescue ropes and hundreds of ring buoys to aid in water rescues. But when Evans died, most of the state national guard’s members had not received that equipment, the Army Times reported.Operation Lone Star costs an estimated $2.5m weekly, and earlier this month Abbott announced the state would spend an additional $30m on the mission to provide grants to local governments to ostensibly limit crime along the border.Abbott launched the operation in March 2021 as a response to a reported increase in US-Mexico border crossings. The governor declared the higher number of border crossings a disaster, enabling him to send his state’s national guard there.Authorities have since touted the arrests of more than 274,000 migrants on nearly 17,000 criminal charges. But the mission has drawn criticism because those arrests include ones that are physically distant from the border, not related to crimes there, and made by law enforcement agencies not directly participating in Operation Lone Star, according to reporting from the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and the Marshall Project.There were reports earlier this month that the operation is also under investigation by the federal justice department for potential civil rights violations. News of the investigation came days after 53 migrants who were being smuggled across the border in a sweltering tractor-trailer were found dead in the back of the vehicle in San Antonio.Rios, the soldier who died Thursday, was a team leader for Delta Company in the 536th Brigade Support Battalion, officials said.“Our sincere condolences go out to the family of Sgt Rios Rodriguez,” the Texas national guard’s leader, major general Thomas Suelzer, said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with them at this difficult time.”TopicsTexasUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      Migrant deaths show Biden needs to change immigration policy: Politics Weekly America

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      At the end of June, authorities in San Antonio, Texas, opened the back of an abandoned truck to find the bodies of more than 50 migrants inside – people who had made the journey across the southern border in extreme heat. The news led to scrutiny, from all sides, of the Biden administration’s approach to immigration, with Republicans saying it was too weak and Democrats, too harsh.
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to Silvia Rodriguez Vega and Pedro Gerson about the steps the US government could take to prevent further deaths at the border

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