Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Since that day in 2018, he has cooked for students, prepared livestock at a market and bathed the disabled residents of a group home, stashing away what he could to reunite his family in Missoula, 8,400 miles and worlds away from the Ugandan refugee camp where he grew up. But the Trump administration’s move to slash the number of refugees admitted into the United States in the next 11 months by nearly half has already canceled several planned refugee flights — including three this week — stranding more than 400 people cleared for transport and leaving Nsanzinfura in despair.

He is contemplating what was once unthinkable, a return to East Africa and the camp he finally escaped.

“It’s my family which I need to take care of,” said Nsanzinfura, who is known as Joseph. “It made me lose hope that I will see them again here.”

As the White House prepares to finalize the fiscal year’s refugee cap at 18,000, the lowest number since the program was created four decades ago, many of the nearly 200 Congolese who settled in Missoula have answered desperate calls from relatives who have waited years in camps in Uganda or Tanzania for refuge in the United States. One woman has been pleading with community leaders to help her son, who recently emerged from a coma and is now alone in a camp. A local preacher prepared his three children to go to the airport last month to welcome their uncle, only to find out the morning of the arrival that the flight had been canceled.

In fact, the flights canceled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were the third batch to be scrubbed as refugee officials await final word on this year’s refugee cap, said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. The next possible departures would be Nov. 5, if President Donald Trump signs off on the annual cap before then.

Trump has made restricting refugee admissions part of his broader goal to limit immigration. This fiscal year’s 18,000 is down from the 30,000 let in between October 2018 and September 2019, and that was a fraction of the 110,000 that President Barack Obama offered refuge in the 2017 fiscal year.

The shriveling of the program comes as the number of people fleeing violence and persecution in the world totaled 70 million last year, the highest recorded since World War II. Trump is expected to finalize his refugee cap in the coming days, which will pair with a potentially divisive executive order that gives local activists more power to reject refugees chosen for resettlement in their communities. Together, the cap and the order will change the complexion of the nation’s refugee program.

“It’s a political ploy, putting our program at risk and causing fear among those who ought to be welcomed to a better life in Montana,” said the state’s governor, Steve Bullock, a Democratic presidential candidate.

Administration officials have argued that the cuts are necessary to focus federal resources on a surge of migrant families that have illegally crossed the southern border this year, even though such crossings have declined by more than 60% since May. Thousands of refugees abroad have already cleared the required security screenings and are simply waiting for their ticket to the United States.

Many of them hail from the Democratic Republic of Congo. As of July, more than 4,300 refugees from Congo had passed the extensive security screenings required by the United States and were cleared to move to the U.S., more than any other country, according to State Department data obtained by The New York Times. More than 26,600 Congolese people completed the initial screening in the refugee process.

But the Trump refugee rules are stacked against the Congolese in ways large and small. The administration is moving away from dispersing openings based on geography. Instead of reserving slots for Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the administration will carve out 4,000 refugee slots for Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military, 1,500 for people from Central America and 5,000 for people persecuted for their religion. The final 7,500 slots are for those who are seeking family unification and have been cleared for resettlement.

Those carve-outs do not leave much room for refugees whose families fled ethnic violence and rape in Congo in the 1990s and have spent most of their lives in congested East African displaced persons camps.

“They have uprooted and sold everything, and they were anticipating a new life in the United States,” said Nazanin Ash, vice president for global policy and advocacy for the International Rescue Committee. “And now the rug will get pulled out from under them with no recourse in site.”

Beyond the refugees themselves, the new rules have raised anxieties in host communities like Missoula. The same day the administration announced its refugee cuts, Trump signed an executive order that requires state and local government officials to provide written consent before refugees can be resettled in their communities. The order could allow officials to effectively block the resettlement of refugees in their areas.

“For many years, leaders in Washington brought large numbers of refugees to your state from Somalia,” Trump told an almost entirely white crowd in Minneapolis this month. He would “give local communities a greater say in refugee policy,” he continued.

Residents in Missoula, a fairly liberal town centered around the University of Montana, fear the order could resurrect tensions that surfaced three years ago when Missoulans, inspired by a photograph of a drowned Syrian refugee boy, rallied to bring a resettlement office to the town.

Scores of Montanans, many from surrounding counties like Flathead and Ravalli, traveled to Missoula in 2016 to protest the refugees, predicting a “government sponsored” invasion by “jihadists.”

Parts of the Flathead Valley north of here have had a reputation for being a haven for white nationalists. A dispute between a local real estate agent and the mother of the white nationalist Richard Spencer in nearby Whitefish prompted a white supremacist website to rally attacks on the area’s Jewish residents and call for an armed neo-Nazi march through the streets of the town.

To the south, residents of Ravalli County loudly voiced their concerns as well. The county commission sent a letter to Montana state and congressional officials claiming that the federal government could not adequately vet the families. Hundreds packed a public hearing that would normally attract a couple of dozen people, and they expressed fear that the refugees would bring martial law to the community.

“I think there is a threat from some of those groups but not the individual refugees,” the Ravalli County Commission chairman, Jeff Burrows, said in an interview. “But it’s possible,” he added. “We just don’t know.”

Bob Pechy, a 56-year-old resident of the county since 2006, said the resistance was rooted in race.

“You see a black person, it stands out,” Pechy said outside a strip mall in the town of Hamilton. “People around here, they’ll treat them just like anyone else, but overall they don’t want to see a large immigration of people that aren’t the same color as them.”

Missoula’s mayor, John Engen, said refugees had not brought crime, but they had resolved a labor shortage in the community.

Trump’s community veto order is “designed to make stuff hard and designed to allow people in jurisdictions far away from me that have no idea what Missoula, Montana, is about to send me hate mail,” Engen said. “It’s about intimidation. You got nothing better to do than to push around the mayor of Missoula, Montana?”

To supporters like Engen, the Congolese are filling a void of cultural diversity in a town that is nearly 90% white. In the 1980s, Hmong refugees from Laos settled in Missoula. The children of immigrant families are usually the few students of color in city classrooms, while their parents work long hours at businesses eager for the help.

Bob-Be Sparks, a housekeeping manager at the Holiday Inn downtown, said she had hired 28 refugees this year, and just two other residents of Missoula.

One of her hires, Justine Kambale, has since been promoted to supervisor, and Sparks hopes to elevate other refugees to work with customers behind the counter as their English improves.

“If I don’t have enough people to turn the rooms, the rooms sit vacant overnight and the ownership doesn’t make money,” said Sparks, who described herself as “very conservative.”

Gilbert Hategeka, 32, who works at a group home caring for the disabled, said the refugee cuts had added to a growing list of problems for the Congolese in Montana. Many, including his brother, have left Missoula because of the high rent and lack of opportunity for better wages.

Now, he is fielding calls from relatives in a refugee camp in Uganda who say buses from humanitarian organizations that used to pick up hundreds from camps for refugee processing are now only carrying a couple. The church that Congolese refugees founded in Missoula now attracts about two dozen worshipers compared with as many as 70 in previous months.

On a recent Sunday, Hategeka, Nsanzinfura and Kambale’s husband, Joel, led a service. A choir that included boys who grew up in Montana sang Congolese hymns for the black and white audience. Zigire Yvonny, who arrived in Missoula two months ago, pulled Kambale aside to plead for help getting her son to the United States. He had recently emerged from a coma in a camp in Uganda and was waiting for approval to resettle in Missoula.

“He has no father, no mother,” Yvonny said. “He doesn’t have any brothers or any friends. He has no one who knows him. All the time, he’s called me on the phone saying he’s hungry and has no money.”

Kambale has assumed the role of liaison between government officials and the refugee community, and translator for Missoula’s refugee resettlement office.

In September, Kambale and his wife planned to bring their three children to the airport to greet their uncle, who was approved to come to the United States and had a trip booked.

That morning, weeks before the White House would actually announce the cuts, Kambale was in a meeting with resettlement officials when he heard his brother-in-law’s trip was canceled and his case was delayed.

“Why is God doing this?” his relative asked Kambale on the phone.

The family has received no updates on his case and is not hopeful. Kambale planned to greet his brother-in-law the same way he greets all Congolese refugees: by shouting “karibu,” the Swahili word for welcome.

“A language which all refugees can hear,” Kambale said.

He fears he will not be saying it anytime soon.

This article originally appeared in

These Refugees Escaped Congo, but Trump's Policies May Strand Loved Ones

MISSOULA, Mont. — On his first day in this small college town cradled between the Flathead and Lolo national forests, Funugo Nsanzinfura made sure to submit the paperwork necessary for his daughter, Faith, and her mother, Ayingeneye, to join him in the growing community of Congolese refugees here.

In a little-noticed strategy document published last month to guide law enforcement on emerging threats and in recent public appearances by Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, the department is trying to project a new vigilance about violent white nationalism, beating back criticism that the agency has spent a decade playing down the issue.

“I would like to take this opportunity to be direct and unambiguous in addressing a major issue of our time. In our modern age, the continuation of racially based violent extremism, particularly violent white supremacy, is an abhorrent affront to the nation,” McAleenan said during an address last month, describing white nationalism as one of the most dangerous threats to the United States.

The department’s new stance contrasts that of President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed white supremacy as an insignificant fringe movement. But beyond words and documents, many officials trying to combat the threat throughout the country remain skeptical that the full weight of federal law enforcement is finally being used to give bigoted domestic terrorism the attention it deserves.

Mike Sena, who manages one of 79 information-gathering “fusion centers” across the country partially funded by the Department of Homeland Security, said he has witnessed the rise of hate speech and white supremacist terrorism on the internet — and the reluctance of some in local law enforcement to pursue it.

“If it’s ISIS, they’re jumping to it and saying, ‘I got this,’” said Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group. “But if it’s not, they say, ‘What do I have to do with this?’”

Local police officials in turn hope the belated admission by the Homeland Security Department will lead the agency to share more and richer information on the threat.

Sena said the department’s moves are a good sign. “This is a huge affirmation for what we’ve been trying to do the last 18 years,” he said.

The department’s new public stance is a break with the skepticism that has been rooted within the federal government for years and that Trump has openly expressed — most prominently after the fatal white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the deadly rampage at two mosques in New Zealand. (He did denounce white supremacy after the mass shooting this summer in El Paso, Texas.)

While the Islamic State group and al-Qaida can still inspire homegrown terrorism in the United States, the “Strategic Framework For Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence” asserts that the leadership at Homeland Security must adapt to the rise of domestic terrorism. The department will invest in counter-messaging campaigns and engage the private sector to combat hateful rhetoric online, according to the report.

Highlighting domestic terrorism is a major shift for a Homeland Security Department that has been accused of underplaying the threat in the aftermath of the department’s 2009 report that warned that economic dislocation and the election of a black president could fuel right-wing extremism and identified newly discharged service members as potential recruits. The political backlash was fierce and the report was withdrawn.

An earlier recognition of the white supremacist threat could have been felt in communities across the country, according to Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst for the department who wrote the 2009 report. Such a decision by the department, he said, might have led to trainings for local police departments to scout indicators of potential threats, undercover operations focused on the white nationalist movement and additional investment into organizations that reach out to those who have shown signs of committing violent acts.

Instead “the backlash to my report created a chilling effect across government at all levels,” Johnson said. “Everyone was kind of afraid or hesitant or didn’t even want to look at this issue.”

Even as the threat shifted from foreign-born terrorist cells to those inspired by racist propaganda on the internet, the department cut resources for programs that former officials say were tasked with analyzing the emerging threat and supporting outreach organizations.

The Department of Homeland Security does not take the lead in terrorism investigations. The agency’s role is rather to analyze data, inform local law enforcement agencies of emerging threats and issue grants to local law enforcement to combat terrorism. The fusion centers are key to its information sharing.

Under the current administration, former and current homeland security officials have expressed concern that the agency formed to combat terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been relegated largely to enforce Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda.

“You would think DHS is really just the department of the southwest border,” said Janet Napolitano, a former homeland security secretary under President Barack Obama. “The responsibilities are so much broader than that, and they include both foreign terrorism and also now domestic terrorism.”

Current department leaders acknowledge an exclusive focus on immigration will not keep the country safe.

“Border security cannot stop violence originating from within America,” the department’s new mission report states.

The domestic terrorism threat has grown clearer as Homeland Security’s capacity to address it has atrophied. Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, told Congress in July that the bureau had arrested as many domestic terrorists as foreign terrorists this year and many of them were white supremacists.

The department’s mission report also highlights recent attacks committed by white supremacists, including mass shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand and the deadly shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.

It remains unclear how the Department of Homeland Security will translate its recognition of the threat into action to combat it. Agency officials said they will release an implementation plan in the coming months, and McAleenan has committed to making it public. But law enforcement officials say simply identifying the threats in an official terrorism report was needed — and overdue.

After Napolitano rescinded the 2009 report on right-wing extremism, Obama administration officials feared legitimizing white supremacists’ views with more attention. Under the Trump administration, the office tasked with paying out grants and coordinating local police departments to prevent threats has shriveled.

That office, which has been renamed multiple times, went from a budget of more than $20 million in the Obama administration to less than $3 million, according to the House Appropriations Committee and former homeland security officials. A department official said the $20 million figure was mostly grants and other funds that were not part of the program’s core budget.

A midyear budget request by McAleenan earlier this year was held up by Democrats who worried the administration would use the added resources to target Muslims.

Johnson, who tried to sound the alarm in 2009, said the new agency document gave him a “glimmer of hope.”

“Better late than never, but we’ve had a threat that’s been around for 10 years, and if we acknowledged this and my report was released, we would be much more ahead on strategies,” he said.

In addition to clearly identifying white nationalism as a pressing threat, the department also warns of the rise of “targeted violence” by those who do not display a clear motivation or hatred for a particular group of people.

The report highlights how hateful posts on the internet, including those that are part of disinformation campaigns by foreign states, have incited violent acts in the United States. Officials said they hope the report cements a resolve in police agencies to better investigate leads issued by fusion centers, even if they do not yet meet the definition of probable cause or do not fall into the traditional definition of terrorism.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which represents the police departments that would be on the receiving end of the information gathered by the Homeland Security Department, said calling out domestic terrorism merely brings the department and its fusion centers to the current reality.

“What’s evolved is a recognition that it doesn’t matter if somebody is ideologically driven or just targeting people. We need to know who they are,” Wexler said. “The challenge in a democracy is the First Amendment. People say things on the internet.”

Law enforcement officials said the Homeland Security Department now needs to give police departments more latitude with grants often seen as restricted to combating foreign-born terrorism.

Some police officials have requested additional federal investment in research to identify warning signs of potential attackers and organizations that conduct outreach to those who may espouse hateful views — no easy task for investigators who must weigh First Amendment rights with public safety.

While officials remained skeptical that the Trump administration would truly invest in combating the new threat, Sena is optimistic.

“This gives us the ability to look at the threats across America,” he said. “It’s not just finding the terrorist with the pipe bombs and two end caps, the guy espousing al-Qaida rhetoric.”

New Focus at Homeland Security on Domestic Terrorism

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is beginning to address white supremacist terrorism as a primary security threat, breaking with a decade of flagging attention after bigoted mass shooters from New Zealand to Texas took the lives of nearly 100 people in the last six months.

Homeland Security Dept. Affirms Threat of White Supremacy After Years of Prodding

<h1>WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday upheld a block on President Donald Trump’s attempt to use $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense to construct a wall along the southwestern border, impeding the delivery of one of his signature campaign promises.</h1>

The divided three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit agreed with a lower court’s decision from Friday that ruled the Trump administration did not have the authority to reallocate the funds without congressional approval. The administration immediately appealed.

Two of the three judges on the panel affirmed that the administration could not build the barriers during future challenges.

“We conclude that it is best served by respecting the Constitution’s assignment of the power of the purse to Congress, and by deferring to Congress’ understanding of the public interest as reflected in its repeated denial of more funding for border barrier construction,” wrote Judges Michelle Friedland, an Obama appointee, and Richard Clifton, a George W. Bush appointee.

Judge N. Randy Smith, also a Bush appointee, dissented, calling the ruling “an uncharted and risky approach.”

“This approach is in contradiction to the most fundamental concepts of judicial review,” Smith said. “The majority has created a constitutional issue where none previously existed.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club, hailed the freezing of the funds as a victory.

“Congress and now two courts have said no to border wall funds,” Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement Friday. “For the sake of our democracy and border communities, it’s time the president come to terms with the fact that America rejected his xenophobic wall — and move on.”

As a surge of migrants arrived at the U.S. border, Trump declared a national emergency in February to reallocate funds from counterdrug programs of the Defense Department to build more barriers. This came after a monthslong impasse between the White House and Congress, and a partial government shutdown over funding construction of the wall.

The move to reallocate the funds, which critics of the administration said contradicted the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution, was then challenged in two separate lawsuits.

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California temporarily blocked part of Trump’s plan to build the wall in May. On Friday, Gilliam again blocked the efforts, describing the plan as “unlawful.”

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Seattle blocked another attempt by the administration to deter migration.

Judge Marsha J. Pechman of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington stopped the administration from denying a bond hearing to migrants who crossed the border illegally, which would have kept them jailed until they received a decision on an immigration case.

The administration Wednesday called that ruling “at war with the rule of law.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/us/politics/border-wall-funds-ruling.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Appeals court upholds ruling blocking Trump from using defense funds for border wall

Two of the three judges on the panel affirmed that the administration could not build the barriers during future challenges.

The findings by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General were released as House Democrats detailed their own findings at migrant holding centers and pressed the agency to answer for the mistreatment not only of migrants but also of their own colleagues, who have been threatened on social media.

In June, inspectors from the department visited five facilities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and found children had few spare clothes and no laundry facilities. Many migrants were given only wet wipes to clean themselves and bologna sandwiches to eat, causing constipation and other health problems, according to the report. Children at two of the five facilities in the area were not given hot meals until inspectors arrived.

Overcrowding was so severe that when the agency’s internal inspectors visited some of the facilities, migrants banged on cells and pressed notes to windows begging for help.

“At one facility, some single adults were held in standing-room-only conditions for a week, and at another, some single adults were held more than a month in overcrowded cells,” according to the report, which built off an initial inquiry by the inspector general in May that described similar conditions in facilities in El Paso, Texas.

The report fueled Democratic lawmakers’ resolve to press for answers from the Customs and Border Protection agency even as they continued to fight among themselves over an emergency spending bill that passed last week without the strict conditions that liberals and Hispanic members had demanded. Their sense of urgency was stoked further after ProPublica unearthed a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents that featured jokes about migrant deaths and threats to members of Congress.

“The inspector general’s report provides a shocking window into the dangerous and dehumanizing conditions that the Trump administration is inflicting on children and families at the border,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “This report is even more troubling after the discovery of the vile, crude comments made on social media by some of those in CBP responsible for caring for migrant families and children.

“The inhumanity at the border is a challenge to the conscience of America,” she added.

After touring a facility in Clint, Texas, where a group of lawyers had reported that children had gone unfed and unwashed, Democratic lawmakers said they had met migrants who were not given fresh water and were forced to drink from toilets.

In a series of tweets Tuesday, one of the Democrats, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who was the target of some of the more offensive posts in the Facebook group, described Customs and Border Protection as a “rogue agency.”

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, demanded Tuesday that the acting secretary of homeland security, Kevin K. McAleenan, and the newly appointed acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, come to Capitol Hill to discuss the Facebook group and the allegations in the report.

“There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency,” Cummings said. “The committee needs to hear directly from the heads of these agencies as soon as possible in light of the almost daily reports of abuse and defiance.”

The House Judiciary and Oversight committees both announced hearings next week into the conditions at detention centers.

According to the report, details of which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, 826 of the 2,669 children detained at the facilities were held longer than 72 hours, in violation of a federal court settlement and Customs and Border Protection policy. Senior managers raised security concerns at the facilities, calling the situation “a ticking time bomb,” according to the report. Images published in the report show crowds of migrants packed into cells pressing their hands onto the windows. One migrant held up a cardboard sign reading, “Help.”

Some migrants clogged their toilets with blankets and socks in order to be released from the crowded cells. When some refused to return, Border Patrol brought in a special operations team “to use force if necessary.”

“Additionally, detainees have attempted to escape while removed from their cells during maintenance,” according to the report.

While senior Department of Homeland Security officials have for months sounded the alarm over a record number of Central American families crossing the southwestern border, officials in recent weeks have disputed the descriptions of the conditions of detained migrants. McAleenan last week described the allegations at the Clint facility as “unsubstantiated” and called it “clean and well managed.”

But the government’s own report backed up the Democrats’ descriptions. The facilities were built for the short-term stay of adults expected to be quickly deported. Central American children, which under immigration law cannot be immediately deported back to their origin country, are supposed to be moved to facilities managed by the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours. Single adults are supposed to be moved to facilities built for longer-term detention managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“These are not facilities that are designed to hold people for more than three days,” said Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, the only Republican representing a border district. “You shouldn’t be holding anybody in these facilities for more than that.”

But Department of Homeland Security officials have said other facilities are full as well. To deter migration to the border, the department recently threatened to start nationwide raids to deport unauthorized families, which President Donald Trump said will begin after July 4.

An ICE spokesman also said Tuesday that the agency was issuing fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars to immigrants in the country illegally who refused to comply with deportation orders.

The agency began sending out the notices, with fines up to $799 per day, in December. On Tuesday, NPR reported that one woman was sent a fine for nearly $500,000.

Among border sectors, the Rio Grande Valley has seen some of the largest surges of migration, according to senior department officials. The agency has built tent camps in the area to hold hundreds of the asylum-seekers and this year began flying unprocessed migrants to facilities with more space in San Diego.

Last week, Customs and Border Protection gave reporters a rare tour of a detention facility in McAllen, Texas, where migrants of all ages were being held inside chain-link fences, lying on worn gym mats and snacking on sandwiches.

Stacked on shelves inside “la hielera,” or the icebox, as migrants commonly call the facility for its frigid temperatures, were diapers, baby wipes, formulas and other materials authorities use to care for the migrants. Two medical teams operate out of the facility and screen the migrants when they arrive after being apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

“This is kind of ground zero for us,” said Carmen Qualia, the acting executive officer for law enforcement operational programs of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector.

But the inspector general’s report questioned whether the department was doing enough for the children.

At a news conference Tuesday, doctors in Texas who care for children released from the facilities said they were surprised more had not died. At least six migrant children have died in federal custody or shortly after they were released since September.

They described children having lifesaving medication taken away or released with serious ailments but without any medical records from the time they were detained. One doctor related the story of a young mother who described how hard it was to keep her newborn baby warm while in custody.

“This baby had been given a new onesie and given a plastic blanket, and despite her best efforts, her little newborn’s fingers and toes were still blue,” said Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a pediatrician in El Paso.

Robert E. Perez, deputy commissioner for Customs and Border Protection, said he was “very confident” his agents were providing fresh water, food and hygiene products to migrants in Border Patrol custody. His agents are overwhelmed, he said, because of a record number of families crossing the border, which has filled facilities built for short-term detention.

“We take any and every allegation of misconduct incredibly seriously,” Perez said on CNN. “And there will be consequences to those who do not adhere to our standards of conduct.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/border-center-migrant-detention.html" id="58baa06b-77c6-36e6-a1c5-ba9dd0dbb919">The New York Times</a>.

Squalor is pervasive in migrant detention centers, a report finds

WASHINGTON — Overcrowded, squalid conditions are more widespread at migrant centers along the southern border than initially revealed, the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog said Tuesday. Its report describes standing-room-only cells, children without showers and hot meals, and detainees clamoring desperately for release.

<h1>WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked an order by Attorney General William Barr that would have kept thousands of migrants detained indefinitely while waiting for their asylum cases to be decided.</h1>

Judge Marsha J. Pechman of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington described the order, which would have denied some migrants a bail hearing, as unconstitutional. Under a preliminary injunction, Pechman said migrants must be granted a bond hearing within seven days of a request or be released if they have not received a hearing in that time.

“The court finds that plaintiffs have established a constitutionally protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision-maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” Judge Pechman wrote.

Her ruling also noted that the government was likely to appeal the decision.

The order, which was issued in April, was another attempt by the Trump administration to prevent the release of migrants into the country — and to deter asylum-seekers from crossing the border altogether.

The administration in recent months has raised fees for asylum-seekers and slowed the processing at ports of entry. It is also expanding a policy that has forced more than 13,000 migrants to wait in Mexico as their legal cases proceed.

For years, migrants who were determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries have been allowed to request bond hearings so they could be released on bail rather than wait in detention facilities for their cases to be heard. The order from Barr, whose purview extends to immigration courts, would have denied that right to a hearing to people who are apprehended after they illegally enter the United States.

He appeared to acknowledge at the time that the order could aggravate already overcrowded facilities. Conditions at the facilities have been the subject of public backlash after lawyers, lawmakers and the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog described mistreatment and filth.

In April, Barr delayed his order for 90 days.

Michael Tan, a senior staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the order would have denied due process to those seeking sanctuary in the United States.

The administration, he said, was “trying to create a perception that we need to lock everybody up or chaos ensues.”

But Tan added: “That’s just not true. We have a long-standing process in our immigration system to decide whether someone should be locked up or not.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/federal-judge-asylum-seekers.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Federal Judge blocks Barr's attempt to deny asylum-seekers bail

Her ruling also noted that the government was likely to appeal the decision.

The effort has been planned as a show of force to deter migration to the southwestern border, but immigration agents and experts have also described the planning and logistics for the operation as flawed.

The effort will focus on more than 2,000 undocumented family members who entered the United States in recent years and had their cases expedited on a specialized docket and were served deportation orders in at least 10 major cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New Orleans.

ICE branches in additional cities were also told to prepare to conduct deportations, according to one of the homeland security officials.

It remained unclear whether families in all of the cities would be detained. According to one federal official, agents in New York have been instructed to go to the homes of families in the country illegally and instruct them to leave the country in 30 days. The families may be fitted with an ankle bracelet for tracking.

In an interview with ABC News, Mark Morgan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said 2,040 family members would be targeted, without specifying the timing of the operation.

Such operations have been carried out under previous administrations. While people are often detained at home, work or courthouses, the operation Sunday would be a coordinated effort across the country. Morgan is hoping the deportations will quell a record number of Central Americans seeking asylum.

While President Donald Trump said on Twitter this week that ICE would deport millions of immigrants, the agency does not have the resources to carry out a mission of that size.

Some immigration experts doubted the agency would reach the target of 2,000, partly because families most likely fled their homes after Trump’s tweet late Monday night. “They know we’re coming,” said Ronald D. Vitiello, former acting director of ICE.

On Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department said it would not help the federal government with any planned raids.

Operation set that will round up more than 2,000 for deportation

WASHINGTON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expected to send agents into communities Sunday morning to begin a coordinated operation deporting undocumented immigrant family members across the country, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials.

<h1>WASHINGTON — A 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who officials said was sick with influenza was found dead at a Border Patrol station in South Texas on Monday morning, after a week of waiting in holding facilities to be sent to a shelter for migrant children.</h1>

The teenager, identified by officials as Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, was the third migrant child — all of them from Guatemala — to die in Customs and Border Protection custody.

A fourth, another 16-year-old Guatemalan boy, died last month after being placed in a shelter for young migrants by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“The men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection are saddened by the tragic loss of this young man, and our condolences are with his family,” John Sanders, the agency’s acting commissioner, said in the statement Monday. He said the agency was “committed to the health, safety and humane treatment of those in our custody.”

Carlos entered the United States without his parents near Hidalgo, Texas, on May 13 in a group of about 70 other migrants. An official with Customs and Border Protection, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation into Carlos’ death was in preliminary stages, told reporters that the boy did not show signs of illness in an initial medical screening on the day he was detained.

He was held in a processing center in the agency’s Rio Grande Valley sector until Sunday, the official said. Early that morning, Carlos told agents at the facility he was not feeling well. A nurse practitioner determined he had influenza and recommended he receive doses of Tamiflu. Border Patrol agents bought the medicine from a nearby pharmacy.

Later Sunday, Carlos was moved to a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, about 20 miles away, where he could be separated, the official said. He was found dead Monday morning, an hour after a welfare check.

Officials said Carlos was given a diagnosis of Influenza A, but it was not clear if he was specifically tested for the illness, and officials did not respond to questions for clarification.

This article originally appeared in <a id="cb282eee-db81-4ef2-95bf-216244393bf2" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/us/politics/migrant-death-border.html">The New York Times</a>.

Guatemalan Boy Dies at Border Station While Awaiting Move to a Shelter

A fourth, another 16-year-old Guatemalan boy, died last month after being placed in a shelter for young migrants by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Guatemalan boy dies at border station while awaiting move to a shelter

The Transportation Security Administration requested a few hundred volunteers to deploy to the border to transport migrants, distribute meals and provide legal support, a department official said Wednesday. The agents, some of whom will come from the Federal Air Marshal Service and from the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team, usually provide security at airports and on airplanes while undercover, according to four department officials.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the specifics of the reorganization of security personnel.

It was the latest attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to support overwhelmed Border Patrol agents by diverting to the border officials who provide security elsewhere in the country.

As the number of migrants crossing the southwestern border has increased in recent months, the agency has sent in Coast Guard teams and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who typically conduct criminal investigations. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security has requested — and received — military assistance.

The moves have stoked concerns that security risks could go unmonitored, as well as concerns about longer wait times for commercial vehicles at ports of entry, according to two of the homeland security officials.

The number of volunteers from the TSA will account for less than 1% of a workforce of 60,000, and there are no plans to reassign those who screen passengers at airports. The specifics of the reorganization of TSA agents were first reported by CNN.

Last month, more than 98,900 migrants, including more than 58,000 families, illegally crossed the southwestern border at points between official ports of entry. Customs and Border Protection officials detained 109,144 migrants at the border, including at its legal ports of entry, the highest total since 2007.

“We cannot address this crisis by shifting more resources,” Carla L. Provost, chief of the Border Patrol, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this month. “It’s like holding a bucket under a faucet. It doesn’t matter how many buckets we have if we can’t turn off the flow.”

In late March, the Coast Guard began deploying 150 officials to the border to provide medical care for migrant families and children and to assist with patrols, according to Lt. Cmdr. Scott McBride, a Coast Guard spokesman. The officials previously conducted search-and-rescue missions and medical work.

The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Thousands of active-duty military troops are also helping the department build portions of the wall along the border.

Homeland Security Investigations, the branch of ICE that normally conducts criminal and terrorist investigations, has also assigned 130 agents to the border. Those agents will now conduct DNA tests on some migrants to determine if the children they are traveling with are not their own, part of a pilot program that the department says aims to weed out fraudulent families. They will also be combating human trafficking.

John Cohen, the department’s former acting undersecretary for intelligence during the Obama administration, commended the agency for reallocating resources to assist at the border.

But, he said, because of the Trump administration’s “obsession with immigration enforcement” and its failure to confront the migrant surge earlier, “we now have to divert resources from law enforcement and security operations focused on high-risk issues so they can deal with border and immigration issues.”

Cohen also served as a senior adviser at the agency under President George W. Bush.

The department has also reassigned 731 Customs and Border Protection agents who usually screen people and vehicles at ports of entry along the northern and southern borders, at harbors and at airports to help process migrants.

“The department is considering all options to address the humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” said Tyler Q. Houlton, the agency’s acting assistant secretary. “We will continue to work with our workforce to find dynamic solutions and funding to address this very serious problem."

This article originally appeared in <a id="45df0984-d8a9-3071-a0b6-20e3b91c9a1c" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/politics/federal-agents-border-migrant-surge.html">The New York Times</a>.

Air marshals are the latest officials diverted to the border to handle the surge of migrants

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has pulled federal agents from airports, from legal border crossings and from deep inside the United States and reassigned them to the southwestern border to grapple with a surge of incoming migrants.

The U visa program, created in 2000, offers immigrants who are in the country illegally temporary legal residency and a path to U.S. citizenship if they cooperate with law enforcement officials after being a victim of or a witness to violent crimes, among them domestic violence and sexual assaults.

But under the Trump administration, the federal program is facing the biggest backlog in its history, officials said, meaning that immigrants could be deported as they wait for their visas. Last year, fewer immigrants applied for the visas — the first annual decline since 2007 — in what law enforcement officials and lawyers called a sign that immigrants were growing wary of helping police and prosecutors.

In San Francisco, Sgt. Inspector Antonio Flores had welcomed the crackdown on crime that he thought would be a tenet of the Trump administration. Instead, he said, the growing delays in issuing the U visas have frightened victims who are in the country illegally from coming forward and, in turn, thwarted charges against suspects.

“It’s been very challenging for us,” said Flores, who heads the human trafficking unit at the San Francisco Police Department. “We believed things were going to be easier for law enforcement, and it didn’t quite work out that way.

“Let us do what we do,” Flores said. “If I get a good perpetrator, a suspect, give me the tools. Don’t take away my tool.”

In Tucson, Ariz., the police chief, Chris Magnus, said the visa protections have for years been essential to persuade immigrants who are in the country illegally to report crimes without fear of being deported. But in recent weeks, immigration lawyers have informed him that victims and witnesses are reluctant to cooperate with police.

And even if they do, the lawyers told him, the backlog leaves victims worried that they will be deported after they apply — and identify themselves as immigrants in the country illegally — but before they get their visas.

“If we want them to come forward and participate in the prosecution process, they need to have confidence that their family members or themselves are not going to be deported while participating,” Magnus said. “If the real goal is to get dangerous criminals off the street, it seems like this is a sort of contradiction in terms of priorities and focus.”

Congress approved the visa program in 2000 to encourage immigrants who are in the country illegally to work with law enforcement.

The first step for a U visa is local certification: Police, prosecutors or judges must certify the victim’s help in criminal cases before immigrants apply for the U visa. After being certified, the federal government scrutinizes applicants and places them on a waiting list that provides temporary residency for themselves and family members and the opportunity to apply for a work permit while they wait for their visas. It is the period to even appear on the waiting list that has ballooned.

Only 10,000 U visas are issued annually; it can take years for an immigrant to receive one, even after the criminal case they assisted has been closed. (Relatives of the immigrants are not subject to the cap.)

After this article was published, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Jessica Collins, said the agency has issued as many U visas as it can annually since 2010.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s hard-line campaign to limit immigration has undercut his own tough-on-crime agenda, law enforcement officials said, by worsening major delays in a visa program that is intended to help police pursue violent criminals.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Articles written by the author

These Refugees Escaped Congo, but Trump's Policies May Strand Loved Ones

New Focus at Homeland Security on Domestic Terrorism

Homeland Security Dept. Affirms Threat of White Supremacy After Years of Prodding

Appeals court upholds ruling blocking Trump from using defense funds for border wall

Squalor is pervasive in migrant detention centers, a report finds

Federal Judge blocks Barr's attempt to deny asylum-seekers bail

Operation set that will round up more than 2,000 for deportation

Guatemalan boy dies at border station while awaiting move to a shelter

Air marshals are the latest officials diverted to the border to handle the surge of migrants

Trump's immigration crackdown blunts his effort to be tough on crime

Guatemalan boy dies in U.S. custody after illness, officials say

Coast guard's top officer pledges 'dedicated campaign' to improve diversity

Homeland security chief cites top threat to U.S. (it's not the border)