March 2021 - KISSLOROD

VP Harris, Guatemala’s Giammattei Discuss Immigration

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei spoke by phone on Tuesday and agreed to work together to address the root causes of migration to the United States, the White House said in a statement. “They agreed to explore innovative opportunities to create jobs and to improve the conditions for all people in Guatemala and the region, including by promoting transparency and combating crime,” the statement said. President Joe Biden has named Harris to lead U.S. efforts with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to try to stem the flow of migration, which has climbed sharply in recent weeks. Harris thanked Giammattei for his efforts to secure Guatemala’s southern border, the White House said.Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, speaks during February 2020 news conference in Guatemala City, March 31, 2021.Guatemala’s government, in a statement, said that during the call Giammattei underlined his interest in Guatemalan citizens living in the United States being granted temporary protected status. Temporary protected status allows nationals of certain countries, often facing armed conflict or major natural disasters, who are already in the United States to remain and work there.Harris also accepted an invitation by Giammattei to visit the Central American country at a future date, Guatemala said. Several …

US Federal Employees Asked to Volunteer and Assist at Southern Border

Faced with the challenge of caring for thousands of migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is asking workers from other federal agencies to volunteer to go to the border region on temporary assignments.During deployments of between 30 and 120 days, the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement wants the volunteers to help with tasks such as supervising children and collecting contact information for their relatives inside the United States so that they can be handed to over to their family’s care while they go through immigration proceedings.Children who are taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection are transferred to HHS facilities until they can be placed with a sponsor. Health and Human Services says in more than 80 percent of cases, a child has a family member in the United States, and that about half of those are a parent or legal guardian.There are currently about 18,000 children in custody, including at HHS facilities located in convention centers in Dallas, Texas, and San Diego, California.While authorities expel most adults who cross the U.S.-Mexico border under a public health order that former President Donald Trump issued in response to the coronavirus …

White House: VP Harris, Guatemala’s Giammattei Discuss Immigration

US Federal Student Debt Forgiven for Disabled Borrowers

Student loan borrowers in the United States with total and permanent disability will have their debt discharged, the U.S. Department of Education (DoED) has announced.”Borrowers with total and permanent disabilities should focus on their well-being, not put their health on the line to submit earnings information during the COVID-19 emergency,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a press release.”Waiving these requirements will ensure no borrower who is totally and permanently disabled risks having to repay their loans simply because they could not submit paperwork.” US Students With Disabilities Afforded Equality Reasonable accommodations have been available to students in the US since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990The forgiveness will impact more than 230,000 borrowers. The debt relief applies to federal student loan borrowers with “total and permanent disability,” DoED explained.An example of borrowers who will be relieved by this action are veterans who took out federal student loans and have been deemed disabled by the U.S. Veteran’s Administration. Total and permanent disability exists if an individual can no longer work because of illness or injury. Of the 230,000, more than 41,000 will be refunded payments made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, they will not be asked to submit earnings …

UN: Increase in Child Migrants Through Dangerous Darien Gap

The number of child migrants passing through the perilous Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama has risen dramatically, the U.N. child welfare agency said Monday. Underage migrants made up only about 2% of those using the jungle corridor in 2017. In 2020, children made up 25% of the migrants making the hard trek on foot, UNICEF’s report said. The Darien Gap is a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of roadless jungle that provides the only land route north out of South America. There is little food or shelter on the weeklong trek and bandits and wild animals prey on migrants. FILE – Aerial view of La Penita indigenous village, Darien province, Panama, May 23, 2019. Migrants cross the border between Colombia and Panama through the Darien Gap on their way to the United States.Most migrants making the hike are from Haiti or Cuba, with smaller numbers from African nations, such as Cameroon and Congo, and South Asian countries, such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. “I have seen women coming out of the jungle with babies in their arms after walking for more than seven days without water, food or any type of protection,” said Jean Gough, the UNICEF regional director who made a …

Expelled from US at Night, Migrant Families Weigh Next Steps

In one of Mexico’s most notorious cities for organized crime, migrants are expelled from the United States throughout the night, exhausted from the journey, disillusioned about not getting a chance to seek asylum and at a crossroads about where to go next. Marisela Ramirez, who was returned to Reynosa about 4 a.m. Thursday, brought her 14-year-old son and left five other children — one only 8 months old — in Guatemala because she could not afford to pay smugglers more money. Now, facing another agonizing choice, she leaned toward sending her son across the border alone to settle with a sister in Missouri, aware that the United States is allowing unaccompanied children to pursue asylum. “We’re in God’s hands,” Ramirez, 30, said in a barren park with dying grass and a large gazebo in the center that serves as shelter for migrants. Lesdny Suyapa Castillo, 35, said through tears that she would return to Honduras with her 8-year-old daughter, who lay under the gazebo breathing heavily with her eyes partly open and flies circling her face. After not getting paid for three months’ work as a nurse in Honduras during the pandemic, she wants steady work in the U.S. to send an older …

US Waives FBI Checks on Caregivers at New Migrant Facilities

The Biden administration is not requiring FBI fingerprint background checks of caregivers at its rapidly expanding network of emergency sites to hold thousands of immigrant teenagers, alarming child welfare experts who say the waiver compromises safety. In the rush to get children out of overcrowded and often unsuitable Border Patrol sites, President Joe Biden’s team is turning to a measure used by previous administrations: tent camps, convention centers and other huge facilities operated by private contractors and funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration announced that in March it would open eight new emergency sites across the Southwest, adding 15,000 new beds, more than doubling the size of its existing system.These emergency sites don’t have to be licensed by state authorities or provide the same services as permanent HHS facilities. They also cost far more, an estimated $775 per child per day.And to staff the sites quickly, the Biden administration has waived vetting procedures intended to protect minors from potential harm.Staff and volunteers directly caring for children at new emergency sites don’t have to undergo FBI fingerprint checks, which use criminal databases not accessible to the public and can overcome someone who changes a name …

Small Texas Border Town Is Route to US for Migrant Children

As darkness sets on the Rio Grande, U.S. Border Patrol agents hear pumps inflating rafts across the river in Mexico. It is about to get busy. Within an hour, the rafts drop off about 100 people in six trips into the United States, including many families with toddlers and children as young as 7 traveling alone. All of them wear numbered yellow plastic wristbands that look like they could be used to get into a concert or amusement park, and everyone rips them off and tosses them on the ground after setting foot in the U.S. Large black letters on the wristbands read, “Entregas,” or “Deliveries,” apparently a mechanism for smugglers to keep track of migrants they are ferrying across the river that separates Texas and Mexico. Roma, a town of 10,000 people with historic buildings and boarded-up storefronts in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, is the latest epicenter of illegal crossings, where growing numbers of families and children are entering the United States to seek asylum. U.S. authorities reported more than 100,000 encounters on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019. More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody Thursday, including about …

Thai Teen Faces Jail for Allegedly Defaming King

A 16-year-old Thai is potentially facing jail for allegedly defaming the country’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn by wearing a crop top, as Thailand’s youth-driven pro-democracy protests are gradually being quashed by a royalist establishment armed with draconian laws.The country’s lèse-majesté law, known better as “112,” after its section in the Thai criminal code, carries three to 15 years in jail for each charge of “defaming, insulting or threatening” key players in the palace, effectively shielding the powerful monarchy from criticism.Lèse-majesté allegations have been filed against at least 71 protesters, with seven key leaders denied bail so far as they await trial.The alleged crime of the teenager — whose identity VOA News is withholding, as he is a minor — was to wear a crop top at a protest with an anti-monarchy slogan written on his stomach.That was deemed an insult to the king, who has been repeatedly shown in European media wearing a crop top while overseas.“Why am I being punished for having a different opinion?” he asked.“I’m not afraid for myself, but I’m scared others will end up like me. I’m scared this might be the reason people might not come out to protest anymore,” he told VOA last month.The …

Specialized Care Required: Migrants Youths in US Custody

Unaccompanied minors continue to stream across the US-Mexico border, the only migrant group the Biden administration is allowing to remain in the US. As VOA’s Aline Barros reports, the influx has overwhelmed an immigration system struggling to comply with strict requirements for housing and processing children. Camera: Celia Mendoza …

Specialized Care Required: Migrant Youths in US Custody

Originally from Honduras, Oberlina lives in the U.S. state of Ohio. In 2018, she traveled with a migrant caravan to the U.S.-Mexico border, where she petitioned for asylum. Last week, the mother of two received a phone call from federal authorities.Her children, ages 6 and 11, had crossed the border into the United States, unaccompanied.“Immigration officials called me, and they said the children were OK. The next day they called me again. And they told me the children were feeling very sad. I talked to them through tears and so much anguish. I gathered all my strength to tell them not to lose hope,” Oberlina told VOA.Oberlina’s children are among thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed America’s southern border so far this year in what has become an early and thorny challenge for President Joe Biden. Critics as well as some allies of the administration are calling the situation a crisis.Republican lawmakers have repeatedly faulted Biden’s easing of former President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, saying the new administration all but invited an influx of migrants. At a news conference Thursday, Biden rejected the charge, noting seasonal increases in border arrivals.”It happens every single, solitary year – there is …

Universities Serve as Mass Vaccination Centers

Mass vaccination centers are emerging around the U.S. as more doses are rolled out more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Colleges and universities around the U.S. have turned into these centers, serving thousands of patients a day. VOA’s Kathleen Struck reports. Producer and camera: Mike Burke. …

Code Yellow Has Student Quarantined in Qatar

My studies already disrupted by a 1,400 mile trip from Ethiopia, I heard my phone ping to tell me I’d be on the move again. This time, to a different COVID-19 quarantine facility, 20 minutes away. My school — Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois — is in the American Midwest, but I attend classes in Qatar, at the university’s Doha campus in the Gulf States region. I am working toward a bachelor’s degree in journalism, remotely, like most of the world’s students, because the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered campuses and pushed classes online. I had just returned from my home country, and was quarantined at a hotel in Doha for the standard seven days before I could join the general population. When the COVID-19 app on my phone failed to turn from quarantine yellow to go-ahead green by Day 7 after my entry COVID test, I knew I wouldn’t be set free. EHTERAZ phone appMy phone app — called EHTERAZ, or “precaution” in Arabic — is a contact-tracing and risk detecting app, operated by the Ministry of Public Health in Qatar and used by all residents and visitors.While green indicates COVID-19 negative, yellow means quarantine, and red …

Biden Appoints His VP to Handle Migrant Surge 

U.S. President Joe Biden has selected Vice President Kamala Harris to take charge of one of the biggest issues confronting his administration in its early months — the flow of migrants arriving at the country’s southern border. “We’re going to be dealing with a full team now,” Biden said Wednesday. “I can’t think of nobody who was better qualified to do this,” he said, noting Harris’ past experience as the attorney general of California, a border state. “When she speaks, she speaks for me, doesn’t have to check with me,” added Biden. “She knows what she’s doing.” The president told Harris, a former U.S. senator and daughter of immigrants, “I gave you a tough job, and you’re smiling.” Harris, alongside the president, noted “the work will not be easy,” calling the influx at the U.S. border with Mexico “a challenging situation.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a meeting with immigration advisers in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, March 24, 2021.The vice president said she looked forward to engaging in diplomacy with government leaders and the private sector of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as collaborating with Mexico and other countries in …

Biden to Meet with Immigration Advisers Amid Migrant Surge

U.S. President Joe Biden is meeting Wednesday with immigration advisers and top Cabinet officials to try to figure out how to cope with the surge of mostly Central American migrants crossing the country’s southwestern border with Mexico into the United States.Biden has come under increasing pressure in recent days from both Republican critics and his Democratic colleagues in Congress to respond to the stream of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador walking north through Mexico to the U.S.Biden has urged migrants to stay home but thousands have been walking hundreds of kilometers to reach the border. Biden said Tuesday he would have more to say soon on the issue and is certain to face tough migration questions at the first formal news conference of his presidency on Thursday. Biden to Migrants Heading for US-Mexico Border: Stay Home Republicans, Democrats blame each other for latest immigration crisis When he took office two months ago, Biden blocked further construction of the border wall championed by former President Donald Trump and embraced what he said would be more humane treatment of migrants. Biden has told migrants to not make the treacherous trek to the U.S., but many migrants have viewed his policy shift …

Despite COVID, Unruly Crowds Persist During Spring Break

After thousands of students disregarded coronavirus health and safety guidelines last March to attend beach parties in Mexico, Florida and Texas, many U.S. universities chose to cancel spring break this year to deter students from traveling amid the pandemic.In Miami Beach — one of the most popular spring break destinations in the United States — things did not go as planned as large crowds descended on the entertainment district, letting loose and causing mayhem as they went on a rampage.The Miami Beach Police Department tweeted that its officers were forced to use pepper balls that emit a noxious smoke “to disperse members of the crowd who were disorderly” while congregating on March 13. Miami Beach officers were surrounded, and two were injured after trying to disperse crowds over the weekend, they reported.MBPD dealing with very large crowds this evening near 8 Street and Ocean Drive. While taking a subject into custody, Officers were forced to utilize pepper balls to disperse members of the crowd who were disorderly and surrounding officers.1/2— Miami Beach Police (@MiamiBeachPD) Police officers stand guard as revelers enjoy spring break festivities in Miami Beach, Florida, March 22, 2021.Northwestern University in Illinois instructed its students to notify the …

Miami’s South Beach Confronts Disastrous Spring Break

Florida’s famed South Beach is desperately seeking a new image. With more than 1,000 arrests and nearly 100 gun seizures already during this year’s spring break season, officials are thinking it may finally be time to cleanse the hip neighborhood of its law-breaking, party-all-night vibe. The move comes after years of increasingly stringent measures — banning alcohol from beaches, canceling concerts and food festivals — have failed to stop the city from being overrun with out-of-control parties and anything-goes antics. This weekend alone, spring breakers and pandemic-weary tourists drawn by Florida’s loose virus-control rules gathered by the thousands along famed Ocean Drive, at times breaking into street fights, destroying restaurant property and causing several dangerous stampedes. The situation got so out of hand that Miami Beach Police brought in SWAT teams to disperse pepper bullets and called in law enforcement officers from at least four other agencies. Ultimately, the city decided to order an emergency 8 p.m. curfew that will likely extend well into April after the spring break season is over. “We definitely want people to come and have fun,” Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola said Monday. “It’s a nightlife city. We want people of all races, …

Congressman Releases Photos of Migrant Detention Facilities at US Border

President Joe Biden’s administration has tried for weeks to keep the public from seeing images like those that emerged Monday showing immigrant children in U.S. custody at the border sleeping on mats under foil blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions. Administration officials have refused to call the detention of more than 15,000 children in U.S. custody, or the conditions they’re living under, a crisis. Officials have barred nonprofit lawyers who conduct oversight from entering a Border Patrol tent where thousands of children and teenagers are detained. And federal agencies have refused or ignored requests from the media for access to detention sites. Such access was granted several times by the administration of President Donald Trump, whose restrictive immigration approach Biden vowed to reverse. Now Biden faces growing criticism for the apparent secrecy at the border, including from fellow Democrats. FILE – Migrants are seen in a green area outside of a soft-sided detention center after they were taken into custody while trying to sneak into the U.S., in Donna, Texas, March 19, 2021.National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that “the administration has a commitment to transparency to make sure that the news media gets the chance to report on …

Monthly Archives: March 2021