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Published: 1/5/2020 3:00:39 PM

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Throughout 2019, the journalists working the immigration beat have struggled to keep up with the near-daily indignities that the Trump administration has visited on the migrants seeking admission into the U.S. One byproduct of that is that many worthy stories about people fighting back against those indignities have been under-covered. Here are two such stories.

In the summer of 2014, as the so-called surge of families and unaccompanied minors overwhelmed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Obama administration decided to detain hundreds of families instead of releasing them conditionally until their cases could be heard in immigration court.

Megan Kludt, now a partner with the Northampton-based immigration law firm of Curran, Berger & Kludt, volunteered at the border helping people imprisoned in a makeshift holding facility in Artesia, New Mexico. The detention of children was unprecedented, and at the time, felt like an absolutely off-the-charts violation of human rights, Kludt says.

Upon returning to the Pioneer Valley, she joined forces with the ACLU of Massachusetts Immigrant Protection Project connecting local immigrants with attorneys. In 2018, the fresh hell unleashed by the Trump administrations family separation policy brought Kludts focus back to the southern border. She now works with the El Paso Immigration Collaborative (EPIC), an alliance of several non-governmental organizations and law firms around the country, on the biggest challenge currently facing immigration advocates: helping detained migrants make a case in front of an immigration judge or an ICE officer that they are not a danger to the community or a flight risk, and can therefore be released until their case is decided. (Disclosure: Kludt occasionally guest-speaks to my UMass classes for a nominal fee.)

Local organizations do the best they can, Kludt says, but they have a hard time reaching everyone who needs help. Using a specially designed case management system and a production line approach to its work, EPIC is able to help thousands of people document their ties to the U.S. by contacting their family members or friends who have agreed to sponsor them, posting bond, and preparing parole requests. They also collect data about ICE practices that can then be used in lawsuits. More than 1,000 attorneys and volunteers, many of them fluent in Spanish, French or Portuguese, contribute to this massive effort remotely.

Our goal is to provide service and to try to release as many people as possible, but if were not actually changing the system, were not really succeeding. So we also need to be constantly checking in about advocacy. What we want to see is policy changes, Kludt says. Its really a human rights crisis. Theres a lot of things that are going on under this administration that are really heartbreaking, but everyone has their place and what they can do. In my case, Im an immigration attorney, so this is my place, this is my stand at this time.

While collaboratives like EPIC have managed in recent years to deliver at least some assistance to many of the refugees detained in facilities across the United States, tens of thousands of individuals and families remain largely out of reach in improvised shelters to the south of the border because of the governments new Remain in Mexico policy. In the sad hierarchy of wretchedness, these people probably rate as the most vulnerable group of refugees, as they have to contend not only with miserable living conditions, but also with extortion, assault and even kidnapping.

Border Angels is one of the few U.S.-based outfits that have been able to consistently assist this category of people. For decades, the organization was best known for leaving water jugs in the desert areas of the border for migrants to find. They now also directly support 16 migrant shelters in Tijuana with donations collected from Americans, electricity and water bills, food, legal representation and bond.

That work is personal for Dulce Garcia, a Border Angels board member and a DACA recipient. Im still undocumented, even though I came here in 1987 when I was about 4 years old. Fast-forward to today: Im a property owner, a business owner, I have my own law practice, and Im also the executive director for this nonprofit. But no matter how much I pay in taxes, no matter how much I feel like Ive earned my keep, I still will never be a U.S. citizen the way the laws are today, Garcia says.

Her uncle died trying to cross the desert into the U.S. When she was in high school, her brother was detained by ICE, and now lives with a deportation order that will be enforceable as soon as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is ended. In September of 2017, Garcia successfully sued the Trump administration in a bid to retain DACA protections. When the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on the legality of DACA in November 2019, Garcia was in attendance. But until the court, Congress and the American voter finally make their decisions, Garcia and the hundreds of volunteers she coordinates continue to fight back against inhumanity.

Interviewing migrants. Posting bond. Contacting family members. Drafting parole requests. Suing the government. Bringing toys and clothes to children stuck in migrant shelters. Leaving lifesaving water jugs in the desert. Paying electricity and water bills. They all chip away at the misery thousands of families are experiencing this winter.

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Columnist Razvan Sibii: The resistance, as organized by immigration lawyers - GazetteNET

Turkish President Recep TayyipErdoansaid Sunday that violence in Syrias Idlib region threatens to cause another Syrian refugee crisis akin to the one that began in 2015, according to Reuters.

Speaking in Istanbul Sunday, Erdoan said Russian and Syrian offensives in the region had driven more than 80,000 people toward Turkey. He added that Ankara was trying to the best of its possible to bring an end to the bombings, saying a Turkish delegation would travel to Moscow to discuss the issue Monday.

Unless Europe takes steps to stop the violence in the region, Erdoan added, the continent was likely to see an influx of refugees fleeing the war zone similar to 2015s, according to the news service.

Turkey invaded northeastern Syria following the U.S. departure from the region in October, with Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinFormer pro golfer advanced business interests of indicted Giuliani associates: report Trump faces pivotal year with Russia on arms control Repeat of 2015 migrant crisis inevitable without action: Turkish president MORE reaching a new arrangement to demilitarize northern Syria by the end of the month.

See the article here:
Repeat of 2015 migrant crisis inevitable without action: Turkish president | TheHill - The Hill

Swedens right-wing Sweden Democrats are now neck and neck with the ruling Social Democrats in opinion polls. Though vilified and demonized, the partys success represents a complete failure of liberalism in the face of reality.

The Sweden Democrats - who were until recently dismissed as a fringe, racist party - are now surging in the polls. A voter survey, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper last week, puts the party within 0.2 percentage points of Prime Minister Stefan Lofvens left-wing Social Democrats. Moreover, voters now agree with the partys policies on nine out of nine issues.

On immigration, 43 percent of voters side with the party and its leader, Jimmie Akesson. Only 15 percent favor Lofvens policies. Likewise, 31 percent favor Akessons position on law and order, compared to 19 percent for Lofven.

The press has not made Akessons ride to the top easy. Yet, most outlets have failed to dig up dirt on the 40-year-old politician, who like Frances Marine Le Pen, has made a point of distancing his party from its extreme-right roots and presenting a clean-cut image.

Akesson was rounded in the media for admitting to an online gambling addiction several years ago, but voters evidently didnt mind. Akessons past comments about homosexual parents were dug up by author Jonas Gardell for a much-publicized op-ed two weeks ago, readers gave him their vote a week later regardless. Do-gooding musician Bono even made a spectacle of comparing Akesson to Hitler before last years elections, to no avail.

Its not difficult to find the real reason for Akessons popularity. Sweden is in the throes of a crime wave. Murder, assault, rape, threats, and harassment have all skyrocketed since 2015, according to the countrys Crime Prevention Council. Sexual offenses in particular have tripled in the last four years, while murder and manslaughter have more than doubled.

Furthermore, Sweden has emerged as the hand grenade attack capital of Europe. In 2018 there were 162 bombings reported to police, and 93 reported in the first five months of this year, 30 more than during the same period in 2018. The level of attacks is extreme in a country that is not at war, Crime Commissioner Gunnar Appelgren told SVT last year.

A 2017 investigation found that immigrants, the majority of them from the Middle East and North Africa, were behind 90 percent of shootings in Sweden. Meanwhile, the countrys police force has identified 50 immigrant-heavy neighborhoods as vulnerable - a term many have taken to mean no-go zones.

The Sweden Democrats reject multiculturalism, and have proposed a tightening of immigration law and a return of refugees to their home countries. The party has advocated life without parole for serious offenses, and the deportation of foreigners found guilty of serious crimes.

Many of us remember another Sweden, Akesson wrote in an op-ed last month. An everyday life where crime was there but not so close. Crime that was not as crude and ruthless as what we see today.

Akessons paean to the past has been criticized as the typical nostalgia of nationalism, but in its place, Lofven has only offered denial, blaming segregation, poverty and unemployment for the crime in Swedens ghettos.

The segregation is because there is...too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result he said in an interview with SVT last month.

However, unemployment has fallen as shootings have risen. Even if unemployment alone is to blame for violence, Lofven did not mention the fact that the unemployment rate among migrants in Sweden is triple the national average, while 90 percent of refugees who arrived since the 2015 migrant crisis are unemployed.

Instead, his government has engaged in across-the-board denialism. The taxpayer-funded Swedish Institute puts out videos downplaying the crime problem and literally telling critics on Twitter that nothing has happened here in Sweden. The institute has also created an Arabic-language advertising campaign inviting prospective migrants in with promises of generous welfare benefits.

Lofven publicly denied the existence of no-go zones in a statement given at the White House last year. But when crime statistics tell a different story, the Ministry of Justice has a plan for that too: suppress politically sensitive information, meddle with figures, and ignore embarrassing results.

Lofvens liberalism may have resonated with voters when he came to power in 2014. But the migrant crisis and subsequent crime wave that followed a year later proved its undoing, as the country was repaid for its humanitarianism in blood and a drain on welfare. A quick google search reveals hundreds of articles that pose questions like Why is Sweden shifting to the right?

The answer to that question is simple. Liberalism has clashed with reality, and lost.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Triumph of the right in Sweden is a result of the total failure of liberalism - RT

Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children on the Greek island of Lesbos are living in conditions that pose severe risks to their physical and mental well-being, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The Greek government announced plans to resettle children on the mainland, but aid organizations on Lesbos see little improvement so far.

Unaccompanied minors on the Greek island of Lesbos are being exposed to degrading conditions and often left to "fend for themselves," according to areportthis week from Human Rights Watch.

The research draws on anonymized interviews with 22 children from October this year, some as young as 14, living on Lesbos. Severe overcrowding in Moria, the island's main camp, has led to a lack of age-appropriate accommodation for children traveling alone or separated from family. The majority of the children spoken to for the report were living either in areas alongside unrelated adults, or in a large informal area that has sprung up outside the camp.

The report calls for an urgent response to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions the children are living in. One 16-year-old interviewee reported sleeping on a cardboard carton on the floor.

Sharing tents with adult strangers

Lesbos, alongside other Greek island "hotspots" on Samos and Chios, has experienced the biggest increase of boat arrivals since 2016, when the EU-Turkey Deal was introduced in an attempt to stem the flow of refugees to the continent.

With over 18,000 people now in a camp with capacity for little over 2,000, thousands -- includingthose with complex health needs, pregnant women, and young children -- are sleeping in tents on the rough, sloping ground of an olive grove. The area is often referred to as the "jungle" by those living there.

There are currently 968 unaccompanied and separated children on Lesbos, according to the latest UN figures. With only 147 spots for age-appropriate accommodation outside the camp, and 210 spaces inside Moria, hundreds are being left vulnerable and exposed to insecure, and sometimes violent, conditions.

Interviewees in the Human Rights Watch report described having to share tents with adult strangers, or on the ground without shelter -- some for as long as three months.

One 16-year-old interviewee from Afghanistan said in the report that he couldnt sleep while in the large main tent in Moria camp, intended for new arrivals. "There is no control who will come and sleep in there," he said. "The most difficult [thing] is that there's no light in the tent at night because the lamps are broken. It's terrifying because you don't know who or what is moving inside the tent."

"Everything is dangerous here -- the cold, the place I sleep, the fights," said one 14-year-old interviewee, who stated they lived in a rat-infested tent with 50 other people.

Not enough shelters available

There has always been a fragmented child protection system for unaccompanied minors on the island, Elina Sarantou from legal service provider HIAS on Lesbos, pointed out. Problems have included lack of information, an inefficient guardianship system, poor quality asylum interviews and delays, and inhumane reception conditions.

"The numbers however have now increased and it is therefore difficult, or even impossible, to ignore anymore," said Sarantou, adding that the current situation is directly related to shelter.

"In order for a minor to be transferred, a space has to open up on the mainland," Sarantou told InfoMigrants. "And since there are only shelters for a quarter of the minors in Greece, there is an obvious bottleneck."

In November the Greek government announced plans to respond to the severe overcrowding of hotspot areas such as Lesbos on the Greek islands. Plans include moving 20,000 people to the mainland early next year, and shutting camps on Lesbos, Chios and Samos - replacing them with 'closed' facilities that human rights advocates have feared will constitute detention centers. While transfers from the islands to the mainland have increased in recent months, high numbers of boat arrivals have also continued.

Relocation to the mainland

At the end of last month the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also announcedNo Child Alone, a new scheme to respond to the situation of unaccompanied minors on the islands -- promising to quickly settle thousands of children on the mainland. HIAS however say they have seen little implementation on Lesbos so far.

At the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) pediatric clinic outside Moria, mental health activity manager Angela Modarelli says, since October, they have started to see unaccompanied minors accessing psychological support "because the situation is getting worse and worse."

"They are in an unknown place, an unknown world - not speaking the language - without any support," said Modarelli, adding they are treated like adults even though they are children. "Every night when it becomes dark, they have to find a way to keep themselves safe.''

"Mostly when they arrive to see us it's already a crisis moment," said Modarelli. She has seen cases of self-harm, depression, suicidal ideation and plans, sometimes attempts. "And we had kids of 16 and 17 having a plan to end their life. Because... this is too much. They dont see that they are welcome here."

Most of the unaccompanied minors interviewed in the recent Human Rights Watch report also reported experiencing psychological distress.

Although long term solutions are urgently needed now, Afshan Khan, UNICEF special coordinator for the migrant response in Europe, toldInfoMigrants,Greece could not be expected to provide this support alone.

"UNICEF is once again urging European Governments to increase pledges to relocate unaccompanied and separated refugee and migrant children, fast-track family reunifications for those who already have relatives in Europe and increase funds supporting response efforts," said Khan.

"Unaccompanied children are among the most vulnerable people on the Greek islands, and they need Greece and other European countries to take care of them," said Coss in the Human Rights Watch report. "The EU and its member states should demonstrate responsibility and care for kids who suffer there every day."

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A crisis within a crisis: Hundreds of unaccompanied minors left to 'fend for themselves' on Lesbos - InfoMigrants

Pope Francis has described indifference towards the migrant crisis as a sin and called detention centres in Libya as places of torture and despicable slavery.

The Pope, who has made defending refugees a key part of his time at the head of the Catholic Church, was speaking as he welcomed 33 migrants to the Vatican from a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

He said all detention centres, which are overcrowded and a hot spot for human rights violations, should be closed and migrant traffickers punished.

Exact migrant figures in Libya are difficult to determine with many held in unofficial camps where abuse is particularly rife, but the figure is believed to be well over 600,000.

So far in 2019 just under 100,000 migrants arrived by sea to Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta, according the UNs refugee agency. Some 1,277 are dead or missing.

While the figures are a far cry from 2015 when over a million made the voyage by sea, the percentage of deaths to arrivals has risen sharply.

"How can we fail to hear the desperate cry of so many brothers and sisters who prefer to face a stormy sea rather than die slowly in Libyan detention camps, places of torture and ignoble slavery?", the Pope said.

"How can we remain indifferent to the abuses and violence of which they are innocent victims, leaving them at the mercy of unscrupulous traffickers? Our ignorance is a sin."

Pope Francis criticised the policy of preventing migrants from landing in Europe, which has repeatedly seen rescue ships stranded in the Mediterranean and unable to dock.

This approach has emboldened the Libyan coastguard to lead rescues, which typically sees the migrants returned to detention centres.

"Serious efforts must be made to empty the detention camps in Libya, evaluating and implementing all possible solutions," Pope Francis said.

"We must denounce and prosecute traffickers who exploit and abuse migrants,"

The Popes comments came as he unveiled a cross adorned with a life jacket, which had been worn by a migrant who died last year while crossing the Mediterranean.

I decided to expose here this life jacket, crucified on this cross, to remind us that we must keep our eyes open, keep our hearts open, to remind everyone of the absolute commitment to save every human life, a moral duty that unites believers and non-believers, he said.

In 2016 Pope Francis flew three Syrian families languishing in Lesbos to the Vatican and he has been highly critical of the mistreatment of migrants.

Updated: December 20, 2019 04:35 PM

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Pope Francis decries Libyan migrant camps as places of torture and slavery - The National