"Record heat wave in the U.S. raises public health concerns" PBS NewsHour 6/17/2022
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SUMMARY: More than 100 million Americans this week were under some sort of heat advisory, and were warned to stay indoors if possible. From Texas to California, a massive heat wave has set record temperatures, raising concerns about how hot is too hot. W. Larry Kenney, a professor of physiology and kinesiology at Penn State, joins William Brangham for more on how extreme temperatures impact the body.
From the governor that Republicans tried and failed to remove.....
"Gov. Newsom on $123B California schools plan, oil spill clean up and climate change" PBS NewsHour 10/5/2021
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SUMMARY: A key focus of President Joe Biden's spending plan centers around addressing climate change and expanding universal pre-K. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed a $123 billion bill that would, among other things, expand pre-K and provide an extra year of kindergarten for some children. Judy Woodruff speaks with Newsom about these issues and how the California law plans to address them.
"Southern California oil spill could be ‘ecological disaster,’ take weeks to clean up" PBS NewsHour 10/4/2021
Personal note, my nephew and his wife own a home blocks away from Huntington Beach and have verified to the damage.
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SUMMARY: Federal and state investigators are focusing on a 41-year-old pipeline as the cause of a massive oil spill off the Southern California coast. The 126,000 gallon oil spill is threatening wildlife and prompting a robust cleanup effort in the Pacific Ocean. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the scale and scope of the damage remains unclear.
"West U.S. wildfires are so extreme that they’re creating lightning, fire whirls" PBS NewsHour 7/20/2021
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SUMMARY: More than 80 large fires are burning in 13 states across the U.S. currently, impacting nearly 1.3 million acres. One of the worst remains in Southern Oregon — the Bootleg Fire. It has been burning for two weeks and has already scorched an area a third of the size of Rhode Island. Carrie Bilbao with the National Interagency Fire Center joins William Brangham with the latest on the fires.
"Californians scramble for fresh water as taps, wells run dry" PBS NewsHour 7/20/2021
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SUMMARY: The severe drought across the Western U.S. is already causing long term problems, exacerbated by the warming atmosphere driven by climate change. As William Brangham reports from California’s San Joaquin Valley, the demand for water has threatened the drinking supply for hundreds of thousands of rural residents — including the farmers who grow a significant part of the country’s food supply.
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NOTE: This was copied from the e-newspaper, therefore no link to article.
"State adopts ethnic studies course" by Nina Agrawal, Los Angeles Times 3/19/2021
Ending years-long and often divisive debate over ethnic studies coursework in California’s K-12 schools, the State Board of Education on Thursday unanimously approved a model curriculum to guide how the histories, struggles and contributions of Asian, Black, Latino and Native Americans — and the racism and marginalization they have experienced in the United States — will be taught to millions of students.
The new curriculum embraces an approach to ethnic studies that focuses on the four core groups but evolved to accommodate a breadth of experiences, including lessons on the Jewish, Armenian and Sikh communities in the U.S.
Although criticism still emerged Thursday, the curriculum approval culminates two years of difficult discussions, protests and rewrites over which groups should be included and how their stories should be presented. Drafts were alternately pilloried for being left-wing propaganda or capitulating to right-wing agendas, and defended as providing an essential means for students of color to see themselves reflected in public school curriculum. It comes at a time when educators are seeking concrete lessons and strategies to address racism.
“The passion that we hear about this topic illustrates why ethnic studies is so important,” board president Linda Darling-Hammond said after nearly eight hours of presentations and discussion. “Much of it is a quest by each person or each group for a sense of belonging and acknowledgment.”
“Ethnic studies demands that we understand the forces that stand in the way of our shared humanity so that we can address them,” she said. “We need the more complete study of our history that ethnic studies provides and the attention to inequality that it stimulates.”
For now, the model curriculum serves as a guide for school districts that want the option to offer ethnic studies. But its lessons stand to become a flashpoint for debate again in the months ahead, as a bill to make a high school ethnic studies course a graduation requirement — believed to be the most far-reaching law of its kind nationally — makes its way through the Legislature.
The final vote came four years, four drafts and 100,000 public comments after state law mandated that educators create a model ethnic studies curriculum.
“In a state with the most diverse student body of anywhere in the nation, our students must see themselves reflected in their school, their curriculum, and the knowledge they learn,” Luis Alejo, author of that legislation when he was in the Assembly, said at the meeting Thursday. “This first-in-the-nation model curriculum will show other states what is possible.”
Supporters said the anti-racist teachings and the historic perspectives of marginalized groups in the curriculum are of critical importance at this moment in the U.S. as it reckons with issues including the Black Lives Matter movement and police abuse, violent attacks on Asian Americans and the rise of hate crimes against them, and attempts to disenfranchise voters of color.
“What we … have to do is take steps to start preventing these horrific acts against people of color,” said civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, whose social justice foundation works with several school districts. “It is not enough to say, I am not a racist. What we have to do in today’s world is we have to be anti-racist…. There is no place that has the greatest responsibility than our educational system.”
“We are proud of what we have to present to you,” State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond told the board. “And we acknowledge that when you do something of this magnitude it will not make everyone happy, but what we strive for is balance.”
The first draft of the curriculum was besieged by controversy and criticism, in large part from Jewish groups and legislators who objected to its treatment of Jews, exclusion of anti-Semitism as a form of hate, and mention of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions protest movement against Israel. Others, too, argued it was heavy on academic jargon, filled with left-leaning ideology and a controversial glossary that included definitions of terms like “hxrstory” and “cisheteropatriarchy.”
Other ethnic groups, including Armenian Americans, Sikh Americans and Arab Americans, also variously protested their exclusion or the terms under which they were included.
Another focal point of debate was “critical race theory,” a lens to examine how race and racism are embedded in institutional and systemic inequities. Frequently attacked by former President Trump and misinterpreted as creating divisions among groups, critical race theory is seen by ethnic studies practitioners as inseparable from the field, and the board recommended adding a definition to clear up misconceptions about it.
The curriculum includes a discussion of anti-Semitism in a sample lesson about Jewish Middle Eastern Americans and an additional sample lesson about Jewish Americans, both submitted by Jewish educators, in a section on “inter-ethnic bridge building.” Armenian and Sikh Americans are included in that section as well. So are Arab Americans — a sticking point, as Asian American Studies faculty have considered Arab Americans to fall under the umbrella of their discipline.
In a sign of how much has changed, some of the loudest objectors to the initial curriculum, including the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and the Jewish Community Relations Council, have withdrawn their complaints.
“We need ethnic studies now,” Tyler Gregory, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council said Thursday. “Ethnic studies gives marginalized communities the agency to define and share their own stories, cultures, and histories. As Jewish Americans, we relate to this urgent need.”
“Our crucial inclusion presents our own chance to impart the richness of our people, so that future generations hear the dog whistles of anti-Semitism that too often fall on deaf ears,” Gregory said.
But all of the ethnic studies teachers and experts initially appointed by the State Board of Education to draft the curriculum have asked to withdraw their names from it.
In a February letter to the top state educators and policymakers, members of the original advisory committee wrote: “Ethnic Studies guiding principles, knowledge, frameworks, pedagogies, and community histories have been compromised due to political and media pressure. Our association with the final document is conflicting because it does not reflect the Ethnic Studies curriculum that we believe California students deserve and need.”
Theresa Montaño, a professor of Chicana/Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge and a member of the advisory committee, said in an interview that, due to the heavy influence of public comments, the curriculum had moved further and further away from ethnic studies, removing core concepts and terms, and much closer to a multicultural social studies or history course.
“While we would argue that ethnic studies is for all students and we do honor multiple perspectives in our classrooms, the content should be on the racialized communities of color,” Montaño said.
“Ethnic Studies is the opportunity to give one course to the 80% of California students who have begged for inclusion of their histories and their stories in the California curriculum,” she said. “One course in 12 years. One. And you couldn’t even do that…. That’s what’s the most disappointing.”
Splits over the curriculum — including within the Jewish community — were again apparent during public comment on Thursday. Some Jews criticized it as insufficiently addressing anti-Semitism and the place of Middle Eastern Jews. Others said the model curriculum process had been “co-opted” by anti-Palestinian, pro-Israel groups.
Other supporters of traditional ethnic studies said the latest version had been stripped of its “anti-racist, anti-colonial and liberatory tenets” with the removal in places of terms like “revolution” and “capitalism,” as well as of substantive discussion of Palestinians.
Montaño said that ultimately what matters is what happens in the classroom, where teachers, students and parents will carry out the actual work of implementing ethnic studies.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a longtime professor of Africana studies and a former member of the body that reviewed drafts of the model curriculum, said Thursday that the curriculum will provide needed parameters for educators around the discipline.
“Criticism will continue, I can guarantee you that. The robust conversation will continue…. What is in the discipline, what is not in the discipline, what’s appropriate material to use,” she said.
“Curriculum is not a static thing … but you have to take the first step. And we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We will not find the perfect curriculum, but we have found a good curriculum, one that is strong.”
SUMMARY: Roughly a quarter of all homeless Americans live in California, where the rate of homelessness has increased 16 percent in the past year. Facing pressure from his constituents and President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made the issue his top priority and proposed an array of potential policy solutions. John Yang sits down with Anita Chabria of the Los Angeles Times to discuss the details.
SUMMARY: In 2019, American law enforcement agencies have identified over 70 suspects using a new technique called genetic genealogy, which California detectives leveraged in 2018 to identify the Golden State Killer. In the first of a two-part series, William Brangham shares the story of the first genetic genealogy case to go to trial — and how the science behind it solved a 32-year-old double murder.
SUMMARY: Genetic genealogy, the technique millions of people are using to learn about their family history, has now become a potent tool with which law enforcement can solve crimes. But the method has major privacy implications that are prompting some critics to urge that we slow down in our adoption of it. William Brangham shares a "cautionary tale" of how one person's DNA testing can have a wide impact.
SUMMARY: President Trump has announced that states will no longer be able to set their own fuel mileage and emissions standards, as they previously were empowered to do. California, for example, had an agreement with several automakers for voluntary adherence to tougher standards. Its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss why the policy change could be "catastrophic.”
Program will focus on fighting disease, address dearth of health workers
UC San Diego is expected to receive permission today to create a $100 million school of public health capable of spotting and fighting disease worldwide, assessing how pollution from wildfires affects specific communities, and evaluating mobile medical devices.
The program also will address California’s emerging shortage of health workers, including a projected need for 160,000 home care employees over the next decade.
The proposed school was unanimously approved Wednesday by a committee of the University of California Board of Regents, with final authorization scheduled to come today. The move could become part of a much larger public health initiative. Planners have told regents that they eventually may be asked to green-light similar programs at the system’s campuses in Irvine, Merced, Davis and San Francisco.
UC Berkeley and UCLA already operate nationally ranked schools of public health.
“Medical schools train physicians to treat individual patients,” said Dr. David Brenner, UC San Diego’s Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences. “We also need to be concerned about people’s lives and needs across populations. That’s what we’ll do. It is a missing piece.”
UC San Diego is one of the 10 largest research universities in the country and is broadly involved in public health.
The university is studying e-cigarettes, which have emerged as a public health concern due to a mysterious illness tied to vaping. It also is examining the relationship between sedentary behavior and heart disease in Latinos. UC San Diego engineers spent months talking to families and social workers about how to design robots that care for people with dementia. The school’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography is analyzing how sea spray affects climate, which in turn can affect people’s ability to breathe and sleep if the air becomes too hot.
And the school is trying to figure out why a disproportionately large number of people at a village in Italy live to be 100 or older.
UC San Diego’s supporters include Florida billionaire-inventor Herbert Wertheim, who gave the campus $25 million last year to begin developing a school of public health. He also might help the campus come up with the additional $75 million it needs in private donations to flesh out the program, which eventually will feature a new building.
The university will ask regents to name the school after the 80-year-old Wertheim, who told the Union-Tribune on Wednesday: “We need to find ways to prevent disease and to better help people who already have things like diabetes and hypertension. The ideas David (Brenner) has been coming up with are fantastic.”
Wertheim is an optometrist and engineer who is credited with helping millions of people to avoid developing cataracts and macular degeneration by creating eyewear that better screens out ultraviolet and blue light.
He believes that schools should draw together people from many disciplines to tackle major problems. That’s the approach being taken by UC San Diego, which says it will collectively exploit the research talent it has in its separate schools of medicine, pharmaceutical science, and engineering, as well as Scripps and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
The move is “the next logical step in the evolution of our public health programs, initiatives, clinics, undergraduate degree program and existing faculty expertise,” UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said in a statement.
“With a focus on public health, we can define the future where medicine, biology, engineering and public policy come together. We can look at how we, as human beings, can live in a better society and create better health outcomes for each and every one of us, regardless of our socioeconomic background.”
San Diego State University already has a school of public health, and Cal State San Marcos has a department in this same broad area of science.
“I don’t see any overlap. They will all be contributing to the workforce,” said Dr. Wilma J. Wooten, the public health officer for San Diego County.
The new program also was embraced Wednesday by Stephen Welter, vice president for research at SDSU.
“Both institutions have unique strengths that can be brought to bear on the public health issues facing San Diego and the world,” Welter said.
SUMMARY: With more Americans seeking treatment for mental health issues, lawmakers and the U.S. health care system are having trouble keeping up. People with severe mental illnesses who don't find adequate health care often end up on the streets or behind bars. And the options for residential long-term care are dwindling. Byrhonda Lyons of CalMatters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization, reports.
California has among the most stringent gun laws in the country, and on Monday a far-reaching new initiative to curb violence will require background checks for every ammunition purchase.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and other proponents said it will save lives, but opponents are suing in hopes of eventually undoing a law they said will mostly harm millions of law-abiding gun owners.
Voters approved the checks in 2016 and set an effective date of July 1. Ammunition dealers are seeing a surge in sales as customers stock up before the requirement takes effect.
“In the last two weeks I’ve been up about 300%” with people “bulking up because of these stupid new laws,” said Chris Puehse, who owns Foothill Ammo east of Sacramento.
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence spokeswoman Amanda Wilcox appeared with Newsom at a news conference Tuesday and said the checks are “the kind of thing that could have prevented” last week’s fatal shooting of rookie Sacramento police Officer Tara O’Sullivan.
Prosecutors charge that Adel Sambrano Ramos fatally shot the 26-year-old officer using one of two rifles assembled from parts to create assault weapons that are illegal in California. Wilcox and other supporters said ammunition background checks can help authorities discover so-called ghost guns that aren’t registered with the state.
The state Department of Justice, which will administer the background check program, estimates there will be 13.2 million ammunition purchases each year. But 13 million will be by people who already cleared background checks when they bought guns in California, so they are already registered in the state’s gun owners’ database.
They will pay a $1 processing fee each time they pick up bullets or shotgun shells.
Store clerks will run buyers’ identification through that database and a second database of those who bought guns legally but are no longer allowed to own them because of certain criminal convictions or mental health commitments. Those who pass get their ammo on the spot.
But the Democratic governor and Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said there are still some issues that must be addressed. People who bought rifles or shotguns before 2014 and anyone who bought a handgun before 1996 are likely not in the state’s registry.
Wilcox said owners of unregistered weapons will have to pay $19 for a one-time background check that can take days to complete and is good for a single purchase within 30 days. Wilcox said that should encourage owners to register their firearms. Buyers will also have to get their ammunition through registered dealers, ending a practice that allowed bullets to be ordered online.
Governor cites state’s history of violence, calls it ‘a genocide’
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Tuesday apologizing on behalf of the citizens of California for a history of “violence, maltreatment and neglect” against Native Americans in a rare move that some tribal leaders said could begin a healing process for their communities.
“California must reckon with our dark history,” Newsom said. “We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds.”
Newsom offered an in-person apology during remarks at a blessing ceremony at the site of the future California Indian Heritage Center in West Sacramento. The Democratic governor said he had been discussing a formal apology with advisers for several months and decided to take action Tuesday when more than 100 tribal leaders from all over the state visited Sacramento for an annual meeting.
“It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was. A genocide. (There’s) no other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said. “And so I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”
The governor’s order references an 1851 address from the state’s first chief executive, former Gov. Peter Burnett, in which he tells lawmakers to expect “a war of extermination” to continue “until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
A year earlier in the Legislature’s first session, lawmakers approved an “Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians” that allowed Native Americans to be sold into indentured servitude for minor offenses and separated children from their families. The state spent the equivalent of more than $1 million in currency at the time to subsidize militia campaigns against the native people, according to the governor’s office.
California’s American Indian population declined from about 150,000 to 30,000 between 1846 and 1879, wrote Benjamin Madley, an assistant professor of history at UCLA, in a 2016 op-ed calling for the state to acknowledge the genocide . Madley is the author of the 2009 book “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.”
Daniel Salgado, chairman of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, said Newsom’s formal apology is a recognition of a long history of what happened to native people in California.
“People can say it should have come a long time ago but I appreciate that this governor is stepping up and taking that first step in what we believe is a healing process,” Salgado said. “In any kind of relationship, there’s recognition of a wrongdoing, an apology and a healing starts to take place.”
Newsom’s office said the state has never formally apologized for actions against Native Americans.
The governor is also calling for a Truth and Healing Council to hear testimony and clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans. Christina Snider, Newsom’s tribal adviser and a member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, will lead the council and delegates from California’s tribes will work her to issue a draft report on its findings by Jan. 1.
Asked if the state should provide more formal reparations for California Native Americans, Newsom said he hadn’t engaged in those conversations and believed the council would provide a forum to discuss future steps.
Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court, said she hopes the council will serve as a model for other states.
“It’ll be a long process, an education process,” Abinanti said. “Truth is a good thing. Healing is a good thing. We’re at a time and place in the world where it’s essential for us to try to do those things.”
Sitting in a circle of plastic chairs under an oak tree with the governor, tribal leaders shared stories of past trauma at the hands of settlers. Some cried and sang songs.
Several expressed optimism that Newsom would continue a meaningful dialogue and work collaboratively with Native Americans.
Erica Pinto, chairwoman of the Jamul Indian Village, reminded him that her people judge actions more than words.
“It’s healing to hear your words, but actions will speak for themselves,” Pinto said. “I do look forward to hearing and seeing more of you.”
SUMMARY: In Santa Rosa, California, what's left of a mobile home park is still desolate after a 2017 wildfire. The former residents with homes still standing aren't allowed to live there, but they have also had trouble getting insurance money. Karla Carballo-Torres and Lorin Eleni Gill of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism report.
In wake of horse deaths, bill would allow prompt suspension of meets
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’s supporting legislation that would give the California Horse Racing Board authority to quickly suspend a meet license when necessary to protect the health and safety of horses or riders.
The announcement Thursday follows the deaths of 26 horses at Santa Anita since Dec. 26.
“The recent horse fatalities in California are unacceptable,” Newsom said in a statement. “We must hold the horse racing industry to account. If we can regulate horse race meets, we should have the authority to suspend licenses when animal or human welfare is at risk.”
The legislation, SB469 by state Sen. Bill Dodd, would allow the board to immediately suspend a license without the usual legal notice at least 10 days in advance of a vote, or the 48-hour requirement in the case of so-called special meetings. The bill has cleared the Senate and now goes to the Assembly.
“Santa Anita Park has led the way in implementing historic reforms that modern racing requires,” Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for track owner The Stronach Group, said in an email.
“We are committed to working with Governor Newsom and to continue the progress we have made to date with owners, trainers, jockeys and all other stakeholders who are prioritizing horse and rider safety,” he said.
Santa Anita’s current meet ends June 23. On Nov. 1-2, it will host the Breeders’ Cup, considered the biggest two-day event in U.S. horse racing.
Los Alamitos, in Orange County, will then race for three weeks before Del Mar [San Diego] opens it summer meeting July 17.
After the summer meet in 2016, during which 17 horses died, Del Mar invested $5 million in upgrading the track surface and added more veterinarian oversight. Track officials also reduced racing days in order to have more time after the San Diego County Fair to make the track safe.
Fatalities at Del Mar dropped by 70.6 percent over the past two summers.
The rate of deaths at Santa Anita began drawing notice during the winter when the track east of Los Angeles received unusually heavy rain, bringing scrutiny of the condition of the surface.
Most of the deaths occurred before the track temporarily suspended racing in early March and limited training.
Before racing resumed March 29, Santa Anita instituted medication limits and provided additional track veterinarians to monitor training hours. The racing board also increased veterinarian, steward and investigator staffing time.
In the meantime, the Los Angeles County district attorney opened an investigation and animal-rights activists have protested at the track.
The most recent death was on May 26, when a 9-year-old gelding was euthanized after injuring a leg in a race a day earlier. It was the third horse death in nine days.
Among the array of new measures aimed at improving safety, The Stronach Group invested $500,000 in a scanning machine to detect injuries.
In addition, no race-day medications are allowed except for the anti-bleeding medication Lasix, which will be phased out in stages. Medications for horses in training require a diagnosis from a state-qualified veterinarian, and transparency of veterinarian records has been increased.
Timed, high-speed workouts require permission at least 48 hours in advance so that veterinarians can try to identify at-risk horses.
The group also said it would continue working with independent track surface experts.
Antczak writes for The Associated Press. U-T staff writer Bryce Miller contributed to this report.
SUMMARY: California wildfires have been brutal recently. The worst in a century was last November’s Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and largely destroyed the town of Paradise. State investigators have confirmed a Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line caused the blaze. Amna Nawaz talks to The Wall Street Journal’s Russell Gold about how it started and whether PG&E has taken steps to prevent recurrence.
SUMMARY: It’s been six months since the most deadly and destructive wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and burned 19,000 structures in November 2018. But even at the peak of the inferno, some scientists moved toward it, in an attempt to understand more about the intensity and spread of the flames. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien has the harrowing inside look.
SUMMARY: Santa Anita Park is one of the country’s most famous and storied horse racing venues, and this weekend it was due to host a major prep contest for May’s Kentucky Derby. But a spike in deaths among horses training there -- 21 have died since December 26 -- has prompted the track to close for testing, amid rising alarm from critics who fear the sport is too grueling to begin with. John Yang reports.
SUMMARY: In Paradise, California, thousands of residents are trying to cope with disruption and displacement resulting from November's devastating Camp Fire. Children attend school in a repurposed hardware store, where counselors try to help them manage their trauma. Meanwhile, amidst millions of tons of toxic debris, finding safe and stable housing is a challenge. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.
SUMMARY: Health care continues to be a top political issue. While some congressional Democrats consider universal health coverage, state and local governments are already pushing ahead with proposals to corral costs and broaden access to care, including for the undocumented. Special correspondent Sarah Varney shares stories from California and New York, two states pursuing ambitious health care agendas.
Gov. California Gavin Newsom (D-Calif): You look around the rest of the world, they're just rolling their eyes, higher life expectancy. They do chronic disease management better than the United States for roughly half the price. You look at quality indexes, we dropped to 37 in the world in our quality index last year, below Cuba and Costa Rica.
This is ludicrous, and so it's incumbent upon governors, mayors, to take the lead, in the absence of the federal government doing its job.
Operation illegally brought hundreds of women to U.S.
A group of travel agents has been charged with running illicit “birth tourism” schemes across Southern California that allegedly brought hundreds of pregnant Chinese clients to the U.S. illegally so they could deliver their children on American soil, according to court records made public Thursday.
The charges are the culmination of a long-running investigation by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS into three outfits operating for years in Los Angeles, the Inland Empire region and Orange County that charged as much as $100,000 for their clandestine services — a price tag authorities say Chinese parents-to-be readily paid to make sure their children would be citizens of what one company’s brochures called the “most attractive nationality.”
“These cases allege a wide array of criminal schemes that sought to defeat our immigration laws — laws that welcome foreign visitors so long as they are truthful about their intentions when entering the country,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said in a statement. “Statements by the operators of these birthing houses show contempt for the United States, while they were luring clients with the power and prestige of U.S. citizenship for their children.”
Arrested Thursday morning were Dongyuan Li, 41, of Irvine, who was identified in court records as an executive at You Win USA Vacation Services in Irvine, as well as Michael Wei Yueh Liu, 53, of Rancho Cucamonga, and Jing Dong, 42, of Fontana [CA], who authorities said owned and operated a company called USA Happy Baby in San Bernardino.
The three face charges of conspiracy, immigration fraud, money laundering, identity theft and other crimes, according to indictments filed in U.S. District Court.
Li’s husband, along with her business partner, Chao Chen, and several others involved in the schemes also face charges, but are believed to be living in China, court records show. Chen, Homeland Security officials told the Los Angeles Times, pleaded guilty to some crimes and agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of a plea deal, but then fled the country as he awaited sentencing.
Also indicted Thursday was Wen Rui Deng, 65, an American citizen officials accuse of running a Los Angeles-based agency named Star Baby Care, which authorities believe to have been the largest birth tourism operation in the U.S. She, too, is in China, authorities said.
The indictments stem from a series of raids agents carried out in March 2015 on dozens of apartments used to house pregnant women and other locations linked to the birth tourism schemes.
Following the raids, several women and their husbands living in the apartments were ordered by a judge to remain in the country as material witnesses in the case. Many of them fled back to China, however, leading to charges being filed against them and an Irvine attorney who helped them escape.
The investigation into the operations named in Thursday’s indictments began in 2013, when birth tourism operations were booming in Southern California and coming under increasing scrutiny by local officials and disgruntled residents. Officials were tipped off by anonymous letters sent to a federal immigration office and the Irvine Police Department that described a man operating a birth tourism business out of a luxury apartment building in Irvine.
The Carlyle Apartments happened to be across the street from a Homeland Security Investigations field office. From their windows, agents could see pregnant Asian women coming and going, HSI officials told the Times.
An undercover agent was dispatched to make contact with Chen, who was suspected of operating the business. The agent told him a cousin in China wanted to come to the U.S. to have a baby, officials said. Chen asked the agent for approximately $15,000 and instructed him to have his cousin call a number in China, according to the HSI officials.
A female HSI agent fluent in Mandarin called the number from a concealed number and, over several conversations, was coached on how to deceive U.S. immigration officials. She was instructed to fabricate a job and the name of the place she went to school, information the agency employee later used to complete an application for a tourist visa to the United States on behalf of the woman.
“Everybody wants to come to the U.S.,” HSI agents recalled the employee saying on the phone. “It’s crazy how many people I have to train, I’m overwhelmed.”
It is not known how many women were brought to the U.S. by the three agencies implicated in Thursday’s indictments. On her website for Star Baby Care, Deng boasted of having orchestrated 8,000 U.S. births since opening her doors in 1999, according to court records. Li and Chen told prospective clients they had successfully sneaked more than 500 pregnant women into the country, records show.
The investigation would later widen to include Star Baby Care and Happy Baby USA. The three companies followed a similar strategy, instructing clients on how to lie on tourist visa applications and putting them up in one of the dozens of apartments each operation leased across the region.
Although childbirth can be a legitimate reason to travel to the U.S. if the traveler provides the correct paperwork and evidence they can pay for their medical care, lying about the purpose of a visit can lead to charges of visa fraud. Customs and border protection agents at major ports of entry such as Los Angeles International Airport in recent years have tightened security for pregnant Chinese women and sometimes block them from entering the country.
Taiwanese, Korean, Turkish, and Russian mothers are also known to engage in birth tourism, but the practice has become particularly popular with the newly wealthy Chinese middle class.
Investigators found women paying the birth tourism agencies were told to come to the U.S. before their third trimester and to wear loose-fitting clothes in order to better conceal their pregnancies from immigration officials. For example, in a voicemail message to a customer in 2014 intercepted by investigators, Li said: “The main thing is they look and see if you look obvious (pregnant); can they see it? First thing is not to let them see it. Second thing is don’t deny it if they can see it, and just say that you’re still here for vacation and just show them the return flight ticket,” according to Li’s indictment.
After giving birth, mothers typically stay in the U.S. at least long enough to observe the Chinese custom of “zuo yuezi,” a monthlong regimen that restricts a new mother’s diet and lifestyle in order to help her recover from pregnancy.
On a document titled “Strategies to Maximize the Chance of Entry” that investigators discovered while searching You Win USA’s offices, Li and Chen spelled out the particulars of their strategy. They told women, for example, they would improve their chances of slipping past immigration officials by putting on their tourist visa applications that they intended to stay at the Trump International Hotel in Honolulu.
Liu and Dong, who ran USA Happy Baby, catered to wealthier clients that included Chinese government officials and charged as much as $100,000 for their services, authorities said.
The indictments also drew attention to the drain on resources at the hospitals where the women gave birth. After paying tens of thousands of dollars to the agencies that brought them to the U.S., the mothers often claimed to be uninsured or poor to receive a reduced bill for childbirth services, the indictments said.
Despite the subterfuge the mothers employed to come to the country, their children nonetheless are citizens under U.S. law and officials said they do not plan to try to challenge their citizenship.
In recent years, the practice has prompted some lawmakers, who oppose children of unauthorized immigrants automatically becoming citizens, to propose repealing birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
President Donald Trump last year claimed erroneously that the United States is the “only country in the world” that automatically confers citizenship to anyone born in the country. In fact, it is one of at least 30 countries that do so.
Mejia and Rubin write for the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times contributed to this report.
