TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Reuniting Separated Families

aka 'Trump Anti-immigrant Racism'

"Why it was so difficult for HHS to reunite separated migrant families" PBS NewsHour 3/5/2020

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SUMMARY:  A new watchdog report reveals troubling details about how the U.S. government handled the separation of migrant families as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.  The litany of failures includes communication breakdown, lack of planning and insufficient care.  Lisa Desjardins talks to Ann Maxwell, Assistant Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.

BORDER BATTLE - U.S.-Mexico Deal vs Immigration

"Will U.S.-Mexico deal reduce immigration?  A report from 2 borders" PBS NewsHour 6/10/2019

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SUMMARY:  President Trump announced Friday that he had struck a deal with Mexico both to stem the flow of immigrants from Mexico into the U.S. and to avoid levying tariffs on Mexican imports.  Nick Schifrin talks to the NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz, reporting from El Paso, and James Frederick, a journalist based in Mexico City, about the details of the agreement and the outlook for meaningful change.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "Exit West"

"Magical novel 'Exit West' explores what makes refugees leave home" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2017

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SUMMARY:  In "Exit West," a city in the Muslim world is plunged into violence and two lovers join the mass migration of our time.  Mohsin Hamid's story about refugees is a novel, not journalism, but it combines the surreal with the very real.  Hamid sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss what inspired him and why he says he's seeing a "failure of imagination" around the world.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  An unnamed city in the Muslim world is plunged into violence, and two young lovers are forced to flee, becoming a small part of the mass migrations of our era.  But they travel through time and space through magic doors.

“Exit West” is a novel combining the very real with the almost surreal, imagining individuals behind today's headlines.

Author Mohsin Hamid has spent parts of his life in the U.S. and Europe.  He now lives in his native city of Lahore, Pakistan.

And nice to see you again.

MOHSIN HAMID, Author, “Exit West”:  Nice to see you.

JEFFREY BROWN:  This is in one way a very up-to-the-minute look at the dislocation of individual lives, but, of course, it's not journalism.  It's art.  It's a novel.

Tell me how you thought about what you were after.

MOHSIN HAMID:  Well, I have been moving around my whole life, California, Pakistan, London, New York, Pakistan again.

And I wanted to write about the experience of migration.  And I also felt this resistance to migrants was growing, and I wanted to write in response to that.

DESPERATE JOURNEY - Europe's Migrant Crisis

"Problems driving migrant crisis persist, but the welcome mat has been rolled back" PBS NewsHour 6/16/2016

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SUMMARY:  The EU deal with Turkey to stem the tide of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea has seen more and more asylum seekers flocking to the western Mediterranean, with deadly results.  More than 1,000 have drowned there in the past several weeks, and the ones that do succeed face an uncertain future.  Gwen Ifill talks to Amin Awad of the UN refugee agency for more on how Europe is combating the crisis.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Mr. Awad, welcome.

On this program, we have seen the terrible stories of the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming, especially from the Mideast and Africa, trying to get to Greece, trying to get to Turkey, trying to get into Europe.

Has that problem, has it gotten worse or gotten better since this whole crisis began?

AMIN AWAD, Director for Middle East and N. Africa Bureau, UNHCR:  I think this problem of migrants and refugees and secondary movement is persisting.

I wouldn’t say it’s getting better or it’s getting worse, simply because the conditions that people are fleeing are getting worse.  The serious situation is not better than it was before.  Cessation of hostilities ended.  The resumption of fighting continued.  And as a result, people are fleeing.

The poverty and impoverishment that people fleeing sub-Saharan Africa continue to persist.  There isn’t a south-north collaboration, as used to be before.  People are fearing — fleeing Niger, where there is conflict.  There is poverty.  And they seek opportunity, new places, market and labor and mobility.

And some of them are fleeing conflict, coming from East Africa, the Horn of Africa, or the central part of Africa or the western part of Africa.  So the root causes for flight are still there.  And the world has to come up with more mechanisms and better mechanisms to tackle the root causes of these conflicts or poverty.

GWEN IFILL: So the root causes are still there, but the welcome mat is not there anymore.  In fact, it’s certainly not there in Turkey, and it’s certainly not there in Germany like it once was.  So how does that affect the flow?

AMIN AWAD:  People — the flow will persist.  People will continue to try all they can to make it to safety, to make it to better places, to find opportunity or protection.

If the welcoming mat is not there, then there ought to be equal investment in the communities where conflicts are and where poverty is, and try to stem the flow in a more dynamic and cooperative manner.

But you also have to uphold all international instruments, the international protection, international national refugee law, the international human rights law.  We have to rally around these and similar, because that’s what makes the world also orderly.

EUROPE - Migrant Crisis, Two Families

"What happened for two Syrian families who made it to Germany" PBS NewsHour 9/18/2015

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SUMMARY:  A week ago we followed two Syrian families along the grueling and unpredictable migration to Germany.  Already, much has changed for the two families.  William Brangham offers an update.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  William Brangham updates on the stories of two families he first met in Hungary.  Tonight, we meet them in Germany, where their lives have taken, for now, very different turns.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  While refugees and migrants have clashed violently with police on the Hungarian border this week, their attempts to enter into Europe are, for many of them, just the beginning of a much longer journey.

Last week, we followed two Syrian families along the grueling, unpredictable migration from the Middle East towards Germany.  Both suffered sleepless nights, chaotic border crossings, and a maze of ever-changing rules and challenges.

Now, only a week later, so much had changed.

HAMEED YAKDI, Syrian Refugee (through interpreter):  It’s a good feeling.  After a long, hard effort and great risk, we arrived here.  Thank God that we made it here.  It’s a very strange feeling.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Hameed Yakdi and his family from Syria were lucky in many ways.  Not only did they make it through Hungary before this week’s violence broke out and the sealing of the border, but, in Austria, they met Hameed’s brother, Muhammaed, who immigrated to Germany two years ago, and helped guide them the rest of the way.

HAMEED YAKDI (through interpreter):  I felt safe the moment I reached Germany.  I have a family that welcomed and helped me.  I have not had to struggle.  When I ask, they answer right away.  They have lived here a long time, and they make me feel at home.

OPINION - Shields and Books 9/13/2015

"Shields and Brooks on U.S. reaching out to refugees, Iran deal assurance" PBS NewsHour 9/11/2015

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week’s news, including whether the U.S. has a responsibility to take in Syrians displaced by war, Senate Democrats’ blocking of a GOP resolution to reject the Iran deal, Vice President Joe Biden’s interview with Stephen Colbert and former Gov. Rick Perry drops out.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  But first to the analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks.  That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

We just had a segment where we laid out in painful detail how difficult it is for a refugee to gain asylum in the United States.  And there are several people who say, you know what?  If it wasn’t for the United States’ foreign policy of perhaps disbanding the Iraqi army, creating a tremendous amount of regional instability that perhaps in — fueled ISIS, destabilized Syria further, and has caused this migrant crises — is the United States responsible or should they be more responsible in taking more asylum seekers?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  Yes, I would be one of those people.

I think all the things you mentioned.  And then a couple years ago, we had a big debate about Syria and whether we should be helping the moderates, the moderates, such as they are, in Syria and whether we should arm those moderates.  And people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham said yes.

Eventually, the current administration did arm them, but with very little, much too late.  And so you have this war between Assad’s forces and ISIS.  And so I do think it was partially our — the vacuum created by the U.S. and the West, when there was still some sort of moderate solution possible, that helped create this crisis.  And, therefore, we have a responsibility to take in more refugees.

It’s still, though, bizarre to me that most of the debate is on this side of the pipeline, the flow of people on the receiving end.  There are hundreds of millions — not hundreds, but there are a lot of — millions of people in Syria.  Are they all going to come?  What about dealing with that Syria there and creating safe havens, creating places where people can go to be safe, when you can have islands of stability inside these two evil forces?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist:  I agree 100 percent with 50 percent of what David said.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  I think that it didn’t begin with the United States’ withdrawal from Iraq.  It began with the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the entire destabilization of the region.

And there’s no question that Iran was strengthened by the United States’ invasion of Iraq, that sectarian violence was encouraged and that — destabilization.  As far as our — the United States’ commitment to Syria, it’s certainly been halting.  But that part of that halting has been lack of any domestic political support, as a consequence of what happened in Iraq.

And it was just an unmitigated disaster.  But the reality is that the moral leadership of the planet, or at least of the Western world right now, has become in Berlin and Stockholm.  Germany and Sweden have stepped up.  And people say, oh, well, that is in the self-interest of Germany.

It is in the self-interest of Germany to take talented, energetic, able, committed people who have the resources, the initiative and the strength to get out.  It’s a tragedy.  David makes the point that a nation the size of Syria, four million people have left the country.

I mean, that’s a stain on us and it’s a stain on all of the civilized world that we have allowed that to continue.

MIGRANT CRISIS - European Union Ambassodor

"Will EU proposal relieve pressure on those bearing the brunt of the migrant crisis?" PBS NewsHour 9/9/2015

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SUMMARY:  European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced new plans to require member states to absorb a share of 160,000 asylum seekers flocking to Italy, Greece and Hungary.  European Union Ambassador David O'Sullivan joins Gwen Ifill to discuss the announced proposal.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Joining us now to talk about that push and pull, and the announced proposal today to help remedy the crisis, is the European Union’s ambassador to the United States, David O’Sullivan.

Welcome.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN, European Union Ambassador to the United States:  Thank you.

GWEN IFILL:  So let’s talk about the proposal put forth today to take — to accept 160,000 of these migrants and refugees and spread them somehow among different countries in the E.U.  How feasible is that?

DAVID O’SULLIVAN:  I think it’s eminently feasible.

I mean, you need to understand, of course, that this is basically a proposal designed to relieve the immediate pressure on the front-line countries in Europe who’ve had to bear the brunt of the increased wave of refugees, particularly Italy and Greece coming from the Mediterranean, and now Hungary through the route of the Western Balkans.

It’s clear that these countries, enormous efforts though they have made — and the Italians and Greek people have been extremely generous in their reaction — it is more that they can cope with, so we do need a redistribution of people already on European soil across all of our member states, so the burden can be shared more equitably.

But this is not the only action which is being proposed, of course.  We’re also looking at stepping up action across the borders.  We are the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to the refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

But, as your report has shown, the system there is at breaking point, and this is part of the push that the international community will also need to address.

GWEN IFILL:  A lot at the breaking point, including emotions.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN:  Indeed.

GWEN IFILL:  I want to talk about the 160,000, though, because you’re saying that is a baseline, that’s where you begin, not where you necessarily end.

And you’re talking about enforcing by putting in place, mandating quotas, certain countries have to accept a certain amount.  How do you enforce that?

OPINION - Shields and Gerson 9/4/2015

"Shields and Gerson on refugee crisis responsibility, Trump’s GOP pledge" PBS NewsHour 9/4/2015

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including Hillary Clinton’s latest interview on her use of a private email server, Donald Trump’s pledge not to run as a third-party candidate, plus who should be stepping up to address the refugee crisis in Europe.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist:  I will say this about Secretary Clinton today.  Her answer to Andrea on Joe Biden was pitch-perfect.  I mean, it was human, it was natural, it was very personal in the best sense.  And it didn’t have any political angle to it that I could detect.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Well, she asked her, do you have a comment about the fact that he’s considering running?

MARK SHIELDS:  Right.  Oh, I’m sorry.  Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And she said, it’s not for me to say.  And then she went on to say, he needs the space to think about it, right?

MARK SHIELDS:  Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Michael, we ran a clip of what the Vice President said last night at that speech at the synagogue in Atlanta.

Do you think get the sense that he’s leaning away?  He clearly didn’t sound like he is there yet.

MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post:  I get the sense that you’re seeing that process in public, exactly what he’s thinking about this.  It’s one of his appeals, is this transparency.

And this is a family that underwent a terrible trauma three months ago, that, you know, a trauma like that can strengthen a family, but it also can be a difficult time.  And a presidential campaign brings minute and massive scrutiny.

And so I think that is a real issue.  But he could come in here.  He doesn’t fit an ideological gap.  He’s very much like Clinton in a lot of his views.  There is no ideological gap he would fill.  But there is a kind of ethical gap that he might fill.

EUROPE - Migrant Humanitarian Crises

"Thousands of migrants journey through Macedonia, Serbia en route to Europe" PBS NewsHour 8/24/2015

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SUMMARY:  In Europe, it's the summer of mass migration. Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News follows along as thousands of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa travel by train from Macedonia to Serbia, hoping to eventually reach Germany and other points north.

LINDSEY HILSUM, Independent Television News:  Night falls, but they keep on walking.  Only a few more yards, and they will have left Greece behind.  They will be in Macedonia.  By morning, they’re still walking.

Word has traveled back down the line:  Go to Gevgelija station.  Some have spent the night here.  They have seen worse places on their odyssey.  It’s dirty, but they do their best.  The Macedonians have managed to put order into chaos, despite the swelling numbers.  Syrians and others with small children are given priority.  Extra trains have been laid on to take them to the next border with Serbia.

It’s 110 miles away, a four-hour journey, easy compared to what they have been through before.  They have paid 10 euros per ticket, like any other passenger.

Where are you from?

MAN:  I’m from Syria.

LINDSEY HILSUM:  From Syria?  From which place?

MAN:  Aleppo, Afrin.

LINDSEY HILSUM:  From Aleppo and Afrin, from Afrin.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees says 7,000 traveled to Serbia this past weekend.  Many people on this train are going from Syria to Germany, so they’re about halfway through their journey.  And this is the point where they’re full of hope.  They’re on the move.  They think they have left the worst behind them.

Germany has said it will take 800,000 people this year.  That’s a lot, but there are many more trains behind this one.  They can’t take everyone and there are thousands more people on the way.  Some are fleeing Aleppo and Bashar al-Assad, others Raqqa and Da’esh, the Islamic State.  What difference does it make?

MAN:  Hard situation in Syria, no power, no water, no Internet, no any help for us.  We can’t stay in Syria.  The — Bashar al-Assad attack us every day, morning, every time, our baby so afraid of light and sound.

LINDSEY HILSUM:  Of the bombs, of the sounds?

MAN:  Of bombs and of the guns every day, every day.  So we left.

"How should Europe deal with its deluge of refugees?" PBS NewsHour 8/25/2015

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SUMMARY:  A surge of refugees hit Hungary’s southern border this week, many fleeing the war in Syria.  Most of the refugees are seeking asylum in Northern Europe.  Gwen Ifill talks to David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, about how nations are handling the refugee crisis.

EUROPE - Migrants

"Grisly Discovery in Migrant Crisis Shocks Europe" by ALISON SMALE and MELISSA EDDY, New York Times 8/27/2015

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The legions of desperate migrants fleeing war and mayhem in the Middle East and Africa have long known they were risking harm from unscrupulous smugglers and death at sea to reach the safety of Europe.  But it became shockingly clear on Thursday that they now face the same dangers within Europe’s own borders.

A white truck filled with the decomposing bodies of as many as 50 smuggled migrants was found abandoned on the outskirts of Vienna in the summer heat.  The discovery came just as European leaders were meeting in a nearby palace to devise new ways to cope with the migration crisis.

News about the corpses instantly overshadowed the meeting and transfixed Europe with new worries that the scope and complexity of the crisis had escalated.

European Union officials have been struggling for ways to control the tens of thousands of migrants who are now reaching the continent, without forfeiting the free movement between member countries that is a fundamental part of life in the 28-nation bloc.  Now its members are confronting human traffickers who are exploiting the open borders.

“We are all shaken by this terrible news that up to 50 people have lost their lives because they got into a situation where smugglers did not care about their lives,” said Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, at a news conference at the Vienna meeting.  “Such a tragic death.”

Ms. Merkel emphasized what she called the need for Europe to pull together and ease the migration crisis, part of the biggest wave of migrants since World War II.  But the meeting ended on a discordant note with no apparent consensus on how to proceed.

The death toll at sea is already greater than 2,500 and is rising almost every day, with news reports on Thursday that a ship carrying hundreds of migrants had sunk off the coast of Libya.  Now the truck discovery has made it clear that the illegal trade in humans has broadened from arranging perilous journeys across the Mediterranean to profiteering from the tens of thousands now pouring in through the Balkans.

Until recently, the flow was mostly restricted to the southern countries, particularly Italy. But as new routes through Greece and the Balkans have become popular, the pressure to stem the flow has broadened and deepened.

The people in the truck were thought to be among the migrants on their way through Central Europe and toward the wealthier countries — particularly Germany — in the north.

The precise death toll had yet to be determined by Thursday night, but more than 20 bodies — and as many as 50 — were believed to be in the truck, said Hans Peter Doskozil, director of the police in the eastern state of Burgenland.  He added that the count was hindered by the advanced state of decomposition.

The discovery was made after a highway worker alerted the police around 11:40 a.m. that the truck, with Hungarian license plates, was parked in the emergency lane of a highway that links Budapest and Vienna, in the Neusiedl am See region, near the Hungarian border.  Mr. Doskozil said the truck had probably set off from east of Budapest on Wednesday, and was abandoned either late that night or early Thursday.

Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, said that the authorities believed the truck had been part of a human trafficking operation, and that the victims “were illegal migrants who were trying to reach the West through Hungary or with the help of Hungarians.”

Hungarian officials said they had assigned investigators to help the Austrians with the case.

Mr. Doskozil said the investigators would comb the cab of the truck to establish the identity of the driver.  By afternoon, the authorities said the truck had been towed to an undisclosed location where the bodies could be removed and identified.

“It is clear that this is a case of organized criminality where a lot of money is at stake and business is made out of human suffering,” Mr. Doskozil said.

The discovery was a new twist on a summer of tragedy for migrants, who have drowned at sea by the hundreds and been injured or worse in accidents during their attempts to reach safety and jobs in the European Union.

Just a day earlier, Italian officials announced the discovery of 50 bodies in the hold of a ship that appeared to have departed Libya bound for Italy.

The Balkan overland route has replaced the Mediterranean passage as the favored route for migrants this summer.  The change has severely affected Austria, which has been struggling to cope with the masses of migrants, and officials have grown increasingly concerned about smugglers.

SOUTH AFRICA - Migrant Fear

"Living in fear after attacks on migrants in South Africa" PBS NewsHour 8/5/2015

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SUMMARY:  In South Africa this year there has been a wave of xenophobic attacks against migrants coming from other parts of Africa.  Special correspondent Martin Seemungal looks at roots of the violence and the fear that these foreigners face.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  We turn now to South Africa, where a wave of violence against migrants earlier this year left many victims frightened and the government struggling for a solution to the resurgence of xenophobia, the fear of people from other countries.

NewsHour special correspondent Martin Seemungal has our report from Durban, South Africa.

A warning:  Some of the images in this story may be disturbing.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL (NewsHour):  Six dead, hundreds injured, 5,000 migrants forced to seek refuge in hastily organized camps, all due to a wave of anti-foreigner violence in South Africa.

Police have watched over this refugee camp for immigrants for two months, guarding people who came here for safety, being told now it is time to return home.

Anicet Bigirimana is from Burundi.  He says the attack on his family was sudden and extremely violent.

ANICET BIGIRIMANA, Migrant:  The first time they came, they put — they took my son.  They put him — a tire in the petrol.  They almost burned him.  But today — there’s another neighbor who grip (grabbed) him from their hands.  That’s how they started.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL:  This Somali immigrant running for his life from a group of South Africans also survived, this attack, one of many in April, part of a wave of xenophobic attacks against other Africans living and working here.

According to official statistics, there are just over two million immigrants in South Africa, and somewhere between 500,000 and one million are undocumented.  The worst violence was in the Durban area.  Parts of downtown became battle zones, as migrants fought back.

It appeared to be part of a systematic campaign against people from African countries, in particular Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Congo, and Malawi, but there is no clear indication who was responsible for organizing the attacks.

Chris Van Den Berg is a city councilman for a district in Durban that includes a number of villages in the surrounding hills.

CHRIS VAN DEN BERG, City Councillor, Durban:  There was a group about 80-odd plus, people with bangers and bush knives, telling people very clearly that they could not be here Sunday morning, that they were going to be — they were either going to be killed or attacked.

HUNGARY - New 'Iron Curtain'

"Why Hungary is building a new ‘Iron Curtain’" PBS NewsHour 8/4/2015

Man's comment is an example of the consequences of NOT having religious freedom.

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SUMMARY:  In Hungary, government leaders say they can't cope with the flood of migrants entering their country:  80,000 so far this year.  So the government is racing to complete a 110 mile-long fence -- what opponents are calling a “new Iron Curtain” -- along its border with Serbia.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour):  This family is more than 3,000 miles away from home in Congo.  After months on the road, they have just slipped across the frontier from Serbia and have been stopped by the Hungarian police.

The adults don’t want to be filmed, for fear of jeopardizing their chances of reaching France another thousand miles away.  In this porous border region, the country lane is teeming with migrants on a relentless march to Northern Europe.

You’re in Hungary.

MAN:  No, you are in Hungary.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  You are in Hungary.

Where have you come from?

MAN:  I’m from Serbia.  OK.  Enough.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  Nearby, a member of a right-wing vigilante group which claims to protect a local village stands guard over a group of Pakistanis who also just entered Hungary.  Some fled for economic reasons, others because of persecution.

MAN:  I wanted to marry some girl.  The Muslim religion, we don’t have permission for it, so they kill her.  So they don’t — they want to kill me, and now I’m running.  Even my family want to kill me, my relatives, everybody, because we cross a religion.  So, this is me running from there.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  The migrants fear a repeat of violence they say was inflicted by police in Bulgaria.

MAN:  They hit us here and here, here.  And they take all money, SIM cards, mobile. Everything, they take from us.

MALCOLM BRABANT:  But the vigilante lets them go.  The authorities estimate as many as 2,000 people are crossing illegally into Hungary every day.  Although most have no intention of remaining in the country, their sheer numbers intimidate some on isolated farms.