Month: October 2017

Jose wears an ankle monitor on his right leg.

Caught crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, the Honduran native was detained for about 17 months in an immigration facility, first in Texas and then in New Jersey, where his bail was set at $20,000.

Jose, who asked not to be identified by his real name, did not have the money. Usually the full amount is required in illegal immigration cases because immigrants are considered flight risks.

His pro bono immigration lawyer could not help him with the bond amount, but he told Jose about Libre by Nexus, a Virginia-based company that helps detained immigrants pay bonds by fitting them with ankle monitors.

WATCH: US Immigration Ankle Monitors Come Under Question

Libre by Nexus is able to give the bonding company financial guarantees so rather than the full amount, the detainee pays a bond premium of typically 10 to 15 percent of the face value of the bond to the bondsman.

Once the bond payment is met, immigrants must still wait while their cases, usually requests for asylum, make their way through the backlogged immigration courts. But they can leave jail as long as they are equipped with a GPS device and are willing to pay the monthly fees.

Jose must pay $420 a month to rent the monitor. He must also pay off the bond payment and interest in monthly installments. He needs to make about $1,420 every month to cover all fees.

He lives rent-free in a halfway house and cleans houses to make enough to pay Libre by Nexus.

“All that I wanted was to get out of detention,” Jose told VOA. “I spent two birthdays, two Christmases without family. It was very hard.”​

‘​Unfair’ practices?

“Let Libre by Nexus bring your loved one home,” the company says on its website, calling its GPS program “a critical service to our clients, the securitization of their immigration bond so that they can be released from immigration custody.”

But the federal government is investigating Libre by Nexus, to see if the company has engaged in “unfair, deceptive or abusive acts” by “marketing or selling those products or services to consumers or enforcing their terms and conditions.”

Documents show that on Aug. 22, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent a request to the company asking for Libre’s files on about 15,000 clients nationwide.

CFPB, an agency created by Congress during the financial crisis of 2007-2008 to regulate financial companies, says the purpose of the civil investigation is to “determine whether persons who provide products or services related to bonds posted on behalf of detainees are extending credit or offering to extend credit.”

The Washington Post has reported that some contracts between Libre and immigrants have been “the subject of lawsuits and allegations of fraud by immigrants who did not understand them.”

The paper interviewed dozens of immigrants who said Libre employees allegedly threatened them when they were struggling to pay the monthly fee for the ankle monitor.

“I worry a lot because I don’t have money,” Jose admitted. “I feel embarrassed to [wear it] so I [don’t] wear shorts. I only leave the house wearing pants.”

Libre responds

Libre filed a petition in September, arguing the company does not “provide consumer financial products or services, and therefore, is not subject to the demands of the CFPB,” which Libre called an “unconstitutional” bureau.

Libre also said the request was “excessively vague and overbroad” and would cost the company about $204,160 plus “two employees to spare for 2.5 months to solely focus on gathering the information” and 8,060 hours of work.

CFPB Bureau Director Richard Corday rejected Libre’s arguments on Oct. 11 and gave the company 10 calendar days to “produce all responsive documents.”

Libre did not respond to a VOA email seeking comment. CFPB has not confirmed if Libre complied with the agency’s request.

​Journey to US

Jose was 20 years old when he left Honduras in 2015. He had moved to the city and found work.

But one Sunday, he was approached at work by a man with a gun, who assaulted him, emptied the cash registers and stole his work phone.

“Then I begin to receive extortion calls. They told me that I had to make monthly payments and if I didn’t pay … they would kill me and they knew where my whole family lived,” Jose said.

Jose stopped picking up his cellphone, said goodbye to relatives, and told his mother that he was leaving for the United States.

After 11 days in Texas, Jose was taken to Delaney Hall Detention Center in New Jersey.

Through a New Jersey organization called First Friends, which provides detained immigrants and asylum-seekers assistance with resettlement and advocacy, he was able to find a lawyer.

Now 22, he lives in a transition house for immigrants who are rebuilding their lives and waiting for their day in court.

“If the judge says I can stay, that would be amazing, because I don’t want to go back to my country. It would be my future, my professional future. I would study, I would be someone,” Jose said.
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The United States is calling on Myanmar to stop military reprisals against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

In a telephone conversation Thursday with Myanmar’s Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed concern about the continuing humanitarian crisis and reported atrocities in Rakhine State.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement that Tillerson urged Myanmar’s security forces to support the government in ending the violence and allow the safe return home of those displaced during the crisis, in accordance with the 1992 Joint Statement with Bangladesh and without further conditions.

Tillerson also urged the military to facilitate humanitarian aid for people in affected areas, to allow media access, and cooperate with the U.N. “to ensure a thorough, independent investigation into all allegations of human rights abuses and violations and to ensure accountability,” Nauert said.

Tillerson also condemned the Aug. 25 deadly attacks by Rohingya militants on security forces in Rakhine State, which prompted the reprisals that continue unabated.

The government security forces campaign against the Rohingya Muslims, which the U.N. has called ethnic cleansing, has created a massive exodus of more than a half-million Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh and elsewhere. Most of the refugees are women and children.

Displaced Rohingya have told harrowing accounts of how the Burmese military has burned their villages, and of killings, rape and looting. The Rohingyas also say landmines have been laid to prevent them from returning.

The Rohingya Muslims say they are a long-persecuted minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and are often denied even the most basic human rights.
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Paul Coles’ journey to becoming one of the 2.5 million Americans addicted to prescription opioids began with painkillers prescribed for injuries suffered during an IED attack in Iraq. The physical scars healed, but emotionally Coles suffered. He had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and couldn’t stop using drugs. 

“It got to the point I would take three times the lethal dose of heroin and cocaine, load it into a syringe and shoot it up, trying to shut my body down,” Coles said. “I would sit there and say, ‘God if you are out there, just kill me.’”

Time after time, he cheated death. But he couldn’t escape the law. Coles found himself handcuffed, arrested and jailed on charges of felony drug possession. Yet what seemed to be a new low would turn into a lifeline.

From the moment Judge Jeri Beth Cohen looked at Coles, she knew he needed help. 

“My feeling is that opioid addiction is a terminal illness: You’re either going to end up in prison or you’re going to end up dead,” Cohen said.

“I’m seeing more and more cases,” she said. “These are young men and women between the age of, I guess, 21-30. It’s a largely Caucasian population,” she added.

​One judge, two courts, one team

Coles’ case is one of hundreds Cohen has seen during the unfolding prescription opioid and heroin epidemic in South Florida. Inside her courtroom, with graphic photos of what drugs can do to the body, she surrounds herself with professional caseworkers on the frontlines of how America’s criminal justice system handles the boom in opioid abuse.

Miami-Dade County launched the nation’s first drug court in 1989. Today there are 3,000 U.S. drug courts serving 136,000 people. But a report by Physicians for Human Rights claims few communities have adequate treatment facilities and the criminal justice objectives of drug courts often overrule the medical need of the patient.

Cohen’s drug court gives people the chance to beat their addictions, stay out of prison while eventually getting their felony drug charge expunged from the record if they complete the year-long program. 

Like Paul Coles 75 percent of Drug Court graduates remain arrest-free at least two years after leaving the program. 

Miami-Dade County launched its first drug court when the community was facing a previous drug crisis. The approach then did not address people’s addictions, rather it was focused on jailing them for criminal conduct.

“There was a crack cocaine epidemic just like we’re looking at this opioid and heroin epidemic right now. People coming into criminal court in large numbers were taking a plea or going to jail, getting out and getting rearrested,” Cohen said.

Today there’s a stream of people in drug court struggling with addiction to a multitude of prescription pain pills and heroin. Cohen, regarded as one of the top drug court judges in the country, uses a holistic approach.

“What I find is if we can get them stabilized on a drug like Methadone or a Suboxone, which blocks a high, then they’re able to start engaging and they’re much more able to focus on getting well.” she said. The goal of the drug court is to get people treatment, steering them away from prison time and hopefully reducing recidivism rates.

“You have to take many variables into account: trauma, untreated mental illness, the chronicity or severity of the drug usage and also what’s going on in the family. If you’re not developing a treatment plan with your treatment team based on an individual’s particular risk and needs, you aren’t going to be successful with that individual,” Cohen said.

The judge bemoans the system’s lack of compassion.

“People are treated really, really poorly,” she said. “In the jails, in the courts, even in treatment they’re treated poorly. If you have money, it’s easier to access care [but] it’s still hard.”

​Zero tolerance

For all her understanding, Cohen shows little tolerance for those not following the rules. She sentences some to community service hours while others go back to jail.

There are frequent drug screenings to make sure people stick with their sobriety. Those who don’t meet the court’s year-long requirements may be returned to a traditional criminal court to face felony drug charges.

“I don’t think that sick people should be in jail. I do the best that I can to help people get well within our system, to divert them out of jail, but yet hold them accountable,” Cohen said “I feel like I do my job and I feel like I do it well.” 

“If you don’t go into the program, that’s fine with me,” Cohen tells a young, opioid-addicted mother, handcuffed and dressed in orange prison suit. “I am not going to keep you here and I am going to have the state dependency court file a termination of parental rights. I will order them to do it,” Cohen stressed.

Family reunions

“The children in my court have been removed from their parents because they have severe and chronic drug addiction and have failed to get into treatment,” the judge said. Her formula is to get parents who are struggling with opioid addiction intensive drug treatment so they can regain custody of their children.

She said 60 percent of the parents who go through the program get their children back.

“It’s getting into true recovery, improving your relationships with your family, your spouse, your children and starting that long life-long journey to recovery,” Cohen said.
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As the best-of-seven 2017 World Series shifts from Los Angeles to Houston at one game apiece, diehard fans of the hurricane-devastated city can sense a first-ever baseball championship within their grasp. Houstonians admit that a series victory — if only a momentary distraction — would lift the city’s spirits. Ramon Taylor reports from Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros.
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The United States blacklisted seven North Korean officials and three government entities Thursday, saying they had engaged in human rights abuses that were “among the worst in the world.”

The State Department and Treasury imposed economic sanctions on officials in Pyongyang’s military security, labor and diplomatic outposts, as well as forced labor operations in foreign countries where North Korean soldiers are required to work for free while their wages are sent back to the financially beleaguered government.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the “sanctions target the North Korean military and regime officials engaged in flagrant abuses of human rights. We also are targeting North Korean financial facilitators who attempt to keep the regime afloat with foreign currency earned through forced labor operations.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the human rights abuses also included extrajudicial killings, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence inside the country.

“Many of the country’s human rights abuses underwrite the regime’s weapons program,” she said, “including forced labor in the form of mass mobilizations, re-education through labor camps, and overseas labor contracts. Thousands of North Koreans are sent abroad every year to work in slavelike conditions, earning revenue for the regime.”

Nauert also said “the regime’s efforts to restrict North Koreans’ freedom of movement, right to leave their country and access to information reach far beyond its sovereign boundaries. The government deploys security officials on assignments overseas to monitor the activities of North Koreans abroad and to forcibly repatriate individuals seeking asylum abroad.”

U.N. report

The U.S. report came as Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. special human rights rapporteur for North Korea, released a similar report concluding that there were “patterns of grave violations” of human rights in the reclusive communist country. Pyongyang has kept him from personal observation of human rights in the country, but he said he had spoken with people who have witnessed abuses there.

However, the U.N. official cautioned that the world body’s repeated imposition of sanctions against North Korea aiming at blocking its nuclear weapons development “can have a devastating impact on the civilian population.”

He called for the world to have “constructive engagement” with North Korea, even while acknowledging such advice “may not be welcomed with open arms.”

The latest U.S. condemnation of the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came as President Donald Trump was nearing the start of a five-nation Asia trip in early November, including visits to South Korea, China and Japan. Trump is planning wide-ranging talks with leaders in the region about North Korea’s continued defiance of the U.N. dictates against further nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
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The State Department on Thursday recognized Intersex Awareness Day and said the United States stands in solidarity with intersex persons around the world. The statement comes as the department faces a discrimination lawsuit on the issue.

“We recognize that intersex persons face violence, discrimination, harassment, and persecution on account of their sex characteristics,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said. “At a young age, intersex persons routinely face forced medical surgeries without free or informed consent. These interventions jeopardize their physical integrity and ability to live freely.”

The State Department said it reaffirms its strong commitment to promoting a world where all persons can freely and equally express themselves with dignity, regardless of sex characteristics.

“Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female.  

The statement Thursday comes as the department faces a federal discrimination lawsuit from nonprofit Lambda Legal group on behalf of intersex American and U.S. navy veteran, Dana Zzyym.

Zzyym was denied a U.S. passport because only two choices were available for gender marker on the passport application form, either male or female.

“Dana has been fighting for almost three years for an essential identity document that accurately reflects who they are,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Paul Castillo said in an October 10 press release. “The U.S. District Court ordered the State Department to reconsider its binary-only gender policy barring use of a third gender marker on U.S. passports.”

Lambda Legal says many intersex people identify as male or female, but some, like Zzyym, do not.  Zzyym uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “them” and “their” and was born with ambiguous sex characteristics.

Lambda Legal outlined Zzyym’s struggle.

“Shortly after Dana’s birth, their parents and doctor decided to raise them as a boy. As a result, Dana underwent several irreversible, painful and medically unnecessary surgeries that didn’t work, traumatized Dana and left them with severe scarring.”

Later in life, Zzymm began educating the public about issues facing intersex people and applied for a passport to travel to a forum in Mexico, but the application was denied.

In October 2015, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado against the U.S. State Department for violating the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The court issued a ruling in favor of Zzyym in November of 2016. However, the case has been reopened because the State Department continues to refuse a gender marker that is neither male nor female on its passport applications.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit, the State Department told VOA: “As a matter of policy, we are unable to comment on pending litigation.”

In tweets Thursday, Lambda Legal called the State Department statement recognizing Intersex Awareness Day hypocritical and said the department should “take its own advice & help end violence, discrimination, harassment, persecution of intersex people.”
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When kids go back to school, they usually talk about what they did during their summer vacation. The 15 and 16-year-olds who joined Summer RISE in Montgomery County, Maryland, have some unique stories about work in fire departments, non-profits, private businesses and many other workplaces. Faiza Elmasry tells us about one of the high schoolers who spent 3 weeks in the biology lab at a local college. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The social media company Twitter on Thursday announced it would block any advertising on its platform from Russia-sponsored news outlets Sputnik and RT.

The company, in a statement on its blog, said it took the step as part of its “ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.”

Twitter cited a report produced in January by U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded the Russian government attempted to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Early this year, the U.S. intelligence community named RT and Sputnik as implementing state-sponsored Russian efforts to interfere with and disrupt the 2016 Presidential election, which is not something we want on Twitter,” the company statement read.

In its report, the intelligence community concluded “with high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed an influence campaign intended to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

Further, the report claims “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect [Donald] Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” though it provides no direct evidence for either of these claims.

The Russian effort to influence the election is said to have consisted of several hundred fake Twitter accounts and about $100,000 worth of Facebook ads promoting “divisive” causes like Black Lives Matter. U.S. media reports also indicate Russians purchased similar ads on Google.

Lawyers for Twitter and Facebook will testify next month at hearings before congressional committees investigating what, if any, effect the Russian trolls may have had on the election.

Twitter said it will still allow RT, formerly called Russia Today, and Sputnik to remain as users on the platform, but they will not be eligible to buy ads. The company also said it will take the nearly $2 million it has earned on ads from the Russian news agencies since 2011 and donate it to support “external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections.”

 
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