The protest group, called No Tech for Apartheid, now has more than 200 Google employees closely involved in organizing, according to members, who say there are hundreds more workers sympathetic to their goals. TIME spoke to five current and five former Google workers for this story, many of whom described a growing sense of...
Seventeen Democratic senators, led by Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), have warned the State Department that Israeli assurances of compliance with the February memorandum were neither credible nor reliable....
However, truck owners involved in the food deliveries, mostly Egyptian hauliers, are reluctant to let their vehicles be used inside Gaza for fear of them bombed or ransacked by starving Gazans. There is also a shortage of willing drivers after repeated incidents of aid trucks coming under fire, of which the WCK bombing has been...
“Despite the tragedy unfolding under our watch, the Israeli Authorities informed the UN that they will no longer approve any @Unrwa food convoys to the north,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, said on X.
Gaza is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, dating back to the first century, and the third oldest church in the world. Despite constant threats to survival, the community has persisted for two millennia....
A Gallup poll released on Wednesday found that 55 percent of Americans now oppose the war, a ten percent increase since the last survey was conducted by the pollsters in November....
More than 1,200 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been forced from their homes since the conflict started, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
Israeli and foreign human rights groups have documented a long history of snipers firing on unarmed Palestinians, including children, in Gaza and the West Bank....
Birchmore’s case is among at least 194 allegations that law enforcement personnel, mostly policemen, have groomed, sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with Explorers since 1974, an ongoing investigation by The Marshall Project has found. The vast majority of those affected were teenage girls — some as young...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – After narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin. Fifty-five percent currently disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve.
What’s truly wild is the misleading media coverage of Glazer’s speach. Variety initially quoted him as saying, “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness.” That reads totally different than what he actually said: “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” He’s refuting the hijacking of their Jewishness, not their Jewishness itself.
Then NBC News covered his remarks in an article titled “Jonathan Glazer condemns violence in Gaza and Israel in Oscars speech” and subtitled “In his remarks, the director said in part: ‘Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack in Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?’” They thus give the impression that Glazer’s comments were a condemnation of both sides of the conflict, not the targeted criticism of Israel’s occupation that it was.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio State University police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested about three dozen people Thursday night for staging a pro-Palestine encampment on campus – carrying out what is likely the highest number of protest-related arrests there since the Vietnam War....
While the prosecutor’s statement did not mention Israel, it was issued after Israeli and US officials have warned of consequences against the ICC if it issues arrest warrants over Israel’s war on Gaza.
A New York Times examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that violence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention. The violence had been instigated by dozens of people who are seen in videos counterprotesting the encampment....
The Biden administration is frequently choosing to hold asylum seekers in detention while their case goes through the system instead of just processing them and releasing them with a court date as was the standard practice before Trump:
We write to express outrage over your administration’s expansion of the cruel and unnecessary immigration detention system. Last month, you signed a spending bill that provides historically high funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention - $3.4 billion in taxpayers’ money. Our organizations work with and advocate on behalf of people who have experienced immigration detention. They carry life long scars from the mistreatment and dehumanization they endured because of the United States’ reliance on detention, mostly through private prisons and county jails. Your administration is further entrenching this reliance, marking an utter betrayal of your campaign https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/promise/1613/end-profit-detention-centers/.
Detention does not provide an efficient or ethical means of border processing, and it certainly does not indicate to migrants that they are welcome in the United States. It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane and misguided – as even the most punitive forms of detention https://www.americanprogress.org/article/family-separation-detention-deter-immigration/ not to deter people from seeking safety or a better life.
Sincerely,
18 Million Rising
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Amnesty International USA
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Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
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Human Rights Watch
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Mijente
Muslim Advocates
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Refugees International
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Sikh Coalition
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Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice
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This report – a joint effort by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRCP), and researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) – provides a detailed overview of how solitary confinement is being used by ICE across detention facilities in the United States, and its failure to adhere to its own policies, guidance, and directives.
The study reveals that immigration detention facilities fail to comply with ICE guidelines and directives regarding solitary confinement. Despite significant documented issues, including whistleblower alarms and supposed monitoring and oversight measures, there has been negligible progress. **The report highlights a significant discrepancy between the 2020 campaign promise of U.S. President Joseph Biden to end solitary confinement and the ongoing practices observed in ICE detention.**Over the last decade, the use of solitary confinement has persisted, and worse, the recent trend under the current administration reflects an increase in frequency and duration. Data from solitary confinement use in 2023 – though likely an underestimation as this report explains – demonstrates a marked increase in the instances of solitary confinement.
This report exposes a continuing trend of ICE using solitary confinement for punitive purposes rather than as a last resort – in violation of its own directives. Many of the people interviewed were placed in solitary confinement for minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints. Many reported inadequate access to medical care, including mental health care, during their solitary confinement, which they said led to the exacerbation of existing conditions or the development of new ones, including symptoms consistent with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The conditions in solitary confinement were described as dehumanizing, with people experiencing harsh living conditions, limited access to communication and recreation, and verbal abuse or harassment from facility staff.
In the last five years alone, ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times, with an average duration of 27 days, well exceeding the 15-day threshold that United Nations (UN) human rights experts have found constitutes torture. Many of the longest solitary confinement placements involved people with mental health conditions, indicating a failure to provide appropriate care for vulnerable populations more broadly.
The treatment of people in immigration detention facilities and the excessive, punitive use of solitary confinement is not only contrary to ICE’s own policies and guidance but also violates U.S. constitutional law and international human rights law
On the campaign trail four years ago he promised “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” But then he waived two dozen laws to continue constructien on the border wall, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. [pbs]
Biden maintained Trump’s Title 42 policy, which expelled asylum seekers under the pretext of protecting public health, for more than two years after taking office, even as the ACLU was suing to put an end to the policy.
He also chose to adopt a reworked version of another Trump immigration policy innovation, prompting more lawsuits:
The Biden administration has instituted its version of Trump’s asylum transit ban. That rule allows immigration enforcement officials to turn away migrants for a number of reasons: if they do not have valid travel and identification documents, if they’ve traveled through another country without applying for asylum, if they don’t show up at a port of entry at an appointed time, and more. [Vox]
Blaine Bookey, legal director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said the deportations were “a disgrace”.
“They protect no one. They ‘deter’ no one. They violate our laws and treaty obligations, legal guidance from the UN Refugee Agency, and basic principles of humanity. They must end,” Bookey said in a statement on Friday.
During the first year of the Biden administration, DHS worked with oversight agencies to review facilities with substandard conditions… The administration closed out or reduced capacity for some of the worst facilities following this review, but these actions were the “barest minimum” compared to what officials involved in the review had envisioned.[50] In August 2022, another internal DHS study recommended closing or downsizing nine immigration detention centers.[51] However, ICE only ended contracts with two of the detention centers mentioned in that review.[52]
ICE refuses to comply with recommendations from oversight bodies, such as the DHS OIG, when they issue scathing reports about life-threatening conditions. For example, the OIG issued a report in March 2022 on Torrance County Detention Facility which had already failed one Nakamoto inspection in 2021, recommending that ICE immediately stop detaining people there.[54] ICE rejected the recommendation, and continued to keep hundreds of people detained in Torrance.[55] That same month, ICE’s contracting officer also issued a report finding that violations of federal standards continued in Torrance.[56]
Later that year, in August 2022, a young man from Brazil named Kesley Vial, died in the Torrance facility.[59] ICE’s review of Kesley’s death addressed similar failures identified in the OIG report that contributed to his fatal suicide attempt.[60]
At another ICE detention facility in Port Isabel, Texas, the OIG reported in February 2023 on “unsafe conditions,” and found the facility did “not meet standards for detainee segregation.”[61] Months later, on October 8, 2023, Julio Cesar Chirino Peralta died in ICE custody after being detained at Port Isabel.[62]
Under Biden, 12 people have died in ICE custody.[64]
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Continuing to fund ICE’s detention system is inhumane and misguided. For fiscal year 2023, U.S. taxpayers paid $2.8 billion for ICE detention.[66] Following the end of the Trump-era Title 42 mass expulsion policy in May, the Biden administration adopted a more hardline approach, implementing new “sweeping” enforcement measures, including increasing detention capacity.[67] In doing so, the administration chose to ignore years of evidence showing that punitive enforcement measures do not lead to decreases in migration numbers.[68] Detention numbers spiked, from 22,000 in May to over 39,000 by the end of October 2023.[69] In continuing to expand the incarceration of people facing administrative removal proceedings, the administration ignores clear evidence showing that legal representation and community-based support services are a more humane and effective method of ensuring compliance at immigration court hearings.[70]
Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel (time.com)
The protest group, called No Tech for Apartheid, now has more than 200 Google employees closely involved in organizing, according to members, who say there are hundreds more workers sympathetic to their goals. TIME spoke to five current and five former Google workers for this story, many of whom described a growing sense of...
Israel’s Brutality Is Increasing—and So Is Its Denialism (www.thenation.com)
A human rights monitor documented the sniping of at least 13 children in and around Shifa Hospital, all between the ages of 4 and 16.
Famine is now probably present in Gaza, US says (www.theguardian.com)
Israel is not in compliance, so stop giving it aid (thehill.com)
Seventeen Democratic senators, led by Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), have warned the State Department that Israeli assurances of compliance with the February memorandum were neither credible nor reliable....
Biden Says Debate With Trump Will Depend on the GOP Nominee’s “Behavior” (truthout.org)
Aid ‘still not reaching Gaza’, as top US official warns famine has started (www.theguardian.com)
However, truck owners involved in the food deliveries, mostly Egyptian hauliers, are reluctant to let their vehicles be used inside Gaza for fear of them bombed or ransacked by starving Gazans. There is also a shortage of willing drivers after repeated incidents of aid trucks coming under fire, of which the WCK bombing has been...
California officer shoots and kills boy, 15, holding gardening tool (www.theguardian.com)
New York police used stun gun on migrant holding toddler, video shows (www.theguardian.com)
Israel will no longer approve Unrwa food aid to northern Gaza, agency says (www.theguardian.com)
“Despite the tragedy unfolding under our watch, the Israeli Authorities informed the UN that they will no longer approve any @Unrwa food convoys to the north,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency, said on X.
Progressive Groups Launch New Coalition to Oppose AIPAC Influence (truthout.org)
This Easter, Gaza's Christian community faces extinction (www.newarab.com)
Gaza is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, dating back to the first century, and the third oldest church in the world. Despite constant threats to survival, the community has persisted for two millennia....
A majority of Americans now oppose Israel's war on Gaza (www.newarab.com)
A Gallup poll released on Wednesday found that 55 percent of Americans now oppose the war, a ten percent increase since the last survey was conducted by the pollsters in November....
How Israeli settlers are expanding illegal outposts amid Gaza war (www.aljazeera.com)
More than 1,200 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been forced from their homes since the conflict started, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza (www.theguardian.com)
Israeli and foreign human rights groups have documented a long history of snipers firing on unarmed Palestinians, including children, in Gaza and the West Bank....
‘Death at any moment’: fights break out as Gazans compete over airdropped aid (www.theguardian.com)
Boy Scouts’ police Explorer program has faced over 200 sexual misconduct accusations (www.nbcnews.com)
Birchmore’s case is among at least 194 allegations that law enforcement personnel, mostly policemen, have groomed, sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with Explorers since 1974, an ongoing investigation by The Marshall Project has found. The vast majority of those affected were teenage girls — some as young...
Majority in U.S. Now Disapprove of Israeli Action in Gaza (news.gallup.com)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – After narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin. Fifty-five percent currently disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve.
Jonathan Glazer Condemns ‘Holocaust Being Hijacked by an Occupation’ in Oscar Speech (www.indiewire.com)
Over 30 pro-Palestine protesters arrested at Ohio State: what we know (www.nbc4i.com)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio State University police and the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested about three dozen people Thursday night for staging a pro-Palestine encampment on campus – carrying out what is likely the highest number of protest-related arrests there since the Vietnam War....
ICC demands end to threats against court amid Gaza war probe (www.aljazeera.com)
While the prosecutor’s statement did not mention Israel, it was issued after Israeli and US officials have warned of consequences against the ICC if it issues arrest warrants over Israel’s war on Gaza.
How Counterprotesters at U.C.L.A. Provoked Violence, Unchecked for Hours - (NYT Gift Link) (www.nytimes.com)
A New York Times examination of more than 100 videos from clashes at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that violence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention. The violence had been instigated by dozens of people who are seen in videos counterprotesting the encampment....
US repatriates two dozen westerners from Islamic State camp in Syria (www.theguardian.com)
The Kurdish fighters are holding more than 56,000 detainees with alleged or perceived links to the Islamic State group....
The Biden administration has a plan to shut down the border. But it needs Mexico's help. (www.nbcnews.com)