KURSK FIENT FAILED

The fall of Vuhledar is a microcosm of Ukraine's wartime predicament

SAMYA KULLAB and VOLODYMYR YURCHUK
Updated Wed, October 2, 2024 






 An aerial view of Vuhledar, the site of heavy battles with the Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Feb. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The fall of a front-line town nestled atop a tactically significant hill is unlikely to change the course of Ukraine’s war against Russia. But the loss underscores Kyiv’s worsening position, in part the result of firm Western red lines, military officials and analysts said.

Vuhledar, a town Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to keep for two years, is the latest urban settlement to fall to the Russians. It follows a vicious summer campaign along the eastern front that saw Kyiv cede several thousand square kilometers (miles) of territory.

Ukraine’s military said they were withdrawing their troops from Vuhledar to “protect the military personnel and equipment" in a statement on Wednesday.


Vuhledar's fall is a microcosm of Ukraine’s predicament in this chapter of the nearly three-year war. It reflects the U.S.'s refusal to grant Ukraine permission to strike targets deep inside Russian territory, preventing Kyiv from degrading Moscow’s capabilities. Meanwhile, Russia's dominance of the skies allows it to develop and advance devastating aerial glide bombs for which Ukraine has no effective response, while a controversial mobilization drive has failed to produce a new class of Ukrainian fighters capable of holding the line.

The Ukrainians' retreat from the town comes after a much-anticipated visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the U.S. last week. The Biden administration so far has refused Kyiv’s request to use Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to strike Russian airfields and other key targets, and Zelenskyy’s “victory plan,” was dismissed by some as more of a wish list than a plan of action.

In the meantime, Russian fighter jets continued to drop aerial bombs on Vuhledar, which precipitated the retreat, soldiers there said.

“(The Russians') main tactic was to encircle us from the flanks, and they did this constantly for six to seven months with constant aerial attacks — due to this tactic they managed to exhaust our resources, because we don’t have as much as they have,” said Arsenii Prylipka, the head of the press office of the 72nd Brigade, which had been defending Vuhledar since August 2022.

The fight for Vuhledar

After two years of failed attempts to capture Vuhledar, Russian forces switched tactics earlier this year. The town’s pre-war population of 14,000 dwindled to less than 100 during the heat of the fighting.

Russian soldiers began mounting sophisticated attacks from the north and southern flanks, powered by superior electronic warfare capabilities and an array of infantrymen on motorcycles, artillery fire, drones and aerial glide bombs. Moscow suffered heavy causalities.

Ukrainians have been pressuring the U.S. to relax restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia. Lawmakers said they expected a green light from the U.S. months ago, but it didn’t come: The Biden administration refused to waver on this red line.

It has meant that Russian command and control centers, logistics hubs and airfields from which Russian fighter jets carry deadly aerial glide bombs, are out of reach of Ukrainian forces.

Russia fires nearly 120 aerial bombs a day on average, about 3,000 a month. The bombs are Soviet-era weapons refitted with navigational technology.

“We cannot change the dynamics, and the Russians are pushing,” said Pavel Narozhnyi, founder of the non-profit Reactive Post, which sources spare parts for artillery.

Month after month of constant attacks eventually eroded Ukrainian defenses.

After two years of intense fighting, the 72nd Brigade — which never rotated out due to the intensity of the fight and the lack of a demobilization strategy from Ukrainian military leaders — withdrew from the patch of land many of their comrades died to defend.

Prylipka had said the brigade would stay until the very last moment when defending Vuhledar became impossible. That scenario unfolded this week.

“The Russians searched for weak spots in our defenses, a constant probe to find routes to penetrate the town and as they advanced they tried to destroy the entire town. All the time we are under fire,” said Prylipka.

Vuhledar served as a defensive stronghold, a fortress town atop a hill surrounded by open fields and near two major roads. From there, Ukrainian soldiers were able to observe approaching Russian forces at a distance. From that vantage point, it was easy to coordinate counter-attacks. That advantage now falls to Russian forces.

While tactically significant, Vuhledar isn’t a crucial logistics hub for Kyiv, and Russian forces already controlled most of the main roads through the town before capturing it, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said. Ukraine’s access to other critical supply lines remains intact.

The road to Pokrovsk

The capture of Vuhledar is part of Moscow’s pursuit of the strategic logistics hub of Pokrovsk, just 30 kilometers (19 miles) north. Its fall would severely compromise Ukrainian defenses.

The next step for Russian forces will be to drive Ukrainian forces out of the nearby city of Kurakhove.

“This line is interconnected and the enemy will not be able to enter Pokrovsk and come close to Pokrovsk unless it can drive our troops out of Kurakhove," said Ivan Tymochko, chairman of the Council of Reservists of Ukraine’s ground forces. "Otherwise, (the Russians) would have exposed their fronts to the flanks and would have received a serious blow to the side.”

“On the other hand, the enemy understands that if it does not take Kurakhove, it will not be able to seriously influence the course of events around Vuhledar," he added.

The fall of Vuhledar: Ukrainian forces withdraw after two and a half years of fighting

Sasha Vakulina

EURONEWS
Wed, October 2, 2024 

Kyiv forces have withdrawn from the town of Vuhledar in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian military command confirmed on Wednesday.

According to the crowd-sourced monitoring website DeepState, Russian soldiers entered the coal-mining city in the Donbas on Tuesday, advancing from the West and South.

The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported earlier that Moscow's forces have also been advancing northeast of the town.

Geolocated footage published on Monday and Tuesday shows Russian forces planting Russian flags and freely operating in various parts of Vuhledar, and Russian military bloggers claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces seized the settlement.

Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin said the situation on Tuesday was "very difficult". “The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city," he told Ukrainian TV.

By Wednesday, the Khortytsia army group officially announced that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn.

"The higher command authorized a manoeuvre to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to save personnel and military equipment and take up a position for further operations," the group said.

Related

No running water, no electricity, no armed forces: Vuhledar in Donetsk region broken by ongoing war


The storm of Vuhledar: Russian forces threaten from three sides

Ukraine's 72nd Mechanised Brigade has defended the town for nearly two years.

The scale of Ukrainian casualties is unknown at this time, however, an orderly withdrawal likely helped avoid greater casualties.
What is next for Russian forces?

Russian troops have been attempting to capture the town since the start of the full-scale invasion in early 2022. Vuhledar withstood numerous attacks in recent months and weeks as Moscow's forces tried to encircle the town.

The ISW said it is unclear if Russian forces will make rapid gains beyond Vuhledar in the immediate future.

Now, they will have to first completely clear the town "to make it a useable position from which they can launch future assaults," ISW added, with Ukrainian defensive positions situated northeast of Vuhledar.

ISW previously assessed that Moscow's seizure of Vuhledar is unlikely to fundamentally alter the course of offensive operations in western parts of the Donetsk region, mainly because Vuhledar is not a particularly crucial logistics node, and Russian forces controlled most of the main roads running into Vuhledar even before Tuesday.

This means that Russian forces already could interdict Ukrainian logistics in this part of the front to some extent.
Why is Vuhledar important?

Vuhledar's strategic importance lies in its location. The town sits on higher ground between the two fronts: eastern and southern.

To the south, Vuhledar was the last fortified town before the village of Velyka Novosilka and the entire southern part of the Donetsk region that Ukraine controls.

The town is roughly 40 kilometres east of the administrative border with the Zaporizhzhia region. Controlling Vuhledar would also help Russian forces improve their railway logistics, which might help them advance further.

Moscow's primary target remains the town of Pokrovsk, some 50 kilometres north of Vuhledar. Although threatening Pokrovsk's southern flank, Russian forces would need to manoeuvre across open terrain to meaningfully support offensive operations southeast of Pokrovsk.

Advancing across an open field area during the upcoming mud season would complicate matters for Russian forces. It is possible that the Ukrainian military command factored the weather aspect into the decision to withdraw its forces from Vuhledar.

And while it won't be an issue for Russian forces to take full control of the town now, the muddy roads and fields would be almost unusable for mechanised assaults should Russian forces decide to advance further.

They might decide to wait for the ground to freeze before considering the next steps, which would happen in about a month in southern part of Ukraine's Donetsk region.

Russia appears to have seized a Ukrainian town after almost 2 years of trying

Mia Jankowicz
Updated Wed, October 2, 2024

Russia appears to have seized a Ukrainian town after almost 2 years of trying


Russia appears to have finally seized Vuhledar, a key frontline town in eastern Ukraine.


The town has been under attack since early in the war, with intense fighting from January 2023.


The town's strategic location may provide a boost to Russia — after at least 18 months of fighting.

Russia appears to have gained control over a key Ukrainian frontline town, military experts said, as the town's governor described a difficult situation for Ukraine there.

Citing open sources and pro-Russian military bloggers, the Institute for the Study of War said that as of Tuesday, "Russian forces likely seized Vuhledar."

Russian forces have been seen moving freely about the town and planting flags there, the ISW reported.

Vuhledar's governor, Vadym Filashkin, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday that the situation in the town was "extremely difficult" and that "the enemy has already almost reached the center of the town," the Kyiv Post reported.

One hundred and seven of the town's civilians — out of a pre-war population of about 14,000 — remained, Filashkin said.

Russia has been fighting to seize Vuhledar — a small coal mining town in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region — in earnest since at least January 2023.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' general staff did not mention the town in its daily update of locations where fighting was taking place.

Crowd-sourced monitoring website DeepState showed Vuhledar surrounded by Russian forces on three sides as of Monday.

By Tuesday, its map shows the town as completely under Russian control.

Unable to easily resupply from any direction, Ukrainian soldiers were likely trapped before being bombarded with glide bombs, Reuters reported.

Vuhledar has been targeted by aerial bombardments from the very outset of the war, being struck by Russian cluster munition on February 24, 2022, according to Human Rights Watch.

Since then, Russia has made multiple sustained attempts to take the town. A major assault began in January 2023, at a cost of thousands of soldiers, Politico reported Ukraine's military as saying last year.

The fighting tore apart much of Russia's elite 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, considered one of the country's best.

A further assault came in June, with Russia securing a number of advances in nearby towns last month.

How strategically important Vuhledar's capture will turn out to be remains to be seen.

As a long-fought-over hotspot, Vuhledar has gained a reputation as a "fortress" in the Ukrainian military, and its loss is likely a morale blow, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The ensuing morale boost to Russia will likely come at a welcome moment in Moscow — a rare win as President Vladimir Putin increases the country's defense and security spending to 40% of the country's overall budget, the highest on record.

According to draft budget documents published earlier this week, Russia has earmarked the equivalent of $145 billion for defense spending next year, up from about $114 billion.

Some economists say the war is the only thing keeping Russia from entering an immediate recession.

Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War on Tuesday cited its own earlier assessment that the seizure of Vuhledar "is unlikely to fundamentally alter the course of offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast, largely because Vuhledar is not a particularly crucial logistics node."

"It is unclear if Russian forces will make rapid gains beyond Vuhledar in the immediate future," the think tank added.

However, the town's high ground and its position at the intersection of the eastern and southern war fronts still make it a valuable target for Russia, per Reuters.

And its loss has the potential to threaten the security of all of the unoccupied southwest of the Donetsk region, Federico Borsari, a fellow in defense and security at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Kyiv Independent.

The town also sits about 35 miles south of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistics hub that Russia has kept under intense pressure throughout the summer — and whose southern flank is now even more vulnerable.


Russian troops reach centre of Ukrainian bastion Vuhledar

Updated Tue, October 1, 2024 
By Olena Harmash and Gleb Garanich

KYIV (Reuters) -Russian troops have reached the centre of Vuhledar, a bastion on strategic high ground in eastern Ukraine's industrial Donbas region that had resisted Russian assaults since Moscow's full-scale invasion, a regional Ukrainian official said on Tuesday.

Footage posted to social media showed Russian soldiers waving a flag from atop a bombed-out multi-storey building and unfurling another flag on a metal spire on a roof. Reuters determined the footage matched street patterns of Vuhledar.

Other images showed smoke rising over the ruins of the once small mining town, now a deserted and devastated battlefield where Ukrainian units had held off previous armoured Russian assaults through 2-1/2 years of war.

"The enemy is already nearly in the centre of the city," Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region that makes up part of the broader Donbas historical area, told Ukrainian TV, describing the situation as very difficult.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian military did not comment on Tuesday on the situation in Vuhledar. It was unclear whether Russian forces controlled the whole town.

"Vuhledar... the city we all fought for, the city where soldiers from different units laid down their lives, the city where I met the war with a weapon in hand," Stanislav Buniatov, a Ukrainian military blogger and a volunteer soldier said on the Telegram messaging app.

Combat footage by the popular war blog DeepState showed Russian forces throughout Vuhledar. Ukraine's public broadcaster Suspilne quoted soldiers fighting there as saying they had not received an order to leave.

Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin "regularly receives direct information from the military" including on Vuhledar, but there was no official comment from Moscow that the town was taken.

Russian military bloggers, including a group of military analysts who ran the prominent Rybar Telegram channel, touted the capture of the city, which could speed up the advance of Russian forces in Donbas.

Vuhledar has strategic significance because of its high ground and its location near the junction of the two main fronts, in eastern and southern Ukraine. Russian forces reached the outskirts last week and have since intensified their push.

Earlier, Andriy Nazarenko, commander of a drone battalion of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, said they were outgunned and outmanned in Vuhledar.

"The situation in Vuhledar is very difficult, it is the hardest because assaults have been going on for more than six months and the enemy is constantly rotating its ranks with fresh, trained forces," Nazarenko told Reuters.

Speaking from an undisclosed location during a Zoom interview, Nazarenko said his unit was doing everything possible to maintain "a window" for the infantry to be able to retreat from the town.

RUSSIA'S FAST ADVANCE

Since August, Moscow's troops have advanced at their fastest rate for more than two years in eastern Ukraine, despite Ukrainian forces mounting a surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said that about 2,000 to 3,000 Russian troops were in the town, attacking from three different directions.

"We will not be able to hold on in Vuhledar in these conditions," Kovalenko told Reuters, saying the decision to retreat from Vuhledar should be taken quickly.

Full control over Vuhledar would help Moscow's troops to improve their logistics by using railways more actively, easing their further advance in the region and giving them positions on heights from which to fire artillery.

Filashkin, urging people to leave, said that about 350,000 people remained in government-held parts of the region, down from about 1.9 million before the war. Only 107 civilians remained in Vuhledar, which had a pre-war population of about 14,000, he said.

The Donetsk region, where Russian proxy forces launched a revolt in 2014, is one of four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow claimed to have annexed in late 2022. Moscow says capturing the rest of the province is one of its principal war aims.

Ukraine drove back Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv and recaptured territory in a counter-offensive in 2022. But another Ukrainian counter-offensive last year was a failure and Russian forces have mostly had the battlefield initiative since.

(Reporting by Olena Harmash, Gleb Garanich, Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Writing by Olena Harmash, Ron Popeski and Lidia Kelly; Editing by Peter Graff, Alexandra Hudson, Jonathan Oatis and Deepa Babington)


Russia captures Vuhledar after two years of Ukrainian resistance

A satellite view of Vuhledar

By Guy Faulconbridge
Updated Wed, October 2, 2024 

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian troops on Wednesday took charge of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Russia launched its full-scale assault in 2022.

The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.

Ukraine's eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops and "preserve personnel and military equipment".

The Russian defence ministry did not mention Vuhledar in its daily battlefield report.

Russian Telegram channels, however, published video of troops waving the Russian tricolour flag over shattered buildings.

The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said the last Ukrainian forces from the 72nd Mechanised Brigade, a unit famous for its resistance, had abandoned the town late on Tuesday.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia's primary tactical goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region - the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk - in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia controls about 80% of the Donbas, a heavy industry hub where the conflict began in 2014 when Moscow supported pro-Russian separatist forces after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Kyiv and Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine.

VUHLEDAR TAKEN IN RAPID RUSSIAN ADVANCE

Since Russia sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022, the war has largely been a story of grinding artillery and drone strikes along a heavily fortified 1,000-km (620-mile) front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

But in August the battlefield became much more dynamic: Ukraine smashed through the border in Russia's Kursk region in a bid to divert Russian forces, and Russian troops began advancing faster than before in eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 150 km (95 miles) of the front in the Donetsk region, with the logistics hub of Pokrovsk also a key target.

They captured Ukrainsk on Sept. 17 and then began encircling Vuhledar, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Pokrovsk.

Russia has been using pincer tactics to trap and then constrict Ukrainian strongholds. Images from the area showed intense bombardment of the town with artillery and aerial glide bombs.

Neither side discloses losses, and each said the other had paid a high human price for the town.

Control of Vuhledar, which lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, is significant because it will ease Russia's advance as it tries to pierce deeper behind the Ukrainian defensive lines.

Russian bloggers said Russia could now try to push towards Velyka Novosilka, just over 30 km (20 miles) to the west.

Vuhledar also sits close to a railway line connecting Crimea to the Donbas region.

Russian forces currently control 98.5% of the Luhansk region and 60% of the Donetsk region.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Kevin Liffey)

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to see Israel as a US ally: AP-NORC poll

AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX
Tue, October 1, 2024 



Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a year of war between Israel and Hamas, U.S. public opinion on the conflict remains polarized, a new survey by the Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds, with Democrats more likely to be critical of Israel, while Republicans remain more supportive.

There are a few points of relative consensus — about half of U.S. adults, for example, say Hamas bears “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war, while about one quarter says it has “some” responsibility and about 2 in 10 say it has “not much” responsibility or “none at all.”

But U.S. adults remain divided on the extent to which the Israeli government is responsible for the conflict continuing. And the findings indicate that the past year of war hasn’t done much to widen or narrow the partisan gulf that existed early in the conflict.


Democrats remain more sympathetic toward the Palestinians than Republicans and more critical of Israel, while Republicans are more likely to sympathize with the Israelis and view Israel as a U.S. ally that shares the United States' values and interests.

However, it’s unclear from this survey if public opinion will shift as the war in the Middle East expands beyond Gaza. It was conducted from Sept. 12 to 16, before Israel’s military significantly escalated its operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and before Iran launched missiles at Israel on Tuesday. Hamas, based in Gaza, and Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, are militant groups allied with Iran.

Americans largely don't blame the US government

President Joe Biden has maintained crucial U.S. military support to Israel throughout the Gaza war, while repeatedly trying — and failing — to broker a cease-fire. Americans are most likely to place “a lot” of blame on Hamas for the continuation of the war between Israel and the militant group, followed by the Israeli government, and the Iranian government and groups backed by Iran.

They place much less responsibility on their own country. Only about 1 in 10 Americans say the U.S. government bears “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas, while about 4 in 10 say it bears “some” responsibility, and 45% say the U.S. bears “not much” or no responsibility at all.

Democrats are slightly more likely than Republicans to say the U.S. has “some” responsibility, but overall the partisan differences on this question are small.

Brian Grider, a 48-year-old Republican from Moscow, Ohio, isn't sure how the U.S. could defuse the conflict.

“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do,” he said. “It would be nice if we could and we might want to try, but is it going to work? Probably not.”

Republicans more likely than Democrats to see Israel as an ally

The year of fighting appears to have calcified the partisan divide on the war and the U.S. relationship with Israel.

About half of Republicans view Israel as an ally of the U.S. that shares its values and interests, while about half of Democrats think Israel is a partner that the U.S. should cooperate with but that doesn't share American values and interests.

More than half of Democrats also say the Israeli government bears “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war, compared to about 4 in 10 Republicans.

Brian Becker, a 49-year-old Democrat in Colorado, says his views of the war shifted after hearing more on social media about Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who were harmed by the war.

“I didn’t feel like that was fair for them,” Becker said. “So that did start to change my mind a little bit, started to give that waver of support to Palestine,” he said. “Where before I probably would have been just, ‘Yeah, go Israel.”’

On the other hand, about half of Republicans say they sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians, while Democrats are more likely to say they sympathize with both groups equally.

Grider, the Ohio Republican, thinks Israel responded appropriately to the Oct. 7 attack, comparing it to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.

“I definitely don't think Israel is doing too much in response to what happened to them,” he said.

Overall views of the war remain stable

Views of the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the U.S. role in mediating it, haven't shifted much over the course of the year.

Support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state rose slightly, from around 2 in 10 in August 2023 to about 3 in 10 now. (About half of Americans currently say they neither favor nor oppose an independent Palestinian state, and about 2 in 10 are opposed.) There was also a slight uptick in the share of Americans who think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel.

But about 4 in 10 U.S. adults continue to say the U.S. is spending “too much” on military aid to Israel in the war, while a similar share say the U.S. is spending “the right amount." About 1 in 10 say the U.S. is spending “too little,” which is in line with an AP-NORC poll conducted in early 2024.

The mix of U.S. opinions on the Gaza war reflects the complexity of a conflict where Americans may see bad actors and innocent victims on both sides, according to Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and a research affiliate of the Pearson Institute.

“This leads to people having very strong views on both sides, which, of course, we’ve seen,” Poast said. And it doesn’t, he added, make for “a consistent narrative of, ‘We’ve got to support Israel,' or 'We’ve got to support the Palestinians.’”

Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 and took hostages, some of whom are still being held in Gaza. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians. Gaza health officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their death toll but say many of those killed are women and children.

Charles Jolivette, a 42-year-old Democrat in New Orleans who developed concerns about Israel’s offensive through discussions with friends and colleagues who have Palestinian heritage, has observed a kind of echo-chamber effect, where people on the different sides of the issue seem to only hear views that reflect their own beliefs.

“But I would love to have some more,” Jolivette said, referring to exchanges of view with people who see the conflict differently. And for "not only mainstream media, but the mainstream American populace, to have that ability to have these real conversations.”

___

The poll of 1,111 adults was conducted using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.95 percentage points.

__

GET REAL

A Donald Trump mass deportation of immigrants would cost hundreds of billions, report says

Andrew Sheeler
Wed, October 2, 2024 

Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants on the scale advocated by former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to enact, and would only be possible with the creation of a massive detention camp system.

That’s the finding of a new study by the nonpartisan American Immigration Council.

The report comes as a majority (54%) of Americans have said they support mass deportation, according to a Scripps News/Ipsos poll taken in September.


The immigration council’s study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey as well as publicly available data about the current costs of immigration enforcement to paint a grim picture of what mass deportation would look like.

Representatives from the Trump campaign did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment by deadline. The Bee also reached out to the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris for comment but received no response.

The total price tag for a one-time operation: $315 billion.

“We wish to emphasize that this figure is a highly conservative estimate. It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time — incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible,” according to the study.

The report said this operation would be impossible without mass detention camps to detain the 13 million undocumented immigrants.

“To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people,” the report said.

It gets even more expensive if the project is carried out longer term.

The report estimates that a long-term mass deportation campaign of 1 million immigrants a year would average $88 billion a year, for a total cost of $967.9 billion over the course of more than a decade.

“This would require the United States to build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists. The government would also be required to establish and maintain over 1,000 new immigration courtrooms to process people at such a rate,” the report said.

The report also looks at what such a campaign would do to the economy. Here, too, the picture is grim.

“Mass deportations would cause significant labor shocks across multiple key industries, with especially acute impacts on construction, agriculture, and the hospitality sector. We estimate that nearly 14% of people employed in the construction industry are undocumented. Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure. As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs,” the report said.

The American Immigration Council isn’t alone in offering a dire warning about economic impact of mass deportation.

The nonpartisan Brookings Institution cites multiple studies showing that such policies result in the decline not just of foreign-born workers, but also a drop in employment among American-born workers.

A report from the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics found that a mass deportation policy would result in “no economic growth over the second Trump administration from this policy alone.”

At the vice presidential debate Tuesday evening, Vance, a Republican, said that a Trump administration would start its mass deportation project by focusing on undocumented immigrants who have criminal records. He falsely put that number as 1 million people.

According to a fact check from Axios, roughly 430,000 undocumented immigrants not currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody have criminal convictions. That’s far less than the American population at large, where one in three Americans has a criminal record.

Opinion: Hate against Haitian immigrants ignores how US politics pushed them here

Régine Théodat
Wed, October 2, 2024

As Haitians find themselves at the center of yet another political firestorm, a pawn in another U.S. election cycle, it’s easy for some in the United States to forget about the real people caught in the middle. The political back-and-forth might lead those unfamiliar with Haiti's struggle to wrongly assume that Haitians are incapable of being at the center of their self-determination, as if today’s Haitians are somehow different from those who rose up in 1791, fought their enslavers and liberated themselves in 1804 to create the first free Black republic.

A new documentary, "The Fight for Haiti," shows how untrue that is.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric ignores key factors that brought us here. Ironically, the most recent anti-corruption movement was dismantled by Jovenel Moïse, a president backed by both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Moïse’s actions before his assassination in 2021 further fueled gang violence, displacing hundreds of thousands.

In testimonies to the U.S. Congress, activists have warned that Washington's continued support for corrupt leaders would result in mass migration ‒ something today’s xenophobic rhetoric ignores.
Why Haitian group filed criminal charges against Trump, Vance

President Donald Trump welcomes Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and other Caribbean leaders in 2019 to his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach Fla.

Last week, the Haitian Bridge Alliance filed citizen criminal charges against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, citing their "baseless and malicious comments" about Haitian immigrants in Springfield eating pets.

The repeated claims without evidence resulted in bomb threats and evacuations, terrorizing Springfield. Under Ohio law, private citizens seeking an arrest of prosecution can file an affidavit for review.

In a now-deleted tweet, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., disparaged the advocacy group by dismissing its legal action as a "sophistication" Haitians couldn’t possibly possess ‒ seemingly unaware of the "sophistication" of the Haitian Revolution that played a crucial role in the Louisiana Purchase, where he now holds office.

Opinion: Trump's Republican Party excuses racists

Haitians have, and always have, embodied the wherewithal to seek self-determination. "The Fight for Haiti" shows us that the Haitians of today are indeed their ancestors' wildest dreams.

This gripping documentary takes us into historical and current events sparked by a seemingly simple question: What happened to billions of dollars in missing development funds received through Venezuela’s PetroCaribe oil alliance?

The film centers on the PetroCaribe challenge that struck a nerve in a nation long burdened by corruption, broken promises and worsening living conditions. Despite facing physical loss, death and threats, the aptly named “Petrochallengers” held firm in their question: "Kot kòb PetroCaribe a?" (Where is the PetroCaribe money?)

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It was a question Haitians globally were asking. In 2018, Haitian filmmaker and writer Gilbert Mirambeau Jr. posted a photo of himself holding a cardboard sign with that very question. This unsuspecting tweet quickly became the catalyst for a monumental shift in Haiti’s sociopolitical landscape, landing at the perfect moment. Social media challenges were thriving, and a digitally savvy, frustrated and mobilized youth in Haiti turned it into a movement.

The question cut through Haiti's internal social hierarchies, which often separate people by wealth, location or education. Everyone wanted the answer.

Haitians demanded justice from US-backed regime

Director Etant Dupain interviews anti-corruption activist Stephanie Boucher in 2021 in Port-au-Prince for his 2024 documentary, "The Fight for Haiti."

As the director of "The Fight for Haiti" documentary, Etant Dupain, explains: "The movement unites all walks of life, this is one of the reasons I interviewed all different ages, classes and groupings of people, I want to show that all Haitians are concerned."

The country had grown accustomed to corruption and broken promises, but the film shows why this specific question about the PetroCaribe funds was different. The deal with Venezuela offered Haiti discounted oil, with the savings intended for development projects such as infrastructure, health care and education. Unlike typical foreign aid, which often leaves countries trapped in debt and under foreign control, this was a chance for Haiti to invest in itself.

Unfortunately, much of the money disappeared, stolen by the people trusted to safeguard it. Many projects were either never completed or poorly executed.

Opinion: I'm a pastor in Springfield. Haitian immigrants in our city need compassion, not hate.

Like their ancestors, who turned from everyday people into soldiers, today's Haitians became activists and investigators. When the movement began in 2018, anyone with a smartphone could be a Petrochallenger. People used social media to demand a collective audit of the funds.

Eventually, the Moïse government was forced to conduct a full audit. Despite threats against the auditors, the Petrochallengers persisted, and three thorough reports were published.

This audit serves as the foundation for holding those responsible accountable, recovering the stolen funds and investing them in the country's development. The United States and Canada have initiated economic and political sanctions against many involved in the funds misappropriation. No arrests have been made, but Petrochallengers hope and continue to fight for justice.

The story of the question "Kot kòb PetroCaribe a?" and the Petrochallengers is more than a movement; it’s a symbol of the Haitian people’s resolve. "The Fight for Haiti" powerfully captures that determination, making it not just a historical document but an urgent call to action for a brighter future.

"The movement is not dead because the activists believe the trial is nonnegotiable," Dupain says. "The film itself is proof that the movement is very much alive, and it is also a tool to build momentum."

Will you also be a Petrochallenger?

Régine Théodat is a Haitian American entrepreneur, strategist and cultural advocate.

Régine Théodat is a Haitian American entrepreneur, strategist and cultural advocate. She’s principal at Anana Consultants and owns a children's cultural learning brand, Isse & Lo.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Trump, Vance lie about Haitians. 'Fight for Haiti' doesn't

Trump on Springfield Haitian migrants: ‘They have to be removed’

Damita Menezes
Wed, October 2, 2024 

NEWSNATION


Former President Donald Trump spoke with Ali Bradley, who leads NewsNation’s daily coverage of the border. Follow Ali on X and click here to download the NewsNation app to see exclusive reporting from the border every day.

HOUSTON (NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump exclusively told NewsNation in an interview Wednesday he would revoke the temporary protected status for Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, and ensure their return to Haiti.

The Republican nominee was at a private fundraiser in Texas when he addressed the situation in Springfield, telling NewsNation border reporter Ali Bradley that 32,000 Haitian migrants had been relocated to a community of 52,000 residents.

Trump told NewsNation he believes Haiti would accept the migrants back under his leadership.

“It has nothing to do with Haiti or anything else. You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country,” he said.

“Springfield is such a beautiful place. Have you seen what’s happened to it? It’s been overrun. You can’t do that to people. I’d revoke (the protected status), and I’d bring (the migrants) back to their country.”

Voter Guide 2024: Breaking down the candidates, policies and issues

The comments come after Trump’s running mate, Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, revisited false claims he made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pets, saying now he is “concerned for the American citizens” in the city.

“In Springfield, and communities across this country, you have schools that are overwhelmed, housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said while debating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, his Democratic opponent, in the election’s only vice presidential debate.

Trump calls Jack Smith filing ‘pure election interference’
Enabling and protecting border law enforcement

The former president told NewsNation he would enable local law enforcement to execute what he calls the largest deportation in American history and potentially deploy military forces to combat drug cartels.

Trump said border agents “know everything about [migrants] … they know the good ones, the bad ones, and they’re going to get them out.”

Addressing cartel violence along the southern border, Trump proposed a “military operation” to counter increasingly sophisticated tactics by Mexican drug organizations, which reportedly now employ drone jammers and have been found with rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices near the border.

“They’re very rich, and they’re very evil,” Trump said of the cartels. “We’re going to have to get in some military action. … They’re killing 300,000 people a year.”

Two Mexican drug cartels have helped flood the United States with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 80 times stronger than morphine that’s killing over 200 Americans daily, authorities say.

Exclusive: Mexican cartels using devices to disrupt U.S. drones

The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have established a sophisticated supply chain, sourcing precursor chemicals from China and manufacturing fentanyl in clandestine Mexican labs before smuggling it across the U.S. border, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports.

Mexican drug cartels operating along the U.S.-Mexico border are using electronic devices to disrupt drones being used by U.S. border officials to track immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally, NewsNation learned.

In September 2023, Border Patrol agents in Texas discovered a backpack with what appeared to be cannonball-sized IEDs. It wasn’t the first time the U.S. government had found potential explosive devices at the border.

In May 2023, NewsNation reported border officials recovered a rudimentary device created using an M&M container that was bound with electrical tape.

The former president also praised GOP Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border initiatives but maintained that border security ultimately requires federal action, stating, “All you have to do if you’re the president is say to the Border Patrol and to the states, ‘Nobody come in, it’s closed.'”

Trump predicted he would win New Mexico because of the southern border. Trump lost the state in 2020 by about 11 points and in 2016 by about 8 points.

Houston teens carjack driver to smuggle migrants
How many people are crossing the border?

U.S. Border Patrol arrests along the Southwest border rose slightly from July to August but remained among the Biden administration’s lowest monthly numbers.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, agents had 58,038 encounters between ports of entry in August, up from 56,399 in July.

The actual number of encounters at America’s borders is expected to reach about 10 million by the end of the fiscal year, including repeat crossings and deportations.

These encounters include repeat crossings and deportations, which means the actual number of unique individuals entering the country is much lower.

Walz, Vance spar on immigration
‘The largest deportation effort in American history’

One of Trump’s key promises if reelected is to mount the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history. He made similar promises when he first ran for office, but during his administration, deportations never topped 350,000.

For comparison, then-President Barack Obama carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the highest annual total since records were kept.

This time, Trump has given some more specifics on his promises. He said he’ll use the National Guard to round up migrants. And he said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with.

He’s also vowed to kick out hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have entered the country under two key Biden administration programs if he’s reelected.

Any mass deportation plans would certainly be challenged in court and be enormously expensive to carry out. And it would depend on countries’ willingness to take back their citizens.

Trump also said he would bring back policies he had put in place during his first term, like the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42. Remain in Mexico made migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum cases were heard, while Title 42 curbed immigration on public health grounds.

He has said he’ll revive and expand a travel ban from his term that originally targeted citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs.”

Trump also seeks to end birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are both in the country illegally.

DHS increases time for new asylum regulations

Why is the border a top voter issue?

Making the border safer and other immigration-related issues remain among the biggest concerns for voters heading into the 2024 election. Trump has used the border as a backdrop for a series of campaign stops in recent months.

Trump has repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden and Harris, claiming that the president and his “border czar” are to blame for the steady amounts of migrants and for the trouble that Trump has alleged has come specifically from the illegal border crossings.

The president has countered with the effectiveness of his executive order, which led to a drop in the number of border encounters after a record 250,000 encounters were reported in December 2023 alone.

There has been a significant drop in encounters between federal agents assigned to the U.S.-Mexico border and immigrants who have entered the country illegally.
Political gridlock on border policy

In June 2024, Biden released a series of executive actions capping migrant crossing until border encounters remain consistently low — under 2,500 per day for an entire week — to give Border Patrol more time to handle each migrant’s situation.

The president also clarified his use of executive powers, saying he was doing what Congress would not about a bipartisan immigration deal that failed in the Senate after Trump urged GOP lawmakers to vote against it.

NewsNation’s Jeff Arnold and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. 

Trump says he would revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants in Springfield if elected

Rashard Rose and Kate Sullivan, CNN
Wed, October 2, 2024 



Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would revoke Temporary Protected Status for the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and deport them if he is reelected in November.

“You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country. They are, in my opinion, it’s not legal,” Trump said in an interview with NewsNation.

Trump, asked if he would revoke the migrants’ Temporary Protected Status, said,
“Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.”

The former president and his allies have continued to spread misinformation about Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield.

Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that gives permission to enter to vetted participants with US sponsors. And many have “Temporary Protected Status,” as CNN has previously reported, which shields them from deportation and allows them to live and work in the country for a limited period of time.

Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with Temporary Protected Status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

Trump, pressed in the Wednesday interview on what would happen if Haiti refused to receive them, said: “They will,” without providing additional details.

“Well, they’re going to receive them, they’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive them,” Trump said.

During the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security was aggressive in ending a number of temporary protected status designations that had been on the books, in some cases, for decades.

Trump in recent weeks has spread debunked conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, including at last month’s presidential debate, as part of his efforts to stoke fears about immigrants and push his hardline immigration policy proposals, including mass deportations.

From the September 10 debate through September 20, Springfield received more than 35 threats of violence, including bomb threats, according to Springfield Mayor Rob Rue. The threats prompted evacuations of elementary schools and supermarkets, lockdowns of hospitals and a transition to remote learning at several local colleges.

Rue, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and other local officials have decried the rumors as false and destructive to the community. A staffer for Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate who helped to propel the misinformation, was told early last month by Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck that “there was no verifiable evidence or reports to show” that the rumors are true, CNN reported.

The city of Springfield notes on its website that approximately 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants live in Clark County — which has a population of roughly 136,000 — and that Haitian immigrants are there legally.

Haitian workers play a significant role in Springfield’s economy, filling much-needed jobs, the city has said. DeWine has acknowledged the city was having some issues adjusting to the influx of mostly Haitian immigrants, but he said in an interview last month they were working to deal with the issues and called the Haitian immigrants “positive influences” on the community.

CNN’s Jack Forrest, Daniel Dale, Danya Gainor, Catherine E. Shoichet, Elizabeth Wolfe, Melissa Alonso, Jeff Winter and Chelsea Bailey contributed to this report.


Dominican Republic will deport up to 10,000 Haitians a week, citing an 'excess' of immigrants

Associated Press
Wed, October 2, 2024


Undocumented Haitians detained by immigration officials stand inside a police vehicle, in Dajabon, Dominican Republic, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Dominican Republic announced Wednesday that it would start massive deportations of Haitians living illegally in the country, expelling up to 10,000 of them a week.

Government spokesman Homero Figueroa told reporters that the government took the decision after noticing an “excess” of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Figueroa said officials have seen an increase in Haitian migrants as a U.N.-backed mission in Haiti to fight gang violence flounders. He said authorities also agreed to strengthen border surveillance and control, but he did not provide details.

Last year, the Dominican Republic deported more than 174,000 people it says are Haitians, and in the first half of the year, it has expelled at least 67,000 more.

Activists have long criticized the administration of President Luis Abinader for what they say are ongoing human rights violations of Haitians and those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. Abinader has denied any mistreatment.

Wednesday's announcement comes a week after Abinader announced at the U.N. General Assembly that he would take “drastic measures” if the mission in Haiti fails. It is led by nearly 400 police officers from Kenya, backed by nearly two dozen police and soldiers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize. The U.S. has warned that the mission lacks personnel and funding as it pushes for a U.N. peacekeeping mission instead.

Gangs in Haiti control 80% of the Port-au-Prince capital, and the violence has left nearly 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years, while thousands of others have fled the country.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

CHRISTINA LARSON, HELEN WIEFFERING and MANUEL VALDES
Wed, October 2, 2024

PHOTO ESSAY

LONG BEACH, Wash. (AP) — Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns.

And Crocs — so many mismatched Crocs.

If you find a single Croc shoe, you might think somebody lost it out on the beach, he said. “But, if you find two, three, four and they’re different — you know, one’s a big one, one’s a little one — that’s a clue.”

These items aren’t like the used fishing gear and beer cans that Lewis also finds tossed overboard by fishers or partygoers. They’re the detritus of commercial shipping containers lost in the open ocean.

Most of the world’s raw materials and everyday goods that are moved over long distances — from T-shirts to televisions, cellphones to hospital beds — are packed in large metal boxes the size of tractor-trailers and stacked on ships. A trade group says some 250 million containers cross the oceans every year — but not everything arrives as planned.

More than 20,000 shipping containers have tumbled overboard in the last decade and a half. Their varied contents have washed onto shorelines, poisoned fisheries and animal habitats, and added to swirling ocean trash vortexes. Most containers eventually sink to the sea floor and are never retrieved.

Cargo ships can lose anywhere from a single container to hundreds at a time in rough seas. Experts disagree on how many are lost each year. The World Shipping Council, an industry group, reports that, on average, about 1,500 were lost annually over the 16 years they’ve tracked — though fewer in recent years. Others say the real number is much higher, as the shipping council data doesn’t include the entire industry and there are no penalties for failing to report losses publicly.

Much of the debris that washed up on Lewis’ beach matched items lost off the giant cargo ship ONE Apus in November 2020. When the ship hit heavy swells on a voyage from China to California, nearly 2,000 containers slid into the Pacific.

Court documents and industry reports show the vessel was carrying more than $100,000 worth of bicycle helmets and thousands of cartons of Crocs, as well as electronics and other more hazardous goods: batteries, ethanol and 54 containers of fireworks.

Researchers mapped the flow of debris to several Pacific coastlines thousands of miles apart, including Lewis’ beach and the remote Midway Atoll, a national wildlife refuge for millions of seabirds near the Hawaiian Islands that also received a flood of mismatched Crocs.

Scientists and environmental advocates say more should be done to track losses and prevent container spills.

“Just because it may seem 'out of sight, out of mind,’ doesn’t mean there aren’t vast environmental consequences,” said marine biologist Andrew DeVogelaere of California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, who has spent more than 15 years studying the environmental impact of a single container that was found in sanctuary waters.

“We are leaving time capsules on the bottom of the sea of everything we buy and sell — sitting down there for maybe hundreds of years,” he said.

Nitric acid, plastic pellets and baby seals

This year’s summer winds washed thousands of plastic pellets ashore near Colombo, Sri Lanka, three years after a massive fire aboard the X-Press Pearl burned for days and sank the vessel a few miles offshore.

The disaster dumped more than 1,400 damaged shipping containers into the sea — releasing billions of plastic manufacturing pellets known as nurdles as well as thousands of tons of nitric acid, lead, methanol and sodium hydroxide, all toxic to marine life.

Hemantha Withanage remembers how the beach near his home smelled of burnt chemicals. Volunteers soon collected thousands of dead fish, gills stuffed with chemical-laced plastic, and nearly 400 dead endangered sea turtles, more than 40 dolphins and six whales, their mouths jammed with plastic. “It was like a war zone,” he said.

Cleanup crews wearing full-body hazmat suits strode into the tide with hand sieves to try to collect the lentil-size plastic pellets.

The waterfront was closed to commercial fishing for three months, and the 12,000 families that depend on fishing for their income have only gotten a fraction of the $72 million that Withanage, founder of Sri Lanka’s nonprofit Centre for Environmental Justice, believes they are owed.

“Just last week, there was a huge wind, and all the beaches were full of plastic again,” he said in mid-June.

Lost container contents don’t have to be toxic to wreak havoc.

In February, the cargo ship President Eisenhower lost 24 containers off the central California coast. Some held bales of soon-waterlogged cotton and burst open. Debris washed ashore near Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, a federally protected area.

The ship’s captain informed the U.S. Coast Guard, which worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and California State Parks to remove the debris. Each bale was too heavy to drag away — instead they had to be cut up, each filling two dump trucks.

“A rancid soggy mess,” said Eric Hjelstrom, a chief ranger for California State Parks. “If tidal pools get filled with cotton, that can block out sunlight and harm a lot of organisms.”

One bale landed in an elephant seal nursery, surrounded by baby seals. “You have to be careful how to approach it – you don’t want to injure the seals,” Hjelstrom said. A marine mammal specialist gently escorted 10 pups away before the bale was removed.

Although the operators of the President Eisenhower helped pay for cleanup, neither California nor federal authorities have ordered the company to pay any penalties.

As for the metal shipping containers, only one was spotted on a U.S. Coast Guard overflight, and it had vanished from sight by the time a tugboat was sent to retrieve it, said Coast Guard Lt. Chris Payne in San Francisco.

When shipping containers are lost overboard, “Most of them sink. And a lot of times, they’re just in really deep water,” said Jason Rolfe of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program.

Most sunken containers — some still sealed, some damaged and open — are never found or recovered.

The Coast Guard has limited powers to compel shipowners to retrieve containers unless they threaten a marine sanctuary or contain oil or designated hazardous materials. “If it’s outside our jurisdiction,” said Payne, “there’s nothing that we can do as the federal government to basically require a company to retrieve a container.”

The long-term impact of adding on average more than a thousand containers each year to the world’s oceans — by the most conservative estimates — remains unknown.

Scientists at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California are studying the cascade of changes wrought by a single container found by chance on the seabed.

Their research team was operating a remote-control vehicle at 4,200 feet (1,280 meters) below the surface to study deep-sea corals in 2004 when they were surprised to encounter a metal box. “It’s just serendipity that we found it,” said marine ecologist Jim Barry. Despite multiple spills in nearby shipping lanes, “It’s the only container that we know exactly where it landed.”

“The first thing that happens is they land and crush everything underneath them,” said DeVogelaere, who studied the sunken container. By changing the flow of water and sediment, the container completely changes the micro-ecosystem around it — impacting seafloor species that scientists are still discovering.

“The animals in the deep have felt our presence before we even knew anything about them,” he said.

Labels showed the container came from the Med Taipei, which had lost two dozen boxes in rough seas on a journey between San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2006, the ship owners and operators reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay $3.25 million for estimated damages to the marine environment.

Steering floating skyscrapers at sea

More than 80% of international trade by volume arrives by sea. All this cargo travels on increasingly vast ships.

“On the modern big ships, it’s like a high-rise building,” said Jos Koning, a senior project manager at MARIN, a Netherlands-based maritime research organization that studies shipping risks.

Today’s largest cargo vessels are longer than three football fields, with cranes required to lift containers and stack them in towering columns. When the industry took off some 50 years ago, ships could hold only about a tenth of the freight that today’s behemoths carry. According to the insurer Allianz, container ship capacities have doubled in just the last two decades.

Greater size brings heightened risks. The largest ships are more difficult to maneuver and more prone to rolling in high waves. And there’s a greater chance that any single box could be damaged and crushed — a destabilizing accident that can send an entire stack of containers cascading into the sea.

In February, the marine insurer Gard published a study based on six years of their claims that showed 9% of ultra-large ships had experienced container losses, compared to just 1% of smaller vessels.

Accidents are often linked to cargo that has been inaccurately labeled, weighed or stored. Investigators determined that the X-Press Pearl’s devastating spill near Sri Lanka, for instance, was the result of a fire that likely started from a poorly stacked container that was leaking nitric acid.

But cargo ship operators don’t have the capacity to verify all container weights and contents, and instead must rely on information that shippers provide.

“It’s just completely impractical to think that you can open every container,” said Ian Lennard, president of the National Cargo Bureau, a nonprofit that works with the U.S. Coast Guard to inspect seagoing cargo.

In a pilot study, the group found that widespread mislabeling and improper stowage meant that nearly 70% of shipping containers arriving in the U.S. with dangerous goods failed the bureau’s safety inspection.

“Despite all these problems, most of the time it arrives safely,” Lennard said.

But when there is a crisis — a ship hits rough weather, or a container carrying a chemical ignites in summer heat — accidents can have catastrophic impacts.

High seas, high losses, but no definitive counts

How often do shipping container spills happen? There’s no clear answer.

Existing tracking efforts are fragmented and incomplete. Although a few shipwrecks and disasters grab headlines, like the March crash of a cargo ship into a Baltimore bridge, much less is known about how often containers are lost piecemeal or away from major ports.

To date, the most widely cited figures on lost shipping containers come from the World Shipping Council. The group’s membership, which carries about 90% of global container traffic, self-reports their losses in a survey each year.

Over 16 years of collected data through 2023, the group said an average of 1,480 containers were lost annually. Their recent figures show 650 containers were lost in 2022 and only about 200 last year.

Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, said self-reported surveys miss the full picture.

For example, not included in the 2023 tally were 1,300 containers from the cargo ship Angel, which sank near Taiwan’s Kaohsiung port. That’s because the ship’s operators aren’t members of the World Shipping Council.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a maritime intelligence company that’s tracked thousands of marine accidents on container ships over the past decade, told AP that underreporting is rampant, saying ship operators and owners want to avoid insurance rate hikes and protect their reputations.

Marine insurers, which are typically on the hook to pay for mishaps, likely have access to more complete data on losses – but no laws require that data to be collected and shared publicly.

World Shipping Council president and CEO Joe Kramek said the industry is researching ways to reduce errors in loading and stacking containers, as well as in navigating ships through turbulent waters.

“We don’t like when it (a container loss) happens,” said Kramek. “But the maritime environment is one of the most challenging environments to operate in.”

Earlier this year, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization adopted amendments to two global ocean treaties aimed at increasing transparency around lost shipping containers. Those changes, expected to take effect in 2026, will require ships to report losses to nearby coastal countries and to authorities where the vessel is registered.

But with no enforceable penalties, it remains to be seen how extensively operators will comply.

Alfredo Parroquín-Ohlson, head of cargo in the IMO’s maritime safety division, said, “We just encourage them and tell them how important it is, but we cannot be a police.”

What floats above and what lies beneath

It’s not just environmentalists who worry. Some lost containers float for days before sinking — endangering boats of all sizes, from commercial vessels to recreational sailboats.

The sporting body World Sailing has reported at least eight instances in which crews had to abandon boats because of collisions with what were believed to be containers. In 2016, sailor Thomas Ruyant was 42 days into a race around the world when his sailboat’s hull split from a sudden crash with what appeared to be a floating container.

“It gives me the shivers just thinking about it,” he said in a video dispatch from his damaged boat as he steered toward shore.

In Sri Lanka, the consequences of the X-Press Pearl accident linger, three years after the ship went down.

Fishermen have seen stocks of key species shrink, and populations of long-lived, slow-reproducing animals such as sea turtles may take several generations to recover.

For his part, Lewis, the volunteer beach cleaner in Washington state, said he wonders about all the debris he doesn’t see wash up on his shores.

“What’s going to happen when it gets down deep and, you know, it just ruptures?” he said. “We know we’ve got a problem on the surface, but I think the bigger problem is what’s on the seafloor.”

 Long Beach Peninsula in Pacific County, Wash., Monday, June 17, 2024

AP Photos/Lindsey Wasson

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Larson and Wieffering reported from Washington, D.C. Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.