Watchdog: Trump officials ignored warnings about family separations

The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services

said senior Trump administration officials failed to prepare for migrant

 family separations, making the reunification process more complicated. 

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

March 5 (UPI) -- Senior Health and Human Services Department officials didn't act on staff's warnings of an increase in family separations at the border, leaving the department unable to provide adequate care for separated migrant children, a watchdog report released Thursday said.

The HHS inspector general's office conducted the study in response to the Trump administration's so-called zero-tolerance policy implemented in spring 2018 in which all adults accused of illegally crossing the southern border were prosecuted. Because of that, officials separated children from their detained parents and housed them at facilities across the United States.

Court battles later required the federal government to reunify migrant children with their parents. The inspector general's office said it investigated how the government responded to the zero-tolerance policy and the order to reunite families.

It found that a lack of communication across interagency channels meant there was a lack of planning for how to handle a larger number of children separated from their parents.

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This "left the department unable to provide prompt and appropriate care for separated children when the zero-tolerance policy was implemented," the report said.

"Further, because no procedures or systems had been established to track separated families across HHS and [the Department of Homeland Security] for later reunification, HHS struggled to identify separated children."

One Office of Refugee Resettlement staff member told inspector general investigators they noticed an increase in children being separated from their parents a full year before zero-tolerance became the Trump administration's official policy.

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"I said ORR was seeing much higher levels of separation, and that those separations were impacting particularly babies and young children," the staffer said. "I said this so many times that I was called a broken record.

Another ORR staffer told the inspector general: "I told them it was going to traumatize children to separate them unnecessarily. I said that to anyone I could."

HHS officials declined to act on the warnings, though, the inspector general report said.

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During the reunification process, the inspector general report said it found "significant operational challenges," which were complicated by poor guidance from the HHS. Manual processes made the reunification vulnerable to error, the report said.

The report recommended that the HHS take steps to prioritize children's interests and well-being. The agency also recommended the department enter into formal agreements with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to ensure better communication going forward.

The inspector general based its findings on case reviews, more than 5,000 documents, and interviews with staff, officials and provider facilities.

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Exclusive: Guatemala seeks to limit migrants returned under U.S. asylum agreement


GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala’s new government is trying to limit the number of foreign migrants the United States sends its way under an agreement that makes the Central American nation a buffer zone to reduce U.S. asylum claims.


The United States has sent hundreds of Honduran and El Salvadoran asylum seekers to Guatemala under the agreement implemented in November and is now seeking to expand the program.

However, Guatemala’s priority in ongoing talks with U.S. officials is to make sure the number sent back daily does not exceed its “very limited” capacity to process new arrivals, deputy foreign minister Eduardo Hernandez told Reuters.

“We have only one runway” and one migrant reception center, Hernandez said in an interview last week. The agreement “cannot exceed our installed capacity.”


As it stands, the deal is one of a series of overlapping measures the Trump administration sees as key to bringing down irregular migration into the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has made his performance on controlling immigration a plank of his 2020 re-election campaign.

Known as an Asylum Cooperative Agreement and signed by the previous Guatemalan government, the deal is similar to the safe third country agreement under which asylum seekers who pass through Canada must apply for refuge there rather than in the United States.

Critics of the arrangement, and similar U.S. deals with Honduras and El Salvador, say those countries do not offer adequate conditions for protecting at-risk migrants and that their asylum systems are too rudimentary to cope.

Under President Alejandro Giammattei, who took office in January, the Guatemalan government has promised to give more information about the deal, which was negotiated behind closed doors and was only partially made public.

Hernandez said the government was working with U.S. counterparts to produce clear implementation rules governing issues such as how many families with children Guatemala accepts, whether to extend the deal to more nationalities, and how many foreign asylum seekers it would take per day.

“If it is possible, we want to add an annex, something succinct, simple, direct, clear and that leaves no space for interpretation,” he told Reuters last week.

Under the initial agreement, the United States agreed to only include individual adults, but Hernandez said it was later extended to include families with children.

Casa de Migrante, a non-governmental shelter that receives the returned foreign migrants, say pregnant women and young children showing signs of chronic stress were among the people U.S. officials had placed in the program.

Data released by the Guatemalan Immigration Institute, a government agency, show that through March 3 a total of 789 people have been returned, including 311 children.

The Trump administration on Thursday announced it set aside 10,000 H2-B temporary non-agricultural work visas for Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Hondurans, as part of a broader expansion of such visas.

The nationality-specific set-aside is unusual for such programs, and appeared to be in recognition of the asylum deals.

The deal with Honduras could be implemented imminently, acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said on Thursday. Morgan said the United States continued to negotiate to increase the number of asylum seekers taken by Guatemala.

Guatemala court overturns government's civil society restrictions

MARCH 6, 2020 

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala’s government on Friday said it will respect a ruling by the nation’s Constitutional Court that overturns a law allowing the government to pry into the affairs of and even dissolve non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Congress passed the law on Feb. 12 with the support of the ruling party and other conservative lawmakers who argue that foreign-backed NGOs violate national sovereignty.

The law had been questioned by the United States and human rights groups. The U.S. State Department had described the bill as putting “onerous” requirements on NGOs in Guatemala, saying such groups play key roles in functioning democracies.

Several civil rights organizations sued to overturn the law, saying it violated human rights. The court sided with the organizations.

The law forced NGOs to register, report their donations and allow their accounts to be inspected. Under certain circumstances, it would also allow NGOs to be dissolved, controlled and monitored.

“We will respect the ruling and call on Guatemalans to unite, to promote a culture of transparency, prosperity and development,” Guatemala’s government said.

Although the court’s ruling is provisional if Congress and the government want to re-impose the rules, the legislative process would need to start from scratch, former congressional legislative director Ana Isabel Antillon told Reuters.

Governments around the world, including Turkey and India, in recent years have made regulations more burdensome for civil society groups. In 2019, rights group Amnesty International released a report warning of a “global assault” on NGOs.

In Guatemala, civil society has often been at odds with governments, the army and business groups by seeking justice for victims of a 36-year-long civil war, as well as supporting anti-corruption efforts and peasant farmer and land-rights activists.

Migrants are boon for poor Roma villagers on Turkey-Greece border

BOOMTOWN ON THE BORDERLANDS

KARAAGAC, Turkey (Reuters) - For members of the Roma minority in the Turkish village of Karaagac on the border with Greece, the arrival of thousands of migrants desperately seeking to cross into the European Union could not have been better news.

Sevgi Katirci rides a horse cart in the town of Karaagac near the Turkish-Greek border in Edirne, Turkey, March 6, 2020. REUTERS/Joseph Nasr

Poor and living mainly from cultivating their gardens and collecting cardboard and plastics for recycling, Roma families are now looking to cash in catering to the needs of 4,000 migrants now in a makeshift tent camp at the frontier.

Farmers set up stands selling everything from tomatoes and cucumbers to quince and pomegranate. Others sold mineral water, bread, yoghurt and tinned teapots.

A few turned their horse-drawn carts into taxis to ferry exhausted migrants and their shopping to the border.


Among all the Roma scrambling to make more money on the edge of the village overlooking fields and a dirt road running to the Pazarkule border crossing, teenager Sevgi Katirci stood out.

She was the only woman riding a horse cart and her clients were solely men. Wearing a green jacket and black jeans, she would gracefully whip her horse and race to the border as her passengers held tight.

“The migrants are here today, but they could be gone tomorrow,” said her father Mehmet, operating his own cart and watching his hard-working daughter with pride. “So we have to make the best of it.”

Like many children of Roma in Turkey, Sevgi doesn’t go to school. Her work helps her family earn about 150 Turkish liras ($25) a day, charging 10-15 liras per passenger.


The Roma and their foreign clients have turned the dirt road to the border into a multicultural market where migrants compare notes on their experiences and discuss what to do next.

Hassan Tunai, who was selling water bottles, fruit juice and yoghurt, said earning money from the migrants left him with a bad feeling.

“I wish it would not be like this,” he said, wearing sunglasses and hoisting the Turkish flag on his stand. “When we see them (the migrants), the money that we earned loses its meaning. It does not make us happy.”

5 March 2020

Migrants prepare for the coming night in a forest in the buffer zone at the Turkey-Greece border a crossing point

AFP/Getty

In Canada, doctors broadened coronavirus testing, and made an unlikely save
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada’s official guidance on the novel coronavirus has been to test patients who recently traveled to affected areas, but some doctors and hospitals have expanded testing on their own, finding the first in a series of patients linked to Iran before the scale of the Iranian outbreak was known.


FILE PHOTO: Staff and visitors walk past a sign indicating to

 wash hands on the elevator doors at the Jewish General Hospital

 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada March 2, 2020. 

REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo

The Canadian approach, which let front-line staff exercise judgment in looking for the virus, diverged from the United States, which said only on Tuesday that any American could be tested.

One unlikely catch was British Columbia’s sixth patient, a woman in her 30s whose test results were announced on Feb. 20. She had recently traveled from Iran, but as the country had only disclosed its first cases on Feb. 19, she would not have been flagged under federal guidelines in use at the time.

But the woman had been on multiple international flights, so a clinician in Vancouver tested anyway, said the province’s health officer Bonnie Henry at a recent press conference.

“We have always said that if a clinician has a concern about somebody and they have symptoms that could be COVID-19, that we would allow that testing,” she said.

The day after the case was found, Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief medical officer, told reporters “imported cases linked to Iran could be an indicator that there is more widespread transmission than we know about.”

By March 3, BC had found five more cases linked to Iran, and more were identified in Ontario.

Every case that is caught can prevent a chain of new infections. Even so, on Thursday BC said it had what could be Canada’s first case of community spread. Canada has confirmed 45 cases by Friday.

Canada’s federal government testing guidance is currently focused on travel to a list of locations that has lagged the spread of the virus. On Friday, Washington state was not listed, even as it battled an outbreak that has killed 12 people.

But provinces are not bound by the guideline. BC, which shares a border with Washington, is now telling healthcare providers that anyone who would usually be tested for influenza or respiratory syncytial virus, another common illness, should also be tested for the novel coronavirus.

Ontario has stuck with the federal government’s list of affected areas, but says clinicians can test other patients they feel are at risk.

Surveillance testing, a separate process focused on patients who no one has identified as at risk, is also ramping up. BC has added the virus to its flu surveillance program, which tests a sample of patients seen by a selected group of clinicians to better understand how the flu spreads. Ontario is piloting a similar program.

Kevin Katz, medical director of Toronto’s Shared Hospital Laboratory, who is participating in the Ontario pilot, said on Thursday his site had sent 20 to 30 samples a day for just under a week and so far all were negative, uncovering no evidence of widespread community transmission.

Lab capacity has made testing possible. Canada has three government labs that can confirm infection, and Ontario has said its lab alone could handle up to 1,000 samples a day. Washington state said on Wednesday its state lab can only test about 100 patients a day.

In Ontario, several major hospitals said they are also running diagnostic tests more broadly than the province requires.

“The people who are having to respond to this on the front lines are always going to have to be more nimble,” said Susy Hota, director of infection control at the University Health Network. “We’re going to see things shifting a little bit quicker.”

Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Nick Zieminski

Climate change or coronavirus? 'Pick your evil', protesters say

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Protesters at a rally led by climate activist Greta Thunberg on Friday denounced governments for taking urgent action against the coronavirus outbreak but failing to treat global warming as an emergency.

VIDEO https://www.reuters.com/video/?videoId=OVC3X6TPB

Several thousand people braved the rain in Brussels with the 17-year-old Swede, marching through the city that is home to the European Union’s main institutions.

“It is shameful that for so long the climate and environmental emergency has been ignored. We are still in a crisis that has never once been treated like a crisis,” Thunberg told the demonstrators in a speech.


Some supporters said they had put aside concerns about being infected with the coronavirus in a crowd to join the march.

“It’s pick your evil. Do you want to die from global warming or from coronavirus?” said Gorkem, 40, wearing a face mask.

“One of them gets much more attention than the other, so we are trying to raise a bit more awareness about what is already affecting all our lives.”

Flo, a filmmaker from the Belgian city of Ghent who attended with her baby daughter, said the rapid spread of the coronavirus had demonstrated that governments can respond to crises.

“You see people all crazy with coronavirus and you see that governments can do things to make everybody aware about a situation, to make things happen ... But they do so little about climate change,” she said.
Organisers said some 4,000 people attended the event, fewer than expected, probably because of the weather and concerns about the spread of the virus in large crowds.

Andaga, 25, a marine biology student from Ghent, said some of her friends stayed away because of worries about the virus.

“I thought, okay, maybe I should carry hand sanitizer, but it was sold out everywhere ... Yes, it was a concern of mine but not enough to stop me from coming out and marching,” she said.

While the protest went ahead, some events in the European Union’s hub have been canceled as a precaution.

The European Parliament has banned external visitors for the next three weeks, although it waived its own rule on Thursday to allow Thunberg to give a speech.

Other climate events have fallen victim to the virus. The United Nations on Friday postponed a week of climate change events in Kampala, Uganda, which had been scheduled for next month

Exclusive: U.S. discussing non-renewal of Chevron's Venezuela waiver, moves to cut oil trade - sources

(Reuters) - The U.S. government is preparing to impose new measures as soon as next week to stifle Venezuela’s oil exports, including a move not to renew Chevron Corp’s (CVX.N) license to do business with state-run company PDVSA, sources familiar with the matter said.



The United States imposed harsh sanctions on Venezuela in early 2019, in an effort to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whose 2018 re-election was considered a sham by most Western countries.

Venezuela’s oil exports have dropped by one-third since then, but more than a year on, Maduro remains in power, backed by Venezuela’s military as well as Russia, China and Cuba.

Frustrated by the socialist leader’s grip on power, the Trump administration has increased pressure on Venezuela’s oil industry in recent weeks.

The U.S. Treasury Department last month blacklisted Geneva-based Rosneft Trading, a unit of Russia’s oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM), for conducting business with PDVSA and warned global energy firms that more such measures were expected.

Now, U.S. officials are targeting oil-for-fuel swaps and loan repayments through oil deliveries, threatening to close off the last areas left open by the government for firms still dealing with PDVSA.

According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Washington has already told some of PDVSA’s customers to stop oil-for-fuel swaps if they want to fully comply with new sanctions. Companies taking Venezuelan oil as repayment for debt could also have to cease those transactions.

A 90-day period set by Washington to wind down foreign purchases of Venezuelan oil ends on May 20.


“The United States is asking us to follow a policy of zero Venezuelan crude going out, zero fuel going in. So swaps so far allowed would have to end by the wind-down period deadline,” an executive from one PDVSA customer said.

One of the sources said the measures were likely to come late next week but another cautioned a final announcement could still be several weeks away.

Chevron is the largest U.S. company still in the country, operating with a waiver that allows it to continue producing oil with PDVSA in several joint ventures, and also trade cargoes of Venezuelan crude in international markets. Its license expires in April.

Chevron spokesman Ray Fohr said the company is “hopeful” its license can be renewed.

PDVSA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, declined to comment. The U.S. Treasury did not comment beyond repeating that the license expires on April 22.

“Chevron is a positive presence in Venezuela,” Fohr said. The company’s share of production from its joint ventures with PDVSA averaged some 35,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2019, representing about 6% of the country’s total production.

“If Chevron is forced to leave Venezuela, non-U.S. companies will fill the void and oil production will continue,” he said.

Senior State Department officials had argued against cancelling Chevron’s license for now, but the White House has backed the idea of taking action, one of the sources told Reuters.


Buyers in China, India and Europe continued importing after sanctions last year, so Venezuela’s oil exports did not fall as much as some U.S. officials expected. Washington recently said it will go after customers in Asia, as well as intermediary firms that have helped hide the origin of the crude.

In recent days, major Indian refiners Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) and Nayara Energy began planning a reduction in purchases of Venezuelan oil starting next month.

The United States in January 2019 recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the OPEC nation’s legitimate interim president. Maduro has dismissed Guaido as a puppet of the United States.

ITALY CORONAVIRUS FASHION STATEMENT

REUTERS

MARCH 6, 2020 DEMONSTRATIONS STREET BATTLES CHILE 
https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/protests-flare-up-on-streets-of-chile-idUSRTS351I6

PHOTO ESSAY EXCERPTS

ANARCHIST GAMES

U.S. lawmakers fault FAA, Boeing for deadly 737 Max crashes

WASHINGTON/SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. House investigative report into two fatal Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes on a Boeing 737 MAX faulted the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) approval of the plane and Boeing’s design failures, saying the flights were “doomed.”

Boeing Co’s (BA.N) 737 MAX has been grounded worldwide for nearly a year following the second of two crashes, one in Indonesia in October 2018 and one in Ethiopia last March, that together killed 346 people.

The preliminary investigative findings from the U.S. House Transportation Committee, released on Friday, called the FAA’s certification review of the 737 MAX “grossly insufficient” and said the agency had failed in its duty to identify key safety problems.

“The combination of these problems doomed the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights,” the panel said in the 13-page report.

It also said Boeing’s 737 MAX design “was marred by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers, and efforts to obfuscate information about the operation of the aircraft.

The report, which comes days ahead of the anniversary of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, adds that the findings should prompt legislative changes to address how U.S. regulators approve new aircraft for service.

The committee has been probing the crash for almost a year and received hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewed key Boeing and FAA employees in its investigation.

Boeing said it has cooperated extensively with the committee’s investigation and said it would review the report.

The FAA said in a statement it welcomed the report’s observations and said lessons learned from the two fatal crashes “will be a springboard to an even greater level of safety.”

“While the FAA’s certification processes are well-established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs, we are a learning agency and welcome the scrutiny,” the FAA said.

Ethiopia plans to release an interim report into the March 10 crash before the first anniversary, an official said last month.

A final report into the Lion Air crash released last October by Indonesia faulted Boeing’s design of cockpit software on the 737 MAX but also cited errors by the airline’s workers and crew.

RED FLAGS

The committee also concluded the FAA and Boeing missed “multiple red flags and clear data points” in recommending that the 737 MAX should continue to fly after the first crash.

Those decisions “gambled with the public’s safety,” it said.

Boeing is facing around 100 lawsuits from families of victims of the Ethiopian crash who have questioned why the U.S.-based planemaker and authorities did not ground the MAX after the Lion Air crash.

The U.S. House panel also faulted Boeing for what it described as a “culture of concealment” for failing to disclose information to airline pilots about the 737 MAX’s MCAS stall-prevention system linked to both crashes, and that a key angle-of-attack cockpit alert was “inoperable on the majority of the 737 MAX fleet.”

Boeing did not tell U.S. regulators for more than a year that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data optional on the 737 MAX, instead of standard as on earlier 737s, but has said the missing display represented no safety risk. Boeing has said it will make the feature standard before the MAX returns to service.

Erroneous data from a sensor responsible for measuring the angle at which the wing slices through the air - known as the Angle of Attack - is suspected of triggering a flawed anti-stall system that pushed the plane downward in two recent crashes.

Federal prosecutors aided by the FBI are reviewing the plane’s certification as are a grand jury and the Transportation Department inspector general’s office. Several independent reviews have also faulted Boeing’s design and called for improvements in how the FAA certifies new airplanes.

Representative Rick Larsen, who chairs an aviation subcommittee, said Friday’s report and other independent reviews make “it abundantly clear Congress must change the method by which the FAA certifies aircraft.”

Boeing halted production of the MAX in January and a key certification test flight is not expected before April, Reuters has reported, as Boeing addresses several software issues and whether it must move wiring bundles on the plane. Boeing says it hopes to win approval for the plane to return to service by mid-year.

Separately, the FAA on Friday proposed fining Boeing $19.7 million for allegedly installing equipment on hundreds of 737 aircraft containing sensors in heads-up displays that regulators had not approved for use.

U.S. FAA proposes fining Boeing $19.7 million over 737 airplane sensors
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday proposed fining Boeing Co $19.7 million for allegedly installing equipment on hundreds of 737 aircraft containing sensors in heads-up displays that regulators had not approved for use.

The FAA alleges that between June 2015 and April 2019, Boeing installed Rockwell Collins Head-up Guidance Systems on 791 jetliners, including 618 Boeing 737 NGs and 173 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

The FAA said these aircraft were equipped with sensors that had not been tested or approved as compatible with those guidance systems. Boeing, which did not immediately comment, has 30 days to respond.

The MAX has been grounded since March 2019 after two fatal crashes but there is no relationship between the crashes and this issue. Collins declined to comment.

Boeing said Friday it had cooperated with the investigation and “done a thorough internal review and implemented changes to address their concerns.” Boeing said the issue was not safety but “insufficient documentation.” Boeing added that a review “found the parts met or exceeded all original requirements.”

Boeing added it is “committed to doing better.”

The FAA said Boeing violated regulations when it certified these aircraft as airworthy when they were not in conformance with their type certificates. The FAA also said Boeing failed to follow its own business process instructions, which are in place to help prevent such situations.

Rockwell Collins subsequently conducted the necessary testing and risk analysis and updated the documents, FAA said.

The FAA has proposed other recent fines against Boeing.

In January, the FAA proposed fining Boeing $5.4 million, alleging it failed to prevent the installation of defective parts on 737 MAX airplanes.

The FAA alleged Boeing “failed to adequately oversee its suppliers to ensure they complied with the company’s quality assurance system, ... Boeing knowingly submitted aircraft for final FAA airworthiness certification after determining that the parts could not be used due to a failed strength test.”

The FAA proposed a $3.9 million civil penalty against Boeing for the same issue in December involving 133 737 NG airplanes, the prior generation of the 737.