Episcopal bishop on President Trump: ‘Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence’

Michelle Boorstein, Sarah Pulliam Bailey WASHINGTON POST 6/2/2020

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, was seething.

President Trump had just visited St. John’s Episcopal Church, which sits across from the White House. It was a day after a fire was set in the basement of the historic building amid protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Before heading to the church, where presidents have worshiped since the days of James Madison, Trump gave a speech at the White House emphasizing the importance of law and order. Federal police officers then used force to clear a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators from the street between the White House and the church, apparently so Trump could make the visit.

“I am outraged,” Budde said in a telephone interview a short time later, pausing between words to emphasize her anger as her voice slightly trembled.

She said she had not been given any notice that Trump would be visiting the church, and did not approve of the manner in which the area was secured for his appearance.

© Katherine Frey/The Washington Post The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, in 2016.

“I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop,” Budde said.

She excoriated the president for standing in front of the church — its windows boarded up with plywood — holding up a Bible, which Budde said “declares that God is love.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde of the president. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”

In a written statement, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, head of the Episcopal denomination, accused Trump of using “a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.”

“This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us,” Curry wrote.

“The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God,’” he continued, calling on Trump and others in power to be moral. “For the sake of George Floyd, for all who have wrongly suffered, and for the sake of us all, we need leaders to help us to be ‘one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.’ ”

Budde and Curry are among the pantheon of progressive religious leaders who have long been critical of Trump’s politica agenda. The Episcopal Church’s policies include supporting abortion rights, refugee resettlement, an expansion of health care and other issues that Trump has opposed or not embraced. According to the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Episcopalians are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 39 percent of church members who are Republican or lean Republican.

Trump’s longtime religious allies, who are socially more conservative, saw his walk over to St. John’s much differently. “What kind of church I need PERMISSION to attend,” tweeted Pastor Mark Burns of South Carolina after Budde and others said Trump should have let them know he was coming. “Jesus welcomes All.”

Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for several of Trump’s religious advisers, tweeted favorably about the incident as well.

“I will never forget seeing @POTUS @realDonaldTrump slowly & in-total-command walk from the @WhiteHouse across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,” he wrote. “After just saying, ‘I will keep you safe


Trump did not enter St. John’s on Monday evening. No one associated with the church was present for his visit.

Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Clemson University who studies Christian nationalism, said the president’s appearance was an attempt to promote the idea of America as a distinctly Christian nation after his Rose Garden speech.

“Going to the church, not going in it, not meeting with any clergy, holding up a Bible, but not quoting any scripture, after an authoritarian speech, was about using the religious symbolism for his ends,” Whitehead said.

“It was a signal to the people that embrace the idea of a Christian nation, that he will defend Christianity in the public sphere,” Whitehead said. “He said he’ll make America safe. That raised the question, for whom? It’s largely for white, mostly Protestant America.”

Budde — who spent 18 years in as a rector in Minneapolis before being elected bishop of the Washington diocese — said the Episcopal church disassociates itself from the messages offered by the president.

“We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so so grounding to our lives and everything we do,” she said. “It is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice.”

© Alex Brandon/AP Police form a line in front of St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House Sunday night.

Following a tradition set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Trump attended a service at St. John’s before his swearing-in ceremony in 2017. He visited the church again that year to mark a national day of prayer for victims of Hurricane Harvey and in 2019 on St. Patrick’s Day.

Budde said she learned he was headed back to the yellow 19th century building on Monday by watching the news. “No one knew this was happening,” she said. “I don’t want President Trump speaking for St. John’s.”

Rev. Robert W. Fisher, the church rector, said he felt blindsided by the visit. Usually, the White House gives the church at least 30 minutes notice before the president comes by.

“We want St. John’s to be a space for grace, as a place where you can breathe,” he said. “Being used as a prop, it really takes away from what we’re trying to do.”

Earlier in the day, Fisher said, he and other clergy were outside the church handing out water bottles and granola bars to protesters, and expressing solidarity with their cause. He said he watched images of the protest being dismantled “with disbelief.”

Fisher, 44, became the rector of St. John’s in June 2019, and has not yet hosted a presidential visit. The church usually draws about 400 people on a typical weekend. But it has been closed since mid-March due to the broad shutdown restrictions in place to combat the novel coronavirus.



Damage to the building from Sunday night’s fire and vandalism will cost at least $20,000, Fisher said. But he said the destruction should not become the focus of what has been happening in the streets outside the White House.

Fisher said that when people have talked about the church being burned, he has tried to redirect them, saying it was likely one person who does not represent the majority of people protesting.

“That has pulled away from the more important message that we have to address racism in this country,” he said.

sarah.bailey@washpost.com

In some protests, local officials say white instigators are causing mayhem

A SINGLE VEGAN ACTIVIST @ MALE FROM PHILLY HOMEGROWN ANARCHIST

NOT PART OF ANY INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST ORDER OR ANTIFA

“What did I tell you?” a voice cried out as the camera recording mayhem in downtown Pittsburgh settled on a white man, clad in all black, smashing the windows of a police vehicle.


“It is not black people,” the onlooker called to the crowd before addressing the vandal directly: “What are you doing?”

What he was doing, authorities later alleged, was inciting riots on Saturday as the city — like dozens of others across America — was swept up in sustained unrest over the death of a black man in police custody. Demonstrations have spread from Minneapolis, where a white police officer pinned his knee on the neck of George Floyd, to scores of cities, some of which have been looted and set ablaze.

Police identified Brian Jordan Bartels, 20, of Allison Park, Pa., as having “kicked off” the escalation in Pittsburgh, one of several examples of peaceful assemblies against police violence creating opportunities for pandemonium. While at heart the gatherings have been an appeal for racial justice, they also have attracted a diverse array of people with other grievances and agendas who have co-opted the moment, accelerating what has been a national unraveling as the country reels from a pandemic that has put more than 40 million people out of work.

In most American cities, people of all races appear to be participating in the violence, vandalism and looting, particularly in Minneapolis, where a crowd burned the police department’s 3rd Precinct building last week and vandals were seen smashing windows and stealing items from stores. Multiracial coalitions also have marched peacefully. But in some cities, local officials have noted that black protesters have struggled to maintain peaceful protests in the face of young white men joining the fray, seemingly determined to commit mayhem.

In footage that spread widely online, a man identified as Bartels, who faces charges of vandalism and rioting, wore a bandanna emblazoned with the symbol of the Animal Liberation Front, a leaderless international resistance movement that pushes for animal rights. In the footage, he raised his middle fingers to black protesters who begged him to stop. At Bartels’s home in a Pittsburgh suburb, officers found spray paint and firearms, according to an arrest warrant reviewed by The Washington Post.
© Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Brian Jordan Bartels

Attempts to reach Bartels, who turned himself in to police on Monday evening, were unsuccessful.

As authorities intensified their efforts to quell the uprisings — deploying tear gas and rubber bullets in aggressive spasms in many cities — police officers were joined by some elected officials and protest organizers in accusing white activists and extremists of exacerbating the chaos by blocking roadways, destroying police property and lobbing bricks into businesses.

“We came together as Pittsburghers and supported a First Amendment right to gather and say more must be done,” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D) told reporters over the weekend. “And then it was hijacked.”

Some local officials were even more blunt. After reviewing footage of the weekend’s events, Jenny Durkan, the mayor of Seattle, said she feared the black community would shoulder the blame for havoc others caused.

“It is striking how many of the people who were doing the looting and stealing and the fires over the weekend were young white males,” Durkan (D) said in an interview.

President Trump on Monday evening said in a Rose Garden address that he stands with demonstrators who condemn Floyd’s death, as peaceful protesters were cleared with flash-bang explosives and tear gas so he could pose for a photograph in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“These are not acts of peaceful protest; they are acts of domestic terror,” said Trump, who earlier Monday encouraged governors to “dominate” the streets with the militaristic tactics already in use in parts of the country.

Violence had erupted in some of the early demonstrations starting last week, with protesters in Minneapolis setting several businesses on fire along with the police precinct.

But from Baltimore to Sacramento, black protesters also were filmed protecting storefronts and placing their bodies before police barricades to preserve principles of nonviolence, and to prevent backlash disproportionately aimed at them. Videos emerged, too, of them confronting white demonstrators who had usurped the mantra of “black lives matter,” which gave birth to a movement for racial justice and police accountability, in seemingly random acts of defacement.

“Don’t spray stuff on here when they’re going to blame black people for this,” a black woman admonished two vandals outside of a Starbucks in Los Angeles.

In East Liberty, a gentrifying neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a young black protester delivered a case of bottled water to a phalanx of police officers standing guard at a demonstration on Sunday outside of a Target store.

“With all this stuff going on, I just wanted to spread the positivity,” said Alexander Cash, 23, who lost his job at a nearby Residence Inn because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. “It doesn’t matter if it’s one or 45 cops standing there. I can walk up to them and still be peaceful.”

That sort of caution was being undermined by intentionally destabilizing acts, warned Tim Stevens, a longtime civil rights activist in Pittsburgh.

“People who do not have the social justice commitment at heart, people who really don’t care about George Floyd — they care only about an opportunity to cause disruption — how many of those people were in Pittsburgh over the weekend?” he asked. “How many were out across America?”

Similar questions have become acute from Austin, where a racial justice group on Sunday canceled a planned assembly for fear of violent escalation by unaffiliated activists, to Fargo, N.D., where police questioned four men carrying assault rifles to a protest site in a bid to protect businesses. In Denver, police officers commandeered firearms from anti-government gun enthusiasts who self-identify as “Boogaloo boys,” part of a far-right militia movement.

“These are people who are agent provocateurs,” Chas Moore, the executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, said of the extremists joining the protests. He canceled his group’s demonstration, originally planned for Sunday, after the chaos of Saturday night. “These are extremists and anarchists, not right or left. They want complete annihilation of the system, and they’re at the forefront of the fires and the breaking of vehicles.”© Gene J. Puskar/AP A police vehicle burns a during a march in Pittsburgh on Saturday.

Others warned against tagging certain bad actors for responsibility, especially after Minnesota officials at first tried to lay blame for damage on out-of-state protesters, allegations that failed to find support in arrest records. Over the weekend, Melvin Carter, the mayor of St. Paul, Minn., walked back comments initially asserting that “every person” detained in protests came from other states. In fact, data showed nearly all of those arrested gave addresses in Minnesota.

Durkan said the age profile of those arrested in Seattle skewed young, and she pledged to examine the demographics more closely. Officials in Pittsburgh and Austin said they did not break arrest data down by race, making it difficult to discover whether claims of culpability were reflected in on-the-ground enforcement efforts.

“It’s very easy for the government to create this binary of good protesters and bad protesters, and it always fits their whim,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change. The dilemma, Robinson said, is how to welcome new faces to the fold without inviting chaos: “We are in a really complicated moment, and we have a lot more questions.”

The complexity was deepened when President Trump, with Attorney General William P. Barr’s backing, faulted anarchists and left-wing activists for the upheaval without furnishing any evidence.

On Monday, the president’s allies trumpeted news of the charges against Bartels, a day after the president said he would designate an anti-fascist collective known as antifa as a “terrorist organization,” though he has no apparent legal authority to do so.

A former friend of Bartels who corresponded with him for several years before they had a falling out in May said Bartels never once mentioned antifa, some of whose adherents favor aggressive tactics.

The friend, a 17-year-old who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared online harassment, said Bartels was militant about veganism but otherwise espouses views that do not fall neatly along ideological lines. Another teenager who moved in the city’s pop-punk scene with Bartels said Bartels loathed establishment forces, no matter their partisan makeup. But neither understood why Bartels would have smashed a police vehicle in broad daylight, as police accuse him of doing.

Similar scenes of destruction appeared in numerous cities.

In downtown Austin, a crowd of several hundred protesters massed outside Austin Police Department headquarters on Sunday evening. With their numbers increasing, protesters eventually streamed over a concrete embankment and onto Interstate 35, a thoroughfare that slices Austin along racial and economic lines.

The crowd was a diverse mix of black, white and Hispanic demonstrators, but it was the young white protesters who seemed to push the limits. As the crowd walked south to an exit, white protesters were spray-painting the asphalt and a concrete median.
© Gene J. Puskar/AP Smashed windows at a Starbucks in Pittsburgh.
NOT COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS, PAID CONTRACT WORKERS

One white woman was observed applying an adhesive to a traffic cone in an attempt to adhere it to the roadway while a black protester walked by, turning his head in apparent surprise. Later in the evening, white protesters threw plastic water bottles at police, drawing rebuke from some black members of the crowd.

“The police are targeting black protesters out here with rubber bullets,” said Maredith Drake, 43, who had been offering first aid to injured protesters all weekend. “We think they feel like they’ll be less accountable if they shoot a black person instead of a white one.”

On Chicago’s West Side, a liquor store was looted for hours and then torched at about 9 p.m. Sunday. The air was filled with blinding smoke as Glenn Johnson, 45, stood in the doorway of his graphic design business across the street, saying he had watched looters so committed to the undertaking that they worked in crews of three, each completing a specific task. Most cars had out-of-town license plates, he said.

“I don’t condone this, but I don’t condemn it,” Johnson said. “I understand where it’s coming from. But the thing is, we’re so far into this, everything is going to be gone.”

Peter Holley in Austin and Mark Guarino in Chicago contributed to this report.

Charges: Illinois man went to Minneapolis to riot
By AMY FORLITI, Associated Press 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An Illinois man who allegedly traveled to Minneapolis to participate in riots after the death of George Floyd has been arrested and charged with federal counts, after prosecutors say videos posted to his Facebook page showed him handing out explosives and damaging property.

Matthew Lee Rupert, 28, of Galesburg, Illinois, was arrested in Chicago and charged Monday by criminal complaint with three counts, including civil disorder, carrying on a riot and possession of unregistered destructive devices.

According to an FBI affidavit, Rupert posted self-recorded videos on his Facebook page last week that show him in Minneapolis. In one video, he is seen handing out explosive devices to others and encouraging them to throw them at law enforcement. He's also shown damaging property and attempting to light a business on fire. In that video, Rupert says: “We come to riot, boy! This is what we came for!”

Floyd, a black man, died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck while Floyd was handcuffed and saying that he couldn’t breathe. The arrest was recorded by a bystander and viewed widely. Floyd’s death sparked protests in Minneapolis and around the country, some of which became violent. A medical examiner said Monday that Floyd's heart stopped as police restrained him and compressed his neck.

The charges against Rupert come as civic leaders nationwide have frequently blamed outsiders for bringing trouble into their communities. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz made the assertion in the early days of protests that outsiders were responsible for most of the violence. He later backed away from that, and arrest data so far have showed most people taken into custody were from Minnesota.

But authorities have also said they have made arrests involving people with equipment, including incendiary devices, that could be used to burn and damage. Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said authorities in the Minneapolis area had stopped cars without license plates, driving without lights, then found such material inside. Harrington said Monday he had at least two confirmed incidents and was working to verify other reports.

The FBI affidavit says that on Thursday, Rupert posted references to the protests in Minneapolis on his Facebook page, and later that night he said he was heading there. By Friday, he was posting videos of himself in Minneapolis.

One video lasts more than two hours. In it, Rupert references SWAT vehicles and says, “I’ve got some bombs if some of you all want to throw them back … bomb them back … here I got some more … light it and throw it.” As he is making the comments, he hands out an item with a brown casing and a green wick. Shortly after one person throws a device, an explosion can be heard in the background.

In that same video, he is seen entering a boarded up liquor store, then asking for lighter fluid and entering a Sprint store which he says he lit on fire. He is then seen entering and stealing from an Office Depot, according to the affidavit.

The FBI affidavit says that on Saturday, Rupert posted on his Facebook page that he was headed to Chicago, and that he would “loot” there. Early Sunday morning, he posted more videos of himself in and around Chicago. In one video, he talks about starting a “riot” and causing damage.

He was arrested early Sunday by Chicago police for violating an emergency curfew in the city. Officers found several destructive devices, a hammer, a heavy-duty flashlight and cash in his vehicle, according to the affidavit.

Rupert appeared in federal court in Chicago for a hearing to have him moved to Minnesota to face charges. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney to comment on his behalf.

Nearly 26,000 Nursing-Home Residents Died of Covid-19, U.S. Tally Shows

The first major federal effort to measure the deadly impact of the new coronavirus in nursing homes found around 26,000 deaths, a total that likely falls short of showing the full toll on some of the most vulnerable Americans.

The new survey of nursing homes, released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, showed 25,923 resident deaths tied to Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 449 deaths among the facilities’ staff. The survey also found about 95,000 infection cases at nursing homes across 49 states, about a third of them among staff members.

But the CMS rule that mandated the data collection, issued May 8, didn’t require nursing homes to report deaths and cases that occurred before early May. Also, assisted-living facilities, which aren’t regulated by CMS, didn’t have to submit any information, though they could do so voluntarily.

© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the agency believed that the “vast majority” of nursing homes had provided data from before May 8, though CMS said about 20% of the nation’s 15,400 nursing homes had not reported required data by May 24. Ms. Verma said CMS couldn’t require the facilities to report information from before the rule took effect. 

 
Nursing homes and other types of elder-care facilities have been major hot spots for deadly Covid-19 outbreaks around the U.S., particularly in populous regions such as the Northeast, which have spent months battling significant outbreaks.

A Wall Street Journal tally of state data from around the U.S. shows more than 42,000 Covid-19-associated deaths in long-term-care facilities, including nursing homes and assisted-living sites, along with more than 200,000 cases. This tally, too, likely undercounts the full impact of the outbreak because of reporting lags and incomplete information from some states.

In total, more than 104,000 deaths nationwide are linked to Covid-19, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

Nursing homes have been particularly vulnerable to the highly contagious virus because of their setup, with elderly, frail residents often living in shared rooms, in close contact with staff who can become infected without showing symptoms.

CMS said Monday it is increasing penalties for nursing homes with persistent infection-control violations and taking more actions on lower-level infection problems.

States have gradually improved their own reporting on the crisis in these facilities. Still, the federal-level count was meant to fill in the gaps because states have widely varying methodologies and levels of disclosure.

Later this week, CMS said it would release data searchable by individual facility, which hadn’t been available to consumers in a number of states, including Texas, Missouri and Arizona. The data will be updated weekly, the agency said.

The early federal data show some shortfalls compared with information that states have released thus far, some of which is more recent. California’s Department of Public Health, for example, counted 1,856 Covid-19-related deaths in skilled-nursing facilities by Monday. The federal survey counted 1,184 in California nursing homes. The state of Connecticut recently reported 2,398 nursing-home deaths, far above the 1,500 thus far included in the federal data set.

The 5,944 confirmed and presumed nursing home deaths counted by state authorities in New York are roughly double the number tallied by the federal survey. New York limits its own nursing-home data by leaving out cases in which residents died in the hospital. The federal survey asked nursing homes to include such cases.

The federal survey also asked for reports of probable Covid-19-related deaths, which often reflect cases in which there is clinical evidence of the disease despite the lack of confirmatory laboratory results, although CMS said lack of testing may limit reporting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts these cases, and many of the nursing-home cases in New York are what the state calls presumed Covid-19 deaths.

Comparisons with the newly released federal data are difficult in many other states that blend nursing home reports with reports from other kinds of long-term-care facilities.

The federal data are likely to leave the full picture of the virus’s fatal effects in U.S. nursing homes incomplete, researchers said. CMS has suspended some other traditional forms of surveillance, citing the need to reduce burdens on the facilities. In March, the agency waived requirements that nursing homes submit detailed staffing data.

“We won’t be able to see what was going on,” said Tamara Konetzka, a professor of health-services research at the University of Chicago. “We’ll have a data gap during this time.”

Using the patchwork of state data, researchers had already been delving into which factors are associated with cases of Covid-19. A new analysis by David Grabowski of Harvard University and others, using data from 30 states, found that the factors most clearly linked with having a Covid-19 case included being in states with significant spread of the virus, an urban location and a greater share of African-American residents. Being a for-profit nursing home was tied to having larger outbreaks, the analysis found.

CMS said its new data showed that nursing homes with low ratings on the agency’s five-star quality scale were more likely to have large numbers of coronavirus cases than those with high ratings.

The Covid-19 risks in nursing homes have been compounded by inadequate testing and personal protective equipment, said Joseph Ouslander, a geriatrician who is a professor at Florida Atlantic University. Though testing requirements are ramping up, nursing homes have been complaining about the cost.

“There are going to be, unfortunately, more and more clusters of infection and death in nursing homes,” said Dr. Ouslander. “It’s going to keep happening.”

ICE keeps transferring detainees around the country, leading to COVID-19 outbreaks

The immigrants began to show symptoms in late April, about a week after arriving at the Rolling Plains Detention Center in Haskell, Texas.

© Provided by NBC News

Lisa Riordan Seville and Hannah Rappleye and Julia Ainsley 
1 day ago 

They had been held in dorms with other recent transfers, according to a county official. First three detainees tested positive for COVID-19. Then 20 more. As of Friday, 41 immigrants detained at Rolling Plains had been infected. Just three county residents have tested positive.

In Pearsall, Texas, 350 miles south, transfers turned another detention center into a virus hotspot. Frio County had just a single confirmed case of COVID-19 in early April. Then two detainees who had recently been moved to Pearsall's South Texas ICE Processing Facility tested positive, ICE told county officials. Thirty-two immigrants have now been diagnosed, almost 90 percent of the state's official COVID-19 tally in Frio County.

"Our vulnerability is absolutely that detention center," said Frio County Commissioner Jose Asuncion. "Once that facility is exposed, the employees are coming in and out, there's no way to contain it."

In the past several months, while most Americans have been ordered to shelter at home, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shuffled hundreds of people in its custody around the country. Immigrants have been transferred from California to Florida, Florida to New Mexico, Arizona to Washington State, Pennsylvania to Texas

These transfers, which ICE says were sometimes done to curb the spread of coronavirus, have led to outbreaks in facilities in Texas, Ohio, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to attorneys, news reports and ICE declarations filed in federal courts.

ICE's actions have prompted an outcry from Democratic senators, who on Friday said the transfers had spread the virus and demanded Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf bring them to a halt.

"Until ICE halts transfers and expands testing, the agency will continue to exacerbate conditions for individuals in ICE custody and for all the communities surrounding its facilities," reads the letter signed by 18 senators.

Since ICE announced its first case in March, COVID-19 has surfaced in at least 55 of the roughly 200 facilities that ICE uses. More than 1,400 detainees have been infected, roughly half of all those tested, ICE data show. Two immigrants and three staffers have died.

ICE declined to provide information on how many transfers have occurred throughout the pandemic. But NBC News identified nearly 80 since the pandemic was declared, and that is not a complete accounting. The analysis includes moves between immigration detention facilities as well as from criminal to ICE custody. Individual detainees are often moved several times prior to deportation.

© Courtesy Betsy Mejia Betsy Mejia and her husband Oscar Mejia. Oscar Meija has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, since February. (Courtesy Betsy Mejia)

ICE has a protocol for transfers. Detainees are medically screened and cleared for travel, issued a mask, and in some cases, have their temperatures taken, according to court filings and ICE statements. But it does not routinely test prior to moving detainees from one place to the next.

An attorney representing ICE told a federal court in Florida that it only tests immigrants who display symptoms of COVID-19, the Miami Herald reported. ICE told NBC News in a statement that it tests some, but not all, immigrants before they are placed on planes and deported.

Without widespread testing and contact tracing, it is difficult to identify the source of infections inside ICE facilities. At several, employees have been the first to test positive, ICE data shows. But advocates, along with several federal judges overseeing lawsuits against the agency, have voiced concern that transfers are threatening immigrants' lives and contributing to the virus' spread.

"Transfers are ongoing, numerous, frequent and appear to be spreading COVID-19 from one place to another," said Jessica Schneider, director of the detention program at the nonprofit Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami, one of several groups that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of detainees in South Florida. "The folks that are detained are sitting ducks."
'Someone has died'

Even before the first ICE detainee was diagnosed with COVID-19, more than 4,000 doctors signed a letter warning ICE an "outbreak of COVID-19 in immigration detention facilities would be devastating."

It is difficult, if not impossible, to social distance in detention, doctors and corrections experts said. ICE detention is civil, and not supposed to be punitive. But detention centers share many traits with prisons. Men, women and children sleep, eat and watch television in close quarters, often in open dorms with beds and chairs bolted close together. Their movements, along with access to sanitary supplies, are tightly controlled.

Like nursing homes and meatpacking plants, prisons across the county have proven coronavirus hotspots. When state and federal prison officials in Ohio, Louisiana and California conducted mass testing, hundreds of prisoners came back positive. Most had no symptoms. The federal Bureau of Prisons, which decreased movement of prisoners 90 percent during the pandemic, announced earlier this month it would begin to phase transfers back in. Given the risks, it will conduct "aggressive testing" before and after transfers.

ICE's largest outbreak is currently at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, Calif., where nearly 160 people have tested positive. Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, 57, was held at Otay before his death on May 7, the first from COVID-19 in ICE custody. On Sunday, Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, a 34-year-old held in a Georgia facility, became the second person detained by ICE to die of the virus.

The Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, Calif.

"We've been saying since this started that if the government didn't act quickly, people were going to die," said Monika Langarica, a staff attorney with the ACLU of San Diego, which has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of detainees at Otay Mesa. "We know that's not hyperbole. Someone has died."

But within its archipelago of detention centers, which includes county jails and privately operated facilities, ICE routinely tests only those who show symptoms. It also does not test all people before deportation, a spokesperson confirmed. Some governments abroad have demanded tests after people deported to Guatemala, Mexico and Haiti were found to have COVID-19.

If half of detainees tested come back positive, ICE isn't testing enough, said Dr. Anjali Niyogi, associate professor at Tulane School of Medicine, a public health expert who has been treating coronavirus cases in New Orleans. The more than 1,400 positive cases within ICE, she added, are "absolutely an undercount."

Doctors and attorneys around the country have argued ICE's best method to stop the spread of disease is to release detainees, particularly those with medical issues. Lawyers and advocacy groups have filed lawsuits nationwide in an attempt to force releases. They argue that because immigration detention is civil, the agency has wide discretion in who it detains. Former ICE officials have backed that claim.

ICE has voluntarily released more than 900 people as part of its own review of which detainees are medically vulnerable, a spokesman said, and several hundred more after court orders. Along with a drop in enforcement due to COVID-19, the number of people in immigrant detention has fallen to under 26,000, its lowest level during the Trump administration.The Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, Calif.

The agency has taken "important steps" to keep immigrants and staff safe since the outbreak of COVID-19, a spokesperson said, including medically screening incoming detainees, providing protective equipment and disinfecting facilities. It has also implemented safety measures for transfers. Those with COVID-19 are grouped together, or "cohorted," the spokesperson said, and new admissions are isolated for two weeks before moving into general population.

But every exit and entrance into a detention center increases the risk the virus will spread. ICE Assistant Field Office Director Alan Greenbaum acknowledged the dangers transfers pose in a declaration to a federal court in Massachusetts. He argued ICE should be able to move people from criminal to ICE custody within the same Bristol County facility, which the court had temporarily barred.

Transferring detainees to a new facility, he wrote, "creates a greater risk of detainees being exposed to, or exposing others to, COVID-19."

Read the court document here.

While ICE asserts it has the right to move detainees at any time, for virtually any reason, the agency said transfers are "part of the agency's extensive efforts to stem the potential spread of COVID-19," including to facilitate social distancing. In some cases, that has backfired.
People looked 'very sick'

In early March, just as the coronavirus was beginning to surface on the coasts, ICE arrested K. at his home in Philadelphia. According to his lawyer, Lilah Thompson, the agency asserts a past criminal conviction made K., a legal permanent resident, deportable. (K.'s name is being withheld for fear of retaliation).

K. was taken to Pike County Correctional Facility in Hawley, Penn. Several men held there had tested positive for COVID-19. After showing symptoms, K. was also tested. He had the flu, but not COVID-19. He was recovering when he was woken up before dawn on April 11 to be transferred. Thompson didn't know where he was until ICE notified her K.'s case had been moved to Texas.

K. was among more than 70 people taken from two facilities with outbreaks in the Northeast and moved to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, according to interviews with attorneys and a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month. The move was first reported by the Dallas Morning News.

They were loaded onto buses, taken to the airport, and flown to Dallas in shackles, according to the lawsuit and interviews with attorneys. Then another bus delivered them to Prairieland.

Days before, about 50 men detained at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Jones County, Texas, were also transferred to Prairieland, according to an affidavit in the lawsuit.

"We were all squished together and there were people on the bus who looked very sick," a detainee stated in an affidavit. "There were a few people coughing a lot on the way."

No one wore masks, he added, and because everyone on the bus was cuffed, "they could not cover their mouths."

A few days after K. arrived at Prairieland, officers moved him from the dorm into isolation, Thompson said. When they tested K. again, he had COVID-19.

Prairieland had no confirmed cases before the transfers from the Northeast and Bluebonnet, ICE records show. A week later it had three. By May 1, there were 41.

"They put people on buses and planes without proper protection," said Thompson, an attorney with the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia. "It shows a disregard for immigrants' lives, and a disregard for their rights."

In at least one case, ICE knowingly transferred a detainee with COVID-19.

In late April, an ICE official submitted a declaration to a federal court in Louisiana that one person who tested positive at the Catahoula Detention Center in Harrisonburg, La., had been transferred to the Richwood Correctional Center, 70 miles away in Monroe.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-keeps-transferring-detainees-around-the-country-leading-to-covid-19-outbreaks/ar-BB14PEBt
VIDEO
Migrant families in ICE detention refuse to separate from children


Richwood had 29 confirmed cases at the time. "Many of these positive cases were transferred from other facilities to Richwood," the official told the court.

That same week, the Associated Press reported, prison officials told employees they'd be required to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, due to staff shortages caused by a "high number of positive COVID 19 staff cases." About a week later, two Richwood guards died from COVID-19.

Positive cases there have climbed to 65.

Stories like that concern Rep. Jason Crow, D.-Colo. The weekly reports he gets about the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, outside of Denver, show hundreds of detainees have transferred in and out since the pandemic began.

"These aren't people coming from the border or picked up," said Crow, whose district includes Aurora. "These are people being moved around."

Crow began tracking disease at Aurora last year, when a mumps outbreak swept through nearly 60 detention facilities, infecting more than 900 immigrants.

In a letter to ICE early this month, Rep. Crow expressed concern that transfers could introduce the disease to facilities and surrounding communities, pointing to the admission of a detainee from the Sterling Correctional Facility, a state prison that then had the largest single COVID-19 outbreak in Colorado.

Last week, Aurora diagnosed its first cases of coronavirus among detainees, though several guards have been infected. One of the two men with COVID-19 had recently transferred from Sterling, according to his attorney, Henry Hollithron. Oscar Perez Aguirre, 57, arrived with a fever. After his health quickly deteriorated, said Hollithron, he was hospitalized. Aurora now has five cases.

GEO Group, the private prison company that runs Aurora, said it has been making every effort to keep both employees and detainees safe.

"Our utmost priority has always been the health and safety of all those in our care and our employees," a spokesperson said, adding the GEO Group has no role in the decisions of who ICE transfers or releases.

Federal courts have begun to question ICE about how its transfer practices may be putting detainees at risk.

On May 21, a court in South Florida requested that ICE disclose whether "transfers have been known to result in an increase in COVID-19 cases." ICE asserted they have not.

This came after the agency moved 33 detainees from the Krome Detention Facility in Florida to a nearby lockup in Broward County. Following the transfer, 16 detainees tested positive for the virus, as first reported by the Miami Herald, driving the number of cases at Broward from three to 19, according to ICE statistics.

ICE told the court that it has broad discretion under the law to relocate detainees as needed. The agency regularly transfers people due to risk level, where it has bed space, for medical reasons or to deport them, the agency said, adding that it does not transfer or deport those with symptoms, who are waiting for test results, or who are suspected to have COVID-19, unless medically necessary.

The detainees who were moved to Broward were cleared before leaving, ICE told the court, and were put into a 14-day quarantine.

Because they have been cohorted, the agency said, "ICE does not believe that the transfer has resulted in an increase in COVID-19 cases at" Broward.

Read the court document here.

A federal court in Louisiana has publicly questioned the agency's accounting of cases, particularly with regard to transfers. In response to another lawsuit seeking to free immigrants there, ICE stated in a sworn affidavit that as of the afternoon of May 18, there were "no known cases" at the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena, La. Days before, the agency reported 15.

In an order that led to the release of 14 detainees, the judges described ICE's approach to transfers as an outlier.

"We can only speculate that some of these detainees were moved to other facilities as it is well known that ICE has continued operations and not followed the lead of the Bureau of Prisons and Louisiana Department of Corrections, both of whom have largely precluded the movement of their inmates," the court wrote.
'They're not doing anything right'

Those held inside the nation's immigrant detention facilities could see coronavirus coming, but could do little to stop it.

From inside his dorm at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, Oscar Mejia watched the new detainees arrive through April. He and those who slept on the bunks arranged in close rows worried that soon enough, the virus would make its way in, too.

"They've brought new people from other places — from Dallas, from all over," Mejia said in a phone call from the facility, where he has been since February. "Those are people who are coming, they might not be well."

© Courtesy Betsy Mejia Betsy Mejia speaks to her husband Oscar Mejia in the Bluebonnet detention center over video call. (Courtesy Betsy Mejia)

At least 200 people were transferred to Bluebonnet since mid-March, according to news reports and numbers provided by Management and Training Corporation (MTC), the private company that runs Bluebonnet. Whether the coronavirus was carried in by one of them, or the six officers who have tested positive, Mejia couldn't say.

But beginning in April, he and others in his dorm developed fevers and coughs. Treatment, he said, consisted of Tylenol, allergy pills and salt to gargle with.

"We told them there was corona but they didn't do tests," said Mejia.

That mirrors the account in a YouTube video posted on April 29 that shows a group of men pleading for help from a facility they say is Bluebonnet.

"We've been telling them we're sick, they're not doing anything right," a man in the video said. "All they're doing is giving us Tylenol."

NBC News could not verify the source of the video, but the detainees' uniforms, the ceiling of the dorm, and the dates mentioned in it correspond to verified information and images.

Mejia said he was finally tested for COVID-19 in mid-May. He came back positive, along with 131 other men at Bluebonnet, roughly a quarter of those held there.

The rural West Texas facility now has the second-largest outbreak of any ICE facility in the country, ICE data shows.

Both ICE and MTC told NBC News allegations they have not taken proper precautions are false.

"The health and safety of our staff and the men and women in our care is our top priority," a spokesperson said in a statement, adding that MTC is "strictly following" CDC guidelines and testing anyone who displays COVID-19 symptoms.

As similar stories have emerged nationwide, Washington has begun to respond. The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General recently opened an investigation into whether ICE adequately safeguarded detainees and staff from COVID-19. On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary will hold a hearing to examine best practices for incarceration and detention during the pandemic.

Meija's wife, Betsy, said she's tried for months to get help for the men at Bluebonnet. She posted on Facebook. She called the warden in Anson and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. From their home in Kilgore, Texas — more than 300 miles from Bluebonnet — she's not sure what more she can do.

"I'm fighting a losing battle," she said.

INSPIRED TRUMPS INSURRECTION SPEECH
Belarus' Lukashenko outlaws protests, arrests opponents

Belarus has seen a spark in protests since President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed he will run for a sixth term in office. He said he won’t allow a "color revolution" after his main political opponent was jailed.


Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Monday that authorities will outlaw protests until the upcoming election and he will never allow a revolution to occur. Local media reported that prominent opposition figures were arrested following anti-government demonstrations in Minsk at the weekend.

"We will never allow destabilization of the situation in our country," Lukashenko said. "We don't want any 'color revolutions' here," he added, referring to a sweep of revolutions in the Balkans and worldwide in the early 2000s.

The strongman leader has led the former Soviet state for 25 years and has been described as Europe's last dictator owing to his tight hold on power and allegations of widespread corruption at the highest levels of government.

Read more: Minsk and Moscow: Dependency has its price

Lukashenko is seeking re-election to a sixth term as president on August 9. Presidential term limits were abolished in a 2004 referendum. Opponents say he should be banned from running; Lukashenko described opposition groups as "bands of criminals."

Arrest of opposition leader

Demonstrations have been ongoing for several weeks since Lukashenko confirmed he will be running for another term. Independent media reported Sunday that prominent opposition leader Mikola Statkevich was arrested at a demonstration.

Statkevich was sentenced to 15 days in police detention, as dozens more activists were held across the country, charged on a variety of counts.

Statkevich was found guilty of organizing an unauthorized rally, AFP reported. He was jailed for six years in 2010 after opposing Lukashenko in presidential elections.

Rights groups have also denounced the arrest of popular political video blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky on Friday. He was accused of violence against a police officer, which supporters say was police persecution.

'No Pashinyans or Zelenskiys'

Lukashenko said it would be impossible for a revolution like in Armenia or Ukraine to overthrow the existing government.

"We don't have any Pashinyans or Zenskiys," he said Monday, referring to Armenia's Nikol Pashinyan and Ukraine'' Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claiming that Belarus' opposition lacked such caliber. "I've become closely acquainted with them. They're talented people."

Read more: Belarus: How death squads targeted opposition politicians

The president also dismissed the idea of a female president last week, telling a crowd "We'll have a man for president."

Belarus has hit headlines globally during the coronavirus pandemic as one of the few countries not to introduce any kind of restrictions on public life. Lukashenko dismissed coronavirus as a "psychosis" and has said that fresh air and hard work are the best cures.

The Eastern European country has reported over 43,000 confirmed cases with 230 people dead, though health experts say they believe that cases may have been under-reported.

ed/rc (AFP, dpa)

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Keywords Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, protests, Minsk

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3d7Id

In the press 'America is suffocating': Country at tipping point as protests spread

AFP VIDEO FROM, MINNEAPOLIS POST PROTESTS

Facebook staff attack Zuckerberg over company stance not to act on Trump posts

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Facebook employees critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to act on President Donald Trump's inflammatory comments about U.S. protests went public on Twitter, praising the rival social media company for acting, and rebuking their own employer.

Many tech workers at companies - including Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google, and Amazon.com Inc - have actively pursued social justice issues in recent years, urging their employers to take action and change policies.

Even so, the weekend criticism marked a rare case of high-level employees publicly taking their chief executive to task, with at least three of the seven critical posts seen by Reuters coming from people who identified themselves as senior managers.

"Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind," wrote Ryan Freitas, whose Twitter account identifies him as director of product design for Facebook's News Feed. He added he had mobilized "50+ likeminded folks" to lobby for internal change.

Jason Toff, identified as director of product management, wrote in a tweet: "I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.”

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"We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone wrote in a text, referring to company employees.

"We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we'll continue seeking their honest feedback.”

Warning label

Twitter Inc on Friday affixed a warning label to a tweet from Trump in which he had included the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Twitter said the tweet violated its rules against glorifying violence but was being left up as a public service exception.

Nationwide unrest erupted after the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis last Monday. Video footage showed a white officer kneeling on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes before he died.

Facebook declined to take action on the same message, with Zuckerberg saying in a Facebook post on Friday that while he found the remarks "deeply offensive," they did not violate company policy against incitements to violence and people should know whether the government was planning to deploy force.

In the post, Zuckerberg, who last week took pains to distance his company from the fight between the president and Twitter, also said Facebook had been in touch with the White House on Friday to explain its policies. Facebook later confirmed reporting by news website Axios that Zuckerberg had a call with Trump.


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But some of the dissenting employees directly praised Twitter's response.

"Respect to @Twitter’s integrity team for making the enforcement call," wrote David Gillis, identified as a director of product design. In a long Twitter thread he said he understood the logic of Facebook's decision, but: "I think it would have been right for us to make a 'spirit of the policy' exception that took more context into account.”

Jason Toff was one of several Facebook employees who were organizing fundraisers for racial justice groups in Minnesota. Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Monday that the company would contribute an additional $10 million to social justice causes.

"Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy," wrote another Facebook manager, Andrew Crow, head of design for the company's Portal product. "I disagree with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen.”

(REUTERS)

APARTHEID AMERIKA FRANCE24 AFP VIDEO

African refugees in Minneapolis join protestors in their adopted homeland

FROM SHITHOLE COUNTRIES TO RACIST SHITHOLE USA



Art and posters can be seen at a memorial for George Floyd that has been created at the place where he was taken into police custody and later died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., June 1, 2020. © REUTERS/Leah Millis
Text by:NEWS WIRES

African refugees living in Minneapolis were already struggling with their "American dream" when George Floyd died in police custody.

Now their dream is in tatters and they have joined their African American "brothers" in the streets to protest racism in their adopted homeland.

"I came here for freedom. My country was at war," said Tiha Jibi, who arrived from South Sudan at age 15.

"I end up having two boys, 10 and six, who are afraid because we are not white," she said, full of rage.

Leaving her family and her country was hard, as was the journey to get to the United States, but she was determined to pursue her own American dream of peace, equality and democracy.


Now, she realises, "it's all a lie. Now we have to face that reality."

That's why she has been marching to protest the death at the hands of a white police officer of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man whose killing has sparked nationwide protests and clashes with police.

"I came here as a refugee but not as a white refugee," she said. "My permanent home is the US and my permanent color is black. I have to protest."

The state of Minnesota, where Minneapolis is located, has the highest percentage of refugees per inhabitant in the whole country, with two percent of the US population but 13 percent of its refugees, according to the most recent census.

Among them are a large number of people from the Horn of Africa -- Ethiopians and Somalis -- whose presence in the marches was noticeable because of the colorful robes worn by the women.

'Dehumanised'

Deka Jama, a 24-year-old woman who came to the United States from Somalia in 2007, showed up with friends, all of them veiled, to protest the discrimination that met them in their new homeland.

"We thought that everyone would be equal, that we would not be judged by religion, by color, by our dresses. That's not how we were welcomed," she told AFP.

She feels a close affinity to African Americans, many of them descended from slaves and who have been Americans for generations.

There is "something connects us," she said. "We are all dehumanized, regardless of our cultural differences. We have to be here for them."

Minnesota's Somali community has a source of pride, though, in Ilhan Omar, a 37-year-old born in Mogadishu who was elected to Congress in 2018.

But she too has been the target of racial abuse, death threats and slander. Last summer, President Donald Trump said that she and three other women of color in Congress should "go back" to their countries of origin.

For the past week, Omar has often been asked to comment on the situation. She has not held back from telling people that, beyond acts of police violence, Americans have to address the core issue of inequality in the country.

Poverty

"So many people know a social and economic neglect," Omar said on Sunday.

According to Minnesota Compass, a website that tracks the state's demographics, families from Africa are particularly hard hit.

In 2016, 12 percent of the population of Minnesota was living under the poverty line, but that number rose to 31 percent among the Ethiopian community and 55 percent among Somalis.

That has meant that for many refugees, an important facet of the American dream -- social mobility -- has broken down over time.

And the riots that have followed some protests have not helped their plight, since some of the looted businesses were immigrant-owned.

"I am very disappointed, very disappointed," Ahmed, a 42-year-old who arrived from Ethiopia a decade ago, said as he took in the blackened ruins of a burned building.

For him and many others, the major concern is for their children.

One Ethiopian woman, who asked not to be named, said she has four sons and worries that, when they grow up, they too could be subjected to the type of police brutality that took the life of George Floyd.

"This could happen to our children," she said, encouraging protesters marching below on a highway.

You have to support this movement, she said, "to stop racism, for the future."

(AFP)

A week after George Floyd died at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, protests across the US

are still going strong. But at the very scene where he died, members of the African-American community on Monday peacefully gathered to pay their tributes, and to be reminded of their constant struggle against systematic racism. FRANCE 24’s Kethevane Gorjestani reports.

Hundreds of people on Monday gathered at the scene where Floyd, an unarmed African American, was killed at the hands of a white police officer a week earlier. Although the gathering was largely about paying tribute, with flowers, prayers and chants, it also served as a painful reminder of the daily struggles of African-Americans against systematic racism.

“It’s sad for the African Americans around here because we already question where our place is in America. And with things like this, if we don’t stand up, we’re showing them that we’re allowing this stuff [to happen]. We’ve been allowing it for too long now,” Tommy Macbrayer, who organised the gathering, told FRANCE 24.

Since 2014, at least 100 African-Americans, including Trayyon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner, have died at the hands of the police. And their deaths have stoked very real fears in the African-American community.

“Every single night I worry about my sons. I track their locations. And I have predominantly good children, do you know what I mean?,” said an African-American mother who did not want to give her name.

“The fear of just not knowing. That if you don’t raise your hands or if you get pulled over, this could be your very last day living here. It’s overwhelming.”