Firearms Now the Leading Cause of Death Among U.S. Kids, Teens

April 22, 2022
By Robert Preidt 

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 22, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Guns have surpassed road crashes as the leading cause of death among U.S. children and teens.

Gun-related deaths rose 29% among 1- to 19-year-olds from 2019 to 2020, according to a new University of Michigan study. In all, there were more than 4,300 gun-related deaths — including suicides, homicides and accidents — in that age group in 2020.

The rising rates demonstrate that the United States is failing to protect its youngest population from a preventable cause of death, said study co-author Jason Goldstick. He is a research associate professor of emergency medicine at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor.

"Recent investments in firearm injury prevention research by the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and National Institutes of Health, in addition to community violence prevention funding in the federal budget, are a step in the right direction, but this momentum must continue if we truly want to break this alarming trend," Goldstick said in a university news release.

The study attributed 3,900 deaths in the 1- to 19-year age group to motor vehicles. The authors added that drug poisoning deaths rose more than 83% to more than 1,700. Drug poisoning was the third-leading cause of death in the studied age group.

The findings, based on CDC data, were published April 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Motor vehicle crashes were consistently the leading cause of death for children and adolescents by a fairly wide margin, but by making vehicles and their drivers safer, these types of fatalities have drastically decreased over the past 20 years," said study co-author Dr. Patrick Carter, co-director of the university's Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.

"Injury prevention science played a crucial role in reducing automobile deaths without taking cars off the road, and we have a real opportunity here to generate a similar impact for reducing firearm deaths through the application of rigorous injury prevention science," Carter added.

In 2020, more than 45,000 people of all ages died in the United States as a result of firearms, up more than 13% from 2019. The researchers said the increase was largely due to gun homicides, which jumped more than 33% from 2019 to 2020. Firearm suicides rose by about 1%, the CDC data show.

According to study co-author Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, vice president for research and a professor of emergency medicine at the university, "Firearm violence is one of the most critical challenges facing our society, and based on the latest federal data, this crisis is growing more and more intense."

More information

The Pew Research Center has more about gun deaths.


SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, April 20, 2022


Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Not a labour of love
Interview with Silvia Federici

Catrin Ashton
Silvia Federici
31 January 2022


Unpaid housework – forgotten by Marx, championed by the 1970s feminist Wages for Housework Campaign – has become a point of pandemic contention for working mothers. And care workers, mostly underpaid women with families, are facing the worst. Could vaccine mandates that sidestep the autonomy of workers’ bodies therefore be a stage too far?


Catrin Ashton: I first came across your work at a personally ideal moment: I had been at home for a few months with a newborn when I read Maria Rosa Dalla Costa and Selma James’s 1974 essay ‘The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community’. What struck me was how little had changed in 40 years. I had grown up with a concept of feminism which no longer seemed to apply with a baby. My job had involved travelling. I gave that up and was suddenly at home with no transport, no money of my own.

It was a very strange situation to be in, quite suddenly. Then we started a campaign in Wales inspired by Wages for Housework. Could you give an overview of the campaign’s beginnings and explain the inspiration behind your involvement?

Silvia Federici: Our campaign began in the early 1970s with women from different countries, mostly from Italy and some from England. I was in the US at the time but from Italy. The Wages for Housework Campaign was an alternative to the strategies that many feminists were organizing as a path to women’s liberation. The dominant trend within the feminist movement back then mostly came from a leftist tradition.

Actually, you had two trends: one from radical feminists, who identified patriarchy behind the system of women’s oppression but never clearly defined how male dominance had evolved historically (the strategy of radical feminists was usually to create cultural spaces that would mostly be women’s spaces); then you had the socialist feminists / Marxist feminists who told us that the way to liberation was to take waged jobs and join the working class, that the problem with women – discriminated on the basis of gender – originated from women’s confinement to domestic work.

It was argued that domestic work doesn’t produce any social wealth, that domestic work is a backward activity, that it isn’t really part of the capitalist organization of work and, therefore, women who are mostly involved with this kind of work do not have power to change society.

Men, for instance, can withdraw their labour. They can go on strike because they are producing capital, and so they can stop the flow of capital. Therefore, the argument, which you find in Marx and Engels and the whole Marxist communist tradition, was that women’s liberation means going out, joining the union, etc. But I came from a whole set of feminists who began analysing the condition of women’s work, of domestic work, and we came to a very different conclusion.

‘Capitalism also depends on domestic labour” (1970s-80s) poster by See Red Feminist silk-screen collective Photo via womensart1 from Twitter.

We concluded that domestic work – housework – is an extremely important part of the capitalist organization of work. What is being ‘produced’ through housework is the workers themselves.

In other words, the capitalist organization of work, as described by the left tradition, was a very partial one, because it only recognized production and wage labour production, industrial production, office work. It only recognized wage labour and the production of goods. It never saw the whole organization behind the production of the worker, the production of the capacity to work. So, for us, the Wages for Housework Campaign had many meanings.

First of all it made visible that this work is not just a natural activity, something women do because they are women. It is not the leftover of a pre-capitalist society but work that is central to every activity, to every economic activity.

Although not the only goal of the campaign, saying we wanted a wage for housework – the support system, the pillar of every economic activity – because we are working for the same employers that wage workers are working for, was very central. It was an epistemic strategy to make visible what until then had remained invisible.

Catrin Ashton: It was this aspect of the campaign that I found so exciting. It radicalized being a mother or being at home. You gave some power to that position, making it possible to talk about changing society from there rather than having to leave the home.

Silvia Federici: Yes, because in the left tradition, in the Communist Party and in the organization of women on the left, they became workers only when they went to the factory or when they went to work outside the home. Otherwise, they were not considered workers, and this is something very important, because it meant that this organization never recognized not only the work that women do but also the function of housework in the production of the workforce.

They never looked on the home as a place of struggle. The place of struggle was wage labour only, in line with Marx.

And they didn’t understand something profound about the capitalist organization of work, about capitalist accumulation as a whole: by not seeing the unpaid labour that women do, not acknowledging that whole capitalist class, every employer has exploited that labour, has benefited by naturalizing it, by making it appear as a ‘labour of love’, by not recognizing it as work.

Silvia Federici, photographed by Dani Blanco, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By ignoring all of this, not only did they embrace – legitimize and embrace – the capitalist viewpoint, but they also presented a very distorted image of capitalist accumulation. Capitalist accumulation, in their view, takes place in the factory, in the office, takes place through wage labour.

They didn’t see that the wage organizes the work of the community, organizes the work that takes place in the home, that with these wages, employers employ not only one worker but more than one worker: they also employ the people who are reproducing them, who are reproducing their capacity to work.

We realized that capitalist accumulation depends on the huge amount of unpaid labour, which is much wider than the Marxist socialist tradition ever acknowledged.

And we also recognized the connection between sexism and racism. Wage capitalism has created a labour hierarchy with paid workers on top: mostly white, mostly male. Unpaid workers – women, houseworkers, colonial subjects – are, of course, at the bottom. Slaves and slavery have been hugely significant for the accumulation of capital.

Looking at the discrimination of women from the point of view of reproduction has given us a different perspective on capitalism as a whole.

Catrin Ashton: The connection you make between the work that a woman does privately in her own home and all unpaid work done everywhere, globally and historically, which you describe as central to capitalism, is particularly inspiring.

Silvia Federici: Once we understood the significance of what reproductive work, what housework represents in the organization of work, in the process of accumulation, then we also began to understand the role of the wage. We saw that the wage is not compensation for work done or even a way of extracting some unpaid labour from the working day of the waged worker. Rather the wage is a whole way of organizing society. It’s also a way of concealing entire fields of exploitation by describing only certain workers, only waged workers, as workers.

It naturalizes and conceals entire fields of exploitation. We know, for instance, that Marx, as an abolitionist, wrote to Lincoln during the US civil war about the first international campaign to boycott the cotton trade for its use of slave labour, both congratulating him on the emancipation declaration and criticizing him for not really analysing slave work as a producer of capitalist accumulation in an entire three volumes.

There are passages here and there, but, for Marx, the fundamental terrain of struggle – industrial work – was underrepresented. Marx saw slavery in the same way he saw domestic work, as a kind of activity that would be left behind, that is historically backward, to be transcended by a future of capitalist development.

See Red Women, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done,
(screenprint in red ink, 1976). Gift of the American Friends of the V&A;
Gift to the American Friends by Leslie, Judith and Gabri Schreyer and Alice Schreyer Batko.

But we have seen that this hasn’t really been the case. The abolition of slavery has been more formal than real. We have seen, for instance, that with the process of globalization, the world expansion of capitalization since at least the late 1970s, has led to an expansion of informal labour. This has led to the expansion of all kinds of unpaid activities, of informal activities that are outside the wage relation. So, when we spoke of housework, we interpreted it as a prism, as a window to look at the capitalist system, which was really important for me.

I think that the work we did in the 1970s – analysing housework, analysing wages – was fundamental to decipher, interpret and analyse the whole process of recolonization that happened in the 1980s and 1990s and still continues throughout Latin America, Africa, influenced by the work of the IMF, structural adjustment, privatization, etc. It helped me tremendously with the work we had done because we understood capitalism’s relevance in relation to unpaid labour and hierarchy.

Capitalism is a producer of differences. Capitalist development has to continually develop new hierarchies, new divisions. It always responds to its crises through a massive process of expropriation, a massive process of expulsion from any means of reproduction.

When Maria Rosa Dalla Costa says that the housewife is iconic – which, of course, is a statement that has to be qualified – there’s something very profound there. She is iconic as a figure that embodies the unpaid worker. She is both the ‘unpaid worker’ and the ‘worker’, who is not recognized as such. She is a marginal figure or one destined to be surpassed by capitalist development.

Capitalism’s expansion has augmented unpaid labour. Students in the US and Europe, for example, are asked to do an enormous amount of unpaid work under the pretence of gaining skills, experience. We know of companies who are laying off workers because universities are sending them unpaid interns.

Catrin Ashton: And, despite the idea that women are somehow emancipated from housework, because we could go out to work if we wanted to and even earn high wages in some cases, the pandemic has shown that women still do most of the housework.

So after capitalism, who will do the dishes? Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash.

Wages for Housework was a campaign for much more than just a wage. Amongst other things it called for women’s autonomy over their own bodies. There was a pro-abortion campaign, anti-sterilization campaigns and campaigns against the medicalization of women’s bodies. The call was for women to be able to understand their own bodies. There was also a call for the state to stop controlling women’s bodies, in order, for example, to control birth rates.

In the UK, a large proportion of care home staff comes from the Global South or Eastern Europe. They tend to be a demographic that’s wary of COVID vaccinations, and yet, here they are, mostly women, greatly underpaid and being told to do something to their bodies that they are reluctant to do, for the good of the people. You’ve written about how capitalism has transformed the body into a work machine, and here’s an example of the work machine being adapted so that it can work ‘better’ in pandemic conditions.

Other than questioning the timing of decisions – whether reactions were too quick or too slow – I don’t think we, on the left, have adequately critiqued the UK government’s response to the pandemic. Do you think that this is fair, due to the nature of this crisis, or do you think that, as Marxists, as feminists, as activists on the left, we need to be asking more questions?

And, going back to care workers, how does the current issue fit into the wider historical context of state control over working-class women’s bodies? Is there a question over the negative responses they receive if they don’t comply?

Silvia Federici: Yes, there are many questions. But let me quickly give some context first.

The Wages For Housework Campaign also dealt with abortion. We were critical, as many black women’s organizations were too, of the exclusive position that the feminist movement held on abortion. Abortion meant the right to choose and, we said, in order to choose, in order to control our reproductive capacity, we must also fight for the right to have children.

In the US, black women have always been denied maternity rights. This has been the case from the time of slavery to the present day. Control over our bodies has two aspects: we want to be free to decide not to have children, but we also want the right to have children. In order to have children, there’s a struggle for the necessary resources so that we don’t have to be dependent on a man.

Also – and this is important – we have seen over the years that women who have gone on to take a job outside the home, with some exceptions, take precarious, underpaid jobs without autonomy. In the US, working class women have huge amounts of debt, because the wage is never enough: it is a big struggle to earn 15 US dollars an hour; most people make 7 dollars an hour; and millions are making only 15,000 dollars a year, including migrants who also need to send some money home. Clearly, these are not liveable wages, so people have recourse to loans. It’s the only way to survive.

During the pandemic 5 million women have lost paid employment. And 2.5 million have spontaneously left their jobs because they had children at home when schools were closed. The situation is desperate.

Domestic workers are in a terrible situation. First, in both Europe and the US, they are largely migrant women from Africa, the Caribbean, the Philippines who have left impoverished countries, either destroyed by wars, by the politics of the IMF, international capital, the European Union, the US government and so forth. Then, when the COVID-19 epidemic began, many were left with nothing from the families they worked for.

Not only have they suffered personally but also their entire families, whom they support, have suffered. I feel it’s unjust to force them to be vaccinated against their will.

Tolls of a trade? Photo by Félix Prado on Unsplash.

It’s very difficult for people such as myself to take a proper position on vaccination because we don’t know all the details. I’m not a doctor. I don’t have the qualifications to understand all aspects of these new vaccines. But there are certain questions that stand out, such as why is it that we never hear of therapy, or other means that can also help.

We aren’t aware of how many people are equally dying of cancer compared with COVID-19. Yet cancer raises questions about wider issues of pesticide use, water and air contamination, an environment that is more and more destructive to our bodies, especially in underprivileged parts of the world. This is not being talked about which makes me extremely suspicious that what is at stake is not really concern for our health but concern for the profit of big corporations.

COVID-19 vaccines are sold as a universal solution, the miracle. We are told not to worry about the long-term consequences. But we don’t know what they are yet. Of course, this doesn’t mean that COVID vaccines aren’t providing protection. But we are told anything is better than death, so we embrace the philosophy. I think there are many remaining questions centred on healthcare systems that have been destroyed over the years.


The great mortality COVID-19 has engendered is a political disaster. Such mortality could have been avoided if our healthcare systems, our nutritional care, had not been continually undermined. But raising a doubt about vaccines makes you a Trump supporter and a fascist. I really resent that now when we go out, the first thing anybody asks each other is, ‘are you vaccinated?’ I think that the discussion is more complex.

The pandemic provides a moment of truth. The system we follow is destructive. It puts us all in danger but some more than others: black communities, the elderly, people of the former colonial world. And we have also seen the incredible mercenary character of many pharmaceutical companies. They have used public money for their research and are now making everyone pay and often limiting the right to patents.

It’s clear that the capitalist class is going to use COVID-19 internationally for a major restructuring of capitalist development. The World Economic Forum is talking about a capitalist reset: a new form of capitalist development, the reorganization of work, a redistribution of wealth. I want to know if the people who are interested in a different kind of society are also those who are going to organize a reset. For me, the question is who exactly is going to set the stage for what is going to come next.

An edited Welsh version of this interview was published in O’r Pedwar Gwynt, summer 2021. Based on an interview held by Undod and the Communist Party in Wales in December 2020.

Published 31 January 2022
Original in English
First published by O’r Pedwar Gwynt

Contributed by O’r Pedwar Gwynt, summer 2021 

© Catrin Ashton / Silvia Federici / O'r Pedwar Gwynt / Eurozine

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Whose Family Values?

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK 

How teen pregnancies skyrocketed in lockdown

South Africa is fighting to keep girls in school

Colleta Dewa
22 April 2022


In most provinces of South Africa, teen pregnancies have more than doubled during the pandemic, and the police often fail to follow up on statutory rape cases. Many schoolgirls have been cornered by the lack of digital tools, exposed to blackmail and exploitation at the hands of those they asked for help so they could participate in online learning. The country has introduced special programmes to keep teenage mothers on their education track, but human rights groups say more is needed.


‘It is painful and heart-breaking watching a child become a mother. Children should be children not birthing other children. Because I could not afford to buy her a phone or a laptop, he took advantage of that!’, says 64-year-old Nosipo Murweri whose 13-year-old granddaughter Mbali1 was reportedly raped and impregnated by a 32-year-old man from their neighborhood. Unbias the News caught up with Murweri on an early morning in November 2021 as she joined the queue at Matale police station in Cullinan village, Gauteng Province in South Africa. Murweri has been frequenting the police station since March 2020, following up on Mbali’s rape case, but the police have only been ‘adding salt to her wound.’

‘Despite having told the police who the perpetrator was, nothing has been done. No arrest up to this day. The pain is even worse when I see him roaming the streets and my little girl dropped out of school because he impregnated her. She cries when she sees others going to or coming back from school. She feels like she is doomed,’ said Murweri. Mbali is just one of the 750,000 children who dropped out of school in South Africa between January 2020 and May 2021 due to learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another epidemic

By May 2021, the number of school-aged children not attending classes was approximately 650,000-750,000, a jump between four and five hundred thousand from pre-pandemic times, according to education researchers. Although the reasons for dropping out range from familial struggles to involvement with drugs and gang initiation, the pandemic precipitated a worrying consequence: the rise in teenage pregnancies directly linked to school that aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Gauteng province alone recorded 23,000 births by girls under the age of 18 between April 2020 and May 2021, with 934 of them below the age of 13. This province is home to nearly 15 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, including the country’s largest city Johannesburg, as well as the administrative capital Pretoria. Figures shown to Unbias the News by the organization indicate that seven out of the country’s 10 provinces recorded more than double the number of teenage pregnancies during the pandemic.

‘Unless we act fast and decisively, the impact on girls’ futures and all our futures will be devastating,’ said Marumo Sekgobela, spokesperson for Save The Children. ‘Save the Children has embarked on a program together with the government to ensure that adolescents have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information and services,’ added Sekgobela.

Rahima Essop, Head of Communications and Advocacy at Zero Dropout Campaign, an organization that aims to halve the number of South Africa’s school dropouts by 2030, says the pandemic made children from poorer communities ‘more vulnerable to dropping out of school.’ As she explains:

Students from the most vulnerable households are at highest risk of dropping out of school. If we don’t find ways to support these learners through school, we effectively trap them in cycles of inter-generational poverty and social exclusion, which often re-inscribe racial and gender inequalities. Over the course of the Covid-19 lockdown, the highest rates of dropouts have been among the poorest households in rural areas.

Though she could not give the exact statistics, Essop noted that African and Black students constitute the highest number of dropouts, as compared to white and Indian South African students.

A digital divide

According to Statistics South Africa (STS SA) more than 2.2 million jobs were lost to the economic consequences of the lockdown, further straining budgets in most households and making it difficult for some families to keep their children in school. Although schools managed to carry on using online resources and dividing attendance days, more than 50% of children in rural communities could not afford online learning due to lack of digital resources, including both data and devices.

Minister of Basic Education Matsie Angelina Motshekga told Unbias the News:

Parents struggle to provide fees, transport, and school supplies due to the hardships exacerbated by the global pandemic. Because most schools resorted to online learning during lockdown periods, poorer communities could not afford these, hence children from these communities were left out and some of them subsequently dropped out of school.

Section 29 of the country’s constitution states that every person in South Africa has the right to a basic education and the Constitutional Court states that access to school, which must include attendance, as a ‘necessary condition’ to the fulfillment of the right to basic education.

There are 13 million children in grades 1 to 12 in South Africa but the pandemic pushed school attendance to its lowest level in 20 years. Although education is free in some public schools, demand for enrolment into non-paying schools exceeds capacity. As a result, not everyone is accommodated.

Minister Motshekga noted that the country’s ‘Eastern Cape province had the highest number of dropouts, followed by the Free-state Province.’ These provinces are dominated by rural areas.
Aggravating inequality

The pandemic has proven to be nothing but a messenger of irreversible setbacks, inflicting permanent and visible scars on the lives of many girls in South Africa and the world at large. It has also exposed how inequality and poverty aggravate gender-based violence against girls. It’s painfully exemplified in Mbali’s case:

I last went to school in March 2020. Schools were being closed abruptly due to COVID19 lockdowns. Others were doing lessons from home using laptops or smart phones but I have neither of these at home … Because I was eager to catch up with my fellow classmates, I would go to Muchuzi (the alleged rapist) to ask for his phone so that I could attend online classes. He would give me the phone but after a month, he told me that I have to pay him back by sleeping with him. This happened many times until June (2020) when I discovered that I was pregnant. …

My grandmother told the Village Head and they both went to approach him but he denied it. That is when we went to the police and we were told that I should have reported the matter the first time it happened.

Early pregnancy in the country forces many girls to drop out of school and can leave them stigmatized by society for being teenage mothers, or leave them trapped in early marriage. Culturally, there is a belief that falling pregnant out of wedlock is a symbol of loose morals or a bad upbringing.
Police failing to catch up

Because of poverty, some of these girls are forced to submit to the demands of their abusers and in some cases, the police are letting them down by not treating some of the incidents with the seriousness and urgency they deserve.

According to the country’s constitution, the age of consent is 16, but girls as young as ten are giving birth. Despite the statutory rape offence, Mbali says Muchuzi went on to threaten her with ‘revenge porn,’ saying that if she goes to the police, he ‘would circulate the video he took while they were having sex.’

‘Although there are isolated cases where victims complain that the police did not help them, I can assure you that child and women abuse is a major concern and a priority for the police,’ said police spokesperson Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo.

The human rights advocacy group Legal Resource Centre (LRC) says that in a country where child abuse is so rampant, police and the judiciary ‘need not let the girls down.’ Shaatirah Hassim of the Legal Resource Centre says:


‘South Africa needs to address teenage pregnancies which are rising at an alarming rate. The police may argue that they are doing their best in dealing with this, but we need a collective effort at national level to see if the men responsible for these statutory rapes are actually being prosecuted. Do the figures of victims tally with figures of convicts of statutory rape? If not, who is sleeping on duty, the police or judiciary?

Schools are a form of protection. Girls stuck at home during lockdown were vulnerable to falling victims of male relatives or neighbors, compromising and complicating the chances of abuse cases being reported to police. ‘Some cases just go unreported for various reasons: sometimes their families or community prevent victims from reporting when the perpetrators are close relatives, sometimes it’s fear of the unknown or threats by the perpetrators,’ argues Brigadier Naidoo. ‘Sometimes they choose to settle the issues on their own or force the girls into early marriages. This makes it difficult for the police to do their work.’
A lost generation?

Florence Siziba, the School Head at Lonhaba High School in the West Rand, says an integrated and holistic approach is needed to support girls to stay in school and achieve their full potential during and after pregnancy. Siziba said,


Bit by bit we are losing a generation to school dropouts related to COVID-19.At my school, currently four girls did not return to school due to pregnancy. Two of them are 14-years-old, one is thirteen and Letwin is 16.

Letwin was supposed to be taking her final exam but she ran away from home due to the abuse she faced at the hands of her parents when they discovered she was pregnant. We tried to track her down to sit for her exams but to no avail. She was one of the brightest students.

In a country where about a third of young people aged 15 to 24 are both unemployed and without education or training for future employment, to underestimate the drastic effect dropping out has on their futures is both short-sighted and devastating.

‘We are hopeful that the figures will drop since the Minister of Basic Education has intensified the implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in schools,’ added Siziba. But sex education can only go part of the way in addressing the unequal standards faced by student who become pregnant.
The scar is only seen on me

Unbias the News tracked down Letwin, who gave birth in October 2021 and found her at her auntie’s place. She shared her story:


I am supposed to be taking my final exams but I have a newborn child. What pains me the most is that the guy who impregnated me is also a student and he is in class, taking his exams. The scar is only seen on me because it is a woman who gets pregnant.I tried to go back to school after lockdown but it was not easy. The teachers and fellow students stigmatized me. Sometimes I would sleep in class only to wake up to laughter and mockery statements so I decided to stop because it was draining me.

I faced bullying at school and lack of compassion at home. My dad would wake me up even at midnight telling me to go to the man who impregnated me. That’s when I decided to run away and came to stay with my auntie here.

According to Panyaza Lesufu, Education Member of the Executive Council for Gauteng Province, ‘of the thousands of girls who get pregnant, only a third are likely to return to school after giving birth.’

‘I would want to go back to school after giving birth. My auntie has spoken to people from UNICEF and they linked me up with social workers who said they can take my child to a safe place as I go back to school and will reunite us when I am done with school and ready to take the baby’, said Letwin of her future plans.
Light at the end of the tunnel

Muriel Mafico is the deputy representative for UNICEF in South Africa. She says that the teen pregnancy surge ‘requires a multi-sectoral engagement. Families, communities, schools and government have to work together. Mental health and psycho-social support is needed for the girls/victims.’

At the national level, the Ministry of Education has embarked on a massive drive to help keep the pregnant girls in schools. Granville Whittle, deputy director general of the Department of Basic Education says they deployed 3,000 young people known as ‘learner support agents’ to schools mandated with supporting young girls who get pregnant.

‘This includes taking schoolwork to their homes if they missed school or are at home sick, and also to help them access social welfare services such as child support grants when the babies are born.’ Whittle explained. ‘They also provide emotional support for vulnerable pupils and those from granny-headed households with homework.’

Whittle added that the ministry also signed an agreement with the United States’ government for additional funding aimed and hiring more learner support agents. ‘Programmes are in place to educate girls on voluntarily giving up of their children for adoption. It is also important to note that those who dropped out still have the opportunity to re-enter the system in 2022,’ Whittle added.
The right to remain in school

The future of many girls impregnated and forced to drop out of school has been compromised, but where are the fathers if they are neither in prison nor in the lives of the mother and child?

‘For the years that I have worked in communities around South Africa, I realized that the father always plays a shadowy role in the whole teen pregnancy journey, but I want the nation to know that there are laws that can make these men take care of their children,’ said Monsi Madosi, a social worker with the department of Social Welfare.

The urgent need to address the matter pushed the cabinet to approve the Teenage Pregnancy Policy in mid-November. The policy grants a right for pregnant students to continue with their education as do male students who impregnate them. It also contains a reporting requirement for children who fall pregnant as a result of statutory rape. The policy goes into effect this month.

South Africa joins five other countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, namely Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone and São Tomé and Príncipe, in countermanding discriminatory policies and adopting policies that allow pregnant students to stay in school.

The teenage pregnancy crisis in South Africa has brought into question the country’s social and criminal justice policies, as well as their sincerity to efficiently deal with child abuse cases. The future of girls like Mbali and Letwin, future depends on whether society continues to see them as students as they become parents.

This article was contributes to Eurozine by Unbias the News. Illustrated by Victoria Shibaeva, edited by Tina Lee

Names have been changed to protect the identities of the young subjects.


Published 22 April 2022
Original in English
First published by Unbias the News


© Colleta Dewa / Unbias the NewsPDF/PRINT

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European Cultural Foundation

Sheryl Sandberg under fire for trying to kill a story about her ex, the CEO of Activision Blizzard

Taylor Hatmaker@tayhatmaker /•April 21, 2022

Image Credits: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is now facing “internal scrutiny” at the company after pressuring U.K. tabloid the Daily Mail to kill a story about her former boyfriend, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.

The revelations come in an explosive new report from the Wall Street Journal detailing a coordinated campaign to discourage the tabloid from publishing the story, pulling resources from both Activision Blizzard and Meta.

Sandberg dated Kotick, now accused of facilitating a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination at his company, from 2016 to 2019. In spite of denying that he had knowledge of disturbing allegations of employee misconduct, including alleged rape, Kotick apparently knew about many of those incidents — a fact he concealed from the company’s board.

The Wall Street Journal report details how Sandberg contacted the Daily Mail’s digital division in 2016 and again in 2019 as the tabloid was working to reveal a temporary restraining order against Kotick that a former girlfriend put in place in 2014. Sandberg and Kotick reportedly “developed a strategy to persuade the Daily Mail not to report on the restraining order,” working in tandem with employees from their respective companies.

In both instances, Sandberg reportedly told the tabloid that Kotick’s former girlfriend since retracted the allegations of harassment that prompted her to file for a restraining order.

According to The WSJ report, Meta is now reviewing its COO’s involvement in trying to kill the story about her then-boyfriend. When TechCrunch asked if Sandberg would have violated company policy by leveraging internal PR resources for a personal dispute, Meta declined to answer.

“Sheryl Sandberg never threatened the MailOnline’s business relationship with Facebook in order to influence an editorial decision,” Meta Executive Communications spokesperson Mao-Lin Shen said in a statement emailed to TechCrunch. “This story attempts to make connections that don’t exist.”

For a company weary from an unrelenting series of scandals, revelations about Sandberg’s meddling in her ex-boyfriend’s PR crisis are just another headache. It’s not clear how seriously Meta is scrutinizing her behavior — or if the broader leadership team was even aware of it, though The WSJ does indicate her actions are under “review” for potentially breaking company rules.

After years of tension and high stakes policy-setting during the Trump years, Sandberg is reportedly no longer as close with Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg as she once was. It’s possible that the Kotick situation will be viewed as yet another misstep in which Sandberg makes headlines for the wrong reasons. Internally, Sandberg is known for deploying Meta’s PR resources in defense of her personal brand, though the degree to which Meta’s COO was working in lockstep with the rest of company leadership around the Kotick situation isn’t yet known.

Kotick hangs on by a thread

In a statement to TechCrunch, Activision Blizzard’s board of directors stated that Kotick informed the senior independent director of the board about the “incident” in 2014 and later notified the full board. After an investigation through law firm Skadden Arps, the board determined that there was “no merit to the allegations.”

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson referred TechCrunch to Elizabeth McCloskey with the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, who provided a statement from Kotick’s former girlfriend, who the firm declined to name, walking back her former allegations against Kotick.

” … In 2014, I signed a sworn statement making clear that what I had said was untrue,” according to the statement from Kotick’s former girlfriend provided through the law firm. In the statement, she also accused The WSJ of “exploiting” her in order to publish an unflattering story on Kotick.

Activision Blizzard employees staged a walkout and circulated a petition to call for Kotick’s resignation in November in light of his involvement in the ongoing culture crisis at the company. Kotick has hung on as CEO so far, but reports suggest he won’t retain the position on the other side of Microsoft’s planned $69 billion acquisition of the company.

Activision Blizzard also named two new women to its board Thursday, though the company told TechCrunch that the timing of this announcement is not connected to new revelations around Kotick. Those board additions are Substack Communications VP Lulu Cheng Meservey, formerly of TrailRunner, and Kerry Carr, an SVP from Bacardi.

The pair of new board members will replace two men who are stepping down from the board. As Bloomberg observed, the additions will bring Activision Blizzard’s board into compliance with California law that mandates a public company’s board with six or more directors must include at least three women or face steep fines.

Kotick himself will soon be leaving Coca-Cola’s board, where he’s served in a well-compensated role for a decade. The company faced pressure from some investors to remove Kotick in light of the unfolding scandal around company culture at Activision Blizzard, though the gaming executive says he will step down to focus on steering his company through its acquisition by Microsoft.

Protest at London court as extradition of Julian Assange from UK to US on spying charges edges closer

Supporters of Julian Assange protest yesterday outside Westminster Magistrates' Court. 

Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty

April 21 2022 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States has edged a step closer after magistrates formally issued an order paving the way for him to face espionage charges.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel will now be responsible for deciding whether to approve the extradition after a protracted legal battle.

An extradition order was issued by chief magistrate Paul Goldspring during a seven-minute hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday.

Mr Goldspring said: “In layman’s terms, I am duty bound to send your case to the Secretary of State for a decision.”

Outside court, scores of supporters gathered, holding placards reading: “Don’t extradite Assange”.

The extradition may yet be further delayed by an appeal.

Assange (50) was not present in court physically, although he watched the administrative proceedings by video-link from Belmarsh Prison, London.

He appeared to form a heart shape with his hands during part of the hearing.

He is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

His legal team claimed the publication of classified documents exposed US wrongdoing and were in the public interest.

They said the prosecution was politically motivated and that he faces up to 175 years in jail.

Assange, who married his fiancée, Stella Moris, last month, has been held in Belmarsh prison for three years since being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Mrs Assange was in the public gallery for the hearing.

Noise from the supporters could be heard outside the courtroom.

Among them was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who told those assembled: “He’s done absolutely no more than telling the truth to the world. Julian, we will carry on campaigning.”

Op-Ed: Assange case — Chasing the ghosts of the past using only double standards?


ByPaul Wallis
Published

April 20, 2022



Assange faces 18 charges in the US including espionage and hacking - Copyright AFP/File Biju BORO

A UK court has issued an order for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US. this order comes after many years of effective inaction and Mr. Assange’s virtual imprisonment for several years.

Materials collected and leaked by Chelsea Manning, an ex-US Army serviceman, were published by Assange as editor of Wikileaks in 2010. These materials included information regarding serious allegations of US military misconduct during the Iraq war.

Leaked materials also contained videos and other information regarding the deaths of civilians and other actions categorized under international law as war crimes. Very little legal or other action appears to have happened regarding allegations and evidence contained in this information.

An earlier UK court finding ruled against the deportation of Assange. This ruling was overturned by a superior court when the US was given the right to appeal. Assange still has the option to appeal to the High Court regarding the current deportation ruling.

A few legal perspective issues
Is leaking information regarding war crimes an offense? Against whom? The people killed or the people killing them? The mere fact that the large numbers of deaths are apparently legally worth less than the publication of the information about them deserves some attention.

The public interest: The public, of whom you have heard occasional mentions, are paying for these wars with their lives and the money of the privileged few who pay taxes. How is publication of this information NOT in the public interest? Are the public paying for unpunished war crimes?

Security leaks: What security leaks? Allegations at the time of supposed security leaks putting servicepeople at risk don’t seem to have any substance at all, especially over time. Why not?

Security breaches: Manning, a very low ranking soldier, supposedly collected this vast amount of information over a considerable period of time. To what level of security classifications could he have access? I ask because the exact significance and security status of the leaks needs to be quantified.

An explanation of how these supposedly serious breaches of security also got no further than prosecuting Manning would also be nice. …Or were they not deserving of investigation for some reason? Because on the face of it, the average local supermarket has or had more security oversight than the US military. Somebody downloads that much information and nobody notices? Come off it.

Espionage: There is no indication of espionage being conducted by Assange or Manning. No money changed hands, which it usually does in any real espionage environment. There is no reason to believe this information was published for any other reason than in serving the legitimate public interest.

Double standards 1: If this information had been leaked regarding any other nation, the person leaking and publishers would be considered true patriots. Ironically, they’d also be considered to be providing information for the purpose of justice.

Double standards 2: The publication of information that relates to war crimes is illegal? How?
Double standards 3: Information regarding the Wikileaks data was also published by every other news media site on Earth. They’re not guilty of anything? After the fact or not, they’re publishing exactly the same information.

Double standards 4: Can Assange receive a fair trial in the US? there has been absolutely no presumption of innocence or legal mitigation whatsoever. If so, how can he get a fair trial? Does the US legal system have access to jurors who haven’t read any news in the last 12 years?

… So how are we going with the course of justice?

Not too well, it seems. If reporting and publishing information related to serious breaches of US and international law is illegal, times are tough in the legal profession. Kindly note that most of the significant information published by Wikileaks relates almost entirely to reportable offenses. Personnel are supposed to report such breaches of law under military regulations and international law. Nobody did.

Manning, in effect, did exactly that. Assange published that information. Explain how that’s a crime. You may have to, you know.

Nobel laureate urges journalists to publish US documents after Assange extradition order

Adolfo Perez Esquivel says Julian Assange is 'victim of US policy of oppression for defending freedom of press'

Ahmet Gurhan Kartal |21.04.2022



LONDON

A Nobel Peace laureate on Thursday urged all media and journalists with “civic courage” to publish US documents that show violations of human and peoples’ rights.

The letter by 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel underlined a British court decision Wednesday to extradite WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, saying: “This decision leads to a death sentence for defending freedom of the press.”

Esquivel wrote: “We call on all media, journalists who fight for freedom to speak out and demand the freedom of Julian Assange who with civic courage, publishes US documents that violate human and peoples’ rights.

“Allowing Julian to be extradited is a threat to freedom of the press and a grave warning to those who question the repressive policies and serious violations of human and peoples’ rights committed by the United States.”

The Argentine Nobel laureate further said: “Julian Assange is a victim of US policy of oppression for defending freedom of the press. We reject the decision of the British justice system and demand the freedom of Julian Assange.”

A British court on Wednesday issued a formal order to extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges.

The final decision on the extradition will be made by Home Secretary Priti Patel next month, which Assange will be able to appeal at the High Court if she goes ahead with a decision of extradition.

Assange will face 18 counts of hacking the US government computers and violating the espionage law if he is extradited to the US and a potential prison sentence for years. He may face a prison term of up to 175 years.

The 50-year-old was dragged out of Ecuador’s embassy building in London in 2019, where he took refuge for more than seven years.

The British police arrested him for skipping his bail in 2012 and on behalf of the US due to an extradition warrant.

Assange order shows “hypocritical nature” of US – China

Foreign ministry spokesperson said the US has presented the true face of its ‘freedom of speech and the press’

Julian Assange © Jack Taylor / Getty Images

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has hit out against the order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US, issued by a UK court earlier this week, saying that it represents the hypocritical nature of the US government.

“This is the true face of the US 'freedom of speech and the press.' The extradition of Assange to the US can lay bare the hypocritical nature of the US government better than the WikiLeaks revelations,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, during a press conference on Thursday.

The Chinese official also noted that everything Julian Assange has gone through ever since he reported on alleged US war crimes, tells people that “those who expose the so-called atrocities of other countries are heroes, while those who expose the scandals of the US are criminals.”

A magistrates court in London issued a formal order on Wednesday to extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he will face up to 175 years in prison under the espionage charges brought against him for publishing a trove of classified State Department and Pentagon documents in 2010, which detailed alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has been accused of attempting to hack Pentagon computers and has been charged under the Espionage Act, which prohibits obtaining information related to national defense which can be used to undermine US interests or benefit foreign nations. 

Assange’s legal team has argued that the UK court’s ruling was equivalent to issuing him a “death sentence” as the whistleblower’s defense has insisted that the US might subject him to solitary confinement and psychological torture. Meanwhile, Assange’s wife, Stella Moris, claims that her husband’s health has significantly deteriorated ever since he was placed in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison three years ago, adding that he suffered a stroke in October 2021.

Read more

 Assange extradition order issued by UK court

The prosecution of Julian Assange has sparked fierce international criticism against the US and British governments by advocates of media freedom. Assange supporters see him as a prisoner of conscience who is being persecuted by Washington and London for his work as a publisher, arguing that the case against him sets a chilling precedent which suggests that any journalist wishing to investigate misconduct by Western governments may have their lives completely ruined in retribution.

Assange has denied all accusations against him, while his defenders and supporters point out that neither he nor WikiLeaks were under US jurisdiction when documents were published. They insist Assange had engaged in journalism that is legal in the US, and that accusations of him conspiring to hack the Pentagon’s computer systems were based on discredited testimony of a convicted Icelandic criminal.

WikiLeaks’ official position on the charges is that they are politically motivated and “represent an unprecedented attack on press freedom and the public’s right to know – seeking to criminalize basic journalistic activity.”

RT

UK: RSF joins 19 organisations in urging Home Secretary Priti Patel to reject Assange extradition


JESSICA TAYLOR / AFP / UK PARLIAMENT

ORGANISATION
RSF_en
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has joined 19 organisations in urging UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to reject the US government's request to extradite Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. These groups, representing press freedom, free expression, and journalists' organisations, have also requested a meeting with Patel to discuss concerns in the case. The full text of the letter is below.

The Rt. Hon Priti Patel

Secretary of State for the Home Department

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

22 April 2022

Dear Home Secretary,

We, the undersigned press freedom, free expression and journalists' organisations  are writing to express our serious concern regarding the possibility of extradition of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States and to ask you to reject the US government’s extradition request. We also request a meeting with you to discuss these points further.

In March, the Supreme Court refused to consider Mr Assange’s appeal against the High Court decision, which overturned the District Court ruling barring extradition on mental health grounds. We are deeply disappointed with this decision given the high public interest in this case, which deserved review by the highest court in the land.

However, it is now in your hands to decide whether to approve or reject Mr Assange’s extradition to the US. The undersigned organisations urge you to act in the interest of press freedom and journalism by refusing extradition and immediately releasing Mr Assange from prison, where he has remained on remand for three years despite the great risks posed to his mental and physical health. 

In the US, Mr Assange would face trial on 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which combined could see him imprisoned for up to 175 years. He is highly likely to be detained there in conditions of isolation or solitary confinement despite the US government’s assurances, which would severely exacerbate his risk of suicide. 

Further, Mr Assange would be unable to adequately defend himself in the US courts, as the Espionage Act lacks a public interest defence. His prosecution would set a dangerous precedent that could be applied to any media outlet that published stories based on leaked information, or indeed any journalist, publisher or source anywhere in the world. 

We ask you, Home Secretary, to honour the UK government’s commitment to protecting and promoting media freedom and reject the US extradition request. We ask you to release Mr Assange from Belmarsh prison and allow him to return to his young family after many years of isolation. Finally, we ask you to publicly commit to ensuring that no publisher, journalist or source ever again faces detention in the UK for publishing information in the public interest.

We request to schedule a meeting at your earliest convenience, and would be grateful for a prompt response. Please reply via Azzurra Moores at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) at amoores@rsf.org.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Vincent, Director of Operations and Campaigns, Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Sarah Clarke, Head of Europe and Central Asia, ARTICLE 19

Mark Johnson, Legal and Policy Officer, Big Brother Watch

Dr Suelette Dreyfus, Executive Director, Blueprint for Free Speech

Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN

Laurens Hueting, Senior Advocacy Officer, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)

Ricardo Gutiérrez, General Secretary, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)

Ralf Nestmeyer, Vice-President and Writers-in-Prison Officer, German PEN

Index on Censorship 

Anthony Bellanger, General Secretary, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)

Séamus Dooley, Assistant General Secretary, National Union of Journalists

Romana Cacchioli, Executive Director, PEN International 

Christine McKenzie, President, PEN International Melbourne Centre

Kjersti Løken Stavrum, President, PEN Norway

Zoë Rodriguez, joint President, PEN Sydney, and Chair of the PEN International Women Writers Committee

Peter Tatchell, Director, Peter Tatchell Foundation

Ricky Monahan Brown, President, Scottish PEN

Tanja Tuma, President, Slovene PEN

Jesper Bengtsson, President, Swedish PEN

Report Finds Biden Administration Jails Too Many Asylum Seekers, keeps Them Locked Up Too Long


2022-April-22 

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Joe Biden administration is unnecessarily jailing immigrants requesting asylum, detaining thousands for months when they could be staying with family members or in supportive circumstances where they could pursue their cases safely and at less taxpayer expense, according to a report released Thursday by Human Rights First, an international human rights organization.

The report, "'I'm a Prisoner Here': Biden Administration Policies Lock Up Asylum Seekers", credits the White House with ending Donald Trump administration attempts to limit and even halt the asylum process. However, it says Biden policies are resulting in needless mass detention of people seeking asylum, a protection that can be granted to applicants who fear persecution based on race, religion, nationality or political opinion, USA TODAY reported.

"As the administration restores compliance with US refugee law at the southern US border and ends Trump policy that illegally prevented people from seeking asylum, it should not substitute one rights-violating policy for another," said the report, based on information on more than 200 asylum seekers and immigrants who have been detained and interviews with 76 of them.

It cites Biden's campaign pledge to eliminate prolonged detention, but says the Department of Homeland Security "under the Biden administration has detained tens of thousands of asylum seekers, jailing many in newly opened or expanded facilities or in remote areas where they often face insurmountable barriers to fairly presenting their asylum claims".

The report comes amid growing frustration with the Biden administration from both sides of the immigration debate.

Immigration opponents, including Republicans in Congress and state GOP officials, have criticized the Biden administration for not taking a tougher stance on what to do with the record number of people waiting in Mexico to legally enter the United States and those illegally crossing the Mexico-US border.

But others who support immigration reform that would allow more people to legally live in the United States have said the Biden administration is violating the human rights of asylum seekers and must do more to sway public opinion toward supporting immigrant rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which did not participate in producing the report, also favors placing immigrants with family or in supportive community programs, said Eunice Cho, an ACLU senior staff attorney who focuses on immigration detention issues.

“The government has instead chosen to put them behind bars, sometimes for very lengthy periods of time. What we know, generally speaking, is that ICE detention is a system that's marked by rampant abuse, mistreatment and danger,” she said, ADDING, “We can build a system that supports immigrants and the government's interest without the cost and the abuses that are part of this fundamentally flawed system.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement Thursday to USA TODAY that it focuses its civil immigration enforcement efforts "on the apprehension and removal of noncitizens who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security".

ICE added it "takes seriously the health, safety, and welfare of those in our care, and commits to protecting their rights under the law".

The Human Rights First report says the health of people with serious medical conditions has been endangered by detention. It cites the case of a Venezuelan man who was incarcerated for five months before dying of complications from AIDS, pneumonia, respiratory and kidney failure and COVID-19.

The administration's detention policy has "inflicted enormous trauma and suffering", said the report's author, Rebecca Gendelman, a Human Rights First attorney focusing on refugee protection research.

A Sudanese man interviewed for the report, who identified himself as Sabri, told USA TODAY he was detained for more than five months, even though a US judge granted him a positive credible fear determination – an early major step in the asylum process that means something bad would likely happen to him if he returned to his home country – just a month after arriving at the Texas border in August. Sabri, who fears persecution if he returns to Sudan, said he remained detained despite having family members in the US who could have given him a place to stay.

After Immigrations and Customs Enforcement declined to release him from a Louisiana correctional center even though his lawyer said he was entitled to parole, Sabri wrote to make another release request. An ICE officer "told me, 'The more you write, the more you stay in prison'," he said.

Sabri, who was separated from his wife when they arrived in the United States due to lack of marriage documentation, also said it is difficult to prepare properly for an asylum hearing while incarcerated.

"So, you might get rejected," he said.

"You have to have all the evidence … to present it to the court. When you’re in a cell in a detention center, you do not have (access to) the evidence, so you might get rejected," said the man, now reunited with his wife as they continue to seek permanent asylum.

The Human Rights First report, based on information collected from February 2021 to April 2022, alleges a number of government transgressions during Biden's tenure in the White House:

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) incarcerated tens of thousands of immigrants who could otherwise comply with requirements of the asylum process while living with family members or in community-based case support programs. The mass jailing results from asylum seekers being designated as a threat and isn't justified, the report says.

• People from Black-majority countries requesting asylum have been detained 27% longer than those from other countries. Black asylum seekers "have been subjected to horrific anti-Black abuse and mistreatment in ICE detention", including officers cutting hair worn in braids or locks and making racist statements.

• Detention of asylum-seeking parents has resulted in family separation.

• LGBTQ asylum seekers, including transgender people, face a serious risk of violence in detention.

• The administration has ignored a court order requiring release of medically vulnerable people from detention, a situation made worse by COVID-19.

The pandemic "just exacerbates the cruelty and the danger of jailing people", Gendelman said.

The Biden administration "has taken some positive steps to reduce the use of immigration detention (from Trump-era levels). It's not currently detaining families with minor children. It requested a reduction in detention funding, and it's taken steps to close some facilities", she said, adding, "At the same time, it has expanded and reopened other immigration jails and continues to detain asylum seekers and separate families at the border."

At a presentation Thursday held in conjunction with the report's release, a Ugandan activist named Salma, who had been attacked and kidnapped in Uganda, where her brother was tortured and killed, said a Customs and Border Protection officer initially recommended she return home rather than spend what he said would be years in detention waiting to gain asylum.

“But I had to save my life and if I went back to my country, I don’t know how I would survive,” said Salma, who said she was chained as she went through processing.

“They chained my hands, they chained my waist, they chained my legs like I was a criminal, a very, very bad criminal. That is the part that actually tormented me a lot," she added.

Gendelman recommended a shift from reliance on detention to community-case support programs, which provide legal representation, housing and health care and are "a more humane and effective and less costly solution than immigration detention".

Such programs also "have shown enormous success in ensuring that asylum seekers appear at their hearings", Gendelman said. As a group, they are not flight risks, she said, citing an analysis of government data from 2008 to 2018 that determined that 83% of non-detained immigrants and 96% of those who had lawyers attended their immigration court hearings.

Other report recommendations include issuance of regulations with a strong presumption against detention; adoption of the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, which limits the use of detention; support for universal legal representation; and avoidance of the "flawed" expedited removal process.

In May, the administration could rescind Title 42, a policy adopted under Trump that allowed expulsion of asylum seekers at the Mexican border to prevent the spread of COVID but was seen by critics as a way to stop immigration. That will restore compliance with US refugee law and allow asylum seekers to enter the country, said Gendelman, who nevertheless is concerned that it will result in more detention if government enforcement priorities don't change.

The Human Rights First report also takes a dim view of "so-called 'alternatives to detention' that rely on punitive and intrusive electronic surveillance," such as ankle monitors, and can "effectively place people under house arrest".

Other pro-immigrant groups have also expressed concern about Biden administration policies.

Detention Watch Network, an immigrant advocacy group that was not involved with the report, supports the lifting of Title 42 and full restoration of asylum access, but that should be done "without the use of immigration detention, including detention by another name—Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 'alternatives to detention,'" advocacy Director Setareh Ghandehari said in a statement.

Sabri, now reunited with his wife in the Midwest as they pursue asylum status, said living in the United States is still his goal, despite the long detention and having to post a higher bond than many other immigrants.

"Yeah, 100%, I want to be here. This is the journey that I planned," he said, adding, "I'll be staying the rest of my life if I get guaranteed over here."