THE SHOCK OF NIHILISM
Investigating the Stone Age origins of violent raids

Archaeology correspondent David Keys reports on a scientific investigation that unmasks a prehistoric nightmare

Humans have used bows and arrows for hunting for around 70,000 years – and the new research into the Jebel Sahaba skeletons proves that such weapons were being used in intercommunal warfare between hunter-gatherer groups probably from at least around 20,000 years ago. This image shows a prehistoric rock painting depicting a southern African San archer in Cederberg Mountains, South Africa.
(Getty)

New archaeological research has shed fresh light on the extremely violent nature of Stone Age warfare.

A detailed analysis of conflict wounds sustained by members of a small community living in the Nile Valley almost 20,000 years ago has revealed that prehistoric warriors attacked populations indiscriminately, injuring and killing women and children with the same high frequency that they slaughtered adult males.

The only difference was that they usually appear to have killed children with clubs at close quarters – rather than solely using arrows and spears.

The picture emerging from the study – carried out by the British Museum and the French National Centre for Scientific Research – demonstrates, for the first time, the indiscriminate brutality of at least some Stone Age warfare.

The analysis reveals that, as far as the population studied is concerned, large pitched battles did not tend to occur. Instead, there seem to have been very frequent small-scale events in which family groups were attacked, sometimes with extraordinary ferocity and levels of violence far in excess of that needed to merely kill people.

Several victims had between 10 and 20 unhealed arrow or spear injuries – and had each been subjected to at least one frenzied attack.


Dr Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho (left), Dr Isabelle Crevecoeur carry out microscopic analysis of bone lesions on the Jebel Sahaba victims at the Egypt and Sudan Department of the British Museum
(Isabelle Crevecoeur/Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho )

One woman had, for instance, 19 unhealed arrow or spear injuries to her hip, upper legs, upper arm, shoulder and head

Another individual – a male – had serious unhealed injuries to his lower jaw, upper legs, upper arm and forearm.

In eight cases, the scientists found fragments of flint arrowheads still embedded in victims’ bones – and in 28 cases, they found flint arrowhead or spearhead material inside victims, but not embedded in their bones (thus suggesting a high frequency of injuries to flesh and organs). In seven individuals, more than five examples of such flint projectile material were discovered inside each of their body cavities.

In an exhaustive study over the past eight years, the scientists used microscopes to examine, in great detail, 61 individuals, from a prehistoric cemetery site called Jebel Sahaba in northern Sudan, originally excavated in the 1960s.

Of those 61 people, 41 per cent had suffered arrow or spear injuries to their remaining bones. A further 21 per cent had been injured or killed with clubs or other blunt weapons

In most cases, almost half of their visible impact wounds had healed, suggesting that those individuals had been attacked on multiple occasions – on average, perhaps several times per year.

The arrow and spear impact marks almost certainly represent only a small fraction of the total number of attacks suffered by victims because about a third of each individual’s bones could not be examined – they had not survived – and because many combat injuries would have been to flesh and organs rather than to bones (and were therefore largely undetectable). Many totally healed impacts were also undetectable.

Violence was inflicted on families indiscriminately. At least half of the 15 children in the cemetery had visible evidence of having been attacked, often multiple times.

At least 19 out of the 43 adults in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery had also been attacked with spears or arrows – often on multiple occasions. And a further 11 had been injured or killed with hand-held blunt weapons. The only group comparatively absent from the cemetery were teenagers.

In terms of gender, men and women seem to have been attacked by the group’s enemies with equal frequency and ferocity.

Except in the case of children (who were often killed with blunt weapons – presumably stone hammers or bone or wooden clubs), most attacks were carried out from a distance – through the use of spears and bows and arrows.

The skeletons examined over the past eight years come from an excavation carried out at Jebel Sahaba in northern Sudan in 1965
(Image courtesy of the Wendorf Archives of the British Museum)

It appears that arrows predominated because, where direct (rather than oblique) impacts on bone occurred, penetration was often substantial (sometimes several centimetres, suggesting very high velocity impacts).

Certainly, the bow and arrow had already been in use in Africa for about 50,000 years – and had also been employed in Asia for more than 20,000 years.

The arrows and spears used to carry out the Nile Valley attacks were very sophisticated – and designed to cause the maximum amount of blood loss.

It may be that the levels of violence at Jebel Sahaba were particularly high because climatic changes at the time would have led to substantially increased competition between different communities.

The Nile Valley hinterland was becoming much more arid, reducing wild game availability – and Nile water levels were becoming much more erratic, with occasional major floods destroying virtually all local vegetation.

Dr Daniel Antoine, acting keeper of the Department of Egypt and Sudan, and curator of Bioarchaeology at the British Museum, said: "Jebel Sahaba has now been shown to be the oldest cemetery in the Nile valley and one of the earliest sites displaying extensive interpersonal violence in the world. Competition for resources due to a shift in the climate was most probably responsible for these frequent conflicts."

Dr Isabelle Crevecoeur, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and lead researcher on the project, said: "Healed and unhealed lesions, caused by arrows, spears and other weapons, were found on over two-thirds of the 61 individuals buried at the site, regardless of their age or sex, including young children."

Although the most detailed study of the victims has been carried out over the past few years (and is only being published today), none of the scientific work would have been possible without the original excavations of the site, commissioned by Unesco in advance of the construction of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam and the subsequent inundation of the site by Lake Nasser in the 1960s. Today, the site of the Stone Age cemetery is inaccessible – because it lies at the bottom of that vast lake.

The precise date of the Jebel Sahaba cemetery is not known, but tests show that the skeletons were buried there between 13,400 years ago and 20,000 years ago, and probably during the older part of that date range. However, the cemetery itself appears to have been in use for only two or three generations.

The new research is important because it reveals the unexpectedly very high levels of violence that could erupt, in at least some circumstances, in the Stone Age.

It suggests that there may have been no rules or traditions or taboos governing conflict between communities – and that in turn suggests that there may have been no ethical values in existence, at least as far as the treatment of members of other communities was concerned.

The amount of excess violence (that is, over and above that needed to kill somebody) also gives insights into the degree of animosity felt by communities against other people – and the brutal slaughter of children suggests that the attackers wanted to obliterate a community rather than merely defeating it.

The new research into the Jebel Sahaba skeletons is being published today in the science journal Nature – Scientific Reports.

Are mushrooms on Mars proof of alien life?

Discoveries of the fungus-like minerals, writes Gareth Dorrian, are no proof that we have extra terrestrial neighbours... yet.

1 day ago

Mushroom life on Mars may be too good to be true
(Nasa)

A recent study claims to have found evidence for mushroom-like life forms on the surface of Mars. As it happens, these particular features are well known and were discovered by cameras aboard Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, shortly after it landed in 2004.

They are not, in fact, living organisms at all, but “haematite concretions” – small sphere-shaped pieces of the mineral haematite, and their exact origin is still debated by scientists. Haematite is a compound of iron and oxygen and is commercially important on Earth. The spherical rocks on Mars may have been created by the gradual accumulation of the material in slowly evaporating liquid water environments. They could also have been produced by volcanic activity.

Either way, mushrooms they are not. The area around Opportunity’s landing site is littered with them – they can be seen all over the surface and were also found buried beneath the soil and even embedded within rocks.

Fossilised worms

These space “mushrooms” were not the first claim of alien life. On August 7, 1996, the then US president Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn and announced the possibility that scientists had discovered the ancient, fossilised remains of micro-organisms in a meteorite that had been recovered from Antarctica in 1984.

The meteorite, ALH 84001, is one of a handful of rocks we have from Mars. These were blasted off the surface of the planet by volcanic eruptions or meteorite impacts, drifted through space probably for millions of years, before ending up on Earth.

The tiny structures discovered within, using powerful microscopes, resemble microscopic worm-like organisms and are likely to be billions of years old. Debate over the true origins of these structures continues today – many scientists have pointed out that well known inorganic processes are quite capable of producing structures which resemble living organisms. In other words, simply because something might look a bit like life (mushrooms or otherwise), that does not mean it is.

Mystery gases

In the 1970s Nasa’s viking robotic landers carried a series of experiments designed to test the Martian soil for the presence of microorganisms.

The experiments chemically treated small samples of Martian soil in reaction chambers on board the landers. In one of them, nutrients containing radioactive carbon-14 were added to the soil samples. In theory, this should be absorbed by any growing and multiplying microbes. The carbon-14 would then increasingly be “breathed out” over time, showing a steady increase in concentration within the reaction chamber.

After the chemical analyses, each soil sample was steadily heated to hundreds of degrees to destroy any microbes, with the intention of seeing whether any such reactions in the soil ceased. Intriguingly, this particular experiment did show a steady increase in carbon-14 over time which was indeed terminated after heating to above the boiling point of water. Several inorganic chemical reactions have been proposed as an explanation. These results therefore remain inconclusive and are still debated today.

More recently, minute quantities of methane have been found in the Martian atmosphere. This is also intriguing as living organisms on Earth are known to release methane. Once again, however, it must be stressed that this not conclusive proof of life. Methane can also be produced by several inorganic processes, including by heated rocks.

Wow!

In 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope in the US detected an unusual radio signal while scanning the sky. The signal lasted for just a couple of minutes, was very high powered and was detected over a narrow range of frequencies. These factors make it quite difficult to envisage a natural cause, as most natural radio sources can be detected across a wide range of frequencies.

As exciting as they are, it is important to treat claims of alien life with a healthy dose of scepticism, and this is indeed what scientists do

The exact signal has not been detected again since, despite frequent radio surveys of the same part of the sky. The signal was so remarkable at the time that the astronomer on duty, Jerry Ehman, circled the print out of the signal with red pen and wrote “Wow!” next to it.

Various explanations have been proposed over the years including, recently, that the signal was generated by a passing comet, or transmissions from an Earth-orbiting satellite. The exact origin of the Wow! signal is still not fully agreed upon today, and remains an intriguing mystery.

Tabby’s Star

A key tool of planet hunting is the dimming method – observing light from a star to see if it periodically dips in a regular fashion as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. In 2015, professional astronomers working with citizen scientists from the Planet Hunters project announced the discovery of a nearby star displaying unusually strong and consistent dimming over time.

Tabby’s Star is named after astronomer Tabitha Boyajian who was lead author on the paper announcing the discovery. Data from the Kepler Space Telescope showed not just a regular dimming, as one might expect from a planetary orbit, but highly irregular dips in the light and, interestingly, a consistent decrease in light output over several years.

This highly unusual behaviour prompted numerous theories to explain the observations, including cometary dust or debris from a massive impact gradually spreading out to cover the face of the star. Some also speculated that these were signatures of an advanced alien species building a structure around the star. But further observations have found no corroborating evidence to support this possibility. For example, radio telescopes have failed to detect any unusual radio emissions from the star. Today, the scientists behind the discovery believe that the unusual dips in light are caused by clouds of cosmic dust passing across the face of the star.

As exciting as they are, it is important to treat claims of alien life with a healthy dose of scepticism, and this is indeed what scientists do. No conclusive evidence that extra terrestrial life exists has been found … yet.

Gareth Dorrian is a post doctoral research fellow in space science at the University of Birmingham. This article first appeared on The Conversation.

#homunculus

Human Stem Cell Research Guidelines Updated

Removal of the 14-day limit for culturing human embryos is one of the main changes in the revised

 recommendations from the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

Ruth Williams
May 26, 2021
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, MORSA IMAGES

In response to the technological advances of recent years, the International Society for Stem Cell Research today (May 26) released an updated version of its guidelines for basic and clinical research involving human stem cells and embryos. The ISSCR’s changes include recommendations for using human embryo models, lab-derived gametes, and human-animal chimeras as well as an end to the widely accepted two-week maximum for growing human embryos in culture.

“What has happened in the past . . . four years is that this area of research advanced really, really quickly and there have been multiple discoveries that put us in a position where we have no guidelines [for] the kind of things we are doing in the lab,” says developmental biologist Marta Shahbazi of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK who was not involved with the development of the document. “[So] it’s nice to see these guidelines. . . . They were really needed,” she says.


The ISSCR, founded in 2002, produced its original standards for human embryonic stem cell research in 2006, followed closely in 2008 with guidelines for the use of such cells in clinical settings. In 2016, these two documents were combined and updated to form the ISSCR’s Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation. And now, five years on, the document has been updated again—the result of two years of work and deliberation by an international team of close to 50 scientists, bioethicists, and policy experts, with peer review by a separate team of independent researchers and ethicists from around the world, explains ISSCR president Christine Mummery of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

Human embryonic stem cell research “sits at the intersection of several areas where the stakes are fairly high in terms of public trust,” says bioethicist Josephine Johnston of the Hastings Center who was not involved with crafting the new guidelines. “It’s human material, it’s embryos, it’s sometimes fetal cells . . . and they also use animals.”

[If] what has been followed up until now is ISSCR guidelines, [then] I predict that we will see US institutions permitting research beyond fourteen days now, because they will have ISSCR behind them.

—Josephine Johnston, Hastings Center

Formal guidelines for this type of research are helpful, says Mummery, because it “makes it very clear on paper what is and what is not allowed.” The guidelines exist “to make scientists feel comfortable with what they’re doing and to make regulators and the public feel comfortable [too].”

Although the guidelines themselves are not law, institutions, funding bodies, and journals can and do use them to set standards for the work they allow, fund, and publish, explains Johnston. “A lot rides on these.”

Since the 2016 guide, stem cell researchers have made a number of significant technical advances. It is now possible, for example, to grow in culture embryonic stem cell–derived models of human embryos as well as chimeric human-monkey embryos. Aside from these breakthroughs, the last five years have seen improvements in organoid culture, germ cell culture and transplantation, gene editing, and other areas for which updates to the ISSCR guidelines were needed, says bioethicist Insoo Hyun of Harvard Medical School and Case Western Reserve University who is a member of the ISSCR guidelines update steering committee.

See “CRISPR Scientists Slam Methods Used on Gene-Edited Babies”

The updates include the categorization of organoid research as an area not requiring specialized oversight. That’s because “brain organoids are not sophisticated enough at this stage, we think, that in the next five years there are going to be any real concerns about consciousness. They’re too small, too rudimentary, and they’re not hooked up to any external stimuli,” says Hyun.

In the ISSCR’s new three-tier system of research categorization, the culturing of organoids is placed firmly in level one—least concern—as are the culturing of chimeric human-animal embryos, stem cell–derived gametes, and human embryo models that do not contain all components necessary for normal development.

The transfer of human-animal chimeric embryos to a nonhuman uterus (not including that of an ape) is considered a level two procedure requiring specialized oversight, as are the culturing or manipulation of any actual human embryos and the culturing of embryo models with all component parts (such as blastoids).

Furthermore, the use of stem cell–derived gametes for human reproduction, the transfer of chimeric or model human embryos to human or ape uteruses, and the editing of germline genomes are prohibited and therefore placed on level 3.
Relaxed limitations for stem cell research

In addition to these changes, the ISSCR has removed the 14-day limit for culturing a human embryo—a restriction that has been widely accepted, or even enacted into law, in countries performing human stem cell research for the last 40 years.

“We have removed it from the category of prohibited activities,” says Hyun, “and encourage different jurisdictions to have their own discussions with their publics about the permissibility of going a little past day fourteen.”

Although human embryos have never been cultured that long, “we know that it is potentially doable,” says Shahbazi, “because there are a couple of publications showing the culture of monkey embryos past day fourteen in vitro.” In 2019, for instance, researchers reported growing monkey embryos for 20 days. It would definitely be interesting to go beyond two weeks with human embryos, she adds, “because this is the point at which gastrulation starts so this is really when cells start to decide their fate. . . . It’s a really critical stage.”

Johnston is concerned that now, with no recommended limit, public trust in embryonic research may be eroded. The 14-day rule “did a lot of political work for embryo research,” she argues, “because it said to policy makers and the public, ‘We are not without restrictions. We have lines that we will not cross.’”

Rather than removing the limit, she says, it may have been better to set a new one—either a longer time limit, or a biological one. Assuming that going beyond 14 days is scientifically justified, she says, keeping some sort of limit would be a signal of accountability, restraint, and respect for this early form of human life.

For many countries, the fact that the ISSCR no longer views human embryo culture beyond 14 days as impermissible will not change rules on research. In the UK, for example, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act has written the 14-day rule into law.

But in countries without such laws, such as the US, where laws on human stem cell research apply only to that funded by the National Institutes of Health, this alteration to the guidelines may be “much, much more impactful,” says Johnston. “[If] what has been followed up until now is ISSCR guidelines,” she says, then, “I predict that we will see US institutions permitting research beyond fourteen days now, because they will have ISSCR behind them.”

R. Lovell-Badge et al., “ISSCR guidelines for stem cell research and clinical translation: The 2021 update,” Stem Cell Reports, doi:10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.012, 2021.

A.T Clark et al., “Human embryo research, stem cell-derived embryo models and in vitro gametogenesis: considerations leading to the revised ISSCR guidelines,” Stem Cell Reports, doi:10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.008, 2021.

I. Hyun et al., “ISSCR guidelines for the transfer of human pluripotent stem cells and their direct derivatives into animal hosts,” Stem Cell Reports, doi:10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.005, 2021.

L. Turner, “ISSCR’s guidelines for stem cell research and clinical translation: supporting the development of safe and efficacious stem cell-based interventions,” Stem Cell Reports, doi:10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.011, 2021.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/08/homunuclus.html

GREEN CAPITALI$M

From powerful tidal turbines to huge wave machines, Scotland is becoming a hub for marine energy

WE HAVE THE BAY OF FUNDY
PUBLISHED TUE, MAY 25 2021

Anmar Frangoul

CNBC

KEY POINTS

Marine energy’s current footprint is tiny compared to other renewable technologies such as solar and wind.

Driving costs down is seen as being key if the sector is to flourish in the years ahead.


This image shows Orbital Marine Power’s 2 megawatt turbine, the Orbital O2.

LONDON – In mid-May, a prototype wave energy converter weighing 38-metric tons arrived in Orkney, an archipelago located in waters north of mainland Scotland.

Later this summer the bright yellow, 20 meter long piece of kit — dubbed Blue X — will be transported to one of the European Marine Energy Centre’s test sites, where it will undergo initial sea trials.

Developed by a firm called Mocean Energy, the Blue X will be the latest piece of technology to be put through its paces at Orkney-based EMEC.

Many other companies have undertaken testing at the site over the years. They include Scotland’s Orbital Marine Power, which is working on what it describes as the world’s most powerful tidal turbine, Spain-based tidal power firm Magallanes Renovables and ScottishPower Renewables, part of the Iberdrola Group.

There are many reasons why businesses come to Orkney — but two in particular are key: strong waves and tides.

“Those kind of natural resources are … second to none,” Matthew Finn, EMEC’s commercial director, told CNBC in a phone interview.

“What’s really unique about Orkney is you’ve got these high energy bits next to quite sheltered harbors and inlets,” he went on to add.

“And right in the middle of Orkney is Scapa Flow, which is one of the largest sheltered anchorages in Europe, if not the world, so you can go from these … high energy resources to quite benign, protected environments.”

This is important when it comes to the research and development phase of projects, Finn noted: “If you need to do maintenance cycles or you need to do something with your device, it’s quite quick to get from the ports and harbors to the test sites and back, so I think that’s a massive natural advantage.”
Putting marine energy on the map

Since its inception in 2003, EMEC has become a major hub for the development of wave and tidal power, helping to put the U.K. at the heart of the planet’s emerging marine energy sector.

“EMEC was created as a bit of a flagship organization, with the idea that if you could put a lot of investment into one facility it would reduce the time, the cost and the risk for these technologies to come to market,” Finn explained.

£36 million ($50.98 million) has been invested in EMEC so far. Financial backers include the Scottish government, U.K. government, European Union, Orkney Islands Council, The Carbon Trust and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

As well as miles of coastline and abundant natural resources, facilities such as EMEC also draw upon the U.K.’s long history of marine-based industries and leading academic institutions.

“There’s lots of legacies from other sectors, oil and gas being one but (also) aquaculture; lots of engineering disciplines that are really strong,” Finn explained, “and the universities kind of grab a hold of these sort of things and pump a lot of innovation and ideas and people into it.”

The latter point was illustrated earlier this year when it was announced that some £7.5 million of public funding would be used to support the development of eight wave energy projects led by U.K. universities.
The importance of testing

Cameron McNatt is Mocean Energy’s managing director. Speaking to CNBC, he outlined how his company — which has offices in Scotland and whose manufacturing and testing program has been backed by Wave Energy Scotland to the tune of £3.3 million — would be using EMEC to test the giant Blue X wave energy converter over the coming weeks and months.

First, what he described as “shakedown testing” would take place in the sheltered waters of Scapa Flow.

“Then it will be moved to the larger, open Atlantic site, Billia Croo, where it’ll really see some pretty serious waves and generate more power,” he added. “We’ll test … power production, reliability, survivability.”

A grid connected facility, Billia Croo is described by EMEC as having “one of the highest wave energy potentials in Europe.”

According to the organization, its average significant wave height ranges between 2 and 3 meters, with the highest wave on EMEC’s records coming in at 18 meters.

In terms of how Mocean Energy’s technology could be deployed in real-world scenarios, McNatt said it was focused on providing power to operations connected to the oil and gas sector.

“While it’s maybe a bit funny to be applying renewables within oil and gas there’s a real demand,” he said. “Operators are looking to reduce their carbon footprint and to transition into … cleaner energy.”

“We see this as a stepping stone and a pathway towards developing … larger-scale technologies,” he added.

While Orkney is now well established as a major hub for the testing of wave and tidal systems, the U.K.’s marine energy sector is also looking to play a greater international role.

Speaking to CNBC, Robert Norris, head of communications at trade association RenewableUK, sought to hammer home this point.

“As an island nation we have the best marine energy resource in Europe,” he said via email.

“We’re already selling our marine energy technology around the world,” he added, citing the example of Scotland-headquartered Nova Innovation exporting tidal turbines to Canada.
Challenges ahead

There may be excitement in some quarters regarding the potential of marine energy, but its current footprint is tiny compared to other renewable technologies such as solar and wind.

Recent figures from Ocean Energy Europe show that only 260 kilowatts of tidal stream capacity was added in Europe last year, while just 200 kW of wave energy was installed.

In comparison, 2020 saw 14.7 gigawatts of wind energy capacity installed in Europe, according to industry body WindEurope.

Despite this, tidal and wave power could have a significant role to play in the years ahead as countries attempt to decarbonize their energy mix and hit ambitious emissions reduction targets.

The European Commission, for example, wants the capacity of ocean energy technologies to hit 100 megawatts by 2025 and roughly 1 gigawatt by 2030.

Back across the Channel, discussions about marine energy’s role in the U.K. continue, with driving costs down seen as being key if the sector is to flourish. In a report released earlier this month, RenewableUK called on the government to also establish a target of 1 gigawatt of marine energy.

The London-based organization added: “Much like with floating wind, a 1 GW target for marine energy, set in the 2030s, would not just signal a confidence in marine energy to the world, but would also demonstrate the U.K.’s commitment to making these technologies a cost-competitive solution for others to adopt.”

DEMOCRACY NOW!
I Will Not Yield My Values: Fired AP Journalist Emily Wilder Speaks Out After Right-Wing Smears

LONG READ

STORY MAY 25, 2021
Watch Full Show

GUESTS

Emily Wilder
22-year-old journalist who was fired by the Associated Press after right-wing critics attacked her for past pro-Palestinian activism in college.

Janine Zacharia
journalism professor at Stanford and a former Jerusalem bureau chief for The Washington Post.

LINKS
Emily Wilder on Twitter
Janine Zacharia on Twitter

In her first TV interview, we speak with Emily Wilder, the young reporter fired by the Associated Press after she was targeted in a Republican smear campaign for her pro-Palestinian activism in college. Wilder is Jewish and was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace at Stanford University before she graduated in 2020. She was two weeks into her new job with the AP when the Stanford College Republicans singled out some of her past social media posts, triggering a conservative frenzy. The AP announced Wilder’s firing shortly thereafter, citing unspecified violations of its social media policy. “Less than 48 hours after Stanford College Republicans began to post about me, I was fired,” says Wilder. “I was not given an explanation for what social media policy I had violated.” Over 100 AP journalists have signed an open letter to management protesting the decision to fire Wilder, which came just days after Israel demolished the building housing AP offices and other media organizations in Gaza. Journalism professor Janine Zacharia, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for The Washington Post who taught Wilder at Stanford, says the episode is an example of how much pressure news organizations face on Middle East coverage. “I am very aware, perhaps more than most, to the sensitivities around the questions of bias and reporting on the conflict,” says Zacharia. “In this case it wasn’t about bias.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The Associated Press news service is facing growing criticism for firing a young reporter after she was targeted by a right-wing smear campaign for her pro-Palestinian activism while she was a college student at Stanford.

Emily Wilder is Jewish. She was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and also the group Jewish Voice for Peace at Stanford University before she graduated in 2020. She was an intern at The Arizona Republic before the AP hired her for an entry-level role in Phoenix, and was two weeks into her new job when the Stanford College Republicans began highlighting some of her past tweets. Their campaign was then amplified by right-wing media and politicians, including Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton. The AP says it fired Wilder for violating its social media policy. The decision came just days after Israeli forces bombed the building housing the AP’s office in Gaza.

Ten senior AP executives stood by the decision to fire Emily Wilder, noting in a leaked memo to editorial staff, quote, “We did not make it lightly,” referring to the decision. The AP’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, did not sign the memo. She begins her new job next month as executive editor at The Washington Post. She’s making history as the first woman executive editor of The Washington Post. She told NPR she has, quote, “handed over day-to-day operations” at AP, so, quote, “I was not involved in the decision at all.”

Meanwhile, journalists at the AP protested Wilder’s firing in an open letter Monday, writing, quote, “It has left our colleagues — particularly emerging journalists — wondering how we treat our own, what culture we embrace and what values we truly espouse as a company,” unquote.

For more, we go to Phoenix, Arizona, to speak with Emily Wilder in her first television broadcast interview. We’re also joined by Janine Zacharia, who was Emily Wilder’s journalism professor at Stanford University. She’s the former Jerusalem bureau chief for The Washington Post.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Emily, why don’t you just take us through what happened to you?

EMILY WILDER: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me.

Last Monday, a group from my alma mater, the Stanford College Republicans, began to post online past posts that I had made on social media, in an attempt to expose my history of activism for Palestinian human rights while I was an undergraduate at Stanford University, and in an attempt to link AP to Hamas. In the next two days, I began to receive a lot of harassment, a lot of pretty heinous harassment, as well as prominent Republicans on the internet began to lambaste me, including Senator Tom Cotton and Ben Shapiro.

I was reassured during this time by my editors that I would not face repercussions for my past activism and that they just wanted to support me while I was facing this smear campaign. But less than 48 hours after the Stanford College Republicans began to post about me, I was fired. The reason given was a supposed social media violation sometime after I joined AP on May 3rd. I was not given an explanation for what social media policy I violated or what tweet had violated policy, and I still have not received an explanation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Emily, when you were originally hired, what were you told by the Associated Press of what its social media policy was for its reporters?

EMILY WILDER: I was told that reporters must not share opinions online, must not show bias in coverage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you were covering — what were you covering while you were at the AP?

EMILY WILDER: Well, I was hired as a news associate on the West Desk, which covers the western United States, 14 states in the western United States. And my position is not actually a reporting position; it was an entry-level kind of apprenticeship, an editorial and production apprenticeship. And so, I was concerned with assisting coverage in the western United States.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in effect, why would these folks at Stanford target you? It seems almost nonsensical they would go after you in this concerted and campaign-like manner.

EMILY WILDER: Well, first of all, this is not my first encounter with this group. During my time at Stanford, they built a reputation as kind of bullies. They antagonized really any student they disagreed with. And I was in their crosshairs more than once. So they knew my name, and I guess they did not forget about me. And I can’t say for certain why they did what they did, but perhaps they learned that I had joined a national news organization at a moment that that news organization was under public scrutiny, and they took it as an opportunity to both smear me and smear the Associated Press.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the union representing Washington Post reporters — now, of course, Emily was working for the AP, but the union representing Washington Post reporters tweeted, quote, “Solidarity with the staff of the @AP and Emily Wilder. We hope management provides swift answers on her termination and clarifies the newsroom’s social media practices,” unquote. The AP said in a memo to staff Monday it plans to review its social media policies. Now, the significance of The Washington Post writers’ union expressing solidarity is that Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of AP, is going to become the first woman executive editor of The Washington Post, beginning in June, which brings us to our next guest, Janine Zacharia, a professor at Stanford University who taught Emily Wilder. You were The Washington Post bureau chief in Jerusalem, is that right, about a decade ago?

JANINE ZACHARIA: That’s correct.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about this controversy?

JANINE ZACHARIA: So, I want to speak about it on two levels. I want to speak personally, as Emily’s instructor at Stanford, what this has been like, and then I want to speak in the macro about what I think is really happening here.

So, personally, I want to say that when Emily called me to tell me that she had been fired by the AP, I literally was shocked. I was really shocked, because — and I really didn’t know what to say. And I said to Emily, “Close your laptop. I need to call you back,” because I really need to think about what’s happening here, what we’re going to do and how am I going to help my brilliant former student continue with a career in journalism, because, yes, I spent most of my career, close to two decades, reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I started my career as a young woman in Jerusalem in an earlier incarnation, in the ’90s, for Reuters. So I am very aware, perhaps more than most, to the sensitivities around the questions of bias and reporting on the conflict.

Nevertheless, as was mentioned, in this case it wasn’t about bias. And it wasn’t even about, I don’t think, social media policies, because if you review what Emily posted since she started at the AP, there was one tweet that mentioned a mild opinion about the question of objectivity on reporting on the conflict and the language we use, and an editor could have come to her and said, “I think you should take down that tweet, because it expresses an opinion in violation of our social media policies. Doesn’t mean you can’t have these opinions, but you can’t broadcast them on social media.” But I think that the bigger issue in this case, if you read the letter of her dismissal, was that it mentions you cannot have any conflict that could be perceived as a bias or leading to accusations of bias. Something to that effect was the language.

And so, when the Stanford College Republicans documented some of her pro-Palestinian activism in college, I think they got a little spooked, because it was in the context, as Emily mentioned, of Israel’s strike on the Gaza bureau and Hamas, and people who wanted to defend that strike were trying to accuse AP of knowingly sharing a building with Hamas — when Hamas rules the Gaza Strip for 15 years; they’re everywhere — and this was a way to continue to fuel that narrative: “Look, you hired this news associate who has pro-Palestinian views.” And so, it really was a full-on disinformation campaign against not only Emily, but the AP. These are actors who are not interested in having a serious conversation about how we cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They want to take down credible, fact-based news organizations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Janine Zacharia, what are some of the unusual pressures that reporters who are covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to deal with, especially here in the United States?

JANINE ZACHARIA: You know, I think the number-one one is this perception of — there’s one — there’s a couple, OK? First of all, it’s a conflict of dueling narratives. And when you are trying to do objective reporting on the conflict, you know, you do — and this is the way it is — you try and figure out what’s going on, what do people say happened at that checkpoint, what happened right now with the bombing of the building, whatever, and you evaluate the information that’s given to you.

You know, if you take a walk in my inbox from 2009, 2010, 2011, when I was there for The Washington Post — you know, social media was still in its infancy, but I received so much hate mail. Nothing like what happened to Emily now could have happened to me, because there were no Twitter mobs back then, really. “You’re pro-Zionist.” “You’re pro-Palestinian.” “You’re this.” “You’re that.” And it could be very intense.

You know, I remember when I covered — there was an incident of what was called the flotilla. The Mavi Marmara was an aid shipment going to Gaza, and I was in the Gaza Strip for The Washington Post. And I got woken up around this time, 4 or 5 a.m., and I was told that the Israelis, IDF, had killed — or maybe it was the Navy or whatever, whoever — there was images of them dropping onto this Turkish aid ship — had killed nine people. And so I started writing for The Washington Post. I was doing radio. And I got a call that night from a very senior Israeli official yelling about this A1 story I had written for The Washington Post. And the Israelis hadn’t — the Israelis hadn’t released any information. It was like we were trying to — it was hard, in other words. So you do your best to cover this conflict as best as you can.

And what I do at Stanford is take people like Emily, brilliant students who care about the world, who have deep social conscience, who study history, who know what’s going on in the world, and I try to train them to channel that social conscience into accountability journalism. And what’s so distressing to me about this incident is Emily shouldn’t have to and can never erase who she was — right? — before joining the AP. And if they decide that because she was a pro-Palestinian activist, attacked by a student group, amplified by a right-wing smear campaign against her, then they’re going to — what does this mean? Does this mean that any student who was an activist in college — which is what students do, they’re activists in college — can’t become a journalist? You know, what happens if they’re activists on abortion or climate change? Or is this specifically about Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of the pressures that these news organizations feel?

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read what Ari Paul, who wrote about Emily Wilder for FAIR, later wrote on Facebook. He said, “She was not some famous firebrand. She wasn’t appointed to some high-level post like Jerusalem correspondent. She’s a college grad who had a low-level job at a domestic bureau. But it’s clear that right-wing organizations are keeping tabs on all sorts of college activists and keeping track of where they end up working. And the right is clearly organized to follow and stalk them and ruin their lives, or at least attempt to.” Emily, can you comment on this? And talk about what the Associated Press said to you before you joined. I mean, it wasn’t a secret that you were part of — you were a Jewish student, you were part of Jewish Voice for Peace, and also you were part of the group for justice in Palestine.

EMILY WILDER: I think that that post is absolutely right, especially considering my post was in the western United States. My beat was totally unrelated to the Middle East. Like Janine said, yes, I have opinions about the Israel-Palestine conflict as a citizen of the world, but also as a Jewish American who grew up in a Jewish community. And, yes, I have history of activism on that issue. Neither of those facts prevent me from being able to do fair, credible, fact-based reporting, especially when the beats are entirely unrelated to the Middle East.

But also, I want to take it a step further and say that the values that led to my activism, the values of compassion and justice that compelled me to speak out loudly and advocate for Palestinian human rights, those values are powerful assets in my reporting. And I don’t think newsrooms should try to get me to yield those values. And I really hope that I can continue to channel those values in accountability journalism, like Janine said.

AMY GOODMAN: I also want to point out that more than a hundred Associated Press employees signed a letter in support of you, Emily, that read, in part, quote, “Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her. We need to know that the AP would stand behind and provide resources to journalists who are the subject of smear campaigns and online harassment.”

I also wanted to ask both Emily and Professor Zacharia about this timing of when this happened. You know, I was watching — while Sally Buzbee said she’s not involved with day-to-day now at AP because she’s going over to The Washington Post to head that news organization, she was on television talking about the bombing of the AP offices in Gaza, talking about calling for an investigation, and the intimidation this meant for the fact that there would be fewer voices reporting out of Gaza, and how critical that was. Emily, if you could talk about this? And then I’d also like to ask Janine Zacharia to go broader, both of you, on the coverage of Israel and Palestine. There was just a major petition that was signed by many to Canadian journalism organizations talking about the fact that they’re not even supposed to use the word “Palestine.”

EMILY WILDER: I can’t really speak to which executives within the Associated Press were involved in the decision to fire me, partly because I received so little information when I was fired. And still I have received so little information. But I agree with you, the timing is really important to the story here. I mean, it’s a perfect storm. We have the event in Gaza with the AP office a couple days ago. We have — people have made links between my treatment and the treatment of other journalists, like Chris Cuomo on CNN. And this is also happening within a moment that newsrooms are reckoning with this question about social media objectivity, past activism, diversity of life experiences. And I think that that’s why, you know, my former colleagues at the Associated Press — that’s partially why they felt so compelled to speak out. And seeing that is really encouraging and uplifting as a young journalist.

AMY GOODMAN: I should also point out that — and a number of others have done this — Wolf Blitzer, a main anchor on CNN, formerly worked for AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He hasn’t been fired or prevented from reporting on Israel and Palestine. Professor Janine Zacharia, would you like to comment?

JANINE ZACHARIA: You know, I just — there’s so many things that are upsetting about all this. But, you know, if you’re going to go down the road of — in general, of, “OK, well, Emily was with Jewish Voice for Peace, and Wolf Blitzer was for AIPAC,” the answer has to be, you know, judge your reporters based on their work. Right? Because it’s insane to think that journalists don’t have passions and opinions, because the very people who go into journalism, as you very well know, Amy, are people who are passionate and have opinions about things in the world. And so, it’s just — that’s distressing.

And also, I just want to echo something that Emily said about how they still haven’t told her really what’s going on. To me, as her instructor, as someone who maybe feels like I entrusted my young student with them, this is shocking to me that they didn’t do more to sort of talk to her about it. And I think it’s because it really wasn’t about social media policy.

And this is something that the AP and other news organizations really need to think about. Who are we going to let work in our newsrooms? How are we going to deal with — I mean, if you have, for example, a whole generation of students who went to Black Lives Matter protests last summer, and then they come and take my journalism class at Stanford or another university, and they say, “You know what? I want to be a journalist,” and their lives live on TikTok and Instagram and all that, are all these journalists not — are these students not going to be able to be journalists now? I mean, are there not top managers in news organizations who were in anti-Vietnam protests in the ’60s, and their lives live on in Instagram?

Or is this specific to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Which, as you noted, the coverage is shifted the very week that Emily got caught up in this. You had the bombing of the AP bureau in Gaza. You had a very visceral reaction by the American public to the Israeli attacks in Gaza, in a way that you did not have in 2014 when 2,200 Palestinians were killed. You didn’t see this kind of reaction. You had, on the A1 of The New York Times on Sunday, a story about the brutality of life under Israeli occupation. These are all very unusual. Look on The New York Times today in terms of a letter from Gaza that really calls into question a lot of the Israeli narrative about Hamas and what’s really happening in Gaza. I mean, there’s just — there’s a major shift going on.

And so, you know, I think that Emily, in a way, the reason that she’s seeing a lot of support is — I was worried. I wanted to make sure she had support. And you’re seeing that because it’s coming at that moment. Thank God, because I can’t tell you again how distressing this has been for me as her instructor and someone who cares so deeply about her.

AMY GOODMAN: A major —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Emily —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Emily, I wanted to ask you: How has this, the last few days, shaped your view of journalism and what you want to do as a journalist?

EMILY WILDER: Yeah, it’s really rocked my perspective, honestly, I mean, obviously. You know, I wanted to join the AP because — while, like everybody on this Earth, I do have opinions, and those opinions fuel my passion for journalism, I wanted to join the AP because I am capable at doing fact-based accountability journalism. That is what I really excelled at at The Arizona Republic, and that’s why the AP hired me. And they were aware that I cared about the world. They were aware that I had a commitment to justice and marginalized communities. So, I thought I would be welcome in a newsroom like AP.

But, you know, I was also aware of this broader history, that I’m just one example in, of media institutions unfairly applying these rules about objectivity and social media haphazardly, when expedient, in a way that generally comes down hardest on journalists of color, journalists who have ever spoken out on Israeli policy, and in a way that just reinforces status quo politics. So I was aware of that, and I was witnessing these shifts in the industry. I thought I’d be welcome.

But now I know that I — this experience, I guess, could have made me question my commitment to those values that compel me to do journalism, but I will not yield them. And now I know that I need to channel them into journalism in a team, in an organization, that is similarly aligned.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting, when you follow the money, as journalists are supposed to do. The Stanford Review, a conservative publication, was co-founded over 30 years ago by the venture capitalist and conservative philanthropist Peter Thiel, who went on to speak at Trump’s first Republican National Convention. He didn’t contribute a lot to Republican senators, but he did contribute to the one who attacked you, Emily, and that was Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, and also has a lot of ties to the Stanford College Republicans.

But I also wanted to thank you for a piece that you did in The Arizona Republic that Juan and I followed up on, that you broke for them, which became a major national story. And that’s the story of Kristin Urquiza, whose father, Mark Anthony Urquiza, was a supporter of Donald Trump and died after believing the president’s assurances that the coronavirus pandemic was under control. He died of COVID. In October, we spoke to Kristin Urquiza, after you highlighted her in your piece in The Arizona Republic about losing her father. And I just want to play that clip for you.


KRISTIN URQUIZA: My dad, first and foremost, was great and did not deserve to die alone in a hospital with just a nurse holding his hand. He was also a lifelong Republican who was politically aware. He watched television news programming fairly regularly, read the newspaper, and engaged me as a young kid in politics, which is kind of where I got my interest in the world around me from. He was a Trump supporter and voted for Trump and believed him in what he had to say.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Kristin Urquiza talking about losing her father. But, you know, you had major impact as a young reporter at The Arizona Republic. And if also you could go back to commenting on Peter Thiel?

EMILY WILDER: Yeah, that story was really formative in my time at The Arizona Republic. It was pretty early on in my time at the Republic. And it represents exactly the kind of journalism that I excel at and that I want to continue doing, which is highlighting the undertold, underrepresented or suppressed stories of certain communities and linking those experiences to a larger investigative context, to a larger — to the situation that we’re in, where communities of color are the most at risk for COVID-19. So, I was really grateful to have been a part of that and to have broken such an important story. And, you know, that’s what I — I try to continue to do impactful storytelling like that.

And in terms of the connection with Peter Thiel, yes, this organization does have powerful and wealthy connections in the conservative ecosystem. But I also want to make sure that people understand that this is just a group of college-aged trolls, honestly, and they did not have to become relevant. They should not have — the Associated Press should not have felt threatened by them. I truly believe they would have gone away — they would have spun their wheels on this and gone away, if the Associated Press had not fired me and had not sort of empowered them and empowered their bullying, empowered their disinformation.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Professor Janine Zacharia, what are you going to teach your students, as they come back to Stanford now, about what this means for journalism? In the end, because of Emily’s outspokenness and bravery in taking this on instead of slinking away, do you think journalism will advance in this country, and particularly around the Israel-Palestine issue?

JANINE ZACHARIA: Well, I scrapped my class in foreign correspondence on Thursday that I had planned, and we’re devoting it to this, because it’s so important, obviously. Emily is a peer and a friend of many of the students in my current class, who have been very traumatized by this whole thing, wondering, again, you know, whether they have a future in journalism, reaching out to me quite shell-shocked. And so, I feel the need as their instructor to talk about what’s happened.

But I don’t know what to say, you know, truthfully, Amy, because what I do, as someone who started at Reuters and worked at The Washington Post, the conventional media, you know, what I train them to do, I don’t know — I just don’t know what to say right now. I’m still processing it all. But what I will do is hold up Emily as an example of what I believe they all should do, is use their brilliance and channel their convictions into amazing reporting that gets picked up by Amy Goodman and others. She had another story, by the way, about wait times for COVID testing, that was featured on Rachel Maddow, as an intern. Right? So, in the end, you know, I’ll stress that this is really the AP’s loss, and whoever hires her next is going to be so very fortunate.

AMY GOODMAN: Maybe she’ll be Sally Buzbee’s first hire at Washington Post —

JANINE ZACHARIA: That would be nice.

AMY GOODMAN: — and then follow in your footsteps. Emily — I want to thank you both for being with us, Emily Wilder, fired by AP, which has fired up the journalism community, not only in the United States, and others for more just reporting around the world, and Janine Zacharia, Emily Wilder’s journalism professor at Stanford University who is the former Washington Post Jerusalem bureau chief.

Next up, today marks the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which sparked international protests and a reckoning over race and policing. Stay with us.
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FEATURE LONG READ

COVID-19 cases spiking again at some ICE detention centers. Critics say ICE failed to vaccinate detainees

#ABOLISHICE

#PRISONINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX

#PRIVATEPRISONS

#PRISONNATION

Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic and Maria Clark, The American South


Several immigration detention centers in the U.S. are experiencing new spikes in COVID-19 cases.

ICE officials attribute the spikes to newly arrived immigrants transferred to ICE detention facilities from Border Patrol facilities near the border with Mexico, where there has been an influx of migrants and asylum seekers.

Many critics, however, say a failure by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration to systematically administer vaccines to detainees has led to the rise in new cases.

Critics say ICE has failed to adhere to other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, including reducing unnecessary transfers of detainees between ICE detention facilities, where detainees live in tight quarters behind bars and the virus can easily spread.

Medical experts fear that recent outbreaks in some ICE detention facilities not only endanger the health of detainees and staff, but could spread to surrounding communities at a time when more states are relaxing COVID-19 safety precautions.

Data posted on ICE's website and interviews with immigrant advocates and attorneys show COVID-19 spikes are happening at several immigration detention facilities owned and operated by private, for-profit companies that contract with ICE.

Those facilities include three facilities owned and operated by Nashville-based CoreCivic: the La Palma Correctional Center and Eloy Detention Center, both located in Eloy, Arizona, and the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi.

ICE data shows a spike in COVID-19 cases also has occurred at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana. That immigration detention center is owned and operated by LaSalle Corrections, based in Ruston, Louisiana.

The new spikes are happening at ICE facilities that have had COVID-19 troubles in the past. What's more, detainees and some correctional officers have raised alarms about inadequate COVID-19 precautions at some of the same facilities, which ICE officials and private contractors have denied.

In April 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Adams County Correctional Center on behalf of seven medically vulnerable detainees claiming insufficient COVID-19 precautions at the Adams facility, including being housed in dorms of up to 120 people, staff members who didn't wear masks or gloves and some detainees not having access to soap.

A correctional officer at the Eloy Detention Center died in June 2020 after contracting the virus, prompting a correctional officer to speak out publicly about what he claimed were unsafe conditions at the facility. The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health later concluded that CoreCivic did not violate any health and safety standards.

At the La Palma Correctional Center, guards fired pepper spray and pepper balls to quell a peaceful protest in April 2020 by detainees over concerns about COVID-19 precautions, a recent government watchdog report revealed. At least 1,217 detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 at the La Palma facility since the pandemic started, the highest total of any ICE facility, according to ICE data.

NOT NASAL BASED SPRAY FOR VACCINATION

PEPPER SPRAY AT DETENTION CENTRE

Two correctional officers at the LaSalle Corrections-owned Richwood Correctional Center died in April 2020 after contracting the coronavirus.

LaSalle Corrections owns the Irwin County Detention Center. That is one of two immigration detention centers the Biden administration announced earlier this month will be closed amid reports of medical misconduct.

ICE data shows there are 400 active confirmed COVID-19 cases currently under isolation or monitoring at the Adams facility, the highest number of any facility in the nation, 192 cases at the Richwood facility, the second-highest, 157 cases at the Eloy facility, the third highest, and 155 cases at the La Palma facility, the fourth highest.

COVID-19 cases at those four facilities total 904. That represents 45% of the total 2,007 COVID-19 cases ICE is monitoring at the 131 facilities, including three hotels, being used to house immigration detainees in ICE custody, according to an analysis of ICE data.

CoreCivic officials said the data posted on ICE's website regarding its facilities is inaccurate.

"There are some discrepancies between the COVID cases being reported on the ICE website and the actual case numbers, which we are working with our government partner to address," Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic's manager of public affairs, said Friday in an email.

CoreCivic officials provided their own separate data showing a huge discrepancy with the official data reported on the ICE website. As of May 24, there were 39 active COVID-19 cases at Adams, 45 at Eloy, and 35 at La Palma, according to Amanda Gilchrist, CoreCivic's director of public affairs.

"Reporting any other COVID case numbers would be factually inaccurate," Gilchrist said in an email. "Also, the vast majority of active cases entered the facility COVID-positive."

CoreCivic and ICE did not respond to a request asking to explain the discrepancy between the data provided by CoreCivic and the data posted on the official ICE website. CoreCivic also did not respond to a request to provide any documentation it has shared with ICE as part of CoreCivic’s efforts to get ICE to correct the incorrect data it claims is posted on the ICE website.

LaSalle Corrections, the company that operates Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana, did not respond to requests for comment.

During a May 13 hearing in front of members of Congress, ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson was asked what percentage of immigration detainees had been fully vaccinated.

Johnson said he was not sure.

"If I remember correctly, it's like 20% have had at least one shot, but let me confirm that that is the case," Johnson testified.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., who asked the question, said that Johnson had testified earlier that 1,229 detainees had been fully vaccinated as of May 5, and based on data she had received that was about only 7% of the detained population.

"I am concerned because at 7% that would lag far behind both the nation as a whole, and at 20%, sir, because over one-third of American adults are fully vaccinated and even the Federal Bureau of Prisons has one-third of their incarcerated people fully vaccinated," Underwood said.

As of May 26, 50% of U.S. adults had been fully vaccinated and nearly 62% of adults had received at least one vaccination, according to the CDC.
Critic: ICE explanation is 'ugly scapegoating at its worst'

The latest COVID-19 spikes at detention centers in the U.S. are surprising considering that cases overall have dropped sharply in recent months in most states after earlier waves during the winter and last summer.

The COVID-19 spikes come as the number of people detained behind bars in ICE custody has shot up under President Joe Biden's administration.

ICE officials said the recent COVID-19 spikes have been caused by transfers to immigration detention centers from border facilities. The U.S. has struggled to cope with a wave of migrants crossing the border illegally, including families who have been waiting for months in dangerous conditions in Mexico for a chance to seek asylum in the U.S.

"Some ICE facilities have seen an increase in the number of noncitizens being transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody from border facilities resulting in an apparent rise in COVID-19 cases among new arrivals to the facility," ICE acting press secretary Paige Hughes said in a written statement.

Hughes credited on-site medical professionals with "reducing the risk of further spreading the disease by immediately testing, identifying and isolating the exposed detainees to mitigate the spread of infection, in accordance with CDC guidelines."

ICE and medical professionals at detention facilities are working with local health departments to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 to the community and are vaccinating detainees who request vaccinations, Hughes said.

"Medical center staff took the necessary steps to quickly isolate the exposed detainees, provide proper medical care and prevent further spread of infection within the facility to detainees already in residence. Preventative steps included early recognition and following the guidelines established by the CDC and the ICE Health Services Corps," Hughes said.

Mariana Casal Singletary, the epidemiologist for Pinal County, where La Palma and Eloy detention centers are located in Arizona, attributed recent increases in COVID-19 cases at those facilities to "intakes" of immigrants recently apprehended at the border and transferred to ICE facilities.

Many of the immigrants the facilities have received have tested positive for a more transmissible strain of the virus that was first detected in the U.K., she said. It is also now the most dominant strain in Arizona.

It is already very difficult to manage a COVID-19 outbreak inside a congregate setting and the introduction of the more transmissible strain is making it even harder, she said.

"They keep receiving so many intakes from the border, and they have received variants that we call variants of concern," Casal Singletary said.

Casal Singletary said the increase in COVID-19 cases reported at the two ICE detention centers is the result of a lag in test results, not just a recent spike in actual new cases.

Overall, ICE and CoreCivic "are doing what they can to control" the outbreak, she said.

"They follow all the infection prevention measures that they can, but their biggest challenge is that they keep receiving people and these people can come, let's say, exposed from other places, but develop the disease inside and they are counted cases when the transmission is not really inside. So it's very difficult to interpret the data," Casal Singletary said.

Critics say ICE has failed to systematically offer COVID-19 vaccines to detainees, which has led to spikes at detention facilities, where detainees live in close quarters that can cause the virus to easily spread.

"It's absolutely outrageous that there are still COVID-19 outbreaks taking place in immigration detention six months after vaccines have been approved and given that there was a surplus of unused vaccine in the United States," said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project. "This is really ICE’s failure for its poor implementation of vaccine rollout in the facilities."

ICE has left local officials with the responsibility of procuring and administering COVID-19 vaccines to people detained under ICE custody, Cho said.

That has led to a patchwork supply of COVID-19 vaccines being given to the growing number of people being held in immigration detention centers, and sowed confusion in several states over who is responsible for vaccinating detainees, Cho said.

"This is quite problematic" because COVID-19 can spread quickly in congregate settings such as detention facilities, and then can spread outside the facility to the community in general, Cho said.

Cho rejected ICE's claim that the recent COVID-19 spikes at immigration detention facilities have been fueled by transfers of immigrants from Border Patrol facilities near the border.

"ICE's attempt to blame the spread of COVID-19 within its own facilities, where it is entirely preventable through a rigorous vaccination and quarantine program, is simply scapegoating and ugly scapegoating at its worst," Cho said.

The increasing number of people held in immigration detention centers and the continued transfer of detainees between ICE facilities has added to the problem, Cho said.

"This is partially a disaster of ICE's own making," Cho said.

During the pandemic, the Trump administration began releasing some immigrants from detention centers, in part due to pressure from immigrant advocates and also as the result of lawsuits, to try to control COVID-19 outbreaks at several ICE facilities, and minimize the spread inside ICE detention centers. The Trump administration also implemented a policy under Title 42 of the health code to quickly expel most immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol, including asylum seekers, amid the pandemic, which also resulted in fewer people being detained in ICE facilities.

But in recent months under the Biden administration, the number of people being held in immigration detention centers has increased after dropping significantly in the final months of the Trump administration as more asylum seekers under the Biden administration have been allowed to remain in the U.S. rather than expelled.

There were 19,041 people being held in immigration detention centers as of May 13, according to ICE data obtained by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

That is a 34% increase from the 14,195 immigrants in ICE detention during the final days of the Trump administration, but far below the 50,922 people in ICE detention in September 2019 under the height of the Trump administration, according to the TRAC data.
Transfers also blamed for case rise

Sarah Loicano, a spokesperson for the New Orleans ICE field office, attributed the rise in COVID-19 cases at Adams to an increase in the number of detainees transferred into ICE custody from border facilities.

The detained population at Adams has risen since early this year, she said in a written statement.

“While the rising numbers of COVID positive cases may seem indicative of an outbreak, it’s important to note that the population at Adams County has also greatly increased in recent weeks,” she said.

The average daily population at Adams in May was 1,099. By comparison, the population was at 267 in December, Loicano said.

A coalition of immigrants’ rights organizations filed a complaint on May 17 with the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Inspector General describing the outbreak at Adams as an “emerging public health catastrophe.”

Active COVID-19 cases reported at the facility have jumped from four on March 12 to more than 400 by May 23, according to the complaint and ICE data. Epidemiologists with the Mississippi State Department of Health confirmed that 437 cases as of May 25 have been attributed to Adams County Correctional Center. The numbers are reported to health authorities by the facility, according to Mississippi State Health Department spokesperson Liz Sharlot.

Immigration attorneys claim the rapid spike in cases is linked to unsafe conditions that have put detainees at high risk of infection. Detainees have reported inconsistent access to soap and disinfecting supplies for the dormitories, inconsistent use of masks, and limited space to properly socially distance, according to interviews with former detainees and immigration attorneys.

Laura Belous, an advocacy attorney at the Arizona-based Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which provides legal services to detained immigrants in Arizona, faulted ICE and CoreCivic for not bringing the outbreak under control at immigration detention centers in Arizona, including by not systemically providing vaccines to detainees.

"The crazy thing to us is that we are now 15 months into this pandemic and we know how to control the spread of this disease and it's not happening at La Palma and that then puts community spread higher," Belous said. "At the end of the day, detention center health is community health because this virus spreads and can be transmitted no matter if you are a detainee there of if you're a staff member there. So this is putting all of this at risk and this is making the pandemic last longer for all of us."

Gilchrist, the CoreCivic spokesperson, disputed all of the allegations of unsafe conditions at its facilities.

In a written statement, she said that CoreCivic provides “ample cleaning supplies and soap at all of our facilities, including ACCC.”

Detainees are provided with handwashing soap and Environmental Protection Agency-approved sanitation supplies on a daily basis, Gilchrist said. Detainees have had access to extra disinfecting chemicals and cleaning supplies in response to COVID-19, Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist said staff members are required to wear face masks, without exception, and that all staff members and people in their care at Adams have had masks since April 2020. Detainees are required to wear masks when outside of their assigned living areas unless they are eating or drinking, she said.

Advocates said they are concerned about transfers of large groups of detainees to the Adams facility and other detention facilities, which they believe have contributed to recent spikes in COVID-19 cases across several states.

Belous at the Florence Project said several clients have been transferred recently from the La Palma Correctional Center in Arizona to the Adams facility in Mississippi.

She said the transfers may have helped spread the virus from the La Palma facility to the Adams facility.

"Our concern is that if you don't have it under control at La Palma and you move folks around, then this virus will continue to spread wherever folks are if they are not properly quarantined or tested," Belous said.

Gilchrist disputed this claim.

"Since even before any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our facilities, we have rigorously followed the guidance of local, state and federal health authorities, as well as our government partners. La Palma Correctional Center has followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which have evolved over time, since the onset of the pandemic and we're continuing to work closely with our government partners to enhance procedures as needed," Gilchrist said.

Khurtlyn Chin, 36, who was detained at the Adams facility from October 2019 until April 2021, raised concerns about the flow of new detainees coming into the cramped dormitory he said he shared with up to 80 other men over the past year. There was little room to socially distance and mask use was inconsistent among staff members and detainees, he said.

The constant flow of new detainees was especially troubling, Chin said.

“People are getting transferred in and out, in and out and mixing in with the general population. That’s why the cases got so crazy,” he said. Chin was released from the facility in April, because of a medical condition that puts him at risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

CoreCivic disputed the claim in an emailed statement and said that individuals arriving at their facilities are tested for COVID-19 during intake. Individuals who don’t test positive are separated from the rest of the population for the first 14 days at the facility, Gilchrist said.

“There is a robust communication process in place with detainees regarding test results and cohort status/protocols. Our health care providers verbally notify the detainees of their test results,” Gilchrist said.

Chin was named in the complaint, which also alleges that ICE regularly flew close to 100 immigrants at a time to the Adams facility from other facilities, detaining them in holding rooms where social distancing is impossible.

Max Meyers, an immigration attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice in Jackson, questions why one of his clients was recently transferred after 20 days at Adams County Correctional Center to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana. The client was later released from Winn after 48 hours. The 34-year-old man arrived in the U.S. with his wife from Cuba, requesting asylum at the Texas border. According to medical records he turned over to immigration authorities at the border, he has asthma, which puts him at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, Meyers said.

“ICE is still in possession of his medical paperwork, but instead of directly releasing him from Adams he was transferred unnecessarily to Winn,” Meyers said. “Adams County Correctional is clearly a hot spot. But now we are seeing outbreaks in other detention centers where we know there have been transfers from Adams.”

Correctional facilities and detention centers are required to limit transfers in and out of facilities to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, according to a series of guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control. Immigration attorneys say that transfers have continued throughout the pandemic, posing a risk of spread among facilities and the surrounding communities.

“There has been an alarming rate of transfers of medically vulnerable people and vague or no reason for which to justify the transfers,” said Veronica Salama, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

ICE was ordered by U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal of the Central District of California last April to consider the release of medically vulnerable detainees to limit the spread of COVID-19 and ensure their safety. Under the order, ICE was required to limit transfers to reduce the spread of the virus.

“We are seeing much of the same concerns we have had the entire time, denials to release people with several medical vulnerabilities and failure to limit transfers,” said Ben Salk, a senior staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The New Orleans’ ICE field office reported 786 active COVID-19 cases as of May 24, making up nearly 39% of all active COVID-19 cases currently reported among ICE detainees. Outbreaks of more than 50 active cases also have been reported at three Louisiana detention facilities, according to ICE data.

The spikes in cases coincide with growing concern over ICE’s lack of a national strategy for how it intends to vaccinate more than 20,000 people in its custody. The agency has not said how many detainees have been vaccinated while in its custody, leaving vaccination efforts to be coordinated by localhealth authorities in each state.

In Arizona, vaccines have been provided to detainees at two of four ICE facilities, according to Casal Singletary, the Pinal County epidemiologist.

Casal Singletary declined to say whether the two included either the La Palma or Eloy facilities.

In Louisiana, vaccines have been requested and distributed to the nine facilities currently used by ICE to house detainees, according to state health officials.

“Facilities have been provided options to receive vaccines in multiple ways, including vaccination response teams, that are available on a monthly schedule to visit each region (across Louisiana) on a rotation,” according to a spokesperson with the Louisiana Department of Health. The Louisiana National Guard is helping to administer vaccines in several ICE facilities, and state health authorities are discussing the possibility of providing vaccine education in those settings.

The Mississippi State Department of Health has distributed 800 first and second doses of the Moderna vaccine to Adams County Correctional Center and 1,100 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as of May 24. Detainees are not required to be vaccinated, so it’s not clear how many doses were used.

Sharlot, a spokesperson for Mississippi's health department, in a written statement attributed the rise in cases at the facility to new arrivals to Adams.

“All new detainees are tested on arrival and entry into the facility. The detainees reported as new cases at this facility are testing positive on entry into the facility, indicating exposure to and infection with Covid-19 occurred outside of the facility prior to their entry into Adams County Correctional Center,” she said.

But with states reducing or entirely eliminating protections put in place to limit the spread of the virus, there is concern over the potential impact outbreaks in detention facilities could have on surrounding communities.

In Louisiana, the vast majority of detention facilities are within a three- to four-hour drive from larger cities in rural pockets of the state where vaccine hesitancy is high. Both Louisiana and Mississippi are among the 10 states with the lowest rates of vaccination in the U.S., according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker.

“We know this is going to have an impact in rural populations with low vaccination rates,” said Dr. Anjali Niyogi, an associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the Tulane School of Medicine and a volunteer for Physicians Without Borders. “Without adequate protective measures in place and the spread of new variants, what does this mean for a potential third wave and for already overburdened health facilities in those communities?”