A Brazilian nun who has helped refugees and migrants for 40 years on Wednesday won the Nansen prize awarded every year by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees for outstanding work to protect internally displaced and stateless people.
Sister Rosita Milesi, 79, is a member of the Catholic order of the Scalabrini nuns, who are renowned for their service to refugees worldwide. Her parents were poor farmers from an Italian background in southern Brazil, and she became a nun at 19.
As a lawyer, social worker and activist, Milesi championed the rights and dignity of refugees and migrants of different nationalities in Brazil for four decades.
She is the second Brazilian to receive the award. Former Sao Paulo Archbishop Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns won the prize in 1985.
Milesi leads the Migration and Human Rights Institute (IMDH) in Brasilia, through which she has helped thousands of forced migrants and displaced people access essential services such as shelter, healthcare, education and legal assistance.
She coordinates RedeMIR, a national network of 60 organizations that operates throughout Brazil, including in remote border regions, to support refugees and migrants.
Five rich men disappeared in a tourist submersible, and the rich world was obsessed with them. In the same week, 750 poor people were crammed onto a fishing boat called the Adriana that the rich world let sink. On the sub were two billionaires, two millionaires and a millionaire’s son. One of the millionaires and his son were from Pakistan, the same country from which many of the migrants on…
During a campaign rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, suggested that his plan to deport millions of immigrants in the United States would utilize violence on a massive scale. Trump falsely insinuated that immigrants living in the U.S. were mostly violent criminals, a claim that has been debunked many times over the past…
Myanmar’s shadow government has called on Thailand to exclude Myanmar junta from involvement in administering the affairs of migrant workers in Thailand, saying the regime is unfairly taxing them in order to prolong its grip on power.
Thailand is home to about two million documented workers from Myanmar, with jobs in agriculture, fishing, manufacturing and other sectors, and many sending funds home to support families as Myanmar’s economy languishes in the aftermath of a 2021 coup.
While many Myanmar workers arrive under an exchange system, others slip across the border without paperwork hoping to get a so-called Certificate of Identity, or CI, issued by either a Thai government office or the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, allowing them to stay and work.
The National Unity Government, or NUG, set up by pro-democracy politicians after the 2021 coup, said the authority of the junta embassy in Myanmar to issue the certificates gives it the opportunity to exploit “oppressed Myanmar migrant workers and expatriates in all means.”
“The National Unity Government would like to urge the [Thai] government, the house of representatives and parliament, concerned bodies and people of Thailand who prioritize the basic human and labor rights not to allow the Myanmar military junta’s violations in free and fair Thailand,” the NUG said in a statement.
The role of the embassy in issuing the certificates, one of the first steps that migrants take towards establishing themselves legally in Thailand, became even more important last month when Thailand closed seven of its eight offices for issuing the certificates, meaning they are only available through a center in Samut Sakhorn city and the embassy in Bangkok.
The NUG said the embassy was unfairly asking for extensive paperwork, when the CI system was set up to process undocumented migrants.
“It is completely different from the original intention of issuing CI cards for those who cannot provide any documentation,” the NUG said, adding that if migrants had the necessary paperwork, the embassy should be issuing them passports.
In September last year, as Myanmar’s economic crisis worsened, the ruling military council demanded that overseas workers remit at least 25% of their salary to families in Myanmar through banks and services approved by the junta at an artificially low exchange rate.
Later in the year, the junta announced that any worker applying for documentation, including CIs, at the Bangkok embassy would also be required to pay taxes to the junta in addition to their Thai taxes.
The embassy was “exploiting the hard-earned wages of migrant workers with the intention of creating a stream of revenues to use in their brutal terrorism,” the NUG said.
“Forcibly collecting income tax from the salary of expatriate citizens, pressurizing them to send remittances to families through banks and financial services companies that they designate is only aimed at their interests and perpetuation of power,” it said.
The Myanmar embassy in Bangkok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Myanmar boy (C) dressed in a Superman costume waits with his mother in a queue to return back to Myanmar before their seven-day Thailand border pass expire, at the Tak border checkpoint in Thailand’s Mae Sot district on April 11, 2024. (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP)
Yamone, a Myanmar national who received her CI in May, told Radio Free Asia that in order to get her documentation, she had to begin paying into the junta’s tax system, amounting to a quarter of her income.
“We are currently living in Thailand, so we don’t want to pay taxes to Myanmar, but we continue to pay them,” Yamone said.
The NUG urged the Thai government to stop the junta collecting income tax from Myanmar citizens in Thailand, saying there was already an agreement not to double-tax Myanmar workers. It also called on Thailand to issue identity cards to migrant workers allowing them to stay.
Kyaw Ni, deputy minister for the NUG’s Ministry of Labor, told RFA that although Thailand continued to engage with the junta, the NUG also spoke with the ministry through intermediary organizations to try to make its case.
“Although there have been no direct discussions with the Thai labor ministry yet, we have held two online meetings with the Committee on Labor of the Thai parliament,” Kyaw Ni said, adding that the NUG had also held talks with the Thai foreign ministry on migrant workers.
Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kiana Duncan for RFA.
Just hours before Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of apparently coordinated arson attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network. No one has claimed responsibility yet. Before the games, protests highlighted the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities as “social cleansing.” We go to Paris for an update with…
On a July afternoon in the Thai coastal town of Samut Sakhon southwest of Bangkok, hundreds of Myanmar migrants queued in the rain outside a government office, the last place in Thailand where they can get a Certificate of Identity, or CI, which allows them to live and work legally in the kingdom.
Until very recently, similar scenes played out at seven other such offices across Thailand. But on July 7, the government shut those offices, leaving hundreds of thousands of Myanmar workers fretting about how to get hold of the vital paperwork.
“After the other centers closed, about 900 people would come to the center per day,” said one job broker in Samut Sakhon, who helps migrants get the documents, declining to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Thailand is home to about two million people from Myanmar toiling in jobs in agriculture, hospitality, fishing, manufacturing and other sectors, but labor advocates say that many live undocumented after arriving through the porous border.
Thousands have fled for their lives after protesting against a 2021 military coup and again in early 2024 when the military began conscripting young people into their army, and the closure of the CI offices has sent shockwaves through the community.
Htoo Chit, executive director of the Foundation for Education and Development, estimates that more than 200,000 Myanmar nationals still need to apply for a CI, saying that some have not been able to afford the fees and may need more time.
Workers caught without documentation can be sent to prison, hit with heavy fines and deported, under Thai law.
“It’s really dangerous for the migrant workers,” said Htoo.
The government has said that workers have had sufficient time to apply for the proper paperwork since the offices opened in October. The Department of Employment did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Radio Free Asia.
Fewer options
For many migrant workers, the alternatives to obtaining the CI are daunting. They can risk returning to Myanmar – which has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup – to try to get a passport but they run the risk of being refused or of being drafted into the army. Or they can approach the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to ask for a passport, a prospect that terrifies those who fled for political reasons.
“It will be more difficult. I have many friends who are trying to get a CI, but they won’t get it if the offices are closed,” said one man living on the border who asked to remain anonymous to protect his status to stay in Thailand.
The man said he applied and received his CI in 2023 near Bangkok, but his friends may not be so lucky, adding that more than 15 people from his circle of friends won’t be able to make a similar trip hundreds of kilometers south to Samut Sakhon for fear of arrest and the cost of travel.
“They’re trying to think how to do it but they don’t really know. They’re living here with police cards,” he said, referring to an unofficial system by which migrants pay a monthly fee to local police to avoid arrest. “The police are always asking for documents and they arrest our people who don’t have them so it will be hard.”
People cross the Thailand-Myanmar Friendship Bridge as a stream of people queued at a border crossing to flee Myanmar early on Friday, a day after the strategically vital town of Myawaddy adjoining Thailand fell to anti-junta resistance that has been growing in strength, in Mae Sot, Thailand, April 12, 2024. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)
But labor advocates argue this ignores the complex realities faced by migrant workers.
Brahm Press, director of the Migrant Assistance Program in Thailand, said the CI was a vital first step for people trying to set themselves up in Thailand, especially for those in fear of persecution by the Myanmar junta.
“The problem is that when documents expire, people who are in Thailand and don’t want to return and don’t want the government to know where they are, they’re the ones who are going to have the problem,” Press said “The CI is kind of the starting point for re-entering the system.”
The Foundation for Education and Development’s Htoo shares similar concerns.
“Who’s going to provide it? If you didn’t have a CI or you didn’t want to work with the Myanmar government, where are you going to get this kind of certificate?” he said.
Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kiana Duncan for RFA.
We host a roundtable the morning after Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president on Thursday, just five days after surviving an assassination attempt, delivering the longest acceptance speech in convention history. Trump began with a somber recounting of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his right ear, and soon went off script to deliver a rambling diatribe against various political enemies and repeatedly demonized immigrants. “The first three or four days of the convention were pitched as a display of unity,” says Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker, who says the nominee “got in the way” of the party’s plans. “Trump was just straightforwardly weird.” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, founder of Futuro Media, says the vicious anti-immigrant rhetoric from Trump and almost every other speaker throughout the week is built on lies. “If everything that he said is true, then our American economy would be tanking, right? And, actually, there would be rampant crime across the streets. That is not the truth. And even Trump supporters … know that’s not the truth,” says Hinojosa. We also speak with former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner, who says both Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance are promoting a false populism that does not actually support workers or challenge the power of big money. “We do need a president that will put the working-class people ahead of corporations. We do need a president that will line up the supposed values of this country with policy. The problem is, President Donald J. Trump is not it, and neither is J.D. Vance,” says Turner, a senior fellow at The New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In Southern Arizona, on an over-100-degree day in June, humanitarian aid workers found a group of migrants standing in a thin slice of shade formed by the large steel slats of the border wall. Among them were a pregnant woman, an elderly woman, two women showing signs of heat exhaustion and young children. In total, about 30 people had crossed into the United States and were waiting for the Border…
On June 18, President Joe Biden announced that he would be taking executive action to protect undocumented spouses of American citizens, providing them with a pathway to citizenship. This would extend protections, work visas and citizenship to potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals, many of them DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients and Dreamers. In response…
President Biden has issued one of the most restrictive immigration policies ever declared under a recent Democratic administration. It will temporarily shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, deny asylum to most migrants who do not cross into the U.S. via ports of entry, and limit total asylum requests at the southern border to no more than 2,500 per day. The ACLU has threatened to sue the Biden administration over what reporter John Washington, who covers immigration in Arizona, calls an “excruciating and likely deadly” decision. “An illegal asylum seeker is a contradiction in terms,” Washington continues. “People have the right, according to U.S. law, to ask for asylum irrespective of how they crossed the border or where they are or what their status is. And this rule really flies in the face of that.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that authorizes officials at the U.S.-Mexico border to immediately deport asylum seekers if they have entered the country in any manner other than through a legal port of entry — a move that will put thousands of people who are fleeing persecution in their home countries in jeopardy. The executive order, announced by the Biden White House on…
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In a recent interview with Spanish-language cable network Univision that aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden suggested that he would soon issue an executive order using the same authority former President Donald Trump used to enact racist immigration policies. Lamenting that thousands of migrants are seeking asylum in the U.S. daily under current policy, Biden said during the interview that he…
Republicans who are pushing for more restrictive immigration policy ahead of a pivotal election year continue to lean on an old strategy in their appeal to voters: broadly framing immigrant men as dangerous next to imagery of young White women victims. In 2015 it was Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was fatally shot on a San Francisco pier. A year later, Sarah Root, a 21-year-old Iowa woman…
Although three-quarters of migrants surveyed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand said they suffered some type of abuse while leaving their homelands via people-smuggling networks, nearly half said they would do it again, the United Nations said in a report released Tuesday.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime conducted a survey of nearly 4,800 migrants and refugees in those three countries who had turned to illegal networks to smuggle them into Southeast Asia, the UNODC’s regional office in Bangkok said in its report.
The respondents were abused by the “military, police, smugglers, border guards or criminal gangs,” according to the report titled “Migrant Smuggling in Southeast Asia.” Those who took part in the survey were from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Somalia and Vietnam, and included Rohingya.
“Migrant smuggling is often not a free or voluntary choice, but an act of desperation, to seek security, safety or opportunity, or freedom from threat of harm, oppression or corruption,” said Masood Karimipour, UNODC regional representative in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“The data shows that smugglers may be individual actors, loosely connected criminals, or organized groups. Bringing them to justice is an important part of protecting the people seeking safety and a better life,” he said in a statement that accompanied the report’s release.
The report found that military and police were seen as likely to carry out physical violence; ask for bribes or engage in extortion; cause death; and commit sexual violence during the journey.
“Non-physical violence (e.g., harassment) is more common for men (18% of smuggled men surveyed) than women (13%). Eleven percent of women and 6% of men experienced sexual violence, while 9% of men and 6% of women witnessed death,” the report said.
About one-quarter of the respondents said that climate issues including floods, drought or extreme temperatures drove them to seek out smugglers.
“Climate issues are particularly relevant for smuggled Bangladeshis; three out of four Bangladeshis surveyed said that climate-related or natural environment issues influenced their decision to leave,” the UNODC said.
A similar number said they were pulled into having to bribe officials, or give them gifts or perform favors during their travels.
“[P]eople think that they need smugglers to help them deal with corrupt authorities,” the report said.
Despite this, “Among smuggled people surveyed, almost half (48%) stated that they would have taken the journey anyway, knowing what they did now about the conditions, 40% said that they would not have and 12% were undecided,” the report said.
It found that more than two out of every three respondents said they, family or friends had initiated contact with smugglers through social media, by phone or in person. They pay fees averaging US$2,380.
Nearly 90% of Rohingya – members of a persecuted and stateless Muslim minority group from Myanmar – told interviewers that they used smugglers to get to Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia.
In light of the report released by UNODC, RFA-affiliate BenarNews reached out and interviewed three Rohingya who had relied on people-smuggling networks in their efforts to migrate to countries in Southeast Asia other than Myanmar.
Rohingya Shobbir Hussain (left) and fellow refugees Sirajul Mustafa, Abdul Kalam and Hafiz Ayasullah stand near the Balee Meuseuraya Aceh Building, a meeting building in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, March 25, 2024. (Nurdin Hasan/BenarNews)
One of the three, Shobbir Hussain, 18, is among 2,000 Rohingya who have been sheltering in Indonesia’s Aceh region since October 2023.
Along with about 130 other Rohingya, he arrived in Aceh Besar regency on Dec. 10, from the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, after weeks adrift at sea.
Shobbir said his parents sent him on his journey to have a better life.
“Life in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, Bangladesh, is no longer safe. There are frequent acts of violence, kidnapping and extortion,” Shobbir said.
“It turns out here is not what I expected either,” he said.
Four months after arriving in Aceh, Shobbir said his life is much like it was in the Bangladesh camp – his time is spent eating and sleeping.
“There is nothing to do, even though I want to go to school or work.”
Shobbir said his father paid smugglers to take him by a wooden boat across the rough Andaman Sea – a 45-day journey to Indonesia – after they promised a better life in Indonesia or Malaysia. He said he did not know how much his father had paid for him to leave.
His father, mother and seven siblings lived in a cramped Cox’s Bazar refugee camp after they were forced to leave Rakhine state following a brutal offensive launched by the Myanmar military in 2017.
“Our house was burned down and the Myanmar military shot dead one of my younger brothers. That’s why we fled to Bangladesh,” he said.
Fled to Malaysia
Meanwhile in Malaysia, Shahidullah Mohd Hosein, said his parents paid smugglers to help him leave a crowded refugee camp in search of better opportunities abroad.
Shahidullah lived in the Kutapalong refugee camp in Bangladesh after his family fled the prosecution in Myanmar. His family and about 1 million other Rohingya live in camps and settlements in and around Cox’s Bazar.
Shahidullah said he had no future in the camp.
“There are a lot of groups who kidnap people to demand ransom, and if the family of the kidnapped person does not pay, they threaten to kill that person,” Shahidullah, 29, told BenarNews.
He said groups have burned shelters in the crowded camps at night, leaving families homeless.
Shahidullah said he reached out to a syndicate to arrange passage to Malaysia. Before long the syndicate demanded his mother pay 500,000 Bangladeshi taka ($4,565) to transport him to Malaysia. He arrived in Malaysia in September 2023.
“I did not know how my mother was able to get the money. But after a few days I was sent to a boat with around 100 other Rohingya.
“It took us one month and some trekking to get us to Malaysia. We had no food throughout the journey and could only eat when we were on land,” he said, adding that the group had to resort to eating leaves while trekking through jungles.
Shahidullah’s journey ended last September in Ampang, near Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur, where he has been housed by the Rohingya expatriate community.
Rohingya Halima Khatun, 25, seen here in a Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, returned to Bangladesh last month after spending 13 months incarcerated in Myanmar after her effort to travel to Malaysia failed, March 8, 2024. (Sharif Khiam/BenarNews)
In Bangladesh, a Rohingya woman has returned to a refugee camp after her attempt to travel to Myanmar for an arranged marriage led to spending more than a year in a Myanmar prison.
Halima Khatun saw her father killed by Burmese troops in Myanmar’s Rakhine state on Aug. 25, 2017. Her mother took her and two sisters across the border where they sheltered at a Bangladesh seeking shelter in the Teknaf refugee camp.
Halima, who was 18 at the time, said she fled the camp in late 2022 to travel to Malaysia assisted by human traffickers. Instead, she spent 13 months in prison after being arrested by Myanmar authorities when the boat’s engine broke down during the sea voyage.
“My family was unable to trace me during those 13 months. They assumed I had drowned in the sea or died anyhow,” she told BenarNews during an interview.
Following her release from prison, Halima returned to Bangladesh in February with assistance from Myanmar relatives.
“My marriage to Habibur Rahman, a young Rohingya guy in Malaysia, was planned. He was the one who attempted to utilize the ‘Dalal’ syndicate to get me there,” she said. The term means brokers.
“One of the brokers involved in my journey to Malaysia was a Rohingya living in Myanmar; another was a local Bangladeshi,” Halima said.
The traffickers demanded 800,000 taka ($7,289) as payment for transporting her to Malaysia.
She was traveling with several Rohingya men and women, as well as some Bangladeshis.
“After leaving Shamila [a Rakhine state village], we stayed on that boat for 22 days before moving on to another small boat for two days and two nights. Then, as the boat [engine stalled], the sailors rushed away.
“Then the ‘military’ arrived and rescued us. After that, a police car drove all of us to a place where we were for 12 days,” she said.
Sentenced to two years in a Myanmar prison, Halima spent 13 months incarcerated.
About three weeks ago, Halima paid a broker fee to cross the Naf river by boat and return to Bangladesh.
Halima said the man who promised to marry her had already married another Rohingya girl from a camp in Bangladesh and took her to Malaysia.
Abdur Rahman in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Ahmad Mustakim Zulkifli in Kuala Lumpur and Nurdin Hasan in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By BenarNews Staff.
As presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Joe Biden scapegoat and attack immigrants on the campaign trail, stoking racist and xenophobic fears for votes, we speak to the director of a groundbreaking new film, unseen, that aims to reframe the narrative. Using experimental cinematography to promote accessibility for blind and low-vision audiences, unseen follows Pedro, who is blind and undocumented, as he works toward a degree in social work. Director Set Hernandez, themself an undocumented immigrant and a co-founder of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, discusses the film’s uplifting of the “undocumented and disabled perspective,” in opposition to political narratives that exclude and dehumanize immigrant communities.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
As Hong Kong authorities prepare to pass a second national security law, the British government has relaxed some of the immigration rules for people from the city seeking to emigrate to the United Kingdom amid a crackdown on dissent.
The Safeguarding National Security bill, currently before the Legislative Council, includes sentences of up to life imprisonment for treason, insurrection, sabotage and mutiny, and 20 years for espionage.
It can punish people 10 years for crimes linked to “state secrets” and “sedition,” and allow the passports of anyone who flees overseas to be revoked.
The legislation is mandatory under Article 23 of its Basic Law, which has provided a constitutional framework for the city since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
It was recently rebooted after being shelved following mass popular protests against it in 2003, and is expected to pass this week.
Critics say the ruling Communist Party has a broad and vaguely defined interpretation of many of the crimes in the bill, and that “national security” charges are already being used to prosecute people for peaceful dissent and political opposition in the city.
Relaxed rules
Now, the U.K. Home Office has relaxed the rules for holders of its British National Overseas, or BNO, passport who wish to apply for a visa.
The visa offers a pathway to resettlement and eventual citizenship, making it easier for them to obtain public assistance if they run out of money, smoothing out bureaucratic bottlenecks and allowing them to bring relatives and dependent adults with them with independent visa status.
In February, the United Kingdom loosened requirements for people wanting to emigrate from Hong Kong with their partner under the BNO route to citizenship. To date, at least 191,000 people have applied to the visa program, according to government figures released in November.
A girl waves farewell to friends as she departs for a permanent move to the U.K. at the Hong Kong airport, June 30, 2021. (Vincent Yu/AP)
The moves, while not huge in scope, will likely smooth the path of many families to resettlement in the United Kingdom, an immigration consultant told RFA Cantonese.
An immigration consultant with the British advocacy group Hong Kong Aid who gave only his surname Chow for fear of reprisals said he has seen an uptick in inquiries about the BNO visa since the government announced it would fast-track the new national security law through the legislature.
“My sense is we have been getting a lot more inquiries from Hong Kong about applying for BNO visas and political asylum as the Article 23 [law] has been in process,” Chow said.
“We have been getting a call every couple of days since February,” he said. Public consultation on the law started on Jan. 30.
Chow said he didn’t believe that the rule changes alone were enough to prompt a surge in applications.
A Hong Kong resident who moved to the United Kingdom a few months ago and who gave only the surname Cheung welcomed the rule changes. Now she plans to apply to have her elderly, dependent mother join her.
“It’s definitely very beneficial, because I had been worried about this for a long time,” she said. “She’s very old, and this is about our family’s long-term future and career development. We all think the U.K. is a better place.”
Moves in Canada
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Canada are calling on the government to make sure that they continue to offer priority processing of applications from Hong Kongers wanting to emigrate to the country, and to take steps to ease bureaucratic bottlenecks for more than 100 applicants.
Parliamentarians Melissa Lantsman and Tom Kmiec said they are concerned about the effects of delays “as the human rights situation in Hong Kong continues to deteriorate and Hong Kongers look for a safe way to exit the city by immigrating to Canada.”
“We would like to clarify whether priority processing is still in place as the situation in Hong Kong continues to deteriorate,” they said in a letter to the immigration minister.
Aileen Calverley, co-founder and trustee of the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch, said many Hong Kongers are being faced with delays in processing their applications to emigrate to Canada.
“It is important that the government uphold its commitment and ensure their applications are processed in a timely manner,” Calverley said in a statement.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cheryl Tung for RFA Cantonese.
In 2019, I stood outside a for-profit child migrant jail in the city of Homestead, Florida. I was watching then-presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris speak out against the facility, initially opened under the Obama administration and reopened under former President Donald Trump. “It’s a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government,” Harris said at the time…
President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump are in Texas today touring different sectors of the Southern border, a spectacle that encapsulates how central immigration is to each of their reelection campaigns. It is Biden’s approach to immigration in recent months, however, that has been a source of controversy on both sides of the aisle. Large swathes of the country do not believe his…
Republicans in the Arizona state legislature have advanced a bill that would grant property owners the right to shoot and kill anyone who trespasses on their property, so long as they claim they were doing so in self-defense. House Bill 2843 expands the state’s current “Castle Doctrine” law. That statute allows individuals to shoot and kill any person who breaks into their home.
