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For Immediate Release
June, 04 2024, 07:53pm EDT
Contact:
Etant Dupain: edupain@refugeesinternaitonal.org
Refugees International Appalled by New Biden Border Policies
Statement by Refugees International Director for the Americas and Europe Yael Schacher:
“Refugees International is appalled by President Biden’s invocation of executive authority to violate U.S. and international refugee law and turn away people seeking safety at the U.S. southern border after a numerical quota has been reached. The number of people crossing the border has no bearing on the claims of legitimate asylum seekers. However, they will now be shut out – ironically in the name of “freeing up the asylum system for those with legitimate claims.”
Today’s policies will also not yield a better managed border. As the failed experiment with Title 42 showed, it will compound suffering and crime on the Mexican side of the border and waste valuable operational and legal resources to implement and defend. These are resources that would be better used coordinating reception and adjudicating claims to restore trust and fairness in the asylum system. Because of limits on returns and repatriations, the new policies will likely lead to increased detention of unauthorized crossers who both do and do not “manifest fear” of return (itself an ill-defined process), especially if they are from Africa and Asia.
Like several other asylum policies implemented by the administration in the last year, including bars on eligibility and expedited screenings in border patrol custody, today’s announced policies – which the administration shockingly calls “common sense” – are reminiscent of asylum restrictions proposed by former President Trump and constitute a direct betrayal of values candidate Biden promised to uphold as president.
At a time of unprecedented displacement in the hemisphere and beyond, they also represent a shirking of responsibility by a country with capacity to receive many more people seeking safety and set a dangerous example to the world of scapegoating asylum seekers in hopes of political gain. The challenges at the border are real and require solutions that balance an orderly border with fair and humane treatment of asylum seekers. This approach will achieve neither.”
Refugees International is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates to end refugee crises, advocates for lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced people, and promotes solutions to displacement crises.
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Nov 25, 2024
An estimated 130,000 children under the age of 10 have been trapped in areas of northern Gaza almost entirely cut off from aid assistance, food and medical supplies for 50 days, a major humanitarian group said Monday.
According to Save the Children, life-sustaining aid has largely failed to make it through to any of the people besieged by Israeli forces in northern Gaza since early October, when the IDF declared the territory a "dangerous combat zone" and ordered civilians to evacuate.
Earlier this month, Joyce Msuya, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator for the United Nations, warned that the Israeli offensive in the area that began in early October was "an intensified, extreme, and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year." Local health officials in Gaza say that the death toll for the entire enclave has surpassed 44,000 since October 7 of 2023.
"Save the Children has been unable to access northern Gaza to deliver food parcels for 5,000 families, along with 725 hygiene kits and other aid supplies, for over seven weeks," said the group in its Monday statement. "Before the area was closed off, Save the Children worked through local partners to reach thousands of children in need, distributing over 1,000 food parcels and 600 hygiene kits, and reaching around 15,000 children and families in northern Gaza with psychosocial support, recreational activities, and case management."
Save the Children's warning comes not long after the Famine Review Committee released an alert stating that "there is a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip."
"The situation in northern Gaza is not fit for human survival and yet we know there are about 130,000 children under 10 trapped in those conditions, not to mention the thousands of older children and their families," said regional director Jeremy Stoner.
A mother of two trapped in northern Gaza, identified by Save the Children as Ruba, testified through the group that she was trapped with her children "under relentless bombs, rockets, and bullets, with nowhere to run. My mother is paralyzed, and I cannot leave her behind. My brother has been killed, my husband was taken, and I don't know if he's alive."
"With no food, no clean water, and constant fear, both my children have developed rashes, and my daughter is passing blood, but there is no medicine, no help, and absolutely nothing I can do. They cry and ask me why we can’t just leave, why their father isn’t with us, why we can’t go back to a normal life," she said.
Save the Children is not the only entity reporting that aid is being blocked. According to an update from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued last week regarding northern Gaza, "between 1 and 18 November, 27 out of 31 coordination requests by the U.N. to access the besieged areas were denied and the remaining four were initially approved but then impeded on the ground. No fuel was let in for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities."
Following Save the Children's statement, Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called for bolder action by nations besides the U.S.: "Because the Biden administration steadfastly refuses to apply any real pressure on the genocidal Israeli government to allow food to be delivered to those being intentionally starved in northern Gaza, including some 130,000 children under age 10, it is up to the international community to take concrete action."
“While our nation's government has abdicated any role in alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people under a systematic campaign of mass destruction, slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation, other nations can take actions such as economic sanctions, arms embargoes and arrests of Israeli war criminals," he said.
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Former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, a moderate Democratic lawmaker who fully embraced economic populism in his later political career and ran what one journalist called a "proto-Bernie" presidential campaign in 1976, died on Saturday at the age of 94.
Harris' death inspired tributes from an array of Democratic politicians and progressives, who remembered the former senator's outspoken support for working people and his championing of Indigenous rights.
Harris was voted into the Senate to replace Sen. Robert Kerr (D-Okla.) in 1964 after Kerr died of a heart attack. He began as a close ally of President Lyndon Johnson, supporting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson's Great Society programs aimed at reducing poverty.
But he "underwent a dramatic passage from moderate-conservative to liberal ideas," as The New York Times reported, embracing a "new populism" that was centered on promoting racial equality and a redistribution of economic and political power and fighting against the exploitation of workers. He also gradually changed his stance on Vietnam, calling for troop reductions and eventually a full withdrawal of the U.S. military in the region.
In 1967 he was a member of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders, convened to determine the root cause of riots in Black communities across the country. He concluded that "entrenched racism" was to blame.
He was also credited with sponsoring a bill that pushed President Richard Nixon to return Blue Lake, a site that was sacred to the people of the Taos Pueblo tribe, to them.
"In Senator Harris, Oklahoma sent a public servant to Washington, D.C. who gave voice to those in need, lifted up those the economy left behind, was a champion of civil rights, and was a friend to Indian Country," said Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. of the Cherokee Nation.
"His story is one that too few people know—the story of an Oklahoman who championed working families and fought for justice and equity at every turn."
Running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, Harris called for higher taxes on the richest Americans and lower taxes for the rest of the country, stricter regulations on large corporations, a "moral" foreign policy, abortion rights, and "community control" of police forces.
Columnist John Nichols of The Nation said Harris adopted the slogan "No More Bullshit" during his presidential campaign.
Harris' presidential bid, said journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, "was a road-not-taken that would have led to a much better world than we have now."
Harris told the Times in 1975 that the issue he was most concerned with was "privilege."
"The fundamental problem is that too few people have all the money and power, and everybody else has too little of either," he said. "The widespread diffusion of economic and political power ought to be the express goal—the stated goal—of government."
Harris' campaign garnered enthusiastic support from many voters, with the former senator taking aim at "the superrich, giant corporations" and leading efforts to gain the confidence of blue-collar workers, farmers, poor Black and white voters, and unemployed people.
"Those in the coalition don't have to love one another," Harris said. "All they have to do is recognize that they are commonly exploited, and that if they get themselves together they are a popular majority and can take back the government."
After his presidential run, Harris became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and left politics to raise chickens on a farm in Corrales, New Mexico.
In conversations with Axios reporter Russell Contreras in his later years, Harris expressed frustration with the Democratic Party, saying leaders didn't discuss poverty as much as they should.
"It's harder to get out of poverty today than it was back then," he told Contreras.
He added that showing a commitment to fight for working-class and low-income people would motivate people in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and on Native American reservations across the country.
"We are grateful to see national media highlighting the life and legacy of former Senator Fred Harris," said the Oklahoma Democratic Party. "His story is one that too few people know—the story of an Oklahoman who championed working families and fought for justice and equity at every turn."
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A cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be within reach on Monday amid reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has repeatedly scuttled diplomatic efforts in recent months—has broadly accepted the proposed terms of a truce after months of devastating bombing that has ramped up in recent days.
Citing an unnamed senior U.S. official, Axiosreported Monday that "Israel and Lebanon have agreed to the terms of a cease-fire agreement to end the Israel-Hezbollah conflict."
The proposed agreement could still collapse: Netanyahu sparked fury within the Biden White House by publicly dismissing a U.S.-led cease-fire push in late September, and the far-right prime minister has been an obstacle to diplomatic attempts to end Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.
According to Axios, Israel's Security Cabinet is expected to approve the newly proposed deal as early as Tuesday.
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Michael Herzog, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., said in a radio interview Monday that "we are close to a deal."
In its current form, the deal would reportedly entail an initial 60-day halt to fighting and a withdrawal of the Israeli military from Lebanon. During that two-month period, according to the Financial Times, "Lebanon and Hezbollah would move its weapons north of the Litani river, which runs 30 kilometers from the U.N.-drawn border."
The Israeli outlet Channel 12reported Monday that the Biden administration has signaled U.S. support if Israel decides to attack Lebanon again "whenever it sees an immediate threat."
Israel's large-scale bombardment of Lebanon—which began in mid-September and was soon followed by a ground invasion—has killed more than 3,000 people, including hundreds of children; displaced more than a million; and sparked a massive humanitarian crisis.
Hezbollah rocket fire has killed dozens of civilians in Israel, according toThe Associated Press, and more than 50 Israeli soldiers have been killed on the ground in Lebanon.
"There's nothing complicated about the fact that children in Lebanon deserve protection, and they're getting none," reminds UNICEF Spokesperson @1james_elder.
Ceasefire for the children of Lebanon NOW. pic.twitter.com/4krwuf1A6N
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) November 19, 2024
Israel bombings intensified in densely populated areas of Lebanon over the past several days as negotiators raced to finalize a cease-fire agreement. One Israeli attack on a multistory residential building in central Beirut on Saturday killed at least 29 people and injured dozens more.
In response, Hezbollah fired a large barrage of rockets into Israel in what was described as the group's largest attack in weeks. Reutersreported that "the Israeli military said houses had been destroyed or set alight near Tel Aviv" as a result of the rocket attack.
Israel's military launched fresh attacks across Lebanon on Monday, killing at least a dozen people.
"Israeli strikes hit commercial and residential buildings in Beirut as well as in the port city of Tyre," APreported. "Military officials said they targeted areas known as Hezbollah strongholds. They issued evacuation orders for Beirut's southern suburbs, and strikes landed across the city, including meters from a Lebanese police base and the city's largest public park."
Humanitarian organizations and United Nations officials have been pleading for a cease-fire in Lebanon for weeks amid the surging death toll and intensifying humanitarian emergency sparked by Israel's assault.
James Elder, a spokesperson for the U.N. Children's Fund, told reporters last week that "for the children of Lebanon, it has become a silent normalization of horror."
"In Lebanon, much the same as has become the case in Gaza, the intolerable is quietly transforming into the acceptable. And the appalling is slipping into the realm of the expected," said Elder. "And once more, the cries of children go unheard, the world's silence grows deafening, and again we allow the unimaginable to become the landscape of childhood. A horrific and unacceptable new normal."
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