Immigration tops public concerns: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx
Texas defies Federal law, officials, puts immigrant lives in danger https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/03/texas-national-guard-migrants-drowning
US routinely uses torture: briefing and white papers
Venezuela refugees flock to US https://www.csis.org/analysis/persistence-venezuelan-migrant-and-refugee-crisis
US harsh policy toward Venezuela drive migrants https://www.democracynow.org/2022/12/21/us_clears_chevron_to_resume_oil
US harsh policy towards Central America, US prison gangs, drugs drive migrants https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11151.pdf
The number of refugees is growing amid environmental, political, economic pressures. They’re a powerful economic benefit to the US. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/news/new-report-reveals-refugees-profound-economic-contributions-and-integration-united-states
World’s 70 million displaced people face a coronavirus disaster, report says
The world’s 70 million displaced people — refugees, asylum seekers and those internally uprooted by war and other crises — are among the most vulnerable to the spread of the novel coronavirus, and the least able to combat it.
Several factors have helped create a virus time bomb: crowded conditions and, for many, a lack of basic shelter; aid that has slowed and in some cases stopped altogether during the crisis; along with the absence of medical care and basic sanitation, according to Refugees International.
In a report released Monday, the independent organization said that while a failure to protect refugee communities will threaten societies at large, “many nations are turning inward as they seek to protect their own citizens.”
Refugees International Report COVID-19 and the Displaced: Addressing the Threat of the Novel Coronavirus in Humanitarian Emergencies
Dismantling democracy? Virus used as excuse to quell dissent
…In times of national emergency, countries often take steps that rights activists see as curtailing civil liberties, such as increased surveillance, curfews and restrictions on travel, or limiting freedom of expression. China locked down whole cities earlier this year to stop the spread of the virus as India did with the whole nation.
Amnesty International researcher Massimo Moratti said states of emergency are allowed under international human rights law but warned that the restrictive measures should not become a “new normal.”
New US measures threaten civil rights amid coronavirus pandemic
As the US continues its scrambling response to the coronavirus outbreak, it has closed borders, quarantined some neighborhoods, and shut down businesses in a number of the most populous states.
Behind the scenes, federal and state governments have also been pushing for a series of draconian measures to respond to the virus, which would disproportionately affect asylum seekers, people embroiled in the justice system and even those seeking an abortion.
The efforts have already had a striking impact on civil liberties, and bear hints of a 2020 version of the US government response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which ultimately led to the Patriot Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that allowed, among other things, the government to collect citizens’ phone data, in an unprecedented encroachment on personal rights….
US jails will become death traps in the coronavirus pandemic
The high turnover rate in the nation’s more than 3,100 city and county jails renders them particularly susceptible to contagion
On Wednesday, 18 March, while New York emerged as the national center for the coronavirus, a desperate message was dispatched from the city’s notorious Rikers Island. “A storm is coming,” tweeted Dr Ross MacDonald, the chief medical officer for the city’s jails, in a frantic plea for action from local officials. “I know what I’ll be doing when it claims my first patient. What will you be doing? What will you have done?”
By the end of that day, one corrections officer and one person jailed on Rikers had tested positive for Covid-19. Ten days later, the number of those infected in New York’s jails had risen to 104 staff and 132 incarcerated people.
More than two months after the first confirmed US case, some portion of the public and the press seems finally to be grasping a chilling truth: unless something changes, our teeming jails, prisons and detention centers – which hold more than 2.2 million people, more than all but four American cities – will likely witness mass casualties….
‘I won’t survive’: Iranian scientist in US detention says Ice will let Covid-19 kill many
An Iranian scientist who was exonerated in a US sanctions trial but remains jailed by immigration authorities said the conditions in detention were filthy and overcrowded – and officials were doing little to prevent a deadly coronavirus outbreak….
WorldConsul 