Monday, June 18, 2018

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2018





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Donald Trump Jr.

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun
In case of accidents he always took his mom
He's the all American bullet-headed saxon mother's son.
All the children sing
Hey Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger lies
Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise
So Captain Marvel zapped in right between the eyes
All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
The children asked him if to kill was not a sin
Not when he looked so fierce, his mother butted in
If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him
All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

The Beatles

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Listen to 'The Daily': Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?

By Michael Barbaro, May 30, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/podcasts/the-daily/kevin-cooper-death-row.html?emc=edit_ca_20180530&nl=california-today&nlid=2181592020180530&te=1




Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via RadioPublic | Via Stitcher

The sole survivor of an attack in which four people were murdered identified the perpetrators as three white men. The police ignored suspects who fit the description and arrested a young black man instead. He is now awaiting execution.

On today's episode:
• Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for three decades.



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Feds extend deadline for public comments on future draft

The feds initially provided only a few days for the public to submit comments regarding the future of the draft in the United States. This mirrored their process of announcing public hearings with only a few days notice. Due to pressure, they have extended the deadline for your online comments until September. 

They need to hear from us!

  • It's time to end draft registration once and for all.
  • Don't expand the draft to women. End it for everyone.
  • No national service linked to the military--including immigration enforcement.
  • Until the US is invaded by a foreign power, stop pretending that the draft is about anything other than empire.
  • Submit your own comments online here.
As we have been reporting to you, a federal commission has been formed to address the future of draft registration in the United States and whether the draft should end or be extended.
The press release states "The Commission wants to learn why people serve and why people don't; the barriers to participation; whether modifications to the selective service system are needed; ways to increase the number of Americans in service; and more."
Public hearings are currently scheduled for the following cities. We encourage folks to attend these hearings by checking the commission's website for the actual dates and locations of these hearings (usually annouced only days before).
  • June 26/27, 2018: Iowa City, IA
  • June 28/29, 2018: Chicago, IL
  • July 19/20, 2018: Waco, TX
  • August 16/17, 2018: Memphis, TN
  • September 19/21, 2018: Los Angeles, CA
For more background information, read our recent post "Why is the government soliciting feedback on the draft now?"

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

We had draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck on the Courage to Resistpodcast this week to explain what's going on. Edward talks about his own history of going to prison for refusing to register for the draft in 1983, the background on this new federal commission, and addresses liberal arguments in favor of involuntary service. Edward explains:
When you say, "I'm not willing to be drafted", you're saying, "I'm going to make my own choices about which wars we should be fighting", and when you say, "You should submit to the draft", you're saying, "You should let the politicians decide for you."
What's happening right now is that a National Commission … has been appointed to study the question of whether draft registration should be continued, whether it should be expanded to make women, as well as men register for the draft, whether a draft itself should be started, whether there should be some other kind of Compulsory National Service enacted.
The Pentagon would say, and it's true, they don't want a draft. It's not plan A, but it's always been plan B, and it's always been the assumption that if we can't get enough volunteers, if we get in over our head, if we pick a larger fight than we can pursue, we always have that option in our back pocket that, "If not enough people volunteer, we're just going to go go to the draft, go to the benches, and dragoon enough people to fight these wars."
The first real meaningful opportunity for a national debate 
about the draft in decades . . .
Courage to Resist -- Support the Troops Who Refuse to Fight!
484 Lake Park Ave. No. 41, Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559

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Incarceration Nation
Emergency Action Alert:
RELEASE DRAFTERS OF THE AGREEMENT TO END HOSTILITIES FROM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
In October, 2017, the 2 year court monitoring period of the Ashker v. Governor settlement to limit solitary confinement in California expired. Since then, the four drafters of the Agreement to End Hostilities and lead hunger strike negotiators – Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Arturo Castellanos, George Franco, and Todd Ashker, have all been removed from general population and put in solitary in Administrative Segregation Units, based on fabricated information created by staff and/or collaborating "inmate informants." In Todd Ashker's case, he is being isolated "for his own protection," although he does not ask for nor desire to be placed in isolation for this or any reason. Sitawa has since been returned to population, but can still not have visitors.
Please contact CDCr Secretary Scott Kernan and Governor Edmund G. Brown and demand CDCr:
• Immediately release back into general population any of the four lead organizers still held in solitary
• Return other Ashker class members to general population who have been placed in Ad Seg 
• Stop the retaliation against all Ashker class members and offer them meaningful rehabilitation opportunities
Contact Scott Kernan. He prefers mailed letters to 1515 S Street, Sacramento 95811. If you call 916-324-7308, press 0 for the Communications office. Email matthew.westbrook@cdcr.ca.gov and cc: scott.kernan@cdcr.ca.gov
Contact Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.,  c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; Phone: (916) 445-2841; Fax: (916) 558-3160; Email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/
As a result of the administrative reviews established after the second prisoner hunger strike in 2011 and the Ashker settlement of 2015, California's SHU population has decreased from 3923 people in October 2012 to 537 in January 2018.  Returning these four men and many other hunger strikers back to solitary in the form of Ad Seg represents an intentional effort to undermine the Agreement to End Hostilities and the settlement, and return to the lock 'em up mentality of the 1980's.
Sitawa writes: "What many of you on the outside may not know is the long sordid history of CDCr's ISU [Institutional Services Unit]/ IGI [Institutional Gang Investigator]/Green Wall syndicate's [organized groups of guards who act with impunity] pattern and practice, here and throughout its prison system, of retaliating, reprisals, intimidating, harassing, coercing, bad-jacketing [making false entries in prisoner files], setting prisoners up, planting evidence, fabricating and falsifying reports (i.e., state documents), excessive force upon unarmed prisoners, [and] stealing their personal property . . ." 
CDCr officials are targeting the Ashker v. Governor class members to prevent them from being able to organize based on the Agreement to End Hostilities, and to obstruct their peaceful efforts to effect genuine changes - for rehabilitation, returning home, productively contributing to the improvement of their communities, and deterring recidivism.
Please help put a stop to this retaliation with impunity. Contact Kernan and Brown today:
Scott Kernan prefers mailed letters to 1515 S Street, Sacramento 95811. If you call 916-324-7308, press 0 for the Communications office. Email matthew.westbrook@cdcr.ca.gov and cc: scott.kernan@cdcr.ca.gov
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.,  c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; Phone: (916) 445-2841; Fax: (916) 558-3160; Email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/
Read statements from the reps: 
Joint Statement from the 4 – Don't let CDCR reverse our Hunger Strike-won legal victory
Sitawa – Brutha Sitawa: CDCr and Soledad Prison retaliate with false reports to return me to solitary confinement
Arturo – Statement by Arturo Castellanos
Todd – We stand together so prisoners never have to go through the years of torture we did  (with Open Letter to Gov. Brown, CA legislators and CDCR Secretary Kernan)




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"There Was a Crooked Prez"
By Dr. Nayvin Gordon

There was a crooked Prez, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked lawyer upon a crooked isle,
They bought a crooked election which caught a crooked mission,
And they both lived together in a little crooked prison.

April 28, 2018

Dr. Gordon is a California Family Physician who has written many articles on health and politics.


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It is so beautiful to see young people in this country rising up to demand an end to gun violence. But what is Donald Trump's response? Instead of banning assault weapons, he wants to give guns to teachers and militarize our schools. But one of the reasons for mass school shootings is precisely because our schools are already militarized. Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was trained by U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program while he was in high school.
Yesterday, Divest from the War Machine coalition member, Pat Elder, was featured on Democracy Now discussing his recent article about the JROTC in our schools. The JROTC teaches children how to shoot weapons. It is often taught by retired soldiers who have no background in teaching. They are allowed to teach classes that are given at least equal weight as classes taught by certified and trained teachers. We are pulling our children away from classes that expand their minds and putting them in classes that teach them how to be killing machines. The JROTC program costs our schools money. It sends equipment. But, the instructors and facilities must be constructed and paid for by the school.
The JROTC puts our children's futures at risk. Children who participate in JROTC shooting programs are exposed to lead bullets from guns. They are at an increased risk when the shooting ranges are inside. The JROTC program is designed to "put a jump start on your military career." Children are funneled into JROTC to make them compliant and to feed the military with young bodies which are prepared to be assimilated into the war machine. Instead of funneling children into the military, we should be channeling them into jobs that support peace and sustainable development. 
Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry to take the war machine out of our schools! The JROTC program must end immediately. The money should be directed back into classrooms that educate our children.
The Divest from the War Machine campaign is working to remove our money from the hands of companies that make a killing on killing. We must take on the systems that keep fueling war, death, and destruction around the globe. AND, we must take on the systems that are creating an endless cycle of children who are being indoctrinated at vulnerable ages to become the next killing machine.  Don't forget to post this message on Facebook and Twitter.
Onward in divestment,
Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Sarah, Sophia and Tighe
P.S. Do you want to do more? Start a campaign to get the JROTC out of your school district or state. Email divest@codepink.org and we'll get you started!

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October 20-21, 2018

Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

By Whitney Webb
WASHINGTON—In the last few years, arguably the most visible and well-publicized march on the U.S. capital has been the "Women's March," a movement aimed at advocating for legislation and policies promoting women's rights as well as a protest against the misogynistic actions and statements of high-profile U.S. politicians. The second Women's March, which took place this past year, attracted over a million protesters nationwide, with 500,000 estimated to have participated in Los Angeles alone.
However, absent from this women's movement has been a public antiwar voice, as its stated goal of "ending violence" does not include violence produced by the state. The absence of this voice seemed both odd and troubling to legendary peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose iconic protest against the invasion and occupation of Iraq made her a household name for many.
Sheehan was taken aback by how some prominent organizers of this year's Women's March were unwilling to express antiwar positions and argued for excluding the issue of peace entirely from the event and movement as a whole. In an interview with MintPress, Sheehan recounted how a prominent leader of the march had told her, "I appreciate that war is your issue Cindy, but the Women's March will never address the war issue as long as women aren't free."
War is indeed Sheehan's issue and she has been fighting against the U.S.' penchant for war for nearly 13 years. After her son Casey was killed in action while serving in Iraq in 2004, Sheehan drew international media attention for her extended protest in front of the Bush residence in Crawford, Texas, which later served as the launching point for many protests against U.S. military action in Iraq.
Sheehan rejected the notion that women could be "free" without addressing war and empire. She countered the dismissive comment of the march organizer by stating that divorcing peace activism from women's issues "ignored the voices of the women of the world who are being bombed and oppressed by U.S. military occupation."
Indeed, women are directly impacted by war—whether through displacement, the destruction of their homes, kidnapping, or torture. Women also suffer uniquely and differently from men in war as armed conflicts often result in an increase in sexual violence against women.
For example, of the estimated half-a-million civilians killed in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many of them were women and children. In the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, the number of female casualties has been rising on average over 20 percent every year since 2015. In 2014 alone when Israel attacked Gaza in "Operation Protective Edge," Israeli forces, which receives $10 million in U.S. military aid every day, killed over two thousand Palestinians—half of them were women and children. Many of the casualties were pregnant women, who had been deliberately targeted.
Given the Women's March's apparent rejection of peace activism in its official platform, Sheehan was inspired to organize another Women's March that would address what many women's rights advocates, including Sheehan, believe to be an issue central to promoting women's rights.
Dubbed the "Women's March on the Pentagon," the event is scheduled to take place on October 21—the same date as an iconic antiwar march of the Vietnam era—with a mission aimed at countering the "bipartisan war machine." Though men, women and children are encouraged to attend, the march seeks to highlight women's issues as they relate to the disastrous consequences of war.
The effort of women in confronting the "war machine" will be highlighted at the event, as Sheehan remarked that "women have always tried to confront the war-makers," as the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the men and women in the military, as well as those innocent civilians killed in the U.S.' foreign wars. As a result, the push for change needs to come from women, according to Sheehan, because "we [women] are the only ones that can affect [the situation] in a positive way." All that's missing is an organized, antiwar women's movement.
Sheehan noted the march will seek to highlight the direct relationship between peace activism and women's rights, since "no woman is free until all women are free" and such "freedom also includes the freedom from U.S. imperial plunder, murder and aggression"that is part of the daily lives of women living both within and beyond the United States. Raising awareness of how the military-industrial complex negatively affects women everywhere is key, says Sheehan, as "unless there is a sense of international solidarity and a broader base for feminism, then there aren't going to be any solutions to any problems, [certainly not] if we don't stop giving trillions of dollars to the Pentagon."
Sheehan also urged that, even though U.S. military adventurism has long been an issue and the subject of protests, a march to confront the military-industrial complex is more important now than ever: "I'm not alarmist by nature but I feel like the threat of nuclear annihilation is much closer than it has been for a long time," adding that, despite the assertion of some in the current administration and U.S. military, "there is no such thing as 'limited' nuclear war." This makes "the need to get out in massive numbers" and march against this more imperative than ever.
Sheehan also noted that Trump's presidency has helped to make the Pentagon's influence on U.S. politics more obvious by bringing it to the forefront: "Even though militarism had been under wraps [under previous presidents], Trump has made very obvious the fact that he has given control of foreign policy to the 'generals.'"
Indeed, as MintPress has reported on several occasions, the Pentagon—beginning in March of last year—has been given the freedom to "engage the enemy" at will, without the oversight of the executive branch or Congress. As a result, the deaths of innocent civilians abroad as a consequence of U.S. military action has spiked. While opposing Trump is not the focus of the march, Sheehan opined that Trump's war-powers giveaway to the Pentagon, as well as his unpopularity, have helped to spark widespread interest in the event.

Different wings of the same warbird

Sheehan has rejected accusations that the march is partisan, as it is, by nature, focused on confronting the bipartisan nature of the military-industrial complex. She told MintPress that she has recently come under pressure owing to the march's proximity to the 2018 midterm elections—as some have ironically accused the march's bipartisan focus as "trying to harm the chances of the Democrats" in the ensuing electoral contest.
In response, Sheehan stated that: 
"Democrats and Republicans are different wings of the same warbird. We are protesting militarism and imperialism. The march is nonpartisan in nature because both parties are equally complicit. We have to end wars for the planet and for the future. I could really care less who wins in November."
She also noted that even when the Democrats were in power under Obama, nothing was done to change the government's militarism nor to address the host of issues that events like the Women's March have claimed to champion.
"We just got finished with eight years of a Democratic regime," Sheehan told MintPress. "For two of those years, they had complete control of Congress and the presidency and a [filibuster-proof] majority in the Senate and they did nothing" productive except to help "expand the war machine." She also emphasized that this march is in no way a "get out the vote" march for any political party.
Even though planning began less than a month ago, support has been pouring in for the march since it was first announced on Sheehan's website, Cindy Sheehan Soapbox. Encouraged by the amount of interest already received, Sheehan is busy working with activists to organize the events and will be taking her first organizing trip to the east coast in April of this year. 
In addition, those who are unable to travel to Washington are encouraged to participate in any number of solidarity protests that will be planned to take place around the world or to plan and attend rallies in front of U.S. embassies, military installations, and the corporate headquarters of war profiteers.
Early endorsers of the event include journalists Abby Martin, Mnar Muhawesh and Margaret Kimberley; Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly; FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley; and U.S. politicians like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Activist groups that have pledged their support include CodePink, United National Antiwar Coalition, Answer Coalition, Women's EcoPeace and World Beyond War.
Though October is eight months away, Sheehan has high hopes for the march. More than anything else, though, she hopes that the event will give birth to a "real revolutionary women's movement that recognizes the emancipation and liberation of all peoples—and that means [freeing] all people from war and empire, which is the biggest crime against humanity and against this planet." By building "a movement and not just a protest," the event's impact will not only be long-lasting, but grow into a force that could meaningfully challenge the U.S. military-industrial complex that threatens us all. God knows the world needs it.
For those eager to help the march, you can help spread the word through social media by joining the march's Facebook page or following the march'sTwitter account, as well as by word of mouth. In addition, supporting independent media outlets—such as MintPress, which will be reporting on the march—can help keep you and others informed as October approaches.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer forMintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, theAnti-Media, and21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.
—MPN News, February 20, 2018
https://www.mintpressnews.com/cindy-sheehan-and-the-womens-march-on-the-pentagon-a-movement-not-just-a-protest/237835/

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Major George Tillery
MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION
SEX FOR LIES AND
MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY
April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony.
These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors.

Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony
For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters.

Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms.
In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org.
Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence.
The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings.
This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense.
Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new  "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support.
Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years
The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court.
During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison.
Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying."  For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners.
Major Tillery Needs Your Help:
Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence.
Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment.
Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed.

Major Tillery and family

HOW YOU CAN HELP
    Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom.
    Go to JPay.com;
    code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC

    Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner:
    The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false.
    Call: 215-686-8000 or

    Write to:
    Major Tillery AM 9786
    SCI Frackville
    1111 Altamont Blvd.
    Frackville, PA 17931
    For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org
    Call/Write:
    Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com
    Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com


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    Free Leonard Peltier!

    On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

    By Leonard Peltier


    Art by Leonard Peltier

    Write to:
    Leonard Peltier 89637-132 
    USP Coleman I 
    P.O. Box 1033 
    Coleman, FL 33521
    Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603

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    Reality's trial
    is postponed 
    until October 15th.


    That's 500 Days in Jail,
    Without Bail!

       

    Whistleblower Reality Winner's trial has (again) been postponed.
    Her new trial date is October 15, 2018, based on the new official proceedings schedule (fifth version). She will have spent 500 days jailed without bail by then. Today is day #301.
    And her trial may likely be pushed back even further into the Spring of 2019.

    We urge you to remain informed and engaged with our campaign until she is free! 




    One supporter's excellent report
    on the details of Winner's imprisonment

    ~Check out these highlights & then go read the full article here~
    "*Guilty Until Proven Innocent*

    Winner is also not allowed to change from her orange jumpsuit for her court dates, even though she is "innocent until proven guilty."  Not only that, but during any court proceedings, only her wrists are unshackled, her ankles stay.  And a US Marshal sits in front of her, face to face, during the proceedings.  Winner is not allowed to turn around and look into the courtroom at all . . .
    Upon checking the inmate registry, it starts to become clear how hush hush the government wants this case against Winner to be.  Whether pre-whistleblowing, or in her orange jumpsuit, photos of Winner have surfaced on the web.  That's why it was so interesting that there's no photo of her next to her name on the inmate registry . . .
    For the past hundred years, the Espionage Act has been debated and amended, and used to charge whistleblowers that are seeking to help the country they love, not harm it.  Sometimes we have to learn when past amendments no longer do anything to justify the treatment of an American truth teller as a political prisoner. The act is outdated and amending it needs to be seriously looked at, or else we need to develop laws that protect our whistleblowers.
    The Espionage Act is widely agreed by many experts to be unconstitutionally vague and a violation of the First Amendment of Free Speech.  Even though a Supreme Court had ruled that the Espionage Act does not infringe upon the 1st Amendment back in 1919, it's constitutionality has been back and forth in court ever sense.

    Because of being charged under the Espionage Act, Winner's defense's hands are tied.  No one is allowed to mention the classified document, even though the public already knows that the information in it is true, that Russia hacked into our election support companies." 
     Want to take action in support of Reality?

    Step up to defend our whistleblower of conscience ► DONATE NOW


    FRIENDS OF REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWER
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    Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations! 
    Charity for the Wealthy!

    GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

    By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017

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    1)  Nicaragua Protests Take a New Turn: Empty Streets
    By Alfonso Flores Bermodez and Elisabeth Malkin, June 14, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/world/americas/nicaragua-protests-strike.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

    A woman passed shuttered shops in a market in Managua, Nicaragua, on Thursday during a one-day strike called by opponents of President Daniel Ortega.CreditOswaldo Rivas/Reuters
    MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The streets of Nicaragua's major cities were deserted on Thursday as residents heeded an opposition alliance's call for a one-day strike to demand that President Daniel Ortega step down.
    Banks and businesses were closed, and barely a car could be seen on the streets of the capital, Managua, a city usually snarled with traffic. The strike, and the resulting silence on the streets, was a change in tactics from the raucous protests that have gripped the country since April when a movement of resistance to Mr. Ortega's rule began to grow.
    Residents of provincial cities and towns also joined the strike, and photographs and videos of empty streets circulated on social media sites.

    Hospitals and government offices were open, as were state-owned gas stations. Public schools held a shortened school day, but many parents kept their children at home.
    The strike grew out of protests against changes to the social security system that would have raised workers' contributions and cut retirees' pensions. The changes were withdrawn, but the protests quickly evolved into demonstrations against the authoritarian rule of Mr. Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
    The government responded to the protests with a bloody crackdown, firing into crowds of demonstrators and clashing with them at barricades. More than 160 people, mostly protesters, have been killed since April, according to the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights.
    On Wednesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned "the excessive use of state force," including attacks on protesters by "parapolice" squads and other masked gunmen.
    Mr. Ortega has agreed to resume Catholic Church-mediated talks on Friday to end the political standoff, although opposition leaders fear he may use them to wait out the protests.
    "Ortega's response to return to dialogue on Friday shows that these civic measures are giving results," said Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a spokesman for the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy. The alliance encompasses students, business owners, small farmers and civil society advocates who have made common cause against the government.
    "But we haven't seen any willingness from the government to respond to our democratization agenda," Mr. Chamorro added. Those demands include Mr. Ortega's resignation, free elections and justice for the families of those killed in the protests.
    Mr. Chamorro warned that the blockades and protest marches would continue.
    Mr. Ortega, 72, the onetime leftist revolutionary who has dominated Nicaraguan political life for much of the past four decades, has created a government in his own image since he won election in 2006. He later secured changes to the Constitution to allow him to run for re-election indefinitely, and established control over the Supreme Court, Congress and the electoral authority.
    Among the government offices that were open on Thursday was the headquarters of the migration ministry, where hundreds of people stood in line to apply for a passport, the first step to leave the country.
    Among them were Katherin Mendieta and her husband, Darwin Chávez, both 21 and students at Polytechnic University, which has been a center of the student protests.
    "We're scared, my husband is young and young people are being attacked," said Ms. Mendieta. "We decided not to join the protests because we are scared."
    The couple have a 6-month-old daughter and no idea where they will go, but they want to leave Nicaragua's political turmoil behind. "I have never gotten involved in politics because I have seen that it is all false and dirty," Mr. Chávez said.
    The two months of upheaval have begun to take a toll on people's livelihoods. José René Zamora, 75, a pineapple farmer, was filling his pickup truck at a state-owned gas station, his family crammed on the flatbed. "I have my pineapple plantation, but you can't plant because there is nowhere to sell," he said.
    He would like to see Mr. Ortega go, he said, but in peace, without any more bloodshed.

    Alfonso Flores Bermúdez reported from Managua, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.

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    2) The Pimp Who Won the Primary: 'I Know How Donald Trump Feels'
    By Jacey Fortin, June 15, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/politics/dennis-hof-nevada-pimp.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

    Dennis Hof is a brothel owner who won a Republican primary for the State Assembly in Nevada, the only state where prostitution is legal.CreditDavid Montero/Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press
    A Republican primary race in Nevada this week ended in victory for a businessman and reality television star who describes himself as a pimp.
    Dennis Hof, 71, is a brothel owner running to represent Nevada's 36th District in the State Assembly. On Tuesday, Mr. Hof defeated the three-term Republican incumbent, James Oscarson, in the deep-red district.
    "I'm fighting the establishment, and I know how Donald Trump feels," said Mr. Hof, who campaigned mainly on lowering taxes and will face off against the Democrat Lesia Romanov in November.

    Ms. Romanov, 51, is a relative outsider, too; she has been an educator for two decades and is campaigning for education reform and fiscal accountability.
    "This is my first experience in politics," she said. "Just jumping right into the fire."
    She added that if Mr. Hof's primary victory inflates voter turnout in November, it could work in her favor. "I don't think party lines are going to be as big of an issue as they would normally be," she said.
    Like the president, Mr. Hof has been accused of sexual assault. At least two women have come forward publicly, but no charges were brought against him because the statute of limitations ran out. Mr. Hof has denied the allegations. "I'm around 540 girls in a very sexually charged environment at all times," he said. "Sex is not a problem for me, and I would never be involved in anything like that."
    Mr. Hof published a book called "The Art of the Pimp" in 2016 and was the star of the HBO television series "Cathouse," which focused on the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, his brothel east of Carson City. In 2015 Lamar Odom, the former N.B.A. forward who married the reality television star Khloé Kardashian, was hospitalized after he was found unconscious at another brothel owned by Mr. Hof.
    Mr. Hof's victory came amid debates over whether prostitution should be outlawed in Nevada — the only state in the country where it is legal. "The religious right needs to know it's not going away," Mr. Hof said of prostitution, adding that attempts to ban things like alcohol, marijuana and prostitution only drive the industries underground and allow criminals to thrive.
    In addition to championing lower taxes, he said he would defend the Second Amendment and the rights of private well owners in his district.
    He drew parallels between his voter appeal and that of President Trump. "Both can't be bought, and both can't be bossed," he said. "And that resonated big."
    Kimberly Mull, a survivor of child sex trafficking and a founder of No Little Girl, a campaign to outlaw prostitution in Nevada, said the state's brothels were places of rampant abuse and exploitation. Mr. Hof's primary victory was "mind-boggling, and it's hurtful to survivors," she said. "It's hurtful to victims. It's hurtful to women."
    Still, she said, Ms. Romanov's chances in November are slim. In the presidential election, 68 percent of voters in Nye County, which covers much of the state's 36th Assembly District, chose Mr. Trump.
    "I hope that this little district within Nevada can be an example of how we as a country, we as a community, can go above the party name and the party identity and just vote for human decency and kindness and women's equality," she said. "But, you know, I would also like a unicorn."
    Brothels in Nevada are mostly in rural areas; they are not legal in Las Vegas, Carson City or Reno. Mr. Hof said his brothels had brought tax revenues to the state and its counties.
    A report released by Nye County last month found that in 2016 and 2017, brothels there generated more than $392,000 for the county, offset by costs of just over $31,000. But the report did not cover 2018 and so did not include county expenses related to three lawsuits filed by Mr. Hof against county officials this year. (One complaint accuses an official of defamation, and two others are related to the removal of brothel signs.)
    Ms. Romanov said she would defer to voters' wishes on the issue of legal prostitution. "I'm here to represent the people," she said of her campaign. "It's not an extension of my ego."
    Mr. Hof said he was confident about his chances.
    "I'm going to prevail," he said. "When you're in the reddest district in Nevada that is very libertarian-leaning, a Democrat is going to have a tough row to hoe."

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    3) Ed Sadlowski, Fiery Steelworkers Insurgent, Dies at 79
    By Sam Roberts, June 14, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/obituaries/ed-sadlowski-fiery-steelworkers-insurgent-dies-at-79.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

    Edward Sadlowski in East Chicago, Ind., in 1975. He was lionized by liberals and the national media as a populist who would democratize union elections.CreditGary Settle/The New York Times
    Ed Sadlowski, a fireball labor leader whose militant insurgency in the 1970s shook but failed to dislodge the steelworkers union's top brass, died on Sunday in Estero, Fla. He was 79.
    His death was confirmed by his daughter Susan Sadlowski Garza, a Chicago alderwoman. He had Lewy body dementia, she said.
    Mr. Sadlowski, a third-generation steelworker who dropped out of high school in the 11th grade to become an apprentice machinist, rose meteorically through the ranks of the United Steelworkers union by echoing the confrontational rhetoric of his labor heroes, like John L. Lewis, who had led the miners union, and Victor Reuther, one of three Reuther brothers who had transformed the autoworkers union into a labor power.

    Mr. Sadlowski rejected the more collegial approach of contemporaries who had gone so far as to give up the right to strike in favor of arbitration.
    Nicknamed "Oil Can" because he had customarily carried one in his first job in a steel mill, Mr. Sadlowski was lionized by liberals and the national media as a populist who would democratize union elections and oust entrenched officers who had cozied up to management and lost touch with the rank and file.
    In the mid-1960s, at 26, he became the youngest president of a steelworkers union local after a federal court overturned a rigged vote. He later led the union's largest district, covering mills from Chicago to Gary, Ind.
    Mr. Sadlowski went on to challenge established labor leaders in 1977 in a bitter campaign for the presidency of the national union, which comprised 1.4 million members. But in generating liberal political support and financial contributions from outside sources — including the consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the folk singer Pete Seeger and former members of the Kennedy administration — his campaign provoked a backlash by some steelworkers.
    Mr. Sadlowski was defeated, and the national union proceeded to bar outside financial contributions to union candidates. He challenged the decision, but it was upheld in 1982 by the United States Supreme Court.

    Edward Eugene Sadlowski Jr. was born in Chicago on Sept. 10, 1938, to Mildred (Sanders) Sadlowski and Edward Sr., who worked for Inland Steel and was a founding member of a steelworkers union local.

    Ed was born about a mile from the site of what was remembered as the "Memorial Day Massacre" of 1937, when 10 unarmed supporters of striking steelworkers were killed by the police. (He later became the proud owner of a check that John L. Lewis wrote to pay for the funerals.)
    In 1956, after a stint in the Army, Mr. Sadlowski was hired at 18 to be an oiler at the United States Steel South Works in South Chicago. Three years later, he married Marlene McDillon, who survives him. In addition to her and his daughter Susan, he is survived by two other daughters, Patricia Hoyt and Diane Agelson; a son, Edward; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
    After he was elected president of United Steelworkers Local 65 at 26, Mr. Sadlowski sought higher union office in 1973, campaigning to be director of sprawling District 31. He lost by 2,000 votes. But a dissident group he led, called Steelworkers Fightback, enlisted Joseph L. Rauh Jr., a prominent Washington lawyer, to challenge the outcome in federal court, and in a rerun in 1974 supervised by Labor Department monitors, Mr. Sadlowski won by 20,000 votes.
    While he once likened the labor movement to a "holy crusade," Mr. Sadlowski dismissed the notion that the Fightback dissidents were idealists and that the campaign showed him to be a romantic.
    "A romantic!" he said to Rolling Stone magazine. "A romantic could've never won that election."
    The 1977 national election to succeed I.W. Abel as president was among the most vituperative internal labor disputes ever. In one instance, a Sadlowski volunteer was shot and wounded handing out leaflets in Houston.
    Backers of Lloyd McBride, a union leader from St. Louis and Mr. Abel's preferred successor, painted Mr. Sadlowski as a radical whose platform was a 1930s anachronism espoused by an erudite idealist who had told Penthouse magazine: "We've run the workers into the ground. Ultimately, society has nothing to show for it but waste."

    Mr. Sadlowski, whose liberal bona fides included his opposition to the Vietnam War and to the political boss Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, argued that the leadership had lost touch with the workers, bargained away the right to strike and empowered the presidents of union locals, rather than the rank and file, to ratify contracts.
    "You can make it sound like any kind of revolutionary rhetoric you want," he told The New York Times in 1976, "but the fact is it's the working class versus the coupon clipper."
    McBride won, about 328,000 to 249,000, and Mr. Sadlowski's national celebrity rapidly evaporated. He became a union subdistrict director and retired in 1993.

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    4) Willie Nelson Speaks Out on Immigrant Family Separation at Border
    By Joseph Hudak,  June 14, 2018
    https://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/willie-nelson-immigrant-family-separation-border-w521551

    Willie Nelson has called the Trump Administration's policy of separating immigrant families at the border "outrageous." Amy Harris/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock

    Willie Nelson has issued a statement on the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The country-music icon and Texas native ripped the Department of Justice's policy under President Trump, calling it "outrageous."

    "What's going on at our southern border is outrageous. Christians everywhere should be up in arms. What happened to 'Bring us your tired and weak and we will make them strong?' This is still the promise land," Nelson says, citing lyrics from songwriter David Lynn Jones' "Living in the Promiseland," which Nelson cut for his 1986 album The Promiseland.

    Nelson, who grew up about five hours from the Mexican border in Abbott, Texas, has never been shy about championing social causes. In 2013, he expressed his support for gay marriage, telling Texas Monthly, "It's ridiculous to me that this is something we're having a conversation about in this day and age." An outspoken proponent for environmental awareness and the legalization of marjiuana, he launched his own "green fuel" company BioWillie in 2007, and in 2015 started his Willie's Reserve cannabis company.

    The issue of immigrant children crossing the Mexico-Texas border is not a new concern of Nelson's. In 2014, he talked to Rolling Stone about the issue. "I've been watching, and the only thing we can do is take care of those kids, whatever it takes. They're scared. They're being mistreated. And it's not a good way to start off your life. But it's a good opportunity for us to show a little bit of humanitarianism and take care of those kids. I know a lot of people want to send them back. I guess the closer you are to the situation, the more extreme emotions you have about it, but it seems to me the old golden rule, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' or 'treat other people like you want to be treated' … Treat those kids like they were your kids."
    In May, the Trump administration instituted a zero-tolerance policy that called for all immigrants crossing the border illegally to be prosecuted. Because minors cannot be held in criminal custody, close to 500 children have been separated from their parents since the policy was enacted. On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the separation of children from their parents while addressing law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

    Tonight, the organization Families Belong Together will hold a series of rallies to protest the policy in cities around the U.S., including Nelson's part-time home of Austin, Texas.

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    5) San Francisco Labor Council Resolution on Kevin Cooper 
     Published: June 14, 2018 
    —Peace and Freedom Party, June 5, 2018
    http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/news/general/1437-kevin-cooper-san-francisco-labor-council

    On Monday, June 11, 2018 the below resolution on the continued unlawful incarceration of Kevin Cooper, on death row since 1985 was passed. The resolution was written by Peace and Freedom Party member Carole Seligman and was submitted by PFP member/OPEIU Local 29 union member Alan Benjamin.
    Whereas, Kevin Cooper, a Black man, has been on California's death row since 1985 despite compelling evidence of innocence in the brutal murder of Peggy and Doug Ryen, their daughter Jessica (10), and Christopher Hughes (11), and the throat slitting of Joshua Ryen (8), who survived and communicated with a social worker in the hospital that the assailants were multiple white men; and
    Whereas, DNA and other forensic testing could remove grave doubts surrounding Mr. Cooper's conviction and death sentence, but, the State has refused to permit it, despite a defense offer to pay for this testing; and
    Whereas, On February 17, 2016, having exhausted all of his appeals, Mr. Cooper submitted a petition for clemency to Governor Brown asking him to initiate a full investigation of his case for innocence, including DNA testing; and
    Whereas, the Governor has the power to order a full investigation and should do so because the State must do everything in its power to avoid executing an innocent person; and
    Whereas, the evidence in this case points to three white men, who were seen in the vicinity of the crime, in the victims' car, and in a nearby bar with bloody clothing, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department (SBSD) issued an all-points bulletin identifying these men as suspects and described what they were wearing, and
    Whereas, the SBSD took bloody coveralls worn by a known murderer into evidence, but they threw them away without testing them; and
    Whereas, the five victims had 144 wounds inflicted with three or four weapons, and the adult victims had loaded firearms at their bedside, causing the coroner to initially conclude that there were multiple attackers, not a single assailant; and
    Whereas, DNA testing done in 2002 has been shown to have been falsified by the prosecution; and
    Whereas, in 2004 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Mr. Cooper's execution to allow for testing on blood and hair samples, that testing has never been properly done; and
    Whereas, in 2009 eleven federal appellate judges dissented from the denial of Mr. Cooper's appeal with five of them signing on to a 100-page dissenting opinion that stated "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man;" and also concluded that the SBSD "manipulated and planted evidence in order to convict Cooper;" and
    Whereas, at least 12 federal appellate judges, former prosecutors (including two who had won death sentences that were later reversed in Louisiana and Texas), retired FBI agents, jurors from Mr. Cooper's trial, the President of the American Bar Association, a sister of one of the victims, faith leaders, an international human rights commission, U.N. bodies on human rights, and African diaspora, and four deans of prominent California law schools have expressed the belief that Mr. Cooper may well be innocent and have called for a full investigation; and
    Whereas, over the past three decades there have been many exonerations from death sentences, including in California, showing extreme prosecutorial bias and wrongdoing, exemplified by The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department where Sheriff Tidwell, who headed the investigation of the Ryen/Hughes murders was convicted of felonies for the theft of over 500 guns from county evidence rooms during his tenure as Sheriff from 1983-1991; and where William Baird, the SBSD criminalist who testified for the prosecution was later fired from the department for stealing drugs from the SBSD property locker; and
    Whereas, Daniel Gregonis, the SBSD criminalist responsible for testing key pieces of evidence admitted under oath to altering test results to implicate Mr. Cooper; and the handling of the crime scene was completely deficient (including allowing more than 70 people to walk through it); and
    Whereas, a climate of racial hostility, shown in a mock lynching of a stuffed gorilla outside the courtroom during Mr. Cooper's preliminary hearing with a sign reading "Kill the Nigger" exemplified the extreme racism surrounding the prosecution of the trial.
    Therefore be it Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council publicly calls upon Governor Brown to investigate the case of Kevin Cooper, to have the State test the evidence with the most up-to-date technologies available, and grant him a reprieve from the death penalty.
    Respectfully submitted by Alan Benjamin, OPEIU Local 29.
    Peace and Freedom Party endorses this resolution.
    For the PFP's statement on Kevin Cooper go to: 
    http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/national/resolutions-and-statements/1268-freedom-for-kevin-cooper 
    For more on this case or to contribute to the cause, please visit SaveKevinCooper.org.


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    6) I Was Fired for Making Fun of Trump
    By Rob Rogers, June 15, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/cartoonist-rob-rogers-trump-fired.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region

    Rob Rogers: Mr. Rogers joined The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as an editorial cartoonist in 1993. He worked there until this week. In 1999, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
    After 25 years as the editorial cartoonist for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I was fired on Thursday.
    I blame Donald Trump.
    Well, sort of.
    I should've seen it coming. When I had lunch with my new boss a few months ago, he informed me that the paper's publisher believed that the editorial cartoonist was akin to an editorial writer, and that his views should reflect the philosophy of the newspaper.
    That was a new one to me. 
    I was trained in a tradition in which editorial cartoonists are the live wires of a publication — as one former colleague put it, the "constant irritant." Our job is to provoke readers in a way words alone can't. Cartoonists are not illustrators for a publisher's politics.
    When I was hired in 1993, The Post-Gazette was the liberal newspaper in town, but it always prided itself on being a forum for a lot of divergent ideas. The change in the paper did not happen overnight. From what I remember, it started in 2010, with the endorsement of the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, which shocked a majority of our readership. The next big moment happened in late 2015, when my longtime boss, the editorial page editor, took a buyout after the publisher indicated that the paper might endorse Mr. Trump. Then, early this year, we published openly racist editorials.

    Things really changed for me in March, when management decided that my cartoons about the president were "too angry" and said I was "obsessed with Trump." This about a president who has declared the free press one of the greatest threats to our country. 
    Not every idea I have works. Every year, a few of my cartoons get killed. But suddenly, in a three-month period, 19 cartoons or proposals were rejected. Six were spiked in a single week — one after it was already placed on the page, an image depicting a Klansman in a doctor's office asking: "Could it be the Ambien?" 
    After so many years of punch lines and caricatures, skewering mayors and mullahs, the new regime at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decided that The Donald trumped satire when it came to its editorial pages.
    This has been my dream job. It makes the experience of buying a coffee or checking out at a grocery store a thrill. I go to pay and the person looks at my credit card, sees my name, asks me if I'm the Rob Rogers and then tells me about a particular cartoon he or she loved. The outpouring of support I have received in recent days from the people of this city, including its mayor, has been overwhelming and uplifting.
    The paper may have taken an eraser to my cartoons. But I plan to be at my drawing table every day of this presidency.

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    7)  Video Shows Border Patrol SUV Hitting Native American Man, Then Driving Away
    By Simon Romero, June 15. 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/border-patrol-video-ohono-oodham-arizona.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

    A United States Border Patrol truck in Nogales, Ariz. Video of a Border Patrol vehicle that appears to strike a man from a Native American reservation spread quickly on social media on Friday.CreditJim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
    ALBUQUERQUE — Tensions flared on Friday between federal authorities in Arizona and residents of a Native American reservation straddling the border with Mexico after a video surfaced in which a Border Patrol vehicle appears to hit a man from the tribe before driving away.
    The video, which was recorded on the phone of the victim, a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation identified as Paulo Remes, spread quickly on social media after several tribe members and Indivisible Tohono, an organization focused on the impact of border policies, posted the footage on Twitter and Facebook.
    "They just ran me over, bro," Mr. Remes is heard saying on the video. He told The Arizona Daily Star that he was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of injuries from the incident, which took place on Tohono O'odham land about 60 miles southwest of Tucson. Mr. Remes appeared to be standing in a dirt road facing the vehicle when it made contact, knocking him to the ground.
    Mr. Remes told the newspaper that the driver of the vehicle did not stop.

    The United States Border Patrol said in a statement that it was "actively investigating" the incident. "We do not tolerate misconduct on or off duty and will fully cooperate with all investigations of alleged unlawful conduct by our personnel," the Border Patrol said.

    Robert G. Daniels, a spokesman in Arizona for the Border Patrol, said the agency was not able to release the identity of the agent involved in the episode; the video seems to show the vehicle speeding away after the victim is hit.
    "All I can say is that this incident is under investigation," Mr. Daniels said.

    The vehicle incident is the most recent episode in a history of strain between federal authorities and the Tohono O'odham, a tribe with about 34,000 enrolled members whose territory straddles the border between the United States and Mexico. The tribe controls about 2.8 million acres in Arizona.
    Edward D. Manuel, the chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation, said in a statement that the victim is 34 years old. Mr. Manuel, who did not identify the victim by name, added that the tribe's police department was investigating the incident together with the F.B.I. and the United States Attorney's Office.
    "The Nation is aware of disturbing video footage of the incident," Mr. Manuel said, adding that it was under "active investigation."

    Leaders of the tribe have expressed opposition to President Trump's pledge to build a wall through their land along the border. Largely because officials strengthened security at other points along the border, the reservation of the Tohono O'odham has emerged as an important transit point for unauthorized immigrants and drug traffickers, leading to frequent encounters with law enforcement and the Border Patrol.
    Some in the reservation said the vehicle incident was part of a history of federal agents acting with impunity on their land. They pointed to an episode in 2003 in which a Border Patrol agent, Cody Rouse, ran over and killed a Tohono O'odham teenager, Bennett Patricio. A federal judge cleared Mr. Rouse in 2006 of wrongdoing in the case.

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    8)  She Went to Jail for a Drug Relapse. Tough Love or Too Harsh?
    By Jan Hoffman, June 4, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/health/drug-addict-relapse-opioids.html

    Julie Eldred relapsed while on probation, and was sent to jail. Justices are weighing whether the probation requirement to stay clean constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.CreditKayana Szymczak for The New York Times
    STOW, Mass. — As soon as Julie Eldred was granted probation for stealing jewelry to buy drugs, she got busy fulfilling the judge's conditions. She began an intensive all-day outpatient treatment program. She even went an extra step and started daily doses of Suboxone, a medication that can quell opiate cravings.
    Then she relapsed and snorted her drug of choice — fentanyl.
    To stop from plunging into free fall, she asked her doctor for a stronger dose of Suboxone. She stayed clean the next day. And the next.
    But the following morning, 11 days after her probation began, she had her first drug screen and tested positive. Traces of fentanyl had lingered in her system. Within hours, she was shackled, strip-searched and incarcerated.

    Should an addict's relapse be punished with a criminal sanction? Ms. Eldred has put that question before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a case that may have widespread ripples, as hundreds of thousands of addicted people tumble into the criminal justice system. Remaining drug-free is an almost universal requirement of probation. Violating it can bring sanctions ranging from a warning to, frequently, jail.

    The judge ordered Ms. Eldred to a medium-security prison, until her lawyer could find her residential treatment. During the 10 days she spent there, she did not receive any drug counseling, much less Suboxone.
    In Commonwealth v. Julie Eldred, the justices, presiding over the state's highest court, are wrestling with whether this condition of her probationamounts to cruel and unusual punishment for an offender with a substance use disorder. In reaching a decision, expected imminently, the justices must weigh competing scientific studies. Is addiction a brain disease that interferes with one's capacity to abstain? Or a condition, rather than a disease, that is responsive to penalties and rewards?
    Law enforcement officials argue that the threat of jail protects not only offenders but society from potentially more drug-related crimes. Yet numerous addiction specialists say that the criminal justice system is the most blunt and clumsy of instruments for addressing a public health disaster.
    The Eldred case is philosophically tricky, said Eric E. Sterling, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "We're punishing someone who has a disease. Yet we don't want to create an exemption from punishment for people who commit crimes when they are addicts."
    That the challenge is even before a court indicates how science has changed the perception of addiction from the zero-tolerance crack years. Some observers say the courts may be taking the issue more seriously because contemporary offenders tend to be, like Ms. Eldred, white, while crack defendants were overwhelmingly black.

    Having misused drugs since she was 15 years old, Ms. Eldred argues that she was incapable of stopping abruptly. A brief signed by addiction medicine experts and policymakers supports her.
    In it, they state that addiction is "a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry." Someone severely afflicted needs the drugs not for a pleasurable high, but to maintain a new normal and stave off withdrawal. The brain becomes so compromised, they say, that relapse is not only involuntary but to be expected on the stop-start journey to recovery.
    Relapse, therefore, is not an indication that an addicted person is willfully defying a court's order, said Lisa Newman-Polk, Ms. Eldred's lawyer, a former social worker, but "a symptom of the disease and a signal that the addiction is active."
    Instead of jailing Ms. Eldred, a judge could give treatment more time or alter it, she said during oral argument in October.
    In a brief supporting the prosecution, psychiatrists, psychologists and legal scholars assert that the brain-disease model is contested. Changes in brain structure from drugs do not necessarily translate into an inability to resist them, they said. With carrot-stick prompts, many addicted people can choose to abstain.
    And, prosecutors said, two such prompts include an expunged record for completing probation or, for relapse, jail.
    A brief submitted by the National Association of Drug Court Professionalson behalf of 3,400 drug courts noted that the success of these programs depends on a judge being able to apply graduated sanctions, to propel a defendant through treatment.

    "There's a lot of data showing individual differences in resisting relapse but that people figure out ways to deal with their cravings all the time," said Gene M. Heyman, a lead author on an amicus brief who lectures about addiction at Boston College and Harvard. "Think of the idioms that have emerged: 'kicking the habit' and 'going cold turkey.' These refer to voluntarily quitting on your own."
    Dr. Heyman, an experimental psychologist, said addiction is a severe problem, but stopped short of calling it a disease that relies on a medical model for intervention. Behavioral and social norms can greatly influence addicts, "but embarrassment doesn't cure cancer," he said.
    "Jail won't solve the problem," he added. But temporarily, "it might stop some people from continuing to use or even overdose."
    When that point is put to Ms. Eldred, 30, a small, fine-boned woman with blond hair rinsed pink, who is a year sober, she will tell you that jail is no haven from drugs. During her stints in prison, drugs were often available, she said. One inmate overdosed.
    Ms. Eldred had risk factors for severe opioid use disorder that also make recovery protracted: Possible genetic predisposition. Prenatal exposure. Other mental health disorders.

    She was adopted as a newborn. Her birth mother used cocaine. She has A.D.H.D. At school in Acton, a Boston suburb, Ms. Eldred channeled her energy into cheerleading, dancing and horseback riding. But opiates, swiped from a friend's parents' medicine cabinet, quelled her restlessness and anxiety in ways that her A.D.H.D. medications did not.

    After snorting Vicodin for the first time, she thought: "Oh my God. I love this."
    By the time she was a high school junior, she was trading Adderall for Vicodin. Then Percodan 5s. Then Perc 30s.
    "I hid it well," she said. "I didn't nod out in public. Except I don't remember high school graduation."
    Her new boyfriend was a dealer.
    She went through her first detox at 23: by then she was snorting up to 10 Perc 30s a day. She flipped a car. Finally she told her parents, who were stunned but scrambled to find her rehab.
    Opiates dominate the story of her next seven years, spent either in full-blown addiction — eventually snorting heroin, and then fentanyl — or working fiercely to get sober. She pinballed among detox, rehab, halfway houses and, briefly, jail.
    During one sober stretch that lasted just over two years, she volunteered at barns and dog shelters, and added a certificate in animal behavior to her associate's degree.
    She had a fiancé. She was just fine. So she began dialing back on meetings.
    Then she had a bad day. And ran into an old acquaintance.
    Within six months, her heroin and fentanyl habit grabbed hold with its former fervor.
    "It was all about my next fix and not getting sick," Ms. Eldred said. She was maintaining, snorting several times a day, desperate to avoid withdrawal. She had been through it before, the sweats, shakes, aches, stomach cramps.

    In August 2016, she stole two necklaces and a bracelet to pawn for drug money. When the judge gave her a year's probation for larceny, facing up to a 30-month sentence for violating conditions, she thought she could remain drug-free. She even tried Suboxone.
    "But I still felt sick," she said.
    So she used. When she reported her relapse to the doctor, he upped her Suboxone dose.
    Ms. Newman-Polk happened to catch Ms. Eldred's probation violation case. The judge said that Ms. Eldred could be released only after the lawyer found her residential treatment.
    Ms. Eldred went through withdrawal in prison. Ten days later, she entered a program where she remained for nearly eight months. Only now, a year later, she admitted that even in the first months there, she relapsed. Secretly, she visited her doctor to restart Suboxone.
    Her probation ended last August. The case is over. She looks happy, gray-blue eyes clear, the new apartment, which she and her fiancé share with a dog and cat, both rescues, spotless.
    Didn't getting a probation violation and going to jail lead her to this good place?
    Ms. Newman-Polk, who had been preparing the legal challenge before meeting Ms. Eldred, disagreed. "Dehumanizing Julie with jail didn't get her better," she said. "She's in recovery because of sustained treatment with medication and family support, which is exactly what the court interrupted by jailing her."
    Prosecutors have pointed to Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) as a model. Probationers are told they will be tested randomly and frequently. Incarceration, though brief, will be swift and certain. The program's low rate of recidivism for crime and drug use has drawn national acclaim.

    But recent studies show that replication efforts failed. They reduced neither rates of drug use nor crime.
    Probation, writes Fiona Doherty, a clinical professor at Yale Law School, is "a hidden body of law" that needs scrutiny because judges and probation officers have wide latitude to define a defendant's "good behavior."
    The Eldred case, which challenges that power, is, ironically, a continuation of the origins story for probation. In 1841, John Augustus, a teetotaling Boston bootmaker, described as the father of modern probation, posted bond for "a common drunkard." By his death, he had supervised nearly 2,000 people, many arrested for intoxication, their records expunged in exchange for avowed sobriety.
    Ms. Eldred's lawyers rely on a 1962 United States Supreme Court case, Robinson v. California, which struck down a statute making it a crime for a person "to be addicted to the use of narcotics" — noting that while selling or possessing illegal drugs was against the law, the state could not punish people solely for the status of their illness.
    But during the Eldred argument, the justices in Massachusetts noted that many offenders commit crimes to sustain their addictions. Shouldn't judges order an addicted defendant to remain substance-free to prevent criminal behavior?
    Indeed, prosecutors wrote, if the justices found that Ms. Eldred "did not have free will with regard to her drug use, this 'compulsion' may serve as an excuse to the drug-related larceny itself."
    Kelly Mitchell of the University of Minnesota Law School's Robina Institute for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, suggested a middle-ground solution. A judge could order the offender to be evaluated for substance use disorder and to follow treatment recommendations, she said. A violation, she said, would be for "failing to get the evaluation and to attend treatment, rather than failing to remain drug-free."
    For Julie Eldred, the requirement to stay drug-free was a disincentive for recovery. "Knowing that a relapse leads to a probation violation made it harder for me to talk about my struggles, for fear of being locked up," she said.

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    9)  McDonald's to Switch to Paper Straws in Britain as Country Turns Against Plastic
    By Amie Tsang, June 15, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/mcdonalds-plastic-straws-britain.html

    McDonald's uses 1.8 million plastic straws per day in Britain alone.CreditToby Melville/Reuters
    LONDON — The queen has backed efforts to curb the use of plastics. The Church of England has encouraged a similar push. The British government plans to legislate to require it.
    Increasingly, companies here in Britain and elsewhere are joining that campaign, too. On Friday, McDonald's became the latest to do so. The fast food chain outlined plans to phase out plastic straws across its 1,361 restaurants in Britain, which currently use 1.8 million plastic straws a day, by the end of next year.

    The drive to reduce the use of plastics has accelerated considerably in Britain. A million birds and more than 100,000 sea mammals die from eating or getting tangled in plastic waste each year, according to the British government. But a recent BBC documentary series, "Blue Planet II," dramatically increased awareness through scenes in which birds traveled thousands of miles to find food for their young only to accidentally feed them plastic.

    IIn previous years, British authorities have forced stores to charge for plastic bags and banned the manufacturing of products containing plastic microbeads. The government has also proposed going further, with a ban on the sale of plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton swabs with plastic stems.

    Britain isn't alone in its efforts.
    Prompted as much by environmental imperatives as by China's sudden refusal to take in vast quantities of garbage for processing, other places have moved against plastic. The European Union has proposed bans on plastic products like single-use drinks containers and sticks for balloons as part of its effort to reduce marine litter by 30 percent by 2020. More than 40 countries around the world have introduced measures to restrict or reduce the use of plastic bags.
    Businesses and other organizations have also taken up the cause. Bacardihas removed straws and stirrers from cocktails at company events. Upmarket supermarket Waitrose, Lord's Cricket Ground in London and London City Airport, as well as several food and coffee chains, have pledged to get rid of straws and reduce use of plastic. Ikea has committed to removing all single-use plastics from its products and stores by 2020.
    Greenpeace, the environmental group, welcomed the move by McDonald's, but called on the company to implement it worldwide and reduce its use of plastics in other packaging.
    "It's great that McDonalds is taking this seriously, but there's other things they can be doing," said Fiona Nicholls, an oceans campaigner at the nonprofit. "They're putting enormous volumes of plastic waste on the market. People should be able to enjoy a McFlurry, or whatever, without having to think, 'I've just created some pollution.'"

    McDonald's plans to gradually replace its plastic straws with paper ones. An unscientific test by New York Times journalists using the paper straws with a Diet Coke and a banana milkshake raised worries about the sturdiness of the straws and how long they would last when left in a drink or chewed.
    At one central London outlet where paper straws were already in use, lunchtime customers voiced support for the move.
    "I'm in favor if it achieves the endgame," said David Arivo, a besuited lawyer who was about to return to work. Mr. Arivo complained that his paper straw got soggy as he finished his cup of Fanta, but said he was nevertheless in favor of the change, noting that the scenes in "Blue Planet II" were "quite horrific."
    Another customer, David Matthews, said he had similarly seen the impact of plastic pollution on television programs. Mr. Matthews, a 61-year-old construction worker, added as he tucked into a cheeseburger and strawberry milkshake that his paper straw could do with some improvement.
    "It doesn't flow up the straw as easily," he said. "You can also taste the paper. It's a good idea, though."

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    10) Ketamine Used to Subdue Dozens at Request of Minneapolis Police, Report Says
    By Christopher Mele, June 16, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/ketamine-minneapolis-police.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

    Minneapolis police officers asked emergency medical responders to use the tranquilizer ketamine to sedate suspects and others who were restrained, The Star Tribune reported.CreditMark Zdechlik/MPR News
    Minneapolis police officers asked emergency medical workers dozens of times over three years to inject suspects and others with the powerful anesthetic ketamine, including some who were already restrained, The Star Tribune reported on Friday.
    In some cases, the drug caused heart or breathing failure and required those injected to be revived or intubated, according to the newspaper.
    The Star Tribune said it had obtained a draft report of an investigation by the Office of Police Conduct Review, a division of the city's Department of Civil Rights.

    Ketamine has for decades been used as an anesthetic for humans and animals as well as abused as a recreational hallucinogenic drug known as Special K. Researchers have also explored its therapeutic uses in treating depression.

    The Star Tribune, citing the draft report, said the number of documented injections of ketamine during police calls increased to 62 last year from three in 2012, including four times on the same person.
    In one case, officers and emergency medical workers responded to a call about a man who appeared to be in a mental health crisis.
    Four officers and two medical responders arrived and decided to sedate the man, according to the report authors, who reviewed body camera footage, The Star Tribune reported.
    Upon seeing the needle, the man said he did not want the shot. "Whoa, whoa, that's not cool!" he pleaded, according to the newspaper. "I don't need that!"
    He was injected with the drug twice and secured to a chair. "Shortly after, he became nonverbal and unintelligible, prompting one officer to remark, 'He just hit the K-hole,' a slang term for the intense delirium brought on by ketamine," the newspaper reported.

    Until last month, the police had no policy for using the drug, which the department manual classified as a "date rape drug" because it is a powerful sedative that can erase or alter memory.
    Side effects of the drug can include changes in blood pressure and heart rate, delirium, agitation, confusion and hallucinations, said Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. If it is not administered properly, it could lead to cardiac and respiratory problems and potentially worsen agitation, he added.
    John B. Gordon, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Minnesota, said on Friday he first learned of the injections from The Star Tribune report.
    If officers directed medical responders to administer the drug, it amounted to a "horrible abuse of power," he said.
    Members of Hennepin Healthcare, the main emergency medical service provider in Minneapolis, are authorized to use ketamine when a patient is "profoundly agitated," unable to be restrained and a danger to themselves or others, according to its policy, The Star Tribune said, adding that the draft report found cases in which emergency medical workers used it on people who did not appear to fit those criteria.
    Around the time the draft report was completed last month, Police Cmdr. Todd Sauvageau issued an order that officers "shall never suggest or demand" that emergency medical personnel sedate a person. "This is a decision that needs to be clearly made by EMS personnel, not MPD officers," the order said.
    In a statement on Friday, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo emphasized that the draft report was incomplete "and devoid of any input from medical personnel," and that releasing its contents "before its completion was irresponsible."

    The report has not been made public and remained a "work in progress," a spokesman for the Police Department, John Elder, said on Friday.
    Hennepin Healthcare said in a statement on Friday that it heard in early April that officers were asking that ketamine be used and relayed its concerns to the police on May 3.
    "While a police request for ketamine may occur, the final decision is always made by professional medical personnel," the agency said. "Last year, ketamine sedations were used on 0.095 percent of our 81,500 EMS calls for service."
    Hennepin Healthcare said that the drug had been used by its emergency medical services since 2008, and that it had asked an independent agency to review eight specific cases cited in the report.

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    11) Shunned by Italy, Migrants at Sea Arrive in Spain
    By Raphael Minder, June 17, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/world/europe/spain-migrant-ship-italy.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

    Spanish medical staff carried out preliminary health checks on the migrants at Valencia's port.CreditAlberto Saiz/Associated Press
    MADRID — More than 600 migrants disembarked from three ships on Sunday in the port of Valencia, Spain, more than a week after they had been rescued at sea only to be turned away by Italy and Malta.
    Arriving separately, the Aquarius, a rescue ship, and two Italian Navy vessels reached Valencia carrying a total of 630 migrants — including pregnant women and children — that the Aquarius had originally picked up from six rubber dinghies in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya.
    After their exhausting journey, migrants shouted with joy as their ships entered Valencia's port. Some disembarked singing.

    The fate of the Aquarius has underlined the deep divisions in Europe over how to handle an influx of migrants mostly from the Middle East and Africa.

    The Aquarius is operated by two European humanitarian groups, SOS Méditerranée and Doctors Without Borders. David Noguera, the president of the Spanish branch of Doctors Without Borders, said on Sunday that the migrants had completed a journey that was "too long and generates contradictory feelings."
    He added, "The blockade of European ports sets a very negative precedent."
    The landing in Spain opens a new chapter in a saga that began last Sunday, when Italy's new populist government followed through on anti-immigration campaign promises by refusing to let the Aquarius dock at an Italian port.

    Italy's interior minister and the leader of the anti-immigrant League, Matteo Salvini, had argued that "an army of fake refugees" had long exploited what he called the country's lax rules.
    That left the ship, which at the time was overburdened with the rescued migrants, stranded at sea in dangerous conditions.

    The migrants will be granted a special humanitarian permit to stay in Spain for 45 days while the authorities review their cases and give them medical attention. The Spanish government said it would review all of the 630 migrants' cases to decide whether to grant them asylum. Those who do not fulfill the criteria would face deportation.
    Italy's decision to bar the migrants drew a furious reaction from humanitarian groups and other European countries. Spain brought an end to the standoff when its new Socialist government offered to let the migrants land there instead.
    During the standoff, Italy allowed emergency services to board the Aquarius to check on the migrants, who were crammed on board. The Italian government also sent two navy ships to escort the Aquarius to Spain and to help transport the migrants to reduce overcrowding.
    Mr. Salvini has cast his government's turning away of the Aquarius as a political victory. His party campaigned on promises to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants and to prevent new arrivals from landing on Italian shores.
    Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said his government's decision to let the refugees land was an "obligation to avoid a human catastrophe." Mr. Salvini responded acerbically to the Spanish decision. He welcomed the "good heart" of Mr. Sánchez's government and urged him to "also use his generosity in coming weeks" to welcome more migrants, given that Spain has received far fewer than Italy.
    Even as the Aquarius migrants reached safety in Valencia after their week at sea, others faced a similar ordeal.

    Mr. Salvini warned on his Facebook page on Saturday that "two other ships with the flag of Netherlands — Lifeline and Seefuchs — have arrived off the coast of Libya, waiting for their load of human beings abandoned by the smugglers."

    He said Italy would block those other rescue ships, too, writing: "These gentlemen know that Italy no longer wants to be complicit in the business of illegal immigration, and therefore will have to look for other ports (not Italian) where to go."
    On Sunday morning, Spanish medical staff boarded the Dattilo to carry out preliminary health checks when the Italian Navy ship reached its assigned dock at Valencia's port, shortly before 7 a.m. local time. Spanish police officers began registering the first migrants once they were allowed to disembark. The Orione, another Italian Navy vessel, was the last to reach Valencia, more than six hours after the Dattilo.
    The first migrant who completed the registration process was a 29-year-old man from Sudan, according to Spanish news reports. Over 2,000 people helped receive the migrants in Valencia, including Red Cross workers and interpreters.
    Some of the migrants are expected to be transferred to France, after the government of President Emmanuel Macron announced that passengers from the Aquarius who wished to resettle in his country would be welcomed.
    Aquarius's arrival coincided with the rescue of almost 1,000 migrants off the southern coast of Spain over the weekend. The migrants were picked up by the country's maritime rescue services as they were trying to cross the waters separating Morocco from Spain in dozens of dinghies.
    "Spain faces an avalanche of migrants because of the call effect," the headline on the front page of ABC, a Spanish right-wing newspaper, read on Sunday. The newspaper said that "almost 1,000 illegals" had reached southern Andalusia, calling it the largest influx of migrants since 2014.
    According to ABC, the message sent by the Socialist government's humanitarian gesture could be "used by the mafias that traffic human beings to increase their activity, because it allows them to make their clients believe that the entrance to Spanish territory — and hence that of Europe — will be easier from now."

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    12)  A Legal Resident, an Arrest by ICE and Father's Day in Jail
    By Sarah Mervosh, June 17, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/legal-resident-arrested.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

    Jose Luis Garcia, 62, with his granddaughter Marley. Mr. Garcia, who came from Mexico and is a legal resident of the United States, was arrested by immigration officials because of a misdemeanor conviction from nearly 20 years ago, his lawyer and family said.
    Jose Luis Garcia was watering his lawn and drinking his morning coffee outside his home in Southern California last Sunday when federal immigration authorities showed up.
    Mr. Garcia — a 62-year-old Mexican immigrant who has been a legal resident since the 1980s, according to his family — shouted for help.
    He spilled his coffee on the sidewalk as agents arrested him, said his daughter Natalie Garcia, who ran outside and saw her father handcuffed. She said the authorities told her they had a warrant for his arrest related to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge that was resolved nearly two decades ago.
    "They are kidnapping people from their home, starting with my father, who has the legal status," said Ms. Garcia, 32.

    A week later, Mr. Garcia was still being held by immigration officials, and his family was preparing to spend Father's Day without him.
    Mr. Garcia and his family are among those who have been swept up in the Trump administration's immigration policy, which cracks down not only on illegal immigrants but also on legal residents. The administration makes it a priority to remove those who have pending criminal charges or any convictions in their past.
    United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 162 people during a three-day roundup in the Los Angeles area last week. In a news release, the agency emphasized that the operation targeted immigrants who posed a safety risk, such as one Mexican who was a known gang member and had been convicted of rape.
    But Mr. Garcia's case appears to show just how sweeping ICE can be in making arrests regardless of an immigrant's legal status or how long ago their criminal case was resolved. An agency spokeswoman said ICE did not exempt any class of "removable aliens" from potential enforcement as it seeks to uphold immigration law and protect public safety.
    Mackenzie W. Mackins, an immigration lawyer representing Mr. Garcia, said it was a waste of taxpayer money to target her client.

    "This is just an example of them going into our communities on a Sunday morning and picking people up who aren't a danger or a threat or a flight risk," she said.
    But that is the new reality under the Trump administration, she said, adding, "Everyone is an enforcement priority."
    Mr. Garcia was 13 when he came to the United States, traveling from Mexico with his teenage brother, his daughter said. From then on, "he worked diligently to achieve the American dream," she said.
    He picked fruit in fields in Northern California, tried to make it as an amateur boxer and worked as a truck driver. But he has spent most of his career working as a machine operator at a factory, she said.
    Her father received his green card and became a permanent legal resident in 1988, Ms. Garcia said.
    In 2001, Mr. Garcia was convicted of a misdemeanor stemming from a dispute with his wife, according to his lawyer and his family. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Superior Court said he was sentenced to 25 days in jail and three years of probation. Ms. Garcia said that her father completed probation.
    It was a domestic dispute they settled years ago, and "they are still married to this day," Ms. Garcia said.
    A spokeswoman for ICE said in a statement that Mr. Garcia was arrested because he "has past criminal convictions that make him amenable to removal from the United States."

    The spokeswoman would not specify the convictions, citing privacy rules. Ms. Garcia said she was not aware of other convictions in her father's past.
    Today, she said, he is a husband, a father to his five adult children and a "jolly grandpa" to his nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
    Ms. Garcia, a single mother who works full time in public relations, said her father is helping to raise her 6-year-old daughter, Marley, who calls him Dad. Ms. Garcia often calls upon her father to pick up Marley from school or to help cook dinner.
    The family had planned to celebrate Father's Day with a barbecue, and Ms. Garcia had gifts already picked out.
    Marley planned to give him a photo of the two of them, with the words "Best Dad!" in a heart. Ms. Garcia said she bought her father what she gives him for every occasion: clothing with the logos of his favorite teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and the University of Southern California Trojans.
    Instead, Mr. Garcia will spend Father's Day at the Theo Lacy Facility, a maximum-security jail complex in Orange, Calif. His first court appearance is scheduled for June 29.
    "It's killing me," Ms. Garcia said. "I'm a daddy's girl. I miss him so much."

    Jack Begg contributed research.

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    13) Separated at the Border From Their Parents: In Six Weeks, 1,995 Children
    By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, June 15, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/politics/trump-immigration-separation-border.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

    Keilyn Enamorada Matute, from Honduras, with her 4-year old son, this year as they surrender themselves to Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico to the United States.CreditLynsey Addario for The New York Times
    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said on Friday that it had separated 1,995 children from parents facing criminal prosecution for unlawfully crossing the border over a six-week period that ended last month, as President Trump sought to shift blame for the widely criticized practice that has become the signature policy of his aggressive immigration agenda.
    From April 19 to May 31, the children were separated from 1,940 adults, according to a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke during a conference call with reporters that had been described as an effort to correct the record about immigrant families being split up at the border.
    Administration officials insisted on anonymity to explain the president's policy and deny many of the damaging stories that have appeared about it in recent days. That included an anecdote about a 4-month-old taken away from her mother by immigration authorities as the baby was breast-feeding, which one official said the department had tried unsuccessfully to verify.

    "I hate the children being taken away," Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday morning in front of the White House. "The Democrats have to change their law — that's their law."

    A short time later, he wrote on Twitter, "The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda."
    But Mr. Trump was misrepresenting his own policy. There is no law that says children must be taken from their parents if they cross the border unlawfully, and previous administrations have made exceptions for those traveling with minor children when prosecuting immigrants for illegal entry. A "zero tolerance" policy created by the president in April and put into effect last month by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, allows no such exceptions, Mr. Trump's advisers say.
    The president's efforts to deflect blame for the practice reflected the degree to which it has become politically unpopular, with Democrats, civil rights and immigrant advocacy groups and religious leaders condemning it as inhumane. Republicans have also begun to express unease about the practice. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said on Thursday that he was not comfortable with it, and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio tweeted on Friday: "Quit separating families. It's that simple."
    The number released on Friday suggests that thousands of children have been taken from their parents at the border since late last year. The New York Times reported in April that about 700 children had been separated from their parents as they were processed at stations on the southwest border, including more than 100 under the age of 4. As the number of children in its custody grows beyond the capacity of existing detention centers, the Trump administration reportedly plans to erect a tent city in Tornillo, Tex., to house them.
    The homeland security official said that the administration had drawn a "bright line" against taking babies from their parents because the government was unable to appropriately care for children that young, but could not immediately provide information about the age cutoff below which they would decline to take a child.

    The official also denied that department personnel were using false pretenses to take away children, such as saying that they were going to bathe. But lawyers and members of Congress who have spoken with migrants separated from their children in recent days have reported hearing otherwise.
    Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, who recently visited 174 women apprehended at the border and being held in a federal prison facility in SeaTac, said some of them reported having been told that they needed to briefly leave their children to be photographed or see a judge, only to return and find the children had been taken away.
    "They were forced to leave their children in this room, and then when they came back, the children were gone, and not a single one of them was able to say goodbye," Ms. Jayapal said in an interview on Friday. One woman, she said, told her that a border agent had said she and the other detainees "should let all their friends back home know that this is what would happen if they tried to come into the United States illegally."
    Even as they defended the tactics, administration officials argued on Friday that they would prefer not to have to use them, and called on Congress to support legislation to change immigration laws so they would no longer be necessary.
    At one point, the official complained that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC had been disrespectful for having said during a broadcast that the tactics being employed to separate children from their parents unwittingly were "just like the Nazis," calling the comparison "disgusting." Without naming Mr. Scarborough, he demanded an apology.

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    14)  Why Aren't More Men Working?
    By N. Gregory Mankiw, June 15, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/men-unemployment-jobs.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=13&pgtype=sectionfront

    With unemployment at 3.8 percent, its lowest level in many years, the labor market seems healthy.
    But that number hides a perplexing anomaly: The percentage of men who are neither working nor looking for work has risen substantially over the past several decades.
    The issue, in economist's jargon, is labor force participation. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys households, every adult is put into one of three categories. Those who have a job are employed. Those who are not working but are searching for a job are unemployed. Those who are neither working nor looking for work are counted as out of the labor force.
    This last group is ignored when calculating the unemployment rate. The presumption is that if a person without a job isn't looking for one, then he or she doesn't want one, and the joblessness is not a problem. But is that really accurate?
    The data show some striking changes over time. Among women, the share out of the labor force has fallen from 66 percent in 1950 to 43 percent today. That is not surprising in light of changing social norms and the greater career opportunities now open to women.

    Men, however, exhibit the opposite long-term trend. In 1950, 14 percent of men were out of the labor force. Today, that figure stands at 31 percent.
    Some of this change is easy to explain. People now spend more years in school, delaying their start of work. In addition, as life expectancy rises, people have longer retirements. A man retiring at age 65 in 1950 could expect to live another 13 years. Today, a man retiring at that age has an average retirement of 18 years.
    Yet schooling and retirement explain only part of what has occurred. Consider prime-age men, those from the ages of 25 to 54. These men are generally well past their schooling and well before their retirement. Yet this group has also been exiting the labor force.
    In 1950, only 4 percent of prime-age men were not working or looking for work. Today, that figure is 11 percent.

    Why has that number nearly tripled?
    One likely hypothesis, discussed in a recent paper by the economists Katharine G. Abraham and Melissa S. Kearney, is that the rise in nonparticipation is related to declining opportunities for those with low levels of education.

    Economists who study rising inequality, like my Harvard colleagues Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, attribute a large share of it to skill-biased technological change — the tendency for advances in technology to enhance the productivity and wages of workers who have certain skills while reducing the demand for those who don't. Unskilled workers are left with the choice of accepting lower wages or leaving the labor force. This hypothesis is consistent with the fact that labor force participation has fallen more for workers with lower levels of educational attainment.
    Compounding these trends is international trade, which can have much the same effects as technology. Whether an American manufacturing worker is replaced by a robot or a Chinese worker, the result is the same: job displacement. (The benefit to consumers — lower prices — is the same, too.) If the jobs that remain available are much less attractive than the one a worker just lost, he may give up looking.
    One might wonder how these less educated, prime-age men support themselves after leaving the labor force. The social safety net plays a role. In a study for the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, Scott Winship reports that "75 percent of inactive prime-age men are in a household that received some form of government transfer payment." Mr. Winship believes that government disability benefits in particular are one reason for the lack of interest in work.
    Moreover, the social safety net extends beyond government aid. For many young adults, living with their parents is a viable option, even if not an attractive one for all participants. The recent court case brought by a couple to evict their 30-year-old son from the family home is just one facet of a broader social trend.
    For many non-workers, being out of the labor force is intermittent rather than permanent. In his recent Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, John Coglianese documented the rise of what he calls "in-and-outs" — prime-age men who temporarily leave the labor force. While not working, these men live off their savings or the income of their spouse or cohabiting partner.
    It is an open question how policymakers should respond, or whether they should at all. The decision to look for work is a personal one, and in a free society people will naturally make different choices. Yet it is troubling that rising nonparticipation is most pronounced for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

    One step in the right direction would be to expand opportunity by increasing educational attainment and skills training. Doing so would help expand opportunity, as well as address many other problems facing the economy. But that is easier said than done.
    Spending more on education might help, but is a tough political sell. And improving the educational system could require not just more money, but fundamental reforms that are hotly contested by the various stakeholders.
    The data on labor force participation show that the economy is changing in profound and disquieting ways. The literature on this phenomenon is growing but has yet to yield any easy answers.

    N. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M. Beren professor of economics at Harvard University

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    15) Test the DNA of Kevin Cooper, Says Kim Kardashian West to Jerry Brown
    By Narda Zacchino, June 16, 2018
    https://www.truthdig.com/articles/kim-kardashian-west-to-jerry-brown-test-the-dna-of-kevin-cooper/

    Prison guards walk down a corridor in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif., where Kevin Cooper is detained. (Ben Margot/AP)
    Kim Kardashian West, coming off her ​recent ​success in getting President Trump to pardon a grandmother serving a life sentence, has taken to Twitter to ask California Gov. Jerry Brown to give San Quentin death row inmate Kevin Cooper the DNA tests he has been denied, tests that could prove his innocence.
    ​Cooper has been imprisoned for 34 years for a ​savage crime he insists he did not commit—the 1983 slaughter of chiropractors and Arabian horse breeders Doug and Peggy Ryen, both 47, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes. Christopher was a friend of Joshua Ryen, 8, who was attacked and left for dead.
    Though Cooper has lost all his appeals, in 2009 five judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asserted he was framed by the San Bernardino, Calif., Sheriff’s Department. The judges were joined by six colleagues in asking for a hearing to prove his innocence. ​Cooper’s attorneys continue to gather new evidence that he did not commit the crime.
    What separates execution and exoneration in the case are modern DNA tests that Cooper’s attorneys claim could prove he was framed. They are being fought by the San Bernardino district attorney’s office and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who say enough DNA testing has been done and no more is needed. The tests could be ordered by the governor, but he has made no public move to do so. Brown has been sitting on Cooper’s clemency petition, which details numerous examples of law enforcement misconduct in the case, for almost two and a half years.
    ​Following a recent New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof about Cooper, California Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein urged Brown to let the tests proceed. The tests could clear Cooper or confirm his guilt and could possibly identify the actual killers, initially described by the sole eyewitness, Josh Ryen, as three white assailants. 
    Cooper’s attorneys have focused attention for years on a white man who was implicated in the murders by his girlfriend, who called deputies after he came home the night of the murders wearing bloody coveralls, which she handed over to a deputy sheriff. She told the deputy her boyfriend was a convicted murderer of a 17-year-old girl and he had been out of prison less than a year. She also reported that the tan T-shirt he was wearing the day of the murders exactly matched the bloody shirt that was found and his missing hatchet resembled the bloody hatchet found near the crime scene.
    No one from homicide ever called her, as she requested, or picked up the coveralls from the deputy. They were never tested for the victims’ blood, and they were thrown in a dumpster on orders of a supervisor six months later, at the start of Cooper’s preliminary hearing. Eleven months after the murders, when the girlfriend called the sheriff’s department to find out why she had never been interviewed, the boyfriend was interviewed by two homicide detectives, denied owning the coveralls, and said his girlfriend thought the killers had stopped by her house during their escape and dropped off the coveralls, which were left in his bedroom closet. When asked if he would take a polygraph test, he said yes; however, the detectives changed their minds and said it would not be necessary. 
    ​Kevin Cooper is a Truthdig contributor. His clemency petition and other documents in his case can be found here.
    Journalist Narda Zacchino has been investigating this case for over a year. Her next story on Kevin Cooper’s bid for exoneration will appear on Truthdig next week.

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     16)  The Racist Trope That Won’t Die
    By Brent Staples, June 17, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/roseanne-racism-blacks-apes.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region


    The comedian Roseanne Barr resurrected one of the oldest and most profoundly racist slanders in American history when she referred to Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who served as an adviser to President Barack Obama, as the offspring of an ape.
    This depiction — promoted by slave traders, historians and practitioners of “scientific” racism — was used to justify slavery, lynching and the creation of the Jim Crow state. It made the leap to the silver screen in deeply noxious films like “The Birth of a Nation” and haunted American popular culture well into the 20th century.
    The toxically racist ape characterization has been pushed to the margins of the public square. Nevertheless, a growing body of research shows that it has maintained a pernicious grip on the American imagination. It is especially problematic in the criminal justice system, where subhuman treatment of African-Americans remains strikingly visible.
    That message comes through powerfully in research by several social scientists, but particularly in the work of the Stanford University psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt and Phillip Atiba Goff, president of the Center for Policing Equity at John Jay College in New York. In six studiespublished with collaborators a decade ago, Mr. Goff and Ms. Eberhardt found that even younger study participants who were born since the civil rights revolution and claimed to know nothing of the ape caricature of blackness were swayed by it when making judgments about black people. In one study, white male undergraduates who were subliminally exposed to words associated with apes — for example, “chimp” or “gorilla” — were more likely to condone the beating of those in police custody when they thought that the suspect was black.

    In another study, the authors analyzed death penalty cases covered in The Philadelphia Inquirer between 1979 and 1999. They found that black defendants convicted of capital crimes were four times more likely than whites convicted of capital crimes to be described with labels associated with apes, such as “savage,” “brute” or “beast.” The researchers also discovered that defendants who were implicitly portrayed as more apelike in the newspaper were more likely to be executed by the state.
    This process of dehumanization often leads Americans to view African-American men as larger and more fearsome than they are. This pattern of misperception is troubling. Police officers are often exonerated for killing civilians on the premise that they fired their weapons out of fear for their lives. This issue famously came up in the 2014 killing of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man in Milwaukee who was shot 14 times by Officer Christopher Manney. Officer Manney later portrayed Mr. Hamilton as hulking and muscular, saying he feared being “overpowered.” An autopsy showed that Mr. Hamilton was actually of modest build — 5 feet, 7 inches tall and 169 pounds.
    The tragedy of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed by a Cleveland police officer in 2014 while playing with a toy gun, fits this pattern. An officer at the scene described him as being 20 years old. Black children are often seen as significantly older and more menacing than they actually are. And, research suggests, the automatic presumption of threat provoked by a black face applies even the when the face belongs to a 5-year-old child.
    Mr. Goff and his colleagues published a striking set of studies the year Tamir was killed. They found that when a group of mainly white college students were shown photographs of white, black and Latino boys, they overestimated the ages of black boys ages 10 to 17 by an average of 4.5 years. In other words, they perceived 13-year-old boys as adult men — and viewed black children as more culpable for crimes.

    The ape caricature plays a role here, too. The more participants associated black people with apes, the authors showed, the greater the discrepancy between their guesses of the ages of black children and their actual ages — and the more severely the participants judged the children’s culpability. A related analysis of police personnel records determined that officers who associated blacks with apes were more likely to have used force against a black child in custody.
    These findings have much to say about disparate treatment in the criminal justice system, especially given the recent spate of episodes in which black people were confronted by law enforcement and, sometimes, hauled off to jail for living their lives at Starbucks, among other places.
    The backlash that forced ABC to cancel Ms. Barr’s television series reflects a distaste for passé, plainly stated racism in a society that likes to see itself as having put bigotry behind it. Nevertheless, centuries of institutional racism — and the dehumanization of black people upon which it relied — have left an indelible imprint on how Americans process blackness.
    The notion that the country might somehow move past this deeply complex, historically layered issue by assuming an attitude of “color blindness” is naïve. The only real hope of doing that is to openly confront and talk about the powerful, but submerged, forms of discrimination that have long since supplanted the undisguised version.

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     17) "I Can't Go Without My Son" a Mother Pleaded as She Was Deported to Guatemala
    By Miriam Jordan, June 17, 2018
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/immigration-deported-parents.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

    Elsa Ortiz, 25, was deported to Guatemala from the United States on June 5 without her son Anthony, 8.CreditMarian Carrasquero/The New York Times
    They’d had a plan: Elsa Johana Ortiz Enriquez packed up what little she had in Guatemala and traveled across Mexico with her 8-year-old son, Anthony. In a group, they rafted across the Rio Grande into Texas. From there they intended to join her boyfriend, Edgar, who had found a construction job in the United States.
    Except it all went wrong. The Border Patrol was waiting as they made their way from the border on May 26, and soon mother and son were in a teeming detention center in southern Texas. The next part unfolded so swiftly that, even now, Ms. Ortiz cannot grasp it: Anthony was sent to a shelter for migrant children. And she was put on a plane back to Guatemala.
    “I am completely devastated,” Ms. Ortiz, 25, said in one of a series of video interviews last week from her family home in Guatemala. Her eyes swollen from weeping and her voice subdued, she said she had no idea when or how she would see her son again.

    As the federal government continues to separate families as part of a stepped-up enforcement program against those who cross the border illegally, the authorities say that parents are not supposed to be deported without their children. But immigration lawyers say that has happened in several cases. And the separations can be traumatic for parents who now have no clear path to recovering their children.

    “From our work on the border, we have seen a significant increase in the number of moms separated from their children, and many of them have reported they didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye before the separation, “ said Laura Tuell, the global pro bono counsel at Jones Day, an international law firm providing assistance to refugees in Texas, whose lawyers spoke with Ms. Ortiz.

    “Some of the women we have encountered in detention at the border have reported facing pressure to deport voluntarily in order to be reunified with their children,” she said.
    Critics say that Ms. Ortiz’s saga is the latest indication that the administration’s new enforcement strategy was rolled out without adequate planning. The processing and detention of migrant families can involve three Homeland Security agencies — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services — as well as the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. Poor coordination among them has made it hard to track children and parents once their paths diverge in the labyrinthine system.
    “I cannot convey enough how much utter chaos there is,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a research and advocacy organization that monitors immigration issues. “The government does not have a proper system in place to track families and coordinate.”

    In some cases, parents and children have gone weeks without being able to communicate with one another and without knowing one anothers’ whereabouts. From April 19 to May 31, a total of 1,995 children who arrived with 1,940 adults were separated from their parents, according to administration officials.
    Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the “zero tolerance” policy officially in early May to stanch the flow of migrants, mainly from Central American countries like Guatemala. It calls for prosecuting nearly all of those who are found to have entered the United States illegally. Previously, most border-crossers who were caught would have faced deportation but not criminal charges, and would not have been separated from their children.
    Children whose parents have been arrested are transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department, whose staff screens them, finds housing and remains responsible for them.
    From that point, migrant parents and children become separate legal cases in the maze of government bureaucracy, and keeping them linked has proved challenging. Different legal protections are afforded to juveniles and adults in the immigration system, and as a result, reuniting families can take months or longer, several legal experts said.

    In federal court, parents typically plead guilty to the misdemeanor offense of illegal entry. Many are then likely to accept “expedited removal” from the country, in the hope of being reunited quickly with their children. But children cannot be subject to expedited removal; they are automatically entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge, and their cases take longer to resolve.
    “Once the parent and child are apart, they are on separate legal tracks,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE during the Obama administration.

    Reunification becomes particularly difficult when a parent is deported without the child and is no longer on American soil, Mr. Sandweg said; in those cases, “there is a very high risk that parents and children will be permanently separated.”
    Federal immigration officials say parents are not supposed to be deported without their children, and if this occurs, parents have two options: They can have a family member who is living in the United States take sponsorship and custody of the child, or the child can be flown home and delivered into the custody of the authorities in the parent’s home country — and from there to the parent.
    Normally, an ICE spokeswoman said, the agency works with the Health and Human Services department “to reunite the parent and child at the time of removal, and with the consulate to assist the parent with obtaining a travel document for the child.” In any case, she said, the agency has procedures in place to make sure detained parents have either telephone or in-person contact with proceedings related to their child. A government hotline has been set up to help parents locate their children.
    A spokesman for Health and Human Services said that the department does not discuss individual cases of minors in its facilities.
    Ms. Ortiz’s greatest fear is that she won’t be able to return to the United States to claim custody of her son, and that without her intervention, he won’t be returned to her.
    Ms. Ortiz provided detailed accounts and documents that attest to her detention, criminal prosecution and separation from her son. The story of how the two of them came to be in the United States involves years of difficult single parenthood in Guatemala, with both economic setbacks and threats of violence from the rising lawlessness in her community.
    A few years ago, Ms. Ortiz fell in love with a “good man,” she said, who treated her son as his own child. The man, named Edgar, moved to the United States to work in construction and had been sending money to help support them. He asked that his last name not be disclosed because he fears repercussions from federal authorities.

    This year, Ms. Ortiz, fearful of the thugs who were increasingly preying on people in her neighborhood, decided it would be best to take her son and join Edgar in the United States.
    They made it to Texas safely, but shortly afterward, as they walked along a road, they were intercepted by border agents, arrested and taken to a station. Ms. Ortiz said she was interviewed the next day by border officials, and that is when she was told her son would be separated from her. “I begged, please don’t do this, don’t take him,” she said.
    About an hour later, her son’s name was called. Mother and son stood up, and over Ms. Ortiz’s loud protests, Anthony was led away. A 12-year-old girl went with him.

    A few days later, Ms. Ortiz said, she boarded a bus filled with migrants and was taken to a federal court in South Texas, where she pleaded guilty to illegal entry. Ms. Ortiz was later transferred to another facility, in Laredo, Tex., where she was finally able to make telephone calls.
    She contacted Edgar to tell him that their plan had gone awry, and that she and her son had been arrested and then separated.

    “She was crying desperately,” Edgar recalled in a telephone interview.

    By this time, it had been more than a week since she had seen Anthony, and she still had no idea where he was.
    At one point, an immigration officer handed her a handwritten note on a pink slip of paper with the words, “Call Shelter Son” and a telephone number. But before Ms. Ortiz could get access to a phone to make the call, she said, another officer summoned her and several other women to inform them that they were booked on a deportation flight that was leaving shortly.
    What about Anthony? No one would listen, she said.
    Ms. Ortiz recalled sobbing heavily as she reluctantly climbed the steps to the plane that would take her and dozens of other deported migrants back to Guatemala early in June. She said she was the last to board.
    “Please don’t put me on the plane,” she remembered pleading over and over in Spanish. “I can’t go without my son.”
    “I was shaking, I could barely walk,” Ms. Ortiz recalled. She said that an American immigration officer escorting her across the tarmac was also in tears. “She told me to talk to the boss when I got inside the plane,” Ms. Ortiz said.
    But he did not listen.
    “I cried the entire flight,” she said. “When I arrived at the airport in Guatemala, I was almost fainting. They gave me a tranquilizer.”

    She phoned Edgar from Guatemala the next day, and he reached out to a lawyer at Jones Day, who provided him with the government hotline number.
    After several attempts, Edgar got a woman on the line who asked for the boy’s name and date of birth. “She told me he is fine — he has clothes, shoes and his own bed, we are taking good care of him,” Edgar recalled.
    Later that day, a caseworker from the shelter called the cellphone number of the boy’s grandfather, José Ortiz, in Guatemala — the only telephone number the boy had memorized. She put Anthony on the phone, and his grandfather said he seemed cheerful.
    “He shared how he was learning English, playing games and being well treated,” Ms. Ortiz said.
    Finally, on Thursday, she got to speak to Anthony herself. She told him to be good. They joked about an imaginary character — “the clown” — who they always pretended slept between them in the bed they shared. But she said Anthony seemed worried — about her.
    “Mammy, are they treating you well in the house where you are at? Anthony asked.
    “Yes,” she said, knowing that he would not know — not until the shelter workers told him, and she dreaded how he’d respond when they did — that the house was in Guatemala.

    Marian Carrasquero contributed reporting from Guatemala.

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