Month: January 2018

USA Gymnastics, the sport’s U.S. governing body, said Wednesday that all its remaining directors have resigned following revelations that the longtime team doctor had sexually abused numerous athletes under his care.

A USA Gymnastics spokeswoman on Friday had said that the full board intended to resign. The U.S. Olympic Committee threatened to revoke the organization’s governing authority if the full board had not stepped down by Wednesday, after former team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault charges.

“We are in the process of moving forward with forming an interim board of directors during the month of February, in accordance with the USOC’s requirements,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement. “USA Gymnastics will provide information about this process within the next few days.”
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Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of occasional reports from this area.

HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA —  “Yes, there exists this fear — the fear that this can happen [again],” said Raul, a 31-year-old Mexican national and longtime resident of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A fear of reprisal led to his request that VOA keep his surname and workplace confidential.

Speaking in Spanish to VOA in the basement of a Catholic church in downtown Harrisburg, Raul recounted how he was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on his way to work in May, along with a van full of other immigrant workers.

“They stopped us for no reason whatsoever,” Raul said. “They weren’t looking for anybody in particular. They simply asked all of us, ‘Are you here legally?'” 

In Raul’s case, the answer is no.

WATCH: One Undocumented Immigrant Talks Living in Fear

Free for now after being held briefly in a detention facility, he worries about being arrested again and eventually deported.

“I’m the head of the family, and so if something would happen to me, my children and my wife would be left without any support,” he said. “They would suffer a lot. They’re very close to me, so it would be a hard blow.”

Growing threat

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, has a sizable Hispanic population — about 18 percent of the city’s 49,000 people. Many, like Raul, are from Mexico; others are from Central American nations. They work for landscaping companies, meatpacking plants and other local industries.

Increasingly, those who are undocumented are at risk of arrest and detention, according to local news reports going back to last March. ICE will not release the numbers of arrests for Pennsylvania or the Harrisburg area. However, “administrative arrests” — an ICE category for those whose offenses are immigration-related, as opposed to conventional criminal charges — rose by 42 percent last year since President Donald Trump took office. Just over 110,000 people in this category were detained across the country since last March.

“There’s no population off the table,” ICE acting director Tom Homan said at a December news conference. “If you’re in this country illegally, we’re looking for you, and we’re looking to apprehend you.”

Craig Shagin, an immigration lawyer in Harrisburg, characterizes ICE actions as “aggressive at best, unlawful at worst. Time and again, we hear from our clients that they’re driving down the street, and they’re pulled over, for no apparent reason.

“Every day and in every way, we’re becoming a little bit closer to [Communist] East Germany,” Shagin told VOA. “This is having a very deleterious effect in our life, our social life.”

WATCH: One Immigration Attorney Discusses ICE Tactics

Father Orlando Reyes of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church agrees the arrests are having an impact on the city’s Hispanic community.

“People are afraid to go to the store or even come to church,” Reyes told VOA, adding that almost every week he hears about an ICE arrest. Reyes’ church is in the Allison Hill neighborhood, where a number of ICE arrests reportedly took place.

Local police officials say they have heard the arrests are continuing but are more targeted, focusing on specific addresses and places of employment. They say they get calls from people seeking help because their family members have disappeared. Two or three weeks later, the officials say, the missing individual turns up at the immigration detention facility in nearby York, Pennsylvania, after having been arrested by ICE. ICE officials do not inform local authorities when they are in the city, nor is ICE required to do so.   

The aim of the stepped-up enforcement by the Trump administration is to stop illegal immigration.

“As long as people think that if they can get by the fine men and women of the border patrol and no one is looking for them — those days are over,” Homan warned. “We’re looking for them.”

But for Raul, who has been in the United States for 10 years, the crackdown is difficult to understand. He says he has worked hard — first as a migrant farm worker and later finding steady work in Harrisburg, always paying his taxes and staying out of trouble. Now, the father of two American-born children worries about what would happen if he is deported back to Mexico.

“We would all go,” he said, even though his children speak more English than Spanish. “We don’t want that, because the truth is, we have our lives here, and we came here in search of a better life.”

​Thriving city

In the meantime, Harrisburg is thriving. Sitting on the banks of the Susquehanna River, the city has diversified with service-related industries, including health care and technology, according to Forbes magazine.

“Downtown Harrisburg has become a popular destination for live entertainment from jazz to contemporary music performing in its various night clubs,” the magazine said.

ICE’s increased enforcement has not impacted Harrisburg’s businesses or its labor force, according to the Harrisburg Chamber of Commerce. Chamber president David Black tells VOA he has read about the ICE actions, but has not heard of any adverse consequences.

“I can’t speak for every single business in the Harrisburg area, but we’ve seen no impact. It’s business as usual,” he said.
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Less than a week after threatening to cut aid to the Palestinians if they fail to pursue peace with Israel, the United States is sanctioning the political leader of Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip.

The State Department Tuesday announced it has placed Ismail Haniyeh, president of the Hamas political bureau, on its terrorist list as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

The U.S. already lists Hamas as a terrorist organization, but the State Department said Haniyeh maintains close ties with the group’s military wing and has reportedly been involved in attacks on Israeli citizens.

Also designated is Harakat al-Sabireen, an Iranian-backed group that operates mainly out of Gaza and the West Bank. Officials say Harakat al-Sabireen has planned and carried out attacks against Israel and has fired rockets at Israeli targets.

Two Egyptian groups, Liwa al-Thawra, and Harakat Sawa’d Misr, were also added to the terrorist list.  Both had previously been associated with the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

‘Important step’

“These designations target key terrorist groups and leaders, including two sponsored and directed by Iran, who are threatening the stability of the Middle East, undermining the peace process, and attacking our allies Egypt and Israel,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement. “Today’s actions are an important step in denying them the resources they need to plan and carry out their terrorist activities.”

The terrorist designations appear to support two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy priorities — support for Israel and countering Iranian influence across the Middle East.

During meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Trump threatened to withhold as much as $85 million slated to go to the Palestinians through the United Nations.

“We give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands. That money is on the table, and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace,” Trump said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Trump reiterated he would seek to curtail aid to any country that failed to stand by the U.S., including those that voted against the U.S. in the United Nations General Assembly after he moved to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“American taxpayers generously send those same countries billions of dollars in aid every year,” he said. “I am asking Congress to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign assistance dollars always serve American interests and only go to America’s friends, not enemies.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s rejection of peace talks with the Taliban has provoked a strong reaction from the Islamist insurgency, while lead Afghan clerics advocate against continuation of military action to end the war in Afghanistan.

“We have always maintained, the true authority of war and peace is not with the Kabul regime but with the American invaders, and the recent statement by Trump made this matter brighter than the sun,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday.

Trump ruled out talks with the insurgent group and vowed to “finish” them in the wake of a wave of terrorist attacks in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that killed hundreds of people.

“They’re killing people left and right. Innocent people being killed left and right,” Trump told a U.N. Security Council delegation at the White House on Monday.

“So we don’t want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time, but it’s going to be a long time,” noted the U.S. president, suggesting a stronger military campaign against the Taliban was imminent.

Trump and his “war-mongering supporters” should expect an equal reaction and not “roses” from the Taliban, asserted the insurgent spokesman in a written statement released to media.  

“War will only make the reactionary jihadist waves more violent and increase the human and financial losses of American troops by many folds,” Mujahid said.

Crossing a ‘red line’

A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday stopped short of supporting Trump’s idea of rejecting talks with insurgents. Shah Hussain Murtazawi told VOA the Afghan government will now use all available means to stop the Taliban from conducting terrorist attacks.

“The Taliban have crossed a red line and lost the opportunity for peace…We have to look for peace on the battlefield. They have to be marginalized,” Murtazawi pledged. He said a suicide car bombing last Saturday was the “red line.” The blast killed more than 100 people and wounded 250 others.

On Tuesday, an Afghan council of 100 prominent clerics met in Kabul to denounce the militant violence as un-Islamic.

The council’s spokesman, Mohammad Qasem Halimi, while talking to reporters, declined to directly comment on Trump’s refusal to engage in talks with the Taliban, but maintained that Islamic Afghanistan “faithfully” believes in resolving issues through peace negotiations.

“I want to stress that those [the Taliban] who are not coming to peace talks are against the [Islamic] religion. I am hopeful that discussing peace on the table talks can solve the problems. But we have not yet come to the conclusion that war is the way forward to find peace, particularly in Afghanistan,” Halimi said.

Visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan explained to reporters in Kabul Tuesday night that there was no change in Washington policy and the stepped up U.S. military pressure on the Taliban is meant to push insurgents into peace talks. 

Civilians have borne the brunt of the Afghan conflict in recent years. Observers see the stepped up Taliban attacks as a reaction to recent battlefield setbacks and killings of key Taliban commanders in U.S.-led international airstrikes.

The insurgency has refused to engage in peace talks until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

Pakistan complicit?

The United States believes the Haqqani network, a faction within the Taliban, plotted Saturday’s attack. Afghan officials have also long accused Pakistan of supporting and sheltering the Taliban and Haqqanis.

The Pakistani government denies the charges and has condemned the recent series of “heinous attacks” in the neighboring country.

Pakistani authorities also cite stepped up border scrutiny measures in addition to sustained counterterrorism operations on their side.

Earlier in January, about 1,800 Pakistani clerics issued a fatwa, or religious decree, declaring suicide bombings and anti-state acts as un-Islamic. Afghan officials and clerics, however, dismissed the move as insufficient for it being limited to Pakistan only. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal rejected the criticism as misplaced and declared the religious directive as a “landmark” development for countering religious extremism and terrorism.

“It [the fatwa] goes on to prohibit the use of Pakistani territory for the propagation of any kind of terrorism…Afghanistan may on its part seek a similar fatwa from its ulema [body of religious scholars]. The application of fatwas is universal and not restricted to geographical limits,” Faisal maintained.

Islamabad also alleges that anti-state militants are using bases in Afghan border areas to launch attacks against Pakistan, charges Kabul denies.

An improvement in strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan is seen as key to effective regional counterterrorism efforts.

 
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Afghanistan is asking the U.S. government to stop deporting Afghan nationals, saying it has no repatriation agreement with the United States.

“We did not sign any such agreements with the United States of America,” Ahmad Shekib Mostaghni, spokesperson for the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the VOA Afghanistan Service. If there were such an agreement, Mostaghni said, it would have been made by the nation’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations, which he said handles all immigration issues.

“So, since they are not aware of such an agreement, I can officially confirm that we — MoFA — did not ink any deal with the U.S in this regard,” Mostaghni said.

Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations adviser Hafiz Ahmad Miakhel also insisted that his government has not approved a repatriation agreement and said the ministry is asking for a halt to all deportations. “Ongoing war has been forcing people to leave Afghanistan,” he said in an interview. “We are a country still at war, and our people need to be helped rather than deporting.”

The European Union entered into a repatriation agreement with Afghanistan in October 2016 to pave the way for the return of failed Afghan asylum seekers. In addition, Germany, Sweden and Finland have country-to-country agreements.

When VOA asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if the United States has such an agreement, spokesman Brendan Raedy provided a written response:

“International law obligates each country to accept the return of its nationals ordered removed from the United States. The United States itself routinely cooperates with foreign governments in documenting and accepting its citizens when asked, as do the majority of countries in the world.”

Afghan deportations

Deportations from the U.S. were down overall in 2017, but an analysis of the data by National Public Radio shows that if the Latin American countries — which make up some 90 percent of repatriations — are not counted, deportations to the rest of the world were up by 24 percent.

“Deportations to Brazil and China jumped,” NPR reported. “Removals of Somalis nearly doubled. Deportations to Ghana and West Africa are up more than two times.”

Afghanistan is no exception. ICE statistics show the number of Afghans deported rose sharply last year from 14 in fiscal year 2016 to 48 in FY 2017.

“Dozens of Afghan immigrants or asylum seekers have been deported to Kabul since [U.S. President Donald] Trump took the power,” Miakhel said. “In April 2017, we received a group of 21 deportees of different ages.”

Miakhel said there was not much clarity about the reasons for the deportations. “We were told that some of the Afghan deportees were not qualified to seek asylum in the U.S.; some of them may have posed a threat to the U.S. national security or may have committed crimes.”

The United States has an estimated 14,000 troops in Afghanistan assisting, training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces to defeat Taliban, Islamic State and other insurgent groups.

According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, more immigrants and refugees hail from Afghanistan than any other country except Syria. Some 2.7 million Afghan immigrants and refugees are under UNCHR protection worldwide, most of them fleeing violence and insecurity.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is following a long presidential tradition for his State of the Union address Tuesday, inviting guests to showcase policies most important to him.

Fifteen guests will sit alongside first lady Melania Trump in the gallery of the House of Representatives chamber as Trump delivers his first State of the Union address a year into his presidency.

Their guests include Corey Adams, an Ohio welder who the White House says plans to take money saved from the president’s tax-cut package and set it aside to help finance his two daughters’ education.

His employers will be there as well, Steve Staub and Sandy Keplinger, sibling founders of a manufacturing company who say they were able to grow their business and hand their employees a larger holiday bonus because of the tax overhaul.

Two couples, Elizabeth Alvarado and Robert Mickens, along with Evelyn Rodriguez and Freddy Cuevas, both parents of girls killed by MS-13 gang members, are guests as well, highlighting Trump’s push to keep illegal immigrants bent on committing horrific crimes out of the country.

Another guest is C.J. Martinez , a supervisory special agent for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations unit, whose work led to the arrests of more than 100 MS-13 gang members.

The Trumps also invited Ryan Holets, a New Mexico police officer who adopted a baby from parents addicted to opioids, a major drug problem in the U.S.

The military

Guests linked to the U.S. military include Matthew Bradford, a Marine Corps veteran who stepped on an IED in Iraq in 2007, costing him both of his legs and his eyesight. He was the first blind, double-amputee to re-enlist in the Marines.

Another guest is Army staff sergeant Justin Peck, who aided a team member wounded in November by an IED and saved his life. Preston Sharp, creator of the Flag and Flower challenge, will be there. His group honors deceased veterans at military cemeteries by placing an American flag and a red carnation on their grave sites.

Natural disasters

Trump and his wife also invited three guests who played key roles in their communities last year in coping with unprecedented natural disasters in the U.S.

Jon Bridgers was founder of the Cajun Navy, a nonprofit group that led rescue efforts in the southern part of the country, especially during the flooding in Houston that resulted from Hurricane Harvey.

David Dahlberg is a fire prevention technician who saved 62 people, including children and staff members, when a Southern California wildfire erupted. Ashlee Leppert is a Coast Guard aviation electronics technician who engaged in rescue efforts during a string of hurricanes.

Even as Trump invited guests to highlight his tax legislation and prominent issues important to his political fortunes, he already is focusing on his 2020 re-election effort. His campaign is live-streaming his address and promised anyone willing to donate at least $35 that their name will be displayed on screen as a donor while Trump is speaking.

Some Republican lawmakers have invited guests supporting Trump policies, while numerous Democratic lawmakers gave speech tickets to guests showing their opposition to Trump.

Several Democrats have invited undocumented immigrants who years ago were brought illegally to the U.S. by their parents. Their right to stay in the United States, or be returned to their native countries, is at the heart of contentious negotiations between lawmakers and the White House after Trump last year ended a program protecting them against deportation.He gave Congress until March 5 to weigh in on the issue.

One Democrat, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan, invited as her guest Cindy Garcia, whose husband, Jorge Garcia, was recently deported to Mexico by the Trump administration after living in the U.S. for 30 years.

Congressman Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, who is giving a Democratic rebuttal speech after Trump finishes his address, invited a transgender soldier, Patricia King, to focus on Trump’s plan to ban transgender people from serving in the military.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York invited San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, a sharp critic of the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island that is a U.S. territory.
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U.S. national security officials are weighing whether to build a nationalized 5G wireless network to combat the threat of Chinese eavesdropping, but a key government regulator said Monday American telecommunications companies should instead lead the development of the new technology.

Officials at the National Security Council in the White House are urging President Donald Trump consider an intense government effort to create the fifth generation wireless network by the end of his first term as president in early 2021, saying it is “necessary and possible to build a secure, high-performance, world-leading 5G network platform.”

In a memo first disclosed by the Axios web news site, officials said “China has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure.” The memo contended that “China is the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain.”

One U.S. official told Reuters, “We want to build a network so the Chinese can’t listen to your calls. We have to have a secure network that doesn’t allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don’t take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business.”

The plan for a government-owned 5G network is apparently a half year or more from consideration by Trump and already would trail development of a 5G system by others throughout the world.

As envisioned, such a 5G network would eclipse the speed and capacity of the 4G networks that currently comprise the world’s top wireless operations. U.S. telecom giants Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and other carriers have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of their own 5G networks, while South Korea, Japan and other countries are testing such systems.

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is arguing against a government takeover, saying U.S. private sector development should continue.

“I oppose any proposal for the federal government to build and operate a nationwide 5G network,” he said. “The main lesson to draw from the wireless sector’s development over the past three decades — including American leadership in 4G — is that the market, not government, is best positioned to drive innovation and investment.”

He added, “What government can and should do is to push spectrum into the commercial marketplace and set rules that encourage the private sector to develop and deploy next-generation infrastructure. Any federal effort to construct a nationalized 5G network would be a costly and counterproductive distraction from the policies we need to help the United States win the 5G future.”
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New “security upgrades” to the U.S. refugee admissions program will help block criminals and other suspicious persons from entering the United States from high-risk nations, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday.

Nielsen, speaking at a public event in Washington, did not give further details. But she said the upgrades would be announced later Monday and would protect the refugee program from “being exploited by terrorists, criminals and fraudsters.”
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President Donald Trump said on Monday he will address his proposed immigration overhaul in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday and will seek

Democratic support for it.

Speaking to reporters after a swearing-in ceremony for new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Trump said his immigration overhaul will have to be bipartisan “because the Republicans don’t really have the votes to get it done in any other way.”

Trump also said his speech will cover his efforts to lower trade barriers around the world for American exports. “We have to have reciprocal trade. It’s not a one-way deal anymore,” he said.

Reporting By Steve Holland Editing by Chizu Nomiyama.
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