Conditions at South Texas Border Patrol stations are so grim that migrant men in one facility pleaded for help from government inspectors visiting in June, said to an internal watchdog report released Tuesday. Dozens of disheveled men crowded around a window, holding up notes telling passersby how long they had been there, the Wall Street Journal reports. Some pointed to their beards as evidence. The conditions are so dire—with some detained migrants held in standing-room-only cells for days on end—that one Border Patrol official described the situation as a “ticking time bomb” in a June 10 visit from the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked Kevin McAleenan and Mark Morgan, acting leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, to testify July 12 about conditions at the border. Agents in the Rio Grande Valley, the site visited by the inspector general’s office, cited “security incidents” involving men at the facilities, including migrants clogging the single toilet with Mylar blankets and socks to force their removal so the cells could be repaired and cleaned. In one incident, men who had been moved refused to return to the cell and some migrants have tried to escape. The visit was cut short “because our presence was agitating an already difficult situation,” the report said. The report is the latest to detail overcrowded and unsanitary holding cells as lawmakers, immigration advocates, and a federal judge have weighed in on conditions at the border. It could further press the Trump administration and Congress, which last week approved a $4.6 billion package of humanitarian aid for migrants at the border. Last week a federal judge in California ordered the government to improve conditions quickly for children held by authorities at the border. A federal judge blocked an order by Attorney General William Barr that would have kept thousands of migrants detained indefinitely while waiting for their asylum cases to be decided, the New York Times reports. Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle described the order, which would have denied some migrants a bail hearing, as unconstitutional. In a preliminary injunction, Pechman said migrants must be granted a bond hearing within seven days of a request or be released if they have not received a hearing in that time. “Plaintiffs have established a constitutionally protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” Pechman said. The Trump administration is likely to appeal. The order, issued in April, was an attempt by the Trump administration to prevent the release of migrants into the U.S. and to deter asylum seekers from crossing the border altogether. The administration has raised fees for asylum seekers and slowed processing at ports of entry. It is also expanding a policy that has forced 13,000 migrants to wait in Mexico as their cases proceed. Migrants determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries have been allowed to request bond hearings so they could be released rather than wait in detention facilities for their cases to be heard. Barr’s order would deny that right to a hearing to people who are apprehended after they illegally enter the U.S. He appeared to acknowledge that the order could aggravate already overcrowded facilities. Michael Tan of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project said the administration was “trying to create a perception that we need to lock everybody up or chaos ensues.” Before the rise of social media, Border Patrol agents gathered in parking lots after their shifts for “choir practice” — a chance to share what they saw that day and anything else on their minds. T.J. Bonner, who led the National Border Patrol Council during much of his 32-year career as an agent, recalled the defunct tradition while trying to explain a secret Facebook group for agents that included sexually explicit posts about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and questions about the authenticity of a recent photo of a father and daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande, the Associated Press reports. “That outlet faded away and was replaced by social media, where people thought they had a safe place they could vent and process,” said Bonner, whose career ended in 2010. “That would explain some of the callous comments. The vile stuff? There’s no excuse. I’m certainly not going to try to defend it.” Billed as “fun, serious and just work related,” the group boasts 9,500 members. “We are family, first and foremost,” it says, according to ProPublica, which reported its existence. A former agent in the group said members had to provide the administrator with their graduating class number from the Border Patrol Academy and have a current member vouch for them. The agent likened the forum to a bar where agents would gather after work and swap stories. A news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in Border Patrol custody elicited a response from one member, “If he dies, he dies.” Another member posted a GIF of the “Sesame Street” character Elmo with the quote “Oh well.” The posts threaten to tarnish the Border Patrol’s image at one of the most challenging times in its 95-year history. As the National Rifle Association has been consumed by public infighting, Wayne LaPierre has maintained a firm grip on its leadership. Now a major benefactor is preparing to lead an insurgency among wealthy contributors to oust LaPierre as chief executive, the New York Times reports. A rebellion would represent a troublesome threat to LaPierre as his organization’s finances and political machine are strained amid several legal battles, notably the New York attorney general’s investigation into its tax-exempt status. Donor David Dell’Aquila said the internal warfare “has become a daily soap opera and it’s decaying and destroying the NRA from within, and it needs to stop.” He added, “Even if these allegations regarding Mr. LaPierre and his leadership are false, he has become radioactive and must step down.” Until that happens, Dell’Aquila, a retired technology consultant who has given $100,000 to the NRA, said he would suspend donations, including his pledge of an estate worth several million dollars. He said he was among a network of wealthy donors who would withhold $134 million in pledges, much of it earmarked years in advance through estate planning, and would give the gun group’s board a list of demands for reform. “The donors are rebelling,” said a firearms industry executive, saying he believed that the leadership turmoil was “helping to destroy, temporarily, the strength of the NRA as one of the strongest lobbying groups.” The extent of any rebellion is difficult to discern, and the NRA insisted it still had the firm backing of its donor base. LaPierre has the support of the NRA’s 76-member board. It would take a three-fourths vote by the board and one of its committees to oust him. The turmoil has stoked fear among some Republicans that the NRA’s political potency could be blunted heading into the 2020 elections. A Las Vegas police officer who froze one floor beneath the gunman during the Route 91 Harvest festival massacre has been fired, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. Officer Cordell Hendrex left the police department nearly 18 months after the release of body camera footage showing Hendrex holding his position in a hallway one floor beneath the killer for nearly five minutes as rounds continually sprayed into the crowd of country music fans below on Oct. 1, 2017. Police union president Steve Grammas confirmed that Hendrex had been fired in connection with his actions on the night of the attack. “We do not believe Cordell should have been terminated,” Grammas said. He pointed to an internal affairs investigation that he said was launched only after body camera footage of Hendrex’s hesitation started circulating in the media. “In our opinion, until it came up in the news and they started getting some heat is when they made this decision.” In his officer report, Hendrex admitted to being scared during the shooting. The report and records like it were released to the Review-Journal only after the newspaper and other media organizations sued for their release. “I know I hesitated and I remember being terrified with fear and I think that I froze right there in the middle of the hall for how long I can’t say,” Hendrex wrote. Grammas said Tuesday that on the night of the attack, “all of our officers were up against something that nobody has been up against before.” Two days after his wife was killed in Virginia Beach, Va.’s mass shooting, Jason Nixon heard words that would launch him on a one-man mission for answers about the case, reports the Washington Post. “To my knowledge, the perpetrator’s performance was satisfactory,” City Manager Dave Hansen said of the gunman, DeWayne Craddock. Months earlier, Nixon’s wife, Kate, had “written up” Craddock for poor work and for being “disrespectful toward her because she was a woman and higher powered,” he recalled. Kate Nixon was a manager in the city’s public utilities department, where Craddock was an engineer. “They … said he was satisfactory,” Jason Nixon said. “He was not. And if my wife was alive right now, she’d tell you that.” The discrepancy has shaken Nixon’s faith in the ongoing police investigation into the May 31 mass shooting that killed 12 and has fueled his calls for an independent inquiry. With the city rejecting requests to disclose Craddock’s personnel records, Nixon has become its gadfly, hiring an attorney and urging others to follow his lead. “How many times was he written up? What did human resources do about it, and why wasn’t he let go a long time ago if he had these issues?” Nixon said. A city spokeswoman said requests for an outside inquiry “appear premature while the criminal investigation is ongoing.” At least two more victims’ families back Nixon’s demand for a new investigation, as have two state delegates. The City Council is expected to vote soon on a resolution to authorize a second inquiry. The city has suggested it could take as long as 10 months for the police to finish the investigation. Separately, a survivor of the mass shooting who doesn’t want to return to his workplace has been arrested on a “disturbing the peace” charge, the Associated Press reports. The Justice Department inspector general will investigate the FBI’s role in dropping plans a decade in the making to move its headquarters to the Washington suburbs, the Washington Post reports. Inspector General Michael Horowitz told House committee leaders that he is initiating a review of DOJ actions that led to the canceling of the plans in favor of building a smaller replacement for the J. Edgar Hoover Building downtown and dispersing other FBI staff elsewhere. The review could produce revelations about the Trump administration’s stunning reversal of bipartisan plans for the development of a new, highly secure campus that would have gotten the bureau out of the deteriorating Hoover building. Democratic leaders of two committees, Oversight and Transportation and Infrastructure, have pressed Horowitz to investigate. They redoubled efforts after the head of the General Services Administration was found by her agency’s inspector general to have misled Congress about the White House’s involvement in the decision-making. Democrats allege that President Donald Trump used the decision to advance his own financial interests, which administration officials deny. The GSA is the landlord to Trump’s D.C. hotel, located down the street from the Hoover building. Redeveloping the Hoover site could introduce a new hotel competitor. Trump said before running for office that he was considering bidding for the FBI project as well. Under Trump, the FBI and GSA have resisted responding to document requests made by Democrats. FBI Director Christopher Wray has defended the decision to keep the headquarters in downtown Washington. “It is absolutely the FBI’s view, the FBI’s choice, the FBI’s preference to build a new building . . . at our current location,” he said. For a decade before Trump’s election, the FBI had been working with the GSA and Congress on the suburban headquarters plan. Navy SEAL Chief Edward Gallagher was acquitted Tuesday on all murder charges, witness intimidation charges, and assault charges related to a 2017 deployment in Iraq, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. A seven member jury of Marines and sailors acquitted Gallagher on all but one count in one of the nation’s most closely watched military trials. The jury convicted Gallagher on a single count related to his taking pictures alongside an Iraqi fighter’s corpse, a charge that carries a maximum punishment of four months in custody. The jury is still deliberating punishment for that charge, which could potentially result in a loss of rank. Gallagher, 40, was charged with premeditated murder in connection with the 2017 death of a captive teenage ISIS fighter he was treating for injuries from an air strike. Petty Officer 1st Class Corey Scott testified that he, not Gallagher, killed the fighter. Scott said that Gallagher did stab the fighter between his neck and collar bone but afterwards, Scott said, he covered the fighter’s breathing tube until the fighter suffocated and died. Gallagher’s other charges stemmed from allegations from platoon snipers who said he routinely took shots at civilian non-combatants from one of two bombed-out sniper towers during deployment. Andrea Gallagher said her husband had been sent to fight the war on terror after 9/11 and did not deserve to be prosecuted. “There’s a reason that we started this war, and we need to finish it,” she said. “We don’t finish it by throwing away our war fighters and terrorizing their families domestically.” The case drew international attention and Gallagher drew widespread support, especially among Republican Congress members and President Donald Trump, who had Gallagher transferred out of the brig. A New Jersey judge was sharply rebuked in a rape case by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers, the New York Times reports. A girl, 16, was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk boy, also 16, sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party, prosecutors said. The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind. He shared the cellphone video among friends, and sent a text that said, “When your first time having sex was rape.” Family Court Judge James Troiano said it wasn’t rape. He wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers. He said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades, and was an Eagle scout. The judge said prosecutors should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life. He denied prosecutors’ motion to try the boy as an adult. The appeals court cleared the way for the case to be moved from family court to a grand jury, where the teen will be treated as an adult. New Jersey law allows juveniles as young as 15 to be tried as adults. In another New Jersey case, an appeals court reversed a judge’s decision not to try a 16-year-old boy as an adult after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. Judge Marcia Silva said that “beyond losing her virginity, the State did not claim that the victim suffered any further injuries, either physical, mental or emotional.” Appellate judges also upbraided Judge Silva, noting that the teenager could be culpable because the girl was not old enough to provide consent. Hawaii on Tuesday became the first state to remove a requirement that a person be a victim of sex trafficking to have a prostitution conviction erased. Legislation signed by Gov. David Ige tosses prostitution convictions for those who avoid additional convictions for three years, even if they can’t prove they have been victims of sex trafficking, the Associated Press reports. Victim advocates say most trafficking victims aren’t able to prove they’re victims because they fear their pimp will retaliate. They may depend on their pimp or trafficker for their livelihood. Ige called the proof of victimization requirement “unrealistic.” Nationwide, the average age someone enters the sex trade is about 13. Trafficking is a major problem in Hawaii because of the large tourism industry and military population. Previously, the law allowed sex trafficking convictions expunged after six years, but only with proof of victimization. “In 2019, the days of the scarlet letter are over,” said state Sen. Laura Thielen. “People who have been in prostitution should not have an onerous burden on them once they leave that job, to be able to vacate their record and be able to have access to other employment.” Khara Jabola-Carolus of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women said 80 percent of women in prostitution in Hawaii were trafficked into it. Police Chief John O’Grady of Mount Dora, Fl., was fired Tuesday after an investigation found several incidents of misconduct, including an accusation that he made a “derogatory” comment referring to a Puerto Rican police officer, initially refused to give back a lost puppy and set traffic stop “targets” for officers to achieve, the Orlando Sentinel reports. O’Grady “engaged in behavior unbecoming of a city of Mount Dora employee,” said city attorney Sherry Sutphen. “The investigation concluded that there was overwhelming evidence of a department fraught with distrust and lack of respect for O’Grady’s leadership,” she said. O’Grady, 56, had been chief for 5 1/2 years after a 26-year career at the Orlando Police Department. In 2017, the city expanded his duties to include oversight of the Fire Department and gave him an additional title, public safety director. The investigation started after an April 12 charity event at which O’Grady asked officer Ivelisse Severance to accept an award. “Ivy, you are Puerto Rican, or whatever, so you can accept this,” O’Grady said. He was placed on paid administrative leave days after Severance filed a hostile work environment complaint with the city and said she was humiliated in front of an audience of about 70 people. “In an era where police officers are being subjected to harassment due to ethnicity, it could not be more inappropriate for a Chief of Police to insult an officer in a public forum,” Severance wrote. “His comment implied because we are both Hispanic we are all the same.” |
