All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Trump administration says it will reject new DACA applications while weighing future of the program

is he defying Court Order?
DACA recipients and supporters rally in celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the program outside of the Immgration and Customs Enforcement offices in Phoenix in June.

DACA recipients and supporters rally in celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the program outside of the Immgration and Customs Enforcement offices in Phoenix in June.
Thomas Hawthorne/The Republic via REUTERS

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday it will reject new applications for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program despite a federal judge’s order earlier this month that new applicants should be given consideration.

The judge’s order came after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t follow proper procedure when it ended the program in 2017 and allowed DACA to stand. But on Tuesday, DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said he was instructing staff “to take all appropriate actions to reject all pending and future initial requests for DACA” and exercise its authority to “to terminate or deny deferred action at any time when immigration officials determine termination or denial of deferred action is appropriate.”

As of December 2019, there were about 107,000 Texans with DACA permits, according to federal statistics. The program applies to undocumented immigrants who came to the country before they were 16 and who were 30 or younger as of June 2012. The program gave them a renewable, two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation.

The DHS announcement on Tuesday also limits the protection for recipients who renew their DACA permits to one year instead of the original 24 months.

“As the Department continues looking at the policy and considers future action, the fact remains that Congress should act on this matter,” Wolf said in a statement. “There are important policy reasons that may warrant the full rescission of the DACA policy.”

Even after what many believed was a loss for the Trump administration at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, the president said he was instead given time to figure out how to end the program.

“The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won,” Trump tweeted at the time. But he made statements arguing he had the power implement action on DACA that would protect young immigrants, though he was unclear on details.

If the Wolf memo issued Tuesday is any indicator, the White House will likely put pressure on Congress to act and blame lawmakers if there is not a comprehensive solution in the late months of a contentious election year.

“Even if the DACA policy could have been justified as a temporary measure when it was created, Congress arguably has had more than sufficient time to consider affording permanent status or immigration relief to the class of aliens covered by the policy,” Wolf wrote. “And yet, although various proposals have been advanced to do that, Congress has so far declined to take action.”

13763658.gif

Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian mosque in fresh price tag attack

Ramallah/PNN/

A group of Israeli settlers has torched a mosque in the central sector of the occupied West Bank amid continued acts of vandalism and violence by settlers, known as price tag attacks, against Palestinians and Muslim holy sites.

Palestinian sources, requesting anonymity, said the extremists stormed the city of al-Bireh, located 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of Jerusalem, in the early hours of Monday and scribbled racial slogans against Arabs and Muslims on the walls of the mosque, before setting parts of it on fire.

Local residents rushed to the site once they took notice of the fire, and managed to extinguish it before it could sweep through the whole building.

The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs denounced the arson attack in a statement, saying it exposes the racist nature of Israel. It further accused Israeli authorities of supporting settler groups as they press ahead with their price tag attacks.

If you want to continue to read our work and help us produce more news and reports from Palestine, click here to donate to our fundraising campaign

Speaking at the start of a weekly cabinet session in Ramallah, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh condemned the arson attack as a criminal act and held the Israeli regime responsible for the sacrilegious move.

“This is a criminal and racist act, and we hold the Occupation (Israeli) authorities fully responsible for the assault and the rising level of Israeli settler violence [against Palestinians],” he said.

Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also censured the attack.

“The Ministry, while seriously following up cases of settlers’ attacks on places of worship, holds the Israeli regime and its prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] fully and directly responsible for the latest attack,” it said in a statement.

Moreover, the secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Saeb Erekat, decried the arson attack as an act rooted in “racism and apartheid.”

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

According to human rights groups, incidents of sabotage and violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians and their property are a daily occurrence throughout the West Bank.

التدوينة Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian mosque in fresh price tag attack ظهرت أولاً على PNN.

Update on Covid-19 among meatpacking workers: an American tragedy

Leah Douglas at the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) is doing a great public service.  She has a website where she reports Covid-19 cases among workers in the food system.

These are not trivial.  As of July 24, she reports Covid-19 cases in:

  • 370 meatpacking plants
  • 139 food processing plants
  • 74 farms and production facilities

As for confirmed cases:

  • 37,197 meatpacking workers
  • 4,635 food processing workers
  • 4,927 farmworkers

She reports 188 deaths among these workers

  • 168 among meatpacking workers
  • 14 among food processing workers
  • 6 among farmworkers

Here’s what this looks like:

Where is all this happening?  She’s got a chart for that too.

These places have a lot to answer for.

This is an American tragedy.

Miami has more COVID-19 cases than all of Australia, and thousands more are still being diagnosed every day – ABC News

Mr Sharp said authorities at the local level had also failed — either sending mixed messages or simply not communicating with each other at all.

He cites the example of the Miami Dade county Mayor and the Miami city Mayor.

“Miami Dade county Mayor closed outdoor dining with 48 hours notice,” Mr Sharp said.

“The Mayor of the city was on the news a day later saying he knew nothing about it — he doesn’t think it’s right.

“It’s just mind-blowing.

“They’re not having a co-ordinated strategy, so on the reopen you have the kind of chaos you see here at the moment.”

Kevin Cho Tipton is an ICU nurse at one of Florida’s largest public hospitals.

At the moment, he is in-and-out of personal protective equipment (PPE) up to 20 times a shift.

“The amount of equipment needed is increasing exponentially, it seems like, and so it’s difficult,” he said.

Despite the precautions, one of his colleagues, Araceli Buendia, has already died of COVID-19.

“She was one of the nurse leaders at at one of our public hospitals,” Mr Cho Tipton said.

“I’ve personally put at least two of my co-workers on ventilators.

“It’s been very difficult.”

 

Source: Miami has more COVID-19 cases than all of Australia, and thousands more are still being diagnosed every day – ABC News

Here Are The Current NYPD Officers With The Most Substantiated Misconduct Complaints – Gothamist – Bad Apple’s worst nightmare – being publicly outed.

Gothamist/WNYC has identified seven officers in the CCRB’s data set with substantiated allegations in at least six separate complaints—the most of all current NYPD officers. All enjoyed high-ranking positions as of last month, according to the dataset. All are white men. Some have been the subject of extensive news coverage.

Source: Here Are The Current NYPD Officers With The Most Substantiated Misconduct Complaints – Gothamist

Clapped out of ICU, dead days later: the secondary impact of Covid-19 | World news | The Guardian

Infections have long been known as a risk factor for strokes, but there is some evidence to suggest that if a patient has a stroke while suffering from Covid-19, they are more likely to suffer a worse type of stroke with multiple large artery blockages in the brain, more severe disability and a higher chance of dying of the stroke, according to David Werring, professor of clinical neurology at University College London and consultant neurologist at University College hospital and the National hospital, Queen Square.

Source: Clapped out of ICU, dead days later: the secondary impact of Covid-19 | World news | The Guardian