Óscar Escaped Death Threats in Honduras— Only to Face Detention in the U.S.

Think about it folks – if we were all anti-immigration or if migration wasn’t necessary for evolution of humans, We’d all still be living in what is now Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia and perhaps some other hominid would be living and migrating in the rest of the world!

Fleeing death threats in Honduras, Óscar Armando Valle Rios crossed the U.S. border not to the safety of his family but straight into detention.

Despite their own immigration struggles, his relatives are trying to raise the $10,000 bond to free him. Here, Edwin Espinoza, Óscar’s cousin, talks with Lezak Shallat about Óscar; he also created this GoFundMe campaign for contributions: https://www.gofundme.com/free-oscar-armando-valle-rios Please consider a donation!

My cousin Óscar is what you’d call a family man. He’s young, in his early 20s, and his life has always revolved around his young daughter, his wife and his mother. He’s a baker, and would leave his house in Tegucigalpa early every morning. Each night when he got home, first thing, he’d find his little girl and hug and kiss her, and then his wife. Then he’d go and greet his mother. That was his routine.

Oscar with his daughter

At least, that was his routine until escalating threats from the pandilla 18th Street gang forced Óscar to move his wife and daughter into hiding. Pandilleros had been following him for months, trying to recruit him. One day, they followed him for five blocks before overcoming him. They forced him to kneel and put a gun to his head, saying: “Join us or we’ll kill you.”

Óscar begged for his life and prayed aloud, asking God for one last chance to make it home safely. That’s when he decided to join his brother in Miami. Because if he stayed — or if he returns — they’d kill him. We have friends who were killed for refusing to join the gangs. If you refuse to get involved, they’ll punish you.

Óscar wants safety, to work hard and create a better life for his family.

But he hasn’t had the chance, because he was picked up by the border patrol right after crossing into the U.S. near Mexicali. That was about six weeks ago. He did that interview they call “la creíble,” where you explain why you had to leave and why you can’t return. And he was sent straight into detention in Adelanto. That’s somewhere in California.

The court set a $10,000 bond, so we’re trying to raise the money to free him.

Óscar doesn’t have a lawyer. I’m told that you don’t get a lawyer if you turn yourself in. You have to find your own lawyer. I’ve made dozens of calls to lawyers but they never call back.

Óscar’s brother is in Miami and I’m in New York. We can’t visit him. But we’re doing what we can to help him. And it’s hard, because we have our own immigration problems. I’m also from Tegucigalpa, and I was also threatened by gangs. I’ve been here about six months and I just presented my papers to court, without a lawyer. I came here with my wife and daughter. It’s been very, very tough. But we can’t give up.

My cousin loves his daughter so much. She is his daily inspiration to continue fighting.

Editor’s note: Edwin proclaims his faith in this music video he stars in and helped produce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqLL6yzQkNs

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Óscar Escaped Death Threats in Honduras— Only to Face Detention in the U.S. was originally published in IMM Print on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Russia ‘paved way for Ukraine ship seizures with fake news drive’

All the crap about fascist Ukraine has been swallowed whole by those who are either pro-Russia or rabidly anti-EU

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EU’s security commissioner says Moscow spread false claims for at least a year before last month’s seizures

The Kremlin launched a year-long disinformation campaign to soften up public opinion before its recent seizure of three Ukrainian ships and their crews in the Sea of Azov, the EU’s security commissioner has alleged.

Julian King said Russia had paved the way for its decision to fire on and board two artillery ships and a tug boat through the dissemination of fake news.

Continue reading…

Instagram Takeover | Muyi Xiao

© Muyi Xiao

© Muyi Xiao

We have recently invited Muyi Xiao 肖慕漪 to take over Photography of China’s Instagram account to share several of her projects. Muyi Xiao is currently the Visual Editor at ChinaFile, an online publication under the Center on U.S-China Relations of Asia Society.


More information:
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Photography of China Instagram account
www.muyixiao.com

Chile declines to sign U.N. pact, says migration not a human right: report

1. The creator did not create the world with boundaries.
2. The evolution of humankind depended/depends on migration as circumstances for survival change! Chile has become the latest country to pull out of a controversial United Nations migration pact, its interior ministry indicated, provoking fury among opposition parties who accused Sebastian Pinera’s government of “shameful and authoritarian” behavior.

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ASIA/LEBANON – Maronite Bishops say Syrian refugees must be repatriated without waiting for political solution to the conflict

Threatens to tear Lebanon apart to send refugees home to death – what God want that?

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Bkerké – Lebanon “can no longer carry the weight of Syrian refugees”, and therefore it is necessary to “dissociate the political solution of the conflict in Syria from the necessary return of the displaced to their homes “. This urgent matter was underlined once again by the Maronite Bishops on the occasion of their latest monthly assembly, hosted on 6 December by the Patriarchal See of Bkerké. The Maronite Bishops insist that the repatriation of Syrian refugees must be started without waiting for a complete political solution to the conflict which has tormented Syria since 2011.
On 30 November the Lebanese foreign minister Gebran Bassil had a meeting in the Vatican with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for relations with states of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, for clarification and reassurance regarding the position of the Holy See on the question of the repatriation of Syrian refugees who have found shelter in Lebanon. During the meeting the Lebanese minster explained to Archbishop Gallagher the serious reasons for which Lebanon cannot continue to bear for much longer the economic and security weight of the emergency connected also with the presence on Lebanese territory of more than one million Syrian refugees.
“Lebanon asks simply that no obstacle will prevent the safe return of those refugees wishing to return” said Gebran Bassil in a statement issued following the meeting with Archbishop Gallagher.
Before the meeting between the Lebanese minister and the high ranking Vatican official, certain considerations attributed to Archbishop Gallagher had drawn comments from the Lebanese media according to which the present situation in Syria could render impracticable the albeit desired repatriation of Syrian refugees .

We all fell for Facebook’s utopianism, but the mask is at last being torn away | Jamie Bartlett | Opinion | The Guardian

Will anything change? Surveys show that people are suspicious of social media platforms – but keep on sharing and clicking regardless. And, yes, there are some good things about Facebook too. But resentful users do not make for a sound business model, and I suspect the coming years will see competitor platforms that promise greater privacy, built on a different approach to the “free, for data” cul-de-sac we’re trapped in. True, network effects are hard to overcome – everyone is on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook – but the ghost of the once dominant MySpace haunts every tech CEO. One thing I’m sure of, however, is that nothing will change Zuckerberg’s mind. When the next scandal breaks, as it surely will, he’ll apologise, and then talk about connectivity – no matter how disconnected it is from reality.

Source: We all fell for Facebook’s utopianism, but the mask is at last being torn away | Jamie Bartlett | Opinion | The Guardian

US Evangelical Christian organizations have donated some $65M to settlements

PNN/ Bethlehem/

Right-wing evangelical organizations have raised tens of millions of dollars over the past 10 years to fund settlement projects in the West Bank, a report published by Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said it had conducted an audit of the funds, estimated to be between $50 million and $65 million, based on media reports, US tax records and the Molad Center brief composed in 2015 that 11 evangelical organizations contributed to the figure.

One such evangelical organization is the Jubilee, and evangelical volunteers are sent to Har Bracha, a settlement in the West Bank near Nablus. Jubilee is one of many evangelical organizations active in what it calls the “biblical heart of the country”. Over the past 10 years, the Jubilee has sent about 1,700 volunteers to the settlement.

Jubilee has worked for several years without announcing its activity, claiming that it would be better for the Israelis not to know about it, but is now hosting journalists and others in a “campus” that it has established in Har Bracha.

The paper pointed out that the readiness of this organization evangelical to reveal its activity in the West Bank shows the size of relations between the evangelicals and settlers.

The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is headed by Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, announced several months ago that the Jubilee organization will receive $16,000 a year from this year and is expected to increase from the Israeli government. The ministry said it was giving the money to the evangelical organization in light of its media activity in favor of Israel and settlements among evangelical communities in the United States.

Aharon Katzsov, founder of the Israel Heart Association, also known as the Benjamin Fund, said his association collects hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for projects in the settlements. But he pointed out that most of the funds raised by this Assembly come not only from evangelicals. “When a Jew donates $ 1,500, the Christian pays $ 50 on average, but their numbers are growing very rapidly,” he told the paper.

“The more I know of evangelicals over the past years, the more I realize how thirsty they are for the relationship with the settlements,” said Katzov, who lives in the settlement of Shilo. They often tell me, when they arrive in Tel Aviv, that ‘we did not imagine Israel that way’, but when they come here, to the settlements, they say that they imagined Israel this way. They are our greatest allies. ”

The newspaper said that the settlement “Ariel” gets the largest donations from the evangelicals. In 2008, it received $8 million for a sports zone. The Evangelists also donated $1 million to the Jewish-Christian Center in Efrat.

The paper added that it is difficult to know how much financial support evangelical settlements, because non-profit institutions and churches registered in the United States is not required to provide the authorities with detailed reports on sources of funding or disclosure of donations, and assistance to settlements not only by money but volunteer hours.  Thousands of evangelical volunteers work in settlements, for example 175 volunteers participated in picking 340 tons of grapes in settlements this year working in total of nearly 5,000 hours.

A report issued by the Molad Center three years ago said that it is impossible to estimate the amount of financial support that evangelical organizations transfer to the settlements, because many Israeli non-governmental organizations that are active in the West Bank are in direct violation of international law.

The report added that “a large portion” of all evangelical investments in Israel reach the settlements benefiting from regional councils, right-wing societies, random settlement outposts, commercial interests and travel agencies specializing in tours of settlements.

The political expediency shown by Evangelicals alliance with Israel has only grown in recent decades. So why is there such strong support from the Evangelicals? According to an earlier report by CNN website, in the last 12 months, the evangelical Christian community in the United States has actually given $100 million to charitable causes in Israel, according to Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “God promises Abraham those who bless Israel and the Jewish people will be blessed and those who curse them will be cursed,” he says, citing Genesis. Not only this but Evangelicals see the creation of Israel in 1948 as the fulfilment of biblical prophesy, Eckstein says, “it reflects the hand of God”.

Not only is the support from Evangelicals for Israel supporting a biblical prophecy that they vehemently believe in they have also had great influence with Trump’s administrative decisions relating to Israel, the far-right Christian groups puts pressure on a president eager to show he’s fulfilling his campaign promises.

 

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