Roughly one in 10 migrants pushed back to Mexico to await U.S. court hearings under a Trump administration program have been caught crossing the border again, a top border official said Thursday.

Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a White House briefing that migrants returned to Mexico under a program known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have a 9% recidivism rate. Many of those migrants intend to seek asylum in the United States.

“Unfortunately, some of the individuals in the MPP program are actually going outside the shelter environment,” Morgan said. “They’re re-engaging with the cartels because they’re tired of waiting. And that’s when we’re hearing that some of that further abuse and exploitation is happening.”

Nearly 59,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the program, according to a CBP spokesman.

Program to deter Central Americans

The administration of President Donald Trump launched the MPP program in January as part of a strategy to deter mostly Central American families from trekking to the U.S. border to seek asylum. Trump officials have argued the bulk of such claims for protection lack merit and that migrants are motivated by economic concerns.

Immigration advocates say asylum seekers sent to wait in Mexican border towns, for the weeks or months it takes for their cases to wind through backlogged immigration courts, face dangerous and possibly deadly conditions.

Migrants who claim fear of returning to Mexico can ask to stay in the United States for the duration of their court case.

But just 1% of cases have been transferred out of the program, according to a Reuters analysis of federal immigration court data as of early October.

Report criticizes program

A report released by the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley on Thursday criticized the MPP program and the Trump administration’s handling of a migrant surge earlier this year.

The report, citing interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees, said political supervisors at the agency intervened to override asylum officer decisions to remove migrants from the MPP program.

An agency spokeswoman called the allegation “completely false” and said political appointees do not conduct reviews of such decisions.

Border Patrol arrested 35,444 people in October, the fifth consecutive monthly decline this year, according to a CBP official. The administration has said the MPP program and other measures have helped lead to a decline in border arrests.”

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On Aug. 13, 2018, Bobi Wine was in campaign mode.

The popular musician-turned-parliamentarian was attending a rally for Kassiano Wadri, a politician from Uganda’s Arua region, in the north of the country.

There, Wine says, government forces ambushed, arrested and tortured him.

On his Facebook page, Wine later shared his ordeal.

“The marks on my back, ankles, elbows, legs and head are still visible. I continued to groan in pain and the last I heard was someone hit me at the back of the head with an object — I think a gun butt or something,” Wine wrote. “That was the last time I knew what was going on.”

Wine’s driver, Yasin Kawuma, was fatally shot during the violence that day. 

Wine, a vocal critic of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, is certain security forces knew where he’d be and meticulously planned their attack.

Reporting by The Wall Street Journal this summer confirms his claims and shows that Ugandan intelligence officials, with the help of employees of Chinese tech giant Huawei, hacked into Wine’s WhatsApp and Skype accounts to monitor the dissident and his supporters.

In an interview Wednesday, Wine told VOA he’s now adopted a sophisticated routine to throw government spies off his trail using burner phones and old-fashioned code words.

“What I’ve been doing to protect myself and the people that I communicate with is, one, to use coded language when I’m talking on the phone that is known,” he told VOA.

“I’ve been forced to devise means of changing telephone numbers and telephone headsets constantly to keep them on the wrong track,” Wine added. “And sometimes, when I have to move to a place and I don’t want to be followed by the regime, I’m forced to leave my phone behind or put my phone in a car that is going in a different region of the country while I’m going into another one. That alone is how I’m trying to maneuver to go around it.”

Denials

Huawei, who helped build a large portion of Africa’s cellular backbone, has also been implicated in allegations of spying on African diplomacy on behalf of the Chinese government.

But Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, firmly denies spying claims and says his company refuses to give up confidential information of clients and “would definitely say ‘no’ to such a request,” in a rare press conference at the company’s headquarters in January.

In a recent interview with VOA, Zambian President Edgar Lungu also addressed the question of spying on dissidents and opposition parties in the country. 

“There was this story that Huawei, the Chinese company, that I am spying on opposition party leaders, their phones and so on,” he said, describing what he thinks is a spread of misinformation.

He further explained that these claims are detrimental to the country’s image and foreign policy. 

“I think that we need to do more … so that the truth is given to the people, so that we are not demonized over fake news stories,” he said.

‘They were tracking me’

Wine, who was born Robert Kyagulanyi, says his first-hand experiences reveal the scope and sophistication of government-backed spying.

“Among the things I got to learn was that they were listening to my calls and having a copy of all that was WhatsApp chats and many other things, following my location every time,” he said. “I even learned that day when I was arrested and brutalized in Arua, it was because of that technology that they got that they could listen to my phones, and they were tracking me. And they know that they follow me on my phone and they know where I am and listening to my calls.”

The government’s paranoia won’t stop, Wine suggested, as long as they perceive him as a threat.

And he has no plans to back down.

Wadri, the candidate Wine campaigned for in 2018, won his seat in parliament.

Now Wine is gearing up for a new kind of campaigning, after announcing this summer his intention to run for president in Uganda’s 2021 polls.

VOA’s Peter Clottey contributed to this report.

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The parents of an American journalist who has been missing in Syria for the past seven years told VOA in an interview that they are convinced he is still alive and that the U.S. government should do what it can to reveal his whereabouts and ensure his safe return home.

The 38-year-old journalist, Austin Tice, went to Syria in May 2012 to cover the war as it was entering its second year. He was arrested three months later in August at a checkpoint in Darayya suburb, south of the capital Damascus, and has been missing since.

“In the event that Austin sees this interview, [we want him to know] that his mother and father love him very much and his siblings can’t wait to see him again,” Tice’s father, Marc Tice, told VOA. “We know he is strong and we know he will hang in there, and we can’t wait to hold him in our arms.”

Marc Tice said he and his wife, Debra Tice, believe their son is apprehended in Syria, most likely in areas currently under the Syrian government control. The couple have been trying relentlessly for years to secure the release of their son, albeit with no success.

“It doesn’t really matter who is holding him, the thing that really matters is who has the authority to secure his safe relief,” said his mother, Debra. “We know he is still alive; he is somewhere in Syria, most likely in Damascus or its whereabouts. He is staying alive because he wants to walk free.”

The parents have visited Lebanon several times hoping to get into Syria to appeal directly to the Syrian government. They were never granted a visa to enter the war-torn country.

A Marine

Tice is a veteran Marine officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A graduate of the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, he worked as a freelance journalist, reporting for several outlets such as The Washington Post, CBS and the French news agency.

His reporting on Syria focused on the escalating conflict and its consequences on vulnerable people, particularly children.

In a photo he posted on Flickr, June 19, 2012, he wrote, “I have more pictures of beautiful Syrian kids than I could ever possibly use. It breaks my heart to see what is happening to them. No kid should even have to know that things like this happen in the world, much less be forced to live and sometimes die this way.”

He was detained less than two months later, on Aug. 14, 2012.

Nearly five weeks after his disappearance, a video surfaced on social media showing Tice blindfolded and in distress among a group of men leading him away in what observers believe to be a staged video, according to the Tice family. Concurrently, multiple pro-Syrian regime news outlets also reported him being “still alive” and accused him of being a spy for Israel. 

The U.S. State Department has said it also believes Tice is still alive and it is actively working to bring him back. The FBI has allocated a $1 million reward for any information leading to his return.

His parents, however, say they believe more should be done to press the Syrian government for more information. The couple on Tice’s 38th birthday, Aug. 11, launched the “Ask About Austin” campaign to garner more popular support.

Organizations such as the National Press Club and Reporters Without Borders have also joined their efforts.

Congressional outreach

Last September, the National Press Club led teams of volunteers in a congressional outreach effort to inform congressional teams of Tice’s case. It lobbied U.S. lawmakers to sign a bipartisan letter to President Donald Trump urging “continued efforts to free Austin and return him to his family.”

The letter was sent to Trump after receiving 52 signatures from the Senate and 121 from the House of Representatives.

“We strongly urge you that you continue to use the full weight of your national security team — including dispatching the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs — to secure his release. Seven years is simply too long for Austin to be separated from his loved ones,” read the letter led by Representative Eliot Engel, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The campaign came after the release two foreigners recently from their detention in Syria, American Sam Goodwin and Canadian Kristian Lee Baxter. Both were released through Lebanon’s mediation.

Unbearable environment

Dozens of Syrian and foreign journalists who went to Syria to document the war have been killed or injured over the years.

According to the World Press Freedom Index, Syria continues to be an “unbearable environment” for journalists, where the risk of arrest, abduction or death makes journalism “extremely dangerous” in the country.

The Syrian Center for Journalistic Freedoms said in its September report that since the Syrian uprising started in 2011, about 1,251 violations were committed against journalists. It claimed that half of these violations were committed by the Syrian government, while the Islamic State group seconded the regime in targeting journalists.

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Singer-songwriter Jesse Colin Young made history with the “Youngbloods” on their classic ‘60s peace anthem “Get Together.” Earlier this year, Jesse released his 19th solo album “Dreamers” and this is his first album of new material since 2006’s “Celtic Mambo.”

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The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized 833,000 people – an 11-year high in new oaths of citizenship – in fiscal year 2019, which ended September 30. This fiscal year, USCIS administered the Oath of Allegiance to 60 of America’s newest citizens, from 51 different countries, during a special naturalizing ceremony Tuesday at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Holding American flags in their left hands, the group raised their right hands, and placed them over their hearts, and took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America.

“It means a lot, joining one of the world’s greatest country of all times and able to serve this country,” said Sandra Amoah, a new U.S. citizen originally from Ghana.

For these 60 people from 51 different countries, young and old, this was the final step to become a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. But it also marked a new beginning in their lives.

“It’s going to open more doors for me for a young guy growing up, it’s a great opportunity right here,” Ghana native Yaw Opoku Amoah told VOA.

“I found it very emotional and I feel that it is a privilege that not very many people can obtain,” Virginia Growich, a new U.S. citizen who was born in England said.

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Becoming a U.S. citizen bestows many privileges, including being able to bring family members to the U.S., as well as being eligible for federal jobs and to run for public office. But in this crowd, many were excited to able to vote in upcoming presidential elections.

“I got my citizenship, and the most exciting part … next year it’s going to be vote and I will vote, yes,” said Sumreen Amer, a new citizen originally from Pakistan.

 “I am very interested in being able to vote,” Growich agreed.

While the Trump administration has proposed major cuts to legal and family immigration, and capped the number of refugees to the U.S. in 2020 at 18,000, USCIS, the government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States, naturalized 833,000 people in fiscal year 2019, an 11-year high in new oaths of citizenship.

Sarah Taylor, acting director of the Washington District, says one reason for the increase in naturalizations might be the upcoming election.

“So we did have a big uptick always before a presidential election. It stayed high in the last couple of years and we anticipated it will remain high,” Taylor said.

Coming from such countries as Afghanistan and Yemen, these new citizens are hopeful for a bright future for themselves and their families, as they said: naturalization will open new doors for them in this land of opportunities.

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Kinsey Metts moved to California for its wilderness and great outdoors. Now she wants to leave for the same reasons.

This autumn’s rash of destructive wildfires — predicted to grow worse in coming years as climate change strengthens — is threatening to shatter the California Dream that has long lured people to the state, drawn by its sunny weather and opportunities for a better life.

With increasingly powerful fires ripping through Northern and Southern California again and again, the question of leaving is now on plenty of people’s minds.

Metts, on maternity leave with a 9-week-old son, was forced to evacuate her rural Geyserville home, in the wine country north of the San Francisco Bay area, when the October Kincade fire tore through the hills behind it.

“We’ve loved our life here,” said Metts, who works for a nonprofit helping at-risk children. “We love the outdoors and to backpack and kayak.”

“But I don’t know if I want to stay here anymore. It just feels like it’s getting worse and worse,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

California has long faced annual wildfires, but their geographic extent has increased fivefold since the early 1970s, according to research published this summer in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, an international group of scientists.

The study pointed to more fires and to fires increasingly fueled by vegetation made drier by climate change.

“Human-caused warming has already significantly enhanced wildfire activity in California … and will likely continue to do so in the coming decades,” the study said.

Many residents say those differences are now hitting perilously close to home.

Rocio Mercado moved to California from Mexico 23 years ago and was one of the nearly 200,000 people ordered to evacuate as the Kincade fire burned.

“I love California, but honestly I don’t know if I want to live here for the rest of my life,” she said outside the Healdsburg grocery store, where she is a supervisor. “I don’t feel safe anymore.”

Stay or go?

More people have been moving out of California than moving in from other states, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Last year, about 691,000 people left California but only about 500,000 people arrived, part of a trend that reaches back several years, data showed.

Those leaving California are driven by more than just wildfires, but the growing fire threat has become too significant to ignore, some feel.

“For the very first time in our lives, we’re probably going to leave California,” said Lynne Imel, whose house burned in the Camp Fire that devastated the town of Paradise in 2018.

The blaze killed 85 people and stands as the state’s most lethal wildfire on record.

“I don’t want to talk about the fire for the rest of my life. We want a fresh start,” Imel said as she attended a memorial ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the disaster.

Imel and her husband, who live in Sacramento, had planned to retire to their Paradise home, but may now move across the border into the state of Nevada, she said.

But for many others, leaving doesn’t feel like an option.

“The question is, where do you relocate?” asked Michael Pigoni, the fire chief in El Cerrito, California. He pointed to hurricanes in the U.S. Southeast, tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest and cold weather in the North.

Wherever weather-related threats hit, “you learn to adjust,” he said.

Diane Wilson, whose Soda Rock Winery in Healdsburg burned in the Kincade fire, similarly said she and her husband would rebuild, noting she was “not a big worrier.”

“I don’t see us leaving because of the fires. We have to adapt,” she said. “We were a little traumatized,” she admitted. But “now we’re looking forward.”

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Ahmed Sabrie woke up to find his house half-submerged in fast-rising flood waters.

Frightened and confused, he herded sleepy family members onto the roof of their home in central Somalia as scores of thousands of people in the town, Beledweyne, scrambled for their lives. Clinging to an electric power pylon by the edge of the roof, the family watched as their possessions were washed away.

“I could hear people, perhaps my neighbors, screaming for help but I could only fight for the survival of my family,” the 38-year-old Sabrie, the father of four, recalled. As one of his children wailed, the family waited for more than 10 hours before a passing rescue boat spotted them.

Death toll unknown

Authorities have not yet said how many people died in the flooding last month, Somalia’s worst in recent history and the latest reminder that the Horn of Africa nation must prepare for the extremes expected to come with a changing climate.

At least 10 people went missing when their boat capsized after the Shabelle river burst its banks. Local officials have said at least 22 people in all are presumed dead and the toll could rise.

“This is a catastrophic situation,” Mayor Safiyo Sheikh Ali said. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who visited the town and waded through submerged areas, called the devastation “beyond our capacity” and pleaded for more help from aid groups.

With no proper emergency response plan for natural disasters, local rescuers used rickety wooden dhows to reach trapped people while helicopters provided by the United Nations plucked people from rooftops. African Union and Somali forces have joined the rescue operations and the Somali government airlifted food.

“Many people are still trapped in their submerged houses and we have no capacity and enough equipment to cover all areas,” said Abdirashakur Ahmed, a local official helping to coordinate rescue operations. Hundreds are thought to still be stuck.

More rain, flooding

With more heavy rains and flash flooding expected, officials warned thousands of displaced people against returning too quickly to their homes.

More than 250,000 people across Somalia were displaced by the recent severe flooding, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Beledweyne town was the worst affected. Several thousand people were sheltering under trees or in tents.

“Floods have destroyed more than three-quarters of Beledweyne and submerged many surrounding villages,” said Victor Moses, the NRC’s country director.

Aid groups said farms, infrastructure and roads in some areas were destroyed. The destruction of farmland near rivers is expected to contribute to a hunger crisis.

To better prepare for “major climate-induced shocks” such as flooding and drought that Somalia already faces every two to five years, the country and the U.N. Development Program this week launched a $10 million project to expand weather monitoring resources and train a largely rural population in water conservation and flood management.

The possibility of further damage from heavy rains in the coming days remains a concern, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Parts of the Lower Juba, Gedo and Bay regions, where IOM has supported displaced populations for years, have been affected. Many displaced people were stranded without food, latrines or shelter.

“In Baidoa, people have moved to high ground where they are in immediate need of support,” said Nasir Arush, the minister for humanitarian and disaster management for South West State.

Survivors like Sabrie now must struggle to rebuild their lives.

“We’re alive, which I am thankful to Allah for, but this flood disaster wreaked havoc on both our livelihoods and households so I see a tough road ahead of us,” he said from a makeshift shelter built on higher ground outside town.

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Security forces killed two protesters and wounded 35 others in Baghdad Thursday, police and medical sources said, as thousands of Iraqis continued a wave of anti-government protests.

One protester died immediately after a tear gas canister hit his head and another died in a hospital from wounds from a stun bomb fired by security forces, the sources said.

Security forces used live fire, rubber bullets and shot tear gas canisters in a bid to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered near Tahrir Square, a Reuters cameraman said.

Most of those hurt had choked on tear gas or had been hit by rubber bullets and were taken to hospital, medical sources said.

Protesters said the security forces had stepped up their firing of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets early Thursday morning.

More than 300 people have been killed since Oct. 1, as security forces have fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at crowds of protesters.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government has taken some measures to try to quell the unrest, including handouts to the poor and creating more job opportunities for college graduates.

But it has failed to keep up with the growing demands of demonstrators who are now calling for an overhaul of Iraq’s sectarian political system and the departure of its entire ruling elite.

The unrest is among the biggest and most complex challenges to the current ruling elite since it took power after the U.S. invasion and the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

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Drug-resistant “superbug” infections have been called a developing nightmare that make conquered germs once again untreatable.

So there’s some surprising news in a federal report released Wednesday: U.S. superbug deaths appear to be going down.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 36,000 Americans died from drug-resistant infections in 2017. That’s down 18% from 2013.

Officials credit an intense effort in hospitals to control the spread of particularly dangerous infections.

But while deaths are going down, the report says infections overall increased nationally. And while superbugs mainly have been considered a hospital problem, they are appearing much more often elsewhere.
 

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North Korea intensified its demand Wednesday that the United States take steps by the end of this year to normalize relations, saying it is out of patience with Washington. 

“We, without being given anything, gave things the U.S. president can brag about, but the U.S. side has not yet taken any corresponding step,” said the statement from North Korea’s State Affairs Commission and circulated by its U.N. mission. “Now, betrayal is only what we feel from the U.S. side.”

Diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to denuclearize have been largely stalled since a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February, which was cut short with no agreement.

Pyongyang is especially upset that the U.S. and South Korean militaries plan to hold joint aerial exercises next month. The Pentagon said the routine drills, which involve aircraft and fighter jets, would go ahead but be scaled back this year. 

North Korea warned that such acts have put relations between the two countries “on the verge of a breakdown.” 

“Our official stand is that we can no longer remain an onlooker to such a reckless act of the U.S.,” the statement said. 

Since the two leaders met in Singapore at their first summit in June 2018, the U.S. has either suspended or scaled down the joint military exercises it holds with South Korea in order to enhance the atmosphere for denuclearization talks to continue.

North Korea says the U.S. move is a violation of the joint statement adopted at that summit. 

“It is our intention and will to answer dialogue with dialogue and recourse to force in kind,” the statement said. “To look back on the past hours which we let them pass with patience, we no longer feel the need to exercise any more patience.”

North Korea wants international economic and trade sanctions imposed on it lifted in exchange for progress on the denuclearization file.
 

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Rapper Kodak Black has been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges stemming from his arrest just before a scheduled concert performance in May.

The 22-year-old Black admitted in August that he falsified information on federal forms to buy four firearms from a Miami-area gun shop on two separate occasions.

Black also faces drug, weapons and sexual assault charges in other states. Black is a Florida native who was born to Haitian American parents as Dieuson Octave and who now goes by the legal name of Bill Kapri.

He was arrested during a Miami-area hip-hop festival in May that was marred by several violent incidents, The rapper is known for songs such as “ZeZe” and “Roll in Peace.”

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Nine privacy, social justice and consumer groups are calling for the U.S. government to block Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-gadget maker Fitbit, citing antitrust and privacy concerns.

They say in a Wednesday letter to the Federal Trade Commission that the deal would consolidate Google’s dominance over internet services like search, advertising and smartphone operating systems.

They also worry it’ll add to Google’s store of consumer data. Health information is of particular concern. Google has hired health care executives, hinting at a health-data business to come.

Politicians and regulators have been scrutinizing Google and other Silicon Valley companies for how they use customer data and leverage their size to thwart competitors.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
 

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