02 May 22
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Celebrating the life and mourning the loss of our co-founder and co-director Kathy Boudin
Kathy graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1965 and was soon radicalized by the growing anti-war and racial justice movements of the 60s, beginning her lifelong work as an activist, organizer, teacher, and champion of social justice. From her engagement with the early days of the civil rights movement in the Cleveland-based ERAP Project (a multiracial movement of the poor), to her work with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, Kathy was most of all an organizer, who loved talking to and learning from people; she built community toward overcoming oppression and disenfranchisement. She chose to work on behalf of marginalized communities and against war and imperialism, forgoing the comforts and privileges available to her. She was determined to make radical change by any means necessary.
In 1981, trying to raise money to support Black revolutionary organizations, Kathy and her partner David Gilbert participated in the robbery of a Brinks truck in Nyack, NY. Though Kathy and David were not armed and did not personally hurt anyone, three men were killed. Kathy and David were arrested and sentenced to decades in prison.
Kathy entered Bedford Hills Correctional Facility with remorse for her role in the deadly robbery, and serious questions about the role of violence in political movements and the consequences of her political choices.
Her then 14-month-old son, Chesa Boudin, was adopted by friends and fellow activists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who raised him in partnership with Kathy and David; she had regular visits with Chesa for the next 22 years, helping to parent him from the distance her incarceration created.
In prison, Kathy underwent a profound transformation, grappling with her crime and its consequences. She became a leading advocate for women in prison, fighting for the reunification of imprisoned women and their children, bringing college courses back to Bedford Hills after the termination of Pell grants, and building a community response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, saving countless lives. She was the first woman to earn a masters degree while incarcerated in New York State Prison. Her outward-facing initiatives became a path to seeking restorative justice for many, and eventually led to parole and release from prison.
After Kathy was paroled in 2003, she avoided public appearances or statements, seeking private reconciliation and time with family and friends. She founded the Coming Home Program at the Spencer Cox Center for Health at Mt. Sinai/St.Luke’s Hospital in Morningside Heights, which provides health care for people returning from incarceration. She went on to earn a doctorate from Columbia University Teachers College in 2007; to teach at the Columbia School of Social Work; and to co-found and co-direct the Center for Justice at Columbia University. Among other things, since 2010 the Center for Justice organized an annual movement building conference, “Beyond the Bars” which attracts thousands of activists, organizers, academics, and justice impacted people from down the block and around the world. “More than just an academic conference, Beyond the Bars is led by formerly incarcerated people and has built a global community at the forefront of justice reform,” said Cheryl Wilkins co-founder of the Center for Justice. “Kathy was instrumental in developing Release Aging People from Prison (RAPP), uplifting the voices of women through work with the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, and so much more.”
Kathy’s work had a major impact on the struggle for the decent treatment of incarcerated people, the fight against mass incarceration, and on criminal justice reform. Jarrell E. Daniels, a staff member at Columbia’s Center for Justice and a formerly incarcerated person says, “Kathy’s legacy, mission and lifetime commitment to advancing social justice, supporting disadvantaged communities and reforming the criminal legal system will never be forgotten, especially by those whose lives she touched… Her leadership with the Center for Justice empowered community members and returning citizens to stand as advocates for institutional and systematic change. Although she was a mother of one, she was a mother and fearless leader in the global movement for justice reform, social equality and re-enfranchisement. For so many of us, Kathy was a legend that defied odds and broke through the boundaries. She will never be forgotten.”
Activist and Professor Angela Davis said, “Kathy is one of my oldest friends. We’ve known each other since high school, and we’ve done work against the prison industrial complex for the last twenty some years since Kathy herself was released from prison.”
Kathy’s articles have been published in The Harvard Education Review; Journal of Corrections Education, Women and Therapy; Columbia Journal of Gender and Law; and Liman Report of Yale Law School. She is editor and co-author of the book Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison. Her research interests included the impact of higher education and peer support on incarcerated women, recidivism rates and life experience of people serving long sentences and parole policy, and the experience of adolescents with incarcerated mothers.
“Kathy’s commitment to higher education opportunities for people who are incarcerated and who have returned from incarceration inspired Columbia’s Justice-in-Education initiative which provides educational opportunities in prisons and jails and on campus. Seven formerly incarcerated students will celebrate their graduation from Columbia this month as a fitting tribute to Kathy’s effort to ensure college access to people with a criminal conviction,” said Geraldine Downey, Niven Professor of Humane Letters, Department of Psychology, and the Director of the Center for Justice. “Kathy exemplified a meaningful life after decades in prison. Her influence will be felt for years to come in our work and the efforts of so many others.”
Her years of separation from her own son led Kathy to pursue and keep close friendships with the children of her many friends – and their children too, as they grew up and became parents themselves. An avid reader and inspired story-teller, poet, and gift-giver, she was a beloved aunt and adopted grandmother for dozens of young people. Her love of music – folk, political, feminist, classical, jazz – brought her joy. And she was a model for other generations who were inspired by her thoughtful introspection, kindness, and fierce determination to make the world a better place.
“My mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way,” said Chesa Boudin, Kathy’s son and the San Francisco District Attorney. “She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years. She always ended phone calls with a laugh, a habit acquired during the 22 years of her incarceration, when she wanted to leave every person she spoke with, especially me, with joy and hope. She lived redemption, constantly finding ways to give back to those around her.”
Kathy is survived by her brother Michael Boudin, her life partner David Gilbert and their son Chesa Boudin, daughter-in-law Valerie Block, grandson Aiden Block Boudin, and Chesa’s two brothers Zayd and Malik Dohrn and honorary daughters-in-law Rachel DeWoskin, Lisa Freccero, and five honorary grandchildren: Dalin, Light, Jacai, Nala, and Teo.
Donations in Kathy’s honor should be made to:
Columbia’s Center for Justice: https://socialwork.givenow.columbia.edu/?alloc=19488#
Release Aging People in Prison: https://rappcampaign.com/donate/
or
The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/free-her
Kathy Boudin, Weather Underground Radical, Dies at 78
Center for Justice
Kathy Boudin, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who spent years behind bars after taking part in a deadly 1981 holdup of a Brink’s armored truck, has died at age 78.
The Columbia University Center for Justice, of which Boudin was a co-founder and co-director, announced her death on its website, saying she died "after a seven-year fight with cancer."
Boudin died on Sunday, with her son, Chesa Boudin, who is San Francisco's district attorney, and her partner, David Gilbert, by her side, the center said.
Boudin had graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1965 and was "radicalized by the growing anti-war and racial justice movements of the 60s," the center said, adding: "She was determined to make radical change by any means necessary."
Both Boudin and Gilbert had participated in the Oct. 20, 1981, robbery of a Brink’s truck in Nyack, New York. Guard Peter Paige and two Nyack police officers, Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown, were killed in the incident.
"Though Kathy and David were not armed and did not personally hurt anyone, three men were killed," the center noted.
Both Boudin and Gilbert were arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, with Boudin receiving a 22-year sentence and her partner getting 75 years to life. Gilbert was granted parole and released from prison in 2021 after his sentence was commuted by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just before he left office earlier that year.
Following their arrest, Chesa, less than 2 years old at the time, was adopted by Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, friends of his parents and fellow activists.
Boudin was able to hold regular visits with her son during her time in prison, but her experience behind bars pushed her to become an advocate for the incarcerated, advocating early on for the reunification of imprisoned women and their children and for higher education opportunities for those in prison.
Boudin became the first woman to earn a masters degree while incarcerated in New York State Prison, according to the Columbia University Center for Justice. And in the years after she was paroled in 2003, Boudin went on to earn a doctorate from Columbia University Teachers College in 2007. She later began teaching at the Columbia School of Social Work and co-founded Columbia University's Center for Justice.
In a statement shared by the Columbia University Center for Justice, Chesa Boudin paid tribute to his mother and her legacy.
“My mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way,” said Chesa.
“She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years," he said. "She always ended phone calls with a laugh, a habit acquired during the 22 years of her incarceration, when she wanted to leave every person she spoke with, especially me, with joy and hope. She lived redemption, constantly finding ways to give back to those around her.”
Previously, he had spoken out about how his childhood growing up with both his mother and father incarcerated shaped his determination to "restore a sense of compassion" what it comes to the U.S. justice system.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (photo: Ukrayinska Pravda)
In his video address late Saturday, which Zelenskyy delivers nightly in Ukrainian, the president switched into Russian: “Every Russian soldier can still save his own life. It’s better for you to survive in Russia than to perish on our land."
He said Russia has been recruiting new troops “with little motivation and little combat experience" for units sent into battle early in the Russian invasion, only for those units to be gutted and thrown back into the war again.
“The Russian commanders are lying to their soldiers when they tell them they can expect to be held seriously responsible for refusing to fight and then also don’t tell them, for example, that the Russian army is preparing additional refrigerator trucks for storing the bodies. They don’t tell them about the new losses the generals expect,” Zelenskyy said.
The message comes as Ukrainians in besieged areas such as Mariupol are struggling to hang on; thousands of civilians and soldiers in the Azovstal steel plant there are running out of food and supplies. Yet Western authorities have said the strong Ukrainian defense is slowing Russian troops in their ultimate goal to seize the Donbas region.
Zelenskyy also met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who praised the courage of the Ukrainian people and vowed continued U.S. support to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Pelosi led a congressional delegation to Kyiv to assess Ukraine’s needs for the next phase of the war.
Pelosi, a California Democrat who is next in line to the presidency after the vice president, is the most senior American lawmaker to visit Ukraine since Russia’s war began more than two months ago. The group met with Zelenskyy for three hours.
"America stands with Ukraine. America will stand with Ukraine until victory is one. And will stand with our NATO allies," she said at a briefing in Rzeszów, Poland.
Michael Cohen and Trump. (image: Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty Images)
There’s a new witness in a civil case against the Trump Organization. And this witness could help show that Trump was lying.
It’s a crucial detail in an ongoing lawsuit in New York City. And, if true, it would mean the former president lied during sworn videotaped testimony behind closed doors in October last year.
It also would indicate that Trump’s former director of security, Keith Schiller, also lied when he was similarly deposed in 2016 by lawyers representing beat-up protesters.
The lawsuit had essentially been on hold while Trump was shielded by the power of the presidency in the White House. But in the past month or so—with a trial just weeks away—lawyers for the aggrieved protesters discovered that Cohen was a key witness to Trump’s personal involvement in the attack.
The Trump Organization “would have been aware that Mr. Cohen had relevant information and was a potential witness for nearly seven years before he came forward to [us] on his own,” Benjamin N. Dictor wrote in a court filing on Tuesday. (Dictor also happens to represent The Daily Beast’s News Guild.)
The company “failed to disclose this or identify Mr. Cohen as a person with relevant information at any point,” Dictor explained.
On Friday, the attorney representing Trump, Schiller, and the company filed documents in court that cast it as a totally different story. The attorney, Alina Habba, claimed the defense was “ambushed” by the sudden appearance of Cohen as a prospective witness. And Habba used the opportunity to sling mud at Cohen himself, noting he is “a disgraced attorney and convicted felon.” She is already dismissing whatever testimony he might deliver, calling Cohen “a convicted perjurer” with a “well-documented vendetta” against Trump.
Both sides are now gearing up to officially question Cohen himself in the coming weeks, and his testimony could prove decisive at trial. Cohen declined to comment about the matter for the time being, citing his upcoming deposition. However, court filings already explain what he’s expected to say.
According to Dictor’s filing, Cohen remembers being in Trump’s office in his New York City office skyscraper on Sept. 3, 2015 when Schiller let him know that angry protesters had gathered downstairs on Fifth Avenue. They were calling attention to the racist remarks Trump made when he announced his ultimately successful presidential campaign that summer—the speech where he infamously described Mexican migrants like this: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Cohen recalls that Trump told Schiller to “get rid” of them, according to the court filing by the protesters’ lawyer. The security guard and Cohen then went downstairs, where Schiller assaulted the protesters and ripped away one of their signs. They went back upstairs together and brought the torn-up sign to Trump’s office.
“Mr. Cohen’s description of the events that he observed on September 3, 2015 is not only additional direct proof of Trump’s control and management of his security personnel, it also directly contradicts and would therefore serve as rebuttal to the testimony of Defendants Trump and Schiller,” Dictor wrote in his affidavit.
At Trump’s Oct. 18, 2021 deposition at the very same building, the Trump Organization’s own lawyer posed the question to the former president.
“At any time on September 3, 2015, did you direct Keith Schiller to use any force against any of the protesters outside Trump Tower?” defense attorney Lawrence Rosen asked.
“No, I didn't,” Trump responded.
“At any time on September 3, 2015, did you direct Keith Schiller to do anything?” Rosen clarified.
“No,” Trump said.
The company’s former head of security maintained the same version of events when he was asked about it at Dictor’s law firm back in 2016.
Dictor asked Schiller if Trump in any way directed him to do anything with regard to those demonstrations. Schiller said no.
Lying during a sworn deposition would normally expose someone to potential perjury criminal charges. But former prosecutors told The Daily Beast that would be tricky in New York, where Penal Law § 210.50 says “falsity of a statement may not be established by the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness.”
One former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said this incident—like so many others that it’s hard to keep count—could lead to criminal charges against Trump. He raised the possibility of putting Schiller before a grand jury and asking him about the office meeting, which would grant him total immunity—and further pressure him to tell the truth.
But it’s unclear if the Manhattan DA has the appetite for that sort of thing, given that the long-running criminal investigation into Trump appears to be fizzling out.
The entire ordeal would be an otherwise forgettable incident of rage-fueled security goons, were it not for the fact that this court case has now opened up Trump to potential criminal charges.
Earlier this week, The Daily Beast revealed that in his deposition, Trump repeatedly admitted to overseeing compensation for an executive whose untaxed corporate perks are currently under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
In her court papers on Friday, Habba blasted the other side for making Trump’s embarrassing deposition public in the first place. She called it a “blatant attempt to garner unwarranted media attention and to irreparably taint the potential jury pool.” She’s now asking the judge to financially penalize the beaten protesters and sanction their attorneys.
Young minors lie inside a pod at a holding facility run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (photo: Dario Lopez-Mills/AFP)
VICE News obtained complaints filed on behalf of thousands of migrant children detained last year by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Teenage mothers said they were denied milk, diapers, and medicine for sick babies.
A 17-year-old boy reported witnessing other children being tased as punishment.
These allegations are just a handful of what’s described in recent complaints obtained by VICE News and filed on behalf of thousands of migrant children detained last year by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP. The children’s names have been withheld in the complaints because they fear retaliation for speaking out.
The complaints, detailed here for the first time since being filed on April 6, allege migrant children in CBP custody are routinely denied medical care, served rotten or inedible food, and abused verbally and physically. The complaints also allege CBP routinely violates a court order that’s supposed to limit a kid’s time in CBP custody to 72 hours; instead they’re subjected to prolonged stays in frigid holding cells known as hieleras or ice boxes.
The Biden administration has said it’s preparing for another wave of migration with the pending rollback of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that has enabled border agents to turn away nearly everyone except unaccompanied children. While officials claim conditions are improving, the complaints paint a grim picture of what awaits those who attempt to cross, especially young people.
“We expect now that Title 42 is going away, this is just going to worsen,” said Carson Scott, an attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “Advocates have consistently been sounding the alarm bells. When we have waves of more children crossing the border, conditions get even worse.”
Scott’s group was one of four nonprofit legal service providers that screened over 25,000 migrant children last year and filed the complaints with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. A spokesperson for CBP, an agency within DHS, declined to comment on the complaints, citing pending litigation.
One 14-year-old girl said she had just waded across the Rio Grande and was still damp from the river when she was allegedly left by CBP “handcuffed for approximately 24 hours without any food or water.” The girl, identified by the initials MJC, said she spent a total of 18 days shivering in a hielera, subsisting on bean burritos that tasted spoiled.
Unaccompanied migrant kids are supposed to spend a maximum of 72 hours in CBP custody before they’re handed off to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and placed in a licensed childcare facility. But the complaints allege most kids endure stays far longer.
When MJC asked for warm clothes, the complaint says CBP agents refused and told her if she was cold due to lack of clothing, “she should’ve thought about that before coming to the U.S.”
She was eventually allowed to see a doctor and diagnosed with a stomach bug and a broken arm that had been left untreated during her time in the hielera. The group representing MJC said she was eventually placed with a sponsor in the U.S. and remains in the country while her case plays out in immigration court.
The complaints allege treatment like MJC received is “common and widespread” among children in CBP custody.
“It is not limited to the conduct of a ‘bad apple’ employee within the agency,” the complaints say. “It is not limited to even a rogue or remote CBP outpost that lacks training and resources. The sheer number of children who have reported abuse, many of whom told us that they fear retaliation and were afraid to speak up, suggests that these examples are but a fraction of the actual total.”
Earlier this week, the Biden administration released its plan for handling the expected surge in arrivals at the border, including expanding detention capacity from 13,000 at the start of this year to hold “18,000 noncitizens in CBP custody at any given time,” as well as expediting processing to move more people through the system. Still, officials warned the preparations might not be enough.
“Despite these efforts, a significant increase in migrant encounters will substantially strain our system even further,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote. “We are operating within a fundamentally broken immigration system that only Congress can fix.”
Since former President Donald Trump first imposed Title 42 at the start of the pandemic, in early 2020, most migrants—including asylum-seekers—have been blocked from crossing under the justification that they could spread COVID-19. President Joe Biden has kept the policy largely in place but carved out an exception for children who arrive at the border alone, with no adult relatives to care for them. More than 122,000 kids like that came to the U.S. in the 2021 fiscal year alone, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Another organization that filed a complaint with DHS, Americans for Immigrant Justice, provided exclusive data compiled from screenings of more than 2,300 children detained by CBP last year. Half of them described “cold temperatures” in holding facilities, nearly a third said they were held for longer than the 72 hours allowed under the law, and around 15 percent reported “lack of food/water.” Verbal or physical abuse was reported by 7 percent of the children.
“A number of them broke down crying,” said Maite Garcia, supervising attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice. “It stays with people for years to come.”
The abuse described in the four complaints runs the gamut from CBP agents calling migrant kids obscenities in Spanish to threatening to beat kids with a nightstick, to even more extreme cases. One 16-year-old girl from Mexico, identified by the initials PAM, said the agents pulled her hair and nearly knocked her over while conducting a body search. She was pregnant at the time.
Once she arrived at the holding facility, PAM said, she and other children were “treated like animals,” and she was “ultimately hospitalized for two days because she began experiencing contractions and had a high-risk pregnancy.”
A 15-year-old girl named Debra described being grabbed by two male CBP agents and pinned facedown on the ground after she was detained crossing the border last October. She said she was barely able to breathe with an agent kneeling on her back. Bruises and abrasions from the encounter were still visible on Debra’s face and legs when attorneys interviewed her, the complaint says, and photos were submitted as evidence but have not been disclosed publicly.
“They did not clean her injuries or provide her with any bandages,” the complaint alleges.
One major problem, Garcia said, is that kids detained by CBP are not allowed to contact family members, and lawyers can typically speak with them only after they’re transferred to the custody of another agency.
“Right now it’s a dead zone,” Garcia said. “It creates a situation ripe for abuse and lack of oversight.”
Aiming to minimize migrant kids’ time in CBP custody, federal officials opened multiple “Emergency Intake Sites” or makeshift shelter facilities last year, including a sprawling tent city on the grounds of Fort Bliss, a military base near El Paso. Whistleblowers and child welfare advocates have described the Fort Bliss facility as a “hellhole” with miserable conditions that could further traumatize kids who have often already endured violence and hardship on their journey north.
Nearly three-quarters of more than 2,300 migrant children screened by the group Immigration Defenders Law Center had been housed in Emergency Intake Sites after CBP custody, according to data obtained exclusively by VICE News.
‘No place for a child’
Watchdogs have warned for years that CBP facilities are not suitable for children, and previous images of kids crowded into chain-link cages and wrapped in silver thermal blankets sparked widespread outrage. In 2020, the Government Accountability Office found that CBP had used money intended for detainees’ medical care to buy motorcycles and dirt bikes. The GAO also found that CBP “lacks reliable data on deaths” in agency custody.
Despite efforts at reforming CBP, it appears little has changed. And Democrats on Capitol Hill are once again on alert.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who chairs the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee, called for accountability after staff in her office received copies of the complaints obtained by VICE News.
“The mistreatment of children and families is a moral stain on our nation—period,” Lofgren said. “These reported conditions must never be permitted in U.S. government custody, particularly involving minors.”
Lofgren placed some of the blame on Trump for “preventing proper investigations and enacting zero-tolerance policies,” as did another prominent House Democrat, Rep. Joaquín Castro of Texas. He praised “the current administration’s work to build a more humane immigration system” while also calling for reform.
“The ongoing reports of abuse and human rights violations at CBP facilities are unacceptable,” Castro told VICE News. “These facilities are no place for a child, and they need to be safe for all adults who pass through them.”
CBP was created after 9/11 with the primary mission of arresting adult males who were crossing the border from Mexico to seek work, according to Adam Isaacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America. In the years since, migration has largely shifted to children and asylum-seekers, but CBP has not adapted, Isaacson said, and there has been no real urgency to improve long-dismal conditions in holding facilities.
“It’s not like Congress is lavishing money on CBP to feed migrants who cross the border illegally,” said Isaacson, who maintains a database of alleged incidents of CBP abuse. “The American people are stingy about this sort of thing. It’s why you have chain-link cages and mylar blankets. It's the experience of doing it as cheaply as humanly possible.”
One former CBP director, Gil Kerlikowske, who led the agency during a wave of child migration under the Obama administration, said even during his tenure nearly a decade ago the facilities at the border “were awful when it came to housing families or children.” But efforts to overhaul the system have largely stalled in Congress, he said.
“We need a whole different set of facilities along the border,” Kerlikowske added. “Facilities where there can be more adequate medical care, facilities that are meant to house families and children.”
In 2019, Congress earmarked funding to create the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, to improve oversight of DHS border facilities and investigate alleged abuse. The effort stalled under the Trump administration, but it’s now up and running.
Rep. Lucille Royal-Allard, a Democrat from California, who led the push for the new watchdog, expressed concern about the allegations in the complaints and noted that the funding bill passed by Congress in 2022 requires CBP holding facilities to “keep temperatures at comfortable levels,” among other basic standards.
“Even the best standards are not enough if they are not being followed by DHS personnel,” Royal-Allard told VICE News. “Allegations of abuse against migrants must be investigated quickly and thoroughly, and any confirmed allegations must result in appropriate consequences.”
The groups that filed the DHS complaints on behalf of migrant children made similar pleas for accountability and reimagining the way unaccompanied kids are processed when they arrive in the U.S. They want licensed child welfare to take the lead instead of law enforcement agents. But that change is unlikely to come soon, and in the meantime the lawyers have asked a federal judge to order the government to improve conditions.
Lawyers who represent child migrants have been in ongoing litigation with the Department of Justice over how kids are treated in CBP custody. Peter Schey, who leads the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, asked the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit to review the allegations in the complaints.
Schey said the federal government is working toward a new agreement that would add new safeguards to prevent CBP abuse, but it hasn’t been finalized yet.
“The settlement would provide the kind of protections that children in CBP custody need to avoid abuse and avoid inhumane conditions of detention,” Schey said. “It would be a historic change.”
Without that change, the groups that filed DHS complaints worry abuse will continue.
Three siblings, for example, allege that after they crossed the border last March, they were held in a windowless cell intended for around 25 kids but crammed with nearly 100, according to a document submitted by the organization Kids in Need of Defense. The boys Abel, 5, and Cameron, 6, and their 15-year-old sister, Mikayla, described receiving thin silver blankets that were not enough to keep warm and becoming “very sick after eating rice and tortillas that they believed were spoiled because they tasted sour.
When Mikayla asked for medicine or help for her little brothers, the complaint says the agents told her, “This is not a hospital, and we are not doctors. We cannot help you.”
Carly Sessions, an attorney at Kids in Need of Defense, said that when Mikayla was interviewed for the complaint, she was with a sponsor in the U.S. waiting for her immigration case to be decided in court. She had kept the blanket.
“She brought it out to show me,” Sessions said. “It was a memento she kept, not in a happy way but to her own resilience, of something she endured.”
This still frame from Metropolitan Police Department body worn camera video shows Thomas Webster, in red jacket, at a barricade line at on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (photo: Metropolitan Police Department/AP)
Thomas Webster, a 20-year NYPD veteran, was the first Capitol riot defendant to be tried on an assault charge and the first to present a jury with a self-defense argument. Webster, who was wearing a face mask in court, showed no obvious reaction to the verdict finding him guilty of all six counts against him, one of which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Webster, 56, testified that he was trying to protect himself from a “rogue cop” who punched him in the face. He also accused the Metropolitan Police Department officer, Noah Rathbun, of instigating the confrontation.
Rathbun testified that he didn’t punch or pick a fight with Webster as a violent mob attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over then-President Donald Trump.
Webster’s jury trial was the fourth for a Capitol riot case. The first three defendants to get a jury trial were convicted of all charges in their respective indictments. A judge decided two other cases without a jury, acquitting one of the defendants and partially acquitting the other.
A grand jury indicted Webster on six counts, including a charge that he assaulted Rathbun with a dangerous weapon, a metal flag pole. Webster wasn’t accused of entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 2.
Prosecutors asked for Webster to be detained pending sentencing, but the judge agreed to let him remain free until that hearing. He’ll be monitored with an ankle bracelet. The judge said it was a “close call” whether to jail him immediately but noted that he has complied with current conditions of release and doesn’t have any prior convictions.
Webster drove alone to Washington, D.C., from his home near Goshen, New York, on the eve of the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a U.S. Marine Corps flag on a metal pole when he approached the Capitol, after listening to Trump address thousands of supporters.
Webster said he went to the Capitol to “petition” lawmakers to “relook” at the results of the 2020 presidential election. But he testified that he didn’t intend to interfere with Congress’ joint session to certify the Electoral College vote.
Rathbun’s body camera captured Webster shouting profanities and insults before they made any physical contact. Webster said he was attending his first political protest as a civilian and expressing his free speech rights when he yelled at officers behind a row of bike racks.
The body camera video shows that Webster slammed one of the bike racks at Rathbun before the officer reached out with an open left hand and struck the right side of Webster’s face. Webster said it felt as though he had been hit by a freight train.
“It was a hard hit, and all I wanted to do was defend myself,” Webster said.
Webster also said he believed Rathbun was coming after him and recalled thinking, “He’s gone rogue.”
Rathbun said he was trying to move Webster back from a security perimeter that he and other officers were struggling to maintain.
After Rathbun struck his face, Webster swung a metal flag pole at the officer in a downward chopping motion, striking a bike rack. Rathbun grabbed the broken pole from Webster, who charged at the officer, tackled him to the ground and grabbed his gas mask.
Rathbun testified that he started choking as the chin strap on his gas mask pressed against his throat.
“That’s not a position that anyone wants to be in,” Rathbun said.
Webster said he grabbed Rathbun by the gas mask because he wanted the officer to see his hands.
During the trial’s closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly urged jurors to reject Webster’s self-defense argument.
“Don’t let the defendant off the hook for what he did that day,” Kelly said.
Defense attorney James Monroe said Webster had a right to defend himself against a “bad cop” who was using excessive force.
“Get behind the truth. And I’m talking about the whole truth,” Monroe told jurors.
Rathbun reported a hand injury from a separate encounter with a rioter inside the Capitol. He didn’t report any injuries caused by Webster, but jurors saw photos of leg bruises that Rathbun attributed to his confrontation with the retired officer.
A Metropolitan Police Department detective who investigated said Rathbun didn’t recall his encounter with Webster several days after the riot. Rathbun said seeing the body camera video refreshed his memory.
Webster faced counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer using a dangerous weapon; civil disorder; entering and remaining in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; disorderly and disruptive conduct in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; and engaging in an act of physical violence on Capitol grounds.
Webster retired from the NYPD in 2011 after 20 years of service, which included a stint on then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s private security detail. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1985 to 1989 before joining the NYPD in 1991.
More than 780 people have been charged with riot-related federal crimes. The Justice Department says more than 245 of them have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. More than 100 officers were injured.
Two other defendants testified at their trials. Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man who was convicted by a jury of obstructing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, said he was following orders from then-President Donald Trump. A judge hearing testimony without a jury acquitted Matthew Martin, a New Mexico man who said outnumbered police officers allowed him and others to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda doors.
Two riot defendants didn’t testify at their trials before jurors convicted them of all charges, including interfering with officers. One of them, Thomas Robertson, was an off-duty police officer from Rocky Mount, Virginia. The other, Texas resident Guy Wesley Reffitt, also was convicted of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee who acquitted Martin of all charges, also presided over a bench trial for New Mexico elected official Couy Griffin. McFadden convicted Griffin of illegally entering restricted Capitol grounds but acquitted him of engaging in disorderly conduct.
People wait for news of the release of relatives detained during the state of emergency in El Salvador, at the security perimeter of the Izalco prison in Izalco, El Salvador, on April 28, 2022. (photo: Jose Cabeza/Reuters)
Arbitrary Arrests, Short-Term Disappearances, Deaths in Custody
On April 24, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly extended the state of emergency for 30 days. The emergency provisions suspend the right to privacy, freedom of association and assembly, and some due process protections. The government of President Nayib Bukele requested the extension, contending that the state of emergency had helped address a wave of homicides by gangs, though the conditions leading to the violence persisted. According to the government, more than 20,000 people have been arrested since March 25, many for allegedly “belonging to an unlawful association.”
“During the first 30 days of Bukele’s state of emergency, we have seen evidence of arbitrary arrests of innocent people, some of them subjected to short-term enforced disappearances, and worrying deaths in custody,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, acting Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of protecting Salvadorans from gang violence, security forces are abusing the overly broad powers granted to them by Bukele’s allies in the Legislative Assembly, who have now opened the door to 30 more days of human rights violations.”
The preliminary findings by Human Rights Watch and Cristosal are based on 43 interviews with victims, their relatives, lawyers, and civil society members, as well as a review of corroborating photographs, judicial files, and medical records. Members of the Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), an international group of prominent forensic experts, provided expert opinion on some evidence of abuses.
As of April 26, the organizations were still analyzing evidence related to 180 additional reported cases, including dozens of reported arbitrary arrests identified by Cristosal.
Since March 25, police and soldiers have conducted dozens of raids, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, arresting thousands of people. In 34 of the 40 cases of abuse for which Cristosal and Human Rights Watch were able to obtain first-hand information, security forces had detained people at their homes or in the streets. In 20 cases, security forces had raided people’s homes without showing a warrant.
In most cases, witnesses said security agents did not show an arrest warrant to justify the detention, nor did they indicate why people were being detained. In 11 cases in which victims asked why they were being arrested, officers said they were “following the orders of their superiors.” In some cases, officers allegedly searched for tattoos on people’s bodies when detaining them, presumably for evidence of gang affiliation. Many people interviewed said that their relatives were not tattooed or had artistic tattoos unrelated to gangs.
In 12 of the 40 cases, witnesses saw security forces take photographs of the detainees. In some of these cases, the security forces later posted the photographs on social media, publicly accusing the detainees of being gang members or “terrorists” before they were taken before a judge.
In five cases, witnesses said that police or soldiers hit people as they were detained. In another five cases, police officers told detainees’ relatives that they were going to be detained if they did not “stop asking questions.” In almost all of the cases, witnesses said, detainees were taken to a nearby police station. Only 10 of those detained were allowed to see or talk with their families before being transferred to another police station or a prison. Twenty-four were held in incommunicado detention for days or weeks.
Relatives of detainees typically said they were not informed of the whereabouts of their loved ones. In five cases, relatives said, officers refused to provide information about the detainees’ whereabouts even when family members went from detention center to detention center to inquire. In 19 cases, relatives said they still do not know where their loved ones are being held and have been unable to communicate with them for days or weeks.
When authorities refuse to acknowledge a detention or conceal the whereabouts of a person taken into custody, no matter for how long, it constitutes an enforced disappearance, which is prohibited under international law, even during states of emergency. This leaves the disappeared person defenseless and the family facing levels of uncertainty and suffering that are inhumane and abusive, the groups said.
Human Rights Watch and Cristosal documented two cases of people detained during the state of emergency who died in custody. Salvadoran media outlets have reported three additional cases.
Elvis Josué Sánchez Rivera, a 21-year-old musician, died on April 19, following his arrest on April 3 in Santa María Ostuma. His family said he was arrested when he was on his way to play soccer with a friend. They said they did not know where Sánchez Rivera was after his arrest and were informed of his death on April 19 by hospital authorities. The authorities did not conduct an autopsy, his relatives said. A medical report says he had been transferred from a detention center and indicates that he died of “hypertension” and “sudden death.” Photographs of his body show bruises.
Rusudan Beriashvili and James Lin, members of the Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), analyzed the photos. They told Human Rights Watch and Cristosal that there “appear to be multiple lesions on different areas of the body that may have occurred during custody and may be the result of torture or other ill-treatment.” They said that the death was “suspicious” and that the reported lack of an autopsy was seriously concerning and run counter to international standards and widely accepted medical practice.
Walter Vladimir Sandoval Peñate, a 32-year-old agricultural worker, died on April 3. Police had arrested him on March 30, in La Trinidad. Relatives who witnessed the detention said police officers detained him claiming he belonged “to an unlawful association.” On April 3, his family went to the police station where he was detained to bring him food and water.
Officers told a relative that he should “return the next day early in the morning to speak with the public defender who was assigned to the case.” A few hours later, a person who works at a mortuary went to Sandoval Penate’s house and told his family he had died. A report by El Salvador’s Institute of Legal Medicine says he died due to “severe thorax trauma.” Photographs of his body show multiple bruises.
Many detainees appear to be under investigation for the crime of “belonging to an unlawful association.” Under the state of emergency, the authorities are not required to bring detainees before a judge until 15 days after arrest, as opposed to the 72-hour requirement established in the Salvadoran Constitution.
On April 21, Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said during a press interview that 5,900 of the more than 14,000 people detained by then had been charged with a crime and sent to pretrial detention. Only 17 people had been released after a court hearing, he said.
Dozens of children have been charged and sent to pretrial detention, according to several tweets by Delgado.
The large-scale detentions have most likely aggravated prison overcrowding. As of December 2020, Salvadoran prisons were 136 percent over capacity, with some holding more than six times the maximum number of prisoners allowed. On April 19, the Legislative Assembly passed a law to create new prisons.
On March 30, the Legislative Assembly passed legislation expanding mandatory pretrial detention to include all crimes committed by alleged gang members and allowing for these people to be held for an indefinite period before trial. The Assembly also lowered the age of criminal responsibility for children accused of the existing crime of belonging to “terrorist groups or any other criminal gang,” from 16 to 12 years. The new legislation allows prison sentences of up to 10 years for children ages 12 to 16 and of up to 20 years for children over 16.
Salvadoran authorities have an obligation to conduct thorough, prompt, and independent investigations into abuses and deaths in custody, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal said.
However, investigations face dauting, if not insurmountable, obstacles given the high number of detainees and the fact that there are virtually no independent institutions left to act as a check on executive power in El Salvador. In recent months, the pro-Bukele majority in the Legislative Assembly has packed the Supreme Court, replaced the attorney general with a government ally, and dismissed hundreds of low-level judges and prosecutors.
“The way to prevent these abuses is to end the state of emergency, ensure due process rights, and respect the independence of judges and prosecutors,” Taraciuk Broner said.
Plastic waste. (photo: Bigto/Getty Images)
California’s Attorney General is coming after Big Oil for causing the plastic pollution crisis and “deceiving” the public about recycling.
“Enough is enough. For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis,” Bonta said in a press release. “The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled, and the recycling rate has never surpassed 9%.”
As part of their investigation, the company has subpoenaed Exxon Mobil for its alleged role in the plastics crisis.
The press release attributes the plastics pollution crisis to the fossil fuel industry, which has sought to increase plastic production as demand for fuels has decreased amid the clean energy transition. Bonta’s office notes recent efforts to offload surplus shale gas supply by investing $208 billion across 351 projects within the fossil fuel industry for chemicals projects. That investment is part of a broader trend that’s seen annual global plastics production grow from 1.5 million tons in the 1950s to 300 million tons today, the announcement reads.
Along the way, responding to state and local legislatures’ attempts to pass plastic bans, the industry launched marketing campaigns to promote recycling. A 2020 investigation by NPR and Frontline that found that as early as the 1970s, members of the oil and gas industry had doubts that recycling plastic could “ever be made viable on an economic basis,” yet, spent millions urging consumers to recycle because “selling recycling sold plastic.”
One group at the fore of this marketing push is the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, comprised of petrochemical companies including Exxon, Mobil, DuPont, Chevron and Phillips 66, that spent “millions of dollars to combat the plastics ‘image’ problem” by taking out ads in major magazines lauding the benefits of recycling, an informational page on the California Attorney General’s website reads.
Today, 79 percent of plastic produced is landfilled and another 12 per cent is incinerated, according to a 2017 study in Science Advances that the announcement cites. Once landfilled, plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose.
“Every week, we consume the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic through the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe,” Bonta said in the release. “This first-of-its-kind investigation will examine the fossil fuel industry's role in creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis—and what laws, if any, have been broken in the process.”
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