Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
There are over 1,400 pits filled with toxic coal ash in the United States. And they’re starting to leak into the water supply… #YEARSproject with Earthjustice
There are over 1,400 pits filled with toxic coal ash in the United States. And they're starting to leak into the water supply… #YEARSproject with Earthjustice
Posted by War On Our Future on Monday, December 17, 2018
WAIT FOR IT… Little boy receives the “only Christmas gift he asked for” – his military dad returning home – and his reaction will melt your heart.
Boy's reaction to this Christmas gift will melt your heart
WAIT FOR IT… Little boy receives the "only Christmas gift he asked for" – his military dad returning home – and his reaction will melt your heart. ❤️❤️❤️
Posted by CBS News on Monday, December 17, 2018
Apropos of nothing, Donald Trump lashed out yesterday afternoon at his former personal attorney / “fixer”, unusual for an American president:
“Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?”
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, the FBI did not “break into” Michael Cohen’s office. Rather, federal law enforcement executed a court-approved search warrant.
That’s neither “unthinkable” not “unheard of.” It happens every day. Even Trump, for all of his limitations, should be at least vaguely aware of this.
What’s more, the president’s tweet was, as best as I can tell, the first time Trump has referred to anyone publicly as a “rat” – a label he used to condemn Cohen for cooperating with law enforcement.
So what we have here is a sitting president – who’s responsible for faithfully executing the nation’s laws, who appoints federal judges, and and who chose senior members of the Department of Justice, including the attorney general and FBI director – publicly condemning someone for cooperating with federal law enforcement, while simultaneously criticizing the FBI for executing a lawful search warrant.
In other words, the line between Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric and the dialog from villains in mob movies is getting uncomfortably blurred.
There is a degree of irony to all of this. To hear the president tell it at campaign rallies, he’s a great champion of law enforcement. In practice, however, Trump’s posture toward law enforcement tends to break down into three categories:
2. Trump opposes law-enforcement institutions: As recently as September, the president said he sees his conflict with the FBI as one of his “crowning achievements.” Trump added at the time that he sees some leaders who’ve served in federal law enforcement as “a cancer in our country.” He’s similarly referred to the DOJ as the “Department of ‘Justice’ ” – as if he believes the DOJ’s commitment to justice is in doubt – and called it “an embarrassment to our country!”
3. Trump expects the justice system to be a tool of his political agenda: This president hasn’t just undermined the judicial system by abusing his pardon powers, he’s also urged law enforcement to enforce his political vendettas – more than once – and help Republicans win elections.
In August, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg said of this president, “He’s doing nothing less than elevating gangster ideology to the status of high principle.”
That was nearly four months ago. Trump is, if anything, sounding even more like the head of a crime family now.
A new report shows growth of dollar stores in low-income and rural communities furthers inequity and pushes out local businesses.
Today, there are more dollar stores in the United States than all Walmarts and Starbucks combined. These low-priced “small-box” retailers, like Dollar General, offer little to no fresh food—yet they feed more Americans than either Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, and are gaining on the country’s largest food retailers.
Detailing the explosion of dollar stores in rural and low-income areas, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently released a report that shows how these retailers exacerbate economic and public health disparities. The report makes the case that dollar stores undercut small rural grocers and hurt struggling urban neighborhoods by staving off full-service markets.
ILSR also argues that the proliferation of dollar stores is the latest outgrowth of an increasingly concentrated grocery sector, where the top four chains—Walmart, Kroger, Ahold-Delhaize, and Albertsons—sell 44 percent of all groceries, and Walmart alone commands a quarter of the market. These dominant chain stores have decimated independent retailers and divested from rural and low-income areas, as well as communities of color.
A Dollar General in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Photo credit: Taber Andrew Bain)
“Earlier trends in big box store [growth] are making this opening for dollar stores to enter,” says Marie Donahue, one of the report’s authors. “We’re seeing a widening gap of inequality that’s a result of wealth being extracted from communities and into corporate headquarters… Dollar stores are really concentrating in communities hit hardest by the consequences of economic concentration.”
“Before this report, I had no idea that dollar stores were proliferating in this way,” says Dr. Kristine Madsen, Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. But, she adds, “it doesn’t surprise me that these incredibly cheap stores may be the only choice for people [who] may be choosing between medicine and rent and food.”
Dollar General did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
Two companies, Dollar Tree (which acquired Family Dollar in 2015) and Dollar General, have expanded their footprint from just under 20,000 stores in 2010 to nearly 30,000 stores in 2018, with plans to open yet another 20,000 stores in the near future. Dollar General alone opens roughly three stores a day.
Most of these new stores are in urban and rural neighborhoods where residents don’t often have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2015, in fact, Dollar Tree and Dollar General represented two-thirds of all new stores in “food deserts,” defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as low-income areas where a third or more of residents live far from a full-service grocery store. Dollar General predominantly targets rural areas, though it s beginning to compete with Family Dollar, which is ubiquitous in urban food deserts.
Profiting off these left-behind places is baked into dollar stores’ business plan. In 2016, low-income shoppers represented 21 percent of Dollar General’s customers but 43 percent of their sales. Dollar General executives publicly described households making under $35,000 and reliant on government assistance as their “Best Friends Forever.” When discussing growing rural-urban inequality, Dollar General’s CEO said “the economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” i.e., more struggling rural families.
Some, including dollar-store executives themselves, argue that a low-cost retailer seeking to go where no one else will benefits underserved communities. But ILSR argues that dollar stores are not a true solution to hunger or food insecurity. Furthermore, the group says, they do nothing to promote food sovereignty, or people’s right to control the production and distribution of their own food.
Inside a Dollar General store in Eldred, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Random Retail)
“To the extent that dollar stores are filling, in some ways, a need in communities, I think that is true in the short term,” says Donahue. “But really our research is demonstrating … those foods aren’t as good quality as full-service grocers or independent local stores, which may be able to connect to local farmers and the larger food system.”
Dollar stores sell predominantly shelf-stable and packaged foods. Four-hundred-and-fifty Dollar General locations are experimenting with an expanded refrigerator section to respond to a demand for more fresh fruits and vegetables. But, to date, the fresh and frozen offerings that do exist in these stores consist of processed meats, dairy products, and frozen meals. In other words, customers don’t have the same wide selection as they do in a traditional full-service grocery store.
“Grocery stores have more variety and a higher quantity of healthy foods than do dollar stores,” says Dr. David Procter, director of the Rural Grocery Initiative, a program of Kansas State University’s Center for Engagement and Community Development.
Despite their reputation, dollar stores don’t provide the best deals either. They often sell products in smaller quantities to keep a low price tag and draw in cash-strapped buyers. But when comparing per-ounce prices to a traditional grocery store, dollar store customers tend to pay more. Reporting by The Guardian found that the prorated cost of dollar store milk cartons comes to $8 per gallon, for example.
Dollar store customers do, however, find genuine value in things like greeting cards, pasta, coat hangers, and other everyday home goods. But this very cost-cutting is what makes dollar stores uniquely brutal competitors for smaller independent grocers.
“There’s very little money made on all kinds of segments of the [independent] grocery store, but where [grocers] do make their most money … is in paper goods and dry goods,” explains Procter. “That is really the heart of Dollar General … and it’s cutting into the largest profit area of the grocery store, that’s the real challenge.”
By sucking away this source of revenue, dollar stores tend to drive out the few independent grocers that remain, especially in rural areas. ILSR’s report found that “it’s typical for sales [at local grocery stores] to drop by about 30 percent after a Dollar General opens.”
Additionally, a survey by the Rural Grocery Initiative found that competition from large chain stores is the single largest challenge facing independent rural grocers. In the ’90s, Walmart was their main challenger; now Dollar General is moving in where even Walmart wouldn’t go, pushing out more local businesses.
Residents lose more than fresh foods when their local grocery store disappears. They lose jobs, local investment, and a voice in their food choices.
According to federal data, small independent grocers employ nearly twice as many people per store when compared to dollar stores. “When you have a hometown grocer owned by people who are committed to that community, not only are all the decisions made locally, but all of the profits stay in that town,” says Procter. “Some of the money that’s being generated in Dollar General stores is going to their headquarters in Tennessee, and the decisions about whether or not that [store] stays open or what they offer is being made by out-of-state corporate decision makers.”
A Dollar Tree store in Cheshire, Conn. (Photo credit: Mike Mozart)
In addition to undercutting existing stores, the proliferation of dollar stores can shut out new entrants. This is a particular concern in low-income urban areas and communities of color. ILSR’s report features the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s a 14-year life expectancy gap between residents in the predominantly Black north Tulsa neighborhood and residents in the predominantly white south Tulsa neighborhood. ILSR found that dollar stores have “concentrated in [Tulsa] census tracts with more African American residents,” and community members are not happy about it.
“I don’t think it’s an accident they proliferate in low socio-economic and African American communities,” Tulsa City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper told ILSR. “That proliferation makes it more difficult for the full-service, healthy stores to set up shop and operate successfully.”
However, Tulsa’s story also provides a glimpse of hope into what some communities can do to halt the invasion of dollar stores. Hall-Harper worked to pass zoning ordinances that would limit dollar store development and encourage full-service grocers to set up shop. She rallied residents to protest the opening of a new Dollar General and join city council meetings to show support for a temporary dollar store moratorium. City council passed the moratorium and the zoning changes seven months later. North Tulsa will soon have a new grocery store, operated by Honor Capital, a veteran-owned company that has a food-access mission. Rural communities in Kansas have similarly organized and leveraged city council to halt a proposed Dollar General.
“It’s great to see a community really fight for this ordinance and show up to public meetings and hearings and challenge those traditional systems that would have just approved development for more dollar stores in the area,” says Donahue.
“You say you love your children above all else, yet you are stealing their futures right before their very eyes,” – This 15-year-old activist just called out world leaders for their global inaction on climate change.
15-year-old Climate Activist Calls Out World Leaders for Inaction
"You say you love your children above all else, yet you are stealing their futures right before their very eyes," – This 15-year-old activist just called out world leaders for their global inaction on climate change.
Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Friday, December 14, 2018
Now an innocent seven-year-old girl has died of medical neglect because of Trump’s sadism at the border. If there’s a Hell…
December 14, 2018
The Senate ‘puts the ‘fun’ in ‘dysfunction”
Claire McCaskill Says There Are ‘Too Many Embarrassing Uncles’ in Senate in Farewell Remarks
Claire McCaskill Says There Are 'Too Many Embarrassing Uncles' in Senate in Farewell Remarks
Some seriously tough love from Sen. Claire McCaskill as she prepares to leave office: '[The Senate] just doesn't work as well as it used to.'
Posted by NowThis Election on Friday, December 14, 2018
If you’ve read about the puppy who saved his owner from a rattlesnake, or the dog who waits at a train station for 12 hours a day for his human to come home from work, you know that the love of these magical creatures knows no bounds.
However, if you have any doubts, allows us to direct your attention to a touching photo recently shared on Facebook by Cris Mamprim, a healthcare worker at Hospital Regional Alto Vale in Brazil.
At around 3 a.m. last Sunday, the hospital admitted a homeless man named César, who needed to be treated for some medical issues. When the hospital staff looked at the door, they saw a group of faithful dogs, anxiously standing at the periphery to make sure their human was all right.
Even though César is homeless, he still cares for the dogs, and that care is infinitely reciprocated, because there’s no such thing as unrequited love in the world of a dog. Mamprim wrote on Facebook:
“A simple person, without luxury, who depends on help to overcome the hunger, the cold, the pain, the evils of the world, has by his side the best companions, and the exchange is reciprocal. Exchange of love, affection, warmth, understanding. A person who confessed to us that he sometimes goes hungry in order to feed them. I don’t know what his life is like, because he’s on the street, and I don’t even want to know and judge him, but I admire the respect and love he has for [his dogs]. Seeing them like this, waiting on the door, just shows how loved and cared for they are.”
The staff invited the dogs inside, and fed both César and his canine crew. An hour later, he was discharged from the hospital, and while there’s no telling what the rest of his life will be like, you can be sure the dogs will be by his side. And for another amazing story about canines, read about this patient dog who went viral for politely obeying a cafe’s “no dogs allowed” rules.
“Secretary of the Interior @RyanZinke will be leaving the Administration at the end of the year after having served for a period of almost two years,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation.” The president said he would name a replacement this coming week.
Mr. Zinke is the latest Trump official to exit an administration plagued by questions of ethical conflict. And his departure comes as Mr. Trump has begun a shake-up in his administration. In early November, the president fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and last weekend he announced that his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, was leaving.
In one of the final acts of Mr. Kelly’s tenure, his team told Mr. Zinke that he should leave by year’s end or risk being fired in a potentially humiliating way, two people familiar with the discussion said.
Mr. Trump has been looking at replacing a number of other cabinet officials. He has been telling associates for weeks that the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, will be leaving now that the midterm elections are over, and he has also frequently complained about Betsy DeVos, the education secretary. The homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, is also seen as likely to depart soon.
But Mr. Trump is aware that the confirmation processes for any new nominees are likely to be more contentious in the second half of his term, as he faces re-election.
Mr. Zinke, a former Montana congressman and member of the Navy SEAL’s best known for riding an Irish sport horse through Washington on his first day in office, oversaw mineral extraction and conservation on roughly 500 million acres of public land. He had become the subject of several federal investigations, one of which his department’s top watchdog has referred to the Justice Department, a potential step toward a criminal investigation.
The inquiries include an examination of a real estate deal involving Mr. Zinke’s family and a development group backed by the Halliburton chairman, David J. Lesar. Mr. Zinke stood to benefit from the deal, while Mr. Lesar’s oil services company stood to benefit from Mr. Zinke’s decisions on fossil fuel production.
Mr. Zinke has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. “I love working for the President and am incredibly proud of all the good work we’ve accomplished together,” he said on Twitter. “However, after 30 years of public service, I cannot justify spending thousands of dollars defending myself and my family against false allegations.”
Mr. Trump had tolerated the seemingly endless drips of scandal surrounding Mr. Zinke in part because he liked him personally and in part because his focus on the cabinet was concentrated on his desire to oust Mr. Sessions.
At the same time, though, Mr. Trump disliked the bad press that was amassing for Mr. Zinke, given how it reflected on him personally. And as the incoming House Democratic majority made clear that Mr. Zinke would be a prime target, Mr. Trump’s aides convinced him that the time had come to shove out Mr. Zinke.
A few months ago, the White House Counsel’s Office indicated to some West Wing aides that officials would be less likely to be subpoenaed by the new House majority if they left before the new Congress was sworn in in January. That has helped speed up the departures of several.
“This is no kind of victory, but I’m hopeful that it is a genuine turning of the page,” said Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, who as the incoming chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee has repeatedly tangled with Mr. Zinke. He added, “The next interior secretary should respect the American people’s desire for strong environmental standards and an end to corporate favoritism.”
Mr. Zinke’s exit follows that of the other major architect of the Trump administration’s environmental policies, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Pruitt, also known for his aggressive rollback of environmental regulations, resigned in July amid questions about alleged spending abuses, first-class travel and cozy relationships with lobbyists. Among other actions, Mr. Pruitt came under fire for reaching out to the chief executive of Chick-fil-A with the intent of helping his wife open a franchise.
Beyond examining the real estate deal, the Interior Department’s inspector general had faulted Mr. Zinke for allowing his wife, Lola, to travel in government vehicles, contrary to department policy, and chided him for using $12,000 in taxpayer money to take a charter plane after a talk to a hockey team owned by one of his biggest donors.
The inspector general has also been examining the secretary’s decision to block two Native American tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut after his office received heavy lobbying from MGM Resorts International. The entertainment giant had been planning its own casino not far from the proposed tribal one.
Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said Mr. Zinke’s actions had sometimes been overshadowed by Mr. Pruitt’s more obvious fumbles. That let the secretary operate in an “ethical Wild West,” she said.
“There are these laws and these ethical norms that are being blown to bits by these cabinet secretaries,” Ms. Marsco said. “And that’s the pattern, the problem, that keeps us up at night.”
Since President Trump’s inauguration, White House staffers and cabinet officials have left in firings and resignations, one after the other.
The federal investigations follow several other examinations of Mr. Zinke’s behavior. He has been criticized for claiming on dozens of occasions that he is a geologist, though he has never held a job as one. When he was a candidate for Congress, campaign finance experts questioned whether it was legal for him to benefit from a super PAC that he had created. And as a Navy SEAL, he admitted to improperly billing the government $211 for a trip home to Montana, something that two admirals told The New York Times prevented him from rising to senior levels in the Navy.
Mr. Zinke’s resignation, rather than an end to his pro-fossil fuel policies, quite likely signals a passing of the playbook. Mr. Zinke’s deputy, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, is expected to step in as acting head of the department.
Mr. Zinke, 57, grew up in Whitefish, Mont., a timber and tourism town at the edge of Glacier National Park. When he took charge of the Interior Department, he promised that his youth in the West would help him balance conservation and extraction on the land in his care. Much of that land is in the West, and it includes the national parks and monuments that have become the nation’s environmental icons.
With his flashy leadership style and aggressive approach to deregulation, Mr. Zinke had largely escaped the public thrashing that Mr. Trump has directed at other cabinet members. But in recent weeks the president had signaled that the secretary’s tenure might be coming to end, possibly as a result of the ethics inquiries.
“I do want to study whatever is being said,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Nov. 7, referring to the investigations into Mr. Zinke. “I think he’s doing an excellent job, but we will take a look at that, and we’ll probably have an idea on that in about a week.”
Mr. Zinke was considered a surprise choice for the position. He had reportedly gained favor with Donald Trump Jr., because, like the president’s son, he is an avid game hunter.
He ran the office with a swaggering flair that won him the admiration of the president and conservative Westerners, many of whom applauded his effort to move major department operations to places like Denver or Boise, Idaho. But his style also drew derision from the environmental community and the quiet mockery of many career staff members in his own agency.
In Washington, he flew a special interior secretary flag above the Interior building when he was present, and he often skipped a coat and tie for fishing shirts and boots. Beyond the capital, he hiked and rode across landscapes in a cowboy hat, even as he pushed plans to drastically reduce monument boundaries.
In June, Politico reported that Mr. Lesar, the Halliburton chairman, was lending financial backing to a major development in Mr. Zinke’s hometown, Whitefish, that would significantly raise the value of property owned by Mr. Zinke. The development would include a hotel, shops and a brewery, and Mr. Zinke’s wife had pledged in writing to allow the developer to build a parking lot that would help make the project possible. The land for the potential lot is owned by a foundation created by Mr. Zinke.
Because Halliburton is the nation’s largest oil services company, and because Mr. Zinke regulates the oil industry on public land, the deal raised questions as to whether it constituted a conflict of interest. Mr. Zinke’s schedule also showed that he had hosted Mr. Lesar and a developer involved with the hotel-brewery project in his secretarial office in 2017.
In response, three Democrats sent a letter to the Interior Department’s top watchdog, Mary L. Kendall, requesting an investigation into whether Mr. Zinke had used his position as secretary for personal financial gain. In July, Ms. Kendall complied, opening an investigation. In October, her department forwarded at least one inquiry to the Justice Department.
Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for Mr. Zinke, has said that the secretary did nothing wrong and that he resigned from his charitable foundation’s board of directors before the deal was made.
Before Mr. Zinke joined the Trump administration, he often called himself a conservative conservationist. But as secretary, he quickly became one of the chief proponents of Mr. Trump’s energy-first agenda, promoting policies that seek to open the East Coast to offshore drilling, weaken the standards of the Endangered Species Act and shrink two national monuments, constituting the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.
Last year under Mr. Zinke, the United States offered up 12.8 million acres of federally controlled oil and gas parcels for lease, triple the average offered during President Barack Obama’s second term, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
These policies won Mr. Zinke favor with Mr. Trump, who had made promotion of the fossil fuel industry a key part of his campaign platform, as well as from the oil and gas companies that had increasingly made up Mr. Zinke’s donor base as a Montana politician.
His policies have angered environmentalists, who have filed lawsuits trying to block these plans. Many have argued that Mr. Zinke has turned his back on the nation’s environmental heritage just as dire news about climate change has made land, water and air protection increasingly urgent.
The likely replacement by Mr. Bernhardt of his former boss in an acting capacity echoes events that followed the resignation of Mr. Pruitt at the E.P.A. Mr. Pruitt, once a favorite of Mr. Trump’s for many of the same reasons as Mr. Zinke, was replaced in an acting capacity by his deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist with a low profile and a deep knowledge of the agency he ran and the regulations he sought to undo.
While Mr. Zinke spent his tenure as the face of many of the Trump administration’s efforts, many on the inside saw Mr. Bernhardt as the effective manager who was able to push policies through. Mr. Bernhardt, with years of experience in the George W. Bush administration, and as a former lawyer and lobbyist for some of the nation’s largest oil companies, brings a deep insider’s knowledge to his job that Mr. Zinke lacked. His former legal clients included the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Halliburton.
Since his Senate confirmation last summer, Mr. Bernhardt has generated criticism from environmental and government watchdog groups that his new role will create a conflict of interest, as he oversees proposals that could directly benefit his former clients.
Maggie Haberman and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — A 7-year-old girl who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her father last week died after being taken into the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, federal immigration authorities confirmed Thursday.
The Washington Post reports the girl died of dehydration and shock more than eight hours after she was arrested by agents near Lordsburg, New Mexico. The girl was from Guatemala and was traveling with a group of 163 people who approached agents to turn themselves in on Dec. 6.
It’s unknown what happened to the girl during the eight hours before she started having seizures and was flown to an El Paso hospital.
In a statement, Customs and Border Protection said the girl had not eaten or consumed water in several days.
The agency did not provide The Associated Press with the statement it gave to the Post, despite repeated requests.
Processing 163 immigrants in one night could have posed challenges for the agency, whose detention facilities are meant to be temporary and don’t usually fit that many people.
When a Border Patrol agent arrests someone, that person gets processed at a facility but usually spends no more than 72 hours in custody before they are either transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or, if they’re Mexican, quickly deported home.
The girl’s death raises questions about whether border agents knew she was ill and whether she was fed anything or given anything to drink during the eight-plus hours she was in custody.
Immigrants, attorneys and activists have long raised issues with the conditions of Border Patrol holding cells. In Tucson, an ongoing lawsuit claims holding cells are filthy, extremely cold and lacking basic necessities such as blankets. A judge overseeing that lawsuit has ordered the agency’s Tucson Sector, which patrols much of the Arizona-Mexico border, to provide blankets and mats to sleep on and to continually turn over surveillance footage from inside the cells.
The Border Patrol has seen an increasing trend of large groups of immigrants, many with young children, walking up to agents and turning themselves in. Most are Central American and say they are fleeing violence. They turn themselves in instead of trying to circumvent authorities, many with plans to apply for asylum.
Agents in Arizona see groups of over 100 people on a regular basis, sometimes including infants and toddlers.
Arresting such groups poses logistical problems for agents who have to wait on transport vans that are equipped with baby seats to take them to processing facilities, some which are at least half hour north of the border.
The death of the 7-year-old comes after a toddler died in May just after being released from an ICE family detention facility in Texas, and as the administration of Donald Trump attempts to ban people from asking for asylum if they crossed the border illegally. A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked that ban, but the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate it Tuesday.
Cynthia Pompa, advocacy manager for the ACLU Border Rights Center, said migrant deaths increased last year even as the number of border crossing dropped.
“This tragedy represents the worst possible outcome when people, including children, are held in inhumane conditions. Lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP have exacerbated policies that lead to migrant deaths,” Pompa said.