The Philadelphia Police Department are set to fire 13 officers for offensive social media posts, which included homophobic and racist sentiments.
This discipline was the result of research done by by the Plain View Project. They published thousands of Facebook posts from jurisdictions around the country, including Philadelphia, in June.
Following the publication of these posts, the Philadelphia Police Department launched an internal investigations.
Overall, the department removed 72 officers from street duty. They gave 13 a 30-day suspension with the intent to formally dismiss them.
Four other officers received a 30-day suspension, three received no other formal discipline, and the rest received varying consequences from formal reprimands to 5-day suspensions.
What did the messages say?
Most of the messages reviewed were homophobic, racist, and Islamophobic in nature.
In one post from 2014, an officer wrote a suspect ‘should be taken out back and put down like the rabid animal he is’. More recently in February, a different officer commented on a news article about an alleged murderer and wrote: ‘Hang him.’
In other posts, officers described Islam as a ‘cult’ which glorified death.
Police Commissioner Richard Ross and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney held a press conference about the matter on Thursday (18 July).
Ross said the 13 officers set to be fired all made posts that advocated violence. He added every officer going forward will receive training about social media and off-duty behavior.
Kenney commented at the conference: ‘We have a duty to represent ourselves and our city. We will not allow this incident to break down the progress we have made and we pledge to do better.’
A project investigating police
A group of Philadelphia attorneys created Plain View Project in 2016. They formed the database when they learned numerous police officers made social media posts that ‘appeared to endorse violence, racism and bigotry’.
As a research project, Plain View identifies such posts.
‘We believe that these statements could erode civilian trust and confidence in police, and we hope police departments will investigate and address them immediately,’ the group states on its website.
Another two lawsuits were filed last week in California against the U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, Inc. by several dozen patients who claim the company withheld from the market for more than a decade a drug for treating HIV that it knew was safer and more effective than the drug it promoted during that period.
The two personal injury lawsuits accuse Gilead of intentionally continuing to promote the HIV medication tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), which was known to cause serious kidney and bone damage, so it could profit from the drug before its patent on the medication was to expire in 2015.
At the same time, the lawsuits charge, Gilead withheld from the market a far safer version of the drug called tenofovir alafenamide (TAF), which it knew would more effectively treat HIV without causing any of the serious side effects caused by TDF.
The lawsuits charge that many patients taking one of five Gilead HIV drugs for which TDF was a key component needlessly suffered debilitating and sometimes fatal kidney and bone damage as well as damage to their teeth. Also adversely impacted by TDF, the lawsuits claim, were HIV-negative people taking the Gilead drug Truvada, which contained TDF, as part of the HIV prevention regimen known as PrEP.
In response to these and as many as a dozen or more similar lawsuits filed by HIV patients and PrEP users in state and federal courts in California over the past two years, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation on Monday called on Gilead to create a $10 billion fund “for victims harmed by its TDF-based drugs.”
Michael Weinstein, executive director of AHF, the nation’s largest AIDS advocacy and HIV/AIDS patient care organization, said a large compensation fund would benefit both Gilead and the more than 1,000 patients that are plaintiffs in the multiple lawsuits against Gilead over the TDF issue.
“We had two goals in putting this out,” said Weinstein. “One was to underline the significance of the liability that they are facing based on their conduct,” which could amount to billions of dollars, he said referring to Gilead.
“And second of all is simply to plant the idea in Gilead’s mind that ultimately the best resolution of this is to compensate the people who were harmed,” Weinstein said.
“For years, Gilead represented its TDF-based medications as safe and effective, misleading Plaintiffs, their doctors, and the medical community into believing that no safer alternative design existed that would have saved Plaintiffs from TDF’s dangerous effects,” says one of the two lawsuits filed July 12 in Alameda County, Calif., Superior Court.
“Indeed, it was Gilead that discovered and helped develop the safer design around the same time it developed TDF in the mid to late 1990s,” the lawsuit says. “Gilead, however, shelved TAF, the safer design, in 2004. Gilead marketed and sold only the dangerous and less effective design – TDF and TDF-based combination pills – for approximately 15 years,” the lawsuit continues.
“Then, when its monopoly on those TDF drugs was about to expire, Gilead sought and received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell, and market TAF-based drugs, allowing it to extend its exclusivity on tenofovir and keep its HIV drugs branded and priced high to increase its profits,” the lawsuit says.
A spokesperson for Gilead Sciences didn’t immediately respond to an email and phone message from the Blade asking the company to comment on this and other similar lawsuits filed against it during the past two years over the TDF and TAF drug allegations.
Gilead’s attorneys disputed the allegations that the company failed to adequately alert patients and doctors of the adverse side effects of TDF in a July 10 motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a motion calling for the court to dismiss yet another lawsuit filed against it over the TDF-TAF issue.
That case, Adrian Holley, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc., was filed in March 2018 and is one of several TDF-related cases filed against Gilead in federal court in California.
In its motion to dismiss, Gilead argues that plaintiffs have failed to provide sufficient evidence that “newly acquired information” surfaced to that would have allowed Gilead to “strengthen warnings contained in TDF medication labeling after 2008.”
Gilead has stated in the past it has included warnings about possible harmful side effects of TDF for people who have a history of kidney or bone related ailments. The lawsuits, however, have charged the company with failing to issue an alert that TDF could cause serious kidney and bone damage for people who did not have a history of kidney or bone related problems.
‘Plaintiffs still have not alleged, inter alia, facts supporting when they or their doctors were exposed to any alleged misrepresentations, what misrepresentations they or their doctors were exposed to, or if or how their or their doctors’ conduct changed based on any such misrepresentations, as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures 8(a) and 99(b),” Gilead attorneys state in their motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit.
The motion to dismiss makes no mention of the other key allegation in this and the other lawsuits – that Gilead withheld the release of the safer HIV drug TAF to enable it to reap its profits from TDF until its patent on that drug expired in 2015.
The lawsuit filed on July 12 in Alameda County, entitled Gary Smith, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc. includes 41 plaintiffs who are seeking financial compensation for damages of an as yet undeclared amount on grounds that Gilead violated “Strict Products Liability – Failure to Warn” requirements; engaged in “Negligence and Gross-Negligence—Design Defect and Failure-to-Warn” related to the harmful effects of TDF; Fraud; and “Breach of Express and Implied Warranty.”
The Smith v. Gilead lawsuit was filed five days after a separate lawsuit accusing Gilead of the same allegations of failing to adequately alert patients to the harmful side effects of TDF and withholding the release of the safer drug TAF was filed in San Diego County Superior Court under the case name Timothy Williams, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc., et al.
“This case is a shocking example of corporate greed,” said Elizabeth Graham, one of the lead attorneys with Grant & Eisenhofer, an Oakland, Calif.-based law firm that filed the San Diego case on behalf of the plaintiffs it is representing.
“Gilead owed its consumer patients the safest possible drug, but opted to withhold that drug from the market in the name of profit,” Graham said in a statement.
Liza Brereton, an attorney with HIV Litigation Attorneys, a law firm created to focus on personal injury and class action lawsuits filed against Gilead related to TDF, said judges with the multiple California state courts in which the pending lawsuits against Gilead have been filed have scheduled a hearing in Los Angles for July 30 in which the cases were expected to be consolidated into one large case.
“So it’s taken a while but pretty soon we’ll be all in front of one judge in one court and things will be moving pretty quickly,” Brereton said.
She said the cases in federal courts will continue as separate cases.
On Wednesday (10 July), a group of 30 LGBTI advocates sent a letter to dozens of tech companies, urging them to stop donating to anti-LGBTI politicians.
These companies include Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Dell, T-Mobile, and Amazon.
Tell me more
According to Buzzfeed News, the group Zeros for Zeros analyzed the contribution data between 2010 and 2019 of the top-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index.
It found that 49 corporate PACs gave a combined $5,837,331 [€5,171,495.84] to members of Congress who received a rating of zero on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. This includes Texas Rep. Ted Cruz. Last year, Cruz introduced legislation that would make it legal for businesses and nonprofits to discriminate against same-sex couples.
‘These corporations create welcoming and safe environments for their LGBTQ employees and market to LGBTQ customers,’ Lane Hudson, campaign manager for Zero for Zeros, told Buzzfeed. ‘But they’re still giving to members of Congress who will make an America that is unsafe for all of us. And we want them to reconcile their values with their corporate giving.’
Companies like Google gave a combined $178,500 [€158,139.40] through their corporate PAC to anti-LGBTI politicians as well. Google has faced scrutiny for refusing to crack down on hate speech, and donated $10,000 [€8,859.35] to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. In 2014, Lee made statements in defense of religious liberty at the expense of LGBTI rights.
Brian Babin
PACs associated with Amazon, AT&T, Microsoft, and Dell gave about $15,000 [€13,289.02] total to Texas Rep. Brian Babin. Republican Babin previously called Obama’s policy on gender-neutral bathrooms ‘wrong’ and ‘misguided.’
‘The federal government should not be in the business of throwing common sense and decency out the window and forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who “identifies” as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five year-old girls,’ Babin said in a statement.
‘For over four decades we’ve been committed to the LGBTQ+ community and have led the way in adopting workplace policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,’ an AT&T representative told Buzzfeed. ‘We support candidates on both sides of the aisle who are addressing the issues that impact our business, our employees, and our customers. That doesn’t mean we support their views on every issue.’
Steve King
Microsoft, Google, AT&T, and T-Mobile are among the companies that, via their PACs, have donated thousands to Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King. King ran a successful campaign to oust three of the state’s Supreme Court judges after they ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution.
Amazon, Dell, Google, Microsoft, and T-Mobile did not reply to Buzzfeed’s request for comment.
‘We’re not asking for the moon,’ Hudson said. ‘We’re just asking them to not give money to the most anti-gay members of Congress. These companies are giving money to politicians who would undo all the progress they supported. It doesn’t make sense.’
Anything else?
This revelation comes after many responded skeptically to corporations participating in this year’s Pride. This phenomenon is known as Rainbow Capitalism. This is where, for the month of June, companies will pay lip service to the LGBTI community (for example, changing their logos to include the Pride flag) in a way to pander to LGBTI consumers.
A pioneering British mathematician whose codebreaking helped end World War II but was persecuted under anti-homosexuality laws is to be honored on British bank notes.
Alan Turing, credited by many as the father of modern computing, will be featured on the £50 ($63) note starting in 2021, the Bank of England said Monday.
“As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far-ranging and pathbreaking,” the bank’s governor, Mark Carney, said in a statement.
Turing’s work on codebreaking was instrumental in the Allied victory in World War II, and he was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1945.
However, he was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 for sexual relations with another man and avoided prison by accepting chemical castration.
His personal life became subject to intense scrutiny, with British security officials concerned his sexuality was a security risk.
Turing died June 7, 1954, of cyanide poisoning; a half-eaten apple was found beside his bed. An inquest recorded a verdict of suicide.
Turing was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013 after years of campaigning by the mathematician’s many supporters. The then-Justice Minister Chris Grayling labeled his conviction “unjust and discriminatory”.
The bank note will feature Turing’s signature and one of his quotes: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
Twenty-nine transgender women who are in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at a privately-run detention center in rural New Mexico have signed a letter in which they complain about the conditions in which they are living.
The trans women who are detained at the Cibola County Correctional Center signed the handwritten letter written in Spanish that is dated June 26. Trans Queer Pueblo, a Phoenix-based group that advocates on behalf of undocumented LGBT immigrants, provided a copy of it to the Washington Blade.
The letter says there is not “adequate” medical attention to “treat people with disabilities, people with HIV, skin infections” and there is “a lack of medications for many” trans women. The letter also states Cibola County Correctional Center staffers “psychologically and verbally” mistreat them.
“We are afraid of reprisals, but (we are) more afraid to be in this situation,” reads the letter.
Reporters visited trans unit on June 12
CoreCivic, a private company that was once known as the Corrections Corporation of America, operates Cibola County Correctional Center, a minimum-security men’s facility that is roughly 80 miles west of Albuquerque in Cibola County.
A unit for trans ICE detainees opened at the facility in 2017 after the agency’s contract with Santa Ana Jail in Orange County, Calif., which had a unit specifically for trans detainees, ended. The Cibola County Correctional Center also houses cisgender men who are in the custody of ICE, the U.S. Marshals and Cibola County.
Reporters from the Blade; the Associated Press; Univision and a television station in El Paso, Texas, on June 12 visited the unit. The tour, which ICE organized, took place less than 13 months after Roxsana Hernández, a trans Honduran woman with HIV who had been briefly detained at the Cibola County Correctional Center, died in ICE custody at an Albuquerque hospital.
The reporters, among other things, saw six trans detainees playing volleyball with a male staffer in an outdoor recreation area that was adjacent to the unit. The reporters did not tour the portion of the facility in which detainees are kept in solitary confinement.
Alejandra, a prominent trans rights activist from El Salvador who has been in ICE custody since 2017, is detained at the Cibola County Correctional Center. Alejandra is among those who signed the letter.
“This unit’s employees in recent days did activities that are only an opposite image of reality,” it reads.
The Blade has reached out to an ICE spokesperson for comment on the letter.
ICE officials have repeatedly defended its treatment of trans people who are in their custody.
A 2015 memorandum then-ICE Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Thomas Homan signed requires personnel to allow trans detainees to identify themselves based on their gender identity on data forms. The directive, among other things, also contains guidelines for a “respectful, safe and secure environment” for trans detainees and requires detention facilities to provide them with access to hormone therapy and other trans-specific health care.
Adrien Lawyer of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, an Albuquerque-based advocacy organization, on June 12 told the Blade his group “liaisons with ICE” on the treatment of the trans women who are in ICE custody at the Cibola County Correctional Center.
The Blade on June 11 visited the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, an Albuquerque-based group that advocates on behalf of immigrants, and spoke with three trans women who were previously detained in the facility. Inadequate medical care and bad food at the Cibola County Correctional Center are among the issues about which they complained.
From 2006-2011 Russia refused to register three LGBTI organizations. Those included Rainbow House, the Movement for Marriage Equality, and the Sochi Pride House.
Authorities refused to register the groups, arguing they would ‘destroy the moral values of society’ or ‘undermine [Russia’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity…by decreasing its population’.
While homosexuality is not illegal in Russia, the country introduced a ‘gay propaganda‘ law in 2013. It prevents the positive representation of LGBTI issue on any kind of media platform. The government argued it stopped the ‘promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors’.
The European Court of Human Rights had previously condemned the law. But this week fined the Russian government for refusing to register the groups.
The court ordered the government to pay representatives of each organization a combined total of US$40,400 (€36,000).
It ruled Russia’s actions were discriminatory and violated freedom of association.
‘Citizens should be able to form a legal entity in order to act collectively in a field of mutual interest… [it is] one of the most important aspects of the right to freedom of association, without which that right would be deprived of any meaning,’ the ruling read.
The court ruling went on: ‘The refusals to register the applicant organisations on the ground that they promoted LGBT rights cannot be said to be reasonably or objectively justified.’
‘[The decisions] touched upon the very core of the applicant organisations and affected the essence of the right to freedom of association.’
The global fight against AIDS is stalling due to lower investment, marginalized communities missing vital health services, and new HIV infections rising in some parts, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
More than half of all new HIV infections in 2018 were among sex workers, drug users, men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these groups, according to a report by UNAIDS. Many of those populations did not get access to infection prevention services, it said.
Progress in some countries has been “impressive,” the U.N. body’s report said, but others are seeing rising numbers of HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths.
It noted “worrying increases” in new infections in eastern Europe and central Asia, where HIV cases rose by 29 percent, as well as in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.
“Ending AIDS is possible if we focus on people not diseases,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Gunilla Carlsson.
She said now was the time to “create road maps for the people and locations being left behind (and) take a human rights-based approach to reaching people most affected by HIV.”
This would need greater political leadership, she said, starting with adequate and well-targeted investment.
Global funding for the AIDS fight dropped off significantly in 2018 – by nearly $1 billion – as international donors gave less and domestic investments did not grow fast enough to plug the gap. Around $19 billion was available for the AIDS response in 2018, UNAIDS said – falling $7.2 billion short of the total $26.2 billion it says is needed by 2020.
Globally in 2018, some 770,000 people died of AIDS and almost 38 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.
HIV cannot be cured but the infection can be kept in check by AIDS drugs known as antiretrovial treatment.
Around 23.3 million of the 37.9 million people with HIV worldwide currently get the AIDS drugs they need.
Around 1.7 million people were newly infected, the UNAIDS report said, a 16% decline since 2010, driven mostly by steady progress in parts of eastern and southern Africa.
South Africa, for example, has cut new HIV infections by more than 40% and AIDS-related deaths by around 40% since 2010.
But the report warned there is still a long way to go in many parts of eastern and southern Africa – the regions most affected by HIV.
The American dream to live in absolute freedom; safe from the threats, persecution, violence, psychological torture and even death the Cuban dictatorship has imposed on me because of my journalistic work fell apart in my hands as soon as I arrived in Louisiana. The Cubans here who are also seeking protection from the U.S. government welcomed me to the Bossier Parish Medium Security Facility with an ironic surprise. They opened their arms and told me, “Welcome to hell!”
I could hardly believe they have spent nine, 10 and even 11 months asking, waiting for a positive response from immigration authorities in their cases.
I was under the illusion that after an asylum official who interviewed me at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Center in Tutwiler, Miss., on March 28 determined I had a “credible fear of persecution or torture” in Cuba, one hearing with an immigration judge would be enough to obtain my conditional release and pursue my case in freedom as U.S. law allows. But I was wrong. The locals (here at Bossier) once again took it upon themselves to dash my hopes.
“Nobody comes out of Louisiana!” they proclaimed.
It only took a few minutes for my dream, like that of many others, to turn into a nightmare. The more than 30 migrants who arrived in Louisiana on the afternoon of May 3, coming from Mississippi after more than a month detained at Tallahatchie, were plunged into a deep depression that continues today. Only the tears under the blanket that nobody can see are able to ease my desperation for a few minutes and then I once again feel it in my chest when I think of my family in Cuba who continues to receive threats of jail and death from the Cuban dictatorship because of my work with “media outlets of the enemy.” This reality is the only thing that awaits me back there. I therefore see the situation in Louisiana and I am once again afraid. I cannot see an exit. Prisoner here, prisoner if I return to Cuba. I feel trapped.
Violation of their own laws
I realized a few days after I arrived in Louisiana the subjectivity of who makes the decisions matters, not objectivity or attachment to those who are being held. Louisiana feels like a lost piece of “gringo” geography at which nobody seems to look, or to the contrary, it is a coldly calculated strategy that triumphs on authoritarianism, abuse of power or intransigence. I don’t know what to think.
More than a few who have arrived here have come to the conclusion the U.S. has made migrants its new business. Keeping migrants in their custody for so long keeps hundreds of employees and lawyers in business, as well as generating huge profits for the prisons with which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts. It has become clear the government prefers to waste more than $60 a day per migrant than set us free under our own recognizance.
“Louisiana is an anti-immigrant state,” Arnaldo Hernández Cobas, a 55-year-old Cuban man whose asylum process has taken 11 months, tells me. “It is not possible for any of the thousands of people who go through the process to leave victorious.”
Hernández tells me ICE agents have not met with him once during his confinement and the deportation officer has never seen him.
“I don’t know if I am allowed to have bail,” he says. “Judge Grady A. Crooks affirms that we do not qualify for this and he does not give it to those who qualify for it because they can flee. This only happens in this state because migrants in other places are released and can pursue their cases on the outside after they make bail.”
Another way to obtain conditional freedom is through parole, a benefit the federal government offers to asylum petitioners who enter the country legally and are found to have a credible fear of suffering, facing persecution or being tortured in their countries of origin.
“To grant it, ICE asks for a series of questions that relatives should send to them, but what is happening is that they don’t give them enough time to do so,” says Arnaldo.
This is exactly what happened with me.
My family managed to send the documents the next day for my parole interview, which was scheduled for the following day. ICE nevertheless denied me parole because I did not prove “that I am not a danger to society.” I am sure they didn’t even take my case seriously.
There are stories that border on the absurd because many migrants have received their parole hearing notifications the same day they should have filed their documents. One therefore feels as though ICE mocks you to your face and your feelings of helplessness reach the max.
The awarding of parole is a new procedure ICE must complete, but it does not go beyond that. They use this and other crafty strategies to “stay good” in the eyes of the law and they therefore keep asylum seekers in custody for months. They bring them to hearings they will not win, pushing for the deportation of those who do not succumb to the pressure of confinement without properly assessing the risk to their lives that returning to their native countries would entail.
ICE is required to free us a few days after it grants parole, and we already know it doesn’t want to do this. Their goal is to keep us locked up at all costs.
“The cruel irony is that the majority of asylum seekers who follow the law and present themselves at official ports of entry don’t have to ask an immigration judge for their release from custody,” declared Laura Rivera, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that provides legal assistance to immigrants, in an article titled, “Stuck in ‘hell’: Cuban asylum seekers wither away in Louisiana immigration prisons.” “To the contrary, their only avenue to secure their freedom is to ask the same agency that detains them, the Department of Homeland Security.”
But DHS — as Rivera details in the article published by the Southern Poverty Law Center — is ignoring its mandate to consider requests for release in detail. And to the contrary it denies conditional release without justification.
“Men are kept hidden from the outside world, locked up and punished for defending their rights and are forced to bring their cases before immigration judges who deny them with rates of up to 100 percent,” affirmed Rivera.
Another of the process violations in Arnaldo’s case was he was assured where he was first detained that he could win his case along with that of his wife, “but when he came” to Louisiana the judge “told me this was not allowed, that each case is different.” Arnaldo’s life cannot be different from that of his wife because they have been together for 37 years. His wife has been free for nine months, but he remains behind bars. And so, it happens with mothers and sons, brothers and people who have identical cases. Once again, subjectivity determines a person’s fate.
During his hearing with Crooks, Arnaldo declared he feels “very uncomfortable” because he considers him an extremist.
“He said that he only recognizes extreme cases,” says Arnaldo. “Doors mean nothing to him. He describes himself as a deportation judge, not an asylum judge. In the entire time that I have been here nobody has won asylum, not even bail, only deportations.”
Conclusive proof of the judge’s extremism came one day when another judge ran the hearings and the migrants who presented their cases that morning received asylum. The example could not have been more illustrative.
Douglas Puche Moxeno, a 23-year-old Venezuelan man who has spent nine months in Louisiana, also said the detainees “did not receive more information on how the process should be followed and how one should do it.”
“I don’t know if they explained to us the ways to obtain a conditional release,” he says.
In relation to their hearings, Douglas says “the judge told me that he knew the real situation in Venezuela, but he did not grant me asylum because I am not an extreme case. He is waiting for someone to come to the United States without an arm or a leg to be accepted.”
The migrants in Louisiana are trying every way possible to be released. They have made these complaints on television stations and have even gone to Cuban American U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
“We have reached the point of filing a lawsuit against ICE,” Douglas explains. “A team of lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center have proposed a lawsuit seeking a reconsideration of parole. This is one of the most hopeful ways that we have to obtain freedom. If we are successful, the benefits will be for everyone.”
“Various protests to pressure authorities and to reclaim our rights as immigrants have been organized,” says Douglas. “Relatives, lawyers and various institutions have come together in Miami, Washington and even here in Louisiana to make ICE aware of the injustices that have been committed against us for more than a year.”
‘This is not your country’
Bossier is a jail deep in Louisiana, hidden in the woods that surround it. Each day inside of it is a constant struggle for survival that takes a huge toll on my physical, psychological and above all emotional capacities. More than 300 migrants live in four dorms in cramped conditions with intense cold and zero privacy.
My stay here reminds me of the school dorms in Cuba where we were forced to share smells, tastes and basic needs. Here we also share Hindu, African, Chinese, Nepali, Syrian and Central American migrants’ beliefs, cultures and ways of life.
My personal space is reduced to a narrow metal bed that is bolted to the floor, a drawer for my things and a thin mattress that barely manages to keep my spine separated from the metal, which sometimes causes back pain. The most painful thing, however, is the way the officers treat us. For “better or for worse,” you feel as though you are a federal prisoner.
“According to ICE, we are ‘detainees,’ not prisoners, but we have still suffered physical and psychological abuses,” says Arnaldo. “I remember one time when an official dragged a Salvadoran man to the hole for three days simply for eating in his bed. They don’t offer anything to us and they don’t talk to us, they yell. They wake you up by kicking the bed.”
“The slightest pretext is used to disconnect the microwave, the television or deny us ice, affirming this is a luxury and not a necessity,” alleges Arnaldo. “When we complain about these situations. They tell us, ‘This is not your country.’”
Smiles are not common inside the dorm. The faces of affliction and sadness predominate. Good news is almost always false and the frustration and stress this confinement causes us therefore returns.
“I feel very sad, afflicted here, as though I had killed someone because of the mistreatment that we receive, the place’s conditions,” declares Damián Álvarez Arteaga, a 31-year-old man who has spent 11 months as a prisoner in the U.S.
“Freedom is the most precious thing a human being has,” he adds. “I hope that I will receive a positive response to my case after spending so much time detained. We have demonstrated to the U.S. that we are truly afraid of suffering persecution or torture in Cuba.”
Hours in here seem to have no end: They stretch, they multiply, but they never shorten or pass quickly. Our only contact with the outside the world are telephone communications or video calls (at elevated prices) with relatives, friends or lawyers and sporadic trips to the patio to greet the son and take fresh air.
“In all of the time that I have been here, I have seen the son a few times and only for 15 minutes and this is because we have complained,” recalls Arnaldo.
The yard, as we also call it, is a small rectangle of fences and surveillance cameras with a cement surface at the center of it where some of us play soccer when they give us a ball. I roll the pants of my yellow uniform up to my knees to allow the sun to warm my extremities a bit while my eyes wander towards the lush forest that is a few meters away from me. I admire the sky, the few vehicles that are driving on the nearby highway and I take deep breaths of oxygen because I know I had just come out of the deep sea and desperately needed air to keep me alive.
“Everyday is the same here from the same food to the same activities,” says Douglas. “This prison does not have sufficient spaces to accommodate so many people for so long. We don’t have a library or family visits.”
‘Soup is currency’
My day at Bossier begins a bit before 5 a.m. With the call to “line-up,” I receive a plastic tray with my breakfast. Today is cereal day, low-fat milk, bread and a small portion of jelly. The menu is the same each day of the week. I always save part of it because there is nothing more to eat until midday.
“The food is not correct,” opines Damián. “My stomach is already used to that small portion. A piece of bread with hot sauce and some vegetables or mortadella cannot sustain an adult man, nor can it keep you in shape to resist such a stressful process.”
The last meal of the day is at 4 p.m., and because of this it is a fantasy to be in bed at 11 p.m. with a full stomach. I reduce the hunger pains with an instant soup to which I add some carrots and a hot dog that I steel for myself from the day’s meals.
Since I still have some money, I can buy soups and extra things to make Bossier’s bad food a little better. Bossier classifies those who don’t receive economic support from their families as “indigent” and they are forced to clean up for their fellow detainees in exchange for a Maruchan soup. Here soup is currency. Everything begins and ends with it, the savior of hungry nights.
“You can buy these and other things at elevated prices in the commissary, the only store to which we have access and for which we depend on everything,” says Damián.
Bossier’s medical services on the other hand are so basic that there is not even a doctor or nurse on call, nor is there an observation room for patients and consultations only take place from Monday to Friday.
“One who gets sick is put in punishment cells, isolated and alone, which psychologically affects us,” notes Arnaldo. “People sometimes don’t say they don’t feel well because they are afraid they will be sent to the ‘well.’ In extreme cases they bring you to a hospital with your feet, hands and waist shackled and they keep you tied to the bed, still under guard. I prefer to suffer before being hospitalized like that.”
Yuni Pérez López, a 33-year-old Cuban, experienced this unfortunate situation first hand. He was on the hole for six days because he had a fever.
“I felt as though I was being punished for being sick,” he says. “And even when the doctor discharged me, they kept me there. It was like being in an icebox: Four walls, a bed, a toilet and a light that never turns off. To leave from there I had to stop eating for an entire day to get the officials’ attention and they returned me to the dormitory.”
Bossier also leaves you chilled to the bone because we cannot use blankets or sheets to cover ourselves from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is not a question of esthetic or discipline because the officials are not interested in whether your bed is made well. The only thing that bothers them is when we are cover ourselves from the dorm’s intense cold.
The migrants interviewed by the Washington Blade are those who have been at Bossier the longest. They are all appealing Crooks’ decision not to grant them political asylum. I have not presented my case yet, so I am still a little hopeful that I will receive the protection of the U.S. Like them, I am trying to get used to this harsh reality and be strong, although most of the time sadness consumes me and erases positive thoughts.
The U.S. to me — like for many — does not represent a comfortable life, the newest car or McDonald’s. None of this will ever be able to fill the void of my family, friends or passionate love that I left behind. The U.S. represents the opportunity to LIVE, so I will hold on to it until the end.
Dozens of Pennsylvanians were geared to make history Monday evening by raising the pride flag for the first time over Reading City Hall. Yet minutes before the event was slated to begin, the city’s mayor, Wally Scott, prohibited council members and city employees via text message from hanging the flag.
“People were disappointed at first, then they just became angry,” Ben Renkus, president of the Reading Pride Celebration, the group that planned the event, told NBC News. “The event was at 4:45 p.m. and many people had to leave work early to attend.”
The flag ceremony coincided with Reading’s 13th annual LGBTQ Pride Celebration, which kicked off this past weekend. The pride flag was supposed to be flown until Sunday, the last day of the festivities.
Following Monday’s last-minute cancellation, Renkus said the group marched to a nearby park where Scott was known to hang out after work, but the mayor wasn’t there. The group now plans to attend the next city council meeting, which is scheduled to be held Monday, with their rainbow flags in hand to express their fury.
“What was supposed to be a proud and historical moment in history today for the City of Reading, the LGBTQ+ community and our allies, turned into a show of blatant, unacceptable discrimination,” the LGBT Center of Greater Reading wrote Monday in a statementposted to its Facebook page. “To those who were on the street today in support; and to those who were with us in spirit, we are resilient; we will continue the fight for our rights.”
Scott contends that anti-LGBTQ discrimination was not behind his decision to cancel the flag-raising ceremony. He said his decision was based on his belief that the rainbow pride flag is a political symbol, and flying it would be against city policy.
“It’s the policy not to put up or endorse movements,” Scott told NBC News. “Numerous people have come into the office asking to put up flags, and we just don’t do it.”
Scott said he’s been asked to put up a Confederate flag and a flag commemorating National Pot Smokers Day, among others.
Renkus does not agree with Scott’s interpretation of the rainbow pride flag, however, and said the flag “represents and validates a specific group of people.”
The rainbow flag has been a universal symbol of LGBTQ pride, equality and inclusion since June 1978, when it made its debut at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Renkus filed a formal complaint with the Human Relations Commission at Reading City Hall, alleging that Walker’s actions were discriminatory.
“The city has had LGBTQ protections in its ordinance since 2009, and we believe the mayor’s refusal to allow us to fly the flag goes against those protections,” Renkus said. “He’s also the first mayor in the Pride Celebration’s history to not attend any Pride events.”
Renkus is hoping for an apology and the ability to fly the pride flag, noting that flags of other countries and a POW/MIA flag have flown over City Hall in the past.
Donna Reed, a member of the Reading City Council, said the council followed protocol and said Scott showed no indication that he would cancel the original flag ceremony beforehand.
Scott, however, claimed he did not know about Monday’s flag ceremony until the afternoon of the event and insisted “nothing was done maliciously by me.”
“I have no objections with them holding the flag on the City Hall steps,” he said. “I just didn’t want to hang it up.”
News of the incident made its way to the state level, with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman calling on Scott to reconsider his decision. Fetterman also announced his plans to attend a pride event in Reading to show solidarity with the city’s LGBTQ community.
Three police officers in El Salvador have been charged with the murder of a transgender woman who was deported from the U.S.
The three police officers — Carlos Valentín Rosales, Jaime Giovanni Mendoza and Luis Alfredo — with El Salvador’s National Civil Police’s 911 System in San Salvador face charges of deprivation of liberty by an agent of authority and aggravated homicide as a hate crime in connection with Camila Díaz Cordova’s death earlier this year. The three men made their initial court appearance on July 5.
Díaz’s friend, Virginia Flores, told the Washington Blade Díaz was reported missing at the end of January.
Díaz was later found at Rosales National Hospital in San Salvador with multiple injuries. She died there on Feb. 3.
“I am not 100 percent satisfied, because we already know that organized crime, as opposed to common crime, is the most harmful here in El Salvador,” Flores told the Blade.
Flores, who had been close to Díaz since she moved to San Salvador from Santa María Ostuma in La Paz department in 2007. Flores said Díaz became part of her family.
“The police officers’ lawyers allege that Camila was on drugs, which is not true,” Flores told the Blade..
“She was not a person with problems, she kept to herself,” added Flores. “She didn’t even swear and she only drank at home, but to say that she was going to drink on the street … I don’t believe it.”
Asociación ASPIDH Arcoiris Trans in a statement demanded prosecutors use the reformed penal code to ensure this crime does not go unpunished and serves as an example to state agents. The trans Salvadoran advocacy group also demanded prosecutors apply the reformed penal code to every hate crime committed against trans women and members of the LGBTI community.
Díaz deported from US in 2017
Díaz asked for asylum in the U.S. because of violence against LGBTI Salvadorans and the government’s reluctance to defend their rights. The U.S. deported Díaz in 2017.
“The Salvadoran government owes a lot to all of these families who have lost a loved one who was part of the LGBTI community or specifically a trans woman,” Flores told the Blade. “Trans women, out of everyone in the LGBTI community, are the most stigmatized, the most discriminated because the same LGBTI community sometimes discriminates against us.”
LGBTI activists have reacted to the officers’ arrest positively, even though the case will generate uncertainty.
“I think that this symbolizes a big advance in the issue of access to justice, which is one of the most (tenuous issues) for the LGBTI community in El Salvador, especially for trans women who have been targeted for murder and disappearances since the 1990s,” says ASPIDH Arcoiris Trans Programs Coordinator Amalia Leiva.
The Díaz case has had its initial court hearing and will continue through the discovery case.
Flores says she hopes officers who have been arrested will not be released, even though the judge has ordered they remain in custody ahead of their next court appearance, which has not been scheduled. The officers face up to 66 years in prison if convicted of Díaz’s murder.
“I would expect that these people will not go free during the discovery phase, the case would continue to a final judgment, a trial, and that they will be convicted there,” said Flores.