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Fresh out of the academy yet still very much an agent-in-training, Chancy Arnold was finally being given a little range.

He and his partner were told to drive on the border road east, familiarize themselves with the rolling hills and unmarked trails that would become their new office.

As they approached the base of Otay Mountain in San Diego County, they came upon a man lying face down in the dirt. About 50 yards to the south, a flimsy barbed wire fence denoted the U.S.-Mexico border.

Strange, Arnold thought, does he really think hes hiding from us?

The agents yelled at the man: Get up, we can see you!

He remained still.

Closer inspection revealed the grisly truth: Someone had driven the migrant through the border, ordered him to the ground and put a bullet in the back of his head.

Even as a rookie, Arnold thought he had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to be a Border Patrol agent. His father had worn the same olive green uniform for as long as he could remember. But the discovery that day was a shock and a glimpse of the ruthless landscape he was now part of.

That was 1985, and Arnold is now nearing 35 years with the agency, making him the longest-serving Border Patrol agent in the nation.

The border has changed considerably in that time.

Arnold has watched the terrain transform into one of fences and roads, surveillance cameras and sensors. Hes seen migration patterns turn from single Mexican men to unaccompanied children and asylum-seeking families.

Hes had to acknowledge the humanity and desperation of the people he encounters while enforcing the laws and policies hes sworn to uphold.

Most agents retire after 20 to 25 years. But Arnold always planned to work until the Border Patrol made him leave. That will be in July, when he turns 57.

Since Day 1, Arnold said, I was going to work until the end.

Arnold was just shy of 3 years old when his father left his job as a roughneck on a Montana oil rig and joined the Border Patrol in 1965. The Arnolds left the northern plains for the dusty borderlands of El Centro.

The year his father joined was a turning point on the southwestern border. The U.S. bracero program, which had sanctioned agricultural labor by Mexican migrants, had just been shut down. And the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 for the first time restricted legal immigration from the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico, while opening it up to Asia and Africa. Preference was given to those with U.S. citizen family members or desirable skills and professions.

But demand for Mexican labor didnt end, and soon migration that once might have been legal was now illegal, creating a large new population of unauthorized immigrants.

The El Centro sector apprehended some 5,300 migrants in 1965, a figure that more than doubled over the next five years. In neighboring San Diego, apprehensions rose to 50,600 over the same period.

It wasnt until Arnold was around 21 that he could imagine carving his own path as an agent.

What the Border Patrol represented securing our borders, securing our nation appealed to me at the time, he recalled. It also provided for a long-term career, no college degree needed, and the chance to work outdoors.

Quite honestly, he said, it was what I knew.

On a recent Friday, Arnold made the familiar trek to Arnies Point, a vista overlooking what used to be one of the most heavily trafficked illegal border crossings.

It looks nothing like it did when he was a mop-top rookie.

But gazing down, Arnold with a military-style crew cut now turned silver was looking decades into the past.

He could see thousands of migrants gathering in a soccer field that has since been filled in by dirt. He could see the vendors in the festival-like atmosphere selling last-minute provisions before the nightly surge north. And he could see agents running through the scrub brush in pursuit.

Catch who you can, process them at the station, come back for more. Repeat. That was the pace back in those days.

In 1985, San Diego accounted for more than 427,000 of the southwest borders 1.2 million apprehensions, the most of any sector.

Just like when his father joined the agency, the southwestern border was at another turning point. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act sought to stem the rising illegal flow by authorizing a 50% increase in Border Patrol staffing and toughening criminal laws against employers. At the same time, it provided a pathway for amnesty for some longtime migrant residents, giving them a chance at legal status.

But illegal immigration continued to grow.

And the increased manpower was slow to materialize. It wasnt until 1994 that the roughly 3,000 agents nationwide in the mid-1980s grew to 4,200, according to Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which gathers federal data.

About 140 of those agents were assigned to Brown Field station when Arnold began. Their coverage area stretched from just east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry to Otay Mountain.

It was from here that Arnold departed each evening, armed with a six-shooter revolver, six to 12 spare bullets, handcuffs and a radio. Agents patrolled in American-made SUVs.

The border fence then was nothing more than barbed wire or cable strung between poles. It didnt stop foot traffic from coming north. Rather, it was meant to stop vehicle loads of drugs or people. It worked sometimes.

Working the swing shift, thered be eight or nine vehicle chases going on at the same time, Arnold recalled. Itd be like a dog fight, trying to figure out whos got this chase and whats going on with that one.

Just north of Arnies Point, finger canyons disappear around the bend. Thats where, in the dense brush, Arnold once hunted for bandits who were hunting for migrants.

The canyons were notoriously violent, a place where robbers could easily hide and prey on those who crossed north. Rapes, assaults and murder were common.

Arnold was just three years out of the academy when he was picked for the elite bandit detail. The stakes were higher on this assignment, and gunfights were practically inevitable.

In fact, Arnies Point was named for one. Its where Agent Arnie Forsyth was once hit in the buttocks during a shoot-out with bandits.

Arnold got into his first and only gunfight in a canyon farther west.

The detail had intelligence of a two-man ambush operation, where one bandit would hide behind a stand of trees at a T-intersection of two trails while the other would distract passing migrants.

Sure enough, Arnolds group approached and took down the distractor. Then the bandits partner came around from behind with a loaded .45-caliber pistol. The agents fired. The bandit was hit; he survived.

Arnolds rotation on the bandit detail was the second to last before the unit was disbanded. But he credits the experience for making him a better cop.

I think it helped me grow up.

More substantial fencing starting going up around 1990 to stem the increasing flow of migrants. But the corrugated landing-mat material, installed on its side, acted more like a ladder than a fence.

It was also easily breached with tools.

At the same time, a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment was sweeping the state. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson helped push through Proposition 187, a voter-approved initiative that slashed state services such as healthcare and public education to unauthorized immigrants. The law was later overturned by a federal judge.

A new strategy was launched in 1994 called Operation Gatekeeper that flooded the San Diego border with agents in three tiers a highly visible show of force that would dissuade migrants from crossing in the first place and catch those who did farther inland.

Apprehensions soared in the first year to more than half A million, then they began to drop off sharply. From fiscal 1995 to 2005, overall apprehensions in the sector declined by 76%.

While some may have been disinclined to make the journey north, however, most just shifted routes east to the less fortified deserts, into the territory Arnolds father had once patrolled.

In the five years after Gatekeeper was launched, apprehensions in El Centros sector rose from 37,317 to 238,126.

The shift didnt come as a surprise but was rather a tactical decision by leaders: Push illegal crossings away from large cities and into wilderness areas for easier apprehensions. But the human cost was high, as the harsher environment claimed thousands of lives over the years.

Following in his fathers footsteps, Arnold eventually transitioned into management.

Hes covered just about every job in the San Diego sector: supervisor, training officer, watch commander. He spent 13 years in the prosecutions unit, readying cases for criminal and administrative court. By then, he had gone back to school, earning a criminal justice degree.

Arnold went to Washington in 2009 for nine months to coordinate care for unaccompanied minors, who in the years preceding had been fleeing to the United States in record numbers. The waves had sent authorities scrambling to find a way to place the children, mostly teens, in appropriate housing long term while caring for their short-term needs at Border Patrol stations.

The experience would help prepare him for his current role.

As assistant chief over prosecutions, asset forfeiture and detentions in the San Diego sector, Arnold has most recently been in charge of mitigating what he calls a humanitarian crisis that started about a year ago with the surge of Central American caravans arriving at the border to seek asylum. Most of them are families.

Although some of the migrants follow protocol and present themselves at ports of entry, many see the long wait of metered lines and cross illegally. Then they sit and wait to be arrested, so they can claim asylum.

Many families ended up staying several days at Border Patrol stations, long past the 72-hour limit, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement reluctant to release them into the community determined where to house them next in accordance with a court agreement that set out the terms of detention for children.

All our Border Patrol stations are set up, built and designed not for families, not for children, but for single adult males, Arnold said. We were holding people in custody longer than we ever intended to hold people in. People in custody longer require more resources.

The change in population shifted agents away from patrolling the line and into caretaker roles.

The latest scrutiny comes as a group of doctors urges Customs and Border Protection, the umbrella agency of the Border Patrol, to hold free flu shot clinics in detention centers for migrant children. Three children have died in detention from the flu in the past year, none in San Diego.

A few weeks ago, doctors demonstrated outside the Border Patrols sector headquarters in Chula Vista, where Arnold is based; the day ended with six protesters arrested.

CBP officials have called vaccine programs in short-term detention not feasible.

The current spotlight on the border is perhaps the most intense its ever been and has created political and philosophical rifts across the country. In many ways, it illustrates the deeper divisions facing the nation.

Arnold tries not to let the discord get to him.

I know theres always throughout history going to be those individuals who dont agree with who we are or what we do, he said. One thing Ive tried to make sure were focused on is that we conduct ourselves with integrity and as professionals.

The vast majority of agents are at the mercy of laws, policies and a vast bureaucracy operating high above them.

We dont get the luxury to say no to laws weve been asked to enforce, he said. Were going to enforce those laws.

But not at the expense of losing their humanity.

I think were portrayed as not caring about people, Arnold said. We do. Your heart goes out to these people. We are humans, we do care about the individuals we encounter.

The Border Patrol is being handed over to a new generation, as agents who came on board during the hiring frenzy of Operation Gatekeeper begin to consider retirement.

But Arnold wont be leaving without first getting a seventh star on the sleeve of his uniform. He gets one for every five years of service.

Ive never met someone with seven stars in my career, he said.

Not even his dad, who retired with four.

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune

Read the original:
In a lifetime on the border, Agent Chancy Arnold has seen it transform - Los Angeles Times

Published: 1/5/2020 3:00:39 PM

Modified: 1/5/2020 3:00:11 PM

Throughout 2019, the journalists working the immigration beat have struggled to keep up with the near-daily indignities that the Trump administration has visited on the migrants seeking admission into the U.S. One byproduct of that is that many worthy stories about people fighting back against those indignities have been under-covered. Here are two such stories.

In the summer of 2014, as the so-called surge of families and unaccompanied minors overwhelmed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Obama administration decided to detain hundreds of families instead of releasing them conditionally until their cases could be heard in immigration court.

Megan Kludt, now a partner with the Northampton-based immigration law firm of Curran, Berger & Kludt, volunteered at the border helping people imprisoned in a makeshift holding facility in Artesia, New Mexico. The detention of children was unprecedented, and at the time, felt like an absolutely off-the-charts violation of human rights, Kludt says.

Upon returning to the Pioneer Valley, she joined forces with the ACLU of Massachusetts Immigrant Protection Project connecting local immigrants with attorneys. In 2018, the fresh hell unleashed by the Trump administrations family separation policy brought Kludts focus back to the southern border. She now works with the El Paso Immigration Collaborative (EPIC), an alliance of several non-governmental organizations and law firms around the country, on the biggest challenge currently facing immigration advocates: helping detained migrants make a case in front of an immigration judge or an ICE officer that they are not a danger to the community or a flight risk, and can therefore be released until their case is decided. (Disclosure: Kludt occasionally guest-speaks to my UMass classes for a nominal fee.)

Local organizations do the best they can, Kludt says, but they have a hard time reaching everyone who needs help. Using a specially designed case management system and a production line approach to its work, EPIC is able to help thousands of people document their ties to the U.S. by contacting their family members or friends who have agreed to sponsor them, posting bond, and preparing parole requests. They also collect data about ICE practices that can then be used in lawsuits. More than 1,000 attorneys and volunteers, many of them fluent in Spanish, French or Portuguese, contribute to this massive effort remotely.

Our goal is to provide service and to try to release as many people as possible, but if were not actually changing the system, were not really succeeding. So we also need to be constantly checking in about advocacy. What we want to see is policy changes, Kludt says. Its really a human rights crisis. Theres a lot of things that are going on under this administration that are really heartbreaking, but everyone has their place and what they can do. In my case, Im an immigration attorney, so this is my place, this is my stand at this time.

While collaboratives like EPIC have managed in recent years to deliver at least some assistance to many of the refugees detained in facilities across the United States, tens of thousands of individuals and families remain largely out of reach in improvised shelters to the south of the border because of the governments new Remain in Mexico policy. In the sad hierarchy of wretchedness, these people probably rate as the most vulnerable group of refugees, as they have to contend not only with miserable living conditions, but also with extortion, assault and even kidnapping.

Border Angels is one of the few U.S.-based outfits that have been able to consistently assist this category of people. For decades, the organization was best known for leaving water jugs in the desert areas of the border for migrants to find. They now also directly support 16 migrant shelters in Tijuana with donations collected from Americans, electricity and water bills, food, legal representation and bond.

That work is personal for Dulce Garcia, a Border Angels board member and a DACA recipient. Im still undocumented, even though I came here in 1987 when I was about 4 years old. Fast-forward to today: Im a property owner, a business owner, I have my own law practice, and Im also the executive director for this nonprofit. But no matter how much I pay in taxes, no matter how much I feel like Ive earned my keep, I still will never be a U.S. citizen the way the laws are today, Garcia says.

Her uncle died trying to cross the desert into the U.S. When she was in high school, her brother was detained by ICE, and now lives with a deportation order that will be enforceable as soon as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is ended. In September of 2017, Garcia successfully sued the Trump administration in a bid to retain DACA protections. When the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on the legality of DACA in November 2019, Garcia was in attendance. But until the court, Congress and the American voter finally make their decisions, Garcia and the hundreds of volunteers she coordinates continue to fight back against inhumanity.

Interviewing migrants. Posting bond. Contacting family members. Drafting parole requests. Suing the government. Bringing toys and clothes to children stuck in migrant shelters. Leaving lifesaving water jugs in the desert. Paying electricity and water bills. They all chip away at the misery thousands of families are experiencing this winter.

Read the original here:
Columnist Razvan Sibii: The resistance, as organized by immigration lawyers - GazetteNET

Turkish President Recep TayyipErdoansaid Sunday that violence in Syrias Idlib region threatens to cause another Syrian refugee crisis akin to the one that began in 2015, according to Reuters.

Speaking in Istanbul Sunday, Erdoan said Russian and Syrian offensives in the region had driven more than 80,000 people toward Turkey. He added that Ankara was trying to the best of its possible to bring an end to the bombings, saying a Turkish delegation would travel to Moscow to discuss the issue Monday.

Unless Europe takes steps to stop the violence in the region, Erdoan added, the continent was likely to see an influx of refugees fleeing the war zone similar to 2015s, according to the news service.

Turkey invaded northeastern Syria following the U.S. departure from the region in October, with Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinFormer pro golfer advanced business interests of indicted Giuliani associates: report Trump faces pivotal year with Russia on arms control Repeat of 2015 migrant crisis inevitable without action: Turkish president MORE reaching a new arrangement to demilitarize northern Syria by the end of the month.

See the article here:
Repeat of 2015 migrant crisis inevitable without action: Turkish president | TheHill - The Hill

Swedens right-wing Sweden Democrats are now neck and neck with the ruling Social Democrats in opinion polls. Though vilified and demonized, the partys success represents a complete failure of liberalism in the face of reality.

The Sweden Democrats - who were until recently dismissed as a fringe, racist party - are now surging in the polls. A voter survey, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper last week, puts the party within 0.2 percentage points of Prime Minister Stefan Lofvens left-wing Social Democrats. Moreover, voters now agree with the partys policies on nine out of nine issues.

On immigration, 43 percent of voters side with the party and its leader, Jimmie Akesson. Only 15 percent favor Lofvens policies. Likewise, 31 percent favor Akessons position on law and order, compared to 19 percent for Lofven.

The press has not made Akessons ride to the top easy. Yet, most outlets have failed to dig up dirt on the 40-year-old politician, who like Frances Marine Le Pen, has made a point of distancing his party from its extreme-right roots and presenting a clean-cut image.

Akesson was rounded in the media for admitting to an online gambling addiction several years ago, but voters evidently didnt mind. Akessons past comments about homosexual parents were dug up by author Jonas Gardell for a much-publicized op-ed two weeks ago, readers gave him their vote a week later regardless. Do-gooding musician Bono even made a spectacle of comparing Akesson to Hitler before last years elections, to no avail.

Its not difficult to find the real reason for Akessons popularity. Sweden is in the throes of a crime wave. Murder, assault, rape, threats, and harassment have all skyrocketed since 2015, according to the countrys Crime Prevention Council. Sexual offenses in particular have tripled in the last four years, while murder and manslaughter have more than doubled.

Furthermore, Sweden has emerged as the hand grenade attack capital of Europe. In 2018 there were 162 bombings reported to police, and 93 reported in the first five months of this year, 30 more than during the same period in 2018. The level of attacks is extreme in a country that is not at war, Crime Commissioner Gunnar Appelgren told SVT last year.

A 2017 investigation found that immigrants, the majority of them from the Middle East and North Africa, were behind 90 percent of shootings in Sweden. Meanwhile, the countrys police force has identified 50 immigrant-heavy neighborhoods as vulnerable - a term many have taken to mean no-go zones.

The Sweden Democrats reject multiculturalism, and have proposed a tightening of immigration law and a return of refugees to their home countries. The party has advocated life without parole for serious offenses, and the deportation of foreigners found guilty of serious crimes.

Many of us remember another Sweden, Akesson wrote in an op-ed last month. An everyday life where crime was there but not so close. Crime that was not as crude and ruthless as what we see today.

Akessons paean to the past has been criticized as the typical nostalgia of nationalism, but in its place, Lofven has only offered denial, blaming segregation, poverty and unemployment for the crime in Swedens ghettos.

The segregation is because there is...too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result he said in an interview with SVT last month.

However, unemployment has fallen as shootings have risen. Even if unemployment alone is to blame for violence, Lofven did not mention the fact that the unemployment rate among migrants in Sweden is triple the national average, while 90 percent of refugees who arrived since the 2015 migrant crisis are unemployed.

Instead, his government has engaged in across-the-board denialism. The taxpayer-funded Swedish Institute puts out videos downplaying the crime problem and literally telling critics on Twitter that nothing has happened here in Sweden. The institute has also created an Arabic-language advertising campaign inviting prospective migrants in with promises of generous welfare benefits.

Lofven publicly denied the existence of no-go zones in a statement given at the White House last year. But when crime statistics tell a different story, the Ministry of Justice has a plan for that too: suppress politically sensitive information, meddle with figures, and ignore embarrassing results.

Lofvens liberalism may have resonated with voters when he came to power in 2014. But the migrant crisis and subsequent crime wave that followed a year later proved its undoing, as the country was repaid for its humanitarianism in blood and a drain on welfare. A quick google search reveals hundreds of articles that pose questions like Why is Sweden shifting to the right?

The answer to that question is simple. Liberalism has clashed with reality, and lost.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Triumph of the right in Sweden is a result of the total failure of liberalism - RT

Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children on the Greek island of Lesbos are living in conditions that pose severe risks to their physical and mental well-being, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The Greek government announced plans to resettle children on the mainland, but aid organizations on Lesbos see little improvement so far.

Unaccompanied minors on the Greek island of Lesbos are being exposed to degrading conditions and often left to "fend for themselves," according to areportthis week from Human Rights Watch.

The research draws on anonymized interviews with 22 children from October this year, some as young as 14, living on Lesbos. Severe overcrowding in Moria, the island's main camp, has led to a lack of age-appropriate accommodation for children traveling alone or separated from family. The majority of the children spoken to for the report were living either in areas alongside unrelated adults, or in a large informal area that has sprung up outside the camp.

The report calls for an urgent response to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions the children are living in. One 16-year-old interviewee reported sleeping on a cardboard carton on the floor.

Sharing tents with adult strangers

Lesbos, alongside other Greek island "hotspots" on Samos and Chios, has experienced the biggest increase of boat arrivals since 2016, when the EU-Turkey Deal was introduced in an attempt to stem the flow of refugees to the continent.

With over 18,000 people now in a camp with capacity for little over 2,000, thousands -- includingthose with complex health needs, pregnant women, and young children -- are sleeping in tents on the rough, sloping ground of an olive grove. The area is often referred to as the "jungle" by those living there.

There are currently 968 unaccompanied and separated children on Lesbos, according to the latest UN figures. With only 147 spots for age-appropriate accommodation outside the camp, and 210 spaces inside Moria, hundreds are being left vulnerable and exposed to insecure, and sometimes violent, conditions.

Interviewees in the Human Rights Watch report described having to share tents with adult strangers, or on the ground without shelter -- some for as long as three months.

One 16-year-old interviewee from Afghanistan said in the report that he couldnt sleep while in the large main tent in Moria camp, intended for new arrivals. "There is no control who will come and sleep in there," he said. "The most difficult [thing] is that there's no light in the tent at night because the lamps are broken. It's terrifying because you don't know who or what is moving inside the tent."

"Everything is dangerous here -- the cold, the place I sleep, the fights," said one 14-year-old interviewee, who stated they lived in a rat-infested tent with 50 other people.

Not enough shelters available

There has always been a fragmented child protection system for unaccompanied minors on the island, Elina Sarantou from legal service provider HIAS on Lesbos, pointed out. Problems have included lack of information, an inefficient guardianship system, poor quality asylum interviews and delays, and inhumane reception conditions.

"The numbers however have now increased and it is therefore difficult, or even impossible, to ignore anymore," said Sarantou, adding that the current situation is directly related to shelter.

"In order for a minor to be transferred, a space has to open up on the mainland," Sarantou told InfoMigrants. "And since there are only shelters for a quarter of the minors in Greece, there is an obvious bottleneck."

In November the Greek government announced plans to respond to the severe overcrowding of hotspot areas such as Lesbos on the Greek islands. Plans include moving 20,000 people to the mainland early next year, and shutting camps on Lesbos, Chios and Samos - replacing them with 'closed' facilities that human rights advocates have feared will constitute detention centers. While transfers from the islands to the mainland have increased in recent months, high numbers of boat arrivals have also continued.

Relocation to the mainland

At the end of last month the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also announcedNo Child Alone, a new scheme to respond to the situation of unaccompanied minors on the islands -- promising to quickly settle thousands of children on the mainland. HIAS however say they have seen little implementation on Lesbos so far.

At the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) pediatric clinic outside Moria, mental health activity manager Angela Modarelli says, since October, they have started to see unaccompanied minors accessing psychological support "because the situation is getting worse and worse."

"They are in an unknown place, an unknown world - not speaking the language - without any support," said Modarelli, adding they are treated like adults even though they are children. "Every night when it becomes dark, they have to find a way to keep themselves safe.''

"Mostly when they arrive to see us it's already a crisis moment," said Modarelli. She has seen cases of self-harm, depression, suicidal ideation and plans, sometimes attempts. "And we had kids of 16 and 17 having a plan to end their life. Because... this is too much. They dont see that they are welcome here."

Most of the unaccompanied minors interviewed in the recent Human Rights Watch report also reported experiencing psychological distress.

Although long term solutions are urgently needed now, Afshan Khan, UNICEF special coordinator for the migrant response in Europe, toldInfoMigrants,Greece could not be expected to provide this support alone.

"UNICEF is once again urging European Governments to increase pledges to relocate unaccompanied and separated refugee and migrant children, fast-track family reunifications for those who already have relatives in Europe and increase funds supporting response efforts," said Khan.

"Unaccompanied children are among the most vulnerable people on the Greek islands, and they need Greece and other European countries to take care of them," said Coss in the Human Rights Watch report. "The EU and its member states should demonstrate responsibility and care for kids who suffer there every day."

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A crisis within a crisis: Hundreds of unaccompanied minors left to 'fend for themselves' on Lesbos - InfoMigrants