Month: November 2019

Denying communion is done on a case-by-case basis. Other parishes are more accepting of gay people and would not hold back this sacrament, Smolenski said. She had already been distancing herself from the church in recent times after tensions rose when the priest denied communion to a same-sex couple during Mass earlier this year.

“He publicly shunned the couple,” Smolenski recalled.

It prompted her to branch out to another church for a while. But St. Stephen was Smolenski’s lifelong parish. She returned, and even received communion by Nolan on November 17. Six days later, she received the phone call from Nolan.

“It definitely felt like a slam dunk,” Smolenski said.

Priest says denying communion is ‘painful’

She and Linda have given financially to the church, including $7,000 in June 2017 for the renovation of St. Stephen.

“Some of that criteria are just around what’s happening in that person’s life and what do they believe and what are they doing and what are they not doing,” Nolan said.

He acknowledged that denial of Holy Communion is painful for those denied.

“To me, this is also a cause of great sadness in my own life as a priest,” Nolan said.

The statement said that inclusion and acceptance are a hallmark of the diocese, but that acceptance is presumed upon “a respect on the part of individuals for the teachings and practice of the wider Catholic community.”

“No community of faith can sustain the public contradiction of its beliefs by its own members,” the statement said. “This is especially so on matters as central to Catholic life as marriage, which the Church has always held, and continues to hold, as a sacred covenant between one man and one woman.

Smolenski has read the bishop’s statement and feels the denial of her communion is leading to divisiveness in the parish. Micki Benz, a 40-year-parishioner at St. Stephen, empathizes with Smolenski. Benz recently switched churches because she finds it difficult to be part of a community where gay people are discriminated against.

“This was a parish that was growing, that was harmonious, that was vibrant,” Benz said. “Today we are a parish of divisiveness and dissension.”

Smolenski pointed to the larger picture, stating that even Pope Francis wants people to be loving and kind, and that the Catholic church should tackle problems bigger than her sexual orientation.

“I am who I am because God made me just like this,” she said.

For more than a decade, ICE has been taking a small number of immigrant teens it deems to be dangerous far from their families and detaining them for months at a time.

For immigration attorneys and human rights experts such as Godoy, the practice is alarming.

“I may not object to the fact they are being held,” said Godoy, director of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. “But I object to the fact that nobody can even know who they are (and) why.”

Public attention has primarily focused on the treatment of children who recently crossed the border illegally on their own or with their parents. These kids are usually held in Border Patrol camps, family shelters overseen by ICE or on their own in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for so-called “unaccompanied” children, after arriving without any parents or being separated from them.

But teenagers who are already living inside the country with a parent can be classified as accompanied. This means if they are apprehended by ICE, they can be put in secure facilities where ICE has contracted to hold them, mixed among other US youth. Attorneys said most cases they had seen involved undocumented children who had faced a criminal conviction, charge or accusation, but that ICE also has the authority to detain those legally in the country with visas and even green card holders if their criminal records place them in violation of immigration laws.

Immigrant youth — regardless of their residency status — are supposed to receive a number of legal protections when detained. Yet more than a dozen immigration attorneys describe the agency’s detention of minors as a black hole with little oversight or easy access to lawyers who can help them navigate complicated immigration law.

The places these youth are held don’t appear on ICE’s online map of detention centers. The agency doesn’t make its reports about the conditions of the facilities available like it does for others. And family members can’t find their loved ones using the federal government’s official detainee locator since it only provides information on adults.

“ICE juvenile jails are secret and unaccountable,” said Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “And ICE wants it to stay that way.”

ICE said it follows all rules about when a juvenile can be detained in a secure environment, and described the youth it holds as those with serious criminal histories, saying that “it would be irresponsible and potentially dangerous for the agency to allow these individuals to remain out of custody with a guardian,” as they await immigration proceedings or deportation. It did not, however, elaborate on the specific allegations and evidence ICE has used to take them from their families.

***

Philadelphia attorney Mary Chicorelli remembers an immigrant mother who was “beside herself” after her son was taken from where they lived in North Carolina to a private juvenile detention center in rural Pennsylvania in 2017.

Immigration documents show the 16-year-old was turned over to ICE and sent to the facility after being arrested by local authorities over misdemeanor charges for marijuana and gun possession. Chicorelli recalled the teen looking even younger than he was and said he was free of any previous criminal record. She said he repeatedly asked when he would be able to see his mom again.

“The separation between the respondent and his mother has increased the stress and anxiety given his mother’s health,” Chicorelli wrote in a motion for his release, saying that the mother, a cancer patient, had brought her son to the United States to escape the violence in Honduras.

An immigration judge released him after Chicorelli emphasized in court filings that the teen hadn’t been convicted of any of the criminal allegations since the charges were still pending. She stopped representing him after his release and was unable to connect with the family to find out what had happened to him since.

Another North Carolina mother named Leticia, who has gone through immigration proceedings to obtain a visa and only gave permission to use her first name, said that after her 17-year-old son Victor was arrested by police last year, he warned her that ICE agents said they would be picking him up from a Raleigh jail. But she had no idea where they were taking him and no way of finding out.

She said as the weeks dragged on, she became increasingly frantic. She depended on Victor, whom she said she brought to the United States from Mexico when he was five. As her oldest son, he cared for her younger children while she worked long hours. He also supported the family financially by picking up odd jobs and working at McDonald’s, where the manager described him as “responsible,” “reliable” and “eager to learn,” according to a letter shared by his attorney.

But his mother knew Victor had struggled. In a statement he later wrote for his immigration case, Victor, who did not feel comfortable using his full name but agreed to share documentation of his case, said he had a troubled childhood and suffered from depression when his dad left the family. Law enforcement and immigration records show he was convicted of breaking and entering and larceny for a string of car break-ins. He was also convicted of threatening a friend he claimed stole from him. According to a police report, Victor was waiting for the friend when he got off the school bus, took out some sort of knife — which Victor told his attorney was a pocketknife — and said “give me back my s*** or you’re going to regret it.” No one appeared to be hurt in the incident.

It was after receiving a suspended sentence and probation for his latest car break-ins, meaning he was ready to be released by local authorities, that Victor was taken into ICE custody last year. His mom said she worried about whether her son was okay and feared he would be deported back to a country he barely knew. She anxiously tried to find him, she said, asking ICE for information and searching the agency’s online locator where family members can track the whereabouts of immigrant detainees. But his name was nowhere to be found.

She said she finally learned of his location when Victor called her from a juvenile detention facility in Oregon and told her not to worry about him. In a statement, the facility said parents are typically notified of their child’s arrival within 48 hours, but that it could not speak to whether — or how soon — contact is made before a kid arrives at the facility.

According to his mother, Victor spent more than three months detained by ICE in Oregon.

Statements in Victor’s immigration file from detention officers at the Oregon facility described him as respectful and a “model youth” — saying he had integrity and helped to calm down and mentor other “more troubled youths.”

He was facing deportation, but to prevent that from going on his record, he requested “voluntary departure” from the immigration court instead — and his attorney said he was sent back to Mexico when he turned 18.

***

Government data reviewed by CNN shows that ICE has most recently been authorized to hold minors for longer than 72 hours at three juvenile detention facilities: the Cowlitz County Youth Services Center in Washington state, Abraxas Academy in Pennsylvania, run by private prison operator GEO Group, and the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility’s juvenile division (NORCOR).

According to data previously released by ICE through a public records request from a group of immigrant advocacy groups, there have been more than 130 bookings of minors by ICE for more than 72 hours between January 2009 and May 2017 — a small fraction of the overall number of children detained by the government. The data also shows how some minors were held for hundreds of days, and one for more than a year and a half. It did not specify the circumstances of why the youth were being held. ICE told CNN in July that eight male teenagers were currently being detained but did not say how many have been in its custody since 2017.

An ICE protocol manual filed in court last year lays out rules for who can be held in secure detention under Flores, stating that this group includes those who the agency determines are “delinquent” or “chargeable as delinquent” after facing a criminal conviction or accusation. But attorneys who have represented some of these teens say these rules can be left open to interpretation, and that ICE has been able to lock up teens facing a range of charges or accusations the agency views as “chargeable” offenses. The lawyers say that fights with classmates or photos on social media that allegedly suggest a gang affiliation have been used as part of the rationale to detain certain teens.

CNN reviewed immigration documents from three separate cases. Two involved teens who had faced weapon possession charges, though they hadn’t been charged with violent offenses. The third was Victor.

Unlike these youths held in juvenile detention facilities, so-called “unaccompanied” migrant kids taken into custody, often while crossing the border, are sent to facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. They receive access to legal services through a network of government-funded attorneys who are given lists of children detained by ORR. These attorneys visit the facilities, brief the children on their rights and help them find legal representation.

ICE said juveniles in its facilities should have legal access as well, saying that youth “are advised of the pro bono attorney lists that are posted within facilities” and that staffers can help them call lawyers.

But without a more structured program in place for kids in ICE custody, attorneys and immigrant rights advocates say that it is far harder to make sure every kid actually obtains representation — making a lack of legal access one of their biggest concerns about the practice.

The same attorneys notified about every kid in ORR detention aren’t given a list of those in ICE detention. So even if they wish to help the children for free, they say it’s difficult for them to learn who these teens are.

The National Immigrant Justice Center’s Altman said that as a result, ICE is able to levy serious allegations of gang affiliation and other unlawful conduct — and children are left “hard pressed to defend themselves.”

***

At least two of the three juvenile detention facilities used by ICE have been accused of mistreating kids in the past. Abraxas Academy, in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, has been cited by state regulators for alleged sexual harassment and sexual abuse, as well as excessive use of force to restrain children. In 2015, one staffer who was later fired bit a child, and in 2016 other employees put kids in headlocks, according to the state inspection reports. The facility did not comment directly about the findings in these state inspections, but said its mission is to “provide safe and humane care” and that the contract to hold ICE juveniles expired in June, with the last teen released in August.

The NORCOR juvenile detention center, meanwhile, was the subject of a 2017 report from Disability Rights Oregon, a nonprofit that under federal law has the authority to investigate certain facilities in the state. The report highlighted “inhumane conditions” at NORCOR — saying “conditions were harsher and more restrictive than any adult jail we had visited.”

NORCOR said it disputed many of the findings in the report but acknowledged that a review of policies and practices was necessary. After changes were made, NORCOR said an independent review found the facility was “safe, open and hospitable.” It also said it encourages families to remain connected to the youth held there, making visitation available five days a week and allowing teens two free phone calls each week.

The third location used by ICE for juveniles, the Cowlitz County Youth Services Center, said ICE would need to comment about the reasons teens are sent there. It also said that kids with attorneys are allowed to have contact with them and that employees notify parents of their child’s whereabouts as soon as they receive contact information from ICE.

***

Godoy, the human rights researcher set on finding out more about this practice in the Pacific Northwest, said one of the aspects that disturbs her most is that even if a court has adjudicated a case and determined a teen can be released to the public, ICE is able to step in and detain them longer.

She said this opens the door for potential abuses of power — especially given the lack of transparency surrounding ICE’s justification for locking these teens up instead of allowing them to go through immigration court while home with their families.

Godoy is now involved in time-consuming, complicated litigation as the federal government has fought to keep the documents she wants from being released.

The agency is arguing that the county cannot release them without violating a federal regulation preventing state or local governments from making these kinds of detainee records public. But Godoy still questions this reasoning and why the agency is so set on keeping her from the information.

“The level of aggressiveness with which they are pursuing secrecy should alarm us,” she said.

What should we investigate next? Email us: watchdog@cnn.com.

After that her father was released from detention and went north to suburban Chicago, where he has relatives.

Now she was on her way to join him.

Wearing a blue T-shirt and a pink hoodie she was given at the shelter, Deisi sat in the mostly empty station with nothing to do but watch the ’90s music videos that flashed on a small TV atop a nearby vending machine.

Four hours later, she boarded a bus — the first of four she would need to ride on this journey. Surrounded by strangers, Deisi feared she wouldn’t be able to reach Chicago to find her father.

She was on her own in a strange country, and she had no clue what would happen next.

She wants to help her dad walk again

Before she left her hometown of El Jicaro, Guatemala, Deisi was living with her grandparents, finishing her junior year of high school and planning to spend the summer watching movies with her 14-year-old sister. She daydreamed about becoming a doctor.

She wasn’t sure about the idea of traveling to the United States and waited until the last minute to tell her mom, who lives elsewhere with her other siblings.

But she knew her dad, whose legs had been broken in a car accident, could get better medical care in the US, and he couldn’t travel by himself.

For four years Deisi had watched her father, Artemio Arreces Florian, struggling to fully heal. He underwent a series of surgeries in Guatemala but did not regain much mobility, and his pain would not go away.

While her father mostly uses a wheelchair to move around, one of his legs is strong enough that he’s able to use a walker to travel a few feet. But he has a heavy limp, and his face reflects the strain on his body.

“I know we all came looking for a better future,” Deisi told CNN. “Personally, I left Guatemala because I want to help my dad walk again.”

In May, the father and daughter left Guatemala and crossed into Mexico with a couple of backpacks, a walker and a wheelchair.

They rode regional buses and traveled in Ubers. Sometimes Deisi had to walk for miles, pushing her dad’s wheelchair and carrying his walker. They slept in warehouses and ate beans and rice as they made the trip north.

On June 2, they crossed the Rio Grande on inflatable boats and were detained by Border Patrol agents within hours after entering South Texas.

They were brought to a chilly holding area known as a “hielera,” or “cooler,” where Deisi was separated from her father and taken to a facility for migrant minors.

Father and daughter were only allowed to wave goodbye to each other through a glass window. Deisi feared her dad could be deported, leaving her alone in the US.

“I felt very bad, and I started to cry — because we were together for the whole journey,” she told CNN.

“We knew it was neither his fault nor mine. It was immigration who decided to separate us.”

Her birthday gift: Freedom

Because Deisi was under 18, she was placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

But migrant youths cannot remain in the shelters once they turn 18, according to federal law. While they wait for their immigration hearings they have only two options: get transferred to adult immigration detention, or find a sponsor — a relative or family friend — willing to take them.

About a month passed before Deisi learned that her dad had been released on bond from detention and was staying with family members in Glendale Heights, Illinois, west of Chicago.

Then came her 18th birthday.

Migrant children who turn 18 while in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement are transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, said an ICE spokeswoman.

“At that time, a new custody determination is made by ICE, taking into account the totality of the individual’s circumstance, to include flight risk, threat to the public, threat to themselves, ties to the community, and immigration court ruling,” the spokesperson said.

So on August 21, Deisi was released from a Brownsville, Texas, shelter to go live with her father and other relatives in Illinois.

But first she’d have to get there.

That day there were no candles for Deisi to blow out or a cake waiting to be cut. Her birthday gift was her freedom, but it was hard to enjoy it.

She had left Guatemala as a girl. Now she was an adult, and for the first time in her life she would have to make decisions by herself and find ways to stay safe.

She would have to travel alone, for days, across the country to find her father.

Such challenges can be daunting for young migrants, said Camila Alvarez, a managing attorney for the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles.

“She’s a young adult, being 18 in a new country where you probably just fled violence … don’t know the language. Eighteen is not a sufficient age to be able to see for yourself like that,” she said.

Alvarez says that while social workers travel with young children after they are released from federal custody, migrants 18 and older are on their own.

“It’s planned, it’s calculated and it’s punitive because they are leaving vulnerable people without any resources and without any people they know in the United States,” Alvarez said. “Without a phone and without a way to get help. They are stuck figuring it out by themselves.”

She traveled cross-country alone, asking God to guide her

Each of the young migrants dropped off at the bus station in Harlingen that day were pre-booked on buses to destinations where they have family members. The other two 18-year-olds were headed to Atlanta and Phoenix.

At the bus station Deisi was approached by Joyce Hamilton, a volunteer with Angry Tias and Abuelas, a group that assists immigrants who recently arrived in the US.

“Feliz cumpleaños,” Hamilton, 69, a retired college reading instructor, told Deisi, offering her birthday wishes as she sat down on a bench next to her. “I’m not here to sell anything. I’m here to help you.”

Hamilton comes almost daily to the bus station with hygiene supplies, water bottles, snacks and advice for the teen migrants.

That day, Hamilton handed Deisi a map of the US and traced the journey she would take through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.

“We do it to make sure they know where they’re going and to give them information on their rights as immigrants,” Hamilton told CNN.

In Guatemala, Deisi did as her grandparents and her schoolteachers said. At the shelter in South Texas, she followed orders from staffers and social workers. Now, everything was up to her.

“I’m nervous because I have never traveled by myself,” Deisi told CNN after boarding the bus. “I don’t know the United States … I’m asking God to guide me, help me and allow me to arrive safely.”

Over the next three days, Deisi rode four different buses on her way to Chicago. She navigated bus stations across the country and fought her nerves by taking naps. While she mostly avoided speaking with strangers, she befriended a migrant family aboard one bus.

By the time she reached the bus station in Chicago, she had changed into a gray T-shirt and was wearing a small wooden cross around her neck.

Her dad was waiting. When she saw him, she dropped everything she was carrying and rushed to give him a hug.

“I was feeling like I was losing you, mi amor,” Arreces Florian told her, sobbing.

The two held hands the entire way home from the bus station.

She’s put her dreams on hold

Since arriving in Glendale Heights, Deisi has slept in the basement of a house she shares with her uncle and his family, her dad, her dad’s wife and her 9-year-old stepsister. The basement is almost as big as Deisi’s room at her grandparent’s house in Guatemala.

She got a job serving ice cream and making aguas frescas at a Mexican restaurant near her uncle’s home. She is excited that she could be waiting tables soon, she says. She saved her tips and bought a cellphone, which she uses to send selfies to her friends and call her sister in Guatemala.

“I just love her and need her so much,” she said.

But Deisi’s dreams of becoming a doctor or finishing high school are on hold. Her priority, she says, is making enough money to rent an apartment for her and her father.

Her dad has not been able to work full-time due to his lack of mobility, so Deisi has become the main breadwinner for the two of them. He has gotten some medications to alleviate the chronic pain in his legs but is still looking for a doctor who will reassess his wounds.

When she’s not working, Deisi spends hours joking with her dad. Sometimes she tries new nail polish on her dad’s toenails. Other days, she loads her dad’s wheelchair into an Uber and they go together to the grocery store.

“I used to say that I would never come to the US, and I often feel weird or out of place here,” she said. “But at the same time I feel at home because I have my dad.”

Still, their lives in the US are tenuous. Both Deisi and her father have court hearings next year, and neither know if they will be allowed to remain in the country. Over the past three months they’ve been periodically checking in at ICE offices.

Deisi was surprised when an ICE agent placed an electronic monitor on her ankle, restricting her from traveling outside Illinois.

“I was in shock. I asked why was I getting one but all of them spoke English and no one could tell me why,” she said. “I think they gave me one in case I got desperate and wanted to go back to Guatemala.”

At first, Deisi thought she would forget she was wearing the monitor. But she’s been turned down for jobs once employers see it, she says. And she’s afraid immigration officers will come for her if the monitor malfunctions or its battery dies.

“It’s stressful for her to live with this constant threat that she’s going to be deported,” her dad told CNN.

Deisi and her father have spent hours calling immigration attorneys, just to learn they can’t afford to pay any of them. Those who could do it pro bono so far have declined to take their cases or have a long waitlist.

So most days, Deisi puts her jacket and walks through cold, windy weather to the restaurant where she works. She’s no longer thinking about her long-term future. Instead, she’s worried about the present. And she hopes they’ll get to stay in the US so her dad can heal and the two of them can build a new life, together.

Even those in power join in; longtime Flemish Culture Minister Sven Gatz wore blackface at an event in 2015, before responding: “Engaged against racism all my (political) life. And now I’m an ordinary racist because I colored my face dark. Come on. Love. Don’t hate.” to critics on Twitter. 

“You can talk about blackface in Belgium pretty much every day,” anti-racism campaigner Mouhad Reghif told CNN. “I’m tired of trying to explain to hundreds of people that blackface is racist.”

Reghif has long led a fight against Belgium’s relationship with blackface — but that battle took an ugly turn on a sweaty, stifling afternoon earlier this year.

‘I could have been really harmed’

Undeterred by a spell of oppressively hot weather, thousands of people clogged the streets of a medieval Belgian town in August. They had gathered to drink, dance and enjoy the annual folkloric parade that sweeps through Ath; a festival dating back centuries, held to commemorate the unlikely biblical victory of David against Goliath.

It’s a story Reghif felt he could relate to; but unlike the masses surrounding him, he was not there to celebrate.

Dressed in a hat and sunglasses and surrounded by plain clothed police officers, Reghif instead tried to disappear into the crowd. “I was really scared people would recognize me,” he told CNN by telephone. “If they did only part of what they’d promised me in their threats and messages, I could have been really harmed.”

The anti-racism activist was a target for one reason. He had spent much of the past year leading a high-profile and deeply controversial campaign against the parade’s central character, “The Savage” — a sinister villain, played by a white man in blackface, who appears bound by chains with a ring through his nose.

In return for his activism online, he’d received “dozens, if not hundreds” of threatening messages against himself and his daughter. “They say we rape kids, we torture sheep, we are terrorists, and we want to cancel their festival and their traditions and replace it with Islamic law, which is just crazy.”

Still, the 45-year-old activist from Brussels had traveled to see the offending character in the flesh.

He hadn’t planned to disrupt the event — he was merely there “to watch.” But before The Savage had taken center stage, the police officer ensuring Reghif’s safety received an order from the mayor’s office: get him out of Ath.

“I was escorted by the policemen back to my car,” he recalled, before being followed by officers as he drove into the next major town. His treatment attracted international attention, thrusting the festival at Ath into the spotlight and leading to anger over its recognition by UNESCO.

For Reghif and many of his fellow anti-racism campaigners, that recognition had been a long time coming. Several regional celebrations use characters in blackface, which are usually depicted as shadowy antagonists.

Ath’s was not the first festival he’d campaigned against for using characters in face paint, he told CNN, and it likely won’t be the last.

‘A colonial mindset’

But in Belgium, experts say, blackface is one of many holdovers from the country’s colonial period.

“Belgians still have a colonial mindset,” said Reghif. “They do not face their colonial history … they don’t talk about the millions of dead by Leopold II.”

The era of Belgium’s King Leopold II is remembered far more clearly in what was then called the Congo Free State, a rubber and ivory-rich region in central Africa ruled personally, and brutally, by the monarch who was eager to exploit Africa’s wealth. Leopold ruled between 1885 and 1908 before it was then taken over by the Belgian state until 1960.

“The cruelties imposed on African laborers to force them to collect rubber beggar the imagination,” explained historian Matthew Stanard of Berry College in the United States, who has authored works on the period and its remembrance in Belgium. He noted one particularly gruesome example — the “accounting system” known as “mains coupees,” in which officers would sever and turn in a hand of a victim to keep track of those they had killed.

In total, it is estimated that millions died under Leopold II’s rule.

But back home, even after the end of its empire in the 1960s, “imperial propaganda had long-term effects,” Stanard said. Belgians continued to see central Africans as “exotic, backwards and uncivilized,” he noted — while “memories (of colonialism) have stayed generally positive … and Leopold II was completely rehabilitated after the end of the colonial era.”

With no offer of visas, very few Congolese people came to Belgium until far more recently, he added — so while the country became home to people from a number of European nations, colonial sentiments towards African cultures was never shaken off.

“A lot of Belgians who wear blackface … they don’t realize how much it would be hurting or insulting somebody, because they don’t know anybody who’s of African descent,” said Stanard.

“The colonial era is when all those blackface traditions appeared,” added Laura Nsengiyumva, a Belgian-Rwandan artist, activist and professor who has examined the country’s imperial hangover through her work.

“For the white Belgian citizen, there is no access to this knowledge about what happened there,” she said, noting that the Congo Free State is barely touched on in most school curricula. “It keeps people unaware and very sensitive to their traditions.”

“My students at university are 20 years old and that’s the first time they hear about any of this,” she added. “How can you talk about Belgium without that?”

The United Nations has asked the same question. In February, a group of UN experts visited the country to investigate the role its imperial history plays today.

“Where curriculum exists, it appears to recapitulate colonial propaganda,” the report added — focusing on Belgium’s supposed role in modernizing the Congo, and ignoring its atrocities.

It also found what many others find in the country: the use of blackface.

“The use of blackface, racialized caricatures, and racist representations of people of African descent is offensive, dehumanizing and contemptuous,” the UN report said, urging Belgium’s government to “support and facilitate an open debate on the use of blackface, racialized caricatures and racist representation of people of African descent.”

‘You’re there, but you don’t exist’

One institution finds itself at the center of the storm about Belgian colonial memory — the country’s controversial Africa Museum.

The site, which attempted to shake off a decades-long reputation of being outdated and offensive with an expensive refurbishment, re-opened last year.

“Our museum is the most visible symbol of the colonial past of Belgium,” its director Guido Gryseels told CNN. “We’re in the middle of that debate.

“Some people want us to take a much more activist role, for example in condemning Leopold II. (But) we see ourselves as a forum for debate … you leave it up to the visitors to make their own minds.”

Gryseels recognized that “the majority of young people know very little about colonial past,” and as a result, “any change in cultural tradition” does not come without some opposition. “When I grew up I didn’t know a single person in the area that was of another origin,” he noted.

But he dismissed the suggestion that blackface is commonplace in Belgium, suggesting that “there is racism in the country but it’s by and large so uncommon.”

That’s a view rejected by Nsengiyumva, who served as an adviser for the museum before its re-opening but has been critical of the institution since.

“There is a lot of prejudice, but it’s even more dangerous because you don’t see it,” she said, pointing to inequality in housing, employment opportunities and other social areas.

Her complaints have been made frequently by black and minority ethnic people in Belgium, and were supported by a study earlier this year by Brussels Observatory for Employment and Training — which found that the unemployment rate among people with African origin was around three times higher than white European candidates in Brussels.

Reghif said trends like those have a profound impact. “It’s a social death — you are there, but you don’t exist,” he said.

And for Nsengiyumva, blackface in particularly can make that experience more painful.

“You had this idea that blackness and violence were related — that’s the same idea as seen in The Savage of Ath,” she said. “It’s really like an education to racism … for white kids to see their black comrades as violent, as dirty, in negative ways.

“Because it’s folklore, because it’s tradition for kids, people think it’s innocent,” she concluded. “But it’s not innocent.”

Caruana Galizia’s work made her many powerful enemies while she was alive, and she was sued for libel on multiple occasions. The many threats she received have contributed to the difficulty in determining just who was responsible for her death.

What happened to her?

Caruana Galizia died on October 16, 2017, when her rented Peugeot 108 was detonated by a remote control device on a country lane near her home in Bidnija, Malta. Her son Matthew Caruana Galizia, told CNN that she was driving a rental car at the time, out of fear that someone might target her car in an attempt to kill her.

What was left of Caruana Galizia’s body was found by her son Matthew, who was living at home at the time. When he heard the blast, he ran barefoot to the nearby field where what was left of her car was scattered. He described the grisly scene in a Facebook post after her death. “I looked down and there were my mother’s body parts all around me,” he wrote. He has vowed to continue his mother’s work.

Her family have petitioned the government of Prime Minister Muscat to open a public inquiry into whether the removal of police protection ultimately led to her death. Such an investigation has not yet been launched. The government attributed wider cuts in police protection to budget decreases, but it has not explained why it removed Caruana Galizia’s protection. CNN has contacted the government on whether it will open an inquiry into the circumstances.

Has anyone faced justice for her murder?

In December 2017, 10 people were arrested in connection with setting the bomb that killed Caruana Galizia. The detentions at the time were largely seen as an answer to growing pressure from the European Union on Muscat’s government to show good faith in investigating her murder.

Seven of the detained people were eventually let go, but brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio along with Vincent Muscat, no relation to the Prime Minister, have been formally charged with her murder. All three suspects have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.

On November 25, Malta President George Vella pardoned a taxi driver named Melvin Theuma, who had been accused of working as an intermediary between the three men charged with her murder and others who ordered the killing. The pardon was requested by Prime Minister Muscat in exchange for Theuma’s testimony. The pardon is essentially Malta’s version of immunity from prosecution, and means that Theuma cannot be tried for any alleged involvement in Caruana Galizia’s murder. CNN has been unable to reach Theuma’s lawyer for comment.

Matthew Carbone, the Head of Government Communications in Malta, told CNN the country’s Attorney General and the Police Commissioner both recommended the pardon, which is subject to a number of conditions and can be reversed.

Fenech was most recently arrested on his yacht, while heading for international waters, according to a spokesman for Maltese Armed Forces. He was then detained and held without charge for 48 hours, under Maltese law which requires suspects to be charged within that time frame or set free. He has since been released on police bail. Fenech’s lawyer Gianluca Caruana Curran declined to comment on this story to CNN.

Where does the blame lie?

Many, including Caruana Galizia’s own family, have criticized the official investigation into her death, and claim that the investigation could lead directly to Prime Minister Muscat — if he were not also leading the investigation.

Muscat was a frequent target of Caruana Galizia’s investigations into corruption, especially due to his wife’s alleged involvement in the Panama companies. Caruana Galizia’s family have said that they believe the Prime Minister wanted her dead.

Muscat has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

In a statement emailed to CNN, Carbone said the Prime Minister “has always taken the necessary decisions for the country to keep moving forward.”

“At the same time all resources were given to our independent institutions to leave no stone unturned and get to the truth behind the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia,” the statement said, adding that Muscat “will refrain from commenting on issues directly related to the investigation.”

Maltese opposition leader Adrian Delia told CNN that the murder had shaken the country’s politics, and placed the blame squarely on the prime minister and his inner circle. “The Prime Minister and ministers were at the very least fully aware of what was going…. They are at the very least guilty of allowing a situation to precipitate to a stage where a journalist was assassinated to shut her up for good.”

“One has to put this investigation within a context, that context being a series of corruption scandals that were outed by Daphne Caruana Galizia, the press and the opposition,” Delia told CNN.

He claims that the prime minister initially sought to shield members of his inner circle whom she investigated, and that his government’s failure to provide sufficient protection to Caruana Galizia ultimately led to her death. “The Prime Minister, despite the clear evidence in hand, kept defending his inner circle of people. These criminals developed a sense of impunity, and it is this sense of impunity that led to her murder just over two years ago,” he said.

The European Union’s special rapporteur to Malta Pieter Omtzigt, told CNN that he believes Muscat faces a conflict of interest in leading the investigation into Caruana Galizia’s death. “Checks and balances on the Prime Minister are totally insufficient to solve this situation,” he told CNN. “The PM appoints the police commissioner, the judges, the magistrates, all the supervisors, the ministers, the attorney general.”

“[Muscat] can also recommend a presidential pardon. He has a huge conflict of interest,” he added.

Maltese police would not confirm to CNN who else is under investigation. A spokeswoman said that “there are a few people we are investigating. We won’t give any information on their identity.”

Why is the story back in the news?

After Theuma received a presidential pardon, two prominent members of Muscat’s Cabinet resigned this week. A third announced he was “suspending himself.”

When asked about the resignations and suspension of the three Labour members, Malta’s Labour Party told CNN in a statement that “investigations are ongoing and the information that we have at this stage is from news reports which still need to be corroborated when persons are arraigned in court.”

The party said it “categorically condemns the brutal murder of Ms. Daphne Caruana Galizia and is satisfied that the government provided all the necessary resources to the country’s institutions and authorities to seek justice in this case.”

What has the international reaction been?

International condemnation of the lack of accountability in Caruana Galizia’s murder has been widespread, from Pope Francis — who took the unusual move to send condolences for the death of a private citizen — to rights groups that have kept her investigative work alive. She has received over a dozen posthumous awards for excellence of journalism. Grants in her name have been established at a number of journalism schools.

The EU has demanded answers from Malta since the murder, with little success. Europe’s justice commission wrote soon after the murder that it “expects an independent and thorough investigation to uncover who is really responsible for Daphne’s murder, we want the full truth. There is no place in the EU for the murder of journalists.”

The same statement said recent shifts in Maltese personnel involved with the case could be interpreted “as a way to delay and stall in the investigation.”

Of particular note to many foreign news organizations is the fact that flowers and candles and other tributes are regularly removed from the makeshift site dedicated to Caruana Galizia in the capital of Valletta on the Great Siege Square, even as Malta’s political landscape is roiled by the investigation’s fallout.

As Matthew Caruana Galizia tweeted Wednesday, “Even after his chief of staff was arrested on suspicion of murder, Muscat still ordering the memorial to my mum to be cleared.” Muscat has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder, its cover-up or any seeming lack of thorough investigation.

Ramirez Palma’s deportation order was given in February 2016 and the appeal was dismissed in November 2018, said Homero Lopez, his immigration lawyer.

“He had to go to a checkup on November 1st to present evidence that he had the necessary documents to travel, which he had,” Lopez wrote in an email to CNN. “He had a valid passport which he brought with himself when he was arrested.”

This incident may cause other potential whistleblowers to remain silent, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice said in a statement

“Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma’s deportation leaves every one of us less safe,” the statement read. “The next time a building collapses, we will wonder if it could have been prevented if our federal agencies had prioritized answers and accountability for the survivors of the Hard Rock … This is a shocking dereliction of the federal government’s responsibility for worker safety that should concern every American.”

CNN has attempted to reach out to Ramirez Palma’s employers, Rey Co., Inc. and King Co., but has not heard back.

Ramirez Palma barely survived the collapse, wife says

Ramirez Palma worked on the Hard Rock site for three months before it collapsed, according to a complaint filed on November 21 with the US Department of Labor by his attorney, Mary Yanik of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

“Mr. Ramirez Palma repeatedly raised safety concerns to the supervisors and had a reputation for speaking up about safety issues on the work site,” Yanik wrote in the complaint.

His supervisors told him “if he didn’t want to do the work, then they would find others to do it. He interpreted this as meaning that he would be fired,” Yanik said, adding that this was said to other workers as well.

Ramirez Palma began noticing “unusually large” discrepancies during the construction of the building, Yanik said. In his 17 years as a construction worker, Ramirez Palma has seen floor measurements that were off between .75 and 1.25 inches off, but at the Hard Rock he noticed measurements off by 2 inches, Yanik said.

“Mr. Ramirez Palma specifically raised the alarm about the building not being level various times, on more than 5 different occasions,” Yanik said, adding her client was told to get back to work.

According to the complaint, the day before the collapse, Ramirez Palma was working on the 14th floor and noticed the floor shifting like a small earthquake.

“He also noticed the laser measurements show the laser visibly moving from the markings 2 to 3 inches up and down, showing that the building was moving,” according to the complaint.

“(He) doesn’t remember much after that … (he) woke up … someone was giving him water … he couldn’t breathe,” she said.

After the collapse, workers approached Ramirez Palma crying and told Ramirez Palma that he was right about the building being dangerous with several supervisors were within earshot, Yanik said.

ICE arrests Ramirez Palma two days after collapse

Two days after the collapse, Ramirez Palma was arrested after being stopped by officers with the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans, according to a statement from US Customs and Border Protection.

“Ramirez(-Palma) had been fishing without a license, and when FWS officers asked for further identification, he was unable to produce a valid driver’s license and only had foreign citizenship documentation,” the statement read.

CBP officers determined Ramirez Palma was in the US illegally and had a removal order that was issued back in February 2016, the statement read.

However, Yanik said in the complaint Ramirez Palma did have a valid fishing license and had shown it to the wildlife officers when asked for it.

In the complaint, Yanik said that Ramirez Palma was told not to attend a meeting at King Construction Co. on the Monday after the collapse in which other workers discussed monetary compensation for the collapse. Instead, according to the complaint, Ramirez Palma went fishing but was followed by a man who later identified himself as an official with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who ticketed him for fishing without a license.

A few minutes later, Border Patrol officers arrived and arrested him, Yanick said.

The timing of Ramirez Palma’s arrest is “definitely suspicious,” said his immigration lawyer Homero Lopez. Ramirez Palma had a scheduled check-in on November 1, which Ramirez Palma “definitely” planned to go to, Lopez said.

Ramirez Palma wanted to remain in the US, but because of his medical condition and the “suffering” his family is going through Ramirez Palma decided not to file a motion to reopen his case because that would prolong his detention, Lopez said.

“The system is set up in a way for people to give up on their cases,” Lopez said.

Ava Dejoie, secretary for Louisiana Workforce Commission, wrote to DHS on November 27 asking that Ramirez Palma be released, and his deportation stopped because he was a “crucial witness” to the investigation of the collapse. Investigations like this take time and require interviews with multiple witnesses, she said.

“In the aftermath of a disaster of this scale, the public needs all available information to understand what happened at the worksite, including information from Mr. Ramirez Palma and workers like him who witnessed safety violations before the collapse,” Dejoie wrote. “The investigations will undoubtedly suffer.”

It’s an “absolute priority” to identify the two people who were killed by the suspect in the London Bridge stabbing attack, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told reporters on tonight.

Three other people are being treated for injuries, Dick said. 

The attack started in Fishmonger’s Hall in London, Dick told reporters.

“My understanding is that police were called at 13:58 hours and city of London police officers had bravely and professionally confronted the suspect by 14:03 hours, just five minutes later,” she added. 

The Metropolitan police commissioner warned that there would be more police presence in the coming days, both armed and unarmed, patrolling the streets. 

Stevie Beer, 26, works at a building overlooking London Bridge. She tells CNN she was alerted to a situation on the bridge by a colleague who was trapped behind a cordon after going out to grab lunch.

“A colleague out for lunch messaged to say there’d been an incident on London Bridge and he was unable to cross back over the river,” Beer says. “I went straight to the window and saw hundreds of people running off the bridge down Tooley Street.”

Beer said there were reports that nearby Borough Market was also being evacuated on Friday afternoon as well.

Britain’s PA news agency is reporting a cordon has been established around Borough Market while local shops are evacuated.

However, outside of the ponds, it’s a different story.

“What does exist is a great diversity of halophilic archaea (a type of primitive salt-loving microorganisms) in the desert and the saline canyons around the hydrothermal site, but neither in the hyperacid and hypersaline pools themselves, nor in the so-called Black and Yellow lakes of Dallol, where magnesium abounds,” said López García. “And all this despite the fact that microbial dispersion in this area, due to the wind and to human visitors, is intense.”

The researchers performed mass sequencing of genetic markers meant to find and classify any microorganisms that may be present, as well as cultures to find microbes, cytometry for detecting individual cells, brine chemical analysis and electron microscopy combined with X-ray spectroscopy.

At first glance, minerals rich in silica may mimic microbial cells, the researchers said. But their analysis revealed the difference.

“In other studies, apart from the possible contamination of samples with archaea from adjacent lands, these mineral particles may have been interpreted as fossilized cells, when in reality they form spontaneously in the brines, even though there is no life,” López García said.

Scientists have used evidence of life in extreme environments on Earth as an analog for the conditions where life may exist on other planets in our solar system or beyond it. The researchers warned that in this case, just because there is liquid water present or because something resembles cells or other biological aspects beneath a microscope, does not mean there is life present.

“Our study presents evidence that there are places on the Earth’s surface, such as the Dallol pools, which are sterile even though they contain liquid water,” López García said.

The Dallol ponds actually prevent life from forming because they contain chemical barriers like chaotropic magnesium salts that help break down hydrogen. Combined with the salty, acidic and hot environment, life receives no encouragement in the pools.

“We would not expect to find life forms in similar environments on other planets, at least not based on a biochemistry similar to terrestrial biochemistry,” said López García.

The researchers will continue studying the pools to determine more about the limits of life.