Archive for November, 2010
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 30, 2010
I just received another letter today from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection about my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. A public servant named Dorothy Pullo, Director of FOIA Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in reply to my letter of November 3, 2010 claims that I indicated my belief that, “a message was being sent to residents by the involvement of the U.S. Border Patrol.” As I didn’t make any such statement in my letter I can only assume that Ms. Pullo is again internet surfing in a desperate bid to figure out how to overide my statements to her, rather than simply reading my letter. (I wonder if I’m going to be charged again for this additional internet surfing?) Notice, however, that I never made any such statement in my posting. I said that the Grand Forks Police were sending a message to anyone who dared stand and watch them by making those residents show documents.
Ms. Pullo also claims that, “your argument that the documents requested are to be used to assist refugees and educate the public about refugees is unconvincing”, and, “It appears likely the requested documents would be used in a manner consistent with interests of you and Friends of Refugees thus placing your request in the commercial-use requester fee category.” Thus I will need to pay at least $91.60 for them to press the print button on their computer and mail the 11 page document to me.
This is funny because that’s all I do – assist refugees and educate the public about refugees. Ms. Pullo offers no reason for why she would think I have any “commercial” interests in helping refugees or educating the public about refugees, probably because she has no real reason to think so.
I think what we have here is yet another government bureaucrat, whose salary we pay and who supposedly ought to be serving us, who thinks its her job to withhold government documents from the public and not abide by U.S. laws (Freedom of Information Act). Abiding by the law must seem like such an inconvenience to her.
Posted in Dept of Homeland Security, immigration documents, Lutheran Social Services of ND, North Dakota, openess and transparency in government, police, Somali, U.S. Customs & Border Protection | Tagged: Department of Homeland Security, Dorothy Pullo, FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, Grand Forks, Grand Forks Police, police, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, Somali refugees, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 29, 2010
Here is a question that Gedlu Metaferia of the AMAAM asked us which we have decided to post to our web site.
Mutual Assistance Associations have specific definitions each time a grant is published in the Federal Register. Here is a question for the ORR (HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement). What is the current definition of a mutual assistance association (MAA)? It was my understanding that MAA’s were community/ethnic based organizations where 51% of the Board members are refugees or former refugees (both women and men). It came as the result of Vietnamese/ Laotian /Cambodian (SE Asian) resettlement in the late 1970s – to have a bridge agency that helps refugees in their transition, and that closely functions with resettlement agencies by simulating the home culture. If you take any ORR request for proposal (RFP) it carefully stipulates the definition of an MAA. As the easy money got bigger in community self-help grants groups like ISED Solutions (more of a consultative or research organization) and even VOLAGS like ECDC were included as MAA’s. MAA’s are also (my opinion) used by mainstream professionals to scheme money. For example, the organization can be Somali Bantu and the Executive Director can be an a non-Bantu, e.g. MSW from George Washington University. Some have lost the MAA definition because there are no refugees from that ethnic group in the last 15-20 years. I do not know if there are Cambodian refugees now. In some cases churches are MAA’s also. Some of the agencies listed on the ORR web site as MAA’s are definitely not MAA’s. For example included on this list are the following entities:
Government agencies
- Colorado Department of Human Services
- State of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services
- Wisconsin State’s Department of Workforce Development
VOLAGs
- U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc. (HIAS)
Resettlement agencies
- Catholic Charities Maine
- Minnesota Council of Churches
- International Institute of New Hampshire
- Rochester Catholic Family Center, Division of Catholic Charities
- Nationalities Services Center
- Lutheran Community Services Northwest
Schools
- City of St. Paul Public Schools
- Portland State University
- Granite School District
Misc.
- ISED Solutions (a consultant/research organization)
- Mosaica Foundation
- Goodwill Industries
- Clergy and Churches United
- Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries (a church)
Has the criteria for MAAs changed?
- Gedlu
Posted in Mutual Assistance Associations (“MAAs”)/Ethnic Community-Based Organizations (“ECBOs”), ORR | Tagged: AMAAM, Gedlu Metaferia, HHS, MAA, Mutual Assistance Associations, Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 28, 2010
The media is flooding the nation with reports about the so-called 19-year-old Somali terrorist in Portland who was planning on blowing up a Christmas tree lighting event. He came to the U.S. at age 3 as a refugee. I’ve been thinking about this story and it bothers me how much time and effort and money the FBI agents used to entice this teenager into the plot. The agents helped him to create the plot which he had no knowledge, ability or means to do on his own. People who knew Mohamed Osman Mohamud report that he was a sweet child who always had a smile on his face. According to an article in The Oregonian as a teenager he was known for being smart, quiet, never violent, and enjoyed playing basketball.
…”He was a good kid who made good grades,” Stephanie Napier said of Mohamud. The Napiers described him as an intelligent, polite, quiet teen who graduated early from Westview High School and moved to Corvallis for college.
Their impression of Mohamud lines up with that of a wide range of friends and acquaintances who have known the accused would-be bomber from grade school in Portland, high school in Beaverton and college in Corvallis.
While legal documents paint him as someone bent on mass destruction, friends says he is a quiet, smart young man; an avid basketball player; and proud of his Muslim faith.
They say his father was heavily involved in the Somali community but that his family was friendly and had a modern lifestyle.
But none ever saw anything to indicate he might have a radical side.
The Napiers came to know Mohamud and his parents, Mariam and Osman Barre, during the two years the families were neighbors.
They said the couple seemed to have a happy home with three well-behaved children. Mariam and her teenage daughter, Mona, were especially close with Stephanie Napier. In fact, Mona babysat Marcus, the Napier’s now 9-year-old son.
Portland Bombing Suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s Neighbors The Napier family lived across the street from the family of Mohamed Osman Mohamud…
…The Napiers said Mohamud’s family moved away sometime in the summer of 2009, around the time that Mariam Barre and Osman Barre split up, she said.
“He was a quiet kid, but with his folks splitting up, who knows,” Adam Napier said…He speculated that Mohamud may have been recruited into terrorist violence: he said that in training for the Army, he learned terrorist organizations often target loners or those with no family – young kids with nothing to lose…Read more here
So far we don’t know anything about his side of what happened. The media are relying entirely on a FBI affidavit for their breathless and exciting stories, although omitting information that points to a reason why this otherwise well-behaved 19-year-old boy would want to hurt civilians, including children. Glenn Greenwald writing for Salon.com analyzes this further.
The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who — with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI’s own undercover agents — allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon. Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it. Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.
What’s missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism… Read more here
What could have gone wrong with this boy? Anger and emotional turmoil of his parent’s divorce? Mental illness? Young people, loners, people alienated from their families, and people mentally ill with depression, psychosis or other are all quite vulnerable, and criminals and terrorists are able to influence them with their ideas. Should we be enticing alienated, misguided, or mentally ill young people into criminal plots or should we be offering them help and treatment? It seems that an incredible amount of manpower and money went into this operation to destroy this young person’s life, when instead we could have used just a fraction of that money to guide him, treat him, help him. What scares me is the number of people we have in our society who fulfill their unseemly urge for power by trying to destroy other people’s lives, including the life of this teenager who had his whole life before him. I don’t think that is what this country should stand for. Call me naïve but I always believed in the U.S. Constitution and the principles for which we stand, even though I have often seen much contradiction in our society.
Posted in FBI, Islamic, mental health, Oregon, Portland, Somali, teenagers | Tagged: FBI, Portland, refugee resettlement, refugees, Somali refugees, terrorism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 27, 2010
According to an article in The Monitor, legitimate refugees, actually asylees, are being thrown into ICE detention facilities for long periods while they wait for their cases to come up before our backed-up immigration courts. Caseloads for immigration judges are now about three times that of federal district judges. Officials detained an Ethiopian refugee for seven months in an ICE facility in South Texas before his case began to wind its way through a patchwork of complex and confusing court asylum proceedings.
SAN BENITO — The young refugee retraced the long, twisted journey that landed him on the American side of the Hidalgo International Bridge earlier this year, pleading for asylum in the U.S., fearing deportation would amount to a death sentence.
The 24-year-old had fled his native Ethiopia months earlier, fearing near-constant government threats in retaliation for vocally supporting an opposing political party. Brutally beaten and twice thrown in prison, the young man was told authorities would kill him if arrested a third time.
His long path to the U.S. took him through Africa, Dubai, Cuba and eventually to Colombia, trekking through dense jungle to the Panama border. Over the course of months, a series of busses, trains and long hikes through Central America ended at the Hidalgo bridge, where he turned himself in and was immediately shipped to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Port Isabel, where he would stay for seven months.
“I was confused. I cried always because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” the man recalled. “I was scared. I know that if I go back (home) they’re going to kill me.”
The man’s account echoes the stories of hundreds of others who come to the U.S. seeking political asylum every year in U.S. immigration courts, a system that experts fear is already strained and overwhelmed with exploding caseloads. In Harlingen’s immigration court alone, data shows that pending cases have more than doubled over the past fiscal year… Read more here
Posted in asylees, Ethiopian, ICE, immigration courts, Texas | Tagged: asylees, asylum, Department of Homeland Security, Dept of Homeland Security, Ethiopian refugees, ICE, immigration courts, refugee resettlement, refugees | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 26, 2010
Sidi Mwalimu, executive director of the not-for-profit agency Mohawk Valley Somali Bantu Community Association Inc. gave a lecture recently about the suffering his people experienced before they resettled to the U.S. Somali Bantu are descendants of slaves taken to Somalia from Tanzania and northern Mozambique. An article in the Utica Observer-Dispatch outlines some of his talk.
…The Somali Bantu clans – non-native to Somalia — were the victims of murder, torture and rape at the hands of native Somalis during the Somali Civil War, forcing what was left of the Somali Bantu to flee to refugee camps in Kenya, Mwalimu explained.
“The Somali clan were raping our females and killing the husbands,” he said, relating an incident in which Somali clan members shot a 2-day-old infant in the head (they had killed the baby’s father nine months prior), and left the 15-year-old mother alone and traumatized.
“It was a very difficult time; we were barely surviving.”
He would pause, overcome, as he recounted how the Somali Bantus had to flee to Kenya on foot. Some walked for 30 days, forced to leave those who could not continue along the roadway. Without food and water, they drank urine and the blood of animals in order to survive.
“People were dying on the road and there is no way you can help them, so you have to leave them and help yourself,” Mwalimu said, remembering how people were killed by lions and hyenas.
But it was the story of a woman, the mother of two children, who could no longer walk and was left to die on the roadway that moved Mwalimu to tears that slid, unchecked, down his cheeks.
“She called to the children and told them this is my last word for you: ‘Walk with these people; I can’t walk with you anymore. Please look after each other,’” Mwalimu said after his emotion silenced him for almost a minute. “The children had nowhere to go, nobody to go to, they had nothing, just themselves.”… Read more here
Posted in Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, Somali Bantu, Utica | Tagged: Mohawk Valley Somali Bantu Community Association Inc., refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, Sidi Mwalimu, Somali bantu, Somalia, Utica | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 25, 2010
According to an article in the Boston Globe Iraqi Mandaean refugees – Mandaeanism is an ancient religion – are desperate to find a country that will take them all in, however no one wants all of them. In addition, the U.S. has decided to resettle the Mandaean refugees around the country rather than allow them to live together in one area, as they have requested.
BOSTON—No single country wants to take all the Iraqi Mandaean refugees, and that’s putting the tiny population at risk, a United Nations refugee official said Thursday…
…Mandaeanism is a tiny, ancient religion that views John the Baptist as its great teacher. About 60,000 Mandaeans recently have fled Iraq and Iran because of persecution, many to Jordan and Syria.
Since 2007, more than 1,200 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. The groups are scattered mostly in Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, Colorado and California. Populations also have been resettled in Europe and Australia.
Boston Mandaean doctor Wisam Breegi said Mandaeans need to be resettled together for support in one place, like Boston, or the population will disappear within two generations.
“This community has no country and is scattered all over the world,” Breegi said. “There needs to be an effort to try to keep Mandaeans together.”…Read more here
Posted in Boston, California, Colorado, Iraqi, Mandaean, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas | Tagged: Boston, Iraq, Iraqi refugees, Lutheran Social Services in Worcester, Mandaean, Mandaean refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, UN, United Nations, Vincent Cochetel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 24, 2010
This Thanksgiving holiday story in the Louisville Courier-Journal is about everything that is right in refugee resettlement – a helpful resettlement agency, generous volunteers, and ethnic community support. A Burundian refugee father of five succumbs to a parasite in his lungs but his 29-year-old nephew and his wife, as well as compassionate volunteers, step in to help.
Three years after leaving Africa’s violence and the refugee camp where his wife died from complications of childbirth, Sindayihebura Pierre’s dream for his family finally seemed to be taking root.
The Burundian father of five had worked hard to build a new life in Louisville. He’d landed a night factory job. He’d bought a Jeep. And he’d proudly watched his children thrive in public schools.
But in September, 44-year-old Pierre died suddenly from a parasite he’d been carrying since his days in the camps, leaving his children orphaned in a country they still barely knew…Read more here
Posted in Burundian, Catholic, Catholic Charities of Louisville Inc., children, Louisville, volunteers | Tagged: Burundian refugees, Catholic Charities of Louisville, Louisville, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, Thanksgiving | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 23, 2010
It was two weeks ago that the Catholic Diocese of Arlington announced they were resuming refugee resettlement to Fredericksburg, VA. Now, the Fredericksburg School Board has written a letter to the governor of Virginia asking him to halt resettlement to the city. A column by Emily Battle in the The Free Lance-Star gives more details.
Last week, Chelyen Davis and Kelly Hannon reported on a meeting the city School Board had about how the schools check on students’ residency status in Fredericksburg. They mentioned a letter the School Board sent last week to Gov. Bob McDonnell, urging him to help them stem the flow of refugees to the city’s small school system…
…In their letter, School Board members say they have been informed that 100 refugees are to be resettled in this region in the coming year, with half of them to be placed within the city limits. Because Fredericksburg has a smaller budget, fewer schools and fewer taxpayers than its neighboring localities, some city officials have tried to make the point to the resettlement office that the burden of this high-needs population should be more equitably spread among larger, wealthier localities.
The School Board makes some similar points in its letter to the governor, which you can read here…
…The board members close by saying, “This locality simply cannot support them,” and urging the governor to encourage the resettlement office to help place refugee families in localities better equipped to meet their needs.
What, if any effect this letter has remains to be seen. Board members noted in their letter that past requests made directly to the agency responsible for resettlement have been followed by an increase in the flow of refugees to the city. Read more here
This issue tends to be most pronounced during recessions when the unemployment rate is high. During non-recession times the refugees are able to quickly join the workforce and offset the extra costs of schooling their kids with their contributions to the tax base.
Posted in faith-based, Catholic, fredericksburg, Catholic Diocese of Arlington, school for refugee children, schools, children, unwelcoming communities, capacity | Tagged: Catholic Diocese of Arlington, fredericksburg, refugee children, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, schools, Virginia governor | 2 Comments »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 22, 2010
Nothing seems to have changed at Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Inc. Last March we reported about the severe problems that Burmese refugee clients were having with the agency. Now Somali and Ethiopian refugee clients of the agency are coming forward to express their distress and frustrations. Refugees report that Catholic Charities placed them in small, roach-infested apartments without any home-safety orientation. When refugees call the agency they don’t hear anything back for days at a time, or case workers tell them they will be out to see them and then don’t show up. The agency has made late rent payments to landlords resulting in landlord warning letters to the refugees. Some refugees are also receiving electrical disconnect notices. Refugees lack transportation and report that overall communication with the agency is extremely poor. They asked to meet with the agency’s director of refugee programs, Paula Walker, but so far she will only speak to them by phone. Some refugees have been so desperate for help that they have resorted to calling 911.
An American volunteer said that some of the refugees asked him a couple of times to come and meet a group of new refugees “that nobody is helping”. He said he went and the small apartment soon filled with over 30 people. Most of the refugees were Somali and they were desperate. They shared some
of their stories. One said that his family was picked up at the airport and left for three days and two nights without enough food. Another refugee said that instead of the traditional rental assistance for six months, it was being cut to three months because of the huge influx of refugees into San Antonio. Yet another refugee said that they were a family with eight kids and had a two room apartment. None of the refugees had a job and no one was helping them look. The volunteer said he came out of the meeting and saw a refugee woman with a young child with hydrocephalus—the child’s head twice the normal size. The woman said the family had been in the country for a month and still had not seen a doctor, nor did they yet have a doctor’s appointment. The child clearly needed a shunt inserted into his head to relieve fluid buildup.
The volunteer said he went back the next day and started on the myriad problems of one family – because the Catholic Charities’ caseworkers were refusing to help. While he was there, one refugee man called his Catholic Charities caseworker about an appointment to get scheduled inoculations for his family. The caseworker said that he couldn’t take the family because it wasn’t “in the budget”. Another refugee had an 85-year-old mother with hepatitis-C and a wife with a uterine infection – and again, no scheduled appointments. The volunteer reports that the number of serious complaints went on and on. Some refugees complained of verbal abuse from Catholic Charities staff, with an assistant director named Hisham telling one man that he “didn’t care about his problems!” All of this added to the volunteer’s experiences from earlier this year with the abandoned Catholic Charities Burmese refugee families. One Burmese refugee man hung himself and his body was found by children. The volunteer said that his conclusion is that there are hundreds of abandoned refugees in the Wurzbach-Gardendale-Datapoint streets area – and another 80 families are expected within weeks.
After the crisis with the recently arrived Somali refugees, a couple of days later the refugees called the police on Catholic Charities. Four police cars pulled up to the apartments. The police then called Catholic Charities to find out why they weren’t helping the refugees. Then two Catholic Charities administrators arrived and passed out $100 gift cards and told the refugees to go back into their apartments. A couple of days later, four blocks away, Catholic Charities held their annual “International Gala” at the Omni Hotel. The volunteer reports that San Antonio has been completely overwhelmed by vast numbers of refugees that continue to be mindlessly pumped in. The apartment complexes in the Wurzbach, Gardendale, and Datapoint streets area have basically become “refugee camps” of confused, frustrated, un-served, and under-served refugees.
Catholic Charities’ refugee program director Paula Walker was quoted last year in a news article about the agency saying, “In the past two years, the local program grew from helping 600 refugees settle into new lives to more than 1,000.” Perhaps this is the result of raising the number of refugees an agency receives so quickly in such a short period. That, of course, would be the State Department’s doing.
Posted in State Department, Burma/Myanmar, Somali, Somali Bantu, health, faith-based, Catholic, San Antonio, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio Inc., food, transportation, housing, overcrowding, police, insufficient assistance with daily tasks, Ethiopian, late health screenings, housing, children, capacity | Tagged: Archdiocese of San Antonio, Burmese refugees, catholic charities, Ethiopian refugees, refugee resettlement, refugee resettlement agencies, refugee resettlement program, refugees, San Antonio, Somali refugees | 1 Comment »
Posted by Christopher Coen on November 19, 2010
Isaac Siliman
A 33-year-old man got life and a 24-year-old woman got 25 years in the September 2009 murder of a 37-year-old Sudanese refugee named Isaac Siliman at the Lighthouse Bay apartment complex in Jacksonville, the site of three 2009 homicides. The twoadmitted pepper-spraying, tasering, and beating Siliman on the head with a hammer, then stealing his car, computer, credit card, and other items. Siliman became a U.S. citizen just two months before his murder and was working at Swisher International cigar company, sometimes double shift, to save up money to bring his wife Mary Laku and their daughters, Youbilla and Manuella, to Jacksonville from Uganda. He was also supporting his father in Sudan. A Florida Times-Union article tells more:
They’d met several years ago, their relationship spinning into a cycle of violence and financial desperation that eventually left a Sudanese refugee — a man who trusted them despite his turbulent upbringing — beaten and dead in Jacksonville.
When they were arrested in September 2009, Ashley Nichole Jerrell pleaded with Merlin Williams Jr. to confess alongside her.
They never meant to kill Isaac Siliman, she said, but they did. They were in it together.
Siliman, 37, became a U.S. citizen several months before the attack. He was working at Swisher International as he tried to save up enough money to relocate his wife and children from the violent, politically unstable African nation.
On Thursday, more than a year after the couple had beaten Siliman to death with a hammer in a robbery gone bad, Jerrell shook. She cried. She apologized. She bawled while hugging her father in Circuit Judge Charles Arnold’s courtroom.
She’d just watched as deputies led Williams, 33, away to begin serving a life sentence. A jury already had advised against the death penalty, a decision Arnold theorized came somewhat ironically from the conscience as the jurors learned through Jerrell’s testimony that she’d be shown mercy for her cooperation….
…Jerrell and Williams made off with Siliman’s credit cards, computer and black Nissan Xterra after attacking him with the hammer, a stun gun and pepper spray. They were preparing to burn the Nissan when the police caught them…
…Initially, Siliman was not suspicious of the couple when they showed up at his apartment because he’d hired Williams to work on his computer. Shortly before they attacked him, he shared cigarettes with them on his back patio and showed them his family photo album. Read more here
Posted in Jacksonville, safety, South Sudanese | Tagged: crime, Isaac Siliman, Jacksonville, Lighthouse Bay apartment complex, refugees, resettlement, sudanese | Leave a Comment »
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
I just received another letter today from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection about my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. A public servant named Dorothy Pullo, Director of FOIA Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in reply to my letter of November 3, 2010 claims that I indicated my belief that, “a message was being sent to residents by the involvement of the U.S. Border Patrol.” As I didn’t make any such statement in my letter I can only assume that Ms. Pullo is again internet surfing in a desperate bid to figure out how to overide my statements to her, rather than simply reading my letter. (I wonder if I’m going to be charged again for this additional internet surfing?) Notice, however, that I never made any such statement in my posting. I said that the Grand Forks Police were sending a message to anyone who dared stand and watch them by making those residents show documents. 
