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Tag: Race and ethnicity

  • Kansas tribe ends nearly $30 million deal with ICE

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    A Kansas tribe said it has walked away from a nearly $30 million federal contract to come up with preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers after facing a wave of online criticism.

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation ‘s announcement Wednesday night came just over a week after the economic development leaders who brokered the deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were fired.

    With some Native Americans swept up and detained in recent ICE raids, the deal was derided online as “disgusting” and “cruel.” Many in Indian Country also questioned how a tribe whose own ancestors were uprooted two centuries ago from the Great Lakes region and corralled on a reservation south of Topeka could participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.

    Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick nodded to the historic issues last week in a video address that called reservations “the government’s first attempts at detention centers.” In an update Wednesday, he announced that he was “happy to share that our Nation has successfully exited all third-party related interests affiliated with ICE.”

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that provide health care management staffing, general contracting and even interior design. And Rupnick said in his latest address that tribal officials plan to meet in January about how to ensure “economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future.”

    A tribal offshoot hired by ICE — KPB Services LLC — was established in April in Holton, Kansas, by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a former naval officer who markets himself as a “go-to” adviser for tribes and affiliated companies seeking to land federal contracts.

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said in 2017 that Woodward’s firm advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.

    Woodward also is listed as the chief operating officer of the Florida branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.

    Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for KPB said Woodward is no longer with the LLC but she declined to say whether he was terminated. Woodward did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm he’s affiliated with, Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.

    A spokesperson for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said the tribe divested from KPB. While that company still has the contract, “Prairie Band no longer has a stake,” the spokesperson said.

    The spokesperson said Woodward is no longer with the tribe’s limited liability corporation, but she declined to say whether he was terminated.

    The ICE contract initially was awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and concept designs” for processing centers and detention centers throughout the U.S., according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real-time contracting database. It was modified a month later to increase the payout ceiling to $29.9 million.

    Sole-source contracts above $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.

    Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security haven’t responded to detailed questions about why the firm was selected for such a big contract without having to compete for the work as federal contracting normally requires. It’s also unclear what the Tribal Council knew about the contract.

    “That process of internal auditing is really just beginning,” the tribal spokesperson said.

    —-

    Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Goodman from Miami.

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  • Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are awarding $5 million to a leader in neurodiversity education

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    NEW YORK — Mega billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, former news anchor Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are awarding $5 million to the founder of a neurodivergent student support network, a recognition that the lesser-known recipient credits to the students powering his fast-growing movement for more inclusive classrooms.

    “I feel like there’s a narrative sometimes that our little actions don’t matter,” Neurodiversity Alliance CEO David Flink said. “That’s just not true. And this proves it. Lots of little actions that happen every day in our work, collectively over time, reached the ears of folks like Lauren and Jeff.”

    Flink is among this year’s five winners of the Bezos Courage & Civility Award. Given most years since 2021, the grant celebrates barrier-breaking individuals who unify people behind bold solutions to often neglected challenges. The no-strings-attached prize money can be used however honorees want to pursue their charitable goals.

    The Neurodiversity Alliance began over 25 years ago as a peer-to-peer mentorship program for students with various learning and developmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia. The nonprofit now reaches more than 600 high schools and colleges, encouraging youth to build educational environments that serve classmates whose brains function differently from what is considered typical.

    The Bezoses, who tied the knot this summer in a lavish Venice ceremony that drew protests highlighting wealth inequality, did not release any explanation for their support of the cause. The Amazon founder’s net worth sits around $240 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fourth richest person in the world.

    Bezos has previously shown an interest in early childhood education through his nonprofit network of tuition-free preschools inspired by the Montessori model.

    Sánchez Bezos grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia. She told “Good Morning America” last year that her children’s book, “The Fly Who Flew to Space,” is for “the 8-year-old me who was told I wasn’t smart.” She credited a college professor, who recruited her to the school newspaper despite her insistence that she could not spell, for encouraging her to get tested.

    The selection of Flink marks a departure from the award’s previous higher profile recipients. Past honorees include CNN political commentator Van Jones, World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, actor-director Eva Longoria and country superstar Dolly Parton. The shift reflects a desire to get the money closer to the ground rather than let well-known figures distribute money to the nonprofits of their choice.

    The smaller scale approach differs from many of Bezos’ ultra wealthy peers, according to an Indiana University professor emeritus in public affairs and philanthropic studies. Leslie Lenkowsky said that today’s entrepreneur-philanthropists — Bill Gates, for example — tend to focus on systemic change in the realms of health or education.

    “Rather than trying to change the system, what they’re trying to do is provide funding to individuals or communities to deal with important issues,” Lenkowsky said of the Bezoses. “It really is a much older model of philanthropy.”

    The award’s size is also smaller this year. Five winners are equally splitting a $25 million pot whereas past awards have totaled as much as $100 million.

    Flink said the money will help the alliance meet its goal of reaching more than 2,000 sites by 2028. He promised to invest in growing the mentorship program, telling more stories that challenge negative narratives about neurodiversity and expanding the national network of student leaders who get training to sustain their schools’ clubs.

    He said this support is especially important when “the demand has never been greater” and they’ve witnessed “some oscillation” in the resources that schools receive.

    The Trump administration’s dismantling of the Education Department has included mass layoffs at the agency charged with addressing complaints that students with disabilities are not receiving adequate support from their schools. Earlier this month, the department brought back dozens of Office for Civil Rights staffers, saying their help is needed to tackle a growing backlog of discrimination complaints.

    Kala Shah, an attorney whose 24-year tenure at the Department of Education included enforcing protections for students with disabilities, said that neurodivergent students depend on that oversight.

    “This is an especially critical time for private foundations and philanthropy to help fill the gap in resources that’s been created by the current federal climate,” she said.

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    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Maryland to consider slavery reparations after Gov. Wes Moore’s veto is overridden

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    ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland will create a commission to study potential reparations for slavery after lawmakers voted Tuesday to override a veto by Gov. Wes Moore — currently the nation’s only Black governor — that disappointed many fellow Democrats.

    Moore said in his veto letter in May that it was a difficult decision to veto the bill, which was a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. But he wrote there has been enough study of the legacy of slavery, and it was now time to “focus on the work itself” to address it.

    But Democrats who control both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly decided the commission was needed to better examine how to do that.

    “This topic isn’t easy, but, again, without formal study, reparations risk being dismissed as symbolic or unconstitutional, regardless of moral merit,” said Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Democrat.

    After his veto was overridden, Moore said that while he disagrees with the legislature’s decision, “I am eager to move forward in partnership on the work of repair that we all agree is an urgent and pressing need.”

    “I believe the time for action is now -– and we must continue moving forward with the work of repair immediately,” Moore said in a statement. “That mission is especially vital given the immediate and ongoing effects of this federal administration on our constituents, including communities that have been historically left behind.”

    Potential reparations outlined in the bill include official statements of apology, monetary compensation, property tax rebates, social service assistance, as well as licensing and permit fee waivers and reimbursement. Reparations also could include assistance with making a down payment on a home, business incentives, childcare, debt forgiveness and tuition payment waivers for higher education.

    Maryland’s Black population is about 30%, the highest percentage of any state outside of the Deep South.

    Support for reparations gained momentum in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. However, the issue has been a difficult one, particularly for high-profile Democrats, and comes amid a broader conservative backlash over how race, history and inequality are handled in public institutions.

    “At a time of growing attacks on diversity and equity, today’s action reaffirms our shared commitment to truth-telling, accountability, and meaningful progress for Black Marylanders,” the state’s Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement.

    In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered a mixed bag for proponents of bills aimed at addressing racist and discriminatory policies against African Americans. He signed a law authorizing $6 million for California State University to study how to confirm an individual’s status as a descendant of an enslaved person. But he vetoed other bills the California Legislative Black Caucus championed as tools to atone for the state’s history.

    Newsom, who is considering running for president in 2028, signed a law last year to formally apologize for slavery and its lingering effects on Black Californians.

    Moore has said he is not planning to run for president in 2028, but he has continued to cultivate a national profile that has drawn pundits’ attention as a potential White House contender.

    New York City lawmakers approved legislation last year to study the city’s significant role in slavery and consider reparations to descendants of enslaved people.

    In 2021, Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, became the first U.S. city to create a reparations plan for its Black residents, using tax revenue from the sale of recreational marijuana.

    As recently as a few years ago, Americans viewed the prospect of reparations mostly negatively. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2021 found that only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults said descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way, such as given land or money. About 7 in 10 said these descendants should not be repaid.

    Maryland lawmakers did not take up congressional redistricting in their one-day special session. Moore has expressed interest in pursuing a new map, which could come up when lawmakers convene in January for their annual 90-day session. However, the state Senate president has said he doesn’t support moving forward with a new map. Democrats hold a 7-1 advantage over Republicans in the state’s eight congressional districts.

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  • Converts are finding Eastern Orthodoxy online. The church wants to help them commune face-to-face

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    LOS ANGELES — Often when a potential convert walks through the doors of his church, one of the first things the Very Rev. Andreas Blom encourages them to do is give up the thing that brought them there.

    “You discovered Orthodoxy online. You learned about it online. Now you’re here, the internet is done,” he tells inquirers at Holy Theophany Orthodox Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Now you have a priest. Now you have people. Now you need to wean yourself off that stuff and enter into this real community of faith.”

    Blom is not a Luddite advising congregants to go off the grid, but is instead responding to the explosion of Eastern Orthodox content online that is, at least in part, driving a surge of converts across the United States. Christian Orthodoxy is an embodied tradition that requires in-person participation, but the internet has given their message a reach not seen in centuries.

    Sometimes called America’s “best kept secret,” Orthodoxy is embraced by about 1% of U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center. But a heightened online profile has led to two waves of converts since the pandemic, said Matthew Namee, executive director of the Orthodox Studies Institute.

    Young, single men are often cited as the driving force behind this trend. But Namee said preliminary data suggest the most recent influx of converts is more diverse, with many Black and Hispanic people, women and young families joining. Clergy report people coming from a host of religious backgrounds, from Islam to witchcraft, as well as different Christian traditions.

    Blom’s Holy Theophany launched a second church this year because their 250-capacity building was consistently overflowing, with dozens standing outside each week.

    “It’s almost full already,” he said of the new location. “And back at our church, again we have a bunch of people standing outside every Sunday. We just can’t keep up.”

    They’re already in talks to launch a third church.

    While some Orthodox content creators are priests, others have no formal ties to the church. They span ideological and political affiliations, with some leaning far right and others who are conventional religious conservatives on issues like marriage and abortion.

    “By and large, Orthodox Christians are not far right. It’s a minority group within a minority religious tradition,” said Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, who studies religion and politics at Northeastern University.

    Jonathan Pageau, a Canadian icon carver who teaches symbolism courses online, is among the most popular content creators with about 275,000 YouTube subscribers.

    “We have to see it as a kind of irony and something of a paradox. In some ways, you could say we’re using tools that aren’t completely appropriate,” he said of how the internet contrasts with Orthodoxy’s emphasis on in-person liturgy. “At the same time, one of the things that the internet offers is reach. And one of the things Orthodoxy hasn’t had in forever is reach.”

    Pageau, who converted in 2003, says he and other influencers stress the importance of in-person community to their followers.

    “We tell them to go to church,” he said. “You can’t live this in your mind online because it is distorting. When you go to church, you meet all kinds of people, people that are on all sides of the political aisle.”

    Abia Ailleen researched Orthodoxy online for six months before stepping inside Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. The 28-year-old Latina, who was chrismated — or received into the faith — in April 2024, also sees a disconnect between Orthodoxy online and in the flesh.

    “People who come to Saint Sophia who are very rigid, who want to be perfect and holy based on what they’ve learned on the internet, a lot of the time Saint Sophia isn’t a place that they want to stay,” she said. “We really have cultivated a structure of humility, of making mistakes and of vulnerability.”

    To be sure, devout Orthodox do follow a robust program of prayer, fasting and other disciplines. Justin Braxton, a firefighter who converted a year and a half ago, likens some of Orthodoxy’s “strenuous” demands to exercise.

    “I dreaded leg day, but I would feel amazing afterwards. I feel like that’s the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is when you’re basically fulfilling carnal needs,” he said. “Joy is that feeling after that tough workout and saying, ‘Yeah, I did it.’”

    At the same time, priests often try to temper the yearnings of some converts for rules and structure.

    “They come to Orthodoxy and they find that yes, we have rules and we have structure. But within those rules and structure there’s a lot of fluidity,” said the Very Rev. Thomas Zain, dean of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Brooklyn, New York, and vicar general of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

    His church has seen an exponential increase in attendance, which began about two years ago. “I’ll get like 50 people at a Bible study or adult education class, where I used to get three or four or five,” he said.

    Zain, a descendant of Syrian immigrants who was born into the faith, is navigating the ideological diversity from which people are joining. “It’s breathed new life into the church, but it’s also challenging because you’re trying to mold them into one community with the old and the new,” he said.

    Part of what’s fueling the perception that only men are converting is that many influencers overlap with the so-called manosphere — content online that caters toward men grappling with their understanding of masculinity. Orthodoxy is often billed as an alternative or supplement to self-help advice for young men.

    “As a theologian, the idea that somehow masculinity — this particular way of thinking about masculinity — is inherent to Orthodox theology and teaching is I think just completely wrong,” said Aristotle Papanikolaou, cofounding director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. “There’s actually no logic to the idea that somehow I need to be masculine in this particular way in order to unite myself with God.”

    Though appealing to some, others believe these influencers distort their idea of Christianity. “It’s just not my cup of tea,” said Aaron Velasco, a 26-year-old filmmaker chrismated last year.

    And while Velasco did take an interest in some content creators, and appreciates Pageau’s demeanor and perspective, he thinks many of them preach an inflammatory version of the faith that doesn’t fit his current understanding of it.

    Many adherents say the broader church is more ideologically diverse than the rigid conservatism often found online.

    “Look at the institutional church. There is this huge hierarchy where women are not present. It’s hard to say that’s not a masculine image,” said Dina Zingaro, who is studying Orthodoxy at Harvard Divinity School and who was raised in the faith. “At the same time, there are so many counter-narratives in Orthodoxy that uproot this idea.”

    Church leaders have made few public responses, however some clergy are beginning to speak more about the magnitude of this influx and its accompanying challenges.

    “There are cases of extremism and fundamentalism,” said Metropolitan Saba, leader of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, during an address last month in Denver. “Many who are coming to the church today are psychologically, emotionally or socially wounded, which requires experienced and mature spiritual fathers and mothers.”

    Zingaro, who preaches regularly and teaches courses for Orthodox women on preaching, hopes church leadership will be more vocal.

    “Our response in my mind has not been strong enough,” Zingaro said. “There’s something that we’re doing that is making people think it’s OK to make these claims about Orthodoxy. We need to lift up the real spirit and the core of Orthodoxy, which is really the opposite of this rule-based male domination version.”

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    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Oklahoma Black Lives Matter leader indicted for fraud, money laundering

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    OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal grand jury indicted the leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Oklahoma City over allegations that millions of dollars in grant funds were improperly spent on international trips, groceries and personal real estate, prosecutors announced Thursday.

    Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, 52, was indicted earlier this month on 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering, court records show.

    Court records do not indicate the name of Dickerson’s attorney, and messages left Thursday at her mobile number and by email were not immediately returned.

    According to the indictment, Dickerson served since at least 2016 as the executive director of Black Lives Matter OKC, which accepted charitable donations through its affiliation with the Arizona-based Alliance for Global Justice.

    In total, BLM OKC raised more than $5.6 million dating back to 2020, largely from online donors and national bail funds that were supposed to be used to post bail for individuals arrested in connection with racial justice protests after the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer in 2020, the indictment alleges.

    When those bail funds were returned to BLM OKC, the indictment alleges, Dickerson embezzled at least $3.15 million into her personal accounts and then used the money to pay for trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, retail shopping, at least $50,000 in food and grocery deliveries for herself and her children, a personal vehicle, and six properties in Oklahoma City deeded to her or to a company she controlled.

    The indictment also alleges she submitted false annual reports to the alliance stating that the funds were used only for tax-exempt purposes.

    If convicted, Dickerson faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count of wire fraud and 10 years in prison and fines for each count of money laundering.

    In a live video posted on her Facebook page Thursday afternoon, Dickerson said she was not in custody and was “fine.”

    “I cannot make an official comment about what transpired today,” she said. “I am home. I am safe. I have confidence in our team.”

    “A lot of times when people come at you with these types of things … it’s evidence that you are doing the work,” she continued. “That is what I’m standing on.”

    The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan “Black lives matter” a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.

    The Associated Press reported in October that the Justice Department was investigating whether leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020. There was no immediate indication that Dickerson’s indictment is connected to that probe.

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  • Cincinnati approves $8.1 million settlement with protesters arrested in 2020

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    CINCINNATI, Ohio — The city of Cincinnati approved an $8.1 million legal settlement Wednesday with hundreds of non-violent protesters who had alleged mistreatment at the hands of city and county authorities when they were arrested during the racial justice demonstrations of 2020.

    Cincinnati City Council approved the deal after its terms were outlined last week. It brings to a close years of litigation that stemmed from protests over the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people.

    None of the 479 plaintiffs had been charged with a felony or violent offense nor been involved in any property damage — though some did occur. All were charged with misdemeanor curfew violations during nights of protests from May 30 to June 8, 2020, but those were later dismissed by the city amid a flurry of conflicting court rulings.

    The lawsuit they brought collectively in 2022 alleged police brutality, wrongful arrests, inhumane jail conditions and unlawful seizures of property.

    Hamilton County, whose sheriff and jail were also named in the lawsuit, will pay $65,000 toward the settlement, with the city paying the remainder.

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  • Campbell’s fires executive who was recorded saying company’s products are for ‘poor people’

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    The Campbell’s Co. said Wednesday it has fired an executive who was recorded making racist comments and mocking the company’s products and customers.

    Martin Bally, a vice president in Campbell’s information security department, was named in a lawsuit filed last week by Robert Garza, a former Campbell’s employee who said he was fired Jan. 30 after he reported Bally’s comments to a supervisor.

    The lawsuit was filed in Michigan, where both Garza and Bally live. Campbell’s is based in Camden, New Jersey.

    In the lawsuit, Garza claimed he met with Bally in November 2024 to discuss his salary. During the meeting, which Garza allegedly recorded, Bally described Campbell’s as “highly process(ed) food” and said it was for “poor people.”

    Garza claimed in the lawsuit that Bally made racist remarks about Indian workers, whom he called “idiots.” Garza said Bally also told him that he often went to work high after consuming marijuana edibles.

    Campbell’s said Wednesday it first learned of Garza’s lawsuit last week. After listening to portions of the recording, Campbell’s said it believed the voice was Bally’s. Bally was fired Tuesday.

    “The comments were vulgar, offensive and false, and we apologize for the hurt they have caused,” the company said in a statement. “This behavior does not reflect our values and the culture of our company, and we will not tolerate that kind of language under any circumstances.”

    Garza’s attorney didn’t respond when The Associated Press asked for a copy of the audio recording.

    But according to Local 4 news in Detroit, which interviewed Garza and played a portion of the recording on air, Bally said Campbell’s products were unhealthy during his expletive-filled rant.

    “Bioengineered meat. I don’t want to eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer,” Bally said.

    Campbell’s defended its chicken Wednesday, saying it comes from long-trusted U.S. suppliers, is raised without antibiotics and meets high quality standards.

    “The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate, they are patently absurd,” Campbell’s said.

    Larry Kopp, the chairman and founder of The TASC Group, a strategic communications and public relations company, said Campbell’s should have fired Bally and reached a settlement with Garza as soon as it learned of the incident.

    “If they had settled they would not be in this mess,” Kopp said. “Recordings like these are devastating and should never see the light of day.”

    Garza is seeking monetary damages from Campbell’s, Bally and from his former manager, J.D. Aupperle. Garza said he told Aupperle about the conversation with Bally shortly before he was fired.

    Campbell’s said Wednesday that Aupperle remains employed by the company.

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  • Trump says lax migration policies are top national security threat after National Guard members shot

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday’s “heinous assault” on two National Guard members near the White House proves that lax migration policies are “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”

    “No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” he said.

    Trump’s remarks, released in a video on social media, underscores his intention to reshape the country’s immigration system and increase scrutiny of migrants who are already here. With aggressive deportation efforts already underway, his response to the shooting showed that his focus will not waver.

    The suspect in the shooting is believed to be an Afghan national, according to Trump and two law enforcement officials. He entered the United States in September 2021, after the chaotic collapse of the government in Kabul, when Americans were frantically evacuating people as the Taliban took control.

    The 29-year-old suspect was part of Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden-era program that resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said. The initiative brought roughly 76,000 Afghans to the United States, many of whom had worked alongside American troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators.

    It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and his allies, congressional Republicans and some government watchdogs over gaps in the vetting process and the speed of admissions, even as advocates say it offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.

    Trump described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on earth,” and he said his administration would review everyone who entered from the country under President Joe Biden — a measure his administration had already been planning before the incident.

    During his remarks, Trump also swung his focus to Minnesota, where he complained about “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” who are “ripping apart that once-great state.”

    Minnesota has the country’s largest Somali community, roughly 87,000 people. Many came as refugees over the years.

    The reference to immigrants with no connection to Wednesday’s developments was a reminder of the scope of Trump’s ambitions to rein in migration.

    Administration officials have been ramping up deportations of people in the country illegally, as well as clamping down on refugee admissions. The focus has involved the realignment of resources at federal agencies, stirring concern about potentially undermining other law enforcement priorities.

    However, Trump’s remarks were a signal that scrutiny of migrants and the nation’s borders will only increase. He said he wants to remove anyone “who does not belong here or does not add benefit to our country.”

    “If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” Trump added.

    Afterward, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would indefinitely stop processing all immigration requests for Afghan nationals pending a review of security and vetting protocols.

    Supporters of Afghan evacuees said they feared that people who escaped danger from the Taliban would now face renewed suspicion and scrutiny.

    “I don’t want people to leverage this tragedy into a political ploy,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac.

    He said Wednesday’s shooting should not shed a negative light on the tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who have gone through the various legal pathways to resettling in the U.S. and those who await in the pipeline.

    Under Operation Allies Welcome, tens of thousands of Afghans were first brought to U.S. military bases around the country, where they completed immigration processing and medical evaluations before settling into the country. Four years later, there are still scores of Afghans who were evacuated at transit points in the Middle East and Europe as part of the program.

    Those in countries like Qatar and Albania, who have undergone the rigorous process, have been left in limbo since Trump entered his second term and paused the program as part of his series of executive actions cracking down on immigration.

    Vice President JD Vance, writing on social media, criticized Biden for “opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees,” adding that “they shouldn’t have been in our country.”

    “Already some voices in corporate media chirp that our immigration policies are too harsh,” he said. “Tonight is a reminder of why they’re wrong.”

    ___

    Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Man who fatally attacked a San Francisco woman will get life in prison

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    SAN FRANCISCO — A man convicted of beating a San Francisco grandmother who later died is facing life in prison, a judge said Tuesday.

    San Francisco Superior Court Judge Eric Fleming said Keonte Gathron, 25, will likely be sentenced to prison without the possibility of parole in the death of Yik Oi Huang. The judge postponed sentencing until next week because the defendant had not received a presentence report, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

    Gathron was convicted earlier this month of murder, carjacking, robbery, elder abuse, child endangerment and other charges stemming from a two-week crime rampage in January 2019. Authorities say he targeted victims of Asian descent or who spoke little English.

    Huang, 88, was attacked on her morning walk. She was found injured at a playground in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood where she lived. Her skull, arms and neck were broken. Her home was burglarized minutes afterward.

    Huang received long-term care at a hospital but died in January 2020. Her assault preceded the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic and rattled the city’s Asian American community.

    Gathron represented himself and denied culpability but produced no evidence. He also accused police of manipulating surveillance video, DNA and other evidence.

    Fleming announced he intends to sentence Gathron to two life sentences — one with the possibility of parole — and over 30 years for other offenses. Gathron plans to appeal.

    Huang’s three daughters and several grandchildren spoke in court, in English and Cantonese. They described Huang as a hard-working wife, mother and garment factory employee in China who made sure her children were fed. She realized a dream of moving to the U.S. and owning a home in San Francisco.

    A tearful Gathron said he “understood the pain and loss” but insisted he was innocent.

    The park where Huang died was renamed Yik Oi Huang Peace and Friendship Park last year.

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  • American menswear designer Jeffrey Banks is finally sharing his story and starting a new chapter

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Designer Jeffrey Banks spent years co-authoring seven books on fashion before finally deciding it was time to share his own story.

    The menswear designer recounts more than 50 years in fashion, from working for Ralph Lauren to launching his own label, in his new memoir “Storyteller: Tales from a Fashion Insider.”

    At 72, Banks is having a breakout year. One of his designs was selected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibit, and he’s relaunching his eponymous menswear label.

    Banks debuted his label of polished tailoring and American sportswear back in 1976 at 21. His menswear played with color and texture: think tartan plaid jackets, pinstriped suits and furs. And at a time when there were few Black designers, his clothes were being sold in major department stores from Macy’s to Bergdorf Goodman and he was landing multimillion-dollar deals.

    For his Jeffrey Banks menswear relaunch in January, he’s moving away from suiting and embracing sustainable sportswear, from knits to underwear.

    “As much as I love suits and tailored clothing,” he told The Associated Press, “I don’t think that’s the business for now, and the business of young people.”

    His industry friends have rallied around him on his book tour. The Council of Fashion Designers of America hosted a conversation between Banks and Isaac Mizrahi last week to celebrate the publication of Banks’ book.

    Mizrahi, who worked for Banks on his womenswear line, called him a trendsetter in the commercial space.

    “I was so inspired when I was working with him, and he was one of the first people to do a lot of things at once,” Mizrahi said. “I looked at that, and I thought that was real success.”

    Banks is a natural storyteller

    Banks’ memoir doubles as a love letter to the family, loved ones and fashionable friends who supported him over the years. One motivation for doing the book, he said, was to ensure his mother, who turns 105 in January, could read it.

    “She instilled in me and in my sister, as did my father, the idea that if we wanted something bad enough and we were willing to work hard enough for it, we could achieve and get anything that we wanted,” Banks said. “And the fact that we were Black, that shouldn’t make a difference.”

    Banks and his mother shared a love of clothing. At 10, he designed a yellow asymmetrical wool coat and matching sheath dress for her to wear on Easter Sunday.

    Former CFDA President Stan Herman, 97, said that Banks is a natural storyteller with an impeccable memory, who he joked, “was born with a Vogue in his crib.”

    In his book, he highlights his “Mentors” and “Best Friends Forever” through entertaining anecdotes and photos of fashion industry stalwarts like late designer Perry Ellis and celebrities like Bobby Short, Barbra Streisand and Audrey Hepburn. Ever the gentleman, Banks’ book does not divulge all his insider secrets despite working so closely with some of the biggest names in fashion.

    Banks’ fashion ascent

    Banks credits fashion industry giants Lauren and Calvin Klein as his mentors.

    He first met Lauren as a teenager while working at Britches of Georgetowne, a menswear store in Washington, D.C. In his book, Banks shares how Lauren gave him one of his personal suits to wear for prom before he later worked for the designer while attending Pratt Institute. Banks said the two first bonded over their admiration of Hollywood movie stars like Cary Grant and Fred Astaire.

    “Ralph always treated me like an equal, I mean, from Day One,” Banks said. “He always said … I’m his other son.”

    While attending the Parsons School of Design, Banks was personally recruited by Klein. At his first fashion show, Banks said he sat Klein and Lauren next to one another.

    It was while building Klein’s menswear line that Banks was offered the chance to start his own label. He then ventured into men’s outerwear with Lakeland, furs with Alixandre, a Jeffrey Banks Boys’ line and even womenswear.

    In 1980, he was tapped to overhaul Merona Sport, a family sportswear brand, he turned into a money-making juggernaut that catapulted his career. He writes that the brand jumped from generating $7 million to $70 million within six months. At the time, Mizrahi said, it was like Banks had “struck gold.”

    As Banks goes back to his roots with the relaunch of this menswear label, his fashion community is ready to embrace him again.

    “He’s still as relevant as ever,” Fern Mallis, former head of The Council of Fashion Designers of America, said. “And I think there’s definitely a place for him in the market, he’s got a wonderful following of fashionista friends. … We’ll be wearing it, posting it and writing about it.”

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  • As Black women face unemployment challenges, policymaker roundtable seeks solutions

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    In a packed room at library in a downtown Boston, Rep. Ayanna Pressley posed a blunt question: Why are Black women, who have some of the highest labor force participation rates in the country, now seeing their unemployment rise faster than most other groups?

    The replies Monday from policymakers, academics, business owners and community organizers laid out how economic headwinds facing Black women may indicate a troubling shift for the economy at large.

    The unemployment rate for Black women increased from 6.7% to 7.5% between August and September this year, the most recent month for available data because of the federal government shutdown.

    That compares with a 3.2% to 3.4% increase for white women over the same period. And it extended a year-long trend of the Black women’s unemployment rate increasing at a time of broad economic uncertainty.

    Many roundtable attendees view those numbers as both an affront and a warning about the uneven pressures on Black women.

    “Everyone is missing out when we’re pushed out of the workforce,” said Pressley, a progressive Democrat. “That is something that I worry about now, that you have all these women with specific expertise and specializations that we’re being deprived of.”

    And when Black women do have work, she said they tend to be “woefully underemployed.”

    Black women had the highest labor force participation rate of any female demographic in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, yet their unemployment rate remains higher than other demographics of women.

    Historically, their unemployment rate has trended slightly above the national average, widening during periods of slowed economic growth or recession. Black Americans are overrepresented in industries like retail, health and social services, and government administration, according to a 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey.

    “Black women are at the center of the Venn diagram that is our society,” said Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, a PhD candidate in public policy and economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    She pointed to April as the month when Black women’s unemployment began to diverge more sharply from other groups. A policy agenda that ignores the causes, she said, could harm the broader economy.

    Roundtable participants cited many long-standing structural inequities but attributed most of the latest divergence to recent federal actions. They blamed the Trump administration’s downsizing of the Minority Business Development Agency and the cancellation of some federal contracts with non-profits and small businesses, saying those actions disproportionately impacted Black women. Others said tariff policies and mass federal layoffs also contributed to the strain.

    The administration’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives was repeatedly mentioned by participants as a cause for a more hostile environment for Black women to find employment, customers or government contracting.

    There is no concrete data on how many Black federal workers were laid off, fired or otherwise dismissed as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts through the federal government.

    The attendees discussed a wide range of potential solutions to the unemployment rate for Black women, including using state budgets to bolster business development for Black women, expanding microloans to different communities, increasing government resources for contracting, requiring greater transparency on corporate hiring practices and encouraging state and federal officials to enforce anti-discrimination policies.

    “I feel like I was just at church,” said Ruthzee Louijeune, the Boston City Council president, as the meeting wrapped up. She encouraged attendees to keep up their efforts, and she defended DEI policies as essential to a healthy workforce and political system. Without broad-based efforts, the Democrat said, the country’s business and political leadership would be “abnormal” and weakened.

    “Any space that does not look like our country and like our cities is not normal,” she said, “and not the city or country we are trying to build.”

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  • Tulsa Race Massacre survivor dies at 111

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    DALLAS — Viola Ford Fletcher, who as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child, has died. She was 111.

    Her grandson Ike Howard said Monday that she died surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. Sustained by a strong faith, she raised three children, worked as a welder in a shipyard during World War II and spent decades caring for families as a housekeeper.

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    By JAMIE STENGLE – Associated Press

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  • Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, dies age 111

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    DALLAS — Viola Ford Fletcher, who as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child, has died. She was 111.

    Her grandson Ike Howard said Monday that she died surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. Sustained by a strong faith, she raised three children, worked as a welder in a shipyard during World War II and spent decades caring for families as a housekeeper.

    Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said the city was mourning her loss. “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose,” he said in a statement.

    She was 7 years old when the two-day attack began on Tulsa’s Greenwood district on May 31, 1921, after a local newspaper published a sensationalized report about a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman. As a white mob grew outside the courthouse, Black Tulsans with guns who hoped to prevent the man’s lynching began showing up. White residents responded with overwhelming force. Hundreds of people were killed and homes were burned and looted, leaving over 30 city blocks decimated in the prosperous community known as Black Wall Street.

    “I could never forget the charred remains of our once-thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air, and the terror-stricken faces of my neighbors,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.”

    As her family left in a horse-drawn buggy, her eyes burned from the smoke and ash, she wrote. She described seeing piles of bodies in the streets and watching as a white man shot a Black man in the head, then fired toward her family.

    She told The Associated Press in an interview the year her memoir was published that fear of reprisals influenced her years of near-silence about the massacre. She wrote the book with Howard, her grandson, who said he had to persuade her to tell her story.

    “We don’t want history to repeat itself so we do need to educate people about what happened and try to get people to understand why you need to be made whole, why you need to be repaired,” Howard told the AP in 2024. “The generational wealth that was lost, the home, all the belongings, everything was lost in one night.”

    The attack went largely unremembered for decades. In Oklahoma, wider discussions began when the state formed a commission in 1997 to investigate the violence.

    Fletcher, who in 2021 testified before Congress about what she went through, joined her younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, and another massacre survivor, Lessie Benningfield Randle, in a lawsuit seeking reparations. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed it in June 2024, saying their grievances did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

    “For as long as we remain in this lifetime, we will continue to shine a light on one of the darkest days in American history,” Fletcher and Randle said in a statement at the time. Van Ellis had died a year earlier, at the age of 102.

    A Justice Department review, launched under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act and released in January 2024, outlined the massacre’s scope and impact. It concluded that federal prosecution may have been possible a century ago, but there was no longer an avenue to bring a criminal case.

    The city has been looking for ways to help descendants of the massacre’s victims without giving direct cash payments. Some of the last living survivors, including Fletcher, received donations from groups but have not received any payments from the city or state.

    Fletcher, born in Oklahoma on May 10, 1914, spent most of her early years in Greenwood. It was an oasis for Black people during segregation, she wrote in her memoir. Her family had a nice home, she said, and the community had everything from doctors to grocery stores to restaurants and banks.

    Forced to flee during the massacre, her family became nomadic, living out of a tent as they worked in the fields as sharecroppers. She didn’t finish school beyond the fourth grade.

    At the age of 16, she returned to Tulsa, where she got a job cleaning and creating window displays in a department store, she wrote in her memoir. She then met Robert Fletcher, and they married and moved to California. During World War II, she worked in a Los Angeles shipyard as a welder, she wrote.

    She eventually left her husband, who was physically abusive, and gave birth to their son, Robert Ford Fletcher, she wrote. Longing to be closer to her family, she returned to Oklahoma and settled north of Tulsa in Bartlesville.

    Fletcher wrote that her faith and the close-knit Black community gave her the support she needed to raise her children. She had another son, James Edward Ford, and a daughter, Debra Stein Ford, from other relationships.

    She worked for decades as a housekeeper, doing everything in those homes from cooking to cleaning to caring for children, Howard said. She worked until she was 85.

    She eventually returned to Tulsa to live. Howard said his grandmother hoped the move would help in her fight for justice.

    Howard said the reaction his grandmother got when she started speaking out was therapeutic for her.

    “This whole process has been helpful,” Howard said.

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  • Former Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown dies in prison hospital at 82

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    BUTNER, N.C. — H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82.

    Brown died Sunday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, his widow Karima Al-Amin said Monday.

    A cause of death was not immediately available, but Karima Al-Amin told The Associated Press that her husband had been suffering from cancer and had been transferred to the medical facility in 2014 from a federal prison in Colorado.

    Like other more militant Black leaders and organizers during the racial upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brown decried heavy-handed policing in Black communities. He once stated that violence was “as American as cherry pie.”

    “Violence is a part of America’s culture,” Brown said during a 1967 news conference. “… America taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression, if necessary. We will be free by any means necessary.”

    Brown was chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a powerful civil rights group, and in 1968 was named minister of justice for the Black Panther Party.

    Three years later, he was arrested for a robbery that ended in a shootout with New York police.

    While serving a five-year prison sentence for the robbery, Brown converted to the Dar-ul Islam movement and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Upon his release, he moved to Atlanta in 1976, opened a grocery and health food store and became an Imam, a spiritual leader for local Muslims.

    “I’m not dissatisfied with what I did,” Al-Amin told an audience in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1998. “But Islam has allowed things to be clearer. … We have to be concerned about the welfare of ourselves and those around us, and that comes through submission to God and the raising of one’s consciousness.”

    On March 16, 2000, Fulton County Deputy Sheriff Ricky Kinchen and deputy Aldranon English were shot after encountering Al-Amin outside his Atlanta home. The deputies were there to serve a warrant for failure to appear in court on charges of driving a stolen car and impersonating a police officer during a traffic stop the previous year.

    English testified at trial that Al-Amin fired a high-powered assault rifle when the deputies tried to arrest him. Then, prosecutors said, he used a handgun to fire three shots into Kinchen’s groin as the wounded deputy lay in the street. Kinchen would die from his wounds.

    Prosecutors portrayed Al-Amin as a deliberate killer, while his lawyers painted him as a peaceful community and religious leader who helped revitalize poverty-stricken areas. They suggested he was framed as part of a government conspiracy dating from his militant days.

    Al-Amin maintained his innocence but was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life.

    He argued that his constitutional rights were violated at trial and in 2019 challenged his imprisonment before a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case.

    “For decades, questions have surrounded the fairness of his trial,” Al-Amin’s family said Monday in a statement. “Newly uncovered evidence — including previously unseen FBI surveillance files, inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, and third-party confessions — raised serious concerns that Imam Al-Amin did not receive the fair trial guaranteed under the Constitution.”

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  • Beloved Italian singer Ornella Vanoni, whose career spanned 70 years, dies at 91

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    NICOSIA, Cyprus — Ornella Vanoni, a beloved performer who had a seven decade-long singing career with such international hits as “Senza Fine” and “L’appuntamento,” has died. She was 91.

    In a post on X Saturday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her deep sorrow for the loss of Vanoni, whose “unmistakable voice” left an imprint on Italian culture for generations. “Italy loses a unique artist who leaves us with an unrepeatable artistic heritage,” Meloni said.

    Vanoni died of cardiac arrest at her Milan home, Italian newspaper La Stampa reported.

    Vanoni recorded more than 100 albums with sales of over 55 million copies, vaulting her to iconic status among generations of fans and earning her the moniker “The Lady of Italian Song,” according to LaPresse newspaper.

    Born in Milan in 1937, Vanoni’s first love was the theater, which culminated with performances on the Broadway stage in 1964. But her passion for music combined with what LaPresse described as a “highly personal and sophisticated performing style” and vast repertoire from jazz to pop led her to collaborate with some of the most important songwriters in Italy and abroad.

    Vanoni’s partnership — and love affair — with famed Genovese singer-songwriter Gino Paoli produced the hit “Senza Fine” (Without End), which shot her onto the international stage in 1961.

    Her later collaborations spanned a range of artistic talent including Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock and George Benson, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency.

    Vanoni excelled in numerous prestigious music festival awards in Italy, including the country’s most popular Sanremo Music Festival in which she participated eight times, earning second place in 1968 with the song “Casa Bianca.”

    Her talent extended into songwriting which was recognized when she twice won the prestigious Tenco Award — the only Italian singer to be awarded the prize as a songwriter and the only woman to have won it twice.

    ANSA said Vanoni was much sought-after as a guest on television programs in her later years because of her unpredictable nature, the vast wealth of anecdotes she shared and her “complete indifference to political correctness.”

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  • ‘Rental Family’ spotlights real-life Japanese businesses that offer fill-in relatives and friends

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    TOKYO (AP) — Ryuichi Ichinokawa’s life could be right out of the movie “Rental Family” as the founder nearly two decades ago of the Heart Project business in Japan, which he bills as a surrogate attendance service complete with furnishing of extras and family members.

    He has hired dozens of people to act like reporters with cameras and voice recorders, taking notes and milling with real journalists to fill up an otherwise rather vacant event. He has posed as the boyfriend of a woman who needs to discuss legal paperwork with her former spouse. And he has gone to a hospital as a stand-in husband for a woman getting fertility treatments.

    “I am being of service to people. I hope they will be happy,” said Ichinokawa, a dapper elderly man who asked The Associated Press to not be photographed lest his identity become public.

    “Rental Family,” a moving drama from Searchlight Pictures starring Brendan Fraser, is sure to spark interest in Japan’s real-life industry. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, centers on Phillip, an American actor who is recruited by a Tokyo “rental family” agency in need of a “token white guy.” His recurring jobs range from playing video games with a loner to portraying a little girl’s long absentee father. It isn’t long before Phillip starts to become emotionally invested in what were supposed to be superficial relationships. The film’s Japanese supporting cast also bring to life the intense highs and lows of assuming a role in a stranger’s life.

    In reality, these niche businesses highlight how deeply people in Japan experience loneliness or worry about keeping up appearances. Outsiders may cringe at the idea of paying amateur actors to be fake family members or friends. But users say they find these services comforting and even healing.

    Rental roles can vary and be stressful

    The film’s director, Mitsuyo Miyazaki whose professional name is Hikari, was born in Japan yet knew little about the concept. Once she learned about it, she couldn’t stop thinking about what a unique story it could inspire. So Hikari started researching and found hundreds of companies in Japan that offer rental families or similar services. She spoke with several people in that world.

    “I kind of started tackling those questions, and interviewed them on what are the necessities of the business that needs to happen in Japan. And then that’s how I kind of built stories,” Hikari said.

    Even at a time when people seek company through Artificial Intelligence, she thinks hiring of actors to fill emotional voids will always be in demand.

    “I don’t think they will disappear, honestly, it might just probably expand,” she said.

    In Ichinokawa’s experience, most people who ask for the service have a certain social status to protect. He has organized visits to a bar for a hostess who wants to impress her employer with lots of clientele. Similar to the movie, Ichinokawa has gone to school events with a single mother and her child, acting as a friendly uncle.

    Sometimes Ichinokawa takes extra steps to ensure the facade. If required, he will print fake business cards — which are routinely exchanged at Japanese gatherings.

    Some parts are easy, like being a wedding guest who just sits and eats. But it’s often stressful work. You’re coached to avoid uttering the wrong name or background information. You might have to be prepared to talk about childhood memories you have no clue about. Ichinokawa used to scribble names on his hand. He also pores over notes in advance. If he’s really desperate, he excuses himself to the restroom.

    Payment for getting rented out varies. For Heart Project, the relatively easy roles can make 9,800 yen ($63) for a couple of hours. For the more elaborate parts, the client dishes out 20,000 yen ($130) to 30,000 yen ($190) per person.

    Ichinokawa’s rule is that you only play a role once. To do it more than once is setting yourself up for failure. And he has never failed in his mission, he added proudly.

    “I don’t feel I am acting. I really get angry if that’s what the situation requires,” he said.

    Japan’s loneliness epidemic

    Japan has long grappled with loneliness, high suicide rates and a stigma surrounding mental illness. After a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the country examined how the disasters were affecting mental health, said Miwa Yasui, a professor at the University of Chicago whose research includes the influence of culture on mental health.

    Today, there are more mental health providers and an understanding of the need for counseling in Japan. During the pandemic, volunteers focused on teen depression started an online Japanese-language chat service.

    Japanese people isolated physically are prone to feeling it internally, said Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, author of “The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan.”

    “When people feel they’re not loved, they are not accepted, they’re now seeing they’re not heard. The sense of ‘I don’t matter’ is a form of loneliness,” said Ozawa-de Silva, who is also a professor at Emory University.

    This can lead to “hikikomori,” where people withdraw socially and become shut-ins for months or even years.

    Japanese culture’s collectivist nature also contributes to hiding mental health challenges. Children are taught the principle of “minna no tame ni” or for the sake of everybody, Yasui said. As adults, there is pressure to maintain harmony and make sure the needs of others — work or family — are met.

    “Within Asian cultures, there’s a concept of loss of face,” Yasui said. “If you lose that, that actually has significant implications.”

    In Ozawa-de Silva’s opinion, renting actors for surface-level intimacy is putting a “Band-Aid” on a deeper problem.

    “I’m not against that,” Ozawa-de Silva said. “If people can buy time by renting a family, while pursuing much better long-term solutions, I think the rental family could be a very, very beneficial thing.”

    Rental families and real connections

    While someone with a Western mindset might find renting actors bizarre, many Japanese people find it reassuring. Much of the written feedback Ichinokawa gets expresses relief or appreciation: “Thank you for today. You really interacted with us like a real mother. My boyfriend kept saying, ‘What a great mom.’” From a male client: “Please relay my regards to the person who played the role of my wife and tell her she was a superb wife.”

    The film, which will be released in February in Japan, uses the rental family concept to remind people that human nature’s need for connection is not something you can suppress.

    “When you help somebody and if they feel like you’re being supportive, that makes you feel good,” Hikari said. “And a family member doesn’t have to be alway blood-related.”

    ___ Tang reported from Phoenix.

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  • A Chicago street vendor couple has a defiant response to immigration arrests: Stick to the routine

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    CHICAGO — The massive Border Patrol presence on a recent Saturday morning in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood didn’t faze Ofelia Herrera even though she and her husband are in the United States illegally.

    She waited for agents to move a few blocks away, then opened their stand serving Mexican-style corn on the cob and “aguas frescas” flavored with cucumber, pineapple and strawberry in the heart of the Mexican immigrant community, just as they’ve done for 18 years. Sirens blared through a chaotic day as Chicago police responded to a Border Patrol call for help and confronted demonstrators.

    Herrera, 47, and Rafael Hernandez, 44, have refused to alter their routines during an immigration enforcement blitz in Chicago that has caused many without legal status to stay home since it began in early September. Even some U.S. citizens of Latino heritage are afraid to go outside.

    The couple says working not only pays the bills but helps avoid depression, making them stand out from others gripped by fear in Chicago’s immigrant communities.

    “The only thing you can do is have faith in God and not be afraid,” Herrera said in an interview at the couple’s South Side house, already bedecked with Christmas decorations just days after Halloween. “Fear gives way to depression and other things. At the end of the day, they don’t deport you to Mexico but you are sick with depression and other things because you didn’t have faith in God.”

    Hernandez agreed. “We know people who have fallen into depression. They don’t leave the house. It’s very sad.”

    The couple’s Little Village food stand, adorned with American flags, is in a bustling area the Border Patrol has visited often. The two-lane commercial drag is lined with family-owned restaurants serving birria and chilaquiles, and clothing stores with displays of Mexican sports team jerseys and white dresses for quinceañera parties — a coming-of-age celebration for 15-year-old girls in Latino families.

    Vendors sell sliced fruit and pottery from parked vehicles. Strains of ranchera music from cars and shops add to the festive atmosphere, drawing Mexican immigrant visitors from across Chicago and beyond. A family from Waterloo, Iowa, nibbled corn smothered in mayonnaise, cotija cheese, lime and chili powder at the couple’s stand under a cold drizzle.

    Many of the couple’s friends haven’t ventured outside in more than two months. That fear has sparked a grassroots effort to buy out street vendors, allowing them to go home early and avoid public exposure.

    Sidewalk traffic on 26th Street is livelier than many commercial areas in Chicago, even with the immigration crackdown. It is lined with barber shops, groceries and other businesses that have signs in Spanish and English demanding immigration authorities stay away unless they have a court warrant.

    The couple knows people who were arrested by heavily armed agents asking about their legal status — an egg vendor here, a tamale vendor there. They described the sting of tear gas unleashed by agents on demonstrators at a shopping center parking lot last month.

    Many immigrants, even some with legal status, are loathe to speak with reporters, especially if identified by name, fearful it may lead to deportation. Herrera and Hernandez say they are eager to share their story to foster understanding of how the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations is playing out.

    Herrera crossed the border in 2004, followed later by her two children who are now adults living in Chicago. Hernandez made the journey in 2005. Both paid smugglers thousands of dollars for dayslong treks through the Arizona desert. Acquaintances enticed them to head to Chicago, the second-highest U.S. destination for Mexican immigrants after Los Angeles.

    The couple met while working at a Mexican restaurant in Little Village. They have two U.S.-born children; their 10-year-old son speaks little Spanish and has been largely oblivious to the immigration crackdown.

    Their 16-year-old daughter fears prolonged detention for her parents even more than the possibility of them being deported to Mexico.

    The couple took a class at City Hall for a municipal certificate to become street food vendors and bought a house for $39,000 in 2017 that badly needed repairs.

    From 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays they serve tacos and burritos from a yellow truck in the dirt driveway of their home in Englewood, a predominantly Black neighborhood and one of Chicago’s poorest. Once home to a thriving shopping district, parts of the neighborhood have fallen into disrepair with boarded-up houses. Crime is persistent.

    On weekends they head to Little Village, where they work 11-hour days.

    They have thought about trying to obtain legal status but they don’t have a strong case and could never afford an attorney. They obtained Illinois driver’s licenses. They say they paid taxes, stayed out of trouble and generally lived without fear of being deported.

    “Chicago is nice,” Hernandez said. “The crime is difficult but Chicago is marvelous. There are many opportunities for those of us who are immigrants. It’s painful what is happening.”

    The couple’s sales have plunged about 75% since the Trump administration began “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago on Sept. 8, Herrera said. Like almost everyone they know, their phones constantly alert them to warnings about where immigration officers are making arrests and to stay away.

    It appears that authorities are arresting “everyone,” Hernandez said, even though the administration vows it is pursuing “the worst of the worst.” More than 70% of people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in the 12-month period through September were not convicted of a crime in the U.S.

    U.S. authorities say they are making criminals a priority but that anyone in the country illegally is subject to arrest. That includes street vendors, according to Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who led enforcement blitzes in Los Angeles, Chicago and, now, Charlotte, North Carolina.

    “Those folks undercutting American businesses, is that right?” Bovino, a frequent presence in Chicago’s Little Village, said in a recent interview. “Absolutely not. That’s why we have immigration laws in the first place.”

    The couple’s memories of how the COVID-19 pandemic kept them inside are a reminder to stay active, allowing only small adjustments. They recently headed to Little Village to buy supplies for their business when word came on social networks that Bovino was in the area making arrests. They decided to shop in another neighborhood.

    They have been back to Mexico only once in more than 20 years, a family visit in 2012 that included crossing the border illegally in Eagle Pass, Texas. They want to stay in Chicago but say they are prepared to return to Mexico if arrested. They would bring their American citizen children with them.

    “People are frightened because they have lives here, they have kids here, including us,” Herrera said. “We don’t want to go to Mexico but, if we have to, we will. What else is there to do?”

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  • Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ patterns

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    The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.

    The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

    Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

    Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.

    The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.

    This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

    The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.

    This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.

    The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.

    The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.

    And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations.

    Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”

    “For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications,” the agency said. While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally allowed “to operate anywhere in the United States,” the agency added.

    While collecting license plates from cars on public roads has generally been upheld by courts, some legal scholars see the growth of large digital surveillance networks such as Border Patrol’s as raising constitutional questions. Courts have started to recognize that “large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University.

    Today, predictive surveillance is embedded into America’s roadways. Mass surveillance techniques are also used in a range of other countries, from authoritarian governments such as China to, increasingly, democracies in the U.K. and Europe in the name of national security and public safety.

    “They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”

    ‘We did everything right and had nothing to hide’

    In February, Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo, a driver for a small trucking company that specializes in transporting furniture, clothing and other belongings to families in Mexico, was driving south to the border city of Brownsville, Texas, carrying packages from immigrant communities in South Carolina’s low country.

    Gutierrez Lugo was pulled over by a local police officer in Kingsville, a small Texas city near Corpus Christi that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Mexican border. The officer, Richard Beltran, cited the truck’s speed of 50 mph (80 kph) in a 45 mph (72 kph) zone as the reason for the stop.

    But speeding was a pretext: Border Patrol had requested the stop and said the black Dodge pickup with a white trailer could contain contraband, according to police and court records. U.S. Route 77 passes through Kingsville, a route that state and federal authorities scrutinize for trafficking of drugs, money and people.

    Gutierrez Lugo, who through a lawyer declined to comment, was interrogated about the route he drove, based on license plate reader data, per the police report and court records. He consented to a search of his car by Beltran and Border Patrol agents, who eventually arrived to assist.

    They unearthed no contraband. But Beltran arrested Gutierrez Lugo on suspicion of money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity because he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash — money his supervisor said came directly from customers in local Latino communities, who are accustomed to paying in cash. No criminal charges were ultimately brought against Gutierrez Lugo and an effort by prosecutors to seize the cash, vehicle and trailer as contraband was eventually dropped.

    Luis Barrios owns the trucking company, Paquetería El Guero, that employed the driver. He told AP he hires people with work authorization in the United States and was taken aback by the treatment of his employee and his trailer.

    “We did everything right and had nothing to hide, and that was ultimately what they found,” said Barrios, who estimates he spent $20,000 in legal fees to clear his driver’s name and get the trailer out of impound.

    Border Patrol agents and local police have many names for these kinds of stops: “whisper,” “intel” or “wall” stops. Those stops are meant to conceal — or wall off — that the true reason for the stop is a tip from federal agents sitting miles away, watching data feeds showing who’s traveling on America’s roads and predicting who is “suspicious,” according to documents and people interviewed by the AP.

    In 2022, a man from Houston had his car searched from top to bottom by Texas sheriff’s deputies outside San Antonio after they got a similar tipoff from Border Patrol agents about the driver, Alek Schott.

    Federal agents observed that Schott had made an overnight trip from Houston to Carrizo Springs, Texas, and back, court records show. They knew he stayed overnight in a hotel about 80 miles (129 kilometers) from the U.S.-Mexico border. They knew that in the morning Schott met a female colleague there before they drove together to a business meeting.

    At Border Patrol’s request, Schott was pulled over by Bexar County sheriff’s deputies. The deputies held Schott by the side of the road for more than an hour, searched his car and found nothing.

    “The beautiful thing about the Texas Traffic Code is there’s thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for,” said Joel Babb, the sheriff’s deputy who stopped Schott’s car, in a deposition in a lawsuit Schott filed alleging violations of his constitutional rights.

    According to testimony and documents released as part of Schott’s lawsuit, Babb was on a group chat with federal agents called Northwest Highway. Babb deleted the WhatsApp chat off his phone but Schott’s lawyers were able to recover some of the text messages.

    Through a public records act request, the AP also obtained more than 70 pages of the Northwest Highway group chats from June and July of this year from a Texas county that had at least one sheriff’s deputy active in the chat. The AP was able to associate numerous phone numbers in both sets of documents with Border Patrol agents and Texas law enforcement officials.

    The chat logs show Border Patrol agents and Texas sheriffs deputies trading tips about vehicles’ travel patterns — based on suspicions about little more than someone taking a quick trip to the border region and back. The chats show how thoroughly Texas highways are surveilled by this federal-local partnership and how much detailed information is informally shared.

    In one exchange a law enforcement official included a photo of someone’s driver’s license and told the group the person, who they identified using an abbreviation for someone in the country illegally, was headed westbound. “Need BP?,” responded a group member whose number was labeled “bp Intel.” “Yes sir,” the official answered, and a Border Patrol agent was en route.

    Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement shared information about U.S. citizens’ social media profiles and home addresses with each other after stopping them on the road. Chats show Border Patrol was also able to determine whether vehicles were rentals and whether drivers worked for rideshare services.

    In Schott’s case, Babb testified that federal agents “actually watch travel patterns on the highway” through license plate scans and other surveillance technologies. He added: “I just know that they have a lot of toys over there on the federal side.”

    After finding nothing in Schott’s car, Babb said “nine times out of 10, this is what happens,” a phrase Schott’s lawyers claimed in court filings shows the sheriff’s department finds nothing suspicious in most of its searches. Babb did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AP.

    The Bexar County sheriff’s office declined to comment due to pending litigation and referred all questions about the Schott case to the county’s district attorney. The district attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

    The case is pending in federal court in Texas. Schott said in an interview with the AP: “I didn’t know it was illegal to drive in Texas.”

    ‘Patterns of life’ and license plates

    Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.

    Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states.

    But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region.

    In a budget request to Congress in fiscal year 2024, CBP said that its Conveyance Monitoring and Predictive Recognition System, or CMPRS, “collects license plate images and matches the processed images against established hot lists to assist … in identifying travel patterns indicative of illegal border related activities.” Several new developer jobs have been posted seeking applicants to help modernize its license plate surveillance system in recent months. Numerous Border Patrol sectors now have special intelligence units that can analyze license plate reader data, and tie commercial license plate readers to its national network, according to documents and interviews.

    Border Patrol worked with other law enforcement agencies in Southern California about a decade ago to develop pattern recognition, said a former CBP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Over time, the agency learned to develop what it calls “patterns of life” of vehicle movements by sifting through the license plate data and determining “abnormal” routes, evaluating if drivers were purposely avoiding official checkpoints. Some cameras can take photos of a vehicle’s plates as well as its driver’s face, the official said.

    Another former Border Patrol official compared it to a more technologically sophisticated version of what agents used to do in the field — develop hunches based on experience about which vehicles or routes smugglers might use, find a legal basis for the stop like speeding and pull drivers over for questioning.

    The cameras take pictures of vehicle license plates. Then, the photos are “read” by the system, which automatically detects and distills the images into numbers and letters, tied to a geographic location, former CBP officials said. The AP could not determine how precisely the system’s algorithm defines a quick turnaround or an odd route. Over time, the agency has amassed databases replete with images of license plates, and the system’s algorithm can flag an unusual “pattern of life” for human inspection.

    The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. In documents obtained by the AP, a Border Patrol official boasted about being able to see that a vehicle that had traveled to “Dallas, Little Rock, Arkansas and Atlanta” before ending up south of San Antonio.

    Documents show that Border Patrol or CBP has in the past had access to data from at least three private sector vendors: Rekor, Vigilant Solutions and Flock Safety.

    Through Flock alone, Border Patrol for a time had access to at least 1,600 license plate readers across 22 states, and some counties have reported looking up license plates on behalf of CBP even in states like California and Illinois that ban sharing data with federal immigration authorities, according to an AP analysis of police disclosures. A Flock spokesperson told AP the company “for now” had paused its pilot programs with CBP and a separate DHS agency, Homeland Security Investigations, and declined to discuss the type or volume of data shared with either federal agency, other than to say agencies could search for vehicles wanted in conjunction with a crime. No agencies currently list Border Patrol as receiving Flock data. Vigilant and Rekor did not respond to requests for comment.

    Where Border Patrol places its cameras is a closely guarded secret. However, through public records requests, the AP obtained dozens of permits the agency filed with Arizona and Michigan for permission to place cameras on state-owned land. The permits show the agency frequently disguises its cameras by concealing them in traffic equipment like the yellow and orange barrels that dot American roadways, or by labeling them as jobsite equipment. An AP photographer in October visited the locations identified in more than two dozen permit applications in Arizona, finding that most of the Border Patrol’s hidden equipment remains in place today. Spokespeople for the Arizona and Michigan departments of transportation said they approve permits based on whether they follow state and federal rules and are not privy to details on how license plate readers are used.

    Texas, California, and other border states did not provide documents in response to the AP’s public records requests.

    CBP’s attorneys and personnel instructed local cities and counties in both Arizona and Texas to withhold records from the AP that might have revealed details about the program’s operations, even though they were requested under state open records laws, according to emails and legal briefs filed with state governments. For example, CBP claimed records requested by the AP in Texas “would permit private citizens to anticipate weaknesses in a police department, avoid detection, jeopardize officer safety, and generally undermine police efforts.” Michigan redacted the exact locations of Border Patrol equipment, but the AP was able to determine general locations from the name of the county.

    One page of the group chats obtained by the AP shows that a participant enabled WhatsApp’s disappearing messages feature to ensure communications were deleted automatically.

    Transformation of CBP into intelligence agency

    The Border Patrol’s license plate reader program is just one part of a steady transformation of its parent agency, CBP, in the years since 9/11 into an intelligence operation whose reach extends far beyond borders, according to interviews with former officials.

    CBP has quietly amassed access to far more information from ports of entry, airports and intelligence centers than other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. And like a domestic spy agency, CBP has mostly hidden its role in the dissemination of intelligence on purely domestic travel through its use of whisper stops.

    Border Patrol has also extended the reach of its license plate surveillance program by paying for local law enforcement to run plate readers on their behalf.

    A federal grant program called Operation Stonegarden, which has existed in some form for nearly two decades, has handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to buy automated license plate readers, camera-equipped drones and other surveillance gear for local police and sheriffs agencies. Stonegarden grant funds also pay for local law enforcement overtime, which deputizes local officers to work on Border Patrol enforcement priorities. Under President Donald Trump, the Republican-led Congress this year allocated $450 million for Stonegarden to be handed out over the next four fiscal years. In the previous four fiscal years, the program gave out $342 million.

    In Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels said Stonegarden grants, which have been used to buy plate readers and pay for overtime, have let his deputies merge their mission with Border Patrol’s to prioritize border security.

    “If we’re sharing our authorities, we can put some consequences behind, or deterrence behind, ‘Don’t come here,’” he said.

    In 2021, the Ward County, Texas, sheriff sought grant funding from DHS to buy a “covert, mobile, License Plate Reader” to pipe data to Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector Intelligence Unit. The sheriff’s department did not respond to a request for comment.

    Other documents AP obtained show that Border Patrol connects locally owned and operated license plate readers bought through Stonegarden grants to its computer systems, vastly increasing the federal agency’s surveillance network.

    How many people have been caught up in the Border Patrol’s dragnet is unknown. One former Border Patrol agent who worked on the license plate reader pattern detection program in California said the program had an 85% success rate of discovering contraband once he learned to identify patterns that looked suspicious. But another former official in a different Border Patrol sector said he was unaware of successful interdictions based solely on license plate patterns.

    In Trump’s second term, Border Patrol has extended its reach and power as border crossings have slowed to historic lows and freed up agents for operations in the heartland. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, for example, was tapped to direct hundreds of agents from multiple DHS agencies in the administration’s immigration sweeps across Los Angeles, more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) from his office in El Centro, California. Bovino later was elevated to lead the aggressive immigration crackdown in Chicago. Numerous Border Patrol officials have also been tapped to replace ICE leadership.

    The result has been more encounters between the agency and the general public than ever before.

    “We took Alek’s case because it was a clear-cut example of an unconstitutional traffic stop,” said Christie Hebert, who works at the nonprofit public interest law firm Institute for Justice and represents Schott. ”What we found was something much larger — a system of mass surveillance that threatens people’s freedom of movement.”

    AP found numerous other examples similar to what Schott and the delivery driver experienced in reviewing court records in border communities and along known smuggling routes in Texas and California. Several police reports and court records the AP examined cite “suspicious” travel patterns or vague tipoffs from the Border Patrol or other unnamed law enforcement agencies. In another federal court document filed in California, a Border Patrol agent acknowledged “conducting targeted analysis on vehicles exhibiting suspicious travel patterns” as the reason he singled out a Nissan Altima traveling near San Diego.

    In cases reviewed by the AP, local law enforcement sometimes tried to conceal the role the Border Patrol plays in passing along intelligence. Babb, the deputy who stopped Schott, testified he typically uses the phrase “subsequent to prior knowledge” when describing whisper stops in his police reports to acknowledge that the tip came from another law enforcement agency without revealing too much in written documents he writes memorializing motorist encounters.

    Once they pull over a vehicle deemed suspicious, officers often aggressively question drivers about their travels, their belongings, their jobs, how they know the passengers in the car, and much more, police records and bodyworn camera footage obtained by the AP show. One Texas officer demanded details from a man about where he met his current sexual partner. Often drivers, such as the one working for the South Carolina moving company, were arrested on suspicion of money laundering merely for carrying a few thousand dollars worth of cash, with no apparent connection to illegal activity. Prosecutors filed lawsuits to try to seize money or vehicles on the suspicion they were linked to trafficking.

    Schott warns that for every success story touted by Border Patrol, there are far more innocent people who don’t realize they’ve become ensnared in a technology-driven enforcement operation.

    “I assume for every one person like me, who’s actually standing up, there’s a thousand people who just don’t have the means or the time or, you know, they just leave frustrated and angry. They don’t have the ability to move forward and hold anyone accountable,” Schott said. “I think there’s thousands of people getting treated this way.”

    —-

    Tau reported from Washington, Laredo, San Antonio, Kingsville and Victoria, Texas. Burke reported from San Francisco. AP writers Aaron Kessler in Washington, Jim Vertuno in San Antonio, AP video producer Serginho Ro​​osblad in Bisbee, Arizona, and AP photographers Ross D. Franklin in Phoenix and David Goldman in Houston contributed reporting. Former AP writer Ismael M. Belkoura in Washington also contributed.

    —-

    Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

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  • Descendants obtain works of enslaved potter in landmark restitution deal

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    BOSTON — Inside the wide mouth of a stoneware jar, Daisy Whitner’s fingertips found a slight rise in the clay — a mark she hoped was a trace left behind by her ancestor, an enslaved potter who shaped the vessel nearly 175 years ago in South Carolina.

    Standing in the gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last week, Whitner said she felt a quiet connection to her ancestor, David Drake, in that moment.

    “I was telling the kids, ’Inside this jar, I’m sure I’m feeling his tears, sweat drops off his face, his arms,’” said 86-year-old Whitner, a Washington, D.C., resident and a retired account manager for The Washington Post.

    The jar is one of two returned to Drake’s family as part of a historic agreement this month between Drake’s descendants and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, one of the institutions that holds pieces of his work.

    The vessels are among hundreds of surviving works by “Dave the Potter,” an enslaved man who labored in the alkaline-glazed stoneware potteries of Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before and during the Civil War. Dave signed many of his jars — and inscribed some with rhyming couplets — an extraordinary and unparalleled assertion of identity and authorship during a time when literacy for enslaved people was criminalized.

    The agreement represents what experts say is the first major case of art restitution involving works created by an enslaved person in the U.S. — a process traditionally associated with families seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis in World War II.

    It’s also rare: as enslaved people were denied legal personhood and documentation, tracing the ownership or lineage of their works is often impossible.

    Children’s book author Yaba Baker, Dave’s 54-year-old fourth-generation grandson, called the return “a spiritual restoration.” Baker, whose first two children’s books explore Black history, said the family felt a dual sense of pride and grief. Many Black families, he noted, struggle to trace their ancestry past a few generations; recovering Dave’s work gave them back a piece of themselves.

    After the museum returned the pots to the family, they sold one back so people can continue to learn from Dave’s legacy. The other is on lease to the museum, at least temporarily. The MFA Boston said it wouldn’t disclose how much it paid.

    “We don’t want to hide them away in our house. We want other people to be inspired by it,” Baker said. “We want people to know that this person, Dave the Potter, who was told he was nothing but a tool to be used, realized he had humanity. He deserved his own name on his pots. He deserved to write poetry. He deserved to know who he was.”

    Laboring in the pottery yards in the South Carolina heat, Dave etched his name next to the date — July 12, 1834 — on a clay jar that would be sold by his owner and used to store pork and beef rations for enslaved people like him across the region.

    He also inscribed the jar, which would likely end up on a cotton plantation in South Carolina, with the couplet:

    “Put every bit all between / Surely this jar will hold 14” to mark the jar’s 14-gallon capacity.

    The vessel was the first of hundreds, if not thousands, of stoneware jugs and jars made by Dave alongside other enslaved potters over 50 years before and during the Civil War.

    Much of Dave’s poetry followed Christian themes. As he aged, he wrote more and explored themes related to his enslavement. One of his most resonant poems was etched into a jar he produced in 1857, around the time scholars believe Dave and his family were separated after being sold to different slave owners.

    “I wonder where is all my relation / friendship to all – and every nation”

    Multiple Drake descendants said they felt especially moved by Dave’s question about his relations — and that their restitution felt like Dave’s question was finally answered.

    It’s unclear what became of the jars after Dave died. The MFA purchased them in 1997 from an art dealer. MFA Boston’s Art of the Americas Chair Ethan Lasser said he thinks they survived mostly from pure “benign neglect” in South Carolina because they were large and difficult to transport or break.

    The MFA has at least two Drake pots, a “Poem Jar” and a “Signed Jar,” both from 1857.

    The jar the Drake descendants sold back to the museum is similar to the 1857 pot on which Dave asks about his relations because he uses first-person language that suggests ownership — something that makes it especially powerful, Lasser said.

    “Think of this as an enslaved person, speaking in the first person claiming authorship,” Lasser said.

    In the poem, Dave writes:

    “I made this Jar = cash – / though its called = lucre Trash”.

    On more than one pot, Dave writes “and Mark” next to his own name, suggesting he worked on the piece with another enslaved laborer. Oral histories indicate that Dave was disabled after losing a leg, although it’s unclear how, and may have needed help with his ceramic work later in life.

    His last surviving jar, made as the Civil War raged on in 1862, reads: “I made this Jar, all of cross / If you don’t repent, you will be lost”.

    Researchers believe Drake died sometime in the 1870s after gaining his freedom in the Civil War. He is accounted for in the 1870 census, but not in the 1880 census.

    For the Drake descendants, encountering Dave’s work has been both moving and difficult — a collision of pride in his artistry and grief for the conditions in which he lived.

    Yaba Baker, who has a 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son, said the experience gave his family something they had never had before: a traceable link.

    “I was able to turn to my son and say, ‘This is your lineage.’ Dave the Potter was not only a great artist — he resisted oppressive laws, even though he could have been killed for it,” he said. “That’s what you come from. Before, we didn’t have that link.”

    Yaba Baker said he often thinks about the anguish Dave may have felt if, as some historians speculate, the poems on his jars were attempts to signal to family members sold away from him — a common trauma of slavery.

    “I can’t imagine not knowing where my own kids are,” Baker said. “Completing that circle is very moving for me.”

    For his mother, Pauline Baker, discovering Dave’s story filled a void many Black families know intimately.

    “If you’re not African American, you don’t understand the missing links in your history,” she said. “When you do find a connection, it becomes very personal.” She studies his life — the heat, the labor, the loss of a limb — and wonders how he managed such precision and focus. “He did not allow them to enslave his mind,” said Baker, 78, a retired speech pathologist who worked for three decades in Washington, D.C., public schools.

    Since the MFA agreement was announced, the family has heard from museums and private collectors who hold Dave’s work and want to discuss what ethical restitution might look like for them as well.

    Daisy Whitner said she felt her ancestor’s presence each time she slid her hand inside the jar.

    “It broke my heart,” she said. “The outside is beautiful, but when you think about what he went through — sunup to sundown, in that South Carolina heat, on one leg — this poor man in bondage had no say in working so hard for nothing.”

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  • Wisconsin archaeologists identify 16 ancient canoes in a prehistoric lake ‘parking lot’

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    MADISON, Wis. — Archaeologists have identified more than a dozen ancient canoes that Indigenous people apparently left behind in a sort of prehistoric parking lot along a Wisconsin lakeshore.

    The Wisconsin Historical Society announced Wednesday that archaeologists have mapped the location of 16 canoes submerged in the lake bed of Lake Mendota in Madison. Tamara Thomsen, the state’s maritime archaeologist, said that the site lies near a network of what were once indigenous trails, suggesting ancient people left the canoes there for anyone to use as they traveled, much like a modern-day e-bike rack.

    “It’s a parking spot that’s been used for millennia, over and over,” Thomsen said.

    Lake Mendota is a sprawling, 15-square-mile (38.8-square-kilometer) body of water on Madison’s west side. The state Capitol building and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are located on an isthmus that runs between it and Lake Monona, a 5-square-mile (13-square-kilometer) lake to the east.

    The discoveries began in 2021 when archaeologists uncovered the remains of a 1,200-year-old canoe submerged in 24 feet of water in Lake Mendota. The following year they found the remains of a 3,000-year-old canoe, a 4,500-year-old canoe under it and a 2,000-year-old canoe next to it, alerting researchers that there was probably more to the site than they expected.

    Working with Sissel Schroeder, a UW-Madison professor who specializes in Native American cultures, and preservation officers with the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Thomsen has now located the remains of 12 additional canoes, Thomsen said.

    Radiocarbon dating shows the oldest of the 16 canoes dates back to 5,200 years ago, making it the third oldest canoe discovered in eastern North America, she said. The two oldest were found in Florida, with the oldest of them dating back 7,000 years, Thomsen said.

    Wisconsin experienced a drought beginning about 7,500 years ago and lasting to around 1000 B.C., Thomsen said. The lake in the area where the canoes were found was probably only 4 feet (1.2 meters) deep over that period, she said, making it a good place to disembark for foot travel. The canoes likely were shared among community members and stored at designated points like the Lake Mendota site. Users would typically bury the canoes in sediment in waist- to chest-deep water so they wouldn’t dry out or prevent them from freezing, Thomsen said.

    Travelers may have been headed to Lake Wingra, a 321-acre (130-hectare) lake on Madison’s south side, Dr. Amy Rosebrough, the state archaeologist, said. The Madison area is part of the ancestral homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation, which views one of the springs that feeds Lake Wingra as a portal to the spirit world, she said.

    “The canoes remind us how long our people have lived in this region and how deeply connected we remain to these waters and lands,” Bill Quackenbush, the Ho-Chunk’s tribal preservation officer, said in a news release.

    Thomsen speculated that if the drought did begin 7,500 years and archaeologists are finding canoes beneath other canoes, they may eventually find a 7,000-year-old canoe in the lake. That could mean Indigenous people that predated many of Wisconsin’s tribes may have used the lake, she said.

    Thomsen spends most of her days uncovering Great Lakes shipwrecks and works on the canoe project only one day per week. But she called that work the most impactful she has ever done as an archaeologist because she engages with Wisconsin tribes, learns their history and tells their stories.

    “I think I’ve shed more tears over this,” she said. “Talking with the Indigenous people, sometimes I sit here and just get goose bumps. It just feels like (the work is) making a difference. Each one of these canoes gives us another clue to the story.”

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