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From the Los Angeles Times

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Colombia assuming instructor role for other militaries

As part of a regional counter-narcotics push, Colombia is helping train the armed forces of Mexico and 13 other Latin American and Caribbean nations, many of which get U.S. financial assistance.

by Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times

March 6, 2011

Reporting from Melgar, Colombia

Before his helicopter training run, Mexican air force Lt. Isaac Garcia got some pointers from battle-hardened chopper jockey Col. Donall Tascon of Colombia.

Garcia knew that Tascon taught classes during the day and sometimes flew dangerous missions against leftist rebels at night, and that he had chalked up 2,500 hours of flight time, much of it on special operations and perilous rescue missions. He didn't have to be told that for the Colombian pilot, fighting a drug war was anything but an academic exercise.

"We have a lot to learn from Colombia. We're now going through what they have experienced for the last 20 years," the 27-year-old Garcia said later of the drug-fueled violence plaguing Mexico. "What Colombian pilots know about night missions, flying over difficult terrain, and participating in joint task forces is invaluable to us."

Garcia, who says Colombia's history gives its pilots and trainers a unique credibility, is one of 18 Mexican helicopter pilots undergoing training at a Colombian air base two hours southwest of Bogota, the capital. The curriculum includes special operations, rescue missions, weaponry and battle tactics.

Colombia, as part of a regional counter-narcotics push, is helping train the armed forces of Mexico and 13 other Latin American and Caribbean nations, many of which receive U.S. financial assistance.

Garcia's 32-week helicopter training course, for example, costs about $75,000 per pilot, officials said, and is funded through the Merida Initiative anti-drug aid the U.S. provides Mexico.

In addition to pilot training, Colombia instructs others in skills such as conducting criminal investigations, processing intelligence and deploying soldiers in jungle warfare.

Instruction sites vary from Afghanistan to an isolated spot about 300 miles south of Melgar at the Puerto Leguizamo marine base on Colombia's border with Peru. Colombian instructors there will soon show 45 sailors and soldiers from 11 countries how to pilot high-speed and heavily armed river patrol boats, said Colombian marine Gen. Rafael Colón.

Other countries, including Peru to Guatemala, see value in Colombia's experience fighting the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and drug gangs. Many are confronting similar scourges.

"Southern Colombia is the perfect classroom, and has all the ingredients: a porous tripartite river border with the presence of the FARC, illegal crops, and illicit traffic in arms and money," Colón said. "Countries come to learn and exchange ideas."

Colombia has benefited from Plan Colombia, the $7-billion U.S. aid package that has been decisive in modernizing and reshaping the military forces of a nation that a few years ago seemed on the verge of becoming a narco state.

In an interview, Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said the main motive for offering training is strategic: to strengthen the region against criminal bands and rebel groups trafficking narcotics and terrorism. But he didn't deny that neighboring countries are attracted to the cost advantages of Colombian training.

Tascon, commander of the Combat Air Command base in Melgar, said that providing Garcia's pilot training at the U.S. Army's helicopter flight school at Ft. Rucker in Alabama might cost as much as $120,000.

Rivera said the Defense Ministry is creating a new agency to manage the increasing demand for training and market a "portfolio" of counter-narcotics and anti-terrorism instruction.

"It will have a budget funded by Colombians but also by allies, including the United States, with an interest in this type of cooperation," he said.

Colombia's pilot training role is expected to grow soon with Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., the manufacturer of Black Hawk helicopters, planning to build a flight simulation training center that would open in early 2012.

"Air power, the use of helicopters, made the difference in Colombia gaining the upper hand," Tascon said. "Other countries recognize how decisive it is and naturally want to learn from us."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-mexico-pilots-20110306,0,814075,print.story

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On immigration, momentum shifts away from Arizona

A year after SB 1070 inspired a call for similar laws around the country, other states have failed to follow suit. Only Utah has passed a diluted version.

by Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

March 6, 2011

Reporting from Denver

A year ago, a revolution on immigration enforcement seemed underway, with legislators in at least 20 states vowing to follow the lead of Arizona's tough new law targeting illegal immigrants.

These days, the momentum has shifted.

In at least six states, the proposals have been voted down or have simply died. Many of the other proposals have not even made it past one legislative chamber.

The most-discussed provision in the Arizona law requires police to investigate the status of people they legally stop whom they also suspect are illegal immigrants.

But even in Arizona, several tough immigration proposals have been stalled in the Senate, with business leaders and some Republicans arguing that the state does not need more controversy.

The one state whose Legislature has passed an Arizona-style law, Utah, only approved a diluted bill accompanied by another measure that goes in a dramatically different direction.

The Utah Legislature on Friday voted to create ID cards for "guest workers" and their families, provided they pay a fine and don't commit serious crimes. Immigrants who entered the country illegally would be fined up to $2,500. Immigrants who entered the country legally but were not complying with federal immigration law would be fined $1,000.

"Why not put something in place where, in five years, we can say we did something, rather than sending a few people home?" said state Rep. Bill Wright, who wrote the law. "Sending a few people home will not solve our problems."

Utah's measure is essentially a state version of the comprehensive immigration reform that many backers of the Arizona approach deride as amnesty.

Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute said the momentum behind Arizona's law was similar to the motivations driving Republican campaigns during the 2010 election and a bevy of new "tea party"-backed legislators eager to make their mark.

"There was a strong newcomer's enthusiasm for this," Chishti said. "Now I think reality has set in."

The main factor behind the retreat is skittishness about costs, said Ann Morse, who tracks immigration legislation for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Arizona was sued by the Obama administration, which secured an injunction against most of the law. That ruling is under appeal and expected to reach the Supreme Court, costing millions in legal fees. Arizona was also hit by boycotts and canceled conventions.

"Most states are looking at where to cut money, not where to spend money," Morse said.

There's still time for the dynamic to change. Laws partly modeled on Arizona's SB 1070 have made their way out of one of the two chambers in legislatures in Indiana, Kentucky and Georgia.

But the situation in Georgia symbolizes why it has been difficult to pass Arizona-style laws. Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, campaigned on bringing such legislation to Georgia, but allies accuse him of equivocating because he hasn't vowed to sign the proposal that passed the state House of Representatives on Thursday.

Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington said it's not surprising that efforts to replicate SB 1070 face uphill battles. Such laws spark fierce opposition from businesses, police and immigration advocates.

The issue gained traction in Arizona, Krikorian said, because illegal immigration was viewed as such a serious problem there. But elsewhere, "there's no business with full-time employees trying to get immigration laws enforced. In fact, the opposite is true."

"Any progress at all surprises me," he added.

In Nebraska, state Sen. Charlie Janssen's SB 1070-style bill is stuck in the Legislature's judiciary committee, where he says six of the eight members are cool to the idea.

"When you talk to Main Street, Nebraska, they say, 'Go do it,'" Janssen said. "But when you get down here, the advocacy groups get to all the individual senators."

In Florida, a measure modeled on SB 1070 is unlikely to pass, but the Republican-controlled Legislature will still consider requiring that all people booked into jail be checked for immigration violations.

"What's encouraging is they're backing away from the blatant anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona," said Subhash Kateel of the Florida Immigration Coalition. "But there's politicians who campaigned on doing Arizona-style stuff, and now they have to do something."

In Arizona itself, SB 1070 helped propel Republicans to record margins in both chambers of the Legislature and to a clean sweep of statewide elected offices during the November election. Polls show the measure is very popular in the state and nationwide.

But its author, Senate President Russell Pearce, has been unable to replicate the measure's smooth passage with the latest batch of immigration laws. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Proposals to require that hospitals check patients' immigration status, that teachers and social workers refer suspected illegal immigrants to the federal government and that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants be denied citizenship have all squeaked through state Senate committees. They have yet to face a vote in the full Senate. It's possible the measures will ultimately pass, but many political observers in the state are surprised there has been Republican opposition to them.

"We have other more important issues and this distracts us from them," said Sen. John McComish, a Republican who voted for SB 1070.

The biggest shift in dynamics is in Utah, where, the day SB 1070 was signed last year, a legislator vowed to bring the same law to the Beehive State. In response, business and community groups issued a statement of principles known as the Utah Compact to fight the measure. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is growing rapidly overseas and in immigrant communities in the United States, endorsed the compact.

When the Utah Legislature acted on immigration last week, it moved in contradictory directions, trying to satisfy activists who want a tough approach to illegal immigration and business and religious leaders who urge flexibility and compassion for working families.

The Legislature weakened the Arizona-style law, which would now only require immigration checks of people arrested for felonies and serious misdemeanors. Still, the measure easily passed both houses. The guest-worker ID program also won easy approval.

The guest-worker bill depends on a federal waiver, and there are many who are skeptical the federal government would grant it. "It sends a bad message, that Utah wants its own amnesty program," said Ronald Mortensen, a Utah-based activist against illegal immigration. "I think there's going to be a lot of upset people."

Critics call Utah's guest-worker effort an unconstitutional attempt to create a state-level immigration policy just to send a message to a deadlocked Washington. That was also a central criticism of Arizona's law.

On Friday, as the heavily conservative state Senate debated the issue, senator after senator said the measure was a needed warning for a Washington they see as out of touch on taxes and regulation. State Sen. Howard Stephenson compared the move to the opening shots of the Revolutionary War.

"We are in a sense firing a shot and saying we are going to do it right," Stephenson said, "and set a pattern for Congress and the rest of the nation to follow."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-illegal-immigration-20110306,0,1207335,print.story

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Report finds 20% of Californians struggled to feed their families in 2010

In poll, 1 in 5 California residents said there were times last year when they couldn't afford enough food. The state ranks No. 16 for food hardship, with the Fresno and Inland Empire areas particularly hard-hit.

by Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times

March 5, 2011

One in five Californians struggled to afford enough food for themselves and their families last year, according to a new report by the Food Research and Action Center.

The rate in California was slightly higher than the national average of 18%.

Jim Weill, president of the Washington-based nonprofit, said the figures underscore the need for a strong nutrition safety net — including food stamps and school meals — for families that continue to struggle as the economy begins to recover.

"While the nation's Great Recession may have technically ended in mid-2009, it has not yet ended for many of the nation's households," Weill said in a statement Thursday. "For them, 2010 was the third year of a terrible recession that is widely damaging the ability to meet basic needs."

The report was based on data collected for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which conducted telephone interviews with more than 350,000 people in 2010, including 35,543 people in California.

Just over 20% of California respondents answered yes to the question: "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"

That places the state at No. 16 in the nation for food hardship, the report said. The highest rate was recorded in Mississippi, where nearly 28% said they did not always have enough money to buy food. The lowest rate, just over 10%, was in North Dakota.

The report also looked at food hardship in the 100 metropolitan statistical areas with the largest number of respondents. These areas were defined by the Census Bureau and include cities and their surrounding communities.

The two highest metropolitan rates were in California: 27% in the Fresno area and 26% in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario. The rate in Bakersfield was 24%; Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana came in at 21%.

In an interview Friday, Weill blamed California's high rate of food hardship on above-average unemployment and low participation in the federal food stamp program. Just half of eligible Californians were receiving the benefit in 2008, the most recent year for which federal estimates are available.

"One way that California can deal with its outsized hunger problem is to get food stamps to people who are eligible," Weill said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-food-hardship-20110306,0,1208578,print.story

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Texas college students at center of gun legislation debate

Student activists at the University of Texas are protesting and supporting the bill that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses in the state. But most students and faculty seem opposed.

by Paul Meyer, Los Angeles Times

March 6, 2011

Reporting from Austin, Texas

Konrad Sliwowski stood in the shadow of the University of Texas clock tower surrounded by the lunchtime clamor: the student election volunteers in handmade "Vote Big John" T-shirts, the Lego Club, and activists against human trafficking stationed near fliers advertising a screening of "Airplane!"

"I don't like guns in any kind of situation," the 22-year-old senior said recently while passing out fliers for a lecture on Rwanda. "School is already an emotional battleground. To add on a physicality to it, you could really stir things up."

Sliwowski and his classmates — not yet born when a student gunman opened fire atop the clock tower in the summer of 1966 — are now at the center of a debate over whether to allow concealed handguns on Texas college campuses.

A proposed law would make Texas one of the few places in the nation where faculty, staff and students with concealed handgun licenses could bring guns inside campus buildings.

Supporters say it would give them the same rights of self-defense they have off campus and could help prevent massacres like the one at Virginia Tech that claimed 32 lives in 2007. The bill has substantial political support at the state Capitol, but remains weeks away from a vote.

About 500,000 people have concealed handgun licenses in Texas, a state where handguns are allowed inside the Capitol and hunters outnumber the population of South Dakota. State law requires that concealed handgun carriers be at least 21, complete a training course and pass a background check.

At the University of Texas, which has more than 50,000 students, the debate resonates with both distant and recent history. The 1966 shootings killed 14 people and seared the threat of school violence into American consciousness.

Then last September, a 19-year-old gunman wielding an AK-47 assault rifle terrorized the campus before killing himself on the sixth floor of the library.

Randall Wilhite, an adjunct professor at the university law school, was driving toward campus that day when he heard five shots. He watched students scatter behind trees and saw the gunman in a ski mask fire shots into the median.

Wilhite recently applied for a concealed handgun license, motivated by the incident and a recent robbery of his home. He often wonders what he would have done that September morning if he had been carrying a weapon.

The professor — who believes the proposed law could make campuses safer — has not decided when and where he will carry a gun when he receives his license.

"What I'm going to do with it remains to be seen," he said. "I would not take it to class under existing law. If the law changes, I would seriously consider it."

Others here cringe at the prospect of guns in an environment saturated with roommate rivalries, melodramatic romances, alcohol, depression, parties, academic pressure and the emotional exigencies of finding oneself at college.

"It's possible to envision scenarios in which a student carrying a gun could help save lives. It's a lot easier to envision multiple scenarios in which it would not be good for a student to have a gun," said Phillip Barrish, an associate professor in the English Department.

In September, Barrish found himself a few feet from the gunman inside the library. He said the prospect of another student or faculty member pulling a gun in self-defense could have made the situation even worse, potentially turning the gunman's thoughts from suicide to murder.

More philosophically, Barrish fears that guns could change the educational environment, eroding the trust needed for a vigorous exchange of ideas. He also worries about students being armed during disciplinary hearings or professors' office hours.

"I think I would always have it in the back of my mind," he said.

Jeff Wentworth, the Republican state senator who has spearheaded the gun legislation, says he hopes to prevent a repeat of what happened at Virginia Tech. He says he believes that if students and staff there had been carrying firearms, "lives would have been saved that day." An earlier version of the bill stalled last session.

University of Texas President William Powers says he sees the merits of both arguments, but believes potential benefits are outweighed by the risks.

"I think the faculty is, both in the last session and currently, not in favor of more guns on campus," he said. "Police are not in favor of more guns on campus. I think an overwhelming number of students are not in favor of it."

One of those in favor of the bill is Kory Zipperer, the 21-year-old vice president of the university's chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. Zipperer, a psychology major with ambitions of becoming a Houston police officer, recently received his concealed handgun license. He says resistance to such legislation on campus has softened, particularly after the September violence.

"In 2008, the reaction was just that we were lunatics, that we were completely crazy," he said.

Zipperer and other supporters cite statistics that they say show there's no reason to believe that violence will increase by letting guns on campus.

John Woods doesn't buy the statistical argument. Woods was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech during the 2007 shootings, and lost a close friend in the rampage. He's now a leader of Students for Gun-Free Schools in Texas.

"Kory's not the type of person I'm worried about," he said.

What worries him is the potential for more suicides and crimes of passion. He also fears the longer-term implications.

"What happens when it becomes the culture of the classroom?" he asked.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-guns-20110306,0,7656436,print.story

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From the New York Times

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With Drive (and Without a Law Degree), a Texan Fights for Immigrants

DALLAS — The calls from Malaysia come in daily to Ralph Isenberg, a Texas businessman who has become an unorthodox advocate for immigrants in extreme distress.

From the office of his commercial real estate company here, Mr. Isenberg confers by webcam with Saad Nabeel, a college student who once lived in Texas but now calls from Kuala Lumpur.

Mr. Nabeel's mood shifts from hopeful cheer to reeling despair. And Mr. Isenberg reassures him, time and again, that despite the daunting odds, he will one day return to live in the United States.

The alliance of Mr. Isenberg, by his own description a hard-driving Jew, and Mr. Nabeel, a Muslim engineering student from Bangladesh who was deported last year, is one of the more unusual tales in the history of immigrants' struggles to prevail in the American immigration system.

Mr. Nabeel's case is one of several dozen that Mr. Isenberg has taken up in recent years, voluntarily and with singular zeal, often when lawyers have concluded that they are too hard to handle. And immigration cases do not come any harder than Mr. Nabeel's.

Until a year ago, Mr. Nabeel, now 20, hardly thought of himself as an immigrant. He had been living in the United States since he was 3, when his father brought the family here because of threats from political adversaries in Bangladesh. Mr. Nabeel was studying electrical engineering on a full scholarship he won at the University of Texas, Arlington.

But in 2001, his father's petition for political asylum was denied. A separate application for resident status was approved, but then it stalled in visa backlogs. In November 2009, immigration authorities detained Mr. Nabeel's father and ordered the whole family deported. Mr. Nabeel was expelled to Bangladesh in January 2010.

Since then, Mr. Nabeel has become a refugee himself, fleeing in fright from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Now he is lying low there, longing for the United States.

And Mr. Isenberg sits in his Dallas office, plotting what he calls “creative” legal strategies to reopen Mr. Nabeel's case, even though he is not a lawyer. In a stream of phone calls, he browbeats immigration officials, jawbones local reporters about the case and communes via video with Mr. Nabeel.

“This is not my job — it's my mission,” Mr. Isenberg said after one recent coaching session with Mr. Nabeel, whom he has never met in person.

“Saad may not be a citizen, but he's as American as anybody else. He's a product of this country,” Mr. Isenberg said, “and we have an obligation to protect our own.”

As a former member of the Dallas Plan Commission, Mr. Isenberg has cut a high profile in this city. The first immigration case he undertook, the one that ignited his passion, involved his own family.

His second wife, Nicole, is from China. When Mr. Isenberg met her, he was married and she was working as a masseuse. She was in deportation proceedings after missing an immigration court hearing, Mr. Isenberg said, in a scandal that fascinated Dallas residents.

He and Nicole married, and Mr. Isenberg lobbied the authorities to reconsider her case. The couple moved to China, and over eighteen months Mr. Isenberg flew back across the Pacific more than a dozen times while he pressured American immigration officials to authorize a visa for Nicole. It was granted in 2007, and the family returned to Dallas.

“I have had my own experience with the immigration system,” Mr. Isenberg said, “and I got hurt.”

Since then, Mr. Isenberg has helped to free a Palestinian family with four children from a troubled immigration detention center in Taylor, Tex. Last year he won the release from a jail in Arizona of Hector Lopez, 21, a college student from Oregon who had been deported to Mexico. Mr. Lopez was detained after he returned to the border and turned himself in to apply for political asylum. Mr. Isenberg pressed officials relentlessly until they freed Mr. Lopez in time to join his mother in Oregon for Christmas.

Mr. Isenberg's office is in one of several buildings he owns in Dallas, this one a bank building in a stylish suburb with a view of downtown. Enthusiastically patriotic, he has adorned his office shelves with models of the Lincoln Memorial and a bust of President John F. Kennedy.

Yet he has antagonized people with his assertive methods, including some who were on his side. Mr. Lopez's first immigration lawyer, Siovhan Sheridan-Ayala, resigned after Mr. Isenberg became involved. Ms. Sheridan-Ayala said she could not comment on that decision as a professional matter.

Another immigration lawyer who has worked with Mr. Isenberg praised his determination. “He takes on the most difficult of cases,” said Josh Bardavid, whose office is in New York, and “he sometimes succeeds where standard methods would not.”

But, Mr. Bardavid added, his “unorthodox style can rankle the authorities, but also occasionally his allies, especially where the publicity becomes overwhelming.”

Lawyers make Mr. Isenberg impatient. “I have a hard time finding lawyers who want to take a risk,” he said.

He hands out a lot of his own legal advice, although he is careful to clarify that he is not a practicing lawyer. “Just because I'm not an attorney,” he said, “what's wrong with me knowing more about the law than a lawyer?”

Mr. Nabeel, in a recent interview via Skype, said he tried living with his family in Bangladesh but drew suspicion because he did not speak Bangla. One day he was clubbed by a policeman on the street in Dhaka, the capital, he said, after he came to the defense of a child the policeman was beating. His family decided he had to leave the country.

In November, Mr. Nabeel enrolled in the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Even his engineering classes were framed in teachings from the Koran, he said. In a course on Islamic theology, he said, a professor sought to justify the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Nabeel said he did not return to that course.

After Mr. Nabeel announced to some classmates that he had Jewish friends in the United States, they created a Facebook page to attack him that filled with hundreds of insults before it was taken down, apparently by Facebook officials.

“I told Ralph, ‘You need to get me out of here,' ” Mr. Nabeel said. “I'm an American in a school that's trained to hate Americans.”

He said Mr. Isenberg was his lifeline. “Whenever I'm close to depression or something,” he said, “Ralph definitely reassures me that he's not going to give up on my case.”

In Dallas, Mr. Isenberg expounds on the multiple missteps he sees in the government's handling of Mr. Nabeel's detention and removal. He is preparing three or four legal plans for the young man's return. “I've seen enough of these cases now to know that everyone has got a solution to it,” Mr. Isenberg said. His fervor rose. “I don't mean this in a threatening sense,” he said, “but once the pin is pulled out of my hand grenade legally, it's not going to go back in.”

“I don't want to tear the system apart,” he added. “But that's one of the beautiful things about being a United States citizen. If that's what it's going to take to make these wrongs right, so be it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/us/06deport.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Proving Torture, to Help Win Asylum

A MAN from Mauritania sat stone-faced, cradling his head, which bore a scar that marked the spot where his master had gouged him with a piece of firewood, he told the doctor. A Congolese businessman showed a deformed knee that, to the doctor's trained eye, indicated a forced fracture. And a man from Southeast Asia was sure that a mark on his lower torso was evidence of a beating with a bat, though a medical examination showed that it was a sign of a fungal infection.

All three were sharing their scars and their stories with Dr. Ramin Asgary, director of the human rights program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, whose testimony and affidavits have played a crucial role in convincing immigration judges that people seeking asylum were victims of torture in their home countries.

Dr. Asgary, 42, and his students have examined about 130 refugees, many over the past three years in an unused playroom at Mount Sinai, sifting through stories of baton blows, glass slashes and cigarette burns for evidence of abuse — or signs of fraud. “Every story is a new story,” he said in an interview. “It never gets routine.”

In the 2009-10 fiscal year, the New York asylum office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services received 7,975 applications for asylum — an increase from 6,769 in 2009.

Dr. Asgary, an assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai who previously worked for Doctors Without Borders, runs one of several clinics across the city evaluating people who claim to have been tortured. Lawyers and immigrants' advocates refer asylum seekers to him; he does the evaluations, provides affidavits and testifies, if needed, without charge. The legal standard for being granted asylum is a well-founded fear of persecution if the person is sent back. Past torture may be evidence that such a fear is real.

Young, educated men from Africa are the majority of Dr. Asgary's patients. He has found that 87 percent of them have been victims of more than one form of torture. Theirs are harrowing tales of surviving an underworld where men have many ways to ruin one another. They've told stories of having gun barrels pressed to their heads; of having their eyeglasses stomped and being unable to see their tormentors; of being suspended from ceilings; of having their teeth cracked by kicks; of sputtering while their heads were submerged in buckets of water. Many fly to the United States and then seek asylum, which can lead to permanent residency and eventually citizenship.

Then there is psychological torture. Dr. Asgary hears reports of people who witnessed murder or rape, or who had to share a prison cell with a corpse. He has learned that torture has its own macabre geography: victims from Liberia and Sierra Leone often have been branded with a red-hot rod; those from Cameroon or Chad are more likely to have been beaten with a baton.

Not all of their stories are straightforward, and not all of the scars are clear.

Some patients are too traumatized to recount each detail of their ill-treatment. “The imminence of your death is very powerful,” Dr. Asgary said. “They don't specifically remember how many blows they got or the position, exactly.” Others, of course, are so desperate that they make things up, perhaps conflating things that happened to others.

Dr. Asgary sees himself as something of a detective. “If it really doesn't make sense, then I tell them, ‘I want you to tell me; if you don't remember, tell me you don't remember,' ” he said. “ ‘And if you think that it could be due to anything else, could you think about it and tell me?' ”

Dr. Asgary recalled one patient, years ago at a different hospital, whose story seemed too rehearsed; he stopped the interview and suggested to the man's lawyer that they try another doctor.

He said he had never submitted affidavits opposing torture claims — that is not how he sees his job. He said that “it is not the court that asks our opinion; it is the client,” and that “torture is a legal term and does not need to always have” physical or psychological aftereffects.

Asylum seekers are often fearful that without visceral scars or pristine details, they will be deported. “Obviously, this is an important thing in their life, so they're scared,” Dr. Asgary said. “They think they should know” what happened to them, he added, “and if they don't know, they think it hurts their credibility. They think you're going to say, ‘You don't have anything. Go home.' ”

That was the case of the man from Southeast Asia, who kept pointing to the scar on his lower torso. “It really looked like a fungal infection, but he persisted that he was beaten by a bat,” Dr. Asgary recalled. “He really thinks that if he doesn't have a scar, he hasn't been tortured.” Ultimately, he confirmed that the scar was, indeed, from an infection — but he also found other scars that he said provided clear evidence of beatings with blunt objects.

Dr. Asgary's students can be skeptical. Recently, some questioned how a Salvadoran man's groin pain could result from torture. But when the examination began, Dr. Asgary said, “this guy had probably 15 other scars on his body,” including marks on his kneecaps where he had hit the ground and marks on his arms showing he had tried to defend himself from a gang.

Some students wondered why the man could not remember a medicine he received when he was first treated for the wounds, but Dr. Asgary was sympathetic, saying, “He was running for his life,” fleeing to the United States.

The man from Mauritania, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his asylum proceeding was unresolved, told his story one recent evening in a monotone, recounting his slave master swinging a piece of firewood at him. Dr. Asgary kept prodding for details, asking, “Bigger than this?” while wobbling his pen.

The man paused often, carefully searching for words to explain how prison guards had tied his arm to a bar, forcing him to stand upright overnight.

On another day, the Congolese businessman, who also spoke on the condition that he not be named for fear of being found by his countrymen in New York, told of being attacked during a political protest in July 2009. He was kicked by men wearing military boots and was unable to see through the blood pooling on his face. To keep him from marching again, he said, police officers slammed his knee with a baton; the next day, he woke up in a hospital, with broken knees. He left his wife and children and escaped to New York, where he told his story to Dr. Asgary in September.

A man from Cameroon, who was granted asylum but was fearful of having his name published because his wife and children were still in Africa, spoke to one of Dr. Asgary's classes, telling of being tied “like a crucifix” after attending a political rally.

In prison, he said, officers hit him with a rifle. His voice broke as he described losing his glasses over the tip of his nose, patting the floor for them, then standing up, only to be knocked down again. Outside the hospital building, he proudly shared pictures of his daughters. He is safe now, but lonely. After fighting for three years to obtain asylum, he has just started the process to bring them here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/nyregion/06asylum.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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States Prosecute Fewer Teenagers in Adult Courts

A generation after record levels of youth crime spurred a nationwide movement to prosecute more teenagers as adults, a consensus is emerging that many young delinquents have been mishandled by the adult court system.

Last year, Connecticut stopped treating all 16-year-old defendants as adults, and next year will do the same for 17-year-olds. Illinois recently transferred certain low-level offenders younger than 18 into its juvenile system. And in January, lawmakers in Massachusetts introduced a bill to raise the age of adulthood in matters of crime, and their counterparts in Wisconsin and North Carolina intend to do the same.

By year's end, New York might be the only state where adulthood, in criminal matters, begins on the 16th birthday.

The changes followed studies that concluded that older adolescents differed significantly from adults in their capacity to make sound decisions, and benefited more from systems focused on treatment rather than on incarceration.

A 2010 report by Wisconsin's juvenile justice commission to the governor, James E. Doyle, and the Legislature found that “for many, if not most, youthful offenders, the juvenile justice system is better able to redirect their behavior,” in large part because of the greater availability of social services.

Most of the studies pointed to a 2005 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons that outlawed the death penalty for defendants who were younger than 18 when their crimes were committed, because of the “general differences” distinguishing them from adults — a lack of maturity, greater susceptibility to peer pressure and undeveloped character.

It is more expensive to prosecute a defendant in juvenile court, and opponents of the changes are questioning the costs at a time when states are facing deep budget deficits. In New Hampshire's House of Representatives, members voted overwhelmingly in 2008 to raise the age at which defendants are considered adults, to 18 from 17, but the bill died in the finance committee because of the projected cost.

In North Carolina, where proposals have failed in the last two legislative sessions, the issue has also largely been about money. “It does not make sense to take a system that all the experts agree does not have the resources to care for the children, and then add two more age groups,” said Edmond W. Caldwell Jr., vice president and general counsel of the North Carolina Sheriffs' Association, which opposed legislation to send 16- and 17-year-olds to the juvenile courts.

An analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice research group that has advocated alternatives to prison, found that transferring about 31,000 16- and 17-year-olds to North Carolina's juvenile system would cost approximately $71 million annually, but generate $123 million in benefits each year, assuming there were fewer arrests over the long term and fewer people in jails and prisons.

Every state maintains one court and correctional system for juveniles and another for adults. The juvenile system generally has a higher staff-to-offender ratio and programming that focuses on treatment and rehabilitation. Juvenile court records are sealed, making it easier for young people who do not commit crimes as adults to find jobs, apply for public housing and receive financial aid for college.

Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have already set the age of adult criminal responsibility at 18. Eleven states have set the age at 17. New York and North Carolina are the only two states that set the age at 16.

In 2008, the year of the most recent national estimate from the Justice Department, law enforcement agencies made about 2.1 million arrests of teenagers younger than 18, and most of those cases involved 16- and 17-year-olds. The data also showed a drastic decrease in arrest levels since the mid-1990s: there were an estimated 2.9 million such arrests in 1996, when the population of those under 18 was smaller than it is today.

Despite a long history of liberal politics in New York's justice system, many facets of the system remain from the days when crime sent people to the suburbs and beyond.

New York led the charge to crack down on juvenile crime after a 15-year-old named Willie Bosket shot and killed two people in the New York City subway in 1978. Mr. Bosket received a five-year sentence, the maximum for a juvenile, inciting outrage. Legislators quickly passed the Juvenile Offender Act, which lowered the age of adulthood to 13 in all murder cases, and 14 for other major felonies; the age was left at 16 for other crimes.

Over the next two decades, nearly every state and the District of Columbia passed laws that increased the number of young offenders who could be sent to adult criminal court, either by lowering the age of criminal responsibility or increasing the number of offenses for which juveniles could be prosecuted as adults, with most of the changes happening in the 1990s.

Even as that trend is being reversed, all states retain the ability to prosecute especially violent youths as adults, in some cases with no minimum age limit. But those cases make up a tiny portion of the total juvenile caseload nationwide. In 2007, there were fewer than 9,000 juvenile cases waived to adult court, out of nearly one million juvenile prosecutions, according to the most recent national estimate from the Justice Department.

In New York, where 45,873 youths ages 16 and 17 were arrested last year, proponents of raising the age of adult criminal responsibility have attempted to push the issue in the past two months. Aides to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo did not immediately respond to questions about his position on the issue.

In January, an advisory board to the Governor's Children's Cabinet, a group of state officials with oversight over youth issues, released a report calling for a task force to examine raising the age.

Around that time, members of the New York State Bar Association children's committee drafted legislation to establish such a task force, and they are looking for support from legislators and the governor's office. Michael A. Corriero, a retired judge who presided over Manhattan's special court for 13-, 14- and 15-year-old offenders who were tried as adults, testified at a City Council committee hearing in January that the current system was ineffective.

Any efforts to raise the age would contend with questions about whether the state's juvenile justice system, already under strain, can handle an even bigger load. Four youth prisons were placed under federal oversight last year because of complaints of physical abuse of inmates and a lack of mental health counseling. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has proposed that the city be allowed to handle its own juvenile cases.

In interviews, New York City judges asserted that the juvenile court system as it was currently financed would be overwhelmed by adding 16- and 17-year-old offenders. “We would need a big infusion of funding and staff to make it happen with that age group,” said Fran Lubow, a judge in Queens Family Court. “I don't see that happening in our current budget circumstances.”

Some judges said teenagers in adult court were well served with a host of special rehabilitation programs, and noted that young defendants in adult court automatically had their first misdemeanor conviction sealed, and that judges had the discretion to seal later convictions.

But others called on the state to get in step with the rest of the country. “People across the nation who have rethought this issue have come to the conclusion that it's time for a change, and I think it's time in New York for that same kind of assessment,” said Monica Drinane, the supervising Family Court judge in the Bronx. “The age of 16 is not a good cutoff for juveniles.”

One case last month in Manhattan's adult criminal court, which involved a 17-year-old admitted shoplifter, illustrates the quandary and the costs involved. The judge offered the teenager a choice: a residential drug-treatment program or a one-to-three-year prison sentence. The judge had reviewed a social worker's assessment of the defendant that detailed a history of misdemeanor thefts, mental health hospitalizations, substance abuse and beatings by his mother's boyfriend, but no convictions involving violence.

The defendant, who was 16 when he stole clothing from a Filene's Basement store and cold medicine from Duane Reade, weighed his options. He knew that his mother's insurance would not cover the $600 monthly payments for the program. But if he were in juvenile court, a judge could have ordered him into a program, with taxpayers picking up the entire cost.

He chose prison. “Because I didn't have Medicaid, the city wasn't going to pay for the program,” said the teenager from a video-conferencing room at Rikers Island. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because the judge agreed to seal his conviction.

“This is a painful example of the problem with the current law, which literally puts handcuffs on 16- and 17-year-olds as well as the judges in criminal court,” said Steven Banks, chief lawyer at the Legal Aid Society, which represented the teenager.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/nyregion/06juvenile.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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New Laws to Control Immigration Pass in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Legislature has approved an immigration package that includes an enforcement law reminiscent of Arizona's but is tempered by a bill for a guest worker program for illegal immigrants.

The measures, approved by the State Senate and House on Friday night, would allow illegal immigrants to get a permit to work in the state. They also include a requirement that the police check the immigrant status of anyone stopped for a felony or serious misdemeanor.

Supporters said that the package balanced economic needs and compassion; opponents argued that it would probably encourage more illegal immigration.

State lawmakers initially balked at the enforcement measure because of a likely backlash feared by some. But State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican, garnered enough support after amending it to focus on more serious crimes.

An Arizona law approved last year drew nationwide attention over provisions requiring the police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if they had reasonable suspicion they were here illegally. A federal judge ordered that aspect of the law put on hold.

Representative Bill Wright, a Republican who sponsored the Utah bill creating the guest worker program, said that if the state could secure a federal waiver, the program could become a model for the rest of the country.

The bill would allow illegal immigrants to get a permit to live and work in Utah with their families.

The most vocal critic of that provision, Representative Chris Herrod, a Republican, said that a guest worker program would draw more illegal immigrants to the state.

“People think we'll be seen as compassionate,” Mr. Herrod said. “People will actually see us as weak. They will see we don't care about the rule of law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/us/06utah.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Giving Life After Death Row

Salem, Ore.

EIGHT years ago I was sentenced to death for the murders of my wife and three children. I am guilty. I once thought that I could fool others into believing this was not true. Failing that, I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter. But gradually, the enormity of what I did seeped in; that was followed by remorse and then a wish to make amends.

I spend 22 hours a day locked in a 6 foot by 8 foot box on Oregon's death row. There is no way to atone for my crimes, but I believe that a profound benefit to society can come from my circumstances. I have asked to end my remaining appeals, and then donate my organs after my execution to those who need them. But my request has been rejected by the prison authorities.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 110,000 Americans on organ waiting lists. Around 19 of them die each day. There are more than 3,000 prisoners on death row in the United States, and just one inmate could save up to eight lives by donating a healthy heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and other transplantable tissues.

There is no law barring inmates condemned to death in the United States from donating their organs, but I haven't found any prisons that allow it. The main explanation is that Oregon and most other states use a sequence of three drugs for lethal injections that damages the organs. But Ohio and Washington use a larger dose of just one drug, a fast-acting barbiturate that doesn't destroy organs. If states would switch to a one-drug regimen, inmates' organs could be saved.

Another common concern is that the organs of prisoners may be tainted by infections, H.I.V. or hepatitis. Though the prison population does have a higher prevalence of such diseases than do non-prisoners, thorough testing can easily determine whether a prisoner's organs are healthy. These tests would be more reliable than many given to, say, a victim of a car crash who had signed up to be a donor; in the rush to transplant organs after an accident, there is less time for a full risk analysis.

There are also fears about security — that, for example, prisoners will volunteer to donate organs as part of an elaborate escape scheme. But prisoners around the country make hospital trips for medical reasons every day. And in any case, executions have to take place on prison grounds, so the organ removal would take place there as well.

Aside from these logistical and health concerns, prisons have a moral reason for their reluctance to allow inmates to donate. America has a shameful history of using prisoners for medical experiments. In Oregon, for example, from 1963 to 1973, many inmates were paid to “volunteer” for research into the effects of radiation on testicular cells. Some ethicists believe that opening the door to voluntary donations would also open the door to abuse. And others argue that prisoners are simply unable to make a truly voluntary consent.

But when a prisoner initiates a request to donate with absolutely no enticements or pressure to do so, and if the inmate receives the same counseling afforded every prospective donor, there is no question in my mind that valid organ-donation consent can be given.

I am not the only condemned prisoner who wants the right to donate his organs. I have discussed this issue with almost every one of the 35 men on Oregon's death row, and nearly half of them expressed a wish to have the option of donating should their appeals run out.

I understand the public's apprehension. And I know that it could look as if what I really want are extra privileges or a reduction in my sentence. After all, in a rare and well-publicized case last December, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi released two sisters who had been sentenced to life in prison so that one could donate a kidney to the other. But I don't expect to leave this prison alive. I am seeking nothing but the right to determine what happens to my body once the state has carried out its sentence.

If I donated all of my organs today, I could clear nearly 1 percent of my state's organ waiting list. I am 37 years old and healthy; throwing my organs away after I am executed is nothing but a waste.

And yet the prison authority's response to my latest appeal to donate was this: “The interests of the public and condemned inmates are best served by denying the petition.”

Many in the public, most inmates, and especially those who are dying for lack of a healthy organ, would certainly disagree.

Christian Longo, a prisoner at Oregon State Penitentiary, is the founder of the organization Gifts of Anatomical Value From Everyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/opinion/06longo.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

How Not to Assign Kidneys

MORE than 87,000 Americans suffering from end-stage renal disease are on dialysis and awaiting a kidney transplant. Fewer than 17,000 of them are likely to have new kidneys by the end of the year.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit group that manages the nation's organ transplant system, wants to change the system for allocating kidneys from deceased donors. While organs from living donors are usually directed to a particular person, kidneys from the deceased are distributed under a formula devised by the network. The proposal is supposed to provide deceased-donor kidneys of higher quality to healthier, younger patients instead of to elderly ones who presumably have fewer years to live.

It sounds simple enough. But the strategy could result in fewer kidneys going from living donors to young candidates, and could lead to more deaths of older or sicker candidates on the waiting list. Moreover, it would do nothing to address the fundamental problem: the persistent shortage of kidneys from donors, both living and deceased.

The proposal would set up a two-pronged strategy that is intended to increase the number of life-years gained for every donor kidney. Under the proposal, the top 20 percent of kidneys from deceased donors who had been young and healthy would be assigned to the top 20 percent of young healthy candidates. In other words, the best deceased-donor kidneys would be given to patients likeliest to have long lives ahead of them.

The other 80 percent of deceased-donor kidneys would be allocated first to local candidates within a 15-year age range of the donor, and if no potential candidate were identified, then to the broader pool of candidates. (For example, candidates aged 25 to 55 would get priority for a kidney from a 40-year-old donor who had just died.)

But while the goal is understandable, the proposal is flawed. For one thing, our ability to forecast the success of any particular transplant is limited. The models used to predict whether both the kidney and the recipient survive in any individual operation are correct only 60 percent to 70 percent of the time; sometimes kidneys don't last as long as expected. So basing a vast shift in policy on a model that is just two-thirds accurate should give us pause.

In addition, giving healthy young patients first dibs on kidneys from young deceased donors might reduce donation rates from living donors to the young candidates, which is at cross-purposes with the goal of extending years of life after transplant. In 2005, the network started giving pediatric transplant candidates priority for kidneys from deceased donors younger than 35. While the pediatric patients received more organs from deceased donors, they got fewer organs from living donors. The likely explanation is that the donors, including many parents, held off, figuring that they could donate later, when the deceased-donor kidney eventually failed. (Those kidneys can last up to 20 years.)

The new proposal would effectively expand the 2005 rule to all healthier, younger candidates, potentially reducing living-donor transplantation to the very group that stands to benefit the most from it. This would only increase their need for another transplant later, since kidneys from deceased donors do not last as long as kidneys from living ones.

Giving more organs to young recipients would also come at the expense of “older” recipients, which in this context can mean 50 to 64. (Only a tiny fraction of all kidneys go to recipients older than 70.) Since older candidates on the waiting list are less likely to live long enough to receive a kidney, making them less eligible for transplants will probably result in more deaths on the list, and more pressure on available living donors to donate to older candidates.

What should be done instead?

First, allocate kidneys on a broader basis. Under both the current and proposed systems, kidneys are allocated locally. But while a New Yorker with end-stage renal disease will typically wait at least six years for a transplant, her counterpart in Minnesota might wait just two to three. Since a kidney from a young deceased donor would probably be allocated to a young local candidate, young candidates in areas with long waiting lists would still be at a substantial disadvantage under the new proposal. Turf disputes among regional and state networks are the main reason geographic disparities haven't been addressed.

Second, the network should continue to support first-person consent legislation under which people who have properly declared their willingness to donate their organs in case of an unexpected death cannot have their wishes overruled by their bereaved families.

But for now, the only sure way to reduce the shortage of organs is to expand transplantation from living donors, which requires more resources from the network. The public needs better education about the benefits of donation by the living and assurances that it is almost always safe. And the network should identify and remove disincentives to donation, like the expenses donors incur for travel or for taking unpaid leave from work for the operation preparation, the procedure and recuperation. We also support tracking the long-term health of living donors, which the network should do more to promote.

The network should also keep encouraging innovative efforts like “kidney swaps” or “donor chains.” Kidney swaps involve two donor-recipient pairs who are incompatible within the pair, but can donate to the other pair's recipient. (Think of it as a square dance where the couples switch partners halfway through.)

Donor chains begin with a living donor willing to donate to anyone on the waiting list. Instead of simply giving that donor's kidney to the next patient in line, the kidney can go to the would-be recipient in an incompatible donor-recipient pair; that donor, in turn, can then give to another recipient of an incompatible donor-recipient pair, with the chain continuing indefinitely. (Consider it the medical equivalent of “pay it forward.”)

Patients count on doctors to be not only compassionate in providing care, but also dispassionate in examining data and vigilant in considering the undesirable consequences of any treatment. On these points, the new proposal for allocating kidneys from deceased donors falls short. And on the really pressing issues, it is not nearly ambitious enough.

Lainie Friedman Ross is a pediatrician and professor of clinical ethics at the University of Chicago. Benjamin E. Hippen is a transplant nephrologist at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/opinion/06ross.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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East Coast Rapist Suspect Attempts Suicide

Authorities said Aaron Thomas, 39, attempted to hang himself in his jail cell. He survived, and was transported to a hospital for treatment.

Thomas has been arrested in connection with a string of sexual assaults from Rhode Island to Virginia. Initial rape charges against the unemployed trucker have been filed in Connecticut and Virginia. Authorities in New Haven say that DNA evidence may tie him to 17 attacks on women, which took place over the span of a decade.

Police said the "East Coast Rapist" approached women on foot, using weapons like a knife, a screw driver, or a hand gun.

At one time he lived in a house that was right behind the Dale City Elementary School.

Thomas left an impression on his Dale City neighbors. Those who lived nearby recalled loud and frequent fighting between Thomas and the woman he was living with there.

He also lived in District Heights in Prince George's County from June 1994 to August of 2006. Several of the attacks happened in the county during that time period.

It was a Prince William County source gave the tip that led police to Thomas' New Haven residence. Prince William County was the site of the East Coast Rapist's last attack. Two teenagers in 2009 were raped behind a shopping center while coming home from trick or treating.

In New Haven, DNA from the end of a discarded cigarette butt that provided enough evidence for police to make an arrest.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-East-Coast-Rapist-Attempts-Suicide-117484623.html

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