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Saturday 31 October 2020
New top story from Time: Sean Connery, the ‘Original’ James Bond, Dies at Age 90
LONDON — Scottish actor Sean Connery, the first actor to play James Bond on film and for many fans the best, has died. He was 90.
Bond producers EON Productions confirmed his death, first reported by the BBC.
Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they were “devastated by the news.”
“He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words — ‘The name’s Bond… James Bond,’” they said in a statement.
The producers said Connery’s “gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent” was largely responsible for the success of the series.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was “heartbroken” at the news.
“Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons,” she said.
In a varied career, Connery played James Bond seven times, starting with “Dr. No” in 1962. His portrayal defined the suave secret agent for a generation of fans.
He also had major roles in films including “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Highlander” and “The Hunt for Red October.”
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 for services to film drama.
New top story from Time: Here’s Everything New on Netflix in November 2020—And What’s Leaving
Netflix’s award-winning original series The Crown returns for a fourth season on November 15. The cast for the British Royal Family in season 3 will be back, including Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, and viewers can also expect to meet Gillian Anderson as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Emma Corrin as Diana, Princess of Wales.
Those looking to get into the holiday spirit this month are in luck, with plenty of festive original programming debuting on the streaming platform. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, a musical film starring Forest Whitaker and Keegan-Michael Key, releases on November 13, and will feature original music from artists like John Legend and Usher. November will also bring The Princess Switch: Switched Again, the sequel to The Princess Switch, Vanessa Hudgens’ campy 2018 Netflix Christmas comedy and Dolly Parton’s Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, which features 14 original songs from Dolly herself.
Here’s everything new on Netflix this month—and everything set to leave the streaming platform.
Here are the Netflix originals coming to Netflix in November 2020
Available November 1
M’entends-tu? / Can You Hear Me?, season 2
Available November 3
Felix Lobrecht: Hype
Mother
Available November 4
Love and Anarchy
Available November 5
Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?
Operation Christmas Drop
Paranormal
Available November 6
Citation
Country Ever After
La trinchera infinita / The Endless Trench
Available November 9
Undercover, season 2
Available November 10
Dash & Lily
Trash Truck
Available November 11
Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun
The Liberator
Nasce uma Rainha / A Queen Is Born
What We Wanted
Available November 12
Ludo
Available November 13
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
The Life Ahead
The Minions of Midas
Available November 15
The Crown, season 4
Available November 17
The Boss Baby: Back in Business, season 4
We Are the Champions
Available November 18
El sabor de las margaritas / Bitter Daisies, season 2
Holiday Home Makeover with Mr. Christmas
Available November 19
The Princess Switch: Switched Again
Available November 20
Alien Xmas
Flavorful Origins: Gansu Cuisine
If Anything Happens I Love You
Voices of Fire
Available November 22
Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square
Available November 23
Shawn Mendes: In Wonder
Available November 24
Dragons: Rescue Riders: Huttsgalor Holiday
El Cuaderno de Tomy / Notes for My Son
Hillbilly Elegy
Wonderoos
Available November 25
The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two
Great Pretender, season 2
Available November 26
Mosul
Available November 27
A Go! Go! Cory Carson Christmas
The Call
Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker
Don’t Listen
Sugar Rush Christmas, season 2
Überweihnachten / Over Christmas
Virgin River, season 2
La Belva / The Beast
Available November 28
The Uncanny Counter
Available November 29
Wonderoos: Holiday Holiday!
Available November 30
A Love So Beautiful
Finding Agnes
Here are the TV shows and movies coming to Netflix in November 2020
Available November 1
60 Days In: Season 5
A Clockwork Orange
Boyz n the Hood
Casper
Christmas Break-In
Dawson’s Creek: Seasons 1-6
Easy A
Elf Pets: A Fox Cub’s Christmas Tale
Elf Pets: Santa’s Reindeer Rescue
Elliot the Littlest Reindeer
Forged in Fire: Season 6
Jumping the Broom
Knock Knock
Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, seasons 1-3
Little Monsters
Mile 22
Ocean’s Eleven
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Piercing
Platoon
School Daze
Snowden
The Garfield Show: Season 3
The Impossible
The Indian in the Cupboard
The Next Karate Kid
Wheels of Fortune
Yes Man
Available November 2
Prospect
Available November 4
A Christmas Catch
Christmas With A Prince
Available November 5
A New York Christmas Wedding
Midnight At The Magnolia
Available November 6
The Late Bloomer
Available November 12
Fruitvale Station
Graceful Friends
Prom Night
Available November 13
American Horror Story: 1984
Available November 15
A Very Country Christmas
America’s Next Top Model: Seasons 19 & 20
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Hometown Holiday
Survivor, seasons 20 & 28
V for Vendetta
Available November 16
Loving
Whose Streets?
Available November 22
Machete Kills
Available November 23
Hard Kill
Available November 26
Larry the Cable Guy: Remain Seated
Available November 30
The 2nd
RUST CREEK
Spookley and the Christmas Kittens
Here’s what’s leaving Netflix in November 2020
Leaving November 1
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
Olympus Has Fallen
Shark Night
Leaving November 4
Death House
Leaving November 6
Into the Forest
Krisha
Leaving November 7
Hit & Run
Hope Springs Eternal
The Sea of Trees
Sleepless
Leaving November 8
Bathtubs Over Broadway
Leaving November 11
Green Room
Leaving November 14
Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, season 1
Leaving November 15
9
Abominable Christmas
The Addams Family
Drive
Leaving November 16
Santa Claws
Soul Surfer
Leaving November 17
Sour Grapes
Leaving November 22
End of Watch
Leaving November 23
Bushwick
Shot Caller
Leaving November 26
The Lincoln Lawyer
Leaving November 27
Jeopardy!: Champion Run I: Gilbert Collins
Jeopardy!: Champion Run II: Rachel Lindgren
Jeopardy!: Champion Run III: Ryan Fenster
Jeopardy!: Champion Run IV: Josh Hill
Jeopardy!: College Championship III
Jeopardy!: Producer’s Pick
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Leaving November 30
Anaconda
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
The Bachelor: Season 13
Bad News Bears
Diana: In Her Own Words
Gridiron Gang
Hostage
National Security
Lakeview Terrace
Moneyball
Ocean’s Eleven
Ocean’s Twelve
Ocean’s Thirteen
Priest
Stand and Deliver
The Tribes of Palos Verdes
West Side Story
Y Tu Mamá También
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
Zodiac
New top story from Time: Here’s What’s New on Amazon Prime in November 2020
Sacha Baron Cohen revives his outrageous character Borat, for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the Amazon Prime original sequel to his 2006 satirical film about an inquisitive fictional journalist from Kazakhstan. In his latest installation, Cohen tackles American politics with high-stakes pranks on everyone from Mike Pence to Rudy Giuliani.
There’s no shortage of films to screen for a movie night this fall, from feel-good classics like As Good As It Gets and Dead Poets Society to thrilling dramas like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Those looking for a new television show to binge also have a range of titles to choose from, from the PBS documentary series, America’s Untold Story, to all six seasons of the ensemble sitcom Community. There are also plenty of options for younger viewers on Prime this month, including past seasons of the beloved Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the animated series, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
Here are all the series and movies available on Amazon Prime Video this month.
Here are the new Amazon Prime Video originals in November 2020
Available October 23
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Available November 6
El Presidente (English Dub), season 1
Ferro, season 1
Wayne, season 1
Available November 13
Alex Rider, season 1
James May: Oh Cook, season 1
Available November 20
Small Axe, Limited Series
The Pack, season 1
Available November 25
Uncle Frank
Here are the movies streaming on Amazon Prime Video in November 2020
Available November 1
28 Days Later
A Christmas Movie Christmas
A Christmas Switch
A Majestic Christmas
Arizona Whirlwind
Article 99
As Good As It Gets
Boyz N’ The Hood
Breathless
Country Strong
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Dead Poets Society
Deja Vu
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Firewalker
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
Marrying Father Christmas
Me, Myself & Irene
More Than A Game
Mr. Majestyk
Next Day Air
Platoon
Rock N’ Roll Christmas
Romancing The Stone
Ronin
Silverado
Step Up
Thank You For Smoking
The Expendables
The Expendables 2
The Expendables 3
The Insider
The Iron Lady
The Jewel Of The Nile
The Last Waltz
The Sapphires
The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3
The X Files: I Want To Believe
Twilight
Underworld: Evolution
Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans
Underworld
Wall Street
Water For Elephants
You Got Served
Zookeeper
Available November 3
General Commander
The Assault
Available November 4
Blue Story
Available November 6
The Secret: Dare to Dream
Available November 7
Retaliation
Available November 11
Tonight You’re Mine
Available November 13
The Ride
Available November 14
The Dictator
Available November 15
12 Pups Of Christmas
Christmas Crush
Available November 18
Body Cam
Available November 20
Seven Stages To Achieve Eternal Bliss
Available November 21
Most Wanted
Available November 26
Bombshell
Available November 27
Life in a Year
Here are the TV shows streaming on Amazon Prime Video in November 2020
Available November 1
America’s Founding Fathers, season 1
America’s Untold Story, season 1
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, season 1
Before We Die, season 1
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, season 1
Crime 360, season 1
Delicious, season 1
Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, season 1
Jamestown, season 1
Lost Worlds, season 1
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, season 1979
Naked Hustle: Season 1 (Urban Movie Channel)
Stockholm: Season 1 (Topic)
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show: Season 1 (Best TV Ever)
The MotorTrend 500: NASCAR Heads West: Limited Series (MotorTrend)
The Restaurant: Season 1 (Sundance Now)
Available November 8
Community, seasons 1-6
Available November 13
American Horror Story: 1984, season 9
Available November 14
Scrubs, seasons 1-9
Here are the new movies available for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video in November 2020
Available November 6
The Informer
Available November 13
Come Away
Friday 30 October 2020
New top story from Time: 7.0 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Coast of Turkey, Killing at Least 4 and Injuring 120
(ISTANBUL) — A strong earthquake struck Friday between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, collapsing several buildings in Turkey’s western Izmir province and leaving at least four people dead.
Dozens more were injured, while some damage to buildings and the road network, and four light injuries were also reported on Samos.
Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted that four people were killed in Izmir and 120 were injured. He said 38 ambulances, two ambulance helicopters and 35 medical rescue teams were working in Izmir.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 with an epicenter 13 kilometers (8 miles) north northeast of the Greek island of Samos. The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 7.0. It is common for preliminary magnitudes to differ in the early hours and days after a quake. Multiple aftershocks struck the region.
A strong earthquake struck Friday between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, collapsing several buildings in Turkey’s western Izmir province and causing some damage in Samos. There were reports of people trapped beneath rubble in Izmir.
Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency said three injured people were pulled from the wreckage of a building in Izmir. Some damage was also reported on the Greek island of Samos, to buildings and the road network. The director of the hospital in Samos said four people were treated there for light injuries.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said the earthquake was centered in the Aegean at a depth of 16,5 kilometers (10.3 miles) and registered at a 6.6 magnitude. The emergency authority said it sent search and rescue teams to Izmir.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9, with an epicenter 13 kilometers (8 miles) north northeast of the Greek island of Samos. The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 7.0. It is common for preliminary magnitudes to differ in the early hours and days after a quake. Multiple aftershocks struck the region.
Izmir mayor Tunc Soyer told CNN Turk that about 20 buildings collapsed. The city is the third biggest in Turkey with about 4,5 million residents. Turkey’s interior minister tweeted six buildings in Izmir were destroyed. He said there were small cracks in some buildings in six other provinces.
The environment and urban planning minister, Murat Kurum, said people were trapped under the wreckage and rescue efforts were underway.
Videos posted on Twitter showed flooding in the immediate aftermath of the quake in Izmir’s Seferhisar district. Turkish officials and broadcasters called on people to stay off the streets after reports of traffic congestion.
Turkish media showed wreckage of a multiple-story building in central Izmir, with people climbing it to start rescue efforts. Turkish media showed at least one woman being helped from the rubble of a collapsed building. Smoke was filmed in several spots in central Izmir.
Turkish media said the earthquake was felt across the regions of Aegean and Marmara, including Istanbul. Istanbul’s governor said there were no reports of damage in the city, Turkey’s largest.
The quake was felt across the eastern Greek islands and as far as the Greek capital, Athens, and in Bulgaria.
Greek seismologist Efthymios Lekkas told Greek state television ERT that it was still too early to say whether this was the main earthquake, although he said it was likely it was.
“It is an event that is evolving,” Lekkas said, adding that some damage had been reported in parts of Samos.
A tsunami warning was issued, with residents of the Samos area told to stay away from the coastline. Water rose above the dock in the main harbor of Samos and flooded the street.
Residents have also been told to stay away from buildings, as aftershocks continued to rattle the area. Local officials told state media there were reports of damage to buildings and part of the island’s road network.
___
Becatoros reported from Athens. Amer Cohadzic in Sarajevo, Bosnia, contributed.
New top story from Time: ‘I Thought I Was Going to Die.’ How Donald Trump’s Immigration Agenda Set Back the Clock On Fighting Human Trafficking
Emma remembers most of all the pressure in her chest as she struggled to breathe. For at least an hour, she and two other women were packed into a wooden box, one on top of the other like animals to slaughter, in the back of a truck as it crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. Her clothes were soaked through with sweat, her leg cramped from twisting to fit on top of the woman below, and her lungs ached from the weight of the woman lying above her. “I thought I was going to die,” she says, wiping away tears. Nearly a year later, the memory still makes her small frame recoil.
The 45-year-old never expected to end up trapped in an international human trafficking operation. Just a few weeks earlier, Emma had boarded a flight in Beijing that she thought would lead her to a new life in the U.S. The past few years had become intolerable for her in China. She’d fallen for a business scam, gotten into debt, and become the target of loan sharks, who dumped feces and animal blood at the beauty shop where she worked in Guangxi, China. They threatened her so often that she went into hiding at her sister’s house.
She’d applied twice for a tourist visa to the U.S., but was rejected, so she took an acquaintance’s advice and went to an office in the neighboring province of Guangdong. There, a man said he could help her. He told her that he could get her a Japanese visa that would allow her to enter Mexico, and that people there would then help her cross the border to the U.S. and find a job. To Emma, who had a high school education and did not speak English, the deal sounded like her best option, even if the details were sparse and the price was steep: the man was asking 200,000 yuan or nearly $30,000. “There’s nothing worse” than the life I’m living, she remembers thinking.
As it turned out, there was. After Emma arrived in Mexico in spring 2019, nothing went as she had expected. Her terrifying journey in the box in the back of the truck ended in Los Angeles and later, she was transported to Bowling Green, Ky., where she was tricked into working at an illicit massage parlor. Soon, she was being pressured by her boss to do whatever the customers asked for. She paid $10 a day to sleep on a single mattress on the floor in a back room of the parlor and cooked all her meals on a hot plate, constantly monitored by security cameras mounted around the store. Emma could earn tips by serving clients sexually, but otherwise she received only $20 of the $60 customers paid for her services.
Emma had no one to call for help. She knew nobody in the U.S., was unfamiliar with the immigration system, and she was terrified to stray too far from the massage parlor. Her boss had told her repeatedly that if American police saw her outside of the parlor, they would “execute” her. “You’re illegal. You’re like an ant,” Emma says her boss told her. “If you get killed by the police, nobody knows who you are anyway.”
In July 2019, Kentucky investigators raided the massage parlor where Emma was working and living. When they discovered her, she was so traumatized that she could not stop crying. But she answered all the questions local police and Kentucky state investigators asked and, later, she was connected with an organization that helps survivors of human trafficking. Advocates offered her safe housing, counseling and lawyers that would guide her through the steps required to remain legally in the U.S.
But more than a year later, Emma is still in limbo. The federal government hasn’t processed her application for a special visa meant for human trafficking victims and in the meantime, she has no legal status, no authorization to work, and must, by necessity, remain in the margins of society. Because of her vulnerable situation, she asked TIME to be identified as Emma, which is not her real name.
Emma’s experience has become increasingly common under President Donald Trump, who has put fighting human trafficking among his top priorities. His daughter and White House adviser Ivanka made the issue one of her key causes, giving it frequent White House attention, and just this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had launched a new Center for Countering Human Trafficking to bring together law enforcement officials and staff from across the agency to work on human trafficking investigations. In January, at a White House summit during “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month,” Trump championed his Administration’s work. “I have never seen such enthusiasm for a single issue as I have for human trafficking,” he said.
Counter-trafficking lawyers, victim advocates, and former Trump Administration officials offer a starkly different perspective. They say that by cracking down on all forms of immigration, including legal and humanitarian avenues, the Trump Administration has made the work of preventing human trafficking more difficult in key and measurable ways. Specific policy changes across a variety of federal agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice, have increased barriers to victim protections, complicated investigations into trafficking networks, and warped Americans’ perspectives of what the problem looks like. Those harms, counter-trafficking experts say, will be hard to reverse, even if Trump’s not reelected this year.
“What we’ll see is a decade of lost ground in addressing human-trafficking in the United States,” says Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, the country’s largest coalition of anti-trafficking service providers and advocates. “We’ve got at least four years, if not eight, of harmful policies that are making it easier for traffickers, pushing survivors further into the shadows and causing service providers who are most likely to be able to identify trafficking victims to not trust federal agencies.”
Bruggeman says she had been used to having good relationships with staff across the federal government. But under the Trump Administration, she found meetings were often one-sided; she and several other major anti-trafficking groups boycotted the January White House summit. Ultimately, she says, “this government has chosen to ignore the needs of survivors and to reward traffickers.”
Policy changes exacerbate the trafficking problem
Human trafficking is one of the world’s fastest growing criminal industries and one of the most difficult crimes to stop. It unfolds in the shadows, preys on victims who are already marginalized by society, and takes many, disparate forms. Polaris, an anti-trafficking group that operates the U.S. national human trafficking hotline, identifies 25 types of trafficking that span a wide range of industries, from restaurant and food service to factories, manufacturing, and beauty and illicit massage. Victims are recruited in a variety of ways as well. Most are recruited through intimate partners, by family members, or by someone promising a job that turns out not to be legitimate, according to data gleaned from Polaris’s help hotline.
Emma falls into that third category, and the nearly $3 billion-a-year illicit massage industry, where she ended up, is one of the largest and most networked trafficking markets in the U.S. There are more than 10,000 illicit massage businesses across the country, according to Heyrick Research, an intelligence-driven research organization focused on human trafficking. From the outside, these businesses look unremarkable. They’re often out in the open, in strip malls or on street corners, hidden by anodyne storefronts. But the sex work or forced labor that happens inside can be difficult for law enforcement to prove.
“Trafficking cases often include psychological coercion, threats of violence that are not written down,” Bruggeman says. “There’s not a large paper trail for a lot of this.”
In Emma’s case, her boss trapped her at the massage parlor not with physical shackles, but with fear of deportation or death. She told Emma that if she did not perform the sexual acts requested of her, the clients would call the police. Emma did refuse to engage in many activities, and some clients grew violent, pulling her hair, trying to force her to touch them anyway, or demanding their money back. When she complained, Emma’s boss suggested she move to another massage location in the area, a tactic that experts say traffickers often use to keep their illegal businesses from being detected. Investigators believe that Emma’s boss was involved with multiple illicit massage parlors and was part of a larger trafficking network. The investigation is ongoing.
For years, law enforcement officials nationwide have touted raids on illicit spas and massage parlors as part of the state and federal government effort to crack down on trafficking. The issue received renewed attention in February 2019 when Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner and Trump ally, was charged with paying for sex acts at a spa in Jupiter, Fla. But the charges against him were dropped this fall—an outcome that experts say is not uncommon. Raiding an illicit massage parlor is one thing; successfully prosecuting wealthy people who patronize the parlors, or even more crucially, the organizations who facilitate the trafficking, is the real challenge.
Overcoming that challenge often means that law enforcement officials must recruit the help of victims themselves. In many cases, only victims can identify the sometimes-vast roster of traffickers, including, for example, massage parlor managers, owners, and the teams of drivers and coordinators who transport workers between locations. “Law enforcement really depends on survivors being able to tell them what happened and explain where it happened and when it happened,” Bruggeman says. “Then they can find evidence to corroborate all of that.”
But convincing victims to cooperate with police or investigators is difficult. When police find potential victims, they are often terrified of law enforcement officials. That’s particularly true in instances where police are also charging the victims with other crimes, like prostitution or entering the country illegally. Even in cases where victims want to cooperate, they’re often psychologically traumatized, so it can take time for them to remember all the details of what happened to to them, experts say.
In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA)—the signature federal legislation on human-trafficking—in part to address precisely this issue. One of the law’s key features was that it established a framework of “protection, prosecution and prevention”: the understanding is that law enforcement must protect and collaborate with survivors, rather than imprison or prosecute them, in order to prevent future trafficking. The T visa, which was created by the TVPA, was a crucial tool in this effort. It allowed noncitizen trafficking victims who were assisting law enforcement with an investigation to remain in the U.S. for a period of time with work authorization and benefits.
“In the years before the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was passed, trafficked clients, if I encountered them, they’d fall through the cracks,” says Kathleen Kim, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and an expert on human trafficking. “There was no social safety net, there was no infrastructure to keep them afloat while advocates were working on their behalf to gain protection and benefits for them from the government.” The T visa also enables lawyers and advocates to help survivors transition to more stable environments, where they are less vulnerable to further exploitation.
These efforts to encourage human trafficking victims to cooperate with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials has been complicated by Trump’s immigration agenda. In November 2018, the Trump Administration announced that people denied a T visa may be issued a notice to appear in immigration court, beginning deportation proceedings. The move had an immediate chilling effect on human trafficking victims’ willingness to help police, lawyers and advocates say.
At the same time, the Administration made actually applying for or receiving a T visa even harder. Fee waivers on supplemental documents that used to be approved are now routinely denied, and applications are now adjudicated more strictly, multiple anti-trafficking experts and victims’ lawyers say. For example, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) now frequently requests further evidence that a person was indeed trafficked or that their trafficking history is the reason they are still in the U.S. Producing that kind of documentation can be nearly impossible for real human-trafficking victims, human trafficking experts say. Emma, for instance, has no written contract spelling out the intentions of the man at the Guangdong office or with the men who put her in a box in Mexico. When she arrived in Kentucky, she was paid in cash. The orders she received from her boss were verbal.
Daniel Hetlage, a USCIS spokesperson denied that requirements, eligibility criteria or the adjudication process for the T visa program had changed. “USCIS remains committed to protecting the integrity of our immigration laws and ensuring they are faithfully executed,” he said in a statement, adding that those denied T visas “may appeal adverse decisions.”
Advocates say the proof is in the numbers. The processing time for T visas has grown from an average of 7.9 months in 2016 to a current estimate of up to 2.4 years. The U.S. now has the largest backlog of pending T visa applications and the largest number of denials in the program’s history, as well as the lowest number of approvals in a decade, according to USCIS data.
Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, says the process of applying for a T visa was never seamless, but the past few years have been an anomaly. “Before we had six to 12 months to wait, but it was a waiting period that was tinged with hope,” she says. “Now it’s a waiting period tinged with fear.” Her organization informs trafficking victims that if they apply for, but are denied, a T visa they could be deported and then lets them decide how to proceed, she says. Since the Trump Administration’s 2018 policy change, her clients have chosen not to take the risk: she has not applied for a single new T visa in nearly two years. Without this protection, victims are better off simply disappearing into the country: without a path to legal status, employment, or benefits, why risk collaborating with law enforcement?
Those who work to counter human-trafficking say the Trump Administration has made their work more difficult in other ways, too. In 2018, the Justice Department released its applications for grants provided by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), but included new restrictions on how organizations could use that funding. Legal aid and victims service organizations that had previously used the OVC grants to help clear victims’ criminal records, for example, could still apply but would not be allowed to use funds for that purpose. Advocates say that prohibition was counterproductive: it had the effect of making victims even more dependent on those exploiting them. Traffickers often force victims to commit crimes and then use those criminal records as leverage: people with criminal records are much less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police, and if they escape their situation, they’re less likely to be able to find work, housing, or otherwise be able to live independently. This year, the OVC grants did not include the restriction on vacating criminal records, but the change was never explained, and advocates say other irregularities with the grant-making process continue.
“The Trump Administration’s immigration policies have made foreign trafficking victims’ lives more dangerous. Those policies have made it more difficult to escape. And those policies have made it more difficult to obtain relief,” Vandenberg says. “Trafficking victims are living in terror.”
Emma landed in the middle of this policy shift. In her case, the Bowling Green police, working with investigators from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, discovered her after the raid on the massage parlor. They contacted Kathy Chen, a contractor at Heyrick Research who served as an interpreter. Emma was terrified but determined to stop the people who had trafficked her, so she agreed to help the police. “What they always want to look for is, who trafficked you, who is behind this,” says Chen, of the investigation into Emma’s case. The Kentucky Attorney General’s office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation, but said that whenever it helps local law enforcement with sex or labor trafficking cases, its staff “undertake investigations from a victim-centered approach to ensure crime victims do not experience additional trauma.”
Emma later learned that law enforcement could help her apply for what’s known as Continued Presence, a status designed to help victims stay in the U.S. if they might serve as a witness in an investigation. She also applied for a T visa specifically for trafficking victims. In December, Emma’s request for Continued Presence was denied without explanation. Her T visa application is still pending.
Trump’s corrosive rhetoric
Since entering the White House, one of President Trump’s primary agenda items has been cracking down on people entering the U.S., both legally and illegally. As part of that effort, his Administration has ended Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries with dangerous conditions; slashed the cap on refugees to a historic low; and forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.
But his influence has also been more subtle: he has distorted the national conversation about immigration by repeatedly caricaturing immigrants as gang members, criminals, and drunk drivers, while simultaneously promoting dramatic narratives about child sex trafficking, which play directly to Trump’s political base. Child exploitation has long been a particular concern among evangelical Christians, who have remained firmly in Trump’s camp throughout his time in office. More recently, the issue has served as a key force behind the rise of QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that claims Trump is fighting a deep state cabal of elites who are running a worldwide child sex trafficking ring. Trump has pointedly refused to condemn QAnon and at NBC’s town hall this month, lent credence to the group’s delusions, saying, “they are very strongly against pedophilia.”
Child sex trafficking is a real issue, but advocates say that the Administration’s rhetoric, backed with conspiracy-drenched claims, makes the actual work of preventing trafficking—of children and adults—even harder. Earlier this year, for example, QAnon believers, enthralled by a fictionalized threat, overwhelmed Polaris’ national trafficking hotline with calls about the false story that online furniture retailer Wayfair was trafficking children. The overwhelming volume of calls made it nearly impossible for Polaris to address and aid real victims in dangerous situations. In July, Polaris’s leadership grew so frustrated that it put out a statement encouraging people to “learn more about what human trafficking really looks like in most situations.”
Trump’s QAnon-fueled narrative, experts explain, has the effect of warping how people understand human-trafficking, making it harder for people to identify and prevent. “His emphasis on child sex trafficking occurs at the neglect of human trafficking at large and human trafficking as defined as a more complicated sociological phenomenon,” says Kim, the professor at Loyola Law School.
The narrow, fictional QAnon narrative also advances Trump’s incorrect suggestion that the victims of immigration crimes are Americans, and implicitly white, Kim says. Trump often conflates undocumented immigrants with traffickers and smugglers, and fans his supporters’ fears that their loved ones will be killed, raped or snatched away by a shadowy foreigner. That cartoonish narrative papers over a much more complex problem. There is no comprehensive national source of data on human trafficking victims, but experts say the majority of victims are recruited by people they know, and typically come from already vulnerable populations. People of color are disproportionately impacted by labor and sex trafficking, according to Polaris. “My concern,” says Kim, “is that the stronger the influence of QAnon becomes stronger the influence of white supremacy becomes.”
‘Stephen Miller won’t let it be solved’
People within the Trump Administration have raised similar concerns. Back in June 2018, when Elizabeth Neumann was the assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the Department of Homeland Security, then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tasked her with developing a new strategy on fighting human trafficking. When Neumann met with anti-trafficking groups and learned about the topic, she says it quickly became apparent to her just how much the Administration’s immigration posture was hampering the fight against trafficking. In particular, she says, the Administration’s goal of limiting overall immigration and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) intense focus on eliminating fraud, were creating a chilling effect on noncitizen human trafficking victims.
Neumann says she tried to raise the issue with policy officials at ICE, but the discussions didn’t go anywhere. She also tried to get recommendations into DHS’s strategy report on the topic, but when discussions became too heated, she settled for putting higher level language about victim-centered approaches in the strategy document. She figured she and the other officials would “fight all of this out” during the strategy’s implementation. But that never happened. Plagued with chronic understaffing and constant turnover, DHS failed to publish Neumann’s strategy report until January 2020. Four months later, she quit, unable to reconcile her own beliefs with Trump’s actions and rhetoric, which she says was emboldening white supremacists. (She has since appeared in a video produced by Republican Voters Against Trump, saying she is voting for Joe Biden this year because the country cannot afford four more years of Trump.)
A DHS spokesperson said the idea that the Trump Administration has made it more difficult to prevent human trafficking is “ludicrous” and pointed to its new center on trafficking. But the spokesperson did not answer specific questions about the strategy report or concerns raised by Neumann and anti-trafficking advocates. “The Trump administration has made the historic fight to end human trafficking a top priority,” the spokesperson said.
The State Department’s annual Trafficking In Persons reports from recent years, which evaluate the human trafficking landscape and efforts to combat the crime in countries around the world, corroborate some of Neumann’s concerns.
Human trafficking prosecutions and charges fell in 2018 and 2019, and T visa approvals have fallen all three years so far under Trump, according to the most recent Trafficking in Persons reports. The reports are also full of notes about areas that advocates see as needing improvement, from immigration deterrents to victims being arrested for committing sex acts or other crimes their traffickers compelled them to do. In July, Mark Taylor, a former State Department official who coordinated the reports from 2003 to 2013, wrote an op-ed in the Bangkok Post condemning the Trump Administration’s actions and arguing that by continuing to rank itself a Tier 1 nation, the highest designation for counter-trafficking, the U.S. was undermining its own credibility. (The State Department declined to comment for this article.)
Neumann says she and many of her colleagues understood the dilemma they were in: the work of countering human-trafficking was being subjugated to a broader agenda, perpetuated by President Trump and Stephen Miller, a long-serving top advisor who has pushed the Administration’s most extremist immigration policies. “We would go to these meetings with [the Department of Justice] and State and sometimes the White House, and everybody would be looking at this problem going like, ‘We’ve got to get these T visa numbers up,’” Neumann says. “You’re kind of looking around the room going, ‘Hey, everybody understands that in this Administration this problem will never be solved because Stephen Miller won’t let it be solved.”
’What’s going to happen to me?’
Emma, who is just learning how to navigate her adopted country, isn’t privy to most of the details of these Ivory Tower policy discussions. But the implications of Trump’s policies in her daily life are crystal clear: because of delays seemingly designed to deter new T visa applications and reduce the total number offered each year, she finds herself in a prolonged legal purgatory. Until a decision is issued on her case, she has no legal status, no access to benefits, like Medicaid, and no work authorization. She’s also been given no indication of when the government will give her an answer. If she is eventually granted a T visa, she could be allowed to stay in the U.S. for up to four years, and could be eligible to apply for permanent status. If her application is denied, she could begin deportation proceedings.
The indecision puts her in an impossible position. After the raid last summer in Kentucky, Emma found a job as a live-in housekeeper in Maryland with a family that did not ask about her legal status. But when COVID-19 hit in March, Emma panicked. “What if I contract the disease, what is going to happen to me? What about health care?” she thought. “What if I die alone?” She had a conversation with the man she’d been dating and the two of them decided she’d move in with him so they could be together, and she would not have to keep working and expose herself to COVID-19. She is much happier now, she says.
After years of harassment and trauma, Emma would like to stay in the U.S. permanently. She dreams of maybe opening her own beauty store one day if she can get legal status. But in the meantime, she is hoping that her own personal nightmare will help law enforcement officials. She wants them to find and punish the network that exploited her so that “they do not continue to lie to the innocent people,” she says. “They shouldn’t let innocent people be cheated and forced to do things that they don’t want to.”
New top story from Time: Armed Right-Wing Groups Aren’t ‘Militias’—We Need to Stop Calling Them That
Over the last month, ever since the indictment of 13 men for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the word “militia” has appeared in thousands of newspaper headlines and TV news reports. The Detroit News: “Feds Say They Thwarted Militia Plot to Kidnap Whitmer.” NPR: “FBI Says Militia Plotted To Kidnap Michigan Governor.” ABC-12: “Militia Members Accused in Whitmer Kidnapping Face Life in Prison.” But all of these headlines are wrong, and almost every instance of the use of the word militia by journalists—as well as politicians and even law enforcement—has been wrong. Why? Because there is no such thing as a legal private paramilitary militia.
But don’t take it from me, here’s Mary McCord, a former Justice department official who is the legal director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University: “The use of the word ‘militia,’ when you are talking about anything other than a state militia like the National Guard, is just wrong. Using that term without putting the world ‘unlawful’ in front of it suggests there is some constitutional authority or legitimacy for their existence, which there isn’t.”
Let’s say it again, and now let’s make sure that governors and state attorneys general and law enforcement pay attention: All 50 states prohibit private militias. They are illegal. Such organizations were banned starting with the Militia Act of 1903, and then amended by the National Defense Acts of 1920 and 1933. That legislation stated that all “able-bodied residents available to be called forth in defense of the state” were now members of the United States National Guard, which is part of the reserve components of the U.S. Army and Air Force. They are the militia. Period.
So, to the media, by all means use the word militia for the National Guard, but don’t use it for vigilante groups that go by the name Oathkeepers or III%ers or the Wolverine Watchmen or any other name. Call them what they are: gangs, extremist groups, criminals, even domestic terrorists. You can be sure that if these men in camouflage with guns were Black or Muslim, people wouldn’t be calling them militias. These groups use the name militia as a camouflage for their often violent and anti-democratic views. The term evokes the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War, citizen-soldiers who fought the British. But these guys are not heroes; they don’t deserve that historical cover.
In the middle of a national pandemic, in a nation riven by social justice protests, with historically high levels of unemployment, and with a contentious presidential election days away, we are at a moment that experts say is a perfect launchpad for acts of intimidation and violence by unlawful militias. “The threat level is pretty high,” says Jared Holt who monitors extremist groups at the Atlantic Council. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are about 180 active anti-government paramilitary groups in the U.S, some claiming thousands of members, others having just a handful. Their numbers are growing.
For these unlawful militias, Election Day could become their Super Bowl. “Local officials, law enforcement, and voters,” says McCord, “need to know that groups of armed individuals have no legal authority under federal or state law to show up at voting locations claiming to protect or patrol the polls.” Sometimes law enforcement, says Holt, are sympathetic to these unlawful militias. These groups may say they are protecting the public, they may say they are there to help law enforcement—but they are not. They can and should be removed by legal authorities like, well, the actual state militia.
Oh, but doesn’t the 2nd Amendment protect them? Unlawful militias always cite the Second Amendment as providing the DNA of their founding and the justification for their continuation. This, too, is wrong. A “well-regulated Militia” in the words of the Second Amendment, means just that: it is regulated by the State. The Supreme Court, in 1886 and in the Heller decision of 2008 written by Justice Scalia, explicitly permits the states to prohibit “private paramilitary organizations.” And they do. There are plenty of constitutional debates about the Second Amendment—this is not one of them.
Nor does the First Amendment give them much protection either. The First Amendment’s provision of free speech and free assembly is not in conflict with the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. Yes, burly white guys in camouflage can own guns, they can freely express their opinion that the federal government is going to confiscate their guns, they can “peacefully assemble” to protest that idea, they just can’t do so brandishing their guns and intimidating people, especially voters.
Who are these unlawful militias? They are, in the words of Barton Gellman in his seminal 2010 TIME cover on white extremist groups, “twisted patriots.” They are overwhelmingly white men who appropriate Revolutionary War imagery to cloak their anti-government views. What unites them is the idea that the federal government is tyrannical and will take away not only their guns but their rights. Many contend the 16th Amendment that created the federal income tax is unconstitutional. These groups mushroomed in 1990’s after the federal government launched sieges in Ruby Rudge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. But their appeal dimmed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people.
The galvanizing event for the modern unlawful militia movement, according to Gellman’s story, was the election of the first Black president. Disinformation and conspiracy theories blossomed: Obama would declare martial law. Obama was going to confiscate all guns. Obama would usher in an international take-over of America. These groups saw Barack Obama not only as a Black man, but as a foreigner, an alien, un-American, and not of this country. This belief was aided and accelerated by the birther movement, whose primary promoter was none other than Donald J. Trump.
Trump’s role in the resurgence of unlawful militias is impossible to measure, but according to both Holt and McCabe, he is seen as a kindred spirit. A new study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a non-governmental research group, says “there has been a major realignment of militia movement in the U.S. from anti-federal government writ large to mostly supporting one candidate.” That candidate is Donald Trump. When Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”; when he said the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by”; when he expressed sympathy for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year old vigilante charged with killing two protesters in Kenosha; when he smiled as his supporters cheered “Lock her up” about Gov. Whitman—after the kidnapping plot was revealed—he is seen as an inspirational figure and a cheerleader for violence.
These groups have also been galvanized by the George Floyd protests, which is ironic. The George Floyd demonstrators are also protesting the tyranny of state power against a minority. But the narrative that seems to be motivating them now, according to Holt, is online disinformation about a violent “left-wing” response in the event of a Trump victory. In the case of a disputed election, Holt says, “their tone is one of readiness.”
With the election days away and a possible indeterminate or contested result, what can and should states do? It is a bedrock of our civil law that the government—and only the government—is able to legally and legitimately use force in the maintenance of public safety. Every state has some kind of provision in its constitution that allows it to prohibit paramilitary activity that leads to intimidation, violence, and chaos. Election intimidation is against the law. “Local authorities in all 50 states,” says McCord, “should know that the law empowers them to restrict paramilitary activity during public rallies and elections, while preserving the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly.”
They need to do so. That’s true law and order.
