@yjtorbati's Threads
Newest data from @StateDept shows pace of waiver issuances for people subject to travel ban appears to be picking up. As of Oct. 31, 23% of visa applicants subject to the ban had been granted waivers. That's up from 17% a month earlier travel.state.gov/content/dam/vi…
Those figures mask huge disparities by nationality. For instance, the October figures show that just 8.7% of visa applications by Iranians (by far the largest group) were granted waivers. Libyans were 36%, Somalis 26%, Yemenis (2nd largest group) 57% 
Still, it's a dramatic difference from the situation in the first months of the travel ban. I reported in April that in the ban's first 11 months, just 6 percent of people subject to it were granted waivers reuters.com/article/us-usa…
Today, @SecPompeo praised the @UNDP's work in Iraq stabilizing areas reclaimed from ISIS, which the U.S. has partially funded. He called it "a worthy investment" and called for U.S. allies to cover shortfalls
That is starkly different from how Mike Pence characterized the UN's work in Iraq in Oct 2017. For months leading up to these comments by Pence, career officials had been hearing of dissatisfaction among Iraqi Christians and American religious groups w the UN's work
In my story, published last week, I note that career officials acknowledged flaws in the UN's work but believed it was largely effective. From his comments today, it looks like Mike Pompeo agrees propublica.org/article/how-mi…
The @StateOIG report released today offers new details on the 2017 removal of Lawrence Bartlett, the @StateDept's refugee admissions director, from his position (he has since returned to that role) stateoig.gov/system/files/e…
.@ArshadReuters and I wrote about his removal in early 2018. By then, he had been assigned to the FOIA office, which an official described as a form of internal exile akin to being sent "to Siberia." reuters.com/article/us-usa…
The @StateOIG report doesn't name Bartlett, but he is clearly Employee Four
There's a word officials at @USAID used when one of their colleagues was ousted because of pressure from @VP's office.
She had been "Penced."
I spoke to 40 current/former officials and experts and saw internal emails. Here's what it means to be "Penced." (THREAD)
She had been "Penced."
I spoke to 40 current/former officials and experts and saw internal emails. Here's what it means to be "Penced." (THREAD)
2/ For yrs, conservative Christian groups have wanted to direct more foreign aid in the Middle East toward Christians. They found a receptive ear in this administration, particularly @VP, whose office pushed USAID/State Dept to do more for Christians and other minorities in Iraq
3/ So, in 2017, in response to that pressure from @VP, USAID launched new grants. Career officials decided the grants in 2018. They went to large, established organizations, which partnered with smaller Iraqi groups.
NEW: @USCIS, the federal agency charged with admitting immigrants, has instructed its officers to use Google Translate and other similar tools to understand refugees' social media posts propublica.org/article/google…
Google Translate and other such machine translation tools routinely struggle to translate idioms, colloquial language and slang. Google has even advised that its tool is not "intended to replace human translators."
But an internal manual shows USCIS told officers vetting refugees that "the most efficient approach to translate foreign language contents is to utilize one of the many free online language translation services provided by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines."
“Both the British and Australian governments have been trying to keep the identities of their arrested citizens (in Iran) out of the public domain, believing diplomatic efforts to have them released would be more effective if conducted in private.” gu.com/p/cb6p2/stw
This strategy - keeping things quiet in hopes of brokering a diplomatic deal - is a common response to Iran's practice of arresting academics, journalists, tourists and others with foreign and dual nationalities.
We found that Iranian authorities often make promises of quick release - if only family members keep quiet.
Trump prides himself on freeing American prisoners held abroad. So why isn’t he pushing harder for the ones in Iran? @kgilsinan and @yarabayoumy report: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
@kgilsinan @yarabayoumy "[T]he fact that when you engage with Iranian officials they always tell you not to make noise, and that if you don’t make noise, things will be resolved more quickly, that’s probably an indication that you should do precisely the opposite.” - @Joelcpj theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
@kgilsinan @yarabayoumy @Joelcpj "The State Department’s office of the special envoy for hostage affairs declined to comment despite repeated inquiries." theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Three times in 2018, @DeptVetAffairs had a chance to weigh in on an expansive Trump immigration policy and argue for an exemption for veterans. Each time, it declined to do so. My latest, with @iarnsdorf and @dlind propublica.org/article/emails…
@DeptVetAffairs @iarnsdorf @DLind This was revealed in emails we received through a Freedom of Information Act request. See those emails here: documentcloud.org/documents/6283…
Also notable: as the White House scrambled to release an initial version of the “public charge” rule, it warned federal agencies that the decision to propose changing the policy had “been made at a very high level and will not be changing”
Nearly 2 yrs ago, I wrote about Alireza, a gay Iranian man trying to resettle in the US but who had been blocked repeatedly by Trump admin's changes to US refugee policy. Today, I got word that he + his partner were just resettled in Portland, after nearly 5 yrs stuck in Turkey
Here is my 2017 story on Alireza and some of what he had gone through reuters.com/article/us-tru…
Also: my later reporting found that the security review that blocked Alireza and thousands of people like him came as a result of White House interference and had not been recommended by career staff reuters.com/article/us-usa…
I'm late to this letter from former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to John Bolton, obtained by @tedhesson. He argued in Sept. 2018 for the refugee cap to be 45,000 (Trump later cut it to 30k) politico.com/f/?id=0000016c…
Mattis argues that 1) the U.S. owes it to Iraqis who risked their lives in battle to admit them as refugees and 2) more immigrant families enlist than native-born, "so there is also a positive second-order effect" of higher refugee admissions
The letter, sent in Sept. 2018, bolsters my @Reuters story from last year, published in Aug. 2018, on Pentagon officials raising the alarm internally about paltry admissions of Iraqi refugees who had helped the U.S. in battle reuters.com/article/us-usa…
My story for @ProPublica, on comments by a USAID official in support of Trump's 2020 re-election at a @StateDept event yesterday. @USAID told me the agency's ethics office is reviewing the episode propublica.org/article/its-il…
@propublica @StateDept @USAID These comments were made at a forum attended by hundreds of people, and were streamed on YouTube (You can see the exchange here: )
@propublica @StateDept @USAID I'm interested in knowing how widespread this behavior is, especially as things gear up for the 2020 campaign season. If you've witnessed or know of federal officials engaging in partisan political actions or statements on the job, get in touch. yeganeh.torbati@propublica.org
The @StateDept has released new statistics on the implementation of the travel ban between Dec. 2017 and March 2019. There's a lot in here, but some highlights travel.state.gov/content/dam/vi…
More than 12,000 visa applicants from the travel ban countries are in the security check backlog (often referred to as "administrative processing"). @StateDept says: "At present, much of the enhanced screening and vetting process is manual."
This security check process is often incredibly frustrating for visa applicants. I've talked to dozens of people who have waited for months and months after their interviews with little to no update from the embassy as to the status of their application.
This statement by an Iranian diplomat runs counter to findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. It found in Sept. 2017 that the jailing of Iranian-Americans Siamak and Baquer Namazi is "arbitrary" and contravenes Declaration on Human Rights ohchr.org/Documents/Issu…
Just one excerpt of the UN report - Siamak's access to legal counsel was severely limited, and he, his family and lawyers were given no formal evidence behind the charges of espionage/collusion during his pre-trial detention
The UN similarly found that the detention of @Princeton student Xiyue Wang was "arbitrary" and that Iran's use of espionage charges against him for trying to access historical archives "reaches the level of absurdity." ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/…
#RamadanKareem to everyone observing around the world. Interesting piece here about Enes Kanter fasting during the NBA playoffs. I found this detail about his OKC coach touching nytimes.com/2019/05/05/spo…
Also, lol: “Steven Adams was a very, very big fan of halal food,” Kanter said of the Thunder center, “and I remember the day I got traded to the Knicks, he was so sad. He was like, ‘Man, I’m not going to eat halal food anymore.’”
Here's the original, great @WSJ story on the @okcthunder's obsession with halal food. KD wasn't a fan: wsj.com/articles/the-o…
Given @jzarif’s recent statements about welcoming prisoner negotiations w the US, read me and @joel_schectman from last year on how complicated and fraught this issue actually is reuters.com/investigates/s…
For instance, even while tense prisoner talks were happening between the U.S. and Iran in 2015, Iran jailed another American citizen, Siamak Namazi. @jzarif then told John Kerry that Siamak could not be included in the deal
Former officials told us @jzarif pledged to Kerry that Siamak wld be released after the deal. But Siamak is still in jail, 3+ yrs after his fellow Americans were freed. And in time since, Iran has jailed, by my count, 7 US citizens or permanent residents (some have been released)
God, this, a million times. Using "Persian" for "Iranian" is exclusionary of all the Arabs, Kurds and other ethnicities that make up Iranian culture/heritage
However..."Persian" is the correct term for the language when you're speaking English, rather than "Farsi." Yeah it's complicated
Also - people have the right to identify themselves however they want. My/Ramtin’s point was in regard to news outlets purporting to be accurate/thorough not erasing a large portion of Iranians
HHS will expand capacity at its “temporary influx” shelter in south Florida to 3200 beds, from the current ~2400 hhs.gov/sites/default/…
I visited the Homestead shelter in February, when it housed 1600 kids. It’s run by a for-profit company and the government pays ~$750 per kid per night there, about 3x as much as the rate at traditional permanent shelters reuters.com/article/us-usa…
In February, the government had already relaxed a federal requirement on clinician-to-child ratios at Homestead. And state child welfare regulations don’t apply, unlike at traditional shelters, because it’s on federal land
I'm watching the Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on visa vetting/national security and Rep. Max Rose opens his line of questioning by asking DHS officials testifying about the wisdom of the travel ban homeland.house.gov/hearings-and-m…
.@MaxRose4NY notes that all people denied entry by the travel ban checked all the boxes, otherwise passed security checks, but were denied entry simply because of their country of origin
It's pretty rare for elected officials to mention the travel ban much these days, with the exception of Coons, Van Hollen and maybe a couple others, so this was notable to me, especially that it was his first question out the gate
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hear today from the family members of four American citizens or permanent residents missing or detained in Iran: Bob Levinson, Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and Nizar Zakka foreignaffairs.house.gov/2019/3/the-sta…
In addition to those men, we know of several other cases of Americans detained in Iran: Xiyue Wang, a Princeton doctoral student; Morad Tahbaz, a businessman/environmental activist; and Michael White, a Navy veteran. The last two were imprisoned since Trump came into office
In August @joel_schectman and I did a deep dive into how difficult these cases are and exploring how the Obama and Trump administrations approached the issue of Iran's imprisonment of Americans reuters.com/investigates/s…
Unclear, confusing exchange just now between Jackson Lee and Nielsen regarding children held in HHS custody versus those in DHS custody. Imprecise questions and answers mixing up family separation by CBP, ICE deportation of sponsors. End result is zero actually useful information
A clearer, more focused question addressing DHS' responsibility for larger numbers of migrant children in fed custody might ask precisely about ICE's deportation of sponsors and how that works; or deep probing of why some children are still being separated from parents at border
Under specific, focused questioning from Rep. Kathleen Rice, @SecNielsen states she did not know Jeff Sessions was going to announce zero separation in a speech last April before he did so. "I did not know he was making that announcement that day."
The obvious reaction to this - ironic that the US would ask other countries to give refuge to Venezuelans when its own refugee policy has been so restrictive - is yet another example of how the Trump admin’s immigration policies conflict w its stated foreign policy priorities
Exhibit 2: the travel ban, in particular on Iranians, given the Trump admin’s stated support for the Iranian people. When Iranian activist @AlinejadMasih met w @SecPompeo recently, one of her three points was the travel ban’s impact on ordinary people
I could go on - huge drop in admittance of Christian refugees from the Middle East even as the Trump admin professes concern for religious minorities, etc.
I haven’t read the Abramson book but descriptions I’ve seen online (no citations in text, but apparently sources listed in back) reminded me of a story I did at the @yaledailynews in 2007 on similar problems in a Yale law prof’s book yaledailynews.com/blog/2007/10/0…
The Post’s write-up of the scandal seems to indicate a similar problem in Abramson’s work as I found in Ayres’ book: washingtonpost.com/arts-entertain…
Here’s what academic and journalism experts I spoke to then for my story said about what Ayres did (which seems to be similar to the problems in Abramson’s book - although again, I don’t have a copy and am going off others’ reporting)
This is surreal for me to even type, but I'm on @ThisAmerLife this weekend for a segment produced by the amazing @zchace about the tiny library on the U.S.-Canada border where Iranian families separated by the travel ban have been reuniting thisamericanlife.org/664/the-room-o…
The original story I did for @Reuters on the library last month is here: reuters.com/article/us-usa…
The @ThisAmerLife segment uses audio from a video interview @zgoelman conducted. See the incredible video version of the story he produced here: reuters.tv/v/P5Xb
Trump, during his Christmas Day video conference with U.S. troops: “We have a little bit of a shutdown because we believe in walls."
Reported by the indefatigable @makinibrice
Trump also said during this video conference that the Fed is raising interest rates too fast, in his opinion
