TV News LIES

Dear Leqaa,

Ramadan Kareem. I say it with a heavy heart, knowing these words reach you in a place that has tried to strip them of meaning.

It has now been one full year. One year since that dreadful night that marked the beginning of a brutal wave of arrests targeting protesters for nothing more than speaking the truth. Though we have never met in person, I have carried you with me every single day since Noor called me while I was detained in Jena, Louisiana, to tell me that you had been taken. I remember thinking: not again, not another one of us. From that moment, a piece of my heart has been tied to your struggle.

Leqaa, this is your second Ramadan in detention. I need to say that plainly, not as a detail but as a measure of what has been stolen from you. Ramadan is the sound of your mother’s voice calling you to iftar. It is the particular smell of food being prepared with love after a long day of fasting. It is the feeling of breaking bread with family, of praying together, of being held by community in the holiest time of the year.

But they denied you halal food in that facility. They denied you the basic dignity of practicing your faith. Last Ramadan you endured this, and now another has come and found you still caged, still waiting, still being told that your faith, like your grief, is something to be managed rather than honored.

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Three brothers, including two of the nation’s most successful luxury real estate brokers, were convicted of sex trafficking charges on Monday after a five-week trial over accusations that they used drugs and force to rape scores of women they had dazzled with their wealth and opulent lifestyle.

The verdict came after 11 women testified they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers: twins Oren and Alon Alexander, 38, and Tal Alexander, 39.

The women described attacks that occurred after they were invited to vacation locales, including the Hamptons, a Caribbean cruise and a ski trip in Aspen, Colorado. More than 60 women say they were raped by one or more of the brothers, according to prosecutors.

Defense lawyers suggested the accusers had faulty memories or were hoping to cash in on the brothers’ fortunes. The brothers, their lawyers conceded, were womanizers. But they insisted any sex was consensual.

Oren and Tal Alexander were brokers at real-estate powerhouse Douglas Elliman before starting their own firm, Official. Alon Alexander worked at the family’s private security firm.

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A divided U.S. appeals court has refused to let the Trump administration revoke legal protections that allow more than 350,000 Haitians to live and work in the U.S. and avoid being returned to their gang-violence-stricken country.

A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late on Friday rejected the administration’s bid to pause a February 2 ruling that blocked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from ending

TPS is a humanitarian program that shields eligible migrants from deportation and allows them to work.

Under outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the department has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, arguing the program was never intended to serve as a “de facto amnesty.”

The administration had asked the D.C. Circuit to stay U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes’ February order while it appeals. Her decision came in a class-action lawsuit brought by Haitians seeking to prevent DHS from exposing them to deportation.

Under outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the department has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, arguing the program was never intended to serve as a “de facto amnesty.”

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Thousands of mourners paid their respects Friday, March 6 to Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon, who died last month at age 84.

One of those who attended the public homegoing celebration at Chicago’s House of Hope on Friday was Chicago native and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, who also spoke during the ceremony.

During his speech, Thomas acknowledged the "five presidents" who were in attendance.

"I would also like to honor the five presidents who are sitting here today: President (Kamala) Harris, President (Hillary) Clinton, President Bill Clinton, First Lady Jill Biden, President Biden, and Chicago's own southside President Barack Obama," Thomas said, which drew huge applause.

Thomas also praised Jackson for being an inspiration throughout his life, while adding that fellow civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., were his heroes.

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All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

“It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions,” said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children’s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations. When a pregnant child is moved to Texas, “as long as she is in Texas, she can’t access an abortion – without a federal official needing to deny her an abortion”, he said.

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The students at Ellis Prep academy – like most high schoolers – have a lot on their mind right now.

Essay deadlines, college applications, younger siblings and dance rehearsals. But also, the immigration operations across the US and the president’s goal of “mass deportations”.

This small high school in the Bronx is one of the few in New York City that is dedicated exclusively to students who recently arrived in the US.

In May last year, 20-year-old Dylan Lopez Contreras – a senior at Ellis – was detained at a routine immigration court hearing. He was completing his education, which had been disrupted by the arduous journey he had made from Venezuela to the US border. Then suddenly, he disappeared from class. And his name was all over the local and national news. According to his lawyers, he was the first New York public school student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has been detained at the Moshannon Valley ICE processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, ever since.

“It was a shock,” said Roger, one of his friends at Ellis.

In the months since Dylan’s arrest, Roger and other students have tried to process their anger and their grief about what happened while rallying support for their friend. They have also tried to imagine the lives they want to live, and a world they want to live in, after they graduate high school.

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