January 9, 2007

California Farmers Gear Up to Champion New Guest Worker Bill

Associated Press, 1/9/07

01-09) 13:13 PST Hughson, Calif. (AP) --

For generations, Vito Chiesa's family has grown peaches for canning, but the Central California farmer plans to rip out his entire orchard if he can't get enough workers to hand-pick the fruit.

That's the message Chiesa and a corps of California growers will take to Washington this week, as they fly in to campaign for a new Senate bill that would create a guest worker program to grant as many as 1.5 million farm laborers legal status to keep working in the United States.

A similar proposal was defeated last year after legislators stonewalled immigration reform. But farm lobbyists are betting the stand-alone bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and set to be introduced Wednesday, will find new supporters in the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress.

Growers say aggressive security patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have created a labor shortage that's left apples hanging on trees in Washington state, marred berry harvests in Oregon and delayed the onion harvest in Texas. The American Farm Bureau Federation has warned labor shortages could cause $5 billion in losses to the agriculture industry.

The economic threat is particularly acute in the nation's top agricultural state where more than one-third of the nation's farmworkers are employed, California farmers say. Last summer, a quarter of the pear crop in rural Lake County rotted on the trees when pickers never showed up, said Toni Scully, a pear packer there.

"Throughout the summer, farmers were cobbling together workers to meet their immediate needs," said Jack King, national public affairs manager for the California Farm Bureau Federation. "When we failed to push something through last year, we vowed we'd be back."

The bill would create a pilot program allowing people who have worked in agriculture for at least 150 days a year for three years, or 100 days per year for five years, to apply for a green card. It would grant legal status to no more than 1.5 million workers over five years, some of whom could apply for citizenship.

The measure passed the Senate last year as part of a larger immigration bill, but failed when the House and Senate deadlocked over broader reforms. It will likely face opposition from conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, an influential Washington think tank that argues the guest workers would attempt to bring their families with them, causing an extra burden on social services that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Estimates of the bill's fiscal impact vary widely.

Growers and farm worker advocates don't agree on how to fix a system that has allowed an estimated 12 million immigrants to enter the country illegally. But both say the beginning of a solution is the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act of 2007, dubbed "AgJobs," which would speed up worker approvals under the current H2-A program, a federal contract that brings agricultural workers to the U.S. to fill jobs few Americans will take.

Several hundred temporary laborers already come to California legally each year on H2-A visas. But since the 1960s, when the last guest worker program between the U.S. and Mexico ended amid allegations of worker mistreatment, a majority of workers have crossed the border without documents.

Nearly all of California's farmworkers were born in Mexico, and 57 percent of the labor force lacks authorization to work in the U.S., up from 9 percent in 1990, according the state division of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Virtually everybody agrees that agriculture is an industry that cannot do well without the undocumented worker," Feinstein said in an interview with the Associated Press. "And the people are coming to the realization that there won't be a comprehensive immigration bill. The first step was taken with the border security bill. (A guest worker program) is the next logical step."

In the meantime, Chiesa has already started pulling up some of his peach trees and replanting rows of almond and walnut trees, which can be harvested by machines instead of people.

"When I grew up, everything was peaches," said Chiesa, whose family has farmed in Hughson, a rural community along the Tuolumne River about 15 miles southeast of Modesto, since the 1950s. "But we're getting rid of them. It comes down to labor — my stomach can't put up with the uncertainty."

Chiesa's brother, Kevin, pulled out his own peach trees to open a walnut processing plant, where he now employs about 50 people year-round. Alicia Juarez, who oversees a walnut-sorting machine there, said she much preferred the steady paycheck of her current position to working in Stanislaus County farms, sizing and sorting peaches in the field.

"The salary's better here than in the field. There, you're in the sun all day and you're carrying heavy things," said Juarez, a legal U.S. resident born in Guanajuato, Mexico. "Not everyone can get these jobs, though, and I know lots of people who would apply to be guest workers."

January 11, 2007

U.N. to Reassess Peacekeepers in Darfur Border Area

Reuters South Africa, 1/11/2007

By IRWIN ARIEFF

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations will reassess whether to send peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic after an initial survey found the Darfur border area too dangerous, diplomats said on Wednesday.

The Peacekeeping Department agreed to send an assessment team to the area, which borders on Sudan's troubled western Darfur region, after Security Council members complained that civilians there were suffering and the international community was doing little to protect them, the diplomats said.

"There was a real interest expressed by members of the Security Council in moving ahead with this endeavor, even though we have to take all factors into account, including the situation on the ground, both political and military," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

"There was some frustration expressed in the room about the pace of these activities," said Churkin, the council president for January. "Some members wanted to see things happening much faster than has been the case."

Civil war in Darfur spilled over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic last year, driving civilians near the border from their homes and into camps already crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees that earlier fled Darfur.

The Security Council in June asked the U.N. Peacekeeping Department to explore protection of the camps, and an initial assessment mission was sent in late November.

Fighting on the ground in Chad prevented the mission from visiting some of the affected areas, and a report issued in November recommended against deploying peacekeepers in the border area until all parties agreed to stop fighting and begin talks aimed at a political solution.

The report said U.N. peacekeepers could be attacked by rebel groups if they tried to stop cross-border activities and that a U.N. force " would be operating in the midst of continuing hostilities and would have no clear exit strategy."

But council members were unhappy with the report.

"Our goal is a U.N. peacekeeping mission," said Churkin, calling for the new assessment mission to leave "as quickly as possible."

"We are very concerned about people in the region," said South African U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo. "We want to see some action to end the suffering."

Jury rules State Farm owes damages

Associated Press, 1/11/2007

By GARRY MITCHELL

A jury on Thursday awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages to a couple who sued State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. for denying their claim after Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could benefit hundreds of other homeowners challenging insurers for refusing to cover billions of dollars in storm damage.

A federal judge only hours earlier had taken part of the case out of jurors' hands before they awarded punitive damages to State Farm policyholders Norman and Genevieve Broussard.

U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled Thursday morning that State Farm is liable for $223,292 in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to the Broussards' home. Senter left it to a jury to decide whether to award punitive damages.

Senter's decision to make a directed verdict rather than let the jury decide the entire case appeared to surprise everyone in the courtroom. After he explained his ruling, Senter ordered a recess to give attorneys time "to get over the shock."

After the jury announced its award, the Broussards left the courthouse arm in arm. "It's a great day for South Mississippi," Norman Broussard said.

Some of Senter's earlier rulings in other Katrina cases have favored the insurance industry, but his decision Thursday calls into question the companies' refusal to cover billions of dollars in damage from Katrina's storm surge.

The Broussards sued State Farm for refusing to pay for any damage to their home, which Katrina reduced to a slab. The couple, who wanted State Farm to pay for the full insured value of their home plus $5 million in punitive damages, claimed that a tornado during the hurricane destroyed their home. State Farm blamed all the damage on Katrina's storm surge.

State Farm and other insurers say their homeowner policies cover damage from wind but not from water, and that the policies exclude damage that could have been caused by a combination of both, even if hurricane-force winds preceded a storm's rising water.

Senter, however, ruled that State Farm couldn't prove that Katrina's storm surge was responsible for all of the damage to the Broussards' home. The judge also said the testimony failed to establish how much damage was caused by wind and how much resulted from storm surge.

State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said after the jury's verdict that the company is likely to appeal the decision. "We are surprised and disappointed by both the judge's ruling on the coverage issues and the amount awarded by the jury for punitive damages," he said in a written statement. "We believe the expert testimony supported a different result."

Jack Denton, one of the couple's attorneys, said they are "very pleased" with the jury's verdict but declined further comment. "Obviously we have other trials coming up and don't want to jeopardize those cases," he added.

In his closing argument Thursday, one of the Broussards' attorneys, William Walker, said State Farm had breached their contract "in a bad way" by denying their claim. State Farm "acted like a chiseler," he said, adding, "The pocketbook is what they listen to."

State Farm attorney John Banahan urged jurors to "use your head and your heart" in deciding on punitive damages and to reject an attempt by the Broussards' attorney to demonize the company as an "evil empire."

Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute in New York, said before the jury announced its decision that a punitive damage award would be "distressing" for insurers.

"It adds even more cost and more uncertainty to the other problems that already exist in the Mississippi homeowners insurance market," he said.

The Broussards' case isn't directly involved in recent settlement talks between State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and policyholders' lawyers.

People with direct knowledge of the settlement talks told The Associated Press this week that State Farm, Mississippi's largest home insurer, is considering paying hundreds of millions of dollars to settle more than 600 lawsuits and resolve thousands of other disputed claims.

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, an attorney who represents 639 State Farm policyholders in the settlement talks, said he doesn't know how the judge's ruling on Thursday will affect the negotiations.

Randy Maniloff, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who represents insurers and has closely followed the Katrina litigation, said Senter's ruling is a "huge verdict" for homeowners even if the jury didn't award punitive damages.

"That settlement is looking awfully good for State Farm now," he added.

January 16, 2007

U.N. Human Rights Expert Wins Nod for U.S. Visit

New York Times , January 16, 2007

By REUTERS

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights expert said on Tuesday he had won permission to visit the United States to evaluate U.S. methods of dealing with people on terrorism charges.

Martin Scheinin, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, had formally requested a U.S. visit in July and received an invitation in a letter dated December 20.

The Finnish jurist, who reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council, said he hoped to make the trip in late May.

"I intend to examine, in depth, issues regarding the detention, arrest and trial of terrorist suspects and the rights of victims of terrorism or persons negatively impacted by counter-terrorism measures,'' he said in a statement.

Scheinin has previously voiced concerns about Washington's decision to permit tough interrogation techniques and military trials for terrorism suspects, saying the Bush administration's laws set a dangerous international precedent.

He has also called for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects are being held in conditions some say violate international laws on torture and arbitrary detention.

President Bush has acknowledged the camp -- which has held 770 captives, of whom only 10 been have been charged with crimes -- has hurt the American image abroad but has made no concrete moves to close it. Guantanamo Bay still houses about 395 prisoners suspected of al Qaeda and Taliban links, kept in maximum-security cells.

During his U.S. visit, Scheinin said he aimed to meet government, judicial, security and law enforcement officials, as well as non-governmental groups.

Population Shifts

New York Times, January 16, 2007

By CARL HULSE

Census projections analyzed by the firm Election Data Services show that population losses in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina could cost the state a Congressional seat after the 2010 census. Louisiana is not the only projected loser: seven states in the Northeast and the Midwest would drop Congressional seats as residents migrate to the South and the West, where six states would gain seats. Texas, which has absorbed some Louisiana transplants, would gain two. The trend would seem to be good for Republicans, who have dominated those regions, though Democrats have made inroads. New districts will be drawn by state legislatures.

Some at Guantanamo Mark 5 Years in Limbo

Washington Post, January 16, 2007

By CAROL D. LEONNIG and JULIE TATE

Shackled at the wrists and blinded by special goggles, the first captives from the U.S. war in Afghanistan were ushered to makeshift prison cells thousands of miles from the battle, at the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, five years ago last week.

Gholam Ruhani was among them, the prison's third official inmate, flown in by cargo plane with the first group of 20 men. The 23-year-old Afghan shopkeeper, who spoke a little English, was seized near his hometown of Ghazni when he agreed to translate for a Taliban government official seeking a meeting with a U.S. soldier.

Ruhani is still at Guantanamo, marking the fifth anniversary of the prison and his own captivity. He remains as stunned about his fate, according to transcripts of his conversations with military officers, as he was when U.S. military police led him inside the razor wire on Jan. 11, 2002, and accused him of being America's enemy.

"I never had a war against the United States, and I am surprised I'm here," Ruhani told his captors during his first chance to hear the military's reasons for holding him, three years after he arrived at Guantanamo. "I tried to cooperate with Americans. I am no enemy of yours."

Now prison and prisoner are forever linked, joined by hasty decisions made in war and trapped by that fateful beginning.

Guantanamo, which is struggling to rid itself of roughly 200 of its 393 remaining detainees, served its original purpose of taking dozens of terrorism suspects and enemy fighters from the chaotic Afghan battlefield and elsewhere, administration officials and the prison's supporters say.

But after five years and more than $600 million, it has failed to quickly and fairly handle the cases of hundreds of people such as Ruhani, against whom the government has no clear evidence of a role in attacks against the United States, according to current and former government officials and attorneys for detainees.

In the administration's effort to obtain raw intelligence, officials said, it was easier to ship hundreds of men with unclear allegiances to a naval base in Cuba in early 2002 and ask the hard questions later. But with a government focused on interrogations, a bureaucracy lacking tolerance for risk and a detention policy under legal attack, the United States has found it difficult to free many of the detainees, regardless of the information it has on the threat they pose.

"We of course had to make snap judgments in the battlefield," said one administration official involved in reviewing Guantanamo cases, who spoke anonymously to avoid angering superiors. "Where we had problems was that once we had individuals in custody, no one along the layers of review wanted to take a risk. So they would take a shred of evidence that a detainee was associated with another bad person and say that's a reason to keep them."

That policy, and persistent reports of detainee abuse inside Guantanamo's walls, have provided rallying points for Islamic radicals, undermined international support for U.S. efforts to track down terrorists and ignited a legal effort that has repeatedly embarrassed the administration.

"Guantanamo took on a life of its own," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former U.S. ambassador at large for war crime issues. "What started as a solution to an immediate problem became both a more permanent place and a cause celebre internationally."

The White House and the Defense Department say the detention and interrogation facility they call Joint Task Force Guantanamo has been a success in protecting Americans and helping U.S. officials learn more about terrorist networks. Dangerous men are inside the prison, among them Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of aiding him. They were among 14 detainees transferred there last year as the administration sought, and later won, a law that restricts detainees from challenging their imprisonment in U.S. courts.

So far, 10 detainees have been designated to stand trial before special military commissions, and the Defense Department expects that 80 more will face a similar fate.

"In Guantanamo, we have held the engine of al-Qaeda -- the recruiters, smugglers, trainers, facilitators, financiers, bombmakers and potential suicide bombers -- detained and out of the fight," said Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, a Defense Department spokesman. "We have no desire to be the world's jailer and do not hold detainees for any longer than necessary. We have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo."

The prison has changed dramatically since its inception, after a battlefield crisis in north-central Afghanistan over Thanksgiving weekend in 2001. For four days, U.S. and British forces fought a prisoner uprising in a fortress used by the CIA as an interrogation site in Mazar-e Sharif. By Nov. 28, hundreds of prisoners were dead and the U.S. military had taken custody of an estimated 200 survivors and suspects.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, in charge of the assault on Afghanistan's al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds, urged the military to find a site outside the country to hold and evaluate this expanding group of suspects. The job had also overwhelmed his detention facility, a converted machine shop at Bagram air base.

Back in Washington that December, someone floated an idea: What about taking the prisoners to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay? Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld liked it. By the next month, military cargo planes were bringing Muslim men seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Cuba, 20 and 30 at a time.

President Bush, relying on advisers' untested legal theories, declared a week after the prison opened that the captives were not entitled to Geneva Conventions protections or prisoner-of-war status and could be held in Cuba, without charges, indefinitely.

Between its opening and Feb. 14, 2002, the number of prisoners at Guantanamo swelled to 300. In late January of that year, Vice President Cheney said the detainees were "the worst of a very bad lot" and added: "They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans."

But of the 773 detainees who have spent time in Guantanamo, the government has released roughly half, most because they had no information and no role in any fighting. The majority were sent home after the evidence against each was formally reviewed at military hearings required in 2004 by the Supreme Court, which rejected the Bush administration's claim that it could detain foreign nationals indefinitely without such sessions.

Of the 393 prisoners who remain today, the military has determined that 85 pose so little threat, they should be transferred to their home countries. Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because some evidence about the prisoners is classified, estimate that about 200 pose a danger to Americans.

It is unknown what classified evidence exists to hold Ruhani, who said he was newly married and trying to help his elderly father run an electrical supply store when he was arrested on Dec. 9, 2001. The military tribunal that reviewed his case in 2004 publicly concluded that he was a danger because he was captured with a senior Taliban intelligence officer, was carrying rounds for his pistol and had worked as a part-time aide in a Taliban security office.

Ruhani told the three-officer tribunal that he had been waiting for three years to set the record straight, transcripts show. He contended that the Taliban required all young men to fight in its army but said he was able to avoid going to the front lines by agreeing to do menial cleaning and clerical jobs at a nearby police office.

"I was afraid I would be killed," he told them.

He had learned a little English to make some sense of the electronics manuals in his family's shop. And, he said, he was happy to help translate when asked by a fellow villager -- Abdul Haq Wasiq, a Taliban official who later became a prisoner with him at Guantanamo -- because he considered the Americans friendly. He said almost everyone in Afghanistan carries a weapon for protection but he handed his over to the Americans as he entered the meeting.

"I believed I was on the Americans' side. I expected to leave that meeting and return to my life, my shop and my family. Instead, I was arrested," he said, adding: "All I want to say is that I am not guilty. I am asking for your help."

The military decided to continue holding Ruhani. At a review hearing the next year, he seemed bewildered that the Americans had not yet determined that his detention was a mistake.

"If there is a misunderstanding, please don't hold that against me," Ruhani said. "When will they let me know that I'll be released?"

One major obstacle for Ruhani and dozens of others still at the prison is nationality. The U.S. government has determined that Afghanistan, and a few other countries, cannot keep track of released detainees who the United States believes are low-risk but need monitoring.

Afghans make up the largest group of current detainees. Yemenis and Saudis, whose countries either cannot handle released detainees or do not want them, also remain in large numbers.

The detainees in that first group of 20 are emblematic of Guantanamo's prisoners. Half have been released. Of the remaining 10, one is David Hicks -- prisoner No. 2 -- an Australian who fought in the Kosovo Liberation Army, then converted to Islam and was captured in Afghanistan. Two are admitted Taliban commanders.

Three others are more like Ruhani, with public files that appear to make them unlikely enemies of the United States.

One is Shakhrukh Hamiduva, an 18-year-old Uzbek refugee who fled his country after the government there killed one of his uncles and jailed other relatives. He tried to cross the border from Afghanistan when U.S. bombs started falling but was captured by a tribal leader and sold to U.S. forces for a bounty. He said soldiers told him he would be released, but instead he ended up in Cuba.

"We went after small fries at every turn," said Neal Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who helped argue the Supreme Court case last June that struck down the government's original plan for military trials. "Gitmo blew our credibility. And it's going to take a long time to get it back."

Detainee's Letters Give Peek at Life At Guantanamo

Washington Post, January 18, 2007

By ERIC RICH

Majid Khan, a terrorism suspect secretly detained for years by the CIA and now held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told his Pakistani wife in a letter that she should not dwell on the thought of his return because "if I come back, it will be a miracle of God."

The handwritten letter and three others to his family in suburban Baltimore are the first substantial communication from any of the 14 "high-value" detainees to become public since the captives were transferred in September from what were called CIA "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo.

Khan's letters, redacted in places by military censors, reveal that he has embraced religion in ways that he had not as a high school student in Owings Mills, according to family members and teachers. Khan commanded his wife, Rabia Yaqoob, to study the Koran "with all the footnotes and the explanations" and thanked her for "giving me a daughter in the midst of your sadness."

"Our life is not less than a story from the movies," he wrote. "If you add a few songs to it, it would make a very good film."

The government has denied Khan, 26, and the other high-value detainees access to lawyers, asserting in court that the "alternative interrogation methods" to which Khan was subjected are among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets. As a result, little is known about the arrests, detentions or interrogations of those captives.

U.S. officials say Khan, a Pakistani national, took orders from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and who is also a high-value detainee at Guantanamo. Khan was allegedly asked to research the poisoning of U.S. reservoirs and the blowing up of U.S. gas stations, and was considered for an operation to assassinate the Pakistani president.

The letters Khan wrote to his wife and family were delivered through the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose representatives are permitted to visit the detainees on the condition that the agency does not publicly disclose information gathered during the meetings.

Khan's letter to his wife, written in Urdu, was introduced in court in Pakistan and has been published on an Urdu-language Web site operated by the BBC. Yaqoob's attorney, Nisar A. Mujahid, said the letter, by revealing Khan's desperation, supports his contention that the government of Pakistan should use diplomatic pressure to help protect Khan's rights.

Khan's oldest brother, Mahmood Khan, said yesterday that the family was releasing the letters it received to draw attention to the case. Mahmood Khan said that, for several days after the letters arrived last month, he could not bring himself to read them.

"The more you read about how much he loves us, the things going through his mind, what he's been through -- what am I going to say to him?" asked Mahmood Khan, speaking at the family's home.

The letters in English are rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Khan wrote that he is held in solitary confinement, that he is allowed to leave his cell "to get sunburn" for one hour each day, and that he can sometimes talk with other inmates through cell walls. Beyond those particulars, the details of his confinement are few.

"In this letter I am going to mention some of the things I have been through," he wrote on Oct. 20. The next 19 lines of text are blacked out. After the redaction comes Khan's complaint that he did not have his glasses during his first two years of detention and that the military prison lacks basketball courts and other comforts common in U.S. prisons.

"But in some way this place is still better and in some way other were better," he wrote.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer who has been seeking access to Khan, said the redactions, although expected, raised questions. "So many of the interrogation techniques are already known," said Gutierrez, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo.

Majid Khan was detained while he was staying with a brother in Pakistan in March 2003, according to his family and court filings by his attorneys. They said men who were not in uniform burst into the brother's apartment in Karachi late one night and put hoods over the faces of those inside: Majid, his brother Mohammad and his brother's wife. The couple's one-month-old son was also taken into custody.

Although the others were released without charges over the course of three months, Majid Khan's whereabouts were not officially disclosed until September, when President Bush named him as one of the 14 high-value detainees.

Mahmood Khan said his brother, a 1999 graduate of Owings Mills High School, dreamed of being a deejay or a rap musician, even for a time a U.S. Marine, but not a terrorist.

Khan was most recognizable as that young man in the earliest of the notes. He thanked his family for the letters they had sent, bragged that he could do 100 push-ups in 80 seconds, and asked for news of deaths and marriages. "And I don't need to tell you how much I love and miss you guys," he wrote.

Khan was more serious in the second letter. He wrote that he had grown a beard and had studied Islam deeply since his capture, that he now wrote poetry and could read the Koran without translation.

He asked his father for forgiveness and wrote that he had sinned, a reference, according to Mahmood Khan, not to criminal activity but to the pursuit of material indulgences.

"Things never stay the same, and life goes on, so please don't worry about me," he wrote. "Remember it's my sins who brought me here. When my sins are forgiven then I'll get freedom, so it's between me and Allah."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.