Eric Adams

More Migrants Arrive In D.C. As White House Slams Republican Governors

By Newsy Staff

and Associated Press
September 17, 2022

More than 50 migrants were bused to the home of Vice President Kamala Harris, while New York officials expected at least six more buses to arrive.

Another wave of migrants arrived at the nation’s capital and New York City on Saturday as the White House continues to criticize Republican governors in Texas, Florida and Arizona for what it calls a “political stunt.”

More than 50 migrants were bused to the home of Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday while New York officials expected at least six more buses to arrive by the end of the day.

The White House hammered the Republican governors of Texas and Florida for arranging for the transport of migrants to Democratic strongholds in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The governors of Texas and Arizona have sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in recent months.

But the latest surprise moves – which included two flights to Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday paid for by Florida – reached a new level of political theater that critics derided as inhumane.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the flights to Martha’s Vineyard were part of an effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.”

President Joe Biden criticized the move, saying “Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke to reporters Friday as the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard were being moved to housing on a military base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“These are the kinds of tactics we see from smugglers in places like Mexico and Guatemala,” Jean-Pierre said. “And for what? A photo-op. Because these governors care about creating political theater, then creating actual solutions to help folks who are fleeing communism, to help children, to help families.”

Massachusetts is planning to activate as many as 125 National Guard members to assist.

In New York, Mayor Eric Adams says shelters are at their breaking point due to the influx of migrants.

In total, there have been nearly two million encounters along the southern border this year, which is already over 200,000 more than last year.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Visa To Start Categorizing Gun Shop Sales Separately

Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and will likely add pressure for Mastercard and American Express to adopt the code.

Payment processor Visa Inc. said late Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops.

It’s a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting. But gun rights advocates have argued that step would unfairly segregate legal gun sales when most sales do not lead to mass shootings.

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the payment processor said in a statement.

Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and will likely add pressure for Mastercard and American Express to adopt the code as well.

Gun control advocates had gotten significant wins on this front in recent weeks. New York City officials and pension funds had pressured the ISO and banks to adopt this code.

Two of the country’s largest public pension funds, in California and New York, are pressing the country’s largest credit card firms to establish sales codes specifically for firearm-related sales that could flag suspicious purchases or more easily trace how guns and ammo are sold.

Merchant Category Codes now exist for almost every kind of purchase, including those made at supermarkets, clothing stores, coffee shops and many other retailers.

“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for your groceries, your credit card company has a special code for those retailers. It’s just common sense that we have the same policies in place for gun and ammunition stores,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who blames the proliferation of guns for his city’s deadly violence.

The city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, said it made moral and financial sense as a tool to push back against gun violence.

“Unfortunately, the credit card companies have failed to support this simple, practical, potentially lifesaving tool. The time has come for them to do so,” Lander said recently, before Visa’s announcement.

Landers is a trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System — which together own 667,200 shares in American Express valued at approximately $92.49 million; 1.1 million shares in MasterCard valued at approximately $347.59 million; and 1.85 million shares in Visa valued at approximately $363.86 million.

In letters to the companies, the New York pensions funds, joined by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, sought support for such a move, saying the companies have a responsibility to prohibit the use of their networks for what public officials deemed illegal activity.

“Failing to do so can result in regulatory, reputational, and litigation risks that may harm long-term shareholder value,” the letters asserted.

Over the years, public pension funds have used their extensive investment portfolios to influence public policy and the market place.

The California teacher’s fund, the second largest pension fund in the country, has long taken aim on the gun industry. It has divested its holdings from gun manufacturers and has sought to persuade some retailers from selling guns.

Four years ago, the teacher’s fund made guns a key initiative. It called for background checks and called on retailers “monitor irregularities at the point of sale, to record all firearm sales, to audit firearms inventory on a regular basis, and to proactively assist law enforcement.”

The pension funds argue that creating a merchant category code for standalone firearm and ammunition stores could aid in the battle against gun violence.

In letters to the credit card companies, a pattern of purchases could flag suspicious activity.

Officials said that a week before the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died after a shooter opened fire in 2016, the assailant used credit cards to purchase more than $26,000 worth of guns and ammunition, including purchases at a stand-alone gun retailer.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Steve Bannon Charged With Money Laundering In Border Wall Scheme

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
September 8, 2022

Trump’s former White House strategist faces money laundering and conspiracy charges for duping donors in the “We Build The Wall” project.

Former President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon surrendered Thursday to face state money laundering and conspiracy charges in New York alleging he duped donors who gave money to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors say that while Bannon promised donors all the money they gave would go to building the wall, he was involved in funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to two other people involved in the scheme. The indictment didn’t identify those people by name, but the details match those of Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in April.

Bannon’s state-level charges in New York stem from the same alleged conduct as an attempted federal prosecution that ended abruptly, before trial, when Trump pardoned Bannon on his last day in office. Manhattan prosecutors also charged WeBuildTheWall, Inc., a nonprofit entity that Bannon and others allegedly used to solicit donations.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses. In Bannon’s case, any double jeopardy argument would likely fall flat because his federal case didn’t involve an acquittal or conviction.

Bannon, 68, arrived at the Manhattan district attorney’s office shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday.

“This is an irony,” Bannon told reporters as he entered the building.

“On the very day the mayor of this city has a delegation down on the border, they are persecuting people here, that try to stop them at the border,” he said, referring to a recent trip by New York City officials to Texas.

“This is all about 60 days from the day,” he said, referring to the upcoming national election in November.

In an earlier, written statement, Bannon accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of pursing “phony charges” against him ahead of the midterm election, saying the Democratic prosecutor targeted him because Bannon and his radio show are popular among Trump’s Republican supporters.

Bannon said federal prosecutors “did the exact same thing in August 2020 to try to take me out of the election,” referring to his arrest months before Trump’s reelection loss. “This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

In 2020, federal agents pulled Bannon from a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast and arrested him on charges he pocketed more than $1 million in wall donations. Prosecutors alleged thousands of investors were tricked into thinking all of their donations would go toward the border wall project, although Bannon instead paid a salary to one campaign official and personal expenses for himself.

The states of Texas and Arizona recently began busing asylum-seekers to New York and Washington D.C. in an attempt to ratchet up political pressure on President Joe Biden’s administration to stop people from crossing into their states from Mexico. New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently dispatched a fact-finding team to Texas, partly to find out whether migrants were getting on the buses voluntarily.

While the wall Bannon’s group proposed was to be built on the U.S. southern border, more than 1,000 miles from the Big Apple, Manhattan prosecutors have jurisdiction to pursue charges against Bannon because some donors to the effort lived in New York.

Federal prosecutors, in the trial of a former Bannon co-defendant, noted that some residents of the New York City area had donated to the wall-building project. One witness that testified was an official with the charities bureau of the New York attorney general’s office who said that a charity backing the wall project had filed paperwork to accept donations in the state. The attorney general’s office is also involved in Bannon’s state criminal case.

Bannon, who had pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, was dropped from the federal case when Trump pardoned him.

Kolfage and Badolato had been scheduled to be sentenced this week, but that was recently postponed to December. A third defendant’s trial ended in a mistrial in June after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict.

In another case not covered by Trump’s pardon, Bannon was convicted in July on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He is scheduled to be sentenced in October and faces up to two years in federal prison.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Venezuelan Migrants Faced Dangerous Journey To Flee Country

Hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants continue arriving in New York City in what has become a crisis in the big apple.

Michel, a Venezuelan migrant, says leaving Venezuela with his wife and five children was not an easy decision.

“When you make the decision to leave your country, it is not easy for us. It is not easy,” said Michel.

Francelys Guedez says she didn’t want to see her 12 year-old son continue living under a dictatorship in Venezuela.

“I don’t want the dictatorship that exists in my country to live,” said Guedez.

Michel Sagues is a Venezuelan migrant.

“I regretted it after being there,” said Sagues.

For Sagues, the dangers he and his family could encounter on their journey gave them pause about leaving Venezuela. But home was too far away to turn back, and the future of his 20-month-old son was in his hands.

All of these parents are bound by the same conviction: their love for their children.

And they are some of more than 6,300 migrants seeking asylum in New York City in recent weeks.

“They already asked me for some documents, I think for registration,” said Sagues.

Michel says he started the process of enroll his five children in school.

But for all of the migrants, language is a major obstacle.

NEWSY’S AXEL TURCIOS: How was the process when you tried to enroll your child in school?

MICHEL SAGUES: To be honest, it was a bit complicated because the school district doesn’t have many people on staff who speak Spanish. I think one of the staff got kind of annoyed because he couldn’t understand me, and I wasn’t able to understand him.

The New York City Department of Education announced Project Open Arms, a support plan for asylum-seeking families.

It’s a program that allocates more bilingual staff to help these migrants enroll their children in schools.

However, Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, says the Department of Education needs to do more.

“We need them to take this on more aggressively to ensure that the students are not just getting the basic educational supports in school, but that they’re also getting the services in school that are going to help them continue to succeed in the educational environment,” said Awawdeh.

The migrants are being bused to New York City from the Texas-Mexico border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott has acknowledged it’s a protest against what he calls President Joe Biden’s out-of-control border policies overwhelming Texas communities.

And it’s targeting Democratic city mayors like Eric Adams in New York City.

“Texas Gov. Abbott is using asylum seekers as political pawns in his efforts to build his own profile across the nation and also to get his poll numbers to increase in the state of Texas,” said Awadeh.

Most of the migrants are from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Cuba and crossed the Darién Gap, a lawless stretch of dangerous, mountainous rainforest standing across Colombia and Panama.

Jaison Manrrique crossed the region with his five-year-old daughter and wife.

“As a father I never thought to put my daughter through those conditions, sleeping on the bank of a river without knowing if in the early morning the water level was going to rise and drag us,” said Manrrique.

According to UNICEF, at least 5,000 children entered the jungle between January and June 2022.

“In the group that came behind us, there were many women, and they were all raped. Even 13-, 14-year-old girls who came in the group were raped. The men in the group were beaten,” said Guedez.

After crossing the Mexico border into Texas, the migrants say they were seeking asylum, which allows them to legally stay in the U.S. before seeing a judge.

Immigration Attorney Isadora Velazquez says these migrants go through a process called “credible fear interview.”

“They determined that this person could qualify for potential asylum. This may also apply to parents that come with their children and even if they have removal orders their children may qualify for a benefit. They don’t want the child to be at burden so the parent might be allowed in,” said Velazquez.

The immigration attorney says having an asylum claim doesn’t give them automatic benefits.

“When they do file property, they still have to wait 150 days to get a chance to apply for the work permit. Once they apply for a work permit the average wait is at least three months,” said Velazquez.

Without a work permit, they can not legally work in the country.

In the meantime, five-year-old Jaisbeli Manrrique knows what she wants.

She wishes to go to school and learn English.

: newsy.com

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Vaccinations Urged After Polio Virus Detected In New York

The discovery of the polio virus in New York comes just after British health authorities found evidence the virus was spreading in London.

The virus that causes polio has been discovered in New York’s wastewater.

Officials say it’s a sign the disease is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people.

The infection caused paralysis in one person a few weeks ago in Rockland County, north of New York City.

“It’s the rare case that causes paralysis, so that means there must be several hundred other cases in the community circulating before you see this one case,” said Dr. José Romero, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Though all New York children are required to have a polio vaccine, Rockland and Orange counties are known areas of vaccine resistance.

“It’s not just this community. It’s any other community that’s surrounding it that has low vaccination rates that’s also at risk, so the spread is always a possibility because the spread is going to be silent,” said Dr. Romero.

New York’s mayor told CNN this comes at an especially challenging time for public health in New York.

“We are dealing with a trifecta. COVID is still very much here. Polio, we have identified polio in our sewage. And we’re still dealing with the monkeypox crisis,” said Mayor Eric Adams.

Polio was once one of the country’s most feared diseases. It affected children mostly.

Annual outbreaks have caused cases of paralysis for thousands.

Vaccines became available in 1955 and a national campaign cut cases in the U.S. to less than 100 in the 1960s.

In the 1970s, the case count was less than ten.

Polio has been mostly wiped out in developed countries, but outbreaks remain in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of Africa.

“Finding polio in a country where we’ve found high levels of vaccination, haven’t seen polio cases for over 40 years is significant. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The very, very tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Romero.

The discovery of the polio virus in New York comes just after British health authorities found evidence the virus was spreading in London.

Children there, ages one through nine, were made eligible for booster shots of the vaccine this week.

: newsy.com

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Polio Detected In NYC’s Sewage, Suggesting Virus Circulating

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
August 12, 2022

“The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Vasan said.

The virus that causes polio has been found in New York City’s wastewater in another sign that the disease, which hadn’t been seen in the U.S. in a decade, is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people, health officials said Friday.

The presence of the poliovirus in the city’s wastewater suggests likely local circulation of the virus, health authorities from the city, New York state and the federal government said.

The authorities urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the potentially deadly disease.

“The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said. “With polio circulating in our communities there is simply nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus, and if you’re an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, please choose now to get the vaccine. Polio is entirely preventable and its reappearance should be a call to action for all of us.”

Dr. José R. Romero, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said, “This is sobering; we know polio spreads silently, and it’s likely that there are many people infected with polio and shedding the virus in these communities. This is also an urgent and living reminder of the importance of vaccination.”

New York City is being forced to confront polio as city health officials are struggling to vaccinate vulnerable populations against monkeypox and adjusting to changing COVID-19 guidelines.

“We are dealing with a trifecta,” Mayor Eric Adams said Friday on CNN. “COVID is still very much here. Polio, we have identified polio in our sewage, and we’re still dealing with the monkeypox crisis. But the team is there. And we’re coordinating and we’re addressing the threats as they come before us, and we’re prepared to deal with them with the assistance of Washington, D.C.”

The announcement about the discovery of the polio virus in New York City comes shortly after British health authorities reported finding evidence the virus has spread in London but found no cases in people. Children ages 1-9 in London were made eligible for booster doses of a polio vaccine Wednesday.

In New York, one person suffered paralysis weeks ago because of a polio infection in Rockland County, north of the city. Wastewater samples collected in June in both Rockland and adjacent Orange County were found to contain the virus.

CDC officials said the virus identified in wastewater samples collected in New York City did not contain enough genetic material to determine if they were linked to the Rockland County patient.

Most people infected with polio have no symptoms but can still give the virus to others for days or weeks. Vaccination offers strong protection, and authorities urged people who haven’t gotten the shots to seek one immediately.

Based on past outbreaks, it is possible that hundreds of people in the state have gotten polio and don’t know it, officials said.

Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease mostly affects children.

Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to less than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A small percentage of people who contract polio suffer paralysis. The disease is fatal for 5-10% of those paralyzed.

All schoolchildren in New York are required to have a polio vaccine, but Rockland and Orange counties are both known as centers of vaccine resistance.

According to the CDC’s most recent childhood vaccination data, about 93% of 2-year-olds had received at least three doses of polio vaccine. But the rate is only 80% in New York state, and is far lower in the area around where the polio case was reported — just 60% in Rockland County and 59% in Orange County, according to state data.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Chipotle To Pay NYC Workers $20M For Violating Labor Laws

By Associated Press
August 11, 2022

The settlement covers about 13,000 employees who worked at the chain’s New York City outlets between 2017 and this year.

Chipotle Mexican Grill will pay $20 million to current and former workers at its New York City restaurants for violating city labor laws, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

According to investigators, Chipotle’s violations of the city’s Fair Workweek law included failing to post work schedules 14 days in advance, pay a premium for schedule changes and offer available shifts to current employees before hiring new employees.

The settlement between the city and the California-based fast-food chain covers about 13,000 employees who worked at the chain’s New York City outlets between 2017 and this year. It is the result of an investigation by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection into complaints filed by 160 Chipotle workers and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, city officials said.

“Today’s settlement with Chipotle is not only a victory for workers by securing up to $20 million in relief for approximately 13,000 workers, but also sends a strong message, as the largest worker protection settlement in New York City history, that we won’t stand by when workers’ rights are violated,” Adams, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Under the agreement, any hourly New York City Chipotle worker is eligible to receive $50 for each week worked between Nov. 26, 2017, and April 30, 2022. Chipotle will also pay $1 million in civil penalties to the city.

“We’re pleased to be able to resolve these issues and believe this settlement demonstrates Chipotle’s commitment to providing opportunities for all of our team members while also complying with the Fair Workweek law” Scott Boatwright, Chipotle’s chief restaurant officer, said in a statement.

Boatwright said the company has taken steps to improve compliance through measures such as improved time-keeping technology and looks forward to “continuing to promote the goals of predictable scheduling and access to work hours for those who want them.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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A Cyberattack Illuminates the Shaky State of Student Privacy

The software that many school districts use to track students’ progress can record extremely confidential information on children: “Intellectual disability.” “Emotional Disturbance.” “Homeless.” “Disruptive.” “Defiance.” “Perpetrator.” “Excessive Talking.” “Should attend tutoring.”

Now these systems are coming under heightened scrutiny after a recent cyberattack on Illuminate Education, a leading provider of student-tracking software, which affected the personal information of more than a million current and former students across dozens of districts — including in New York City and Los Angeles, the nation’s largest public school systems.

Officials said in some districts the data included the names, dates of birth, races or ethnicities and test scores of students. At least one district said the data included more intimate information like student tardiness rates, migrant status, behavior incidents and descriptions of disabilities.

Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district.

Now some cybersecurity and privacy experts say that the cyberattack on Illuminate Education amounts to a warning for industry and government regulators. Although it was not the largest hack on an ed tech company, these experts say they are troubled by the nature and scope of the data breach — which, in some cases, involved delicate personal details about students or student data dating back more than a decade. At a moment when some education technology companies have amassed sensitive information on millions of school children, they say, safeguards for student data seem wholly inadequate.

“There has really been an epic failure,” said Hector Balderas, the attorney general of New Mexico, whose office has sued tech companies for violating the privacy of children and students.

In a recent interview, Mr. Balderas said that Congress had failed to enact modern, meaningful data protections for students while regulators had failed to hold ed tech firms accountable for flouting student data privacy and security.

outpacing protections for students’ personal information. Lawmakers rushed to respond.

Since 2014, California, Colorado and dozens of other states have passed student data privacy and security laws. In 2014, dozens of K-12 ed tech providers signed on to a national Student Privacy Pledge, promising to maintain a “comprehensive security program.”

Supporters of the pledge said the Federal Trade Commission, which polices deceptive privacy practices, would be able to hold companies to their commitments. President Obama endorsed the pledge, praising participating companies in a major privacy speech at the F.T.C. in 2015.

The F.T.C. has a long history of fining companies for violating children’s privacy on consumer services like YouTube and TikTok. Despite numerous reports of ed tech companies with problematic privacy and security practices, however, the agency has yet to enforce the industry’s student privacy pledge.

In May, the F.T.C. announced that regulators intended to crack down on ed tech companies that violate a federal law — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — which requires online services aimed at children under 13 to safeguard their personal data. The agency is pursuing a number of nonpublic investigations into ed tech companies, said Juliana Gruenwald Henderson, an F.T.C. spokeswoman.

company’s site says its services reach more than 17 million students in 5,200 school districts. Popular products include an attendance-taking system and an online grade book as well as a school platform, called eduCLIMBER, that enables educators to record students’ “social-emotional behavior” and color-code children as green (“on track”) or red (“not on track”).

Illuminate has promoted its cybersecurity. In 2016, the company announced that it had signed on to the industry pledge to show its “support for safeguarding” student data.

Concerns about a cyberattack emerged in January after some teachers in New York City schools discovered that their online attendance and grade book systems had stopped working. Illuminate said it temporarily took those systems offline after it became aware of “suspicious activity” on part of its network.

On March 25, Illuminate notified the district that certain company databases had been subject to unauthorized access, said Nathaniel Styer, the press secretary for New York City Public Schools. The incident, he said, affected about 800,000 current and former students across roughly 700 local schools.

For the affected New York City students, data included first and last names, school name and student ID number as well as at least two of the following: birth date, gender, race or ethnicity, home language and class information like teacher name. In some cases, students’ disability status — that is, whether or not they received special education services — was also affected.