Latest news with #NotInvisibleActCommission
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Six years after her son's homicide, a Navajo mother still searches for answers
Since the FBI closed its investigation into her son Kyle's homicide over three years ago, Colleen Harrison Jackson has advocated for the case to be reopened. Here, she holds her son's college diploma while surrounded by photos and memories of her child. (Ungelbah Dávila for New Mexico In Depth) This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T). The person he discovered was Kyle Jackson, a 31-year-old citizen of the Navajo Nation. Kyle had fought with another man at a nearby house hours before his body was found, according to witness interviews by law enforcement. Severely injured, Kyle was kicked out of the house. It's unclear how long he lay in the road before dying, but at least one other person passed by without stopping to help him, about six hours before the call to police. In the following weeks, his mother, Colleen Harrison Jackson, visited the spot where his body was found and spoke with the 911 caller, along with some of his friends who had been with him in the days leading up to his death. This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth Then she got the letter. The FBI had closed its investigation, the specialist wrote to Colleen in March 2022. The letter provided a nine-word explanation: The United States Attorney's Office had declined to prosecute. Standing in front of the post office, Colleen cried as she read those words. 'No one called me and said, 'We're going to close this case, this is why.' No one called me,' she said. 'I just get this letter, and I was very upset because I didn't know what happened. I really just broke down.' To this day, no one has been tried for killing Kyle. Colleen isn't alone. She's one of thousands who have lost loved ones to a national crisis of Indigenous people disproportionately dying of homicide or going missing. Infrequent updates from law enforcement, many affected families say, have intensified the pain they're already feeling. That was one of the key findings of the federal Not Invisible Act Commission, which, in a 2023 report, made numerous recommendations aimed at police and prosecutors improving the way they communicate with families. In an interview with New Mexico In Depth last year, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico Alexander Uballez and two prosecutors in the office's Indian Country Crimes section acknowledged the harm done to families when the federal government delivers difficult news about their loved ones' cases through the mail. During his tenure, which began in May 2022, the office established a policy of updating families in person when possible, according to Uballez. A Not Invisible Act Commission member says that's a step in the right direction. But Uballez, who announced his run for Albuquerque mayor in April, has since resigned at the request of President Donald Trump. The new U.S. attorney for the district, Ryan Ellison, didn't answer a question about whether the policy Uballez described will remain, but said in an email that prosecutors working closely with families is important. Growing up in northwestern New Mexico, Kyle spent time playing along the San Juan River, fishing at a nearby dam with his grandpa, and helping take care of his siblings and cousins. He was an avid reader and enjoyed working on science projects for school fairs. His childhood love of the outdoors continued into adulthood, and he often went on hikes and camping trips. In 2016, he graduated from San Juan College with an associate of applied science degree in the college's industrial maintenance mechanic program. Kyle 'never let things get him down,' Colleen said, and looked out for others. As a teenager, he urged his mom to let friends who had unstable home lives stay with their family, she said. A former girlfriend, Christa Perez, first met Kyle when they were in high school. They reconnected over a decade later and started dating. Perez is a single mom with three kids and was struggling at the time, she said. 'If it wasn't for Kyle, I think I'd still be drinking. I'd still be lost,' Perez said. 'He was there for me no matter what.' He taught her kids how to play a card game, and to this day, Perez said, they ask, 'Are we going to play Kyle's cards or regular cards?' They broke up about a year before his death but kept in touch, up until the week he died. Colleen shared with New Mexico In Depth a Shiprock police incident report, the letter she received from the FBI in 2022, and a report of findings from the University of New Mexico's Office of the Medical Investigator, which found Kyle had died of blunt head trauma. The news organization obtained the recording of the 911 call and dispatch log from San Juan County, along with records maintained by the FBI, primarily summaries of witness interviews from which names have been redacted. On the night of Friday, June 21, at about 9 p.m., Kyle and two other people went to a nearby store to pick up alcohol. Later that night, he ended up at a house in Nenahnezad, where, according to the witness interviews, he and another man fought. Kyle 'may have been struck with a hammer,' according to the report of findings. He then 'moved about the home, bleeding on various surfaces, before being kicked out' early Saturday morning with facial and skull fractures. At about noon on Saturday, a man driving to visit a friend in the area saw Kyle lying in the road, he later told a Navajo criminal investigator. The man believed Kyle, who appeared to have been 'beaten badly,' was dead. He continued up the road and saw busted windows on the house he intended to visit. Not wanting to get involved, he turned around. When he drove past Kyle again to leave the area, he was 'moving around a little bit.' The man 'was afraid the guy might get up and turn on him,' so he drove off just as it began to rain. Trying to make sense of why the man didn't help Kyle, Colleen said she thinks people in her community are hesitant to call law enforcement because they're skeptical arrests will come out of it, and there are fears about retaliation. The 911 call didn't come in until about 6:30 p.m. that day. The caller told the operator he had just arrived home from Farmington when he found Kyle's body in the road out front. 'Does he look to be beyond any help?' the operator asked. 'Nope, nope, not even breathing, nothing,' the caller said. 'He looks—he got hit or something. There's a hole in the side of his temple.' Emergency medical services and then officers with the Navajo Nation's Shiprock Police District arrived over the next 40 minutes. Several other people later arrived at the scene, a police officer wrote in his report, including Kyle's grandmother, who asked to see his body. At about the same time, Colleen was a few miles away, hosting a birthday party for her daughter. She learned about her son's death later that night from his grandmother. 'I knew something was wrong already. I could feel it,' Colleen said. 'And when she told me, I don't even know what happened after that. I couldn't even breathe.' Early on in the investigation, the family was told there was a suspect, and the suspect's arrest might be on the news in another week, Colleen said. Weeks turned into months, though, and that never happened. But when Colleen would call for updates, an FBI victim specialist would sometimes get back to her and say investigators were still working on the case. So the letter — dated March 17, 2022, nearly three years after Kyle's death — came as a shock. The FBI had closed its investigation because the U.S. Attorney's Office had declined to prosecute, the victim specialist wrote. The decision didn't 'lessen the important contribution' Colleen made to the investigation, the letter reads, and her 'assistance and cooperation were greatly appreciated.' Colleen called the Navajo criminal investigator and asked him to explain. The investigator arranged a meeting with the FBI agent. During that sit-down, which Colleen remembers happening about four months after she received the letter, they told her there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute. They said the case could be reopened if another witness came forward, Colleen said. That was almost three years ago. There have been no updates since. In a late February interview, Uballez, the former U.S. attorney, wouldn't talk about Kyle's case, saying the office typically doesn't comment on investigations, whether they're open or closed. But he spoke more generally about how a federal prosecutor decides whether to file charges. (Uballez was sworn into office in May 2022, two months after Colleen received the letter from the FBI.) FBI agents assigned to a case, Uballez said, can 'procedurally, look at it themselves' and decide to not refer it for prosecution. Or 'they could look at it and say, either, 'We're sort of on the fence and we want you guys to make the call,' or, 'We think there's a charge there,'' Uballez said. Federal prosecutors then evaluate whether there were any constitutional rights violations and whether they think a case could be proven to a jury, he said. 'It's a different calculus,' Uballez said. 'Even though we may agree we know who did this, what happened, it doesn't mean that we should charge.' In 2023, the federal Not Invisible Act Commission heard testimony from at least 260 people who have lost loved ones to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people or survived human trafficking. The commission visited seven cities, including Albuquerque. One of the major themes from the hearings, the commission wrote in a report published in October that year, was that 'authorities at all levels must improve communications with family members, who are too often left in the dark for days, weeks, or months about the investigation.' 'Tragically, a case may be declared 'cold' without a family receiving any information about the investigation,' the report reads. Asked what has stuck with her most from the hearings, Amber Kanazbah Crotty, a commission member and Navajo Nation Council delegate, said families' disappointment with law enforcement either communicating with them infrequently or in ways that don't feel compassionate. 'They're dealing with their missing relative, or there may have been violence, a homicide or a criminal element to their case, but with the lack of communication from law enforcement, it just adds on another layer of, they don't feel that their relatives mattered,' Crotty said in an April interview. Instead of mailing a family a piece of paper informing them their relative's case has been closed, she said, the commission recommended 'a warm hand off.' 'It's not the U.S. attorney themselves, but at least a victim advocate to be there to answer any questions they have, and they're then referring them or connecting them to community resources like behavioral health, mental health support groups, so they're not feeling like this is only happening to them and nobody cares about their relatives,' Crotty said. The Justice Department since 2010 has required every U.S. Attorney's Office with tribal lands in its district to develop an operational plan for addressing public safety in Indian country. 'A trauma-informed approach both considers the emotional impact on victims and their families and is culturally sensitive,' reads the New Mexico office's plan, last updated in 2024. 'The relationship between Tribal communities and the federal government is a fraught one. [Assistant U.S. attorneys] and law enforcement need to acknowledge this history and work hard to gain the trust of Tribal members who may have reasons to distrust the federal government and law enforcement based on past experiences and long histories.' While the office can't share all the details of an investigation or why it made a particular decision, staff have been working to do a better job of communicating with affected families, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eliot Neal said during an interview last year. Neal was hired in 2023 as part of the Justice Department's Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Regional Outreach Program. One 'challenge' the office identified in recent years, Neal said, was families not hearing from law enforcement for long periods of time and then receiving letters — like the one Colleen got — 'out of the blue.' In response, the office instituted a policy of giving families case updates in person when possible, Indian Country Crimes Section Supervisor Elisa Dimas said during last year's interview. 'We've made it a real priority to understand the emotional impact that these cases have on families, to make sure that we go out and deliver this news in person, if we can, along with the victim advocate,' Dimas said. 'Because even though we might not be pursuing a criminal case at our office, we know that there are still resources and support that we can provide, either through the victim advocates or community resources, to these families.' That practice 'came naturally to a lot of us' based on prior experience working with crime victims and their families, Uballez said in the February interview. 'What we did was expand the responsibility to include this more victim-centric, community-centric—you know, to build in time for people to build those relationships. And of course, if resources get drawn down there, either in personnel, or priorities elsewhere get expanded, that could change,' Uballez said, referring to Trump administration directives. Asked if the in-person-when-possible policy will remain, Ellison, who was sworn in as New Mexico's U.S. attorney on April 18, said in an email sent by spokesperson Tessa DuBerry that he understands 'the importance of working with families of violent crimes to ensure there is justice for what they have suffered.' 'I encourage the prosecutors working with victims of violent crimes, including those in Indian Country, to work closely with these families as their cases proceed through federal court,' Ellison wrote. In the spring before his death, Kyle gave his mother a packet of flower seeds. Colleen enjoyed gardening, but she hadn't done it in a long time, and the packet ended up in a drawer somewhere. A few years ago, she was cleaning up around her house when she came across it. 'I just broke down. I remembered him giving that to me, and I said, 'I'm going to make a garden.' So I put flowers all over my front yard, and I'm starting on the back. Trees, flowers, and it's growing,' she said. 'It's all for Kyle.' Colleen has worked doggedly to find answers and get Kyle's case reopened since receiving the letter in 2022. She's attended events, sometimes as far away as three hours south in Albuquerque, to ask for help from federal and tribal officials. She's created posters with photos of her son and information about his death to take to rallies and gotten to know other Indigenous families with relatives who have been killed or gone missing. And she has repeatedly followed up with the investigators and filed records requests to try to learn more about their efforts. She has her own theories about what happened to Kyle, but she worries she'll never know definitively who killed her son or why they did it, let alone that they'll face criminal charges. 'It's a nightmare, and my family is not the same,' Colleen said. 'And I don't know how—you never come back from this. You don't come back from it. You can adjust to it, but my life is different now, it's just so different.'
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MMIW report a casualty of federal purge of government data
Nancy Marie SpearsThe Imprint An oversight group launched five years ago outlined myriad ways Congress could better protect Indigenous people from going missing, getting killed or falling prey to human traffickers, with particular focus on tackling gender-based violence. Among the recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission were specific protections for foster youth, who end up lost at higher rates than their peers. The commission titled its report Not One More and detailed calls to action for multiple federal agencies — including the Departments of Justice and the Interior, Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families. This year, legislators and policymakers were supposed to establish ways to better track the missing, and step up efforts to find them. But on Feb. 18, the 212-page, comprehensive set of findings and recommendations that 41 commissioners worked on for three years suddenly vanished from the U.S. Department of Justice website. 'I don't know who's going to carry the recommendations out,' said Kristin Welch, a Menominee Nation descendant and Not Invisible Act commissioner. Welch, founder and executive director of the Wisconsin-based Waking Women Healing Institute, reflected the doubts among many that life-saving measures may now be suspended. 'The report being removed doesn't inspire hope under this administration that the work is going to continue and be meaningful,' she said. The Not Invisible Act Commission report is one of countless previously public documents that have suddenly been taken down from federal websites since the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump. In his first month in office alone, thousands of government web pages were removed, a New York Times analysis found — including vital information related to many aspects of American life, from health and safety to veterans affairs, taxes and scientific findings. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment about why the Not Invisible report had been taken down, or whether the agency would move forward with the recommendations relevant to the department. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Indigenous youth are more likely than non-Native American kids to go missing from foster care. In a report examining a recent decade of data, the center documented nearly 3,000 such cases, 99% of which were ultimately resolved. But while the kids were off the radar, they were identified as 'endangered' — more likely to be engaging in risky behavior, struggling with mental illness and turning to drugs and alcohol. Trump signed the Not Invisible Act in October 2020, during his first term. In 2024, under President Joe Biden, top officials praised the intent of the act they said would 'resolve this longstanding crisis and support healing from the generational traumas that Indigenous peoples have endured in the United States.' Then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland underscored the issue. 'Addressing violent crimes against Indigenous peoples has long been underfunded and ignored, as a cause of intergenerational trauma that has affected our communities since colonization,' Haaland said in a press statement. 'Through historic efforts like the Not Invisible Act Commission, we're identifying recommendations created by Indian Country, for Indian Country. This will ensure that epidemics like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis and Human Trafficking are addressed with the resources they demand.' In its report, the commission called for the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study of American Indian and Alaska Native children missing from foster care and determine whether law enforcement is doing everything possible to find them. The department also 'must mandate that any foster care agencies receiving federal funding report immediately any missing Tribal juvenile to their corresponding Tribe,' it reported. It also recommended that the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of Health and Human Services, 'develop and disseminate culturally appropriate, trauma-informed prevention programming' to keep runaways from becoming victims of trafficking, violence or the criminal justice system. Further, it stated Congress 'must appropriate funding to the ACF, which must integrate training on human trafficking, survival sex work, and intergenerational trauma.' 'Human traffickers prey on the vulnerable, often people who are young, homeless or in foster care,' the commissioners wrote. 'There must be outreach and help to interrupt this pattern.' The Biden administration's plan brought together tribes, federal agencies, law enforcement, social service providers, survivors and the relatives of Native people who've been trafficked, gone missing or were murdered — and plotted better coordination and support. Now, some tribal members who contributed to the report say the Trump administration is working to devalue Indigenous people and making already-difficult work even harder. Others said tribes would continue the search for missing loved ones no matter what — ensuring the feedback the commission received from won't be forgotten. 'I think about all those survivors and family members, and everything they had to go through to testify at these hearings in hopes those recommendations will be launched into action,' Welch said. 'It's a really big slap in the face to our relatives. We've seen it so many times by the federal government: this constant erasure, with no respect for our relatives, their pain and their trauma.' Another commissioner is Ruth Buffalo, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, composed of three affiliated tribes. She serves as the CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, which focuses on the search for missing and murdered Native Americans in her state, and preventing tribal children from entering the foster care system. Buffalo said she and others across Indian Country remain steadfast in their commitment to ensuring the Not Invisible recommendations are met. 'The community continues to lead these efforts, and the work doesn't stop because there's a different president in office,' Buffalo said. 'That just means we continue to push even harder to hold the elected officials accountable.' These concerns about missing and murdered Indigenous people are compounded by a new political landscape marked by mass firings of federal employees and efforts to deeply cut spending on social services. Many of the commission's recommendations would require additional federal funding. Tribal organizations including the National Congress of American Indians supported the recommendations produced by the Not Invisible commission. Last year, the Departments of Justice and the Interior, as well as the Health and Human Services department, released their response to the recommendations. The agencies committed to policy updates for additional law enforcement and investigative resources; improved funding for tribal, state and federal law enforcement; enhanced data collection; and better services to help victims and their families heal, among other goals. Some recommendations tackled inadequate internet access, particularly in Alaska, so tribes and villages can act quickly to search for a missing person. Others focus on relatives met with indifference by law enforcement who showed little interest and failed to follow up on their cases. 'I went … to the DA's office … to demand that I see some progress in my son's case. They couldn't even find my son's case,' a Northern California parent stated in the report. 'It was heartbreaking. The fact that they didn't know his name says that I'm not good enough.'
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘A slap in the face': activists reel as Trump administration removes crucial missing Indigenous peoples report
Since January, Donald Trump's presidency has been marked by a series of radical changes. Of note is the way troves of previously publicly available information on government websites such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or National Institutes of Health (NIH) have quietly gone dark. One such page is the the Not Invisible Act Commission's final report from November 2023. The Not Invisible Act Commission was mandated by bipartisan legislation and signed into law by Trump himself. The report was a collaboration between the justice department and the interior department to address, document and respond to the missing and murdered Indigenous peoples (MMIP) crisis, in which Indigenous communities experience disproportionate rates of abduction, assault and murder. Accurate statistics about the MMIP and missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) crises can be limited and dated, but, as of 2019, homicide was the third most common cause of death for Indigenous girls aged 15 to 19 and Indigenous women aged 20 to 24. The Not Invisible Act Commission's final report was a culmination of seven in-person field hearings held across the country and a one-day virtual national hearing. Nearly 600 people attended the hearings and 260 people, including survivors, victims, family members, advocates and law enforcement gave testimony to the commission. As a result of those hearings, the commission issued its final report of recommendations to address the crisis. Having a resource like the Not Invisible Act Commission's final report provided Indigenous people and governments, as well as federal, state and local branches of the US government, with data and suggestions on how to reduce the crises. The act itself was historic, not only because it shed light on an issue that Indian Country has faced for decades, but also because it was the first bill that was introduced and passed by four Indigenous US congressional members. Despite the report no longer being available online, advocates say the fight to bring light to and end the MMIP and MMIW crises continues. Charolette Gonzales, the policy and advocacy director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women (CSVANW) said that she and other staffers were shocked when the Not Invisible Act Commission's report was removed from the federal website. 'They were like, 'What does this mean for the future of other information that supports our work?'' said Gonzales, who is Diné and San Ildefonso Pueblo. '[We] make sure that our communities are informed. What does that mean for them?' The coalition focuses on preventative work, or trying to stop violence against Indigenous women before it happens. 'When doing this education, we are better able to equip them with the ability to advocate for themselves, and that work is really important as we move forward, especially with these unprecedented times of this current presidential administration,' she said. Karrisa Newkirk, of the Oklahoma-based MMIW Chahta, an organization that supports affected families through financial assistance, provides training opportunities for law enforcement agencies, and works with victims to help them heal after experiencing violence, said that the work doesn't stop just because of a decision made in Washington. 'When it comes to our work and what we do, I don't feel like we've missed a step,' she said. 'We're going to continue to serve our families exactly how we should and always have. When it comes to other MMIWs across the United States, I truly feel like it kind of puts us back in time a little bit, where people aren't going to see what a real crisis it is.' Newkirk said that after the commission collected the data, it should have been used to make tangible changes. Still, having a national database that tracked MMIW cases was vital. 'Even though there were great strides in the last couple years, them removing that was like a slap in the face. It was a huge step back.' she said. 'It felt like we were being heard and recognized, and then all of a sudden it felt like that was no longer what it was anymore … When you think about that as someone that's in the work and you know how many people already don't know about it, and then it's removed from the United States website, it's definitely disheartening.' The CSVANW has begun discussing creating a database of its own, one built with information that the organization has collected over the years, including documents and reports that the Department of Justice previously issued. This method of ensuring that vital documents and resources are stored somewhere other than on government agency's websites is something that some advocates have been pushing for since the website purges began. The National Indigenous Women's Resource Center, Inc (NIWRC), a non-profit organization that works to end violence against Native women, children and communities, for example, has a version of the Not Invisible Act's report that is still accessible. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 'We're taking it upon ourselves to collect as much information as we can as it slowly becomes unavailable to us on purpose,' Gonzales said. 'I think the censorship is a really hard hit to our communities, especially to our work. We already have limited resources as not only just a Native organization and survivor-led organization, but also as tribal people who live in these pueblos and work with our people.' MMIW Chahta also tracks its own numbers, and is trying to overcome racial misclassification by law enforcement. Tribal communities are also concerned about whether or not treaties, agreements made between sovereign nations, will be upheld by the US government, Gonzales said. The US has had a long history of violating treaties even before Trump's election. Since he was sworn in, Trump and Elon Musk have called on the General Services Administration to terminate the leases of roughly 7,500 federal offices, including 25 regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On Friday, Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order, which aimed to strengthen tribal sovereignty for the 574 federally recognized tribes in the nation. Following the removal of the Not Invisible Act Commission's final report page, federal agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid, including, 'indigenous community', 'tribal', and 'Native American'. Defense department websites removed pages about Indigenous code talkers, whose usage of Choctaw and Navajo languages to communicate messages were vital for winning the first and second world wars. Of the extreme changes being made by the administration and their implications for Indigenous people, Gonzales said: 'A lot of community members, along with our staff, are emotionally exhausted everyday we hear about new executive orders coming out. 'Our survivors and our resources truly help decrease the violence that happens in our communities … And so, once we heard this, I think our mind instantly went to the fact that Native women will die if we don't have federal funding. That's just a fact.'
