Latest news with #Padron
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Children among seven dead as migrant boat capsizes
Credit: Reuters Two five-year-old girls were among seven people killed when a migrant boat capsized as it reached a port in Spain's Canary Islands. The victims drowned after migrants waiting to disembark the overcrowded boat accidentally capsized it by crowding on one side in what was the latest tragedy on the perilous route, emergency services said. Juan Miguel Padron, the mayor of El Pinar municipality, told local television that around 150 people were on the boat. It was being escorted by a rescue ship to La Restinga harbour on El Hierro, the archipelago's smallest island, when tragedy struck. As it neared the port, the vessel tipped over and some of the migrants 'were trapped in the boat and others died while being saved', Mr Padron added. Four women, two girls aged five and another girl aged 16, were killed. A three-year-old boy and a third five-year-old girl almost drowned before being transported by helicopter to a hospital in Tenerife, the emergency services wrote on X. Two three-month-old babies, a pregnant woman and three minors were in hospital on El Hierro, they said. RTVE, the Spanish public broadcaster, aired footage of rescuers throwing lifebuoys to people clinging onto an overturned boat and treading water off El Hierro. Spain's maritime rescue service told AFP in a statement that a rescue ship had found the boat that morning and accompanied it to La Restinga. 'During the disembarkation, some of the people travelling on the boat crowded on one of the sides, which caused it to tilt and capsize,' the service said. 'The transfer of people is the most delicate moment of the operation and, with the vessels being overloaded and with precarious security conditions, the difficulty increases notably.' Alpidio Armas, the head of El Hierro's local government, questioned how the migrants could be saved on the high seas but die in the apparent safety of a port. 'We are doing something wrong,' he told reporters. Each year, Spain takes in tens of thousands of Europe-bound migrants who arrive in the Canary Islands from West Africa, with Malians, Senegalese and Moroccans the most common nationalities. Strong ocean currents and ramshackle vessels make the long crossing dangerous. According to Caminando Fronteras, an NGO, at least 10,457 migrants died or disappeared while trying to reach Spain by sea between Jan 1 and Dec 5 last year. Anselmo Pestana, the central government's representative in the archipelago, explained that the migrants' fatigue complicated the emergency response in the water. 'If the rescue was not immediate, they probably sank very quickly,' he told journalists. Local authorities have consistently warned of unsustainable pressure on their resources and complained about a lack of solidarity. 'We ask for decisive action from the European Union,' Fernando Clavijo Batlle, the Canary Islands' regional leader, told reporters in La Restinga. 'This is unfortunately what we experience... those who are very far away in offices are incapable of understanding it.' Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, wrote on X that the deaths 'should move us all'. 'Lives lost in a desperate attempt to find a better future. We must rise to the occasion. It's a question of humanity,' he said. Almost 47,000 irregular arrivals reached the archipelago last year, breaking the annual record for the second year running, as tighter controls in the Mediterranean pushed migrants to attempt the Atlantic route. But numbers are down so far this year, dropping 34.4 per cent between Jan 1 and May 15 compared with the same period in 2024, according to the latest interior ministry figures. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
New York Times
25-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Forgotten in Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants
Fernando Padron was stuck in a South Texas jail cell. Accused of stealing credit cards that he used to buy diapers, a bike and other goods for his family, he had not been brought into court or spoken to a lawyer. He did not hear anything about his case for nine months. Finally, in March 2023, prosecutors charged him with a misdemeanor, and he was released. But his ordeal had just begun. Over the next two years, he would be arrested repeatedly in connection with the theft. He was pressured into a seemingly improper plea deal in one court, only to be charged again in another. At one point, he was in jail for six months before officials involved in his case realized he was there. Mr. Padron, 27, is a U.S. citizen with no prior convictions, and his offense was minor enough that elsewhere in Texas, he might not have been jailed at all. But he was in the dysfunctional Maverick County court system, where basic tenets of American justice often do not apply. Officials here openly acknowledge that poor defendants accused of minor crimes are rarely provided lawyers. And people regularly spend months behind bars without charges filed against them, much longer than state law allows. Last year alone, at least a dozen people were held too long uncharged after arrests for minor nonviolent crimes, interviews and records reviewed by The New York Times show. Some defendants seem to have been forgotten in jail. Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed. 'The county is not at the level that it should have been for years,' conceded Maverick County Judge Ramsey English Cantú, who oversees misdemeanor court. He said he had been trying to 'revamp' and 'rebuild' the local justice system since he was elected in 2022. 'It's been a challenge for me,' he added. 'But at the end of the day it is unjust.' Under the U.S. Constitution, people facing jail time are entitled to a lawyer — paid for by the government if they cannot afford their own — and a fair and efficient court process. But these protections are tenuous, especially in rural parts of America, studies have shown. In Texas, one of the states that spend the least on indigent defense, The Times found recent examples of people held beyond deadlines without charges or lawyers in six rural counties. Maverick County stood out. It is in one of the state's poorest regions, and many defendants cannot afford a lawyer; some spend months in jail because they cannot pay a bail bondsman $500 or less. Yet over the past two decades, state auditors have repeatedly noted the county was failing to adequately provide indigent counsel. In 2023, when more than 240 misdemeanor defendants requested representation, the county judge appointed lawyers in only a handful of cases, records show. Nonetheless, the state has imposed no consequences. With no one to guide them, defendants enter a disjointed justice system where it can be perplexingly difficult to figure out why someone is in jail, if there even is a reason. Misdemeanor court files are almost always missing key documents. Felony court files are often not available until more than a year after a defendant's arrest. The jail sometimes reported having no record of people despite recently holding them for months. Defense lawyers and constitutional law scholars, responding to The Times's reporting, called the county's practices 'atrocious,' 'Kafkaesque' and 'not a criminal system at all.' 'The lack of transparency and the lack of public defenders in this jurisdiction has allowed this completely inept system to persist,' said Rachel Kincaid, an associate law professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and former federal prosecutor. 'There's no pressure on them to do anything differently.' In jailhouse interviews, some defendants said they had no idea what was happening in their cases. 'They haven't told me anything,' Juan Sanchez, 21, said in Spanish in May, shivering on a jail stool without a shirt or pants in a knee-length suicide prevention vest. He had pleaded guilty in November 2023 to trespassing at the local mall in exchange for his release, but was not let out until June, shortly after The Times asked officials why he was still there. 'They really don't give you information here,' said David Burckhardt, 36, who had been jailed for five months without charges after being arrested in August 2023 on accusations of vandalizing his neighbor's car. 'You just got to do your time.' But it is what happened to Mr. Padron that best illustrates the repercussions of the county's lapses. Told details of his case, four veteran Texas defense lawyers said that in other counties they most likely could have secured a sentence of 30 days or fewer, with some chance he would get no jail time. Mr. Padron has now spent 20 months in jail, missing his son's first two birthdays. His case is still not resolved. 'I got out and I was doing things right,' he said at the jail after his third arrest stemming from the theft. 'And then, all of a sudden, you have an arrest warrant. And I left my girlfriend and son by themselves.' The Free State of Maverick About half of Maverick County's residents live in the city of Eagle Pass, which is on the Mexican border, about 150 miles southwest of San Antonio. Most residents' first language is Spanish, and people who live in the neighboring Mexican city, Piedras Negras, cross often to work, shop or visit relatives. The county has a history of scandals, including a federal investigation into bribery and contract-rigging a decade ago that sent four of five commissioners to prison. A veteran police officer said locals jokingly call it 'the Free State of Maverick' because officials tend to do what they want and deal with the ramifications later. The region is also at the forefront of America's crackdown on immigration. Since 2021, Texas police officers have arrested thousands of migrants in Maverick County for trespassing, in an effort to deter crossings and boost deportations. After legal challenges, the state created a special criminal system to expedite the process by quickly charging migrants and assigning them lawyers. The justice system for local residents shows far less urgency. It took on about 350 cases last year, a vast majority of them misdemeanors or felony drug possession. The police and the Sheriff's Department often take weeks or months to report an arrest to prosecutors. The prosecutors then take months to decide whether to go to court, for charges as simple as resisting arrest or trespassing. During this time, prosecutors are not told, and typically do not check, whether a defendant is in jail. Neither law enforcement agency answered questions about the delays. Jaime Iracheta, the county attorney, said misdemeanors in Maverick County go through layers of vetting. Some other jurisdictions file such charges within days, if not hours. Although those leading the justice system are all Democrats — a relic of the party's historical strength with Hispanic voters — they are divided into rival factions. Mr. Iracheta, whose office prosecutes misdemeanors, endorsed Judge English Cantú in his 2022 run for county judge. Sheriff Tom Schmerber, who has overseen the jail since 2013, is an ally of the judge's predecessor, David Saucedo. When Judge English Cantú ran against Mr. Saucedo, his second cousin, he called Mr. Saucedo a 'bully' who gave his 'cronies' big salaries 'not to do anything.' Mr. Saucedo called his opponent 'self-serving' and accused him of helping spread an 'almost comical' rumor that he was a murderer. In interviews, officials did not dispute that the county had not released some people on time, but blamed one another for the failures. 'The unfortunate inability of communication between the Sheriff's Department and the prosecutor's office, I think, is what has delayed this situation,' Judge English Cantú said. He added that misdemeanor court, where he presides about once a month, was held less often under Mr. Saucedo. Mr. Saucedo said his own predecessors held misdemeanor court even less frequently. Mr. Iracheta said the Sheriff's Department was the problem. 'We have extreme issues over there, but I can't control who the people elect,' he said. The sheriff did not respond to interview requests, but the jail's case manager, Daniella Ramos, criticized the magistrates who set bail. She said she sends them weekly jail rosters so they can order defendants to be released, but they go 'into the abyss.' Kina Mancha, the county's longest-tenured magistrate, countered that the jail had sometimes failed to follow orders to let people go. 'They're not doing their job,' she said. Without public defenders, the county relies on local lawyers to represent poor defendants, paying a few hundred dollars per case. But in felony court, the few willing lawyers are often not appointed until defendants appear before a judge — typically months or years after their arrest. In misdemeanor court, lawyers are rarely appointed at any time. Often, the only lawyer in the room is the prosecutor. Judge English Cantú's primary job is serving as the county's chief executive, akin to a mayor. Like most Texas county judges, he does not have a law degree. The First Arrest Born in San Antonio, Mr. Padron has spent most of his life in Piedras Negras. He dropped out of school around age 12, when his mother was killed, and in recent years has regularly crossed the international bridge to look for day labor in Eagle Pass. On the night of his arrest in June 2022, Mr. Padron needed diapers for his infant son, Fernandito, but had no money. He recalled telling his girlfriend: 'I'm going to go to someone and see what I can do. I'll take any job right now.' He entered the United States and saw a house where he thought he might offer to clean the yard or wash the truck. But it was dark outside, he said. When he noticed the truck door was unlocked, he snatched the wallet inside. Later, he would describe the decision as rash, adding that he wished he could apologize and work to repay what he took. 'I got carried away,' he said in Spanish. After buying diapers at a grocery store, Mr. Padron went to a Walmart and bought a bike, a hair straightener and a 'Frozen' coloring book before the accounts were frozen. He was heading back toward the border at around 10 p.m. when the police, responding to a call from the credit cards' owner, found him and chased him down. The police reported recovering goods worth a little more than $300. They arrested him on several potential charges: the misdemeanors of fleeing the police and stealing the wallet, and multiple counts of using stolen credit cards, a low-level felony. A magistrate met with Mr. Padron, noted on a form that he wanted a court-appointed lawyer and set his bail at roughly $40,000. He probably could have paid $4,000 or less to a bail bondsman and been released, but Mr. Padron did not have that. He was sent to the county jail. Texas law lays out what should have happened next. His form requesting a lawyer should have reached Judge English Cantú within 24 hours and been ruled on within days. Prosecutors had 30 days to officially charge him with any misdemeanors and 90 days for felonies; after both deadlines, he should have been released. None of that was done. Judge English Cantú said in an interview that he does not get the attorney request forms. This surprised several county magistrates, who said jail staff had promised a year ago to begin consistently forwarding them to the court. 'Was that being done? I don't know,' said Jeannie Smith, a magistrate of nearly 15 years. 'Is it being done now? I don't know.' Without a lawyer to follow up on his case, Mr. Padron stayed in jail for nine and a half months. Misdemeanor prosecutors finally charged him in March 2023 with one crime, evading arrest. He was released and a month later reported to court, where he was offered a plea deal: a year of probation, along with a $600 fine, $270 in court costs and a monthly $40 fee. Mr. Padron hesitated. He knew he could not pay, he said later, and he had already been jailed so long. Shouldn't he get credit for that? he recalled asking the prosecutor. The prosecutor most likely should not have offered Mr. Padron a deal at all. State law bars Texas prosecutors from speaking in court to a defendant who has asked for a lawyer before a judge rules on the request. (Although prosecutors said they only talk to defendants who have waived their right to counsel, the law specifies those waivers are invalid if a request for a lawyer is outstanding.) A defense lawyer could have pushed for Mr. Padron to get time served, a sentence equal to the months he had spent in jail, ending his case without probation. Or asked the court to waive fines and fees, given his inability to pay them. But Mr. Padron did not have a lawyer, and the prosecutor warned him the next offer could be worse. He took the deal. 'It's Almost Over' Six months later, in November 2023, Mr. Padron was arrested for violating his probation as he crossed into Eagle Pass for work. He had not attended his monthly check-ins or paid his dues. This time, he was in jail for six and a half months, apparently by mistake, before anything happened in his case. 'I found out he was in custody because he called me from the jail,' the probation officer told Judge English Cantú in a May 2024 hearing. The judge called the delay 'unacceptable.' 'We need to move these individuals as quickly as possible, especially if they are inmates,' he added. Mr. Padron stood expressionless. The 10-minute back-and-forth was in English, which he does not understand. In Texas, misdemeanors like Mr. Padron's evading arrest charge have a maximum sentence of one year, and judges are required to credit defendants for time already served. Mr. Padron had been incarcerated for a total of 16 months. Still, the prosecutor asked for another 44 days in jail. Judge English Cantú switched to Spanish to ask Mr. Padron why he violated probation, and he responded that with a baby and little work, he could not afford the fees and was afraid to check in without them. The judge paused, and then sentenced him to 34 additional days. (The judge declined to comment on individual cases.) 'The good news is it's almost over,' Mr. Padron said at the jail a couple of weeks later, desperate to reunite with his family. In July, he was released for what he thought would be the final time. A month later, he was again stopped at the border and sent back to jail. More than two years after his initial arrest, he was now being charged in felony court for using the credit cards. Delays on Delays By then, the victim of Mr. Padron's crime had moved on. Yaqueline Salinas had been furious in 2022 when she got an alert that her credit cards were being used at the nearby Walmart. She drove around until she saw Mr. Padron, whom she recognized from her neighbor's security cameras, and flagged down the police. But it took felony investigators a year to ask for her credit card statements, she said. The bank had refunded her money, so she never responded. 'I felt bad, honestly,' Ms. Salinas later said in an interview in Spanish, remembering the Pampers that fell off the bike Mr. Padron was riding. 'He's already missed so much time with the baby.' She assumed his case had been resolved long ago. 'He went back to jail?' she asked a Times reporter. 'Oh my god.' Even without her records, felony prosecutors carried on. But it would be another year before Mr. Padron was indicted. Last year, felony indictments in the county were brought, on average, nearly 14 months after a crime, more than twice the time it took for misdemeanor charges, a Times analysis shows. Felony prosecutors work for the district attorney and rarely coordinate with the county attorney's misdemeanor prosecutors, they said. As a result, defendants like Mr. Padron sometimes plead guilty to a misdemeanor, thinking they will be freed, only to be rearrested — or never let go — because the police had also listed a potential charge for felony prosecutors to consider. That is why Mr. Sanchez, the man held for trespassing at the local mall, was not released until seven months after his guilty plea: The jail was still holding him on an outstanding burglary allegation that prosecutors later said they were not pursuing. Another man, 22, was arrested last April, accused of smashing his father's car windows and running from the police. In September, he pleaded guilty to evading arrest, a misdemeanor, for time served. But the jail continued to hold him, waiting for the district attorney to charge him with vandalism. In February, when The Times asked the district attorney why the man was still there, he said his office had no record of the case. The man was released that day. The Right to an Attorney In interviews, Judge English Cantú and Mr. Iracheta, the county attorney, were quick to point to improvements they had made. Mr. Iracheta said he had sped up misdemeanor prosecutions in recent years by requiring the police to send him cases within 30 days. Still, in 2024, his office took half a year on average to file charges. 'Filing within six months is reasonable,' he said, noting that the statute of limitations for misdemeanors is two years. 'We are actively working to improve efficiency,' he added. Last fall, Judge English Cantú accepted a state grant to hire a coordinator to help appoint lawyers; the coordinator started this month. From July to December, the judge also assigned lawyers in 31 cases, according to audit reports, compared with none in the first half of the year. He denied one request. Still, almost all those appointments came after defendants appeared in court; scores of additional requests logged by magistrates earlier in the process had gotten no response, state reports through December show. In felony court, Mr. Padron's case continued. He was finally given a lawyer, Luis De Los Santos, in August 2024. Mr. De Los Santos was initially appointed to handle Mr. Padron's felony charges about five months after his first arrest, according to a court administrator. But Mr. Padron said he never heard from the lawyer, and nothing was ever recorded in his court file. Twenty-one months later, after Mr. Padron was indicted, Mr. De Los Santos was assigned to the case again. (He did not respond to questions about his first appointment.) In October, after Mr. Padron's first felony court appearance, Mr. De Los Santos seemed unsurprised that his client had been in jail so long. Moments later, the judge, Maribel Flores, said that she does not usually know how long a defendant has been held until late in a case. But asked by a reporter about Mr. Padron's time in jail, she said that in such situations, 'usually we'll just do time served.' In November, the prosecution agreed for Mr. Padron to be released on bail without cost. But the charge hung over him. 'I really don't want to get probation, because for any little thing they're going to lock me up,' he said the next morning. 'I'm going on two and a half years for the same thing.' He reported to court again in December, when the prosecution offered Mr. Padron a plea deal: not time served, but five years of probation, which typically involves nearly $4,000 in fees. Mr. De Los Santos told Judge Flores that he considered the offer 'fairly reasonable.' But Mr. Padron was hesitant, and the lawyer asked for more time to explain the deal to him. Judge Flores put the case off again until January. Mr. Padron missed that hearing. The next day, outside his home, he said he had overslept and found his bike missing when he awoke, leaving him no way to get to court on time. His son was about to turn 3, and Mr. Padron was despondent at the idea of being sent to jail again. Across the border, a new warrant was written up for his arrest.
Associated Press
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Venezuelan family in US under curtailed humanitarian protections clings to faith amid uncertainty
Every Sunday, Johann Teran goes to worship at a Lutheran service in suburban Minneapolis, trying to find some hope that the future he was building isn't all slipping away. Like hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans hit by political and economic crises, Teran, his wife and her mother applied for different kinds of humanitarian protections in the United States that the Trump administration has curtailed or is expected to end soon. 'I'm feeling like they're telling me, 'Go, just go back, we don't want you.' Even when they gave me the opportunity to be here,' Teran said. 'We are just hopeless, and trying to find hope, and that's why I'm going more to the church, to look for or get this hope that I need.' The 27-year-old attorney came to Minnesota eight months ago on a humanitarian parole program the Biden administration created in 2022. It granted two-year visas to 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all countries deemed by the United States to have unstable or repressive governments – if they had a U.S. financial sponsor and passed background checks. Teran's wife, Karelia, 29, hadn't received approval yet when the new administration ended the program, leaving her in Venezuela without a legal path to the U.S. Her mother, Marlenia Padron, was granted temporary protected status – TPS, another mechanism for people who fled countries in disarray – in 2023, but the government has ordered it to end in early April for several hundred thousand Venezuelans like her. Hundreds of thousands more Venezuelans and Haitians will lose TPS later this year. Lawsuits were filed Thursday to reverse the decision about Venezuelans. Before cooking dinner in her small apartment decorated with photos of far-away relatives and statuettes of the Virgin Mary, Padron said she understands that President Donald Trump 'was fed up' with Venezuelans who have committed crimes in the United States and wants to deport them. 'But he eliminates the TPS and there we all fall,' Padron said in Spanish. 'I don't know what's going to happen, what will happen with a lot of people who are here hurting nobody. ... I'm working, I file my taxes. I wanted to buy a house. Those are the plans we had, but now I can't have those plans.' Padron, 53, said threats against her began just as Venezuela's economic crisis escalated. Working as an attorney for a local government office in Puerto La Cruz, she said she was kidnapped for ransom, detained on trumped-up political accusations and surveilled – all the while watching her income disappear in the currency crisis, water and electricity rationed, and medicine for her elderly mother grow scarce. 'That time of the kidnapping was the trigger,' she said, describing how she was taken from a shopping center and held for three days, with beatings and accusations of being a 'traitor of the homeland' for raising questions about corruption. 'Nobody can say Venezuela is a place that has stability and respect for human rights. So people are going to continue to flee,' said Karen Musalo, an attorney and professor who leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. 'The U.S., I would say under the Biden administration, with both humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, was recognizing that and responding to that.' Musalo said most of roughly 8 million Venezuelans who fled in recent years went to other Latin American countries, triggering a regional crisis. Padron went to Colombia first, crossing by canoe a river where gangs and guerrillas roamed. Worried she still might be targeted, she decided to travel on to Mexico, cross into the United States and turn herself into U.S. immigration authorities, asking for asylum – a process that can take many years. When the special TPS program started, she applied, got a work permit and a job at a printing press, and finally felt safe in her new home in Minnesota – not always looking over her shoulders for threats or navigating shortages of necessities. 'I get home, make my meal for the next day, if I want to eat out, I go out – because there's quality of life, I earn what one earns to live peacefully,' she said. 'I don't have to go to a gas station to get gas and spend two days in line.' Padron had never seen trees without leaves when she arrived in fall 2021, so adjusting to the frigid winters has been jarring. But she finds peacefulness in the snow. 'Sometimes when there's a lot of snow, I leave the shoes outside, and then I open the door and I think, 'My shoes, I left them outside!' And there they are. In Venezuela that wouldn't happen, they'd steal your shoes,' Padron said. Now her daughter has no way to rejoin the family, and Padron is unsure of her own next steps. Even her father back in Venezuela has been asking 'When will they deport you?' But she says she can't go back in fear of her life. Raised Catholic, she hopes that if she can stay in the United States, she will get a bigger home with an altar covered in flowers for the two statuettes – one honors her native city's Virgin Del Valle and the other an icon especially venerated by Cubans, La Virgen de la Caridad. Meanwhile, she started attending Tapestry Church, a Lutheran congregation where old-timers as well as Latin American migrants worship in Spanish and English. In 2023, the church had applied to sponsor humanitarian parole for 38 Venezuelans, but those cases were never processed. Now, it tries to reassure its congregants despite widespread fears. 'We have the conviction that we're stronger in community,' said the Rev. Melissa Melnick Gonzalez, Tapestry's pastor. Teran, who works as a paralegal, has been volunteering with the congregation, helping fellow immigrants with paperwork. 'Everybody is worried and kind of anxious. People doesn't want to go out anymore,' he said. 'The Venezuelan community is just at home. We're all waiting, like we were criminals.' He's trying to get a work visa that would prevent him from returning to Venezuela while allowing his wife, an orthodontist, to leave a country where young professionals like them can't make ends meet – and any protest risks violent repression. He said he studied democracy in law school and would like to practice law in the United States, where 'there's no impunity.' 'So that dream is also being kind of canceled by Trump,' Teran said. On a recent evening, as Padron fried arepas, Teran video-called his wife, and reached out to the phone screen when she turned it on their two snoozing Schnauzer dogs, Hoddy and Honey. Expecting Karelia's humanitarian parole would be approved any time, he had moved into a pet-friendly apartment before the program was terminated. 'I don't see any future right now for having her, in fact there's nothing that I can do right now for having her,' Teran said. 'I don't understand that, why you allow me to get in legally and now you're treating me like an illegal.'
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Venezuelan family in US under curtailed humanitarian protections clings to faith amid uncertainty
HOPKINS, Minn. (AP) — Every Sunday, Johann Teran goes to worship at a Lutheran service in suburban Minneapolis, trying to find some hope that the future he was building isn't all slipping away. Like hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans hit by political and economic crises, Teran, his wife and her mother applied for different kinds of humanitarian protections in the United States that the Trump administration has curtailed or is expected to end soon. 'I'm feeling like they're telling me, 'Go, just go back, we don't want you.' Even when they gave me the opportunity to be here,' Teran said. 'We are just hopeless, and trying to find hope, and that's why I'm going more to the church, to look for or get this hope that I need.' See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. The 27-year-old attorney came to Minnesota eight months ago on a humanitarian parole program the Biden administration created in 2022. It granted two-year visas to 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all countries deemed by the United States to have unstable or repressive governments – if they had a U.S. financial sponsor and passed background checks. Teran's wife, Karelia, 29, hadn't received approval yet when the new administration ended the program, leaving her in Venezuela without a legal path to the U.S. Her mother, Marlenia Padron, was granted temporary protected status – TPS, another mechanism for people who fled countries in disarray – in 2023, but the government has ordered it to end in early April for several hundred thousand Venezuelans like her. Hundreds of thousands more Venezuelans and Haitians will lose TPS later this year. Lawsuits were filed Thursday to reverse the decision about Venezuelans. Before cooking dinner in her small apartment decorated with photos of far-away relatives and statuettes of the Virgin Mary, Padron said she understands that President Donald Trump 'was fed up' with Venezuelans who have committed crimes in the United States and wants to deport them. 'But he eliminates the TPS and there we all fall,' Padron said in Spanish. 'I don't know what's going to happen, what will happen with a lot of people who are here hurting nobody. ... I'm working, I file my taxes. I wanted to buy a house. Those are the plans we had, but now I can't have those plans.' Padron, 53, said threats against her began just as Venezuela's economic crisis escalated. Working as an attorney for a local government office in Puerto La Cruz, she said she was kidnapped for ransom, detained on trumped-up political accusations and surveilled – all the while watching her income disappear in the currency crisis, water and electricity rationed, and medicine for her elderly mother grow scarce. 'That time of the kidnapping was the trigger,' she said, describing how she was taken from a shopping center and held for three days, with beatings and accusations of being a 'traitor of the homeland' for raising questions about corruption. 'Nobody can say Venezuela is a place that has stability and respect for human rights. So people are going to continue to flee,' said Karen Musalo, an attorney and professor who leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. 'The U.S., I would say under the Biden administration, with both humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, was recognizing that and responding to that.' Musalo said most of roughly 8 million Venezuelans who fled in recent years went to other Latin American countries, triggering a regional crisis. Padron went to Colombia first, crossing by canoe a river where gangs and guerrillas roamed. Worried she still might be targeted, she decided to travel on to Mexico, cross into the United States and turn herself into U.S. immigration authorities, asking for asylum – a process that can take many years. When the special TPS program started, she applied, got a work permit and a job at a printing press, and finally felt safe in her new home in Minnesota – not always looking over her shoulders for threats or navigating shortages of necessities. 'I get home, make my meal for the next day, if I want to eat out, I go out – because there's quality of life, I earn what one earns to live peacefully,' she said. 'I don't have to go to a gas station to get gas and spend two days in line.' Padron had never seen trees without leaves when she arrived in fall 2021, so adjusting to the frigid winters has been jarring. But she finds peacefulness in the snow. 'Sometimes when there's a lot of snow, I leave the shoes outside, and then I open the door and I think, 'My shoes, I left them outside!' And there they are. In Venezuela that wouldn't happen, they'd steal your shoes,' Padron said. Now her daughter has no way to rejoin the family, and Padron is unsure of her own next steps. Even her father back in Venezuela has been asking 'When will they deport you?' But she says she can't go back in fear of her life. Raised Catholic, she hopes that if she can stay in the United States, she will get a bigger home with an altar covered in flowers for the two statuettes – one honors her native city's Virgin Del Valle and the other an icon especially venerated by Cubans, La Virgen de la Caridad. Meanwhile, she started attending Tapestry Church, a Lutheran congregation where old-timers as well as Latin American migrants worship in Spanish and English. In 2023, the church had applied to sponsor humanitarian parole for 38 Venezuelans, but those cases were never processed. Now, it tries to reassure its congregants despite widespread fears. 'We have the conviction that we're stronger in community,' said the Rev. Melissa Melnick Gonzalez, Tapestry's pastor. Teran, who works as a paralegal, has been volunteering with the congregation, helping fellow immigrants with paperwork. 'Everybody is worried and kind of anxious. People doesn't want to go out anymore,' he said. 'The Venezuelan community is just at home. We're all waiting, like we were criminals.' He's trying to get a work visa that would prevent him from returning to Venezuela while allowing his wife, an orthodontist, to leave a country where young professionals like them can't make ends meet – and any protest risks violent repression. He said he studied democracy in law school and would like to practice law in the United States, where 'there's no impunity.' 'So that dream is also being kind of canceled by Trump,' Teran said. On a recent evening, as Padron fried arepas, Teran video-called his wife, and reached out to the phone screen when she turned it on their two snoozing Schnauzer dogs, Hoddy and Honey. Expecting Karelia's humanitarian parole would be approved any time, he had moved into a pet-friendly apartment before the program was terminated. 'I don't see any future right now for having her, in fact there's nothing that I can do right now for having her,' Teran said. 'I don't understand that, why you allow me to get in legally and now you're treating me like an illegal.' ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
The Independent
22-02-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Venezuelan family in US under curtailed humanitarian protections clings to faith amid uncertainty
Every Sunday, Johann Teran goes to worship at a Lutheran service in suburban Minneapolis, trying to find some hope that the future he was building isn't all slipping away. Like hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans hit by political and economic crises, Teran, his wife and her mother applied for different kinds of humanitarian protections in the United States that the Trump administration has curtailed or is expected to end soon. 'I'm feeling like they're telling me, 'Go, just go back, we don't want you.' Even when they gave me the opportunity to be here,' Teran said. 'We are just hopeless, and trying to find hope, and that's why I'm going more to the church, to look for or get this hope that I need.' The 27-year-old attorney came to Minnesota eight months ago on a humanitarian parole program the Biden administration created in 2022. It granted two-year visas to 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all countries deemed by the United States to have unstable or repressive governments – if they had a U.S. financial sponsor and passed background checks. Teran's wife, Karelia, 29, hadn't received approval yet when the new administration ended the program, leaving her in Venezuela without a legal path to the U.S. Her mother, Marlenia Padron, was granted temporary protected status – TPS, another mechanism for people who fled countries in disarray – in 2023, but the government has ordered it to end in early April for several hundred thousand Venezuelans like her. Hundreds of thousands more Venezuelans and Haitians will lose TPS later this year. Lawsuits were filed Thursday to reverse the decision about Venezuelans. Before cooking dinner in her small apartment decorated with photos of far-away relatives and statuettes of the Virgin Mary, Padron said she understands that President Donald Trump 'was fed up' with Venezuelans who have committed crimes in the United States and wants to deport them. 'But he eliminates the TPS and there we all fall,' Padron said in Spanish. 'I don't know what's going to happen, what will happen with a lot of people who are here hurting nobody. ... I'm working, I file my taxes. I wanted to buy a house. Those are the plans we had, but now I can't have those plans.' Padron, 53, said threats against her began just as Venezuela's economic crisis escalated. Working as an attorney for a local government office in Puerto La Cruz, she said she was kidnapped for ransom, detained on trumped-up political accusations and surveilled – all the while watching her income disappear in the currency crisis, water and electricity rationed, and medicine for her elderly mother grow scarce. 'That time of the kidnapping was the trigger,' she said, describing how she was taken from a shopping center and held for three days, with beatings and accusations of being a 'traitor of the homeland' for raising questions about corruption. 'Nobody can say Venezuela is a place that has stability and respect for human rights. So people are going to continue to flee,' said Karen Musalo, an attorney and professor who leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. 'The U.S., I would say under the Biden administration, with both humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, was recognizing that and responding to that.' Musalo said most of roughly 8 million Venezuelans who fled in recent years went to other Latin American countries, triggering a regional crisis. Padron went to Colombia first, crossing by canoe a river where gangs and guerrillas roamed. Worried she still might be targeted, she decided to travel on to Mexico, cross into the United States and turn herself into U.S. immigration authorities, asking for asylum – a process that can take many years. When the special TPS program started, she applied, got a work permit and a job at a printing press, and finally felt safe in her new home in Minnesota – not always looking over her shoulders for threats or navigating shortages of necessities. 'I get home, make my meal for the next day, if I want to eat out, I go out – because there's quality of life, I earn what one earns to live peacefully,' she said. 'I don't have to go to a gas station to get gas and spend two days in line.' Padron had never seen trees without leaves when she arrived in fall 2021, so adjusting to the frigid winters has been jarring. But she finds peacefulness in the snow. 'Sometimes when there's a lot of snow, I leave the shoes outside, and then I open the door and I think, 'My shoes, I left them outside!' And there they are. In Venezuela that wouldn't happen, they'd steal your shoes,' Padron said. Now her daughter has no way to rejoin the family, and Padron is unsure of her own next steps. Even her father back in Venezuela has been asking 'When will they deport you?' But she says she can't go back in fear of her life. Raised Catholic, she hopes that if she can stay in the United States, she will get a bigger home with an altar covered in flowers for the two statuettes – one honors her native city's Virgin Del Valle and the other an icon especially venerated by Cubans, La Virgen de la Caridad. Meanwhile, she started attending Tapestry Church, a Lutheran congregation where old-timers as well as Latin American migrants worship in Spanish and English. In 2023, the church had applied to sponsor humanitarian parole for 38 Venezuelans, but those cases were never processed. Now, it tries to reassure its congregants despite widespread fears. 'We have the conviction that we're stronger in community,' said the Rev. Melissa Melnick Gonzalez, Tapestry's pastor. Teran, who works as a paralegal, has been volunteering with the congregation, helping fellow immigrants with paperwork. 'Everybody is worried and kind of anxious. People doesn't want to go out anymore,' he said. 'The Venezuelan community is just at home. We're all waiting, like we were criminals.' He's trying to get a work visa that would prevent him from returning to Venezuela while allowing his wife, an orthodontist, to leave a country where young professionals like them can't make ends meet – and any protest risks violent repression. He said he studied democracy in law school and would like to practice law in the United States, where 'there's no impunity.' 'So that dream is also being kind of canceled by Trump,' Teran said. On a recent evening, as Padron fried arepas, Teran video-called his wife, and reached out to the phone screen when she turned it on their two snoozing Schnauzer dogs, Hoddy and Honey. Expecting Karelia's humanitarian parole would be approved any time, he had moved into a pet-friendly apartment before the program was terminated. 'I don't see any future right now for having her, in fact there's nothing that I can do right now for having her,' Teran said. 'I don't understand that, why you allow me to get in legally and now you're treating me like an illegal.' ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
