NORTHWEST/NATION
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
THe OBseRVeR — 7A
U.S. begins reuniting families separated at Mexico border
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO— The
Biden administration said
Monday, May 3, that four
families that were separated
at the Mexico border during
Donald Trump’s presi-
dency will be reunited in
the United States this week
in what Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro May-
orkas calls “just the begin-
ning” of a broader effort.
Two of the four families
include mothers who were
separated from their chil-
dren in late 2017, one Hon-
duran and another Mexican,
Mayorkas said, declining
to detail their identities. He
described them as children
who were 3 years old at the
time and “teenagers who
have had to live without
their parent during their
most formative years.”
Parents will return to the
United States on humani-
tarian parole while author-
ities consider other lon-
ger-term forms of legal
status, said Michelle Brane,
executive director of the
administration’s Family
Julio Cortez/Associated Press
a migrant man, center, holds a child as he looks at a u.s. Customs and Border Protection agent at an intake area
after crossing the u.s.-Mexico border March 24, 2021, in Roma, Texas. The Biden administration said Monday,
May 3, that four families that were separated at the Mexico border during donald Trump’s presidency will be
reunited in the united states this week in what Homeland security secretary alejandro Mayorkas calls “just the
beginning” of a broader effort.
Reunification Task Force.
The children are already in
the U.S.
Exactly how many fam-
ilies will reunite in the
U.S. and in what order is
linked to negotiations with
the American Civil Liber-
May Day marches lead to
arrests in Seattle, Portland
Associated Press
SEATTLE — At least 20
people were arrested during
May Day demonstrations
in Seattle and Portland in
support of immigrants and
worker rights, officials said.
Seattle police said 14
people were arrested Sat-
urday, May 1, for crimes
including obstruction, prop-
erty destruction, reckless
driving and assault as sev-
eral unpermitted marches
wound through the down-
town area. Demonstra-
tors threw bottles, rocks,
paint, paint-filled eggs and
raw eggs and threw lighted
flares into the roadway, offi-
cers said.
About 150 people par-
ticipated in a permitted
march in support of immi-
grant and worker rights,
The Seattle Times reported.
They also called for open
borders, equality in vaccine
access and spoke against
hate crimes against Asian
people, racism, police bru-
tality and white supremacy.
“Our people have built
multiracially with the Black
working class, with Native
folks with Latinx folks
around the world to fight
for a different vision of
this planet, where we can
live, where we can breathe,
where we can be safe,”
said JM Wong of Massage
Parlor Outreach Project
said during a speech in the
center of Seattle’s China-
town International District.
In Portland, peaceful
demonstrations during the
day gave way to violent
demonstrations at night.
About 100 people marched
toward the area around
city hall on Saturday night,
where there were multiple
reports of vandalism and
broken windows at busi-
nesses, police said. Officers
declared the gathering a riot
and ordered people to leave.
They later announced six
arrests.
Officers deployed crowd
dispersal munitions at a
smaller group of people
who gathered outside the
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement facility in
Southwest Portland.
National news briefs
Supreme Court won’t
take Maryland bump
stock ban case
WASHINGTON — The
Supreme Court is declining
to take up a challenge to
Maryland’s ban on bump
stocks and other devices
that make guns fire faster.
The high court on
Monday, May 3, turned
away a challenge to the
ban, which took effect in
October 2018. A lower
court had dismissed the
challenge at an early stage
and that decision had been
upheld by an appeals court.
As is typical, the court
didn’t comment in declining
to take the case.
Maryland’s ban preceded
a nationwide ban on the sale
and possession of bump
stocks that was put in place
by the Trump administra-
tion and took effect in 2019.
The Supreme Court previ-
ously declined to stop the
Trump administration from
enforcing that ban. Both
Maryland’s ban and the
nationwide one followed a
2017 shooting in Las Vegas
in which a gunman attached
bump stocks to assault-style
rifles he used to shoot con-
certgoers from his hotel
room. Fifty-eight people
were killed and hundreds
were injured.
U.S. to launch trade
talks on COVID-19
vaccine distribution
WILMINGTON, Del.
— The U.S. top trade nego-
tiator will begin talks with
the World Trade Organiza-
tion on ways to overcome
intellectual property issues
that are keeping critically
needed COVID-19 vaccines
from being more widely
distributed worldwide, two
White House officials said
Sunday, May 2.
The White House has
been under pressure from
lawmakers at home and
governments abroad to join
an effort to waive patent
rules for the vaccines so
that poorer countries can
begin to produce their
own generic versions of
the shots to vaccinate their
populations.
The U.S. has been crit-
icized for focusing first on
vaccinating Americans,
particularly as its vaccine
supply begins to outpace
demand and doses approved
for use elsewhere in the
world but not in the U.S. sit
idle.
U.S. Trade Represen-
tative Katherine Tai will
be starting talks with the
trade organization “on how
we can get this vaccine
more widely distributed,
more widely licensed, more
widely shared,” said White
House chief of staff Ron
Klain.
Klain and national secu-
rity adviser Jake Sullivan
said the administration will
have more to say on the
matter in the coming days.
Sullivan said the admin-
istration believes pharma-
ceutical companies “should
be supplying at scale and
at cost to the entire world
so that there is no bar-
rier to everyone getting
vaccinated.”
Klain said the U.S. has
sent India enough of the
raw materials it needs to
make 20 million vaccine
doses. India is battling a
deadly new surge in corona-
virus infections and deaths.
— Associated Press
ties Union to settle a federal
lawsuit in San Diego, but
Mayorkas said there were
more to come.
“We continue to work
tirelessly to reunite many
more children with their
parents in the weeks and
months ahead,” Mayorkas
told reporters. “We have a
lot of work still to do, but
I am proud of the prog-
ress we have made and the
reunifications that we have
helped to achieve.”
More than 5,500 children
were separated from their
parents during the Trump
administration going back
to July 1, 2017, many of
them under a “zero-toler-
ance” policy to criminally
prosecute any adult who
entered the country ille-
gally, according to court fil-
ings. The Biden administra-
tion is doing its own count
going back to Trump’s
inauguration in January
2017 and believes more
than 1,000 families remain
separated.
While family separa-
tion ended in June 2018
under court order, Biden
has repeatedly assailed the
practice as an act of cruelty.
An executive order on his
first day in office pledged
to reunite families that
were still separated “to the
greatest extent possible.”
The ACLU is happy for
the four families but their
reunifications are “just
the tip of the iceberg,”
said attorney Lee Gelernt.
Among the more than 5,500
children known to have
been separated, more than
1,000 may still be apart
from their parents and more
than 400 parents have yet to
be located, he said.
“We need the Biden
administration to pro-
vide relief to all of them,
including providing them a
permanent pathway to citi-
zenship and care,” Gelernt
said.
The reunifications begin
as the Biden administra-
tion confronts the third
major increase in unaccom-
panied children arriving at
the border in seven years.
It has made strides moving
children from overcrowded
Border Patrol facilities to
U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services shel-
ters, which are more suited
to longer-term stays until
children are placed with
sponsors in the United
States, typically parents or
close relatives.
The average stay for an
unaccompanied child in
Border Patrol custody has
fallen to about 20 hours,
below the legal limit of 72
hours and down from 133
hours in late March, May-
orkas said.
Nuclear waste tank in Washington may be leaking
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press
RICHLAND, Wash. —
An underground nuclear
waste storage tank in
Washington state that dates
to World War II appears to
be leaking contaminated
liquid into the ground, the
U.S. Department of Energy
said Thursday, April 29.
It’s the second tank
believed to be leaking
waste left from the pro-
duction of plutonium for
nuclear weapons at the
Hanford Nuclear Reserva-
tion. The first was discov-
ered in 2013. Many more
of the 149 single-walled
storage tanks at the site are
suspected of leaking.
Tank B-109, the latest
suspected of leaking, holds
123,000 gallons of radioac-
tive waste. The giant tank
was constructed during
the Manhattan Project that
built the first atomic bombs
and received waste from
Hanford operations from
1946 to 1976.
The Hanford site near
Richland in the south-
eastern part of the state
elaine Thompson/Associated Press, File
a sign at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation stands near Richland, Wash-
ington. Officials say an underground nuclear waste storage tank that
dates to World War II appears to be leaking contaminated liquid into the
ground. The u.s. department of energy said Thursday, april 29, 2021,
the tank holds 123,000 gallons of radioactive waste left from the pro-
duction of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
produced about two-
thirds of the plutonium
for the nation’s nuclear
arsenal, including the bomb
dropped in 1945 on Naga-
saki, Japan, and now is the
most contaminated radio-
active waste site in the
nation.
A multibillion dollar
environmental cleanup has
been underway for decades
at the sprawling Hanford
site.
The Washington state
Department of Ecology and
the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency were
notified April 29 that the
tank was likely leaking.
“There is no increased
health or safety risk to the
Hanford workforce or the
public,” said Geoff Tyree, a
spokesman for the Energy
Department. “Contamina-
tion in this area is not new
and mitigation actions have
been in place for decades to
protect workers, the public
and the environment.”
The tank had been pre-
viously emptied of pump-
able liquids, leaving a small
amount of liquid waste
inside, the agency said.
Systems in the area capture
and remove contaminants
that reach the groundwater
and ensure the protection
of the Columbia River, the
agency said.
The leak from was first
suspected in March 2019,
when there appeared to
be a drop in the level of
its liquid waste. Monthly
checks showed the level
stable until July 2020,
when another drop was
detected, and the Depart-
ment of Energy launched
an investigation.
State officials said the
tank is leaking about 3.5
gallons per day.
“It’s a serious matter
whenever a Hanford tank
leaks its radioactive and
dangerous chemical waste,”
Ecology Director Laura
Watson said, adding “this
highlights the critical need
for resources to address
Hanford’s aging tanks,
which will continue to fail
and leak over time.”
La Grande School District
Date: Thursday, May 6, 2021
Time: 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Place: At your local area Elementary
School. (Where your child will be attending school)
What to Bring:
5 BEFORE
2019
September
1,
2021
Bring your child to meet
the Kindergarten teachers.
For further information, please contact one of the following:
Central School – Connie Ingerson – 541.663.3501
Greenwood School – Eva McKinney – 541.663.3601
Island City School – Dena Tams – 541.663.3271