WASHINGTON: A senior US senator on Tuesday accused US firms of willfully ignoring “horrific” forced labor conditions in China’s Xinjiang region and called on the Commerce Department to stop American companies and consumers buying goods produced by such labor.
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said recent reports indicated a wide array of US companies, including Apple, Kraft Heinz , Coca-Cola, and the Gap, had sourced, or continued to source, goods from Xinjiang.
“Moreover, there are consistent reports that US companies fail to undertake basic labor and human rights assessments in Xinjiang, in essence willfully ignoring the horrific conditions of forced labor in Xinjiang,” Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said in the letter.
“In failing to uphold their responsibilities to vet their supply chains, these companies may be complicit in the mass repression of Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups,” he said.
The firms Menendez mentioned did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The United Nations estimates more than a million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in camps in Xinjiang in recent years. China denies it violates Uighur rights and says the camps are designed to stamp out terrorism and provide vocational skills.
Menendez, who has called for sanctions on China over the issue, also requested information about US government contractors who source cotton from China, which produces 84% of its cotton in Xinjiang.
“The use of materials that are manufactured using forced labor is unacceptable for products in US markets,” he said in the letter.
An Australian think tank said in a report earlier this month that tens of thousands of ethnic Uighurs have been transferred to work in factories across China supplying 83 global brands in conditions “that strongly suggest forced labor.”
Nike Inc, which was included in that report, said in a statement on its website that while the company “does not directly source products from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” it had been conducting due diligence with its suppliers in China to identify and assess potential risks related to employment of people from the region.
On Monday, the Washington-based Fair Labor Association, which conducts due diligence for major multinational firms, said it was “deeply troubled by credible reports of forced labor and other violations of fundamental rights in Xinjiang.”
“We have directed our affiliates to review their direct and indirect sourcing relationships, identify alternative sourcing opportunities, and develop timebound plans to ensure that their sourcing is in line with the FLA’s principles,” it said.
US senator calls for action on forced labor in China’s Xinjiang
https://arab.news/r7f9f
US senator calls for action on forced labor in China’s Xinjiang
- The UN estimates more than a million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in camps recent years
- Ethnic Uighurs work in factories across China supplying 83 global brands in conditions ‘that strongly suggest forced labor’
Drought, rising prices and dwindling herds undercut this year’s Eid Al-Adha in North Africa
- Rising prices and falling supply are creating new challenges, breeders and potential buyers throughout the region say
- Each year, Muslims slaughter sheep to honor a passage of the Qur’an in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God
Each year, Muslims slaughter sheep to honor a passage of the Qur’an in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who intervened and replaced the child with a sheep.
But this year, rising prices and falling supply are creating new challenges, breeders and potential buyers throughout the region say.
At a market in suburban Algiers last week, breeders explained to angry patrons that their prices had increased because the cost of everything needed to raise sheep, including animal feed, transport and veterinary care, had grown.
Slimane Aouadi stood watching livestock pens, discussing with his wife whether to buy a sheep to celebrate this year’s Eid.
“It’s the same sheep as the one I bought last year, the same look and the same weight, but it costs $75 more,” Aouadi, a doctor, said.
Amid soaring inflation, sheep can sell for more than $1,200, an exorbitant amount in a country where average monthly incomes hover below $270.
Tradition meets reality
Any disruption to the ritual sacrifice can be sensitive, a blow to religious tradition and source of anger toward rising prices and the hardship they bring.
So Morocco and Algeria have resorted to unprecedented measures.
Algerian officials earlier this year announced plans to import a staggering 1 million sheep to make up for domestic shortages. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI broke with tradition and urged Muslims to abstain from the Eid sacrifice. Local officials across the kingdom have closed livestock markets, preventing customers from buying sheep for this year’s celebrations.
“Our country is facing climatic and economic challenges that have resulted in a substantial decline in livestock numbers. Performing the sacrifice in these difficult circumstances will cause real harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited incomes,” the king, who is also Morocco’s highest religious authority, wrote in a February letter read on national television.
Trucks have unloaded thousands of sheep in new markets in Algiers and the surrounding suburbs. University of Toulouse agro-economist Lotfi Gharnaout told the state-run newspaper El Moudjahid that Algeria’s import strategy could cost between $230 and $260 million and still not even meet nationwide demand.
Thinning pastures
Overgrazing has long strained parts of North Africa where the population is growing and job opportunities beyond herding and farming are scarce. But after seven years of drought, it’s the lack of rainfall and skyrocketing feed prices that are now shrinking herds. Drought conditions, experts say, have degraded forage lands where shepherds graze their flocks and farmers grow cereals to be sold as animal feed.
With less supply, prices have spiked beyond the reach of middle class families who have historically purchased sheep for slaughter.
Moroccan economist Najib Akesbi said shrinking herds stemmed directly from vegetation loss in grazing areas. The prolonged drought has compounded inflation already fueled by the war in Ukraine.
“Most livestock farming in North Africa is pastoral, which means it’s farming that relies purely on nature, like wild plants and forests, and vegetation that grows off rainwater,” Akesbi, a former professor at Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, said.
For breeders, he added, livestock serve as a kind of bank, assets they sell to cover expenses and repay debts. With consecutive years of drought and rising feed costs, breeders are seeing their reserves drained.
Pressed herders
With less natural vegetation, breeders have to spend more on supplemental feed, Acharf Majdoubi, president of Morocco’s Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders said. In good years, pastures can nourish nearly all of what sheep flocks require, but in dry years, it can be as low as half or a third of the feed required.
“We have to make up the rest by buying feed like straw and barley,” he said.
Not only do they need more feed. The price of barley, straw and alfalfa – much of which has to be imported – has also spiked.
In Morocco, the price of barley and straw are three times what they were before the drought, while the price of alfalfa has more than doubled.
“The future of this profession is very difficult. Breeders leave the countryside to immigrate to the city, and some will never come back,” Achraf Majdoubi said.
US federal authorities arrest dozens for immigration violations across Los Angeles
- Immigration enforcement agency averaging about 1,600 arrests per day and says it has arrested ‘dangerous criminals’
- Dozens of protesters gathered Friday evening outside a federal detention center in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Federal immigration authorities arrested 44 people Friday across Los Angeles, prompting clashes outside at least one location as law enforcement threw flash bangs to try to disperse a crowd that had gathered to protest the detentions.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents executed search warrants at three locations, said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations. But immigration advocates said they were aware of arrests at seven locations, including two Home Depots, a warehouse in the fashion district and a doughnut shop, said Angelica Salas, executive director for the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.
In the fashion district, agents served a search warrant at a business after they and a judge found there was probable cause the employer was using fictitious documents for some of its workers, US Attorney’s Office spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy confirmed.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said the activity was meant to “sow terror.”
Federal immigration authorities have been ramping up arrests across the country to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. Todd Lyons, the head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defended his tactics earlier this week against criticism that authorities are being too heavy-handed. He has said ICE is averaging about 1,600 arrests per day and that the agency has arrested “dangerous criminals.”
Protests recently broke out after an immigration action at a restaurant in San Diego and in Minneapolis, when federal officials in tactical gear showed up in a Latino neighborhood for an operation they said was about a criminal case, not immigration.
Dozens of protesters gathered Friday evening outside a federal detention center in Los Angeles where they believed those arrested had been taken, chanting “set them free, let them stay!”
Other protesters held signs that said “ICE out of LA!” while others led chants and shouted from megaphones. Some scrawled graffiti on the building facade.
Officers holding protective shields stood shoulder to shoulder to block an entrance. Some tossed tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Officers wearing helmets and holding batons then forced the protesters away from the building by forming a line and walking slowly down the street.
“Our community is under attack and is being terrorized. These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers, and this has to stop. Immigration enforcement that is terrorizing our families throughout this country and picking up our people that we love must stop now,” Salas, of CHIRLA, said at an earlier press conference while surrounded by a crowd holding signs protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Yliana Johansen-Mendez, chief program officer for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said her organization was aware of one man who was already deported back to Mexico after being picked up at a Home Depot on Friday morning. The man’s family contacted her organization and one of their attorneys was waiting for hours to speak to him inside the detention center, she said. Authorities later said he had already been removed, and the man later contacted his family to say he was back in Mexico.
Videos from bystanders and television news crews captured people being walked across a Home Depot parking lot by federal agents as well as clashes that broke out at other detention sites.
KTLA showed aerial footage of agents outside a clothing warehouse store in the fashion district leading detainees out of a building and toward two large white vans waiting in a parking lot. The hands of the detained individuals were tied behind their backs. The agents patted them down before loading them into the vans. The agents wore vests with the agency acronyms FBI, ICE and HSI. Armed agents used yellow police tape to keep crowds on the street and sidewalk away from the operations.
Officers throw smoke bombs to disperse crowd
Aerial footage of the same location broadcast by KABC-TV showed officers throwing smoke bombs or flash bangs on the street to disperse the people so they could drive away in SUVs, vans and military-style vehicles.
The station showed one person running backward with their hands on the hood of a moving white SUV in an apparent attempt to block the vehicle. The person fell backward, landing flat on the ground. The SUV backed up, drove around the individual and sped off as others on the street threw objects at it.
Immigrant-rights advocates used megaphones to speak to the workers, reminding them of their constitutional rights and instructing them not to sign anything or say anything to federal agents, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Katia Garcia, 18, left school when she learned her father, 37-year-old Marco Garcia, may have been targeted.
Katia Garcia, a US citizen, said her father is undocumented and has been in the US for 20 years. “We never thought this would happen to us,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
Pitts O’Keefe said in a statement that one additional person was arrested for obstruction. The California branch of the Service Employees International Union said its president was arrested while exercising his right to observe and document law enforcement activity.
Man charged with hate crime in Boulder attack on ‘Zionist people’ appears in US federal court
- Mohamed Sabry Soliman was arrested on June 1 for throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado
- The demonstrators were raising awareness of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas militants in Gaza
DENVER: A man who told investigators he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people” when he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators raising awareness of Israeli hostages appeared briefly in federal court for the first time Friday to face a hate crime charge.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, sat in the jury box in a Denver courtroom handcuffed and dressed in a green jail uniform, a US Marshal sitting in the row behind him. Listening to the proceedings in Arabic through an interpreter, he answered “yes” and “I understand” in Arabic as Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O’Hara explained his rights.
Before the brief hearing started, Soliman mostly looked away from the crowded gallery, but after the proceedings he nodded and smiled as his lawyers spoke to him.
A conviction on a hate crime charge typically carries a penalty of no more than 10 years in prison, but Assistant US Attorney Melissa Hindman said if the crime involves an attempted killing, the sentence can be as long as life in prison.
Soliman is represented by public defenders who do not comment on their cases to the media. He is scheduled to appear in federal court again June 18 for a hearing in which federal prosecutors will be asked to show they have enough evidence to prosecute Soliman. He’ll face a similar hearing in state court July 15.
He is accused in Sunday’s attack on the weekly demonstration in Boulder, which investigators say he planned for a year. The victims include 15 people and a dog. He has also been charged in state court in Boulder with attempted murder and assault counts as well as counts related to the 18 Molotov cocktails police say he carried to the demonstration.
Investigators say Soliman told them he had intended to kill all of the roughly 20 participants at the weekly demonstration on Boulder’s popular Pearl Street pedestrian mall, but he threw just two of his 18 Molotov cocktails while yelling “Free Palestine.” Soliman told investigators he tried to buy a gun but was not able to because he was not a “legal citizen.”
Federal authorities say Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been living in the US illegally.
Soliman did not carry out his full plan “because he got scared and had never hurt anyone before,” police wrote in an arrest affidavit.
Not all of the victims were physically injured. Some of them are considered victims because they were in the area and could potentially have been hurt in the attack, 20th Judicial District Michael Dougherty said Thursday.
Three victims remained in the hospital Friday, UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital spokesperson Dan Weaver said.
The dog was among the injured, which resulted in an animal cruelty charge being filed against Soliman, Dougherty said.
Soliman told investigators that he waited until after his daughter graduated from school before launching the attack, according to court documents.
Federal authorities want to deport Soliman’s wife and their five children, who range from 4 to 17 years old, but a judge issued an order Wednesday halting deportation proceedings until a lawsuit challenging their deportation can be considered. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has described their claims as “absurd” and “an attempt to delay justice.”
US immigration officials took Soliman’s wife and children into custody Tuesday. They are being held at a family immigration detention center in Texas.
According to a court document filed Friday by the family’s lawyers, law enforcement had arranged for Soliman’s wife and children to stay in a hotel while their home was searched following the attack. After two nights, Homeland Security Investigations agents told the family they had to move to another hotel for their safety and were then met by between 10 and 20 plainclothes officers who took them into custody, the filing said.
According to the document, one of them allegedly told Soliman’s wife, “You have to pay for the consequences of what you did.”
Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported, is returned to US to face migrant-smuggling charges
- Lawyer calls charges ‘fantastical,’ questions witness credibility
- Case highlights tensions between Trump administration and judiciary
WASHINGTON: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was flown back to the United States to face criminal charges of transporting illegal immigrants within the US, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday.
Abrego Garcia’s return marked an inflection point in a case seized on by critics of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown as a sign that the administration was disregarding civil liberties in its push to step up deportations.
Abrego Garcia — a 29-year-old Salvadoran whose wife and young child in Maryland are US citizens — appeared in federal court in Nashville on Friday evening.
His arraignment was set for June 13, when he will enter a plea, according to local media reports. Until then, he will remain in federal custody.
If convicted, he would be deported to El Salvador after serving his sentence, Bondi said. The Trump administration has said Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation that his lawyers deny.
Officials on Friday portrayed the indictment of Abrego Garcia by a federal grand jury in Tennessee as vindication of their approach to immigration enforcement.
“The man has a horrible past, and I could see a decision being made, bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it was the Justice Department that decided to bring Abrego Garcia back.
According to the indictment, Abrego Garcia worked with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, then transport them from the US-Mexico border to destinations in the country.
Abrego Garcia often picked up migrants in Houston, making more than 100 trips between Texas and Maryland between 2016 and 2025, the indictment alleges.
It also accuses Abrego Garcia of transporting firearms and drugs. According to the indictment, one of Abrego Garcia’s co-conspirators belonging to the same ring was involved in the transportation of migrants whose tractor trailer overturned in Mexico in 2021, resulting in 50 deaths.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, called the criminal charges “fantastical” and a “kitchen sink” of allegations.
“This is all based on the statements of individuals who are currently either facing prosecution or in federal prison,” he said. “I want to know what they offered those people.”
The indictment also led to a high-level resignation in the federal prosecutor’s office in Nashville, with news that Ben Schrader, chief of the criminal division for the Middle District of Tennessee, had resigned in protest.
A 15-year veteran of the US Attorney’s Office, Schrader had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the administration’s actions, and the indictment of Abrego Garcia was “the final straw,” a person familiar with the situation told Reuters. Schrader declined comment.
Schrader had posted notice of his resignation on LinkedIn last month, around the time the indictment was filed under seal, but he did not give a reason.
Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15, more than two months before the charges were filed. He was briefly held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, despite a US immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent to El Salvador because he would likely be persecuted by gangs.
Bondi said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had agreed to return Abrego Garcia after US officials presented his government with an arrest warrant. “The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” she told a press conference.
In a court filing on Friday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to keep Abrego Garcia detained pending trial.
Citing an unnamed co-conspirator, prosecutors said Abrego Garcia joined MS-13 in El Salvador by murdering a rival gang member’s mother. The indictment does not charge Abrego Garcia with murder.
Abrego Garcia could face 10 years in prison for each migrant he is convicted of transporting, prosecutors said, a punishment that potentially could keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.
Tensions with the courts
The case has become a symbol of escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary, which has blocked a number of the president’s signature policies. More recently, the US Supreme Court has backed Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration in other cases.
After Abrego Garcia’s lawyers challenged the basis for his deportation, the US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return, with liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the government had cited no basis for what she called his “warrantless arrest.”
US District Judge Paula Xinis has opened a probe into what, if anything, the Trump administration had done to secure his return, after Abrego Garcia’s lawyers accused officials of stonewalling their requests for information. That led to concerns among Trump’s critics that his administration would openly defy court orders.
In a court filing on Friday, Justice Department lawyers told Xinis that Abrego Garcia’s return meant they were in compliance with the order to facilitate bringing him back to the US
Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia’s return did not mean the government was in compliance, asserting that his client must be placed in immigration proceedings before the same judge who handled his 2019 case.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic US senator from Maryland who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said in a statement on Friday that the Trump administration has “finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States.”
“The administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along,” Van Hollen said.
Russia launches major overnight attack on Kharkiv, killing one
- Kharkiv regional Governor Oleg Synegubov posted that seven people were wounded in the aerial assault
- On June 5, at least 18 people were wounded in strikes on the northeastern city
KYIV, Ukraine: Russia pummelled Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv before dawn on Saturday, launching its “most powerful attack” there since the start of the war, the mayor said, announcing one person killed.
In recent weeks, Russian troops have accelerated their advance while the latest negotiations in Istanbul failed to broker an end to the three-year war.
“Kharkiv is currently experiencing the most powerful attack since the beginning of the full-scale war,” Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov posted on Telegram, describing a barrage of missiles, drones and guided bombs striking simultaneously.
“As of now, at least 40 explosions have been heard in the city over the past hour and a half,” he wrote at 4:40 am (0140 GMT), adding that drones were still buzzing overhead. “The threat remains.”
A strike on a residential building in Kyivsky district killed one person, the mayor said.
Kharkiv regional Governor Oleg Synegubov posted that seven people were wounded in the aerial assault.
“Medical personnel are providing the necessary assistance,” he wrote.
On Thursday, at least 18 people, including four children, were wounded in strikes on the northeastern city that set an apartment bloc on fire.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that Moscow would respond to an audacious Ukrainian drone attack that destroyed several nuclear-capable military jets.
Ukraine has been pushing for an unconditional and immediate 30-day truce, issuing its latest proposal to Moscow at peace talks in Istanbul on Monday. But Russia has repeatedly rejected calls for such a ceasefire.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine destroyed, and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia invaded in February 2022.
