The Jim Bakker Show

Turkey steps up scrutiny on Muslim migrants from Russia

memorial for nightclub attack victims in Istanbul Turkey

By Maria Tsvetkova and Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has increased scrutiny of Russian-speaking Muslim communities in the past few months following a series of attacks blamed on Islamic State, a concrete example of the renewed relationship between the two countries.

Turkish police have raided the homes of Russian-speaking immigrants in Istanbul, detained many and expelled others, according to interviews with Russian Muslims living in the city. At least some of those targeted by Turkish authorities are known to be sympathetic to radical Islamist movements.

The security activity indicates that Russia and Turkey are sharing intelligence, part of a newly-forged alliance that has also seen Moscow and Ankara work together on a peace deal for Syria.

The cooperation comes as a resurgent Russia, already active in Ukraine and keen to boost its diplomatic influence in the Middle East, has been playing a greater role in Syria in the vacuum left by the United States under Barack Obama.

The roundups mark a change for Turkey, which has historically welcomed Muslims fleeing what they say is repression in countries including Russia, among them communities who fought government forces in Russia’s North Caucasus.

“Around ten of my acquaintances are in jail now,” said Magomed-Said Isayev, a Muslim from the Russian North Caucasus mountains, who moved to Istanbul three years ago.

He said for most of his time in Turkey he had no difficulties with the authorities. He said he had done nothing to harm Turkish citizens, but now he felt he was no longer safe from the threat of detention.

Turkey has been criticized by some Western allies for being too slow to stop the flow of foreign fighters crossing its borders to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in the early years of the jihadist group’s rise.

Turkey has rejected such suggestions, saying it needed greater intelligence sharing from its allies in order to intercept would-be jihadists. It has tightened its borders and last August launched a military campaign in Syria to push Islamic State away from Turkish territory.

ATTACKS ON TURKEY

Several recent Islamic State attacks in Turkey have been blamed on Russian-speaking attackers.

After a gun-and-bomb attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport that killed 45 people last June, police detained two suspects from the North Caucasus.

An Uzbek has been charged with a gun attack on an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day in which 39 people were killed.

“Before that, Turkey was very loyal to those who came from ex-Soviet countries,” said Russian Muslim activist Abdul-Alim Makhsutov, who has lived in Istanbul for several years.

“We have a long-established tradition of moving to Turkey for religious reasons and to escape pressure. The terrorist attacks tarnished this reputation.”

Turkey has provided sanctuary to Muslims from Russia since the 19th century, when the tsars conquered the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region. A new flow of migrants was prompted by two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s, and a crackdown on Islamists in the south of Russia that continues today.

A Turkish security source said operations had increased following the recent attacks and that raids in areas where foreigners were living had shown that militants were living in and hiding among those communities.

“Our operations are not limited to specific parts of Istanbul but all across the city. It is about foreigners without the necessary paperwork, passport or ID. We fight crime wherever it may be,” a Turkish police official told Reuters.

A Russian security official said Moscow has been sharing lists of suspicious Islamists with Ankara for two or three years, but Turkey has only started using the information in the wake of recent attacks, as it has become a clear target for jihadists.

Russia’s foreign ministry and Federal Security Service did not respond to Reuters questions about intelligence-sharing with Turkey. A Turkish intelligence source said they were cooperating more with Russia but declined to give further details.

KIDS BEHIND BARS

One 25-year-old woman from Russia’s Dagestan region, told Reuters she had lived openly in Turkey for three years. Until last October her family had experienced no problems, she said.

She said her family had bought property in Turkey and took care to renew their immigration documents, while her brother competed professionally for a Turkish wrestling team.

In October, masked policemen in flak jackets, conducting an anti-terror raid, smashed in the door of the family’s apartment, the woman said.

She spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because, she said, she did not want to endanger members of her family. During the interview, she wore a black chador with only her face uncovered and broke off the conversation to pray.

The family, including women and four children, as well as a female neighbor and her children, were held for several days in a police station, she said.

At first, the police locked them in a room with bars on the windows but after a while police had to leave the door open “because the children often went to the toilet,” the woman said.

The detainees were transferred to Istanbul police headquarters and after two weeks most of the women and children from her family, and the family of her neighbor, were released.

But she said her father, brother, sister-in-law and 10-month-old niece were still in detention. They had not been charged with any offence, the woman said, though Reuters was not able to independently verify that. Istanbul police said it could not comment on specific cases.

The Dagestani woman said that in detention she had been questioned about Islamic State, and whether her family was affiliated to it. She denied any links to the group.

Russians living in Turkey say that some detainees were told by the Turkish police that the action against them was based on information provided by Russia.

“I’ve heard they (Russian authorities) inform the Turks about two kinds of people, who may be involved in terrorist activities or have a shady reputation,” said Ali Evteyev, a former Russian mufti and now an Istanbul resident.

He said that often there is no prosecution, but it is made clear to them they are no longer welcome. “The Turks just don’t extend their residence permit. You have to go to jail and try to appeal, or leave.”

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

U.N. wants to negotiate with U.S., Canada to resettle Rohingya refugees

By Krishna N. Das

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – The United Nations’ refugee agency has asked Bangladesh to allow it to negotiate with the United States, Canada and some European countries to resettle around 1,000 Rohingya Muslims living in the South Asian nation, a senior official at the agency said.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya live in Bangladesh after fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar since the early 1990s, and their number has been swelled by an estimated 69,000 escaping an army crackdown in northern Rakhine State in recent months.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would push for resettlement of those most in need, despite growing resistance in some developed countries, particularly the United States under President Donald Trump, UNHCR’s Bangladesh representative, Shinji Kubo, told Reuters on Thursday.

“UNHCR will continue to work with the authorities concerned, including in the United States,” Kubo said.

“Regardless of the change in government or government policies, I think UNHCR has a clear responsibility to pursue a protection-oriented resettlement program.”

Kubo said 1,000 Rohingya refugees had been identified as priorities for resettlement on medical grounds or because they have been separated from their family members living abroad.

“Resettlement will always be a challenging thing because only a small number of resettlement opportunities are being allocated by the international community at the moment,” Kubo said in an interview. “But it’s our job to try to consult with respective countries based on the protection and humanitarian needs of these individuals.”

H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said the resettlement proposal was “unrealistic” due to reluctance in the United States and Europe to take further Muslim refugees.

Reuters reported this month that officials at an Australian immigration center in Papua New Guinea were increasing pressure on asylum seekers to return to their home countries voluntarily, including offering large sums of money, amid fears a deal for the United States to take refugees had fallen through.

Canada, Australia and the United States were the top providers of asylum to Rohingya Muslims who came to Bangladesh from Myanmar before Dhaka stopped the program around 2012. A Bangladesh government official said it was feared the program would encourage more people from Myanmar to use it as a transit country to seek asylum in the West.

Canada has said it would welcome those fleeing persecution, terror and war, after Trump put a four-month hold on allowing refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries into the United States, an order since suspended by a U.S. district judge.

HOPING FOR ACCESS

The UNHCR supports around 34,000 refugees living in two government-registered camps in the Bangladesh coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, but a greater number of Rohingya live in makeshift settlements nearby, unregistered and officially ineligible to receive international aid.

Kubo said he had asked Bangladesh to give the UN access to all the refugees who have recently arrived, adding that UNHCR and other international agencies were also willing to provide aid to poor Bangladeshis living near the refugee settlements to counter local resentment at the influx.

Hasina adviser Imam said providing aid to the new refugees and its citizens was the responsibility of the government.

Myanmar said late on Wednesday that a security operation that began after nine police officers were killed in attacks on border security posts on Oct. 9 had now ended.

A report released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Feb. 3 gave accounts of mass killings and gang rapes by troops during the operation, which it said probably constituted crimes against humanity.

Two UN sources have separately told Reuters that more than 1,000 Rohingya may have been killed in the crackdown.

Northern Rakhine has been locked down since October, and Myanmar has not said when aid groups or reporters might be allowed in.

“We’re now hoping for immediate access to the affected areas in northern Rakhine as soon as possible with our resources, our protection expertise,” Kubo said. “That will also have a positive impact on what is happening in Bangladesh at the moment.”

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in COX’S BAZAR; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Tunisia PM, in Germany, dismisses criticism over asylum deportations

Tunisia PM and Germany Chancellor to discuss refugee/migrant issue

BERLIN (Reuters) – Tunisia’s prime minister, in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected criticism on Tuesday that his country had been slow to take back failed asylum seekers from Europe, including Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri.

Youssef Chahed also rejected the idea of Tunisia setting up its own asylum centers to ease the burden on Europe.

Shortcomings in the system were exposed in December by the failure to deport Tunisian Islamic State supporter Amri, who was on a watch list and had been denied asylum six months before he killed 12 people by driving a truck through the market.

In an interview in Bild, Chahed said cooperation with Germany on asylum seekers was functioning well.

“The biggest problem for Europe is refugees who go from Libya to Italy,” he said, adding that German authorities needed to provide the correct paperwork to be able to send back failed asylum seekers to Tunisia.

It was largely a delay in getting the right documents, including identity papers, that prevented Amri from being repatriated. He was shot dead by Italian police in Milan on Dec. 23.

“Illegal immigrants who use false papers sometimes make things difficult and prolong the process,” he said.

Asked about the possibility of Tunisia building refugee centers with European help, Chahed said:

“Tunisia is a very young democracy, I don’t think that it can function or that we have capacity to create refugee camps,” he said, adding that the main focus should be finding a solution with Libya.

Merkel has been weakened by her open-door migrant policy which allowed more than a million refugees into Germany in the last two years. She is now trying to show voters she is beefing up security and cracking down on illegal migrants before a national election due in September.

Merkel needs the cooperation of countries like Tunisia to speed up deportations. She also plans to give police greater powers to detain rejected asylum seekers seen as a terrorist threat and to set up ‘federal departure centers’ near airports to house rejected applicants ahead of their deportation.

Chahed visited the site of the December attack by Amri in western Berlin and laid flowers there.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Gareth Jones)

German agency working to clear backlog of 435,000 asylum cases

rejected asylum seeker returns to middle east

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s migration agency hopes to clear a backlog of 435,000 asylum cases within months, the organization’s new director said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday.

Jutta Cordt, who took over as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) this month, told the newspaper her top priorities were to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, deepen integration, and step up deportations of those whose applications were denied.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring,” the paper quoted Cordt as saying.

She told the paper the agency had received 40 million euros ($42.57 million) in additional funding in 2017 to work on repatriation processing and wanted to start that process sooner.

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially,” Cordt told the newspaper.

More than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany since the beginning of 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. Polls show that migration will be a key issue in September’s national election.

The issue of repatriation – and better identification of refugees – has taken on new urgency after a spate of Islamist attacks carried out by failed asylum seekers, including Anis Amri, the 24-year-old Tunisian man who rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Amri, who was shot dead in Italy, had lived in Germany under at least 14 different names, police have said.

Cordt told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper in a separate interview that local authorities should be taking fingerprints from migrants to better track their identities and avoid multiple asylum applications.

Migrants are currently fingerprinted by police if they cross the German border without a valid passport, then again in a migrant intake center and for a third time when they file an asylum application.

BAMF has said that it has now biometric data on all migrants, but it is not clear how many multiple applications for asylum benefits have been filed.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)

U.S. must go on taking refugees, EU migration chief to say in Washington

EU dude for migration saying that the U.S. needs to take migrants/refugees

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s top migration official will tell the new U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in Washington on Wednesday that the United States cannot shut its doors on refugees despite President Donald Trump’s orders.

The EU’s migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, will be the first senior Brussels official to visit Washington since Trump’s inauguration more than two weeks ago.

Much of this time has been dominated by uproar over Trump’s decision to stop allowing refugees into the United States and barring almost any travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, a move he said was needed to ensure his nation’s safety.

The EU is also trying to curb immigration after some 1.6 million people arrived in the bloc in 2014-2016, an uncontrolled influx that caught it unprepared, triggered bitter political disputes between member states and raised security concerns.

The bloc has resorted to tightening its borders, rejecting labor migrants more stringently and tightening asylum rules for refugees. These measures, however, do not go anywhere near Trump’s ban on refugees, which the EU has criticized.

“Refugee resettlement is a global responsibility and it cannot be shouldered by just a handful of countries,” Avramopoulos told Reuters on the eve of his talks with Kelly.

“Nations with a long experience in this field, having hosted millions of migrants and refugees, I hope will continue playing their responsible leading role,” he said in emailed comments.

Should the United States rescind more permanently the international law obligation to help people fleeing war or persecution, it would leave the EU under even more pressure.

Separately on Tuesday, a European court cast doubt on the bloc’s strategy to deal with the migration crisis, by saying EU countries cannot refuse entry to people at risk of torture or inhuman treatment. [nL5N1FS27L]

Avramopoulos and Kelly will also discuss security during their first face-to-face meeting that comes at a delicate time for the transatlantic relationship, with the EU worrying Trump could turn his back on America’s European allies.

“Democracy, equality, the rule of law – these are all values we share with the US. Of course our openness should not come at the expense of our security – but our security objectives should never come at the expense of our fundamental values of openness and tolerance either,” Avramopoulos said.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Alison Williams)

Worried about Trump, asylum seekers walk cold road to Canada

By Rod Nickel and Anna Mehler Paperny

WINNIPEG, Manitoba/BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Refugees in the United States fearing a worsening climate of xenophobia in the wake of a divisive U.S. presidential campaign are flocking to Canada in growing numbers.

Manitoba’s Welcome Place refugee agency helped 91 claimants between Nov. 1 and Jan. 25 – more than the agency normally sees in a year. Most braved the freezing prairie winter to walk into Canada.

“We haven’t had something before like this,” said Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, which has helped refugees get medical attention and housing. “We don’t know what to do.”

A temporary restraining order by a U.S. judge of President Donald Trump’s executive order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban has provided a reprieve for refugees trying to come to the United States.

But Canadian advocacy organizations are bracing for a greater influx of asylum-seekers, driven in part by the contrast between the ruling Liberal government’s acceptance of Syrian refugees in Canada with Trump’s anti-foreigner rhetoric.

“They will make a dash for Canada, whether they are going to go through cold weather to die or not,” said Abdikheir Ahmed, a Somali immigrant in Manitoba’s capital Winnipeg who helps refugees make claims.

Since late summer, 27 men from Ghana walked to Manitoba from the United States, Yeboah said. Two lost all their fingers to frostbite in December and nearly froze to death.

More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Over 2,000 more entered “irregularly” during a similar time period, without official authorization, such as across unmonitored fields.

Four hundred and thirty asylum seekers crossed Manitoba’s border irregularly in the first nine months of 2016-17, up from 340 the entire previous year, CBSA said.

“The U.S. presidential campaign, putting undocumented immigrants and refugees in the spotlight, terrified them,” said Ghezae Hagos, counselor at Welcome Place. “The election and inauguration of Mr. Trump appears to be the final reason for those who came mostly last month.”

In Quebec, 1,280 refugee claimants irregularly entered between April 2016 and January 2017, triple the previous year’s total.

In British Columbia and Yukon, 652 people entered Canada irregularly in 2016, more than double the previous year.

More of these people would enter at border crossings, advocates say, if Canada didn’t have a policy of turning many of them away when they do. The 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires people to apply for asylum in the first of the two countries they arrive in. Advocates argue the agreement inadvertently encourages people to dangerously sneak into Canada and make a claim rather than be rebuffed at the border.

If the government doesn’t abandon this agreement, they say, it could find itself in court.

The number of refugee applicants crossing the land border under exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement has risen by 16 percent in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same time period the year before.

In Buffalo, New York, hundreds of people are streaming through Vive, a shelter that helps refugee applicants to Canada.

Vive’s client numbers, including long-time U.S. residents and refugees, spiked last summer and have stayed consistently high since – two or three times what they’d normally see a year or two ago. Vive’s Canadian service manager Mariah Walker expects to see even more.

“Clients are definitely spooked by (Trump’s) executive orders,” said Walker.

CANADIAN WELCOME

Prime Minister Trudeau took office in 2015 on a commitment to admit tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

“While the majority of the world is turning their backs and building walls, the fact that Trudeau took this bold humanitarian goal put [Canada] on the map,” said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services at Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia.

But this year, Canada plans to take only 7,500 government-assisted refugees – less than half last year’s number. People eager to sponsor refugees find themselves waiting years to do so.

Anisa Hussein, 20, and Lyaan Mohammed, 19, hired a smuggler to take them from Somalia to Minneapolis in August, where they planned to settle in a large Somali community. But Trump’s anti-refugee rhetoric frightened them into traveling to Manitoba days later.

“(Trump) said he would turn away the refugees and we would go back to Somalia,” said Mohammed, peeking timidly from behind the hood of a thick parka she received in Canada for winter. “We were so scared. We just wanted to be [in] a safe place.”

They rode a bus and taxi to North Dakota, then walked for hours into Emerson, Manitoba and filed refugee claims.

They might have been able to cross at a port of entry if Canada’s policies were different, says Canadian Council for Refugees executive director Janet Dench.

Her organization, as well as Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, are demanding Canada abandon the Safe Third Country Agreement: Trump’s United States is no safe haven, they argue.

The government is standing by the agreement, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told the House of Commons last week.

If the government doesn’t act, Dench said, her group will sue.

“We are talking about people’s charter rights. … So, yes, we would expect to see something in the courts.”

For a graphic on Csnadian refugee claims, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2keMDuH

(Additional writing by Andrea Hopkins; additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver, editing by Edward Tobin)

Stranded migrants in Greek camp protest over living conditions

Refugees and migrants block entrance of refugee camp

ATHENS (Reuters) – A group of migrants and refugees on Monday blocked a Greek minister from entering the former Athens airport terminal, where they have been stranded for months, in a protest against their living conditions.

Dozens of protesters, among them many children, rallied outside a gate chanting “Go, Go!” and “Liar!” to Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas. One migrant handed him a crying child as he reached the chained gate.

The government wants to clear out the entire compound, which consists of venues used in the 2004 Olympic Games and the former Athens airport, as Greece has agreed to lease it to private investors under its bailout program. About 1,600 people, mostly Afghans, are camped in these facilities.

About 600 people live at the former arrivals’ terminal where Monday’s protest took place.

The protest, a day after local media reported that a group of migrants were going on hunger strike, was brief. Mouzalas said some migrants had tried to block food distribution at the camp on Sunday but the reports that they were going on hunger strike were unfounded.

“I completely understand their pain and hardship. We are trying to ease it as much as we can,” Mouzalas told reporters.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants have been stranded in Greece from border shutdowns throughout the Balkans, halting the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Legal battles to test Trump and his immigration ban

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s temporary immigration ban faced on Monday the first of several crucial legal hurdles that could determine whether he can push through the most controversial and far reaching policy of his first two weeks in office.

The government has a deadline to justify the executive order temporarily barring entry of people from seven mostly Muslim countries and the entry of refugees after a federal judge in Seattle blocked it with a temporary restraining order on Friday.

The uncertainty caused by a judge’s stay of the ban has opened a window for travelers from the seven affected countries to enter the United States.

Trump has reacted with attacks on the federal judge and then the wider court system which he blames for hampering his efforts to restrict immigration, a central promise of the Republican’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to use Trump’s attacks on the judiciary to raise questions about the independence of his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over the weekend denied the Trump administration’s request for an immediate stay of the federal judge’s temporary restraining order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban.

But the court said it would consider the government’s request after receiving more information.

The government has until 3 p.m. PST (2300 GMT) on Monday to submit additional legal briefs to the appeals court justifying Trump’s executive order. Following that the court is expected to act quickly, and a decision either way may ultimately result in the case reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

Top technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft banded together with nearly 100 companies on Sunday to file a legal brief opposing Trump’s immigration ban, arguing that it “inflicts significant harm on American business.”

Noting that “immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list,” the brief said Trump’s order “represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years.”

The controversial executive order also “inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result,” the brief added.

Trump, who during his campaign called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, has repeatedly vowed to reinstate the Jan. 27 travel ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day bar on all refugees in the name of protecting the United States from Islamist militants.

His critics have said the measures are discriminatory, unhelpful and legally dubious.

Ten former U.S. national security and foreign policy officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, filed overnight a declaration in the court case against the executive order arguing the ban serves no national security purposes.

The declaration was signed by former secretaries of state including John Kerry, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and former CIA Directors Michael Hayden and Michael Morell.

Bob Ferguson, the Washington State attorney general who filed the Seattle lawsuit, said he was confident of victory.

“We have a checks and balance system in our country, and the president does not have totally unfettered discretion to make executive orders as he chooses,” he told NBC News’ “Today” show. “In the courtroom, it’s not the loudest voice that prevails… it’s the Constitution.”

On Sunday, Trump broadened his Twitter attacks on U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who issued the temporary stay on Friday, to include the “court system.” Trump a day earlier derided Robart, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as a “so-called judge.”

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “If something happens blame him and court system.”

Trump did not elaborate on what threats the country potentially faced.

It is unusual for a sitting president to attack a member of the judiciary. Vice President Mike Pence defended Trump, even as other Republicans urged the businessman-turned-politician to avoid firing such fusillades against the co-equal judicial branch of government, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check on the power of the presidency and Congress.

Democrats, still smarting from Republicans’ refusal last year to allow the Senate to consider former Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of appeals court Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, have seized on Trump’s attacks to question his nomination last week of Gorsuch.

“With each action testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to serve on the Supreme Court,” Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said in a statement. “His ability to be an independent check will be front and center throughout the confirmation process.”

Republicans hope to swiftly confirm Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative appeals court judge tapped by Trump to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly a year ago.

(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama)

Peru to give visas to thousands of crisis-weary Venezuelans

Peru's president in press conference saying venezuelans will get visas

LIMA (Reuters) – Peru has created a temporary visa that will allow thousands of Venezuelans to work and study in the country, part of a migratory policy that aims to “build bridges” and “not walls,” the Andean nation’s interior ministry said.

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s government issued 20 temporary visas to Venezuelan migrants in Peru this week. Kuczysnki, a centrist, has expressed concern about shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela, mired in a deep economic crisis.

Some 6,000 Venezuelans are expected to receive the permit, which will allow them to study, work and receive health services in Peru for a year, the interior ministry said late on Thursday.

Peru has enjoyed nearly two decades of uninterrupted economic growth and single-digit inflation, a sharp contrast to socialist-led Venezuela, where the ranks of the poor have swollen in recent years.

“We want to offer a different message on migration than what’s offered in other places. We want to build bridges that unite us and not walls to separate us,” Interior Minister Carlos Basombrio said in a statement.

The comment appeared to be a thinly veiled shot at the new U.S. government, which is traditionally an ally of Peru.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a temporary entry ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, and insisted that Mexico will pay for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to curb illegal immigration.

Kuczynski, a former Wall Street banker and free-trade advocate who took office last year, has previously compared Trump’s proposed border wall to the Berlin Wall, and said he would oppose it in the United Nations.

Kuczynski and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last week that they would stand with Mexico and seek to strengthen regional trade, in the wake of rising tensions between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump.

(Reporting by Mitra Taj; Editing by Paul Simao)

U.S. moves to resume admitting refugees, including Syrians

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department on Saturday moved to begin admitting refugees, including Syrians, as soon as Monday after a federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration temporary ban on refugee admissions.An email from the State Department’s refugee office reviewed by Reuters Saturday said the U.S. government is working with its legal team and interagency and overseas partners to comply with the ruling.

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order had suspended refugee admissions for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees but U.S. Judge James Robart in Seattle on Friday blocked the president’s order.

A U.S. State Department official told Reuters on Saturday that officials “expect some refugees to arrive Monday.”

The U.S. instructed the International Organization for Migration “to rebook refugees of all nationalities, including Syrians, who were” to schedule to arrive since the Trump’s order was signed, the email said.

“We are focusing on booking refugee travel through February 17. We are asking that arrivals resume this Monday, the first normal travel day of the week, if possible. We are aware that some refugees may not be ready to depart on short notice,” the email said.

A United Nations spokesman, Leonard Doyle, told the New York Times about 2,000 refugees were ready to travel.

Refugees do not usually enter on weekends, a U.S. official said, as the department hews to a strict set of rules on how their admissions are processed.

Other travelers from seven Muslim majority countries affected by President Donald Trump’s week-old curb on immigration can rework their flights after the judge’s order, as long as they have valid visas.

Refugees fleeing war, hunger and persecution have less autonomy. Advocates working on their behalf urged the government to move quickly on admitting them.

International Refugee Assistance Project Director Becca Heller called for “the instant resumption of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to immediately take the most vulnerable refugees out of harm’s way.”

During the week of the ban, the government admitted 843 refugees – but no Syrian refugees, government figures show. Officials previously told Reuters that they were “in transit” and had already been cleared for resettlement before the ban took effect.

For refugee families, they are trying to keep expectations in check and hope they do not end up back where they started.

Ayham Oubeid, a Syrian living in Cleveland, has been waiting for over a year for his brother George’s family to come to the United States as refugees. His brother, who has health issues, is living in Dubai on a work visa that covers him, his six-year-old daughter and five-months pregnant wife.

George left his job and moved the family out of their apartment when he was told they would be resettled in the United States on Feb. 13. But the family’s plane tickets were canceled when Trump announced the temporary ban. Without George’s job, the family could lose the work visa and be sent back to Syria in the midst of its deadly civil war.

Upon hearing of the judge’s ruling from Friday, Oubeid called George. He was careful not to be too hopeful, knowing the judge’s order could be overturned.

“I don’t want to get excited. I don’t want my brother to get excited. Because it was hard for him when he lost everything and was told he couldn’t come,” Oubeid said.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards and David Shepardson in Washington, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Mary Milliken, Dan Grebler and Diane Craft)

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