Adeel Hassan

They had turned off the road into the United States, across an international border.

Border Patrol officials detained the two couples and their three young children, who were held in American custody for nearly two weeks. They were deported Wednesday after spending the past 11 nights in a Pennsylvania detention center, said a lawyer for the families.

“This is how the scariest experience of our entire lives started,” Eileen Connors, one of the detained Britons, wrote in a sworn statement filed to the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. “We will never forget; we will be traumatized for the rest of our lives by what the United States government has done to us.”

According to Connors, her husband, David, and his cousin were arrested despite their protests that they did not intend to cross the border. They asked if they could turn around, she wrote, but the officer said they would all be held.

A spokesman with U.S. Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday that the vehicle was seen on surveillance video on Avenue 0 in British Columbia at about 9 p.m. on Oct. 2. The official said the vehicle then crossed the border “by slowly and deliberately driving through a ditch onto Boundary Road in Lynden, Washington.”

Fifteen minutes later, the driver and six passengers — including 2-year-old twins and a 3-month-old — were arrested. The spokesman said record checks showed that two of the four adults had been denied travel authorization to the United States.

Canada refused to allow their return, the spokesman said, and the British Consulate could not be reached. Connors said they had a visa waiver, which entitled them to travel to the United States for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days without a visa, although they were not aiming to visit the United States that night.

“They didn’t want to be here,” said their lawyer, Bridget Cambria. “This is the only family that has come from across the border who wants to leave. Normally, people who want to come to the United States are in this facility.”

On their first night in detention, Connors wrote, she and her baby were kept in “a very cold” female-only cell at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Washington. She put her son on top of her and tried to rest. “It was futile because he kept sliding off of me, and I just could not let him lie on the disgusting floor,” she wrote.

Immigration officers told them the next day that they would be released if they provided contact information for a family member in the United States who could become their sponsor, she said. But after they gave the name of a relative, she wrote, immigration officials said there was a change in plans.

They were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote Connors, 24. David Connors, 30, was dropped off at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, while she and her son were taken to a Red Roof Inn in Seattle. They were in customs custody for a much shorter period then most border crossers, Cambria said. “They had an understanding of the language and their rights and were outspoken,” she said, adding that many others do not have the same luxury.

The next morning they were put on a flight to Pennsylvania, where they arrived at the Berks Family Residential Center in rural Leesport, she wrote. The other adults and their infant twins were taken to the same place, Cambria said.

The baby had not completed his immunizations, making him especially vulnerable to germs and contagious diseases, Cambria wrote in a letter to Homeland Security, adding that he had not yet seen a pediatrician.

“We all had to shower when we arrived, but because he is too small to take into a shower, I had to wash him off in the office on a sofa, using a washcloth and soap that I had with me,” Connors wrote in her sworn statement. “They offered me a baby bathtub to use, but it was filthy dirty and had broken bits, so I refused to use it.”

She wrote that the temperature dropped to 50 degrees at night and that the staff refused to turn the heater on. On Friday, the baby woke up with a swollen, teary eye, and his skin was rough and blotchy, she wrote. Officials did offer to remove the baby, she wrote: “If we wanted, we could sign papers to allow him to be separated from us and taken to some other facility.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not return a request for comment. About 4,300 people were arrested at the Canadian border in 2018, and about 3,000 in 2017.

There are eight families with children under the age of 5 being held at the Berks center, said Jasmine Rivera, a community organizer who is the coordinator for the Shut Down Berks Coalition. The center is run by the county under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and houses about 90 parents and children.

“It is undoubtedly the worst experience we have ever lived through,” Connors wrote. “No one should have to suffer this kind of treatment. This would never happen in the United Kingdom to U.S. citizens, or anyone else, because people there are treated with dignity.”

This article originally appeared in

British Family Says One Wrong Turn Led to ICE Detention Nightmare

Seven British citizens said they were vacationing in Canada when they had to swerve to avoid an animal, not an uncommon occurrence in rural British Columbia. But doing that proved dangerous in its own way.

The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, made four claims: that Harvard had intentionally discriminated against Asian Americans, used race as a predominant factor in admissions decisions, used racial balancing and considered the race of applicants without first exhausting race-neutral alternatives.

In her ruling, Judge Allison D. Burroughs detailed in a 130-page document why she believed the Harvard admissions process was not only fair but committed to attracting applicants “who are exceptional across multiple dimensions.”

— An applicant’s race was ‘never viewed as a negative.’

Burroughs acknowledged that the Harvard admissions process was “not perfect,” but that when the university considered race, it did so only to benefit applicants’ chances — as a “plus” factor — not to hurt them.

Harvard admissions officers are allowed to take students’ race directly into account only when assigning their “overall rating,” at the end of the process, when race is one of several factors on the table. The magnitude of the plus factors that Harvard gives for race, the judge said, are modest and never a “defining feature” of applications. On the whole, “race has no specified value in the admissions process and is never viewed as a negative attribute,” the judge wrote.

The plaintiffs had argued that Harvard had given considerable weight to applicants’ race, violating strict guidance by the Supreme Court.

In 2018, Harvard provided its admissions officers with more explicit guidelines on when and when not to use race in reviewing applications and during interviews.

— There was no pattern in stereotyping Asian Americans.

Asian Americans have long been dogged by stereotypes that categorize them as “quiet,” “hardworking,” “bland” and “not exciting” — stereotypes that the plaintiffs said appeared in Asian American admissions files.

But Burroughs’ ruling noted that the plaintiffs did not show that any applicant had been “referred to by these types of descriptors because of their race or that there was any sort of systemic reliance on racial stereotypes.”

She also pointed out that African American and Hispanic applicants had been described as “quiet,” “shy” and “understated” by admissions officers.

The plaintiffs had argued that Asian American applicants scored consistently lower than other races on their so-called personal ratings, a subjective measure that takes into account a student’s background and character. The judge recognized that there was a disparity but said that it was “small” and reflected neither intentional discrimination nor a process that failed to take unintended discrimination seriously.

— ‘Sparse country’ disparities did not sway the judge.

Students for Fair Admissions pointed out that in some of its search and recruitment efforts, Harvard lowered the required test scores for students from “sparse country” — rural areas with historically low numbers of Harvard admits — who identified as white, other or unidentified, but it did not lower the score for students from the same states who identified as Asian American.

The judge dismissed the argument that this was proof the Asian American population at Harvard was being intentionally suppressed. She pointed out that in more urban states where Asian American and white students had similar backgrounds, Harvard had identified Asian Americans for recruitment based on their lower ACT scores.

“Overall, the inconsistencies in the search criteria do not seem to be linked to efforts to advantage or disadvantage any particular racial group, and it was unclear from the testimony at trial whether these variations were accidental or intentional,” she wrote.

— ‘Race-neutral alternatives’ are not sufficient.

Burroughs accepted Harvard’s argument that it had adequately studied and exhausted race-neutral ways to maintain diversity on campus.

Some race-neutral alternatives, like admitting only students at the top of their classes, were simply unworkable, the judge said. To admit every applicant with a perfect grade-point average, Harvard would need to expand its class size by approximately 400% and then reject every applicant with an imperfect grade-point average without regard to other factors, including extracurricular activities and life experiences.

The plaintiff had put forth other ideas, including considering socioeconomic background instead of race and eliminating strong admissions preferences for so-called ALDC students — athletes, legacies (or children of alumni), those on the dean’s and director’s interest lists, and the children of faculty or staff.

The judge was skeptical that a socioeconomic approach would be truly race-neutral.

On ALDC students, the judge was somewhat deferential. Removing these preferences “would improve socioeconomic diversity,” she wrote, but have limited effect on racial diversity and come at a steep cost to the university’s athletics, donor relations and student life. Reasonable minds could differ on the importance of these things, she said, but the court “takes no position on these issues other than to note that these are topics best left to schools to figure out for themselves.”

— The admissions process at Harvard remains flawed.

While the judge found there was no intentional discrimination, the admissions process could likely be improved, she wrote.

Burroughs made note of implicit bias a number of times in her decision, saying that it was conceivable that the unintentional biases of admissions officers — and the guidance counselors and teachers who write recommendations — could explain some of the statistical disparities between Asian American students and other races.

But the likely effects of unintentional bias, while regrettable, were very slight, the judge said, and could not be totally eliminated in a process that requires judgments about individuals.

Harvard has made some changes since the plaintiff brought the lawsuit. The admissions procedures for the current freshman class explicitly directed officers that they “should not take an applicant’s race or ethnicity into account in making any of the ratings other than the overall rating” and that for the overall rating the “consideration of race or ethnicity may be considered only as one factor among many.”

The personal rating criteria has also been changed. Officers are instead asked to consider “qualities of character” such as “courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles,” “leadership,” “maturity,” “genuineness, selflessness, humility,” “resiliency,” “judgment,” “citizenship,” and “spirit and camaraderie with peers.”

“Harvard perhaps should have instituted an explicit written policy stating which ratings could take race into account before 2018, but that error has now been remedied,” Burroughs wrote. She also wrote that the process would likely benefit from implicit bias trainings for admissions officers.

5 Takeaways From the Harvard Admissions Ruling

In one of the most closely watched lawsuits concerning affirmative action and higher education, a federal judge Tuesday ruled that Harvard could continue considering race in its admissions process in pursuit of a diverse class.

The plan would go well beyond gun-control measures like “red flag” laws and expanded background checks, which have been openly discussed after 31 people were killed in recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas.

Most, if not all, of the proposals in the Parkland group’s “Peace Plan for a Safer America” would face opposition from the gun lobby and its supporters in the federal government, who would be likely to argue that the measures would impinge on Second Amendment rights.

The student activists, who organized and led the March for Our Lives — their first act of protest — are calling for a comprehensive plan that is as sweeping and demanding as the Green New Deal, the resolution introduced in Congress this year that charts a grand plan for tackling climate change.

“We know this seems ambitious, given Washington’s apathy to decades of bloodshed in our schools, neighborhoods, and even our houses of worship,” David Hogg, 19, a Parkland survivor and a founder of March for Our Lives, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning. “It’s okay to disagree with us — but we know video games aren’t to blame.”

The plan’s major proposals include:

— A national licensing and gun registry.

— A ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

— A mandatory gun buyback program for assault-style weapons, and a voluntary buyback for other firearms.

— A limit of one firearm purchase a month per person.

— The establishment of a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the White House.

— Raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21, from 18.

— A new multistep gun licensing system, overseen by Washington, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. Licenses would need to be renewed annually.

— A Peace Corps-style program that would pay for young people to work on gun violence prevention for a year in communities and nonprofit groups around the country.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/march-for-our-lives-gun-control.html" id="a3487cbf-d242-39aa-ab94-566058b4f346">The New York Times</a>.

March for Our Lives, a group led by student survivors of last year’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, unveiled an ambitious gun control platform on Wednesday that would ban assault-style weapons, raise the minimum age for buying firearms, create a national gun registry and require gun owners to pay for new licenses each year.

Parkland Survivors Unveil Plan on Guns

The sweep of the Parkland group’s plan is indicative of how young progressive activists have rejected the incremental approach seen in past legislation. “Young people are demanding bolder solutions,” said Brent J. Cohen of the Center for American Progress. “We are sick of being ignored by Congress, and done begging for half-measure solutions.”

The backbone of the plan was drawn up during a two-month bus tour last summer, when the group traveled to more than 50 cities and towns in 20 states to meet with local activists, hold rallies and register voters. They gathered ideas as they went.

“We tried to be as diverse and broad as possible for how we built this plan,” said Charlie Mirsky, 19, one of the group’s founders. “We reached out to students, experts, every kind of demographic possible to make sure that we had the most comprehensive plan.”

At least 40 people worked on the plan directly, according to Ariel Hobbs, a member of the group’s student executive board. They collaborated through phone calls, in shared documents online, and face to face at a summit meeting last month in Houston.

Like the Green New Deal, the Parkland group’s proposal is a road map for legislative action rather than the legislation itself. “This isn’t a bill; it’s a plan,” said Mirsky, who has led the group’s lobbying program in Washington.

Hobbs added that lawmakers “can take the parts they want.”

“It’s not our job to pitch what they want to implement,” she said, “but we’re offering solutions to every single avenue of gun violence.”

The group never seriously considered a more gradual approach. “We kind of decided, at the end of the day, what are we doing if we’re not pushing for the strongest possible plan we can have?” Mirsky said. “We want to save the most lives that we can. We didn’t have a real choice.”

Hobbs, a student at the University of Houston, added: “There are always going to be people who say that we should wait, that we should take things slow. But while they’re saying that, people are getting killed.”

Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said that the proposed mandatory buybacks would be a huge logistical challenge but that much of the plan was feasible, particularly establishing a director of gun violence prevention.

“Gun violence takes many forms that are relevant to multiple agencies,” he said, adding that “you would want someone to direct and coordinate efforts.”

The Parkland group is hoping its plan will influence the political debate around the 2020 presidential election, and is asking each candidate to endorse it. It has also set a goal of mailing voter registration cards to all Americans when they turn 18.

After the shootings earlier this month in El Paso and Dayton, President Donald Trump vowed to pursue “background checks like we’ve never had before.”

But on Sunday, after discussions in Bedminster, New Jersey, with gun rights advocates — including Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association — Trump appeared to walk that promise back, saying that “people don’t realize we have very strong background checks right now” and that this is “a very, very big mental health problem.”

Trump spoke again with LaPierre on Tuesday, and the president echoed the gun rights group’s talking points from the Oval Office, saying that Democrats wanted to take radical steps in violation of the Second Amendment.

Despite political opposition, surveys show that Americans are coalescing in their support for some type of legislative action.

Though the vast majority of voters support universal background checks, NRA officials say they would be a first step toward large-scale gun licensing that would warp the Second Amendment into “a European-style privilege reserved for wealthy elite who can afford to comply with burdensome, bureaucratic procedures to acquire a firearm.”

And though polls find that a majority of Americans support a new ban on assault-style weapons, Trump, speaking in Dayton two weeks ago, said that “there is no political appetite” for such a ban.

Other gun control proponents spoke approvingly of the Parkland group’s plan. “We welcome any and all ideas to the table when it comes to saving lives,” said Stacey Radnor of Everytown for Gun Safety, a national group that advocates tougher gun laws. “Student activists across the country have brought tremendous energy and leadership to the gun violence prevention movement.”

The proposal comes at a time when there is growing tension among local, state and federal officials over gun laws, and who should have the right to set them.

Hollas is believed to be the first person in the country to be given a national ecclesiastical role of this kind. And the choice of the hymn was a deliberate underlining of what she sees as a desperate need: to do more than react to the latest mass shooting with an offer of benedictions. That, she said, is not sufficient in a country where 40,000 people are killed by guns each year.

“The saying ‘thoughts and prayers’ has been co-opted by the gun lobby to keep the church from taking action so they can increase their profits,” Hollas, who was installed in her new role by the Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this month, said in a recent interview. “While all that we do as Christians should be rooted in worship and prayer, it should not stay there. It is like breathing — worship and prayer is the in-breath, and action is the out-breath.”

A Texas native who describes herself as “no stranger” to gun culture, Hollas, 52, said she was committed to ensuring that Americans from all sides of the gun debate stop talking past one another. “No matter where you fall on this issue,” she said, “the important thing is that we remain in conversation with one another.”

From her place of ministry, Retreat House Spirituality Center in Richardson, Texas, Hollas will oversee about 800 supporters of gun violence prevention in all 50 states.

We asked her about her role and what she hoped to accomplish. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

What is your background? And what makes you ready for this role?

I grew up in Plainview, Texas, where guns and hunting are part of the culture. My father owns multiple guns and property specifically for family hunting trips. My in-laws live on a farm in South Texas where shooting guns would often happen on a weekend trip. This background is what enables me to connect to gun owners.

I first went to seminary because I felt called to the ministry of spiritual direction, which is a ministry of listening. I feel this is what is needed most right now. We have lost our ability to listen to one another, to our bodies and, therefore, to God. Violence is the result of this separation. Spiritual practices can heal, repair and restore us to right relationship and thus lead us away from violence and toward peace and love.

What exactly will you do in your new role?

My role is to encourage the church at every level to become informed and active in preventing gun violence, to provide pastoral care for victims and survivors, and to seek a spiritual response to resist violence and seek Christ.

I serve as a resource and an encourager and connector for pastors, elders and others in the church so they are empowered to prevent gun violence. I have the best role, as I spend my days talking to so many different people all across the country who are committed to ending gun violence

Do you expect to face resistance?

I expect resistance because when you talk about guns, you are tapping into the part of the brain that protects one’s identity. Guns and identity are linked for many people; that is why I have developed a spiritual practice that helps us shift our bodies from fight-or-flight mode and teaches us to welcome and hold with compassion all the sensations that arise in our bodies. When we connect with one another on the level of personal experience, it leads to empathy. Establishing empathy is key in peacemaking.

Do you feel daunted at all?

The church has always been political — Jesus was executed by the government for speaking against its violence and against the religious authorities that aligned themselves with this unjust system. That is still the role of the church today: to speak a word of peace into a world of violence.

I live in Texas, and I became involved in this movement because of the passing of a law that allowed guns on college campuses. My daughter was a student at Texas Tech at the time, and I saw how her friends and roommates viewed the law as an invitation to become armed.

Being familiar with guns, I knew from what they were saying that they did not have a realistic understanding of how a gun worked. They basically assumed that having a gun would turn them into Jason Bourne, ready to defeat any bad guy that came their way, but the reality is having a gun increases one’s chance of being shot.

And while legislation is an important part of the work, it is not what gets me up in the morning. I am more interested in creating the cultural change that is needed along with legislation.

What can other church congregations do?

There are so many churches that are doing great things that it is hard to pick just one. The one that is most on my heart today is one I am working with in Texas, St. Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson. It is a congregation that has both far-left liberals and gun-loving Trump supporters worshipping together Sunday mornings.

Starting in September, this congregation will engage in a five-week study. Each week’s lesson will be led by a different member of the congregation so that a variety of folks will feel comfortable participating and to ensure that no one person’s individual agenda dominates the discussion.

When we can move beyond the rhetoric, we find that no Christian is a proponent of gun violence. Churches have been afraid to talk about gun violence because they are worried it will cause people to leave, but we are called to shine light into darkness.

Mainline denominations are in a unique position to be leaders in bringing conversations about gun violence out of the shadows, as our congregations are one of the few places where people of different political persuasions still gather together voluntarily.

And I know of no congregation that is not touched by gun violence. Often, these folks feel they must grieve in silence. When people think gun violence prevention, they think about legislation, criminal activity and mass shootings, but most gun deaths are suicides.

I also think there is lots to learn about white Americans’ obsession with guns and how that is impacting the violence in communities of color. It is our responsibility, as a mostly white church, to be actively engaged in dismantling white supremacy and creating racial equity.

Why do you remain hopeful?

I entered seminary thinking I would just take two classes and get my diploma in the art of spiritual direction and that would be it. But God kept leading me toward ordained ministry, which didn’t make much sense at the time as I didn’t feel called to lead a congregation.

In fact, I was thinking about withdrawing my candidacy for ordination when the NRA came to Dallas last year for their annual convention. I was blessed to be part of a prayer vigil hosted by a group of interfaith leaders, which ran from the beginning of the convention to the end. It was during this vigil, on the steps of Dallas City Hall, that I gained clarity on my call to speak the word of God into the violence of the world.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/minister-gun-violence-church.html" id="3a1d8393-7604-3f94-a3e0-4dab9cf2b7cc">The New York Times</a>.

A Ministry Pushing Beyond 'Thoughts and Prayers'

To the strains of the hymn “If We Just Talk of Thoughts and Prayers,” the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States ordained The Rev. Deanna Hollas as its first minister of gun violence prevention this month.

'Thoughts and Prayers' Aren't Enough, America's First Gun Violence Minister Says.

Though residents said they were fed up by years of corruption, the tipping point proved to be the publication of hundreds of pages of crass, insensitive and often profane chat messages among Rosselló and 11 men in his inner circle. The texts confirmed what many Puerto Ricans thought — that they held disdain for the public.

The vast majority of governors in the United States fulfill their terms, though many have resigned to take a Cabinet position, or to join the Senate. Since World War II, two have left governor’s mansions to move to the White House. But a few have met ignominious ends in office.

Here is a look at the men who have been forced out of the governor’s office over the past 15 years.

Eric Greitens of Missouri (2018)

Greitens, a Rhodes scholar, a decorated member of the Navy SEALs who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a Bronze Star recipient, was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.

But he lasted barely 17 months in office, before two felony charges involving allegations of sexual and political misconduct and a 24-page legislative committee report filled with graphic details of an extramarital affair brought the looming threat of impeachment in a state capital dominated by his fellow Republicans.

“It’s clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight,” he said in his resignation speech. “I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty to the people that I love. I know and people of good faith know that I am not perfect, but I have not broken any laws or committed any offense worthy of this treatment.”

Shortly after the speech, the other felony charge, for illegally obtaining a donor list from a charity he founded and using it to raise money for his 2016 campaign, was also dropped.

Where is he now? Greitens recently said that he planned to deploy with the Navy to the Middle East in the fall, The Kansas City Star reported.

Robert Bentley of Alabama (2017)

Bentley left office on the day that impeachment hearings began — an exit that was secured by prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges: failing to file a major contribution report and knowingly converting campaign contributions to personal use.

Days earlier, a report was made public that said Bentley, a Republican, had fostered “an atmosphere of intimidation” and compelled state employees to help him cover up his affair with his senior political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. He was also the subject of multiple investigations, including inquiries by the FBI and the state attorney general’s office. The deal, which bars him from public office, allowed him to avoid felony charges and potential jail time.

In 2016, Bentley acknowledged that he had made sexually charged remarks to Mason, whom one official referred to as the “de facto governor.” Mason resigned in 2016.

“I’ve not always made the right choices,” he said. “I’ve not always said the right things. Though I have sometimes failed, I’ve always tried to live up to the high expectations the people place on the person who holds this esteemed office.”

Where is he now? A dermatologist by training, Bentley has since returned to private practice, where Mason again works for him. His biography does not mention that he did not finish his second term.

John Kitzhaber of Oregon (2015)

A personal relationship was also at the center of a crisis that engulfed Kitzhaber, a Democrat, only one month after starting his fourth term (he also served from 1995-2003).

His fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, was accused of using her access to the governor to gain consulting contracts. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed years of emails, employment records, visitor logs, credit card statements, tax returns and anything related to contracts awarded to Hayes or her consulting company.

Though no criminal charges were filed against either Kitzhaber or Hayes, who had been an unpaid policy adviser to the governor, the state’s ethics commission concluded that they had violated conflict-of-interest laws.

Kitzhaber agreed to pay a $20,000 fine last year and admitted to violating state ethics laws.

“It is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved,” he said upon leaving office.

Where is he now? Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, is a paid speaker and consultant, with a focus on health care policy and issues.

Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois (2009)

A vacant Senate seat left by President-elect Barack Obama became the undoing of Blagojevich. He was impeached and removed in 2009 and later convicted on federal charges for corruption, for trying to personally benefit from making an appointment to Obama’s seat and from people who had state business. Federal prosecutors said that his actions “would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”

“The law as it stands right now is that I have to go do what I have to go do, and this is the hardest thing that I have ever had to do,” he said outside his Chicago home on the day before going to prison in 2012. “I’ll see you around.”

Where is he now? He remains in a low-security prison in Jefferson County, Colorado, although President Donald Trump last year suggested that he might commute Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence.

Eliot Spitzer of New York (2008)

Spitzer, the son of a wealthy New York real estate baron, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School before serving two terms as New York’s attorney general (1999-2007). His time in that office was best known for his using aggressive tactics to pursue tycoons and executives with a moralistic fervor.

Those years earned him a landslide victory in the governor’s race in 2006. Spitzer, a Democrat, lasted little more than a year before he was caught on a federal wiretap confirming plans to meet an escort from a high-priced prostitution service in Washington.

“Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he said, announcing his resignation. “I can and will ask no less of myself.”

Spitzer did not face criminal charges and, in 2013, he lost the Democratic primary for New York City comptroller.

Where is he now? He took over his family’s real estate business after his father’s death in 2014.

James E. McGreevey of New Jersey (2004)

McGreevey, a Democrat, resigned in 2004 after admitting he had an affair with a man he had put on the state payroll as a special adviser. He was the first openly gay governor.

“I realize the fact of this affair and my own sexuality if kept secret leaves me, and most importantly the governor’s office, vulnerable to rumors, false allegations, and threats of disclosure,” he said in his resignation address.

“So I am removing these threats by telling you directly about my sexuality. Let me be clear, I accept total and full responsibility for my actions. However, I am required to — to do now, to do what is right to correct the consequences of my actions and to be truthful to my loved ones, to my friends and my family, and also to myself.”

Where is he now? He has been helping to reintegrate former inmates into society, but he was recently ousted from his leadership role for the local New Jersey nonprofit program.

John Rowland of Connecticut (2004)

Rowland, a Republican, was facing impeachment when he resigned in 2004, midway through his third term, amid a federal investigation for accepting gifts from friends and business executives.

“I acknowledge that my poor judgment has brought us here,” he said in a televised address outside the governor’s mansion. It was the only reference he made to the scandal about to force him from office.

One year later, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in federal prison for accepting $107,000 in gifts from people doing business with the state and not paying taxes on them.

He went to prison a second time, after a conviction in 2014 on more corruption charges. The 2-1/2-year sentence was for conspiring to conceal payments for his work on a congressional campaign from the Federal Election Commission.

Where is he now? Rowland is a development director for Prison Fellowship Ministry, helping to counsel prisoners and former prisoners, while advocating for criminal justice reforms.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/puerto-rico-governor-history.html" id="06aa5881-65f9-3705-a534-1b3068c2b6f1">The New York Times</a>.

Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló of Puerto Rico announced his resignation on Wednesday, after an uprising and looming impeachment proceedings had derailed his administration.

Texts, Sex, Lies and Corruption: Here's What Has Forced Governors Out of Office

It took the jury less than an hour to convict Albert Flick, 77, for the 2018 murder of Kimberly Dobbie, 48, who was slain in front of her 11-year-old twins outside a laundromat in Lewiston, Maine, a city of 36,000.

The killing itself was shocking but so was Flick’s violent past, leaving Dobbie’s family and others in the town to question why he was ever allowed to be freed.

“There is no age that is ‘too old’ to commit murder,” Elsie Kimball Clement, daughter of Sandra Flick, said last year. “He never should have been on the streets.”

Forty years ago, Albert Flick was living in Westbrook, Maine, working at a doughnut shop and facing the end of his marriage. His wife, Sandra Flick, served him with divorce papers and had police officers remove him from their apartment. But, when he came to get his belongings, he was armed with a jackknife.

Sandra Flick’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Elsie, hid in a bedroom and watched as Albert Flick bent her mother’s arm behind her back and covered her mouth with his hand. The daughter fled the apartment. When a neighbor went up to check on Sandra Flick, he saw Albert Flick on the stairs, covered in blood, and found Sandra Flick stabbed four times in the neck and chest, and once through her heart.

Flick was convicted in his wife’s murder and spent 25 years in prison. But the violence continued after his release: He was convicted of punching and stabbing a woman — who a prosecutor said was a girlfriend — with a fork in 2007, and of assaulting and threatening another woman with whom, a prosecutor said, he had a sexual relationship, in 2010.

A prosecutor then urged a judge to sentence Flick to about eight years in prison, calling him a danger to society and women. Despite his age — then in his late 60s — she told the judge that he was not about to stop.

Judge Robert E. Crowley cut that recommendation in half, sending Flick back to prison for less than four years.

“At some point Mr. Flick is going to age out of his capacity to engage in this conduct,” Crowley said, “and incarceration beyond the time he ages out doesn’t seem to me to make good sense from a criminological or fiscal perspective.”

Crowley retired as a judge shortly afterward, and he now works in alternative dispute resolution at a law firm in Portland.

Had Flick been imprisoned longer or remained on probation, authorities might have been able to keep a closer eye on him. But Flick had served his sentence and had the right to live freely.

Last July, he killed Dobbie in a nearly identical stabbing attack to the one on his wife. Prosecutors said that Flick was obsessed with Dobbie, 48, who was homeless and living in a shelter.

She would go to the library during the day, when the shelter required residents to be out of the building. That is where Flick met her and began following her, even eating meals at the shelter.

Flick offered to buy her sons the healthy lunches she could not always afford. “She was just plain out of money,” Katharyn Cormier, a resident at the shelter told The Times last year, “and any mother’s going to accept that.”

Dobbie’s friends said that he followed her everywhere, despite being asked to leave her alone. She also spurned his romantic overtures.

She and her sons had just been awarded an apartment of their own, outside Lewiston before her death. The day before caseworkers were going to take them to their new home, Dobbie was stabbed to death.

In court, Flick wore black headphones, to help him hear the proceedings. Bud Ellis, an assistant attorney general, told jurors that Flick knew Dobbie was going to be moving away from Lewiston and said that Flick thought to himself, “If I can’t have her, I will kill her.”

“We and the family and friends of Kim Dobbie are very gratified with the jury verdict,” Ellis said Friday. “Mr. Flick stabbed her to death in a similar fashion to how he murdered his wife Sandra in 1979. At least there is some level of justice in his conviction.”

Flick faces 25 years to life in prison during his sentencing hearing, set for Aug. 9. Maine has no death penalty. This time the prosecutor will seek a life term.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/albert-flick-convicted-kimberly-dobbie-murder-maine.html" id="781ca932-e886-37a7-a4f0-9a89cdf4089c">The New York Times</a>.

A murderer with a long history of violence against women — but who had been freed from prison and deemed unlikely to hurt anyone again because of his advancing age — was convicted by a jury in Maine this week in the stabbing death of a mother of twin boys.

A Murderer Deemed Too Old for Violence Was Just Convicted of Another Killing

You need only to watch the video of the moment to see that: Goodgame’s jaw plummets, his eyebrows jump to the brim of his graduation cap, and his eyes dart from side to side like he is searching — somewhere, anywhere — for comprehension.

When he finds that certainty — that this is indeed happening — his disbelief turns to pure joy. Still, it takes another moment for him to find his legs for a standing ovation.

Goodgame was seated behind Smith at the time of the announcement, because it is his job to raise money and keep graduates connected to Morehouse, the private, all-male, historically black college in Atlanta.

“I heard the words, but I just couldn’t believe it,” Goodgame, a 1984 Morehouse graduate and the college’s vice president for external relations and alumni engagement, said Monday morning. “I looked at the audience to see, and it was registering at the same time for all of us. When he said it, it was an authentic no-clue-at-all look.”

Goodgame, who has worked at Morehouse for 25 years, called it a “transformational moment” for his alma mater and one that could lead to greater recognition of the work of historically black colleges and universities.

“To have someone else say that the work our institutions do is worthy of investment and reinvestment is significant,” he said. “We have the population that is most vulnerable not to make it to 18. We show them you can have a fine education that is designed and built just for you, that’s more than just chemistry or physics.”

Goodgame said it cost him $5,000 a year to attend Morehouse in the 1980s. Now, full-time tuition at Morehouse is $25,368, and other expenses, including room and board, books and fees, can push the total cost of attendance above $48,000.

The son of a steelworker and a teacher who was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Goodgame said he understood that there was a “domino effect” on graduates when they could not make their first loan payment six months after graduation.

It can hurt their confidence and their credit score, he said, and they might decide to put off starting a family. “Now the dreams that they have do not have to be deferred,” he said.

More than 90% of Morehouse students receive some form of financial aid, according to the college, including scholarships, grants, work-study jobs and loans. About half qualify for Pell grants.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data, the majority of historically black college and university graduates have not paid down even $1 of their original loan balance in the first few years out of school. Their federal-debt load is about one-third higher than graduates of other public and nonprofit four-year schools.

Smith made a donation to Morehouse earlier this year to finance scholarships. He told the audience Sunday that his student loan-eliminating gift, intended for the 396 graduating seniors, was meant to set an example of paying forward.

When billionaire Robert F. Smith told Morehouse College’s class of 2019 on Sunday that his family would eliminate their student loans, no one was more surprised than Henry Goodgame.

Adeel Hassan

Articles written by the author

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