Italian marine arrives home after 4 years in custody in India

An Italian marine who Indian prosecutors accuse of murdering two fishermen during an anti-piracy mission returned home on Saturday after four years in custody in New Delhi.

Salvatore Girone, who was held in custody at the Italian embassy in the Indian capital, is one of two marines arrested in 2012 over the fishermen's deaths during the operation to protect an Italian oil tanker.

The other marine, Massimiliano Latorre, is already back in Italy after suffering health problems.

The marines say they fired on the fishing boat because they thought the Italian ship they were assigned to protect, the Enrica Lexie, was under attack. Indian prosecutors accuse them of murdering the fishermen.

India's supreme court ruled earlier this week he was free to go home at least until Italy's dispute with India over jurisdiction in the case, which is now in international arbitration, is over.

Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti embraced the uniformed Girone when he arrived at Rome's Ciampino airport. He was also greeted by the foreign minister, the navy's top admiral and relatives.

India's Supreme Court said Girone must surrender his passport when he arrives in Italy and he will be required to return to India within a month of an order from the tribunal.

The long dispute over the incident has strained relations between India and Italy and its European Union partners.

In an effort to end legal wrangling, both countries last year agreed to move their dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which also ruled Girone should be allowed to return home earlier this month.

Italy argues that the case should not be heard in India because the incident occurred in international waters. India has said it remains confident the tribunal will decide in its favour.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Helen Popper)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

US agencies split over fingerprinting parents of child immigrants

WASHINGTON - US immigration enforcement officers are proposing that fingerprints be taken from all people claiming custody of children who have entered the United States illegally without an adult relative, a measure that opponents said could keep thousands of families apart.

As a new wave of unaccompanied Central American children pours across the U.S.-Mexico border, the proposal underscores the sometimes conflicting goals of federal agencies in dealing with undocumented immigrants, a volatile issue on the presidential campaign trail.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is ultimately responsible for finding housing for migrant children, told Reuters they have no plans to change fingerprinting policy. They said the proposal -- made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in an internal memo seen by Reuters -- would delay family reunions and infringe upon the parent-child relationship.

"One of our goals is to place children with an appropriate sponsor as promptly as we can safely do so. And so any delay for placing the child with their parent is time that we're keeping a parent and child separated," said Bobbie Gregg, deputy director for children's services at HHS's office of refugee resettlement.

The memo by ICE officials, drafted in response to a February Senate hearing, proposes expanding fingerprinting, now limited to non-parents, to include parents.

ICE says that would allow fingerprints to be checked against an FBI database of criminals to verify the identities of people who say they are parents while ensuring that children do not go to parents who have criminal histories.

The proposal is preliminary and could change. It was unclear whether it would ultimately win the backing of the White House.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- which oversees ICE -- and the Justice Department advise HHS on its practices and have a role in enforcing overall immigration policy.

The White House declined to comment on the proposal.

Asked about the documents that describe the fingerprinting proposal, a Homeland Security spokeswoman said the agency does not discuss internal deliberations. Neither ICE nor HHS would comment on whether they have had discussions on the proposal.

From January 2014 to April 2015, more than 31,000 parents claimed children who entered the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog unit.

They made up 60 percent of those who claimed children, with most of the rest claimed by other relatives. Only 161 non-relative sponsors claimed children.

U.S. authorities are required to find housing for illegal immigrant minors while they await a trial to determine whether they will be deported, a process that can take years.

Under current law, people who appear at child migrant holding facilities saying they are parents must show the child's birth certificate to prove the relationship. If that is not available, the parent and child must undergo a DNA test.

Immigration advocates say the ICE proposal would discourage parents from sending for their children and claiming them, fearing that ICE would use fingerprinting to trace undocumented immigrants for possible deportation.

"It could keep parents away from their children if they think it is going to land them in a lock-up somewhere," said David Leopold, a Cleveland lawyer who formerly headed the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The ICE officials also said in the memo that the agency supports expanding immigration-status checks to all sponsors, including parents.

ICE acknowledged that conducting immigration checks on parents claiming children could "reduce the likelihood that sponsors would come forward to take custody of children."

NEW WAVE OF CHILD MIGRANTS

Illegal entry into the United States by unaccompanied minors has surged in recent years. Most are Central American children who make the dangerous journey across Mexico and the U.S. border without their parents, fleeing poverty and violence.

In the six months through March 2016, almost 28,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended crossing into the United States, close to the record-high number hit in the same period in 2014.

An investigation by the Associated Press in January found that HHS had placed some migrant children in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced into labor for no pay. None of the known abusers had claimed to be parents.

A Senate panel in February asked authorities to improve screening of adults claiming custody of child migrants.

The document from ICE is a draft of answers to questions Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley submitted for the record following the hearing.

After the AP investigation, HHS said it began doing 30-day follow-up checks on households to which it had assigned a child, while also giving an emergency hotline phone number to all children before they are discharged from HHS custody

But ICE's response to Grassley said HHS should go a step further, noting that many state and local child protective service agencies routinely fingerprint parents who reclaim children after periods of separation.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

US Supreme Court allows couple to reclaim adopted child

NEW YORK - In a child custody case that one justice called heartbreaking, the U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday an American Indian girl now being raised by her biological father should not have been taken from a couple who had cared for her since just after birth under a law aimed at keeping Native American families together.

In a 5-4 ruling that prompted stirring dissents, the court said South Carolina's highest court misinterpreted the law last July in letting the girl, who is now 3-1/2 years old, remain in the custody of Dusten Brown, a member of the Cherokee Nation.

The girl, named Veronica, had earlier been in the care of Matt and Melanie Capobianco, a white couple from Charleston, South Carolina, after Brown renounced his parental rights by text message without taking custody and the birth mother gave her up for adoption.

But a family court ordered the girl be given to Brown under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 after he changed his mind. That law was intended to curb abusive practices that caused many Native American children to be removed from their families.

Brown took custody in December 2011, when the girl was 27 months old, and moved to Oklahoma. Last July, South Carolina's highest court upheld the family court order regarding the girl, who according to court papers is 1.2 percent Cherokee.

Writing for the Supreme Court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the South Carolina court erred in finding that the law protected Brown from losing his parental rights, or gave him a preference in caring for the girl.

"Under the State Supreme Court's reading," Alito wrote, "a biological Indian father could abandon his child in utero and refuse any support for the birth mother ... and then could play his ICWA trump card at the eleventh hour to override the mother's decision and the child's best interests."

Allowing such an outcome automatically would "unnecessarily place vulnerable Indian children at a unique disadvantage in finding a permanent and loving home," Alito added.

Matt Capobianco has worked as a Boeing technician. Melanie Capobianco has a doctorate in developmental psychology. They are known in court papers as Adoptive Couple, and the girl as Baby Girl.

ADOPTION EFFORT TO PROCEED

"We're thrilled," Mark Fiddler, a lawyer for the couple, said in an interview. "Adoption professionals have been perplexed for years over how the ICWA applies to voluntary adoption proceedings where the unwed father is Indian and the mother is not. The decision today clears up that confusion. It means my clients may proceed with efforts to adopt Veronica."

Charles Rothfeld, a lawyer for Brown, said the decision was "disappointing" but narrow. He said Veronica still lives with her biological father and stepmother, and is "thriving and happy. We are confident that ultimately the father will retain custody."

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Bill John Baker also expressed disappointment, saying at a news conference: "Veronica Brown's best interests are served by her continuing to live in a loving home with her biological father."

The Capobiancos said in a statement they hope the decision will prevent "the tragic disruption of other adoptions."

Veronica was conceived while Brown had been engaged to the birth mother, who is of predominantly Hispanic background.

After renouncing his parental rights, Brown changed his mind after learning that his former fiancée had put the girl up for adoption and that the girl was under the Capobiancos' care.

"It's a pretty devastating opinion," said Dorothy Alther, executive director for California Indian Legal Services, which submitted a brief on Brown's behalf. "(It) impacts not only biological parents but also tribes, because it means they would have no right to intervene."

Alito was joined in his majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, who has two adopted children, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who has nine children, dissented, saying the majority "needlessly demeans the rights of parenthood. (P)arents have their rights, no less than children do."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor also dissented, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan and mostly by Scalia, saying the majority ignored Congress's intent "to rectify a perceived wrong that, while heartbreaking at the time," cannot be undone.

"However difficult it must have been for (Baby Girl) to leave Adoptive Couple's home when she was just over 2 years old, it will be equally devastating now if, at the age of 3 1/2, she is again removed from her home and sent to live halfway across the country," she wrote. "Such a fate is not foreordained, of course. But it can be said with certainty that the anguish this case has caused will only be compounded by today's decision."

The case is Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl et al, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-399. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Harriet McLeod in Charleston, South Carolina; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com