'Asylum status pending'
Independence Day freedoms don't protect Iranian Christians taking refuge in the United States
Funny enough, the days are getting shorter now. My mother insisted on trimming the shrubs by July 4th so they’d have time to put out new growth before frost. This year by some miracle I’ve complied. Yet it’s perhaps a fool’s errand: the boxwoods are battling blight. As long as some appear green and thriving, I’ll battle too, sterilizing the hedge shears in between each trim in hopes that fungus won’t spread.
This is what I see many of you doing in the world, the tedious, sweaty work of tending against decline, hoping toward a better harvest. Along the way that means exposing trouble to the sunlight and to other forces with more healing powers than we can muster on our own. Your labor is not in vain, and sometimes, sometimes, it works! Happy Fourth of July.
Europeans worked against decline this week, kicking off a Financing for Development conference amid a crisis in global development and a scorching heatwave, with temperatures at the conference site in Seville, Spain, reaching 107 degree.
The United States pulled out of the conference last month with the chief U.S. negotiator exiting months of deliberations over a final statement, the Seville Compromise, that won approval this week. Jonathan Shrier, acting U.S. Representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council, said the document “crossed many of our red lines” and was not in keeping with Trump policy on trade, taxes, and innovation. That left the United States without a voice at the table as 70 world leaders and 12,000 participants look for ways to recover from the drastic cuts in U.S. foreign assistance.
“We cannot afford a retreat from multilateral cooperation,” the compromise states, before hammering out a revised global framework for financing sustainable development.
Poor nations have few ways to make up for the overnight cuts to essential health and education services once supported by USAID and others—with aid from other sources or by borrowing against hoped-for growth in their own economies. But 3.3 billion people already live in countries that pay more interest on their debts than they spend on such programs, and that number is going up. The multilateral compromise is designed to provide new ways, using hybrid capital and tougher rules around corruption, to reduce the debt load while freeing up expenditures for programs once underwritten by the United States.
EU leaders said they were not going be dissuaded by the American-led trend toward unilateralism. “Collective mobilization can still work,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.
In the United States, it's time to start panicking about the national debt. The budget bill that won final House passage on Thursday—with President Donald Trump’s signature expected today—will add $3.4 trillion to the national debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Democrats bear most of the burden, says economist Noah Smith (“President Joe Biden didn’t even try to raise taxes in order to pay for his spending.”) but interest rates are forcing the U.S. to refinance at ever higher rates.
In Ukraine despite increased Russian bombings, Kyiv hosted an International Red Cross gathering that largely centered on training and military preparedness for conflict in Europe. Years of war have given Ukrainian Red Cross staff and volunteers expertise in civilian rescue and treating the wounded. Delegates gained real-life experience as they were forced to endure three nights of bombing and air raid shelters.
President Trump has denied reports this week that the United States has cut off critical weapons to Ukraine, though the Pentagon earlier confirmed it. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an hour-long phone call yesterday with Trump, said Moscow wants a negotiated settlement to the war but won’t step back from its original goals. Those include territorial concessions.
Russian attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine killed 968 civilians and injured 4,807 between December to May—a 37 percent increase compared with the same period last year. The attacks included airstrikes that targeted five hospitals. The latest UN report also highlights a growing practice of unidentified contacts with Ukrainian children over social media to incite them to commit acts of sabotage.
One-way Iranian drones, the same type that Iran fired across the Middle East into Israel this month, are overwhelming Ukraine’s air defenses. Chris Chivers has a good long read on how they’ve become so lethal.
Iranians in a West Los Angeles community are living in fear, not after war in their homeland but following raids that resulted in arrests and detentions of four churchgoers. Cornerstone Church West Los Angeles pastor Ara Torosian, called to one scene, filmed the arrests when masked ICE agents took a husband and wife into custody. As the pastor questioned the agents, one threatened to arrest him. Torosian said the husband and wife, who attended house churches in Iran before seeking asylum in the United States, “are like my next generation leaders.”
“They have no criminal background, they have Social Security numbers and work permits and children born in the United States,” he said. The couples have “asylum status pending” cases, having applied legally and reported for courthouse appearances. Following their arrests, agents removed them to south Texas family detention centers, out of reach of California legal assistance and with proceedings on hold because there is no Farsi translation at the facility.
Torosian came to the United States as a refugee after his own arrest in Iran for smuggling Bibles. Watching his congregants, he said, “I remember all my pain and suffering back in Iran.” His full interview is worth your time.
Across the United States mass detentions and deportations are expected to increase. Congress narrowly approved this week a budget President Trump is set to sign today that includes massive funding infusions — roughly $150 billion — toward immigration and border enforcement. For detention alone, it allocates an amount ($65 billion) that’s more than two times the budget of the entire federal prison system. Here’s a breakdown.
In Kenya’s sprawling Kibera district, the largest slum in Africa, a few hundred merchants and shoppers are using bitcoin as part of a pilot program to extend financial services to some of the country’s poorest and most under-banked people. Despite the lack of regulation and volatility of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin carries no transaction fees and can be a way to store money and value for people on the move in war zones and impoverished areas.
In California’s Mojave Desert, SuperAdobes offer an open-source way to construct housing that can survive earthquakes, fires, and hurricanes—and at about a third the cost of traditional homes. It’s an enterprise founded by Iranian immigrants using raw-earth architecture indigenous to Iran. As the Persian mystic Rumi wrote: “Earth turns to gold in the hands of the wise.”
On the homefront, a state of emergency in my hometown following Hurricane Helene was lifted this week, 10 months later. Two things can remain true, seen right here in images that include my neighborhood: our broken hearts at so much devastation and our hope at so much team spirit and recovery. We can say more fully now that pain is the architect of resilience.
