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The struggle to reunite families separated under Trump · Apple News Today

• 0:00
  [INTRO MUSIC]
• 0:04
  Yasmeen Khan, Narrating: Good morning! It’s Tuesday, March 12th.
• 0:07
  I’m Yasmeen Khan, in for Shumita Basu.
• 0:10
  This is "Apple News Today."
• 0:12
  On today’s show:
• 0:14
  Many parents and children separated at the border are still not back together;
• 0:19
  The work of a famous author gets published against his wishes;
• 0:23
  And why there is still so much progress to be made on equal pay around the world.
• 0:29
  [MUSIC FADES]
• 0:34
  But first, let’s take a quick look at some other stories in the news.
• 0:38
  Starting in Haiti,
• 0:39
  where Prime Minister Ariel Henry is preparing to resign.
• 0:43
  Armed gangs have threatened to start a civil war if he does not.
• 0:47
  And in recent weeks,
• 0:48
  they’ve tightened their grip on the capital of Port-au-Prince,
• 0:51
  attacking the airport, main seaport, and other public buildings.
• 0:55
  Haiti has not had a president since 2021,
• 0:59
  and its National Assembly has been empty since lawmakers' terms expired last year.
• 1:04
  Officials in the U.S. have pressed Henry to hold elections,
• 1:08
  but a senior official with the State Department
• 1:10
  told The "Washington Post" last week
• 1:12
  that Henry was showing a, quote, “unwillingness to cede real power.”
• 1:17
  Now, Henry says he will step down
• 1:19
  after the creation of a transitional council
• 1:22
  to select a new interim leader.
• 1:24
  And the U.S. announced yesterday
• 1:26
  that it will double its defense spending
• 1:28
  on a multinational security force in Haiti,
• 1:31
  led by Kenya.
• 1:33
  Now, to a developing story in air travel.
• 1:37
  At least 50 people were injured on a Boeing 787 aircraft
• 1:41
  traveling from Sydney to Auckland,
• 1:44
  when it suddenly "dropped" altitude mid-flight.
• 1:47
  A passenger on the flight described the moment for the "BBC:"
• 1:50
  [START BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 1:50
  Brian Jokat: It woke me up instantly and I looked up towards the ceiling,
• 1:54
  my head was back
• 1:55
  and my person sitting next to me was glued to the ceiling.
• 2:00
  And then I thought I was dreaming for a second.
• 2:03
  I thought, am I having the nightmare or something?
• 2:05
  And then he fell from the ceiling straight down on his face,
• 2:09
  three meters down to the floor.
• 2:11
  [END BBC ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 2:11
  Khan, Narrating: The flight, operated by LATAM Airlines, had more than 270 people on board.
• 2:17
  At least one person is in serious condition .
• 2:20
  There’s an investigation underway,
• 2:22
  and Boeing says it’s working to gather more information.
• 2:25
  Since the aircraft was made in the U.S.,
• 2:27
  the head of the FAA says they’ll be monitoring the situation closely as well.
• 2:32
  And in related news,
• 2:33
  the Justice Department recently announced
• 2:35
  that it’s opened a separate investigation into Boeing
• 2:38
  that's related to an incident from January
• 2:41
  when a panel on the side of a Max 9 jet blew out in the middle of a flight.
• 2:46
  And in Washington,
• 2:48
  President Biden has laid out his proposal for federal spending
• 2:51
  for the next fiscal year.
• 2:53
  The proposed 7.3 trillion-dollar budget
• 2:56
  includes lower consumer costs for health care, childcare and housing.
• 3:01
  Plus, new taxes on the wealthy and major corporations
• 3:04
  to pay for those proposals.
• 3:06
  Dr. Shalanda Young, from the Office of Management and Budget,
• 3:10
  spoke with "NPR" about Biden’s plan ahead of its release:
• 3:13
  [START NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 3:14
  Dr. Shalanda Young: This president has made very clear
• 3:15
  that he will not support extending tax cuts
• 3:18
  for those that make over $400,000.
• 3:20
  The top one and two percent should pay their fair share,
• 3:23
  in that way, that will pay for tax cuts for those that make under $400,000.
• 3:29
  [END NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 3:29
  Khan, Narrating: Biden’s plan would cut 3 trillion dollars from the national debt
• 3:33
  over the next decade.
• 3:34
  With Republicans in control of the House, the odds of it passing are low.
• 3:39
  [PENSIVE MUSIC]
• 3:39
  So, this budget proposal is more like Biden’s economic pitch to voters,
• 3:43
  on why he should be re-elected in November and what he'd want to do if that happened.
• 3:56
  It’s been several years
• 3:58
  since approximately 5,000 migrant children were separated from their parents
• 4:02
  under the Trump administration,
• 4:04
  and still today, as many as 2,000 are still not reunited.
• 4:08
  [MUSIC FADES]
• 4:09
  "New York Magazine" takes a close look at the slow, and often painstaking work,
• 4:14
  of finding kids still in the U.S., and then tracking down their parents,
• 4:18
  who were deported to their home countries.
• 4:21
  Piper French wrote the story:
• 4:23
  Piper French: The more you delve into this process, the more you realize
• 4:26
  just how much work it is to undo something that was done so quickly and carelessly.
• 4:34
  Khan, Narrating: One big problem, French says, has been record keeping:
• 4:38
  French: I mean, there's a few different aspects
• 4:40
  with regards to record keeping that made this really complicated.
• 4:43
  One was that there are a bunch of different agencies involved
• 4:46
  in separation and detention,
• 4:48
  and they didn't communicate with each other.
• 4:50
  They didn't have online systems that shared information.
• 4:54
  Khan, Narrating: So, the Biden administration created something called
• 4:57
  the "Family Reunification Task Force" in 2021
• 5:01
  to set up some kind of system for finding families.
• 5:04
  To be clear, the government was compelled to reunify families by the courts.
• 5:09
  French says the success of this task force
• 5:11
  rests with individual lawyers and advocates,
• 5:15
  people who are willing to work for weeks, or months, to reunify a family,
• 5:19
  often based on flimsy information.
• 5:22
  Advocates here in the U.S.
• 5:23
  sometimes have to team up with people on the ground in Central and South America
• 5:27
  to find parents.
• 5:29
  French: For years, they were getting names.
• 5:32
  Sometimes it was only a name.
• 5:34
  They would try to track down a birth certificate.
• 5:36
  And then, based on whatever information was available on the birth certificate,
• 5:40
  they just start calling and then start driving.
• 5:44
  and drive hundreds of miles in some cases,
• 5:48
  going to often pretty remote villages,
• 5:52
  places where they didn't know anyone.
• 5:54
  And they would have to sort of do this like, diplomatic work of
• 5:57
  getting in touch with the community leader and explaining their intentions.
• 6:01
  Khan, Narrating: Under a court settlement,
• 6:02
  the government is allowing eligible parents
• 6:04
  to reunite with their children in the U.S,
• 6:07
  with permission to stay for three years
• 6:09
  under something called “humanitarian parole.”
• 6:12
  In her reporting, French heard from lawyers and advocates
• 6:16
  that the intensive search of finding kids, and eventually tracking down parents,
• 6:21
  was not even the hardest part of their job.
• 6:24
  Sometimes it was watching the actual reunion,
• 6:27
  because so many years have passed since families were together.
• 6:30
  French: Reunifications are supposed to be this joyful thing, right?
• 6:33
  And in some cases, they really are.
• 6:35
  The Amadors, who I profile in the piece,
• 6:38
  I watched a video of their reunification, and it's totally beautiful and happy,
• 6:42
  and they're all just hugging each other and won't let each other go.
• 6:45
  But that's just not always the case,
• 6:47
  because the trauma of the separation is very present.
• 6:50
  [INVESTIGATIVE MUSIC]
• 6:50
  Khan, Narrating: She says in some cases, children do not recognize their parents.
• 6:54
  And others are angry,
• 6:56
  believing it was their parents’ choice to leave them.
• 7:07
  Today,
• 7:08
  a new novel by the late writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez
• 7:13
  will be published in English.
• 7:15
  The book, called “Until August,” is highly anticipated.
• 7:19
  It’s also highly controversial.
• 7:21
  [MUSIC FADES]
• 7:21
  "NPR" has the story.
• 7:23
  Towards the end of his life,
• 7:25
  García Márquez was attempting to finish writing what would be his final novel
• 7:29
  about a married, middle-aged woman and her secret sex life.
• 7:33
  He suffered at the time with debilitating dementia
• 7:36
  and was struggling to make the novel work.
• 7:38
  He apparently attempted multiple versions before he finally gave up
• 7:42
  and declared that he never wanted the book to be published.
• 7:45
  In fact, he instructed his sons to destroy it.
• 7:48
  Shortly after, in 2014, he died.
• 7:52
  Now, 10 years later,
• 7:54
  his sons have gone against their father’s wishes
• 7:56
  and published the book.
• 7:57
  [START NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 7:58
  Rodrigo: We concluded that the book, though unfinished,
• 8:01
  made a lot of sense and was very moving.
• 8:03
  [END NPR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 8:04
  Khan, Narrating: That’s one of his sons, Rodrigo, speaking with "NPR" last week.
• 8:08
  Rodrigo described how Alzheimer’s robbed his father
• 8:11
  of the ability to assess the quality of his work,
• 8:14
  or even recognize it.
• 8:16
  Often, he would sit down to read one of his own books
• 8:18
  and couldn't make a sense of it.
• 8:20
  And it wasn't ‘til he reached the last page and saw his picture in the back cover
• 8:25
  that he realized, "Oh, this is one of my books,"
• 8:28
  and then he'd start to read it again.
• 8:30
  Khan, Narrating: Friends of García Márquez in the publishing community
• 8:33
  have been divided over whether his sons made the right decision.
• 8:37
  Fellow Nobel laureate Salman Rushdie
• 8:39
  raised concerns about the implications of publishing new work from an author
• 8:44
  without their consent.
• 8:45
  Salman Rushdie: I'm really worried that something has been authorized
• 8:48
  which should not have been authorized.
• 8:50
  Khan, Narrating: The book’s editor, Cristóbal Pera, argued
• 8:53
  that the strong female protagonist from "Until August"
• 8:56
  makes it a good addition to his late friend's catalogue,
• 8:59
  which includes book like "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
• 9:02
  and "Love in the Time of Cholera."
• 9:04
  Garcia Marquez’s son, Rodrigo, says he and his brother understand
• 9:09
  that people may feel uncomfortable with their choice.
• 9:12
  But they believe they made the right decision.
• 9:14
  We are speaking for our father
• 9:17
  because he gave us permission to speak for him.
• 9:20
  Is there some betrayal? Yes, of course.
• 9:23
  This is not the last wish of an aging writer.
• 9:27
  Khan, Narrating: But he says he hopes this final book will delight readers so much
• 9:32
  [INSPIRING MUSIC]
• 9:32
  that their father will forgive them, even if they made the wrong call.
• 9:45
  Finally, today is Equal Pay Day,
• 9:48
  one of the more sobering days on the calendar,
• 9:51
  because it’s a reminder of how much longer women must work
• 9:54
  to earn what men do.
• 9:56
  And places around the world still have a ways to go
• 9:59
  [MUSIC FADES]
• 9:59
  to close the pay gap,
• 10:00
  according to a recently released global study.
• 10:04
  The World Bank found that not a single country
• 10:06
  offers women the same opportunities as men in the workforce,
• 10:10
  and that the gender gap is even wider than previously thought.
• 10:14
  So is the legal protection gap.
• 10:16
  For the first time,
• 10:17
  this report measured the impacts of workplace childcare
• 10:20
  and safety policies on men and women.
• 10:23
  And researchers found, on average,
• 10:25
  that women had far fewer legal protections in the workplace than men.
• 10:30
  The report also found
• 10:31
  that many countries have done the work to pass laws
• 10:34
  that would address the pay gap.
• 10:35
  But most of them, around two thirds,
• 10:38
  are falling short on implementing those laws.
• 10:41
  Tea Trumbic of the World Bank explained in a recent interview
• 10:45
  why it’s important to track this.
• 10:47
  She spoke with the German media outlet "DW News."
• 10:49
  [START YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 10:50
  Tea Trumbic: One of the things that we're trying to really emphasize is that
• 10:53
  it's important to write strong laws that legislate towards gender equality,
• 10:56
  but it's also important to invest in institutions
• 11:00
  and systems that implement those laws.
• 11:02
  And then to also understand, are those outcomes being achieved,
• 11:05
  that the law is intended to achieve.
• 11:07
  [END YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 11:07
  Khan, Narrating: Globally, women earned just 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.
• 11:13
  Many will argue
• 11:14
  there’s a moral imperative to making equal pay
• 11:17
  for equal work a reality.
• 11:19
  But there are also real financial incentives to do so.
• 11:22
  [OUTRO MUSIC]
• 11:22
  According to the report,
• 11:24
  closing the gap could raise the global GDP by more than 20 percent.
• 11:32
  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
• 11:35
  And if you’re already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
• 11:38
  We have a narrated version of the "New York Magazine" article
• 11:41
  on family separations that we talked about.
• 11:44
  If you’re listening in the Podcasts app,
• 11:46
  follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story.
• 11:49
  And I’ll be back with the news tomorrow.
• 11:54
  [MUSIC FADES]