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U.S. starts ‘extreme vetting’ at Australia’s offshore detention centers

U.S. Homeland Security officials have begun “extreme vetting” interviews at Australia’s offshore detention centers, two sources at the camps told Reuters on Tuesday, as Washington honors a refugee swap that U.S. President Donald Trump had called “a dumb deal”.
The Trump administration said last month the agreement to offer refuge to up to 1,250 asylum seekers in the centers would progress on condition that refugees satisfied strict checks.
In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a center in Costa Rica, where the United States has expanded intake in recent years, under the deal struck with former President Barack Obama.
The first security interviews finished last week at Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island detention center, two refugees who went through the process told Reuters.
The refugees told Reuters that interviews began with an oath to God to tell the truth and then proceeded for as long as six hours, with in-depth questions on associates, family, friends and any interactions with the Islamic State militant group.
“They asked about why I fled my home, why I sought asylum in Australia,” said one refugee who declined to be named, fearing it could jeopardize his application for U.S. resettlement.
The security interviews are the last stage of U.S. consideration of applicants.
Manus Island is one of two Australian-operated detention centers, which hold nearly 1,300 people who were intercepted trying to reach Australia by boat.
Human rights groups have condemned the intercept policy and the harsh conditions of the camps. Australia says offshore processing is needed as a deterrent after thousands of people drowned at sea before the policy was introduced in 2013.
A decision on the fate of the first 70 people interviewed is expected to be reached within the next month, a different source who works with refugees said.
A spokesman for Australia’s immigration minister refused to comment on the resettlement process.
The U.S. State Department and White House did not immediately respond to questions.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for extreme vetting have extended to those traveling to the United States from Muslim countries.
Australia’s relationship with the new administration in Washington got off to a rocky start when Trump lambasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the resettlement arrangement, which Trump labeled a “dumb deal”.
Details of an acrimonious phone call between the pair soon after Trump took office made headlines around the world. Australia is one of Washington’s staunchest allies and has sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. military in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The relocation of asylum seekers to the United States is designed to help Papua New Guinea and Australia proceed with the planned closure of the Manus detention center on Oct. 31.
But the fate of approximately 200 men deemed non-refugees is uncertain.
Those not offered resettlement in the United States will be offered the chance to settle in Papua New Guinea or return home.
Australia has already offered detainees up to $25,000 to voluntarily return home; an offer very few have taken up.

U.S. delivers patrol boats to Vietnam to deepen security ties

The United States has transferred six patrol boats to the Vietnam coast guard, to help build security cooperation between the two countries, U.S. embassy in Hanoi said in a statement on Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed his hope for a stronger relationship with Vietnam, after the Obama administration put ties on a stronger footing amid Vietnam’s territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.
The patrol boats, which were included a defense cooperation memorandum agreed in 2011, will help Vietnam in intercoastal patrols and law enforcement, the statement said.
It also added that delivering these vessels deepens cooperation in the areas maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance operations within Vietnam’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.
“Vietnam’s future prosperity depends upon a stable and peaceful maritime environment. The United States and the rest of the international community also benefit from regional stability,” U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius said.
Vietnam is the country most openly at odds with China over the waterway since the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took a softer line with Beijing.
China claims 90 percent of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan lay claim to parts of the sea, through which about $5 trillion of trade passes each year.

Trump administration wants Obamacare subsidy case put on hold, again

The Trump administration asked on Monday that a major federal court case weighing the fate of the Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies be put on hold again, leaving billions of dollars in payments to insurers up in the air for 2017 and 2018.
In a joint filing with the U.S. House of Representatives submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the administration and Republican lawmakers asked for a second 90-day extension.
The subsidies are available to low-income Americans who buy individual health insurance on the exchanges created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, popularly known as Obamacare.
President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers want to repeal and replace the law and are working on legislation to overhaul it that would also secure the subsidy funding during a transition period. But it is not clear if or when they will pass it.
The two sides said they wanted more time because they were discussing measures that would no longer require a judicial decision, including the new healthcare legislation.
Insurers that are trying to set premium rates for insurance plans to be sold in 2018 are running up against deadlines and have repeatedly asked Congress to fund the subsidies during the transition.
One Republican senator said on Monday that he believed the money for the subsidies should be appropriated by Congress. “I think we have to,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters outside the Senate. “We need to stabilize premiums, or we’re not going to have a market.” He said he was speaking for himself and not Republican leaders.
The legal case was filed by the Republican-led House against the Obama administration to cut off the subsidy payments.
A lower court had ruled in favor of the lawmakers, saying that Congress must appropriate the money for the subsidies and that the government could not simply pay for them in the way it does now.
Insurers and medical groups reiterated their view on Monday after the court filing about continuing the payments, which amount to about $7 billion this year and help low-income consumers pay for out-of-pocket medical costs.
“Uncertainty is destabilizing the market and leading health plans to raise their rates for 2018 to account for the political risk brought on by Congress and the administration through a protracted debate over the fate of these reimbursements,” Margaret Murray, chief executive officer of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, said in a statement.
While the proposed legislation from the House would keep the payments through 2019, Trump has said he could stop paying the subsidies at any time. That has insurers concerned that the monthly government payments could end and leave them exposed financially.
Several insurers, including Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, have already exited the Obamacare marketplace for 2018. Credit Suisse analyst Scott Fidel said insurers such as Centene Corp and Molina Healthcare Inc that focus on the low-income families that qualify for the subsidies have the most at risk. Centene shares closed down 1.4 percent at $74.02 and Molina fell 0.8 percent to $66.84.

Trump seeks to slash government spending in budget plan

The White House on Tuesday will ask Republicans who control the U.S. Congress – and federal purse strings – to slash spending on healthcare and food assistance programs for the poor as they push ahead on plans to cut taxes and trim the deficit.
President Donald Trump is set to propose a raft of politically sensitive cuts in his first full budget, for the fiscal year that starts in October, a proposal that some analysts expected would be put aside by lawmakers as they craft their own budget and spending plans.
Trump, who is traveling overseas and will miss the unveiling of his plan, wants lawmakers to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over 10 years, balancing the budget by the end of the decade, according to a preview given to reporters on Monday.
More than $800 billion would be cut from the Medicaid program for the poor and more than $192 billion from food stamps.
Republicans are under pressure to deliver on promised tax cuts, the cornerstone of the Trump administration’s pro-business economic agenda, which would cut the business tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and reduce the number of personal tax brackets to three from seven.
But their policy agenda has stalled as the White House grapples with the political fallout from Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
Comey had been leading a probe of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Trump’s biggest savings would come from cuts to the Medicaid program made as part of a Republican healthcare bill passed by the House of Representatives.
The bill aims to gut the Obama administration’s signature 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, that expanded insurance coverage and the government-run Medicaid program for the poor. But it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, which is writing its own law.
The White House proposed changes that would require more childless people receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, to work.
STEEP CUTS
The plan would slash supports for farmers, impose user fees for meat inspection and sell off half the nation’s emergency oil stockpile. Another politically fraught item is a proposal for cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, a goal that has long eluded lawmakers and administrations from both political parties.
The first look at the plan came in a “skinny budget” released in March – a document that received a tepid response from Congress.
Most departments would see steep cuts, particularly the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.
There is some new spending. The Pentagon would get a boost, and there would be a down payment to begin building a wall on the southern border with Mexico, which was a central promise of Trump’s presidential campaign.
The budget includes $25 billion for a plan to give parents six weeks of paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, and $200 billion to encourage state and local governments to boost spending on roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure programs.
The plan drew immediate fire from lobby groups, including from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which said it relied on “rosy assumptions,” gimmicks and unrealistic cuts.
“While we appreciate the administration’s focus on reducing the debt, when using more realistic assumptions, the president’s budget does not add up,” Maya MacGuineas, the group’s president, said in a statement.
Trump’s plan relies on forecasts for economic growth of 3 percent a year by the end of his first term – well beyond Congressional Budget Office assumptions of 1.9 percent growth.
“That assumes a pessimism about America, about the economy, about its people, about its culture, that we’re simply refusing to accept,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Monday.