United News of Bangladesh

The U.N.'s humanitarian aid and refugee agencies said Wednesday they are seeking $5.6 billion to help millions of people in Ukraine and countries that have taken in fleeing Ukrainians in the wake of Russia's invasion of their country nearly a year ago. The bulk of the joint appeal — $3.9 billion — is for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which aims to help more than 11 million people by funneling funds through more than 650 partner organizations. Refugee agency UNHCR, meanwhile, is seeking $1.7 billion to help some 4.2 million refugees who have fled to 10 host countries in eastern and central Europe. The joint appeal, one of the largest of its kind for a single country, could draw a large outpouring of funds from Western countries, as a similar appeal did since the war began. Such U.N. appeals rarely get fully funded. “We were relatively well-funded last year," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “I think the refugee appeal was funded in excess of 70% — not total, but quite good. We count on that to last.” The appeal comes as a string of crises around the world have stretched the generosity of wealthy donors. “Of course, this is not the only crisis in the world,” Grandi added. "There’s many others that deserve — I’m just back from Ethiopia, Burundi. Who talks about Burundi? Sorry, but this is the reality and people need support as much as anywhere else.” The appeal from UNHCR does not cover Russia. Its figures, which are largely drawn from numbers provided by national governments, show that more than 2.8 million refugees from Ukraine have been taken in by Russia. Grandi said Russia gets funds for those refugees “from other sources” — including un-earmarked funds. “We stand ready to do more if it’s needed for any Ukrainian that is in need in Russia," he said. "That offer is on the table and is available.” The U.N. says humanitarian groups helped nearly 16 million people in Ukraine last year, including in areas not controlled by the Kyiv government. More than one-third of those received cash assistance, which can help prop up the battered national economy.  

Romania briefly scrambled military jets and neighboring Moldova temporarily closed its air space Tuesday after authorities in both countries reported mysterious weather balloon-like objects traversing their skies. The incidents occurred at around midday local time and briefly raised concerns in the two Eastern European countries, both which border Ukraine and have been affected by Russia’s war. Romania’s defense ministry said it deployed two jets that are under NATO command to its southeastern skies to seek an aerial object it described as being small with “characteristics similar to a weather balloon.” It had been detected initially by radar systems in Romanian airspace at an altitude of about 11,000 meters (36,000 feet). “The crews of the two aircraft did not confirm the presence of the aerial target, neither visually nor on the onboard radars,” a ministry statement said, adding that the two MiG-21 LanceR aircraft stayed in the vicinity for about 30 minutes before returning to base. Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that “the Romanian fighter jets did not find any object, even if it was spotted on the radar … so no threat for the Romanian airspace.” It was unclear whether the two incidents were related, and neither country said where they believed the objects had come from. The events follow a string of comparable incidents this month in the U.S., in which objects detected and shot down by warplanes included a high-altitude Chinese balloon that traversed American airspace. China said it was a weather balloon that had accidentally drifted off course. Read more: China's Xi expresses support for Iran amid Western pressure The incident in Moldova triggered widespread travel disruption and brief panic when authorities temporarily closed the country's airspace over what they later described as an object “similar to a weather balloon” spotted near the northern border with Ukraine. Scores of flights in the country of about 2.6 million people, one of Europe’s poorest, were canceled or rescheduled. Some were diverted to Romania. “Given the weather conditions and the impossibility of monitoring and identifying the object as well as its flight path … the decision was taken to temporarily close the airspace,” Moldova's aviation authority said in a statement. Romania has been a NATO member since 2004 and a European Union member since 2007. Moldova is militarily neutral and thus not a potential NATO member. It's looking to forge closer ties with the west and was granted EU candidate status last June, the same day as Ukraine. On Monday, Moldovan President Maia Sandu accused Russia of plotting to overthrow her country's government and derail it from its EU accession path. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed Sandu’s claims on Tuesday as “absolutely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

As Vitalii Khroniuk lay facedown on the ground taking cover from Russian artillery fire, the Ukrainian solider had just one regret: He had never had a child. Aware that he could die at any moment, the 29-year-old decided to try cryopreservation — the process of freezing sperm or eggs that some Ukrainian soldiers are turning to as they face the possibility that they might never go home. “It’s not scary to die, but it’s scary when you don’t leave anyone behind,” said Khroniuk, who had quickly joined the war effort, without a thought about his future, when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago. During a vacation home in January, he and his partner went to a private clinic in Kyiv, IVMED, that is waiving the $55 cost of cryopreservation for soldiers. The clinic has had about 100 soldiers freeze sperm since the invasion, says its chief doctor, Halyna Strelko. Assisted conception services to get pregnant currently cost $800 to $3,500. “We don’t know how else to help. We can only make children or help make them. We don’t have weapons, we can’t fight, but what we do is also important,” said Strelko, whose clinic had to close during the first months of the war as Kyiv was under attack but reopened after the Russian military retreated from the area. When Khroniuk told his partner, Anna Sokurenko, 24, what he wanted to do, she initially was unsure. “It was very painful to realize that there is a possibility that he will not return,” said Sokurenko, adding that it took her a night of reflection to agree. She and Khroniuk spoke to The Associated Press while sitting at the clinic, where posters of smiling babies, including one that reads, “Your future is securely protected,” hang in the corridor. The clinic’s lab has its own backup power supply that kicks in during frequent outages from Russian missile strikes damaging the electric infrastructure. Dr. Strelko, who has been in the fertility business since 1998, said the service she is offering soldiers is particularly important now, pointing to "a very aggressive part of this war with massive losses.” Russian forces have been pushing their advance on the eastern city of Bakhmut with heavy shelling and attacks that are believed to have produced massive troop losses for both Ukraine and Russia. Neither side is saying how many have died. Sokurenko and Khroniuk married a few days after their clinic visit, and he is now fighting in the Chernihiv region near the border. She believes that a chance to have a child, even after a partner is killed at war, could smooth the deep pain of loss. “I think it’s a very important opportunity in the future if a woman loses her loved one," she said. “I understand that it will be difficult to recover from this, but it will give the sense to continue to fight, to continue to live." Nataliia Kyrkach-Antonenko, 37, got pregnant while visiting her husband in a front-line town a few months before he was killed in battle. Her husband, Vitalii, came home to Kyiv for a short vacation 10 days before his November death and got to see an ultrasound of his unborn baby girl. He also visited a fertility clinic to freeze his sperm. Kyrkach-Antonenko hopes to eventually have another child using that sperm. She said being able to have her late husband’s children “is an incredible support.” “We have loved each other incredibly strong for 18 years,” she said. She also sees cryopreservation as a fight for the country's future. “Their dads did everything possible to make this future happen. Now it is our turn, as women, to fight for the future of Ukraine as well, raising people with dignity. People who can continue to change the country for the better,” she said. Another couple who went to the IVMED clinic in December, Oles and Iryna, asked that only their first names be used because of privacy concerns. Oles is in the Donetsk region, where some cities were turned into hellscapes due to fierce battles over the past months, and sees cryopreservation as an assurance. Iryna spends her nights alone in their apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv, tossing between anxiety for her husband as he fights on the most intensive and deadly part of the eastern frontline and the numerous visits to the clinic where she is trying to get pregnant. “Yes, it is a difficult life, with worries, bombardment, with constant anxiety for relatives. But at the same time, it is what it is,” she says. “It’s better to be a parent now than to put it off until you can no longer have children." “Family is what will hold our country, and children are our future," she said. “We fight for them."

Russia is the main security threat for all of Europe and will remain so for a long time, Norway’s intelligence officials said Monday, warning that recent burnings of Islam’s holy book in Scandinavia could possibly lead to terror attacks in the country. “Russia today poses the biggest threat to Norwegian and European security, and the confrontation with the West will be long-lasting,” said Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram. Arild Gram made the remark after the government received the annual threat assessments from Norway’s three security services: the domestic and the foreign intelligence agencies and the Norwegian National Security Authority, or NSM. “The burning of the Quran could be seen as offensive or provocative and we expect that such events will also occur in 2023 in Norway,” said Beate Gangås, head of the domestic security service, known by its acronym PST. “When such events take place in Norway, the likelihood of radicalization and ultimately terrorist planning against Norway increases.” Despite the warning, Norway’s terror domestic threat level was left unchanged at “moderate.” The deputy head of the foreign Norwegian Intelligence Service Lars Nordrum said that Norway’s oil and gas installations could be targeted by Russian sabotage. NSM head Sofie Nystrøm warned that “all of Europe will suffer” if Norwegian gas and oil installations were hit. “Norway is now Europe’s most important energy supplier after Russia ended its gas exports to the West,” said Nordrum. But PST assessed that it’s unlikely Russia would carry out any sabotage operation on Norwegian soil this year. Desecrating a book held sacred by a religious community is protected in Scandinavian countries by freedom of speech. On Feb. 2, police in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, had barred a group to stage a protest outside the Turkish Embassy that would have involved setting a fire a copy of the Quran on grounds that security could not be ensured “in a satisfactory manner” at the event. Ankara is angry that anti-Turkish protests have been allowed to take place, and particularly that it has not prevented an anti-Muslim activist from repeatedly burning the Quran, the Muslim holy book. In Stockholm and Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Last week, the Swedish domestic security agency SAPO warned that the threat of attacks in Sweden has increased in the weeks since a far-right activist burned a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. An application to stage a protest during which the Quran was to be burned was turned down with Swedish police saying that “such a gathering is judged to be capable of causing serious disturbances to national security.”

Moldova’s President outlined Monday what she described as a plot by Moscow to use external saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, put the nation “at the disposal of Russia” and derail its aspirations to one day join the European Union. President Maia Sandu’s briefing comes a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova, claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials. “The plan for the next period involves actions with the involvement of diversionists with military training, camouflaged in civilian clothes, who will undertake violent actions, attack some state buildings, and even take hostages,” Sandu told reporters at a briefing. “The purpose of these actions is to overthrow the constitutional order, to change the legitimate power from Chisinau to an illegitimate one,” Sandu said, “which would put our country at the disposal of Russia, in order to stop the European integration process.” She defiantly vowed: “The Kremlin’s attempts to bring violence to our country will not succeed.” There was no immediate reaction from Russian officials to Sandu’s claims. Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people, has sought to forge closer ties with its Western partners. Last June, it was granted European Union candidate status, the same day as Ukraine. Sandu said that between October and December, Moldovan police and its Intelligence and Security Service, or SIS, have intervened in “several cases of organized criminal elements and stopped attempts at violence.” Over the past year, Non-NATO Moldova has faced a string of problems. These include a severe energy crisis after Moscow dramatically reduced gas supplies; skyrocketing inflation; and several incidents in recent months involving missiles that have traversed its skies, and debris that has been found on its territory. Moldovan authorities confirmed that another missile from the war in Ukraine had entered its airspace on Friday. Sandu said that Russia wants to use Moldova in the war against Ukraine, without providing more details, and that information obtained by intelligence services contained what she described as instructions on rules of entry to Moldova for citizens from Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Montenegro. “I assure you that the state institutions are working to prevent these challenges and keep the situation under control,” Sandu said. She said that Moldova’s Parliament must adopt draft laws to equip its Intelligence and Security Service, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the necessary tools to combat more effectively the risks to the country’s security.” The President added that the plan would “rely on several internal forces, but especially on criminal groups” and went on to name two Moldovan oligarchs, Ilan Shor and Vladimir Plahotniuc, both of whom are currently in exile. Both men last year were sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K. Last fall, a series of mass anti-government protests organized by Shor’s populist, Russia-friendly Shor Party, also rocked Moldova amid the energy crunch. The President’s press briefing Monday comes after the resignation on Friday of Moldova’s Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita. The same day, Sandu appointed her defense and security adviser, pro-Western economist Dorin Recean, to succeed Gavrilita. On Friday, after Moldovan authorities confirmed the missile incident, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters in Washington that “Russia has for years supported influence and destabilization campaigns in Moldova, which often involve weaponizing corruption to further its goals.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Monday that the government would do “whatever it takes” to protect the country, as the U.K. announced a security review after several unidentified objects were shot down in the skies over North America. Asked about the objects, Sunak said he wouldn’t “comment in detail on security matters, but people should be reassured that we have all the capabilities in place to keep the country safe,” including a quick-reaction force of Typhoon fighter jets. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said “the U.K. and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security." He said "this development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse.” U.S. fighter jets shot down an object over Lake Huron on Sunday – the fourth such downing over the U.S. or Canada this month. On Feb. 4, the U.S. military downed what officials say was a Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast after tracking it for several days across North America. On Friday, F-22 jets shot down a “car-sized” object in U.S. airspace off the coast of Alaska, and on Saturday Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had ordered a U.S. warplane to shoot down an unidentified object – later described as a balloon — high over the Yukon territory in northwest Canada. The item downed Sunday was described as octagonal, with strings hanging off, but had no discernable payload. The three objects were much smaller in size, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected spy balloon — one of what U.S. officials say is a fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that have targeted more than 40 countries over several years. China says the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had blown off course. British Transport Minister Richard Holden said Monday that it was “possible” China had flown spy balloons over the U.K. He said Britain would deal “robustly” with China, which he called “a hostile state.” A senior U.S. military official said Sunday that part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” and closer scrutiny of the skies following discovery of the spy balloon. Pentagon officials say the three objects downed since then posed no security threats, but so far little is known about them and officials have ruled nothing out — not even UFOs.

More than 4,800 individuals may have been victims of child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church and 512 alleged victims have already come forward to speak out, an expert panel looking into historic abuse in the church said Monday. Senior Portuguese church officials had previously claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred. Senior clergymen sat in the front row of the auditorium where panel members read out some of the harrowing accounts of alleged abuse included in their final report. There were vivid and shocking descriptions. The head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference, Bishop José Ornelas, said church authorities would study the panel’s 500-page report before giving an official response. “We have seen and heard things we cannot ignore,” he told reporters. “It’s a dramatic set of circumstances. It won’t be easy to get over it.” The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, set up by Portuguese bishops just over a year ago, looked into alleged cases from 1950 onward. Portuguese bishops are due to discuss the report next month. The panel regretted that the Vatican had taken so long to grant access to church archives. Permission came only in October, giving the panel just three months to go through written evidence of abuse. The statute of limitations has expired on most of the alleged cases. Only 25 allegations were passed to prosecutors, the panel said. The report, criticized by some as long overdue, came four years after Pope Francis gathered church leaders from around the world at the Vatican to address the sex abuse crisis in the church. That meeting was held more than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia and 20 years after it hit the United States. Bishops and other Catholic superiors in many parts of Europe at the time continued to deny that clergy sex abuse existed or insisted on giving little weight to the problem. Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who headed the panel in Portugal, said it estimates the true number of victims during the period as being at least at 4,815. That extrapolation was made on potential other victims mentioned by those victims who came forward. The panel is not publishing the names of the victims, the identities of the alleged abusers, or the places the abuses allegedly happened. However, it is to send to bishops by the end of the month a list of alleged abusers who are still active in the church. The final report includes a separate — and confidential — annex of all the names of church members reported to the committee that is being sent to the Portuguese Bishops Conference and to the police. The Portuguese church hasn’t said whether it intends to pay compensation to any victims. The six-person committee included psychiatrists, a former Supreme Court judge and a social worker. The report said that 77% of the abusers were priests, with other perpetrators being linked to church institutions. It added that 77% of victims didn’t report the abuse to church officials and only 4% went to the police. Most of the abuse took place when the victims were in early adolescence. It said 48% of those who came forward had spoken about the abuse for the first time. Most of the alleged victims were male, though 47% were female, the report said. It said there were places in Portugal, such as some seminaries and religious institutions, that were “real blackspots” for abuse. The panel recommended that the statute of limitations on such crimes be extended to at least 30 years from the current 23 years.  

Thousands left homeless by a massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago packed into crowded tents or lined up in the streets for hot meals Monday, while the desperate search for anyone still alive likely entered its last hours. One crew wrested a 4-year-old girl from rubble in hard-hit Adiyaman, 177 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck. Thousands of local and overseas teams, including Turkish coal miners and experts aided by sniffer dogs and thermal cameras, are scouring pulverized apartment blocks for signs of life. While stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days — many broadcast live on Turkish television and beamed around the world — tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period. Experts say given temperatures that have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) — and the total collapse of so many buildings — the window for such rescues is nearly shut. The quake and its aftershocks, including a major one nine hours after the initial temblor, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, killing more than 35,000 and reducing whole swaths of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal. Damage included heritage sites in places like Antakya, an important ancient port and early center of Christianity historically known as Antioch. Greek Orthodox churches in the region have started charity drives to assist the relief effort and raise funds to eventually rebuild or repair churches. Some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes. Not enough tents have arrived for the homeless, said survivor Zehra Kurukafa, forcing families to share the tents that are available. “We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” said Kurukafa. Turkish authorities said Monday that more than 150,000 survivors have been moved to shelters outside the affected provinces. In the city of Adiyaman, Musa Bozkurt waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to western Turkey. “We’re going away, but we have no idea what will happen when we get there,” said the 25-year-old. "We have no goal. Even if there was (a plan) what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?” But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended. “Those who have the means are leaving, but we’re poor,” he said. “The government says, go and live there a month or two. How do I leave my home? My fields are here, this is my home, how do I leave it behind?” Volunteers from across Turkey have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup for survivors who lined up in the streets of downtown Adiyaman. Other volunteers continued with the rescue efforts. After rescuers pulled out the 4-year-old, a relative told HaberTurk television that more loved ones were inside the building. As the scale of the disaster comes into view, sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an ineffective response to the historic disaster. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough reelection battle in May. Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured salvage tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive Monday in the wreckage of a five-story building in Turkey's Gaziantep province. Syrian authorities said a newborn whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of their home was doing well. The baby, Aya, was found hours after the quake, still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. She is being breastfed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is being treated. Such tales have given many hope, but Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.” David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed. But he added that the odds were not very good to begin with. Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they collapsed into very small pieces, leaving very few spaces large enough for people to survive in, Alexander said. “If a frame building of some kind goes over, generally speaking we do find open spaces in a heap of rubble where we can tunnel in,“ Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photographs from Turkey and from Syria, there just aren’t the spaces.” Wintery conditions further reduce the window for survival. In the cold, the body shivers to keep warm — but that burns a lot of calories, meaning that people also deprived of food will die more quickly, said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech. Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed. Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced. Turkey’s death toll from the quake has exceeded 31,000. Deaths in Syria, split between rebel-held areas and government-held areas, have risen beyond 3,500, although those reported by the government haven’t been updated in days. Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that the international community has failed to provide aid. Griffiths said Syrians "rightly feel abandoned.” He added: “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.” In the Syrian capital of Damascus Monday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told reporters that “troubles” regarding the flow of aid to Syria’s rebel-held northwest are “now being corrected.” The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, meanwhile, said that 53 trucks carrying aid had crossed from Kurdish territory into earthquake-damaged areas controlled by rival Turkish-backed rebels in northwest Syria who had previously prevented convoys from crossing. Turkish authorities consider the Syrian Democratic Forces to be a terrorist group, along with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist group.

Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards flooded the streets of Madrid on Sunday for the largest protest yet against the regional government’s management of the capital city’s health care services. Over 250,000 people rallied in the city center, according to the central Spanish government. Organizers claimed the crowd was bigger by several hundred thousand. Many protest participants carried homemade signs with messages in Spanish like “The right to health is a human right. Defend the health service.” Health worker associations led the demonstration, which was backed by left-wing parties, unions and normal citizens concerned with what they see as the dismantling of the public health care system by the Madrid region’s conservative-led government. ALso Read: Spain’s support sought to expedite release of 5 detained Bangladeshi nationals These groups have taken to the streets on a regular basis in recent months, and their movement is gathering strength. Madrid’s regional chief, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, alleges the protests are motivated by the political interests of left-wing rivals ahead of May regional elections across most of Spain. Health care workers claim that Díaz Ayuso’s administration spends the least amount per capita on primary health care of any Spanish region even though it has the highest per capita income. They say that for every 2 euros spent on health care in Madrid, one ends up in the private sector. Critics of her administration say that produces long waits for patients and overworked doctors and nurses. Spain has a hybrid health care system, but the public sector is larger than the private one and is considered a basic pillar of the state. It is run by Spain’s regions.  

Pedro Yudel Bruzon was looking for someone in the U.S. to support his effort to seek asylum when he landed on a Facebook page filled with posts demanding up to $10,000 for a financial sponsor. It's part of an underground market that's emerged since the Biden administration announced it would accept 30,000 immigrants each month arriving by air from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Applicants for the humanitarian parole program need someone in the U.S., often a friend or relative, to promise to provide financial support for at least two years. Bruzon, who lives in Cuba, doesn't know anyone who can do that, so he searched online. But he also doesn't have the money to pay for a sponsor and isn't sure the offers — or those making them — are real. He worries about being exploited or falling prey to a scam. “They call it humanitarian parole, but it has nothing to do with being humanitarian,” said Bruzon, who said he struggles to feed himself and his mother with what he makes as a 33-year-old Havana security guard. “Everyone wants money, even people in the same family.” It’s unclear how many people in the United States may have charged migrants to sponsor them, but Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carry dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters. Several immigration attorneys said they could find no specific law prohibiting people from charging money to sponsor beneficiaries. “As long as everything is accurate on the form and there are no fraudulent statements it may be legal,” said lawyer Taylor Levy, who long worked along the border around El Paso, Texas. “But what worries me are the risks in terms of being trafficked and exploited. If lying is involved, it could be fraud.” Also, she noted, it “seems counterintuitive” to pay someone to promise to provide financial support. Attorney Leon Fresco, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said charging to be a sponsor is a “gray area” and the U.S. should send a forceful message against the practice. Kennji Kizuka, an attorney and director of asylum policy for the International Rescue Committee, which resettles newcomers in the United States, said this type of thing happens with every new U.S. program benefitting migrants. “It looks like some are just going to take people’s money and the people are going to get nothing in return,” Kizuka said. Levy said such exploitation surrounding a similar U.S. program for Ukrainians prompted the government to publish an online guide about how to spot and protect against human-trafficking schemes. One common scheme with immigration programs is known as notario fraud and involves people who call themselves “notarios públicos” charging large sums. In Latin America, the term refers to attorneys with special credentials, leading lead migrants to believe they are lawyers who can provide legal advice. In the U.S., notaries public are merely empowered to witness the signing of legal documents and issue oaths. In another scheme, someone poses as a U.S. official asking for money. The U.S. government notes: “We do not accept Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, or gift cards as payment for immigration fees.” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services warns about potential scams with the humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans that was rolled out last month and notes online that the program is free. “Fulfilling our humanitarian mission while upholding the integrity of the immigration system is a top priority for USCIS,” the agency said in response to questions about the potential for exploitation. It says the agency “carefully vets every prospective supporter through a series of fraud- and security-based screening measures.” “Additionally, USCIS thoroughly reviews each reported case of fraud or misconduct and may refer those cases to federal law enforcement for additional investigation,” the statement said. The agency did not address whether any application has been rejected because of concerns that potential sponsors might be requesting money. The Department of Homeland Security says 1,700 humanitarian parole applications were accepted as of Jan. 25 from Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, plus an undisclosed number of Venezuelans. A Texas-led lawsuit seeks to stop the program, which could allow 360,000 people a year to enter the U.S. legally. One Facebook post advertising paid sponsorships led to a person who identified himself as an American citizen living in Pensacola, Florida. Told he was communicating with a journalist, the person refused to talk on the phone and would only text. The person told The Associated Press he had sponsored a Cuban uncle and aunt for $10,000 each. He refused to provide contact information for those relatives, then stopped responding to questions. Another would-be sponsor said via Facebook messenger that they charge $2,000 per person, which includes a sponsorship fee, document processing and an airline ticket. Requests for more information were answered with a phone number from the Dominican Republic that rang unanswered. A man who posted seeking a sponsor told the AP that he was disturbed by some offers. “It’s very easy to trick a desperate person and there are an abundance of them here,” the man, who identified himself as Pedro Manuel Carmenate, of Havana, said. “You just have to tell the people what they want to hear.” Of course, not all sponsors charge a fee. A new initiative called Welcome.US aims to match Americans to migrants without supporters. Also, nonprofit organizations are trying to spread accurate information about the program. Sarah Ivory, executive director of the nonprofit USAHello that provides online information in multiple languages, said the proliferation of offers for paid sponsorship is “deeply troubling and frustratingly predictable,” reflected in hundreds of queries to the group. “Many report that they barely have the money to feed themselves, much less pay to get a passport or arrange a sponsor,” Ivory said. Such desperation is reflected on social media. “I’m looking for a sponsor for two people please, my husband is in a wheelchair,” reads a post from someone who says she lives in Havana. “I will give my house with everything inside and I’ll pay $4,000 for each” person sponsored.