Keeping Counsel: Challenging Immigration Detention Transfers as a Violation of the Right to Retained Counsel

In 2019 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) incarcerated nearly 500,000 individuals. More than half of the individuals detained by ICE were transferred between detention facilities, and roughly thirty percent of those transferred were moved between federal circuit court jurisdictions. Detention transfers are isolating, bewildering, and scary for the detained noncitizen and their family. They can devastate the noncitizen’s legal defense by destroying an existing attorney-client relationship or the noncitizen’s ability to obtain representation. Transfers also obstruct the noncitizen’s ability to gather evidence and may prejudicially change governing case law. This Note describes the legal framework for transfers and their legal and non-legal impacts. It contends that transfers violate noncitizens’ constitutional and statutory rights to retained counsel by obstructing the attorney-client relationship. Further, it argues that federal courts have jurisdiction to review right to counsel challenges to transfers under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Written with practitioners in mind, this Note canvasses the practical and legal difficulties of making such a challenge

Out in the Open: A Geoarchaeological Approach to Open-Air Surface Archaeology in the Semi-Arid Interior of South Africa’s Western Cape

Southern African research into the behavioural evolution of Late Pleistocene human adaptability, flexibility, and innovation is typically pursued through the lens of rock shelter deposits. However, rock shelters only cover a very small, geographically specific area of the subcontinent, distorting our understanding of change in human-environment interaction and demography. While still under-represented and under-explored in regional syntheses, more studies are looking to open-air archaeology to fill this geographic void in Late Pleistocene research. These studies either pursue a landscape approach that prioritises spatial coverage, or site-bound excavation to maximise temporal control. However, few investigate the depositional and erosional phenomena involved in the formation of surface archaeology and its surrounding landscape. To rectify this disparity, this thesis explores the complex spatio-temporal relationship between surface archaeology and the formation history of Uitspankraal (UPK) 7 by combining multiple interdisciplinary methods from the Earth and archaeological sciences: randomised surface survey and sampling, geomorphometry, geophysical survey, granulometry, XRD analysis, OSL dating, artefact mapping, and assemblage composition and artefact condition analysis. UPK7 is located in the semi-arid Doring River valley and yields surface archaeology that implies occupation from the Still Bay to the Historic period. Results show that it is an eroding series of source-bordering dunes draped across a palaeoterrace and a hillslope of bedrock and colluvium. UPK7 formed through rapid but pulsed sediment accumulation over at least the last 80 ka, with periods of surface deflation and exposure that facilitated artefact redistribution. Despite the abundance of Late Pleistocene archaeology at UPK7, erosion currently outpaces deposition and deposit stabilisation. Erosion has accelerated in at least the last 5,000 years and especially within the last 300 years, suggesting feedback between Holocene aridification, an increase in oscillations between wet-dry conditions, and an increase in human-ungulate activity in the study area. Together these conditions have differentially erased younger deposits, exposing the consolidated Late Pleistocene sediment and the more ancient material it preserves. The visibility, spatio-temporal distribution, and preservation of UPK7’s surface artefacts reflect the locality’s topography, the timing of their discard and the duration and process of sediment accumulation and erosion. The spatial patterning and diversity of time-diagnostic and non-diagnostic artefacts is shown to correspond with the depositional age of their underlying substrate in areas where topographic conditions minimize or reduce the impact of surface runoff, but where sediment deflation persists. When artefacts are assessed at the scale of the archaeological epoch the spatial distribution of Middle Stone Age artefacts shows a significant association with the oldest deposit, Lower Red. The spatial distribution of Later Stone Age artefacts is significantly associated with Upper Yellow sediment, as opposed to the older Lower Red substrate and the younger Indurated Sand. The findings presented in this thesis caution against forming behavioural interpretations from spatial patterns in surface material without examining their post-depositional history and without forming an understanding of the coevolution of archaeological and landscape formation. This study underscores the need for incorporating a geoarchaeological approach into Late Pleistocene open-air research to improve southern Africa’s landscape-scale insight into greater Africa’s human behavioural evolution

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

This Poster will go in depths of the different elements, that will allow readers to understand from the author’s perspective on the question, what does it mean to be human? Various elements that will be discussed will include the following: wealth, social media, and religion. These three elements alone play a huge role in the lives of individuals all across the world. Furthermore, while discussing these elements, there will be critical concepts that readers will be able to think about based on additional facts being provided about each component. Lastly, the different types of resources that will be discussed in this poster will help readers to understand how each element affects the lives of human beings

Understanding Early Later Stone Age technology at a landscape-scale: evidence from the open-air locality Uitspankraal 7 (UPK7) in the Western Cape, South Africa

Understandings of past human behaviour in southern Africa are hampered by a site-based approach to prehistoric technological systems that relies on spatially isolated samples from one or a few key \u27type-sites\u27. Lithic technological behaviour, however, was a landscape-scale process with raw material acquisition, reduction, transportation, use, maintenance and discard taking place at varied locations. This study takes a landscape approach to the investigation of Early Later Stone Age (ELSA) technology on the Doring River by exploring two points in what we believe to be one system. It compares data from an open-air lithic scatter from Uitspankraal 7 (UPK7) located on the Doring, the major river and lithic source in the area, with a published rockshelter sample from Putslaagte 8 (PL8) located 2 km from the Doring and 15 km to the northwest of UPK7. Differences between the two assemblages support a scenario in which hornfels blades and flakes were produced at the river and transported into the surrounding landscape, with limited transportation of cores. Intriguingly little evidence of quartz-bipolar reduction was found in the open-air sample at UPK7, raising the possibility that different ELSA technological components were organised in distinct patterns across the landscape. Results suggest that the composition of ELSA assemblages is highly situational, with proportions of quartz and/or bipolar technology, for instance, appearing responsive to local context. Overall, this study highlights the importance of taking a landscape-orientated approach to investigating the nature and cause of continuity and variability in the archaeological record. Such an approach will inevitably lead to a more comprehensive understanding of early LSA technology, behaviour and land-use patterns

Implications of Nubian-like core reduction systems in southern Africa for the identification of early modern human dispersals

Lithic technologies have been used to trace dispersals of early human populations within and beyond Africa. Convergence in lithic systems has the potential to confound such interpretations, implying connections between unrelated groups. Due to their reductive nature, stone artefacts are unusually prone to this chance appearance of similar forms in unrelated populations. Here we present data from the South African Middle Stone Age sites Uitpanskraal 7 and Mertenhof suggesting that Nubian core reduction systems associated with Late Pleistocene populations in North Africa and potentially with early human migrations out of Africa in MIS 5 also occur in southern Africa during early MIS 3 and with no clear connection to the North African occurrence. The timing and spatial distribution of their appearance in southern and northern Africa implies technological convergence, rather than diffusion or dispersal. While lithic technologies can be a critical guide to human population flux, their utility in tracing early human dispersals at large spatial and temporal scales with stone artefact types remains questionable

AN AUSTRALIAN DYNAMIC: REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF PARTNERSHIPS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH, AND RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE AND CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT

Australian academic libraries first became partners in the transformation of Australian data and technology enabled research in 2008 through their involvement with the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) program to advance research data management capacity and capability. The partnership of academic libraries with ANDS enabled the development of new research support services and helped to shift the knowledge base of the academic community in research data management, in Australia. Recent training initiatives like the ANDS 23 Things was directed toward academic librarians to increase their knowledge of and capacity to help researchers use national research infrastructure and to manage their data well. The academic libraries have also partnered with ANDS, now part of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and the Australian Access Federation (AAF) on persistent identifier implementation, DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier). In this next phase, AARNet is a partner in supporting academic librarian and researcher skills development. The three organisations are working together; to build on foundational knowledge and infrastructure. Academic librarians and researchers are being introduced to the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data, infrastructure, and platforms, and taught data processing and movement techniques, through ARDC and AARNet (Australian Advanced Research Network) skills offerings. The focus of this presentation is on the changing role of academic libraries in supporting research data management and associated research infrastructures, and on the challenges. Australian national research infrastructures and academic libraries are co-evolving; together we are establishing pathways for the future, to foster new capabilities and advance our world-class research infrastructure. This transformation is enabled through our strategic alliance, an openness to dialogue and change, and by leveraging national and international partnerships

Comparative evaluation of the MAPlex, Precision ID Ancestry Panel, and VISAGE Basic Tool for biogeographical ancestry inference

Biogeographical ancestry (BGA) inference from ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) has strong potential to support forensic investigations. Over the past two decades, several forensic panels composed of AIMs have been developed to predict ancestry at a continental scale. These panels typically comprise fewer than 200 AIMs and have been designed and tested with a limited set of populations. How well these panels recover patterns of genetic diversity relative to larger sets of markers, and how accurately they infer ancestry of individuals and populations not included in their design remains poorly understood. The lack of comparative studies addressing these aspects makes the selection of appropriate panels for forensic laboratories difficult. In this study, the model-based genetic clustering tool STRUCTURE was used to compare three popular forensic BGA panels: MAPlex, Precision ID Ancestry Panel (PIDAP), and VISAGE Basic Tool (VISAGE BT) relative to a genome-wide reference set of 10k SNPs. The genotypes for all these markers were obtained for a comprehensive set of 3957 individuals from 228 worldwide human populations. Our results indicate that at the broad continental scale (K = 6) typically examined in forensic studies, all forensic panels produced similar genetic structure patterns compared to the reference set (G′ ≈ 90%) and had high classification performance across all regions (average AUC-PR > 97%). However, at K = 7 and K = 8, the forensic panels displayed some region-specific clustering deviations from the reference set, particularly in Europe and the region of East and South-East Asia, which may be attributed to differences in the design of the respective panels. Overall, the panel with the most consistent performance in all regions was VISAGE BT with an average weighted AUC̅W score of 96.26% across the three scales of geographical resolution investigated

The role of perceived public and private green space in subjective health and wellbeing during and after the first peak of the COVID-19 outbreak

Research has consistently shown that access to parks and gardens is beneficial to people’s health and wellbeing. In this paper, we explore the role of both public and private green space in subjective health and wellbeing during and after the first peak of the COVID-19 outbreak that took place in the UK in the first half of 2020. It makes use of the longitudinal COVID-19 Public Experiences (COPE) study, with baseline data collected in March/April 2020 (during the first peak) and follow-up data collected in June/July 2020 (after the first peak) which included an optional module that asked respondents about their home and neighbourhood (n = 5,566). Regression analyses revealed that both perceived access to public green space (e.g. a park or woodland) and reported access to a private green space (a private garden) were associated with better subjective wellbeing and self-rated health. In line with the health compensation hypothesis for green space, private gardens had a greater protective effect where the nearest green space was perceived to be more than a 10-minute walk away. This interaction was however only present during the first COVID-19 peak when severe lockdown restrictions came into place, but not in the post-peak period when restrictions were being eased. The study found few differences across demographic groups. A private garden was relatively more beneficial for men than for women during but not after the first peak. The results suggest that both public and private green space are an important resource for health and wellbeing in times of crisis