captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, january 28: the trump administration's immigration proposal under consideration as the next deadline looms. in our signature segment, after surviving violent attacks in myanmar, rohingya women begin to deal with mental health consequences. and, the resurgence of taliban attacks in afghanistan. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> "pbs newshour weekend" is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg.

corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. >> additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thank you for joining us. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed optimism today that congress could make an immigration deal in the wake of the white house's four point immigration proposal. they think it can happen before february 8. that's when the latest short term spending bill expires. president trump tweeted last night that he offered "a wonderful deal"-- which proposed a legal pathway for 1.8 million daca or daca-eligible immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in funding for a wall on the mexico border and increased security.

in the proposal, mr. trump also called for reducing legal immigration, including an end to family-based immigration beyond spouses and minor children, as well as eliminating the visa lottery. democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia called the proposal "a good starting point." manchin is part of a bipartisan group dubbed the common sense coalition that helped end the government shutdown and plans to meet again this week. >> we have people with expertise, thom tillis, a lot of good people, james lankford. a lot of people with knowledge are in this group. so i think we can find a pathway forward. i really do. >> sreenivasan: republican senator lindsey graham defended the proposed $25 billion trust fund for border security. >> you don't need $25 billion for a wall. you need wall systems. you need roads, you need redundancy. you need to fix old fencing. we're not going to build a 1,900-mile wall, but $25 billion can be spent wisely. >> sreenivasan: senator graham also weighed in on another hot

topic on capitol hill: last week's "new york times" report that president trump tried to fire special counsel robert mueller last june. graham said he doesn't know whether the story is true or not, but would pass legislation that would protect mr. mueller from being fired. fellow republican senator susan collins of maine, also expressed confidence in mueller to complete the russia investigation and also supported bills that would protect him from being fired. >> there are some constitutional issues with those bills. but it would certainly not hurt to put that extra safeguard in place, given the latest stories. >> sreenivasan: police in russia arrested one of the country's most prominent opposition leaders as protesters took to the street to boycott the country's upcoming presidential elections. anti-corruption activist alexei navalny was detained as he made his way to a protest in moscow's pushkin square. the demonstration was one of several going on across the country responding to navalny's exclusion from running against president vladimir putin in russia's march 18th election.

putin is widely expected to easily win his fourth term. just hours before his arrest, officers raided navalny's moscow headquarters, and broadcast it live. navalny faces 20 days in jail for organizing the unsanctioned protests. he was previously convicted of embezzlement in a case widely seen as politically motivated. florida senator marco rubio has fired his chief of staff after receiving reports of "improper conduct" with subordinate staffers. rubio's office did not provide details of the accusations, but says it is notifying the appropriate congressional and senate administrative offices. in a statement, the florida republican said: "i had sufficient evidence to conclude that while employed by this office, my chief of staff had violated office policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates." this art show highlights work from the countries represented in president trump's travel ban. see more at pbs.org/newshour.

>> sreenivasan: funerals are underway for the victims of yesterday's suicide attack in kabul, afghanistan. more than 100 people died when an ambulance packed with explosives raced through a security checkpoint and detonated in a busy area. speaking at saint peter's square today, pope francis condemned the violence in afghanistan. >> ( translated ): how long will the afghan people have to endure this inhumane violence? let us pray for all the victims and for their families, and let us pray for all those in that country who continue to work to build peace. >> sreenivasan: all of this came just a week after gunmen stormed kabul's intercontinental hotel killing 22 people. the taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. for more on the taliban's increased activity in afghanistan, i am joined from washington, d.c. by doug ollivant, who served as a director at the national security council under presidents bush and obama, and is now a managing partner with mantid international. doug, this is almost a redo of a conversation we might have had three years ago, four years ago shall even 10 or 12 years ago.

how is the taliban still as strong as they are. >> the taliban are still strng as they are because nothing has fundamentally changed. the taliban are still a terrorist group, as these attacks made plain. these last three attacks. you highlighted not just the ambulance attack against their green zone and the intercon but also a smaller attack on the save the children office of all things in jal all bad. so there clarily a terrorist group but their aims have not changed. they want to be back inside the governments and the government seems unable to repel them and we seem unable to help the government in repelling them. >> what about the kind of almost surge like strategy that we have employed elsewhere. is that happening in afghanistan? is there repercussion of that? >> we have increased slightly the number of troops that we have in afghanistan but we now have about 15, 16,000 troops, to read the unclassified numbers. but in 2010 we had 100,000

troops. and general petraeus and ambassador clark are a team of leadership. if they couldn't do it in 2010 with all those resources why would we think that a sixth of that number today is going to make any significant difference. >> at the same time the taliban seemed to be making some inroads into gaining some legitimacy within the afghan government. >> well, this is always been the, the trouble. the afghan government when it comes on tends to get deeply involved in corruption. and the people dislike the corruption. they dislike that the judicial ician system is corruption-- corrupt and the taliban for all its brutality is a much less corrupt organization and its judicial systems are fair, if extremely har be. so they have always had this appeal at least within the peshtung section of the afghan

population. >> put this in perspective, afghan's relationship with russia. >> we have been therefore foafer. we have been there almost twice as long as the afghanistan, we have been there twice as long as our main operations in vietnam. this is a long time, 2001 and 9/11 was over 16 years ago. >> stewart: >> sreenivasan: is there any strategy that the. is has telegraphed or is working on to try to accelerate some sort of stability there? >> certainly. we've been trying to make afghanistan more stable for virtually all of those 16 years. but it is not working. afghanistan simply doesn't have the social capital, the intellectual capital, the development to stabilize itself. and we've been trying it for 16 years. but the amount of commitment need in terms of man power and in terms of money and in times of time is simply not something that's really acceptable.

so we just keep stumbling along. >> doug ollivant, thanks so much for joining us. >> my pleasure >> sreenivasan: in the last five months alone, more than 650,000 rohingya refugees have fled myanmar for neighboring bangladesh. the rohingya, a muslim minority, have faced a systematic campaign of attacks, rapes, murders, and the burning of their villages at the hands of the myanmar military. the united nations high commissioner for human rights has said the crisis appears to be a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and should be investigated as a genocide. for those who manage to survive, there is a meager existence in a crowded refugee camp where they rely on international aid to salvage what is left of their lives. and as you'll see in this report from special correspondent martin seemungal, the healing process has only just begun. a warning, the images and accounts in this story may be

disturbing to some viewers. >> reporter: the scale of the crisis is overwhelming, a city of huts built by rohingya refugees in just three months, carved out of the forests of bangladesh along the myanmar border. they fled quickly, carrying little, driven by attacks on their home villages inside myanmar. they came by the thousands day after day, week after week to this sprawling refugee camp. now over half a million rohingya are here. they live with overcrowding, many rely on food handouts, struggling to stay healthy, living with terrible memories. >> ( translated ): i am still >> reporter: there are stories

like that in virtually every hut in the camp. the sudden massive influx of rohingya was met by a huge relief operation focusing on the basics, shelter food, water, medicine. the physical needs, and lately more and more emphasis on mental health to address the enormous psychological impact on the rohingya refugees. mahmuda mahmuda is a psychologist with u.n.h.c.r., the u.n. refugee agency. she has been counseling the refugees since the beginning. this 16-year-old did not want her identity revealed but she told her story to mahmuda. she says government soldiers attacked her village and killed her mother with a machete. she says the soldiers caught her and took her away. she says she was raped. >> they try to normally do many things like self-blaming and guilt and shame as we just try to help them in this way so that they can realize it's not their fault. >> reporter: initially mahmuda

was the only u.n.h.c.r. psychologist here, but she is building a team, training women like sumi. >> as a psychologist i, we try to build a relationship with the person because the blame is not her. >> reporter: pieter ventevogel is u.n.h.c.r.'s senior mental health officer and he says more people like mahmuda are needed because it's important to deal with the rohingya in their own language in terms they understand. >> much of the language of psychology is not understood by refugees. we need to bring it down to simple things. so like the word for depression. the word for depression for example or the word for p.t.s.d. doesn't exist as such in the rohingya language. >> reporter: ventevogel says severe post-traumatic stress disorder is prevalent given what the refugees endured. these are the people who are easily frightened and often unable to function at all. rashida's scars are seen, slash

wounds on her throat and neck, and unseen. the memory of the attack by myanmar soldiers. she also saw both her children murdered. >> ( translated ): my two-year- old was thrown into the river and drowned. my infant was thrown and smashed on the ground. >> reporter: rashida spends most of her time inside her hut and has difficulty doing the simplest tasks. >> some people are not able to go on with their lives. because they keep being haunted by the events that happened to them in the past, they keep being stressed and the stress is still in their body. >> reporter: momtaj and her daughter rozia also endured a terrible ordeal. the burns on momtaj's face are still painful, weeks after the attack. it began with a raid on their village of tula toli. she says the soldiers killed her husband and son, then came for her, another story of rape-- they seem countless here. mother and daughter are

inseparable. >> ( translated ): i saw the soldiers killed my father and were attacking my mother. i screamed. the soldiers beat me on my head and then i can't remember anything. >> reporter: momtaj says the soldiers locked them in the warehouse with other women and children and set it on fire. she says they escaped when one of the walls collapsed. that's how she suffered the burns. >> ( translated ): i was very afraid, but my mother was with me. >> everyone is emotionally affected to some extent by what happened. but that's different from saying everyone is traumatized. why? because the actions that you take are different. if i say someone is traumatized, my action will be to find a trauma therapy or something. if i say a person is grieving, what i will do is i will facilitate him in the grief process. in his bereavement. >> reporter: health officials

here say rashida would likely benefit from specialized trauma counseling and she says she would welcome that. >> ( translated ): if a psychologist could come and help i would be happy because i have to live with this every day. >> reporter: psychologists here say momtaj and rozia are ideal candidates for group therapy. mahmouda regularly conducts sessions like this, mostly with women. they can talk among people with shared experiences with a counselor to listen. group therapy, mental health services in general, are not something they had access to in myanmar. >> they can sleep here without fear so it is a very important thing because in myanmar they couldn't sleep well in night. they were all the time in torture in pressure, so it is horrible for the women and ladies. now they have safe life. >> reporter: hasina says she often feels tense and anxious. but she says the sessions help.

>> ( translated ): when we speak to the counselors we feel happy because nobody else asks. >> reporter: there are other ways u.n.h.c.r. and the other agencies are providing psychological support, ways you wouldn't expect, like helping refugees help themselves. supplying bamboo and blankets to let them go and build their own huts is one way. >> if you build your own place, it becomes your own. your own space. and it is a sense of belonging that you get back. >> reporter: there are also specific initiatives to address children's needs. it is estimated over half the camp population is made up of children many of whom have witnessed the same horrors as the adults. the relief agency save the children has built a number of what it calls child-friendly spaces. these centers are usually managed by refugees themselves. >> we're providing that basic level of routine normality and stability and then through that

we identify children who are more distressed or who are showing signs that they need to be referred for more specialized support. >> reporter: these centers are a glimpse of what can be achieved, but much more is needed amid all the hardship and pain in the camps. >> sreenivasan: the trump administration's immigration proposal that included a pathway to citizenship for the so-called dreamers and a request for border wall funding came at the same time that the department of justice sent letters to the mayors of several sanctuary cities stating that their lack of cooperation with federal immigration enforcement could mean and end to public safety funding from the d.o.j. the administration has also increased enforcement, including: multiple deportations of individuals who have been living in the united states for decades, often leaving families behind in the u.s.

immigration and customs enforcement agents around the country raided nearly a hundred 7-11 convenience stores and arrested 21 individuals. and it the agency has gained access to a license plate database with billions of records that could tell authorities where specific vehicles have been and at what time. it's in that context that we speak with sarah stillman, a staff writer for the "new yorker" magazine and the director of the global migration program at columbia university. she has been covering this topic area and recently filed a piece for the "new yorker." along with the assistance of graduate students, her team looked at the stories behind increased enforcement numbers and the sometimes grave consequences for the deported. so first what were you researching, how did you do it? >> we were wondering about the people who come here seeking asylum from often central america's el salvadore, guatemala an hon duras, who get deported, because often we are hearing this hypothetical that we could potentially be sending people back to harm. but we very often don't actually

hear the consequences when someone is deported. >> the administration is going to say we are just enforcing the letter of the law, we cannot be responsible for what happens to someone in a different country. >> we actually have obligations under international law and under dom ease particular law. so i think one of the manyingful things to come out of world war ii and the international community getting together to figure out how do we prevent the kinds of misery that we actually inflicted on people, certainly the u.s. as a country that shift away, people that come here from nazi germany during the war, 1951, we pass the convention that said we will make that commitment as an international community, so none the less, people are both appearing at the border, directly expressing the belief that they will be harmed if they go back and are still being shipped immediately back and we are also seeing one of the biggest shifts under trump is people living in this country for a long time, people who have very deep roots here who are being sent back.

>> sreenivasan: some of the people told the people arresting them and the people escorting them back across the border that i am in grave harm. it's on you now. >> absolutely. so i focused on a woman who had been living in the u.s. for a long time, she had u.s. citizen children, driving hoping one night in texas, was pulled over by a local cop and he decided when he learned she was undocumenterred to turn her over to border patrol. she knew she had a violent husband in mexico that threatened to kill her when if she was sent back. she told literally to border officers, what i am sent back i am killed, and that is what happened. she was found dead. >> one of the things that you also point out is that a decrease in trust between the communities and the law enforcement that serve them. in one of your paragraphs in virginia, domestic assault reports in one hispanic neighborhood dropped more than 85% after the trump's inauguration compared to the same period the previous year, reports of rape and sexual assault fell 75%.

and that didn't happen for the rest of tee city or the rest of the country. so this is specific to latino american population and it is just not in articlington, virginia. >> no, this is a national trend. we have seen police officers in los angeles and in houston come forward saying we are really worried about the public safety ramifications of punch the immigration enforcement. i spoke to a city attorney in denver who said 13 immigrant women have come forward to say can i no longer proceed with my case. i will revoke my wish to either get a protective order to bring myself to the courthouse where ice has been appearing oftentimes. >> that has been one of the tactics increased in the recent past is secretaries ultly much d they are camping out. >> we have seen that in new york, we have seen 100 percent increase in the presence of ice and isa rests happening in courthouses or right outside of them within the administration comes back to the same point which is listen we're just trying tone force these rules under the obama administration some of these were not enforced. but at the same time president

obama has called the reporter in chief soshts' not just since the trump administration but some of these patterns are you pointing out have been going on for a few years. >> i think that is right. i think we've seen a dramatic change inth bo the rhetoric and the reality on the ground in terms how ice is operating. a 40% increase in isa rest over the last area but i think it-- ice ice arrests in the past year. we did see a large number of deportations but there was pros cue tor qual discretion and priorities for who should be sent back. by the end of o bam ---- obama's term there really was a focus on people with certificate yeses felony offenses and that is isn't out the window and we have dhaka daca, young people who have lived here much of their lives, many are a you will dids with their own children ho are being sent back and we have also got temporary protective status, pem from el salvadore and a number of other countries that thought they would be here safely for awhile and are also being sent. >> sara stillman, thank you so

much for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> sreenivasan: parts of paris are underwater right now as flooding on the river seine reaches its crest. the rising water forced some 1,500 residents to evacuate. the flood also caused parts of the louvre museum to close along with many roads, train stations and parks. while the crest of this flood falls below the cities record levels, river levels are expected to remain exceptionally high for several days. the trump administration is dealing a surprising blow to a controversial mining proposal in alaska. last spring, e.p.a. administrator scott pruitt directed his agency to revisit an obama-era decision to use the clean water act to block the gold and copper mining project which endangered bristol bay, home to the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery. but in a statement this week upholding that 2014 decision, the e.p.a. says it found the project could irreparably harm

the watershed, but the agency stands ready to work with the mining companies. there are some notable passings to share with you. first, ingvar kamprad, the founder of ikea, the world's largest furniture retailer. he started ikea at the age of 17, growing it into a worldwide business and making him the eighth richest man in the world, according to bloomberg, he's was worth nearly $59 billion. kamprad was known for his frugality, a trait reflected in ikea's prices. ingvar kamprad died yesterday at his home in sweden at the age of 91. and mort walker, the creator of the comic strip "beetle bailey" has died. wlker debuted the "beetle bailey" comic strip in 1950. his satirical take on life in a military camp appeared in 1,800 newspapers worldwide and reached 200 million readers. in the strip's 68-year history, beetle bailey and his cohorts at camp swampy never saw battle and walker never updated their weapons or uniforms. mort walker worked on "beetle bailey" up until his death at age 94.

>> sreenivasan: tomorrow on the newshour, the first of my reports from houston where thousands of residents are still displaced five months after hurricane harvey. this hotel room is what jackie white and her husband michael have been staying in for the past month. they moved here from another hotel, and for three months before that slept on their daughter's floor, which given >> this is more than enough for anyone to worry with and stress with. >> sreenivasan: their ordeal began in august, when hurricane harvey swept into houston-- then at least 30,000 of the city's homes were flooded. >> in large part we're still waiting on funding to come from the federal level to the state and then down to the local level. >> sreenivasan: that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh

access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. retirement company.r additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. these are so spicy. jeez!

those are hot, man. isn't water "nuoc"? nuoc? nuoc? nuoc. you want some nuoc? yes, please. [laughter] and you, too? nuoc. ed kenney, voice-over: chefs are always looking for inspiration for their next dish, but sometimes that exciting new thing is hidden deep in old traditions. food brings people together and has the power to conjure up cherished memories. jack johnson: ♪ oh, you're such a pretty thing ♪ ♪ i'll take you, and i'll make you all mine ♪ kenney: i was born and raised in the hawaiian islands, one of the most diverse communities in the world. johnson: ♪ we will watch you from the clouds ♪ ♪ we can't stop it, anyhow ♪ it's not ours kenney: in this show, we'll meet a guest from hawai'i, learn about their favorite dish, trace it back to its origins, and have some fun along the way. johnson: ♪ oh, you're such a pretty thing ♪ ♪ i'll take you, and i'll make you all mine ♪