Lost in the United States: From Teenage Migrants to Trafficking Victims

Here’s what you’ll find on today’s show:

— In Marion, Ohio, a city of about 35,000 people an hour north of Columbus, eight migrant teenagers from Guatemala found themselves trapped in a trafficking ring in 2014. A particularly alarming piece of the story, says Deirdre Shessgreen, is that the teenagers had actually been approved by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of Health and Human Services which resettles unaccompanied migrant children.

— Malaysia has convicted the first person under a new law outlawing ‘fake news.’ Under Malaysia’s Anti-Fake News Act, it is a crime to create or share fake news, and it carries a sentence of up to 10 years in jail. Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman pleaded guilty to maliciously publishing fake news for posting a misleading Youtube video, and, not able to pay the court fine, he was sentenced to one month in prison. Enforcement of the bill comes at a politically contentious time in the country. Malaysia’s federal elections take place next week while Prime Minster Najib Raza is under intense scrutiny for his possible link to an international embezzlement scheme. Opponents worry the government will use the new law to further censor the prime minister’s critics.

— ClemantineWamariya was a six-year-old girl living in Rwanda when her world was suddenly upended. Neighbors began to disappear and her parents grew increasingly frantic. She and her fifteen-year-old sister were sent to stay with their grandparents in the country, until the day their grandmother told them to run. The sisters ran out the back door and kept running, escaping a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of people.