In Biden v. Texas, the attorneys general of Missouri and Texas sued after the Biden administration ended the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

The Department of Homeland Security began the MPP in 2019 under President Donald Trump. It tasks agents with returning illegal immigrants seeking asylum to Mexico as they work their way through the U.S. legal system.

On his first day in office, the Biden administration announced it would no longer carry out the program. The administration argued the policy in question was inhumane, strained the U.S. relationship with Mexico, and created chaos. Texas and Missouri argued the administration’s plan is more chaotic and hurts the American public by releasing thousands of illegal immigrants into U.S. communities.

The federal government argued it needs Mexico’s cooperation to carry out the policy, which ties its hands.

In a news conference after oral arguments, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rebuffed that claim, pointing out the Trump administration was able to successfully work with Mexico to quickly deport migrants.

“This is a really important case… In my opinion, we’ve all become border states. It affects all of us,” Paxton said.

Since Biden took office, illegal immigration has soared, raising more concerns about the president’s policies. Border Patrol reported more than 2 million encounters with people crossing the southern border illegally in 2021. Those numbers remain elevated this year.

“In total, there were 221,303 encounters along the southwest land border in March, a 33 percent increase compared to February,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported earlier this month. “Of those, 28 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months, compared to an average one-year re-encounter rate of 14 percent for FY2014-2019.”

U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas ruled in August that the Biden administration must reinstate the MPP, saying they violated federal law by discontinuing it. In August, the Supreme Court said it would not immediately overturn that order.

“The applicants have failed to show a likelihood of success on the claim that the memorandum rescinding the Migrant Protection Protocols was not arbitrary and capricious,” that order read.

But the case was back before the nation’s highest court Tuesday.

During oral arguments, the justices grilled both sides and questioned the public benefit of releasing illegal immigrants into the U.S. and the process used by the Department of Homeland Security to evaluate and release migrants. They also raised concerns about funding, asking what else could be done if DHS does not have the resources to detain migrants and Mexico is hesitant to take them back.

The federal government stressed that it did not have the room to detain the hundreds of thousands of migrants encountered at the border every month.

“So you agree that Congress has expressed a preference for detention when that is available,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked the federal government’s attorney, to which she agreed.

Supporters of the Biden administration’s policy change argued it was more humane to migrants.

“For over three years, MPP has forced thousands of asylum seekers to wait for their asylum hearings in dangerous border towns, subjecting them to systemic danger and violence,” said Joan Rosenhauer, executive director of Jesuit Refugee Service. “JRS works directly with people in northern Mexico as they await their opportunity to pursue asylum and find safety in the U.S. We hear every day of the violence and suffering they experience.”

Biden also has taken fire for his decision to end Title 42 enforcement May 23. A Trump-era provision, Title 42 allows border agents to quickly expel illegal immigrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19 into the U.S. A federal judge on Monday blocked his lifting of that provision.

“I view Missouri as a proxy for all the others states impacted by the crisis we have at the border,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said. “Today, this is a central question about the rule of law and border security. We are very hopeful for a positive decision and result here.

“The drug trafficking, human trafficking doesn’t stop in El Paso,” he added.

Source: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/u-s-supreme-court-hears-arguments-in-remain-in-mexico-lawsuit/article_2d1caa2c-c57c-11ec-a771-6b07761ad4d0.html

The post U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in ‘Remain in Mexico’ lawsuit first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Although countries in Latin America, led by Mexico, continue to be the source of most of the immigrants applying for entrance at the southern border, the number of immigrants from India, Turkey, Russia, and Romania are all up in year-to-date 2021 as compared to the same period in 2020.

Romania led all countries outside of Latin America with 3,435 people seeking entry to the U.S. so far this year, up from 276 in 2020.

“They are aware that President Biden has promised to treat migrants more humanely than Trump, and there may be a perception of an opportunity arising now to come to the U.S.-Mexico border,” Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst of U.S. immigration policy at the Migrant Policy Institute, told Newsweek. Here, migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico are detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 21, 2021 in San Luis, Arizona.NICK UT/GETTY IMAGES

“We’re now seeing record numbers,” Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst of U.S. immigration policy at the Migrant Policy Institute, told Newsweek. “The main reason for ‘why now’ really has to do with a combination of the economic effects of the pandemic, as well as the messaging emerging, or the narrative emerging, about opportunities at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

As the United States continues down a path of economic and public health recovery, Bolter said America presents itself as a place of opportunity.

“The US, especially in the last six months or so, has really gotten its legs under it and is clearly on a pathway to recovery, both economically and health-wise,” Bolter said. “So, I think that maybe the lack of opportunity in home countries compared with the growing opportunities in the U.S. can’t be understated.”

She said the economic, social, and health effects of the pandemic made life even more difficult for people living under challenging circumstances abroad. News continues to circulate characterizing the border as being less hostile under the Biden administration, which Bolter said plays a role in people’s perceptions.

“They are aware that President Biden has promised to treat migrants more humanely than Trump,” Bolter said, “and there may be a perception of an opportunity arising now to come to the U.S.-Mexico border.”

While crossings at the border took their first major jump to nearly 72,000 in October under the Trump administration, President Biden’s increasing of the refugee cap and processing of those enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols are a departure from the previous administration’s policies of deterrence.

But there is something more fundamental than a perception of a friendlier America driving the migrant tide, she said.

“The pandemic has kind of exacerbated conditions that have existed in some countries for years, driving people to the U.S.,” Bolter told Newsweek.

Outside of people journeying from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, Romanians represent the largest demographic encountered by CBP this year. Bolter said many of these Romanians are ethnic Romani, referred pejoratively as Gypsies, who’ve experienced decades of discrimination in both Romania and Europe as a whole, being both enslaved until the 19^th century and murdered during the Holocaust.

Here, a refugee child waits for a security check after crossing the Macedonian border into Serbia on January 29, 2016.ARMEND NIMANI/AFP/GETTY

Given the relatively low numbers of migrants coming from other European and Asian countries, Bolter declined to speculate on the social conditions they may be facing. However, like the Romanians, most Russians were encountered as family units.

Bolter said that migrants fleeing with their families tend to be fleeing hostile political environments.

“Typically single adults tend to be more likely fleeing for more economic reasons,” Bolter said. “When migrants are fleeing as families, they tend to be fleeing more dire conditions and imminent persecution.”

In contrast, most Turks and Indians were encountered as single adults, which she said points toward economic migration. Yet, the economic situations these individuals face look different from both the Central American migrants journeying north and the poorest individuals they’re leaving behind in their home countries.

“Those who can afford flights do tend to have more economic resources available to them,” Bolter told Newsweek. “At the same time, it can almost seem a little counterintuitive, because if they’re coming to the U.S. for economic reasons but can afford the flight over, why do they need to come to the U.S.?”

As a possible explanation, Bolter said that these individuals, given their resources, may feel constrained in their home countries, as they may find their social and political freedoms being abridged. She said they view emigrating to the U.S. as an avenue toward being able to use the skills and resources they might have.

Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies at the University of Texas, El Paso, studies human rights at the border. Like Bolter, he told Newsweek these individuals face intense pressures, both economically and politically.

“There they are people who are at high risk and are under pressure,” he said, “pressure in terms of persecution, pressure in terms of economic suffering.”

“When migrants are fleeing as families, they tend to be fleeing more dire conditions and imminent persecution,” Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst of U.S. immigration policy at the Migrant Policy Institute, told Newsweek. Here, migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico are detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 21, 2021 in San Luis, Arizona.NICK UT/GETTY IMAGES

Heyman said the migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border from these non-western hemisphere nations represent a small total of those fleeing these nations. Visas to the U.S., Canada, and Europe are restrictive, so these individuals may need alternative means to reach their destination. Here is where Heyman said human smugglers play a role in directing these migration flows.

Ecuador stands as an important platform for smuggling organizations, Heyman said. It also requires a visa from few countries. Smugglers with connections to Ecuador or similar Central American nations may offer their services and connections to those looking to flee.

While the individuals fleeing may not have originally intended to undertake such a long journey, Heyman said they make the decisions with intention, which may motivate them to fly across the Atlantic, traverse Central America, then through Mexico, and finally to the United States.

“Smugglers get people from unusual locations to this border,” Heyman told Newsweek. “I think people are interested in migrating. They themselves may not be perfectly well informed, but they have some ideas about what they intend to do.”

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/under-biden-more-european-asian-migrants-seek-entry-us-mexico-border-1609061

The post Under Biden, More European and Asian Migrants Seek Entry at U.S.-Mexico Border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A Guatemalan migrant and his son cross to the United States, via the Rio Grande natural border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, in search of political asylum. (Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images)

Republican critics of Biden say the new wave is the start of the crisis they have long predicted, invited by the new administration’s eager rejection of Trump’s deterrent approach. Yet Biden also inherited a highly improvised enforcement system from his predecessor that was already under strain and highly dependent on Trump’s diplomatic bullying of Mexico.

New Biden rules for ICE point to fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency

Late last month, Mexican authorities in some areas of the border stopped taking back families returned by the United States under emergency pandemic health measures implemented last March. With the U.S. capacity to hold adults and children reduced by the pandemic and the temporary closure of the largest Border Patrol facility in South Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began dropping families off at bus stations and shelters last week.

“I came last year, but they weren’t giving you the opportunity to cross. But then I decided to come back again, and thank God, I got the opportunity,” said Daysi Funes Peña, 40, who arrived with her three children Thursday night.

Last fall, she crossed the Rio Grande with her family and surrendered to border officials, but they were returned to Mexico, she said. This time, Funes Peña and her children were released in downtown McAllen and into the care of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

The area has been one of those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 100,000 cases, raising concerns in cities and towns worried about a growing influx of people and outbreaks inside shelters. CBP officials do not test migrants for the coronavirus, but the state of Texas last week sent extra kits to border communities.

A group of 166 adults and children arrived in the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday night, followed less than an hour later by a group of 87, according to CBP. Since then, additional groups of more than 100 have been taken into custody in the same area, according to a CBP official who was not authorized to discuss the incidents.

Homeland Security officials have not said how many adults and children they have released since Mexico stopped accepting some family groups. They have described the releases as mostly limited to the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, but shelter operators in the Laredo and Del Rio areas, as well as in San Diego, have reported a sudden upturn in the number of people released by CBP needing care.

“In some instances, certain family units in a small fraction of the border have not been able to be returned to their last point of origin,” Matt Leas, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “As Customs and Border Protection always has, it adjusts resources as needed to meet the demand at the border and regularly screens individuals for signs of health issues when they are encountered, including covid-19. Anyone who shows sign of illness receives the appropriate medical treatment.”

Mexico has stopped accepting some Central American families ‘expelled’ by U.S.

CBP typically releases families in its custody because U.S. courts have ruled that underage migrants cannot be held in adult immigration jails. Parents who arrive with children are generally issued an order to appear in court and released into the interior of the United States.

The Trump administration tried to deter families with its Zero Tolerance crackdown in 2018, which separated more than 3,000 children from their mothers and fathers before it was halted amid public outcry.

Border crossings soared after that, until Trump used tariff threats to coerce Mexico into helping the United States crackdown. Mexico began accepting Central American families sent back by U.S. authorities and made to wait outside U.S. territory while their humanitarian claims were processed by U.S. courts. That program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, left thousands of families living in squalid tent camps along the Rio Grande, and Biden is suspending it.

Starting last March, the Trump administration turned to a different enforcement tool, known as Title 42, that allowed U.S. agents to rapidly “expel” most recent border crossers to Mexico. But after barely a week of Biden’s presidency, Mexico has started refusing the return of some families, citing a new law that went into effect last month requiring children to go to family-appropriate shelters.

The Mexican government released a statement Saturday acknowledging that it had “made some adjustments in recent days” due to the implementation of its new law, but it said there had been no broader policy change.

Across northern Mexico, migrants waiting along the border debated what to do. Some had read news stories about families crossing the Rio Grande and being released into the United States. Contradictory rumors swirled on WhatsApp groups.

Some parents were torn: Was it worth the risk of swimming across the river with their children, or should they wait until a more formal policy emerged? What if that policy never came?

“I don’t know what to do,” said Glenda, a 38-year-old from northern Honduras who was waiting in Matamoros with her two children, ages 2 and 5. “There are rumors and people have it in their head that if they swim across they’ll get a permit to live in the U.S., but I can’t tell if it’s real.”

She had been waiting in Matamoros for over a year for the chance to apply for asylum in the United States. Each time she had approached immigration officials on the international bridge, she was told to wait. In October 2019, she decided to send her 16-year-old son across the bridge alone, so that he would be processed as an unaccompanied minor, making it harder for officials to turn him back. He’s now in a San Antonio foster home.

There are over 20,000 outstanding MPP cases along the border, more than 5,000 of them in Brownsville, according to an analysis from the University of Texas. Even though Biden has suspended the policy, it remains unclear when and how those asylum seekers will be brought to the United States for their cases to be processed. Many of them have endured violence and extortion while waiting in Mexico. Some have decided that swimming across the river is now worth the risk.

Mexican police charged in massacre of Guatemalan migrants near U.S. border

Biden administration officials in recent weeks have issued public statements urging migrants not to make the journey north. But current and former CBP officials say the president’s other moves to rescind Trump-era controls, welcome immigrants, and curtail deportations risk incentivizing a new migration wave in Central America, which has been hit hard by natural disasters and the financial blow of the pandemic.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday announced the cancellation of another Trump-era program, known as Asylum Cooperation Agreements, that allowed U.S. authorities to send asylum seekers back to Central America to find refuge there.

“I think we’re just sending the wrong message in rescinding all these executive actions,” said Rodolfo Karisch, a retired Border Patrol official who was chief in the Rio Grande Valley in 2019. “I think we’re asking for additional chaos similar to what we saw in 2019,” he said.

“This could cause a huge problem for these communities along the border, because we still have significant challenges with covid, and this looks like a recipe for something that isn’t good,” Karisch said.

Last summer, Enedina Treviño, and five family members caught the virus. Her mother-in-law died from it.

Treviño was alarmed by the news of migrants being released untested in nearby McAllen. There was still a risk, she said, even if the migrants are tested soon after they arrive.

“I know they come here to better themselves, but it’s still a danger to us — a community who is still suffering from covid, still suffering the aftereffects,” said Treviño, who has been dealing with the lingering effects of the disease that she said put her in the hospital just two weeks ago.

Many of the Central American families reaching the border have been traveling long distances in cramped quarters, at greater risk of exposure.

Inside the McAllen shelter where Funes Peña and her children arrived after their release by CBP, kids wearing blue surgical masks chased each other. Posters hung around the large room, labeling stations for “Personal Hygiene” and “Registration.” A map of the United States hung on one wall. Colorful children’s drawings were taped to the windows. “Here is beautiful,” read one in Spanish.

On Sunday afternoon, Funes Peña was preparing to step on a plane for the first time — the last leg of a harrowing journey from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border that relied on the kindness of strangers to feed and clothe her and her children.

Her 11-year-old son fed a bottle to her 3-year-old daughter, who lay half-asleep in her arms. Funes Peña’s other daughter, Andrea Marisol, 9, looked on, a strip of blue tape concealing her right eye.

The girl had been attacked in the streets of Honduras, her mother said when she was 5 years old. Funes Peña was hoping she could find better medical care for her daughter’s eye in the United States.

The family is from the rough outskirts of San Pedro Sula, and Funes Peña said they were fleeing both poverty and violence. A single mother, she worked at a factory that laid off its staff amid the pandemic, and she was left jobless and with three children to feed.

The family first left Honduras in September, arriving at the border in October, she said. They were soon returned to Mexico. They went home to Honduras.

It was on her second trip north, while she was making her way slowly through Mexico, that she received a call from a friend who had embarked on the journey to the United States a week earlier.

“She said, ‘Come, they’re really receiving mothers with children, families.’ And it was true, we made it,” Funes Peña said. “That was my goal, to make it.”

The family left immigration custody and arrived Saturday at the shelter in downtown McAllen, which provided her with clothes, shoes, and food, Funes Peña said. The next day, they were on a flight to New Jersey to start a new life.

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Arelis Hernández

Arelis Hernández is a Texas-based border correspondent on the national desk working with the immigration team and roving the U.S. southern border. Hernández joined the Post in 2014 to cover politics and government on the local desk after spending four years as a breaking news and crime reporter at the Orlando Sentinel. Follow

Kevin Sieff

Kevin Sieff has been The Washington Post’s Latin America correspondent since 2018. He served previously as the paper’s Africa bureau chief and Afghanistan bureau chief. Follow

Nick Miroff

Nick Miroff covers immigration enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security for The Washington Post. He was a Post foreign correspondent in Latin America from 2010 to 2017, and has been a staff writer since 2006. Follow

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/migrant-families-us-border-biden/2021/02/07/1bf05212-6970-11eb-9ed1-73d434b5147f_story.html

[Disclaimer]

The post Biden faces border challenge as migrant families arrive in greater numbers and large groups first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

70,000 migrants were caught crossing the Southwest border of the U.S. last month — a 64% increase compared to last November that came in spite of the pandemic and strict immigration enforcement policies, border officials told reporters Monday.

Driving the news: Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan — a Trump appointee with hardline immigration views — sought to blame the increase in the waning days of the administration on the courts and President-elect Joe Biden’s stated immigration platform.

By the numbers: In addition to the overall surge, there have also been more migrants and minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, countries that have suffered from recent hurricanes.

• The number of unaccompanied children encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border rose from 712 in April to roughly 4,700 in October and 4,500 in November, Morgan said.

Between the lines: Unlike past surges, smugglers have been trying to sneak minors further into the U.S. through remote areas, notes Axios’ Russell Contreras.

• Because the 2019 crisis was fueled by large numbers of migrant families and children from the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — border officials pay close attention to those trends.

What they’re saying: Morgan blamed rising numbers on court rulings, including one in November that prevented border officials from quickly expelling minors who cross the border alone. However, the number of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border decreased slightly between October and November.

• Morgan suggested Biden had also contributed to the trends at the border, saying “cartels and human smugglers are fueling perceptions that our borders will once again be wide open, and that we will be reinstating the loopholes that have been closed.”
• “If your policy consists of stopping deportation for almost four months, discontinuing or not supporting Title 42, revoking the Migrant Protection Protocols,” Morgan said, listing off other elements of Biden’s immigration platform, “the message you’re sending is clear and simple: We have open borders.”
• He added that he would love to speak to the Biden transition team about his concerns, but had not yet.

Reality check: Immigration flows are complex. While American politics can play a role, the pandemic, economic instability, and hurricanes have also pushed Central Americans to flee their home countries.

What to watch: If border crossings continue to rise, the Biden administration may need to be even more cautious and methodical in deciding how and whether to change Trump’s border policies, Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney who worked at the Justice Department under President Obama, told Axios.

• Morgan also told reporters that the administration is on track to complete its goal of building 450 miles of border wall by the end of the year.

Source: https://www.axios.com/border-crossings-biden-immigration-89b48348-7882-4701-80ab-1019484bfe5e.html

The post Surge in border crossings spells early test for Biden’s immigration plans first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

MATAMOROS, Mexico — More than 1,700 people live nearly on top of one another steps from the U.S.-Mexico border, squeezed into tents crammed together like Tetris blocks. Many of the mostly Central American migrants have been living here for months, terrified of venturing outside in this city the Gulf Cartel calls home.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court said the Trump administration can continue its “Remain in Mexico” program that has, to date, sent some 60,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico to wait for five-plus months while their immigration cases are decided. The decision reverses an appeals court decision that said the policy, officially called Migrant Protection Protocols, violates the law and is causing “extreme and irreversible harm.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t weigh in on the legality of the policy but allows it to continue while lower court challenges continue. But as the legal battle plays out, the asylum-seekers living through the consequences of the policy are in a paralyzing state of limbo. Most are likely to still live in this Matamoros tent camp when the spring rains hit and turn the ground they’re sleeping on into mud.

TENTS LINE THE AREA NEAR THE RIO GRANDE AT A MIGRANT CAMP IN MATAMOROS, MEXICO ON MARCH 3, 2020. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

The ambiguous legal landscape has compounded the sense of helplessness. And the administration is also staying ahead of the courts, ramping up ever more restrictive policies to keep out migrants. They include sending asylum-seekers to Guatemala to seek protection there and fast-tracking the deportation of Mexican asylum seekers.

“One day they put a law in place, and the next day they take it away,” said Alejandro, an asylum seeker fleeing political persecution who asked to withhold his last name for fear he would be returned to Nicaragua. “We have no idea if the U.S. is going to actually review our cases, or if they’re just going to send us to Guatemala or Honduras. We are just waiting, in a complete state of limbo.”

A GROUP OF CHILDREN PLAY “PAPA CALIENTE,” OR HOT POTATO, WITH A BASKETBALL ON MARCH 3. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

Many of them have been living for months in shelters and overcrowded tent camps in cartel-controlled territory, mere feet from the U.S. border. Their informal shelters dot the U.S.-Mexico border, stretching from Tijuana to Matamoros. As the U.S. has turned its attention to the coronavirus and 2020 elections, their ongoing plight is a stark reminder of how President Donald Trump has effectively pushed the immigration crisis to foreign soil, out of sight and mind for the American public.

In Matamoros, the tent camp was supposed to be a short-term fix to address the pile-up of thousands of asylum seekers with nowhere to live. Instead, it’s become a permanent make-shift city with no clear oversight, leader, or authority in control.

MIGRANTS AT A CAMP IN MATAMOROS, MEXICO PLAY GAMES AND RELAX ON MARCH 2. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

The United Nations refugee agency says Mexico’s National Institute of Migration oversees the camp, noting that it installed portable toilets and metal tarps. But the Migration Institute denies it holds the role. Asked who is in charge, the agency’s spokesman told VICE News, “the migrants themselves.”

The encampment is also not considered a refugee camp, as those are managed under strict guidelines for sanitary conditions and security. Instead, the camp has an ad-hoc structure with self-appointed leaders. No one knows exactly how many people are living here.

CARLOS TORRES AND ANTONIO MARTINEZ PLAY CHECKERS AT THE CAMP IN MATAMOROS ON MARCH 3. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

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“We have serious concerns about security at the settlement and welcome the efforts of the Mexican authorities to address these,” said Sibylla Brodzinsky, spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency in Central America and Mexico.

At least 50 parents have sent their children across the border on their own, knowing that was the only way their children would be allowed into the U.S. But the decision has been gut-wrenching.

“Seeing my kids walk across the bridge by themselves, I felt like my heart was being taken out of my body,” said Luz Torres, who sent her 11-year-old-daughter and nine-year-old son into the U.S. alone at the beginning of February. Torres’ daughter is mentally and physically disabled, and Torres said she was terrified for her safety.

A MAN SELLS SNACKS IN THE MIGRANT CAMP. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

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“What choice did I have? I couldn’t keep them here, sleeping in a tent on the ground. I can handle it but not them,” Torres said between sobs.

No one knows how long the camp will last. As time has passed, aid groups from Unicef to small nonprofits have stepped in to provide food, medical services, and some classes.

ERIKA TAMARILLO PREPARES TAMALES INSIDE A TENT AT THE CAMP ON MARCH 4. ERIKA LIVED IN NORTH CAROLINA FOR NEARLY 20 BUT RETURNED TO MEXICO TO TRY TO HELP HER FAMILY IMMIGRATE. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

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The number of Central American asylum seekers has declined in recent months, but that’s been offset by a growing number of Mexicans fleeing violence in the state of Guerrero. While Mexicans are not subject to Migrant Protection Protocols, they are waiting on average around two months to cross into the U.S. and make an asylum claim in a process known as “metering.”

The fear of a public health emergency is never far. Even as international health leaders are urging people to wash their hands frequently and not touch their faces because of the coronavirus, the camp is overflowing with people but short of sanitation facilities.

WOMEN POUR CLEAN WATER INTO A BUCKET AT THE CAMP ON MARCH 2. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS.

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“This is racism and xenophobia in its maximum expression,” said Alonso Villegas, looking at the tent camp. He fled political persecution in Venezuela and has been waiting in Matamoros since September with his three-year-old son for a judge to decide their case.

Villegas is better off than most of the migrants here. He found a job working as a mechanic and rents a small apartment, so his son has a bed to sleep on while they wait for a resolution in their case. Still, when he heard about the appeals court decision striking down Migrant Protection Protocols, he ran to the port of entry hoping to enter the U.S.

But by the evening, the court had said its decision wouldn’t take effect until the Supreme Court could weigh in. Villegas was despondent.

“I would rather die in Venezuela than here,” Villegas said. “At least there I have my family.”

A GROUP OF BARBER SHOP STUDENTS OFFER FREE HAIRCUTS TO MIGRANTS STAYING AT THE CAMP IN MATAMOROS. PHOTO: SERGIO FLORES/VICE NEWS

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Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgekxg/migrants-stuck-in-tent-cities-on-the-border-just-had-hopes-dashed-supreme-court

The post These Migrants Stuck in Tent Cities on the Border Just Had Their Hopes Dashed by the Supreme Court first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Trump has campaigned for reelection on his border security record. While the February border numbers do not represent a major increase, analysts say the president could have a difficult time pointing to the monthly enforcement statistics as a sign of his success if an upward trend emerges.

Mexico’s homicide rate remains near peak levels, its economy is not growing, and a slowdown in global manufacturing triggered by the coronavirus spread could create new emigration pressures in the coming months.

Mark Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, praised Trump’s border policies to reporters Thursday and presented a chart titled “Alien Removals Exceed Arrivals” that he said was evidence of the administration’s success.

Instead of using the monthly arrest figures as a gauge for migration trends — as Trump officials have done for the past three years — Morgan said the new metric shows the administration continues to deport or turn back more immigrants than the number being detained.

“We have become more efficient and more effective at removing individuals,” he said, adding that the agency has reduced the number of migrants released into the U.S. interior by 95 percent.

Though the raw numbers show an increase in unauthorized migration, Morgan said the agency’s new calculations demonstrate “what I call the end of catch-and-release.”

The Trump administration maintains it is still confronting a crisis at the border that requires emergency restrictions on the U.S. asylum system. While the number of migrants taken into custody last month was fewer than half the February 2019 total, it was significantly higher than the 23,557 arrests recorded in February 2017, the president’s first full month in office.

Arrests have dropped 75 percent since May when authorities detained more than 144,000 border-crossers during a record surge of Central American families and children. The administration responded by imposing sweeping restrictions on U.S. asylum processing, requiring migrants to wait in Mexico while their humanitarian claims are adjudicated or flying them to Guatemala with instructions to seek safety there.

One of those programs, the Migrant Protection Protocols, has sent more than 60,000 back to Mexico to wait while U.S. courts process their claims. Thousands are waiting in makeshift camps and shelters on the Mexican side of the border, where reports of kidnappings and attacks against asylum seekers are commonplace.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Wednesday upheld an injunction blocking the Trump administration from placing migrants in the MPP program after March 11, but the ruling will apply only to those who cross the border into Arizona or California.

Government attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to stay that injunction and allow the MPP program to continue border-wide.

The president said this week that his administration is prepared to close the southern border entirely in response to the coronavirus outbreak, but there are no indications CBP is taking steps to do so. Mexico has confirmed only a handful of infections, far fewer than the United States.

Ken Cuccinelli, an acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told senators Thursday that CBP has amplified its screening for potential coronavirus cases at U.S. land border points of entry, in addition to its airports. The agency has “excluded over 300 foreign nationals” at the three border crossings most heavily used by Chinese nationals, some of whom he said had flown to Canada or Mexico in an effort to skirt U.S. travel restrictions pertaining to the coronavirus.

The United States is banning the entry of most foreign nationals who recently visited or departed China. U.S. citizens and permanent residents who recently visited China are subject to additional screening, and thousands — including those who have no symptoms of illness — have been referred for 14 days of self-monitoring and isolation at home.

“It has not been uncommon for Chinese nationals to fly to Tijuana or Vancouver or Montreal . . . and then cross into the United States,” Cuccinelli told lawmakers Thursday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.

“The three largest land ports of entry for Chinese nationals are Blaine, Washington; Buffalo, New York; and San Ysidro in California,” he said. “. . . At those three ports, the numbers [of Chinese nationals crossing] are sufficiently high that we staged cooperation with HHS medical personnel there, much like we have at the airport.” Canadian nationals who had recently traveled to China make up the largest group denied entry, he said, followed by Chinese travelers.

“We have been very aware of it and confronting it head-on and turning those folks back, frankly,” Cuccinelli added.

Cuccinelli said CBP officials at airports and other ports of entry were giving “obviously a heightened focus” to any travelers who had visited China or Iran, “but also [South] Korea, Italy, and Japan.” Travel history is the “first and biggest flag” for CBP officials screening arrivals to the United States, he said. He also said administration officials were reevaluating daily the possibility of an expanded travel ban.

Currently, individuals identified as having visited high-risk areas might be pulled aside for secondary screening. Individuals deemed particularly at risk are referred for medical screenings by contractors on-site at ports of entry, and potential cases are then referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cuccinelli said.

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Nick Miroff

Nick Miroff covers immigration enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security for The Washington Post. He was a Post foreign correspondent in Latin America from 2010 to 2017 and has been a staff writer since 2006.

Abigail Hauslohner

Abigail Hauslohner covers immigrant communities and immigration policy on The Washington Post’s National desk. She covered the Middle East as a foreign correspondent from 2007 to 2014 and served as the Post’s Cairo bureau chief. She has also covered Muslim communities in the United States and D.C. politics and government.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-border-crackdown-stalls-as-illegal-crossings-increase-for-first-time-in-9-months/2020/03/05/c864c828-5eec-11ea-8baf-519cedb6ccd9_story.html

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The post Trump border crackdown stalls as illegal crossings increase for first time in 9 months first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Updated: Tue, Dec 10^th 2019 @ 4:04pm EST

Source: https://www.numbersusa.com/news/rep-ross-spano-we-can-delay-budget-we-cant-delay-crisis

The post Rep. Ross Spano: We can delay a budget, but we can’t delay a crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A group of 64 parents and children had waded through a shallow bend in the Rio Grande to turn themselves in to the agent on the U.S. side. He radioed for a van driver, but there were none available. By 2 a.m., the temperature was 44 degrees.

The agent handed out plastic space blankets. The group would have to wait.

Mothers and fathers swaddled their families in the silvery, crinkling sheets and clustered with them on the ground, shushing the children. They shivered in the cold wind, and the sound of crying carried on, like a broken alarm.

Groups like this arrived again and again in February, one of the coldest and busiest months along the southern border in years. U.S. authorities detained more than 70,000 migrants last month, according to preliminary figures, up from 58,000 in January. The majority were Central American parents with children who arrived, again, in unprecedented numbers.

During a month when the border debate was dominated by the fight over President Trump’s push for a wall, unauthorized migration in fiscal 2019 is on pace to reach its highest level in a decade. Department of Homeland Security officials say they expect the influx to swell in March and April, months that historically see large increases in illegal crossings as U.S. seasonal labor demand rises.

The number of migrants taken into custody last year jumped 39 percent from February to March, and a similar increase this month would push levels to 100,000 detentions or more.

It was a surge in the border numbers in March 2018 that infuriated President Trump and launched his administration’s attempt to deter families by separating children from their parents. Trump stopped the separations six weeks later to quell public outrage. But the controversy the policy generated — and its widely publicized reversal — is now viewed by U.S. agents as the moment that opened the floodgates of family migration even wider, worsening the problem it was meant to fix.

While arrests along the border fell in recent years to their lowest levels in half a century, they are now returning to levels not seen since the George W. Bush administration, driven by the record surge in the arrival of Central American families.

For U.S. border agents, the strain has grown more acute, as they struggle to care for children using an enforcement infrastructure made in an era when the vast majority of migrants were Mexican adults who could be quickly booked and deported. The Central American families — called “give-ups” because they surrender instead of trying to sneak in — have left frustrated U.S. agents viewing their own role as little more than the facilitators for the last stage of the migrants’ journey. They are rescuing families with small children from river currents, irrigation canals, medical emergencies and freezing winter temperatures.

“We’re so cold,” said Marlen Moya, who had left Guatemala with her sons six weeks earlier and crossed the Rio Grande with the group of 64.

Moya’s son Gael, 6, was sick with a fever and moaning, his face streaked with tears. “In Juarez, we were shoved and yelled at,” she said, looking back across the river to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. “We slept on the street.”

Asked why she didn’t cross during the day, when temperatures were mild, Moya said she worried that Mexican police would stop them. “We’ve already come this far,” she said.

Much of the attention last fall was focused on caravan groups, mostly from Honduras, as they reached Tijuana, Mexico, not far from San Diego. Then concern shifted to Arizona and New Mexico, where groups of rural Guatemalan families began showing up at remote border outposts. Two Guatemalan children died in December after being taken into U.S. custody, as Homeland Security officials declared a humanitarian and national security crisis.

The border deal Trump and Democrats reached last month includes $415 million to improve detention conditions for migrant families, including funds to potentially open a new processing center in El Paso. But in the meantime, families continue to arrive in groups large and small, in faraway rural areas and right in downtown El Paso.

“The numbers are staggering, and we’re incredibly worried that we will see another huge increase in March,” said a Homeland Security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unpublished figures.

The group by the river had landed on the no man’s land between the Rio Grande and the tall, steel American fencing. They were on U.S. soil, a place that already has a border wall.

The lone U.S. agent with the group was the only one available along that span. Drug smugglers have been using the groups as a diversion, so the agent couldn’t leave the riverbank.

No vans or buses arrived to pick up the families. Other agents were busy at the nearby processing center because so many groups had arrived in El Paso that night, and still others were at the hospital, where they were helping parents and children receive treatment for severe flu symptoms.

Homeland Security officials have been urging lawmakers to grant them broader powers to detain and quickly deport families in a search for deterrent measures. Their attempts to crack down using executive actions have been blocked repeatedly in federal court.

The migrants travel by van to a holding facility in El Paso.

The Trump administration has begun sending some asylum-seeking Central Americans back to Mexico to wait while their claims are processed, but so far that experiment has been limited to California’s San Ysidro port of entry.

About 150 migrants were sent back across the border in February, according to Mexican authorities, but that is a small fraction of the more than 2,000 unauthorized migrants coming into U.S. custody on an average day.

Homeland Security officials said Friday that the pilot program, which they call Migrant Protection Protocols, will expand to El Paso and potentially other locations in coming weeks, predicting that the number of Central Americans sent back would grow “exponentially.” Some of the cities where they will wait are among the most dangerous in Mexico.

Mexican officials are cooperating by providing general assistance and job placement for those sent back to wait, but privately they have warned the Americans that their capacity to take parents with children is extremely limited, especially families that need welfare assistance and enrollment in already-crowded public schools.

Migrants at the border hold tight to the blankets and move about the area to stay warm while they wait for the van.

Arrivals and departures

U.S. court restrictions on the government’s ability to keep children in immigration jails — and the sheer volume of people arriving — have left Homeland Security agencies defaulting increasingly to the overflow model Trump deplores as “catch-and-release.”

Volunteer workers from religious charities were visible at the El Paso airport last month, guiding newly arrived Central American families through the terminal, directing them like a tour group.

The adults wore GPS monitors on their ankles and carried manila envelopes with instructions telling them when to appear in court for their asylum claims. Some were traveling in premium seats, the only last-minute tickets available when their families arranged the flights.

It was the first time many of the migrants had been on an airplane. For Dionel Martinez, it was the second.

The 48-year-old Guatemalan came to the United States three decades earlier, working as a landscaper until he was deported — his only other time on a plane.

“We’re going to Pennsylvania,” he said. A friend had arranged a job at a pizzeria there.

With the savings from his first stint in the United States as a young man, Martinez was able to buy some land in his home country and start a family. But a drought this year had left them hungry.

“There was no harvest,” he said. “Not one grain of corn.”

His son Darwin, 13, came with him to the United States this time. The boy fainted during the journey, his father said, when they had to stand for hours in the back of a cattle truck.

Martinez said he paid 30,000 Guatemalan quetzals, about $2,500, to a “coyote” smuggling guide. It was a cheap rate, but it meant that he and his son traveled through Mexico in trucks, like cargo.

Across rural Guatemala, Martinez said, word has spread that those who travel with a child can expect to be released from U.S. custody. Smugglers were offering two-for-one pricing, knowing they just needed to deliver clients to the border — not across it — for an easy surrender to U.S. agents.

Migrant families keep walking to stay warm as they wait for the van in El Paso. The group of 64 migrants came across the Rio Grande and presented themselves to U.S. authorities.

“If this continues, I don’t think there will be anyone left in Guatemala,” Martinez joked. The men from his village near the town of Chiquimula were all leaving, he said, bringing a child with them.

Martinez said he used the family home as collateral. He had four months to pay off the $2,500. “I need a way to feed my family, and this is it,” he said.

Not all Central American families are economic migrants. Others, especially from Honduras, arrive with stories of gang threats and violent attacks. After crossing the border, a U.S. asylum officer performs a preliminary screening to determine whether their fears of persecution are credible enough to deserve a hearing with an immigration judge.

The problem, Homeland Security officials say, is that a growing portion of those who pass the initial screening never appear in court. They know asylum standards are tightening. Or, like Martinez, they have a prior deportation from the United States that all but disqualifies them from getting asylum.

Once released into the U.S. interior, some shed their monitoring bracelets and slip into the shadows to remain in the United States, a country where wages are 10 times higher than in Central America.

The saturation at the border means that it matters little whether a parent’s story of persecution is sufficiently credible; the United States has just three detention facilities appropriate for families, with about 3,000 beds, and those are full. The pipeline backs up into Border Patrol stations that were never designed for long-term detention, let alone children, many of whom arrive sick after days in cramped quarters.

A Border Patrol agent in Antelope Wells, N.M., uses his truck as a perch to spot smugglers and groups of migrants approaching the border.

A crossing gone quiet

The tiny, remote Antelope Wells, N.M., border crossing, where 8-year-old Jakelin Caal arrived in December before falling fatally ill, is now staffed with a team of medically trained Border Patrol agents. But that crossing has gone quiet in recent weeks, as more large groups turn up on El Paso’s riverbanks.

For families too poor to hire a smuggler, it was the only place to cross, converging with others who sought safety in numbers. Carlos Guevara, 35, said he and his son had wandered the streets of Juarez with nowhere to sleep, then spotted the crowd heading for the river.

“I want to give my son a better life,” he said. Guevara said he earned about $6 a day for farm labor in Honduras, and left a month earlier with, Carlitos, 7, en route to Michigan. “I can’t stand being poor anymore.”

Swathed in plastic, his son approached the headlights of an agent’s Border Patrol truck, its idling engine offering some warmth. Other children in the group were still crying and calling out.

Ramiro Cordero, a Border Patrol official assigned to accompany reporters, called on the radio, and said he would go back to the nearest station and get a van himself.

Border Patrol official Ramiro Cordero puts bracelets on Mairon Argueta and his daughter Elsi Argueta, 4, who arrived in El Paso from Honduras. The bracelets identify the group of migrants and how many people crossed.

“This is what’s happening on a daily basis,” Cordero said. “You’ve got to understand that we have to take care of everyone that comes across. And this requires transportation and a lot of logistical support.”

“Hopefully the vans can get here to transport them to one of the processing facilities,” he said. “But for right now, this is where we stay.”

He lined up the parents and children to issue bracelets to each one with a number corresponding to their arrival group. “They will be provided with basic needs, whether it’s water, juices, warm meals,” Cordero said. They would also get a medical screening.

Two blue-uniformed customs officers, summoned to help the Border Patrol agents, arrived with a van after 3 a.m.

The agents loaded the families into the vehicle, needing three trips to transport the entire group. The crying had stopped. On the radio, a dispatcher said there were already 607 migrants in custody at the processing center where they were headed, more than twice its capacity.

Cordero stands at the border barrier in Antelope Wells, N.M., on Feb 20.

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Credits: Story by Nick Miroff. Photos by Carolyn Van Houten. Video by Jorge Ribas. Designed by Courtney Kan. Photo Editing by Karly Domb Sadof.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/03/04/feature/after-cold-busy-month-at-border-illegal-crossings-expected-to-surge-again/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d99513773e20

The post Record number of families, cold reality at border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.