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.

The United States and Mexico last month agreed to relaunch the controversial scheme known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), in keeping with a U.S. federal court order.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled to reverse many hardline immigration policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden ended MPP soon after his inauguration in January as he sought to pursue what he called a more humane approach to immigration. But a federal judge ruled Biden’s move did not follow proper procedure, and in August ordered MPP reinstated.

The program first resumed in December at the international crossing connecting El Paso, Texas, to Ciudad Juarez. More than 200 people have been returned to Mexico so far under the relaunch of MPP, according to the U.N.’s International Organization of Migration (OIM).

Two migrants were returned to Tijuana, across from California, on Wednesday with future appointments in U.S. courts, an official with OIM told Reuters.

The migrant rights advocacy group Al Otro Lado told Reuters the two men were Colombian nationals.

Neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) nor Mexico’s immigration agency immediately responded to requests for comment.

The United Nations’ refugee agency and advocacy groups have criticized the restart of the Trump-era policy, warning migrants face the risk of kidnapping, rape, and extortion in dangerous Mexican border towns.

Under the original 2019 program, some 70,000 migrants seeking asylum were forced to wait weeks and sometimes years in Mexico for a U.S. court date instead of being allowed to await their hearings in the United States.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 5 (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday began returning migrants to the Mexican city of Tijuana in an restart of a Trump-era program that forces asylum seekers to wait for U.S. court hearings in Mexico, Mexican authorities and the U.N. migration agency said.

The United States and Mexico last month agreed to relaunch the controversial scheme known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), in keeping with a U.S. federal court order. U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled to reverse many hardline immigration policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden ended MPP soon after his inauguration in January as he sought to pursue what he called a more humane approach to immigration. But a federal judge ruled Biden’s move did not follow proper procedure, and in August ordered MPP reinstated.

The program first resumed in December at the international crossing connecting El Paso, Texas, to Ciudad Juarez. More than 200 people have been returned to Mexico so far under the relaunch of MPP, according to the U.N.’s International Organization of Migration (OIM).

Two migrants were returned to Tijuana, across from California, on Wednesday with future appointments in U.S. courts, an official with OIM told Reuters.

The migrant rights advocacy group Al Otro Lado told Reuters the two men were Colombian nationals.

Neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) nor Mexico’s immigration agency immediately responded to requests for comment.

The United Nations’ refugee agency and advocacy groups have criticized the restart of the Trump-era policy, warning migrants face the risk of kidnapping, rape, and extortion in dangerous Mexican border towns.

Under the original 2019 program, some 70,000 migrants seeking asylum were forced to wait weeks and sometimes years in Mexico for a U.S. court date instead of being allowed to await their hearings in the United States.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-begins-returning-migrants-mexican-border-city-under-rebooted-trump-era-policy-2022-01-05/

The post U.S. begins returning migrants to Mexican border city under rebooted Trump-era policy first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Mexico City: The United States on Wednesday began returning migrants to the Mexican city of Tijuana in an restart of a Trump-era program that forces asylum seekers to wait for U.S. court hearings in Mexico, Mexican authorities and the U.N. migration agency said.

The United States and Mexico last month agreed to relaunch the controversial scheme known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), in keeping with a US federal court order.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has struggled to reverse many hardline immigration policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden ended MPP soon after his inauguration in January as he sought to pursue what he called a more humane approach to immigration. But a federal judge ruled Biden’s move did not follow proper procedure, and in August ordered MPP reinstated.

The program first resumed in December at the international crossing connecting El Paso, Texas, to Ciudad Juarez. More than 200 people have been returned to Mexico so far under the relaunch of MPP, according to the U.N.’s International Organization of Migration (OIM).

Two migrants were returned to Tijuana, across from California, on Wednesday with future appointments in U.S. courts, an official with OIM told Reuters.

The migrant rights advocacy group Al Otro Lado told Reuters the two men were Colombian nationals.

Neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) nor Mexico’s immigration agency immediately responded to requests for comment.

The United Nations’ refugee agency and advocacy groups have criticized the restart of the Trump-era policy, warning migrants face the risk of kidnapping, rape, and extortion in dangerous Mexican border towns.

Under the original 2019 program, some 70,000 migrants seeking asylum were forced to wait weeks and sometimes years in Mexico for a U.S. court date instead of being allowed to await their hearings in the United States.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-mexico-relations-us-mexico-border-joe-biden-struggles-with-trump-era-policy-as-us-returns-mexican-migrants-2691625

The post Joe Biden Struggles With Trump-Era Policy As US Returns Mexican Migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“Don’t abandon us here,” a man says angrily as his voice breaks. He is surrounded by about 3,000 Haitian adults and children who have traveled from South America to southern Mexico and now seek refuge from the harsh sun in the city of Tapachula’s Olympic Stadium.

The scene is disheartening. Migrants have no basic services and live in cramped conditions. There is no access to clean water, food, or health care. The campsite has only a few portable toilets. A foul stench emanates from neglect. The trash has piled up—enough to cover the ground. Only by organizing themselves are migrants able to meet some of their needs.

Everyone waits in line, enduring high temperatures, hunger, and sickness with the hope of boarding a bus that will allow them to leave Tapachula. The border city has become a prison for migrants who, despite requesting asylum, have not yet received a response from immigration agencies. To make matters worse, the lack of information from authorities has created a chaotic situation. Thousands desperately look for a way to continue their journey.

“We are sleeping on s–t,” a woman angrily tells us. She mentions the worms in the garbage and the places where migrants rest. “A lot of people have the flu, fever, there is no light. We are sleeping in garbage,” says another migrant, emphasizing the unsanitary conditions in which thousands find themselves.

“I haven’t seen much organizational or individual presence,” says Laura Benítez, project coordinator for the organization Global Response Management (GRM), in reference to immigration authorities. Benítez, who has joined various caravans in recent years, says the current migrant crisis is reaching new levels amid unresponsiveness from authorities.

“The main thing is children with fever, flu, cough, some problems with skin allergies…People are here waiting for hours, days under the sun. They don’t eat well or drink enough water. They are dehydrated and with the heat, and we’ve seen children with temperatures over 102 degrees,” she says.

Chaos

According to Karen Martínez, coordinator for the Office of Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), due to the Immigration Regulation Office’s inability to expedite refugee requests at the southern border, news unofficially spread at the end of November that the Tapachula division was transferring migrants to other Mexican states.

In roughly 10 minutes, 10,000 people flooded the office. Immigration authorities “upon being overrun, sent them to the stadium to form a line, and there they were going to tell them where they were going,” explains Martínez, who believes that this response led to the chaotic situation that ensued.

“Truthfully, it’s been very sad to see the conditions in which people find themselves. The stadium is full, which has likely caused discomfort for many, but it’s the only way to put pressure on the National Immigration Institute (INM),” she says.

Only then, on November 28, did the INM publish a statement specifying that in order to reduce the massive concentration of foreigners in Chiapas, the institution would expedite “the transfer of asylum requests to other entities, with the goal of issuing and delivering humanitarian visas in a fast and orderly fashion.”

“[Immigration authorities] never said anything, and it was all unverified information from people who had been moved during those transfers; we know nothing else about [them],” explains Martínez. This is in contrast to the official version that speaks of a safe and orderly transfer to other Mexican states.

“Immigration comes one minute, says one thing, then later, they say another,” people at the stadium reported. This coincides with the stance of JRS, which maintains the situation has been worsened by misinformation and the enforcement of immigration policies that are geared toward containment, rather than providing clarity.

COMAR, Overrun

According to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), between January and November 2021, the state of Chiapas alone received almost 50,000 asylum requests for a total of 90,038 foreigners.

Of all the applications registered at Mexico’s northern and southern borders, 38 percent are Haitian nationals, which makes the Caribbean nation first in terms of the number of asylum requests in progress.

The majority of them, however, are not coming from their homeland. Instead, they have been traveling for months or even years from South American countries like Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. According to Martínez of JRS, the fact that Haitians continue to migrate stems from the xenophobia and anti-immigrant backlash they face throughout the continent—just as they do in Mexico.

For Martínez, the Haitian population has been the most vulnerable in Tapachula because they have no other options to legalize their immigration status besides requesting asylum. She points out that COMAR’s handling of this process has been slow, which has stranded people in Tapachula without documentation proving their status that would allow them to travel to other parts of Mexico.

“The law says that everyone who is subject to the application process is eligible for residency. These individuals apply for a residency card for humanitarian reasons. The INM issues this card, which proves that you are able to transit through Mexico for a year. It also means that you won’t have any problem regularly moving within the country,” she explains.

Immigration offices, however, do not have appointments available until March and April of 2022. Migrants who find themselves in Tapachula against their will are still without work, food, or homes, essentially living on the street, waiting long periods for a response from immigration authorities.

“Faced with this situation, new caravans leaving from Tapachula have started to pop up…These so-called caravans enter into direct confrontation with the National Guard and the INM. Serious human rights violations against migrants have been proven,” says Martínez.

Resettlement?

“We’re miserable, we’re not animals,” another migrant tells us when we ask about their situation. “Immigration has to get us out of here because if we stay, we’ll die of hunger, sick and dehydrated,” she adds. Meanwhile, the majority of those we interviewed agree that there is a lack of information from immigration officials, who are sometimes seen in the vicinity but avoid questions.

According to migrants’ testimonies, the INM is inefficient. Even though it promised to send between 50 and 70 buses to transport thousands of migrants, only three were seen over the course of a week. Benítez has heard testimonies from migrants that the buses that did depart went to San Luis Potosí, Guadalajara, and Puebla.

Despite the lack of official information from immigration authorities concerning their destinations, Martínez more or less confirmed the transfers. “Yes, they have told us that they arrived in Querétaro and there were people who shared with us that they had been left in Veracruz and that afterwards…the response [to their residency requests] was ‘better to keep moving, here there is no way to gain residency, better to look along the way,’” she says with concern. It remains unclear where the resettlements are taking place.

“It’s a situation that got out of control and they are looking for a way to close these routes because in reality, up until now, I’ve had reliable information on who these people are, where they go, where they are dropped off, what their legal status is. But everything is very much up in the air. So the truth is that it’s very worrisome because safety and individual rights are not guaranteed,” Martínez says.

Martínez underscores how this could lead to another problem. As with the 2018 caravans, many migrants could “get lost” in the refugee process “and later they are sent to the southern border again to verify their migration status at the special request of COMAR.”

Militarized Migratory Policies

Amid increased migrant numbers in Tapachula, the need for basic sustenance is growing, as are issues like xenophobia, according to Martínez. For her, the government’s militarized immigration policies contribute to the repression against migrants.

An example of this is INM’s discourse, which seeks to blame migrants for violent actions that make it difficult to carry out procedures. In a statement at the end of November, the immigration authority stated: “Groups of people were detected who, on the one hand, armed with stones and sticks, block avenues and streets and prevent the arrival of buses, and others who, at the same time, resort to violent actions to demand that they leave the same day.”

In contrast, after accompanying various caravans, Martínez points out that INM officials have used force against migrants. Migrants, in turn, are just looking to defend themselves. “This is a consequence of what is happening in the region, people have heard ‘no’ since leaving their country…There hasn’t been communication, dialogue, or listening,” she says.

There are also multiple reports from migrants who have denounced extortion attempts by immigration authorities. However, due to the already precarious situation and the fear of reprisals, no one has filed a formal complaint.

For Martínez, another case that shows how the policies of the Mexican state do not guarantee migrants’ fundamental rights is the truck accident on the Tuxtla Gutiérrez-Chiapa de Corzo highway that, as of December 10, had a death toll of 55—all migrants from the Quiché region in Guatemala.

“We are truly in solidarity with the families and their losses, and the anguish in knowing the fate of their loved ones. This is reflected in a militarized, repressive, and violent immigrant policy, which has forced the people who move through southern Mexico to choose these increasingly dangerous options and routes that put their lives and dignity at risk,” says Martínez.

For her part, Benítez emphasizes the importance of raising awareness of the migrant crisis happening in Tapachula. “It was incredible to arrive here on Monday and see so many people and not see anyone helping them, to see so many with basic needs: from medical attention to water, food… There is a lot of need and we have to be human and show solidarity.”

Aldo Santiago is a documentary filmmaker and independent journalist. He is also an editor and correspondent for Avispa Midia.

Santiago Navarro F is an economist, journalist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. He is co-founder of the investigative journalism portal Avispa Midia.

Editor’s note: This English translation has been lightly edited for length. See the original Spanish version at Avispa Midia.

Source: https://nacla.org/news/2022/01/06/tapachula-haitian-migrants

The post In Tapachula, Thousands of Haitian Migrants Wait to Be Resettled first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Biden administration’s Southern Border coordinator will step down at the end of the month as officials continue to struggle with a large influx of migrants trying to enter the United States.

Roberta Jacobson, the former ambassador to Mexico, was chosen as President Biden’s border czar amid pressure from lawmakers to address what some are calling a “crisis” at the southern border.

“Consistent with her commitment to serve in the administration’s first 100 days, Ambassador Jacobson will retire from her role as Coordinator at the end of this month,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

Roberta Jacobson, the Biden administration’s Southern Border coordinator, will step down at the end of the month. (REUTERS/Tom Brenner)

VP HARRIS VISITS CHICAGO BAKERY EVEN AS BORDER CRISIS ESCALATES

Sullivan praised Jacobson’s work in shaping the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and renewed efforts to cooperate with Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, home to many migrant children making the dangerous passage to the U.S.

More than 16,000 unaccompanied migrant children are in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and another 4,000 in the care of Customs and Border Protection, according to official figures. CBP announced on Thursday that there have been 172,000 migrant encounters in March, of which nearly 19,000 involved unaccompanied children.

The administration has blamed Trump’s dismantling of asylum systems for the “challenge” it faces at the border while Republicans have cited Biden’s immigration policies and messaging.

In a statement to The New York Times, Jacobson praised Biden’s effort to repair and recast the nation’s immigration system after four years under former President Trump.

“They continue to drive toward the architecture that the president has laid out: an immigration system that is humane, orderly, and safe,” she said in a brief interview. “I leave optimistically. The policy direction is so clearly right for our country.”

She noted that her appointment was always intended to last 100 days, which will expire at the end of April.

Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead diplomatic efforts to work with Mexico and Central American countries on improving conditions in the region. Harris has been sharply criticized for failing to visit the border.

Jacobson told the Times she was confident the administration would make progress in slowing the flow of migrants.

“They know it is something that can’t happen overnight,” she said. But she added that officials in the other countries were motivated to find solutions, as well.

“Diplomacy is a conversation,” she said. “It’s not a monologue.”

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-border-roberta-jacobson-step

The post Biden Border Coordinator Roberta Jacobson stepping down first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a press conference in Mexico City, Mexico, June 2019 – Francisco Canedo / Xinhua / Redux

US. President Joe Biden has vowed a return to diplomatic normalcy instead of personal lunacy, multilateralism instead of unilateralism, and a foreign policy conducted through institutionalized channels instead of through Twitter. Most foreign governments have greeted the change with relief—but the applause has not been unanimous. Some countries benefited from the lack of engagement or scrutiny they got under former President Donald Trump. Mexico, in particular, looks set to receive Biden’s agenda not with open arms but with a raised fist.

Whether out of political pragmatism or genuine fear, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador cultivated close ties with Trump and acquiesced to U.S. demands to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and control immigration. In return, Trump turned a blind eye to the emergence of an authoritarian populist regime that began to renege on many of the commitments it had undertaken as a North American partner.

Now, López Obrador is making no secret of his desire to pick a fight with Biden. He refused to congratulate the president-elect early on and then sent a belated and frosty congratulatory note that sharply contrasted with the effusive letter he wrote to Trump in 2016. He passed a law imposing restrictions on foreign agents operating in Mexico, including those from the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the FBI. He backtracked on energy reform—something his predecessor implemented in order to encourage foreign investment—auguring a return to an energy policy dominated by state monopolies. And he suggested that the Mérida Initiative for bilateral security could be terminated. In case these measures did not send a direct enough message, the Mexican president has further offered political asylum to Julian Assange, refused to condemn the violence that Trump supporters unleashed at the U.S. Capitol, lambasted Facebook and Twitter for “censoring” Trump, and invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Mexico. Clearly, López Obrador is setting the stage for confrontation with the new administration in the White House.

Turmoil in the bilateral relationship with Mexico does not seem to have made the Biden team’s radar or its list of priorities. But a return to the U.S.-Mexican relationship before NAFTA, when conflict and distance prevailed over cooperation, could set back many of the objectives that the Biden administration considers vital. The United States needs Mexican cooperation on security, trade policy, and the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Nor can it afford a Mexico that slides backward on democracy, refuses to view climate change as an existential threat, or fails to control a pandemic that does not respect borders. Mexico’s president is spoiling for a fight, and Washington must not wait for risks to become inevitabilities that could imperil containment of the pandemic and recovery from the disruption it has wrought.

AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE

The Trump administration neglected most Latin American issues, exercised a heavy hand in Cuba and Venezuela, and obsessed over immigration and the border with Mexico. During his presidential campaign and throughout his term in office, Trump used Mexico as a “political piñata” in an effort to rile his electoral base: Mexicans were “rapists” and “criminals,” the United States was besieged by caravans of illegal immigrants, and NAFTA was a bad deal that needed to be renegotiated in order to defend American interests. These recurrent themes translated into policies—such as the construction of a wall on parts of the U.S.-Mexican border—that placed Mexico on the defensive due to the asymmetry in the relationship.

López Obrador chose to deal with Trump’s unpredictability by pursuing a calculated policy of appeasement. As a candidate for president in 2018, López Obrador had voiced strong criticism of Trump’s anti-Mexican and anti-immigration stances—he even published a book called Oye, Trump (Hey, Trump). But once in office, López Obrador reversed positions and forged a pragmatic alliance with the man he had once decried. When Trump escalated his anti-immigration rhetoric and threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican exports, López Obrador began clamping down on the Central Americans he had initially welcomed and to whom he had promised safe transit.

Trump had frequently stated that Mexico would end up paying for the border wall: in fact, Mexico became the wall. Its government treated immigrants in a fashion that its politicians had often denounced, deploying the newly formed and militarized National Guard to chase them down and deport them.

López Obrador forged a modus vivendi with Trump in which Mexico accepted every demand, made multiple concessions, and adopted immigration policies that it had once deemed unacceptable. The Mexican government allowed the United States to unilaterally impose its so-called Remain in Mexico policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, wherein immigrants filing asylum claims in the United States were deported back across the border to wait indefinitely, even though Mexico was unable to provide security for its own population, let alone immigrants, amid rising crime and violence.

Part of López Obrador’s compliance took the form of silence. A humanitarian crisis mounted in Mexico’s border region, but the country’s president continued to acquiesce in the policies that created it. The United States imposed family separation policies and confined children in cages, but the Mexican president said nothing. U.S. immigration authorities conducted raids and arbitrarily deported Mexicans, without provoking comment from the president. And anti-Mexican sentiments crested in the United States, culminating in hate crimes such as the massacre in El Paso in 2019. Still, López Obrador looked the other way.

He did so in return for Trump’s turning a blind eye to democratic recession in Mexico. At the helm of what López Obrador calls the country’s “Fourth Transformation,” the president has dismantled checks and balances and weakened the country’s autonomous institutions. He regularly attacks the news media and civil society and has seized discretionary control of the budget. Some of his policies have reinforced the militarization of public security. In all, the Mexican president seems intent on propelling his country back to an era of dominant party rule.

Because Mexico lacks a cohesive opposition, López Obrador’s dream of centralized control seems close to becoming a reality. The president has mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis, which has produced a catastrophic economic recession, but his popularity remains undented. He has even stated that the pandemic le cayó como anillo al dedo, which loosely translates as “fell like manna from heaven,” because the emergency enabled him to carry out exceptional antidemocratic measures that might have met resistance in more normal times.

Trump and López Obrador shared some obvious affinities. Both tended to discredit the news media, insult opposition leaders, label criticism as “fake news,” avoid facemasks, and minimize the threat from COVID-19. The Mexican leader hailed his American counterpart as a true leader, compared him to Abraham Lincoln, and even traveled to Washington D.C., in the midst of the pandemic to endorse Trump’s presidential reelection bid and praise his respect for Mexico’s sovereignty. The relationship was so amiable that when the United States arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos—a former Mexican secretary of defense—on drug charges, López Obrador persuaded Washington to return the general to Mexico. The DEA had spent five years amassing evidence against Cienfuegos, but Trump’s attorney general requested that the prosecution drop its case. Mexico’s government celebrated the general’s return as a triumph of close ties between friends.

Such talk has ceased with the change in U.S. administration. The Mexican president who so recently stressed friendship now seems poised to wrap himself in his national flag and defend his country’s honor, which he sees as under threat. The reasons behind this abrupt shift are both personal and political. López Obrador does not fear Biden the way he feared Trump. And so a politically calculated discourse of national sovereignty and anti-Americanism is again more useful than costly. With it, López Obrador can rally his base in advance of the midterm elections in July 2021, when 15 governorships and control of Congress will be at stake. He can make Biden a foil and a distraction from Mexico’s deep economic recession and the ravages of COVID-19.

But beyond the political imperatives that are driving López Obrador’s divergence with Biden, something deeper is at stake. López Obrador’s nationalistic, enclosed, and less globalized vision of Mexico contradicts the spirit in which free trade was conceived. At its best, NAFTA reinforced political stability and economic development in Mexico, helping inoculate the country against pendular policy shifts and conflict with the Unites States. The agreement sought to recognize and promote integration—a goal from which López Obrador has recoiled, pushing instead for a return to an inward-looking economic model reminiscent of the 1970s. López Obrador’s contentious shift threatens to derail much of what has been accomplished in the last two decades, and Washington should be paying attention.

PICKING A FIGHT

Two years ago, López Obrador signed on to a renegotiated version of NAFTA known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). But many of the Mexican president’s policies run counter to the treaty’s provisions and the broader goal of engagement with the world. Mexico City was to construct an international airport that would serve as a Latin American hub, but López Obrador put a stop to the project. He has tried to ensure that state monopolies can continue to dominate the energy sector by revising gas contracts with foreign investors and wrenching control from autonomous energy regulators, among other measures. Mexico has become less attractive to investors in emerging markets as a result. The country’s economic growth was decelerating even before the pandemic. Now, its GDP is predicted to contract by nine percent in 2021, as thousands of businesses close and millions of jobs disappear.

López Obrador may well anticipate that he will face criticism from the United States under Biden on trade and other issues. The Mexican president surely would rather not face scrutiny for his record on human rights and freedom of expression, let alone for his failure to adhere to the labor standards stipulated under the USMCA or the free trade clauses on energy. If and when the Biden administration decides to pressure Mexico on such matters, López Obrador will denounce “imperialistic intervention” and deflect attention to his fight with the American president.

In truth, trouble has been brewing in the U.S. security and trade relationship with Mexico for some time. López Obrador promised the Trump administration that Mexico would investigate Cienfuegos upon his return to Mexico but then broke that promise and even released confidential files on the case that the DEA had provided. The Justice Department sent a strong letter of condemnation. Three outgoing Trump cabinet members took a similarly acrimonious tone in a letter condemning Mexico for undermining trade commitments in the energy sector. In response, López Obrador has insisted that Mexico has the sovereign right to determine domestic policies, despite its obligations under the USMCA. His tone has not been collaborative or consensual but belligerent.

Mexico’s dustup with the DEA and U.S. security agencies spells trouble for cooperation in the crucial areas of security and drug trafficking. The Mexican military has come to act with ever-greater autonomy and ever-less civilian control or accountability. This empowered Mexican military resists working with U.S. intelligence agencies, perhaps because it has ties to drug cartels and seeks to shield its high officials from justice. The new foreign-agent law in Mexico further limits the ability of U.S. law enforcement agents to operate and share information. The result is that Washington increasingly sees Mexico as an unreliable partner in a host of important areas.

CONFLICT FORETOLD

Biden’s agenda in Latin America appears to begin with immigration. He has already announced an economic aid and security plan designed to address the root causes that drive people to flee north. His other priorities include rebuilding bridges with Cuba and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, as he seeks to promote democracy and human rights in the region while combating corruption. Mexico does not seem to register as a prime concern.

But many of Biden’s ambitious plans, particularly regarding immigration, will require extensive collaboration with Mexico at a time when an ill wind seems to be blowing between the two countries. The new administration may be caught in the uncomfortable position of requesting Mexico’s assistance to stem the flow of Central American caravans even while butting heads with López Obrador over democracy, human rights, labor standards, and climate change. If Biden decides to exchange cooperation on immigration for silence on other troublesome issues, he will be repeating the Trump playbook and allowing problems to fester.

Many such difficulties have grown more acute in the past year. Mexico has one of the highest COVID-19 lethality rates in the world. The pandemic is escalating in a country that shares a 2,000-mile, porous border with the United States, and so is violence: Mexico had 35,000 homicides in 2020, the highest recorded in the country’s history. López Obrador responded by empowering the military at the expense of bilateral security cooperation. Lockdowns have squeezed the country’s economy, but the government has refused to implement fiscal policies to mitigate the damage. And López Obrador seems more intent on resurrecting a carbon- and oil-based economy than in pushing the country to address the imperatives of climate change.

Yet the Biden team seems oblivious to the democratic regression, the economic debacle, and the uncontrolled pandemic in Mexico. The administration has designated Cuba and Venezuela as countries of concern, and it has made public statements centering largely on Central America and migratory and asylum issues. But Mexico remains a dangerous blind spot. López Obrador’s nationalistic populism and the risk it poses to democracy, climate change, and the fight against corruption are startlingly absent from an agenda that purportedly prioritizes such concerns. The United States needs a Mexico policy designed to rein in López Obrador’s worst instincts and bring him back into the North American fold in order to assure a politically and economically stable neighbor.

Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, once likened the relationship between the two countries to one between a bear and a porcupine. The United States looms large over Mexico, choosing at times to bluster and at others to hibernate, withdrawing its attention altogether. Hypersensitive to U.S. interference, Mexico always stands ready to show its quills. The U.S.-Mexican relationship has important ramifications for trade, security, drugs, energy, and even health, and the López Obrador government seeks to counter Biden’s priorities on almost every front. If Biden doesn’t find a way to reset the relationship, Mexico and the United States will return to a pattern of neglect, punctuated by instances of conflict—a renewed porcupine politics that will draw blood from both countries amid a pandemic that demands collaborative solutions, not animal instincts.

DENISE DRESSER is a Professor of Political Science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/mexico/2021-02-01/mexicos-president-spoiling-fight-washington

The post Mexico’s President Is Spoiling for a Fight With Washington first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON — 

Vice President Joe Biden was spending much of his time on Iraq a year into President Obama’s second term when he got a phone call from the president asking him to turn to a situation a little closer to home.

A “plethora of children” was “headed toward the border from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala,” Biden said last year, recounting the conversation. “He said, ‘Come home, take care [of it], do something.’”

The region had not been high on the administration’s priority list, but immigration was. And as the crisis of migrant children caught officials flat-footed, Biden became the administration’s point man for managing it.

Now, as Biden heads toward election day as a strong front-runner, U.S. officials and others say the evidence is mounting that another surge of migrants is starting to build in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — Central America’s Northern Triangle. For Biden, if he wins, a renewed crisis of children and families coming to the border could provide an early test.

Biden has sought to distance himself from some parts of the Obama administration’s immigration policies, saying at his second debate with President Trump last week that the administration made a “mistake” by putting too much emphasis on deportations.

At the same time, he has also said the U.S. needs to show it can control its borders and has been wary of policy changes that might spark a sudden rush of migrants. And his own history with the issue is complex.

Asked at the debate why voters should trust that he will make good on his campaign pledge to overhaul immigration, he said he had learned from the Obama administration’s experience.

“We made a mistake. It took too long to get it right,” he said.

‘It just kind of exploded’

In 2013, Homeland Security agencies began to notice an unexpected uptick in arrivals of Central American families and lone children in South Texas, according to Ben Rohrbaugh, then a senior department advisor. Rohrbaugh recalls a Border Patrol agent telling him the issue of unaccompanied children had “started to take over his life.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who left the administration in September 2013 to become president of the University of California, said in an interview that the migrant crisis burst suddenly onto officials’ list of top concerns.

“It was a slow increase over some months, and then it just kind of exploded,” she said.

In the 12 months ending September 2012, roughly 24,000 children came alone to the U.S. southern border, almost all from the Northern Triangle. Two years later, nearly 70,000 unaccompanied kids arrived. The numbers of Central American families spiked just as quickly.

By the time Rohrbaugh moved to the White House in 2014 to be director of border enforcement at the National Security Council, meetings on the issue became like a “drumbeat.”

A deadly cocktail of poverty, public corruption, and violence from gangs founded in the U.S. then deported to the region have contributed to the Northern Triangle nations having among the world’s highest homicide rates, creating an environment of fear and insecurity that prompts many to try to flee.

During Obama’s second term, the longtime understanding in the region that U.S. law afforded migrants the right to seek asylum and gave unaccompanied minors certain humanitarian protections morphed into a belief that migrants could receive permisos to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, officials said.

POLITICS

‘You can’t paint them with one brush.’ Trump, Biden face perils, promise wooing Florida’s Latino voters

In Washington, meanwhile, the administration’s immigration policy had been driven by an implicit trade off: Obama hoped that if he demonstrated that his administration had delivered on border security, he could gain support in Congress for sweeping immigration reform, for which both parties had called for decades.

Those enforcement efforts angered many immigrant-rights activists, who in his first term had dubbed Obama the “deporter in chief,” and they strained relations between the administration and some Latino elected officials.

Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) said she worked closely with Biden after she was elected in 2014 — the first-ever member of Congress born in Central America. She expresses lingering disappointment at Napolitano and other Obama-era officials for not doing more to resist putting “politics before humanity.”

“I’m realistic — we simply can’t help every single person that comes to our southern border,” Torres told The Times. “But we have not told that story of why these people are fleeing.”

By the time the child-migrant numbers began to surge, the legislative effort at immigration reform had failed — a victim of Republican opposition in the House to anything that conservatives would see as “amnesty.”

But officials said they feared that failure to contain the migration flow would serve as an invitation for even more migrants to try the dangerous, often deadly, journey north.

The administration responded in 2014 by separating hundreds of Central American families, citing concerns for the children’s safety; holding them in hastily thrown-together tent facilities and on military bases; and beginning a system of family detention that persists today despite adverse court rulings.

While calling the administration’s policy a “mistake,” Biden at the debate rejected comparison between the Obama administration’s short-term, emergency response and the Trump administration’s more intentional policy of separating families explicitly for deterrence.

Hundreds of families separated under Trump remain apart, and court-appointed researchers and lawyers have been unable to locate the parents of about 545 migrant children who were taken from their families, according to recently filed court documents.

“They separated them at the border to make it a disincentive to come to begin with,” Biden said.

As Trump pressed: “Who built the cages, Joe?” Biden responded, “Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated. And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It’s criminal. It’s criminal.”

Former Obama administration officials in interviews similarly drew a distinction between what they called crisis management and Trump administration actions they described as intentionally cruel and punitive. Yet in Obama’s final years, officials also conceded their moves were intended in part to send a familiar message: Don’t come.

Beyond the domestic political fights, the Obama administration also pursued a foreign policy strategy in which Biden took the lead.

In July 2014, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced his Southern Border Program to step up Mexico’s immigration enforcement. The policy was aimed at effectively moving U.S.-Mexico border enforcement south to Guatemala, with Mexico taking the lead in blocking migrants moving north.

For most years since Mexico has removed more Central Americans than the United States.

The administration, in turn, pursued a $750-million “Alliance for Prosperity,” a plan drafted by Northern Triangle leaders and announced by Biden under which the U.S. provided economic and security assistance through the end of Obama’s tenure.

In December 2014, the administration established the Central American Minors refugee program, allowing children and their families to apply for U.S. protection before leaving their home countries. Trump ended that program in one of his first moves in office.

Critics at the time said the Obama-Biden strategy put too much emphasis on security over development. Whether it would have worked remains unknown because of Trump’s abrupt shift in policy.

In Obama’s last year, nearly 78,000 family units and 60,000 unaccompanied children came to the border. In 2019, before the Trump administration effectively and indefinitely closed the border, citing COVID-19, almost 474,000 family members, and 76,000 unaccompanied children arrived.

Today, Biden’s campaign platform outlines a strategy similar to Obama’s — work with Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, coupled with a four-year, $4-billion regional program to combat “factors driving migration.”

Whoever wins will have a tough time rebuilding trust, said Torres, who noted civil war “stole” her opportunity to grow up in Guatemala. Beyond merely discouraging migration to the U.S., she said, “We cannot allow narco-traffickers and public corruption to steal those futures from those little girls.”

For Biden, the 2014 experience remains an important touchstone.

On a June 2014 trip to Guatemala, Biden advocated longer-term solutions, but made clear U.S. assistance was tied to avoiding a repeat of the unaccompanied-minors crisis, “a tragedy we all must take responsibility for — the country from which they come, and the country to which they are headed.”

The U.S. was stepping up enforcement, he said, “because those who are pondering risking their lives to reach the United States should be aware of what awaits them.”

“It will not be open arms.”

---

Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed from Washington.

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-27/central-american-unaccompanied-minors-biden

[Disclaimer]

The post A renewed surge of migration from Central America could pose early test for a President Biden first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

When voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 presidential election, they will choose between two strikingly different plans for the border wall in Arizona and border security in general.

On one hand, the Trump administration plans to spend $15 billion to build hundreds of miles of 30-foot-tall wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which includes filling gaps in the wall already standing in Arizona. On the other hand, Joe Biden plans to stop building the wall and focus instead on beefing up screening technology at ports of entry and building surveillance towers in remote areas.

The border wall played a central role in President Trump’s campaign in 2016, and he continues to tout the wall at rallies across the country. He tells crowds, “It’s like magic” and is “working beyond our wildest expectations.” In response, they chant: “Build that wall!”

While Trump claims Biden and other Democrats want open borders, Biden accuses Trump of being obsessed with a wall he says “does nothing to keep Americans safe” and won’t stop smugglers from digging tunnels or flying drones across the border.

Biden told reporters in early August, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” Instead, he would put his efforts toward “making sure we use high-tech capacity to deal with it at the ports of entry; that’s where all the bad stuff is happening.” He has not said he would tear down the wall, but he likely would face intense pressure to do so if he is elected.

For voters in Wisconsin, Virginia, and other states far from the U.S.-Mexico border, the presidential candidates’ comments may amount to little more than political rhetoric that prompts either cheers or groans, depending on the listener’s political perspective.

For Southern Arizona residents, the vote on Nov. 3 will determine the future of the border wall and set the tone for how federal agencies spend billions of taxpayer dollars to address drug smuggling and illegal border crossings for at least the next four years.

To analyze what’s at stake, the Arizona Daily Star spoke with border residents and Customs and Border Protection officials, reviewed court records and CBP statistics, and made two dozen trips to border wall projects since construction started in the summer of 2019.

WALL RAISES NO SHORTAGE OF OPINIONS

Standing next to the wall, you have to crane your head back to see the top of it. The wall is made of steel poles, known as bollards, that extend 30 feet up from the ground. Each bollard is 6 inches wide and filled with concrete and rebar. To allow Border Patrol agents to see into Mexico, the bollards are separated from one another by 4 inches of space.

A wide steel plate is fitted to the top of the wall to make it more difficult to climb over. To deter tunnel digging, the concrete foundation of the wall extends 6 to 10 feet into the ground. Lighting and sensors help agents detect activity near the wall, and new roads will help them respond faster.

Most of the 190 miles of wall built so far in Arizona replace head-high vehicle barriers or fencing that stands 10 feet to 18 feet tall. When construction is completed, Arizona will have more than 230 miles of wall, at a cost of roughly $4.5 billion.

As the election nears, there is no shortage of opinions about the wall among residents of border towns, despite the wall taking a backseat to the coronavirus and other issues in the election season.

“Build the Wall and Crime will Fall,” proclaimed an electronic billboard near Wellton, a small town near Yuma about 25 miles north of where contractors built the 30-foot-tall wall behind a much shorter metal-mesh fence. In Tucson, yard signs demand “No Border Wall,” and Tohono O’odham protesters carried banners calling for “No Wall on O’odham Land” after briefly stopping wall construction southwest of Tucson last month.

The Star regularly receives calls and emails from readers who support or oppose the border wall, including a SaddleBrooke resident who said completing the wall can’t come soon enough, along with fully funding the Border Patrol. A Tucson resident called the wall a blight on the landscape paid for with money stolen from the military. An Oro Valley resident said he was pleased to have the wall in place and that open borders were bad for America.

Brad Finn, a Vietnam veteran who has lived next to the border near the San Pedro River in Cochise County since the late 1990s, said the border fence installed a decade ago “keeps us safe,” but he worried the new wall would block wildlife migrations.

“I’m not sure how the Mexican jaguars are going to get through, unless they get a key to the gate,” Finn said as he stood on a dusty road and watched a crane replace an 18-foot-tall wall panel with a 30-foot-tall panel.

The vehicle barriers being replaced closer to the San Pedro River let animals, and humans, easily cross the border. The new wall projects in the area will connect with fencing in Douglas and Naco to create a roughly 75-mile long barrier that will be virtually impossible for deer, bear, bobcats, mountain lions or any animal larger than a jackrabbit to cross.

“It isn’t like it was 20 years ago,” Finn said. Back then, only about four Border Patrol agents worked in the area each night, trying to catch large groups of people looking for work or hauling marijuana loads. Now, it’s closer to 40 agents each night looking for small groups in camouflage.

Standing in a hangar on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base surrounded by Customs and Border Protection helicopters and surveillance planes, Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said the new wall will prove effective.

“Any place we’ve ever installed border wall, it’s actually improved the ability of every individual agent to cover more border, to secure more border in their shift than they could without it,” Scott said.

Rather than an impenetrable barrier, the new wall intimidates some people from trying to cross the border and slows down those who take the risk, Scott said.

“It stopped most older people and most younger kids. When they walk up and they see a 30-foot-high wall, it stops them,” Scott said. “It doesn’t always stop the 22-year-old. It doesn’t always stop the super-agile. But you know what? Now it’s one (person),” instead of large groups crossing together.

Melissa Owen, who lives on a ranch near Sasabe where new wall is going up, said she supports border security, but the new wall is a “monstrosity” that is unpopular with her neighbors.

“Anyone who actually knows the situation here knows that heightened security at ports of entry, where most illegal substances come into the U.S., a sensible program of surveillance technology, and a sane and equitable immigration policy are the best answers to the ‘crisis on the border,’” Owen said.

During the last year of wall construction, far fewer families and children were stopped while crossing the border in remote areas, according to CBP statistics. That trend began before wall construction started in Arizona, due largely to Trump administration policies cracking down on asylum seekers and the Mexican government stopping asylum seekers from reaching the U.S. border.

Border Patrol agents are catching more single adults trying repeatedly to cross the border, including 8,000 in September when 170 miles of wall had been built in Arizona. CBP officials say this is the result of pandemic-related policies that involve quickly expelling Mexican migrants, who then turn around and try repeatedly to cross the border.

As for drugs, most hard drugs like meth, fentanyl and heroin are smuggled through ports of entry rather than through the desert where the wall is being built, as has been the case for decades, CBP statistics show. Marijuana, far and away the most common drug smuggled through the desert, plummeted in the last decade as the legal marijuana industry expanded in Arizona and other states.

THE STAKES

Arizona has been at the center of the Trump administration’s wall-building efforts since construction started last summer, due in part to the accessibility of federal land along Arizona’s border with Mexico.

The wall now crosses the San Pedro River in Cochise County, much to the disappointment of bird-watchers and nature enthusiasts who enjoy one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. Contractors are plowing through mountainsides a few miles west of the river on the Coronado National Memorial, as well as in Guadalupe Canyon in the county’s southeastern corner and the mountains west of Nogales. The wall runs along most of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson.

Near Yuma, only a few areas remain without a new wall, most notably a stretch along the Colorado River that the Cocopah Indian Tribe considers sacred. Near Tucson, the wall will run along most of the border except for a few mountains, the San Rafael Valley east of Nogales, 62 miles on the Tohono O’odham Nation, and urban areas like Nogales and Douglas.

The head of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, told the Star on Wednesday that officials are considering building more wall in Arizona, including a second layer of wall in urban areas and in the “open gap” on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“Wherever we don’t have a wall system, that’s where the cartels are exploiting. We’re already seeing that on the Tohono O’odham Nation,” Morgan said.

“We’re going to continue to have an ongoing dialogue with the leaders of the Tohono O’odham Nation to come up with a viable solution there,” Morgan said.

Tribal officials have opposed the idea of replacing head-high vehicle barriers on the reservation with new wall, saying last week that the wall was “destroying our environment, desecrating sacred places, and physically separating our people.”

Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said Morgan was “either misinformed” or “purposely misleading the public” about dialogue between CBP and the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“There is no ongoing dialogue, nor has CBP ever had required consultations with the Nation regarding the ongoing destruction of sacred O’odham sites along the border,” Norris said. “CBP has never offered a wall proposal to the Nation and has repeatedly stated in meetings when asked that they have no plans to build a wall on the Nation’s lands.”

“The Nation continues to expend extraordinary resources to protect the U.S. border, and has already agreed to viable solutions such as vehicle barriers, Integrated Fixed Towers, and other measures,” Norris said. “The Nation’s position on a fortified wall is clear and we agree that consultations on this issue need to start immediately.”

The reservation has long been a site of illegal border crossings and drug smuggling, federal court records in Tucson show. Those records also show O’odham police working with federal agents on task forces and busts made with the help of sensors and cameras on the reservation and Border Patrol checkpoints that ring the reservation.

With regard to building a second layer of wall in urban areas, Morgan did not cite any plans for specific cities in Arizona. A second layer of wall already is going up along about 1 mile of the border in downtown Naco, but no plans have emerged for Nogales or Douglas.

A border fence has run through downtown Nogales for several decades, evolving from chain-link fence to Vietnam War-era landing mats, and now the current version made of 18-foot-tall bollards built nearly a decade ago. Camera towers run by CBP are positioned on either side of the downtown port of entry.

“Honestly, I think that’s overkill,” Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino said of the possibility of building a second layer of wall. “I can’t see a 30-foot wall going through downtown Nogales.”

Garino said he supports border security and pointed out that Nogales police and Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputies regularly work with the Border Patrol to combat cross-border crime.

If CBP were to decide to build a second layer of wall in downtown Nogales, it likely would block off the road that runs along the border fence, which is the main access point for several neighborhoods, he said.

“As a city, we would have to have a serious conversation with CBP,” Garino said.

THE WALL IN ELECTION SEASON
Despite the importance of the wall to border communities, it has faded somewhat in the presidential election as other issues took center stage.

The wall is a mainstay at Trump rallies, but it usually only takes up a minute or two of hourlong speeches. Trump told crowds in Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere that the wall is working, it will be finished soon, and Democrats want open borders.

Biden talks about it even less. His views on the wall and border security are described in detail on the campaign website, but most of his public comments on the wall came during an interview with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists in early August.

Neither campaign answered questions from the Star about the wall in Arizona. Instead, they provided general background information and referred the Star to their campaign websites.

“It seems to feature less prominently in this campaign than it did in the 2016 campaign,” said Jessica Bolter, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Public concern about immigration also has been dwarfed by the coronavirus pandemic and the poor state of the economy, she said. The Trump campaign also sees “internal threats to dwell on,” she said, such as protests that Trump opposes.

At the same time, the administration has sped up border wall construction, she said. More than half of the 360 miles of wall built during the Trump administration were built since April.

If Trump is elected, Bolter expects he will continue building nearly 740 miles of border wall. If Biden wins, she expects he will adopt the “mainstream Democratic position” on border security and invest in technology.

Biden said he would stop wall construction, but he has not been clear about whether he would cancel wall contracts or just not award any new ones.

Given the high visibility of the wall, “I suspect that this is something that Biden will try to deliver on pretty quickly,” Bolter said.

Cal Glover, a member of the People Helping People group that advocates against the militarization of the border in Arivaca, just north of where about 40 miles of wall are being built, said he is voting for Biden, but “I’m not happy about it.” Biden may not build more wall, but he has not said he would tear it down, Glover said.

“It seems to feature less prominently in this campaign than it did in the 2016 campaign,” said Jessica Bolter, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Public concern about immigration also has been dwarfed by the coronavirus pandemic and the poor state of the economy, she said. The Trump campaign also sees “internal threats to dwell on,” she said, such as protests that Trump opposes.

At the same time, the administration has sped up border wall construction, she said. More than half of the 360 miles of wall built during the Trump administration were built since April.

If Trump is elected, Bolter expects he will continue building nearly 740 miles of border wall. If Biden wins, she expects he will adopt the “mainstream Democratic position” on border security and invest in technology.

Biden said he would stop wall construction, but he has not been clear about whether he would cancel wall contracts or just not award any new ones.

Given the high visibility of the wall, “I suspect that this is something that Biden will try to deliver on pretty quickly,” Bolter said.

Cal Glover, a member of the People Helping People group that advocates against the militarization of the border in Arivaca, just north of where about 40 miles of wall are being built, said he is voting for Biden, but “I’m not happy about it.” Biden may not build more wall, but he has not said he would tear it down, Glover said.

Customs officers at Arizona’s ports of entry intercepted 1,100 pounds of fentanyl in the first 11 months of fiscal 2020, five times as much as Border Patrol agents in the Tucson and Yuma sectors caught in the deserts and highways. Customs officers also caught five times as much heroin, seven times as much cocaine, and three times as much meth.

In Arizona, that pattern shifted slightly in the past year as Border Patrol agents saw more meth smuggled in backpacks through the desert. Federal officials told the Star that smugglers likely were trying to replace revenue lost from a sharp decline in marijuana smuggling in recent years. Seizures of marijuana by Border Patrol agents in Arizona dropped steadily from 1.25 million pounds in fiscal 2013 to 48,500 pounds in the first 11 months of fiscal 2020.

The Star asked Morgan whether the administration had a measure to show the public whether the wall was a success, such as a drop in illegal border crossings.

“When we have that multilayered strategy at effective levels in strategic locations, we will see that output: Seizures go down, illegal immigration goes down, assaults on agents go down,” Morgan said.

Success should be measured in terms of how CBP interacts with drug cartels to “shape their behavior and guide them where we want them to go,” Morgan said.

In terms of stopping people from crossing the border in Arizona, the effect of the wall is unclear so far.

Apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally, which is used as a proxy for total illegal crossings, in Arizona fell fairly steadily from 616,000 in fiscal 2000 to 51,500 in fiscal 2017. That period saw more Border Patrol agents stationed in Arizona and vehicle barriers, fencing, and surveillance towers installed along much of the border, as well as economic growth in Mexico that lessened the need to head to the United States.

For fiscal 2020, agents in Arizona reported nearly 75,000 apprehensions, including more than 54,000 single adults. That total was a sharp decrease from the previous fiscal year when agents made 132,000 apprehensions. Many of those apprehensions were of asylum-seeking families and children who generally sought out Border Patrol agents, rather than tried to evade them.

Last month, when 170 miles of new wall had gone up in Arizona, agents stopped more than 8,000 single adults, compared to about 1,100 members of families and unaccompanied children.

The wall will cut down on the number of migrants agents apprehend at any one time, Scott said, which will give agents more time to interview them and gather information about smuggling organizations.

Scott said he had seen people climb over the wall and cut through it, which “takes about 20 minutes, depending on the tools.” But if they climb over the wall, they will be easier to catch than “somebody that stood there and said ‘go’ and sprinted north.”

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

If smugglers manage to cut through one of the bollards, “you can squeeze one person through at a time,” rather than large groups that would rush through openings in metal panel fencing years ago.

A “PERPETUAL” EMERGENCY
One key difference between the Biden and Trump campaigns involves the emergency declaration that allowed Trump to pull $10 billion from the Defense Department to build the border wall.

The Biden campaign says his administration would “end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a wall.”

President Trump signed the declaration in February 2019. The declaration came after a dispute with Democrats in Congress over wall funding led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump’s rhetoric about the border wall often conjures up images of violent gang members, and the emergency declaration briefly cited the border as a “major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.”

But the formal justification for funding the wall, as well as the wall’s apparent effects, were aimed at stopping asylum-seeking families from crossing the border.

“In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending,” the declaration read.

The Star asked Morgan if border residents should expect to live under a perpetual state of emergency, despite the rationale for the declaration disappearing.

“Here’s when the emergency ends, in my opinion: When we have Congress step up and pass meaningful legislation to end the crisis,” Morgan said. “To once and for all send a message to anyone that is even anticipating illegally entering: You are not going to be allowed in and there will be consequences. Until we have statutory reform, I think we’re going to be in perpetual crisis.”

Federal judges are pushing back on the Trump administration’s pulling of money from the Defense Department after Congress rejected his request. The administration is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court, which previously let stand the administration’s funding decision.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in early October that the Trump administration overstepped its authority when it moved billions of dollars from the Defense Department’s construction fund to build the border wall. Those funds were used to build sections of wall in Yuma, California, and Texas. The appeals court judges said the Trump administration failed to show how the wall projects were “necessary” for the Defense Department.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Sept. 25 that the House of Representatives had standing in a lawsuit alleging the Trump administration violated the House’s constitutional power over funding federal activities.

“To put it simply, the Appropriations Clause requires two keys to unlock the Treasury, and the House holds one of those keys. The Executive Branch has, in a word, snatched the House’s key out of its hands,” the D.C. judges wrote.

While those lawsuits play out and voters consider how to cast their ballot, Morgan warned that the coronavirus pandemic would lead to more waves of immigration from Mexico and Central American countries.

Border wall details

The border wall built during the Trump administration in Arizona

• 30 feet tall
• Made of steel bollards that are six inches wide and filled with concrete and rebar
• The bollards are separated from each other by four inches of space, which allows Border Patrol agents to see into Mexico
• The wall is topped with a steel, anti-climbing plate
• The foundation extends six to 10 feet into the ground
• Fiber-optic cable buried in the ground is designed to detect digging
• LED lights were installed near the wall to allow agents and cameras to see illegal activity
• Access roads were built or improved for the wall project to help agents respond quickly
• In most cases, the new wall replaces a variety of head-high barriers, which were designed to stop smugglers from driving across the border
• Expected to last 30 years
• Funded by $10 billion from the Defense Department and $5 billion from Congress

Source: https://tucson.com/news/local/future-of-border-wall-about-to-be-handed-over-to-voters/article_be2bcd7c-7b53-51bc-a9e9-8b4e8cd2d0e1.html

The post Future of border wall about to be handed over to voters first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A few months after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election, official Texas State business brought me to two ICE immigration detention centers in South Texas. As a manager in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Division, I had been coming to these normally noisy, filled-to-capacity facilities for years to interview detainees.

But the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall stood about as empty and silent as a ghost town, besides the Pakistanis and Somalis I’d come to see who’d been in for a while already. Same situation at the larger, usually packed-to-capacity Port Isabel center near Brownsville a few weeks later.

The empty hallways and cells at that moment were stark manifestation of a phenomenon that became known as the “Trump Effect“. ICE intelligence officers at the facilities explained it to me at the time: Populations throughout Latin America, after hearing candidate Trump swear to build a wall, hike deportations, and otherwise crack down on illegal border entries, chose to shelter in place rather than cross the border. Apprehensions fell more than 70 percent for a time.

But now, the nation may face the equal but opposite “Biden Effect” should there be a change in administrations.

A Biden Effect could look like a sustained migrant crisis of the sort the United States and Europe have experienced from time to time. In this case, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans and others from around the world who have by now fully absorbed Biden’s campaign promises — a reversal of virtually all Trump immigration policies, an end to most deportations, free medical care, access to other welfare benefits, and various amnesties — could cross through Mexico once again. If unopposed, the first migrants — some in caravans, others travelling individually — would swamp U.S. border asylum systems, and detention facilities. This is not without precedent, like the 2014-2015 unaccompanied-minor crisis and the 2018-2019 Central American caravans crisis.

Additional migrants, seeing the vanguard caravans succeed unhindered, would likely continue for as long as they, too, were unopposed. The swell — nearly a million came over just in 2019 before Trump tamped it down with a medley of policies Biden promises to reverse — would take up long-term illegal residence in cities across the country. They would do so believing that the new administration would do nothing to deport them and everything to sustain them indefinitely until eventual amnesty and citizenship.

An Unreasonably Dystopian Prediction?

If the Trump Effect proved anything, it was that economically distressed foreign populations closely monitor a humming social media communications grapevine about when and how American policies and practices make illegal immigration easier or harder, and therefore make their chances to permanently embed inside the United States higher or lower. Economic migrants are more willing to join caravans or pay big smuggling fees if they feel they can both get in and stay in. They stay home if they perceive they probably will be thrown back, their effort and payments for naught.

While Trump did much to decrease the chances for migrants successfully embedding in the U.S., Biden has messaged policies that all but guarantee success, starting with the reversal of Trump immigration policies by executive order, and going even further. For instance, one message heard very loud and clear was his March 2020 promise of a deportation moratorium on all illegally present aliens — to include even most criminal aliens — during his first 100 days in office, to be followed by a permanent extension for everyone but the most hardened criminal alien felons (“I don’t count drunk driving as a felony,” he even said).

Biden’s online immigration platform offers a powerful incentive for resumptions of caravans that brought a million migrants in during 2018-2019 before Trump finally broke their momentum with a slew of different policies. Biden has promised to end the highly effective “Remain in Mexico” push-back policy that keeps largely ineligible asylum claimants from disappearing into the American interior after they lose or abandon their claims.

During one primary debate, Biden was among those who raised his hand when the moderator asked which of them would favor providing illegal immigrants with free access to the nation’s medical care system.

The shiniest gold ring Biden has dangled before the poor of Latin America and beyond is likely his promise to prioritize “a road map to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants”. Regardless of the details of any such legislation, it would serve as a powerful incentive, sending the message that anyone who manages to get over the border would stand a good chance of securing permanent legal status.

All of this is more than merely pleasant music to the ears of people aspiring to live and work in the United States and to human smugglers and caravan organizers only too happy to facilitate. Taken altogether, it is reasonable to predict a sustained migrant crisis in the event of a change in administrations.

I reported early clues suggesting this prognosis during a January 2020 reporting trip to the Mexico-Guatemala border, where I interviewed migrants who, to my surprise, repeatedly told me that, because their chances of reaching the United States and staying had fallen to unacceptable lows under Trump, they would wait in Mexico, expecting him to lose reelection and a successor to remove the barriers. Tens of thousands like them were applying for Mexican asylum at the time because the Mexican national guard blocked all the roads north (at Trump’s insistence) and Mexico was threatening to deport them unless they applied for Mexican asylum. As one of many of the Central American migrants and Mexican officials told me, of the decision to hang out in Mexico until Trump lost: “I’ll wait for that because it would make things easier to get in.”

An El Salvadoran woman coming to Mexico with a child said she’d chosen to live in Mexico, too, on the gamble that “Once Trump is defeated and the Democrats take over, things are going to get better.”

Alma Delia Cruz, head of Mexico’s asylum office in the southern state of Chiapas, told me she knew the majority of 70,000 asylum applicants her office was processing (up from just 76 the year before) had no intention of staying in Mexico for long.

“This is just their first chance to get into the United States, of course,” she told me. “I don’t know what’s on the minds of these people exactly, but the threats from Trump can’t deter them from eventually getting into the U.S.”

Other reporting has since confirmed the use of Mexican asylum as a temporary tactic, such as this April 2020 El Paso Times report quoting migrants equivocating as to whether they’ll settle for the great Mexican Dream or head to the U.S. border even if they get Mexican asylum.

The tide of Central Americans applying for Mexican asylum continues to build as the American election draws nearer. And the applicants are not only Mexican but from all over the world. Thousands of Haitians, Africans, Cubans, and Middle Eastern migrants also are applying for Mexican asylum, adding to those likely to head for the U.S. the moment American defenses begin to falter.

What Would Mexico Do?

In June 2019, Trump threatened Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador with ruinous economic trade tariffs on all U.S.-bound exports if he did not halt the migrant caravans crossing his country’s southern border with Guatemala. Obrador complied by deploying some 6,000 Mexican National Guard troops on more than 50 roadblocks throughout Mexico’s border states, essentially bringing northbound migrant traffic to a halt.

Caravans have regularly battered themselves apart against the bulwark of the rather implacable Mexican national guard troops, who rounded them up by the thousands and bused them back to Central American countries. But they keep forming, relentlessly probing and testing this one most effective defensive perimeter, looking for the moment of opportunity when it goes away.

If a President Biden chose not to maintain Trump’s tariff threat, Mexico would likely redeploy its troops elsewhere. Overnight, Mexico could return to its traditional role as a migrant-transit superhighway to the U.S. border.

Still, predicting migration flows isn’t the kind of bet on which to place real money, since trends can be notoriously unpredictable and susceptible to unforeseeable factors. The Trump Effect eventually wore off once migrant communities noticed that campaign promises were taking quite a long time to actually be implemented and then, when some of them were, contributed to a rush on the border in 2018 that Trump had to counter in ways no one could have envisioned at the time (such as threatening Mexico trade tariffs). Likewise, a Biden administration, seeing an initial rush on the border in the wake of Democratic victory, might not follow through for quite some time with its policy promises and, ultimately, if the new president decides mass migration must be stopped, he may be forced to leave some of Trump’s policies in place.

Source: https://cis.org/Bensman/Will-We-See-Biden-Effect-Border

The post Will We See a ‘Biden Effect’ at the Border? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Arrests along Mexico border jumped 40% last month amid Trump administration immigration crackdown first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.