HUEHUETAN, Mexico - Mexico’s military police on Saturday halted and turned back a caravan of up to 2,000 migrants from Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, hours after they embarked toward the United States, according to Reuters witnesses.
Agents of the National Migration Institute (INM) detain a migrant during an operation by the National Guard to halt a caravan of migrants from Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, hours after they embarked toward the United States, in Tuzantan, in Chiapas state, Mexico October 12, 2019. REUTERS/Jacob Garcia
The migrants had departed before dawn from Tapachula in the southern state of Chiapas near Guatemala despite an ongoing crackdown on migration on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The group, including people pushing children in strollers, proceeded on foot about 19 miles (30 km) before being apprehended on the road in Huehuetan in the afternoon.
Around 500 members of Mexico’s National Guard military police in helmets and tactical vests blocked the highway on both sides, according to a Reuters witness, and some pursued migrants who fled into neighboring fields.
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Officials from Mexico’s national immigration institute detained most of the group, putting them on buses back to Tapachula. About 150 migrants decided to return on foot.
Activist Irineo Mujica of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who accompanied the migrants, said only a small group opted to walk back on their own.
“The vast majority were taken to Tapachula, the caravan was dismantled,” he said in a video documenting the incident.
The scene was reminiscent of a string of caravans that left Central America a year ago, at one point ballooning into a group of 7,000 people in southern Mexico.
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That en masse migration drew extensive media attention and triggered a crisis with U.S. President Donald Trump, who called the caravans an “invasion” and demanded Mexico do more to halt their progress.
The Mexican government in June struck a deal with the United States vowing to significantly curb U.S.-bound migration in exchange for averting U.S. tariffs on Mexican exports.
Arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border fell in September for the fourth month in a row, after record high crossings this Spring, and the Trump administration credited cooperation from Mexico and Central American countries for the sustained drop.
NEW YORK - Attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia sued President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to block a sweeping new rule to indefinitely detain migrant families seeking to settle in the United States.
FILE PHOTO: Migrant families turn themselves to U.S. Border Patrol to seek asylum following an illegal crossing of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo, Texas, U.S., August 23, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was the first in an expected flurry of litigation seeking to stop the rule, officially published on Friday, from taking effect in October.
“This new Trump rule callously puts at risk the safety and well-being of children. It undermines a decades-old agreement reached in court by the federal government to prevent the unlawful detention of immigrant children,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in announcing the lawsuit.
The White House did not immediately comment on Monday evening.
The new rule seeks to scrap a 1997 agreement, known as the Flores settlement, which puts a 20-day limit on how long children can be held in immigration detention.
The settlement was expanded in 2015 to apply not just to unaccompanied children but also to those traveling with their parents.
Trump administration officials say the detention limits have become a “pull” factor for migrants, who hope that if they show up at the U.S.-Mexico border with a child and ask for asylum, they will be allowed in pending a hearing in U.S. immigration court, a practice the president has called “catch-and-release.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the Flores settlement are likely to face more than just legal hurdles.
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Even if the courts allow the new rule to take effect, there are also practical problems: paying for thousands of additional family detention beds.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only three family detention facilities - two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania - that have between 2,500 and 3,000 beds, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said in announcing the rule last week.
More than 42,000 families, mostly from Central America, were arrested along the U.S. southern border just last month. The July arrest numbers are at record highs, even though they have dropped more than half compared with levels seen in May.
NOT ENOUGH BEDS
“Even if the number of border crossings doesn’t go back up in the fall, all this (new rule) would enable them to do is to detain a relatively small percentage of the arriving families for longer,” said Kevin Landy, a former ICE assistant director responsible for the Office of Detention Policy and Planning under the Obama administration.
Without more space, that practice is likely to continue, Landy said.
Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency could not comment on potential increases to the agency’s detention capacity.
Congress mandates how much ICE can spend on immigration detention, and the 2019 budget has $2.8 billion earmarked to pay for 49,500 beds for solo adults - but only 2,500 beds for parents and children.
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However, ICE is currently detaining more than 55,000 immigrants, a record high, a small percentage of them at family facilities, according to agency statistics.
ICE has also had a hard time finding communities willing to accept the construction of facilities, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former policy adviser at U.S. Customs and Border Protection now at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center.
It is also not clear how the family detention rule will work with another Trump administration policy pushing Central American families back to Mexico to wait out their U.S. court hearings there, she said.
TAOS, N.M. - The FBI on Saturday said it had arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico.
The arrest came two days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the group of illegally detaining migrants and New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered an investigation.
Hopkins, 69, also known as Johnny Horton, was arrested in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on a federal complaint charging him with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
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“We’re not worried about it, he’s going to be cleared,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), blaming his arrest on political pressure from Lujan Grisham.
Hopkins is the “national commander” of the UCP, which has had around half a dozen members camped out on a rotating basis near Sunland Park since late February.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. soldiers walk next to the border fence between Mexico and the United States, as migrants are seen walking behind the fence, after crossing illegally into the U.S. to turn themselves in, in El Paso, Texas, U.S., in this picture taken from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 3, 2019. The writing on the wall reads, "Help us Jesus Christ." REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo
PATRIOTS OR FASCISTS?
The UCP describes itself as a “patriot group” helping U.S. Border Patrol cope with record numbers of Central American families crossing the border to seek asylum.
Dressed in camouflage and carrying rifles, UCP members have helped U.S. Border Patrol detain over 5,600 migrants in the last two months, Benvie said. Videos posted online by the group show members telling migrants to stop, sit down, and wait for agents to arrive. Critics accuse the UCP of impersonating law enforcement.
Crowdfunding sites PayPal and GoFundMe on Friday barred the group, citing policies not to promote hate or violence, after the ACLU called the UCP a “fascist militia.”
“Today’s arrest by the FBI indicates clearly that the rule of law should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officials, not armed vigilantes,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement of Hopkins’s arrest.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress on Thursday aimed to end a dispute over border security with bipartisan legislation that would avert another partial government shutdown but does not give President Donald Trump the money he sought for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The measure faces votes in the Republican-led Senate and Democratic-controlled House of Representatives before going to the Republican president, who has not yet announced whether he will sign it. Trump triggered a 35-day-long shutdown of about a quarter of the federal government with his December demand for $5.7 billion to help build a wall, but did not get the money in a deal that ended that shutdown and does not get it in the legislation now before lawmakers.
Late on Wednesday, negotiators put the finishing touches on legislation that would provide more than $300 billion to fund the Department of Homeland Security and a range of other federal agencies through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Funding is due to expire for those agencies on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor, described the legislation as “a compromise that no side will view as a perfect deal,” but labeled it “a success for our bipartisan process” and reiterated his call for Trump to sign it.
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Trump was due to be briefed on the package on Thursday, a White House official said.
The legislation would provide $1.37 billion in new money to help build 55 miles (88.5 km) of new physical barriers on the border. It is the same level of funding Congress appropriated for border security measures last year, including barriers but not concrete walls.
“When the Senate votes on the agreement, we’ll be voting to avoid a second partial shutdown and provide the certainty of a fully functioning federal government,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “Later today, I hope each of my colleagues will join me in moving forward with the agreement produced by this hard work, and the president will sign it into law.”
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer called the agreement a “reasonable compromise.”
“It does not fund the president’s wall, but it does support smart border security initiatives that both parties have always supported, including increased security at our ports of entry and humanitarian assistance at the border. Most importantly, it will keep our government open,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
The legislation would also fund the Justice Department, Commerce Department, State Department, Department of Agriculture, Internal Revenue Service and others, covering roughly 800,000 federal workers.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens next to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Four liberal, first-term House Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said in a statement they would oppose the bill, citing their opposition to the administration’s immigration policies and declaring that the Department of Homeland Security “does not deserve an increase in funding.”
Failure to enact the bill would shutter many government programs, from national parks maintenance and air traffic controller training programs to the collection and publication of important data for financial markets, for the second time this year.
Trump 'not happy' with deal to avert shutdown
‘LET’S ALL PRAY’
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who was presiding over the opening of the Senate, added his own prayer at the end of a prayer by the guest chaplain. “Let’s all pray that the president will have the wisdom to sign the bill so the government doesn’t shut down,” Grassley said.
Trump was widely blamed for the previous shutdown.
A border wall was a central 2016 campaign promise by Trump. As president, he has called the border a national security crisis that requires a wall to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He originally said Mexico would pay for the wall along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border, an idea Mexico dismissed.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is in regular contact with the White House, said Trump was “inclined to take the deal and move on.” Graham also told reporters Trump would then look elsewhere to find more money to build the wall and was “very inclined” to declare a national emergency to secure the funds.
Such a move, bypassing Congress and redirecting funds previously approved by lawmakers for other purposes in order to construct the wall, likely would spark a court battle, as it is Congress and not the president that mainly decides how federal funds get spent under the U.S. Constitution. Several Republicans have cautioned Trump against taking the unilateral action.
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking to reporters at a conference in Poland, said Trump is “evaluating what’s in the bill. He’s also evaluating the authority that he has, and I know he’ll be making a decision before the deadline this Friday.”
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - More Americans blame President Donald Trump than congressional Democrats for the partial U.S. government shutdown, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday, as the closure stretched into its sixth day with no end in sight.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters after holding a video call with U.S. military service members in the Oval Office on Christmas morning in Washington, Dec. 25, 2018. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan/File Photo
Forty-seven percent of adults hold Trump responsible, while 33 percent blame Democrats in Congress, according to the Dec. 21-25 poll, conducted mostly after the shutdown began. Seven percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans.
The shutdown was triggered by Trump’s demand, largely opposed by Democrats and some lawmakers from his own Republican Party, that taxpayers provide him with $5 billion to help pay for a wall that he wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. Its total estimated cost is $23 billion.
Just 35 percent of those surveyed in the opinion poll said they backed including money for the wall in a congressional spending bill. Only 25 percent said they supported Trump shutting down the government over the matter.
In a statement on Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said, “The president has made clear that any bill to fund the government must adequately fund border security.”
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The statement made no mention of Trump’s proposed wall.
Showing little sense of urgency, both chambers of Congress convened for mere minutes late on Thursday, but neither took any action to end the shutdown before adjourning until next week.
Democrats and Republicans were still very far apart on resolving the impasse, said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s spokesman Justin Goodman in a statement.
Democratic Representative Jim McGovern tried to interrupt the brief Republican-run session in the House of Representatives by offering a measure to reopen shuttered government agencies and keep them running through Feb. 8. But he was ignored and his microphone was soon cut off. The House session lasted less than three minutes.
“That was a legitimate request and I should have been recognized,” McGovern told reporters later. “They wouldn’t even recognize me. This is the way they’ve been running this place.”
SHUTDOWN CONTINUES
Inaction in Congress put the shutdown on track to continue into next week and possibly to drag well into January.
While its impact has been limited so far, partly due to holiday-season vacations underway for the 800,000 or so federal workers affected, that could change soon.
Government agencies began notifying the public on Thursday about service disruptions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said the shutdown means it cannot process new flood insurance policies, possibly disrupting home sales.
The Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce, offered advice to government employees on staving off creditors if paychecks lapse.
The wall dispute coincided with the expiration of funding for about 20 percent of the government. The remaining 80 percent is fully funded and is unaffected by the shutdown.
