Illegal Immigration

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      Biden Expresses Regret for Calling an Undocumented Immigrant ‘an Illegal’

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      President Biden expressed regret on Saturday for using the word “illegal” to describe an undocumented immigrant who has been charged in the killing of a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, agreeing with his progressive critics that it was an inappropriate term.Mr. Biden used the word during an unscripted colloquy with Republicans during his State of the Union address on Thursday night, and then came under fire from immigration supporters who consider the term dehumanizing. Among those who said he should not have used it were several congressional Democrats.“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal’; it’s ‘undocumented,’” Mr. Biden said on Saturday in an interview with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC, during which he addressed his disagreements with former President Donald J. Trump.“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about ‘vermin,’ the way he talks about these people ‘polluting the blood,’ ” he said, adding, “I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.”He continued: “Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all.”Mr. Capehart asked if that meant he regretted using the word “illegal.”“Yes,” Mr. Biden answered.The president’s reply went further than when he was first asked about the matter by reporters on Friday. He did not explicitly take back the term at that point, noting that the immigrant charged in the murder in Georgia was “technically not supposed to be here.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read the Federal Judge’s Ruling

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      Case 6:23-cv-00007 Document 305 Filed on 03/08/24 in TXSD Page 14 of 31

      to emergency medical conditions, including childbirth and labor, to aliens living in the United States. (Id. at 51-52).

      44. In May 2023, HHSC estimated expenditures for Emergency Medicaid services provided to CHNV nationals. The expenditure calculations reflect the sum of paid amounts on Emergency Medicaid claims for services to individuals with a country of origin listed as one of those four countries, regardless of immigration status. The expenditure calculations are as follows: $207,000 in 2019; $141,000 in 2020; $123,000 in 2021; $178,000 in 2022; and $30,000 in 2023 (as of May 5, 2023). (Id. at 52).

      45. CHIP Perinatal provides prenatal care to certain low-income women who do not otherwise qualify for Medicaid. (Id. at 53).

      46. In May 2023, HHSC estimated the cost of Texas CHIP Perinatal services provided to aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The total estimated cost to Texas for these services was approximately $28,000 in 2019; $37,000 in 2020; $64,000 in 2021; $80,000 in 2022; and $51,000 in 2023 (as of May 5, 2023). (Id. at 54). Further, since October 1, 2022, Texas paid an estimate of $47,500 in services for aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. (Id.).

      47. While these figures are estimates, the Court finds that through these two programs, Texas will inevitably expend some health care resources on CHNV nationals who enter the United States under the Parole Program.

      2.

      An Increase in CHNV Nationals Entering Texas Would Impose Incarceration Costs on the State.

      48.

      According to a 2022 figure, the average cost of incarcerating an inmate who qualifies for reimbursement under the federal government’s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (“SCAAP”) in Texas Department of Criminal Justice (“TDCJ”) facilities is $77.49 per day. (Dkt. No. 263 at 35).

      49. From July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021, TDCJ incarcerated 7,058 eligible inmates for a total of 1,984,597 days. Using the 2022 per-day figure, the estimated cost of incarcerating these inmates for that period was $153,786,422. (Id.).

      50. Of that amount, SCAAP reimbursed only $17,364,520. Thus, Texas paid approximately $68.74 per day per criminal alien incarcerated in TDCJ facilities. (Id.).

      51. Texas, via TDCJ, also incurs costs to keep aliens in custody or add them to mandatory parole or supervision programs when those aliens are not detained or removed by federal immigration authorities. (Id. at 36). For example, in Fiscal Year 2022, the average per-day cost of these programs for each inmate not detained or removed is $4.69, which would mean total costs of $9,307,760, based on the most recently completed SCAAP application. (Id. at 36).

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      Address Showed Biden Seeking Tricky Balance on Immigration

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      The president used his State of the Union speech to try to demonstrate that he could be tough on the border without demonizing immigrants.Confronting the fraught politics of immigration, President Biden wants to focus attention on the decision by Republicans in Congress, egged on by former President Donald J. Trump, to block a bipartisan deal that would provide an infusion of money for border security and allow the president to close off the border to asylum seekers.On the defensive, Republicans have escalated their longstanding effort to tie migrants to heinous crimes.Both strategies were on full display on Thursday night as Mr. Biden delivered his State of the Union address. He made his case that it is Republicans who are now responsible for the problems at the border, while Republicans portrayed his policies as responsible for the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was killed in February, allegedly by a Venezuelan migrant.The dynamic has Mr. Biden, who heading into the general election campaign has signaled a harder line on immigration, walking a careful path, as his clash with Republicans on Thursday night demonstrated. He at once promised to bring back “order” at the border while also vowing not to assail migrants in the manner of Mr. Trump and his allies.“I will not demonize immigrants saying they are poison in the blood of our country,” Mr. Biden said in his address before a joint session of Congress, referring to statements by Mr. Trump that have echoes of white supremacy.“Unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans, and we’re the only nation in the world with the heart and soul that draws from old and new,” Mr. Biden said. “Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years, home to people from every place on Earth.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump, Seeking Cash Infusion, Meets With Elon Musk

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      It’s not clear whether Mr. Musk will spend any of his billions on the former president’s behalf. If he does, he could erase Mr. Trump’s financial disadvantage in the 2024 race.Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.Mr. Trump and his team are working to find additional major donors to shore up his finances as he heads into an expected general election against President Biden. Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Musk to allies and hopes to have a one-on-one meeting with the billionaire soon, according to a person who has discussed the matter with Mr. Trump.It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it’s essential that Mr. Biden be defeated in November — and people who have spoken to Mr. Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.With a net worth of around $200 billion, according to Forbes, Mr. Musk could decide to throw his weight behind Mr. Trump and potentially, almost single-handedly, erase what is expected to be Mr. Biden and his allies’ huge financial advantage over the former president.Aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Musk has long portrayed himself as independent-minded, and like many business leaders he has donated to candidates from both parties over the years. Unlike other U.S. billionaires, he has not spent heavily on a presidential election, and his donations have been fairly evenly split over the years between Democrats and Republicans. Mr. Musk’s businesses, Tesla and SpaceX, have benefited from federal government contracts and subsidies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Migration Through Darien

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      On Friday, boat companies began operating in Colombia after a five-day pause, allowing migrants to once again make their way through the notorious jungle terrain and continue toward the U.S. border.Migration toward the United States through the perilous jungle known as the Darién Gap returned to normal on Friday, with hundreds of people from Venezuela, Ecuador and beyond entering the jungle following a roughly five-day pause in which migrants could not begin the trek.The pause in this increasingly large migration flow was the result of an arrest operation led by the Colombian prosecutor’s office, in which two captains driving boats full of migrants headed to the jungle were taken into custody, where they remain, according to the prosecutor’s office. The office said that the captains had been transporting the individuals illegally, in part because the migrants did not carry proper documentation.The captains worked for two boat companies — Katamaranes and Caribe — that for years have been playing an essential role in carrying migrants from the northern Colombia community of Necoclí about two hours across a gulf to the entrance to the jungle, which they must then cross to get to Central America and eventually the United States. The boat companies have been doing this openly — something documented extensively by The New York Times — and the arrests seemed to signal a shift in policy by Colombian authorities.But in retaliation for the arrests, the boat companies paused transport, and the number of migrants waiting around in Necoclí and another exit town, Turbo, swelled quickly to several thousand people. That posed an enormous challenge to both towns, which do not have the resources or infrastructure to house and feed so many people for an extended amount of time.The arrests of the boat operators came after months of pressure by the United States on the Colombian government to do more to limit or stop migration through the Darién. In a recent interview, Hugo Tovar, a Colombian prosecutor, said his office was working diligently, with the help of the United States, to investigate and arrest human traffickers.On Friday, Johann Wachter, secretary of the Necoclí municipal government, said that the boat companies decided to restart operations after a meeting between representatives from the boat companies, local governments, the Colombian national migration office and other agencies, including someone from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Biden-Trump Border Visits Revealed a Deeper Divide

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      Their approaches to immigration represent a test of voters’ appetite for the messiness of democracy, pitting the president’s belief in legislating against his rival’s pledge to be a “Day 1” dictator.Even the participants in President Biden and Donald J. Trump’s overlapping visits to Texas on Thursday seemed to sense there was something remarkable about their near encounter along the southern border.Rarely do the current and former commanders in chief arrive on the same scene on the same day to present such sharply different approaches to an issue as intractable as immigration. Even rarer still was the reality that the two men are most likely hurtling toward a rematch in November.“Today is a day of extraordinary contrast,” declared Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who had appeared alongside Mr. Trump.But the dueling border events were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke to the competing visions of power and presidency that are at stake in 2024 — of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.Perhaps the most surprising facet of the split screen was that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden agreed on some of the basic contours of the border problem: that the current situation, with migrant crossings setting a new monthly record of nearly 250,000 in December, is unsustainable.“It’s long past time to act,” Mr. Biden said.“I didn’t get everything I wanted in that compromise bipartisan bill, but neither did anybody else,” President Biden said on Thursday as he visited the border, in Brownsville, Texas. “Compromise is part of the process. That’s how democracy works.”Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Considering Executive Order That Could Restrict Asylum at the Border

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      The action under consideration could prevent people from making asylum claims during border crossing surges. The White House says it is far from a decision on the matter.President Biden is considering executive action that could prevent people who cross illegally into the United States from claiming asylum, several people with knowledge of the proposal said Wednesday. The move would suspend longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to ask for safe haven.The order would put into effect a key policy in a bipartisan bill that Republicans thwarted earlier this month, even though it had some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has contemplated in years.The bill would have essentially shut down the border to new entrants if more than an average of 5,000 migrants per day tried to cross unlawfully in the course of a week, or more than 8,500 tried to cross in a given day.The action under consideration by the White House would have a similar trigger for blocking asylum to new entrants, the people with knowledge of the proposal say. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.The move, if enacted, would echo a 2018 effort by President Donald J. Trump to block migration, which was assailed by Democrats and blocked by federal courts.Although such an action would undoubtedly face legal challenges, the fact that Mr. Biden is considering it shows just how far he has shifted on immigration since he came into office, promising a more humane system after the Trump years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Company Hired 24 Minors to Clean Slaughterhouses, Labor Department Says

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      Fayette Janitorial employed at least 24 children between the ages of 13 and 17 to work overnight shifts cleaning dangerous equipment at plants in Virginia and Iowa, federal regulators said.A Tennessee-based company employed at least two dozen children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts cleaning dangerous equipment in slaughterhouses, including a 14-year-old whose arm was mangled in a piece of machinery, the Labor Department said on Wednesday.The department filed a request on Wednesday for a temporary restraining order and injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa against the company, Fayette Janitorial Service LLC. It provides cleaning services at slaughterhouses in several states, including Iowa and Virginia, where the department said an investigation had found that the company had hired children to clean plants.The Labor Department opened its investigation after an article in The New York Times Magazine reported that Fayette had hired migrant children to work the overnight cleaning shift at a Perdue Farms plant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.Fayette did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman told The Times in September that the company was unaware of any minors on its staff and learned of the 14-year-old’s true age only after he was injured.Meat processing is among the nation’s most dangerous industries, and minors are barred under federal law from working in slaughterhouses because of the high risk of injury. But that has not stopped thousands of destitute migrant children from coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America to work dangerous jobs, including in meatpacking plants.The Labor Department found that Fayette had hired at least 24 children between the ages of 13 and 17 to work the overnight shift cleaning dangerous power-driven equipment at a Perdue plant in Accomack County, Va., and at a plant operated by Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa. Fifteen children were working at the Virginia plant, and at least nine children were found to be working at the Iowa plant, the department said in its complaint requesting the injunction and restraining order.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More