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      Biden Shut the Border to Asylum Seekers. The Question Is Whether the Order Can Be Enforced.

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      There are still ways for people to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, particularly without any new resources to help guard the 2,000-mile frontier.As of 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, the U.S. border with Mexico was shut down to nearly all migrants seeking asylum in the United States.The drastic action, the result of an executive order signed by President Biden, was designed to keep the border closed at least through Election Day and defuse one of the president’s biggest vulnerabilities in his campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.The question is how broadly it can be enforced, especially along a 2,000-mile border that does not have nearly the capacity to manage the number of people who want to enter the United States.As of Wednesday morning and into Thursday, the order appeared to be working, although it was still too early to make a real assessment. Migrants in the border towns of Mexicali and Ciudad Juárez were being turned away, and the word was spreading.In Mexicali, Guadalupe Olmos, a 33-year-old mother, said that when she heard about the new policy, she wept, and said it was now pointless to try to enter the United States. Last year, she said, gunmen shot up her car, killing her husband. She and her three children survived and have been trying to get out of Mexico.“It is not going to happen anymore,” Ms. Olmos said. “Yesterday, they told us that this is over.”Before the new restrictions went into effect, migrants would seek out border agents and surrender, knowing that anyone who stepped foot on U.S. soil could ask for asylum. Often, they would be released into the United States to wait, sometimes for years, for their cases to come up.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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      San Diego Is Once Again a Top Migrant Entry Point

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      Asylum seekers from around the world are trying to enter the United States through California, and immigrant traffic there has reached its highest level in decades.From sunrise to sunset, the U.S. Border Patrol buses arrived every hour at a sunbaked parking lot in San Diego.Dozens of migrants stepped outside each time, many seeming to be confused about what was happening at this trolley hub on a recent weekend. There were no local officials to answer questions. No services. And few ways to reach their next destination in the United States.For the first time in 25 years, the San Diego region has become a top destination for migrants along the southern United States border, surpassing the number of illegal crossings at areas in Arizona and Texas for several weeks this year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.It has been a surprising turn for a border spot that was the focal point of the bitter national debate over immigration decades ago, before falling out of the spotlight as migrant flows shifted eastward. The recent surge in San Diego has been overwhelming enough that a government-funded welcome center exhausted its budget and had to close in February. Since then, the United States Border Patrol has bused migrants to a trolley center and sent them on their way.After being dropped off at the Iris Avenue Transit Center, many of the migrants head to the San Diego International Airport or find shelter provided by churches or nonprofit organizations in the San Diego area.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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      Art and the Power to Heal

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      Artists and community organizations around the world are increasingly turning to art to create positive social change.Using her arms as a makeshift clapboard, a Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white caftan clapped her hands together, signaling the beginning of the rehearsal. The other amateur Thespians, wearing comic stick-on mustaches, moved to their marks, improvising a scene in a women’s beauty salon where one patron’s hair is accidentally dyed blue.As the scene ended, all the women were in hysterics, ribbing each other over how they could better play their parts next time. Scenes like this are common at the Kuluhenna Creative Workshop, which is held at a community clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire city. The workshop is open to all local women, but with a focus on immigrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.The 90-minute class, which the Mafwa Theater has held since 2019, is a happy space. Each week, some 15 women gather to tell stories, dance, act and gossip. They are provided with bus passes, a play area for their young children and an on-site health worker in case any of the women want to talk.Eman Elsayed, a mother of three originally from Egypt, said before she joined the workshop in 2020, she was “depressed, isolated and fed up” with her life in Leeds. But eventually, especially after joining Mafwa Theater’s associate artists program in 2021, she felt her life change.“Art, it’s a magic wand,” said Elsayed, who now has a paid job doing community outreach for the program. “But you need to believe, and you need to take the time to see what it will do.”Mafwa’s project is just one example of a larger trend — as more and more groups and individuals worldwide are using the arts to empower, unite and even help heal people who have suffered trauma, from war and natural disaster, or discrimination, poverty and displacement.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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      Biden Expected to Sign Executive Order Restricting Asylum

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      The move, expected on Tuesday, would allow the president to temporarily seal the border and suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday allowing him to temporarily seal the U.S. border with Mexico to migrants when crossings surge, a move that would suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.Mr. Biden’s senior aides have briefed members of Congress in recent days on the forthcoming action and told them to expect the president to sign the order alongside mayors from South Texas, according to several people familiar with the plans.“I’ve been briefed on the pending executive order,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas who previously criticized Mr. Biden for not bolstering enforcement at the border earlier in his presidency. “I certainly support it because I’ve been advocating for these measures for years. While the order is yet to be released, I am supportive of the details provided to me thus far.”The order would represent the single most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any modern Democrat, and echoes a 2018 effort by President Donald J. Trump to block migration that was assailed by Democrats and blocked by federal courts.Although the executive action is almost certain to face legal challenges, Mr. Biden is under intense political pressure to address illegal migration, a top concern of voters ahead of the presidential election this year.The decision shows how the politics of immigration have tilted sharply to the right over the course of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Polls suggest growing support, even inside the president’s party, for border measures that once Democrats denounced and Mr. Trump championed.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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      Schumer Announces Senate Will Vote Again on Border Bill

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      The bipartisan border enforcement compromise, blocked by Republicans in February, is all but certain to be thwarted again. Democrats aim to tag the G.O.P. as the culprit in its failure.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, plans to push forward this week with a second vote on a bipartisan border enforcement bill that Senate Republicans killed earlier this year at the urging of former President Donald J. Trump.The measure is almost certain to be blocked again, but Democrats hope to use the failed vote to sharpen an election-year contrast with the G.O.P. on a critical issue that polls show is a major potential liability for President Biden and their candidates.Democrats will aim to neutralize the issue by showing voters that they and Mr. Biden have tried to get migration at the U.S. border with Mexico under control, but have been thwarted repeatedly by Republicans following the lead of Mr. Trump.“The former president made clear he would rather preserve the issue for his campaign than solve the issue in a bipartisan fashion,” Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues that heralded the bill’s provisions and outlined his plans. “On cue, many of our Republican colleagues abruptly reversed course on their prior support, announcing their newfound opposition to the bipartisan proposal.”After months of negotiation, Republicans and Democrats reached an improbable immigration compromise in February — one that G.O.P. lawmakers had insisted was a prerequisite for providing additional aid to Ukraine — that appeared to have a chance at passage. But Mr. Trump called it too weak and instructed his allies in Congress to vote it down. The measure failed when it fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate, with all but four Republicans voting to block it. (In the 50-to-49 vote, three Democrats and one independent also voted “no,” denying the measure even a simple majority.)Mr. Biden, whose team helped hammer out the deal, urged support for it on Monday in a statement from Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, that said, “We strongly support this legislation and call on every senator to put partisan politics aside and vote to secure the border.”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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      Elecciones en República Dominicana: lo que hay que saber

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      El presidente Luis Abinader llega a las elecciones de este domingo como el claro favorito, impulsado por políticas migratorias nativistas, una economía fuerte y un esfuerzo anticorrupción.Este año, República Dominicana está deportando decenas de miles de personas de Haití, a pesar de las peticiones de las Naciones Unidas de que no lo hagan, mientras los migrantes huyen de una anarquía impulsada por bandas criminales. El presidente dominicano, Luis Abinader, está incluso aplicando medidas adicionales, como la construcción de un muro fronterizo entre las dos naciones que comparten la isla caribeña La Española.Los votantes dominicanos acudirán a las urnas este domingo para unas elecciones generales y las políticas migratorias severas, junto con un impulso anticorrupción y un crecimiento del turismo, han convertido a Abinader, quien busca un segundo mandato, en el claro favorito.Las elecciones dejan en evidencia cómo República Dominicana, con una de las economías más sólidas de América Latina, se diferencia de otros países de la región, donde muchos líderes que llegaron al poder en el mismo periodo que Abinader tienen índices de aprobación sombríos.El uso por parte de Abinader de restricciones polémicas contra los migrantes haitianos también deja en evidencia un enfoque de mano dura hacia la migración que convierte a República Dominicana en un escenario atípico en la región.“Estas sin duda no son unas elecciones de ‘cambio’, como lo han sido muchas otras en América Latina recientemente”, dijo Michael Shifter, miembro de Diálogo Interamericano, una organización de investigación con sede en Washington.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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      Se está postulando al Senado con una historia de migrante humilde. Te contamos el resto

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      Bernie Moreno, el republicano que se enfrenta al senador Sherrod Brown en Ohio, cuenta una historia de rico venido a menos que volvió a ser rico. Pero la realidad no es tan clara.Se está postulando para el Senado de EE. UU. como un migrante exitoso. Está contactando a los votantes de Ohio con una historia conmovedora, de alguien que superó los obstáculos por sus propios medios, y que solo pudo haberlo hecho en un lugar como Estados Unidos al llegar siendo un niño desde Colombia, arriesgarse con un negocio que estaba en dificultades y luego al convertirlo en un éxito rotundo, volviéndose multimillonario en el proceso.Bajo la bandera del movimiento político populista de Donald Trump, Bernie Moreno, el republicano que está retando al senador Sherrod Brown, se autodenomina humildemente un “tipo que vende automóviles en Cleveland” y relata las modestas circunstancias de su infancia, cuando su familia migrante empezó de cero en Estados Unidos.“Llegamos aquí sin absolutamente nada —llegamos aquí de manera legal– pero llegamos aquí, nueve de nosotros en un apartamento de dos habitaciones”, contó Moreno en 2023, en lo que se convirtió en su discurso característico. Su padre “tuvo que dejarlo todo atrás”, ha dicho, recordando lo que llamó el “estatus de clase media baja” de su familia.Pero hay muchas más cosas que Moreno no dice sobre sus antecedentes, su educación y sus poderosos vínculos actuales con el país que lo vio nacer. Moreno nació en una familia rica y con conexiones políticas en Bogotá, una ciudad que nunca abandonó del todo y donde algunos de sus familiares continúan disfrutando de gran riqueza y estatus.Brown en Dayton, Ohio, en marzoMaddie McGarvey para 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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      Trump Is Flirting With Quack Economics

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      More than 30 years ago, the economists Rudiger Dornbusch (one of my mentors) and Sebastian Edwards wrote a classic paper on what they called “macroeconomic populism.” Their motivating examples were inflationary outbreaks under left-wing regimes in Latin America, but it seemed clear that the key issue wasn’t left-wing governance per se; it was, instead, what happens when governments engage in magical thinking. Indeed, even at the time they could have included the experience of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, which killed or “disappeared” thousands of leftists but also pursued irresponsible economic policies that led to a balance-of-payments crisis and soaring inflation.Modern examples of the syndrome include leftist governments like that of Venezuela, but also right-wing nationalist governments like that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who insisted that he could fight inflation by cutting interest rates.Will the United States be next?I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?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