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      Who Is Jorge Glas, an Ecuadorean Politician Arrested at Mexico’s Embassy?

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      A former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas had been convicted of bribery in two separate cases. He had fled to the Mexican Embassy in Quito after facing more embezzlement charges.Mexico has severed diplomatic relations with Ecuador after Ecuadorean police officers on Friday arrested Jorge Glas, an Ecuadorean politician who had been granted refuge in Mexico’s Embassy in Quito.That arrest, which Mexico described as a “violation” of its sovereignty, capped days of growing tensions between the two Latin American countries. Ecuador has considered Mr. Glas a fugitive and said its police force was acting on an arrest warrant for Mr. Glas.Here’s what to know about the politician at the center of the dispute.Jorge Glas is a former vice president of Ecuador.Mr. Glas served in several ministerial roles under the longtime left-wing government of a former Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa. Mr. Glas’s most notable role was as Mr. Correa’s vice president, a position he held from 2013 to 2017.His term as vice president in the subsequent government, led by Lenín Moreno, lasted only a few months. In 2017, he was forced from office and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of receiving over $13.5 million dollars in bribes.The bribes had involved Odebrecht, an international construction giant that admitted to paying bribes in more than a dozen countries. The corruption scandal implicated current and former officials in Latin America and has rocked its political establishment.He became mired in other bribery charges.In 2020, a separate bribery case led to Mr. Glas being found guilty of accepting money in exchange for issuing public contracts between 2012 and 2016.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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      The U.S. Is Rebuilding a Legal Pathway for Refugees. The Election Could Change That.

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      President Biden is restoring resources and staffing for the refugee program, which was gutted during the Trump administration.With national attention focused on the chaos at the southern border, President Biden has been steadily rebuilding a legal pathway for immigration that was gutted during the Trump administration.The United States has allowed more than 40,000 refugees into the country in the first five months of the fiscal year after they passed a rigorous, often yearslong, screening process that includes security and medical vetting and interviews with American officers overseas.The figure represents a significant expansion of the refugee program, which is at the heart of U.S. laws that provide desperate people from around the world with a legal way to find safe haven in the United States.The United States has not granted refugee status to so many people in such a short period of time in more than seven years. The Biden administration is now on target to allow in 125,000 refugees this year, the most in three decades, said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman.By comparison, roughly 64,000 refugees were admitted during the last three years of the Trump administration.“The Biden administration has been talking a big talk about resettling more refugees since Biden took office,” said Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “Finally we are seeing the payoff in higher numbers.”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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      Crews at Site of Bridge Collapse Work on Removing First Piece of Debris

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      The governor of Maryland said that the search for missing victims would resume when the conditions for divers improve.Crews in Baltimore on Saturday were working on pulling the first piece of wreckage out of the water after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a tangible sign of progress in the daunting effort to reopen the busy waterway.Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath of the U.S. Coast Guard said at a news conference that his crew was aiming to lift the first segment of the bridge “just north of that deep draft shipping channel.” He added, “Much like when you run a marathon, you’ve got to take the first few steps.”The bridge was a critical transportation link to one of the largest ports in the United States, and the collapse is costing the region and the country millions of dollars the longer it is out of operation. More than 8,000 workers on the docks have been directly affected, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said.Mr. Moore said cutting up and removing the north sections of the bridge “will eventually allow us to open up a temporary restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse.”Officials overseeing the cleanup added on Saturday that salvage teams will use gas-powered cutters to systematically separate sections of the steel bridge, which will then be taken to a disposal site.The work was occurring less than a week after a giant container ship known as the Dali suffered a complete blackout and struck the bridge, killing six construction workers and bringing the bridge down into the Patapsco River.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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      Appeals Court Keeps Block on Texas Migrant Law

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      The decision in favor of the federal government left in place a trial court injunction while courts determine whether the measure is legal. A federal appeals court late Tuesday ruled against Texas in its bitter clash with the federal government, deciding that a law allowing the state to arrest and deport migrants could not be implemented while the courts wrestled with the question of whether it is legal.A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has a reputation for conservative rulings, sided in its 2-to-1 decision with lawyers for the Biden administration who have argued that the law violates the U.S. Constitution and decades of legal precedent.The panel’s 50-page majority opinion left in place an injunction imposed last month by a lower court in Austin, which found that the federal government was likely to succeed in its arguments against the law. The opinion was written by the Fifth Circuit’s chief judge, Priscilla Richman, a nominee of President George W. Bush, and was joined by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, who was nominated to the bench by President Biden last year.Judge Richman found that Texas’ law conflicted with federal law and with Supreme Court precedent, particularly a 2012 immigration case, Arizona v. United States.“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” she wrote. “Texas has not shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits,” she said after discussing how various arguments made by the state fell short.It was a setback for Gov. Greg Abbott but not an unexpected one: The governor has said that he anticipated the fight over the law’s constitutionality to eventually reach the Supreme Court. Mr. Abbott has said the law, which allows the state to arrest and deport migrants on its own, is necessary to deal with the record number of migrants crossing into Texas from Mexico. 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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      in US Politics

      Arizona court rules Mexico can proceed with lawsuit against five US gun dealers

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      A trial court in Arizona has ruled that the Mexican government may proceed in its trailblazing lawsuit against five US gun dealers, who stand accused of facilitating gun trafficking across the border into Mexico.Mexico argues that the companies’ marketing campaigns and distribution practices mean that they are legally responsible for the bloodshed that their guns contribute to.This is the second such case that the Mexican government has brought in US courts this year, having also accused US gun manufacturers of facilitating the cross-border arms traffic in a case in Massachusetts.“[The Mexican lawsuits] emphasize the responsibility of companies regarding how they produce and sell their weapons,” said Carlos Pérez-Ricart, a political scientist in Mexico.Gun sales are highly restricted in Mexico itself, where there is just one gun store, run by the state.Yet the Mexican government estimates that 200,000 firearms are smuggled over the border from the US every year.This fuels a level of insecurity and violence that is extraordinary in peacetime: for the past six years, Mexico has seen more than 30,000 homicides a year.Some 70% of the guns used in homicides in Mexico have serial numbers that can be traced back to US gun shops.Between the two cases, Mexico is seeking $25bn in damages. But it also seeks to shine a light on industry practices and force change, thereby reducing the flow of weapons into Mexico and the gun violence they add to.In both cases, the gun companies sought protection under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevents them from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products.The trial court in Massachusetts initially dismissed Mexico’s case on those grounds, but Mexico appealed, and the decision was reversed in January.The gun manufacturers have said they will ask the supreme court to take the case on. But the supreme court only takes a fraction of cases where review is sought by defendants.By contrast, the trial court in Arizona accepted Mexico’s case against gun dealers. This means the “discovery” phase can begin right away, in which Mexico is entitled to ask for documents from defendants, and company executives may be questioned under oath.“We’re off to the races in the Arizona case,” said Jonathan Lowy, president of Global Action on Gun Violence, which is co-counsel in both cases.To win, Mexico will need to convince the juries that the companies’ design choices, marketing campaigns and distribution practices are sufficiently connected to gun violence in Mexico for them to be considered responsible.The lawsuits could provide a template for future legal actions to change the way the gun industry operates, for example forcing manufacturers to produce firearms in a way that makes it harder to convert for greater lethality.“This could lead to a massive reduction in the sale of crime guns supplying both cartels in Mexico and also criminals in the US, because the same industry practices supply both,” said Lowy. “It would save a great deal of lives – on both sides of the border.”Even if Mexico doesn’t win the lawsuits, it has put the issue of smuggled firearms as a catalyst of violence squarely into the public debate for the first time.“For many years the conversation was dominated by drugs going from Mexico to the US, and nobody mentioned firearms,” said Pérez-Ricart. “It’s crucial that we talk about firearms as a matter of greatest importance in foreign policy.” More

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      Iowa Passes Bill to Make Returning After Deportation a State Crime

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      Iowa lawmakers passed a bill on Tuesday that would make it a crime to enter the state after being deported or denied entry into the United States. The passage puts the Midwestern state on track to join Texas in enforcing immigration outside the federal system.The Iowa bill, which passed on the same day that the Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce a new law empowering police officers to arrest unauthorized migrants, now goes to the desk of Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, who said she planned to sign it.“President Biden and his administration have failed to enforce our immigration laws and, in doing so, have compromised the sovereignty of our nation and the safety of its people,” Ms. Reynolds said Tuesday evening in a statement. “States have stepped in to secure the border, preventing illegal migrants from entering our country and protecting our citizens.”Iowa Democrats, who have lost power over the last decade and are vastly outnumbered in the Legislature, mostly opposed the legislation but were powerless to stop it.“This bill is a political stunt and a false promise that doesn’t contain the needed resources,” State Senator Janice Weiner, a Democrat from the Iowa City area, said when her chamber debated the measure. “It’s a gotcha bill.”The bill would make it a misdemeanor for someone to enter Iowa if they were previously deported, denied entry to the United States or had left the country while facing a deportation order. In some cases, including if the person had certain prior convictions, the state crime would become a felony. Iowa police officers would not be allowed to make arrests under this legislation at schools, places of worship or health care facilities.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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      Mexico Condemns Texas Law, and Says It Will Not Accept Deportations From the State

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      Mexico will not accept deportations made by Texas “under any circumstances,” the country’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas to arrest migrants who cross into the state without authorization.The ministry condemned the state law, known as Senate Bill 4, saying it would separate families, violate the human rights of migrants and generate “hostile environments” for the more than 10 million people of Mexican origin living in Texas.Mexico’s top diplomat for North America, Roberto Velasco Álvarez, rejected the ruling on the social media on Tuesday, saying that immigration policy was something to be negotiated between federal governments.The Mexican government has severely criticized the measure since last year, and rejected the idea of local or state agencies, rather than federal authorities, detaining and returning migrants and asylum seekers to Mexican territory.“Texas has taken a very combative stance,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican studies at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s only aggravating the problem because you violently close one part of the border, but others are still open.”A senior Mexican foreign ministry official who was not allowed to speak publicly said that the Supreme Court ruling would not affect existing migration agreements between the two countries.While Mexico has served as the United States’ immigration enforcer, often discouraging migrants from massing at the border, the country has also publicly pushed for two key policies to address the root causes that force people out of their home countries — such as poverty, violence, inequality and climate change — and expand regular pathways for migration.Last week, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said his administration was proposing that the Biden administration give legal status to at least five million undocumented Mexicans living and working in the United States.He has also called on the United States to suspend sanctions against Venezuela and lift the blockade against Cuba, saying that such measures would reduce migration flows from those countries. And he has called proposals to build walls or close the border as “electoral propaganda.”“Do you think the Americans and Mexicans will approve of this?” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “Companies cannot stand it. Maybe for a day, but not for a week.” More

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      Mexico’s President Faces Inquiry for Disclosing Phone Number of Times Journalist

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      President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico has repeatedly made attacks on members of the news media in a country that is one of the world’s deadliest for journalists.Mexico’s freedom of information institute, a government agency, said Thursday that it would start an investigation into the president’s disclosure on national television of the personal cellphone number of a journalist for The New York Times.The investigation centers on a decision by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a televised news conference on Thursday that left many aghast in Mexico, one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. At least 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.During the news conference, Mr. López Obrador read aloud from an email from Natalie Kitroeff, The New York Times’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested comment for an article revealing that U.S. law enforcement officials had for years been looking into claims that allies of Mr. López Obrador met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels.In addition to railing against Ms. Kitroeff and identifying her by name, Mr. López Obrador publicly recited her phone number.“This is tantamount to doxxing, illegal by Mexican privacy laws and places reporters at risk,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said on X, the social media platform.Mexico’s National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection, or INAI, said in a statement that its investigation would seek to establish whether Mr. López Obrador had violated Mexican legislation protecting personal data. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of information system, which was created more than two decades ago to make government operations more transparent and curb abuses of power.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