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      Mexico’s Next President Will Be a Woman

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      Mexico will elect its first woman as president next year after the governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum to square off against the opposition’s candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez.Mexico’s governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate in next year’s presidential election on Wednesday, creating a watershed moment in the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, with voters expected to choose for the first time between two leading candidates who are women.“Today democracy won. Today the people of Mexico decided,” Ms. Sheinbaum said during the announcement, adding that her party, Morena, would win the 2024 election. “Tomorrow begins the electoral process,” she said. “And there is no minute to lose.”Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering and a protégé of Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will face off against the opposition’s top contender, Xóchitl Gálvez, 60, an outspoken engineer with Indigenous roots who rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.“We can already say today: Mexico, by the end of next year, will be governed by a woman,” said Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political scientist at Mexico’s Monterrey Institute of Technology, adding that it was an “extraordinary change” for the country.Ms. Sheinbaum has built her political career mostly in the shadow of Mr. López Obrador, and had emerged early on as the party’s favored pick to succeed the current president. That connection is thought to give her a crucial edge heading into next year’s election thanks to the high approval ratings enjoyed by Mr. López Obrador, who is limited by Mexico’s Constitution to one six-year term.In recent months, Mr. López Obrador has insisted that he will hold no influence once he finishes his term. “I am going to retire completely,” he said in March. “I am not a chieftain, much less do I feel irreplaceable. I am not a strongman; I am not a messiah.”President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is constitutionally limited to one six-year term.Alejandro Cegarra for The New York TimesBut some analysts say his influence will endure regardless of which candidate wins in 2024. Should Ms. Sheinbaum win, “there may be changes to certain policies, though the broad strokes of his agenda will remain intact,” according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in WashingtonIf she is defeated, Mr. López Obrador “will not fade quietly into the background,” the report said, citing a large base of loyal supporters allowing him to command substantial influence. Some legacies of his administration — including austerity measures or the immersion of the military into social, security and infrastructure roles — could also be obstacles for Ms. Gálvez if she seeks to roll back his policies.As the two female candidates target weaknesses in each other’s campaigns, they share some similarities. While neither are explicitly feminist, both are socially progressive, have engineering degrees and say they will maintain broadly popular antipoverty programs.Both women also support decriminalizing abortion. In Ms. Gálvez’s case, that position stands in contrast to that of her conservative party. Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday decriminalized abortion nationwide, building on an earlier ruling giving officials the authority to allow the procedure on a state-by-state basis.Ms. Sheinbaum, who was born to Jewish parents in Mexico City, would become Mexico’s first Jewish president if she wins the race. She has faced a misinformation campaign on social media claiming falsely that she was born in Bulgaria, the country from which her mother emigrated; supporters of Ms. Sheinbaum have called this effort antisemitic.Ms. Sheinbaum would become Mexico’s first Jewish president if she wins the race.Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York TimesShe studied physics and energy engineering in Mexico before carrying out her doctoral research at California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After entering politics, she became Mr. López Obrador’s top environmental official when he was mayor of Mexico City.When Ms. Sheinbaum herself was elected mayor of the capital in 2018, she took on public transit and environmental issues as top priorities, but was also the target of criticism over fatal mishaps in the city’s transportation systems, including the collapse of a metro overpass in which 26 people were killed.With polls positioning Ms. Sheinbaum as the front-runner, her ties to Mr. López Obrador required discipline to maintain his support even when she may not have agreed with his decisions. For instance, when Mr. López Obrador minimized the coronavirus pandemic and federal government officials tweaked data to avoid a lockdown in Mexico City, she remained silent.“What has stood out is her loyalty, I think a blind loyalty, to the president,” said Mr. Silva-Herzog Márquez, the political scientist.Still, while hewing to Mr. López Obrador’s policies, Ms. Sheinbaum has also signaled some potential changes, notably expressing support for renewable energy sources.Drawing a contrast with her rival, Ms. Gálvez, a senator who often gets around Mexico City on an electric bicycle, has focused on her origins as the daughter of an Indigenous Otomí father and a mestiza mother.Xóchitl Gálvez, the top opposition candidate, has Indigenous roots and rose from poverty to become a tech entrepreneur.Claudio Cruz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Gálvez grew up in a small town about two hours from Mexico City without running water and speaking her father’s Hñähñu language. After receiving a scholarship to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she became an engineer and founded a company that designs communications and energy networks for office buildings.After Vicente Fox won the presidency in 2000, she was appointed as head of the presidential office for Indigenous peoples. In 2018, Ms. Gálvez was elected senator representing the conservative National Action Party.Mr. López Obrador has repeatedly made her the focus of verbal attacks, which has had the effect of raising her profile around the country while highlighting the sway that the president and his party exert across Mexico.A combative leader who has embraced austerity measures while doubling down on Mexico’s reliance on fossil fuels, Mr. López Obrador looms over the campaigning. He pledged to do away with a long-held political tradition whereby Mexican presidents handpicked their successors with their “big finger,” replacing the practice with nationwide voter surveys.Historically, political parties in Mexico mostly selected their candidates in ways that were opaque and lacked much inclusion. Handpicking was more common than a “free and fair competition for a candidacy,” said Flavia Freidenberg, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.The new selection process has changed that tradition, but concerns persist over a lack of clarity and other irregularities that have been denounced by some analysts and other presidential hopefuls. Both the governing party, Morena, and the broad opposition coalition, called the Broad Front for Mexico, used public opinion polls “that have not been fully transparent,” Ms. Freidenberg added, “and are not necessarily considered democratic procedures.”The new procedures also ignored federal campaign regulations, with those at the helm of the process in both the governing party and the opposition moving the selection forward by a few months and cryptically calling Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez “coordinators” of each coalition instead of “candidates.”“These irregular activities have occurred under the gaze of public opinion, the political class and the electoral authorities,” Ms. Freidenberg said. “This is not a minor issue.”Next year’s general election, in which voters will elect not only a president but members of Congress, might also determine whether Mexico may return to a dominant-party system — similar to what the country experienced under the once-hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held uninterrupted power for 71 years until 2000.Despite some setbacks, there are signs this is already happening. In June, Morena’s candidate won the governor’s race in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous state, defeating the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate.That victory brought the number of states under Morena’s control to 23 out of 32 states, up from just seven at the start of the president’s term in 2018.The question is “whether Morena reconfigures itself into a hegemonic party like the old PRI,” said Ana Laura Magaloni, a law professor who advised Ms. Sheinbaum’s mayoral campaign. “And that depends on how much of a fight the opposition can put up.” More

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      Dos mujeres competirán por la presidencia en México

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      México votará por su primera presidenta el próximo año después de que el partido gobernante eligiera a Claudia Sheinbaum para enfrentarse a la candidata de la coalición opositora, Xóchitl Gálvez.El partido gobernante de México, Morena, eligió el martes a Claudia Sheinbaum, quien fue jefa de gobierno de Ciudad de México, como su candidata presidencial para las elecciones de 2024. Se trata de un momento crucial en el mayor país de habla hispana del mundo, pues se espera que los votantes elijan por primera vez entre dos mujeres como principales candidatas.Sheinbaum, de 61 años, es física, tiene un doctorado en ingeniería ambiental y cuenta con el respaldo del actual presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Se enfrentará con la principal contendiente de la oposición, Xóchitl Gálvez, una ingeniera franca y de ascendencia indígena que creció en un ambiente de pobreza y luego se convirtió en empresaria tecnológica.“Ya podemos decir hoy: México, a finales del año que viene, va a estar gobernado por una mujer”, dijo Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, un politólogo en el Tec de Monterrey, y agregó que era un “cambio extraordinario” para el país.Sheinbaum ha hecho su carrera política en buena medida a la sombra de López Obrador y muy pronto surgió como la candidata preferida del partido para suceder al presidente. Se considera que ese vínculo con López Obrador le ha brindado una ventaja clave de cara a las elecciones del próximo año gracias a los altos índices de aprobación con los que cuenta el mandatario, que está limitado constitucionalmente a un solo periodo sexenal.López Obrador ha insistido en los últimos meses que no tendrá influencia cuando concluya su mandato. “Me voy a retirar por completo”, dijo en marzo. “No soy cacique, mucho menos me siento insustituible; no soy caudillo, no soy mesías”.El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador solo puede gobernar durante un sexenio según la ConstituciónAlejandro Cegarra para The New York TimesPero algunos analistas consideran que su influencia se extenderá sin importar cuál sea el aspirante que gane la presidencia en 2024. Si Sheinbaum fuera electa, “podría haber cambios en ciertas políticas, aunque los esbozos generales de su agenda seguirán intactos”, según un reporte reciente del Centro de Estudios Estratégicos e Internacionales.Si fuera derrotada, López Obrador “no se retirará discretamente a segundo plano”, decía el informe. “Su base de seguidores es suficientemente grande y leal como para permitirle ejercer influencia significativa”. Gálvez podría enfrentar obstáculos con el legado de la actual gestión si buscara revertir sus políticas, como las medidas de austeridad o la participación del ejército en labores sociales, de seguridad e infraestructura.Aunque las dos candidatas identifican mutuamente las debilidades de sus campañas, comparten algunas similitudes. Ambas son progresistas en temas sociales, aunque ninguna de las dos se identifica explícitamente como feminista; ambas tienen grados universitarios en ingeniería y han dicho que van a mantener los programas de combate a la pobreza de esta gestión, que son ampliamente populares.Ambas mujeres apoyan la despenalización del aborto. En el caso de Gálvez, esa postura contrasta con la de su partido conservador. La Suprema Corte de Justicia de México despenalizó el aborto a nivel federal el miércoles, una decisión que se sustenta en un fallo anterior que le da autoridad a los funcionarios para permitir el procedimiento en todos los estados.De ganar la elección, Sheinbaum, hija de padres judíos en Ciudad de México, se convertiría en la primera persona judía en gobernar México. En las redes sociales ha enfrentado una campaña de desinformación que asegura que nació en Bulgaria, el país del que emigró su madre; los seguidores de Sheinbaum han calificado esos señalamientos como antisemitas.En caso de ganar la elección, Sheinbaum se convertiría en la primera persona judía en gobernar México.Meghan Dhaliwal para The New York TimesSheinbaum estudió física e ingeniería energética en México antes de hacer su investigación de doctorado en el Laboratorio Nacional Lawrence Berkeley en California. Luego de incursionar en la política se convirtió en la principal funcionaria de medioambiente de la gestión de López Obrador cuando él fue jefe de gobierno de Ciudad de México.Luego, cuando ella fue electa para ese mismo cargo en 2018, puso entre sus prioridades el transporte público y medioambiente, pero también fue blanco de críticas por los percances mortales sucedidos en los sistemas de transporte público de la ciudad, entre ellos el colapso de una línea del metro en el que 26 personas perdieron la vida.Al posicionarse como la favorita en los sondeos, los vínculos de Sheinbaum con López Obrador le exigieron disciplina para conservar el apoyo presidencial incluso cuando pudo haber estado en desacuerdo con sus decisiones. Por ejemplo, se quedó callada cuando López Obrador minimizó la pandemia de coronavirus y los funcionarios federales manipularon los datos para evitar un confinamiento en Ciudad de México.“Lo que ha resaltado es su lealtad, yo creo que una lealtad ciega al presidente”, dijo Silva-Herzog Márquez, el politólogo.Sin embargo, al apegarse a las políticas de López Obrador, Sheinbaum también ha dado muestras de posibles cambios, expresamente al mostrar apoyo por las fuentes de energía renovable.En cambio su rival, Gálvez, una senadora que suele andar por la capital mexicana en una bicicleta eléctrica, se ha enfocado en resaltar su origen como hija de una madre mestiza y un padre indígena otomí.Xóchitl Gálvez, principal candidata opositora, tiene ascendencia indígena y surgió de un entorno de pobreza para convertirse en empresaria de tecnología.Claudio Cruz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGálvez creció en un pueblo pequeño ubicado a unas dos horas de Ciudad de México sin agua corriente y hablando la lengua hñähñu de su padre. Estudió ingeniería con una beca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y fundó una empresa que diseña redes de comunicación y energía para edificios de oficinas.Después de que Vicente Fox ganó la presidencia en el año 2000 fue nombrada como encargada de la comisión presidencial de asuntos indígenas. En 2018 fue electa senadora por el conservador Partido Acción Nacional.López Obrador la ha convertido en la figura central de reiterados ataques verbales, lo que ha tenido el efecto de elevar su presencia en el país mientras que llama la atención hacia la influencia del presidente y su partido en todo México.López Obrador, un líder combativo que ha adoptado medidas de austeridad y ha incrementado la dependencia de México de los combustibles fósiles, influye en la campaña. Prometió erradicar una antigua tradición política, el dedazo, con la cual los presidentes mexicanos eligen a sus sucesores, y remplazar esa práctica con encuestas de electores a nivel federal.Históricamente los partidos políticos mexicanos elegían a sus candidatos en primarias opacas y con poca inclusión. La elección por dedazo era más común que una “competencia libre y justa por una candidatura”, dijo Flavia Freidenberg, politóloga de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.El nuevo proceso de selección ha cambiado esa tradición, pero siguen existiendo preocupaciones por la falta de claridad y otras irregularidades señaladas por algunos analistas y aspirantes presidenciales. Tanto el partido gobernante, Morena, como la amplia coalición de la oposición, llamada Frente Amplio, usaron sondeos que “no necesariamente han sido transparentados en toda su magnitud”, dijo Freidenberg, “y que no necesariamente son procedimientos considerados como democráticos”.El nuevo proceso también ignoró las regulaciones federales a las campañas, y los responsables de los procesos, tanto en el partido gobernante como en la oposición, han adelantado la selección unos meses mencionando de manera críptica a Sheinbaum y Gálvez como “coordinadoras” de cada coalición en lugar de “candidatas”.“Estas actividades irregulares, en cualquier caso, se han dado bajo la mirada de la opinión pública, de la clase política y de las autoridades electorales”, dijo Freidenberg. “Esto no es una cuestión menor”.Las elecciones presidenciales del próximo año, en las que los votantes no solo elegirán al presidente, sino también a los miembros del Congreso, también podrían determinar si México se prepara para volver a un sistema de partido dominante similar al que el país experimentó con el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), una agrupación que alguna vez fue hegemónica y gobernó durante 71 años ininterrumpidos hasta el año 2000.Hay indicios de que esto ya está sucediendo, aunque con algunos retrocesos. En junio, la candidata de Morena ganó la contienda por la gubernatura del Estado de México, el estado más poblado del país, donde derrotó a la candidata del PRI.Esa victoria puso en manos de Morena a 23 de un total de 32 entidades federativas de la república, un aumento de las siete que controlaba el partido gobernante al inicio del sexenio en 2018.La duda es “si Morena se reconfigura en un partido hegemónico como fue el viejo PRI”, dijo Ana Laura Magaloni, una profesora de derecho que asesoró la campaña de Sheinbaum a la jefatura de gobierno. “Y eso depende, para mí, de cuánta batalla pueda dar la oposición”.Simon Romero es corresponsal en Ciudad de México, desde donde cubre México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Se ha desempeñado como jefe del buró del Times en Brasil, jefe del buró andino y corresponsal internacional de energía. Más sobre Simon RomeroEmiliano Rodríguez Mega es reportero-investigador del Times radicado en Ciudad de México. Cubre México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Más sobre Emiliano Rodríguez Mega More

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      Is It Time to Negotiate With Putin?

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      Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIt’s been 18 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. No true negotiations have happened. As the stalemate continues, what role should the United States play in the fight?This week on “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss how the war is playing out at home and why the G.O.P. seems more interested in invading Mexico than defending Ukraine.Plus, a trip back in time to a magical land of sorcerers and “Yo! MTV Raps.”(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)A photo illustration of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, as if printed in a newspaper, with one edge folded over, showing print on the other side.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Nils Petter Nilsson/GettyMentioned in this episode:“An Unwinnable War,” by Samuel Charap in Foreign Affairs“The Runaway General,” by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone“First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin,” by Vladimir PutinThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Mexico’s Supreme Court Rejects AMLO-Backed Election Changes

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      The ruling from the country’s top court came as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ramps up his attacks on the judicial system.Mexico’s highest court on Thursday struck down a key piece of a sweeping electoral bill backed by the president that would have undermined the agency that oversees the country’s vote, and that helped shift the nation away from single-party rule.The ruling by the Supreme Court is a major blow to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has argued that the plan would make elections more efficient, save millions of dollars and allow Mexicans living abroad to vote online.The election measures were passed early this year by Congress, which is controlled by the president’s party, and would have applied to next year’s presidential race. Though Mr. López Obrador is barred from seeking re-election, his party’s chosen candidate will most likely be a heavy favorite.The bill would have slashed the National Electoral Institute’s work force, reduced its autonomy and curbed its power to punish politicians for violating election laws. Civil liberty groups said the measures would have hobbled a key pillar of Mexican democracy.“What it sought was to transform the entire electoral system,” said Ernesto Guerra, a political analyst based in Mexico City. “It was a 180-degree turn to the rules of the democratic game.”However relieved some Mexicans were by the ruling, some also worried that Mr. López Obrador might try to turn the legal setback to his advantage and rally his base around the idea that the judiciary is corrupt. During a morning address Thursday in which he anticipated the ruling, he lit into the court.“It is an invasion, an intrusion,” Mr. López Obrador said.He said he would present an initiative “in due time” to have members of the judiciary elected just like the president or senators. “It should be the people who elect them,” he said. “They should not represent an elite.”The court last month had invalidated another part of the bill that, among other things, involved changes to publicity rules in electoral campaigns.Mexicans casting ballots in Ciudad Juárez in 2018.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesIn throwing out the remaining part of the bill by a vote of nine to two, justices pointed to violations by lawmakers of legislative procedure, saying that the changes had been rushed through in only four hours and that members of Congress had not been given reasonable time to know what they were voting on.“As a whole, they are so serious that they violate the constitutional principles of Mexican democracy,” Justice Luis María Aguilar said during the court’s discussion. “Not respecting the rules of legislative procedure is constitutional disloyalty.”José Ramón Cossío, a lawyer who is a former member of the court, said that Mr. López Obrador and his allies had pushed the changes known as “Plan B” forward “in such an arrogant, violent, rude way that they lost.”Experts described the court’s decision as a major setback for the administration of Mr. López Obrador, who has made overhauling the electoral system a major priority. The government had defended the changes as a needed step to “reduce the bureaucratic costs” of elections and to ensure that “no more frauds occur” in Mexico.“The rule of law has never been threatened with the approval of the reforms,” the president’s legal adviser wrote in a statement in March. “It is false that the fundamental rights of the citizens are at risk.”With Plan B struck down, next year’s elections will be governed by the same rules under which Mr. López Obrador and his party, Morena, came to power, Mr. Guerra said.“This gives me peace of mind,” he said. “We see the burial of this reform emanating from and for the political power.”The Supreme Court building in Mexico City. Marco Ugarte/Associated Press But fears remain that the ruling may be weaponized against the judicial system, which already has come under attack by the president for rejecting a number of his administration’s initiatives, including one that would have transferred the newly created National Guard from civilian to military control. The court ruled that this was unconstitutional.“This defeat was intentionally sought to properly assume the role of victim and erect the perfect enemy,” said Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, an expert in constitutional law and ethics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Narratively, this defeat becomes more of a victory.”The risk, analysts warn, is long-term damage to the judiciary. “Justice as we know it, with all its shortcomings, could experience a setback,” Mr. Garza Onofre said.The president, he added, would be prudent “to cool heated tempers.”“We know that is not going to happen,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I feel safe here’: the people leaving everything behind to seek refuge in US

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has a message for migrants that he has been repeating loudly and frequently: “Our border is not open … don’t risk your life and your life savings” to come to the US seeking refuge without invitation.But for millions, hunger, violence and fear ring out louder. Political dysfunction and economic calamity are pushing people from many nations in the western hemisphere in what Joe Biden has called the “largest migration in human history”, exacerbated in Latin America and beyond by the coronavirus pandemic.People with tenacity but few means make a hopeful journey mostly across land towards the US-Mexico border. If they beat the odds to reach American soil they may find harbor – or more heartbreak.Yesi Ortega choked up when talking to the Guardian at a shelter in El Paso, west Texas, earlier this month, as she recounted the odyssey she, her husband Raphael López and their five-year-old son, Matías, had spent six months making.The family had reached a tipping point in their native Venezuela and followed more than 7 million other citizens who have fled the country’s economic collapse and pervasive hunger when their choice came down to food or clothing, Ortega, 24, said.“We had no option. We needed to take the risk,” she said. Like almost a third of this exodus, they first tried nextdoor Colombia, itself unstable and contributing amid the post-pandemic hardship to the latest rise in migration towards the US.Ortega found work in a restaurant kitchen and López labored in a plastics factory in Medellín. But they were paid less, as migrants, the equivalent of $35 a week between them, when a staple such as milk was $3 a liter and the rent was crippling, she said.When they failed to get legal status and couldn’t access the healthcare system or school for Matías, like many others they left Colombia for the US.They survived the slog and danger of walking through the hellish Darién Gap jungle into Panama and trudged through Central America and Mexico, fraught with risk, especially for foreigners migrating on a shoestring.The family didn’t use human smugglers, Ortega said. She recounted how, along the way, they were mugged twice at gunpoint, slept under torrential rains and endured cold nights, leapt on to freight trains when they could, worked temporary jobs and begged for money to buy food, water and bus tickets to relieve the trek whenever possible.Eventually, they reached Ciudad Juárez, across the Mexican border from El Paso. After all that, Matías then broke his right arm while playing. But the family pressed on and went to Door 40 in the towering border barrier to turn themselves in to federal border patrol agents.At first they were separated. Ortega and Matías were taken and held in New Mexico while López, 27, was sent to a detention center 85 miles away in Tornillo, which became known in the Trump administration for holding unaccompanied migrant children in detention camps.They were released after about a week of what they described as cold, uncomfortable conditions and managed to reunite and find a shelter in El Paso. Last week the three traveled to Chicago, where they had a contact address, to await their interview with the immigration authorities in June to find out if they will be allowed to go through the full asylum system in the US – or be deported.The family entered the US before the Title 42 pandemic-related rule was lifted on 11 May, which had blocked many from requesting asylum while allowing some families with young children to do so. After that block ended, the Biden administration nevertheless brought in a “presumption of ineligibility” for asylum for people who simply turn themselves in at the border. This has enraged immigration advocates, who call the new restriction an asylum ban. No matter what, the dice are loaded against Ortega and her family if the authorities conclude they are economic migrants.Around the corner from the shelter, fellow Venezuelan José Ocando, 28, was sleeping on the ground in an alley on a thin mat with some blankets.He had also been living in Colombia, with his wife, but was tracked down by members of a gang who told him his impoverished mother back in Venezuela had a debt outstanding and said they would kill them both if they didn’t pay up.“We left everything from one day to another. There was no time to figure out why these people wanted me to pay a debt I didn’t even know about,” he told the Guardian.They fled and took buses to Monterrey in northern Mexico. There they were within geofencing range to access the US government’s app, CBP One on a smartphone, to request a US asylum appointment.They tried every day for a month but couldn’t get an appointment, Ocando said. So they went to Matamoros, where the Rio Grande infamously claims lives and on 11 May produced scenes of frightened young children, some roped together and with little inflatable rings to stop them from drowning, clinging to their parents on the muddy riverbank as others waited up to their necks in the river, all on the wrong side of razor wire with gun-toting US troops beyond.Ocando and his wife made it across safely, although he was detained and expelled back to Mexico, while his wife was allowed in. She traveled to Utah to join an uncle – as those claiming asylum must give an address to the authorities – and after Ocando traveled the length of the Texas-Mexico border, he was allowed into El Paso.Now he’s found a part-time job carrying blocks on a construction site and is saving for a bus ticket to join his wife as they also await an asylum interview.“It’s been difficult, but I feel safe here,” he told the Guardian.Meanwhile, Fabiola Cometán, 45, also felt protected on US soil after decades of physical abuse by her two former partners, she said.The last straw was receiving a death threat from one of her sisters in their native Peru recently over a debt, going to police and being ignored and then threatened by three men who came to her door demanding the money be paid, she said.Before leaving Lima to join a small group of mostly Venezuelan migrants traveling together for safety overland to the US, she had to decide which of her children to take with her.She thought of the hazards of the Darién and the danger of extortion and sexual assault in Mexico, she said.She sobbed as she said she took her six-year-old son and left her nine-year-old daughter behind with another sister, to protect her from the greater risk of being raped or kidnapped.“My heart broke into pieces, but I had to leave her to come here and find a better opportunity for all of us,” she said.She plans to make her way to New York and go through the asylum process there. Her son, Luis, talked excitedly of going to school and one day seeing snow.
      Joanna Walters contributed reporting More

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      Republican John Kennedy: southern plain-talk or Foghorn Leghorn shtick?

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      Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, offended Mexicans across the world in a hearing on the FBI and DEA’s budget this month, calling for American military members and law enforcement agents to invade their country in order to “stop the cartels” while adding that Mexico would be “eating cat food and living in tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” if not for “the people of America”.Mexico’s top diplomat condemned the comments as “profoundly ignorant”, and the country’s ambassador to the US called for a formal apology for the “vulgar and racist” language. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, urging the more than 37 million Americans of Mexican and other Latin American descent to “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.The entire episode illustrated how Kennedy has emerged as a loud conservative voice in recent years in the US and in a state which has repeatedly relied on laborers of Mexican origin to rebuild homes as well as businesses following hurricanes and other natural disasters.But as the fallout from his remarks about Mexico unfolded, critics also seized on the opportunity to point out that the Republican senator was once a moderate – and some would even say liberal – Democrat before switching parties in 2007, just as the far-right Tea Party movement was taking hold in Louisiana politics.And those critics say the politician who holds degrees from Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia and Oxford University in the UK is “playing the role of a clever hick” by doing things like making fun of Mexico in order to exploit the “bigotry and fear of his base”.Kennedy has made a name for himself by delivering “folksy”, sometimes racist statements in an exaggerated southern American accent that has been likened to being somewhere between that of Mr Haney, the con artist from the former CBS sitcom Green Acres, and Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon rooster who appears in Looney Tunes. The latter comparison is so striking that New Orleans’s Times-Picayune newspaper once posted a quiz featuring a series of eccentric statements that was headlined: “Who said it: Sen John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?”In a Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy once told a Cornell law professor born in Soviet-era Russia: “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade” – insinuating that she was a communist or a foreign agent. The remark came about three years after Kennedy drew ridicule from some quarters for spending a Fourth of July holiday – which recognizes the US’s independence from the UK – in Russia with leaders of his country’s rival power.Separately, in a tough-on-crime, pro-police campaign ad, Kennedy ended the video by saying: “Look, if you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you’re in trouble, call a crackhead.”But back when he was a figure in Louisiana’s state politics, Kennedy’s elocution hewed more closely to a background that is typical of his estimated net worth of more than $12m in 2016. In interviews and videos of proceedings before his switch to the Republican party, Kennedy – one of the wealthiest members of Congress – appears to speak with only a slight southern accent.“Before he got to the Senate, Kennedy never pretended to be a hick,” said Robert Mann, mass communication professor at Louisiana State University and author of Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics. “Instead, he usually acted like the well-educated, affluent person that he is.”Mann said that while Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party during a prior role as the Louisiana state government’s treasurer, he was one of the most outspoken critics of the governor at the time: Bobby Jindal, a Republican. But once he switched parties and entered the national political scene, Kennedy literally changed his tune.“After he got to the Senate and realized that Fox News and its viewers enjoyed his shtick, he went all in on this new persona,” Mann said. “The Kennedy of 2005 or 2008 is a completely different person in style and tone from the one you see today on the TV.”For Mann, Kennedy’s one-liners aren’t genuine, off-the-cuff folksy remarks. They’re calculated attempts to appease his conservative base. “The relationship is simple, I think: he periodically validates and reinforces their distorted views [on] Mexicans, Blacks and other marginalized people,” Mann said. “That tells them that he’s not an urbane, rich, well-educated person, but just one of them.“It’s how politicians have pandered to the lowest common denominator for centuries. Kennedy has mastered the technique.”Mann said that Kennedy was “playing a role on TV” by delivering sometimes “nonsensical” statements and using an exaggerated accent, which appears to fall in the long tradition of ambitious people using voice alteration to further themselves. Recent examples include Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who is bound for prison after fraudulently claiming her technology could diagnose diseases with a single drop of blood and admitted that the baritone voice she used before her criminal conviction wasn’t her real voice. Another is Paris Hilton, who recently dropped the iconic, high-pitched “shy” voice she once used while appearing on the reality television show The Simple Life.“That role is of a clever hick who, while unsophisticated, is always quick with a put-down for smug city slickers,” Mann said. “If you view him through the lens of someone who is affecting an attitude, the words don’t have to make complete sense. It’s the image and the attitude that count.”But while Kennedy may be playing a character, the senator’s statements have real-world impacts, including on foreign relations. The remarks have strained the relationship between the US and Mexico.The two countries are economic partners, with more than 33 million US tourists visiting Mexico every year and over $800bn in bilateral trade. That includes the more than $40bn Louisiana exports to Mexico and $15bn the state bought, creating a surplus balance in favor of Louisiana of $25bn.Additionally, more than 2 million US citizens permanently live in Mexico, and the jobs created by trade between the countries supports more than 70,000 families in Louisiana.A senior Mexican diplomat at the Mexican embassy in Washington said the rhetoric in Kennedy’s recent remarks about his country and his people runs “counter to the needs of the US-Mexico relationship,” which he said requires “stronger dialogue and mutual understanding”.“Uninformed and ill-intentioned statements have the potential to veer us on to a trajectory that can further foster misunderstanding and miscommunication between both countries,” the official said. “The true challenge lies in comprehending and addressing the numerous shared challenges but also opportunities faced by Mexico and the US, on the grounds of respect.” More

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      Border crossings reportedly decrease after Title 42 rules scrapped

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      Crossings at the US border with Mexico have dropped 50% after Title 42 restrictions ended at the end of Thursday and the Biden White House implemented an arguably tougher immigration policy, American homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday.Mayorkas’s remarks on Sunday were a defense of the policy which replaced the expired measure that allowed border officials to expel migrants 2.7m times to their home country or Mexico without hearing their asylum claims, ostensibly to limit the spread of Covid-19.Advocates have argued that the new Biden restrictions mimic two Donald Trump-era policies, but Mayorkas defiantly touted the updated measures, saying on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that the “US Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week before Title 42 ended”.The rules now bar migrants from asylum if they don’t request refugee status in another country before entering the US. Mayorkas added that, on Friday, border patrol officers had detained 6,300 migrants and about 4,200 on Saturday, down from more than 10,000 “before the end of Title 42 earlier last week”.Mayorkas’s cited reduction in border crossings is what the administration expected when announcing the new asylum restriction. Mayorkas had previously said “the border is not open”, attempting to send a clear message to migrants on the Mexican side. He had also said that those who don’t pursue legal pathways to the US could face a “five-year ban on re-entry and potential criminal prosecution”.The numbers appeared to be an early projection of what could happen in the upcoming weeks and months amid the Biden administration’s new border policy. In some areas at the border such as Texas’s Rio Grande valley, agents apprehended 1,133 migrants, representing a 66% decrease as compared with the highest mark, 3,300, during the last fiscal year in the area, according to chief border patrol agent Gloria Chavez.Nonetheless, there were still signs of the border attracting prospective migrants. More than 1,500 miles (2,400km) west, near the San Ysidro port of entry in California, hundreds of people were sitting on cardboard boxes on a sloping hill between the two barriers that form the border walls.Those people – mostly women and children – were on US soil, just steps away from Tijuana, Mexico, having crossed the actual border between the two countries. But they were stuck in an area between two 30ft (10-meter) walls, waiting at the time to be processed by border patrol. “When we first came out here the first few days, there were maybe 100, 150 – then gradually, it started to increase to 200, 250,” said Robert Vivar, an immigration missioner with the San Diego Episcopal diocese. “On a daily basis, [border patrol agents] come in and go and take women and children for processing.”Friends of Friendship Park Committee members, such as Vivar and Pedro Rios, along with other activists and observers, called it an “open-air detention center”. There were few visible services: just one portable toilet for 400 to 800 people.Activists insisted they have seen an increase in the number of people showing up in the last week. The agency said it had nearly 25,000 migrants in custody on Thursday. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they would increase the number of beds by several thousand.However, the scene between the border walls was orderly. Children smiled through the thick, rusted bollards at volunteers who handed out crayons and notepads just three days after Mexico celebrated Mother’s Day and one day before the US recognized the holiday.One young boy squeezed a new stuffed animal tightly.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReligious groups and nonprofits in San Diego have organized an impromptu service site on the Mexican side of the wall that included a charging table for phones handed through the wall, and bins of donations – toilet paper, diapers, sanitary pads, first aid items, clothing and food.There were rows of water bottles lined up in the barrier. Volunteers kept arriving throughout the afternoon: families dropped off donations, high schoolers showed up to hand out food and a minister walked along a stretch of the wall to get individual requests from new arrivals. People who spoke Spanish, French, Arabic and English came to the wall to ask for jackets, warm pants and socks as the sun set and the California desert turned cold.A half mile to the west, border patrol agents monitored a men’s encampment on a windy hill. Volunteers loaded donations, mainly blankets and tarps, on to the agency’s trucks that offered to drive them up to the men’s group. Some of the attendees confirmed to the Guardian that the donations were delivered. Organizers are less certain about where people ended up when the border patrol took groups of 60 to 70 people for processing from either camp.A federal judge in Florida on Friday blocked a Biden policy of expediting the release of some migrants to prevent overcrowding in border patrol facilities. Consequently, the administration asked the judge, Kent Wetherell, to pause his ruling because it could force border patrol agents to decline arrests in order to mitigate the overcrowding conditions.Wetherell denied the Biden administration’s request, dismissing it as “borderline frivolous”. The Biden White House has said it plans to appeal the ruling. More

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      US senator denounced as ‘profoundly ignorant man’ over remarks on Mexico

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      Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.Kennedy’s rant came on Wednesday during a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing that in part focused on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s budget. Kennedy told DEA administrator Anne Milgram that she and other members of the Biden White House should pressure López Obrador to let US military and law enforcement officials storm into his country “and stop the cartels”.“Make him a deal he can’t refuse,” Kennedy said, an apparent allusion to the famous line from the classic mobster film The Godfather. Kennedy also said: “Without the people of America, Mexico, figuratively speaking, would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback.”Kennedy’s comments about the US’s neighbor to the south built on prior Republican statements exalting the idea of using the American military to crack down on Mexican cartels. Mexican cartels press most illegal fentanyl into counterfeit pills which are designed to look like Xanax, oxycodone, Percocet and other prescription medications, or they mix it into other drugs, including cocaine and heroin.Many of the 70,000 overdose deaths registered in the US annually involve people who took fentanyl without knowing it.In a response on Thursday to Kennedy, Ebrard said numerous Mexican government officials and citizens have died in the name of stopping fentanyl from crossing into the US. “He doesn’t know that or pretends like he doesn’t,” Ebrard said.Ebrard added that Kennedy should contemplate why people in the US can obtain fentanyl simply by going out to certain streets or logging on to certain websites online. “It’s a fallacy to argue in favor of sending an armed force to Mexico when in the United States you have fentanyl circulating everywhere,” said Ebrard, who has previously noted that it is mostly Americans who are arrested for trafficking fentanyl in the US.Kennedy delivered his tirade against Mexico in a southern American accent that many of his detractors have likened to the voice of Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn. As the Louisiana politics and culture news outlet Gambit reported, it is widely believed that Kennedy maintains the drawl to come off as folksy, despite his holding degrees from the University of Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia and Oxford University in the UK.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe is also one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, where Democrats and independents who caucus with them hold a two-seat majority after last year’s midterm elections. Open Secrets estimated that Kennedy’s net worth was more than $12m in 2016, when the former longtime treasurer of Louisiana’s state government first won his Senate seat.Kennedy began his political career as a Democrat before switching his party affiliation to Republican in 2007. More