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      Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction

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      Joe Biden faced intense criticism from environmental advocates, political opponents and his fellow Democrats after the president’s administration waived 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in south Texas, its first use of a sweeping executive power that was often employed under Donald Trump.“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar said. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.“I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”Environmental advocates said the new wall would run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and species such as the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.“A plan to build a wall will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat,” said Laiken Jordahl, a south-west conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.“It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands.”During the Trump presidency, about 450 miles of barriers were built along the south-west border. The Biden administration halted such efforts, though the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, resumed them.A federal proclamation issued on 20 January 2021 said: “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”On Wednesday, border officials claimed the new project was consistent with that proclamation.“Congress appropriated fiscal year 2019 funds for the construction of border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, and [homeland security] is required to use those funds for their appropriated purpose,” a statement said.The statement also said officials were “committed to protecting the nation’s cultural and natural resources and will implement sound environmental practices as part of the project covered by this waiver”.Observers were not convinced. Referring to a famous (and much-mocked) Trump campaign promise, Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, said: “Well Mexico didn’t pay for the wall, but Biden did.”Pointing to a campaign promise by Biden – “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration” – Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, said: “Biden’s flip-flop here is not only a validation of President Trump’s border and immigration policies, but also a validation of President Trump’s entire 2024 America First campaign!”Polling shows Trump leads Biden when voters are asked who would handle border security better.On Wednesday, homeland security officials posted the announcement on the US federal registry. Few details were provided about construction in Starr county, Texas, which is part of a busy border patrol sector currently seeing “high illegal entry” by undocumented migrants via Central and South America.According to government data, about 245,000 such entries have been recorded this fiscal year in the Rio Grande Valley sector.“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in the federal registry notice.The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were among federal laws waived to make way for construction. The waivers avoid reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.Starr county, between Zapata, Mexico, and McAllen, Texas, is home to about 65,000 people in 1,200 sq miles, part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.Federal officials announced the project in June and began gathering public comments in August, sharing a map of construction that could add up to 20 miles to existing border barriers. The Starr county judge, Eloy Vera, said the new wall would start south of the Falcon Dam and go past Salineño, Texas.“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive,” the county judge said, pointing to creeks cutting through ranchland. “There’s a lot of arroyos.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Florida confirms it was behind flights that left asylum seekers in California

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      Florida confirmed on Tuesday that it was behind two private jet flights that brought three dozen people seeking asylum from the US southern border to California amid accusations that the individuals were coerced to travel under false pretenses.The state’s division of emergency management said in a statement that the passengers all went willingly, and refuted allegations from California officials such as the governor, Gavin Newsom, who had threatened Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, with kidnapping charges.Two planes arrived in Sacramento on 2 and 5 June, each carrying people seeking asylum, mostly from Colombia and Venezuela. The individuals had been picked up in El Paso, Texas, taken to New Mexico and then put on charter flights to California’s capital of Sacramento, said Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general. Bonta, who said Florida would be guilty of “state-sanctioned kidnapping” if it was found to be behind the flights, is investigating whether any violations of criminal or civil law occurred.Alecia Collins, a spokesperson for the Florida division of emergency management, said in a statement that “through verbal and written consent, these volunteers indicated they wanted to go to California”. She also shared a video compilation that appeared to show people signing consent forms and thanking officials for treating them well.The clips had no time stamps, and Collins declined to share additional details about when and where they were recorded.It was the DeSantis administration’s first acknowledgment that it coordinated the flights.This isn’t the first time the DeSantis administration has transported migrants from Texas to other states. Last fall, Florida flew 49 Venezuelans to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard. This week a Texas sheriff filed acriminal case over the flights to Martha’s Vineyard – the sheriff has previously said the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” into traveling to the wealthy liberal town.Last month, DeSantis, who recently announced a presidential bid, signed into law a bill approving $12m for a program to relocate migrants, even if they never step foot in Florida.Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived on Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs in El Paso. The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight on Monday, Bonta said.He said the asylum seekers have court dates in New York, Utah and Colorado and carried a document that “purports to be a consent and release form” that is designed to shield Florida from liability.“Of course, what’s important is what is actually said and represented and told to the individuals, and we’ve got good indications of what that was and the fact that it was false, misleading and deceptive,” Bonta said.Darrell Steinberg, Sacramento’s mayor, said faith-based groups are working together to help the newcomers, who are staying at two undisclosed locations in the city and have been given food, clothing and cellphones to contact their families.Gabby Trejo, the executive director of Sacramento ACT, a collaboration of religious congregations in the Sacramento area, said all of the arrivals had already been given pending court dates by US immigration officials before they were approached in Texas by people promising jobs. Trejo said that they had been “lied to and deceived”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom’s office, meanwhile, doubled down on its criticism of DeSantis.“This is exploitative propaganda being peddled by a politician who has shown there are no depths he won’t sink to in his desperate effort to score a political point,” said Anthony York, a spokesperson for Newsom.Newsom indicated in a tweet on Monday that California may consider kidnapping charges against DeSantis. Such charges would likely be extremely difficult to prove, particularly given that the migrants signed waivers.DeSantis’s latest apparent move to send migrants to California’s capital city appears to be a direct shot at Newsom. Though Newsom has not announced any plans to run for president in 2024, he and DeSantis have frequently sparred on immigration policy, abortion access, LGBTQ+ and civil rights, and a host of other cultural issues.It’s not yet clear if the new arrivals in Sacramento plan to stay in California or will eventually seek to go elsewhere, advocates said. Four who arrived on the first flight on Friday have already been picked up by friends or family members, but the rest remain in the care of local advocacy groups.The faith-based coalition is also connecting the migrants with medical and legal services, said Shireen Miles, a longtime Sacramento ACT volunteer. She said several people have court hearings as soon as next week in places such as Chicago, New York and Denver, which immigration attorneys are working to reschedule. More

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      Ron v Don / Britain’s numbers game: Inside the 2 June Guardian Weekly

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      Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.The Guardian Weekly has a split cover this week, depending where in the world you get the magazine.Our North America edition puts the cover focus on the US race for the Republican presidential nomination. Ron DeSantis finally confirmed his candidacy, despite a nightmare launch on social media platform Twitter, which means the Florida governor is already playing catch-up with his arch-rival, Donald Trump.To capture the schoolyard-rumble feel of the race, illustrator Neil Jamieson tried to channel his 10- and 13-year-old kids who, he says, love to press each other’s buttons. “This cover leans in to the work of my hero George Lois, the legendary American creative director of Esquire whose acerbic wit and eye for composition redefined the American magazine cover in the 1960s,” adds Neil.Whether DeSantis has it in him to wrest the Republican playground bragging rights from Trump remains to be seen, as David Smith reports from Washington.For readers elsewhere, the cover reflects the record figures of people migrating to Britain – a subject that affects the lives of many around the world, more recently from countries such as Hong Kong, India and Ukraine, to name but a few.As our big story explores, one of the main talking points is not that the numbers are so high but why, when migration is such a dynamic and enduring reality of the modern world, successive Conservative governments have perpetuated the simplistic notion that UK immigration can easily be reduced.Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal breaks down the figures, while south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen finds out why Indians studying abroad are so keen on British universities. Finally, Daniel Trilling outlines how the UK’s controversial policy to stop small migrant boats crossing the Channel is partly inspired by Greece’s hardline crackdown, one area in which post-Brexit Britain seems happy to emulate its European neighbours.If you’ve wondered what inspires people to stand on one leg blindfolded for hours, or to attempt the loudest burp, don’t miss Imogen West-Knights’ long read on how the weird and wonderful Guinness World Records is still thriving in the digital age.In Culture, as the TV series Succession ended this week, writer Jesse Armstrong discusses the show’s genesis and the real-life characters who inspired its fearsome media mogul protagonist, Logan Roy.Get 12 issues of the Guardian Weekly magazine for just £12 (UK offer only) More

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      Republicans aren’t fixing the migrant border plight. In fact they’re making it worse | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Last week saw the end of Title 42, the Trump-era border restriction which was technically introduced as a health measure during the coronavirus pandemic. The policy allowed the Trump and then Biden administrations to expel without due process the vast majority of people seeking asylum at the United States-Mexico border. Given that the acute phase of the pandemic has passed, the end of the policy – which has been used about 2.7m times – was inevitable.But the end of Title 42 has also reignited the political firestorm over the US immigration and refugee system. Republicans have seemed to gleefully anticipate “chaos” and “disaster” at the border after the policy is lifted. Less biased observers are also concerned that the US refugee processing system will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of people now expected to seek asylum. The Biden administration has come under fierce criticism from the left for a tough new policy of questionable legality which requires most refugees to seek asylum from abroad using a glitchy cellphone app called CBP One.Not to be outdone, Republicans have responded to the situation by promising to return to the failed and cruel policies of the past. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill which would order the resumption of Trump’s border wall and eviscerate the right to asylum for those who reach the US. Meanwhile, speaking at a CNN town hall last week, Trump defended his policy of family separation and indicated that he would consider reinstating it if he became president again.All of these proposals show that even though there are many reasons to be concerned about the humanitarian situation at the southern border, Republicans have no solutions to it. Migration is driven by human suffering and the desire for a better and safer life, rooted in structural factors like the climate crisis, human rights violations and economic inequality. US government policies have some impact, but they’re not determinative. If people could be prevented from seeking asylum through angry posturing or cruel policies like family separation, then it’s hard to explain why 2019 – a year when Trump was president – saw the largest number of arrivals in 12 years.What’s even worse is that the policies that Republicans want to pursue in other areas of life only make the structural factors underlying migration more severe. The party is opposed to serious efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and it cut foreign aid to Central America under Trump – in some cases actually as punishment for the arrival of migrants at the border. Furthermore, the weak US gun laws which Republicans back create an “iron river” of firearms flowing into Mexico and Central America, where 70% and 50% of guns used in crimes are traced back to the US.The party also has a long history of promoting US military intervention in Latin America, which has caused instability and propped up the regimes that fuel the inequality and violence of today. Republicans are busy right now proposing that the US invade Mexico to take out its drug cartels, an action that would contribute to the country’s insecurity and undoubtedly fuel an increase in migration northwards.If Republicans wanted to actually help deal with the refugee crisis, there are many things they could do. They could join with Democrats to properly fund the system of refugee centers, in which the number of detainees is already exceeding capacity, and immigration courts, where some refugees have been waiting more than a decade for a hearing. They could try to advance proposals to work constructively with the nations with which the United States shares a hemisphere to tackle common problems like the climate crisis, economic inequality and gun violence. And they could work to expand, rather than contract, legal pathways to citizenship and asylum.The Biden administration is now working to do just that, announcing plans to set up immigration processing centers throughout Latin America, with the first to open in Guatemala and Colombia in the coming weeks. Eventually, the administration hopes to reduce the need for desperate people to arrive at the border by offering them an opportunity to apply for asylum from elsewhere. This should not only dial down the political heat at home, but much more importantly mean that would-be migrants don’t have to suffer the harrowing journey north, which for many ends in abuse or death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut these plans can only be effective and sustainable over the long term with the cooperation of Republicans, both in Congress and in future administrations. For that to happen, the party would need to start seeing immigrants and refugees as fellow human beings in need of assistance rather than as enemies to be quashed. Only then can America really make progress in tackling this problem and escaping the cycle of cruelty in which it is currently trapped.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a newsletter and podcast 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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      Title 42 migration restrictions have ended, but Biden’s new policy is tougher

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      As the Title 42 pandemic-era rule ended at midnight on Thursday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security and a former Cuban refugee, issued a stern warning to would-be migrants, saying: “People who arrive at the border without using a lawful pathway will be presumed ineligible for asylum.”In many ways, Mayorkas’s statement directly contradicted some of the promises Joe Biden made as a candidate during the 2020 presidential election. Then Biden had pledged to dismantle Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, calling the numerous restrictions his rival enacted to shut off access to the US asylum system “cruel”.After taking office, Biden reversed some of Trump’s border policies, including a program that required asylum-seekers to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities while their cases were reviewed by US courts.But for more than a year, Biden kept, and defended in court, Trump’s most sweeping border restriction: the Title 42 emergency order that allowed agents to cite the Covid-19 pandemic to quickly expel migrants without hearing asylum claims.The Biden administration in 2022 tried to phase out Title 42, but was blocked by a lawsuit filed by Republicans in 19 states. By the time it ended – due to the expiration of the Covid-19 public health emergency – Title 42 had been used to expel migrants over 2.7m times from the US southern border, according to government statistics.But Biden is now replacing Title 42 with an arguably tougher, more restrictive policy. His administration on Friday started implementing a rule barring migrants from asylum if they don’t request refugee status in another country before entering the US.Advocates suggested that such a restriction mimics two Trump-era policies known as the “entry” and “transit” asylum bans which were consequently blocked by courts. As a result, the new restrictive border control has already been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrants’ rights groups in federal court.“This new rule is no less illegal or harmful. It will effectively eliminate asylum for nearly all non-Mexican asylum seekers who enter between designated ports of entry, and even for those who present at a port without first securing an appointment,” the complaint says.Thousands of migrants anticipating the end of Title 42 crossed into the US in record numbers this week along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. They gathered on the banks of the Rio Grande and gates near the border wall, waiting for their turn to be let into US soil.Nestor Quintero, who crossed the US border near El Paso, Texas, only to be expelled to Tijuana, recently returned to Ciudad Juárez, scared that once Title 42 was lifted, his chances to give his daughters a “better and safer life” would be diminished.Unable to secure an appointment using a government cellphone app known as CBP One for over a month, the Venezuelan decided to surrender himself along with his family at gate 47 at the border wall in El Paso last week.“We were detained for six days and then were given documents by the [immigration] officials,” said Quintero, 35, who left Venezuela after an opposition politician he had worked for disappeared.“We have a [court] date in September this year, but now we only worry about eating. We have no money and we are hungry.”Biden’s asylum restriction, announced the same day Quintero’s family was released from border patrol custody, could have led to them being deported and banned from entering the US for five years. If they attempted to re-enter the US, they would have faced criminal prosecution.One of the only ways to avoid facing deportation under the strict asylum rule is to secure an appointment to enter the US through the government app. In its first four months, over 83,000 individuals have successfully scheduled an appointment through CBP One, a DHS official told the Guardian.CBP recently announced changes to the app, increasing the number of appointments available to approximately 1,000 a day from 740. That could be an option for some of the estimated 60,000 migrants who the border patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, said are waiting in northern Mexico, but it is unclear how many are willing to wait.The number of migrants stranded in Mexico could also increase further due to the new policies. The Mexican government has agreed to continue accepting tens of thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan deportees from the US.Shelter directors in Mexico told the Guardian they are at capacity.“This agreement means that more than 360,000 people could come to a country that doesn’t have a federal or state system to help everyone,” said Rafael Velásquez, the country director for Mexico at the International Refugee Committee.In its effort to dissuade migrants from travelling north, the Biden administration has also partnered with the Colombian and Panamanian governments to create regional processing centers to screen migrants who could be eligible to enter the US legally. The White House is also allowing up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the US each month, as long as they have American financial supporters.Just before Mayorkas’s statement on the termination of Title 42, a federal judge in Florida blocked a Biden policy of expediting the release of some migrants to prevent overcrowding in porder patrol facilities. The agency said it had nearly 25,000 migrants in custody on Thursday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said it will increase the number of beds by several thousand.On the evening of 11 May, Quintero, who along with his wife and daughters were released from a detention center in El Paso, reached out to the Venezuelan relative he left behind in Ciudad Juárez, worried about his whereabouts.“He was sad because he is now alone in Mexico,” said Quintero, whose final destination is Chicago, but his court appointment is in Texas. “He thinks he got deported because he came by himself, with no children, to the US.” More

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      Situation at US-Mexico border ahead of end of asylum limits ‘very challenging’

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the last two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear. On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley were Venezuelan.Mayorkas noted that Mexico agreed this week to continue taking back Venezuelans who enter the US illegally after asylum restrictions end on 11 May, along with Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans. Migrants have been expelled from the US more than 2.8m times since March 2020 under the authority of what is known as Title 42.The secretary reaffirmed plans to finalize a new policy by Thursday that will make it extremely difficult for migrants to seek asylum if they pass through another country, like Mexico, on their way to the US border.“The situation at the border is a very serious one, a very challenging one and a very difficult one,” Mayorkas said.Illegal crossings tumbled after the Joe Biden White House announced asylum restrictions in January, but they have risen since mid-April. The president of the National Border Patrol Council, Brandon Judd, said this week they have been hovering at about 7,200 daily, up from about 5,200 in March.Border patrol chief Raul Ortiz said 1,500 active-duty troops are planning to be dispatched to El Paso, Texas, adding to 2,500 national guard troops already positioned across the border. Ortiz said El Paso was chosen because it has been a busy corridor for illegal crossings over the last six months. The troop deployment was announced this week but not the location.Mayorkas, on his second day of a visit to the Rio Grande Valley, said smugglers were deceiving migrants and luring them on a dangerous journey. “The border is not open, it has not been open, and it will not be open” after 11 May, he said.The Mexican foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, echoed Mayorkas’s sentiment about smugglers spreading misinformation.“We’re seeing a very significant flow (of migrants) in recent days on the basis of a hoax,” Ebrard said at a news conference. He said smugglers are saying: “Hurry up to get to the United States by crossing Mexico because … they’re going to end Title 42” on 11 May.“It’s a trick and they’re at risk,” Ebrard said.The Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged those who want to migrate to follow legal pathways, such as applying in US processing centers scheduled to open in Guatemala and Colombia. He said Mexico was not making special preparations for the end of Title 42 because he did not expect a surge.“A lot of people won’t let themselves be tricked,” the president said.Mayorkas touted new legal pathways, which include parole for up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a month who apply online with a financial sponsor. But he said the Biden administration could only do so much without Congress.“We have a plan – we are executing on that plan,” Mayorkas said. “Fundamentally, however, we are working within a broken immigration system that for decades has been in dire need of reform.”US customs and border protection said on Friday that it is raising the number of people admitted to the country at land crossings with Mexico to 1,000 a day from 740 using a mobile app called CBP One that was extended in January to asylum-seekers. Demand has far outweighed available slots.The administration faced a setback, at least a temporary one, when Colombia said on Thursday it suspended deportation flights from the US due to “cruel and degrading” treatment of migrants. Colombia’s immigration agency said it canceled returns of 1,200 Colombians after complaints about conditions in US detention centers and on the flights. More

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      ‘He feels unstoppable’: DeSantis plans to export his chilling immigration policies to the nation

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      A popular political souvenir in Florida currently is a range of merchandise touting the services of a nonexistent travel company named DeSantis Airlines.T-shirts, drinks glasses and car decals alike bear the motto “Bringing the border to you”, a mocking commemoration of the time last year when Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor, baited a load of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers on to two chartered planes in Texas with false promises of jobs and housing in Boston, then promptly dumped them in Martha’s Vineyard.The stunt, paid for by Florida taxpayers, was branded cruel and heartless by analysts, political opponents and immigration advocates, and lauded by DeSantis’s supporters as another successful “owning” of liberals.But beyond the politically charged rhetoric, the episode was further proof that immigration, and the demonizing of immigrants, are top priorities for DeSantis while he prepares his likely run at the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.That might seem a curiosity, given that his state is so reliant on immigrant labor, and that almost 3 million workers, comprising more than a quarter of Florida’s entire workforce, were born overseas, according to the American Immigration Council. They fill jobs vital to Florida’s key dollar-generating industries including agriculture, construction, tourism and transportation.Yet to observers of DeSantis’s “anti-woke” world, where liberalism is the enemy, and hard-right ideology eclipses all else, it comes as little surprise.“It’s a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, a play to elevate his national profile by using this issue to mobilize the base and get his soundbites on Fox News,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant advocacy organization America’s Voice.“He is using immigration as a tool to create anger, a very motivating emotion, and elevate his national profile. It’s about amplifying the narratives of chaos, of fear and, really, hate, which is damaging not just to the politics of our country, but also to the policy advancement of the issue.”Advocates in Florida are angered by the governor’s progressively hardline stance in a catalog of legislative measures that might not have drawn the same headline publicity as the Massachusetts flights, yet signal the priorities and policies he would probably pursue from the White House.DeSantis has a long history of picking fights with the Biden administration over the southern border and pursuing legal challenges to federal immigration policies.Closer to home, he and his willing Republican-dominated legislature passed a law in 2019 banning perceived sanctuary cities he believed were shielding migrants from national immigration laws. That case is still tied up in the appeals court after a federal judge ruled parts of it unconstitutional.Last year, DeSantis signed a bill mandating law enforcement to fully implement federal policies and blocking local authorities from contracting with companies that have transported undocumented aliens.But in the weeks since his landslide re-election in November, Florida’s governor has really cut loose on immigration, expanding his migrant removal program, then unveiling measures billed as his response to “Biden’s border crisis” that many consider his most extreme package yet.One part, removing in-state university tuition rates for undocumented students, put him at odds with his own party’s lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nuñez, who sponsored the 2014 bill introducing the tuition discounts, and his Republican predecessor Rick Scott who signed it. While Scott has said he would do so again, the ever-loyal Nuñez has reversed her position.Florida’s business leaders are also concerned by a new requirement to use the internet-based E-Verify employment checking system to deny jobs to those who are undocumented, while those without papers would be denied ID cards and driver’s licenses.Another alarming strand, flagged this week by the New York Times, would require hospitals to establish and report to the state a patient’s immigration status.Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, is worried by the proposed felony criminalization and lengthy prison sentences for anyone who “harbors or transports” an undocumented alien knowingly. She said it could affect parents whose child invites an undocumented classmate to their birthday party, or a carer who took an undocumented senior to a medical appointment.“It’s government overreach. He’s using a facade of protection for government overreach and fascism, controlling every part of everybody’s life,” she said.The effect of DeSantis’s immigration crackdown has been chilling. Rubén Ortiz, a pastor in DeLand whose congregation is almost exclusively from South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, says they are “terrified”.“I’m getting calls saying: ‘Pastor, can you find someone to take care of our kids if we are deported?’ Others are looking to return to their own country,” he said.“They can call us if they have any incident with the police, a traffic stop or whatever, and now they say: ‘Will the future be worse?’ It’s not only going to school with the kids, it’s if we get sick, and it’s mandatory for hospitals to verify legal status.“People are basically living in the shadows. These people are just looking for a better life, a better place to live. They already had a horrible journey to the US, they’re established and flourishing right now. This is repeating their nightmare and affecting their ability to dream.”The economic impact of DeSantis’s policies is also a concern for Cárdenas, of America’s Voice.“Immigrants contribute like $600m in taxes at the state and local level, 36% of businesses are immigrant owned, so once the business community starts thinking about the implications of what DeSantis is proposing, it’s going to be eye-opening,” she said.“It’s really out of step with our economic needs, which is a top issue for every voter.”She pointed to the rejection of Trump-style immigration extremism in the midterms as a warning for DeSantis. “The majority of the electorate supports immigration and a progressive vision when it comes to policy. They’re Americans who recognize the important place immigrants play in our economy, they want us to have a compassionate system, and they really value our heritage as a nation of immigrants.“It’s such a disservice to the issues Americans care about when we have these kinds of leaders who are amplifying again not just hateful rhetoric that hurts immigrants, but also is not in the best interest of our nation.”Petit, meanwhile, is certain DeSantis will try to project his agenda on to the national stage, noting that he won re-election as governor by 19 points last year and that his Republican legislative supermajority in Florida has left him in effect untouchable.“He’s gotten to the point where there’s a part of his form of governance that is showing up because he has become too empowered. He feels unstoppable,” she said.“It’s what his governance could look like in 2024 for the United States, should he get elected, so people need to pay attention to what he’s doing.”DeSantis, who has previously sent Florida law enforcement officials to help patrol the US southern border with Mexico, continues to paint the immigration debate as a national crisis. He says the nearly 11,000 migrants repatriated from his state since last August are a consequence of the Biden administration “losing control” of the country’s borders.“As Biden’s border crisis continues unabated, my administration is working hard to protect our communities and businesses from the many threats posed by illegal immigration,” he said in a statement announcing his latest crackdown in February.Petit isn’t buying it, and sees DeSantis’s actions as a performance designed to capture Trump’s hardline base for his own presidential ambitions.“I think he realized that when Trump was president people wanted to see a strong presidency, and the fact Trump was a bully got everybody excited,” she said.“He wants to be a bully, except the danger is he’s much more subtle. He’s doing the same things in a much more subtle way and using immigrants as pawns to advance his popularity.” More