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      US threatens to sue Texas over law allowing state police to arrest migrants

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      The US Department of Justice has threatened to sue the state of Texas if it implements a law that would allow state police to arrest any person deemed suspicious of crossing the border illegally.The law, called Senate Bill 4, is scheduled to go into effect on 5 March. One of the strictest immigration laws ever passed in American history, SB4 seeks to “prohibit ‘sanctuary city’ policies, that prohibit local law enforcement from inquiring about a person’s immigration status and complying with detainer requests”.The law would include “improper border entry” as a new criminal offense, placing undocumented Texas residents and migrants within the grips of the state’s criminal justice system.Immigration and border enforcement is a function of the federal government, the justice department argues: since the US supreme court ruled so in the landmark United States v Arizona case in 2012, immigration policy has long been under the purview of the US federal government – not individual states.In a letter addressed to the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, the Biden administration has given the Lone Star state a deadline of 3 January to reverse course.The letter says, in part: “SB 4 is preempted and violates the United States constitution. Accordingly, the United States intends to file suit to enjoin the enforcement of SB 4 unless Texas agrees to refrain from enforcing the law. The United States is committed to both securing the border and ensuring the processing of noncitizens consistent with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). SB 4 is contrary to those goals.”On X, Abbott wrote: “The Biden Admin. not only refuses to enforce current U.S. immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration. I’ve never seen such hostility to the rule of law in America.”He added: “Biden is destroying America. Texas is trying to save it.”The move is one of several attempts by Texas at enforcing border security, all a part of Operation Lone Star, a joint operation between the Texas department of public safety and the Texas military department with the mission of countering illegal immigration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarlier this year, in July, Abbott and his administration were condemned as inhumane by immigrant and civil rights groups for deploying razor wire and a large floating buoy in the Rio Grande to deter illegal migration – another issue on which the US Department of Justice pursued legal action against Texas.In May, shortly after the Biden administration ended the pandemic-era policy Title 42, which had given US officials authority to turn away people who had come to the US-Mexico border claiming asylum in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Abbott deployed a security unit called the Texas tactical border force to the US-Mexico border. The force is equipped with aircrafts, boats, night vision devices and riot gear.In recent years, Texas has also joined Republican-led Florida in bussing undocumented immigrants from their states to “sanctuary” cities such as Chicago, New York and Boston. More

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      Biden officials decry Trump’s anti-migrant xenophobia – yet quietly copy his stance| Moustafa Bayoumi

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      At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday, the former president Donald Trump repeated a claim he made back in September: immigrants coming to the United States, he said, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. The phrase is particularly disturbing as it evokes Nazi language about blood and nation.The last time Trump uttered this “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, criticism from historians and civil libertarians was swift. This time, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saw an opportunity and pounced. “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,” a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that “Trump is not shying away from his promise to lock up millions of people in detention camps.”Yes, that’s true, but while Trump’s rhetoric and promises are odious and must be rejected, the Biden campaign is also talking out of both sides of its mouth.First, to Trump. By now, only a visitor from another planet (who would certainly be locked up by Trump for illegal entry) would be surprised by the ex-president’s rhetoric. Trump’s jingoistic ability to sow fear of foreigners and hatred of others is a large part of his rightwing populist appeal. Over the weekend, Trump also claimed that “drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country”. He said the United States was facing something “like a military invasion” from would-be immigrants and asylum seekers and promised to implement “the largest deportation operation in American history”.Even the cadence of his speech is reminiscent of a reel highlighting the Greatest Worst Things Trump Ever Said. Remember what he said about Mexico in 2015? “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”Today, even the “good people” are gone. Now, Trump describes those crossing the border this way: “They come from prisons. They come from mental institutions and insane asylums. Many are terrorists.” (It’s a 2024 remix!) He also makes a point to say: “They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia,” as if we should be afraid of Latinos, Africans and Asians, leaving me to wonder whom we shouldn’t be afraid of. I’m not really wondering. The answer is as plain as vanilla.But far more troubling than Trump’s putrid but predictable xenophobia is hearing the Biden campaign trumpet how morally opposed it is to Trump’s border policies at precisely the same time that the White House is negotiating with Republicans to adopt immigration policies that look suspiciously and horribly Trump-like. There is a word for such a stance: hypocrisy.The reason for the negotiations is no secret. The Biden administration has been seeking to send US military assistance to both Ukraine and Israel, but the funding bills have stalled in Congress. To vote for the money, Republicans are demanding the administration overhaul its immigration policy to align more closely with theirs, and – disturbingly – the Democrats seem poised to do so.Put another way, the Democrats are ready sell out immigration for foreign policy, even though the impact on immigration could be substantial and long-lasting, while Democratic foreign policy goals are both unclear and increasingly unpopular.Joe Biden entered office with an immigration reform agenda, one that sought to reverse many of the inhuman positions of his predecessor, such as the family separation policy that the Trump administration cruelly deployed. Biden didn’t always succeed, but the aspiration was clear. Early on in his term, he proposed the US Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented people, brought Dreamers – undocumented people brought to the United States as children – immigration relief, set up refugee processing centers in Central America and funded more immigration judges, among other things.It never passed.Instead of convincing the other side of the aisle of the need for immigration reform, the Biden administration has slowly given up on reform over the years. It’s been happening piecemeal for a while now (such as Biden funding the construction of 20 miles of Trump’s border wall), but reports of the latest negotiations read like a major capitulation to the Republican worldview.The Biden administration is reportedly discussing rolling back its historical commitments to asylum seekers in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel and inducting a new system to apprehend undocumented immigrants already in the country. Being discussed is expanding “expedited removal” of migrants at the border without a hearing, significantly raising the criteria for asylum, making permanent pandemic-era border restrictions (like the public health provision known as Title 42) and mandating immigration detention for some immigrants who are awaiting a court date.“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix,” is how Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator from California, has responded. Padilla is the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety. “In fact, it will make the problem worse,” he said. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”Trump’s racist comments about “poisoning the blood of the nation” are typical of Trump’s bigotry, but Biden’s immigration approach reads more like a betrayal. Biden’s willingness to trade away American traditions of asylum protection and meaningful immigration reform for an Israeli military campaign on Gaza that is widely acknowledged – even by Biden himself – as unacceptably dangerous to civilian life, having killed upwards of 20,000 people, makes Biden’s calculation here seem not only cynical but disastrous, both for Gaza’s civilians and for Biden’s prospects for re-election. (Meanwhile, why wouldn’t Israel’s leaders continue to ignore Biden’s pleas to limit their military assault? Ignoring Biden makes him look weak, as they too would almost certainly prefer a Trump presidency.)The Biden administration wants to have it both ways. Biden officials want to believe they can criticize Trump’s positions but adopt positions close to Trump’s when it’s expedient. To answer this fundamental contradiction, they seem to be throwing their weight behind the appeal of a “lesser of two evils” argument for Democratic voters.What they don’t seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, is that every time someone asks you to choose between a lesser of two evils, they’re still asking you to choose evil. And that’s a choice some voters simply aren’t willing to make.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Our Little Amal has travelled thousands of miles – but there is still far to go

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      We were theatre people gathered from the UK, the US, Palestine, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, Eritrea, Italy and France. Our idea was for Amal, a 12ft puppet of a Syrian child, to travel along one of the routes across Turkey and Europe that refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and many other countries follow as they flee war, violence and persecution. We imagined Amal as one of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors and her journey as, simply, a search for her mother.In 70 towns and cities along her 5,000-mile route – Gaziantep to Manchester – we invited artists and arts organisations to welcome her. “A refugee child will arrive. She’ll be tired, hungry, frightened. How will you welcome her? With a dance? With a meal typical of your region? With an orchestral concert?”And we invited figures of “power” to welcome her – in a Turkish mountain village the mayor, in Rome the pope, in London the speaker of the House of Commons …Between July and November 2021, Amal travelled along the south Turkish coast, crossed to the island of Chios in Greece, walked through Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, sailed from Dunkirk to Dover all the while leading perhaps the biggest community art project ever staged, a rolling festival of art and hope. In Arabic Amal means “hope”.Through the genius of her creators, Handspring Puppet Company, the skill of her puppeteers and social media, she quickly became a global symbol of human rights. She met something like a million people on the street, tens of millions more online. Her education pack was downloaded from walkwithamal.org all over the world. In the welcoming crowds, we’d hear kids explain to their parents: “She was born in Aleppo, we learned about her in school …”Almost as soon as she set out, she received invitations to places – Stockholm, Adelaide, Seoul – not within the logic of her route but, once her first journey was complete, she was free. She could go anywhere. In 2022 at the invitation of the mayor of Lviv she visited Ukraine as well as shelters set up across the border in Poland to receive refugees from the war zone. She toured the UK, visiting Stonehenge and appearing alongside Elbow at Glastonbury. She led a group of mayors from many major cities through the streets of Amsterdam to the Anne Frank House.In New York she was welcomed by the Metropolitan Opera on her arrival at JFK airport and by artists and audiences at 50 sites across all five boroughs. Thousands of children holding bird puppets streamed behind her across Brooklyn Bridge. We saw all this, and visits early this year to Toronto and Trondheim, as preparation for her second very long journey.On 7 September she arrived in Boston harbour in a clipper. Later that day she was serenaded by students in Harvard Yard and at night was played to sleep among other homeless people by Yo Yo Ma. On 10 September members of the Nipmuc nation canoed across Lake Ashfield to sing to her in welcome. The mayor of Hartford, Connecticut was the first of many mayors to declare the day of her visit “Little Amal Day”. In Washington a brass band played as she strode down Pennsylvania Avenue to be welcomed to the Capitol by congressmen and women, then she paraded down Black Lives Matter Plaza.She went north to the “rustbelt” – Detroit, Dearborn, Flint. She gazed at the rush of cars thrusting down into the tunnel under the Detroit River that emerges in Canada, the first of three river borders on her 12-week, 60-city US/Mexico journey. In Memphis, Tennessee, she stood outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. In Birmingham, Alabama, she marched from the 16th Street Baptist Church hand in hand with a veteran of the 1960s civil rights “foot soldiers”, the crowd singing “Ain’t nobody gonna turn me around, turn me around …” On a glittering New Orleans night, accompanied by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, she made her way through the revellers on Bourbon Street.From El Paso, Texas she crossed briefly into Mexico. Beneath the massive blood-red X-shaped tower that expresses Ciudad Juárez as a crossing point and a meeting place, she was cheered by young people in Mexican national dress and a Mariachi band. Later, standing on the south bank of the Rio Grande (the second river border of her journey), she came across a group of families with young children from Venezuela who, having waded through the chest-high water, were on US soil but blocked from going further by the barbed-wire crested 20-foot wall …Back in the US, she was welcomed by some of the hundreds, maybe thousands, young and old, who run organisations in villages and towns along the border to support migrants and refugees who have made it across. Tiffany runs a shelter where new arrivals can make a phone call, eat, shower and rest while a bus is summoned to ferry them to Tucson where they’ll hand themselves over to the authorities and apply to stay. Father Mike offers his church hall to new arrivals to pause and take stock of the new world they’re in. Outside on the street a youngster from Honduras is interviewed by a local journalist.“What does Amal mean to you?”“She gives me hope …”One late October day, west of Nogales, Arizona, the elderly chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation guided Amal to the fence between his hereditary territory and Mexico. Overnight, perhaps 2,000 people had crossed and were gathered in a hard mud clearing under the blazing sun awaiting the arrival of police to “process” them. “We will never allow a wall to be built on this land which we cherish,” said the Chairman gazing up at Amal. “If they try, we will fight them, won’t we, my girl.”In the Inglewood neighbourhood of Los Angeles, she had a starring role in a vibrant Vegas-style dance of welcome choreographed by Debbie Allen, performed by hundreds of students. On the jam-packed Jerry Moss Plaza of the downtown Music Center bands played, soap bubbles glimmered in the night air as a jubilant crowd serenaded Amal.From San Diego, she crossed into Mexico through the turnstile on foot and was greeted by the governor of the state of Baja California and the mayor of Tijuana, both making speeches about how deeply they as mothers felt their responsibilities for the wellbeing of migrant children. On Tijuana Playa the metal border wall juts into the sea. As Amal strolled along the beach accompanied by well-wishers and a mariachi band, I thought: “But the wall doesn’t jut out that far, why don’t people swim round it?” The currents are too strong.Will the strong flow of migrants ever cease? No one sets out on these perilous journeys unless there’s no other way to escape war, organised crime, extreme poverty. In Mexico, as in Turkey, it seemed to us that, at the official level but also on the streets, there’s an understanding that “the problem” is not refugees and asylum seekers. The people are innocent. The problem is the situation. Deal with the political, social and economic crises or people will keep coming.In the Centro Comunitario San Bernabé in Monterrey she played soccer with teams of boisterous kids. In the Tonalá neighbourhood of Guadalajara something like 40,000 people crowded the streets. “Amal, Amal, Amal!” In Zapopan perhaps 20,000 yelled as she entered the Basilica of Our Lady, was sung to by priests and then escorted back out into the blazing sunshine by yet another mariachi band.In Mexico City she was formally welcomed by the presidents of the Senate and of the Congress. In Los Pinos Park the minister of culture brandished her cowboy hat and sang to her. “You are warriors,” she told us, “warriors for peace.” On the central square, the Zócalo, she was welcomed by the mayor and by a dance choreographed for her by Raúl Tamez. Tens of thousands marched behind her through the working-class district Iztapalapa brandishing signs “We love Amal, Ser Migrante es un acto de Valor”.Outside the church at Xochimilco, near the vast canal system built by the Aztecs on which Amal went for a twilight cruise, Unicef and UNHCR officials asked if she would keep heading south into Guatemala, San Salvador and Honduras: “This work you do is very important to us. You draw attention to the level of the crisis, to the needs of the children. No doubt about it, she should keep going.”At Mexico’s southernmost tip, Ciudad Hidalgo, the river border with Guatemala is a gently sloping bank strengthened by sandbags leading down to a row of wooden rafts. Armed police stand about but seem unengaged by the constant, apparently casual, flow of people punting to and fro in both directions. The Guatemalan quetzal is stronger than the Mexican peso so Guatemalans hop aboard the rafts and float across to do their shopping. But Amal has no need to shop. She climbs aboard a raft, lays her head on her hands, stretches out and floats gently along, at rest at last.As she travelled, Amal raised just shy of $1,000,000 (£800,000) which will be distributed to organisations that support refugees by our charity partner Choose Love. There are two further, briefer, Amal journeys planned for 2024.
      David Lan was artistic director of the Young Vic from 2000 to 2018. With Tracey Seaward he is producer of The Walk.
      This article was amended on 12 December. Philadelphia Avenue has been corrected to Pennsylvania Avenue; and the spelling of choreographer Raúl Tamez’s name has been corrected. More

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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