Refugees and Displaced Persons

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      Mexican Military Fatally Shoots Six Migrants

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      The country’s defense ministry said the military officers who opened fire might have mistaken the migrants for cartel members.At least six migrants were killed in southern Mexico on Tuesday night after military officers shot at the vehicle they were traveling in. The episode called attention to a growing concern in Mexico — ever more powerful armed forces that operate with little oversight — and a continuing one, the dangers faced by migrants in the country.Mexico’s defense ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the officers were doing “ground reconnaissance” in the state of Chiapas when they spotted a pickup truck traveling fast, and that the truck’s driver tried to evade the soldiers. Behind the pickup truck were two vehicles that the military said were similar to those organized crime groups in the region use: stakebed trucks, small flatbeds with fencing in the cargo area.The officers may have mistaken the migrants for cartel members, according to the ministry defense ministry.The military said the officers “heard explosions,” so two of them opened fire, bringing one of the trucks to a stop. It was carrying a group of 33 migrants from around the world. Four people died at the scene and two at a hospital, officials said. Ten others were injured. The rest were handed over to Mexican immigration officials.The military did not say whether the migrants were armed.The authorities did not immediately release the identities of the victims. A collective of migrant rights groups said in a statement that among the dead were four men, a woman and a girl. The targeted migrants, the statement added, came from Nepal, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Cuba.“These facts are neither accidental nor isolated,” the collective said. “They are a direct consequence of ordering military deployment to contain migratory flows under a logic of persecution and not of protection.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On the Trail, Trump and Vance Sharpen a Nativist, Anti-Immigrant Tone

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      From calling for mass deportations to spreading false claims about migrants’ eating pets, former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, are taking a hard line.As former President Donald J. Trump warned supporters on Saturday in Wilmington, N.C., that immigrants were “taking your jobs,” his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, campaigned about 500 miles north in Leesport, Pa., where he told his crowd that immigrants were taking their homes — and their children’s homes.Battling in a tight race, the Trump-Vance team is sharpening the anti-immigrant nativism that fueled the former president’s initial rise to power in 2016, seizing on scare tactics, falsehoods and racial stereotypes. They spread a false claim that Haitian migrants in a small Ohio city were stealing and eating the pets of their neighbors. And they are increasingly failing to draw a distinction between migrants who are in the country legally and those they call “illegal aliens,” whom they blame for a raft of social ills.Mr. Trump likened the influx to an “invasion” at his rally in North Carolina. “We are going to totally stop this invasion,” he said. “This invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.” He also claimed, falsely, “Every job in this country produced over the last two and a half years has gone to illegal aliens — every job.”Mr. Vance, at the rally in Pennsylvania, said migrants deserved some of the blame for rising home prices because they were “people who shouldn’t be here, people who are competing against you and your children to buy the homes that ought to be going to American citizens.” He faulted the policies of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration.“Our message to Kamala Harris is: Stop giving American homes to foreigners who shouldn’t be in this country,” Mr. Vance said. “Start giving them to American citizens who deserve to be here.”Both Mr. Trump, who has promised to oversee mass deportations if elected, and Mr. Vance are increasingly questioning the status of Haitian migrants who are in the country legally.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Solingen, Germany, Becomes Reluctant Symbol of Migration Battles

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      After a stabbing attack that prosecutors say was committed by a Syrian who was rejected for asylum, the city of Solingen finds itself at the center of a longstanding debate.Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.The party and its supporters are attempting to use the stabbing attack to bolster their broader anti-immigrant message, with some blaming the assault on “uncontrolled migration” even before the nationality of the suspect was known.“They are trying to use this tragedy to foment fear,” said Matthias Marsch, 67, a Solingen resident who was at Sunday’s counterprotest and worries about a rightward drift in society. “I’m here to stand against that.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Launches Another Offensive in Gaza’s South Amid Push for Truce

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      The United States, Egypt and Qatar are trying to restart peace talks between Hamas and Israel, while Israel carries on its operation in Gaza and braces for attacks by Iran and Hezbollah.An Israeli ground assault in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes and shelters, many for a third time or more, even as the United States and some Arab allies pressed both Israel and Hamas to restart peace talks.Between 60,000 and 70,000 people had fled by Thursday evening after the Israeli military ordered people in the city of Khan Younis to leave, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. More continued to flee into the night and into Friday.The Israeli military said its troops were “engaged in combat both above and below-ground” in the Khan Younis area, in an attack involving ground troops, fighter jets, helicopter gunships and paratroopers, and that the air force had struck more than 30 targets. The assault, the military said, was “part of the effort to degrade” Hamas’ capabilities “as they attempt to regroup.”Under a blazing sun, women carrying babies and blankets, men pushing carts and wheelchairs over sandy roads and young children carrying suitcases and backpacks have walked away from homes and shelters and toward unknown destinations. Some were in tears.“People are sleeping in the streets. Children and women are on the ground without mattresses,” Yafa Abu Aker, a resident of Khan Younis and an independent journalist, told The New York Times in a text message.“Death is better,” an older woman said on Thursday, in video from the Reuters news agency. “We’re fed up. We’ve already died. We’re dead.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Israeli Evacuation Order in Gaza Displaces Palestinians Again

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      The order affected part of southern Gaza, while farther north, the Israeli military struck the grounds of a school it said was being used by Hamas, killing more than 30 people, Gaza officials said.The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several neighborhoods in southern Gaza on Saturday, the latest in a series of such directives recently that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again.The decision affects an area around the city of Khan Younis that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for Palestinian civilians, who are weary from nearly a year of unrelenting war and a daily struggle to avoid disease and find enough food and clean water to survive.“People aren’t being regarded as people,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re being treated as pinballs and chess pieces.”The Israeli military said its recent evacuations and operations in Khan Younis have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency and accused Hamas of installing weapons infrastructure in the area under the latest evacuation order on Saturday.Over the past week, amid new evacuation orders, more than 190,000 people have fled the places where they were sheltering in southern and central Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the area, according to both Israel and Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had killed more than 100 militants in Khan Younis in recent days, while Palestinian health officials have said that at least some casualties arriving at local hospitals with severe blast wounds have been women and children.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Utica Residents Grill Mayor After Police Killing of 13-Year-Old Boy

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      An officer in Utica, N.Y., fatally shot the boy, Nyah Mway, after he brandished what the officer believed was a gun. At a community meeting, residents called the killing “an injustice.”More than 100 residents of Utica, N.Y., grieving the death of a 13-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a police officer there last week, gathered at a church on Sunday afternoon to demand accountability for his killing.The boy, Nyah Mway, was walking in the city with another boy on Friday night when they were stopped by three police officers. When one officer asked to pat them down, Nyah fled, footage from officers’ body-worn cameras shows.The police said in a statement that Nyah had displayed “what appeared to be a handgun” as he ran. In footage that has been slowed down, it appears that he turns while holding something that looks like a handgun, before he is tackled, held to the ground and shot.The police later determined that he had been holding a pellet gun.On Sunday, the mayor of Utica, Michael P. Galime, answered questions from residents who filled the auditorium at Tabernacle Baptist Church. Police officials were not in attendance.Almost all of the attendees were part of the city’s Karen community — members of an ethnic group from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, who speak the Karen language. Nyah’s family members are Karen refugees.In Utica, a city of about 60,000, refugees and their families make up about a quarter of the population.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Escaping China by Sea, Dissident Kwon Pyong Faces His Next Act

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      Kwon Pyong recounted for the first time the series of gambles that got him out of China by jet ski, and almost a year later, out of South Korea.The dissident’s lone regret after his 200-mile escape across the Yellow Sea was not taking night vision goggles.Nearing the end of his jet ski journey out of China last summer, Kwon Pyong peered through the darkness off the South Korean coast. As he approached the shore, sea gulls appeared to bob as if floating. He steered forward, then ran aground: The birds were sitting on mud.“I had everything — sunscreen, backup batteries, a knife to cut buoy lines,” he recalled in an interview. He was prepared to signal his location with a laser pen if he became stranded and to burn his notes with a lighter if he were captured. He also had a visa to enter South Korea, and had intended to arrive at a port of entry, he said, not strand himself on a mud flat.It wasn’t enough.Mr. Kwon, 36 and an ethnic Korean, had mocked China’s powerful leader and criticized how the ruling Communist Party was persecuting hundreds of pro-democracy activists at home and abroad. In response, he said, he faced an exit ban and years of detention, prison and surveillance.But fleeing to South Korea did not offer the relief he expected. He was still hounded by the Chinese state, he said, and spent time in detention. Even after he was released, he was in legal limbo: neither wanted nor allowed to leave. More

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      More Cities Feel Strain as Migrants Relocate When Aid Runs Out

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      After aid runs out elsewhere, some migrants relocate to places like Salt Lake City, where they find help but hurdles, too. “Consider another state,” says a flier distributed by Utah.The bright orange fliers from the State of Utah were blunt.“There is no room in shelters,” the advisory warns migrants contemplating travel to Utah. “No hotels for you.”It continues: “Housing is hard to find and expensive. Food banks are at capacity.”Confronted with a swelling number of migrants who have strained its resources, Utah in recent days has begun urging newcomers at the border and in the United States to “consider another state.”It is the latest sign of the challenges facing migrants and the communities where they hope to settle. As more people leave their initial destinations in search of better work and stable housing, more cities and towns are struggling to keep up.By the time Utah began warning migrants not to come, Carmen Selene and Cleodis Alvorado were already here, along with thousands of other migrants who have made their way to Utah in recent months from other U.S. cities.After traveling to the Texas border from Venezuela with their two sons, Ms. Selene and Mr. Alvorado crossed into the United States last September and were soon on a bus chartered by the state of Texas. Bound for Denver, the couple expected that Mr. Alvorado would quickly find a job and they would begin building a new life. But like so many of the other migrants arriving in the United States, Mr. Alvorado could not work legally and was competing for odd jobs with other migrants in the same predicament.When their hotel stay, paid for by the city of Denver, ran out, the family ended up on another bus, this one headed to Salt Lake City, thought to be a welcoming destination, thanks to plentiful jobs and the deep influence of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More