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      Kamala Harris says US-Mexico border situation is ‘tough’ but claims progress

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      Kamala Harris described the situation as “tough” at the US-Mexico border where migrants are being held in detention and routinely expelled before their pleas for sanctuary can be heard, as on Friday she made her first visit there as vice-president.In El Paso, west Texas, she met with five girls, aged between nine and 16, who had been held at a Customs and Border Protection processing center after crossing the border.She then visited the border itself at the nearby Paso del Norte port of entry, across from the Mexican city of Juárez, where there are frequently scenes of misery and chaos as people huddle in peril there and at other points along the border, waiting for a chance to be allowed to make a legal case to be in the US.“We inherited a tough situation,” Harris said during a meeting with faith-based organizations, as well as shelter and legal service providers.She added: “In five months we’ve made progress, but there’s still more work to be done.”She is tasked with addressing causes of migration, particularly from Central America, which range from violence, poverty and corruption to climate change.“The stories that I heard today reinforce the nature of those root causes,” she said.Meanwhile, the Biden administration is looking into conditions for migrant children at the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, it was announced during Harris’s journey to the border, amid testimonials presented in court that conditions are desperate.Symone Sanders, Harris’s spokeswoman, told reporters aboard Air Force Two en route that Joe Biden and Harris “have instructed [homeland security secretary Xavier] Becerra to do a thorough investigation” of the conditions where children are being held in tents at the military facility.“The administration is taking this very seriously. Extremely seriously,” Sanders said.However, a White House spokesman later sent a statement that conditions at Fort Bliss had improved and that: “HHS [the health and human services department] has already been looking into [the] facility on their own. At no time did The White House recommend a probe of the facility.”Harris faced the most politically challenging moment of her vice-presidency during her visit, as part of her role leading the Biden administration’s response to recent increases in families and unaccompanied children migrating across the US-Mexico border.Harris was asked by a reporter why “right now was the right time” to make her first trip to the border.She replied that it was not her first trip, although it is her first trip as vice-president and since Joe Biden put her in charge of solving immigration and migration problems.After taking questions, Harris was briefed by border patrol on the agency’s efforts to computerize records to speed up processing of migrants’ legal cases. Many are seeking asylum from human rights violations, and children, in particular, aim to reunite with family members already in the US while their cases are dealt with.Harris did not visit the secure facilities at Fort Bliss. Last month, Becerra announced he was walking back plans to house thousands of children younger than 12 there, after Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists protested that the facility did not meet basic child welfare standards.The temporary shelter is one of a dozen or so makeshift sites the government set up to provide more capacity beyond the traditional, licensed shelters that the health and human services department oversees.The vice-president has faced bipartisan criticism for declining to make the trip thus far , as well as remarks on her trip to Guatemala, when she starkly spelled out the Biden administration’s message to those seeking sanctuary in the US: “Don’t come.”Those comments “reinforced the years of attacks on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers by the previous administration”, Dylan Corbett, the director of a local non-profit organization that focuses on immigration policies and aiding migrants in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, told the Guardian.With Donald Trump visiting the area less than a week after Harris and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, making increasingly rightwing remarks about immigration, Republicans will be watching the vice-president’s visit closely for fodder for further attacks.Aside from party politics, CBP, the federal agency, recently reported nine deaths of migrants along the border just in the El Paso sector, but said they were only reporting the number of deaths where agents find the deceased individual or are involved in an emergency response. The actual number is likely to be higher.Those are deaths such as by heatstroke as migrants trek through triple-digit desert heat, or falls from the 30t-high border wall.“We have such little appreciation for what they’re risking to be safe, to put food on the table,” Ruben Garcia, the director of the Annunciation House network of shelters in the area, said. “These people aren’t coming here because they want to put jacuzzis in their houses.”Biden’s first few months in office have seen record numbers of migrants attempting to cross the border.CBP recorded more than 180,000 encounters on the Mexican border in May, the most since March 2000.Those numbers were boosted by a coronavirus pandemic-related ban on the legal facility for seeking asylum from persecution, a rule called title 42 begun by Trump and continued by Biden that allows most people unlawfully crossing the border to be summarily expelled into Mexico, at their peril.Harris was joined on the trip by the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin and local Democratic congresswoman Veronica Escobar.Escobar called El Paso the new Ellis Island, the facility in New York harbor that processed millions of migrants to the US a century ago. Looking forward to welcoming @VP Harris to El Paso – America’s new Ellis Island.As I told VP last March, El Paso has chosen to employ compassion toward those seeking refuge, and her visit will provide key context for her diplomatic efforts to address root causes of migration.— Rep. Veronica Escobar (@RepEscobar) June 24, 2021
      Harris did not visit Fort Bliss on Friday, nor the memorial to victims of the mass shooting by a man professing hatred of immigrants, at an area Walmart store in 2019.Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino civil rights organization, called Harris’s visit “a day late and a dollar short”. More

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      US ends Trump-era asylum rules for immigrants fleeing violence

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      The US government on Wednesday ended two Trump administration policies that made it harder for immigrants fleeing violence to qualify for asylum, especially Central Americans. Attorney general Merrick Garland issued a new policy saying immigration judges should cease following the Trump-era rules that made it tough for immigrants who faced domestic or gang violence to win asylum in the United States. The move could make it easier for them to win their cases for humanitarian protection and was widely celebrated by immigrant advocates. “The significance of this cannot be overstated,” said Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council. “This was one of the worst anti-asylum decisions under the Trump era, and this is a really important first step in undoing that.” Garland said he was making the changes after President Joe Biden ordered his office and the Department of Homeland Security to draft rules addressing complex issues in immigration law about groups of people who should qualify for asylum. The changes come as US immigration authorities have reported unusually high numbers of encounters with migrants at the southern border. In April, border officials reported the highest number of encounters in more than 20 years, though many migrants were repeat crossers who previously had been expelled from the country under pandemic-related powers. The number of children crossing the border alone also has been hovering at all-time highs. Many Central Americans arrive on the border fleeing gang violence in their countries. But it isn’t easy to qualify for asylum under US immigration laws, and the Trump-era policies made it that much harder. More than half of asylum cases decided by the immigration courts in the 2020 fiscal year were denials, according to data from the department of justice’s executive office for immigration review. Four years earlier, it was about one in five cases. In the current fiscal year, people from countries such as Russia and Cameroon have seen higher asylum grant rates in the immigration courts than people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the data shows. One of the Trump administration policies was aimed at migrants who were fleeing violence from non-state actors, such as gangs, while the other affected those who felt they were being targeted in their countries because of their family ties, said Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney in Washington who focuses on asylum. Dzubow said he recently represented a Salvadoran family in which the husband was killed and gang members started coming after his children. While Dzubow argued they were in danger because of their family ties, he said the immigration judge denied the case, citing the Trump-era decision among the reasons. Dzubow welcomed the change but said he doesn’t expect to suddenly see large numbers of Central Americans winning their asylum cases, which remain difficult under US law. “I don’t expect it is going to open the floodgates, and all of a sudden everyone from Central America can win their cases. Those cases are very burdensome and difficult,” he said. “We need to make a decision: do we want to protect these people?” More

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      Texas will build a wall along its border with Mexico, governor says

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      The Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has announced that the state will build a wall along its southern border with Mexico, sparking criticism from human rights and immigration advocacy groups.Citing the Biden administration’s rollback of Trump-era immigration policies, Abbott announced the border wall plans amid other security measures including plans for Texas to construct its own detention centers and $1bn of the state’s budget being allocated to border security. Abbott also declared that more undocumented immigrants will be arrested and sent to local jails versus being turned over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as Ice.“I will announce next week the plan for the state of Texas to begin building the border wall,” said Abbott at a border security summit in Del Rio on Thursday.“To be clear, this is an attempt to distract from his governing failures while targeting vulnerable migrants,” tweeted the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.“There is no substantive plan,” said Edna Yang, the co-executive director of immigration advocacy and legal aid group American Gateways, in a statement obtained by the New York Times. “It’s not going to make any border community or county safer.”“Governor Abbott is planning to steal Texans’ land for a political stunt,” tweeted Democratic Texas representative Joaquin Castro.It is unclear if Texas has the authority to construct a border wall following Biden’s cancellation of such building projects. The Biden administration had already threatened to sue Texas earlier this week after Abbott ordered that the state-licenses be revoked for any federally contracted facility that houses migrant children.Previous attempts to build a wall at the border, an ongoing campaign promise from former president Donald Trump, have been unsuccessful. Of the 1,000 miles of border wall Trump pledged to build on Mexico’s dime, only about 80 new miles of fencing that hadn’t existed before has been constructed. Trump also reinforced over 400 miles of barriers that already existed, using US taxpayer dollars to do so.Joe Biden, who promised to halt border wall construction, signed an order on his first day in office that stopped building projects on the border, implementing a 60-day review on the border wall project, and calling for unused border wall funds to be redirected. Since then, the US Department of Defense cancelled parts of the wall that were being built using military funding, reappropriating unspent funds for previously deferred military construction projects.Now, amid record increases in migrant children and families crossing the US-Mexican border, the Biden administration has struggled to handle the surge in migrations. Currently, authorities have continued rapidly expelling migrants who arrive at the border, following pandemic practices started by Trump, and while allowing others to enter the US while they await legal process, in federal facilities, since Biden revised and ended Trump’s Remain in Mexico asylum policy.Republicans, including Abbott, have long criticized Biden’s rollbacks of Trump-era border policies, claiming that softer revisions are inspiring more attempts to cross the US-Mexico border. But, there has been little evidence that harsher border policies are effective. In particular, Trump’s border wall is scalable with common, $5 hardware store ladders.Immigration advocates in Texas have also decried Abbott’s claims of a violent crisis at the border and previous policy efforts to police the southern border, arguing that assertions of rampant chaos are inaccurate and previous actions have done little to address migration concerns. In March, following declarations of drug smuggling and human trafficking at the border, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying hundreds of agents and government resources to posts along the US-Mexico border. More

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      Kamala Harris suffers bumpy baptism over immigration on first foreign trip

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      Kamala Harris has returned to the US from her first foreign trip and big test since becoming vice-president – and taking over the hot-potato issue of immigration – battered by criticism over her harsh “Do not come” message to desperate migrants and her testy ambivalence over visiting the US-Mexico border.Harris arrived back on US soil from a three-day trip to Guatemala and Mexico just as Joe Biden flew out to the UK on Wednesday on his first overseas venture since winning the White House.His may be a higher-stakes visit aimed at reassuring European allies and confronting Russia after the divisive era of Donald Trump.But Harris’s more short-haul foray was never going to be plain sailing, either with the aim being to tackle “the root causes” of hundreds of thousands of migrants making the dangerous trek to America’s southern border, seeking entry to the US.Most are attempting unlawful entry or trying to appeal to the border authorities to allow them to apply for asylum through the US courts.With factors such as poverty and government corruption, a legacy of war and dictatorship, and as much foreign hindrance as help in Central American politics over the decades, any trip by a new US president or vice-president is fraught with high risk of failure.On top of that, newer trends such as increased migration forced by the climate crisis guaranteed that Harris was never going to achieve one-trip fixes.But although her hosts declared her visits a success, the “get tough” stance she touted with leaders over corruption was overshadowed by an awkward interview and criticism from US progressive torchbearers such as the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her stark remarks aimed at migrants.Ocasio-Cortez called out Harris on Twitter, saying her comments were “disappointing to see”.“First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival,” said the congresswoman, adding: “Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”Several human rights groups also spoke out to criticize Harris’s remarks.With unlawful crossings to the US over the US-Mexico border accelerating during the first months of the Biden administration, as US border authorities reported they encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children crossing in March, the pressure on Harris has been intense.Biden put her in charge of dealing with the issue of the border in particular, within wider immigration policy, as the early weeks of his presidency featured stark reports and images of children crammed into detention centres on the US side of the border, with legal and social processing systems overwhelmed.Overall, more than 170,000 encounters were reported on the border in April, between migrants, mostly from Central America, and the US authorities, the highest level in more than 20 years.Harris, who has been under pressure at home to visit the US-Mexico border since she was given the role, but has not yet done so, focused her three-day visit on economic development, climate and food insecurity.In Guatemala, the origin of almost half the migrants gathering at the US border in recent months, Harris and the president, Alejandro Giammattei, expressed optimism that they could work together.The Biden administration has earmarked almost $4bn in commitments to help address the “root causes” of migration. Alongside that, Harris was also frank in her message, saying “the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home”.But it was when Harris said in an address: “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: ‘Do not come, do not come,’” that heads all over the US political and media landscape turned.It is no different a message than people in the Biden administration have delivered publicly before. But the stark statement actually made in a country where people are driven to head to the US by desperation prompted a strong response.Ocasio-Cortez described her comments as “disappointing” and noted that it is legal to seek asylum in the US from persecution in another country.Harris responded only obliquely, saying: “I’m really clear: we have to deal with the root causes and that is my hope. Period.”Harris was also forced to fend off criticism that she had yet to visit the US-Mexico border herself since becoming vice-president. Such visits are a perilous photo op for leaders looking to establish foreign and domestic policy credentials.And she dealt with the topic awkwardly when asked in an early morning TV interview about why she hadn’t visited the border this year, saying she hadn’t been to Europe either.“Well, we are going to the border,” Harris she added to NBC news anchor Lester Holt. “We have to deal with what’s happening at the border, there’s no question about that.”Moving on from a short stay in Guatemala to Mexico City, Harris sought to assure poor and threatened populations of Latin America on Tuesday that the United States has “the capacity to give people a sense of hope” and is focused on “tangible” results “as opposed to grand gestures”.The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Mexico was in a completely new phase of relations with the US.Eduardo Gamarra, professor of international relations at Florida International University, told the Guardian it was an important trip. “Harris issued a very significant statement in terms of rebutting the Republicans’ position that Democrats are running an ‘open border’ policy, and she made it quite clear to Giammattei that the US is willing to invest but there have to be significant changes in the way corruption is handled,” he said.[embedded content] More

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      Kamala Harris questioned over not going to US-Mexico border – video

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      US vice-president Kamala Harris has brushed off questions about her decision not to go to the US-Mexico border as part of her work to address the spike in migration. Harris, who was asked about the issue during visits to Mexico and Guatemala, said: ‘I’ve been to the border before and I will go again, but when I’m in Guatemala dealing with root causes, I think we should have a conversation about what is going on in Guatemala’, Harris said. Republican lawmakers have criticised her for not prioritising the shared frontier

      Kamala Harris takes on a new role as she heads on her first overseas trip
      AOC condemns Kamala Harris for telling Guatemalan migrants not to come to US More

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      AOC condemns Kamala Harris for telling Guatemalan migrants not to come to US

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      The progressive New York representative Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez has criticized Vice-President Kamala Harris, for saying undocumented migrants from Guatemala should not come to the US.On her first foreign trip as vice-president, Harris visited Guatemala on Monday. At a press conference with Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, the former California senator spoke about investigating corruption and human trafficking in Central America, and described a future where Guatemalans could find “hope at home”.But she also had a clear message that undocumented Guatemalan migrants would not find solace at the US border under the Biden administration.“I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” she said. “Do not come. Do not come.”Later on Monday, Oscasio-Cortez condemned Harris on Twitter, calling her comments “disappointing to see”.“First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival,” said the congresswoman, an influential voice on the Democratic left since her upset win in a 2018 primary and widely known as AOC.“Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”Several human rights groups also spoke out.Rachel Schmidtke, Latin America advocate at the non-profit Refugees International, said: “We continue to urge the Biden administration to build policies that recognize that many Guatemalans will need to seek protection until the longstanding drivers of forced displacement are addressed and realign its message to the Guatemalan people to reflect America’s commitment to the right to seek protection internationally.”The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a non-profit that works with asylum seekers, tweeted: “Kamala Harris, seeking asylum is legal. Turning back asylum seekers is illegal, dangerous, & oftentimes sends them back to their deaths. Seeking asylum is a right under US and international law.”Despite Joe Biden moving to undo Trump-era restrictions at the border, including instituting changes to the asylum process, Harris’s speech underlined a continued stance of turning back undocumented migrants.Central America has long been affected by poverty and violence, amid entrenched cycles of political instability partly caused by criminal elites. Experts contend the US has often aided oppressive regimes. Despite the litany of dangers migrants often face when traveling north, the journey is often safer than remaining at home.“People are leaving because the corrupt governments (supported by the US) have tolerated and encouraged the growth of these criminal organizations,” said Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, in an interview with USA Today.In April, according to CNN, more than 178,000 migrants arrived at the US-Mexico border, the highest one-month total in two decades. More

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      Kamala Harris tells migrants 'do not come' during talks in Guatemala – video

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      The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said she had held ‘robust’ talks with the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, as she sought to find ways of deterring undocumented immigration from Central America to the United States. Speaking during a news conference with Giammattei, Harris delivered a blunt message to people thinking of making the dangerous journey north: ‘Do not come’

      Kamala Harris faces doubts over retooled US policy in Central America
      Kamala Harris takes on a new role as she heads on her first overseas trip More

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      Low-income US immigrants feared seeking benefits during pandemic – report

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      Low-income immigrants in the US who struggled to afford basic needs during the coronavirus pandemic avoided seeking government benefits and other assistance because of immigration-related concerns, according to a new report by the Urban Institute.Immigrants, and especially immigrant women, have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic-induced recession, enduring higher unemployment rates than workers born in the United States, the Migration Policy Institute reports.While the economy sputtered, more than a quarter of adults in low-income immigrant families said they or their partner lost a job, the Urban Institute found. Roughly half said the pandemic had negatively affected their family’s employment, whether through layoffs, furloughs, lost income or other threats to their livelihoods.For many, that sudden economic distress coincided with serious material hardship in 2020, as they forwent costly medical care and scrambled to make rent or mortgage payments.Over 41% of adults in low-income immigrant families suffered food insecurity, more than a quarter had trouble paying family medical bills, and almost 23% struggled to cover their utilities.By December, a majority said they were concerned about paying for housing and medical costs, picking up enough work hours and being able to pay debts in the next month.But, even as low-income immigrant families worried about meeting their needs, a sizable chunk – 27.5% – decided against using non-cash government benefits or other help because of immigration-related concerns. They didn’t apply for or stopped participating in nutrition, health and housing programs, which could have provided the life-sustaining basics they needed.Low-income families with nonpermanent residents – undocumented immigrants, temporary visa holders, etc – were especially vulnerable to those chilling effects. Nearly 44% avoided assistance because of fears over their immigration status or enforcement, including whether it would affect their ability to get a green card.Their hesitation came during a high-profile, years-long battle around the trumped up public charge rule, which made it harder for poorer immigrants to become legal permanent residents and has since been rescinded.Under the former Trump administration, the talking points around that policy underscored a hostility toward immigrants who live in poverty, even though many aren’t eligible for public benefits anyway.“Give me your tired and your poor,” said Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, “who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge”. More