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      Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office

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      Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office Critics say Republican Doug Ducey’s scheme is illegal because makeshift barrier is being erected on tribal and federal landA makeshift new barrier built with shipping containers is being illegally erected along part of the US-Mexico border by Arizona’s Republican governor – before he has to hand over the keys of his office to his Democratic successor in January.Doug Ducey is driving a project that is placing double-stacked old shipping containers through several miles of national forest, attempting to fill gaps in Donald Trump’s intermittent border fencing.The rusting hulks, topped with razor wire and with bits of metal jammed into gaps, stretch for more than three miles through Coronado national forest land, south of Tucson, and the governor has announced plans to extend that up to 10 miles, at a cost of $95m (£78m).Ducey’s shipping container wall on the AZ-MX border is worse than I imagined. I went down yesterday to see it myself for a Border Chronicle story. Imagine 10 miles of this through a national wildlife forest. This is happening right now👇👇 pic.twitter.com/mqCjVo59iA— Melissa del Bosque (@MelissaLaLinea) November 30, 2022
      The area, with mountain ranges rising abruptly from the desert and a diverse environment of plants and animals, is federal land maintained by the US Forest Service.Ducey had first experimented with a smattering of shipping containers in August in Yuma, in the south-west corner of the state, bordering California and Mexico, aiming to stop migrants and asylum seekers.Since Donald Trump implemented the Title 42 rule in 2020 when he was president, which closed ports of entry to most seeking asylum in the US, people have sought gaps in barriers elsewhere in order to request asylum from border agents. The rule appears still to be on track to end later this month although a long legal battle is taking place.Ducey issued an executive order in August to erect old shipping containers near Yuma, and 11 days later workers had installed 130 of what he described as “22ft-high, double stacked, state-owned, 8,800lb, 9x40ft containers, linked together and welded shut”.In October, Ducey filed a lawsuit in which he claimed that the federal land along the border known as the Roosevelt Reservation actually belongs to the state, not the US government, and that Arizona has the constitutional right to protect itself against what he termed an invasion, citing “countless migrants” resulting in “a mix of drug, crime and humanitarian issues”.US attorneys issued a withering response, refuting the claims.The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Cocopah tribal nation said that Ducey was violating federal law by placing the containers on federal and tribal land there. In a letter, the bureau demanded that the state remove the containers. But the state has not, and has since been emboldened to embark on the larger project now proceeding apace more than 300 miles to the east.The Cochise county sheriff, Mark Dannels, supports the new series of shipping containers being placed in his county, hoping “it will deter crime and stop criminal behavior”.But as the line of metal boxes snakes west towards adjacent Santa Cruz county, the sheriff there, David Hathaway, told the Nogales International newspaper that if anyone tries to put the containers in his jurisdiction they will be arrested for illegal dumping.Dinah Bear, an attorney and former general counsel for the council on environmental quality within the executive office of the White House said Ducey’s lawsuit was “shockingly bad” and “frivolous”.“There’s just no question that this is federal property,” she added, as well as being public land, meaning “there’s no legal difference between the land they’re putting the shipping containers on and Grand Canyon national park.”To block the project, she said US Forest Service agents “would definitely want a court order from a judge … They’re not going to go down to the border and have a shootout with state police or arrest the governor at the [state] capitol.”Federal judge David Campbell, based in Phoenix, is presiding over the case, but no hearing has been called yet.“The clock is ticking,” Bear said, with courts backed up and the holidays approaching.The incoming Arizona governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, who will assume office on 2 January after beating Republican candidate Kari Lake in the midterm elections, has said she will remove the containers.Bear predicts Campbell will order the removal.But before that happens, they are being laid down by a contractor called AshBritt, a Florida-based disaster remediation firm. A local media investigation found that Ducey’s announced $6m cost for the Yuma barriers had actually cost $13m.Daily protests by locals alarmed at the project have slowed what was breakneck-speed installation, but not managed to halt it.Meanwhile, Mark Ruggiero, the former Sierra Vista district ranger for the US Forest Service in Cochise county, said the shipping containers are a hazard that jeopardize a binational firefighting agreement with Mexico.“I was shocked to see this barrier going in,” he said. “It’s an illegal action on public land.”As a barrier for humans, the double-stacked boxes are not much of an obstacle, but they are an existential threat to endangered migratory species, especially jaguars and ocelots, as well as being an eyesore. Emily Burns, program director for Sky Island Alliance, a binational conservation nonprofit that tracks wildlife in the Coronado national forest said: “There was no environmental review or planning or mitigation that was done.”The Center for Biological Diversity was allowed to join the federal government as a defendant in Ducey’s lawsuit and has slammed the barrier as damaging and a political stunt.Meanwhile, Burns noted that her organization has 70 wildlife cameras in this stretch of border and they rarely see migrants crossing there.TopicsArizonaUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ice inadvertently posted personal information of 6,252 people in custody

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      Ice inadvertently posted personal information of 6,252 people in custodyWorry after agency spreadsheet was erroneously posted online ‘while performing routine updates’ and was up for about five hours US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Wednesday that it had inadvertently posted to its website the personal information of more than 6,000 people in its custody.The information included names, nationalities, detention centers where the people were held and unique numbers used to identify them in government records, according to Human Rights First, an advocacy group that discovered the leak on Monday.All 6,252 people whose identities were exposed had earlier expressed fear of persecution if courts denied their bids to remain in the US and were returned home, according to Human Rights First.Eleanor Acer, the group’s senior director for refugee protection, said she worried that detainees or their families might be in danger in their home countries.“In some countries people are targeted, retaliated against for seeking asylum,” the Associated Press reported Acer saying.Ice said an Excel spreadsheet was erroneously posted “while performing routine updates” and was up for about five hours. It said it deleted the information 11 minutes after being notified.“Though unintentional, this release of information is a breach of policy and the agency is investigating the incident and taking all corrective actions necessary,” Ice said in a statement.It said it would tell detainees or their attorneys of the leak, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.“This will allow noncitizens or their attorneys-of-record to determine whether the disclosure may impact the merits of their protection claim,” an Ice spokesperson said.The Los Angeles Times also reported that the government will notify individuals who downloaded the information that they should delete it, and that Ice is monitoring the internet for potential reposting.Diana Rashid, a managing attorney of the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the paper her organization was concerned over the disclosure of the identity of one of her clients, a Mexican woman.“We are deeply concerned about our client’s safety after Ice publicly shared this very sensitive information about her and thousands of others like her,” Rashid said.“She is seeking protection from removal because she fears persecution if returned to her country of origin. Revealing this information makes her more vulnerable to the persecution and abuses she fears if deported.”Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, echoed similar sentiments, telling the paper: “The US government has a crucial obligation to hold asylum seekers’ names and information in confidence so they don’t face retaliation or further harm by the governments or individuals whose persecution they fled.“Ice’s publication of confidential data is illegal and ethically unconscionable, a mistake that must never be repeated.”TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Texas sends bus carrying 28 migrants, including sick child, to Philadelphia

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      Texas sends bus carrying 28 migrants, including sick child, to PhiladelphiaDehydrated 10-year-old sent to hospital after arrival, as Governor Greg Abbott sends thousands of migrants to Democratic-led areas A bus carrying 28 migrants from Texas arrived in Philadelphia on Wednesday, including a 10-year-old girl suffering from dehydration and a high fever who was taken to a hospital for treatment.Title 42: judge orders Biden to lift Trump-era immigration ruleRead moreAdvocates who welcomed the migrants with coats and blankets before dawn on a cold and drizzly morning said the families and individuals came from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The city and several non-profit groups were ready to provide food, temporary housing and other services.“In general, people feel relieved,” said one Philadelphia city councilmember, Helen Gym, who accompanied several of the migrants onto a second bus taking them to a site where their needs could be assessed.“We want them to know that they have a home here. There’s a 10-year-old who’s completely dehydrated. It’s one of the more inhumane aspects that they would put a child who was dehydrated with a fever now, a very high fever” on the bus, Gym said. “It’s a terrible situation.”The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, announced on Tuesday that Philadelphia would be the next destination for migrants the state is transporting by the thousands to Democratic-led areas.Advocates who greeted the group in Philadelphia, which included 21 adults, said it was not clear how long the bus journey took. One said it would typically take about 40 hours.“The important thing is they got to Philadelphia, and they were received with open arms,” said Emilio Buitrago of the non-profit Casa de Venezuela. “The kids are frightened, they’re exhausted, they’re tired. They’re going to go to a place … where they’re going to have comfy, warm beds with a blanket, and warm food. From there, we’re going to work on relocation.”Some families hope to unite with relatives or friends in other locations, Gym said.US officials stopped more than 2m illegal border crossings in the last fiscal year, a record high that reflects deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries along with the relative strength of the US economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.In the fiscal year that ended on 30 September, migrants at the US border were stopped 2.38m times, up 37% from 1.73m times the year before.Other buses have turned up in recent months in New York, Washington and Chicago. Texas has transported more than 13,000 migrants since April. Abbott has sent the buses to Democratic-led cities as a way to maximize exposure over what he says is inaction by the Biden administration regarding the southern border.Critics have called the buses a cruel political stunt, but last week voters rewarded Abbott with a record-tying third term as Texas governor in his race against the Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Abbott made a series of hardline immigration measures the centerpiece of his campaign.Nearly six in 10 Texas voters favored Abbott’s decision to send migrants to northern cities, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of almost 3,400 voters in the state.In a statement announcing the bus trips to Philadelphia, Abbott’s office said the Philadelphia mayor, Jim Kenney, “has long celebrated and fought for sanctuary city status, making the city an ideal addition to Texas’ list of drop-off locations”.Kenney said: “It is truly disgusting to hear today that Governor Abbott and his administration continue to implement their purposefully cruel policy using immigrant families – including women and children – as pawns to shamelessly push his warped political agenda.”Kenney said the city was working with more than a dozen local organizations to provide the migrants with shelter space, emergency health screening, food, water, language interpretation and more. Some will probably make their way to other states.Arizona and Florida have also sent migrants to northern US cities.Philadelphia has also welcomed waves of Ukrainians, Afghans and others in recent years. The people arriving from Texas are all in the US legally while they seek asylum, Kenney said.“It is our duty to welcome and support these folks as they face some of the most trying times of their lives,” the mayor said. “At its core, this is a humanitarian crisis, that started with instability and violence in South and Central America and is being accelerated by political dynamics in our own country.”TopicsUS immigrationTexasGreg AbbottUS-Mexico borderUS politicsPhiladelphianewsReuse this content More

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      Title 42: judge orders Biden to lift Trump-era immigration rule

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      Title 42: judge orders Biden to lift Trump-era immigration ruleAsylum restrictions imposed at beginning of Covid pandemic are ‘arbitrary and capricious’, US district judge says A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to lift Trump-era asylum restrictions that have been a cornerstone of border enforcement since the beginning of Covid.Migrants still being blocked by ‘really dangerous’ Trump-era Covid policyRead moreThe US district judge, Emmet Sullivan, ruled in Washington that enforcement must end immediately for families and single adults, calling the ban “arbitrary and capricious”. The administration has not applied it to children traveling alone.Within hours, the justice department asked the judge to let the order take effect on 21 December, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union did not oppose the delay.“This transition period is critical to ensuring that [the Department of Homeland Security] can continue to carry out its mission to secure the nation’s borders and to conduct its border operations in an orderly fashion,” government attorneys wrote.On Wednesday, Sullivan granted the five-week delay “with great reluctance”, saying it would “enable the government to make preparations to implement” his ruling.In that 49-page ruling, Sullivan, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, said authorities failed to consider the impact on migrants and possible alternatives. The ruling appears to conflict with another in May by a federal judge in Louisiana that kept the asylum restrictions.Migrants have been expelled from the US more than 2.4m times since the rule took effect in March 2020, denying migrants rights to seek asylum under US and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of Covid. The practice was authorized under Title 42 of a broader 1944 law covering public health.Before the judge in Louisiana kept the ban in place in May, US officials said they were planning for as many as 18,000 migrants a day under the most challenging scenario, a staggering number. In May, migrants were stopped an average of 7,800 times a day, the highest of Joe Biden’s presidency.Immigration advocacy groups have pressed hard to end Title 42, but more moderate Democrats, including senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, wanted it to stay when the administration tried to lift it in May.On Wednesday, Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, which advocates for common-sense immigration reform, said: “Keeping Title 42 in place has perpetuated the cruel legacy of the Trump administration and made border enforcement much more difficult and chaotic.“It’s only fitting that Judge Sullivan’s important ruling came on the same day that Donald Trump announced another run for office and only a week after the American people largely rejected … Republican candidates who took an extreme position on immigration in the midterms.”Cárdenas said the Biden administration should enact “a functional, orderly and humane set of [immigration] policies that upholds and advances our values and laws”.Under Title 42, bans have fallen largely on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – in addition to Mexicans – because Mexico allows them to be returned from the US. Last month, Mexico began accepting Venezuelans expelled from the US under Title 42, causing a sharp drop in Venezuelans seeking asylum at the US border.Nationalities less likely to be subject to Title 42 have become a growing presence at the border, confident they will be released in the US to pursue their immigration cases. In October, Cubans were the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans, followed by Venezuelans and Nicaraguans.The US homeland security department said it would use the next five weeks to “prepare for an orderly transition to new policies at the border”.“We continue to work with countries throughout the western hemisphere to take enforcement actions against the smuggling networks that entice migrants to take the dangerous and often deadly journey to our land borders and to address the root causes of irregular migration that are challenging our hemisphere as a whole,” the department said.An ACLU attorney, Lee Gelernt, said Sullivan’s decision renders the Louisiana ruling moot.“This is an enormous victory for desperate asylum seekers who have been barred from even getting a hearing because of the misuse of public laws,” Gelernt said. “This ruling hopefully puts an end to this horrendous period in US history in which we abandoned our solemn commitment to provide refuge to those facing persecution.”TopicsUS immigrationBiden administrationUS domestic policyUS politicsUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      Former warden and brother accused of killing migrants near US-Mexico border

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      Former warden and brother accused of killing migrants near US-Mexico borderMichael Sheppard has since been fired from his job at Texas jail and faces, along with his brother, a charge of manslaughter After stopping for water near the US-Mexico border, one migrant was shot dead and another was wounded when they were fired on by the warden of an allegedly abusive Texas jail and his brother last week.Michael Sheppard – the warden of West Texas Detention Facility, a privately-owned jail which once housed migrants detained by the federal government – and Mark Sheppard each face a charge of manslaughter after the 27 September shooting in rural Hudspeth county, roughy 90 miles (145km) from El Paso.Prosecutors charged the Sheppard brothers, both 60, two days after the shooting. Michael Sheppard has since been fired from his job.According to Texas’s public safety department, the victims in the case were among several migrants standing alongside a road drinking water from a reservoir when the Sheppards drove up in a truck. The migrants hid when the pickup first passed, but then the driver backed the truck up, got out, leaned over the hood and fired two gunshots at the group.One of the group’s members, a man, was struck in the head and killed. Another – a woman – was struck in the stomach and injured before eventually being brought to the hospital, officials said. Neither of the victims’ names was immediately released to the public.Investigators wrote in court records that witnesses reported hearing one of the men in the pickup hurl derogatory words at them and make the engine roar, the Associated Press reported.Using a description of the pickup as well as surveillance cameras, authorities later found the truck and the Sheppard brothers.The Sheppards – before they were arrested – claimed to investigators they were hunting at the time of the shooting.A spokesperson for the West Texas Detention Facility’s proprietor, Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections, later told media outlets that the company had dismissed Michael Sheppard “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment”. The spokesperson wouldn’t elaborate, citing an “ongoing criminal investigation”.The University of Texas and Texas A&M immigration law clinics and the immigration advocacy group Raices wrote a 2018 report that detailed multiple allegations of abuse – physical and verbal – against African migrants held at the West Texas Detention Facility.The report alleges that the warden “was involved in three of the detainees’ reports of verbal threats [and] in incidents of physical assault”.Authorities had trouble following up on the report’s allegations because many of those interviewed were soon deported, co-author Fatma Marouf told the Associated Press.Though the report stops short of naming that official, Democratic congressmember Lloyd Doggett of Texas over the weekend confirmed that Michael Sheppard was the warden to which the 2018 report referred.Doggett on Saturday joined other Texas Democrats in Congress in calling for a federal investigation in the shooting with which the Sheppard brothers have been charged.“The dehumanizing, the demeaning of people who seek refuge in this country, many of whom are people of color, is what contributed to the violence we see here,” Doggett said.Overall, in August, US authorities said they stopped migrants 203,598 times, an increase of 1.8% from 199,976 times in July but a decrease of 4.7% from the same month in 2021.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting
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      The US’s ‘immigration crisis’ is admitting too few immigrants, not too many | Deepak Bhargava and Rich Stolz

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      The US’s ‘immigration crisis’ is admitting too few immigrants, not too manyDeepak Bhargava and Rich StolzLet’s make the US the most welcoming country on Earth – and bring order and humanity to a dysfunctional system Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s cruel scheme to lure and transport vulnerable asylum seekers from the south to Massachusetts marks a new low in the immigration culture wars. The refugee crisis in our hemisphere demands bold and humane solutions, but the policy debate is frozen by the politics of fear and racism. Republicans grandstand about the issue for political advantage, while many Democrats would prefer to change the subject.We propose a “Statue of Liberty Plan” for the 21st century that would set a goal for the US to become the most welcoming country on Earth for migrants and refugees and bring order and humanity to a dysfunctional system. The antidote to the venomous nativism that poisons our politics is to embrace immigration as a pillar of civic and economic renewal.To the migrants who died in Texas, Biden is no different to Trump on immigration | Maeve HigginsRead moreExpanded migration is necessary to fix a broken system that invites demagoguery. There are few accessible legal pathways for prospective immigrants. People who seek to come to the US wait in lines that extend for years or decades, or have no migration pathway at all. With no other options, migrants trek thousands of miles, risking death to seek asylum.Under US and international law, people arriving in the US claiming persecution must have their cases heard; vulnerable migrants would be better off if they could seek refuge without having to undertake hazardous journeys across continents. The public would not be inflamed by scenes of disorder, and nativist politicians wouldn’t be able to use vulnerable people as political props.Contrary to our national myth of being a welcoming nation, the US currently lags well behind Australia, Canada and other countries in the share of its population that are immigrants. Under our proposal, the US would admit 75 million immigrants over the next decade, which would double the foreign-born population from 15% to over 30%, giving it the largest share of any developed nation. Admitting 7.5 million people a year would be a dramatic increase compared with recent history – in the Obama years, the US admitted 1 million immigrants a year, and that number shrank dramatically under Trump.Under our plan, immigrants could enter the US based on family ties or through a revamped humanitarian visa that would recognize factors such as economic hardship and the climate crisis as well as political persecution.New immigration policy can only succeed with a new story about immigration that dispels historical amnesia. We tend to talk about migration as a matter of individual choices. Conservatives characterize migrants as threats while liberals talk about the positive contributions that migrants make. Both perspectives obscure the role of US foreign policy in installing and supporting repressive and authoritarian governments. Invasions, annexations, coups and mercenary wars are a bloody throughline in the history of US relations with Latin America. US corporations profit from extreme exploitation, while US trade and sanctions policies have increased poverty, notably in Venezuela where sanctions have increased extreme hardship.The climate crisis is also a growing cause of migration. In Central America and the Caribbean, nearly a third of migrants in hard-hit areas cite climate-induced lack of food as the main reason for becoming migrants. The number of climate migrants will surely grow; the World Bank estimates that 216 million people worldwide will be forced to migrate by 2050.Current US policy offers no path for people displaced by extreme weather events, desertification, or rising sea levels. The US contributes greatly to climate change, while countries in the global south are bearing the worst effects. We face a moral reckoning. Having burned down our neighbors’ houses, will we admit them when they seek refuge?Even those who don’t agree that US policy plays a large role in driving migration should embrace our plan. The country’s population growth rate has flatlined. Population growth between 2010 and 2020 was the second lowest in the country’s history, largely because of declining birth rates among native-born Americans. We face a crisis of “age dependency” as the number of seniors rises dramatically relative to working age adults. Demographic decline is feeding a nationwide care crisis and imperils the sustainability of programs like Medicare and social security. Immigration is a necessary solution.The absence of a progressive vision for immigration has fed a nativist consensus that has dominated our policymaking for too long. We now take for granted a vast, sprawling apparatus of border security that surveils and detains immigrants and generates profits for corporations who in turn finance the campaigns of nativist politicians. Studies show that left parties in Europe that embrace restrictionist views legitimize and strengthen the standing of the far right. The future of multiracial democracy depends on a new immigration paradigm.Standing where we do today at a nadir in the country’s immigration debate, proposals to dramatically increase immigration levels may seem far-fetched. But the political consensus rest on a faulty assumption that only a “get tough” posture on immigration is viable.In fact, the public’s reaction to the cruelties of the Trump era was to reject nativist policy making. For the first time since 1965, more Americans believed in 2021 that we should increase immigration levels than those who thought we should admit fewer. Organizations like Welcome.US have organized thousands of Americans across the political spectrum to assist Afghan refugees, while people in New York City and Martha’s Vineyard opened their arms to welcome asylum seekers cynically sent to them by DeSantis and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott.The policy and politics we urgently need will be built by the actions of millions of Americans to welcome new immigrants.
      Deepak Bhargava is a distinguished lecturer at Cuny’s School of Labor and Urban Studies and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Rich Stolz is a fellow at the Roosevelt institute. They recently published the report The Statue of Liberty Plan: A Progressive Vision for Migration in the Age of Climate Change
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      ‘Tale of two borders’: how a US Covid-era rule shapes fate of migrants

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      ‘Tale of two borders’: how a US Covid-era rule shapes fate of migrants Title 42 bans all migrants from entering the country over spread of Covid – but the rule is largely enforced against Mexicans and people from Guatemala, Honduras and El SalvadorAs hundreds of migrants line up along an Arizona border barrier at about 4am, agents try to separate them by nationality.“Anyone from Russia or Bangladesh? I need somebody else from Russia here,” an agent shouts. Then, quietly, almost to himself, he says: “These are Romanian.”It’s a routine task for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in this flat expanse of desert where the wall ends. People from at least 115 countries have been stopped here during the past year, with entire families from Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, India and Cameroon among those arriving in Yuma, south-west Arizona after wading through the perilous knee-deep Colorado River.It marks a dramatic shift away from the recent past, when migrants were predominantly from Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, escaping a mix of state sponsored and criminal violence, corruption and extreme poverty.People not from Mexico and the Northern Triangle accounted for 41% of detentions on the border from October to July – up from only 12% three years earlier, according to official figures. Meanwhile, Mexicans made up 35% of all border encounters – higher than three years ago but well below the 85% reported in 2011 and the 95% at the turn of the century.The changing demographics reflects how a controversial pandemic-era rule still shapes the fate of some migrants, even though much of the US has moved on from Covid.Migrants risk death crossing treacherous Rio Grande river for ‘American dream’ Read moreThe impact of Title 42, a Trump-era mandate barring migrants and asylum seekers from entering the country at land borders, is especially stark at some of the busiest crossings, such as Yuma and in Eagle Pass, Texas, close to where at least nine people died last week trying to cross the rain-swollen river.The only option for most Mexicans and Central Americans caught up in the Title 42 ban is to try to cross at more isolated and less militarized points, in hope of eluding detention – otherwise they are likely to be summarily expelled, and refused the opportunity to seek asylum.Mexicans still account for seven of every 10 encounters in the Tucson area in southern Arizona, where John Modlin, the CBP sector chief, said smugglers order them to walk at night with black-painted water jugs, camouflage backpacks and boots with carpeted soles to avoid leaving tracks in the sand.“[An] incredibly different tale of two borders, even though they’re within the same state,” said Modlin.In Yuma, migrants from Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East arrive having typically walked a short distance through tribal lands, and surrender to border patrol agents. They come wearing sandals and carrying shopping bags stuffed with belongings over their shoulders, expecting to be released to pursue their immigration cases. Some carry toddlers on their hips. On paper, Title 42 denies people of all nationalities the right to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of Covid. In reality, the rule has been selectively enforced against Mexicans and people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, who the Mexican government agreed to accept.Most other nationalities have been spared due to the US not wanting to pay for expensive flights and limited diplomatic options.“The challenge is what Mexico can accept,” Modlin said. “That’s always going to be a limiting factor.”So far, the Biden administration’s attempts to wind down Title 42 have been blocked by the courts. Yet its continuing use depends on where people come from and which port of entry they are trying to seek asylum. In Yuma, Title 42 was applied in less than 1% of of 24,424 stops in July, whereas in Tucson, it was used in 71% of detentions.It is unclear why.“What we know with absolute certainty is that the smuggling organizations control the flow,” Modlin said. “They decide who goes where, and when they go to the point. It’s almost like air traffic control of moving people around.”In Yuma, groups of up to two dozen or so migrants dropped off by bus or car on a deserted Mexican highway begin arriving in the US shortly after midnight. If English and Spanish fail, agents use Google Translate to question them, under generator-powered lights, take photos and load them on to buses.One recent morning, six Russians said they flew from Istanbul to Tijuana, Mexico, with a stop in Cancun, and hired a driver to take them four hours to the deserted highway where they crossed.A 26-year-old man who had flown from his home in Peru to Tijuana said the most difficult part of the journey was the anxiety about whether he’d make it to his destination in New Jersey.Nelson Munera, 40, said he, his wife and their 17-year-old son got off a bus on the highway and crossed into Yuma because fellow Colombians had taken the same route.Lazaro Lopez, 48, who came with his nine-year-old son from Cuba by flying to Nicaragua and crossing Mexico over land, chose Yuma because that’s where his smuggler guided him.Most will be released on humanitarian parole or with a notice to appear in immigration court.From here, the border patrol drops off hundreds of migrants each day at the Regional Center for Border Health near Yuma, that charters six buses daily to transport them almost 200 miles north-east to Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport. “We have seen families from over 140 countries,” said Amanda Aguirre, the clinic’s chief executive officer. “We haven’t seen one from Mexico, not through our processing.”The shift is also evident on the Mexican side of the border.The Don Chon migrant shelter in nearby San Luis Rio Colorado fills many of its roughly 50 beds with Central Americans expelled under Title 42.Kelvin Zambrano, 33, who arrived in a large group of Hondurans, said he fled threats of extortion and gang violence, but border agents were not interested in hearing his story. “I don’t know why, but they don’t want Hondurans,” he said.TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderUS politicsCoronavirusfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US national guard soldier’s death marks at least eighth tied to border security mission

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      US national guard soldier’s death marks at least eighth tied to border security missionThe controversial Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021, is under federal investigation for possible civil rights violations A Texas national guard member assigned to a border security mission helmed by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, died this week at his unit’s hotel, leaving him as the latest of several soldiers to die while deployed on the controversial operation.Alex Rios Rodriguez, a 52-year-old sergeant, suffered a medical emergency from which first responders were unable to revive him while he was at his quarters in McAllen, Texas, said a news release Friday issued by officials with the agency that runs the state’s national guard.Homeland security secretary warns against crossing US-Mexico borderRead moreThose officials said Rios’s death was not considered to be directly related to Operation Lone Star. But, according to a report in the Army Times, Rios is at least the eighth Texas national guard soldier linked to Operation Lone Star to die since Abbott increased the number of deployments to the mission with thousands of involuntary call-ups last fall.Four guard members who were either sent to the border or tapped to deploy there died by suicide between October and December last year, the Army Times’ report said. Two more died in a pair of separate accidental shootings reported in January and February. And in April, a 22-year-old soldier named Bishop Evans drowned while trying to save two people he believed were struggling to swim across the Rio Grande.About two months before the death of Evans, who earned a posthumous promotion to sergeant, those running Texas’ national guard had ordered rescue ropes and hundreds of ring buoys to aid in water rescues. But when Evans died, most of the state national guard’s members had not received that equipment, the Army Times reported.Operation Lone Star costs an estimated $2.5m weekly, and earlier this month Abbott announced the state would spend an additional $30m on the mission to provide grants to local governments to ostensibly limit crime along the border.Abbott launched the operation in March 2021 as a response to a reported increase in US-Mexico border crossings. The governor declared the higher number of border crossings a disaster, enabling him to send his state’s national guard there.Authorities have since touted the arrests of more than 274,000 migrants on nearly 17,000 criminal charges. But the mission has drawn criticism because those arrests include ones that are physically distant from the border, not related to crimes there, and made by law enforcement agencies not directly participating in Operation Lone Star, according to reporting from the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and the Marshall Project.There were reports earlier this month that the operation is also under investigation by the federal justice department for potential civil rights violations. News of the investigation came days after 53 migrants who were being smuggled across the border in a sweltering tractor-trailer were found dead in the back of the vehicle in San Antonio.Rios, the soldier who died Thursday, was a team leader for Delta Company in the 536th Brigade Support Battalion, officials said.“Our sincere condolences go out to the family of Sgt Rios Rodriguez,” the Texas national guard’s leader, major general Thomas Suelzer, said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with them at this difficult time.”TopicsTexasUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More