The United States and El Salvador on Friday agreed to attempt to reduce the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border by strengthening El Salvador’s capacity to provide for asylum seekers, but did not detail any concrete actions.

“The core of this is recognizing El Salvador’s development of their own asylum system and committing to help them build that capacity,” Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told reporters in Washington after signing documents with El Salvador’s minister of foreign affairs, Alexandra Hill.

“Individuals crossing through El Salvador should be able to seek protections” in the Central American country even if they were intending to apply for asylum in the United States, he added.

Neither official said when the arrangement would take effect or provide details on how it would be administered. It was unclear how such a deal would work, given that most migrants from other countries take routes that avoid crossing the small, poverty-stricken El Salvador.

“We are going to work out operational details. This is just a broad agreement,” Hill told Reuters upon leaving the signing ceremony.

The agreement represents the latest effort by McAleenan to seal immigration deals with the Northern Triangle countries of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – from where many immigrants arriving at the U.S. southern border set out.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made immigration enforcement a centerpiece of his administration and is pushing to staunch the flow of migrants – many of them families – crossing into the United States. Border crossings reached record highs earlier this year, frustrating Trump.

Guatemala has signed a so-called ‘safe third country’ deal with the United States that requires asylum seekers who travel through Guatemala on the way to the U.S.-Mexico border to ask for refuge in Guatemala first, instead of in the United States. The Guatemalan Congress, however, has not ratified the deal.

The United States has a similar safe third country agreement with Canada.

Honduras, meanwhile, held talks with the United States over migration this week that will continue into next, Honduras’ foreign ministry and the U.S. Embassy said in a joint statement on Friday.

Among the topics under discussion is the possibility of requiring Cuban migrants to seek asylum in Honduras rather than the United States.

Citing fears that the United States could retaliate against Honduran exports, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez told local television on Thursday that there was a need for a region-wide agreement with Mexico, Guatemala and the United States, given increasing numbers of migrants from Cuba and Africa traversing Central America to reach the United States.

“So we believe that Honduras should also become a safe country to avoid the situation becoming more complicated,” Hernandez said.

Immigration advocates have criticized the deals, saying Central American countries where many people are fleeing from violence, poverty and endemic corruption, do not have the capacity to process more asylum claims and cannot assure safety for vulnerable migrants.

“The real goal of the United States is to make sure these (asylum) claims are never heard in a U.S. court,” said Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for Washington-based pro-immigration group America’s Voice, following the U.S.-El Salvador agreement.

El Salvador, which has 6.6 million people, is one of the world’s most violent nations, largely due to criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking and extortion.

As the U.S. government has pursued the deals, the Department of Homeland Security in parallel issued a rule that would bar most migrants from gaining U.S. asylum if they had not sought safe haven in any country they first transited through.

The rule accomplishes virtually the same thing as the agreements, but it has faced legal challenges. A federal court initially blocked the rule from taking effect, but the Supreme Court on Sept. 11 allowed it to be implemented while the court challenges are ongoing.

The Trump administration signed an asylum agreement Friday with El Salvador, giving the U.S. the right to repatriate migrants who cross through El Salvador to reach the U.S. and who then request asylum here.

Officials hope the agreement, along with a similar one signed with Guatemala over the summer, will change the incentives that have spurred this year’s illegal immigration surge at the border.

Most asylum-seekers have bogus claims and won’t win their cases, but under the current system, many of them were allowed to remain in the U.S. while they argued their case — giving them a foothold here. Officials believe that if they can block those bogus asylum-seekers from reaching U.S. territory in the first place, it will reduce the overall flow.

Acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan signed the agreement in Washington with Alexandra Hill, El Salvador’s foreign minister.

“We are talking about giving them secure alternatives and increasing legal alternatives to safe migration,” Ms. Hill said.

The deal would apply to people from countries other than El Salvador who traverse the country en route to the U.S. to claim asylum. The U.S. says if they are truly asylum-seekers they should apply in the first safe country they come to, and should not be allowed to pick and choose their final destination.

“Individuals crossing El Salvador should be able to seek protection there,” Mr. McAleenan said.

Critics, anticipating the deal, had said El Salvador isn’t safe enough for asylum-seekers.

America’s Voice, an immigrant-rights advocacy group, said the State Department currently cautions Americans against traveling to El Salvador because of endemic violence, and the department’s human rights report cites El Salvador for extrajudicial killings and torture perpetrated by government security forces.

“The Trump administration’s asylum policies and sham processes are endangering lives and exacerbating a human rights crisis Trump and his team helped spark,” said Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for America’s Voice.

Mr. McAleenan, though, said the country is developing its asylum system and the U.S. is working to assist those efforts.

He also said the new agreement goes beyond the asylum question and recognizes steps the new Salvadoran government has already taken to cut illegal immigration. He said the number of Salvadorans caught trying to jump the U.S.-Mexico border has fallen more than 60% in recent months.

The U.S., as part of the deal, is committing to help expand guest worker opportunities for Salvadorans, and Ms. Hill said she’s also expecting more U.S. help in supporting Salvadorans deported back to her country.

Ms. Hill said her government is intent on trying to stop the flow of “irregular migration.”

She said one key motivation was the tragic deaths over the summer of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Valeria, both from El Salvador, who drowned in the Rio Grande after deciding they no longer wanted to wait to enter legally and instead attempted to swim the river.

Photos of the father and daughter dead on the bank of the river went viral, capturing the horrific dangers of illegal immigration.

For some Trump critics, the photo also became ammunition for arguing that his policies were cruel. They argued the family had become frustrated waiting in Mexico to claim asylum and felt they had no choice but to cross illegally.

Ramirez actually made it to the U.S. shore with his daughter, then went back into the river to help his wife cross. But his daughter followed him back into the water, and they both were swept away.

The wife later said they were coming to the U.S. for better economic opportunities — which is not usually a reason to be able to claim asylum.

The Senate needs to act this week to clear a stopgap spending bill before recessing through the end of the government’s fiscal year, but that is really the only must-pass business for either chamber.

The House passed the measure Thursday, 301-123, after resolving hangups that included a debate over assisting farmers who have seen demand for crops plummet thanks to the ongoing sparring over trade with China.

While demonstrators are expected to descend on Washington on Monday, aiming to get the attention of official Washington, much of the official business will be elsewhere.

The House is coming in a day later this week than initially planned so members can attend Monday funeral services for Emily Clyburn, wife of House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, in South Carolina.

And with the U.N. General Assembly meeting this week, much of the White House’s focus has shifted to New York.

There is no expectation the Senate will have trouble reaching an agreement to clear the measure to keep the government funded through Nov. 21, but it is certainly not the only piece of business that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to advance.

First up for the week is the nomination of Brian McGuire to be the deputy undersecretary for legislative affairs at Treasury. McGuire is no stranger to the Senate, having previously worked as speechwriter for McConnell as well as chief of staff in the Kentucky Republican’s personal office.

It became clear Thursday that there would be no agreement to speed up McGuire’s confirmation thanks, ironically, to opposition from Rand Paul, Kentucky’s other Republican senator, over questions about tax treaties.

McGuire will now receive a debate-limiting cloture vote Monday evening with confirmation expected Tuesday. Several other nominations will follow before the Senate gets to the continuing resolution.

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Once the House is back Tuesday, Democrats will once again turn their attention to border politics as the chamber considers two measures designed to improve the Department of Homeland Security’s treatment of migrants.

A bill from freshman Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents the border area of El Paso, to create an ombudsman and institute accountability standards for the Homeland Security Department is back on the schedule.

House Democratic leaders had hoped to bring the Homeland Security Improvement Act to the floor at the end of July but decided not to move forward at the time amid intraparty disagreements over some of the measure’s provisions.

Escobar told CQ Roll Call on Friday that the bill will be revised through a manager’s amendment in the Rules Committee to exclude some provisions targeting Trump administration policies that she hopes can be addressed later in separate legislation.

Those provisions include banning DHS from separating migrant families under almost all circumstances and eliminating Migrant Protection Protocols that require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are being processed.

Moderate Democrats felt that some of those provisions, which were added to the bill from an original version Escobar introduced in March, were not fully fleshed out and that the caucus should take more time to come up with replacement policies rather than just block the Trump administration’s executive actions without adequate substitute enforcement measures.

“By making it so broad, it made it harder to pass in a short period of time,” Escobar said of the version that leadership sought to bring to the floor in July. “And it also made me think that we need to tackle these issues separately. So we essentially brought the bill back to its original intent from March, although it’s still changed a little bit. Committee staff helped us think about how to really strengthen some areas, and we took out some things that we can get done in other ways.”

The other border measure the House will consider this week— called the U.S. Border Patrol Medical Screening Standards Act — is from Rep. Lauren Underwood. It would require Customs and Border Protection to establish procedures for conducting medical screenings within 12 hours of its agents stopping individuals at ports of entry.

Senators, meanwhile, also need to follow through on an existing agreement for votes to pass a bipartisan bill that would authorize the USAID to provide assistance for efforts to combat the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Under the time agreement reached before August recess, the Senate has until Thursday of this week to debate the measure on the floor, along with an amendment from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that seeks to require a State Department certification about efforts to eliminate human trafficking before USAID can release funds.

In committee action, media attention will be on the House Intelligence Committee’s Thursday hearing with acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The committee wants to grill Maguire about his refusal to provide the panel with a whistleblower complaint that reportedly involves the president making an inappropriate promise to Ukraine. House Democrats believe the law requires Maguire to turn over the complaint but, acting on counsel from the Justice Department, he has said it is out of his purview.

The House Judiciary Committee will continue its impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump with a subcommittee hearing Monday on the Emoluments Clause and allegations that he has been personally profiting off the presidency by driving government officials to stay at his business properties.

On Wednesday, the full Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on assault weapons as House Democrats consider whether to push to reinstate a ban on those high-power firearms in the wake of a spate of mass shootings this summer.

Following last week’s release of House Democratic leaders’ proposal for lowering prescription drug prices, two subcommittees will hold hearings. Two House subcommittees will be conducting oversight hearings on e-cigarettes this week.

Senate appropriators will continue their efforts to get bills in line for floor consideration, with markups scheduled this week for four bills: Interior-Environment, Commerce-Justice-Science, Homeland Security and Legislative Branch.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday to send to the floor the nomination of Eugene Scalia to be Labor secretary. Since the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a Cabinet nominee, he will likely jump to the front of McConnell’s lineup of nominees for confirmation during the Senate session in October.

Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, the president was in New Mexico Monday night, kicking off a swing through the west. At a rally in Rio Rancho, the president declared that he has strong support from Latinos — because of his tough stance on migrants and drugs crossing the border. “We got a lot of Hispanics, got a lot of Hispanics,” he later said. “We love our Hispanics.”

This rally seemed to have a dual purpose: to show that Trump is reaching out to Hispanic voters and that he intends to put New Mexico in play for the 2020 election. But on both counts, the rally was an abject failure. There’s no way that this president can win over a majority of Latinos or New Mexicans.

Consider how Trump spoke about one of his top Latino supporters at the rally. Singling out Steve Cortes, a member of his Hispanic Advisory Council, the president said, “He happens to be Hispanic, but I’ve never quite figured it out because he looks more like a WASP than I do.” This comment was staggeringly ignorant. Latinos come in all skin tones, and some may indeed fit the president’s image of whatever a “WASP” looks like. So, what is there to figure out? Trump expressed the narrow sentiment that all Latinos should look one way, which shows how out of touch he is with the diversity of the nation’s largest minority group.

Then, shouting across the arena to Cortes, the president said, “Nobody loves the Hispanics more. Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?” Although Cortes’ answer was inaudible, Trump’s suggestion that he might have dual loyalties was at best bizarre and at worst offensive. It reflects the false, bigoted mindset that Latinos are less than fully American because we stay connected to our culture, language, and traditions. If this is how Trump speaks publicly about Cortes, imagine how he speaks privately about the many Latinos who are not his loyalists.

On Tuesday, Cortes said on Twitter that the president’s phrasing was “awkward,” that Trump was “joking,” and that “Critics should stop imputing malice where there is none.” Cortes’ response was entirely predictable, as he has a history of defending virtually anything Trump does. That doesn’t make Trump’s record of anti-Hispanic bias go away. Remember when he was so impressed that a Border Patrol agent spoke “perfect English?”

At his rally, Trump went on to say that Latinos understand the drug crisis better than other voters. He said that Hispanics support his border wall because “you understand it better than other people, but at the center of this crisis is the drugs that are pouring in, and you understand that when other people don’t understand it.” The president provided no context for Latinos’ supposed understanding of the drug trade; this is simply more of Trump’s natural inclination towards tired stereotypes. However, there is evidence that Hispanics do not support his border wall. A 2018 Pew survey found that 75 percent of Latinos are opposed to the idea.

Despite Trump’s assertion at the rally that Hispanics love him, that’s hardly true either. According to Pew, 79 percent of Hispanics disapprove of the job he is doing as president. A poll conducted by Latino Decisions this summer shows that only 21 percent of Hispanics support the president’s re-election. Many Latinos have reported feeling targeted or fearful in the aftermath of the El Paso massacre, carried out by a shooter inspired by Trump’s brand of anti-Hispanic rhetoric.

Perhaps the only good thing that can be said about Trump’s Monday rally is that the president may be attempting to reach beyond his base and bring in potential new supporters. If so, his move is motivated by political necessity. Trump’s approval is declining in key battleground states that supported him in 2016, so he has to expand the map as a backup strategy for 2020.

Good luck with that.

Not only is New Mexico 49 percent Hispanic, Trump’s net approval in “The Land of Enchantment” has gone down by 34 percentage points since he took office. The state has not gone Republican in a presidential election since 2004, when George W. Bush defeated John KerryJohn Forbes KerryKerry urges China and India to step up on climate change in WaPo op-ed Sunday shows – Trump’s Ukraine call, Iran dominate Kerry: ‘One way or the other’ Iran was responsible for Saudi attack MORE by less than 6,000 votes. The fact that Trump is diverting $125 million in funding for New Mexico military projects to pay for his wall is not going to help him in the state, either.

Underneath its spectacle, Trump’s New Mexico rally only confirmed a sad, ugly truth. This president is unwilling to see Latinos — even his own supporters — as full Americans. And especially during Hispanic Heritage Month, that’s nothing to celebrate.

Immigration and the United States are not a new duo. According to the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants made up between 13 and 15 percent of the U.S. population from around 1860 to 1915.

Things changed in 1924 with the passing of the Immigration Act. This resulted in the percentage of immigrants to steadily decline with a nadir of around 5 percent. We saw change once again in 1965 with a new act that reversed that decline — the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Immigration rates began to rise once again bringing us to the current day claim that this rise is now becoming historic. Technically we have not yet superseded the immigration population percentage of 1890. Americans are not living in unprecedented times in relation to immigrants.

This concept does not marry well with our national leaders’ stance on immigration. Blaring headlines calling for the building of a Mexico-U.S. border wall are only one facet of the president’s approach noted for harsh language and extreme policies triggering sentiments of crisis.

So what happens when an exhibition about displacement in the nation’s capital during this time is shown? Can it be anything other than an agenda for the furthering of a specific political position in relation to its topic? Absolutely. But, not easily.

Such an exhibition, “The Warmth of Other Suns Stories of Global Displacement,” is currently on view at the Phillips Collection and takes on the issue of displacement with a refreshingly wide lens.

While the co-curators of this exhibition — Natalie Bell and Massimiliano Gioni of the New Museum — were asked to curate an exhibition about displacement in conversation with the Phillips’ well known holding of American artist Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series,” the exhibition was not to be a deep dive on one specific occurrence of U.S.-Mexico border tensions.

This exhibition was meant to be a panoramic representation of global sentiments towards forced movement.

“The Warmth of Other Suns” is one of the most ambitious exhibitions to date for the institution, showing the works of 75 artists from across the globe.

Merging the contemporary and the historical the exhibition reveals displacement in conceptual and literal ways, focusing on the journeys of reshaping cultural identities in foreign lands.

Yet, “The Warmth of Other Suns” did not go unscathed in its political ripple effects. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) rejected the ad campaign for the exhibition. In WMATA’s opinion, the exhibition and its associated campaign “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions” as well as the fact that it “intended to influence public policy.” That kind of campaign is prohibited by their rules.*

Perhaps WMATA was not far off. Titling his Washington Post review of the exhibition “This D.C. exhibition should be seen by everyone concerned about the migrant crisis”, Sebastian Smee dove headfirst into propping up his commentary along activist lines. Phillips Collection Director Dorothy Krosinski also said, “We are proud to be at the forefront of dialogue around these important and timely issues in the U.S.” Words like “concerned”, “crisis”, “important”, and “timely” synergize to feel fully political.

However, seeing an exhibition out of concern for a social fact, or being at the helm of a public conversation is not equivalent to being a champion for specific policies.

WMATA’s choice reveals a one-dimensional understanding about what exactly art can do at any one time and place. An understanding that actively delegitimizes arts ability to deepen societal consciousnesses in relation to timely challenges

WMATA’s perspective is founded in an important, and flawed, baseline assumption: The collective context in which an exhibition is held trumps the messages in an individual piece of art.

Powerful art accounts for nuance and variance. Powerful art is not didactic and straightforward. The manifestation of an entire exhibition immediately becomes more than a topical byline. It becomes an occasion for holistic learning that when done expertly naturally crosses any and all kinds of isles.

Both the context of the exhibition and the artworks in the exhibition exert equal agency in shaping a space for learning. The Warmth of Other Suns is a perfect example.

Decision-making based on a sloppy conflation of the individual art object and the context in which it is seen will rob society of experiences for empathy building.

For example, take the video installation piece Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River (Strait of Gibraltar, Morocco-Spain) by Francis Alÿs. To view the work, one must walk underneath a wooden structure with bluish-green lighting that houses two large screens, placed across from one other.

Playing on the two screens is a film showing a line of children holding boats made of shoes and other recycled materials. The children — of varying skin tones — are walking, single file, into the Strait of Gibraltar. Things seem odd, but fun and innocuous nonetheless. Perhaps a group of schoolchildren are testing out a project they made in school. The water is shallow and the children are all tall enough to safely enjoy themselves.

The film begins at a bird’s eye view to appreciate the singularity of the entire line of children amongst the limitless teal undulations of the sea. The sleek minimalist composition is gorgeous. As the children continue to walk into the sea, the film switches to eye level. The water soon becomes the dominating force. We can hear the chattering of the children as they continue onwards. The water is rising beyond hip-height and the splashes of the water hit the camera lens. The scene goes in and out of clarity and at this point we can no longer see entire bodies but instead bits and pieces, only as the water allows.

The screens are not synchronized and it becomes chaotic to try and keep up with the images on both. As a viewer, we have to choose where to give our attention. The camera then moves underwater. Silence.

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The voices and splashing are gone. It’s an eerie sense of peace because while the lack of sound is relaxing and the color of the clear water hypnotic, we know we are underwater where we can’t breath. Is this a calming respite, or the end? The camera then reemerges and the chaos returns. We don’t know where the children are, or if they are in fact still in a line. Some boats have lost their owners. The film continues on like this — rising and falling, loud and soft, left and right.

Through an expert manipulation of time, sound, size, and composition Alys brings us from a place of controllable peace to a place of chaotic helplessness. Through the innocence of a line of children at sea, Alys showcases this sea as a double-faced entity. Tapping into the universal sentiment of beachside relaxation he upends that calm with a surrealist scenes that disintegrates into confusion and loss.

He leaves us to sit in our discomfort, forcing us to embrace it as our new normal. We of course can walk away from this when we want. Perhaps the thought that not everyone can crosses our mind.

Now, these observations are not made to insinuate that critiques of artworks regarding a global crisis fall simply according to creativity points. Many could argue that we should not care so much about the creativity of the piece if it brings awareness to large audiences about a social issue plaguing our time.

It is this nature, as shaped by artistic quality evident in so many of the works shown in “The Warmth of other Suns,” which will ultimately determine the making of a measurable impact.

Congress is moving toward passing a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, but some lawmakers are warning it could be the first in a series of stopgap funding measures over the next year to avoid a fight over President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump’s top adviser on Asia to serve as deputy national security adviser United Auto Workers strike against GM poised to head into eighth day Trump doubles down on call to investigate Biden after whistleblower complaint: ‘That’s the real story’ MORE’s border wall.

Sen. Richard ShelbyRichard Craig ShelbyFight over Trump’s wall raises odds of ‘continuous’ stopgap measures McConnell support for election security funds leaves Dems declaring victory Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg courts critics on Capitol Hill | Amazon makes climate pledge | Senate panel approves 0M for state election security MORE (R-Ala.), the top appropriator in the Senate, said it’s possible Congress will spend the next fiscal year passing several stopgap bills, known as continuing resolutions (CRs).

“I don’t know if we’ll end up in a shutdown, but we could end up with continuous CRs,” he said. “That could be the endgame.”

Lawmakers are hoping to avoid a repeat of December’s fight over Trump’s border wall, which led to a 35-day partial government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history.

In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, negotiators resolved the wall issue by agreeing to put a very limited amount of funding toward rebuilding pedestrian fencing and reinforcing existing border barriers. That solution allowed both sides to claim victory — Trump could say money was going toward the wall, while Democrats could say nothing new was being built.

But ever since Trump’s emergency declaration to build the wall following the last shutdown, the spending fight has spread beyond the lone homeland security bill that deals with border issues.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, fumed after Trump used presidential emergency powers to reprogram military funds toward building the wall. Both chambers rebuked him for the action, passing a bill to overturn his emergency declaration, but they could not muster the support needed to override Trump’s veto.

Trump has since redirected $2.5 billion in Pentagon drug trafficking funds, $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund and, most recently, $3.6 billion in military construction funds.

“The president may not care about our system of checks and balances, but every one of us here should,” Sen. Patrick LeahyPatrick Joseph LeahyFight over Trump’s wall raises odds of ‘continuous’ stopgap measures Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg courts critics on Capitol Hill | Amazon makes climate pledge | Senate panel approves 0M for state election security Senate committee approves 0 million for state election security efforts MORE (Vt.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the Senate floor this month.

With Democrats now demanding safeguards to prevent Trump from using newly appropriated funds for the wall and refusing to backfill military accounts emptied for wall construction, the problem has metastasized from the homeland security bill to other spending measures such as defense and military construction and veterans affairs’ bills.

Democrats have also accused the GOP of dipping into a labor, health and education spending bill to provide $5 billion in new funds for the wall. Republicans pulled both that bill and the one covering the State Department and foreign operations as Democrats readied amendments blocking the Trump administration on abortion rules.

The amendments, Republicans said, violated a top-line spending deal reached in the summer prohibiting so-called “poison pills,” or controversial policy riders.

Those skirmishes, combined with the larger wall fight, raise serious questions about whether Congress will get any spending bills for fiscal 2020 signed into law.

“I’m not going to faint dead away if we end up with a CR for the whole year,” said Sen. John KennedyJohn Neely KennedyMORE (R-La.), an appropriator.

Both parties, however, dislike the prospect of governing on a continuing resolution, which would freeze spending at current levels and block agencies from initiating new projects.

“None of us would like that,” said Shelby. “It’s not good for the military. It’s not good for the administration. It’s not good for the Democrats.”

After Democrats blocked a package of bills that included defense and health funding from advancing in the Senate this past week, Leahy suggested that smaller bills unencumbered by controversy — energy and water, transportation, and housing and urban development — could progress.

“My hope is they’ll sober up in the Senate, come to a deal, and then we can go to conference — we have the vehicles to get there — and then we’ll fight this out,” said Rep. Tom ColeThomas (Tom) Jeffrey ColeFight over Trump’s wall raises odds of ‘continuous’ stopgap measures Senate spending talks go off the rails as soon as they begin Social determinants of health — health care isn’t just bugs and bacteria MORE (R-Okla.), an appropriator.

But even if some bills make it through the Senate, they might not make it to President Trump’s desk.

House Democrats are aiming to finalize all the funding measures at once, waiting for all the bills grouped into minibus packages to be agreed upon before sending them to the White House. That strategy would increase the odds of a complete government shutdown instead of a partial one if no overall agreement is reached on spending legislation.

When the previous partial shutdown began, five of the 12 annual bills had already been signed into law, meaning several federal agencies, including the Defense Department, were unaffected.

“I think the longer you delay, the more political things become, obviously, if we move into the election year itself,” said Cole. “So my hope is we can get this all done, if not by Thanksgiving, then certainly by the end of the calendar year.”

Despite those challenges, some lawmakers are hopeful that appropriators will be able to come together and reach a deal.

“I’m a Cubs fan,” joked Illinois Rep. Mike QuigleyMichael (Mike) Bruce QuigleyFight over Trump’s wall raises odds of ‘continuous’ stopgap measures Democrats to seek ways to compel release of Trump whistleblower complaint Whistleblower complaint based on multiple incidents; watchdog won’t disclose info MORE (D), an appropriator. “I’m optimistic.”

(CNN) — Thirteen Marines have been formally charged with involvement in human smuggling operations, the US Marine Corps announced Friday.

The Marines will face military court proceedings for alleged violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including failure to obey an order, drunkenness, larceny, perjury and transporting and/or conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants.

“Two of the Marines, Lance Cpl. Byron D. Law and Lance Cpl. David J. Salazar-Quintero, both members of 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division … were arrested by border patrol personnel on July 3, 2019 for allegedly transporting and conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants,” the 1st Marine Division Press Office wrote in a statement.

In July, 18 US Marines and a sailor were arrested in dramatic fashion for alleged involvement in various illegal activities ranging from human smuggling to drug-related offenses, according to a statement made to CNN from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services.
A US official told CNN at the time that the arrests were related to an incident this summer in which two Marines from Camp Pendleton were charged with transporting undocumented Mexican immigrants to the United States for financial gain.

In early July, Border Patrol agents in Southern California were checking hiding spots and tracking footprints near Interstate 8 when one of the agents saw a black car pull off the highway onto a dirt turnaround, according to a criminal complaint.

Law was driving, and Salazar-Quintero was in the passenger seat, the complaint says. There were three passengers in the back of the car, and they told the agent they were Mexican citizens, had no immigration papers and were not permitted to enter the United States, it says.

The driver and passenger, under questioning, began pointing fingers at each other, the complaint says.

Law told the agent he was a Marine based at Camp Pendleton, and he said that Salazar-Quintero had called him the night of July 2 and asked him if wanted to make $1,000 for picking up an immigrant, the complaint says.

The three immigrants apprehended from the back of Law’s car told Border Patrol agents that they’d made arrangements to be smuggled into the United States and had been told via cell phone to get into Law’s car.

Two of the migrants said they were planning to pay $8,000 to be smuggled into the country, the complaint says. One planned on traveling to Los Angeles, the other to New Jersey.

(CNN) — Lawyers and legal observers expressed confusion and frustration this week as immigration hearings ramped up at two new tent facilities along the US-Mexico border in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas.

The facilities are an expansion of the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols program, which requires some migrants to wait in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings. The judges, in these cases, are not at the tent facility but preside by teleconference from other immigration courts several miles away. The process has meant lawyers have faced a host of logistical challenges in representing clients who are staying in Mexico.
“The whole process is disorienting,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “How could we expect these unrepresented individuals fleeing harm, fleeing violence from their home countries… how could we even expect them to fully understand this process?”

The Trump administration began the roll out of MPP, informally known as “remain in Mexico,” earlier this year. The first slate of hearings in March also stirred confusion among immigration lawyers who scrambled to understand the intricacies of the policy. Previously, migrants seeking asylum were allowed to stay in the United States as their case moved through the immigration court system.
Lisa Koop, lawyer at the National Immigrant Justice Center, represented eight migrants who are seeking asylum and waiting in Mexico for the duration of their proceedings. Koop attended hearings at the Laredo tent court where her cases were scheduled.

Koop and her clients were able to briefly meet in small, air-conditioned rooms before the hearings, which began at 8:30 a.m. During the hearings, Koop described how migrants saw the immigration judge on a screen, but not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys, adding that it was “often hard to hear” them.

While her clients had a sense of what was going on, others appeared “bewildered.”

“It was a lot of confusion, a lot of people who believed this would be the hearing where they could present their cases,” Koop said.

In one instance, she recalled a little boy and his mother who didn’t have legal representation at the hearing.

“[He] was standing up, asleep, leaning on his mom, moaning as the judge addressed the group,” Koop said.

Questions about access
According to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, 19 judges from three immigration courts in Texas are hearing cases through video conferencing — which has been used in immigration courts before.

“These courts are supposed to be open to the public,” said Charanya Krishnaswami, Americas advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, but access has been limited.

Lawyers who are representing migrants scheduled for that day of cases and filed proper documentation can enter the facility. But those who want to observe the daily proceedings are limited to the immigration courts where the judge is located.

In a statement, a Customs and Border Protection official said that “because the immigration hearing facilities (IHF) in Laredo and Brownsville are within CBP’s secure port of entry property, access to these temporary immigration hearing facilities will operate in accordance with practices for other secure CBP areas,” adding that requests for access will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

After being denied access to the Laredo and Brownsville facilities, Krishnaswami went to immigration courts in Harlingen and San Antonio to observe proceedings.

Krishnaswami watched as video of the migrants was fed into the court. “In one of the proceedings I saw this week, a woman was tearfully describing the harm she experienced in Mexico and then the video cut out,” she recalled. When the video came back, the woman had to recount the experience again.

Over the course of the week, Krishnaswami, along with other observers, sat in on dozens of master calendar hearings, the first hearing in removal proceedings, and watched as migrants were either provided a date for their next hearing or in the case of those who didn’t show, ordered removed in absentia.

On Tuesday, for example, there were 56 people listed on a docket in San Antonio. Of those, 33 people appeared and 23 were ordered removed, according to Krishnaswami.

Around 42,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the MPP program. Given that they’re residing in Mexico, immigration lawyers based in the US have limited access to them, particularly in dangerous regions. Only a small share of migrants in the program have secured representation, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks court data and released a report on access to attorneys this summer.
Some in the legal community argue that access to the tent facilities, not just the immigration courts where the judges are located, is important for that reason—to give lawyers the opportunity to connect with migrants who may need legal representation and explain the process.

“Normally, I would at least be able to note their names and see if I could try to connect them with a legal service providers,” Krishnaswami said. “I remember thinking all I have is their name and the last three digits of their A-number (which is assigned to noncitizens) and there’s no way to get them help.”

Washington (CNN) — A New York judge on Friday ordered President Donald Trump to provide video testimony as part of an upcoming lawsuit brought by protesters who say they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards during a 2015 protest outside of Trump Tower.

Judge Doris M. Gonzalez wrote in her ruling that Trump’s testimony is “indispensable” to the trial and so he must provide video testimony before the trial is set to begin Thursday. The Washington Post first reported the judge’s ruling.
The trial centers around a protest in September 2015 in front of Trump Tower in New York City where two protesters wore parody Ku Klux Klan outfits to protest Trump’s rhetoric on illegal immigration, according to the initial court filing.

The lawsuit brought by five men who describe themselves in a complaint as “human rights activists” alleges that Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, hit a protester, Efrain Galicia, in the head after Galicia tried to stop Schiller from taking their large cardboard signs, which read, “Trump: Make America Racist Again.” The filing says that when Galicia tried to hold onto one of the signs, Schiller ripped it away from him, tearing it to pieces.
Related Article: Protesters sue Trump after violent encounter with security
When Galicia tried to prevent Schiller from taking another sign, he says Schiller hit him with “a closed fist on the head with such force it caused (him) to stumble backwards.”

In his sworn testimony, Schiller claims the protesters and their banners were a threat to public safety because they would have impeded an ambulance from responding to an emergency in the building. Schiller says Galicia grabbed him from behind prompting him to swing around and hit the protester with his “open hand.” Schiller says he believed Galicia was attempting to grab his gun and thus used the “minimal amount of force to get him off of my firearm and off of my body.”

Ben Dictor, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told CNN “the court got it right. It’s long been held that a plaintiff has a right to an adverse party’s testimony at trial.”

Gonzalez ordered Trump to provide his video testimony before the trial begins Thursday. Dictor said he has sent a letter to Trump’s legal team asking them to provide potential times and dates for him to give the deposition.

Schiller said in his deposition that Trump was inside Trump Tower the day of the protest and was giving a press conference when the demonstration started. The plaintiffs argue the President had control over his security’s actions because they are his employees, even if Trump himself did not order them to act.

The Trump campaign declined to comment Saturday, and CNN has reached out to the President’s attorneys for comment.

In a separate filing, Trump’s attorneys characterized the plaintiffs’ motivations as political and argued that “Trump did not strike or touch any of the plaintiffs or take plaintiffs’ sign from them. In fact, the President was not even in the vicinity” of the incident outside of Trump Tower.

Gonzalez soundly rejected that argument Friday, writing that “no government official, including the Executive, is above the law.”

“More than 200 years ago our founders sought to escape an oppressive, tyrannical governance in which absolute power vested with a monarch. A fear of the recurrence of tyranny birthed our three-branch government adorned with checks and balances,” Gonzalez wrote.

Schiller’s ties to Trump date back to the President’s time as a private citizen and television personality. After his inauguration, Trump tapped Schiller as director of Oval Office operations, a position he left in September 2017.

Schiller was hired by the Republican National Committee after leaving the White House to advise on security for the 2020 convention.

Protests outside different Trump properties became increasingly frequent during the 2016 presidential campaign as Trump successfully navigated a crowded GOP primary and ultimately the general election. Trump repeatedly praised the use of violence against protesters who interrupted his campaign events or rallies ahead of his inauguration in January 2017.

A New York City judge has ordered that President Trump sit for videotaped testimony in a lawsuit brought by protesters who say they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards during the 2016 campaign.

The Bronx-based judge, Doris M. Gonzalez, wrote that Trump’s testimony is “indispensable” to the trial, which is scheduled to begin Thursday. She wrote he must therefore be examined by videotape before then, though Trump is likely to ask for a delay.

The protesters argue Trump, his campaign and business should be held liable for the actions of security guards who were working for the company. They say, even if Trump didn’t directly order the guards to act, he had control over their actions because they were his employees and his campaign trail rhetoric gave them the impression that violence would be condoned.

The suit alleges Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, punched one of the men in the head while trying to grab from him a sign that read, “Make America Racist Again!” Schiller has said he was simply trying to make space on the sidewalk and that he struck the protester only after the man grabbed him suddenly from behind.

Attorneys for Trump did not respond to requests for comment. They can appeal and seek to stay the ruling while their appeals are considered.

The case is one of a number of matters working their way through state and federal courts that will likely test the limits of presidential power. Because it was filed in August 2015 — just two months after Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency — it is more advanced than other matters.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the president can be sued in federal court. The ruling came as President Bill Clinton was being sued by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, for sexual harassment and, as a result, Clinton was required to sit for a videotaped deposition in the case in 1998. Clinton settled the case and it never went to trial.

Trump, by contrast, has been ordered to offer testimony for use at the New York trial, a rare instance of a jury sitting in judgment of a sitting president.

If the Bronx jury rules that the security guards acted inappropriately and Trump was to blame, they could impose sizable punitive damages on the president.

The Bronx matter stems from a September 2015 rally outside Trump Tower in which four men of Mexican descent wore Ku Klux Klan outfits and carried large banners. They were protesting Trump’s campaign comments about immigrants.

The group alleges Trump’s security guards emerged from the building and shoved and pushed them, grabbing and ripping their signs. In a moment partially caught in news footage at the time, one of the men, Efrain Galicia, alleges Schiller struck him in the head with a closed fist and another guard placed his hands around his neck and attempted to choke him.

After Trump took office, he appointed Schiller as director of Oval Office operations, a position he held until September 2017. Trump’s lawyers are also representing him in the case and did not respond to requests for comment.

Benjamin N. Dictor, an attorney for the plaintiffs, on Friday sent a letter to Trump’s attorney asking him to “advise what date, time and location” Trump would be made available.

He said the plaintiffs want to try to determine whether the president has ever authorized his staff to use force.

The rally took place about a week after Schiller forcibly removed Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a crowded news conference. In news footage of the incident, Trump appeared to catch Schiller’s eye before the security chief moved toward the reporter.

Trump was present in Trump Tower at the time of the rally, preparing to give a news conference.

“This is a case about speech on a New York City public sidewalk and violence used against people on that sidewalk,” Dictor said. “It will be up to a jury of New Yorkers whether an individual who owns a business can be responsible for the actions of his employees.”

In court filings, Schiller has said the men’s large banners were blocking the sidewalk. In a sworn statement, he said he attempted to collect the signs and bring them into the building but Galicia grabbed at him from behind. Believing Galicia was grabbing for his gun, he swung around and hit him with an open hand, he said.

Trump’s attorneys argued the president should not be required to testify because he was not present at the protest and has no relevant information to share about how it unfolded.

They wrote that the plaintiffs have advanced no reason that Trump’s testimony is necessary in the case “beyond an apparent desire to subject the President to politically fueled cross-examination on issues that have no real bearing on the claims or defenses in this proceeding.”

Gonzalez rejected that argument, ruling that Trump’s testimony is critical and he should find time to provide it.

“No government official, including the Executive, is above the law,” she wrote.

Walter E. Dellinger III, who served as solicitor general while Clinton was president, said that, in the Jones case, the Supreme Court urged trial judges to give significant deference to a president’s busy schedule. For that reason, Trump could seek to delay next week’s trial to allow more time for his participation.

Higher level courts in New York could also examine more closely the question of whether his testimony is truly needed to determine whether he can be blamed for the actions of his employees.

“He could possibly get out of it on the grounds that his testimony is not needed — but he’s unlikely to have any constitutional defense,” Dellinger said.

Trump could face particular peril if forced to testify under oath in the case, where any falsehoods he told could lead to further investigations. In the Jones case, Clinton said under oath that he did not have a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, leading to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998.

The Bronx case was filed in state court. Trump has tried to argue that, even if the president can be sued in federal court, like in the Clinton-Jones matter, he should be spared from litigation filed under state law.

In March, an appellate level court in New York rejected that argument in a different case, in which a former “Apprentice” contestant, Summer Zervos, alleges the president defamed her by publicly denying her accusations that he kissed and groped her without consent in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Discovery in that case has begun and Zervos is expected to seek to depose Trump.

As a child in Colombia, Maria Vallejo assumed her family’s traditions were practiced everywhere. But when she moved to the United States at age 29, she realized how closely tied many of these customs were to her Hispanic heritage — like the piercing of a baby girl’s ears. “In Colombia, it’s not even discussed,” says Vallejo, a photographer in Gainesville, Fla. “You have your baby girl in the hospital. They take her away and clean her up; they bring the baby back — and her ears are pierced.”

So she was surprised when that didn’t happen after she gave birth to her daughter in the U.S. in 1999. “I had earrings for her with me at the hospital, but they brought her back to me, and she didn’t have her ears pierced,” she says. “I asked the nurse to do it, and she said, ‘No, no, you have to talk to your pediatrician.’”

Infant ear piercing isn’t strictly Colombian; it’s one of many practices embraced across Latin America that make up Pan-Latino culture. Edith Gonzalez, who has a doctorate in anthropology from City University of New York, notes that simply sharing a history, language or country doesn’t guarantee that groups will share traditions.

“The Spanish had colonized different regions in the Americas, mixing with local populations for hundreds of years. They therefore had wildly diverse cultural variation before the Northern European colonizers even started coming (to America),’ she says. “So, for example, people from Central America have a radically different culture than people from the Greater Antilles.”

Thus, a tradition observed in Mexico might not be practiced in Cuba or Spain — or it could be called something else entirely.

Common Conventions

Some cultural practices have a wide reach, such as la cuarentena. In its strictest sense, it’s a 40-day postpartum period in which a new mother is expected to do nothing but care for her child. The family handles housework and cooking, providing her with herbal remedies and approved foods. In some regions, there are religious origins at play, says Gonzalez, but there are practical reasons to observe la cuarentena. Some researchers have found that cultures that encourage this kind of support also tend to see improved maternal and infant health.

In some areas, help is hired. “Your family hires a nurse — a nana — in Colombia,” says Vallejo. “She sleeps on a bed next to the baby’s crib; she’s with the baby all the time.” Vallejo’s in-laws offered to hire one when her children were born, but she declined due to lack of space. However, she gladly accepted help from her parents and in-laws, who flew in from Colombia.

Roxanna Sarmiento, chief operating officer of #WeAllGrow Latina Network, grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she embraced traditions from both the Dominican culture as well as her father’s Colombian heritage. She also practiced a modern take on la cuarentena when she had her three children in the U.S.; her parents traveled to Boston to stay with her for a month each time. “It was such a help to have extra hands to hold the babies, and my mom made us my favorite comfort food,” she says. “This tradition means everything. It reminds me of how our culture prizes family relationships above all.”

Convictions and Protections

Like la cuarentena, mal de ojo (or the evil eye) is recognized amongst many Latinos — and within other cultures. Mal de ojo refers to a curse that can be cast with a look. Within Latino populations, especially in Mexico and Central America, it’s common for mothers to give their babies an amulet, like an azabache, to be worn to protect against that curse. The jet black gemstone may be combined with red stones or glass, sometimes with a blue eye painted on top.

Daniela Benson and her daughter, Lara
Daniela Benson and her daughter, Lara (Photo: Provided by Daniela Benson)

Daniela Benson, a business consultant in Tampa, Fla., grew up in Venezuela, moved to the U.S. at age 25 and welcomed her daughter, Lara, in 2018. “I think it’s more of a superstition, but every mom wants to protect her baby from something bad happening to them,” she says. “So you buy an azabache and put it either on an ankle bracelet or pin it on the baby’s clothing.”

Like Sarmiento and Vallejo, Benson looks to her culture’s traditions for guidance and comfort, but isn’t a strict observer. She pierced Lara’s ears, but waited two months to do so. “Every single female in my family had her ears pierced at birth,” she says. “I loved playing with earrings when I was growing up.” Benson knows that Lara may not embrace every tradition passed down through the Venezuelan side of her family, but feels that at least she will have her earrings to connect her to her roots.

I want to take you on a journey that begins and ends with questions about the American Dream, about what being an American means, and what it means to be an “other.” I’ve survived the flowering and disintegration of that dream during my lifetime, which began in a post — World War II moment of optimism, when my parents strove for inclusion, only to see their dream fade with the bitter reality that our homeland, and possibly our culture and traditions, were slowly dying.

I am the child of a generation that came to New York during the mid-century Great Migration of Puerto Ricans. Our family lived through the turmoil of the Civil Rights Era and white flight in the Bronx, inhabiting racialized working-class Catholic identities, transitioning from West Side Story to the Decade of the Hispanic, but never losing touch with the island we left behind.

My parents fared moderately well as blue-collar and government workers on the mainland, and they built a house on the island for retirement, only to watch uneasily as the fantasy of Puerto Rico as a middle-class U.S. outpost in the Caribbean slipped into uncertainty. Their struggle informed my own as I tried to hold onto my bicultural Nuyorican identity, one that never fully embraced “Americanness” in a country that desperately resisted racial difference, increasingly seeing it as a sign of disloyalty.

The author’s parents during their wedding reception in New York City in the 1950s. (Ed Morales)The author’s parents during their wedding reception in New York City in the 1950s. (Ed Morales)
After Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898, the island evolved from a site dominated by U.S.-based sugar manufacturers to a mid-century showcase for industrial capitalism. The shift was hastened by pressure from the postwar United Nations for world decolonization, the threat of a militant Puerto Rican nationalist movement, and a Western desire to blunt any enthusiasm for Cuba’s socialist experiment. As part of the industrialization effort, euphemistically called “Operation Bootstrap,” the United States allowed corporations to set up on the island tax-free, employ workers for below minimum wage and corner the market on selling to Puerto Rican consumers.

The effort, also known as Manos a la Obra or “Let’s Get to Work,” transformed the island’s agricultural economy into an industrial one. Luis Muñoz Marín — the island’s first elected native Puerto Rican governor, voted in in 1949 — led the effort to attract U.S. corporate investment to the island to establish textile, clothing, and other manufacturing operations. This economic transformation also included a long process of consolidating agricultural production, which eliminated jobs and land for rural residents, who were tied to it through wage labor and subsistence farming.

‘Mi negro’: Embracing my blackness as a Puerto Rican man

While living standards for many improved, Bootstrap’s success depended on exporting surplus labor to the United States, creating a wave of migrant Puerto Rican workers to the mainland. Thousands had migrated in the past to Hawaii for the sugar industry as well as to New York City and Tampa, to work as tabaqueros, or cigar-factory workers. But the Great Migration of the post — World War II era firmly established Puerto Ricans as a growing population in urban centers like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Cleveland.

Puerto Ricans’ Great Migration to the North paralleled that of African Americans, who had migrated to those urban centers just a few years earlier to escape Jim Crow laws. Because many — if not most — of the Puerto Ricans forced to flee northward were darker-skinned and not part of the island’s white-ish elite, there was some cultural crossover between the two groups. They faced similar forms of racial discrimination and lived in the same or bordering neighborhoods. And because Puerto Ricans were already American citizens, their experience aligned more with the established African American status of second-class citizenship than that of Latin American immigrants from other countries.

Earlier Cuban immigrants, like jazz musician Mario Bauzá, had begun to fuse African American jazz techniques with Afro-Cuban ones, music that allowed Puerto Ricans to build bridges with American blacks. Puerto Rican groups promoted fusion music like bugalú, which combined Afro-Cuban rhythms with R&B.

But while there was considerable cultural exchange, Puerto Ricans inhabited a racial no man’s land, the variations in skin tone and appearance being something “other” than African American while also clearly racially distinct from white Americans.

My parents were part of this migration, arriving in New York within years of each other in the early 1950s. They had come from different corners of the Luquillo Mountain Range in the northeastern part of the island, both children of rural farmers with somewhat different levels of accumulated wealth. My father’s family owned a large, prosperous finca, or ranch, in a mountainous region south of the municipality of Canóvanas, until a disgruntled suitor of one of my aunts, as my family members describe him, murdered my grandfather. The farm collapsed and had to be sold off, forcing my father, one of 14 children from two marriages, to live in difficult conditions in a poor barrio of San Juan called Buen Consejo.

The author’s mother in her home in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, in 2018. (Ed Morales)The author’s mother in her home in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, in 2018. (Ed Morales)
My mother was one of nine children and grew up in a mountainside finca near what would become the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System, El Yunque. Her parents’ finca operated on the subsistence level, and my mother grew up in near-poverty conditions during the Great Depression, which gravely impacted rural Puerto Ricans. She did well in high school and attended the University of Puerto Rico on a scholarship, where she trained to be a schoolteacher. Yet economic conditions on the island remained desperate, so both of my parents took advantage of the low airfares that Operation Bootstrap provided to look for work in New York City.

What’s next for Puerto Rico? A reckoning with its colonial status.

Moving to the United States from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America has been a thread in American history, a compelling narrative through which American exceptionalism is manufactured and celebrated. But Puerto Rico’s Great Migration is unique in that it grew out of an anticipated problem with Operation Bootstrap: an increase in landless and unemployed “peasants” as the island transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The guagua aérea, or “aerial bus,” was created to ship islanders to the mainland as part of a plan to impose the illusion of U.S. citizenship.

Flights from San Juan to New York were very inexpensive — as cheap as $25 — and Puerto Ricans quickly became the first set of migrants to the United States who arrived mostly via airplane. Because Puerto Ricans were already U.S. citizens, there was no restriction on their travel. This fostered a pattern of circular migration unheard of among other groups, who would do everything they could to stay in the U.S. permanently.

Because of this nomadic uncertainty, I’ve always felt profound ambivalence about my parents’ journey here. They were part of a process that, in a few short decades, would see the Puerto Rican population in the United States surpass that on the island. And with that came an awareness of a Puerto Rican nation that didn’t need accoutrements like national sovereignty or even national territory to flourish and prosper.

HELENA, Mont. — A woman who is suing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection after an agent questioned her and a friend for speaking Spanish in a convenience store said Friday the backlash to their lawsuit has forced them to move away from their small Montana city.

Ana Suda and her family have been harassed by neighbors, strangers and even schoolchildren in the city of Havre ever since a video of a border agent questioning her and Martha “Mimi” Hernandez was uploaded to YouTube, Suda said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. One version of the video has been viewed more than 123,000 times since February.

Suda and her two children have been living with relatives in El Paso, Texas, for the past 1 ½ months while her husband — a Customs and Border Protection employee himself — is seeking a job transfer to join them.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Suda said. “Our lives are not the same, it’s not the same anymore. These guys destroyed everything we have.”

Hernandez has been living in Great Falls but still commutes to her job in Havre, said their attorney, Alex Rate of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana.

The women, who were born in the U.S. and are citizens, said in their lawsuit that they were speaking to one another in Spanish while standing in line to buy eggs and milk in a convenience store in Havre. The agent, Paul O’Neill, entered the store, overheard them and kept them in the parking lot for approximately 40 minutes while he checked their identifications.

“Ma’am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here,” O’Neill said in the video.

Suda was born in Texas and moved to Montana with her husband in 2014. Hernandez was born in California and has been living in Montana since 2010. Suda did not recognize O’Neill as a colleague of her husband, nor did she say that her husband worked for the same agency.

Havre is a city of nearly 10,000 people about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the U.S.-Canada border and near two Native American reservations. The city’s population is mostly white and about 4% Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census.

The women filed their lawsuit in February, saying they were detained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizures and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause. They are asking a judge to declare it is unconstitutional for the federal agency to detain anyone based on race, accent or language alone, to block the agency from doing so and to award them an unspecified amount for damages.

They say such stops are a pattern with the Havre sector of the Customs and Border Protection, and they cite other recent cases where Latino and Latinas were stopped.

“They destroyed my life, but if I can help somebody else with this speaking out, I’ll take it,” Suda said.

Border officials and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined comment on Friday, citing the pending lawsuit.

The agency is seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, and a hearing is scheduled for Oct. 2. Attorneys for the agency say it has sovereign immunity against any damage claims, and that because the women were only stopped once after living there for years, there’s no evidence there’s any threat of it happening again to them.

Ever since the lawsuit was filed, Suda said the backlash has come in forms of angry faces on the street, backhanded comments made about her, high-volume confrontations and once a man shoved her. She said friends of border agents have told her to drop the lawsuit, but she did not file a complaint with the police because one woman who confronted her said she was friends with the police.

Once, a classmate of her young daughter called the girl an expletive in Spanish, Suda said. The potential threat to her children was a major factor in her decision to leave. She has a young son who is autistic and nonverbal, and she feared that something could happen to him and he wouldn’t be able to tell her.

Havre Police Chief Gabe Matosich did not return repeated calls for comment this week. Mayor Tim Solomon was out of the office on Friday and didn’t immediately return a message.

___

This story has been updated to correct the name of the federal agency to U.S. Custom and Border Protection, not U.S. Custom and Border Patrol.

The Trump administration announced an accord Friday that will allow the United States to divert asylum seekers from the U.S. border to El Salvador, pushing migrants into one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The deal between the two governments is the latest measure aimed at creating new layers of deterrents to the influx of migrants applying for protection on U.S. soil.

Kevin McAleenan, the acting homeland security secretary, signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill in front of television cameras in Washington, but the two officials gave few details and no indication when their accord would take effect.

McAleenan, who traveled to El Salvador for talks last month with President Nayib Bukele, praised a “shared responsibility” on migration that was part of a broader deal to accelerate economic development in Central America with the goal of keeping migrants in their home countries.

“Today we’re very happy to announce the signing of this cooperative agreement between the United States and El Salvador to build protection capacity,” ­McAleenan said, “to further our efforts for opportunities to seek protection for political, racial, religious or social group persecution as close as possible to the origin of individuals who need it.”

The accord shows a willingness by the Trump administration to send people to places that are known to be dangerous — and from which people have been fleeing extreme poverty, violence and corruption — to dissuade them from attempting a journey to the U.S. border in the first place.

McAleenan called the accord with El Salvador an “asylum cooperation agreement,” rather than the kind of “safe third country” arrangement Trump officials have pursued for years. That term has been stigmatized in Central America, in large part because it would be difficult to consider the Northern Triangle region of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala safe, given that it has among the highest homicide rates in the world.

“The core of it is recognizing El Salvador’s development of their own asylum system and a commitment to help them build that capacity,” McAleenan told reporters Friday. He said the diversion of asylum seekers from the U.S. border to El Salvador would be “one potential use of the agreement.”

“Individuals crossing through El Salvador should be able to seek protections there, and we want to enforce the integrity of that process throughout the region,” he said.

In practice, though, the asylum cooperation agreement with El Salvador takes the Trump administration further toward what McAleenan is seeking across the hemisphere: deals intended to stem the surging numbers of migrants from around the world who have flooded U.S. immigration courts with humanitarian claims.

Asylum seekers from Nicaragua, Cuba and other nations who pass through El Salvador en route to the U.S. border will be eligible for return there once the accord is implemented, U.S. officials say. As part of the plan, the United States will help build an asylum system in El Salvador and in other nations in the region, seeking to fund the effort through United Nations refu­gee agencies. Only 18 people sought asylum in El Salvador last year, according to the latest U.N. data.

“We need to see whether the United States will provide El Salvador with assistance to implement the plan,” said Cristobal Ramón, an immigration analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “While El Salvador isn’t receiving as many asylum seekers as the United States and Mexico, the country may not have the institutional capacity and resources to process an uptick of asylum seekers that may be sent back under the terms of the deal, which could undermine its implementation.”

McAleenan reached a similar deal with Guatemala in August that has yet to be put in place. But the Salvadoran accord is different in a key regard: Unlike Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, the Salvadoran leader is one of the most popular figures in Latin America, with an approval rating topping out at 90 percent in some polls.

McAleenan also is nearing a deal with Honduras, administration officials say.

Other nations where McAleenan has sought such accords, including Panama and Mexico, have balked, saying they will not sign safe third country agreements even as they demonstrate a willingness to reach deals that could function in a similar way.

Bukele, 38, a centrist businessman and former mayor of San Salvador, has sought to leverage his cooperation with the United States to obtain benefits from the Trump administration. They include additional U.S. investment and a potential fix for the roughly 200,000 Salvadorans who have been living in the United States for nearly 20 years with a form of provisional residency known as temporary protected status (TPS).

The Trump administration’s attempts to end TPS for El Salvador and other nations have been blocked in court; the current extension is valid through January.

A TPS deal has been included in the discussions, U.S. officials say, but McAleenan made no announcement on the topic Friday, even as Hill, the Salvadoran foreign minister, spoke urgently about the need for a resolution.

“There are other measures we are working on to find a permanent solution” for TPS holders in the United States, Hill said, noting that those Salvadorans are the parents of an estimated 200,000 U.S.-citizen children. “They’re a people that put their hand on their heart to sing the national anthem of the United States and put their hand on their heart to sing the national anthem of El Salvador. They are hard working, and they are rooted within the United States of America.”

The asylum accord would not send Salvadorans back to their country if they reach the U.S. border seeking protection, though they could be routed to Guatemala if that deal takes effect.

McAleenan has emphasized that the United States will implement the asylum agreements carefully to avoid overwhelming receiver nations with a flood of people needing resettlement.

Gang violence pushed El Salvador’s homicide rate to one of the world’s highest this decade, but in recent years the violence has ebbed. According to the latest Salvadoran figures, the murder rate has fallen by half since last year, which the government attributes to its military crackdown on gangs.

Irregular migration from El Salvador also has declined significantly in recent years, and U.S. agents now arrest far more Hondurans and Guatemalans at the border, according to the latest data.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon resume detaining migrant families in Texas, at a facility outside of San Antonio, clearing the way for the agency to detain hundreds of additional parents and children.

The Trump administration had stopped holding families at the Karnes County Residential Center in the spring, saying it was unable to transport migrants there because of a record influx of families at the border.

But, after a decline in apprehensions in the summer, officials said in a statement on Saturday that they will revert Karnes “back to a family residential center in the near future.”

Officials had said earlier that they expected the facility to return to exclusively detaining families after a few months.

Karnes has most recently been used to hold about 700 adult women, and intake has been temporarily suspended, ICE spokesman Richard Rocha said in the statement.

Current detainees at Karnes can expect to be transferred to other facilities, he said.

Karnes can house up to 830 parents and children, according to Geo Group, the private contractor that runs the facility.

U.S. weighs plan to phase out family detention at Texas facility, despite migration surge

ICE is housing families at two other facilities in Berks County, Pa., and Dilley, Tex. Karnes is the second largest family center.

Re-adding Karnes restores ICE’s total capacity to detain families to more than 3,000 people, though most recently its family detention centers were well below capacity.

The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a nonprofit organization based in Texas, said female detainees were told they would be transferred to other facilities in a few days.

It called for ICE to shut down these and other facilities and said women have complained of poor medical care at Karnes.

“ICE is about to transfer women from Karnes Detention Center to Louisiana & other detention centers across the country to make room for family detention,” the nonprofit tweeted Friday.

Migrant families have flooded the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year seeking refuge from violence and poverty, mainly in Central America. The White House claims they are traveling in families because limited detention means they are likely to be released in the United States, and most are rarely deported.

In recent months, the Trump administration has intensified enforcement and pressured Mexico to detain more families traveling north and host thousands awaiting their asylum hearings.

The Trump administration is also attempting to expand the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, restrict asylum, and broker deals with Central American nations to absorb mass migration.

Last month, officials took steps to terminate a federal court settlement restricting how long U.S. officials can detain migrant children with their parents. Officials want to replace the settlement with a rule that could expand family detention and dramatically increase the time children spend in custody.

If the administration’s bid is successful, officials would have the legal authority to hold families longer. Acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan has said his goal is to detain families for less than two months to complete their immigration cases, and release or deport them together.

Family apprehensions at the southern border declined over the summer, from 70 percent of all migrants taken into custody in July to 55 percent in August. Arrests typically drop during the scorching summer months but crossings remain higher than during past years, irritating a president who campaigned on a promise to drive down the numbers.

Overall apprehensions are expected to approach 1 million this fiscal year, a threshold unseen since the George W. Bush administration.

AS A magnet for global talent, the United States has been successful for decades in attracting international students and scholars. Under the Trump administration, that success has tapered off: The number of newly enrolled international students issued visas by the State Department has fallen by nearly 10 percent over the past two academic years. The risk now is that mounting visa problems and other obstacles may make it even harder for students to enter the country, depriving the United States of talent and brainpower and, potentially, giving America’s competitors an edge.

More than a million international students are in this country, roughly a third of them Chinese; a recent study showed they contribute more than $39 billion to the economy. National security concerns, including worries about industrial and other forms of espionage, are legitimate grounds on which to scrutinize their applications to study here. But reports from campuses suggest that recent administrative impediments often seem random and unjustified.

In February, the government extended the time it takes to process applications assigned for extended security checks to six months; previously, it took two months. As the New York Times reported, that shift, and what appears to be a spike in the numbers designated for such additional processing, can confound students admitted to college in the spring and hoping to enroll in the fall. Should a student make a down payment? Book and pay for flights? Rent an apartment? The uncertainty and attenuated wait times have discouraged many, and it has likely dampened the enthusiasm of others who were planning to apply.

The slowdown in visa processing for some applicants follows a sharp hike in visa-processing fees. The administration has also pursued a crackdown on students who overstay or violate the terms of their visas — even though some do so inadvertently — with draconian penalties, including long-term bans on returning to the United States. A federal court has blocked implementation of that policy, but the message it transmits dovetails with other administration measures intended to discourage international students from coming.

In late August, a Palestinian student about to take his place as a freshman at Harvard said he was turned away at the Boston airport by a Customs and Border Protection agent who, upon examining his phone, disliked the social media postings of some of the young man’s friends. If officials using that criterion were empowered to bar U.S. students from matriculating, it’s conceivable that every college classroom in the country would be empty. (The student was subsequently allowed to enter the country.)

Turning a cold shoulder to ambitious young people around the world is a self-defeating strategy on multiple fronts. It robs U.S.-born students at college and university campuses of valuable perspectives and opportunities to widen their aperture on the world. It undermines the United States’ standing as a global beacon that can impart democratic values to students who might champion them when they return home. And it diminishes America’s standing and leadership by transmitting a message of hostility to the very people who had regarded us with hope.

WORTHINGTON, Minn. — It was the first day of school, so Don Brink was behind the wheel of his bus, its yellow paint glistening in the drizzling dawn. Wearing jeans and a John Deere cap, he turned the radio to an oldies station and, with hands callused thick by 50 years of farming, steered the vehicle toward the edge of town.

He stopped in front of familiar farmhouses surrounded by fields of soy and corn, where blond children boarded the bus, chatting in English.

“Morning,” the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran said.

This was the Worthington he knew.

But then Brink headed back into town, past the meatpacking plant that was the area’s main employer and into the neighborhood he called Little Mexico, even though most of its residents were Central American.

This was the Worthington he did not know — the Worthington he resented.

At the corner of Dover Street and Douglas Avenue, a handful of Hispanic children were waiting. At Milton Avenue, there were a few more. And at Omaha Avenue, a dozen students climbed aboard — none of them white.

Brink said nothing.

“I say ‘good morning’ to the kids who’ll respond to me,” he said later. “But this year there are a lot of strange kids I’ve never seen before.”

Those children, some of whom crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone, have fueled a bitter debate about immigration in Worthington, a community of 13,000 that has received more unaccompanied minors per capita than almost anywhere in the country, according to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Five times in just over five years, the district has asked residents to approve an expansion of its schools to handle the surge in enrollment. Five times, the voters have refused — the last time by a margin of just 17 votes. A sixth referendum is scheduled for November.

The divide can be felt all over Worthington, where “Minnesota nice” has devolved into “Yes” and “No” window signs, boycotts on businesses and next-door neighbors who no longer speak. A Catholic priest who praised immigrants was booed from the pews and has received death threats.

The driving force behind the defeats has been a handful of white farmers in this Trump-supporting county, including Brink, the bus driver.

Even as he earns a paycheck ferrying undocumented children to and from school, Brink opposes the immigration system that allowed them to come to Worthington.

“Those kids had no business leaving home in the first place,” Brink said. “That’s why we have all these food pantries, because of all these people we are supporting. I have to feed my own kids.”

Now he pulled up to the same high school where he and his wife had walked arm-in-arm as teenage sweethearts, and watched his passengers step down into a stream of dark-haired children, among them a pregnant 15-year-old from Honduras and a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala who’d arrived months earlier.

For the two unaccompanied minors, their first day of school was an opportunity.

For Brink, it felt like an affront.

Inside Worthington High, more than a thousand students were scrambling to find their classrooms before the morning bell, their sneakers squeaking on the freshly polished linoleum.

A dozen Hispanic boys crowded silently into the office, looking confused. One wore soccer cleats with jeans. They were among the 129 kids who’d arrived in the district over the summer.

“You guys know where you’re going?” an administrator asked. “You need help?”

Since the fall of 2013, more than 270,000 unaccompanied minors have been released to relatives around the country as they wait for immigration hearings. Many have ended up in large cities: 16,000 in Los Angeles; 18,000 in Houston; 20,000 in the Washington, D.C., area.

Thousands more, however, have ended up in small towns like Worthington, where their impact is dramatic.

In those six years, more than 400 unaccompanied minors have been placed in Nobles County — the second most per capita in the country, according to ORR data.

Their arrival has helped swell Worthington’s student population by almost one-third, forcing administrators to convert storage space into classrooms and teachers to sprint between periods, book carts in tow.

“All of our buildings are over capacity,” said Superintendent John Landgaard.

“The school district is busting at the seams,” added Mayor Mike Kuhle.

School districts don’t track immigration status but they do keep tabs on English language learners (ELL), who are generally more difficult and costly to educate.

The number of ELL students in Worthington has nearly doubled since 2013, to 35 percent of students. In the high school, where most unaccompanied minors are placed, it has almost tripled.

“They arrive every day, all year long,” said Julie Edenborough, director of migrant services for Guymon Public Schools in Texas County, Okla., the only place to receive more unaccompanied minors per capita than Nobles County. “We’re talking about kids who couldn’t write their own name, who couldn’t hold a pencil.”

School districts like Guymon and Worthington have scrambled to hire Spanish-speaking teachers, who are part educators, part parents, part therapists. Many unaccompanied minors live with unfamiliar relatives who offer little support. Teachers often fill the void, arriving early, staying late, even buying their students groceries.

“A lot of these kids suffer horrible trauma on the journey to the United States,” said Perla Banegas, who until recently taught newcomers at Worthington High. “Some were sexually abused. Others were almost murdered by a gang or left in the desert.”

Many students feel pressured to work to pay off their debts and contribute to household expenses: rent, electricity, even WiFi.

One 17-year-old asylum seeker from Guatemala said he cleaned a meatpacking plant by night, attended class by day and milked cows in the afternoon before grabbing a few hours of sleep.

But he could never fully repay the Worthington relative with whom he was living. Now 18, he’s dropped out of school, moved to another state and works construction. His asylum hearing is scheduled for March in Minneapolis but he fears he won’t have the money to attend, forfeiting his already uphill battle for asylum.

“I didn’t think the United States was going to be like this,” he said recently. “So hard.”

This school year didn’t start easily for the 16-year-old from Guatemala or the 15-year-old from Honduras. The older girl misread her schedule and arrived 45 minutes late, then had to leave to get vaccinated. The younger one arrived on time only to be scolded.

“You can’t wear shirts like that,” the attendance secretary told her in English, pointing to the Honduran’s floral blouse, which hung off her shoulders and exposed her bra straps. As a family friend who’d driven her to school translated, the girl tugged up her shirt.

The two headed toward the girl’s classroom, and the morning bell rang.

“Good morning and welcome back, WHS students and staff,” a woman announced over the loudspeakers. “Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

But the girl kept walking.

“You have to stop and show your respect,” the friend whispered in Spanish. “They do this every day.”

“Ah, okay,” the girl said as she stared at the students with their hands on their hearts.

When Don Brink attended high school in the 1960s, Worthington was almost entirely white. But by the end of the century, the population was 20 percent Hispanic: primarily Mexicans drawn to the area’s poultry farms and meatpacking plant.

In 2007, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 230 undocumented workers at the plant. Immigrants kept coming, however, mostly from Central America. Today the town is almost two-thirds minority. Hispanics outnumber whites.

While nearby towns have shrunk and their schools have closed, Worthington has grown. Signs in Spanish and Lao now line downtown, where Mexican restaurants compete with a new microbrewery. A Guatemalan flag flies in the window of a store selling soccer jerseys and baby blankets. On a recent afternoon, “Hello” was written on the sidewalk in chalk in 11 languages.

Even as Worthington has changed, however, its tax base still depends largely on white farmers like Brink, pitting the town’s future against its past.

In 2013, when the school district first asked voters to pay for new classrooms amid the influx of unaccompanied minors, those farmers feared they would bear the brunt of the $39 million. The bond referendum failed.

Three years later, when the school district asked for $79 million, some locals felt insulted.

“They shot for the moon,” said Dave Bosma, who transports livestock for a living. He voted for the referendum the first time around only to join Brink and others in opposing it in 2016. They called themselves Worthington Citizens for Progress, raising money door-to-door and distributing “Vote No” fliers at the town’s annual turkey race.

The group also hired a controversial consultant named Paul Dorr, who for decades has worked to defeat public school referendums across the Midwest. Dorr’s aggressive tactics, which once included burning LGBT children’s library books in another town, only deepened the divide.

The second referendum was defeated by a 2-1 margin on Nov. 8, 2016 — the same day Donald Trump won 62 percent of the vote in Nobles County.

Attitudes have only hardened since then, as three more referendums have failed. Citizens for Progress unsuccessfully tried to oust the superintendent, and a former teacher who shared students’ private information with the group was charged with a crime. Accusations of racism have become commonplace.

“White people here don’t want to pay for people of color and undocumented children to go to school,” said community activist Aida Simon.

The rising tensions reflect broader shifts in the state. Last fall, some Republican candidates called for Minnesota to stop accepting refugees, many of whom are Somali Muslims.

“There was concern among citizens as to the cost of refu­gee resettlement,” said Jeff Johnson, the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate who supported a suspension. “Often the answer was ‘you’re racist.’ It shut down the discussion.”

In Worthington — where the congressional district flipped Republican in 2018 — the discussion has centered less on Somali refugees than on Central American asylum seekers, who Trump warned were “invading” the United States ahead of the midterm.

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Father Jim Callahan took to the pulpit at St. Mary’s Church to defend the migrants. As he delivered his sermon, boos echoed off the stained glass windows. A parishioner’s son, in town for the holiday, was heckling him.

Another man approached Callahan after a different sermon on immigration and threatened to kill him, the priest recalled. And a stranger at a gas station spit in his face.

“They can call it whatever they want,” Callahan, 69, said of the opposition to expanding the school system, “but the bottom line is that it is racism.”

Members of Citizens for Progress says their concerns are purely financial at a time when farmers are already hurting from flood-damaged crops and the trade war with China.

“On a weekly basis I’m told I hate children,” said Bosma, 37, whose kids go to a private Christian school. “I’m just a young guy trying to make a living for myself and put food on the table for my family. I look at the bank account at end of the month and say, can I afford another $200 in property taxes this year?”

Brink also insists he isn’t prejudiced. His own grandparents were immigrants from Holland, and his parents spoke some Dutch. But he doesn’t believe Worthington should be a destination for the undocumented.

“I wish they would have another ICE raid,” he said. “They need to get rid of the illegals.”

The 15-year-old sat near the classroom window, her belly nearly touching the desk in front of her.

She hadn’t known she was pregnant when she left Honduras in February, after the father who’d left her behind as a baby called to tell her to join him and his new family in America. Then she’d started throwing up in her hotel room in southern Mexico.

She’d thought about turning back, back to the boyfriend who had begged her to stay.

Instead, she continued north, crossing the Rio Grande in a raft before spending two days in a Texas Border Patrol facility and a month in a Florida shelter.

Now she was 3,000 miles from home, back in school and about to give birth.

“I want to learn a little bit more about you guys,” her teacher said, first in English, then Spanish.

When it was her turn, the girl gave her name and said she’d arrived four months ago. She didn’t mention that her child was a boy or that she wanted to name him after the dad he might never meet.

She had worried she’d be surrounded by kids who didn’t speak her language. Instead, she found herself in a class with 14 Guatemalans and two Salvadorans.

Sitting across the room, the 16-year-old from Guatemala was one of the last to speak.

She was the shy youngest child of maize farmers in the western highlands who were too poor to send her to school. It had been three years since she sat in a classroom. Asked about the best part of her first day, she would later say simply: “Learning.”

She lived in what had once been a nice house near the school where the intricate crown molding was now crumbling and the wallpaper was coming off in sheets. But instead of sharing her bed with siblings, she now had her own room. The older sister who’d brought her here had decorated it with paper orchids to remind her of home.

The teacher asked the class to create name tags emblazoned with words representing them.

The pregnant girl wrote “Math,” her favorite subject.

At 1:15 p.m., she left early for a medical appointment. The doctor told her the baby was healthy but the girl cried anyway, thinking of her boyfriend.

At 2:50 p.m., the 16-year-old walked out of school with a new friend. The two girls had grown up a few miles from one another in Guatemala but only met in America, where they now live a block apart.

As they strolled home, they passed Guatemalan ladies in lawn chairs waiting for their children and an elderly white couple sitting on their porch. They oppose the referendum to expand the schools.

“We can’t afford the taxes,” the woman said later, even though she works part-time at the middle school and knows the classrooms are overcrowded.

“Half the town is illegal,” added her 80-year-old husband, an oxygen tube in his nose.

Across town, Don Brink was picking up kids at the middle school, which is 20 percent white.

He earns $83 a day from the bus route. But as he drove through the town that immigrants had revived, listening to oldies, he thought only of what has been lost. And he worried that this time, the referendum would pass.

In a news conference following the signing, the two leaders praised one another but didn’t offer many details on the agreement.

Mr. McAleenan said that the pact will help build El Salvador’s asylum capacity—which is known to be almost nonexistent—and that the U.S. may seek to return migrants from third countries there in the future, though he didn’t elaborate on how such a system might work.

El Salvador, under pressure from the Trump administration, has already deployed 1,100 troops and immigration officers to its border with Guatemala.

It couldn’t be determined what, if anything, the Salvadoran government secured in return. The country’s popular new president, 38-year-old Nayib Bukele, has asked the Trump administration for more help to resettle deported migrants, along with more temporary U.S. worker visas for Salvadorans.

The Salvadoran government has also been pushing for the U.S. to grant permanent legal status to the 200,000 Salvadorans living in the U.S. under a program called Temporary Protected Status, which the administration has ended.

“The main issue is to protect our people that are forced to flee the country,” Ms. Hill said. “We are talking about giving them more security and increasing legal alternatives for safe migration.”

The Friday deal forms another plank of President Trump’s regional strategy to force asylum seekers to look for refuge in countries other than the U.S. The Mexican government has agreed to drastically step up border enforcement on its own southern border, contributing to a drop in border crossers coming to the U.S. in the last couple months.

Border Crisis: What’s Happened and What Comes Next
Border Crisis: What’s Happened and What Comes Next
As the migrant crisis on the U.S. border with Mexico intensifies, government agency leaders have been invited to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Here’s a look at the conditions drawing scrutiny and the answers lawmakers will be seeking. Photo: AFP
The deal doesn’t qualify as a safe-third-country agreement, where two countries agree that their respective counterparts are safe enough and have strong enough asylum systems so that if a migrant enters one of the countries first, they must apply for asylum in that country. Currently, the U.S. has just one safe-third-country agreement, with Canada.

In July, the Trump administration struck another safe-third-country agreement with Guatemala. The agreement has yet to be implemented.

Guatemala, like El Salvador, carries the State Department’s second-highest travel-safety warning, advising most Americans to reconsider travel there.

El Salvador’s murder rate fell by more than half between 2015 and 2018, to 50.3 homicides per 100,000 people, according to the Igarapé Institute, a think tank in Brazil that tracks global violence. That still ranks El Salvador as one of the most dangerous countries in the world, leading some refugee advocates to say it isn’t a well-suited destination for people fleeing violence.

The administration is pushing to strike similar agreements with the governments of Honduras and Panama. An agreement with Honduras could be announced within weeks, officials said.

Mr. Trump this year threatened to cut off humanitarian aid to what is known as the Northern Triangle —El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—sparking criticism from some members of Congress who said the move would only exacerbate the crises that push migrants north. The government has since reversed some of those cuts, but the State Department has said most projects in those countries won’t be funded going forward.

Why Trump’s Threat to Cut Central America Aid May Be Counterproductive
Why Trump’s Threat to Cut Central America Aid May Be Counterproductive
President Trump said the U.S. will end Central American aid as thousands of migrants march toward the U.S. border. The WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib explains why this might be counterproductive. Photo: Getty
The administration has also made it nearly impossible for refugees to win asylum cases in the U.S. after the Supreme Court allowed it to move forward last week with a new policy disqualifying any applicants who traveled through a third country en route to the U.S. The policy still faces lower-court challenges.

El Salvador has a barely functional asylum system in place. Just 48 people have been granted asylum in the tiny Central American nation by the end of 2018, according to the United Nations refugee agency, while there were 18 pending applications.

By contrast, the U.N. agency estimates some 71,500 Salvadorans have been internally displaced by widespread violence. Around 46,800 Salvadorans sought asylum world-wide in 2018, ranking the nation sixth among countries of origin for new asylum seekers, according to the U.N.

“El Salvador has an emerging asylum system that reflects the low demand. That’s why there is no so much infrastructure right now to handle a possible higher flow,” said Giovanni Bassu, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative for Central America and Cuba. “To build [a more robust asylum system] in El Salvador won’t be easy or quick.”

—Robbie Whelan contributed to this article.

HOUSTON — President Trump played second fiddle on Sunday to Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, at a boisterous cultural rally in which the American president was technically just an invited guest.

But never one to let a good crowd go to waste, Mr. Trump treated the giant gathering at NRG Stadium in Houston as his own, declaring that “you have never had a better friend as president than President Donald Trump, that I can tell you.”

Tens of thousands of Indian-Americans gathered to celebrate the recent re-election of India’s fiery populist leader at an event cheekily called “Howdy, Modi!” Big screens throughout the stadium displayed the face of the prime minister, who arrived to thunderous cheers on a red carpet.

There were no Trump signs in the crowd, as there would be at one of his “Make America Great Again” rallies. And the president mostly stuck to his prepared remarks as the crowd of mostly Indian-Americans responded with polite applause.

Mr. Trump praised Mr. Modi, marveling that some 600 million people voted in India’s recent elections. “That’s a lot of people,” the president said, adding that Indian-Americans enrich the culture of the United States and that the two nations are “grounded in our common values.”

But he mostly seized on his own rally themes, bragging about slashing regulations, lowering unemployment, implementing a tax cut and hardening the nation’s borders against “those who would threaten our security.”

“There are those in Washington who would raid your health care to fund free benefits to those who enter our country illegally,” he said, previewing his attacks on Democrats during the presidential campaign. “I will never allow politicians to take away your health care or give it to illegal immigrants.”

The rally brought together two leaders with similar styles. Both rose to power by embracing right-wing populism, portraying themselves as champions of the masses fighting against an entrenched establishment. Both presented voters with a vision to make their respective countries “great again,” and both have fanned tensions along religious, economic and social fault lines.

Mr. Modi, who is in the United States for a week largely to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York, won a landslide re-election in May. But Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi are also both polarizing figures among the people they lead. While many Indians see Mr. Modi as a strong, decisive leader, a small but vocal minority say he is becoming an autocrat, rapidly consolidating power, going after political enemies inside his country and sowing division between Hindus and Muslims.

In the United States, Mr. Trump is preparing to run for re-election in a bitterly divided country with polls regularly showing him receiving well short of 50 percent support. His participation in Sunday’s rally with Mr. Modi offered a chance to woo a constituency — the four million American residents of Indian descent — whose support could prove helpful.

Mr. Modi delivered in English an over-the top introduction of Mr. Trump, declaring that the president’s name is “familiar to every person on the planet” and “comes up in almost every conversation in the world on global politics.”

Standing next to Mr. Modi, the president beamed with pleasure as the prime minister delivered a twist on his own election slogan: “Abki baar Trump sarkar” or “This time, a Trump government.”

But earning votes from Indian-Americans will not be easy for Mr. Trump, even with Mr. Modi by his side.

Indian-Americans have supported both Democrats and Republicans in the past, though they have gravitated away from Mr. Trump’s party more recently. Although the president’s tax and economic policies appeal to many Indians, his tough stance on immigration, including legal immigrants from India, has caused great angst, especially in Silicon Valley, which relies heavily on Indian workers who come on H-1B visas.

An overwhelming majority of Indian-American voters are registered as Democrats and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

M.R. Rangaswami, the founder of Indiaspora, a group that tries to organize Indian-Americans, said events like Sunday’s rally help the community become more relevant in the United States. He said Mr. Trump’s appearance here was an opportunity to increase his 14 percent showing among Indian-Americans in 2016.

“He could hope he could change some minds,” Mr. Rangaswami said. “It could happen.”

Mr. Trump crowed last week that his decision to join Mr. Modi at the event on Sunday enlarged the crowd at the stadium, which can hold up to about 70,000 people.

“I have a very good relationship with Prime Minister Modi. By the way, great relationship with Pakistan and with India,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One several days ahead of the Modi event. “But he’s got a big crowd coming, and I guess the crowd just got a lot bigger because they just announced — he asked would I go, and I will go.”

Mr. Trump’s appearance at the event, which was followed by a stop with the Australian prime minister at an Ohio recycled packaging plant owned by an Australian company, comes as his administration is finalizing plans for a modest trade deal with India. That step that would help resolve earlier tensions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi over India’s trade balance with the United States and other trade issues.

The trade agreement, which could be finalized by the two leaders as soon as this week, is expected to help American farmers and manufacturers by eliminating Indian restrictions on electronics, medical devices and a few agricultural goods. In return, Mr. Trump would restore a special trade status for developing countries, something the president stripped from India this year.

Resolving a nettlesome trade dispute with India presents Mr. Trump with an opportunity for a public relations victory amid increasing frustration over his global trade wars with China and other countries.

Mr. Modi, 69, is at his best outside India. He has prioritized, more than any other Indian leader in recent decades, India’s brand around the world and projected an image of a muscular India, an emerging superpower. He travels all across Asia, he was the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel, he has journeyed across Africa and during a visit to New York in 2014 he packed Madison Square Garden with ecstatic crowds cheering: “Modi! Modi! Modi!”

He has come a long way. Years ago, he was banned by American authorities from even entering the United States because of allegations that as chief minister in Gujarat in the early 2000s he was responsible for an explosion of religiously driven violence that claimed more than 1,000 lives, most of them Muslim.

The goal of this trip is to attract investment to India, and there is a little extra urgency: India’s economy is suffering its biggest downturn in years. Mr. Modi is also eager to shore up diplomatic support. But a controversy threatens to cast a shadow over his visit.

Human rights groups and three Nobel Peace Prize winners have criticized the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a prestigious award they plan to bestow upon Mr. Modi this week. The peace activists say that under Mr. Modi’s leadership, “India has descended into dangerous and deadly chaos that has consistently undermined human rights.”

A group of protesters gathered in Houston on Sunday to denounce Mr. Modi.

But Mr. Modi has typically drawn strong support from the Indian diaspora, even those who disagree with some of his domestic policies, because he has been so successful at burnishing India’s image on the world stage.

In one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest moves as president, days after his inauguration, he revived the deportation program known as Secure Communities.

Proponents argue that it helps prevent crime and also increases the police’s ability to solve crime through collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. But a new study from the University of California, Davis, has cast doubt on the ability of Secure Communities to do either.

The program, involving cooperation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local police departments, began under George W. Bush in 2008. President Obama expanded it drastically during his first term but in 2014 discontinued it.

Jurisdictions across the country rolled out the program in varying ways. Some places had few or no deportations; in others, deportations approached or even exceeded half a percent of the local population. Some introduced the program as early as 2008, while others didn’t begin until 2013.

The nationwide examination of over a thousand local areas before and after they adopted Secure Communities found a consistent outcome: Places that deported the most appeared no safer than those that deported the fewest.

Researchers compared deportations data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University with crime rates from the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Reporting program, finding no relationship between deportations and crime. They also saw no effect of deportations on violent or property crime, regardless of how aggressive deportations were in a given area.

Crime has been declining in many areas across the country for decades, and it continued to do so under Secure Communities. If deportation were an effective crime-prevention method, places that deported the most would display larger decreases in crime than other areas. No trends like that were observed.

But crime data is notoriously noisy, and dependent on a complex range of factors, potentially masking real trends. To counteract some of these possible confounding factors, the authors of the paper took advantage of the program’s staggered rollout to produce data with widely varying conditions.

This natural experiment, in conjunction with models controlling for a variety of demographic and socioeconomic factors, was used to help isolate the potential effect of deportation policy from overall factors and trends in the country. It found no link between higher deportation rates and lower crime.

Nashville introduced one of the most aggressive versions of Secure Communities, starting gradually in 2010. By the program’s end in 2014, more than 1,600 people in the city had been deported — almost half a percent of its working-age population.

Since Mr. Trump’s restarting of the program in 2017, the situation for Nashville’s undocumented immigrants has only gotten worse, said Mary Kathryn Harcombe, a lawyer and legal director at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. She recalled the effect on local law enforcement of Mr. Trump’s early policy memos shifting deportation priorities away from those convicted of serious crimes.

“There was no prioritizing,” she said. “Everybody is fair game. The use of the criminal justice system was no longer based on the concept of, somebody who has committed a crime is more dangerous — it was simply a dragnet system.”

Blurring enforcement priorities heightens the risk of deportation for those with minor convictions, including for misdemeanors like traffic offenses; for violations related only to immigration status, like an overstayed visa; and for those charged with a crime but not convicted. Before Secure Communities was discontinued, a tenth of a percent of Nashville’s working age population had been deported as a result of minor violations — a rate higher than that in 97 percent of areas nationwide.

The immigration debate in the Nashville area has drawn national attention. In 2008, a routine traffic stop led to the arrest of Juana Villegas, who was nine months pregnant and turned out to be driving without a license and to have previously been deported. Detained for almost a week, she gave birth in custody, cuffed to a hospital bed much of the time.

This summer, neighbors and activists formed a human chain around a man and his 12-year-old son to keep away ICE officers seeking to apprehend them in their vehicle. More recently, an ICE agent opened fire after approaching a truck in a grocery store parking lot. The driver, who an ICE spokesman said had been previously deported, was shot twice as he tried to drive away, and later turned himself in to authorities. The F.B.I., which is investigating, said it had not yet arrested or charged the man.

The Nashville-Davidson County Sheriff’s Office expressed support for cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. “We believe if someone is criminally active in the community and also wanted by ICE, it is responsible to cooperate,” Karla West, the office’s chief of staff, said via email. “We will continue to bring a balanced, responsible approach to this subject regardless of the political environment.”

Throughout, a coalition of city policymakers, lawyers and immigrant advocates have battled to disentangle the city’s government agencies from ICE operations. They’ve called on the Nashville sheriff to stop renting bed space for ICE detention. They’ve also asked local agencies to limit their employees from sharing information about custody, release dates or court appearances — and to stop complying with ICE detainer requests that lack a judicial warrant.

In response, Tennessee passed a bill withholding funding from any city that limits cooperation with ICE. “The state law appears to be specifically aimed at Nashville,” Ms. Harcombe said. “We are a blue island in a red sea.”

Many Americans say illegal immigration is itself a crime (it is a civil violation or a misdemeanor, depending on if a person overstayed a visa or crossed the border without authorization). And some say undocumented immigrants are unlikely to report crimes committed against them by other undocumented immigrants.

But the study’s findings are consistent with literature suggesting that deporting immigrants would not be an effective way to address crime. Research demonstrates that immigrants over all and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to be arrested than the native-born population; that both are less likely to be incarcerated; and that immigration does not raise an area’s local crime rates (neither does undocumented immigration).

The paper also evaluated claims that Secure Communities could help the police solve crimes more effectively through information sharing. Comparing clearance rates — the rates at which reported crimes are marked as resolved by the police — again showed no effect. Crimes were solved at similar rates regardless of the aggressiveness of deportations in an area.

Relative to the rest of the country, overall crime in Nashville before Secure Communities and after the program was similar. Still, surveys show one in five Nashville residents are in favor of deportations, one of the strongest shows of support in the country.

As arguments rage in cities across the country over the role of local police in Mr. Trump’s immigration operations, the administration has escalated deportations in recent months. The justification often used is to keep communities safe.

Researchers said an evaluation of the data that already exists was the best way to resolve this question and guide the future of deportation policy. Giovanni Peri, a professor of economics at U.C. Davis, wrote the study with Annie Laurie Hines, a graduate student in the U.C. Davis economics department, while both were research fellows at TRAC. “The motivation was, let’s try to learn from the past,” he said.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for its newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. Anna Flagg is a senior data reporter for The Marshall Project.

In his 70s, the writer embarks on one of the great adventures of a traveling life, a solo road trip from Reynosa to Chiapas and back.

Amalia Cruz Martínez, a member of the Zapotec indigenous group, walks towards the town of San Marcos Tlapazola, near Oaxaca.CreditCreditCesar Rodriguez

By Paul Theroux

Photographs by Cesar Rodriguez

Sept. 23, 2019Updated 5:58 a.m. ET
In the casual opinion of most Americans, I am an old man, and therefore of little account, past my best, fading in a pathetic diminuendo while flashing his AARP card, a gringo in his degringolade. Naturally, I am insulted by this, but out of pride I don’t let my indignation show. My work is my reply, my travel is my defiance.

Sometimes, a single person, met casually on a journey, can be a powerful inspiration. I happened to be in Nogales, Mexico, to talk to migrants — and on that visit I saw a middle-aged woman praying before her meal in a shelter. She was Zapotec, from a mountain village in Oaxaca state, and had left her three young children with her mother, intending to enter the United States and (so she said) become a menial in a hotel somewhere and send money back to her family who were living in poverty. But she had become lost in the desert, and spotted by the Border Patrol, seized and roughed up and dumped in Nogales. The image of her praying did not leave my mind and it strengthened my resolve to take a trip throughout Mexico, but concentrating on Oaxaca, one of the poorest states; and on my trip whenever I felt obstructed or low, I thought of this valiant woman, and moved on.

I studied the map. I had no status except my age, but in a country where the old are respected, that was enough — more than enough.

So I took an improvisational road trip along the border and the length of Mexico, from the frontier to Chiapas, with the kind of excitement I felt as a young man. One of the greatest adventures of my traveling life, this trip on the plain of snakes (as I thought of it) was enlightening and pleasurable, Mexico’s splendors vastly outweighing its miseries, and, though I had been warned repeatedly beforehand, I did not die.

I had begun my trip in a mood of dejection and self-pity, feeling shunned, overlooked, ignored, rejected — easily identifying with migrants and Mexicans, who knew the feeling of being despised. I’d hoped the trip would be salutary, a cure of my sour mood, and so it proved. I was uplifted, smiling when I set off for home, my hand on my heart, promising to return. In my time in Mexico I’d made many friends with Mexican writers, spoken at a number of literary and political events, and found a Mexican publisher. One of the greatest thrills in travel is to know the satisfaction of arrival, and to find oneself among friends.

ImageA Mexican Army patrol along the border between Mexico and the United States in territory where the drug cartels dominate.
A Mexican Army patrol along the border between Mexico and the United States in territory where the drug cartels dominate.
Now, making my way home to the United States,I took the migrant route all the way north, except instead of riding on top of a rattling boxcar of the train known as the Beast, or in a clanking bus or a narco van, I was speeding in my own car, leaving San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern state of Chiapas. “I’m going to miss San Cristóbal,” a man says in Charles Portis’s novel “Gringos.” “This place is cool and pleasant the year round, a fat man’s dream.”

The autopista was closed — I was waved back by a policeman — so I took the old winding road on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre del Sur, the narrow track that had been cleared by the Dominican friars from Oaxaca in their pursuit of converts, and the conquistadors in search of gold.

The road hugged the high slopes, sometimes obscured in cloud, in sunny places allowing glimpses into lush valleys below, so deep they seemed like abysses. For many years this slow track was the main road in and out of San Cristóbal, and was still known as the Carretera Internacional, because it leads to Guatemala and beyond; but the new, straighter autopista superseded it in 2006. The only town on this old winding road was Navenchauc, a community of low square houses, most of them made of rough unpainted cement blocks, lining mongrel-haunted lanes.

From the cold 6,000-foot heights of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the road twisted down 4,000 feet through the forest to the heat of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, then dropped 2,000 more on a straight road to the hot gusts of wind and dense humidity of the sea-level tropics, crossing from Chiapas into the state of Oaxaca. There, at a roadblock, a policeman in a sweat-stained shirt, clawing the air, directed me off the road. He was an older man, weary-looking and yawning, scowling at my Massachusetts license plate, his manner, in the Mexican policeman way, peevish.

“Is this your car?”

“Yes. I have papers — my Vehicle Importation Permit, my insurance, my license,” I said, and began fossicking in the plump folders in my briefcase.

Something in my manner, perhaps my reciting my documentation, my fussing, wearied him further. “You can go,” he said.

At center, Macrina Mateo Martínez, a Zapotec woman, with a basket full of red clay.
I bypassed Juchitán, circumvented Tehuantepec and entered the hills, climbing back into the sierra, sun-dried, dust-blown and arid — the biscuit-brown, baked-looking mountains of upland Oaxaca.

Around midafternoon I stopped to eat in La Reforma, a small town aslant on the mountainside, scattered on both sides of the road, one building signposted Restaurante Rosa. It was a good-sized family house, the parlor furnished with two dining tables. No other diners today.

“Welcome.” Three women greeted me, three generations: an old woman at a stove, her daughter busying herself sifting maize flour, the gawky granddaughter sprawled on a wooden chair — her long legs stretched out, her feet on the arm of another chair.

“Where are you going?” the old woman asked. We spoke in Spanish.

“The border,” I said. “To the United States.”

“Take me with you!” she cried out, and gripped my arm.

“What will you do there?”

“I can cook. I can clean your house. I can look after you. Take me with you — take me away from here. I don’t care where you come from. I want to go there.” She let go of my arm to stand aside and put on a pleading face that was also intentionally clownish. “Please come back for me.”

Her daughter by now had made me the quesadilla I’d asked for, and brought it on a plate with a cup of black coffee. The granddaughter was laughing softly, wagging her bare brown feet. She was languid and beautiful, with a long, sallow Modigliani face, sharp eyes and slender fingers.

“How old are you?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Twelve.”

Provoked by my question, the old woman’s daughter — the girl’s mother — approached me and sized me up. “How old are you, señor?” “Adivina.” Take a guess.

She studied me, she did not speak, she cocked her head, pursed her lips, and pressed a finger to her cheek, in actressy reflection, liking the suspense she was creating.

“Seventy-six,” she said. Tilting her head back, looking haughty, she was triumphant.

“But I’m a cabrón,” I said, thumping my chest.

They shrieked, because the word had a belittling meaning here, not “dude,” as I had meant, but “dickhead.”

From left, Alberta Mateo Sánchez, Amalia Cruz Martínez and Macrina Mateo Martínez, in the mountains of San Marcos Tlapazona looking for red clay.
I spent two days in San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, outside Oaxaca city, and then I left at sunup and drove down the dirt road past the agave and garlic fields onto the main road and beyond Oaxaca and Etla. There was no blockade at siege-prone Nochixtlán, where the teachers’ union had regularly been holding protests and where the footbridge still bore the slogan of the demonstration I had happened on earlier, “Justice and Rights for All People,” and the rusted, burned-out bus still lay where I had last seen it.

The deep ravines of the Mixteca Alta, farther on, were the most dramatic, the emptiest, I’d seen in Mexico. High peaks rose to the southwest, and deep down, the river looked black from this height, and the valley lay in shadow. At a steep part of the road, I saw a small boy, no more than 9 or 10, treading close to the curb, balancing a bundle of slender, eight-foot bamboo poles on his shoulder — no houses or side roads anywhere, the small, solitary figure with his awkward burden.

The first time I’d driven near here, I’d had to detour into the countryside, slewing and skidding on goopy rain-sodden roads in slurries of mud, through a thunderstorm with three hitchhikers. But today I was speeding, going faster when the road flattened nearer Puebla. Next to the highway, always the signs of old Mexico, goatherds shuffled in the tall grass beyond the guardrails, the goats kicking up dust.

In the dark back streets of Matehuala, looking for a place to stay, I remembered the friendly motel, Las Palmas, where I’d slept on the way south: behind a strong fence, secure for my car, with clean rooms and local food.

“You are coming from?” the clerk at the reception desk asked. She was tall, in a tailored suit that was perhaps her uniform.

I told her Oaxaca.

“Did you eat grasshoppers?”

“Lots of them. Ants, too. Very tasty.”

She pursed her lips. “We have better food here.”

Cabuches were in season, the buds of the biznaga (or barrel) cactus, like baby Brussels sprouts. I had a plate of them, and the other Matehuala specialty again, cabrito al horno, baby goat baked with the skin on, tender and slimy.

The waiter, Hilário, asked me whether I was going north. I said yes.

“Don’t go through Reynosa. It’s bad there.”

“I was planning to go that way.”

“No.” He was firm. “My home is in Monterrey. I know Reynosa is dangerous right now. Especially this week.”

“What about Ciudad Alemán?”

“Better, I think.”

The almost empty streets of the border city of Reynosa, where the drug cartels control much of the city.
Driving through the small settlements in the heat and glare the next day — every building and every road sign, even the shepherds and the women and children carrying bundles, all coated with a fine film of dust — a feeling of melancholy descended on me. I guessed this was because of the self I remembered from being here long before, the dejected man who had no idea where he was going. But I was a different person now, because I knew where I had been. Instead of being purified by suffering — sometimes the consequence of a travel ordeal — I had made friends on the road and that had lifted my spirits.

I had marveled at this desert landscape on my trip south; it still bewitched me with its stark beauty and unexpected wildness. Taking a side route away from Saltillo, I found myself circling the steep, gravelly brown mountains that serve as the dramatic backdrop to Monterrey, so simple and shapely, with sharp peaks and knifelike ridgelines, such an amazing eruption of sierra, yet so close to the flat land of Texas just north.

From this simplicity and rugged beauty I saw the density of Monterrey in its populous valley, the confusion of roads, the sun beating down on the mass of white, flat-topped houses that looked hot and Moroccan. I headed east and then north along the edge of Monterrey, through industrial suburbs and fenced compounds of bleak tenements, east to Cadereyta Jiménez — notorious for gangs — to Cerralvo (a restaurant, a gas pump), following signs to Ciudad Mier.

The road north was flat and straight through the fields of mesquite and tall grass, sparsely inhabited, only a few roadside villages and very few other cars.

Fiddling with the radio in my car, I heard music from a Monterrey station, classical music I had not heard anywhere else in Mexico, and happened upon a lovely piece (violin, cello, piano) I’d heard before, but couldn’t name. This sweet soundtrack soothed me and sped me onward, past the tall grass and twisted trees.

Long before, in Ciudad Alemán, on my traverse of the border, a shopkeeper had said to me, “Don’t go outside town. Twenty miles away are the ranchitos, and the mafia.”

I was traveling in the area of the ranchitos and the mafia now. It was around here, so the shopkeeper had suggested, the cartels were located. Looking closely at passing buildings, I saw no people, just broken windows, empty stores, abandoned houses and collapsed fences, suggesting fear and chaos.

“And that was the Notturno in E-flat Major by Franz Schubert,” the woman on the Monterrey radio station said as the music ended.

There were not many big houses — perhaps three in the hundred miles from Monterrey — but each fancy villa seemed to represent drug money.

A woman walks along the border in Tijuana.
At a road junction near the town of Mier I stopped to let a truck pass and was surrounded by eight youths pressing their faces against my windows.

“What’s up?”

Shaking a tin can at me, one boy said, “We’re collecting money for the Queen of the Day.”

I put some coins in the can and said, “Where’s the queen?”

A girl pushed past the boys and smiled at me. She wore a black, lacy see-through blouse, tightfitting shorts, and — on this hot back street in Nuevo León — white patent-leather high heels. She placed a hand on each cheek, tilted her head like a stage coquette and pouted moodily.

“I am the queen,” she said. Her fingernails were sparkly against her cheeks.

I asked the boys, “Which of you have been to the United States?”

Two of them said they had been across, to the Texas town of Roma, about six miles away. The torment of Ciudad Mier, suffering in its dust and neglect, was that the fabulous kingdom of money was just down the street and over the narrow river.

I was exhilarated as I set off, but a blocked road and a detour sign sent me into a deserted village, where I began to worry — a dirt road, no signs, ruined buildings, like driving into the sort of entrapment I’d been warned about. I kept on, fretting, until I saw a paved road in the distance, and took it. A mile or so farther on, the curio shops, the taqueria where I’d once had a meal, the shop where I’d seen a pear-shaped, orange-haired piñata in the shape of Donald Trump, the plaza where I’d had a shoeshine.

Although Texas was just across the river, no gringos circulated here. I was hungry, so I went back to the taqueria. Then I bought an ice cream. I sat in the plaza and had my shoes shined, savoring the delay.

But when I told the shoeshine man, Héctor, the route I had come, he said, “You’re very lucky.”

Image
An abandoned church on the outskirts of Reynosa.
An abandoned church on the outskirts of Reynosa.
I didn’t think much about that remark. Without a hitch I crossed the international bridge to Roma. A boy on a Jet Ski skidded in circles on the Rio Grande below the bridge. I had taken a simple detour from Monterrey, as Hilário had suggested in Matehuala, a safe back road through the eastern suburbs of Monterrey and Cadereyta Jiménez.

But “You’re very lucky” preyed on my mind. And later I researched the recent history of the area and found that Route 54 was strategic for human and drug smuggling, that this whole border state of Nuevo León had become a battlefield on which the Zetas and the Gulf cartel vied for dominance. Kidnappings and mayhem were common; in the manufacturing town of Cadereyta Jiménez (broom factory, oil refinery, workers’ tenements) five municipal employees were massacred in 2012, and in the same year, in San Juan, a town just 75 miles southwest of Roma, 49 bodies were discovered dumped on the federal highway I’d traveled, all of them decapitated and dismembered, all of them young men, and none of them (because of the butchery) easily identifiable.

Yes, I was lucky — incredibly so. Lucky in the people I met, lucky in the friends I made, lucky even in my mishaps, my always emerging unharmed, with a tale to tell. More than 50 years of this, ever the fortunate traveler.

I’d arrived safely in Roma, but I was not done. I needed to apply for a refund on my Vehicle Importation Permit, and renew my visa in case I wanted to reenter Mexico. So I drove along the Texas side of the border to McAllen and then crossed into Mexico again, to the customs office in a building just inside the Reynosa frontier.

“I can’t do any of your visa paperwork today,” the clerk said “I can give you a refund on your permit, but there’s a three-day waiting period for the visa.”

“I can’t come back in three days. I need it now.”

“This is the law.”

I pleaded a little, explaining the inconvenience.

“Maybe talk to that man.”

He indicated a man in black. I explained my dilemma. He too told me about the specified waiting period.

A stark government sign on the wall behind the man’s head cautioned me, in large black letters in two languages, “Any Attempt to Offer a Bribe or a tip to an Official is Forbidden, and Punishable by Law.”

“I realize it’s a problem,” I said, and explained that I needed it now.

He listened carefully, then beckoned me into his office, nearer the warning sign. He rifled through my papers. He looked me up and down, seeming to make a mental calculation.

“Yes. I can help you,” he said in a whisper. “But it will cost something.”

At such a moment the wary traveler thinks: Given the severe sign, and the willingness of the man, this must be a trap. I offer the bribe and then I am arrested for the crime of offering a bribe.

“Cuánto cuesta?” I mouthed.

Fumbling with a ballpoint pen and agitatedly clicking it, seeming with each click to adjust his calculation, he finally gripped it and wrote “180” on a small piece of paper. Just as quickly he crumpled the paper, pinched it small, and pocketed it.

“Pesos?”

He snorted a little, and “hoicked”: a Mexican negative. I turned away and covertly selected nine $20 bills from my wallet, folded and flattened them, and palmed them to him. He did not thank me. He clucked softly, a satisfying un-gumming of his sticky tongue, and made the money disappear. Then he prepared my documents and wished me a good journey.

One of the highest values that President Trump and immigration adviser Stephen Miller cherish is the goal of making it as hard as possible for desperate migrants to appeal for refuge in the United States — even if they would qualify for it under U.S. law.

Trump and Miller have gone about this in many devious ways, and one under-the-radar tactic they’ve used is to change the pre-screening process through which migrants apply to enter the asylum system, to make it harder to even get a hearing at all.

Now, however, the union for the asylum officers who administer this process is fighting back: It’s taking the unusual step of filing a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit against the administration the officers work for.

The brief from the asylum workers’ union — the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council 119, which represents hundreds of workers who run the asylum system, including conducting pre-screening interviews — condemns the new policy as arbitrary, illegal and cruel.

“These changes are contrary to U.S. and international law and cruelly place asylum seekers at risk of being returned to countries where their life or freedom may be in jeopardy,” Michael Knowles, special representative for Council 119, told me Friday.

The lawsuit in question was filed in D.C. District Court in June by two refugee groups, on behalf of five plaintiffs who failed the screening for “credible fear.” A judge temporarily blocked the removal of two of them, but the policy has gone into effect.

The lawsuit challenges the administration’s changes to what’s known as the “credible fear” interview, the first threshold for migrants requesting asylum. It’s supposed to determine whether they have a chance of eventually qualifying, and if they pass it, they enter the system to await a formal hearing before a judge.

The new policy changes the “lesson plan” used by hundreds of asylum officers, with the goal of making it harder to pass that credible-fear screening. Restrictionists have long argued that this screening is too easy to pass, resulting in more people getting admitted into the system than ultimately qualify for asylum in the end.

Administration officials want to restrict asylum-seeking because they claim large percentages of those who pass the test disappear into the interior and don’t show up for hearings. But the most up-to-date numbers debunk that claim.

The lawsuit argues that the new policy requires asylum officers to demand that migrants present a factual record demonstrating a significant possibility of future persecution upfront, when they may not have access to one, rather than merely demonstrating a significant possibility of prevailing at the eventual hearing, as under current law.

“Under the law, asylum seekers only have to show at the credible-fear stage that they have a significant possibility of establishing eligibility for asylum,” Justin Cox, senior supervising attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project, a group behind the lawsuit along with RAICES, told me. “This lesson plan tried to raise the standard Congress created.”

Now the asylum workers’ union has filed a brief for the plaintiffs. This is not typical: The union has done this a couple times before, most recently filing a brief against Trump’s policy of forcing migrants to remain in Mexico. As The Post’s Maria Sacchetti noted at the time, this constituted an “unusual public rebuke of a sitting president by his own employees.”

Remarkably, that’s now happening again.

The union’s brief points out that there is a moral and humanitarian reason that the initial credible-fear screening should be easier to pass, relative to the final hearing. At that initial stage, migrants just concluded “harrowing journeys,” are held in detention, aren’t expected to have access to lawyers and won’t have adequate representation.

Given those realities, the brief notes, making the credible-fear screening relatively easy is needed to avoid denying entry to the system (and an eventual hearing) to people who actually will end up meriting asylum. Thus, the brief argues, making the screening harder is not “consistent with Due Process.”

The change in the lesson plan is not a small matter. As the brief notes, it is tampering with asylum officers’ ability to ensure that those exercising their legal right to apply for asylum are treated in keeping with “domestic law and the United States’ treaty obligations.”

The new standard, the brief acidly notes, “impermissibly raises the burden of proof for credible fear determinations” for people who have “crossed the border with nothing more than the shirts on their backs and are then detained.”

It remains to be seen how far this lawsuit gets. But for now, it’s notable that asylum officers are again publicly challenging the administration. It’s another indication of a brewing asylum officers’ rebellion against Trump’s policies: Several recently told Molly O’Toole that they were deeply unnerved over sending asylum seekers back to Mexico, with one lamenting: “I hope they’re alive.”

All this is yet another reminder that for Trump and Miller, the overarching goal is to reduce the numbers of immigrants legally here — even or especially if it means preventing people from getting a fair hearing who would otherwise qualify for asylum. To Trump and Miller, blocking that from happening is a feature, not a bug.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Department of Justice were back in federal court Friday over the separation of families at the border.

The ACLU says that the government has violated a June 2018 injunction that put a stop to family separations and has separated a thousand more families since then.

They believe that the government is using the criminal history of parents to justify their separation from their children, even if the conduct was relatively minor.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt spoke outside of the courthouse shortly after the two-hour hearing in front of Judge Dana Sabraw.

“The government has now separated more than a thousand children, many just babies and toddlers after the court told them to stop doing it last summer,” Gelernt told KPBS.

“The government’s claim is that they had to separate because the parent was a danger to their child. What we’ve learned from the government’s own record is that they’re separating for theft offenses, DUI’s, the most minor crimes that would never suggest a parent is a danger to their child.”

The ACLU is hoping Sabraw will find that the families separated since the initial injunction must now be reunited with their children.

Lawyers from the justice department argued in court that, under the injunction, they were allowed to separate families based on criminal histories. They said that under the ACLU’s interpretation of the injunction, they would not be able to separate a parent with sex abuse convictions from their child.

Before the June 2018 injunction, nearly 3,000 families were separated at the border.

ISLA PERICO, El Salvador — The offer was befuddling: A little over a year ago, families living on Isla Perico, a speck of an island in a destitute corner of El Salvador, were offered $7,000 each to pack up and move to the mainland.

The islanders were told their move was necessary to help achieve China’s plan for turning a downtrodden patch of Central America into a global trade hub and manufacturing powerhouse.

But they steadfastly refused, doubting that they would benefit from any bonanza the Chinese could bring.

“Where would we go?” said Mercedes Hernández, cradling a 1-year-old baby. “We have a life here.”

Over the months that followed, the island’s roughly 35 families would become unlikely participants in a struggle between Beijing and Washington, which wants to stop the Chinese from gaining a strategic foothold in a tiny impoverished nation that sits on its doorstep.

American officials in El Salvador went on the offensive to thwart China’s foray, painting Beijing as an untrustworthy partner with hidden motives.

For most of the past decade, the United States watched with unease as much of Latin America was pulled into China’s orbit through a growing network of trade and loans — which Washington did little to confront.

ImageChina “advances its own agenda with little regard for the long-term economic prospects” of developing nations, said Jean Manes, until recently the American ambassador in El Salvador
China “advances its own agenda with little regard for the long-term economic prospects” of developing nations, said Jean Manes, until recently the American ambassador in El SalvadorCreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
As China presented itself as a partner with a vision for El Salvador’s future, President Trump may have played into China’s hands, his critics say. The Trump administration initially countered China with little beyond threats to the Central American nation and its neighbors for not doing enough to curb migration, one of the president’s signature issues.

But then the United States took another tack: trying to turn public opinion in El Salvador against the Chinese.

American officials criticized China’s legacy in the developing world in several interviews, meetings with opinion makers and posts on social media. At one point, the American ambassador went as far as suggesting China could be seeking to establish a military post in the country.

“China’s agreements with El Salvador have been negotiated by a small group of individuals, behind closed doors and without the involvement of the public or representatives from the key sectors affected by those agreements,” said Jean Manes, the recently departed American ambassador in El Salvador, who was given rare leeway to publicly criticize China’s plans.

China, she said, “advances its own agenda with little regard for the long-term economic prospects for or environmental impact on developing countries.”

The American warnings, and the resistance of Isla Perico’s families, helped thwart China’s plans — at least for the time being. Measures that would have allowed China to proceed stalled in El Salvador’s legislature.

The entrance of the building once used as the Embassy of Taiwan in San Salvador, now abandoned.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
Ou Jianhong, China’s ambassador in El Salvador, declined several interview requests and the embassy did not respond to emailed questions. In an interview with Xinhua, China’s state news agency, Ms. Ou called Washington’s warnings “irresponsible and unfounded.”

The offer to create a special zone in El Salvador, by a Chinese state-owned company called Asia-Pacific Xuanhao, was summarized in a document called “Shared Opportunities, Shared Future.” A copy was reviewed by The New York Times.

The deal would allow China to advance its quest to establish an alternative trade route to the Panama Canal, and enhance its ability to shape commerce in the region.

The special zone also would give China a valuable perch to expand its military and intelligence capabilities in Washington’s vicinity, according to American officials who have watched warily as Beijing has invested in at least 60 Latin American port projects.

For El Salvador, the deal came with significant trade-offs, and left several unanswered questions.

The Chinese requested a 100-year lease of a 1,076-square-mile area — 13 percent of the country’s landmass — and demanded tax exemptions for their companies that would last three decades. Details about the financing structure were not publicly disclosed, causing concern among some Salvadorans that their country risked becoming financially beholden to Beijing for generations.

But by the time the United States began its campaign against the Chinese in El Salvador last summer, the Americans had a lot of catching up to do.

A woman filling barrels in the Santa Fé neighborhood of San Martin from a truck donated by China.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
To some Trump administration critics, it was a self-inflicted wound.

While the Chinese were offering to build manufacturing plants, invest in renewable energy and make El Salvador a tourist destination, President Trump was calling migrants “animals,” and separating children from parents at the border.

“That attitude opens up space for China,” said Roberto Rubio, director of the National Foundation for Development, a research group in San Salvador, the capital. “If the United States threatens to cut our aid, treats our people poorly and brings little investment, why not go with the Chinese?”

While the Trump administration has suspended aid programs to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Ms. Ou, the ambassador, noted that China had signed 13 cooperation agreements on infrastructure, investment, science, technology, education, culture and tourism.

“The cooperation with China will not in any way turn into a debt trap, but a cake for the benefit of its two peoples,” she said in the Xinhua interview.

In early July 2018, El Salvador’s president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, gave the legislature a bill that would establish the legal framework for a special economic zone encompassing 26 municipalities along the southeastern coast.

It soon became clear the bill had been custom-made for the plan the Chinese had been quietly promoting for months. Among other conditions, it required El Salvador to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the island off the Chinese mainland where China’s former government fled in 1949 when the Chinese Communists took power.

Rebuilding El Salvador’s unused port of La Union was part of China’s grand commercial proposal.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
When Mr. Sánchez Cerén announced last August, during a televised address, that his country was breaking ties with Taiwan and establishing diplomatic relations with China, he envisioned an era that would bring “great benefits to the country and provide extraordinary opportunities.”

Chinese banks are now the dominant lenders in Latin America, having provided more than $140 billion between 2005 and 2018.

Trade between China and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean soared from $17 billion in 2002 to nearly $306 billion in 2018.

The Obama administration did little to publicly challenge China’s deepening engagement in Latin America after the Chinese in 2009 signaled their intention to expand investment and trade in a region rich in commodities and in dire need of infrastructure upgrades.

Soon after President Trump’s election in November 2016, the Chinese issued an updated policy vision for the region that was notably bolder.

The update conveyed China’s desire to build military alliances with Latin American nations and signaled its aspirations to become a guiding force on global challenges like climate change, sustainable development and cybersecurity.

Community leaders in San Alejo were wary of China’s proposal.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
As the deal was debated by Salvadoran lawmakers over the past year, the Chinese sought to win them over, inviting lawmakers and journalists on paid trips to Beijing.

They also began disbursing a $150 million assistance package.

The first gestures included buying 10 trucks for the water agency of San Salvador and donating 15,000 laptops to public schools.

Ana Guadalupe, a 56-year-old resident of the Santa Fe district in San Salvador, said water service had been sporadic and unreliable before the new trucks began deliveries Tuesdays and Saturdays.

“There were many places where there was no water,” she said on a recent afternoon as workers from the water agency used a large hose on a truck emblazoned with the Chinese flag to deliver water. “Without water we can’t live.”

Across town, Sara Cruz, a computer teacher at Francisco Morazan school, called the new Lenovo laptops her students had received transformational.

“In the past, things that were Chinese were looked down on, as being of bad quality,” she said. But the sleek laptops shared by the school’s 400 students have changed her mind. “Before we had to teach them theory instead of practice,” she said.

Casta Portillo, right, a school principal in San Salvador, with older computers that had been donated with the help of American aid. But sleek new Chinese laptops have made a big impression.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
Those gestures were not enough to overcome El Salvador’s doubts about the conditions of the deal, stoked by American criticism that the port project had been negotiated secretly. Even as China funded flashy projects that generated good will, efforts to get the special economic zone bill through Congress faltered as lawmakers expressed caution in the lead-up to the presidential election in February. Lacking support, the outgoing government never brought the bill to a vote.

Salvadoran lawmakers passed a measure last August forbidding the sale of islands to foreigners, acting in response to news that Chinese entrepreneurs were trying to acquire Isla Perico and a nearby island.

Yang Bo, a Chinese businessman who has lived in El Salvador for several years, was questioned by prosecutors about his role as the middleman in the attempted purchase of the islands.

As questions about the Chinese venture mounted, the residents of Isla Perico, who make a modest living fishing and growing watermelons, received visits from prosecutors, the governor’s office and the American Embassy.

The string of powerful visitors to their cluster of shacks strengthened the residents’ resolve to stay put.

Antonio Ferman, the mayor of San Alejo, a small town near Isla Perico, said a venture of the scale proposed by the Chinese may well create some desperately needed jobs in the area, which is hollowing out as people facing unemployment and gang violence seek to migrate to the United States. But Mr. Ferman said he doubted any benefit would be worth the impact of such a project on the artisanal fishing industry, which many families rely on, and on the region’s access to clean water.

Soccer players taking a break on Isla Perico. The island’s residents have resisted China’s plan to transform it into a commercial trading hub.CreditDaniele Volpe for The New York Times
A San Alejo resident, Esleta de Jesus Sariles, 40, said few in the region were putting much faith in the prospect of Chinese jobs, which in the best of cases could take years to create.

Like many of her neighbors who live along a winding unpaved road with a growing number of abandoned houses, she decided to head north to the United States, having raised the $7,000 smugglers requested to take her and her diabetic teenage daughter to the border.

“Nearly the whole country has emptied out,” she said. “And nearly everyone has made it through.”

Shortly before taking office on June 1, the new president, Nayib Bukele, signaled he had little appetite for grand Chinese ventures despite his promises to create jobs and attract investment.

The Chinese, he said, “go in, do projects that are not feasible, then they leave the countries with huge loans they cannot repay and use that as leverage.”

Weeks after taking power, however, he struck a different note and ruled out the possibility of switching El Salvador’s allegiance back to Taiwan. “We need to recognize China’s status in the world,” he said.

And in the long run, some American officials fear that China’s willingness to build roads, railroads and ports in the region will be impossible for El Salvador and some of its neighbors to resist.

Norma Torres, a Guatemalan-born representative from California who has become a leading voice on Central America policy on Capitol Hill, said the Trump administration’s focus on keeping migrants out will benefit China.

“They are not looking at short-term, immediate results as we do here in the United States,” Ms. Torres said. “The Chinese have focused on, ‘Where are we going to be in the next 20 years?’”

While the port deal was sidetracked, at least for the time being, it is clear the Chinese are positioning to become El Salvador’s ally of choice.

“Under the careful care of each side, the China-El Salvador relationship will, without doubt, transform from a shrub into a verdant tree,” Ms. Ou, China’s ambassador, wrote in a recent opinion piece published in a local newspaper. “The bilateral cooperation will be as fragrant and delicious as Salvadoran coffee and as sweet and tasty as the sugar of this beautiful nation!”

Gene Palumbo contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 22, 2019, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Interests and China’s Money Collide in El Salvador. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge said Friday that he was struggling with a request to more narrowly define what behavior justifies separating children from their parents at the border after complaints that the Trump administration has abused discretionary powers to split families under limited circumstances, like criminal history or questions about whether the adult is really the parent.

The American Civil Liberties Union argued the government has been separating families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions including traffic offenses. In a court filing, it reported one parent was separated for having damaged property valued at $5, and a 1-year-old was taken away after an official criticized her father for letting her sleep with a wet diaper.

Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart acknowledged some mistakes but said the government has a good system in place.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw called it a “thorny issue” and didn’t rule immediately on the ACLU’s request to intervene during a two-hour hearing, which is unusually long for him. He said a parent convicted of assault with a deadly weapon may be “the most loving, protective parent” and present no danger to the child, but is probably unfit to be held in a family immigration detention center.

“It’s a unique context,” he said.

The administration separated 955 children from their parents from June 26, 2018, when Sabraw halted the practice except in limited circumstances, to July 20, 2019. The government noted that it accounted for a tiny percentage of the more than 500,000 arrests and detentions of people who crossed the Mexican border in families during that time, suggesting restraint.

A two-page memo issued a day after Sabraw’s 2018 order by Kevin McAleenan, then Customs and Border Protection commissioner and now acting Homeland Security secretary, describes criteria for separating families, including a parent being convicted of a felony or “violent misdemeanors,” having a communicable disease or presenting “a danger to the child.”

The Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, separates families if a parent has been convicted of crimes including assault, battery, burglary, resisting arrest, hit-and-run and disorderly conduct, Lloyd Easterling, who oversees processing and prosecutions in the sector, said in a court filing last week. “Simple thefts,” fraud, minor drug or traffic offenses and driving while intoxicated without an aggravating factor generally do not result in separation.

Allegations of criminal histories or gang affiliations in another country are more challenging to prove, but biometric checks and photographic comparisons usually provide answers, Easterling said.

The two sides argued over how widely to use rapid DNA tests on adults suspected of lying that they are parents of a child. The government says expanding use of the tests, which deliver results in about 90 minutes and have been tested along the Mexican border, would pose financial and logistical obstacles.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Nine Marines at California’s Camp Pendleton base have been charged with human smuggling.

They include two riflemen who were stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents on July 3 driving from the US-Mexico border with three Mexicans in the back of a BMW.

The corps on Friday said the Marines, all lance corporals, were charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice by transporting or conspiring to transport immigrants in the country illegally.

Four other Marines who were also detained in the human smuggling investigation weren’t specifically charged with smuggling. They face other charges, including failure to obey orders, drunkenness, endangerment, larceny and perjury.

Thousands of Rohingya have quietly settled in America, but for children who fled violence in Myanmar, having their parents join them is becoming a distant hope.

Hefzur Rahman was resettled in Elk Rapids, Mich., after fleeing genocide in Myanmar.CreditCreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

ELK RAPIDS, Mich. — Not long after Hefzur Rahman enrolled at his new school in Michigan three years ago, his fifth-grade class studied the subhuman conditions that enslaved Africans endured in overcrowded ships bound for North America.

He knew what it was like to be on a boat in fear for his life, he told his classmates.

At the age of 11, he had joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing violent oppression in Myanmar, cramming onto boats piloted by smugglers. The men beat their human cargo, he recalled, and he watched desperate people drink seawater only to die of dehydration. As his boat began to sink, Hefzur tied empty water bottles around his waist and jumped into the ocean. “I thought I would pass away,” he said.

Today, Hefzur is safe, living with a foster family in small-town Michigan, where most of the boats that ply nearby Elk Lake are filled with families headed for sunny afternoons on the water.

But he stays up at night worrying about his parents, who put him on the boat leaving Myanmar not just to save his life, but also in the hope that he would help get the rest of the family out. They are still counting on him. “I feel like I am in jail,” he told his foster mother, anxious that he was spending too much time at school. “I want to work. I must send money to my family.”

About 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in the summer of 2017, and almost all of them, like Hefzur’s parents, are living in camps in neighboring Bangladesh. A few thousand have been admitted to the United States — part of a dwindling number of refugees granted resettlement under a program that President Trump has been scaling back and is expected to slash again this week.

Intent on curbing immigration, the Trump administration will admit no more than 30,000 refugees this fiscal year, the lowest number since the program’s inception in 1980. In the coming days, Mr. Trump is likely to announce another reduction for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, perhaps setting a cap as low as 10,000 refugees or suspending admissions entirely.

For much of the past century, the United States was a world leader in refugee resettlement. The government admitted hundreds of thousands of displaced people after World War II and enacted its first refugee legislation in 1948. It later took in large numbers of refugees from Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union and Cuba, and in more recent years, accepted those fleeing war and genocide in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Adopting even lower limits on refugees would be the latest move by the president to restrict immigration at a time when the country’s proportion of foreign-born residents has reached its highest level in nearly a century. On the southwestern border, the administration has also imposed strict new limits on asylum seekers, mainly from Central America, who are fleeing violence in their homelands.

The Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have faced systemic repression in the majority-Buddhist country for decades. But in August 2017 the military and allied mobs began burning entire villages. The violence, which the United Nations described as ethnic cleansing, pushed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya out of the country.

In 2015, 4,071 Rohingya refugees were admitted to the United States. About 3,000 arrived the following year. But far fewer have come since President Trump took office, and as of Friday, 593 Rohingya had been admitted this year.

For the dozens of children like Hefzur who have been arriving from Myanmar without family, an initial expectation that their parents would join them has faded, leaving many of them frustrated and distraught.

ImageHefzur with his foster family in Elk Rapids.
Hefzur with his foster family in Elk Rapids.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
“My dream is to bring my family here,” Hefzur said. “I’m afraid my mom and dad will die before I can touch them again.”

Bruce Mossburg, program director for refugee foster care at Bethany Christian Services, which has sponsored many of the Rohingya in Michigan, says the children his agency works with often appear to struggle with survivor’s guilt.

“It’s hard for them to heal and move forward if their families are in crisis and they do not know if they will ever see them again,” he said. “Cutting the numbers is devastating for them.”

In Michigan, the Rohingya community is centered in the city of Grand Rapids, where they have formed a soccer club, attend mosque together and share the latest news about developments affecting their families left behind.

Rohim Mohammod, a teenager who was resettled in Grand Rapids in 2017, mastered English within a year of arriving and has received invitations to speak on panels about the refugee experience. In May, he won his sophomore class’s “Champion of Character” which he hung in the bedroom of the neat, two-story Craftsman house where he lives with an American family.

But like Hefzur, he often talks about his mother and two younger brothers who are trapped in Myanmar. Rohim, 17, recently got a job at a hospital cafeteria, and is sending as much money as he can to his family.

Rohim Mohammod before a soccer game with other Rohingya refugees living in Grand Rapids, Mich.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
“He was basically the man of the house,” Tori McGarvey, Rohim’s case manager, said. “His younger brothers looked up to him. His mother counted on him.”

Deprived of an education as a Rohingya in Myanmar, Rohim has relished school, devoting long hours to improving his math skills. Having never heard of the Holocaust, he devoured “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s memoir of his childhood experiences in death camps.

“I look forward to graduating from high school, going to college,” Rohim said. “I always wanted to start a new life. I want to have a good job, a house, find someone who I love one day.”

But even more, he said, “I would like to bring my brothers over here.”

In Myanmar, parents who feared for their children’s safety paid to smuggle them to Malaysia, a majority-Muslim country. Instead they ended up in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, rescued from boats that were adrift in the high seas. After languishing in detention centers or camps for more than a year, the stateless minors were granted refugee status by the United Nations and flown to the United States.

“I never heard of United States,” said Hefzur, sitting on the edge of the lake at his foster family’s vacation home.

Rohim, left, was granted refugee status after spending more than a year waiting to be resettled.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
His paperwork said he was 12, and he looked that age, said Karen Grettenberger, his foster mother. The family enrolled him in fifth grade, and for the first few months, he was quiet and polite.

Gradually, though, he started to withdraw. When Ms. Grettenberger began taking Hefzur to therapy, “that’s when we realized that we had an angry kid,” she recalled.

“His responses were so vehement the interpreter apologized before translating,” she said. Later, at home, “He sat on the floor and refused to look at me while he played with miniature superheroes. He pulled his legs to his chest and rocked. He directed his anger at us for keeping him captive, which hurt.”

Hefzur wanted to quit school and get a full-time job to send money to his family, frustrated that his age — which had been roughly calculated when he arrived because most Rohingya do not keep records of birth dates — rendered him too young to legally work. “You need to change my age,” he told his foster mother.

The Grettenbergers asked Bethany Christian Services to arrange a bone-density test, which estimated he was 14 — old enough to work.

He took a job stocking shelves at a grocery store for minimum wage, and mowed lawns and moved dirt for neighbors. He sent almost all he earned to Myanmar, and his family used it for food and medicine, he said.

Hefzur stayed in touch with his parents via cellphone. They struggled to envision his new life, and were displeased that their son was living with non-Muslims.

Through an interpreter, the Grettenbergers told them that they had no intention of converting him even though Lou Grettenberger, a United Methodist pastor, had been taking Hefzur to church on Sundays with the rest of his family.

The Grettenbergers also ordered decals of Quran passages — one reads “Praise be to God” — for Hefzur’s room. They bought him a new prayer book, which he placed on a bookcase beside his prayer rug. On Fridays, they drove him to the mosque for prayers.

While Hefzur was adjusting, conditions for the Rohingya in Myanmar, where his family was still living, were deteriorating. His parents described villages burning in the distance. They had to go, they informed him.

They told him they had collected money from his brother in Malaysia and sold a married sister’s gold earrings to pay for safe passage to Bangladesh. Then the phone calls stopped.

For seven days Hefzur had no idea what happened to them.

“I remember awakening and hearing him singing his prayers,” Ms. Grettenberger said.

She and her husband felt helpless. “It was an exceptionally surreal situation where we watched the genocide unfold in the media,” she said, “and our son was getting updates from his relatives, hiding in their homes and by the river, describing the same burning villages we were watching on TV.”

When Hefzur finally learned that his family had made it to Bangladesh, he was overjoyed.

Gradually, Hefzur began settling into school, and feeling less guilty about the time he spent there. When he was in 10th grade, Ms. Grettenberger was approached by his teachers. “They ganged up on me and said, ‘Your child needs to be wrestling,’” she recalled.

“My dream is to bring my family here,” Hefzur said. “I’m afraid my mom and dad will die before I can touch them again.” CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
Once he became a powerful member of the varsity team, he started getting high-fives in the hallways. While his English was still halting and academics did not excite him, Hefzur’s other talents were becoming evident.

When the Grettenbergers bought a trampoline, Hefzur assembled it by studying the picture. He built a playhouse from an elaborate kit without reading instructions, repaired the motorboat and tractor, and created a pulley system to reach the bird feeders above the deck.

Gradually, Ms. Grettenberger said, his anxiety seemed to subside.

“It took time for him to see us as allies,” she said. “Eventually, he put the anger aside and embraced what help we are able to give.”

Denied citizenship in their homeland, the Rohingya children, like other legal residents of the United States, can become naturalized Americans after five years. When they become adults, they can apply for their parents to join them through a process known as family reunification, which Mr. Trump has said he wants to cut back.

Hefzur has begun to make plans. This semester, he started a vocational program that would enable him to graduate with a certificate in plumbing. He hopes to take a driving test soon.

Ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha last month, Hefzur sent his family money to buy a cow for slaughter. “I will keep helping them,” he said, “but I also used some of my money to buy a computer.” After setting it up, he made a 3-D sketch of the Grettenberger house and insisted they hang it on the wall.

“When people asked me how I am when I first came, I could only say, ‘Fine.’ But I really didn’t know what it meant,” he said on a Saturday afternoon when he could enjoy his new hobby, sailing, after a week of hard work. “Now I really am fine — and I want my family to be fine, too.”

He hoisted the sail on his foster family’s sunfish boat and set out across Elk Lake, its waters, as they nearly always are this time of year, placid.

Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. @mirjordan

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 22, 2019, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Finding Safe Shores Was Only Half the Struggle. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration signed an agreement with the government of El Salvador on Friday that could force Central American migrants traveling through El Salvador to seek refuge in that violent and dangerous country instead of in the United States.

The agreement is a win for President Trump and his hard-line immigration policies, and it gives him another ally in Central America as he tries to block migrants from seeking asylum at the southwestern border. Washington has signed a similar agreement with Guatemala.

But details on the agreement with El Salvador remain vague, including what steps need to be taken to carry it out.

After signing the accord with Alexandra Hill, El Salvador’s foreign minister, the acting secretary of homeland security, Kevin K. McAleenan, promoted the deal as a broader collaboration that included United States investment into El Salvador’s asylum system. He provided few details.

“Individuals crossing through El Salvador should be able to seek protections there, and we want to enforce the integrity of that process throughout the region but with the broader part of our partnership for addressing migration flows,” Mr. McAleenan said.

Mr. McAleenan has prioritized such agreements to slow the flow of migrants fleeing corruption and persecution in their home countries by forcing them to seek protection elsewhere. Fewer migrants cross through El Salvador, however, compared with Guatemala.

Even without the buy-in of other nations, the Trump administration has taken perhaps the most significant step to curb asylum seeking at the United States border by forbidding applications from would-be asylum seekers who have traveled through another country on their way to America. Under that action, only those already denied asylum in a third country can appeal for it from the United States.

The Supreme Court allowed the administration to enforce policy, but it is still being challenged.

And while Mr. McAleenan and Mr. Trump have discussed the accords with Central American countries as crucial factors in the reduction of apprehensions at the border, they have yet to actually be put in place.

When the United States signed its “safe-third country” agreement with Guatemala, Trump administration officials said migrants would start being returned to that country in August under the agreement. Officials from both countries have walked that label back because it carries a stigma, calling the label a “cooperative agreement” instead.

Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers in the capital, Guatemala City, needed to approve the policy before it could be carried out, and that has yet to happen. The administration has also failed to get Mexico to sign such an agreement.

Human rights advocates say it makes no sense to ask migrants to seek protection in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, which are among the most dangerous, gang-ridden places in the world.

Tens of thousands of Salvadorans have been displaced from their homes, and the number of disappearances suggests that the official homicide rate may be considerably higher than the numbers reported by the police.

In 2018, about 46,800 Salvadorans sought asylum worldwide, ranking the country sixth in the world for new asylum seekers. In addition, according to a government study supported by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, at least 71,500 Salvadorans have been internally displaced by violence. Overall, about 150,000 Salvadorans have become refugees or sought asylum in recent years.

“All these rules, agreements and procedural hurdles are creating a paper wall on the southern border, one that is just as inhumane, immoral, and illegal as one made of metal or bricks,” said Eric Schwartz, the president of Refugees International, an advocacy organization. “When history looks back on this period in the United States, the judgment will be harsh and unsparing.”

Since taking office in June, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has moved quickly to try to bring down the country’s homicide rate, sending the military into its most violent areas.

Although it had already begun to fall since 2017, when it was the highest in the world, according to the United Nations office on drugs and crime, the first three months of Mr. Bukele’s presidency showed a continued drop. According to Roberto Valencia, a Salvadoran reporter who analyzes homicide statistics released by the National Civil Police, the homicide rate in August was the lowest since 2013.

In 2017, there were 10.8 homicide a day in El Salvador, which has a population of about 6.5 million. In July, there were five homicides each day, and 4.2 in August, according to Mr. Valencia.

Still, Ms. Hill acknowledged the dire conditions.

“This is El Salvador’s responsibility because El Salvador has not been able to give our people enough security or opportunities so that they can stay and thrive in El Salvador,” Ms. Hill said.

She also emphasized that the Bukele administration sought to prevent Salvadorans from making the dangerous trip to the United States, referring to a photograph of a father and daughter from El Salvador who drowned in June in the Rio Grande.

“That hit El Salvador in the heart,” Ms. Hill said. “And it hit the United States in the heart. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

Mr. McAleenan committed to helping El Salvador build its system with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.

The commissioner was not consulted on this latest agreement, and Giovanni Bassu, the regional representative for Central America and Cuba, said he had not seen the agreement.

He also said El Salvador’s “very small” asylum office does not have any dedicated staff. Only 30 people applied for asylum in the country last year; 18 of those applications are still pending.

“My main message is that they have other priorities that the state should be investing in,” Mr. Bassu said. “I think rightfully the Salvadoran government is investing its resources where there is a need,” including managing internal displacement and addressing the root causes of migration.

It also remains unclear what El Salvador will receive from the United States. For the agreement with Guatemala, the United States agreed to invest $40 million in aid through commissioner to help build the country’s asylum system. Ms. Hill said the El Salvador government would need help combating gangs, as well as more economic opportunities.

Mr. Bukele has previously lobbied the United States to provide the 200,000 Salvadorans living in the United States with temporary protected status for 20 years. The Trump administration’s attempts to remove those protections have been blocked in court, but that status will expire in January.

On Friday, Ms. Hill again said those Salvadorans needed help, but neither her nor Mr. McAleenan said it was part of the agreement.

“The T.P.S. is temporary,” she said. “But there are also other measures that we are working on to find a permanent solution to this issue.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Washington, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City. Michael D. Shear contributed reporting Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 2019, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Pact With El Salvador Aims to Deter Migrants. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

WASHINGTON — They came from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan. From all over the world, they made the life-changing decision to leave their homes behind and start a new life in America. On Sept. 10, in a packed room in the United States District Court in Washington, they took the final step in the journey to becoming American citizens.

There were 122 immigrants from more than 45 countries who stood before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and raised their right hands. They took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I was there, too, and like them I was naturalized as an American.

I am from the small island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, and I had applied for naturalization nearly a year before, on Sept. 28, 2018. Three months later, I was hired as a news assistant in The New York Times’s Washington bureau, where I tweet (on the NYT Politics social media handle), fact-check and from time to time write articles on American politics as a reporter and fact checker.

The job followed me through every step of the naturalization process. One day I would be in Manhattan being interviewed by immigration officers, who asked if I had ever been a member of the Communist Party or of the Nazi government of Germany. The next day, the Fourth of July, I covered a brawl between communists and white nationalists over a flag burning in front of the White House.

The growing political extremism that has become apparent in this country did not give me second thoughts about becoming an American. In some ways it made me more committed to the “work of national importance” that I swore at my naturalization ceremony to perform for my country when required.

“America benefits from your citizenship,” the judge said to us after we were sworn in. “Because of each of you, and those who have come before you and those who will come after, America will be a stronger and better place.”

Despite the words of welcome, there was a sense of relief on the day of naturalization. With citizenship applications receiving more scrutiny than ever — while being processed at the slowest rate in a decade — I often wondered if something would go wrong before I took the oath.

That nagging feeling followed me as I watched a sweeping effort to reduce the number of documented and undocumented immigrants entering the United States. A chill fell over me as I transcribed the words “send her back” for reporters as they were chanted by the crowd at a rally for President Trump — words that were directed at a naturalized American congresswoman.

ImageA group taking the oath for citizenship.
A group taking the oath for citizenship.CreditAmanda Andrade-Rhoades for The New York Times
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting chief of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose signature was on my naturalization certificate, had even said that the lines “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” on the base of the Statue of Liberty, referred to “people coming from Europe.”

Mr. Cuccinelli has assumed responsibility for a system of legal immigration whose problems did not start with the Trump administration but have significantly worsened in recent years. It took my family seven years to obtain permanent residency in the United States as a result of being categorized as lower priority, “Family 3rd Preference.” But now, seven years is about the average time for all cases, regardless of priority.

In the extreme, some have waited up to 25 years to get a green card. As the backlog in immigration cases increases, some will wait even longer.

The Immigration Act of 1990 sets per-country limits on legal immigration, so the countries with the most applicants have the longest waits. Immigrants from Mexico wait in the longest line of all: No more than 25,620 of the 1.2 million applicants will be granted a green card this year. Today, someone “going to the back of the line,” as President Barack Obama put it in 2013, could be waiting 46 years to get an application approved.

Because I was born in Antigua and Barbuda, which had a population of only 80,000 when my family applied, I had much less of a wait. There are more people now applying for green cards in Haiti, with 94,000 applicants in line, than there are people living in my home country.

And I was sponsored by my family, a product of the “chain migration” that Mr. Trump has criticized and vowed to end. Indeed, my “chain” starts seven degrees of sponsorship away, with my father’s sister’s husband’s brother. Looking back at every stage of my journey to becoming an American, the window of opportunity for immigrants appears to be getting smaller and smaller.

And yet, while these efforts have succeeded in turning many away from our teeming shores, my naturalization, and that of others, is a testament to the fact that many more are still coming. Immigrants will continue to pay their life savings, wait in line for years or even decades, and travel across the world for a chance at the American dream.

“No matter where you come from, or what faith you practice, you are now an American citizen,” Mr. Trump wrote in a letter all of us received at the naturalization ceremony, which struck some participants as discordant, given how he has described our home countries. But it’s true all the same. No matter how difficult you make it for them, immigrants will continue to shape America and participate in its democracy.

I left the courthouse as a hearing in the criminal case of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, was beginning inside. By noon, the president had fired John Bolton, his third national security adviser, a development that would keep reporters and editors alike working well into the evening.

But as I stepped into the office, there was still a moment to celebrate with red, white and blue cookies.

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PLIEUX, France — Though the writer had already lived in his castle for a quarter of a century, it was only three years ago that he finally restored it to its original purpose as a fortress.

The writer, Renaud Camus, rebuilt the top 10 feet of the 14th-century tower, giving him an even more commanding view of his surroundings: the village of 40 souls below; the Pyrenees, faintly visible some 100 miles south despite the midsummer haze; and, in every direction, the peaceful, rolling hills of the “eternal France” that he describes as under assault from what he calls hordes of immigrants.

Up in his castle, the France that Mr. Camus imagines has made him one of the most influential thinkers on the far right in his own country and elsewhere. In his writings, he describes an ongoing “invasion” of France by immigrants bent on “conquest” of its white, European population. To him, the immigrants are “colonizing” France by giving birth to more children and making its cities, towns — and even villages — unlivable.

Others have espoused similar ideas. But Mr. Camus’s portrayal of demographic change — le “grand remplacement,” or the supposed “great replacement” of France’s original population by newer arrivals, mostly from Africa — has become an extremist talking point, cited by mass killers in distant parts of the world.

“It’s a slogan that dramatizes the situation, talking of great replacement the same way we speak of the great barbarian invasions,” said Rudy Reichstadt, an expert on political extremism at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute in Paris. “Now, if you go to a horse race betting bar and talk politics, and you mention the great replacement, people will understand what you mean.”

The idea of the great replacement has directly influenced French politicians and thinkers. Interpreted and repackaged across the internet, it has resonated widely beyond France, including in white supremacist circles.

The men held in two recent mass shootings — at a Walmart in El Paso and at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand — both referred to the “great replacement” and the need to defend white populations against invading outsiders.

While decrying the killings, Mr. Camus said he had no regrets about coming up with the term.

“The great replacement has become a household word,” he said. “I take responsibility for it. I believe in its relevance.”

Stroking his white beard, Mr. Camus, who is not related to the 20th-century writer Albert Camus, sat in his expansive study — half the top floor of his castle filled with books and a handful of African masks. In contrast to the harsh words he chooses to describe France’s immigrants, he spoke softly, and sometimes with the mannerisms of another era. He and his partner of two decades, Pierre, addressed each other as “vous,” though they said they sometimes slipped into the informal “tu.”

Ensconced in his castle in southern France, in a village an hour’s drive across country roads from the nearest train station, Mr. Camus, 73, is perhaps an unlikely source of inspiration for the world’s far right and white supremacists. Until a few years ago, Mr. Camus was known, mainly by other French writers, as a novelist and a pioneering writer of gay literature. An early book about his sexual experiences, called “Tricks,” remains his most translated work.

Growing up in a conservative rural town in central France, Mr. Camus went to Paris in the 1960s and found a niche in the capital’s literary and artistic scene. He befriended Roland Barthes, who wrote the preface for “Tricks.” As a member of the Socialist Party, he became active in politics on the left.

Still, Mr. Camus longed to return to the countryside. He sold his Paris apartment and, in 1992, used the money to buy and restore the castle in Plieux, fulfilling a lifelong fantasy.

A few years after moving to Plieux, he had what he calls an epiphany that would shape his political views. While visiting a 1,000-year-old village in southern France, he said he saw a group of veiled women milling around a fountain.

“And in the ancient windows — beautiful, paired gothic windows — veiled women would appear all of a sudden,” he said. “It was really the population of eternal France that was changing.”

That led to the formation in 2002 of his own political party, l’In-nocence, which calls for an end to all immigration and promotes sending immigrants and their children back to their countries of origin.

Image“I believe in its relevance,” Renaud Camus said of his term “the great replacement,” which has become a far-right rallying cry worldwide.
“I believe in its relevance,” Renaud Camus said of his term “the great replacement,” which has become a far-right rallying cry worldwide.CreditOleg Cetinic/Associated Press
But it was a decade later, when he publicly began using the term “great replacement” and wrote a book with the same title, that his influence in France began to be felt.

The great replacement, he wrote, indicates the “replacement of a people, the indigenous French people, by one or others; of its culture by the loss of its cultural identity through multiculturalism.”

He says he sees no contradiction between his earlier life as a gay writer on the left and his current role as an ideological beacon for the right, including violent extremists. He contends he has always told “the hard truths.”

Previous generations of European immigrants had been drawn by “love” for France, he wrote. But the newer arrivals since the 1970s — mostly from France’s former colonies in the Maghreb and in sub-Saharan Africa — didn’t come “as friends.” Instead, he declared, they came as conquerors and colonizers, filled with hatred and a desire to punish France. He singled out Muslims for “not wanting to integrate” into French society.

According to government data, immigrants now make up about 10 percent of France’s population, many of them nonwhite, up from about 7 percent in the 1970s, or 5 percent in 1946, the year of Mr. Camus’s birth — a steady rise, though far from the overwhelming one described by Mr. Camus.

Mr. Camus’s ideas — and his subsequent call to support Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Rally party — turned him into a pariah in France’s literary and media circles.

His longtime publishers dropped him, forcing him to publish on his own. “The Great Replacement” was never translated into English. Invitations from mainstream news shows dried up. Lifelong friendships came to an end.

But even as Mr. Camus became toxic, his phrase gained traction, first on French far-right websites, like “Observatoire du Grand Remplacement.” Politicians on the right and far right, including Ms. Le Pen, used the term.

Then “great replacement” slipped into the right-wing mainstream. While Mr. Camus’s books went largely unsold, best-selling writers, like Eric Zemmour, have expounded on the idea.

Some literary critics also saw the great replacement’s influence in Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 best seller, “Submission,” a novel that imagines a France led by an Islamist government. In the novel, which includes both real and fictional characters, Mr. Camus makes an appearance as Marine Le Pen’s speechwriter.

Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, said that the author of “The Great Replacement” viewed the world from the perspective of a novelist and aesthete without recognition of real-world consequences.

“He should become aware that in our universe, where everything happens in real time, what you say from the position of an aesthete or a writer, can instantly be transformed into a gun and bullets,” said the expert, who is not related to Renaud Camus.

Isolated in his castle, Mr. Camus grew even more removed from the actual France he purported to describe — one filled, he believes, with people of Arab and African descent burning with hatred for France and plotting its conquest. In fact, he acknowledged that his understanding of such people was based mainly on Twitter and Facebook. He said he almost never read newspapers or watched television.

“Distance is very, very necessary for observation,” he said.

Still, even holed up in a medieval castle, there was a limit to distance. As a recipient of government funds to help renovate his castle, Mr. Camus has had to open it to the public for part of the year.

And so, on a recent afternoon, Mr. Camus and his partner found themselves squeezed inside the top of the refurbished tower, along with six eager tourists. A couple cornered Mr. Camus next to a window, peppering him with questions about the castle.

Like many other fortified castles, its military capability — including the top 10 feet of the tower — was eliminated following a government edict in the 17th century. Back then, the fear was an uprising by the nobility, the castle owners.

By rebuilding the tower, Mr. Camus had restored its defenses. But on this day, in this corner of France, there was no hint of a threat on the horizon.

Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 2019, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Behind Slogan Promoting White Supremacy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The students, who were mostly headed to schools in the University of California system, had visas in hand when they were blocked from their flights this month.

ImageNima Abdollahpour had planned to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis.
Nima Abdollahpour had planned to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis.
Karen Zraick
Published Sept. 20, 2019Updated Sept. 22, 2019, 12:37 a.m. ET
At least a dozen Iranian students who were set to begin graduate programs in engineering and computer science say their visas were abruptly canceled and they were barred from their flights to the United States this month.

The sudden batch of visa cancellations, which came at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, set off a scramble by university officials, lawmakers, the students’ union and Iranian-American advocates to figure out what had happened.

The State Department said that there had been no change in policy regarding student visas, and higher education officials say that visa problems arise every fall for some of the hundreds of thousands of international students who travel to attend American colleges and universities.

But the students, most of whom were headed to schools in the University of California system, say their visas were revoked at the last minute, without any warning or explanation. Most were prevented from boarding flights in Iran, and others from boarding connecting flights in the Persian Gulf. One was detained at Boston Logan International Airport and then turned back.

Many of the students said that a State Department webpage showed their visa cases had been updated around Aug. 30, and they were prevented from boarding in early September.

All of that came before a Sept. 14 attack on two key Saudi oil installations, which has escalated a standoff between the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia against Iran.

[President Trump announced a new round of sanctions against Iran on Friday.]

A law enacted in 2012 under President Barack Obama requires the United States government to deny visas to Iranian students whose coursework would prepare them to work in the energy or nuclear sectors in their home country. Consular officials have wide discretion on how to interpret the statute and put it in place, said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based group.

Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also based in Washington, said he appreciated that the 2012 law had sought to prevent knowledge gained in the United States from being used in the service of the Iranian government.

But he pointed to the difficulty in predicting how students would use technical skills that are widely sought after and applicable in many industries. He suggested a more radical approach: to overturn the Trump administration’s travel ban and require Iranian students in sensitive fields to stay in the United States after graduation.

Most Iranians cannot obtain visas to travel to the United States because of the travel ban on visitors from their country, as well as from Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela. But there are narrow exemptions, including for students. Most of the students who were barred had been given single-entry visas, and were prepared to go years without seeing family members who would not have been able to visit them.

In phone interviews and emails, the students said they were crestfallen. Some had left high-level jobs or sold their homes, or had turned down opportunities in Europe or Canada. Most said their studies had been fully funded, and many had been slated to begin teaching or research positions in addition to their studies.

“I feel I’m damaged emotionally, financially, academically,” said Peyman, 23, who was supposed to begin a degree in electrical engineering at the University of California at San Diego. He asked to be identified only by his first name because he did not want to jeopardize his chances of getting another visa.

Peyman said that he had been barred from a connecting flight in Qatar this month and that an airline employee had scrawled “CANCELLED” across his visa in pen, saying the instructions to do so had come from the Department of Homeland Security.

The State Department does not release data on visa revocations, and the department said it could not release information about individual cases.

Mr. Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, said the group normally hears about visa denials, not last-minute revocations. But new vetting procedures — including reviewing social media information from visa applicants — have been “a black box,” he said.

The student workers in the University of California system are represented by the United Automobile Workers Local 2865. Its president, Kavitha Iyengar, said in a statement that her members “do not deserve to be discriminated against.”

She said that the union often helps members who have visa issues, but that she had never seen a problem of this scope.

John A. Pérez, the chairman of the University of California system’s Board of Regents, said the university would stand with its international students “no matter where they were born — and protect them in any way we can from the unpredictable actions of this administration.”

The university’s media relations office said in a separate statement that it was working with government agencies and lawmakers to resolve the issue. It also noted that other Iranian students in the science, technology, engineering and math fields had arrived on campus before September.

A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection reiterated that there had been no change in policy. He added that the agency had the authority to cancel visas but also had policies in place “to ensure multiple layers of review when adjudicating a denial of admission.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether visa policy had been changed.

At a time when the Iranian economy is in dire condition, hobbled by American sanctions, many Iranian students pay out of pocket to visit the American embassies in Armenia or Turkey for visa interviews, in addition to paying for plane tickets and other arrangements.

Nima Abdollahpour, 23, completed his bachelor’s degree at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which is often called the M.I.T. of Iran, and had planned to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis.

He said he and other students had grown frustrated as they were directed from one government agency to the next.

“I am a student who will lose another year or two of my life to find another program, as well as tons of money and energy,” he said.

Mr. Abdollahpour’s account was published in The Davis Enterprise, a California newspaper, earlier this week.

Chinese scholars have also faced restrictions on visas to the United States amid tensions between the two countries, prompting educators to voice concerns about the possible impact on innovation and on researchers already in the United States. Last month, nine Chinese undergraduate students enrolled at Arizona State University were detained at Los Angeles International Airport and sent back to China without explanation.

In a statement on Thursday, Michael M. Crow, the president of Arizona State University, criticized Customs and Border Protection’s handling of the student visa process.

“They are unevenly and inappropriately making determinations that have no factual basis and that they have no experience making,” he said.

“If C.B.P. and D.H.S. do not take this problem seriously,” Mr. Crow said, “all universities need to seek review by Congress and the courts.”

Karen Zraick is a breaking news and general assignment reporter who writes frequently about race, gender and civil rights. She has also worked as an editor on the International desk and in news curation. @karenzraick

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 22, 2019, Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: Iranian Students Abruptly Barred From U.S.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

My parents refused to let my sister and me forget how to speak Spanish by pretending they didn’t understand when we spoke English. Spanish was the only language we were allowed to speak in our one-bedroom apartment in Miami in the late 1980s. We both graduated from English as a second language lessons in record time as kindergartners and first graders, and we longed to play and talk and live in English as if it were a shiny new toy.

“No te entiendo,” my mother would say, shaking her head and shrugging in feigned confusion anytime we slipped into English. My sister and I would let out exasperated sighs at having to repeat ourselves in Spanish, only to be interrupted by a correction of our grammar and vocabulary after every other word. One day you’ll thank me, my mother retorted.

That day has come to pass 30 years later in ordinary places like Goodwill, a Walmart parking lot, a Costco Tire Center.

I’m most thankful that I can speak Spanish because it has allowed me to help others. There was the young mother who wanted to know whether she could leave a cumbersome diaper bin aside at the register at Goodwill while she shopped. The cashier shook her head dismissively and said she didn’t understand. It wasn’t difficult to read the woman’s gestures — she was struggling to push her baby’s carriage while lugging the large box around the store. Even after I told the cashier what the woman was saying, her irritation was palpable.

The air of judgment is one I’ve come to recognize: How dare this woman not speak English, how dare this other woman speak both English and Spanish. It was a small moment, but it speaks to how easy it would have been for the cashier to ignore a young Latina mother struggling to care for her child had there not been someone around to interpret. “I don’t understand,” she kept saying, though the mother’s gestures transcended language. I choose not to understand is what she really meant.

Those of us who grew up bilingual understand the complexities of holding onto and embracing either language. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said on Twitter, “Growing up, Spanish was my first language — but like many 1st generation Latinx Americans, I have to continuously work at it & improve. It’s not perfect.”

In the Spanish spoken by the children of immigrants, you’ll hear the echoes of cousins laughing at our accents when we visited them in Latin America. If you go back one generation, you’ll hear stories of people like my in-laws, whose teachers in Florida beat them for speaking in school the language they spoke at home. Go back yet another generation and you’ll hear of the state-sanctioned racial terror inflicted on residents of Mexican descent in Texas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

On videos circulating on social media you’ll hear Americans harassing Spanish-speakers at supermarkets and restaurants. This language of xenophobia and white supremacy is spoken fluently by our own president, and is at the root of why generations of Latinx Americans’ relationship with Spanish is laced with pain.

Those whose parents tried to shield them from discrimination by not passing it on are often expected to be fluent in a language they never had the chance to forget. Those of us who managed to hold on to it, despite the pressures to assimilate, know that our imperfect Spanish is a privilege we are often shamed for both inside and outside of our communities. And those of us who speak only Spanish are too often dismissed and worse, targeted — by women pushing shopping carts, by ICE raids, by gunmen with anti-immigrant manifestoes. Their terror makes victims of us all.

A few weeks before the election in 2016, a woman at a Walmart parking lot in Manor, Tex., ran to the tent where I was helping to register voters; she was in tears because her car had been stolen. In a town that’s nearly 50 percent Latinx, none of the police officers on site could understand her. As she filed her police report, with me as an interpreter, I noticed how they made almost no eye contact with her. I was the one they could understand, so they saw only me. She confided that her immigration papers were in the car.

How do you translate fear to those you cannot trust?

At a Costco Tire Center in Texas this week, a woman asked the man who had just helped me whether he spoke Spanish. He answered no, flatly. I volunteered to interpret. As she reached for her membership card, a familiar image in her wallet, her green card, caught my eye. I recognized it from the thick magnetic strip in the back, the way it gleamed bluish-black.

I found myself interpreting her words verbatim, forgetting to switch from the first person to the third. “The car is under my daughter’s name,” I said. In her face I saw my friends, my mother, my grandmother and me, each of us with different degrees of Spanish and English, all rooted in a desire to feel accepted and understood.

I used to think that being bilingual is what made me a writer, but more and more I see it’s deeper than that. It’s the constant act of interpreting. The journeying back and forth. The discovery that language, and the stories it carries, is not a straight path. Those of us who’ve served as interpreters in everyday life know it’s a bittersweet privilege. You find truths in the in-between spaces of language, but never the right words to express them. You hear the sound of someone being heard in your voice, and the sound of someone being unseen in the silence. You speak of simple things, hard things and joyous things, all diluted by the separation from their source. It will never seem fair that a person’s words are not enough.

Natalia Sylvester is the author of the novels “Everyone Knows You Go Home” and the forthcoming “Running.”

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A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 2019, Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: The Beauty of Being Bilingual. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Según los primeros informes, un grupo de personas de la organización Frontline America entró al templo de Lincoln United Methodist Church e interrumpió las actividades protestando contra la labor humanitaria que se lleva a cabo en el lugar. Tanya Lozano, miembro de la congregación, aseguró que tienen a una mujer en santuario y que seguirán protegiendo a las familias a todo costo.

EEUU y México se unieron y en solo una semana deportaron a mas de 2,000 inmigrantes hondureños logrando una cifra nunca antes vista

El 3 de agosto de 2019, un atacante mató a 22 personas e hirió a más de una veintena en un Walmart en El Paso, Texas . Aquel día, esa comunidad cambió para siempre. El tiroteo en El Paso fue el mayor ataque contra la comunidad latina en la historia reciente de Estados Unidos.

Pero mientras algunos sobrevivientes procesan el horror que vivieron, surge cierta esperanza: aquellos que no son residentes podrían solicitar una visa especial diseñada para proteger a las víctimas de crímenes.

El Congreso aprobó este permiso, conocido como visa U, “para las víctimas de ciertos crímenes, que han sufrido abuso físico o mental y brindan ayuda a las agencias de orden público y oficiales gubernamentales en la investigación o prosecución de actividades criminales”.

El objetivo de la visa es ayudar a que las víctimas se sientan protegidas y puedan colaborar con las autoridades. “Le da a la gente la oportunidad de tener una voz que de otro modo no se atreverían a usar por culpa de posibles represalias o de una posible deportación”, dijo Pamela Muñoz, abogada de inmigración en El Paso.

“Sin importar tu origen, o tu color de piel, o si hablas inglés o español, fuiste una víctima y, como víctima, en los Estados Unidos tienes derechos”, dijo Christina Garcia, directora del Programa para Víctimas de Crímenes del Centro de Apoyo al Inmigrante Las Américas, una organización sin fines de lucro en El Paso.

“Sentimos que por el color de nuestra piel nos están atacando”: comunidad de El Paso rinde homenaje a las víctimas del tiroteo

Alison Kamhi, abogada de derecho migratorio que trabaja con la organización sin fines de lucro Centro de Recursos Legales para Inmigrantes, explicó que estas visas cubren distintos tipos de crímenes violentos, “desde violación a violencia doméstica, delitos de lesiones, asesinato y una variedad amplísima de otros crímenes”.

“Que El Paso sea una comunidad con una gran población de inmigrantes, pero también un gran número de familias con distintas situaciones migratorias —en la que algunos miembros pueden ser residentes o ciudadanos y otros no tener nada— da a entender que habrá personas que pueden solicitar la visa”, dijo Muñoz, quien tras el tiroteo ofreció sus servicios como abogada a las víctimas.

De hecho, algunos abogados de inmigración locales se dieron cuenta de que probablemente habían víctimas con distintas situaciones migratorias o con tarjetas de cruce fronterizo, y algunas podían solicitar la visa U.

El inicio de un largo proceso
Las víctimas de un crimen enfrentan un proceso largo y burocrático cuando piden la visa U.

“Es muy difícil”, dijo Christina Garcia, del Centro de Apoyo al Inmigrante Las Américas. “ Es un proceso realmente largo y muy tedioso porque todo el peso de la carga de la prueba recae sobre el solicitante. E incluso cuando la persona dice: ‘Yo estuve allí, viví un trauma psicológico y estoy sufriendo’, eso no garantiza que (el Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración, USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés) vaya a conceder la visa”.

Lo primero que tiene que hacer el solicitante es obtener un documento que certifique que ha sido víctima de un crimen, pero también que puede colaborar con la investigación.

Marta tardó meses en conseguir ese documento. Ella era una de las trabajadoras del festival de música Route 91 Harvest, en Las Vegas, el 1 de octubre de 2017. Desde su habitación en un hotel cercano, un hombre abrió fuego contra los asistentes del festival, mató a 58 personas y dejó centenares de heridos. Hasta la fecha, sigue siendo el tiroteo más mortífero de la historia reciente estadounidense.

“Me tocó vivirlo en carne propia, me tocó verlo con mis ojos”, recordó Marta. “Tropezarme con heridos, con muertos. Correr para allá, para acá, (porque) no hallabas para dónde salir. No había salida”. (Para proteger su identidad, solo se usa el nombre de Marta en esta nota).

Leo Murrieta, director de la organización sin fines de lucro Make The Road Nevada, dijo que había “más de 120 empleados indocumentados trabajando en el festival”. Marta era uno de ellos. De esos trabajadores, muchos ya han iniciado sus trámites para solicitar la visa U.

“Esta gente sufrió el tiroteo, sobrevivió como cualquier otra persona”, dijo Murrieta. “Hay historias de personas, algunas indocumentadas, que salvaron las vidas de otras personas arrastrándolas hasta que estuviesen a salvo, apartándolas de las balas y arriesgando sus vidas para ayudar a otros”.

La organización de la que forma parte Murrieta, Make The Road Nevada, ayudó a más de 70 indocumentados que sobrevivieron al tiroteo.

Después de meses esperando su certificación, Marta y otros sobrevivientes estaban desesperados, dijo ella. Así que decidió contactar a Murrieta.

Pasado el tiempo, y tras reunirse con el sheriff del condado de Clark, Joe Lombardo, las víctimas empezaron a recibir el documento que necesitaban para iniciar el trámite de la visa. Marta sintió por fin que la visa U podía hacerse realidad.

“Le di gracias a Dios”, recordó Marta, “porque dije: ‘Sí, esto sí es una realidad que se va a dar, que después de todo esto feo que pasó, de esta tragedia, va a salir algo bueno’”.

Pero la certificación era solo el comienzo del proceso.

Miles de visas pendientes
El siguiente paso es enviar el certificado, el resto de documentos y esperar a que se tome una decisión. El proceso es largo.

El número de visas U que se pueden aprobar anualmente está limitado a 10,000.

Desde 2015, USCIS ha recibido anualmente más de 30,000 solicitudes de visa U. A eso se suman las 20,000 solicitudes para familiares de las víctimas, que se aprueban después que la solicitud de la víctima.

En el caso de un solicitante califique para la visa, pero ya se haya superado el límite de 10,000 visas de ese año, la víctima recibe una aprobación condicional junto con un permiso de empleo para trabajar legalmente en los Estados Unidos. Quienes reciben la aprobación condicional pasan a una lista de espera.

En marzo de 2019, había 141,803 personas esperando a que se resolvieran sus casos.

En promedio, el tiempo entre que el Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración recibe el caso y decide es de cuatro años, según el sitio web de la agencia.
Pero esos tiempos pueden cambiar.

Christina Garcia explicó que USCIS puede solicitar más información durante ese tiempo. Pueden solicitar más pruebas sobre el impacto que el crimen tuvo en el solicitante o pedir “más información sobre el historial migratorio (del solicitante) o tu historial de vida en Estados Unidos”.

La decisión sobre un caso de visa U puede tomar años.

A la ansiedad de la espera se le suma el riesgo de la deportación. Antes de que un caso se apruebe temporalmente, la víctima sigue bajo la amenaza de ser expulsado del país. Además, desde el 2 de agosto de 2019, el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE por sus siglas en inglés) no necesita consultar con USCIS cuando esté evaluando deportar a una persona que haya solicitado la visa U.

Como consecuencia de esa decisión, a algunos abogados les preocupa que haya víctimas que no se atrevan a presentarse ante la justicia.

Al final, para aquellos que superan el proceso y reciben la visa U, se abre la posibilidad de solicitar la residencia permanente.

Pensar en el futuro
Los abogados en El Paso dicen que solo unas pocas víctimas han mostrado interés por la visa U, pero esperan que eso cambie en las próximas semanas.

Christina Garcia, del Centro de Apoyo al Inmigrante Las Américas, dice que, por ahora, las víctimas están centradas en resolver cuestiones más urgentes y siguen procesando el trauma provocado por el tiroteo.

“No estoy segura de que hayan tenido tiempo para procesar lo que sucedió, para sentarse y pensar: ‘Vale, ¿ahora qué tengo que hacer para asegurarme de que estoy protegida y de que no estoy expuesta a ningún peligro físico o psicológico; pero, además, que (no) estoy en peligro de deportación’”, dijo Garcia.

Rubén Reyes, un abogado de inmigración originario de El Paso, regresó desde Arizona a su ciudad natal para ayudar a algunos de los sobrevivientes.

“Lo que necesitaban era mucho apoyo para cosas cotidianas, conseguir un sitio donde quedarse, dónde vivir, quién se va a hacer cargo de los niños. Ese tipo de preocupaciones”, dijo Reyes.

Reyes ya está de vuelta en Arizona, pero quiere ayudar a las víctimas de El Paso cuando estén listos para solicitar la visa U. Quiere que piensen en su futuro “porque el mañana va a llegar. (La cuestión) es si llega o no con un beneficio”.

Casi dos años tras el tiroteo en Las Vegas, Marta contó que el sonido de una ambulancia o de la policía al pasar puede transportarla a ese día. Aún así, se siente mejor.

Su doctor ya no le receta las pastillas que le ayudaban a dormir desde el tiroteo y tiene la esperanza de poder vivir legalmente en Estados Unidos en el futuro. Ya tiene planes por si recibe la visa U: viajar de vuelta a su país en Centroamérica a visitar a su familia y a su padre, a los que vio por última vez hace 16 años.

“Ya voy a ir metiendo al cochinito algo para cuando ya se llegue esa fecha y ya tener para el vuelo”.

Visa U podría ser una “luz de esperanza” para sobrevivientes de El Paso
Este beneficio va dirigido a quienes han sido víctimas de ciertos crímenes en EEUU
Visa U podría ser una “luz de esperanza” para sobrevivientes de El PasoFamiliares lloran a sus muertos en El Paso, TexasFOTO: EFE
Por: Redacción | 22 de Septiembre 2019
Tras el ataque armado del pasado 3 de agosto dirigido a personas hispanas que se encontraban en un centro comercial de El Paso, Texas, se ha abierto una “luz de esperanza” para los sobrevivientes indocumentados que presenciaron este lamentable hecho que cobró la vida de 22 individuos. Estas personas podrían ser elegibles para obtener la Visa U.

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De conformidad con el reglamento para obtener la Visa U, una persona indocumentada que haya sido víctima de abuso físico o mental en Estados Unidos puede obtener este beneficio para ajustar su estatus migratorio. Sin embargo, el proceso para obtenerla puede demorar hasta más de cuatro años.

Es importante recordar que esta visa va dirigida a personas que hayan sido víctimas de algún crimen determinado y que hayan colaborado con las autoridades judiciales para la investigación de el o los responsables. Aunque esta opción surgió a raíz del incidente, en los últimos días ha aumentado la posibilidad de que los afectados inicien el trámite debido a la asesoría que han recibido por parte de organizaciones proinmigrantes.

Algunos de los crímenes que son considerados para que un inmigrante indocumentado pueda obtener la Visa U son: abuso sexual, violencia doméstica o asalto a mano armada, entre otras felonías.

Con este beneficio, los solicitantes pueden sentirse protegidos de posibles represalias y permanecer legalmente en el país. Actualmente, solo se expiden 10,000 Visas U cada año.

El Paso, lugar donde ocurrió el ataque armado del pasado 3 de agosto, es hogar de un gran número de personas hispanas que a su vez, muchos de ellos no cuentan con un estatus migratorio para trabajar y radicar en Estados Unidos.

Medios de comunicación de dicha ciudad fronteriza informaron que algunos abogados de inmigración locales han mencionado que es muy posible que varios sobrevivientes puedan solicitar la Visa U y que su trámite sea exitoso, incluyendo las personas que tienen tarjetas de cruce fronterizo.

No obstante, los especialistas han advertido que el trámite para obtener este beneficio puede ser muy tardado y burocrático. Las autoridades llevan a cabo un proceso para determinar que el solicitante realmente estuvo en el lugar de los hechos y que fue afectado de alguna manera.

Para iniciar el proceso, la víctima tiene que hablar con la policía y posteriormente llenar el Formulario 918 – Suplemento B, esto certifica que el interesado colaboró con las autoridades. Para esto, es suficiente con presentar una denuncia.

Tras hacer la denuncia y llenar el formulario, la víctima debe recibir una certificación por escrito de que comenzó el debido proceso. Sin este documento, la persona pierde la posibilidad de obtener la Visa U.

El siguiente paso es enviar dicho certificado y documentación a las autoridades correspondientes. De ahí, solo queda esperar a obtener una resolución.

Distintos especialistas han sugerido a las víctimas del ataque que se asesoren con un abogado de inmigración para verificar su elegibilidad.

El juez del distrito sur de California Dana Sabraw lleva tiempo ocupado en la evaluación de cuestiones referidas a las políticas de inmigración de la administración del presidente, Donald Trump. Y ahora se encuentra ante un caso respecto a la separaciones de familias migrantes en la frontera que le genera dudas. Él mismo lo definió este viernes como “un asunto espinoso”.

En junio de 2018, Sabraw ordenó al Gobierno que detuviera la práctica de dividir a familias migrantes en la frontera.

Estas separaciones ocurrieron en gran medida durante los dos meses anteriores, en los que estuvo en vigor la política de “tolerancia cero” del presidente, Donald Trump, que pretendía procesar a todos los migrantes que cruzaban la frontera. Aunque el Gobierno reconoció después que hubo más casos en otros periodos.

Al mismo tiempo, Sabraw solicitó a la administración Trump que devolviera a sus propias familias a más de 2.700 menores que en ese momento estaban detenidos y separados de ellas. La orden de parar la práctica de división de las familias contemplaba sin embargo excepciones en algunas circunstancias limitadas, como las preocupaciones al respecto de la seguridad de los niños.

La Unión Estadounidense de Libertades Civiles (ACLU) aseguró más de un año después en una demanda ante este juez federal que posteriormente a esa orden se separaron a más de 900 niños.Y alegó que en algunos casos, el Gobierno abusó de criterios como la evaluación de antecedentes penales o las dudas sobre si un menor fuera realmente hijo biológico de un adulto migrante.

En la demanda, ACLU aportó ejemplos como el de un padre que fue apartado de su familia porque tenía un antecedente por daños a la propiedad valorados en 5 dólares. O el de una una bebé de un año separada luego de que un funcionario criticó a su padre por dejarla dormir con un pañal mojado.

La organización pidió a Sabraw que definiera de manera más precisa qué criterios de la administración considera válidos cuando esta decide si separa una familia. El juez federal mantuvo este viernes una sesión de dos horas, algo que The Associated Press define “inusual” para él. Pero de momento no ha llegado a dictaminar un veredicto, alegando que tenía dudas al respecto.

Según argumentó, una persona condenada por agresión con un arma letal podría ser el “padre más cariñoso y protector” y no suponer ningún peligro para el niño, pero probablemente no sea apto para estar en un centro de detención para familias migrantes.

Su evaluación sobre si limita ulteriormente las separaciones fronterizas prosigue.

DELITOS MENORES Y ADN

El Ejecutivo destacó que el número de niños separados en circustancias excepcionales entre junio de 2018 y julio de 2019, cuando ACLU presentó su demanda, supone un pequeño porcentaje de los más de 500.000 arrestos y detenciones de personas que cruzaron la frontera mexicana en familia y de forma ilegal durante este periodo.

Scott Stewart, abogado del Departamento de Justicia, reconoció algunos errores pero agregó que el gobierno tiene un buen sistema.

Un documento de dos páginas emitido un día después del fallo de Sabraw en 2018 por solicitud Kevin McAleenan, quien entonces ejercía de comisionado de la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP, en inglés) y ahora es secretario de Seguridad Nacional interino, incluye entre los criterios para las separaciones familiares que uno de los progenitores esté condenado por un delito grave o “delitos menores violentos”, tenga una enfermedad contagiosa o suponga “un peligro para el niño”.

Los efectivos de la Patrulla Fronteriza en el sector del valle del Río Bravo en Texas, el cruce fronterizo ilegal más transitado, separan a las familias si uno de los padres tiene una condena por delitos como asalto, agresión, robo, resistencia a la autoridad, atropello o conducta desordenada, explicó la semana pasada en un documento judicial Lloyd Easterling, quien supervisa el procesamiento y los enjuiciamientos en la región.

Los “robos simples”, fraudes, delitos menores de tránsito y narcotráfico y la conducción en estado de ebriedad sin factores agravantes no suelen derivar en divisiones.

Las acusaciones sobre antecedentes penales o afiliaciones a pandillas en otros países son más difíciles de probar, pero los controles biométricos y las comparaciones fotográficas suelen proporcionar respuestas, dijo Easterling.

Las partes discutieron este viernes sobre la generalización del uso de pruebas de ADN rápidas a adultos sospechosos de mentir sobre su parentesco con un menor.

El Gobierno sostiene que aumentar el uso de esas pruebas, que arrojan resultados en unos 90 minutos y se han probado a lo largo de toda la frontera con México, podrían suponer obstáculos financieros y logísticos.

Douglas Oviedo transcurrió muchas noches en lágrimas mientras ponía todo su esfuerzo para conseguir entrar en EEUU. Este migrante hondureño de 35 años tuvo que huir de su país de origen hace 11 meses por las amenazas que sufría de pandillas locales. Tras un largo viaje llegó a la frontera entre Tijuana, México y San Diego, California, pero las autoridades no lo dejaron instalarse en EEUU.

El hombre pidió asilo a finales de 2018, pero pocas semanas después entró en vigor una nueva política de la administración del presidente, Donald Trump, conocida con el nombre de “Remain in Mexico” y que obliga a los solicitantes en la frontera a quedarse en el país vecino a la espera de que las cortes resuelvan sus casos. Desde el pasado lunes, Oviedo sabe que su suerte puede cambiar: un juez de San Diego ha aceptado su petición.

“Estoy muy agradecido con Dios”, contó a la cadena NBC tras conocer la decisión sin esconder su felicidad. “Todos mis sacrificios, todas las lágrimas en la noche, todo el sufrimiento, se han convertido en una gran recompensa”.

Su abogada, Lisa Knox, aseguró que se trata de uno de los poquísimos casos resueltos positivamente desde que el Gobierno puso en marcha el nuevo programa, formalmente llamado Protocolo de Protección a Migrantes (MPP, en inglés). El hombre ya ha podido cruzar la frontera e instalarse en San Diego.

Oviedo se ha tenido que enfrentar a la adversidad desde que era muy pequeño. Sus padres murieron de SIDA y lo dejaron así huérfano cuando aún no tenía 13 años. Poco tiempo después, su hermano fue asesinado. Él se quedó en la calle, y empezó a drogarse. A los 15 años de edad, hasta llegó a intentar suicidarse.

Pero en ese momento todo cambió: “Dios llegó a mi vida”. El joven se convirtió en pastor, y empezó a predicar en uno de los barrios más peligrosos de Tegucigalpa, la capital de Honduras, según contaron él y su abogada. Entre sus objetivos estaba el de intentar apartar a los más jóvenes de las pandillas criminales que controlaban ese territorio

Eso le supuso ser incluido en una lista negra elaborada por pandilleros. Por consecuencia, su vida empezó a estar en serio peligro. “Las pandillas lo veían como una amenaza, y lo amenazaron muchas veces”, aseguró Knox. Oviedo también fue activo políticamente en su comunidad.

EL COMIENZO DE UN DURO VIAJE

Hace once meses, la situación se le hizo insostenible, y así decidió emprender un largo y peligroso viaje hacia el norte. Se unió a una caravana de migrantes, y en otoño de 2018 atravesó México llegando hasta Tijuana.

Al ser rechazado en la frontera con EEUU, vivió en carpas levantadas en albergues temporales para migrantes en esa ciudad del noroeste de México. En ese momento, no sabía cómo iniciar una solicitud de asilo ni mucho menos cómo defender su caso, cuenta la agencia EFE.

Pero su suerte dio un nuevo giro cuando conoció a Jake Lee, un ciudadano estadounidense comprometido en labores humanitarias en los albergues. Tras escuchar su historia, Lee lo convenció a seguir su lucha.

El 17 de diciembre de 2018, Oviedo acudió así al cruce fronterizo entre Tijuana y San Diego a pedir un formulario para solicitar asilo. El suyo tenía el número 1.834. Tras presenter su petición, empezó una larga espera.

Poco más de un mes después, el 29 de enero, autoridades migratorias estadounidenses lo entrevistaron por primera vez. Pero esa misma semana había entrado en vigor el programa MPP . Después de 16 horas en un centro de detención, fue enviado de vuelta a Tijuana, convirtiéndose en uno de los primeros 14 migrantes con los que se probó la nueva política, afirma EFE.

“Fue terrible, lloré cuando me regresaron. Me sentía completamente decepcionado”, Contó Oviedo. Se quedó en Tijuana, y allí pasó gran parte de su tiempo con miedo. Un amigo que él tenía allí, por ejemplo, desapareció. “No hemos podido encontrarlo en ningún lado”, contó a NBC.

Un día, mientras estaba en la playa de Tijuana, Oviedo pensó en los miles de otros migrantes que como él esperaban en México el permiso para entrar en EEUU. Actualmente casi 40.000 solicitantes de asilo fueron integrados en el programa MPP, según datos del Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), de la Universidad de Siracusa (Nueva York).

UN PROYECTO PARA OTROS MIGRANTES COMO ÉL

Oviedo se acercó a otro migrante hondureño, Michael Rodríguez, y empezó con él a crear un refugio de migrantes para migrantes. “Los albergues están saturados, no hay dónde quedarse”, dijo. Su idea es que el nuevo espacio pueda acoger a hasta 40 mujeres y niños, que indica como las personas más vulnerables en esta situación.

El contar sus vivencias y este proyecto convenció al juez de inmigración Rico Bartolomei a aceptar su solicitud de asilo. El pasado lunes, Oviedo conoció el veredicto favorable. Y así se convirtió en uno de los pocos migrantes que tuvieron éxito en este proceso impuesto por el programa MPP. “Agaché mi cabeza y comencé a llorar de alegría”, contó.

“Él ha sido un líder en su comunidad. El hecho de que haya ganado es importante también para otros migrantes, que pueden ver que sí es posible lograrlo”, comentó Knox, que forma parte de la organización Centro Legal de la Raza.

Oviedo ahora puede soñar. Aunque tiene previsto instalarse en el norte de California, donde lo acogerán asociaciones proinmigrantes, quiere seguir gestionando su refugio en Tijuana, que fue inaugurado tan solo dos días antes de conocer la decisión del juez sobre su caso.

También tiene otro objetivo: encontrar abogados para otros migrantes como él, tras darse cuenta de que tener representación legal ha sido clave en este proceso, según explicó. “Haré todo lo que pueda, trabajaré día y noche para encontrarles abogados”.

Por el otro lado, este pastor tampoco se olvida de sus seres más queridos: su mujer y sus hijos de diez, siete y cuatro años. Ellos todavía están fuera de EEUU, y Oviedo espera conseguir que lo alcancen cuanto antes en California.

Su defensa le ha comentado que es probable que el Gobierno estadounidense apele la decisión del juez dentro de un plazo de 30 días, por lo que se preparan para responder en caso de que así ocurra. Si eso pasara, su caso se llevará ante la Junta de Apelaciones de Inmigración.

Knox afirmó que si la aceptación de su petición asilo se confirma, su familia podrá reunirse con él de forma inmediata. “Voy a trabajar muy duro para sacarlos adelante, para que mis hijos puedan tener una mejor educación y más seguridad, porque en Honduras no se puede”, asegura Oviedo. “Es mi sueño”.

Activistas se manifiestan en contra de las acciones de agentes de ICE en los centros de detención y aseguran que han habido muertes de migrantes

Un juez de la ciudad de Nueva York ordenó a un propietario pagar una multa de $5,000 a la ciudad y $12,000 en daños y perjuicios a una inquilina por amenazar con reportarla con el Servicio de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés), reportó esta semana el diario The Wall Street Journal.

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La Comisión de Derechos Humanos de Nueva York presentó la demanda contra el propietario de Queens ante un juez administrativo. Según el informe, la propietaria le dijo a la inquilina inmigrante que llamaría a ICE si no pagaba la renta.

Bajo la ley de derechos humanos de la ciudad de Nueva York, amenazar con llamar a las autoridades de inmigración se clasifica como discriminación, según la Comisión de Derechos Humanos. A pesar de esto, se cree que este es el primer caso en los Estados Unidos donde una persona ha sido penalizada por amenazar con llamar a las autoridades de inmigración.

Despiden al empleado de una estación de servicio en Illinois que amenazó con lla…

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Despiden al empleado de una estación de servicio en Illinois que amenazó con llamar a ICE al ver a un grupo de mexicanos

Al parecer, la casera Dianna Lysius, amenazó a la entonces inquilina Holly Ondaan, una inmigrante de Guyana con ciudadanía de la Unión Europea, enviando varios mensajes de texto y correos electrónicos. En ese entonces, Ondaan no tenía autorización de estar en los EEUU, aunque ahora ya la tiene.

Varios meses después de que Ondaan dejó de pagar su renta, la casera comenzó los trámites de desalojo y supuestamente amenazó con alertar al ICE si la inquilina no pagaba ese día. También supuestamente le envió un enlace a una noticia sobre una redada de ICE en 7-Elevens, al parecer para intimidarla.

Lysius, de 44 años, dijo en una entrevista que no envió los textos ni los correos electrónicos a la Sra. Ondaan. Dijo que planea apelar el fallo del juez. “Todo en ese informe es falso”, dijo según el reporte del WSJ.

La inquilina se puso en contacto con la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la ciudad, que se hizo cargo de la denuncia contra la propietaria. El 12 de septiembre, un juez administrativo ordenó a Lysius pagar una multa de $5,000 y $12,000 en daños a la inquilina.

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Ondaan se mudó de la casa en octubre de 2018, debiendo 14,400 dólares de renta, según el fallo. Una decisión de la corte de vivienda en septiembre de 2018 dijo que tendría que pagar $6,895 de renta atrasada.

Si tú o alguien que conoces ha recibido amenazas similares, puede comunicarte al 311 y presentar una queja formal ante la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la ciudad.

Los litigantes, especialistas en inmigración, ya ha logrado ganar dos casos de refugio en EEUU. Lisa Knox, representante del colectivo, asegura que la principal razón del éxito es porque conocen a detalle a los migrantes, quienes en ocasiones ignoran que sus procesos pueden ser a favor. Activistas reconocen que la falta de un abogado ha sido la clave para que sigan rechazando procesos en las cortes.

El precandidato presidencial republicano Joe Walsh cree que “la mayoría de los republicanos están cansados de el drama y la crueldad diaria del presidente”. Walsh también señaló a Donald Trump como “racista e intolerante”.

Elmer Córdova narró que su esposa intento llegar a Estados Unidos y pagó a un ‘coyote’ para que la ayudara. Sin embargo, la mujer y el niño pequeño murieron. Córdova cuenta que tuvieron que salir de Honduras por la pobreza y violencia que hay en su país

WASHINGTON.— El secretario de Seguridad Nacional, Kevin McAleenan, y la canciller de El Salvador, Alexandra Hill, firmaron hoy un “memorando de acuerdo” de colaboración para que los migrantes rumbo a EEUU puedan previsiblemente solicitar asilo en ese país centroamericano, en el marco de la campaña de presión que mantiene Washington contra los cruces ilegales en la frontera sur.

Durante una rueda de prensa, McAleenan y Hill elogiaron el acuerdo bilateral para poner fin al éxodo de migrantes irregulares hacia Estados Unidos, aunque no proveyeron detalles sobre el acuerdo y su implementación.

“Lo principal de este acuerdo es un acuerdo de cooperación de asilo, el reconocimiento de que El Salvador desarrolla su propio sistema de asilo, y un compromiso (de EEUU) de ayudarles a construir esa capacidad”, explicó McAleenan.

Al atacar de manera conjunta la emigración ilegal, un “uso potencial” del acuerdo, agregó, es que los migrantes que crucen a través de El Salvador rumbo a EEUU “puedan buscar protección en ese país”.

Oficialmente no se trata de un acuerdo de tercer país seguro, como el que se discute con Guatemala y que México se ha negado a aceptar, aunque tendrá un efecto similar al requerir que los migrantes que buscan asilo en Estados Unidos lo hagan primero en territorio salvadoreño.

El objetivo estadounidense es evitar que los migrantes lleguen hasta su frontera sur y así reducir la montaña de casos de asilo que atascan los tribunales de Inmigración.

Preguntada sobre qué necesidades tiene El Salvador para hacer valer el acuerdo, Hill dijo que su país necesita el apoyo de EEUU en dos áreas: el incremento a la seguridad y el combate contra las pandillas, que amenazan, matan y extorsionan, y “más iniciativas de inversiones”.

También indicó que necesitan un mayor intercambio de información biométrico sobre los salvadoreños que son deportados de EEUU, y ayuda para su reasentamiento y oportunidades económicas.

Hill abogó por alternativas legales para una “migración segura”, como la ampliación del programa de visas temporales “H-2A” -otorgadas al sector agrícola-, para que los salvadoreños puedan venir a realizar trabajos en EEUU y después regresar.

Asimismo, McAleenan elogió la intención y “compromiso muy poderoso” del presidente salvadoreño, Nayib Bukele, de poner fin a la migración ilegal durante su mandato de cinco años.

El Gobierno alcanzó un acuerdo con El Salvador sobre cooperación en materia de inmigración irregular, aunque no se trata de un pacto de “tercer país seguro”, informó este viernes la canciller salvadoreña, Alexandra Hill, en declaraciones a los periodistas en Washington.

“Son todas las medidas para tratar de minimizar y tratar de garantizar la protección de todas esas personas que se ven forzadas a migrar irregularmente hacia los EE.UU.”, dijo la canciller salvadoreña, sin ofrecer detalles específicos del acuerdo.

El Gobierno alcanzó un acuerdo con El Salvador sobre cooperación en materia de inmigración irregular, aunque no se trata de un pacto de “tercer país seguro”, informó la canciller salvadoreña, Alexandra Hill, en declaraciones a los periodistas en Washington.

“Son todas las medidas para tratar de minimizar y tratar de garantizar la protección de todas esas personas que se ven forzadas a migrar irregularmente hacia los EE.UU.”, dijo la canciller salvadoreña, sin ofrecer detalles específicos del acuerdo.

Hill indicó que estarán firmando “un acuerdo marco para poder trabajar en estrecha colaboración y cooperación en los diferentes temas” que les atañen.

“Es evidente que el tema de migración irregular es un problema y una preocupación que compartimos tanto Estados Unidos como El Salvador”, agregó la funcionaria durante un acto en la sede de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) en Washington.

El diario The Washington Post informó, citando a funcionarios gubernamentales, que el pacto permitiría enviar al país centroamericano a los demandantes de asilo que lleguen a la frontera estadounidense para que pidan ese amparo desde allí.

El pasado 26 de julio, los Gobiernos de Estados Unidos y Guatemala firmaron un acuerdo que obligará a la mayoría de los migrantes que atraviesan el país centroamericano a pedir asilo allí, en vez de en territorio estadounidense.

Dulce María Alavez sigue desaparecida, y el miedo al Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE) está complicando aún más su búsqueda pese a que la recompensa ha aumentado este viernes a 35.000 dólares.

El rastro de la niña, de 5 años, se perdió el lunes en un parque de Nueva Jersey.

Su madre, Noema Alavez Pérez, de 19 años, la llevó junto a otros niños al Bridgeton City Park, y la dejó marchar hacia un área de juegos, con un helado en la mano, mientras ella terminaba de sacar del auto al resto de menores.

Unos 10 minutos más tarde, según su relato, se encontró a su hijo de 3 años llorando, con el helado en el suelo, y ni rastro de Dulce María. “Pensé que nada más estaba jugando a las escondidas, que estaba jugando en el bosque”, explicó.

Pero, al no hallarla, media hora después telefoneó a la policía.

Los investigadores sospechan que fue secuestrada por un individuo de constitución delgada, sin vello facial, de piel clara, probablemente hispano, que calzaba zapatillas anaranjadas y vestía pantalones rojos y camisa negra.

La atrajo supuestamente hasta una camioneta roja con ventanas tintadas, en la que la introdujo por una puerta lateral corredera. La niña vestía una playera amarilla, pantalones a cuadros blancos y negros, y sandalias blancas.

“Necesitamos la ayuda de todos”, ha indicado la asociación gremial PBA de la policía estatal. “El tiempo es nuestro enemigo”, ha afirmado por su parte los investigadores, tras cinco días de búsqueda infructuosa con agentes, helicópteros, perros entrenados y buzos.

“La niña puede haberse encontrado con alguien, un adulto, que se ganara su confianza”, ha dicho Robert Lowery, vicepresidente del Centro Nacional de Niños Desaparecidos o Explotados.

Primero se la buscó en el parque, por si se hubiera extraviado. Ahora se la busca en todo el estado, y pidiendo toda la ayuda ciudadana que sea posible.

“Si saben algo, que nos ayuden para encontrar a mi nieta, no tengan miedo de la policía, por favor, reporten lo que saben a la policía”, pidió su abuela, Norma Pérez.

Ese miedo a las autoridades migratorias es un posible obstáculo a la hora de reportar pistas (aunque el FBI las acepta de forma anónima). De hecho, el novio de la madre, Edgar Martínez, mexicano indocumentado de 27 años, ha sido interrogado y, aunque no se encuentra detenido por la policía, sí parece estar bajo custodia de ICE, según el diario New York Post.

El padre de la niña ha regresado a México, según este medio.

El gobierno de El Salvador alcanzó este viernes un acuerdo con Estados Unidos para recibir a solicitantes de asilo, en lo que supone el último esfuerzo de la administración de Donald Trump para frenar la llegada de centroamericanos a la frontera.

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“El fondo de este acuerdo es el asilo. Busca reconocer el desarrollo que ha hecho El Salvador de su propio sistema de asilo y su compromiso para ampliar esa capacidad”, dijo el secretario interino del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS), Kevin McAleenan, acompañado por la canciller de ese país, Alexandra Hill, durante una rueda de prensa conjunta en Washington.

Además de reconocer al gobierno de Nayib Bukele por desplegar a cientos de policías en la frontera, McAleenan explicó que la cooperación incluye entre sus “usos potenciales” que los inmigrantes que crucen por El Salvador puedan pedir asilo en este país.

“Este acuerdo forma parte de una estrategia integrada para combatir al crimen organizado, fortalecer la seguridad en la frontera y reducir el tráfico ilegal y la trata de personas, así como la migración forzada. Este acuerdo es un esfuerzo bilateral para proteger la integridad física y evitar los peligros que conlleva la migración irregular”, se lee en un comunicado difundido por la Embajada de Estados Unidos en El Salvador este viernes.

El Salvador y Estados Unidos firmarán este viernes un acuerdo sobre asilo que buscaría frenar el uso del asilo en Estados Unidos por la migración ilegal económica y las redes de traficantes de personas.

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El periódico New York Times aseguró que el acuerdo será firmado hoy y es similar al firmado por la administración de Donald Trump y el Gobierno de Guatemala: este acuerdo permite que Estados Unidos devuelva a los migrantes que llegan a pedir asilo a la frontera sur del territorio estadounidense.

El acuerdo será anunciado por el secretario interino de Seguridad Nacional, Kevin McAleenan, quien ya firmó una carta de intenciones con la canciller salvadoreña Alexandra Hill y el ministro de Seguridad, Rogelio Rivas. Un compromiso de esa carta de intenciones firmada el 28 de agosto de 2019 es mejorar la capacidad de asilo en El Salvador.

Durante los últimos cinco años, el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE) casi duplicó las peticiones enviadas a las autoridades de California para que retuvieran por más tiempo a los migrantes bajo su custodia.

Un reporte del Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), de la Universidad de Siracusa (Nueva York), expuso que el aumento de ICE fue de un 42% con respecto a las cifras que se registraron hace cinco años.

Por ejemplo, durante el periodo fiscal 2014 las autoridades locales recibieron una media de 2.286 peticiones por mes para retener a migrantes, mientras que, en el mismo ciclo del 2019, que concluye este septiembre, la cifra alcanzó las 3.246 solicitudes.

Estos pedidos son una herramienta que le proporcionan más tiempo a ICE para determinar si se queda con la custodia federal de un migrante que se enfrenta a la deportación.

Las solicitudes, conocidas como detainer, alargan hasta por 48 horas el tiempo en el que un inmigrante permanece en la cárcel y otra agencia local después de que se estableció la fecha de su liberación.

Pero no ocurre solo en California. En otros estados como Florida, las peticiones también aumentaron en un 35,7% durante el mismo periodo, mientras que en Nueva Jersey el incremento fue de un 32,4%, de acuerdo con el análisis de TRAC.

En tanto, a nivel nacional, en los primeros ocho meses del periodo fiscal actual el empleo de esta técnica tuvo un descenso de un 6% en comparación con el mismo ciclo del 2018.

ICE expidió entre octubre del 2018 y mayo del 2019 una media mensual de 13.898 solitudes de retención, mientras que del 1 de octubre del 2017 y el 30 de septiembre de 2018 el número fue de 14.775.

En el caso particular de California, convertido en un estado santuario, el aumento de estas peticiones ha contrastado con el hecho de que el estado tiene al menos tres leyes que limitan la colaboración de las autoridades locales con agencias federales de inmigración.

El descenso de estas solicitudes es más notorio cuando se compara con las cifras del año fiscal 2009, donde se registró una media mensual de 20.309 peticiones, justo cuando la administración de Obama (2009-2016) instauró el programa de Comunidades Seguras.
Texas, Carolina del Norte y Arizona son los estados que mayores descensos reportan entre los años fiscales 2014 y 2019. En Arizona se redujo el 35.6% en ese periodo, cuando pasó disminuyó de 752 solicitudes a 484.

Zacarías Alonso Mendoza y Juana Gómez Canseco se llevaron una sorpresa inesperada cuando esta semana recibieron la noticia de que ya son residentes permanentes de los Estados Unidos, debido a que sus dos únicos hijos, nacidos con discapacidad severa en los Estados Unidos, van a necesitar atención y cuidados médicos de por vida.

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“Estoy muy feliz. Ahora me podré sentir más libre para llevar a mis hijos a muchos lugares porque la verdad si me daba miedo que de repente pudiera surgir una redada, que nos deportaran y los niños se quedarán aquí”, dice Zacarías Alonso de 35 años.

El abogado en migración Alex Gálvez sorprendió a la pareja de padres inmigrantes mexicanos con la buena nueva de la residencia en el show de radio de Eddie El Piolín Sotelo.

“Quiero decirles que después de que el juez de la Corte aprobó darles la residencia, el fiscal tuvo 30 días para apelar su fallo y como no lo hizo, ustedes ya son residentes”, afirma el abogado.

Portland (OR), 19 sep (EFEUSA).- El fiscal general del estado de Washington, Bob Ferguson, presentó hoy una demanda para bloquear el plan que tiene el Gobierno de “reprogramar” fondos destinados a proyectos de construcción militar aprobados por el Congreso para financiar la construcción del muro fronterizo con México.

“El mal uso del presidente Trump de sus poderes de emergencia presidencial para lograr un objetivo político ideológico es un abuso atroz, independientemente de cómo se sientan los estadounidenses acerca de Trump o la inmigración”, dijo Ferguson.

“Sus acciones amenazan con socavar ese sistema y no permitiremos que eso suceda “, añadió el fiscal general.

Por su parte, el gobernador del mismo estado, Jay Inslee, mostró hoy su apoyo a la demanda y dijo que “las acciones del presidente demuestran un claro desdén de la autoridad del Congreso y constituyen una grave violación de los poderes constitucionalmente establecidos”.

“El presidente prometió que México pagaría por su vanidoso proyecto fronterizo, pero en cambio son los militares estadounidenses, sus familias y sus comunidades quienes lo están pagando”, añadió el demócrata.

En febrero, el presidente Trump declaró una “emergencia nacional” para reasignar fondos para su tan prometido muro fronterizo, a pesar de que el Congreso se ha negado repetidamente a aprobar los fondos que solicitó.

Trump aseguró que “iba a gastar el dinero de todos modos “.

Con apoyo bipartidista, el Congreso incluso votó para revocar la declaración de “emergencia” de Trump , pero el propio presidente vetó la acción legislativa.

No fue hasta principios de este mes cuando el Gobierno indicó pagar con fondos militares la construcción del muro a lo largo de la frontera sur del país.

De una partida de más de 3,6 mil millones de dólares, entre los fondos desviados hay 89 millones de dólares previstos para construir un nuevo muelle y una instalación de mantenimiento, muy necesarios en la base de submarinos de Bangor, en la península de Kitsap, en el estado de Washington.

Las embarcaciones que escoltan y brindan seguridad a los submarinos entre la base y los puntos de buceo en el Estrecho de Juan de Fuca actualmente no tienen espacio en el muelle, lo que las obliga a operar en un “estado nómada”, según el Departamento de Defensa.

Ferguson planea además solicitar en un futuro cercano una medida cautelar para bloquear de inmediato cualquier intento de la Administración de desviar fondos del Congreso.

Washington, 20 (EFEUSA).- El gobierno del presidente Donald Trump reactivará un programa que ha permitido que algunos inmigrantes indocumentados que reciben tratamientos médicos por condiciones de salud raras y graves permanezcan en el país, informaron hoy los medios locales.

La semana pasada la guatemalteca María Isabel Bueso y otros inmigrantes con graves condiciones de salud testificaron ante un subcomité de la Cámara de Representantes explicando que su supervivencia depende de que permanezcan en Estados Unidos.

El grupo incluyó niños que sufren fibrosis cística y otras enfermedades, y quienes declararon que si se les envía a sus países de origen podrían morir.

Un mes antes el gobierno había notificado a esos inmigrantes que debían salir del país en 33 días.

El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional ha informado al comité legislativo que, por órdenes del secretario interino Kevin McAleenan, el gobierno reabrirá la consideración de las solicitudes para diferir las deportaciones, según el diario The New York Times.

En un mensaje enviado al Comité de Supervisión de la Cámara de Representantes, el gobierno indicó que “reanuda la consideración de las solicitudes de dilación de acción de manera discrecional, caso por caso”.

Bueso, de 24 años de edad, tiene diagnóstico de mucopolisacaridosis VI, un mal metabólico hereditario causado por la ausencia o el mal funcionamiento de ciertas enzimas. Además sufre paraplejia.

La mujer llegó a EE.UU. cuando tenía 7 años de edad para participar en una prueba clínica y desde entonces ha estado recibiendo asistencia médica en Oakland, California.

Grupos de derechos civiles y defensores de los inmigrantes iniciaron demandas ante los tribunales a comienzos de septiembre para impedir las deportaciones.

“En estos tiempos sombríos de continuos ataques del gobierno contra los derechos humanos y la dignidad humana, éste parece ser un momento de buenas noticias”, indicó en una declaración el presidente del comité, el demócrata Jamie Raskin, de Maryland.

“Es notable que se requieran audiencias de emergencia en el Congreso y un clamor nacional para proteger a niños gravemente enfermos y que encaran la deportación”, añadió.

El gobierno del presidente Donald Trump revirtió el jueves su decisión de dejar de tomar en cuenta las solicitudes de los inmigrantes que buscan evitar la deportación debido a tratamientos médicos u otras adversidades, después de varias semanas de indignación pública y de una investigación del Congreso en torno a la medida.

El Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración (USCIS por sus siglas en inglés) confirmó que reanudará la consideración de solicitudes de “acción diferida” a discreción y caso por caso, como lo ha hecho en años anteriores.

Ya está en vigencia la nueva política de asilo de Trump
La agencia indicó que dar marcha atrás a la decisión del 7 de agosto fue instrucción del secretario interino de Seguridad Nacional Kevin Kealoha McAleenan, quien supervisa el USCIS. No dio más detalles.

La decisión de cancelar la añeja política generó críticas inmediatas por parte de médicos y abogados migratorios, especialmente en Boston, donde un gran número de familias afectadas se ha establecido para recibir atención médica en algunos de los principales hospitales del país.

Polémica tras primeras audiencias de asilo en carpas
Grupos en pro de los derechos civiles en la ciudad también presentaron una demanda federal bajo el argumento de que la agencia no había dado una notificación o justificación apropiada respecto a la cancelación, como lo requiere la ley.

A principios de mes, el USCIS, en una concesión parcial ante las críticas, reabrió las peticiones de alrededor de 400 solicitantes pendientes a los que se les habían emitido cartas de rechazo en las que también se les ordenaba salir del país en un periodo no mayor a 33 días o arriesgarse a una deportación.

Suspenden eliminación de visas para tratamientos médicos
A pesar del anuncio del jueves, los representantes demócratas dijeron que seguirán en busca de respuestas sobre cómo se llegó a la decisión de la cancelación. También dijeron que monitorearán a la agencia para asegurarse de que el cambio se sostenga.

WASHINGTON — Los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza están comenzando a evaluar a las familias migrantes por “temor creíble”, en lugar de los oficiales de asilo altamente capacitados que usualmente eran los encargados ​​de determinar si los peticionarios califican para recibir protección de EEUU.

Los primeros agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza llegaron la semana pasada para comenzar su instrucción en el South Texas Family Residential Center, en Dilley, el centro de detención familiar para inmigrantes más grande del país, según los abogados que trabajan allí y varios empleados de los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de EE.UU.

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La medida amplía el impulso de la administración Trump para que los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza realicen las entrevistas que marcan el primer paso en el largo proceso de asilo. Los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza comenzaron a entrenarse para realizar estas entrevistas a fines de abril, pero recién ahora comienzan a desplegarse en centros de detención familiar.

Como resultado, los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza (personal de las fuerzas del orden, que detienen a las familias migrantes en la frontera) también tendrán autoridad para decidir si esas familias sufren un “temor creíble” de ser perseguidos en sus países de origen.

Un proyecto de ley que detiene la emisión de visas de trabajo para personas de cualquier país que no sean de India y China regresa al pleno del Senado la próxima semana.

Si se aprueba, expertos en política de inmigración estiman que durante los próximos 10 años, los indios, así como un pequeño número de chinos, pudieran ser los únicos extranjeros en obtener la residencia permanente por razones en trabajo, algo que afectaría significativamente a empresas norteamericanas que buscan a otros extranjeros con talento específico.

El jueves, el senador Mike Lee, republicano por Utah, intentó que se aprobara la ley a viva voz en el pleno del Senado. Este procedimiento tiene por fin aprobar una iniciativa de ley lo más rápido posible. Pero fracasa si solo un senador se opone a la votación a viva voz.

El muro que el presidente Donald Trump ha ordenado construir en la frontera de Estados Unidos con México no sólo es notablemente alto y puntiagudo, para herir a cualquier que trate de saltarlo, y está pintado de negro para que sea “más caliente que el sol”. Además, está cableado para que las autoridades fronterizas puedan saber al instante si alguien está intentando cruzarlo.

Esto último lo contó el propio presidente. El problema es que al Ejército no le hizo ninguna gracia que se supiera, puesto que, presuntamente, era un secreto.

Trump se comprometió ante su electorado en numerosos actos electorales a completar hasta 500 millas de barrera durante sus cuatro años de mandato. Le queda poco más de un año y apenas se han construido algunas millas.

Es cierto que se han renovado 60 millas de valla antigua: “Era como una lámina de metal y la gente simplemente podía derribarla de manera rutinaria”, dijo. Pero hasta ahora no había podido construir el nuevo muro prometido, lo que podría haber sido considerado una humillante derrota antes de las elecciones de 2020.

El problema es que prometió que México lo pagaría y México se negó a pagarlo. Luego quiso que el Congreso lo pagara con dinero de los contribuyentes estadounidenses, pero el Congreso, incluso con mayoría republicana, se negó a darle todo el dinero que pedía. Así que Trump declaró una emergencia nacional en la frontera y desvió fondos del Ejército (que ha alertado que eso podría causar una emergencia nacional).

Su plan ahora es construir prácticamente una milla de muro al día para cumplir su promesa de levantar 500 antes de las elecciones de 2020.

En realidad, la frontera se extiende unas 2,000 millas, pero él mismo admitió que no haría falta levantar una barrera desde el océano Pacífico hasta el Golfo de México, sino sólo entre 700 y 900 millas. Primero, porque ya hay 654 millas de muro construido, a las que se suman otras 51 millas con barreras dobles o triples. Y porque, además, “hay un montón de barreras naturales”, entre ellas montañas “y ríos violentos y crueles” que sirven como muro natural.

No será un muro, porque Trump rectificó en enero: “Dije que iba a construir el muro, no dije que lo fuera a hacer de cemento”, explicó, aduciendo que “el acero es más fuerte que el cemento”. “La gente necesita poder ver a través del muro”, añadió, en referencia a los agentes migratorios.

En febrero trascendió que quería hacer con esa valla: “Vamos a pintarla de negro, se pondrá tan caliente que será imposible trepar por encima”, dijo a sus asesores, “así será más caliente que el sol”. De hecho, añadió, supuestamente en broma, que perdonaría a quienes fueran condenados por incumplir la ley para acelerar la construcción de esta barrera.

Este miércoles, durante una visita electora a un sector del muro reconstruido cerca de San Diego, insistió: “Puedes freír un huevo en esa pared. Este muro no se puede saltar”. Orgulloso, llegó a firmar un barrote con su nombre.

Quizá por orgullo también, se excedió al parecer presumiendo de las capacidades de esta valla, que bautizó como “el Rolls-Royce de los muros fronterizos”, en referencia al costosísimo auto de super-lujo.

Trump explicó a los periodistas que el muro está “cableado, para que sepamos si alguien está intentando penetrar”. “Puede que usted quiera comentar un poco más, general”, añadió luego, volviéndose hacia Todd Semonite, jefe de los ingenieros del Ejército.

Pero Semonite respondió: “Señor, podría ser mejor no hablar de esto”.

Entre risas nerviosas de otros oficiales, Trump replicó: “Ok, me gusta eso, es una gran respuesta, sólo les diré que está cableado, ¿ok?”.

Cableado o no, el muro no está pintado de negro: era demasiado caro. “Tiene un potente, buen color oxidado”, dijo Trump, añadiendo que podría ser pintado de negro en el futuro.

Hasta ahora se han construido 66 millas, contando los tramos renovados de valla ya existente, y hay 251 más en construcción en 17 sectores, más contratos para otras 163 millas. El resto tendrá que esperar por problemas con los propietarios privados de las tierras donde se quiere levantar la valla fronteriza.

“Desde el piso 11 de mi hotel en El Paso (Texas) se ve México al fondo. Es Juárez y desde aquí arriba la postal es preciosa. Si bajo y atravieso la frontera, la cosa cambia. En Juárez se amontonan centenares de centroamericanos que intentan cumplir su sueño de llegar a Estados Unidos”.

Este texto, publicado en junio en un diario español, lo firma Jordi Évole, uno de los periodistas más reconocidos en lengua española. Tras 11 años al frente de Salvados, un programa de televisión de profunda raíz periodística en el que ha entrevistado a todo tipo de personalidades mundiales, entre otros, al papa Francisco y al dirigente venezolano Nicolás Maduro, esta vez Évole ha cruzado el océano Atlántico para analizar a la que es quizá la figura más relevante y controversial de nuestro tiempo: el presidente Donald Trump.

Se trata del documental Mr. Trump, disculpe las molestias, que será emitido en Telemundo este 29 de septiembre a las 7:00 pm (6:00 pm Centro).

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“Llegar a Estados Unidos y poder hacer la televisión que nos gusta de la mano de Telemundo es un sueño. Esperamos estar a la altura de lo que merece la comunidad latina de este país”, señala el periodista.

“Con este especial, Telemundo afronta una manera de hacer periodismo audiovisual que no se había hecho antes en la televisión hispana de los Estados Unidos. Se analiza cómo está impactando la presidencia de Trump en los latinos y lo hacemos con Jordi Évole, uno de los periodistas en español más relevantes y con más impacto”, afirma por su parte Luis Fernández, vicepresidente ejecutivo de Noticias de la cadena.

Trump concedió este año la primera entrevista a un medio en español desde su llegada a la Casa Blanca, cuando se sentó a hablar con José Díaz Balart, presentador de Noticias Telemundo.

Ahora Évole se suma para ampliar el foco y viaja a El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, Miami, Tucson (Arizona) y Washington DC para reflejar el profundo impacto que esta presidencia ha tenido en los latinos.

En el documental se escucha la voz de ciudadanos de a pie, sus convicciones, esperanzas y miedos, pero también la de importantes figuras hispanas como el chef José Andrés, la actriz Kate del Castillo, el periodista Jorge Ramos y el propio Díaz Balart; además de políticos como el senador y precandidato demócrata Bernie Sanders.

Los expertos Jorge Cancino y Armando Olmedo explican cuáles son los cambios recientes en las reglas de deportación expedita y cómo hasta los turistas que están de paso por Estados Unidos podrían pasar un mal rato si no llevan a la mano la mayor documentación posible para probar que no son inmigrantes.

Un salvadoreño está sentado en una sala de audiencias improvisada en una carpa blanca situada en un puente fronterizo en Laredo (Texas). El hombre, que ha llegado hasta ahí escoltado desde la ciudad fronteriza de Nuevo Laredo, tiene a su hija de unos 3 años en su regazo mientras habla por videoconferencia con una jueza de migración que está a más de 150 millas de distancia, en San Antonio. Dirigiéndose a la pantalla de televisión que tiene en frente, el solicitante de asilo le cuenta a la magistrada Margaret D. Burkhart que teme volver a México donde, según cuenta, les secuestraron durante tres días.

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Historias como las de este salvadoreño son las que la directora de abogacía para las Américas de Amnistía Internacional (AI), Charanya Krishnaswami, ha escuchado desde el lunes cuando llegó a Texas para conocer de primera mano las cortes que el gobierno ha montado en carpas en las ciudades fronterizas de Nuevo Laredo y Brownsville. A través de ellas, la administración de Donald Trump busca atender los casos de los más de 40,000 solicitantes de asilo que han sido enviados a México con el programa conocido como Protocolos de Protección de Migrantes (MPP) sin que estos estén físicamente en Estados Unidos.

Para Krishnaswami, esta nueva estrategia con la que el gobierno trata de hacer frente a la reciente oleada de migrantes centroamericanos que han llegado en los últimos meses a Estados Unidos con niños de la mano para pedir asilo, es “injusta” y no garantiza el derecho de las personas que se sienten perseguidas a pedir protección.

“Está claro que la manera en que estas cortes en tiendas están construidas para aislar a los solicitantes de asilo del público lo máximo posible y que no puedan conseguir ayuda. Así que mucha gente no tiene asistencia legal”, lamenta la directora de abogacía de AI en declaraciones a Univision Noticias.
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“Hay mucha gente que está intentando hacer todo bien por todas las maneras y aun así los devuelven a México y no entienden por qué. No entienden por qué vienen a corte, no tienen orientación legal ni explicación del proceso”, agrega.

El objetivo del gobierno: desmotivar a quienes “no tienen razones válidas”
Pero el gobierno ve estas cortes hechas con carpas blancas y tráilers e instaladas al lado de los puentes fronterizos como una herramienta para agilizar las audiencias de asilo del país, que cuentan ya con un millón de casos atrasados, según el registro independiente que lleva la Universidad de Syracuse.

El muro que el presidente, Donald Trump, ha ordenado construir en la frontera de Estados Unidos con México no sólo es notablemente alto y puntiagudo, para herir a cualquier que trate de saltarlo, y está pintado de negro para que sea “más caliente que el sol”. Además, está cableado para que las autoridades fronterizas puedan saber al instante si alguien está intentando cruzarlo.

Esto último lo contó el propio presidente. El problema es que al Ejército no le hizo ninguna gracia que se supiera, puesto que, presuntamente, era un secreto.

Trump se comprometió ante su electorado en numerosos actos electorales a completar hasta 500 millas de barrera durante sus cuatro años de mandato. Le queda poco más de un año y apenas se han construido algunas millas.

Es cierto que se han renovado 60 millas de valla antigua: “Era como una lámina de metal y la gente simplemente podía derribarla de manera rutinaria”, dijo. Pero hasta ahora no había podido construir el nuevo muro prometido, lo que podría haber sido considerado una humillante derrota antes de las elecciones de 2020.

El problema es que prometió que México lo pagaría y México se negó a pagarlo. Luego quiso que el Congreso lo pagara con dinero de los contribuyentes estadounidenses, pero el Congreso, incluso con mayoría republicana, se negó a darle todo el dinero que pedía. Así que Trump declaró una emergencia nacional en la frontera y desvió fondos del Ejército (que ha alertado que eso podría causar una emergencia nacional).

Su plan ahora es construir prácticamente una milla de muro al día para cumplir su promesa de levantar 500 antes de las elecciones de 2020.

En realidad, la frontera se extiende unas 2.000 millas, pero él mismo admitió que no haría falta levantar una barrera desde el océano Pacífico hasta el Golfo de México, sino sólo entre 700 y 900 millas. Primero, porque ya hay 654 millas de muro construido, a las que se suman otras 51 millas con barreras dobles o triples. Y porque, además, “hay un montón de barreras naturales”, entre ellas montañas “y ríos violentos y crueles” que sirven como muro natural.

No será un muro, porque Trump rectificó en enero: “Dije que iba a construir el muro, no dije que lo fuera a hacer de cemento”, explicó, aduciendo que “el acero es más fuerte que el cemento”. “La gente necesita poder ver a través del muro”, añadió, en referencia a los agentes migratorios.

En febrero trascendió que quería hacer con esa valla: “Vamos a pintarla de negro, se pondrá tan caliente que será imposible trepar por encima”, dijo a sus asesores, “así será más caliente que el sol”. De hecho, añadió, supuestamente en broma, que perdonaría a quienes fueran condenados por incumplir la ley para acelerar la construcción de esta barrera.

Este miércoles, durante una visita electora a un sector del muro reconstruido cerca de San Diego, insistió: “Puedes freír un huevo en esa pared. Este muro no se puede saltar”. Orgulloso, llegó a firmar un barrote con su nombre.

Quizá por orgullo también, se excedió al parecer presumiendo de las capacidades de esta valla, que bautizó como “el Rolls-Royce de los muros fronterizos”, en referencia al costosísimo auto de super-lujo.

Trump explicó a los periodistas que el muro está “cableado, para que sepamos si alguien está intentando penetrar”. “Puede que usted quiera comentar un poco más, general”, añadió luego, volviéndose hacia Todd Semonite, jefe de los ingenieros del Ejército.

Pero Semonite respondió: “Señor, podría ser mejor no hablar de esto”.

Entre risas nerviosas de otros oficiales, Trump replicó: “Ok, me gusta eso, es una gran respuesta, sólo les diré que está cableado, ¿ok?”.

Cableado o no, el muro no está pintado de negro: era demasiado caro. “Tiene un potente, buen color oxidado”, dijo Trump, añadiendo que podría ser pintado de negro en el futuro.

Hasta ahora se han construido 66 millas, contando los tramos renovados de valla ya existente, y hay 251 más en construcción en 17 sectores, más contratos para otras 163 millas. El resto tendrá que esperar por problemas con los propietarios privados de las tierras donde se quiere levantar la valla fronteriza.

Washington (CNN) — El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional nuevamente permitirá que los inmigrantes indocumentados con afecciones médicas graves soliciten permanecer en Estados Unidos, revirtiendo una medida controvertida de mitad de año que terminó con la práctica y provocó una protesta pública.

“Bajo la dirección del secretario interino McAleenan, el Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de Estados Unidos (USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés) está reanudando su consideración de solicitudes de acción diferida no militar de forma discrecional, caso por caso, excepto que lo exija una ley aplicable, una regulación, u orden judicial”, dijo el jueves un portavoz de la agencia.

También se envió una notificación por correo electrónico a los miembros del Congreso.

La decisión del departamento el mes pasado de no considerar más las solicitudes no militares de acción diferida (alivio temporal de la deportación) generó una amplia condena de los grupos de defensa, abogados y legisladores, quienes argumentaron que la revocación perjudicaría a quienes se benefician del alivio. También provocó una demanda de grupos de derechos civiles.

MIRA: La demanda contra el plan inmigratorio de Trump sobre la detención indefinida de menores

La Unión Estadounidense de Libertades Civiles de Massachusetts, que se encontraba entre los grupos que presentaron la demanda, calificó el anuncio del jueves como “un acontecimiento alentador”.

“Este es un desarrollo alentador para las personas y familias cuyas vidas se vieron afectadas por la terminación abrupta de la acción diferida médica de la administración Trump”, dijo el director legal Matt Segal. “Tenemos la esperanza de que el Gobierno trabajará para restaurar este programa humanitario vital y esperamos recibir noticias del Gobierno directamente en relación con nuestra demanda en nombre del Centro Internacional de Inmigrantes de Irlanda”.

En agosto, los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración enviaron cartas a las familias que habían solicitado alivio de la deportación, diciendo que las oficinas de campo de la agencia “ya no consideran solicitudes de acción diferida”, a excepción de ciertas excepciones militares.

En cambio, la agencia dijo que remitiría al Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas para determinar si los asuntos no militares “justifican una acción diferida”, según un portavoz. Pero los procedimientos de las dos agencias no son idénticos.

Las personas pueden solicitar a ICE una “suspensión de deportación o expulsión”, pero eso se hace solo después de que alguien haya agotado todos los procedimientos judiciales de inmigración y se haya ordenado su expulsión, según un funcionario de la agencia. Los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración son la agencia responsable de los beneficios legales de inmigración, incluida la autorización de trabajo.

ICE no acepta “solicitudes” de acción diferida, un acto discrecional que permite al Departamento de Seguridad Nacional retrasar o prevenir la aplicación de la ley de inmigración, según la agencia.

LEE: Activista guatemalteco que invitó a ICE a un foro comunitario se enfrenta a la deportación

Después del rechazo, los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración anunciaron que volverían a revisar algunos casos pendientes de aquellos que solicitan alivio de la deportación. La agencia reabrió cerca de 400 solicitudes que habían estado pendientes y luego fueron denegadas el 7 de agosto.

La semana pasada, los legisladores escucharon a dos testigos a quienes, debido a sus condiciones médicas, se les había otorgado alivio de la deportación.

María Isabel Bueso, de 24 años, y Jonathan Sánchez, de 16, describieron haber recibido la carta de los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración.

“Estaba tan asustada. Era la primera vez que recibíamos este tipo de carta”, dijo Bueso. “Todavía estoy abrumada con diferentes emociones”. Bueso, que tiene una enfermedad genética rara, vino a Estados Unidos desde Guatemala a los 7 años para participar en un ensayo clínico.

MIRA: Guatemala puede continuar negociación migratoria con Estados Unidos para ser tercer país seguro

“No quiero morir”, dijo Sánchez, quien vino a Estados Unidos en busca de tratamiento para la fibrosis quística. Sánchez advirtió que su país de origen, Honduras, no está preparado para tratar su enfermedad.

“No debería requerirse una audiencia de emergencia por parte del Congreso, y amenazas, para forzar a la administración Trump a hacer lo correcto”, dijo el presidente de Supervisión de la Cámara, Elijah Cummings, en un comunicado el jueves.

“Nuestra Comisión continuará buscando respuestas sobre quién fue responsable de esta cruel política en primer lugar”, agregó el demócrata de Maryland.

Geneva Sands de CNN contribuyeron a este informe.

dalia Yamileth Herrera y su pequeño Iker Gael Córdova Herrera, ambos nacidos en Honduras, son los nuevos rostros de la tragedia que viven miles de inmigrantes que intentan cruzar hacia Estados Unidos a cualquier precio y tras una travesía de cientos de kilómetros. Sus cuerpos fueron recuperados el miércoles en el Río Grande, en el suroeste de Texas, luego de una intensa búsqueda realizada por la Patrulla Fronteriza y serán repatriados en las próximas semanas. Gabriela Matute Urdaneta con el reporte.

Decenas de manifestantes llevaron a cabo una fuerte protesta fuera de las oficinas del grupo GEO Inc, el más grande operador de las prisiones de inmigración del país, en la que montaron una representación simbólica de los inmigrantes muertos en los centros de detención manejados por corporaciones con fines de lucro.

Los participantes tomaron la calle frente a las oficinas centrales de GEO en el 6100 Center Drive de Los Ángeles para exigir el cierre de las cárceles privadas que manejan los centros de detención; y decir a los negociadores del presupuesto en el Congreso que ellos contratan con encarceladores que son cómplices en la muerte de inmigrantes.

Idalia Yamileth Herrera Hernández murió ahogada con su bebé mientras intentaba cruzar el Río Grande de México hacia Texas (EEUU), informó en un comunicado a CNN Nelly Jerez, viceministra de Asuntos Exteriores y Asuntos Migratorios de Honduras.

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POR CLEVELAND
La migrante hondureña de 26 años murió con su hijo Iker Gael Córdova Herrera, de 21 meses de edad.

Sus cuerpos fueron recuperados la semana pasada en un área cerca de San Felipe Creek en el condado Val Verde (Texas) después de una “búsqueda intensiva” por aire y agua, según un portavoz de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP) de Estados Unidos.

Jerez dijo que ambos habían ingresado recientemente a EEUU, donde la madre hizo una solicitud de asilo, pero fueron enviados a Matamoros (México) para esperar una audiencia en la corte de inmigración.

La madre y el niño estaban en proceso de ser repatriados a Honduras, dijeron las autoridadesm según Pix11.

Herrera Hernández y su hijo durmieron en las calles y refugios en Matamoros durante semanas, dijeron su esposo y cuñado a Univision y WUVG.

La semana pasada, Herrera Hernández le dijo vía mensajes de texto a su esposo Elmer Córdova que se sentía asustada y nerviosa por cruzar el Río Grande.

Córdova dijo que él y sus hijas mayores se mudaron a Carolina del Norte a principios de este año. Su esposa e hijo intentaban unirse a ellos.

Miles de solicitantes de asilo se han visto obligados a esperar en México mientras sus casos se evalúan en EEUU, bajo el programa de Protocolos de Protección de Migrantes, conocido informalmente como “Permanecer en México”.

Un grupo de manifestantes se concentró en protesta este jueves por la noche ante la casa del director de un centro de detención privado utilizado por el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE; en inglés) en Aurora, Colorado, de acuerdo a varios medios locales.

El semanal The Aurora Sentinel cifra el número de participantes en la protesta, que se cerró con tres detenidos según la policía de la localidad, en alrededor de 100. Los grupos organizadores de la concentración tenían como objetivo protestar contra las redadas de ICE dirigidas a migrantes en Colorado y la detención de indocumentados en prisiones como la de Aurora, según explicó uno de ellos en Facebook.

Este centro ubicado en las afueras de Denver es administrado por el grupo GEO, que tiene un contrato con ICE, y ha sido citado más veces en informes y por activistas como un lugar donde el respeto de los derechos de los inmigrantes detenidos no siempre está garantizado. La compañía propietaria niega esta acusación.

Entre los convocantes de la protesta estuvieron los grupos Abolish ICE y Comunistas de Denver, según reporta la web de KUSA-TV, afiliada local de NBC. “Tenemos a gente, a mi gente, a latinos, en condiciones inhumanas en esta prisión de GEO y en todo el país”, afirmó un manifestante, Alejo González.

“La pregunta que estoy tratando de hacer no es qué puede hacer un buen gobierno para uno, sino qué debe hacer uno para tener un buen gobierno”.

Antes de que los participantes comenzaran a marchar por las calles de Aurora rumbo a la casa del director del centro de detención, los líderes de la protesta pidieron al grupo que permaneciera en las aceras y calles públicas y les advirtieron que no ingresaran a alguna propiedad privada ni causaran ningún daño, según KUSA-TV.

CBS4 asegura que no es la primera vez que se organizan protestas referidas a la prisión de Aurora, pero sí que se elige como lugar de concentración la vivienda privada de una persona relacionada con su administración.

La manifestación fue acogida por una masiva respuesta policial, indicaron algunos medios locales. Los activistas lanzaron lemas como “No justice, no peace. No ICE or police (en español: Sin justicia, no hay paz. No a ICE y a la policía), cuenta The Denver Post.

Hubo momentos de tensión cuando algunos de los protestantes insultaron a los agentes, así como por la presencia de un grupo de contra manifestantes, con el que hubo intercambio de gritos, según la afiliada local de NBC.

CRÍTICAS DE LA POLICÍA
La policía aseguró en Twitter que detuvo a tres varones con la acusación de obstrucción, conducta desordenada y resistencia a un arresto. Así mismo también aseguró que no hubo heridos.

El jefe de la policía de Aurora, Nick Metz, criticó a los manifestantes, calificando de “vil y asquerosa” la actitud de “muchos de los que estuvieron allí”, aunque aseguró que la localidad protege la libertad de expresión.

Algunos vecinos salieron a la calle cuando vieron alboroto. “Me parece muy molesto, porque esta es su propiedad personal y no un lugar de negocios “, afirmó una de ellas en referencia al hombre objeto de la protesta.

“Él tiene una familia, todos tenemos familias en este barrio. Es un grupo muy unido. Y están viniendo e molestando aquí”, agregó.

El grupo GEO difundió a los medios locales un comunicado en el que criticó duramente a los manifestantes. “Esta noche damos un suspiro de alivio porque la familia de nuestro empleado y sus vecinos están a salvo, y sus propiedades permanecen intactas. Desafortunadamente, el espectáculo ha establecido un nuevo mínimo en nuestra política y discurso público”, escribió un portavoz.

El mensaje asegura que GEO no es responsable de resolver la crisis en la frontera sur y que su papel es el de prestar servicios a las administraciones públicas y sugiere a los protestantes que se dirijan a los políticos para pedir cambios legislativos.

Un informe divulgado este miércoles por la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU) en Colorado asegura que ICE opera centros de detención sin una supervisión significativa del gobierno, incluyendo el de Aurora, donde, agrega, en los últimos años fallecieron dos migrantes. La instalación puede albergar a cerca de 1,500 detenidos.

Un panel con organizaciones para hablar de inmigración, de la problemática actual y del aumento de personas que intentar llegar a los Estados Unidos a pesar de las políticas migratorias, además de conocer las distintas opciones de ayuda para los migrantes desde a pagar fianzas hasta casos de mujeres asaltadas y violadas en la búsqueda del sueño americano.

La maquinaria de captura, procesamiento y deportación de inmigrantes se ha convertido en un negocio lucrativo en el que miles de indocumentados han sufrido abusos, discriminación, maltrato, separación de sus seres queridos y otras atrocidades, en su búsqueda de un mejor futuro en suelo estadounidense. La historia del médico nicaragüense Isaac Molina, quien escapó de su país tras un atentado contra su vida, es realmente conmovedora.

WASHINGTON—The Department of Homeland Security will once more consider requests from unauthorized immigrants to temporarily stay in the country, typically to receive lifesaving medical treatment, after facing fierce criticism for announcing that it would no longer accept such appeals.

A spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and immigration Services, an agency under DHS, said in a statement Thursday that at the direction of Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, it “is resuming its consideration of non-military deferred action requests on a discretionary, case-by-case basis.”

USCIS had handled deferred action requests but announced in August it was transferring that authority to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that carries out deportations.

The move raised fears among immigration-rights advocates that ICE would take a tougher stance against these immigrants, effectively ending the possibility that anyone would be granted deferred action.

The program permits migrants to defer deportation for up to two years at a time. Most people covered by the program came to the U.S. legally on a visa or other legal status and have requested to stay longer. The government said it receives about 1,000 such requests a year.

The government didn’t formally announce its initial decision to end the program for several weeks until several immigrants receiving medical attention were unexpectedly denied requests to remain in the country and told they needed to leave within 33 days.

The move sparked intense public criticism. The House held a public hearing last week, where several young immigrants testified that they would die if deported. More than 100 members of Congress signed a letter demanding answers from the Trump administration.

“It should not take an emergency hearing by Congress—and threats for more—to force the Trump administration to do the right thing,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Mr. McAleenan felt particularly sensitive to the negative outcry that the department’s decision sparked, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Initially, USCIS announced it would once more consider renewals of people with existing deferred action claims.

Some Department officials pushed Mr. McAleenan to create a new medical deferred action program, administered by the Homeland Security Secretary. But other officials, particularly some political appointees within USCIS, worried that continuing the program would lend legitimacy to the idea—due to be argued before the Supreme Court in November—that the government has similar legal authority to defer deportation for so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Ultimately, Mr. McAleenan opted to simply reverse the initial decision.

More than a month ago, reports emerged that migrants and asylum seekers had been bused from Nuevo Laredo, at Mexico’s northern border with the United States, to Chiapas, near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.

The Mexican government paid for the buses. The first time was just a few dozen people. The second, it was several hundred. Some of the migrants had indeed given up, sure that their asylum claims would never be processed, and had knowingly agreed to board the buses. But according to UNHCR officials who spoke with the migrants, it was unclear if migrants understood the consequences of boarding the bus or if it was even voluntary at all.

Then reports about the buses stopped. Immigration agencies and journalists had increased scrutiny of the program—which might be why it seems to have subsided, if not been completely scrapped.

The buses represent a larger issue with Mexico’s struggles to deal with Northern Triangle migration. Mexico’s government is desperately trying to prevent migrant asylum seekers from reaching the U.S.—and to some extent they are succeeding. But American policies and an influx of people seeking refuge have strained their systems, leading to measures that may violate international law.

Buses may have been one way for Mexico to alleviate pressure points, though several hundred migrants pale in comparison to the thousands waiting in Mexican border towns for their claims to be processed. But if migrants return to their home country after they’ve already applied for asylum, the case that they are unsafe in their country of origin is significantly weakened in court, explained Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). “It’s another ill thought through attempt by the Mexican government to relieve pressure at the border without really thinking about the implications of that program for the asylum seekers,” Meyer says.

Several asylum law experts tell me that the busing program is very nearly “refoulement,” a term used to describe when countries deport asylum seekers back to the countries from which they had fled. Refoulement is addressed in Articles 32 and 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, and covers both formal and informal deportation. The latter is harder to define and consequently harder to enforce. But, as sociologist David FitzGerald explained in his new book Refuge Beyond Reach, informal refoulement is part of the larger strategy that wealthy countries use to keep migrants out.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, explained that whether busing violates non-refoulement policies gets into murky legal territory. But if you take someone “99 percent of the way back” to the place they are fleeing—and boarding the bus seems semi-voluntary—it’s about as close to refoulement as you can get without actually violating that law, he said. Several other asylum experts told me something similar.

Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at WOLA, tweeted about the buses while he was in Mexico, helping garner media attention. It’s refoulement in everything but name, he told me when he returned from the border.

Reichlin-Melnick feels more strongly. “It’s this principle of agreeing not to do certain behaviors because that’s bad,” he says.

THE STORY OF THE BUSED MIGRANTS and asylum seekers goes something like this, Voice of America’s Victoria Macchi and Ramon Taylor report: After a treacherous journey to reach the southern border of the U.S.—in temperatures well over 100 degrees—migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection, held for several days, and then sent back across the border, under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program. Formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), the policy requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexican border towns like Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, and Juárez until their claims are processed.

MPP has forced more than 40,000 people to wait in Mexico. The process of “metering,” where only a certain number of people can request asylum at a port of entry per day, compounds the problem. But the effect of the policies is not just a temporary hold on who is able to win asylum. Instead, it effectively bars people from asylum by deporting them to another country, Mexico—refoulement in spirit, if not by name.

Of the 1,155 MPP asylum cases that have already been decided, just over 1 percent of asylum seekers had an attorney. This bodes a dismal success rate. According to one journalist’s count, just two people sent to Mexico under MPP have actually won asylum.

The interview process for MPP has also resulted in family separation, as American officials arbitrarily decide who waits in the U.S. and who waits in Mexico for their hearing. “MPP interviews are a joke. They are a due process facade,” says Reichlin-Melnick.

While migrants and would-be asylum seekers wait in Mexico, they are essentially homeless with few ways to support themselves. Migrants in border towns find that the cities’ shelters are full. The Mexican government is not monitoring them, so there’s no way to track migrants either. And it’s not just Central American migrants; the new policies have also delayed migrants from Haiti and African countries such as Eritrea and Cameroon.

“Undoubtedly, [MPP] leads to people being returned to places where they might be in danger,” says Reichlin-Melnick. “For one of the 35,000 who have already been sent back under MPP, whether or not this is a violation of international law is largely irrelevant. They are already facing the homelessness, and the danger, the uncertainty of being placed in this program.”

MPP places migrants in cities the U.S. State Department advises U.S. travelers not to visit, and State even advises its own employees about which areas of those cities to avoid. Immigrant rights groups argue that these cities place migrants—already particularly vulnerable populations—at risk of kidnapping, extortion, rape, and murder. “To those already sent back, the question of whether this violated human rights law is kind of a cold comfort,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

“The whole ‘Remain in Mexico’ violates [non-]refoulement, let alone if Mexico is dropping them at the Guatemalan border with no arrangements,” said Deborah Anker, a professor who specializes in asylum law at Harvard.

THIS NEAR-REFOULEMENT has enabled President Trump to claim victory on immigration policy. His efforts to outsource migrants to Mexico, and to some extent to Guatemala, have had some success. His tariff threat intimidated Mexico into largely accepting growing numbers of migrants within its borders, thereby decreasing the number of people crossing into the U.S. Recently, the Mexican government deployed new border patrol officers, though Maureen Meyer of WOLA told me they are barely trained and are largely former military personnel.

Mexico insists that it is “doing well” in addressing President Trump’s immigration demands by reducing the number of migrant apprehensions, as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said this week. But Trump has not yet said if it has been enough—and consequently if he will drop the tariff threat. Although fewer people cross in the summer, the recent dip is proportionally higher than a typical seasonal decline. August’s numbers were still higher than last year, but Mexico’s cooperation is integral to Trump’s success. Trump officials touted the pact just as Mexican officials made a trip to Washington last week to discuss the details of the June agreement.

Even before “Remain in Mexico” forced nearly 40,000 people to wait in Mexico’s border towns, Mexico was not known for exemplary migrant protections. In January 2018, Amnesty International released a report based on a 500-person survey of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras that indicated asylum seekers were being denied protection and deported, even to their death. Despite testimonies that showed asylum seekers’ fears of persecution or violence in their country of origin, Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) was deporting many claimants. The survey found that three-quarters of people detained by INM were not told of their right to seek asylum in Mexico.

Mexico claims that its more recent busing was voluntary, and more closely resembled the voluntary deportation usually conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is largely American-funded. IOM has more extensive protocols for “voluntary deportation” than Mexico, but immigrant rights advocates still object that the standards are not high enough. Joel Millman, press officer for the IOM, confirmed to me that this busing incident was not IOM, but that the agency does have a program for Mexico. “[Voluntary deportation] is the kind of work we get asked to do everywhere in the world every day,” Millman says. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times’ Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported, more than 2,200 migrants have been transported back to Central America from Juárez and Tijuana.

“There has to be a point at which this becomes such a problem for Mexican cities on that side of the border where they can’t deal with it anymore, which is why you saw the buses happening and taking people to another [city],” added Reichlin-Melnick.

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME the U.S. has been involved in “refoulement.” In January 2003, just before the U.S. and Canada reached a “safe third country” agreement, Canada employed a policy known as “direct-backs.” Much like “Remain in Mexico,” under direct-backs the Canadian government stated that refugee claimants at the U.S.-Canada border who cannot be immediately processed upon arrival were to be sent back to the U.S. until their appointment time in Canada. The instructions specified that this was the policy even if the claimant would be detained by the U.S. government, and therefore unable to return to Canada. This policy—albeit short-lived—meant that the U.S. did in fact deport six claimants who were waiting for their appointment in Canada. By doing so, the U.S. engaged in what is known as “chain refoulement,” where both Canada and the U.S. are responsible.

Shortly after these episodes, Canada and the U.S. reached a safe third country agreement, under which asylum seekers are required to file for asylum in whichever of the two countries they reach first. Despite concerns about fair hearings, asylum seekers traveling north were forced to file in the U.S. If asylum seekers are rejected, then they may apply elsewhere.

Safe third country agreements have also been floated to deal with asylum seekers at the border. The Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to force just such an agreement on Guatemala—a country with steep levels of violence and widespread poverty. Guatemalans are heavily against the agreement, and it’s unclear if the idea will make it past the country’s highest court.

FitzGerald told me that these bilateral talks have been unusual. It’s a lot of “might makes right,” he says. “That’s not usually how this kind of pressure happens in cases of externalization. Usually the stronger country is giving out more carrots, and then if they are applying more sticks they do it quietly.” Instead, the Trump administration has applied tariff pressure to Mexico, and cut aid to countries including Guatemala.

But without a bilateral agreement, deporting asylum seekers—or busing them to another border—comes much closer to refoulement. MPP itself is operating as a kind of refoulement, and if Mexico buses asylum seekers back to Guatemala’s border, it’s nearly the chain refoulement that embroiled Canada and the U.S. nearly two decades ago. MPP has yet to be heard on the merits in court, but in the meantime, its operation could already be violating international law.

If it’s true that Mexico is running a quasi-deportation program to mitigate pressure on their own system by offloading it to Guatemala, the U.S., Mexico, and Guatemala could potentially be in violation of international law. But perhaps more importantly, American policy is forcing migrants into a false choice: minimal safety in Mexico or returning to the very dangers from which they had fled.

“You don’t need to know it’s illegal to know that it’s immoral,” Reichlin-Melnick says.

GUATEMALA CITY — Research compiled one year ago by Customs and Border Protection pointed to an overwhelming factor driving record-setting migration to the U.S. from Guatemala: Crop shortages were leaving rural Guatemalans, especially in the country’s western highlands, in extreme poverty and starving.

An internal report that was circulated to senior Homeland Security officials and obtained by NBC News showed that migration surged from those areas of Guatemala without reliable subsistence farming or wages from commercial farming jobs. More than 100,000 Guatemalans headed north last year, and many more followed in fiscal year 2019, making Guatemala the single largest country contributing to undocumented immigration across the U.S. southwest border this year.

Scientists have said the increase in poverty and food insecurity driving migration are due to multiple factors, one of which is climate change.

The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, Kevin McAleenan, has publicly sounded the alarm about Guatemala’s food scarcity.

But inside the Trump White House, that message was largely ignored in both policy decisions and messaging around what should be done to stem the flow of migrants. Last October, a month after the CBP report was finalized, President Donald Trump announced he was considering suspending foreign aid to Guatemala, which included money used to mitigate the affects of climate change on small farms.

“Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.,” President Trump tweeted in October. “We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.”

In April, the administration followed through, undertaking a review of fiscal year 2017 assistance and freezing $170 million in foreign aid slated for Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Over $400 million in fiscal year 2018 foreign aid will also be reprogrammed elsewhere, including outside the Western Hemisphere.

With evidence of a correlation between acute food insecurity and migration in hand, the Trump administration instead focused on an agreement with the government of Guatemala to stem the flow of immigrants through law enforcement means.

Law enforcement over food aid
Under the agreement with Guatemala, an outline of which was obtained by NBC News, nearly 90 Americans from Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and CBP are slated to deploy to Guatemala to stop immigrants from other Central American countries from passing through their borders on the way to the U.S. Vehicles and equipment to help Guatemalan law enforcement are also included in the deal, which was outlined in May and solidified in July.

The outline states: “Enhancing border security is sought in order to reduce irregular migration flows; carry out the necessary training to support and enhance criminal investigations; concrete actions to counteract human trafficking and human smuggling; and the interdiction of illicit drug trafficking…” Nowhere in the agreement is food insecurity or foreign aid mentioned.

Under the Trump administration, the United States has funded $150 million through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the federal government’s development finance institution, to increase housing opportunities in Guatemala. And an agreement between Guatemala and the Department of Labor was signed in July to ensure that Guatemalan farm workers coming to the U.S. on temporary visas are vetted by the Guatemalan government. But none of those actions take on the impact of climate change and variability on the food supply in Guatemala’s highlands.

Between 2012 and 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) committed around $200 million to rural development programs in Guatemala, according to a USAID document reviewed by NBC News. USAID has operated programs in Guatemala specifically “designed to help to mitigate the impact of drought and coffee leaf rust,” a climate change-fueled fungus, according to an agency spokesperson. “We continue to move forward on the President’s decision regarding foreign assistance for Guatemala, and have ceased obligating new funds for Guatemala.”

The move to freeze funding frustrated those within the administration and outside of it who had been advocating for solutions to the “push factors” of immigration over law enforcement-oriented solutions that crack down on “pull factors,” like building a wall to block migrants at the U.S. border.

But a DHS official said the high turnover inside the agency has made officials nervous about keeping their jobs and anxious to please the White House, particularly senior adviser Stephen Miller. “Everyone knows Miller isn’t interested in hearing about climate change,” the DHS official said.

A senior federal law enforcement official echoed those sentiments: “There is a root cause of migration. But the question presupposes that if you know there’s a refugee crisis related to climate change you should do something about it.”

Data-based evidence
In an interview with the Washington Post in September 2018, then-CBP Commissioner McAleenan said, “Food insecurity, not violence, seems to be a key push factor informing the decision to travel from Guatemala, where we have seen the largest growth in migration flow this year.”

He based his position largely on interviews conducted by Border Patrol agents with immigrants at the border, where they are routinely asked to be as specific as possible about where they are from. By overlaying that information with data about food insecurity, CBP saw clear evidence of a correlation.

The CBP data made clear that in areas suffering acute food insecurity, like Guatemala’s Huehuetenago, Chiquimula and Zacapa departments, the rates of migration were higher than in areas without food shortage concerns.

Scientists say food insecurity can be traced to several factors. A fungus known as coffee leaf rust is rapidly expanding due to climate change throughout the Dry Corridor, a transnational area stretching through Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In so doing, it is killing the region’s cash crop, coffee. That, along with global competition plus a years-long drought, has made the plant virtually worthless. Other crops are suffering too, making jobs in commercial farming to supplement income hard to come by as well, leaving entire communities without food to sell, or money to buy food to eat.

“Our research suggests that the main driver of the recent migration in Guatemala is increasing socio-economic vulnerability, said Diego Pons, an applied climatologist with Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, part of Columbia World Programs. “This was made worse because of a multi-year drought that cannot be explained by climate change alone, but it’s a part of a larger complex climate system.”

This week, INSIVUMEH, the national meteorological service of Guatemala, announced the launch of the NextGen seasonal forecasting system with the scientific support of Columbia University’s ACToday initiative, which Pons said is the type of program that could mitigate some effects of climate change and variability on the lives of Guatemalans. It helps farmers determine when to plant, and it does not rely on U.S. foreign aid.

“NextGen will help make Guatemala a leader in the region when it comes to climate forecasting. This is a historical step forward for the country. It will now be able to provide climate services not just to some, but to all Guatemalans, especially those who depend on rain-fed agriculture for food and income.”

While visiting Chiquimula and Zacapa with the World Food Program and Pons in August, NBC News observed villages where children were suffering from malnutrition, including one, Las Sopas, where five children died last year of starvation. Today, the World Food Program, which also does not directly rely on funding from the United States government, is feeding the village’s children at the community’s school in an emergency response.

“A lot of the kids that are here, come because they know for sure there’s going to be food,” a local teacher explained. When the children waiting in line for food from the NGO were asked if they knew someone who had left for the U.S., around half raised their hands.

I don’t know how to say zygote in Spanish. Instead, I grasp for a word I know is not there. I don’t know how to say the word zygote, so instead the woman in front of me says the “baby” is not well formed.

I had this conversation, and several like it, at The South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas. I was there providing free legal counsel to detained persons seeking asylum in the United States.

I rarely talk about abortion apart from snarky remarks about the latest anti-abortion legislation in some seemingly far-off state (often, coincidentally, Texas). I’m no expert. Still, when I’m asked by an overworked volunteer at the detention center to talk to the women about their “options,” I know exactly what that means. I spoke to three women about the possibility of abortion. Three women who are already mothers, one with a babbling baby on her lap, the second with a bright pink rosary hanging around her neck, and the last a sweet woman about my mother’s age, endearing smile lines and all.

Many of the families in detention are from the Northern Triangle: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Abortion is illegal in all three countries. Guatemala, the most progressive of the three, allows abortion only if the mother’s life is at risk. In Honduras the criminalization of abortion is firm. The same is true for El Salvador, where strict laws surrounding abortion were put on international display recently with the case of Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez. Hernandez was convicted with homicide after suffering a 3rd trimester miscarriage, facing up to 40 years in prison. She was acquitted in a retrial on August 19th, but the lengthy battle for her freedom demonstrates just how harsh El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws can be. Hernandez’s battle in the supreme court comes only four years after that of Beatriz Garcia. Garcia, known publicly as “Beatriz,” was denied the termination of her second pregnancy by the Salvadoran Supreme Court, despite doctors’ claim that her pregnancy was potentially fatal because she also had lupus and that the fetus itself was unviable.

The impact of discussing abortion with women who face prison time for an accidental miscarriage in their home countries was not lost on me. Especially since we were having that discussion in a place where many women are jailed for seeking a better life for their children.

These women are fundamentally excluded from the pro-choice conversation. I imagined my first conversation about abortion, my first real conversation about abortion, to be with a friend. One my age, who perhaps did not have a partner, and certainly did not already have a child. The reality is that in the United States, 59% of women who seek abortions are already mothers. We often leave these women out of the conversation, and we most certainly leave out immigrant women, particularly those who already have children. These women are often reduced to nothing more than mothers, even if they don’t yet have children.

The conversation around immigrant women in the U.S. so often returns to motherhood. “They came here for their children” we hear in one ear, “anchor babies” in another. This is the context with which I sat down with each mother to discuss their options.

The net of advocacy in place for families seeking asylum can fail to recognize these women as valuable and worthwhile in their own right. We see it all the time in the way news articles cover immigration detention. The emphasis always on the mothers and their children: the family. In doing so, we police the immigrant family. The mothers are reduced to just that: mothers. Fundamentally, however, they are women and deserve to be taken care of and to take care of themselves.

For the entire world, it has become clear that the image that the United States once had, of an idyllic country to which migrants from all parts of the world aspired, regardless of their condition, has become faded, battered. In nearly three years, the rise of a new form of treating “the other” has changed, perhaps forever, the possibility of becoming a true nation of welcome.

It is unknown whether, demographically-speaking, welcoming the downtrodden had been the real intention at one time, with everything and the existence of a symbolic Statue of Liberty that has now been devalued by the immigration policies of the current government; but what is more evident is that a good part of U.S. society has germinated a deep sense of exclusion. So much so that its members have been able to erect as the leader of this new “movement” a president who, in image and likeness, paints immigrants from one extreme to another. And they intend to keep him in the White House for another four years.

For the entire world, it has become clear that the image that the United States once had, of an idyllic country to which migrants from all parts of the world aspired, regardless of their condition, has become faded, battered. In nearly three years, the rise of a new form of treating “the other” has changed, perhaps forever, the possibility of becoming a true nation of welcome.

From the threat to construct a wall to prevent the passage of undocumented immigrants, to the malicious slandering of Hispanics as delincuents, or the intimidation upon separating migrant children from their families, on top of putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of people seeking asylum, this new current of thought has continued advancing, in society as well as in the administration, despite the fact that the political and social counterpart has also created a movement of resistance in diverse fronts —legal, political, social, and community-based— that, unfortunately, has not been able to stop neither the anti-immigrant rhetoric nor the fortification of hate toward minorities.

It is this dangerous equation that has deepened further the division in a country that supposedly arrived at historic-social maturity where those ghosts of the past that have done so much damage to humanity no longer fit: racism, xenophobia, indicators of fascism, social prejudice, among so many others.

But these have revived in such a way that they have completely disfigured the face of multiculturalism they had been sculpting before the rest of the world since the fight for civil rights. It is noted that this chapter of history did not please everyone and that, on the contrary, it was simmering a definite animosity that was unleashed upon arrival of the current occupant of the White House on the political arena.

And from there a new historical watershed was established, which will be easily analyzed by future generations, but right now looks like a fledgling society, immature, a young nation that had everything, including the possibility of being a unique and worldwide model of development, despite its arrogance about being “the best” that has ever existed in human history.

This is, of course, part of its own mythology, and that is why it still represents a “beacon of hope” for many who literally have nothing and after overcoming the pride in the land where they were born, have to separate themselves from the concept of belonging to that place and reinvent themselves in other latitudes with the goal of not fading away as people, as a family, as productive and thoughtful beings.

But in the United States, they have met an invisible wall that right now frustrates this very objective.

In that sense, returning newly to its immigrant essence is being complicated, as the U.S. has lost the hegemony and reputation it used to have on this topic; it will not be easy, perhaps, to educate new generations to remove racism once and for all, but we cannot stop trying, for the good of humanity, as UNESCO notes in its report “Migration, displacement and education: building bridges, not walls,” from its Global education monitoring report 2019: “immigration and displacements continue stirring up negative reactions in modern societies, exploited at the same time by opportunists who believe it beneficial to construct walls and not bridges.”

But that will be a countercurrent social process that for now, in the context of the 2020 presidential elections, will be stranded before the sick reinforcement of anti-immigrant rhetoric, before that invisible wall of racism that forms the essential part of the campaign of he who currently holds the power.

David Torres is a Spanish-language Advisor at Américas Voice.

BOSTON — The Trump administration reversed its decision Thursday to stop considering requests from immigrants seeking to defer deportation for medical treatment and other hardships, following weeks of public outcry and a congressional inquiry into the decision.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed Thursday it will resume considering “deferred action” requests on a discretionary, case-by-case basis, as it had done for years prior.

The agency said the reversal of the Aug. 7 decision was directed by Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin Kealoha McAleenan, who oversees USCIS. It didn’t elaborate.

The decision to terminate the longstanding policy drew immediate criticism from doctors and immigration lawyers, particularly in Boston, where a number of the impacted families have settled to receive treatment in some of nation’s top hospitals.

Civil rights groups in the city also filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the agency hadn’t given proper public notice or justification about the termination, as the law requires.

Earlier this month, the USCIS, in a partial concession to the criticism, reopened requests from about 400 pending applicants who had been issued denial letters that also ordered them to leave the country within 33 days or risk deportation.

Despite Thursday’s announcement, House Democrats said they’ll continue to press for answers about how the termination decision came about. They also said they’ll be monitoring the agency to assure the reversal takes hold.

“Because of the secrecy and obstruction surrounding this policy, we will be taking additional steps to verify that these children and their families do not need to live in fear and uncertainty,” U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee that held a contentious hearing on the decision last week and has scheduled another one for next week. “Our committee will continue to seek answers about who was responsible for this cruel policy in the first place.”

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat who was among those calling for a congressional investigation into the decision, also applauded the reversal.

“This is for all of the children and families who have been dehumanized by this cruel Administration,” she said. “When we fight, we win.”

Deferred action is a special status that allows foreign nationals to temporarily work and receive health benefits for up to two years while they or their family members receive treatment for serious medical conditions.

The renewable status doesn’t provide a pathway to citizenship and is similar to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which the Trump administration is trying to undo.

The administration hasn’t said how many people currently hold the status, but says it receives about 1,000 requests a year nationwide. Most of the requests, it has said, are denied.

In an important policy reversal, the Trump administration on Thursday said it would resume a program that enabled some immigrants to remain in the country without fear of deportation while undergoing lifesaving medical treatment.

The unannounced termination last month of much of the so-called deferred action program generated public outrage and drew sharp rebuke from the medical establishment. Among those ordered to leave the country in 33 days or face deportation was Maria Isabel Bueso, who had been involved in clinical trials that led to the approval of a drug to extend the lives of those with her rare genetic disease.

Last week, Ms. Bueso and other young immigrants with serious illnesses told a House Oversight subcommittee that their survival depended on staying in the country, and pleaded for reinstatement of the program.

The Department of Homeland Security informed the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that, at the direction of Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary, it would resume consideration of requests for deferrals. A spokesman for the United States and Citizenship Immigration Services, which had originally rescinded the program, confirmed the decision.

Ms. Bueso and others had received letters in August from the agency, which adjudicates immigration benefits, notifying them that their requests to remain in the country had been denied. That drew criticism from lawyers, Democratic lawmakers and doctors, who said their patients were being issued a death sentence.

A few weeks later, the government said it would reopen the cases of those who had received denials, sending them letters to that effect. However, it did not tell them whether their requests had been granted or clarify how other applicants should proceed. It said only that cases would be considered by another agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But that agency, which oversees deportations, told The New York Times that it had not been consulted and was not prepared to take on the role.

Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, sponsored a letter signed by more than 120 members of Congress demanding answers from homeland security. She then called for an emergency oversight hearing about the elimination of the program.

On Thursday, Michael Anderson, president of Benioff Children’s Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco, where Ms. Bueso receives weekly treatment, said, “We hope this will apply to every patient who requires lifesaving care, including our patient Isabel Bueso and other children in her situation.”

Ms. Bueso, who has an enzyme disease that causes dwarfism and other physical deformities, has remained in the country since she was 7 to receive treatment and participate in additional medical studies; she has renewed her deferred action status every two years. Her parents pay for private health insurance to cover her care.

“While we have not received any official confirmation that our deferred action case will be approved,” Ms. Bueso said, “we are cautiously optimistic about this news.”

Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. @mirjordan

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 20, 2019, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Deferred Action For Immigrants Set to Resume. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Acting Homeland Security Department Secretary Kevin McAleenan has directed federal immigration officials to resume processing deportation relief requests for people receiving treatment for serious medical conditions.

The decision reverses an earlier move by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to put a freeze on the requests, known as “deferred action.” The earlier decision made an exception for military members and their families, but sought to deny relief to other applicants.

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“At the direction of Acting Secretary McAleenan, USCIS is resuming its consideration of non-military deferred action requests on a discretionary, case-by-case basis, except as otherwise required by an applicable statute, regulation, or court order,” a USCIS spokesperson said in a written statement.

USCIS quietly changed its policy around deferred action last month. The agency sent letters to roughly 400 applicants that told them the requests would not be processed and that they should depart the country within 33 days.

Democrats and pro-migrant advocates blasted the move. A House Oversight subcommittee held a hearing on the issue last week that featured testimony from two undocumented immigrants with serious medical conditions. Both witnesses had received letters informing them their deferred action requests would not be considered.

“It should not take an emergency hearing by Congress — and threats for more — to force the Trump administration to do the right thing,” said Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in a written statement. “Our committee will continue to seek answers about who was responsible for this cruel policy in the first place.”

An internal USCIS memo obtained by POLITICO and published last week showed that the agency urged McAleenan to rescind its deferred action authority altogether.

The memo was prepared by USCIS Policy and Strategy Chief Kathy Nuebel Kovarik for a Sept. 9 meeting to be led by acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli. In the document, Nuebel Kovarik wrote that if McAleenan declined to remove the authority altogether, he should at least keep the current guidance halting any future requests for relief.

SAN DIEGO — President Donald Trump signed his name on a newly constructed section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, calling it a “world-class security system” that will be virtually impenetrable.

Trump toured a section of the border wall in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area on Wednesday. It was a return trip for the Republican president, who traveled there in March 2018 to see border wall prototypes that authorities later destroyed to make way for 14 miles (22.4 kilometers) of steel, concrete-filled bollards currently under construction.

Before construction began, the border in San Diego was protected by an initial layer of sheet metal that was easily blow-torched and a second, more formidable layer that could be compromised with powerful, battery-operated saws.

“It was like a sheet metal, and people would just knock it over like just routinely,” Trump said, referring to the initial layer that was replaced. He stood with construction workers and top Customs and Border Protection, Army Corps of Engineers and homeland security officials.

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, defended the project, dismissing critics who call it the “president’s vanity wall.”

“I’m here to tell you that’s false,” he said, telling reporters that Trump reached out to border experts to find out what they needed. “You listened to the agents,” he told Trump.

Trump highlighted features of the wall, which he said have been studied by three other countries. He said the wall absorbs heat — “You can fry an egg on that wall.” The concrete goes deep into the ground to prevent tunneling. And agents can see through it to spot possible threats on the Mexican side of the border, he said.

“When the wall is built, it will be virtually impossible to come over illegally, and then we’re able to take border control and put them at points of entry,” Trump said.

He heaped praise on the Mexican government, especially for sending tens of thousands of troops to its northern and southern borders to help slow the flow of migrants headed toward the United States. He said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “has been great.”

“We’re all thrilled,” Trump said. “You know Mexico has never done anything to impede people from pouring into our country and now they’re doing just the opposite. They’ve really been incredible.”

The president reveled in details of construction, saying Border Patrol and military officials persuaded him to adopt more expensive designs. He said he dropped a preference for solid concrete, instead opting for concrete-filled steel bollards that allow agents to see through to Mexico to spot assailants throwing rocks or other projectiles. He agreed to go along with barriers that are 30 feet (9 meters) high and double-layered in heavily traveled areas.

“It’s the Rolls-Royce version,” Trump said.

When Trump asked Army Corps Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite to explain how technology embedded in the wall alerts agents to illegal activity, he was told, “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing it.”

Semonite offered new details on the pace of construction that underscored how quickly the administration plans to move.

It has built 66 miles (106 kilometers), has 251 miles (403 kilometers) in various stages of construction at 17 sites and has contracts for 163 miles (262 kilometers) planned in the next 90 days, the general said. Additional land on private property is expected to take more time.

Crews are installing 270 panels a day, each one with eight bollards.

Trump, whose construction targets have shifted, said he expects to build up to about 550 miles (885 kilometers) of wall along the 1,954-mile (3,126-kilometer) border and said the administration will pause at about 400 miles (643 kilometers) to assess what more is needed.

Trump said cost concerns led him to put aside his preference to paint the wall black, which absorbs heat. He said the wall was “a good, strong rust color” and could be painted later.

Trump is riding a string of wins on the wall and on immigration in general. Arrests on the Mexican border arrests plunged in August, well beyond the usual summer dip, from a 13-year high reached in May. Arrests are still relatively high, topping 50,000 in 10 of the last 11 months, compared with only eight months over the previous decade.

Last week, the Supreme Court gave Trump a green light to deny asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. border with Mexico without having first sought protection in the third country.

The Pentagon recently diverted $3.6 billion from 127 military construction projects to build 175 miles (280 kilometers) of barriers on the border. Trump had promised during the 2016 presidential campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Senior Trump administration officials are considering a plan to again divert billions of dollars in military funding to pay for border barrier construction next year, a way to circumvent congressional opposition to putting more taxpayer money toward the president’s signature project, according to three administration officials.

The president has pledged to complete nearly 500 miles of new barrier by the 2020 election — stirring chants of “Build the Wall!” at his campaign rallies. But that construction goal will require a total of $18.4 billion in funding through 2020, far more than the administration has publicly disclosed, the administration’s latest internal projections show.

‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall by Election Day

Planning documents obtained by The Washington Post show the cost of building 509 miles of barriers averages out to more than $36 million per mile. The documents also show that the government would need to obtain — either by eminent-domain claims or purchases — land that lies under nearly 200 miles of proposed barrier.

At a Sept. 11 meeting at the White House led by adviser Jared Kushner, senior officials discussed a plan that would press lawmakers to backfill — or reimburse — $3.6 billion of Pentagon funds that the administration diverted this year to pay for fence construction, the officials said.

The White House also has requested $5 billion for barrier funding in 2020 through the Department of Homeland Security budget, but if that money is not approved, the administration plans to dip into the Pentagon’s construction budget for the second consecutive year to get another $3.6 billion, said the officials familiar with the plan.

The Democratic majority in the House is adamantly opposed to providing additional funding for the project.

If the administration carries out the plan, the White House will have defied Congress to divert a total of $7.2 billion of Defense Department funds over two years, money that would otherwise pay to repair or upgrade U.S. military installations.

When the White House was asked about the plan Thursday, a senior official responded that the discussion was “a typical project-management meeting where administration officials discussed border wall progress” and that the goal was to ensure that border security priorities were being fulfilled “and that additional needs were being assessed in the event more funding became available.”

Trump’s urgency about barrier construction has unnerved top aides responsible for the project’s completion, and it also has raised new concerns about potential shortcuts in contracting and procurement procedures.

Two days after the White House meeting, the head of the House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter to Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, asking for a briefing on border barrier procurement, saying the committee was investigating whether regular contracting processes were being bypassed to build the structure more quickly.

Committee Chariman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said lawmakers also were troubled by revelations in The Post that President Trump had urged the Corps of Engineers to steer contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company whose top executive is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News.

Cummings’s letter cited concerns that the Corps of Engineers “is being pressured to bypass regular contracting processes in order to complete construction more quickly.”

The committee gave a Friday deadline for Semonite to provide the briefing, according to the letter.

The Corps of Engineers also has been directed to hand over information about border construction bids to Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has promoted Fisher Industries to Trump. Cramer has said he has been “deputized” by the president to ensure that barrier construction remains on track.

‘He always brings them up’: Trump tries to steer border wall deal to North Dakota firm

A spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers said the agency awards contracts through competitive procedures that provide “the best value to the government for the particular procurement action being undertaken.”

“As a standard practice, when publicly releasing contractual information, USACE advises our contractors and coordinates with our legal team to ensure that information released does not violate proprietary concerns,” said the spokeswoman, Raini Brunson.

Cramer, who has repeatedly pushed for Fisher Industries to get a border contract, said he was pleased to hear he would be getting the documents he had requested.

“I don’t know if Fisher or anyone else would build a better or less-expensive wall,” Cramer said Thursday. “When I was in El Paso, I saw a Fisher-built segment and another segment, and the quality from the surface and the technology implemented by Fisher was far superior. I believe it was less expensive as well.”

Cramer said he had repeatedly pushed for the documents and had been stymied. He said he did not plan to give the documents to Fisher — something military officials fear will happen. Cramer said he is working only to help the president, who he said has asked him to dive into the wall construction.

“This is my inquiry as a member of the Senate who sits on the committees with jurisdiction over the USACE,” Cramer said. “I have no plans to share the documents with anyone, depending on what they show, and I don’t imagine Fisher would be all that interested. What I’ve requested are projects that have already been awarded. If there are irregularities like high bidders getting awards over lower bidders or inadequate explanations why a company was overlooked or rejected, I’m more likely to share that information with you or other media as well as [the office of the inspector general] or the secretary of the Army or defense.”

The administration’s financial maneuvers have drawn significant criticism from lawmakers who accuse the White House of undermining military readiness to fund a project closely tied to the president’s reelection campaign.

White House budget officials told lawmakers in early 2018 that their plan was to install more than 700 miles of barriers over a decade at a cost $18 billion. The construction plan laid out by Trump appears to move the project much faster, delivering about 200 miles less for the same amount of money.

This year’s Pentagon reprogramming has taken funding away from 51 projects, generating significant opposition, so the plan discussed at the White House would first try to get lawmakers to put that money back into budgets that fund military construction and repairs.

“The plan is to sell it as replenishment money to the Defense Department for the $3.6 billion they took this year,” said one of the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisal. “Then once they got it from Congress, they would take it again.”

The House this week voted down a Republican motion to “backfill” the military construction funds. The money has been diverted from child-care facilities and schools on military bases, as well as from maintenance and repairs on U.S. bases.

Trump has pushed aides to build the border fencing as quickly as possible, brushing off concerns about property ownership and contracting procedures while reassuring others worried about wrongdoing that he will issue pardons if they are targeted for prosecution.

The administration has not said publicly how it plans to obtain funding next year to meet its ambitious construction targets, which will require the government to dramatically accelerate the pace of work and make aggressive use of federal authority to seize private land.

The planning document distributed at the meeting led by Kushner last week indicates that 187 of the 509 miles of proposed border barrier are on private land — more than one-third of the total. On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior announced the transfer of 560 acres of federal land to the Army to facilitate barrier construction along a 70-mile stretch of the border.

Trump also has taken an increasingly keen interest in aesthetic elements of the barrier, insisting it should be painted black and topped with spikes, despite the cost increases associated with those elements.

The border wall meeting led by Kushner was attended by Semonite, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner Mark Morgan, top White House budget official Russell Vought and others from the Pentagon and the White House.

The White House’s plan to ask lawmakers for additional Pentagon funds to make up for the reprogrammed money, only to divert money all over again, could outrage Democratic lawmakers who already are bracing for another potential standoff with the White House this fall.

Trump forced a partial shutdown of the federal government that stretched from December into January in an attempt to gain leverage over congressional Democrats in his push for $5 billion in construction money, but the president buckled after polls showed most Americans blamed him for the impasse.

The White House then maneuvered to get the money elsewhere, largely by squeezing military construction projects. Of the $3.6 billion redirected to the border project in 2019, about half comes from projects at bases and locations overseas, while the other half has been shaved off domestic projects.

So far, the administration has installed about 65 miles of new barrier, all of it in areas where the government has replaced smaller or dilapidated fencing with imposing steel fencing as tall as 30 feet.

Touring new sections of double-layered fencing with top Homeland Security officials this week, the president likened the structure to a luxury automobile.

“I said, ‘Fellas, how about doing a less-expensive version?’ ” he told reporters. “They said, ‘Well, this is the version that works, including the poured concrete in the steel with the rebar and everything else.”

“That’s the Rolls-Royce version.”

Mexican growers have signed an agreement with the Commerce Department that raises the prices of the tomatoes they sell in the United States but drops the threat of a 25 percent U.S. anti-dumping duty.

“The agreement was hard-fought, but we were able to secure a number of important provisions that will make this deal work for our distributors and customers,” Mario Robles, director of the Sinaloa growers association, said in a statement.

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The Commerce Department, in its own statement, said the agreement eliminates the injurious effects of unfairly priced Mexican tomatoes, prevents price suppression and undercutting and allows department officials to audit at least 80 Mexican tomato producers and U.S. sellers every three months to ensure compliance.

The agreement also closes loopholes from past suspension agreements that permitted sales below the minimum “reference prices” in certain circumstances and includes an inspection mechanism to prevent the importation of low-quality, poor-condition tomatoes from Mexico, which can have price-depressing effects on the market, the department said.

Heading into final talks this week, Mexican tomato growers were threatening not to sign the agreement because of concern over a new border inspection procedure.

U.S. companies that import about $2 billion of Mexican tomatoes annually also warned Wednesday the requirement could cause costly border delays. That would also affect other incoming produce such as table grapes, avocados, onions and citrus that require inspection under USDA marketing orders, Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, said in an interview.

However, the Mexican growers said Thursday they won a commitment that inspections will be conducted by the USDA in accordance with its normal practice, including being done in a timely manner and completed within 24 hours.

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Commerce also committed that the inspection program — which does not take effect for at least six months — will be developed and implemented in consultation with experts at USDA, the growers said.

“These provisions help relieve our concerns that the United States was setting up a de facto quota or volume restriction,” said Rosario Beltran, president of the grower association CAADES. “We hope these provisions will give comfort to the many interests in both countries concerned about bottlenecks at the border and supply chain delays.”

The Mexican growers said they were also able to preserve the ability to sell directly to U.S. retailers and protect the rights of U.S. buyers to seek damages when the product they receive does not meet specifications.

“We take the Department of Commerce at its word that the agreement is not designed to impede trade and we thank the Department’s team for working with us to make important changes to the agreement in the last 30 days,” said Antonio Gandara, president of the Sonora growers association.

The so-called suspension agreement ends a two-decade-old anti-dumping investigation that the Commerce Department relaunched in May at the request of Florida tomato growers. Commerce set a preliminary anti-dumping duty of 17.5 percent on the imports, which was scheduled to increase to 25 percent if no deal was reached.

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“The department’s action brought the Mexican growers to the negotiating table and led to a result that protects U.S. tomato producers from unfair trade. It also removes major uncertainties for the Mexican growers and their workers,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

Oscar Woltman, president of AMHPAC, Mexico’s largest growers’ association, said the final agreement is much better than initial demands made by the Florida Tomato Exchange, which represents the industry in that state.

“Considering that we started the negotiations with Commerce with the Florida Tomato Exchange demanding that the reference prices should be extended downstream to the final sale and that U.S. buyers be stripped of legal rights, we believe we have ended up in a much better place,” Woltman said.

A majority of voters disapprove of the Trump administration’s decision to reallocate money from the Department of Defense to build his long-promised border wall, according to a new poll released on Thursday.

The Hill-HarrisX poll found that 57 percent of registered voters disagree with a plan to divert money from the Department of Defense to build the southern border wall, compared to 44 percent of voters who said they do support the move.

Republicans overwhelming back the president on this issue at 80 percent.

But just 17 percent of Democrats said they approve of Trump’s reallocation of military funds, as did 38 percent of independent voters.

The survey comes just weeks after the Trump administration announced it was moving forward with its plan to redistribute $3.6 billion in Defense Department funds to build a 175-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The announcement comes after Trump’s national emergency declaration earlier this year over funding for the border wall.

Democratic leadership have made it clear that they intend to fight the Pentagon’s decision to reallocate defense funds for the wall.

“Canceling military construction projects at home and abroad will undermine our national security and the quality of life and morale of our troops, making America less secure,” House Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiPelosi: Lewandowski should have been held in contempt ‘right then and there’ Democrats bicker over strategy on impeachment Overnight Health Care — Presented by Partnership for America’s Health Care Future — Pelosi set to unveil drug price plan | Abortion rate in US hits lowest level since Roe v. Wade | Dems threaten to subpoena Juul MORE (D-Calif.) said in a statement following the initial announcement.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 1,003 registered voters between Sept. 13 and Sept. 14. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has finalized nearly $2.5 billion in contracts to build a portion of President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump conversation with foreign leader part of complaint that led to standoff between intel chief, Congress: report Pelosi: Lewandowski should have been held in contempt ‘right then and there’ Trump to withdraw FEMA chief nominee: report MORE’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Thursday.

The amount means that, as of this week, 129 miles worth of projects in New Mexico, Arizona and California “has been obligated and is on contract,” Jonathan Hoffman told reporters at the Pentagon.

All but $3 million of that money remains unobligated but will be used before the end of the month, Hoffman said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in April and May had awarded the funding for border wall projects after the Trump administration declared a national emergency and sought to reallocate the money from a DOD fund meant to combat drug trafficking.

The dollars then became caught in a legal battle, with the Supreme Court ruling 5-4 in July that the Trump administration could start using the funds to construct a wall while litigation continues to play out.

Defense Secretary Mark EsperMark EsperOvernight Defense: Trump says he has ‘many options’ on Iran | Hostage negotiator chosen for national security adviser | Senate Dems block funding bill | Documents show Pentagon spent at least 4K at Trump’s Scotland resort Documents show Pentagon spent at least 4,000 at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland Senate panel advances Trump’s nominees to lead Air Force, Army MORE also earlier this month authorized $3.6 billion in Pentagon dollars, to be redistributed from military construction projects across the globe, to build 175 miles of wall along the southern border.

To move forward on such wall projects, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Wednesday transferred 560 acres of land to the Army for about 70 miles of barrier in Arizona, California and Texas.

Asked how long it will take to have that $3.6 billion fully contracted out, Hoffman said there was no timeline but acknowledged that “it’s going to take months.”

The administration’s goal is to have completed more than 450 miles of wall construction by the end of 2020, Hoffman added.

“It’ll take a little while, as we do the planning, we buy the property, we do the environmental assessments … and then you’ll see a rapid increase in the amount. Right now, we’re at a pace of about a mile a day and we’ll see that continue to go up,” he said.

Thousands of miles from Washington D.C. in Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Napier works on the front lines of the border crisis.

He showed “Nightline” a section of the border barrier that “was and still is a major drug trafficking and human trafficking corridor,” he said.

“We know that somebody came here with a kid,” he said, pointing out refuse along the barrier. “There’s children’s clothing, diapers, a small container of baby oil.”

From there, people traversing the desert would have 40 miles to go before “they get to something that would resemble civilization where they can be picked up by somebody else,” Napier said.

PHOTO: “The border is clearly a public safety threat to my county because of the drug and human trafficking that comes across that border,” Napier said. ABC
“The border is clearly a public safety threat to my county because of the drug and human trafficking that comes across that border,” Napier said. more +
For more than three decades, this has been Napier’s home — the largest border county on the southern border.

On the national stage, what happens here has become a political flashpoint. Just this week, President Donald Trump touted his campaign promise of building a wall at the U.S. southern border while speaking south of San Diego.

“It’s a very powerful, very powerful wall, the likes of which probably to this extent has not been built before,” Trump said while showing off a portion of the 30-foot-tall bollard wall. “Plus it’s designed to absorb heat, so it’s extremely hot. The wall is, you won’t be able to touch it. You can fry an egg on that wall. It’s very, very hot.”

It’s the latest in a debate that’s dominated headlines and divided the country. But for the lifelong Republican sheriff, the border is much more than a policy dispute.

“The border is clearly a public safety threat to my county because of the drug and human trafficking that comes across that border,” Napier said. “Public safety’s not a partisan issue, it’s not a political issue. It’s quality of life, it’s a human condition issue. So partisanship and political ideology should not intersect [with] what I do to maintain public safety in my county.”

Napier said that in Pima County, in “some places, the only way to get to those areas are by air or hiking.”

Within a few miles of the international border, Napier noted that there’s “very undeveloped land — vast expanses of desert areas that somebody coming to this country between the ports of entry have to navigate.”

“My deputies do recover almost 100 bodies a year in the deserts of this county,” he said. “That taxes our resources, but it also pulls at my strings from a humanitarian standpoint.”

Chief Medical Examiner Greg Hess and his team work to identify remains recovered in the desert — a grim situation that he said has worsened since the early 2000s.

“So far this year…to date in 2019, we’ve recovered 92 suspected undocumented border cross remains,” Hess said. “We went from…75 [remains recovered] in the year 2000. In 2001, it was 77. In 2002, it was 145.”

The incomplete remains of an unidentified migrant discovered earlier this year laid on Hess’ exam table.

“That was somebody’s father, that that was somebody’s brother, somebody’s son,” Napier said. “That’s a human being, and a human being probably driven by very desperate decisions in their home country to make a very dangerous and illegal ingress in the United States that cost them their lives.”

Napier said Trump was correct in that “we need to secure our southern border.”

“I do understand the desperation,” Napier said of those who cross the border. But he added that it’s not safe. “Do not come into this country illegally because you’re going to [be] victimized by criminals [and] by the environment.”

The vast majority of immigrants have entered the country legally, including asylum seekers like Angel Ramos.

Last year, Ramos and his son Fernando fled Honduras. Like many Central American families, they say they had no choice but to take the risk.

“There, everything is controlled by gangs. And, well, now that you’re older, they want you to sell drugs, to do so many things… I didn’t want to do it,” Ramos told “Nightline” in June.

“My son is the most precious thing for me [so] I didn’t want to be involved in those bad things,” Ramos said. “You can imagine my son. How is he going to grow up without a father? Because over there, if you do something bad, they kill you.”

The father and son made the perilous three-month journey on foot, bus and train to reach the U.S. border.

Unlike the hundreds of thousands who have crossed into the U.S. illegally, Ramos said he wanted to do it the right way — petitioning for asylum to U.S. immigration officials at the Nogales Port of Entry.

After a few days, immigration officials released Ramos and his son at a Tucson, Arizona, shelter. The two are allowed to stay in the U.S. as their asylum case makes it through the courts.

But new policies under the Trump administration are making it harder for asylum seekers like Ramos to seek refuge.

Napier says in Pima County, “some places the only way to get to those areas are by air or hiking.”
While immigration dominates headlines, another constant concern on the border is stemming the flow of illegal drugs, the majority of which pass through legal ports of entry.

Sergeant Patrick Hilliker is with the Border Interdiction Unit at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

“We are usually directly involved in finding, or assisting other agencies in finding, hundreds of pounds a year,” Hilliker said. “You can imagine how much is probably getting through and how much is actually in this country right now.”

PHOTO: Sergeant Patrick Hilliker is with the Border Interdiction Unit at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. ABC
Sergeant Patrick Hilliker is with the Border Interdiction Unit at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
Hilliker showed “Nightline” what he said was approximately 14 pounds of heroin that had been seized.

“This one, in particular, you can see they’re in vacuum-sealed bags and that’s to contain the smell and make it so the dogs don’t smell it.”

(MORE: Border Patrol agent shot, suspect killed during traffic stop)
The southwest border has long been the primary entry point for heroin. In 2017, nearly 1,000 pounds of heroin came through the Tucson sector.

“Nightline” joined Hilliker and some of his team to stake out what they believe is a “stash house.”

“If they see something that looks like there’s some smuggling going on, we’ll go try to stop the vehicle and talk with them,” Hilliker said.

“Any way you can think of smuggling narcotics into this country, it’s been done,” Hilliker added. He listed drugs that were found inside of car “radiators, fake battery compartments [and] fake flooring. They’ll take everything out of the vehicle and put in a fake floor, reweld it, put carpet back over it…put the seats back on and it’s very difficult to find.”

Traffickers not only use any method necessary to do business, they also use smugglers from all walks of life.

“They will pay people into bringing this stuff up and it’s quick money,” Hilliker said. “Sometimes, there’s elderly people that are doing it, younger people, different nationalities, different citizenships.”

“The opiate addiction is a public health emergency,” Napier said. “This is really the front line of a national issue, right here in our counties. But we have to bifurcate the issue of illegal immigration from transnational crime. They’re not exactly the same thing, although they intersect one another once in a while.”

For Napier, these aren’t faraway threats but realities in his backyard — nuances too often lost in the noise.

“We need to secure our border for public safety reasons, national security reasons and human rights reasons,” Napier said. “No one can argue past those three points. Let’s get it done.”

The Interior Department approved a transfer of 560 acres of public land to the U.S. Army to build about 70 miles of border wall, Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt announced Wednesday.

The approved land, which spans parts of New Mexico, California and Arizona, will not interfere with any national parks or segments of Native American land, according to the department’s announcement.

“I’ve personally visited the sites that we are transferring to the Army, and there is no question that we have a crisis at our southern border,” Bernhardt said in a department announcement. “Absent this action, national security and natural resource values will be lost. The impacts of this crisis are vast and must be aggressively addressed with extraordinary measures.”

The order temporarily transfers the land to the Army for a three-year period for border security purposes.

The transferred land includes portions of Luna and Hidalgo Counties in New Mexico, San Diego County, California and Yuma County, Arizona.

The Interior Department said the transfer of land will also prevent “environmental issues caused by unlawful border crossings,” including land degradation, destruction of trails and unlawful fires.

The Army submitted its request for the transfer after Trump’s unprecedented move declaring a national emergency at the border in February, after Congress did not approve his request for he billions of dollars to create a border wall.

The Defense Department announced earlier this month it will defer $3.6 billion to fund 11 barrier projects along the southern border.

Building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has been a cornerstone of Trump’s presidency and was a promise he made during his 2016 campaign, when he repeatedly claimed that Mexico would pay for the project.

NEW YORK — As news of immigrant parents being separated from their children at the border filled headlines last summer, Vivien Tartter became distraught.

So the 67-year-old psychology professor took action: She opened the doors of her Manhattan apartment to a Guatemalan family of three who had been separated at a detention center in Colorado, reunited in New York and had no place to stay.

“I wanted to help and I knew I could do this,” said the divorced empty-nester, who has housed them for a year.

Tartter is one more of a small but growing number of U.S. citizens who have picked up immigrants from detention centers, driven them to bus stations and doctor appointments, shared meals with them or hosted them at their homes, sometimes for one night, sometimes for a full year.

At a time when the nation seems starkly divided on who should be allowed to reside in the United States, hosts say they want to give these immigrants, many of them asylum seekers or refugees, a safe space, as well as respond to President Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration.

Members of the Asylum Seekers Sponsorship Project, who are spread across the country, thought they would maybe find a dozen people willing to open their homes to strangers when the group was formed in the spring of 2018, shortly after a national debate broke out over a policy of separating migrant families arriving at the border. The group was surprised to see about 100 volunteers signing up the first two days, and now about 2,000 people have shown interest in hosting someone. The organization has so far placed asylum seekers with about 200 hosts.

“Every time the Trump administration lashes out at immigrants, at migrants, at asylum seekers, we see more Americans outraged for that, looking for ways to relieve,” said Heather Cronk, a core team member of the group who lives in the Washington area.

About 800 people quickly signed up to volunteer to host somebody shortly after the nationwide organization Freedom for Immigrants launched its sponsorship program last year, said Christina Fialho, co-founder and executive director of the group. Now nearly 2,000 people have signed up, she said.

The group, based in California and with offices also in New York, Washington and Texas, says it has also collected $1.1 million from donors to post bond and get more than 230 immigrants out of custody so that they can stay with hosts, friends or family.

In New York, Tartter was connected to Guatemalan immigrant Rosayra Pablo Cruz by the group Immigrant Families Together.

She placed Pablo Cruz, who is 36, and her 6- and 17-year-old sons in two rooms on the lower floor of her duplex apartment. Tartter went from living alone with a cat to hearing “little bubbly children noise” downstairs, which she described as a “delight.” The aroma of Guatemalan “pepian,” a meat and vegetable stew, sometimes filled the air.

“I don’t know if I gave them more than what they gave me,” Tartter said.

Immigrant Families Together paid for the Pablo Cruz family’s food and transportation while they were at Tartter’s home.

The volunteer group First Friends also offers that sort of aid, as well as visiting immigrants in detention and offering a room for a night or two. Before Trump arrived at the White House, the New Jersey group had 50 or 60 people. It now has about 120, said Rosa Santana, the group’s program director.

An unprecedented surge of asylum-seeking families from Central America has overwhelmed U.S. authorities during Trump’s tenure.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The Associated Press last week that there is a backlog of about 335,000 asylum cases and more than half of that is over two years old.

Trump has made immigration a signature issue, pushing for tough restrictions on asylum — a stance that has pleased his supporters while rousing increasing sympathy for migrants among his critics.

A survey by the Pew Research Center published in January reported that 62% said immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents,” while 28% said immigrants burden the country by taking jobs, housing and health care. The poll was based on telephone interviews of 1,505 adults conducted in mid-January 2019. It had a margin of error of three percentage points.

The process of becoming a host can be challenging. Not every host can communicate in Spanish, French or other languages, and the vetting process by some groups is rigorous. The international organization World Relief, for example, makes hosts go through a training process, background checks and in-home visits.

Many of the hosts are retirees, empty-nesters or people who work but have some time or space in their homes.

Some of those being hosted, like transgender immigrant Dulce Rivera, have a deportation order pending. Rivera, a Roma immigrant with no birth certificate or other identification documents, has lived for five months at the New Mexico trailer home of Jan Thompson, a former union official at a local university.

“It is humanity. You do it because it is the right thing to do,” said Thompson, who is 76 and met Rivera while she was in immigration detention. Rivera said she was expelled from her home as a child and isn’t sure where she was born. She said she lived in Spain, Uruguay, Honduras and Mexico before arriving to the U.S.

The host-an-immigrant movement irks many who favor limiting immigration.

William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said hosting immigrants is wrong because U.S. laws state that “illegals are to be deported and not be given aid or jobs.”

“U.S. citizens and national groups should not be helping fake asylum seeker illegal aliens to enter and remain in the U.S. to sway U.S. elections to the left using anti-Trump illegal Democrat non-citizen voters to counteract Republicans,” Gheen said.

Many of the immigrants are asylum seekers who have been granted temporary authorization to stay in the U.S.

In Los Angeles, Mila Marvizon and her husband responded to a social media request to host a youth who, according to his lawyer, couldn’t get a bond unless he had a sponsor.

“So I said, ‘I will be the sponsor, fine,’” said Marvizon, a 57-year-old former documentary TV producer who runs an eBay store. “We had to prove we were American citizens, prove we were financially able to support someone and that we would make sure he gets to all official appointments, court dates, ICE appointments, everything else.”

Now, after three months hosting the 18-year-old Honduran who wears ankle monitor, Marvizon speaks in a maternal tone.

“His character is very cheerful, but I see him in his bedroom, hour after hour after hour, you know, door shut, windows drawn,” she said. “He will be fine when he gets his work permit. He then will be a busy boy and will be happy again.”

___

SAN DIEGO — The scene played out like a segment on the QVC shopping channel. In making this one-of-its-kind product, the host proclaimed, no expense was spared. It was crafted from the finest natural steel and the heaviest concrete. This was “the Rolls-Royce version” — so strong, so imposing that no human could scale it, not even a champion mountain climber. Twenty had tried and failed, he said.

The pitchman was President Trump. And the product was his much-ballyhooed border wall.

Trump used just about every sales trick he honed as a real estate developer and promoter here Wednesday to showcase a newly built section of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Immigrant rights advocates and other critics denounce it as a menacing testament to inhumanity and cruelty, but Trump hawked the massive fence as a feat of innovation and ingenuity — the physical manifestation, although for now only in partial form, of his signature campaign promise.

Taking reporters on an afternoon pilgrimage to a dusty construction site in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, Trump boasted of the structure’s design features as if he were still in his pre-presidential life pitching investors on a glimmering new condo building.

“We have a wall the likes of which very few places have ever seen,” Trump said at the start of a 37-minute presentation that he and his top immigration officials made to journalists. “What they’ve done is beyond.”

The president was armed with facts and figures. He talked up the wall’s height (between 18 feet and 30 feet, depending on the risk assessment of the location); its projected length (“close to 500 miles” by the end of next year); and its depth (the steel bollards and concrete go about six feet into the ground).

“It really is virtually impenetrable,” Trump said, comparing it favorably to previous barriers. “Any walls that were put up, we can knock down very quickly, very easily. This wall is not something that can be really knocked down.”

Trump tried to brush over the reality that Mexico is not paying for the barrier, as he had promised throughout his 2016 campaign. Construction is being funded with U.S. taxpayer money after the president used emergency powers to tap funding that Congress had allocated for Pentagon projects.

Trump said that he tried to lower the cost. “I said, ‘Fellas, how about doing a less expensive version?’ ” he told reporters. “They said, ‘Well, this is the version that works, including the poured concrete in the steel with the rebar and everything else.’ That’s the Rolls-Royce version.”

Trump played up the dangers from which the barrier is protecting Americans. “Tijuana is right over there,” he said, referring to the notoriously crime-ridden city on the Mexico side. Two barriers were being erected here: An 18-foot structure on the Mexico side and a 30-foot structure on the U.S. side, with a road between them on which U.S. agents could patrol.

Trump promoted the barrier’s design as all the better to keep unwanted migrants on the Mexico side. Steel bollards, which look like hard-edge industrial tubes, are rooted deep in the ground and rise straight up into the sky. Concrete is then poured into the hollow interior to fortify the structure.

“If you think you’re going to cut it with a blow torch, that doesn’t work because you hit concrete, and then if you think you’re gonna go through the concrete, that doesn’t work because we have very powerful rebar inside,” Trump said.

Trump explained that the steel panels atop the bollards are designed to absorb heat from the broiling sun, a mechanism to further scare away would-be intruders.

“You can fry an egg on that wall,” Trump said. “It’s very, very hot, so if they’re going to climb it, they’re going to have to bring hoses and water, and we don’t know where they’re going to hook it up because there’s not a lot of water out here.”

Although he had once advocated for the barrier to be painted black to better absorb heat and to have spikes at the top, features intended to injure perpetrators, Trump said the government was keeping the steel natural — “a good, strong, rust color” — while reserving the option to paint it at a later date.

Trump said design prototypes had been stress-tested. “We had 20 mountain climbers,” he said. “That’s all they do. They love to climb mountains. They can have it. Me, I don’t want to climb mountains, but they’re very good. Some of them are champions. And we gave them different prototypes of walls and this one was hardest to climb.”

“This wall can’t be climbed,” Trump added. Later, he allowed, “I guess maybe one of the greatest pole vaulters in history can get over the low one, but it’ll be very painful when they land.”

Trump was flanked by top immigration officials, who nodded in agreement with the president’s declarations and offered their own testimonials. They were like certified experts giving a new product the Good Housekeeping Seal.

“This design, it’s a game-changer,” said Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

At one point, Trump nearly gave up operational secrets.

“One thing we haven’t mentioned is technology,” he said. “They’re wired so that we will know if somebody’s trying to break through, and you may want to discuss that a little, General.”

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees construction of the border barrier, demurred.

“Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that,” he said.

So Trump opted instead for a casual summary: “I’ll just tell you they’re wired, okay?”

Trump later touted the barrier’s technological advances. “Now we have a world-class security system at the border,” he said. “I would think that there’s no place like this anywhere. No place has anything like this or even close to it. Other places have guards, and unfortunately they have machine guns and they have electrified fences — you touch them and you get electrocuted — but we don’t do that.”

As the event went on, it may have sounded to some like Trump was on an ego trip, but Morgan sought to dispel that notion.

“Sir, if you don’t mind, I think this is important to talk about,” Morgan said. “There’s a false narrative out there that this wall is the president’s ‘vanity wall.’ I’m here to tell you right now that’s false.”

Trump seemed delighted by the acting commissioner’s performance. As Morgan spoke, the president locked eyes with a Washington Post reporter, smiled widely and nodded, as if to signal that he knew exactly what Morgan was up to.

Trump was clearly taken by the steel fortress rising from the dirt and he hoped the journalists were, too. “I wanted to have you here because nobody would believe this unless they see it,” he said. “I hope you’re impressed. . . . This is top of the line.”

As he finished, the president was informed of a tradition at the border that anyone who works on the wall signs it. Trump, who autographs everything from photographs of himself to news articles about himself, leaped at the chance.

“Sign it?” he said. “I’ll sign it. Let’s go.”

Aboard Air Force One for the flight back to Washington, Trump strode back to the press cabin to boast more about his achievement. “I’m glad you got to see it,” he told reporters.

The president sounded like he was seeking affirmation from people bound by professional ethics not to provide any.

“I hope you like the wall, by the way,” he told the traveling press pool. “Do you like the wall?”

Trump fielded questions about other topics, but before returning to his cabin at the front of the plane, he came back to what had been at the top of his mind.

“I hope you see the wall is what it is,” he told the journalists. “It’s a great structure and it’ll really do the trick.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says it will resume processing some deferred-action requests for migrants after backlash over its decision last month to not defer deportations for migrants and their family members who receive life-saving medical treatment.

“At the direction of Acting Secretary McAleenan, USCIS is resuming its consideration of non-military deferred action requests on a discretionary, case-by-case basis, except as otherwise required by an applicable statute, regulation, or court order,” a USCIS spokesperson told The Hill on Thursday.

The spokesperson noted that most deferred-action requests are related to either family support or medical issues. The change means USCIS will revert to processes in place up until early August that allow for non-military deferred removal requests to be considered.

The agency sparked backlash last month when it signaled it would force migrants who are facing serious medical issues to return to their home countries.

A spokesperson for USCIS had told The Hill late last month that the process allowing those migrants and their family members to avoid deportation would not end, but would be handled through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The spokesperson had said at the time that the change took effect in early August and provided exemptions for military families.

The initial move faced wide scrutiny, and the Trump administration previously said it was considering a reversal of its decision.

News of the reversal was first shared Thursday by members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, citing a notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“It appears that the Trump Administration is reversing its inhumane and disastrous decision to deport critically ill children and their families who are receiving life-saving medical treatment in the United States,” Oversight Chairman Elijah CummingsElijah Eugene CummingsOvernight Defense: Trump says he has ‘many options’ on Iran | Hostage negotiator chosen for national security adviser | Senate Dems block funding bill | Documents show Pentagon spent at least 4K at Trump’s Scotland resort Top Oversight Democrat demands immigration brass testify Documents show Pentagon spent at least 4,000 at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland MORE (D-Md.) said in a statement.

“We will be taking additional steps to verify that these children and their families do not need to live in fear and uncertainty,” he added.

USCIS had previously been receiving about 1,000 deferred action requests annually, mostly due to family or medical reasons. Most were not approved.

The move to eliminate the protection for migrants was first reported last month by The Associated Press, which obtained USCIS letters sent to applicants in the Boston area.

The AP noted that the correspondence made no mention of ICE taking over the program and ordered the immigrants to exit the U.S. in 33 days or face deportation.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said his administration is close to ending the release into the U.S. of migrants who cross the southern border while they await court proceedings, a practice he has long derided as “catch and release.”

“There will be no more catch and release,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We won’t have catch within two weeks. We’ll be free of catch and release, releasing people.”

Trump signed a memorandum in August 2018 ordering the end to the policy, which he has said encourages illegal immigration. The president said the long-promised change could finally take place because of his administration’s unilateral moves to crack down on asylum seekers entering the country and the Mexican government’s push to apprehend Central American migrants traveling north.

Speaking beside Trump, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said the goal of ending the practice is now attainable. He cited the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Trump administration can proceed with its policy of turning back nearly all asylum seekers, as well as a program that forces many migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while their legal cases are considered.

“Those are two significant things that are able to drive us in catch and release,” Morgan said. “We’re confident that in a couple of weeks we’re going to be able to end catch and release at the southwest border.”

But there are other legal and practical barriers that could prevent the government from detaining or turning back every migrant who illegally crosses the southwest border.

Detention centers are already overcrowded because of the spike in crossings over the past year. The administration also has yet to finalize so-called “safe-third country” agreements with Central American nations, which would require asylum seekers traveling through another country to first seek refuge there rather than the U.S.

The Trump administration is also locked in a court fight with 19 states and the District of Columbia, which are challenging its bid to end limits on detention of migrant children. Under a court ruling known as the Flores Agreement, the government is required to release migrant children from detention after 20 days.

Trump has often imposed two-week deadlines for major policy announcements that have been missed.

The drowning of a 21-month-old boy in South Texas is the latest in an increasing number of child immigrant deaths at the US–Mexico border.

Iker Gael Cordova Herrera’s body was found last week near San Felipe Creek in Val Verde County — along with that of his 26-year-old mother, Idalia Yamileth Herrera Hernández. They had asked US immigration authorities for asylum but were sent back across the border to Matamoros, under a Trump administration policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” to wait for their first court dates.

The policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols program, which has forced more than 42,000 asylum-seekers back into Mexico while their asylum case is adjudicated by an immigration judge. The process could take months.

Advocates said MPP forces asylum-seekers to live in dangerous Mexican cities with few resources and little protection. Some grow desperate enough that they can no longer wait, and are driven to cross the US border illegally.

In the case of the mother and son, “After several months of waiting the compatriot despaired of being in Mexico and decided to cross the [Rio Grande] again, leading her to her death along with her son,” Nelly Jerez, the Honduran vice foreign minister of consular and migration affairs, said in a statement.

So far in 2019, 15 children have died at the US–Mexico border, according to data from the International Organization for Migration. That is the highest number of dead children since 2014, which is when the organization started tracking deaths along migratory routes for its “Missing Migrants Project.”

Previously, the highest number of children who died at the US–Mexico border was nine, in 2018, and before that it was eight in 2016.

Seven of the 15 children who died in 2019 so far have drowned or were presumed drowned, according to IOM. The deaths of immigrant children who died in US custody or shortly after being released by authorities is also included in the figures.

Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, drowned in June after they were told they would have to wait for months before being given the chance to even request asylum from the US. That process, known as metering, limits the number of people allowed to enter through official US border crossings to request asylum.

A photo of the father’s and daughter’s lifeless bodies floating in the river made headlines around the world and cast a spotlight on the dangers of the Rio Grande. Just last week a teenage girl almost drowned in the river after months of waiting in Mexico under MPP.

Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is a direct tie between people dying trying to cross the border and restrictive policies such as metering or MPP.

“US policy has been shaping the way people come into this country,” Leutert told BuzzFeed News. “When it’s more restrictive we know people try to cross the river and drown. It’s a continuation of what happens when we’re taking away legal pathways.”

The Customs and Border Protection agency didn’t immediately respond when asked about any correlation between Trump’s policies and the increase in immigrant deaths.

In 1917, when the US required immigrants to pass a literacy test and pay a tax, Leutert said people tried to enter the US undetected via the Rio Grande.

In the 1940s — when the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican workers to US farmlands because of a shortage of workers during World War II, was banned in Texas — the US saw a “big increase” in unauthorized crossings and also deaths. In a New York Times article from July 24, 1949, a Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce member said Mexicans were drowning in the Rio Grande at the rate of at least one person a day. The Mexican government had banned its people from working in Texas under the Bracero Program because it said its citizens were being discriminated against in the state.

Leutert said it’s easy for the public to wave their hands, to say immigrants shouldn’t have tried to cross the border, and to say it’s their fault, when instead people should be looking at what legal avenues can be created to avoid this.

“That’s how we are able to justify hundreds of people dying every year in unnatural horrible deaths in US territory,” Leutert, who is researching immigrant deaths in South Texas, said. “The policies don’t change, and for whatever reason people’s desires and dreams also don’t change. When these two things collide, which is what happens all the time, you have these tragic outcomes.”

In an interview with ABC News, the nation’s top immigration enforcement official scolded lawmakers for heated political rhetoric that he said put his agents’ safety at risk and declared that “everyone” should “take a deep breath,” an admonition that could apply to President Donald Trump as well as critics of his policies.

PHOTO: Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence sits down with ABCs Aaron Katersky to discuss the Trump administrations latest immigration policy proposals. ABC News
Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence sits down with ABC’s Aaron Katersky to discuss the Trump administration’s latest immigration policy proposals.more +
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“We’re not Nazis,” he said in a wide-ranging interview this week, referencing comparisons from Democrats who’ve described migrant detention centers as “concentration camps.”

The plea by acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence is likely to solicit pushback. Critics say his agency’s tactics have grown increasingly aggressive, including one incident in which ICE officers smashed the window of a car with a man sitting inside with his young children. He was dragged out and arrested, then deported. Agency officials said the force was justified because the man had previously been deported and had reentered the U.S. – a felony.

But Albence insists that not enough is being done to tell the side of the agents who are responsible for enforcing President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies.

The comments drew a contrast with Trump’s approach to the immigration debate. Trump has declared a “war” on illegal migration and in June said ICE would start targeting “millions” of undocumented immigrants.

Despite the threats, ICE has not hit the record number of annual removals made during the Obama administration. Those numbers hit a peak in 2011 when the agency removed more than 400,000 people from the country. Under Trump, fewer than 260,000 were removed in the first full budget year of his presidency.

To explain these results, Albence pointed to the changing demographics of more recent border crossers, noting that the Central American families crossing in record numbers over the past year are more difficult to deport than single adult men from Mexico.

He also said a lack of cooperation from state and local law enforcement was to blame.

“Unfortunately the politics of this have gotten so bad that they would rather put these politics over public safety,” Albence said.

When Trump announced earlier this year he would take a “tougher” approach in immigration enforcement, some local police chiefs spoke out against the move. They argued that Trump’s public shows of force to create deterrent effects for border crossers can make immigrant communities fearful, putting obstacles in the way of fighting local crime.

Albence rejected the idea that his agency was responsible for instilling fear in any way.

“No I don’t think I have to address the fear,” Albence told ABC News. “If you are here in this country illegally you are subject to arrest and, if ordered removed by an immigration judge, removal from this country. That hasn’t changed.”

Albence also blamed those stagnant laws and congressional inaction for the dilemma his agency faces in attempting to detain more families and children long-term. Currently the agency has a capacity to hold a maximum 3,000 family members with two detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Border Patrol has been forced to release tens of thousands of family members since the migration influx started putting major strains on holding cells back in March.

And while the Trump administration continues to litigate its recent move to lift detention limits on families and children, Albence insisted that indefinite detention is not on the table.

“There is no such thing as indefinite detention,” Albence argued. “When individuals are in our custody just as if they’re arrested for a criminal violation. There is a process that they are going through.”

As the administration continues to take aggressive action, the enforcement push has been complicated by a thorough shake-up of Trump’s Homeland Security agency earlier this year. Albence took over the top job at ICE in June. His predecessor, Mark Morgan, had the job less than two months before transitioning to acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The heads of all three domestic immigration agencies – ICE, CBP, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – agencies currently work in an “acting” capacity.

Albence, who has made a career in immigration enforcement, said he’s not interested in becoming the agency’s permanent director.

TIJUANA, Mexico — In the Zona Norte of Tijuana, Leidy Rivas has spent the last month cooking pupusas out of a bright orange storefront. Along with two other women from El Salvador, she prepares the Salvadoran street food — a tortilla stuffed with cheese, chicharron or zucchini and topped with a cabbage slaw to make a little bit of money to support the migrant shelter where she’s staying.

For Leidy, the work also helps her get her mind off the fact that her family is stuck in Tijuana.

Rivas, her sister, her husband Gustavo and her two young children arrived at the shelter just over two months ago. They left their home in El Salvador after Leidy’s father was killed and they began receiving death threats. They planned to seek asylum in the United States but didn’t expect that seeking asylum would be such an ordeal. Upon arrival, they put their names down on a waiting list at the El Chaparral border crossing and received a number that, when called, would give them their chance to cross the border make their asylum claim.

The list is thousands long. Their family’s number likely won’t come up for a few more months. And just last week, Gustavo and Leidy heard news that will further complicate their wait.

On September 11, the Supreme Court struck down the Ninth Circuit Court’s injunction on Trump’s so-called asylum ban, allowing the regulation to temporarily take effect across the country until the courts issue a final ruling.

Read more: Immigrants have rights when ICE comes to arrest them, but experts warn this only goes so far

Under the ban, asylum seekers who have passed through other countries on their way to the US are only eligible for asylum in the US if they have been denied asylum in a third country. That is, migrants like Leidy and Gustavo, who have passed through Mexico to reach the US, are ineligible for asylum unless they’ve been denied asylum in Mexico or one of the other countries through which they’ve passed. The rule currently applies to asylum seekers who have made their claims after July 16, 2019, the day after Trump first announced the rule.

Since last year, would-be asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico border have been subject to an informally managed process called metering. Rather than arriving at a port of entry and immediately making an asylum claim, migrants now receive a number that specifies their place on a waiting list. Each day, the US determines how many asylum seekers they will accept. Some days in Tijuana, those in charge of managing the list will call ten or twelve numbers; often, they call only one or two — or none at all. Over 10,000 asylum seekers are currently waiting to request asylum in Tijuana alone. The new asylum ban would render them all ineligible.

The Rivas family is on a list of thousands waiting to cross the border into the US to claim asylum.
Madeleine Wattenbarger
Hope, and then a dose of reality
Recent months’ turmoil over asylum regulations has left migrants like Leidy and Gustavo uncertain about their prospects. The asylum ban was first blocked by the lower courts, but the Supreme Court ruling has temporarily allowed the ban to take effect again.

The lower court’s decision initially gave Leidy hope.

“We’re not really well informed,” she said, “but it’s really unfortunate for us that first, they say they’re going to give us an opportunity, and then that they won’t. It’s always changing.” While the family waits to find out their asylum status, her children ages four and five, are missing school.

Read more: More than 900 migrant children have been split from their parents since Trump formally ended family separations last year

Despite the asylum ban, migrants are still eligible for other forms of international protection. In a Friday panel at Tijuana’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Monika Langarica, the immigrant rights staff attorney at the San Diego chapter of the ACLU, explained that would-be asylum seekers can still solicit a withholding of removal or protection under the UN Convention Against Torture.

Asylum seekers must jump through infinitely smaller hoops to receive one of these, however. While asylum claims generally require applicants to show about a 10% chance of persecution if they return home, withholding removal requires a higher threshold. Protection under the Convention Against Torture applies in cases where there is over a 50% likelihood that applicants will be tortured if they return home.

These forms of protection don’t grant recipients the same rights as asylum, either: they don’t provide a pathway to citizenship, and they don’t allow recipients to sponsor their families’ immigration to the US.

“It’s a roadblock,” Langarica said, “but we’re still continuing with a lot of hope.”

Leidy and her husband in front of the pupuseria.
Madeleine Wattenbarger
‘We don’t speak the language, and they don’t like black people’
While Central American migrants have been the most visible population crossing through Mexico in recent years, the ban has consequences for tens of thousands of asylum seekers from all over the world. Mexico has long been a country of transit for migrants seeking to reach the US. In the days after the Supreme Court decision, the crowds waiting to request asylum at El Chaparral included migrants from Cameroon, Turkey, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, among others.

Hans and Orlando came to Tijuana from Cameroon, where they left because of the economic crisis and civil war. On their way to the US, they arrived first to Ecuador, then spent three months making their way north. The journey took them through seven countries before arriving in Mexico. Under the ban, they would have had to seek asylum (and had it denied) in one of those eight countries to be eligible for asylum in the US. Their four months in Tijuana have convinced them that they can’t stay in Mexico.

“We don’t speak the language, and they don’t like black people,” Orlando said. He says he’s experienced racism at his job delivering water across the city. The two men had heard about the asylum ban, but because of racial discrimination in Mexico, they see the US as their only option.

Children’s drawings hang on a fence at the El Chaparral border crossing.
Madeleine Wattenbarger
‘They’ve gotten this far, and they’ll drain their last resource to be able to get to the US’
Jose Maria Garcia Lara, the director of the Tijuana migrant shelter Movimiento Juventud 2000, says that while he expects to see some asylum seekers decide to remain in Mexico, most are holding out hope that they’ll make it across the border.

“They’ve gotten this far, and they’ll drain their last resource to be able to get to the US,” he told Insider. “Some will stay here, but there’s still not much possibility for them to regularize their status.”

That’s partly because Mexico’s refugee services are stretched so thin. Despite receiving record levels of asylum claims this year, Mexico’s Refugee Commission (COMAR) currently faces its lowest budget in seven years, and the caseload of asylum seekers so far this year already amounts to more than twice last year’s number. The UN Refugee Agency has provided COMAR with additional staffing and support, but it continues to lack personnel to deal with the claims.

Garcia Lara also expects to see more people choosing to cross the border in other, riskier ways. “All they’re doing is making it so people look for other ways to get to the US,” he said.

Gustavo and Leidy haven’t considered staying in Mexico or trying to cross into the US illegally. “There are so many months left. It could be that the laws change,” Gustavo said. “We still have faith.”

They’re worried about the long-term consequences, and they don’t want to put their children at risk. They don’t want to live under the violence that drives Mexicans to seek asylum in the US.

“In 42 years of life, I never thought of leaving my country,” Gustavo says. “A criminal isn’t a reason to leave an entire life — unless they’re threatening you with death. Then, the first thing you’ll do is look for protection.”

Donald Trump’s administration has spent roughly $33m (£26.3m) in the past seven weeks to staff an immigrant detention centre for unaccompanied minors in Texas that has been completely empty since last month, according to officials.

The last child left the Homestead detention centre on 3 August, and yet the sprawling facilities have reportedly remained staffed to house as many as 1,200 immigrants at once.

Jonathan Hayes, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, acknowledged the soaring figures during a congressional hearing on Wednesday about immigrant children in US custody and their specific mental health needs.

The revelations about how much has been spent by the federal government to keep the empty facilities staffed were made when Mr Hayes was asked by Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan if his office was in fact spending $600 (£478) a day to pay for each of the 1,200 available beds.

“It’s the beds, but yes sir,” Mr Hayes said.

He said the initial idea was to keep the facilities open after sudden influxes of unaccompanied minors left detention centres inundated with newly-arriving migrants earlier this year. Reopening and re-staffing the Homestead centre would take “a minimum of 90 to 120 days,” according to Mr Hayes.

The plan was made to keep the facilities open “given the extreme uncertainty of referrals coming across our nation’s southern border and how many kids we might have to care for,” Mr Hayes said.

Homestead “isn’t really a switch that we’re ready to turn off at this point”, he added.

Mr Pocan then chided the official over the staggering costs to keep the Homestead facilities open for “invisible, imaginary, nonexistent human beings”.

While officials saw a high of nearly 16,000 unaccompanied migrant children in US custody last year, there are currently about 5,700, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Mr Trump and his administration were criticised by Democrats at the hearing for taking hard-line immigration policies at the US-Mexico border that they said only further contributed to the humanitarian crisis in the region.

The president was forced to roll back several of those policies, including one that extended the amount of time migrant children were in custody by requiring every single person in a household to receive fingerprint background checks before a child can be released to anyone in that family unit.

Mr Trump also signed an executive order ending his zero tolerance policy — which began the systematic separation of migrant families at the southern border — after a swift backlash and nationwide demonstrations.

Border Patrol agents, rather than highly trained asylum officers, are beginning to screen migrant families for “credible fear” to determine whether applicants qualify for U.S. protection, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

The first Border Patrol agents arrived last week to start training at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, the nation’s largest immigrant family detention center, according to lawyers working there and several employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The move expands the Trump administration’s push for Border Patrol agents to take over the interviews that mark the first step in the lengthy asylum process. Border Patrol agents began training to conduct asylum interviews in late April, but agents have now deployed to family detention facilities for the first time.

As a result, Border Patrol agents — law enforcement personnel who detain migrant families at the border — will also have authority to decide whether those families have a “credible fear” of being persecuted in their home countries.

Customs and Border Protection has provided few details about the Border Patrol asylum training and has not publicly acknowledged whether agents have yielded significantly lower approval rates than federal asylum officers, but internal communications and other official documents obtained by The Times indicate early problems with the program.

The Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Neither the agency nor Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, immediately responded to requests for comment by deadline.

Agents at Dilley are not wearing the Border Patrol’s well-known olive-green uniforms, and are identifying themselves to migrant families and children as asylum officers, said Shay Fluharty, an attorney with the Dilley Pro Bono Project, who has been in interviews conducted by the agents.

“It’s creating significant strain for our clients — not just because they’re unprepared and untrained,” Fluharty told The Times. “We understand that the intention is to significantly limit asylum officers who are conducting these interviews and have them be primarily conducted by Border Patrol.”

The Trump administration’s ultimate goal with the Border Patrol training program is to make it more difficult for migrants to win asylum, asylum officers, officials, and lawyers say, because White House officials believe that agents will be more adversarial and less likely to approve asylum seekers. By contrast, asylum officers work under Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security agency that administers the legal immigration system and benefits.

Under Homeland Security regulations, the credible-fear interview must be conducted in a “non-adversarial manner.”

Michael Knowles, special representative for the federal asylum officers’ union, said many members are concerned about the use of law enforcement personnel for crucial interviews with people seeking refuge. Neither the union nor its officers have been given official notice of or explanation for the shift, Knowles said.

“I don’t mean to denigrate the proper and legitimate role of Border Patrol, but it’s different,” Knowles said. “They’re not trained and geared toward refugee protection, any more than I’m trained to go look for tracks in the desert and chase people.”

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, confirmed that agents are undergoing training in which they conduct credible-fear interviews with family units. But he pushed back against the idea that Border Patrol agents would be “tougher” against asylum seekers.

“I’ve personally had conversations with both President Trump and Stephen Miller,” Judd said. “It’s always been my understanding that the reason to have Border Patrol agents do the credible-fear interviews is to ensure the asylum process begins at the earliest practicable moment. … The narrative being painted that Border Patrol agents will deport more persons doesn’t hold water.”

According to a Customs and Border Protection training timeline obtained by The Times, 10 Border Patrol agents from the El Centro sector in California began training to do credible-fear interviews in April, and by August, a total of 60 agents were due to conduct their first credible-fear interviews. A new group started trainingin early September, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel.

The agents are all “non-bargaining employees,” meaning they are not members of a union.

The timeline states three times that “additional training will be required” if the Border Patrol role in asylum interviews expands to family units. Homeland Security officials also assured congressional staffers in August that the Border Patrol was not going to cover family units because of that requirement, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee aide told The Times. Department officials did not inform the committee they’d be deploying agents to family detention centers.

It’s unclear whether the agents sent to the detention center in Dilley received additional training, or whether Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers will remain at the facility after they finish instructing the agents. Several officers have already been reassigned.

According to separate records obtained by The Times, as of last month, Border Patrol agents had completed 178 credible-fear screenings with asylum seekers from more than 15 countries — all of whom were single adults. They determined 54% met the credible-fear standard and 35% did not. Agents closed 11% of cases without making a determination.

While the newly trained Border Patrol agents have yet to complete many screenings, that’s a far lower approval rate than is typical for the initial interviews. Congress deliberately set a low standard for “credible fear” in order to ensure that the U.S. government did not return people to potential harm, and roughly 80% of asylum seekers pass the first interview.

Ultimately, only about 1 in 5 asylum seekers wins a case, according to the Justice Department. The Trump administration cites that disparity to argue that most asylum seekers have fraudulent cases, and President Trump frequently disparages asylum as a “hoax.” He also has lamented that Border Patrol and military personnel are restricted from getting “rough” with migrants.

Advocates argue that the disparity only shows how difficult it is to win the right to stay in the United States. With the backlog of immigration cases now surpassing 1 million, a final decision can take years.

The asylum division at Citizenship and Immigration Services has faced heavy pressure from the White House and from Ken Cuccinelli, who was named acting director of the agency in June. John L. Lafferty, asylum division chief for six years, recently was reassigned to a service center and replaced on an acting basis by Andrew Davidson, who oversaw fraud detection.

Lafferty was outspoken about his directorate being forced to implement dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy with what he said was little to no advance notice or consultation. Knowles, the union representative, called Lafferty’s reassignment “diplomatic exile.”

All decisions made so far by Border Patrol agents at the “credible fear” stage have been reviewed by a supervisory asylum officer before they were issued, according to the records obtained by The Times.

But critics of the training program worry that the administration will use it to get around requirements for asylum officers and supervisors to have special training and extensive experience — with comparatively inexperienced and less-trained Border Patrol agents in effect policing themselves rather than having their decisions reviewed by a Citizenship and Immigration Services supervisory officer.

Internal communications obtained by The Times indicate Border Patrol agents appear to have already stepped outside their allowed roles.

Last Thursday, Ashley Caudill-Mirillo, deputy chief of the asylum division at Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote to leaders in the field stressing that agents could only screen credible-fear claims from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and “under no circumstances” should they interview Cubans.

“There are no exceptions to this rule,” she said, adding that officials “may follow up with you if it is found these assignments occurred in the event we are asked to explain.”

Fluharty said she and her colleagues have witnessed a range of issues. The handful of Border Patrol agents deployed to Dilley are all male, effectively preventing clients who’ve suffered from severe sexual or gender-based violence from requesting a female asylum officer. Some agents are conducting interviews over the phone — a first at Dilley, where all screenings had previously been in-person — and with children as young as 6 years old. Other screenings are lasting far longer than normal, more than six hours. And agents are consistently asking irrelevant questions, while leaving out the most critical ones, she said.

“It’s most difficult for families who have to share really traumatic experiences under really stressful circumstances,” she said, “And now with someone without the appropriate knowledge or training.”

President Trump went to New Mexico this week to court Hispanic voters with one of his signature rallies, in which rowdy supporters roared their approval as he vowed to continue his crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

New Mexico has the country’s largest Hispanic population, about 49 percent, and Trump assured potential voters that despite his tendency to conflate Latinos with criminal behavior and his administration’s policies, including detaining immigrants from Latin American countries and, in some cases, separating children from their parents, he has their best interests at heart.

As he often does to show that he’s down with some people of color, Trump noted that Steve Cortes, a television commentator and supporter, was in the house and quipped: “He happens to be Hispanic, but I’ve never quite figured it out because he looks more like a WASP than I do. . . . But I’ll tell you what, there is nobody that loves this country more or Hispanics more than Steve Cortes.”

Trump then asked Cortes: “Who do you like more: The country or Hispanics? He says the country. I don’t know, I may have to go for the Hispanics, to be honest. We love our Hispanics!”

Although some Hispanics were offended by those comments, Trump made other pronouncements that would resonate with some Latinos, particularly those who support the Republican Party, said Geraldo Cadava, a professor of history and Latina and Latino studies at Northwestern University.

Take Trump’s declaration that “The Hispanic Americans understand they don’t want criminals going across the border, they don’t want people taking their jobs, they want security, and they want the wall. They want the wall.”

Cadava said the Republican Party understands immigration is not the top issue for Hispanic voters, a fact born out by public surveys. Immigration, Cadava said, “is not … even the second or third thing Hispanics care about,” Cadava said, adding that economic issues, including jobs, education, health care and homeownership rank higher. “Hispanics have never been single-issue voters,” he said.

It’s the same rationale cited by other Trump supporters, who say they will vote for him despite his incendiary rhetoric, including racist tweets aimed at African American, Hispanic and Muslim members of Congress.

Cadava, who has a book coming out next year about the history of conservatism among Hispanics, says it is unclear how much support Trump will get from Latinos in next year’s presidential election, but history suggests they might not behave any differently than they have in the past. Since 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon set out to cultivate Hispanic support, Republicans have usually received close to or more than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote. Before 1972, Hispanic support for Republican presidential candidates was in single digits or low teens.

In an article for The Post’s Made by History blog, Cadava wrote: “Because of Nixon’s perceived support for Hispanics and the issues they cared about — chiefly political inclusion, economic uplift and this strand of virulent anti-Communism — Nixon won more than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1972, more than doubling the support any Republican candidate had won previously.”

Since then, Hispanic support for the Republican presidential nominee has hovered close to 30 percent, and even climbed into the 40s for former president George W. Bush. In 2016, 28 percent of Latinos voted for Trump.

Cadava said the Trump campaign is making moves to court Hispanics, including a “Latinos for Trump” kickoff event in Miami in June. Vice President Pence, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and others spoke at a gathering of Hispanic small-business owners this year in Washington.

Based on what he has heard at the event in Washington, as well as from his conversations with Hispanic Republicans, Cadava said the Republican “playbook” will be talking up low unemployment rates and higher median incomes for Hispanics under Trump. Republicans also will attempt to link liberal lawmakers such ad Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has described herself as a democratic socialist, to the economic and social turmoil of communism in Cuba and socialism in Venezuela.

Cadava talked to About US about what he has learned talking to Hispanic Republicans as part of his research for his book. This interview has been lightly edited.

Too many pundits think Hispanics will be outraged by the administration’s harsh immigration stance.

“Ever since the ’90s when the Republican Party has increasingly taken a hard right turn on immigration, Hispanic Republicans have pointed out that immigration is not the first or even second or third thing that Hispanics care about. Hispanics have never been single-issue voters, but Hispanic Republicans have been more pressed to announce that, and count on that to still be true now.

“Also, as one Puerto Rican Republican explained to me, the Republican National Committee for the last 10 years has spent millions of dollars in door-to-door campaigns in Hispanic neighborhoods and makes sure that there are paid organizers who show up at every single community event talking about homeownership and how Republicans are the party you should support because they make it easier to purchase your own home. So all of the [anti-immigration] bluster doesn’t really matter because on the ground the RNC has been organizing in the Hispanic community for a long time, focusing on things that people really care about.”

Hispanic Republicans are no less loyal than other members of the party

“Hispanic Republicans today are really wrestling with what they’re going to do in 2020. The people I talked to have been Republicans for 40 or 50 years and they’re really wrestling with what they’re going to do in 2020. I’ve talked to some who actively support efforts to have Trump primaried by another Republican. But out of 30 to 40 people I talked to, only one said he hopes a Democrat kicks Trump’s butt in 2020. Everybody else has been wrestling with it. One activist told me, ‘I don’t love Trump, I don’t like the things he says but I’m going to vote for him because I will not let one man ruin the movement we’ve spent decades trying to build.’ From his perspective a vote for Trump is a vote for the Republican Party, not the individual Donald Trump.”

The notion that Hispanic Republicans will abandon their party en masse is flawed

“Political scientists always want to say x percent of Hispanics oppose abortion or are veterans of the military and x percent oppose gay marriage and the sum totality of all of those individual issues are supposed to explain why Hispanics vote for Republicans. But as I see, it’s loyalty to the Republican Party that’s developed over a long period of time, to the point that it’s hard for them to consider switching parties now. It’s really hard for them.

“Hispanic support for Republican candidates has ebbed and flowed, dipped and climbed, but it’s usually about a third. It shot up to 40 percent in 2000 and 44 percent in 2004 for George W. Bush, and Hispanic Republicans looked at his election as a hopeful sign of a shift forward for the Republican Party. Now, in retrospect, it’s seen as more of a blip that had to do with his own personal appeal, his brother Jeb and the work he had done, and his family has had a long-term commitment to recruit Hispanics to the party.

“The Democratic Party is waiting for the moment when there will be a tidal shift of Hispanics toward it and it seems that the ground is ripe for that because of everything that not only Donald Trump has said and done over the past four years, but everything the Republican Party has done over the past 25 years. Democrats have been waiting for the moment or election when there will be some kind of tidal shift toward the Democratic Party and it hasn’t happened. And may not happen even in 2020.”

WASHINGTON—A bipartisan bill in the Senate that aimed to speed up employment-based green cards for some Indian and Chinese immigrants caught in a yearslong backlog failed to pass Thursday.

Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah.), sponsor of the bill—which would remove per-country caps on permanent residency for immigrants who have job offers in the U.S.—had attempted to pass the resolution using a procedure called unanimous consent, which allows bills to bypass roll-call votes. Sen. David Purdue (R., Ga.) blocked it.

Mr. Perdue said on the chamber’s floor Thursday that he supports the bill but wants some language clarified, adding that he is concerned about its impact on specific industries. “I want to work with Senator Lee in addressing these concerns and come to a resolution very quickly,” Mr. Perdue said.

At issue are a few specialty professions that rely on immigrant labor—particularly the nursing sector, which draws heavily from the Philippines—and would see their wait times for green cards extended under the bill.

Under current U.S. law, no more than 7% of employment-based green cards can be issued to any one country. Critics of that approach in both parties say that allotting the same number of green cards to each country advantages those applying from smaller nations while penalizing Indian and Chinese applicants who qualify but must wait years for their turn because they are in larger pools of applicants.

Mr. Lee’s bill would allow people who have waited longest in the queue for permanent residency to get it first. In July, the House passed a similar bill with a wide bipartisan margin.

“There’s no justifiable cause for delay. We will continue to work on it. I wish we could pass it today, because it’s ready,” Mr. Lee said.

The proposed change pits industries against each other as they seek to expedite permanent residency for workers they say they need. The problem stems in part from the fact that the U.S. approvals of green-card applicants vastly exceed the number of available green cards that are actually distributed, which total about 1.1 million annually. While there are no limits to how many applicants can be approved, there is a fixed overall number of green cards issued by the State Department.

Congress is unlikely to agree to raise that total. Republicans, who have resisted such efforts for years, might be willing to increase the percentage of employment-based green cards only in exchange for a reduction in family-based or diversity green cards, a trade-off Democrats would oppose.

Technology companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have lobbied Congress to pass Mr. Lee’s bill to help software engineers and other workers, many from India, who are stuck in the backlog. Also pushing for the bill is Immigration Voice, a nonprofit social-welfare group founded by Indian immigrant workers.

“We believe this bill is very simple and very powerful, and every objection to this bill will be overcome,” said Leon Fresco, counsel for Immigration Voice.

But the American Hospital Association and AMN Healthcare, a health-care staffing agency, oppose the bill because they believe it would dramatically increase the wait time for green cards for other foreign workers, particularly nurses from the Philippines. All of Us, a group representing graduate students and skilled workers who need green cards, also oppose it.

Mr. Lee had faced internal Republican opposition on the bill, primarily from Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who echoed the hospitals’ concerns.

Messrs. Lee and Paul struck a deal Wednesday, setting aside 5,000 green cards for specialty professions—widely understood to benefit nurses from the Philippines. The AHA soon opposed that deal, saying it didn’t grant enough green cards.

“We appreciate Senator Paul’s efforts, but this falls short of the minimum number needed to address the shortage of American nurses,” said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who now lobbies for the AHA.

Mr. Lee’s unanimous-consent request was delayed for more than an hour as GOP senators huddled in the cloakroom attempting to work out a last-minute deal. Outside in the Senate gallery, dozens of Indian immigrants waited, many with their children.

Later, when Mr. Purdue announced his objection on the Senate floor, the immigrants were mostly silent, but some put their heads in their hands or covered their eyes.

“We really thought today was the day,” said Vikram Desai, vice president of Immigration Voice and a Philadelphia product consultant who has lived in the U.S. legally for 16 years, nine of them in the green-card backlog.

A bill that would eliminate per-country caps on employment-based green cards, effectively opening the door to more high-skilled immigrants from India and China, failed on the Senate floor Thursday after Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) blocked the bill.

The bill, which would not have increased overall legal immigration levels, had seemed like it would be a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on one of the most contentious topics of the Trump administration. In July, it passed the House in a 365-65 vote with substantial bipartisan support.

But whether the Senate would pass the bill was an ongoing question. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), had previously blocked the bill and Perdue blocked it again on Thursday, saying that he still had concerns about how it would affect specific industries without elaborating further.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), said on the Senate floor Thursday that he would try to assuage those concerns and seek another vote on the bill next week. But there’s no telling whether another senator will block that vote as well.

The failure of the bill, which tackles just a small slice of the legal immigration system and would likely have passed the Republican Senate if it were put to a vote, shows just how hard it has become for Congress to tackle immigration issues. Even in the GOP, consensus on reform to legal immigration appears out of reach.

The bill would have made the green card system more equitable
The US issued a total of 1,127,167 green cards in fiscal year 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. About half of those green cards were issued to new arrivals to the US, who are mostly family members of US citizens or permanent residents and foreigners with US job offers.

Citizens of any one country can only be granted 7 percent of all available employment-based and family-based green cards annually. These country caps, introduced in 1965, replaced a quota system based on national origin, which tied the number of immigrants admitted from any country to past census counts of how many immigrants of their nationality were already living in the US. The change led to a fundamental shift in US immigration, opening the door to more immigrants outside Northern Europe, including, for example, those displaced by conflicts in Southeast Asia.

The country caps were intended to ensure that there was diversity of nationality among those allowed to immigrate to the US. But they have been denounced in recent years as discriminatory toward nations like India and China, which face much longer green card backlogs than any other country.

According to the State Department, some employment-based applicants who have been waiting since June 2008 from China and since April 2010 from India only just became eligible to apply for a green card this month. Wait times among family-based applicants are even longer.

The bill — introduced by Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Lee, and known as the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act — is an attempt to address those backlogs, raising the cap for any country to 15 percent for family-based green cards and doing away with it entirely for employment-based green cards.

The bill would effectively send nationals of India and China, who have been waiting for years for a chance to apply for green cards, to the front of the line, meaning that other countries would likely see increased wait times, including Canada and Argentina. Wait times would even out over time once the backlog for Indian and Chinese nationals is cleared.

Indian and Chinese nationals would not take up all of the available green cards in the short term: At most, 85 percent of available green cards could be given to them in the first year after the bill is passed, rising to 90 percent in the second and third years.

The bill would be a boon to Silicon Valley, which overwhelmingly relies on high-skilled foreign labor, particularly in the field of engineering. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, whose district includes San Jose, California, and who has reaped substantial donations from Big Tech, had originally proposed the legislation in the House.

Some have criticized the bill as an imperfect attempt to solve the problem of green card shortages. Ira Kurzban, an immigration attorney and professor at the University of Miami School of Law, tweeted Thursday that the bill fails to increase the overall number of green cards and visas available annually; instead, it just re-allocates the existing numbers in a more equitable way.

Paul, meanwhile, initially objected over concerns about nurses immigrating, pushing for the bill to include a provision that would allow 5,000 foreign nurses to come to the US annually on temporary visas for the next decade. The original version of the bill would have increased green card wait times for foreign nurses, many of which come from the Philippines, to about seven to eight years. Under current law, Filipino nurses can be approved practically immediately.

While the version of the bill that Lee proposed for a vote Thursday did not include the exact amendment Paul had sought, it did have a carve out for occupations where there are shortages, which would include nurses.

Other experts have proposed other small fixes: Under current law, there are about 675,000 total green cards available annually, 140,000 of which are allocated for employment-based applicants. To free up the number of green cards available, David Bier, a policy analyst at the libertarian CATO Institute, has suggested that Congress change the way applicants are counted against those caps.

Currently, family members of employment-based applicants count against the 140,000 cap, which eats substantially into the available green cards. Bier has suggested eliminating this policy.

Such fixes, however, can’t substitute for raising overall levels of legal immigration. The existing caps on overall annual legal immigration are simply not designed to accommodate the number of people seeking to immigrate to the US legally and obtain green cards. But raising immigration levels isn’t politically feasible as most Republicans, but not Paul, reject the idea.

It’s proven difficult to work through that kind of impasse, even before Trump: Republicans and Democrats failed to pass a much-anticipated bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform package in 2013. Rather than tackling big immigration issues at once, the approach needs to be incremental, or so says Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who worked on the 2013 bill.

It is perhaps for that reason that the country caps bill, even though it only tackles a small part of the legal immigration system, has generated buzz as an unlikely bipartisan success and signal that a piecemeal approach does work — even earning a cameo on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

“It’s not just numerical caps,” Oliver says. “The whole system has a lot of restrictions on who exactly can come here.”

Threatening to call immigration enforcement is classified as discrimination under New York City’s human-rights law, according to the commission.

Lawyers for the commission said they believe it is the first case in the country where an individual was fined for threatening to call immigration authorities.

Should it be illegal to threaten to call immigration authorities on an individual? Join the conversation below.

City lawyers accused the landlord, 44-year-old Dianna Lysius, of sending multiple threatening text messages to her tenant, Holly Ondaan, 48, during a trial held over two days in May and June.

Ms. Lysius said in an interview she didn’t send the texts and emails to Ms. Ondaan. She said she plans to appeal the judge’s ruling. “Everything in that report is false,” she said.

Ms. Ondaan said in an interview that she is an immigrant from Guyana with European Union citizenship and wasn’t authorized to be in the U.S. at the time of the threats. She got her green card in July 2018, according to the ruling and Ms. Ondaan.

The case was one of 160 inquiries made to the commission in 2018 related to housing discrimination based on immigration status, a spike compared with prior years, a commission spokeswoman said.

Sapna Raj, deputy commissioner of the commission’s law enforcement bureau, said that cases similar to this one have increasingly been brought before her office in part because of the increased attention to immigration nationwide.

The Sept. 12 ruling was made by an administrative law judge for the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, which is responsible for handling cases brought by city agencies.

Ms. Ondaan had lived in Ms. Lysius’s Jamaica, Queens, property since 2011. However, Ms. Ondaan stopped paying rent in October 2017, according to the judge’s ruling. Ms. Lysius fell behind in mortgage payments and eventually sold the property in foreclosure, according to the ruling.

Judge John B. Spooner said her “dire financial circumstances likely played a significant part in motivating her hostile messages.”

In early January 2018, Ms. Lysius began eviction proceedings against Ms. Ondaan. On Jan. 11, Ms. Lysius wrote in a text message that she would call ICE on Ms. Ondaan if she didn’t pay rent that day. She later sent a link to an article about ICE officers raiding 7-Elevens to detain unauthorized workers.

After Ms. Ondaan reached out to the city’s Commission on Human Rights, the agency sent a letter on Jan. 17 to Ms. Lysius ordering her to cease threatening to report tenants to immigration authorities, according to the ruling. The next day, Ms. Lysius sent an email to Ms. Ondaan threatening to call ICE, the ruling said.

“As a citizen of the country I must protect my country,” the email said, according to the ruling.

Ms. Ondaan eventually moved out in October 2018, owing $14,400 in rent, according to the ruling. A housing-court decision in September 2018 said Ms. Ondaan would have to pay $6,895 of the back rent.

LIMA (Reuters) – Peru deported 150 Venezuelans for entering the country illegally as authorities sought to enforce stricter policies for migrants from the crisis-stricken nation, Peru’s immigration office said on Thursday.

The immigrants were detained this week in a coastal desert region at Peru’s northern border with Ecuador, part of a route taken by hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have migrated to Peru, Chile and Argentina in recent years to escape hyperinflation and shortages of basic food and medicine at home.

Authorities barred the migrants from entering Peru for 15 years and left them in Ecuador, the office said in a statement.

The announcement followed several days of local TV coverage of a gruesome murder involving Venezuelan gang members, fueling concerns about crime, a top priority for most Peruvians.

False rumors have also been circulating in audio messages on WhatsApp and social media posts that Venezuelans were trying to kidnap children. Peru’s interior minister ruled out any truth to the rumors and warned against “xenophobic” practices.

Peru was once one of the most welcoming countries for Venezuelan migrants, granting them temporary residency so they could work and access public services. But as the number of Venezuelans in Peru has climbed to more than 850,000, fanning concerns about crime, jobs and social services, Peru cut the residency program short and toughened entry requirements.

Earlier this month, the government said that a new visa requirement for Venezuelans that it imposed in June had led to a 90% drop in legal entries and that authorities would beef up security to prevent illegal crossings.

Peru, Chile and Ecuador now require visas and hard-to-get passports from Venezuelan nationals. Colombia, home to the largest Venezuelan population outside Venezuela, continues to allow them to enter without visas.

Venezuela’s economic collapse and political crisis under President Nicolas Maduro has unleashed the biggest migratory crisis in recent Latin American history.

The Venezuelan diaspora could double to 8 million by the end of 2020, the Organization of American States (OAS) said in June.

Many Venezuelans in recent waves of migrants are trying to join family members.

Reporting By Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino; Editing by Alistair Bell

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is tracking charges of child pornography and solicitation of sex from a teenage girl against Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Felipe Vázquez, agency officials said Thursday, raising the possibility that the U.S. will seek to deport the All-Star closer if he is convicted of crimes.

But removing him to his native Venezuela may prove difficult for the U.S., amid political instability there and all-but-severed U.S. relations with the government of Nicolás Maduro. Vázquez could, in turn, face a lengthier sentence in state prison in the U.S., because his attorneys would be unable to argue for leniency in exchange for deportation.

Vázquez’s immigration status and citizenship adds a new layer of complexity to a case that is already complicated because it spans two states, Florida and Pennsylvania. The case has little precedent in U.S. major league sports because players with the most egregious legal difficulties have typically been American citizens.

Authorities arrested Vázquez on Tuesday on a Florida warrant, on charges that he had used a computer device to solicit a minor for sex and provided obscene material to a minor. Later that day, additional charges were filed against him in Pennsylvania, including statutory sexual assault and unlawful contact with a minor.

Vázquez admitted to police that he had sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl and exchanged sexually explicit photos and videos with her, according to a criminal complaint in Pennsylvania released Wednesday. He is being held without bond in the Allegheny County Jail.

A Pirates spokesman confirmed Thursday that Vázquez, 28, is a Venezuelan national who has a green card allowing him to permanently live and work in the U.S. Such a card, however, can be revoked and the holder ordered removed in cases involving aggravated felonies, a definition that typically includes child sex offenses and pornography, depending on the exact wording of state statutes.

The spokesman added that the Pirates “have not communicated directly to anyone in regards to his immigration status.”

“ICE is aware of the charges and is closely monitoring the case,” ICE officials said Thursday.

The agency declined to comment on its ability to effect removals to Venezuela.

Francisco Symphorien, a Venezuelan-American attorney in Orlando who has a large client base of Venezuelans fighting removal orders in cases that don’t involve serious crimes, said he was unaware of the Trump administration being able to carry one out this year.

“I think there’s a theoretical possibility, but as a practical matter it’s very difficult to get it done,” he said.

To deport a foreign national, the U.S. generally needs the person’s home country to provide travel documents and agree to accept the person. The U.S. has recognized opposition politician Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s sole legitimate leader, and imposed a total economic embargo on the Maduro government. The U.S. has also suspended all commercial and cargo flights to Venezuela over security concerns.

The U.S. has sometimes been able to persuade a third country to accept a deportee, typically in situations involving people from the Middle East. It’s not clear that other countries have agreed to accept Venezuelans removed from the U.S. because of serious crimes, though some, such as Colombia, have taken in refugees fleeing across the border between the two countries.

Symphorien said Venezuelans can also seek to fight removal in court, citing deteriorating Venezuelan conditions to argue that it would be in contravention of provisions such as the Convention Against Torture. Venezuelans have faced acute food shortages, and a lack of access to power or running water, in recent years.

Vázquez would likely serve any prison sentence in the U.S. before ICE stepped in to attempt a removal. Defense attorneys for foreign nationals facing removal sometimes try to argue for no prison time, or reduced prison time, because the person is already facing the punishment of removal. The obstacles in Venezuelan removal means that option appears to be unavailable to Vázquez, whose attorney declined to respond to multiple messages Wednesday and Thursday.

If Vázquez is convicted and sentenced to prison time, he will be moved into ICE custody on his release. What happens next depends on whether the situation in Venezuela has changed by that time. If it has improved, he would be less able to make a torture claim, and the U.S. would probably be able to make the removal happen.

If it hasn’t, ICE will hold him until they can arrange his removal. If it drags on past six months, he would likely be declared “unremovable” and attorneys would push for his release, said David Leopold, a partner and head of the immigration law group at Ulmer & Berne LLP.

Vázquez, who goes by the nickname “Nightmare” in Major League Baseball, is in the second season of a four-year contract with the Pirates worth a guaranteed $22 million. The deal includes multiple club options that could increase his compensation to more than $40 million. Since debuting in the major leagues in 2015, Vázquez has earned about $8.5 million in salary. He has been one of the best relievers in baseball in 2019, posting a 1.65 ERA and striking out 90 batters in 60 innings.

He would not forfeit the money if he faced removal, attorneys said. “The money he’s already earned is his money,” Leopold said.

Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com

The House on Thursday easily passed a stopgap spending measure to avert a shutdown at month’s end. But the hard part is just beginning.

Democratic and Republican leaders will spend the next two months attempting to forge a lasting deal to fund the government involving all of the same political landmines that thrust Washington into a 35-day shutdown — and more.

Story Continued Below

The border wall. Detention beds. Immigration agents. And now, President Donald Trump’s cash grab from the Pentagon to fund the wall.

“That is going to be a big fight, like we saw last time,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said in an interview. “Nobody wants a shutdown. But what do you do when you’re so far apart?”

After a 301-123 vote, the House-approved funding bill — which keeps the government open until just before Thanksgiving — now heads to the Senate, which is expected to clear the legislation well before the Sept. 30 deadline.

Congressional leaders will then have until Nov. 21 to reach an accord for full-year funding, or, as many lawmakers expect, another funding patch through Christmas. That sets up Congress for an eerily similar scenario to fall 2018, when dealmaking broke down and Trump shuttered the government after Democrats refused to fund his wall.

Even this short-term funding bill resulted in some behind the scenes drama: Democratic and Republican spending leaders struggled to reach a deal for days as they sparred over Trump’s controversial aid program for farmers hit by his trade wars, Puerto Rico’s Medicaid funding and, of course, the wall.

The most difficult piece of the upcoming funding talks center on a small slice of the $1.4 trillion budget: the Department of Homeland Security. That bill alone, and the related fight over the wall, was the trigger of the longest-ever government shutdown that stretched from last December to January.

So far this year, neither party has formally released its opening bid on the DHS funding bill. House Democratic leaders have said they plan to offer zero dollars for Trump’s wall, while pursuing more restrictions for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including fewer detention beds.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have skewered Republicans for proposing that $5 billion from domestic programs be spent on the wall, with plans to divert another $7 billion in military construction funds to border projects. Those fiscal 2020 funding levels could be in flux, however, as both parties in the upper chamber continue negotiating behind the scenes.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby acknowledged earlier this week that bipartisanship in the appropriations process has eroded over funding for Trump’s wall.

“The controversy has seemed to grow and gotten deeper in the Democratic ranks,” the Alabama Republican said. When asked on Thursday if a short-term spending bill is just punting on that contentious issue, he replied, “Could be.”

Democratic lawmakers view the request for more wall funding as a slap in the face. The White House already unilaterally diverted several billion dollars from military construction projects for his wall this year.

“They know darn well that $12 billion in additional monies for the wall isn’t going to fly with Senate Democrats or the House,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

Funding disputes over the wall are part of why the Senate has yet to pass a single spending bill on the floor — a delayed start that has complicated any attempt by the two chambers to begin talks on a final deal. Disagreements over abortion-related provisions have also ensnared some of the Senate’s spending bills.

House Democrats, meanwhile, have passed funding bills for nearly every other department.

But Democratic lawmakers say they are also unwilling to delay consideration of a DHS funding bill for much longer — fearful of simply maintaining current funding and other policy provisions that Democrats are eager to change.

“One of the things I’m going to be pushing is that DHS doesn’t become the orphan child again. But that there’s going to be a total package,” said California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who leads Democratic negotiations for the House DHS funding bill.

Progressive lawmakers, in particular, are eager to use the upcoming funding talks to fight Trump’s border policies, which include not just the wall, but a slew of new hard-line moves taken over the summer.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters this week that he expects “some big fights” this fall — “including how people are treated at the border.”

Still, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), who leads the House Appropriations Committee, downplayed the drama.

“There are many difficult issues. We’ll sit down and work them out,” Lowey said. “That’s what government is all about.”

Washington (CNN) — For 57 years, the Church World Service resettlement office in Richmond, Virginia, served thousands of refugees from around the world, helping them get their feet off the ground in the United States after fleeing dangerous conditions and persecution in their home countries. Some who passed through moved on once they settled in, while others came back to work at the office and assist fellow refugees.

But now, amid the decline in the number of refugees being admitted, that office is closing at the end of the month — the outcome of the administration’s attempt to curb legal migration to the US and cripple the system set up to assist some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Office closures are a new reality for agencies tasked with resettling refugees as the number of admissions has drastically dropped. All nine resettlement agencies who work with the State Department to place refugees have had to close offices or pause their placement programs — chipping away at a system designed to not only place refugees but also help them integrate into communities across the country.

As of April 2019, around 100 offices have either closed entirely or suspended their refugee resettlement program, a third of offices nationwide, according to a Refugee Council USA report released this year.
“These past two years have been challenging for refugee resettlement offices across the country,” wrote then-Virginia director of immigration and refugee program at the Church World Service, John Baumann, in a letter to staff and community partners in March. “As a nation that has always proudly led the world in numbers of refugees resettled, we are now receiving roughly a quarter of the 85,000 people that we resettled just three years ago.”
Church World Service first paused its placement program in Richmond last November before deciding to close it entirely at the end of this month, as they had similarly done with an office in New York.

“All the while we were waiting and hoping that the refugee program would return to its more historic and compassionate level,” said Roisin Ford, a regional director at Church World Service. “It didn’t happen and it still hasn’t happened.”

The refugee cap, which dictates how many refugees may be admitted to the US, is discussed among several departments and agencies, and eventually approved by the President. Where as the cap has often been viewed as a goal to be reached, the actual number of refugees admitted has fallen short.

Last year, the administration set a refugee cap of 30,000, the lowest level since 1980, and significant shift away from the increasingly high caps placed under former President Barack Obama. In the last few years of Obama’s presidency, the administration raised the refugee ceiling from 85,000 in fiscal year 2016 to 110,000 in fiscal year 2017 amid the Syrian crisis.
As of August 2019, more than 28,000 refugees have been admitted to the US this fiscal year, according to figures from the Refugee Processing Center.

“We will continue to resettle the most vulnerable refugees, including those who have fled religious persecution, while prioritizing the safety and security of the American people,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.

While the administration is nearing the ceiling it imposed, the numbers are still very low when compared to recent years. In fiscal year 2016, for example, nearly 85,000 refugees were admitted to the United States.

The offices tasked with helping place those refugees have taken a hit as a result of the drastic drop in admissions, making it difficult to sustain themselves when fewer refugees are being admitted.

“You’re really seeing an ongoing decimation of the refugee program,” said Jenny Yang, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, one of the nine resettlement agencies.

World Relief has closed seven of its offices since 2017, as a result of the dwindling arrival numbers. They anticipate resettling around 2,400 refugees this fiscal year, down from the roughly 6,500 refugees World Relief placed in fiscal year 2016.

Uncertain future for programs
“It’s been a particularly devastating year for Church World Service and really for everyone that cares for refugee resettlement,” said Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy for the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service, another of the nine resettlement agencies.

Resettlement agencies help place refugees once they’ve been admitted to the US, introducing them to services, helping them get jobs, and familiarizing them with a new community. In some cases, the help offices provide can be as simple as showing individuals the local bus route or teaching them how to use the financial system.

But under the Trump administration, the resettlement program has been infused with uncertainty. Over the last two years, agencies have had to make adjustments like closing offices or pausing their placement programs, but another fiscal year with a low admission ceiling will further squeeze them, according to those involved in the process.

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration floated the possibility of admitting zero refugees next year during a meeting with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and the Pentagon, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

While the zero option received immediate pushback from some government officials, the possibility of a lower refugee cap is not lost on resettlement agencies preparing for upcoming admissions.

“It goes without saying that people don’t get into resettlement work, especially at the local level, to be very wealthy and in the one percent,” said Danielle Grigsby, interim director of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of 24 nongovernmental agencies focused on refugee protection.

“This is a passion project for most people and it’s really been psychologically challenging to see the impact this prolonged state of certainty has had,” Grigsby added.

Last week, senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the departments of State, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services expressing concerns over the administration’s approach to next year’s refugee ceiling.

“We are increasingly disturbed by the administration’s disregard for legal requirements, congressional intent, and the importance of refugee resettlement to our nation,” the letter reads. The refugee cap requires consultation with Congress.
The State Department spokesperson said the determination is expected to be made by the end of the month, adding, “We do not discuss internal and interagency deliberations or communications involved in those deliberations.”

The Church World Service Richmond office, one of the agency’s 21 immigration and refugee program locations, saw a drastic drop in refugee admissions between fiscal year 2007 and 2019. Until fiscal year 2016, the number of arrivals hovered around 100, but started decreasing thereafter to only 5 arrivals so far this fiscal year, according to the group.

Those figures are alarming when put in the context of the rising number of refugees around the world. According to the United Nations refugee agency, in 2018, there were more than 20 million refugees.
Earlier this month, more than two dozen retired generals and admirals sent a letter to Trump urging him to sustain the program –in a show of how the refugee program not only serves humanitarian purposes but also national security.

“Further cuts would undermine commitments made to allies and partners on the ground, our national security missions overseas, and the domestic infrastructure here in the United States that supports the successful integration of refugees, including those who served alongside U.S. troops,” the letter read.

The seeming dismantling of the refugee resettlement program is due, in part, to the State Department requiring some offices that had worked with more than one agency to only work with one, according to the council’s report.

Resettlement agencies have also had to contend with the possibility that they may be cut from the process entirely, meaning they would stop receiving funding from the State Department to admit refugees. In 2018, the State Department indicated in its Notice of Funding Opportunity document that not all nine resettlement agencies would be funded in fiscal year 2019. In the end, all nine were funded, but the agencies are nervous the department might consider that again as they wait for the fiscal year 2020 notice.

Vice President Pence has hired former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Katie Waldman as his new press secretary.

A Pence spokesman confirmed Thursday that Waldman has been brought on to replace Alyssa Farah, who left the vice president’s office in August to become press secretary at the Pentagon.

Waldman currently serves as communications director for Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.). Before that, she focused on immigration during her time at DHS.

Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short told NBC News, which first reported the hire, that Waldman has “extensive experience and she’ll be a great fit in our office.”

“She’s shown she has the mettle to handle intense environments,” Short said.

McSally praised Waldman in a statement to The Hill, calling the move to the vice president’s office a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Waldman worked at DHS during the tenure of former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The agency faced intense criticism last year over its “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of thousands of migrant families, something Nielsen defended from the White House podium.

Nielsen was ousted in April, and much of DHS’s press staff turned over a short time later.

For Yael Ross, studying the impact of immigration on a child’s education is “very personal.”

Ross, an immigrant from Mexico and a former teacher, is the director of the Center for New American Children & Education at the organization Children at Risk, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to addressing the root causes of poor public policies affecting children.

Ross’ work aims to understand the best ways to help the estimated 17 million “new American children,” which her organization defines as U.S. citizen children with documented immigrant parents; U.S. citizen children with undocumented immigrant parents; undocumented minors; and “Dreamers,” recipients of an Obama-era program that allows young immigrants who were brought the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the country.

The Center for New American Children started in January 2018 with the goal of analyzing and understanding the impact of recent immigration enforcement policies on Texas schools. Through research and advocacy, the center is working to understand the best ways to help children from immigrant communities get the support they need to get a high-quality education.

“I came to the United States for graduate school, and my journey was hard, so I can’t imagine how hard it is for someone who didn’t have the same support I had,” said Ross, who holds a bachelor’s in educational psychology from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Image: Yael Ross, Director of the Center for New American Children.
Yael Ross, Director of the Center for New American Children.Alan Ross
A 2018 study from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, which noted an increase in worries related to immigration enforcement and a 70 percent decline in academic performance among new American children, served as a catalyst for her work and research.

“As a kid, or really anyone, emotions are a shared experience. So kids will pick up on their family’s fear. When they don’t have the same perspective and maturity, emotions will become a challenge when trying to close an achievement gap,” Ross said.

The center is currently partnering with established organizations providing direct services to children and families in Houston, including the Houston Independent School District, Baker Ripley, and Yes Prep Public Schools. The organizations run focus groups with immigrant families, interview immigration lawyers and perform online surveys to assess what the children’s needs are and tailor unique approaches.

Their 2019 report “Immigration & Education: Impact and Challenges on Our Public Schools,” chronicles their findings.

According to Ross, one of the first ways to help is providing teachers with better professional development in understanding mental health.

“Schools need to prioritize what teachers actually really need to know and either give teachers the training in recognizing things like depression and anxiety or bring the professionals into the schools so they can actually support the students,” Ross said.

This way, teachers can understand that certain behaviors often come from a student being in survival mode due to outside factors like food or home insecurity and fear of deportation.

She also says that it is important to understand some of the cultural context behind a student’s success.

“Don’t assume that everyone has the same education and background that you have,” Ross said. “We all assume things based on where we grew up, and it doesn’t come from a bad place, but we have to understand that there are more ways than how we grew up.”

According to Ross, this can lead to misconceptions that parents aren’t engaged in their child’s education when, in reality, they are living in fear of deportation or come from cultures that are not as outspoken when it comes to demanding certain things.

As a nonprofit, one of the challenges the Center for New American Children is facing is securing funders. “When you use the word ‘immigration,’ every word after it becomes political and not child focused. Sometimes companies don’t want their name associated with something perceived to be too political. It’s a real challenge,” Ross said.

This story appears as part of coverage for “NBC News Learn Presents: Education Now Houston,” a two-hour live community event supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. For more information, go to nbcnews.com/learnhouston.

Employees at five leading American firms told BuzzFeed News in an anonymous, nonscientific survey that they were generally split over whether their company should contract with government immigration agencies.

Last month, a leaked recording of a meeting between Ogilvy CEO John Seifert and several employees revealed a sharp conflict: Workers were morally outraged that the iconic ad firm had a contract with US Customs and Border Protection after several children died in CBP custody. But company executives stood by the work as responsible and “prestigious” business.

It was a conflict made for the Trump era, between a company accustomed to working largely uncontroversially with the US government and employees who expected their employer to take a value stand against the worst features of the new American right.

Before the Ogilvy meeting — you can read a full transcript here — the employees started talking about the CBP contract on a messaging board on Fishbowl, a platform that allows people to sign up with their company email address to communicate with one another based on a shared employer or being in the same industry.

So BuzzFeed News partnered with Fishbowl to run surveys of employees at the five major companies — Guidehouse, Deloitte, McKinsey & Co., Grant Thornton, and Accenture — that were awarded contracts with CBP and/or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The anonymous survey showed up on the Fishbowl feeds for each company employee.

BuzzFeed News asked how much employees approved or disapproved of the fact that their company had a contract with the agencies. In all, 2,363 people took the survey.

The private results were a sharp contrast with the leaked confrontation between Ogilvy staff and employees.

Results show that most employees seem split into three camps: Roughly a third (29.4%) approved or strongly approved of their company’s work with these government agencies, a bit more than a third (39.1%) had no opinion, and another third (31.7%) disapproved strongly or somewhat with their company’s decision to work with ICE or CBP.

The limited results indicate that many employees aren’t necessarily up in arms about their company doing work with immigration authorities. Many were glad because they trust the work their company does and thought it would be a good influence on government operations.

“Someone will always take the contract. I would much rather be involved and/or have the company be one with a strong culture of ethical behavior. There is a way to recruit people who can do the job but not abuse their positions or disregard human integrity for the people they are hired to stop, hold, etc.,” commented one person on Fishbowl who works for Accenture, a professional services company that was hired last year to help CBP recruit. The government has since discontinued the contract.

“Helping the US government to recruit people is bad how?” said another Accenture employee.

“Every government organization is bad at what they do — that’s why they need consultants in the first place,” said someone who works at Deloitte, a consulting company that has a contract with ICE and whose employees called for termination of that contract last year.

A Grant Thornton spokesperson said the firm “has a long-standing history of serving federal and state government agencies with quality and distinction. Professional standards prevent us from commenting on specific client engagements. We do not have any comment on your poll.”

Accenture declined to comment, and Guidehouse, McKinsey, and Deloitte didn’t return requests for comment.

Some employees on Fishbowl were blunt: It’s a business.

“Who gives a shit? It’s about making money, and I bet ICE is getting a lot of that now. No reason why we can’t get some of it 😊,” wrote another employee at Deloitte.

Fishbowl also provided an analysis of content posted in Fishbowl-wide public groups by employees of these five companies and Ogilvy. Data scientists from Fishbowl searched for posts that mentioned the keywords “immigration,” “immigrant,” “undocumented,” “border patrol,” “CBP” (all caps only), and “ICE” (all caps only) and ran a few calculations on behalf of BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed News wanted to find out just how relevant the topic of immigration was to employees of these six companies. The analysis found that the conversations around immigration spiked at three particular points in time: November 2016, the month President Donald Trump was elected; January 2017, the month of Trump’s inauguration and a slew of immigration-related policies, including the Muslim ban, a crackdown on sanctuary cities, and talk about building a wall between Mexico and the US; June and July 2018, when news of families being separated at the border broke; and July of this year, when Ogilvy’s CEO John Seifert had to address concerns from his employees over the ad company’s contract with CBP.

Below is a chart that shows what percentage of all content posted involved those terms over time. (Fishbowl was founded in the fall of 2016.)

To better understand the nature of the conversations around immigration, BuzzFeed News asked Fishbowl to also run an analysis on the posts that included the immigration-related keywords. The data scientists looked into word pairings, or bigrams — imagine splitting a sentence into a bunch of words that are adjacent to one another and then counting how often each pair occurs.

The analysis below shows how often word couplets appeared across all of the messages. Among the most common word pairings in immigration-related posts were “illegal immigrants,” “immigrant parents,” “border patrol,” and “white people.”

See the top 40 pairings below.

Corporate activism has made headlines throughout the country with workers from Ogilvy, Equinox, Edelman, and Wayfair walking out or protesting their company’s involvement with government immigration agencies or the Trump administration.

Employees at the companies surveyed are also having more conversations about what is an ethical or a nonethical source of revenue.

“If corporate companies are about inclusion and diversity and about non bias and non judgement with people, it should be the same for work revenue. Someone’s got to do the work,” commented one Accenture employee.

A Deloitte employee responded to that comment: “I never considered it like that. I’m pro-life, but I wouldn’t care if we had a contract with Planned Parenthood or a similar organization, but I would care if they forced me to work on it. From what I’ve heard, everyone has been allowed to roll off without penalty.”

The people gathering at Yosemite’s Glacier Point on Thursday morning won’t be your typical hikers and tourists. Forty-two people from 15 countries will stand before one of the park’s most spectacular views of Half Dome to pledge their allegiance to the U.S., becoming the country’s newest citizens.

Judge Jeremy Peterson, the magistrate for the U.S. District Court in Yosemite Valley, will swear them in. Park Superintendent Michael Reynolds will appear, and the park’s mounted patrol will act as color guards, a news release Wednesday said. And afterward, apple pie will be served.

Glacier Point at Yosemite National Park
Citizens at a previous naturalization ceremony at Yosemite’s Glacier Point.
Since 2006, national parks have served as memorable landscapes for naturalization ceremonies organized by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“These ceremonies have brought America’s next generation of immigrants to the natural, historical and cultural treasures that tell the American story,” Michael Connor, former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior wrote on the agency’s blog in 2016.

A new citizen shows off her certificate in front of Yosemite National Park’s mounted guards.
A new citizen shows off her certificate in front of Yosemite National Park’s mounted guards.
In the last few months, naturalization ceremonies have taken place amid the cactuses at Arizona’s Saguaro National Park and at Roosevelt Arch, built in 1903, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California held its 10th ceremony this month. Twenty-six people raised their hands and took the oath.

In August, Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in New York held its first citizenship ceremony. Acting Superintendent Catherine Bragaw told new citizens, “As we stood on the same ground where Harriet Tubman once stood, we were immersed in her dream of freedom and equality. Her dream lives on.”

Naturalization ceremony at Grand Canyon National Park
Ceremonies have taken place at Grand Canyon National Park.
In its 100th year, the National Park Service hosted 100 such ceremonies in parks such as the Grand Canyon, the Everglades and Harpers Ferry in West Virginia.

Beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals say they’re worried about what might happen to them if the Obama-era program is terminated and they are deported to their native countries.

DACA recipients cite quality of health care, food access and physical safety in their home countries as top concerns, according to a survey released this week.

The survey, by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California San Diego and advocacy groups including United We Dream, the Center for American Progress and the National Immigration Law Center, contacted about 1,100 DACA recipients over about three weeks.

Many worried about the consequences of being deported:

About 80% said they’d be concerned about their own and their family’s physical safety in their home country.

About 58% said they’d worry about access to food.

About 75% said they’d worry about the quality of health care.

The findings come about two months before the future of the 7-year-old Obama-era program is set to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.

DACA, which forestalls deportation for some unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and grants them renewable two-year work permits, could be in its final months of existence.

Supreme Court justices will hear arguments in November about whether President Donald Trump has the authority to terminate the program.

Their decision could come next June, in the midst of the presidential election, rattling the political cage.

The Trump administration moved to shutter the program in September 2017, and Trump then tasked Congress with finding a permanent solution for DACA recipients.

But several federal court decisions in early 2018 stopped the administration’s efforts. The program is now only processing renewals, and no initial requests for DACA are being accepted.

The survey also found that with DACA, beneficiaries reported finding better financial footing:

About 58% reported getting a job with better pay.

About 53% reported finding jobs that better fit their education and training.

About 53% reported getting a job with health insurance and benefits.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A county in south Mississippi has settled a racial profiling lawsuit and its sheriff’s department is setting new policies that limit officers’ use of race or national origin as a reason to stop and question people, attorneys say.

A family with Latino and Native American background filed a federal lawsuit in November against Hancock County, Mississippi.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi Center for Justice, representing the family, said Wednesday that a settlement was signed last month and that the new anti-profiling policies are part of the settlement.

Mississippi sheriff sets policies amid racial profiling suit
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
yesterday
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A county in south Mississippi has settled a racial profiling lawsuit and its sheriff’s department is setting new policies that limit officers’ use of race or national origin as a reason to stop and question people, attorneys say.

A family with Latino and Native American background filed a federal lawsuit in November against Hancock County, Mississippi.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi Center for Justice, representing the family, said Wednesday that a settlement was signed last month and that the new anti-profiling policies are part of the settlement.

The lawsuit says Marcos and Stephanie Martinez of Taylors, South Carolina, their three children, two other relatives and a family friend were on vacation and traveling through Mississippi in June 2017 in the family van when a deputy stopped them on Interstate 10. It says the deputy asked if they were U.S. citizens, confiscated their passports and other documents and demanded to know if they were carrying illegal drugs.

The lawsuit says Marcos Martinez was obeying all traffic laws when he was stopped, and that he and the others in the van were detained for four hours — two on the side of the interstate and two at the sheriff’s department. It says they underwent “extensive interrogation, threats and multiple unlawful searches because of their perceived race, ethnicity and national origin.”

Stephanie Martinez and the couple’s children are U.S. citizens, and she is of Native American descent. Marcos Martinez was born in Mexico, and at the time of the traffic stop, he had legal permanent residency in the United States. He has become a U.S. citizen since.

Marcos Martinez’s mother and sister, who are both from Mexico and were in the U.S. on tourist visas, were in the van. The lawsuit says the family was driving from South Carolina to Mexico to return them home before their visas expired. The friend in the van lives in South Carolina and was traveling with the Martinez family so he could see his own relatives in Mexico.

Stephanie Martinez told The Associated Press on Thursday that because of the way the family was treated during the traffic stop, her children no longer trust law enforcement officers. The children are now 10, 13 and 15 years old.

“Now when they see a cop, they automatically think they’re coming for us,” Stephanie Martinez said. “It’s hard for me to explain to them that they are supposed to call on law enforcement in time of need and they are supposed to trust law enforcement when I don’t trust them myself.”

Hancock County Sheriff Ricky Adam did not immediately return a call from AP seeking comment Thursday.

The sheriff’s department’s new policies say race, ethnicity or national origin may play no role in an officer’s decision to stop, detain or question people unless those characteristics are part of a “credible, timely and specific suspect description” that includes other information such as a suspect’s height or weight. The policies also say officers may not prolong a stop to check a person’s immigration status and that the department must collect information about traffic stops, including the length of the stop, whether it resulted in a citation and the race or ethnicity of the person stopped.

Stephanie Martinez said she’s pleased that her family’s lawsuit brought about policy changes.

“I just want people to know that they have rights and they need to know those rights,” she said.

The settlement includes a $90,000 payment from the county to the plaintiffs, a Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman said.

Attorneys for the Martinez family said that Hancock County said its deputies were acting under a program that promotes cooperation among local and federal law enforcement agencies. However, Gillian Gillers, senior staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a news release that the program does not give local officers the authority to enforce federal immigration laws.

“This case is a powerful reminder that when local law enforcement tries to do the job of federal immigration agents, they will face costly legal challenges,” Gillers said.

Norfolk’s sheriff has ended his agreement with federal authorities to lock up suspected illegal immigrants in the city jail.

For the past two years, Sheriff Joe Baron has jailed detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in exchange for federal money, usually for a couple days before ICE officers transfer them to a long term detention facility.

But now that’s over. The Norfolk Sheriff’s Office’s contract rider with ICE, which covered the past year, ended on Tuesday. Baron decided not to sign a new one that could have stretched into September 2020.

Baron declined through a spokeswoman to talk about his decision.

Norfolk Sheriff Joe Baron
Norfolk Sheriff Joe Baron (Courtesy of the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office)
While the contract officially ended this week, the jail hadn’t housed immigration detainees for nearly seven months. The last one came to the Norfolk jail on Feb. 22, a week after The Virginian-Pilot published a story exposing that, between September 2017 and February, the Sheriff’s Office held some 830 people arrested by ICE.

In September 2017, the sheriff agreed to house ICE detainees for up to 72 hours each for $44.50 per person per day, until ICE officers could transfer them to one of their long term facilities. In a December 2018 interview with The Pilot, Baron said housing detainees protected Norfolk residents from “some bad characters.” It also brought in cash. ICE has paid more than $380,000 to house some 830 detainees at the Norfolk jail, although state officials siphoned off most of that.

In the first 1½ years, the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office accepted nearly every detainee ICE could bring, leading an ICE officer to thank the sheriff’s office for its “unwavering support.” On two occasions, Baron even waived a rule prohibiting ICE from leaving detainees at the jail for more than 72 hours. One was in the summer of 2018 when ICE officers were scrambling to find beds for detainees that immigration officials were picking up at the border or arresting in Virginia during raids. The number of ICE detainees the sheriff’s office was jailing spiked as a result.

But in January, after an extensive interview with The Pilot, O’Toole balked when ICE officials asked to bring in detainees. A Richmond-based ICE official explained they wanted to use the Norfolk jail to help sister ICE offices at the southern border by booking and holding detainees for a couple days before transferring them to its long term facility in Farmville.

O’Toole said they couldn’t because the sheriff’s office was replacing its kitchen floor and preparing food offsite.

After the first Pilot story ran on Feb. 14, the heat intensified on Baron. Dozens of protesters picketed and protested a City Council meeting, urging the city’s elected lawmakers to push Baron to end the detentions.

The council has no formal authority over the sheriff, who is independently elected. But most if not all members of the council, like Baron, are Democrats in a city where Republican Donald Trump got less than 30 percent of the vote for president in 2016.

One council member said he’d support a resolution calling on the sheriff to stop working with ICE, although the council has considered no such statement. A band of activists started calling, emailing and meeting with Baron, pushing him to end his contract with ICE.

Partnerships with local jails are an important part of ICE’s detention network, said Randy Capps, a researcher at the non-partisan think tank, Migration Policy Institute.

Capps has said authorities can plan ahead for raids like the ones that happened last month in Mississippi, where 680 workers at food processing plants were arrested on immigration charges, or a Virginia operation that netted 132 arrests last year.

But ICE always needs breathing room for situations that are tougher to predict, like the number of immigrants crossing the border, Capps said. Having space in local jails gives the federal agency flexibility.

The advocates who pushed Baron to stop working with ICE followed a playbook that’s worked in other cities across the country, Capps said. Uncomfortable with the Trump Administration’s immigration policies and facing pressure at home, leaders in California, Oregon and Northern Virginia cities and towns decided in recent years to kill ICE contracts similar to the one the Norfolk sheriff had.

It’s hard to change federal immigration policy, especially if you’re far from Washington, D.C., Capps said. But local officials like Baron are much more impressionable. They’re elected and answerable to voters, who they might run into outside their office — or at the grocery store.

“That pressure can be quite effective,” Capps said.

The Johns Hopkins University is ending one of its contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announcing Thursday that the medical school has severed an agreement to train federal immigration agents in responding to emergency medical situations.

In a statement, university spokeswoman Kim Hoppe wrote that the medical school notified ICE’s Office of Investigations several weeks ago that it would not be renewing the contract, which has trained ICE’s Special Response Teams in medical training since 2004.

“After careful and deliberate consideration, the JHU Center for Law Enforcement Medicine will not be renewing this contract,” Hoppe wrote, adding that university officials are negotiating how to execute “a safe and orderly wrap up of the medical programs.”

Students have long protested the university’s contracts with ICE and aggressively called for the school to sever ties. They’ve accused the university of “pretending to stand for progressive principles while reaping the rewards of dirty business.”

As part of a monthlong sit-in at Garland Hall in April, students demanded the university end its contracts with ICE andcancel plans for its own police force.

A few months earlier, students and faculty walked out of class and marched around campus chanting, “Caging children is horrific, JHU is complicit” and “JHU hear us shout, we won’t stop until ICE is out.”

Since 2008, the university has earned more than $7 million from 37 contracts with ICE, according to government spending data. Hopkins has three contracts with the agency totaling more than $1.7 million. The contracts, set to expire this year, are primarily with the medical school for educational programs that provide emergency medical training and leadership education.

University leadership has pushed back against the protesters, saying they must protect academic freedom.

A separate contract the university has with the agency to train agents in its Public Safety Leadership program is set to expire this year and the university wrote in a letter to students in October that the “program as a whole is currently being wound down.”

IN ITS multipronged efforts to deter migrants from seeking asylum in the United States, the Trump administration has devised policies designed to outsource the problem, mainly to Mexico. Judging strictly by the numbers, that strategy has been effective in stanching the flow of refugees attempting to cross the southern border in flight from violence, oppression and economic hardship in Central America and elsewhere. But that apparent gain has come at a cost — to the safety and welfare of the migrants, who are preyed on in lawless Mexican border towns, and to the United States’ moral standing.

Collateral damage from the administration’s determination to turn back the northward flow of desperate people has fallen heavily on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador forced to remain in Mexico under an administration policy adopted in January, and since expanded, as they await adjudication of their asylum claims. The program bears the antiseptic-sounding name “Migrant Protection Protocols.” In fact, it affords asylum seekers precious little protection.

To the contrary, thousands of migrants, waylaid for months in Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican cities with high crime rates, are frequent targets of kidnapping gangs, which demand ransom from the victims’ relatives at home. In Mexico, shelter for the migrants is inadequate; living conditions are harsh; access to lawyers is scant.

More than 42,000 asylum applicants have been shunted to Mexico under the program, but half are believed to have given up on their bids and returned to their home countries. No doubt, some had wished mainly to improve their financial prospects by finding work in the United States, or hoped to escape domestic or gang violence. Many of these would not have qualified under the criteria the Trump administration has set for granting asylum: persecution arising from race, religion, nationality, or membership in a political or social group. Others, however, might have met the criteria but felt too exposed or frightened to continue waiting in Mexico.

To its credit, Mexico has granted work permits and social security numbers to migrants awaiting adjudication of their asylum applications in the United States. It is now facing a surge in asylum applicants itself, owing to a Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to enforce a new policy, at least for now, denying refuge to migrants who pass through another country on their way to the United States without seeking asylum there. That is likely to overwhelm Mexico’s limited absorption capacity: Last year, the country’s refugee agency processed fewer than a fifth of nearly 30,000 migrants who applied for asylum there. The agency, which had just a few dozen employees and a minuscule budget, is now receiving additional funding from the Mexican government and the United Nations.

President Trump, who has proclaimed this country “full,” wants out of the United States’ traditional role as a haven for asylum seekers and refugees. In doing so, he might satisfy a political agenda, but he shifts a burden to neighbors far less capable of handling it; sets a dispiriting and — we would say — un-American example for other nations in the world; and, perhaps most harmfully, deprives the United States of the sort of people who have contributed enormously to the nation throughout its history.

[VIDEO]

Maria Isabel Bueso, 24, of Guatemala is diagnosed with Mucopolysaccharidosis VI, which causes dwarfism, clouded vision, and spinal cord compression, among other abnormalities. She came to the U.S. when she was 7 to participate in a clinical trial, and has been receiving medical care in Oakland, California, ever since. On August 16, she was informed that the Trump administration had terminated a deferred action program allowing her to undergo lifesaving treatments in this country without fear of deportation. Bueso is now fighting to stay in the U.S.—while continuing the fight for her life.

It was my family lawyer who called with the news that was, in essence, a death sentence for me. The U.S. Citizen Immigration Services had suddenly and with no warning eliminated the “deferred action” program allowing immigrants like myself to stay in the country legally while undergoing lifesaving treatment.

I live with a debilitating disease called MPS VI and also suffer from paraplegia. I use a power wheelchair to get around, and have a tracheotomy and a VP shunt in my brain. I’m originally from Guatemala, but now live with my family in California, where I’ve been getting treatment at a hospital every Friday for the last 16 years.

I had actually just finished a treatment session, when the lawyer called. “You and your family are being told to leave the country within 33 days or face deportation,” he said.

My mom sunk down to the ground and sobbed. I started shaking with fear. It was like my whole world stopped right there, in that moment. This was never something we expected to happen. If I don’t have my treatment, my doctor says I’ll die.

I was born a healthy baby girl back in Guatemala, but at three weeks old I started developing ear infections for no reason and coming down with high fevers. Doctors couldn’t figure out why, until they did an x-ray, which showed abnormalities in my bones. At one and a half years old, I was diagnosed with MPS VI.

When doctors handed my mom a packet explaining what the condition was, she says she literally dropped to the floor and wept. The good thing, doctors told her, was that it would not impact my intelligence. The bad thing, they told her, is it is the rarest forms of MPS in the world and can cause problems like cardiac arrest, hydrocephalous, blindness, hearing loss, bone abnormalities, chronic pulmonary disease, and even early death.

Doctors didn’t think I’d live past my tweens.

That was over two decades ago, and I’m still here. After receiving my diagnosis, I got invited to participate in an MPS clinical trial in California that lasted for six months. I don’t remember much from that period except going to hospitals and doing testing, testing, and more testing. At the end of the trial, my doctor said that this treatment wasn’t being offered in Guatemala and if we wanted to continue, I’d need to stay in the U.S.

It’s never lost on me how much my family has sacrificed. My mom, my dad, and my sister left everything behind in Guatemala and moved permanently to the U.S. Every day I feel incredibly blessed for my family, really grateful. The words “thank you,” almost feel silly for how truly grateful I truly am.

As I continued my treatments, my family established their new lives in California, where we bought a home. My dad has been at the same company for 12 years now, and my sister met the love of her life and is getting married. My mom stays at home to take care of me and is my biggest champion. We even pay for my treatments with private health care insurance.

I’ve defied the odds and lived, which is something I don’t take for granted. I try to live my life to the fullest each and every day. Last year, I cried at my graduation ceremony from California State University, East Bay, because I never thought I was going to get this far. I’ve become a spokesperson for my disease, and an advocate on behalf of people with rare diseases.

After our lawyer called with the news, my mom and I headed straight to Congressman Mark Desaulnier’s office, who reached out to Senator Kamala Harris. They sent an inquiry to U.S. Citizen Immigration Services, but nobody knew what was going to happen. Politicians called an emergency hearing seeking answers, where I testified and told lawmakers all about my story and why I need to stay in the country.

“If I’m sent back, I will die.”

“If I’m sent back, I will die,” I told the House Oversight subcommittee. “But I want to live. I am a human being with hopes and dreams for my life.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apologized to me, and to all of the people who testified, for the “dehumanizing policies” that brought us all there that day. I also met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Representative Kevin McCarthy, and Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein. That meant a lot, as this is a humanitarian issue, not a partisan one. But right now, we still aren’t getting any answers. We’re basically in a limbo status, as our case is re-opened and as we wait for U.S. Citizen Immigration Services to reconsider their decision. We assume that means our deportation is on hold.

Lawmakers, if you’re reading this, President Trump, if you’re reading this, please help to rewrite the wrong of this policy change. Please help me and all of the other families whose lives depend on the treatment they receive in the U.S.

I came to this country by invitation from doctors, and my participation in the clinical trial is, in the long run, going to help other people who were born here with this condition. I’ve been fighting my entire life to essentially help find a treatment for this disease and I’m grateful for the opportunity this country has given me to receive treatment and to live much longer than expected, but now I’m also fighting for my right to live.

La emergencia climática está causando la emigración de personas que viven de la agricultura. Véalo en nuestra serie especial, Planeta Tierra

La edificación de la valla fronteriza al oeste de Tucson, Arizona, está en medio de la controversia por un reporte de la Oficina de Parques Nacionales en el que se indica que varios sitios arqueológicos se verán afectados por la obra de infraestructura. El biólogo Sergio Ávila precisa que también se impactarían algunas fuentes de agua para la fauna silvestre.

Me sigo preguntando si los demócratas entienden lo que está en juego en la elección presidencial de 2020; es decir, si han asimilado lo que supondría un segundo periodo de Donald Trump en la presidencia.

Y me lo pregunto porque el anticlimático debate demócrata de la semana pasada no aclaró quién de tantos precandidatos podrá movilizar e inspirar a los votantes que desean un cambio, del mismo modo en que Trump moviliza a su prejuiciosa base.

Si bien es cierto que un sector del electorado está dispuesto a votar en 2020 por una escoba con sombrero si eso supone prevenir un segundo mandato de Trump, también es cierto que hay que energizar a los votantes. En 2016 los demócratas apostaron erradamente a que Hillary Clinton era imparable y que Trump con su descabezada campaña de excesos no ganaría. Ahora que es presidente, los demócratas siguen apostando equivocadamente a que esos excesos de Trump que se han tornado en deplorables políticas públicas en todos los rubros —inmigración, medio ambiente, salud, política exterior— serán suficientes para movilizar votantes.

Pero por lo que he visto hasta ahora, si 2020 resulta en una ola azul demócrata será a pesar de los mismos demócratas y no por parte de ellos. Es decir, será porque el propio electorado se movilice; porque los grupos cívicos encargados de registrar y movilizar votantes se lancen a las calles como hacen en cada ciclo electoral para garantizar que la gente vote; porque esa misma gente entienda que un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump terminará de cambiar el panorama político en detrimento de los sectores más vulnerables, particularmente pobres, minorías e inmigrantes.

Trump se ha tornado en un dilema para los demócratas. Unos creen que responder a cada uno de sus ataques es darle más municiones, pero al mismo tiempo entienden que el ataque frontal de Trump a las instituciones de este país, a los sectores más necesitados, su asalto a la democracia y a la decencia tienen que ser enfrentados, pero el cómo atajarlo todavía no es un arte que dominen. Además, la diversidad demócrata hace que no exista consenso, tal y como ha quedado demostrado en la disyuntiva de si proceder o no con una pesquisa sobre un potencial residenciamiento de Trump por la lista de conductas cuestionables que para muchos confirman que ha obstruido la justicia, entre muchas otras cosas.

De otra parte, a veces condenan las políticas de Trump en el tema que sea, como en el caso de la inmigración, pero no establecen con claridad su contrapropuesta.

O peor aún, su desesperación por establecer un claro contraste con los demás los lleva a ser crueles y mezquinos, como el caso del exsecretario de Vivienda, Julián Castro, cuando en su intento de demostrar que el exvicepresidente Joe Biden no está apto para la presidencia por su edad, le espeta que quizá no recuerda lo que dijo hace dos minutos. Ah, la juventud. Algunos de estos políticos jóvenes creen que lo serán eternamente y tratan de usar la edad como factor en contra de sus rivales. Si el planeta no revienta antes de lo previsto por el cambio climático, es probable que Castro, con suerte, llegue a la edad de Biden y veremos entonces si sigue pensando como ahora.

Por eso concuerdo con otro de los precandidatos demócratas, el excongresista de Texas, Beto O’Rourke, cuando declaró este domingo que “a quién diablos le importa la edad de Biden”. Y añadió: “Tenemos niños enjaulados. Tenemos diez años para confrontar el cambio climático. Millones no pueden ver a un doctor. Y casi cuarenta mil personas mueren cada año por armas de fuego. Tenemos que hablar de las grandes cosas que realmente le importan a la gente”.

Poco a poco avanza el proceso de eliminación y serán los electores quienes en primarias y asambleas elijan al candidato o candidata que enfrentará a Trump en 2020. Cada sector tiene un importante papel que jugar. Los demócratas no deben dormirse en sus laureles pensando que la maldad de las políticas de Trump, el racismo de este presidente y el caos que lo rodea serán suficientes para frenar su reelección. Tienen que invertir en registrar y movilizar como nunca antes a su base. No volver a hacerlo a última hora como siempre pasa.

Y esos electores también tienen el rol más importante: acudir a las urnas. Si algo demostró 2016 es que las elecciones tienen serias consecuencias; que quedarse en casa porque su candidato no fue el nominado equivale a darle un voto a la oposición.

Quizá entre tanto precandidato demócrata cacareando es difícil ver un claro panorama; quizá ninguno entusiasma a los votantes como lo hizo Barack Obama en 2008.

Pero en este maratón, los aspirantes y los votantes que quieren un cambio de mando tienen el mismo objetivo en mente: evitar la reelección de Trump. Quizá esa misión impida que lo perfecto sea enemigo de lo bueno.

En Nueva York, nuestra fuerza viene de nuestra increíble diversidad. Esto corre por nuestras venas, somos el hogar de la Estatua de la Libertad, el hogar de Ellis Island, y el hogar de más inmigrantes que casi cualquier otro estado. Una parte enorme y significativa de esa diversidad es la población latina de Nueva York.

Puedes verlo en el orgulloso legado de cada latino que ha llamado hogar a nuestro estado—desde Tito Puente y Sonia Sotomayor, hasta millones de familias a través de generaciones. Puedes verlo en nuestras bodegas, probarlo en nuestras comidas y escucharlo sonar desde nuestras iglesias. Está consagrado en nuestros murales y en nuestras bibliotecas, y vibra en nuestra música.

Es en este sentido, le deseo un feliz inicio al ‘Mes de la herencia hispana’ a las comunidades latinas por todos los Estados Unidos.

A través de la guerra y la paz, la alegría y la tristeza, y en tiempos de riqueza y pobreza profunda los latinoamericanos han desempeñado un papel central en la historia de nuestra nación. Le dan vida a nuestro credo nacional que para muchos, somos un solo pueblo.

Este año, como todos los años, celebramos esa verdad, al mismo tiempo reconocemos las varias formas en las que podríamos unir más estrechamente la tela del tapiz estadounidense. Porque Estados Unidos no puede celebrar la riqueza de su herencia latina sin reconocer también los desafíos que enfrentan los latinos en el panorama político actual.

Hay más hispanoamericanos que viven en los Estados Unidos que nunca antes, por todos los rincones del país. Pero hoy, tenemos una administración que se ha esforzado por excluir e intimidar a los latinos en los Estados Unidos.

Lo vemos no solo en las palabras y tuits del presidente, sino también en las políticas de su administración y sus aliados republicanos en el Congreso: han recortado la cobertura de salud para millones de familias, han regalado recortes de impuestos para los ultra ricos, han limitado fondos para nuestros conciudadanos estadounidenses en Puerto Rico, le han dado la espalda a inmigrantes y migrantes en busca de una vida mejor en los Estados Unidos y no han tomado medidas significativas para abordar el cambio climático y la violencia armada, dos cuestiones que afectan desproporcionadamente a los hispanos.

Ahora más que nunca, debemos resistir las voces de la intolerancia y abogar por políticas que expandan oportunidades para cada ciudad y cada código postal en los Estados Unidos.

Eso significa que debemos reducir los costos del seguro de salud y los medicamentos. Significa que tenemos que aumentar los salarios y cerrar la brecha salarial para las familias latinas que trabajan cada día más duro pero que todavía se han quedado atrás.

Significa que tenemos que fortalecer nuestra democracia y asegurar que nuestro censo cuente a todos. Significa que tenemos que proveer una solución legislativa permanente que incluya un camino a la ciudadanía para los beneficiados de DACA y TPS.

Y significa que tenemos que invertir en el futuro de nuestros niños: desde proteger nuestro medio ambiente hasta instituir medidas significativas de seguridad de armas de fuego.

Detrás de esta diversa lista de prioridades hay un conjunto de valores comunes: la familia, el trabajo duro, y la fortaleza frente a los desafíos. Estos son los valores que han hecho nuestro país la envidia del mundo. Es fundamental para el significado de este mes.

Así que les deseo lo mejor a todos aquellos que están celebrando el ‘Mes de la herencia hispana’. Es un honor el hablar con ustedes, pelear por ustedes y celebrar una parte de nuestra identidad nacional la cual es verdaderamente como ninguna otra.

Élmer Córdova cuenta que su esposa no sabía nadar y que el ‘coyote’ al que le pagó 8,000 dólares no les dio chalecos salvavidas. Durante lo ocurrido, Córdova estaba junto a sus dos hijas esperando a su pareja y a su pequeño en Carolina del Norte.

La Junta Escolar del Fort Worth ISD se mantuvo firme en su decisión de cesar de su puesto a una maestra acusada de publicar mensajes anti-inmigrantes explícitos en contra de estudiantes de la preparatoria Carter-River High School.

Georgia Clark, quien dirigió sus altisonantes mensajes a Donald Trump, pidiéndole que revisara el estatus migratorio de los estudiantes de la preparatoria en donde impartía clases de inglés, se quedó sin empleo el martes, tras una votación de 8-0 a favor de su despido, tras varios meses de audiencias y recomendaciones a favor y en contra de sacarla de las aulas.

El presidente de la Junta Escolar del Distrito, Jacinto Ramos, declaró que la decisión tomada obedeció a la recomendación del Superintendente y la administración del FWISD.

En una audiencia pública anterior, una estudiante afroamericana incluso acusó a Clark de “segregar” a los estudiantes cuando impartía su clase, basándose en la “raza”.

De acuerdo al Star-Telegram, Clark puede apelar la decisión que ahora sí la dejó sin trabajo. La docente podría ante el Comisionado de Educación de Texas.

Clark dijo a reporteros recientemente que no se arrepentía de lo publicado en Twitter, al contrario.

“No”, respondió. “Porque francamente Dios, estaba diciendo ‘Es tiempo. Necesitas hacer esto ahora'”.

Desde junio la Junta Escolar había votado a favor de despedirla, pero Clark apeló la decisión.

A continuación, algunos de los tuits de Clark que le dirigió a Donald Trump, pensando que se dirigía al presidente en privado.

“Sr. Presidente, el Fort Worth Independent School District está lleno de estudiantes ilegales de México”, publicó el 17 de mayo desde la cuenta @Rebecca1939 (que ya fue borrada). “Carter-Riverside ha sido tomada por ellos”.

En otra publicación, afirmó: “Los mexicanos se rehusan a honrar nuestra bandera”.

En mayo, cuando un estudiante pidió permiso de ir al baño en su clase, Clark le dijo “muéstrame tus papeles que indiquen que estás legal”, el o la estudiante le dijo a investigadores, lo cual fue corroborado por otro estudiante.

Ante los investigadores, Clark negó haber hecho tal comentario, el cual presuntamente ocurrió el 17 de mayo. Ese mismo día, de acuerdo al Washington Post, Clark le envió varios tuits a Trump acerca de la presencia percibida por ella de “inmigrantes ilegales” en el distrito.

“La señora Clark declaró que no se dio cuenta que sus tuits eran públicos”, indicó en una revisión el FWISD. La maestra reconoció que los “tweets” eran suyos.

Para todo mundo ha quedado claro que aquella imagen que Estados Unidos tenía como país idílico al que aspiraban, independientemente de su condición, los migrantes de cualquier parte del mundo ha quedado desdibujada, maltrecha. En casi tres años, el surgimiento de una nueva forma de tratar al “otro” ha modificado, quizá para siempre, su posibilidad de convertirse en una verdadera nación de bienvenida.

Se desconoce si, demográficamente hablando, acoger a los desvalidos haya sido su verdadera intención alguna vez, con todo y la existencia de una simbólica Estatua de la Libertad que ahora mismo ha sido devaluada por las políticas migratorias del actual gobierno; pero lo que es ya más que evidente es que en una buena parte de la sociedad estaodunidense ha germinado un profundo sentido de exclusión. Tan es así, que sus integrantes han logrado erigir como líder de este nuevo “movimiento” a un presidente que, a imagen y semejanza, los pinta de cabo a rabo. Y tienen la intención de mantenerlo otros cuatro años en la Casa Blanca.

Desde la amenaza de construir un muro para evitar el paso de indocumentados, hasta la tipificación malintencionada de los hispanos como delincuentes, o la intimidación al separar menores migrantes de sus familias, además de poner obstáculo tras obstáculo a los solicitantes de asilo, esa nueva corriente de pensamiento ha seguido avanzando, tanto en la sociedad como en la administración, a pesar de que la contraparte política y social organizada haya creado a su vez un movimiento de resistencia en diversos frentes —legal, político, social, comunitario— que, lamentablemente, no ha logrado detener ni la retórica antiinmigrante, ni el fortalecimiento del odio hacia las minorías.

Es esta una ecuación peligrosa que ha profundizado aún más la división de un país que se suponía había llegado a la madurez histórico-social donde no cabían ya esos fantasmas del pasado que tanto daño le habían hecho a la humanidad: racismo, xenofobia, indicios de fascismo, prejuicio social, entre tantos otros.

Pero estos han revivido de tal manera, que han desfigurado por completo el rostro del multiculturalismo que se había estado esculpiendo ante el resto del mundo desde la lucha por los derechos civiles. Ahora se nota que no a todos agradó esa etapa histórica y que, por el contrario, fue gestando una animadversión definitiva que logró salida con la aparición del actual ocupante de la Casa Blanca en la arena política.

Y a partir de ahí se estableció un nuevo parteaguas histórico que será de fácil análisis para generaciones posteriores, pero que ahora mismo hace ver como sociedad iniciática, inmadura, a una joven nación que lo tenía todo, incluso la posibilidad de ser el modelo de desarrollo mundial único, a pesar de su arrogancia como “lo mejor” que le haya ocurrido a la historia humana.

Esa es, por supuesto, parte de su propia mitología, y es por ello que aún representa ese ‘faro de esperanza” para muchos que literalmente nada tienen y que superando el orgullo por la tierra que los vio nacer, tienen que romper con esa necesidad de pertenencia a un origen y reinventarse en otras latitudes con el fin de no desvancerse como personas, como familia, como seres productivos y pensantes.

Pero han encontrado un muralla invisible que ahora mismo les frustra ese objetivo en Estados Unidos.

En ese sentido, está siendo complicado para este país retomar nuevamente su esencia inmigrante, pues ha perdido la hegemonía y la reputación que tenía incluso en ese tema; no será fácil, quizá, reeducar a las nuevas generaciones para extirpar el racismo de una vez y para siempre, pero no se debe dejar de intentarlo, por el bien de la humanidad, pues como lo apunta la Unesco en su reporte “Migración, desplazamiento y educación: construyendo puentes, no muros”, de su Informe de seguimiento de la educación en el mundo 2019, “la migración y los desplazamientos siguen suscitando reacciones negativas en las sociedades modernas, explotadas a su vez por oportunistas que consideran beneficioso construir muros y no puentes”.

Pero ese será un proceso social a contracorriente que ahora mismo, en el contexto previo a las elecciones presidenciales de 2020, quedará varado ante el reforzamiento enfermizo de la retórica antiinmigrante, ante esa muralla invisible del racismo, que formará parte esencial de la campaña de quien actualmente detenta el poder.

Las cartas se volverán a echar para los extranjeros que aspiran a emigrar legalmente a Estados Unidos con una green card en mano. Más de 50,000 individuos y sus familias podrán aspirar a alcanzar el sueño americano en 2021 por el camino más simple que, además, no cuesta dinero.

El Departamento de Estado estadounidense anunció el jueves que sorteará aleatoriamente 55,000 Visas de Diversidad mediante el programa conocido como la Lotería de Visas, correspondientes al año fiscal 2021.

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Green Card, el gran sueño de los inmigrantes está a la mano si cumples estos requisitos
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Las inscripciones para la lotería de green cards del 2021 comenzará el miércoles 2 de octubre del 2019 y permanecerá abierto el plazo para calificar hasta el martes 5 de noviembre de este año, informó el Departamento en una guía con instrucciones para participar.

Lee más: Estos son los 9 beneficios que negarán acceso a la green card a inmigrantes

Si eres seleccionado en el programa DV-2021, tienes derecho a solicitar la visa durante ese año fiscal, entre el 1ro de octubre de 2020 y el 30 de septiembre de 2021, informaron las autoridades diplomáticas.

El programa de Visas de Diversidad proporciona visas de residencia permanente a nacionales de países con bajas tasas de inmigración a Estados Unidos en los últimos cinco años.

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Los seis países donde USCIS no cerrará oficina para trámites de inmigración en el exterior
AGOSTO 10, 2019 3:28 PM
En la lotería de visa puede participar cualquier extranjero que cumpla dos requisitos, uno de los cuales es haber nacido en países que califican. Los países excluidos para el año fiscal 2021 (DV-2021) son: Bangladesh, Brasil, Canadá, China (nacido en el continente), Colombia, República Dominicana, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haití, India, Jamaica, México, Nigeria, Pakistán, Filipinas, Corea del Sur, Reino Unido (excepto Irlanda del Norte) y sus territorios dependientes, y Vietnam.

Además, a los aspirantes se les exige haberse graduado de educación secundaria o su equivalente, o tener dos años de experiencia laboral en una ocupación que requiera al menos dos años de entrenamiento, en el plazo de los últimos cinco años.

Lee más: Haga estas preguntas si contrata a un abogado de inmigración para no arrepentirse luego

Más de 23 millones de personas de todo el mundo, los solicitantes y sus familiares o “derivados”, intentaron este año inmigrar legalmente a los Estados Unidos a través del programa de lotería de visas DV-2020. Los más beneficiados por la rifa en Latinoamérica y el Caribe fueron los participantes cubanos, que sumaron 2,703 seleccionados, seguidos por los venezolanos.

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El ‘parole’ de los cubanos en la cuerda floja: otros ya perderán el beneficio de permanencia
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CÓMO PARTICIPAR EN LA LOTERÍA DE VISAS DE 2021
Los solicitantes deben enviar su formulario de inscripción a dvlottery.state.gov y solo se permite un registro por persona, de lo contrario el concursante queda descalificado.

Tras inscribirse en línea, el aspirante a la green card verá una pantalla de confirmación con su nombre y número de confirmación que debe imprimir para verificar si es elegido entre los ganadores.

Las personas que ya viven en Estados Unidos con estatus de no inmigrante también pueden participar, siempre que su país de origen esté incluido.

El gobierno estadounidense hará la selección a través de un sorteo aleatorio computarizado y distribuirá las visas entre seis regiones geográficas.

Lee más: Aprenda inglés gratis por la internet. Agencias del gobierno le facilitan la tarea

NUEVO REQUISITO
Entrar en la lotería de visas ya no será tan fácil como antes.

La agencia de política exterior indica que a partir del próximo sorteo DV-2021 exigirá a los ciudadanos extranjeros un pasaporte válido y vigente para participar.

Hasta ahora no se precisaba tener un pasaporte válido para participar en el sorteo de green cards, aunque sí es necesario para la entrevista en la embajada de Estados Unidos o consulado que deben pasar los ganadores de la rifa antes de emigrar.

El Departamento de Estado explica en el documento que el nuevo requisito era necesario para frenar el alto número de inscripciones fraudulentas en el programa.

“Le recomendamos encarecidamente que complete el formulario de inscripción usted mismo, sin un ‘asesor de visas’, un ‘agente de visas’ u otro facilitador que ofrezca ayuda. Si alguien te ayuda, debes estar presente cuando la inscripción se está preparando para que pueda proporcionar las respuestas correctas a las preguntas y conservar la página de confirmación y su número de confirmación único”, advirtió el departamento en las instrucciones publicadas el jueves.

ATLANTA, Georgia. El senador republicano David Purdue bloqueó temporalmente este jueves la aprobación de un proyecto de ley que ha sido criticado porque podría dejar en desventaja a inmigrantes de origen hispano que esperan sus visas de trabajo.

El Senado buscaba dar vida a la medida mediante lo que se conoce como un Acuerdo de Consenso Unánime, una figura que permite la aprobación expedita de legislación siempre y cuando no hayan objeciones de congresistas.

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“Apoyo este proyecto”, dijo Perdue al momento de objetar. “Pero hay lenguaje que necesita aclararse y aún tengo preocupaciones del impacto que pueda tener en algunas industrias específicas, no solo en mi estado, sino en el resto del país”.

La medida, conocida en el Senado como la S386, busca reformar la manera en que se otorgan visas de inmigrantes altamente calificados.
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Encuentra un reporte completo con reacciones locales este jueves a las 6 y 11 pm, solo en Noticias 34 Atlanta.
En la actualidad solo se puede otorgar un máximo de 7 por ciento de las visas disponibles por país. La nueva ley eliminaría ese límite. El cambio beneficiaría a países con alta demanda de personal, como India, pero dejaría en desventaja a otros, como quienes viven en Latinoamérica, aseguran críticos.
“Ahorita, si alguien está en México y un empleador quiere pedirlo, él va a venir en 14 a 18 meses, con la residencia y su familia”, dijo Charles Kuck, abogado de inmigración. “Pero si esta propuesta pasa el Senado, ellos tendrán que esperar al menos una década”.

El presidente, Donald Trump, firmó uno de los barrotes de la valla fronteriza durante su visita este miércoles al sector del nuevo muro construido en Otay Mesa, en San Diego (California), frente a la ciudad mexicana de Tijuana

Lo hizo “por invitación” de los trabajadores de la construcción presentes, como reflejó el corresponsal de CBS News en la Casa Blanca, el periodista Mark Knoller.

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At invitation of the construction personnel, Pres Trump pulls out a Sharpie and signs one of the posts of the border wall. Other officials follow suit.

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Trump describió el muro como “un sistema de seguridad de clase mundial” que sería prácticamente impenetrable.

El presidente ya visitó esta zona en marzo de 2018, en esa ocasión para examinar varios prototipos construidos para renoval la barrera, que en este sector tenía décadas de antigüedad y consistía en dos capas de metal y concreto.

“Era como una lámina de metal y la gente simplemente podía derribarla de manera rutinaria”, comentó

La nueva barrera está cubierta de pintura especial para que el sol la caliente aún más.

“Puedes freír un huevo en esa pared —dijo— Este muro no se puede saltar”.

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#BREAKING: The President’s signature on the wall. @CBS8

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El presidente también comentó que este tipo de valla penetra suficientemente en la tierra, como para impedir que se pueda escarbar desde el lado mexicano y crear un túnel.

“Este es el Rolls-Royce” de los muros fronterizos”, dijo, según un reporte de The Washington Post, en referencia a estos costosísimos autos de super-lujo.

Trump viajó a Otay Mesa para ver la construcción de una barrera de acero y concreto de 30 pies de altura (9 metros) que está reemplazando la valla fronteriza existente en un tramo de 24 millas (cerca de 39 km).

Ante un grupo de periodistas, el presidente aseguró que esperaba que cerca de 500 millas de esta nueva barrera serían completados para finales del próximo año.

“Una vez que se construya el muro, será prácticamente imposible ingresar ilegalmente —garantizó Trump— y entonces podremos tomar control de la frontera y colocar [a los inmigrantes] en los puertos de entrada”.

Elogios y amenaza a México

Trump también dijo orgulloso que su proyecto de muro ha sido estudiado por otros países, y elogió la actual política del gobierno mexicano al enviar miles de efectivos militares a sus fronteras norte y sur para intentar contener el flujo de migrantes que se dirigen a Estados Unidos.

“Todos estamos encantados —aseguró en referencia al presidente, Andrés Manuel López Obrador—. México nunca había hecho nada para impedir que la gente viniera en grandes cantidades a nuestro país, y ahora están haciendo justo lo opuesto. Realmente han sido increíbles”.

El mandatario advirtió a la vez que, si México diera por terminada su actual cooperación con Estados Unidos para detener el flujo de migrantes, entonces la Casa Blanca podría aplicar aranceles a las importaciones de ese país y que un arancel del 5% podría pagar fácilmente la construcción del muro fronterizo en apenas seis meses.

La visita de este miércoles a la frontera estuvo comprendida dentro del plan de promoción del publicitado muro en la frontera con vistas a su reelección en noviembre de 2020.

En febrero, Trump declaró una emergencia nacional para desviar fondos militares para la construcción del muro cuando el Congreso se negó a proporcionarle la cantidad que él había solicitado.

Antes, siendo todavía uno de los candidatos por el Partido Republicano para las elecciones de 2016, el empresario había prometido que México pagaría el muro.

Sin embargo, la administración Trump no ha construido apenas nuevos segmentos del muro desde que echó a andar en enero de 2017, aunque sí ha reemplazado aproximadamente 60 millas de las barreras ya construidas.

Antes de regresar a Washington DC., el presidente asistió a un almuerzo de recaudación de fondos. Allí saludó y conversó con seguidores suyos que pagaron entre 1000 y 100.000 dólares.

Según un reporte de Telemundo 20, tan solo en San Diego se habrían recaudado cerca de 4,000,000 de dólares para la reelección presidencial. El equipo de campaña aspiraba a recaudar unos 15,000,000 de dólares en las tres ciudades visitadas en California.

Se trata de la tercera visita del presidente a la zona desde que asumió el cargo en enero de 2017.

WASHINGTON.— Kamyar Samimi murió bajo custodia federal en 2017 debido a la negligencia médica y abuso en un centro de detención de inmigrantes en Colorado, pero su escandalosa muerte no ha impedido que la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) siga invirtiendo millones de dólares en empresas como GEO Group, a cargo de varios de esos centros en el país.

Así lo argumenta un informe divulgado ayer por la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU) en Colorado, en el que asegura que ICE opera centros de detención sin una supervisión significativa del gobierno, incluyendo el de Aurora, donde falleció Samimi en diciembre de 2017, y Evalin Alin Mandza, cinco años antes.

Esa instalación está en manos de GEO Group, que a través de los años ha recibido jugosos contratos de ICE para la gestión de diversos centros de detención en Estados Unidos.

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BREAKING: Today we released an investigative report detailing the inhumane conditions inside the ICE detention facility in Aurora. The report highlights several stories of death, abuse and medical neglect. Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/cashinginoncruelty … #CashingInOnCruelty

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En ese sentido, el informe de ACLU quiere llamar la atención sobre los problemas en los centros de detención de ICE, muchos de ellos bajo administración de empresas como GEO Group. Hasta la fecha, 31 inmigrantes han fallecido bajo custodia de ICE durante la Administración Trump, incluyendo al menos siete niños.

El centro de detención en Aurora “viola los derechos humanos básicos de sus detenidos, principalmente los que solicitan asilo, a través del abuso y la negligencia médica, según el informe de ACLU, que es producto de una investigación de nueve meses.

El informe, titulado “Lucrándose con la crueldad: relatos de muerte, abuso y abandono en el Centro de Detención de GEO en Aurora”, pone los reflectores sobre el historial de abusos vinculados con el encarcelamiento de inmigrantes.

“La investigación reveló numerosas historias de incompetencia médica, descuido dental, cuidado de salud mental inadecuado, falta de recursos para detenidos discapacitados, así como un cuidado inferior, que contribuyeron al sufrimiento y muerte de Kamyar Samimi”, quien llevaba más de 40 años como residente permanente en EEUU, dijo ACLU.

La instalación donde murió Samimi alberga a cerca de 1,500 detenidos, la mayoría por infracciones migratorias civiles, pero ya encerrados por ICE en Aurora no tienen acceso a niveles adecuados de cuidado médico, nutrición, recursos legales o, en muchos casos, de la misma “decencia humana”, agregó la organización.

La ACLU pudo constatar a través de su investigación que el médico de GEO a cargo del cuidado de Samimi lo privó de la dosis de metadona que éste tomó con receta médica durante 20 años para tratar un problema médico. Esa decisión, que ACLU calificó como “medicamente injustificable”, le produjo síntomas de abstinencia tan debilitadores como torturadores, explicó Mark Silverstein, director legal del grupo en Colorado.

Según Silverstein, las investigaciones internas sobre la muerte de Samimi jamás cuestionaron el papel que pudo haber jugado el médico para “precipitar” el trágico desenlace. La ACLU interpuso una demanda para obtener el historial médico completo de Samimi.

Pero Samimi no fue la única víctima mortal: en 2012, Evalin Ali Mandza, de 46 años, murió de un ataque cardíaco en el mismo centro y, según un informe oficial, éste “no tuvo acceso a cuidado médico adecuado” durante su encierro, según ACLU.

Aún cuando la Oficina del Inspector General del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) ha condenado las condiciones del encarcelamiento de migrantes a cargo de ICE, la agencia no ha exigido cuentas a GEO ni ha mejorado las condiciones en los centros de detención, según ACLU.

Pese a las deficiencias en el centro de detención, GEO registró un ingreso neto de $33,4 millones en el último trimestre de 2018, y en la actualidad tiene un valor de más de $2,300 millones, agregó.

La investigación interna de ICE destapó numerosas violaciones de las normas respecto a los detenidos pero, a comienzos de este año, la agencia procedió a ampliar la capacidad del centro de detención en Aurora de 1,000 a 1,500 inmigrantes, muchos de los cuales languidecen allí durante años, dijo el informe.

Aún cuando las autoridades pusieron en cuarentena a los migrantes por brotes de varicela y paperas, el centro a cargo de GEO todavía sólo tiene un médico contratado a tiempo completo, según ACLU.

ICE dijo en una declaración escrita que su instalación en Aurora se maneja “de forma humana, limpia y profesional”, que pasó una inspección independiente en octubre pasado, y que las acusaciones de ACLU “simplemente no se apoyan en otras numerosas inspecciones” que también le han dado el visto bueno.

La muerte de cualquier detenido bajo custodia de ICE “es trágica, y nuestro personal hace todo esfuerzo por evitarlas”, agregó la agencia, al indicar que la instalación en Aurora solo ha tenido dos muertes en más de 30 años.

En el año fiscal 2018, ICE ha registrado nueve muertes en sus centros de detención, del total de más de 396,000 detenidos.

GEO se defiende

En declaraciones a Noticias Telemundo, Pablo Páez, vicepresidente ejecutivo para relaciones corporativas de GEO, explicó que no podía comentar específicamente sobre las nuevas acusaciones pero que ACLU mantiene “una posición política generalmente en contra de alianzas público-privadas”, y el informe lo confirma.

Según Páez, el centro en Aurora ha operado con acreditación nacional más de 30 años bajo gobiernos demócratas y republicanos, tiene aproximadamente 46 puestos médicos, y ofrece servicios las 24 horas del día, los siete días a la semana.

Los profesionales también reciben talleres de capacitación que, además de temas de salud, abarca asuntos de derechos humanos, y en la actualidad el centro está en el proceso de llenar más vacantes, pese a la escasez de personal de salud, subrayó.

El ejecutivo no habló concretamente de la muerte de Samimi pero insistió en que GEO tiene políticas para el tratamiento de la abstinencia de opiáceos, que además cumplen con las normas de ICE para el tratamiento de drogadicción y desintoxicación.

Múltiples casos de abuso

Para Denise Maes, directora de política pública de ACLU en Colorado, los casos de incompetencia o insuficiente cuidado médico muestran que ICE y GEO “carecen de la voluntad y habilidad para proveer siquiera el cuidado más básico” para los migrantes detenidos.

“Este informe tiene enfoque nacional porque estos centros de detención en manos privadas no actúan con transparencia o rendición de cuentas al público. Ese es el juego de ICE, que las cosas sean menos transparentes, envueltas en secretismo”, dijo Maes a Noticias Telemundo en entrevista telefónica.

“El hecho es que tienen un sólo médico para 1,400 detenidos; es lo que (GEO) nos dijo y lo que pudimos comprobar. No sé dónde están los otros 45 profesionales que mencionan porque no están presentes allí… los detenidos tienen que hacer citas por Skype”, precisó Maes.

“Con este informe queremos que los legisladores estatales implementen nuestras recomendaciones, todas pensadas para crear más transparencia y rendición de cuentas”, agregó.

En uno de los casos documentados por ACLU, Diana López, una solicitante de asilo se quejó de un enorme dolor de diente pero nunca logró que la llevaran a un dentista. La mujer intentó sacarse el diente por sí sola y otras compañeras en su celda ayudaron a limpiarla.

A un detenido que sufría de depresión, su psicólogo le dijo que “nadie se preocupaba por él” y que debería mejor firmar su deportación voluntaria.

Mientras, Fabián Vásquez, que padecía de sordera, comenzó a mostrar síntomas de confusión y aislamiento al no recibir los aparatos auditivos para oír bien, y Elías Salgado sufrió depresión por “las represalias, castigos arbitrarios y abandono” que experimentó en el centro de Aurora.

También está el caso de Miguel Angel Avila Arce, que aseguró que un guardia de seguridad le quebró varios dedos al aplastarle la mano con la puerta de la celda.

Por ello, el informe incluye recomendaciones para mejorar las condiciones en el centro de detención en Aurora; más fondos para la representación legal de los detenidos, y que se disminuya la colaboración de la policía local con ICE, entre otras.

La hija de Samimi explicó que trabaja con ACLU en la campaña contra ICE porque no quiere que otras familias sufran como la suya, y que cesen los abusos en los centros de detención.

Por medio de un informe, el Comité Asesor del Estado de Colorado a la Comisión de Derechos Civiles de los Estados Unidos solicitó al Congreso una acción inmediata para solucionar los retrasos en la acumulación y procesamiento de solicitudes de ciudadanía dirigidas al Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de Estados Unidos (USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés).

Esta acción fue bien recibida por la Asociación Nacional para Nuevos Estadounidenses (NPNA, por sus siglas en inglés) y por la Coalición de Derechos de Inmigrantes de Colorado (CIRC, por sus siglas en inglés).

“El informe se suma a las voces, que van desde los líderes de la NPNA hasta los miembros del Congreso, condenando los retrasos intencionales en la solicitud de ciudadanía y el impacto destructivo que tiene en los derechos de voto, los derechos civiles y la capacidad de USCIS para servir al público de manera efectiva”, comentó la directora ejecutivo de CIRC, Nicole Melaku.

El informe fue publicado este jueves, incluye testimonios de miembros de NPNA y CIRC, los cuales fueron brindados desde febrero del presente año como parte de una investigación sobre las implicaciones de los derechos civiles.

“En lugar de cerrar las puertas a la ciudadanía, respaldamos el llamado a la acción y supervisión del Congreso sobre USCIS y que la agencia complete las solicitudes de ciudadanía dentro de los seis meses”, agregó Melaku.

El documento hace señalamientos puntuales a los siguientes aspectos:

*USCIS debe procesar las solicitudes de ciudadanía dentro de los seis meses a partir de la fecha presentada, el objetivo de la agencia según lo establece la ley.

*El Congreso debe llevar a cabo audiencias para responsabilizar a la agencia y garantizar su misión legal.

*El Congreso debería asignar fondos para abordar el retraso; y que los estados, las ciudades y las organizaciones sin fines de lucro deberían trabajar para promover la naturalización.

Este informe se publica casi dos años después de que NPNA dijo que había un atraso considerable en las solicitudes de ciudadanía por parte de la administración Trump.

Mediante un comunicado, NPNA calificó estas acciones como “otras barreras del ‘segundo muro’ que dificultan la aplicación de los casi nueve millones de inmigrantes que son elegibles para la ciudadanía”.

Un exprisionero político cubano que solicitó la ciudadanía estadounidense después de vivir cuatro décadas en el país, vio frustradas sus ilusiones de naturalización cuando el gobierno federal le denegó la solicitud. Él es Francisco Verona, de 82 años de edad, y su historia fue difundida en una columna publicada por el periódico Miami Herald.

“Es una realidad aplastante para muchos refugiados cubanos. Una vez anunciados como héroes que desafiaron a Fidel Castro, ahora a los cubanos se les niega cada vez más la protección legal y son deportados por la administración Trump”, declaró la organización America’s Voice, mediante un comunicado.

De acuerdo con la columna, entre 1978 y 1979 el gobierno del entonces presidente estadounidense Jimmy Carter negoció con Fidel Castro la liberación de cerca de 3,000 presos políticos, de los cuales la mayoría eran de origen cubano.

Uno de esos prisioneros liberados fue Verona, un hombre de Pinar del Río, Cuba que fue parte de los opositores a la toma comunista del régimen de Fidel Castro. Ante esto, fue encarcelado cuatro veces, según la columna antes citada.

Es importante recordar que durante años el gobierno de Estados Unidos intentó derrocar al régimen de Castro, por lo que en su momento brindó asilo político a los cubanos que decidían abandonar su país para huir del comunismo.

Desde que fue liberado de Cuba y a Miami, Verona ha radicado por 40 años en este país, lugar donde tiene una pequeña empresa de construcción junto a su hermano.

El hombre dijo en dicha columna que no comprende el motivo por el cual le han negado la ciudadanía estadounidense, ya que fue el mismo gobierno de esta nación quien lo sacó de una prisión en Cuba para traerlo.

Para la organización proinmigrante America’s Voice, situaciones como estas se pueden presentar en casos determinados debido al esfuerzo del gobierno federal por endurecer las políticas migratorias.

Washington, 12 sep .- Las autoridades comenzaron hoy a aplicar la normativa del Gobierno para denegar el asilo a los indocumentados en la frontera sur que hayan pasado por México u otros países sin haber pedido allí esta protección, tras el espaldarazo a esta medida que dio el miércoles el Tribunal Supremo.

“La decisión (del Supremo) significa que los demandantes de asilo que vengan a EE.UU. a través de un tercer país deben primero solicitar el asilo allí antes de que se les conceda en EE.UU”, explicó a Efe la experta Elora Mukherjee, directora de la Clínica de Derechos de Inmigrantes de la Escuela de Leyes de Columbia.

El Alto Tribunal dio luz verde ayer de forma temporal al Ejecutivo del presidente Donald Trump para denegar el asilo a inmigrantes indocumentados, en su mayoría centroamericanos, en la frontera.

La decisión, tomada con siete votos a favor y dos en contra, no es definitiva pero se aplica mientras la batalla legal sigue su curso en otras cortes de menor instancia.

Aun así, el Supremo suspende con su resolución el fallo de un tribunal menor que había bloqueado esa medida.

A finales de julio, la Administración de Trump anunció cambios en su política de asilo que impedían a la mayoría de indocumentados solicitar la protección tras cruzar la frontera sur con México.

Un juez federal en California bloqueó rápidamente la medida, lo que provocó el inicio de un litigio que llegó hasta al Supremo.

La directora del programa de México de la Oficina en Washington para Asuntos Latinoamericanos (WOLA), Maureen Meyer, recordó a Efe que la decisión del Alto Tribunal es temporal hasta que otras cortes de menor instancia determinen si el reglamento del Gobierno sobre asilo es legal o ilegal.

Entretanto, los funcionarios “tienen poder para rechazar a cualquier solicitante de asilo en la frontera sur de EE.UU. que haya pasado por otro países que tienen un sistema funcional de asilo, es decir, México, Guatemala o cualquier otro país”, puntualizó Meyer.

No obstante, Mukherjee se mostró esperanzada en que finalmente haya un fallo favorable en cortes de menor instancia para los demandantes de ese amparo: “Espero que la judicatura ayude a proteger a los solicitantes de asilo porque la decisión del Tribunal Supremo los pone en riesgo”.

Ambas expertas auguraron que el desenlace a este proceso judicial podría darse en los próximo meses, aunque no descartaron que podría prorrogarse hasta el próximo año.

En ese sentido, Mukherjee subrayó que, aunque no hay un calendario establecido, “podría tomar largo tiempo, aunque como es un asunto de seguridad nacional, puede resolverse en los próximos meses”.

Sea como fuere, en opinión de Meyer, “lo que ha demostrado el Gobierno de Trump es que cualquier fallo de un tribunal menor lo van a apelar y buscar la vía rápida para que lo resuelva el Tribunal Supremo”.

Y es que en la actualidad hay dos litigios a este respecto en dos cortes menores pendientes de resolverse, que, no obstante, podrían ser apelados ante el Supremo.

“Lo más grave es que en estos meses se está poniendo en marcha un programa cuya legalidad es muy cuestionable”, lamentó la experta de WOLA.

Hasta ahora varias decisiones en material de inmigración puestas en marcha por el Ejecutivo de Trump han acabado en los tribunales, pero el presidente cuenta con la carta del Tribunal Supremo.

Y es que la máxima instancia judicial del país dispone actualmente de una mayoría conservadora entre sus jueces (cinco conservadores frente a cuatro progresistas), después de que Trump nominara a dos magistrados en menos de dos años.

Desde su llegada al poder en enero de 2017, el mandatario ha hecho del asilo uno de sus objetivos políticos, ya que considera que hay un abuso del sistema del que los inmigrantes se aprovechan para ingresar y trabajar en el país.

En los últimos meses, la frontera sur ha vivido un incremento en las llegadas de solicitantes de asilo centroamericanos con sus familiares y hay cerca de 436.000 peticiones sin resolver según datos oficiales.

Mayo fue el mes de mayor flujo desde 2006, con la detención de más de 132.000 personas que cruzaron la frontera sin permiso.

Trump ha probado varias medidas para desincentivar esa migración, como separar a padres de sus hijos menores de edad tras cruzar la frontera o devolver a México a solicitantes de asilo a la espera de que se resuelvan sus casos, pero espera que impedir las peticiones frene finalmente el flujo.

Denver, Colorado.- Un reporte revela las “historias de muerte, abuso y negligencia” que se han suscitado en una cárcel privada de Aurora, Colorado, la cual es utilizada para recluir a personas indocumentadas. El documento fue difundido por la filial en Colorado de la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU, por sus siglas en inglés).

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El reporte, un documento de 48 páginas y cuya difusión espera que se tomen medidas para evitar se repitan estas historias, se basa en entrevistas con personas que permanecieron en el centro de detención del GEO Group, una empresa privada que obtuvo un contrato del Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés).

ACLU analiza seis muertes acaecidas en este centro, ya sea por abusos o por no haber recibido tratamiento médico: las de los inmigrantes George Zoley, Kamyar Samimi, Evalin-Ali Mandza, Dan Courson, Ronnie Keyes y Mohammed Dirshe.

También, se anotan seis casos de “sufrimiento y descuido”, a los internos John Mathews, Diana López, Jane Smith, Fabián Vásquez, Elías Salgado y Miguel Ángel Ávila Arce.

Según ACLU, el “sufrimiento” está relacionado con heridas físicas, falta de tratamiento médico, violencia de los carceleros, discriminación y castigos reiterados o innecesarios.

López, como ejemplo y de acuerdo con el documento, padeció complicaciones físicas luego de la extracción de un diente. Vásquez fue colocado en confinamiento solitario porque no tenía sus audífonos, y Ávila sufrió la fractura de varios dedos cuando un guardia cerró con fuerza la puerta de su celda.

“La crueldad debe detenerse”, dice el reporte de ACLU. “Tenemos el poder para asegurarnos de que la muerte de Kamyar Samimi y el sufrimiento de muchos otros no sea en vano”.

Samimi, un iraní con presencia legal en el país, murió en diciembre de 2017 cuando el médico de la cárcel decidió no administrarle los medicamentos necesarios por considerarlo “drogadicto”.

Por ese hecho, y por denuncias recibidas, el congresista demócrata Jason Crow estableció visitas semanales al centro de detención.

Además, en junio de 2018 y nuevamente en junio último, la Asociación Estadounidense de Abogados de Inmigración (AILA, por sus siglas en inglés) demandó a GEO y a ICE por “la peligrosa falta de servicios de cuidados médicos de salud mental en las instalaciones de Aurora”.

Además de las demandas de ACLU, el Centro de Educación y Cumplimiento de Derechos Civiles también acudió a la corte en 2019 contra GEO por la muerte de Samimi.

“Yo tengo presencia legal en este país desde hace 25 años, pero estuve detenida en ese centro por semanas hace dos años y sé que lo que dice ACLU es verdad, por lo que sufrí yo y sufrió mi familia”, dijo una inmigrante mexicana de 40 años que solicitó anonimato.

“Ni yo, ni mis hijas nos hemos recuperado de mi detención. Lo que vi y viví allí adentro no puedo contarlo. Solamente lo saben mi terapista y mi confesor”, afirmó la inmigrante, que ha iniciado acciones judiciales contra ICE.

ICE tiene “la responsabilidad constitucional” de velar por el bienestar de los detenidos, enfatizó ACLU, cuyo reporte también sea apoya en documentos obtenidos mediante demandas judiciales contra ICE y contra GEO, o por medio de la Ley de Libertad de Información (FOIA, por sus siglas en inglés).

La cárcel de GEO en Aurora comenzó a operar hace 30 años y a principios de este año se expandió para alojar hasta 1,500 presos. Entre febrero y abril de 2019 se detectaron en ese establecimiento numerosos casos de enfermedades contagiosas, lo que llevó a cuarentena a casi 400 inmigrantes.

SAN DIEGO — El presidente Donald Trump visitó el miércoles una nueva sección del muro entre Estados Unidos y México, que describió como “un sistema de seguridad de clase mundial” que será prácticamente impenetrable, y por primera vez en lo que va de su presidencia, utilizó su cuenta de Twitter para lanzar un mensaje en español y fortalecer su política contra la inmigración indocumentada.

Trump recorrió un tramo del muro fronterizo en el área de Otay Mesa en San Diego. Es la primera visita del mandatario al lugar desde marzo de 2018, cuando acudió a ver prototipos de muro que las autoridades destruyeron posteriormente para hacerle espacio a 22 kilómetros (14 millas) de acero y bolardos rellenos de concreto actualmente en construcción.

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Antes de que comenzaran los trabajos, la frontera en Otay Mesa estaba protegida por una capa inicial de láminas de metal que podían ser perforadas rápidamente con un soplete, y una segunda capa más resistente que podía ser penetrada con sierras eléctricas.

“Era como una lámina de metal y las personas simplemente podían derribarla de manera rutinaria”, comentó Trump, refiriéndose a la primera capa que fue reemplazada. Realizó el recorrido junto a altos funcionarios de la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP, por sus siglas en inglés), de Seguridad Nacional y del Cuerpo de Ingenieros del Ejército, así como trabajadores de la construcción.

Varios demócratas del Senado se unieron a la senadora por Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, en una carta enviada al Servicio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de Estados Unidos (USCIS, por sus siglas en inglés) para solicitar revertir la decisión de terminar con el “Filipino World War II Veterans Parole Program”.

Este programa fue creado en 2016 para permitir que los filipinos veteranos que participaron en la Segunda Guerra Mundial puedan reunirse con sus hijos y hermanos mediante la aprobación de visas de inmigración basadas en la reunificación familiar.

Los senadores consideran que USCIS describió el programa de manera incorrecta cuando decidió concluirlo, ya que lo habría mencionado como un programa que “permite a las personas saltear la línea y evitar los canales adecuados establecidos por el Congreso”.

Además, los legisladores demócratas aseguran que esta decisión entra en conflicto con la implementación real del programa por parte de las autoridades migratorias.

“Estos filipinos veteranos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial sirvieron a nuestro país con gran coraje y profunda lealtad. Se merecen nuestro respeto y gratitud. Le pedimos que rescinda su decisión de terminar un programa que reconoce las contribuciones extraordinarias y los sacrificios de los filipinos veteranos que lucharon por los Estados Unidos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial“, expresaron los senadores mediante la carta enviada a USCIS.

A parte de la senadora Mazie Hirono, otros legisladores que se unieron a esta petición fueron Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif. ), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Cory Booker (DN.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Tim Kaine ( D-Va.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev) y Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

“La Segunda Guerra Mundial terminó hace casi 75 años, y sin embargo, estos veteranos aún no han recibido todos los beneficios que se les prometieron. Hoy en día, hay menos de 6,000 filipinos veteranos sobrevivientes, y muchos todavía están esperando reunirse con sus hijos”, se lee en la carta.

Tucson, Arizona.- El manantial de Quitobaquito, situado cerca de la población de Lukeville y que durante siglos ha sido fuente de agua para personas y animales que cruzan el desierto, podría ser una de las principales áreas afectadas con la construcción del prometido muro fronterizo del presidente Donald Trump.

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El manantial, que discurre cerca de la línea fronteriza, ha sido un “oasis en el desierto” para miembros de la tribu indígena Tohono O’odham. También lo fue para misioneros españoles que llegaron a esta región y luego para familias mexicanas que se establecieron en esta región antes de que formara parte de los Estados Unidos.

Debido a la construcción del muro fronterizo, se espera que el Gobierno federal comience a principios de octubre a bombear agua proveniente del manantial para mezclar con el cemento.

También, se cree que con el agua se rociarán los caminos donde los contratistas levantarán el muro, cuya construcción comenzó a finales de agosto dentro de un área de Arizona que es Monumento Nacional.

El Gobierno quiere reemplazar 44 millas (unos 70 kilómetros) de cercas de madera existentes dentro del Monumento Nacional de Organ Pipe Cactus por gigantescas placas de acero de 30 pies de alto (9 metros), y bases de hormigón armado de 10 pies (3 metros) de profundidad.

Expertos estiman que se necesitan 84.000 galones de agua diarios para el proyecto.

“Estamos extremadamente preocupados por la extracción del agua para construir el muro, sabemos la importancia de este manantial, muchos animales y peces podrían morir si el manantial se seca“, dijo Laiken Jordahl, experto en conservación del medioambiente en la franja fronteriza.

De acuerdo con Jordahl, quien también trabaja en el Centro para la Diversidad Biológica, con base en Tucson, “el muro fronterizo cavará una profunda cicatriz dentro del ecosistema desértico mejor preservado en el planeta”.

Lo partirá “en dos, fragmentando la reserva natural de la región y su medioambiente para siempre”, sostuvo el experto.

“Nuevamente, vemos que la Patrulla Fronteriza no ha hecho ningún tipo de estudio o consulta sobre cómo el uso de esta fuente de agua impactará a las especies”, reclamó Jordahl.

Por su parte, la propia agencia federal, y en respuesta a una petición del Servicio de Parques Nacionales, asegura que vigilará el nivel de reserva de esta fuente de agua natural durante las labores de construcción.

De acuerdo con la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, reemplazar por láminas de acero las dos primeras millas de la cerca existente en Lukeville, donde hay un puerto de entrada al país, tomará al menos 45 días.

En declaraciones enviadas ala agencia EFE, la reserva indígena Tohono O’odham indicó que el pasado 16 de junio aprobaron una resolución condenando la construcción del muro en el Monumento Nacional de Organ Pipe Cactus, así como en el Refugio de Vida Salvaje de Cabeza Prieta, una ruta para sus peregrinaciones.

“Estos planes de construir un muro fronterizo hará imposible llevar a cabo ceremonias tradicionales y amenazan con terminar para siempre una tradición sagrada“, indica la resolución formal presentada por Tohono O’odham.

La construcción del muro en Organ Pipe Cactus también amenaza por lo menos a 22 sitios arqueológicos, según un reporte del Servicio de Parques Nacionales obtenido por el Washington Post.

El informe describe 17 sitios previamente descubiertos por arqueólogos, así como cinco nuevos y en preparación, cerca de la franja fronteriza. Este análisis se enfocó en un área de 11,3 millas (18 km), particularmente en la Reserva Roosevelt, dentro del Monumento Nacional.

Arqueólogos han encontrado allí utensilios, trozos de cerámica y objetos ceremoniales que datan del periodo de la tribu Hohokam, unos de los primeros pobladores del desierto de Arizona.

“El muro fronterizo de la administración Trump atravesará el emblemático Monumento Nacional Organ Pipe y destruirá la biodiversidad y los ecosistemas preciosos que hacen que el sur de Arizona sea tan especial”, dijo el congresista Raúl Grijalva.

El demócrata de Arizona calificó el muro como una construcción “inútil” que “diezma el medioambiente” y aumenta la militarización en las comunidades limítrofes.

“No debería gastarse ni un centavo en construir el monumento al odio de Trump; continuaré oponiéndome a todos y cada uno de los esfuerzos de la Administración para robar dinero de otras agencias federales para construir su muro racista“, enfatizó Grijalva.

La Administración actual desvió un presupuesto de 3.600 millones de dólares para proyectos militares, con el fin de reemplazar y extender el muro fronterizo, en total 174 millas (280 km) en áreas de Arizona, Nuevo México y Texas.

Trump visitó San Diego, California el miércoles 18 de septiembre, estuvo en un tramo de la valla fronteriza reemplazada por un nuevo muro metálico de entre 18 y 30 pies de altura.

Un video que publicó en Facebook la Fundación Nacional Cubano Americana, muestra al activista de ‘Unpacu’ en la puerta del avión de la aerolínea Swift Air, el cual lo trajo de regreso a Miami.

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“Estos tiranos y esbirros me golpearon aquí en Holguín en las costillas”, dijo Alexander Otero, mostrando los golpes en su rostro.

El cubano denunció además que las autoridades del régimen le quitaron su residencia.

“Pero les juro que mañana salgo en una lancha para Cuba”, aseguró Otero.
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El expreso político había viajado a Cuba desde Miami el pasado 17 de septiembre, luego de recibir un permiso de 72 horas por razones humanitarias, el cual le fue otorgado en la embajada de Cuba en Washington.

Sin embargo, Alexander Otero Rodríguez dijo que al llegar al aeropuerto Frank País García, lo metieron en una oficina, en donde lo agredieron física y verbalmente.

El activista de la Unión Patriótica de Cuba había sido sentenciado a 7 años de cárcel en Cuba, acusado de atentar contra un autoridad en la isla durante una protesta en Bayamo.

El análisis fue realizado por el Centro de Información y Acceso a Registros Transaccionales (TRAC, por sus siglas en inglés) de la Universidad de Syracuse. Según el reporte, hasta el 31 de agosto 1,007,155 casos esperaban la decisión de los magistrados. El estado más afectado es California donde 175,739 personas desconocen su futuro migratorio, seguido por Texas con 160,759. También indica que los procesos en las cortes se han duplicado en los últimos tres años.

En un viaje de tres días a la zona limítrofe con México para recaudar fondos para su campaña de reelección, el mandatario elogió la sección de la muralla que visitó y escribió en Twitter, en español: “No más. No más falso asilo, no más ‘detener y soltar’, no más entrada ilegal en Estados Unidos”.

El presidente de los Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, popular por enviar en Twitter comentarios sobre inmigrantes y el famoso muro fronterizo que pretende construir, envió esta vez un mensaje racista muy directo.

Trump hizo uso de un meme escrito en español —también envió una versión en inglés—con las palabras “NO MÁS” en letras grandes y en negrita. La imagen muestra además a Trump parado frente a un muro fronterizo, con el ceño fruncido.

MEMPHIS (LPL/MIA) — La Oficina de Violencia contra las Mujeres (OVW, por sus siglas en inglés) del Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos ha otorgado una subvención de $600.000 a los Defensores de Inmigración del Medio Sur (MIA, por sus siglas en inglés) por su asociación de colaboración con CasaLuz.

MIA y CasaLuz comenzaron su asociación en 2016 para proporcionar representación legal integral y defensa de víctimas a los sobrevivientes hispanos y latinos de violencia doméstica, agresión sexual, acoso y trata de personas. Esta beca proporciona financiación continua para la colaboración de los socios durante los años 2019 a 2022.

CasaLuz es el ancla del proyecto, como la primera y única agencia de defensa y apoyo a víctimas culturalmente específica de la región que sirve a los inmigrantes sobrevivientes. “CasaLuz fue fundada en 2015 para satisfacer las necesidades únicas de las víctimas hispanas de abuso, que enfrentan barreras para acceder a servicios adecuados”, dice Inés Negrette, directora ejecutiva y fundadora de CasaLuz. “A través de este subsidio, nuestras organizaciones ayudan a los clientes vulnerables a romper el ciclo de abuso y avanzar hacia vidas libres de violencia”.

MIA y CasaLuz se complacen en tener la oportunidad de continuar apoyando a las comunidades hispanas y latinas al darles a las víctimas acceso a la justicia, la sanación y seguridad.

Los Defensores de Inmigración del Medio Sur, CasaLuz y el Programa de Empoderamiento de Refugiados tendrán una capacitación de medio día el viernes, 4 de octubre de 2019 sobre el impacto de la violencia doméstica en las comunidades de inmigrantes y refugiados en el Medio Sur. Esta capacitación proporcionará a los participantes una comprensión de la dinámica única de la violencia doméstica en las comunidades de inmigrantes y refugiados, incluidos los aspectos culturales de la violencia doméstica, los efectos sobre los niños y las barreras a la justicia.

San Diego (CA), 18 sep (EFEUSA).- El presidente Donald Trump insistió este miércoles en la necesidad de un tramo de unas 500 millas (más de 800 kilómetros) de muro fronterizo para atajar lo que considera “una tremenda emergencia nacional”.

Durante una visita a un tramo de la valla fronteriza erigida en Otay Mesa (sur de California), el presidente señaló que la “tremenda emergencia nacional” que supone el tráfico de drogas y personas solo podrá ser contenida con la construcción del muro y “cuando los traficantes de personas no puedan atravesarlo”.

Añadida hoy en la agenda oficial de su gira por California, Trump ha vuelto al mismo sitio que visitó en 2018 para observar los ocho prototipos del nuevo muro que durante su campaña electoral prometió construir en las más de 2.000 millas (más de 3.200 kilómetros) de frontera con México.

El colegio de abogados de California reporta que en los últimos seis meses las quejas contra falsos abogados que ofrecen asesoría inmigratoria sin autorización legal han aumentado considerablemente. El problema causa grandes pérdidas a los afectados, especialmente a aquellos inmigrantes indocumentados que creen en promesas de la anhelada residencia legal en Estados Unidos. Liliana Escalante nos cuenta más.

Denver, Colorado.- Un reporte revela las “historias de muerte, abuso y negligencia” que se han suscitado en una cárcel privada de Aurora, Colorado, la cual es utilizada para recluir a personas indocumentadas. El documento fue difundido por la filial en Colorado de la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU, por sus siglas en inglés).

El reporte, un documento de 48 páginas y cuya difusión espera que se tomen medidas para evitar se repitan estas historias, se basa en entrevistas con personas que permanecieron en el centro de detención del GEO Group, una empresa privada que obtuvo un contrato del Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés).

ACLU analiza seis muertes acaecidas en este centro, ya sea por abusos o por no haber recibido tratamiento médico: las de los inmigrantes George Zoley, Kamyar Samimi, Evalin-Ali Mandza, Dan Courson, Ronnie Keyes y Mohammed Dirshe.

También, se anotan seis casos de “sufrimiento y descuido”, a los internos John Mathews, Diana López, Jane Smith, Fabián Vásquez, Elías Salgado y Miguel Ángel Ávila Arce.

Según ACLU, el “sufrimiento” está relacionado con heridas físicas, falta de tratamiento médico, violencia de los carceleros, discriminación y castigos reiterados o innecesarios.

López, como ejemplo y de acuerdo con el documento, padeció complicaciones físicas luego de la extracción de un diente. Vásquez fue colocado en confinamiento solitario porque no tenía sus audífonos, y Ávila sufrió la fractura de varios dedos cuando un guardia cerró con fuerza la puerta de su celda.

“La crueldad debe detenerse”, dice el reporte de ACLU. “Tenemos el poder para asegurarnos de que la muerte de Kamyar Samimi y el sufrimiento de muchos otros no sea en vano”.

Samimi, un iraní con presencia legal en el país, murió en diciembre de 2017 cuando el médico de la cárcel decidió no administrarle los medicamentos necesarios por considerarlo “drogadicto”.

Por ese hecho, y por denuncias recibidas, el congresista demócrata Jason Crow estableció visitas semanales al centro de detención.

Además, en junio de 2018 y nuevamente en junio último, la Asociación Estadounidense de Abogados de Inmigración (AILA, por sus siglas en inglés) demandó a GEO y a ICE por “la peligrosa falta de servicios de cuidados médicos de salud mental en las instalaciones de Aurora”.

Además de las demandas de ACLU, el Centro de Educación y Cumplimiento de Derechos Civiles también acudió a la corte en 2019 contra GEO por la muerte de Samimi.

“Yo tengo presencia legal en este país desde hace 25 años, pero estuve detenida en ese centro por semanas hace dos años y sé que lo que dice ACLU es verdad, por lo que sufrí yo y sufrió mi familia”, dijo una inmigrante mexicana de 40 años que solicitó anonimato.

“Ni yo, ni mis hijas nos hemos recuperado de mi detención. Lo que vi y viví allí adentro no puedo contarlo. Solamente lo saben mi terapista y mi confesor”, afirmó la inmigrante, que ha iniciado acciones judiciales contra ICE.

ICE tiene “la responsabilidad constitucional” de velar por el bienestar de los detenidos, enfatizó ACLU, cuyo reporte también sea apoya en documentos obtenidos mediante demandas judiciales contra ICE y contra GEO, o por medio de la Ley de Libertad de Información (FOIA, por sus siglas en inglés).

La cárcel de GEO en Aurora comenzó a operar hace 30 años y a principios de este año se expandió para alojar hasta 1,500 presos. Entre febrero y abril de 2019 se detectaron en ese establecimiento numerosos casos de enfermedades contagiosas, lo que llevó a cuarentena a casi 400 inmigrantes.

El hondureño Douglas Oviedo consiguió esta semana el segundo asilo otorgado entre miles de centroamericanos que esperan a lo largo de la frontera mexicana, bajo el programa Protocolos de Protección a Migrantes (MPP).

El hombre, de 32 años de edad, asistió a su cuarta y última audiencia ante la corte de migración en San Diego. Horas antes, había salido de la garita peatonal de San Ysidro para pisar por primera vez Estados Unidos en su calidad de refugiado.

“Fue difícil por momentos, pero toda decisión viene de arriba”, dijo al salir libre Oviedo, quien se inspira en sus creencias religiosas.

Lo primero que hizo el hondureño, ampliamente conocido entre organizaciones y migrantes en espera en Tijuana (México), fue abrazar a Adam Elfers —un músico estadunidense con quien forjó un dueto musical y entrañable amistad en la frontera.

Juntos impulsaron actos en beneficio de albergues para inmigrantes.

Oviedo llegó en noviembre a Tijuana, en una caravana que partió de Honduras. Desde el inicio destacó porque en un albergue con miles de migrantes organizó un karaoke con cantos de alabanzas.

Y tan solo éste fin de semana, Oviedo y otros hondureños inauguraron en Tijuana la Casa Hogar El Puente —el primer albergue construido por centroamericanos para inmigrantes y familias en espera de la resolución de sus casos en la corte de San Diego.

Dos días más tarde Oviedo se convertía en refugiado en EEUU.

Lisa Knox, abogada del Centro Legal de la Raza y quien encabezó a un equipo que representó a Oviedo en la corte, dijo a La Opinión que haber contado con apoyo legal fue determinante para ganar el caso.

“Este caso y otro concedido –al pastor hondureño Alec—demuestran que el presidente Trump se equivoca al decir que la personas que buscan asilo no lo merecen. En general sus casos son dignos de merecer asilo pero para la mayoría de los migrantes sin abogado, es muy difícil convencer a la corte”, comentó Knox.

Por lo general, los casos de los migrantes que están en la frontera mexicana bajo un programa que impuso unilateralmente la administración Trump carecen de asesoría legal y mucho menos cuentan con representación de abogados.

La Universidad de Syracuse publicó el mes pasado un estudio que dice que solo el 1.2% de los integrados al programa Protocolos de Protección a Migrantes (MPP) cuentan con representación de abogados.

Esperaba en la frontera, hoy hondureño logra el asilo deseado
Este es una de las pocas solicitudes resueltas entre miles que aguardan en la frontera
Esperaba en la frontera, hoy hondureño logra el asilo deseadoLleno de júbilo, Douglas Oviedo abraza a Kei Kurimoto, miembro de un grupo musical que lo apoyó durante la espera. / fotos: Manuel Ocaño.FOTO: LA OPINIÓN
Por: Manuel Ocaño / Especial para La Opinión | 19 de Septiembre 2019
El hondureño Douglas Oviedo consiguió esta semana el segundo asilo otorgado entre miles de centroamericanos que esperan a lo largo de la frontera mexicana, bajo el programa Protocolos de Protección a Migrantes (MPP).

El hombre, de 32 años de edad, asistió a su cuarta y última audiencia ante la corte de migración en San Diego. Horas antes, había salido de la garita peatonal de San Ysidro para pisar por primera vez Estados Unidos en su calidad de refugiado.

“Fue difícil por momentos, pero toda decisión viene de arriba”, dijo al salir libre Oviedo, quien se inspira en sus creencias religiosas.

Lo primero que hizo el hondureño, ampliamente conocido entre organizaciones y migrantes en espera en Tijuana (México), fue abrazar a Adam Elfers —un músico estadunidense con quien forjó un dueto musical y entrañable amistad en la frontera.

Juntos impulsaron actos en beneficio de albergues para inmigrantes.

Oviedo llegó en noviembre a Tijuana, en una caravana que partió de Honduras. Desde el inicio destacó porque en un albergue con miles de migrantes organizó un karaoke con cantos de alabanzas.

Douglas abraza a Adam Elfers (i), un músico estadunidense con quien forjó un dueto musical en Tijuana (México).
Y tan solo éste fin de semana, Oviedo y otros hondureños inauguraron en Tijuana la Casa Hogar El Puente —el primer albergue construido por centroamericanos para inmigrantes y familias en espera de la resolución de sus casos en la corte de San Diego.

Dos días más tarde Oviedo se convertía en refugiado en EEUU.

Lisa Knox, abogada del Centro Legal de la Raza y quien encabezó a un equipo que representó a Oviedo en la corte, dijo a La Opinión que haber contado con apoyo legal fue determinante para ganar el caso.

“Este caso y otro concedido –al pastor hondureño Alec—demuestran que el presidente Trump se equivoca al decir que la personas que buscan asilo no lo merecen. En general sus casos son dignos de merecer asilo pero para la mayoría de los migrantes sin abogado, es muy difícil convencer a la corte”, comentó Knox.

Por lo general, los casos de los migrantes que están en la frontera mexicana bajo un programa que impuso unilateralmente la administración Trump carecen de asesoría legal y mucho menos cuentan con representación de abogados.

La Universidad de Syracuse publicó el mes pasado un estudio que dice que solo el 1.2% de los integrados al programa Protocolos de Protección a Migrantes (MPP) cuentan con representación de abogados.

El hondureño dijo que apoyará a sus compañeros desde San Francisco, ciudad en la que planea establecerse.
Paulina Olvera Cáñez, directora del centro Espacio Migrante, dijo conocer a “muchas mujeres migrantes con historias muy fuertes pero, que sin abogado, no tienen oportunidad” de conseguir asilo en Estados Unidos.

Oviedo comentó que ahora desde San Francisco apoyará a sus compañeros de El Puente y a la comunidad que aguarda en la frontera.

María Paula Ochoa le dice cuándo se estrena la serie ‘Living Undocumented’ que sigue el día a día de ocho familias con un miembro indocumentado. La actriz Selena Gomez es una de las productoras.

El flujo de migrantes que intentan cruzar México para alcanzar EEUU continúa.

Este miércoles, las autoridades informaron de que interceptaron a un grupo de 195 migrantes, entre ellos 83 menores de edad, que viajaban en tres vehículos por una carretera del estado de Veracruz, en el este del país.

También detuvieron a diez personas, ocho varones y dos mujeres, por la acusación de tráfico de personas, según un comunicado de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública (SSP) de Veracruz publicado en Facebook.

El grupo de migrantes fue interceptado mientras viajaba a la altura de la localidad de Vista Hermosa, en la carretera Acayucan-Catemaco. La SSP asegura que se encontraban en tres camiones, uno blanco y de marca Volvo, uno amarillo de marca Scania y uno blanco y rojo de marca no especificada.

Cuando los agentes de esta entidad y de la Guardia Nacional dieron el alto a la caravana de vehículos, los conductores intentaron huir. Sin embargo, los oficiales se lo impidieron.

La SSP indica que en el grupo de migrantes interceptados había 115 hombres y 80 mujeres. 171 personas tienen nacionalidad de Guatemala, 20 de Honduras y cuatro de El Salvador.

Estos migrantes fueron trasladados al Instituto Nacional de Migraciones (INM), según el comunicado de la SSP. Por el otro lado, los diez sospechosos de tráfico de personas quedaron a disposición de las autoridades.

Estas tendrán que decidir cómo proceder tanto con los migrantes indocumentados interceptados como con sus presuntos traficantes. No se han dado detalles sobre el estado de salud de los migrantes.

El viernes pasado, la agencia EFE informó de que un grupo de 45 migrantes fue interceptado mientras viajaba en condiciones de hacinamiento y con signos de deshidratación en Veracruz.

UN VERANO DE ALTA INTENSIDAD

Los flujos migratorios aumentaron en México desde octubre de 2018, cuando caravanas con miles de migrantes, en su mayoría centroamericanos, comenzaron a ingresar al país para intentar y llegar a Estados Unidos.

A inicios de junio de este años, los gobiernos de EEUU y de México llegaron a un acuerdo que preveía un mayor esfuerzo del segundo en limitar la presión migratoria a cambio de que la administración del presidente, Donald Trump, no impusiera nuevos aranceles a productos mexicanos, tal y como amenazó en un primer momento.

El Gobierno de México apretó a lo largo del verano los controles para interceptar a migrantes antes de que alcanzaran la frontera conjunta con EEUU. También creó la Guardia Nacional, un cuerpo de seguridad especializado en este frente.

BAJAN LOS CRUCES ILEGALES

Hace poco más de dos semanas, el secretario mexicano de Relaciones Exteriores, Marcelo Ebrard, explicó al Gobierno de EEUU que desde junio, cuando México aceptó desplegar la Guardia Nacional en la frontera con Guatemala para evitar la imposición de aranceles estadounidenses a sus productos, el flujo migratorio se redujo en un 58,7%.

Por el otro lado, las autoridades de EEUU trabajaron para limitar las posibilidades de acceso al país por parte de los migrantes. Según datos oficiales de EEUU, para el pasado 1 de septiembre, la Patrulla Fronteriza (CBP; en inglés) regresó a México a más de 42.000 solicitantes de asilo para esperar la resolución de sus casos en ese país bajo el programa “Quédate en México”.

Las estadísticas de CBP indican además que en junio, julio y agosto el número de cruces de la frontera entre ambos países se desplomó con respecto a los meses anteriores. Desde mayo, cuando se tocó el número máximo de ingresos de los últimos cinco años con más de 144.000 cruces, se pasó a los 104.000 de junio, 82.000 en julio Y 64.000 en agosto.

El canciller mexicano sostuvo la semana pasada que en octubre el número de migrantes que buscan llegar a Estados Unidos se verá reducido a los niveles promedios habituales previos a la crisis migratoria iniciada a finales del año pasado.

“Estaríamos llegando para el mes de octubre, aproximadamente, a los promedios históricos de los flujos migratorios hacia Estados Unidos”, aseveró Ebrard en rueda de prensa en Palacio Nacional donde hizo balance de la política migratoria mexicana.

De acuerdo con el canciller, el próximo mes las entradas irregulares a Estados Unidos disminuirían por debajo del promedio histórico de los últimos cinco años, que es de 23.157 migrantes centroamericanos mensuales y 16.691 migrantes mexicanos. En total, las autoridades de EEUU han detenido en la frontera entre octubre del año pasado y agosto de este año más de 810.000 migrantes.

WASHINGTON.— Kamyar Samimi murió bajo custodia federal en 2017 debido a la negligencia médica y abuso en un centro de detención de inmigrantes en Colorado, pero su escandalosa muerte no ha impedido que la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) siga invirtiendo millones de dólares en empresas como GEO Group, a cargo de varios de esos centros en el país.

Así lo argumenta un informe divulgado hoy por la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU) en Colorado, en el que asegura que ICE opera centros de detención sin una supervisión significativa del gobierno, incluyendo el de Aurora, donde falleció Samimi en diciembre de 2017, y Evalin Alin Mandza, cinco años antes.

Esa instalación está en manos de GEO Group, que a través de los años ha recibido jugosos contratos de ICE para la gestión de diversos centros de detención en Estados Unidos.

ACLU of Colorado
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@ACLUofColorado
BREAKING: Today we released an investigative report detailing the inhumane conditions inside the ICE detention facility in Aurora. The report highlights several stories of death, abuse and medical neglect. Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/cashinginoncruelty … #CashingInOnCruelty

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En ese sentido, el informe de ACLU quiere llamar la atención sobre los problemas en los centros de detención de ICE, muchos de ellos bajo administración de empresas como GEO Group. Hasta la fecha, 31 inmigrantes han fallecido bajo custodia de ICE durante la Administración Trump, incluyendo al menos siete niños.

El centro de detención en Aurora “viola los derechos humanos básicos de sus detenidos, principalmente los que solicitan asilo, a través del abuso y la negligencia médica, según el informe de ACLU, que es producto de una investigación de nueve meses.

El informe, titulado “Lucrándose con la crueldad: relatos de muerte, abuso y abandono en el Centro de Detención de GEO en Aurora”, pone los reflectores sobre el historial de abusos vinculados con el encarcelamiento de inmigrantes.

“La investigación reveló numerosas historias de incompetencia médica, descuido dental, cuidado de salud mental inadecuado, falta de recursos para detenidos discapacitados, así como un cuidado inferior, que contribuyeron al sufrimiento y muerte de Kamyar Samimi”, quien llevaba más de 40 años como residente permanente en EEUU, dijo ACLU.

La instalación donde murió Samimi alberga a cerca de 1,500 detenidos, la mayoría por infracciones migratorias civiles, pero ya encerrados por ICE en Aurora no tienen acceso a niveles adecuados de cuidado médico, nutrición, recursos legales o, en muchos casos, de la misma “decencia humana”, agregó la organización.

La ACLU pudo constatar a través de su investigación que el médico de GEO a cargo del cuidado de Samimi lo privó de la dosis de metadona que éste tomó con receta médica durante 20 años para tratar un problema médico. Esa decisión, que ACLU calificó como “medicamente injustificable”, le produjo síntomas de abstinencia tan debilitadores como torturadores, explicó Mark Silverstein, director legal del grupo en Colorado.

Según Silverstein, las investigaciones internas sobre la muerte de Samimi jamás cuestionaron el papel que pudo haber jugado el médico para “precipitar” el trágico desenlace. La ACLU interpuso una demanda para obtener el historial médico completo de Samimi.

Pero Samimi no fue la única víctima mortal: en 2012, Evalin Ali Mandza, de 46 años, murió de un ataque cardíaco en el mismo centro y, según un informe oficial, éste “no tuvo acceso a cuidado médico adecuado” durante su encierro, según ACLU.

Aún cuando la Oficina del Inspector General del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) ha condenado las condiciones del encarcelamiento de migrantes a cargo de ICE, la agencia no ha exigido cuentas a GEO ni ha mejorado las condiciones en los centros de detención, según ACLU.

Pese a las deficiencias en el centro de detención, GEO registró un ingreso neto de $33,4 millones en el último trimestre de 2018, y en la actualidad tiene un valor de más de $2,300 millones, agregó.

La investigación interna de ICE destapó numerosas violaciones de las normas respecto a los detenidos pero, a comienzos de este año, la agencia procedió a ampliar la capacidad del centro de detención en Aurora de 1,000 a 1,500 inmigrantes, muchos de los cuales languidecen allí durante años, dijo el informe.

Aún cuando las autoridades pusieron en cuarentena a los migrantes por brotes de varicela y paperas, el centro a cargo de GEO todavía sólo tiene un médico contratado a tiempo completo, según ACLU.

ICE dijo en una declaración escrita que su instalación en Aurora se maneja “de forma humana, limpia y profesional”, que pasó una inspección independiente en octubre pasado, y que las acusaciones de ACLU “simplemente no se apoyan en otras numerosas inspecciones” que también le han dado el visto bueno.

La muerte de cualquier detenido bajo custodia de ICE “es trágica, y nuestro personal hace todo esfuerzo por evitarlas”, agregó la agencia, al indicar que la instalación en Aurora solo ha tenido dos muertes en más de 30 años.

En el año fiscal 2018, ICE ha registrado nueve muertes en sus centros de detención, del total de más de 396,000 detenidos.

GEO se defiende

En declaraciones a Noticias Telemundo, Pablo Páez, vicepresidente ejecutivo para relaciones corporativas de GEO, explicó que no podía comentar específicamente sobre las nuevas acusaciones pero que ACLU mantiene “una posición política generalmente en contra de alianzas público-privadas”, y el informe lo confirma.

Según Páez, el centro en Aurora ha operado con acreditación nacional más de 30 años bajo gobiernos demócratas y republicanos, tiene aproximadamente 46 puestos médicos, y ofrece servicios las 24 horas del día, los siete días a la semana.

Los profesionales también reciben talleres de capacitación que, además de temas de salud, abarca asuntos de derechos humanos, y en la actualidad el centro está en el proceso de llenar más vacantes, pese a la escasez de personal de salud, subrayó.

El ejecutivo no habló concretamente de la muerte de Samimi pero insistió en que GEO tiene políticas para el tratamiento de la abstinencia de opiáceos, que además cumplen con las normas de ICE para el tratamiento de drogadicción y desintoxicación.

Múltiples casos de abuso

Para Denise Maes, directora de política pública de ACLU en Colorado, los casos de incompetencia o insuficiente cuidado médico muestran que ICE y GEO “carecen de la voluntad y habilidad para proveer siquiera el cuidado más básico” para los migrantes detenidos.

“Este informe tiene enfoque nacional porque estos centros de detención en manos privadas no actúan con transparencia o rendición de cuentas al público. Ese es el juego de ICE, que las cosas sean menos transparentes, envueltas en secretismo”, dijo Maes a Noticias Telemundo en entrevista telefónica.

“El hecho es que tienen un sólo médico para 1,400 detenidos; es lo que (GEO) nos dijo y lo que pudimos comprobar. No sé dónde están los otros 45 profesionales que mencionan porque no están presentes allí… los detenidos tienen que hacer citas por Skype”, precisó Maes.

“Con este informe queremos que los legisladores estatales implementen nuestras recomendaciones, todas pensadas para crear más transparencia y rendición de cuentas”, agregó.

En uno de los casos documentados por ACLU, Diana López, una solicitante de asilo se quejó de un enorme dolor de diente pero nunca logró que la llevaran a un dentista. La mujer intentó sacarse el diente por sí sola y otras compañeras en su celda ayudaron a limpiarla.

A un detenido que sufría de depresión, su psicólogo le dijo que “nadie se preocupaba por él” y que debería mejor firmar su deportación voluntaria.

Mientras, Fabián Vásquez, que padecía de sordera, comenzó a mostrar síntomas de confusión y aislamiento al no recibir los aparatos auditivos para oír bien, y Elías Salgado sufrió depresión por “las represalias, castigos arbitrarios y abandono” que experimentó en el centro de Aurora.

También está el caso de Miguel Angel Avila Arce, que aseguró que un guardia de seguridad le quebró varios dedos al aplastarle la mano con la puerta de la celda.

Por ello, el informe incluye recomendaciones para mejorar las condiciones en el centro de detención en Aurora; más fondos para la representación legal de los detenidos, y que se disminuya la colaboración de la policía local con ICE, entre otras.

La hija de Samimi explicó que trabaja con ACLU en la campaña contra ICE porque no quiere que otras familias sufran como la suya, y que cesen los abusos en los centros de detención

Según oficiales, los números de inmigrantes que son arrestados por la Patrulla Fronteriza han aumentado un 25% en relación al año pasado y aseguran que hay muchas familias completas que intentan cruzar.

Las vacaciones de Luis Alberto Santaella se convirtieron en una verdadera pesadilla. El turista venezolano viajó el pasado 10 de junio a Miami a visitar a su hermano, a quien no veía desde hace cinco años, y estuvo detenido por casi tres meses en el Centro de Transición de Broward.

¿Se ha convertido el sistema migratorio del país en un gran negocio? Así es como el sueño americano que viven millones de indocumentados se transforma en un camino de persecución y separación de familias, para quienes buscan un mejor futuro en suelo estadounidense. Para tener una idea de la magnitud de esta crisis actualmente, es necesario saber que el promedio diario de personas en custodia de autoridades migratorias es de aproximadamente 50,000 personas.

En una visita a un segmento del muro este miércoles, Trump alabó la ingeniería de la obra, diseñada para que sea “impenetrable” y explicó detalladamente sus características, que la convierten en un “sistema de seguridad de clase mundial”, según el mandatario

Ken Cuccinelli, the hardline acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, is seeking a new power — to unilaterally publicize personal information about asylees, refugees, and their family members in the US who are being prosecuted for certain crimes, according to a memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Currently, only the DHS secretary has the ability to disclose this type of information on a discretionary basis to the media. Though federal regulations currently prohibit USCIS officials from making these disclosures, Cuccinelli wants the ability to do so.

In a “Memorandum For The Secretary,” signed by Cuccinelli on Sept. 10 and intended for acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Cuccinelli said the information he wants to reveal may include, but will not be limited to, the people’s dates of birth, whether they were granted asylum status or admitted as refugees, are family members of asylees or refugees “and if so, who the principal applicant was on the case,” and the date of the asylum grant or admission.

It’s unclear whether McAleenan has made a decision on the memo yet.

“DHS Privacy Policy already permits the release of certain information if the public interest outweighs the individual’s privacy interest, such as when two dozen members of the MS-13 gang were arrested in California for brutal murders,” a USCIS spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Many of the individuals in that case had illegally entered the United States or entered and sought to stay in the US using asylum or refugee status. Due to the abuse of the refugee and asylum programs by MS-13, terrorist organizations, and cartels, the acting director requested the same authority in order to educate the American public, lawmakers, and media about the dangerous criminals who came to the United States by abusing our legal immigration system.”

In his memo to McAleenan, Cuccinelli states that “DHS’s ability to effectively preserve confidence in the integrity of DHS or demonstrate the accountability of DHS’s officers or employees is hampered when the Director or the Acting Director of USCIS is unable to disclose asylum and refugee-related information to courts and in press materials related to prosecutions involving crimes pertaining to national security or public safety.”

Cuccinelli requests he be able to “disclose asylum and refugee-related information, including information related to credible fear and reasonable fear claims, to courts and in press materials in connection with prosecutions involving crimes relating to national security or that threaten public safety.”

Such details are currently protected from disclosure by federal regulations and USCIS has previously explained that releasing such details could lead to “retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated or endanger the security of the claimant’s family members who may still be residing in the country of origin.”

Ur Jaddou, the former chief counsel with USCIS, said such an overarching request by Cuccinelli was inappropriate.

“They are going to put people in danger,” she said. “This undermines the very purpose of the asylum claim and the purpose of the prohibitions on the disclosure. I’m shocked.”

Since he began as acting director, Cuccinelli has pushed policies that cut back the time immigrants have to consult with attorneys before their initial asylum interviews and implored asylum officers to be stricter in the interviews. He has maintained an active Twitter feed where he has attacked the asylum officers’ union for criticizing a policy that forces immigrants to remain in Mexico, advertised his TV appearances, and repeatedly criticized local jurisdictions for policies that limit their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Cuccinelli also requested authorization letting him release the information of individuals who were previously asylees and refugees.

Cuccinelli states in the memo that he should be given the ability to disclose the information because they could come into play in the criminal prosecutions themselves.

“This authorization would help to ensure that these individuals are not granted bail during criminal proceedings without full consideration by the court of all relevant information and would allow the disclosure of such information to the media in press releases and other press-related materials in connection with their prosections,” Cuccinelli wrote in the memo.

Criminal justice experts, however, said Cuccinelli’s reasoning was unclear.

“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where somebody’s asylum or refugee status would be relevant in a bail proceeding,” said Michael Romano, a lecturer at Stanford Law School who teaches criminal justice policy. “The primary consideration of bail proceedings is the threat to public safety and obviously local officials are in the best position to evaluate that.”

John Sandweg, who once headed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was acting DHS General Counsel under the Obama administration, said Cuccinelli’s request lacked any purpose. The regulation on the privacy of asylee and refugee information allows for disclosures to be made to criminal investigators and courts on a need-to-know basis, beyond the DHS Secretary’s discretionary power.

“This is 100% about the media. This memo is in the guise of a public safety matter, but it’s really to publicize cases where asylum seekers were arrested or prosecuted for a criminal offense,” he said, after being told about the memo. “They are trying to undermine faith in the asylum and refugee system to suggest it is a public safety threat and the data does not support that.”

Cuccinelli also wrote to McAleenan about the case of three individuals arrested in connection with a counterterrorism investigation recently and that he had previously sought to disclose their “refugee-related information.” The individuals were admitted to the US as “refugee derivatives” — or family members of an individual who arrived as a refugee — but Cuccinelli did not provide further information on their cases.

The memo ends with a section for McAleenan to sign, which includes language that says McAleenan authorizes the “director (or acting director) of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to disclose information contained in or pertaining to applications for asylum or refugee resettlement or any credible fear or reasonable fear determinations with respect to prosecutions relating to national security and public safety including, but not limited to, dates of birth and dates of grants of asylum status or of admission as refugees, for purposes related to facilitating the subject alien’s prosecution and raising public awareness.”

(CNN)The immigration court backlog now exceeds 1 million cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks immigration court data.

Immigration courts, which fall under the Justice Department and decide whether to deport immigrants, have been bogged down over the years as more cases are added to the docket that can be addressed at any given time.

“If nothing else, the continuing rise of the backlog shows that the immigration court is broken,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “Until we fix the design defect of having a court in a law enforcement agency, we will not be able to address the backlog in a fair and effective manner.”

CNN has reached out for comment to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s immigration system, specifically taking issue with the practice of releasing immigrants while they await their court dates. To remedy that, his administration has sought to hire more immigration judges in the hopes of unclogging the court. Even so, the number of cases has continued to tick upward.

During the last partial government shutdown, for example, the only cases that moved forward were those of immigrants in detention. All others were postponed.

In January, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse estimated that more than 42,000 immigration court hearings had been canceled as a result of the shutdown — exacerbating an issue Trump had pledged to resolve.

“The latest case-by-case court records through the end of August 2019 show the court’s active case backlog was 1,007,155,” according to the clearinghouse’s report released Wednesday. “If the additional 322,535 cases which the court says are pending but have not been placed on the active caseload rolls are added, then the backlog now tops 1.3 million.”

While the clearinghouse doesn’t attribute the backlog to any one factor, the American Bar Association has previously proposed a major overhaul of the US immigration system, calling the courts “irredeemably dysfunctional.”

“The state of the U.S. immigration court system has worsened considerably since our 2010 Report,” that March report noted, mentioning an unprecedented backlog of cases, increased wait times, policy changes that aim to accelerate cases without allocating enough funding, overreliance on video teleconferencing during court proceedings and possible bias in the hiring of judges.

The Justice Department had previously addressed some of the issues the bar association report raised.

The administration has acknowledged the massive immigration court backlog and has, at times, placed blame on unfounded asylum claims, which have to work their way through their court system.

This month, the administration opened tent courts along the Texas border to hear the cases of migrants who have been returned to Mexico to await their immigration proceedings as part of the Migrant Protection Protocols program. Around 42,000 migrants have been sent back under the program.

In Wednesday’s report, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse notes that the Migrant Protection Protocols cases still make up a small share of the court’s active backlog.

CNN’s Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.

LAREDO, Texas — The white tents that sit here on the very edge of the U.S border, with Mexico a literal stone’s throw away, represent one of the jewels in the crown of the Trump administration’s recent efforts to get a grip on the immigration crisis.

They are the temporary courtrooms set up as part of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — known colloquially as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. That policy, established earlier this year, involves sending migrants who are trying to claim asylum back to Mexico during their proceedings — instead of releasing them into the U.S. while their cases are heard.

This means, officials say, that cases can be heard more quickly — within as little as 40-60 days, as opposed to the years it sometimes takes after family units are released into the U.S. They say that’s better for the migrants, as it leaves them in limbo for less time. But they argue it also serves as a disincentive for Central American migrants who do not have legitimate asylum claims but might otherwise get into the U.S. by claiming “credible fear” of returning home.

The white tents along the border right now are meant to handle the growing asylum claims, with the backlog now at more than 800,000 cases. The courtrooms recently were set up in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, but the administration is hoping to set up more such tents across the border soon, expanding amid greater cooperation with Mexico.

CUCCINELLI ON CONSTITUTION WEEK

Yet the proceedings have come under fire from immigration advocates. The group Human Rights First has called them “secretive” and described them as part of an “attack” on due process within a “sham” asylum system. The same group recently charged that they’ve been closed to the media and public observers. Advocates see the courts as simply another hurdle for asylum seekers.

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, center, Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, left, and Acting U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli, right, address the media. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, center, Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, left, and Acting U.S. Customs and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli, right, address the media. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)

Officials sought this week to shed light on the process. Fox News, along with other reporters, were shown the facilities in which migrants wait their turn, and also the rooms where they are put in front of a judge — who oversees cases via video conference from San Antonio. The facility has a daily capacity of 428, but officials are hoping to expand that.

Such is the courts’ importance in the multi-layered approach to tackling the crisis that four top officials went to Laredo on Tuesday to tour the facilities and defend the practices to reporters: Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence.

“President Trump is using all the tools available to him and leveraging each federal agency to address the crisis at the southern border,” Cuccinelli said ahead of the visit. “MPP has been a highly effective tool and this visit will help explain the process to the American people.”

Migrants who are apprehended at the border and placed under MPP are sent back to Mexico, where the Mexican government gives them a social security number, a work visa, and assists with finding employment. When it is time for their hearing, they cross into the U.S. and into the tent courtrooms (officials call them “soft-sided facilities”).

Migrants wait in a processing room in a Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)
Migrants wait in a processing room in a Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)

GOP SENATORS INTRODUCE BILL REQUIRING DNA TESTING OF MIGRANTS TO CURB CHILD TRAFFICKING

On site, migrants are aided by translators and also provided legal counsel. There are private hearing rooms where they can speak to lawyers and also speak one-on-one with a judge. Play areas with books and toys were also set up for children to wait in while court hearings were taking place.

“With this facility here, the whole of government approach … bringing all the resources to bear but still giving them access to counsel, still giving them access to appropriate screening with USCIS, and doing it all here, we’re hoping we’re going to expedite that process, sift out those claims not based on merit and then those claims that are based on merit,” Morgan told reporters at the facility.

More than 42,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico under MPP — but it appears only a sliver of migrants ever get accepted and allowed into the U.S. When asked about this, officials didn’t say how many had been allowed into the U.S. via MPP, and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review did not immediately respond to a request for that number.

Albence said that many of those put into MPP decide to give up and head home, and officials believe that as that continues to happen, it will stop migrants from making the dangerous journey north from Central America.

Critics, however, say that the administration is setting too high of a bar for entry, and have questioned the legality of the program. The program has also come under fire over a series of reports that migrants sent back to Mexico are facing violence when they get there.

A lawyer with the National Immigrant Justice Center alleged in an NPR interview that the system is meant to “foreclose” asylum.

ON THE BORDER, OFFICIALS SEE DIVIDENDS FROM TRUMP’S DEAL WITH MEXICO

Morgan was asked about the reports of violence against migrants in Mexico and said that while the U.S. is assisting Mexico, what goes on inside the country is ultimately Mexico’s responsibility.

A courtroom in the MPP center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)
A courtroom in the MPP center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)

“We have to be very very careful as our own sovereign nation to paint an entire nation as a warzone,” he added. “I don’t believe that, we are not receiving that information from the government of Mexico.”

Cuccinelli said that just 6 percent of migrants claim they fear going back to Mexico, and about one in six of those are found to have a reasonable fear of going back while they wait for their hearing. Albence said as well that much of the crisis is fueled by the loopholes still present in the U.S. immigration system, and called on Congress to act.

The courtrooms are just one piece in the jigsaw of efforts by the administration to crack down on the migrant crisis — and officials have been keen to promote what they see as initial signs of success.

The administration announced last week that immigration officials apprehended 64,006 at the border in August, a 22 percent drop from July and a 56 percent drop from the peak of the crisis in May, when more than 144,000 migrants were caught or deemed inadmissible.

Officials say that the agreements with Mexico in particular — but also with Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama — are helping stem the flow as those countries implement policies to staff up their borders and crack down on drug and human traffickers.

A children’s play area in the MPP center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)
A children’s play area in the MPP center in Laredo, Texas. (Adam Shaw/Fox News)

Meanwhile at home, the Trump administration has moved to end the 1997 Flores court agreement, which limits how long unaccompanied minors can be detained — and was in 2016 interpreted by a federal court to apply to accompanied minors as well. This, officials say, has produced a powerful “pull factor” that encourages migrants to bring children with them — even if they are not their own.

While many of its measures and rules face significant legal challenges, including the Flores rule, last week the administration saw another victory when the Supreme Court upheld a rule that bars migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. if they have passed through another country.

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While it only gives the policy the green light while other legal challenges are ongoing, it allows the administration to bar most Central American migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. It marked the second administration win at the high court steps in just a few months in regard to immigration. In July, the court ruled that the administration could shift money from the Pentagon to building a wall on the southern border.

In the wake of that decision, the administration is now planning to have 450-500 miles of barriers built along the border by the end of next year.

The federal government is two weeks away from running out of money, and lawmakers are preparing to pass a short-term funding measure to buy more time to reach an agreement on the annual spending legislation. But in a sign of the difficulty ahead, money for the border wall has already dominated the early stages of talks in the Senate.

“The controversy seems to have grown and gotten deeper,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Failure to reach an agreement on border-wall funding led to a 35-day government shutdown, which ended in January as the longest in U.S. history.

A worker walks beside a section of the Pentagon-funded border wall in Yuma, Ariz., Sept. 10. Photo: Matt York/Associated Press
Even if lawmakers ultimately pass an extension of funding—often referred to as a continuing resolution—for DHS, they will still have to grapple with the president’s ability to move money around within the federal government. After Congress didn’t approve the level of funding he had sought, Mr. Trump in February declared a national emergency, allowing him to repurpose more than $6 billion to build the wall.

The president said the wall is necessary to reduce illegal immigration, a matter he said is critical to national security. Democrats have panned the wall as an ineffective and costly method of securing the border.

The Trump administration’s move to shift money from Defense Department and military construction projects—including schools for the children of service members—toward wall construction has rankled Democrats. They sought to add an amendment to the bill funding the Defense Department to limit the president’s ability to redirect money.

“The bill before us does nothing to rein in the ability of the president to continue to raid money from the Department of Defense to pay for his wall,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

That effort to amend the bill failed in committee, and Republicans advanced the military spending legislation along party lines. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has said he would move forward with a procedural vote on the spending legislation this week, daring Democrats to oppose funding for the military on the Senate floor.

“My Democratic colleagues seem eager to bog down the funding process with all their outstanding disagreements with the president,” Mr. McConnell said.

Is averting a government shutdown a good reason to put off congressional debate over border-wall funding? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) lambasted the procedural maneuver, calling it a political stunt.

“For him to say that Democrats are the ones threatening to block military funding when in fact we oppose a Republican bill that would shortchange the military is the height of double talk by the leader,” he said.

Democratic efforts to curb the administration’s ability to move money around for the wall have bled into other parts of the Senate appropriations process, including how to divvy up funding between various departments. A group of top Senate Democrats, including Messrs. Schumer and Leahy, sent a letter to Messrs. McConnell and Shelby on Tuesday asking that they drop funding for the wall from the chamber’s spending legislation.

Mr. Schumer is also seeking to force a floor vote on terminating the national emergency at the border in a bid to end the president’s authority to transfer the funds. Two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), have joined the effort.

But even as the skirmishes over the president’s ability to shift money continue, lawmakers in both parties and chambers are avoiding the main issue: deciding how much new money to give toward the wall.

House Democrats, who have passed 10 of the 12 spending bills, don’t plan to bring their own DHS spending bill to the floor this month. In a saga that opened a party rift, nearly 100 Democrats voted against a $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package for the southern border. They had raised concerns about how the funds—which weren’t designated for the wall—would be used.

Discussions about passing a continuing resolution for DHS remain relatively preliminary, and a person familiar with White House thinking argued that it was too soon to “declare defeat on DHS.” Lawmakers are expected to pass a short-term spending bill to keep the government open until Nov. 21, though legislation has been delayed by negotiations over aid to farmers affected by the trade war with China.

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R., Tenn.), the top Republican on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees DHS, said he hopes Congress doesn’t have to resort to simply extending the department’s current funding.

“I want to see a properly negotiated, properly funded DHS bill that addresses the nation’s current needs,” he said. “I have never been a fan of CRs—except when we’re facing a government shutdown.”

—Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com

— Meanwhile, an internal National Park Service report obtained by The Washington Post reveals that the bulldozers and excavators rushing to install Trump’s border barrier could damage or destroy up to 22 archaeological sites within Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in the coming months.

“The administration’s plan to convert an existing five-foot-high vehicle barrier into a 30-foot steel edifice could pose irreparable harm to unexcavated remnants of ancient Sonoran Desert peoples,” Juliet and Nick Miroff scoop. “Experts identified these risks as U.S. Customs and Border Protection seeks to fast-track the construction to meet Trump’s campaign pledge of completing 500 miles of barrier by next year’s election. …With the president demanding weekly updates on construction progress and tweeting out drone footage of new fencing through the desert, administration officials have said they are under extraordinary pressure to meet Trump’s construction goals. … The Department of Homeland Security has taken advantage of a 2005 law to waive several federal requirements — including the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the Endangered Species Act — that could have slowed and possibly stopped the barrier’s advance in the stretch in Arizona.”

— You can read the 123-page report for yourself here.

— Speaking of the immigration wars, the Trump administration continues to take dramatic steps to make the United States a less hospitable destination for those who hope to seek refuge here.

Along the Texas border, for instance, the Trump administration has set up tent courts for virtual asylum hearings. The administration has budgeted up to $155 million to operate five temporary courts along the length of the border under the Migrant Protection Protocols initiative. The goal is to replace the asylum processing model that Trump has disparaged as “catch and release.”

“By routing migrants directly from official border crossings into the adjacent court complex, U.S. authorities can fulfill the obligation to give asylum seekers access to the U.S. court system without giving them physical access to the United States,” Nick reports from Laredo, Tex. “So far this year, at least 42,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico under the MPP program, and a growing number have opted to return to Central America instead of waiting. The acting Homeland Security officials who visited the Laredo courts Tuesday defended them as a lawful and appropriate response to a border crisis that has pushed illegal crossings this year to their highest levels in more than a decade.”

— The Trump administration also wants to increase fees nine-fold for immigrants appealing their deportations, making the process unaffordable for many. In a draft Department of Justice regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News, officials propose that immigrants pay $975 to request an appeal of an immigration judge’s ruling and $895 to request a case be reopened or reconsidered with the Board of Immigration Appeals. “Currently, the fee to apply for each of these requests is $110,” BuzzFeed notes. “Experts believe, if enacted, the increases will impact certain immigrants’ very ability to obtain legal status and protections.” The proposed regulations will require a 60-day comment period before they can go into effect.

— The White House yesterday quietly fired John Mitnick, the general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. Personnel drive policy. The general counsel is a key job at DHS because so many lawsuits against Trump’s immigration policies are pending.

“The White House this year has turned [DHS]— which oversees securing the country’s borders, disaster relief efforts and addressing domestic terrorism and cybersecurity threats — into a revolving door of officials, creating a void of permanent leadership,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Mitnick’s ouster was prompted by the White House general counsel’s office as opposed to Stephen Miller, who has been a main force behind previous homeland security firings, an administration official said. But two other people briefed on the events disputed this account, saying that the counsel’s office had tried to keep Mr. Mitnick where he was.”

A top Democrat on the House Oversight and Reform Committee demanded Wednesday that the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) appear before the panel.

His request comes after lower-ranking officials refused to answer most questions during testimony before the committee earlier this month.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, chairman of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, wrote to Ken Cuccinelli and Matthew Albence, the acting heads of USCIS and ICE, respectively, formally requesting they testify before the subcommittee on Sept. 26.

Raskin panned what he called a “flagrant, last-minute breach of the agreement” to avoid committee subpoenas in exchange for making officials available to testify.

Cuccinelli and Albence had previously been requested to appear before the committee, but had reached an agreement to send lower-ranking officials instead.

But at the hearing this month, called in response to the administration’s decision to end deportation deferrals for critically ill children and their families, the officials sent by the two agencies repeatedly refused to answer member questions, citing ongoing litigation.

In his letter, Raskin cited an exchange he had with Daniel Renaud, the associate director of the Field Operations Directorate at USCIS.

“You can’t tell me there’s a new policy. You can’t tell me what motivated the new policy, and you can’t tell me what the new policy is. Is that a correct assessment of the situation?” asked Raskin.

“That is my testimony, sir, yes,” replied Renaud.

Raskin further complained that the administration officials failed to comply with requests made in a letter signed by Oversight Chairman Rep. Elijah CummingsElijah Eugene CummingsMajority of voters say federal officials staying at Trump hotels is a conflict of interest The Hill’s Morning Report – What is Trump’s next move on Iran? House committee launches investigation into Transportation Secretary Chao MORE (D-Md.) and more than 100 members of the House to follow up with their committee testimony.

“The Department’s actions are a clear breach of its agreement with the Committee,” wrote Raskin. “The Department’s rationale for refusing to answer questions from Congress has been rejected by the Supreme Court, and the Department’s stonewalling is obstructing our investigation.”

“We are going to end the raids which are terrorizing communities all across this country. We are going to impose a moratorium on deportations,” Mr. Sanders said Saturday at an event focused on Latino voters. “There are some things that a president can do with executive orders and some things you can’t.”

Critics of Mr. Sanders, including many conservatives, seized on the comments, saying such a deportation policy would be akin to having open borders. A spokeswoman for Mr. Sanders said the moratorium would be in place temporarily while an audit is completed.

Mr. Sanders’s current perch among the most immigration-friendly 2020 candidates differs sharply from his situation in his previous presidential bid. At the time, the Vermont lawmaker was forced to defend comments in which he described some forms of legal immigration as detrimental to American jobs, a sentiment echoed by President Trump as well as many labor unions.

Mr. Sanders opposes ICE raids and deportations because ‘immigrants make our communities and our economy stronger,’ a spokeswoman said. Photo: a mason/ice/handout/Shutterstock
Democrat Hillary Clinton criticized him during the 2016 primaries for helping to kill an immigration bill in 2007 that would have created legal status for millions of people in the country illegally. Mr. Sanders said the bill didn’t have sufficient protections for labor.

“If poverty is increasing, and if wages are going down,“ Mr. Sanders, then a freshman senator, told CNN in 2007, ”I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are right now.”

So far in 2020, Mr. Sanders’s rhetoric has hewed closer to the pro-immigration wing of his party, but his views appear unchanged. A spokeswoman for the Sanders campaign said he opposes ICE raids and deportations because he “believes that immigrants make our communities and our economy stronger.” She said, however, that he is calling for changes to visa programs because he believes large corporations “have exploited an underclass of guest workers.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this summer, Mr. Sanders said he wasn’t opposed to guest-worker programs, but he felt that Americans should be given first priority for jobs.

“Here we have in the state of Vermont … thousands of young people who are snowboarding, and they’re skiing, and they know how to do these things pretty well. And yet, if you go to some of the resorts, what you would find is that people from Europe and elsewhere were coming in as ski instructors,” Mr. Sanders said.

“If there is nobody who wants to do it, fine, you bring in people from elsewhere,” he said. “But you certainly make it clear that people in this country have first dibs on those jobs.”

His pushes to make it tougher for employers to bring in high-skilled foreign workers have been supported by a slate of labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, which has called for changes to the current guest-worker visa programs.

A Sanders administration would require higher wages for people receiving high-skilled H1-B visas and would make such visas portable so recipients don’t have to stay at one company to maintain their work status, according to his campaign. Mr. Sanders would also raise enforcement standards to make sure foreign-worker visas can be used only to fill gaps and not displace existing workers.

The Trump administration, since taking power in 2017, has changed the allocation process for H1-B visas, which are coveted by Silicon Valley companies, while reducing the number of visas secured through outsourcing companies.

Mr. Sanders and some other liberal Democrats voted to kill the 2007 immigration package, joining with most Senate Republicans. Two of Mr. Sanders’s rivals for the presidential nomination in 2020, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden, voted in favor of the legislation.

Mr. Sanders later voted for a bill to give people who came to the U.S. as minors legal status, and he supported a bipartisan 2013 immigration bill that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He also criticized the Obama administration for carrying out large-scale ICE raids and deportations.

Ali Noorani, executive director of centrist advocacy group America Is Better, said that Mr. Sanders is attempting to satisfy both immigration activists and labor but that he could struggle to get bipartisan support for his ideas if he is elected.

So far, Mr. Sanders appears to be appealing to both constituencies.

Adrian Reyna, strategy director for immigration group United We Dream, said Mr. Sanders’s deportation pause would offer immigrant families breathing room as policy makers “do the work of laying out the vision for the way the current immigration status quo should change.”

“We think it’s really important for the next president to take action to stop the pain that’s being caused in the immigrant communities,” Mr. Reyna said.

Joe Burkhimer, a union member and electrical lineman from Bucks County, Pa., said he supports limits on legal immigration because some trades worry about immigrants taking their jobs for lower wages.

But he said antiunion laws have hurt American workers most. “Immigrants aren’t the problem,” Mr. Burkhimer said.

—Michelle Hackman contributed to this article.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com. and Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com

Kal Penn took a two-year sabbatical from acting to work in President Barack Obama’s White House, so you would be forgiven for assuming that he’s trying to make a political point with his new television series, “Sunnyside.”

Penn is also a creator of this NBC sitcom, which premieres on Thursday and is titled after the neighborhood of the same name in Queens, the New York borough known as one of the most diverse places on earth. Penn plays a disgraced New York City councilman who tries to redeem his reputation by helping a ragtag group of immigrants navigate the United States citizenship process.

The premise seems timely in the Trump era, but “it was never meant to be a reaction to anything,” said Penn, 42, who started developing the series five years ago. “The topic of immigration goes back to the founding of our country. It is all of our stories.”

“As long as we’re mindful of that,” he added, “I’m not going to take anybody’s bait.”

Besides, said Penn, who was previously best known for his title role in the “Harold and Kumar” stoner movies, his intentions are more comic than didactic.

“I love things like Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show,’ but you don’t feel good about the world when you turn it off,” he explained recently, sipping Cabernet at a Hell’s Kitchen hotel bar. “When I was growing up, I loved shows like ‘Perfect Strangers,’ ‘Head of the Class’ and ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ When you turn off the TV, not only do you feel good, you feel like you spent time with your friends.”

Then, lifting his glass, he added, “Cheers!” in an unintentional reference to another feel-good sitcom and possible “Sunnyside” influence. In an interview, Penn discussed his earlier characters’ problematic names, his experiences in the White House — real and fictional — and more. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

ImageIn “Sunnyside,” Penn, center, is an ex-politician helping a group of would-be citizens played by, from left, Joel Kim Booster, Poppy Liu, Samba Schutte, Diana Maria Riva and Moses Storm.
In “Sunnyside,” Penn, center, is an ex-politician helping a group of would-be citizens played by, from left, Joel Kim Booster, Poppy Liu, Samba Schutte, Diana Maria Riva and Moses Storm.CreditColleen Hayes/NBC
What inspired you to create a sitcom for yourself?

About six years ago, I was on a show with Jerry O’Connell and Tony Shalhoub called “We Are Men.” It was very short-lived. The morning after the third episode aired, I got a call: “Hey, don’t come to work tomorrow.” The next day my manager said, “What’s your dream job?” I said, “This was it — I want to be on a network comedy.”

Then he asked me, “But if you were going to create a show, what would it be?” I said, “Thematically, this sounds cheesy, but I love making people laugh, and I love America. It would be great if we could do a show that makes people do both of those together.” So I started putting together a project like that.

You’re on NBC’s Thursday night schedule. It’s a different world — no pun intended — from the ’80s and ’90s, when having a slot there guaranteed 20 or 30 million viewers every week. Does it matter to you that you’re reaching a smaller audience these days?

We’re going to make it that big again! [Laughs.] No, what I like about the network space is you can bring people together in a way that you still can’t in streaming. Those services’ reach is restricted because of how much you have to pay a month for them.

You grew up in New Jersey. Why set this show in Sunnyside, Queens?

When I was a little kid, before Edison, N.J., was a hotbed of Indian culture, one Sunday a month, we’d pack up the station wagon and drive to Jackson Heights. My mom would go to the Indian grocery store there. It was always very diverse. I was looking for a neighborhood like that to set the show in, and Jackson Heights and Flushing are the two I know the best, but “Flushing” is a truly terrible title for a show. Sunnyside has the same demographics and is a better title than “Jackson Heights.”

Like your character, Garrett Modi, you’re the child of first-generation Indian immigrants. Your birth name was Kalpen Modi, which you shortened to Kal Penn for showbiz. Is this show autobiographical in any way?

Not really. I always like playing characters who are different from me. Kumar is way cooler than I’ll ever be. There are more comedic influences than real-life ones. I love Garrett and his sister Mallory’s names. When I went to name them, I went back through this long litany of beef people had with me about the names of characters I played. It started with the character I played in “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” Taj Mahal. That is unmistakably a very problematic name. It was a different time; we’ve moved past that. But when I got the job on “House,” they had written my role as Dr. Lawrence Kutner, and they said, “How do you feel about changing it to an Indian name?” I said “No, I auditioned for Lawrence Kutner and got it, and I want to play him.” When I started on the show, people said, “Why aren’t you playing a character named Dr. Samir Patel?” I get that we look to art forms for validation, and it means a lot to people. That said, it’s a no-win situation.

So Garrett’s parents came to America in the ’80s and they started watching “The Facts of Life” and thought Mrs. Garrett was very hard-working. Then they saw her on reruns of “Diff’rent Strokes” and were like, “Wait a second, she has two jobs? Our firstborn son has to be named after her!” Then they got into “Family Ties,” and Mallory is a slacker. Their high-performing daughter is named after Mallory, and she’s the one who’s done everything right. I just love that.

From left, Penn, John Cho and Malin Akerman in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.”CreditSophie Giraud/New Line Cinema
Network sitcoms “can bring people together in a way that you still can’t in streaming,” Penn said.CreditMiranda Barnes for The New York Times
How did your parents feel about using your real last name on “Sunnyside”?

My dad was not a fan at first. He said: “That’s a terrible idea. People are going to be confused. You used to work in politics. People might think it’s supposed to be you.” But he’s come around.

Were you always equally passionate about politics and acting?

No, my first love was always acting. I enjoyed the sabbatical I took, but you’re not going to see me running for Senate. When I was growing up, I would hear stories about how my grandparents had marched with Gandhi, but I never thought about that as politics. I thought of it as a weird story my family told. I had never been interested in politics.

Then, in 2007, there was a writers’ strike, and my “House” co-star Olivia Wilde invited me to an event for Obama. I really liked him, and I campaigned for three days in Iowa and was really excited. It was a small campaign at that point. We were way down in the polls. I wasn’t working, so I ended up campaigning in 26 other states. Then we won, and there was an opportunity to serve in the White House. What was I going to say, “No, I’d rather do another stoner movie?”

What was the transition like, going from acting to working in the Office of Public Engagement?

I would work on speeches and think to myself, “This needs to be more boring.” Because if I get a laugh, I was worried somebody from Politico would write, “Kumar brings down the house with American Opportunity Tax Credit speech.” That’s the wrong messaging. Then I came back to acting with a role on Season 8 of “How I Met Your Mother.” They moved so fast — the director, Pamela Fryman, was moving on after two takes. I thought: “I’m not funny anymore. I must be awful.” She said: “We’ve been here for eight years for a reason. I hired you for a reason, and I promise you if something wasn’t working, I would do another take.” It was all in my head.

Penn worked in the Obama White House for two years.CreditSaul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After that, what was it like acting and working as a political consultant on the D.C.-set drama “Designated Survivor”?

I initially said no, because I knew the narrative was going to be “Kal Penn goes from Barack Obama’s White House to Kiefer Sutherland’s White House.” Then I read the script and loved it, so I signed on. We had five showrunners in three years, and depending on the showrunner, my job was either to point out everything that was inaccurate, because they wanted it to be accurate, or point out everything that’s inaccurate, so they could lean into the inaccuracy because they weren’t making a documentary. It was interesting to field texts from my former White House colleagues about things that would never happen: “Oh really, dude?” I would tell them my job was not to make it more accurate. It was to give them the tools to make a choice.

Have you chosen a candidate to support in 2020 yet?

This is probably going to sound like a deflection, and I promise it’s not. I didn’t realize how much work putting your own show on the air is, and I’m very excited to be doing that. I helped Bernie Sanders out in the primaries and supported Hillary Clinton in the general election in 2016. I’m excited by a lot of the candidates. I like Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris. They all bring something unique. But I haven’t really had time to focus on it and make a choice.

Are you worried that people who don’t share your opinions won’t tune into “Sunnyside” because they assume it will have a liberal bias?

Not really. We’re at a time and a place where we all have our closely held political views, and that’s a great thing. But what I love about comedy is that, like sports and music to some extent, it’s one of the few things that still tends to bring people together.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 22, 2019, Section AR, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Kal Penn Just Wants You to Feel Good. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

While some politicians claim immigrants are responsible for bringing in crime, study after study shows that immigrants — both documented and undocumented — commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.

A new paper out of Florida State University substantiates that premise, and it does so by looking at something that previous research had left unexamined: recidivism.

Using data from the Florida Department of Corrections, the FSU study, published Sept. 18 in Justice Quarterly, compared the recidivism rates of foreign-born and native-born individuals formerly incarcerated for felonies and released from custody in Florida. The FSU researchers found immigrants were the ones less likely to commit another felony — by a sizable margin.

“There’s been a lot of prior empirical research on the relationship between immigration and crime, and most of the research has focused on original offending and arrests and incarceration. What we’ve seen from that research is that immigrants are just less criminally involved than non-immigrants,” said Marin Wenger, assistant professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at FSU, who co-authored the study. “We wanted to see if the same was true for recidivism.”

In “Immigration and Recidivism: What Is the Link?” researchers looked at a sample of 192,556 former Florida felons. Of those, 3,879, or 2 percent, were immigrants, while the rest were native-born. In comparing both groups’ recidivism outcomes, researchers found that 32% of nonimmigrants were reconvicted of a felony offense within three years of release, compared with just 19% of immigrants.

That result held when analyses were repeated to account for within one, two and five years of release.

“I think this just adds to the larger picture that has tried to dispel the myth of the criminal immigrant,” said Wenger. “You know, there’s a very charged public rhetoric about immigrants and the dangerousness and criminality of that group, and empirical research doesn’t support that.

“And so this study fits quite nicely into that larger narrative that any policy that is shaped around making communities safer is a little bit misinformed if it’s focusing on foreign-born individuals.”

To hone in on the link between recidivism and immigration, the researchers controlled for other characteristics that prior studies have found to be related to odds of reoffending. That included factors like gender, age, race and ethnicity, prior felony convictions and whether individuals had been labeled habitual offenders in Florida.

The paper does have its caveats.

Because the immigrant sample did not include foreign-born offenders who were transferred to immigration officials for detention or deportation (rather than released into a Florida community), foreigners with potentially higher chances of reoffending might be underrepresented. In addition, the data was from 2004 to 2011, so it doesn’t reflect the most up-to-date recidivism patterns.

“Because of more recent immigration policy, it’s possible that immigrants are more over-policed than they used to be, in which case they could be showing up in arrests and recidivism rates more so than in the past,” said Wenger. “But it’s an open question. We don’t have the answer to that because we don’t have more recent data.”

Looking forward, Wenger hopes the study leads to more efficient decision-making.

“I think that it’s important for our policies to be evidence-based because we don’t want our law enforcement officers and other criminal justice agents to waste resources,” she said. “We are in a time of very limited resources and so I think we should be focusing on the things that will actually translate into safer communities.

“What our research shows in combination with all this prior research on immigration and crime is that the immigrant community is not the danger. Focusing on them in policy is likely to lead to wasted resources.”

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach trails Democrat Barry Grissom by 10 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup for Kansas’ open Senate seat in 2020, according to internal GOP polling data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The previously unpublished findings reveal why some Republicans are deeply concerned that a Kobach candidacy could cost the party a Senate seat in Kansas—and why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pushing so hard for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former congressman from Wichita, to challenge Mr. Kobach for the GOP nomination.

“It’s laughable that anyone is taking seriously a poll on a hypothetical match-up conducted 18 months before the election and prior even to Secretary Kobach’s entry into the race,” said Steve Drake, Mr. Kobach’s campaign manager.

No Democrat has won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. But in a statewide Senate race between Mr. Kobach and Mr. Grissom, a former U.S. attorney, Mr. Grissom led Mr. Kobach, 52% to 42%, the poll shows. Every single other Republican tested in a general election scenario led the Democrat by at least eight points.

The poll reviewed by The Journal was conducted June 9-11 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. It surveyed 600 likely voters in Kansas, including an oversample of 150 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.

The poll found Mr. Kobach’s image rating underwater across the state, at 32% favorable vs. 50% unfavorable. And there was a strong intensity to voters’ negative reactions to his image, with 39% strongly unfavorable toward Mr. Kobach vs. 15% strongly favorable. Among independent voters, his image rating was a net 24 percentage points weaker than President Trump’s.

The poll also showed a generic Republican beating a generic Democrat for Senate in Kansas, 44% to 36%—suggesting that Mr. Kobach underperformed the generic ballot.

“Those claimed favorable/unfavorable numbers are not consistent with other polls, which indicates that the sample of this June poll was not a representative sample,” Mr. Drake said.

An outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, Mr. Kobach drew controversy during his two terms as Kansas’ top election official for pursuing contentious measures to curb supposed voter fraud.

He announced a Senate run in July, a year after losing the Kansas governorship to Democrat Laura Kelly by 5 percentage points.

The polling reinforces the fears of some Republicans in Kansas and Washington that Mr. Kobach could put their party’s Senate majority at risk should he win the GOP nomination. There now are 53 Republicans in the Senate. If Democrats win the White House, they’d have to pick up three seats from Republicans to take control of the 100-member chamber. If Mr. Trump wins re-election, Democrats would need to net four seats, since Vice President Mike Pence would hold the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

With a handful of GOP-held Senate seats already considered competitive in states such as Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina, Republicans don’t want to have to spend money and resources defending the Kansas seat as well.

But Mr. Kobach, who appears regularly on Fox News and writes a column for Breitbart News Network, remains popular with his conservative base in Kansas and across the country.

Conservative author Ann Coulter and billionaire investor Peter Thiel are hosting a fundraiser for Mr. Kobach in New York City on Wednesday evening.

“There are people from all over the country—Texas, Oregon, California, Florida—attending the fundraiser,” said Mr. Drake in a statement to the Journal earlier this week. “It’s turning out to be quite a big event.”

Jerid Kurtz, a representative for the Grissom campaign, expressed optimism about the race.

“Barry Grissom is the strongest Democratic candidate to run for the U.S. Senate in Kansas in a generation, and he looks forward to a General Election race against extremist Kris Kobach,” Mr. Kurtz said Tuesday.

New Mexico’s Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday unveiled an ambitious new plan that would provide free college tuition to all in-state students.

The plan would apply to students regardless of the family’s income level, a departure from similar plans in other states, which are geared toward low-income students. New Mexico’s plan would apply to students at two and four-year colleges regardless of their immigration status.

Ms. Grisham called the program “an absolute game-changer” for the state.

What are potential the benefits or drawbacks of free college for residents of New Mexico? Join the conversation below.

“Higher education in this state, a victim of the recession, has been starved in recent years. We are pivoting to a robust reinvestment in higher learning—specifically and directly in our students,” Ms. Grisham said at the 2019 New Mexico Higher Education Summit, where she made the announcement.

If passed, the plan, which is called New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship, would affect an estimated 55,000 students across the state’s 29 public higher-education institutions. The plan would also apply to adults returning to school.

Although Democrats control both houses of the state’s legislature, it is unclear if the plan will pass.

State Sen. Gregg Fulfer, a Republican, believes the state needs to “fix what’s broke” before creating new plans that require new sources of money that have to be sustained over time. “I think with the education crisis we are in, this will be hard to pass in the legislative session coming and therefore will need to be looked at closely,” Mr. Fulfer said.

Tripp Stelnicki, the governor’s director of communications, said he was optimistic the plan would be approved.

New Mexico State Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez said the new plan would help create a much needed skilled workforce and address poverty and other social issues in the state. “It is not a done deal, but I know it will be very seriously considered by legislators,” Ms. Lopez said.

If the legislature passes the plan, New Mexico would join 20 states that have similar programs, including New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, which provides free tuition to students attending state colleges for families making up to $125,000.

Write to Talal Ansari at Talal.Ansari@wsj.com

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JACKSON, Miss. – The Guatemalan couple crossed the Rio Grande, stepped into Texas and gazed out across miles of farmland.

Behind them, in their hometown of Comitancillo, was a 2-year-old daughter with expensive medical bills. The young couple planned to leave the girl with a relative and travel north to find work in central Mississippi chicken plants. They told each other they would send money for their daughter’s hospital expenses and eventually save enough to move back to Guatemala’s highlands and build a home.

The couple had spent days riding buses through Mexico and hid from federales in a forest. For the next two days, they hiked deeper into Texas. They had no food or water. They paused at a horse trough to drink the dirty green liquid. They worried for their lives, but they were just as concerned that border agents would catch them.

Their next goal was Houston, where they knew someone who would drive them to a new life in Mississippi, complete with a job at a chicken plant.

The woman in this story, who lives in the Carthage area, is one of dozens of people the Clarion Ledger interviewed since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided seven poultry plants in central Mississippi, arresting 680 people in what authorities called the largest single-state immigration crackdown in a decade.

She and others provided an in-depth look at how the poultry industry played an integral part in transforming central Mississippi into a home for undocumented residents.

The couple’s journey eight years ago is similar to that of thousands of undocumented people from Mexico, Guatemala and other Central American countries who have come to work in Mississippi’s poultry industry.

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They helped build poultry into Mississippi’s richest agricultural commodity, which brings in more than $2.5 billion a year. They helped companies such as Koch Foods and Peco Foods – both of which were raided last month but face no charges – rake in billions in revenue.

How it all began: ‘We are gonna form the Hispanic Project’
Luis Cartagena would never have come to Mississippi from Chile if his brother-in-law weren’t so good at tennis.

And the wave of Latino immigration might never have come here – or at least been delayed – had it not been for Cartagena.

His brother-in-law, Tito Echiburu, arrived to play tennis at Mississippi State University in the 1960s. Working as a tennis pro, Echiburu befriended John Rogers, whose family owned the B.C. Rogers chicken processing plant. Echiburu eventually became CFO at the plant.

Cartagena’s sister and parents came to Mississippi next, and Cartagena joined them in 1990, after waiting seven years to legally immigrate.

Despite holding a history degree from a university in Chile, his first job was working in the cooler of the B.C. Rogers plant.

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Besides Cartagena and Echiburu, there were very few Latinos in central Mississippi – but that was about to change.

The chicken plant had hundreds of open jobs and struggled to hire American workers, when John Rogers saw a program on PBS about unemployment in Miami.

Cartagena said his boss approached him and said, “OK, Luis, I will consider that you’re ready.”

“For what?”

“We are gonna form the Hispanic Project. … You’re going to be the coordinator,” Cartagena said his boss told him.

Luis Cartagena moved to the USA from Chile with his dog, Tuto, in the 1990s, following his siblings and parents.
Luis Cartagena moved to the USA from Chile with his dog, Tuto, in the 1990s, following his siblings and parents. (Photo: Sarah Warnock, Clarion Ledger)

In 1993, Cartagena began flying to Brownsville and McAllen in Texas and to Miami, where he would go to unemployment offices and interview Latinos.

Cartagena would fly back to Mississippi, and busloads of new hires would arrive days later.

Workers were provided a few weeks of free rent, beds and a sheet, Cartagena said. B.C. Rogers had 166 apartments for Latino workers.

“I offered them a job,” Cartagena said. “I offered them where to live. A lot of people like it. They came, but finally, when they start working in the plant – it’s a hard life, working the plants – a lot of them quit.”

Are the jobs really so bad most Americans won’t do them?
For years, chicken plants struggled to fill jobs. The most-stated reason is the jobs are so difficult, dirty and low-paying that most Americans don’t want them.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration noted poultry workers face a slew of hazards. Some such as long hours, loud noises, dangerous machinery and dangerous chemicals are found in other industries. Some are unique to the poultry industry, such as floors that are often slick, not just from water used in processing but from raw chicken scraps.

Poultry workers suffer serious injuries on the job at a rate almost twice that of private industry as a whole, according to OSHA.

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How raids were planned: ICE used ankle monitors, informants to plan immigration raids where 680 people were arrested

The industry is so tough and has such poor wages that many new hires leave within weeks or even days.

In one role known as “live hang,” workers grab live chickens by the feet and attach them to moving metal hooks, often being attacked and defecated on by the desperate birds.

In the “deboner” role, workers use a knife to slice through various parts of the chicken and remove bones.

Cartagena said he hired about 700 people in his first year as a coordinator for the Hispanic Project, and about half made it more than a few weeks before quitting.

But Latinos kept coming for jobs and started to put down roots.

After 1993, Cartagena said, he no longer had to fly to unemployment offices to recruit Latino workers. The word was out, and prospective employees showed up, a trend that continues today.

Finding a job: ‘The jobs are not so hard like they are in our country’
Within three days of arriving in Mississippi in 1999 – weak, tired and with nothing but the clothes on his back – a 19-year-old from Guatemala found work at a Tyson chicken processing plant.

The man, who asked to be identified as E. Miranda because he entered the USA without permission, had a friend in Carthage who worked in a chicken plant.

Miranda gew up in a home made of dirt and wood with no electricity, where his entire family slept in a single room. His friend described an entirely different existence in America and loaned him about $4,000, so Miranda could pay smugglers and come to Mississippi.

“He said that here in the United States, the jobs are not so hard like they are in our country. You get more pay, you get more money working here,” Miranda said.

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Miranda went with his friend to a Tyson plant, received an ID badge and started working as a chicken cutter.

After his first day on the cutting floor, his arms were sore, his hands hurt, but he didn’t quit.

“That was the reason we were here,” he said. “We continue working, even if it was so hard.”

Cartagena, coordinator for the Hispanic Project, said that by the time Miranda arrived in Mississippi, several chicken processing plants were competing for Latino workers.

Plants would pay 10 cents more an hour to poach Latino workers from competing plants, he said.

Cartagena said he hired only documented workers. He said B.C. Rogers trained him to detect fake documents, and he personally checked to make sure everything was legal.

Obtaining fake documents: ‘It’s like they’re selling fruit’
By the mid-to-late ’90s, chicken plants in the area seemed to stop caring about documentation, Cartagena said.

“Things start changing,” he said. “They start accepting whatever (documentation).”

Fraudulent documents were easy to come by. Social Security cards and fake IDs were sold at laundromats and convenience stores in the communities surrounding food processing plants, according to law enforcement affidavits and interviews with undocumented workers.

One woman, who asked not to be identified, said it used to be that immigrants could go to a Walmart parking lot in Forest and people would be there asking, “Do you need papers?”

“They don’t hide. It’s like they’re selling fruit,” she said.

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The fake IDs used by immigrants are unsophisticated, said Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee, who was chief of police in Forest before being elected sheriff.

Often the age, weight and height on the card do not match up with the individual, he said. Lee said the average person can look at an ID and quickly realize it’s a fake.

“This is not like a James Bond, change-your-ID-type of operation. This is pretty much taking advantage of your own folks. They charge you $500 and say, ‘Here’s your ID and Social Security number.’ And it’s pretty much printed on card stock, regular card stock,” Lee said.

Romeo Ramirez’s daughter, 9-month-old Elizabeth, was breastfed until her mother was arrested by immigration officials during raids in Mississippi on Aug. 7.
Romeo Ramirez’s daughter, 9-month-old Elizabeth, was breastfed until her mother was arrested by immigration officials during raids in Mississippi on Aug. 7. (Photo: Alissa Zhu/Clarion Ledger)

Romeo Ramirez, an undocumented worker in Leake County, described contractors who helped arrange papers and jobs – for a price. The prospective employees paid less than $100 up front and agreed to contribute 25% to 50% of their wages to the contractors for a set amount of time.

Others, such as Miranda, described showing up for work – no questions asked and no documents required.

Small towns transformed by growth of immigrant community
From 1990 to 2000, the Latino population increased by more than 1,000% in Scott County, which researchers call the “home of Mississippi’s Poultry industry.” It’s roughly doubled since 2000, Census figures show.

Increasingly, immigrants to central Mississippi are from Guatemala, community members said, where jobs are scarce and pay is low. Of the more than 300 people not immediately released after the recent ICE raids, nearly three-fourths are from Guatemala.

Yolanda Soto, from Mexico, moved to Forest in 1996. She followed her brother’s husband, who found work in the town.

Back then, Soto said, there were only a handful of Latino families in the area. Few of the native residents spoke Spanish, and she didn’t speak English. If she had to go to a doctor, her husband had to write a note in English explaining what was wrong.

“There were no tortillas in the stores, no chiles, nothing,” she said. “I cried all the time because I wanted to go back home.”

Yolanda Soto, left, and Dorcas Diego help coordinate donations for families affected by immigration raids Aug. 7.
Yolanda Soto, left, and Dorcas Diego help coordinate donations for families affected by immigration raids Aug. 7. (Photo: Alissa Zhu/Clarion Ledger)

She knew things had changed when she was clicking through TV channels and discovered the cable provider had added a Spanish-language station. She marveled as Mexican restaurants opened, grocery stores with Spanish names appeared and whole sections of Forest were filled with Spanish speakers.

Two of Soto’s brothers-in-law came and found jobs in plants. Then her cousin came, then her cousin’s sister-in-law, then Soto’s sister, then her mother and father-in-law.

“Now I don’t want to go back to my country,” she said. “I want to stay here.”

From a path to citizenship to polarization
In the mid-2000s, it looked as though undocumented immigrants such as the Latinos in central Mississippi might become U.S. citizens – or at least be left alone.

Then the issue became increasingly polarized and politicized.

President George W. Bush had a plan to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants, but senators from his own party killed his comprehensive immigration bill in 2007.

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In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour supported immigration changes that would provide undocumented workers the opportunity to remain legally, citing their importance to local, state and national economies.

After losing the presidential election in 2012, the national Republican Party wrote an “autopsy” that recommended members “embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.”

President Donald Trump won office in 2016 by doing the opposite: criticizing immigrants, particularly Latinos who had crossed the southern border.

Under the Trump administration, ICE reported quadrupling workplace investigations and employee paperwork audits last year and made 2,304 workplace arrests of undocumented immigrants, up from 311 the year before.

Forty-nine managers were convicted, fewer than the prior year, according to The Associated Press.

The size of the raids has steadily grown, including 21 arrests at 7-Eleven stores, 97 people detained in a raid of a Tennessee meatpacking plant and 280 taken into custody at a Texas technology company.

Last month, federal immigration officials targeted Mississippi.

The raid: ‘We’re hungry, the bills are piling up and we’re all out of work’
Of the 680 people arrested Aug. 7, 300 were released within 27 hours. More have been let out on bond, some equipped with ankle monitors. Though no longer behind bars, they face immigration court hearings. Some have been accused of federal felonies, mostly related to the use of fraudulent Social Security cards.

No charges have been brought against managers or owners of the companies that were raided.

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Maria Elodia Anton Ramirez, a mother of four and no relation to Romeo Ramirez, said she no longer feels safe in Forest after the raids. She followed her sister from Guatemala to Forest in 2011, joined a church and sent her kids to school.

Ramirez, her 22-year-old daughter and her husband were all arrested by immigration officials. She and her daughter were soon released, but they lost their jobs, can’t find work and are waiting for an immigration hearing.

“That’s the worry – we’re hungry, the bills are piling up and we’re all out of work,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez is among hundreds of people who are unemployed in the wake of the operation.

“The immigration raids broke a community,” Cartagena said.

Moving forward: ‘Helping this country … to be great’
Miranda, the man who paid smugglers to get him here from Guatemala, said his wife was arrested during the raids and released on a $3,000 bond after nearly a month in detention.

While locked up, she didn’t eat well, was cold and cried every day, he said.

Miranda had to stop working to take care of their three children. He seemed most concerned about how the raids affected one of his sons.

According to Miranda, the boy saw Trump talking on the news a year ago about a zero-tolerance policy toward undocumented immigrants. The child told his parents he could not deal with the situation and threatened to kill himself. Miranda said he and his wife took the boy to a psychologist for treatment.

On Aug. 7, the child screamed and wept when Miranda told him what happened to his mother.

Even so, “I love American people. I love America,” Miranda said. “That’s why we are here.”

Miranda said he doesn’t understand why people think undocumented immigrants get things for free. The opposite is true, he said.

They pay sales taxes when they shop at Walmart. They pay income tax when the chicken plants withhold money from their paychecks. Miranda said he paid more than $1,000 in property tax to Leake County on the ranch-style home he owns on a quiet dead-end street in Carthage.

But he can’t file for a tax refund. He’s not receiving any public benefits. And he can’t qualify for Medicaid.

“We been spending our life here, and we’re helping this country – like the president says – to be great,” Miranda said.

Follow Alissa Zhu, Giacomo Bologna, Luke Ramseth, Justin Vicory, Alan Gomez and Rebecca Morin on Twitter: @AlissaZhu, @GBolognaCL, @lramseth, @justinvicory, @alangomez and @RebeccaMorin_