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Tag: Border security

  • Pandemic-related asylum restrictions known as Title 42 expire, straining US immigration system

    Pandemic-related asylum restrictions known as Title 42 expire, straining US immigration system

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    EL PASO, Texas — As pandemic-era asylum restrictions ended early Friday, migrants in northern Mexico faced more uncertainties about a new online system for appointments to seek asylum in the U.S. Some migrants still waded apprehensively into the Rio Grande, defying officials who shouted for them to turn back, while elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border people hunched over cell phones trying to access an appointment app that may change their future.

    President Joe Biden’s administration introduced the new asylum rules in a bid to get asylum-seekers to stop coming across the border illegally by reviving and sharpening pre-pandemic penalties and creating new legal pathways to asylum that aim to cut out unscrupulous smugglers.

    The transition to the new system unfolded in the night amid legal challenges and last-ditch efforts by migrants to cross a border fortified with barbed wire and troops.

    A federal judge in Florida dealt a potentially serious legal setback to the plan by temporarily blocking the administration’s attempt to release migrants more quickly when Border Patrol holding stations are full.

    At Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, migrant families — with some parents holding children — hesitated only briefly as the deadline passed before entering the waters of the Rio Grande from Mexico, clutching cell phones above the water to light the way toward the U.S.

    U.S. authorities shouted for the migrants to turn back.

    “Be careful with the children,” an official shouted through a megaphone. “It is especially dangerous for the children.”

    Separately, at an outdoor encampment of migrants beside a border bridge in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, cell phones were alight as migrants attempted to book an asylum appointment online through an app administered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    “There’s no other way to get in,” said Venezuelan Carolina Ortiz, accompanied by her husband and children, ages 1 and 4. Others in the camp had the same plan: keep trying the app.

    The expired rule, known as Title 42, was in place since March 2020. It allowed border officials to quickly return asylum seekers back over the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

    While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.

    At the U.S. border with Tijuana, as Title 42 expired, there was no visible reaction among hundreds of migrants who were in U.S. custody between two border walls, many of them for days with little food. They slept on the ground under bright lights in cool spring air. Shelters across Tijuana were filled with an estimated 6,000 migrants.

    It was not clear how many migrants were on the move or how long the surge might last. By Thursday evening, the flow seemed to be slowing in some locations, but it was not clear why, or whether crossings would increase again.

    A U.S. official reported the Border Patrol stopped some 10,000 migrants on Tuesday — nearly twice the average daily level from March and only slightly below the 11,000 figure that authorities have said is the upper limit of what they expect after Title 42 ends.

    More than 27,000 people were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, the official said.

    “Our buses are full. Our planes are full,” said Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner in Brownsville, as recent arrivals headed to locations across the U.S.

    The administration hopes that a new system will be more orderly, and help some migrants to seek asylum in Canada or Spain instead of the U.S. But Biden has conceded the border will be chaotic for a while. Immigrant advocacy groups have threatened legal action. And migrants fleeing poverty, gangs and persecution in their homelands are still desperate to reach U.S. soil at any cost.

    Holding facilities along the border already were far beyond capacity. But late Thursday, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, an appointee of President Donald Trump, halted the administration’s plan to begin releasing migrants with notices to report to an immigration office in 60 days when holding centers reach 125% capacity, or where people are held an average of 60 hours. The quick releases were to also be triggered when authorities stop 7,000 migrants along the border in a day.

    In a statement, Customs and Border Protection said it would comply with the court order, while calling it a “harmful ruling that will result in unsafe overcrowding … and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants.”

    Weatherell blocked the releases for two weeks and scheduled a May 19 hearing on whether to extend his order.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had already warned of more crowded Border Patrol facilities to come.

    “I cannot overstate the strain on our personnel and our facilities,” he told reporters Thursday.

    On Wednesday, Homeland Security announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, or who did not apply online, to qualify for asylum, with few exceptions. It also introduced curfews with GPS tracking for families released in the U.S. before initial asylum screenings.

    Minutes before the new rule took effect, advocacy groups sued to block it.

    The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco by the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and other groups, alleges the Biden administration “doubled down” on a policy proposed by President Donald Trump that the same court rejected. The Biden administration has said its new rule is substantially different.

    The administration also said it is beefing up the removal of migrants found unqualified to stay in the U.S. on flights like those that sent nearly 400 migrants home to Guatemala from the U.S. on Thursday.

    Among them was Sheidi Mazariegos, 26, who arrived with her 4-year-old son just eight days after being detained near Brownsville.

    “I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter, I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie,” she said. Smugglers got her to Matamoros and put the two on a raft. They were quickly apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

    Mazariegos said she made the trek because she is poor and hoped to reunite with her sisters living in the U.S.

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador noted an uptick in smugglers at his country’s southern border offering to take people to the United States, and said they were telling migrants the U.S. border was open.

    At the same time, the administration has introduced expansive new legal pathways into the U.S.

    Up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport. Processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. Up to 1,000 can enter daily though land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on an online app.

    At shelters in northern Mexico, many migrants chose not to rush to the border and waited for existing asylum appointments or hopes of reserving one online.

    At the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter in Tijuana, hundreds of migrants bided their time. Daisy Bucia, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter arrived at the shelter over three months ago from Mexico’s Michoacán state fleeing death threats, and have an asylum appointment Saturday in California.

    Bucia read on social media that pandemic-era restrictions were ending at the U.S.-Mexico border, but wasn’t sure if it was true and preferred to cross with certainty later.

    “What people want more than anything is to confuse you,” Bucia said.

    ___

    Gonzalez reported from Brownsville, Texas; Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico. Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Christopher Sherman in Mexico City; Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico; Maria Verza in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Suman Naishadham in Tijuana, Mexico contributed to this report.

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  • Some scenes from the US-Mexico border, where immigration rules are set to change

    Some scenes from the US-Mexico border, where immigration rules are set to change

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    From El Paso and Ciudad Juarez to San Diego and Tijuana, migrants were massing Thursday along some sections of the U.S.-Mexico border in a last attempt to cross into the United States in the hours before the pandemic-era health rule known as Title 42 ends.

    Some migrants who have traveled from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Central America fear that it could be harder for them to stay on U.S. soil once the restrictions are lifted.

    Here are some of the scenes playing out along the 1,950-mile (3,140-kilometer) international boundary:

    ___

    María José Durán, a 24-year-old student from Venezuela, was on the verge of tears as she sat on a riverbank in Matamoros, Mexico.

    Mexican immigration officials were trying to move migrants to an improvised camp and away from a spot where they could wade across the Rio Grande.

    Durán said she dropped out of college when her parents could no longer afford it and set out for the U.S. with a group of friends and relatives. They crossed the treacherous Darien Gap dividing Colombia and Panama and then a half-dozen more countries before arriving at the U.S. border.

    “I don’t know what to think now, having made such a difficult journey to now find ourselves with this,” she said, motioning toward the opposite shore where at least a dozen Texas state troopers with rifles stood behind concertina wire.

    From the Mexico side, Texas National Guard members could be seen reinforcing a stretch of razor wire to keep migrants out.

    Later, Durán could be seen walking along the levee with other migrants who had crossed the Rio Grande and passed the barbed wire.

    ___

    Hundreds of migrants lined up next to the border wall in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were still crossing over Thursday morning and being received by the U.S. Border Patrol. The numbers were notably lower than in recent days.

    Ecuadorians Washington Javier Vaca and his wife, Paulina Congo, along with their two children, ages 14 and 7, knew nothing about the change in rules.

    “And now will it be better or worse for us?” asked Congo. “We asked for asylum in Mexico and after four months they denied us.”

    A Salvadoran man who gave his name as David moved away from the border and back into Ciudad Juarez for fear of being deported.

    ___

    Authorities in the remote desert community of Yuma, Arizona, expressed alarm after the average daily number of migrant arrivals grew this week from 300 to 1,000.

    Hundreds who entered the Yuma area by crossing the Colorado River early Thursday surrendered to border agents, who later loaded adults and children onto buses.

    Mayor Doug Nicholls asked that the federal government declare a national disaster so that Federal Emergency Management Agency resources and National Guard troops can be rushed to his and other small border communities.

    Most migrants are transported to shelters operated by nonprofit organizations farther away from the border, but border officials will release them into communities if enough transportation isn’t available. Nicholls said officials have already told him they plan to release 141 processed migrants in Yuma County on Friday.

    “The question keeps coming up: ‘What now?’ I’ve been asking that question for two years, with no answers,” said Nicholls. “We are at a situation we’ve never been at before.”

    ___

    Hundreds of migrants who have been waiting days for a chance to apply for asylum lined up Thursday along the towering steel bollards separating Tijuana from San Diego.

    At one point a U.S. Border Patrol agent bent over and talked to a woman who fainted on the dusty ground.

    Others chose not not to crowd the border, instead remaining at shelters in Tijuana to wait for existing asylum appointments or trying to get them online. There were hundreds in the bright yellow buildings of the Agape Mision Mundial shelter, as more arrived at the metal gate with little more than paperwork and a few belongings.

    Daisy Bucia, 37, arrived at the shelter over three months ago with her 15-year-old daughter after fleeing Mexico’s Michoacan state due to death threats she received. The two were waiting to take a bus to the inland city of Mexicali on Saturday for an asylum appointment across the border in Calexico, California.

    ___

    Leaders of nonprofit organizations that assist asylum seekers away from the border in Arizona say they are as ready as possible for the new scenario.

    “We’ll put our best foot forward and approach this with every resource available,” said Teresa Cavendish, executive director of the Tucson shelter Casa Alitas, the state’s largest. “But it may not be enough.”

    Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona runs Casa Alitas’ new 300-bed facility for men, as well as four other locations that also temporarily house women, families and vulnerable people for a combined capacity of over 1,000 beds.

    David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, who visited the organization’s Welcome Center in Phoenix this week, expressed confidence in the agency’s ability to handle any increase in asylum seekers there. The 340-bed shelter was at less than half capacity.

    “The challenge can be managed as long as it is done in an organized and humane manner,” Miliband said.

    Beth Strano, engagement manger for the center in a quiet south Phoenix neighborhood, said: “We served 50,000 people last year and 38,000 people the year before that without any negative impact to our clients or community.”

    ___

    Smugglers helped Guatemalan Sheidi Mazariegos and her 4-year-old son get to Matamoros, Mexico, where she and the child crossed the Rio Grande on a raft.

    But Border Patrol agents took the pair into custody a week ago near Brownville, Texas. On Thursday, the 26-year-old and her son arrived back in Guatemala on one of two flights carrying a total of 387 migrants.

    “I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter,” said Mazariegos. “I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie.”

    ___

    Aylin Guevara, 45, hurried her steps as she walked through the scorching desert of Ciudad Juarez toward the border.

    She was accompanied by her two children, ages 16 and 5, and her husband. The family fled their coastal city in Colombia after receiving death threats and hoped to seek refuge in the U.S.

    After spending the previous night in a hotel, they were eager to get to the border — “to get in and go with the help of God and baby Jesus,” Guevara said.

    But less than a day before the end of Title 42, when they arrived, a U.S. immigration officer said they could not pass.

    “Not anymore, it’s over,” he told them in a firm voice, instructing them to go to bridges 10 miles (16 kilometers) to their left or right.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico, María Verza in Ciudad Juarez, Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Suman Naishadham in Tijuana contributed to this report. Snow reported from Phoenix.

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  • ‘Now or never’: Migrants rush to US border ahead of Title 42 expiration

    ‘Now or never’: Migrants rush to US border ahead of Title 42 expiration

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    MATAMOROS, Mexico — Migrants rushed across the border hours before pandemic-related asylum restrictions were to expire Thursday, fearing that new policies would make it far more difficult to gain entry into the United States.

    In a move to clear out overwhelmed holding facilities, Border Patrol agents were told Wednesday to begin releasing some migrants with instructions to appear at an immigration office in the United States within 60 days, according to a U.S. official. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and provided information to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

    The Biden administration has been unveiling measures to replace Title 42, which suspended rights to seek asylum since March 2020 on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

    On Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, to qualify for asylum. It also introduced curfews with GPS tracking for families released in the U.S. before initial asylum screenings.

    In Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, migrants arrived steadily on Wednesday, stripping down before descending a steep bank clutching plastic bags filled with clothes. They slowly waded into the river, one man holding a baby in an open suitcase on his head.

    On the U.S. side, they put on dry clothing and picked their way through concertina wire. Many surrendered to authorities, hoping to be released to stay legally while pursuing their cases in backlogged immigration courts, which takes years.

    William Contreras of Venezuela said Title 42 was favorable to people of his wracked South American country, having heard that many before him were released in the United States.

    “What we understand is that they won’t be letting anyone else in,” said Contreras’ friend, Pablo, who declined to give his last name because he planned to cross the border illegally. “That’s the reason for our urgency to cross through the border today.”

    The Border Patrol stopped about 10,000 migrants on Tuesday, one of its busiest days ever, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. That’s nearly double the daily average of about 5,200 in March, the latest publicly available data, and close to the 11,000 that U.S. officials have predicted is the upper limit of a surge they anticipate after Title 42.

    More than 27,000 people were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, the official said, well above capacity. In March 8,600 were in custody.

    Border Patrol agents were ordered Wednesday to begin releasing migrants in any border sector that reached 125% of its holding capacity with instructions to report to an immigration office within 60 days. They were also told to start the releases if the average time in custody exceeded 60 hours or if 7,000 migrants were taken into custody across the entire border in any one day.

    In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, some migrant shelters had empty beds as migrants abandoned them to cross into the U.S. Enrique Valenzuela, who coordinates migrant relief efforts for Chihuahua state, said the city’s migrant shelter population was half the nearly 3,000 staying there a few weeks ago.

    On Thursday, about 400 migrants huddled in strong winds whipping up the sand on the Rio Grande riverbank east of El Paso between groups of Texas National Guard soldiers constructing concertina wire barriers. A couple from Colombia approached the concertina wire asking if they could start a fire because a 10-year old was shaking in the desert cold. Most migrants huddled together under thin blankets. Major Sean Storrud of the Texas National Guard said his troops have built 17.4 miles (28 kilometers) of wire barriers in that area in an effort to reduce massive crossings and have explained to migrants the consequences of crossing illegally.

    “The migrants don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Storrud said.

    While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.

    At the same time, the administration has introduced expansive new legal pathways into the U.S. Up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport. Processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. Up to 1,000 can enter daily though land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on an online app.

    In San Diego, more than 100 migrants, many of them Colombian families, slept under plastic tarps between two border walls, watched over by Border Patrol agents who had nowhere to take them for processing.

    Albino Leon, 51, bought chicken from Tijuana vendors through slats in the wall bordering San Diego because the cookies that agents gave him, his wife and daughter left them hungry. News that Title 42 was ending prompted the family to make the journey now.

    “With the changes they are making to the laws, it’s now or never,” said Leon, who flew to Mexico from Colombia and got past a first border wall to reach U.S. soil.

    While U.S. officials predict more crossings after Title 42 ends at 11:59. p.m. EDT Thursday — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the border will be “chaotic for a while” — some were unsure. Soraya Vasquez, deputy director of Al Otro Lado, an advocacy group active in Tijuana, said crossings might fall immediately but migration would persist.

    Miguel Meza, head of migrant programs for Catholic Relief Services, which has 26 migrant shelters in Mexico, estimates there are about 55,000 migrants in border cities across from the United States. More arrive daily from the south, as well as migrants expelled by the U.S. back to Mexico.

    Carmen Josefina Characo, a Venezuelan woman who arrived in Matamoros with her adult daughter, said she was determined to keep trying on a U.S. government mobile app to win a spot to enter the U.S. at a land crossing. Demand has far outstripped supply, exasperating many new arrivals.

    “People who just arrive start hearing the stories of others who have been here longer and they start getting alarmed. ‘Oh, you’ve been here for four months. Well, I just got here and I’m going to cross,’” Characo said.

    Migrants have strained some U.S. cities over the last year.

    Denver began seeing well over 100 migrants a day arrive on buses last week, activating an emergency operations center. The city is scrambling for shelter space.

    “The numbers are overwhelming,” said Alan Salazar, chief of staff to Mayor Michael Hancock.

    Salazar estimated about 9,000 migrants have passed through Denver since late fall, when the city suddenly became a popular stop for Venezuelans and others.

    Elías Guerra, 20, came to Denver last week after hearing it was a welcoming place where he could get a free bus ticket to his final destination. After four nights in a church shelter, Denver provided a $58 bus ticket to New York City. He left Wednesday night.

    “Here it’s comfortable, it’s safe, there’s food, there’s shelter, there’s restrooms,” Guerra said as he waited with dozens of other migrants in a parking garage where the city processed new arrivals.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Christopher Sherman in Mexico City; Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico; Maria Verza in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Anita Snow in Phoenix; Nick Riccardi in Denver; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Giovanna Dell’Orto in El Paso; and Elliot Spagat in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed.

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  • Biden sending 1,500 troops for Mexico border migrant surge

    Biden sending 1,500 troops for Mexico border migrant surge

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will send 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border starting next week, ahead of an expected migrant surge following the end of coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions.

    Military personnel will do data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. The troops “will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants,” Jean-Pierre said. “This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.”

    They will be deployed for 90 days, and will be pulled from the Army and Marine Corps, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will look to backfill with National Guard or Reserve troops during that period, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. There are already 2,500 National Guard members at the border.

    The COVID-19 restrictions have allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for a surge. Even amid the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

    For Biden, who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago, the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.

    Then-President Donald Trump deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity.

    Jean-Pierre downplayed any similarity between Biden’s immigration management and Trump’s use of troops during his term. “DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now,” Jean-Pierre said. “So this is a common practice.”

    But some in Biden’s own party objected to the decision.

    “The Biden administration’s militarization of the border is unacceptable,” said Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chair Bob Menendez, D-N.J. “There is already a humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, and deploying military personnel only signals that migrants are a threat that require our nation’s troops to contain. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

    It’s another line of defense in an effort to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise as border officials move away from the COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

    They will also open centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.

    The Pentagon on Tuesday approved the request for troops by Homeland Security, which manages the border.

    The deployments have a catch: As a condition for Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to the border through Oct. 1, Homeland Security had to agree to work with the White House and Congress to develop a plan for longer-term staffing solutions and funding shortfalls, “to maintain border security and the safe, orderly, and humane processing of migrants that do not involve the continued use of DOD personnel and resources,” said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Devin Robinson.

    As part of the agreement, the Pentagon has requested quarterly updates from Homeland Security on how it would staff its border mission without servicemembers. It was not immediately clear if those updates have happened or if border officials will be able to meet their terms of the agreement — particularly under the strain of another expected migrant surge.

    Homeland Security said it was working on it. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investing in technology and personnel to reduce its need for DOD support in coming years, and we continue to call on Congress to support us in this task,” the agency said in a statement.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Rebecca Santana, Lolita Baldor and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

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  • Texas border city struggles with large arrival of migrants

    Texas border city struggles with large arrival of migrants

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    BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Shelters in a Texas city struggled to find space Saturday for migrants who authorities say have abruptly begun crossing by the thousands from Mexico, testing a stretch of the U.S. border that is typically equipped to handle large groups of people fleeing poverty and violence.

    The pace of arrivals in Brownsville appeared to catch the city on the southernmost tip of Texas off guard, stretching social services and putting an overnight shelter in an uncommon position of turning people away. Officials say more than 15,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have illegally crossed the river near Brownsville since last week.

    That is a sharp rise from the 1,700 migrants that Border Patrol agents encountered in the first two weeks of April, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

    “It’s a quite concerning because the logistical challenge that we encounter is massive for us,” said Gloria Chavez, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley Sector.

    The reason for the increase was not immediately clear. Chavez said migrants have been frustrated by relying on a glitch-plagued government app that can allow them to seek asylum at a port of entry. Some migrants who crossed this week cited other motivators, including cartel threats that immediately preceded the sudden increment.

    The uptick comes as the Biden administration plans for the end of pandemic-era asylum restrictions. U.S. authorities have said daily illegal crossings from Mexico could climb as high as 13,000 from about 5,200 in March.

    Other cities — some far away from the southern U.S. border — are also grappling with suddenly large influxes of migrants. In Chicago, authorities reported this week a tenfold increase in the arrival of migrants in the city, where as many as 100 migrants have begun arriving daily and begun sheltering in police stations.

    Brownsville is across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico, where a sprawling encampment of makeshift tents has housed about 2,000 people waiting to enter the U.S.

    Last week, some tents were set ablaze and destroyed. Some migrants have said cartel-backed gangs were responsible, but a government official suggested the fires could have been set by a group of migrants frustrated over their long wait.

    “It was desperation, the cartel,” said Roxana Aguirre, 24, a Venezuelan migrant who sat outside a Brownsville bus station Friday afternoon. “You couldn’t be on the street without looking over your shoulder.”

    In downtown Brownsville, families from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and China walked aimlessly, carrying their belongings and talking on their cellphones.

    Some waited for their buses while others were in limbo, waiting for relatives before making plans to leave but finding no shelter in the meantime. One Venezuelan couple said they slept in a parking lot after being turned away at an overnight shelter.

    Officials in Brownsville issued a disaster declaration this week, following other Texas border cities that have done the same in the face of suddenly large influxes of migrants, including last year in El Paso.

    “We’ve never seen these numbers before,” said Martin Sandoval, spokesperson for the Brownsville Police Department.

    The reshuffling of resources at the border — in one of the busiest sectors with robust Border Patrol staffing levels — comes as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security prepares to end the use of a public health authority known as Title 42, which allowed them to reject asylum claims.

    The administration has expelled migrants 2.7 million times under a rule in effect since March 2020 that denies rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Title 42, as the public health rule is known, is scheduled to end May 11 when the U.S. lifts its last COVID-related restrictions.

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  • School violence in Brazil mirrors US. Its reaction doesn’t

    School violence in Brazil mirrors US. Its reaction doesn’t

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    About two weeks after a man killed four children in a Brazilian daycare center, authorities already have rounded up some 300 adults and minors nationwide accused of spreading hate speech or stoking school violence.

    Little has been revealed about the unprecedented crackdown, which risks judicial overreach, but it underlines the determination of the country’s response across federal, state and municipal levels. Brazil’s all-hands effort to stamp out its emerging trend of school attacks stands in contrast to the U.S., where such attacks have been more frequent and more deadly for a longer period, yet where measures nowadays are incremental.

    Actions adopted in the U.S. – and some of its perceived shortcomings – are informing the Brazilian response, said Renan Theodoro, a researcher with Center for the Study of Violence at the University of Sao Paulo.

    “We have learned from the successes and the mistakes of other countries, especially the United States,” Theodoro told The Associated Press.

    Brazil has seen almost two dozen attacks or violent episodes in schools since 2000, half of them in the last 12 months, including the daycare center attack April 5.

    President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the notion of schools as safe havens has been “ruined.” His government has sought input from independent researchers and this week convened a meeting of ministers, mayors and Supreme Court justices to discuss possible solutions.

    Some measures already adopted are in line with those implemented over time in the U.S., like the creation of hotlines, safety training for school administrators and teachers, federal funding for mental health, plus security equipment and infrastructure.

    Other measures — like the nationwide sweep for supposedly threatening suspects involving over 3,400 police officers, or the newly invigorated push to regulate social media platforms — have not been enacted there.

    The arrests aim to assuage fear among Brazilians, said Luis Flávio Sapori, a senior associate researcher with the Brazilian Forum for Public Security. “The priority is diminishing panic,” he said.

    In the weeks since the day care massacre, unconfirmed threats and rumors have circulated on social media, and stirred dread among students, educators and parents — including Vanusia Silva Lima, 42, the mother of a 5-year-old son in central Sao Paulo.

    “I am afraid of sending my son to school. Not only myself, my friends are too, women I met at the salon, too,” Lima said.

    Many Brazilian states didn’t wait for the federal response. Sao Paulo, for example, temporarily hired 550 psychologists to attend to its public schools, and hired 1,000 private security guards.

    While shootings in the U.S. often ignite debate, at the federal level it usually ends in stalemate. Democrats focus on gun control while Republicans push for stronger security measures.

    Brazil’s push has garnered broad support in part because proposals haven’t included restricting firearm access, increasingly a hot-button political issue here, as in the U.S. Anyway, Brazil’s school attacks more often are carried out with other weapons, especially knives.

    In the U.S., legislation rarely passes. There have been notable exceptions, however, including a bipartisan compromise approved last year after a massacre at a Texas elementary school and other mass shootings. The bill toughened background checks and kept firearms from more domestic violence offenders, and allocated $1 billion for student mental health and school security.

    Other change has come more gradually since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In almost every state, schools are now required to have safety plans that often include shooter drills. Many individual school districts have their own safety hotlines, and some use software to monitor social media for threats, with mixed results.

    And many U.S. states have given schools money to “harden” buildings with metal detectors, security officers, bulletproof doors and other measures — which has stirred its own debate over the policing of America’s schools.

    Lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Lula’s far-right predecessor, was one of a few prominent voices calling for detectors and armed guards, citing some U.S. states as as examples, and put forward a bill to make them obligatory at all schools.

    Lula has said his government will consider neither detectors nor backpack inspections.

    Sapori said that Brazil has adopted a mixed approach, which stresses mental health care, preventive monitoring of threats and training for teachers, in addition to policing.

    “In Brazil, we have a clear understanding, based on the U.S. experience, that merely investing in armed security in schools does not work, that police presence in schools doesn’t hinder attacks,” Sapori said. “It only works to transform schools into prisons.”

    For Brazil, the Western hemisphere’s second-most populous country, scrambling for quick solutions risks introducing abuses of power.

    As for the suspects arrested over a two-week period through Thursday, Theodoro noted that authorities haven’t detailed the criteria for detentions, and investigations are under seal. Asked by the AP, the Justice Ministry declined to clarify how many of the 302 people taken into custody were minors.

    The ministry also has empowered a national consumer agency to fine tech companies for not removing content perceived as glorifying school massacres, incentivizing violence or making threats.

    And there appears to be broad support for holding social media platforms accountable. At this week’s meeting in the capital, Lula, his justice minister, two Supreme Court justices, and the Senate’s president voiced support for regulation of the platforms, arguing that speech that is illegal in real life cannot be permitted online.

    “Either we have the courage to discuss the difference between freedom of expression and stupidity, or we won’t get very far,” Lula said.

    The Rights in Network Coalition, an umbrella group of 50 organizations focused on basic digital rights, has expressed concern over giving the government the power to decide what can be said on social media.

    Some social media platforms that initially resisted compliance with takedown requests have come around and, in the prior 10 days, had removed or suspended more than 750 profiles, Justice Minister Flávio Dino said.

    When a man hopped over the wall of a day care center in Santa Catarina state and killed four children with a hatchet April 5, state prosecutors called on news media to refrain from sharing images or identifying the killer, citing research that this can encourage other attackers.

    Behemoth media conglomerate Grupo Globo announced it would no longer name nor portray perpetrators of such crimes in its broadcasts or publications. O Estado de S. Paulo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, followed suit. CNN Brasil and Band also made the change.

    In the United States, such a broad shift is yet to be seen in media, though outlets have begun efforts to use shooters’ names sparingly and to focus on victims’ stories, largely due to advocacy by relatives of victims. Some U.S. news organizations have ceased the previously routine profiles of school shooters.

    The developments in Brazil are reminiscent of a groundswell of U.S. federal support for school safety after the Columbine shooting, said Ken Trump, president of Ohio-based consultant National School Safety and Security Services.

    “Since then, it has become much more choppy,” he said.

    The success of Brazil’s efforts will hinge on the ability to maintain momentum even after public attention shifts away from school violence, he added.

    “The bottom-line question is, will it be sustainable?”

    ___ Binkley reported from Washington, D.C. AP journalists Eléonore Hughes, Maurcio Savarese and Carla Bridi contributed from Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia.

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  • Japan PM denounces attack, vows security review before G7

    Japan PM denounces attack, vows security review before G7

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    TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida denounced a pipe bomb attack at a campaign event he attended last weekend and pledged to review security procedures to ensure safety for dignitaries visiting the country for the Group of Seven summit he will host in May.

    “No matter what the reason is, the use of violence to shut down free speech should never be tolerated,” Kishida told selected media from G-7 countries on Thursday at the Prime Minister’s Office, as he stressed that the attack occurred during a nationwide local election campaign.

    “The election, which is the foundation of democracy, should not succumb to violence. We must carry out the election until the end,” he said, explaining why he has continued to deliver speeches since the attack on Saturday.

    A man hurled a pipe bomb at Kishida at the fishing port of Saikazaki in the western prefecture of Wakayana just before he was to make a campaign speech for a local candidate from his governing party. The moment the explosive fell near him, he was pushed away by special police and evacuated unhurt before the bomb exploded.

    The alleged attacker, Ryuji Kimura, 24, was wrestled to the ground and arrested on the spot.

    The attack, which targeted the prime minister less than a year after former leader Shinzo Abe’s assassination, raised questions about whether any lessons had been learned from Abe’s case, especially as Japan navigates key events like the ongoing elections and G-7 meetings.

    “As we prepare to welcome many guests from around the world for the G-7 summit and other events, I feel it is very important to once again review our security measures so that our guests can visit Japan with a sense of safety,” Kishida said.

    During the May 19-21 summit in his electoral constituency of Hiroshima — the target of the world’s first atomic attack — Kishida plans to appeal for nuclear disarmament, while pledging support for the rules-based international order and vowing to play a greater role as the only Asian member of the G-7 to bridge Western economies with the so-called Global South nations. He will also demand that Russia stop the war on Ukraine immediately.

    “I feel our path toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons has become an increasingly difficult one,” said Kishida, who has made the goal his career aim. “But that makes our cause more important than ever, and we must keep raising the flag of the ideal to achieve a nuclear-free world and reverse the ongoing trend. To do so is a responsibility Japan bears to human society as the world’s only country to have suffered nuclear attacks.”

    He said Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised fears the same could happen in Asia, and he said calls for a rules-based international order, along with the rejection of one-sided change to the status quo, could be widely accepted.

    “It is extremely important for the G-7 to reaffirm the basic position, and it could help the international community to unite in case a situation like this happens in places other than Russia and Europe,” he said.

    Violent crimes are rare in Japan. With its strict gun control laws, the country has only a handful of gun-related crimes annually, most of them gang related. But in recent years Japanese police have worried about “lone offender” attacks with homemade guns and explosives.

    Abe was assassinated with a homemade gun at a campaign event on July 8 last year, just two days before the upper house election. The police have since tightened their protective measures following a subsequent investigation that found holes in Abe’s security.

    Kishida said Saturday’s explosion also raised questions over the appropriate distance between candidates or political figures and the voters at campaign venues.

    “It is difficult to balance … but I think it is time for us to think of the distance between politicians and voters that is appropriate for democracy in Japan,” Kishida said.

    Compared with U.S. elections, audiences at political gatherings in Japan — where handshakes and mingling with voters are often considered more important than policy debate — are allowed to be quite close to candidates. At the campaign event with Kishida, the front-row audience was within touching distance and there were no bulletproof shields or other physical barriers between them.

    Additional safety measures, including bag checks and the use of metal detectors, were introduced at some campaign venues after the attack on Saturday.

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  • France’s Macron heckled by crowd angry over pensions

    France’s Macron heckled by crowd angry over pensions

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    PARIS — In France, when presidents take strolls among the public, they’re described as “taking a crowd bath.” Emmanuel Macron took a very cold one on Wednesday.

    Braving hecklers who shouted for him to resign, the French leader threw himself into the uphill task of repairing damage done to his presidency by forcing through unpopular pension reforms, taking his first such “crowd bath” since he enacted the law last week.

    The visit to eastern France, close to the border with Germany, was part of a concerted new effort by Macron and his government to put the furor caused by the pension change behind him. Raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 has ignited a months-long firestorm of protest in France.

    The uproarious climate of discontent threatens Macron’s ability to get some other planned policies through in the remaining four years of his second and last term. He got to see first-hand how unhappy people still are when he mingled among a crowd in the town of Selestat.

    One man who shook his hand didn’t hold back and told Macron that his government is “corrupt” — a claim that Macron immediately denied.

    “You’ll soon fall! You’ll see,” the man said.

    Working his way along the crowd, which was kept back by a metal barrier, Macron argued for his pension reform but also acknowledged that it was “unpopular.”

    “It doesn’t make anyone happy to work more and for longer,” he said.

    Still, he insisted that he wouldn’t be cowed from mixing with people. Macron is generally a fan of crowd baths, to the dismay of his security detail, and doesn’t shy away from his critics.

    “I’ve known worse,” he said.

    In the background, some shouted “Macron, resign!,” or intoned a song that has become an anthem of the retirement protests.

    Earlier Wednesday, during a visit to a company specializing in wooden buildings, Macron was met by a silent protest: Lawmaker Emmanuel Fernandes of the far-left France Unbowed party appeared wearing a gag over his mouth bearing the number 49-3, a reference to the constitutional article that the government used to force the new pension age through parliament without a vote.

    Later, in the calm of the offices of Selestat’s mayor, Macron repeatedly stressed that France needs to move ahead with other priorities. He cited climate change, drought, education and other issues.

    “We’re not always a country that’s calm, but we have to advance,” he told reporters.

    By voluntarily facing hostile crowds, Macron appeared to be trying to break the image his critics painted of him as haughty and out-of-touch.

    “I’m not deaf,” he said inside town hall. ”There are people who are very angry. I respect them.”

    He repeated that not reforming the pension system would have saddled next generations with debt. Unions and other opponents argue that wealthy taxpayers or companies should pitch in more instead, and see the reform as an erosion of France’s social safety net.

    Undeterred by the hostile welcome Wednesday, Macron vowed to continue traveling across the country.

    “We have to continue explaining and moving ahead with the rest,” he said.

    Macron then again braved boos and chants outside to shake a few more hands. He left with protesters shouting, “Retirement at 60: We fought to get it and we’ll fight to keep it.”

    The hard-left CGT union planned scattered protest actions for Thursday. All of France’s main unions said they would hold nationwide protests on May 1 to coincide with International Workers’ Day.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the French government at https://apnews.com/hub/france-government

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  • Climate envoy Kerry: No rolling back clean energy transition

    Climate envoy Kerry: No rolling back clean energy transition

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    SAPPORO, Japan — So much has been invested in clean energy that there can be no rolling back of moves to end carbon emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Sunday.

    Kerry noted that if countries deliver on promises to phase out polluting fossil fuels, the world can limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), better than the worst case scenarios.

    “We’re in a very different place than where we were a year ago, let alone two and three years ago,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press.

    “But we’re not doing everything we said we’d do,” he said, after attending a meeting of energy and environment ministers of the Group of Seven wealthy nations. “A lot of countries need to step up including ours to reduce emissions faster, deploy renewables faster, bring new technologies online faster all of that has to happen.”

    Kerry said the G-7 talks in northeastern Japan’s Sapporo were “really constructive” in yielding a show of unity for phasing out use of unabated fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

    A meeting Thursday of President Joe Biden’s Major Economies Forum, which includes leaders of 20 nations that account for more than three-quarters of global carbon emissions, offers another opportunity for committing resources to the goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050, Kerry said.

    “The United States and all the developed world has the responsibility to help the developing world through this crisis,” he said. “Those countries will really determine what happens. If they will reduce, if they will take the lead, if they will start deploying the new technologies, if they will stop using unabated fossil fuels, we’ll up the chance of winning this battle.”

    Kerry held out hope for cooperation with China on climate despite friction over Taiwan, human rights, technology and other issues, saying he had a “very good conversation” with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, just days earlier.

    “We agreed that we need to get back together personally, visit and try to see what we can find to work on together to accelerate the process. Is that doable? I hope so,” Kerry said.

    The Biden administration has moved aggressively to entice companies to invest in electric vehicles and other cleaner energy technologies. While the U.S. still lags some other countries in use of EVs, the market is changing as consumer preferences evolve and manufacturers invest billions.

    No one person can roll back what’s happening in the climate sector, Kerry said, “because private companies have made major bets on the future and they’re not going to reverse them.”

    One area where much more needs to be done is in climate financing, Kerry said, even though developed countries were close to their $100 billion goal in annual support for developing nations. In 2020, $83 billion was committed.

    The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last week in Washington were a start, “but they’re not enough. They didn’t produce enough of a change, in our judgement, to really unleash the kind of finance support that’s necessary.

    “Our hope … is that over the course over the next weeks and months more will be put on the table, more will be agreed upon and we can move faster,” he said.

    The hope is to reform the structure of finance to get such multilateral development banks to lend more and at better rates.

    “Anyone is going to look pretty critically at what’s going to happen with their money,” Kerry said, noting that “there’s a lot of money and it’s looking for these deals right now.”

    The Inflation Reduction Act is a major step toward incentivizing climate-friendly investments, “sending a signal to the market place that there’s money to be made by transitioning and moving in the direction of clean energy technologies,” he said.

    In the U.S., money will not be invested in new coal-fired power plants, because “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” Kerry said. “The marketplace is not supporting that. Investors are not supporting that.”

    Some countries, including Japan, have balked at setting a clear timeline for phasing out coal-fired plants, citing energy security. And for some countries, it’s a valid concern, Kerry said, though he added, “I think energy security is being exaggerated in some cases.”

    The greater imperative is to do whatever is possible to draw down carbon emissions, given the millions of people who die each year due to unclean air, extreme heat and other dire consequences of climate change.

    “If we’re going to be responsible, we have to turn around and figure out how we are going to more rapidly terminate the emissions. We have to cut the emissions that are warming the planet and heading us inexorably toward several tipping points beyond which there is no reverse,” Kerry said.

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  • Climate envoy Kerry: No rolling back clean energy transition

    Climate envoy Kerry: No rolling back clean energy transition

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    SAPPORO, Japan — So much has been invested in clean energy that there can be no rolling back of moves to end carbon emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Sunday.

    Kerry noted that if countries deliver on promises to phase out polluting fossil fuels, the world can limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), better than the worst case scenarios.

    “We’re in a very different place than where we were a year ago, let alone two and three years ago,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press.

    “But we’re not doing everything we said we’d do,” he said, after attending a meeting of energy and environment ministers of the Group of Seven wealthy nations. “A lot of countries need to step up including ours to reduce emissions faster, deploy renewables faster, bring new technologies online faster all of that has to happen.”

    Kerry said the G-7 talks in northeastern Japan’s Sapporo were “really constructive” in yielding a show of unity for phasing out use of unabated fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

    A meeting Thursday of President Joe Biden’s Major Economies Forum, which includes leaders of 20 nations that account for more than three-quarters of global carbon emissions, offers another opportunity for committing resources to the goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050, Kerry said.

    “The United States and all the developed world has the responsibility to help the developing world through this crisis,” he said. “Those countries will really determine what happens. If they will reduce, if they will take the lead, if they will start deploying the new technologies, if they will stop using unabated fossil fuels, we’ll up the chance of winning this battle.”

    Kerry held out hope for cooperation with China on climate despite friction over Taiwan, human rights, technology and other issues, saying he had a “very good conversation” with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, just days earlier.

    “We agreed that we need to get back together personally, visit and try to see what we can find to work on together to accelerate the process. Is that doable? I hope so,” Kerry said.

    The Biden administration has moved aggressively to entice companies to invest in electric vehicles and other cleaner energy technologies. While the U.S. still lags some other countries in use of EVs, the market is changing as consumer preferences evolve and manufacturers invest billions.

    No one person can roll back what’s happening in the climate sector, Kerry said, “because private companies have made major bets on the future and they’re not going to reverse them.”

    One area where much more needs to be done is in climate financing, Kerry said, even though developed countries were close to their $100 billion goal in annual support for developing nations. In 2020, $83 billion was committed.

    The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last week in Washington were a start, “but they’re not enough. They didn’t produce enough of a change, in our judgement, to really unleash the kind of finance support that’s necessary.

    “Our hope … is that over the course over the next weeks and months more will be put on the table, more will be agreed upon and we can move faster,” he said.

    The hope is to reform the structure of finance to get such multilateral development banks to lend more and at better rates.

    “Anyone is going to look pretty critically at what’s going to happen with their money,” Kerry said, noting that “there’s a lot of money and it’s looking for these deals right now.”

    The Inflation Reduction Act is a major step toward incentivizing climate-friendly investments, “sending a signal to the market place that there’s money to be made by transitioning and moving in the direction of clean energy technologies,” he said.

    In the U.S., money will not be invested in new coal-fired power plants, because “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” Kerry said. “The marketplace is not supporting that. Investors are not supporting that.”

    Some countries, including Japan, have balked at setting a clear timeline for phasing out coal-fired plants, citing energy security. And for some countries, it’s a valid concern, Kerry said, though he added, “I think energy security is being exaggerated in some cases.”

    The greater imperative is to do whatever is possible to draw down carbon emissions, given the millions of people who die each year due to unclean air, extreme heat and other dire consequences of climate change.

    “If we’re going to be responsible, we have to turn around and figure out how we are going to more rapidly terminate the emissions. We have to cut the emissions that are warming the planet and heading us inexorably toward several tipping points beyond which there is no reverse,” Kerry said.

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  • NATO member Finland breaks ground on Russia border fence

    NATO member Finland breaks ground on Russia border fence

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    IMATRA, Finland — The construction of barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia – primarily meant to curb illegal migration – has broken ground near the southeastern town of Imatra less than two weeks after the Nordic country joined NATO as the 31st member of the military alliance.

    The Finnish Border Guard on Friday showcased the building of the initial three kilometer (1.8 mile) stretch of the fence to be erected in Pelkola near a crossing point off Imatra, a quiet lakeside town of some 25,000 people.

    Finland’s 1,340 kilometer (832 mile) border with Russia is the longest of any European Union member.

    Construction of the border fence is an initiative by the border guard that was approved by Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s government amid wide political support last year. The main purpose of the three-meter (10-foot) high steel fence with a barbed-wire extension on top is to prevent illegal immigration from Russia and give reaction time to authorities, Finnish border officials say.

    In 2015-2016, Moscow attempted to influence Finland by organizing large numbers of asylum-seekers to northern Finnish crossing points in the Arctic Lapland region. Russian authorities were seen deliberately ushering thousands of asylum-seekers – mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan and other Middle East nations – to those border crossing points.

    The move was seen as a show of muscle by Moscow. The issue was settled when Finnish President Sauli Niinistö held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The flow of migrants stopped shortly thereafter.

    This is a scenario that Finland – a nation 5.5 million people that officially became a NATO member on April 4 – wants to prevent from repeating itself.

    Border officials are quick to acknowledge, however, that it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year – the main reason for Finland’s quick push to join NATO after decades of military nonalignment – that prompted construction of the border fence.

    “Border barrier fence was no kind of political topic before the war (in Ukraine). And actually, it wasn’t a kind of plan of the Finnish border guard,” Brig. Gen. Jari Tolppanen, head of the technical division at the Finnish Border Guard, told The Associated Press. “All changed after the attack (of Russia against Ukraine).”

    The pilot section of the fence is scheduled to be completed by this summer, while the barrier will eventually be extended to a maximum of 200 kilometers (124 miles). It will cover areas – in bits and pieces of separate length – mainly in southeastern Finland near the main border crossing points with Russia but it will also have sections up in the Arctic north in Lapland.

    “In this new situation, we must have much more credible and much more independent border control,” Tolppanen said. “We need to strengthen our resources. And the fence is necessary in order to manage, for example, large-scale illegal immigration.”

    Imatra is located a mere seven kilometers (4.4 miles) off the Russian industrial town of Svetogorsk in the Karelia region and is a few hours’ drive away from Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg. The town has a long history in dealing with Russians – tourists, day-trippers and permanent residents alike.

    “Here in Imatra, we’re not so afraid about Russians because the border has always been there and it has never been open like between European countries,” said Antero Lattu, vice chairman of Imatra City Council. He stressed that locals aren’t afraid of Russians “but we’re happy because of that fence.”

    Erkki Jouhki, who works as a town planner, agreed but also stressed Finland’s military capabilities. NATO membership gives Finland “a strong back but we have a very strong army. it’s very well (armed) … it’s a very modern army here because of Russia.”

    The border fence project is estimated to cost a total of 380 million euros ($422 million) and is scheduled to be completed by 2026.

    Finland’s long eastern frontier runs mainly through thick forests. In some places the Finnish-Russian border is marked only by wooden posts with low fences meant to stop stray cattle.

    ___

    Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this article.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Finland parliament website targeted ahead of NATO entry

    Finland parliament website targeted ahead of NATO entry

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    HELSINKI — Finland’s parliamentary website was paralyzed by a denial-of-service attack on Tuesday, just before the country made its historic entry into NATO, a move that more than doubles NATO’s border with Russia and has angered Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    The attacks — in which participants flood targets with junk data — made the parliament’s site hard to use, with many pages not loading and some functions not available for a time.

    A pro-Russian hacker group known as NoName057 (16) claimed responsibility, saying the attack was retaliation for Finland joining NATO. The hacker group, which has reportedly acted on Moscow’s orders, has taken part in a slew of cyberattacks on the U.S. and its allies in the past. The claim could not be immediately verified.

    For the most part, Finns went about their business as usual on the bright cold day, belying the historic nature of Finland becoming the 31st member of NATO. Its membership was formalized with a series of steps in Brussels.

    It’s a moment that most Finns had never previously wanted as they balanced friendly ties with both the West and Russia. But all that changed with Russia’s full-scale and brutal invasion of its neighbor Ukraine last year, creating a sudden and strong sense of insecurity that pushed the nation toward membership in the security alliance.

    There were few outward signs of the geopolitical shift aside from the Finnish and NATO flags, both blue and white, fluttering against the backdrop of Helsinki’s deep blue sky.

    The NATO flags were raised alongside the national flags in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a building that was originally built for the military of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. A regular flow of curious onlookers could be seen near the gates of the foreign ministry, trying to catch a glimpse of the flags.

    Aki Luhtanen, a professor of psychiatric nursing who was among those stopping by the Foreign Ministry, said Russia’s war on Ukraine feels very close and NATO membership offers protection now and for the long term.

    “I think we should be aware and afraid of Russia,” Luhtanen said. “And I think in the future (it) is very, very important to belong to NATO.”

    It was on that same ministry building that Finnish authorities projected the colors of the Ukrainian flag after Russia’s invasion last year, in an early sign of strong support for Kyiv.

    Newspapers, leaders and commentators alike agreed that Tuesday was a historic day for the nation of 5.5 million people that shares a a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) border with Russia.

    “Until now, we have defended our country alone,” Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen told public broadcaster YLE on arrival in Brussels. “From now on, we can rely on getting outside help should things get tough. And of course, we are ready to help should someone be in trouble.”

    Kaikkonen will join President Sauli Niinisto and Haavisto, the foreign minister, for the events in Brussels.

    “This is historically very significant for Finland. Finland has never been militarily aligned before in its history,” said Juhana Aunesluoma, professor of political history at the University of Helsinki. “Of course, many things changed when Finland joined the European Union in 1995, but Finland remained militarily nonaligned.”

    The ceremony in Brussels falls on NATO’s very own birthday, the 74th anniversary of the signing of its founding Washington Treaty on April 4, 1949. It also coincides with a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers.

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  • Netanyahu fires defense minister for urging halt to overhaul

    Netanyahu fires defense minister for urging halt to overhaul

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    JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister on Sunday, a day after he called on the Israeli leader to halt a planned judicial overhaul that has fiercely divided the country and prompted growing discontent within the ranks of the military. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv and other major cities following the announcement.

    The dismissal signaled that Netanyahu will move ahead this week with the overhaul plan, which has sparked mass protests, angered military and business leaders and raised concerns among Israel’s allies. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had been the first senior member of the ruling Likud party to speak out against the plan.

    In a brief statement, Netanyahu’s office said late Sunday the prime minister had dismissed Gallant. Netanyahu later tweeted “we must all stand strong against refusal.”

    Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets in protest after Netanyahu’s announcement, blocking Tel Aviv’s main artery, transforming the Ayalon highway into a sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags and lighting a large bonfire in the middle of the road.

    Demonstrations took place in Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, where thousands of people gathered outside Netanyahu’s private residence. Police scuffled with protesters and sprayed the crowd with a water cannon.

    The decision came less than a day after Gallant, a former senior general, called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military over the plan.

    Gallant had voiced concerns that the divisions in society were hurting morale in the military and emboldening Israel’s enemies across the region. “I see how the source of our strength is being eroded,” Gallant said.

    While several other Likud members had indicated they might follow Gallant, the party quickly closed ranks on Sunday, clearing the way for his dismissal.

    Galit Distal Atbaryan, Netanyahu’s public diplomacy minister, said that Netanyahu summoned Gallant to his office and told him “that he doesn’t have any faith in him anymore and therefore he is fired.”

    Gallant tweeted shortly after the announcement that “the security of the state of Israel always was and will always remain my life mission.”

    Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that Gallant’s dismissal “harms national security and ignores warnings of all defense officials.”

    “The prime minister of Israel is a threat to the security of the state of Israel,” Lapid wrote on Twitter.

    Avi Dichter, a former chief of the Shin Bet security agency, is expected to replace him. Dichter had reportedly flirted with joining Gallant but instead announced Sunday he was backing the prime minister.

    Netanyahu’s government is pushing ahead for a parliamentary vote this week on a centerpiece of the overhaul — a law that would give the governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to pass laws that would grant parliament the authority to override Supreme Court decisions with a basic majority and limit judicial review of laws.

    Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.

    But critics say the constellation of laws will remove the checks and balances in Israel’s democratic system and concentrate power in the hands of the governing coalition. They also say that Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, has a conflict of interest.

    Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past three months to demonstrate against the plan in the largest demonstrations in the country’s 75-year history.

    Leaders of Israel’s vibrant high-tech industry have said the changes will scare away investors, former top security officials have spoken out against the plan and key allies, including the United States and Germany, have voiced concerns.

    In recent weeks discontent has even surged from within Israel’s army – the most popular and respected institution among Israel’s Jewish majority. A growing number of Israeli reservists, including fighter pilots, have threatened to withdraw from voluntary duty in the past weeks.

    Israel’s military is facing a surge in fighting in the occupied West Bank, threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group and concerns that archenemy Iran is close to developing a nuclear-weapons capability.

    Violence both in Israel and the occupied West Bank has escalated over the past few weeks to heights unseen in years.

    Manuel Trajtenberg, head of an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies, said that “Netanyahu can dismiss his defense minister, he cannot dismiss the warnings he heard from Gallant.”

    Meanwhile, an Israeli good governance group on Sunday asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.

    The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It said he was not above the law.

    “A prime minister who doesn’t obey the court and the provisions of the law is privileged and an anarchist,” said Eliad Shraga, the head of the group, echoing language used by Netanyahu and his allies against protesters opposed to the overhaul. “The prime minister will be forced to bow his head before the law and comply with the provisions of the law.”

    The prime minister responded saying the appeal should be dismissed and said that the Supreme Court didn’t have grounds to intervene.

    Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from directly dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement he is bound to, and which the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption. Instead, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a close confidant of Netanyahu, is spearheading the overhaul.

    But on Thursday, after parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled from the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement by entering the fray.

    The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and toward a burgeoning constitutional crisis, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

    “We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.

    Netanyahu is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate affairs involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he will try to seek an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul. —— Associated Press journalist Tia Goldenberg contributed from Tel Aviv.

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  • Gap grows between TikTok users, lawmakers on potential ban

    Gap grows between TikTok users, lawmakers on potential ban

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    NEW YORK — On the one side are dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill issuing dire warnings about security breaches and possible Chinese surveillance.

    On the other are some 150 million TikTok users in the U.S. who just want to be able to keep making and watching short, fun videos offering makeup tutorials and cooking lessons, among other things.

    The disconnect illustrates the uphill battle that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle face in trying to convince the public that China could use TikTok as a weapon against the American people. But many users on the platform are more concerned about the possibility of the government taking away their favorite app.

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said during a nearly six-hour congressional hearing Thursday that the platform has never turned over user data to the Chinese government, and wouldn’t do so if asked.

    Nevertheless, lawmakers, the FBI and officials at other agencies continue to raise alarms that Chinese law compels Chinese companies like TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to fork over data to the government for whatever purposes it deems to involve national security. There’s also concern Beijing might try to push pro-China narratives or misinformation through the platform.

    “I want to say this to all the teenagers out there, and TikTok influencers who think we’re just old and out of touch and don’t know what we’re talking about, trying to take your favorite app,” said Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw during the hearing. “You may not care that your data is being accessed now, but you will be one day.”

    Many TikTok users reacted to the hearing by posting videos critical of lawmakers who grilled Chew and frequently cut him off from speaking. Some called a potential TikTok ban, as some lawmakers and the Biden administration has reportedly threatened, the “biggest scam” of the year. And others blamed the surge of scrutiny on the platform on another tech rival, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    But few expressed fear of possible Chinese surveillance or security breaches that lawmakers continue to amplify as they look to rein in TikTok.

    Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., whose district is in the heart of Silicon Valley, said he is mindful of the value that platforms like TikTok provide to young people as an outlet for creative expression and building community. “But there’s absolutely no reason that an American technology company can’t do that,” said Khanna, the top Democrat on the cyber subcommittee on House Armed Service. “America has the most innovative technology companies in the world.”

    He added that Congress should move forward with a proposal that would force platform’s sale to an American company for continued access for its millions of users while “ensuring that the platform isn’t subject to Chinese propaganda or compromises people’s privacy.”

    According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Americans aged 13 to 17 use TikTok, and 16% of all teens say they use it almost constantly. It’s because of TikTok’s large user base that Lindsay Gorman, a former tech adviser for the Biden administration who now works as a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund, says the Biden administration will likely pursue every option short of a ban first. That would include the option for the app’s Chinese owners to divest, which the Biden administration is reportedly demanding from TikTok if it wants to avoid a nationwide ban.

    TikTok itself has been trying to leverage its popularity. On Wednesday, it sent dozens of influencers to Congress to lobby against a ban. It has also ramped up a broader public relations campaign, plastering ads all over Washington that tout its promises of securing users’ data and privacy and creating a safe platform for its young users.

    Some popular TikTokers who speak out against a ban are concerned — and angered — about how it might impact their personal lives. Many earn income from their videos and have inked brand partnerships to market products to their audiences — another stream of revenue that could be wiped away if the platform disappears. They would also lose the social capital that comes from having a large following on the trend-setting app.

    Demetrius Fields, a standup comedian who amassed 2.8 million followers on TikTok from posting comedy sketches, said he spent a long time building his career and followership on the platform. He has one active deal with the fast fashion retailer Fashion Nova, which allows him to earn an income along with the videos he posts on TikTok.

    If the app is taken away, he said building an audience on another platform would be challenging for him due to the competition to grab user attention.

    “The financial implications for me would be pretty terrible,” Fields said. “I would probably have to go back to working a desk job.”

    Sarah Pikhit, an 18-year-old student at Penn State University, said she used to use TikTok a lot, but started cutting back when she realized how much time she spent scrolling through videos on the app. She still uses it, but mostly to post her own content, which she says she can do on other platforms. She said she wouldn’t care if TikTok gets banned — but her friends would.

    “They like the excessive scrolling,” Pikhit said.

    —-

    Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Gap grows between TikTok users, lawmakers on potential ban

    Gap grows between TikTok users, lawmakers on potential ban

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    NEW YORK — On the one side are dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill issuing dire warnings about security breaches and possible Chinese surveillance.

    On the other are some 150 million TikTok users in the U.S. who just want to be able to keep making and watching short, fun videos offering makeup tutorials and cooking lessons, among other things.

    The disconnect illustrates the uphill battle that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle face in trying to convince the public that China could use TikTok as a weapon against the American people. But many users on the platform are more concerned about the possibility of the government taking away their favorite app.

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said during a nearly six-hour congressional hearing Thursday that the platform has never turned over user data to the Chinese government, and wouldn’t do so if asked.

    Nevertheless, lawmakers, the FBI and officials at other agencies continue to raise alarms that Chinese law compels Chinese companies like TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to fork over data to the government for whatever purposes it deems to involve national security. There’s also concern Beijing might try to push pro-China narratives or misinformation through the platform.

    “I want to say this to all the teenagers out there, and TikTok influencers who think we’re just old and out of touch and don’t know what we’re talking about, trying to take your favorite app,” said Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw during the hearing. “You may not care that your data is being accessed now, but you will be one day.”

    Many TikTok users reacted to the hearing by posting videos critical of lawmakers who grilled Chew and frequently cut him off from speaking. Some called a potential TikTok ban, as some lawmakers and the Biden administration has reportedly threatened, the “biggest scam” of the year. And others blamed the surge of scrutiny on the platform on another tech rival, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    But few expressed fear of possible Chinese surveillance or security breaches that lawmakers continue to amplify as they look to rein in TikTok.

    Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., whose district is in the heart of Silicon Valley, said he is mindful of the value that platforms like TikTok provide to young people as an outlet for creative expression and building community. “But there’s absolutely no reason that an American technology company can’t do that,” said Khanna, the top Democrat on the cyber subcommittee on House Armed Service. “America has the most innovative technology companies in the world.”

    He added that Congress should move forward with a proposal that would force platform’s sale to an American company for continued access for its millions of users while “ensuring that the platform isn’t subject to Chinese propaganda or compromises people’s privacy.”

    According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Americans aged 13 to 17 use TikTok, and 16% of all teens say they use it almost constantly. It’s because of TikTok’s large user base that Lindsay Gorman, a former tech adviser for the Biden administration who now works as a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund, says the Biden administration will likely pursue every option short of a ban first. That would include the option for the app’s Chinese owners to divest, which the Biden administration is reportedly demanding from TikTok if it wants to avoid a nationwide ban.

    TikTok itself has been trying to leverage its popularity. On Wednesday, it sent dozens of influencers to Congress to lobby against a ban. It has also ramped up a broader public relations campaign, plastering ads all over Washington that tout its promises of securing users’ data and privacy and creating a safe platform for its young users.

    Some popular TikTokers who speak out against a ban are concerned — and angered — about how it might impact their personal lives. Many earn income from their videos and have inked brand partnerships to market products to their audiences — another stream of revenue that could be wiped away if the platform disappears. They would also lose the social capital that comes from having a large following on the trend-setting app.

    Demetrius Fields, a standup comedian who amassed 2.8 million followers on TikTok from posting comedy sketches, said he spent a long time building his career and followership on the platform. He has one active deal with the fast fashion retailer Fashion Nova, which allows him to earn an income along with the videos he posts on TikTok.

    If the app is taken away, he said building an audience on another platform would be challenging for him due to the competition to grab user attention.

    “The financial implications for me would be pretty terrible,” Fields said. “I would probably have to go back to working a desk job.”

    Sarah Pikhit, an 18-year-old student at Penn State University, said she used to use TikTok a lot, but started cutting back when she realized how much time she spent scrolling through videos on the app. She still uses it, but mostly to post her own content, which she says she can do on other platforms. She said she wouldn’t care if TikTok gets banned — but her friends would.

    “They like the excessive scrolling,” Pikhit said.

    —-

    Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Biden, Trudeau meet on migration, China and more

    Biden, Trudeau meet on migration, China and more

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    OTTAWA, ONTARIO — President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are set to announce an agreement aiming to stem the flow of asylum seekers at unofficial border crossings from the U.S. to Canada.

    The agreement on Friday comes as Biden makes his first visit to Canada as president. Wide-ranging Trudeau-Biden talks also were touching on the 13-month old war in Ukraine, military spending, shared concerns about China‘s aggressiveness, and violence and political instability in Haiti.

    Biden and Trudeau met for private talks before the U.S. president was to deliver a speech to the Canadian Parliament. The leaders also were to hold a joint press conference, and Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, were to host Biden and first lady Jill Biden for a gala dinner before the visiting Americans were returning to the U.S.

    Biden in brief comments at the start of the Friday meeting said he often tells other world leaders the United States is lucky to have Canada as a neighbor.

    “We disagree … on things occasionally but there’s no fundamental difference in the democratic values we share and it really makes a big difference,” Biden said.

    Trudeau for his part noted that he’s been able to work closely with Biden on economic, climate and security issues. “We have no greater friend and ally than the United States,” he said.

    As for China, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, arrested there in 2018, were expected to be on hand for Biden’s Parliament speech.

    The two were taken into custody shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, the technology company Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request. The Canadians were held for more than than two years in China before the Biden and Trudeau governments managed to win their release. Kovrig is a former diplomat, Spavor a businessman.

    Meng reached an agreement with prosecutors that led to fraud charges against her being dismissed and allowed her to return to China.

    The migration accord eliminates a loophole under existing rules and will allow both countries to turn away asylum seekers at their borders, according to U.S. and Canadian officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deal before it was formally announced.

    A 2002 agreement between the U.S. and Canada says asylum seekers must apply in the first country they arrive in. But the U.S.-Canada pact had only applied at official border crossings, creating an opening for migrants who travel through the U.S. to claim asylum in Canada, crossing illegally at Roxham Road, a half-hour taxi ride from the bus station in Plattsburgh, New York.

    The quirk in the rules resulted in thousands of migrants annually crossing into Canada from the U.S. at a non-official checkpoint, enabling them to stay as they seek asylum instead of letting the process play out while staying in the U.S..

    As part of the agreement, Canada is expected to announce that 15,000 migrants from the Western Hemisphere will be given official slots to apply to enter the country.

    “We’re seeing an increase in irregular migration going north into Canada, which reflects the regional and global migration challenge, as we’ve been talking about,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday. “We’re committed to working with them to address it, including by prioritizing orderly and safe migration through regular pathways.”

    Regarding Haiti, Canada is being nudged by the U.S. and other allies to lead an international mission there to deal with the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis. Canada was expected to announce on Friday $100 million ($72.7 million U.S.) in new aid for Haiti, according to Canadian officials.

    Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the country’s Council of Ministers sent an urgent appeal last October calling for “the immediate deployment of a specialized armed force, in sufficient quantity” to stop the crisis caused partly by the “criminal actions of armed gangs.” But more than five months later, no countries have stepped forward. Canada’s top military official has suggested the country doesn’t have the capacity.

    White House officials said Friday’s meetings would also include discussion of defense spending, an issue that’s in the spotlight after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that traversed part of Canada and the continental U.S. last month.

    Canada has long faced calls to increase its defense spending to 2% of its gross domestic product, the agreed-upon target by NATO members. Ottawa spends about 1.2% now.

    A senior Canadian official said the Trudeau government was expected to announce plans on Friday to accelerate billions more in defense spending. The money will go for infrastructure in the far north and a new radar system. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

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  • Nigeria electing governors after disputed presidential vote

    Nigeria electing governors after disputed presidential vote

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    ABUJA, Nigeria — Millions of Nigerians are headed back to the polls Saturday as Africa’s most populous nation holds gubernatorial elections amid tensions after last month’s disputed presidential vote.

    New governors are being chosen for 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states as the opposition continues to reject the victory of President-elect Bola Tinubu from the West African nation’s ruling party.

    On Friday, armed security forces were seen patrolling the streets across the states where elections were to be held.

    “Ahead of the elections, the security situation across the country appears tense, with reports of violence, kidnap and assassination in several states,” Situation Room, a coalition of civil society groups, said in a statement.

    Observers have said that the presidential vote was peaceful for the most part, but there are still fears of attacks in many parts of Nigeria where armed groups often carry out violent killings, such as in the northwest and in the southeast.

    At a security meeting in Nigeria’s capital this week, Nigeria’s national security adviser Babagana Monguno said security forces have been deployed in all violence hotspots and officials do not envisage any major security threat.

    “We must allow everyone to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens of this country. Anybody who is itching to undermine this process should please think again,” said Monguno.

    Despite being Africa’s largest economy and one of its top oil producers, Nigeria’s development has been stifled by endemic corruption and bad governance, which in many cases involves governors. Nigeria’s constitution grants enormous powers to the governors yet they are immune from any form of prosecution throughout their four-year tenure with a two-term limit.

    The powers of the governors notwithstanding, polls have shown many in the West African nation do not have a high level of interest in the election and performance of governors, a trend analysts have said affects the level of accountability across the states.

    “Even if we get the president right, everything else is against us — the people in the national assembly, the governors and the structural problems in terms of our constitution,” said Ayisha Osori, a director at Open Society Foundations.

    Three political parties have emerged as frontrunners among the 18 filing governorship candidates in the 28 states. And although there are a record 87.2 million registered voters, analysts fear a repeat of the low participation in last month’s presidential vote which recorded a 26.7% voter turnout rate, the lowest in Nigeria’s history.

    In the capital, Abuja, Kate Imadu, 26, was among many who could not vote in the presidential election despite waiting all day and into the night to cast her vote. That has made her less interested in traveling to her town in Cross River state to vote for the next governor, she said.

    “What is the need of traveling when I couldn’t vote here during the presidential election?” Imadu asked, echoing the frustration of many others.

    Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission has promised to address challenges that arose in last month’s election, such as the delays in voting and uploading of results, both of which opposition parties alleged caused the disenfranchisement of voters and the manipulation of results.

    “We must work harder to overcome the challenges experienced in the last election (as) nothing else will be acceptable to Nigerians,” Mahmood Yakubu, head of the electoral body, told officials in Abuja.

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  • Texas, Florida push border laws as governors eye presidency

    Texas, Florida push border laws as governors eye presidency

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    PHOENIX — Led by tough-talking Republican governors weighing presidential runs, Texas and Florida are debating especially strict legislation on border security as the GOP tests federal authority over immigration.

    The moves in the two GOP-controlled statehouses come against a backdrop of polarization in Congress that makes any national immigration legislation seem unlikely as President Joe Biden tries to drive down migrant arrivals at the border while eyeing his own reelection bid.

    Republican proposals in Texas build on Gov. Greg Abbott’s $4 billion project Operation Lone Star, with its construction of more barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border and busing of migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Washington, D.C., and New York. Abbott’s aides confirm he’s considering running for president.

    Operation Lone Star already has added more officers along Texas’ border with Mexico to detain migrants who trespass on private property. Now, Texas lawmakers have proposed creating a new border police force that could deputize private citizens, as well as making it a state felony to enter the state without authorization, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

    “Texas is taking historic action to secure the border and stop guns, drugs, and cartel gangs from assailing our state,” Abbott said in a tweet this week. “As President Biden abandons his constitutional duty, Texas continues to step up.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered Donald Trump’s strongest possible GOP competitor so far in next year’s presidential primary, has proposed making human smuggling in the state a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Hospitals would be required to collect data on patients’ immigration status and people in the U.S. illegally would be denied state government ID cards.

    “Texas and Florida are places with politically ambitious governors who are hoping to use immigrants in the furtherance of their agendas,” said attorney Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Center, which promotes immigrant rights.

    Despite the hardline rhetoric, Broder said advancements in immigrant rights have been quietly made in recent years.

    State-level organization has improved immigrants’ access to health care, higher education, professional licenses and driver’s licenses, according to a recent study Broder co-authored.

    The study noted Colorado became the first state to enact an alternative to unemployment insurance for excluded workers. Arizona voters last year approved in-state tuition for all students who attended high school in the state, regardless of their immigration status.

    Abbott and DeSantis blame Biden for a big increase last year in illegal crossings into the U.S. But a plunge this year in illegal crossing numbers could throw cold water on the GOP’s attacks against Biden’s handling of border issues. The sharp drop along the Southwest border followed the Biden administration’s announcement of stricter immigration measures.

    The U.S. Border Patrol said it encountered migrants 128,877 times trying to cross the border in February between the legal ports of entry, the lowest monthly number since February 2021. Agents detained migrants more than 2.5 million times at the southern border in 2022, including more than 250,000 in December, the highest on record.

    “Florida will not turn a blind eye to the dangers of Biden’s Border Crisis,” DeSantis said in a tweet last month announcing Florida’s legislation. “We are proposing additional steps to protect Floridians from these reckless federal policies, including mandatory E-Verify and prohibiting local government from issuing ID cards to illegal aliens.”

    While Texas and Florida officials ballyhoo their border tightening efforts, no major immigration legislation has emerged this year in Arizona, where some of the nation’s toughest laws targeting immigrants have been devised.

    Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, passed in 2010, required law enforcement officers to determine the immigration status of a person stopped or arrested if the officers suspected the person may be in the U.S. unlawfully, a practice detractors said encouraged racial profiling. Courts eventually struck down several of the law’s provisions.

    Arizona’s Republican lawmakers are up against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who this year has vetoed a GOP-backed budget and a bill that bans teaching public schoolchildren subject matter its authors describe as “critical race theory.”

    New Mexico, which also shares a border with Mexico, has since 2021 steadily removed barriers for migrants without legal status to access public benefits, student financial aid and licensure in credentialed professions.

    After taking office in 2019, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham withdrew the majority of National Guard troops her Republican predecessor sent to the border, denouncing a “charade of border fear-mongering.”

    New Mexico’s Legislature is also controlled by Democrats. Nevertheless, legislators this week rejected a proposal to bar state and local government agencies from contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants as they seek asylum.

    In North Carolina, Republican lawmakers last month launched a new attempt to require sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration agents interested in picking up certain jail inmates believed to be in the U.S. unlawfully. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper twice vetoed earlier versions of the measure, but Republican majorities in the General Assembly have since increased.

    A similar Idaho effort so far has failed to make it beyond its legislative introduction.

    Immigration-related legislation in other states includes:

    — A Georgia bill that failed to advance that would give in-state college tuition to immigrant students who arrived in the U.S. as children and who are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Bills are advancing that would ban companies and some people from certain foreign countries from buying farmland within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of any military base.

    — A Colorado bill aimed at allowing immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and are protected from deportation to own a firearm so they can become law-enforcement officers.

    ____

    Associated Press writers Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas; Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida: Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Jesse Bedayn in Denver; and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

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  • Yoon: Seoul-Tokyo ties key to address N Korea, supply chains

    Yoon: Seoul-Tokyo ties key to address N Korea, supply chains

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    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president wants Japan to join his efforts to improve ties frayed over Tokyo’s past colonial rule, saying there is an increasing need for greater bilateral cooperation because of North Korean nuclear threats and global supply chain challenges.

    “We cannot afford to waste time while leaving strained Korea-Japan relations unattended,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said in written response to questions posed by several foreign media outlets including The Associated Press. “I believe we must end the vicious cycle of mutual hostility and work together to seek our two countries’ common interests.”

    Yoon’s comments were provided Wednesday, a day before he travels to Tokyo for a closely watched summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The focus of attention is whether and what corresponding steps Kishida would take in response to Yoon’s recent plans to use South Korean funds to compensate some of the colonial-era Korean forced laborers without requiring Japanese contributions.

    Yoon’s push has triggered withering criticism from his domestic political rivals, who accuse him of making what they call “a humiliating diplomatic surrender” to Japan. But Yoon has defended his decision, saying greater ties with Japan is essential to tackle a slew of foreign policy and economic challenges.

    “There is an increasing need for Korea and Japan to cooperate in this time of a poly-crisis with North Korean nuclear and missile threats escalating and global supply chains being disrupted,” Yoon said. “I am confident that the Japanese government will join us in opening a new chapter of Korea-Japan relations which will go down to history.”

    South Korea and Japan, both key U.S. allies and vibrant democracies, are closely linked to each other economically and culturally. But their ties plunged to one of their lowest points in decades after South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2018 ordered two Japanese companies to compensate some of their former Korean employees for forced labor during the 1910-45 colonial rule.

    Japan has insisted all compensation issues were already settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties and was accompanied by $800 million in economic aid and loan from Tokyo to Seoul. The history disputes spilled over to other issues, with Tokyo placing export controls and South Korea threatening to terminate a military intelligence-sharing pact.

    The feuding undermined a U.S. push to reinforce its alliances in Asia to better cope with North Korean nuclear threats and a Chinese rise.

    Since taking office last May, Yoon, a conservative, has been focusing on repairing ties with Japan, boosting the military alliance with the United States and building a stronger trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security cooperation. Yoon says those steps were needed to deter North Korea, whose nuclear-capable missiles put both South Korea and Japan within striking distance.

    Tensions with North Korea have further intensified recently, with the North test-firing a spate of missiles in protest of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

    “As North Korea’s nuclear development seriously threatens peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and beyond, it is more important than ever that the international community works on a concerted deterrence and responses – this includes the ROK-U.S. alliance and ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation,” Yoon said, invoking South Korea’s formal name.

    After Yoon’s government announced it would use money raised domestically to compensate the former forced laborers who won damages in the 2018 rulings, U.S. President Joe Biden hailed the plan as a major step toward enhancing the partnership between two of Washington’s closest allies.

    While experts say that North Korea’s aggressive weapons testing activities are aimed forcing the United States to accept it as a nuclear power and relaxing international sanctions, Yoon said Kim would fail to achieve this goal.

    “Since the complete denuclearization of North Korea is the clear and unchanging goal of the international community, the Republic of Korea will never acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear state under any circumstances,” Yoon said.

    He said Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are “continuously taking strong diplomatic, economic and military measures to show that the international community’s commitment to denuclearizing North Korea is stronger than North Korea’s commitment to the development of nuclear weapons.”

    Yoon also called on North Korea to halt its “reckless” nuclear program and take steps to address the suffering of its people. He said South Korea is willing to provide humanitarian assistance to North Korean people, citing an assessment “that food shortages there have grown worse with some regions seeing people dying of hunger recently.”

    Yoon expressed optimism that the thawing of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan would also expand economic cooperation between the technology-driven countries, which he said would be crucial to address industrial supply chain vulnerabilities and other global challenges.

    “If Korea-Japan relations are normalized, I expect to see acceleration of strategic cooperation, such as technological partnerships, joint research & development and the expansion of mutual investments in various fields, such as semiconductors, space and bio-health including materials, parts and equipment,” he said.

    Yoon said expanded cooperation between South Korea and Japan – both semiconductor powerhouses – will contribute “greatly” in improving the resilience in global supply chains, which have been rattled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 and could be reshaped by an intensifying U.S.-China rivalry.

    Yoon also said South Korea and Japan while pursuing stronger bilateral ties should also seek to advance their economic relations with China in a “stable manner.”

    South Korea has struggled to strike a balance between its ally United States and China, its biggest trade partner, amid an intensifying Washington-Beijing confrontation over regional influence and technology.

    “While maintaining communication, Korea, Japan and China will work together in areas of common interest in the economic field, including supply chain stabilization, and on our responses to health and climate crises,” he said.

    ___

    Find more AP Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • Tucker Carlson’s scorn for Trump revealed in court papers

    Tucker Carlson’s scorn for Trump revealed in court papers

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    NEW YORK — A defamation lawsuit is revealing scornful behind-the-scenes opinions by Fox News figures about Donald Trump, including a Tucker Carlson text message declaring, “I hate him passionately.”

    Carlson’s private text comments were revealed in court papers at virtually the same time the former president was hailing the Fox News host on social media. Trump said he was doing a “great job” in presenting excerpts of U.S. Capitol security video of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — though Carlson used the video to produce a false narrative of the attack.

    The documents are coming to light at a time of increased tension between Trump and Fox, the dominant media force appealing to conservatives, as he campaigns to regain the presidency.

    Voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, claiming the network broadcast false claims that the company was responsible for fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The case is to go to trial this spring, and a trove of documents related to Fox’s actions after the election are being publicly released in advance.

    A common theme emerging from the internal documents and depositions is that Fox executives and hosts doubted the election claims being peddled by Trump and his allies, but aired and emphasized them anyway. Fox was growing concerned about a decline in viewership as Trump supporters turned away from the network after it — correctly — called Joe Biden the presidential winner in Arizona on election night.

    The exchanges include Carlson’s text conversation on Jan. 4, 2021, with an unknown person, in which the prime-time host expressed anger toward Trump.

    Carlson said that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights” and that “I truly can’t wait.”

    Carlson said he had no doubt there was fraud in the 2020 election, but that Trump and his lawyers had so discredited their case — and media figures like himself — “that it’s infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.”

    Federal and state officials, courts, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election, although Trump continues to falsely state that the presidency was stolen from him.

    Addressing Trump’s four years as president, Carlson said, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”

    In another text exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson denigrated Trump’s business abilities: Trump’s talent, he said, is to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

    Publicly, Fox viewers heard very different views, such as a 2017 exchange with colleague Greg Gutfeld in which Carlson agreed that Trump was “the greatest president that ever will be.” On his show in 2019, Carlson said Trump had fought as hard as he could to make sure everyone in America was treated equally under the law.

    “You can say what you really believe in public,” Carlson said then. “You’re an American citizen. That is your right.” Trump could lose in 2020, he added, “but he’ll be a genuinely great president.”

    Fox, in response to the court exhibits quoting Carlson that were released late Tuesday, said that “Dominion has been caught red handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press. We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”

    Carlson has continued rolling out security video from the Capitol attack, footage handed to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. For that, Trump said on his social media platform, “congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history.”

    The selective release of the footage to sway the historical account has drawn criticism, including from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday called on Fox to stop spreading election lies, which he said was eroding trust in American democracy.

    Fox’s founder, Rupert Murdoch, has a complex relationship with Trump: “I was not close to him,” Murdoch said in a deposition in the libel lawsuit.

    Indeed, though Murdoch acknowledged talking to Trump occasionally, he said he also sought inside information from Sean Hannity, one of his network’s primetime hosts, because Hannity was the closest person at Fox to Trump.

    Following Trump’s loss in November 2020, Murdoch despaired of the president’s behavior.

    “The real danger is what he might do as president,” Murdoch wrote in an email to a friend that month. “Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls! Don’t know about Melania, but kids no help.”

    But Murdoch told his network’s officials that he also didn’t want to “antagonize” Trump: “He had a very large following, and they were probably mostly viewers of Fox, so it would have been stupid,” Murdoch said in a deposition in the Dominion case.

    In separate questioning in the case, Murdoch acknowledged that he believed the 2020 presidential election “ was not stolen.”

    On social media recently, Trump was critical of Fox when other court papers released in the Dominion case made clear that a number of the network’s executives and personalities privately believed the election fraud claims were bunk.

    Trump and his team also have accused Fox of giving his latest campaign for the presidency little attention and favoring a potential challenger for the GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Fox and Trump have long had a complicated relationship. While he frequently has used the network to reach its audience, he also has been furious at a perceived lack of loyalty, most prominently after the 2020 election.

    In a fiery speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee last week, Trump ally Steve Bannon complained that Fox had disrespected the former president.

    “You’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president,” Bannon said. “Well, we deem you’re not going to have a network.”

    On Saturday afternoon, Fox News aired Trump’s speech to CPAC in its entirety.

    ___

    Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Gary Fields and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report, as did news researcher Randy Herschaft in New York.

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