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Tag: Border security

  • Plunge in border crossings could blunt GOP attack on Biden

    Plunge in border crossings could blunt GOP attack on Biden

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    SAN DIEGO (AP) — A sharp drop in illegal border crossings since December could blunt a Republican point of attack against President Joe Biden as the Democratic leader moves to reshape a broken asylum system that has dogged him and his predecessors.

    A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows some support for changing the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the level of immigration and asylum-seekers should be lowered, while about 2 in 10 say they should be higher, according to the poll. About a third want the numbers to remain the same.

    The decrease in border crossings followed Biden’s announcement in early January that Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the U.S. agreed to admit up to 30,000 a month of those four nationalities on humanitarian parole if they apply online, enter at an airport and find a financial sponsor.

    The administration has also proposed generally denying asylum to anyone who travels though another country on their way to the U.S. without seeking protection there — effectively all non-Mexicans who appear at the U.S. southern border.

    The new rules put forth by Biden could help the president fight back against critics who complain he hasn’t done enough to address border security issues. But the moves have also fueled anger among some of his Democratic allies who are concerned that he is furthering a Trump-era policy they view as anti-immigrant and hurting vulnerable migrants who are trying to escape dangerous conditions in their native countries.

    And the new changes — and subsequent drop in illegal border crossings — are unlikely to stop the barrage of attacks from conservatives who see border security as a powerful political weapon.

    Biden has been on the defensive as Republicans and right-wing media outlets have hammered him over the soaring increase in migrant encounters at the border. The new House GOP leadership has held hearings on what they call the “Biden border crisis” and talked of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    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. According to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, Border Patrol agents stopped migrants about 130,000 times in February, similar to January.

    Among Republicans, the poll shows about two-thirds say there should be fewer immigrants and asylum-seekers, while only about 1 in 10 say there should be more.

    Democrats are split: About a quarter say the number of immigrants should increase, a quarter say it should decrease, and about 4 in 10 say it should remain the same. They are slightly more supportive of asylum-seekers specifically, with 37% supporting an increase, 26% backing a decrease, and 36% saying the number should remain the same.

    Under U.S. law, numbers are not capped on asylum, which was largely a policy afterthought until about a decade ago. Since 2017, the U.S. has been the world’s most popular destination for asylum-seekers, according to U.N. figures. Even those who lose in court can stay for years while their cases wind through a backlogged system.

    Omar Reffell, a 38-year-old independent voter in Houston, said that he supports immigration but that news coverage of “caravans of people trying to cross the border” sends the wrong message to migrants.

    “People think that they just show up at the border, come across, there is not going to be any repercussions,” Reffell said. “I’m not against immigration. I think immigration is good for the country, but it has to happen in a very orderly manner or it puts a lot of stress, especially on the border states being able to provide resources.”

    More than 100,000 migrants each month were being released in U.S. border cities late last year with notices to appear in immigration court or report to immigration authorities.

    Dan Restrepo, a top White House adviser on Latin America during Barack Obama’s presidency, believes the American public will accept high levels of immigration — if a systematic process can be followed.

    The challenge in managing migration “is the sense of chaos and disorder that can be created by images of overwhelmed processing facilities and the like at the physical border,” he said. “It’s less the numbers and more the imagery” that bothers voters.

    Republicans cast Biden’s expansion of humanitarian parole for four nationalities as a political ploy to divert attention from the border and are not likely to let up on their criticism of the president on immigration. The Federation of American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, called January’s plunge in border numbers “a shell game” to boost Biden’s reelection prospects.

    Fox News Channel has hit hard on the story over the last year. Reporter Bill Melguin said in a “Battle for the Border” special on Nov. 3 that he had spent more than 200 days on the Texas border.

    “We’ve been shooting the video all day long,” Melugin said in a typical report from the Texas town of Eagle Pass. “We keep getting these massive groups of 150 to 200 crossing every single day.”

    The network’s night-vision drone cameras have showed hundreds of migrants walking across the border, each one appearing as a luminous white stick slowly advancing across a dark screen.

    The poll found 39% of U.S. adults approve of how Biden is handling immigration, and 38% approve of him on border security — slightly below his overall approval ratings. About two-thirds of Democrats but only about 1 in 10 Republicans say they approve of his handling of either issue.

    The poll was taken Feb. 16-20, just before the administration proposed on Feb. 21 that asylum should generally be denied to migrants who pass through another country without applying for protection there if it is deemed safe. The administration is angling to have the new rule take effect before the pandemic-related limits on asylum are expected to end May 11, though legal challenges appear imminent.

    Becky Steelsmith, a 70-year-old independent voter from Zachary, Louisiana, is reluctant to heap blame on Biden because solutions also eluded his predecessors, but she notes that the optics are not great.

    “The only reason why I disagree with Biden’s handling of it is that I think he’s a little too soft,” said Steelsmith, a retired teacher. “I’m not saying it’s his fault that it’s happening. I’m saying that as president, he needs to sit down and really focus and come up with some kind of a solution, or the beginning of a solution.”

    ___

    The poll of 1,247 adults was conducted using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

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  • Italy rejects any blame for deadly migrant shipwreck

    Italy rejects any blame for deadly migrant shipwreck

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    ROME — Italy’s interior minister on Tuesday strongly rejected claims that government policies to discourage illegal migration played a role in a shipwreck off the nation’s southern coast in which at least 72 people died.

    Minister Matteo Piantedosi said that assertions that “rescues were supposedly conditioned or even impeded by the government constitutes a grave falsehood that offends, above all, the honor and professionalism of our forces working daily in the sea, in particularly difficult scenarios.”

    The body of a 3-year-old child was recovered Tuesday, the latest victim of the Feb. 26 shipwreck. The splintered remains of a wooden boat and dozens of bodies washed ashore near the town of Cutro. Survivors reported that the boat had set out from Turkey with about 180 people on board.

    Eighty people survived, including many who swam ashore and some pulled from the water by local residents. Italian prosecutors in Crotone, a port city in Calabria, are investigating to see if the Italian coast guard should have been dispatched hours earlier, in time to prevent the deaths and perhaps the shipwreck itself.

    As interior minister, Piantedosi is responsible for implementing the right-wing government’s immigration and border enforcement policies. Addressing the Chamber of Deputies, the Italian Parliament’s lower house, he said 28 of the known dead were children and that three of the presumed migrant smugglers were arrested.

    Opposition lawmakers and humanitarian groups have decried Italy’s decision to send only border police boats and not coast guard rescue boats to the aid of the vessel soon after it was spotted. A surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, the European Union’s border and coast guard agency, spotted the boat late on Feb. 25, 40 nautical miles (72 kilometers) off Italy’s coast.

    Frontex communicated to Italian maritime authorities that the vessel exhibited good “flotation” and had one person above deck. But thermal readings taken by the agency indicated the possibility of numerous passengers below deck.

    “The Frontex asset (aircraft) didn’t pick up on nor did it signal a situation of distress,” Piantedosi said. He added that no calls for help or distress signals came from the vessel itself.

    Italian authorities decided it was a law enforcement matter as the boat neared Italy’s territorial waters and sent out two border police boats operated by members of Italy’s financial police. But waves as high as almost 4 meters (13 feet) and strong winds forced the Italian boats to turn back shortly before the shipwreck happened.

    By the time the Italian coast guard determined a rescue operation was required, it was too late.

    “If the financial guard boats couldn’t make it, how was a wooden boat supposed to make it?” lawmaker Giuseppe Provenzano of the opposition Democratic Party thundered in response to the interior minister’s account.

    Piantedosi said the smugglers could have brought the boat safely to shore hours earlier but had kept it at sea, fearing they’d run into police on shore after seeing flashing lights coming from the beach. The smugglers then “made a sharp turn in the attempt to change direction and distance (the boat) from that stretch of sea,” the minister said.

    “In that stretch, the boat, very close to the coast, and in the midst of high waves, hit, with every probability, a sandbank, and because the bottom of the boat ruptured, began to take on water,” Piantedosi said.

    Opposition lawmakers complained that the minister didn’t answer crucial questions, including who had decided after the initial Frontex sighting that a rescue mission wasn’t warranted.

    ”That obscure point needs to be cleared up. It’s owed to the victims,” as well as to local residents “who dived into the sea” to pull out both survivors and bodies, opposition 5-Star Movement lawmaker Vittoria Baldino said.

    The minister rejected allegations that a crackdown on illegal migration pushed by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni was a factor in the shipwreck’s dreadful loss of life.

    “The international law of rescue at sea wasn’t changed by this government.” Piantedosi said. “Saving life can’t be subject to political conditions.”

    Among those calling for the interior minister’s resignation over the shipwreck has been the Democratic Party’s new leader, Elly Schlein. Piantedosi’s statement from several days ago that “desperation can’t justify journeys putting children’s lives at risk” incensed her and other opposition politicians, who accused the minister of blaming the victims.

    Piantedosi expressed regret that his words were “interpreted that way.” He echoed Meloni’s remark that stepped up efforts were urgently needed to shut down smuggling operations.

    Afghans, Pakistani, Iranians, Somalis and Palestinians were among the people who paid some 8,000 euros ($8,700) each to set out on the ill-fated vessel in hopes of reaching family in Europe.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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  • Plunge in border crossings could blunt GOP attack on Biden

    Plunge in border crossings could blunt GOP attack on Biden

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    SAN DIEGO — A sharp drop in illegal border crossings since December could blunt a Republican point of attack against President Joe Biden as the Democratic leader moves to reshape a broken asylum system that has dogged him and his predecessors.

    A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows some support for changing the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the level of immigration and asylum-seekers should be lowered, while about 2 in 10 say they should be higher, according to the poll. About a third want the numbers to remain the same.

    The decrease in border crossings followed Biden’s announcement in early January that Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the U.S. agreed to admit up to 30,000 a month of those four nationalities on humanitarian parole if they apply online, enter at an airport and find a financial sponsor.

    The administration has also proposed generally denying asylum to anyone who travels though another country on their way to the U.S. without seeking protection there — effectively all non-Mexicans who appear at the U.S. southern border.

    The new rules put forth by Biden could help the president fight back against critics who complain he hasn’t done enough to address border security issues. But the moves have also fueled anger among some of his Democratic allies who are concerned that he is furthering a Trump-era policy they view as anti-immigrant and hurting vulnerable migrants who are trying to escape dangerous conditions in their native countries.

    And the new changes — and subsequent drop in illegal border crossings — are unlikely to stop the barrage of attacks from conservatives who see border security as a powerful political weapon.

    Biden has been on the defensive as Republicans and right-wing media outlets have hammered him over the soaring increase in migrant encounters at the border. The new House GOP leadership has held hearings on what they call the “Biden border crisis” and talked of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    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. According to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, Border Patrol agents stopped migrants about 130,000 times in February, similar to January.

    Among Republicans, the poll shows about two-thirds say there should be fewer immigrants and asylum-seekers, while only about 1 in 10 say there should be more.

    Democrats are split: About a quarter say the number of immigrants should increase, a quarter say it should decrease, and about 4 in 10 say it should remain the same. They are slightly more supportive of asylum-seekers specifically, with 37% supporting an increase, 26% backing a decrease, and 36% saying the number should remain the same.

    Under U.S. law, numbers are not capped on asylum, which was largely a policy afterthought until about a decade ago. Since 2017, the U.S. has been the world’s most popular destination for asylum-seekers, according to U.N. figures. Even those who lose in court can stay for years while their cases wind through a backlogged system.

    Omar Reffell, a 38-year-old independent voter in Houston, said that he supports immigration but that news coverage of “caravans of people trying to cross the border” sends the wrong message to migrants.

    “People think that they just show up at the border, come across, there is not going to be any repercussions,” Reffell said. “I’m not against immigration. I think immigration is good for the country, but it has to happen in a very orderly manner or it puts a lot of stress, especially on the border states being able to provide resources.”

    More than 100,000 migrants each month were being released in U.S. border cities late last year with notices to appear in immigration court or report to immigration authorities.

    Dan Restrepo, a top White House adviser on Latin America during Barack Obama’s presidency, believes the American public will accept high levels of immigration — if a systematic process can be followed.

    The challenge in managing migration “is the sense of chaos and disorder that can be created by images of overwhelmed processing facilities and the like at the physical border,” he said. “It’s less the numbers and more the imagery” that bothers voters.

    Republicans cast Biden’s expansion of humanitarian parole for four nationalities as a political ploy to divert attention from the border and are not likely to let up on their criticism of the president on immigration. The Federation of American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, called January’s plunge in border numbers “a shell game” to boost Biden’s reelection prospects.

    Fox News Channel has hit hard on the story over the last year. Reporter Bill Melguin said in a “Battle for the Border” special on Nov. 3 that he had spent more than 200 days on the Texas border.

    “We’ve been shooting the video all day long,” Melugin said in a typical report from the Texas town of Eagle Pass. “We keep getting these massive groups of 150 to 200 crossing every single day.”

    The network’s night-vision drone cameras have showed hundreds of migrants walking across the border, each one appearing as a luminous white stick slowly advancing across a dark screen.

    The poll found 39% of U.S. adults approve of how Biden is handling immigration, and 38% approve of him on border security — slightly below his overall approval ratings. About two-thirds of Democrats but only about 1 in 10 Republicans say they approve of his handling of either issue.

    The poll was taken Feb. 16-20, just before the administration proposed on Feb. 21 that asylum should generally be denied to migrants who pass through another country without applying for protection there if it is deemed safe. The administration is angling to have the new rule take effect before the pandemic-related limits on asylum are expected to end May 11, though legal challenges appear imminent.

    Becky Steelsmith, a 70-year-old independent voter from Zachary, Louisiana, is reluctant to heap blame on Biden because solutions also eluded his predecessors, but she notes that the optics are not great.

    “The only reason why I disagree with Biden’s handling of it is that I think he’s a little too soft,” said Steelsmith, a retired teacher. “I’m not saying it’s his fault that it’s happening. I’m saying that as president, he needs to sit down and really focus and come up with some kind of a solution, or the beginning of a solution.”

    ___

    The poll of 1,247 adults was conducted using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

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  • Trump Begins His ‘Final Battle’

    Trump Begins His ‘Final Battle’

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    Former President Donald Trump gripped the CPAC lectern as he workshopped a new sales pitch: “I stand here today, and I’m the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent—and very easily—World War III.” (Wild applause.) “And you’re gonna have World War III, by the way.” (Confused applause.)

    It was just one in a string of ominous sentences that the 45th president offered tonight during his nearly two-hour headlining speech at the annual conservative conference, which for years prided itself on its ties to Ronald Reagan, but is now wholly intertwined with Trumpism, if little else. Yet even amid cultish devotion, Trump seemed bored, listless, and unanimated as he spoke to a sprawling hotel ballroom that was only three-quarters full.

    For much of the speech, Trump’s voice took on more of a soft and haggard whisper than the booming, throaty scream that characterized his campaign rallies. His language, by contrast, was bellicose. Tonight’s address was among the darkest speeches he has given since his “American carnage” inauguration. Trump warned that the United States was becoming “a nation in decline” and a “crime-ridden filthy communist nightmare.” He spoke of an “epic battle” against “sinister forces” on the left. He repeatedly painted himself as a martyr, a tragic hero still hoping for redemption. “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump told the room. He pulled out his best, half-hearted Patton: “We are going to finish what we started. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory.” He was heavy on adjectives, devastating with nouns. “We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all,” he said.

    This was only Trump’s fourth public event since officially entering the 2024 race last fall. Rather than lay out his vision for America, he found a mess of topics about which to complain. The White House, Trump said, “wasn’t the easiest building to live in.” He opined that “illegal immigrants come in, and we house them in the Waldorf-Astoria.” He characterized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “China-loving politician” and sounded legitimately disappointed when saying, “My wonderful travel ban is gone.” He lamented the halcyon days before he knew the terms “subpoena” and “grand jury.” He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “racist” and griped about the “Department of Injustice.” Shortly before his speech, Trump told James Rosen of Newsmax that he intends to stay in the 2024 presidential race even if he is indicted in one (or more) criminal investigations. Relatedly, he promised to “totally obliterate the Deep State.”

    Adam Serwer: The FBI desperately wants to let Trump off the hook

    The audience, largely composed of Trump loyalists, hooted and repeatedly yelled “U-S-A!” A brief selection of the hats dotting the hallways outside the Potomac Ballroom: MAGA, ’MERICA, LET’S GO BRANDON, TRUMP WON, WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED. Trump’s solemn face was splashed across an array of comically dramatic acrylic paintings on display. (Kari Lake, the election denier who lost her race for Arizona governor last year, kissed one on stage Friday night.) Downstairs from the main stage, attendees could have their picture taken in a mock version of Trump’s Oval Office. Multiple people roamed the corridors in red, white, and blue “Trump 45” baseball jerseys. As the former president spoke, supporters waved bright red WE WANT TRUMP signs. But the man himself seemed only sort of into it, and very bitter.

    It was a strange and lackluster conference—more of a “1 a.m. at the party” vibe than “the greatest political movement in the history of our country” that Trump invoked tonight. Perhaps, years from now, 2023 will be remembered as “the last gasp of CPAC.” Gone was the FoxNation sponsorship; Newsmax hoped to fill the void. Attendees could also linger at pop-ups from The Epoch Times, Right Side Broadcasting News, America First News, OAN, Lindell TV, Proverbs Media Group LLC, and Patriot Mobile, which was pitching itself as a Christian cell-phone company.

    Aside from Trump, the CPAC lineup was missing many of its usual stars. And most of his potential 2024 challengers skipped the conference altogether this year, with several instead attending a rival Club for Growth event in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump spoke just a few hours after Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, and Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who announced the formation of something called an “Election Crime Bureau.” Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado came next with a fire-and-brimstone speech peppered with Bible verses. “We must stand united in this battle against actual evil,” she told the room.

    On Friday, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gently distanced themselves from their old boss in their speeches. (Haley was met with chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” after she left the stage.) The businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who is also running for the Republican nomination, paraphrased Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech before pledging to get rid of affirmative action, calling it a cancer. He took aim at the Georgia congresswoman and super Trump surrogate Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Do we want a national divorce, or do we want a national revival?” Trump, when rattling off thank yous and compliments early into his speech—Representative Matt Gaetz: “a great guy”; Dr. Ronny Jackson: “he’s a doctor!”—joked that Greene is a “low-key” person.

    The CPAC straw poll, once a pivotal moment in the GOP election cycle, wrapped up 10 minutes ahead of schedule tonight. (On cue, someone tried to start a “Let’s Go Brandon” chant during the unveiling of the results.) Unsurprisingly, Trump won with 62 percent of the vote, crushing his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who received 20 percent. Curiously, Trump never mentioned DeSantis in his speech. (Tomorrow, DeSantis is scheduled to speak at the Reagan Presidential Library, and both candidates are soon headed to Iowa.)

    Read: Does Trump stand a real chance to repeat 2016?

    Steve Bannon, proud recipient of a Trump pardon, was among the biggest celebrities of the weekend. Late Friday afternoon, Bannon marched out to the stage in all black, three pens clipped to his shirt, and attacked Fox News for its alleged “soft-ban” of Trump. He referred to the Murdoch family as “a bunch of foreigners” and said, “Note to Fox senior management: When Donald J. Trump talks, it’s newsworthy.” He fired up the crowd: “We’re not looking for unity. We’re looking for victory!” He pounded his hand on the lectern, summing up the theme of the weekend: “MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!”

    As Trump spoke, another of the gathering’s many “Let’s Go Brandon!” chants broke out, and the former president thanked the crowd. At one point, he play-acted a scene between President Joe Biden and his son Hunter discussing the “laptop from hell” and received genuine laughs. Trump warned that Biden “is leading us into oblivion,” then promised to single-handedly end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Nearly every topic he touched—border security, foreign wars—had a way of coming back around to him, Trump. “NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up,” he said. He then spoke hypothetically about Russia blowing up NATO’s headquarters.

    “You know, I had a beautiful life before I did this,” Trump said wistfully at one point. “I lived in luxury. I had everything.” As the speech crossed the 90-minute mark, Trump was clearly losing the audience. He returned to the wartime language: “We will not yield. We will press forward,” he promised. “We will finish what we started.”

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    John Hendrickson

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  • McCarthy defends giving Tucker Carlson Jan. 6 trove access

    McCarthy defends giving Tucker Carlson Jan. 6 trove access

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    WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is defending his decision to give Fox News’ Tucker Carlson “exclusive” access to Jan. 6 security footage of the Capitol attack, despite the conservative commentator’s own work raising false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2021 riot over Joe Biden’s election.

    McCarthy vowed Tuesday to eventually make roughly 42,000 hours of sensitive Capitol Police security videos available to the broader public “as soon as possible,” but made it clear the Fox News commentator had first dibs. The Republican McCarthy is also supportive of giving access to some of the nearly 1,000 defendants being prosecuted for their roles in the siege.

    Five people died in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack and its aftermath after then-President Donald Trump encouraged a mob of supporters to “fight like hell” as Congress was tallying the election results from the states.

    “I don’t care what side of the issue you are on. That’s why I think putting it out all to the American public, you can see the truth. See exactly what transpired that day,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol.

    “Have you ever had an exclusive? Because I see it on your networks all the time. So we have exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy said.

    The speaker’s decision to release the mountains of police security footage has set off a firestorm at the Capitol over the way the images will be potentially used as a political tool to rewrite the history of what happened that deadly day. Fox News is facing new scrutiny in a separate court case over its airing of false claims about the 2020 election that Trump lost to Biden.

    It’s also raising new concerns about sensitive security operations at the Capitol. While video from the Jan. 6 riot has already widely aired as part of the public hearings last summer by the House committee investigating the attack — including from the police cameras, documentarians like then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter who filmed secret locations and even the rioters themselves — McCarthy is making available almost 42,000 hours of footage, three times what was first seen, from cameras stationed in all corners of the Capitol complex.

    “We are deeply concerned that the release of footage related to the January 6 violent insurrection will reveal some security details that could create some challenges in terms of the safety and well being of everyone on the Capitol Complex,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

    Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the House Jan. 6 committee, said the panel went through a painstaking process to work closely with the U.S. Capitol Police to review and ultimately release approved segments of the surveillance footage as part of its public hearings.

    “I’m supportive of a process, if this is true transparency, that would not compromise the integrity or the security of the Capitol,” the Mississippi Democrat said.

    When McCarthy told fellow Republicans behind closed doors about his decision Tuesday, he was greeted with applause, according to a person who was familiar with the private conference meeting but unauthorized to speak about it publicly.

    The speaker has had a rocky relationship with Carlson, who has been critical of McCarthy’s leadership, but the influential Fox News commentator ultimately stood down when the California Republican was battling to become House speaker in a dragged-out party vote earlier this year. It was seen as helping to boost McCarthy to the job.

    McCarthy insisted he was taking measures to ensure security at the Capitol would not be jeopardized by the release, but declined to provide details — only to say that Carlson made it clear to the speaker’s team he did not want to show “exit routes” used by lawmakers or others.

    Access to the footage will also be available to defendants who are facing charges over their alleged involvement in Jan. 6. McCarthy said defendants have had access before, but if it’s still needed, “We can supply that to them too.”

    The House Administration Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight, which is chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., is making accommodations for any attorneys representing defendants who have asked to view the footage, the person familiar with the situation said.

    Democrats on the panel said they were “deeply troubled” by McCarthy’s actions, warning that access to such large swaths of footage could expose security vulnerabilities to be used by those “who might wish to attack the Capitol again,” according to a report. They vowed to conduct oversight.

    But the Republican leader has made it clear he is working to set the record as he sees it, and repeatedly complained that other media outlets, including CNN, already had received exclusives to show video last year, when Democrats held the majority in House.

    McCarthy also suggested it was unfair that the Jan. 6 panel, which disbanded once Republicans took control of the House, released security video during the riot of former Vice President Mike Pence fleeing for safety as well as the GOP leader’s own staff scrambling to secure their office.

    “It was disturbing to me that the January 6 committee would show the exit strategy of the vice president,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “What I thought would be best is if the entire world and the country could see what transpired.”

    Carlson has said that his producers have been on Capitol Hill since early February, poring over the footage after getting the “unfettered access” from McCarthy.

    The archive is a potential trove of the inner workings of the Capitol and includes the hideaways of lawmakers as well as the evacuation routes that Capitol Police used to usher leadership and rank-and-file members to safety. It also includes long moments of empty hallways where nothing is happening.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the release of tapes to Carlson was “despicable” and said he would not agree to release them to other media. “Security has to be the number one concern,” Schumer said.

    Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell would not comment directly on McCarthy’s move, saying his only concern is the security of the Capitol.

    __

    Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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  • US increases military support for Somalia against al-Shabab

    US increases military support for Somalia against al-Shabab

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    The United States is increasing its military assistance to Somalia as the country sees success in battling what the U_S_ calls “the largest and most deadly al-Qaida network in the world.”

    ByOMAR FARUK and CARA ANNA Associated Press

    MOGADISHU, Somalia — The United States is increasing its military assistance to Somalia as the country sees success in battling what the U.S. calls “the largest and most deadly al-Qaida network in the world.”

    Sixty-one tons of weapons and ammunition arrived Tuesday in Mogadishu, the U.S. said in a statement of support for a historic Somalia-led military offensive against al-Shabab extremists that has recaptured dozens of communities since August.

    In a separate joint statement with other leading security partners Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Britain, the U.S. said they will support Somalia’s efforts to manage weapons and ammunition that could allow the United Nations Security Council to lift its arms embargo on the country.

    “A very productive meeting,” Somalia’s national security adviser, Hussein Sheikh-Ali, tweeted after the Washington gathering.

    The government of Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared “total war” last year on the thousands of al-Shabab extremists who for more than a decade have controlled parts of the country and carried out devastating attacks while exploiting clan divisions and extorting millions of dollars a year in their quest to impose an Islamic state.

    The current offensive was sparked in part by local communities and militias driven to the brink by al-Shabab’s harsh taxation policies amid the country’s worst drought on record. Somalia’s government quickly lent support. Now neighbors Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti have agreed to a joint “search and destroy” military campaign.

    Somalia is recovering from decades of conflict, and the federal government is eager to shed the country’s history as a failed state and attract investment. Under the current president, the government is cracking down on al-Shabab’s financial network and encouraging religious authorities to reject the extremist group’s propaganda — even enlisting a former deputy al-Shabab leader as Somalia’s current minister for religious affairs.

    The U.S. has an estimated 450 military personnel in Somalia after President Joe Biden reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces. The U.S. supports Somali forces and a multinational African Union force with drone strikes, intelligence and training.

    The increased support for the Somalia-led offensive comes as the AU force is set to withdraw from the country and hand over security responsibilities to Somalia by the end of 2024.

    ___

    Anna reported from Nairobi, Kenya.

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  • Pakistan-Afghan border crossing shut after brief reopening

    Pakistan-Afghan border crossing shut after brief reopening

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    PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan shut down a key border crossing with Afghanistan just hours after it was reopened on Thursday, officials said, the latest twist in the controversial closure of the Torkham junction that started earlier this week.

    The issue of the crossing, a key trade route for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, has added to increasing tensions between the two countries, which share a troubled and volatile boundary.

    Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Sunday closed the crossing, claiming Islamabad was not aboding by an agreement with Kabul to allow Afghan patients and their caretakers to cross into Pakistan without travel documents for medical care. On Monday, Afghan Taliban forces and Pakistani border guards exchanged fire, which wounded a Pakistani soldier.

    On Wednesday, Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Mohammad Asif, and secret service chief, Lt. Gen. Anjum Nadeem, travelled to Kabul and met senior Taliban officials to discuss the border issue.

    On Thursday morning, Torkham was reopened by Afghan Taliban forces, allowing some of the thousands of trucks that had lined up for days at the border — many with vegetables, fruits and other perishable food items — to cross over and ease the backlog.

    The Afghan Embassy in Pakistan tweeted the news of the reopening and on the Pakistani side, truck drivers rejoiced as their vehicles began moving along the Khyber Pass.

    However, the crossing closed hours later. Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that Pakistan was unable to make the border crossing “fully functional because of administrative issues.” He did not explain.

    Other officials in Islamabad were not immediately available for comment.

    “The Torkham gate has been closed by the Pakistani side after it was opened today by the officials of the Islamic Emirate,” the media center in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province said on Twitter.

    For Pakistan, the Torkham border crossing is a vital commercial artery and a trade route to Central Asian countries. But Islamabad has also accused the Afghan Taliban of providing sanctuary for Pakistani militants whose cross-border attacks have led to a spike in violence in Pakistan.

    The Afghan Taliban administration has said the Pakistani delegation was told during Wednesday’s meeting that it was up to Pakistan to provide all the “necessary facilities” for travelers at Torkham and also at Spin Boldak, another crossing further south, as well as special facilities for the transportation of patients needing emergency medical care. The Pakistani side promised to resolve these matters quickly, Kabul said.

    Closures, cross-border fire and shootouts are common along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

    Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said its delegation to Kabul also raised during Wednesday’s talks “the growing threat of terrorism in the region,” particularly by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tahreek-e Taliban-Pakistan or TTP, and the Islamic State group.

    On Thursday, senior security officials told The Associated Press that the Pakistani delegation demanded the Taliban prevent Pakistani Taliban militants from launching cross-border attacks on Pakistan from within Afghanistan.

    The demand, the officials said, is urgent as the Pakistani Taliban allegedly plan to launch their “spring offensive” in March. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

    Pakistan has recently warned that it has the right to target TTP sanctuaries in Afghanistan if the Taliban administration fails to rein in the militants, increasing the prospect of more cross-border violence.

    The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group, but allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power more than a year ago as the U.S. and NATO troops withdrew from the country after 20 years of war.

    The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened the TTP, which in recent months stepped up attacks in Pakistan, where security forces often raid their hideouts. In the latest raid in the northwestern district of Lakki Marwat, security forces on Thursday killed six Pakistani Taliban militants, police said.

    ___

    Faiez reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this story.

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  • Kremlin official urges deeper ties with China to resist West

    Kremlin official urges deeper ties with China to resist West

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    MOSCOW — Russia’s security head on Tuesday held talks with the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy chief, calling for closer cooperation with Beijing to resist Western pressure.

    Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, said during a meeting with Wang Yi, the party’s most senior foreign policy official who is visiting Moscow, that the West sought to deter Russia and China as part of its attempts to preserve global domination.

    “The bloody events in Ukraine staged by the West is just one example of it,” said Patrushev, a longtime associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “All that is being done against Russia and China and to the detriment of developing nations.”

    Russia has sought to cast what it calls its “special military operation” as an effort to protect Russian speakers and to derail Western efforts to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark. Kyiv and its Western allies reject that argument as a bogus cover for an unprovoked act of aggression.

    Wang said Tuesday that the relations between Moscow and Beijing are “solid as a rock” and will “stand the test of the volatile international situation.”

    The Chinese official noted that Russia and China have “excellent opportunity to continue close strategic cooperation and contacts to protect our shared strategic interests.”

    “Together with the Russian side, we are ready to strongly uphold our national interests and dignity and to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in all areas,” he said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.

    China, which has declared a “no limits” friendship with Russia, has pointedly refused to criticize Moscow’s actions, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking the Kremlin, and has blasted the punishing sanctions imposed on Russia. Russia, in turn, has strongly backed China amid tensions with the U.S. over Taiwan.

    During Tuesday’s meeting with Wang, Patrushev emphasized that “amid a campaign by the West to deter both Russia and China, it is particularly important to further deepen the Russian-Chinese coordination and cooperation in the international arena.”

    Patrushev said that the development of “strategic partnership” with China remains a top priority for Russia, and reaffirmed Moscow’s “invariable support for Beijing on the Taiwan, Xinjang, Tibet and Hong Kong issues, which the West has exploited to discredit China.”

    The two nations have held a series of military drills that showcased increasingly close defense ties amid tensions with the United States.

    Patrushev on Tuesday invited Wang to discuss international and regional issues, adding that “this will help greater consolidation of our approaches and our unity in addressing shared challenges.”

    Wang’s visit to Moscow follows President Joe Biden’s unannounced visit to Ukraine on Monday, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and reaffirmed a strong U.S. support for Kyiv on the eve of the Russian military operation’s one-year anniversary.

    Before heading to Russia, Wang held talks Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of an international security conference in Munich. Blinken noted that he reiterated a warning to China against providing assistance to Russia in Ukraine, including helping Moscow with evading sanctions the West has imposed on Moscow.

    Wang is also set to hold talks Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Kremlin said that a meeting with Putin is also possible.

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  • US Rep. Cicilline to step down, lead nonprofit foundation

    US Rep. Cicilline to step down, lead nonprofit foundation

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    Rhode Island congressman David Cicilline said Tuesday he will step down this summer to lead his home state’s largest funder of nonprofits.

    The Democrat, who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Committee on the Judiciary, was named president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, effective June. 1.

    “Serving the people of Rhode Island’s First Congressional District has been the honor of my lifetime,” said Cicilline, who is serving his seventh term. “As President and CEO of one of the largest and oldest community foundations in the nation, I look forward to expanding on the work I have led for nearly thirty years in helping to improve the lives of all Rhode Islanders.”

    Cicilline, 61, said the opportunity to lead the foundation was unexpected, but gives him the opportunity to “have an even more direct and meaningful impact on the lives of residents of our state.”

    The Rhode Island Foundation, founded in 1916, focuses on supporting economic security, affordable health care, as well as education and job training. It raised $98 million in 2021 and awarded $76 million in grants, according to its website.

    Cicilline takes over for Neil Steinberg, who will continue as president and CEO until Cicilline starts. The congressman has “the experience, the skills, the passion, and the network to ably lead the Foundation,” Steinberg said.

    Cicilline was selected after a national search.

    “Congressman Cicilline’s career-long fight for equity and equality at the local, national and international level, and his deep relationships within Rhode Island’s communities of color are two of the many factors that led us to this decision,” said Dr. G. Alan Kurose, chair of the foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement.

    Cicilline has represented Rhode Island in the U.S. House since 2011.

    The news of his retirement comes months after he withdrew his bid for a leadership post in the House this Congress. Cicilline, who is openly gay, had challenged Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina for the Democrat’s assistant role, arguing that it was time the party’s leadership table included LGBTQ voices.

    But Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black American in Congress, received unanimous support from the caucus in closed-door elections in December to stay in leadership.

    The challenge to Clyburn was a surprise, but Cicilline said at the time that he felt the need to act to ensure the Democratic leadership “fully reflect the diversity” of the caucus and of the country.

    During his tenure he was a frequent critic of big tech and the amount of power the nation’s tech companies held. He was a House impeachment manager during former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, and a lead sponsor of the legislation that gave federal recognition to same-sex marriages.

    Cicilline previously served as mayor of Providence from 2003 to 2011, and in the state legislature from 1995 until 2003. He has degrees from Brown University and Georgetown University Law Center.

    Rhode Island’s other longtime Democratic representative, Jim Langevin, served his last day in office earlier this year after announcing in January 2022 that he would not seek reelection to the seat he has held since 2001. He was replaced by another Democrat, Seth Magaziner.

    Under state law, Rhode Island’s governor can set a date for a special election to find Cicilline’s successor.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington, D.C. contributed to this story.

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  • Presidents of Colombia, Venezuela sign trade deal on border

    Presidents of Colombia, Venezuela sign trade deal on border

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    BOGOTA, Colombia — The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela met on their border Thursday to sign an agreement designed to improve trade between the two countries and lift import duties on dozens of manufactured goods.

    The deal comes as relations between the two countries improve following the election of Colombia’s first leftist president. Recently Colombia and Venezuela opened their border bridges to commercial cargo trucks for the first time in seven years.

    “This is not only about making trade easier, but also about making it easier for people to move between both countries,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said. “There has to be legality here, so that the rights of people are protected.”

    Trade between Colombia and Venezuela fell drastically after 2015 amid political disputes that led to frequent border closures.

    In 2019, Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, shut the border for months, had shipping containers put on bridges connecting the countries and cut off diplomatic ties.

    Maduro acted after Colombia’s then conservative government and the United States recognized Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and tried to help him to bring truckloads of humanitarian aid into the cash-strapped country.

    Last year, Colombia and Venezuela renewed diplomatic relations following the election of Petro as Colombia’s president.

    Petro has recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and moved away from U.S. led efforts to isolate Venezuela’s authoritarian government.

    Colombia’s new president has said that he would like to convince Venezuela to rejoin the interamerican system of human rights, and has also asked Venezuela to assist Colombia’s efforts to broker a peace deal with the National Liberation Army, a rebel group that is present on both sides of the border.

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  • Israeli troops kill 5 Palestinian gunmen in West Bank raid

    Israeli troops kill 5 Palestinian gunmen in West Bank raid

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    AQABAT JABR, West Bank — Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen in a raid on refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the latest bloodshed in the region that will likely further exacerbate tensions.

    The Palestinian president’s office called the violence a crime, urging the United States to pressure Israel to hold back on its incursions. The military said the raid was meant to apprehend a militant cell that staged a botched shooting attack on a restaurant in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

    The violence comes amid one of the deadliest periods in years in the West Bank and in the first weeks of Israel’s new government, its most right-wing ever, which has promised to take a tough stance against the Palestinians.

    The Israeli military said it was operating in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp to apprehend the suspects behind a failed shooting attack last month at a West Bank restaurant, where attackers allegedly were thwarted by a weapon malfunction. The attackers then fled the scene, the military said, adding that they were members of the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip and has elements in the West Bank as well.

    The military said it was searching Monday for the militant cell behind the shooting that it said had sealed itself inside a home in the refugee camp. During the search, troops encountered gunmen and a gun battle erupted. The military said several of the gunmen who were killed were involved in the attempted attack on the restaurant.

    “The new Israeli government is continuing its series of crimes against our Palestinian people,” a statement from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office said.

    Jihad Abu Al-Assal, the governor of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, said the military was still holding on to the gunmen’s bodies. Without access to the bodies, the Palestinian Health Ministry did not immediately confirm the deaths, saying only that three were injured, one of them critically.

    Speaking at an event at the site of a recent deadly Palestinian shooting attack, Netanyahu confirmed earlier reports by Israeli security officials that five gunmen were killed, two of them involved in the attempted attack.

    The security officials told The Associated Press the two were Hamas members, while the three others were gunmen who had exchanged fire with troops during the raid. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the raid with the media.

    Hamas said it mourned the deaths of the members of its armed wing, without specifying how many had died. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the violence would be met with a response.

    “Our people and their resistance will not delay in responding to this crime,” he said.

    The raid comes days after an earlier incursion in the Aqabat Jabr camp, which is near the Palestinian city of Jericho, a desert oasis in an area of the West Bank that rarely sees such unrest, where troops were also searching for the suspects.

    Since the shooting at the nearby settlement, the Israeli military has blocked access to several roads into Jericho — a closure that has placed the city under a semi-blockade, disrupting business and creating hourslong bottlenecks at checkpoints that affected even Palestinian security forces, footage showed.

    Monday’s violence comes days after an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp killed 10 Palestinians, mostly militants but also a 61-year-old woman. The next day, a Palestinian shooting attack outside an east Jerusalem synagogue killed seven people, including a 14-year-old.

    The Israeli army has ramped up near-nightly raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel last spring. Over the last year of escalating raids, Jericho has remained a sort of sleepy desert town, spared much of the violence.

    The Palestinian Authority, in retaliation for last week’s raid into the Jenin refugee camp, declared a halt to security coordination with Israel.

    Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Since the start of this year, 41 Palestinians have been killed in those territories. Some 30 people were killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022.

    The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

    Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

    ___

    Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Wafaa Shurafa contributed reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

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  • Arizona’s shipping container wall on border is coming down

    Arizona’s shipping container wall on border is coming down

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    PHOENIX — Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s border barrier of shipping containers has been largely dismantled in time for a new Democratic administration, costing tens of millions of dollars over just a few months as they were set up and taken down again.

    Removal of the hulking red, gold and blue steel boxes is creating a stark visual shift in affected sections of Arizona’s southern landscape as a new governor takes power and another $76 million in state funds is spent to remove the containers on top of the $95 million it cost to put them there.

    Ducey had said the containers placed at an opening along the border near the western community of Yuma and across a grassland valley in eastern Arizona’s Cochise County were intended as a temporary measure until the Biden administration undertook permanent construction to secure the border.

    Gov. Katie Hobbs, who was sworn in this week, was among Democrats who called it a political stunt.

    Border security was a key issue of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a focus for many Republicans. Hobbs’ GOP rival, Kari Lake, campaigned on a promise to dispatch the National Guard to the border on her first day in office.

    The issue wound up in federal court after Ducey sued, asking that Arizona be recognized as having the sole or shared jurisdiction for the strip of federal land the containers were placed on. He also argued Arizona had the right to protect its residents from illegal immigration he termed a humanitarian crisis.

    An agreement between Ducey’s administration and the federal agencies named in his lawsuit called for the containers to come down by Wednesday, the day before Hobbs’s inauguration. But the court later stayed all deadlines in the case by 30 days to give Hobbs and new Attorney General Kris Mayes time to review the situation.

    In Yuma, all 130 of the containers covering about 3,800 feet (about 1,160 meters) were removed by Tuesday.

    Workers continue to dismantle the container wall in Cochise County, said Russ McSpadden, who has regularly visited the site in remote San Rafael Valley as a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

    About a third of some 3,000 containers were erected there, raising concerns about possible harm to local wildlife and natural water systems before protesters halted the work in early December. Environmentalists said the work in the Coronado National Forest imperiled endangered or threatened species like the western yellow-billed cuckoo and the Mexican spotted owl.

    Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls said this week that although the U.S. government plans permanent construction to close the big gap around the Morelos Dam section that immigrants often wade through, he worries about gaps not scheduled for construction.

    The U.S. Border Patrol announced Friday that construction to close the gap near the Morelos Dam will begin next week, noting that the swift-moving Colorado River poses potential hazards for drowning and other injuries for migrants and the agency’s own personnel.

    “The containers were never going to totally stop people from crossing, but it was a way to better control it,” said Nicholls, a Republican who is in regular contact with the White House and U.S. agencies about hundreds of asylum seekers arriving in his small city daily.

    Nicholls said he is already in talks with the Hobbs administration about border security and wants the governor to visit the area.

    “I’m hoping she makes her way here sooner rather than later,” he said. “We still feel like it’s an emergency.”

    Under Ducey, Arizona was busing hundreds of migrants from the Yuma area to the U.S. capital.

    Nicholls said the regular bus trips to Washington continue despite the change in governors, with the nonprofit Regional Center for Border Health assuming the contract.

    He said that without any kind of migrant shelter, Yuma is ill-prepared to help newcomers who need a place to stay, and that offering bus rides to Washington allows many to travel free to the East Coast where they may have family.

    Unlike busloads of migrants being sent to East Coast cities from Texas, nonprofit groups in Washington have said the buses from Arizona come with detailed manifests of passengers and their nationalities, coordination on arrival times and medical personnel aboard each trip. Ducey’s administration had sent more than 2,500 migrants on some 70 trips to Washington beginning in May.

    Ducey’s administration earlier estimated each bus trip cost about $80,000 in state funds, which would put the total cost so far well over $5.6 million.

    A spokesperson for the Regional Center for Border Health in Somerton, Arizona, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the contract is now being handled.

    Nicholls said the center will be reimbursed for the cost of the trips by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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  • US reopening visa and consular services at embassy in Cuba

    US reopening visa and consular services at embassy in Cuba

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    HAVANA — The United States Embassy in Cuba is reopening visa and consular services Wednesday, the first time it has done so since a spate of unexplained health incidents among diplomatic staff in 2017 slashed the American presence in Havana.

    The Embassy confirmed this week it will begin processing immigrant visas, with a priority placed on permits to reunite Cubans with family in the U.S., and others like the diversity visa lottery.

    The resumption comes amid the greatest migratory flight from Cuba in decades, which has placed pressure on the Biden administration to open more legal pathways to Cubans and start a dialogue with the Cuban government, despite a historically tense relationship.

    They are anticipated to give out at least 20,000 visas a year, though it’s just a drop in the bucket of the migratory tide, which is fueled by intensifying economic and political crises on the island.

    In late December, U.S. authorities reported stopping Cubans 34,675 times along the Mexico border in November, up 21% from 28,848 times in October.

    Month-to-month, that number has gradually risen. Cubans are now the second-largest nationality after Mexicans appearing on the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows.

    The growing migration is due to a complex array of factors, including economic, energy and political crises, as well deep discontent among Cubans.

    While the vast majority of Cuban migrants head to the U.S. via flights to Nicaragua and cross by land at the U.S. border with Mexico, thousands more have also taken a dangerous voyage by sea. They travel 90 miles to the Florida coast, often arriving in rickety, precariously constructed boats packed with migrants.

    The exodus from Cuba is also compounded by rising migration to the U.S. from other countries like Haiti and Venezuela, forcing the U.S. government to grapple with a growingly complex situation on its southern border.

    The renewal of visa work at the embassy comes after a series of migration talks and visits by U.S. officials to Havana in recent months, and may also be the sign of a slow thawing between the two governments.

    “Engaging in these talks underscores our commitment to pursuing constructive discussions with the government of Cuba where appropriate to advance U.S. interests,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement in November following an American delegation’s visit to Cuba.

    The small steps are far cry from relations under President Barack Obama, who eased many American Cold War-era sanctions during his time in office and made a historic visit to the island in 2016.

    Visa and consular services were closed on the island in 2017 after embassy staff were affflicted in a series of health incidents, alleged sonic attacks that remain largely unexplained.

    As a result, many Cubans who wanted to legally migrate to the U.S. have had to fly to places like Guyana to do so before migrating or reuniting with family.

    While relations have always been tense between Cuba and the U.S., they were heightened following the embassy closure and the Trump administration’s tightening of sanctions on Cuba.

    Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. has eased some restrictions on things like remittances and family travel from Miami to Cuba, but has fallen short of hopes by many in Cuba that a Biden presidency would return the island to its “Obama era.”

    Restrictions on tourist travel to Cuba, and imports and exports of many goods, remain in place.

    Also kindling tensions has been the Cuban government’s harsh treatment of participants in the island’s 2021 protests, including hefty prison sentences doled out to minors, a constant point of criticism by the Biden administration.

    Cuban officials have repeatedly expressed optimism about talks with the U.S. and steps to reopen visa services. Cuban Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Cossio said in November that ensuring migration through safe and legal pathways is a “mutual objective” by both countries.

    But Cossio also blamed the flight of tens of thousands from the island on U.S. sanctions, saying that “there’s no doubt that a policy meant to depress the living standards of a population is a direct driver of migration.”

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  • EXPLAINER: What happens if COVID asylum restrictions end?

    EXPLAINER: What happens if COVID asylum restrictions end?

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    WASHINGTON — Since the pandemic began, the United States has been using a public health rule designed to limit the spread of disease to expel asylum-seekers on the southern border.

    Title 42, as it’s called, has been used more than 2.5 million times to expel migrants since March 2020, although that number includes people who repeatedly attempted to cross the border.

    The Supreme Court said in a ruling Tuesday that it would keep Title 42 in place indefinitely. The case will be argued in February, and the stay will be maintained until the justices decide the case.

    In November, a federal judge ruled that immigration authorities could no longer use Title 42 to quickly expel prospective asylum-seekers and set a Dec. 21 deadline for its use to end. That set off a legal back-and-forth with a group of conservative-leaning states pushing to keep Title 42 in place and the federal government and immigration advocates say its time is over.

    The change comes as surging numbers of people are seeking to enter the country through the southern border and with Republicans intent on making immigration a key issue when they take control of the House in January.

    A look at Title 42 and the potential impact of the ruling:

    HOW IT STARTED

    In March 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order limiting migration across the southern and northern borders, saying it was necessary to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The virus was ravaging the U.S., schools were shutting down and hospitals filling up, and President Donald Trump was trying numerous ways to limit migration, his signature political issue.

    The order authorized Customs and Border Protection to immediately remove migrants, including people seeking asylum, to prevent the spread of the virus. The order said areas where migrants were held often weren’t designed to quarantine people or allow for social distancing and could put border personnel and others at risk.

    “The public health risks of inaction are stark,” it said.

    The Biden administration continued the policy. While many Democrats pushed President Joe Biden to overturn Trump’s anti-immigration measures, some — especially in border states — have advocated to keep Title 42, saying the U.S. is unprepared for an increase in asylum-seekers. When the CDC moved to lift it earlier this year, moderate Democrats — including Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia — wanted it to stay.

    THE COURT FIGHT

    In 2021, a group representing immigrants who were denied the right to seek asylum sued to end the use of Title 42.

    As that case made its way through the courts, the CDC announced last April that the rule was no longer needed because vaccines and treatments were becoming much more widespread.

    That sparked Republican-leaning states to file their own lawsuit aimed at keeping Title 42 in place. The states argued that ending the rule would lead to a surge in migrants to their states that would in turn take a toll on their services. That argument found favor with a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana who ordered keeping the restrictions in place. The judge found Biden’s administration failed to follow administrative procedures requiring public notice and time to gather public comment on the plan to end the restrictions.

    But that ruling was effectively blocked by another federal judge in a separate lawsuit in Washington. That judge, appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, ruled on Nov. 15 that the Biden administration must lift the asylum restrictions by Dec. 21. That ruling, addressing broader questions about Title 42, took precedence over the Texas ruling, cheering immigration advocates. In a key development, the federal government did not appeal to keep the public health restrictions in place.

    “The court was correct to find that banning migrants, while allowing the rest of the country to open up, is unlawfully arbitrary, causes grave harm to desperate asylum-seekers, and overrides the United States’ legal commitments to provide a safe haven for those fleeing persecution,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Then a group of conservative states tried to intervene to keep Title 42 in place. They argued that the cancellation of pandemic-era policy “will cause an enormous disaster at the border” and the additional migrants will increase the states’ costs for law enforcement, education and health care. They’ve also argued that they had to intervene after the federal government did not push to keep Title 42 in place. The case has gone all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who last week ordered a temporary stay keeping Title 42 in place so it could thoroughly study each side’s arguments.

    The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday extended the temporary stay indefinitely as it set a February timetable for hearing arguments.

    DOES TITLE 42 AFFECT ALL ASYLUM-SEEKERS?

    Not really. The Biden administration has not used it with children traveling alone, only single adults or families. And the ban has been unevenly enforced by nationality, falling largely on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — in addition to Mexicans — because Mexico allows them to be returned from the United States. Last month, Mexico began accepting Venezuelans who are expelled from the United States under Title 42, causing a sharp drop in Venezuelans seeking asylum at the U.S. border.

    Some other nationalities are less likely to be subject to Title 42 because costs or frayed relations with their home countries, Cuba for example, make it difficult for the U.S. to send them back. People from these countries have become a growing presence at the border, confident they will be released in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

    According to the most recent figures released by Customs and Border Protection officials, illegal border crossings by Cubans and Nicaraguans rose sharply in November while overall migration flows were little changed from October.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF TITLE 42 ENDS?

    If it goes away, asylum-seekers will be interviewed by asylum officers who will determine if they have a “credible fear” of being persecuted in their home countries. If they’re found to face a credible threat, they can stay in the U.S. until a final determination is made.

    That can take years. Although some are detained while their asylum process plays out, the vast majority are freed into the United States with notices to appear in immigration court or report to immigration authorities.

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a memo outlining their preparations for the end of Title 42’s use that the current system is not designed “to handle the current volume of migration nor the increased volume we expect over the coming weeks and months.”

    It said it is preparing for a possible surge by cracking down on smuggling networks, speeding removal of those found to have little basis to stay in the U.S., and working with international partners to stem migration. It said it’s also seeking more money from Congress. Meanwhile, as temperatures plummeted last week, thousands of migrants were gathered on the Mexican side of the border waiting to see what happens if and when Title 42’s use ends.

    Republicans, who will control the House come January, are expected to make immigration a major issue. Already there have been calls to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    Some Democrats have also voiced concern about what happens when Title 42 goes away. In a letter to Biden this week, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas joined two Texas Republicans — Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Tony Gonzales — in asking Biden to keep Title 42 in place, saying there was a crisis at the southern border and that DHS hadn’t presented a plan to maintain control there.

    ——

    Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.

    ———

    Follow AP’s complete coverage on immigration: https://apnews.com/hub/immigration

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  • China blasts US defense bill while Taiwan welcomes it

    China blasts US defense bill while Taiwan welcomes it

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    China has blasted an annual U.S. defense spending bill for hyping up the “China threat” while Taiwan welcomed the legislation, saying it shows U.S. support for the self-governing island that China says must come under its rule

    BEIJING — China blasted an annual U.S. defense spending bill for hyping up the “China threat” while Taiwan welcomed the legislation, saying it demonstrated U.S. support for the self-governing island that China says must come under its rule.

    “China deplores and firmly opposes this U.S. move,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted online Saturday, calling the new law a serious political provocation that blatantly interferes in China’s internal affairs.

    President Joe Biden signed the $858 billion defense bill into law in Washington on Friday. It includes about $45 billion more than Biden had requested as lawmakers look to offset inflation and boost the nation’s military competitiveness with China and Russia.

    The bill also repealed a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for U.S. troops.

    In the Indo-Pacific region, the legislation authorizes increased security cooperation with Taiwan and requires expanded cooperation with India on emerging defense technologies, readiness and logistics.

    A Taiwan Foreign Ministry statement thanked the U.S. Congress “for showing the great importance it attaches to Taiwan-U.S. relations and strengthening Taiwan’s security.”

    China objects to U.S. support for Taiwan, an island of 23 million people off its east coast. The two split during the civil war that brought the communists to power in China in 1949.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said the U.S. defense bill “severely affects peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

    China staged major military exercises around Taiwan in August after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island. The Chinese military sent 39 planes and three ships toward Taiwan earlier this week in a relatively large show of force.

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  • US court rejects maintaining COVID-19 asylum restrictions

    US court rejects maintaining COVID-19 asylum restrictions

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    REYNOSA, Mexico — Restrictions that have prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. in recent years remained on track to expire in a matter of days after an appeals court ruling Friday, as thousands more migrants packed shelters on Mexico’s border with the U.S.

    The ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals means the restrictions known as Title 42 are still set to be lifted Wednesday, unless further appeals are filed.

    A coalition of 19 Republican-leaning states were pushing to keep the asylum restrictions put in place by former President Donald Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The public-health has left some migrants biding time in Mexico.

    Advocates for immigrants had argued that the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding history and commitments to offer refuge to people around the world fleeing persecution, and sued to end the use of Title 42. They’ve also argued the restrictions were a pretext by Trump for restricting migration, and in any case, vaccines and other treatments make that argument outdated.

    A judge last month sided with them and set Dec. 21 as the deadline for the federal government to end the practice. Conservative states trying to keep Title 42 in place had pushed to intervene in the case. But a three-judge panel on Friday night rejected their efforts, saying the states had waited too long. Louisiana’s Attorney General expressed disappointment with the decision and said they would appeal to the Supreme Court.

    Border cities, most notably El Paso, Texas, are facing a daily migrant influx that the Biden administration expects to grow if asylum restrictions are lifted. Tijuana, the largest Mexican border city, has an estimated 5,000 people in more than 30 shelters, Enrique Lucero, the city’s director of migrant affairs said this week.

    In Reynosa, Mexico, near McAllen, Texas, nearly 300 migrants — mostly families — crammed into the Casa del Migrante, sleeping on bunk beds and even on the floor.

    Rose, a 32-year-old Haitian, has been in the shelter for three weeks with her daughter and 1-year-old son. Rose, who did not provide her last name because she fears it could jeopardize her safety and her attempts to seek asylum, said she learned on her journey of possible changes to U.S. policies. She said she was happy to wait a little longer in Mexico for the lifting of restrictions that were enacted at the outset of the pandemic and that have become a cornerstone of U.S. border enforcement.

    “We’re very scared, because the Haitians are deported,” said Rose, who is worried any mistakes in trying to get her family to the U.S. could get her sent back to Haiti.

    Inside Senda de Vida 2, a Reynosa shelter opened by an evangelical Christian pastor when his first one reached capacity, about 3,000 migrants are living in tents pitched on concrete slabs and gravel. Flies swarm everywhere under a hot sun beating down even in mid-December.

    For the many fleeing violence in Haiti, Venezuela and elsewhere, such shelters offer at least some safety from the cartels that control passage through the Rio Grande and prey on migrants.

    In McAllen, about 100 migrants who avoided asylum restrictions rested on floor mats Thursday in a large hall run by Catholic Charities, waiting for transportation to families and friends across the U.S.

    Gloria, a 22-year-old from Honduras who is eight months pregnant with her first child, held onto a printed sheet that read: “Please help me. I do not speak English.” Gloria also did not want her last name used out of fear for her safety. She expressed concerns about navigating the airport alone and making it to Florida, where she has a family acquaintance.

    Andrea Rudnik, co-founder of an all-volunteer migrant welcome association in Brownsville, Texas, across the border from Matamoros, Mexico, was worried about having enough winter coats for migrants coming from warmer climates.

    “We don’t have enough supplies,” she said Friday, noting donations to Team Brownsville are down.

    Title 42, which is part of a 1944 public health law, applies to all nationalities but has fallen unevenly on those whom Mexico agrees to take back — Guatemalans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans and, more recently, Venezuelans, in addition to Mexicans. Illegal border crossings of single adults dipped in November, according to a Justice Department court filing released Friday, though it gave no explanation for why. It also did not account for families traveling with young children and children traveling alone.

    According to the filing, Border Patrol agents stopped single adults 143,903 times along the Mexican border in November, down 9% from 158,639 times in October and the lowest level since August. Nicaraguans became the second-largest nationality at the border among single adults after Mexicans, surpassing Cubans.

    Venezuelan single adults were stopped 3,513 times by Border Patrol agents in November, plunging from 14,697 a month earlier, demonstrating the impact of Mexico’s decision on Oct. 12 to accept migrants from the South American country who are expelled from the U.S.

    Mexican single adults were stopped 43,504 times, down from 56,088 times in October, more than any other nationality. Nicaraguan adults were stopped 27,369 times, up from 16,497. Cuban adults were stopped 24,690 times, up from 20,744.

    In a related development, a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, ruled Thursday that the Biden administration wrongly ended a Trump-era policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. The ruling had no immediate impact but could prove a longer-term setback for the White House.

    White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said immigration laws would continue to be enforced at the border and the Biden administration would work to expand legal pathways for migrants but discourage “disorderly and unsafe migration.”

    “To be clear: the lifting of the Title 42 public health order does not mean the border is open,” he said. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is doing the work of smugglers spreading misinformation to make a quick buck off of vulnerable migrants.”

    ———

    Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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  • US sues Arizona over shipping containers on Mexico border

    US sues Arizona over shipping containers on Mexico border

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    PHOENIX — The U.S. government sued Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the state Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.

    The complaint filed in U.S. District Court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.

    Ducey told U.S. officials earlier this week that Arizona is ready to help remove the containers, which he says were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wants the U.S. government to say when it will fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall as it announced it would a year ago.

    The U.S. “owes it to Arizonans and all Americans to release a timeline,” he wrote in a Tuesday letter, responding to news of the pending federal complaint.

    Border security was a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a key issue for Republican politicians.

    The Department of Justice complaint asks the court for Arizona to be ordered to halt placement and remove the containers in remote San Rafael Valley in southeastern Cochise County.

    The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million is about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment have held up work in recent days.

    “Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on federal lands,” the complaint reads. The action also seeks damages to compensate the United States to fix any damage along the border.

    The Justice Department sued on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service it oversees.

    U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement from Washington that the project “is not an effective barrier, it poses safety hazards to both the public and those working in the area and has significantly damaged public land.”

    “We need serious solutions at our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” Vilsack said.

    The complaint was applauded by U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona. He called the project an “illegal junkyard border wall.”

    Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal complaint “should be the beginning of the end of Doug Ducey’s lawless assault on protected national forestlands and endangered wildlife.”

    Ducey wrote federal officials after being informed of their intent to file the complaint and rejected their argument that the containers “present serious public safety risks and environmental harms.”

    “The number one public safety risk and environmental harm has come from inaction by the federal government to secure our border,” Ducey wrote, with the January 2021 halt in the building of Trump’s border wall resulting in “an ever-increasing number of migrants who continue to flow into the state.”

    Ducey’s move comes amid a record flow of migrants arriving at the border. U.S. border officials have stopped migrants 2.38 million times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Trump’s presidency, in 2019.

    Ducey also rejected the U.S. government’s claims that the containers interfere with the ability of federal agencies to carry out their official duties, as well as to complete construction of border infrastructure in some areas.

    He said he was encouraged by the Biden administration’s earlier announcement it would fill gaps in the wall, but that was a year ago.

    “Arizona had no other choice but to address the crisis at its southern border and began erecting a temporary border barrier,” the governor wrote.

    Hobbs has said she considers the project a political stunt, but hasn’t decided what to do about the containers after her Jan. 5. inauguration.

    Ducey sued federal officials over their objections to the container wall Oct. 21, insisting that Arizona holds sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot (18.2 meter) strip the containers rest on and has a constitutional right to protect residents from “imminent danger of criminal and humanitarian crises.”

    Ducey’s container wall effort began in late summer in Yuma in western Arizona, a popular crossing point, with scores of asylum-seekers arriving daily and often finding ways to circumvent the new barriers. The containers filled areas left open when Trump’s 450-mile (724 km) border wall was built. But remote San Rafael Valley — the latest construction site — is not typically used by migrants and was not contemplated in Trump’s wall construction plan.

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  • EXPLAINER: What’s at stake in Turkey’s new Syria escalation

    EXPLAINER: What’s at stake in Turkey’s new Syria escalation

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    BEIRUT — After weeks of deadly Turkish airstrikes in northern Syria, Kurdish forces and international players are trying to gauge whether Ankara’s threats of a ground invasion are serious.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly warned of a new land incursion to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border, following a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and on the Syria-based People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Both have denied involvement.

    On Nov. 20, Ankara launched a barrage of airstrikes, killing dozens, including civilians as well as Kurdish fighters and Syrian government troops. Human Rights Watch has warned that the strikes are exacerbating a humanitarian crisis by disrupting power, fuel and aid.

    In the most recent development, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin flew to Turkey this week for talks on the situation in Syria.

    Here’s a look at what various foreign powers and groups embroiled in the Syria conflict stand to gain or lose:

    WHAT TURKEY WANTS

    Turkey sees the Kurdish forces along its border with Syria as a threat and has launched three major military incursions since 2016, taking control of large swaths of territory.

    Erdogan hopes to relocate many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to northern Syria and has begun building housing units there. The plan could address growing anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey and bolster Erdogan’s support ahead of next year’s elections, while diluting historically Kurdish-majority areas by resettling non-Kurdish Syrian refugees there.

    Erdogan has also touted plans to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) security corridor in areas currently under Kurdish control. A planned Turkish invasion earlier this year was halted amid opposition by the U.S. and Russia.

    THE KURDISH RESPONSE

    Kurdish groups are pressing the U.S. and Russia, both of which have military posts in northern Syria, to once again prevent Turkey from carrying out its threats.

    The Kurds are worried that West will stand aside this time to appease Ankara in exchange for approval of Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

    “This silence toward Turkey’s brutality will encourage Turkey to carry out a ground operation,” said Badran Jia Kurd, deputy co-chair of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

    Kurdish groups, which fought against the Islamic State group alongside a U.S.-led coalition and now guard thousands of captured IS fighters and family members, warn that a Turkish escalation would threaten efforts to stamp out the extremist group.

    In recent weeks, officials from the U.S. and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had stopped or scaled back joint patrols against IS because of the airstrikes, although patrols have since resumed.

    THE ROLE OF THE SYRIAN INSURGENTS

    The so-called Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkey-backed Syrian opposition groups with tens of thousands of fighters, would likely provide foot soldiers for any future ground offensive. In previous incursions, including the 2018 offensive on the town of Afrin, the SNA was accused of committing atrocities against Kurds and displacing tens of thousands from their homes.

    Several officials from the SNA did not respond to calls and text messages by The Associated Press. One official who answered said they were ordered by Turkish authorities not to speak about plans for a new incursion.

    THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT’S STANCE?

    The Syrian government has opposed past Turkish incursions but also sees the SDF as a secessionist force and a Trojan horse for the U.S., which has imposed paralyzing sanctions on the government of Bashar Assad.

    Damascus and Ankara have recently been moving to improve relations after 11 years of tension triggered by Turkey’s backing of opposition fighters in Syria’s civil war. Damascus has kept relatively quiet about the killing of Syrian soldiers in the recent Turkish strikes.

    WILL THE UNITED STATES GET INVOLVED?

    The United States maintains a small military presence in northern Syria, where its strong backing of the SDF has infuriated Turkey.

    However, the U.S. at first said little publicly about the Turkish airstrikes, speaking more forcefully only after they hit dangerously close to U.S. troops and led to anti-IS patrols being temporarily halted. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last week voiced “strong opposition” to a new offensive.

    Asked if the U.S. had any assurances for Kurds worried that the U.S. might abandon them to coax a NATO deal out of Turkey, a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said only that there had been no changes to U.S. policy in the region.

    WILL RUSSIA BROKER A DEAL?

    Russia is the Syrian government’s closest ally. Its involvement in Syria’s conflict helped turn the tide in favor of Assad.

    Although Turkey and Russia support rival sides in the conflict, the two have coordinated closely in Syria’s north. In recent months, Russia has pushed for a reconciliation between Damascus and Ankara.

    Moscow has voiced concerns over Turkey’s recent military actions in northern Syria and has attempted to broker a deal. According to Lebanon-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, the chief of Russian forces in Syria, Lt. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, recently suggested to SDF commander Mazloum Abdi that Syrian government forces should deploy in a security strip along the border with Turkey to avoid a Turkish incursion.

    IRAN’S INTERESTS

    Iran, a key ally of the Assad government, strongly opposed Turkish plans for a land offensive earlier this year but hasn’t commented publicly on the possible new incursion.

    Tehran also has a sizable Kurdish minority and has battled a low-level separatist insurgency for decades. Iran has seen sustained protests and a deadly crackdown by security forces since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, in the custody of the country’s morality police in mid- September.

    Iran has blamed much of the unrest on Kurdish opposition groups exiled in neighboring Iraq, charges those groups deny, and has carried out strikes against them. Another Turkish incursion into Syria could provide a model for a wider response if the unrest in Iran’s Kurdistan continues to escalate.

    ———

    Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writers Andrew Wilks in Istanbul and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

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  • Croatia to join Europe’s ID-check-free area, others to wait

    Croatia to join Europe’s ID-check-free area, others to wait

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    BRUSSELS — European Union countries agreed Thursday to allow Croatia to fully open its borders and participate in Europe’s ID-check-free travel zone, but Bulgaria and Romania were told that they must wait longer to be allowed in.

    “The Schengen area is growing for the first time in more than a decade,” the Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency tweeted after a meeting of interior ministers in Brussels. “Ministers approved Croatia’s membership as of 1 January 2023!”

    The so-called Schengen area is the world’s largest free travel zone. It comprises 26 countries — 22 EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Almost 1.7 million people live in one Schengen country and work in another. Around 3.5 million people cross an internal border each day.

    Austria, in particular, had objected to Bulgaria and Romania joining, citing migration concerns.

    “When it comes to the accession of Romania and Bulgaria we are not united and that makes us very weak and that makes me also sad,” Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters after the decision was announced.

    “You deserve to be full members of Schengen, you deserve to have access to the free movement in the Schengen area,” Johansson said, adding that the two had strong support from almost all the ministers present.

    Full accession for the EU’s newest members — Bulgaria and Romania joined the bloc in 2007, Croatia in 2013 — required unanimous support from their partners.

    Last month, the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, ruled that all three candidate countries meet the technical criteria for joining, and the European Parliament has also voted in favor of their membership.

    Croatia’s bid received no notable opposition from its EU partners, and the government in Zagreb hailed the news.

    Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic wrote on Facebook that, with the open borders, Croatia “has fulfilled the strategic goals of the government” and that “citizens and the economy will have the biggest benefit.”

    “Croatia is in Schengen!” Deputy Prime Minister Davor Božinović enthused.

    “There are no more borders on our European journey. We met all the conditions, went through a long and demanding process,” he said. “With Croatia in Schengen, everyone benefits — the citizens, the economy, Croatia and the EU.”

    But ahead of Thursday’s meeting Austria appeared almost certain to veto the Bulgarian and Romanian bids over immigration, as increasing numbers of people cross its borders without authorization via the Balkans region.

    Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner renewed his country’s staunch opposition, noting that more than 100,000 people have entered Austria this year without authorization.

    “The system is not working right now,” he told reporters.

    Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also sparked a furor last week when he alleged that Bulgarian border security officials could accept cash bribes.

    Bulgarian President Rumen Radev hit back, writing on Facebook that three Bulgarian border officials have been killed in recent months while protecting the bloc’s external borders. “Instead of European solidarity,” Radev said, “Bulgaria receives cynicism.”

    In an effort to ease their partners’ concerns, Bulgaria and Romania invited EU fact-finding missions with national experts twice in recent months to see how things have improved.

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country has a clear position: “We want Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania to be fully part of the Schengen area and will continue to work for that.”

    “We are also confident that we will succeed in the end,” he added. “This was a day of decisions today, there are more to come, very soon even.”

    The President of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, Marcel Ciolacu, wrote on Facebook after the decision was announced, that “Austria’s unfair opposition is a free Christmas gift” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “European unity and stability have today received a hard blow from a state that has chosen, in difficult times, to abandon its European comrades and serve … the interests of Russia,” Ciolacu said. “Austria is clearly disconnected from Europe.”

    Bulgarian Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev was cautiously optimistic after Thursday’s announcement, saying that he thought common ground could be found to overcome the objections of Austria, and perhaps the Netherlands.

    “Austria already signaled that there are mechanisms, compromises that it is ready to accept. So, the talks will continue,” he told reporters.

    Honor Keleman, Romania’s Deputy Prime Minister, however, was incensed by the result and vowed to “continue to fight” to join Schengen “without giving in to Austria’s miserable blackmail.”

    “Austria’s veto is unfair, immoral, lacking solid arguments, showing a miserable political game,” he wrote on Facebook. “Yes, it is a miserable decision against every Romanian citizen … against the laws governing freedom of movement within the European Union.”

    Rights group Amnesty International also noted the decisions with concern, pointing to reports and evidence about migrants being unlawfully detained in some EU countries, notably Croatia.

    “Today’s announcement that Croatia is joining the Schengen area shows that the EU condones, and even rewards, these illegal practices, and is willing to sacrifice human rights to prevent people from entering the EU,” said Amnesty’s Western Balkans Researcher Jelena Sesar.

    ———

    McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania. Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this story.

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  • The House GOP’s Investigation Conundrum

    The House GOP’s Investigation Conundrum

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    The list of investigative priorities for the House Judiciary Committee that the incoming chairperson, Jim Jordan, sent to the Justice Department earlier this month reads like an assignment sheet for Fox News.

    And that was before Jordan, with incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, repeatedly insisted the FBI had colluded with “Big Tech” to undermine former president Donald Trump by “suppressing” information about Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election.

    It was also before reports surfaced that Kevin McCarthy, in his bid to secure the votes as speaker, promised far-right members of his caucus that he would authorize investigations into the Justice Department’s treatment of the insurrectionists who rioted in support of Trump on January 6. This was also before McCarthy threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    Two months before taking power, the new House Republican majority has signaled that its investigative agenda will channel the preoccupations of the former president and his die-hard base of supporters. But it has set this course immediately after a midterm election in which voters outside the core conservative states sent an unmistakable signal of their own by repeatedly rejecting Trump-backed candidates in high-profile senate and gubernatorial races. That contrast captures why the GOP’s plans for aggressive investigations of President Joe Biden may present as much political risk for the investigators as it does for the targets.

    Read: The new majority

    House Republicans and their allies are confident that the investigations will weaken Biden in advance of the 2024 presidential election. “This is not just superficial stuff—this is damaging stuff,” former Republican Representative Tom Davis, who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee, told me.

    But the new majority’s focus on airing echo-chamber conservative obsessions risks further stamping the GOP as the party of Trump precisely as more Republican leaders and donors insist the recent election results demonstrate the need to move beyond him.

    “All these folks are coming out saying, ‘Turn the page; move forward’ … and I think this is really a problem if some of these [House] members are going to continue to look back and embrace Trump at a time when we saw the most Trumpian candidates get their heads handed to them,” former Republican Representative Charlie Dent told me.

    The choices confronting GOP leaders on what—and how—to investigate encapsulates the much larger challenge they will face in managing the House. This month’s midterm election left the GOP with a House majority much smaller than it expected. The results also created a kind of split-personality caucus operating with very different political incentives.

    Most incoming House Republicans represent districts in Trump country: 168 of them hold seats that Trump won by 10 percentage points or more in 2020. Another three dozen represent more marginal Republican-leaning seats that Trump carried by fewer than 10 points two years ago.

    But the GOP majority relies on what will likely be 18 members (when all the final votes are counted) who won districts that voted for Biden in 2020. Eleven of those 18 are in New York and California alone—two states that will likely become considerably more difficult for Republicans in a presidential-election year than during a midterm contest.

    For the Republicans from the hard-core Trump districts, demonstrating a commitment to confronting Biden at every turn is crucial for preempting any possible primary challenges from their right, says the Democratic consultant Meredith Kelly, a former communications director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But, as Dent told me, the Republicans precariously holding the Biden seats have the “polar opposite” incentive: “They need to have bipartisan victories and wins.”

    Amid that cross-pressure, many analysts second the prediction of outgoing Democratic Representative David Price of North Carolina, a political scientist who has written several books about Congress, that the new GOP House majority is not likely to pass much legislation. The problem, Price told me, is not only the partisan and ideological fracture in the GOP caucus, but that its members do not have “an agenda that they campaigned on or they are committed to.”

    All members of the GOP caucus might agree on legislation to extend the Trump tax cuts, to promote more domestic energy production, or to increase funding for border security. But resistance from the Republicans in blue and purple districts may frustrate many of the right’s most ambitious legislative goals, such as repealing elements of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, passing a national ban on abortion, and forcing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

    With their legislative opportunities limited, House Republicans may see relentless investigation of Biden and his administration as a path of least resistance that can unite their caucus. And, several observers in both parties told me, all sides in the GOP are likely to support efforts to probe the White House’s policy record. Such targets could include the administration’s handling of border security, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how it is allocating the clean-energy tax credits and loan guarantees that the Inflation Reduction Act established.

    But Republicans have already indicated they are unlikely to stop at such conventional targets.

    Jordan, in his letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month, warned of coming investigations into the Justice Department’s treatment of Project Veritas; allegations that the department has targeted conservative parents as “domestic terrorists” for their actions at school-board meetings; and the department’s decision making in the choice to execute a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

    At the press conference last week with Jordan, Comer declared that evidence from the GOP’s investigation of Hunter Biden’s business activities, including information obtained from his laptop, “raises troubling questions about whether President Biden is a national-security risk.”

    Jordan, asked at that press conference about the reports that McCarthy has committed to an investigation of the prosecution and treatment of the January 6 rioters, refused to deny it, instead repeating his determination to explore all examples of alleged politicization at the Justice Department. At one point, Jordan, an unwavering defender of Trump through his two impeachments, delivered an impassioned attack on federal law enforcement that reprised a long list of familiar Trump grievances. “When is the FBI going to quit interfering with elections?” Jordan excitedly declared.

    David Frum: Another flop from GOP Productions

    Jordan doesn’t even represent the outer edge of conservative ambition to use House investigations to settle scores for Trump. Earlier this week, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida tweeted that when Republicans take the majority, they “should take over the @January6thCmte and release every second of footage that will exonerate our Patriots!”

    That might be a bridge too far even for McCarthy. But as he scrambles to overcome conservative resistance to his bid for speaker, he has already shown deference to demands from the Trump-country members who constitute the dominant block in his caucus. One example was the report that he promised Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that he would allow some investigation into treatment of the January 6 rioters. Another came in his appearance along the Texas border this week. McCarthy went beyond pledging oversight of the Biden administration’s border record to raise the much more incendiary (but also Fox-friendly) notion of impeaching Mayorkas.

    Dent, the former GOP representative, told me that on all these fronts, House Republicans risk pushing oversight to a confrontational peak that may damage its members from marginal seats at least as much as it hurts Biden—particularly if it involves what he described as airing Trump grievances. “These rabbit holes are just fraught with political peril in these more moderate districts,” Dent said.

    Democrats hope that the coming GOP investigations will alienate more voters than they alarm. Several Democratic strategists told me they believe that the focus on so many conservative causes will both spotlight the most extreme Trump-aligned voices in the Republican caucus, such as Jordan and Greene, and strike swing voters as a distraction from their kitchen-table concerns.

    Leslie Dach, a veteran Democratic communications strategist now serving as a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, a group mobilizing to respond to the investigations, told me the GOP inquiries will inexorably identify the party with the same polarizing style of Trump-like politics that voters just repudiated in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. “We saw in this election that voters reject the Trump playbook and MAGA politics, but that is exactly what they will see in these hearings,” he said.

    Congressional investigations always carry the risk of disclosures that could hurt or embarrass Biden and other officials. And whatever they find, investigations also promise to divert significant amounts of the administration’s time and energy. The White House has already staffed up a unit in the counsel’s office dedicated to responding to the inquiries. Cabinet departments are scrambling to do the same.

    Recognizing the potential political risk, several Republican representatives newly elected in Biden districts have already urged their party to move slowly on the probes and instead to prioritize action on economic issues. Their problem is that McCarthy already has given every indication he’s likely to prioritize the demands for maximum confrontation from his caucus’s pro-Trump majority.

    “If past is prologue, Kevin McCarthy will fall much on the side of the ruby-red Republican base and the pro-investigation, pro-culture-war side,” Kelly says. “He’s never proven able to stand up to the fringe.” And that means the new members from Biden-leaning districts who have provided the GOP its narrow majority have reason to sweat almost as much as the Biden administration over the swarm of investigations that House Republicans are poised to unleash.

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    Ronald Brownstein

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