Hunting down your enemies on the bustling streets of Amsterdam, along the U.S.-Mexico border or in a Middle Eastern fishing village is just part of the intense action in the latest Call of Duty video game.
The Friday release of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” continues a nearly two-decade run for California-based Activision Blizzard’s wildly popular military shooting game franchise. New installments of the game can rival Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters in how much they earn on their opening weekend.
But the battle this time is also happening off-screen. Call of Duty is at the center of a corporate tug-of-war between Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation over Microsoft’s pending $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard.
Rights to the mega-hit franchise, currently owned by Activision, will be handed over to Microsoft once the deal — the largest in the gaming industry’s history — is finalized in 2023. Once in full control, whether Microsoft will allow Call of Duty games to remain on the Sony Xbox platform or choose to make it exclusive to GamePass is at question.
“Microsoft would have full ownership of one of the most valuable franchises in console gaming,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “And naturally, Sony does not want that or like that because it will cost them business.”
The scheduled October 28 release of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” continues a nearly two-decade run for Activision Blizzard’s wildly popular military shooting game franchise.
Callofduty.com
“Must-have” game title
Microsoft has been working to get approval from antitrust regulators in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere to complete its January agreement to acquire the video game giant. But it’s been trailed around the world by objections from Sony, which is afraid of losing access to what it describes as a “must-have” game title.
Among those listening to Sony’s concerns are antitrust regulators in the United Kingdom who last month escalated their investigation into whether Microsoft could make Call of Duty and other titles exclusive to its Xbox platform or “otherwise degrade its rivals’ access” by delaying releases or imposing licensing price increases.
“We are concerned that Microsoft could use its control over popular games like ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘World of Warcraft’ post-merger to harm rivals, including recent and future rivals in multi-game subscription services and cloud gaming,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in September, Reuters reported
Blast from the past
Meanwhile, work on Modern Warfare 2 started before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered Infinity Ward’s headquarters outside of Los Angeles, forcing developers to be more creative in how they drew the game’s characters, weaponry, motions and scenery and recorded its voices. It was the same studio that in 2003 launched the original Call of Duty, a first-person shooter set during World War II.
Infinity Ward executives declined to talk about their pending takeover by Microsoft. But Microsoft is increasingly speaking out about what would be the largest-ever tech acquisition, trying to assure regulators that it will keep Call of Duty on the PlayStation console “for at least several more years” beyond its current contract with Sony.
PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan meanwhile has called Microsoft’s assurances misleading, telling the Financial Times in September that Microsoft had only offered to keep the hit franchise on PlayStation for “three years after the current agreement.” An offer Ryan dismissed as “inadequate on many levels, and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers.”
While Brazil and Saudi Arabia have already approved the deal, it still awaits important decisions from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and authorities in the U.K. and the European Union. Microsoft told investors Tuesday that is still expects the deal to close by the first half of next year.
But it’s possible regulators could impose conditions that force Microsoft to keep access open to Call of Duty for a longer time and ensure that its rivals aren’t getting a lesser version.
“Is it really that important for Sony on a financial basis? Probably not. But it’s mostly the draw of having all these people come to their platform,” van Dreunen said.
And while important to console-makers and the digital subscription services they are building, Call of Duty and its fanbase is just a portion of what Microsoft would get from taking over Activision Blizzard, which owns dozens of titles including popular mobile games like Candy Crush. Van Dreunen said while the attention is on the Call of Duty dispute, that mobile expansion might be the real “gravity point” for Microsoft’s massive merger.
The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force the top two lawyers from Donald Trump’s White House counsel’s office to testify about their conversations with the former President, as it tries to break through the privilege firewall Trump has used to avoid scrutiny of his actions on January 6, 2021, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
The move to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin just last week is part of a set of secret court proceedings. Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying before a criminal grand jury about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.
But the Justice Department successfully secured answers from top vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short over the past three weeks in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.
Jacob’s testimony on October 6, which has not been previously reported, is the first identifiable time when the confidentiality Trump had tried to maintain around the West Wing after the 2020 election has been pierced in the criminal probe following a court battle. A week after Jacob spoke to the grand jury again, Short had his own grand jury appearance date, CNN reported.
All four men previously declined to answer some questions about advice and interactions with Trump when they testified in recent months in the secret criminal probe. Trump lost the court battles related to Jacob and Short before the chief judge of the trial-level US District Court in Washington, DC, last month.
Attorneys for the men whom the DOJ is seeking to compel have declined to comment for this story or haven’t responded to requests. Cipollone and Philbin didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment.
All four men have been willing to be as cooperative as the law demands, leaving Trump’s team to handle the fight over certain details in the investigation, the sources say.
The litigation around Cipollone and Philbin’s testimony may be important for investigators in the long run, given how close the pair was to the Trump leading up to and during the Capitol riot. Prosecutors are likely to aim for the grand jury to hear about their direct conversations with the then-President.
The disputes – conducted under seal in court because they involve grand jury activity – may also spawn several more court fights that will be crucial for prosecutors as they work to bring criminal charges related to Trump’s post-election efforts.
Witnesses the federal grand jury has subpoenaed, such as former White House officials Mark Meadows, Eric Herschmann, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, also could decline to describe their conversations with Trump or advice being given to him after the election, several sources familiar with the investigation say.
Trump and his allies have used claims of confidentiality – both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege – with mixed results in multiple legal quagmires that surround the former President. Those include the January 6 federal criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents federal criminal investigation, Georgia’s Fulton County investigation of election meddling, and the House select committee probe of January 6 as well. Some of the privilege arguments Trump has raised have never been settled in federal court, and some of the fights could lead to the Supreme Court.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the “weaponized” Justice Department in a statement and referred to the probes surrounding the former President as “witch hunts.”
According to the sources, the Justice Department won a trial-level judge’s order at the end of September that said Jacob and Short must testify in response to certain questions over which Trump’s team had tried to claim presidential and attorney-client confidentiality.
The sealed court case, stemming from the grand jury’s work, had been before the chief judge of the DC District Court, Beryl Howell. Howell refused to put on hold Jacob and Short’s testimony while Trump’s team appealed, a source said.
The Trump team, meanwhile, took several days to respond to their loss before Howell in court. The Justice Department set a quick-turnaround subpoena date for Jacob, leaving him to head into the grand jury under subpoena on October 6, according to several sources.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is still considering legal arguments from Trump’s defense lawyers and the Justice Department over his ability to make executive and attorney-client privilege claims.
How that is resolved – either by the appeals court or even the Supreme Court, if Trump pursues it that far – could have significant consequences for the January 6 criminal investigation, and for multiple witnesses who may be refusing to share some of what they know because of Trump’s privilege claims.
Among a large group of former top Trump officials, Jacob has been one of the most searing voices condemning the then-President’s actions after the election, especially regarding the pressure he and his election attorney, John Eastman, tried to place on then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of the presidential vote.
Jacob has been a harsh critic of Eastman, who is also of interest to prosecutors, dating back to when Eastman tried to convince Pence’s office the vice president alone could override the vote. He told Eastman at the time the right-wing attorney was a “serpent in the ear” of the President, and wrote while Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, “thanks to your bulls**t, we are now under siege.”
Jacob added to a parade of star witnesses at public House select committee hearings this summer, speaking candidly about his disgust with what he witnessed inside the White House complex from his high-ranking position administration.
“There is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person would choose the American President, and then unbroken historical practice for 230 years, that the vice president did not have such an authority,” Jacob testified in July.
But what Jacob and Short knew of Trump’s conversations, they wouldn’t disclose to the House nor to the grand jury until this month.
In a taped House select committee deposition, Cipollone answered many questions about what happened inside the West Wing on January 6 but declined to describe communications between him and Trump.
Cipollone’s and Philbin’s roles as White House lawyers raise complicated legal questions about whether Trump can claim confidentiality over the legal advice they gave him, as well as whether a former president can assert executive privilege to hold off criminal investigators.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly declined to assert executive privilege around January 6 information, essentially leaving the fight for Trump to wage opposite the Justice Department.
While the courts will look at each situation individually, history isn’t on Trump’s side. Federal prosecutors investigating former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were able to overcome attorney-client privilege assertions for White House counsel as well as executive privilege assertions so the grand jury could hear closely guarded information.
FILE – Border Patrol agents patrol along a line of shipping containers stacked near the border on Aug. 23, 2022, near Yuma, Ariz. The Cocopah Indian Tribe is welcoming the federal government’s call for the state of Arizona to remove a series of double-stacked shipping containers placed along the U.S.-Mexico border near the desert city of Yuma, saying they are unauthorized and violate U.S. law. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
NEW YORK — When Wilfredo Molina arrived in the U.S. from his native Venezuela, he told border agents he wanted to go to Miami but didn’t have an address. They directed him to what he thought was a shelter in midtown Manhattan but turned out to be a gray office building.
“It was a fake building. I didn’t understand what it was,” he said.
Molina was among 13 migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. who agreed to share documents with The Associated Press that they received when they were released from U.S. custody while they seek asylum after crossing the border with Mexico. The AP found that most had no idea where they were going — nor did the people at the addresses listed on their paperwork.
Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not respond to repeated questions about families and individuals interviewed and the addresses assigned to them.
But the snafus suggest a pattern of Border Patrol agents, particularly in Texas, sending migrants without friends or family in the United States to offices that get no notice. The places often don’t have space to house migrants. Yet because those addresses appear on migrants’ paperwork, important notices may later be sent there.
“We believe that Border Patrol is attempting to demonstrate the chaos that they are experiencing on the border to inland cities,” said Denise Chang, executive director of the Colorado Housing Asylum Network. “We just need to coordinate so that we can receive people properly.”
Addresses on documents shown to AP included administrative offices of Catholic Charities in New York and San Antonio; an El Paso, Texas, church; a private home in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts; and a group operating homeless shelters in Salt Lake City.
A Venezuelan family that came to the American Red Cross’ Denver administrative offices was referred to multiple shelters before someone volunteered to take them in. Migrants who came to New York ended up in shelters, hotels or temporary apartments that the city helped them find and pay for.
A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year. In the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, migrants were stopped 2.38 million times, up 37% from 1.73 million times the year before and surpassing 2 million for the first time.
The year-end numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries, the relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.
Many are immediately expelled under the asylum restrictions, a public health order known as Title 42, which denies people a chance at seeking asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
But others — including people from Cuba and Nicaragua, with which the U.S. has strained relations — are released with notices to appear in immigration court or under humanitarian parole. Those migrants must tell agents where they will live, but many can’t provide an address.
“It almost seems as though, at the border, officials are simply just looking up any nonprofit address they can or just looking up any name at all that they can and just putting that down without actually ever checking whether that person has mentioned it, whether there’s beds or shelter at that location, or whether this is even a location that can provide legal assistance,” said Lauren Wyatt, managing attorney with Catholic Charities of New York. “So clearly, this is not the most effective way to do this.”
Most of the migrants interviewed in New York had hopped on taxpayer-funded buses that Texas and the city of El Paso have been sending regularly to the northeast city.
Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona also have been sending migrants released at the border to Democratic strongholds, including Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. They have been criticized for failing to notify local officials of plans. Republicans say they are highlighting issues with President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
The Biden administration recently agreed to accept up to 24,000 Venezuelans at U.S. airports if they apply for asylum online with financial sponsors, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion. Mexico has said it will take back Venezuelans who cross the border into the U.S. and are expelled under Title 42 authority.
Yeysy Hernández, a Venezuelan who reached New York after taking one of El Paso’s buses, says the address in her documents is for an El Paso church that wasn’t expecting migrants and where she slept just one night. Now she worries immigration notices might be sent there.
Hundreds of immigrants have shown up at one of the offices for Catholic Charities of New York with documents listing the address. Wyatt said the group complained and the government promised to put an end to the practice by Aug. 1 — something that “obviously, hasn’t happened.”
The group also has received more than 300 notices to appear in immigration court for people the organization does not know, Wyatt said. It’s also received deportation orders for migrants who failed to appear in court because their notices were sent to a Catholic Charities address.
Victor Quijada traveled with relatives last month to Denver after border agents sent the Venezuelan family to an American Red Cross office building. Once there, they were referred to a city shelter that also turned them away. They eventually found a shelter that took them in for a few days, but they felt unsafe.
“It was tough what we had to go through; from the things we had to eat to being on the streets — an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Quijada said.
Chang, from the Colorado Housing Asylum Network, eventually took the family into her home and her organization helped them lease an apartment. She said she knows of several migrants assigned to addresses of groups that can’t help them.
“The five families that I’ve worked with in the last three months, all five were picked up off the street, literally sitting on the sidewalk with children,” she said.
The building in midtown Manhattan where Molina went is an International Rescue Committee refugee resettlement office, but it provides only limited services to asylum-seekers there, said Stanford Prescott, a spokesman for the group.
Only one of the IRC’s U.S. offices — in Phoenix — operates a shelter for asylum-seekers and most stay less than 48 hours. Yet its Dallas and Atlanta offices also have been listed on migrants’ documents.
“We are deeply concerned that listing these addresses erroneously may lead to complications for asylum-seekers who are following a legal process to seek safety in the U.S.,” Prescott said.
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Trump did not sign an order to deploy 20,000 troops on Jan. 6
CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was stopped by the House sergeant at arms, at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
THE FACTS: While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about the National Guard response, he issued no such order before or during the rioting. New footage released last week of House lawmakers on Jan. 6 has sparked a resurgence of false claims and conspiracy theories about the insurrection. The videos, recorded by Pelosi’s daughter, showed the congresswoman negotiating with governors and defense officials in an effort to get Guard troops to the Capitol. Some on social media used the occasion to revive baseless claims that Pelosi had stopped a Trump order for tens of thousands of National Guard troops before the event. “Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 Guardsmen on J6. It was refused by the House sergeant at arms, who reports to Nancy Pelosi,” said one post that spread on Gettr, Instagram and Twitter. As the AP has previously reported, Trump was not involved in decision-making related to the National Guard on Jan. 6, and Pelosi did not stand in their way. Trump did say during a 30-second call on Jan. 5 with then Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops on Jan. 6, according to a statement Miller provided to a House committee in May 2021. But Miller added that there was “no elaboration,” and he took the comment to mean “a large force would be required to maintain order the following day.” There is no evidence that Trump actually signed any order requesting 10,000 Guard troops, let alone 20,000, for Jan. 6. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense provided a timeline of the agency’s involvement in preparing for and responding to the attack on the Capitol. The timeline shows no such order, and notes only that on Jan. 3, the president concurred with activating the D.C. National Guard to support law enforcement at the behest of Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser. When the rioting started, Bowser requested more Guard help, on behalf of the Capitol Police. That request was made to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who then went to Miller, who approved it. Neither Pelosi nor the House sergeant at arms could have stopped an ordered deployment of National Guard troops because Congress doesn’t control the National Guard, legal experts say. Guard troops are generally controlled by governors, though they can be federalized, said William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University. The online claims “make no sense at all,” Banks said, adding, “The House sergeant at arms, he or she is not in the chain of command. Nor is Nancy Pelosi.” As the newly released footage showed, she and Mitch McConnell, then Senate majority leader, called for military assistance, including the National Guard. The House sergeant at arms does sit on the Capitol Police Board, which also includes the Senate sergeant at arms and the architect of the Capitol. That board opted not to request the Guard ahead of the insurrection, but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun. There is no evidence that either Pelosi or McConnell directed the security officials not to call the guard beforehand, and Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said after the insurrection that Pelosi was never informed of such a request.
— Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.
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Immigrants not auto enrolled to vote under new driver’s license law
CLAIM: A new Massachusetts law providing driver’s licenses for immigrants in the country illegally will also automatically register them to vote in elections.
THE FACTS: The law passed by Massachusetts state lawmakers this summer prohibits immigrants without legal permission to reside in the U.S. from being automatically registered to vote. Social media users have been reviving fears that the new Massachusetts law would give those living in the country illegally the right to vote since the state has automatic voter registration. The concerns come as residents weigh a ballot referendum on the law in next month’s election. The law, which takes effect July 1, 2023, would allow Massachusetts residents who cannot provide proof of lawful presence in the U.S. to obtain a driver’s license or permit if they meet all other requirements, such as passing a road test and providing proof of identity. “Giving Driver’s licenses to illegals gives them the right to vote,” the Massachusetts Republican Party said in a Facebook post. Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl repeated the claim during a televised debate against Democratic rival Maura Healey. He noted that Republican Governor Charlie Baker vetoed the legislation in part over election concerns. Massachusetts’ Democratic-led legislature ultimately overrode the veto. But state Sen. Brendan Crighton, a Democrat who was a lead sponsor of the bill, told the AP that the voting concerns have “long been debunked.” He argued that green card holders, student visa holders and other types of noncitizens can already seek Massachusetts driver’s licenses, and there’s a system in place to ensure they’re not automatically registered to vote. The state in 2020 enacted an automatic voter registration law in which every eligible citizen who interacts with state agencies like the RMV is automatically registered to vote, unless they specifically opt out. The state’s current driver’s license form asks if the applicant is a U.S. citizen and a Massachusetts resident under a section for voter registration. If the applicant can’t answer “yes” to all the questions, they are then instructed to check a box that says, “Do not use my information for voter registration.” “The term ‘automatic voter registration’ is a misnomer in the sense that the individual is not registered to vote unless they are a citizen and over 18 years old,” Crighton said. “It is not actually automatic.” Amanda Orlando, Diehl’s campaign manager, didn’t dispute that Massachusetts’ new law specifically prohibits automatic voter registration for those seeking driver’s licenses. But she maintained the law, as constructed, “places the burden” of reviewing voting eligibility on the already overburdened and understaffed RMV. “What is written in the law, and what will happen in reality are different,” Orlando wrote in an email. “As noted by Governor Baker, they are not able to handle the volume they currently have, let alone increase it substantially with giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.” The RMV declined to comment, but Secretary of State William Galvin’s office, which oversees Massachusetts elections, said the two agencies have been in communication ahead of the law taking effect next year. Under the current process, the RMV provides the secretary of state’s office with all the relevant information for voter registration — such as an applicant’s name, date of birth and address — and can provide additional information to further verify voting eligibility, said Debra O’Malley, Galvin’s spokesperson. “The RMV has a record of what evidence of lawful presence has been provided and removes from those batches anyone who hasn’t provided them with a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, or U.S. naturalization papers,” she said by email.
— Associated Press writer Phillip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.
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CNBC report on climate research didn’t confirm ‘chemtrails’ theory
CLAIM: A CNBC story on research into technology to combat climate change admitted that “chemtrails” are real.
THE FACTS: The story reported on a federal plan to research technology that could place materials in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth, but experts say the idea is being investigated and is not currently in use. A TikTok video also shared on Instagram is distorting the facts around a recent CNBC story to advance a long-running conspiracy theory that the condensation trails, or contrails, left in the air by planes are actually dangerous “chemtrails.” “Chemtrails are real,” text shown in the video reads. The theory posits that aircrafts are spewing toxic chemicals as part of a nefarious and secret plot. The video, viewed more than 9,000 times on TikTok, shows screenshots of an Oct. 13 CNBC story headlined, “White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight.” The person in the video then proceeds to show footage of vapor trails in the sky. But the CNBC story wasn’t “admitting” that chemtrails are real, and experts say the aerosol injection technology it discussed is not currently in use. The CNBC report looked at a White House plan to study ways to reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth, in an effort to combat global warming. In passing a federal appropriations bill earlier this year, Congress directed federal agencies to coordinate with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a five-year plan assessing the use of such solar and climate interventions. One possibility is the use of stratospheric aerosol injection, an idea taken from the climate effects of large volcanic eruptions. These eruptions emit sulfur into the atmosphere, where it turns into “highly reflective microscopic droplets,” said Ben Kravitz, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University. Those sulfur droplets “reflect some sunlight back to space, and it cools the planet a little bit,” he said in an email. “Stratospheric aerosol injection is built on that idea — if nature can cool the planet, maybe we can do it on purpose.” The idea is not without risks, Kravitz added, and the point of research is so that decision makers can weigh whether to use such technology. “Currently nobody is doing this,” he said. David Keith, a Harvard University professor who researches this field, likewise told the AP that this is “a discussion about a technology that is possible but is not now used.” Keith said in an email that aerosol injection would not leave contrails like those left by planes. “If someone were doing climate-altering stratospheric aerosol injections – the sky would probably look a little whiter and hazier, much like it looks in a big city,” Kravitz said.
— Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.
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No suspected serial killer in Seattle, despite online rumor
CLAIM: King County detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle after several women in a southern section of the city and the nearby city of Burien were found dead with their bodies posed in the same way.
THE FACTS: The King County Sheriff’s Office and Seattle Police Department both said they are not investigating a suspected serial killer. The claims erupted on social media last weekend as Seattle residents warned each other about the alleged criminal. “King County Detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle right now,” read a tweet that was shared to Instagram, where it amassed nearly 40,000 likes. “Multiple women’s bodies have been discovered recently in the Burien and SODO area, apparently posed in the same way,” the post continued, referring to a district of downtown Seattle. “Serial killer warning in Seattle!” read another tweet, which included a screenshot of an email attributed to a local bar manager. The email claimed a killer had been targeting women in their 30s between 12 a.m. and 7 a.m. in the south Seattle area. The Seattle Police Department refuted the claims on Twitter and in an emailed statement, saying it did not have any serial homicide cases. The King County Sheriff’s Office, which is the main law enforcement agency for unincorporated areas of the county and 12 cities including Burien, also denied the claims on Twitter and by email. “The King County Sheriff’s Office is aware of unsubstantiated on-line social media reports that select death investigations, in the vicinity of South Park / SR509, may share similar characteristics,” the statement read. “At this time, the Sheriff’s Office has identified no evidence affirming this for any cases under our jurisdiction.” It’s unclear where the baseless rumors originated, though unsupported claims related to serial killers occasionally spread in cities across the country. The bar manager cited as the author of an email spreading the claims did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
— Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The year-end numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries, the relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.
Migrants were stopped 227,547 times in September at the U.S. border with Mexico, the third-highest month of Joe Biden’s presidency. It was up 11.5% from 204,087 times in August and 18.5% from 192,001 times in September 2021.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, migrants were stopped 2.38 million times, up 37% from 1.73 million times the year before, according to figures released late Friday night. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Donald Trump’s presidency in 2019.
Nearly 78,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were stopped in September, compared to about 58,000 from Mexico and three countries of northern Central America that have historically accounted for most of the flow.
The remarkable geographic shift is at least partly a result of Title 42, a public health rule that suspends rights to see asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Due to strained diplomatic relations, the U.S. cannot expel migrants to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua. As a result, they are largely released in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
Title 42 authority has been applied 2.4 million times since it began in March 2020 but has fallen disproportionately on migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
U.S. officials say Venezuelan migration to the United States has plunged more than 85% since Oct. 12, when the U.S. began expelling Venezuelans to Mexico under Title 42. At the same time, the Biden administration pledged to admit up to 24,000 Venezuelans to the United States on humanitarian parole if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport, similar to how tens of thousands of Ukrainians have come since Russia invaded their country.
The first four Venezuelans paroled into the United States arrived Saturday — two from Mexico, one from Guatemala, one from Peru — and hundreds more have been approved to fly, the Homeland Security Department said.
“While this early data is not reflected in the (September) report, it confirms what we’ve said all along: When there is a lawful and orderly way to enter the country, individuals will be less likely to put their lives in the hands of smugglers and try to cross the border unlawfully,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus.
The expansion of Title 42 for Venezuelans to be expelled to Mexico came despite the administration’s attempt to end the public health authority in May, which was blocked by a federal judge.
Venezuelans represented the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans for the second straight month, being stopped 33,804 times in September, up 33% from 25,361 times in August.
Cubans, who are participating in the largest exodus from the Caribbean island to the United States since 1980, were stopped 26,178 times at the border in September, up 37% from 19,060 in August.
Nicaraguans were stopped 18,199 times in September, up 55% from 7,298 times in August.
The report is the last monthly reading of migration flows before U.S. midterm elections, an issue that many Republicans have emphasized in campaigns to capture control of the House and Senate. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee released a one-sentence statement Saturday in response to the numbers: “You’ve got to be kidding.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two Russian Indigenous Siberians were so scared of having to fight the war in Ukraine, they chanced everything to take a small boat across the treacherous Bering Sea to reach American soil, Alaska’s senior U.S. senator said after talking with the two.
The two, identified as males by a resident, landed earlier this month near Gambell, on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, where they asked for asylum.
“They feared for their lives because of Russia, who is targeting minority populations, for conscription into service in Ukraine,” Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Saturday during a candidate forum at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage.
“It is very clear to me that these individuals were in fear, so much in fear of their own government that they risked their lives and took a 15-foot skiff across those open waters,” Murkowski said when answering a question about Arctic policy.
“It is clear that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is focused on a military conquest at the expense of his own people,” Murkowski said. “He’s got one hand on Ukraine and he’s got the other on the Arctic, so we have to be eyes wide open on the Arctic.”
Murkowski said she met with the two Siberians recently but didn’t provide more details about exactly when or where the meeting took place or where their asylum process stood. She was not available after the forum for follow-up questions.
Murkowski’s office on Oct. 6 announced their request for asylum, saying the men reportedly fled one of the coastal communities on Russia’s east coast.
A village elder in Gambell, 87-year-old Bruce Boolowon, is believed to be the last living Alaska National Guard member who helped rescue 11 U.S. Navy men who were in a plane that was shot down by Russian MIGs over the Bering Sea in 1955. The plane crash-landed on St. Lawrence Island.
Gambell, an Alaska Native community of about 600 people, is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula in Siberia.
Even though one of the Russians spoke English pretty well, two Russian-born women from Gambell were brought in to translate. Both women married local men and became naturalized U.S. citizens, said Boolowon, who is Siberian Yupik.
Russians landing in Gambell during the Cold War was commonplace, but the visits were not nefarious, Boolowon said. Since St. Lawrence Island is so close to Russia, people routinely traveled back and forth to visit relatives.
But these two men seeking asylum were unknown to the people of Gambell.
“They were foreigners and didn’t have any passports, so they put them in jail,” he told The Associated Press last week.
The two men spent the night in the jailhouse, but townspeople in Gambell brought them food, both Alaska Native dishes and items bought at a grocery store.
“They were pretty full; they ate a lot,” Boolowon said.
“The next day, a Coast Guard C-130 with some officials came and picked them up,” he said, adding that was the last he heard about the Russians.
Since then, officials have been tight-lipped.
“The individuals were transported to Anchorage for inspection, which includes a screening and vetting process, and then subsequently processed in accordance with applicable U.S. immigration laws under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” was all a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said in an email this past week when asked for an update on the asylum process and if and where the men were being held.
Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney in Anchorage, said it’s very unlikely information about the Russians will ever be released.
“The U.S. government is supposed to keep all of this confidential, so I don’t know why they would be telling anybody anything,” she told the AP.
Instead, it would be up to the two Russians to publicize their situation, which could put their families in Russia at risk. “I don’t know why they would want to do that,” Stock said.
Thousands of Russian men fled the country after Putin in September announced a mobilization to call up about 300,000 men with past military experience to bolster forces in Ukraine.
Messages sent last week and again on Saturday to the Russian consular office in San Francisco were not returned.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two Russian Indigenous Siberians were so scared of having to fight the war in Ukraine, they chanced everything to take a small boat across the treacherous Bering Sea to reach American soil, Alaska’s senior U.S. senator said after talking with the two.
The two, identified as males by a resident, landed earlier this month near Gambell, on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, where they asked for asylum.
“They feared for their lives because of Russia, who is targeting minority populations, for conscription into service in Ukraine,” Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Saturday during a candidate forum at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage.
“It is very clear to me that these individuals were in fear, so much in fear of their own government that they risked their lives and took a 15-foot skiff across those open waters,” Murkowski said when answering a question about Arctic policy.
“It is clear that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is focused on a military conquest at the expense of his own people,” Murkowski said. “He’s got one hand on Ukraine and he’s got the other on the Arctic, so we have to be eyes wide open on the Arctic.”
Murkowski said she met with the two Siberians recently but didn’t provide more details about exactly when or where the meeting took place or where their asylum process stood. She was not available after the forum for follow-up questions.
Murkowski’s office on Oct. 6 announced their request for asylum, saying the men reportedly fled one of the coastal communities on Russia’s east coast.
A village elder in Gambell, 87-year-old Bruce Boolowon, is believed to be the last living Alaska National Guard member who helped rescue 11 U.S. Navy men who were in a plane that was shot down by Russian MIGs over the Bering Sea in 1955. The plane crash-landed on St. Lawrence Island.
Gambell, an Alaska Native community of about 600 people, is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula in Siberia.
Even though one of the Russians spoke English pretty well, two Russian-born women from Gambell were brought in to translate. Both women married local men and became naturalized U.S. citizens, said Boolowon, who is Siberian Yupik.
Russians landing in Gambell during the Cold War was commonplace, but the visits were not nefarious, Boolowon said. Since St. Lawrence Island is so close to Russia, people routinely traveled back and forth to visit relatives.
But these two men seeking asylum were unknown to the people of Gambell.
“They were foreigners and didn’t have any passports, so they put them in jail,” he told The Associated Press last week.
The two men spent the night in the jailhouse, but townspeople in Gambell brought them food, both Alaska Native dishes and items bought at a grocery store.
“They were pretty full; they ate a lot,” Boolowon said.
“The next day, a Coast Guard C-130 with some officials came and picked them up,” he said, adding that was the last he heard about the Russians.
Since then, officials have been tight-lipped.
“The individuals were transported to Anchorage for inspection, which includes a screening and vetting process, and then subsequently processed in accordance with applicable U.S. immigration laws under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” was all a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said in an email this past week when asked for an update on the asylum process and if and where the men were being held.
Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney in Anchorage, said it’s very unlikely information about the Russians will ever be released.
“The U.S. government is supposed to keep all of this confidential, so I don’t know why they would be telling anybody anything,” she told the AP.
Instead, it would be up to the two Russians to publicize their situation, which could put their families in Russia at risk. “I don’t know why they would want to do that,” Stock said.
Thousands of Russian men fled the country after Putin in September announced a mobilization to call up about 300,000 men with past military experience to bolster forces in Ukraine.
Messages sent last week and again on Saturday to the Russian consular office in San Francisco were not returned.
With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, immigration remains a top issue among Latino voters – but views on legal and illegal immigration vary greatly.
“I think it’s been misunderstood,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied Latino voter preferences for decades.
While many Latino voters support a more “humane treatment” of migrants and creating a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, Teixeira said there are many in the community who “are not really interested or delighted by the idea people can just pour across the border. … They also think we need more border security.”
While polls show the majority of Hispanics align with Democrats on immigration, the GOP has recently made significant gains, even while escalating the anti-immigrant rhetoric popularized by former President Donald Trump.
About 55% of Latinos support Democrats on the issue of legal immigration, according to a recent NYT/Siena College poll, which also indicated roughly a third support a border wall along the US southern border.
With candidates racing to capture every last vote, Latinos – who make up more than 30 million of the country’s registered voters – could tilt the scales in major contests across battleground states.
“There’s a vulnerability there. There’s a soft underbelly for the Democrats on this issue, even among Hispanic voters,” Teixera said.
A hardline immigration policy is part of what Abraham Enriquez says attracted him and other Latinos in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to Trump.
“I think Latinos, we don’t really care much about what you say, it’s about what you’re going to do,” said Enriquez, who founded Bienvenido US, an organization that aims to mobilize conservative Hispanic voters.
The grandson of Mexican migrants, Enriquez says Democrats are losing support among the nations’ fastest growing voting bloc because their rhetoric is out of touch: too critical of the capitalist system and not critical enough of what he calls unrestricted immigration.
“If America is so bad, if America is such a terrible country to live in, why did 50 migrants die suffocated in a trailer to seek a better life in this country?” he asked.
Trump unexpectedly made gains in the Rio Grande Valley in 2020 and the region recently elected the first GOP representative in more than a century, after US Rep. Mayra Flores won a special election earlier this year.
While Republicans are closely eyeing three congressional races in South Texas as a test of their appeal in the community, immigration attorney Carlos Gomez argues campaign promises often don’t lead to change. He says a sensible, balanced approach to reform is sorely needed, but missing from the public discourse surrounding immigration.
“Neither party is addressing the issue well,” Gomez said. “Either they talk to the right, or they talk to the left, but they don’t come (to the border) and talk to us. They don’t see what we’re doing on a daily basis.”
Gomez criticized Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants to Democrat-led cities as an “inhumane” way to win votes, not a genuine effort to help migrants or border towns.
In Florida, another state with a large Hispanic population, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis similarly took the controversial step in September of flying dozens of Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts – a move that pro-immigration advocate Maria Corina Vegas called a “stunt.”
“It may make for interesting television, to raise money, to play to the base, to feed a narrative of grievance. That’s what populists do, effectively,” said Vegas, a deputy state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition, a group that promotes comprehensive immigration reform.
As a Venezuelan-American who came to the US fleeing Hugo Chavez’s communist regime, she argued the demonization of outsiders among politicians may help motivate some supporters, but will ultimately harm the country.
“I never thought I would see that in this country. I saw that in my country – it tore my country apart. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the right or the left. It’s anti-democratic,” Vegas said.
For Cuban-born entrepreneur Julio Cabrera, the issue is tied inextricably to the American economy: “This country moves because of immigrants and Latinos. … We do the dirty jobs others do not want.”
Cabrera is turned off by anti-immigrant rhetoric, he says, because the vast majority of immigrants entering the US are decent people looking to work and build a better life. He believes the immigration system should be kinder to those who have risked their lives for a better future.
After fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship in 2006, Cabrera says he was robbed at gunpoint while traveling through Mexico before arriving at the southern border, where he sought asylum with his daughter.
Now, he is a successful restauranteur, running Cafe La Trova in Miami, where he says most of his staff are immigrants.
“Everybody is an immigrant here and we’ve done something remarkable for this community.”
Younger voters, like Marvin Tapia – a Colombian-American who lives in Little Havana – argues the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment is tied to nationwide demographic change, which he says is a positive development more politicians should embrace.
“If we’re sharing a country built on immigrants, we should be proud of that. That we evolved and we grow and change. … I believe that growth is pivotal to the growth of a country, especially like the US,” Tapia said. “We should learn from it, instead of run from it.”
The first group of Venezuelan migrants sponsored by U.S.-based individuals under a new Biden administration policy designed to deter illegal border crossings arrived in the U.S. over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
Four Venezuelans approved to come to the U.S. under the private sponsorship program arrived Saturday on flights originating from Mexico, Guatemala and Peru, DHS officials said. The arrivals show the sponsorship process has been operationalized rapidly since the U.S. government began accepting applications from prospective sponsors on Tuesday.
Hundreds of additional Venezuelans have also been approved to book their travel to the U.S., where they will be granted humanitarian parole, a temporary quasi-status that will allow them to work and live in the U.S. legally for at least two years, according to DHS officials.
A group of Venezuelan migrants called “walkers” walk on the highway between San Cristobal and the Venezuela border city of San Antonio del Tachira on Sept. 24, 2022, in order to cross the border into Colombia and continue their journey to the United States.
YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Modeled after a similar Biden administration program that has allowed tens of thousands of Ukrainians to come to the U.S. since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the sponsorship process for Venezuelan migrants was announced last week as part of a strategy to discourage Venezuelans from crossing the U.S. southern border illegally.
More than 187,000 Venezuelans crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without legal permission in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, a record that made Venezuela the fifth-largest source of unauthorized migration to the U.S. during that 12-month span, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics show.
The arrival of tens of thousands of migrants from Venezuela to the U.S. border over the past year is part of a mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing their homeland’s economic collapse and political turmoil. More than seven million people have left Venezuela, the largest refugee crisis ever recorded in the Americas, according to the United Nations.
To deter further arrivals to the U.S. border, the Biden administration on Oct. 12 said it had convinced Mexico to accept the return of migrants from Venezuela under Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that allows immigration agents to quickly expel migrants on public health grounds, without allowing them to request asylum.
The large-scale expulsions of Venezuelans to Mexico are a stark departure from the fortunes of Venezuelan migrants who reached the U.S. before the policy took effect. Prior to the announcement, most Venezuelan migrants were released into the U.S. and allowed to seek asylum, since Venezuela’s repressive government has refused to accept the return of its citizens.
The Biden administration simultaneously announced the sponsorship process on Oct. 12, saying it was committed to allowing up to 24,000 Venezuelans to enter the U.S. legally at airports if U.S.-based individuals agreed to financially sponsor their temporary resettlement.
To discourage Venezuelans from continuing to journey to the U.S., the Biden administration said those who entered the U.S., Mexico or Panama illegally after the policy’s announcement would be rendered ineligible for the sponsorship program.
Venezuelans’ trek to the U.S. often includes a days-long journey on foot across Panama’s notorious Darién Gap, a jungle connecting the country with Colombia that more than 150,000 migrants — 107,000 of them from Venezuela — have traversed this year, according to Panamanian government statistics.
On Friday, Biden administration officials said they had received evidence that their strategy was working, including reports that Venezuelans were stopping in third countries to reassess their journeys, or returning to Venezuela or other nations they had left.
An average of 154 Venezuelans entered U.S. border custody daily this week, an 86% drop from the 1,131 average the week before the Biden administration unveiled the new policies for Venezuelans, according to government data provided by the officials.
While parole will allow Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors to work and live in the U.S. without fear of deportation, it will not provide them permanent legal status. To secure permanent U.S. residency, Venezuelans would need to apply for — and be granted — an immigration benefit like asylum.
ROME — Two minors were found dead Friday on a migrant boat carrying nearly 40 people in the Mediterranean Sea and a search was under way for a woman reported missing from the vessel, Italy’s coast guard said.
A coast guard statement said 36 people were found alive on the boat, which had been reportedly disabled by an explosion, in waters off Malta. It was not immediately clear how the minors had died or what the passengers’ nationalities were.
Italian state TV said the migrants, including many from sub-Saharan Africa, had sailed from the Tunisian port of Sfax.
The coast guard statement said a Tunisian fishing boat informed the coast guard earlier Friday that the migrants were in difficulty within Malta’s search-and-rescue zone.
In accordance with Maltese authorities, the Italian coast guard dispatched a motorboat to their aid. The statement said the fishing boat had told rescuers there had been an explosion on the migrants’ boat.
A coast guard aircraft and vessel were searching for the woman reported missing. The ages of the two dead minors were not made public.
Doctors examining the migrants said several had suffered burns.
The survivors were brought to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily, which has a residential center for rescued migrants where initial documentation can be done ahead of asylum requests.
Many of the migrants who reach Italy by sea from Africa, the Middle East or Asia — either on their own boats or aboard rescue vessels — are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution, and their asylum bids are rejected.
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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
Premiering Oct. 25, the podcast docuseries hosted by Sara Carter will reveal previously unreported revelations about the border
Press Release –
Oct 20, 2022
ARLINGTON, Va., October 20, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Today, Radio America released the official trailerpreviewing its new podcast, Dark Wars: The Border, set to premiere on Oct. 25, exactly two weeks before Election Day. Hosted by award-winning investigative journalist Sara Carter, the podcast follows Carter on her perilous journey to expose how the porous U.S.-Mexico border has facilitated a deadly trail from America’s foreign adversaries to your hometown; with cartels, slavery, and death in between. Watch the trailer HERE.
“I am excited to release this podcast, which is a culmination of my on-the-ground investigative reporting of our border crisis,” said Dark Wars host, Sara Carter. “I embedded with border patrol agents via foot, horseback, car, and helicopter – talking to coyotes and migrants alike – to reveal chilling stories about the opioid crisis and human trafficking that you haven’t read about in the news. I traveled to the native countries of these migrants to understand how cartels use social media to recruit migrants under the guise of easy passage and a better life. In reality, they encounter abuse, rape, and death. I’m telling the stories of those being ignored by the media.”
Dark Wars: The Border documents an investigation that delves deeper than any previous U.S.-Mexico immigration story to date and comes at a time when Customs and Border Protection and other government agencies have come under serious scrutiny for negligence at the border, as Politico reports. The premiere episode features a wide range of perspectives, from U.S. Senators such as Rand Paul and Marsha Blackburn to Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to coyotes that work for the cartel among others, all to reveal a border crisis that is more serious and disturbing than what is reported in media, in a shocking portrayal of money and power that connects Mexican cartels to the neighborhoods of everyday Americans.
Visit DarkWarsPod.com for more information on the podcast, which releases on Oct. 25 and can be heard on every podcast platform. To interview Sara Carter or for other queries, please email KennyCunninghamJr@gmail.com.
About Dark Wars Podcast: Dark Wars: The Border is a new podcast series, hosted by award-winning journalist Sara Carter, that conducts in-depth investigations to expose what you are not being told about what’s happening at our 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico. It uncovers how this crisis touches you and every other American across the country. Dark Wars is a joint production of Radio America and The Dark Wire (www.darkwarspod.com).
More than 2,700 people are sworn in as U.S. citizens during naturalization ceremonies on April 9, … [+] 2009, in Montebello, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Do Republican Party officials believe Latino immigrants are coming to “replace” Americans, or do they think Latinos are the party’s future? The answer affects whether there will be a legislative solution for young people brought to America by their parents.
Republican lawmakers claiming immigrants are part of a “great replacement” of White voters has been in the news for months. “Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny . . . for previously echoing the racist ‘great replacement’ theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo,” reported the Washington Post (May 16, 2022). “The baseless conspiracy theory claims that politicians are attempting to wipe out White Americans and their influence by replacing them with non-White immigrants.”
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The immigration group America’s Voice has tracked election-year ads and found inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants from Republican candidates. “Almost all the Republicans running statewide in Arizona have made ‘replacement’ and ‘invasion’ conspiracies a central part of their campaigns,” according to an America’s Voice report.
Speaking at a Trump rally on October 9, 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, now considered one of the highest profile Republican members of Congress, said, “Joe Biden’s 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs, and replacing your kids in school. And coming from all over the world, they’re also replacing your culture. And that’s not great for America.”
It is difficult to square this rhetoric with the actions of the Republican National Committee, which insists Latinos are the future of the Republican Party and have held naturalization events for immigrants around the country.
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“Republicans are hoping to reap a long-term return on their outreach effort among Hispanic communities, helping new U.S. residents gain their citizenship and eventually cast their first ballot,” reported the Washington Times (October 4, 2022).
The newspaper reports the Republican National Committee (RNC) held a “graduation ceremony” in Doral, Florida, for immigrants who took civics classes to prepare for the naturalization test to become American citizens. “This is part of our long-term outreach, with community centers but also this program,” said RNC spokeswoman Nicole Morales. “We’re actually investing in these communities and uplifting these communities and not just going in a month before the election to [ask for] votes.”
The Washington Times reports the Republican National Committee “hosted and planned over 100 events for Hispanic Heritage Month” in swing states that include Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida and others. Over 100 Hispanic House candidates are running as Republicans, a new record, according to the RNC.
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Immigration Legislation: The conflict between “great replacement” rhetoric and GOP outreach to Latinos affects individuals who need Congress to address their legal status.
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will likely become the House speaker if Republicans take control of the House of Representatives after the November 2022 election. “McCarthy is taking a very hard line on immigration policy,” reported Punchbowl News. “The California Republican is opposed to trading a pathway to citizenship or DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] for increased border security. This is the traditional trade both parties have envisioned for years.”
For DACA supporters, the stance of House Republicans on immigration has increased the urgency for Congress to take action on DACA before January 2023. “Advocates have turned up the pressure on the Senate to pass legislation this year to establish a citizenship path for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, after a federal appeals court dealt yet another blow to the program that for now protects those so-called Dreamers,” reported Suzanne Monyak in Roll Call. (See here for more on DACA legal issues.)
It is also unclear whether there is sufficient Republican support to pass legislation to help another group of young people. “Documented Dreamers” entered the United States on legal visas but would be forced to leave the United States if (or once) they “age out” of their parents’ green card applications. (A documentary by Daniela Cantillo and an interview with the founder of Improve The Dream explain the issue.)
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An amendment by Rep. Deborah K. Ross (D-NC) and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) was included in the House defense authorization bill to “protect dependent children of green card applicants and employment-based nonimmigrants who face deportation when they age out of dependent status,” reported Roll Call. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the America’s Children Act, the Senate companion. However, the measure in the defense authorization bill will likely require 60 votes and sufficient support from Republican senators to become law.
There is reason for cautious optimism among supporters of the amendment to provide age-out protections. Five Republicans (Senators Paul, Cramer, Rounds, Blunt and Collins) are sponsors of the Senate amendment on the defense authorization bill. Two other Republicans (Ernst and Murkowski) sponsored the America’s Children Act. In response to a question, Donald Trump said he supported a legislative solution for Documented Dreamers, indicating this is not a “MAGA” issue.
The Border: At the same time the RNC was preparing its Hispanic Heritage month events, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) sought press attention by putting Venezuelan asylum seekers on a flight to Martha’s Vineyard. In an earlier era, conservative Republican Ronald Reagan likely would have lauded Venezuelan immigrants as victims of an oppressive socialist government.
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People are motivated to leave their homes for reasons independent of U.S. border policies, which means reviving all Trump administration’s border policies is unlikely to reduce the flows. Refugees and migrants are propelled by problems in their home countries that include violence, political oppression and disastrous economic policies.
More than 7.1 million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela, with most currently living in Latin America. A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report puts the issue in stark terms: “According to the report’s findings, half of all refugees and migrants in the region cannot afford three meals a day and lack access to safe and dignified housing. To access food or avoid living on the streets, many Venezuelans resort to survival sex, begging or indebtedness.”
Under Trump, apprehensions at the Southwest border, a proxy for illegal entry, increased by more than 100 percent between FY 2016 and FY 2019 (from 408,870 to 851,508). With the pandemic, apprehensions declined in March 2020, but by August and September 2020 returned to approximately the same level as August and September 2019.
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The Biden administration has maintained a number of Trump policies, such as expelling immigrants under Title 42 health authority to prevent them from applying for asylum. A Department of Homeland Security report released during the Trump administration concluded that many more immigrants started using human smugglers after Border Patrol enforcement increased over the past two decades.
Analysts point out Republican candidates have attacked the Biden administration for the number of people arriving at or crossing the Southwest border but have not offered practical solutions. Such solutions, analysts say, would include significantly expanding the number of available work visas and conducting refugee circuit rides to process individuals before they reach the border.
Arizona is refusing the federal government’s demand to take down double-stacked shipping containers it placed to fill gaps in the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it won’t do so until the U.S. moves to construct a permanent barrier
PHOENIX — Arizona has refused the federal government’s demand to take down double-stacked shipping containers it placed to fill gaps in the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it won’t do so until the U.S. moves to construct a permanent barrier instead.
The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs dug in its heels in an Oct. 18 letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, saying “the containers will remain in place until specific details regarding construction are provided.” It was signed by Allen Clark, the department’s director.
A regional spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Arizona’s refusal in the most recent flap between the Biden administration and Republican-led border states over immigration policies.
The federal agency told Arizona officials in a letter last week that the containers were unauthorized and violated U.S. law. The bureau also demanded that no new containers be placed, saying it wanted to prevent conflicts with two federal contracts already awarded and two more still pending to fill border wall gaps near the Morelos Dam in the Yuma, Arizona, area.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ordered installation of more than 100 double-stacked containers that were placed over the summer, saying he couldn’t wait for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to award the contracts it had announced for the work.
Migrants have continued to avoid the recently erected barriers by going around them, including through the Cocopah Indian Reservation. The Cocopah Indian Tribe has complained that Arizona acted against its wishes by placing 42 of the double stacks on its land.
The border wall promoted by former President Donald Trump continues to be a potent issue for Republican politicians hoping to show their support for border security.
President Joe Biden halted wall construction his first day in office, leaving billions of dollars of work unfinished but still under contract. The Biden administration has made a few exceptions for small projects at areas deemed unsafe for people to cross, including the gaps near Yuma.
The Center for Biological Diversity raised a different objection to the shipping containers on Wednesday, filing a notice of intent to sue Ducey’s administration over what the environmental group said are plans to erect more shipping containers along the border. The group said the move will obstruct a critical jaguar and ocelot migration corridor.
Ducey’s office said it could not comment because it had not received an official notice from the center.
One migrant is dead, another is wounded and at least seven others are languishing in detention three weeks after twin brothers allegedly opened fire on them in the Texas desert, claiming they mistook them for wild hogs during a hunting trip.
Yet, the accused shooters, 60-year-old brothers Michael and Mark Sheppard, who both worked in local law enforcement, were initially released on half a million dollars bail after being jailed briefly on manslaughter charges.
The case has caused outrage among advocates for the victims and survivors, who say their detention violates a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement directive that calls for giving strong consideration to the fact that they were crime victims who cooperated with authorities in determining whether they should be released.
This combination of booking photos provided by the El Paso, Texas, County Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 1, 2022, shows brothers Mark Sheppard, left, and Michael Sheppard, who authorities say opened fire on a group of migrants getting water near the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022.
El Paso County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File
“This is a hate crime that occurred immediately after they were crossing into the United States,” said Zoe Bowman, the supervising attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, who is representing the seven detained survivors.
Michael Sheppard, who was a warden at the troubled West Texas Detention Facility where he was accused of abuse, and his brother, Mark, who worked for the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office, were recently again taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the Sept. 27 shooting.
The sheriff’s office did not say where they were being held or why they were initially released on bond. The case is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, an arm of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are often victims of crimes, including human trafficking, but most happen south of the border. A clear cut case like this one, in which migrants are the victims of a widely publicized crime on U.S. soil in which charges have been brought against identified suspects, can provide a rare paper trail to protection under a visa for migrants who are crime victims in the U.S., Bowman said.
But despite the August 2021 ICE directive that strongly encourages the release of crime victims while the lengthy visa process is underway, these migrants remain in detention, Bowman said.
Six of the surviving migrants are being held at the El Paso Processing Center — an ICE detention facility — while a seventh is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and is expected to be transferred to the West Texas Detention Facility, the embattled lockup where Michael Sheppard was a warden.
“It certainly seems like they are not putting the needs of these people first by choosing to hold onto them,” Bowman said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on the migrants’ detention.
The migrants told authorities they were drinking water from a reservoir on county land in Sierra Blanca, south of El Paso in the hot, dry Chihuahuan Desert, when two men — identified in court documents as the Sheppard brothers — pulled over in a truck. The migrants said they ran to hide.
Mark Sheppard told investigators he and his brother were out hunting and thought they had spotted a javelina, a kind of wild hog, when they opened fire. “Mark Sheppard told us he used binoculars and saw a ‘black butt’ thinking it was a javelina,” court documents said.
But the migrants told authorities the men in the truck yelled and cursed at them in Spanish, taunting at them to come out, and revved their engine as they backed up. When the group emerged from hiding, the driver exited the vehicle and fired two shots at them.
Jesús Iván Sepúlveda was shot and killed. Brenda Berenice Casias Carrillo was struck in the stomach and seriously wounded.
Silvia Carrillo, the wounded woman’s aunt, told The Associated Press that she heard from her niece via WhatsApp on Sept. 25 that the group was beginning the precarious desert journey from Mexico into Texas and was turning off their phones. When she next made contact with Casias two days later, her niece told her the group had been shot at and she lay wounded, fearing she would die.
Carrillo encouraged her niece to call 911 for help. Also in the group of 13 migrants were Carrillo’s two sons, another niece and a son-in-law. Casias told her they were all okay but another man who was with them — 22-year-old Sepulveda of Durango, Mexico — was dead.
“I felt like I was going to die, I was desperate and imagined the worst,” Carrillo said.
When authorities arrived in response to her 911 call, Casias was taken to a hospital and the other survivors were questioned by federal and immigration officials. Their testimonies led to the arrest of the Sheppard brothers, after which the witnesses were placed in ICE custody.
On Oct. 7, Carrillo said she spoke to Casias again, this time from the hospital. Casias sounded weak, but said she was slowly getting better and had one more surgery to go.
Casias remains stable and improving and has some legal protection, her attorney, Marysol Castro, managing attorney for Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services in El Paso, said Tuesday. She declined to provide specifics because she said her client is afraid for her safety since learning of the Sheppard brothers’ initial release.
Bowman said she is seeking visas intended for migrants who are crime victims for her clients, but even though the case has been widely publicized it could take months to produce the necessary court documents.
In the meantime, she has petitioned, without success so far, for them to be released to sponsors in the U.S. — a decision that is solely at the discretion of ICE authorities.
John Sandweg, an attorney who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, said other factors like the survivors’ role as witnesses could mean that authorities choose to keep them in detention so they are nearby to testify in the case.
Still, on the face of it, he said, “there is not a good reason” why these migrants remain detained.
“The bottom line is that study after study after study and ICE’s own data has demonstrated the effectiveness of alternatives to detention,” Sandweg said, adding that the system “is in critical need of reform.”
Meanwhile, Carrillo said she and relatives of the other survivors await answers on the fate of their loved ones in the country they journeyed to for a better life, and are calling for the shooters to be brought to justice.
“I just want them to do justice for my niece and for Jesus, the man who died,” Carrillo said.
AUSTIN, Texas — One migrant is dead, another is wounded and at least seven others are languishing in detention three weeks after twin brothers allegedly opened fire on them in the Texas desert, claiming they mistook them for wild hogs during a hunting trip.
Yet, the accused shooters, 60-year-old brothers Michael and Mark Sheppard, who both worked in local law enforcement, were initially released on half a million dollars bail after being jailed briefly on manslaughter charges.
The case has caused outrage among advocates for the victims and survivors, who say their detention violates a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement directive that calls for giving strong consideration to the fact that they were crime victims who cooperated with authorities in determining whether they should be released.
“This is a hate crime that occurred immediately after they were crossing into the United States,” said Zoe Bowman, the supervising attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, who is representing the seven detained survivors.
Michael Sheppard, who was a warden at the troubled West Texas Detention Facility where he was accused of abuse, and his brother, Mark, who worked for the Hudspeth County sheriff’s office, were recently again taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the Sept. 27 shooting.
The sheriff’s office did not say where they were being held or why they were initially released on bond. The case is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, an arm of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are often victims of crimes, including human trafficking, but most happen south of the border. A clear cut case like this one, in which migrants are the victims of a widely publicized crime on U.S. soil in which charges have been brought against identified suspects, can provide a rare paper trail to protection under a visa for migrants who are crime victims in the U.S., Bowman said.
But despite the August 2021 ICE directive that strongly encourages the release of crime victims while the lengthy visa process is underway, these migrants remain in detention, Bowman said.
Six of the surviving migrants are being held at the El Paso Processing Center — an ICE detention facility — while a seventh is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and is expected to be transferred to the West Texas Detention Facility, the embattled lockup where Michael Sheppard was a warden.
“It certainly seems like they are not putting the needs of these people first by choosing to hold onto them,” Bowman said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on the migrants’ detention.
The migrants told authorities they were drinking water from a reservoir on county land in Sierra Blanca, south of El Paso in the hot, dry Chihuahuan Desert, when two men — identified in court documents as the Sheppard brothers — pulled over in a truck. The migrants said they ran to hide.
Mark Sheppard told investigators he and his brother were out hunting and thought they had spotted a javelina, a kind of wild hog, when they opened fire. “Mark Sheppard told us he used binoculars and saw a ‘black butt’ thinking it was a javelina,” court documents said.
But the migrants told authorities the men in the truck yelled and cursed at them in Spanish, taunting at them to come out, and revved their engine as they backed up. When the group emerged from hiding, the driver exited the vehicle and fired two shots at them.
Jesús Iván Sepúlveda was shot and killed. Brenda Berenice Casias Carrillo was struck in the stomach and seriously wounded.
Silvia Carrillo, the wounded woman’s aunt, told The Associated Press that she heard from her niece via WhatsApp on Sept. 25 that the group was beginning the precarious desert journey from Mexico into Texas and was turning off their phones. When she next made contact with Casias two days later, her niece told her the group had been shot at and she lay wounded, fearing she would die.
Carrillo encouraged her niece to call 911 for help. Also in the group of 13 migrants were Carrillo’s two sons, another niece and a son-in-law. Casias told her they were all okay but another man who was with them — 22-year-old Sepulveda of Durango, Mexico, — was dead.
“I felt like I was going to die, I was desperate and imagined the worst,” Carrillo said.
When authorities arrived in response to her 911 call, Casias was taken to a hospital and the other survivors were questioned by federal and immigration officials. Their testimonies led to the arrest of the Sheppard brothers, after which the witnesses were placed in ICE custody.
On Oct. 7, Carrillo said she spoke to Casias again, this time from the hospital. Casias sounded weak, but said she was slowly getting better and had one more surgery to go.
Casias remains stable and improving and has some legal protection, her attorney, Marysol Castro, managing attorney for Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services in El Paso, said Tuesday. She declined to provide specifics because she said her client is afraid for her safety since learning of the Sheppard brothers’ initial release.
Bowman said she is seeking visas intended for migrants who are crime victims for her clients, but even though the case has been widely publicized it could take months to produce the necessary court documents.
In the meantime she has petitioned, without success so far, for them to be released to sponsors in the U.S. — a decision that is solely at the discretion of ICE authorities.
John Sandweg, an attorney who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, said other factors like the survivors’ role as witnesses could mean that authorities choose to keep them in detention so they are nearby to testify in the case.
Still, on the face of it, he said, “there is not a good reason” why these migrants remain detained.
“The bottom line is that study after study after study and ICE’s own data has demonstrated the effectiveness of alternatives to detention,” Sandweg said, adding that the system “is in critical need of reform.”
Meanwhile, Carrillo said she and relatives of the other survivors await answers on the fate of their loved ones in the country they journeyed to for a better life, and are calling for the shooters to be brought to justice.
“I just want them to do justice for my niece and for Jesus, the man who died,” Carrillo said.
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Associated Press reporters Jake Bleiberg in Dallas, Texas, and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
The immigration law firm provides counsel to clients who want immediate and convenient access to legal services worldwide.
Press Release –
updated: Oct 19, 2022
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., October 19, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– KAMKHADZE PA, a law firm practicing U.S. Immigration and Nationality law, was launched in Hollywood Beach, Florida. The immigration law firm provides counsel to clients who want immediate and convenient access to legal services worldwide. Using the latest technology and the most efficient operational processes, Kamkhadze PA offers clients the ability to complete their immigration process entirely online, with seamless and prompt communication during the process.
The firm provides full legal services in the field of immigration law, including legal counsel, long-term strategy, case preparation and filing, and representation with U.S. Immigration agencies. The firm’s practice specializes in employment-based visa and green card petitions for foreign nationals of extraordinary ability, investors, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and scientists. The firm also provides legal services in family-based immigration matters and naturalization cases.
Kamkhadze PA Immigration Law Firm utilizes the Lean Six Sigma methodology to ensure consistency, provide clear communication, be flexible and responsive. By individually analyzing each case and tailoring strategies to the individual needs and qualifications of the client, Ana Kamkhadze, Esq., MBA, has developed a comprehensive approach to case development and has successfully represented a range of clients.
The firm is committed to excellence and its capabilities are differentiated through its innovative and extensive legal analysis. The case preparation at the firm reflects Mrs. Kamkhadze’s meticulous attention to detail as well as her in-depth knowledge of immigration law and the latest adjudication trends. Her firsthand knowledge of the complex U.S. immigration system allows her to empathize with clients on a personal level and handle each case as if it were her own.
Ana Kamkhadze, Esq., is a licensed Attorney in New York, and since immigration law is federal law, she represents clients in their immigration matters anywhere in the United States and abroad. Prior to opening her immigration practice, she acquired significant expertise in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Law for almost a decade. She is a member of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) and a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
Mrs. Kamkhadze received legal education first in Georgia and later in the U.S., at Florida International University, where she obtained a master’s degree in law and a master’s degree in business management and administration. Her combined education in both business and law assists her clients in developing the most efficient business immigration strategies.
Before moving to the United States, Ana Kamkhadze, Esq., practiced business law in Georgia at one of the leading business law firms, where she has also been a contributor to the Doing Business Report published by the World Bank. She has been the author of several published articles and the winner of a few international conferences.
The arrival of migrants in northeastern parts of the country has started to put a strain on those cities’ resources. CBS News’ Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green spoke with Jeffrey Thielman, president and CEO of the International Institute of New England, about what support is available for migrants who have made the long and difficult journey to the U.S.
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Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer flanked by their children, all members of the singing Von … [+] Trapp family, in this publicity handout from the 1965 film adaption of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music.
Bettmann Archive
The Trapp family’s history is an immigrant success story filled with overcoming hardship and adapting to the realities of a new land and culture. While the outlines of the Trapp family’s real-life story matched The Sound of Music, the movieended when the family’s immigration journey to America began.
Maria von Trapp, played by Julie Andrews in the film, worked with and fell in love with the children, married the captain and the family left Austria. However, Hollywood movies and real life are not the same. The family did not like the portrayal of Georg, the father/captain, who, according to Maria and the children, was loving and outgoing, not stern and reclusive as portrayed in the movie.
Maria was religious, as the movie showed. “The only important thing on earth for us is to find out what is the will of God and to do it,” she wrote in her memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. Maria recalled saying those words to the Reverend Mother shortly before being assigned as a tutor for Baron von Trapp, who would become her future husband. Contrary to the depiction in the movie, Maria was not the governess to all the children, and she married Georg more than a decade before World War II. She writes in her memoir that her love of the children inspired her to marry Georg. There were 10 children, rather than the seven portrayed in the movie.
The family became singers and toured Paris, London, Brussels and elsewhere, even once singing for the Pope. The war interrupted their musical ambitions in Austria.
On March 11, 1938, the family celebrated daughter Agatha’s birthday. Over the radio, they heard Austria’s chancellor say, “I am yielding to force. My Austria—God bless you!” The next morning, Maria saw German soldiers “on every street corner.”
The Trapp children felt the impact of the Nazi takeover of Austria. Children were forbidden to sing songs in school with the word Christ or Christmas in the name. Soon after the takeover, daughter Lorli told Maria her first-grade teacher wanted to speak with her. The teacher told Maria: “When we learned our new anthem yesterday Lorli didn’t open her mouth. When I asked her why she didn’t sing with us, she announced in front of the whole class that her father had said he’d put ground glass in his tea or finish his life on a dung heap before he would ever sing that song. Next time I will have to report this.” Lorli also refused to raise her hand in a “Heil Hitler” salute. Maria feared the family would be placed in a concentration camp.
Austria’s Navy Department asked Georg to come out of retirement and command a submarine. Soon after, the Trapp family was asked to sing at a celebration for Adolf Hitler’s birthday. In both cases, Georg’s answer was “No.”
After these refusals, Georg gathered the family together for a pivotal moment in their lives. “Children, we have the choice now: Do we want to keep the material goods we still have, our home with the ancient furniture, our friends, and all the things we’re fond of?—Then we shall have to give up the spiritual goods: Our faith and our honor. We can’t have both anymore. We could all make a lot of money now, but I doubt very much whether it would make us happy. I’d rather see you poor but honest. If we choose this, then we have to leave. Do you agree?”
The children answered, “Yes, father.”
“Then, let’s get out of here soon,” said Georg. “You can’t say no three times to Hitler.”
Real life diverged from the film The Sound of Music. “The family did not secretly escape over the Alps to freedom in Switzerland, carrying their suitcases and musical instruments,” writes Joan Gearin, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration. “As daughter Maria said in a 2003 interview printed in Opera News, ‘We did tell people that we were going to America to sing. And we did not climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and instruments. We left by train, pretending nothing.’”
Gearin notes the family traveled to Italy, not Switzerland. Georg, Maria’s husband, was an Italian citizen by birth. “The family had a contract with an American booking agent when they left Austria,” writes Gearin. “They contacted the agent from Italy and requested fare to America.”
Maria describes their first impressions of America. “Bewildered—completely bewildered—that’s what we all were when three taxis spilled us out on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street . . . All the instruments in their cases . . . the big trunks with the concert costumes and our private belongings . . . the tallest houses in Vienna have five or six stories. When the elevator took us to the 19th floor, we simply couldn’t believe it.”
The family began a series of concerts, but their agent, Mr. Wagner, canceled the remaining tour events when he found out Maria was eight months pregnant. “What a blow! Fewer concerts meant less money, and we needed every cent,” writes Maria. She gave birth to a son, Johannes, around Christmas.
Money became an issue since what the family earned mostly went to repaying Mr. Wagner the cost of the boat tickets, which he had advanced. Their visitor visa expired in March. The visa stipulated they could only earn money by performing concerts. Fortunately, the family’s agent had lined up more concert dates. However, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) thwarted those plans.
“One morning came the fatal letter,” writes Maria. “The Immigration and Naturalization Service informed us that our application for an extension of temporary stay was not granted, and we had to leave the United States at the latest March 4. This was a cruel blow. We had burned all our bridges behind us, and would never dare go back home again, and now America would not allow us to stay here. . . . One thing was certain: We had to leave.”
The family traveled by boat to Europe and performed small concerts in Sweden and elsewhere. Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 cut short their concert plans.
Their agent, Mr. Wagner, provided another advance for tickets to the United States, which meant the family was headed once more to America. After arriving at the dock in Brooklyn, Maria made a mistake that almost cost the family their sanctuary. When an immigration officer asked Maria how long she intended to stay in America, instead of saying “six months,” Maria said, “I’m so glad to be here—I want to never to leave again!”
This mistake landed the family in an immigration detention facility. Reporters and photographers came to Ellis Island and published articles about the Trapp family being held in detention. After the fourth day, the family was questioned at an immigration court hearing, focusing on whether they planned to leave. Given the judge’s tone, Maria was pessimistic after the hearing. Perhaps only due to the outside pressure and publicity, the family was released from detention.
During their second tour in America, the family learned the hard facts of show business. Their agent, Mr. Wagner, scheduled them in large concert halls but did a poor job publicizing the events. Wagner told the family he didn’t think they had sufficient appeal to American audiences and decided not to renew his contract to represent them. Without representation, the Trapp family had no chance of success and no way to remain in America. The family had reached another moment of crisis.
With much effort, they found another potential agent. However, he said his representation was contingent on changing the family’s act to appeal to a wider American audience, not just those primarily interested in choral or classical music. He told them he would need $5,000 in advance for publicity and advertising. At the time, the family had only $250 in their bank account. The entrepreneurial family got to work. They met with a wealthy couple who, after hearing their story and listening to them sing, promised to lend them half the money. The Trapp family found another sponsor for the other $2,500. They were back in business.
Their new agent changed the name from the Trapp Family Choir, which he considered sounded “too churchy,” to the Trapp Family Singers. To earn money before the new tour would start, the family made handicrafts, such as children’s furniture, wooden bowls and leather works.
The family’s entrepreneurial streak continued when they bought a farm in Vermont and added a music camp on the grounds. During World War II, the family ran afoul of government regulators at the War Production Board, who said the family had used “new” rather than “second-hand” lumber in violation of the law. Maria thought she would be put in prison until the regulators relented after she showed them the lumber had been purchased 18 months before. Vermont’s governor attended the camp’s grand opening, which featured the Trapp family singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Today, the farm and lodgings remain a tourist attraction.
Two of the Trapp family returned to Europe—fighting as soldiers for the U.S. Army during World War II. It was an ironic twist. Rather than their father being pressed into service as a submarine commander for the German war effort, the sons fought against Germany in Western Europe. After the war, the family regained ownership of their Austrian home, which had been confiscated to serve as a headquarters for (SS Reich Leader) Heinrich Himmler. The family sold the home to a church group and raised money to help Austrians impoverished by the war and Germany’s occupation.
The Trapp family overcame tragedy in America. In 1947, Maria’s husband, Georg, passed away. He died of pneumonia surrounded by his family.
The Trapp family continued to perform, and eventually took on outside performers to replace some of the children who had gone on to other careers in America, including in medicine. The great-grandchildren of Maria and Georg continue to sing in America.
Maria von Trapp’s proudest day in America came in 1948, when she became a U.S. citizen. “Then came the big day in May when we were summoned to the courthouse in Montpelier—the five years of waiting for over,” writes Maria. “What a mixed group it was, waiting there in the courtroom: Italians, Croatian, Syrians, English, Irish, Polish, and we Austrians. The clerk called the roll. Then the judge entered the room. We all rose from our seats. Then we were asked to raise our right hand and repeat the solemn oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America. After we had ended, ‘So help me God,’ the judge bade us sit down, looked at us all, and said: ‘Fellow citizens.’ He meant us—now we were Americans.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two years ago, candidate Joe Biden loudly denounced President Donald Trump for immigration policies that inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as the Nov. 8 election nears, Biden has turned to an unlikely source for a solution: his predecessor’s playbook.
Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.
Mexico has insisted that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity. So if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.
“These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Biden’s new policy has drawn swift criticism from immigrant advocates, many of them quick to point out the Trump parallels.
“Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
The administration says the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S.
For more than a year after taking office in January 2021, Biden deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used its authority to keep in place the Trump-era declaration that a public health risk existed that warranted expedited expulsion of asylum-seekers.
Members of Biden’s own party and activist groups had expressed skepticism about the public health underpinnings for allowing Title 42 to remain in effect, especially when COVID-19 was spreading more widely within the U.S. than elsewhere.
After months of internal deliberations and preparations, the CDC on April 1 said it would end the public health order and return to normal border processing of migrants, giving them a chance to request asylum in the U.S.
Homeland Security officials braced for a resulting increase in border crossings.
But officials inside and outside the White House were conflicted over ending the authority, believing it effectively kept down the number of people crossing the border illegally, according to senior administration officials.
A court order in May that kept Title 42 in place due to a challenge from Republican state officials was greeted with quiet relief by some in the administration, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The recent increase in migration from Venezuela, sparked by political, social and economic instability in the country, dashed officials’ hopes that they were finally seeing a lull in the chaos that had defined the border region for the past year.
By August, Venezuelans were the second-largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexicans. Given that U.S. tensions with Venezuela meant migrants from the country could not be sent back easily, the situation became increasingly difficult to manage.
So an administration that had rejected many Trump-era policies aimed at keeping out migrants, that had worked to make the asylum process easier and that had increased the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. now turned to Title 42.
It brokered a deal to send the Venezuelans to Mexico, which already had agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 if they are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.
All the while, Justice Department lawyers continue to appeal a court decision that has kept Title 42 in place. They are opposing Republican attorneys general from more than 20 states who have argued that Title 42 is “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s already disastrous border control policies from descending into an unmitigated catastrophe.”
Under Title 42, migrants have been expelled more than 2.3 million times from the U.S. after crossing the country’s land borders illegally from Canada or Mexico, though most try to come through Mexico.
The administration had announced it would stop expelling migrants under Title 42 starting May 23 and go back to detaining and deporting migrants who did not qualify to enter and remain in the U.S. — a longer process that allows migrants to request asylum in the U.S.
“We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”
A separate lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union also is trying to end Title 42, an effort that could render the administration’s proposal useless.
“People have a right to seek asylum – regardless of where they came from, how they arrive in the United States, and whether or not they have family here,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
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<p>AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on Biden Immigration</p>
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Long reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of immigration at https://apnews.com/hub/immigration
