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Tag: US-Mexico Border

  • Mexico boosts controls on cattle after new screwworm case found near US border

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    Mexico activated emergency controls Monday after detecting a new case of New World screwworm in cattle in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon state, the closest case to the U.S. border since the outbreak began last year.The animal, found in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo, came from the Gulf state of Veracruz, Mexico’s National Health for Food Safety and Food Quality Service said. The last case was reported July 9 in Veracruz, prompting Washington to suspend imports of live Mexican cattle.The parasite, a larva of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly, attacks warm-blooded animals, including humans. Mexico has reported more than 500 active cases in cattle across southern states.The block on cattle imports has spelled trouble for Mexico’s government, which has already been busy trying to offset the brunt of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats this year.The government and ranchers have sought to get the ban lifted. If it stays in place through the year, Mexico’s ranching federation estimates losses up to $400 million.Mexico’s Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said in a post on X that Mexico is “controlling the isolated case of screwworm in Nuevo Leon,” under measures to fight the pest agreed with the U.S. in August.U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Washington will take “decisive measures to protect our borders, even in the absence of cooperation” and said imports on Mexican cattle, bison and horses will remain suspended.“We will not rely on Mexico to defend our industry, our food supply or our way of life,” she said.

    Mexico activated emergency controls Monday after detecting a new case of New World screwworm in cattle in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon state, the closest case to the U.S. border since the outbreak began last year.

    The animal, found in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo, came from the Gulf state of Veracruz, Mexico’s National Health for Food Safety and Food Quality Service said. The last case was reported July 9 in Veracruz, prompting Washington to suspend imports of live Mexican cattle.

    The parasite, a larva of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly, attacks warm-blooded animals, including humans. Mexico has reported more than 500 active cases in cattle across southern states.

    The block on cattle imports has spelled trouble for Mexico’s government, which has already been busy trying to offset the brunt of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats this year.

    The government and ranchers have sought to get the ban lifted. If it stays in place through the year, Mexico’s ranching federation estimates losses up to $400 million.

    Mexico’s Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said in a post on X that Mexico is “controlling the isolated case of screwworm in Nuevo Leon,” under measures to fight the pest agreed with the U.S. in August.

    U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Washington will take “decisive measures to protect our borders, even in the absence of cooperation” and said imports on Mexican cattle, bison and horses will remain suspended.

    “We will not rely on Mexico to defend our industry, our food supply or our way of life,” she said.

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  • El Chapo’s sons discussing plea with US government: Lawyer

    El Chapo’s sons discussing plea with US government: Lawyer

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    The sons of notorious drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman are in talks to cut a plea deal with United States prosecutors, according to their lawyer.

    The news was unveiled during a court hearing in Chicago on Monday for El Chapo’s younger son, Ovidio Guzman, who, along with his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez, is accused of helping run the Sinaloa cartel his father once led and funnelling massive amounts of narcotics into the US.

    The Guzman brothers – along with two other siblings still in Mexico – make up the “El Chapitos” faction of the feared cartel. Both have pleaded not guilty in prior court hearings.

    Their father “El Chapo” is serving life in prison in a supermax facility in the US state of Colorado for a massive drug conspiracy.

    The Guzman sons’ reported plea talks come after one of the brothers was arrested at a Texas airport in July along with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the notorious head of a rival cartel faction.

    Zambada, the 76-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, was described by prosecutors as “one of the world’s most notorious and dangerous drug traffickers”, who had evaded capture for decades.

    He pleaded not guilty to 17 counts of drug trafficking, murder and other charges in a New York court last month.

    “Kidnapped”

    Zambada’s lawyer has claimed his client was kidnapped and forced onto a small plane bound for Texas where US law enforcement was waiting.

    Mexican prosecutors have filed kidnapping charges against Joaquin Guzman Lopez, suggesting he smuggled El Mayo into the US as a prize to try to get favourable treatment for his jailed brother, Ovidio.

    Experts say the Chapitos could provide valuable evidence in the case against Zambada, as well as possible corruption investigations against officials in Mexico.

    “Any cooperation agreement with any drug trafficker implies that he will inform on possible Mexican federal government officials, military, police, in the transfer of drugs,” said Jesus Esquivel, the Washington correspondent for the Mexican magazine, Proceso.

    As an example, Esquivel cited the indictment of Mexico’s former public security chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, who was sentenced last week in New York to 38 years in jail.

    Separate cases

    Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who will defend both jailed Guzman brothers, told reporters that plea talks with the US justice system are just getting off the ground, according to several media reports.

    He also stressed that the sons are facing “two totally different cases”.

    “This isn’t a package deal in terms of one doing one and one doing the other … The government views them differently,” Lichtman was quoted by ABC News Chicago as saying.

    Assistant US Attorney Andrew Erskine said that both the prosecution and defence hoped to settle Ovidio’s case before trial and expected progress before the next hearing scheduled for January 7.

    US Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram said Zambada’s arrest “strikes at the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast”.

    Cartel war

    After the Guzman Lopez and El Mayo’s arrests, a war erupted between the two vying cartel camps, with daily shootouts wreaking havoc in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. At least 72 people have been killed and 209 people kidnapped, according to state prosecutor Claudia Sanchez.

    One of the recent targets was the local newspaper El Debate, which had been covering the continuing hostilities. On October 18, the publication was sprayed with gunfire, but no injuries were reported.

    The Sinaloa cartel has long been dreaded for its brutality against perceived enemies, including law enforcement and critical journalists.

    US Attorney General Merrick Garland, in announcing charges last year against the Guzman brothers and their associates, detailed alleged cases of torture by the cartel, including experimenting on victims with fentanyl and feeding others to tigers.

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  • US judge orders Texas to remove controversial border buoys from Rio Grande

    US judge orders Texas to remove controversial border buoys from Rio Grande

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    A United States federal judge has ordered Texas to remove a controversial floating border barrier from the Rio Grande after the massive buoys and underwater nets came under fire for endangering migrants and asylum seekers as they crossed the river from Mexico.

    In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge David Ezra said that the barriers could violate treaty agreements between the US and Mexico. He also cast doubt on their effectiveness.

    “The State of Texas did not present any credible evidence that the buoy barrier as installed has significantly curtailed illegal immigration across the Rio Grande River,” Ezra wrote. He ordered the barrier to be moved to an embankment on the Texas side of the river by September 15.

    Within hours of the decision, Texas had already filed an appeal, with Governor Greg Abbott calling the judge’s ruling an attack on the state’s “sovereign authority”.

    “Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way up to the Supreme Court,” Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement on Wednesday shared via social media.

    The four-foot-wide orange buoys became the subject of debate after being installed by Abbott’s administration in July as part of a larger migration deterrence effort known as Operation Lone Star.

    Critics, however, denounced the barrier as a dangerous political stunt. By the end of July, the Department of Justice — under Democratic President Joe Biden — had sued the state for refusing to remove the barrier, saying the buoys violated federal law.

    In the suit, the Justice Department alleged that Texas had installed the barrier on an international boundary without properly consulting federal authorities.

    Abbott, meanwhile, has dismissed the lawsuit as a political attack and blamed Biden for failing to crack down on unauthorised border crossings.

    “Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” Abbott said in a press release.

    But Abbott’s administration has come under increasing scrutiny for its tactics along the US-Mexico border.

    A letter released in July, reportedly authored by a Texas state trooper, expressed concerns with policies and decisions being implemented to repel migrants and asylum seekers.

    The trooper explained he believed in the mission of Operation Lone Star, but that he had grave concerns with directions he had been given to “push” struggling migrants back into the Rio Grande and deny them water to drink.

    “I believe we have stepped over a line,” his letter reads.

    In August, two bodies were found in the Rio Grande near the border barrier, one of which was tangled in the buoys. Texas authorities said it appeared the two people had drowned in the river, known for its deadly currents.

    Questions also arose over whether the barrier violated Mexican sovereignty.

    In an August statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry expressed concern “about the impact on migrants’ human rights and personal security that these state policies could have, as they go in the opposite direction to close collaboration”.

    While the Biden administration has criticised the barriers on humanitarian grounds, migrant rights groups have slammed the president for enacting policies that they say severely restrict the right to seek asylum.

    The administration is currently facing an ongoing legal challenge to a policy that requires asylum seekers to first apply in the countries they pass through before arriving in the US, similar to the “safe third country” rule enacted under former President Donald Trump.

    Critics have called the policy an “asylum ban” and a violation of international law.

    For decades, critics have likewise denounced policies that drive migrants and asylum seekers to dangerous border crossings by blocking safer areas.

    This tactic, known as “prevention through deterrence”, has its roots in the 1990s, but many immigration rights advocates believe it has pushed migrants and asylum seekers to take on greater risks in the absence of accessible legal pathways into the country.

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  • US to begin accepting Venezuelan claims under new migration plan

    US to begin accepting Venezuelan claims under new migration plan

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    United States immigration officials are set to begin accepting applications for a new parole programme for Venezuelan asylum seekers, in a plan that will see most Venezuelans trying to enter the US through its southern border expelled back to Mexico.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday published a Federal Register notice (PDF) announcing the official start of the programme, which was announced last week, that will allow 24,000 Venezuelans to come into the US by air.

    The plan, which is aimed at addressing the growing number of Venezuelans who have been arriving at the US-Mexico border seeking asylum, also includes the expansion of a border expulsion policy known as Title 42.

    Up until now, the pandemic-era rule – which allows US authorities to quickly send most migrants back to Mexico without a chance to file a petition – had largely been applied to asylum seekers from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

    Due to strained relations with the Venezuelan government, the US had been unable to expel the country’s citizens. It has instead been allowing them to file for asylum and enter the US to pursue their cases.

    Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, arriving at a camp where Mexican authorities will arrange permits for their continued travel north, in San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca [Marco Ugarte/AP Photo]

    But now, under the new agreement, Mexico has agreed to take in Venezuelans.

    The development comes as the administration of US President Joe Biden has struggled to address the record-high numbers of migrants and asylum seekers arriving at its southern border with Mexico.

    With three weeks until critical midterm elections that will determine control of the US Congress, Biden’s Republican rivals have seized on the issue and accused his administration of mishandling the situation at the border.

    US and international rights groups have slammed the new border policy for Venezuelans.

    “While we welcome steps to provide safe processing for some Venezuelans, the creation of safe pathways should never be wielded to deny other people seeking protection access to asylum,” dozens of human rights organisations wrote in a joint letter last week addressed to DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    “We are also troubled that the announcement refers to attempted entry at the southern border by Venezuelans as ‘illegal.’ Seeking asylum is legal under both US and international law,” the letter reads.

    Migration advocates also argued that the 24,000 cap on Venezuelans who will be allowed into the US is a negligible number that does not address the pressure at the border.

    More than 155,000 Venezuelans have been stopped at the US-Mexico border as of the end of August, DHS records show, in a stark uptick from last year when more than 50,000 were apprehended. In August alone, more than 25,000 Venezuelans crossed the border from Mexico, according to the department.

    “Personally, it’s hard not to see this as a massive stick and a tiny carrot,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said on Twitter.

    “DHS says 33,000 Venezuelans entered in September and that 3,000 people a day (“mostly Venezuelans”) are crossing the Darien Gap into Panama on their way north. So a cap of 24,000 is, to be blunt, crumbs.”

    Citing an unnamed Mexican official, Mexico’s migration agency said on Monday that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had asked the US to take in one Venezuelan asylum seeker for each person expelled to Mexico.

    “That way, if the Biden administration takes in 24,000 Venezuelans, Mexico will not accept more of 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the United States,” the agency said in a statement.

    To be eligible for the programme, DHS said applicants must have a sponsor in the US, pass a security check, and fly at their own expense to an airport in the US. Those who are accepted will be able to live and work in the US legally.

    DHS has said that the plan is modelled after “Uniting for Ukraine”, a programme advanced by the Biden administration that has so far allowed thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion to come to live and work in the US if they are able to secure a financial sponsor.

    That immigration scheme is capped at 100,000 Ukrainians.

    At the same time, more than 6.8 million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2014, when the economy went into free fall. Most have fled to Latin American and Caribbean countries, but in recent months, many have been streaming north towards the US.

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  • US to take in some Venezuelans but will send most back to Mexico

    US to take in some Venezuelans but will send most back to Mexico

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    The United States and Mexico have announced a joint migration plan that will see most Venezuelan asylum seekers trying to enter the US through its southern border sent back to Mexico while granting access to the US to thousands of others who come by air.

    The effort, announced late on Wednesday, aims to address the growing number of Venezuelans arriving at the US-Mexico border.

    Under the new programme, which came into effect immediately, up to 24,000 Venezuelans will be allowed to enter the US by air, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said. Others who try to enter the US through the border without documentation will be returned to Mexico.

    “These actions make clear that there is a lawful and orderly way for Venezuelans to enter the United States, and lawful entry is the only way,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

    “Those who attempt to cross the southern border of the United States illegally will be returned to Mexico and will be ineligible for this process in the future,” he said.

    President Joe Biden’s administration has struggled to cope with record migrant and asylum seeker arrivals at the southern US border as more people come from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

    Biden’s Republican adversaries, who are seeking to gain control of Congress in the November 8 midterm elections, have criticised what they view as his failure to secure the border.

    Migrants from Venezuela on their way to the US-Mexico border wait to board buses in Guatemala City [File: Luis Echeverria/Reuters]

    The expulsions of Venezuelans will be carried out under Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows US border officials to swiftly send asylum seekers to Mexico without the chance to submit a claim for protection.

    Until now, Mexico had only agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, resulting in an uneven enforcement of the rule. The US struggles to expel other nationalities due to costs, strained diplomatic relations and other considerations.

    Poor relations with the Venezuelan government have made it nearly impossible to apply Title 42 to Venezuelan asylum seekers, and in recent months, many had been allowed to apply for asylum and are then released into the US while they await their court dates.

    In August, Venezuelans were stopped at the US-Mexico border 25,349 times, up 43 percent from 17,652 in July and four times the 6,301 encounters in August 2021, DHS said, signalling a remarkably sudden demographic shift.

    Migrant advocates welcomed the new humanitarian programme but slammed what they said was an expansion of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that has denied access to protection to thousands of people.

    “The program … should not be viewed as a replacement for asylum protections enshrined in both US and international law,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said in a statement. “It provides only temporary protection to a very limited subset of the millions of Venezuelans forced to leave their homeland.”

    Vignarajah said the programme will disproportionately affect Venezuelans who deserve protection but do not have ties to the US.

    To qualify for entry into the US when arriving by air, an applicant must be sponsored by a US-based person or organisation, DHS said.

    Venezuelans who are accepted into the programme will be granted what is known as “humanitarian parole”, allowing them to live and work legally in the US for a limited time but not offering them a path to permanent status.

    The US and Mexico said their plan is modelled after the “Uniting for Ukraine” programme, under which the Biden administration has allowed Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion to enter the US to live and work if they can secure a financial sponsor in the country.

    The US said it plans to admit up to 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war for stays of up two years under the scheme. So far, the US has admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainians.

    Meanwhile, more than 6.8 million Venezuelans have fled their country since the economy tanked in 2014, mostly to Latin American and Caribbean countries.

    But an increasing number of people have been heading towards the US, and the 24,000 slots that the Biden administration is offering are fewer than the number of Venezuelans who crossed the border from Mexico in August alone.

    Alongside the agreement on Venezuelan migrants and refugees, Mexico’s foreign ministry and DHS said the US will make available about 65,000 temporary work visas for lower-skilled industries, roughly double the current annual allotment.

    At least 20,000 of those temporary visas will be reserved for people from Haiti and northern Central American countries.

    “The United States government has accepted the request of the Mexican government to substantially increase labor mobility in the region,” Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “The new proposal represents important and innovative progress towards the shared goal of ensuring orderly, safe, regular and humane migration.”

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