Mexican official says migration, security at stake in NAFTA talks: report

8/10/2017 Reuters

Mexico could pull back on cooperation in migration and security matters if the United States walks away from talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican economy minister said in a newspaper report published on Thursday.

Ildefonso Guajardo, who will take part in the first round of NAFTA talks with U.S. and Canadian officials in Washington on Wednesday, told the Reforma daily that new tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States were unacceptable.

“If they do not treat [us] well commercially, they should not expect us to treat them well by containing the migration that comes from other regions of the world and crosses Mexico,” Guajardo said. “Or they should not expect to be treated well in collaboration with security issues in the region.”

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Mexico officials accused of abuse in migration centers: report

08/03/2017 Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A report found that staff at Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) abused and even tortured migrants held in detention centers across the country, a finding the organization disputed on Thursday.

INM commissioned the report, which was conducted by human rights works and others from outside the government agency. It was not clear why the agency commissioned the report but Mexico’s migration officers have long been accused of corruption, shaking down migrants and even working with organized criminals involved in human smuggling rings.

INM said it has taken steps to safeguard against the problems highlighted by the report but disputed the report’s most serious findings.

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With 20 months until Brexit, UK orders year-long EU migration study

7/27/2017 Reuters

Britain ordered a year-long study of EU migration on Thursday to help it design a post-Brexit immigration system that is due to come into force just six months after report is completed.

EU citizens’ freedom to live and work in Britain will end as soon as it leaves the bloc, scheduled for March 2019, but ministers have said they will design a system that allows businesses to hire the workers they need.

However, with Brexit negotiations already under way and the EU hoping to wrap up talks by October 2018, critics said the study should have been commissioned sooner and that uncertainty was already driving EU nationals out of the UK labor market.

Interior minister Amber Rudd asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a public body that advises the government, to look at how migration affects the labor market and the wider economy, and how the post-Brexit rules need to work to support the country’s plans for an industrial revival.

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Mexico says seven of its citizens died in sweltering San Antonio truck

07/26/2017 Reuters

Eric Gay/Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s foreign ministry on Wednesday raised the number of its citizens who died or were hospitalized after enduring sweltering conditions in the back of a truck in San Antonio, Texas, saying seven Mexicans died and 27 remain in hospital.

At least 10 people were found dead over the weekend in the back of a tractor-trailer in the south-central Texas city, with dozens escaping by foot.

At least 100 illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico and Guatemala, were crammed into the back of the truck. The driver accused of smuggling the illegal immigrants has said he was unaware of the human cargo he was hauling until he took a rest stop.

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Without Visas, Carnival Workers Are Trapped at Home in Mexico

7/22/2017 The New York Times

Francisco Trujillo heads north each summer to do a job that few Americans want: a four-month stint operating carnival rides, mopping up vomit and sleeping in a cramped trailer with other workers.

His annual journey to the United States was a routine shared by many in the shabby city of Tlapacoyan, about 190 miles east of Mexico City in the hills of Veracruz state, which supplies two-thirds or more of the 7,000 foreign workers hired by America’s amusement sector each year.

This year, however, Mr. Trujillo, 32, is not selling tickets for the Super Shot vertical drop or doling out funnel cakes. Caught in a debate over how many visas the United States government should issue to seasonal workers, he is among thousands of Mexicans who are stuck at home, unable to get permission to work across the border.

“They say we are taking jobs from the Americans,” said Mr. Trujillo, who has worked the last four carnival seasons in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Carnival work is “really hard,” he said, adding, “Americans don’t want to do it.”\

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Asylum seekers turned away at U.S.-Mexico border sue U.S. government

7/12/2017 Reuters

A group of asylum seekers fleeing gang and drug violence in Honduras and Mexico were improperly turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border by border patrol agents, a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government on Wednesday said.

The lawsuit said some U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have referred to the tough immigration policies of President Donald Trump when turning asylum seekers back. But it also said human rights groups have documented “hundreds” of cases dating back to at least the summer of 2016, before Trump’s election win in November.

Filed by a non-profit legal services group called “Al Otro Lado” along with six unidentified people in U.S. District Court in central California, the class action lawsuit said border agents have used “misrepresentations, threats and intimidation,” to tell asylum seekers they cannot enter the country at various border crossings in California, Arizona and Texas.

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More families fleeing Central America resettling in Mexico

07/05/2017 The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The armed, masked gang members showed up on a motorcycle at the home in northern Honduras last fall with a stark warning for the occupants: Leave town within 24 hours, or else.

Laura Maria Cruz Martinez, another single mother and the nine kids in their care hurriedly threw clothing and personal items into bags and made for the border before dawn, their home abandoned with the furniture and appliances left in place.

Nine months later they’re together again in two adjacent apartments in a working-class neighborhood of eastern Mexico City. It hasn’t always been easy adjusting to this megalopolis of 20 million-plus, with its crowded subway and unfamiliar, slang-heavy Spanish, but at least they’re safe from the gangs rampaging back home.

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