Massive migrant caravan disbands as Mexico hands out travel permits; migrants expected to head to US

13/06/2022

Source: Fox News

The massive migrant caravan, which at one point swelled up to well over 10,000 migrants as it set off toward the U.S. border from southern Mexico, has now broken up as Mexican officials have offered temporary visas to migrants – although organizers say they will still travel to the U.S.

Organizer Luis Villagran told Fox News that about 80% of migrants in the caravan, approximately 9,000, have received a migratory multiple form (FMM). That travel visa allows them to travel freely in Mexico temporarily.

The Biden administration has faced heavily criticism for its handling of the crisis, with Republicans tying the surge to the administration’s rollback of Trump-era policy and a lax interior enforcement – combined with calls for mass amnesty in Washington D.C.

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Government expands role of military; gives army, navy full control over customs

05/26/22

Source: Mexico News Daily

The military now has full control of customs after the federal government’s publication of a new decree.

President López Obrador had already given control of most of the nation’s land and maritime customs offices to the army and navy but a presidential decree expands their powers.

The military now has exclusive responsibility for inspecting goods entering the country via land borders, ports and airports.

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US authorities find major cross-border ‘narco-tunnel’ to Mexico

Tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego had rail and ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities say.

Date: May 17th, 2022

Source: Al Jazeera English

Authorities in the United States have announced the discovery of a major drug smuggling tunnel that extends from Mexico to a warehouse in an industrial area in the US state of California.

The secret passage from Tijuana to San Diego featured rail and ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities said on Tuesday.

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Trump attacks ‘weak’ Mark Esper after ‘missiles into Mexico’ memoir claim

Ex-president has ‘no comment’ on whether he wanted to fire missiles at Mexico, choosing instead to chide former defense chief

Date: May 9th, 2022

Source: The Guardian

Given a chance to address whether he contemplated firing missiles at Mexico, as his ex-defense secretary writes in a new memoir, Donald Trump avoided the issue, instead attacking his former cabinet member as “weak and ineffective.”

Trump, in a written statement to CBS’s 60 Minutes, said he had “no comment” when asked whether he ever asked ex-defense secretary Mark Esper about sending “missiles into Mexico” to destroy drug cartel labs in the country, which Esper claimed in a memoir published this week.

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Supreme Court examines Biden’s power to set US immigration policy in ‘Remain in Mexico’ challenge

(CNN)The Biden administration will ask the Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow it to terminate a Trump-era border policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” a case that will be a test of the White House’s ability to set immigration policy.

Date: April 26th, 2022

Source: CNN

Under the unprecedented program launched in 2019, the Department of Homeland Security sent certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out. 

Critics call the policy inhumane and say it exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous and squalid conditions. Migrants subject to the program — formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols — have resided in makeshift camps along Mexico’s northern border.

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‘Despicable’: Mexico’s president slams Texas’ enhanced border truck inspections

President López Obrador’s criticism comes after Texas’ governor, who’s facing re-election, touts his tough border policies, which snarled traffic and got criticized by business groups.

Date: April 18th, 2022

Source: ABC News

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday criticized the Texas government over its imposition of enhanced commercial truck inspections earlier this month, which disrupted trade at the Mexico-U.S. border.

“Legally they can do it, but it’s a very despicable way to act,” Lopez Obrador said at a regular news conference.

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They left her hanging’: details emerge of woman’s death at US-Mexico border

Griselda Verduzco Armenta was trying to get over the barrier with the help of coyotes to find a more secure future for her daughters

Source: The Guardian

Date: April 16th, 2022

As she’d done before, Griselda Verduzco Armenta tried to cross Mexico’s border with the US earlier this week with dreams of being able to better provide for her two young daughters.

But the 32-year-old’s journey ended in tragedy when authorities say she fell from atop the US border wall in Arizona, accidentally became entangled in a climbing harness that she had used to scale the barrier, and was choked to death while upside down.

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Mexican truck drivers block major US-Mexico point of entry in protest of Texas border inspections

Mexican truck drivers on Monday block the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge connecting Reynosa to McAllen, Texas

Date: April 12th, 2022

Source: CNN

(CNN)Commercial traffic at a major US-Mexico land entry port is “halted temporarily” due to an ongoing protest on the Mexican side of the border, with “no southbound movements by US carriers,” a US Customs and Border Protection official confirmed Monday to CNN.

The protest at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge follows a move by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office to enhance safety inspections at state border ports in response to Biden administration plans to end pandemic-related restrictions at the border.

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Ukrainians seeking refuge at the U.S.-Mexico border stuck in legal limbo

Date: March 31, 2022

Source: NBC News

SAN DIEGO — Armed with a backpack and a smartphone, Ihor Solomko paced back and forth outside the San Ysidro Port of Entry at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, anxiously waiting for news from his eldest daughter, who was stopped by border officials as she attempted to cross into the U.S. early that morning after fleeing war-torn Ukraine.

The family has been separated since 2016, when Solomko and his wife secured green cards and relocated permanently to Wisconsin with their youngest daughter. Their older daughter stayed behind in Ukraine with her husband and hadn’t seen her parents in two years.

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Stuck at Mexico border, anti-war Russians sweat their futures as Ukrainians enter U.S.

TIJUANA, Mexico, March 19 (Reuters) – Russians trying to enter the United States at the Mexican border are frustrated they are not getting in like Ukrainians are, despite leaving their homeland over the invasion of Ukraine.

Date: March 19th, 2022

Source: Reuters

U.S. officials have let dozens of Ukrainians through this week but Russians remain in limbo, prompting some to camp on the pavement alongside a barbed wire border fence, defying warnings from Mexican authorities to leave.

Irina Zolkina, a math teacher who left Moscow with her four children and her daughter’s boyfriend, burst into tears when a U.S. border agent on Thursday took one look at her stack of Russian passports and shook his head, saying they would have to wait – soon after officials ushered in six Ukrainian men.

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