Homeland security secretary visits Calexico border construction

04/18/2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visited Calexico’s replacement border barrier project on Wednesday after holding a town hall with local Border Patrol agents and officials from other immigration-related agencies.

The new chief of the Border Patrol in El Centro, Gloria Chavez, gave Nielsen a piece of the old Vietnam War landing mats that separated Calexico from Mexicali before the construction project began in February. A 30-foot fence made of bollards — posts placed close enough together that people can’t pass between them — will replace just over two miles of the landing mats.

Construction has progressed since February with well over a football field length of fence already in place.

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Remnants of migrant caravan move toward US-Mexico border

04/18/2018 The Washington Post

The remnants of a migrant caravan of Central Americans that drew the ire of President Donald Trump were continuing their journey north through Mexico toward the U.S. border on Wednesday.

Organizer Irineo Mujica, speaking from the western Mexico city of Guadalajara, said that about 500 migrants had been riding trains north since departing Mexico City last weekend. The caravan that left the Guatemala-Mexico border in late March grew to more than 1,000 migrants who found safety travelling in numbers.

In Mexico City, Mujica had said the capital was the caravan’s last official stop, but many of the migrants feared going solo on the dangerous final leg north and decided to keep travelling en masse. Some who had split off to press on alone reported back about kidnappings and having their papers for safe passage torn up.

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Fear, solidarity drive migrants to stick with Mexico ‘caravan’

04/05/2018 Reuters

Impoverished Central American migrants traveling in a “caravan” through Mexico that angered U.S. President Donald Trump said they would stick together for safety even though the group will ends its journey in Mexico City rather than the U.S. border.

Since peaking at around 1,500 people, the caravan has dwindled under pressure from Trump and Mexican migration authorities, which vowed to separate those migrants with a right to stay in Mexico from those who did not.

By Thursday morning, scores of migrants were boarding buses to leave the town of Matias Romero in the southern state of Oaxaca, where their journey was held up by authorities at the weekend.

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Caravan won’t end in Mexico. Some migrants will risk trip to US border

04/05/2018 CNN

The caravan of Central American migrants going through Mexico to the US border isn’t ending. Instead, its participants will disperse into smaller groups after reaching Mexico City.

While some will stay in Mexico to try to get refugee status there, others will continue north to the US border.

Organizers of the caravan estimate that some 200 or so people will proceed all the way to the US border in the coming days, although the number could be higher. Last year, about 150 went all the way to the border, they said.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan or People Without Borders has organized the event for years. The caravan has always dispersed into separate, smaller groups at some point along the journey. What has been striking is that this year’s event has the largest number of people ever, with more than 1,100.

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Game Changer In NAFTA As Trump Makes Mexican Border A Potential Deal Breaker

04/02/2018 Forbes

The market was definitely not penciling in illegal border crossings as part of the NAFTA negotiation process. But after this weekend, Mexico has been put on notice. The president said that if Mexico doesn’t secure its own border, where thousands from Central American countries are using Mexico as a gateway into the U.S., then it’s lights out NAFTA.

“If NAFTA dies, protectionism increases inflation and that is not good for the bull story,” says Eric Lascelles, chief economist for RBC Global Asset Management in Toronto. “You’re stuck with several negative consequences because inflation acts like a tax and it obliges the Fed to tigthen. It would be a worse case scenario and you would face the real risk of a sudden recoil. Will we see tax cuts giveth and protectionism taketh away? I’m still hopeful,” he says.

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Mexico pledges $4.3 million effort to stop Tijuana spills

03/26/2018 The Washington Post

Mexico is pledging to spend $4.3 million to clean the Tijuana river channel after two California cities sued a U.S. agency over the decades-old problem of sewage fouling U.S. wetlands and beaches.

Mexico’s National Water Commission said Monday it will strengthen and clean overflow channels and drains, to prevent sewage and garbage from flowing into the Pacific near the U.S. border. It also will renovate pumping stations and electrical components to carry the runoff to treatment plants.

The California cities of Imperial Beach and Chula Vista and the Port of San Diego contend the International Boundary and Water Commission’s U.S. section failed to comply with the federal Clean Water Act.

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A Battle Over a U.S. Brewery in Mexicali

1/29/2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune

A major U.S. beer manufacturer’s decision to build a giant production plant in Baja California’s desert capital has been cause for much celebration in Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid’s administration. But not everybody is applauding.

Constellation Brands, maker of Modelo and Corona beers, finds itself in the crossfire of a bitter dispute. On one side are government officials who are vowing to see the project through; on the other, opponents determined to shut it down, saying the plant will use a large amount of water that should go to local farmers.

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