President Trump bashes California Gov. Jerry Brown for limiting National Guard mission at Mexico border

04/17/2018 CNBC

President Donald Trump on Tuesday took aim at California Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to limit his state’s National Guard troops’ mission at the border.

“Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border,” the president tweeted. “He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border. The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!”

Brown said he would not permit soldiers to fully engage in immigration enforcement on the border, which is a big snag in Trump’s plan to bolster military presence at the boundary as he awaits construction of his long-promised wall.

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‘RiseUp AS ONE’ concert bridges U.S.-Mexico border

10/15/2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Their voices rising in English and Spanish, an all-star cast of performers called for building bridges -not walls- during a Saturday concert in San Diego by the U.S. border.

The outdoor concert, called “RiseUp AS ONE,” was a celebration of immigration, cultural diversity and Latin identity- and a call for political participation- before an audience of 15,000 people gathered as the sun went down by the border fence in Otay Mesa.

The message reached a far broader audience, as the concert was broadcast live nationally and streamed worldwide by the event’s hosts, the Spanish-language television network Univision and Fusion, a cable channel and digital platform aimed at English-speaking millennials.

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Why More Gas Is Moving From California to Mexico Amid Heat

06/29/16 Bloomberg

California is warning of natural gas shortages and potential blackouts this summer after a historic leak near Los Angeles. Meanwhile, more of the power-plant fuel is flowing from the state into Mexico.

Deliveries to the North Baja pipeline system in Mexico through California jumped 45 percent to 441 million cubic feet on Wednesday compared with two weeks ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They’re 6 percent higher than year-earlier levels, the data show.

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Donald Trump’s ‘beautiful’ wall both a dream and nightmare

5/27/16 BBC News

At the south-western tip of California, straddling the dirty trickle that is the Tijuana river, stands a wall – or rather a series of walls, fences and ditches.

This is the stuff of Donald Trump’s dreams, only his wall would be bigger and better of course, not to mention longer, stronger and vastly more expensive.

Between the fortifications, in what is effectively no-man’s land, a yellow line painted on the concrete marks the end of the mainland United States and the beginning of Mexico.

The border here owes its defences to Operation Gatekeeper, a controversial programme enacted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton which built barriers, added patrols and spruced up technology such as movement sensors.

All these years on, it appears to have worked, up to a point.

“It’s like water,” says border agent Shawn Moran as he drives the route near San Diego which he has patrolled for two decades. “They’re going to take the path of least resistance and right now there’s a lot of resistance out here.”

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The immigrants still ‘California Dreamin’

5/18/16 BBC

A group of drunken men are loitering on the pavement outside Claudia’s block of flats in San Francisco. In the run-down lobby, visitors are greeted by a broken fridge.

The studio flat Claudia shares with her two young daughters though is tidy and homely.

Claudia fled from a violent partner and became homeless. She has been rehoused by a San Francisco charity but her problems are far from over.

‘Fearful for my children’

Claudia does not want to give me her full name because she is one of the more than 11 million undocumented migrants living in the US, and she is worried by the political rhetoric in the presidential race.

“What Donald Trump said shocked me very much because I’m Mexican,” she says.

“I’m fearful that my children would have to fend for themselves because he would want to deport me.”

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The Border Walls Donald Trump Supports Have Led To Thousands Of Deaths In Arizona

3/23/16 International Business Times

Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump stood in front of an outsize American flag Sunday in Fountain Hills, Arizona, and repeated a central promise of his presidential campaign that hits close to home in the Southwestern state.

“We’re going to build the wall, and we’re going to stop it. It’s going to end,” Trump said, referring to his stance on illegal immigration. “We’re going to have a big, beautiful wall.”

Trump has made building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico a cornerstone of his campaign, but his message on the stump fails to mention that existing barriers along the border in the Southwest have contributed to what activists have described as a growing humanitarian crisis. Fences erected in Texas, California and Arizona have led to the deaths of thousands of immigrants as vulnerable people have been pushed out into the inhospitable desert on their trek between the two countries even as the overall rate of illegal border crossing has dropped during the past eight years.

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US Border Security: Drug King Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Was Hiding In California Before He Was Captured By Mexico

3/43/16 International Business Times

Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman illegally traveled to California twice last year after he escaped from a Mexican prison in 2015, raising questions about the security of the U.S. border. Guzman’s daughter, Rosa Isela Guzman Ortiz, a U.S. citizen, claims her father crossed the border in late 2015 to visit relatives and tour a five-bedroom house he had purchased for her, the Guardian reported Friday.

Guzman was captured in January following an interview with actor Sean Penn in Mexico after a massive manhunt that lasted for seven months. Guzman Ortiz, 39, said her father bankrolled Mexican politicians to help him stay on the lam but would not explain how he crossed the U.S. border.

“My dad deposited the money in a bank account with a lawyer, and a while after, he came to see the house, his house. He came twice,” she said of the drug cartel leader.

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