Category Archives: US-Mexico border

‘It’s not the same’: How Trump and Covid devastated an Arizona border town

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Nogales residents say the city is struggling amid the pandemic and after years of Trump painting the area as a ‘war zone’

When Francis Glad was a child growing up in Nogales, Arizona, the US-Mexico border near her home was nothing like it is now. “It was more like a neighbor fence, like you have at your house,” she remembers. “It was very symbiotic. Just people coming back and forth.”

But today, a towering 30ft border wall, made of dizzying steel bollards, slices through the Nogales sister cities.

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Trump says he knows ‘nothing’ about border wall project following Bannon’s arrest – video

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Donald Trump says he knows nothing about the fundraising organisation associated with Steve Bannon's arrest on charges he defrauded supporters of the president in a campaign to help build the president's signature wall along the US-Mexico border.

Bannon was arrested on Thursday for allegedly skimming donations from We Build the Wall, an online fundraising campaign for the US president’s border wall with Mexico, officials in New York said

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Border agents discover ‘most sophisticated tunnel in US history’ in Arizona – video

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US border officials claim an incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona could be the most sophisticated in US history. The tunnel runs from San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona, where it stops short of reaching the surface. It is 3ft wide and 4ft high (1 x 1.3 metres). Smugglers have been using tunnels to move drugs and people across the border for decades

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‘Most sophisticated tunnel in US history’ discovered between Mexico and Arizona

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Although it’s not clear exactly what the structure was intended for, it had ventilation, a rail system and extensive reinforcement

An incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona appears to be “the most sophisticated tunnel in US history”, authorities said.

The tunnel, intended for smuggling, ran from a neighborhood in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona, where it stopped short of reaching the surface. It was built in an area that’s not conducive to tunnels because of the terrain, and it had a ventilation system, water lines, electrical wiring, a rail system and extensive reinforcement, federal officials say.

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Trump claims US would be ‘inundated’ with Covid-19 were it not for border wall

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President made remark hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for not bringing subject up in public

Donald Trump has claimed that the US would be “inundated” with coronavirus, were it not for new sections of the border wall – mere hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for avoiding the thorny subject during a summit meeting this week.

Related: Amlo unscathed after Trump meeting but snags cameo role in US election

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Three asylum seekers at camp near US border test positive for coronavirus

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Advocates have long worried about potential for an outbreak at Matamoros camp, where an estimated 2,000 migrants live

Three asylum seekers have tested positive for coronavirus in a sprawling border encampment, marking the first cases in a settlement that advocates have long viewed as vulnerable amid the pandemic.

Since confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico began rising in March, advocates and government officials have worried about the potential for an outbreak in the Matamoros camp, where an estimated 2,000 migrants live in tents on the banks of the Rio Grande river.

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Mexican border town uses ‘sanitizing tunnels’ to disinfect US visitors from Covid-19

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Authorities in Nogales, Sonora, are hoping to reduce chances of bringing the virus over from Arizona, one of the states most affected

Fears of foreigners bringing infectious disease into the country. Enhanced border checkpoints. And the use of disinfectant spray to sanitize human beings.

These aren’t notes from one of Donald Trump’s freewheeling press conferences. The United States’ troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic is such that the Mexican border city of Nogales, Sonora, has set up “sanitizing tunnels” to disinfect people leaving the US through Nogales, Arizona.

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Construction of US-Mexico border wall proceeds despite coronavirus pandemic

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The Trump administration announced plans to erect 150 miles of barrier on the border, involving large numbers of contractors

The Trump administration is ramping up construction of its multibillion-dollar southern border wall, despite the rapidly escalating coronavirus epidemic which threatens to kill thousands of Americans and plunge the country into economic recession.

Earlier this week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced plans to erect more than 150 miles of the 30ft border wall in Arizona, New Mexico and California – in addition to ongoing construction work at at least 15 sites across those states and Texas.

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US supreme court blocks lawsuit by family of Mexican boy slain at border

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Ruling marks the second involving cross-border incidents preventing cases by foreign nationals in US federal courts

The US supreme court has thrown out a lower court’s ruling that had let the family of a slain 16-year-old Mexican boy pursue a civil rights lawsuit against a US border patrol agent who shot the teenager from across the border in Arizona.

The justices took the action in light of their ruling last Tuesday in a similar case in which they decided on a 5-4 vote to bar a lawsuit against another border patrol agent for fatally shooting a 15-year-old Mexican boy from across the border in Texas.

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Hundreds of Central American migrants rounded up by guardsmen at Mexico border – video

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National guardsmen in riot gear have blocked the path of hundreds of Central Americans near the town of Frontera Hidalgo in southern Mexico. 

Security forces corralled the migrants and hauled them on to buses, as Mexico continues with efforts to contain mass migration under pressure from the Trump administration.


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US sends asylum seekers to Mexico to await hearings held 350 miles away

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Authorities are expanding the Remain in Mexico program, which critics say puts migrants into dangerous border towns

The US government has started sending asylum seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Ciudad Juárez.

Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juárez.

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Mexico releases Texas woman who tried to deliver Christmas gifts to migrants

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Authorities had arrested Anamichelle Castellano, who runs a not-for-profit, after finding ammunition in her car on Monday

A Texas woman has been allowed to leave Mexico after being detained while trying to deliver Christmas gifts to a sprawling refugee camp housing people waiting in limbo at the border for US court dates to deal with their asylum claims.

Relatives of Anamichelle Castellano say she was arrested by Mexican authorities Monday at a bridge crossing from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico.

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Donald Trump falsely claims he’s building a wall in Colorado – video

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Donald Trump on Wednesday talked about the construction of a wall in states that border Mexico, but included Colorado, which is 400 miles away from the frontier. The US president later said on Twitter he had been kidding and added that he had been referring to people in states that weren't on the border, saying they would still benefit from the wall

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‘It’s worse than ever’: how Latinos are changing their lives in Trump’s America

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Hate crimes have risen steadily since 2016, and Latinos say they feel vulnerable: ‘It rattles you at your core’

The first time someone called Lidia Carrillo a “wetback” she had to ask her teacher what the slur meant. She was only 13, and had recently moved to California from Jalisco, Mexico, with her parents and six siblings.

Carrillo had tried to explain that her family hadn’t crossed any river, but it didn’t matter. “They looked at us differently,” she recalled.

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US to sign agreement to send asylum seekers to El Salvador

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Deal could lead to migrants obtaining refuge in El Salvador, one of Central America’s most violent countries

The United States planned to sign an agreement on Friday to help make one of Central America’s most violent countries, El Salvador, a haven for migrants seeking asylum, according to a senior Trump administration official.

The official said the acting homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, would sign a “cooperative asylum agreement”.

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Trump’s Middle East envoy resigns amid Kushner’s stalling peace plan – live

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US president says Jason Greenblatt will be leaving to pursue work in the private sector after three years in administration

A CNN analyst neatly summarized Joe Biden’s continued dominance in the polls despite a series of embarrassing gaffes that many commentators predicted would affect his front-runner status.

Average of all polls this year of Biden v. Trump? Biden by 8. Average of all August polls, after all the gaffes? Biden by 10. That's the same as it is in the RCP average. Clinton lead in the RCP average against Trump at this point? 2.4 points... (1/?)

Maybe, it will change. Heck, we're over a year out. But the difference between what the numbers are saying and conventional wisdom (at least in some quarters) is stunning.

Meanwhile, Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he was wrong when he tweeted Sunday about the threat Hurricane Dorian posed to Alabama.

Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it! pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p

I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not! https://t.co/gO5pwahaj9

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More Cubans seek asylum in Mexico amid clampdown on legal path to US

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US-bound Cubans used to encounter far fewer obstacles on the migration passage, but that’s changed due to crackdowns

Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States.

On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel. The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to handover $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he’d be able to safely continue his passage north.

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El Paso loses its ‘safe city’ title – not from migrants, but a white man killing Latinos | Ed Vulliamy

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The city, which stands at the fulcrum of the US-Mexico borderlands, was one of the country’s safest, until now

When politicians – especially Donald Trump – ratchet up the rhetoric about perils from Mexico along the southern border of the USA, citizens of El Paso react with indignation – also bewilderment, by recourse to a stark truth: they are much safer than most other Americans.

Until now.

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US border wall seesaws allow children on each side to play together – video

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The architect and anti-border wall campaigner Ronald Rael has installed three pink seesaws on the US-Mexico border to allow families on each side to ‘meaningfully connect’ with each other and highlight the bond between the two countries. Rael says the seesaws have turned the wall into a ‘literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations’

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