President decries Trump administration that ‘literally ripped children from the arms of their families’ as he signs executive orders
Joe Biden plans to create a taskforce to reunify families separated at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration, as part of a new series of immigration executive actions signed at an Oval Office ceremony on Tuesday.
Biden condemned Donald Trump’s immigration policies as a “stain on the reputation” of the US.
Continue reading...Trump-appointed judge ruled against president’s 100-day suspension, raising questions over whether Ice will resist reform
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is preparing to resume deportations of asylum seekers after a Trump-appointed Texas judge ruled against a 100-day suspension ordered by Joe Biden.
The ruling, in response to a challenge from a leading figure in the Republican effort to overturn the election result, marks the first shot in a legal rearguard action by Trump loyalists intended to stymie the Biden administration’s agenda.
Continue reading...‘Trump had threatened Mexico with tariffs if it let in this caravan from Honduras. Two hours after crossing this river, many were teargassed then deported’
I had been following a migrant caravan north from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for around 10 days. It was 23 January 2020, and this was the moment the group crossed the Suchiate river, which divides Guatemala from Mexico.
The Mexican authorities had deployed the national guard to stop the caravan entering their country because Trump had threatened to increase tariffs on Mexican goods coming into the United States if they let migrants in. Previously, migrants had been allowed to traverse the length of Mexico with no problem.
Continue reading...The president-elect has promised to do away with ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, raising hopes that asylum seekers claims will be treated seriously
Selma López, 31, has spent nearly a year holed up in a two-room house not far from Mexico’s border with the US, along with her 11-year-old son Darikson and another woman who also made the long journey from Honduras in search of a new life.
Related: Remain in Mexico policy needlessly exposed migrants to harm, report says
Continue reading...Financial consultant Paul Pierrilus came to the US with his parents, who are both US citizens, when he was five
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is to carry out a final deportation flight of the Trump era on Tuesday, with a plane bound for Haiti whose passengers include a man who is not a Haitian citizen, and who has never been there.
Paul Pierrilus, a 40-year-old financial consultant from Rockland County, New York, was born in the French Caribbean territory of Saint Martin, according to a birth certificate supplied by his family, who said he came to the US with his parents when he was five. His sister and parents are US citizens.
Continue reading...Creators say they hope the work encourages people to build bridges between communities
A collection of bright pink seesaws that allowed people to interact over the US-Mexico border has won the prestigious Design of the Year award, with its creators saying they hoped the work encourages people to build bridges between communities.
The Teeter Totter Wall, which bridged across El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico during a 40-minute session, was described as not only feeling “symbolically important” but also highlighting “the possibility of things” by the judging panel.
Continue reading...Truncheon-wielding Guatemalan troops have clashed with Central American asylum seekers trying to push their way north towards the US border as Donald Trump’s presidency entered its final days.
Thousands of mostly Honduran migrants began crossing the Guatemalan border on Friday night, having set off on foot from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula in the early hours of Thursday.
Continue reading...In his final months in office, Donald Trump has ramped up construction on his promised physical border between the US and Mexico – devastating wildlife habitats and increasing the migrant death toll
At Sierra Vista Ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border, Troy McDaniel is warming up his helicopter. McDaniel, tall and slim in a tan jumpsuit, began taking flying lessons in the 80s, and has since logged 2,000 miles in the air. The helicopter, a cosy, two-seater Robinson R22 Alpha is considered a work vehicle and used to monitor the 640-acre ranch, but it’s clear he relishes any opportunity to fly. “We will have no fun at all,” he deadpans.
McDaniel and his wife, Melissa Owen, bought their ranch and the 100-year-old adobe house that came with it in 2003. Years before, Owen began volunteering at the nearby Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and fell in love with the beauty and natural diversity of the area, as well as the quiet of their tiny town. That all changed last July when construction vehicles and large machinery started “barrelling down the two-lane state road”, says Owen.
Continue reading...Biden has said he will end construction of Trump’s wall, but activists say they hope for more than a return to the status quo
As Joe Biden prepares to take office, activists say the president-elect must not only take meaningful action to stabilize the US-Mexico border, but also reckon with his own history of militarizing the border landscape and communities.
Biden has promised to end many of the Trump administration’s border policies, but has yet to unveil the kind of bold immigration plan that would suggest a true departure from Obama-era priorities. Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top immigration adviser who memorably defended the administration’s decision to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants, was recently added to Biden’s transition team.
Continue reading...Chad Wolf took office unlawfully, says federal court judge, therefore could not suspend program that shields young people from deportation
A federal judge in New York has ruled that the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, assumed his position unlawfully and has invalidated Wolf’s suspension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, which shields young people from deportation.
“DHS failed to follow the order of succession as it was lawfully designated,” the US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote.
Continue reading...Six former patients who complained about Dr Mahendra Amin, who has been accused of operating without consent, deported
The Trump administration is trying to deport several women who allege they were mistreated by a Georgia gynecologist at an immigration detention center, according to their lawyers.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has already deported six former patients who complained about Dr Mahendra Amin, who has been accused of operating on migrant women without their consent or performing procedures that were medically unnecessary and potentially endangered their ability to have children.
Continue reading...The Trump administration justifies the expulsions under a public health law but critics say they risk spreading coronavirus in the Caribbean nation
US immigration authorities have radically stepped up deportation flights to Haiti in the weeks before the election, raising concerns over returned migrants’ safety on their return home and the risks of spreading coronavirus in the impoverished Caribbean state.
Continue reading...The hardline adviser is said to be ready to unleash executive orders deemed too extreme for a president seeking re-election
The architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, senior adviser Stephen Miller, is said to have a drawer full of executive orders ready to be signed in “shock and awe” style if Trump is re-elected.
The former homeland security department chief of staff, Miles Taylor, said this wishlist was reserved for the second term because it included policies that were too unpopular for a president seeking re-election.
Continue reading...Joe Biden and Donald Trump have gone head-to-head for the final time before the US election on 3 November in the final television debate, helped by a mute button on the candidates’ microphones that prevented interruptions.
Squaring off in Nashville, Biden had to field aggressive questioning about his son’s business dealings and when Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, the challenger branded his opponent 'one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history'. Here is a look back at the key moments
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have squared off over immigration policies, including the US government being unable to locate the parents of more than 500 immigrant children. 'Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they're brought here and they used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we've ever had,' Trump said. The president also criticised immigration under the previous Obama-Biden administration, including the catch and release policy, saying 'those with the lowest IQ' were the only ones who returned for an immigration hearing
Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive
US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
Continue reading...Lawyers struggling to find parents deported to Central America, says ACLU, after US government removed 1,030 children in 2018
Three years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a court filing, the ACLU said that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported back to the country of origin in Central America, leaving their separated children behind. In the rush to carry out Trump’s orders, the locations of the parents were not recorded and three years later they still cannot be found.
Continue reading...A statue of the former California governor Pete Wilson was removed from a San Diego park after critics said the governor supported laws and policies that hurt immigrants and the LGBTQ community.
The 13-year-old statue near Horton Plaza Park was removed by Horton Walk, the non-profit that owns it, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Horton Walk’s president, Steve Williams, wrote in an email that no decision had been made on whether it will be returned.
Continue reading...The caravan from Honduras is the biggest since the pandemic hit Central America in March, triggering a rise in unemployment and poverty
Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the United States have entered Guatemala, testing the newly reopened frontier that had been shut by the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities had planned to register the migrants as they crossed and offer assistance to those willing to turn back, but early on Thursday, the group pushed past armed guards without registering. By midday more than 3,000 migrants had crossed illegally, said Guatemalan officials.
Continue reading...AP review finds no evidence of mass hysterectomies but files show growing allegations of operations women did not fully understand
Sitting across from her lawyer at an immigration detention center in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks.
Related: Ice hysterectomy allegations in line with US's long and racist history of eugenics | Moira Donegan
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