Move in effect dashes migrants’ plans to travel together in a ‘caravan’ to the United States
Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have swept up hundreds of migrants, returning them to the Honduran border and in effect dashing their plans to travel together in a “caravan” to the United States.
Other, smaller groups traveled on in dribs and drabs in a movement involving several thousand people but very different from previous caravans.
Continue reading...Andrea Bernstein delivers the goods on the bad business which propelled two New York families to Washington
America’s cold civil war rages, impeachment inches ahead and Donald Trump remains a focal point of conflict. As for Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, he is markedly more unpopular than his wife, her father or her gun-toting brother. Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump are rated among the top Republican contenders for 2024.
Related: Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump ‘knew they were lying’ over ploy to sell condos, book claims
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of teachers walked off the job in Los Angeles, American women gathered for their third annual march in Washington, Iowans protested abortion bans, Texans declared Donald Trump ‘not welcome’ in El Paso and students in New York City rallied around Greta Thunberg in calling for action on climate change
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...A look back at some of the biggest moments of the past year.
Warning: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some viewers.
Continue reading...Twenty-five years after her death – and with a Netflix series on the way – Selena’s approach to straddling Mexican and American identities is proving invaluable in the age of Trump
On a sticky Sunday in August, more than 5,000 people are standing through sporadic torrents of rain to attend a free outdoor concert in New York’s Central Park. The event, Selena for Sanctuary, has been organised in response to the Trump administration’s severe policies on undocumented individuals, and the crowd has gathered to support immigrant-rights organisations such as Make the Road New York – all in the name of the pop star Selena Quintanilla.
Selena has been dead for nearly 25 years. The superstar was shot and killed in 1995, at the age of 23, by her fanclub manager, Yolanda Saldívar. Yet at the concert, she seems more present than ever: fans wear T-shirts emblazoned with her wide, red-lipped smile. Others wear one-piece jumpsuits and jackets with gleaming rhinestones, nods to the sparkling stage outfits Selena would often make herself. From the stage, a parade of up-and-coming bilingual artists belts out covers of her classic cumbia hits: Mexican-American indie star Cuco offers his take on Bidi Bidi Bom Bom, dream-pop newcomer Ambar Lucid sings Techno Cumbia, and Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis performs Como la Flor. Their songs are a celebration during a turbulent time, reflecting how Selena still serves as a symbol of hope in the fight for immigrants’ rights.
Continue reading...The revelation of an email trove in which the White House aide trafficked in far-right ideas provoked outrage but little surprise
The extraordinary email leak came with a sense of inevitability. The senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books in emails to a writer at Breitbart, who after leaving the hard-right website leaked 900 messages to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
It was a discovery that would end the careers of most political figures. But among calls for Miller’s resignation, a common theme emerged: a lack of surprise that the architect of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda endorsed white supremacist views.
Continue reading...Vindman, Yovanovitch and Hill showed an unshaken faith in America. But Republicans could not resist cynical innuendo on ‘dual loyalties’
Partisan rancour, smoke and mirrors and damning evidence about the misconduct of the US president – all these were expected from this week’s impeachment inquiry hearings and were provided in spades.
But a narrative that caught many by surprise was the role played by immigrants, the power of their origin stories and their unshaken faith in the ideal of America, even in the “build the wall” era of Donald Trump. At seven hearings over five days, spread over the course of two weeks, this was not only a congressional investigation; it was a nation holding a mirror up to itself.
Continue reading...Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist – a multiple award-winner for documenting life in Australia’s offshore detention system – has left Papua New Guinea
•The story behind Behrouz Boochani’s flight to freedom
Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist who became the voice of those incarcerated on Manus Island, has landed in New Zealand and says he will never return to Papua New Guinea or Australia’s immigration regime.
“I will never go back to that place,” he told the Guardian, shortly after leaving PNG. “I just want to be free of the system, of the process. I just want to be somewhere where I am a person, not just a number, not just a label ‘refugee’.”
Continue reading...Around the world, mobile library programmes are taking books, educational support and even counselling to communities in serious and urgent need
Every week, two converted blue buses stocked with children’s books carefully navigate the streets of Kabul, avoiding areas where deadly explosions are common. These travelling libraries stop off at schools in different parts of the city, delivering a wealth of reading material directly to youngsters who have limited access to books.
“A lot of schools in our city don’t have access to something as basic as a library,” says Freshta Karim, a 27-year-old Oxford University graduate who was inspired to start Charmaghz, a non-profit, in her home city having grown up without many books herself. “We were trying to understand what we could do to promote critical thinking in our country.”
Continue reading...A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, has put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring immigrants to prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can get visas.
US district judge Michael Simon granted a temporary restraining order that prevented the rule from going into effect Sunday. It was not clear when he would rule on the merits of the case.
Continue reading...Family asks Department of Homeland Security to halt their deportation to Honduras to investigate the alleged assault
A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Related: She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border
Continue reading...In a heated 15-minute public interview, the former US homeland security secretary defended her decision as protests raged outside
The former US homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, repeatedly defended her decision to separate thousands of children from their parents at the southern border, in her first public interview since she resigned in April.
At Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Woman summit in Washington DC on Tuesday, the PBS NewsHour correspondent Amna Nawaz asked Nielsen four times if she regretted signing off on the family separation policy, before Nielsen responded: “I don’t regret enforcing the law.
Continue reading...Family of seven were detained for nearly two weeks after crossing into Washington state, saying they were trying to avoid an animal in the road
Lawyers for a British family who made an unauthorized crossing from Canada into the United States say the family have been deported after nearly two weeks in federal custody.
Bridget Cambria says US Immigration and Customs Enforcement told her all seven members of the family, including an infant and toddler twins, were headed back to England. Ice declined comment Wednesday afternoon, saying it did not discuss “removal arrangements” before deportees are back in their own country.
Continue reading...Kevin McAleenan was the fourth person to lead the department in two years
Donald Trump said on Friday that Kevin McAleenan was stepping down as the acting secretary of homeland security.
The president said McAleenan wanted to spend more time with his family and go to the private sector.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Hundreds of migrants from Africa are stuck in Tapachula because of Mexico’s willingness to bow to Trump and stem the flow of migrants
Neh knew she was taking a risk when she got involved with English-language activists in mostly-Francophone Cameroon.
She had no way of know that her decision would eventually force her to flee her country, fly halfway across the world and then set out on a 4,000-mile trek through dense jungle and across seven borders – only to leave her stranded in southern Mexico, where her hopes of finding safety in the US were blocked by the Mexican government’s efforts to placate Donald Trump’s anti-migrant rage.
Continue reading...Administration announced it would set a refugee cap of 18,000 people for the fiscal year, and allow states to ban resettlement
Trump administration changes to US refugee policy are “tantamount to destroying the program”, according to experts, as the amount of people displaced worldwide continues to grow.
On Thursday, the administration announced it would set a refugee cap of 18,000 people for the fiscal year, which begins 1 October. It also issued an executive order allowing states or “local governments” to ban refugee resettlement.
Continue reading...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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