Eight dead in Texas crash after police chase suspected migrant smuggler

Officials say driver fled police and smashed into Chevrolet which then caught fire, with everyone in both vehicles killed

Eight people died on Wednesday when the driver of a car suspected of carrying smuggled migrants fled police and smashed into an oncoming vehicle on a south Texas highway.

The crash happened about 6.30am when the driver of a 2009 Honda Civic tried to outrun deputies from the Zavala county sheriff’s office and attempted to pass a semi-truck, the state department of public safety (DPS) said. The Civic collided with a 2015 Chevrolet Equinox, which caught fire.

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Top Mexican court to give new life to controversial Trump-era border policy

‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which forces people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while US claims are processed, set to be revived

The Mexican supreme court is poised to give new life to a controversial US-Mexico border policy at a time when both countries are looking for ways to slow the flow of migrants heading north.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, is a Trump-era policy that forced people seeking asylum in the US to wait out their legal proceedings in Mexico for months or even years. The government of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador accepted the arrangement and allowed thousands of asylum seekers to be sent back to the country from the US.

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Chicago’s plan to hire controversial firm to house migrants alarms critics

GardaWorld has been investigated for safety violations and is also the same company that bussed migrants in from Texas

The mayor of Chicago is at loggerheads with fellow progressives and his own Democratic state governor over the city’s choice of a vexed company to erect controversial tents for asylum seekers during the bitter midwest winter – as wider tensions rise on the left at the local and national level over migration policy chaos.

While the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, are divided over how to house thousands of migrant families currently sleeping inside and outside Chicago police stations, the two are united in fury at lack of emergency funding coming from Joe Biden’s White House.

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Border walls and deportations: Biden’s migrant plans prompt outrage

The president decried Trump’s migration approach but a series of recent steps, critics say, are barely different from his predecessor

As a candidate in the 2020 election, Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump over what he cast as his rival’s ineffective and un-American approach to immigration – one that undermined the nation’s long history of welcoming those seeking refuge in the United States.

Now as president, facing a migrant crisis that is straining resources at the border and feeding into major US cities, Biden has taken a series of steps that critics on his left say are hardly distinguishable from his predecessor.

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AOC slams sanctions against Venezuela and deportation flights

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said US measures to pressure Maduro’s government contribute to exodus of people from that country

Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the US was “contributing to the destabilisation that drives migration” with measures such as sanctions on Venezuela and Thursday’s decision to resume deportation flights to the South American country.

She also demanded that Joe Biden reverse his recent decision to expedite border wall construction.

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US set to resume deportation flights for Venezuelan migrants

Officials tell AP process expected to begin shortly but decline to provide more details before announcement of government plan

The Biden administration is going to resume deporting migrants to Venezuela, two US officials told the Associated Press on Thursday.

The process is expected to begin shortly, the officials said, though they did not provide specific details on when the flights would begin taking off. The officials were not authorized to publicly disclose details of the government’s plan ahead of an official announcement and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

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Scorching heat caused deaths to double at busiest US-Mexico border route

More than 100 of 148 recorded deaths in El Paso sector were recorded between May and September when heat topped 100F

Scorching summer temperatures caused the number of deaths along one of the busiest migrant routes into the US to more than double in the 2023 fiscal year that closed on Sunday, according to data from the US border patrol.

More than 100 of the 148 recorded deaths in the patrol’s El Paso sector were recorded between May and September when temperatures were at or above 100F (37.7C) for 44 consecutive days, the El Paso Times said on Tuesday.

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Revealed: US collects more data on migrants than previously known

Documents show immigration agency Ice and BI Inc gather more information on those in Isap program and store it for longer

A US immigration enforcement program that tracks nearly 200,000 migrants is collecting far more data on the people it surveils than officials previously shared, and storing that data for far longer than was previously known, the Guardian can reveal.

Newly released documents show that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) stores some personal information the program collects on migrants through smartphone apps, ankle monitors and smartwatches for up to 75 years.

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‘Anything for my family’: Venezuelans in US welcome temporary protected status

Asylum seekers who arrived before the end of July – about 472,000 – will now be able to legally live and work in the US

Venezuelan asylum seekers in the United States have welcomed the news of temporary permission to live and work in the country as a vital “helping hand” after the Biden administration announced that it would extend temporary protected status (TPS) to nearly half a million Venezuelan nationals.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that the TPS extension now includes those who arrived in the US by the end of July, whereas the previous cutoff date was 8 March 2021.

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New York mayor’s remarks on migrants ‘dangerous’, warns fellow Democrat

Progressive Tiffany Cabán says Eric Adams’ hostile comments on migrants have ‘real possibility’ of inciting violence

A prominent New York progressive is warning that mayor Eric Adams’s hostile comments about the rising number of migrants in the city are “dangerous” and risk inciting violence against the new arrivals and other immigrants.

Tiffany Cabán, aiming for re-election to the city council this November and long endorsed by leading leftwing figures, including US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attacked as “irresponsible” the mayor’s remarks last week that the sharp increase in migration to New York would “destroy” the city.

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US federal judge rules revised Daca policy illegal and halts new applications

District judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling expected to be appealed, leaving supreme court to rule on program’s fate for the third time

A federal judge on Wednesday declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children.

US district judge Andrew Hanen agreed with Texas and eight other states suing to stop the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. The judge’s ruling was ultimately expected to be appealed to the US supreme court, sending the program’s fate before the high court for a third time.

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FBI agents reportedly search for Uzbeks helped into US by smuggler with IS ties

Episode reported by CNN required emergency memo to senior officials and suggests agency does not know migrants’ location

Federal agents are reportedly trailing a group of more than a dozen Uzbek nationals who entered the US as asylum seekers aided by a smuggler with ties to Isis.

The extraordinary episode, which multiple US officials confirmed to CNN on Tuesday, was considered so serious that it required an emergency intelligence report to senior Biden administration figures.

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US sues Elon Musk’s SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees

Justice department alleges rocket company refused to consider asylum seekers and refugees for jobs because of citizenship status

The US justice department on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees and asylum seekers.

SpaceX “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status” from at least September 2018 to May 2022, according to the justice department.

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‘Inhumane’: judge hears arguments about anti-migrant buoys in Rio Grande

Court to decide whether to remove them as Greg Abbott and other Republican governors defend militarization of border with Mexico

A federal judge heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state authorities should remove huge buoys installed to stop migrants crossing the river that divides Texas from Mexico.

The court hearing in Austin came a day after Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, and a group of hardline Republican governors gathered on the riverbank to defend local militarization of the US-Mexico border – while also acknowledging that the 1,000ft (305-meter) floating barrier had been adjusted after complaints that it had mostly drifted into Mexican territory.

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Massachusetts governor declares emergency and urges help for migrants

Maura Healey calls on federal government to provide ‘urgent action’ as shelters housing migrants and refugees reach capacity

Massachusetts governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as shelters housing migrants and refugees reached capacity, and called on the federal government to help.

In a letter addressed to US secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas, Healey said: “To our partners in the federal government, Massachusetts has stepped up to address what sadly has been a federal crisis of inaction that is many years in the making.

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New York City plans to house migrants on an island in the East River

Mayor Eric Adams plans to house as many as 2,000 adults seeking asylum, in tent city where center opened and then closed last year

New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced a plan Monday to house as many as 2,000 migrants on an island in the East River where a migrant center was set up last year and then taken down weeks later.

The state will reimburse the city for the cost of operating a tent city for adult migrants on Randalls Island, Adams said.

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Six injured after man drives vehicle into migrant workers in North Carolina

The police had been searching for the driver of the car, when a person of interest came forward and was taken into custody

A man drove a sport-utility vehicle into six people in North Carolina who were described as migrant workers in what “appears to be an intentional assault”, police have said.

All six victims were taken to hospital after the apparent attack, and have since been released.

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Mystery surrounds case of US teen who re-emerged after going missing in 2019

Alicia Navarro, who police said had not been harmed and does not face charges, disappeared days before her 15th birthday

When Alicia Navarro disappeared in 2019 from her home in a Phoenix suburb, days before her 15th birthday, she left a signed note promising she would return.

“I will be back, I swear,” the note read. “I’m sorry.”

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Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to tax and gun charges amid uncertainty over previous plea agreement – as it happened

Judge presiding over hearing involving US president’s son said she needed more time to evaluate previous deal

Ken Buck, a Republican representative of Colorado asked Mayorkas about the the China-Mexico fentanyl pipeline that has been entering the country and the rising fentanyl overdose deaths currently plaguing the US.

“The fentanyl killing thousands of Americans every year as a direct result of your dereliction when people die of fentanyl poisoning. It is your fault,” said Buck as he went on to ask Mayorkas what his response would be to the families of fentanyl victims in the US.

“We grieve the loss of any life as a result of the toxicity, the devastation… The challenge of fentanyl is not new. It has been escalating for more than five years…. This is a scourge and all of us have to work together to combat…

I stand by my statement…that China does bear responsibility because many of the precursor chemicals and the pill press equipment that is used to manufacture fentanyl does originate from there. This is a complex problem. We are taking it to the criminals…”

“I see other countries with systems that are more advanced than ours that can match the need for labor with the supply for labor… It is proven that lawful labor pathways cause a reduction in the number of irregular arrivals at our border…”

“We have used our parole authority consistent with the law and consistent with past practices of different administration.”

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‘Not acceptable’: Texas lawmaker speaks on reports of inhumane border tactics

Tony Gonzales said governor Greg Abbott is ‘doing everything he can’ at the US-Mexico border despite justice department backlash

A Texas Republican representative, Tony Gonzales, has called the current tactics used to deter migrants at the US-Mexico border “not acceptable” and urged the Biden administration and Congress to focus more heavily on legal immigration.

In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, Gonzales, whose 23rd district in Texas includes 800 miles of the US-Mexico border, said that the border crisis “has been anything but humane” and called recent reports of Texas troopers allegedly pushing small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande “not acceptable”.

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