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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Fifth bus of asylum seekers arrives in Los Angeles from Texas

Bus was carrying 44 people hailing from Colombia, China, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, including 14 children

A fifth bus of asylum seekers from Texas arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s plans to transport migrants away from Texas.

On Saturday, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s office announced that the bus – the fifth one to arrive in the city since 14 June – arrived at around 11.30am at Union Station.

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Texas trooper says they were told to push children into Rio Grande and deny migrants water

Trooper employed by Greg Abbott’s initiative expressed concern over ‘inhumane’ actions, in email reviewed by the Guardian

Texas troopers employed by Greg Abbott’s border patrol initiative were instructed to push children into the Rio Grande and deny migrants water in extreme heat, according to emails sent by a state employee.

Nicholas Wingate, a trooper-medic from the state’s department of public safety expressed concern over “inhumane” actions towards migrants in a 3 July email to supervisors and reveals other unreported incidents involving migrants, the Houston Chronicle first reported.

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Another bus with dozens of migrants from Texas arrives in Los Angeles

Bus with 41 people, including 11 children who were with families, was welcomed by collective of faith and immigrants’ rights groups

Another bus carrying asylum seekers arrived in downtown Los Angeles from a Texas border city early on Saturday, the second such transport in less than three weeks.

The bus, which arrived at about 12.40pm at Los Angeles’s Union Station from Brownsville, Texas, held 41 people including 11 children who were with their families, according to a statement from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (Chirla).

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US program is leaving asylum seekers stranded in Mexico, advocates say

Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access

Border agents are promising some Venezuelan asylum seekers a greater chance to stay in the US if they agree to first return to Mexico and make appointments to re-enter from there – or otherwise be deported – but then the migrants are flown to the Mexican interior and stranded there without any way to access the US asylum system, immigration advocates have warned.

People report being pressured by American federal agents into signing up for the arrangement, called “voluntary return” which involves a choice between going back across the US-Mexico border or to the countries they originally fled, with the US government employing a kind of stick and carrot approach, as they seek to deal with fewer people in the US immigration system. The “stick” is being threatened with deportation and related consequences such as a five-year ban on returning to the US, unless they agree to leave – before they go through the interview that screens for a credible fear of going home. And the “carrot” is asylum seekers being told they will have a better chance of being granted refuge if they try again through a specific Biden administration-approved process from another country.

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US officials release bodycam video of man’s fatal shooting by border agents

Raymond Mattia, 58, shot dead in remote corner of Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona last month

Federal US officials have released body camera footage that shows border patrol agents were concerned that a tribal member they fatally shot last month may have been carrying a handgun during an encounter in a remote corner of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona.

The man, Raymond Mattia, 58, died shortly after the shooting the night of 18 May outside a home in the reservation’s Menagers Dam community near the US-Mexico border.

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Greg Abbott decision to bus migrants to LA condemned as ‘despicable stunt’

Los Angeles mayor says Texas governor ‘using human beings as pawns’ amid reports migrants were not given food or drink on bus

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas’s decision to bus migrants to Los Angeles this week has been decried as a “despicable stunt”, as advocates in California reported that the group was not offered food during the 23-hour trip.

On Wednesday, 42 migrants, including 15 youth and three babies, arrived at Union Station in downtown LA, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights-Los Angeles (Chirla), who met the group when they arrived. The travelers he spoke to came from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti, and one came from China, he said, adding some told him they had been on the bus for nearly a day without any food or drink.

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Texas governor Greg Abbott sends ‘1st bus’ of migrants to Los Angeles

The city found out about the bus before it arrived at Union Station, after which the migrants were directed to a nearby church

Texas governor Greg Abbott announced on Wednesday evening that his state had dropped off a busload of migrants in Los Angeles, the latest move by a rightwing governor to send people seeking help to a region run by Democrats.

Abbott claimed in a tweet that “small Texas border towns remain overrun & overwhelmed because Biden refuses to secure the border”, adding: “LA is a city migrants seek to go to, particularly now its leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary status.”

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US halts appointments using migrant phone app at Texas border crossing

Move follows reports of extortion by Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo who threaten migrants with missing asylum appointments

The Biden administration has stopped taking mobile phone app appointments to admit asylum seekers at a Texas border crossing that connects to a notoriously dangerous Mexican city after advocates warned US authorities that migrants were being targeted there for extortion.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gave no explanation for its decision to stop scheduling new appointments via the CBP One app for the crossing in Laredo, Texas.

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Outcry as Texas to install ‘buoy barrier’ in Rio Grande to deter border crossings

Rightwing governor Greg Abbott unveils new measures at US-Mexico border condemned by critics as ‘chilling’

The governor of Texas announced the state will install a barrier made of buoys along a section of the Rio Grande where people often wade or swim across the treacherous river from Mexico seeking refuge in the US, as the state committed $5.1bn towards ramping up plans to thwart border crossings.

Greg Abbott said a “new, water-based barrier of buoys” will be placed in the river. At a press conference he showed a line of large red buoys floating in the center of the Rio Grande.

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Newsom threatens kidnapping charges after Florida dumps migrants at church

Governor tweets ‘You small, pathetic man … Kidnapping charges?’, directed at DeSantis after migrants left outside Sacramento church

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on Monday branded his rightwing Republican Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, a “small, pathetic man”, and appeared to threaten kidnapping charges for an episode in which a group of migrants was dumped at a Sacramento church.

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, said in a statement that 16 South Americans abandoned outside the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento on Friday were “in possession of documentation purporting to be from the state of Florida”, and may have been duped into boarding charter flights via New Mexico after entering the US in Texas.

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