Category Archives: US immigration

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

Posted on by

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

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Revealed: man force-fed in Ice custody at risk due to ‘substandard care’ says doctor

Posted on by

Ajay Kumar, who is on a hunger strike while detained in El Paso, is receiving ‘abysmal’ treatment, doctor said in court documents

The life of an Indian asylum seeker on hunger strike in US detention is at risk because of the “abysmal” treatment he is receiving from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which began force-feeding him two weeks ago, a doctor warned in court documents filed this week.

Dr Parveen Parmar, chief of the division of global emergency medicine at the University of Southern California, said in an affidavit that the 33-year-old asylum seeker, Ajay Kumar, is receiving “the worst medical care I have seen in my 10 years of practice”.

Continue reading...

Trump says he is seriously looking at ending birthright citizenship – video

Posted on by

The US president has said his administration is looking at ending the right of citizenship for US-born children of non-citizens and people who entered the country illegally. ‘We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby – congratulations, the baby is now a US citizen ... It’s frankly ridiculous,’ Donald Trump told reporters

Continue reading...

US customs outage delays thousands of travelers in airports across country

Posted on by

Social media posts show serious congestion as ‘temporary’ issue affects hubs including JFK and LAX

Thousands of travelers at major US airports faced congested terminals and long lines on Friday due to a temporary computer outage that affected the US Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) processing systems.

Related: Passenger anger as tens of thousands hit by BA systems failure

Continue reading...

Vehicle drives into protesters outside US detention centre – video

Posted on by

A vehicle drove into a line of protesters outside a detention centre in Rhode Island on Wednesday. Dozens of people were protesting against the contract between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Wyatt detention facility when a correctional officer swerved into the crowd. Officers at the scene then pepper sprayed the demonstrators. At least one person was taken to hospital with a broken leg

Continue reading...

Trump official: Statue of Liberty poem should mean ‘poor who can stand on own two feet’

Posted on by

Ken Cuccinelli defends Trump’s decision to make it harder for migrants to be awarded residence if they got benefit programs

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has proposed a new interpretation of the famous welcome that appears on a placard at the Statue of Liberty.

The famous lines, taken from The New Colossus by the 19th-century New York poet Emma Lazarus, read: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Continue reading...

More major US immigration raids likely despite outcry – report

Posted on by

White House ordered Ice agents to identify targets across the US, report says, with focus on workplaces

More major raids aimed at picking up undocumented immigrants are likely soon despite a flood of outrage at a huge operation last week that saw more than 600 Latino workers detained at poultry plants in Mississippi.

Donald Trump’s White House has ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to identify more targets across the country, according to a report by CNN. The network said the raids would be specifically aimed at workplaces, just like those in Mississippi.

Continue reading...

Trump blames ‘violent’ video games as El Paso death toll rises to 21 – live

Posted on by

Trump has turned his attention away from the shootings if his Twitter feed is any indication.

The president has instead been busy attacking China for harming America’s economy and repeating the (false) claim that US consumers are not covering the cost of his trade war:

....used currency manipulation to steal our businesses and factories, hurt our jobs, depress our workers’ wages and harm our farmers’ prices. Not anymore!

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Cory Booker, has dismissed Trump’s statement on the shootings this morning as woefully lacking.

The New Jersey senator specifically cited Trump’s focus on mental illness in his remarks. “Mental illness didn’t kill the people of Dayton,” Booker said. “People are too easily getting their hands on guns.”

Continue reading...

Running dry: the water crisis driving migration to the US – podcast

Posted on by

Nina Lakhani explores how drought and famine are fuelling the wave of migration from Central America to the US. Plus: Emma Graham-Harrison on China and the Hong Kong protests

Victor Funez walks to a cemetery in Nejapa, El Salvador, every day and fills a three-gallon plastic pitcher with water before trudging home. He repeats this several times a day – it’s his family’s only source of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani met him as part of an investigation into how a lack of access to clean water is a major driver of migration from Central America to the US.

She tells India Rakusen that rising sea levels are destroying coastal towns in Honduras and how drought and famine have prompted a mass exodus from Guatemala. In El Salvador, meanwhile, corporate interests, corruption and gangs worsen the problems caused by the lack of clean water.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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’

Continue reading...

Trump says agreement reached with Guatemala to restrict asylum seekers

Posted on by

Immigrant rights advocates say the ‘safe third country’ agreement is cruel and unlawful, though it could still be blocked

Donald Trump announced Friday that Guatemala was signing an agreement to restrict asylum applications to the US, a move that immigrant rights advocates said was cruel and unlawful.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the US border.

Continue reading...

Supreme court allows Trump to use $2.5bn in Pentagon funds for border wall

Posted on by

Move allows administration to redirect money despite lawmakers’ refusal to provide funding

The US supreme court cleared the way for Donald Trump to use billions in Pentagon funds to build a border wall.

The decision allows the Trump administration to redirect approximately $2.5bn approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.

Continue reading...

Fear, confusion, despair: the everyday cruelty of a border immigration court

Posted on by

At a federal immigration court in El Paso asylum seekers wait in limbo as a result of Trump’s policies

Judge Sunita Mahtabfar, presiding over the El Paso immigration court in south-west Texas, kicked off the hearing by asking the 16 asylum seekers a question.

“Is anyone here afraid to return to Mexico?” she said.

Continue reading...

Ocasio-Cortez wants ‘9/11-style commission’ on family separations

Posted on by
  • Democratic congresswoman hosts event in New York district
  • Tells crowd Trump ‘sent me back to Queens’ with racist attack

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate child separation on the border with Mexico on Saturday, and said the US government has a life-long responsibility to children it severed from their parents, to provide them with mental health support.

Related: Bieber thanks Trump over A$AP Rocky but urges: 'Let those kids out of cages'

Continue reading...

Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelans despite crisis

Posted on by
  • US as yet unwilling to grant temporary protected status
  • Senators accuse Trump of ‘having it both ways’ over Maduro

The Trump administration has said it is not yet willing to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans, meaning it will continue to deport people back to a country it says is being destroyed by a tyrant.

The news comes amid a humanitarian crisis that could forcibly displace as many as 8.2 million people by the end of 2020, and the same month that the United Nations accused the Venezuelan government of killing thousands of its own citizens.

Continue reading...

Impending immigration raids across US spark anxiety and protests

Posted on by
  • Raids expected to target 2,000 migrants in nearly a dozen cities
  • Vigils held from Los Angeles to Berlin

Immigration raids conducted by the Trump administration are expected in major US cities on Sunday, a prospect that has sparked vigils, protests, condemnation and fear.

Related: 'This is tough stuff': Pence visits caged, unwashed, overcrowded migrants

Continue reading...

Man dies as police shootout follows firebomb attack on immigration centre

Posted on by

Authorities say man threw incendiary devices and tried to ignite propane tank at Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre in Washington state

A 69-year-old man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Washington state early on Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.

The Tacoma police department said the officers responded about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, a US Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.

Continue reading...

Mike Pence visits migrant detention facilities on southern US border – video

Posted on by

The vice-president, Mike Pence, got a first-hand view of migrant detention facilities after touring two centres in Texas as he spoke out against grandstanding on Capitol Hill after legislators delivered emotional testimony about appalling conditions. Pence was in the border city of McAllen, Texas where he was joined by a delegation of Republican lawmakers as they toured migrant detention centres.  President Donald Trump has said that a nationwide wave of arrests of immigrants facing deportation will begin over the weekend.

Continue reading...

‘This is tough stuff’: Pence visits caged, unwashed, overcrowded migrants

Posted on by
  • Men say they have been held for 40 days and want to brush teeth
  • Vice-president claims migrants are ‘in good shape’

Controversy continued on Saturday over Mike Pence’s visit to a detention facility on the Texas border, in which the vice-president said appalling conditions described by a pool reporter were “tough stuff” but placed the blame for the migrant crisis on Democrats in Congress.

Families fleeing violence, poverty and drought in Central America have been coming to the US in record numbers, peaking in May when the border patrol made nearly 133,000 apprehensions. Detention facilities quickly filled up, forcing many migrants to languish in unsuitable facilities much longer than the 72 hours required by law.

Continue reading...