Category Archives: US immigration

Joe Biden implores Congress to pass US-Mexico border security bill

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Senate bill includes aid to Ukraine and Israel, as House tries to advance bill with Israel aid only, which Biden says he would veto

Joe Biden urged Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill in a pointed speech on Tuesday, accusing Republicans of “caving” in to Donald Trump’s demands to block the legislation from advancing.

“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically,” Biden said at the White House. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”

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South Dakota tribe bans governor from reservation over US border comments

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Oglala Sioux tribe banishes Republican Kristi Noem after she spoke about wanting to send razor wire to Texas

A South Dakota tribe has banned the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, from one of the US’s largest reservations after she spoke this week about wanting to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to help deter immigration at the southern border with Mexico.

The Oglala Sioux tribe president said Noem’s ban from the Pine Ridge reservation resulted from the fact that many arriving at the US border with Mexico are Indigenous people from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, who come “in search of jobs and a better life”.

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US Senate releases draft bill to toughen border measures while securing aid to Ukraine and Israel

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Biden urges Congress to pass bill which includes measures to temporarily close border if over 5,000 undocumented people cross a day

US senators on Sunday evening released the details of a highly anticipated $118bn package that pairs federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others, launching a long-shot effort to push the bill past sceptical, hard right House Republicans – whom Democrats accuse of politicizing immigration while being in thrall to Donald Trump.

The proposal is the best chance for Joe Biden to bolster dwindling US wartime aid for Ukraine – a major foreign policy goal that is shared by both the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.

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Senate to vote next week on bipartisan border bill, Schumer says

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Top Senate Democrat gives timetable for vote on border security bill tied to Ukraine aid as Trump urges lawmakers to reject deal

The US Senate will vote next week on a bipartisan bill that would strengthen security at the US-Mexico border and also provide more aid to Ukraine and Israel, the chamber’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said on Thursday.

“We cannot simply shirk from our responsibilities just because the task is difficult,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, adding that the text of the package will be released by Sunday, with the initial vote taking place no later than Wednesday.

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US immigration officials didn’t properly document hysterectomies – watchdog

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Officials didn’t document medical necessity in two cases, homeland security’s inspector general says in report

Immigration officials did not document the medical necessity of at least two hysterectomies they authorized for women in their custody, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.

Investigators contracted with an OB-GYN to review six hysterectomies performed on migrant women who were in federal custody. The doctor found that in two of the cases, officials had failed to document whether it was medically necessary, the watchdog report states.

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Roaches, rats and rotten food reported at Chicago shelter for asylum seekers

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Public safety concerns about shelter housing more than 2,500 prompted in December after five-year-old boy died

Appalling conditions have been uncovered at a Chicago warehouse turned migrant shelter where more than 2,500 asylum seekers are staying.

Complaints about cockroaches, rats, rotten food, exposed pipes, sewage issues, illnesses spreading and inadequate food and water provision have been made to the city authorities, in emails first reported by WTTW, the PBS member station in Chicago.

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Fight over border intensifies as Texas governor pledges more razor wire

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Greg Abbott says he will defy Biden and US supreme court and install more concertina wire to try to prevent migrant crossings

The fight between Texas and the federal government over the control of the US-Mexico border has further intensified after state governor Greg Abbott announced he will defy the Biden administration and US supreme court by ordering the installation of even more razor wire to deter migration.

On Monday, the supreme court voted 5-4 in favor of the federal government’s power to remove the controversial concertina wire installed along stretches of the border in Texas, at Abbott’s direction. Despite this, Abbott, a hard-right Republican, is intensifying his plans to try and fence off parts of the US border with Mexico.

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Mitt Romney: Trump’s call to stonewall Democrats on immigration ‘appalling’

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Utah senator accuses ex-president of exploiting issue for political gain by directing Republicans to block deal

Donald Trump’s directive to congressional Republicans to not agree to a deal with Democrats on immigration and border control is “appalling”, Mitt Romney said.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

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US border policy deal within reach despite efforts by Trump to derail it, senators say

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Outlook had appeared grim following reports McConnell was walking away, but now lawmakers say text could be released in coming days

Congressional negotiators said a border deal was within reach on Thursday, despite efforts by Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill to derail the talks.

With the fate of US aid for Ukraine hanging in the balance, the outlook for border compromise had appeared grim following reports on Wednesday night that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was walking away from a compromise that he suggested could “undermine” Trump’s chances in a November general election against Joe Biden. But by Thursday afternoon, senators involved in the discussions were insisting that the opposite was true: an agreement was in sight and legislative text could be released in the coming days.

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New York mayor sues bus operators that brought migrants from Texas for $708m

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Lawsuit announced by Eric Adams says 17 bus companies violated state law by transporting 33,000 people to the city

New York City has sued 17 charter bus companies that transported migrants from Texas, the mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed in New York state court in Manhattan, says the city is seeking $708m from the firms because that was the cost it incurred to house the migrants and provide services to them over the past two years.

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US Department of Justice sues Texas over new state immigration law

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Suit is aimed at stopping a law allowing police to detain people suspected of crossing the US border without authorization

The US Department of Justice has sued Texas and its Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to block a new and controversial state immigration law from going into effect.

After threatening the state with legal action after last year’s passage of SB4, a new Texas law which allows state police to arrest any person they suspect has crossed the US-Mexico border without authorization, the justice department did so on Wednesday. Immigration and border control officially falls under the purview of the federal government – not individual states.

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Record half million people crossed the treacherous Darién Gap in 2023

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Jungle between Colombia and Panama marks the start of the dangerous trek north from South America to the United States

A record 520,000 people crossed the treacherous jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darién Gap in 2023, more than double the number reported the year before, according to new figures from the government of Panama.

The people who made the journey that marks the start of the dangerous trek north from South America to the United States last year were mostly from Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti and China, according to the numbers from Panama’s migration agency.

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Plane detained in France sheds light on Nicaragua’s role in US migrant crisis

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Flight contained 303 Indians en route to Central American country whose light visa requirements have attracted US-bound travelers

The detention in France of a charter plane bound for Nicaragua has renewed attention on the Central American nation’s role as a springboard for migrants from across the world seeking to make their way to the United States.

The flight, which left the United Arab Emirates on 21 December with 303 passengers of Indian nationality, was grounded during a refueling stop after an anonymous tip-off alleging human trafficking.

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US-Mexico border crossings in December set monthly record high

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Over 300,000 people were on track to cross as Biden makes urgent efforts to curb migrant flows that have become political liability

More than 300,000 people were on track to cross the US-Mexico border in December without authorization and are being processed by American immigration officials, a tally that sets the latest monthly record, according to government figures obtained by CBS.

The number of crossings, averaging roughly 8,400 apprehensions a day by US border agents, comes amid urgent efforts by the Joe Biden White House to curb migrant flows that have become a domestic political liability for him as he seeks re-election in 2024.

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‘I feel like a criminal for quitting’: nurses in the US fight ‘stay or pay’ agreements

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Filipino nurses for Ohio-based company say they have been forced to pay thousands in fees after signing training contracts

Filipino nurses are calling for the US’s top labor watchdog to review controversial “stay or pay” training repayment agreement provisions that have left them facing lawsuits and thousands of dollars in fees after they quit their jobs.

Training repayment agreement provisions (Trap) are contracts employers require workers to sign before beginning a job and stipulate that if a worker leaves the job before a specified time, they owe substantial fees.

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US-Mexico border talks yield ‘important agreements’ on rail and bridge crossings

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Two countries agree to enhance efforts to tackle human smuggling, poverty and violence and promote legal ‘pathways’

US and Mexican officials have hailed the success of talks held on Wednesday aimed at curbing historically high unauthorized immigration across their shared, 2,000-mile border that risks becoming a humanitarian disaster and an election year political crisis for Joe Biden.

After the closed-door meeting between the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Mexican foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, hailed what he described as “important agreements”.

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Biden mulls border crackdown in face of Trump’s migrant-bashing rhetoric

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President faces pressure from Republican critics and Democratic allies as he struggles to address what both sides agree is a crisis

Heading into the heat of the 2024 election season, Joe Biden is weighing major changes to US immigration policy that would toughen border enforcement and address an issue that has emerged as one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities ahead of a likely rematch against his anti-immigration rival Donald Trump.

But it is also a risk for Biden, who entered the White House in 2021 promising to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system” after Trump’s four-year crackdown on immigration.

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How Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is taking over the Republican party

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Rhetoric that was widely seen as echoing Hitler was not enough for some senior Republicans to break ranks with the former president

Donald Trump has the tacit blessing of senior Republican figures as he seeks to put border security front and center of the 2024 election by deploying fascistic language to fire up his support base, political analysts warn.

The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 has called for a sharp crackdown on immigration and asserted at a weekend rally that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

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Two Guinean children abandoned in Bogotá airport as migrant routes shift

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Migration through the treacherous Darién gap is slowing as less restrictive air routes open up between South and Central America

Two children from the west African country of Guinea who were abandoned in Bogotá’s airport have been taken into government custody after spending several days on their own in the international departures terminal.

Colombia’s national immigration department said the children, aged 10 and 13, had been travelling with separate groups and were left in the airport by their relatives earlier this month for reasons that have not been clarified.

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Texas sends plane to Chicago with over 100 people who crossed US-Mexico border

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Spokesman for Greg Abbott says flights are result of criticism over his operation of bussing migrants to Democratic-led cities

Texas sent a plane with more than 120 people who crossed the US-Mexico border to Chicago in an escalation of Greg Abbott’s bussing operation, which has sent more than 80,000 people to Democratic-led cities across the country since last year.

The first flight, which the Republican governor’s office said left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago’s city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Brandon Johnson, the city’s mayor. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing or impoundment.

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