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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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).
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Rights group says 16 migrants were flown via private chartered plane but its unclear who paid for the travel
A rights group has said 16 migrants had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California and dropped off outside a church in Sacramento.
The migrants from Venezuela and Columbia entered the US through Texasreported the Associated Press. They were flown to California from New Mexico via a private chartered plane, but it’s unclear who paid for the travel.
Continue reading...FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation investigating after Raymond Mattia shot dead on Thursday night near US-Mexico border
US border patrol agents investigating a report of gunfire shot and killed a man on a tribal reservation in southern Arizona after he abruptly threw something and raised his arm, the agency said on Monday.
The FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation are investigating Thursday night’s fatal shooting of Raymond Mattia.
Continue reading...Raymond Mattia of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona was shot by agents after calling them for assistance
The FBI and Tohono O’odham Nation police are investigating the fatal shooting of a tribal member by US border patrol agents in southern Arizona.
Federal Customs and Border Protection officials said agents from the Ajo border patrol station “were involved” in a fatal shooting on the Tohono O’odham reservation near Ajo at about 10pm on Thursday. They haven’t released any additional information other than to say the encounter was under review by Customs and Border Protection’s office of professional responsibility, which investigates fatal shootings carried out by agents, among other cases.
Continue reading...Mabel Alvarez Benedicks says eight-year-old daughter ‘cried and begged for her life’ but did not receive hospital care for influenza
The mother of an eight-year-old girl who died in US border patrol custody said on Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.
Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.
Continue reading...Special counsel also concludes no charges should be brought against the FBI
The Guardian’s Alexandra Villarreal has more on just how Joe Biden is trying to discourage migrants, and why advocacy groups say in this area, he’s not that different from Donald Trump:
Last week, the Biden administration toughened its stance against migration at the US-Mexico border through a new federal regulation that severely restricts access to asylum. This “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” rule effectively replaces the Title 42 public health order, which Donald Trump introduced ostensibly to stem Covid-19 but has functioned increasingly as an immigration enforcement tool, allowing border officials to quickly expel migrants without the chance to request asylum in the US. Title 42 ended on 11 May.
Continue reading...US homeland security secretary defended strict new immigration measures as volunteers pitched in to help migrants stuck at border
Crossings at the US border with Mexico have dropped 50% after Title 42 restrictions ended at the end of Thursday and the Biden White House implemented an arguably tougher immigration policy, US homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden on Sunday told White House pool reporters that the border situation immediately after Title 42’s elimination was “much better than you all expected”. The president said he did not plan to visit the border “in the near term” because to do so at this stage “would just be disruptive”.
Continue reading...