Category Archives: Mexico

US halts appointments using migrant phone app at Texas border crossing

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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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Mexico City mayor resigns in bid to become country’s first female president

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Claudia Sheinbaum will seek ruling party’s nomination to succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador in election next year

Mexico City’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has announced that she will step down this Friday to seek the ruling party’s presidential nomination, bidding to become the country’s first female leader in an election due to be held next year.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) said on Sunday it would on6 September announce the winning candidate from its internal selection process. Sheinbaum is one of the favorites.

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Election of Delfina Gómez as governor of Mexico state signals decline of PRI

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The PRI – once the overwhelmingly dominant party of Mexico in the 20th century – is now a weak and also-ran political force

Mexico’s oldest party has lost control of the country’s most populous and influential state, in an election result that could signal the end of a powerful network that has dominated politics in the region for almost a century.

Alejandra del Moral Vela – the candidate for the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which has governed the state of Mexico (Edomex) uninterrupted since 1929 – was beaten by eight points on Sunday, despite claiming victory during the vote count.

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Texas woman dies of infection linked to cosmetic surgery in Mexico

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Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgery

A Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.

Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported.

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Fowl play: errant chicken delays Mexico City metro service

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The latest transit system mishap comes after a series of incidents that city officials have claimed were sabotage

Service was temporarily halted on one of Mexico City’s metro system this week after a chicken got loose on the tracks.

Video posted by the Metro on Tuesday showed maintenance personnel and civil defense officers in hard hats chasing the errant fowl around the tracks with brooms, gloves and a trash bag.

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Border crossings reportedly decrease after Title 42 rules scrapped

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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”.

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US senator denounced as ‘profoundly ignorant man’ over remarks on Mexico

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John Kennedy’s comments about Mexicans ‘eating cat food’ came as he urged the US military to enter country to ‘stop the cartels’

Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.

The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.

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Title 42: Biden officials press on with deportation plans and warn those crossing unlawfully face tougher consequences – as it happened

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Officials stress hardline approach as American Civil Liberties Union files lawsuit, saying new rules close off safe routes for people seeking asylum

In El Paso, the Texas city this home to one of the major crossing points from Mexico, the Associated Press reports on how the city’s faith leaders are navigating an influx of migrants that’s expected to grow in the days to come.

Here’s more from their story:

As changing policies, rampant misinformation and exasperated, fearful crowds converge in this desert city, faith leaders are striving to provide shelter and uplift.

Along with prayers, they are counseling migrants about the daunting challenges that await them on U.S. soil, with enormous backlogs in asylum hearings and the Biden administration’s newly announced measures that many consider stricter than the existing ones known as Title 42.

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US authorities ‘seeing large numbers of migrants at border’ before Title 42 expiration – as it happened

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Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warns people against crossing border illegally in White House briefing

We’re a few minutes away from the daily White House press briefing, where homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will appear ahead of the midnight expiration of Title 42, the rule put in place under Donald Trump that has allowed US authorities to turn away most asylum seekers over the past three years.

Immigration authorities and some communities at the border are bracing for a potential surge of new migrants once the measure expires, and Mayorkas is likely to use his appearance to warn people against trying to cross into the US illegally, and outline steps Washington will take to stem the flow. He may also be asked about the possibility Republicans will follow through on their threats to impeach him over the situation at the border.

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US-Mexico migration deal raises fears for struggling border cities

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Agreement designed to curb increase of people arriving into US marks dramatic precedent for two countries, experts say

An agreement between the United States and Mexico designed to curb the surge of migrants arriving at the US doorstep marks a dramatic new precedent in relations between the two countries, analysts said, warning that the deal could further overwhelm border cities already struggling to cope.

Under the agreement announced in a joint statement on Tuesday, Mexico will continue accepting migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away from the US.

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US man, 79, beaten to death in Mexico while delivering donations to the poor

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Rudy Lazo, who immigrated to the US from El Salvador in the 1980s, would regularly deliver clothes, food and toys to Tijuana

A 79-year-old American man who transported clothes, food and toys into Mexico to donate to the poor was beaten to death during a delivery trip in Tijuana, family members and authorities said.

Rudy Lazo’s killing during an apparent robbery in mid-April happened a couple of months after the US state department warned Americans to avoid Mexico, citing elevated kidnapping and homicide risks in areas including Baja California, the state Tijuana is in.

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Mexico army ignored cartel warnings before mass student kidnapping, emails show

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Months before 43 Ayotzinapa students vanished, army was repeatedly warned of criminal gang presence

The Mexican military received nearly a dozen complaints about cartel activity in the region where 43 students were abducted in September 2014, emails hacked from the country’s defense ministry reveal, but the armed forces apparently did little to tackle organized crime in the area.

The students’ kidnapping and disappearance, which took place in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, was one of the most horrific and high-profile human rights abuses in Mexico’s recent history, and remains unsolved despite years of protests and a relentless pursuit of justice by the students’ parents.

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Mexican navy seizes tequila bottles containing nearly 10 tons of liquid meth

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Intercepted over the weekend, the 11,520 bottles were bound for export before sniffer dogs alerted the authorities to the liquid

Mexican navy inspectors have intercepted 11,520 tequila bottles bound for export that actually contained nearly 10 tons of concentrated liquid meth.

In total, the bottles – intercepted over the weekend at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo, contained approximately 8,640kgs (about 19,000lbs) of meth.

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Senior Mexican official to stand trial over fire that killed 40 migrants

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Judge cites evidence that state immigration chief failed in duty to protect detention centre occupants in Ciudad Juarez blaze

A judge has ordered the immigration director of Mexico’s northern border state of Chihuahua to stand trial on charges of homicide, injuries and failure to perform his duties over a deadly fire at a migrant detention centre.

Juan José Chávez ordered the director, Salvador González, to be held in prison pending trial.

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Mexican president finally offloads unwanted luxury jet … to Tajikistan

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Leader widely known as Amlo called predecessor’s plane an ‘insult’ but now Tajikistan government pays $92m to take it off his hands

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has finally found a buyer for a luxury presidential jet that he once called an “insult” to the people: the government of Tajikistan.

López Obrador said that the agreed sale price for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner used by his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto – but never by him – was about 1.66bn pesos, or about $92m.

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Arrest of Chihuahua migration chief spotlights abuses in Mexican system

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Last month’s fatal fire in Ciudad Juárez is latest in a series of deaths and injuries dogging the country’s militarized migration agency

Mexican authorities have arrested the head of migration for the state of Chihuahua in connection with a fire which killed 40 people at a government-run detention facility in the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez last month.

The death of the migrants sparked outrage across Mexico after surveillance footage showed that officials failed to unlock the doors of the holding cell where migrants were trapped.

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US charges 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel including El Chapo’s sons

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Charges filed against cartel leaders, alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, traffickers and others in fentanyl investigation

The US justice department has charged 28 members of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, including sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a sprawling fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges on Friday alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief, Anne Milgram, and other top federal prosecutors. The charges were filed against cartel leaders, as well alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers.

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Mayan ball game scoreboard thought to be over 1,000 years old found in Mexico

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The circular carved stone, unearthed at the Yucatán’s Chichén Itzá complex, displays hieroglyphic writing and two game players

A stone scoreboard used in an ancient ritual ball game has been discovered at the famed Mayan Chichén Itzá archaeological site on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

The circular piece, measuring just over 12.6in (32cm) in diameter and weighing 88lbs (40kg), displays hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US

Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.

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Four found dead in Mexico’s Cancún beach resort

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No immediate information on nationalities or identities in latest violence to hit popular holiday destination

Four dead bodies have been found near a beach in the Mexican resort city of Cancún, in the latest incident of violence to hit the popular holiday destination.

There was no immediate information on the nationalities or identities of the victims. The announcement of the deaths came less that a week after a US tourist was shot in the leg in the nearby town of Puerto Morelos.

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