Category Archives: Mexico

Now El Chapo’s back in jail, hunt is on for the Mexican drug baron’s money

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$12,666,181,704 … that’s the Sinaloa cartel boss’s sales in the US. Now he’s in jail, prosecutors want to seize his vast riches

It’s a favourite current joke in Mexico: “No más túneles!” – no more tunnels. There’s little chance of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera repeating his famous escapes from Mexican prisons in the US jail where he was sent after being given a life sentence last week by a court in Brooklyn.

So now that El Chapo is removed from the scene, what next? The pillar of the US “Kingpin” strategy against narco-traffic is that the trade is weakened when its leaders are caught and jailed.

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El Chapo: Mexican drug lord sentenced to life in prison

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US district judge imposed life sentence plus 30 years at hearing in federal Brooklyn court

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord found guilty of running a murderous criminal enterprise that smuggled tons of drugs into the United States, was sentenced by a US judge on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

US District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence of life plus 30 years, which was mandatory under the law, at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.

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One year on from pivotal win for Mexico’s left, Amlo is still campaigning

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López Obrador remains broadly popular, likely due to success at upending a political system most voters perceived as riddled with corruption

His government has just signed off on a new trade deal with Canada and the US, and his diplomats managed to fend off punitive US tariffs, but Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long showed a crushing lack of interest in foreign affairs.

So instead of hobnobbing with other G20 leaders in Japan, the president known popularly as “Amlo” was in Mexico City, preparing to address thousands of supporters in the city’s central square on Monday.

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Children at the border: the crisis that America wasn’t prepared for

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Despite fears stoked by Trump, fewer migrants are arriving at the border than in past years – but most are now children headed to facilities that are ill-equipped to receive them

At a border patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas on 11 June, a group of lawyers and doctors met a 17-year-old girl from Guatemala. She was in a wheelchair and she held her tiny one-month-old daughter, who was swaddled in a gray sweatshirt so dirty it was almost black.

Related: ‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s graves

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Seaweed invasion threatens tourism in Mexico’s beaches as problem worsens

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Hotel occupancy rates have dropped as concern grows that the seaweed is threatening key industry in the Mayan Riviera

Trying to ignore the rotten-eggs whiff drifting in from the shoreline, a team of municipal workers was scooping up wads of rotting brown seaweed from the beach of this Mexican beach town 40km (25 miles) south of Cancún.

But almost as fast as they could be cleared away, more clumps of algae were washing ashore, forming foul-smelling mounds across the white sands of the beach.

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Is it wrong to look at the harrowing photo of a drowned father and daughter? | Peter Beaumont

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In an age when social media has undermined our ability to engage with pictures, Julia le Duc’s tragic image raises tough questions

Warning: graphic images

Julia le Duc’s image of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, lying drowned on a muddy shoreline after an attempted crossing of Rio Grande into the US appears like a summation of all the arguments about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.

The pair look as though they could be locked in a sleeping embrace, the child’s head tucked inside her father’s T-shirt, where she’d been placed by him for safety as he swam, protecting their last dignity.

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‘The river is treacherous’: the migrant tragedy one photo can’t capture

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The father and his toddler daughter pictured face down in the river were two of dozens who drowned this year while crossing the border to seek asylum

Under a hot sun beating down on the US border, a family of five can be seen mid-river, struggling against a cruel current of greenish-grey water threatening to sweep them off their feet. It appears to be a couple and their three children, risking their lives in the treacherous Rio Grande that divides Mexico from Texas.

The father clutches a black backpack in his hand, the family’s only luggage. On his back he’s carrying a small boy wearing a rainbow-striped T-shirt. A little girl is on the woman’s back, small arms clasped tightly around her mother’s neck.

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US border: photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ peril – video report

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Searing photographs showing a man and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in shallow water along the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande near the US border highlight the perils of the latest migration crisis involving mostly Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.

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‘They wanted the American dream’: reporter reveals story behind tragic photo

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Julia Le Duc gives details of the father and his toddler daughter who died trying to cross the Rio Grande Warning: graphic images

Julia Le Duc is a reporter for La Jornada in Matamoros, the Mexican city directly across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

Her shocking photographs showing the bodies of Salvadoran migrant Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria cast a fresh spotlight on the migration crisis at America’s southern border. Here she describes how the images came into being.

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Shocking photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ border peril

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The toddler’s arm was still draped around her father’s neck after bodies were found in the Rio Grande as they sought asylum

  • Warning: contains graphic images

The grim reality of the migration crisis unfolding on America’s southern border has been captured in photographs showing the lifeless bodies of a Salvadoran father and his daughter who drowned as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.

The images, taken on Monday , show Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his daughter Valeria, lying face down in shallow water. The 23-month-old toddler’s arm is draped around her father’s neck, suggesting that she was clinging to him in her final moments.

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Mexico immigration chief vows to cut number of people migrating by 60%

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Newly appointed chief, Francisco Garduño, said he hoped to prevent hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the country each year

Mexico’s immigration chief has vowed to slash the number of migrants entering his country by 60% and prevent Mexico from being used as “a trampoline” to the United States, as the Mexican government scrambles to satisfy Donald Trump’s demands to curb migration.

Trump has given Mexico a 45-day deadline – which ends on 22 July – to reduce the flow of undocumented Central American migrants to the United States’ southern border, leaving the Mexican government racing to meet those demands and avert the threat of tariffs.

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‘I’ll never have another child’: the mothers failed by Mexico’s hospitals

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In one of Mexico’s poorest states, women from minority backgrounds are increasingly at risk of abusive treatment during pregnancy and childbirth

Nancy Martínez was 17 when she went into labour. Though her age meant she was considered a high-risk pregnancy, she was left alone for several hours without monitoring or pain medication.

Nurses told Martínez to be quiet and put up with the pain, while doctors mocked her mother, Nancy Ceron Diaz, denying her information about her daughter’s condition.

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Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret

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A Guardian report from 11 countries tracks how US waste makes its way across the world – and overwhelms the poorest nations

What happens to your plastic after you drop it in a recycling bin?

According to promotional materials from America’s plastics industry, it is whisked off to a factory where it is seamlessly transformed into something new.

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Up to four avocado trucks stolen in Mexican state every day

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Packers and exporters took out newspaper adverts to decry situation in Michoacán, a battleground for warring crime factions

Up to four trucks carrying avocados are stolen every day in the violent Mexican state of Michoacán, as organized crime groups seek to take advantage of consumers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for the fruit.

Avocado packers and exporters took out newspaper adverts on Friday to decry a worsening security situation in the state, which has long been a battle ground for warring crime factions.

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UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ‘used to target dissidents’

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Exclusive: Yana Peel co-owns NSO Group that licensed Pegasus software to authoritarian regimes

A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.

Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.

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Mexico: Amlo says sale of presidential plane will fund migrant crackdown

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Funds from sale of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s jet will be put toward the deployment of the newly formed national guard

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to fund a crackdown on migrants to Mexico from Central America with proceeds from the sale of his office’s aircraft, a 787 Dreamliner which has been on offer since shortly after the Mexican president took office in December.

Funds from the sale would be put toward the deployment of the newly formed national guard which has the power to detain migrants without correct papers, López Obrador said on Wednesday.

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Donald Trump teases ‘secret’ Mexico agreement – video

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The US president, Donald Trump, gave reporters a glimpse of what he said was a deal with Mexico on Tuesday, but offered few details on what was in the document. Trump was speaking to reporters before departing for Iowa when he took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, held it up and said it was the deal with Mexico. He said it was 'a very good agreement' for both countries, but said he would let Mexico announce it

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‘I’m about to have my baby’: migrants stuck in Mexico face more uncertainty

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Tariff deal calls for expansion of policy forcing Central American asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases wind through US courts

In a cramped San Diego courtroom, immigrant mothers cradled restless babies and toddlers as they waited to go before a judge. After a quick exchange, they were whisked back to Mexico where they face months, or possibly years, before their cases play out in the US.

Hundreds of miles away, a judge in El Paso, Texas, noticed that an infant was fussing and let the child’s mother stand up and burp the baby before shipping her and about a dozen others, including six pregnant women, back to the Mexican border city of Juarez.

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‘All I have done, no credit!’ Enraged Trump defends US-Mexico migrant deal

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President tweets ire at New York Times and opponents as agreement to avoid tariffs comes under scrutiny

The Trump administration was forced to defend its immigration agreement with Mexico on Sunday, amid reports that key provisions in the deal, forged under the threat of trade tariffs, were mostly old commitments agreed to months ago.

Related: Mexican president leads 'celebration' rally after US tariffs dropped

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