CLAREMONT - Baby Jesus is lying in a manger inside a cage, wrapped in an emergency foil blanket and separated from Mary and Joseph, who are each trapped in cells of their own.
This is the startling nativity scene created by a Protestant church in California to draw attention to the plight of migrants.
"We put them in different cages, as a symbol representing our community, and all immigrants, who are being held in detention centers and need our help," Genaro Cordoba, co-creator of the installation and spokesman for Claremont United Methodist Church, told AFP.
"Jesus, Joseph, Mary represent all our immigrants, all the refugees, not just in the United States but all over the world," he said, switching from Spanish to English.
"We have seen how they suffer, and people don't want them, and (in) our country the same thing," Cordoba added.
Karen Clark Ristine, senior minister at the church about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, explained in a Facebook message accompanying the images that the Holy Family were "the most well-known refugee family in the world."
"Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary were forced to flee with their young son from Nazareth to Egypt to escape King Herod, a tyrant," she wrote.
"They feared persecution and death. What if this family sought refuge in our country today?"
The grim Nativity scene appears to address that question.
Each cell is lined with barbed wire, and both Mary and Joseph are pictured facing the infant, their arms outstretched in hope and desperation.
"Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center as more than 5,500 children have been the past three years," wrote Ristine.
A Trump administration "zero tolerance" policy launched in 2018 saw thousands of children separated from their parents at the border, a tactic apparently meant to frighten the families, before the government backed down.
Migrants including children were held in caged enclosures.
"Jesus grew up to teach us kindness and mercy and a radical welcome of all people," said Ristine.
svu-ban-amz/it
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump has suffered a new legal setback after a federal judge temporarily blocked a measure that would have required immigrants to prove they had health insurance or could afford medical care.
US District Judge Michael Simon issued a 28-day restraining order during a rare Saturday session in his courtroom in Portland, Oregon, according to a copy of the decision seen by AFP.
The new health-coverage requirement had been set to take effect on Monday.
The immigration-defense groups that had sought the injunction said the new US requirement would have been particularly onerous for low-income migrants and would unfairly favor others from wealthier countries.
The White House decried the ruling.
"It is wrong and unfair for a single district court judge to thwart the policies that the President determined would best protect the United States health care system," press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
The presidential proclamation of October 4 said that only immigrants who would not "financially burden the United States health care system" would be granted visas.
The fight against illegal immigration has been a key pillar of Trump's policies.
Several of his immigration decisions have been blocked in court.
The Republican administration has regularly appealed adverse decisions to the Supreme Court, which twice this summer found in Trump's favor.
But Judge Simon's 18-page ruling seemed to leave the administration with limited room to craft a dissent.
He listed at least 5 reasons that an individual's health insurance status could not be used as the sole determiner of a person's admissibility.
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WASHINGTON - With a little help from the Supreme Court and Mexico, US President Donald Trump's fitful crackdown on immigration is finally gaining traction.
Trump has spent his entire presidency promising to stop illegal immigration, shut out asylum seekers and wall off the Mexican border.
The far-reaching policies sparked an avalanche of court challenges, complaints from human rights organizations and derision from opposition Democrats ahead of next year's elections.
Undeterred, Trump has hammered away, making construction of a US-Mexican border wall one of his presidency's centerpieces -- and a key part of his 2020 reelection platform.
And this week he celebrated a string of victories.
The latest boost came Wednesday when the Supreme Court said he could enact severe restrictions on asylum seekers.
The ruling requires would-be refugees to ask for asylum in the first country they visit and only then -- if they are rejected -- can they attempt to apply in the United States.
The ruling -- which has temporary effect while challenges play out in lower courts -- shuts out large numbers of people fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. They will now have to apply for asylum in Mexico, rather than head directly to the United States.
Trump's opponents, as well as dissenting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, say the change upends decades of tradition in which the US, itself founded by waves of often poor immigrants, has welcomed refugees.
But Trump, who argues that economic migrants abuse the system with fraudulent asylum claims, went on Twitter to herald the "BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!"
"The Southern Border is becoming very strong despite the obstruction by Democrats," he tweeted.
MEXICO COMES ON BOARD
That's far from all.
In July, the Supreme Court backed Trump's move to divert billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to pay for extending or rebuilding stretches of wall on the Mexican border. This lets him circumvent fierce resistance to funding in a divided Congress.
The Pentagon also said this Tuesday that the deployment of 5,500 troops on the border -- something that was initially highly controversial -- was being extended for the coming year.
While Trump exaggerates the amount of wall-building activity there's no question that momentum is gradually shifting his way.
"The Wall is going up very fast despite total Obstruction by Democrats in Congress, and elsewhere!" he tweeted Wednesday.
Perhaps the most significant shift has happened on the other side of the long, rugged frontier, where the Mexican government has set aside previous hostility to cooperate with Trump.
The change in mood follows threats by Trump to impose trade tariffs on Mexico, even though the two countries are in a free trade agreement together with Canada.
Not that Mexico is entirely happy. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard called the new US asylum restrictions, which could mean a torrent of new cases for his country, "unprecedented."
"Or course we disagree," he said.
But Mexico appears to have accepted it has no choice but to play by Trump's rules.
On Monday, Mark Morgan, head of the US border patrol service, welcomed "unprecedented support" from Mexico, which he said has deployed 10,000 troops on its own southern border with Central America and 15,000 on the US border.
Proof that the joint crackdown is having an effect is in the numbers, US officials say.
August detentions of undocumented migrants numbered 64,000, down from 82,000 the previous month and 144,000 in May, Morgan said. Mexico, he said, has apprehended 134,000 people so far this year, compared to 83,000 in all of 2018.
Democrats use the immigration issue to paint Trump as heartless, even racist. But the president feels he's on the right track.
On Monday, as streams of Bahamians tried to exit islands ravaged by Hurricane Dorian, Trump made clear the United States would eye this latest group of asylum seekers skeptically.
"I don't want to allow people that weren't supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers," he said.
The language echoed his long-term characterization of Central American migrants as potential rapists and gang members.
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WASHINGTON - The Trump administration, facing criticism over deportations from lawmakers and civil rights groups, said on Monday it would reopen consideration of some deferral requests for compelling circumstances such as medical conditions.
In August, the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) said it was "no longer entertaining" such requests from people outside the US military, but on Monday said it would reopen and complete cases that were pending on Aug. 7, the day the new policy took effect.
The agency said it still believed it was appropriate to hand over responsibility for such work to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), enabling its own staff to focus more efficiently on other legal immigration applications.
Nearly 130 Democratic US senators and members of Congress last week sent a letter Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and Ken Cuccinelli, director of USCIS, protesting what they called a "cruel" and "inhumane" move.
"Individuals requesting deferred action from USCIS are among the most vulnerable. Children and families submit such requests due to severe medical conditions like cancer, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis," the lawmakers wrote. "In many cases, the treatments are life-saving."
They said letters sent out by USCIS in early August summarily denying the requests gave people 33 days to leave the country, and said they face forcible removal and denial of future visas if they did not comply.
The decision caused fear and confusion, the lawmakers said, warning it could force people to return to countries where lack of necessary medical care threatened their lives. They asked DHS, USCIS and ICE to answer a list of 14 detailed questions about the policy shift. The agency sent out letters in early August informing those who had requested deferred action about the new policy, but providing few details on how to submit requests with ICE.
Deferred action is a discretionary determination to temporarily postpone the removal from the United States of a person who is illegally present, and occurs on a case-by-case basis, factoring in medical conditions and other circumstances.
USCIS said those denied requests that were pending on Aug. 7 did not have removal orders pending, and had not been targeted for deportation. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by David Gregorio)
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The city of San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County sued President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday, seeking to block a new rule that would drastically reduce legal immigration by denying visas to poor migrants.
Some experts say the new rule could cut legal immigration in half by denying visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people if they fail to meet high enough income standards or if they receive public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, public housing or Medicaid.
"This illegal rule is just another attempt to vilify immigrants," San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement. Trump has made efforts to curb both legal and illegal immigration, an issue he has made a cornerstone of his presidency and one that he has stressed again as the campaign for the 2020 presidential election heats up.
The rule, unveiled on Monday and to take effect Oct. 15, expands the definition of a public charge, allowing denials to visa applicants who fail to meet income requirements or who receive public assistance.
"The final rule rejects the longstanding, existing definition of public charge, and attempts to redefine it to include even minimal use of a much wider range of non-cash benefits," said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
"The final rule will worsen the health and well-being of the counties' residents, increase risks to the public health, undermine the counties' health and safety-net systems, and inflict significant financial harm," the suit said.
San Francisco is both a city and a county. Santa Clara County includes the city of San Jose and various other parts of Silicon Valley.
The suit names U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security and their directors as defendants. The former agency declined to comment and the latter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit claims the new rule violates the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 by contradicting the longstanding definition of public charge as a person "primarily" dependent on public assistance for survival.
The suit also claims the new rule would split families, undermining immigration laws to prioritize family unification; misapplies the intent of Congress on the description of self-sufficiency of immigrants; and runs contrary to the statutes governing SNAP, also known as food stamps.
The National Immigration Law Center said it also will file a lawsuit to stop the rule from taking effect. The attorneys general of California and New York have also threatened to sue. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta Editing by Leslie Adler)
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The administration of US President Donald Trump announced Monday new rules that aim to deny permanent residency and citizenship to migrants who receive food stamps, Medicaid and other public welfare.
The change threatens to set back the citizenship hopes of millions of mostly Hispanic migrants who work for low wages and depend in part on public services to get by.
It also appeared to close the door for impoverished and low-skilled migrants outside the country hoping to legally obtain a foothold in the United States.
Announcing a new definition of the longstanding "public charge" law, the White House said hopeful migrants will not be granted resident visas if they are likely to need public assistance.
In addition, those already here and using public services will not be able to obtain green cards or US citizenship.
"To protect benefits for American citizens, immigrants must be financially self-sufficient," Trump said in a White House statement.
Rules could impact millions
The ruling could impact many of the 22 million non-citizen legal residents of the country, and the estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants, most long-term residents in both groups.
It immediately was thrown into question by pro-migrant activists planning to sue and from Democrats in Congress who said they would fight it.
"This administration scapegoats immigrants, emboldens white supremacists, and tears families apart. This is racist policy. We will continue fighting to #ProtectFamilies," tweeted Representative Donna Shalala.
The White House said "large numbers" of migrants "have taken advantage of our generous public benefits, limited resources that could otherwise go to vulnerable Americans."
It said half of all non-citizen households include at least one person using Medicaid, the government-run health program, and that 78 percent of households led by a non-citizen with no more than a high school education use at least one welfare program.
"Through the public charge rule, President Trump's administration is reinforcing the ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, ensuring that immigrants are able to support themselves and become successful here in America," said Ken Cuccinelli, acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Children mostly unaffected
Cuccinelli said that the new standards would be used to judge non-citizen residents who use public services repeatedly after October 15, 2019.
The services that count against an applicant include federal, state and local cash and income assistance, food stamps from the federal SNAP program, Medicaid, and subsidized housing.
Cuccinelli stressed that the new rules did not apply to public assistance programs for children or pregnant women, or emergency room care.
As for hopeful immigrants, they would have to demonstrate the ability to live in the United States without resorting to public assistance.
Changes planned since 2018
The changes to the "public charge" rules have been in the works since 2018, as part of Trump's campaign to slash both legal and illegal immigration.
In May, Trump announced a broad plan for immigration "that protects American wages, promotes American values, and attracts the best and brightest from all around the world."
"As a result of our broken rules, the annual green card flow is mostly low-wage and low-skilled," he said.
He said the newcomers "compete for jobs against the most vulnerable Americans" and weigh heavily on welfare programs.
"We're not able to give preference to a doctor, a researcher, a student who graduated number one in his class from the finest colleges in the world — anybody."
'Dire humanitarian impact'
In a study last month, the Urban Institute said the new regulations, when proposed last year, were already driving immigrant families to curtail their use of public services.
Some were pulling out of the SNAP program, leaving them with "insufficient resources for food and adequate nutrition."
In addition, staying away from Medicaid "put people in a position of forgoing treatment for chronic conditions and preventive medical care."
The National Immigration Law Center announced Monday that it would sue to block the implementation of the new rules, calling them a "racially motivated policy."
"This news is a cruel new step toward weaponizing programs that are intended to help people," said Marielena Hincapie, NILC executive director.
"It will have a dire humanitarian impact, forcing some families to forego critical life-saving health care and nutrition. The damage will be felt for decades to come."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
IRBIL, Iraq — Life was a struggle for Jimmy Aldaoud. He was bipolar and schizophrenic, and battled depression and diabetes. He got into trouble, frequently landing in jail or on the street in and around Detroit, where he grew up.
Then, in June, he was deported to Iraq, and life got even more difficult. He had never set foot there before, his family said. He did not understand Arabic. He did not have enough medicine.
And he was alone. His three sisters did not even know he had been sent there until he called them from the city of Najaf.
Aldaoud, 41, died in Baghdad on Tuesday, after days of vomiting blood and begging to return to the United States.
“He was sort of doomed from the beginning,” said Edward Bajoka, an immigration lawyer who is in touch with Aldaoud’s family.
Aldaoud’s experience illustrates the dire consequences that noncitizens living in the United States may face if they are deported to countries they have not seen in decades, or ever. Aldaoud was officially an Iraqi, but he was born in a refugee camp in Greece and entered the United States legally in 1979 at the age of 6 months.
Almost as soon as Aldaoud left the airport in Najaf, Iraq, he would have been unable to read the signs or understand the conversations all around him. Everything from the scorching summer sun to the electricity cuts that punctuate the days would have been strange.
“He was literally crying every day,” his sister Rita Aldaoud, 30, said in an interview, adding that Aldaoud told her he would rather be back in an American jail.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Detroit said in an unsigned statement that Aldaoud, whose name is sometimes spelled Al-Daoud, was ordered removed from the United States in May 2018 after at least 20 criminal convictions over the previous two decades, including assault with a weapon, domestic violence and home invasion. While awaiting deportation, he was released in December with a GPS tracker, but he cut it off, the agency said. Local police arrested him in April on a larceny charge, and he was finally deported on June 2.
After about two weeks in Iraq, Aldaoud lamented his harrowing situation in a video that was posted on Facebook.
“They wouldn’t let me call my family, nothing,” he says of U.S. immigration officers in the video. “I begged them. I said: ‘Please, I’ve never seen that country. I’ve never been there.’”
Aldaoud, sitting on the ground, says he had been sleeping in the street and struggling to find food. “I’ve got nothing over here, as you can see,” he says.
In the video, a cross tattoo can be seen on his forearm. Aldaoud is a Chaldean Catholic; in mainly Muslim Iraq, Christians are a minority that has shrunk considerably since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Shortly after the video was posted, the Rev. Martin Hermiz, spokesman for Iraq’s Christian Endowment, found Aldaoud’s cellphone number and called him to ask if he needed help.
“He said, ‘No — if anyone wants to help me, let Trump know my situation here in Iraq so maybe he can have mercy on me and bring me back to America,’” Hermiz recalled, adding that Aldaoud also turned down an offer to stay in a church, saying he wanted to live alone and pay his rent himself.
The small apartment Aldaoud found was in a working-class Christian neighborhood of Baghdad, where there are churches and women can walk comfortably without headscarves.
Hermiz said he did not hear from Aldaoud again, but he did get a call from a friend of Aldaoud, who said he had taken Aldaoud to a Baghdad hospital because he was vomiting blood. The hospital gave him medication and sent him home, Hermiz said.
Rita Aldaoud said her brother had similar symptoms in the past when his blood sugar spiked. In the last few days of his life, his family grew worried about his health. When they called him, she said, “he would answer and say, ‘I can’t talk,’ and you could hear he was throwing up.”
A Baghdad neighbor found him dead in his apartment Tuesday morning.
Politicians have expressed outrage at ICE before over the deaths of asylum-seekers who have been killed after being deported.
“We knew he would not survive if deported,” said Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
Rep. Andy Levin, a Democrat who represents the district in metropolitan Detroit where Aldaoud used to live, said he did not have to die. “His death could have and should have been prevented, as his deportation was essentially a death sentence,” Levin said in a statement.
Aldaoud has had trouble believing that her brother could have been deported to a country in which he had never set foot.
“It’s baffling, I don’t understand it,” Rita Aldaoud said. “We’re still dumbfounded, to be honest.”
“It was a shock to find out he’d passed, but to be honest, I didn’t know how he would make it there,” she added.
For now, Aldaoud’s body is in the Baghdad morgue. An Iraqi court has ordered an investigation into the cause of his death, and Dr. Ziad Ali, the country’s forensic medical examiner, said he thought it would be another month before pathology and tests are complete.
No one is sure what will happen to his body after that, Hermiz said: “We are looking for relatives to receive him, but what a pity it is that there are no relatives to receive him here in Iraq.”
source: news.abs-cbn.com
EL PASO, Texas - A single capital murder charge was filed on Sunday against the man accused of killing 20 people and wounding more than two dozen others at a Walmart store in El Paso, a mass shooting authorities are viewing as a case of domestic terrorism.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday's rampage in the heavily Hispanic city appeared to be a hate crime. Police cited an anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly before the shooting, which they attributed to the suspect, Patrick Crusius, as evidence that the bloodshed was racially motivated.
It was the second of three separate public shooting sprees carried out in the United States in the span of a week, an unusually dense cluster of massacres that prompted fresh alarm in a country accustomed to reports of young men shooting down strangers.
The County of El Paso's state court website lists a single charge of capital murder against Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Texas.
His grandparents, with whom Crusius had recently been living, said they were devastated by the attack.
"He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College," the statement said, read aloud by a family friend to reporters outside the home on Sunday. "He moved out of our house six weeks ago, and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town."
The single charge is likely a legal place holder to keep Crusius in custody until further charges can be filed against him for each of the dead and the wounded.
It was unclear if Crusius has a lawyer or when a bond hearing or other court appearances will occur.
A state prosecutor said prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Crusius if he is found guilty.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Sunday the attack "underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violent extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes."
The agency said it remains concerned that more US-based extremists could become inspired by these and previous high-profile attacks to engage in similar acts of violence.
The US attorney for the western district of Texas, John Bash, said federal authorities were treating the El Paso massacre as a case of domestic terrorism.
"And we're going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is to deliver swift and certain justice," he told a news conference on Sunday. He said the attack appeared "to be designed to intimidate a civilian population, to say the least."
FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on July 23 that the bureau has recorded about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects in the preceding nine months and that most investigations of that kind involve some form of white supremacy.
BACK-TO-BACK SHOOTINGS
The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by another mass shooting, and came a week after a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before he was killed by police.
In Dayton, Ohio a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the city's downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.
Democratic candidates for next year's presidential election called on Sunday for stricter gun laws and accused President Donald Trump of stoking racial tensions.
Trump has frequently derided many asylum seekers and other immigrants coming across the US southern border as liars and criminals. At a political rally he held in May, after asking the crowd what could be done about immigrants coming in illegally, Trump smiled and joked after someone in the crowd yelled back: "Shoot them!"
Responding to the shootings, Trump called on lawmakers to pass new background checks laws for buying guns, and suggested any such legislation might also include greater restrictions on immigration.
"We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!" he wrote on Twitter on Monday morning ahead of planned remarks on the subject. On Sunday, he attributed the shootings to what he called the "mental illness" of the killers.
SIGNS OF HATE
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperating with investigators.
"He basically didn't hold anything back," Allen said at Sunday's news conference, but declined to elaborate.
Police said the suspect opened fire with a rifle on shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.
A police spokesman said on Sunday that the names of the victims would be released only when relatives had been informed, and he said he had no estimate for how long that would take.
Crusius comes from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande across the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez.
A four-page statement posted on 8chan, an online message board often used by extremists, and believed to have been written by the suspect, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."
It also expressed for support for the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.
The rampage in El Paso on Saturday was the eighth most deadly mass shooting in recent years in the United States.
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PALENQUE, Mexico - He has negotiated dense jungle and clung precariously with other migrants to a freight train, taking on the combined might of 2 countries' ever more rigid immigration authorities -- but Jose Contreras isn't giving up his dream of reaching the United States.
Like the many migrants who set out daily for new lives in America, the Honduran father-of-4 will not be deterred by the expanding Mexican immigration crackdown prompted by US pressure.
The journey northwards is becoming ever more treacherous since Mexico deployed thousands of troops to its border with Guatemala, which has also signed a pact with Washington aimed at keeping migrants out of the US.
Contreras, 31, left San Pedro Sula in northwestern Honduras eight days ago and paid $26 to be taken across 20 miles (33 kilometers) of national park from El Naranjo in Guatemala to the Mexican frontier.
The price jumped to $42 for the onward 40-mile trip to Tenosique, in Mexico, where migrants can jump on the train known as "La Bestia," which means "the beast."
Contreras was among 50 Hondurans who boarded at 1:00 am to get to the tourist town of Palenque, known for its stunning Mayan archeological site.
"They tell us there are lots of security agents who are going to catch us and that's how they sow fear" to make migrants pay more, Contreras said of the tactics used by the "polleros" -- people smugglers.
Those who don't have enough money are faced with the choice of turning over their valuables or being left behind.
"That's where you lose everything you brought: rings, watch. You have to leave it all there," added the construction worker, trying for a fourth time to get across so he can earn enough money to support his wife and children aged 2 to 10.
'BE BRAVE!'
La Bestia's blazing headlights and the screeching sound of metal on the tracks break the humid dawn atmosphere in Palenque.
After climbing down from the wagons, migrants walk alongside the rails flanked by the seventh century city as the red sky stretches out overhead.
"Be brave!" shouted one migrant with an enthusiasm that provided a welcome counterpoint to the tired faces around him, weighed down by rucksacks and carrying bottles of water.
"We crossed rivers and mountains," added Jose Ramon Fuentes.
"The aim is to get to the other side, God willing," said the 37-year-old father-of-3, embarking on his first attempt to reach the US in search of work.
"Many prefer to go deeper into the jungle and the mountains to get here because both the police and criminals will rob them," said Sister Maria Tello, director of the Casa del Caminante refuge located close to the Palenque train stop.
Sister Maria says she doesn't know which routes exactly the migrants take "but even if we knew them, we wouldn't divulge them because that would put (the migrants) in danger."
She said migrants arrive "badly hurt and tired," with viral diseases and dehydrated due to the long routes through inhospitable terrain.
'MORE DEATHS'
Mexico's government insists that its new migration measures are designed to treat undocumented travelers with dignity, looking after their integrity and human rights.
"From the moment they take away everything (the migrants) bring, that doesn't seem like good treatment to me," said Sister Maria scornfully.
On Tuesday, Mexican authorities freed a Honduran family that had been kidnapped last week in the southern Chiapas state that borders Guatemala.
A woman claiming to be a relative told Honduran television station Televicentro that she had been contacted by kidnappers asking for $15,000.
One of the Hondurans given refuge at the Casa del Caminante, 24-year-old Cesar Caballero, says he had to pay members of the Guatemalan security forces three times.
"Otherwise they would have made me get off the bus," said Caballero, travelling with his wife and three children, including a 3-month old.
After 6 hours at rest, the freight train chugs into gear again, with many of those who arrived early clinging onto its metal steps.
Others throw their rucksacks into the open wagons before scrambling aboard.
Just before joining his compatriots, Contreras hit out at US President Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador over the agreement that increased border patrols to stave off the threat of stiff new US trade tariffs against its southern neighbor.
"What the presidents have done is stir up the hornet's nest, so there is going to be damage, more deaths," said Contreras.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
US authorities launched small-scale operations to arrest undocumented families over the weekend in a start to President Donald Trump's plan to deport thousands of immigrants.
The multi-day operation was expected to target around 2,000 recently-arrived families in about 10 cities who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge.
The removal operations are meant to deter a surge in Central American families fleeing poverty and gang violence in their home countries, with many seeking asylum in the United States.
Immigrants and their advocates were on standby for mass arrests, but by early evening there were reports of only a few low-profile operations in cities including New York, Denver and Miami.
"We are doing targeted enforcement actions against specific individuals who have had their day in immigration court and have been ordered removed by an immigration judge," Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Matt Albence told Fox News when asked for an update.
Mary Bauer at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said there were no confirmed operations in large southern cities such as Atlanta.
Nor were there reports of mass arrests from the American Immigration Council, which has lawyers on standby to help people taken to the country's largest family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
"Immigrants and immigrant communities all over the country are in hiding and people are living in these terrified, terrorized ways, because that is the point of this whole action, whether enforcement actions take place or not," said Bauer, the SPLC's deputy legal director.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said there were three ICE operations in his city on Saturday, with no reported arrests. He said there was no ICE activity in New York on Sunday.
In Denver, the Colorado Rapid Response Network of immigration activists said there were unconfirmed reports of ICE or police detaining 3 people on Sunday in the Potter Highlands area.
The Miami-based Florida Immigrant Coalition said immigrants were sheltering at home after ICE agents were seen in the area of the city's international airport. No arrests were reported.
"They've been stocking up on groceries and making plans to stay in their homes with the lights off and the blinds down," the group posted on Facebook. "Some are staying home from work."
An ICE spokeswoman declined to comment on operations, citing the safety of the agency's personnel.
Albence told Fox News that enforcement operations would target families who entered the country illegally then mostly failed to attend court hearings to pursue an asylum claim.
Immigration rights activists have said that in many cases immigrants do not receive proper notice of their court dates.
Democratic officials have told immigrants they have the right not to open their doors to ICE agents, unless presented with a warrant signed by a judge.
The Trump administration faces widespread criticism for housing immigrants in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and there are concerns about migrant children being separated from adults by US authorities.
Amid protests outside many such facilities, a 69-year-old gunman was shot dead by police early on Saturday after he attacked an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington and set fire to at least one vehicle outside.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Rosalba O'Brien and Susan Thomas)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
US President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will launch raids across the country this weekend to round up thousands of undocumented migrants for deportation.
"They came in illegally," he told reporters at the White House. "They are going to take people out and they are going to send them back to their country."
Trump said ICE would focus mainly on people with convictions, including gang members, but also others.
"It starts on Sunday and they're going to take people out and they're going to bring them back to their countries," Trump told reporters at the White House.
"Or they're going to take criminals out, put them in prison, or put them in prison in the countries they came from."
While the focus will be on removing criminals, Trump said the raids would also target "people that came into our country, not through a process, that just walked over a line. They have to leave."
The ICE raids are expected to take place in 10 major cities, pursuing people for whom courts have already issued removal orders, according to media reports.
- 'Brutal action' -
They could potentially target families who have been inside the United States for many years, with homes, businesses and US-born children, the reports said.
Migrant communities and immigration and rights activists around the country were girding for the raids.
Migrants were being told to not open their doors to ICE agents if they do not have search or arrest warrants, to record their encounters with agents, and to call immigration attorneys for help.
Democrats warned the Trump administration Thursday about breaking up long-resident families with members who are inside the country legally.
House leader Nancy Pelosi called the ICE plan "heartless" and said Sundays are when many Hispanic immigrant families are in church.
"These families are hardworking members of our communities and our country. This brutal action will terrorize children and tear families apart," she told reporters.
"Many of these families are mixed-status families," she added, referring to families who include members in the United States legally and illegally, such as migrants with children born inside the country.
According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 10.5 million undocumented migrants in the United States, and two-thirds have been in the country more than 10 years.
- 'Outstanding job' -
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday that ICE has removal orders for some one million migrants, but added that it has nowhere near the manpower or facilities to arrest and deport that many.
Trump meanwhile praised the Mexican government for helping to crack down on the number of migrants passing through Mexico to cross the southern US border.
He noted that the number of migrants detained while entering the United States had fallen in June, after he threatened punitive tariffs on imports from Mexico that could have crippled its economy.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said 104,344 migrants were detained after crossing the border in June, down 28 percent from May's 13-year record high but still an extremely high figure, some 60,000 more than the same month last year.
"Mexico has done an outstanding job so far," Trump said, adding that the country had sent 21,000 soldiers to its southern and northern borders to stem the flow of migrants, most of whom are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
"Yes, they maybe did it because of tariffs, but they're doing a great job and I appreciate it."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - Democrats in the US Congress demanded Thursday that President Donald Trump protect families and children ahead of expected immigration raids this weekend.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will launch sweeping deportation operations on Sunday as the administration expands its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the New York Times reported.
ICE has obtained court orders for the removal of about one million undocumented migrants, according to a senior administration official, but the initial raids will target some 2,000 across at least 10 cities, the Times said.
Democrats lashed out at the plans, saying they threaten people who have lived in the United States for many years and built families that include US citizens.
House leader Nancy Pelosi called the ICE plan "heartless" and said Sundays are when many Hispanic immigrant families are in church.
"These families are hardworking members of our communities and our country. This brutal action will terrorize children and tear families apart," she told reporters.
"Many of these families are mixed-status families," she added, referring to families who include members in the United States legally and illegally, such as migrants with children born inside the country.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday that ICE has nowhere near the resources needed to pursue the full one million cases.
"They are absolutely going to happen," he said of the raids, however.
MIGRANTS STILL ARRIVING AT HIGH RATE
The removal orders can be issued on the completion of court cases involving the migrants, whether for minor civil infractions or their own citizenship or asylum cases.
Fearing arrest and deportation, migrants often don't show up for cases and judges summarily rule against them.
Senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer warned the Trump administration that ICE should not split families with young children if it carries out the raids.
"Stop separating children from their families. Tell your agencies, do not separate a single child from their parents," he said.
ICE hasn't commented on the raids, which would come with Trump seeking to demonstrate toughness on immigration amid a still-strong influx of migrants across the border with Mexico.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said 104,344 migrants were detained after crossing the border in June, down 28 percent from May's 13-year record high but still an extremely high figure, some 60,000 more than the same month last year.
While migrant flows usually ebb in the hot summer, DHS said initiatives with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where most of the migrants come from, and a joint crackdown with Mexico, whose territory most must transit, had contributed to the downturn.
pmh/ft
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MONTREAL - The Quebec provincial legislature on Sunday approved a controversial immigration bill that will replace a first-come, first-served standard for accepting migrants with one tied to an applicants' skills.
The law is similar to a proposed plan from US President Donald Trump that would shift his country's visa system from family-based immigration towards bringing in more skilled workers.
The law will attempt to more closely match the skills offered by would-be immigrants with the needs of the labor market in Quebec, Canada's second most-populous province.
Under the new law, some 18,000 applications now on file will be shredded, affecting as many as 50,000 people, many of whom already live in the province.
The 18,000 existing applicants will have to restart the immigration process.
The provincial government promised to expedite processing of their new applications, saying qualified workers would have answers within six months rather than the current 36 months.
The 62-to-42 vote on the bill took place around 4 am (0800 GMT) at the end of a marathon session convened by the governing center-right Coalition Avenir Quebec, immigration minister Simon Jolin-Barrette announced on Twitter.
"We are modifying the immigration system in the public interest because we have to ensure we have a system which meets the needs of the labor market," Jolin-Barrette told the National Assembly.
All three opposition parties opposed the measure, calling it "inhuman" and saying the government did not justify dropping the 18,000 pending applications.
"Honestly, I don't think this bill will be seen positively in history," Liberal Party MP Dominique Anglade said, according to the Montreal Gazette. "It's the image of Quebec which gets tarnished."
Premier Francois Legault's government resorted to a special parliamentary procedure to limit debate over the proposal.
His party won power in October with a promise to slash by more than 20 percent the number of immigrants and refugees arriving each year in Quebec.
The assembly reconvened on Sunday and after sometimes-acrimonious debate passed a bill banning the wearing of religious symbols by public servants including police officers, judges, lawyers, prison guards and teachers.
However the new law will only apply to new recruits, with existing employees unaffected.
The proposal, also backed by Legault, puts the premier at odds with the multiculturalism advocated by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
jbe-et/elm/bbk/cs/sah
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON -- Democrats on Sunday slammed Donald Trump's tactics of threatening punitive tariffs to extract concessions on immigration from Mexico, saying the US president was recklessly endangering ties to a major ally and trade partner.
"What the world is tired of, and what I am tired of, is a president who consistently goes to war, verbal war, with our allies," Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"We need a decent relationship with Mexico," added Sanders, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. "We should not be confronting them every other day."
His comments came 2 days after the US and Mexico, following urgent talks in Washington, reached a deal to avert the five-percent tariffs Trump had threatened on all imports from Mexico, a move economists said would have had devastating impact in both countries.
The Mexican side, for its part, agreed to bolster security on its southern border and expand its policy of taking back Central American migrants as the US processes their asylum claims.
'THREATS AND TANTRUMS'
Trump and his Republican supporters hailed the deal as a major breakthrough, but the Democrats sharply criticized his frequent resort to tariff threats and said many of the Mexican concessions were made months ago.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a sharply worded statement Saturday saying Trump had "undermined America's preeminent leadership role in the world" by threatening tariffs against Mexico.
"Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy," she said.
But Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, insisted that results were what mattered.
"People can disagree with the tactics (but) Mexico came to the table with real proposals," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "We have an agreement that, if they implement, will be effective."
'BRILLIANT' USE OF TARIFFS
Beto O'Rourke, a former congressman from the border city of El Paso, Texas who is also pursuing the Democratic nomination, was among the critics challenging how much Trump had actually accomplished.
"I think the president has completely overblown what he reports to have achieved," he said on ABC's "This Week." "These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases months ago.
"They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has."
Many lawmakers from border states like Texas -- even many Republicans -- had expressed grave reservations about the tariff threat, but Republicans, at least, welcomed the outcome.
"In general, Republicans understand that tariffs are attacks on American consumers and we don't want to see them in place long-term, nor do I believe President Trump does," Republican Senator Ron Johnson said on Fox.
That said, the Wisconsin lawmaker added, "I think he used them as leverage in this situation brilliantly."
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, speaking Saturday in the border city of Tijuana, also credited the agreement, saying it meant "there will not be an economic or financial crisis in Mexico."
MONTHS-OLD CONCESSIONS?
One of the concessions touted by administration officials was Mexico's agreement to deploy its National Guard to slow the migrant flow northward.
But Mexico had pledged to do that in secret talks in March, according to officials from both countries quoted by the New York Times.
And the agreement to expand a program allowing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are being processed was reached in December, the officials said.
Trump lashed out at what he called "another false report in the failing New York Times" tweeting on Sunday that "We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico."
The Times issued a statement standing by its article. "We are confident in our reporting, and as with so many other occasions, our stories stand up over time and the president's denials of them do not," it said.
And insisting on his version, Trump added: "Importantly, some things not mentioned in yesterday's press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON -- The White House laid out its conditions Wednesday for averting President Donald Trump's threatened trade tariffs on Mexico, as new data showed migrant detentions at the southern US border have hit their highest level since 2006.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard was in Washington for top-level talks with Vice President Mike Pence, hoping to prevent the five percent import tariffs from coming into force Monday, potentially taking a deep toll on Mexico's economy.
Ahead of the meeting, a top White House official laid out tough terms for Mexico to halt the northward flow of Central American migrants, demanding it lock down its own southern border and process asylum claims inside Mexico.
Speaking from Ireland, Trump said he believes Mexico is ready to "make a deal."
"I think they will stop it. I think they want to do something and make a deal," Trump said. "They sent their top people to try."
"I think Mexico has to step up and if they don't, the tariffs will go on, and if they go high, the companies are going to move back into the United States. It's very simple," he added.
MIGRANTS SURGE 32 PERCENT IN MAY
The talks opened as the US Customs and Border Protection reported that more than 144,000 migrants were detained crossing the border with Mexico in May, a 32 percent surge from April and nearly triple the level of a year ago.
Most were families from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and the total included some 57,718 children, mostly hoping to escape chronic poverty and violence and get a foothold inside the United States.
CBP Acting Commissioner John Sanders said the numbers had overwhelmed government staff and facilities at the border.
Increasingly the migrants were arriving in large groups, including one of 1,036 individuals detained in El Paso, Texas on May 29.
"We are in a full-blown emergency. The system is broken," he said.
WHITE HOUSE CONDITIONS
Ebrard was hoping to convince the White House to hold off on the tariffs, which Trump said last week will rise by 5 percent each month, up to 25 percent, if the number of migrants reaching the US border isn't cut.
Mexico has deployed its new National Guard police force to its southern border and stepped up migrant detentions and deportations.
But the flow has continued: a caravan of around 1,200 Central American migrants entered southern Mexico from Guatemala on Wednesday, bound for the United States, police said.
Senior Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro said Mexico could avoid the tariffs by satisfying 3 conditions.
First and foremost, he said, Mexico has to accept the migrants' asylum requests under its own laws rather than allowing them to travel on to the United States to seek sanctuary.
"They can commit to taking all the asylum seekers and then applying Mexican laws, which are much stronger than ours," he told CNN.
Secondly, Navarro said, Mexico has to more strongly police its southern border with Guatemala to prevent migrants from entering.
"The southern border that Mexico has with Guatemala is only 150 miles (240 kilometers), and better yet it has both natural and artificial chokepoints where it is really easy to police," Navarro said, offering US assistance in the process.
Thirdly, he said, Mexican officials manning checkpoints on the roads that migrants take through Mexico must stop taking bribes and permitting the migrants to continue on their northward journey toward the United States.
"Those checkpoints are designed to stop the flood, but instead, it's the corruption, the government officials that make money from this human trafficking, that has to stop," he said.
"That's it, that's what we're looking for."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - A merit-based immigration proposal being put together by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner could lead to an increase in U.S. visas for highly skilled workers, sources familiar with the effort said on Wednesday.
Kushner is expected to present the comprehensive plan next week to President Donald Trump, who will decide whether to adopt it as his official position or send it back for changes, the sources said.
The plan does not propose ways to address young people who came to the United States illegally as children who were protected by President Barack Obama in the 2014 program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or those people who have Temporary Protected Status, the sources said.
Democrats, whose support the White House would need to advance any kind of immigration legislation through Congress, have insisted that the DACA recipients be protected.
Kushner has held about 50 listening sessions with conservative groups on immigration, a senior administration official said. He has been working with White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and policy adviser Stephen Miller on the plan and the sources said there has been some intense behind-the-scenes jockeying about the plan.
At a Time magazine forum in New York on Tuesday, Kushner said he was working well with Miller, an immigration hawk, on the topic. The two men are both long-time Trump advisers.
"Stephen and I haven't had any fights," he said with a smile.
That drew skepticism from immigration advocate Marshall Fitz of the Emerson Collective, who gave Kushner credit for advancing criminal justice reform but said immigration was a dramatically different issue that Miller was dominating at the White House.
"It's impossible to see how Kushner could navigate an issue this freighted with history and central to the president's re-election strategy in a way that would actually move the ball forward," Fitz said.
As a White House candidate in 2016 and throughout his presidency, Trump has advocated a hard-line policy on immigration, pushing for a wall to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border and using bruising rhetoric to describe people who have fled Central American countries to enter the United States.
Republicans have largely supported his immigration proposals, but the latest White House plan aims to bring them together on a broader basis.
Some in the U.S. business community have asked that the number of highly skilled visas be raised to attract more employees from abroad for specialized jobs amid a booming U.S. economy. Trump himself has talked of the need to bring in more skilled workers.
The immigration plan would either leave the number of highly skilled visas each year at the same level or raise it slightly, the sources said.
The overall goal is to reshape the visa program into a more merit-based system, a key Trump goal. Officials working on the plan have been reviewing the systems used by Canada and Australia as possible models for the Trump effort.
The group has been working on a guest-worker program as part of the proposal to address the U.S. agriculture community's need for seasonal labor while not hurting American workers, but nothing has been finalized, the sources said. Trump has sought to court farmers in key battleground states to boost his chances of re-election in 2020.
The proposal will include recommendations for modernizing ports of entry along the U.S. border to ensure safe trade while preventing illegal activity. It will also address asylum laws to take account of Trump's desire to reduce the number of people who overstay their visas, the sources said.
Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, is also a main architect of a Middle East peace proposal that the president is expected to unveil this summer.
His objective on the immigration plan at the very least is to have a document that represents the president's immigration policy and provide something that Republicans can rally around.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
