International
Even in the Nido de las Águilas, a section without a wall, border crossings in the United States go down
The crossing of asylum-seeking migrants has been reduced in recent weeks on the border of California (USA) with Mexico, even by the popular Nido de las Águilas, a stretch of about 500 meters without a wall and one of the favorites of coyotes or human traffickers in decades.
The Border Patrol recognizes that the area, just 5 kilometers east of the urbanized area of San Diego, where the Otay mountains begin to be steep, is still one of the resources of migrants to enter the country. “There are migrants who still continue to cross in that area, as in others of the San Diego Sector of the Border Patrol,” said officer Gerardo Gutiérrez.
However, the Patrol says it does not know how many people have crossed there since President Donald Trump took office on January 20. Throughout San Diego County, civilian groups and the Coast Guard have reported a total of 77 detainees, but now most, 63, have arrived by sea, and there are no reports of arrests in the area without walls.
Residents of the place told EFE that although they still hear nocturnal noises of people passing by, now it is minimal. “I would tell you that at the end of 2023 large groups of people passed by, from about 30 to 40 people every now and then. One group was on right now and in minutes the other. Now I only have to see a small group of four people and stop counting, that was all, about two weeks ago,” Ventura, a resident of the area in Tijuana (Mexico) told EFE.
“I see that they continue to arrive, but it can no longer be compared,” said another resident of the Nido de las Águilas neighborhood, a highly populated neighborhood in Tijuana where the border wall about 9 meters high is interrupted.
The resident whose window has a direct view of the border said that now “very few people are seen crossing. Nothing as it was until a few months ago.”
Without wanting to say his name or accepting that photos be taken “for safety”, he said that “before they were groups every now and then: last year still sometimes in an hour I could see groups one after another.”
‘El Nido’ became one of the most frequented corridors since the 1990s, when the construction of the wall with Mexico began for the first time on the San Diego border and the Border Patrol deployed for the first time a larger operation, Operation Guardian.
The wall was then a closed metal obstacle ten feet (about 3 meters) high with a sharp finish that often cut fingers or caused injuries to migrants.
But unlike San Diego, with the largest and most populated urban area on the US border, ‘El nido’ has constantly had less surveillance and still has no wall, on top of a hill.
From the homes of the people who live in Mexico you can see the two interrupted parallel walls, and also if there is surveillance of the Border Patrol. For those ‘adventages’, it became known as a neighborhood of coyotes.
However, the mountain and open field area on the side of the United States, represents much less obstacle than, for example, San Ysidro, about 10 kilometers to the west, where there is not only a double wall and greater surveillance of patrol boats, but also teams of military engineers reinforced with barbed wire.
Another of the sections where migrants still arrive is to an area between parallel border walls to the west of the San Ysidro checkpoint, where in previous years thousands of people came to camp in search of asylum.
The director of the American Friends Committee, Pedro Ríos, who has headed a permanent post of assistance to migrants who arrive at that point reports only two groups so far this month: eight people from the Middle East and Africa, and a family of six people from Uzbekistan.
The other resource, more frequented since last January 20, is the sea, which has led the Coast Guard to take charge for the first time of intercepting boats with migrants, a task that CBP previously carried out in the Pacific with the support of the Border Patrol.
The Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported on Tuesday an 85% reduction in crossings along the southern border with Mexico during the first eleven days of the Trump administration, compared to the same period in 2024.
Since former President Joe Biden (2021-2025) decreed greater restrictions on asylum in June 2024, border crossings have been decreasing.
International
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
The American press agency Associated Press (AP) announced this Friday that it has sued three members of the Donald Trump Administration after being banned from the Oval Office and the presidential plane Air Force One for not complying with the directive of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not to be retaliated for it by the Government. The Constitution does not allow the Government to control freedom of expression,” the media maintains.
In its style guide, AP decided to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name”, still mentioning the new name chosen by Trump, since it is a body of water that shares a border with Mexico and Cuba.
The White House formally blocked AP’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One on February 14. “We are very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The agency’s lawsuit, of 18 pages and filed before a federal court in Washington DC, alleges that they have decided to take this step to claim their right to editorial independence and prevent the Executive from coercing journalists to use only a language approved by it.
Trump signed the executive order to change the name to Gulf of America on January 20, the first day of his return to power. He later named February 9 as ‘ Gulf of America Day’.
The AP complaint is specifically directed against the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his number two, Taylor Budowich, and the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
This Thursday, more than thirty US media asked the Government to restore AP’s participation in presidential events and not to take into account “the editorial point of view” when limiting access to the White House.
Among the signatories are the television networks Fox News and Newsmax, with a conservative tinge, in addition to other large newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic.
AP highlighted when reporting on his complaint that this Friday Trump referred to that agency as “radical left-wing lunatics”: It is “a third-rate company with a first name,” he said about it, the main one in the country and founded in 1846.
International
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
The Legislature of the city of Buenos Aires approved this Friday the suspension of the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), a measure that, according to the deputy head of government, Clara Muzzio, “allows to save 20 billion pesos (about 18,894 million dollars)”, and advanced the legislative elections for May 18.
“The City Legislature suspended the PASO, a measure that saves $20 billion for neighbors,” Muzzio announced on Friday.
For his part, the mayor of the City, Jorge Macri, maintained that the PASO “were an expensive mechanism that only solved the problems of politicians, not of the people.”
The May 18 elections, which were originally scheduled for July, will be held through the Single Electronic Ballot system.
In that instance, the inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires will elect their local legislators and, in October, they will have to return to the polls to define, together with the rest of the country, the composition of the chambers of Deputies and Senators.
“The fact that the elections are in May allows each Buenos Aires to decide on their own city, without being tied to national discussions,” said the mayor.
The project was approved in the Buenos Aires legislature with 55 votes in favor, 3 against and one abstention, after an agreement between the main political forces.
The suspension of the primaries in the City of Buenos Aires occurs one day after the Argentine Parliament approved the same measure at the national level.
The original project sent by the national government sought the elimination of the primary system but finally, given the lack of support for that objective, the government chose to promote an initiative that suspends them for this year.
The primary election system was first implemented in Argentina to define the candidates for the 2011 general elections, based on a political reform approved by Parliament at the end of 2009, with the aim of democratizing political representation, transparency and electoral equity.
According to the PASO system, to be qualified to compete in the general elections, candidates or lists of candidates must achieve at least 1.5% of the total votes in the primaries.
All parties are obliged to participate in the primaries, although they do not necessarily have to present more than one list of candidates to decide which one will lead to the general elections, an option for which the majority of the forces have opted in the last elections.
That is one of the reasons why the system has been questioned, among which are also its costs and the cumbersomeness of the organization.
International
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Friday that threatens to impose tariffs on foreign governments that apply digital fees to US companies, including Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
The order states that “foreign governments have exercised a growing extraterritorial authority over US companies, particularly in the technology sector,” and directly cites the taxes on digital services that “several business partners” apply since 2019.
According to the text, the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on those governments that use taxes or regulations that are “discriminatory, disproportionate or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property from US companies to that government or its chosen domestic entities.”
Trump delegates to the US Trade Representative the possibility of “renewing investigations” on the so-called technology fees of Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey, imposed in the first term of the Republican, and if so, “take all appropriate actions”, which would include the imposition of tariffs.
“US companies will no longer sustain failed foreign economies through fines and extortionational taxes,” says the White House document, which provides for a “process” for them to “report” these “disproportionate” measures to the Commercial Representative.
He also instructs him to investigate together with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce whether in the European Union or the United Kingdom the use of products or services of US companies is “required or encouraged” to “undermine freedom of expression”, political activity or, “otherwise, moderate content”.
It also suggests to the Representative, among other things, to hold “a panel” with its partners of the T-MEC (Canada and Mexico) on the tax on digital services in Canada, and identify ways to achieve a “permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
The order does not mention any specific company, but mainly affects large technology companies such as Apple, Google (subsidiary of Alphabet), Meta and Amazon, which have precisely starred in a resounded approach to President Trump since he won the elections in November.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump ordered to investigate the digital fees to his companies abroad and threatened to apply tariffs to the six countries indicated today; taxes were imposed in the government of his successor, the Democrat Joe Biden, and subsequently suspended.
Trump signed another executive order aimed at restricting access to US technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, what he calls “foreign adversaries”, including Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
The executive order does not specify in detail what measures will be taken to restrict the access of these “foreign adversaries” to US technology.
Under the label of “foreign adversaries”, the order identifies China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the “regime of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro”, according to the text.
Trump justifies his decision with the argument that “economic security is national security” and maintains that the country must protect its sensitive infrastructures and technologies, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors and advances in biotechnology.
The executive order focuses especially on China, pointing out that companies linked to Beijing have used investments in the US to access key technologies and that the Chinese government is taking advantage of US technology to modernize its military apparatus.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has announced several restrictions on trade with the aim of balancing the trade balance and pressuring countries such as Mexico and Canada to make concessions on immigration and efforts against drug trafficking.
It has imposed a 10% tariff on China, which is in addition to the rates already applied during its first term (2017-2021).
Trump’s new restrictions come after his predecessor, Joe Biden, took steps to limit exports of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technology to China, which led Beijing to respond with export controls on graphite, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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