International
10,000 migrants, many Haitian, packed under Texas bridge
AFP
More than 10,000 undocumented migrants, many of them Haitians, were being held under a bridge in Texas on Friday, US officials said, posing a new challenge to President Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
Bruno Lozano, the mayor of Del Rio on the US-Mexico border, said that the migrants were crowded in an area controlled by the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) beneath the Del Rio International Bridge.
Many of them were Haitians hoping to stay in the United States as their country suffers after a large earthquake and continuing political turmoil, Lozano said.
The mayor said there were 10,503 people under the bridge on Thursday evening, up from around 8,000 earlier in the day.
Video footage showed families sitting and sleeping in the open air, awaiting processing by the CBP, which has been overwhelmed by migrants crossing the border from Mexico as well as tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan.
“The border patrol right now is so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants in the Del Rio sector,” Lozano said.
He said, besides those under the bridge, there were another 2,000-3,000 held in detention by CBP in the area.
– Risk of heat illnesses –
In a statement, the CBP said it was sending extra personnel and resources.
“To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site while migrants wait to be taken into Border Patrol custody,” it said.
CBP said the “vast majority” of single migrants and many of the families would be expelled under the government’s Title 42 policy curtailing immigration due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Those who cannot be expelled under Title 42 and do not have a legal basis to remain will be placed in expedited removal proceedings,” CBP said.
Both Republicans and Democrats called for quick action from Biden, whose administration recorded and mostly expelled more than 200,000 migrants at the border in both July and August, the highest numbers in more than a decade.
Some said Biden’s decision in late July after Haitian president Jovenel Moise’s assassination to allow Haitians without US visas at the time to remain in the country offered an incentive for others to come.
“10,503 illegal aliens are under this bridge tonight because Joe Biden made a political decision to cancel deportation flights to Haiti,” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz tweeted on Thursday.
Meanwhile Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, herself an immigrant, also pressed Biden to act.
“This needs an urgent response from the Biden administration that is comprehensive and includes a cross-agency collaboration,” she said in a statement.
“Let’s help these folks who are stranded there and act swiftly before this gut-wrenching situation grows to unmanageable level.”
International
The US arrests almost 1,200 immigrants in one day, a new high
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service. (ICE) announced that last Monday it arrested 1,179 immigrants, a new daily high, following the Trump Administration’s promise to accelerate the raids and arrests.
According to data consulted by NBC News, at least on Sunday, only 52% of those arrested were considered “criminal arrests”, immigrants with criminal records or pending cases in their countries of origin.
The rest would be immigrants with no violent or criminal record and who would only have illegally crossed the border.
ICE is sharing daily data of arrests in raids of immigration authorities, while Trump’s migration policy manager, the so-called ‘border tsar’, Tom Homan, has promised to accelerate arrests in raids.
The number of daily arrests ranged between 400 and 593 people during the week, dropped to 286 on Saturday and reached a peak of more than 950 on Sunday, according to ICE data.
Since January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, authorities have detained more than 4,000 immigrants.
Some of the detainees are being classified as “the worst criminals arrested”, who are allegedly members of organized criminal gangs and gangs.
For her part, the Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, shared a video this Tuesday of raids in New York last night and assured that they were “trash” foreigners accused of “kidnapping, assault and robbery.”
ICE will focus the efforts of its rounds on three cities each week, with a goal of at least 1,200 immigrants arrested each day, according to NBC News.
Immigration agents are accelerating the pace of the raids since Donald Trump took power on Monday last week with the promise of mass deportations.
According to NBC News on Tuesday, ICE’s goal is to focus on three large cities each week for its operations.
This week started with the roundups in Chicago on Sunday and continued on Tuesday morning in New York, in an operation led on the ground by the new Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem.
According to sources cited by that American network, the third city of the week will be Aurora, a suburb of Denver (Colorado) with a Hispanic majority.
International
Mexico receives deportees from other countries from the United States, but denies being a “safe third country”
The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, acknowledged on Tuesday that the country has received deportees of other nationalities from the United States in the first week of Donald Trump’s government, but denied becoming a “safe third country.”
“There is permanent communication, coordination in case people of other nationalities arrive, as has been done in the past,” the president said in her morning conference.
Sheinbaum declared that after receiving criticism from the opposition for reporting on Monday that, from January 20 to 26, in Trump’s first week as president, Mexico has received 4,094 deportees, but not all from Mexico.
The Mexican ruler argued that she heads a “humanist government” and that in the previous administrations of both countries Mexico has received migrants of other nationalities.
“We, as Mexicans, if there is a foreign person at the border, for humanitarian reasons we cannot, with -7 degrees in Ciudad Juárez, not attend to people for humanitarian reasons, and there is permanent coordination that has existed in the past, it is not something new,” he stressed.
The president indicated that the situation in Mexico is different from that of El Salvador, which negotiates a ‘safe third country’ agreement with the Trump government that would allow the United States to deport migrants from other countries, including alleged members of organized crime, according to CBS News.
“We know that the United States Government is agreeing with the different countries of Latin America and other nationalities, and what we have is coordination, communication without subordination,” he insisted.
In addition, when asked if Mexico would receive military aircraft with deportees, she replies that “so far there has not been that,” because these flights have been civilian.
The country is concerned about the mass deportations promised by Trump because Mexicans are about half of the eleven million undocumented people in the United States and their remittances represent almost 4% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), which in 2024 would have received an estimated record of 65 billion dollars.
The Government of Mexico spoke with other Latin American countries to directly receive their deportees from the United States without first passing through Mexico.
“We are acting with dignity, with sovereignty, with responsibility, a lot of responsibility, and always looking for dialogue, in defense of our sovereignty and respect for Mexicans,” Sheinbaum said.
The Government of Mexico has installed ten attention centers in the states of the northern border to receive deportees by the new Administration of Donald Trump in the United States, although they are still “empty,” said on Tuesday the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez.
“We are ready and we are coordinated with the conviction of serving our countrymen with warmth and humanism, the care centers are already operating to provide them with a warm, orderly and safe reception,” he said.
The headquarters are in Tijuana and Mexicali, in the state of Baja California; in Nogales and San Luis Río Colorado, in Sonora; in Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua; in Nueva Rosita, in Coahuila; in El Carmen, in Nuevo León, and in Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas, with a total of 1,250 public servants.
These centers offer free transfer, personal hygiene items, repatriation letters and other identity procedures, and food, said the Secretary of the Interior.
“The Government of Mexico has implemented the national repatriation strategy ‘Mexico embraces you’, to receive Mexicans returned from the United States in a warm and humane way,” Rodríguez recalled.
The centers are exposed after it was learned that Mexico received 4,094 deportees, most of them of Mexican origin, and a record of four planes in a single day, during the first week of Trump as president of the United States, who announced “the largest deportation in the history” of the United States.
The strategy ‘Mexico embraces you’, the secretary detailed, consists of assisting and protecting from the consulate in the United States, as well as receiving and support in the six border states, and the reintegration of deportees in their places of origin.
It aims at the inter-institutional work of the entire Government to receive returning people, monitor compliance with international and bilateral repatriation agreements in the face of possible human rights violations, and ensure the reception and integration in their places of origin.
“Mexican migrants are not criminals, they crossed the border and contributed to the economy of that nation (United States), and they also contribute to their native country, they are very hardworking people who strive every day to get ahead,” Rodríguez said.
Finally, the Secretary of the Interior promised the deportees that “today’s Mexico is different from what they left, it is in transformation, and it has a Government that works for the well-being of all.”
International
Israel’s ambassador to the UN gives 48 hours to UNRWA to evacuate its centers in Jerusalem
The ambassador of Israel to the UN, Danny Danon, today gave the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) 48 hours to evacuate its centers in Jerusalem, in accordance with an Israeli law that prohibits the organization from providing services in the territory of the Hebrew State.
“UNRWA will have to cease operations and evacuate all the premises in which it operates in Jerusalem, including the properties located in Ma’alot Dafna (in East Jerusalem) and Kfar Aqueb,” Danon warned on Tuesday at a press conference prior to a Security Council session, which deals with the issue of the agency.
The ambassador recalled that the law prohibits the agency from operating “within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel,” as well as having contact with Israeli officials and maintaining “any service or representative office activity within our territory.”
Thus, he said, Israel, which gave the agency until January 30 to leave its offices in East Jerusalem, “will end all collaboration, communication and contact with the UN or with anyone acting on its behalf.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres responded today to the letter sent to him by Danon last Friday, informing him that UNRWA must “cease its operations in Jerusalem and evacuate all facilities in which it operates in the city no later than January 30, 2025,” that is, six days in advance.
In a four-page response, Guterres describes this “unilateral demand” as “manifestly unreasonable and inconsistent with Israel’s international obligations,” and recalls that Danon has ignored his messages, which gave him “ample opportunities” to consult and negotiate with the UN
The United States said on Tuesday before the UN Security Council that the closure of the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem “is a sovereign decision of Israel,” and went further, stressing that “the United States supports the implementation of this decision.”
The diplomat Dorothy Shea, who acting heads the US mission until the arrival of the new ambassador, Elise Stefanik, thus adapted her speech to the new airs of foreign policy marked by President Donald Trump, aligning herself more clearly with Israel.
“The UNRWA,” Shea said, “exaggerates the effects of the laws (approved by the Israeli parliament to almost completely restrict the agency’s activities) by suggesting that they are going to force the cessation of their humanitarian operations in full.” These statements are “irresponsible and dangerous,” he said.
Meanwhile, the UN director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Louis Charbonneau, urged governments on Tuesday to make it clear to the Government of Israel that the international community “will not allow it to dismantle” the offices of the UNRWA.
“Governments must make it clear to the Israeli authorities that the world will not allow them to liquidate the rights of Palestinian refugees. They must support efforts to hold Israeli authorities accountable for starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a weapon of war,” he said in a statement.
The law to which Danon refers was approved last year and prohibits UNRWA from providing services in Israeli territory, including East Jerusalem, where more than 300,000 Palestinians live who do not enjoy the same rights as other Israeli citizens (they cannot vote, for example, in national elections).
The agency has about 30,000 employees and is responsible for carrying out some of the tasks of a State (such as providing health or educational services) to the Palestinians who were displaced after the creation of the State of Israel and their descendants, both in Gaza and the West Bank and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Israel accuses UNRWA of having links with Hamas, although so far it has only presented specific evidence against some workers.
The UN has repeated on numerous occasions that the services provided by UNRWA are irreplaceable because there is no agency or NGO that has its logistics, personnel and capabilities to carry them out, compared to what the Government of Israel advocates.
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