Tag Archives: Border Security

Senate faces showdown over immigration and ‘Dreamers’

Demonstrators calling for new protections for so-called "Dreamers," undocumented children brought to the U.S. by their immigrant parents, walk through a senate office building on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. January 17, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Susan Heavey and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration remained insistent on hardline immigration measures on Thursday as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on various legislative proposals to protect young “Dreamer” immigrants and to tighten border security.

In a statement overnight, the Department of Homeland Security dismissed what some thought was the bill most likely to win enough bipartisan support to pass the chamber, saying it failed to meet minimum criteria set out by President Donald Trump.

The plan, crafted by a bipartisan group of senators led by moderate Republican Susan Collins, would protect from deportation 1.8 million young adults who were brought to the United States illegally as children and who are known as Dreamers.

It also includes a $25 billion fund to strengthen border security and possibly even construct segments of Trump’s long-promised border wall with Mexico.

The immigration issue has become a matter of urgency for lawmakers after Trump in September ordered an Obama-era program that protected Dreamers to end by March 5, telling Congress it should come up with a solution by then.

The Department of Homeland Security blasted the Collins-led plan, saying it destroyed the ability of DHS officers to remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country, and “is an egregious violation of the four compromise pillars laid out by the President’s immigration reform framework.”

Trump’s four provisions are for any bill to include funds to build the border wall, to end the visa lottery program, to impose curbs on visas for the families of legal immigrants, and to protect Dreamers.

The Republican president has backed a bill by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley that embraces Trump’s wish list but is unlikely to win support from enough Democrats in the closely-divided chamber.

A narrower third bill, by Republican John McCain and Democrat Chris Coons, has been dismissed by Trump.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was expected to bring forward all three measures on Thursday to gauge which has enough support to move toward a vote in the Senate ahead of a Friday deadline he has imposed for the legislation.

Despite backing from several Republicans for the Collins-led plan, it was unclear if enough Democrats would get behind it to muster the 60 votes needed in the 100-member Senate that Republicans control 51-49.

Democratic U.S. Senator Tim Kaine told MSNBC on Thursday he thought lawmakers were “very close” to the 60 votes needed on the Collins-led measure. Republican Senator Marco Rubio told Fox News he was unsure whether any Senate plan would move forward.

Even if one of three bills passes, it must still win over the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a larger majority and are pushing a more conservative proposal that is closer in line with Trump’s framework.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he will support only legislation backed by Trump, who has carried his tough law-and-order stance toward immigrants from his 2016 campaign into his administration.

(Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Trump promises to ‘take the heat’ for broad immigration deal

U.S. President Donald Trump, flanked by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), holds a bipartisan meeting with legislators on immigration reform at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 9, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan

By Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was ready to accept an onslaught of criticism if lawmakers tackle broad immigration reforms after an initial deal to help the young illegal immigrants known as Dreamers and build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump told lawmakers at the White House he would back a two-phased approach to overhauling U.S. immigration laws with the first step focused on protecting immigrants who were brought here as children from deportation along with funding for a wall and other restrictions that Democrats have opposed.

Once that is done, Trump said, he favors moving quickly to address even more contentious issues, including a possible pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that is opposed by many Republicans and many of his supporters.

“If you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat, I don’t care,” Trump told lawmakers about a broad immigration bill. “You are not that far away from comprehensive immigration reform. And if you wanted to go that final step, I think you should do it.”

Trump campaigned for the White House in 2016 with a hard-line approach on illegal immigration, and many of his supporters consider potential citizenship for undocumented immigrants to be an unacceptable grant of amnesty.

Trump said on Tuesday he would sign a bill that gives legal status to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, known as Dreamers, as long as the bill had the border security protections he has sought, including funding for a wall.

“Now, that doesn’t mean 2,000 miles of wall because you just don’t need that … because of mountains and rivers and lots of other things,” Trump said. “But we need a certain portion of that border to have the wall. If we don’t have it, you can never have security.”

Trump and his fellow Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, have been unable to reach agreement with Democrats on a deal to resolve the status of an estimated 700,000 young immigrants whose protection from potential deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program ends in early March.

“A VERY PRODUCTIVE MEETING”

Under pressure from immigrant groups ahead of midterm congressional elections in November, Democrats are reluctant to give ground to Trump on the issue of the wall, his central promise from the 2016 presidential campaign.

But after the meeting, lawmakers from both parties said they would meet as early as Wednesday to continue negotiations on a deal covering DACA and border security, as well as a visa lottery program and “chain migration,” which could address the status of relatives of Dreamers who are still in the United States illegally.

“From that standpoint it was a very productive meeting,” said Senator David Perdue, a Republican. “We have a scope now.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters the broader bill with a path to citizenship was not a focus for now.

“We’re certainly open to talking about a number of other issues when it comes to immigration, but right now this administration is focused on those four things and that negotiation, and not a lot else at this front,” she said.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who also was at the meeting, said negotiators in Congress still faced difficulties but it was important that Trump had shown he had “no animosity toward the Dream Act kids” and the “wall is not going to be 2,220 miles wide.”

PARTY DIFFERENCES ON BORDER SECURITY

The U.S. Congress has been trying and failing to pass a comprehensive immigration bill for more than a decade, most recently in 2013 when the Senate passed a bill that later died in the House of Representatives.

The latest immigration negotiations are part of a broader series of talks over issues ranging from funding the federal government through next September to renewing a children’s health insurance program and giving U.S. territories and states additional aid for rebuilding after last year’s hurricanes and wildfires.

Top congressional leaders did not attend the hour-long meeting. The guest list included lawmakers from both parties involved in the immigration debate, such as Graham and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.

A majority of those protected under DACA are from Mexico and Central America and have spent most of their lives in the United States, attending school and participating in society.

Trump put their fate in doubt in early September when he announced he was ending the DACA program created by former President Barack Obama, which allowed them to legally live and work in the United States temporarily.

Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, said a DACA bill could win support for passage even though there are differences between the parties over what constitutes necessary border security.

“Democrats are for security at the border,” Hoyer told Trump during the meeting. “There are obviously differences, however, Mr. President, on how you affect that.”

On Monday, Trump announced that he was ending immigration protections for about 200,000 El Salvadorans who have been living legally in the United States under the Temporary Protection Status program. Haitians and other groups have faced similar actions.

A congressional aide told Reuters that negotiators in Congress also have been talking about legislation that would expand TPS in return for ending a visa lottery program that Republicans want to terminate.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Steve Holland, Susan Heavey and Amanda Becker; Writing by John Whitesides and Jeff Mason; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Turkey to give harshest response if border threatened after Iraq referendum: PM

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim addresses his supporters in Kirsehir, Turkey, August 23, 2017. Mustafa Aktas/Prime Minister's Press Office/Handout via REUTERS

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday it had stopped training peshmerga forces in northern Iraq in response to a Kurdish independence vote there, whose backers had thrown themselves “into the fire”.

The Kurdish peshmerga have been at the forefront of the campaign against Islamic State and been trained by NATO-member Turkey’s military since late 2014.

Northern Iraq’s main link to the outside world, Turkey views Monday’s vote – which final results on Wednesday showed overwhelming in favour of independence from Baghdad – as a clear security threat.

Fearing it will inflame separatism among its own Kurds, Ankara had already threatened military and economic measures in retaliation. Government spokesman Bekir Bozdag reiterated on Thursday any such actions would be coordinated with the Iraqi central government.

Bozdag, also a deputy prime minister, told broadcaster TGRT in an interview that more steps would follow the peshmerga decision and that the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq would meet soon.

Turkey, which is home to the region’s largest Kurdish population, is battling a three-decade Kurdish insurgency in its southeast, which borders northern Iraq.

MINIMUM DAMAGE?

President Tayyip Erdogan said it was inevitable that the referendum “adventure” in northern Iraq, carried out despite Turkey’s warnings, would end in disappointment.

“With its independence initiative, the northern Iraq regional government has thrown itself into the fire,” he said in a speech to police officers at his palace in Ankara.

Earlier this week, Erdogan said Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if his country halted the flow of trucks and oil across the border, near where Turkish and Iraqi soldiers have been carrying out military exercises this week.

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day flow through a pipeline in Turkey from northern Iraq, connecting the region to global oil markets.

Erdogan has repeatedly threatened economic sanctions, but has given few details.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkey would not shy away from giving the harshest response to a national security threat on its border, but that this was not its first choice.

Speaking in the central Turkish province of Corum, Yildirim said Turkey, Iran and Iraq were doing their best to overcome the crisis caused by the referendum with the minimum damage.

Iraq, including the Kurdish region, was Turkey’s third-largest export market in 2016, according to IMF data. Turkish exports to the country totalled $8.6 billion, behind Germany and Britain.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay, Ercan Gurses and Ezgi Erkoyun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)

Anti-India protests erupt in Nepal over shooting death on border

Nepalese students affiliated with the All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU), a student wing of the Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), protest near the Indian Embassy against the incident in which one Nepali man was killed at the India-Nepal border, in Kathmandu, Nepal March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Indian border guards killed a Nepali citizen over a local dispute in a rare shooting at the border, Nepal’s government said, prompting anti-India protests in the area and in the national capital on Friday.

India and Nepal share a 1,751-km (1,094 miles) long and open border and thousands of people cross over each day to work and trade, but Nepali politicians have often accused India of meddling in its affairs.

Dozens of people were protesting over a damaged culvert in Nepal’s Anandabazaar near the border with India on Thursday when Indian border guards opened fire, killing a 25-year-old man, a government statement said.

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said India’s border guards had opened an inquiry and had asked Nepal to provide a forensic and post mortem report on the victim.

It said officials from the two countries had met and agreed to take steps to maintain calm.

But on Friday, fresh protests erupted in Anandabazaar, which is 477 km (298 miles) southwest of Kathmandu, with an even bigger group of Nepalis attacking a local government office, Home Ministry spokesman Bal Krishna Panthi said.

“The area is tense,” a police official in the region said.

Another group of demonstrators tried to march on the Indian embassy in Kathmandu in protest over the shooting, but were stopped by police, leading to scuffles, police official Chhabi Lal said.

Nepal’s ties with India were strained towards the end of 2015 and into last year after it blamed India for tacitly supporting a months-long blockade on fuel and goods by Indian-origin plainspeople who are opposed to Nepal’s constitution.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Hungary to arm new ‘border hunters’ after six-month crash course

Hungarian border hunter recruits take oath during a swearing in ceremony in Budapest, Hungary, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

By Krisztina Than

BARCS, Hungary (Reuters) – Sandor Jankovics is proud to be joining Hungary’s new “border hunter” force after a six-month crash course to help police and army units keep out migrants, part of a security clamp down that has raised human rights concerns.

Hungary’s southern border with Serbia and Croatia marks the external edge of the European Union’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have entered Hungary via its southern frontier since 2015, though most have moved on westward to more prosperous parts of the EU.

The migrant flow has ebbed greatly since Hungary erected a fence along the southern boundary and the EU struck a deal with Turkey 18 months ago that curbed migration from that country into neighboring Europe.

But nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who on Tuesday described mainly Muslim migrants as a “Trojan horse for terrorism”, has cited the risk of a new influx from the Balkans and is beefing up his country’s defense.

This week Hungary also passed a law to detain migrants in camps along its border, a step the United Nations said violates EU humanitarian law and will have a “terrible physical and psychological impact” on asylum seekers.

Jankovic, 26, who quit his job as a laborer in nearby Austria last year, will start “border hunter” duty along with almost 1,000 other volunteers within three months.

He is one of dozens undergoing fast-track training at Barcs, a border crossing with fellow EU country Croatia.

Barcs witnessed the apex of the migration crisis in September 2015 when many thousands fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East flooded into Hungary after having passed through Croatia from Serbia.

Now Barcs is eerily quiet, with only a few passing trucks being spot-checked by police. Orban’s security plan focuses on the border with Serbia since Croatia has beefed up its boundary with its Balkan neighbor since 2015.

Jankovics said he had never met a migrant, but looks forward to training patrols and to his deployment with great pride since he had always aspired to becoming a police officer.

CRASH COURSE IN SECURITY

“We will be sent to the stretch of border where we will be needed,” he said. He will get a monthly gross salary of 220,000 forints (£614), well above the minimum of 161,000 forints guaranteed by Hungary for those with secondary education.

Recruits, who must be between 18 and 55 years old, are given training similar to police and learn other skills such as guarding a border fence, detaining large groups of migrants and tracking their paths.

Some multicultural studies are part of the program.

“Initially we started to learn about the major religions of the world, who believes in what,” Jankovics said.

Like police officers, border hunters will carry pistols with live ammunition, batons, pepper spray and handcuffs, and will also be equipped with night-vision goggles if needed.

“The defense of Hungary is the most important for us,” said Adrienn Heronyanyi, 23, a recruit who previously worked in catering.

Hungarian police aim to recruit up to 3,000 border hunters. Recruiting is continuous, including in secondary schools.

In the classroom, the new recruits assemble their pistols at the order of their officer within seconds. In the afternoon, they learn judo skills and moves to handcuff people.

Asked under what conditions border hunters could use force against migrants, regional police chief Attila Piros said the rules were the same as for police – to “break resistance” but only as a last resort.

He said any force must be proportionate and justified. “One of the most important things in this six-month training that we teach as law but in fact has moral and ethical foundations is that criminals are human beings, everybody has human rights.”

MIGRANT “STORM” HAS NOT DIED – ORBAN

At a swearing-in ceremony of border hunters in Budapest on Tuesday, Orban, whose anti-immigrant policies have gone down well with voters, said Hungary had to act to defend itself.

“The storm has not died, it has only subsided temporarily,” he said. “There are still millions waiting to set out on their journey in the hope of a better life (in Europe).”

In addition to the razor-wire border barrier, the government has begun installing a second line of “smart fence” along the Serbian border. Border police said they had detained over 100 illegal migrants in the past 30 days.

Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, voiced alarm at Hungary’s migrant detention plan.

“Automatically depriving all asylum seekers of their liberty would be in clear violation of Hungary’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights,” he said on Wednesday.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its teams in Serbia were treating a growing number of migrants who reported being beaten and stomped on by Hungarian border guards who intercepted them.

Orban’s government has denied mistreating migrants. His office said eight cases of alleged mistreatment had been investigated but in none “was it proven that refugees had been harmed by border personnel”.

Reuters could not independently verify reports of abuses.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Canada not convinced it will see surge in people crossing border

The former border crossing used by refugees as they walk from the United States to enter Canada at Emerson, Manitoba, Canada February 25, 2017. Picture taken Febraury 25. REUTERS/Lyle Stafford

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada sees no signs of a coming surge in asylum seekers illegally crossing the border from the United States, a senior government official told reporters on Thursday, even as a steady stream of people continued to walk across the frontier.

Several hundred people, mainly from Africa, have defied winter conditions to enter Canada since Jan. 1. They are fleeing President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, migrants and refugee agencies say.

A briefing by Canadian officials was the first of its kind and comes as the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau comes under increasing domestic political pressure to deal with the influx.

Trudeau must also ensure the issue does not complicate his relations with Trump.

Security experts predict more will try to come as the snow melts and the weather warms.

But officials told the briefing it was too early to say whether a trend was developing and noted the number involved was still very small compared to the roughly 26,000 people who ask for asylum in Canada on average every year.

“There is no reason to believe that simply changes in weather patterns is going to lead to (an) increase,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

As dawn broke on Thursday, Reuters photographer Dario Ayala watched the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest a group of five – a man, two women and two children – after they scrambled across a ditch near the Quebec town of Hemmingford, on the border with New York state. The people said they came from Syria.

An RCMP officer standing on the Canadian side warned the group they would be detained if they crossed.

“Sorry, sorry, we have no choice,” said the man. Once in Canada, they were detained, and driven off for processing.

Later the same morning, at the same spot, Ayala saw police arrest seven people who said they were from Eritrea.

Reuters could not independently verify nationalities of people crossing the border on Thursday.

Government officials acknowledge an increase in people seeking asylum this year while insisting they have enough resources to cope.

Although no one has yet been charged by the police for illegally crossing the border, all those detained are checked to make sure they do not have convictions for serious crimes.

“We are not releasing anyone we have concerns about,” another official told the briefing.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Chris Reese)

Trump administration has found only $20 million in existing funds for wall

A general view shows a newly built section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence at Sunland Park, U.S. opposite the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s promise to use existing funds to begin immediate construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has hit a financial roadblock, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The rapid start of construction, promised throughout Trump’s campaign and in an executive order issued in January on border security, was to be financed, according to the White House, with “existing funds and resources” of the Department of Homeland Security.

But so far, the DHS has identified only $20 million that can be re-directed to the multi-billion-dollar project, according to a document prepared by the agency and distributed to congressional budget staff last week.

The document said the funds would be enough to cover a handful of contracts for wall prototypes, but not enough to begin construction of an actual barrier. This means that for the wall to move forward, the White House will need to convince Congress to appropriate funds.

An internal report, previously reported by Reuters, estimated that fully walling off or fencing the entire southern border would cost $21.6 billion – $9.3 million per mile of fence and $17.8 million per mile of wall.

DHS officials did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Trump has said he will ask Congress to pay for what existing funds cannot cover and that Mexico will be pressured to pay back U.S. taxpayers at a later date.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he will include funding for a border wall in the budget for next fiscal year. He has estimated the cost to be between $12 billion and $15 billion.

Many Republican lawmakers have said they would vote against a plan that does not offset the cost of the wall with spending cuts.

In the document it submitted to Congress, the DHS said it would reallocate $5 million from a fence project in Naco, Arizona, that came in under budget and $15 million from a project to install cameras on top of trucks at the border.

The surveillance project was awarded to Virginia-based Tactical Micro, but was held up due to protests from other contractors, according to the DHS document. Tactical Micro could not be reached for comment.

The DHS only searched for extra funds within its $376 million budget for border security fencing, infrastructure and technology, so it would not have to ask for congressional approval to repurpose funding, according to the document.

Contractors cannot begin bidding to develop prototypes until March 6 but more than 265 businesses already have listed themselves as “interested parties” on a government web site.

Those interested range from small businesses to large government contractors such as Raytheon <RTN.N>.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Bill Trott)

Outmoded U.S. immigration system poses security risk, study shows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities’ lack of progress in automating their systems is compromising border security, making it more difficult to process people seeking to get into the country, a report said on Tuesday.

“We may be admitting individuals who wish to do us harm, or who do not meet the requirements for a visa,” John Roth, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, told a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

The report from Roth’s office, released on Tuesday, said immigration officials expect it will take $1 billion and another three years, 11 years into the effort, to move from a paper-based system to automated benefit processing.

U.S. lawmakers have been calling for a tighter visa system since the November Paris attacks and December San Bernardino shootings. In Paris, some of the militants were Europeans radicalized after visiting Syria, and a California attacker had been admitted on a fiance visa.

They want to ensure that potential militants cannot enter the United States under programs, such as the “visa waiver” granted citizens of most western countries.

Roth told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that workers processing millions of applications for immigrant benefits work with a system “more suited to an office environment from 1950 rather than 2016.”

He said some green cards and other immigration documents had been mailed to wrong addresses, or printed with incorrect names, which meant they could have fallen into the wrong hands.

The poor quality of electronic data that is kept makes it more difficult to engage in data matching, to root out fraud and identify security risks, Roth said.

Shipping, storing and handling over 20 million immigrant files costs more than $300 million a year, he added.

The report also said the EB-5 visa program, which admits investors who spend $500,000 or $1 million in the United States, depending on the area, may not be subject to close enough scrutiny to ensure Americans’ safety.

The current system also allows “known human traffickers” to use work and fiance visas to bring victims into the country, the report said.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the committee’s chairman, said the modernization was too slow and expensive. “It should not take years and years and billions and billions of dollars,” he said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Alan Crosby)