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Russia to deploy military police on Golan Heights

Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi speaks during a news briefing, with a map showing the territory of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria seen in the background, in Moscow, Russia August 2, 2018. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via REUTERS

By Denis Pinchuk and Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will deploy its military police on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, its defense ministry said on Thursday, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sweeping away of rebels in southwestern Syria has worried Israel, which believes it could allow his Iranian backers to entrench their troops close to the frontier.

Underlining the tensions, Israel killed seven militants in an overnight air strike on the Syrian-held part of the Golan Heights, Israeli radio said on Thursday.

Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian defense ministry official, said that Russian military police had on Thursday begun patrolling in the Golan Heights and planned to set up eight observation posts in the area.

He said the Russian presence there was in support of United Nations peacekeepers on the Golan Heights who, he said, had suspended their activities in the area in 2012 because their safety was endangered.

“Today, UN peacekeepers accompanied by Russian military police conducted their first patrols in six years in the separation zone,” Rudskoi told a briefing for journalists in Moscow.

“With the aim of preventing possible provocations against UN posts along the ‘Bravo’ line, the deployment is planned of eight observation posts of Russia’s armed forces’ military police,” Rudskoi said.

He said the Russian presence there was temporary, and that the observation posts would be handed over to Syrian government forces once the situation stabilized.

The deployment of the Russian military police highlights the degree to which the Kremlin has become an influential actor in Middle East conflicts since its military intervention in Syria which turned the tide of the war in Assad’s favor.

Israel has been lobbying the Kremlin to use its influence with Assad, and with Tehran, to try to get the Iranian military presence in Syria scaled back.

Israel sees Iran, and Iran’s allies in the Hezbollah Shi’ite military, as a direct threat to its national security.

That message was conveyed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met in Moscow last month, a senior Israeli official said.

Iranian forces have withdrawn their heavy weapons in Syria to a distance of 85 km (53 miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, TASS quoted a Russian envoy as saying on Wednesday, but Israel deemed the pullback inadequate.

(Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Christian Lowe, Richard Balmforth)

Most children, parents separated at U.S.-Mexican border reunited: court filing

After being reunited with her daughter, Sandra Elizabeth Sanchez, of Honduras, speaks with media at Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – About 1,400 children of some 2,500 separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border have been reunited with their families, the U.S. government said in a court filing on Thursday.

Government lawyers said 711 other children were not eligible for reunification with their parents by Thursday’s deadline, which was set by a federal judge in San Diego. In 431 of these cases, the families could not be reunited because the parents were no longer in the United States.

The parents and children were separated as part of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigration. Many of them had crossed the border illegally, while others had sought asylum at a border crossing.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case against the government, said in Thursday’s court filing that data showed “dozens of separated children still have not been matched to a parent.”

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt accused the government in a statement of “picking and choosing who is eligible for reunification” and said it would “hold the government accountable and get these families back together.”

In a call with journalists after the court filing, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Chris Meekins said it was awaiting guidance from the court about how to proceed with the children of 431 parents no longer in the United States. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is an agency of department.

The government did not say in the call or in its court filing how many of those parents were deported.

One immigrant, Douglas Almendarez, told Reuters he believed that returning to Honduras was the only way to be reunited with his 11-year-old son.

“They told me: ‘He’s ahead of you’,” said Almendarez, 37, in the overgrown backyard of his modest soda shop several hours drive from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. “It was a lie.”

The ACLU said the government has not yet provided it with information about the reunifications of children aged 5-17 with their parents, including the location and timing of them.

“This information is critical both to ensure that these reunifications have in fact taken place, and to enable class counsel to arrange for legal and other services for the reunited families,’ it said.

LOST IN ‘BLACK HOLE’

Immigration advocates said the government’s push to meet the court’s deadline to reunite families was marred by confusion, and one said children had disappeared into a “black hole.”

Maria Odom, vice president of legal services for Kids in Need of Defense, said two children the group represented were sent from New York to Texas to be reunited with their mother. When they arrived, they learned their mother had already been deported, Odom told reporters during a conference call.

Odom said her group does not know where the children, aged 9 and 14, have been taken.

It was an example, she said, “of how impossible it is to track these children once they are placed in the black hole of reunification.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An outcry at home and abroad forced U.S. President Donald Trump to order a halt to the separations in June. U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and set Thursday as the deadline.

Sabraw has criticized some aspects of the process, but in recent days, he has praised government efforts.

The ACLU and government lawyers will return to court on Friday to discuss how to proceed.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del.; additional reporting by Loren Elliott in McAllen, Texas, Nate Raymond in Boston and Callaghan O’Hare in San Antonio; writing by Bill Tarrant; editing by Grant McCool)

Bosnia’s security minister wants army at border to curb entry of migrants

FILE PHOTO: Migrants and Bosnian police eye one another in Velika Kladusa, Bosnia, near the border with Croatia, June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic/File Photo

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s security minister said on Wednesday he would seek legislative changes to enable border deployments of the army to help stop migrants entering the impoverished country en route to European Union territory.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants who streamed northwards through the Balkans to EU territory in 2015 largely bypassed Bosnia. But the ex-Yugoslav republic now finds itself struggling to accommodate about 5,000 people intent on making their way via neighboring Croatia to affluent EU countries further north.

More than 9,000 people from Asia and North Africa have entered Bosnia from Serbia and Montenegro since the beginning of 2018, including 3,000 over the past month, and a similar number have managed to cross into EU member Croatia.

“I am planning to initiate changes to the law that will provide for the deployment of the army in the protection of our borders,” Security Minister Dragan Mektic told reporters.

With only two official asylum and refugee centers, the small country of 3.5 million people – which aspires to EU membership – is hardpressed to accommodate the migrants.

New facilities are planned pending a deal among Bosnia’s multi-layered, semi-autonomous regional governments, many of which reject hosting migrants on their territory.

Many migrants are staying in improvised shelters, tents and dilapidated buildings, lacking running water and toilets, especially in the northwestern towns of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, near the Croatian border.

Red Cross officials have voiced concern over worsening conditions for thousands of migrants stranded in Bosnia and many say the government is failing to adequately protect the rights of refugees.

The authorities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, their resources stretched and citing health and security risks, plan to stage a protest in front of the central government building in the capital Sarajevo on Thursday to demand an urgent solution to the problem.

“We (Bosnia) have become the collateral damage of an EU problem. We will not allow the country to become a hot spot,” said Mektic. “The EU has failed this test, for it has allowed criminals and people smugglers to run this process instead of its own institutions.”

He said he expected the European Commission to soon draft the text of an agreement that would allow deployments of officers from the EU border agency Frontex to Bosnia to help it curb migration and organized crime.

(Reporting by Maja Zuvela; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

At Texas border, joy and chaos as U.S. reunites immigrant families

Undocumented immigrants recently released from detention prepare to depart a bus depot for cities around the country in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elli

By Yeganeh Torbati and Loren Elliott

LOS FRESNOS, Texas (Reuters) – Luis Campos, a Dallas attorney, showed up at a Texas immigrant detention facility close to the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday morning expecting to represent a client before an immigration judge.

But his client – a mother who had been separated from her child by immigration authorities after they crossed the border illegally – was not at the Port Isabel Detention Center. For more than a day, Campos was unable to determine whether she had been released and whether she had been reunited with her child.

Campos did not fare much better with his other appointments. Of the five other clients he had been scheduled to meet with that day, four were no longer at Port Isabel, and it was unclear if they had been released or transferred to other facilities.

“We don’t know what their status is except they’re no longer in the system,” Campos said. “We don’t know where people are right now and it’s been a struggle to get information.”

Lawyers and immigrant advocates working in south Texas this week reported widespread disarray as the federal government scrambled to meet a court-imposed deadline of July 26 for reunifying families separated by immigration officials under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” measures.

Half a dozen lawyers Reuters spoke to described struggles to learn of reunification plans in advance and difficulty tracking down clients who were suddenly released or transferred to family detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The lawyers said it was often difficult to get through by telephone and that when they did the government employees often knew little about their clients’ status or location.

ICE officials did not respond to questions about the reunification process in Texas and elsewhere.

A government court filing on Thursday said that 364 reunifications had taken place so far. It was unclear from the document, filed as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging parent-child separations at the border, exactly how many more were likely.

Of more than 2,500 parents identified as potentially eligible to be reunited with their children, 848 have been interviewed and cleared for reunification, government attorneys told the court. Another 91 have been deemed ineligible because of criminal records or for other reasons.

Undocumented immigrants recently released from detention prepare to depart a bus depot for cities around the country in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

Undocumented immigrants recently released from detention prepare to depart a bus depot for cities around the country in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

BUSY SHELTERS

Evidence of the reunification efforts can be found throughout the Rio Grande Valley area, a border region that covers the southern tip of Texas and includes small towns like Los Fresnos.

Children arrive in vans at the Port Isabel Detention Center near Los Fresnos late into the night, lawyers said.

A sprawling church site in San Juan, around 60 miles (97 km) away, was designated as a migrant shelter after it became clear that a large number of reunited families would be released from Port Isabel.

The shelter has been housing between 200 and 300 adults and children on any given night this week, according to migrants who spent time there.

The same court order that required separated families to be reunited also ordered the government to stop separating new arrivals at the border and some families who have crossed in recent weeks have been detained together.

But ICE has limited facilities to house parents and children together, and strict rules apply regarding how long and under what circumstances it can keep children locked up.

Claudia Franco, waiting to board a bus at a terminal in McAllen, near San Juan, said she and her daughter traveled from Guatemala and were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol after entering the United States last week. The pair were released from custody a few days later, and Franco was given an ankle monitor during her legal fight to remain in the country.

President Donald Trump has called for an end to such swift releases, which he refers to as “catch-and-release.”

‘WILD WEST LAWYERING’

Having attorneys can make a crucial difference for Central American migrants trying to negotiate the complexities of the legal system.

Angela, a Honduran woman who declined to give her surname, had initially been found not to have a “credible fear” of returning to Honduras, something that must be established as the first step in an asylum claim.

On Monday, she appeared in immigration court with attorney Eileen Blessinger. The judge reversed that initial finding. The next day, Angela was reunited with her daughter after more than a month apart and the two will seek asylum in the Indianapolis area, she said in a phone interview from a shelter.

Lawyers said that other clients will be deprived of representation in court because of the chaotic reunification and release process.

“It’s all totally like Wild West lawyering,” said Shana Tabak, an attorney with the Tahirih Justice Center, which provides legal services to migrants. “The government is moving really quickly, without a lot of advance planning it seems.”

One urgent priority, said Tabak, was making sure immigrants who leave the area change the location of their impending proceedings to a court near their eventual destination.

But that can be difficult. On Wednesday afternoon, Campos and a colleague met with a migrant client at a shelter, and just by chance, he ran into a Honduran woman who he had met with earlier this month at Port Isabel. Unbeknownst to him, she had been released and was now with her young son. They quickly exchanged a few words.

“They were just bouncing with joy,” he said. “We agreed to talk later that day and then I couldn’t find her after that.”

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Loren Elliott, editing by Sue Horton and Rosalba O’Brien)

Israel warns Syrians away from frontier as Assad closes in

People wave white cloths next to the refugee tents erected near the border fence between Israel and Syria from its Syrian side as it is seen from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights near the Israeli Syrian border July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

GOLAN HEIGHTS/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of Syrians approached the Israeli frontier on the Golan Heights on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to seek help or sanctuary from a Russian-backed Syrian army offensive, before turning back after a warning from Israeli forces.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have arrived near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in the past month, fleeing a rapidly advancing offensive which has defeated rebels across a swathe of territory near Jordan and Israel.

“Go back before something bad happens. If you want us to be able to help you, go back,” an Israeli army officer on the Israeli side of a frontier fence told the crowd in Arabic through a megaphone. “Get a move on.”

The offensive has triggered the single biggest displacement of the war, with several hundred thousand people uprooted. Both Israel and Jordan have said they will not allow Syrians to cross into their territory.

Israel, which seized the Golan in the 1967 Middle East War, has given humanitarian aid to refugees in encampments close to a 1974 Israeli-Syrian disengagement line. Many of the displaced are sheltering within the disengagement zone that is monitored by a U.N. force.

The Syrians who approached the frontier fence stopped some 200 meters (yards) away, before an Israeli soldier told them to leave.

People walk towards the border fence between Israel and Syria from its Syrian side as it is seen from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights near the Israeli Syrian border July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvu

People walk towards the border fence between Israel and Syria from its Syrian side as it is seen from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights near the Israeli Syrian border July 17, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

“You are on the border of the State of Israel. Go back, we don’t want to hurt you,” the soldier shouted in Arabic through a loudspeaker at the crowd, live Reuters TV footage showed.

The crowd, which included women and children, then walked back slowly towards the refugee encampment. Some stopped mid-way and waved white cloths in the direction of the Israeli frontier.

The Russian-backed offensive has advanced swiftly, unopposed by President Bashar al-Assad’s foreign adversaries. The United States, which once armed the southern rebels, told them not to expect it to intervene as the attack got underway last month.

A witness on the Syrian side of the Golan frontier said the sound of bombardment was drawing ever nearer. The United Nations said last week up to 160,000 Syrians had fled to Quneitra province, some in close proximity to the Golan area.

GOVERNMENT FORCES CELEBRATE

Syrian state TV broadcast from a hilltop captured from rebels on Monday and overlooking the Golan frontier. Government fighters waved rifles and held aloft pictures of Assad as they celebrated on camera from the location, al-Haara hill.

“We will liberate all Syria,” said one of the soldiers.

Israel has threatened a harsh response to any attempt by Syrian forces to deploy in the disengagement zone, complicating the government offensive as it draws closer to the frontier.

Israel does not want its enemies Iran and Hezbollah, both allies of Assad, to move forces near its border. Iran-backed Shi’ite forces including Hezbollah have been critical to Assad’s advances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking alongside U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, cited the need to restore the situation along the Golan borders to the state that prevailed before the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressing Putin to rein in Iranian and Iran-backed forces in Syria.

Hezbollah-controlled al-Manar TV said the Syrian army had captured one of the last rebel-held areas in Deraa province, al-Aliyeh.

At least 14 people, including five children and some women, were killed when government forces bombarded the nearby village of Ain al-Tineh 10 km (6 miles) from the Golan frontier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous words in final paragraph)

(Reporting by Rami Amichay and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry in Beirut and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Angus MacSwan)

U.S. seeks court guidance on deadlines to reunite migrant families

FILE PHOTO: Immigrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under a new "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration, are being housed in tents next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S., June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

The U.S. government is seeking guidance from a federal court over its efforts to reunite migrant parents and their children before court-imposed deadlines, after the administration separated the families for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

In a filing overnight, U.S. Department of Justice officials asked the United States District Court for the Southern District of California for more details about procedures to reunite migrant families, saying in some cases the government may need additional time.

The separations have sparked a fierce outcry and numerous protests, part of a political firestorm over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy and beefed-up efforts to deter illegal U.S. entry.

The Trump administration had implemented the separation policy as part of stepped-up efforts to deter immigrants from crossing the U.S. border from Mexico.

But it reversed course last month amid a groundswell of global opposition and said it would keep families together if possible.

U.S. officials are now rushing to reunite more than 2,000 children separated from their parents at the border after the court in San Diego ordered the government last month to halt the practice.

Democrats and even some allies of the Republican president as well as foreign leaders and the Pope have condemned the separations, and protests continued over the weekend in cities across America over the issue.

Advocacy groups including the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit, have questioned the government’s contention it may need more time to safely reunite families, and have raised concerns about whether it has a comprehensive plan to bring families together.

The U.S. government is scheduled to update the federal judge in the San Diego case on the reunification process later on Friday.

U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw last month ordered that children under 5 years old be reunited with their parents by July 10, and for all children to be reunited by July 26. He also ordered that parents have phone contact with their children by Friday.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told reporters there were now “under 3,000” children in HHS care, including about 100 under the age of 5.

Azar said the U.S. government was relocating parents of children under 5 years old to detention facilities close to their children to help speed up family reunification.

The government, in its filing overnight, said the process could further be delayed by steps that were required before parents could be reconnected with their children, according to its interpretation of the court order: DNA testing to verify parentage, a criminal history check, and assurance that parents could provide for the child’s physical and mental well being.

As a result, some cases may require more time than allotted by the court, officials said, asking the court for guidance.

“HHS anticipates, however, in some instances it will not be able to complete the additional processes within the timelines the Court prescribed, particularly with regard to class members who are already not in Government custody,” they wrote.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Israel must prevent entry of refugees from Syria to Israel: minister

An undated image from material released on June 29, 2018 by the Israeli military relates to an Israeli humanitarian aid supply over the border to Syria. IDF/Handout via Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel must prevent the entry of refugees fleeing fighting in Syria, a senior Israeli cabinet minister said on Friday.

The remarks by Yuval Steinitz, energy minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, came on the same day that the Israeli military said it had transferred humanitarian aid to southern Syria.

“I think we must prevent the entry of refugees from Syria to Israel, in the past we have prevented such cases,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told Tel Aviv Radio 102FM.

More than 120,000 people in southwestern Syria have been forced to flee since the Syrian government launched an offensive to recover an area bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from rebels, a monitoring group said.

The Israeli military said an increased number of Syrian civilians had been spotted in refugee camps on the Syrian side of the Golan over the past few days, and that it had overnight sent aid supplies at four locations “to Syrians fleeing hostilities”.

Footage released by the Israeli military on Friday showed a forklift truck unloading palettes with supplies that it said included 300 tents, 28 tonnes of food, medical equipment and medication, footwear and clothing.

Israel has refused to accept refugees fleeing the more than seven-year conflict in Syria, a country with which it remains officially in a state of war. Israel also accuses Iran of stationing military bases and personnel in Syria to use the war- torn country as a launchpad for attacks into Israel.

However, Israel has taken in several thousand Syrians for medical treatment since 2011. Wounded Syrians have been treated at field hospitals set up along the frontier with Syria in the Golan, and in Israeli hospitals.

“We will continue to do what is necessary (for the refugees). I don’t want to go into details (but) our greater worry is … that Iran is trying to turn Syria into a forward military post to confront Israel,” Steinitz added.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Another 49 Central Americans from caravan cross U.S. border

People traveling with a caravan of migrants from Central America line up for eat at a camp near the San Ysidro checkpoint, after U.S. border authorities allowed the first small group of women and children entry from Mexico on Monday night, in Tijuana, Mexico May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Delphine Schrank

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Forty-nine Central Americans from a migrant caravan that angered President Donald Trump crossed into the United States to seek asylum on Wednesday morning, while dozens more woke to a rainy, cold third day camped outside a U.S. port of entry.

The 49 migrants, including a first group of mostly women, children and transgender people who had been waiting at the U.S. gate for about 15 hours, were let through by midday, according to the group’s organizers, raising the total number of migrants who had crossed to 74.

Since Monday, border officials have allowed only a trickle at a time to cross the U.S. border, saying that the busy San Ysidro crossing to San Diego is saturated and the rest must wait their turn.

More than 100 members of the caravan, most from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, have been camped in a square near the entrance of the San Ysidro pedestrian bridge that leads from Mexico to the United States, waiting for their turn to enter the facility.

A group of people travelling with a caravan of migrants from Central America line up to eat at a camp near the San Ysidro checkpoint, after U.S. border authorities allowed the first small group of women and children entry from Mexico overnight, in Tijuana, Mexico May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

A group of people travelling with a caravan of migrants from Central America line up to eat at a camp near the San Ysidro checkpoint, after U.S. border authorities allowed the first small group of women and children entry from Mexico overnight, in Tijuana, Mexico May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

At least 28 migrants who made it into the United States on Wednesday had been next on the list. Late Tuesday they had anxiously filed through the walkway to the U.S. gate.

Two by two, some walked up to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer standing in the gate to ask if they might pass through.

First to try was a man and his small nephew, a football under his arm; then a mother and child; then a women with her grandsons.

Turned away, they bedded down in a small space pressed up against metal bars separating them from the United States, bundled against the cold under blankets and sheets of tarpaulin tenting.

No one knew when, or how many of them, would next be allowed through.

Among them was Reina Isabel Rodriguez, who had fled Honduras with her grandsons. Throughout the caravan’s 2,000-mile (3,220-km) odyssey from southern Mexico, the possibility that U.S. officials might reject her plea for asylum, and of being separated from the boys for not being their biological parent, had never seemed so real.

“I’m scared, I’m so scared, I don’t want to be sent home,” she said, tears streaming down her face. Christopher, 11, watched her with anguish, and Anderson, 7, sat at her feet, his head drooping, a toy robot in his lap.

Rodriguez was among the many migrants of the caravan who told Reuters they were forced from their homes by Central America’s brutal Mara street gangs, along with other life-threatening situations.

Trump’s administration, however, cites a more than tenfold rise in asylum claims in the past seven years, growing numbers of families and children and a shift to more Central Americans as signs that people are fraudulently taking advantage of the system.

Trump wants to tighten U.S. law to make it harder for people to claim asylum. For now though, despite his orders to keep such migrant caravans out of the country, international and U.S. law obliges the government to listen to people’s stories and decide whether they deserve shelter.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it launched prosecutions against 11 “suspected” caravan members on charges of crossing the border illegally.

About half of them are represented by the federal public defender in San Diego, according to the office’s chief trial attorney, Shereen Charlick, including three women who had planned to present themselves and their children to make asylum claims at the official border port of entry.

Long lines at the entry point led the women and their children to try crossing a few miles away, she said, where they were apprehended by immigration authorities. Defense lawyers are trying to track down the location of their children, Charlick said.

She said some of the mothers apprehended are no longer with their children, and that lawyers in the office are trying to figure out how they were separated.

Nicole Ramos, an attorney advising caravan members in Mexico, said she did not believe the individuals facing U.S. criminal charges were part of the caravan group.

“Quite a few people have claimed to be part of the caravan, including a sizable contingent of Guatemalan men who were never part,” Ramos said.

(Reporting by Delphine Schrank, editing by Robert Birsel and Jonathan Oatis)

South Korea switches off propaganda broadcasts, Moon upbeat on North Korea nuclear halt

People walk past a street monitor showing North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un in a news report about North Korea's announcement, in Tokyo, Japan, April 21, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea halted the propaganda broadcasts it blares across the border with North Korea on Monday, aiming to set a positive tone ahead of the first summit in a decade between their leaders as the U.S. president cautioned the nuclear crisis was far from resolved.

The gesture came after North Korea said on Saturday it would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, scrap its nuclear test site and instead pursue economic growth and peace, a declaration welcomed be world leaders.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is due to hold a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-In at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Friday, and is expected to meet with President Donald Trump in late May or early June.

“North Korea’s decision to freeze its nuclear program is a significant decision for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in a regular meeting at the Blue House on Monday.

“It is a green light that raises the chances of positive outcomes at the North’s summits with South Korea and the United States. If North Korea goes the path of complete denuclearization starting from this, then a bright future for North Korea can be guaranteed.”

South Korea’s propaganda broadcasts, which include a mix of news, Korean pop songs, an criticism of the North Korean regime, were stopped at midnight, the defense ministry in Seoul said. It didn’t specify if they would resume after the Kim-Moon summit.

“We hope this decision will lead both Koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute in creating peace and a new beginning,” the South Korean defense ministry said.

It marks the first time in more than two years that the South’s broadcasts have fallen silent. North Korea has its own propaganda loudspeakers at the border, but a defense ministry official said he could not verify that they had also stopped.

CAUTION

The two Koreas agreed to a schedule for Friday’s summit in working-level talks on Monday, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said, adding North Korea had agreed to allow South Korean reporters in its part of the Joint Security Area at the border to cover the event.

Preparations for the talks will include a rehearsal by officials from both countries at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Wednesday, the Blue House said.

The inter-Korean talks and the expected Kim-Trump summit have raised hopes of an easing in tensions that reached a crescendo last year amid a flurry of North Korean missile tests and its largest nuclear test.

Trump initially welcomed Pyongyang’s statement it would halt nuclear and missile tests, but he sounded more cautious on Sunday.

“We are a long way from conclusion on North Korea, maybe things will work out, and maybe they won’t – only time will tell,” Trump said on Twitter.

Still, the shares of South Korean companies with business links to North Korea rallied after Pyongyang’s weekend announcement.

Shares of Good People and Shinwon Corp, which used to operate factories in North Korea’s Kaesong industrial region near the border, rose 8 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

China, North Korea’s main ally, welcomed the North Korean announcement.

The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, told reporters on Monday that North Korea’s announcement at the weekend was “great news”.

“We cannot let any noise damage the continued improvements in the situation on the peninsula and cannot allow anything to interfere in or obstruct the talks process between the parties,” Wang said, after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Beijing.

Editorials in Chinese state-run media were tempered with notes of caution.

The China Daily, the official English-languages newspaper of the Chinese government, said the pledges conveyed the message that Kim will sit down for talks as the leader of a legitimate nuclear power.

“Negotiations about actual nuclear disarmament will likely prove arduous given such weapons are critical to Pyongyang’s sense of security. It will require ironclad security guarantees if it is to relinquish them.”

The Global Times, a hawkish tabloid newspaper run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said all parties “should cherish this hard-won state of affairs” and continue to make efforts toward peace and denuclearization.

“Washington should not regard North Korea’s halt to nuclear and missile tests as a result of its maximum pressure,” the Global Times wrote.

“It must be attributed to multiple factors, one of which is that Pyongyang has mastered certain advanced nuclear technologies and successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 10,000 km.”

The United States, through the United Nations, has pursued a series of ever-tightening sanctions on North Korea aimed at cutting its access to foreign currency.

Customs data on Monday showed China’s imports from North Korea fell sharply in the first three months of the year, and exports also dropped, compared with a year earlier.

Tourism, dominated by Chinese visitors, remains a key export earner for North Korea. China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that 32 Chinese tourists and four North Koreans had died in a major bus accident in North Korea, with two Chinese nationals seriously injured and left in critical condition.

(Reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL and Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON. Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and David Morgan in WASHINGTON, John Ruwich in SHANGHAI, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Cynthia Kim and Heekyong Yang in SEOUL. Editing by Lincoln Feast, Michael Perry and Neil Fullick)

Some 50 members of migrant caravan reach Mexico, U.S. border

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, climb up on a wagon of a freight train before embarking on a new leg of their travels, in Tlaquepaque, in Jalisco state, Mexico April 19, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Lizbeth Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A group of 50 Central American migrants who set out from southern Mexico in late March have reached the U.S. border, having endured the long journey despite threats by President Donald Trump to secure the border with National Guard personnel.

Since peaking at around 1,500 people, the so-called migrant “caravan” has dwindled under pressure from Trump and Mexican migration authorities, who vowed to separate those migrants with a right to stay in Mexico from those who did not.

Some of those migrants began arriving in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on Wednesday and have requested asylum in the United States.

“Since yesterday, some began to cross into the United States to turn themselves in from Tijuana and request asylum. We understand more of (the migrants) will do the same,” said Jose Maria Garcia, director of Juventud 2000, an organization dedicated to assisting migrants.

He said more migrants, many of whom are stranded in Mexico’s central states, are expected to arrive in the coming days.

“We will continue to receive them and it will be up to them if they stay in the country or leave,” Garcia said.

Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas, prompting many people to leave in search of a better life.

Every year, thousands of migrants -especially Central Americans- venture to cross Mexico and reach the United States, often risking their lives along the way.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Darren Schuettler)