Tag Archives: Migrants

Venezuelans buy bus tickets out after Maduro wins re-election

People wait in line to buy bus tickets at a bus station in Caracas, Venezuela May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello

By Luc Cohen

CARACAS (Reuters) – Betsabeth Casique saved for eight months for bus tickets out of Venezuela for herself and her three children. At 1.4 million bolivars each, they are worth what she earns in a month working as a nurse.

It is less than two dollars at the black market exchange rate.

When socialist President Nicolas Maduro won re-election to a six-year term on Sunday in a vote the opposition and foreign governments called illegitimate, Casique decided to leave, first for the western city of San Cristobal and from there to Cucuta, Colombia.

Bags and suitcases are seen at a bus station in Caracas, Venezuela May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello

Bags and suitcases are seen at a bus station in Caracas, Venezuela May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello

“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, what pushed me to do it faster,” Casique, 29, said while charging her cell phone outside the Aeroexpresos Ejecutivos terminal in Caracas, where she was planning to buy tickets for a bus leaving on Tuesday.

Ninety-nine people bought tickets on Monday morning for that trip, said Greberli Rojas, a passenger who displayed a handwritten wait-list she was keeping to avoid disputes between passengers trying to fit on the bus.

Rojas, a 29-year-old accountant who arrived from the town of Barlovento in Miranda state and bought her ticket early Monday, planned to spend the night at the station to avoid losing her spot.

“I’m prepared to sell coffee because us migrants have to be prepared to start from the bottom,” said Rojas, who plans to settle in Lima, Peru.

It appeared the emigration crisis Venezuela had experienced in recent years as its economy collapsed would continue since Maduro’s government was unlikely to change policies that led to hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages and rising crime.

The United Nations has estimated that nearly 1 million Venezuelans the country left between 2015 and 2017.

Over the past weekend, migrants streamed across the border, skeptical that their votes would change anything in an election many thought would be rigged. Mainstream opposition called for a boycott and turnout was 46 percent compared with 80 percent in 2013’s presidential election.

“We expected that the incumbents would win, so we decided to leave,” said Jorge Hernandez, a 23-year-old engineering student who sold his Toyota Avalon to buy tickets for himself and his mother to leave Caracas from the Rutas de America terminal on Monday morning.

He brought bread and crackers for the 36-hour trip to Trujillo, Peru, where his sister has been waiting tables for two-and-a-half months.

“This government has been in power for 18 years and things have gone from bad to worse,” he said.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

Charities warn of drowning danger as migrants camp along Paris canal

Tents where migrants live in a makeshift camp are seen on the Quai de Valmy of the canal Saint-Martin in Paris, France, May 15, 2018. Picture taken May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

By Julie Carriat and Clotaire Achi

PARIS (Reuters) – With hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers packed in tents alongside a Paris canal and under a nearby bridge, charities are warning of the risk from drowning and violence if the authorities do not act to tackle makeshift camps.

Two young men – one Afghan and one probably Sudanese – drowned in the canal this month from the camps housing more than 2,400 people by the Canal St Martin, a trendy area known for hipsters having picnics along its banks on sunny days.

France, which has received far fewer asylum seekers over the past years than neighboring Germany, has nevertheless been struggling with tackling new arrivals – for years in what became know as the Calais “jungle”, on the northern coast, and, since that was shut down, increasingly in Paris.

“If this situation continues, there will be other dramas, there will inevitably be deaths. And therefore I call on the public authorities to act, and give shelter to the people who are there,” said Pierre Henry, the director of the France Terre d’Asile charity.

Some bathe in the canal’s unsanitary waters, while the mobile phones and subsidies handed out by authorities to some of the asylum seekers are the target of attacks, with knives used as weapons to obtain them, said charity volunteer Pauline Doyen.

Pauline, a volunteer speaks to migrants near the truck where humanitarian association France Terre d'Asile works on the Quai de Jemmapes of the canal Saint-Martin in Paris, France, May 15, 2018. Picture taken May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pauline, a volunteer speaks to migrants near the truck where humanitarian association France Terre d’Asile works on the Quai de Jemmapes of the canal Saint-Martin in Paris, France, May 15, 2018. Picture taken May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

“There is too much crazy people. I see, look, this is my face. I fight yesterday here,” a 24-year-old Pakistani man, who gave his name as Suleiman, said in broken English .

“I am new,” Suleiman said, showing a trace of blow on his cheek which he says he sustained trying to stop people stealing his belongings. “People take my phone, I have 300 euros, it is taken.”

The Paris municipality and government disagree on how to tackle the situation and blame each other for it, drawing criticism from charities.

In a letter to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe last week, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo spoke of the “chaos (that) now characterizes the campments”, asking the government for action.

An Interior ministry source described the relations between the municipality and the government as “complex” and said Hidalgo was blocking their plans to evacuate the camp. In her letter Hidalgo confirmed she thought the government’s evacuation plan was not the right solution.

(Additional reporting by Feyi Adegbite; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Alison Williams)

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)

Canada wants U.S. cooperation in turning back asylum seekers

FILE PHOTO: A group of migrants who said they were from Djibouti and Somalia walk along railway tracks after crossing the Canada-U.S. border in Emerson, Manitoba, Canada, March 27, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo

By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada wants to change a bilateral agreement to allow it to turn back thousands of asylum seekers walking across the border but the United States is not cooperating, according to a Canadian official with knowledge of the discussions.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, or STCA, asylum seekers who arrive at a formal Canada-U.S. border crossing going in either direction are turned back and told to apply for asylum in the first country they arrived in.

Canada wants the agreement rewritten to apply to the entire border.

More than 26,000 people have illegally crossed the Canada-U.S. border to file refugee claims in the past 15 months, walking over ditches and on empty roads along the world’s longest undefended border. Many have told Reuters they might have stayed in the United States were it not for President Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric and policies.

Canadian officials first discussed changing the pact with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials last September, shortly after more than 5,700 asylum seekers walked into Canada in August.

“We’d like to be able to get them to agree that we can, if somebody comes across, we just send them back,” the official told Reuters on Friday, adding Canada had raised the issue “at least a dozen” times since.

“I wouldn’t say they’ve been objecting or saying: ‘No, we won’t do it,’ but it’s been not responding rapidly.”

The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing Canada’s proposal and has not yet made a decision, a spokeswoman said.

The Canadian official compared Canada’s position to U.S. requests that Mexico prevent migrants traversing its territory from entering the United States

“We’ve got a problem, here. We’ve got to fix it,” the official added. “And we need the Americans’ cooperation.”

For now, another official said, Canada would keep doing what it is doing: Managing the influx of refugee claimants in a strained system, while seeking to dissuade would-be crossers through outreach efforts.

Even if the United States agreed to take back anyone trying to cross into Canada, keeping people out between all ports of entry would be a challenge and could result in asylum seekers taking potentially deadly risks to avoid detection, said University of Toronto law and human rights professor Audrey Macklin.

The STCA already faces a Canadian court challenge that argues the agreement is discriminatory and violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Canada has also urged U.S. officials to crack down on visas, saying many of the asylum seekers had valid U.S. visas and used the United States merely as a transit point.

Earlier this year, Canadian officials traveled to Nigeria, the source of a significant number of asylum seekers, to speak with Nigerian government officials and U.S. embassy staff.

The number of U.S. visas being issued to Nigerians has since dropped, said Mathieu Genest, a spokesman for Canadian Immigration and Refugee Minister Ahmed Hussen.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Migrants from caravan in limbo as U.S. says border crossing full

A group of members of a migrant caravan from Central America and their supporters look through the U.S.-Mexico border wall at Border Field State Park before making an asylum request in San Diego, California, April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Delphine Schrank

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – About 50 people from a Central American migrant caravan including women, children and transgender individuals tried to seek U.S. asylum on Sunday but were not allowed to cross the Mexico border because officials said the facility was full.

Wearing white arm-bands to distinguish themselves from others crossing at the San Ysidro checkpoint near San Diego, some of the asylum seekers waved good-bye to family members who made a difficult decision to stay behind in Mexico.

About 20 people in the group were able to reach the final fence at the busy crossing, where they were watched by armed U.S. border guards who did not immediately open the gate.

“We have reached capacity at the San Ysidro port of entry,” said Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan in a statement on Sunday, adding that the immigrants “may need to wait in Mexico.”

It was not immediately clear whether the group would be turned back or allowed in later. By sunset the tired migrants had decided to hunker down there, apparently with no bedding beyond the scant possessions they had with them.

Members of a caravan of migrants from Central America climb up the border fence between Mexico and the U.S., as a part of a demonstration prior to preparations for an asylum request in the U.S., in Tijuana, Mexico April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Members of a caravan of migrants from Central America climb up the border fence between Mexico and the U.S., as a part of a demonstration prior to preparations for an asylum request in the U.S., in Tijuana, Mexico April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

“We’ve been waiting so long that it doesn’t really matter whether it’s today, tomorrow or when they let us in,” said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an advocacy group that organized the caravan since its starting point in southern Mexico a month ago.

At one point in early April the caravan gathered 1,500 immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. It has drawn the wrath of President Donald Trump, who ordered immigration officials to be zealous in enforcing rules to stop unlawful entry by caravan members.

More migrants from the caravan, which numbered around 400 people by the time it reached Tijuana, also planned to seek asylum. About 100 set up an open air camp in a small square on the Mexican side by the San Ysidro pedestrian bridge, saying they would stay there until they were allowed through.

With no shelter, they laid out towels and blankets on the cold concrete.

“I’M NERVOUS. I’M AFRAID”

The mood was somber following a grueling 2,000-mile (3,200-km) trek to the border. U.S. immigration lawyers had warned the migrants of the low odds for winning asylum and the likelihood of detention, separation from relatives and deportation.

“I’m nervous. I’m afraid,” said Linda Sonigo, 40, walking solemnly toward the U.S. gate with her two-year-old granddaughter in her arms. “I’m afraid they’ll separate us,” she said, motioning to her two children and grandchild.

U.S. officials do not usually separate children from parents seeking asylum, although immigration advocates have reported instances of it happening. Families often spend less time in detention than other groups.

After U.S. border officials said the check point was full, organizers of the caravan put forward what they called the “most vulnerable cases” to cross the border first, including children under threat and transgender people who say they face persecution in Central America.

Sonigo said her family was fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. Others in the group who decided their cases were not strong enough to have a good shot at asylum tearfully said farewell to relatives they may not see again for years.

Asylum seekers must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution at home, and the overwhelming majority of those from Central America are denied refuge in the United States.

After making a claim, asylum seekers are usually kept in detention centers. Women with young children generally spend less time locked up and are released to await their hearings.

People in Mexico climb the border wall fence as a caravan of migrants and supporters reached the United States-Mexico border near San Diego, California, U.S., April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake

People in Mexico climb the border wall fence as a caravan of migrants and supporters reached the United States-Mexico border near San Diego, California, U.S., April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Those denied asylum are generally deported to their home countries.

Death threats from local gangs, the murder of family members, retaliatory rape and political persecution prompted members of the caravan to flee, members of the group have told Reuters.

McAleenan said the border patrol would communicate with Mexican authorities about capacity at San Ysidro, a move reminiscent of an ad hoc system created to manage an influx of Haitians two years ago, when the U.S. border agency set daily quotas for immigration interviews.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said earlier this week that the caravan migrants should seek asylum in Mexico.

U.S. border authorities said Saturday that some people associated with the caravan had already been caught trying to slip through the fence and encouraged the rest to report to authorities.

(Reporting by Delphine Schrank; writing by Frank Jack Daniel; editing by Phil Berlowitz, Cynthia Osterman and Darren Schuettler)

Busloads of migrants from ‘caravan’ arrive at U.S.-Mexico border

A group of Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, arrive at the office of Mexico's National Institute of Migration to start the legal process and get temporary residence status for humanitarian reasons, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 24, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Edgardo Garrido

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Dozens of Central American migrants from about 600 traveling in a “caravan” through Mexico arrived at the border city of Tijuana late on Tuesday despite warnings it would be futile to try to cross to claim asylum in the United States.

By evening, two busloads of men, women and children arrived in Tijuana, a city that grazes southern California.

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered officials to repel them.

The arrivals spilled into the streets and gazed toward San Diego, visible at spots through a rusty barrier or across a pedestrian bridge, exhausted after their trek that began a month ago near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.

Another four busloads were making their way north from Hermosillo, a city 432 miles south of the border, where the migrants had been stalled for days.

A group of Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, ask for money to get on a microbus to the office of Mexico's National Institute of Migration to start the legal process and get temporary residence status for humanitarian reasons, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 24, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

A group of Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, ask for money to get on a microbus to the office of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration to start the legal process and get temporary residence status for humanitarian reasons, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 24, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Many who fled their homes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because of what they described as lethal threats or political persecution have clung to the hope of receiving asylum in the United States. But their prospects dimmed after U.S. authorities released statements on Monday saying they would driven back.

Rodrigo Abeja, a coordinator from immigrant rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras that has been organizing similar caravans for several years, said the caravan planned to regroup before making any decisions.

“They will wait for all those seeking asylum to be together,” Abeja said.

A third group, resigned to staying in Mexico, awaited processing for year-long visas by immigration authorities in Hermosillo.

Traveling as a group for safety, their numbers were down from a peak of about 1,500 people, dwindling under the twin pressures of waiting for transportation and attacks by Trump, who began lashing out at the caravan on Twitter in early April.

After Trump’s comments, Mexican authorities stalled the caravan in a southern town and began handing out temporary visas that gave them legal status to travel to the border.

(Reporting by Edgardo Garrido; Additional reporting by Delphine Schrank in Mexico City; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

Israel abandons plan to forcibly deport African migrants

FILE PHOTO: A boy takes part in a protest against the Israeli government’s plan to deport African migrants, in Tel Aviv, Israel March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Corinna Kern/File Photo

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli government said on Tuesday it had abandoned a plan to forcibly deport African migrants who entered the country illegally after failing to find a willing country to take in the migrants.

The government had been working for months on an arrangement to expel thousands of mostly Eritrean and Sudanese men who crossed into Israel through Egypt’s Sinai desert.

“At this stage, the possibility of carrying out an unwilling deportation to a third country is not on the agenda,” the government wrote in a response to Israel’s Supreme Court, which has been examining the case.

The migrants will again be able to renew residency permits every 60 days, as they were before the deportation push, the government said.

The migrants and rights groups say they are seeking asylum and are fleeing war and persecution. The government says they are job seekers and that it has every right to protect its borders.

Despite Tuesday’s climbdown, the government said immigration authorities would still try to deport migrants voluntarily, drawing criticism from rights group Amnesty International.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said that after failing to reach agreement with any country to take them in, he would try to draft legislation that would allow the reopening of detention centers in Israel for the migrants.

The Supreme Court has previously struck down legislation that permits such detention and ordered the facilities shut.

“I’M THRILLED”

The government’s U-turn was welcomed by those targeted for expulsion.

“I’m thrilled. I’m speechless. I was so scared every day. If I can stay here it will be good, I’ve lived here so long – I have a job, I have Israeli friends. I am used to the place,” said Ristom Haliesilase, a 34-year-old Eritrean who lives in Tel Aviv, working as a carer for the elderly.

The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home.

Around 4,000 migrants have left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda since 2013 under a voluntary program, but Netanyahu has come under pressure from his right-wing voter base to expel thousands more.

After pulling out of a U.N.-backed relocation plan a few weeks ago, Israel shifted efforts toward finalizing an arrangement to send the migrants against their will to Uganda.

A number of migrant rights groups then petitioned the Supreme Court to block any such policy.

Amnesty also welcomed Tuesday’s decision but criticized Israel’s plan to continue with voluntary deportations.

“… in reality there is nothing voluntary about them. Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers agree to them under pressure. Israel remains under the obligation not to transfer anyone to a country” where they would be unsafe, said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Amnesty will closely monitor the deportations, it said.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell and Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Migrant ‘caravan’ that angers Trump nears U.S.-Mexico border

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, rest at a temporary shelter, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Edgard Garrido

HERMOSILLO, Mexico (Reuters) – Hundreds of Central American migrants traveling in a “caravan” were in limbo in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo on Monday on the final stretch of a journey to the United States where President Donald Trump ordered officials to repel them.

About 600 men, women and children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras had been waiting on Monday in Hermosillo, Sonora to board a train or take buses for the remaining 432 miles miles to the border with California.

Traveling together for safety, their numbers were down from a peak of about 1,500 people since they began their journey on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala almost a month ago, as smaller groups broke away.

Many women and children in the group were planning to seek asylum in the United States after they reach Tijuana, said Rodrigo Abeja, a coordinator from immigrant rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras that has been organizing similar caravans for several years.

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, receive shoes at a temporary shelter, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, receive shoes at a temporary shelter, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Moving from town to town, the impoverished and bedraggled travelers became a lightning rod for U.S.-Mexico relations after Trump launched a succession of tweets in early April, telling Mexican authorities to stop them.

On Monday he again lashed out, threatening that failure to stop the caravan could stall the already tense renegotiation of NAFTA.

“I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country,” Trump tweeted Monday morning. “It’s a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so Naive! WALL”

Following Trump’s Tweets, the group was considering applying for asylum status in Mexico, a Reuters witness traveling with them said.

Trump’s concern with the caravan coincides with recent U.S. border patrol data showing a sharp rise in the number of immigrants found illegally crossing the border, a setback after immigration from Central America evaporated in the months following his election.

While it is not clear what will happen when the group arrives at the border, or if it will disperse before it gets there, there are signs the U.S. is preparing legal defenses. Following Trump’s messages, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he had ordered officials to ensure that sufficient prosecutors and immigration judges were available at the border “to adjudicate any cases that may arise from this ‘caravan.'”

Some migrants told Reuters they would stay in Mexico. Others said they would find other ways to cross. At least 200 were likely to claim asylum if they made it over the border, according to migrants and caravan organizers.

Marie Vincent, a U.S.-based immigration attorney who met the caravan on a stop along the way, said many of the immigrants had a strong case for U.S. asylum either because they faced political persecution, lethal threats from gangs, or violence because of gender or sexual identity.

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, gesture during a demonstration against the U.S President Donald Trump's immigration policies, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, gesture during a demonstration against the U.S President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, in Hermosillo, Sonora state, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Vincent said one of those with a persuasive case was the survivor of a flawed witness protection program in Honduras who had been “stabbed and shot at more times than he could count.”

Faced with another death threat, he escaped to Guatemala and then to Mexico from a hospital bed with the tubes still stuck in his body — one of them hanging from his stomach, she said.

Some of the group had been dissuaded from seeking asylum by warnings about detention conditions they might endure in the United States, she said.

Although Honduras and El Salvador rank among countries with the highest homicide rates in the world, rejection rates for asylum claims from those countries are very steep.

(Additional reporting and writing by Delphine Schrank in Mexico City; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Scott Malone)

African migrants in limbo as Israel seeks Uganda deportation deal

Pepole take part in a protest against the Israeli government's plan to deport African migrants, in Tel Aviv, Israel March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Corinna Ker

By Maayan Lubell

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel is finalizing a deal to deport thousands of African migrants to Uganda under a new scheme after agreements with Rwanda and the U.N.’s refugee agency to find homes for those expelled fell through.

About 4,000 migrants have left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda since 2013 under a voluntary program but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under pressure from his right-wing voter base to expel thousands more.

In January, Israel started handing out notices to male migrants from Eritrea and Sudan giving them three months to take the voluntary deal with a plane ticket and $3,500 or risk being thrown in jail.

The government said from April it would start forced deportations but rights groups challenged the move and Israel’s Supreme Court has issued a temporary injunction to give more time for the petitioners to argue against the plan.

Government representatives told the court on Tuesday that an envoy was in an African country finalizing a deportation deal after an arrangement with Rwanda to take migrants expelled under the new measures fell through.

The representatives did not name the country in court sessions open to the public though Israeli lawmakers have previously said the two countries it was planning to deport migrants to were Rwanda and Uganda.

Israeli Deputy Foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely also identified the countries it was seeking to strike new deportation deals with as Uganda and Rwanda in closed-door comments leaked to Israeli Army Radio.

After the Rwanda deal fell through, the government struck an agreement with the U.N.’s refugee agency (UNHCR) to relocate 16,250 migrants to Western countries but Netanyahu scrapped it after an outcry from right-wing politicians furious that thousands more would be allowed to stay in Israel.

The fate of tens of thousands of migrants who entered Israel illegally through its desert border with Egypt and were granted temporary visas has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a national home for Jews and a haven from persecution.

Israeli rights groups say the country can absorb the estimated 37,000 migrants still there, or should find them safe destinations such as those agreed under the defunct UNHCR deal.

The rights groups have accused Netanyahu, who is under police investigation for corruption, of playing political games to appeal to his right-wing supporters.

The government calls the migrants “infiltrators” and says they have come to find work. The migrants and rights groups say they are asylum seekers fleeing persecution.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

The U.N.’s refugee agency and rights groups are also concerned because many of the Africans who left previously for Rwanda and Uganda voluntarily did not get the protection they were promised and some ended up back on the migration trail.

Both countries have denied having any deals with Israel to resettle migrants. Uganda, a key Western ally in the fight against Islamist militants in East Africa, also denied there were discussions about accepting deportees under the new scheme.

“We are not aware of any Israeli envoy here. Let Israelis tell you who that envoy here is going to sign an agreement with, sign with who? With the foreign affairs, with the president, minister of internal affairs, with who? On what date are they signing?” Okello Oryem, Uganda’s junior foreign affairs minister told Reuters on Wednesday.

At the Supreme Court hearing in Jerusalem, one of the three judges asked the state representatives why Uganda was denying the deal, if indeed there was one. The state said it would provide the court with an explanation in a closed session.

Five migrants interviewed by Reuters said they had been told by immigration officials this year that they could go either to Uganda or Rwanda, if they chose to avoid detention.

Ristom Haliesilase, an Eritrean migrant living in Tel Aviv, said he was given until April 15 to decide whether to be deported, or detained.

“My mind is full of worries. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The first thought I have in the morning is what will they do to me today?” said Haliesilase. “It’s heartbreaking. It breaks the people. It breaks the community.”

Many migrants live in cramped apartments in poor parts of Tel Aviv where eateries serve Eritrean food, clothing stores with signs in Tigrinya display traditional garb, and abandoned warehouses have been converted into makeshift churches.

‘IT’S ALL A SCAM’

Rights groups such as the International Refugee Rights Initiative have been documenting the plight of Eritrean and Sudanese men who have left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda for several years.

In the past few months UNHCR has also documented at least 80 cases of Eritreans who found none of the protection promised upon their departure from Israel, prompting them to go on a perilous trail through conflict zones to reach Europe.

Along the way they were subjected to arrests, torture and extortion before trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy, UNHCR said. Israeli rights groups have documented dozens more such cases.

Under the voluntary scheme, asylum seekers say they were given the option of going back to their country of origin, remaining in detention in Israel or flying to a third country where they were promised they could stay and work legally.

Sajir, 27, an Eritrean now living in Uganda, told Reuters by telephone that he flew there in January after spending five months in Israeli detention.

“They said that my life would be sorted there,” Sajir said, speaking in Hebrew. “But it’s all a scam.”

Notices handed out this year to migrants already in detention or those trying to renew their visas have promised residency and work permits in their destination country. “A local team that will meet you at the airport will provide guidance in the first few days,” the document says.

Sajir said when his flight landed in Uganda, he and 10 other migrants were not taken through passport control. “We were taken out the back. Then someone loaded us onto a bus and took us to a hotel,” he said.

The group was met by a man who offered to set them up with traffickers to take them to Sudan, Kenya or Ethiopia – for a price, he said.

“We got no visa, no papers. There is no work here. It is no good. I cannot stay here. I will try to go to Sudan soon or somewhere, to Libya and then to Europe,” Sajir said.

Israel’s Immigration Authority and the prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

(Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kampala, Steve Scherer in Rome and Corinna Kern in Tel Aviv; writing by Maayan Lubell; editing by David Clarke)

Some 200 migrants in Mexico caravan to seek U.S. asylum: organizers

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, gesture as they arrive from Puebla city to La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Delphine Schrank

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – At least 200 Central American migrants in a “caravan” traveling through Mexico that provoked the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump plan to seek asylum in the United States, organizers said on Monday.

After arriving in Mexico City on Monday, hundreds of migrants poured into the Basilica of Guadalupe, a Roman Catholic shrine, to give thanks, collect themselves or unleash emotions coiled tight during their long journey together from the southern border.

The number looking to claim U.S. asylum was more than double what organizers had anticipated, said Rodrigo Abeja, a coordinator from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a transnational organization that staged the caravan.

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, march from La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Central American migrants, moving in a caravan through Mexico, march from La Casa del Peregrino, a temporary shelter set up for them by the Catholic church, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Mexico April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

For many, the arduous trek to the capital began days or weeks before, each hinging on a personal decision to flee conditions too difficult to bear in El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras.

Barely across the cathedral’s threshold, dozens fell to their knees, heads bowing or eyes glistening as they gazed across the vaulted expanse and strained to hear a priest leading them in prayer.

Honduran Misael George beamed, grateful to have made it this far, and said that after the service he would meet with the other migrants who wanted to seek asylum in the United States.

With his three children and his wife, he went on the run from Honduras after a close relative was killed by a gang, and the threat spread to his family, he said. But with no proof on paper, he knew his odds for claiming asylum were long.

“Difficult, yes,” he said. “But not impossible.”

Trump last week lashed out at the caravan, accusing Mexico of failing to stop illegal immigrants headed to the border.

Manuel de Jesus Rodas, 27, from Honduras, daubed his tears with a tissue but could not staunch the emotion that choked his voice. His mother had just told him to come home, he said, because she was sick and in pain.

Now he waited for guidance about whether to go home – or go on. “I don’t know, but I think I have to follow my route,” he said.

Others in the caravan said they would stay in Mexico.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)