Tag Archives: Rio Grande

U.S. judge ordered Texas to move floating buoys

Texas-Buoys

Important Takeaways:

  • A U.S. judge ordered Texas to move floating buoys that were placed in the middle of the Rio Grande to block migrants from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, a tentative win for President Joe Biden, whose administration sued the state.
  • The ruling is a setback for Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who contends that Biden has been too lenient with border security as record numbers of migrants have been caught crossing illegally in recent years.
  • Texas immediately appealed the ruling to the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Abbott’s office said it was willing to take the case to the Supreme Court if needed.
  • “Our battle to defend Texas’ sovereign authority to protect lives from the chaos caused by President Biden’s open border policies has only begun,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

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For asylum advocates, border expulsions strain faith in Biden

By Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Confused and tired-looking toddlers clung to their parents at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti on Tuesday, among the 360 family members rapidly expelled from the U.S. over the past three days.

These scenes came after U.S. border agents on horseback on Sunday used whip-like reins to block Haitian migrants wading across the Rio Grande with food and supplies from Mexico to a squalid encampment with nearly 10,000 people on the Texas side.

The images triggered anguish among some current U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters who said they once had high hopes that U.S. President Joe Biden would quickly reverse the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump and, as he promised, “restore humanity and American values” to the immigration system.

Outside the government, disillusioned immigration advocates point to Biden’s refusal to repeal Trump’s most sweeping policy known as Title 42 – that allows border agents to quickly expel most migrants to Mexico or their home countries without a chance to apply for asylum.

Biden extended the March 2020 policy put in place by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, arguing it remained necessary as a public health measure amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These deterrence (and) expulsion measures deny due process to asylum seekers and place them in harm’s way. That is a human rights violation,” Michael Knowles, president of AFGE Local 1924, the union that represents the asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Reuters.

“Our members are outraged by the mistreatment of migrants and the refusal of our border authorities to allow them to have their asylum claims heard.”

Three other USCIS employees expressed similar concerns to Reuters, as did an official at another government agency.

Asylum officers interview migrants and refugees to determine if they need protection in the United States, while Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents oversee border security and detention.

Top Democratic lawmakers joined in the criticism. The dwindling goodwill among allies comes as Biden’s immigration agenda was dealt a blow on Sunday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled Democratic proposals to give legal status to millions of immigrants in the United States could not be included in a budget reconciliation bill.

‘WHAT DO THEY BELIEVE IN?’

Biden did exempt unaccompanied children from Title 42 expulsions early in his presidency. But he has included families, even after a federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to stop expelling them. The administration is appealing the order.

A two-week stay on the order was “to allow the government time to organize itself,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union suing the administration over the policy, “not to round up as many people as possible to expel them, and certainly not to expel desperate Haitian asylum seekers.”

The Trump administration argued many asylum claims were false and issued a flurry of policies to limit protections, moves that were often criticized by the USCIS’ union headed by Knowles.

One of the USCIS officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press said it was understood it would take time to roll back the Trump-era measures, but that some are now losing patience in the face of slow reform.

“It’s appalling, disgusting,” the official said. “What do they believe in, if this is acceptable?” Some colleagues were considering whether to leave their jobs, the official said.

Another USCIS official spoke of being “personally mortified.”

USCIS referred a request for comment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who did not immediately respond.

RECORD CROSSINGS

On Tuesday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Title 42 was being applied to the fullest extent possible, while at the same time condemning the actions of the agents on horseback saying the incident was being investigated and those involved had been assigned administrative duties.

As Biden is facing criticism from the left, Republicans say he has encouraged illegal migration by moving too fast to reverse other Trump-era immigration reforms.

In recent months, the number of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border increased to 20-year highs with close to 200,000 encounters in August alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, though that is counting individuals who may have crossed multiple times.

Early in his presidency, Biden took several executive actions cheered by immigration groups – such as ending Trump’s travel bans on several Muslim-majority countries and scrapping a policy that sent asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings. He also exempted unaccompanied minors from Title 42 expulsions and reduced the number of families being expelled.

In a letter to Congress, retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said Biden’s reversals created a crisis at the border and constituted “a national security threat.” Unlike the USCIS union, the unions representing border and ICE agents have been vocal Trump backers.

Earlier this year, Biden also extended deportation relief to around 150,000 Haitians already living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status, though the benefits do not apply to anyone who arrived after July 29.

Biden acknowledged conditions are dire in the Caribbean country that has long struggled with violence and recently suffered a presidential assassination and a major earthquake.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)

Why Roma migrants from Europe are taking rafts from Mexico to enter the U.S

By Adrees Latif and Radu-Sorin Marinas

ROMA, Texas (Reuters) -Among the hundreds of Central American migrants crossing the Rio Grande river daily on rafts from Mexico to Texas, dozens stood out on a recent day. They were generally taller and some wore skirts, stylish shoes and tracksuits, while many of the other migrants wore T-shirts, pants and jeans.

U.S. border patrol officers who apprehended them near the river tried to speak to them in Spanish. There was a pause as some of the border crossers explained in broken English that they were Romanians, a Reuters photographer said.

Scores of Romanians who are part of the Roma ethnic minority have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in south Texas in recent weeks to seek asylum, highlighting the far-flung origins of some of the migrants who have contributed to border arrests in recent months reaching a 20-year high.

Reuters witnessed large groups of these migrants crossing the Rio Grande on rafts on multiple occasions in May. The migrants Reuters spoke to said they were fleeing racism in Romania and wanted to seek asylum in the United States.

The Roma are Europe’s largest ethnic minority and have a long history of social exclusion and discrimination.

Over three weeks, a Reuters photographer saw nearly 200 Romanians crossing at different points along the Texas border, many extended family groups of 10-15 people.

Border patrol agents have apprehended 2,217 Romanians so far in fiscal year 2021, more than the 266 caught in fiscal 2020 and the 289 in fiscal 2019, according to data provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

More than 2,000 Romanians crossed the southwest border in fiscal year 2016. Current arrivals are on pace to be the highest since 2007, the earliest year for which citizenship arrival data is available.

Margareta Matache, director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, said many Roma fled Romania to escape persecution and dire economic circumstances, partly fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Currently, U.S. policies and policy proposals offer hope for more humane and just policies, including for immigrants,” Matache said. “They (Roma) are looking for a better life in a place where they are not exposed to violence, discrimination, and disrespect.”

The Romanian government said it had not been notified by the United States of any detained citizens but said its embassy officials have contacted local authorities after reading media reports.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found in a 2016 survey of nearly 8,000 Roma people in nine European countries that about 80% of the Roma population was living below the national poverty line.

There is no official population count for Roma people, who reside in many countries and have long faced prejudice in Europe and worldwide. Most live in eastern Europe, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary.

According to Romanian media reports, many Romanian migrants fly from Paris to Mexico City as tourists as they do not need visas to enter Mexico. Then smugglers take them by bus to the U.S. border where they cross the Rio Grande by boat or raft.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif in Roma, Texas, Radu-Sorin Marinas in Bucharest, and Ted Hesson in Washington; Writing by Mimi Dwyer; Editing by Ross Colvin and Lisa Shumaker)

First coronavirus case found in sprawling migrant camp at U.S. border

By Julia Love

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – An asylum seeker has tested positive for coronavirus in a sprawling encampment steps from the U.S. border in Matamoros, Mexico, underscoring the challenges migrants face in protecting themselves from the pandemic.

After showing symptoms of the virus last Thursday, the migrant and three family members were placed in isolation and tested, Global Response Management (GRM), a nonprofit providing medical services in the camp, said in a statement.

When results came back Monday, the migrant who had displayed symptoms tested positive and the relatives had negative results.

Two others with symptoms of the virus are also in isolation, GRM said.

Since cases of coronavirus in Mexico began to rise in March, advocates and government officials have been intensely worried about the potential for an outbreak in the camp, where an estimated 2,000 migrants live in tents on the banks of the Rio Grande river.

“The presence of COVID-19 in an already vulnerable population exposed to the elements could potentially be catastrophic,” GRM said in a statement.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many migrants living in the camp are U.S. asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico to await the outcome of their cases under a controversial Trump administration policy known as “Migrant Protection Protocols.”

To prepare for the virus, GRM sought to improve sanitation in the camp by setting up 88 “handwashing stations,” distributed multivitamins to boost migrants’ immune systems and built a 20-bed field hospital.

Luz, a 42-year-old asylum seeker from Peru who asked that her last name not be used due to safety concerns, said she has tried to isolate as much as possible, though she sometimes ventures out of her tent to seek some relief from the fierce Matamoros heat.

“I truly am not afraid, though I try to be cautious,” she said. “But you can’t stay in your tent all the time… It’s too hot.”

(Reporting by Julia Love; Additional reporting for Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke; Editing by Chris Reese)