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| Courtesy Frontera.info |
The New York Times has reported new threats made by Trump regarding the Caravana Migrante and the southern border. At this moment I have not seen this reported in the Mexican News sources:
From MSN
New York Times - 10/25/18
Trump Considers Closing Southern Border To Migrants
"WASHINGTON — President Trump is considering taking executive action to bar migrants, including asylum seekers, from entering the country at the southern border, according to people familiar with the plan. The effort would be the starkest indication yet of Mr. Trump’s election-season push to play to his anti-immigrant base as his party fights to keep control of Congress.
The proposal amounts to a sweeping use of presidential power to fortify the border and impose the kind of aggressive immigration restrictions and enforcement measures that Mr. Trump has made his signature pursuit. The plan is expected to prompt a swift challenge in federal courts.
The move would be the most drastic in a series of steps that Mr. Trump has taken or threatened to take in recent days — including preparations on Thursday to send as many as 1,000 active-duty Army troops to help secure the southern border — as he works to stop what he has called an “onslaught” of immigrants only days before the midterm elections.
As part of that effort, the president has capitalized this month on the thousands of Central American migrants trekking north through Mexico. Many in the group are women and children believed to be seeking refuge from violence and economic hardship. He said without evidence this week that criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” were “mixed in” among the people in the migrant caravan, and has blamed its formation on Democrats , falsely charging that they support allowing immigrants to stream, unchecked, into the country.
The caravan is still more than 1,000 miles south of the border, and it is unclear when or whether the migrants will arrive, or how many will seek to cross into the United States.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the plan for executive action on the border, and referred questions about the troop deployment to the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
Details of the plan were still being completed on Thursday, according to the people who described it, all of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss a proposal that is still under development. The president, who is prone to changing his mind, could still decide not to take action, they stressed.
But three people briefed on the plan said it envisioned Mr. Trump issuing a proclamation on Tuesday. It would invoke broad presidential powers to bar foreigners from entering the country for national security reasons — under the same section of immigration law that underpinned the travel ban — to block Central American migrants from crossing the southern border, they said.
At the same time, the administration would put in place new rules that would disqualify migrants who cross the border in between ports of entry from claiming asylum, according to those briefed. Exceptions would be made for people facing torture at home.
Taken together, the actions would effectively prevent hundred of people in the caravan from gaining entry into the United States and making an asylum claim. But the longer-term implications could be more profound, potentially shutting down altogether an avenue — permitted under both United States and international law — that many people fleeing violence and persecution use to take refuge here.
According to American immigration law, people arriving at ports of entry on the United States border have the right to seek asylum, and, if they demonstrate a “credible fear” of returning home, to have their claims processed with the possibility of eventually being granted legal status to stay. Those who do not go to a checkpoint but are apprehended crossing the border without authorization can also make such a claim and must, under the law, be afforded a chance to have their case heard.
Mr. Trump and his advisers have complained bitterly about that system, arguing that it can reward fabricated or unfounded claims of vulnerability.
He has made no distinction between people flouting immigration laws and those fleeing violence and persecution, portraying the entire caravan group as lawbreakers. “To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally,” the president wrote Thursday on Twitter . “Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!”
Mr. Trump is weighing the new measures as he prepares to order 800 to 1,000 United States Army troops to help secure the southern border, Defense Department officials said on Thursday.
Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, was expected to sign papers in the coming days to send the troops. They will include engineers to help with the construction of tents and fencing, doctors for medical support, and potentially some personnel to operate drones along the border, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deployment had not yet been finished.
Mr. Trump has made it clear in recent days that he is angry and frustrated about his administration’s inability to gain firmer control of the United States border with Mexico.
“I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency,” the president tweeted . “They will be stopped!”
It is not the first time that Mr. Trump has demanded that the military secure the southern border. In April, when another such caravan of migrants began making its way north through Mexico, he called for United States troops to step in, suggesting that he wanted active-duty armed troops to do what immigration authorities could not. Instead, after discussions with Mr. Mattis and others, Mr. Trump requested that hundreds of National Guard personnel be mobilized to serve in support roles.
This time, according to officials briefed on the discussions, Mr. Trump’s aides had been looking at sending many more troops — up to 10,000 — to aid in addressing the migrant flow, as they scrambled to satisfy a president demanding a muscular response. Mr. Mattis has been resistant to calls to involve the military in such endeavors.
The active-duty military is generally barred by law from carrying out domestic law enforcement functions, such as apprehending people at the border. Officials said the deployment that Mr. Mattis is expected to approve would be legal, however, because the troops would be serving in a support role, rather than performing policing or law enforcement duties themselves.
A senior Defense Department official who has been briefed on the planning said the precise legal authorities under which Mr. Mattis would order the deployment were still being ironed out by administration lawyers. Mr. Trump’s reference to the term “national emergency” is significant, the official added, because that allows wider latitude to send active-duty troops under existing legal authorities.
Human rights and immigrant advocacy groups condemned the decision to use the military, calling Mr. Trump’s response to the caravan a callous and politically motivated attempt to instill fear in American voters by fabricating a sense of crisis in the run-up to the midterm elections.
“The approach of a caravan of migrants that includes refugees fleeing persecution and violence is not a crisis, but President Trump is yet again spreading hatred and fear, hoping to score political points by making Americans fear refugees,” said Mike Breen, the chief executive of Human Rights First, an advocacy group. “The president should not be using the military to further a partisan agenda.”
The military deployment is one element of a multifaceted effort that senior administration officials have been discussing privately for weeks to try to satisfy the president’s demand to do more to secure the border. Kirstjen M. Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, who has briefed Mr. Trump about the caravan as well as data showing a large uptick in the number of apprehensions at the border over the past year, has been leading the effort.
On Friday, Ms. Nielsen is scheduled to travel to California to visit a newly constructed border barrier that the Department of Homeland Security describes as “President Trump’s 30-foot border wall.”
The barrier is actually a replacement project first proposed by the Border Patrol in 2009 under the Obama administration, which replaces older structures constructed in the 1990s. The $18 million project replaces two and a half miles of old fencing."
by, Julie Hirschfeld Davis & Thomas Gibbons-Neff
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BTW, the New York Times is correct in stating that the replacement barrier (both in San Diego and Calexico) was appropriated under Obama - I point this out because a couple of weeks ago the San Diego Union Tribune incorrectly reported it was appropriated under Trump.
The point is, these new threats are outrageous and frightening. Unknown if this whackamole Trump will actually go through with these threats.
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I'm putting this AP report up, because so far I have not seen reports from the Mexican News sources of Mexican Federal Police harassing the migrantes; AP points out an example of such harassment and the fact that the Mexican government is not helping the marching migrantes with any sort humanitarian aid. If you see a Mexican report which addresses these issues,please leave a link.
From MSN
AP
Sickness, Fear, Harassment In Mexico Whittle Away At Caravan
The group, many with children and even pushing toddlers in strollers, departed Mapastepec at dawn with more than 1,000 miles still to go before they reach the U.S. border.
They had advanced about 95 miles (150 kilometers) as the crow flies since thousands burst across Mexico's southernmost border six days earlier.
The column stretched for more than a mile as the migrants left the town square where many spent the night. The municipality of some 45,000 people, along with churches and volunteers, offered some medicine and donated water, clothing baby formula and baby bottles.
As they reached the highway, families with young children packed sidewalks asking for donations and rides to the next stop, Pijijipiapan, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) further ahead.
Melkin Claros, 34, was traveling with his 7-year old son and a teenage nephew and remained steadfast in his goal. "Everyone's objective is to arrive (in the United States)," he said, adding that he planned to request asylum because gangs made it impossible to live in Honduras.
"It's true you risk your life a lot here, but we risk more in our country."
Still, Mexican officials say nearly 1,700 have dropped out of the caravan to apply for asylum in Mexico, and a few hundred have accepted government offers to bus them back to their home countries.
Carlos Roberto Hernandez, of Yoro province in Honduras, dropped out after developing a rumbling cough during the scorching daytime heat and evening rains.
"We got hit by rain, and ever since then I've had a cold," Hernandez said. Asked Wednesday if he would make another attempt to reach the U.S., he said emphatically: "No. I'm going to make my life in Honduras."
For Pedro Arturo Torres, it appeared to be homesickness that broke his determination to reach the U.S.
"We didn't know what lay ahead," said Torres. "We want to return to our country, where you can get by — even if just with beans, but you can survive, there with our families, at peace."
The Mexican federal government's attitude has also played a role in wearing down the caravan.
All the food, old clothes, water and medicine given to the migrants have come from private citizens, church groups or sympathetic local officials.
The federal government hasn't given the migrants on the road a single meal, a bathroom or a bottle of water. It has reserved those only for migrants who turn themselves in at immigration offices to apply for visas or be deported.
Sometimes federal police have interfered with the caravan.
In at least one instance, The Associated Press saw federal police officers force a half-dozen passenger vans to pull over and make the drivers kick migrants off, while leaving Mexican passengers aboard. In a climate where heat makes walking nearly impossible at midday, such tactics may eventually take a toll on migrants' health.
In Mapastepec, where the main group stayed Wednesday night, it appeared the size of the caravan had diminished slightly. The United Nations estimated earlier in the week that about 7,000 people were in the group. The Mexican government gave its own figure Wednesday of "approximately 3,630."
Parents say they keep going for their children's futures, and fears of what could happen to them back home in gang-dominated Honduras, which was the main motivation for deciding to leave in the first place.
"They can't be alone. ... There's always danger," said Ludin Giron, a Honduran street vendor making the difficult journey with her three young children. "When (gang members) see a pretty girl, they want her for themselves. If they see a boy, they want to get him into drugs."
Refusing either demand can be deadly. Honduras has a homicide rate of about 43 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world for any country not in open war.
Espinosa, a tortilla maker from Cortes, Honduras, said there was no work back home. "That's why we decided to come here, to give a better future for our children," she said.
Such caravans have taken place regularly, if on a smaller scale, over the years, but U.S. President Donald Trump has seized on the phenomenon this year and made it a rallying call for his Republican base ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
Trump has blamed Democrats for what he says are weak immigration laws, and he claimed that MS-13 gang members and unknown "Middle Easterners" were hiding among the migrants. He later acknowledged there was "no proof" of the claim Middle Easterners were in the crowd. But he tweeted Wednesday that the U.S. "will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!"
Associated Press journalists traveling with the caravan have met throngs of Hondurans, as well as Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans, but no one from the Mideast.
Another, smaller caravan earlier this year dwindled greatly as it passed through Mexico, with only about 200 making it to the California border. Those who do make it into the U.S. face a hard time being allowed to stay. U.S. authorities do not consider poverty, which many cite as a reason for migrating, in processing asylum applications.
Carmen Mejia from Copan, Honduras, carried 3-year-old Britany Sofia Alvarado in her arms, and clutched the hand of 7-year-old Miralia Alejandra Alvarado, also sweaty — and feverish.
Mejia said she was worn out. Still, she pledged to go on. "I've walked a long way. I don't want to return. I want a better future for my children."
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Aristegui Full Coverage.
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Caravana Migrante Updates 10/27/18:
We have been having connection problems here due to the heavy fog, electricity off & on so I'm late.
Here are just some Caravana Migrante Updates from yesterday & today:
10/26/18:
From La Jornada
Policia Federal Detiene a Migrantes de La Caravana
Por, Elio Henriquez
(BTW, I noticed NBC picked up this report today)
Pasted for you:
"Arriaga, Chis . Federal police and agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM) detained a group of undocumented Central Americans who were walking in a caravan from the border city of Hidalgo to Tapachula, government sources reported.
They said that the number of detained migrants could reach 300, although other sources indicated that they were around 100, since many of them managed to escape through the bush.
They added that the police operation was carried out at the height of the municipality of Frontera Hidalgo, after the uniformed were placed on the road to prevent the passage of the caravan.
They reported that the detained Central Americans were transferred to the 21st century station of the INM, located in Tapachula."
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| courtesy Proceso |
Here is the report from Proceso:
Por, Isain Mandujano
Pasted For You:
"ARRIAGA, Chis. (appro) .- Agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM), with the support of the Federal Police (PF), deployed an operation to intercept and detain a group of 300 Honduran migrants who left this morning from the border municipality of Suchiate, and they hoped to join the caravan of migrants that arrived in Arriaga today.
Given this, some of the migrants dispersed and began to run through the brush, but they were caught. The agents of the INM told them that they would not be hurt. However, they were taken against their will to the Siglo XXI Migration Station to register them and initiate their refugee application process before the Mexican Commission for Assistance to Refugees (Comar).
After signing them, they were told they would be taken to the "shelter", a detention center set up by the federal government at the facilities of the Mesoamerican Fair, where up to now there are some 1,700 people, many of them against their will. They can not leave or have contact with their relatives abroad.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the Honduran exodus contingent arrived today to Arriaga, supported by the mayor of Tonalá, Manuel Narcía Coutiño.
So that they did not stay in the central plaza of their town, the mayor of Tonalá provided them with cargo trucks from the town hall and the private initiative, to transfer them once and for all to the next town, Arriaga, the last point in Chiapas territory, before to enter the Oaxacan territory."
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10/26/18:
Proceso published this piece by Arturo Rodriquez which highlights the anti-migrante attitude of the old guard. You might want to check out Arturo's other reports while you are there:
Notas Sin Pauta
Por, Arturo Rodriguez
Pasted For You :
Before migrants, the ruinous Mexico
Arturo Rodríguez García
In 2003, news was displayed in the police sections of local newspapers in Coahuila: two Honduran migrants had been stoned in the vicinity of a railway route and one of them, Ismael de Jesús Martínez Ortiz, was killed in the attack.
The attack was perpetrated by agents of a private security company, responsible for guarding the trains, which was preceded by numerous complaints against their guards for assaults on migrants in transit who, by naturally following their way, left unfinished processes and, therefore, aggressors in impunity.
Until then, a particularly relevant piece of information had not been disseminated: the security company was owned by Miguel Nazar Haro, the bloodthirsty ex-head of the Federal Security Directorate.
For several weeks the survivor of the attack, Germán Turcio Bonilla, convalesced in a hospital and then was lodged in a hotel that the police instances of that entity used to destine to the custody of people in arraigo. The victim was thus subjected to a confinement close to the prison, with the purpose of keeping him in the city and continuing the process of homicide, until Bishop Raúl Vera and the priest, Pedro Pantoja, managed to assume their maintenance and lodging.
That episode consolidated Saltillo's reputation for violence against migrants and, however, in 2007, would extend to the entire migratory route from the southern border to the northern border, with companies no longer as perpetrators. of security but of an entelechy: the organized crime that, it was said, submitted to all institutions, including the National Institute of Migration.
Once again, as happens with social leaders, journalists, opponents or anyone who is uncomfortable for political or economic interests, and is victimized, the State has the perfect excuse to disappear and kill migrants, because it will not be responsible for anything other than Sometimes, and only under internal and external pressure, some miserable people, identified as assassins at the moment of being presented, people without many possibilities of defense. Difficult, however, was to articulate regarding assaults, murders and crimes, which was the business that is the first and last objective of a criminal group.
Perhaps for this reason, the next step was to stigmatize "the crime" to the migrants, with leaks about alleged illicit operations -which the pretext of the narco gives everything-, overexpose those crimes in which a walker had allegedly incurred, magnify a theft of starving and establishing a xenophobic opinion on a small scale, in cities and border crossings, where migrants roam with hunger.
If a stamp is memorable to me of the borders that I have known, it is, for the dramatic, the one of Tecún Umán-Frontera Hidalgo, with its going and coming of merchandise in rafts of parquet and old rim; with pickets of soldiers that testify the free movement of people and the most painful version of free trade, through the Suchiate, spatial space of the exchange of miseries.
Three decades after having crossed it, I am surprised today in the chronicles, reading that the conditions of that border are the same and that only before the migrant caravan they changed momentarily, while the security bodies of the State exposed victims; another change is because the incursion of mass poverty exalted the long work of xenophobic inculturation; and finally, one more change is because the visibility of the caravan occurs at a key electoral moment for the American Donald Trump.
From that 2003 until now, a conclusion: with a private, anonymous or governmental mark, without a known beneficiary, in Mexico, by system, it continues to be literally and symbolically stoned, to Ismael and Germán, while a certain sector of Mexican society feasts with rudeness ."
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10/27/18:
Meanwhile, Pena Nieto opened his arms to the migrantes, offering them food, security, medical assistance and jobs. It was without doubt a "Mi Casa Es Tu Casa" moment. The catch was that they turn themselves in. The migrantes rejected the offer and doubled down - but not before being harassed again, this time by the Gendarmeria in Oaxaca.
From Frontera:
Migrantes En Contra De Plan De Pena
Por, Eduardo Lopez
In 2003, news was displayed in the police sections of local newspapers in Coahuila: two Honduran migrants had been stoned in the vicinity of a railway route and one of them, Ismael de Jesús Martínez Ortiz, was killed in the attack.
The attack was perpetrated by agents of a private security company, responsible for guarding the trains, which was preceded by numerous complaints against their guards for assaults on migrants in transit who, by naturally following their way, left unfinished processes and, therefore, aggressors in impunity.
Until then, a particularly relevant piece of information had not been disseminated: the security company was owned by Miguel Nazar Haro, the bloodthirsty ex-head of the Federal Security Directorate.
For several weeks the survivor of the attack, Germán Turcio Bonilla, convalesced in a hospital and then was lodged in a hotel that the police instances of that entity used to destine to the custody of people in arraigo. The victim was thus subjected to a confinement close to the prison, with the purpose of keeping him in the city and continuing the process of homicide, until Bishop Raúl Vera and the priest, Pedro Pantoja, managed to assume their maintenance and lodging.
That episode consolidated Saltillo's reputation for violence against migrants and, however, in 2007, would extend to the entire migratory route from the southern border to the northern border, with companies no longer as perpetrators. of security but of an entelechy: the organized crime that, it was said, submitted to all institutions, including the National Institute of Migration.
Once again, as happens with social leaders, journalists, opponents or anyone who is uncomfortable for political or economic interests, and is victimized, the State has the perfect excuse to disappear and kill migrants, because it will not be responsible for anything other than Sometimes, and only under internal and external pressure, some miserable people, identified as assassins at the moment of being presented, people without many possibilities of defense. Difficult, however, was to articulate regarding assaults, murders and crimes, which was the business that is the first and last objective of a criminal group.
Perhaps for this reason, the next step was to stigmatize "the crime" to the migrants, with leaks about alleged illicit operations -which the pretext of the narco gives everything-, overexpose those crimes in which a walker had allegedly incurred, magnify a theft of starving and establishing a xenophobic opinion on a small scale, in cities and border crossings, where migrants roam with hunger.
If a stamp is memorable to me of the borders that I have known, it is, for the dramatic, the one of Tecún Umán-Frontera Hidalgo, with its going and coming of merchandise in rafts of parquet and old rim; with pickets of soldiers that testify the free movement of people and the most painful version of free trade, through the Suchiate, spatial space of the exchange of miseries.
Three decades after having crossed it, I am surprised today in the chronicles, reading that the conditions of that border are the same and that only before the migrant caravan they changed momentarily, while the security bodies of the State exposed victims; another change is because the incursion of mass poverty exalted the long work of xenophobic inculturation; and finally, one more change is because the visibility of the caravan occurs at a key electoral moment for the American Donald Trump.
From that 2003 until now, a conclusion: with a private, anonymous or governmental mark, without a known beneficiary, in Mexico, by system, it continues to be literally and symbolically stoned, to Ismael and Germán, while a certain sector of Mexican society feasts with rudeness ."
~~~~~
10/27/18:
Meanwhile, Pena Nieto opened his arms to the migrantes, offering them food, security, medical assistance and jobs. It was without doubt a "Mi Casa Es Tu Casa" moment. The catch was that they turn themselves in. The migrantes rejected the offer and doubled down - but not before being harassed again, this time by the Gendarmeria in Oaxaca.
From Frontera:
Migrantes En Contra De Plan De Pena
Por, Eduardo Lopez
Pasted For You :
"MEXICO CITY
The migrant caravan rejected the "You are your house" plan, proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto, which would give them employment, health, education and regularization possibilities in the country.
In an assembly, the Central Americans did not accept the conditions of staying in Chiapas or Oaxaca to access the program and they agreed to continue on their way to the United States.
Today at dawn the contingent of about 6 thousand people will depart to the Municipality of Tapanatepec, Oaxaca.
"Continue this journey, follow this way of life, we leave tomorrow at three in the morning," said Irineo Mujica, coordinator of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, during the assembly.
They considered that the government measure only seeks to contain them in the South of the Republic where they assure that there are few job opportunities even for the Chiapanecans and Oaxacans.
In addition, the refuge application system is collapsed, according to activists, last year 80% of the procedures were rejected.
They also asked the United Nations to protect the caravan, as they assured that there is harassment of the immigration authorities through arrests of members.
MIGRANTS DO NOT TRUST GOVERNMENT
ARRIAGA, CHIAPAS. - The program "You are in your house" will not be successful among the Central American migrants who travel in caravan to the United States because it only applies in Chiapas and Oaxaca, and they do not want to stay in these entities, said David López, a member of the organization People without Borders.
"Migrants do not trust the government, we already have the experiences of past caravans, they always make us the same promises so that these people stay and deport them, and as promised, nothing comes," he said.
Some 6,000 undocumented Central Americans are in Chiapas, waiting to move to northern Mexico and reach the border with the United States.
Lopez added that the offer of this program is not viable and contradicts the intention of the migrants, besides that most want to go to the neighboring country of the North because they have relatives waiting for them and helping them to arrive."
In an assembly, the Central Americans did not accept the conditions of staying in Chiapas or Oaxaca to access the program and they agreed to continue on their way to the United States.
Today at dawn the contingent of about 6 thousand people will depart to the Municipality of Tapanatepec, Oaxaca.
"Continue this journey, follow this way of life, we leave tomorrow at three in the morning," said Irineo Mujica, coordinator of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, during the assembly.
They considered that the government measure only seeks to contain them in the South of the Republic where they assure that there are few job opportunities even for the Chiapanecans and Oaxacans.
In addition, the refuge application system is collapsed, according to activists, last year 80% of the procedures were rejected.
They also asked the United Nations to protect the caravan, as they assured that there is harassment of the immigration authorities through arrests of members.
MIGRANTS DO NOT TRUST GOVERNMENT
ARRIAGA, CHIAPAS. - The program "You are in your house" will not be successful among the Central American migrants who travel in caravan to the United States because it only applies in Chiapas and Oaxaca, and they do not want to stay in these entities, said David López, a member of the organization People without Borders.
"Migrants do not trust the government, we already have the experiences of past caravans, they always make us the same promises so that these people stay and deport them, and as promised, nothing comes," he said.
Some 6,000 undocumented Central Americans are in Chiapas, waiting to move to northern Mexico and reach the border with the United States.
Lopez added that the offer of this program is not viable and contradicts the intention of the migrants, besides that most want to go to the neighboring country of the North because they have relatives waiting for them and helping them to arrive."