- Pro-Palestinian protesters in car caravan disrupt Christmas caroling in Washington Square Park New York Post
- NYC pro-Palestinian protests target major transit hubs: ‘Bring banners, bullhorns’ FOX 5 New York
- ‘No Xmas as usual’: pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate in US cities The Guardian
- ‘No Christmas as usual’: Pro-Palestinian protestors storm city streets on ‘Super Saturday’ The Hill
- Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protestors gather on 5th Avenue in Midtown, Manhattan in attempt to disrupt Christmas shopping WABC-TV
Tag Archives: caravan
First on CNN: Biden administration launches ‘unprecedented’ operation to disrupt human smuggling as caravan moves north
The operation — which includes deploying hundreds of personnel throughout Latin America and a multi-million-dollar investment — comes as the US continues to grapple with a large flow of migrants to the US-Mexico border, including this week as a caravan of up to 5,000 migrants journeys north from southern Mexico.
“We have brought an all-of-government effort to attack the smuggling organizations. It’s not just Homeland Security Investigations, it’s not just US Customs and Border Protection. But we’re working very carefully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a number of agencies within the Department of Justice, and, of course, our partners in Mexico,” Mayorkas told CNN.
“I think it’s scale and scope; it’s tactics and strategy. It’s really unprecedented,” he added.
Mayorkas is attending the Ninth Summit of the Americas, which is being hosted by the United States in Los Angeles. The gathering of nearly two dozen heads of states from the Western Hemisphere has focused on stabilizing the region and investing in it to, in part, stem the flow migration — an issue that has dogged US presidents, including Joe Biden, for years.
The mass migration within the hemisphere came into sharp focus again this week, as thousands of migrants joined a caravan heading to the US southern border. Asked about how the latest operation applies to that caravan, Mayorkas stressed the administration is “tackling the smuggling organizations that exploit these people.”
The “Sting Operation,” led by the Department of Homeland Security, has so far yielded around 20,000 “disruption actions” that include arrests and prosecutions, seizures of property and criminal investigations, according to the department. The US has also surged over 1,300 personnel throughout the Western Hemisphere and invested over $50 million.
In the last eight weeks, nearly 2,000 smugglers have been arrested, marking a 600% increase in law enforcement actions taken against such actors compared to efforts in previous years, DHS said.
The latest operation builds upon previous initiatives by the Biden administration to go after smugglers who migrants often depend on as they make their way to the US-Mexico border. Last spring, DHS also announced an effort to crack down on criminal smuggling organizations, alongside federal partners.
DHS also set up a new intelligence gathering and law enforcement unit to monitor the movement of migrants and helped stand up a task force, led by the Justice Department, to investigate and prosecute human smuggling and trafficking networks.
Migration looms over Summit of the Americas
At the US southern border, a new trend has been taking shape that’s posed a challenge to the Biden administration: About 40% of border crossers are now from countries outside of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
More than 6 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have fled the country, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Nicaraguans have also increasingly been migrating, as well as Haitians who had moved to the region years ago.
Over the course of Summit of the Americas, administration officials have acknowledged the mass migration in the Western Hemisphere, stressing the need for all countries to help alleviate the flow and create better conditions in country.
The gathering has served as a platform for the Biden administration, leaders of countries in the region, and the public and private sector to come to agreements about the path forward in stemming the flow of irregular migration.
Biden has aimed to demonstrate a level of cohesion across the two continents’ politics, but boycotts by leaders of several nations — including Mexico and three Central American countries — has put a damper on the summit.
The four leaders refused to attend because Biden declined to extend invitations to the three autocratic leaders, instead sending lower-level delegations.
Mayorkas dismissed concerns about key leaders skipping the summit, telling CNN: “All the countries are represented here. So, of course, the president of Mexico is not here but I had the good fortune of seeing the foreign minister of Mexico, Secretary Ebrard, here with whom I have worked very closely throughout my trips to Mexico as well as our continuing dialogue. So no, my confidence is unblemished.”
On Friday, Biden will announce a regional partnership to address mass migration in the Western Hemisphere, according to a senior administration official.
Against the backdrop of the Summit of the Americas, Biden and countries in the hemisphere will sign onto a declaration, dubbed the Los Angeles declaration, though the official declined to say how many countries would join the agreement.
The agreement, the official added, “is centered around responsibility sharing and economic support for countries that have been most impacted by refugee and migration flows.”
Under the declaration, governments are expected to commit to expanding temporary worker programs, bolstering legal pathways like refugee resettlement and family reunification, providing support to countries hosting large migrant populations, and cracking down on human smuggling networks.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Struggling Venezuelans put faith in latest Mexico migrant caravan
VILLA COMALTITLAN, Mexico, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Venezuelans are in a migrant caravan that departed this week from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, according to organizers, just as Mexico is mulling tighter restrictions on their access to the country.
Reuters spoke with a dozen Venezuelans who said they had left in the caravan of around 3,000 people from the city of Tapachula on Thursday after fleeing poverty and hardship in their homeland, where elections are due this weekend.
Luis Garcia, one of the caravan’s organizers, said Venezuelans made up between 20% and 30% of the group. A number related harrowing episodes on their journey from South America, particularly in Panama’s Darien region.
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“I don’t want to stay in Mexico, we want to go to the United States, we just want them to let us pass,” said Daysi, a 63-year-old Venezuelan from the city of Maracaibo who joined the caravan with six relatives, including two of her children.
“Nobody leaves their country because they want to, but there are days when you eat once, others not even that, there’s no medicine, there’s nothing, we’re dying.”
The government’s National Migration Institute, which has tried to break up caravans, could not say how many Venezuelans were in the group, which also featured Central Americans.
The number of Venezuelans crossing Mexico has leapt in 2021, and Reuters last week reported the government is considering setting stricter entry requirements to stem the flow.
The caravan, the second large one to depart Tapachula within a month, has made slow progress and on Saturday reached the village of Villa Comaltitlan in the state of Chiapas.
Another 34-year-old Venezuelan woman from Caracas, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told Reuters by telephone she was beaten and raped by two hooded men in Darien, but resolved to continue “through the power of God.”
“They put a gun in my mouth,” she said. “I couldn’t say no because there were dead women there who resisted.”
Reuters could not independently verify her story, but she shared a document showing she had registered the sexual assault with doctors. She too planned to reach the United States so she can send money back to her baby and mother in Venezuela.
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Reporting by Jose Torres in Villa Comaltitlan and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City
Editing by Dave Graham and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Struggling Venezuelans put faith in latest Mexico migrant caravan
By Jose Torres and Lizbeth Diaz
VILLA COMALTITLAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Hundreds of Venezuelans are in a migrant caravan that departed this week from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, according to organizers, just as Mexico is mulling tighter restrictions on their access to the country.
Reuters spoke with a dozen Venezuelans who said they had left in the caravan of around 3,000 people from the city of Tapachula on Thursday after fleeing poverty and hardship in their homeland, where elections are due this weekend.
Luis Garcia, one of the caravan’s organizers, said Venezuelans made up between 20% and 30% of the group. A number related harrowing episodes on their journey from South America, particularly in Panama’s Darien region.
“I don’t want to stay in Mexico, we want to go to the United States, we just want them to let us pass,” said Daysi, a 63-year-old Venezuelan from the city of Maracaibo who joined the caravan with six relatives, including two of her children.
“Nobody leaves their country because they want to, but there are days when you eat once, others not even that, there’s no medicine, there’s nothing, we’re dying.”
The government’s National Migration Institute, which has tried to break up caravans, could not say how many Venezuelans were in the group, which also featured Central Americans.
The number of Venezuelans crossing Mexico has leapt in 2021, and Reuters last week reported the government is considering setting stricter entry requirements to stem the flow.
The caravan, the second large one to depart Tapachula within a month, has made slow progress and on Saturday reached the village of Villa Comaltitlan in the state of Chiapas.
Another 34-year-old Venezuelan woman from Caracas, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told Reuters by telephone she was beaten and raped by two hooded men in Darien, but resolved to continue “through the power of God.”
“They put a gun in my mouth,” she said. “I couldn’t say no because there were dead women there who resisted.”
Reuters could not independently verify her story, but she shared a document showing she had registered the sexual assault with doctors. She too planned to reach the United States so she can send money back to her baby and mother in Venezuela.
(Reporting by Jose Torres in Villa Comaltitlan and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Dave Graham and Matthew Lewis)
Mainstream morning news ignores massive migrant caravan heading to US border
Media top headlines October 26
In media news today, a Washington Post columnist knocks CNN over its coverage of Joe Rogan, President Biden jokes to school children about avoiding questions from reporters, and Terry McAuliffe got ‘agitated’ when asked about his panicking campaign by Axios
A massive migrant caravan left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico Monday on the third day of their trek toward the U.S. southern border, but anyone who relies on mainstream morning news would have no idea.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck monitored Monday’s editions of NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS Mornings” but didn’t find a peep about the largest and most organized migrant caravan this year.
“This story was ignored on Monday’s broadcast network morning newscasts,” Houck wrote, noting that CNN and MSNBC didn’t bother with the story, either.
Asylum-seeking migrants from Central America, who were sent back to Mexico under Title 42 after crossing the border into the U.S. from Mexico, in the public square where hundreds of migrants live in tents, in Reynosa, Mexico, August 27, 2021. REUTERS/Go Nakamura
(REUTERS/Go Nakamura)
MIGRANT CARAVAN CONTAINING THOUSANDS TRAVELS THROUGH MEXICO TOWARD US BORDER: ‘TELL BIDEN WE ARE COMING’
“Worse yet, the story didn’t receive a mention on the two liberal cable networks either as CNN’s ‘New Day’ and MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ couldn’t even spare a few minutes to offer a condescending dismissal of the caravan as imaginary or insignificant,” Houck wrote.
The caravan is made up of mostly Central Americans, South Americans and Haitians with participants registering to join via QR code starting on Oct. 15.
CNN’s “New Day” failed to cover the massive migrant caravan heading to the U.S. border, according to NewsBusters.
Houck also noticed “New Day was focused on former President Obama declaring culture wars a “trumped-up” and “phony,” while “Morning Joe” mostly covered the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the latest Facebook controversy. Over on the broadcast networks, things were much lighter.
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS GATHERING AT SOUTHERN BORDER AHEAD OF ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO RESTART’ SOURCES SAY
“Instead of covering a new chapter in the border crisis, ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ touted a haunted house in Denver, Colorado, ‘CBS Mornings’ aired an interview with Bruce Springsteen and former President Obama, and NBC’s ‘Today’ had a brief on Ryan Gosling being cast to play Ken in a Barbie movie,” Houck observed.
As for the caravan, video footage captured by Fox News showed thousands of migrants, including small children being pushed in strollers, walking north about 20 miles north of Tapachula. One migrant carried a large wooden cross at the front of the caravan while others carried American flags and signs with President Joe Biden’s name.
“Tell Biden we are coming,” one migrant named William from El Salvador told Fox News.
U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) on climate change, from an auditorium at the White House in Washington, Sept. 17, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Customs and Border Protection announced Friday that there had been more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021, breaking records. Additionally, there were more than 192,000 encounters in September alone – a slight decrease from the more than 200,000 encountered in July and August, but a sign that the border crisis that has dogged the Biden administration is far from over. The administration also had to deal with a massive Haitian migrant surge in September, and fears that more surges could be on the way.
Border Patrol sources told Fox News that as many as 60,000 migrants are amassing on the Mexican side of the border and intend to enter the U.S. in the coming days.
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Fox News’ Griff Jenkins, Adam Shaw and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.
Migrant caravan containing thousands travels through Mexico toward US border: ‘Tell Biden we are coming’
A massive migrant caravan organized via QR code left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico Monday morning on the third day of their long trek toward the U.S. southern border.
The caravan, made up of mostly Central Americans, South Americans and Haitians, is the largest and most organized of its kind this year, with participants registering to join via QR code starting on Oct. 15.
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS GATHERING AT SOUTHERN BORDER AHEAD OF ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO RESTART’ SOURCES SAY
“Tell Biden we are coming,” one migrant named William from El Salvador told Fox News.
Video footage captured by Fox News showed thousands of migrants, including small children being pushed in strollers, walking north about 20 miles north of Tapachula. One migrant carried a large wooden cross at the front of the caravan while others carried American flags and signs with President Biden’s name.
“President Biden, we need your help,” one migrant said.
Unlike the caravans that made headlines in 2019, this one will take considerably longer. The Mexican government has banned truckers from letting migrants hitch a ride, so they will have to walk the entire 2,500 miles to the Texas border.
Mexican officials told Fox News that there are more than 3,000 migrants in the caravan, which left Tapachula on the border with Guatemala on Saturday.
Within hours of their trek, the flood of migrants encountered a wall of Mexican interior police wearing protective gear and wielding shields. But the security did not hold, as migrants forced their way through the blockade and continued on their way to try and seek entry into the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection announced Friday that there had been more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021, breaking records. Additionally, there were more than 192,000 encounters in September alone – a slight decrease from the more than 200,000 encountered in July and August, but a sign that the border crisis that has dogged the Biden administration is far from over. The administration also had to deal with a massive Haitian migrant surge in September, and fears that more surges could be on the way.
The Biden administration has blamed root causes like poverty, corruption and violence in Central America elsewhere and has pledged massive investments of taxpayer money to try and combat those root causes.
Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to the rapid rollback of Trump-era border policies by the Biden administration – particularly the “Remain in Mexico” policy that required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they await hearings on their requests for safe haven in the U.S.
The Biden administration has vowed to try to terminate the Remain in Mexico policy again through a different method after a federal court in Texas ruled that the administration’s previous memorandum on ending the policy was against the law.
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The Department of Homeland Security said it will reinstate the policy by mid-November in response to the court order upheld by the Supreme Court.
Border Patrol sources told Fox News that as many as 60,000 migrants are amassing on the Mexican side of the border and intend to enter the U.S. in the coming days in anticipation of the policy’s re-implementation.
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
Migrant caravan broken up again in Southern Mexico
Mexican border agents and police broke up a caravan of hundreds of migrants Sunday who had set out from southernmost Mexico — the fourth such caravan officials have raided in recent days.
The group of about 800 — largely Central Americans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Cubans — had spent then night at a basketball court near Huixtla, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) up the road from the border city of Tapachula where they had been kept awaiting processing by Mexican immigration officials.
But shortly before dawn, immigration agents backed by police with anti-riot gear went into the crowd, pushing many into trucks.
Hundreds of the migrants escaped running toward a river and hid in the vegetation.
BORDER PATROL SCRAMBLES TO FILL GAP IN WALL LEFT BY BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
“They began to hit me all over,” a woman said amid tears, alleging that police also beat her husband and pulled one of her daughters from her arms.
EL FLORIDO, GUATEMALA – JANUARY 16: Migrants enter Guatemala after breaking a police barricade at the border checkpoint on January 16, 2021 in El Florido, Guatemala. The caravan departed from Honduras to walk across Guatemala and Mexico to eventually reach the United States. Central Americans expect to receive asylum and most Hondurans decided to migrate after being hit by recent hurricanes Eta and Iota. Honduras recently asked to U.S. to extend their Temporary Protected Status. (Photo by Josue Decavele/Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
“Until they give me my daughter, I’m not leaving,” she told an Associated Press camera crew. But immigration agents surrounded the woman, her husband, and other child and detained them.
The group was at least the fourth to be broken up over the past week after heading out in a caravan north.
The government has insisted that excessive force against a Haitian migrant caught on camera the past weekend was an aberration and two immigration agents were suspended.
HIGH-TECH VIRTUAL WALL IS THE LATEST DEFENSE AT THE US-MEXICO BORDER
Mexico has faced immigration pressures from the north, south, and within its own borders in recent weeks as thousands of migrants have crossed its southern border, the United States has sent thousands more back from the north and a U.S. court has ordered the Biden administration to renew a policy of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for long periods of time.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday the strategy of containing migrants in the south was untenable on its own and more investment is needed in the region to keep Central Americans from leaving their homes.
Thousands of mostly Haitian migrants stuck in Tapachula have increasingly protested in recent weeks. Many have been waiting there for months, some up to a year, for asylum requests to be processed.
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Mexico’s refugee agency has been overwhelmed. So far this year, more than 77,000 people have applied for protected status in Mexico, 55,000 of those in Tapachula, where shelters are full.
Unable to work legally and frustrated by the delay and poor conditions, hundreds have set out north.
Dozens gather for car caravan, virtual Women’s March in Sacramento
The pandemic forced the Women’s March Sacramento to look a little different this year. Participants were invited to join a car caravan around the state Capitol and listen to speakers virtually. A permit for an in-person rally was denied, but organizers say now is not the time for complacency.“Just because there’s a new presidential administration, that doesn’t mean women have equity. And it doesn’t mean that we have equal pay. And it doesn’t mean that we have racial justice for all. And it doesn’t mean Indigenous have their rights. Or climate justice,” said Scarlette Bustos with Women’s March Sacramento.”All of those things are women’s issues. And so we have speakers who are leaders in the Sacramento and surrounding communities and they are giving calls to action,” she said.Leaders of the event posted those speeches on their Facebook page Women’s March Sacramento.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
The pandemic forced the Women’s March Sacramento to look a little different this year.
Participants were invited to join a car caravan around the state Capitol and listen to speakers virtually.
A permit for an in-person rally was denied, but organizers say now is not the time for complacency.
“Just because there’s a new presidential administration, that doesn’t mean women have equity. And it doesn’t mean that we have equal pay. And it doesn’t mean that we have racial justice for all. And it doesn’t mean Indigenous have their rights. Or climate justice,” said Scarlette Bustos with Women’s March Sacramento.
“All of those things are women’s issues. And so we have speakers who are leaders in the Sacramento and surrounding communities and they are giving calls to action,” she said.
Leaders of the event posted those speeches on their Facebook page Women’s March Sacramento.