GUATEMALA CITY — One man was wounded Saturday after gunmen opened fire on soldiers at a checkpoint providing area security for a visit by Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to a town near the Mexican border.
Rubén Téllez, a spokesman for the Guatemalan army, said soldiers were working a highway checkpoint intended to act as perimeter security for the presidential visit to La Laguna, a town in Huehuetenango province.
Téllez said a car approached the checkpoint and its occupants then opened fire on soldiers, who returned fire.
One man, possibly a Mexican, was shot in the legs during the incident and was taken for medical treatment.
It does not appear that Giammattei was ever in danger, was the target of the attack or was anywhere near the shooting.
The area is frequented by human traffickers and drug smugglers, many of whom work for Mexican gangs.
“Personnel of the Guatemalan army halted a vehicle that approached their location,” Téllez said. “But the occupants of the vehicle, upon seeing the presence of the military personnel, started firing, to which the soldiers responded, leaving one person wounded while the rest of the occupants of the vehicle escaped in the direction of Mexico.”
Long-running land dispute triggered clashes that left at least one woman, three children and one police officer dead.
Guatemalan authorities have reported that 12 people were killed in the village of Chiquix, 155km (96 miles) east of the capital, where a long-running land dispute has sparked conflicts between the residents of two municipalities.
The victims include women and three children, authorities said on Saturday.
One police officer was also killed during the armed confrontation, while two more were wounded.
Guatemala’s National Police said in a statement that it was engaging leaders of the two communities in efforts to prevent future violence.
The office of the Human Rights Ombudsman also recommended beefing up the police presence in the area.
The land dispute, which dates back more than 100 years, has pitted residents of the Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán municipalities against each other.
A stowaway hidden in the landing gear compartment of an American Airlines jet survived a flight from his home country of Guatemala to Miami, where he was turned over to US immigration officials and taken to a hospital for evaluation.
The US customs and border protection agency confirmed the incident in a statement initially cited by Miami-based television station WTVJ, which posted video taken of the man at Miami international airport shortly after the plane landed on Saturday.
The video, attributed to the social media page Only in Dade on Instagram, showed the stowaway appearing dazed but otherwise unharmed, sitting on the tarmac beside the plane dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt, jacket and boots, as ground crew tended to him and asked if he wanted some water.
“US customs and border protection (CBP) officers at Miami international airport apprehended a 26-year-old man who attempted to evade detection in the landing gear compartment of an aircraft arriving from Guatemala Saturday morning,” the CBP statement said.
“The individual was evaluated by emergency medical services and taken to a hospital for medical assessment,” the agency added. “This incident remains under investigation.”
American Airlines issued a statement saying its Flight 1182 from Guatemala City to Miami arrived shortly after 10am local time and “was met by law enforcement due to a security issue”.
The airline gave no further details, except to say it was assisting in the investigation. The flight from Guatemala to Miami usually takes about 2½ hours.
Guatemala has accounted for a large portion of some 1.7 million migrants apprehended or expelled by US border agents over the past year, many of them Central Americans fleeing violent gangs and grinding poverty.
An immigration attorney, Angel Leal, told WTVJ the Guatemalan stowaway would be detained by CBP while facing an expedited removal order.
The incident was reminiscent of footage in August showing desperate Afghans trying to latch on to the exterior of a US military cargo jet during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul after Taliban forces seized control of Afghanistan. Separate video showed what appeared to be two people falling from the plane as it flew off from Kabul.
The Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment on Saturday’s incident.
According to the FAA, 129 people have attempted to stow away in the wheel wells or other areas of commercial aircraft worldwide since 1947. Of those, the agency said, 100 have died of injuries or exposure.
In one such incident in April 2014, a 16-year-old boy who ran away from home survived five hours in the wheel well of a jetliner as it flew from California to Hawaii.
Officials discovered a 26-year-old man inside an aircraft’s landing gear compartment after a flight from Guatemala landed in Miami on Saturday morning, NBC News reported.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement that the man was being evaluated at a hospital after he was discovered on the flight.
The agency said that he had “attempted to evade detection in the landing gear compartment of an aircraft arriving from Guatemala” before ultimately being detained by its officers, according to NBC.
American Airlines in a statement referred to the incident only as “a security issue” but said that “American Airlines flight 1182 with service from Guatemala(GUA) to Miami (MIA), arriving at 10:06 a.m. local time was met by law enforcement” and added that they were working with law enforcement officials.
The news comes as data from CBP has separately noted that arrests at the southern border have been on the decline since peaking in July. CBP data showed that 192,000 people were arrested along the southern border in September. Comparatively, in July that number reached a high of over 213,000.
Immigration policy has been a point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans, especially former President TrumpDonald TrumpJan. 6 panel faces double-edged sword with Alex Jones, Roger Stone Trump goes after Woodward, Costa over China Republicans seem set to win the midterms — unless they defeat themselves MORE, have claimed that the Biden administration has not done enough to address migrants entering the southern border.
At the same time, Democrats have blasted the previous administration’s controversial immigration policies, including a short-lived “zero-tolerance” policy in 2018 of separating families at the border who were seeking asylum.
Speaking in Guatemala in June during her first foreign trip as vice president, Kamala HarrisKamala HarrisPoll: Biden’s job approval gains two points Republicans seem set to win the midterms — unless they defeat themselves Poll: Harris, Michelle Obama lead for 2024 if Biden doesn’t run MORE urged would-be migrants to the U.S. from Central American countries to stay home.
“Do not come,” she said, repeatedly. “Do not come.”
A stowaway arrived in the landing gear of American Airlines flight 1182 at Miami International Airport Saturday after traveling from Guatemala.
Video from Only in Dade shows the man sitting on the ground as airport personnel tried to aid him and give him water.
The man survived the trip, a flight of about two hours and thirty minutes, and witnesses said he was unharmed.
“As of February 2021, 129 people have attempted to stow away in the wheel wells or other areas of commercial aircraft worldwide since 1947. Of those, 100 people (approximately 78%) died of injuries or exposure during the flight,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at Miami International Airport apprehended a 26-year-old man who attempted to evade detection in the landing gear compartment of an aircraft arriving from Guatemala Saturday morning,” a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. “The individual was evaluated by Emergency Medical Services and taken to a Hospital for medical assessment. Persons are taking extreme risks when they try to conceal themselves in confined spaces such as an aircraft. This incident remains under investigation.”
Immigration attorney Angel Leal said the man will now be detained by authorities.
“He’ll be detained by the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection,” Leal said.
Leal also says the man may be facing an expedited order of removal.
“And then at that point, if he’s in fact a person who’s trying to flee persecution and who wants to request asylum,” Leal said. “He’ll be afforded the opportunity for a credible fear interview before an asylum officer, but more than likely he’ll be detained during that process.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — President Joe Biden stayed mum on policy during a Saturday trip to Michigan, focusing instead on cherries — and cherry pie and cherry ice cream — and voters who were mask-free as coronavirus restrictions have eased. It had all the hallmarks of a campaign stop that he couldn’t make last year.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer greeted Biden when he arrived midday in Traverse City, which is hosting the National Cherry Festival, an event that attracted Presidents Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford in the past.
They skipped the festival, however, in favor of a cherry farm in nearby Antrim County, where Biden pitched his immigration plans when chatting with two couples from Guatemala who were picking fruit. He then greeted a long line of enthusiastic supporters stretched out behind a rope.
His trip was billed as part of a broader campaign by the administration to drum up public support for his bipartisan infrastructure package and other polices geared toward families and education. But the president was out for direct contact with voters and refrained from delivering remarks about his policy proposals.
Whitmer told reporters she spoke to Biden about infrastructure, although not about any projects for Michigan specifically.
“I’m the fix-the-damn-roads governor, so I talk infrastructure with everybody, including the president,” she said. In recent flooding, she said the state saw “under-invested infrastructure collide with climate change” and the freeways were under water.
“So this is an important moment. And that’s why this infrastructure package is so important. That’s also why I got the president rocky road fudge from Mackinac Island for his trip here,” she said.
Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow also said she spoke with the president about the infrastructure package as they toured the cherry farm, noting that her phone signal dropped to one bar and that the proposed broadband buildout was needed.
Biden’s host at King Orchards, Juliette King McAvoy, introduced him to the two Guatemalan couples, who she said had been working on the farm for 35 years. He told them he was proposing a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers. Biden then picked a cherry out of one of their baskets and ate it. He later bought pies at the farm’s market, including three varieties of cherry.
Before leaving Michigan, he stopped in at Moomers Homemade Ice Cream in Traverse City, where he bought Cherries Moobilie cones for Stabenow and Gary Peters, Michigan’s other Democratic senator. But for himself it was vanilla with chocolate chips in a waffle cone.
Told it was cherry country, Biden said, “Yeah, but I’m more of a chocolate chip guy.”
First lady Jill Biden also was on the road Saturday, traveling to Maine and New Hampshire, while Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting a union training center in Las Vegas.
The president has said the key to getting his $973 billion deal passed in Congress involves taking the case straight to voters. While Republicans and Democrats might squabble in Washington, Biden’s theory is that lawmakers of both parties want to deliver for their constituents.
White House officials negotiated a compromise with a bipartisan group of senators led by Republican Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
The agreement, announced in June, features $109 billion on roads and highways, $15 billion on electric vehicle infrastructure and transit systems and $65 billion toward broadband, among other expenditures on airports, drinking water systems and resiliency efforts to tackle climate change.
It would be funded by COVID-19 relief that was approved in 2020 but unspent, repurposed money for enhanced unemployment benefits and increased enforcement by the IRS on wealthier Americans who avoid taxes. The financing also depends on leasing 5G telecommunications spectrum, the strategic petroleum reserve and the potential economic growth produced by the investments.
Biden intends to pass additional initiatives on education and families as well as tax increases on the wealthy and corporations through the budget reconciliation process. This would allow the passage of Biden’s priorities by a simple majority vote, avoiding the 60-vote hurdle in a Senate split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Christians in the Holy Land marked Good Friday without the mass pilgrimages usually seen in the days leading up to Easter because of the coronavirus, and worshippers in many other predominantly Christian countries where the virus is still raging observed their second annual Holy Week with tight restrictions on gatherings.
In Jerusalem, many holy sites were open, thanks to an ambitious Israeli vaccination campaign. It was a stark contrast to last year, when the city was under lockdown. In neighboring Lebanon, Christians observed Good Friday under a lockdown and suffering a severe economic crisis.
In Latin America, penitents from Guatemala to Paraguay carried tree branches covered with thorns and large crosses in Passion Plays reenacting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. At the Vatican, Pope Francis visited a center where volunteers administered vaccinations to poor and disadvantaged people in Rome.
Worshippers in the Philippines and France marked a second annual Holy Week under movement restrictions amid outbreaks fanned by more contagious strains. In the U.S., officials urged Christians to celebrate outdoors, while social distancing, or in virtual ceremonies.
Franciscan friars in brown robes led hundreds of worshippers down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City, retracing what tradition holds were Jesus’ final steps, while reciting prayers through loudspeakers at the Stations of the Cross. Another group carried a large wooden cross, singing hymns and pausing to offer prayers.
Religious sites were open to limited numbers of faithful. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, died and rose from the dead, was open to visitors with masks and social distancing.
Despite one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns, air travel is still limited by quarantine and other restrictions, keeping away the foreign pilgrims who usually throng Jerusalem during Holy Week. In past years, tens of thousands of pilgrims would descend on the city’s holy sites.
“In regular years we urge people to come out. Last year we told people to stay at home,” said Wadie Abunassar, an adviser to church leaders in the Holy Land. “This year we are somehow silent.”
“We have to pray for those who can’t be here,” said Alejandro Gonzalez, a Mexican living in Israel. “Those of us who can be here have a responsibility to keep them in mind and to go in this Way of the Cross that they are going through as well.”
In Lebanon, Christians observed Good Friday amid a severe economic crisis exacerbated by the massive explosion that demolished parts of the capital last year. Even traditional Easter sweets are a luxury few can afford.
“People are not even talking about the feast,” says Majida Al Asaily, owner of a sweets shop in Beirut. “We haven’t witnessed anything like this year, despite the war and other difficulties that we had faced before.”
Israel included Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in its vaccination campaign, but has only provided a small number of vaccines to those in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has imported tens of thousands of doses for a population of more than 2.5 million.
At the Vatican, a masked Pope Francis posed for photos with some of the vaccination volunteers and recipients in the Vatican audience hall. Francis was to preside later Friday over the Way of the Cross procession in a nearly empty St. Peter’s Square, instead of the popular torchlit ritual he usually celebrates at the Colosseum.
In France, a nationwide 7 p.m. curfew forced parishes to move Good Friday ceremonies forward in the day, as the traditional Catholic night processions are being drastically scaled back or cancelled. Nineteen departments in France are on localized lockdowns, where parishioners can attend daytime Mass if they sign the government’s “travel certificate.”
Fire-ravaged Notre Dame did not hold a Good Friday mass this year, but the cathedral’s “Crown of Thorns” was being venerated by the cathedral’s clergy at its new temporary liturgical hub in the nearby church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
In Spain, there were no traditional processions for a second year in a row. Churches limited the number of worshippers. Many parishes went online with Mass and prayers via video streaming services.
In the Philippines, streets were eerily quiet and religious gatherings were prohibited in the capital, Manila, and four outlying provinces. The government placed the bustling region of more than 25 million people back under lockdown this week as it scrambled to contain an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.
The Philippines had started to reopen in hopes of breathing life into its suffering economy, but infections surged last month, apparently because of more contagious strains, increased public mobility and complacency.
In Kenya, all churches were ordered to close as part of a ban on large gatherings to contain a worsening outbreak. Joseph Karinga went to his church anyway and prayed outside the shuttered doors, in a garden near a shrine to Mary.
“I will just say my rosary here and go home,” he said.
___
Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Thomas Adamson in Leeds, England; Aritz Parra in Madrid and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines contributed.
At just 9 years old, Fernando Ochoa is fighting to stop his father’s deportation over fears that he may be separated from him a third time even though President Joe Biden has ordered a 100-day moratorium on deportations and created a family reunification task force.
On Wednesday morning, just outside an immigration court, Fernando gave his attorney a letter he wrote to Biden asking him in Spanish “from my heart that you let my dad go free.”
Fernando and his father, Ubaldo Ochoa Lopez, fled Guatemala over two years ago to seek asylum in the U.S. Instead, Fernando, who was 6 years old at the time, was separated from his dad by immigration authorities. He was one of at least 2,800 migrant children who were separated from their parents in 2018 as part of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, implemented to deter migrants from seeking asylum.
Two months later, Fernando and his father were reunited.
Ubaldo Ochoa Lopez and his 9-year-old son, Fernando.Courtesy RAICES Texas
“During the first 35 days of those two months, Ubaldo couldn’t even contact Fernando. So those 35 days of zero contact, not knowing what was going on, were very traumatic for both of them,” Andani Alcantara, their attorney, said in a news conference Wednesday.
Once they were together, Ochoa Lopez and his son resumed their legal efforts to get asylum, but they were separated for a second time in October, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detained Ochoa Lopez a month after he was convicted of driving while intoxicated, Alcantara said.
“It was only a Class B misdemeanor, but ICE has treated it as a huge crime, and it has decided that it is enough reason not to allow Ubaldo to be with his child, who doesn’t have another parent in the U.S.,” she said.
‘Punished twice’
Ochoa Lopez has been in the Pearsall Detention Center in Texas for four months.
The Texas immigrant rights advocacy group RAICES has been helping Fernando with his asylum case while urging ICE to reunite him with his father, Erika Andiola, the organization’s chief of advocacy, said during the news conference.
Andiola said it’s important to note that Ochoa Lopez “went through the criminal justice system” when he was charged and convicted last year.
“If it was someone else, someone who was born in this country, if he was another person, perhaps he would be back with his son, but he’s not. He’s being punished twice for something that already happened — even after what we, as a country, did to take away his child,” Andiola said.
Fernando wrote in his letter to Biden: “I feel very sad for my dad who is not with me. During Christmas, I was sad for my dad who was not with me. It makes me very sad to see other parents playing with their children because I can’t play with my dad nor receive a hug from my dad.”
Alcantara said she has completed multiple requests to ICE calling for Ochoa Lopez’s release, most recently on Monday after the Biden administration announced new guidelines about immigration enforcement priorities. The public safety guidelines say to prioritize those “who have been convicted of an ‘aggravated felony.'”
“The reality is that ICE always has the discretion to let anybody out of detention, and they are choosing not to,” she said. “That’s harming his child, who’s 9 years old and cries on the phone with Ubaldo because he hasn’t seen his dad in so long.
“They’re choosing to keep a parent and child separated that they had already separated before and traumatized,” she added.
ICE has not responded to an email seeking comment.
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Biden went into his presidency carrying the weight of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as well as criticism for the record number of deportations under former President Barack Obama, when he was vice president.
There’s been an urgent push by progressive supporters and immigration advocates to do things differently.
An early Biden executive order placing a 100-day moratorium on deportations pending an enforcement review was suspended by a federal judge in response to a Texas lawsuit. But the ruling did not require ICE to schedule the deportations, and the agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has deported at least 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras in recent days.
More deportation flights are scheduled this week to Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cameroon and Honduras, in addition to last week’s deportation to Mexico of a woman who witnessed the 2019 anti-Latino mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas.
‘”If Ubaldo is sent back to Guatemala, Fernando is left here without any parent, which is harmful enough in itself, but given his history of prior forceful separations by the government, it would be really harmful for him,” Alcantara said, adding that he would be left “to fight his asylum case on his own.”
Today, as the Biden admin announced its family reunification taskforce, Ubaldo Ochoa-Lopez sat in an ICE prison – in danger of being deported.
He & his son, Fernando came to the US seeking asylum from Guatemala. What awaited them here was a cruel & stunning reality. #FreeUbaldo pic.twitter.com/TmoeSF8vHf
— RAICES (@RAICESTEXAS) February 3, 2021
A group of 120 law professors and legal experts called on the Biden administration to hold ICE officers accountable to executive orders and other directives that reflect “the president’s intention to rebuild the immigration system in a way that respects human rights and due process,” the group said in a news release Tuesday.
They sent a letter to newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging the agency to “use all the tools of prosecutorial discretion at its disposal to comply with the Biden administration’s interior enforcement immigration policies and stop ongoing deportations of asylum seekers and families.”
They warned that continued practices “will inevitably result in the continuation of enforcement practices that send asylum seekers back to their persecutors and destabilize families and communities.”
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