Free Republic

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Dozens of Cubans protested at the U.S. border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday night, demanding they be allowed to cross and claim asylum in the United States.U.S. authorities, including police in anti-riot gear, closed off the bridge that leads into El Paso, Texas, with a concrete barrier topped with barbed wire.A recording blared from a loudspeaker warning that any person who crossed could be arrested.Late into the evening, some 200 migrants who had walked right up to the barrier stayed put.Jonathan Castro, 25, said he has spent one year and eight...

MATAMOROS, Mexico - Aurora Leticia Cruz has tried to keep up with her blood pressure medication since fleeing Guatemala more than a year ago, but the limbo she finds herself in - stuck in a sprawling camp at the Texas border after traversing Mexico - has made that hard. When Cruz felt woozy on a recent day as her blood pressure skyrocketed, it could have ended in tragedy, leaving her 17-year-old granddaughter and two great-grandchildren under 3 alone in the camp in Matamoros. But instead, a nurse practitioner from Oregon and a Cuban doctor, who like Cruz is awaiting U.S....

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday said he would slowly reform US immigration policies to avoid triggering a rush of “2 million people on our border.” Biden confirmed reports that his team is nervous amid an already increasing number of immigrants, including children and families, being detained at the border since his election victory last month. “I’ve already started discussing these issues with the president of Mexico and our friends in Latin America and the timeline is to do it so that we in fact make it better, not worse,” Biden said at a press conference in Wilmington, Del, when asked...

As part of the $900 billion coronavirus relief package it passed late Monday, Congress is set to allow mixed-status households with undocumented family members to receive stimulus checks that they were denied under the first round of legislation in the spring. Under the bipartisan agreement, U.S. citizens and green card holders will be able to receive $600 in direct aid, even if they filed a joint tax return with an undocumented spouse, as well as additional $600 checks per dependent child, according to congressional aides and the text of the legislation. The new compromise would also retroactively make mixed-status families...

Billionaire GOP mega-donor Charles Koch is urging elected Republicans and Democrats to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and increase legal immigration levels, even as 24.5 million Americans remain jobless or underemployed. Koch, in an op-ed with Brian Hooks of Stand Together, writes that Republicans and Democrats should “come together” to give amnesty to the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States and increase legal immigration levels beyond the 1.2 million green cards given to foreign nationals annually.

Well, that didn’t take long. A border crisis is brewing before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Migrant caravans are forming in Honduras, where residents were hit with a pair of devastating hurricanes last month, adding to the economic hardship caused by COVID-19. Faced with ruin, many Hondurans have ­decided to defy local travel bans and head north. “People are no longer scared of the coronavirus,” one caravan ­organizer told Bloomberg. “They’re going hungry, they’ve lost everything, and some towns are still flooded.” The organizer added that migrants are savvy about shifts in US border policy: “When there is a change...

GUADALUPE CANYON, Ariz. - Work crews ignite dynamite blasts in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountaintops in a rush to build more of President Donald Trump’s border wall before his term ends next month. Each blast in Guadalupe Canyon releases puffs of dust as workers level land to make way for 30-foot-tall (9-meter-tall) steel columns near the New Mexico line. Heavy machines crawl over roads gouged into rocky slopes while one tap-tap-taps open holes for posts on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. Trump has expedited border wall construction in...

Until now, testing, treatment and isolation have been our only tools to help limit the spread of Covid-19 - but vaccination is the means to finally bring it under control. That's because, when a vaccine is used by a majority of people, it may lead to herd immunity for all members of society, protecting even those for whom a vaccine is ineffective or medically contraindicated. But if a significant number of people who would otherwise be healthy enough to receive a vaccination don't get one, the risk of a continuing pandemic goes up dramatically for everyone - especially when the...

HOUSTON - A federal court on Tuesday will consider whether to invalidate a program that shields from deportation immigrants brought to the United States as children, potentially creating complications for the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden. The challenge to be heard in Houston concerns President Barack Obama’s original memorandum creating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which currently covers about 650,000 people. Federal courts have already turned away President Donald Trump’s efforts to end DACA. Under the order of a judge in New York, the Trump administration in December restored the program to its original terms under Obama, accepting new...

LOS ANGELES/MONTERREY, Mexico - After spending eight months of 2019 in a makeshift tent camp in the dangerous Mexican border city of Matamoros, Israel Martinez abandoned his hopes of seeking asylum in the United States. Beaten down by the cold and unsanitary conditions in the encampment, Martinez accepted a free flight back to his homeland of Honduras in January 2020. Last month, his house was severely damaged by flooding during back-to-back hurricanes. And in January, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who has promised to relax some immigration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border, takes power. Those factors have prompted Martinez and others...

Sky News in Australia is reporting that there was a major leak of list of nearly 2 million CCP members, something never seen before. Sky News in Australia reports: Advertisement - story continues below A major leak containing a register with the details of nearly two million CCP members has occurred – exposing members who are now working all over the world, while also lifting the lid on how the party operates under Xi Jinping, says Sharri Markson. Ms Markson said the leak is a register with the details of Communist Party members, including their names, party position, birthday, national...

It didn’t take very long for a migrant caravan to form in Honduras and begin their journey to the United States in anticipation of Joe Biden taking office. More than 1,000 Hondurans departed a bus terminal Wednesday night headed to Guatemala. If they make it into Guatemala the caravan will continue on until it reaches the U.S. border. This caravan is populated with Hondurans who are leaving due to the devastation caused by two back-to-back hurricanes. The people are looking to Joe Biden to allow them to stay in America, if they make it to the border. “We have asked...

Since Election Day, the Department of Homeland Security has been preparing for an onslaught of Central American migrants who are being driven by cartel organizations to try to enter the U.S. Southwest border, according to a South Texas congressman. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told Border Report on Friday afternoon that he was briefed by DHS a couple weeks ago “that the bad guys are starting to promote to people of Central America and Mexico that ‘the border will be open; it will be different so start getting ready to come.'”... Cuellar said drug cartels are “promoting and staging” migrants...

A Bloomberg News report indicates that multiple migrant caravans are forming in Central America and are heading for the border in the coming weeks. The caravans represent an “early test” for President-elect Joe Biden and his promised efforts to abolish President Trump’s substantial immigration reforms, according to Bloomberg. The report cites Jose Luis Gonzalez, coordinator of the Guatemala Red Jesuita con Migrantes, who advises “there are going to be caravans, and in the coming weeks it will increase.” Gonzalez notes that it is Biden’s promises to reverse Trump’s anti-illegal immigration policies that are, in part, motivating the caravans to make...

Hundreds of Hondurans trying to start a new caravan to reach the U.S. border were stopped by Honduran security personnel Thursday before they even reached the border with neighboring Guatemala. The Honduran police and immigration agents asked their countrymen to show travel documents and proof of negative coronavirus tests, which none appeared to have... The roughly 600 men, women and children had gathered Wednesday night in the northern city of San Pedro Sula and began walking along a dark highway toward the border with Guatemala. But as they approached the border crossing at Agua Caliente, the Honduran agents said they...

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (Reuters) - Central American authorities on Thursday began trying to break up a caravan of hundreds of Hondurans who set off for the United States to escape the impact of back-to-back hurricanes, testing efforts to stem immigration from the battered region.... ...Guatemala’s migration authorities warned the travelers they would need negative coronavirus tests and passports to enter the country....

<p>HOUSTON - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a lower court was wrong to bar the Trump administration from taking $3.6 billion from military construction projects for a border wall.</p><p>A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that El Paso County and the nonprofit Border Network for Human Rights did not have the standing to challenge President Donald Trump’s redirecting funds from more than 100 military construction projects, including a $20 million road project at a base located in the city. The appeals court found that neither the county nor the Border Network proved it was directly harmed by Trump’s move. The court reversed a December 2019 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Briones.</p>

One of President Donald Trump's earliest and most controversial moves was a travel ban on people from certain nations he said were deemed a security threat to the US. Joe Biden has promised this will be one of the first policies he reverses. The ban - which now applies to 13 countries - has survived many legal challenges, but for some families it has meant years of separation. Afkab Hussein is a Somalian lorry driver who has never lived with his sons. When he first moved to Ohio in 2015, Afkab Hussein planned for his pregnant wife to join him...

How do armed, nonstate actors such as criminal organizations affect economic growth? Nikita Melnikov, Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi explore this question in Gangs, Labor Mobility, and Development (NBER Working Paper 27832), a study of how two of the world’s largest gangs, MS-13 (also known as Mara Salvatrucha) and 18th Street (also known as Barrio 18) affect socioeconomic development in El Salvador. The researchers study a natural experiment that occurred in the 1990s. Before 1997, El Salvador did not have any powerful gangs. In that year, the United States began implementing an immigration policy that made it easier to...

ELK CITY, Okla. - The Elk City Police Department is investigating a deadly home invasion. Police said the victim told investigators two men broke into his bedroom. That's when investigators said the homeowner then opened fire on both, killing one of the would-be thieves. “I saw five or six police cars, they had all alleys blocked off,” said Tristian Wooten, Elk City resident. “Cones had the area shut off.” People living nearby said they woke up and noticed police all over their neighborhood Saturday morning. “They blocked off all in front of the tennis courts there to the south and...