Yemeni separatists have seized control of much of the city of Aden, inflicting a blow to the Saudi-led coalition that is trying to dismantle the country’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement.
Yemeni security officials said Saturday that the separatists also had taken control of the presidential palace, a development confirmed by a spokesman from the Security Belt force, which is dominated by the separatists.
Officials said all military camps in the southern port city also had been seized.
The development complicated U.N. efforts to end the four-year war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and forced the poorest residents to the brink of famine.
The latest fighting erupted Wednesday when separatists tried to break into the presidential palace after Hani Bin Braik, an ex-cabinet minister and deputy head of the so-called Southern Transitional Council, called on forces to “topple” President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi’s government.
Braik accused the president and his forces of being loyal to the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the United Arab Emirates and some other countries consider a terrorist group.
The internationally recognized Yemeni government has accused Braik of provocations and has called on the Saudi and UAE governments to force the separatists to stop their attacks.
Aden is the seat of power for Hadi, who has been residing in Saudi Arabia since the rebels took over the capital of Sanaa in 2014.
The second season of an AMC-TV drama series follows the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and a number of bizarre deaths haunting a community.
“The Terror: Infamy” is set to premiere Monday and stars Derek Mio and original “Star Trek” cast member George Takei as they navigate the forced internment and supernatural spirits that surround them.
It’s the first television series depicting the internment of Japanese Americans on such a massive scale and camps were recreated with detail to illustrate the conditions and racism internees faced.
The show’s new season is part of the Ridley Scott-produced anthology series.
Mio, who is fourth-generation Japanese American and plays Chester Nakayama, said he liked the idea of adding a supernatural element to a historical event such as Japanese American internment. He says he had relatives who lived on Terminal Island outside of Los Angeles and were taken to camps.
Residents there were some of the first forced into internment camps after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
“If you add the supernatural element, it’s a little more accessible and now it’s like a mainstream subject and it can open up more discussion about what really happened and what’s going on right now,” Mio said.
It was a role personal to him as well. “It’s not just another kind of acting job for me,” Mio said. “I really do feel a responsibility to tell this story that my ancestors actually went through.”
From 1942 to 1945, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico and other sites.
Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forced Japanese Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to leave the West Coast and other areas for the camps surrounded by barbed wire and military police. Half of those detainees were children.
Takei, who was interned in a camp as a child, said he was impressed with the show’s research into recreating the camp.
“The barracks reminded me again – mentally, I was able to go back to my childhood. That’s exactly the way it was,” Takei said. “So for me, it was both fulfilling to raise the awareness to this extent of the terror. But also to make the storytelling that much more compelling.”
The series also involves others who are connected to historic World War II events. Josef Kubota Wladyka, one of the show’s directors, had a grandfather who was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped and managed to survive.
Max Borenstein, one of the show’s executive producers who lost relatives at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, said the show’s horror genre still doesn’t compare to the horror of the internment camp.
“It was important to do the research, the lived reality that people faced,” Borenstein said. “The fact of taking people who are citizens of the country and (putting them in camps) is a great stain of our country.”
Co-creator Alexander Woo, who is Chinese American, said he believes the series is especially relevant now given the debate over immigration in the U.S. and Europe.
“The struggle that immigrants go through of embracing a country that doesn’t embrace you back is a story, unfortunately, that keeps repeating,” Woo said. “There’s going to be some people who likely didn’t know of the internment. There will be some people who had relatives in camps. We have a responsibility to be accurate.”
A cease-fire agreement has been reached to end fighting in the Libyan capital of Tripoli during the upcoming Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Libyan National Army (LNA) chief Khalifa Haftar agreed to the United Nation’s-proposed cease-fire Saturday, his spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, said at a news conference in Benghazi.
The U.N. refugee agency reports more than half-a-million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh have received identity documents that will give them better access to aid.
An estimated 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living in overcrowded, squalid camps in the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Most of them fled there two years ago to escape persecution and violence in Myanmar.
A joint registration project by Bangladeshi authorities and the U.N. refugee agency will give identity documents to more than 500,000 of the refugees, many for the first time.
The data on these fraud-proof, biometric cards will give national authorities and humanitarian partners a better understanding of the population and its needs. UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic tells VOA the data collected will allow aid agencies to better help people with specific needs.
“The point of the verification exercise, of conducting a biometric data registration is first and foremost to protect the right of the Rohingya refugees to return to their homes… It is meant to ensure far better planning and far better targeting of the assistance, of very specific types of assistance, that, for example, women would need, that children would need,” said Mahecic.
Mahecic explains the new registration cards indicate Myanmar is the country of origin. He says that information is critical in establishing and safeguarding the right of Rohingya refugees to return to their homes in Myanmar, if and when they decide to do so.
The UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies say they do not believe conditions in Myanmar currently are safe enough for the refugees to return home.
The registration process began in June 2018. On average, some 5,000 refugees are being registered every day. The UNHCR says it aims to complete biometric registrations and provide identification documents for the remaining 400,000 people in Cox’s Bazar by the end of the year.
Over 2 million pilgrims are climbing Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia Saturday at the high point of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Rain, thunder and strong wind disrupted the ritual, but most pilgrims appear to have weathered the ordeal.
Rituals on Mount Arafat, where Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was reputed to have delivered his final sermon almost 1,400 years ago, is part of the final leg of the annual hajj.
Sheikh Mohammed bin-Hassan al-Sheikh delivered the ritual sermon at the Numeira Mosque on Mount Arafat, telling the crowd gathered both inside and outside the building that mercy is the single most important attribute in life.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims pray outside Namira Mosque in Arafat during the annual hajj pilgrimage, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019.
He says that God will have mercy on those who have mercy on others and mercy should be the basis of society and all social relations, between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, mothers and other family.
Mohammed Salah Bintan, the minister in charge of the pilgrimage, told journalists that the Saudi Arabian government has spent a great deal of money to improve infrastructure used by pilgrims.
He says that major projects have been carried out during the past year, including rail transport, in order to take hajjis from one place to another and that the government is planning to spend $26 million in the future as part of (Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman’s) Vision 2030 infrastructure program.
Bassem Omar al-Qadi, a researcher at a Saudi religious institute, told state TV that the lot of pilgrims has improved considerably during the past 20 years.
He says that the main artery leading to the Numeira Mosque was a chaotic scene 20 years ago, with everyone scrambling to find a place to park, amid anger and frayed nerves, whereas today things are orderly and buses bring people on schedule as pilgrims enjoy their comfortable tent camps.
Muslim pilgrims circumambulate around the Kaaba in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Aug. 9, 2019.
Arab media noted that Saudi authorities were allowing a number of prisoners to perform their pilgrimage this year, while they are permitted a brief furlough to attend. Mohammed, a prisoner dressed in the ritual white pilgrim’s garb described his experience.
He says that he was allowed to bring his wife with him to the pilgrimage and that he is still trying to absorb everything, since he finds it hard to believe that he is able to carry out his hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam, without any restrictions and in total tranquility.
After pilgrims descend Mount Arafat Saturday afternoon, they will spend the night in the Valley of Muzdalifa in preparation for the conclusion of the annual hajj Sunday, with the ritual sacrifice of an animal to feed the poor.
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – Puerto Rico’s streets have remained so quiet since Wanda Vazquez took over as governor following weeks of turmoil that one can again hear the island’s famous coqui frog singing at night.
The protests that led to the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rossello a week ago and continued on a smaller scale until the Supreme Court removed his chosen successor have dissipated. Also gone are the sounds of cowbells and whistles, as well as most of the angry graffiti that covered streets in the colonial district of Puerto Rico’s capital that was ground zero for the demonstrations.
People who took to the streets to express disgust with government mismanagement and corruption were united in focusing their anger on Rossello, but now he is gone and there isn’t a common thread on how to proceed. Some Puerto Ricans are urging more protests. Others say people should take a step back and analyze what they want from officials. Yet others wish for stability and say Vazquez should be given a chance. Some worry about who might replace her.
Coming weeks are key
“Many people rose up, and after they accomplished what they did, they’re asking, ‘Now what?’ ” said Mario Negron Portillo, retired head of the school of public administration at the University of Puerto Rico. “In the next few weeks, we’ll really see if that sense of consciousness that was generated … is sustained and how it will be sustained.”
Only a handful of people showed up for a planned protest early Friday evening in front of the governor’s mansion, though Vazquez has said she will not live there, preferring to stay in her own house. Such conciliatory statements — and her earlier insistence that she was not interested in becoming governor — have led many Puerto Ricans to go into wait-and-see mode, activists say.
Some of those protesting politics as usual are also more worried about the alternative. Leaders of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party have suggested replacing Vazquez with Puerto Rico’s congressional representative Jenniffer Gonzalez, a heavyweight in the PNP as well as being head of the territory’s Republican Party.
A demonstrator holds up a sign with a message that reads in Spanish, “We demand transparency,” outside the government mansion La Fortaleza, where a small group of protesters gathered, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Aug. 9, 2019.
While Vazquez is also a member of the PNP, she’s a less prominent figure who entered the territory’s cabinet only two years ago as justice secretary. The governorship dropped on her almost accidentally because others in line to succeed Rossello had resigned or were disqualified by the court.
Gonzalez said on Thursday that she was available for the governorship if Vazquez decided to step down, even as Vazquez said she would not do so.
“There’s somewhat of a hiatus in the fight because there is still speculation whether Wanda Vazquez is passing through as governor or actually plans to finish the term [which ends next year],” said Ricardo Santos Ortiz, spokesman of the Socialist Workers’ Movement, which helped organize some of the demonstrations. “As that becomes more defined, people will be reacting in the streets.”
‘A tense calmness’
Ortiz planned to join Friday’s protest and said more demonstrations could materialize in upcoming days.
“It was unrealistic to think we were going to spend one month, two months, three months with the same intensity,” Ortiz said. “There’s a tense calmness, but people have not checked out.”
Rossello and more than a dozen other officials resigned following anger about corruption, mismanagement of funds and the leak of an obscenity-laced chat in which they mocked women, gay people and victims of Hurricane Maria, among others.
Since then, hundreds of Puerto Ricans across the island have been showing up at unofficial town hall meetings, often in public plazas, where people bring folding chairs or sit on the ground and debate what path Puerto Rico should take as a volunteer writes down ideas on a display board. No politicians have been invited.
Karla Pesquera, an unemployed 30-year-old who has joined in the protests as well as the town halls, said the gatherings are meant to give power back to the people and take it from politicians.
“People want to be adequately represented,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve very excited, very hopeful.”
But Negron warned that if people attending these town halls want to enact their ideas, they will have to bring in legislators and mayors: “Otherwise … it’s just catharsis.”
Special election
Some activists have been demanding a special election to choose a new governor, and the tiny Puerto Rican Independence Party introduced a constitutional amendment to allow for that.
Social media posts reflect a certain waffling: Some have shared details of Friday’s protest to demand that Vazquez step down. Others shared a post that calls on Vazquez as governor to audit Puerto Rico’s more than $70 billion public debt load to detect possible corruption.
And the hashtag #wandadontresign began popping up when PNP leaders began floating the idea of having Vazquez resign to let Gonzalez take over.
Shariana Ferrer Nunez, a member of the Feminist Collective under Construction, which helped organize the protests, said activists are trying to identify common goals that most people can get behind.
“That’s the challenge,” she said. “We have to figure out what we want.”
GARDEN GROVE, CALIFORNIA – The suspect in a Southern California stabbing rampage that left four people dead and two injured pleaded not guilty Friday to murder, attempted murder and other counts.
Zachary Castaneda was arrested Wednesday by police responding to two hours of slashing and stabbing attacks in Garden Grove and Santa Ana.
Authorities said Castaneda, 33, was covered in blood when he was taken into custody after walking out of a 7-Eleven store and dropping a knife and a gun that he’d cut from the belt of a security guard he’d just killed.
The 11 felonies filed against Castaneda also included assault with a deadly weapon to cause great bodily injury, aggravated mayhem, robbery and burglary.
He was arraigned in his jail cell instead of court. Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney, could not immediately say why.
Castaneda had been kept in restraints when detectives tried to interview him.
“He remained violent with us through the night,” Garden Grove Police Chief Tom DaRe said. “He never told us why he did this.”
Information about his defense attorney was not immediately available.
Neighbors killed
Authorities on Friday said Gerardo Fresnares Beltran, 63, was fatally stabbed in his Garden Grove apartment. His roommate Helmuth Hauprich, 62, was also killed in the attack. Castaneda was their neighbor.
Robert Parker, 58, of Orange and Pascual Rioja Lorenzo, 39, of Garden Grove were stabbed separately in Santa Ana.
Rioja Lorenzo was a construction worker and devout churchgoer from Mexico.
He had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade but his wife and 16-year-old son remain in Mexico, said Saul Abrego, an official with the United Pentecostal Church La Senda Antigua in Santa Ana.
Rioja Lorenzo held home Bible study events for the church, and Abrego said he thought he had just come from work and was heading to one such event when he was attacked.
“It was just a big shock for us,” Abrego said.
Garden Grove Mayor Steven Jones, fourth from left, speaks during a news conference following the arrest of Zachary Castaneda outside the Garden Grove Police Department headquarters in Garden Grove, Calif., Aug. 8, 2019.
Court records show that Castaneda was a gang member with a criminal history of assault and weapon and drug crimes.
Castaneda’s criminal history dates to 2004 and includes a prison stint for possession of methamphetamine for sale while armed with an assault rifle.
Castaneda was convicted in 2009 of spousal abuse and paroled after serving about a year in prison, corrections officials said.
Police had previously gone to Castaneda’s apartment to deal with a child custody issue, Garden Grove Police Lt. Carl Whitney said.
The suspect’s mother had been living with him and had once asked police how she could evict her son, Whitney said.
Wife sought protection
Court records show Castaneda’s wife, Yessica Rodriguez, sought a restraining order last year after she said Castaneda threw a beer can at her 16-year-old daughter. She said she also sought an order against him in 2009 when he broke her arm during a fight.
Rodriguez filed for divorce earlier this year, court records show, and has custody of two sons.
Police believe Castaneda killed the two men at the apartment complex where he lived about an hour after burglarizing their unit, then robbed businesses, including a Garden Grove insurance agency where a 54-year-old woman was stabbed. She was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, police said.
Castaneda is accused of robbing a check-cashing business next door to the insurance agency; a woman there was unharmed.
Later, a man pumping gas at a Chevron station was attacked without warning and slashed so badly that his nose was nearly severed, police said. He was in stable condition.
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday that a school board’s transgender bathroom ban discriminated against a former student, Gavin Grimm.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen in Norfolk is the latest of several nationwide that have favored transgender students facing similar policies. But the issue remains far from settled in the country as a patchwork of differing policies governs the nation’s schools.
The Gloucester County School Board’s policy required Grimm to use girls’ restrooms or private bathrooms. The judge wrote that Grimm’s rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause as well as under Title IX, the federal policy that protects against gender-based discrimination.
“There is no question that the Board’s policy discriminates against transgender students on the basis of their gender noncomformity,” Allen wrote.
“Under the policy, all students except for transgender students may use restrooms corresponding with their gender identity,” she continued. “Transgender students are singled out, subjected to discriminatory treatment, and excluded from spaces where similarly situated students are permitted to go.”
Similar claims
Allen’s ruling will likely strengthen similar claims made by students in eastern Virginia. It could have a greater impact if the case goes to an appeals court that oversees Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas.
Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said last month that she expected Grimm’s case to join the “steady drum beat” of recent court rulings favoring transgender students in states including Maryland, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But she said differing transgender bathroom policies are still in place in schools across the country. Those polices are often influenced by court rulings or by states and cities that have passed protections for people who are transgender.
“Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times for transgender students really can depend on where you live and who your principal is,” she said.
One fight in long battle
The judge’s opinion is the latest step in Grimm’s yearslong legal battle, which has come to embody the debate about transgender student rights.
Grimm, who is now 20, has been fighting the case since the end of his sophomore year at Gloucester High School, which is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Richmond and near the Chesapeake Bay. Since graduating in 2017, he has moved to California where he’s worked as an activist and attended community college.
Grimm’s lawsuit became a federal test case when it was supported by the administration of then-President Barack Obama and scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017. But the high court hearing was canceled after President Donald Trump rescinded an Obama-era directive that students can choose bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
The school board has argued that Grimm remains female, even though he obtained a court order and Virginia birth certificate declaring his sex is male in 2016, when he was still in 12th grade.
The board’s attorney, David Corrigan, argued in court last month that gender is not a “societal construct” and that it doesn’t matter that Grimm underwent chest reconstruction surgery and hormone therapy. Corrigan had told the judge that bathroom policy is based on a binary, “two choices for all” view of gender.
Contacted by The Associated Press after the ruling, Corrigan declined to comment in an email.
Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.
U.S. border
A month after the start of a program forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting U.S. immigration hearings, the policy is stranding thousands, most of whom are from Central America. Hundreds are now being bused to Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, in what one Mexican immigration official described to VOA as a policy of “deportation in disguise.”
FILE – A handcuffed woman stares though the chain link fencing at Koch Foods Inc. in Morton, Miss., Aug. 7, 2019.
Raids’ long-term effects
After Wednesday’s raids in the six Mississippi towns where the poultry plants were located, community members said the effects of the roundups would be felt long term.
Migrant children attend school in a bus at the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just kilometers from the U.S. border. They sit in two neat lines and open their notebooks at desks that once served as passenger seats.
FILE – An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official gives direction to a person outside the building that houses ICE and the Atlanta Immigration Court, June 12, 2019.
Immigration court
The Trump administration launched a pilot program in 10 cities, from Baltimore to Los Angeles, aimed at fast-tracking court hearings and discouraging migrants from making the journey to seek refuge in the United States. Immigration lawyers, however, said the new timetable does not give their clients enough time to testify and get documents from abroad to bolster their claims.
July migration statistics
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan announced U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s enforcement actions for July, indicating more than a 20 percent decrease in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border for the second month in a row.
VOA Immigration Reporter Aline Barros contributed to this report from Washington.
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO — Off to the side of the Puente #1, the bridge that connects pedestrians, drivers and cyclists from the Texas city of Laredo to the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, dozens of migrants and asylum-seekers sit on what was built as a parking lot for the customs office.
The concrete radiated after hours of 42-degree Celsius (108-degree Fahrenheit) heat from the sun.
They hadn’t been able to shower in three days, several said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) often apprehended them within an hour of crossing the river, held them for two to three days, then transported them back to Mexico.
Now a month after the start of the Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican government is busing hundreds of returned migrants to faraway Chiapas, in what is described as a thinly disguised deportation program.
Bus departures
VOA witnessed two nights of bus departures from a location adjacent to a pedestrian bridge where CBP dropped off migrants to await their immigration hearings in the U.S. from outside the country.
The first, around 12:30 a.m. on August 7, consisted of eight full buses, transporting 350 to 400 migrants; the next night, another three buses departed from the same location, carrying approximately 120 people, largely families with children under age 10.
Migrants returned to Mexico under MPP have been camping beneath puente 1 (intl bridge) in Nuevo Laredo for days or longer. As of a couple hours ago, buses came to pick them up. Migrants say they are being forced to leave. All of the buses appear to be headed to Chiapas. pic.twitter.com/ZpMBYlMyL1
The majority of migrants VOA spoke with ahead of their 2,100-kilometer (1,300-mile) journey were from Honduras and had crossed the Rio Grande into the United States in the first days of August.
Some of the migrants who spoke to VOA said they felt their hearings stood no chance and would self-deport to their respective countries. Others planned to utilize temporary work permits in southern Mexico while they considered their next moves.
MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, began in January 2019 in other border cities. It expanded in earnest in March, and then June, as Mexico scrambled to respond to the U.S. threat of tariffs if the number of unauthorized border crossings did not decrease.
In a statement to VOA, a CBP spokesperson said MPP allows the U.S. “to more effectively assist legitimate asylum-seekers and individuals fleeing persecution while migrants with false or meritless claims no longer have that incentive to make the journey.”
The Trump administration said it created the program to alleviate overcrowding in U.S. detention facilities by making migrants await immigration court dates in Mexico.
The United States has returned more than 30,000 migrants to Mexico under the policy, CBP acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said Thursday.
According to an analysis by Human Rights First, CBP has returned an average of 450 migrants per day to Mexico in early August, more than double the rate of returns in early June.
More than 3,000 migrants have been returned to Nuevo Laredo during MPP’s first month operating in the city, the independent, U.S.-based human rights organization reported.
That number includes children and adults who have been apprehended crossing the Rio Grande without authorization by U.S. Border Patrol agents, as well as people who presented themselves at ports of entry to formally request asylum.
Central American migrants line up for community-donated food and drinks near the Puente Numero I International Bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. (R. Taylor/VOA)
Left in border city
The migrants VOA met hours after their return from the U.S. were predominantly from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Many felt they had no real choice but to leave on the buses, wherever they were headed, just to get out of Nuevo Laredo.
Sitting in the shade of a bus shelter, they were trying to determine who wanted to go where, and how they would get there.
Few had cellphones or money to contact relatives. They had no knowledge of the city, no map and no means to get to a local shelter. All they carried were clear plastic bags with a few toiletries, paperwork, and the phone numbers of relatives to call when they could borrow a phone from someone with cell service in Mexico.
The Mexican city’s reputation as a hub of drug cartel activity and ransom kidnappings kept many migrants within the confines of the parking lot adjacent to Puente #1.
The U.S. State Department posts a maximum “Level 4: Do Not Travel” warning because of crime and kidnapping in the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, where “armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses as well as private automobiles,” according to its advisory.
“They bring us here, where you’re surrounded by the Zetas drug cartel, and in the end, what security do we have?” said Yuna, a Cuban asylum-seeker returned under MPP, who boarded one of Tuesday’s eight buses to Tapachula, Chiapas. “We can’t [take a taxi] because they’ll send us to the lion’s mouth. If we go to the [bus] station, they’ll kidnap us.”
But according to Nuevo Laredo Mayor Enrique Rivas Montaño, “The issue of insecurity is not exclusive to the border.”
“Everywhere, there are risks, there are dangers in a city you don’t know,” Rivas Montaño told VOA.
A Honduran migrant and her 18-month-old daughter wait to decide their next steps after being returned to Mexico under the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) earlier in the day. (V. Macchi/VOA)
Awaiting US court hearings
Although Mexican immigration authorities first thinned the number of returnees in Nuevo Laredo by busing some to Monterrey, roughly 220 kilometers (137 miles) to the southwest, this week the buses were bound for Tapachula, Chiapas, roughly 10 times farther away.
Monterrey is at a Level 3 warning, with the caution to “reconsider travel due to crime” and curfews on U.S. personnel in the area.
Chiapas, the more recent destination, is considered a Level 2 safety risk, according to the State Department, which urges visitors to “exercise increased caution due to crime.”
It is also Mexico’s southernmost state, which means that within the country’s boundaries, it gets as close to Guatemala — and in turn, El Salvador and Honduras — as a person possibly could be while remaining in Mexico.
That distance puts 35 hours of road travel between the migrants and their court dates in border cities, some for September, others as late as November, requiring additional expenses few people VOA spoke with could afford. A one-way return economy bus ticket, with a connection in Mexico City, costs $111.
Mexico’s National Institute of Migration did not respond to an emailed request for more information about the busing system.
The first buses bound for Chiapas left on August 2, according to one local media report.
Father Julio López, the head of the Nazareth migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, said that southbound trip — while in theory is voluntary but in practice feels like the only option to some migrants — shows that from the outset, even the name of policy was a ruse.
“The Migrant Protection Protocol is, to me, a protocol of lies for migrants,” the priest said. “There is no protocol, and if there were one, it’s not for protection. There is no protection.”
Likewise, a Mexican federal immigration agent at the CBP drop-off site near the bridge said he believed MPP was not a policy of waiting for court dates, but rather one of “dolled-up deportations.”
“Honestly, what we’re seeing here, these are deportations,” he told VOA. “Deportations in disguise.”
CBP deferred comment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a VOA inquiry about whether the MPP program effectively works as a deportation plan. DHS and Mexico’s National Institute of Migration have not yet responded to similar inquiries.
