Immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government picked up nearly 19,000 children traveling alone across the Mexican border in March, authorities said Thursday, the largest monthly number ever recorded and a major test for President Joe Biden as he reverses many of his predecessor’s hardline immigration tactics.

DALLAS (AP) — Texas and Louisiana sued the federal government Tuesday alleging immigration authorities have declined to take custody of people who have been convicted of crimes and could be subject to deportation.

Children and families have been fleeing to the U.S. for years, particularly from Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans disapprove than approve of how President Joe Biden is handling the sharply increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, and approval of his efforts on larger immigration policy falls short of other top issues, suggesting it could be a weak point for the new administration.

TPS recipients are pinning their hopes on the Senate after the House passed a sweeping bill to let them call the United States their permanent home.

MISSION, Texas (AP) — Overwhelmed and underprepared, U.S. authorities are releasing migrant families on the Mexican border without notices to appear in immigration court or sometimes without any paperwork at all, time-saving moves that have left some migrants confused.

The letter calls on Alejandro Mayorkas and the Biden Administration to end the prioritization of persons for detention and deportation who are labeled as gang-affiliated.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge did not immediately rule Tuesday on a closely watched case over the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which confers limited protections on hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought into the U.S. as children.

DONNA, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration for the first time Tuesday allowed journalists inside its main border detention facility for migrant children, revealing a severely overcrowded tent structure where more than 4,000 migrants, including children and families, were crammed into pods and the youngest kept in a large playpen with mats on the floor for sleeping.

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and “we’re working to get that done as soon as we can.”

“Avoid emotive words like onslaught, tidal wave, flood, inundation, surge, invasion, army, march, sneak and stealth.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will take steps to more quickly move hundreds of migrant children and teens out of cramped detention facilities along the Southwest border, President Joe Biden said Thursday as he pushed back hard against suggestions that his administration’s policies are responsible for the rising number of people seeking to enter the country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border.

Nine of every 10 encounters with single adults in February resulted in expulsions under Title 42. Mayorkas said last week that the U.S. makes exceptions only for adults with “certain acute vulnerabilities,” without elaborating.

Hector chats with Todd Miller, a journalist who has covered the border and the border-industrial complex for the past 20 years, and the author of the upcoming book, “Build Bridges, Not Walls.”

MISSION, Texas (AP) — The Honduran girl, 7 years old and surrounded by strangers in the pre-dawn darkness, was determined to keep pace with the other migrants headed for the U.S. border.

America’s complicated history of treating migrants of color inhumanely is a long and sordid tale of bipartisan xenophobic policies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration has tried for weeks to keep the public from seeing images like those that emerged Monday showing immigrant children in U.S. custody at the border sleeping on mats under foil blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions.

Having lived through this tumultuous crisis together, what better time than now to align our practices and policies with our lived reality and our real relationships to each other?

Since Joe Biden’s inauguration, the number of people encountered at the southern border has increased, particularly with families and unaccompanied minors.

Almost everyone at the Tijuana camp has been in Mexico for months or years. They include Haitians who started arriving in Tijuana in 2016 as well as Mexican and Central American families fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters.