Immigration

SAN DIEGO (AP) — In the days before Joe Biden became president, construction crews worked quickly to finish Donald Trump’s wall at an iconic cross-border park overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which then-first lady Pat Nixon inaugurated in 1971 as a symbol of international friendship.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — For the opening salvo of his presidency, few expected Joe Biden to be so far reaching on immigration.

“Nobody imagined that America’s asylum policies would be systematically weaponized and twisted to the point where they purposely put vulnerable people in danger, yet that is exactly what President Trump did with his shameful Asylum Cooperative Agreements,” Senator Bob Menendez said in the release.

EL FLORIDO, Guatemala (AP) — A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. Small groups pressed on toward the Mexican border, while others accepted rides from authorities back to Honduras.

On the eve of Biden’s inauguration, Latino USA reached out to young Latinos who would be personally impacted by a few of these policy changes, to hear what promises they hope Biden will keep—and what they hope Biden will do that he hasn’t committed to yet.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.

VADO HONDO, Guatemala (AP) — Guatemalan police and soldiers on Monday broke up a group of hundreds of migrants who had spent two nights stuck at a roadblock on a rural highway.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) — Hundreds of migrants hoping to reach the U.S. border gathered outside a bus station in this Honduran city Thursday despite continued signs from Mexico and other Central American governments that they would not be allowed through.

“While the current administration has done nothing but vilify the immigrant community, spewing hatred in all forms throughout the last four years, immigrant leaders know that changing administrations has never been the solution,” Movimiento Cosecha said.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden says it will take months to roll back some of President Donald Trump’s actions on immigration, tempering expectations he generated during his campaign and one that may rile advocates pushing for speedy action on the issue.

The community of researchers at Million Dollar Hoods helps us understand how much money is being spent to incarcerate Black and Brown communities, daring to imagine what would be possible if we invested those funds in housing, education, or employment instead.

HOUSTON (AP) — The U.S. government is preparing to deport more than a dozen children and their parents held at a Texas immigration detention center, including a 4-year-old girl with a broken arm requiring surgery, according to lawyers for the families.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday defended Mexico’s restrictive immigration policy, which has prevented many Central American migrants from crossing Mexico to reach the U.S. border.

BOSTON (AP) — Officers at a Dartmouth detention center used excessive force when they deployed pepper spray, police dogs and a flash bang device against inmates who refused to be tested for COVID-19, according to a state report released Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Wednesday that it will allow migrants from six countries to extend their legal U.S. residency under a temporary status for nine months while courts consider its effort to end the program.

Biden’s immigration policies may seem to be an improvement from Donald Trump’s but without a clear Latin American policy agenda, his success may be limited.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A court-appointed committee has yet to find the parents of 628 children separated at the border early in the Trump administration, according to a court filing Wednesday that also said the government last week provided additional phone numbers to aid the long-running search.

MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) — It started out simply: A pop-up school on a sidewalk to teach reading, writing, math and art to Central American children living in a camp of asylum seekers stuck at America’s doorstep.

NEW YORK (AP) — Newly detained immigrants must appear before a judge within 10 days, rather than the weeks or months they’ve sometimes had to endure in recent years, a judge said Monday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sounded skeptical Monday that President Donald Trump could categorically exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to allot seats among the states in the House of Representatives.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) — At a shelter in this northern Honduran city, Lilian Gabriela Santos Sarmiento says back-to-back hurricanes that hit with devastating fury this month have overturned her life. Her home in what was once a pretty neighborhood in nearby La Lima was destroyed by flooding.