The Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó said Friday that opponents of President Nicolás Maduro won’t participate in any early legislative elections he calls amid a protracted power struggle.

PHOENIX (AP) — Construction crews broke ground Thursday on a small portion of the $664 million border fence project in the Arizona desert that is funded through President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Honduran-born U.S. citizen says in a federal lawsuit that he was illegally held in a Louisiana jail for days because a sheriff’s office wrongly suspected he was in the country illegally.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez named two members of her new Cabinet on Wednesday, although the government’s key secretary of state position remains vacant.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — It happens, on average, more than five times a day in Rio de Janeiro: Police open fire and someone dies.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s official monitoring agency is reporting a sharp increase in wildfires this year, and President Jair Bolsonaro suggested Wednesday, without citing evidence, that non-governmental organizations could be setting them to make him look bad.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is moving to end a long-standing federal court agreement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept in detention, a decision that will almost certainly lead to a new court fight over the government’s ability to hold migrant families until their cases are decided.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday his government is talking to “various representatives” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who also confirmed that “secret” discussions had been taking place.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Ex-combatants with Colombia’s once largest guerrilla group turned over names and information Tuesday on several hundred people who went missing during the nation’s long civil conflict in a first step toward helping more families find closure.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — An armed man on Tuesday took dozens of hostages on a bus in Brazil and threatened to set the vehicle on fire with gasoline before police shot him dead in a four-hour standoff broadcast live on television.

HAINES CITY, Fla. (AP) — Seven Puerto Rican health care workers say supervisors at a Florida government-run clinic warned them to stop speaking Spanish among themselves or they would get fired.

HOUSTON (AP) — A new lawsuit blames the Trump administration’s family separations for the death by suicide of a Honduran father after being separated from his 3-year-old child.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — President Jimmy Morales’ son and brother were absolved by a Guatemalan court Monday in a corruption case targeting 25 people, including the former head of the country’s property registry./

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Zapatista indigenous rebel group announced that it is extending its control over so-called “autonomous” zones to 11 more areas in the southern state of Chiapas.

HAVANA (AP) — After weeks of resistance from Cuban video gamers, the island’s state-run computer organization will absorb the services of an offline underground network that for more than a decade extended privately in Havana.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — The U.S. has made secret contact with Venezuela’s socialist party boss as close allies of President Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle seek guarantees they won’t face prosecution for alleged abuses and crimes if they cede to growing demands to remove him, according to a senior Trump administration official.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — When Jordan Ballard read that one of the victims of the El Paso massacre had few relatives and the public was invited to her funeral, the Los Angeles resident bought a plane ticket and flew to Texas to honor a woman she had never met.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday cleared the way for the U.S. government to forbid Central American immigrants from seeking asylum at the two busiest stretches of the southern border in a partial legal victory for the Trump administration.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — As a child, Puerto Rico’s newest governor said she would stand on her balcony and hold imaginary trials, always finding the supposed defendants guilty.

When 63-year-old Margie Reckard was killed by a gunman who opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, earlier this month, Antonio Basco lost his entire world. So, as the man who felt so alone planned her funeral, he invited the world to join him in remembering his companion of 22 years.

SANTA ANA, California (AP) — This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series FRONTLINE on the treatment of migrant children, which includes an upcoming film.