Immigration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security officials said Tuesday there was a 28% drop in the number of migrants encountered by Customs and Border Protection last month, amid a crackdown on migrants by Mexico.

Rather than marking a stark departure, I see President Donald Trump’s approach as ramping up and expanding the U.S. government’s longstanding efforts to punish undocumented immigrants.

More than 1,500 U.S. citizens spent time in immigration detention between 2007 and 2015 before the government acknowledged the mistake, federal records indicate.

CHELSEA, Mass. (AP) — Guatemalan bakeries, Honduran restaurants and Salvadoran markets are joining an already ethnically diverse mix of businesses in downtown Chelsea, a tiny industrial city across the Mystic River from Boston.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican police, soldiers and National Guard are raiding hotels, buses and trains to round up migrants, creating scenes of weeping Central American mothers piled into police vans along with their children and overflowing detention centers with deplorable conditions.

We are scholars focused on U.S.-Mexico migration. Our report on the enforcement of U.S. immigration law under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, presented in February to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, documented pervasive and systematic civil rights violations against Mexicans living in the United States.

PHOENIX (AP) — As tales of wretchedness and overcrowding in government border detention facilities abound, one group of migrants is particularly vulnerable: teen moms and pregnant girls without parents of their own.

Our government has turned its back on these values.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Before the rise of social media, Border Patrol agents gathered in parking lots at the end of their shifts for what was known as “choir practice” — a chance to share what they saw that day and anything else on their minds.

What our communities need are concrete solutions that transforms the immigration system to one that prioritizes unity and freedom for all immigrants. A system that is grounded in humanity and compassion, not terror or fear.

“Happy hunting,” one agent told colleagues.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A 12-year-old boy entered the U.S. from Mexico with his brother and uncle, fleeing violence in Guatemala, but is now without them in a packed Texas border facility. Honduran sisters, 8 and 6, were taken from their grandmother when they arrived. An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy was separated from his aunt and cousin.

“A ticking time bomb.”

“While I do not know what the government has hoped to accomplish here, I do know what the effect of all this has been. A raising of public consciousness,” the No More Deaths volunteer said in a statement.

Some facts and history.

HOUSTON (AP) — A 33-year-old father of two American-born children was allowed to return to the U.S. on Monday, two years after being deported to El Salvador during the first months of the Trump administration.

A brief history of anti-immigrant policies in the United States.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — A man and his young daughter who drowned trying to cross into Texas were laid to their final rest Monday, a week after a heartbreaking image of their bodies floating in the Rio Grande circled the globe.

For almost two weeks, a 12-year-old migrant girl said she and her 6-year-old sister were held inside a Border Patrol station in Texas where they slept on the floor and some children were locked away when they cried for their parents.

The ACLU of Southern California has brought a First Amendment claim on Bello’s behalf, noting that Bello’s arrest mere hours after his poetry reading “strongly indicates” that ICE acted in retaliation against him for his speech expressing views against the agency’s actions.”

LA HACHADURA, El Salvador (AP) — The young father and daughter who drowned in each other’s arms last week in an attempt to swim across the Rio Grande to the United States have been returned to El Salvador for an expected burial at a private ceremony in the capital Monday.