All posts tagged "mexico"

Trump camp insiders say he's looking to 'jettison' key part of campaign pledge: report

President-elect Donald Trump may be on the path to breaking his first campaign promise, according to a report in Monday's Washington Post.

During his presidential campaign, Trump claimed he would impose “universal tariffs" of up to 20 percent on all goods imported to the United States. Economists and many congressional Republicans criticized the plan as potentially "disruptive," warning that American consumers would immediately feel the pinch at the grocery store.

However, Trump's aides are now said to be considering imposing the tariffs only on "certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security," according to Washington Post White House economics reporter Jeff Stein.

Stein cited three anonymous sources, and wrote that such a move "would jettison a key aspect of Trump’s campaign pledge, at least for now," adding that, "no decisions have been finalized and that planning remains in flux."

Also read: 'Bring it on': Defiant Raskin responds to GOP threats of retaliation for J6 investigation

Stein wrote that it wasn't clear "exactly which imports or industries" would face Trump's tariffs if the new plan were imposed.

"Preliminary discussions have largely focused on several key sectors that the Trump team wants to bring back to the United States," Stein wrote, citing two of the sources. "Those include the defense industrial supply chain (through tariffs on steel, iron, aluminum and copper); critical medical supplies (syringes, needles, vials and pharmaceutical materials); and energy production (batteries, rare earth minerals and even solar panels)."

In addition to the "universal tariffs", Trump has threatened Mexico and Canada with 25 percent tariffs and an additional 10 percent tariff on China if they don't stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States.

Trump posted to social media in December that he warned the EU he would impose tariffs if they don't close the trade gap with the United States.

"I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way," Trump wrote.

Read The Washington Post article here.

Texas AG Ken Paxton campaign ad mistakenly implicates Donald Trump

At the start of a video blaming Democrats for a laundry list of problems, a narrator says in an ominous baritone, “Do they know what they have done?”

Moments later, a free-for-all of migrants are shown charging at the U.S. border from Tijuana, Mexico — part of a tribute to “tireless conservative warrior” Ken Paxton, the embattled attorney general of Texas. The video debuted last month at the Texas GOP Convention and Paxton posted it on social media.

ALSO READ: ‘Journalistic dystopian nightmare’: Inside a Tennessee college media meltdown

It turns out, however, according to a Raw Story analysis, that the news footage used to show a “dangerous open border,” as the video called it, was actually from November 2018 — during the middle of Republican Donald Trump’s presidency.

That’s not the only misleading part of the two-minute, 37-second video, which uses a montage of images to evoke fear and blame, all in the name of Paxton, who survived 16 articles of impeachment last year. The Dallas Morning News said the Paxton video resembled "a trailer for an action-hero movie."

Many state convention delegates thought we should post our introduction video from earlier today.

A year ago, establishment politicians in Austin told you I wouldn’t be AG much longer and tried to impeach me. We fought like hell, proved them wrong and now we are going to beat… pic.twitter.com/RHqaLOwCck
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) May 23, 2024

But the stock images used in the video — including a sad boy staring forlornly out a window — did not depict Texans, or even Americans.

Instead, they came from companies or artists representing a veritable United Nations of foreign countries.

The sad boy and the dejected face of a young girl? Switzerland.

Stacks of $100 bills? Spain.

A person representing the “liberal establishment” who’s putting $100 bills into an envelope? Ukraine.

The silhouette of a man walking onto a stage? Russia.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

In the video, Paxton, who in March struck a deal that ended a federal criminal securities fraud case against him, is called “America’s most conservative attorney general” and “somebody who has been brave and strong.” Paxton spent part of April in New York attending the trial of former president Donald Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony fraud counts.

ALSO READ: ‘That's the Kool-Aid’: Republicans triple down on Trump the morning after guilty verdict

The video charges that the “liberal establishment” wanted to eliminate Paxton because it “resents who they cannot control. They hatched a secret and shameful plan to overturn an election and take out our conservative champion.”

Actually, 70 percent of his fellow Republicans in the Republican-controlled state House voted to impeach Paxton on charges of bribery and corruption in trying to help a wealthy political donor.

The impeachment trial, which ended with the Republican-controlled Texas Senate acquitting Paxton, included testimony from a staff member that Paxton’s extramarital affair could make him vulnerable to bribery.

Among the people who listened to the testimony and adjudicated the case: Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton. They are still married. They were shown in a photo at the GOP Convention holding hands and waving to the crowd.

When it was his turn to speak, Paxton claimed migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

He said, falsely, “The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote.”

As water reservoirs go dry, Mexico City and Bogotá are staring down ‘Day Zero’

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

In Mexico City, more and more residents are watching their taps go dry for hours a day. Even when water does flow, it often comes out dark brown and smells noxious. A former political leader is asking the public to “prioritize essential actions for survival” as the city’s key reservoirs run dry. Meanwhile, 2,000 miles south in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, reservoir levels are falling just as fast, and the city government has implemented rotating water shutoffs. The mayor has begged families to shower together and leave the city on weekends to cut down on water usage.

The measures come as a so-called heat dome sitting atop Mexico is shattering temperature records in Central America, and both Central and South America are wasting beneath a drought driven by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, which periodically brings exceptionally dry weather to the Southern Hemisphere. Droughts in the region have grown more intense thanks to warmer winter temperatures and long-term aridification fueled by climate change. The present dry spell has shriveled river systems in Mexico and Colombia and lowered water levels in the reservoirs that supply their growing cities. Officials in both cities have warned that, in June, their water systems might reach a “Day Zero” in which they fail altogether unless residents cut usage.

In warning about the potential for a Day Zero in the water system, both cities are referencing the famous example set by Cape Town, South Africa, which made global headlines in 2018 when it almost ran out of water. The city was months away from a total collapse of its reservoir system when it mounted an unprecedented public awareness campaign and rolled out strict fees on water consumption. These measures succeeded in pulling the city back from the brink.

Six years later, Cape Town stands as a success story in municipal crisis management, but experts say its playbook will be hard for Mexico City and Bogotá to replicate. Instead of focusing primarily on changing public behavior, these cities will need to make big investments to improve aging infrastructure and shore up their water supplies. How they fare in these endeavors will in turn inform future efforts to make the world’s fast-growing cities resilient to increasing climate volatility.

“The bigger question, and what’s relevant for other cities, is now that we’ve experienced this, what can we do going forward to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” said Johanna Brühl, a water expert at the nonprofit Environment for Development in South Africa who has studied Cape Town’s water crisis.

Coining the very phrase “Day Zero” was part of Cape Town’s solution to a water crisis that many officials had seen coming for years. As reservoir levels fell between 2015 and 2017 amid a drought, city leaders released dozens of statements urging residents to reduce water usage, but no one paid much attention. Only in early 2018, when officials started talking in increasingly apocalyptic terms about a collapse of the municipal water system, did residents — and international media outlets — start to pay attention.

The city rolled out a set of measures to enforce cuts, including a tariff system that charged more thirsty users a higher price per gallon plus a door-knocking campaign to shame the biggest water hogs. But it was the rhetoric around Day Zero that seemed to be the most effective tool to slash water usage, experts who studied the crisis told Grist. When the local government warned that residents would have to pick up buckets of water from public collection points managed by the military, consumption plummeted. The effort to stave off a water crisis began to look like a grassroots movement, with residents sharing conservation tricks like flushing the toilet with water captured from the shower.

By April 2018, water usage had fallen to about half of what it was three years earlier, a decline that astonished even city officials. As consumption dropped, the city pushed the estimated date of the apocalypse out by a few days, then a few weeks. When a big rain arrived in the early summer and began to refill the reservoirs, the government turned off the countdown altogether, declaring the crisis at a temporary end.

“The big take-home point for any city in terms of navigating that kind of crisis is just to change the culture and to get the needle moving in the right direction,” said Eddie Andrews, the deputy mayor of Cape Town, who was a city council member during the Day Zero affair. “Culture is really important — making sure that you remain on message.”

Political leaders in Mexico and Colombia have both been sending out the same dire warnings: One prominent Mexico City politician warned in March that the city is “at the edge of the precipice,” and last month Bogotá’s mayor announced that the city had only around 50 days of water remaining, with residents looking at “weeks and months” of water rationing.

But Cape Town’s grassroots conservation success will be difficult to replicate. In order for such messaging to work, residents have to trust their government. Indeed, other large South African cities like Johannesburg and Durban have struggled to spur usage reductions during periods of water stress, in part because they are governed by the African National Congress, or ANC. While the ANC has been the country’s dominant political party since its heroic 1994 victory over the apartheid regime that had ruled South Africa for decades, popular enthusiasm for the party has plummeted in recent years as corruption scandals have engulfed its top ranks. Unlike the governing bodies of South Africa’s other major cities, the Western Cape government that oversees Cape Town is led by an opposition party that enjoys far more local support than the ANC.

Manuel Perló Cohen, a professor who studies water infrastructure at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, said the government in Mexico City doesn’t enjoy the same kind of goodwill, meaning the government’s available tools may be limited to things like mandatory water restrictions.

“It won’t work here, because there’s a lack of confidence in the government,” he told Grist. “People don’t believe in most of what the government says, even if it’s the truth.” Mexico is just weeks away from a major election, and the incumbent leaders in Mexico City as well as the federal government have tried to downplay the water issues even as their opponents seize on it for campaign fodder.

To really have control over the future of its water, a city also needs to have control over its physical infrastructure. But Mexico City loses almost 40 percent of its municipal water to leakage from pipes and canals, one of the highest rates in the world. This means that residential conservation efforts can only have a limited effect on the overall water budget, according to Perló Cohen. The city has also seen a rise in water theft from canals and reservoir systems: Organized crime groups siphon off public water and use it to grow avocados or resell it to water-starved households at a high markup. Locals call this huachicoleo de agua, using a term coined to describe fuel theft.

While the city government of Bogotá has both the public trust and the political power to implement rotating water shutoffs — which has helped protect reservoir levels — the city’s conservation campaign is lacking another crucial ingredient: enthusiasm. As in Cape Town, residents shared novel ways to reduce water usage during the first week of the crisis, but since then the local media has stopped devoting as much attention to the shutoffs. Water usage has begun to tick back up.

“These types of campaigns are difficult to get across to people,” said Laura Bulbena, a Bogotá-based researcher with the environmental nonprofit World Resources Institute. “It’s rained a little in Bogotá, two weeks passed, and actually the numbers show that water consumption went up. So not only there isn’t enough reduction, there’s not enough water coming into the reservoirs.”

But there are other lessons from Cape Town’s water crisis, ones that any city could follow. In its aftermath, the city diversified its water system and reduced reliance on the main reservoirs that shrank during the drought. Officials now plan to build multiple seawater-desalination plants and recharge groundwater aquifers with treated wastewater. This will put the city on far better footing for future dry spells.

“Every single crisis presents opportunities,” said Andrews, the deputy mayor of Cape Town. “We’ve seen that you can’t just rely on the rainfall. You have to augment.”

Bogotá relies on reservoirs for almost its entire water supply, and officials had long believed that the reservoir system was resilient to drought. Now, they may change course and invest in alternate supplies. Experts say bringing in new water sources wouldn’t break the bank; the local water utility could tap the healthy underground aquifer beneath the city, and Bulbena’s team at World Resources Institute has shown that restoring a natural environment in the nearby Bogotá River could help clean that river’s water for drinking.

“The water system is overall very good in Bogotá, but the city must invest in a backup system, because this El Niño system will probably be repeated frequently,” said Armando Sarmiento López, a professor of ecology at Javeriana University in Bogotá.

Alejandra Lopez Rodriguez, a policy advocate at the Nature Conservancy in Mexico City, said that the government of that city could also fix its severe leakage problem and build wastewater treatment plants — if officials choose to prioritize those projects.

“We have resources and we have access to financing,” she told Grist. “There are resources available. It just also takes a will and an interest to want to invest in these issues.”

The Nature Conservancy runs a water investment fund in Mexico City that has financed conservation efforts in the pine forests surrounding the metropolis; these forests capture water and help recharge the city’s collapsing groundwater aquifers.

Recharging aquifers and building desalination plants is one thing, but the water crises in these cities have also revealed a stark fact: For many of the poorest residents in a metropolis like Cape Town, clean water was never available in the first place.

The wealthy and middle-class areas of Cape Town receive piped water from reservoirs, but residents who live in the vast townships outside the city have to get water from communal standpipes — the very fate that so frightened middle-class residents of the city in the leadup to Day Zero. In the eastern neighborhoods of Mexico City, many taps have never released water for more than a few hours each day, according to Lopez Rodriguez, and much of that water is from contaminated sections of the aquifer. Lopez Rodriguez speculates that the crisis in Mexico City has drawn international attention because it has begun to affect upper-class neighborhoods that are accustomed to reliable water deliveries from the reservoir system.

Even during the peak of the Day Zero affair, many of the worst-off residents of Cape Town pointed to the same disparity, said Richard Meissner, a professor of political science at the University of South Africa who has studied the city’s response to the 2018 drought.

“I remember that some of the less affluent people in the city said that the campaign is aimed at the more affluent portions of Cape Town,” he said. “They said, ‘They don’t care about us, because for us every day is a Day Zero.’”

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

A Houston woman applied for a green card. She was banned from the U.S. for a decade.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy.

TAMAULIPAS, Mexico — Claudia González was living a quiet, comfortable life in Houston with her husband and their son. She worked as a data entry clerk at an elementary school and went to church every Sunday with her son.

But something always nagged at her — her immigration status.

After crossing the border illegally as a teenager to rejoin her mother, she had lived undocumented in the U.S. for 15 years until she applied for a work permit through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2018. Even though the program gives recipients temporary protection from deportation, it is not a permanent solution for immigrants who want to live in the U.S. long term.

Because her husband is a U.S. citizen — citizens can sponsor a spouse for a green card — she hired an immigration attorney and paid about $6,000 in fees to apply for permanent legal residency in 2018. For González, it meant freedom from her greatest fear, being deported and separated from her family. And it meant “being legal in a country I call home,” González said.

In June, she traveled from Houston to Ciudad Juárez, where an American consulate officer interviewed her — she had to do this in Mexico because she didn’t have a legal entry into the U.S. But in August, five years after initially applying for her green card, she was hit with a 10-year ban from reentering the U.S.

“It was really hard to receive that message; I was heartbroken,” she said. “I thought about my son. He just started high school, so my thought was that he’ll be 24 by the time I can return and he probably already will have graduated college.”

González, 36, returned to the village where she grew up to live with her mother, Guadalupe González, 50 miles from the Texas border and near the Gulf of Mexico.

Like many undocumented people trying to legalize their immigration status — an estimated 11 million people live in the U.S. without legal status — González had to navigate a bureaucratic and expensive immigration system.

In her mind, it was a chance to correct the mistakes of the past, when her mother asked her to get in a car with strangers who drove her across the Rio Grande and helped her talk her way past U.S. immigration agents. She was 15 at the time.

But the current system can be fickle and unforgiving even for those who want to do it the right way. And unlike the criminal justice system, there is no way to appeal the 10-year ban, and immigration officials don’t have to provide the evidence they have to support their decision.

“It’s not fair and it’s not logical. it's not something that anyone should go through if they want to get legal status in the U.S.,” said Naimeh Salem, an immigration attorney in Houston who recently took González’s case. “If they have never committed a crime in the U.S., they pay their taxes, they're good citizens. Why can’t we make it possible for them to become permanent residents?”

Guadalupe González, her 66-year-old mother, said it weighs on her now, the situation she put her daughter in. She said she did it because she hoped her daughter would get a better education and have a chance at a more successful life in the U.S.

“I try to tell her positive things, and that everything has a solution, even though I too feel bad,” Guadalupe González said. “I try not to show the same emotions as her, because then we both end up crying.”

In January, Guadalupe González requested U.S. asylum after suspected drug cartel members began breaking into people’s homes; four years earlier her oldest son was kidnapped from the ranch where he worked by men the family believes were cartel members, in front of his wife and children. He hasn’t been heard from since.

Guadalupe González was allowed into the U.S. while her asylum case is pending and she moved to Bay City, 80 miles southwest of Houston.

Back in Houston, 15-year-old Gerardo Garza, Jr. is about to complete his freshman year of high school. He was born in Houston and he said he wonders why the immigration system has separated him from his mother. And if he’ll one day get to live with her again in Texas.

“I was just having a hard time accepting that she’s not with me,” he said. “I was in my head like: ‘Why? Why is the government like this? Why can’t it be simpler than it is now?’

Top: Claudia González left her 15-year-old son with his father in Houston while she lives in Mexico and tries to find a legal way to return to her family. Bottom left: González plays lotería with family after church in Tamaulipas. Bottom right: Bottle caps on lotería cards.

In October, Salem filed a request for humanitarian parole, which would allow Claudia González to reenter the U.S. and resubmit her green card application. The request remains pending with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Salem said there were better options for González, who as a DACA recipient could have applied for permission to travel to Mexico, then legally reenter the U.S. That would have allowed her to stay in the U.S. as she applied for her green card without having to go to Juárez.

González said she didn’t take that route because her previous lawyer advised against it. She said she trusted him. But now she regrets not pushing for that option.

“I feel so ignorant now. I should have done more research,” González said.

Now, three generations of the González family are separated as Claudia tries to find a way to reunite with her son in Houston and her mother awaits a decision on her asylum petition.

Life in Tamaulipas

For the past nine months, Claudia González has lived in a remote village where she grew up before leaving for Texas. She lives with her godmother, whose house is next door to her mother’s house.

It’s secluded, surrounded by undeveloped land, some farms and a few ranches — including the one where her missing brother worked. There is a convenience store, a taco restaurant and an evangelical church within a few minutes’ walk of the house. There’s a nearby school and a small plaza that stays mostly empty unless there’s a major celebration.

There's' very little work; many locals depend on money sent home by relatives working on the other side of the border.

The area is also a hot spot for drug cartel activity. Neighbors and González said at night, unmarked vehicles patrol the area — they suspect cartel members keeping an eye out for rival cartel members. It’s common to hear gunfire in the middle of the night, González said.

For a few months, starting in December, she worked at a local stationery store, but quit after receiving a phone call from a man who González said was threatening to shut down the store if it didn’t pay certain “fees.”

“That scared me and gave me a panic attack,” González said.

Claudia González visits a store near her home in Tamaulipas, roughly 50 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border.

Claudia González visits a store near her home in Tamaulipas, roughly 50 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Claudia González visits with her neighbors in her Tamaulipas village. Her older brother was kidnapped from a nearby ranch in 2020 and is presumed dead. González and her neighbors say it’s common to hear gunfire at night. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Before being forced to move to Mexico, she had some money saved. She recently filed her U.S. taxes and received a refund. Once that money dries up, she doesn’t know what she will do, she said.

She spends most of her time researching ways to return legally. She’s contacted the office of a member of Congress in Houston asking for help. She also goes to church and plays lotería, a board game similar to bingo, with an aunt who lives in the same village.

On a Sunday afternoon in September, González wore a green dress and carried a Bible with a black leather cover as she walked the dirt road to the local evangelical church.

The pastor, Estela Prieto Covarrubias, 71, invited congregants to the podium to share a Bible verse or sing. González went to the front to read from Psalm 139. She told the congregation – about 40 people — that the verse helped her fight through her depression, especially after she was hit with the decade-long ban from the U.S.

“Sometimes I feel like I lost a lot of things,” she said through tears. “I lost my job, I am far from my son, but God is the one who has sustained me by his grace and with his mercy."

The congregation applauded. Some shouted: Amen!

Covarrubias said she was impressed by González’s perseverance.

“I believe her testimony is impactful. She doesn’t look devastated,” Covarrubias said after her sermon. “Instead, you see her with an infectious smile, because she has faith in God who is going to open the door for her and put the right people in place to be able to fix her situation and return home with her son.”

Crossing the border

In 1998, Guadalupe González, then a single mom after separating from her ex-husband, who she said was physically abusive, got a tourist visa and began crossing the border to work in McAllen. She would leave Claudia with her sister and her brother-in-law, who had two children of their own. Her ex-husband took Claudia’s older sister and brother to Dallas.

On the weekends Guadalupe González would return to the village to visit Claudia, then relatives would drop her at the border on Sunday afternoons so she could return to work in Texas.

“I needed to pay for [Claudia’s] education and to feed her, that’s why I left,” she said.

When work slowed in McAllen, she said she headed north to Bay City and picked cotton for a few weeks before moving to Houston, where she worked at different restaurants before she started to clean houses in 1999. She would work two months at a time, then return to Mexico for a week at a time.

But the trips were tiring and time-consuming. So in 2003, she sent for Claudia. Her two older children, then 20 and 23 years old, had returned to Mexico and decided to stay.

An aunt dropped off Claudia González at the Texas-Mexico border where a coyote — a human smuggler — put her in a vehicle with a couple who drove her across the border. González said she remembers being in the car with the couple and two other children. She didn’t speak to the U.S. agent at the bridge and doesn’t remember what the adults told the agent about her, but she remembers the agent waving them through.

Guadalupe González, who remarried in 2005, said she didn’t know at the time how that car trip would affect her daughter’s future. She just wanted to be with Claudia in the U.S. and give her a shot at a good education.

“I thought as long as she didn’t cross the desert or get detained, everything would be fine,” she said.

Pastor Estela Prieto Covarrubias leads the worship at her church in Tamaulipas on Sept. 17, 2023. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Claudia González sings at the church.

Claudia González sings at the church. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Building a life in Houston

At Ross Sterling High School in 2005, Claudia González met the boy she would marry. They sat at the same table in the cafeteria with mutual friends. She remembers him “acting like a clown to make me laugh.”

They began to date. Then she started attending an evangelical church with his family, she said. At first, it was just to spend more time with him, but eventually, she became a born-again Christian, leaving behind the Catholic traditions she grew up with.

When she was 17, Claudia González moved in with her boyfriend’s family. Her stepfather was physically and emotionally abusive toward her mother and she wanted to leave that environment, she said. She dropped out of high school, but earned her general educational development degree.

In 2009, the couple had a son, Gerardo Garza. Jr.

Meanwhile, Guadalupe González had separated from her second husband, and in 2011 she returned to Tamaulipas to take care of her father, who was battling pancreatic cancer. Her visa had expired, and there was no guarantee that U.S. officials would renew it, so she went back knowing she would likely not be able to return to Houston.

She took care of her father for 11 months before he died.

“I’m happy I was able to take care of him in his last days,” she said.

Interview in Ciudad Juárez

Claudia González stayed in Houston and built a life. She and her partner got married in 2013. She successfully applied for DACA in 2018, which allowed her to work legally in the U.S.

DACA also allowed her to get a Social Security number, pay taxes and get a Texas driver’s license.

She delivered food for DoorDash. She worked as a cashier at a Subway. Then she found a job she loved at an elementary school, as a data entry clerk. Her coworkers and the teachers soon came to depend on her to act as an interpreter for the Spanish-speaking parents of some of the students.

“I always wanted to make a difference and help people that don't speak English,” she said. “My English is not perfect, you know, but I always tried to help them.”

Every Sunday morning, González and her son would go to church, then head to Olive Garden and share a plate of chicken fettuccine alfredo before ending the afternoon shopping for clothes at Goodwill.

“Those were our mommy-son dates,” she said.

Top: Claudia González speaks with church members after Sunday service. Bottom left: González and her mother, Guadalupe González, prepare breakfast at their home. Bottom right: González holds her chick, Mushito.

She was able to renew her work permit four times, paying $495 in fees each time. But she knew that if she wanted to be secure, she needed a green card. Her husband, who was born in Mexico and became a naturalized citizen, sponsored her.

She began the application process in 2019.

Back in Mexico, tragedy struck in April 2020. Claudia’s older brother, José Fabian, was kidnapped by suspected drug cartel members from the ranch where he lived with his wife and two children. He is presumed dead, but Guadalupe González clings to the hope that he is still alive. The family said they don’t know why he was targeted, but the rumor around town is that he was friends with someone who was involved with the local drug cartel.

“Sometimes I tell my daughter that she at least has a chance to see her son,” Guadalupe González said. “But what about mine? I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

After her brother disappeared, Claudia González wanted to return to Mexico to stay with her mother for a while. She asked her lawyer to apply for what’s known as advance parole, which would have allowed her to leave the U.S. temporarily and return legally as a DACA recipient. Her lawyer told her it was too risky, she said, so she dropped the idea.

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, her application seemed to be stalled in the immigration system bureaucracy. Finally last year, she received an appointment with an American consulate official in Ciudad Juárez.

Her lawyer at the time assured her everything would be fine and advised her to answer the questions honestly, without elaborating too much, she said.

In June, she traveled to Juárez with her son and met her mother and older sister there. They lived in a hotel for two weeks while she did two interviews with the same officer.

She told the officer how she entered the U.S. — by crossing an international bridge with a couple. She said the officer insisted on knowing who brought her into the country and how. González said she didn’t know the people who drove her across the bridge or what documents they presented on her behalf.

After the interviews were done she went to her mother’s home in Tamaulipas to wait for the decision.

On Aug. 28, 2023, González received an email from the U.S. State Department.

She said her heart dropped and tears started to roll down her cheeks when she read it: She was denied a visa and banned from entering the U.S. for a decade because she had lived in the U.S. for more than a year without legal status. They also accused her of lying to the consulate officer and claiming to be a U.S. citizen when she wasn’t.

Her aunt dropped the towels she had just folded and immediately embraced González.

González called her lawyer.

The lawyer told her that he wrote in her paperwork that she immigrated alone, González said. But she told the officer she crossed the border with strangers. She said she believes this discrepancy is what led to her being accused of lying. She insists that she never told U.S. officials that she was a citizen.

“God knows I never said that,” she said. Then her lawyer dropped her.

“He told me that this was out of his expertise and he couldn’t help me and wished me well,” she said.

Top left: Claudia González shares her story on a live stream with members of the Dreamers 2gether group. Top right: Guadalupe González holds a photo of her son, who hasn’t been heard from since he was kidnapped in 2020. Bottom: From left: Claudia González, her mother Guadalupe González, and her sister Ma Guadalupe González at their home in Tamaulipas.

Longing for his mother

Gerardo Garza, Jr. is a high school freshman now, living with his father in the south part of Houston. He plays viola in the school orchestra. Since he was separated from his mother, he texts and calls her often, sharing details about his day, his troubles with his now ex-girlfriend and how he has emotionally broken down at school.

The last time he saw his mother was in April, to celebrate his 15th birthday. His father drove him to the Texas-Mexico border, where Claudia picked him up and took him to the village. She had decorated an event hall with black, gold and red balloons and a neon sign that read, “mis quince” — my 15th.

Dressed in a brown button-down shirt, blue denim jeans and brown boots, Garza posed for a photo next to his mother in front of the balloons as music blared through the room.

They ate carne asada tacos.

“I felt at home, I knew everyone there loved me,” Garza said. “I knew it wasn’t much, but I knew my mom still tried to make it big.”

But when it was time to go home, he felt a punch in his gut, he said. His father picked him up at the bridge on the Mexican side. Garza said his father said something silly that made his mother smile.

Garza and his mother hugged, he said, as both held back tears. On the drive to Houston, he said he thought about his mother’s smile and his eyes started to water.

He put his sunglasses on, he said, so his dad wouldn’t notice he was crying.

He said he misses her a lot and reminisces often about the days they would spend together, especially those Sunday mornings when they would go to church and eat fettuccine alfredo at Olive Garden.

“I always smile and laugh when I remember those good times,” Garza said.

He’s had to learn how to take care of himself most of the time because his father works long hours as a welder.

He said he didn’t realize how much the household depended on his mother. She paid all the bills. She took him to school in the mornings. When his father can’t give him a ride to school he orders an Uber. Or a neighbor takes him.

There was a day recently when he missed his mother so much that he went into her closet and cried.

“My mom is really a good person and I don't think that she deserves any of this, or that we deserve any of this,” he said.

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Australian PM mourns 'tragic' deaths of surfers killed in Mexico

SYDNEY — Australia's prime minister on Tuesday lamented the "tragic" deaths of two Australian brothers and an American shot dead in a suspected robbery in Mexico.

Anthony Albanese praised the trio of "wonderful young men" killed in Baja California state and offered condolences to their devastated families.

"This is a tragic incident, and to all of the family and the friends of these young Australians, I think the whole of Australia's thoughts are with you at this difficult time." Albanese indicated he wanted to speak to the brothers' family "at an appropriate time of their choosing."

Bodies found in Mexico likely those of missing surfers: authorities

TIJUANA, Mexico — The physical characteristics of three bodies found in Mexico's Baja California state resemble those of two Australian brothers and their American friend who went missing while on a surfing trip, local authorities said Saturday.

State prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade said that the bodies, found Friday dumped in a shaft atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, were in an "advanced state of decomposition," complicating identification.

‘Devastating’ wait times at Mexico border strain California small businesses

This story was originally published by CalMatters, nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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Government agencies are spending billions of dollars to improve wait times at the U.S.-Mexico border, but the checkpoints remain severely clogged — and border communities are hurting.

In recent months lines at the border often stretched for several hours, frustrating more than 150,000 students, cross-border families, health care workers, small business owners, and others who daily cross to and from Mexico. Experts say some fronterizas have stopped crossing the border as often, and the loss of foot traffic in the region has resulted in heavy sales losses for small businesses.

“Money we can replace, but time will never come back. Those people are wasting their time in that line,” said Sunil Gakherja, 49, who owns a small perfume store in San Ysidro, a neighborhood in San Diego, close to the border.

Sunil Gakhreja, owner of Sunny Perfumes, in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

U.S. border officials point to the need to shift resources to handle irregular migration — people who come into the United States in places other than official ports of entry, usually to seek asylum. San Diego surpassed Tucson this month as Border Patrol’s busiest sector in the nation.

But border-area residents and business leaders say the federal government should staff the border effectively so that the $741-million expansion of the San Ysidro Port of Entry has its intended impact, to reduce wait times and stimulate the regional economy.

Research published by the Atlantic Council says a 10-minute reduction in wait times could lead to an additional $26 million worth of cargo entering the United States each month and an annual impact of $5.4 million on the U.S. economy from purchases by families and individuals entering the United States from Mexico.

In the San Diego region, regular border crossers say wait times are going up, not down. Waits that used to last 30 minutes to an hour on weekdays can now regularly take three to four hours. On several days last December, pedestrians waited six hours or more. Adding to their frustration, long lines also stretch southbound to enter Mexico.

“Devastating” is how Kenia Zamarripa described the waits on both sides of the border. She is vice president of international and public affairs at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“This is families losing their incomes,” she said. “There are 800 small businesses in San Ysidro that depend on pedestrian crossings and, again, 90% of their customers cross on foot.”

State officials said it’s unclear how much California has missed out on in sales tax revenue because that information can’t be broken down by zip code.

Small border businesses suffering

After opening in 2017, the El Rincon restaurant in San Ysidro faced the same challenges and growing pains many small, family-run businesses contend with, said Andrea Alaniz. Her mom owns the Mexican food restaurant along San Ysidro Boulevard, a few blocks from the border.

“We just opened the doors, and it was just us doing the cooking and waiting tables — hoping that business would increase and keep on a nice trend,” she recalled.

Word quickly spread of her mother’s caseros — homemade family recipes from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Lines would wrap around the tiny restaurant, with some customers even driving from Los Angeles or crossing north from Baja California, for the food.

“You know, the spices … you can find the spices anywhere, but really, it’s the way my mom and my family cooks,” said Alaniz. “My mom’s an amazing cook, and our recipes … they go way back.”

Andrea Alaniz at El Ricon, her family’s restaurant, in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several business that has been affected by recent closures at the U.S.-Mexico border. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Andrea Alaniz at El Rincon, her family’s restaurant, in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several business that has been affected by recent closures at the U.S.-Mexico border. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

The whole family — five siblings — pitched in to handle the increased volume and their newfound success.

“We all work here,” laughed Alaniz. “It was a Sunday, and I remember we were all here, and the music was blaring, and we were just dancing and having fun and it was a really nice feeling.”

Then the pandemic hit. Federal officials restricted cross-border travel. Business tanked. About 200 businesses closed in San Ysidro, a working-class, mostly immigrant community of about 25,000 people, said Jason Wells, president of the local chamber of commerce.

“Shut their doors forever. Gone,” he said.

Alaniz and her family managed to stay open and even sent some money home to family in Mexico, but it was a daily fight. “We just don’t get the same amount of people coming in, because people aren’t going back and forth anymore,” said Alaniz.

Sergio Carrillo prepares food at El Ricon restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several business that has been affected by the recent closures of the U.S.-Mexico border. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Waitress Daisy Marlene Montes Carranza works at El Rincon restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several business that has been affected by recent closures at the U.S.-Mexico border. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

First: Sergio Carrillo prepares food at El Rincon restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. Last: Waitress Daisy Marlene Montes Carranza works at El Rincon restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several businesses that has been affected by recent closures of the U.S.-Mexico border. Photos by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

El Rincon restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego on April 16, 2024. The restaurant is one of several businesses that has been affected by recent closures at the U.S.-Mexico border. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Multiple studies show immigrants like Alaniz’s family were a key economic engine for the United States’ rebound from the pandemic. Some 50% of the labor market’s recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.

Zamarripa says it’s these same border communities that lose about $2 billion yearly because of excessive border wait times. She worries the latest bottlenecks at checkpoints could severely impact those struggling to get back on their feet.

Gakherja, the owner of the perfumery, described a Sunday customer who waited six hours to cross the border.

“He got in the line at 9 in the morning, and he got here at 3:30 p.m. It’s too much. Imagine they have kids who have to go to the restroom. They need food. They’re not thinking about shopping after that,” said Gakherja.

Waiting is the hardest part

It’s not just small businesses that are hurting. Those hardest hit by backlogs at inefficient ports of entry include the region’s hospitality and hospital workers, students, medical patients, and anyone who relies on the interdependence of a cross-border region to offset the skyrocketing costs of living in San Diego, one of the most expensive cities in the nation.

Hector Urquiza, a 19-year-old college student serving in the Army Reserves, lives with his brother in Tijuana because rent is too expensive in San Diego.

“When I had to go to work, there was a two-hour line. It was like a snake, you know, wiggling around. That was kind of painful,” said Urquiza.

Cross-border travelers often turn to Facebook to document their experiences and wait times because the official Customs and Border Protection data is considered inaccurate and unreliable. Cómo está la línea Tijuana (How is the Tijuana line), a Facebook group with 430,000 members, was founded in June 2013 when its creator relied on the official CBP wait times and was extraordinarily late for work, according to his posts.

An immigrant chef in Miami trots the globe to feed the needy

Miami (AFP) - Karla Hoyos is a chef ready to hop on a plane at a moment's notice. Whenever she gets the call, she leaves her taco business in Miami to go anywhere in the world to help feed victims of natural disasters or war. She is one of dozens of chefs connected to World Central Kitchen (WCK), the nonprofit group founded by renowned chef Jose Andres that provides meals at global hotspots where people face trauma. A few days ago, Hoyos, 35, returned from Israel, where she spent two weeks teaching volunteers how to make huge pots of food for those who had to evacuate their homes after the att...

UN experts urge Mexico to stamp out extortion of migrants

Mexico City (AFP) - United Nations experts on Friday called on Mexico to crack down on extortion by police and other officials targeting vulnerable migrants in flagrant violation of their human rights. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also urged the Mexican government to avoid a repeat of the tragedy last year when 40 migrants died in a fire while behind bars. More than 240,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers were detained in Mexico in the first half of 2023, including many children, the experts said at the conclusion of a 12-day visit. According to the Mexican constitution...

Tropical Storm Idalia forms near Mexico, heads to Florida

Miami (AFP) - Tropical Storm Idalia formed Sunday in the Caribbean, buffeting southeastern Mexico with wind and rain, as forecasters predicted it will strengthen to a hurricane before reaching Florida later in the week. The storm, which is not forecast to make landfall in Mexico, will travel across the Gulf of Mexico before reaching northwest Florida, the US National Hurricane Center said. Idalia will create "increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and hurricane-force winds along portions of the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle beginning as early as Tuesday," the NHC war...