On U.S. border, fence meant as barrier becomes lure for migrants

[Bouncer]

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - Huddled against a border fence on a bitterly cold morning in El Paso, Texas, a group of 60 Guatemalan migrants, around half toddlers and children, shouted for help: “We’re cold, we’re hungry, we need shelter.”

The group was trying to surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents and claim asylum, but the agents were too busy herding other groups along the fence that stands about 100 yards (91 m) inside U.S. territory.

The 18-foot-high (5.5 meters) steel barrier is meant to deter illegal immigration. But its position inside the border has turned it into a destination for human smugglers trafficking large groups of asylum seekers fleeing poverty and violence.

The smugglers in recent weeks have shifted routes to El Paso from the remote Antelope Wells area of New Mexico, Border Patrol supervisory agent Joe Romero said.

Once undocumented migrants are on U.S. soil, the Border Patrol is obliged to arrest them for entering illegally. But migrants can claim fear of returning to their countries, allowing them to remain in the United States legally until an asylum hearing, which can take months or years.

The smugglers’ strategy exploits a weakness in the very border wall President Donald Trump has touted as a means to protect the United States from undocumented immigrants and illicit drugs.

The crowds in El Paso illustrate changing immigration patterns. As recently as 2015, the majority of undocumented border crossers were adult men from Mexico looking to disappear into the country and find work. Now the Border Patrol says about 85 percent of migrants arriving in the El Paso sector are Central American families and children seeking asylum.

Gaspar Isom, 38, who was with his 16-year-old son Sebastian, said he chose El Paso for the relative safety of its sister Mexican border city, Ciudad Juarez.

“We were told other places were more dangerous to cross, they were controlled by the Zetas,” Isom said, referring to the Mexican cartel.

The pair were among close to 1,000 mostly Central American migrants who crossed into El Paso on Wednesday in the kind of surge the U.S. border has not seen in over a decade, Border Patrol data show.

El Paso is not alone in seeing an uptick. Over 268,000 undocumented migrants were arrested at the Southwest border from October through February, a near doubling over the same period a year earlier, to a 12-year high, according to government data released this week. Annual apprehensions remain well below the peak of 1.6 million in 2000.

Border Patrol officials say the El Paso fence, one of multiple sections of barrier built inside the border due to quirks of local topography, is successful in stopping migrants from scattering into El Paso.

But they acknowledge having a hard time keeping up with the numbers. El Paso sector Border Patrol stations reached capacity on Wednesday, and the group of 60 was finally picked up at 5 a.m. Thursday, after spending two nights sleeping by the fence, according to Dylan Corbett, who helps run a migrant shelter operated by El Paso’s Roman Catholic diocese.

Romero said the agency ran out of space to safely and securely transport migrants: “We have manpower shortages, our facilities are at capacity if not more.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1QP197

[Bouncer]

i think anyone with any ability to think without bias can now see that we have a real and growing problem at the border. it's getting worse by the day and these people are absolutely gaming the system. forget about trump. i don't give a shit about that pumpkin fuck. we need to be able to separate the 2 and acknowledge this is a real problem that is getting serious.

[Bouncer]

Border at ‘Breaking Point’ as More than 76,000 Migrants Cross in a Month

THE NEW YORK TIMES - March 8th 2019


For the fourth time in five months, the number of migrant families crossing the southwest border has broken records, border enforcement authorities said Tuesday, warning that government facilities are full and agents are overwhelmed.

More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, more than double the levels from the same period last year and approaching the largest numbers seen in any February in the last 12 years.

“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point,” Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters in announcing the new data.

Diverted by new restrictions at many of the leading ports of entry, migrant families continue to arrive in ever-larger groups in remote parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. At least 70 such groups of 100 or more people have turned themselves in at Border Patrol stations that typically are staffed by only a handful of agents, often hours away from civilization. By comparison, only 13 such groups arrived in the last fiscal year, and two in the year before.

More than 90 percent of the new arrivals were from Guatemala, officials said, with a significant change in the dynamics of the migration: While Central American migrants once took weeks to journey through Mexico to the United States, many Guatemalan families are now boarding buses and reaching the southwest border in as little as four to seven days “on a very consistent basis,” Mr. McAleenan said.

Mr. McAleenan also declared sweeping changes to the agency’s procedures for guaranteeing adequate medical care for migrants — an overhaul brought on by the deaths of two migrant children in the agency’s custody in December. The measures, which include comprehensive health screenings for all migrant children and a new processing center in El Paso that will help provide better shelter and medical care for migrant families, are an attempt to fix years of health care inadequacies that have left many at risk.

“These solutions are temporary and this situation is not sustainable,” he said. “This is clearly both a border security and a humanitarian crisis.”

The high number of families crossing the border suggest that President Trump’s policies aimed at deterring asylum seekers are not having their intended effect. Up to 2,000 migrants who traveled in a caravan from Central America last year and faced lengthy delays in Tijuana appeared to have given up their cause as of last month after being discouraged by months of delays at the border. But the families following behind them seem only to have adjusted their routes rather than turn back. Indeed, they are traveling in even larger numbers than before.

The throngs of new families are also affecting communities on the American side of the border. In El Paso, for example, where most of the families are being processed after submitting their asylum applications, a volunteer network that temporarily houses the migrants after they are released from custody has had to expand to 20 facilities, compared with only three during the same period last year. Migrants are now being housed in churches, a converted nursing home and about 125 hotel rooms that are being paid for with donations.

“We had never seen these kinds of numbers,” said Ruben Garcia, the director of the organization, called Annunciation House. He said that during one week in February, immigration authorities had released more than 3,600 migrants to his organization, the highest number in any single week since the group’s founding in 1978.

For the most part, Mr. Garcia said that his staff and volunteer workers had been able to keep up with the surge, often making frantic calls to churches to request access to more space for housing families on short notice. But sometimes their best efforts were upended, he said, including on one day last week, when the authorities dropped off 150 more migrants than originally planned.

“We just didn’t have the space,” Mr. Garcia said.

Border Patrol officials said that the biggest “pull factors” encouraging migrant families to make their way to the United States were federal laws and court settlements that prohibit the authorities from deporting Central Americans without lengthy processing, and from detaining migrant families for more than 20 days, after which they must be released into the country while they await immigration court proceedings. Others at the agency pointed to severe poverty and food insecurity in the Western highlands of Guatemala, where many of the families are from, as a primary motivation.

As of March 3, 237,327 migrants had been apprehended along the southwest border since the fiscal year began in October, a 97 percent increase from the previous year, according to government figures.

The larger numbers and the surge into more remote areas of the border have drawn new attention to longstanding problems with medical services provided by Customs and Border Protection. Migrant families, in particular, tend to arrive in urgent need of medical attention, the agency said, which has strained resources and drawn agents away from their law enforcement duties.

Last year, the agency referred 12,000 border crossers to emergency rooms for care, each one requiring an agent to wait with them at the hospital and ensure they were immediately returned to federal custody upon release. The rates of hospital referrals are increasing, the agency said, with about 145 agents per day currently acting as hospital escorts. Meanwhile, cocaine seizures for the current fiscal year have already exceeded the previous one, and methamphetamine seizures have also increased, according to the agency, a situation that also is demanding staff resources.

Historically, many migrant families have been released from custody almost immediately upon crossing the border because the capacity of facilities outfitted to house parents with children is much smaller than the number of people traveling as families. Immigration authorities have enough space to detain about 3,000 members of migrant families; more than 28,000 crossed the border in January.

Recently, though, the agency has also begun releasing single adults into the country because of backups that now extend to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the country, where adult detainees are traditionally held until their immigration court cases are resolved.

More than 50,000 adults are currently detained in ICE custody, the highest number ever, which has in turn begun to tax government lawyers, who are tasked with prosecuting their deportation cases, according to agency officials.

Yet the latest projections, based on intelligence gathered in Central America as well as patterns from previous years, suggest that the numbers of families traveling to the United States may continue to increase in the coming months.

Volunteer groups are trying to prepare for even greater numbers, and some of them are having to get creative.

In downtown Tucson, a 50-room monastery, occupied by Benedictine nuns for 80 years, has been offered up by a local land developer as a temporary shelter to house migrants until July. Newly arrived migrants are checking in at the rate of about 100 a day, replacing families who secure bus tickets to join friends or relatives elsewhere in the country after staying one or two nights.

“I can’t imagine how we would manage without the monastery,” said Teresa Cavendish, director of operations at Catholic Community Services, which is operating the shelter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/u...-increase.html

[lipripper]

i think anyone with any ability to think without bias can now see that we have a real and growing problem at the border. it's getting worse by the day and these people are absolutely gaming the system. forget about trump. i don't give a shit about that pumpkin fuck. we need to be able to separate the 2 and acknowledge this is a real problem that is getting serious.

It's been a problem...but people have refused and still refuse to acknowledge it..the truth hurts...but this shit has to be fixed...we won't have a county soon...

Sent from my E6910 using Tapatalk

[Bouncer]

It's been a problem...but people have refused and still refuse to acknowledge it..the truth hurts...but this shit has to be fixed...we won't have a county soon...

Sent from my E6910 using Tapatalk

And you stand by letting your country be taken while complaining in shit forum! :D

Sent from my Moto G6 using Tapatalk

[lipripper]

And you stand by letting your country be taken while complaining in shit forum! :D

Sent from my Moto G6 using Tapatalk

Lol....I'm ready...trained and willing..I took an oath many years ago...I haven't been relieved of it yet....talk to you yuppy leftist buddies..they are the ones encouraging the destruction of our way of life...not me brother.

Sent from my E6910 using Tapatalk

[Bouncer]

Your ready to rant on the internet pussy!

Sent from my Moto G6 using Tapatalk

[Bouncer]

More than 2,000 migrants quarantined in U.S. detention centers due to disease outbreaks

(Reuters) - Christian Mejia thought he had a shot at getting out of immigration detention in rural Louisiana after he’d found a lawyer to help him seek asylum.

Then he was quarantined.

In early January, a mumps outbreak at the privately-run Pine Prairie U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center put Mejia and hundreds of other detainees on lockdown. “When there is just one person who is sick, everybody pays,” Mejia, 19, said in a phone interview from the Pine Prairie center describing weeks without visits and access to the library and dining hall.

His attorney wasn’t allowed in, but his immigration court case continued anyway - over a video conference line. On Feb. 12, the judge ordered Mejia deported back to Honduras.

The number of people amassed in immigration detention under the Trump administration has reached record highs, raising concerns among migrant advocates about disease outbreaks and resulting quarantines that limit access to legal services.

As of March 6, more than 50,000 migrants were in detention, according to ICE data.

Internal emails reviewed by Reuters reveal the complications of managing outbreaks like the one at Pine Prairie, since immigrant detainees often are transferred around the country and infected people don’t necessarily show symptoms of viral diseases even when they are contagious.

ICE health officials have been notified of 236 confirmed or probable cases of mumps among detainees in 51 facilities in the past 12 months, compared to no cases detected between January 2016 and February 2018. Last year, 423 detainees were determined to have influenza and 461 to have chicken pox. All three diseases are largely preventable by vaccine.

As of March 7, a total of 2,287 detainees were quarantined around the country, an ICE official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters.

Ten Democratic members of Congress sent a letter on Feb. 28 to ICE acting director Ronald Vitiello seeking more information about viral diseases at immigration detention centers in Colorado, Arizona and Texas. Lawmakers did not mention the Pine Prairie outbreak.

Pablo Paez, a spokesman for The GEO Group, the private prison operator that runs Pine Prairie under government contract, said its medical professionals follow standards set by ICE and health authorities. He said medical care provided to detainees allows the company “to detect, treat and follow appropriate medical protocols to manage an infectious outbreak.”

‘UNPRECEDENTED NUMBERS’
The first cases at Pine Prairie were detected in January in four migrants who had been recently transferred from the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, according to internal emails.

Tallahatchie, run by private detention company CoreCivic, has had five confirmed cases of mumps and 18 cases of chicken pox since January, according to company spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist. She said no one who was diagnosed was transferred out of the facility while the disease was active.

Tallahatchie houses hundreds of migrants recently apprehended along the U.S.- Mexico border, ICE officials said.

On Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters that changing demographics on the southwest border, with more immigrants from Central America traveling long distances, overwhelmed border officials and raised health concerns.

“We are seeing migrants arrive with illnesses and medical conditions in unprecedented numbers,” McAleenan said at a press conference.

However, vaccination rates in the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are above 90 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ICE detainees come from countries all over the world, with varying degrees of vaccination coverage.

‘HIGH PROFILE REMOVAL’
At Pine Prairie, staff members were at times at odds with the warden about how to manage the mumps outbreak, internal emails show. The warden decided not to quarantine 40 new arrivals from Tallahatchie in February despite concerns raised by the medical staff, one email showed.

The warden, Indalecio Ramos, who referred questions about the outbreak to ICE and The GEO Group, argued that quarantining the transfers would keep them from attending their court hearings, the facility’s health service administrator wrote in a Feb. 7 email.

In a Feb. 21 email, ICE requested that medical staff members at Pine Prairie clear a detainee quarantined for chicken pox and mumps for travel, calling him a “high profile removal scheduled for deport.” In an email to staff later that day, warden Ramos wrote that medical staff had wanted to exclude the detainee from transfer but “ICE wants him to travel out of the country anyway ... Please ensure he leaves.”

The ICE spokesman said that travel is restricted for people who are known to be contagious but those exposed to diseases who are asymptomatic can travel.

Since January, the 1,094-bed Pine Prairie facility has had 18 detainees with confirmed or probable cases of mumps compared to no cases in 2018, according to ICE. As of mid-February, 288 people were under quarantine at Pine Prairie. Mejia said his quarantine ended on Feb. 25.

Detention centers in other states also have seen a rise in outbreaks.

There have been 186 mumps cases in immigration detention facilities in Texas since October, the largest outbreak in centers there in recent years, said Lara Anton, the press officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

In Colorado, at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility near Denver, run by The GEO Group, 357 people have been quarantined following eight confirmed and five suspected cases of mumps detected since February, as well as six cases of chicken pox diagnosed since the beginning of January, said Dr. Bernadette Albanese from the Tri County Health Department in Colorado.

Civil rights attorney Danielle Jefferis said court hearings for quarantined immigrants at Aurora were largely canceled.

At Pine Prairie on Feb. 12, Mejia said he felt confused and hopeless during his video hearing, with no attorney by his side.

After Mejia’s lawyers complained, attorneys were allowed to visit quarantined detainees on Feb. 13 - one day too late for Mejia.

While he is appealing his case, his lawyers say he could be deported at any time.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1QR0EW