Far fewer refugees entering US

Sharp fall in illegal immigration from Mexico: officials

AUSTIN, Texas, May 10, (Agencies): Somali refugee Mohamoud Saed was elated when he learned that his wife and eight children had completed the lengthy refugee application process that would allow them to join him in the US, reuniting the family for the first time in seven years.

But the Saeds never made the trip to the Atlanta suburbs because their travel documents expired during the legal wrangling over President Donald Trump’s executive orders to limit the refugee program and ban travel from several countries, including Somalia. They are now living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, desperate for a permanent, peaceful home.

The family’s case illustrates how Trump’s travel bans have caused the number of refugees coming into the US to plummet in the last two months, despite his executive orders largely being blocked in the courts. The number of refugees arriving in the US dipped to 2,070 in March, which was a six-year low except for a period in 2013 when the federal government was shut down. The figure was slightly higher in April, 3,200, but it was still much lower than the months preceding Trump’s order.

An executive order signed by Trump in January decreased the refugee limit from 110,000 to 50,000 this fiscal year, but the cap was not blocked in court until mid-March. That caused the State Department to tightly rein in monthly arrivals when the cap was in effect.

“This program simply can’t be turned on and off like a faucet,” said Erol Kekic, executive director of the Immigration and Refugee Program for Church World Service, one of the world’s largest resettlement organizations.

Many approved refugees like the Saeds had their travel documents expire during that time, forcing them to restart the whole process and leaving them in limbo. The 56-year-old Saed, who was a doctor in Somalia before he fled the nation’s civil war, is anxiously awaiting their arrival while struggling with kidney issues that he hopes could be solved with a transplant from one of his family members.

“You can’t imagine how I’m feeling, missing my family,” Saed said.

Conservatives praise the decrease but insist a total halt in admissions is necessary. Refugee groups say the drop has forced them to lay off employees while trapping thousands of people in war-torn nations, overflowing refugee camps and dangerous living conditions amid the world’s largest refugee crisis in modern history.

At the same time, Republican-controlled legislatures have been doing their part to limit the flow of refugees into their states.

Tennessee recently followed other states in suing the federal government to ban refugees in its state, and more than a dozen states have withdrawn from the federal resettlement program.

Texas recently became the largest state to withdraw from the program, and its Legislature is now moving to abolish the state’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. Both withdrawal from the program and abolishing the office are largely symbolic gestures, since non-profits are now tasked with coordinating refugee admissions. But state officials said they hope to put pressure on the federal government to keep its anti-resettlement fight.

frame for release is unclear. Drafts of the memo have been circulating for weeks and have undergone revisions, so the final language is not yet certain.

A person involved in the discussions described one version to The Associated Press speaking only on condition of anonymity because

Halt

the guidance has not been publicly announced. As outlined, that version would encourage prosecutors to charge people with the most serious, provable offenses — something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge’s discretion and are typically dictated, for

WASHINGTON:

Illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border fell for the fifth straight month in April as the Trump administration’s crackdown takes root, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants, an indicator for the overall flow, fell to 11,129 in April, the lowest in decades, down two-thirds from the same month a year ago.

In the first three full months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan 20, just over 42,000 were detained, compared to nearly 133,000 a year ago.

DHS spokesman David Lapan credited tougher surveillance and enforcement by the US Customs and Border Protection agency, but said they anticipate a possible uptick in coming months after the winter.

The data showed a sharp fall in the number of unaccompanied children attempting to enter the country illegally, 998 in April compared to more than 7,000 in both November and December.

Despite the fall in numbers Lapan said DHS is still seeking to add as many as 5,000 more immigration enforcement staff.

“We still have shortages” in border staff numbers, he said.

AUSTIN, Texas:

Also:

Texas lawmakers are advancing a proposal to license family immigrant detention centers as child care providers.

The state Senate voted 20-11 Tuesday to give preliminary approval to a bill that would allow Texas to license two family lockdowns, despite a past state court ruling that such facilities do not meet minimum requirements to care for kids. The measure would enable detention facilities to hold families for prolonged stays, which advocates say could physically and psychologically harm children.

The bill needs a final Senate vote that could come as early as Wednesday before heading to the state House. Texas’ legislative session ends May 29, so time is running short.

The private prison company GEO Group, which operates an 830-bed family facility south of San Antonio, lobbied Texas politicians to introduce the licensing bill, which could help its Karnes Residential Center remain open. That lockup, which mainly holds women and children seeking asylum from Central America, earns GEO $55 million annually.

A lobbyist from GEO was “where the legislation came from,” State Rep John Raney, a Republican from Bryan, previously told the Associated Press. A GEO Group spokesman said the company “supports any effort to provide appropriate levels of government oversight” and that Karnes “provides high-quality care in a safe, humane, family-friendly environment.”

Senators opposed to the proposal Tuesday called it a “vendor bill” that could seriously harm children seeking asylum.

“We’re doing something in favor of one company instead of in the interests of the children,” said Sen Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston. “They’re not coming here for fun ... They’re coming because they’ve been abused, neglected, and now to add insult to injury we’re putting them in baby jails.”

example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime. (AP)

Liberals win in B. Columbia:

The ruling Liberal Party squeaked to victory in British Columbia elections, but it lost its majority after 16 years in power as the leftleaning CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, May 10, (AP): The voice of a young John F. Kennedy can be heard on what Harvard University believes is the earliest known recording of the late president.

WBUR-FM reports that a 20-year-old Kennedy is speaking about thenpresident Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appointment of Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Black was later revealed to have ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

New Democrats picked up seats, preliminary results showed.

The Liberals will now form the Western Canadian province’s first minority government in 65 years, and uncertainty over whether the parties will form coalitions left the future of big oil and gas projects in the region unclear.

John Horgan, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), had vowed to stop Kinder Morgan Inc’s C$7.4 billion ($5.4 billion) Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion if elected. Horgan has also expressed reservations about a $27 billion liquefied natural gas terminal that Malaysia’s Petronas wants to build.

Going into the vote, the Liberals were neck-and-neck in the polls with the opposition NDP, whose campaign promise to make life more affordable in a province that is home to Canada’s most expensive real estate appeared to have resonated with voters.

With the vote count not complete, the Liberals, which are not linked to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal Party, had won 43 seats in the 87-seat provincial legislature. The NDP had 41 and the Green Party three. Forty-four seats was needed for a majority. (RTRS)