US judge again puts off deportations of Iraqis

WASHINGTON: A US federal judge in Detroit has postponed the deportation of Iraqi nationals by another 14 days as he considers the fate of nearly 1,500 people swept up in an immigration crackdown.

District Judge Mark Goldsmith on Thursday extended an earlier stay that would have expired July 10.

“The substantial allegations made here are the detainees face extreme, grave consequences (such as) death, persecution and torture,” he said.

“Such harm far outweighs any government interest the government may have in proceeding with the removals immediately.”

The case initially involved 100 Chaldean Christians with criminal records who were arrested in immigration raids in Michigan last month.

The crackdown is not connected to President Donald Trump’s travel ban, a measure that temporarily bars incoming refugees and visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

On June 27, Goldsmith expanded his order temporarily restraining the deportations to include all Iraqis nationwide, some 1,444 people.

“The court orders that the stay of removal for all members of the class, both original members and those added by way of expanded definition shall now expire on July 24, 2017,” the order said.

Meanwhile, sources said Romanian border police have detained five Iraqi migrants and two Bulgarian guides who are suspected of illegally crossing the border and trying to go to the Schengen visa-free travel zone.

Police said they stopped two cars on Thursday in the town of Negru Voda in southeastern Romania, following a tip-off. They found two Bulgarians and five Iraqis, including children aged 1 and 7, in the vehicles.

The Bulgarians told police they were transporting the migrants to Bucharest where they would be handed over to an unidentified person who would transport them to the Schengen zone. Romania is not a member of Schengen, but Hungary, Romania’s western neighbor, is.

MADRID: The number of migrants crossing into Spain by sea from North Africa has doubled in 2017 from last year, outpacing the Libya-Italy route as the fastest growing entry point to Europe.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the spike in migrant boats is already putting a lot of stress on Spain’s insufficient migration structures.

Escaping poverty and conflicts, more than 360,000 refugees and migrants arrived on European shores across the Mediterranean last year, according to the UNHCR. More than 85,000 have reached Italy so far this year. Spain’s Interior Ministry did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

While the Italian sea route remains the most popular overall with 59,000 migrants between January and May, up 32 percent from last year, the Spanish route further west has gathered steam with 6,800 migrants using it in the same period, a 75 percent increase from 2016.

In June, the trend was even more pronounced as 1,900 migrants, mostly young men originating from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Cameroon, reached the shores of the Southern region of Andalusia, quadrupling the numbers registered the same month last year.

Further South, just as dramatic is the fall in the number of migrants spotted in the Agadez region of Niger, a key stop on the way to Libya from West Africa.

“People are talking about going to Spain. It seems like it is safer to go through Morocco to Spain than through Libya. The difference is that Libya doesn’t have a president and Morocco — there are not guns like in Libya,” said Buba Fubareh, a 27-year-old mason from Banjul, Gambia, who tried and failed to get to Europe through Libya earlier this year.

Many African migrants passing through Libya have reported having been beaten up, detained in camps with no food or water and even traded as slaves before being held for ransom, forced labor or sexual exploitation.

A similar reorganization has also taken place within the Western Mediterranean route itself, with the Alboran Sea, which connects North-Eastern Morocco and SouthEastern Spain, being now more popular than the previously favored Gibraltar strait or Ceuta and Melilla land borders where policing has increased.

Migrant arrivals on the Spanish coastline