The man, 33-year-old Jovokhir Attoev, crossed the border into Arizona and was apprehended by Border Patrol in February 2022, the officials said. At the time, neither Customs and Border Protection nor ICE could find any derogatory information on Attoev. He was released inside the U.S. on bond.

Then, in May 2023, Uzbekistan put out an international notice that Attoev was wanted in his home country for his alleged affiliation with ISIS.

But it was not until March 2024, almost a year later, when the U.S. government was reviewing Attoev’s application for asylum, that officials discovered the notice from Uzbekistan and connected it with the man living in Maryland.

After the connection was made, ICE arrested him on April 17 in Baltimore. Attoev is currently in custody in Pennsylvania, according to the ICE website. He’s awaiting trial in immigration court next week in New Jersey, where ICE lawyers will likely argue that they need to keep him detained in order to glean more information about his potential ties to ISIS.

Multiple former Department of Homeland Security officials interviewed by NBC News said the case raises concerns about how quickly and frequently the U.S. can do follow-up vetting on migrants who have already crossed the border.

While no derogatory information existed on Attoev at the time he crossed the border in 2022, the notice from the Uzbek government in 2023 was not initially checked against the list of immigrants living in the U.S. and awaiting court hearings.

Elizabeth Neumann, who served as assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at DHS from 2017 to 2020, said Congress should pass the bipartisan border security legislation that was blocked by Republicans earlier this year and allocate more money for counterterrorism.

“The concern I have is that in the last decade or so our counterterrorism budgets have drastically decreased,” Neumann said. “And that means we have [fewer] analysts doing this work. So it is harder to do things in a really timely manner when you have [fewer] resources.”

She added that counterterrorism budgets decreased after the destruction of the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East. But since then, particularly because of the fall of the Afghan government in 2021, ISIS has reemerged as a threat. A branch of ISIS, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), claimed responsibility for a deadly gun attack in Moscow in March. 

In February, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate hearing that ISIS “remains a significant counterterrorism concern for us.” 

There is no indication that ISIS has managed to organize a secret network inside the United States, and if a militant managed to cross over the U.S. border, they would be hard-pressed to organize an attack without such a network, according to Colin Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit center focused on global security issues.

Multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News that the U.S. has not definitively determined whether Attoev is a part of ISIS or if he ever carried out or planned to carry out an attack. DHS continues to seek information and is questioning him further while he is in detention, the officials said. 

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said, “DHS screens and vets individuals seeking to enter the United States to identify national security or public safety threats and takes appropriate action, to include preventing an individual from entering the country. Screening and vetting evaluates information available to the U.S. Government at that time. If individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern, DHS and our federal partners investigate and we detain, remove, or refer them to other federal agencies for further vetting and prosecution as appropriate. In this case, the individual is in U.S. custody and there is no threat to public safety.”

NBC News previously reported that another migrant, an Afghan named Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was on the U.S. terror watchlist but was released by CBP because they did not have enough information to connect him to the watchlist at the time he crossed. He spent nearly a year inside the U.S. before he was arrested in San Antonio. He was released again on bond after a court hearing and then arrested again hours after NBC News published a story on his case.

The national terrorist watchlist, which is maintained by the FBI, includes the names of 1.8 million people considered potential security risks. The database indicates Kharwin is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

Attoev was not on the watchlist at the time he crossed the border in 2022 or at the time he was arrested in April, according to the U.S. officials.

The percentage of migrants with terror ties crossing the border remains extremely low. An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terrorist watchlist as a proportion of the total number of CBP encounters across U.S. borders was slightly lower during the Biden administration than during the Trump administration. It has averaged 0.02% during the Biden administration, lower than the 0.05% it averaged under Trump.

In fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September and saw a surge in border crossings, CBP had 736 encounters with migrants on the terrorist watchlist at U.S. borders, the most in the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watchlist.

It is not known whether any migrants on the watchlist or who were named in international notices as having suspected terror ties were released into the U.S. during the Trump administration.

NBC News’ Didi Martinez and Dan De Luce contributed.

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Each year about 300,000 immigrants, mostly from Mexico, take seasonal jobs on U.S. farms. The new rule, which takes effect June 28, will target abuses experienced by workers under the H-2A program that undermine fair labor standards for all farmworkers.

Labor Secretary Julie Su said the rule aims to “breathe life” into existing worker protections.

“Our rule is meant to give H2-A workers more ability to advocate for themselves, to speak up when they experience labor law abuses,” Su said at a vineyard in Santa Rosa, California, north of San Francisco.

The Biden administration announced a proposal for the new rule in September, saying it would boost safety requirements on farms and raise transparency around how such workers are recruited, to combat human trafficking.

The Labor Department is already required to ensure that the H-2A program doesn’t undercut the wages or working conditions of Americans who take similar jobs. Employers are required to pay minimum U.S. wages or higher, depending on the region. They are also required to provide their temporary workers with housing and transportation.

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Reports of overcrowded farm vehicles and fatalities have increased as the number of guest farmworkers has risen, officials say. Transportation accidents are a leading cause of death for farm workers.

The new rule will require farmers who employ H-2A workers to provide vans and buses used to transport workers long distances and often driven by tired workers. Seatbelts will be required for all passengers.

The new rule also protects temporary agricultural workers from employer retaliation if they meet with legal service providers or union representatives at the housing provided by the employer. It also protects them from retaliation when they decline to attend “captive audience” meetings organized by their employer.

And in a step intended to counter human trafficking, employers would be required to identify anyone recruiting workers on their behalf in the U.S. or foreign countries and to provide copies of any agreements they have with those recruiters.

The proposal drew nearly 13,000 public comments, including some from industry groups that said new regulatory requirements were excessive. Ted Sester, who owns a wholesale nursery in Gresham, Oregon, said it was “full of heavy-handed enforcement and regulatory overreach.”

The Northwest Horticultural Council said the rule “makes the already complex H-2A program far more difficult for growers to navigate, while increasing the risk that growers may lose access to the program without the ability to exercise proper due process – a death knell for Pacific Northwest tree fruit growers utilizing the program.”

Labor advocates strongly applauded the rule.

“Agricultural guest workers are some of the most vulnerable workers in America, but this rule will empower H-2A workers to stand up to some of the biggest challenges they face,” the Congressional Labor Caucus, made up of about 100 pro-union members of Congress, said Friday.

Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, said the rule will help prevent employers’ abuse. She said a requirement for employers to disclose contracts with their agents will make it easier to identify wrongdoers.

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Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7-year-old daughter braved the jungles of Panama’s Darien Gap, traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, they received a work permit last year and found jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

“My plan is to help my family that much need the money and to grow economically here,” Silva said.

Her story amounts to far more than one family’s arduous quest for a better life. The millions of jobs that Silva and other new immigrant arrivals have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year:

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.

“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’

While helping fuel economic growth, immigrants also lie at the heart of an incendiary election-year debate over the control of the nation’s Southern border. In his bid to return to the White House, Donald Trump has vowed to finish building a border wall and to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Whether he or President Joe Biden wins the election could determine whether the influx of immigrants, and their key role in propelling the economy, will endure.

The immigration boom was a surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was 3.3 million.

Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The number of native-born Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — was dropping because so many of them had aged out of that category and were nearing or entering retirement. Their numbers have shrunk by 770,000 since February 2020, just before COVID-19 slammed the economy.

Filling the gap has been a wave of immigrants. Over the past four years, the number of prime-age workers who either have a job or are looking for one has surged by 2.8 million. And nearly all those newcomers — 2.7 million, or 96% of them — were born outside the United States.

At the Flood Brothers farm in Maine’s “dairy capital’’ of Clinton, foreign-born workers make up half the staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk.

“We cannot do it without them,” said Jenni Tilton-Flood, a partner in the operation.

For every unemployed person in Maine, after all, there are two job openings, on average.

A study by Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution found that new immigrants raised the economy’s supply of workers and allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating and accelerating inflation.

In the past, economists typically estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 60,000 to 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But when Edelberg and Watson included the immigration surge in their calculations, they found that monthly job growth could be roughly twice as high this year — 160,000 to 200,000 — without exerting upward pressure on inflation.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden’s immigration policy over the surge in migrants at the Southern border. Only about 27% of the 3.3 million foreigners who entered the United States last year did so through as “lawful permanent residents’’ or on temporary visas, according to Edelberg and Watson’s analysis. The rest — 2.4 million — either came illegally, overstayed their visas, are awaiting immigration court proceedings or are on a parole program that lets them stay temporarily in the country.

“So there you have it,’’ Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum, said. “The way to solve an inflation crisis is to endure an immigration crisis.”

Many economists suggest that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy. They take low-paying but essential jobs that most U.S.-born Americans won’t, like caring for the sick and the elderly. And they can make the country more innovative because they are more likely to start businesses and obtain patents.

Critics counter that a surge in immigration can force down pay, particularly for low-income workers. Last month, in the most recent economic report of the president, Biden’s advisers acknowledged that “immigration may place downward pressure on the wages of some low-paid workers” but added that most studies show that the impact on the wages of the U.S.-born is “small.”

Holtz-Eakin argued that an immigration cutoff of the kind Trump has vowed to impose, if elected, would result in “much, much slower labor force growth and a return to the sharp tradeoff’’ between containing inflation and maintaining economic growth that the United States has so far managed to avoid.

___

Wiseman and Rugaber reported from Washington, Salomon from Miami.

Mohammad Kharwin, 48, is currently out on bond as he awaits an immigration hearing in Texas, scheduled for 2025. There are no restrictions on his movements inside the United States, U.S. officials said.

Kharwin was initially apprehended on March 10, 2023, near San Ysidro, California, after crossing the Mexico-U.S. border illegally.

Border agents suspected he was on the U.S. terrorist watchlist at the time of his apprehension because one piece of information matched an individual on the list. But the agents lacked corroborating information, which officials declined to describe, that would confirm Kharwin was the person they suspected, according to U.S. officials. 

After processing Kharwin and taking his biometric data, Customs and Border Protection released him as they would any other migrant, without contacting the FBI or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. officials said.  

Kharwin was then able to apply for asylum and work authorization, and fly domestically in the United States, the officials said.

Kharwin is on the national terror watchlist maintained by the FBI, which contains the names of 1.8 million individuals considered potential security risks. The database indicates he is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, HIG is a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group” that sought to overturn the Western-backed Afghan government before its fall in 2021. 

HIG was responsible for attacks in Afghanistan that killed at least nine American soldiers and civilians between 2013 and 2015. The group is not seen as a top threat in terms of attacks inside the U.S.

The Biden administration has said it prioritizes migrants considered a threat to national security for detention and deportation. Asked about Kharwin’s case, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said, “While we can’t comment on ongoing matters, we are tracking closely and, as always, taking all necessary steps to ensure public safety.”

“Vetting is a point-in-time check that evaluates information available to the U.S. Government at that time,” the DHS spokesperson added. “If individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern, DHS and our federal partners have procedures in place to investigate and take appropriate action.”

In February 2024, the FBI passed information to ICE indicating that Kharwin had potential terror ties and may pose a risk to national security. Soon after, and nearly a year after he was released near the border, ICE agents conducted an operation and arrested Kharwin on Feb. 28 in San Antonio, Texas, according to sources familiar with the case.

Kharwin was held in ICE detention until his court hearing on March 28, when he appeared before an immigration judge in Pearsall, Texas. Immigration judges decide whether migrants can stay legally in the U.S., continue to be detained or be deported. 

When ICE prosecutors appeared in court, they did not share with the judge some classified information that purportedly showed Kharwin’s ties to HIG, two U.S. officials said. Prosecutors argued that the man should be detained without bond because he was a flight risk, but they did not say that he was a national security risk, according to sources familiar with the case. 

The judge ordered Kharwin released on bond. The Justice Department, which oversees immigration judges and courts, declined to name the judge or respond to a request for official comment. 

On March 30, ICE released Kharwin after he paid the $12,000 bond mandated by the immigration judge, which is higher than most bonds for migrants awaiting immigration court dates. 

The judge placed no restrictions on his movements inside the U.S., but required him to appear for his next court hearing in a year. ICE has not appealed the judge’s decision, sources familiar with the case said.The case illustrates the challenges U.S. officials face in identifying migrants who may pose a national security threat. Kharwin’s case is the third incident in two years in which Customs and Border Protection has released migrants with suspected terrorist ties.  

Earlier this year, a migrant with ties to the Somali terror group al-Shabaab was arrested in Minnesota after living in the U.S. for nearly a year, the Daily Caller reported.

In that case, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center made a “redetermination” that he should be placed on the watchlist after he was released, the Daily Caller reported. 

A June 2023 DHS Inspector General Report reviewed an incident from April 2022 in which a migrant was released because information that would have linked him to the watchlist was not properly gathered. The report did not disclose the migrant’s nationality but it found that the CBP sent a request for more information to the wrong email address.

In both of those cases, however, the migrants suspected of terror ties were taken into custody. 

Jason Houser, former chief of staff for ICE under the Biden administration and former senior adviser for counterterrorism for CBP in the Obama administration, said it is rare for terrorists to cross the border and even more unusual for CBP to release someone who turns out to be a threat. 

“We need to make sure we have processes in place to handle them, make sure they’re detained and we know exactly where they are,” Houser said. 

Houser said DHS is now better equipped to detect terrorists and the number of them trying to enter the U.S. is still very low, even with record crossings at the border. 

“Any terrorist or terrorist-linked individual trying to come into this country is unacceptable,” Houser said. “But we have built across the U.S. government federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, the ability to identify these individuals.”

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has repeatedly turned to the threat of terrorism at the border as a reason why he should be elected president again.

“Terrorists are pouring in, unchecked, from all over the world,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this year.

An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terror watchlist as a portion of the total CBP encounters across U.S. borders was slightly lower under the Biden administration than the Trump administration. It remained an average of 0.02% during the Biden administration, lower than the 0.05% under Trump.

In fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September and included a surge in border crossings, CBP had 736 encounters with migrants on the terror watchlist at U.S. borders, the highest number of the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watchlist.

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It is not known if any migrants on the watchlist were released into the U.S. during the Trump administration.

The vetting systems used to screen migrants at the border under the Biden administration are virtually the same as those used under Trump. When a migrant comes across the border between legal ports of entry, a Border Patrol agent collects the migrant’s name, date of birth, nationality, biometric information (like fingerprints) and photos. An agent then checks a series of national security databases to see if there is a criminal background or if they’re on the nation’s terror watchlist.

Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said in a letter to DHS late last year that the terrorism watchlist is overly broad. They said that having too many people on the list who pose little or no threat to the U.S. can erode the rights of travelers and prove ineffective at stopping those who mean to do harm on U.S. soil.

With a bipartisan immigration reform package blocked in Congress by pro-Trump Republicans, additional border security funding that might address the problems shown by the recent cases is unlikely. 

There are fears, meanwhile, that tens of thousands of migrants are evading agents as they cross the southern border. 

​​“That is a national security threat,” Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens recently told CBS News. “They’re exploiting a vulnerability that’s on our border right now.” 

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In 2022, the foreign-born population was estimated to be 46.2 million people, or almost 14% of the U.S. population, with most states seeing double-digit percentage increases in the last dozen years, according to the figures from the bureau’s American Community Survey.

In California, New Jersey, New York and Florida, foreign-born individuals comprised more than 20% of each state’s population. They constituted 1.8% of West Virginia’s population, the smallest rate in the U.S.

Half of the foreign-born residents in the U.S. were from Latin America, although their composition has shifted in the past dozen years, with those from Mexico dropping by about 1 million people and those from South America and Central America increasing by 2.1 million people.

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The share of the foreign population from Asia went from more than a quarter to under a third during that time, while the share of African-born went from 4% to 6%.

The report was released as immigration has become a top issue during the 2024 presidential race, with the Biden administration struggling to manage an unprecedented influx of migrants at the Southwest border. Immigration is shaping the elections in a way that could determine control of Congress as Democrats try to outflank Republicans and convince voters they can address problems at the U.S. border with Mexico.

The Census Bureau report didn’t provide estimates on the number of people in the U.S. illegally.

However, the figures show that more than half of the foreign-born are naturalized citizens, with European-born and Asian-born people leading the way with naturalization rates at around two-thirds of their numbers. Around two-thirds of the foreign-born population came to the U.S. before 2010.

The foreign-born population has grown older in the past dozen years, a reflection of some members’ longevity in the U.S., with the median age increasing five years to 46.7 years. They also became more educated from 2010 to 2022, with the rate of foreign-born people holding at least a high school degree going from more than two-thirds to three-quarters of the population.

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The new fees affect benefits related to employment-based visas, work authorizations, applications to register as a permanent resident, and those to apply for naturalization.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shared details on the new fees in January. They apply to benefit requests postmarked on or after April 1.

“For the first time in over seven years, USCIS is updating our fees to better meet the needs of our agency, enabling us to provide more timely decisions to those we serve,” USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou said in a written statement in January.

Some fees, including those to replace existing permanent resident cards, have slightly decreased with the changes.

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The USCIS said it will use the new revenues to “improve customer experience and stem backlog growth.”

The rule comes after USCIS conducted a year-long review that included more than 5,400 public comments.

As a result of the input, the agency said the new fees are the same or lower than originally published in a proposed rule change first published in January 2023.

Also, there is a standard $50 discount for applications submitted online, and a reduction in the fees for Employment Authorization Document applications when you are adjusting your status or if you are under the age of 14 in certain situations.

While this is the first full filing fee adjustment since December 2016, USCIS has announced increases for some processing fees more recently.

In December, the agency announced that it would increase the filing fee for Form I-907 to Request Premium Processing, to adjust for inflation.

The adjustment, which went into effect in February, increases certain premium processing fees from $1,500 to $1,685, $1,750 to $1,965, and $2,500 to $2,805. 

What are the new fees of the most popular forms?

Here is the list with all the new immigration fees.

The Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to deny a motion from the State of Texas for a stay on the decision of whether it can enforce SB4.

Under SB 4, state and local police have the right to question, arrest, and charge undocumented immigrants suspected of crossing the border illegally. Furthermore, the law would require that state judges deport people back to Mexico upon conviction, regardless of their nationality.

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The Biden Administration sued the State of Texas shortly after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB4 into law back in December. It argues that the law is an overreach, and conflicts with the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration laws.

In its decision Tuesday, the court noted that:

“Allowing Texas to detain noncitizens without any input from the Federal Government about whether an arrest is warranted in a particular case…would allow the State to achieve its own immigration policy.”

The ruling goes on to note that:

“The Texas removal provisions will significantly conflict with the United States’ authority to select the country to which noncitizens will be removed. A large number of noncitizens who crossed into Texas from Mexico are not citizens or residents of Mexico. Nevertheless, under Texas law they would be removed to Mexico. The United States would have no voice in the matter.”

Earlier this month, Texas’ plans were again put on hold after setting off uncertainty along the border and anger from Mexico flared during a brief few hours that the law was allowed to take effect.

A late-night order on March 19 from an Appeals Court panel temporarily put SB4 on hold — again. Earlier in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for the strict immigration law, dealing a victory to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and encouraging GOP lawmakers in other states that are pushing for similar measures.

But later in a 2-1 order, an appeals court panel continued the legal seesaw surrounding the Texas law, again putting it on pause ahead of oral arguments that were scheduled for March 20.

During the short time the law was in effect Tuesday, Texas authorities did not announce that any arrests had been made or say whether it was being actively enforced. Along the border in Kinney County, Sheriff Brad Coe embraced the arrest powers but said deputies would need probable cause.

“It is unlikely that observers will see an overnight change,” said Coe, whose county covers a stretch of border near Del Rio that until recently had been the busiest corridor for illegal crossings but has quieted considerably.

Arrests for illegal crossings fell by half in January from a record-high of 250,000 in December, with sharp declines in Texas. Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, the focus of Abbott’s enforcement, fell 76% from December. Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings for much of the last decade, recorded its fewest arrests since June 2020.

Tucson, Arizona, has been the busiest corridor in recent months, followed by San Diego in January, but reasons for sudden shifts are often complicated and are dictated by smuggling organizations.

When President Joe Biden visited the Rio Grande Valley for his second trip to the border as president last month, administration officials credited Mexico for heightened enforcement on that part of the border for the drop in arrests. They said conditions were more challenging for Mexican law enforcement in Sonora, the state that lies south of Arizona.

The one-hour hearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended without a ruling, leaving Texas’ new law on hold for now. A flurry of court activity, including a decision Tuesday from the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed the law to take effect for several hours, has caused uncertainty at the border.

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman raised a series of questions about how the state law would be carried out, including how Texas would respond if federal authorities don’t cooperate with a state judge’s order to deport someone. No arrests were reported during the hours the law was in effect Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said it would not have authority to deport under the state law.

“This is uncharted because we don’t have any cases on it,” said Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson.

The Justice Department has argued that Texas’ law is a clear violation of federal authority and will create chaos at the border. Lawyers for the department faced a grilling from Judge Andrew Oldham, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump. The third judge on the panel, Judge Irma Ramirez, did not ask questions during the hearing but has previously voted to keep the law on hold.

TEXAS SB4 IMMIGRATION LAW

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Richman challenged Texas’ assertion that it is exercising a “core police power,” getting Nielsen to acknowledge that deporting people has been a federal responsibility. But Nielsen denied that Texas is “trying to take over the field” on border enforcement and said the state wants to cooperate with the federal government on what is widely acknowledged to be a crisis.

Nielsen also said he did not know how the law would affect someone who entered the country illegally but came to Texas from another state.

Regardless of how this three-judge panel rules, the legal fight will hardly be over. The 5th Circuit has been considering the state’s appeal of a scathing injunction from a lower-court judge that put the law on hold.

The 5th Circuit issued a decision earlier this month that would have allowed the law to take effect, and the Supreme Court essentially declined to intervene Tuesday. But hours after the law took effect, the 5th Circuit reinstated the lower court injunction, pausing the law again.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the law. It instead kicked back to the lower appeals court a challenge led by the Justice Department.

Under Texas law, once defendants are in custody on illegal entry charges, they can agree to a judge’s order to leave the U.S. or face prosecution. However, Mexico has said it would refuse to take anyone back who is ordered to cross the border.

The impact extends far beyond the Texas border. Republican legislators wrote the law so that it applies in all of the state’s 254 counties, although Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said he expects it will mostly be enforced near the border.

Other GOP-led states are already looking to follow Texas’ path. In Iowa, the state House gave final approval Tuesday to a bill that would also give its state law enforcement the power to arrest people who are in the U.S. illegally and have previously been denied entry into the country.

It now goes to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. If signed, it would take effect in July.

“The federal government has abdicated its responsibilities and states can and must act,” Republican Iowa state Rep. Steven Holt said.

In Texas, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, the top county executive, said immigration enforcement should remain a federal, not state, responsibility, echoing the Biden administration’s view. He said heightened law enforcement presence in the city of El Paso during a previous migrant surge brought high-speed chases and traffic stops based on assumptions that passengers were in the country illegally.

“We had accidents, we had injuries, we got a little glimpse of what would happen if the state begins to control what happens in respect to immigration,” Samaniego said.

Arrests for illegal crossings fell by half in January from a record-high of 250,000 in December, with sharp declines in Texas. Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, the focus of Abbott’s enforcement, fell 76% from December. Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings for much of the past decade, recorded its fewest arrests since June 2020.

Tucson, Arizona, has been the busiest corridor in recent months, followed by San Diego in January, but reasons for sudden shifts are often complicated and are dictated by smuggling organizations.

When Biden visited the Rio Grande Valley for his second trip to the border as president last month, administration officials credited Mexico for heightened enforcement on that part of the border for the drop in arrests. They said conditions were more challenging for Mexican law enforcement in Sonora, the state that lies south of Arizona.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday issued an order preventing its enforcement, just hours after the Supreme Court allowed the strict new immigration law to take effect.

The Justice Department is challenging the law, saying Texas is overstepping the federal government’s immigration authority. Texas argues it has a right to take action over what the governor has described as an “invasion” of migrants on the border.

Here’s what to know:

What does the law say about who can be arrested?

The law would allow any Texas law enforcement officer to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, migrants could either agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the U.S. or be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges of illegal entry. Migrants who don’t leave could face arrest again under more serious felony charges.

Arresting officers must have probable cause, which could include witnessing the illegal entry or seeing it on video.

The law cannot be enforced against people lawfully present in the U.S., including those who were granted asylum or who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Critics, including Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, fear the law could lead to racial profiling and family separation. American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Texas and some neighboring states issued a travel advisory a day after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law. The advisory warns of a possible threat to civil and constitutional rights when passing through Texas.

Abbott has rejected concerns over profiling. While signing the bill, he said troopers and National Guard members at the border can see migrants crossing illegally “with their own eyes.”

Texas-Mexico Border Mar 20

Federal judge puts Texas law allowing police to arrest migrants who cross illegally back on hold

Immigration Feb 29

Arizona Republicans are pushing bills to punish migrants who enter the United States illegally

Where would the law be enforced?

The law can be enforced in any of Texas’ 254 counties, including those hundreds of miles from the border.

But Republican state Rep. David Spiller, the law’s author, has said he expects the vast majority of arrests would occur within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas’ state police chief has expressed similar expectations.

Some places are off-limits. Arrests cannot be made in public and private schools; places of worship; or hospitals and other health care facilities, including those where sexual assault forensic examinations are conducted.

It is unclear where migrants ordered to leave might go. The law says they are to be sent to ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, even if they are not Mexican citizens. However, Mexico’s government said Tuesday it would not accept the return of any migrants to its territory from the state of Texas.

Is SB4 constitutional?

The Supreme Court’s decision did not address the constitutionality of the law.

The Justice Department, legal experts and immigrant rights groups have said it is a clear conflict with the U.S. government’s authority to regulate immigration.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, agreed in a 114-page order. He added that the law could hamper U.S. foreign relations and treaty obligations.

Opponents have called the measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law — denounced by critics as the “Show Me Your Papers” bill — that was largely struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Ezra cited the Supreme Court’s 2012 Arizona ruling in his decision.

Texas has argued that the law mirrors federal law instead of conflicting with it.

What is happening on the U.S.-Mexico border?

Arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border fell by half in January from record highs in December. Border Patrol officials attributed the shift to seasonal declines and heightened enforcement by the U.S. and its allies. The federal government has not yet released numbers for February.

Texas has charged thousands of migrants with trespassing on private property under a more limited operation that began in 2021.

Tensions remain between Texas and the Biden administration. In the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, National Guard members have prevented Border Patrol agents from accessing a riverfront park.

Other Republican governors have expressed support for Abbott, who has said the federal government is not doing enough to enforce immigration laws. Other measures implemented by Texas include a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and razor wire along the border.

___

Associated Press writers Acacia Coronado and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

The conservative-majority court, with three liberal justices dissenting, rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration, which said states have no authority to legislate on immigration, an issue the federal government has sole authority over.

That means the law can go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts. It could still be blocked at a later date.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, hailed the court order, calling it “clearly a positive development,” though he acknowledged that the legal battle is not over.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the law “will not only make communities in Texas less safe, it will also burden law enforcement and sow chaos and confusion at our southern border.”

“The court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson also objected to the decision.

The majority did not explain its reasoning, but one of the conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett, wrote separately to note that an appeals court has yet to weigh in on the issue.

“If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this court,” she wrote. Her opinion was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

The law in question, known as SB4, allows police to arrest migrants who illegally cross the border from Mexico and imposes criminal penalties. It would also empower state judges to order people to be deported to Mexico.

The dispute is the latest clash between the Biden administration and Texas over immigration enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a separate opinion, Kagan wrote that the Texas law appears to conflict with federal law, noting that “the subject of immigration generally, and the entry and removal of noncitizens particularly, are matters long thought the special province of the federal government.”

A federal judge blocked the law after the Biden administration sued, but the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a brief order that it could go into effect March 10 if the Supreme Court declined to intervene. The appeals court has not yet decided whether to grant the federal government’s request to block the law.

On March 4, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary freeze on the law to give the Supreme Court time to consider the federal government’s request.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers that the law is “flatly inconsistent” with Supreme Court precedent dating back 100 years.

“Those decisions recognize that the authority to admit and remove noncitizens is a core responsibility of the national government, and that where Congress has enacted a law addressing those issues, state law is preempted,” she wrote.

The appeals court, Prelogar added, did not explain its reasoning for allowing the law to go into effect.

She dismissed Texas’ argument that its law can be defended on the basis that the state is effectively battling an invasion at the border under the State War Clause of the Constitution. The provision says states cannot “engage in war, unless actually invaded” or in imminent danger.

“A surge of unauthorized immigration plainly is not an invasion within the meaning of the State War Clause,” Prelogar wrote.

Defending the law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in court papers that the measure complements federal law and the state should be allowed to enforce it.

The Constitution “recognizes that Texas has the sovereign right to defend itself from violent transnational cartels that flood the state with fentanyl, weapons, and all manner of brutality,” he added.

Texas is “the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” Paxton said.

The city of El Paso and two immigrant rights groups, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways, have also challenged the law and filed their own emergency request at the Supreme Court.

In 2012, the Supreme Court invalidated provisions of a tough immigration law enacted in Arizona. Only two of the justices who were in the majority in that case are still on the court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Sotomayor.

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A one-page order signed by Justice Samuel Alito indefinitely prevents Texas from enforcing a sweeping state immigration enforcement law that had been set to take effect this month. The language of the order strongly suggests the court will take additional action, but it is unclear when.

It marks the second time Alito has extended a pause on the law, known as Senate Bill 4, which the Justice Department has argued would step on the federal government’s immigration powers. Monday’s order extending the stay came a few minutes after a 5 p.m. deadline the court had set for itself, creating momentary confusion about the measure’s status.

Opponents have called the law the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law more than a decade ago, portions of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. The court battle is unfolding as immigration emerges as a key issue in the 2024 presidential race.

The office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the state’s law mirrored federal law and “was adopted to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border, which hurts Texans more than anyone else.”

Hours after the ruling, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded with a post on X saying that Texas is still arresting undocumented immigrants for “other violations of the law.”

“SCOTUS temporarily halted enforcement of SB 4 but Texas is still using its authority to arrest illegal immigrants for criminal trespass and other violations of law,” Abbott wrote. “We continue building the wall, use NG to erect razor wire barriers to repel migrants & buoys remain in river.”

Arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border hit record highs in December but fell by half in January, a shift attributed to seasonal declines and heightened enforcement by the U.S. and its allies. The federal government has not yet released numbers for February.

The Biden administration sued to strike down the Texas measure in January, arguing it’s a clear violation of federal authority on immigration that would hurt international relations and create chaos in administering immigration law. Critics have also said the law could lead to civil rights violations and racial profiling.

A federal judge in Texas struck down the law in late February, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals quickly stayed that ruling, leading the federal government to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 2012 struck down key parts of an Arizona law that would have allowed police to arrest people for federal immigration violations, often referred to by opponents as the “show me your papers” bill. The divided high court found then that the impasse in Washington over immigration reform did not justify state intrusion.

The battle over the Texas immigration law is one of multiple legal disputes between Texas officials and the Biden administration over how far the state can go to patrol the Texas-Mexico border and prevent illegal border crossings.

Several Republican governors have backed Abbott’s efforts, saying the federal government is not doing enough to enforce existing immigration laws.

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It is not clear exactly when the change took effect, but several migrants with flights out of South Texas on Tuesday told advocacy groups that they thought they were being turned away. The migrants included people who had used the government’s online appointment system to pursue their immigration cases. Advocates were also concerned about migrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally before being processed by Border Patrol agents and released to pursue their immigration cases.

The Transportation Security Administration told The Associated Press on Thursday that migrants without proper photo identification who want to board flights must submit to facial recognition technology to verify their identity using Department of Homeland Security records.

“If TSA cannot match their identity to DHS records, they will also be denied entry into the secure areas of the airport and will be denied boarding,” the agency said.

Agency officials did not say when TSA made the change, only that it was recent and not in response to a specific security threat.

It’s not clear how many migrants might be affected. Some have foreign passports.

Migrants and strained communities on the U.S.-Mexico border have become increasingly dependent on airlines to get people to other cities where they have friends and family and where Border Patrol often orders them to go to proceed with their immigration claims.

Groups that work with migrants said the change caught them off guard. Migrants wondered if they might lose hundreds of dollars spent on nonrefundable tickets. After group of migrants returned to a shelter in McAllen on Tuesday, saying they were turned away at the airport, advocates exchanged messages trying to figure out what the new TSA procedures were.

“It caused a tremendous amount of distress for people,” said the Rev. Brian Strassburger, the executive director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, a group in Texas that provides humanitarian aid and advocacy for migrants.

Strassburger said that previously migrants were able to board flights with documents they had from Border Patrol.

One Ecuadorian woman traveling with her child told the AP she was able to board easily on Wednesday after allowing officers to take a photo of her at the TSA checkpoint.

___

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

The contingency fund would let DHS tap into funds on an as-needed basis when the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southern border tops a certain threshold that is unspecified in the budget. If the money is not used to address a surge, the money would be transferred to the general funds of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The request is likely to fall on deaf ears among congressional Republicans, who have already refused to fund $13.6 billion the Biden administration asked for in an emergency supplemental request aimed at responding to a record high number of migrants crossing the border.

It comes as both CBP and ICE are facing significant budget shortfalls.

NBC News first reported that ICE will have to start cutting key operations by May if Congress does not help cover a $500 million budget gap.

Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said that Republicans’ blocking of border provisions of the national security supplemental bill earlier this year will put his agency in a weaker position should the number of migrants rise as the weather warms.

“I certainly continue to be cognizant that the numbers of migrants coming across the southern border could increase and probably will increase in the weeks and months ahead,” Miller said. “I think that’s one of the reasons that as we looked at the national security bill, it gave us additional authorities and resources to effectuate a consequence so that we could quickly screen off folks that didn’t have a valid asylum claim and send them back.”

Biden’s budget also asks Congress for $405 million to hire 1,300 more Border Patrol agents, funding to keep ICE’s 34,000 existing detention beds, $1 billion for aid to Central America to address the root causes of migration, and nearly $1 billion to address the backlog of over 2.4 million pending cases in U.S. immigration courts.

To combat fentanyl smuggling, the budget asks for funding to hire an additional 1,000 CBP officers who can stop the illicit drug from coming across the U.S.-Mexico border and $849 million for technology to detect fentanyl at the border. 

After an NBC News report that some fentanyl detection scanners were sitting unused because of Republican opposition to funding to place them in the ground, Sen. Jon Tester, D.-Mont., asked Congress to fund the technology. 

The budget also asks Congress for funds to ensure that migrant children who cross the border unaccompanied are placed with relatives and sponsors as quickly as possible.

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Supporters say the measure would reduce uncompensated hospital care costs and improve emergency room wait times.

The Senate voted 34-13 for the measure. The Maryland House already passed a similar version of the legislation. Each chamber would need to vote to approve the other’s before the legislation can be sent to Gov. Wes Moore.

The measure would require the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange to submit a federal waiver application by July 1, 2025, to implement the program. The waiver is needed because of federal restrictions on immigrants lacking permanent legal status using the marketplace. The program in Maryland could start as early as 2026, if a waiver is granted.

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton said Texas and 20 other states had not shown they had suffered financial harm because of the humanitarian parole program that allows up to 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined. That was something the states needed to prove to have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

“In reaching this conclusion, the Court does not address the lawfulness of the Program,” Tipton wrote.

Eliminating the program would undercut a broader policy that seeks to encourage migrants to use the Biden administration’s preferred pathways into the U.S. or face stiff consequences.

The states, led by Texas, had argued the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education, and public safety for the migrants. An attorney working with the Texas attorney general’s office in the legal challenge said that the program “created a shadow immigration system.”

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Advocates for the federal government countered that migrants admitted through the policy helped with a U.S. farm labor shortage.

The White House welcomed the ruling.

“The district court’s decision is based on the success of this program, which has expanded lawful pathways for nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who have a sponsor in this country and pass our rigorous vetting process, while dramatically decreasing the number of nationals from those countries crossing our Southwest Border,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office did not immediately reply to messages seeking comment. An appeal by Texas and the other states seemed likely.

Since the program was launched in fall 2022, more than 357,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been granted parole and allowed to enter the country through January. Haitians have been far been the biggest group to use the program with 138,000 people from that country arriving, followed by 86,000 Venezuelans, 74,000 Cubans and 58,000 Nicaraguans.

Migrants must apply online, arrive at an airport and have a financial sponsor in the U.S. If approved, they can stay for two years and get a work permit.

President Joe Biden has made unprecedented use of parole authority, which has been in effect since 1952 and allows presidents to let people in for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Esther Sung, an attorney for Justice Action Center, which represented seven people who were sponsoring migrants as part of the program, said she was looking forward to calling her clients to let them know of the court’s decision.

“It’s a popular program. People want to welcome other people to this country,” she said.

Valerie Laveus, one of the seven represented by Justice Action Center, sponsored her brother and nephew and they arrived in Florida from conflict-plagued Haiti last August. They are flourishing in their new lives, she said, and her nephew has a newfound normalcy and is able to do things like play basketball outdoors without having to worry about safety. Her brother is working in construction.

Laveua said she is grateful for the legal outcome and people entering the country through the program are contributing to society.

“I am ecstatic, not just for my family but for all the other families who are still waiting,” she said.

During an August trial in Victoria, Texas, Tipton declined to issue any temporary order that would halt the parole program nationwide. Tipton is an appointee of former President Donald Trump who ruled against the Biden administration in 2022 on an order that determined who to prioritize for deportation.

Some states said the initiative has benefited them. One Nicaraguan migrant admitted into the country through the process filled a position at a farm in Washington state that was struggling to find workers.

Tipton questioned how Texas could be claiming financial losses if data showed that the parole program actually reduced the number of migrants coming into the U.S.

“The Court has before it a case in which Plaintiffs claim that they have been injured by a program that has actually lowered their out-of-pocket costs,” Tipton said in Friday’s ruling.

When the policy took effect, the Biden administration had been preparing to end a pandemic-era policy at the border known as Title 42 that barred migrants from seeking asylum at ports of entry and immediately expelled many who entered illegally.

Proponents of the policy also faced scrutiny from Tipton, who questioned whether living in poverty was enough for migrants to qualify. Elissa Fudim, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, responded: “I think probably not.”

Federal government attorneys and immigrant rights groups said that in many cases, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are also fleeing oppressive regimes, escalating violence and worsening political conditions that have endangered their lives.

The lawsuit did not challenge the use of humanitarian parole for tens of thousands of Ukrainians who came after Russia’s invasion. It is among several legal challenges the Biden administration has faced over its immigration policies.

The program’s supporters said each case is individually reviewed and some people who had made it to the final approval step after arriving in the U.S. have been rejected, though they did not provide the number of rejections that have occurred.

Friday’s decision “is a clear win and affirmation of humanitarian immigration parole being an indispensable, necessary and model program of the type of smart solutions we should be focusing on to relieve pressure on the border and modernize our failed immigration system,” said Todd Schulte, president of immigration advocacy organization FWD.us.

___

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington, Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is expected to veto the trespassing bill as well as one that cleared the second of both houses Wednesday that would make it a state crime to enter Arizona illegally between ports of entry.

“They are acting on clear political signals from the voters that immigration and the border is their No. 1 issue,” Stan Barnes, a Phoenix-based political consultant and former Republican state senator, said of the GOP lawmakers. “This is what their constituents want.”

Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time in each of the government’s last two budget years, and Arizona in recent months emerged as the most popular area to cross.

The state Senate’s GOP said the “Arizona Border Invasion Act” would “protect Arizona citizens and communities from the crime and security threats associated with the current border invasion caused by the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws.”

It would allow local law enforcement to arrest non-U.S. citizens who enter Arizona from anywhere but a lawful entrance point. A violation would be a top-tier misdemeanor – or a low-level felony for second offenses.

“I think we are seeing an effort in these bills to advance an inflammatory immigration agenda,” said Noah Schramm, policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Arizona. “They seem to trying to force Hobbs into a situation where she has to say ‘no,’ and then they can say she is unwilling to do anything on the border.”

The moves in Arizona come as Republicans in several states, most notably Texas, trumpet tough immigration policies in the lead up to this year’s presidential election.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked a new Texas law that would give police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S., rejecting Republican Gov. Abbott’s immigration enforcement effort. The preliminary injunction pausing the law came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting distinct areas of the Texas-Mexico border.

Federal law already prohibits the unauthorized entry of migrants into the U.S. But Republicans in Arizona and Texas say that the U.S. government is not doing enough and they need additional state powers.

Hobbs “has declared on numerous occasions her disapproval for the lawlessness caused by the federal government’s open border policies,” said Arizona Sen. Janae Shamp, who sponsored the state border control bill. “Now is her chance to protect the citizens of Arizona by signing.”

Hobbs confirmed Thursday she planned to veto the bills and said she recognizes that Arizonans are frustrated by the situation on the border.

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Judge blocks Texas law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants who enter the US illegally

“But passing job killing, anti-business bills that demonize our communities is not the solution,” she said. “Instead of securing our border, these bills will simply raise costs, hurt our farmers, put Arizona entrepreneurs out of business, and destroy jobs for countless working class Arizonans.”

A separate Arizona bill that focuses on trespassing has raised eyebrows because of its author’s stated intention that it could be used by farmers to legally kill people crossing their properties.

But the text of the bill does not mention migrants or the border, instead making a few changes in an existing law.

Republican Rep. Justin Heap used the example of a rancher defending his property from migrants when he said his bill would close “a loophole” in the earlier law that allows a property owner to use deadly force against someone inside a home but not elsewhere on the property.

“We are seeing an increasingly larger number of migrants or human traffickers moving across farm and ranchland,” Heap told a committee hearing earlier this year.

His statement brought to mind one case in which border rancher George Kelly faces trial later this month in the fatal shooting of a migrant on his Nogales area property.

Abbott said in an interview with a conservative commentator earlier this year that his state was doing everything to stop migrants from crossing the border illegally short of shooting them “because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”

This isn’t the first time Republican lawmakers in Arizona have tried to criminalize migrants who aren’t authorized to be in the United States.

When passing its landmark 2010 immigration bill, the Arizona Legislature considered expanding the state’s trespassing law to criminalize the presence of immigrants and imposed criminal penalties.

But the trespassing language was removed and replaced with a requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question people’s immigration status if they’re believed to be in the country illegally.

The questioning requirement was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court despite the racial profiling concerns of critics, but courts barred enforcement of other sections of the law.

The law touched off a national furor with supporters calling for similar legislation for their own states and detractors calling for an economic boycott of Arizona.

Several other Arizona immigration laws have been thrown out by courts over the years.

The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.

Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders want that ruling to get a second look.

Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.

Ezra wrote in his decision that allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to an invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War.”

Following Ezra’s decision, the office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he immediately appealed the ruling.

“We have appealed this incorrect decision. Texas has a clear right to defend itself from the drug smugglers, human traffickers, cartels, and legions of illegal aliens crossing into our state as a consequence of the Biden Administration’s deliberate policy choices,” said Paxton in a statement. “I will do everything possible to defend Texas’s right to defend herself against the catastrophic illegal invasion encouraged by the federal government.”

The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.

The measure would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.

At a Feb. 15 hearing, Ezra expressed skepticism as the state pleaded its case for what is known as Senate Bill 4. He also said he was somewhat sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Abbott and other state officials about the large number of illegal crossings.

Ezra, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, said he feared the United States could become a confederation of states enforcing their own immigration laws. “That is the same thing the Civil War said you can’t do,” Ezra told the attorneys.

Civil rights groups, who also sued the state, have argued the law could lead to civil rights violations and racial profiling.

Republicans who back the law have said it would not target immigrants already living in the U.S. because of the two-year statute of limitations on the illegal entry charge and would be enforced only along the state’s border with Mexico.

Tensions have remained high between Texas and the Biden administration this year over who can patrol the border and how. Other GOP governors have expressed support for Abbott, who has said the federal government is not doing enough to enforce immigration laws.

Among other things, Texas placed a floating barrier in the Rio Grande, put razor wire along the U.S.-Mexico border and stopped Border Patrol agents from accessing a riverfront park in Eagle Pass that they previously used to process migrants.

First responders in Eagle Pass say they are overwhelmed and increasingly traumatized by what they see: parents drowned or dying, their children barely holding onto life after attempting to cross the Rio Grande.

The emotional strain on firefighters and EMTs has grown so great that city officials have applied for a state grant that would bring in additional mental health resources for front-line workers, NBC News reported.

“It’s an unprecedented crisis,” said Eagle Pass Fire Chief Manuel Mello. “It’s nothing close to what I experienced while I was on the line. It’s a whole different monster.”

Firefighters say the first calls for help usually blare through the three stations in Eagle Pass while crews are still sipping their morning coffee, bracing themselves for what the day will bring.

Parents with young children might be near drowning or trapped on islands somewhere between the United States and Mexico, surrounded by the fierce currents of the Rio Grande.

On some shifts, firefighters with the Eagle Pass Fire Department can spend three to five hours in the water, helping rescue migrants crossing the river or recovering their drowned bodies.

“It’s something we’ve never gone through,” said Eagle Pass native Marcos Kypuros, who has been a firefighter and EMT for two decades. “It’s been hard having to keep up with that on top of everything else we take care of.”

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Eagle Pass has become ground zero in recent months for an unrelenting border crisis that is equal parts political and humanitarian.

With hundreds of thousands of people attempting to cross the border illegally each year near Eagle Pass, city emergency personnel have increasingly been called upon to perform difficult and often dangerous rescues or to retrieve dead bodies, they said. They do this while juggling other emergencies in the city of 28,000 and throughout sparsely populated Maverick County.

“They see decomposing bodies, they see children that have drowned. Babies 2-months-old, with their eyes half-open, their mouths full of mud,” Mello said. “I know that when I signed up, they told me that I would see all of that, but not in the number that these guys are seeing now.”

Call volumes to the fire department surged last summer after Title 42, which set limits on asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States, was lifted. On a typical day, the department might receive 30 calls, but the number has doubled in recent months, Mello said.

The added strain prompted one of his firefighters, who was still working through the required probationary period, to turn in his gear and switch careers entirely, he added.

After a record-breaking number of illegal crossings in December, federal authorities say the figure dropped by half in January. The most significant decrease was in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass.

But the steady rise in crossings last year has taken a toll on first responders who did not sign up for this kind of work, Kypuros said.

“Those times where we recover four or five, six, up to seven bodies a day — it was just rough,” he said.

As the number of calls for emergencies on the border grew last fall, so did the number of sick days firefighters requested, according to the fire chief.

“I try and leave all this at work, not take it home with me, but it’s so hard,” Kypuros said. “Sometimes it’s hard to cope.”

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It was not immediately clear when the funds the city applied for would be awarded.

After the record-breaking number of attempted border crossings last year, Abbott ramped up the state’s immigration enforcement efforts. Last week, he announced the deployment of 1,800 members of the Texas National Guard to Eagle Pass in an effort to curb illegal crossings.

Abbott, a Republican, installed razor wire near the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass as part of the enforcement operation, and previously placed buoys in the river to prevent crossings.

Firefighters have treated lacerations and open wounds from people trying to crawl through the concertina wire, Kypuros said. At times, local hospitals get so overwhelmed with patients from the border that wait times for a bed can stretch to two hours, Garcia added.

As thousands of people without pathways to U.S. citizenship wait in squalid, makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border, others attempt dangerous river crossings across the Rio Grande, endangering their own lives and those of their loved ones.

Harish Garcia, who has worked as a firefighter EMT in Eagle Pass for three years, still cannot shake the memory of a drowning mother and her young daughter. Garcia’s crew, including a firefighter with a daughter around the same age as the little girl, loaded the two into an ambulance, he said, but it was too late.

When crews returned to the station, some called their families. Others went quiet, Garcia said.

“Unfortunately, calls are going to keep coming in after that, so we can’t hang on to that for too long,” he said months later. “We have to just let it go and move on to the next call.”

Garcia and Kypuros say they’ve lost count of how many bodies they’ve recovered in recent months. The majority are found after failed attempts to cross the river, but other calls have led fire crews into the rough brush of South Texas, where dehydration and exposure can prove just as deadly.

David Black, a psychologist who has worked with the California law enforcement community for more than 20 years, said witnessing the death of a child is often the most traumatizing event a first responder can experience. Without a strong support system both in and out of the workplace, that stress can eat away at them.

“We outsource our worst-case scenarios to first responders,” he said. “If you have your own children, that can really impact how you look at your own family.”

As Eagle Pass waits for the state grant to be approved, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal workers already have access to mental health resources internally.

The services, which include on-site clinicians and field psychologists, are part of a larger effort to “improve resiliency and encourage our colleagues to seek help when they need it,” said Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner.

Mello said that despite the uncertain nature of the border crisis and the political tensions between the White House and the governor’s office, he is optimistic that help will come.

Until then, he knows the calls for help will keep coming.

Morgan Chesky reported from Eagle Pass, Texas, and Alicia Victoria Lozano from Los Angeles.

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The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private ongoing White House discussions.

The exploration of such avenues by Biden’s team underscores the pressure the president faces this election year on immigration and the border, which have been among his biggest political liabilities since he took office. For now, the White House has been hammering congressional Republicans for refusing to act on border legislation that the GOP demanded, but the administration is also aware of the political perils that high numbers of migrants could pose for the president and is scrambling to figure out how Biden could ease the problem on his own.

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández stressed that “no executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected.”

“The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system,” he said. “Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, rejected what border agents have said they need, and then gave themselves a two-week vacation.”

Arrests for illegal crossings on the U.S. border with Mexico fell by half in January from record highs in December to the third lowest month of Biden’s presidency. But officials fear those figures could eventually rise again, particularly as the November presidential election nears.

The immigration authority the administration has been looking into is outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives a president broad leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the United States if it would be “detrimental” to the national interest of the United States.

Trump, who is the likely GOP candidate to face off against Biden this fall, repeatedly leaned on the 212(f) power while in office, including his controversial ban to bar travelers from Muslim-majority nations. Biden rescinded that ban on his first day in office through executive order.

But now, how Biden would deploy that power to deal with his own immigration challenges is currently being considered, and it could be used in a variety of ways, according to the people familiar with the discussions. For example, the ban could kick in when border crossings hit a certain number. That echoes a provision in the Senate border deal, which would have activated expulsions of migrants if the number of illegal border crossings reached above 5,000 daily for a five-day average.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has also called on Biden to use the 212(f) authority. Yet the comprehensive immigration overhaul Biden also introduced on his first day in office — which the White House continues to tout — includes provisions that would effectively scale back a president’s powers to bar immigrants under that authority.

As passing legislation on border security in Congress appears unlikely, the plans under consideration signal that the White House wants to take action before numbers at the border, which have dropped in the past month, rise again as expected.

The plans have been under consideration for months, the officials said. In December, as Congress prepared to leave town for the holidays with no border solution, illegal crossings of the southwest border hit records at more than 10,000 per day.

The unilateral measures under consideration might upset some progressives in Congress, the officials said, but they noted that Democratic mayors who have asked for more help from the federal government to handle the influx of migrants in their cities would be pleased. The measures are still being drafted and are not expected to take place any time soon.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border bill that they had negotiated with Democrats and the Biden administration over the preceding months.

In a statement, a White House spokesperson said, “The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border.”

“Today, Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security and voted against what border agents have said they need. No regulatory actions would accomplish what the bipartisan national security agreement would have done for border security and the immigration system at large.”

Regardless of how much any executive action might appear to increase immigration enforcement both on the border and in the interior of the U.S., the officials said, it would pale in comparison to the effects that would arise if Congress had passed the border security bill.

“It’s a plan B,” an official said. Both officials said doing nothing is not an option.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden argued the bipartisan bill would have “made important fixes to our broken immigration system,” calling it “the toughest, fairest law” on the border ever proposed.

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Biden faces growing political backlash, some of it from members of his own party, over his handling of the border as he campaigns for re-election. He plans to cite the Republican turnabout on the bipartisan border legislation as proof that for political reasons the GOP does not really want to solve the problem. But he is still vulnerable on the issue, trailing his likely 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, by more than 30 points on securing the border and controlling immigration, according to a new NBC News poll released this week.

The Biden administration has already taken multiple unilateral actions to try to stem the flow of migrants.

In May, when Covid restrictions were set to lift at the border, the Department of Homeland Security introduced restrictions that would make more migrants eligible for speedy deportations. But overwhelming numbers meant the vast majority of migrants apprehended by border agents were still released into the U.S.

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It was the first group since January 2022 and was comprised of men, women and children mostly from inland and southern Honduras, where many farm workers lost their jobs due to the closure of some plantations.

“We are determined to keep going because here we are worse off. We have no jobs. We are hungry,” said Edgar Iván Hernández, a 26-year-old farm worker who was traveling with three relatives.

His cousin, Arnold Ulises Hernández, said they were encouraged to join the caravan after finding out about it on social networks. “The best way is to leave in a group because that way we are not stopped much by the police or immigration,” he said.

The vast majority of migrants cross Central America and Mexico in small groups, using all types of transportation and smuggling networks. Only a few form caravans.

The San Pedro Sula bus terminal is where migrants leave daily in buses headed north toward the U.S., but it was also the origin of the massive caravans of late 2018 and 2019.

In those years, many made it as far as the southern U.S. border. But after the pandemic the situation changed radically due to pressure from the U.S., which asked Mexico and Central American governments to increase their efforts to stop migrants headed north.

Since then, the caravans were stopped first in southern Mexico and later in Guatemalan territory.

Days before Honduran President Xiomara Castro took office in January 2022, a similar group of some 600 migrants departed from San Pedro Sula and was disbanded by Guatemalan security forces.

In 2023, there were record numbers of migrants all over the hemisphere. Arrests for illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico intensified by the end of year when U.S. authorities registered up to 10,000 illegal crossings over several days in December. The number dropped to 2,500 in the first days of January.

In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rejected the Biden administration’s request for the state to “cease and desist” its takeover of Shelby Park, an epicenter of southwest border illegal immigration in Eagle Pass.

“Because the facts and law side with Texas, the State will continue utilizing its constitutional authority to defend her territory, and I will continue defending those lawful efforts in court,” Paxton wrote.

When reached for comment, a DHS spokesperson referred NBC News to Department of Homeland Security General Counsel Jonathan Meyer’s letter this week directing the state to stop blocking the Border Patrol’s full access to roughly 2½ miles of the U.S.-Mexico border occupied by the state’s National Guard.

DHS officials said Saturday that a woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande after Border Patrol agents “were physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area” under orders from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The Texas Military Department disputed the DHS statement, saying its personnel were aware of a distress report but had not detected any distressed migrants.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Judge Christina Martyak agreed to a three-month extension, referred Aarón Rodriguéz and Cindy Baneza to free legal aid provided by the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami in the same courthouse — and their case remains one of the unprecedented 3 million currently pending in immigration courts around the United States.

Fueled by record-breaking increases in migrants who seek asylum after being apprehended for crossing the border illegally, the court backlog has grown by more than 1 million over the last fiscal year and it’s now triple what it was in 2019, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Judges, attorneys and migrant advocates worry that’s rendering an already strained system unworkable, as it often takes several years to grant asylum-seekers a new stable life and to deport those with no right to remain in the country.

“Sometimes hope already sinks,” said Mayra Cruz after her case was also granted an extension by Martyak because the Peruvian migrant doesn’t have an attorney.

“But here I’ve felt a bit safer,” added Cruz, who said she had to flee with only the clothes on her back with her partner and their children after repeated threats from gangs.

About 261,000 cases of migrants placed in removal proceedings are pending in the Miami court — the largest docket in the country. That’s about the same as were pending nationwide a dozen years ago, said Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher.

The backlog includes migrants who have been in the United States for decades and were apprehended on unrelated charges, but most are new asylum seekers who declare a fear of persecution if they are sent back, he added.

Backlogged courts, administered by the Justice Department, often get little attention in immigration debates, including in current Senate negotiations over the Biden administration’s $110 billion proposal that links aid for Ukraine and Israel to asylum and other border policy changes.

When migrants are apprehended by U.S. authorities at the border, many are released with a record of their detention and instructions to appear in court in the city where they are headed. That information is passed on from the Department of Homeland Security to the Justice Department, whose Executive Office for Immigration Review runs the courts, so that an initial hearing can be scheduled.

“They’re just being released without any idea of what comes next,” said Randy McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services for the Archdiocese of Miami, which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants join its diaspora communities.

So many migrants go to them for advice that, in the last couple of years, they’ve largely switched to teaching how to self-petition and represent themselves before judges.

“We help them understand what judges want, and we help judges with efficiency and preserving fundamental rights,” said Miguel Mora, a Catholic Legal Services supervising attorney in Miami.

Advocates say that most migrants ask for individual legal representation, something that’s becoming increasingly rare given the huge numbers, and how to get work permits, which migrants can apply for 150 days after filing their asylum application.

It’s a vicious cycle — without regular work, most can’t afford even a low-cost lawyer, so their cases can take even longer.

“We don’t have the money,” Rodriguéz, 23, told Judge Martyak, who had already granted him an extension for having no attorney at a previous hearing, as his partner rocked the stroller where their U.S.-born baby slept. They fled Honduras after the gang that had killed the father of Baneza’s oldest child threatened further violence unless they started paying from the meager profits of their tortilla shop.

“We were left with no other option than get out of the country,” Rodriguéz told The Associated Press. “We’ve already had three court appearances. Time is helping. We’re getting a little bit oriented.”

But the slow-moving process also means it takes years for asylum-seekers to be able to reunite with families they left behind and integrate fully in American society, said Karen Musalo, an attorney and professor who leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California in San Francisco.

Time also doesn’t help with the backlog, even though government records show judges completed far more cases in the last year than ever before, because their dockets keep growing so fast. Their average caseload is now 5,000 per judge, said Mimi Tsankov, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

She cited estimates that doubling the current number of judges to about 1,400 might solve the current backlog by 2032. In the new budget request, the Executive Office for Immigration Review is requesting funds from Congress to hire 150 new judges and support staff, said its press secretary, Kathryn Mattingly.

Experts like retired judge Paul Schmidt, who also served as government immigration counsel while the last major reform was enacted nearly forty years ago, say the broken system can only be fixed with major policy changes. An example would be allowing most asylum cases to be solved administratively or through streamlined processes instead of litigated in courts.

“The situation has gotten progressively worse since the Obama administration, when it really started getting out of hand,” said Schmidt, who in 2016, his last year on the bench, was scheduling cases seven years out.

In the mid-2010s, families and children from Central America seeking asylum became the majority of illegal crossers at the U.S. southern border. In response, the Obama administration as well as the Trump and Biden administrations started prioritizing some categories of cases they want solved faster to reflect enforcement priorities.

But courts are ineffective deterrents to people desperate to flee their countries, and judges say shuffling cases around only adds to the chaos as they wade through dozens if not hundreds of cases a day.

At the courthouse in Miami last week, one judge went looking for a Haitian family who hadn’t shown up, then granted an order of deportation in absentia, just as she had for a Colombian family who also failed to appear at their hearing immediately before.

Another judge found that a Cuban mother, then a Venezuelan man had applied for other forms of protection special to their countries and dismissed their cases, telling them they were done with the court. The woman broke into grateful tears. The man, who had come more than 200 miles for the minutes-long hearing, mumbled “God bless you” in Spanish.

And a steady stream of migrants went to find Catholic Legal Services — one couple directed there by the judge to figure out how to present in court their video of the gang murder that had forced them to flee.

___

Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat contributed from San Diego, California.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Worried about his mother’s health, Jacob Mabil tried for months to persuade her to let him start the process that would take her from a sprawling refugee camp where she had spent almost a decade after fleeing violence in South Sudan.

He wanted her to come live with him and his young family in the U.S. But before she would agree, she asked for a promise: that he would one day also bring the granddaughters she had raised since they were babies.

Mabil, now 44, said he would do everything he could. But it turned out that he was allowed to petition only for immediate family members. Though his mom joined him in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, in 2020, his nieces remained in Africa.

“That always killed me,” said Mabil, whose own childhood was ripped apart by civil war in Sudan.

As the U.S. government transforms the way refugees are being resettled, Mabil and his family now have hope that they will be reunited with two of his nieces, who soon turn 18 and 19. The Biden administration opened the application process this month that lets Americans who have formed groups to privately sponsor refugees request the specific person they want to bring to the U.S.

When he was just 8, Mabil was forced to run for his life as soldiers came into his village in what is now South Sudan, setting it on fire as they killed people. He became part of the group of children known as the “lost boys,” who spent years on their own and walked hundreds of miles to flee violence.

Mabil, who didn’t even know his mother was alive until shortly after he arrived in the U.S. in his early 20s, said he wants his sister’s daughters to have the same opportunities that he has had.

Traditionally, resettlement agencies have placed refugees in communities, but the push to add private sponsorship as well has come as President Joe Biden works to restore a program that was decimated under former President Donald Trump. The launch at the start of 2023 of the State Department’s Welcome Corps program, which allows everyday Americans the chance to form their own groups to privately sponsor refugees, came after a similar endeavor that let U.S. citizens sponsor Afghans or Ukrainians.

“In many ways it is, I think, one of the most important things that the U.S. resettlement program has ever done,” said Sasha Chanoff, founder and CEO of RefugePoint, a Boston-based nonprofit that helps refugees. “It will allow families who are in desperate need to reunite to do so.”

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With the U.S. hoping to bring in 125,000 refugees this fiscal year, the use of private sponsors expands the capacity of the existing system, said Welcome Corps spokeswoman Monna Kashfi said. She added that the opportunity to apply to sponsor a specific refugee has been greatly anticipated.

“We have heard all throughout the year from people who wanted to know … when they could submit an application to sponsor someone that they know,” she said.

Mabil, his wife and his mother have already joined two family friends to form their own sponsor group to start the process to bring over his two nieces, who were placed in a boarding school when their grandmother left Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for the U.S. One is set to graduate soon and the other has returned to the camp after graduating.

Chanoff said that unaccompanied girls are often “in extraordinary danger” at the camp and regularly kidnapped and sold into marriage.

Mabil’s wife, Akuot Leek, 33, is also from South Sudan and spent her childhood traveling from place to place with her family to try to escape violence. She wants the young women to have the same freedom that she had to choose what to do with their lives.

Leek and Mabil began dating after meeting at a wedding in the U.S. and both are college graduates who now work in finance.

Mabil was one of about 20,000 youths who joined an odyssey that took them first to Ethiopia, where they spent about three years before a war there forced them to flee again. The survivors eventually made it to Kakuma, where Mabil spent almost a decade before coming to the U.S.

“They had survived bullets and bombs and wild animal attacks and things that you and I can’t imagine to get to Kakuma camp,” said Chanoff, who met Mabil at the camp.

Leek and Mabil say that once his nieces are settled in Texas, they may work to bring over other family members.

Mabil’s mother, Adeng Ajang, said living with her son and daughter-in-law and four grandchildren in their comfortable home has made her very happy. Now, the only stress she has in her life is worrying about her granddaughters.

“It was difficult to leave them,” said Ajang as her daughter-in-law translated from the Dinka language. “It was hard.”

Ajang said talks to her granddaughters on the phone often. “Sometimes we talk and then we will start to cry,” she said.

For Mabil, he’s excited and nervous to start the process. “This is my last chance,” he said.

Video journalist Kendria LaFleur contributed to this report.

The United States added 1.6 million people, more than two-thirds of which came from international migration, bringing the nation’s population total to 334.9 million. It marks the second year in a row that immigration powered population gains.

A decline in the number of deaths since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to the U.S. growth rate.

Population gains stem from immigration and births outpacing deaths.

After immigration declined in the latter half of last decade and dropped even lower amid pandemic-era restrictions, the number of immigrants last year bounced back to almost 1 million people. The trend continued this year as the nation added 1.1 million people.

The last time immigration surpassed 1.1 million people was in 2001, according to Census Bureau figures compiled by William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution.

It is a sign of things to come. Without immigration, the U.S. population is projected to decline as deaths are forecast to outpace births by the late 2030s.

“The immigration piece is going to be the main source of growth in the future,” Frey said.

The census determines how many U.S. congressional seats each state gets. If trends continue through the 2030 count, California could lose four U.S. House seats and New York three. Texas could gain four seats and Florida could add three, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.

While low by historical standards, 2023’s half-percent growth rate was a slight uptick from the 0.4% rate last year and the less than 0.2% increase in 2021.

There were about 300,000 fewer deaths this year compared with a year earlier. That helped double the natural increase to more than 500,000 people in 2023, contributing to the largest U.S. population gain since 2018, according to estimates that measure change from mid-2022 to mid-2023. The population increased in 42 states, up from last year’s 31 states.

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The vast majority of growth, 87%, came from the South, a region the Census Bureau defines as stretching from Texas to Maryland and Delaware. But the concentration of growth seen during the height of the pandemic in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia diminished in 2023.

“We peaked in the movement of people to those Sun Belt hotshots,” Frey said. “It’s tapering off a little bit.”

South Carolina’s 1.7% growth rate topped all other states, and its population rose by more than 90,000 residents. More than 90% of the growth came from domestic migration, or people moving from another U.S. state to South Carolina. Without domestic and international migration, the Palmetto State would have lost population in 2023 with almost 1,300 more deaths than births.

Florida had the next-highest growth rate at 1.6%, adding more than 365,000 residents. That was also the second-highest growth in terms of raw numbers. Only Texas surpassed it, gaining more than 473,000 people. More people moved to Florida than any other’s U.S. state this year, with the almost 373,000 movers about evenly split between domestic and international. Significantly fewer residents died in Florida compared to last year, leading to a natural decrease of only around 7,600 people.

Of the 50 states, New York had the biggest rate of population decline, losing 0.5%. It also recorded the largest decline in pure numbers, with a drop of almost 102,000 residents, although it marks a much smaller decline than last year’s 180,000-person drop. The almost 74,000 international arrivals and the state’s natural increase of more than 41,000 residents couldn’t offset the almost 217,000 New Yorkers who departed the state from mid-2022 to mid-2023.

California was still the nation’s most populous state, with 38.9 million residents, though it lost more than 75,000 residents this year. The decline was an improvement from the more than 113,000-person drop last year. Texas was the second most populous state with 30.5 million residents.

For the first time, Georgia surpassed 11 million people in 2023, joining only seven other states above that population threshold.

“Barring something completely unforeseen, the 2020s are shaping up to be the South’s decade,” the Brennan Center for Justice said in a report on Tuesday.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on X, formerly known as Twitter: @MikeSchneiderAP.

The separation of thousands of families “represents one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said moments before approving a settlement between the Justice Department and families represented by the American Civil Liberties Union that ended a legal challenge nearly seven years after it was filed.

Sabraw, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, ordered an end to separations in June 2018, six days after then-President Donald Trump halted them on his own amid intense international backlash. The judge also ordered that the government reunite children with their parents within 30 days, setting off a mad scramble because government databases weren’t linked. Children had been dispersed to shelters across the country that didn’t know who their parents were or how to find them.

As he reminisced and congratulated lawyers on both sides, the judge recalled a sense of horror over initial allegations and how subsequent disclosures left him increasingly dismayed over how the policy was carried out in 2017 and 2018. He read from an earlier order in which he said the practice was “brutal, offensive and fails to comply with traditional notions of fair play and decency.”

Sabraw referred to another court filing in 2018 that described how many parents were deported without knowing where their children were. “Simply cruel,” he said.

The government and volunteers have yet to locate 68 children who were separated under the policy to determine if they are safe and reunited with family or loved ones, according to the ACLU. Sabraw said those children who are unaccounted for was “always my greatest fear and concern.”

Under the settlement, the type of “zero-tolerance” policy under which the Trump administration separated more than 5,000 children from parents who were arrested for illegally entering the country would be prohibited until December 2031.

Children may still be separated but under limited circumstances, as has been the case for years. They include if the child is believed to be abused, if the parent is convicted of serious crimes or if there are doubts that the adult is the parent.

Families that were separated may be eligible for other benefits — legal status for up to three years on humanitarian parole; reunification in the United States at government expense; one year of housing; three years of counseling; legal aid in immigration court. But the settlement doesn’t pay families any money. In 2021, the Biden administration considered compensating parents and children hundreds of thousands of dollars each, but talks stalled.

As he seeks to return to the White House in next year’s elections, Trump has been noncommittal whether he would try to resume family separations. He defended the results in an interview with Univision last month, claiming without evidence that it “stopped people from coming by the hundreds of thousands.”

“When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family, you don’t come. When you think you’re going to come into the United States with your family, you come,” Trump said.

The Department of Homeland Security referred Friday to an earlier statement by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the settlement reflects efforts to address a “cruel and inhumane policy, and our steadfast adherence to our nation’s most dearly held values.”

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told reporters that the judge’s comments Friday “said it all. This was a tragic episode in our country’s history.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to the ruling Friday.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is involved with the negotiations, told reporters Monday night that new pathways to citizenship won’t be a part of any final agreement.

“I think I’ve developed a reputation as being a fairly reasonable, compromise-oriented person. You come to me and tell me we had to have DACA and path to citizenship in this bill, it would be the last discussion you have with me [on] border security,” Tillis said. “This is not the time, or the place, nor the policy construct for it to work.”

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a top Democratic negotiator in the talks, said that while DACA is a priority that Democrats would want to see included in the deal, it doesn’t align with what Republicans want the final bill to look like.

Congressional leaders are aiming to pass legislation before Christmas that includes supplemental aid to Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific, multiple people involved in discussions told NBC News this month. Republicans are demanding tougher border security measures and stricter asylum laws in exchange for the additional Ukraine aid sought by the Biden administration.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

This is the first time in years that U.S. immigration authorities are deporting people to the South American nation, marking a significant concession by the government of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to a longtime adversary.

The first plane, a Boeing 737 jet, took off from the Texas border city of Harlingen and touched down in Miami before arriving hours later outside Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The roughly 130 passengers were Venezuelan women and men who were shuttled to the plane on buses, and wore wrist and ankle restraints. As they boarded, U.S. immigration officers patted them down.

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Biden’s administration said it plans to have “multiple” deportation flights a week to Venezuela, according to a U.S. Transportation Department waiver on travel restrictions, which would place Venezuela among the top international destinations for U.S. immigration authorities.

Restarted flights to Venezuela come after the country’s government and opposition agreed to work on electoral conditions that are expected to trigger relief from U.S. energy sanctions on the Maduro government.

“This flight to Venezuela is the first I’ve seen in my career of an entire charter flight of Venezuelans going back to their country. And we plan on having several more of these in the coming days and weeks,” said Corey Price, an acting executive associate director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Price said those who were prioritized for the flights include recent arrivals as well as migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens said the passengers had illegally entered the U.S. between ports of entry. State television showed footage of migrants in face masks exiting the plane in Maiquetia airport outside Caracas.

The deportees will find a homeland that is still in the midst of complex social, political and economic crises. The Venezuelan government said it had entered into an agreement with the U.S. government that “allows the orderly, safe and legal repatriation of Venezuelan citizens from the United States.” In a statement issued when the flights were first announced, Maduro’s government blamed recent migration on economic sanctions and said it would assist deportees with resources.

The situation has evolved since a global drop in the price of oil — Venezuela’s most valuable resource — a decade ago and mismanagement by the self-proclaimed socialist government pushed the country into a downward spiral. People are grappling with constant food-price hikes and business closures, and workers try to meet their needs with a monthly minimum wage of $3.70 that’s barely enough to buy a gallon of water.

The U.S. government employs a fleet of charter carriers known collectively as ICE Air. Using charter airlines though, these flights, which typically carry 135 migrants, will fly to Venezuela from unspecified airports in the United States, according to the Department of Homeland Security. They will be for Venezuelans who have received final removal orders, which are issued after losing an asylum bid or to those who weren’t able to seek humanitarian protection.

The flights are in response to “an increase in migration from Venezuela that is straining immigration systems throughout the hemisphere — including in the United States,” the Transportation Department said in its waiver.

The U.S. has struggled for years to deport people to countries with which it has strained diplomatic relations, including Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. After a hiatus of more than two years, Cuba allowed for the resumption of U.S. deportations in April, with deportation flights there operating only about once a month.

The U.S. government hopes the recent threat of deportation will be enough to make Venezuelans reconsider trying to enter the United States illegally — and opt instead for the online appointment system to make asylum claims or attempt other legal paths. But it has not deterred many people from continuing to migrate.

Venezuelan migration to the U.S. tapered off a year ago when the Biden administration agreed to allow Venezuelans to enter the country if they applied online with a financial sponsor who also arrived at the airport. More than 61,000 Venezuelans came on that route since last October.

The restart of the deportation flights takes places just weeks after the Biden administration announced that it is granting temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans that have arrived in the U.S. by July 31.

The temporary status makes it easier for them to get work authorization and stop deportation orders.

Experts and immigration attorneys are urging Venezuelans to apply to TPS to prevent their repatriation.

“Venezuelans who have not applied for TPS and have deportation orders could be affected,” said Rachel Leon, an immigration attorney in Florida. “Those who are eligible for TPS should apply as soon as possible to avoid facing deportation.”

At the same time, Mexico agreed to let in some Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. after crossing the border illegally, recognizing that Venezuela wouldn’t.

The lull was short-lived. In August, Venezuelans were arrested more than 22,000 times on charges of crossing the border illegally, fourth behind people migrating from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Many head to New York, Chicago and other major U.S. cities, overwhelming shelters and temporary housing there.

___ Gonzalez reported from Harlingen, Texas. Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.

The settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing families separated from their children, still has to be approved by the judge. But if finalized, it would make it much more difficult for any administration including former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, to revive one of his most controversial tactics to halt immigration at the southern border if he wins next year’s election.

“It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future. We set forth procedures through this settlement agreement to advance that effort,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told The Associated Press.

The Trump administration separated thousands of children from their parents or guardians they were traveling with as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors could not be held in criminal custody with their parents. They were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a family connection.

Faulty tracking systems by U.S. officials caused many to be apart for an extended time or never reunited with their parents. Facing strong opposition, Trump eventually reversed course in 2018, days before a judge put a halt to the practice after a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. During a CNN town hall earlier this year, Trump didn’t rule out once against separating families.

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the ACLU, praised the settlement.

“This settlement means that babies and toddlers will finally get to see their parents after years apart and that these suffering families will have an opportunity to seek lawful status. It also crucially bars an attempt by a future administration to reenact another family separation policy,” said Gelernt. “Nothing can make these families whole again but this is at least a start.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families. According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security in February, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before a Biden administration task force was created and 689 afterward.

Hundreds of families sued the federal government, seeking both monetary damages and policy changes.

This settlement filed in federal court in San Diego does not include monetary damages. But it does provide key benefits including authorization for parents of separated children to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole for three years and work in the U.S. The families receive some help with housing and medical and behavioral health benefits designed to address some of the trauma associated with the separations.

Mayorkas described how he’d met with a woman who had been separated from her daughter and how after they had been reunited, her daughter still struggled with the experience.

“We need to help these families heal. And that is an obligation that we carry because of the pain that we inflicted upon them,” he said.

They’ll also get access to legal services which will be vital as they may file asylum applications to stay in the United States on a permanent basis. The settlement also waives the usual one-year timeline limiting when someone can apply for asylum, and the parents can apply even if they were previously denied, Gelernt said. A special team of supervisors will review their cases.

Some of these benefits were already available to families under a Biden-administration created task force designed to reunite separated families. But Gelernt said the settlement goes beyond the task force’s purview in key ways such as the asylum assistance. The settlement also bars future separations, which the task force did not, and Gelernt said a future administration could have disbanded the task force whereas the settlement is binding.

Under the settlement, it would still be possible to separate children at the border from their parents or guardians, but under limited scenarios, as has been the case for many years. They include if the child is being abused or the parent committed a much more serious crime than crossing the border illegally.

The settlement requires the government to keep detailed documentation when it does separate children from parents so as to avoid the chaos that erupted during the Trump-era family separations where parents and children could not be reunited.

At one point in 2021, the administration was negotiating a possible payout of hundreds of thousands of dollars to each parent and child who was separated. Word leaked on negotiations and produced a political backlash.

Now that the government and the ACLU have agreed on a settlement plan, the judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept it. Before that, people opposed to the settlement can raise objections to the judge.

The ruling is a victory for the Biden administration and its approach to creating new pathways to enter the United States, while, at the same time, making it more difficult for those who don’t follow prescribed methods to seek asylum.

More than 263,000 people scheduled appointments on the CBP One app from when it was introduced in January through August, including 45,400 who were processed in August. The top nationalities of those who scheduled appointments are Haitian, Mexican and Venezuelan.

The app has been criticized on the right as too permissive and on the left as too restrictive.

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CBP One has become “the sole mechanism to access the U.S. asylum process at a (port of entry) on the southern border,” attorneys for Al Otro Lado and the Haitian Bridge Alliance argued in a brief before Friday’s hearing in San Diego. Turning back people without appointments violates agency policy and leaves them ”stranded in dangerous Mexican border towns, vulnerable to kidnapping, assault, rape, and murder,” they said.

The Justice Department insisted there is no policy of turning back asylum-seekers. While those with appointments get priority, officers cannot “turn back” people without them, government attorneys wrote.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Schopler, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said his hands were effectively tied by Supreme Court precedent that limits his authority on immigration policy.

The plaintiffs are disappointed with the decision and considering an appeal, said Melissa Crow, an attorney for the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which represents them.

Katherine Shinners, a Justice Department attorney, told the judge that his reasoning was correct and the case was “fairly straightforward.”

Faced with an influx of asylum-seekers from more than 100 countries, the administration’s mix of legal pathways and more enforcement is being challenged in court on several fronts.

The government appealed a decision to block a new rule that makes it more difficult to claim asylum for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, and enters the U.S. illegally. That rule remains in effect while under appeal.

Another closely watched case challenges a policy to grant a two-year stay for up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport. Texas is leading 21 states to argue that Biden overreached, saying it “amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so.”

The challenge to CBP One will continue in San Diego, despite the judge’s refusal on Friday to intervene immediately.

By Thayma Sánchez

At 17 years old, Abdias Funes Marroquin left El Salvador alone. He had $300 in his pocket as he journeyed toward Virginia to meet the mother he last saw as a baby.

He spent a whole month traveling toward the U.S.-Mexico border and then three months in a youth immigration center.

“You feel a little lonely, because you are alone, interacting with other young people or children from other countries,” Marroquin said.

Now 25, he lives by himself in Annandale, Virginia, as he builds a career and dreams of starting a family of his own.

As Latino immigrants sacrifice and strive to make their American dream come true, often living without their families, loneliness can feel inevitable. Here’s a look at immigrants’ mental health challenges and which culturally specific resources are available in the D.C. area.

The mental and physical effects of loneliness

The experience of being an immigrant can take a mental and even physical toll, said psychologist Jose Efrain Rodriguez, who works with immigrants as well as Latinos in their home countries.

“It’s the fact that I have gone through so many impacts and met so many people who perhaps have wanted to take advantage of me and the resources that I carry, that I have already exhausted them,” he said.

Immigrants can feel isolated and unable to make decisions and get support. In striving to create a new life in a new country, many people become self-interested and then feel even more alone.

“Individualism is not autonomy. Individualism is that I have interests and I am going to achieve those interests at all costs, and I am not necessarily interested in the wellbeing of others,” Rodriguez said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. surgeon general declared widespread loneliness a public health epidemic as dangerous as smoking a dozen cigarettes a day.

“We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told the Associated Press.

Loneliness can lead to health problems including headaches, insomnia, heart trouble and digestive issues, Rodriguez added.

For immigrants who have survived significant trauma, such as passing through the jungle of the Darién Gap, the effects can be as profound as a concussion.

“There is a psychological effect. Literally on a neurological level, it is as if we received an impact. An example of this is, think of a forceful blow to the head that leaves you unconscious,” Rodriguez said.

‘It’s not bad to ask for help’

As immigrants struggle with mental and physical fatigue and the effects of traumatic situations, a number of resources are available in the D.C. area.

Xóchitl López helps immigrants meet their mental health needs after she needed help herself. The Radiante program at the Baltimore organization Centro Sol assisted her after she arrived from Mexico and suffered an illness.

“Because I had been very sick, I had not realized that I was falling into depression,” she said. “When I was halfway through Radiante, it was as if the lights in the house began to turn on, and it was as if I began to see that there were flowers and other things. Then I realized that something was changing.”

López now serves as a mental health ambassador for Centro Sol, aiming to connect Latinos with available resources.

“We live alone in this country,” she said. “Many of us don’t have family. It’s not bad to ask for help. There are many organizations that can support us — we just have to allow them.”

Several other organizations in the D.C. area offer services to immigrants. In D.C., the Latin American Youth Center has a number of mental health services, including those for young people age 8 to 21.

“Along with mental therapy, we offer behavioral and trauma-focused therapy that focuses more on the individual,” Yesenia Molina of the center’s social services team said. “We offer group and family therapy as needed.”

Services also include a life skills program, a substance abuse program for youth, psychiatric evaluations and medication management.

Through a partnership with MoCo Reconnect, services also are available in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County.

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‘Seeing yourself with dignity’

Rodriguez, the psychologist, advised immigrants to work through trauma and feelings of loneliness so they can move forward with their lives.

“There are times when the adaptation cannot be processed, because I have resources that I managed to obtain, but I did not work through the trauma, and then there is a compound trauma,” he said.

“I have to see you as a human being, as a person with a need that has a life that has needs that I have to handle … that is seeing yourself with dignity,” he added.

López, who works with immigrants in Baltimore, spoke about challenging stigmas against mental health care.

“You feel bad, but you don’t know what’s going on with you. We don’t give ourselves permission for it to be mental health,” she said. “It is important that people know that they need to ask for help and that there is someone to help us.”

‘Don’t stop dreaming’

Marroquin, the immigrant whose journey from El Salvador ended in Annandale, said he hasn’t tried mental health services yet.

“In our countries, that is sometimes not seen as very necessary,” he said.

But he attends a church where many other immigrants go.

He advised other newcomers to the U.S. to rely on their faith and their visions of a better life.

“Don’t stop dreaming, and put your trust in God,” he said. “He is the one who takes care of us, and if it is his will, everything is possible.”

Changing Minds: Go here to see resources and stories in NBC4’s long-running Changing Minds series on mental health

Beth Barkley, a teacher at Cardozo Education Campus, in Columbia Heights, received the honor on Wednesday as the District has spent nearly $50 million in the past year on housing and services to thousands of migrants.

Barkley has taught at the school for the past eight years. One of her main responsibilities is teaching Spanish-speaking students who arrived on migrant buses from Texas and Arizona.

“All of our students deserve opportunity and being treated with dignity and respect, regardless of where they come from,” she said at the podium.

Barkley is a favorite among students.

“I always appreciate it, and I feel so grateful. I feel so happy in my heart because of her, because she’s one of the greatest teachers,” one 11th grader said.

The announcement comes a year after Mayor Muriel Bowser set up D.C.’s Office of Migrant Services to handle the influx of migrants. Since then, about 386 young people who arrived in D.C. on the buses have enrolled in DC Public Schools.

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Barkley spoke on Wednesday about the need for more support for undocumented students. 

“We’ve been fighting for years for our undocumented students to have access to mental health support,” she said. “Many of them have experienced a lot of trauma in their home countries.”

The award comes with a check for $7,500, which Barkley said she plans to use as seed money for scholarships to help undocumented students pay for higher education.

“Welcome our students with love. They’re a part of our community. They’re leaders and change-makers in our community, and D.C. is a great city because they’re a part of it,” Barkley added.

But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has so far rejected a U.S. request to set up sites in Mexico, noting he would prefer to have such centers in countries that are the sources of migration, despite the fact that a considerable number of migrants enter the United States from Mexico.

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López Obrador said that he would raise the subject in a meeting of Latin American leaders he will host later this month, suggesting that the countries might agree to a common plan on such sites.

“We have been looking at setting up sites in Mexico, because they (the United States) have asked for it,” López Obrador said. “We have not accepted it, first we want to talk to the presidents,” referring to the Oct. 22 meeting with the leaders of 11 countries that are on migration routes.

The meeting will be held in the southern Mexico city of Palenque. Among those expected to attend are Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize.

Migrant transit centers financed by the United States have been set up in Guatemala to receive applications from Central American citizens seeking to apply for work visas, family reunifications or refugee status.

The centers are part of a larger migratory strategy aimed at reducing the large number of migrants from Latin American and the Caribbean to the United States.

Eventually, applicants with scheduled appointments will be received at offices to be opened in eight places across Guatemala.

The influx of migrants has caused tension between the United States and Mexico.

On Monday, the Mexican government sent a diplomatic note to the United States complaining about the closure of some freight or train border crossings because of the large number of migrants gathered on the border.

Mexico also protested Texas’ truck inspections that have caused major delays at border crossings. López Obrador claimed Monday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to enforce additional truck inspections was “very irresponsible” and politically motivated.

Mexico’s national freight transport chamber said Sunday that 19,000 trucks were delayed at the border. The freight association claimed the delayed trucks were carrying about $1.9 billion in goods.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said it had started “enhanced commercial vehicle safety inspections” on Sept. 19 in crossing around El Paso and Del Rio, Texas, “to deter the placement of migrants and other smuggling activity” and detect unsafe vehicles.

But it all may end soon. A sudden procedural change in how the federal government processes green cards for foreign-born religious workers, together with historic highs in numbers of illegal border crossers, means that thousands of clergy like him are losing the ability to remain in this country.

“We were right on the edge of becoming permanent residents, and boom, this changed,” Colombia-born Castillo said as his wife rocked their 7-month-old boy, a U.S. citizen by birth. “We have done everything correctly, from here onward we believe that God will work a miracle. We don’t have any other option.”

To become permanent U.S. residents, which can eventually lead to citizenship, immigrants apply for green cards, generally through U.S. family members or employers. A limited number of green cards are available annually, set by Congress and separated into categories depending on the closeness of the family relationship or the skills needed in a job.

Citizens of countries with disproportionately high numbers of migrants are put in separate, often longer green card queues. Currently, the most backlogged category is for the married Mexican children of U.S. citizens – only applications filed before March 1998 are being processed.

For faith leaders, the line historically has been short enough to get a green card before their temporary work visas expired, attorneys say.

That changed in March. The State Department announced that for nearly seven years it had been placing in the wrong line tens of thousands of applications for neglected or abused minors from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and would now start adding those to the general queue with the clergy. Since the mid-2010s, a surging number of youth from these countries have sought humanitarian green cards or asylum after illegally crossing into the U.S.

This change means that only applications filed before January 2019 are currently being processed, moving forward the Central American minors by a few months but giving clergy with expiring visas, like Castillo, no option but to leave their U.S. congregations behind.

“They’re doing everything they’re supposed to be doing and all of a sudden, they’re totally steamrolled,” said Matthew Curtis, an immigration attorney in New York City whose clients, like an Israeli rabbi and a South African music minister, are running out of time. “It’s like a bombshell on the system.”

Attorneys estimate so many people are now in the queue that the wait is at least a decade long, because only 10,000 of these green cards can be granted annually.

Curtis’ firm advises potential clergy applicants that “there is no indication when you can receive a green card.”

That’s likely to dissuade religious organizations from hiring foreign workers precisely when they’re most needed because of the growing demand for leaders of immigrant congregations who can speak languages other than English and understand other cultures.

“There’s a comfort to practice your religion in your native tongue, in someone close to your culture celebrating Mass,” said Olga Rojas, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s senior counsel for immigration. The U.S. Catholic Church has also turned to foreign priests to ease a shortage of local vocations.

At one Chicago-area parish that’s been helping with this year’s surge of new arrivals from the border, two Mexican religious sisters have started ministries for women in the shelters as well as English classes, Rojas said.

“These two sisters know they won’t get green cards,” she added, and they expect to lose other religious sisters and brothers who are teachers, principals and serve in other key roles. “That’s catastrophic.”

Those from religious orders with vows of poverty, like Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks, are especially hard hit, because most other employment visa categories require employers to show they’re paying foreign workers prevailing wages. Since they’re getting no wages, they don’t qualify.

Across all faith traditions, there are few options for these workers to continue their U.S.-based ministry, attorneys say. At a minimum, they would need to go abroad for a year before being eligible for another temporary religious worker visa, and repeat that process, paying thousands in fees, throughout the decade – or for however long their green card application stays pending.

“A big concern is that leaving is not really viable. The church will replace the pastor or shut down, it’s too much instability,” said Calleigh McRaith, Castillo’s attorney in Minnesota.

Being in limbo is challenging for the affected religious workers, including Stephanie Reimer, a Canadian serving a nondenominational Christian youth missionary organization in Kansas City. Her visa expires in January.

“I’ve done a lot of praying,” she said. “There are days when it feels overwhelming.”

Martin Valko, an immigration attorney in Dallas whose clients include imams and Methodist pastors, said many rely on their faith to stay hopeful.

But realistic options are so few that the American Immigration Lawyers Association and faith leaders, like Chicago’s Catholic cardinal and coalitions of evangelical pastors, have lobbied the Biden administration and Congress to fix the problem.

Administrative solutions could include allowing religious workers to at least file for their green cards, so they can get temporary work authorization like those in other queues awaiting permanent residence.

The most effective and immediate fix would be for Congress to remove from this category the vulnerable minors’ applications, attorneys say. Despite being humanitarian, they make up the vast majority of the queue they share with religious workers, said Lance Conklin, a Maryland attorney who co-chairs the lawyer association’s religious workers group.

“They shouldn’t be pitted against each other in competition for visas,” said Matthew Soerens, who leads the Evangelical Immigration Table, a national immigrant advocacy organization.

Back at the Iglesia Pentecostal Unida Latinoamericana, Castillo said he has ministered to a family with two young children who survived the Darien Gap, a jungle in Central America favored by smugglers that’s among the most dangerous parts of migrants’ journeys, and a mother and daughter who said they came “through the hole” in the border wall.

“Some of them are in a better migration situation” than himself and his wife Yarleny, Castillo said. But he added that his call to minister to them is undaunted. “I serve God. He will take charge of these affairs while I lead those he has entrusted to me.”

That’s why, even as they face having to leave the country when their visas expire in February, the Castillos are fundraising to buy the building where they now rent worship space. They also regularly drive 10 hours to South Dakota, where they’re establishing another church.

“In this work, one is constantly helping destroyed migrant families,” Yarleny Castillo said. “And they need a space like this.”

—-

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Christian Martinez, 29, is the first conviction for the U.S. government over the tragedy in San Antonio, where the truck was found on a remote back road in June 2022. The dead included eight children who were riding inside the trailer that had no air conditioning in the sweltering Texas heat.

Martinez pleaded guilty to four smuggling-related charges and faces up to life in prison. Court records show his sentencing is set for Jan. 4.

David Shearer, an attorney for Martinez, declined comment.

Prosecutors said Martinez, who lived in suburban Houston, took the driver of the trailer to San Antonio to pick up the vehicle before it made its way to the U.S. border city of Laredo. Once there, Homero Zamorano Jr. allegedly loaded the migrants into the trailer and made his way back north while Martinez and four other men passed messages and made each other aware of the trailer’s progress.

Zamorano and the other defendants are still awaiting trial. Zamorano has pleaded not guilty.

An indictment unsealed in June alleged that the men worked with human smuggling operations in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. They allegedly shared routes, guides, stash houses, trucks and trailers, some of which were stored at a private parking lot in San Antonio.

The truck had been packed with 67 people, and the dead included 27 from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, authorities in Mexico said.

Migrants paid the organization up to $15,000 each to be taken across the U.S. border. The fee would cover up to three attempts to get into the country, according to the indictment.

In a post shared on X, previously known as Twitter, Chaves said Rio Grand City Border Patrol agents discovered the infant at the Texas border and included a blurred image of the baby boy.

“This is a chilling reminder of how children are exploited by human traffickers and criminal organizations every day,” Chavez added.

The incident comes amid a growing crisis at the border as a record number of migrant children are making the perilous journey through Latin America to reach the U.S., according to the U.N. children’s agency. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded over 149,000 children crossing in the fiscal year 2021, more than 155,000 in fiscal year 2022, and over 83,000 in the first eight months of fiscal year 2023, UNICEF said.

This is not the first time that a minor has been found alone at the border. On Aug. 23, two young siblings — a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy — were found abandoned in Rio Grande City. They reportedly came from Chiapas, Mexico, and were left to fend for themselves near the Rio Grande River, in the Eagle Pass area.

Days earlier, two brother from Honduras, aged 12 and 4, were also found near the Rio Grande. They told authorities they were abandoned by migrant smugglers.

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Mohammad was a university professor, teaching human rights courses in Afghanistan before he fled for the United States. Mohammad is also Hazara, an ethnic minority long persecuted in his country, and he said he was receiving death threats under the Taliban, who reimposed their harsh interpretation of Sunni Islam after taking power in 2021.

He crossed the Texas border in April 2022, surrendered to Border Patrol agents and was detained. A year later, a hearing was held via video conference. His words were translated by a court interpreter in another location, and he said he struggled to express himself — including fear for his life since he was injured in a 2016 suicide bombing.

At the conclusion of the nearly three-hour hearing, the judge denied him asylum. Mohammad said he was later shocked to learn that he had waived his right to appeal the decision.

“I feel alone and that the law wasn’t applied,” said Mohammad, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only his first name be used, over fears for the safety of his wife and children, who are still in Afghanistan.

Mohammad’s case offers a rare look inside an opaque and overwhelmed immigration court system where hearings are often closed, transcripts are not available to the public and judges are under pressure to move quickly with ample discretion. Amid a major influx of migrants at the border with Mexico, the courts — with a backlog of 2 million cases -– may be the most overwhelmed and least understood link in the system.

AP reviewed a hearing transcript provided by Mona Iman, an attorney with Human Rights First now representing Mohammad. Iman also translated Mohammad’s comments to AP in a phone interview from Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

The case reflects an asylum seeker who was ill-equipped to represent himself and clearly didn’t understand what was happening, according to experts who reviewed the transcript. But at least one former judge disagreed and said the ruling was fair.

Now Mohammad’s attorney has won him a new hearing, before a different judge — a rare second chance for asylum cases. Also giving Iman hope is a decision this week by the Biden administration to give temporary legal status to Afghan migrants living in the country for more than a year. Iman believes he qualifies and said he will apply.

But Mohammed has been in detention for about 18 months, and he fears he could remain in custody and still be considered for deportation.

AP sought details and comment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency didn’t address questions on Mohammad’s case but said noncitizens can pursue all due process and appeals and, once that’s exhausted, judges’ orders must be carried out.

____

For his April 27 hearing, Mohammad submitted photos of his injuries from the 2016 suicide bombing that killed hundreds at a peaceful demonstration of mostly Hazaras. He also gave the court threatening letters from the Taliban and medical documents from treatment for head wounds in 2021. He said militants beat him with sticks as he left the university and shot at him but missed.

In court, the government argued that Mohammad encouraged migration to the U.S. on social media, changed dates and details related to his history, and had relatives in Europe, South America and other places where he could have settled.

In ruling, Judge Allan John-Baptiste said the threats didn’t indicate Mohammad would still be at risk, and that his wife and children hadn’t been harmed since he left.

Mohammad tried to keep arguing his case, but the judge told him the evidentiary period was closed. He asked Mohammad whether he planned to appeal or would waive his right to do so.

Mohammad kept describing his claim, but John-Baptiste reminded him he’d already ruled. Mohammad said if the judge was going to ignore the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, he wouldn’t ask for an appeal. John-Baptiste indicated he had considered it.

“You were not hit by the gunshot or the suicide bomber,” John-Baptiste said. “The harm that you received does not rise to the level of persecution.”

Mohammad continued, explaining how his family lives in hiding, his wife concealing her identity with a burqa.

“OK, are you going to appeal my decision or not?” John-Baptiste ultimately asked.

“No, I don’t,” Mohammad said.

“And we don’t want you to make the decision now that you can’t come back later and say you want to appeal. This is final, OK, sir?” John-Baptiste said.

“Yes. OK, I accept that,” Mohammad said.

He later asked whether he could try to come back legally. The judge started to explain voluntary departure, which would allow him to return in less than a decade, but corrected himself and said Mohammad didn’t qualify.

“I’m sorry about that, but, you know, I’m just going to have to order you removed,” John-Baptiste said. “I wish you the best of luck.”

Mohammad later told AP he couldn’t comprehend what was happening in court. He’d heard from others in detention that he had a month to appeal.

“I didn’t understand in that moment that the right would be taken from me if I said no,” he said.

___

Former immigration judge Jeffrey Chase, who reviewed the transcript, said he was surprised John-Baptiste waived Mohammad’s right to appeal and that the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld that decision. Case law supports granting protection for people who belong to a group long persecuted in their homelands even if an individual cannot prove specific threats, said Chase, an adviser to the appeals board.

But Andrew Arthur, another former immigration judge, said John-Baptiste ruled properly.

“The respondent knew what he was filing, understood all of the questions that were asked of him at the hearing, understood the decision, and freely waived his right to appeal,” Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said via email.

Chase said the hearing appeared rushed, and he believes the case backlog played a role.

“Immigration judges hear death-penalty cases in traffic-court conditions,” said Chase, quoting a colleague. “This is a perfect example.”

Overall, the 600 immigration judges nationwide denied 63% of asylum cases last year, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Individual rates vary wildly, from a Houston judge who denied all 105 asylum requests to a San Francisco one denying only 1% of 108 cases.

John-Baptiste, a career prosecutor appointed during the Trump administration’s final months, denied 72% of his 114 cases.

Before Mohammad decided to flee, his wife applied for a special immigrant visa, which grants permanent residency to Afghans who worked for the U.S. government or military, along with their families.

But that and other legal pathways can take years. While they waited, Mohammad said, the Taliban came looking for him but instead detained and beat his nephew. Mohammad described making the devastating decision to leave his family, who had no passports.

He opted for a treacherous route through multiple countries to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, which has seen the number of Afghans jump from 300 to 5,000 in a year.

Mohammad said he crossed into Pakistan, flew to Brazil and headed north. He slept on buses and trekked through Panama’s notorious Darien Gap jungle, where he said he saw bodies of migrants who didn’t make it.

Mohammad planned to live with a niece in North Carolina. Now he fears if he’s sent home and his wife gets her visa, they’ll be separated again.

Deportations to Afghanistan are extremely rare, with a handful each year.

Attorney Iman said they’re grateful Mohammad’s case has been reopened, with a hearing scheduled for Oct. 4. She is fighting for his immediate release.

“I have no doubt that his case would have turned out differently had he been represented,” Iman said. “This is exactly the type of vulnerable individual that the U.S. government has promised, has committed to protect, since it withdrew from the country.”

____

Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat contributed from San Diego.

For a second straight day in the French port city of Marseille, Francis took aim at European countries that have used “alarmist propaganda” to justify closing their doors to migrants, and tried to shame them into responding with charity instead. He called for migrants to have legal pathways to citizenship, and for the Mediterranean Sea that so many cross to reach Europe to be a beacon of hope, not a graveyard of desperation.

The Mediterranean, Francis told Macron and a gathering of regional bishops, “cries out for justice, with its shores that on the one hand exude affluence, consumerism and waste, while on the other there is poverty and instability.”

The pope’s visit to the city in southern France, which drew an estimated 150,000 well-wishers Saturday, comes as Italy’s far right-led government has reacted to a new wave of arriving migrants by threatening to organize a naval blockade of Tunisia and to step up repatriations. The French government, for its part, has beefed up patrols on its southern border to stop migrants in Italy from crossing over.

After the bishops’ meeting ended, Macron and Francis held a private, half-hour meeting. They spoke about migration issues and a series of other topics, the French presidency said, adding that both leaders share a “joint will” to bring human solutions to the situation.

France is a “host country” to migrants — especially to asylum seekers — and is supporting European solidarity policies, including through financing and fighting human trafficking, the French presidency said. The Vatican provided no readout of the meeting.

Macron’s centrist government has taken a harder line on migration and security issues after coming under criticism from French conservatives and the far right. With elections for the European Union’s parliament set for next year, Macron is pushing for the EU to strengthen its external borders and to be more efficient in deporting individuals who are denied entry.

Macron greeted Francis on a wind-swept promenade overlooking Marseille’s old port, and helped him walk into the Palais du Pharo for the Mediterranean bishops meeting. With his wife by his side, the French leader listened as a young Italian volunteer working in Greece and the bishop of Tirana, Albania, who fled to Italy during Albania’s communist rule, spoke of the welcomes they received in foreign countries.

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“May we let ourselves be moved by the stories of so many of our unfortunate brothers and sisters who have the right both to emigrate and not to emigrate, and not become closed in indifference,” Francis said. “In the face of the terrible scourge of the exploitation of human beings, the solution is not to reject but to ensure, according to the possibilities of each, an ample number of legal and regular entrances.”

Francis’ two-day trip was scheduled months ago, but it is taking place as mass migration to Europe isonce again making headlines. Nearly 7,000 migrants who boarded smugglers boats in Tunisia came ashore on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa within a day last week, briefly outnumbering the resident population.

Nevertheless, Francis said talk of a migration “emergency” only fuels “alarmist propaganda” and stokes peoples’ fears.

“Those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome, for life” he said. “As for the emergency, the phenomenon of migration is not so much a short-term urgency, always good for fueling alarmist propaganda, but a reality of our times.”

In addition to Macron, the pope’s audience on Saturday included European Commission Vice President Margarítis Schinás, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who has said France would not take in new migrants from Lampedusa.

The French president and first lady Brigitte Macron later attended Francis’ final Mass at the Marseille Velodrome that drew an estimated 50,000 people and featured a giant banner of the pope hoisted up in the stands. The Vatican, citing local organizers, said 100,000 more lined Marseilles’ central Avenue du Prado to cheer as his popemobile passed by.

History’s first Latin American pope has made the plight of migrants a priority of his 10-year pontificate. For his first trip as pope, he traveled to Lampedusa to honor migrants who had drowned while attempting to cross the sea.

In the years since, he has celebrated Mass on the U.S.-Mexico border, met with Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees and, in a visible display of his commitment, brought home 12 Syrian Muslims on his plane after visiting a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece.

Migrants and their advocates living in Marseille, which has a long tradition of multicultural hospitality, said Francis’ call for charity and paths to citizenship gave them hope that at least someone in Europe was sympathetic to their plight.

“It is a very beautiful opportunity for us,” said Francky Domingo, who is part of a Marseille-based association representing migrants seeking official identification documents. “We really want the pope to be our spokesperson to the politicians because the European policy on migration is very, very repressive for us migrants.”

Stephanie Tomasini, a 48-year-old Marseille resident who attended the mass, said the pope sent an important message. “We must be able to … extend a hand and share, all of us should do that. Today, we’re not faced with difficulties, but we could be tomorrow, and we will want someone to open the doors for us,” she said.

Many faithful came from across French regions to see the pope, who last visited the country almost a decade ago. Catherine Etienne, from Brest in western France, watched Francis’ parade with joy. “We are really happy to have seen the Pope. We’re very moved,” she said.

In his remarks, Francis also repeated his opposition to euthanasia, which he has long decried as a symptom of a “throwaway culture” which treats the elderly and infirm as dispensable. Listing euthanasia as a “social evil,” he criticized supporters of assisted suicide as providing “false pretenses of a supposedly dignified and ‘sweet’ death that is more ‘salty’ than the waters of the sea.”

The issue is current in France, where Macron is expected in the coming weeks to unveil a bill that would legalize end-of-life options in France. French media reported that he delayed the presentation of the measure until after the pope’s visit to keep the sensitive topic from interfering.

No details of the government’s proposal have been released, but several options are under consideration, including legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia for adult patients with incurable conditions under strict conditions that guarantee their free and informed consent.

The French presidency said Francis and Macron discussed the issue during their bilateral meeting but didn’t enter into the details.

___

Associated Press writers Nicolas Garriga, Helena Alves and Masha Macpherson contributed to the story.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Now as Yeison prepares to finally enter the U.S., it’s likely he will have to leave Niko behind.

That’s because Niko is a squirrel.

The 23-year-old man and his pet squirrel are an unusual but blunt reflection of the emotional choices migrants make over what to take — and what to leave behind — as they embark on the dangerous trip north. Yeison, who declined to give his last name because he fears for his family’s safety in Venezuela, said going without Niko was out of the question. But Mexico is where they might be forced to part ways.

Yeison, who is among millions of Venezuelans fleeing political and economic unrest back home, secured an appointment for Saturday to present himself at the border to seek entry to the U.S. and request asylum. Animals are generally not allowed to cross the border.

“It would practically be like starting with nothing, without Niko,” Yeison said.

Many who set off on the roughly 3,000-mile (4,800-kilometer) journey to the U.S. do so with only what they can carry and their loved ones. For Yeison, that was a squirrel with a black stripe and flecks of white hair, who made the long trip nesting in a red knit cap stuffed inside a backpack.

For six months, Yeison and Niko lived in a tent at an encampment with hundreds of other migrants in Matamoros. The site is across from the Texas border city of Brownsville, which is hundreds of miles east of Eagle Pass and not experiencing the same dramatic increase in migrants that prompted the mayor to issue an emergency declaration this past week.

On a recent day, Niko crawled over Yeison’s shoulders and stayed close while darting around the tent. Chances are slim Yeison can take Niko across the border, but volunteers at the encampment aren’t giving up.

Gladys Cañas, the director of a nongovernmental organization, Ayudándoles A Triunfar, said she has encountered other migrants who wanted to cross with their pets — cats, dogs and even a rabbit once. But until now, never a squirrel.

Cañas helped connect Yeison with a veterinarian to document Niko’s vaccinations to provide to border agents. She is hopeful they’ll allow the squirrel to cross, whether with Yeison or with a volunteer.

“There’s a connection between him and the squirrel, so much that he preferred to bring it with him than leave the squirrel behind with family in Venezuela and face the dangers that come with the migrant journey. They gave each other courage,” she said.

Yeison said he found the squirrel after nearly stepping on him one day in Venezuela. The squirrel appeared to be newly born and Yeison took him home, where he named him Niko and family members fed him yogurt. The picky squirrel, Yeison said, prefers nibbling on pine trees and is fed tomatoes and mangoes, even in times when food is hard to come by.

At first, Yeison said he sought work in Colombia. He returned to find a loose pine splinter lodged in Niko’s eye and resolved after that to take the squirrel with him on the next journey to the U.S.

Like thousands of migrants, Yeison made the trip through the perilous jungle known as the Darien Gap, where he said he found the body of a man under some blankets. He said he concealed Niko in a backpack when they boarded buses and crossed through checkpoint inspections in Mexico. But one time, Yieson said, a bus driver discovered the squirrel and made him pay extra to keep the animal on board. Yeison said he sold his phone for $35 to cover the cost.

Once they reached the encampment in Matamoros, the pair settled into a routine. Yeison makes money cutting hair by his tent and often falls asleep sharing the same pillow with Niko at night.

He was bracing for a separation.

“I don’t want for him to be separated from me, because I know that we’d get heartsick. I’m sure of that,” Yeison said. “And if he doesn’t get sick, I hope he gets to be happy. And that he never forgets my face.”

Dr. Paul Wise, a pediatrician associated with Stanford University, interviewed families in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas this summer and found children as young as 8 were separated from their parents while being held in the temporary custody of Customs and Border Protection, according to the document filed Friday in the Central District of California.

“Interviews with parents and children found that there were minimal or no opportunities for phone contact or direct interaction between parent and child. The separation of families and the lack of interaction while in custody do significant, and potentially lasting, harm to children, particularly younger children,” Wise said in the court filing. 

Wise also said some migrants reported children younger than 8 were separated. He noted that in the past some teenage males who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with their mothers were separated from family pods that typically held younger children. But in the cases he documented this summer, the children being separated were much younger, according to the filing.

A Customs and Border Protection official told NBC News that the circumstances in which families are separated in CBP custody are rare and separation usually happens with a father is traveling alone with his children. If CBP personnel are not able to find a pod for that individual family due to overcrowding, they make an assessment based on the age of the children and sometimes put the children in a pod with other children of their age and gender, the official said.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

The proposal would reform the H-2A visa program, under which hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Mexico, take on seasonal jobs in the U.S. agriculture industry. The number of people admitted under the program has soared in recent years, as rapid hiring after the pandemic and a low unemployment rate has left many farmers scrambling for workers.

Last year, about 370,000 people were admitted with H-2A visas, double the number in 2016 and five times as many as in 2005, Labor Department officials said. Yet as the popularity of the program has grown, so have concerns about abuses. Reports of overcrowded farm vehicles and fatalities have increased as the numbers have risen, senior department officials said.

The department is already required to ensure that the H-2A program doesn’t undercut the wages or working conditions of Americans who take similar jobs. Employers are required to pay minimum U.S. wages or higher, depending on the region.

“This proposed rule is a critical step in our ongoing efforts to strengthen protections for farm workers and ensure that they have the right to fair and predictable wages, safe working conditions and freedom from retaliation,” said Julie Su, acting secretary of Labor, in a statement.

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The new rule, which is subject to a 60-day comment period, seeks to make it easier for labor unions to contact and interact with the H-2A workers, and to protect the workers from retaliation if they meet with labor representatives. The workers would be allowed to have visitors, including those from labor groups, in employer-provided housing, for example.

The rule would also require farmers who employ H-2A workers to provide seat belts on vans that are often used to transport workers long distances. Transportation accidents are a leading cause of death for farm workers, according to the department.

And in a step intended to counter human trafficking, employers would be required to identify anyone recruiting workers on their behalf in the U.S. or foreign countries and to provide copies of any agreements they have with those recruiters.

Another visa program, the H-2B, which allows temporary workers in fields other than agriculture, already includes similar requirements, department officials said.

“We’re putting together a series of new protections or clarifying protections to make sure that workers in the program can really advocate on behalf of themselves, and that…will help prevent the problems that we’re seeing with exploitative conditions,” a senior Labor department official said.

“You’re talking about passing up something like $1 trillion in production every year that these jobs go unfilled,” David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told CNBC.

With 5.8 million unemployed workers in the U.S., some economists say all of these roles are unlikely to be filled by people currently living in the U.S.

Currently, American immigration policies bar many employers from hiring unskilled migrants.

Bier explained, “In 1986, Congress banned people working without authorization in the U.S. They made it impossible to hire someone who was in the U.S. illegally or without employment authorization.”

Now, some argue this protects workers already living in the U.S., but the public is split almost evenly on this. Fifty-one percent of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute worry immigration could reduce the number of jobs available. 

Meanwhile, the number of job openings remains at historic levels. Darrell Bricker, co-author of “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” and CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs said, “The effect of a shrinking aging population is a decline in innovation, combined with the fact that you’re just going to run out of the things that drove economic growth.”

He continued, saying there is “a huge opportunity for the United States to blunt some of the effects of fertility decline and population aging by having an immigration policy that may be a bit more focused, not necessarily on just accepting anybody for compassionate reasons, but for bringing in people to fill in those skill gaps.”

Bricker’s home country of Canada has a much more open immigration policy and credits its Covid pandemic recovery in part to its approach to immigration.

Dany Barah, associate professor of the practice of international and public affairs at Brown University and a Venezuelan immigrant, said, “One could argue that Canada has benefited a lot from the broken migration system in the U.S.”

Bahar and his colleagues are developing what they’re calling the Occupational Opportunity Network to help keep decision-makers informed about how migrants can help the U.S. economy grow. 

“By looking at every occupation in every locality in the U.S. and projections and historical data, we’re able to actually come up with numbers that are much higher than the current caps in the U.S. system and we hope that these numbers are going to be the basis for a comprehensive immigration reform,” he told CNBC.

However, not all immigration experts agree we need more open borders. Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow, border security and immigration center, at the Heritage Foundation said: “We’re in a really unique environment at the moment. We’re sort of testing, pushing the envelope of our national sovereignty and our ability to to absorb people.”

Hankinson explained the current visa system, specifically in the case of the HB-1 visa, undercuts the skilled labor market by bringing in workers from abroad. “It’s never allowed the market to exercise that function where the wages go up and then people are tempted to go into those fields and fill those jobs.”

Watch the video to learn more about how U.S. immigration policies impact economic growth and how the U.S. can fix it.

The testimony sought to reinforce what the Biden administration argues are the diplomatic stakes over wrecking-ball-sized buoys that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized this summer as part of the Republican’s increasingly hardline measures in the name of curbing the flow of migrants crossing the border.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra did not immediately rule at the conclusion of the hearing Tuesday in Austin. At one point, Ezra said the issue centered on whether Abbott has the power to unilaterally try stopping what the governor has described as an “invasion” on America’s southern border.

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“Mexico has sensitivities about sovereignty and doesn’t want to be seen as a lesser partner to the United States,” said Hillary Quam, the State Department’s coordinator for border affairs between U.S. and Mexico.

She said Mexico has raised concerns “at the highest diplomatic levels” with the U.S. in the short time that the buoys — which stretch roughly the length of a handful of soccer fields on a portion of the river near the Texas city of Eagle Pass — have been on the water. Quam said infrastructure projects between the countries and Mexico’s commitments to delivering water to the U.S. could stall over the barrier.

The hearing was held days after Texas repositioned the barrier closer to U.S. soil. During a trip Monday to Eagle Pass, Abbott said the barrier was moved “out of an abundance of caution” after what he described as allegations that they had drifted to Mexico’s side of the river. He added that he did not know whether the allegations were true.

Ezra questioned why Texas would have moved the barrier if it was already on the U.S. side and whether the currents of the river were causing the buoys to drift.

“If it were in a position Texas was comfortable with, they wouldn’t have done that,” Ezra said.

Ezra ordered both sides to submit written closing arguments by Friday as the Biden administration seeks a court injunction ordering the removal of the buoys.

In the meantime, Abbott’s sprawling border mission known as Operation Lone Star continues to face numerous legal challenges, including a new one filed Monday by four migrant men arrested by Texas troopers after crossing the border.

The men, including a father and son, are among thousands of migrants who since 2021 have been arrested on trespassing charges in the state. Most have either had their cases dismissed or entered guilty pleas in exchange for time served. But the plaintiffs remained in a Texas jail for two to six weeks after they should have been released, according to the lawsuit filed by the Texas ACLU and the Texas Fair Defense Project.

Instead of a sheriff’s office allowing the jails to release the men, the lawsuit alleges, they were transported to federal immigration facilities and then sent to Mexico.

Officials in both Kinney and Val Verde counties, which have partnered with Abbott’s operation, are named in the lawsuit. A representative for Kinney County said Monday that he did not believe anyone had yet reviewed the complaint. A representative for Val Verde County did not return an email seeking comment.

Associated Press writer Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

By the time their paths crossed at the tidy one-story brick house in Cincinnati, they had encountered hundreds of other Mauritanians, nearly all of them following a new path surging in popularity among younger migrants from the West African nation, thanks largely to social media.

“Four months ago, it just went crazy,” said Oumar Ball, who arrived in Cincinnati from Mauritania in 1997 and recently opened his home to Sow, Sall and more than a dozen other new migrants. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

The spike in migration was made possible by the discovery this year of a new route through Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and a handful of other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel.

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As word of the entry point spreads, travel agencies and paid influencers have taken to TikTok to promote the trip, selling packages of flights that leave from Mauritania, then connect through Turkey, Colombia and El Salvador, and wind up in Managua, Nicaragua. From there, the migrants, along with asylum seekers from other nations, are whisked north by bus with the help of smugglers.

“The American dream is still available,” promises a video on TikTok, one of dozens of similar posts from French-speaking “guides” that help Mauritanians make the trip. “Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today.”

“We wish you success. Nicaragua loves you very much,” a man working for a travel agency says in Spanish in another video.

The influx of Mauritanians has surprised officials in the U.S. It came without a triggering event — such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse — suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns: From March to June, more than 8,500 Mauritanians arrived in the country by crossing the border illegally from Mexico, up from just 1,000 in the four months prior, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The new arrivals likely now outnumber the estimated 8,000 foreign-born Mauritanians previously living in the U.S., about half of whom are in Ohio. Many arrived in the 1990s as refugees after the Arab-led military government began expelling Black citizens.

Some who left say they’re again fleeing state violence directed against Black Mauritanians. Racial tensions have increased since the May death of a young Black man, Oumar Diop, in police custody, with the government moving aggressively to crush protests and disconnect the country’s mobile internet.

The nation was one of the last to criminalize slavery, and the practice is widely believed to persist in parts of the country. Several Mauritanians who spoke to The Associated Press said police targeted them because of anti-slavery activism.

“Life is very difficult, especially for the Black Mauritanian population,” said Sow, 38, who described himself as an activist in the country. “The authorities became threatening and repressive.”

It became difficult to fight, he said, and his life was threatened. So he fled via the new route to Cincinnati, where he’d heard a thriving Mauritanian community was helping new arrivals get on their feet.

Previously, applying for asylum in the U.S. meant flying to Brazil, then risking a dangerous trek through the dense jungle of the Darien Gap. The new route through Nicaragua bypasses that link.

The trip can cost $8,000 to $10,000, a hefty sum that some families manage by selling land or livestock. With economic growth over the past decade, Mauritania has moved into the lower ranks of middle-income countries, according to the U.N. refugee agency, but the poverty rate remains high, with 28.2% living below the poverty line.

The Nicaragua route also allows migrants to avoid the boat voyages to Europe that have killed tens of thousands in the past decade. Mauritanian and Spanish authorities have cracked down on boats crossing the Atlantic for Spain’s Canary Islands, and people are increasingly being intercepted after trekking to North Africa to try to cross the Mediterranean. Flying to Nicaragua is legal, and the rest of the trip is on land — attractive options for Mauritanians and others who want to leave Africa.

The new passage presents a rare opportunity to a generation yearning for a better life, said Bakary Tandia, a Mauritanian activist living in New York: “No matter what is your burning desire to come, if there is no route, you will not even think about it. The reality is: People are seeing a window of opportunity, that’s why they are rushing.”

Still, some who’ve followed the Nicaragua route say they were misled about potential dangers and the future awaiting them in the U.S. This month, a bus carrying migrants tumbled down a steep hillside in Mexico, killing 18 people, including one Mauritanian. Two other Mauritians were hospitalized.

Sall, a 23-year-old nurse, said she was robbed of her remaining money on a bus in Mexico by men dressed as police officers. After crossing the border, she was hospitalized with dehydration.

“On WhatsApp they say, ‘Oh, it’s not very difficult.’ But it’s not true,” she said. “We confront so much pain along the way.”

Ibrahim Dia, a 38-year-old who owns a cleaning company in the Mauritanian city of Nouadhibou, said his brother left the country in June, following the Nicaragua trip he’d seen countless others take in recent months. But he was detained at the border and remains jailed at a Texas detention site, Dia said.

Many Mauritanians enter the U.S. in Yuma, Arizona. Some are dropped off on a Mexican highway by smugglers for a roughly two-hour walk through a knee-deep river and flat desert shrub and rocks. They surrender to Border Patrol agents in Yuma waiting under stadium lights where a wall built during Donald Trump’s presidency abruptly ends.

After a period of detention and screening that could last hours or days, they may enter the country to await a court date, a process that can take years. Others are kept in detention for weeks, or placed on a small number of flights deporting them back to Mauritania.

Human rights groups have called on the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status to Mauritania, pointing to reports of abuse against Black residents who are deported after fleeing.

Those who can enter are often put in touch with a close-knit group of American and Mauritanian-born advocates who connect them to housing and help pay for flights across the U.S. Some head to Philadelphia, Denver, Dallas or New York, where an overwhelmed shelter system has left migrants — many from Mauritania and elsewhere in Africa — sleeping on the sidewalk

Ohio remains the most common destination. Several thousands have found their way to Cincinnati, settling in with the small but vibrant existing community. A group of volunteers, led by longtime resident Ball, help with paperwork and adjustments to the country. Some days, Ball makes multiple trips to the airport to pick up people coming from the border, bringing them to his home or a block of apartments rented out by the community.

On a recent Friday evening, more than a dozen Mauritanians carpooled to a nearby mosque to pray. After the service, they piled into the living room of another friend’s house for dinner: steaming bowls of lamb and couscous served on the floor, with cans of Coca-Cola. A women’s World Cup game played as the group discussed their pasts and futures.

Sall, the one-time nurse, said she wants to go back to school. She’s taken on an unofficial role as cook in the house she shares with others new to Ohio. She hopes to stay in Cincinnati with the community that’s embraced her and many others.

“The Mauritanian people gave me a big welcome,” she said. “And they gave me hope.”

____

Offernhartz reported from New York; Brito from Barcelona, Spain. AP journalist Elliot Spagat contributed from San Diego.

The proposal, suggested in an Aug. 9 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration, came as New York struggles to handle the estimated 100,000 migrants who have arrived in the city since last year after crossing the southern U.S. border.

The city is legally obligated to find shelter for anyone needing it. With homeless shelters full, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has taken over hotels, put cots in recreational centers and school gyms and created temporary housing in huge tents.

The letter, written by a senior counsel for the city’s law department, identifies several other sites in which migrants could potentially be housed, including the defunct Metropolitan Correctional Center, which closed in 2021.

That shutdown came after the detention center, whose prisoners have included Mafia don John Gotti, associates of Osama bin Laden and the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, came under new scrutiny because of squalid conditions and security lapses exposed following Epstein’s death.

Lawyers had long complained that the jail was filthy, infested with bugs and rodents, and plagued by water and sewage leaks so bad they had led to structural issues.

The letter didn’t make clear whether the city had actually approached the federal Bureau of Prisons about getting access to the jail as residential housing for migrants. As asylum seekers, the migrants are not prisoners and are mostly in the U.S. legally while their asylum applications are pending, leaving them generally free to travel.

In a statement, the federal Bureau of Prisons said “While we decline to comment concerning governmental correspondence, we can provide; MCC New York is closed, at least temporarily, and long-term plans for MCC New York have not been finalized.”

At least one advocacy group assailed the idea of housing migrants at the jail.

“Mayor Adams likes to say that all options are on the table when it comes to housing asylum seekers, but certain places should most definitely be off the table,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. “The Metropolitan Correctional Center was a notoriously decrepit jail, and is not a suitable place to support people trying to build a new life in a new country.”

The influx of migrants to the city has created some tension between the Hochul and Adams administrations. Lawyers for the two Democrats have sparred in court filings over how best to confront an issue that carries financial, political and humanitarian implications.

In a letter this week, an attorney representing Hochul sought to reject allegations that the state had not responded to the migrant influx in a substantial way, detailing steps the governor has taken while accusing the city of failing to accept state offers of assistance.

“The City has not made timely requests for regulatory changes, has not always promptly shared necessary information with the State, has not implemented programs in a timely manner, and has not consulted the State before taking certain actions,” the letter said.

Hochul’s attorney also noted the state has set aside $1.5 billion for the city to assist migrants and has advanced the city $250 million for the effort but said the city has only submitted reimbursement documents for just $138 million.

Avi Small, a spokesman for Hochul, said in a statement Thursday that “Governor Hochul is grateful to Mayor Adams and his team for their work to address this ongoing humanitarian crisis. Governor Hochul has deployed unprecedented resources to support the City’s efforts and will continue working closely with them to provide aid and support.”

The city, in its own filing, has suggested Hochul use executive orders or litigation to secure housing for migrants in upstate New York or to consider trying to get neighboring states to accept migrants.

Lawyers for the city are also requesting to use state-owned properties such as the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center or State University of New York dormitories to house new arrivals, in addition to requesting the federal government allow them to use federal sites such as the Metropolitan Correctional Center jail and Fort Dix.

Adams’ office did not immediately return an emailed request for comment Thursday.

The new rule makes it extremely difficult for people to be granted asylum unless they first seek protection in a country they’re traveling through on their way to the U.S. or apply online. It includes room for exceptions and does not apply to children traveling alone.

The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals grants a temporary reprieve from a lower court decision that had found the policy illegal and ordered the government to end its use by this coming Monday. The government had gone quickly to the appeals court asking for the rule to be allowed to remain in use while the larger court battles surrounding its legality play out.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the government’s request to stay the lower court’s ruling while the appeal goes forward. They also said they would expedite the hearing for the appeal with both sides expected to send in their arguments to the court by mid-September and a hearing to be held at an unspecified date, meaning a relatively fast timeline to review the case.

Judges William Fletcher and Richard Paez, who were both appointed by President Bill Clinton, ruled in favor of the stay but gave no reason for their decision. Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissented. In his dissent VanDyke seemed to agree with the legality of the rule in theory but said it was little different than previous rules put forward by the Trump administration that were shot down by the same appeals court when Trump was in office. He suggested that the judges had been moved to grant the stay because they feared that if the case went all the way to Supreme Court, that body would have done it instead.

“I wish I could join the majority in granting a stay. It is the right result. But that result, right as it may be, isn’t permitted by the outcome-oriented mess we’ve made of our immigration precedent,” VanDyke wrote.

The new asylum rule was put in place back in May. At the time, the U.S. was ending use of a different policy called Title 42, which had allowed the government to swiftly expel migrants without letting them seek asylum. The stated purpose was to protect Americans from the coronavirus.

The administration was concerned about a surge of migrants coming to the U.S. post-Title 42 because the migrants would finally be able to apply for asylum. The government said the new asylum rule was an important tool to control migration.

Rights groups sued, saying the new rule endangered migrants by leaving them in northern Mexico as they waited to score an appointment on the CBP One app the government is using to grant migrants the opportunity to come to the border and seek asylum. The groups argued that people are allowed to seek asylum regardless of where or how they cross the border and that the government app is faulty. They also argue that the new asylum rule is essentially a reboot of two previous rules put forward by President Donald Trump that sought to limit asylum — the same point Judge VanDyke alluded to in his dissent.

The groups also have argued that the government is overestimating the importance of the new rule in controlling migration. They say that when the U.S. ended the use of Title 42, it went back to what’s called Title 8 processing of migrants. That type of processing has much stronger repercussions for migrants who are deported, such as a five-year bar on reentering the U.S. Those consequences — not the asylum rule — were more important in stemming migration after May 11, the groups argue.

“The government has no evidence that the Rule itself is responsible for the decrease in crossings between ports after Title 42 expired,” the groups wrote in court briefs.

But the government has argued that the rule is a fundamental part of its immigration policy of encouraging people to use lawful pathways to come to the U.S. and imposing strong consequences on those who don’t. The government stressed the “enormous harms” that would come if it could no longer use the rule.

“The Rule is of paramount importance to the orderly management of the Nation’s immigration system at the southwest border,” the government wrote.

The government also argued that it was better to keep the rule in place while the lawsuit plays out in the coming months to prevent a “policy whipsaw” whereby Homeland Security staff process asylum seekers without the rule for a while only to revert to using it again should the government ultimately prevail on the merits of the case.

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Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department reported for the first time Wednesday that a body had been found along the floating barrier. The Coahuila state prosecutor’s office later told local media outlets that the two bodies were recovered and that the process of identification was underway.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement Thursday that it had received a report Wednesday of “a possible drowning victim floating upstream from the marine barrier and notified (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) and the Mexican Consulate.”

The agency said that later Wednesday, a second body was found at the marine barrier.

“Preliminary information suggests this individual drowned upstream from the marine barrier and floated into the buoys,” Steve McCraw, the DPS director said. “There are personnel posted at the marine barrier at all times in case any migrants try to cross.”

Abbott’s office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment but issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying:

“The Mexican government is flat-out wrong. To be clear, preliminary information points to the drowning occurring before the body was even near the barriers. The Texas Department of Public Safety previously reported to Border Patrol the dead body floating upstream from the barriers in the Rio Grande. Also, DPS monitors the barriers for anyone attempting to cross and has not observed anyone attempting to cross since they were installed,” the governor’s office said. “Unfortunately, drownings in the Rio Grande by people attempting to cross illegally are all too common. As was reported in early July before the marine barriers were installed, four people drowned trying to cross the river.”

The governor’s statement went on say the United Nations declared the U.S-Mexico border the deadliest land crossing in the world and pointed blame over illegal crossings in the directions of President Joe Biden and Mexican President López Obrador.

“If President Biden and President López Obrador truly cared about human life, they would do their jobs and secure the border,” Abbott’s office said.

In their statement on Aug. 2, the Mexican government said, “The government of Mexico reiterates that the installation of said wall of wire buoys violates our sovereignty and has an impact on the security, integrity and human rights of migrants, and that it is an action that does not correspond to the close relationship that the governments of United States and Mexico.”

TEXAS MARINE BARRIER

Greg Abbott Jul 26, 2023

DOJ files injunction in Texas buoy case, asks judge to order them removed

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department initially said one body was found along the barrier, then hours later said a second body was found about three miles upriver, away from the area of the buoys. The cause of death is unknown in both cases.

Many had warned about the danger of the barrier, designed to make it more difficult for migrants to climb over or swim under.

Mexico had warned about the risks posed by the bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. The Foreign Relations Department also claimed the barrier violates treaties regarding the use of the river and Mexico’s sovereignty.

“We made clear our concern about the impact on migrants’ safety and human rights that these state policies would have,” the department said in a statement.

Mexico confirmed it was officials from the Texas DPS that initially notified Mexico’s Consulate in Eagle Pass Wednesday about a body.

The barrier was installed in July and stretches roughly the length of three soccer fields. It is designed to make it more difficult for migrants to climb over or swim under the barrier.

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Abbott over the floating barrier. The lawsuit asks a court to force Texas to remove it. The Biden administration says the barrier raises humanitarian and environmental concerns.

The buoys are the latest escalation of Texas’ border security operation that also includes razor-wire fencing and arresting migrants on trespassing charges.

Migrant drownings occur regularly on the Rio Grande. Over the Fourth of July weekend, four people, including an infant, drowned in the river near Eagle Pass before the buoys were installed.

Daniel Gonzalez, 68, of Hickory, surrendered at the Lincolnton Police Department with several relatives by his side, the department said in statement. His family members told detectives that Gonzalez had hit the gas pedal accidentally while trying to park his car and left the scene in a panic.

Gonzalez had rammed his SUV into a group of 20-30 migrant workers who were waiting Sunday morning to board a shuttle bus that travels to and from a nearby farm.

An original statement from the police department earlier Monday said detectives believed the assault was intentional. Maj. Brian Greene, interim chief of the Lincolnton Police Department, said the driver’s motives are still under investigation, and that police are considering the new evidence.

North Carolina Jul 31, 2023

Police search for driver who intentionally hit 6 migrant workers; injuries aren't life-threatening

Officers recovered the black sport utility vehicle involved in the crash. They arrested Gonzalez Monday night and charged him with a felony hit and run with a $50,000 secure bond.

The victims were treated at a local hospital for their injuries, and all six were released late Sunday, Greene told The Associated Press in an interview. Police identified them as Jorge A. Lopez, Zalapa M. Hermosillo, Jose L. Calderon, Luis D. Alcantar, Rodrigo M. Gutierrez-Tapia and Santiago Baltazar. They could not be reached for comment Monday.

The workers had arrived at the Walmart parking lot late Sunday morning from Knob Creek Orchard in Lawndale. Greene said they make the same trip once a week and use a shaded lawn at the bottom of the parking lot in Lincolnton as their regular meeting place to board buses. The men were standing under trees Sunday when an SUV pulled up next to the bus.

“It turns right in front of the bus and appears like it’s almost going to park,” Greene said, describing security footage of the incident. “And then it appears to accelerate at the last minute, jumping the curb, hitting the individuals and the trees and going through the area into the other side of the parking lot and exits the same way it came.”

The police department said it is continuing to work with the FBI, the State Bureau of Investigation and the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles on the investigation.

The workers were rammed by a vehicle outside a Walmart in Lincolnton on Sunday in what appears to have been an intentional assault, but Maj. Brian Greene, interim chief of the Lincolnton Police Department, said the driver’s motives are still under investigation. The victims were treated at a local hospital for their injuries, and all were released late Sunday, Greene told The Associated Press.

Police identified them as Jorge A. Lopez, Zalapa M. Hermosillo, Jose L. Calderon, Luis D. Alcantar, Rodrigo M. Gutierrez-Tapia and Santiago Baltazar. They could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

The workers had arrived at the Walmart parking lot late Sunday morning from Knob Creek Orchard in Lawndale, where they tend to the farmland. Greene said they make the same trip once a week and use a shaded lawn at the bottom of the parking lot as their regular meeting place to board buses. The men were standing under trees Sunday when an SUV pulled up next to the bus.

“It turns right in front of the bus and appears like it’s almost going to park,” Greene said, describing security footage of the incident. “And then it appears to accelerate at the last minute, jumping the curb, hitting the individuals and the trees and going through the area into the other side of the parking lot and exits the same way it came.”

Police are asking the public for help identifying the driver and the vehicle, described in the police report as an older model black sport utility vehicle with a luggage rack.

In a push to offer migrants a safer alternative to crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, the White House announced Friday it will allow some migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who are already in Mexico to cross to the U.S. legally through the refugee resettlement program.

The new initiative will also allow eligible migrants to use the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to book an appointment with a U.S. immigration officer before approaching the border.

US-Mexico Border Jul 27, 2023

Biden administration ramps up deportations

Immigration Jul 27, 2023

Number of migrant families with kids crossing US border nearly triples in two months

“We encourage migrants to use these legal pathways instead of putting their lives in the hands of dangerous smugglers and traffickers,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

The new initiative also allows asylum-seekers to enter a path to permanent residency and citizenship in addition to receiving government benefits only available to migrants with refugee status.

As part of the agreement, Mexico also agreed to build “multipurpose international spaces” in its southern border to offer migrants new asylum and temporary employment permits before they reach the U.S.

“The expanded cooperation between the United States and Mexico to manage our shared border in a humane and orderly way is a testament to strong and enduring bonds of friendship and partnership between our two countries,” the White House said.

The new initiative announced by the Biden administration comes two months after the expiration of pandemic-era border restriction known as Title 42 in May.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, about 85,000 migrants have been deported since Title 42 was lifted, that’s up 65% since the same period last year, when 51,246 migrants were repatriated.