Refugee children gone missing on Mexican border

reporter 1222 — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 13:22:55 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Mexican forces have fired tear gas at hundreds of Central American refugee people, among them children. as they tried to force their way through the Mexico-Guatemala border after the Mexican government rejected their request to transit toward the United States.

The refugee crowds waded across a river into Mexico on Monday in a chaotic scramble that saw mothers separated from their young children.

Witnesses said several children went missing amid the chaos as the refugees scattered to avoid being detained by Mexican officials.

According to Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), the mostly Honduran refugees were part of a group of several thousand people that had set off last week from Honduras, fleeing violence and poverty in their homeland.

A migrant told Reuters that “we didn’t come to stay here. We just want to cross to the other side. I don’t want to go back to my country because there is nothing there, just hunger.”

The Honduran ambassador to Mexico said that Mexican authorities have some 1,300 Hondurans in migration centers and will start deporting them back home on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to punish Mexico and Central American countries economically if they fail to curb the refugee flows.

The Trump administration is scrambling to make good on his campaign promises to curb immigration at the US-Mexico border.

Trump’s anti-immigration policy was a centerpiece of his 2016 election campaign and is now a major issue as he seeks re-election this year.

The US president has long promised to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to physically stop the inflow of migrants but has failed to fulfill that pledge so far.

Trump had initially promised that Mexico would pay for his wall. But, when he failed to secure funding from Mexico, he turned to US Congress, which also refused to provide the funds.

Trump launched the “zero tolerance” policy In 2018 that saw more than 2,300 children separated from their parents at the border before the government backed down amid a massive public outcry.

The post Refugee children gone missing on Mexican border appeared first on Iran News Daily.

US Extends Troop Deployment at Mexico Border

reporter 1222 — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 08:39:04 +0000

The Pentagon said Monday it would extend until Sep 30 the deployment of active duty soldiers and Coast Guard members at the US-Mexico border, while expanding the mission to include surveillance and detection.

Lengthening the troops’ mission past a Jan 31 deadline, the Pentagon said it was “transitioning its support at the southwestern border from hardening ports of entry to mobile surveillance and detection, as well as concertina wire emplacement between ports of entry.”

“DoD will continue to provide aviation support,“ the statement added, referring to the Department of Defense.

The Pentagon already has about 2,350 active-duty troops stationed along the border, deployed under a controversial order President Donald Trump gave last year ahead of midterm elections in November as several thousand Central American migrants made their way to the border to seek asylum from violence and poverty in their own countries.

Critics decried Trump’s order as a costly political stunt to galvanize supporters ahead of the vote, in which his Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.

Trump spoke of a “national emergency” and an “invasion” – initially suggesting US troops could shoot migrants if they threw stones at the US border.

The US military is not allowed in almost any case to get involved in domestic law enforcement and the border mission has put the supposedly non-political military in an uncomfortable spotlight.

About 2,200 National Guardsmen were supporting border operations even before Trump sent the active-duty troops.

The unusual deployment was supposed to end in mid-December, but the Department of Homeland Security asked that it be extended until January, a date which is now further prolonged.

The troops’ role had primarily been to erect miles of concertina-wire fencing along popular crossing points.

Trump is unwavering in his demand for a border barrier, which has triggered a major impasse with legislators and a partial government shutdown that is entering its fourth week.

The president only recently backed away from talk of an emergency declaration that would have freed up Department of Defense funds for a border barrier, after pressing it for days as a way out of the continuing budget standoff.

The troop deployment was one of several issues on which Trump and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis disagreed before he resigned in December after the leader’s shock decision to pull troops from Syria.

Mattis said front-line border troops would only carry batons.

In November visited troops on the border and reiterated that their job in the short term was to assist under-resourced Customs and Border Protection agents and put up physical obstacles.

But “longer term, it’s somewhat to be determined,” he said at the time.

Some rank-and-file troops initially grumbled about the purpose of the mission to US media before they were placed under strict instructions not to voice personal opinions to the press.

Several soldiers AFP spoke to said their time on the border provided valuable real-world training, albeit without the risks of combat.

Twice since November, US Border Patrol agents have fired tear gas during attempted mass migrant crossings in the San Diego area.

The post US Extends Troop Deployment at Mexico Border appeared first on Iran News Daily.

US-Mexico border Archives - Iran News Daily

Refugee children gone missing on Mexican border

US Extends Troop Deployment at Mexico Border

The Pentagon said Monday it would extend until Sep 30 the deployment of active duty soldiers and Coast Guard members at the US-Mexico border, while expanding the mission to include surveillance and detection.