AZMEX I3 3-7-14

AZMEX I3 3 JUL 2014

Note: USMC Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi is still held captive in Mexico.


Flight carrying migrants to land in Yuma
Posted: Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:00 pm | Updated: 11:48 pm, Tue Jul 1, 2014.
By James Gilbert, Yuma Sun staff writer

http://www.yumasun.com/news/flight-carrying-migrants-to-land-in-yuma/article_81660cf4-018a-11e4-9b82-001a4bcf6878.html

A flight carrying Central American migrant families and their children from overcrowded facilities on the Texas border with Mexico is scheduled to land sometime on Wednesday at Yuma International Airport.
According to Agent Douglas Choi of the Yuma Sector Public Affairs Office, the chartered flight will be carrying about 140 migrants who will then be transported by either bus or large vans to the Border Patrol Station in El Centro where they will be processed.
"It is going to be family units. It's not just going to be children. It is going to be the children and their parents," Choi said. "Basically they will be walked from the plane to the vehicles for transport."

The Associated Press has reported that federal immigration authorities will then determine whether the migrants will be held or released pending deportation proceedings. If released, the migrants are told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office near where they were traveling within 15 days.

Immigration officials can immediately return Mexican immigrants to the border, but they are much more hard-pressed to deport Central American migrants who illegally cross into the U.S.
In recent months, waves of Central American migrant families and unaccompanied children have arrived in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas fleeing violence in their home countries.
Choi explained that the reason the plane is landing in Yuma is because the runway at the airport in El Centro is not long enough to accommodate such a flight.
Choi further stated that El Centro Sector Border Patrol agents will conduct the transport and that the Yuma Sector will not be involved.
"We will have no involvement unless requested," Choi said.

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Guatemala's first lady visits immigrants in Tucson
10 hours ago • By Perla Trevizo
Arizona Daily Star Tucson, AZ

Guatemala's first lady, Rosa Leal de Pérez visited Tucson's Greyhound bus station Wednesday evening to thank volunteers and city officials for reaching out to the Guatemalan women and children who are dropped off daily by immigration officials before continuing their journey.

It was part of Pérez's trip to Southern Arizona this week to assess the situation of Guatemalans, many of them women and young children.

"I come as a woman, as a mother and as a grandmother," she said outside the bus station. "I have grandchildren who are the ages of the children making the journey and it breaks my heart."

Pérez's visit comes at a time when the federal government continues to grapple with an unprecedented increase in Central American minors and women traveling with their young children.

So far this fiscal year, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 children and about 40,000 adults with minors.

Pérez arrived in Tucson Tuesday evening and during her trip has met with Catholic Diocese of Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas, and toured the Tucson Border Patrol Sector and the Nogales Placement Center where U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been holding children since early June.

On Wednesday, there were 431 children from Guatemala held at the center, which is being used as temporary housing while the Office of Refugee Resettlement finds bed space for the minors.

CBP in Tucson didn't provide current apprehension numbers of Guatemalans in the sector, but in April officials said they had detained close to 2,500 Guatemalan juveniles, compared with 2,456 in all of the previous fiscal year.

At that time, Border Patrol officials said they were concerned about the spike in the number of kids crossing the border, both alone and accompanied by their parents, especially as the hottest months of the year approached. Agents were also finding them wandering alone in some of the most remote areas of the desert.

Earlier this week, María Gómez, 19, waited for her night bus to Mississippi at the Tucson bus station.

She had walked five hours at night near the Douglas border crossing with her baby strapped to her back. By the end of the trek, the girl had scratches all over her legs and arms.

Like many of the women at the bus station that night, Gómez said she was escaping poverty and looking for a better life for her daughter.

Pérez said her husband's government is aware of the poverty that exists in the Central American country and is working hard to tackle the problem at the root.

She said education and job opportunities are the key and the government has initiatives underway to provide technical training for young people and support programs such as cooperatives.

On July 8, the Guatemalan government will launch a prevention campaign for parents, asking them not to send their children to the United States, she said.

About 80 percent of those leaving Guatemala do so to reunite with their families, Pérez said, not to escape violence.

But Manuel Ortiz, president of a local Guatemalan organization who fled the civil war 21 years ago, said the root of the migration continues to be the violence the country has experienced.

He also asked Pérez to do more for indigenous communities. "There are indigenous people who don't have electricity, who don't have potable water," he told her.She responded that the president is committed to lift the country out of poverty as much as possible. "With willpower and God's help we are on the right path."

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/guatemala-s-first-lady-visits-immigrants-in-tucson/article_b4563a19-5f13-5c0d-aee8-fba7271e82e3.html




City may ask Obama to curb deportations
City of Tucson news
10 hours ago • By Darren DaRonco
Arizona Daily Star Tucson, AZ

Stop deporting kids and tearing apart families.

That's the message Tucson's City Council could send to the federal government next week.

City Councilwoman Regina Romero is seeking a memorial imploring President Obama to suspend deportations of noncriminal immigrants.

She also wants the president to loosen the federal purse strings to help local governments deal with the influx of unaccompanied kids pouring into the country illegally.

With unaccompanied minor children overwhelming local facilities and resources in Nogales, and with immigrants being dropped off at the bus station in Tucson, Romero said the city needs to take a stand.
"All of these things are ever-present in our community," Romero said. "But now more than ever we're seeing the results of a broken immigration system and how it's affecting the local community."

The memorial is based on a letter sent in January to the president from U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva and other members of Congress asking for a halt to deportations.

Romero said national politics have created the perfect timing for the council to consider passing the memorial next week because the president announced Monday that he would take executive action if Congress failed to pass immigration legislation.

"That gives us that much more impetus for us to take this stand and say, 'Yes, President Obama, you have it in your hands to do something about it,'" she said. "It's another pressure point to continue working at. It's not acceptable to have representatives sitting on a bill that could solve a lot of issues."

Romero dismissed critics who say the council shouldn't interject itself into a federal matter.
"The humanitarian crisis happening in Nogales, the people being dropped off at the bus station, and families being torn apart every day by our broken immigration policy — is a local issue. It is a city issue," she said.

Immigrant-rights activists concurred. They said it's important the city sets the tone in the immigration debate so Tucson can avoid incidents such as the one in Murrieta, California, where scores of residents on Tuesday blocked buses loaded with immigrant children and families, forcing authorities to reroute them to a facility in San Diego.

"It is absolutely critical that the community is acknowledging the importance of protecting these children and recognizing their humanity," said Juanita Molina, Border Action Network executive director. "When we see measures like what happened in San Diego, we really want to show there is a different voice and a different way in dealing with this problem."

If the council passes the memorial on Tuesday, it would join a growing chorus nationally to urge the president to enact bold legislation without Congress' input.

At a panel on immigration hosted earlier this week by the AFL-CIO, the labor organization's president, Richard Trumka, told supporters that their next task is to spur Obama to act expansively to curb deportations. "If we stand together and we act boldly, I believe the president will act boldly, and that bold action, my brothers and sisters, will lift our economy while making our country more just," Trumka said.

But in a sign of how difficult it will be for Obama to satisfy advocates' demands, Trumka and other activists have called on the president to provide work permits to everyone who would have been eligible for citizenship under the Senate immigration bill, which would have extended relief to many of the 11.5 million people already in the country illegally.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn't say whether Obama is open to the proposal, but he suggested advocates with high hopes are likely to be only partially satisfied.
"Any sort of unilateral executive actions the president can take are not as powerful as reforms that could be put in place through legislation," Earnest said

And House Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans, who already have announced plans to sue Obama over his use of executive actions, served notice that more moves by the president on immigration would only stiffen their opposition.

Obama said Tuesday that his preference on major policy issues would be to work with Congress and pass legislation. "Whatever we do administratively is not going to be sufficient to solve a broken immigration system," he said.

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Councilwoman Regina Romero is asking her colleagues to adopt a resolution imploring President Obama to stop deporting kids and spend some money to make the lives of the kids being detained in Nogales a little more comfortable. Do you agree?

Results as of 10:30 am. AZ time.

Yes. These young people will be an asset to the U.S. in the future. Let them stay. And let's show them some hospitality by spending some money on them. 8 %

No. These kids are in the U.S. illegally. They should be deported as soon as possible. Letting them stay only encourages more to come. 86 %

They should be treated on a case-by-case basis. If they have family members here already, or if they have training in a valuable skill, let them stay. 6 %

Total number of votes 372

Poll results aren't scientific. Percentages may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding off.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/city-may-ask-obama-to-curb-deportations/article_ce7ffcca-c27f-56fb-8039-388baaa87e48.html

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