EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Daniel Bermudez’s family had fled Venezuela and was headed to the U.S. to seek asylum when the freight train they were riding through Mexico was stopped by immigration officials.

His wife tried to explain that her family had permission to go to the U.S. Instead, they flew her to Mexico’s southern border as part of a surge of enforcement actions that U.S. officials say have contributed to a sharp drop in illegal border crossings.

In addition to forcing migrants from trains, Mexico also resumed flying and busing them to the southern part of the country and started flying some home to Venezuela.

Even if temporary, the decrease in illegal crossings is welcome news for the White House. President Joe Biden’s administration is locked in talks with Senate negotiators over restricting asylum and $110 billion in aid for Ukraine and Israel hangs in the balance.

Bermudez said his wife became separated from her family when she talked to authorities as he gathered his stepchild and their belongings. He wanted to run, but his wife said they shouldn’t because they had followed procedure by making an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities.

“I told her, `Don’t trust them. Let’s go into the brush,’” Bermudez said, adding that other migrants had fled. He recalled her telling him, “Why are they sending us back if we have an appointment?”

Last week, Bermudez, his stepchild and two other relatives were waiting for her at a shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras as she took a bus back in hopes of still making the date.

Mexico’s immigration agency sent at least 22 flights from its border region with the U.S. to southern cities during the last 10 days of December, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. Most were from Piedras Negras, which is across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Mexico also ran two removal flights to Venezuela with 329 migrants. The stretch was punctuated by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Mexico City on Dec. 28 to confront unprecedented crossings to the United States.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a financial shortfall that had led the immigration agency to suspend deportations and other operations was resolved. He did not offer details.

Arrests for illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico fell to about 2,500 on Monday, down from more than 10,000 on several days in December, according to U.S. authorities. In the Border Patrol’s busiest area, arrests totaled 13,800 during the seven-day period ending Friday, down 29% from 19,400 two weeks earlier, according to Tucson, Arizona, sector chief John Modlin.

The drop led U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on Thursday after a monthlong closure on the most direct route from Phoenix to its nearest beaches. The U.S. also restored operations at Eagle Pass and three other locations.

Merchants in Eagle Pass, a city of about 30,000 people, saw sales take “a major hit” while a bridge was closed to vehicle traffic so border agents could be reassigned to help process migrants, Maverick County Judge Ramsey English Cantu said.

“We survive pretty much from everything that comes from the Mexican side,” he said.

Last month, CBP resumed freight crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a five-day shutdown that U.S. officials said was a response to as many as 1,000 migrants riding atop a single train through Mexico before trying to walk across the border.

In Piedras Negras on Thursday, Casa del Migrante housed about 200 migrants, down from as high as 1,500 recently.

Among them was Manuel Rodriguez, 40, who said his family will miss their appointment to seek asylum that was made through the U.S. government’s CBP One app. He said the appointment was registered with his in-laws, who were deported to Venezuela after authorities boarded the bus they were riding.

“It was all under her name and she lost everything,” Rodriguez said.

Proposals being discussed by the White House and Senate negotiators include a new expulsion authority that would deny rights to seek asylum if illegal border crossings reach a certain threshold. Any such authority would almost certainly depend on Mexico’s willingness to take back non-Mexicans who enter the U.S illegally, something it does now on a limited scale.

Mexico’s support was critical to defunct Trump-era policies that forced 70,000 asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court and to deny rights to seek asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., cautioned against overstating Mexico’s role in the recent drop in traffic. Panama reported that less than 25,000 migrants walked through the Darién jungle in December, about half of October’s level and a sign that fewer people are leaving South America for the U.S. Migration usually drops in December amid holidays and cold weather.

“The U.S. is able to lean on Mexico for a short-term enforcement effect on migration at the border, but the long-term effects are not always clear,” Selee said.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of Mexico’s immigration agency has ordered the suspension of migrant deportations and transfers due to a lack of funds amid a record-setting year for migration through the country’s territory.

The suspensions were outlined in an agency memo dated Dec. 1 from director Francisco Garduño, whose authenticity was confirmed to the Associated Press by an agency official who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

Mexico’s finance ministry suspended payments to the National Immigration Institute in November due to end-of-year budget adjustments, according to the memo.

Citing budget constraints “and the lack of liquidity to cover commitments,” Garduño ordered a halt to various agency activities, most notably the “assisted returns,” a government euphemism to describe deportations, and “ground transportation for transfer of irregular migrants.”

Mexico’s government had been frequently moving migrants from points north near the U.S. border to locations in the south in part to relieve pressure on border cities, but also to exhaust migrants, according to advocates.

Mexico has recorded nearly 590,000 undocumented migrants in its territory this year, a significant increase compared to 440,000 in all of last year and fewer than 310,000 in 2021, according to government data.

Mexico has already deported far fewer migrants this year than in recent years. From January to October, the government deported 51,000 migrants, compared to nearly 122,000 in all of last year and more than 130,000 in 2021.

Deportations had precipitously dropped in April following a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The fire killed 40 migrants and injured 27 more. The tragedy threw the immigration agency into chaos and it temporarily closed dozens of its detention centers. Garduño and seven other officials face criminal charges related to the deadly fire. Six of them were charged with homicide.

Deportations had just picked up again in October, when Mexico began sending migrants back to their countries, including flights to Cuba and Venezuela.

With the halt to funding, “Mexico is likely to rely more heavily on National Guard soldiers for migration management, a mission that they are barely prepared to fulfill,” said Adam Isacson, an immigration analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America.

“The result is likely to be a sharp decline in Mexico’s migrant apprehensions during December, and migrants may have a modestly easier time than usual reaching the U.S. border.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two strong allies who don’t always get along personally, will talk migration, fentanyl trafficking and Cuba relations on Friday.

The two leaders are in San Francisco for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, where Biden has held a series of face-to-face meetings with other leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping and the leaders of Japan and South Korea, as he seeks to reassure the region that the U.S. and China are competitors, not zero-sum rivals.

Biden’s relationship with López Obrador is at times tense, in part because of Biden’s willingness to criticize Mexico on topics such as fentanyl production and the killing of journalists. And López Obrador isn’t afraid to snub the U.S. leader. He skipped a Los Angeles summit last year where leaders tackled the issue of migration because the U.S. didn’t invite Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela. He also initially said he would skip this year’s APEC conference, but changed his mind.

López Obrador said he would use Friday’s meeting with Biden to take up the case for Cuba and would urge his U.S. counterpart to resume a dialogue with the island nation and end U.S. sanctions.

Biden, meanwhile, was expected to bring up migration as the U.S. continues to manage a growing number of southern border crossings. The leaders also are expected to discuss deadly fentanyl trafficking, particularly after Biden secured an agreement with Xi to curb the illicit opioid.

The issues are related. Human smuggling over the border is a part of cartel operations that also include drug trafficking into the U.S.

Mexico and China are the primary sources for synthetic fentanyl trafficked into the U.S. Nearly all the chemicals needed to make it come from China, and the drugs are then mass-produced in Mexico and trafficked via cartels into the U.S.

The powerful opioid is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today. More than 100,000 deaths a year have been linked to drug overdoses since 2020 and about two-thirds of those are related to fentanyl. The death toll is more than 10 times as in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.

And migration challenges facing the U.S. are growing increasingly intractable. Democratic leaders at the state and local level are begging for federal assistance to help care for migrant families living in squalid shelters and sleeping in police stations. Republicans are loudly critical of Biden’s border policies as too lax. And Congress has not passed an immigration overhaul in decades.

Biden asked for $14 billion border security funding from Congress to help manage the issue, but the temporary spending bill passed this week included no funding for the border, Ukraine aid or Israel.

There are rising numbers of migrants at the border. Arrests for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico line were up 21% to 218,763 in September, and Biden has repeatedly said Congress should act to fix outdated immigration laws. But in the meantime, his administration has developed policies that aim to deter migrants from making a dangerous and often deadly journey while also opening up new legal immigration pathways.

Mexico’s support is critical to any push by the U.S. to clamp down at the southern border, particularly as migrants from nations as far away as Haiti are making the trek on foot up through Mexico and are not easily sent back to their home countries.

Earlier this year, Mexico agreed to continue to accept migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away at the border, and up to 100,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have family in the U.S. will be eligible to live and work there.

According to data on asylum-seekers in Mexico, people from Haiti remained at the top with 18,860 so far this year, higher than the total for the whole of 2022.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is accepting 30,000 people per month from the four nations for two years and offering them the ability to work legally, as long as they come legally, have eligible sponsors and pass vetting and background checks.

Guatemala and Colombia will open regional hubs where people can go to make asylum claims in the hope of stopping them from traveling on foot. But Mexico has so far refused to allow the U.S. to set one up.

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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — It’s Sunday night and Crystal P. Lira is not answering her messages. Inside the headquarters of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, an organization that has supported reproductive rights near the U.S.-Mexico border since 2016, her only concern is for the woman she has provided with a safe space to get an abortion.

Lira, who lives in Tijuana, in northern Mexico, is one among dozens of Mexican “acompañantes” — volunteers who support women wanting to terminate a pregnancy. Located all over the country, most acompañantes offer virtual guidance through an abortion protocol in which no clinics or prescriptions are needed.

Developed by activists after decades of facing abortion bans and restrictions in most of Mexico’s 32 states, the protocol encourages women to trust self-managed medication abortions following guidelines established by the World Health Organization.

“Accompaniment means that we facilitate information, medications and everything a woman needs to get a safe abortion at home,” Lira said. “But we also provide emotional support and support to fight stigma, religious and cultural barriers.”

Mexico’s Supreme Court recently ruled that national laws prohibiting abortions are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. The ruling, which extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access, happened a year after the court’s U.S. counterpart went in the opposite direction.

The Mexican decision did not have the same immediate impact as Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion on a nationwide basis.

Although the Mexican ruling orders the removal of abortion from the federal penal code and requires federal health institutions to offer the procedure to anyone who requests it, further state-by-state legal work will be needed to remove all penalties.

“The court did not give a direct instruction to any local congress, but it sends a very clear signal of what congresses have to do,” said Sofia Aguiar, a lawyer at the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE.

For now, 20 Mexican states still criminalize abortion.

In Baja California, where Tijuana is located, abortion was decriminalized in 2021. By then, Lira had already gained five years’ experience as an acompañante.

“Ahead of starting an abortion network, I questioned myself: How did I get to this point? Why did I live what I lived, and what could have been different?” she said.

In 2012, Lira faced an unwanted pregnancy. “I didn’t know what to do, where to look for help,” she said.

On the recommendation of a friend, and due to her hometown’s proximity to the U.S. border, Lira made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Diego. She traveled back home with pills and a debt of $600 that she paid for her abortion.

Three years later, deeply conflicted by the inequality in abortion access, she became an activist and received training to become an acompañante.

“The easiest part was learning the abortion protocol,” she said. “The toughest was acquiring a political perspective, understanding how abortions are based on rights and freedom.”

Many reject her views in Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country.

Soon after the court’s ruling in early September, former actor and right-wing activist Eduardo Verástegui announced he will seek the presidency on an anti-abortion platform. “Say ‘yes’ to life and ‘no’ to abortion,” he has said, echoed by his followers.

Without mentioning him by name, the Catholic archbishop of Mexico City, Carlos Aguiar Retes, recently advocated voting for Verástegui in the 2024 election, and some Catholic, evangelical and anti-abortion groups have publicly supported him as well.

“We think it’s good to have a character like him,” said Rodrigo Iván Cortés, director of the National Family Front, an anti-abortion group. “He’s explicit about defending life and family.”

Abortion activists were not surprised by the conservative response to the court’s ruling.

“Historically, every progressive movement is followed by a setback from groups that organize against it,” said Aguiar from GIRE. “We saw it in the United States.”

Aguiar and her colleagues plan to keep advocating for reproductive rights. “We will continue working on issues like obstetric violence, maternal death and forced contraception,” Aguiar said.

At Colectiva Bloodys y Projects, Lira has plans of her own.

With a colleague who recently moved to San Diego, they hope to replicate some of their abortion strategies in California. “We want to migrate our perspectives,” Lira said. “To lead informative brigades and communicate that we can provide pills for those who can’t access abortion medication there.”

It’s no coincidence that Lira’s views are influenced by migration. The surge of migrants approaching the U.S. border, traveling from Colombia through the Darién jungle and moving up through Central America into Mexico, could approach 500,000 this year.

Venezuelans, Salvadorans, Haitians and Mexicans — internally displaced by violence — are among those who migrate by trains, buses and on foot. Along the way, thousands are victims of robbery, human trafficking and sexual abuse.

“We’ve been seeing women who suffer a lot of violence on their way to the United States,” Lira said.

Some migrants who wish to terminate their pregnancies contact them directly and others are channeled through shelters or midwives. “We have realized the need to support these women. … They experience violence, especially sexual, and need abortions,” said Minerva, another member of Colectiva Bloodys y Projects. For security reasons, she spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name.

Access to medication and a private space to get a self-managed abortion are particularly difficult for migrants, who can spend several months in shelters on the border.

“We want to accompany them,” Lira said. “But abortion access is just the tip of the iceberg. We expect to share key information for their physical and mental health.”

Joining forces with a local organization focused on reproductive health, Lira and activist Monica Rosas will offer an informative workshop on fertility and the reproductive cycle by mid-October at a church-affiliated shelter where up to 1,700 migrants are currently waiting to enter the U.S.

“We will create a space for self-knowledge as a tribe,” Rosas said.

The program includes body literacy — naming parts of the anatomy free of taboos — and dances to celebrate the female body.

“We would love for these women who are passing through, waiting for an opportunity to cross, to carry this information with them,” Lira said. “Our bodies are powerful and, if we know them, that can help us reach our own identity.”

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Latin American migrants making their often-arduous journey to the United States frequently fall victim to scams that can amount to thousands of dollars in losses paid to fraudulent businesses that spread disinformation and prey on the vulnerable.

The scammers range from human traffickers — often referred to as coyotes — to social media influencers, and many of them fraudulently pose as work recruiters, legal advisors or immigration coaches.

Most of the impostors take advantage of the many twists and turns in U.S. immigration policy, tricking migrants into paying for fake legal advice, work visas, political asylum or alternative ways to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

About a quarter of migrants surveyed earlier this month said they received messages offering immigration services and jobs, mainly via Facebook and WhatsApp. Two thirds of the 210 surveyed said they fell victim to some sort of fraud or disinformation. One migrant said he spent $1,500 on a form that turned out to be fake.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This report was a collaboration among Verificado, Conexión Migrante, The Associated Press, Data-Pop Alliance and PolitiFact. It was produced with support from the International Center for Journalism’s Disarming Disinformation project, with primary funding from The Scripps Howard Foundation.

Research team: Daniela Mendoza, Patricia Mercado, Julie Ricard, Abril Mulato, Gabriela Martínez, María Ramírez Uribe, Angélica Villegas, Anna Carolina Spinardi, Yvette Yañez and Ivonne Valdés.

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In Mexico, 5,684 complaints of crimes against migrants were reported from 2016 to November 2022, according to Mexico’s interior ministry. Of these, 1,849 were classified as illicit trafficking, 2,655 as theft and only eight as fraud.

Pursuing a fraud complaint is complicated. Migrants typically enlist the help of an independent organization such as Center for Migrant Rights, the nonprofit Al Otro Lado or a migrant shelter like CafeMin. Migrants often continue their attempt to cross the border, and if they succeed, they abandon their case.

As a result, misinformation and scams continue to flourish — and go unpunished, with scammers using social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Tiktok to target migrants.

Migrants can lose anywhere from $1 to $20,000 per person overall in the scams, according to social media posts monitored during May and June and testimonies collected from migrants in early June.

Mercedes Pérez got in touch via social media with Jaime Díaz Márquez, who posed as an employee of an American religious organization and promised to get political asylum in the U.S. for her and 14 relatives. Pérez said he asked for $55 for each family member in exchange for processing a parole, a temporary permit the U.S. grants for urgent humanitarian reasons to allow migrants to stay in the country for at least a year without a visa.

In a Facebook Live broadcast, Díaz Márquez assured the family they would be able to pick up their papers and cross the border legally on Dec. 9, 2022. He later deleted videos and didn’t post again. Mercedes said she lost $770, and received nothing in return.

She reported the alleged fraud to Al Otro Lado, and was directed to file a complaint with local authorities. Ultimately, she declined to do so for fear of retaliation.

Díaz Márquez didn’t respond to multiple attempts seeking comment via telephone and WhatsApp.

Al Otro Lado says migrants affected by scammers rarely report fraud for fear of being deported or jeopardizing their entry into the U.S.

Evelyn Reyes, a Mexican native, said her husband paid about $2,000 and mailed his passport to a person supposedly named Alberto who he contacted via Facebook. The money was supposed to go toward a round-trip flight and a visa for the passport, which was supposed to be delivered to him in Mexico City. But he lost the money, and his passport.

“When he arrived, there was nothing — just ghosts,” Reyes said.

Jorge Gallo, regional press officer for the UN’s International Organization for Migration, said that many migrants “get into huge debts to be able to pay for the services of these coyotes and in many cases they lose everything.”

Gallo says coyotes sometimes simply abandon migrants in the middle of a border crossing, exposing them to danger and even risking their lives.

Then there are social media influencers who offer legal services without being lawyers. Take Darío Andrés, who advertises his services on TikTok and Instagram, where he has more than 500,000 followers.

On his Instagram profile, the self-styled lawyer and partner José Rafael Román Argote, offer migrants advice from Florida. But a search of the 50 bar associations across the U.S. show neither of them registered.

Attempts to speak to Andrés and Argote via WhatsApp messages, TikTok, Instagram and calls were not answered.

These kinds of online personalities share information about immigration procedures as bait to their followers, to later sell them advice that is not always legally sound or is even misinformation.

U.S. policies have shifted often, sowing confusion among migrants and creating opportunity for scammers. Title 42, which ended May 11, denied asylum on grounds of preventing spread of COVID-19 but was applied unevenly. And U.S. authorities created an opaque system of exemptions that allowed select organizations to pick who qualified for exemptions but their names were not made public and their selection criteria were often a mystery.

After Title 42, the main ways to enter the country are with a mobile app called CBP One, which relies on a lottery of 1,250 slots daily at land crossings with Mexico, and parole for up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a month who apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport.

Mexico’s Center for Migrant Rights says it has noticed an increase in online migrant recruitment fraud since 2016, especially through ads on Facebook. While the center does not offer specific figures, the digital survey carried out among migrants indicated that 13% of the total respondents received false job offers.

A U.S. employer who wants to hire seasonal migrants — in agriculture, for example — must have a temporary labor certification. The processing of visas is referred to private agencies that search for workers.

Jocelyn Reyes, CDM’s director of Promotion, Education and Leadership Development, says workers’ recruitment process has been irregular, informal, poorly documented and opaque since the temporary work system between the United States and Mexico was created.

Reyes says that recruiting agencies have been able to monopolize the process by having access to information about job opportunities in the U.S. and arranging the H-2 visas that allow workers to work temporarily in the U.S.

Recruiters often impose fees on migrants interested in accessing job opportunities, something that is illegal, according to the CDM.

At the same time, the Fraud Prevention Department of the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, where the largest number of visas for temporary agricultural work are processed, said that from 2019 to date the number of messages to their hotline that report fraud have increased from 12% to 15%.

Some scammers pose as companies authorized to hire temporary workers in the United States. They might charge for a criminal background check, which is not necessary and which they never actually carry out, according to the migrant rights center.

Samantha Hernández, a spokeswoman for the CafeMin shelter that receives migrants from Latin America and Central America in Mexico City, says misinformation online leads many migrants to believe they need documents of safe passage to go through the Mexican capital.

Laura Ortiz, originally from El Salvador, said that she and others paid $2,500 to an alleged lawyer to organize safe passage. Actually, she needed only to contact Mexican immigration authorities.

“They took our money,″ Ortiz said, adding that later the scammers “blocked us from WhatsApp.”

She said she did not report the scam out of fear of being imprisoned and deported.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and Mexican officials have agreed on new immigration policies meant to deter illegal border crossings while also opening up other pathways ahead of an expected increase in migrants following the end of pandemic restrictions next week.

Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall spent Tuesday meeting with Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and other top officials, emerging with a five-point plan, according to statements from both nations.

Under the agreement, Mexico will continue to accept migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away at the border, and up to 100,000 individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who have family in the U.S. will be eligible to live and work there.

Despite sharing a 1,951-mile border with the U.S., Mexico had been notably absent from the rollout last week of a fresh set of efforts, including the creation of hubs outside the United States where migrants could go to apply to legally settle in the U.S., Spain or Canada. The first centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia.

The COVID-19 restrictions have allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for a surge. Even with the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new avenues meant as alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

Mexico’s support is critical to any push by the U.S. to clamp down at the southern border, particularly as migrants from nations from as far away as Haiti are making the trek on foot up through Mexico, and are not easily returned back to their home countries.

With Mexico now behind the U.S., plus an announcement Tuesday that 1,500 active-duty U.S. troops are deploying south for administrative support, and other crackdown measures in place, border officials believe they may be able to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise once the COVID-19 restrictions end.

Biden, who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago, is trying to signal his administration is making a serious effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, which has been a potent source of Republican attacks. He also is trying to send a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey.

But the effort also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.

The U.S. will continue to turn away Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who cross illegally. Mexico said Tuesday it would continue to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from the four countries that are making up a ballooning share of the overall illegal border crossings, with no easy way to quickly return migrants to their home countries.

According to data on asylum seekers in Mexico, people from Haiti remained at the top with 18,860 so far this year, higher than the total for the whole of 2022.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is accepting 30,000 people per month from the four nations for two years and offering them the ability to legally work, as long as they come legally, have eligible sponsors and pass vetting and background checks.

The administration also plans to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border itself, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally move through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

In addition, 1,500 active-duty personnel will be deployed to the border area for 90 days and will be pulled from the Army and Marine Corps. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will look to backfill those troops with National Guard or Reserve troops during that period, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. There are already 2,500 National Guard members at the border. They are not working in a law enforcement capacity, but their mere presence sends a message.

Then-President Trump deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre downplayed any similarity between Biden’s immigration management and Trump’s use of troops during his term. “DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now,” she said. “So this is a common practice.”

But some in Biden’s own party objected to the decision.

“The Biden administration’s militarization of the border is unacceptable,” said Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chair Bob Menendez, D-N.J. “There is already a humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, and deploying military personnel only signals that migrants are a threat that require our nation’s troops to contain. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The Pentagon on Tuesday approved a request for troops made by the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the border.

As a condition for Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to the border through Oct. 1, Homeland Security had to agree to work with the White House and Congress to develop a plan for longer-term staffing solutions and funding shortfalls to maintain security and immigration processing without the use of Defense Department resources, Pentagon officials said.

As part of the agreement, the Pentagon has requested quarterly updates from Homeland Security on how it would staff its border mission without service members. It was not immediately clear if those updates have happened or if border officials will be able to meet their terms of the agreement — particularly under the strain of another expected migrant surge.

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MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) — About two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a migrant camp across the border from Texas this week, witnesses said Friday, a sign of the extreme risk that comes with being stuck in Mexico as the Biden administration increasingly relies on that country to host people fleeing poverty and violence.

The fires were set Wednesday and Thursday at the sprawling camp of about 2,000 people, most of them from Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico, in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas. An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline.

It was not immediately known who was to blame in torching the tents. Cartel-backed gangs often draw suspicion in any border attacks because of their penchant for preying on migrants and demanding money for passage through their territory. But a government official suggested the fires could have been set by a group of migrants frustrated over their long wait in Matamoros to cross the border.

“The people fled as their tents were burned,” said Gladys Cañas, who runs the group Ayudandoles A Triunfar. “What they’re saying as part of their testimony is that they were told to leave from there.”

There were no reports of deaths or significant injuries. But about 25 rudimentary shelters made up of plastic, tarps, branches and other materials were torched in a sparsely populated part of the camp. Many who lived there also apparently lost clothing, documents and whatever other modest belongings may have been left inside.

Margarita, a Mexican woman staying at the camp, said Friday she saw migrants from Venezuela screaming during the previous day’s blaze.

“They had their children with them and a few other things they had a chance to get,” Margarita said. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be published due to fears for her safety.

Gangs recently threatened migrants who were wading across the river border illegally, as well as their guides, Margarita said, but the crossings had continued.

Criminal groups often prey upon migrants in the area and demand money in return for permission to pass through their territory.

However, Juan José Rodríguez, director of the Tamaulipas Institute for Migrants, a state agency coordinating with Mexico’s federal government, said he had no information that a gang was responsible for the fires.

Rodríguez attributed them to a group of migrants and said some 10 tents that had already been abandoned were burned. He added that they apparently set the fires to express frustration with a U.S. government mobile app that assigns turns for people to show up at the border and claim asylum.

Migrants have been applying for 740 slots made available daily on the glitch-plagued app, CBPOne, which allows them to enter the U.S. legally at an official crossing.

There are far more migrants than available slots, exacerbating tensions in Mexican border cities that house them, often in shelters and camps like the one in Matamoros. Last year hundreds of migrants blocked a major pedestrian crossing between Tijuana and San Diego until authorities shut down the protest.

In Matamoros on Wednesday night, about 200 migrants gathered on the southern side of an international bridge and halted all U.S.-bound traffic, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported. Vehicles were able to resume crossing after about two hours and pedestrians were allowed to cross after about four hours.

CBP made no mention of fires at the Mexican camp in its statement about the bridge shutdown.

The tent fires in Matamoros come on the heels of a March 27 blaze that killed 40 men at a Mexican immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The fire was allegedly started by a detained migrant to protest conditions at the facility in the city across from El Paso, Texas.

The U.S. government is increasingly turning to Mexico while preparing to end pandemic-era asylum restrictions, known as Title 42 authority, on May 11. Mexico recently began accepting people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who cross the border irregularly and are turned back by the U.S.

The Biden administration also is putting final touches on a policy under which asylum would be denied to people who pass through another country, such as Mexico, to reach U.S. soil.

___

Associated Press writer Alfredo Peña in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, contributed to this report.

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With Joe Biden’s border surge on, only the “experts” were surprised to learn that remittances increased to the countries that supply the illegal aliens to the U.S.

According to yesterday’s Mexico Daily Post: “Remittances to Mexico from abroad jumped 11.2% year on year in February while dropping from the prior month, according to data published by the country’s central bank on Monday, April 3rd. Remittances hit $4.3 billion in February, down from the $4.4 billion sent in January. The number of transactions, made mainly from the United States, increased in February by 10.9% year on year, while the average amount per transfer grew 0.3% to $375. In the first two months of 2023, remittances reached $8.9 billion, up 11.8% from the $7.8 billion posted in the year-earlier period. Remittances to Mexico from abroad hit a record high of $58.5 billion in 2022.”

This, to be honest, was kind of surprising, even to me, given that Mexico was not seen as a country that was supplying much of the ongoing border surge’s illegal alien count.

The Mexican government was enabling it, of course but the nationals involved tended to come from Central and South America, rather than Mexico itself. The country had been badly hit by COVID, meaning many people were thrown out of work there and needed to rely on relatives abroad to send a lifeline, which may explain some of it. It’s also true that not everyone who sends remittances to another country is an illegal alien — many legally present foreign nationals also send remittances to their families back home. But it’s also a fact that the more recently an immigrant has arrived here, the more likely he is to send remittances to relatives back home. Let’s just say that this new figure may raise questions about whether Mexico is being undercounted in Border Patrol data or signals that the migrant gains that were there, legal and illegal, had an outsized impact.

And if Mexico’s sendings of immigrants and illegal aliens had this impact, the bigger question is what the impact looks like for other countries, particularly those that dispatch the greatest numbers of illegal aliens to the U.S. border. Many don’t release proper data, but there are signs that the gains were gargantuan.

Just four months ago, Bloomberg News reported this: Remittances to Central America’s so-called ‘northern triangle’ (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) are on track to set a new record, breaking the one set in 2021. From January to September, remittances to the three countries totalled $25.49 billion, an increase of 16.5%, or $3.61 billion more than the figures between the same period of last year. The figures for the same period of 2021 were a 34.2% increase over the same period of 2020. Remittances this year are so far the second-largest in the past decade, and may surpass the total for 2021, based on data from central banks, and the executive secretariat of the Central American Monetary Council (SECMCA).

One can surmise that the gains in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador are at least as high as Mexico’s. Remittances, according to the World Bank and other eggheads who study the matter, have their good and bad points.

For those who receive them, they are obvious lifelines. For those who don’t have money in their home countries and who would starve or grovel otherwise, getting a remittance is a blessing. If one of us had a relative in such conditions, sending the money would be the right thing to do. But there are some negatives, too. According to the IZA World of Labor think-tank, the illegal migration that brings the remittances can lead to labor shortages in the home country and bring in inflation and a consumption culture instead of an investment and savings culture brought on by work, as cash floods a country and there’s not enough local economy to support it. Ultimately, it can make a receiving country’s actual economy non-competitive in the global market, and we know there have been signs of that already in Central America.

Remittances also beef up the banking balance sheets of third-world countries, which reduces pressure on governments to improve their own home conditions by instituting policies that create jobs for locals. If the locals go to America for jobs, why would they need to balance their budgets or make life less hellish for local businesses so they can create jobs in the home country?

Remittances leave these governments with a lot of money to play around with and fewer potential protestors and dissidents to worry about. It’s no secret that badly run countries love remittances.

One potential source of the remittance cash, particularly as it applies to Mexico, though, can be seen in this report from The Economist, which stated that Mexico now receives more remittances than China: The surge owes much to stimulus in the United States, which put dollars back in pockets, as well as to the generosity of migrants, who have dug deep to help relatives in need. Yet bumper flows during the pandemic capped what had already been a decade of fast-rising remittance growth. Over ten years the sums sent home annually to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have more than doubled, according to the World Bank. That is a swifter rate of increase than in any other region.

Stimulus cash? The shoveled-out cash here that “paid for” all the inflation we have now? The cash that had six ways to Sunday for fraud? Many states paid no attention to people’s legal status when they doled out all the stimulus checks, and others did, meaning legal immigrants got the checks for not working — and passed them on abroad. For America’s economy, which was supposed to benefit from this cash, well, it went to other countries instead.

What a sad coda to the wretched stimulus experience. Crummy third-world countries that can’t even create living conditions that their citizens want to live in got the benefit of the money. We got the inflation. Now we are getting more potential remitters with the border-surgers.

Something’s wrong with this picture, and from more than one viewpoint.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man who admitted to purchasing firearms that he knew would be going from the U.S. to a Mexican drug cartel has been arrested in Texas after the discovery that one of the weapons was linked to the deadly kidnapping of four Americans, according federal court records.

Roberto Lugardo Moreno made an initial appearance Monday at a federal court in Brownsville and was appointed a public defender, who did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment. His detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

The kidnapping occurred in Matamoros, Mexico, which is located just across the border from Brownsville.

According to a federal complaint filed Saturday, Moreno has been charged with conspiring to illegally export a firearm. The complaint said that he admitted to buying firearms for people he knew were going to provide them to a member of the Gulf Cartel in Mexico.

The serial number of a firearm he purchased in October 2019 matched that of a gun recovered by authorities that was linked to the March 3 kidnappings, according to the complaint. Moreno said he didn’t apply for a license to export the firearm from the U.S. to Mexico, and knew it would be illegally exported, the complaint said.

Moreno told authorities that he received $100 for the purchase of the guns.

Four friends who were traveling to Mexico so one member of the party could have cosmetic surgery were caught up in a drug cartel shootout in Matamoros. After a vehicle crashed into their van, men in tactical vests with assault rifles arrived in another vehicle and surrounded them.

Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown appeared to have been killed immediately and their bodies were loaded into a truck with the two survivors, Eric Williams and Latavia McGee. The bodies and the two living friends were found days later in a shack.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged drug trafficker wanted by the United States and one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a pre-dawn operation Thursday that set off gunfights and roadblocks across the western state’s capital.

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Army and National Guard personnel had captured a son of “El Chapo.” Sandoval identified him only as Ovidio, in keeping with government policy.

Ovidio Guzmán, nicknamed “the Mouse,” had not been one of El Chapo’s better-known sons until an aborted operation to capture him three years ago. That attempt similarly set off violence in Culiacan that ultimately led President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to order the military to let him go.

Thursday’s high-profile capture comes just days before López Obrador will host U.S. President Joe Biden for bilateral talks followed by their North American Leaders’ Summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Drug trafficking, along with immigration, is expected to be a top talking point.

“This is a significant blow to the Sinaloa cartel and major victory for the rule of law. It will not, however, impede the flow of drugs into the U.S. Hopefully, Mexico will extradite him to the U.S.,” Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former Chief of International Operations, said Thursday.

Vigil said that Ovidio Guzmán was involved in all of the cartel’s activities, especially the production of fentanyl. A 2018 federal indictment in Washington, D.C., accused the younger Guzmán of conspiring to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the United States.

The CDC said last July that more than 107,000 Americans had died from a drug overdose during the year ending January 2022, most of them involving opioids including illegally made fentanyl.

López Obrador’s security approach reversed years of what came to be known as the kingpin strategy of taking down cartel leaders, which led to the fragmentation of large cartels and bloody battles for dominance. López Obrador put all his faith in the military, disbanding the corrupt Federal Police and creating the National Guard under military command.

The capture was the result of six months of reconnaissance and surveillance in the cartel’s territory, and then quick action on Thursday, Sandoval said. National Guard troops spotted SUVs, some with homemade armor, and immediately coordinated with the army as they established a perimeter around the suspicious vehicles and forced the occupants out to be searched.

The security forces then came under fire, but were able to gain control of the situation and identify Guzmán among those present and in possession of firearms, Sandoval said.

Cartel members set up 19 roadblocks including at Culiacan’s airport and outside the local army base, as well as all points of access to the city of Culiacan, Sandoval said, but the Air Force was able to fly Guzmán to Mexico City despite their efforts, and he was taken to offices of the Attorney General’s organized crime special prosecutor.

Sandoval said Guzmán was a leader of a Sinaloa faction he called “los menores” or “the juniors,” who are also known as “los Chapitos,” for the sons of El Chapo.

Other “little Chapos” include two of his brothers — Iván Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán — who are believed to have been running cartel operations together with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

The Chapitos have been taking greater control in the cartel because Zambada was in poor health and isolated in the mountains, Vigil said. “The Chapitos know that if el Mayo dies, (the cartel) is going to break apart if they don’t have control.”

“It’s going to be very important that the U.S. requests Ovidio’s extradition quickly and that Mexico does it,” Vigil said.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that Mexico received a request in 2019 from the United States for Guzmán’s arrest for purposes of extradition. He said that request would have to be updated and processed, but he added that Guzmán must first face an open case in Mexico.

U.S. Homeland Security Investigations had posted a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Guzmán early last year.

Alleged cartel members responded to Thursday’s operation by carjacking Culiacan residents and setting vehicles ablaze in the cartel stronghold. Local and state authorities warned everyone to stay inside.

Intermittent gunfire continued into the afternoon Thursday in Culiacan as Mexican security forces continued to clash with cartel gunmen and few people ventured out.

Airline Aeromexico said in a statement that one of its jets was struck by a bullet Thursday morning as it prepared for takeoff. Passenger video posted online showed people cowering on the floor of the plane. The company said passengers and crew were safe.

Later, Mexico’s Civil Aviation Agency said in a statement that an air force plane in Culiacan had also been hit with gunfire. In addition to the Culiacan airport, the agency said airports in Los Mochis and Mazatlan were also ordered closed and all flights cancelled for security reasons.

David Téllez was aboard that flight with his wife and children, preparing to return to Mexico City after visiting his in-laws.

Their plane had been waiting for its chance to take off as two large military planes carrying personnel landed as well as three or four military helicopters. Marines and soldiers deployed along the perimeter of the runway.

When the commercial flight was finally preparing to accelerate, Téllez heard gunshots in the distance. Within 15 seconds the sounds were suddenly more intense. “We heard gunshots and threw ourselves to the floor,” he said.

He did not know the plane had been hit until a flight attendant told them. The plane quickly returned to the terminal and they were hustled into a room. Late Thursday afternoon they were still in the airport, unsure of when they would be able to return to Mexico City.

Elsewhere in Culiacan, local reporter Marcos Vizcarra had sought shelter in a hotel after gunmen stole his car.

Then he explained via Twitter that armed men had entered the hotel where he had sought shelter “and are threatening guests to give them their car keys.”

Later, Vizcarra reported that they had taken his phone, but he had made it home safely.

Such attempts to create chaos often come in response to arrests of important cartel figures in Mexico. One of the most notorious came when federal security forces cornered Ovidio Guzmán in October 2019, only to let him escape after gunmen shot up the city with high-powered weapons.

López Obrador said at the time he had made the decision to avoid the loss of life.

López Obrador entered office highly critical of the toll of his predecessors’ drug war. He embraced the phrase “hugs, not bullets” to describe his approach to Mexico’s chronic violence, which would focus on social programs aimed at weakening the draw of organized crime.

But four years into his six-year term, the death toll remains high.

In July, Mexico captured Rafael Caro Quintero, once one of the godfathers of drug trafficking and the man allegedly responsible for the murder of a DEA agent more than three decades ago, just days after López Obrador met with Biden at the White House.

At the time, the capture was seen as a signal that Mexico could be willing to go after high-profile cartel bosses again, something López Obrador had been loathe to do.

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