The San Diego Sheriff’s Office said that deputies were assisting the Coast Guard and providing “life saving measures” near the 200 block of Stratford Court in Del Mar, a beach town to the north of San Diego. 

The overturned vessel was reported off the coast of Del Mar at around 6:30 a.m. Monday, and responding crews found the three dead individuals and four survivors in need of medical care at the scene. The vessel was an “old, beat up” panga boat, and possibly a smuggling vessel, Lt. Nick Backouris of the sheriff’s department told the San Diego Union Tribune. 

It was unclear where the boat was coming from before it capsized around 35 miles north of the Mexico border. U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Chris Sappey described the panga as an open fishing boat commonly used by smugglers. “They were not tourists,” Sappey told the Associated Press. “They are believed to be migrants.”

Multiple agencies, including a Coast Guard helicopter and the U.S. Border Patrol, are currently searching the area for the missing people. “Potentially nine more individuals are unaccounted for,” Coast Guard spokesperson Adam Stanton told the Union Tribune. “That nine number doesn’t mean they are in the water. They could have made it to shore.”

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One good thing about my assignments is that I get to see different schools in our local districts from the inside. I know I’m not supposed to reveal their secrets; that’s the first part of my contract with them. But, due to President Trump outing our schools for their heinous acts, I feel compelled to confirm that I’ve seen with my very own eyes, to my extreme dismay, the presence of operating rooms in all the schools.

There is a very inconspicuous door, just around the corner in every school cafeteria, which leads students down a corridor right into a room full of overhead lights, an operating table, an anesthesia cart, a table full of surgical instruments, an oxygen tank, and additional tanks for some mysterious gases. There’s also a huge closet full of clothes of all sizes, for both boys and girls.

You could say that I’ve acted as a spy for Trump, and I’ve seen for myself how school kids are being led to that room by school officials, only to emerge as the opposite sex. Trump is right. It’s true that kids go to school as one gender, the school performs a gender-affirming surgery without the parents’ knowledge or consent, and then the kids go home as another gender. You should see the confused looks on the parents’ faces. In the morning, they say to their son, “Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,” only to find out in the afternoon that Jimmy is now Janine.

Now, I hope you all know I’m just being facetious. There are no special operating rooms in schools. You need surgeons, doctors, nurses, and the rest to “operate” an operating room. Trump is full of [S-word], mocking us, his loyal supporters, making goofy sounds and weird faces when he lies about something so absurd anyone can see through it. That’s the problem, though: not everyone sees through it. There are people who actually believe him.

Our schools exist to educate our kids. There are laws to protect them and the rights of their parents. We don’t live in Nazi Germany—though maybe we would if Trump had his way—where people were treated horribly. We live in California, where individual rights are paramount. You have to ask yourself why Trump would fabricate such an obvious lie. He’s not worried because he has such gullible followers who swallow these blatant falsehoods. I mean, look at his utterly absurd, preposterous lies about “Migrants Eating Dogs.”

Although, that might explain the “mystery meat” we used to find in school cafeterias during lunch. With the influx of migrant children into our local schools, maybe that mystery meat is no longer mysterious. Remember Trump’s words during the debate: “They are eating dogs!” Maybe they’re eating dogs, cats, and, as an amazing coincidence, I don’t see any squirrels around the school trees anymore. There used to be plenty of them, but now, I hardly see any. Go figure.

We should all call our senators, just like the residents of Springfield, Ohio, called their senator, J.D. Vance—so he says—to report the “Dog Eating Migrants” story. Why should that city get so much attention when we have the same issue here? Why isn’t someone here posting such a claim on Facebook, getting it amplified by the Republican Party, and endorsed by our past, present, and future president, Trump? Why aren’t our lunatic influencers and grifters trying to cash in on this fringe idea?

Many say that Trump and Vance are telling this “truth” about migrants eating pets as a dog whistle (no pun intended) to their base. Some argue that this political messaging is racist, meant to rile up white supremacists against these migrants, and, by extension, against Kamala Harris. But I disagree. We all know that Trump is not racist. He has told us that many times. He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. He did have racist bone spurs once, but that was a long time ago.

Politicians have used similar stories about migrants throughout history. It used to be Asians accused of eating dogs and cats. Now it’s the Haitians. Trump is using the same fear-mongering, but this time targeting migrants of color. It’s sheer coincidence (or is it?) that his opponent happens to be a woman of color, and he’s deliberately using this falsehood to achieve the same results as his predecessors.

I think Trump and Vance got the idea when Robert Kennedy Jr. joined their team. We all know that man loves to eat dogs and bears. They must have discussed his culinary tastes and decided to apply it to the migrants.

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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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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Over five years, the largest U.S. city on the Mexican border developed a well-oiled system to shelter asylum-seekers.

That system is being tested like never before as U.S. Customs and Border Protection releases migrants to the streets of California’s second-largest city because shelters are full. Since Sept. 13, about 13,000 have been dropped at transit stations with notices to appear in immigration court at their final destinations in the U.S., with about 500 more arriving daily.

Migrant aid groups blame a mix of circumstances for the shelter crunch: reduced government funding; CBP’s practice of sending migrants from Texas and Arizona to be processed in San Diego; and a surge in illegal crossings. Last week, President Joe Biden’s administration advanced plans for a border wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and said it would resume deportation flights to Venezuela.

Before they are released in San Diego, some migrants being dropped off have been waiting between a double-layer border wall or camping under Border Patrol watch in remote mountains east of the city. CBP closed a major pedestrian border crossing from Tijuana, Mexico, on Sept. 14 and assigned more officials to processing migrants.

“Many do not know where they are, that this is San Diego, this is (the) San Diego region, the nearest airport is San Diego and how to get to their final destination. That is what we’re trying to provide support with,” said Paulina Reyes-Perrariz, managing attorney for Immigrant Defenders Law Center’s cross-border initiative.

Illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 last month after a lull following the start of new asylum restrictions in May had diminishing impact and people from dozens of countries, notably Venezuela, were drawn by prospects of jobs and safety.

Similar to other U.S. border cities, about 95% of migrants in San Diego quickly move to other parts of the country. That’s a sharp contrast to cities far from the border, such as New York and Chicago. But the constant churn of exhausted, disoriented migrants from more than 100 countries has created other strains that the San Diego County government calls “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”

Last week, after a community recreation center could no longer handle the flow of migrants, the Border Patrol resumed drop-offs at a transit center. Arrivals from China, India, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and many west African countries filled a parking lot to charge phones, eat, use the bathroom and wait for free shuttle buses to the airport. “Is California far from here?” an Eritrean man asked volunteers.

Shuttles were announced in Spanish and Arabic. Al Otro Lado, a group aiding migrants, is seeking volunteers who speak Russian, Pashto, Creole, French, Portuguese, Amharic, Hindi, Mandarin, Somali, Turkish and Vietnamese.

“It’s a brief moment of intervention before they can move on to be connected with their loved ones,” said Kate Clark, senior director for immigrant services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego.

Shelters still accommodate families with young children, members of the LGBTQ+ community, the elderly and medically frail. The drop-offs are largely for single adults.

Since 2018, Jewish Family Service of San Diego and Catholic Charities together have helped more than 430,000 migrants in the region.

But Catholic Charities of San Diego recently halved capacity at the two hotels where it houses migrants to about 800 people, who stay an average of less than two days, said CEO Vino Pajanor. “The major issue” is less federal funding as San Diego competes with New York and other cities for support to aid migrants, he said.

Jewish Family Service has maintained shelter capacity at about 950 at a hotel and another large facility.

CBP did not respond to questions about the drop-offs. The Department of Homeland Security said last month that it has given $790 million for migrant shelters this year and asked Congress for an additional $600 million.

Aid groups say government support is needed even for the services at the San Diego transit center parking lot, where migrants get travel advice from volunteers over the steady noise of railroad crossing bells and bus horns. County supervisors voted Tuesday to spend $3 million to to provide airport shuttles, internet connectivity, snacks and other basic services to migrants for three months.

The Border Patrol dropped off about 400 migrants by early afternoon one recent day as airport shuttles left about every hour. Overnight camping is prohibited. Migrants with flights within 24 hours are encouraged to wait at the airport.

The parking lot was a brief stop for Pedro Cardenas, 30, who was booked on a red-eye flight to Newark, New Jersey, after a grueling trip from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Smugglers squeezed about 14 migrants in a vehicle meant for five, forcing them to go hours without water or a bathroom break.

Cardenas, a mechanic on mining equipment, said violence and lack of work prompted him to leave his wife and child behind. He hopes to return with savings to buy land in Ecuador.

“I feel safer,” he said. “I feel happy but sad at the same time because I am not with my family.”

As night fell, volunteers at a church with room for 40 people sought to make sure no one would sleep on the streets. Rincon Marin, 26, arrived too late in the day for a flight to his final destination in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and accepted the church’s offer with a fellow Colombian who was headed to Columbus, Ohio.

“Happy, content,” Marin said to describe his feelings before rushing off to brush his teeth at a portable sink and squeeze into a car on his way to overnight lodging.

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A federal judge in Oakland on Tuesday blocked a Biden administration rule that limits migrants’ access to asylum at the southern border, casting doubt on the future of a key policy aimed at limiting crossings. The order from federal Judge Jon S. Tigar, who was appointed by President Obama, won’t take effect for two weeks.

The Biden administration quickly appealed the ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked Tigar to stay his order while the higher court considers the matter. If the administration is unsuccessful in the 9th Circuit, it could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The policy, which restricts access to asylum for migrants who come through a third country on their way to the U.S. without applying for protections, is the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce the number of migrants crossing without authorization each month. Tigar said Tuesday that the rule was “contrary to law” because it presumed that people who crossed the southern border were ineligible for asylum.

Biden administration officials have said in court declarations that without the policy, border crossings will increase, straining government resources. In June, crossings at the border were at their lowest level in more than two years. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the agency “strongly” disagrees with the ruling and is “confident” that the rule is lawful. “To be clear, because the district court temporarily stayed its decision, today’s ruling does not change anything immediately,” he added. “It does not limit our ability to deliver consequences for unlawful entry. Do not believe the lies of smugglers.”

The rule targets people who enter the U.S. without authorization. Government officials have encouraged migrants to instead use a Customs and Border Protection app called CBP One to schedule an appointment at a port of entry. U.S. officials have also advertised a system that allows migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua to apply for entry into the U.S. provided they have a financial sponsor and can pass security checks. Tigar said that applying for asylum on the way to the southern border is not feasible for many migrants.

He added that waiting in Mexico for appointments at a port of entry was similarly difficult. “Because CBP One access is limited to central and northern Mexico, asylum seekers must remain in these areas until they successfully secure an appointment,” he wrote. “The record suggests that migrants waiting in Mexico are at serious risk of violence.” In 2019, Tigar blocked the Trump administration’s version of the policy. The Supreme Court later stayed that order.

Advocates for immigrants have blasted the Biden administration’s asylum limits, labeling them as nothing more than a return to former President Trump’s strict policies. The legal challenge to Biden’s policy was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigrant Justice Center and the UC Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies in May, when the policy went into place.

The groups celebrated Tigar’s ruling on Tuesday. “The ruling is a victory, but each day the Biden administration prolongs the fight over its illegal ban, many people fleeing persecution and seeking safe harbor for their families are instead left in grave danger,” Katrina Eiland, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in an emailed statement. “The promise of America is to serve as a beacon of freedom and hope,” she added, “and the administration can and should do better to fulfill this promise, rather than perpetuate cruel and ineffective policies that betray it.”

Biden administration officials have said that the policy is intended to discourage unauthorized migration and encourage people to seek alternatives. “As intended, the rule has significantly reduced screen-in rates for noncitizens encountered along the [U.S.-Mexico border],” Blas Nuñez-Neto, a senior Homeland Security official, wrote in the filing. “The decline in encounters at the U.S. border, and entries into the Darién Gap, show that the application of consequences as a result of the rule’s implementation is disincentivizing noncitizens from pursuing irregular migration and incentivizing them to use safe and orderly pathways.” Nuñez-Neto said in the late June declaration that there were 104,000 migrants in northern Mexico and that many appeared to be “waiting to see whether the strengthened consequences associated with the rule’s implementation are real.”

Data from his filing appeared to confirm that the policy had significantly lowered the share of migrants at the southern border who crossed into the U.S. and were allowed to apply for asylum. In their request to stay Tigar’s order pending appeal, government attorneys said that his ruling undermined “efforts taken to prevent an expected increase in encounters at the southwest border following the termination of the Title 42,” referring to the public health measure that allowed border agents to quickly turn away migrants at the border before it was discontinued on May 11.

The policy Tigar deemed unlawful helps prevent a “potentially significant increase in encounters at the southwest border, which would overwhelm the immigration system, incentivize human smuggling, lead to extreme overcrowding in border facilities” and undermine agencies’ ability to manage the immigration system, the government’s attorneys argued.

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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.

___

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.

___

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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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s attorney general said the state of Florida appears to have arranged for a group of South American migrants to be dropped off outside a Sacramento church.

“While this is still under investigation, we can confirm these individuals were in possession of documentation purporting to be from the government of the State of Florida,” Bonta said in a statement late Saturday.

The documents said the migrants were transported through a program run by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and carried out by contractor Vertol Systems Co., said Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Bonta. Florida paid the same contractor $1.56 million last year to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and for a possible second flight to Delaware that never took place.

The 16 migrants who arrived in Sacramento on Friday are from Colombia and Venezuela. They entered the U.S. through Texas. They were transported to New Mexico then flown by a charter plane to California’s capital, where they were then dropped off in front of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, California officials said.

They were approached outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, by people who offered them jobs and travel assistance, said Eddie Carmona of PICO California, a faith-based group helping the migrants. They did not know they were being taken to Sacramento and arrived with few belongings, he said.

Vertol Systems Co. and the Florida Division of Emergency Management did not immediately respond Sunday to emails seeking comment.

Bonta said he is evaluating whether violations of civil or criminal law took place.

“While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting,” Bonta said in a statement.

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Riverside County officials are preparing for an influx of migrants expected to come across the border following the end of the COVID-era restriction Title 42 at 8:59 p.m. Thursday.

The county is the only non-border county in the country that receives migrant dropoffs from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, with Border Patrol centers in cities including Murrieta, Indio and Blythe. The county’s CEO has said the county could begin receiving more than 200 undocumented immigrants per day, causing a major stress on resources.

The increase in immigration is expected to occur once Title 42 ends because the emergency measure allowed border officials to quickly return people to other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the measure is now ending, immigrants will have a much longer process to go through before possible deportation. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the health order provided the means to expel 2.7 million individuals over the last three years. “It remains to be seen what the local impact will be in the coming days, weeks or months when Title 42 expires,” county CEO Jeff Van Wagenen told City News Service. “It is likely that we will see an increase in the number of individuals released by CBP. This will cause significant stress to the system.”

On Wednesday, the Biden administration implemented stricter limitations on who can receive asylum after entering the country illegally. The measure will deny asylum to migrants who show up at the U.S.-Mexico border without first applying online or seeking protection in a country they passed through. In March and April of this year, Riverside County received about 122 migrants per day, and in May the county has been averaging about 200 per day. The number of migrants being dropped off is only expected to grow in the coming months.

The county has a capacity of 300 and as of this week, facilities are at 95% capacity. According to Van Wagenen, the county began receiving large numbers of migrant transfers from Border Patrol agents who had nowhere to put them in March 2021. The period coincided with President Joe Biden’s rescission of Trump’s executive orders restricting immigration, including construction of a border wall. Since that time, Border Patrol dropoffs near the agency’s offices in Blythe, Indio and Murrieta have been constant, Van Wagenen said. According to Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, the tide of border crossers may turn into a tsunami after Title 42 restrictions vanish.

An estimated 150,000 migrants are waiting in northern Mexico for Title 42 to end so they can cross the border, with hundreds of thousands of additional migrants heading north from southern Mexico and Central America, Calvert told CNS. “For years, Republicans in Congress have urged the Biden Administration to take action to prevent this crisis, but nothing has been done, and the human tragedy is only going to get worse due to President Biden’s inaction.”

The administration has denied the border could spin out of control. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that the “border is not open, it has not been open, and it will not be open subsequent to May 11.” Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio, told CNS that our immigration system is broken “but the administration has taken positive steps to institute a safe, orderly and humane system that reflects our American values.” “There is more work to do to equip our CBP personnel and border communities with the resources they need,” Ruiz said. “That is why I advocated directly to the White House for engagement with local government entities and organizations to prepare for the end of Title 42.”

The county has been working with local organizations to prevent the immigration crisis from becoming a homeless crisis as well. They will be providing motel rooms, meals and health screenings for those that come through the county. So far, Riverside County has spent $10 million on dealing with new migrants since March 2021.

But officials say all the money spent so far has been reimbursed by the state and federal government. “There is an urgent need for intervention, especially given the uncertainty,” Van Wagenen said. “We are actively working with state and federal agencies … to relieve the strain placed on the county.”

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MATAMOROS, Mexico (AP) — Migrants rushed across the Mexico border Thursday, racing to enter the U.S. before pandemic-related asylum restrictions are lifted in a shift that threatens to put a historic strain on the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.

The imminent end of the rules known as Title 42 stirred fear among migrants that the changes would make it more difficult for them to stay in the U.S. And the Biden administration was dealt a potentially serious legal setback when a federal judge temporarily blocked its attempt to more quickly release migrants when Border Patrol holding stations are full.

With a late-night deadline looming, misinformation and confusion buffeted migrants as they paced the border at the Rio Grande, often unsure of where to go or what to do next.

At Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, throngs of migrants — some clutching small children — waded across spring river currents, pushed through thickets to confront a border fortified with razor wire. Other migrants settled into shelters in northern Mexico, determined to secure an asylum appointment that can take months to schedule online.

Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes designed to stop illegal crossings and encourage asylum seekers to apply online and consider alternative destinations, including Canada or Spain.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Jhoan Daniel Barrios, a former military police officer from Venezuela as he paced with two friends along the the border in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, looking for a chance to seek refuge in the U.S.

“We don’t have any money left, we don’t have food, we don’t have a place to stay, the cartel is pursuing us,” said Barrios, whose wife was in U.S. custody. “What are we going to do, wait until they kill us?”

Last week, Barrios and his friends entered the U.S. and were expelled. They had little hope of a different result Thursday.

On the U.S. side of the river, many surrendered immediately to authorities and hoped to be released while pursuing their cases in backlogged immigration courts, which takes years.

It was not clear how many migrants were on the move or how long the surge might last. By Thursday evening, the flow seemed to be slowing in some locations, but it was not clear why, or whether crossings would increase again after the coronavirus-related restrictions expire.

A U.S. official reported the Border Patrol stopped some 10,000 migrants on Tuesday — nearly twice the level from March and only slightly below the 11,000 figure that authorities have said is the upper limit of what they expect after Title 42 ends.

More than 27,000 people were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, the official said.

“Our buses are full. Our planes are full,” said Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner in Brownsville, Texas, just north of Matamoros, as recent arrivals headed to locations across the U.S.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been unveiling strict new measures to replace Title 42, which since March 2020 has allowed border officials to quickly return asylum seekers back over the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

The new policies crack down on illegal crossings while also setting up legal pathways for migrants who apply online, seek a sponsor and undergo background checks. If successful, the reforms could fundamentally alter how migrants arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But it will take time to see results. Biden has conceded the border will be chaotic for a while. Immigrant advocacy groups have threatened legal action. And migrants fleeing poverty, gangs and persecution in their homelands are still desperate to reach U.S. soil at any cost.

Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes as they searched Thursday for an opportunity to turn themselves over to U.S. immigration authorities before the 11:59 EDT deadline.

While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.

Holding facilities along the border already were far beyond capacity. But late Thursday, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, an appointee of President Donald Trump, halted the administration’s plan to begin releasing migrants with notices to report to an immigration office in 60 days when holding centers reach 125% capacity, or where people are held an average of 60 hours. The quick releases were to also be triggered when authorities stop 7,000 migrants along the border in a day.

The state of Florida argued the administration’s plan was nearly identical to another Biden policy previously voided in federal court. Earlier Thursday, the Justice Department said its new move was a response to an emergency and being prevented from carrying it out “could overwhelm the border and raise serious health and safety risks to noncitizens and immigration officials.”

Weatherell blocked the releases for two weeks and scheduled a May 19 hearing on whether to extend his order.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had already warned of more crowded Border Patrol facilities to come.

“I cannot overstate the strain on our personnel and our facilities,” he told reporters Thursday.

Even as migrants were racing to reach U.S. soil before the rules expire, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said smugglers were sending a different message. He noted an uptick in smugglers at his country’s southern border offering to take migrants to the United States and telling them the border was open starting Thursday.

On Wednesday, Homeland Security announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, or who did not apply online, to qualify for asylum. It also introduced curfews with GPS tracking for families released in the U.S. before initial asylum screenings.

The administration says it is beefing up the removal of migrants found unqualified to stay in the U.S. on flights like those that brought nearly 400 migrants home to Guatemala from the U.S. on Thursday.

Among them was Sheidi Mazariegos, 26, who arrived with her 4-year-old son just eight days after being detained near Brownsville.

“I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter, I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie,” she said. Smugglers got her to Matamoros and put the two on a raft. They were quickly apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

Mazariegos said she made the trek because she is poor and hoped to reunite with her sisters living in the U.S.

At the same time, the administration has introduced expansive new legal pathways into the U.S.

Up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport. Processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. Up to 1,000 can enter daily though land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on an online app.

At shelters in northern Mexico, many migrants chose not to rush to the border and waited for existing asylum appointments or hopes of reserving one online.

At the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter in Tijuana, hundreds of migrants bided their time. Daisy Bucia, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter arrived at the shelter over three months ago from Mexico’s Michoacán state – fleeing death threats — and have an asylum appointment Saturday in California.

Bucia read on social media that pandemic-era restrictions were ending at the U.S.-Mexico border, but preferred to cross with certainty later.

“What people want more than anything is to confuse you,” Bucia said.

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EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Francisco Palacios waited for four hours with his wife and 3-year-old daughter at a border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego early Wednesday before going to a nearby hotel for a three-hour nap. They came back, bags packed, only to be disappointed again.

But the family from the western Mexican city of Morelia is prepared to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether and when to lift pandemic-era restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum, said Palacios.

“We don’t have a choice,” Palacios said in Spanish, explaining that his family arrived in Tijuana two weeks ago to escape violence and gangs that extorted them for years for a chunk of their income selling fruit from a street cart.

They’re among thousands of migrants gathered along the Mexican side of the border, camping outside or packing into shelters as the weather grows colder.

The limits on border crossings had been set to expire Wednesday before conservative-leaning states sought the top court’s help to keep them in place. The Biden administration asked the court to lift the restrictions, but not before Christmas. It’s not clear when the court’s decision will come.

Texas National Guard members took up positions in El Paso at the behest of the state, while volunteers and law enforcement officers worried that some migrants could succumb to the cold. Nighttime temperatures have been in the 30s and will be even colder in coming days. The Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso, where nighttime temperatures could drop into the 20s this week, planned to open two more shelters for up to 1,000 people at area churches.

Jhorman Morey, a 38-year-old mechanic from Venezuela, warmed his hands by a campfire with a half-dozen other migrants on the southern side of the Rio Grande. He said he was waiting for a decision on the restrictions before attempting to cross into the U.S. Other migrants waded through shallow waters toward a gate in the border fence.

“I want them to decide” on the public health rule known as Title 42, said Morey, who arrived six weeks ago in the Mexican city of Juarez, across the border from El Paso. He now rarely eats after exhausting his savings.

Hundreds of migrants remained in line in Juarez. Others slept along the concrete embankments of the Rio Grande.

As crowds gathered on the riverbanks, 1st Sgt. Suzanne Ringle said one woman went into labor and was assisted by Border Patrol agents. She added that many children were among the crowd.

In Tijuana, an estimated 5,000 migrants were staying in more than 30 shelters and many more renting rooms and apartments. Layered, razor-topped walls rising 30 feet (9 meters) along the border with San Diego make the area daunting for illegal crossings.

A mood of resignation prevailed in Tijuana’s Agape shelter, which housed 560 predominantly Mexican migrants on Wednesday.

Maricruz Martinez, who arrived with her 13-year-old daughter five weeks ago after fleeing violence in Mexico’s Michoacan state, said rumors were rampant that migrants should line up at the border crossing to San Diego Monday.

Albert Rivera, the pastor and shelter director, convened a meeting to tell people migrants that they should only trust official U.S. sources. He convinced most occupants, but said he would like the U.S. government to provide more detailed updates.

A Mexican woman staying at the shelter with her husband and 11-year-old son, who declined to give her name because she is being pursued by a gang, said she fled her village of about 40 homes in Michoacan state after a gang forced her brother to join, killed him, and then burned her house down. The last straw came after the gang forced her 15-year-old son to join them under threat of killing the family and demanded her husband join, sending photos of chopped limbs as a message of the price for resistance.

The woman said the gang took her husband’s refusal as an insult. “They think we are making fun of them for not wanting to join them,” she said, fighting back tears.

The pastor said psychologists had interviewed the woman and he hoped for her to be exempted from Title 42.

A Mexican man who asked that he be identified by his first name, Brian, for safety reasons, said his refusal to join a gang after seven years in the army prompted him to flee his home in Guerrero state with his wife and two sons two months ago. He avoids leaving the shelter except for quick shopping trips.

Brian said he applied for an exemption to the asylum ban.

“Desperate, sad,” he said when describing his thoughts when he learned that Title 42 would be extended beyond Wednesday. “It’s dangerous because you don’t know who could be following you.”

Under Title 42, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times, and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border, on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Immigration advocates have said the restrictions go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution, and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge sided with them in November and set the Dec. 21 deadline.

Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, warning that an increase in migration would take a toll on public services and cause an “unprecedented calamity” that they said the federal government had no plan to deal with.

In response, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order to keep the restrictions in place.

The federal government then asked the Supreme Court to reject the states’ effort while also acknowledging that ending the restrictions abruptly will likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.”

States filed a response early Wednesday, arguing that letting the restrictions expire while the court reviews the lower court decision would cause “immediate, severe, and irreversible harms” to the states.

Though the Wednesday expiration date was set weeks ago, the U.S. government asked for more time to prepare — while saying that it has sent more resources to the border.

About 23,000 agents are deployed to the southern border, according to the White House. The Biden administration said it has sent more Border Patrol processing coordinators and more surveillance and has increased security at ports of entry.

Should the Supreme Court act before Friday, the government wants the restrictions in place until the end of Dec. 27. If the court acts on Friday or later, the government wants the limits to remain until the second business day following such an order.

Title 42 allows the government to expel asylum-seekers of all nationalities, but it’s disproportionately affected people from countries whose citizens Mexico has agreed to take: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently, Venezuela, in addition to Mexico.

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