CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico: As soon as she stepped onto Mexican soil this week, Venezuelan migrant Yuri Carolina Melendez downloaded the US government’s app to apply for asylum appointments.
The CBP One app has been around, but as of Friday migrants in Mexico’s southernmost states bordering Guatemala will be able to apply for appointments. Previously, they had to be in central or northern Mexico.
“I have to wait to see if it really works,” the woman said while resting under a tree with her 16- and 18-year-old daughters along a border highway leading to the city of Tapachula this week.
Mexico has been asking the US to expand the app’s access to the south in an attempt to relieve the pressure migrants feel to continue north to at least Mexico City. In recent years, the Mexican government has tried to contain migrants in the south farther from the US border, but the lack of work opportunities and housing in southern cities like Tapachula have pushed migrants north.
Mexico hopes that if migrants can wait for their appointments in the south they might not risk getting snagged by authorities without papers or by organized crime groups that prey on migrants traveling north. With an appointment, they could, in theory, move without interference.
Germin Aleman, a 31-year-old from Honduras traveling with his wife and three children, planned to register as soon as they reached Tapachula. “We’re going to apply here, we’re going to wait for the appointment,” he said as they walked from the border toward Tapachula.
Others, however, still felt the pressure to get farther north. Many migrants often carry big debts and need to start paying them off as soon as possible. Melendez, for instance, said she planned to keep moving to improve her chances of finding work.
CBP One has been one of the measures of greatest impact in US efforts to bring order to the growing demand for US asylum along its southwestern border.
In the 2023 fiscal year, US Customs and Border Protection reported more than 2.4 million encounters with migrants along the US Southwest border.
Since the app was launched in January 2023, more than 765,000 people have scheduled appointments to request asylum. Immigration has become a central issue in the US presidential election.
When the Biden administration temporarily suspended the asylum process for those who crossed illegally in June, the app became one of the only ways to request asylum. The US handles 1,500 appointments daily.
The number of migrants crossing the US border illegally has fallen significantly since peaking in December 2023. Washington attributes much of that decline to Mexico’s enforcement efforts, which include nabbing migrants in the north and sending them south again.
Still, Mexico welcomes CBP One’s expansion.
“That is going to help us a lot,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Barcena said earlier this month when she announced the expansion was coming. Immigration is a key issue in the two countries’ relationship.
But for dozens of nongovernmental groups that advocate for migrants and human rights, there is little to celebrate.
In an open letter to the Mexican government Thursday, they called CBP One “a violation of international law” because it allows the US to limit access to its territory for people in need of protection.
The groups argued that many migrants wind up stuck in Mexico for months waiting in full shelters or camping in unsanitary conditions. While they wait they are vulnerable to kidnapping, sexual assaults, torture and extortion by criminals and authorities, they said.
In theory, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute allows migrants with CBP One appointments to travel freely to the US border, but the organizations said authorities still sometimes detain migrants and send them south again to keep them from the border.
The institute did not respond to a request for comment about those allegations.
In southern Mexico, migrants have always been targets of smugglers and criminals but the region was quite peaceful for the rest of its inhabitants. Now the situation has changed. The southern border region is locked in a territorial struggle between Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, which want to control routes for smuggling drugs, weapons and migrants. Violence is part of daily life in a lot of border towns.
Among migrants waiting in Ciudad Hidalgo’s central plaza near the Suchiate river that divides Mexico and Guatemala, the question remains whether to wait or to keep moving north.
As a group of migrants debated the answer, the factor that weighed most heavily was money. The migrants had heard the chances of finding jobs are higher in central and northern Mexico, and money is needed for what could be a monthslong wait for an appointment.
“If there are work opportunities we’ll stay; if not, we’ll keep advancing until they give us an appointment,” said Yuleidi Banque, a 28-year-old Venezuelan who had just arrived in Mexico with her partner and her 7-year-old daughter.
“My daughter isn’t well … she’s fed through a feeding tube. We need help,” Banque said.
The United Nations Refugee Agency is cautious about CBP One’s expansion.
Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico chief for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said it could mean fewer risks for migrants headed north. But he added that dealing with migration requires diverse measures, “those like stabilizing the countries of origin, protection in the transit countries and options for regularization and asylum in destination countries.”
For Noemi Ramirez, a 47-year-old from El Salvador, hearing that she could begin her asylum application from Mexico’s Chiapas state led her to immediately set off with her 19-year-old daughter for Tapachula.
“We’re going to wait until we get an appointment. I’m not thinking of going any farther,” she said as they walked, worrying about the violence they could face along the way. “I’m not going to risk it with my daughter. We’re alone.”
US expands area in Mexico to apply for border asylum appointments, hoping to slow push north
https://arab.news/v4xr3
US expands area in Mexico to apply for border asylum appointments, hoping to slow push north
- Migrants in Mexico’s southernmost states bordering Guatemala will be able to apply for appointments
- Mexico hopes that if migrants can wait for their appointments in the south they might not risk getting snagged by authorities or by organized crime groups
Trump names former staffer Katie Miller to Musk-led DOGE panel
- Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency, Trump posts
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Katie Miller, who served in Trump’s first administration and is the wife of his incoming deputy chief of staff, as one of the first members of an advisory board to be led by billionaire allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that aims to drastically slash government spending, federal regulations and the federal workforce.
Miller, wife of Trump’s designated homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, will join Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an informal advisory body that Trump has said will enable his administration to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
“Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency,” Trump posted in a message on his social media platform Truth Social.
Musk and Ramaswamy recently revealed plans to wipe out scores of federal regulations crafted by what they say is an anti-democratic, unaccountable bureaucracy, but have yet to announce members of the DOGE team. Musk has said he wants to slash the number of federal agencies from over 400 to 99.
Katie Miller had served in the first Trump adminstration as deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and as press secretary for former Vice President Mike Pence.
She is currently a spokesperson for the transition team for Trump’s designated Health and Human Services secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr.
Panama rejects Trump’s threat to take control of Canal
- Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
PANAMA CITY: Panama’s president Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday dismissed recent threats made by US President-elect Donald Trump to retake control of the Panama Canal over complaints of “unfair” treatment of American ships.
“Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas belongs to Panama and will continue belonging to Panama,” Mulino said in a video posted to X.
Mulino’s public comments, though never mentioning Trump by name, come a day after the president-elect complained about the canal on his Truth Social platform.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he said.
Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” Trump said. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!“
The Panama Canal, which was completed by the United States in 1914, was returned to the Central American country under a 1977 deal signed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Panama took full control in 1999.
Trump said that if Panama could not ensure “the secure, efficient and reliable operation” of the channel, “then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question.”
Mulino rejected Trump’s claims in his video message, though he also said he hopes to have “a good and respectful relationship” with the incoming administration.
“The canal has no direct or indirect control from China, nor the European Union, nor the United States or any other power,” Mulino said. “As a Panamanian, I reject any manifestation that misrepresents this reality.”
Later on Sunday, Trump responded to Mulino’s dismissal, writing on Truth Social: “We’ll see about that!“
Musk, president? Trump says ‘not happening’
- Trump: “He wasn’t born in this country”
“He’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump told a Republican conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
“You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said of the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who was born in South Africa.
The US Constitution requires that a president be a natural-born US citizen.
Trump was responding to criticism, particularly from the Democratic camp, portraying the tech billionaire and world’s richest person as “President Musk” for the outsized role he is playing in the incoming administration.
As per ceding the presidency to Musk, Trump also assured the crowd: “No, no that’s not happening.”
The influence of Musk, who will serve as Trump’s “efficiency czar,” has become a focus point for Democratic attacks, with questions raised over how an unelected citizen can wield so much power.
And there is even growing anger among Republicans after Musk trashed a government funding proposal this week in a blizzard of posts — many of them wildly inaccurate — to his more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X.
Alongside Trump, Musk ultimately helped pressure Republicans to renege on a funding bill they had painstakingly agreed upon with Democrats, pushing the United States to the brink of budgetary paralysis that would have resulted in a government shutdown just days before Christmas.
Congress ultimately reached an agreement overnight Friday to Saturday, avoiding massive halts to government services.
Russian president meets Slovak PM as Ukraine gas transit contract nears expiry
- Fico has also been a rare senior EU politician to appear on Russian state TV following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine
MOSCOW: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in the Kremlin on Sunday, a rare visit by a European Union leader to Moscow as a contract allowing for Russian gas to transit through Ukraine nears expiry.
Slovakia is dependent on gas passing through its neighbor Ukraine, and it has ramped up efforts to maintain those flows from 2025 while criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to extend the contract expiring at the end of the year.
Fico’s trip to Moscow was only the third by an EU government head since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Slovak opposition politicians called the visit a “disgrace.”
Fico said on Facebook after the meeting that top EU officials were informed of his trip on Friday.
He said it came in response to talks last week with Zelensky, who, according to the Slovak leader, had expressed opposition to any gas transit through Ukraine to Slovakia.
“Russian President V. Putin confirmed the readiness of the (Russian Federation) to continue to supply gas to the West and Slovakia, which is practically impossible after Jan. 1, 2025 in view of the stance of the Ukrainian president,” Fico said.
Fico came to power in 2023 and shifted Slovakia’s foreign policy. He immediately stopped state military aid to Kyiv, has said the war with Russia does not have a military solution, and has criticized sanctions against Moscow.
His visit to the Kremlin follows Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who visited in April 2022, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who went to Moscow last July. EU allies had criticized both of those visits.
Russian television showed Putin and Fico shaking hands at the start of their talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the meeting had been arranged a few days ago.
In the talks, Fico said he and Putin exchanged opinions on the military situation in Ukraine, chances of a peaceful end to the war and on Slovak-Russian relations “which I intend to standardise.”
GAS TRANSIT
Slovakia, which has a long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom, has been trying to keep receiving gas through Ukraine, saying buying elsewhere would cost it 220 million euros ($229 million) more in transit expenses.
Ukraine has repeatedly refused to extend the transit deal.
Fico pushed the subject on Thursday at a EU summit that was also attended by Zelensky, who reiterated his country would not continue the transit of Russian gas.
The Slovak prime minister, who has said his country was facing a gas crisis, has also spoken of solutions under which Ukraine would not transit Russian-owned gas, but rather gas owned by someone else.
Hungary has also been keen to keep the Ukrainian route, but it will continue to receive Russian gas from the south, via the TurkStream pipeline on the bed of the Black Sea.
Ex-Soviet Moldova has also relied on gas transiting Ukraine to supply its needs and those of its separatist Transdniestria enclave, including a thermal plant that provides most of the electricity for parts of Moldova under government control.
The acting head of Moldovagaz, the country’s gas operator, Vadim Ceban, said it could provide gas for Transdniestria acquired from other sources. But the pro-Russian region would have to pay higher prices associated with those supplies.
Ceban said Moldovagaz had made several appeals to Gazprom to send gas to Moldova through TurkStream and Bulgaria and Romania.
Ho Chi Minh City celebrates first metro
HO CHI MINH CITY: Thousands of selfie-taking Ho Chi Minh City residents crammed into train carriages Sunday as the traffic-clogged business hub celebrated the opening of its first-ever metro line after years of delays.
Huge queues spilled out of every station along the $1.7 billion line that runs almost 20 kilometers from the city center — with women in traditional “ao dai” dress, soldiers in uniform and couples clutching young children waiting excitedly to board.
“I know it (the project) is late, but I still feel so very honored and proud to be among the first on this metro,” said office worker Nguyen Nhu Huyen after snatching a selfie in her jam-packed train car.
“Our city is now on par with the other big cities of the world,” she said.
It took 17 years for Vietnam’s commercial capital to reach this point. The project, funded largely by Japanese government loans, was first approved in 2007 and slated to cost just $668 million.
When construction began in 2012, authorities promised the line would be up and running in just five years.
But as delays mounted, cars and motorbikes multiplied in the city of nine million people, making the metropolis hugely congested, increasingly polluted and time-consuming to navigate.
The metro “meets the growing travel needs of residents and contributes to reducing traffic congestion and environmental pollution,” the city’s deputy mayor Bui Xuan Cuong said.
Cuong admitted authorities had to overcome “countless hurdles” to get the project over the line.