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
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/08/23/4516698-1144965521.jpg?itok=t71XVNt7)
- 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
Salman Rushdie’s memoir about his stabbing, ‘Knife,’ is a National Book Award nominee
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- The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, released long lists of 10 Thursday for nonfiction and poetry
- The foundation announced the lists for young people’s literature and books in translations earlier in the week and will reveal the fiction nominees on Friday
NEW YORK: Salman Rushdie’s “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” his explicit and surprisingly resilient memoir about his brutal stabbing in 2022, is a nominee for the National Book Awards. Canada’s Anne Carson, one of the world’s most revered poets, was cited for her latest collection, “Wrong Norma.”
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, released long lists of 10 Thursday for nonfiction and poetry. The foundation announced the lists for young people’s literature and books in translations earlier in the week and will reveal the fiction nominees on Friday. Judges will narrow the lists to five in each category on Oct. 1, and winners will be announced during a Manhattan dinner ceremony on Nov. 20.
Rushdie, 77, has been a literary star since the 1981 publication of “Midnight’s Children” and unwittingly famous since the 1988 release of “The Satanic Verses” and the death decree issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the novel’s alleged blasphemy. But “Knife” brings him his first National Book Award nomination; he was a British citizen, based in London, for “Midnight’s Children” and other works and would have been ineligible for the NBAs. Rushdie has been a US citizen since 2016.
Besides “Knife,” the nonfiction list includes explorations of faith, identity, oppression, global resources and outer space, among them Hanif Abdurraqib’s “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,” Rebecca Boyle’s “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are” and Jason De León’s “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.”
The other nonfiction nominees were: Eliza Griswold’s “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church,” Kate Manne’s “Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia,” Ernest Scheyder’s “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives,” Richard Slotkin’s “A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America,” Deborah Jackson Taffa’s “Whiskey Tender” and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s “Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders.”
Along with Carson’s “Wrong Norma,” poetry nominees include Pulitzer Prize winner Dianne Seuss’ latest, “Modern Poetry“; Fady Joudah’s elliptically titled “(...)”; Dorianne Laux’s “Life on Earth”; Gregory Pardlo’s “Spectral Evidence”; and Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ “Silver.”
Others on the poetry list were Octavio Quintanilla’s “The Book of Wounded Sparrows,” m.s. RedCherries’ “mother,” Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Something About Living” and Elizabeth Willis’ “Liontaming in America.”
Britain’s crime minister has bag stolen at police conference
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- In her speech, Diana Johnson said Britain had been ‘gripped by an epidemic of anti-social behavior, theft and shoplifting’
- Warwickshire Police said a 56-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of burglary and released on bail in connection to the incident
LONDON: Britain’s police and crime minister had her bag stolen at a conference for senior and midranking police officers where she spoke about the growing problem of theft and shoplifting, a government official said on Thursday.
The incident occurred when Diana Johnson attended the Police Superintendents’ Association conference in central England on Tuesday where one senior officer told her in a speech that the criminal justice system was broken.
The official said Johnson had her bag stolen at the conference, but no security risk had been identified. In her speech, Johnson said Britain had been “gripped by an epidemic of anti-social behavior, theft and shoplifting.”
The Home Office, or interior ministry, declined to comment.
Warwickshire Police said a 56-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of burglary and released on bail in connection to the incident.
Britain has been hit by an increase in thefts and shoplifting in recent years. While overall crime has generally been decreasing, the number of thefts from individuals of items like bags and mobile phones rose by 40 percent in the year ending March, according to the Office for National Statistics.
This has contributed to public support for the police falling to record lows. A poll by YouGov earlier this year found more than half of the public do not trust the police to solve crimes, and over a third said they have no faith in the police to maintain law and order.
In her speech, Johnson announced plans to give more police officers training to tackle anti-social behavior after a “decade of decline.”
“Too many town centers and high streets across the country have been gripped by an epidemic of anti-social behavior, theft and shoplifting which is corroding our communities and cannot be allowed to continue,” she said.
Russian missile hit an Egypt-bound wheat cargo ship in Black Sea: Zelensky
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- “Russia launched a strike on an ordinary civilian vessel in the Black Sea right after it left Ukrainian territorial waters,” Zelensky said
- There were no casualties from the attack, Zelensky added, urging global condemnation after the strike
KYIV: A Russian missile on Thursday morning hit an Egypt-bound cargo ship in the Black Sea carrying wheat, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The Black Sea is a crucial trading route for Ukraine, one of the world’s largest agricultural producers and exporters, but was turned into a naval battleground when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Russian missile against a wheat cargo bound for Egypt ... Russia launched a strike on an ordinary civilian vessel in the Black Sea right after it left Ukrainian territorial waters,” Zelensky said in a post on social media.
There were no casualties from the attack, Zelensky added, urging global condemnation after the strike.
“Domestic stability and normal life in dozens of countries around the world are dependent on the normal and unhindered operation of our food expert corridor,” he said.
Moscow last year pulled out of a UN-brokered deal guaranteeing safe passage for Ukraine’s agricultural exports on the Black Sea, but Kyiv has carved out a maritime corridor allowing trade to continue.
Over 5,000 ships have sailed through the grain corridor since it was created, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Wednesday.
Global food prices shot up when Russia invaded Ukraine amid fears conflict in the Black Sea would hobble global food supplies.
Sweden wants to pay immigrants up to $34,000 to return: govt
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- As of 2026, immigrants who voluntarily return to their home countries would be eligible to receive up to $34,000
STOCKHOLM: Sweden's government said Thursday it would drastically increase grants for immigrants who choose to leave the country, in order to encourage more migrants to make the choice.
As of 2026, immigrants who voluntarily return to their home countries would be eligible to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor ($34,000), up from the current 10,000 kronor, the right-wing government, which is propped up by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, said in a statement.
Polish FM sees limit on influencing Iran after Russia missiles transfer
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- “The trouble for Poland is that Iran is already under such severe sanctions that there is not that much more that we can do,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said
- “I’m disappointed, because we have a new president of Iran“
WARSAW: Poland’s foreign minister conceded Thursday that there were limits on how to influence Iran, already under heavy sanctions, after Tehran allegedly shipped short-range missiles to Russia to attack Ukraine.
Western powers this week imposed new sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector, including state carrier Iran Air, and Ukraine warned it may cut off relations with Tehran.
“The trouble for Poland is that Iran is already under such severe sanctions that there is not that much more that we can do,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said when asked if Poland, a staunch backer of Ukraine, would also sever ties.
He was speaking at a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Tuesday said that Russia could start firing the Iranian missiles into Ukraine within weeks.
Western powers had warned Iran against the move, and Sikorski noted that it came shortly after Iranians elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, seen as a reformist within the cleric-run state.
“I’m disappointed, because we have a new president of Iran. He’s supposedly not as aggressive as the previous butcher of Tehran,” Sikorski said.
“But the policy of sending missiles and drones to use against Ukraine and also using similar equipment against Israel seems to be continuing.”
Poland enjoys a long history with Iran, which took in thousands of Polish civilians during World War II.
But as a close US ally, it has joined pressure campaigns against Iran, including agreeing to host a 2019 conference encouraged by then president Donald Trump that pressured Tehran.