MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s incoming government denied a report Saturday that it plans to allow asylum-seekers to wait in the country while their claims move through US immigration courts, one of several options the Trump administration has been pursuing in negotiations for months.
The deal was seen as a way to dissuade thousands of Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the US, a process that can take years. In effect, Mexican border towns are already acting as waiting rooms for migrants hoping to start new lives in the US due to bottlenecks at the border.
“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement.
Hours earlier, The Washington Post quoted her as saying that the incoming administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution” while the US considered their applications for asylum. Lopez Obrador will take office on Dec. 1.
The statement shared with The Associated Press said the future government’s principal concern related to the migrants is their well-being while in Mexico.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that the administration of US President Donald Trump has won support from the Mexican president-elect’s team for a plan dubbed “Remain in Mexico.”
The newspaper also quoted Sanchez as saying: “For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico.”
Sanchez did not explain in the statement why The Washington Post had quoted her as saying there had been agreement.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said, “President Trump has developed a strong relationship with the incoming (Lopez) Obrador Administration, and we look forward to working with them on a wide range of issues.”
Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, described the Remain in Mexico plan as a strategy to take away the ability of migrants to live and work in the US while cases are processed. “The hope is that asylum seekers will not want to live in (Mexico) for months/years and won’t come,” Leutert said via Twitter.
US officials have said for months that they were working with Mexico to find solutions for what they have called a border crisis. One variation, called “Safe Third,” would have denied asylum claims on the grounds that asylum seekers had found haven in Mexico. President Enrique Pena Nieto offered thousands of Central Americans asylum on Oct. 26 if they agreed to remain in southern Mexico. Close to 3,000 migrants took Mexico up on the offer.
Sanchez said Saturday that the next government does not plan for Mexico to become a “Safe Third” country.
Approximately 5,000 Central American migrants have arrived in recent days to Tijuana, just south of California, after making their way through Mexico via caravan. But agents at the San Diego port of entry process fewer than 100 claims per day.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6 million, which he says is struggling to accommodate the influx. Most of the migrants are camped inside a sports complex, where they face long wait times for food and bathrooms. Hundreds of Tijuana residents have protested their arrival, complaining that recent caravans forced their way into Mexico from Guatemala.
Trump threatened Thursday to shut down the border crossing entirely if his administration determines that Mexico has lost “control” of the situation in Tijuana.
Julieta Vences, a congresswoman with Lopez Obrador’s Morena party who is also president of Mexico’s congressional migrant affairs commission, told the AP that incoming Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has been discussing with US officials how to handle a deluge of asylum claims at the border.
“They’re going to have to open the borders (for the migrants) to put in the request,” Vences said. “They will also give us dates, on what terms they will receive the (asylum) requests and in the case that they are not beneficiaries of this status, they will have to return here,” Vences said.
She said Mexico needs to examine how to accommodate the migrants without angering locals.
“When they come back, we need to see how ... we can integrate them into an economic activity so that they can develop and not generate conflict with our own communities.”
Local churches and charities have been feeding the migrants, with assistance from state and federal agencies. They have also distributed thousands of blankets, thin mattresses and personal hygiene kits.
Meanwhile, the government of the state of Baja California has identified 7,000 jobs for which migrants could possibly earn income while they await hearings in the US
Trump took to Twitter again Saturday to reiterate that he plans to do away with the US catch-and-release system, which allows asylum seekers to work and study sometimes for years while their cases are pending.
“Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court,” Trump wrote. “We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No ‘Releasing’ into the US..”
Incoming Mexico gov’t: No deal to host US asylum-seekers
Incoming Mexico gov’t: No deal to host US asylum-seekers
- “There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said
- The Washington Post quoted her as saying that the incoming administration had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution” while the US looks at their cases
UK investigating Hamas’ claim that British hostage killed in Gaza
- Foreign secretary confirms viewing video
LONDON: The UK’s Foreign Office said on Sunday it was investigating a claim by Hamas that a British-Israeli hostage in Gaza had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike over a month ago.
Nadav Popplewell, 51, was captured along with his mother Channah Peri on Oct. 7 during a border incursion when the Palestinian group launched a surprise attack on Israel.
The Foreign Office said it was actively seeking more information on the matter.
Popplewell’s family has requested media outlets refrain from airing footage released by Hamas, showing him in captivity with visible injuries, the BBC reported.
The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron, speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, confirmed viewing the video but provided no further updates on the investigation.
Cameron said: “We don’t want to say anything until we have better information.”
He described Hamas as “callous” for releasing the video and playing “with the family’s emotions in that way.”
The Foreign Office added that the department’s thoughts “are with his family at this extremely distressing time.”
The Israeli military has not issued a statement on the matter.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas has killed over 34,900 people, the majority of whom are women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel has reported that 128 hostages are unaccounted for.
UK mountaineer logs most Everest climbs by a foreigner, Nepali makes 29th ascent
- Both climbers used Southeast Ridge route to summit
- They were on separate expeditions guiding their clients
KATMANDU: A British climber and a Nepali guide have broken their own records for most climbs of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, hiking officials said on Sunday.
Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said Britain’s Kenton Cool, 50, and Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa, 54, climbed the 8,849-meter (29,032 foot) peak for the 18th and 29th time, respectively.
They were on separate expeditions guiding their clients.
“He just keeps going and going... amazing guy!” Garrett Madison of the US-based expedition organizing company Madison Mountaineering said of the Nepali climber. Madison had teamed up with Kami Rita to climb the summits of Everest, Lhotse, and K2 in 2014.
K2, located in Pakistan, is the world’s second-highest mountain and Lhotse in Nepal is the fourth-tallest.
Lukas Furtenbach of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures called Cool’s feat remarkable.
“He is a fundamental part of the Everest guiding industry. Kenton Cool is an institution,” Furtenbach, who is leading an expedition from the Chinese side of Everest, told Reuters.
Both climbers used the Southeast Ridge route to the summit.
Pioneered by the first summiteers, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, the route remains the most popular path to the Everest summit.
Kami Rita first climbed Everest in 1994 and has done so almost every year since, except for three years when authorities closed the mountain for various reasons.
He climbed the mountain twice last year.
Mountain climbing is a major tourism activity and a source of income as well as employment for Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 tallest peaks, including Everest.
Nepal has issued 414 permits, each costing $11,000 to climbers for the climbing season that ends this month.
Banning UK arms exports to Israel would strengthen Hamas, UK’s Cameron says
- Cameron said he did not support an operation in Rafah in the absence of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians
LONDON: Stopping British arms sales to Israel if it launches a ground assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip would strengthen Hamas, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Sunday.
Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate more of the southern city on Saturday in an indication it was pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack, despite US President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold the supply of some weapons if it did so.
Cameron said he did not support an operation in Rafah in the absence of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians sheltering in the southern border city.
However, Britain was in a “completely different position” to the United States in terms of providing arms to Israel, he said, noting that the less than 1 percent of Israel’s weapons that came from Britain were already controlled by a strict licensing system.
“We could, if we chose to, make a sort of political message and say we are going to take that political step,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
“The last time I was urged to do that (...), just a few days later there was a brutal attack by Iran on Israel, including 140 cruise missiles,” he added.
Cameron said the “better answer” would be for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to accept a hostage deal.
“Just to simply announce today we’re going to change our whole approach to arms exports rather than go through our careful process, it would strengthen Hamas, it would make a hostage deal less likely, I don’t think it would be the right approach,” he said.
Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed close to 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
‘Completely helpless’: Afghanistan’s north struggles to get aid after deadly floods
- Thousands of houses and livestock were also wiped out by the flash floods
- Afghanistan is prone to natural disasters, considered vulnerable to climate change
KABUL: Survivors of the deadly flash floods that ripped through northern Afghanistan were still struggling without basic aid on Sunday, as the official death toll rose to over 300.
Heavy rains on Friday triggered flash floods across at least seven provinces, including Baghlan, Ghor, Badakhshan and Takhar, injuring more than 1,600 people and destroyed about 2,600 houses, according to the latest data from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees.
Many people remain missing and livestock were wiped out as survivors picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and damaged buildings over the weekend, while authorities and humanitarian agencies deployed aid and rescue workers.
“All available resources are being mobilized, and relevant ministries and agencies are actively engaged in delivering urgent aid,” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, Afghanistan’s deputy minister for economic affairs, told survivors in Baghlan province on Sunday, as he reassured “unwavering support” from the Taliban-led government “until their lives are restored to normalcy.”
But some people in the province, which bore the brunt of the deluges, said that aid has yet to reach them.
“We haven’t received any support from the government or aid organizations yet. Everyone comes and asks us questions, then they go back,” Ghulam Nabi, who is from the province’s Burka district, told Arab News in a phone interview.
“We lost our houses and our lives. Everything we had is under mud now. The agriculture land and livestock, our only source of livelihood, are also completely destroyed. We don’t have the basic means to cook food for ourselves.”
Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods had left scores of people dead and destroyed farmlands across Afghanistan, a country where 80 percent of its more than 41 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
The South Asian nation is prone to natural disasters and is considered by the UN to be one of countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Aid group Save the Children said about 600,000 people, half of them children, live in the five districts in Baghlan that have been severely impacted by the recent floods.
“Lives and livelihoods have been washed away. The flash floods tore through villages, sweeping away homes and killing livestock. Children have lost everything,” Arshad Malik, the group’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
Most of the affected areas are still cut off on Sunday, inaccessible by trucks as roads and bridges were damaged by the floods, which also impacted other public infrastructure.
People were struggling to access essential health services, the World Health Organization said in a statement, as “several health facilities remain non-operational.”
Abdul Fatah Jawad, director of Ehsas Welfare and Social Services Organization, said that many of the flood survivors were still in shock.
“People are so scared and traumatized. Most houses that survived the flooding are emptied as people fear more floods. Families took refuge in school yards and deserted areas far from residential houses,” Jawad told Arab News.
He said families are in urgent need of basic goods, such as food, drinking water, medicine, tents, blankets and shelter. Since Saturday, his organization has managed to deliver cooked food for hundreds of families.
“People, particularly children, need to eat something … They also need cash to rebuild their houses and their businesses,” he said. “Some families lost everything — house, land, livestock, business. They are completely helpless.”
Indonesia welcomes expanded Makkah Route access as pilgrims start departing for Hajj
- Indonesia will be sending 241,000 pilgrims this pilgrimage season
- The Makkah Route initiative is available in 3 Indonesian cities
JAKARTA: Indonesia on Sunday welcomed the expansion of the Makkah Route initiative to three airports, as the first batch of the country’s largest Hajj contingent to date departed for Saudi Arabia.
The world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation will be sending 241,000 pilgrims to Saudi Arabia this year for the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.
Although the Hajj this year is expected to start on June 14 and end on June 19, many pilgrims depart early to make the most of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fulfill their religious duty.
As Indonesia’s first Hajj flight carrying nearly 400 pilgrims departed from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in the early hours of Sunday, Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas said he was grateful to the Saudi leadership for adding the Makkah Route initiative in other Indonesian cities.
“On behalf of the Indonesian government, I thank the Saudi government for providing additional fast-track facilities, other than Jakarta, it is now available in Solo and Surabaya,” Qoumas said after he sent off the first group in the Indonesian capital.
“Hopefully this will give ease, benefit, and a smooth journey for all Indonesian pilgrims.”
Launched in 2019, the Kingdom’s Makkah Route initiative is a pre-travel program created to help pilgrims meet all the visa, customs and health requirements at the airport of origin, and save them long hours of waiting before and upon arrival in Saudi Arabia.
This year, the initiative will benefit more than 128,000 Indonesian pilgrims who will leave from the three selected cities.
“We saw the fast-track service at the airport. It doesn’t take any longer than two minutes. It’s very fast, very helpful for the pilgrims. When they arrive, they don’t have to go through any other immigration process, they can just hop on the bus and begin their worship in the holy land,” Qoumas said.
This year, Saudi Arabia increased Indonesia’s quota of pilgrims by 20,000, from 221,000 last year, making it the biggest in the Southeast Asian nation’s history.
The highest quota in previous years came before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019, when the Kingdom approved a quota of 231,000 pilgrims for Indonesia.
The additional quota will help shorten the wait for some pilgrims by a few years, which is especially important for elderly pilgrims. Many Indonesians have to wait up to 45 years for their turn, according to official estimates.
Ace Hasan Syadzili, a member of Indonesia’s House of Representatives, was also present to see off the first batch of pilgrims on Sunday, commended the Makkah Route initiative.
“This is certainly helpful. Looking at the previous years, without fast track the immigration can take between two to five hours. But this fast track will speed up services for Hajj pilgrims,” Syadzili said.
“We will continue to oversee and supervise the Hajj management process this year so that it is in line with the people’s expectations.”
