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WASHINGTON – Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions knew the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy would separate families at the border but moved ahead with it anyway, a Justice Department official told lawmakers this week. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Thursday that the 2018 policy followed a test.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court postponed upcoming hearings on two Trump administration immigration policies Wednesday, after both had been reversed on the first day of President Joe Biden’s term. The court was scheduled to hear arguments in the coming weeks challenging then-President Donald Trump’s ability to divert Defense Department funds to border wall construction and.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s order that the Justice Department stop contracting with private prisons could eventually affect thousands of inmates – but not the roughly 3,000 immigrants being held in private facilities in Arizona. Biden said Tuesday that his executive order is part of an effort to promote racial equity and is needed to.

PHOENIX – Four Indigenous and Latino artists in Arizona have been chosen to create murals on a old shipping container in the Roosevelt Row Arts District for the yearlong exhibit UNCONTAINED. The project is sponsored by Roosevelt Row Community Development Corp. and its partner arts organizations. Navajo creative Jesse Yazzie is the first of the.

PHOENIX – On his first day in office, President Joe Biden sent to Congress his plan to reform the U.S. immigration system. The bill includes preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and outlines a path to permanent residence and citizenship for its recipients. That includes Reyna Montoya, an activist in Phoenix.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden made good on a campaign promise within hours of his swearing-in this week, ordering a pause in construction of the border wall and a plan for how to redirect wall funding. Opponents of the wall called the executive order “a huge win.” But they also said it is not the.

MEXICO CITY – During his first two years as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had to work with Donald Trump, who at times was antagonistic toward Mexico. During his last four years, he will work with a new president, Joe Biden. What can we expect? Mexico’s president, who’s widely know as AMLO, has been accused.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden unveiled a sweeping immigration reform bill Wednesday that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, preserve DACA and end the ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries, among other changes. The proposal, released on the first day of his presidency, is a sharp reversal from former President.

On a typical pre-pandemic weekend, the Hector Espino tianguis – or flea market – is teeming with buyers and sellers. But on a recent pandemic weekday, it was all but dead: Most of the roll-up doors were down, and the smattering of shoppers were outnumbered by shopkeepers. Tianguista Benito Encinas was helping a potential customer.

One of five stories in the series, “Hello, Joe: How Biden policies may be felt in Arizona.” WASHINGTON – After years of steadily slashing the number of refugees it will accept, the U.S. can expect to see an increase under the incoming Biden administration. An eight-fold increase and then some. President-elect Joe Biden has said.

One of five stories in the series, “Hello, Joe: How Biden policies may be felt in Arizona.” WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden has promised to roll back many of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies when he takes office next month. He’s got his work cut out for him. While President Donald Trump’s signature –.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration said Monday it will abide by a court order – for now – to start accepting new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applications, a move that could affect an estimated 682,000 undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security is already looking to appeal the Friday court ruling, but advocates for.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration said it does not know how many immigrants might be excluded from the Census under a 2019 presidential order, but it still urged the Supreme Court on Monday to overturn lower courts that blocked the proposal. That was one of the arguments raised Monday as the court considered President Donald.

WASHINGTON – The good news for prospective citizens is that they will soon have more time to take the civics test that has long been a critical part of the citizenship process. The bad news is that, beginning next week, the test will be twice as long. And harder. And there’s no bonus for getting.

WASHINGTON – Phoenix resident Rey Torres is “very happy to have been born into my culture” of a Mexican-American family – just don’t ask him if that means Democrats will be getting his vote this fall. President Donald Trump has “respect for American jobs and … a laser focus on bringing jobs back to our.

WASHINGTON – Remains of 181 migrants were found in the Arizona desert through the end of September, 37 more than in all of last year and the most since 2013, according to the group Humane Borders. The rise in migrant deaths comes during a year of intense heat and little precipitation for Arizona – but.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider whether the Trump administration can use an emergency declaration to divert $2.5 billion on Defense Department funds to construct the southern border wall. Two lower courts have rejected the administration’s argument, agreeing with opponents who argue that the emergency declaration was meant to bypass Congress.

WASHINGTON – Tohono O’odham and congressional officials are condemning the “utterly shameful” use of tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a small group of people during a peaceful border wall protest Monday near Ajo. The incident began as Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers were responding to reports that a couple dozen people had.

WASHINGTON – The number of migrants apprehended at the southern border fell sharply in fiscal 2020, a drop analysts attribute in large part fears of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic havoc left in its wake. Final numbers are set to be released Wednesday at an event with Border Patrol officials in Tucson, but apprehensions.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the status of COVID-19 cases in the facilities. The numbers cited are cumulative cases. This story has been updated. A full description of the correction can be found here. PHOENIX – La Palma Correctional Center, a privately run immigration detention center in Eloy, has recorded the most.

PHOENIX – Republican Sen. Martha McSally and Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, two military veterans battling for a congressional seat in Arizona that is drawing the attention of the nation, debated over the country’s COVID-19 response, jobs and immigration and President Trump’s attacks on Arizona Sen. John McCain. Kelly and McSally wielded the usual disdain of.

PHOENIX – Phoenix Suns guard Ty Jerome tried something for the first time in his career: a fantasy football draft. “I’m hoping for some beginner’s luck,” Jerome said. The Water Bowl Fantasy Football Draft was an entertaining and competitive experience, but more important, the event raised awareness and money for education and clean-water programs in.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge late Tuesday blocked a steep increase in application fees set to take effect Friday for people seeking U.S. citizenship, an increase that advocates feared would have locked many immigrants out. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not follow proper procedures when it ordered.

PHOENIX – On a hot summer afternoon, bags full of soccer equipment, clothing and shoes covered the floor of Monica McPherson’s garage, awaiting the arrival of a special group of kids from the North Phoenix Christian Soccer Club. Since January 2019, a Phoenix Rising FC supporters group called the Red Fury has helped provide thousands.

WASHINGTON – The National Park Service cited public safety concerns for its decision this week to prohibit access to a sacred Tohono O’odham site, a move that comes amid rising tensions between border wall protestors and federal agents. Park service officials said the decision to shut down roads to the Quitobaquito Springs, posted Monday on.

WASHINGTON – Critics of the Trump administration’s border wall on Monday welcomed a court ruling that breathed new life into a congressional lawsuit challenging the White House’s decision to divert funds to the project from other agencies. The ruling Friday by a panel of a federal circuit court in Washington said President Donald Trump’s decision.

WASHINGTON – Arizona nursing assistant Perla Macias dreamed of the day when she would be sworn in as a citizen after 21 years living in the U.S. – followed by a big family celebration afterward. She was on the verge of realizing that dream when it was derailed for six months this spring, first by.

PHOENIX – The Whiteriver Indian Hospital in eastern Arizona is combating health disparities among Native Americans by teaching new mothers strong breastfeeding practices, which research shows improves such ailments as obesity and Type 1 diabetes in kids. The medical center on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation is one of about 10 hospitals under the Indian.

WASHINGTON – Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema confronted the acting head of Homeland Security Wednesday over border wall construction she said has ignored the needs of local communities and bypassed environmental assessment reports. The questions came during a Senate Homeland Security Committee confirmation hearing on the nomination of acting Secretary Chad Wolf – who has been.

BAJO CHIQUITO, Panama – The second we stepped out of the border patrol’s 4X4’s in the Bajo Chiquito camp for migrants, dozens of shouting men and women surrounded us, clamoring to tell their stories. It was immediate, passionate, desperate. Men and women, mostly Haitian, were shouting in Spanish and French Creole, calling out their stories.

PHOENIX – As researchers race to produce an effective COVID-19 vaccine, medical professionals are urging Latinos and Black people, who are at higher risk of contracting and dying from the disease, to participate in clinical trials. But because of a long history of racism and unethical experimentation, people of color may be hesitant to roll.

PHOENIX – With polls showing him trailing in the state, President Donald Trump stopped in Phoenix on Monday to woo a key demographic that could make or break the November election and determine whether Arizona flips from red to blue: Hispanic voters. His appearance at a Latinos for Trump roundtable at Arizona Grand Resort &.

PANAMA CITY, Panama – It’s just before 9 a.m. when a client rings a buzzer outside the law office of Myrna Lopez Yuras in Panama City. As a recent immigrant from Venezuela, the client does not have permission to work in Panama. On this mid-March morning, she hopes to change that. “If you don’t (work),.

WASHINGTON – A federal court Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census, calling the order a clear violation of the law would cause lasting damage. Arizona advocates welcomed the ruling in the case, in which the city of Phoenix was one of numerous government and private plaintiffs, with one.

PANAMA CITY, Panama – In Venezuela, Nelson Diaz worked as a pharmacist and lived in the suburbs in an “American-style” house with a big backyard covered in lush grass. Now he shares a cramped, dimly lit home with his brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew in a dangerous part of Panama City. Diaz, 27, makes $1,000.

WASHINGTON – ICE this week touted the arrest of more than 2,000 immigrants, 67 of them in Arizona, in a five-week nationwide sweep as the agency recovers from a dip in apprehensions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the effort, from July 13 to Aug. 20, targeted immigrants with criminal.

PANAMA CITY, Panama – A spike in migrants moving north through Panama has law enforcement officials worried the country will become an international center for human trafficking. Last year, nearly 22,000 migrants from Haiti, Cuba and a number of African and Asian countries were detained after crossing the perilous Darién jungle along the Panama-Colombia border,.

Desperate migrants from across the globe are increasingly braving Panama’s Darién Gap – considered the most dangerous jungle in the world. Most come from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, starting in South America and traveling north, funneling through the gap in hopes of eventually reaching the United States by land. Many die en route, and.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it is making “drastic cuts” that will affect all agency services, including naturalizations, in order to avoid furloughs of nearly 70% of its workforce at the end of this month. Immigration advocates worried Wednesday that the cuts would add to an already large backlog of cases.

WASHINGTON – Mary Ann Mendoza, the Mesa mom who became an evangelist for get-tough immigration policies, apologized Tuesday for retweeting a conspiracy-laden, anti-Semitic diatribe just hours before she was to address the Republican National Convention. Mendoza was abruptly removed from Tuesday night’s lineup of speakers, where she had been scheduled to have a prime spot.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump was in Yuma Tuesday for the second time in as many months to inspect construction of the border wall that he said has “closed up the border,” reducing the flow of drugs and migrants. The visit came the same day that delegates to the Democratic National Convention were expected to.

LA PEÑITA, PANAMA – Salman Khan is 9,000 miles from his home country of Pakistan. He crossed one of the most dangerous jungles in the world. He sits in a squalid camp overseen by the Panamanian border patrol, unsure of what his future holds. But to Khan, Panama represents a path to freedom. “I want.

Wedged between a sprawl of saguaros and a busy highway in Mexico, Quitobaquito is a tiny oasis. Wildlife and Indigenous communities have long relied on this rare spring system for fresh water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The spring flows into a pond just a few paces from the U.S.-Mexico border at Organ.

BAJO CHIQUITO, Panama – It’s 90 degrees on a March Saturday morning in Bajo Chiquito, a migrant camp and main stopover for many of the thousands of migrants who head north through Panama each year, on their way to the United States. About 100 women, men and children wait in long wooden boats to continue.

PANAMA CITY, Panama – For Yordany Castillo Leyva, the decision to leave Cuba was a question of life and death. As a former forensic medical examiner, Castillo had seen his share of dead bodies. Two years into his job at a Havana hospital, he said he noticed something strange about some of the victims brought.

Today, the Latino and Hispanic population is the largest ethnic or racial minority group in the country, according to the U.S. Census. Yet, experts say their presence in the juvenile justice system is severely underreported. Many experts agree Latino, Indigenous and Hispanic youth are misidentified and poorly counted in county, state and national statistics due.

PANAMA CITY, Panama – Panama, through which tens of thousands of migrants pass each year on their journeys north, is increasingly becoming the destination for Nicaraguans who have chosen to seek refuge by moving south. Since the U.S. has tightened immigration restrictions on its southern border, migrants have sought alternative locations such as Panama and.

BAJO CHIQUITO, Panama – Billowing dust trailed the van as it barreled down a dirt road. In the back seat, Faustin Dieumes held his pregnant wife, running the remnants of a damp napkin over her face. Her body was limp and one of her palms laid face up in her lap. The couple had gone.

PHOENIX – The Trump administration said Tuesday it will stop accepting new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applications and will limit DACA renewals to one year while it undertakes a “full reconsideration” of the Obama-era policy. The Department of Homeland Security announcement comes one month after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s previous efforts to.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will exclude undocumented immigrants in the 2020 census when it comes to allocating seats in Congress, a move critics called unconstitutional and unenforceable. Opponents immediately vowed to sue over Trump’s memorandum, which comes a little more than a year after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s attempt.

PHOENIX – Conservationists expressed anger and frustration over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month not to hear an appeal to stop construction of the southern border wall. But they’re moving ahead on other legal fronts while monitoring construction as it chews through land marked by towering saguaros and home to the endangered jaguar. “It’s.

PHOENIX – The federal government is currently not accepting new applications for protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, despite a federal court’s order Friday that it resume doing so. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson said Monday that “Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice are reviewing the court.

LA PEÑITA, Panama – Nicole Elizabeth tightly hugs her 2-year-old son, David, after hours of walking in flip-flops in searing heat as her family tries to reach this indigenous village, where Panama’s border patrol has an outpost. The Haitian woman uses hand gestures to indicate they were robbed in the treacherous jungle of the Darién.

PHOENIX – Medical experts told members of Congress Wednesday that the deaths of two children in Customs and Border Protection custody could have been prevented, but called the deaths “symptoms of a more extensive system that requires much improvement.” The comments came during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that looked at the December 2018.

Bertha spent 17 days in her bedroom after testing positive for COVID-19. There, she made the soup and the “hot, hot tea” that helped her endure the headaches and coughing fits associated with the contagious respiratory disease. Bertha, an agricultural worker, said she couldn’t risk going to the kitchen or other parts of the house.

PHOENIX – MJ Gao was all set to make her roommate the godmother of her two cats, before the Trump administration reversed itself Tuesday and abruptly canceled a plan to deport some international students. “My life is here,” said Gao, who has lived in the U.S. for seven years and is set to start her.

PHOENIX – It took Maureny Reves Benitez almost two years and thousands of miles of travel by boat, bus and foot through nine countries and the most dangerous jungle in the world to reach Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She arrived near midnight on Nov. 15, 2019. As she waited in a corner of the.

PHOENIX – The head of the private company that runs a migrant detention center in Eloy told a House panel Monday he is “immensely proud” of its operations, even as lawmakers questioned its response to the COVID-19 crisis. CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger was one of four private contractors who testified before a House Homeland Security.

PANAMA CITY – Patricia Cruz and her husband, Geoffrey Godfrey, take in the view of Panama Bay from the balcony of their apartment on the 54th floor of the JW Marriott Hotel. This is a long way from their lives in Baltimore, where they were teaching in one of the city’s toughest school districts. Now.

LA PEÑITA, Panama — Tsheve Joseph Mundeke watched his 9-year-old daughter, Carla Elizabeth, collapse into the dirt at the edge of the road, exhausted. They were only a few miles from their next stop, the village of La Peñita, but after a weeklong trek through Panama’s Darién Gap – considered the most dangerous jungle in.

PHOENIX – Just days after President Donald Trump was in Yuma to praise construction of the border wall last week, a federal court reaffirmed its ruling that the administration’s method of funding that construction was “unlawful.” The ruling Friday by a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the administration’s.

TUCSON – President Donald Trump’s border wall now stretches along just more than 200 miles of U.S.-Mexico borderland. Progress hasn’t slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic; in some places it’s even accelerating. But there’s a tiny swath of tribal land along the lower Colorado River where that’s not the case. The Cocopah Reservation sits in the.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump toured a newly finished section of border wall Tuesday in Yuma, crediting it not only for a reduction in border crossings and drugs but claiming it has helped prevent “a coronavirus catastrophe” on the southern border. Trump, trailing a number of Republican elected officials, was in Arizona to mark the.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday suspending H-1B, L-1, J and other temporary work visas until the end of the year, while also extending the hold on green cards for new immigrants. The suspension is in addition to an earlier order signed April 22, which put a 60-day restriction on the.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump is set to visit Yuma Tuesday to celebrate the completion of 216 miles of border wall, well shy of the 450 miles he has pledged to have built by the end of this year. But experts note that the pace of construction has picked up in recent years and that,.

PHOENIX – For almost three years, Phoenix resident Jennifer Rodriguez Garcia said she has lived with the fear immigration officials will deport her to a country she has never known and separate her from her 2-year-old daughter. Until Thursday. “Today I can breathe again,” Rodriguez Garcia said, after learning that the Supreme Court reversed the.

PHOENIX – Sirens blared, lights flashed and helicopters roared overhead as protesters walked the streets of downtown Phoenix the last weekend of May, echoing the demands heard across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death: “No justice, no peace!” Then came rubber bullets and tear gas, scattering protesters and bystanders as police enforced.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court breathed new life into the endangered DACA program Thursday, ruling that the Trump administration’s attempt to end the program was arbitrary and capricious and must be reversed. The 5-4 ruling by the sharply divided court means close to 650,000 immigrants who were in danger of being deported can breathe a.

PHOENIX – The Trump administration has unveiled its furthest-reaching plan yet to change asylum law in the U.S., redefining the meaning of “persecution” and raising the bar for refugees seeking protection under the Convention Against Torture, among other changes. The 161-page proposal, officially posted Monday in the Federal Register, would also streamline the asylum-approval process,.

PHOENIX – Customs and Border Protection officials spent funds that were supposed to go to medical care and migrant processing facilities to pay for computer upgrades, canine units, ATVs and other items instead, a new government report shows. The Government Accountability Office said Thursday that CBP violated the law when it took money allocated specifically.

PHOENIX – Despite promising trends last week, the Navajo Department of Health reported a spike in COVID-19 cases Monday, with 98 new cases and five additional deaths. As of Sunday, the total number of deaths on the Navajo Nation reservation was 246. Officials said 5,348 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, and they estimated 1,840.

MEXICO CITY – The COVID-19 pandemic has given the Mexican government an opportunity to make changes to its renewable energy market. And some fear this could bring higher rates, less investment and more state control. In late April, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador instructed new renewable energy plants to yield the production to.

PHOENIX – About half of low-income Latino households and just as many Latino-owned businesses said they have not received any support from the massive COVID-19 relief bills, according to a nationwide poll released Wednesday. The survey of 1,800 Latinos across all 50 states oversampled residents of six states, including Arizona. What it found was 48%.

PHOENIX – Sharing meals is generally frowned upon in the socially distanced, stay-at-home world of COVID-19, but one aid group is embracing the notion – figuratively, at least. “Share a Meal With a Refugee,” a program run by the Welcome to America Project, collects donated gift cards to share with refugee families, a group that.

PHOENIX – Jennifer Pastrana calls her mom a traditional Hispanic mother, working multiple jobs to provide for her family and save some money, and leaving little time for visits to the doctor – much less CPR training. But it’s not just Pastrana’s mom. A study last year found bystander CPR – given, as the name.

AUSTIN, Texas – In a charter school gymnasium on the city’s north side, dozens of families fill the bleachers as four pairs of Latina mothers and daughters talk about emotions too often considered taboo in their culture. Building strength. Having courage. Forming bonds, as parent and child, to overcome any hardships that may come their.

PHOENIX – The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything from how most Americans work and shop to how they socialize – even if they can be in the same room. For Maria Leon Peña, it could change her chances of staying in this country. The Phoenix nursing assistant is one of an estimated 29,000 health care.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending immigration in the face of the coronavirus will “not have much of an effect” on the jobs the president said he’s trying to protect, experts on both sides of the issue said Wednesday. The order, signed Wednesday, will deny visas to new immigrants for 60 days but.

PHOENIX – Immigration experts and advocates aren’t sure how to assess President Donald Trump’s Monday evening tweet announcing his intention to temporarily suspend immigration, but they reject the idea that immigrants will compete with thousands of Americans thrown out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they suggest his administration concentrate on making more.

PHOENIX – Border agents turned away 6,306 migrants at the southern border in just 10 days after President Donald Trump authorized the immediate return of immigrants and asylum seekers under a 1944 law to check communicable diseases like COVID-19. Critics charge that the spread of coronavirus was merely a pretext to the administration’s real goal.

WASHINGTON – Migrant farmworkers are in “serious danger” of contracting coronavirus because of ongoing poor conditions, such as overcrowded housing, buses and lack of access to health care, according to a new report. The report by the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante group surveyed 100 migrant workers from Mexico with temporary H-2A visas from.

PHOENIX – Three U.S. Customs and Border Patrol employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in Arizona, bringing the number of confirmed cases among CBP employees in the state to six as of Sunday, April 5. Nationwide, there have been 160 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among CBP employees, according to the agency’s website. No deaths have.

PHOENIX – Nearly a month into a seemingly worldwide shutdown, it may be hard to find an everyday business or public area that has not been closed because of COVID-19. Many companies have allowed their employees to work from home, but businesses deemed essential are still in operation. This includes grocery stores, fuel stations, banks,.

PHOENIX – A group of immigrant detainees have filed suit against U.S. officials, alleging federal inaction during the COVID-19 outbreak endangers those in detention and violates the Constitution. In a lawsuit filed March 30, four Cuban asylum seekers and one green-card holder facing deportation accused the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and Immigration.

PHOENIX – The state is adding $600 to the maximum weekly unemployment benefit of $240, and the first checks should go out as soon as next week, the Arizona Department of Economic Security said Wednesday. The money was added in response to the tidal wave of workers laid off because of the novel coronavirus, with.

PHOENIX – On March 16, the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a public alert aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. The problem: For days, it was in English only – leaving millions of non-English speakers in the U.S. without direct guidance from the federal government amid the deadly.

PHOENIX – Nearly 10 years ago, Senate Bill 1070, the heavily disputed and highly controversial Arizona immigration law, became law. Dubbed the “Show me your papers” law, SB 10170 required law enforcement to check the immigration status of anyone they “reasonably suspected” was in the country illegally. But the law also sparked a movement within.

PHOENIX – A new report from the data firm Civis Analytics says Maricopa County is at risk of the second greatest undercount in the 2020 census – which could end in losses up to $13.2 million in federal funding for some communities that already are underserved. The report estimates a 70,500 undercount in the county,.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. and Mexico will stop all “nonessential” border crossings after midnight Friday in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, but goods and essential workers will still be allowed to cross, the White House announced Friday. The action comes just days after similar restrictions between the U.S. and Canada and.

WASHINGTON – Border officials will start turning away all undocumented migrants and asylum seekers beginning Saturday, in what President Donald Trump called an effort to protect “our border agents, migrants and to the public at large” from COVID-19. The move, announced in tandem Friday with new restrictions on travel to and from Mexico, was defended.

PHOENIX – Immigration judges, attorneys and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyers are calling on the Department of Justice to close all immigration courts because it’s dangerous to hold people in public spaces as COVID-19 continues to spread. The department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review operates four courts in Arizona. The courts’ websites and automated.

WASHINGTON – One of the first things Ken Cuccinelli did after being named acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was to issue a directive sharply cutting the amount of time migrants have to make their case for asylum. One problem – Cuccinelli was not legally the acting director, a court ruled. That March.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump told an audience of Latino business leaders Wednesday that Hispanics are seeing economic gains across the board as a result of tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks that have led to “the booming Trump economy.” Trump’s comments were warmly received at a legislative summit held by the Latino Coalition, a business.

TUCSON – Bandages, blood pressure machines and other medical supplies clutter a folding table as student volunteers from the University of Arizona provide patients with much needed care they might not otherwise get. Immigrants, some in the country legally and others not, came to a local resource center on this day to have their blood.

WASHINGTON – Advocates were not surprised but “truly heartbroken” Monday when the Supreme Court overturned a lower court that had said a Mexican family could sue a Border Patrol agent in Nogales who shot and killed their son in 2012. The high court’s order followed its 5-4 ruling last week in a nearly identical case.

WASHINGTON – Two Arizonans from two points on the border brought two very different ideas about the border wall to a congressional hearing Thursday. While Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. repeated his opposition to the wall and the damage it’s causing sacred sites, Arivaca rancher Jim Chilton said the wall is needed to protect.

WASHINGTON – An emotional Tohono O’odham Nation chairman told lawmakers Wednesday that blasting on sacred sites in national monuments to build a border wall near his reservation has “forever damaged our people.” “I know in my heart and what our elders have told us and what we have learned that that area is home to.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico – Just south of the U.S. border, Sonora’s stunning 2,700-square-mile El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve is an otherworld landscape dotted with enormous craters, sand dunes and lava flows. In 2013, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its outstanding biodiversity, including such endemic species as the endangered.

WASHINGTON – A divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a Border Patrol agent in Texas who shot across the border and killed a teen in Mexico cannot be sued by the boy’s parents for the death. That case is almost identical to a cross-border shooting in Nogales, where courts had said the family could sue.

PHOENIX – For more than two years, advocates for transgender people have alleged mistreatment of migrant detainees at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico. Late last month, they say, their efforts partially paid off when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement temporarily closed the facility and transferred 27 transgender women to other detention centers..

SAN LUIS RÍO COLORADO, Mexico – Inside Casa del Migrante, the piercing screams of an 8-year-old boy echo from a room. Other children, curious and uncertain, look on as Jordan Ramírez battles two nurses trying to vaccinate him against influenza, chicken pox and measles. Jordan’s family arrived here 15 days earlier from their home in.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled that Customs and Border Protection cannot hold migrants for more than 48 hours in its Tucson-area facilities, which he said were not designed to meet “basic human needs … for extended periods.” The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David Bury found the situation at some of the nine.

PHOENIX – As a Somali refugee and determined activist, Naruro Hassan is used to other people speaking on behalf of the refugee community. Yet she was finally able to make her own voice heard Feb. 10, when a group of more than 50 lobbyists for refugee rights joined her at the Arizona Capitol to attend.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration took another step toward expediting construction of a border wall Tuesday, announcing it is waiving federal contracting regulations to fast track construction in four states, including Arizona. The targeted regulations, dealing with contracting, pricing and wage regulations, need to be waived “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads”.

PHOENIX – Inaccurate census figures can lead to a loss of federal funds essential for many communities, and they can result in a state losing seats in Congress. These worries are especially prevalent in Arizona, where there are considerable populations of immigrants and Native Americans. Census Bureau officials are working to clear up any doubts.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration plans to tap the Pentagon for another $3.8 billion in military funds to pay for border wall construction this year, a move critics blasted as “theft,” a raid and a money grab. The fund transfers, detailed in Defense Department budget documents uncovered Thursday, would use money that had been budgeted.

WASHINGTON – Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris said the “controlled blasting” for a border wall that will ultimately cut through his reservation is just the latest example of the federal government ignoring its duty to consult with tribes. Federal agencies involved in border wall construction “are in violation of their own policies since meaningful.

WASHINGTON – Critics are calling a Trump administration plan to curb so-called “birth tourism” unenforceable at best and “rooted in misogyny, xenophobia and racism” at worst, and say it is targeting the wrong people. President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the State Department to stop issuing visas to women who are traveling to this country.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Monday that the Trump administration can enforce its proposed new “public charge” rule that will require immigrants show they won’t need public assistance before they can gain admission to the U.S. The court’s 5-4 order lifts lower court injunctions that had blocked the rule, and lets it take effect.

WASHINGTON – They were Democratic and Republican mayors from cities large and small across the country, but officials on the panel Wednesday on immigration agreed – it’s an issue they all grapple with. For Mesa Mayor John Giles, the U.S. Conference of Mayors event “reiterated to me that immigration, and immigration reform issues, are not.

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court Friday affirmed the convictions of two Mexican men in the 2010 murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a gun battle near Rio Rico. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by Ivan Soto-Barraza and Jesus Lionel Sanchez-Meza that.

KYKOTSMOVI – Vanissa Barnes-Saucedo was 21 when military recruiters stopped her in a shopping mall, waving enlistment papers in front of her. Although she says she wasn’t entirely sure what she was getting herself into, she signed the papers anyway. For the next six years, Barnes-Saucedo was stationed around the world: Virginia, Colorado, South Korea,.

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court agreed that an Iraqi refugee can be deported after he was convicted in Arizona of aggravated assault, a first-time offense that netted him a sentence of just 48 hours behind bars. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that Mohammed Mostafa Altayar, 31,.

WASHINGTON – Even as it was losing the fight to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, the bureau was running tests last summer that it now claims show the question would not have affected response rates. That finding will not affect the 2020 Census, but advocates say it is a distraction they don’t.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration waived environmental and other regulations on nearly one-quarter of Arizona’s border with Mexico last year to ease the way for border wall construction, a review of government documents shows. The Department of Homeland Security issued three separate “section 102” waivers this year covering 90.2 miles of border in Yuma, Pima.

TIJUANA, Baja California, Mexico – Richard Avila was 17 when a military recruiter showed up at his home to persuade his parents to let him join the Marines. He enlisted in 1972. Avila was shipped to the Philippines within months of turning 18. The Vietnam War was coming to a close, and Avila and other.

TIJUANA, Baja California, Mexico – Emilio Hoyos Hernández, who was born in Tijuana, spent his early years moving across the porous U.S.-Mexico border. His family relocated to Los Angeles when he was 2½ and lived there until he was 9. After completing elementary school in Tijuana, Hoyos Hernández moved back to the U.S. to continue.

TIJUANA, Baja California, Mexico – For almost 10 years, Yolanda Varona has watched her children grow up through a computer screen. Varona arrived in the U.S. from Mexico in 1995 on a tourist visa and set out to make a life for herself, son and daughter. She had a job, a car and even a.

MEXICO CITY – The Spanish Conquistadors arrived at the capital of the Aztec empire five centuries ago, igniting the brutal, relentless European colonization of the Americas. And for many Mexicans, the encounter between the two worlds is a prevailing, painful clash. On Nov. 8, 1519, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin – also known as Moctezuma II – emperor.

TIJUANA, Baja California, Mexico – In a neighborhood just south of San Diego stands a narrow, two-story home connected to a tire shop. It’s where U.S. military veterans go after the country they served deports them and there’s nowhere else to turn. The men and women it serves call the place the Bunker. Officially known.

WASHINGTON – The $1.4 trillion budget that Congress passed last week contained $1.375 billion for border wall construction in fiscal 2020 – what one expert called a “mixed bag” in which neither side got all it wanted. The funding, rolled into a must-pass Defense spending bill before lawmakers left town for their holiday recess, was.

MEXICO CITY – Music can be used to build bridges or to protest injustices. And when it comes to new indigenous music, it also is a way to preserve languages and culture – and fight against the atrocities of colonialism. The anti-establishment roots of rock and hip-hop find fertile soil in indigenous cultures. In a.

SANTA FE, N.M. – For decades, actors wearing Spanish armor and colorful costumes would parade into the city’s plaza on horseback to perform the Entrada, a reimagined historical moment. “Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, I have been sent here by his majesty the king with full pardon for all of you,” an actor portraying Don.

WASHINGTON – Just hours after a bitterly partisan impeachment vote, the House turned around Thursday and gave overwhelming bipartisan approval to a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that could affect billions of dollars in annual trade for Arizona. The 385-41 vote is just one step in the approval process for the USMCA deal, but it was.

TUCSON – Melissa Ortiz, a freelance software developer, encounters a lot of situations that make her feel uneasy. Ortiz has become hyperaware that her chosen industry largely excludes people who look like her. First, there was the biweekly meetup with 20 people – only three others were women, and she was the only Hispanic in.

PHOENIX – It’s late October but still too warm for fall. The sun pours through the open panels of the rose-colored walls of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, where men and women from different cultures and backgrounds are filing in for Friday prayers – jumu’ah, in Arabic. Inside, the sound of the athan, the.

SAN FRANCISCO – With a paintbrush in one hand, a can of red paint in the other and a cowboy hat atop his graying head, Dennis Turner began up-and-down strokes along a white brick wall that faces the San Francisco Bay. He traced the same word he painted 50 years ago on a decommissioned prison.

WASHINGTON – A new report claims there have been 636 violent attacks on asylum seekers returned to Mexico under a Trump administration policy, with close to half of those incidents coming in just the last two months. The report by Human Rights First looked at what happens to immigrants subject to the U.S. government’s Migrant.

PHOENIX – Diplomas in hand, 16 Navajo women became the latest graduating class of Project DreamCatcher, a free business training program that aims to create economic opportunities for female Native entrepreneurs. The program is the result of a partnership between the Freeport-McMoRan Foundation and the Thunderbird School of Global Management, which is part of Arizona.

PHOENIX – In Arizona, 46% of K-12 students are Latinx, but the state Board of Education has only about 10% Latinx representation, according to education reform advocates. Luis Avila, who has worked in education reform for more than 20 years, on Monday launched Arizona Latino Leaders in Education to help Latinx students get a fair.

WASHINGTON – Immigration experts and advocates in Arizona are urging people to file their paperwork as soon as possible as federal agencies eye steeper processing fees across a broad range of citizenship forms. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans this month to raise the fees it charges for everything from applying for naturalization to.

PHOENIX – As Phoenix moves forward with plans to build a Latino Cultural Center, the location remains uncertain. The city formed an ad hoc committee led by Vice Mayor Betty Guardado and City Councilman Michael Nowakowksi to create a strategic plan and recommend a cultural center location. The committee picked a former church at the.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security said it will bus asylum seekers from Tucson to El Paso, Texas, where they will be sent back to Mexico to await a decision on their claims under the Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols. The move marks the expansion of the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy to Tucson,.

PHOENIX – A new state poll shows a yawning divide among Republicans and Democrats on key Arizona issues, including immigration, climate change, housing affordability and gun control. But registered independents may well become a deciding factor in the 2020 elections, according to a poll by the ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy. About 35% of.

WASHINGTON – A House committee gave preliminary approval Thursday to a bill that would add 20,000 farmworker visas and let some workers apply for permanent legal residency, despite Republican concerns that it could open the door to more illegal immigration. The 18-12 vote Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee split on party lines that reflected.

PHOENIX – Somalian refugee Mahad Mohamed started a soccer team in 2008 to provide a sense of community for other African refugees in Arizona. He called the team Walalaha, the Somali word for brothers. One of its best players, Kadar Abdifidhin, who joined the 28-player team as an 8 year old, said Walalaha FC Phoenix.

WASHINGTON – House members sparred Tuesday over the Trump administration’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum-seekers, with Democrats calling it unsafe and “abhorrent” and Republicans saying it has helped reduce a massive backlog in immigration courts. The policy, introduced in January by the Department of Homeland Security, lets the government accept asylum requests from.

EL PASO, Texas – Greeted by a crisp morning breeze and the calming flow of a canal along the Rio Grande, believers from all corners of the world joined together under their faith for the 22nd annual Misa Fronteriza, or Border Mass. Hosted by the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso in conjunction with the.

PHOENIX – Mitzi Castro hears the light rail train pass by her home every 15 minutes, a grim reminder, she said, of her experience on Wednesday, when Phoenix police stopped her because she hadn’t validated her $4 light rail ticket. That confrontation, she said, could have led to her detention and deportation to Mexico. On.

WASHINGTON – Dozens of House Democrats renewed calls Friday for the Defense Department to investigate the legality of President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy thousands of active-duty and National Guard troops to the U.S-Mexico border. The call comes 18 months after Trump sent guardsmen to help Border Patrol agents handle what he called a crisis.

WASHINGTON – For the first time in at least a year, more adult immigrants were apprehended at the southern border than families, according to October apprehension numbers released Thursday by Customs and Border Protection. Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a White House briefing that October marked a significant “shift in the demographics” of.

EL PASO, Texas – Authorities say Patrick Crusius loaded his guns into his car on Aug. 3 and drove more than 650 miles from a Dallas suburb to El Paso, on a mission to stop what he called a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Targeting Latinos, Crusius killed 22 people and injured 24 more when he.

LA MORA, Sonora, Mexico – The day this town buried its dead began like many others. As mourners poured in from around Mexico and the United States, daily chores still needed to be done, including feeding the chickens and milking the cows. “You guys already got two gallons!” one young boy yelled during morning milk.

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court justices appeared split Tuesday on whether the family of a Mexican teen who was shot across the border and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Texas can sue the agent. A court in Texas said the family could not, but another court in a nearly identical case in Nogales said.

WASHINGTON – Hundreds of protesters crowded the street outside the Supreme Court Tuesday, chanting “si, se puede” and “home is here” as justices inside the court weighed the future of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA recipients traveled from across the country, including several from Arizona, to voice their support for the.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court grappled Tuesday with the push to end the DACA program, with some justices suggesting that the Trump administration’s justification for the move was flimsy and did not take into account its full impact. But other justices seemed to agree with Solicitor General Noel Francisco that the administration had provided more.

PHOENIX – Arizona DACA recipients wavered between expectation and resignation Tuesday while the Supreme Court considered the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative, a 2012 presidential order that protects 660,000 people from deportation across the country. “You don’t have the ability to plan for the future because you don’t know if you’ll.

NOGALES, Ariz. – While she waits for a family member to pick her up, Daniela Minerva sits near the pedestrian gate in Nogales, Arizona, painting her nails. She often spends time waiting in this spot in order to see her husband who lives in Mexico. When she visits Nogales, Sonora, she needs to plan at.

WASHINGTON – Arizonan Yazmin Irazoqui-Ruiz can’t be in Washington when the Supreme Court considers whether the Trump administration can end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has allowed her to stay in this country and go to medical school. But Irazoqui-Ruiz will still have a presence in the courtroom Tuesday – as.

WASHINGTON – Just over half of voters in southern border states disapprove of the way President Donald Trump is handling border and immigration issues, according to a new report by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center. The survey of 2,750 voters from the four southern border states also found that no more than 40% of those.

TUCSON – Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly defeated Proposition 205, which would have declared Tucson the state’s first sanctuary city. The vote came amid warnings from the Trump administration of possible federal sanctions costing the city millions of dollars. More than 70% of voters said no to the proposition in Arizona’s second-largest city, known for its.

WASHINGTON – Lawyers in Arizona and southern Nevada said they have started receiving notices that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to set new court dates for their clients who are currently protected from deportation by DACA. The notices started coming just weeks before the Supreme Court’s Nov. 12 arguments on several challenges to the Trump.

PHOENIX – A new health initiative is helping Arizona companies create and promote a culture of wellness among their Hispanic employees, some of whom may not speak English. The free initiative, Por Tu Salud, is the Spanish-language version of Wellness AtoZ, a health care program launched by the Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation. Por Tu Salud.

WASHINGTON – Arizona farm groups said a proposal to expand the immigrant workforce and make it easier for those workers to stay in the U.S. is an important first step toward solving the problem of getting and keeping reliable workers. But it’s only a first step, they said, and will need further tweaking. The farm.

WASHINGTON – The acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services insisted to a House panel that there are no new plans to end “medical deferred action,” but Democrats called the administration “cruel” for considering the notion in the first place. Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing came nearly two months after USCIS reversed its plan to.

WASHINGTON – Hector Barajas-Varela is an Army veteran, proud to have served the United States as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division – even after the country deported him twice. A lawful permanent resident who was raised in Compton, California, and enlisted at age 17, Barajas-Varela occasionally choked back tears as he testified about.

WASHINGTON – Zaki Lababidi remembers when the Syrian community in Arizona was a close-knit group, holding social events and fundraisers to help people back home. But now, he says, the community is feeling the chilling effects of the conflict in their native land thousands of miles away. “You are 10,000 miles away, and you are.

PHOENIX – Some U.S. residents with Latin American roots have nuanced views about their identity, ethnicity and culture. They may describe themselves as Latino, while others prefer Hispanic, Chicano or Latinx. Although they might not agree on a term, something binds them in a special way: Spanish and English. In the United States, centuries of.

PHOENIX – Dogs barked in the distance as a knock came on the door of the home shared by Iris del Carmen Flores and her partner, Yadira Mendez Barrientos. It was the middle of the night Dec. 2. The women opened their door to find two armed men, dressed all in black and demanding to.

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is moving forward with plans to collect DNA samples from immigration detainees, including those without criminal offenses, raising alarms among both privacy and immigration advocates. In a notice to be posted Tuesday to the Federal Register, the department said the proposed change would bring people with immigration violations in line.

WASHINGTON – The dream of a national museum dedicated to the Latin American experience took one step closer to reality Thursday, as lawmakers and advocates touted a bill that they think has a good chance of putting a museum on the National Mall. A building may still be years away, but advocates said it is.

WHITERIVER – On a cool evening, crickets chirp in tall grass. A fresh breeze carries the songs of cicadas, and as members of the White Mountain Apache Tribe come together, a murmur of voices can be heard. Several dozen men, women and children form a circle around tribal elder Lenora Ethelbah, and she begins to.

WASHINGTON – Applications for “domestic violence green cards” have risen steadily since the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, but the percentage flagged possibly fraudulent has risen at an even faster pace. Whether that’s because government officials are more suspicious of immigrant applicants or merely doing their jobs – or whether it’s.

PHOENIX – Changes in the “public charge” immigration policy were temporarily blocked by federal judges in three states on Friday, days before they were set to go into effect this week. The proposed changes would have put immigrants entering the country and those seeking green cards under more scrutiny if they have used or were.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Texas Friday blocked an administration plan to use $3.6 billion in Pentagon funds for border wall construction, calling President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure the funds “unlawful.” U.S. District Judge David Briones said Trump cannot use the declaration to get around the budget Congress approved.

WASHINGTON – Two weeks after a federal court halted some detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Arizona law enforcement agencies say they are still doing business with the agency as usual. A U.S. District judge in Central California ruled last month that ICE requests to hold people based solely on an electronic database of.

WASHINGTON – Border officers apprehended nearly 1 million migrants at the southern border in fiscal 2019, an 88 percent increase over the previous year, according to Customs and Border Protection numbers released Tuesday. Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said at a White House press briefing that the “staggering” increase was one that “no immigration system.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday let stand lower court rulings that Maricopa County is responsible for controversial policing practices of the county sheriff’s office under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It’s the second time this year the high court has refused to hear an appeal from the county in the racial profiling case, after.

WILLCOX – A handful of voices softly chattering in Spanish filter into a building that’s become the heart of Winchester Heights, a Willcox neighborhood filled with farmworkers. The community center is dedicated to connecting southeastern Arizona residents – with one another and with better health care. As the clock nears 6 p.m., more men and.

PHOENIX – Immigration officials are not the “bad guys” trying to make the lives of law-abiding immigrants miserable but are going after undocumented immigrants who commit crimes, an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Friday. “We’re human ourselves,” said Albert Carter, acting field office director for ICE enforcement removal operations in Phoenix. “We have.

WASHINGTON – Arizona lawmakers split on party lines this week as Congress voted again to terminate President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border, which he has cited to justify use of Pentagon funds for border construction. The resolution passed by the Senate Wednesday and the House Friday is virtually identical to.

WASHINGTON – Refugee organizations in Arizona and nationally said they were disappointed, but not surprised, at a Trump administration plan to reduce the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. to the lowest level in modern history next year. White House officials announced late Thursday that the administration was proposing to cap the number of.

PHOENIX – The Trump administration has reversed course in its decision to end a process allowing medically vulnerable migrants to apply through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a stay of deportation. In a memo dated Sept. 19, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Citizenship and Immigration Services, alerted Congress that “… at the.

WASHINGTON – Arizonans on opposite sides of the immigration debate were in Washington Wednesday where they rallied on opposite sides of the Capitol in hopes of making their respective cases to Congress. On the West Front, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb joined close to 200 other sheriffs, lawmakers and “angel families” to say the U.S..

WASHINGTON – Five asylum-seeking families have sued the government for the “substantial and ongoing trauma” they say they suffered after being separated from one another when they crossed the border from Mexico into Arizona last year. The lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on behalf of five mothers and their children,.

WASHINGTON – An inspector general’s report on the mental health of migrant children in federal detention found multiple shortcomings in how officials cared for children in custody last fall, with significant trauma and worsening mental health problems. Four Arizona detention facilities were among those surveyed for the report, which pointed to a shortage of clinicians,.

WASHINGTON – Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey joined business leaders in Washington on Monday to push for final approval of the “critical” U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement and protect trade that is worth billions in trade to the state. Ducey and Arizona Chamber of Commerce President Glenn Hamer, speaking to a meeting of U.S. Chamber of Commerce members from.

WASHINGTON – Critics vowed Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Trump administration’s restrictive asylum policy move forward will not be the last word and that they intend to keep challenging the plan. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli welcomed the ruling that said the administration can enforce the policy for.

WASHINGTON – Advocates reacted with alarm Tuesday to published reports that the Trump administration may again cut the number of refugees allowed in to the U.S., a move they said would endanger vulnerable people and tarnish the country’s standing. President Donald Trump has cut refugee admission limits every year since he took office, from a.

WASHINGTON – Apprehensions at the southern border dropped sharply in August, to just more than 64,000 people, in part because of increased cooperation from Mexican authorities, a Customs and Border Protection official said Monday. But while apprehensions have fallen by more than half since peaking at 144,255 in May, this August was still higher than.

WASHINGTON – Two years after the Trump administration announced plans to kill Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program still has a pulse – though advocates worry about how long that might last. On Sept. 5, 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Obama-era initiative to protect young immigrants from deportation would be phased.

WASHINGTON – Border construction near Yuma will receive almost $1.3 billion of the $3.6 billion the Defense Department said it will divert from planned military projects under the national border emergency declared in February by President Donald Trump. Among the 127 Pentagon projects scheduled to lose funding this year for Trump’s border construction push is.

WASHINGTON – Arizona joined 12 other states this week that asked the Supreme Court to roll back Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that they say has caused “irreparable harm” to their states. The brief was filed on behalf of 12 attorneys general and one governor, all Republicans, who claimed that the program is.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has long complained about the Flores agreement, a 1997 court ruling that severely limits the amount of time that migrant children can be detained by the government. In theory, getting rid of the decades-old policy that the administration calls an immigration law “loophole” that incentivizes border crossing and forces family.

PHOENIX – Neon strobes flash as the eager crowd hollers and holds their drinks aloft. Music blares from the speakers as the emcee announces Rosie Cheeks, who strides onstage in high heels and a wide, black cape, ready to reveal her sparkling jumpsuit to her fans. Before Rosie Cheeks can strut her stuff, Steven Juniel.

TEOTIHUACAN – Adrian Aleman Martinez has spent the summer digging a hole in the ground. But not just any hole; this one offers a window into pre-Aztec civilization in central Mexico. On a recent day, he knelt on his right knee, gingerly scraped a trowel across the bottom of the hole, and dumped dirt into.

MEXICO CITY – One of the country’s main business organizations is concerned with rising violence and crime, and it blames part of the problem on guns flowing across the border from the United States. “There’s no development without safety,” said Gustavo de Hoyos, president of the Mexican Employers Confederation. Data from the Mexican government quoted.

WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee pushed through a Republican-backed asylum reform bill on a party-line vote Thursday over the strident objections of Democrats, who were blocked from offering amendments to it. The Secure and Protect Act of 2019 would force migrants to apply for asylum at new facilities outside the U.S., increase the number.

WASHINGTON – With border apprehensions at their highest level in a decade, all sides at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday agreed that the situation at immigrant detention facilities has reached crisis levels. But potential solutions remained elusive. Republicans blamed current immigration laws for providing an incentive that is encouraging migrants to make the.

PUERTO PEÑASCO, Mexico – Cruise ships will be launching from Rocky Point for the first time this winter, but a long-awaited cruise port in this beach town won’t be finished by the time they set sail. Construction began in 2013 on a cruise port in Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, as it’s known to Arizona.

WASHINGTON – Immigration advocates are vowing to continue to fight the use of Defense Department funds for construction of a border wall, after the Supreme Court late Friday lifted an injunction on the funds transfer. The court’s divided ruling was hailed as a “big victory” by President Donald Trump, who declared a national emergency in.

PHOENIX – Bilingual signs are the first thing you see as you approach the front doors of the old Ann Ott Elementary School. “Bienvenidos,” one reads in Spanish. “Welcome.” The south Phoenix school, which has stood empty since 2007, is being transformed into the Phoenix Welcome Center, a shelter for migrant families seeking asylum in.

WASHINGTON – A House panel grilled administration officials Thursday over migrant family separations and conditions at border detention facilities, but the hearing produced more partisan sparks than answers. Both sides at the House Judiciary Committee hearing said the situation at the border has reached crisis levels – but they agreed on little else. Republicans accused.

PHOENIX – Members of the Valley’s Puerto Rican community gathered Wednesday evening at the state capitol to demand the resignation of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who has been under pressure since the leak of private chat messages he and members of his staff exchanged. A PDF released last week by Puerto Rico’s Center of.

PHOENIX – Mark Bailey comes from Scottish and Mexican heritage, and he prefers Irish pubs. On a late morning, he sits in a booth at Rosie McCaffrey’s pub in central Phoenix, chatting with the waitresses as they navigate the narrow space, balancing trays of Guinness and burgers. Bailey’s arms are covered in tattoos carrying symbolic.

PHOENIX – The Trump administration wants to set new barriers for migrants seeking asylum at the southern border. The new rule, published Monday in the Federal Register, states that asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border will no longer be able to apply for asylum in the U.S. if they pass through another country on their way.

TUCSON – Casa Alitas, a nonprofit program that offers short-term shelter to migrants seeking asylum, is poised to move from a former Benedictine monastery to an empty juvenile detention center. “That monastery has been purchased by a private developer and will begin to be developed sometime in August,” Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said. “Therefore,.

WASHINGTON – With deportation sweeps expected to start in major cities this weekend and footage of migrant families held in what critics call “deplorable” conditions at the border, immigration rhetoric heated up Friday on Capitol Hill. Hispanic Caucus members blasted planned roundups this weekend by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, telling of frightened families and children.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday that his administration is “absolutely moving forward” with a push to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, just hours after the Census Bureau said it would not do so. The apparent reversal was dismissed by advocates as a “scare tactic” by the president aimed at keeping.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. PHOENIX – The dozens of protesters gathered outside the office of Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton’s office on Tuesday said they have seen enough of how officials treat migrants at detention centers. “It is a humanitarian crisis,” protester Hannah Pynn said. “And when children are crying out for their mothers and they’re.

WASHINGTON – Arizona Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, and Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, don’t often find themselves on the same side of an issue. But they were among the 102 House members who voted against an emergency border funding bill Thursday, a vote that scrambled the nearly party-line vote of just two days earlier on a Democrat-backed.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court handed a temporary victory Thursday to opponents of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, saying the government will have to go back and make a better case in lower courts if it wants to include the question. That could be difficult for the Census Bureau, which had said that.

WASHINGTON – Arizona representatives split down party lines Tuesday as the House approved $4.5 billion in emergency border funding, setting up a showdown with the Senate which passed its own version of the measure Wednesday. The votes come as federal officials say they could be just days away from running out of money to handle.

LOS ANGELES – With two Jamaican starters possibly injured, the selection chances of Phoenix Rising players Junior Flemmings and Kevon Lambert have been boosted ahead of Tuesday’s crunch Group C clash against Curaçao. Jamaica needs at least a draw to guarantee its progression in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, yet could be forced to rest stars.

ALAMOS, Mexico – This is a “pueblo magico” (magic town), rich in beauty and cultural and historic significance. It’s also near an important ecological crossroads in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The foothills are home to the northernmost tropical deciduous forest in the Western Hemisphere, and it’s a critical connection point between jaguars.

WASHINGTON – The head of the Arizona National Guard defended the use of military troops on the border Thursday, saying their support puts more Border Patrol officers on the front lines – what one official called “badges back to the border.” “We support Customs and Border Protection by moving agents around, helping them with humanitarian.

SAHUARIPA, Mexico – A century ago, jaguars roamed much of the Southwest, including most of Arizona. Today, the only glimpses of the endangered big cats in the United States are caught on cameras just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. In a recovery plan released in April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said bringing jaguars.

LIMA, Peru – Cleofe Jauregui has become like family to about a dozen Venezuelan refugee women who gather weekly to share stories, sew bags to sell and learn how to live life away from their home country. “To me, they are not from another country,” said Jauregui, who has been inviting refugee women to her.

LIMA, Peru – Sara Marianys Soto Duque and Yenife Alexandra Carmona Rieracda are young mothers trying to earn money to support their families. Soto, 26, and Carmona, 23, are two of the more than 700,000 Venezuelans now living in Peru. Soto arrived in October 2018 after leaving her family, including her 2-year-old son, behind in.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump’s pledge to have federal authorities remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country beginning next week set off a flurry of warnings from immigration advocates to prepare families for possible deportation. U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said Tuesday that 2 million may face deportation, a move he supports. Trump.

LIMA, Peru – The decision to leave was almost inevitable. Nersis Arrieta and Edil Aguilar had lived through the shortages, the canceled university classes, the throttling of political dissent, the grim economic reality of Venezuela. They were married and hoped for children. But as a doctor, Arrieta had seen the vaccine shortages, the lack of.

TUMBES, Peru – Young people emigrating from Venezuela experience a mix of optimism and apprehension about starting new lives in Peru. One nongovernmental organization is helping them acclimate through the Friendly Spaces program at the border of Peru and Ecuador. RELATED STORY: As Peru welcomes Venezuelan refugees, its immigration system is overwhelmed AlertMe

LIMA, Peru – As more Venezuelans fleeing the economic and political crisis in their homeland arrive daily in Peru, the Peruvian government readily acknowledges it can’t keep up with the applications for temporary or permanent residency. “The situation changed our life,” said Roxana del Águila Tuesta, Peru’s national superintendent of migrations. “Before, we didn’t have.

PHOENIX – The death of a 7-year-old girl whose body was found near the Arizona-Mexico border Wednesday is a tragedy that immigration officials blame squarely on smugglers. “The reason why this happens is the unscrupulous smuggler organizations went and dropped these people in the border in a very remote area,” said Jesus Vasavilbaso, a spokesman.

PHOENIX – Undocumented immigration from Mexico has dropped so significantly over a decade that Mexicans no longer make up the majority of those living in the U.S. illegally, according to a Pew Research Center report. Mexicans make up less than half the total undocumented immigrant population for the first time in more than half a.

PHOENIX – The trial of No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren ended Tuesday without a verdict. Warren faced 20 years behind bars on charges of conspiring to transport and harbor two undocumented immigrants he encountered in the desert of southern Arizona last year. Judge Raner C. Collins of the U.S. District Court in Tucson declared.

WASHINGTON – When a Border Patrol agent standing in Nogales shot and killed a teen in Mexico in 2012, federal courts said the family of the boy could sue the officer for violating their son’s constitutional rights. But when a Border Patrol agent in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed a Mexican teen in Ciudad.

WASHINGTON – The number of migrants apprehended at the southern border surged to 144,278 in May, bringing the total for the first eight months of fiscal 2019 to 676,315, already more than any full year in the last decade. More than 20,000 of those apprehensions were in Arizona, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection,.

WASHINGTON – The House voted mostly on party lines Tuesday to approve a bill that would protect millions of “Dreamers” from deportation and give them a pathway to citizenship, a bill Republicans said would only lead to more illegal immigration. Just seven Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the bill, which passed Tuesday evening.

Arizona lawmakers, business officials and experts Friday blasted President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a tariff on Mexican goods in hopes of cutting immigration, calling his plan everything from “terribly damaging” to “unhinged.” Trump announced the tariffs Thursday – one day after Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 1,036 immigrants crossing the border near.

TUCSON – The trial of No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren began Wednesday with the prosecutor asserting that federal authorities are not targeting humanitarian aid along the border with Mexico. “No More Deaths is not on trial,” Nathaniel Walters told the jury. “Scott Warren is.” In his opening statement, however, defense attorney Gregory Kuykendall said.

WASHINGTON – To President Donald Trump, the southern border has become a “very dangerous” place, with drug and other crimes driven by an “invasion” of immigrants and traffickers. But state and federal data on violent crime show that the 23 border counties were about as dangerous in 2017 as Cleveland – Cleveland, Tennessee, a town.

TEMPE – Growing up in Spain, Alejandro “Alex” Del Rey had a dream of coming to the United States and playing golf collegiately. When the time came to look for schools, his attention always returned to one: Arizona State. “In Spain, when kids are in high school, you really don’t know about all the schools.

TUCSON – “Yo soy Xicano!” screamed Telpochtli Moreno-Cordova, vocalist for Crossfire. Many audience members in the semicircle that formed around the hardcore quartet nodded their heads and clapped for Moreno’s statement of identity as Xicano, an alternative spelling of Chicano. Chicano originally was used as a pejorative against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans but one that was.

PHOENIX – During the farmer’s market on Saturdays outside Phoenix Public Market downtown, Rodain Abo Zeed sets up a quaint stand filled with falafel, fattoush, pastries, kubbeh and stuffed zucchini. Attendees stroll by under the afternoon sun, gazing at her exotic, hand-made Syrian dishes. Rodain’s Syrian Kitchen is still a relatively new business. And although.

PHOENIX – After years of riding the school bus to and from school in south Phoenix, Angelica Beltran Cuevas noticed she was battling for breath. “It just got so bad at times that I had to go to the hospital. I couldn’t breathe anymore,” she said. Beltran Cuevas was diagnosed with asthma in the third.

Arizona in Focus is a podcast from Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS. Each season we dive deep into a particular topic or story to bring you stories you haven’t heard elsewhere. Check out the rest of our episodes here, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. NOGALES – People who.

LIMA, Peru – Federal authorities face the daunting task of assessing how Peru’s economy and labor market can absorb the more than 700,000 Venezuelans who have fled their country and resettled here in the past few years. Adding to the challenge is an estimate by the International Organization for Migration that the number could grow.

LIMA, Peru – It’s evident from the way he imitates the dance crew’s moves that 5-year-old Christopher Diaz loves to dance, just like his father. But right now, Francisco Diaz isn’t dancing simply for the love of it – the Venezuelan immigrant is dancing to survive. Like many others, Diaz left his home looking to.

LIMA, Peru – Venezuela’s “brain drain” could have benefits for Peru, which has absorbed more than 700,000 Venezuelan immigrants over the past three years and suffers a serious shortage of medical professionals. But difficulties navigating the recredentialing process have prevented many Venezuelan doctors from using their skills in their new home. Dr. Jaime Parra, 37,.

LIMA, Peru – Sulaida Ramirez Davila sat in a support group for those with AIDS and HIV, like her son, Rafael Olivares. Tears welled up as she recalled her decision three years ago to leave Venezuela and Olivares. “I was separated from family … from my son, with the state of health he was in.

LIMA, Peru – Public schools across the country, already pressured by poor infrastructure and inadequate resources, face further strains from the sudden and overwhelming influx of Venezuelan school children. Education officials said they expected 34,000 Venezuelan children to enter public school at the start of the school year in March, up from 26,000 last year..

LIMA, Peru — “Will anything be done against the Venezuelan criminals who enter Peru?” reads the Twitter post. “I have read hundreds of news stories where they are involved in big robberies and MURDERS. Where are the rights of the Peruvian? Will they continue to protect these criminals? WILL YOU DO SOMETHING?” “Venezuelan threatens a.

GANADO – At precisely 6:55 each school day morning, Freddie Yazzie puts his bus in gear and cautiously pulls out of the bus yard beside the Ganado Unified School District main campus. For 26 years, Yazzie has driven school buses for this quiet Navajo community, and in that time, he shaped his role beyond that.

SOUTHERN ARIZONA – One works at a college, another runs an Airbnb. A third works with landscapers and contractors. But once a month, the three have one thing in common: They search for the remains of migrants who died trying to cross the southern U.S. deserts. Aguilas del Desierto is a nonprofit group in San.

LIMA, Peru – When Jesus Manuel Gomez crossed the border from Ecuador into Peru in February 2018 after traveling 1,300 miles from Venezuela, his life changed markedly. In Venezuela, he was an accomplished lawyer with specialized training. “I am a lawyer with much responsibility, with a postgraduate degree in agrarian and environmental law,” said Gomez,.

LIMA, Peru – Many of the more than 700,000 Venezuelans who have fled to Peru have arrived with next to nothing: a backpack, perhaps, carrying a toothbrush, a change of clothes and, most important, a cellphone. For most, their phones are lifelines. “The Venezuelan has broken, has finished with that old adage that the best.

TUCSON – An 11-year old girl from El Salvador coughs into the sleeve of her purple hoodie while Dr. Anna Landau presses a stethoscope to her chest. She struggles to hear the child’s heartbeat over the cries of other sick children in the hallway but is determined to find a diagnosis. “Todo se escucha bien,”.

LIMA, Peru – Mirna Lajoa wants to eat. Carmen Castillo wants a place for her family to live. And Mary Salazar just wants a set of bed sheets that will fit her mattress. These women are part of what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees calls the largest mass migration in the history of.

PHOENIX – Wildlife advocates say animals like the jaguar are at risk if President Donald Trump builds his planned border wall, with one group this week denouncing the administration’s Jaguar Recovery Plan calling it “inadequate.” “This so-called recovery plan won’t do anything to help the jaguar, so the threats to its survival and recovery will.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico – Mexico has long been Arizona’s top trade partner. Now, for the first time, our southern neighbor is also the No. 1 trade partner with the United States. In January and February of this year, trade between Mexico and the U.S. accounted for $97.4 billion in imports and exports. That’s about 15 percent.

WASHINGTON – A border encounter between U.S. and Mexican soldiers earlier this month became a political issue Wednesday when President Donald Trump picked up the incident and threatened to send armed soldiers to the border in response. Trump was reacting to an April 13 incident when a handful of soldiers encountered each other south of.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Wednesday that it will waive dozens of environmental, health and other laws to clear the way for construction on about 58 miles of border barriers, including 12 miles of fencing near Yuma. The move was quickly attacked by lawmakers and environmental activists, who accused the administration of.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico – In a spacious house in downtown Hermosillo a few weeks back, workers were scraping old paint from the walls, getting them ready for a fresh coat. The property is at the tail-end of a transition from a family home to a coworking space, one that also will feature a salon, rooftop common.

  CHOOSE YOUR NEWS Migrant medical costs, Arcosanti experiment and day care inspections PHOENIX – Cronkite News wants to bring you the stories you want to see. We first asked audiences to vote on stories in three topic areas: health, sustainability and borderlands. Our reporters put together news stories exploring various aspects within those areas,.

MEXICO CITY – You’ve probably seen, or used, these two-wheeled vehicles for rent. They’re electric shared scooters, an exciting device for many, but a dangerous one for others. Like in metro Phoenix, electric shared scooters arrived in Mexico City with disruptive technologies and concerns. While some see in them innovation and an opportunity to fight.

TUCSON – Dozens of families and children file into the wooden pews of the Benedictine Monastery in Tucson. A small child wearing a white men’s XL T-shirt clenches his mother’s hand while another plays peek-a-boo. They sit inside the historic monastery’s spacious sanctuary – some gazing up at the grand dome and the four-pillared marble.

EL PASO – On any night in El Paso, there are volunteers and residents scouting the streets for stranded migrants in need of assistance after being recently released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection. Doris Reimer is one of those El Paso residents who has taken to the streets in recent.

Updated Thursday, April 18, 2019 YUMA – Mayor Douglas Nicholls has declared a state of emergency in response to what he described as an overwhelming flow of migrants dropped off by federal officials, and he’s asking for state and federal funds to deal with it. In the past three weeks, nearly 1,300 migrants from Guatemala,.

NOGALES – More than 370 articles on the Nogales International online news archive contain the word “sewage,” and that archive only dates to 2001. These articles reveal a long history of broken pipes, sewage overflows, industrial waste and more. Sewage in Ambos Nogales – “ambos” is Spanish for “both,” referring to the twin cities in.

NOGALES – Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday inspected the border fence that separates this border city from its Mexican neighbor and blamed Democrats for inaction on what the Trump administration calls a “security and humanitarian crisis.” Standing with Gov. Doug Ducey near the razor-wire-strewn steel fence that separates the cities, Pence called on Democrats.

PHOENIX – The Pentagon announced late Tuesday it has awarded about $1 billion for replacement border fence projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. The money was divided between two projects. The Pentagon awarded a Montana company $187 million to replace a segment of steel fence in Yuma and awarded a Texas company a far larger contract,.

PHOENIX – Vice President Mike Pence returns to Arizona on Thursday, this time to tour the Border Patrol station in Nogales and get a look at a border wall that has been a point of conflict between the Arizona city and federal authorities. Pence’s trip was announced Monday, just days after President Donald Trump visited.

WASHINGTON – Frontline border officials told a Senate committee Tuesday that the crisis at the southern border is real and that “something has to change” to combat the growing number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. The testimony came as Customs and Border Protection released new numbers that showed apprehensions at the southern border.

NOGALES, Mexico – Wastewater containing raw sewage has been intermittently flowing into the Nogales Wash from Mexico since mid-January, spurring concerns about health and the water supply for communities on both sides of the border. Four of the five pumps at the Los Alisos Wastewater Treatment Plant in Nogales, Mexico, have been malfunctioning since mid-January,.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump may have backed off his threat to close the border, but business leaders said Monday there is a very real slowdown in crossings after the redeployment of Customs and Border Protection officers. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen last week ordered 750 CBP officers pulled from ports and sent to assist.

WASHINGTON – To Kit Danley, the solution to the border crisis requires more than just politics: It requires that Americans “choose love instead of fear, and long to see Jesus in the faces of the most vulnerable” who show up at the border. Danley, president of Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, made the comments during a.

WASHINGTON – Gov. Doug Ducey gave conditional support Wednesday to a “short as possible” border shutdown, then shifted the blame to Congress which he said has been playing politics with the border issue. Ducey’s comments came after a brief meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump, who threatened last week to close the.

WASHINGTON – Customs and Border Protection said it is stopping Sunday inspection of commercial trucks at Nogales in order to shift officers elsewhere on the border, sparking an outcry from produce companies who fear damage to the time-sensitive industry. The cut comes as the Trump administration has ordered CBP to redeploy 750 officers from ports.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump repeated threats Monday to deal with a surge of migrants by closing the U.S.- Mexico border, a move that has been called a potential “economic catastrophe” for Arizona. The threat came late last week, as Customs and Border Protection said it had 12,000 immigrants in custody – double what it.

PHOENIX – Eunique Yazzie quit the best job she’d ever had after her male co-workers repeatedly called her “native candy.” “It was destroying who I thought I was,” she said. Yazzie, a single mother who works full time, was emotional after reflecting on her experiences with racism. She was one of dozens who attended a.

EL PASO – As the surge of migrant families at the border continues, federal officials and local organizations continue to struggle in their efforts to process and shelter all those arriving in El Paso in huge numbers. Although the temporary detention camp under the Paso Del Norte International Bridge has been closed and the people.

PHOENIX – Sen. Martha McSally reiterated her support for stronger border security at a closed-door roundtable meeting Monday but stopped short of supporting President Donald Trump’s threats to shut down the southern border if Mexico doesn’t stop migrants from entering the United States. She also called on Congress to close “loopholes” that she said have.

YUMA – As a congressional and potential legal battle over the reappropriation of $1 billion in military funds to construct 57 miles of new border fencing heats up in Washington, residents and workers in this corner of Arizona expressed mixed emotions over the effectiveness and necessity of additional barriers. All the while, the number of.

TUCSON – Since she was a child, Martha Sosa has learned life lessons from the films that demonstrated them to her. “I’ve always been a very keen cinephile, thanks to my dad, whose way of talking to us was through films,” Sosa said. “I got a very deep relationship with the cinema experience through watching.

PHOENIX – The 100 or so migrants, ranging from toddlers to elders, were hungry, thirsty and did not know where they were as they stood outside a Greyhound bus station last week. Dropped there by immigration authorities, they were awaiting the next step to reunite with their families. “They’re in unsanitary conditions on dirt, rock.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall continued to inch forward this week, as the Democrat-controlled House failed Tuesday to block the border emergency declaration that let the Pentagon approve $1 billion in wall work Monday. The Defense Department said it was tapping a counterdrug activities fund to let the Army Corps of Engineers.

PHOENIX – Among the hundreds of attendees at the jobs fair at Desert Sky Mall, Terry Hardy stood taller than most and carried a bag full of handouts from employers. Hardy has lived in the Phoenix village of Maryvale for the past 30 years and attended the fair seeking to get back into the workforce.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear Maricopa County’s claim that it should not be held liable for the actions of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a racial profiling lawsuit. The high court, without comment, let stand a 2018 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said “when Arpaio.

TUCSON – When war broke out in Bosnia Herzegovina, Nejra Sumic was forced to do what more than 3 million people have done since 1980: flee to the United States. During the tumultuous 1990s in Bosnia Herzegovina, Sumic says, her family was persecuted for practicing their Muslim religion and forced to uproot their lives. “We.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that some undocumented immigrants can be held without bail, possibly years after they have committed a deportable crime, while authorities determine their deportation status. The 5-4 decision upheld a law that directs the Department of Homeland Security to hold immigrants without bail after their release from jail on.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has identified $150 million for military construction projects in Arizona that could be tapped to fund a border wall, with a $30 million project at Fort Huachuca the likeliest target in the state. The Arizona projects were part of $12.9 billion in projects nationwide from which the Defense Department said it.

PHOENIX – In their first official public appearance together in Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey and Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Bárcena discussed the depths of Arizona-Mexico ties and stressed the importance of ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is meant to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Bárcena told a luncheon of.

TOLLESON – The number of migrants dropped off at Revolution Church in Tolleson has nearly doubled since last December, Pastor Raul Salgado estimates. Migrants are being dropped off by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after they have applied for asylum and are waiting for their cases to be heard. They usually stay two or three.

TEMPE – United, they mourned, coming together in Arizona in a vigil to show that love triumphs over hate. Muslims. Jews. Christians. Lawmakers and civil rights activists. Hours after 50 people were gunned down and dozens were injured in a terrorist attack at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week, Arizonans spoke of overcoming hate.

WASHINGTON – Backed by sheriffs and members of “angel families,” including three from Arizona, President Donald Trump on Friday vetoed a bill that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border. “I knew this day would come, you know, that he would do something that proves to all of us.

WASHINGTON – A House committee voted Wednesday to rescind the law that lets the secretary of Homeland Security waive regulations that get in the way of a border wall, a move critics say is used increasingly by the Trump administration. The 17-12 vote by the House Homeland Security Committee split along party lines, with Democrats.

WASHINGTON – House Democrats unveiled legislation Tuesday that would provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 2 million immigrants protected under the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, Temporary Protected Status and other programs. The Dream and Promise Act, which would also apply to recipients of Deferred Enforced Departure status, would give DACA recipients conditional.

WASHINGTON – A Trump administration plan to limit public assistance for legal immigrants simply “passes the buck down to cities who are going to have to figure out how to pay” for the lost benefits, local officials were told Monday. At a National League of Cities conference, a panel of officials from around the country.

PHOENIX – The audience watched in awe as models wearing ornate, handmade gowns with intricate trimmings walked the runway. Camera flashes illuminated their robes, inspired by styles from around the world. The HOPE Couture Global Fashion Experience provided the backdrop for this world of fashion last month. Held at MonOrchid on Roosevelt Row north of.

NOGALES – Despite record seizures of fentanyl at U.S. ports of entry on the southern border, a rise in overdoses is forcing law enforcement officials in some border communities to change their tactics, emphasizing information and public engagement, as well as drugs to reverse opioid overdoses. Customs and Border Protection officers on Jan. 26 found.

WASHINGTON – Arizona lawmakers split down party lines Tuesday as the House voted 245-182 to terminate President Donald Trump’s declaration of national emergency at the southern border. Trump said the declaration is needed so he can shift $6.7 billion, most of it from the Defense Department, toward construction of a border wall after Congress budgeted.

TUCSON – On the corner of 12th Street and Sixth Avenue, several Venezuelans stood with arms linked, singing along to an acoustic guitar and dancing against a vibrant backdrop of large yellow, blue and red flags. “Cese de la usurpación, gobierno de la transición y elecciones libres,” they chanted Saturday. “Cease the usurpation, transitional government.

NOGALES – Customs and Border Protection officers in late January seized a record 245 pounds of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, at the bustling commercial crossing in Nogales. A bust officials attribute to the use of technology and alert officers while on the job. Officers at the Mariposa Cargo Facility, one of four ports of.

TUCSON – The City Council voted Wednesday night to support Nogales in its fight with the Homeland Security Department and the military over concertina wire strung along the border fence that runs through town. The council voted 7-0 to back Nogales in its demand that federal authorities strip concertina wire from the steel fence separating.

TUCSON – Federal misdemeanor charges have been dropped against four humanitarian aid workers who faced criminal convictions for their work on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Caitlin Deighan, Zoe Anderson, Logan Hollarsmith and Rebecca Grossman-Richeimer no longer face federal charges, but each has been fined $250, No More Deaths said in a release Thursday..

TEMPE – In biting cold on a recent Saturday, a group of people huddled underneath the solar panels on parking lot 59 at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. They waited to take their pick from a cornucopia of zucchini, squash, watermelons and peppers that had been trucked in and piled onto tables. Produce on Wheels.

PHOENIX – Sixteen states have filed suit against President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration last week, but Arizona isn’t among them. The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Michigan filed a complaint on Monday opposing the national emergency declaration,.

WASHINGTON – Hundreds gathered outside the White House Monday to protest President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, a move the protesters called a “massive abuse of presidential power.” “Stop the fake emergency. Defund the deportation force,” said Cristina Jiménez, co-founder of United We Dream and one of the event’s.

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday to redistribute government funds to build his long-sought after wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but some legal experts question whether it’s constitutional. “So we’re going to be signing today, and registering, national emergency and it’s a great thing to do, because we have an.

WASHINGTON – Arizona lawmakers’ reaction to President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national border security emergency Friday split along party lines, with Democrats blasting the move as “fear-mongering” that sets “a dangerous precedent.” But Republicans praised the president for taking action they said is needed to “protect American lives.” Trump’s declaration came just hours after.

PHOENIX – Demand for Valentine’s Day roses at the flower wholesaler where José Durazo works has spiked in recent years, and he and his co-workers are scrambling to get the fragrant blooms to florists across the city. “Over the past three years, I know that the flower shops are expecting more customers,” said Durazo, who.

WASHINGTON – Jessica Rubio remembers it all “happened super fast.” Her brother was standing outside their Phoenix apartment at 5 p.m. when ICE agents arrested him. By 3 a.m. the next day, he had been deported back to Mexico, ending six years of living in the U.S. That was 2011, one year before the Deferred.

NOGALES – The City Council unanimously voted Wednesday night to approve a resolution condemning the recent addition of concertina wire along the border fence within Nogales city limits. The resolution demands that Customs and Border Protection immediately remove the wire. It also states that the city’s development code bans the use of this type of.

WASHINGTON – The Defense Department said it will send an additional 3,750 active-duty troops to the southern border to support Customs and Border Protection officers by stringing razor wire, helping operate mobile surveillance equipment and other support activities. The 90-day deployments will bring the number of active military on the border to 4,350, an announcement.

TUCSON – Sue McConnell cries almost every time she tells the story. In 2012, she stood in a small county courthouse in Kelso, Washington, with other people seeking to change their legal names. After hearing their individual cases, the judge dismissed the group and a clerk came out with a stack of legal documents containing.

TUCSON – Tucson has been at the forefront of the sanctuary movement since the early 1980s, when organizers at the Southside Presbyterian Church began providing refuge for asylum-seekers fleeing civil conflict in Central America. But Tucson has never officially declared itself a sanctuary city, as San Francisco did in 1989, becoming the first municipality to.

WASHINGTON – Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said a border wall would do “very little” to stop the flow of drugs, most of which come in to the U.S. through ports of entry. Estrada’s comments came after a conference call hosted by the National Immigration Forum in which political and law enforcement authorities from.

WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials told House lawmakers Tuesday that there’s nothing unusual about the 2,300 active-duty troops at the Mexican border, calling it in line with similar deployments under previous administrations. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood and Vice Adm. Michael Gilday opened their testimony to the House Armed Services Committee by saying the.

PHOENIX – Effective immediately, asylum seekers who enter the United States illegally through the southern border now will have to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through an extremely backlogged immigration court system. The Trump administration made the announcement late Thursday and with it, a sharp pivot in its asylum policy The.

TEMPE – U.S. diplomats were expelled from Venezuela on Friday, days after members of the Venezuelan community in Arizona rallied to show support for the man they now call Venezuela’s legitimate president, Juan Guaidó. “¡Fuera Maduro! ¡Guaidó es nuestro presidente!” the crowd chanted in Spanish. “Maduro out! Guaidó is our president!” The demonstration echoed a.

TUCSON — More than a decade ago, No More Deaths volunteer Dan Millis left plastic water jugs in the desert for migrants crossing the Mexican border into the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Federal authorities charged him with littering in 2008, and he was found guilty by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco. Millis’ case was.

Updated Saturday, Jan. 19 at 4:30 p.m. TUCSON – Four humanitarian aid workers were found guilty Friday of misdemeanor charges involving leaving aid in a restricted area of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. After a three-day bench trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernardo Velasco found No More Deaths volunteer Natalie Hoffman guilty of all three charges.

FORT DEFIANCE – The trip was about more than a 300-mile journey to play a nationally televised game against a ranked opponent. The Arizona State women’s basketball team also viewed its November excursion to the Navajo Reservation as a time to embrace Navajo culture. “Just hearing the stories that we’ve heard today and weeks before.

WASHINGTON – Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead said there is an “ongoing crisis” at the border affecting all states, not just Arizona, and he called on Washington to fund a border wall to help stop it. “I think there’s misconceptions about what the wall is,” Milstead said Friday in Washington. “It’s not.

NOGALES – Billions of pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables cross the border from Mexico into the United States every year. Now, legislators in Florida are proposing a bill they say would protect U.S. produce growers from unfair Mexican trade practices. But opponents of the legislation say it would be bad for consumers. The bill.

UPPER FRUITLAND, N.M. – Michelle Sherman was 5 when she realized she was different. “I remember seeing two guys holding hands, and then my mom’s like, ‘Oh, that’s disgusting,’ and I was like, OK, maybe it is disgusting,’” Sherman said. Sherman started to believe she, too, was “disgusting,” and at only 11 years of age,.

PHOENIX – Artist Diana Calderon used a small brayer to spread dark ink on a glass plate as she demonstrated how to make a print from a linocut. “Most of my work is about crossing barriers and borders and boundaries,” she said. Born in Ciudad Chihuahua, Mexico, Calderon has been migrating for much of her.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico – The last stretch to the solar array is a rough dirt road that winds through the desert scrublands east of Hermosillo, Sonora’s state capital. Barbed wire and the occasional cow are the only signs of civilization. After one gate and then another, the panels come into view. Row after row after row.

PHOENIX – Officials at a water treatment plant near a heavily polluted site in Tucson are replacing more than 56 tons of activated carbon to address newly discovered perfluorinated chemical contamination. “The fact that we have a treatment plant there at all is entirely driven by the Superfund site,” said Tim Thomure, director of Tucson.

WASHINGTON – The number of Mexican-born immigrants in the United States dropped by about 300,000 from 2016 to 2017, according to Census Bureau data, a shift that experts say is likely driven by changes on both sides of the border. Although the drop, from 11.6 million to 11.3 million, coincides with the election of President.

SCOTTSDALE – It’s a cool November evening in this desert city. Bo Takahashi, a 21-year-old pitcher from Presidente Prudente, Brazil, warms up in the bullpen before taking the mound for the Salt River Rafters. He is preparing to play in what is, at that moment, the only Major League-affiliated baseball game in the world. Takahashi,.

WASHINGTON – Three months after the Trump administration cut the number of refugees the U.S. will accept to the lowest level since 1980, aid groups in Arizona say they already are feeling the effects. “What used to be a very active program has slowed down dramatically and so before, we used to have maybe a.

READING, Pa. — Even though she spent 19 months in detention after crossing the border to seek asylum in the U.S. in 2015, Karen Zelaya still was able to celebrate her son’s sixth and seventh birthdays with him. They were not the happiest of birthdays. Zelaya and her son, Steven Albanes, who are from El.

PHOENIX – The governors of Arizona, New Mexico and Sonora, Mexico, signed an agreement Wednesday promoting the transport of natural gas from New Mexico to growing markets in Asia. The four-year pact promises to promote the production and transmission of natural gas produced in New Mexico, which is to be piped through Arizona to Sonoran.

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers and analysts believe there will be some progress on immigration reform after the new Congress is sworn in next month – but caution that it is more likely to come in baby steps than in big leaps. Six years after a Democrat-controlled Senate passed a sweeping immigration reform bill the stalled in.

WASHINGTON – A year after the Trump administration announced plans to phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program had received more than 230,000 DACA renewal applications, with more coming in every day. Although no first-time applications are being accepted, courts that blocked the administration’s plan earlier this year also ordered U.S. Citizenship and.

WHITERIVER – Each summer since 1925, Native people have gathered in the capital of the Fort Apache Tribe to test their skills in the saddle and celebrate who they are. The 93rd annual White Mountain Apache Tribal Fair & Rodeo, held over Labor Day weekend, included sports competitions, a car show, a parade and an.

PHOENIX – He holds out his forearm, pointing to an area right below a bandage near the crook of his elbow. One of his veins is much thicker – it looks like a caterpillar under his skin. It’s a fistula serving as the entry port for his hemodialysis treatment. “It’s like they stitch two of.

PHOENIX – Under mounds of rubble, overgrown weeds and scattered trash lie the remains of more than 300 Mexican pioneers who helped build Phoenix around the turn of the 20th century. But few people even know they are there. “You can not tell it is a cemetery unless you walk right up on it,” said.

SCOTTSDALE – Gov. Doug Ducey maintained his firm stance on border security at a panel discussion Wednesday during the Republican Governors Association annual conference, but he also stressed the importance of the state’s extensive trade ties with Mexico. “There is a humanitarian and security crisis happening south of the border,” said Ducey, who was sitting.

WASHINGTON – Arizona Republicans on Monday backed President Donald Trump’s renewed demands for border wall funding after migrants were tear gassed as they tried to rush the border at San Ysidro, California, Sunday. A showdown over border wall funding could lead to a partial government shutdown, with the current Department of Homeland Security budget set.

PHOENIX – Against the backdrop of tear gas and border closures in Tijuana over the weekend, several pro-immigrant groups are rushing to meet the increasing needs of asylum seekers. One of those organizations is the Kino Border Initiative, a faith-based nonprofit organization known as KBI in Nogales, Arizona. The Rev. Sean Carroll, the group’s executive.

SAN FELIPE, Baja California – “Bienvenidos al Nido,” Francisco Iñegas said. “Welcome to El Nido.” He walks across what look like huge, gray connector blocks fitted together into a floating pathway. Then he climbs up into El Nido, an open-sea aquarium just off the small town of San Felipe in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. “The.

SAN FELIPE, Baja California – Just as the sun peeks over the horizon, casting an orange glow across the water, a group of fishermen takes off from docks at San Felipe. Their small, blue-and-white boats, known as pangas, bounce and rattle over the waves of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Ruben Orozco wears a Chicago Bulls.

SAN FELIPE, Baja California – The activist sailors aboard Sea Shepherd’s big, white patrol ship in northern Mexico’s Sea of Cortez come from all over the world. A recent crew included volunteers from Italy, France, Brazil, Mexico and the United States, among other places. They’ve all joined the Los Angeles-based conservation society’s ship on the.

PHOENIX – In a year where the number of refugees and displaced people worldwide has reached record highs, those who wish to help have a new way of doing so through Airbnb. The peer-to-peer house-sharing company is offering temporary housing through a program called Open Homes, which now is available in Phoenix. Hospitality Service Center.

WASHINGTON – The Mexican ambassador to the U.S. said Tuesday he is confident final details can be worked out a new trade deal between the two countries and Canada, despite President Donald Trump’s sometimes disruptive border rhetoric. Ambassador Gerónimo Gutiérrez Fernández said that Trump’s ability to drive the narrative made these negotiations on the proposed.