Get ready for another GOP immigrant scare

A few hundred Hondurans formed a caravan bound for the United States on Wednesday after hurricanes battered the country, posing a fresh challenge to efforts to stem immigration from Central America on the cusp of a new US administration.

[...]

Striking just two weeks apart in November, hurricanes Eta and Iota hammered infrastructure, homes and crops, killing about 100 people in Honduras. The neighbouring countries of Guatemala and Nicaragua also suffered widespread damage.

[...]

Guatemala’s migration authorities warned the approaching migrants that to enter the country, they would need negative coronavirus tests and passports.

[...]

Trump, who is due to leave office on January 20, has made curbing illegal immigration a top priority, and has put pressure on Mexico to help him. A caravan of thousands moving through Central America was broken up in October.

[...]

And as a last-minute immigration crackdown that incoming president Biden will likely try to reverse, the Trump administration finalised a regulation on Thursday that greatly restricts access to asylum in the US.

The final rule cuts off asylum access for most migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border through a series of changes to eligibility criteria. [...] [I]t directs immigration judges and asylum officers to deny broad types of asylum claims, such as those based on domestic abuse and gang violence, with some exceptions.

[...]

The latest restrictions are set to take effect on January 11, just nine days before Biden takes office.

  alJazeera

If you have no defense, scare 'em

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Like Disneyland

The US government has begun erecting tents close to the border with Mexico to house detained migrants[Talking about the immigration situation on the border, Trump] told the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures: “When they used to separate children, which was done during the Obama administration, with Bush, with us, with everybody, far fewer people would come, and we’ve been on a humane basis, it’s pretty bad”

He added to the host, Maria Bartiromo: “We go out and we stop the separation. The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families, it’s like Disneyland now.”

[...]

The US government has begun erecting tents close to the border with Mexico to house detained migrants.

[...]

The sight of the tents going up in El Paso is a throwback to just a few months ago when the government was detaining child migrants in an encampment at nearby Tornillo.

The camp started small last summer and was meant to exist for just weeks, but ended up expanding fivefold and enduring for months, amid protests and local opposition, until it was closed in January.

[...]

Last month, CBP was criticised by local advocates and public officials after it chose to house hundreds of migrants in open-air conditions underneath the Bridge of the Americas that crosses the border between El Paso and its Mexican sister city, Juárez. The pen where migrants were being held closed a few days after the press began to report the harsh conditions of the improvised shelter.

[...]

Shaw Drake, a policy counsel for the ACLU border rights center in El Paso said the main concern was how migrants are treated inside the shelters. Both advocates are appealing for more transparency, accountability and government oversight as the number of migrants in detention continues to rise.

“It’s possible to have humane conditions for the migrants being detained in these tents, the issue is that border patrol has an extensive history of abusive conditions in its facilities and there is no indication that would not continue to occur,” Drake said.

[...]

The Trump administration began separating thousands of migrant families last year whenever they crossed the US-Mexico border unlawfully, and detaining parents and children separately, under a “zero tolerance” policy. Trump halted the policy last summer after widespread uproar, though in recent weeks, even as the government is being sued over the consequences, floated, then rejected again, the idea of resuming such actions.

CBP said in a statement last week that the large number of arrivals had created a need to open up additional shelter space in order to continue to process migrants arriving at the border.

  Guardian

I thought they were making them stay in Mexico or, more recently, busing them to sanctuary cities.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why make sense when you can stir up a shitstorm?

The United States is cutting off aid to the "Northern Triangle," otherwise known as the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the State Department told CNN Saturday, one day after President Donald Trump said they had "set up" migrant caravans for entry into the United States.

  CNN

Or, via Fox:

I guess she feels like a fool now.  (She is one.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The reality of immigrant caravans and asylum seekers

Please listen to Pod Save the World's Tommy Vietor interview of Border Angels founder Enrique Morones starting at the 35:45 mark.

And visit the Border Angels website:

Tweeting like crazy this morning

Among other errors.







But the bullshit!

Provided without comment:







OK, one comment here:  Why is there an hour between those two connected tweets?  I'm surprised he could keep the topic in his head for that long.  Does  he tweet with his thumbs?





Speaking of Maduro...




...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hail to the Chief fuckup

Yes, he's done it again.

This time, looking for praise at home, he doxxed some SEALS in Iraq.

President Donald Trump and the White House communications team revealed that a U.S. Navy SEAL team was deployed to Iraq after the president secretly traveled to the region to meet with American forces serving in a combat zone for the first time since being elected to office.

[...]

Official photographs and videos typically blur the individual faces of special operation forces, due to the sensitive nature of their job.

[...]

Current and former Defense Department officials told Newsweek that information concerning what units are deployed and where is almost always classified and is a violation of operational security.

[...]

“Revealing them casually, through an unusual media exposure even if it’s the commander in chief, would prove a propaganda boom if any of this personnel are detained by a hostile government or captured by a terrorist group. There would be no denying who you are and what you do.”

  Newsweek

He doesn't know, and he doesn't care. And apparently no one on his staff does either.

Trump flew to Iraq late Christmas Day after facing a barrage of negative headlines over the holiday season amid a partial government shutdown.

[...]

A pool report during Trump’s visit said the details of the trip were embargoed until the president finished giving his remarks to a group of about 100 mostly U.S. special operation troops engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Syria.

The pool report went on to say that Trump paused to take a selfie with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Kyu Lee, who said he was the chaplain for SEAL Team Five, based out of Coronado, California. The chaplain said Trump told him: “Hey, in that case, let’s take a picture.”

After Air Force One left the Iraqi airspace, Trump posted a video to his Twitter account of his time spent with American forces during his visit to Iraq. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” plays over the video and shows the president and the first lady posing for pictures with service members that appear to be from SEAL Team Five. The special warfare operators are dressed in full battle gear and wearing night vision goggles.

The video cuts to team members shaking the president’s hand before cutting to other special operations personnel and support troops.

[...]

"I don't recall another time where special operation forces had to pose with their faces visible while serving in a war zone,” [a] Pentagon official added.

Cheney outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and paid nothing for it.  But she was a woman.  No Trump supporter would have cared.  But SEALs?  That could cause a few some concern.  Could.  Might not.

His Lardship posted a four-part border wall tweet rant this morning, and I'm so sick of him, I'm wasn't even going to read it. Then I did.

He says he'll close the border entirely if the Dems don't give him his way on the wall. Really? He thinks he can do that? Then he complains we lose "soooo much money" with NAFTA that he'd "consider" closing the border. "Consider" is more like it.  Who's he talking to?  How do those people suppose he's going to close the border?  What do they think that means?  What does HE think that means?  Does he think he can simply ban imports/exports to Mexico?  Does he think that would even be a good idea?  Try that one out on Texans.

 And whatever happened to 'look at this great trade deal I made with Canada and Mexico'? He says we either finish the wall or close the border. Good luck with that, asshat.  And what happened to using "barrier" instead of "wall"?  He's so pissed and panicked he's thrown that out the window I guess.

Then he says he's going to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because they're "doing nothing for us" and "word is" a new caravan is forming in Honduras.

Has he forgotten that the House changes hands in a few days?

He's obviously panicky this morning. Apparently, a government shutdown wasn't such a good idea after all.

(Rant starts here if you want to read it yourself.  Oh, yeah.  He doesn't thread his tweets, so here are links to the other three parts:  2, 3, 4.  And, here's an article about closing the border.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/29:

“The special operators voluntarily participated in this open press event,” said U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, in an email to Newsweek on Friday. “There was no security violation.”

[...]

U.S. Navy Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, told Newsweek on Friday that from the Defense Department's standpoint, there was no security violation.

"I'm not going to comment on what a command should or should not do," Robertson said regarding an individual unit's operational security policies, but, "this was a free and open event to the press, and from the big DoD perspective, there was no violation."

  Newsweek

Since when can special ops people voluntarily reveal their identities?

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Trevor Davids, the Naval Special Warfare Center’s public information officer said: “All these guys will go on to do clandestine work,” he said in his explanation of operational security concerns this past July. “And that work is dangerous.”

More dangerous than ever now.

Judge Sullivan's THIRD case

As it happens, Judge Sullivan was all over the administration*'s asylum policies long before Tuesday, when he got famous by taking three feet of skin off Michael Flynn's tail assembly. Famously, last August, when told by government lawyers that a mother and her daughter who had come here seeking asylum were already on their way back to their home country, Sullivan told the lawyers, "Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States."

And, not for nothing, but, if the suit gets that far, it is Judge Sullivan who is presiding over the lawsuit brought by Democratic congresscritters that accuses the president* of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Sooner or later, god willing, the president* may have to appear before Judge Sullivan, either as a witness or a defendant. I would pay top-dollar for a ticket to that.

  Charles P Pierce

Wouldn't we all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Judge Sullivan's other case

 [...]



 [...]



 [...]











UPDATE:  Just because I laughed out loud at this...

As it happens, Judge Sullivan was all over the administration*'s asylum policies long before Tuesday, when he got famous by taking three feet of skin off Michael Flynn's tail assembly.

  Charles P Pierce

Charlie does turn a nice phrase.

Famously, last August, when told by government lawyers that a mother and her daughter who had come here seeking asylum were already on their way back to their home country, Sullivan told the lawyers, "Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States."

And, not for nothing, but, if the suit gets that far, it is Judge Sullivan who is presiding over the lawsuit brought by Democratic congresscritters that accuses the president* of violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Sooner or later, god willing, the president* may have to appear before Judge Sullivan, either as a witness or a defendant. I would pay top-dollar for a ticket to that.

No complaints

'You want to stay in the U.S. or go back to Guatemala?  Up to you.'

"Caravans of Hondurans" more democratic than the country they're coming to

To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the caravan is nothing more than a “lawless” mob of potentially violent criminals. But dozens of phone interviews and WhatsApp conversations with advocacy groups and migrants, as well as social media updates from groups on the ground, show that the migrants have organized a surprisingly sophisticated ruling structure, complete with everything from a press shop to a department of public works.

When the migrants needed to make public announcements, debate the best routes and vote on different plans, they established a nightly general assembly as a forum open to all, Athens-style. Their legislative floor was an abandoned truck parking lot or an unused sports stadium. Some of the migrants even took turns as communications directors, drafting press statements that were transmitted through a media group of more than 370 journalists on WhatsApp.

When a few of the men started drinking in the evenings to distract themselves, and mothers worried the noise was keeping their children awake, the general assembly set up a kind of internal police force made up of about 100 unarmed volunteers with megaphones to reprimand the men and keep them out of the migrants' makeshift camps after the 7 p.m. curfew.

And when they needed to lobby higher-level entities, such as immigration advocacy groups, human rights watchdogs and local governments, the migrants elected a nine-person Governance and Dialogue Council to press for their most basic needs: food, shelter and safety.

[...]

In between one dysfunctional home country and one openly hostile destination country—at the end of November, the U.S. Border Patrol launched tear gas canisters into Mexico when a group of migrants from the caravan tried to rush the border—these thousands of caravaneros are proving that they can organize themselves to respond to their own needs, the same ones that the broken Central American governments they fled from were often unable, or unwilling, to meet.

[...]

And though it is on a comparatively microscopic scale, the caravan government has been surprisingly successful in areas where actual democracies are not, such as with ensuring the representation of minority groups. One week before the United States elected its most diverse Congress in history, the migrants were also giving voice to underrepresented communities. The Governance and Dialogue Council at first had seven people: three men, three women and one representative from the caravan’s 100-strong LGBTQ community, a gay man. But the council quickly expanded to nine when a group of trans women approached the leaders and said they felt that a gay man could not represent their specific needs; transgender migrants have faced catcalls and incessant sexual harassment along the way. The assembly elected a trans woman and another man to sit on the council.

[...]

More recently, the council, staying at the border with the rest of the migrants, still tries to meet every day. It has been preoccupied with the day-to-day survival of the asylum-seekers and their efforts to persuade official governments to pay attention to their needs. To counter some of the anti-immigrant rhetoric the migrants have encountered daily at the border, the caravan’s assembly voted to set up a task force of cleaning squads to sweep the streets of Tijuana in goodwill, akin to a department of public works.

  Politico

It's not been a good day for His Lardship

A sentencing memo in federal court claiming Himself committed a felony, and a denial of dictatorship.



That nasty old 9th Circuit again.

A very bad day in a very bad fortnight.

California's governor-elect is going to snare himself a nasty presidential tweet or five

A month out from his inauguration, California Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom is staking out his own ground when it comes to immigration policy and relations with Mexico, signaling he’s not interested in keeping National Guard troops at the border and that he intends to seek more state resources to address humanitarian concerns.

[...]

He said he would review current National Guard commitments — those made by [current governor Jery] Brown under pressure from President Donald Trump. Those commitments are set to extend until March 31. But Newsom said he believed those troops could be far better utilized.

“There’s plenty for them to do on the Camp fire and recovery efforts,’’ as well as “on the humanitarian front’’ where the immediate need for shelter, food and medical care is clearly “not going away anytime soon,’’ he said.

  Politico

And he's absolutely right.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The other reason they are coming here

Jesus wept

The optics.  To be sure, this is a Mexican prouction, but it's in place because of the US policy of forcing the asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border while their cases are heard.

Story here

On message

Remember: what you see and hear isn't what's happening*

Speaking with reporters in Mississippi, where he held two rallies for Republican Sen. Cindy-Hyde Smith, the president claimed that three border patrol officers “were very badly hurt, getting hit with rocks and stones” Sunday during a melee with migrants attempting to enter the United States at a border crossing in San Diego.

“We’ve had some very violent people and frankly we don’t want those people in our society,” Trump said, according to a pool report. “We don’t want those people in our country. We have tremendous violence.”

Trump’s account contradicted U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who said in a statement Monday that agents and officers “effectively managed an extremely dangerous situation involving over 1,000 individuals,” adding: “They did so safely and without any reported serious injuries on either side of the border.”

[...]

“You really say, why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it’s going to be formed and they’re running up with a child?” Trump said. “In some cases, you know, they’re not the parents. These are people, they call them grabbers.”

  Politico

That's probably not the term he really wants people to remember.



More from his WSJ interview:

Daniel Dale also summarized Trump's second rally for Hyde-Smith in Mississippi.  Two rallies for her in one day.  If she loses, that's going to look particuarly bad for Trump.




YMCA?  Obviously they don't know that's a gay anthem.

Mike Pence is here. He says, "Mississippi and America need Cindy Hyde-Smith back in the United States Senate." "I think there's only one way you can describe the last two years," Mike Pence says. "It's been two years of action." "We've already started to build that wall," Pence says, adopting Trump's regular lie, and the crowd chants Build That Wall, and Pence says, as Trump does, "Oh, we're buildin' it." Pence concludes: with Gov. Phil Bryant in the state house, with Donald Trump in the White House, "and with God's help, we will make Mississippi safer and more prosperous than ever before." Now Trump.

Fake snow falls on Trump. He marvels at it and swats it away in dramatic fashion. He begins, "Look, snow, I didn't know what was going on, this is, I said, are you sure this is indoor, that beautiful snow looks so real, that's the end of my suit, that's the end of my hair..."

Trump says there are "thousands of people outside." There is not a good record of thousands of people being outside when he says this.

Trump says what is happening is "frankly unprecedented," then tries and fails to say unprecedented again, saying something like, "What's happening is un-prentice."

"We are respected like at no time before," Trump says. He says foreign leaders walk in and tell him, "Mr. President, it's incredible what's happened with your country in such a short time."

Trump on the midterms: "We got very little credit from the fake news media. Very little credit. They talked about the House. But the people I campaigned for in the House - which was very few, I can't, look I'm one person."

Trump is rattling off Senate and governor victories. He says if they win tomorrow it will be a 53-47 Senate margin, "and nobody can believe it." (Everybody can believe it.) Trump: "We had three seats even four seats that were so close. We almost won. In areas that a lot of people say don't bother contesting. We almost won in four states that a lot of people say don't bother, you can't win." This did not happen.

Trump alleges "a little tricky business going on" in the midterms. He does not say what he's talking about.

Trump again calls Sen. Lindsey Graham's fiery pro-Kavanaugh speech "beautiful." "He hit a chord that you hit very rarely in the world of politics or anything else," he says.

Seems like Lindsey's campaign for a job in the Trump administration is going well.

Trump boasts of how many bad people ICE has arrested during his tenure. Sounding a bit Oprah-like, he says, pointing at people in the crowd, "And I don't want that job. And you don't want it. And you don't want it. And you don't want it. And YOU might take it, right there."

Trump cites stats on illegal immigrant crimes, baselessly rejects data on low immigrant criminality. "You know you hear these stories about oh, they don't commit crimes, we commit crimes, they don't commit crimes. Always it's us. No no, it doesn't work that way. It's fake news."

Trump boasts of the Mexico-Canada trade deal, then threatens Mexico and Canada with tariffs again: "But of course they have to treat us fairly. Otherwise we'll just tax their product when it comes in. You know that. You know that. You know that. You know what I'm talking about."

Trump, who always boasts about how he has supposedly ended steel dumping, now says, "They can dump all they want. I want them to dump a lot." His argument is: "Dump all you want, you're gonna pay a lot." But the dumpers, like China, do not pay the tariff; Americans pay it.

Trump again calls NAFTA a disaster and his USMCA, which is very NAFTA, incredible. He repeats, of the name USMCA, "like the song, YMCA, right."

So, that's why they play it.  Hilarious.

"Drug prices are starting to come down," Trump says without any evidence I'm aware of. An Associated Press investigation of brand-name prescription drugs found 96 price increases for every price reduction in the first seven months of this year.

Trump does his usual exaggeration of how dire the experimental-medication situation was before the new Right to Try law, wrongly saying people had "no hope" and "we never let anyone touch it." Trump's FDA chief testified that the FDA approved 99% of pre-Right to Try requests.

Trump says nobody has ever done so much in two years.

Which is not a lie.

Trump: "You still have deep state, but one by one we're getting them out. You have deep state bad people. You have a lot of phony stuff going on. But you know what? One by one, we're winning. We're winning winning winning."

Trump said win win win win and now the crowd is chanting win win win win.

Trump has concluded. Like his rally this afternoon, this one was much shorter than usual.

He's just not feeling it lately. The walls are closing in.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

* Statement by the president.

Why isn't Andrew Napolitano defending Trump on immigration?

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said Monday that President Trump cannot legally follow through with his threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He cannot legally do it," Napolitano said on Fox News. "We know that because of federal statutes. They were last revised in 1986 when our relationship with migrants coming north was very different than it is now."

“But that’s the law as he finds it and that’s the law as he is required to enforce it," Napolitano continued. "And that’s the law that the federal judge in San Francisco that the president attempted to disparage by calling an ‘Obama judge’ told him he had to enforce as well.”

Napolitano noted that Trump doesn't have to tolerate "lawlessness," but said that according to the law, migrants who have a "bonafide asylum claim, meaning you are escaping a government that is pursing you, or escaping a government that is failing to enforce basic law and order, can enter the U.S."

“The president doesn’t want to hear this but it’s the law,” he added.

  The Hill

I assume there will be lawsuits over the use of tear gas against those people who tried to cross recently.

JESUS Christ - impeach!

Trump is retaliating against asylum seekers because of a judge's order temporarily denying him the right to deny asylum to people who don't enter the US at official ports of entry - and Chief Justice Roberts daring to chastise him for his comments about it.

First, he insists they come to a port of entry, and yet, when they have done so, he used tear gas on them!

According to several journalists in Tijuana, US authorities used tear gas on migrants and refugees, including children, who approached the border fence near the El Chaparral crossing. A small group breached the border, local media reported.

[...]

US Customs and Border Protection temporarily closed all vehicle and pedestrian traffic at the major San Ysidro port of entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California on Sunday.

The agency made the announcement as hundreds of migrants and refugees marched towards the border in an attempt to put pressure on the US government to allow thousands of asylum seekers to enter the United States.

[...]

More than 5,000 migrants and refugees have been cramped into a Tijuana stadium complex that is more than 2,000 people over capacity.

[...]

The port of entry remained closed for about six hours before being re-opened.

The developments on Sunday come as frustration grows in Tijuana over the slow processing of asylum claims by US authorities.

[...]

Prior to the border closure, hundreds gathered in San Diego to march in solidarity with the migrants and refugees in Tijuana.

The group, which included a collection of different rights organisations, accused the Trump administration of creating a "war-like atmosphere" against the Central American exodus in Mexico.

[...]

Paul Ross, 74, who served in the Vietnam War, said he felt compelled to come to the border and make his voice heard.

"Latin America has had one dictator after the other," Ross told Al Jazeera. "Almost all of which have had support from the United States, in the beginning, to work towards regime change. The poverty and problems they have there now, have a history which we have to understand."

While holding a flag with Veterans for Peace written on it in combination with a logo with a flying dove, Ross told Al Jazeera he believed the current exodus of Central Americans is a result of the involvement of the US in affairs in these countries.

[...]

Holding banners that read "immigrants are welcome" and "money for jobs, not walls", more than 200 people marched towards the San Ysidro port of entry.

  alJazeera

And he's bought off President-elect AMLO. This is a big surprise to me. AMLO was supposed to be the left-leaning candidate.

The Trump administration has won the support of Mexico’s incoming government for a plan to remake U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, according to Mexican officials and senior members of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team.

[...]

Earlier in the day, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement that “President Trump has developed a strong relationship with the incoming Lopez Obrador Administration, and we look forward to working with them on a wide range of issues.”

The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and place a formidable barrier in the path of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence. By reaching the accord, the Trump administration has also overcome Mexico’s historic reticence to deepen cooperation with the United States on an issue widely seen here as America’s problem.

[...]

“For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico,” said Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s incoming interior minister, the top domestic policy official for López Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1. In an interview with The Washington Post, she called it a “short-term solution.”

“The medium- and long-term solution is that people don’t migrate,” Sánchez Cordero said. “Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine one caravan after another after another. That would also be a problem for us.”

[...]

President Trump briefly described the arrangement in a pair of tweets Saturday evening. “Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court,” Trump wrote. “No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S....All will stay in Mexico.”

The president then issued a threat. “If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!” Trump wrote.

[...]

The prospect of keeping thousands of Central American asylum seekers for months or years in drug cartel-dominated Mexican border states — some of the most violent in the country — has troubled human rights activists and others who worry that such a plan could put migrants at risk and undermine their lawful right to apply for asylum.

[...]

U.S. officials involved in the talks said Mexico has not asked for financial assistance to implement the procedures, which could result in significant costs if asylum seekers are made to wait for months or years. They described the deal as a collaboration, and senior officials from both governments insisted it was not imposed upon Mexico.

  WaPo

I don't believe that for a minute.

On Saturday, Nick Miroff and Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post reported that the Donald Trump administration had made a deal with the incoming president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to implement a “Remain in Mexico” policy.

The incoming Mexican administration released a statement Saturday night that looked like a denial of the Washington Post story — but didn’t actually contradict that a deal was being discussed, or even that they’re close to finalizing one.

[...]

The statement said that “there is no agreement of any sort between the government-elect of Mexico and the government of the United States, as the next president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will take office on December 1” — in other words, denying that the incoming government was already making official deals behind the outgoing government’s back.

[...]

Under the agreement, as the Post describes it, asylum seekers who meet the credible-fear standard would also be asked about the prospects of staying in Mexico. If they couldn’t show a reasonable fear (a higher standard than credible fear) of staying in Mexico, they’d still be allowed to apply for asylum in the US, but they’d wait in Mexico until their case was completed.

[...]

While the two countries are still hammering out the details, it appears that the biggest question — whether Mexico would cooperate — has now been settled.

  Vox

What on earth could AMLO possibly be getting to make this an attractive deal for Mexico?

US Customs and Border Protection said the migrants threw projectiles that struck several agents.

"Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas to dispel the group because of the risk to agents' safety," the agency said on Twitter.

[...]

About 500 migrants on the Mexican side of the border overwhelmed police blockades near the San Ysidro Port of Entry Sunday afternoon, two journalists at the scene in Tijuana told CNN.

[...]

Tijuana police arrested 39 people in connection with the attempt to cross the border illegally, the agency said in a statement on Facebook.

It said they would be reported to Mexican immigration authorities.

Mexico's Interior Ministry earlier said those identified as having tried to cross would be processed for deportation to their home countries.

  CNN

On Friday, Tijuana’s mayor, Juan Manuel Gastélum, declared a humanitarian crisis in his city of 1.6 million, which he said was struggling to accommodate the migrants.

[...]

On Sunday, several hundred people, mostly men, pushed past a blockade of Mexican police near the crossing. They carried hand-painted US and Honduran flags and chanted: “We are not criminals! We are international workers!”

[...]

Some migrants called on each other to remain peaceful. They appeared to pass easily through the police blockade without using violence. A second line of police carrying plastic riot shields stood guard outside a Mexican customs and immigration plaza. That line of police installed tall steel panels on the Mexican side of the border, completely blocking incoming traffic lanes.

[...]

Honduran Ana Zúñiga, 23, said she saw migrants open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point US agents fired teargas at them.

“We ran but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more,” she said, holding her three-year-old daughter, Valery.

  Guardian

And is Mexico not complaining that the US is firing tear gas across the border?*

UPDATE:

JESUS FUCKING Christ!

*UPDATE 11/27:

Mexico’s foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to the U.S. government on Monday calling for “a full investigation” into what it described as non-lethal weapons directed toward Mexican territory on Sunday, a statement from the ministry said.

  Reuters

Operation Desert Stunt