the DON JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 5/8/23… 15,011.70 5/1/23… 15,011.70
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 5/8/23... 34,098.16; 5/1/23... 34,098.16; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for May 8, 2023 – “WITHER... MEXICO!”

This is, and has been, England’s week as long-standing, long-suffering Prince Charles finally accedes to the thrown as King Charles. Tributes and prognostications are still pouring in, however, so we turn South, instead of East, tacos and tequila instead of tea and crumpets and... anticipating the expiration of the Trump era Covid spawned Title 42... take a look at the expected surge of migrants over borders from Texas to California, and make an attempt to understand why so many Mexicans (not to mention others from Central and South America and the Caribbean) are choosing to leave their homes and their families, undertake a dangerous trek to El Norte and, there, accept isolation, esploitation and scapegoating as is the lot of the illegal immigrant – all the while hiding from the police.

On Friday, a particularly perverse calendrical accident inasmuch as celebrations usually tend to involve indulgences in meat and drink, not the fish and soft drinks consigned to Roman Catholic nations (and lands south of our border tend to be quite Catholic in faith and practice), Mexico celebrates (as best it can) the holiday of Cinco de Mayo; commemorating not the independence of the Mexican nation from Spain, but its second deliverance in the 19^th century from a rapacious French Empire that had seized the entire country while the truculent giant to its north was occupied with its own Civil War.

Mexico, in the eyes of the world and world’s leaders, is by no means a failed state on the order of Haiti or Afghanistan – nor is it a war-ravaged hellhole like Ukraine or, of late, the Sudan, but it is a place that people are trying to get out of, not celebrate, and, after today, the danger and the desperation can only increase.

Cinco de Mayo is not, as some believe, a celebration of the independence of Mexico as one of the largest, if not the largest, of the dominoes of the Spanish colonial dominion to topple. Its Wikipedia entry (Attachment One) cites the expulsion of French imperialists who had taken advantage of the American Civil War to steal back some American colonial properties.

Mexico, after the expulsion, would experience democracy, dictatorship, revolution and power struggles among politicians,

By the time that Americans would be facing the Great Depression and, thereafter, the Second World War, Mexico had stabilized itself, somewhat, and the relative postwar prosperity sweeping the United States extended to Mexico, directly, and also through a rather easygoing immigration policy that allowed, over perhaps forty years, millions of Mexicans to cross the border and do some shopping or sightseeing or visiting relatives (just as many Americans in the border states found markets cheaper and easier to access) or to do mostly seasonal work as farm laborers.

The value of the peso began plummeting, but you could still find plenty of good, hard silver coins south of the border, money that felt like money in your pocket.

These so-called “braceros” came north during planting and/or harvesting season to labor in the fields and farms of El Norte; saving up cold, hard cash to spend or invest back home or to send remittances back to Mexico. American politicians, especially in the more agricultural states, welcomed the policy because happy farmers with a plentiful supply of cheap labor meant big donations and support for the Congresspersons, Senators and local officials who profited by the system. And, while the Mexicans knew they were being exploited, they could still make more picking lettuce or grapefruit in California or wrangling steers in Texas.

Some, often following the pattern of black workers in the South, emigrated north to the wheatfields and factories of the North, Many of these settled in the new country – some became citizens, some did not.

Several factors led to the slow but steady decline of the braceros at the tail end of the 20^th century. Under labor activists like Cesar Chavez, farmworkers lobbied for higher wages and better working conditions, sometimes striking to obtain their objectives. For a while agribusiness was able to break or fend off the strikes by importing more cheap Mexican workers, but these now received a more hostile welcome, not only from racist gringos (who tended to lean to the political right, especially after Barry Goldwater and, later, George Wallace riled up their troops) but persons of their own ethnicity who had been original inhabitants of the Southwest, or had migrated years or generations before and tended to side with more liberal Democrats.

Landless and friendless, the visiting workers... especially those who had spread out into the industrial states... faced another threat: the Chinese. The businessmen who were happy to pay Mexican foundry and factor workers a dollar an hour instead of the five that legal Americans cost them were being elbowed out by the retailers and the sharp guys who imported this or that from Chinese middlemen who paid their workers only ten cents an hour.

Those who did not adapt went out of business. And the white, as well as black and even some brown working-class Americans with green cards or citizenship papers could easily be mobilized by right-wing purveyors of a New Populism – the polar opposite of the original pro-worker sentiments of Republicans like Fightin’ Bob LaFollette or Teddy Roosevelt or, later, the New Dealers around his Democratic kinsman Frank.

Hearing the voices of those Americans whose jobs... as hadn’t been shipped off to China... were being taken by immigrants willing to work for less than the minimum wage, Neo-Populist sentiment swelled among white (and some black, even brown) workers, culminating in the so-called “white replacement” doctrine which, although currently a trope of neo-Nazis on the internet, had its roots in plain old economics until the accession of Donald Trump, whose distrust and dislike of the Mexicans equaled his hatred of the Chinese – a form of “dollar diplomacy” that, as jobs became scarcer in the 21^st century and the ruling class pressed down harder (let’s not forget the Amazonian no bathroom break, “piss in a Coke bottle” management ethos) the dismantling of legal segretation meant that the bosses were now able to hire more black workers... a good thing – at wages that, while higher than those of Mexican or other Latin immigrants... in turn... higher than that of the offshore Chinese workforce (a bad thing) – engendered a pivot of the white working class from the prospect of class war to the prospect of race war.

Then, along came the Plague. Once again, all workers were necessary again and wages rose... a little... but the inflation resultant from these higher wages, as well as supply chain issues arising out of the plague as it impacted Baltimore to Beijing, rose even more and the owning class, from the oilies to the bankers and real estate slicks, were quick to gouge what they could gouge amidst the chaos.

Now it was the ruling and owning classes... at least those who still depending on producing product (agricultural, industrial or some services) as opposed to shuffling papers around and slipping a few negotiable securities into their own pockets. The proletariat, under Djonald UnHinged, were placated with racist propaganda against domestic ethnic minority citizens, immigrants (legal or not) and, of course, Those Damned Chinese.

New enemies were needed and found: uppity women resisting the New Theocracy, the menace of the LGBQT M&Ms (enhanced by an idiotic “cancel culture” consisting mainly of wealthy white students at elitist universities eager to signal their virtuous comradeship with the victims of society by burning books, banning comedy and tearing down statues) and, as the plague and Trumpiness swelled like the belly of dead rats, a weird new vortex of conspiracy theories arose to give the voters something other than their inequality to be mad about. MAGAmobs denounced masks and vaccines, swapped stories of wealthy liberals holding child molestation banquets in pizza parlour basements and colluding with reptilian aliens out of TV, the movies and comic books who were coming with space lasers supplied by those always on-hand Jews.

Meanwhile, human illegal aliens were massing at the border. So MAGA-supporting Republican and traumatized, victim-besotted Democratic politicians drafted and passed a Covid-impelled compromise measure: Title 42, based on the premise that the cataclysmic shrinkage of America’s workforce and consequent damage to the supply chain constituted a medical emergency.

The plague came, it killed, and then it departed (for the most part – on Friday the CDC declared that it was no longer an emergency).

Anticipating this eventuality, the Supreme Court... back in February (CBS News, 2/16/23, Attachment Two)... canceled arguments it had scheduled over Title 42, effectively ending the policy that had allowed U.S. border officials to swiftly expel migrants, after the Biden administration said the case would be rendered moot once the border restrictions expire in early May.

“Since it was invoked by the Trump administration at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020,” CBS reports went, “the public health law underpinning Title 42 has allowed U.S. officials along the Mexican border to expel migrants over 2.6 million times to Mexico or their home country, without allowing them to request asylum, federal data show.”

While the Trump administration said Title 42 was designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials have said the agency came under pressure to approve the expulsions, despite concerns about what CBS called “a shoddy public health rationale.”

The Biden administration defended Title 42 and its stated public health justification for over a year. But it moved to end the policy in the spring of 2022, citing improving pandemic conditions and increased vaccination rates in migrants' native countries. “That effort was halted after Republican state officials convinced a federal judge in Louisiana to rule that Title 42 had been improperly terminated,” and the survival of the measure began working its way up the legal foodchain to SCOTUS.

“In November 2022, a federal judge overseeing a separate lawsuit declared Title 42 illegal, saying the government had not sufficiently considered the measure's impact on asylum-seekers.”

Biden administration officials, seeing the bloody handprints on the wall, said they've been preparing for Title 42's end for the past year, by expanding a process known as expedited removal that allows U.S. border officials “to rapidly deport migrants who don't ask for asylum or who fail to establish credible fear of persecution.”

The termination will result in the default back to a previous program, Title 8, which requires border authorities to admit migrants who are under threat in their home countries.

The prospect satisfies nobody.

Covid no longer being a factor, the prophets of doom now warn of a human scourge of refugees from Mexico and points south and other, once the Title was dropped.

MAGAnauts trumpeted that it was time to go back to the “beautiful wall” and, perhaps, stronger measures... mobilizing the military to wait, guns drawn, on the northern bank of the Rio Grande and in downtowns from El Paso to San Diego?Electrification of the Wall? Mining the North Bank on either side of the barrier? Trump himself predicted the U.S. would become “officially, a THIRD WORLD NATION!” when the Covid-era Title 42 immigration policy expired, he said on Truth Social as the Biden Administration faces bipartisan “pushback” for deploying troops to the border ahead of the expected surge in migrants under the soon-to-be loosened immigration policy. (Forbes, Attachment Three)

Trump has been ratcheting up his criticism of the Biden Administration’s immigration policies ahead of Title 42’s expiration, warning Friday “this date will go down in infamy” and “our borders will completely collapse.”

The message was preceded by a video Trump aired Wednesday in which he said President Joe Biden “is preparing to remove the last remnants of my Title 42 policy just a few weeks from now,” while predicting “hundreds of thousands of people will pour in that day” and cause “total mayhem and utter lawlessness.”

Liberals have responded to the Forty Two-thnasia with an array of humanitarian justifications for anything up to and including wholly open borders. A Cinco de Mayo guest opinion piece by writer and immigration advocate Alejandra Oliva in the New York Times (Attachment Four) details her status as a daughter of immigrants and argues that the right of refugees to come to America is legal, as well as ethical, inasmuch as “asylum is the category of legal protection we offer people who are persecuted in their home countries for characteristics they cannot or should not have to change about themselves — political opinion and religion, but also whom someone loves, gender, race or ethnicity.”

Oliva calls the restored and reconstituted Title Eight. “which was put in place in January and allows up to 30,000 people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to enter the United States per month” is not the humanitarian approach it has been promoted as, but, rather, remains “fundamentally an unjust policy.

“Baked into the promise of entry into the United States,” Oliva contends, “are prerequisites that exclude a large majority of people arriving at the border. The parole program requires applicants to have a financial sponsor. They must arrive in the country by plane, which requires the financial and logistical abilities to secure a ticket and a passport all while trying to stay safe in the often dangerous situations from which they are seeking asylum. Those who fail to meet these requirements may be turned away without receiving an asylum screening.”

Not holding to the contention that the nations driving their own people to emigrate to America, including the Mexicans themselves, are blameless – particularly their political and bureaucratical leaders. The Independent UK (as opposed to the liberal Guardian or conservative Sun) reported that the bureaucrat responsible for management of the border crisis (Southern flank) has been arrested for neglibence after “40 people died in a migrant fire at a detention centre in Ciudad Juarez in March.” (Attachment Five)

While the MAGAmob has castigated President Joe’s INS, DOJ, Labor, FBI, Homeleand Security and other agencies blamed for the immigration crimination of the Rio Grande and points west, Mexico’s immigration agency has for years faced human rights and corruption complaints, including charges that the migrant centres stockpiling not only domestics seeking to escape the down-spiraling Eagle and Serpent but immigrants to the Republic from Central and South America, Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, even other continents all too frequently have inadequate ventilation, along with issues over clean water and food – issues which require money, which require taxes and their potential for graft.

After a migrant was allegedly responsible for starting the fire in the Ciudad Juarez facility on 27 March, the Independent wrote, “no one in a position of authority at the centre appeared to make an attempt to evacuate the migrants being held there, even though a holding cell where 68 people were detained was filling with smoke.

“In addition to the 40 people who died in the fire, two dozen others were injured. Nineteen of the people who died were from Guatemala.”

Federal prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office argued in court this week that Francisco Garduño, as the top-ranking immigration official in the country, neglected his oversight duties in Ciudad Juarez despite the fact that he allegedly knew the city’s detention centre was not safe.

Prosecutors asked that Mr Garduño be removed from his job leading the Mexican Immigration Institute, but a judge denied that request and so Mr. Garduño will continue in the role.

It was the first of two fires migrant camps – three weeks later, two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a sprawling camp of about 2,000 people in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas. An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline. (NPR April 22, Attachment Six)

"The people fled as their tents were burned," said Gladys Cañas, who runs the group Ayudandoles A Triunfar. "What they're saying as part of their testimony is that they were told to leave from there."

However, Juan José Rodríguez, director of the Tamaulipas Institute for Migrants, a state agency coordinating with Mexico's federal government, said he had no information that a gang was responsible for the fires.

Rodríguez attributed them to a group of migrants and said some 10 tents that had already been abandoned were burned. He added that they apparently set the fires to express frustration with a U.S. government mobile app that assigns turns for people to show up at the border and claim asylum.

There was no indication that the fires were set by American anti-immigrant zealots.

One who follows the ups and downs of the Mexican economy, as depicted in the Mexico News Daily might wonder why so many people are desperately pulling up stakes and moving (or attempting to move) to a foreign country. Admittedly, many already have relatives in the U.S.A. and there are also communities in which Mexicans are not only accepted, but culturally predominant.

But, the MND (May 1, Attachment Seven) reported that Mexico’s economy “has exceeded analysts’ expectations for Q1 2023, accelerating its GDP growth to around 1.1% compared to last quarter, and showing 3.8% annual growth over the same period last year according to preliminary data” and that this “strong performance in the first quarter of 2023 comes on the back of six consecutive quarters of growth, as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This growth was led by a 1.5% increase in the service economy which, MND alleges, counteracted a 0.7% decrease in the industrial sector, and a 3.2% decrease in the primary sector, which includes agriculture, fishing and mining.

“Indeed, the British magazine The Economist ranked Mexico sixth on a list of “2022’s Unlikely Winners”, an accolade boasted of repeatedly by President López Obrador.”

The problem?

“Although the figures for Q1 2023 appear more positive than predicted, the director of analysis at Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, again cautioned that Mexico’s current growth pattern is unsustainable in the long term.

““The proportion of GDP that represents gross fixed investment has fallen, and what has gained proportion is consumption,” Siller said. “This is not sustainable in the long run because it snowballs public finances, which depend on economic growth.”

Indications are that the wheels are coming off of the Mexican miracle... that, for those already squeezed, their future in the Republic is growing bleak.

A year ago, the Economist UK found that the Mexican economy was “underperforming” due to “red tape, taxes and gangsters.”

“I don’t want to grow because I will be worse off,” a factory manager called Ramón (not his real name) told the Brits. “Not only will his tax rates jump from 2% of profits to 30%, he says, but he will attract attention from both trade unions and organised crime, which will charge derecho de piso—extortion.”

“Thanks to abstemious fiscal policies,” the Economist profile declared, Mexicot had, as of the time of publication, (March 19, 2022, Attachment Eight) “avoided the high inflation and debt that afflict South American economies like Argentina and Brazil. And yet over the quarter-century before the pandemic Mexico managed annual average growth in gdp per person, on a purchasing-power-parity basis, of just 2.8% (see chart). That was little better than Brazil, worse than Argentina and well short of the performance of stars like Chile and Panama.

The plague worsened Mexico’s economy even more than it did to other Latin American nations, or in the United States - and after two years of shrinkage.

“In 2020 Mexico suffered its worst economic contraction since the great depression. Aggregate output shrank by 8.5%. Between 2018 and 2020 at least 3.8m people fell into poverty (according to a measure that takes into account access to services as well as income). That brought the poverty rate to almost 44%.”

Under the shadow of death, Mexico’s economy contracted in the last two quarters of 2021. “The IMF and Mexico’s central bank have revised down sharply their forecasts for growth in 2022 relative to earlier estimates, back to the usual 2-3% range,” the Economist wrote.

Criminal extortion, competition for American corporate runaways from cheaper-labor China, an insecure infrastructure plus “red tape and high taxes in exchange for poor public services” – these are some of the reasons why the economy is withering and the people either moving to an “informal economy” or voting with their feet.

Mexico does have strong unions, for those who can access them, but many of these tend to resemble the Teamsters, under Jimmy Hoffa, the UAW’s assassins of Walter Reuther or the labor bosses in Vegas as opposed to, for example, the UFW under Cesar Chavez (whose granddaughter, Julie Chávez Rodríguez was just appointed his 2024 campaign manager),

The poverty rate of 44% noted above correlates with data from the World Bank... back in 2013, 33% of the population lived in moderate poverty and 9% in “extrem poverty” which leads to 42% of Mexico's total population living below the national poverty line. (See the Wikipedia analysis of Mexican poverty... Attachment Nine)... including the contention that the people themselves are to blame for their plight; the individual condition argument. “This means, a person's individual circumstances and possibilities create their opportunity for access to goods and services. This condition is triggered by a person's income, education, training or work experience, social network, age, health, and other socio-economic factors.”

It also lets the ruling class off the hook.

EQUALITY

Wiki - Mexico's wealth is unevenly distributed among its people where 10 percent of nation's wealthiest have 42.2 percent of all income and 10 percent of the nation's poorest have 1.3 of the remaining income.^[67] Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico and one of the richest in the world, has a personal fortune equal to 4 to 6 percent of the country's GDP.^[68]^[69]

The average life expectancy has drastically increased from 60 years in 1968, to 77 years in 2012. Rural areas still have the highest birth rates and poverty rates in Mexico, with indigenous populations topping the list.

Mexico does not promote equal opportunity employment despite established laws forbidding most socially-recognized forms of discrimination.^[48] The government doesn't become sufficiently involved to promote opportunities to all citizens; including reducing discrimination against middle-age and elder citizens. Over a million of the unemployed face age discrimination and 55% of all unemployed face some form of discrimination when seeking employment.^[49] There are virtually no opportunities for individuals with special requirements such as the disabled.^[50] As job seekers become older, it is harder for them to get employed as employers tend to seek candidates within the "younger than 35 range". Social security (IMSS) is insufficient and there is a huge gap in proportion to the entire population (50% covered), the work force (30% covered), and the retired (33% covered).^[51] There is no unemployment insurance in Mexico.^[52]

RACE

The concentration of poverty and distribution of wealth and opportunities is clearly visible from a geographic perspective.^[60] The northern region of the country offers higher development while the southern states are the most impoverished. This is clearly the result of states equipped with better infrastructure that others. The states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero are among the least developed in the country. These states hold the highest numbers of indigenous population. As a result, 75 percent of the indigenous population lives on moderate poverty line and 39 percent of these under extreme poverty.^[61] (WIKI)

According to the World Bank, about three-quarters of indigenous peoples in Mexico are poor and the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous groups is very high; the difference in poverty has been divided into explained and unexplained components. The explained components are "the amount of the gap attributed to observable characteristics such as education, age, occupation, region of residence and so on," (World Bank, 2005) which account for three quarters of poverty. The unexplained components are related to the level of discrimination and explain a quarter of the poverty.

HEALTH

Life expectancy via worldometers.

#	Country	Life Expectancy (both sexes)	Females Life Expectancy	Males Life Expectancy

46 United States 79.11 81.65 76.61

90 Mexico 75.41 78.17 72.62

EDUCATION

Wiki: government efforts to accommodate the growing student population, improving the quality of instruction and promoting prevalent school attendance has not been enough and therefore education has not remained among priorities for families who must struggle with poverty.^[40]^[41] a condition that the Wilson Center (in a separate article, see Attachment E, below) calls “industry without innovation

OPPORTUNITY

Wiki: Although the country has made great strides in education and professional training, the absence of a serious employment policy means that economic expansion is sacrificed so that higher prices can be avoided. That exerts a negative impact on the labor market in both the short and medium term, and on new professionals most of all.^[45] Situations like this have caused the standard of living among the urban middle class to deteriorate and as a consequence brings on emigration from this sector to other countries, mainly the United States and Canada.^[46]

CRIME

The upsurge in Mexico’s violence, according to the Wilson Center (a non-partisan think tank and supporter of “Open Dialogue & Actionable Ideas”) is the result of “a multi-level, uncoordinated judicial system that has been incapable of controlling criminal networks that are increasingly fractured and geographically dispersed.”

In English, that means, that it increased after 2012 “and was fueled, for example, by the withdrawal of the Army from Michoacán in 2014, and the lack of local enforcement in the new trafficking routes that emerged after larger criminal groups were fractured – for example, “when the Jalisco Cartel Nueva Generación organization grouped together many fragmented cells to fight against a Sinaloa Cartel that was also partially fragmented.” (Wilson Center, Attachment Ten)

Crime, money and “fun, fun, fun” (as Mr. Cale’s paean to the musical, and not Presidential, Mr. Wilson noted) all collide in Mexico’s Caribbean and Pacific Coast resort cities where carefee, careless tourists from the United States, as well as many other wealthy countries, meet and mingle to sample the local amenities.

Cancun, for example, is fingered by the WikiPeople as “an example of where the government have failed to promote general welfare and unequal distribution of wealth,” which has engendered a local lust for the Yankee Dollar amongst otherwise impoverished locals.

“While known for its crispy white beaches, fancy hotels of international renown, and spring break; Cancun shows a notorious economical inequality between the touristic urban zones, and its more rural outskirts, where in various cases,” Wiki reports, “the poorest neighborhoods lack one or more basic services.^[87]^[88]

The Times has followed some of the consequences of poverty, inequality and resulting crime in a February 1^st article by Elisabeth Malkin and Isabella Kwai entitled: “Is It Safe to Travel to Mexico?”

“A number of recent security incidents have raised concerns about the risks of traveling to Mexico,” the Times warned the more than 20 million tourists who flew in last year to visit the country’s beaches, cities and archaeological sites, or to obtain health care.

“Ahead of the spring break holiday, a popular time for American tourists to visit the country, the U.S. Embassy issued a travel alert, urging visitors to exercise caution by avoiding dangerous situations and drinking responsibly, among other recommendations.”

In the past, tourists have been “largely sheltered” from the violence that grips local communities. But the attack and kidnapping of four Americans in the border city of Matamoros, two of whom were later found dead, along with recent disorder in Cancún and violence in early January that forced the closure of three airports in northwest Mexico, is prompting questions about whether the country’s broader unrest is spilling into other destinations.

As a rule, criminals in Mexico are careful not to kill tourists, explained Eduardo Guerrero, the director of Lantia Intelligence, a security consulting company in Mexico City, because doing so “can set in motion a persecution that can last years,” the consequences of which can be “very dissuasive,” he said.

But the rule doesn’t always hold. And in two popular destinations for foreign tourists — Los Cabos, at the tip of the Baja California peninsula (where police chased gunmen into the lobby of a luxury hotel in San José del Cabo, and a cooler containing two heads was left in a tourist area), and the Caribbean coast — local and state officials have recently sought help from the United States to take on organized crime that threatened to drive off tourists.

A spasm of violence at the end of 2021 and early 2022 rattled the tourist industry along the Riviera Maya, the 80-mile strip of Caribbean resorts south of Cancún. Two visitors were killed in crossfire between local gangs in Tulum; a gunfight on a beach in Puerto Morelos sent tourists running for cover into a nearby hotel; a hit man gained entry to a luxury hotel in Playa del Carmen and killed two Canadian tourists believed to have links to organized crime.

Mexico 2023: Come for fun under the sun - stay under the ground?

LAW and BORDERS...

It actually seems that pressure from business and political sectors... some of whom are less than wholly clean... upon the drug cartels (who many also know and do business together) has spread the message that crime will kill off the tourist industry and the money it generates. In Mexico City, concerns about violence... particular homicides, attacks and kidnapping of tourists... have receded and the number of killings has been cut almost in half over the past three years.

The quiet negotiations between formal, informal and criminal enterprises have not extended to cities like Tijuana, Juarez and Matamoros Mexican border cities, which have long endured waves of violence, are not typically tourist destinations, although Americans often cross the border to visit family, shop or... like the four kidnap victims (two of whom were killed) seek out cheaper health care. The U.S. state department has also issued warnings to stay away from six “Level Four” Mexican states where cartel wars have not abated... including the beach destination Mazatlán (closed on Jan. 5 after Mexican security forces arrested Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the crime lord known as El Chapo) while a stray bullet fired by cartel gunmen shooting at a Mexican military plane as it landed at the airport in the state capital, Culiacán, clipped an Aeromexico plane preparing to take off for Mexico City.

In another short article NYT entitled: “What happened earlier this year in Cancún?” poverty and desperation have even led to conflict between legitimate businesses.

What happened was that Uber has been challenging the taxi unions for the right to operate in Cancún and won a court decision in its favor on Jan. 11. “The ruling infuriated the powerful unions, which are believed to have links to local organized crime figures and former governors.”

Taxi drivers then began harassing and threatening Uber drivers. The conflict generated “widespread attention” (the NYT alleged) after a video of taxi drivers forcing a Russian-speaking family out of their rideshare car went viral, and after unions blocked the main road leading to Cancún’s hotel zone,” which prompted the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to issue a security alert.

... and JUSTICE

Mexico also needs legal reforms so that “individuals detained for possession of a firearm can be held in preventive custody,” contend the Wilsonites. Prior to the judicial reform of 2008, Mexico’s penal code provided that civilians carrying large-caliber firearms designated for the exclusive use of the Army had committed a serious crime that required immediate preventive detention. Yet, since the adoption of the new adversarial criminal justice system, firearms possession does not merit preventive detention. Local authorities have argued that this is a severe limitation on the fight against organized crime, especially since the prohibition of possession of large-caliber firearms was one of the most effective ways to keep organized criminals off the streets.

That it will further ensnate law-abiding citizens in gulags run by the corrupt police and politicians... rather in the way that the American War on Drugs of the 1960s and ‘70s quickly became a cultural and ideologal War on Dissidence... goes without saying.

Mister Wilson’s Center also wants the Armed Forces to stop doing the work that should be done by the police “because by doing it, they create a perverse incentive to limit the professionalization of the police departments.”

Contending that it is necessary to improve the coordination between state government and the federation, the Wilsonites propose implementation of a system of police “quadrants,” meaning “the surveillance of high-risk areas, and a closer relationship between local police and citizens,” which some in the United States might associate with profiling and dossier thickening. They do not advicate “the disappearance of local police (which is politically unfeasible),” rather “the allocation of resources to improve the ones we have, and the implementation of penalties for municipalities and states that do not comply with the most basic security conditions.”

Fine words... “improve”, “penalties”, “basic”... but the Devil, as always, will be in the details.

Elsewhere, they recommend that “resources should be allocated for hiring new police officers with better salaries and to eliminate those who do not meet the vetting standards” – which would be a fine and welcomed, although costly, improvement. Unfortunately, their mechanized and robotized “surveillance”, again, can only embolden the corrupt and tempt the moderately honest into further actions against the public without first addressing the issue of corruption, as below.

Some of these dangers to such civil liberties as exist in the Republic to our South have been noted by the Sherlocks at the New York Times. These include investigations of a “notorious spy tool” (Mexico becoming the most prolific user of the Pegasus spyware, which is used by governments around the world to hack into thousands of cellphones) and of the fatal shooting carried out by uniformed Mexican soldiers in the city of Nuevo Laredo, which “has deepened concerns about the growing footprint of the country’s armed forces.”

CORRUPTION

It would not surprise Don Jones, nor Juan Jones, to figure out that such worker representation as does exist tends to work hand-in-spiked-glove with the “formal” economic sectors... the big players (from Carlos Slim on down).

To remain competitive in the international market (i.e. at least keep head above water regarding China), “Mexico has had to offer low wages to its workers while allowing high returns and generous concessions to international corporations,” Wiki cited.^[82]

The words "palancas" and "favores" are part of Mexican economic culture where high-ranking policy makers and private entrepreneurs are accused of promoting their own bottom line while ignoring the necessaries of the working class.^[83]

Mexico is a country with an unfortunate history of corruption. According to Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, Mexico ranks 124 out of 180 countries in terms of perceived levels of public sector corruption. This dismal ranking, reflecting the reality that many Mexicans face on a daily basis, (60% believing that corruption has worsened in the last 12 months and 43% reporting having paid a bribe to access public services within the same period) is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico, and the fact that it has only gotten worse in the last year. (Gitnux.com, 4/20/23, Attachment Twelve)

Gitnux,which contains voluminous statistical reports from American, Mexican and other think tanks, is very, very big on “stark reminders”.

That “only 2.7% of corruption cases at the federal level were properly investigated and sanctioned between 2014 to 2018” is “a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico and the lack of accountability for those responsible” – highlighting the need for “greater transparency and enforcement of anti-corruption laws in order to ensure that those who break the law are held accountable.”

That 40% of Mexicans believe the government is “very bad” at fighting corruption is a stark reminder of the pervasive nature of corruption in Mexico.

That 44% of Mexicans believe that their judiciary is “very/extremely corrupt”, according to a 2015 survey by Transparency International is a stark reminder of the reality of corruption in Mexico. “(M)ore needs to be done to address the issue of corruption in Mexico, and “the government must take steps to restore public trust in the judiciary.”

In 2017, Mexico was ranked “the most corrupt country in the Americas by the Americas Quarterly, with a corruption score of 4.65 out of 10.

“This statistic serves as a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico.” The Americas Quarterly’s corruption score of 4.65 out of 10 is “a damning indictment of the state of corruption in Mexico, and serves as a call to action for those in power to take steps to combat it.”

That at least one in three companies in Mexico has been a victim of corruption, according to a 2019 survey by the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico.

That “87.6% of respondents reported they did not report corruption cases to the authorities” paints a stark picture of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico; it suggests that the vast majority of people are not taking action to report cases of corruption to the authorities.

A 2020 OECD report found that “Mexican companies lose 5% of their annual earnings due to corruption”, which serves as a stark reminder of the devastating effects of corruption in Mexico. It highlights “the immense financial burden that corruption places on businesses in the country, with 5% of their annual earnings being lost to corrupt practices.”

According to the World Bank, in 2020, Mexico’s control of corruption was in the lower half of nations surveyed, on this indicator; a stark reminder that Mexico still has a long way to go in terms of curbing corruption and improving its governance.

The 2020 Global Competitiveness Report ranked Mexico 96th out of 137 countries on the indicator “irregular payments and bribes,” a stark reminder that bribery and irregular payments are commonplace, and where citizens are unable to trust their government to act in their best interests.

According to the Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, “corruption costs Mexico between 2% and 10% of GDP per year;” this statistic being a stark reminder of the immense economic burden that corruption places on Mexico and a clear indication that “corruption is not only a moral issue, but also a financial one, with the country losing billions of dollars each year due to corrupt practices.”

“In 2018, 63% of surveyed companies in Mexico considered bribery and corruption to be part of everyday business.” This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of bribery and corruption “in a business environment where such practices are seen as the norm, rather than the exception.”

?The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report for 2020 states that Mexico ranks at the 28th percentile for the control of corruption.” This dismal statistic paints a stark picture of the pervasive nature of corruption in Mexico, “and the need for greater transparency and accountability in the country’s government and institutions.”

According to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 36% of Mexicans trust their government to do what is right, which serves as a stark reminder of the state of Mexico’s political landscape and provides “a valuable insight into the prevalence of corruption in the country.”

Gitnux concludes its report by painting... not a stark reminder, but a grim picture of the state of corruption in Mexico.

EL JEFÉ

The “formal” and “informal” economic sectors are but strands in the web of institutional corruption that the Wikipedia analysis of poverty revealed which, in the governmental sector, existed “...(f)rom the 1800s to the end of the 20th century.” Successive Mexican presidential administrations that came and went, Wiki argued, have been variously described as “authoritarian, semi-democracy, centralized government, untouchable presidencies, mass-controlling, corporatist and elite-controlled.^[80]“

And now, as the Brookings Institute (previously referenced and now included as Attachment Thirteen, March 16^th ) contends, the Republic is turning back to authoritarian... albeit a liberal authoritarianism

Their exhibit A is the passage of a Senate bill designed to curb the power of the National Electoral Institute (INE), “the non-partisan and independent agency that oversees elections,” as “another step backward” toward Mexico’s decades-long authoritarian past.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a liberal in belief as well as nomenclature (“obrador” meaning “worker” in Spanish) has, the Institute charged, increasingly revealed himself to be a Trumplike neo-populist ruling “a hegemonic-party autocracy with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at the helm.”

Not hegemonic enough. After losing the elections of 2006 and 2012 to Vicente Fox and the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Obrador leveled allegations of fraud. In one of these elections, he attempted to establish a parallel presidency.

Could’ve used a few more Proud Boys but... mutable levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction being typical of democracies... he was restored to power in 2018 and, like that gentleman of El Norte who proclaimed “I am your retribution,” officialized his “grudge against the INE,” an antipathy enhanced when the group fined his party for campaign finance irregularities. Reports of unsympathetic journalists being harassed, even jailed, also arose.

In the first iteration of his vengeful reforms, López Obrador sought to dissolve the nonpartisan INE and replace it with an elected body largely chosen by the executive, among other drastic changes. Widespread public protest doomed these reforms in Congress.

His “Plan B,” which would not change the INE’s structure but would instead gut its budget and bandwidth, forcing the agency to cut staff and close offices across Mexico passed the Lower House and Senate — “heralding a victory for the president and another warning shot for the durability of Mexico’s democracy.”

Despite corruption, violence, and inequality, Mexico has functioned as an electoral democracy for nearly three decades — with political competition and a vibrant civil society. Much of that success, according to Brookings researchers Valerie Wirtschafter and Arturo Sarukhan (the former ambassador from Mexico to the US), is due to the INE and they have charged the Biden administration with responding “too cautiously to López Obrador’s latest illiberal act.”

Some political observers have voiced contentions that “the administration’s reticence can be explained by its need to ensure Mexican collaboration on immigration,” and that “...(a)uthoritarian regimes around the world will reap the geopolitical, strategic, and ideological benefits of a less democratic and more insular Mexico.”

Reuters (March 21^st, Attachment Fourteen) has reported that Obrador has “forcefully rejected criticism of his government's record on human rights, describing reports of official abuses made in a new U.S. State Department study as "lies."

Dismissing the report , (which stated that "impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption," and criticized violence against journalists in Mexico), the President added that the U.S. "believes it's the government of the world.

"It's not worth getting angry about, that's just how they are," he said.

Obrador also responded to Yankee coverage of his record on security, “which has come under increased scrutiny since the abduction of four American citizens in northern Mexico earlier this month and subsequent murder of two of them – arguing that his country is safer than the U.S. - despite a much higher murder rate.

CINCO de MAYO (The Image)

But hey... if the crime is incrasing and the government turning to more “authoritarian” measures... Cinco de Mayo is still a sun-kissed opportunity to eat tacos, drink tequila and, perhaps, listen to a few Santana cuts.

Tequila, in fact, is enjoying a heyday that’s putting pesos in the pockets of Mexicans and aiming a slap at Russia, too. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the US, agave-based liquors like tequila and mezcal were the fastest-growing spirits category of 2022, and are now poised to overtake vodka as the best-selling liquor in the United States this year, after knocking whiskey into third place last year. (Time, May 5, Attachment Fifteen)

But, as ever, there’s always the cancel culture... and the greenies are on the rampage.

Tequila’s growing global popularity has also led to a loss in genetic diversity, as manufacturers turn to high-yielding monocrops that require increasing amounts of pesticides. “Vodka, on the other hand, can be made anywhere, from a wide range of grains, sugar beets and potatoes.”

But hey... everybody knows that environmental radicals are Commies!

In fact, tequila is a victim of climate change.

Rising global temperatures are wreaking havoc on weather patterns in the central and southern parts of Mexico where agave grows, and the succulent, while drought tolerant, is too fragile to handle increasingly sudden shifts from extreme heat to unseasonable storms. Rising temperatures are also threatening the Mexican long nosed bat, blue agave’s principal pollinator.

“So maybe the best way to save the agave plant, the long-nosed bat, and margaritas is by drinking vodka,” writes Time’s Aryn Baker. “Now that’s a solution anyone can toast.” (Except the Ukrainians!)

In fact, maybe a night of good ol’ American whiskey drinking would be more appropriate, given that “Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexican American culture, not independence,” as goes the title of a PBS “woke” criticism of stupid, ugly Americans – drinking down their “Mexican food and alcoholic drinks for the May 5 holiday that is barely celebrated south of the border.” (Attachment Sixteen, 5/5/23)

“That’s brought some criticism of the holiday, especially as beer manufacturers and other marketers have capitalized on its festive nature and some revelers embrace offensive stereotypes, such as fake, droopy mustaches and gigantic straw sombreros.”

Declaiming “What it is!” and “What it isn’t!”, the gumment-paid-for network replays the historical trope that the holiday celebrates the Mexican victory over the better equipped and more numerous (but also demoralized by the end of the Civil War) French troops. Mexicans in Mexico celebrate the “Grito de Independencia, or the Cry of Independence”, most years on Sept. 15 at about 11 p.m. from the balcony of the country’s National Palace, ringing the bell Hidalgo rang.

CINCO de MAYO (The Reality)

CBS News also clarifies the discrepancy between Cinco de Mayo and the “Grito”. (Attachment Seventeen)

Although May 5th is a significant date in Mexican history, it’s not to be confused with the Mexican Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16. “Even though the Battle of Puebla was seen as a major victory, the French would ultimately go on to win the war,” claimed the Francophiliac PBS... although, in fact, the armies of Maximillian, the puppet President were routed at the end of America’s Civil War, and he was sent to face the firing squad. (Attachment Sixteen, 5/5/23)

Franco-Mexican relations were extremely sour during the remainder of the 19^th century, but have... since... improved.

“Cinco de Mayo represents one of those historical episodes where the little guy beats the big guy, right? Where the little people were the oppressed beat the great imperial power," said Gerardo Rios, a professor of Mexican American studies and history at Southwestern College.

CINCO de MAYO (The Reality)

Still, some of the buoyancy of Cinco de Mayo in the United States is tempered by the withering heights of inequality, recession and poverty in Mexico.

America’s Quarterly (February 8^th, Attachment Eighteen) blames inequality for “stunting” the economies of not only Mexico, but most of the nations of Latin America... many of whom are seeing their people attempt to escape towards the north, passing through Mexico.

The World Bank’s GINI coefficient calls the plight of the Spanish speaking Americas “sobering”... “the poorest 50% of the population earns just 10% of total income, while the wealthiest 10% earns 55%.”

Sounds like... oh, never mind.

“When your chances of progress are primarily determined by family background rather than individual effort and merit,” contends AQ’s Adriana Arreaza Coll, “the cradle becomes a lottery marking your future. And perpetuating inequalities affects talent allocation, growth, social cohesion—and political stability.

“In Latin America, you are likely to end up where your parents are on the income distribution ladder. In fact, the report indicates that the region has the greatest immobility in income in the world.”

Inequality “prevents efficient allocation of talent, capping efficiency and economic growth. In turn, low growth is tantamount to tepid job creation and lost opportunities. This is a vicious cycle that ultimately leads to social and political unrest.”

Enlightened political and economic leaders might wish to uplift the poorest of their citizenry, but there is precious little light at the end of this tunnel. Simpler to call in the police and terminate those who unresticate.

So, for the hopeless, emigration is the lesser of lesser evils that would otherwise include incarceration or death. A month ago, the NY Times noted that the “logjam” at the border (with many waiting for Thursday’s expiration of Title 42) was straining the resources of both Mexico and the United States.

While a series of what correspondents Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval called “tough new border policies” sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States to their lowest levels since President Biden took office, but have created a “combustible bottleneck” along Mexico’s northern border (March 28^th, Attachment Nineteen) including the fires in Juarez and Matamoros as noted above and violent clashes with U.S. authorities (the Times adding that most of these angry migrants were not Mexican natives but other, particularly Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans escaping their Marxist workers’ paradises).

“It’s desperation,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the county judge in El Paso, which lies across the border from Ciudad Juárez. “You dangle the end of Title of 42 and then you say, ‘Nevermind,’ and people get stuck.”

EL NORTÉ

American television networks have doled out such coverage as has been feasible... given the distractions of the bank failures and inflation, the debt ceiling crisis, the war in Ukraine and the coronation of King Charles, to name but a few.

With problems of their own... the Writers’ Guild strike being paramount... it would seem that more attention and more coverage would be given to the ever-“breaking” news events, such as the horror at the border.

CBS (May 4^th, Attachment Twenty) has focused on the American political partisan divide; newscaster Camily Moneoya-Galvez reporting that progressive Democrats have condemned Title 42 because it blocks migrants from requesting asylum (a legal right they normally have if they reach U.S. soil) while Republicans have portrayed it as an effective border control tool, “proposing to codify Title 42 into law so it can be used outside of the pandemic context.”

There have been a few half-hearted ventures by House and Senate moderates to work for a solution, but these politicians (like Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) or Thom Tillis (R-SC ) lack influence even within their own party, let alone the nation as a whole. Lawyers, of course, are lining up to file papers and solicit donations from the partisans... any directed settlement having to work its way up the judicial ladder in a process that will take months, if not years, before returning to the Supremes who have already kicked the can. And perverse agendas abound: the Biden administration and MAGA both seeking to exploit whatever chaos and violence ensues – either in red or blue states.

Gov. Greg Abbott, (R-Tx) voiced his intent to resume and accelerate his busings of migrants to blue states and cities, while the deepest and darkest indigonians like Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY) voiced their resistance (and also, expressing enlightened self-interest, appealed to President Joe and the Feds for more money for sheltering the horde). Given the budet crisis, such charity seems out of touch with reality... especially in the red or, at least, pink Senate.

Troy Miller, the top official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), recently told Congress that his agency is preparing for as many as 10,000 migrants to cross the southern border each day after Title 42 ends, which would almost double the daily average in March. Other internal government projections suggest that daily migrant arrivals could rise to 10,000 (some say between 11,000 and 13,000 and Fox contends 14,000), absent a major policy change.

Lacking Republican support for ameliatory stopgaps, President Joe and Congressional Democrats have been attempting to “increase the number of appointments distributed by (their) phone app, so more asylum-seekers can enter the U.S.”, set up “processing centers in Latin America, starting in Colombia and Guatemala, to vet migrants for eligibility to be resettled in those countries, the U.S., Canada or Spain”, “allow some citizens of Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to fly to the U.S. under a program for those with approved visa requests from relatives who are U.S. citizens or residents,” and, a sop to the migrant haters, “disqualify migrants from asylum if they failed to seek refuge in a third country before crossing into the U.S. illegally.”

A follow-up CBS broadcast (Attachment Twenty One) focused on yet another attempt at compromise by Senators Thom Tillis and Kyrsten Sinma (who has renounced the Democrat Party to declare herslf an Independent, further strengthening the Dems’ shaky majority – once again dependent upon Vice President Harris’ tiebreaker).

Joined by other moderates like Manchin and John Cornyn (R-Tx) the bill would insistitute a “quick expulsion” policy, but with a gaping security breach... migrants would not be sent back to “countries where they could face torture or persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a socal (sic)group. These appellants would “need to pass preliminary interviews with U.S. asylum officers to avoid expulsion”... and could live, work, commit crimes or angry up the neighbors here in America while they waited for the bureaucracy to consider their cases.

NBC, on Cinco de Mayo itself (Attachment Twenty Two), solicited views on potential outcomes and solutions from Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior adviser for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank who blamed “the past administration” and argued for “a fulsome strategy” while David Bier, the associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian rival think tank, scoffed: “I don’t expect much from them at this point based on what we’ve seen for the last two decades.”

“What is certain,” the peacock predicted, is that “politicians will use it as a talking point to cast blame as the transition happens.”

A default back to 42’s predecessor, Title 8, would perhaps gain the support of some angry Americans who want to “punish” the illegal entrants; with anyone trying to re-enter after deportation facing “fines and jail time” and would be ineligible to apply to legally enter for three to 10 years.

Since the migrations are happening because the migrants have no money, and because feeding and housing them would be a further budget buster... many American prisons being more safe and comfortable than the countries from which they fled,

Republicans don’t like the humanitarian parole part and so are challenging it in court, and Democrats dislike the denial of asylum for those who cross illegally, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"As a result, people hate it from both sides."

And Fox, itself somewhat diminished in both on-air and corporate workforces, also celebrated Cinco de Mayo by running footage of “hundreds of migrants streaming across the border into Texas from Mexico, as numbers are already beginning to surge ahead of the ending of the Title 42 public health order next week.” Their thermal drone footage, captured overnight, “shows hundreds of migrants streaming into Brownsville from Matamoros, Mexico. Agents are encountering migrants at a rate of 2,000 a day in Brownsville. (Attachment Twenty Three) Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources say in the first four days of May they have been encountering more than 8,000 migrants a day border-wide.

"This is a hemispheric challenge that demands hemispheric solutions," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a press conference.

But GOP members of the House Homeland Security Committee tweeted: "It’s obvious Secretary Mayorkas doesn’t have a plan to stop the surge. It’s time to work with House Republicans to return order to the border."

And the Associated Press (Attachment Twenty Four) quashed any rumors that the migrant hordes would be met with gunfire, land mines or... on the other hand... legions of lawyers, citing a press converence by Biden spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, who said that the troops “will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants.

“This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.”

Assessing the impact on 2024, the AP contended that, for Biden, (who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago) the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. “But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized.”

Then-President Donald Trump also deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity.

Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.

THE WEEKEND

A pessimistic report by Time predicted that America is “days away from a border crisis” complicated by mis- and dis-information, political chaos and criminal opportunities. (Attachment Twenty Five) Partisan and racial objectives are becoming legion – as is omnipartisan concurrence that the process has been bungled. “Now the debate has become about invasion and great replacement theory rather than, ‘What do we need to do when it comes to immigration?’” says Vanessa Cárdenas, from America’s Voice, an organization that advocates for updating the U.S. immigration system.

After President Joe sent 1,500 troops, ostensibly to “support” INS officials and Gov. Abbott retaliated by sending over 500 National Guardsman to do what they think should be done, a posting on the legal blog TypePad (Attachment Twenty Six) contended that militarization of the border would result in mass violence, and the victimization of residents of the border towns and cities, legitimate or not.

The Hill, on the other hand, asserted that terminating Title 42 was “the right thing to do.” (Attachment Twenty Seven) “We must shift the burdens of our failed immigration system off the backs of immigrants and impoverished border communities and into federal and state authorities,” wrote Hill opinionator Daniel López-Cevallos. The status quo is forcing migrants in need of protection or improved economic prospects, who can greatly contribute to U.S. communities, to set on a dangerous journey, littered by organized crime and corrupt officials. Instead, our approach must be guided by the nations’ unequivocal commitment to upholding the right to apply for asylum and recommitting to expanding legal pathways for migrants and asylum seekers.

As President Joe sent his 1,500 into the valley of the RioGrande, Gov. Abbot instituted Operation Lone Star to “stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between ports of entry,” by whatsoever means need be applied, (Attachment Twenty Eight) Calling Biden’s troops paper-shufflers, the Guv contended: “This is not a Texas problem; this is a United States problem. It’s the responsibility of New York or Chicago or the entire country to deal with the problem caused by Joe Biden and his open border policies.”

As the buses started rolling north, Fox News reported that the Texas National Guard is loading Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s to deploy specially trained National Guard members to "hotspots along the border to intercept, to repel and to turn back migrants who are trying to enter Texas illegally,"

THE FUTURE?

The fun begins Thursday.

May 1 – May 7, 2023

Monday, May 1, 2023

Dow: 34,061.70

It’s Mayday

And mayhem in the suites as First Republic is sold off to J. P. Mogan; NDIC (you) pay 13B, including 2B in profits. Cheap real estate loans blamed.

A quiet MayDay in America, but riots in Paris over raising the retirement age to.. 64! Lazy frogs! Texas man (a Mexican illegal) angry over neighbors complaining about him firing off his assault rifle... for “fun”!... invades house, kills five. Gov. Abbott sneers the victims were all illegals, too.

Enormous dust storm in Illinois closes highways, kills six. Weekend tornadoes bash Virginia Beach, 4” rain in New York, snow in Rockies, L.A. mountains and Michigan.

Rain doesn’t stop NY’s Met Gala, where a tribute to Karl Langerfeld brings out oodles of weird costumes (that masquerade as fashion) and celebrities dressing up as cats.

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Dow: 33,683.54

SecTreas Janet Yellin informs Washington that the debt crisis is accelerating faster than expected and America will be broke as soon as June 1^st. TVconomists hasten to assure the sheep that everything is under control. Still and all, the FDIC moves to raise insurement payments that banks have to pay.

Multiple weather perips: high winds, snow, Mississippi River flooding, dust, tornadoes. And a “dustnado” causes massive killer pileup on highways.

Hollywood v. Writers; Guild negotiations fail. Strike begins. (Looking for scabs, Tucker’s available!)

Entertainment goes on, regardless. NBA playoffs begin with Steph Curry v. Lebron James and 76ers beating Cealtics in Game One; Carolina Hurricans and Jersey Devils advance in NHL, “Some Like It Hot” wins 13 Tonys and, for the litterati...Oprah’s Book of the Month is “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese.

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Dow: 33,414.24

Fed meets today and raises interest another quarter of a point. Inflation doesn’t care. President Joe and Congress mull another can kick on debt ceiling. After bank officials and Washington experts say the banking crisis is over, PacWest starts failing.

Crime rides out. Mad bomber caught with explosives in Buckingham Palace. School shooter in Servia kills nine kids. Maniac shoots five at Atlanta hospital. Florida police kill family shooter of mom and three kids. 3^rd stabbing at UC Davis, rampant crime causes two Nordstroms in San Francisco to close.

Already convicted killer Alex Murdaugh confesses that the framed his dog in the murder of a housekeeper who allegedly tripped over the innocent beast. CPB arrests suspects for smuggling foreign parrots in via pillowcases. Mike Lindell not involved.

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Dow: 33,127.74

It’s “Star Wars” Day (“May the Fourth be with you.”) Star Wars ahead? Vladimir Putin accuses America of working with Ukes to attempt to assassinate him with drones – shows videos of Kremlin explosions. More nuke war threats. Iran chips in, seizing a Panamanian oil tanker.

Crime continues marching on – and it gets weird! Virtue signaliers shoot it out at Tesla charging station, thieves steal $5,000 worth of chainsaws (Hello, Leatherface?), subway vigilante strangles Michael Jackson impersonator, and there’s just the ordinary: 3 shot in Eufaula, AL, 3 more in Moultrie, GA. But the authorities are busy, too... the Atlanta hospital killer and Davis stabber caught, and there are now six arrested for the Dadeville Sweet Sixteen shootings. Also: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and 3 followers convicted of seditious conspiracy, Donald Trump blows off Carroll trial to play golf in Ireland, Ed Sheeran not guilty of plagiarizing Marvin Gaye, Italian cops claim Mafia dragnet is greatest ever, Kevin Costner files for divorce and quits Yellowstrone.

Kentucky Derby Day nears... but four horses die mysteriously at Churchill Downs. Horse flu?

Friday, April 28, 2023

Dow: 33,521.77

And... it’s Cinco de Mayo. (See Above)

Mixed new son jobs report… gain of 180K predicted, 253 realized. President Joe says see... look at me, I’m doing the job... and further warns that the GOP is seeking a “manufactured crisis” on the debt ceiling for partisan reasons, but the Fed takes this as greenlighting more interest rate hikes. Wall Street bounces up and down with the economic news and prospects.

Wagner Group’s Prizogin briefly raises hope among Ukrainians by ordering Putin to give him more arms and ammunition or he’ll pull his army of convicts and conscripts from out of Bahkmut while, in Serbia, a second mass shooter auditions for Wagner by gunning down eight more civilians.

In legal news, former President Trump refuses to testify in the E. Jean Carroll Bloomingdale’s civil rape trial, preferring to play golf in Ireland while prosecution plays an old video of his mistaking Carroll for ex-wife Marla Maples. The One Six prosecutors say that Proud Boy and Oath Keeper seditionists should get 25 years for the rarely prosecuted crime with TV pundits call “treason’s cousin” as the WashPost reports Ginni (Mrs. Clarence Thomas) took $80,000 in “gifts” from another extreme-right-wing billionaire (or maybe just generous multi-millionaire), Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct) calls for an investigation citing the “drip, drip, drip” of SCOTUS scandals while the GOP counters by probing Sonia Sotomayor. Plaigerism trial boosts streaming of both Ed Sheeran and Marvin Gaye.

A volcano erupts in Guatemala. That’ll help both the refugee exodus and air quality.

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Dow: (Closed)

It’s Coronation Day (we’ll deal with King Charles, worshippers and haters and some views from influencers in next week’s Lesson).

There’s magic too on the West Coast of the Atlantic... specifically Kentucky, where longshot Mage wins the Derby after the favorite is scratched and equine investigators try to sort out seven dead horses in recent days. Human sports... the NBA and NHL playoffs, MLB and inspirational soccer stories like the accomplishments of tiny Wrexham UK are also in the news.

Crime in America takes no holiday as one gunman shoots fifteen (eight die) in an Allen, Texas mall, another shoots six, kills one at a California party. A different sort of criminal revisits the movie “Snakes on a Plane” by stuffing 22 vipers into his luggage.

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Dow: (Closed)

The parties go on in Blighty as Katy Perry and Lionel Richie sing for King Charles during the rounds of coronation parties lighting up the sky under a grim British rain.

The sun is out in Texas – and so are the psychopaths. Police report racist postings and Nazi memorabilia at home of dead mall rat who killed eight, and another patriot tries to beat his toll by ramming his SUV into a crowd of presumed migrants (or, at least, “housing challenged” Americans) at a bus stop in Brownsville. He fails, killing only seven. Dammit!

Sunday’s talkshow talk finds the usual suspects gaming the 2024 election which 538 pollster Nate Silver says now shows Trump with twice the primary support of Disney-hating Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fl) and both holding seven point leads over President Joe. Still, no credible Democratic challengers manifesting as Fed prepares for another interest rate hike, the border police prepare for the end of Title 42 and Prigozen and Putin kiss and make up after the former promises more weaponry to continue blasting the rats in the ruins of Bahkmut, Ukrainians, meanwhile, are fleeing the area around Zaporizha as new reports circulate that the nuke plant there is ready to go BOOMF!

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS			SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 & 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE	NEXT	INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 & 1/1/22
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	3/6/23	nc	5/23	1,428.51	1,428.51	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 28.50 nc
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	5/1/23	+0.25%	5/15/23	607.05	607.29	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 35,820 829
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	5/1/23	+2.94%	6/23	651.75	670.92	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/ 3.5 3.4
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.03%	5/15/23	274.78	274.87	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 5,795 793
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.04%	5/15/23	284.81	284.94	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 11,230 225
Workforce Particip. Number Percent	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.01% +0.009%	5/15/23	303.10	303.13	In 161,733 775 Out 99,671 678 Total: 261,453 http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 61.875
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	2/27/23	+0.16%	5/23	151.19	151.19	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.60

OUTGO	15%
Total Inflation	7%	1050	5/1/23	+0.1%	5/23	995.88	995.88	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1
Food	2%	300	5/1/23	nc	5/23	278.78	278.78	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0
Gasoline	2%	300	5/1/23	-4.6%	5/23	254.40	254.40	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm -4.6
Medical Costs	2%	300	5/1/23	-0.5%	5/23	296.37	296.37	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm -0.5
Shelter	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.6%	5/23	279.37	279.37	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.6
WEALTH	6%
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	5/1/23	-0.45%	5/15/23	274.90	273.65	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 33,674.38
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	3/6/23	-3.06% +3.59%	6/23	139.61 273.83	139.61 273.83	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M): 4.44 Valuations (K): 375.7
Debt (Personal)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.075%	5/15/23	275.88	275.67	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 73,802

NATIONAL	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.006%	5/15/23	384.61	384.63	debtclock.org/ 4,613.9
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.03%	5/15/23	340.11	339.90	debtclock.org/ 6,037.6
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	5/1/23	+0.04%	5/15/23	425.67	425.50	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 31,728 (The debt ceiling was 31.4)
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	5/1/23	+0.08%	5/15/23	420.48	420.14	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 96,056

GLOBAL	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.04%	5/15/23	343.57	343.71	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 7,294
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	5/1/23	-2.45%	5/23	156.02	156.02	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 251.2
Imports (bl.)	1%	150	5/1/23	+1.27%	5/23	169.79	169.79	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 321.7
Trade Deficit (bl.)	1%	150	5/1/23	+3.55%	5/23	281.03	281.03	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 70.5
SOCIAL INDICES (40%)
ACTS of MAN	12%
World Affairs	3%	450	5/1/23	+0.2%	5/15/23	447.67	448.57	Prince Charles finally becomes King Charles III at @74 under “very British” weather. Mayday 64 retirement age riots in France threaten tourism. Migrant crisis overseas too: refugees crowd Port Sudan, mass at the Egyptian border. Drones explode over Kremlin, Putin calls it an American assassination attempt – threatens WW Three. Again.
Terrorism	2%	300	5/1/23	+0.1%	5/15/23	288.14	288.43	Wagner Groups Prigozin argues with Bad Vlad over more arms, then they reach a settlement and resume Bakhmut terror. Ukrs promptly shoot down so-called “invincible” hypersonic missile. Pundits, politicians and police all call various incidences of crime (below) “domestic terrorism.” GOP stays the course upon blaming mental illness, not guns, for the killings.
Politics	3%	450	5/1/23	nc	5/15/23	471.14	471.14	More trouble for Thomases (Clarence and Ginni) as Old Crow showers them with more “gifts” including paying off all student debts for relatives. Ginni also collects $80K in “fees” from another generous billionaire, Leonard Leo of the alt-right Federalist Society. WashPost poll finds Trump leads DeSantis 51 to 25% in primaries but both beat President Joe by 7% in November.
Economics	3%	450	5/1/23	+0.1%	5/15/23	430.04	430.47	J.P. Morgan buys First Republic Bank. TV-conomist Greg McBride insists that America’s banking system is safe. Fed meets again, raises interest rate 0.25% again. TreaSec Yellin warns of debt ceiling disaster almost every day despite record job growth – President Joe mulls 14^th Amendment override. Jenny Craig goes broke, as does Tuesday Morning (on Wednesday) and the Olive Garden buys Ruth’s Chris steakhouse. Rampant crime causes two San Francisco Nordstrons to close
Crime	1%	150	5/1/23	-0.8%	5/15/23	262.31	260.21	Texas terror as four time deportee kills five neighbors (he’s caught hiding under dirty laundry in a closet in Cut N’ Shoot; neo-Nazi mass shooter kills eight at mall near Dallas before being taken down by hero cop ; eight more run over by SUV outside Brownsville migrant shelter. Seven bodies found in yard of paroled pedophile, six shot at Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant, five more at Atlanta hospital, three each in Eufaula, AL and Moultrie GA, @ student stabber stabs three at UC Davis (Cal.), NYC subway vigilante strangles homeless Michael Jackson impersonator. A 13 year old Serbian school shooter kills nine to top them all (second mass murder there in two weeks), Horror movie thieves steal $5,000 worth of chainsaws in @. Convicted killer Alec Murdaugh now admits that his housekeeper was not killed by famlly dog.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	5/1/23	-0.2%	5/15/23	416.89	416.06	Just another spring week – tornadoes in Virginia Beach, snow in Michigan and Wisconsin, record heat in Northeast, Melting snow runoff floods Mississippi, sends the river rolling on downstream – LaCrosse, Davenport... on its way to Memphis and New Orleans.
Disasters	3%	450	5/1/23	-0.2%	5/15/23	439.45	438.57	There are those tornadoes, there is the dust storms in Ilinois that kills six and closes highways and then there is a “dustnado” in Texas. And as if there wasn’t reason enough for migrants to migrate: a volcano in Guatemala
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX			(15%)
Science, Tech, Educ.	4%	600	5/1/23	-0.2%	5/15/23	624.72	623.47	Bill Gates (pro) and Elon Muxk (anti) line up on benefits v. dangers of AI (while Hollywood explores robot scripts). Gates also promotes his new nuclear power plant in Wyoming. Ukes flee area around Zaporizha nuke plant as it becomes more unstable; Russians would like to leave, but can’t.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	5/1/23	nc	5/15/23	610.57	610.57	President Joe appoints Cesar Chavez @daughter California legislators debate bill to take $500 B away from white people in the state and give it to black people as reparations for the slavery that didn’t exist there. “What about us?” ask the Mexicans involuntarily turned Americans in 1847 or thereabouts after migrants from the East invaded the territory to look for gold.
Health	4%	600	5/1/23	-0.2%	5/15/23	469.22	468.28	Doctors warn of killer Gold Medal flour amd melatonin supplements. BMW recalls luxury cars with bad airbags: the danger is called “dire”! Depressive Americans flock to Vermont, which legalizes assisted suicide.
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	5/1/23	nc	5/15/23	462.22	462.22	Trump kisses off E. Jean Carroll rape trial to play golf in Ireland; lawyer Joe Tacopino says accuser borrowed the plot of a 2012 episode of “Law and Order”. Carroll’s attorneys responding by shoing pix and video that Ol’ 45 mistook her for then-wife Marla Maples. Assorted Oath Keepers and Proud Boys (including leader Enrique Tarrio) are convicted of “seditious conspiracy” (aka “treason’s cousin”); face sentences of 25 years. Ed Sheeran plays chicken with Marvin Gaye plaigerism jurors – says he’ll quit if they don’t acquit. They do.
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX					(7%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	5/1/23	-0.1%	5/15/23	489.98	489.49	Hollywood writers strike – reruns begin. NYC’s Met Gala highlights strange fashions, gawking celebrities, people who dress up as cats. Celebrity scratches include Tiger Woods, sued for 30M by estrange girlfriend and Kevin Costner (who files for divorce and then quits “Yellowstone”. Broadway don’t need no stinkin’ writer/espiders: remake of “Some Like It Hot” wins thirteen Tonys. Rock n’ Roll Hall of fame inducts 23 more including Willie Nelson (who celebrates 90^th giving a fragrant concert bash with Snoop Dogg) – also Kate Bush, George Michael, Al Kooper and Link Wray. RIP: folksinger Gordon “Sundown” Lightfoot, pitcher Vida “True” Blue.
Misc. incidents	4%	450	5/1/23	-0.1%	5/15/23	479.27	478.79	Drunk driver hits, kills bride hours after wedding. Strange smugglers try to push five parrots and 22 snakes through airplane security. Seven dead horses at Churchill Downs prompt inquiries and conspiracy theories Thursday May Fourth (be with you) is also a much-needed National Day of Prayer. And a homeless woman wins $5 million in the California lottery.

The Don Jones Index for the week of May 1^st through May 7^th, 2023 was UP 12.29 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – From the History Channel

MEXICO TIMELINE (ANTIQUITY TO 2006)

November 23, 2020

From the stone cities of the Maya to the might of the Aztecs, from its conquest by Spain to its rise as a modern nation, Mexico boasts a rich history and cultural heritage spanning more than 10,000 years. This detailed timeline of Mexican history explores such themes as the early civilizations that left their mark on the region’s landscape and society, the 300-year period of colonial rule, the struggle for independence in the early 1800s and the country’s rebuilding in the 20^th century.

From Ancient Mesoamerica to the Toltecs

c. 8000 B.C.
The first human experiments with plant cultivation begin in the New World during the early post-Pleistocene period. Squash is one of the earliest crops. This agricultural development process, which continues slowly over thousands of years, will form the basis of the first villages of Mesoamerica (including Mexico and Central America).

1500 B.C.
The first major Mesoamerican civilization–the Olmecs–grows out of the early villages, beginning in the southern region of what is now Mexico. This period is marked by the effective cultivation of crops such as corn (maize), beans, chile peppers and cotton; the emergence of pottery, fine art and graphic symbols used to record Olmec history, society and culture; and the establishment of larger cities such as San Lorenzo (about 1200-900 B.C.) and La Venta (about 900-400 B.C.).

600 B.C.
In the late Formative (or Pre-Classic) period, Olmec hegemony gives way to a number of other regional groups, including the Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations, all of which share a common Olmec heritage.

250
The Mayan civilization, centered in the Yucatán peninsula, becomes one of the most dominant of the area’s regional groups, reaching its peak around the sixth century A.D., during the Classic period of Mesoamerican history. The Mayas excelled at pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left an astonishing amount of great architecture; the ruins can still be seen today. By 600 A.D., the Mayan alliance with the Teotihuacán, a commercially advanced society in north-central Mexico, had spread its influence over much of Mesoamerica.

600
With Teotihuacán and Mayan dominance beginning to wane, a number of upstart states begin to compete for power. The warlike Toltec, who migrated from north of Teotihuacán, become the most successful, establishing their empire in the central valley of Mexico by the 10^th century. The rise of the Toltecs, who used their powerful armies to subjugate neighboring societies, is said to have marked the beginning of militarism in Mesoamerican society.

900
The early Post-Classic period begins with the dominant Toltecs headquartered in their capital of Tula (also known as Tollan). Over the next 300 years, internal conflict combined with the influx of new invaders from the north weaken Toltec civilization, until by 1200 (the late Post-Classic period) the Toltecs are vanquished by the Chichimecha, a collection of rugged tribes of undetermined origin (probably near Mexico’s northern frontier) who claim the great Toltec cities as their own.

Rise and Fall of the Aztecs

1325
The nomadic Chichimecha tribe of the Mexica, more commonly known as the Aztecs, arrive in Mexico’s central valley, then called the Valley of Anahuac, after a long migration from their northern homeland. Following the prophecy of one of their gods, Huitzilopochtli, they found a settlement, Tenochtitlán, on the marshy land near Lake Texcoco. By the early 15^th century, the Aztecs and their first emperor, Itzcoatl, form a three-way alliance with the city-states of Texcoco and Tlatelóco (now Tacuba) and establish joint control over the region.

1428
The mighty Aztecs conquer their chief rivals in the city of Azcapotzalco and emerge as the dominant force in central Mexico. They develop an intricate social, political, religious and commercial organization, with an economy driven by bustling markets such as Tenochtitlán’s Tlatelolco, visited by some 50,000 people on major market days. Early forms of currency include cacao beans and lengths of woven cloth. The Aztec civilization is also highly developed socially, intellectually and artistically. Their language, Nahuatl, is the dominant language in central Mexico by mid-1350s, although numerous other languages are spoken. Distinctive examples of the Aztec artistic style include exquisitely feathered tapestries, headdresses and other attire; finely worked ceramics; gold, silver and copperware; and precious stones, particularly jade and turquoise. In the great cities of the Aztec empire, magnificent temples and palaces and imposing stone statues decorating most street corners, plazas and landmarks all embody the civilization’s unfailing devotion to its many gods.

February 1517
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the first European to visit Mexican territory, arrives in the Yucatán from Cuba with three ships and about 100 men. Members of the local native population clash with the Spanish explorers, killing some 50 of them and capturing several more. Córdoba’s reports on his return to Cuba prompt the Spanish governor there, Diego Velásquez, to send a larger force back to Mexico, under the command of Hernán Cortés. Like most of the first European visitors to the New World, Cortés is driven by the desire to find a route to Asia and its immense riches in spices and other resources.

February 1519
Cortés sets sail from Cuba with 11 ships, more than 450 soldiers and a large number of supplies, including 16 horses. Upon arriving in Yucatán, the Spaniards take control of the town of Tabasco, where they begin learning of the great Aztec civilization, now ruled by Moctezuma II. Defying the authority of Velasquéz, Cortés founds the city of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico directly east of Mexico City. With an entourage of 400 (including several captive members of the native population, notably a woman known as Malinche, who serves as a translator and becomes Cortés’s mistress) Cortés begins his famous march inward into Mexico, using the strength of his forces to form an important alliance with the Tlascalans, enemies of the Aztecs.

November 1519
Cortés and his men arrive in Tenochtitlán; they are welcomed as honored guests by Moctezuma and his people due to the Spaniard’s resemblance to Quetzalcoatl, a legendary light-skinned god-king whose return was prophesied in Aztec legend. Taking Moctezuma hostage, Cortés is able to gain control of Tenochtitlán.

August 13, 1521
After a bloody series of conflicts–involving the Aztecs, the Tlascalans and other native allies of the Spaniards, and a Spanish force sent by Velásquez to contain Cortés–Cortés finally defeats the forces of Montezuma’s nephew, Cuauhtémoc (who became emperor after his uncle was killed in 1520) to complete his conquest of Tenochtitlán. His victory marks the fall of the once-mighty Aztec empire. Cortés razes the Aztec capital and builds Mexico City on its ruins; it quickly becomes the premier European center in the New World.

Hidalgo, Santa Anna and War

1808
Napoleon Bonaparte occupies Spain, deposes the monarchy, and installs his brother, Joseph, as head of state. The ensuing Peninsular War between Spain (backed by Britain) and France will lead almost directly to the Mexican war for independence, as the colonial government in New Spain falls into disarray and its opponents begin to gain momentum.

September 16, 1810
In the midst of factional struggles within the colonial government, Father Manuel Hidalgo, a priest in the small village of Dolores, issues his famous call for Mexican independence. El grito de Dolores set off a flurry of revolutionary action by thousands of natives and mestizos, who banded together to capture Guanajuato and other major cities west of Mexico City. Despite its initial success, the Hidalgo rebellion loses steam and is defeated quickly, and the priest is captured and killed at Chihuahua in 1811. His name lives on in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, however, and September 16, 1810, is still celebrated as Mexico’s Independence Day.

1814
Another priest, Jose Morelos, succeeds Hidalgo as leader of Mexico’s independence movement and proclaims a Mexican republic. He is defeated by the royalist forces of the mestizo general Agustín de Iturbide, and the revolutionary banner passes to Vicente Guerrero.

1821
After revolt in Spain ushers in a new era of liberal reforms there, conservative Mexican leaders begin plans to end the viceregal system and separate their country from the mother land on their own terms. On their behalf, Iturbide meets with Guerrero and issues the Plan of Iguala, by which Mexico would become an independent country ruled as a limited monarchy, with the Roman Catholic Church as the official state church and equal rights and upper-class status for the Spanish and mestizo populations, as opposed to the majority of the population, which was of Native American or African descent, or mulato (mixed). In August 1821, the last Spanish viceroy is forced to sign the Treaty of Córdoba, marking the official beginning of Mexican independence.

1823
Iturbide, who earlier declared himself emperor of the new Mexican state, is deposed by his former aide, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who declares a Mexican republic. Guadalupe Victoria becomes Mexico’s first elected president, and during his tenure Iturbide is executed, and a bitter struggle begins between Centralist, or conservative, and Federalist, or liberal, elements of the Mexican government that will continue for the next several decades.

1833
Santa Anna himself becomes president after leading the successful resistance against Spain’s attempt to recapture Mexico in 1829. His strong Centralist policies encourage the increasing ire of residents of Texas, then still part of Mexico, who declare their independence in 1836. After attempting to quell the rebellion in Texas, Santa Anna’s forces are decisively defeated by those of rebel leader Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. Humbled, he is forced to resign power by 1844.

May 12, 1846
As a result of the continuing dispute over Texas, frictions between the U.S. and Mexican residents of the region, and a desire to acquire land in New Mexico and California, the U.S. declares war on Mexico. The U.S. quickly smother their enemy with superior force, launching an invasion of northern Mexico led by General Zachary Taylor while simultaneously invading New Mexico and California and blockading both of Mexico’s coasts. Despite a series of U.S. victories (including a hard-won victory over Santa Anna’s men at Buena Vista in February 1847) and the success of the blockade, Mexico refuses to admit defeat, and in the spring of 1847 the U.S. sends forces under General Winfield Scott to capture Mexico City. Scott’s men accomplish this on September 14, and a formal peace is reached in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848. By its terms, the Rio Grande becomes the southern boundary of Texas, and California and New Mexico are ceded to the U.S. The U.S. agrees to pay $15 million as compensation for the seized land, which amounts to half of Mexico’s territory.

1857
Defeat in the war against the United States serves as a catalyst for a new era of reform in Mexico. Regional resistance to the strict centralized regime of the aging Santa Anna leads to guerrilla warfare and eventually to the general’s forced exile and the rise to power of rebel leader Juan Álvarez. He and his liberal cabinet, including Benito Júarez, institute a series of reforms, culminating in 1857 in the form of a new constitution establishing a federal as opposed to centralized form of government and guaranteeing freedom of speech and universal male suffrage, among other civil liberties. Other reforms focus on curtailing the power and wealth of the Catholic Church. Conservative groups bitterly oppose the new constitution, and in 1858 a three-year-long civil war begins that will devastate an already weakened Mexico.

Road to Revolution

1861
Benito Júarez, a Zapotec Indian, emerges from the War of the Reform as the champion of the victorious liberals. One of Júarez’s first acts as president is to suspend payment on all of Mexico’s debts to foreign governments. In an operation spearheaded by France’s Napoleon III, France, Great Britain and Spain intervene to protect their investments in Mexico, occupying Veracruz. The British and Spanish soon withdraw, but Napoleon III sends his troops to occupy Mexico City, forcing Júarez and his government to flee in June 1863. Napoleon III installs Maximilian, archduke of Austria, on the throne of a Mexican Empire.

1867
Under pressure from the United States, which has continued to recognize Júarez as the legitimate leader of Mexico, France withdraws its troops from Mexico. After Mexican troops under General Porfirio Díaz occupy Mexico City, Maximilian is forced to surrender and is executed after a court-martial. Reinstated as president, Júarez immediately causes controversy by proposing further changes to the constitution that would strengthen executive power. In the 1871 elections, he narrowly wins reelection over a slate of candidates including Porfirio Díaz, who leads an unsuccessful revolt in protest. Júarez dies of a heart attack in 1872.

1877
After another revolt–this time successful–against Júarez’s successor Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, Porfirio Díaz takes control of Mexico. Except for one four-year stretch from 1880 to 1884, Díaz will rule essentially as a dictator until 1911. During this period, Mexico undergoes tremendous commercial and economic development, based largely on Díaz’s encouragement of foreign investment in the country. By 1910, most of the largest businesses in Mexico are owned by foreign nationals, mostly American or British. The modernizing reforms made by the Díaz government turn Mexico City into a bustling metropolis, but they largely benefit the country’s upper classes, not its poor majority. The fundamental inequality of Mexico’s political and economic system breeds growing discontent, which will lead to revolution.

1910
Francisco Madero, a landowning lawyer and a member of Mexico’s liberal, educated class, unsuccessfully opposes Díaz in the year’s presidential elections. He also publishes a book calling for free and democratic elections and an end to the Díaz regime. Although fully 90 percent of the Mexican population at the time is illiterate, Madero’s message spreads throughout the country, sparking increasing calls for change, and Madero himself becomes the acknowledged leader of a popular revolution.

November 20, 1910
The Mexican Revolution begins when Madero issues the Plan of San Luis Potosí, promising democracy, federalism, agrarian reform and worker’s rights and declaring war on the Díaz regime. By 1911, Díaz is forced to step aside and Madero is elected president, but conflict and violence continue for the better part of the next decade. Popular leaders like Emiliano Zapata in southern Mexico and Pancho Villa in the north emerge as the champions of the peasant and working class, refusing to submit to presidential authority.

1913
In the wake of a series of bloody riots in the streets of Mexico City in February 1913, Madero is overthrown by a coup led by his own military chief, General Victoriano Huerta. Huerta declares himself dictator and has Madero murdered, but opposition from the supporters of Villa, Zapata and the former Díaz ally (but political moderate) Venustiano Carranza drive Huerta to resign by 1914. Carranza takes power, and Zapata and Villa continue waging war against him. Various invasions by the United States–nervous about their unruly neighbor–further complicates matters, as Carranza struggles to hold power. Government forces led by General Álvaro Obregón finally defeat Villa’s northern guerrilla forces, leaving the rebel leader wounded but alive.

1917
Mexico remains neutral throughout World War I, despite efforts by Germany to enlist the country as an ally. Despite the warring factions in Mexico, Carranza is able to oversee the creation of a new liberal Mexican constitution in 1917. In his efforts to maintain power, however, Carranza grows increasingly reactionary, ordering the ambush and murder of Zapata in 1919. Some of Zapata’s followers refuse to believe their hero is dead, and his legend lives on to inspire many generations of social reformers. The following year, Carranza is overthrown and killed by a group of his more radical generals. They are led by Obregón, who is elected president and faces the task of reforming Mexico after ten years of devastating revolution. By this time, nearly 900,000 Mexicans have emigrated to the United States since 1910, both to escape the violence and to find greater opportunities for work.

1923
After three years, the U.S. recognizes the Obregón government, only after the Mexican leader promises not to seize the holdings of American oil companies in Mexico. In domestic affairs, Obregón puts into place a serious of agrarian reforms, and gave official sanction to organizations of peasants and laborers. He also institutes a sweeping educational reform led by Jose Vasconcelos, enabling the Mexican cultural revolution that begins during this period–including astonishing work by such artists as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the photographer Tina Modotti, the composer Carlos Chávez and the writers Martín Luis Guzmán and Juan Rulfo–to extend from the richest to the poorest segments of the population. After stepping down in 1924 to make way for another former general, Plutarco Calles, Obregón is reelected in 1928, but is killed this same year by a religious fanatic.

Rebuilding the Nation

1934
Lázaro Cárdenas, another former revolutionary general, is elected president. He revives the revolutionary-era social revolution and carries out an extensive series of agrarian reforms, distributing nearly twice as much land to peasants as had all of his predecessors combined. In 1938, Cárdenas nationalizes the country’s oil industry, expropriating the extensive properties of foreign-own companies and creating a government agency to administer the oil industry. He remains an influential figure in government throughout the next three decades.

1940
Elected in 1940, Cárdenas’ more conservative successor, Manual Ávila Camacho, forges a friendlier relationship with the U.S., which leads Mexico to declare war on the Axis powers after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. During World War II, Mexican pilots fight against Japanese forces in the Philippines, serving alongside the U.S. Air Force. In 1944, Mexico agrees to pay U.S. oil companies $24 million, plus interest, for properties expropriated in 1938. The following year, Mexico joins the newly created United Nations.

1946
Miguel Alemán becomes the first civilian president of Mexico since Francisco Madero in 1911. In the post-World War II years, Mexico undergoes great industrial and economic growth, even as the gap continues to grow between the richest and poorest segments of the population. The ruling government party, founded in 1929, is renamed the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and will continue its dominance for the next 50 years.

PRI in Power

1968
As a symbol of its growing international status, Mexico City is chosen to host the Olympic Games. Over the course of the year, student protesters stage a number of demonstrations in an attempt to draw international attention to what they see as a lack of social justice and democracy in Mexico under the PRI government and its current president, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. On October 2, ten days before the Games were to open, Mexican security forces and military troops surround a demonstration at the historic Tlatelolco Plaza and open fire. Though the resulting death and injury toll is concealed by the Mexican government (and their allies in Washington), at least 100 people are killed and many others wounded. The Games go ahead as planned.

1976
Huge oil reserves are discovered in the Bay of Campeche, off the shores of the states of Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz, at the southernmost end of the Gulf of Mexico. The Cantarell oil field established there becomes one of the largest in the world, producing more than 1 million barrels per day by 1981. Jose López Portillo, elected in 1976, promises to use the oil money to fund a campaign of industrial expansion, social welfare and high-yield agriculture. To do this, his government borrows huge sums of foreign money at high interest rates, only to discover that the oil is generally of low grade. These policies leave Mexico with the world’s largest foreign debt.

1985
By the mid-1980s, Mexico is in financial crisis. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake in Mexico City kills nearly 10,000 people and causes heavy damage. The displaced residents, dissatisfied with the government’s response to their situation, form grassroots organizations that will blossom into a full-fledged human rights and civic action movement during the late 1980s and 1990s. The country’s problems are exacerbated by continuing accusations of electoral fraud against the PRI and the devastation caused in the Yucatán by a massive hurricane in 1988.

December 17, 1992
President Carlos Salinas joins George H.W. Bush of the U.S. and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada in signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which goes into effect January 1, 1994. The agreement calls for a phasing out of the longstanding trade barriers between the three nations. Salinas pushes it through over the opposition of the media and the academic communities and of the leftist Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD), which begins to win growing support among the electorate. Salinas’ government is plagued by accusations of corruption, and in 1995 the former president is forced into exile.

1994
The latest PRI candidate, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, is elected president and immediately faces a banking crisis when the value of the Mexican peso plunges on international markets. The United States loans Mexico $20 billion, which, along with a plan of economic austerity, helps stabilize its currency.

Mexico Today

1997
The corruption-plagued PRI suffers a shocking defeat, losing the mayoralty of Mexico City (also known as the Distrito Federal, or DF) to PRD candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of former president Lázaro Cárdenas, by an overwhelming margin.

2000
Vicente Fox, of the opposition Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) wins election to the Mexican presidency, ending more than 70 years of PRI rule. Parliamentary elections also see the PAN emerge victorious, beating the PRI by a slight margin. A former Coca-Cola executive, Fox enters office as a conservative reformer, focusing his early efforts on improving trade relations with the United States, calming civil unrest in areas such as Chiapas and reducing corruption, crime and drug trafficking. Fox also strives to improve the status of millions of illegal Mexican immigrants living in the United States, but his efforts stall after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With reforms slowing and his opponents gaining ground, Fox also faces large-scale protests by farmers frustrated with the inequalities of the NAFTA system.

2006
In the July presidential election, the PAN’s Felipe Calderón apparently wins by less than one percentage point over the PRD’s Andrés Manual López Obrador, with the PRI in third place. With the country strongly divided along class lines–López Obrador aims to represent Mexico’s poor, while Calderón promises to continue the country’s business and technological development–López Obrador and his supporters reject the results as fraudulent and stage mass protests. On September 5, a federal elections board officially declares Calderón the winner. He is inaugurated in December, as more than 100,000 protesters in Mexico City–in addition to PRD legislators–rally around López Obrador, who refuses to concede defeat. In his first months in office, Calderón moves away from the pro-business, free-trade promises of his campaign, expressing his desire to address some of the issues of poverty and social injustice championed by the PRD.

ATTACHMENT TWO – From CBS News

SUPREME COURT CANCELS ARGUMENTS IN TITLE 42 CASE WITH BORDER POLICY SET TO END IN MAY

BY CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ FEBRUARY 16, 2023 / 3:12 PM / CBS NEWS

Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday canceled arguments it had scheduled over a pandemic-era policy known as Title 42 that allows U.S. border officials to swiftly expel migrants, after the Biden administration said the case would be rendered moot once the border restrictions expire in early May.

The high court had been scheduled to hear oral arguments on March 1 in a case over whether a group of Republican-led states should be allowed to defend the legality of Title 42, which the Biden administration has sought to end on the premise that it is no longer needed to contain the coronavirus.

The Biden administration told the Supreme Court in a filing earlier this month that the Republican-led states’ request would be moot on May 11, when the expiration of the national COVID-19 public health emergency is set to trigger Title 42’s demise. On Thursday, the high court removed the case from its calendar.

Since it was invoked by the Trump administration at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020, the public health law underpinning Title 42 has allowed U.S. officials along the Mexican border to expel migrants over 2.6 million times to Mexico or their home country, without allowing them to request asylum, federal data show.

The Biden administration defended Title 42 and its stated public health justification for over a year. But it moved to end the policy in the spring of 2022, citing improving pandemic conditions and increased vaccination rates in migrants’ native countries. That effort was halted after Republican state officials convinced a federal judge in Louisiana to rule that Title 42 had been improperly terminated.

In November 2022, a federal judge overseeing a separate lawsuit declared Title 42 illegal, saying the government had not sufficiently considered the measure’s impact on asylum-seekers.

Because of that order, Title 42 was set to end in late December. But at the request of the same group of Republican-led states, the Supreme Court suspended the lower court ruling, allowing border officials to continue the expulsions.

While it has tried to end it, the Biden administration has employed Title 42 as one of its main migration management tools amid record levels of migrant apprehensions along the southern border over the past two years. In fact, since January, the administration has been able to significantly reduce unlawful border crossings through a new strategy that partially relies on Title 42.

In early January, President Biden announced that migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela would be expelled to Mexico under Title 42 if they attempted to cross the southern border illegally. Mexico, for its part, committed to accept the return of up to 30,000 migrants from these countries on a monthly basis.

At the same time, the Biden administration announced it would allow up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to fly to the U.S. legally each month if Americans or others in the U.S. sponsored their arrival. It also unveiled a mobile app that allows migrants in Mexico to request an appointment at a port of entry, so they can request an exemption to Title 42 on humanitarian grounds.

Republican lawmakers have said the Biden administration is not ready to end Title 42, and their concerns have been echoed by some centrist Democrats. Earlier in February, some Senate Democrats joined Republicans in introducing a bill that would extend Title 42 for at least two months after the emergency declaration expires.

Biden administration officials have said they’ve been preparing for Title 42’s end for the past year, including by expanding a process known as expedited removal that allows U.S. border officials to rapidly deport migrants who don’t ask for asylum or who fail to establish credible fear of persecution.

The administration is also planning to publish a regulation before May 11 that would disqualify migrants from asylum if they do not ask for refuge in third countries on their way to the U.S. Those subject to the policy, which has garnered criticism from progressives, could be deported from the U.S. without a court hearing.

The case in which the Supreme Court canceled arguments Thursday is one of several lawsuits Texas and other Republican-led states have filed against Mr. Biden’s immigration actions.

Twenty states led by Texas on Wednesday asked a federal judge to immediately halt the sponsorship process that allows up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. legally each month, saying the authority underpinning the program can’t be used to admit large numbers of foreigners.

The Biden administration has warned that the collapse of the sponsorship program could lead Mexico to reject U.S. expulsions of non-Mexican migrants, since officials in Mexico City made the commitment contingent on the U.S. taking in migrants too.

ATTACHMENT THREE – From Forbes

Former President Donald Trump predicted the U.S. will become “officially, a THIRD WORLD NATION” when the Covid-era Title 42 immigration policy expires next week, he said on Truth Social Friday as the Biden Administration faces bipartisan pushback for deploying troops to the border ahead of an expected surge in migrants under the soon-to-be loosened immigration policy.

Title 42, which allowed immigration authorities to expel migrants who crossed the border illegally without the opportunity to seek asylum, is set to expire on May 11.

The end of the program, implemented under Trump at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the disease, is expected to lead to a wave of asylum seekers and marks a significant challenge for the Biden Administration, which announced last week that it would deploy 1,500 troops for 90 days to the U.S.-Mexico border as the change takes effect.

The expiration of Title 42 has prompted a fresh round of criticism from Republicans who have repeatedly blasted Biden’s border policies, while the Administration’s plan to send troops to the border has ignited backlash within his own party, particularly among pro-immigration Democrats, such as Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), who have equated the deployment to an inhumane “militarization” of the border.

CONTRA

The Biden Administration, which has faced criticism for its shifting stance on Title 42, has deemed the program ineffective at deterring illegal immigration. “People are turned away under Title 42, and they’re not barred from trying to come back. They can and they do try to enter the United States again and again,” Biden said in December, while urging Congress to implement immigration reform, including his repeated call for a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers” enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants temporary visas to people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

KEY BACKGROUND

The Biden Administration first sought to end Title 42 in April last year after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed the policy “no longer necessary,” but the move was blocked by various lawsuits by Republican-led states claiming its early termination would prompt a wave of illegal immigration and hamstring their resources. The Biden Administration has argued that the restrictive policy is no longer necessary and will be replaced by a previous program, Title 8, which requires border authorities to admit migrants who are under threat in their home countries. The lawsuits have come to a halt before the Supreme Court as the program is set to end next week, in conjunction with the expiration of the Covid-19 public health emergency. The Biden Administration has set up various protocols to deal with the expected influx of migrants, including opening new processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala. Earlier this week, the White House also agreed to accept migrants from four additional countries, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, under DHS parole process. The U.S. and Mexico will also wage a joint campaign to crack down on smuggling, the White House said Tuesday.

BIG NUMBER

2.5 million. That’s the number of migrants Department of Homeland Security officials have turned away under Title 42 since it was implemented in March 2020.

TANGENT

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) introduced a bill on Thursday that would allow the Biden Administration to extend Title 42 for two years without the existence of a public health emergency. The senators accused the White House of failing to “secure the border” and predicted “the situation will get even worse once Title 42 is allowed to expire,” they said in a statement. @to end

FURTHER READING

Supreme Court Keeps Title 42 In Place: What To Know About It And How It Could Affect Immigration (Forbes)

Supreme Court Stops Biden From Lifting Trump-Era Title 42 Border Policy—For Now (Forbes)

Judge Ends Trump-Era Title 42 Policy Used To Expel Migrants (Forbes)

And see, also...

Border Crisis: Biden Administration Plan for End of Title 42 More Lawlessness

Wherein the administration announced on April 27 its plans for coping with the expected supercharged illegal immigration once Title 42 is lifted.

ATTACHMENT FOUR – From the New York Times

THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY TO THOSE SEEKING REFUGE

Guest Essay By Alejandra Oliva: May 5, 2023

In 1990, my parents moved to the United States from Mexico so that my father could get his Ph.D. in business. By the time he had successfully completed his studies, they had welcomed two children, and a third was on the way. In the years that followed, my parents built their version of the American dream. They bought a house, where they planted a garden and hosted Thanksgivings and birthday parties, until they sent us off to colleges to pursue our own version of the American dream.

My parents entered their immigration process from a position of privilege, not as asylum seekers. Yet those arriving at our southern border today are similarly compelled to do so in pursuit of that dream. Desperate for a safe place where they can grow and thrive, they believe the United States is a country of opportunity and growth — a place where there’s enough stability that hard work can put one on the track of upward mobility.

But these days the door to stability, much less economic growth, has been shut against asylum seekers even before they’re allowed to enter the country. There’s no better example of this than the Biden administration’s new asylum laws, set to go into effect on May 11. The new measures will, among other things, bar from asylum all non-Mexican migrants who arrive at the southern U.S. border without having first sought and been denied asylum in at least one of the countries they passed through on their journey.

In order to apply for asylum, people need not be physically in the United States — though they must first make an appointment through a notoriously glitchy phone app run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, known as CBP One, that has been proved to be a crash-prone nightmare with facial recognition tech that often fails to accurately identify dark-skinned faces. This measure, instituted in January, is intended to replace Title 42, a Covid-era emergency measure that allowed border agents to turn away asylum seekers, under the justification of helping to prevent the spread of the virus. A public health justification for invoking it was tenuous even in the earliest days of the pandemic. Indeed, public health experts denounced the use of Title 42, saying it failed “to protect public health.”

On the face of it, the end of Title 42 — reopening the border and an ostensible return to normalcy — may seem like a good thing. But in fact, the end of Title 42 means a return to the bureaucratic labyrinth of asylum applications that existed before the pandemic — with the inclusion of an even more complicated, class-stratified system. The rollout of the app presumes migrants have access to a smartphone, are able to find stable internet connections, are comfortable enough using technology to navigate the app and speak one of only three languages in which the app is available. While many migrants are tech savvy — WhatsApp is essentially a cross-border social media network — others may be new to technology and find navigating a phone application confusing.

President Biden’s expanded parole system — which was put in place in January and allows up to 30,000 people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to enter the United States per month — is purportedly a more humanitarian approach. This may be the case, but it’s still fundamentally an unjust policy. Baked into the promise of entry into the United States are prerequisites that exclude a large majority of people arriving at the border. The parole program requires applicants to have a financial sponsor. They must arrive in the country by plane, which requires the financial and logistical abilities to secure a ticket and a passport all while trying to stay safe in the often dangerous situations from which they are seeking asylum. Those who fail to meet these requirements may be turned away without receiving an asylum screening.

I’ve been working with asylum seekers at every stage of the immigration process for years — experiences spanning a few administrations and thousands of policy changes. I’ve served as a translator and advocate for people preparing to cross the border in Tijuana. I’ve helped asylum seekers fill out their applications in a New York City clinic within their first year in a new home. Most recently, I helped people who have been granted asylum after years of effort to share their stories alongside an immigration legal services nonprofit. Every one of them came to the United States in search of a safe place to call home.

We must not forget that the United States has legal obligations to provide protection to people who qualify as refugees under international law. Asylum is the category of legal protection we offer people who are persecuted in their home countries for characteristics they cannot or should not have to change about themselves — political opinion and religion, but also whom someone loves, gender, race or ethnicity. Even before the Biden administration’s new policies, our system betrayed a hollowness to this promise: Asylum seekers were regularly mistreated, detained and put through a bureaucratic gauntlet without aid or explanation.

The choice to come to the United States is not an easy or uncomplicated one. I’ve talked to countless people who have shared how guilty they feel about leaving parents behind in home countries they can never return to. They speak longingly of food and gardens and neighborhoods and all the ineffable things that make a place home. They are often frustrated and angry at how the United States government has treated them. Many of them suffered through long border waits in Mexico or stints in overcrowded immigration detention. They are tired of the bureaucracy and the often contradictory hoops the current asylum process forces them to jump through.

“How is it that I have to wait a certain number of days after applying to get a work permit, but it counts against me if I apply for benefits or if I work without a work permit? How am I supposed to find a place to live, to feed my family?” I can’t tell you how often I heard questions like these, people’s faces drawn with anxiety, contemplating how they would survive here, after they had come here for their survival.

Instead of toggling from one ineffective deterrence strategy to another, or sending troops to manage people who are here looking for peaceful lives, the Biden administration should allocate the billions of dollars in resources currently spent on deterrence on ensuring that asylum seekers are able to quickly receive work permits and settle in communities ready to welcome them.

My parents moved to this country, and stayed here, not out of financial or political necessity, but out of the belief that this country might be a better place to build a life and raise their children. The Biden administration’s decision to continue foreclosing that same opportunity for those who need it most is to betray asylum seekers’ faith in the possibilities of this country. And it is to turn away from our own highest ideals.

Alejandra Oliva is a writer and immigration advocate. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration.”

ATTACHMENT FIVE – From the Independent U.K.

MEXICO IMMIGRATION CHIEF CHARGED OVER DETENTION CENTRE FIRE THAT KILLED 40

Francisco Garduño will remain in his job as he awaits trail

The head of Mexico’s immigration agency will stand trial for his alleged oversight failure after 40 people died in a migrant fire at a detention centre in Ciudad Juarez in March.

Francisco Garduño will remain free and stay in his job for the time being, with the Associated Press reporting that his lawyers will seek an agreement to provide reparations to victims of the fire or their families.

Federal prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office argued in court this week that Mr Garduño, as the top-ranking immigration official in the country, and neglected his oversight duties in Ciudad Juarez despite the fact that he allegedly knew the city’s detention centre was not safe.

Prosecutors asked that Mr Garduño be removed from his job leading the Mexican Immigration Institute, but a judge denied that request and so Mr Garduño will continue in the role.

After a migrant was allegedly responsible for starting the fire in the Ciudad Juarez facility on 27 March, no one in a position of authority at the centre appeared to make an attempt to evacuate the migrants being held there, even though a holding cell where 68 people were detained was filling with smoke.

In addition to the 40 people who died in the fire, two dozen others were injured. Nineteen of the people who died were from Guatemala.

Now, the question is whether high-ranking government officials will be held accountable. Mr Garduño still enjoys the support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who appointed him to the immigration post in 2019 at a time when Mexico was under pressure from then-US President Donald Trump to curb migration at the Mexico-US border.

Mr Garduño, a lawyer by training and longtime public servant, has a relationship with Mr Obrador dating back to when the president was serving as mayor of Mexico City. Mr Garduño took over after his predecessor, Tonatiuh Guillén, quit in protest of increasingly restrictive migration policies.

Mexico’s immigration agency has for years faced human rights and corruption complaints, including that migrant centres all too frequently have inadequate ventilation, along with issues over clean water and food.

Mr Garduño is not the only immigration official set to stand trial. Seven other officials have also been criminally charged for their role in the fire, with the immigration agency’s delegate in Chihuahua state facing homicide and injury by omission charges.

Mr Garduño, for his part, has been ordered to present himself in court every two weeks until his trial begins or his case is settled.

ATTACHMENT SIX – From NPR

MEXICO MIGRANT CAMP TENTS HAVE BEEN TORCHED ACROSS THE BORDER FROM TEXAS

By The Associated Press April 22, 2023 2:44 AM ET

MATAMOROS, Mexico — About two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a migrant camp across the border from Texas this week, witnesses said Friday, a sign of the extreme risk that comes with being stuck in Mexico as the Biden administration increasingly relies on that country to host people fleeing poverty and violence.

The fires were set Wednesday and Thursday at the sprawling camp of about 2,000 people, most of them from Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico, in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas. An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline.

An app launched to make seeking asylum simpler has left migrants even more precarious

There were no reports of deaths or significant injuries. But about 25 rudimentary shelters made up of plastic, tarps, branches and other materials were torched in a sparsely populated part of the camp. Many who lived there also apparently lost clothing, documents and whatever other modest belongings may have been left inside.

Margarita, a Mexican woman staying at the camp, said Friday she saw migrants from Venezuela screaming during the previous day's blaze.

"They had their children with them and a few other things they had a chance to get," Margarita said. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be published due to fears for her safety.

Gangs recently threatened migrants who were wading across the river border illegally, as well as their guides, Margarita said, but the crossings had continued.

Criminal groups often prey upon migrants in the area and demand money in return for permission to pass through their territory.

Migrants have been applying for 740 slots made available daily on the glitch-plagued app, CBPOne, which allows them to enter the U.S. legally at an official crossing.

There are far more migrants than available slots, exacerbating tensions in Mexican border cities that house them, often in shelters and camps like the one in Matamoros. Last year hundreds of migrants blocked a major pedestrian crossing between Tijuana and San Diego until authorities shut down the protest.

In Matamoros on Wednesday night, about 200 migrants gathered on the southern side of an international bridge and halted all U.S.-bound traffic, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported. Vehicles were able to resume crossing after about two hours and pedestrians were allowed to cross after about four hours.

Mexico immigration agency chief will be charged in migrant center fire that killed 40

CBP made no mention of fires at the Mexican camp in its statement about the bridge shutdown.

The tent fires in Matamoros come on the heels of a March 27 blaze that killed 40 men at a Mexican immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The fire was allegedly started by a detained migrant to protest conditions at the facility in the city across from El Paso, Texas.

The U.S. government is increasingly turning to Mexico while preparing to end pandemic-era asylum restrictions, known as Title 42 authority, on May 11. Mexico recently began accepting people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who cross the border irregularly and are turned back by the U.S.

The Biden administration also is putting final touches on a policy under which asylum would be denied to people who pass through another country, such as Mexico, to reach U.S. soil.

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From Mexico News Daily

MEXICO’S BOOMING ECONOMY GREW 1.1% IN Q1

By MND Staff May 1, 2023

Mexico’s economy has exceeded analysts’ expectations for Q1 2023, accelerating its GDP growth to around 1.1% compared to last quarter, and showing 3.8% annual growth over the same period last year according to preliminary data.

The strong performance in the first quarter of 2023 comes on the back of six consecutive quarters of growth, as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Q1 quarter over quarter growth was led by a 1.5% increase in the service economy. This counteracted a 0.7% decrease in the industrial sector, and a 3.2% decrease in the primary sector, which includes agriculture, fishing and mining.

Mexico’s economy has repeatedly exceeded expectations over the last two years. It grew 3.1% in 2022 — less than President López Obrador’s prediction of 5% but well over the 2.2% projected by the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) early in the year.

The growth was even more surprising against a backdrop of record-high interest rates, applied by the central bank in an attempt to control high inflation.

Indeed, the British magazine The Economist ranked Mexico sixth on a list of “2022’s Unlikely Winners”, an accolade boasted of repeatedly by López Obrador.

Morena Party leader Mario Delgado recently gave a conference celebrating the success of the “superpeso” against the U.S. dollar. Mexico’s currency is today valued at just under 18 pesos per dollar, its strongest value since 2018. (Morena/Cuartoscuro)

Even so, many believed the gains were unlikely to continue, as growth stagnated at 0.5% in Q4 2022. Financial analysts such as Fitch Ratings and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean lowered their 2023 growth predictions for Mexico at the end of last year – to 1.1% and 1.4%, respectively.

Fitch warned that continued high inflation could start to erode consumption, compounding economic problems caused by low capital investment in Mexico, the end of the Covid recovery period and the global economic impact of the war in Ukraine.

Although the figures for Q1 2023 appear more positive than predicted, the director of analysis at Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, again cautioned that Mexico’s current growth pattern is unsustainable in the long term.

Siller argued that the apparent strength of the Mexican economy is due largely to government support and remittances from abroad, which primarily boost consumption.

However, gross fixed investment in machinery or other assets to increase production has fallen since 2019, limiting possibilities for long-term growth.

“The proportion of GDP that represents gross fixed investment has fallen, and what has gained proportion is consumption,” Siller said. “This is not sustainable in the long run because it snowballs public finances, which depend on economic growth.”

Although Siller said that “nearshoring” —the process by which U.S. companies have relocated Asian operations to Mexico — had been positive for the Mexican economy, she argued that some of López Obrador’s policies have weakened Mexico’s institutional framework and decreased business confidence.

In light of these factors, Banco Base predicted growth of 1.9% for Mexico at the end of 2023 – a considerable slowdown from the 3.1% seen last year.

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – From The Economist

WHY MEXICO’S ECONOMY UNDERPERFORMS

Red tape, taxes and gangsters keep small firms small

Mar 19th 2022

Ramón runs a successful business in Mexico City moulding plastics for blister packaging. When the pandemic dented demand he found a new opportunity in making facial visors. Despite his acumen, Ramón (not his real name) does not want to expand his business. At his factory there is no sign and no window advertising his wares. “I don’t want to grow because I will be worse off,” he says. Not only will his tax rates jump from 2% of profits to 30%, he says, but he will attract attention from both trade unions and organised crime, which will charge derecho de piso—extortion.

Ramón’s story helps explain something that would otherwise be baffling: why the Mexican economy grows so slowly. Given its advantages, Mexico should be an engine of growth for Latin America. It shares a long land border with the United States. It is part of a free-trade area that lets Mexican industry integrate into North American supply chains. Thanks to abstemious fiscal policies, it has avoided the high inflation and debt that afflict South American economies like Argentina and Brazil. And yet over the quarter-century before the pandemic Mexico managed annual average growth in gdp per person, on a purchasing-power-parity basis, of just 2.8% (see chart). That was little better than Brazil, worse than Argentina and well short of the performance of stars like Chile and Panama.

This disappointing record looms larger after the brutal experience of the pandemic. In 2020 Mexico suffered its worst economic contraction since the great depression. Aggregate output shrank by 8.5%. Between 2018 and 2020 at least 3.8m people fell into poverty (according to a measure that takes into account access to services as well as income). That brought the poverty rate to almost 44%. The recovery is looking equally disappointing. Mexico’s economy contracted in the last two quarters of 2021. The imf and Mexico’s central bank have revised down sharply their forecasts for growth in 2022 relative to earlier estimates, back to the usual 2-3% range.

No single factor explains Mexico’s underperformance. “It’s like a good mole [a traditional sauce], with many ingredients,” quips Gordon Hanson of Harvard University. His work suggests that Mexico’s doldrums are at least partly due to bad luck. Although it experienced some success in building a manufacturing sector in the 1980s and 1990s—an effort that received a boost from the North American Free Trade Agreement starting in 1994—Mexico’s fortunes shifted after China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001.

Thereafter, Mexico’s share of American imports dropped while China’s soared. China offered a much larger workforce at lower wages, making goods that were substitutes for those made in Mexican factories. Nonetheless, Mexico’s close economic ties to the United States meant that the latter’s housing bust and lacklustre recovery sapped Mexican growth. In 2009, for example, output across emerging markets as a whole rose by 2.8%, but in Mexico gdp contracted by 5.3%.

Yet even had Mexico been more fortunate, internal economic problems would probably have weighed on growth. Criminal groups can obstruct businesses or force them to pay for “security”, as Ramón’s experience shows. More mundane difficulties abound. Mexico ranked 60th of 190 countries in the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business index (which ceased publication after 2020). It can be a struggle to get electricity. Paying taxes takes a whopping 241 hours per year on average for firms in the formal sector. More and better infrastructure is needed, especially in the poorer southern states that are disconnected from the global economy, says Valeria Moy, an economist who heads imco, a think-tank in Mexico City.

Formal businesses face red tape and high taxes in exchange for poor public services. That is why so many firms and employees stay informal. Almost 60% of the labour force and an even greater proportion of businesses do not pay the required taxes and social-insurance contributions. Often informal enterprises do not obey labour rules. Despite the large number who toil in it, the informal economy accounts for only about a quarter of Mexican gdp. That is because productivity in informal firms is well below that in the formal sector, and it may well be falling. “It is like the Middle Ages with no technical change,” says Santiago Levy, a former deputy finance minister now at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington.

Life for workers with informal jobs is not easy. In Nápoles, a neighbourhood of the capital, Iván Jiménez runs a fruit-and-vegetable stand. The hours are long. To open the stall for ten hours a day he works for 17 hours from 4am, when he buys stock. (Mexicans work more hours per year than citizens of any other member of the oecd, a club mainly of rich nations, bar Colombia.) Mr Jiménez says the buying power of his earnings has not risen in recent years.

Yet work in the formal sector is not necessarily more attractive. Salvador Trejo, who runs a produce stall in another part of the city, says he can’t afford the taxes that he would have to pay if he moved to the formal sector. Formal employment can mean gaining health insurance, but its benefits are often little better than those provided by health care that can be obtained for nothing. Public pensions do not always sweeten the deal, either. To earn one, until recently a labourer had to work in the formal sector for 25 years, an unachievable feat for anyone over a certain age. The current administration has reduced that requirement to around 15 years, but it has dulled the incentive by introducing grants for older people regardless of their income or employment status.

Although past reforms have improved the growth climate in many respects, few administrations have done much to shrink the informal sector, despite potential gains in the form of higher productivity and tax revenue. Even so, the economy has a strong foundation on which to build.

Mexico has long been an attractive destination for foreign direct investment. Although recent supply-chain problems have affected important industries, such as car-making, the economy could benefit over the long run from a lack of confidence in global supply chains, as American firms move production closer to home. Indeed, in the northern states, which are closely integrated with the United States, industries like aerospace manufacturing are booming. Mexico could enjoy annual growth of around 4%, reckons Mr Levy, if it became more business-friendly and invested in infrastructure. Parts of Mexico do grow at good rates. In 2018 and 2019, for example, the northern state of Baja California Sur grew at an average annual rate of 3.5%.

Opportunity knocked back

But the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is squandering the opportunity. In some ways it is making things worse than they were before the pandemic. A recent move to hand control of the country’s electricity market to the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, a state-owned utility, has discouraged foreign investment. The president has portrayed the private sector as greedy and rattled businesspeople by cancelling construction of an airport. “Currently, it is predominantly domestic issues holding back investment,” says Jonathan Heath, a deputy governor of Mexico’s central bank.

That is a shame. “Mexico is a country of opportunities, whether you sell tacos or something else,” reckons José, who runs a carpet-cleaning business. The biggest opportunity would come from boosting the highly productive formal sector. Unless the government does that, Mexico’s growth will remain mediocre.

ATTACHMENT NINE – From Wikipedia

POVERTY IN MEXICO

Poverty Headcount Ratio (2010)[1]
Poverty Trend	World Bank
Live with less than $1.00 a day	0.7% (0.8 mi)
Live with less than $2.00 a day	4.5% (5.1 million)
Live with less than $2.50 a day	8.8% (10.9 million)
Live with less than $4.00 a day	23.7% (26.9 million)
Live with less than $5.00 a day	33.2% (37.6 million)

Poverty in Mexico deals with the incidence of poverty in Mexico and its measurement. It is measured based on social development laws in the country and under parameters such as nutrition, clean water, shelter, education, health care, social security, quality and availability of basic services in households, income and social cohesion.[2] It is divided in two categories: moderate poverty and extreme poverty.

Poverty is probably one of the main challenges to overcome for any governmental administration; however, it would be important to understand it more thoroughly to see how complex and extensive it is. There are various types of poverty; which are, on the one hand, poverty per se, and on the other, extreme poverty.

According to CONEVAL,[3] the institution designated to measure poverty in Mexico, poverty analysis should not only look at monetary income but also at social factors. Six different lacks serve as indicators in terms of measuring poverty,[3] which are educational backwardness, access to health services, access to social security, access to (decent) food, quality of housing spaces, and finally access to basic services in housing (having a roof to live in and access to certain goods and services).

To be considered poor, it is enough to have an income below the well-being line (income that is less than food and non-food basic basket), regardless of the amount of social deficiencies that the person has, if any.

On the other hand, there is extreme poverty, the most precarious situation in which a person can be,[3] and this is manifested when the income received by a person is less than the food basket and also has three or more lacks previously mentioned.

While less than 2% of Mexico's population lives below the international poverty line set by the World Bank, as of 2013, Mexico's government estimates that 33% of the population lives in moderate poverty and 9% lives in extreme poverty,[4] which leads to 42% of Mexico's total population living below the national poverty line.[5] The extreme gap is explained by the government's adoption of the multidimensional poverty method as a way to measure poverty, which outlines that a person with an income above the "international poverty line" or "well being income line", set by the Mexican government, falls in the "moderate poverty" category if he or she has one or more deficiencies related to social rights such as education (did not complete studies), nutrition (malnutrition or obesity), or living standards (access to elemental services such as water or electricity, and secondary domestic assets, such as refrigerators). Extreme poverty is defined by the Mexican government as deficiencies in both social rights and incomes lower than the "well being income line".[6] Additional figures from SEDESOL (Mexico's social development agency) estimate that 6% of the population (7.4 million people) lives in extreme poverty and suffers from food insecurity.[7]

The high numbers of poverty in the country, despite Mexico's positive potential is a recurrent topic of discussion among professionals.[8] Some economists have speculated that in four more decades of continuous economic growth, even with emigration and violence, Mexico will be among the five biggest economies in the world, along with China, the United States, Japan, and India.[9]

Recently, extensive changes in government economic policy[10] and attempts at reducing government interference through privatization of several sectors,[11] allowed Mexico to remain the biggest economy in Latin America [12] up until 2005 when it became the second-largest.[13] Despite these changes, Mexico continues to suffer great social inequality and lack of opportunities.[14] The previous administration made an attempt at reducing poverty in the country by providing more professional and educational opportunities to its citizens, as well as establishing a universal healthcare.[15][16]

Background[edit]

Mexico's unequal development between the richer urban zones and the considerably poorer rural zones have been attributed to the fast economic growth that took place during the so-called Mexican miracle, the period in which Mexican economy transitioned from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. This led many people to relocate to the cities. Even though investments were pouring into urban infrastructure, the government couldn't accommodate the rapid influx of people, which led to the development of slums in the outskirts of many Mexican cities. The constant government corruption is another factor to which poverty is frequently attributed.[17] Only in recent years, after various economic setbacks, Mexico has recovered to a level where the middle class, once virtually nonexistent, is beginning to flourish.[18][19][20]

Social stratification, still greatly present in Mexico, can be traced back to the country's origin. In the Colonial Period, before its independence, the upper class was composed of those who owned the land and the lower class was made of those who worked the land. After the Mexican Revolution, the government ceded an estimated 50 percent of the land to the general population, covering a small portion of the gap between the wealthy and the poor.[21] Land ownership continued to be the main source of wealth for Mexicans and has dictated the hierarchy of wealth distribution amongst the population. After the country entered its economic industrial transformation, industrialists, businessmen, and politicians have controlled the direction of wealth in Mexico and have remained among the wealthy.[22] The average individual gross annual income in Mexico in 2002 was US$6,879.37 (2010 dollars).[23] 12.3 percent of the Mexican labor force earns the daily minimum wage or MX$1,343.28 per month (approx. US$111.94 November 2010 exchange rates).[24] 20.5 of the labor force earns twice the minimum wage and 21.4 percent earns up to three times the daily minimum wage while 18.6 earn no more than five daily minimum wages.[24] Only 11.8 percent of the working population earn wages equal or above MX$6,716.40 (US$559.70) per month.[24] According to Jaime Saavedra, World Bank Poverty Manager for Latin America, Mexico has made considerable strides in poverty reduction since the late 1990s, with performance above the Latin American average. Saavedra explained that: "Between 2000 and 2004, extreme poverty fell almost seven percentage points, which can be explained by development in rural areas, where extreme poverty fell from 42.4 per cent to 27.9 per cent. The urban poverty rate, however, got stuck at 11.3 per cent."[25]

Government involvements[edit]

Social development began to take place in the form of written policy in the early 1900s.[26] The Mexican Constitution, approved in 1917, outlined the basic social protections citizens are entitled to, including the right to property, education, health care, and employment; and it establishes the federal government responsible for the execution and enforcement of these protections.[27]

The global economic crisis of the late 1920s and forward slowed down any possibility of social development in the country.[28] Between the 1920s and the 1940s the illiteracy levels range between 61.5 and 58 percent, due this the government focused on establishing social protection institutions. By the late 1950s, 59 percent of the population knew how to read and write. In the 2000s only 9.5 percent of the population older than 15 years was illiterated.[26] By the 1960s, individual involvement of some states to increase social development, along with the country's economic growth, as well as employment opportunities and greater income, and the migration of people from the rural states to the urban areas, helped reduced poverty nationwide.[26] The 1970s and 1980s saw the transformation of government and economic policies. The government gave way to flexible foreign trade, deregulation and privatization of several sectors. After the economic crisis of the 1990s, Mexico recovered to become an emerging economic power; however, the number of poor nationwide has remained constant even with the country's overall growth.[29][30]

Regional variation[edit]

Further information: List of Mexican states by poverty rate

Historically, southern states like Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero have remained segregated from the rest of the country.[31] Their implementation of infrastructure, social development, education, and economic growth has been poorly accounted for. These states hold the highest levels of illiteracy, unemployment, lack of basic services such as running water and sanitation, overall urban infrastructure, and government establishment.[32] As citizens of the least fortunate states have noticed growth and improvements in other states, many have simply left seeking better opportunities.[33]

Causes of poverty[edit]

The reasons for poverty in Mexico are complex and widely extensive.[34][35] There is an agreement that a combination of uneven distribution of wealth and resources sponsored by economic and political agendas to favor the rich and powerful is a major contributor to the millions left behind.[36][37]

Individual condition[edit]

In the economic sense, access to insufficient monetary means to afford goods and services becomes the immediate reason to be poor. Because a person's personal income dictates what he or she can afford and what he or she will remain deprived of, the first common cause of poverty is the individual condition.[38] This means, a person's individual circumstances and possibilities create their opportunity for access to goods and services. This condition is triggered by a person's income, education, training or work experience, social network, age, health, and other socio-economic factors:

Lack of and unavailability of education[edit]

As population has grown, the number of students enrolled in schools throughout the country has grown tremendously since the 1950s.[39] At the same time, government efforts to accommodate the growing student population, improving the quality of instruction and promoting prevalent school attendance has not been enough and therefore education has not remained among priorities for families who must struggle with poverty.[40][41] 700,000 students grades 1-9 dropped out of school in 2009 in all of Mexico.[42] 7.9 percent (almost 9 million) of the population is illiterate.[42] 73% of Mexican households have at least one member without education or education below the 7th grade.[42] 40 percent of people in the states of Chiapas, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Oaxaca and Guerrero have education below the 7th grade.[43]

Low quality public education[edit]

It is difficult to speak of progress anywhere, with such alarming educational lag figures, Mexico has been fighting for years against teacher unions that ask for a lot and give a little in return, that is why the quality of public education is far below of what it should be. It is difficult to access public education, and not very efficient. This is a serious problem because a low-quality early education translates into a poor human development index (HDI),[44] which in turn shows low achievement and no expectations of personal and professional growth in the future, which generates the famous poverty trap.

Underemployment[edit]

Getting an education does not immediately translate to landing better paying jobs or overcoming underemployment in Mexico: According to data compiled by the Civic Observatory for Education, fewer than 20% of recent graduates manage to find an appropriate position during their first round of job-hunting. Although the country has made great strides in education and professional training, the absence of a serious employment policy means that economic expansion is sacrificed so that higher prices can be avoided. That exerts a negative impact on the labor market in both the short and medium term, and on new professionals most of all.[45] Situations like this have caused the standard of living among the urban middle class to deteriorate and as a consequence brings on emigration from this sector to other countries, mainly the United States and Canada.[46] Mexico has an extensive infrastructure of informal economics, which further complicates the measurement of unemployment, as people involved in these jobs are not considered unemployed, while not being officially employed either (ex. housemaids, street sellers, artisans). It is estimated that 59% of the jobs in the country belong to the informal economy.[47]

Birth rate, contraception, and life expectancy[edit]

Although Mexico's birth rate has been consecutively declining since the 1970, its population growth still exceeds its ability to pull people out of abject poverty. Contraception is widely used, despite it being a hot-button political and religious issue. Contraception is provided through a government-sponsored program called Mexfam. The average life expectancy has drastically increased from 60 years in 1968, to 77 years in 2012. Rural areas still have the highest birth rates and poverty rates in Mexico, with indigenous populations topping the list.

Other challenges[edit]

Mexico does not promote equal opportunity employment despite established laws forbidding most socially-recognized forms of discrimination.[48] The government doesn't become sufficiently involved to promote opportunities to all citizens; including reducing discrimination against middle-age and elder citizens. Over a million of the unemployed face age discrimination and 55% of all unemployed face some form of discrimination when seeking employment.[49] There are virtually no opportunities for individuals with special requirements such as the disabled.[50] As job seekers become older, it is harder for them to get employed as employers tend to seek candidates within the "younger than 35 range". Social security (IMSS) is insufficient and there is a huge gap in proportion to the entire population (50% covered), the work force (30% covered), and the retired (33% covered).[51] There is no unemployment insurance in Mexico.[52]

Insufficient infrastructure[edit]

Mexico is a country where investment on infrastructure has remained as unequally distributed as income, especially in rural areas and in the southern states.[53] Because many people establish in rural areas, without government permission, and without paying property taxes, the government does not make significant efforts to invest in overall infrastructure of the entire country, yet it has started to do so until the 1990s.[54] Communities often face a combination of unpaved roads, lack of electricity and potable water, improper sanitation, poorly maintained schools, vandalism and crime, and lack of social development programs.[55][56] The government did not begin to focus on improving and modernizing the federal highway system up until two decades ago when it was composed of two-lane roads; often deathtraps and the scenarios of head-on collisions between truckers and families on vacation.[57] City and state governments often face challenges providing citizens who live on informal commerce with the basic services of urbanized life.[58] To worsen the problem the housing laws often vary greatly from one state to another, with the state of Hidalgo having no housing laws at all.[59] Because of this, higher income communities will invest in the development of their own communities while lower income communities might be deprived of the basics such as running water and drainage in various cases.

Geography and poverty

The concentration of poverty and distribution of wealth and opportunities is clearly visible from a geographic perspective.[60] The northern region of the country offers higher development while the southern states are the most impoverished. This is clearly the result of states equipped with better infrastructure that others. The states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero are among the least developed in the country. These states hold the highest numbers of indigenous population. As a result, 75 percent of the indigenous population lives on moderate poverty line and 39 percent of these under extreme poverty.[61]

Unemployment[edit]

Unemployment in Mexico has been continuous.[14][45] In 2009, the unemployment rate was estimated at 5.5 percent (over 2.5 million).[62] Although that figure is far below the unemployment indexes in the rest of Latin America, the European Union, the United States and much of Asia, Mexico faces a serious problem generating jobs.[63] In spite of splendid macroeconomic indicators that currently exist: continuing low levels of inflation and stability in the nation's currency exchange rate; a sufficient number of formal jobs- at least one million every year to keep up with the growing population- have not been created in over ten years.[64] With the abundance of natural resources in the country- as well as its petroleum wealth, these benefits don't seem to reach many of the people of Mexico who lack job opportunities and the means to raise their standards of living out of poverty and marginalization.[65]

In order to improve present day employment opportunities in Mexico, existing laws and regulations must be replaced for efficient instruments with greater legal certainty; encourage private investment; increase the collection of taxes; stimulate the productivity of businesses and the training of workers; and create more and better jobs.[66]

Inequitable distribution of income

Differences in national income equality around the world as measured by the national Gini coefficient. A higher number means a higher income inequality

Mexico's wealth is unevenly distributed among its people where 10 percent of nation's wealthiest have 42.2 percent of all income and 10 percent of the nation's poorest have 1.3 of the remaining income.[67] Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico and one of the richest in the world, has a personal fortune equal to 4 to 6 percent of the country's GDP.[68][69] In spite of efforts by government officials during the past three administrations; transition to globalization,[70] the NAFTA agreement;[71] Mexico has been unable to create efficient public policies in order to compensate for the distortion of its market and the poor distribution of national income.[72]

Obsolete regulatory framework

The absence of basic agreements among Mexico's main political parties for more than ten years has caused a serious backwardness in needed legislation in a number of areas.[73] The current economic framework needs adjustment on virtually all levels including business development opportunities, fair competition, tax collection and tax law; commerce, trade and finance regulations.[74]

Absent competitive principles

The Mexican economy does not support unprivileged businesses, considering its current standards regarding monopolies, both in the public and private sectors.[75] By law, there are public monopolies: government-owned companies controlling oil and gas, electricity, water, etc.[76] Private sector monopolies and duopolies are found in the media, television, telecommunications, and raw materials.[77] For this reason, clear principles of competitiveness that offer incentives to private investment, both national and foreign, are needed in order for jobs to be created.[78]

Government and politics[edit]

Mexico's rampant poverty lagged social development and general public welfare is strongly tied to its politics.[79] Historically, the political system of Mexico has not favored the general population, mainly because it focused to become and be a single-party system of government, largely dubbed "institutionalized" where those in charge had a one-voice, unquestionable plan of action mainly focused to favor the few elite while ignoring the welfare of the rest of population. From the 1800s to the end of the 20th century, as presidential administration came and went, the forms of government has been described as authoritarian, semi-democracy, centralized government, untouchable presidencies, mass-controlling, corporatist and elite-controlled.[80] As each administration took turn, some changes have occurred, sometimes as to contribute to the welfare of the least fortunate but, overall, the political framework behind the economic and social structure of the country continues to be the greatest contributor to inequality.[81]

Foreign trade policies and foreign dependence[edit]

While the NAFTA agreement proved effective in increasing Mexico's economic performance, foreign trade policies have been heavily criticized by activists such as Michael Moore (in Awful Truth) as not doing enough to promote social advancement and reducing poverty.[81] To remain competitive in the international market, Mexico has had to offer low wages to its workers while allowing high returns and generous concessions to international corporations.[82] The words "palancas" and "favores" are part of Mexican economic culture where high-ranking policy makers and private entrepreneurs are accused of promoting their own bottom line while ignoring the necessaries of the working class.[83]

Current recessionary trends in the United States have an even greater impact on Mexico because of the great economic dependence on the northern neighbor. After crude oil export sales, remittances sent home by Mexicans working in the United States are Mexico's second largest source of foreign income.[84][85]

Government efforts and economic policies[edit]

Administration after administration, economic policies and social development programs have been targeted at decreasing poverty and increasing development in the country. Even with the best of intentions, friction between the "special interests" of decision-makers and the general public welfare, makes it difficult for clear goals in the benefit of the public to be accomplished.[86]

Cancun is an example of where the government have failed to promote general welfare and unequal distribution of wealth. While known for its crispy white beaches, fancy hotels of international renown, and spring break; Cancun shows a notorious economical inequality between the touristic urban zones, and its more rural outskirts, where in various cases, the poorest neighborhoods lack one or more basic services.[87][88]

Transparency and corruption[edit]

The lack of political transparency in Mexico has led to bureaucratic corruption, market inefficiencies, and income inequalities.[89][90][91] The ability to exercise civil rights has been increasingly displaced by the control of official authorities, including access to vital information that can capture the misappropriation and mis-allocation of funds, and public participation in state and municipal-level decision-making.[92] This opens up a channel for corruption. Evidence of this can be derived from the Corruption Perception Index 2010: Mexico received a low score of 3.1, on a scale of 0 to 10 (lower scores represent higher levels of corruption).[93] The result is a diffusion of corruption, from the state to the municipal level, and even right down to local security.[94][95]

While it can be difficult to quantify the costs of corruption with pinpoint accuracy, a report from the UN estimates that the cost is about 15 percent of Mexico's GNP, and 9 percent of its GDP.[96][97] Such higher costs have adversely affected the growth of the economy, for instance deterring foreign investments due to uncertainty and risk. A study by Pricewaterhouse Coopers reveals that Mexico had lost $8.5 billion in foreign direct investments in 1999 due to corruption.[98] Business companies admit to spend as much as 10 percent of their revenue in bureaucratic bribes.[97] 39 percent is spent on bribing high-ranking policy makers and 61 percent on lower-ranking bureaucratic-administrative office holders.[99] At least 30 percent of all public spending ends up in the pockets of the corrupt.[99]

Even the domestic impact of corruption is no less severe, incurring additional expenses on firms and households. A family on average pays 109.50 pesos as bribes to authorities; households have also reported paying up to 6.9 percent of their income as bribes. In total, the cost of corruption in terms of GDP was estimated to be about $550bn in 2000.[100]

The situation is still problematic in spite of recent initiatives by the state to become more transparent to the public.[101] Over the years, there has been an effort by the government to reduce opacity, but even so, these initiatives often do not realize their full potential. In June 2003, under Vincente Fox's presidency, the implementation of the Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government Information (IFAI) offered civic organizations and members of the public to acquire previously undisclosed information. This reform has led to the exposure of previous under-the-radar activities, such as the government's misappropriation of 200 million pesos that was intended to combat AIDS.[102] And yet, censorship is still prevalent: in 2008, changes were proposed to increase the subjugation of IFAI's decisions to state control, so that the distribution of information would become more centralized.[103] A number of vertical subversions were also carried out at the time, including the merging of offices that handled information requests with less important agencies.[104] This violated the earlier progressive changes to the constitution, including Article 6, so that transparency was threatened.

Opacity is therefore a major player as a determinant of inequality, especially in effecting the welfare of lower-class households.[105] When resources are misallocated and official funds pocketed by illegitimate parties, the true quality of public services such as healthcare tend to be lower than expected;[106] similarly, the secrecy of the government's budget allocation prevents public scrutiny, so it is difficult to establish financial accountability.[107] As well, from a broader perspective, vital infrastructure from projects, especially those aimed at facilitating social mobility, will also have to deal with the potential impediments caused by the overpricing effect and unnecessary risks of corruption, thereby reducing the accessibility of infrastructure for the poor, especially in rural areas where such infrastructure is less established than in urban areas.[108]

Government and politics (social programs)[edit]

Mexico is a country that has significantly improved in various areas such as access to health, education, life expectancy, GDP, level of exports abroad, infrastructure, labor productivity, among others.[109] But it should also be noted that the distribution of income has become increasingly unequal; which is a serious problem because the misallocation and generation of resources inhibits economic competition in societies, leaving important groups of the population without the possibility of really competing in the economic sphere, which is one of the main obstacles to defeat and eradicate poverty of any kind.

The first time that a social program of collective and voluntary cooperation was launched was under the mandate of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and it was known as the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL),[110] this had as its main banner to combat conditions of extreme poverty and meet their basic needs, this program sought to foster cooperation through unpaid effort.

In other words, the government provided goods and inputs to citizens, so that through their efforts and work, they would create the necessary conditions to progress and get out, with government help, from the condition of poverty. At the beginning, this program was highly questioned due to its clientelist utility. For example, there is a record that in the places where it entered with the greatest rigor and resources was in those localities in which the electoral results did not favor that president.[110]

PRONASOL[110] covered different axes among which were the immediate improvement in living standards, in which the government gave direct government transfers to beneficiaries; solidarity for production, in which employment opportunities and development of productive capacities and resources were offered (investing, generating and developing human capital); solidarity for regional development, where infrastructure works of regional impact were built and development programs were carried out in specific regions (generating infrastructure by regions, employing local people).

This innovative social program achieved a downward conception of poverty rates in the country, and it was also considered a pioneer in the field to such a degree that different countries in Latin America adopted it as the main social policy against poverty. PRONASOL[110] was very well received by Mexican society because it allowed them to observe results and perceive an economic improvement in the very short term, since it was based on a huge amount of government direct transfers.

Also, its success was based on the improvement and development of human capital; this was evident when, for example, in rural communities the government gave away corn or different seeds so that people[110] (laborers and farmers) could work them and obtain financial and personal benefits from them; Another example is the provision of construction material for people with limited resources, to build a decent home, or if it already exists, to improve it.

It is important to note that before 2000,[3] there wasn't an official measurement of poverty in Mexico, so it is not possible to speak of concrete figures on poverty prior to this year (all were approximations). It is known that given the distribution of money and direct government transfers to the people benefited by these programs, the situation of many improved, but we do not know for sure aggregate figures. After this year, during 2001 and 2002, SEDESOL[111] produced the first official income-based poverty measurement.

It was not until the end of 2005 that CONEVAL[3] was created, with the main task of measuring poverty, a mission that it carried out on a specific basis until 2009.

Reducing poverty[edit]

Poverty aid organizations and social development groups have remained active in Mexico. Despite foreign and national aid programs in the country, the overall level of poverty in the country prevails.[112]

Concerning the last two six-year terms of Mexican former presidents, it is important to highlight that the poverty figures were slowly decreasing. For example, according to CONEVAL numbers, in 2010 46.1%[3] of the Mexican population was poor, however in the years up to 2016 this figure dropped to 43.6%.[3]

In addition, during that time 3 million Mexicans were removed from extreme poverty,[111] having gone from 11.3% of Mexicans living in extreme poverty to 7%.[109] One of the main criticisms made of the previous six-year term is that it did indeed reduce the number of people in extreme poverty, but the number of people in moderate poverty increased in a greater proportion.[3]

A public policy to combat the lack of food was the community kitchens implemented during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, which succeeded in decreasing food poverty levels. [109] The community kitchens program sought to improve the nutritional conditions of the population regarding boys and girls from 1 to 11 years of age, pregnant and lactating women, people with disabilities and adults over 65 years of age.[109]

Government approach[edit]

In 1997, the Mexican government launched PROGRESA (Spanish: Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación), an integrated approach to poverty alleviation through the development of human capital.[113]

In 2002, the Social Development Secretary (SEDESOL) replaced PROGRESA with Oportunidades (English: Opportunities); extending coverage to the urban poor and aiding high school students.[114]

Transparency Collective[edit]

The Transparency Collective, or El Colectivo por la Transparencia in Spanish, is a non-governmental collective organization that advocates transparency in Mexico. It was first formed by six civil society organizations in 2002 to demand for greater transparency from state agencies, and the right to access information. Currently, it consists of eleven civil society groups with the common goal of strengthening democracy and raising accountability and the transparency of the state.[115] The Transparency Collective offers an avenue for locals to seek help in obtaining the right to information by offering manuals and online tutorials teaching the locals how to file a request for information. It also discusses topics like human rights, the legislature and government budgets so that locals will be more informed and aware of their rights.[116] For example, Fundar, an NGO which specializes in government budget analysis, runs workshops to educate the public on disseminating information released by government agencies.[117]

The Transparency Collective has also been working with IFAI (Federal Institute of Access to Information). The civil society was productively engaged in the reform of the constitution. For example, CIDE, an academic focusing on public policy, worked at state level helping states comply with the reform. Fundar also focused on evaluating government responses to information requests, the appeals process and on training groups to analyze information released by the government.[118]

Despite the organizational size of the Transparency Collective, collectivization has nonetheless been an important factor in its effectiveness. The collective call for greater transparency was one of the reasons for the comprehensive reform of Article 6 of the Mexican constitution in 2007, which heralded a new level of progression for Mexico's right-to-know movement.[119] The reforms guaranteed the public's rights to non-confidential information at all levels of the government. State transparency laws also had to be standardized around certain basic principles within a year, and states had to implement electronic information systems.[119]

However, in spite of this, there is still a considerable way to go to achieve full transparency. The 2008 constitutional amendments, and interference of the judiciary branch with the demanded disclosure of tax information, threatened the FOI laws that were previously established. Nevertheless, this movement has been met with fierce protests from civil society groups,[120][121] and the Collective continues to appeal to the government to allow for more civil participation.[122]

Demographics[edit]

53.4 percent of the rural population and 36.2 percent of the urban population has education below the 7th grade. 18.9 percent of the rural population and 8.9 percent of the urban population lacks any form of formal education.[123]

Current figures estimate that at least 44.2 percent of the population lives under poverty. Of those, 33.7 live under a moderate state of poverty and at least 10.5 percent live under extreme poverty.[124]

States with highest human development: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Federal District, Nuevo León, Quintana Roo, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Tamaulipas.[125]

States with lowest human development: Chiapas, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Zacatecas.[125]

World comparison[edit]

*The next comparisons are done between national poverty lines, meaning that each country has a different criteria to set its poverty line, for a comparison among countries under the same criteria see International poverty line

Mexico is the second largest economy in Latin America, after Brazil; and the second Latin American country with most number of poor, after Brazil as well; given Mexico's population is about 80 million less than Brazil.[126][127]

Mexico has the 11th to 13th richest economy in the world and ranks 4th with most number of poor among richest economies.[128][129]

Mexico is the 10th to 13th country with the most number of poor in the world.[130]

Of the ten countries with greater population, Mexico ranks 8th as nation with most number of poor behind the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.[131]

Of 193 United Nations members, at least 113 nations show higher levels of poverty and decreased social development and at least 55 other nations have less poverty and higher social development.[132]

Mexico ranks 56th among most developed of the world's nations.[132] It ranks 4th as most developed of Latin American countries, behind Chile.[132]

Poverty and indigenous communities[edit]

Indigenous communities suffer particularly from poverty, causing them to be marginalized from society. Although "local and federal governments implemented social protection programs so as to alleviate poverty conditions and interregional disparities, in general, conditions for indigenous people remain unchanged," (Gonzales cited World Bank, 2005). Studies have shown that ethnicity is an important cause for inequality in income distribution, access to basic health care services and education, which in turn explain the significant difference in earnings between indigenous and non-indigenous people. According to the World Bank, about three-quarters of indigenous peoples in Mexico are poor and the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous groups is very high; the difference in poverty has been divided into explained and unexplained components. The explained components are "the amount of the gap attributed to observable characteristics such as education, age, occupation, region of residence and so on," (World Bank, 2005) which account for three quarters of poverty. The unexplained components are related to the level of discrimination and explain a quarter of the poverty. Indigenous people in Mexico are faced to significant disadvantages in economic and social outcomes and although discrimination against them appears to be decreasing, the government needs to improve education and government services to reduce the poverty gap. Based on their research, the World Bank suggests the promotion of equal health care access for indigenous peoples "though the implementation of a head start program that focuses on maternal and child health issues," (World Bank, 2005) as well as improving "data collection efforts related to identifying indigenous populations," (World Bank, 2005) to better monitor progress over time.

ATTACHMENT TEN – From the Wilson Center

NEW CRIME, OLD SOLUTIONS: THE REASON WHY MEXICO IS VIOLENT AGAIN

By Viridiana Rios

The upsurge in Mexico’s violence is the result of a multi-level, uncoordinated judicial system that has been incapable of controlling criminal networks that are increasingly fractured and geographically dispersed. Today’s crisis is the result of changes in the modus operandi of criminals that are not mirrored by changes in Mexico’s judicial and police institutions.

A war against drug cartels from 2006 to 2012 left Mexico with a fragmented organized crime landscape and with significant changes in the geography of violence. Security operations were concentrated in large cities, forcing criminal organizations to move to the periphery and to more rural areas.

Controlling this increasingly disorganized and geographically dispersed crime required a distinct set of tools that Mexico lacked. The country required a constant and robust strategy of territorial control and proactive intelligence to identify, not only new areas where organized crime operated, but most importantly, to foresee and contain the negative effects of capturing new criminal leaders. The fragmentation of criminal groups required a police force that operated in local and flexible departments, linked to civil society, and capable of capturing petty criminals. Mexico possessed none of these capacities. The slight benefits obtained from concentrating security operations in urban areas reached its limit, and the country was not capable of designing a strategy that could contain new criminal actors that emerged in their place.

The second increase in violence took place after 2012 and was fueled, for example, by the withdrawal of the Army from Michoacán in 2014, and the lack of local enforcement in the new trafficking routes that emerged after larger criminal groups were fractured. Similarly, violence increased when the Jalisco Cartel Nueva Generación organization grouped together many fragmented cells to fight against a Sinaloa Cartel that was also partially fragmented.

A new criminal landscape requires a new solution. Mexico’s new criminal networks are more viral and diversified. The tools to fight them must be, too. Because organized crime has diversified the activities in which it participates, enforcement needs to focus on those activities as well. One such criminal activity is the theft of fuel. In 2017 alone, the Mexican government identified 9,509 clandestine fuel extraction points, 38 percent higher than in 2016. The numbers for 2016 were already 30 percent higher than 2015. Mexico has seen increases in violence in territories surrounding pipelines, and worse, is seeing the emergence of more and more communities that profit from their alliances with criminal groups.

Furthermore, investments must be made to expand the capacities of public security institutions. The Armed Forces cannot continue doing the work that should be done by the police because by doing it, they create a perverse incentive to limit the professionalization of the police departments. Instead, resources should be allocated for hiring new police officers with better salaries and to eliminate those who do not meet the vetting standards.

Mexico also needs legal reforms so that individuals detained for possession of a firearm can be held in preventive custody. Prior to the judicial reform of 2008, Mexico’s penal code provided that civilians carrying large-caliber firearms designated for the exclusive use of the Army had committed a serious crime that required immediate preventive detention. Yet, since the adoption of the new adversarial criminal justice system, firearms possession does not merit preventive detention. Local authorities have argued that this is a severe limitation on the fight against organized crime, especially since the prohibition of possession of large-caliber firearms was one of the most effective ways to keep organized criminals off the streets.

Likewise, it is necessary to improve the coordination between state government and the federation. This would imply, among many other things, the implementation of a system of police quadrants, the surveillance of high-risk areas, and a closer relationship between local police and citizens. This does not mean the disappearance of local police (which is politically unfeasible) but the allocation of resources to improve the ones we have, and the implementation of penalties for municipalities and states that do not comply with the most basic security conditions.

Finally, Mexico would greatly benefit from implementing mechanisms that could show the incompetence of local authorities and penalize them for lack of results. Currently, despite multiple agreements between federal and state governments, there is not a source of real and updated information about the governors that have failed to pursue the implementation of judicial and police reforms. The minimal information that exists is not linked to any form of sanctions and is not public enough to create citizen pressure.
Overall, what Mexico needs is a local and targeted strategy to fight crime that is more fractured.

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From the New York Times

IS IT SAFE TO TRAVEL TO MEXICO? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

A spate of incidents, including a kidnapping and the death of two Americans near the border, have prompted travel warnings from the U.S. government.

By Elisabeth Malkin and Isabella Kwai Published Feb. 1, 2023 Updated March 16, 2023

Two Americans found dead after they were attacked and kidnapped near the border. Airports shuttered amid gang violence in Sinaloa. Turmoil among taxi drivers in Cancún.

A number of recent security incidents have raised concerns about the risks of traveling to Mexico, where more than 20 million tourists flew last year to visit the country’s beaches, cities and archaeological sites, or to obtain health care.

Ahead of the spring break holiday, a popular time for American tourists to visit the country, the U.S. Embassy issued a travel alert, urging visitors to exercise caution by avoiding dangerous situations and drinking responsibly, among other recommendations. “Crime, including violent crime, can occur anywhere in Mexico, including in popular tourist destinations,” the alert said. And the State Department has warned tourists to steer clear of six states, including the state of Tamaulipas, where the recent kidnapping occurred — and to exercise increased precautions in other popular destinations like Playa del Carmen, Cancún, Tulum and Mexico City.

An overwhelming majority of visitors enjoy a safe vacation in Mexico, and tourists are largely sheltered from the violence that grips local communities. But the attack and kidnapping of four Americans in the border city of Matamoros, two of whom were later found dead, along with recent disorder in Cancún and violence in early January that forced the closure of three airports in northwest Mexico, is prompting questions about whether the country’s broader unrest is spilling into other destinations.

What happened on the border?

On March 3, four Americans from South Carolina traveling in a white minivan crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas, into the city of Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. One of the Americans was scheduled for cosmetic surgery.

Soon after the Americans crossed the border, gunmen fired on their vehicle and then abducted the group in a pickup truck. Officials later said that two of the group were found dead at a rural location alongside the other two, who had survived.

The Americans were attacked as a result of “confusion,” according to Irving Barrios, the state prosecutor in Tamaulipas. Matamoros has a long history of violence and highway shootouts, though that reputation has partially subsided in recent years. Then, in late February, one gang moved into the city to wrest control of drug sales from another, said Eduardo Guerrero, the director of Lantia Intelligence, a security consulting company in Mexico City.

“There are places in the country where the situation can change abruptly from one week to another,” he said. While the motives in the attack remain unclear, the Americans had “very bad luck,” Mr. Guerrero said, because they likely stumbled into a battle between the two gangs.

Mr. Guerrero said that the authorities will try to negotiate some kind of compromise, but there was a probability of more violence ahead.

Have authorities curbed violence that might affect tourists?

As a rule, criminals in Mexico are careful not to kill tourists, Mr. Guerrero explained, because doing so “can set in motion a persecution that can last years,” the consequences of which can be “very dissuasive,” he said.

But the rule doesn’t always hold. And in two popular destinations for foreign tourists — Los Cabos, at the tip of the Baja California peninsula, and the Caribbean coast — local and state officials have recently sought help from the United States to take on organized crime that threatened to drive off tourists.

The federal government sent National Guard units to patrol the beaches, and Quintana Roo state authorities asked U.S. law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, to provide intelligence, Mr. Guerrero said. Local authorities, flush with tourism revenues, invested in the police, which is typically the weakest link in Mexican law enforcement.

The joint approach led to a lull in gangland gun battles in Quintana Roo’s tourist areas, and experts say that drug sales to meet foreign demand no longer take place on the street, although they are continuing more discreetly.

The success in tamping down drug violence in Quintana Roo follows a similar improvement in Los Cabos a couple of years ago when U.S. authorities also collaborated with local officials in the state of Baja California Sur. The murder rate soared in Los Cabos in 2017 amid cartel wars, and although tourists were not targeted, that year police chased gunmen into the lobby of a luxury hotel in San José del Cabo, and a cooler containing two heads was left in a tourist area.

What about tourist areas in other states?

Even in states where crime is very high, tourist areas have generally been spared. San Miguel de Allende, a haven for U.S. retirees, is an island of relative peace in a state, Guanajuato, that has been riddled with cartel violence.

The Pacific Coast state of Jalisco, home to the resort of Puerto Vallarta, picturesque tequila country and the cultural and gastronomic attractions of the state capital, Guadalajara, is also the center of operations of the extremely violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The cartel’s focus of violence is in the countryside; Puerto Vallarta and the beaches to its north, including the exclusive peninsula of Punta Mita and the surfers’ hangout of Sayulita, are all booming — and, despite drug sales, the cartel’s control seems to limit open conflict.

Mexico City has become a magnet for digital nomads and shorter term visitors, and concerns about violence there have receded. The city’s police force has been successful in reducing violent crime, particularly homicides, and the number of killings has been cut almost in half over the past three years.

Are there any other safety concerns?

Street crime is still a problem almost everywhere, especially in bigger cities and crowded spaces. Kidnapping and carjacking are a risk in certain regions and many businesses that cater to tourists operate under extortion threats. While tourists may not be aware of underlying criminal forces, their power sometimes spills out into the open in spectacular shows of violence.

The attack in Matamoros is only the most recent example. Mexican border cities, which have long endured waves of violence, are not typically tourist destinations, although Americans often cross the border to visit family, seek out cheaper health care or dine at restaurants.

Three airports in the state of Sinaloa, including the beach destination Mazatlán, were closed on Jan. 5 amid gang violence after Mexican security forces arrested Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the crime lord known as El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in the United States. A stray bullet fired by cartel gunmen shooting at a Mexican military plane as it landed at the airport in the state capital, Culiacán, clipped an Aeromexico plane preparing to take off for Mexico City. Nobody was hurt and the plane returned to the terminal.

In August, gunmen positioned burning cars and buses to block roads around Guadalajara in response to a military raid on a meeting of criminal bosses. In October, a local politician was shot and killed in an upscale steakhouse in suburban Guadalajara as terrified diners crawled to safety.

Pierre de Hail, the president of Janus Group Mexico, a risk management company in Monterrey, is skeptical that security has improved. “There is too much random risk,” he said. “It’s all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

What precautions should tourists take?

Mr. de Hail recommends researching the resort and news from the area you’re visiting. The U.S. State Department provides state-by-state information about travel risks in Mexico. As of early March, the department had issued its strongest possible warning — Level 4: Do Not Travel — for six states, including Tamaulipas and Sinaloa. Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur are at Level 2, indicating that visitors should exercise increased caution. (By comparison, the same Level 2 advisory is applied to France and Spain.)

The Matamoros incident shows how violence can flare up in places that have been quiet recently. Mr. Guerrero suggests searching on the internet before traveling for news of recent outbreaks.

Mr. de Hail also suggests buying travel insurance in case of a medical emergency or theft, and recommends that tourists keep a low profile to avoid attracting attention, he said, warning that it is easy to misread situations.

As anywhere, common sense should prevail, Mr. de Hail said: Don’t wear expensive watches or jewelry, and avoid dark and deserted places. He recommends making a copy of your passport, remaining alert while walking home at night and not leaving your drinks unattended. “I have had numerous cases of people asking for help because they were extorted coming back from bars,” he said.

He added: “If you’re staying in a place that has a report of strikes or demonstrations, don’t go there. You’re a fish out of water.”

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – From Gitnux.com

THE MOST SURPRISING MEXICO CORRUPTION STATISTICS AND TRENDS IN 2023

April 20, 2023

Mexico is a country with an unfortunate history of corruption. According to Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, Mexico ranked 124 out of 180 countries in terms of perceived levels of public sector corruption. This ranking reflected the reality that many Mexicans face on a daily basis: 60% believe that corruption has worsened in the last 12 months and 43% report having paid a bribe to access public services within the same period. In the 2022 survey, Mexico ranked 126^th. (Denmark overtook Finland as most honest; Somalia as most corrupt).

The Mexican Civil Service Secretariat (SFP) reported only 2.7% of federal-level cases were properly investigated and sanctioned between 2014 and 2018, while 93% of companies surveyed by Promonegci reported encountering some form or another type of corrupt practices in their industry during 2020. Additionally, 40% consider government efforts against corruption as “very bad” according to Global Corruption Barometer 2021; 44%, very/extremely corrupt when it comes to judiciary matters (Transparency International); 66.9 % considered public officials “very corrupt” according to Imcyc survey; 5 percent loss due annual earnings attributed by OECD report; 87.6 % did not report any case related with bribery or other forms for 2019 Inegi Survey ; 25 percent believed police are most corrupted institution based on Latinobarometro 2017 study ; 28th percentile control over corruption from World Bank WGI Report 2020 , 3 percent conviction rate among 1 400 cases brought before SNA 2019 , 36 trust percentage towards government Edelman Trust barometer 2020 . All these statistics point at one conclusion: there is still much work left ahead if we want Mexico free from this scourge once and for all.

Mexico ranks 124 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index.

The Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index paints a stark picture of Mexico’s corruption landscape, with the country ranking a dismal 124 out of 180 countries. This dismal ranking serves as a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico and the need for greater transparency and accountability in the country.

60% of Mexicans believe that corruption has worsened in the last 12 months in their country (Global Corruption Barometer 2021).

This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico, and the fact that it has only gotten worse in the last year is a cause for concern. It highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in the country, and serves as a call to action for citizens to demand change.

Mexico Corruption Statistics Overview

43% of Mexicans report having paid a bribe to access a public service within the last year (Global Corruption Barometer 2021).

This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico. It highlights the fact that bribery is a common practice in the country, and that accessing public services can be a difficult and expensive process. It also serves as a warning that corruption is a serious issue in Mexico, and that more needs to be done to address it.

According to the Mexican Civil Service Secretariat (SFP), only 2.7% of corruption cases at the federal level were properly investigated and sanctioned between 2014 to 2018.

This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico and the lack of accountability for those responsible. It highlights the need for greater transparency and enforcement of anti-corruption laws in order to ensure that those who break the law are held accountable. It also serves as a warning to those who may be tempted to engage in corrupt activities, as the chances of being caught and punished are slim.

40% of Mexicans believe the government is “very bad” at fighting corruption (Global Corruption Barometer 2021).

This statistic is a stark reminder of the pervasive nature of corruption in Mexico. It highlights the fact that despite the government’s efforts to combat corruption, the majority of Mexicans still feel that the government is failing in its mission. This statistic serves as a call to action for the government to take more decisive steps to address the issue of corruption in Mexico.

44% of Mexicans believe that their judiciary is very/extremely corrupt, according to a 2015 survey by Transparency International.

This statistic is a stark reminder of the reality of corruption in Mexico. It highlights the fact that a large portion of the population has little faith in the judicial system, which can have a detrimental effect on the country’s overall stability and security. It also serves as a warning that more needs to be done to address the issue of corruption in Mexico, and that the government must take steps to restore public trust in the judiciary.

In 2017, Mexico was ranked the most corrupt country in the Americas by the Americas Quarterly, with a corruption score of 4.65 out of 10.

This statistic serves as a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico. It paints a picture of a country where corruption is rampant and pervasive, and highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in the Mexican government. The Americas Quarterly’s corruption score of 4.65 out of 10 is a damning indictment of the state of corruption in Mexico, and serves as a call to action for those in power to take steps to combat it.

A 2019 survey by the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) revealed that at least one in three companies in Mexico has been a victim of corruption.

This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico. It highlights the fact that corruption is a pervasive issue in the country, one that affects businesses of all sizes. This statistic serves as a call to action for the Mexican government to take steps to address this problem and ensure that businesses can operate without fear of corruption.

In a 2019 Inegi survey, 87.6% of respondents reported they did not report corruption cases to the authorities.

This statistic paints a stark picture of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico; it suggests that the vast majority of people are not taking action to report cases of corruption to the authorities. This indicates that corruption is so widespread and accepted that people are not even attempting to challenge it. This is a worrying sign for the future of Mexico and its citizens, and should be addressed as soon as possible.

A 2020 OECD report found that Mexican companies lose 5% of their annual earnings due to corruption.

This statistic serves as a stark reminder of the devastating effects of corruption in Mexico. It highlights the immense financial burden that corruption places on businesses in the country, with 5% of their annual earnings being lost to corrupt practices. This statistic is a powerful indicator of the scale of the corruption problem in Mexico, and serves as a call to action for the government and citizens to take steps to combat it.

According to the World Bank, in 2020, Mexico’s control of corruption was below -0.41 standard deviations from the global mean, placing it in the lower half on this indicator.

This statistic is a telling indication of the state of corruption in Mexico. It shows that the country is lagging behind the global average, placing it in the lower half of the rankings. This is a stark reminder that Mexico still has a long way to go in terms of curbing corruption and improving its governance.

The 2020 Global Competitiveness Report ranked Mexico 96th out of 137 countries on the indicator “irregular payments and bribes.”

This statistic serves as a stark reminder of the prevalence of corruption in Mexico, highlighting the need for greater transparency and accountability in the country. It paints a picture of a nation where bribery and irregular payments are commonplace, and where citizens are unable to trust their government to act in their best interests. This is a worrying trend that needs to be addressed if Mexico is to make progress in its fight against corruption.

According to the Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, corruption costs Mexico between 2% and 10% of GDP per year.

This statistic is a stark reminder of the immense economic burden that corruption places on Mexico. It is a clear indication that corruption is not only a moral issue, but also a financial one, with the country losing billions of dollars each year due to corrupt practices. This statistic serves as a call to action for the Mexican government to take decisive steps to combat corruption and ensure that the country’s resources are used for the benefit of its citizens.

In 2018, 63% of surveyed companies in Mexico considered bribery and corruption to be part of everyday business.

This statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of bribery and corruption in Mexico. It paints a picture of a business environment where such practices are seen as the norm, rather than the exception. This is a worrying trend that needs to be addressed if Mexico is to make progress in tackling corruption.

A 2017 study found that 25% of Mexicans believe that the police are the most corrupt institution in the country.

This statistic is a telling indication of the level of distrust that Mexicans have in their police force. It speaks to the prevalence of corruption in the country and the need for reform in order to restore public confidence in the institution. It is an important piece of data to consider when discussing the state of corruption in Mexico.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report for 2020 states that Mexico ranks at the 28th percentile for the control of corruption.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report for 2020 paints a stark picture of Mexico’s control of corruption, ranking it at the 28th percentile. This dismal statistic serves as a reminder of the pervasive nature of corruption in Mexico, and the need for greater transparency and accountability in the country’s government and institutions.

According to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 36% of Mexicans trust their government to do what is right.

This statistic serves as a stark reminder of the lack of faith Mexicans have in their government to do what is right. It paints a picture of a nation where trust in the government is low, and corruption is rampant. This statistic is a key indicator of the state of Mexico’s political landscape and provides a valuable insight into the prevalence of corruption in the country.

Conclusion

The statistics presented in this blog post paint a grim picture of the state of corruption in Mexico. The country ranks 124 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, and 60% of Mexicans believe that corruption has worsened over the last 12 months. Additionally, 43% report having paid a bribe to access public services within the same period. Furthermore, only 2.7% of federal-level cases were properly investigated and sanctioned between 2014 to 2018 according to Mexican Civil Service Secretariat (SFP).
In addition, 93% of surveyed companies reported encountering corruption in their industry while 40%, 44%, and 66.9 % respectively believed that government is “very bad” at fighting it; judiciary is very/extremely corrupt; and public officials are “very corrupt” respectively as per Global Corruption Barometer 2021 survey by Transparency International , 2015 survey by TI & 2020 survey for automotive industry . Moreover OECD found 5 percent annual earnings loss due to bribery & IMCO estimated cost from 2%-10%. Inegi 2019 Survey revealed 33 percent victimization rate with 87 percent not reporting any case whereas Latinobarometro 2017 study showed 25percent believing police being most corrupted institution . Lastly WGI ranked 28th percentile for control on corruption & SNA brought 1400 cases but 3percent resulted into conviction as per FPFIPs 2019 evaluation report . All these facts point towards an alarming situation where trust level among citizens have dropped drastically with 36 percentage trusting government according to Edelman Trust Barometer 2020 Report which further aggravates already existing problem making it difficult for authorities take corrective measures against such malpractices without support from people itself..

References

0. – https://www.reports.weforum.org

1. – https://www.www.latinobarometro.org

2. – https://www.info.worldbank.org

3. – https://www.imco.org.mx

4. – https://www.hidalgoconsultores.com

5. – https://www.www.americasquarterly.org

6. – https://www.www.inegi.org.mx

7. – https://www.www.transparency.org

8. – https://www.www.ey.com

9. – https://www.www.oecd.org

10. – https://www.www.edelman.com

11. – https://www.databank.worldbank.org

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – From the Brookings Institute

ORDER FROM CHAOS

Mexico takes another step toward its authoritarian past

By Valerie Wirtschafter and Arturo Sarukhan (former ambassador from Mexico to the US) Thursday, March 16

As Mexico’s Senate celebrated the passage of a bill designed to curb the power of the National Electoral Institute (INE), the non-partisan and independent agency that oversees elections, the country took another step backward toward its decades-long authoritarian past. Despite corruption, violence, and inequality, Mexico has functioned as an electoral democracy for nearly three decades — with political competition and a vibrant civil society. Much of that success is due to the INE.

Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a pugnacious and charismatic leader who swept to power in 2018, Mexico’s independent institutions are slowly losing their ability to serve as a counterweight to the executive. The latest attack on the INE may be López Obrador’s most brazen of all. Yet, the U.S. government has cautiously maneuvered to avoid losing Mexico’s cooperation on vital domestic issues, particularly immigration along the southern border. However, failing to speak out emphatically against Mexico’s steady march back toward authoritarianism — despite recent rhetoric about “standing up for democracy” — comes with its own risks. An unstable or even autocratic Mexico could exacerbate domestic challenges, including the fight against the opioid epidemic, turbocharged by fentanyl, and relegate President Joe Biden’s seemingly firm commitment to democratic governance to mere rhetorical bluster.

THE INE AND THE DEMISE OF MEXICO’S HEGEMONIC-PARTY AUTOCRACY

For much of the 20th century, Mexico operated as a hegemonic-party autocracy with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at the helm. In this system, elections were held regularly to deter dissent by party elites, ensure the controlled rotation of power, and publicly signal overwhelming support for the PRI.

By the late 1980s, the economic and political dynamics of Mexico had changed, making the PRI’s grip on power less secure. The 1988 elections — the first serious electoral competition in Mexico — were marred by widespread fraud. Although the PRI claimed the presidency, the government established the precursor to INE in 1990, known as the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), in response to public outcry. In 1994, the IFE invited international observers (euphemistically called “international visitors” to assuage concerns that Mexico was being monitored by foreign actors) to be present in the lead-up to and on election day.

Initially, the IFE maintained close ties to the PRI, but after reforms instituted in 1996, the watchdog gained independence from political mediation and was regarded highly throughout Mexico and abroad. It even served as a model for the establishment of similar bodies elsewhere and helped run elections, as was the case after Timor-Leste became an independent nation in 1999. In 2000, the IFE oversaw the transition of presidential power from the PRI to the National Action Party, breaking 71 years of PRI rule.

Since 2000, the IFE (which became the INE in 2014 after reforms) has overseen three additional presidential elections — all of which have featured López Obrador as a candidate. In the two elections he lost in 2006 and 2012, López Obrador leveled allegations of fraud. In one of these elections, he attempted to establish a parallel presidency. In the third election — held most recently in 2018 — he won, with a promise to create an “authentic democracy,” free of corruption and waste. By early 2021, he had zeroed in on a favorite target: the INE.

LÓPEZ OBRADOR VS. THE INE

López Obrador has two obsessions — one regarding the past and another regarding the future — and both pivot around the INE. He long maintains a grudge against the INE for certifying the 2006 presidential election, which he lost by a razor-thin margin, and which despite his assertions of fraud, international observers viewed as reflective of “the legitimate will of the Mexican citizens.” As to the future, the last thing that he wants to do at the swearing-in ceremony for Mexico’s next president is place the presidential sash over the shoulders of an opposition president-elect and, in doing so, jeopardize the legacy of his so-called “Fourth Transformation” and the survival of his pet projects and policies.

López Obrador’s aversion toward the INE transformed into action after the agency fined his MORENA party for campaign finance irregularities in 2018 and disqualified two of its gubernatorial candidates from running for office in 2021. Decrying the INE as “rotten,” he put forth legislation to curb its ability to perform its most basic functions — namely, running free and fair elections. His motivation is purportedly to save money, yet elsewhere he has allowed spending and handouts to run rampant.

In the first iteration of the proposed reforms, López Obrador sought to dissolve the nonpartisan INE and replace it with an elected body largely chosen by the executive, among other drastic changes. The initial proposal sparked widespread protest across Mexico in November 2022, leading López Obrador to rail against the measure’s opponents as “mostly racist, classist and big hypocrites” and organize counterprotests days later. Ultimately, these reforms failed to garner enough support in Congress.

Immediately after the first proposal stalled, López Obrador’s allies put forth a so-called “Plan B,” which would not change the INE’s structure but would instead gut its budget and bandwidth, forcing the agency to cut staff and close offices across Mexico. These budgetary constraints will have downstream effects, hindering election officials’ ability to update voter registration lists, issue voter identification cards, and train workers to staff polling precincts on election day. Plan B also restricts election officials’ power to penalize candidates who violate campaign laws and punishes individuals who “slander” the government while disseminating election-related materials. What is considered slander in this context is unclear and undoubtedly open to manipulation. Moreover, the fact that this reform would be enacted just over a year before Mexico’s next presidential elections is alone a cause for deep concern. The proposal has since passed the Lower House and Senate — heralding a victory for the president and another warning shot for the durability of Mexico’s democracy.

LÓPEZ OBRADOR’S AUTHORITARIAN IMPULSES

López Obrador’s attack on the INE represents the latest action to undermine independent institutional capacity. This objective underpins many of his austerity measures, which have reduced institutional bandwidth and eviscerated governmental agencies, regulators, and independent and autonomous bodies, both in terms of budget and manpower. Promising to fight against “the mafia of power,” the president regularly schedules “popular consultations” for major initiatives, including the controversial (and expensive) scrapping of Mexico City’s airport in favor of his proposal. These referendums seek to bypass Congressional approval, typically draw extremely low turnout, and the results are driven by MORENA strongholds. He also holds daily press conferences to speak directly to “the people,” which often last over two hours. During this time, he harasses independent journalists and opponents of his political agenda as “corrupt cretins.”

With allies across Congress who support his agenda, López Obrador has taken aim at the judiciary and other independent bodies. He has also made a concerted effort to court the military and expand its role in public life and public policies, despite promises to “demilitarize” Mexico. And although he swept to power with a vow to end corruption and build a more equitable Mexico, his own social programs have been marred by allegations of misappropriated funds and “disguised clientelism.” He has even appointed a controversial political figure to his administration who oversaw some of the PRI’s most brazen acts of corruption in 1988.

Thus far, López Obrador’s authoritarian acts have done little to dent his popularity — and he has for now met limited resistance from institutions designed to check his power. With a challenge of his INE proposal at the Supreme Court, it will not be long before the full scope of Mexico’s institutional decay becomes clear.

THE TRANSACTIONAL APPROACH OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

Although members of the U.S. Congress from both parties quickly criticized the attack on Mexico’s election process, the Biden administration has responded too cautiously to López Obrador’s latest illiberal act. When the State Department eventually commented that “well-resourced, independent electoral systems and respect for judicial independence” are signs of a “healthy democracy,” Mexico’s president shot back on cue: “there is more democracy in Mexico than could exist in the United States.”

Whereas Biden and others quickly condemned democratic threats in Brazil, the administration’s criticism of Mexico has been more muted. Among other reasons, the administration’s reticence can be explained by its need to ensure Mexican collaboration on immigration — an area that remains a focus of sharp criticism from Republican politicians despite policies that tow closer to Trump-era strategies. By prioritizing other policy areas over institutional threats to Mexican democracy, the Biden administration risks having its own renewed commitments to democratic norms ring hollow and potentially exacerbating migration and transnational organized crime challenges down the road.

Rather than violent insurrection, it is often the slow, systematic cooptation of institutional checks on the executive that facilitates democracies’ demise. Thus far, the Biden administration’s public approach to Mexico has failed to push back against these warning signs. Without firm international condemnation, it’s unlikely López Obrador’s attack on the INE will be his last on Mexico’s independent institutions before the 2024 presidential elections. Particularly as the United States and other countries in the Americas seek to fortify their own democracies, they ignore the threat to Mexico’s independent institutions at their own peril. Authoritarian regimes around the world will reap the geopolitical, strategic, and ideological benefits of a less democratic and more insular Mexico.

By Santiago Levy

2018

Mexico

By Nora Claudia Lustig

1998

Mexico

By Monica Serrano

1998

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From Reuters

MEXICAN PRESIDENT CALLS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 'LIARS' AFTER RIGHTS REPORT

March 21, 2023 3:29 PM EDT

MEXICO CITY, March 21 (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday forcefully rejected criticism of his government's record on human rights, describing reports of official abuses made in a new U.S. State Department study as "lies."

The report issued on Monday said there were credible reports in Mexico of unlawful or arbitrary killings by police, military, and other officials; forced disappearance by government agents; as well as torture and inhuman treatment by security forces.

The report also stated that "impunity and extremely low rates of prosecution remained a problem for all crimes, including human rights abuses and corruption," and criticized violence against journalists in Mexico.

Asked about the report at a news conference, Lopez Obrador dismissed it, saying, "they're lying," and noted the U.S. "believes it's the government of the world."

"It's not worth getting angry about, that's just how they are," said Lopez Obrador, who is due to meet with former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Mexico later on Tuesday. The report "is not true, they're liars."

State Department acting spokesperson Vedant Patel, speaking at a news briefing, rejected criticism that Washington was acting like "the government of the world" and doubled down on the findings of the human rights report.

"As it relates to Mexico, the reported involvement of members of Mexican police, military and other government institutions in serious acts of corruption and unlawful arbitrary killings remain a serious challenge for Mexico and that's why they were highlighted in our report," he said.

Lopez Obrador has pushed back against recent U.S. criticism of his record on security, which has come under increased scrutiny since the abduction of four American citizens in northern Mexico earlier this month. Two of them were later found dead.

The leftist president, who says he is rooting out corruption and impunity in Mexico, has argued his country is safer than the U.S. - despite a much higher murder rate - and criticized U.S. efforts to prevent dangerous drugs from entering the United States.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From Time

Tequila is About to Become the U.S.'s Most Popular Spirit. That's Bad for the Environment

Tequila vs. Vodka: Which cocktail is better for the climate?

BY ARYN BAKER MAY 5, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

Move over martinis, margaritas are taking over the bar. So are ranch waters, Palomas and reposado old fashioneds. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the US, agave-based liquors like tequila and mezcal were the fastest-growing spirits category of 2022, and are now poised to overtake vodka as the best-selling liquor in the United States this year, after knocking whiskey into third place last year.

While that may be great for celebrating Mexican heritage on Cinco de Mayo, it’s not exactly a climate win. Tequila’s combination of versatility and flavor—as easy to mix as vodka in a cocktail, but at the premium end, better for sipping—comes with a higher environmental cost.

By Mexican law, tequila must be made from blue agave plants grown in one of five Mexican states. Mezcal adds a few more states and agave varietals to the mix, but the succulent plant’s limited growing range means that the Mexican spirits have to be trucked over long distances to get to their ultimate destinations. Tequila’s growing global popularity has also led to a loss in genetic diversity, as manufacturers turn to high-yielding monocrops that require increasing amounts of pesticides. Vodka, on the other hand, can be made anywhere, from a wide range of grains, sugar beets and potatoes.

To make tequila and mezcal, brewers harvest the whole agave plant once it reaches maturity (usually seven to 12 years, though some varieties can be harvested earlier), strip off the sword-like leaves and steam or roast the pina, or heart, until it releases a sugar-rich nectar that is then fermented and distilled. That processing generates a lot of waste: for every liter of tequila produced, about 5 kg (or 11 lbs.) of pulp and 10-15 liters of vinasse, an acidic liquid, are left behind. If disposed of improperly, the vinasse contaminates both soil and water supplies, leading to ecological dead zones. Vodka has a much lower waste-to-product ratio.

Tequila’s agave plants face a far greater threat from climate change than vodka’s diversified grains and tubers. Rising global temperatures are wreaking havoc on weather patterns in the central and southern parts of Mexico where agave grows, and the succulent, while drought tolerant, is too fragile to handle increasingly sudden shifts from extreme heat to unseasonable storms. Rising temperatures are also threatening the Mexican long nosed bat, blue agave’s principal pollinator. A 2019 study published in Nature suggests that the overlap between the bats’ range and agave areas could be reduced by up to 75% within 50 years, which would be a disaster for the industry.

Emissions-wise, tequila and vodka production are on par, emitting approximately 3 kg of CO2 per liter, the equivalent of charging a smartphone every day for a year. One new brand of vodka, called Air, is distilling the spirit from water and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, claiming to remove a pound of CO2 for every bottle produced—in theory, the world’s first carbon-negative spirit. So maybe the best way to save the agave plant, the long-nosed bat, and margaritas is by drinking vodka. Now that’s a solution anyone can toast.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From PBS

CINCO DE MAYO CELEBRATES MEXICAN AMERICAN CULTURE, NOT INDEPENDENCE

May 5, 2023 9:19 AM EDT

PHOENIX (AP) — American bars and restaurants gear up every year for Cinco de Mayo, offering special deals on Mexican food and alcoholic drinks for the May 5 holiday that is barely celebrated south of the border.

In the United States, the date is largely seen as a celebration of Mexican American culture stretching back to the 1800s in California. Typical festivities include parades, street food, block parties, mariachi competitions and baile folklórico, or folkloric ballet, with whirling dancers wearing shiny ribbons and braids and bright, ruffled dresses.

For Americans with or without Mexican ancestry, the day has become an excuse to toss back tequila shots with salt and lime and gorge on tortilla chips smothered with melted orange cheddar that’s unfamiliar to most people in Mexico.

That’s brought some criticism of the holiday, especially as beer manufacturers and other marketers have capitalized on its festive nature and some revelers embrace offensive stereotypes, such as fake, droopy mustaches and gigantic straw sombreros.

THIS YEAR’S CELEBRATIONS

With May 5 falling at the end of the work week this year, festivities are kicking off Friday evening with happy hours and pub crawls in cities including Hollywood, featuring $4 beers and two-for-one margaritas, and a boozy party aboard a yacht on Chicago’s Lake Michigan with música norteño, or northern Mexico music, and ballads called corridos.

Celebrations are planned throughout the weekend, especially in places with large Mexican American populations, such as Los Angeles, Houston, New York, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.

A Sunday festival in downtown Phoenix will feature performers including Los Lonely Boys, who describe their music as “Texican rock,” as well as lucha libre, or wrestling matches with masked adversaries. A Cinco de Mayo parade will take place in Dallas on Saturday, while a Holy Guacamole Cinco de Mayo Run steps off that morning in Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California.

WHAT IT IS

Cinco de Mayo marks the anniversary of the 1862 victory by Mexican troops over invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla. The triumph over the better equipped and more numerous French troops was an enormous emotional boost for the Mexican soldiers led by Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza.

Historical reenactments and parades are held annually in the central Mexico city of Puebla to commemorate the inspirational victory over the Europeans, with participants dressed in historical French and Mexican army uniforms.

WHAT IT ISN’T

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, Mexico’s most important holiday.

Mexicans celebrate their country’s independence from Spain on the anniversary of the call to arms against the European country issued Sept. 16, 1810, by the Rev. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest in Dolores, Mexico.

Mexico’s president reenacts el Grito de Independencia, or the Cry of Independence, most years on Sept. 15 at about 11 p.m. from the balcony of the country’s National Palace, ringing the bell Hidalgo rang.

The commemoration typically ends with three cries of “¡Viva México!” above a colorful swirl of tens of thousands of people crowded into the Zócalo, or main plaza, in central Mexico City.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From CBS

THE REAL HISTORY BEHIND CINCO DE MAYO AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MAY 5TH

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla where the Mexican army defeated the French during the U.S. Civil War on May 5, 1862.

By Rocio De La Fe Published: 6:01 PM PDT May 4, 2023 Updated: 5:55 AM PDT May 5, 2023

SAN DIEGO — Every year thousands of Americans crowd into their favorite bars and restaurants for Cinco de Mayo. Many use it as the perfect excuse to go out for a drink or favorite Mexican meal, but the majority don’t know the real history behind Cinco de Mayo.

“It’s not Cinco de drinko, that’s off the table and it’s also not Mexican Independence Day," said Gerardo Rios, a professor of Mexican American studies and history at Southwestern College.

Rios explains why the fifth of May is an important date in Mexican history.

“What Cinco de Mayo celebrates is the Mexican liberal victory over the French forces that had invaded Mexico," said Rios.

In 1862, a powerful French army led by Napoleon III was sent to invade the country, and even though they outnumbered the Mexican army, they were met with a strong resistance in the Mexican state of Puebla.

“Cinco de Mayo represents one of those historical episodes where the little guy beats the big guy, right? Where the little people were the oppressed beat the great imperial power," adds Rios.

The battle was seen as a great victory for Mexico.

“It's akin to David versus Goliath Story, right? And it literally makes the impossible possible," said Rios.

Even though the Battle of Puebla was seen as a major victory, the French would ultimately go on to win the war.

Now, many in the U.S. spend the day celebrating the holiday with food and drinks.

Rios says the date is not a widely celebrated event throughout Mexico, but it is in Puebla, where the day is filled with military parades, recreations of the battle, music and more.

“They do a reenactment of the Battle of Puebla and then they do a reenactment the native people that actually participated in,” he added.

Although it is a significant date in Mexican history, it’s not to be confused with the Mexican Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16.

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From Americas Quarterly

LATIN AMERICA’S INEQUALITY IS TAKING A TOLL ON GOVERNANCE

The region’s lack of social mobility is stunting growth and fomenting instability, a new report shows.

BY ADRIANA ARREAZA COLL | FEBRUARY 8, 2023

CARACAS — Political unrest is posing a threat to governance and stability across Latin America—and its roots can be partly traced to extreme inequality.

During most of the first two decades of this century, solid economic growth rates in Latin America and the Caribbean helped improve social indicators. However, gains have stagnated since 2015, when growth started to falter with the end of the commodity boom. The pandemic only made things worse, increasing inequality and setting poverty back to levels unseen in a decade (32.8%, according to ECLAC).

This further deepened the region’s income gap. In inequality metrics such as the World Bank’s Gini coefficient, the region consistently underperforms the rest of the world. The numbers are sobering: The poorest 50% of the population earns just 10% of total income, while the wealthiest 10% earns 55%, according to the World Inequality Report.

The CAF development bank’s latest flagship Report on Economic Development, RED 2022: Inherited inequities, shows how this reality perpetuates itself. Social mobility must improve in order to reduce inequality, but high inequality prevents greater social mobility. Novel evidence shows that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, mechanisms like human capital accumulation (for example, education and health), asset accumulation and labor opportunities strongly favor wealthy families.

When your chances of progress are primarily determined by family background rather than individual effort and merit, the cradle becomes a lottery marking your future. And perpetuating inequalities affects talent allocation, growth, social cohesion—and political stability.

Social policies have so far been unable to overcome this reality, despite recent progress. Many children in the region exceed their parents’ educational achievements, as years of schooling steadily increased over the past century. While over 80% of the children born in the first decade of the 20th century did not complete elementary school, that fraction was less than 5% by the dawn of this century.

However, the gap itself has hardly changed. Only one in ten children of non-college-educated parents obtain a college degree by 24 or 25 years of age. That fraction is almost 50% for children with a parent who graduated from college. The pandemic only made prospects worse. The region had the most extended school closures, and poor families were left behind by a large gap in internet access and connectivity.

Even if younger generations’ academic achievements have improved with respect to their parents’, labor market opportunities have not. The children of parents employed in high-skilled jobs are almost six times more likely to land such jobs than are the children of parents employed in low-skilled occupations. This replication mechanism also includes family networks and aspirations as well as discrimination against certain groups in the labor markets.

Low educational and occupational mobility contributes to reproducing income disparities from generation to generation. In Latin America, you are likely to end up where your parents are on the income distribution ladder. In fact, the report indicates that the region has the greatest immobility in income in the world.

Another mechanism that perpetuates inequality is the high level of wealth concentration that largely persists across generations in Latin America and Caribbean nations. Certain mechanisms tie the quality and quantity of assets accumulated by parents to those we find in the hands of their children. The report highlights the following such mechanisms: asset composition; financial inclusion gaps, in access to banking or insurance, for example; the greater vulnerability of the assets of disadvantaged households; and the difficulty these disadvantaged households have in acquiring assets. The lack of access to proper insurance mechanisms is especially important in a region prone to economic shocks—as well as the increasing risks of climate shocks that threaten to destroy housing, the main asset of most families in the region.

It can be done

News is better regarding health. The transmission of poor health conditions from mothers to babies and young children has steadily declined in the region, partly due to maternal and child health coverage improvements. And there are several policy options that can address other areas and help break the cycle of low social mobility and inequality in Latin America and in the Caribbean, such as skills training; facilitating access to jobs through employment services; more robust labor regulations and social safety nets; progressive taxation; and greater financial inclusion, to name a few.

Some of these reforms can be politically challenging to implement. Attempts to enact tax reforms to finance social spending, reduce regressive energy subsidies, or change labor regulations have in recent years elicited social protests throughout the region, forcing authorities to back out or water down proposals. However, there are glimpses of hope. Background work for the RED 2022 suggests that, when confronted with the blunt reality that social mobility in the region is far worse than they thought, individuals seemed more willing to accept more progressive taxation to improve opportunities, especially in education.

Policies should focus on implementing interventions at as early an age as possible. Initiatives should address issues before pregnancy and continue during early infancy, childhood, adolescence and the transition to adulthood.

The region needs to level the playfield for the new generations so that “the cradle” weighs less on their future opportunities and well-being. Equity is not just a humanitarian imperative. Inequality prevents efficient allocation of talent, capping efficiency and economic growth. In turn, low growth is tantamount to tepid job creation and lost opportunities. This is a vicious cycle that ultimately leads to social and political unrest. There is no silver bullet, and social consensus will be required to advance necessary reforms.

Unless we address inequality, growth—and stability—may remain elusive.

—

Arreaza Coll is Knowledge Manager (Acting) and Director of Macroeconomic Studies at CAF, Development Bank of Latin America. She coordinates the team of country and research economists. Arreaza was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas and previously worked at the Research Department of the Central Bank of Venezuela. She received her BA in Economics at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas and her PhD in Economics at Brown University.

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From the New York Times

U.S. BORDER POLICIES HAVE CREATED A VOLATILE LOGJAM IN MEXICO

As the United States has cracked down on border entries, Mexico is bearing the burden of housing and feeding tens of thousands of desperate migrants.

By Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval March 28, 2023

Leer en español

A series of tough new border policies have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States to their lowest levels since President Biden took office, but the measures have created a combustible bottleneck along Mexico’s northern border, with tens of thousands of frustrated migrants languishing in overcrowded shelters from Tijuana to Reynosa.

The situation exploded on Monday when a protest at a government-run migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez led to a fire that killed at least 40 people. But scenes of overcrowding and desperation have been unfolding in recent weeks along the length of the border as the Biden administration prepares for yet another surge in migration this spring.

The blaze broke out at a migrant detention facility in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a border city near El Paso, Texas.CreditCredit...Go Nakamura for The New York Times

Migrants have been waiting in anticipation of a major policy shift, expected in May, when the United States plans to lift a pandemic-era health policy that has allowed U.S. border authorities to swiftly expel many unauthorized migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Separate new entry restrictions that have already taken effect require most migrants hoping to win U.S. asylum to apply for an appointment at a port of entry. Problems with the new mobile app have left thousands trying in vain for an appointment while stranded in Mexican border towns, where many have already been waiting for months.

Mexican authorities said the blaze occurred after migrants at the facility placed small mattresses at the entrance of the shelter and set them on fire in protest, after learning they would be deported.

“What we have in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities is a bottleneck,” said Enrique Lucero, director of the migration services office for the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. “Thousands of migrants are waiting for the opportunity to enter the U.S., and more keep arriving.”

The city’s 30 shelters can accommodate 5,600 people; as many as 15,000 migrants are currently in the city, he said.

“The number of people who are able to access the United States is a couple hundred a day,” he said, “but we have thousands here. Shelters are at full capacity.”

Even before Monday’s fire, frustration had boiled over earlier this month in Juárez, when hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, tried to storm their way across the international bridges to reach El Paso, only to clash with U.S. authorities.

Under pressure from the United States, Mexico has agreed to accept the swelling numbers of migrants turned back by American authorities, and to take other measures to help control the number crossing into the United States.

Some local officials on the U.S. side of the border said the Biden administration had created the situation by promising to end the pandemic-related expulsion policy, known as Title 42, which resulted in thousands traveling to the border, and then quickly imposing new restrictions.

He said he had learned through his counterparts in Mexico that shelters and detention centers in Juárez were at near capacity and that they were bracing for yet another surge in the days and weeks to come with plans to lift Title 42 on May 11.

Immigrant advocates have been warning for months that the situation was becoming explosive.

“The 39 lives lost last night in Ciudad Juárez are a horrifying indictment. The systems of enforcement that we have erected to patrol people who migrate are steel hands in velvet gloves, and death is part of the overhead. We are all responsible,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a faith-based organization, said on Twitter.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From CBS NEWS

HOW TITLE 42'S EXPIRATION WILL RESHAPE IMMIGRATION POLICY AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

BY CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ MAY 4, 2023 / 6:00 AM / CBS NEWS

The termination of an emergency immigration restriction known as Title 42 will mark a major policy shift in how the U.S. processes migrants who reach the southern border, including those hoping to ask for asylum.

For over three years, since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. border officials under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have cited Title 42 to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants to Mexico or their home countries on the grounds that their entry could contribute to the spread of the coronavirus.

While officially a public health measure, Title 42 has been used as a tool to manage and deter illegal border crossings, especially under the Biden administration, which has faced an unprecedented migration wave fueled in part by mass exoduses from crisis-stricken countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Progressive Democrats and advocates have condemned Title 42 because it blocks migrants from requesting asylum, a legal right they normally have if they reach U.S. soil. Republicans have portrayed it as an effective border control tool, proposing to codify Title 42 into law so it can be used outside of the pandemic context.

Because it has relied on the rule for over three years, the U.S. expects to see a sharp increase in migrant arrivals once Title 42 ends. To preempt the potentially historic spike in border crossings, the Biden administration has unveiled a web of policies that pair measures to deter migration, such as a restriction on asylum, with expanded opportunities for migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

When is Title 42 ending, and why?

Title 42 is set to end on May 11, absent any last-minute development, because the national COVID-19 public health emergency is expiring, eliminating one of the legal underpinnings of the policy.

Since it was enacted by the Trump administration in March 2020, Title 42 has allowed the U.S. to expel migrants over 2.7 million times from the southern border, according to official government figures.

Up until the spring of 2022, the U.S. government argued that Title 42 was needed to contain the coronavirus, contradicting public health experts. But in April 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there was no public health basis to continue expelling migrants and announced it would phase out Title 42.

Title 42 remained in place due to an order from a federal judge in Louisiana who agreed to a request from Republican-led states to block the policy's termination on technical grounds. The expulsions were again set to end in December 2022 after another federal judge declared the rule illegal. But his ruling was later paused by the U.S. Supreme Court, again at the request of Republican-led states.

What will happen after Title 42?

U.S. officials have said they expect the level of border crossings to rise when Title 42 sunsets, citing the tens of thousands migrants waiting in Mexico and the rapid dissemination of information about U.S. policy changes by smugglers.

Troy Miller, the top official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), recently told Congress that his agency is preparing for as many as 10,000 migrants to cross the southern border each day after Title 42 ends, which would almost double the daily average in March. Other internal government projections suggest that daily migrant arrivals could rise to between 11,000 and 13,000, absent a major policy change.

Is the government prepared?

In January, the Biden administration rolled out its first comprehensive border strategy, expanding Title 42 to expel Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to Mexico if they entered the U.S. unlawfully, while allowing up to 30,000 migrants from those countries to fly to the U.S. per month under a sponsorship program. It also started allowing asylum-seekers in Mexico to secure appointments to enter the country via a phone app.

The administration plans to continue these policies, which led to a sharp drop in border arrivals among the affected nationalities, after Title 42 ends. It will also increase the number of appointments distributed by the phone app, so more asylum-seekers can enter the U.S. at ports of entry along the southern border.

More recently, the administration announced it would set up processing centers in Latin America, starting in Colombia and Guatemala, to vet migrants for eligibility to be resettled in those countries, the U.S., Canada or Spain. It also said it would allow some citizens of Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to fly to the U.S. under a program for those with approved visa requests from relatives who are U.S. citizens or residents.

But the administration has also said it will increase regular deportations, including through a process known as expedited removal under which migrants can be quickly deported and banished from the U.S. for five years. The increase in deportations is expected to work in conjunction with a new regulation that will disqualify migrants from asylum if they failed to seek refuge in a third country before crossing into the U.S. illegally.

On May 2, the Department of Defense announced the deployment of another 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to relieve some of the pressure on Border Patrol agents by helping them with administrative and operational tasks, such as transportation and data-entry.

Despite the administration's moves, border communities have voiced concerns about their ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, with several cities in Texas recently issuing emergency declarations. Border crossings have also already increased sharply in the lead-up to Title 42's expiration, overwhelming Border Patrol holding facilities and prompting the agency to release hundreds of migrants in cities like El Paso, Texas.

While a migration spike is likely, the end of Title 42 will not completely alter current border policy, since most migrants have not been processed under the pandemic rule in recent months. Still, once Title 42 lifts, the U.S. will need to process all migrants who reach American soil under regular immigration law, known as Title 8.

What is Title 8 and how does it differ from Title 42?

Under Title 8, the section of the U.S. code containing all immigration laws, the U.S. is required to give migrants who request asylum a preliminary interview or a chance to present their case in front of an immigration judge.

That doesn't mean the U.S. won't deport migrants post-Title 42. Those who don't claim asylum or who fail preliminary interviews with asylum officers could be deported under the expedited removal process to their home country or Mexico, which has pledged to continue accepting some non-Mexican deportees.

In fact, the administration has been working to speed up these interviews by keeping migrants in Border Patrol custody until asylum officers determine whether they should be deported. Through the new rule, it is also making the interviews more difficult to pass for non-Mexican migrants who didn't seek asylum elsewhere.

Because of diplomatic reasons and operational constraints, such as insufficient detention capacity and deportation flights, not all migrants will be processed under expedited removal. Some migrants will be given a notice to appear in court, and either released into the U.S. or sent to long-term detention centers.

While some adults could be detained, families with children not processed under expedited removal are expected to be released, since officials have ruled out restarting family detention. Title 42's end will not alter the processing of unaccompanied minors, as the policy has not applied to them since late 2020. These children are housed in federal shelters and allowed to stay in the U.S. while their immigration cases are reviewed.

Migrants given court notices will get an opportunity to seek asylum in front of an immigration judge. But because the immigration court system is dealing with a backlog of hundreds of thousands of unresolved cases, their claims are not likely to be adjudicated for years.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – Also From CBS NEWS

SENATE PROPOSAL WOULD LET U.S. EXPEL MIGRANTS AFTER TITLE 42 ENDS

BY CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ UPDATED ON: MAY 4, 2023 / 5:52 PM / CBS NEWS

A group of senators on Thursday unveiled a bill that would allow U.S. border agents to continue expelling migrants without court hearings even after a public health order that has authorized these expulsions during the coronavirus pandemic expires next week.

The proposal would effectively allow the U.S. government to continue the soon-to-be terminated Title 42 border expulsion policy for two years without a public health justification. Title 42 is set to end on May 11, when the national public health emergency over COVID-19 lapses.

In a statement, Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he was introducing the proposal with independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema due to a lack of confidence in the Biden administration's plan to handle the expected rise in migration to the southern border when Title 42 lifts.

"It's clear that Congress must immediately step in, and the bipartisan bill I'm introducing with Senator Sinema will help prevent the catastrophic fallout at the border we will soon see if no action is taken," Tillis said.

Sinema, who was a Democrat until December 2022, said the Biden administration had failed to "plan ahead and implement a realistic, workable plan" to process migrants once Title 42 is phased out.

The bill, which was also co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to swiftly expel migrants to Mexico "without further hearing or review." Those processed for expulsion would need to be detained until they are expelled.

Under the proposal, if Mexico does not accept the return of migrants or DHS determines expulsions there are not in the national interest, the U.S. would have the authority to expel migrants to their home countries, where they have a residence or a third country willing to receive them.

The bill would prohibit U.S. officials from expelling migrants to countries where they could face torture or persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a socal group — the grounds for asylum. This bar would not apply to migrants convicted of certain crimes or those deemed to be a national security risk.

Those who claim they could face torture or persecution would need to pass preliminary interviews with U.S. asylum officers to avoid expulsion.

An earlier draft of the Sinema-Tillis framework, which was first crafted late last year, included a requirement for the State Department to impose visa bans for citizens of countries whose governments reject U.S. expulsions. That provision was not included in Thursday's bill.

The proposal would allow DHS to exempt certain migrants, including those with acute medical conditions, from the expulsions and to process them at ports of entry.

It's unclear if the bill released by Sinema and Tillis will garner sufficient support in the Senate and, most importantly, backing from Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Last year, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first announced it would discontinue Title 42, Sinema, then a Democrat, joined 4 Democrats and six Republicans in introducing a bill to extend the policy.

First instituted by the Trump administration in March 2020 as an emergency measure to fight the spread of the coronavirus, Title 42 has given U.S. border authorities the authority to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants without processing their asylum claims.

The policy's scheduled termination next week has alarmed Republicans, centrist Democrats and border city officials, all of whom have voiced concerns about whether the Biden administration is prepared to manage an expected spike in migrant crossings.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is preparing for as many as 10,000 migrants to cross the southern border each day after Title 42 lapses, which would almost double the daily average in March. Other internal government projections suggest that daily migrant arrivals could rise to between 11,000 and 13,000.

The Biden administration has for its part maintained it is prepared to phase out Title 42, saying it hopes to deter illegal crossings through a strategy that pairs deterrence measures, including increased deportations and a restriction on asylum, with expanded opportunities for migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

— Jack Turman contributed reporting.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – From NBC

AS BIDEN TAKES CONTROL OF THE BORDER WITH THE END OF TITLE 42, CONGRESS IS ABSENT ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

The Biden administration is stepping in to manage waves of people arriving at the border asking for asylum because Congress hasn't updated immigration law for decades.

By Suzanne Gamboa May 5, 2023, 4:50 AM EDT / Updated May 5, 2023, 10:07 AM EDT

The Biden administration is about to shift how migration is handled at the U.S. borders because — once again — Americans have no meaningful immigration legislation from Congress.

Next week the administration will stop using Title 42, the health law imposed during the coronavirus pandemic to control migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. In its place, the administration will revert to Title 8, the nation’s immigration law.

Meanwhile, little is expected from a divided Congress, beyond legislation focused on enforcement and meant more for what was happening on the border a decade ago.

“Congress makes the laws, and they deserve some of the blame here. I don’t expect much from them at this point based on what we’ve seen for the last two decades,” said David Bier, the associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

President Joe Biden has been readying for the shift with other tools, including setting up processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia to use a computer app to make appointments to request entry. It has turned to U.S. sponsors and focused on reuniting families, provided humanitarian parole to some fleeing Haiti and Latin America and forged agreements with other countries, including Mexico.

"They are relying a little more on processing or allowing people to apply for some form of asylum or humanitarian parole before people get to the border," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior adviser for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. "The past administration wouldn't have done that. It would have just tried to prevent asylum."

There is a collective breath-holding at the moment about what will follow once Title 42 disappears. What is certain is that politicians will use it as a talking point to cast blame as the transition happens.

But absent any congressional action for decades, immigration policy has largely fallen to the executive branch, leading to inconsistent crisis response policies. Aspects of such policies often are litigated in courts, making them temporary.

Congress has focused mainly on enforcement, which fails to deal with the fact that the current system of deterrence, designed to stop single adults from Mexico crossing the border illegally, wasn’t built for the wave of asylum-seekers arriving at the border from throughout the world, Cardinal Brown said.

“You can’t rely just on deterrence. You can’t rely on messaging. It’s got to be a fulsome strategy here, and I think what we’ve had for too long is this debate over shut it all down and just stop people from coming in … or everybody deserves a chance to ask and our system can’t. Neither of those is the right answer. It has to be somewhere in between all those things,” she said.

The number of people crossing initially dropped when Title 42 was rolled out. But when it was launched, people had stopped moving globally because of the pandemic, and there were few jobs to be had in the U.S. with everything closed, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Within three months, U.S. border arrivals and arrests had returned to pre-Title 42 levels, he said.

More expulsions — and more repeated border crossings

“We had a whole new set of problems at the border that we haven’t seen since before the Great Recession, and those are people repeatedly crossing and getting caught under Title 42 and being returned to Mexico and then trying again,” Alden said.

The problem has been that, unlike Title 8, the regular immigration law, Title 42 doesn't punish people who repeatedly cross the border.

As a result, more people who have been turned away have crossed again, particularly single adults. In 2019, about 20% of single adults from Mexico and the Northern Triangle had been arrested previously. Under Title 42, nearly half were, according to an analysis Bier published in December.

The number who were detected entering the country illegally but weren't arrested — known as "gotaways" — grew from 12,500 a month in 2019 to more than 50,000 a month last year, Bier found.

“Title 42 basically prohibits people from requesting asylum in the United States. That’s the teeth of the policy,” Bier said. But because Title 42 blocked people from applying legally to enter the country at ports of entry, the only way to get in was to try to bypass Border Patrol and sneak in. It also didn’t deter those who never intended to seek asylum, he said.

“From a security perspective, it got all the incentives backwards. It created a situation where we’ve never seen this much evasion at the border in the last two decades,” he said.

According to Bier’s analysis of border data, 91% of the people expelled in October were single adults from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador.

Bier also found that even though Title 42 targeted those groups, the number of single adults arriving from those countries quadrupled, from an average of 21,000 a month to nearly 80,000 a month.

Some of the most sensational images from the border came in Del Rio, Texas, when hundreds of Haitians were being rounded up by Border Patrol agents on horseback swinging leather reins to force them back across the river. After an outcry, the administration began making exceptions to Title 42 for Haitians, allowing them to request asylum at ports of entry, as had been allowed pre-Title 42.

“When we started to hand out more exceptions to Title 42 at ports of entry for Haitians, the number crossing illegally went way down. We went from 99% [Haitians] crossing illegally to 99% entering legally in an orderly manner,” Bier said. “That’s a huge change from a few months prior, when we had the Del Rio fiasco.”

No 'consistent' policies

As with Haitians, the administration has also made exceptions to Title 42 for Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans, allowing up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries to apply for humanitarian parole, which allows them to work in the U.S. for two years.

But a group of Republican states is in court to try to stop the administration from using the parole program for them. If it succeeds and Title 42 is gone, Mexico is likely to stop taking deportees, “and we will see more of them arriving at the border,” Cardinal Brown said.

“Maybe the principle is the president shouldn’t be able to do this with his parole authority … but I think that’s one of the reasons why the tools that different administrations have are not up to the task,” she said. With executive branch policies stopped or delayed through court action, it's almost impossible to create policies consistent enough to affect migrant arrivals over a longer period of time, she said.

As the Trump administration did, the Biden administration has been securing “cooperative agreements” with Central and South American countries, exchanging visas for their citizens and helping manage their migration issues — such as helping Colombia with Venezuelan refugees — in exchange for enforcement in places like the treacherous Darien Gap, a geographic region between Colombia and Panama that tens of thousands of migrants cross on treks to the U.S. border.

“What the administration is trying to do is recognize this is a hemispheric issue,” Cardinal Brown said, including cooperative agreements similar to those used by Trump but that are “a little larger in ambition.”

There are enforcement aspects to the post-Title 42 plan. People who cross the border illegally are ineligible to apply for asylum and are deportable.

With Title 8 in place, anyone trying to re-enter after deportation faces fines and jail time and is ineligible to apply to legally enter for three to 10 years.

'People hate it from both sides'

Alden, of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that given the impossibility of Congress' doing anything that addresses the current immigration flows, the administration has devised “the most serious plan of any administration to try to deal with asylum.” But he also said there could well be chaos on the border for months given the backlog of people who want to request asylum.

If there is a sense that things are chaotic at the border, support for tougher border measures go up, but if the administration opens up asylum to whomever wants it, political support disappears, he said.

Republicans don’t like the humanitarian parole part and so are challenging it in court, and Democrats dislike the denial of asylum for those who cross illegally, he said.

“I think the Biden administration is trying to walk this line, and it’s the only line that has some plausible hope of working,” Alden said. "As a result, people hate it from both sides."

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – From FOX

FOX NEWS FOOTAGE CAPTURES HUNDREDS OF MIGRANTS CROSSING INTO TEXAS AS TITLE 42’S END APPROACHES

CBP sources say they have encountered more than 8,000 migrants a day

By Adam Shaw and Griff Jenkins Published May 5, 2023 1:46pm EDT

Footage captured by Fox News’ Flight Team shows hundreds of migrants streaming across the border into Texas from Mexico, as numbers are already beginning to surge ahead of the ending of the Title 42 public health order next week.

The thermal drone footage, captured overnight, shows hundreds of migrants streaming into Brownsville from Matamoros, Mexico. Agents are encountering migrants at a rate of 2,000 a day in Brownsville. Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources say in the first four days of May they have been encountering more than 8,000 migrants a day border-wide.

That is before the end of Title 42 on May 11. The public health order was implemented in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and millions of migrants have been rapidly expelled back to Mexico under the order for public health reasons. In March, 46% of all encounters resulted in a Title 42 expulsion.

But the looming end to the order next week has led to fears of a renewed surge at the border, with prior Department of Homeland Security estimates warning that there could be up to 14,000 migrant encounters a day. The latest footage suggests that may not be an exaggeration.

The Biden administration has been scrambling to implement measures to reduce the number of illegal crossings and establish a more orderly process. The administration also announced this week that it is sending 1,500 troops to the border, although officials have said they won’t be engaging with migrants but acting in a supporting role to Customs and Border Protection.

It has also proposed a rule that would, in theory, bar migrants from asylum eligibility if they enter illegally and have also failed to claim asylum in a country through which they have already passed.

It has also announced it is expanding legal pathways with migrant processing centers being established throughout Latin America. Officials also announced a number of collaborative measures with Mexico -- including an agreement for Mexico to take non-Mexican migrant deportations.

"This is a hemispheric challenge that demands hemispheric solutions," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a press conference. "Working with our neighbors in the region, we can and will reduce the number of migrants who reach our southern border."

GOP SENATORS URGE BIDEN TO REVERSE TITLE 42 TERMINATION, CITING ESTIMATES OF MIGRANT DELUGE

But officials have conceded that a surge is likely, and it has lawmakers on both sides of the aisle concerned. Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, signed onto legislation this week that would give the administration an authority similar to Title 42 for an additional two years.

The immigration crisis is only getting worse and our broken immigration system is ill-equipped to handle it," Manchin said in a statement. "Our bipartisan legislation creates a two-year temporary solution to prevent a complete collapse at our southern border. Now, our political leaders must put partisanship aside to finally secure our border, establish a reliable visa program and ensure the American Dream is possible to everyone who follows the law and is willing to work hard."

BIDEN ADMIN SECURES DEAL WITH MEXICO TO DEPORT SOME NON-MEXICAN MIGRANTS AHEAD OF TITLE 42 BEDLAM

The administration has been calling on Republicans in Congress to pass an immigration reform package that it unveiled on the first day in office, but Republicans have rejected that for its inclusion of a mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the House have introduced their own border security and asylum reform package, and on Thursday called for the administration to work with them on it.

"Title 42 ends in 6 days and we are already seeing images of complete chaos at the border," the GOP members of the House Homeland Security Committee tweeted. "It’s obvious Secretary Mayorkas doesn’t have a plan to stop the surge. It’s time to work with House Republicans to return order to the border."

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – FROM THE A.P.

BIDEN SENDING 1,500 TROOPS FOR MEXICO BORDER MIGRANT SURGE

By COLLEEN LONG, AAMER MADHANI and TARA COPP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will send 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border starting next week, ahead of an expected migrant surge following the end of coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions.

Military personnel will do data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. The troops “will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants,” Jean-Pierre said. “This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.”

They will be deployed for 90 days, and will be pulled from the Army and Marine Corps, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will look to backfill with National Guard or Reserve troops during that period, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. There are already 2,500 National Guard members at the border.

The COVID-19 restrictions have allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for a surge. Even amid the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

For Biden, who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago, the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.

Then-President Donald Trump deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity.

Jean-Pierre downplayed any similarity between Biden’s immigration management and Trump’s use of troops during his term. “DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now,” Jean-Pierre said. “So this is a common practice.”

It’s another line of defense in an effort to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise as border officials move away from the COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

They will also open centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.

The Pentagon on Tuesday approved the request for troops by Homeland Security, which manages the border.

The deployments have a catch: As a condition for Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to the border through Oct. 1, Homeland Security had to agree to work with the White House and Congress to develop a plan for longer-term staffing solutions and funding shortfalls, “to maintain border security and the safe, orderly, and humane processing of migrants that do not involve the continued use of DOD personnel and resources,” said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Devin Robinson.

As part of the agreement, the Pentagon has requested quarterly updates from Homeland Security on how it would staff its border mission without servicemembers. It was not immediately clear if those updates have happened or if border officials will be able to meet their terms of the agreement — particularly under the strain of another expected migrant surge.

Homeland Security said it was working on it. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investing in technology and personnel to reduce its need for DOD support in coming years, and we continue to call on Congress to support us in this task,” the agency said in a statement.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – From Time

WHY THE U.S. MAY BE DAYS AWAY FROM A BORDER CRISIS

BY BRIAN BENNETT MAY 8, 2023 7:00 AM EDT

At 11:59 pm on Thursday, May 11, one emergency will officially end and another may begin. That’s when the Biden administration has scheduled the end of the COVID-19 health emergency, which also means the expiration of a pandemic-era practice that began under the Trump administration of immediately expelling people trying to cross the border without allowing them to request asylum.

White House officials are bracing for a surge of people to cross the Southern Border in the wake of the change. President Biden has ordered 1,500 troops to deploy along the border for three months to support operations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

Both Title 42’s expiration, and the way it has warped immigration patterns for the last three years, are widely misunderstood, administration officials and immigration experts say. That’s complicated the debate over its expiration, which has been delayed multiple times as Republican state officials have sued to keep it in place. This time, though, a court reprieve appears less likely.

Criminal smugglers, hoping to increase profits, have been incorrectly telling would-be migrants that the end of the COVID-19 emergency and the associated expiration of Title 42 authorities will allow people to more easily come into the U.S. That is not the case, according to Biden Administration officials.

But there has also been a counter-intuitive impact of the use of Title 42 authorities during the pandemic, say Administration officials and immigration experts. Those quick, summary expulsions meant officials stopped recording the entry of each migrant or inquired about what dangers drove them to leave home. That was expedient, but had an unintended outcome. Many migrants that were summarily expelled, and then tried to enter again and again, multiplying the number of people Border Patrol agents encountered in a year.

“Title 42, ironically, actually increased the number of people admitted to the U.S.,” says Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. “A tool that was designed to expel people without even a hearing became the reason why a lot of people were admitted to the U.S. because they would make repeated attempts and by the fourth or fifth time, they were in.”

Along with sending troops to the border, the Biden administration is trying to convince migrants to not try and enter that way in the first place. The State Department is preparing to open “processing centers” in Guatemala and Colombia where migrants wanting to come to the U.S. can meet with case workers and see if they qualify for one of multiple legal pathways into the country, and has plans to open more such centers in other countries in the hemisphere. The Biden Administration is also continuing to allow 30,000 migrants each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to apply for humanitarian parole from outside the U.S. and get permission to enter the U.S. via a commercial airline, instead of paying criminal smugglers to bring them over land.

“We are seeing a level of migration not just at our southern border, but throughout the hemisphere, that is unprecedented,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said April 30 on NBC’s Meet the Press. The administration’s approach, he said, is to “cut out the ruthless smugglers” and “deliver lawful pathways so people can access humanitarian relief without having to take the dangerous journey from their home countries.”

After May 11, Mayorkas said, people who try to cross into the U.S. between ports of entry will likely be blocked from claiming asylum or finding other legal pathways to enter. “If they arrive at our southern border in between ports of entry, we will deliver consequences,” Mayorkas said.

The Biden Administration is working to get a new immigration rule in place by Thursday that would set stricter conditions for who can claim asylum, adding that if a person was encountered by Border Patrol and trying to come into the U.S. between ports of entry, asylum officials should start with the assumption they would be denied asylum.

The expected surge in migrants at the border comes weeks after Biden announced his bid for another term in office. A protracted border crisis could become a political liability for Biden going into the 2024 election. A poll in April of swing state voters by Global Strategy Group found that 52% of voters think Biden is ignoring the problem of immigration. But Biden’s new efforts to open up more legal ways to enter the United States, while increasing the consequences for those who cross into the US illegally, may resonate with voters in the key states he needs to win reelection. The April poll found that 76% of swing state voters had positive views of increasing border security, and a similar majority of voters, 75%, viewed providing pathways to citizenship in a positive light.

There’s very little a homeland security secretary or an American President can do to reverse human migration patterns predominantly caused by climate change, new storm patterns, rampant violence and economic need. U.S. immigration laws, which could create orderly entry points for migrants to register and work and live in the U.S., are poorly designed to do so, and haven’t been updated in three decades.

“We have to figure out how to manage migration because this is a global phenomenon. It’s not just happening in this hemisphere,” says Vanessa Cárdenas, from America’s Voice, an organization that advocates for updating the U.S. immigration system. “The root causes of what’s causing people to migrate are not going to go away.”

In the meantime, the political debate over how the country should determine who is allowed to live and work in the U.S. has become entrenched and frozen in place. Last week, Senators Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, filed a bill to put in place a system similar to Title 42 for the next two years. The band-aid was needed to prevent “catastrophic fallout at the border,” Tillis said in a statement, which blamed the Biden administration for failing to secure it.

Cárdenas says lawmakers’ inability to adequately address the problem can be traced to how the Republican position on immigration has shifted in recent election cycles. “Now the debate has become about invasion and great replacement theory rather than, ‘What do we need to do when it comes to immigration?’” Cárdenas says.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – From LAW PROFESSORS.TYPEPAD

THE END OF TITLE 42 AND INCREASED MILITARIZATION OF THE BORDER

Guest blogger: Duun O'Hara, Migration Studies Masters Student, University of San Francisco: Sunday, May 7, 2023

With Title 42 coming to end this week, terrible news is reported from the Biden administration. Biden has sent 1,500 soldiers to the southern border to try and stop the “migrant surge” in border states for 90 days.

Title 42 allowed immigration authorities to turn back any asylum seekers at the border. The Biden administration along with US immigration officials are scared that with this ending, it will be a situation where tens of thousands of immigrants seeking asylum will “storm” the border.

The US response as always deploys the military along the border instead of responding to the crisis at hand. Even as we further militarize the border, more officers will not stop immigrants from coming or seeking asylum. This is yet another example of how the Biden administration has failed the immigration system and continues to fund the war in the southwest United States.

If Border Patrol and ICE were not funded enough, Biden ironically has decided to send more “man power” to “defend the border.” More soldiers at the border will not stop people from coming. It will only exacerbate the problems at the US-Mexico border resulting in more deaths.

In true American fashion, the US is also opening new “processing centers” in Colombia and Guatemala. Which is code word for more detention centers to further detain families and children. If the Ciudad Juarez tragedy was not enough, the Biden administration's only solutions seem to consist of building more systems to incarcerate Black, Indigenous people of color.

Far too many times, the US, including various presidential administrations, respond to “the mass influx” of migrants as an issue stemming outside of the US, rather than a systemic problem created by the imperial and colonial past of the US. Instead of treating asylum seekers as people, the US does what it knows best: dehumanize and incarcerate BIPOC.

More troops being sent to the US-Mexico border will only further the violence at the southwest border. Instead of allowing thousands of migrants to seek asylum (their inherent rights in the US), the US is asking other countries like Mexico, to accept non-Mexicans. When will the US take responsibility for the situation at the border, and stop implementing more force? Or maybe instead provide more resources and programs that address the problem, rather make it worse?

Troops being sent to the southwest border present more problems than solutions. Seeing the situation at the border first hand, as recently as February 2023, it also makes me concerned for people who live along the border in border cities who must try to continue their daily lives while the militarization of the border only gets worse by the day. Above all, safety must be guaranteed to people trying to work and provide for their families in these border cities.

But as we know, with increase in militarization, the increase in innocent deaths and incarcerations of more people of color. This decision made by President Biden will horrifically cost many innocent lives seeking a better life.

On a global scale, this decision affects more than just US immigration policies, but also it impacts other Western countries following the US and implementing similar militaristic border measures along their borders.

Incidentally, DOD had already deployed 2500 National Guard soldiers to the border before the 1500 soldier deployment.

I don't think the troops will militarize the border. The Posse Comitatus Act will prevent them from engaging in border patrolling activities. It provides as follows:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

It's a criminal provision but it has been interpreted as a limitation on government activities too.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM THE HILL

ENDING TITLE 42 IS THE RESPONSIBLE THING TO DO, HERE’S WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SHOULD DO NEXT

BY DANIEL LÓPEZ-CEVALLOS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 05/06/23 5:00 PM ET

With the deadline to end Title 42 fast approaching on May 11, the Biden administration is considering various approaches to manage the potential increase in migrant crossings at the southern border. The recent deadly fire at a migrant detention facility in Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas), in which almost 40 Central and South American migrants lost their lives, highlights the need for a well thought out and humane strategy to fill the policy vacuum left by Title 42.

As part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address the potential impacts, the administration should incorporate a public health approach towards making our immigration system work better for migrants and U.S. citizens alike. That means putting the health of migrants at the center of the immigration debate and working our way outwards across our government, addressing socio-economic factors, institutional systems, and policies that affect immigrants’ health.

As it stands, too much immigration rhetoric and policy is in response to a dystopian distorted imagery the U.S. has about the situation on the border between Mexico and the U.S. A poll just last fall suggested that over half of Americans say it’s either somewhat or completely true that the United States is “experiencing an invasion” at the southern border. Focusing on the number of “encounters” (meaning apprehensions and expulsions) at the U.S.-Mexico border alone misses the reality of the increasingly global nature of migration flows through our southern border, beyond Mexico and northern Central America. In fact, last year we saw increasing numbers of migrants from elsewhere in the Americas (Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua) and around the globe (Ukraine, India, Turkey).

It’s also important to keep in mind that almost half of the unauthorized population in the U.S. entered the country legally and later overstayed their visa. While immigration authorities reported almost 2.4 million apprehensions and expulsions in 2022, this number pales in comparison to the over 160 million people who crossed our southern border (via buses, trains, or personal vehicles) into the U.S. without a problem that same year. The interconnected reality of transnational migration from Latin America and other countries around the world into the United States requires broader efforts that address conditions across the entire hemisphere.

In light of this reality, the U.S. must uphold our historical commitment to keeping immigrant families together and supporting them as a unit throughout our immigration processes. The Biden administration must resist the temptation to use migrant detention, transit bans or expedite removals as the primary policy tools, and rather build on their early successes offering legal options for migrants, such as new parole processes and expanded ways to schedule appointments at ports of entry. Both the Los Angeles declaration and the Menendez plan can guide their efforts.

A public health approach also entails supporting immigration authorities to increase their capacity to tackle increased workloads, working collaboratively with their counterparts in immigrant-sending countries, and supporting community-based organizations on both sides of the border.

For one, given the increased pressure on our immigration system, more capacity is needed to ensure that families and unaccompanied children aren’t held in facilities that do not meet even the most basic standards of care. Meanwhile, by working collaboratively with other countries to address the root causes of migration (such as poverty, violence, and natural disasters), and investing in countries and communities to address basic needs (like housing and health care), not only can the administration improve lives across the hemisphere, but also slow the pace of migration. And beefing up investments in community-based organizations, which are more likely trusted by migrants, will serve as a complementary pillar to sustaining care services for migrants as they make their journey through border communities.

Finally, we must shift the burdens of our failed immigration system off the backs of immigrants and impoverished border communities and into federal and state authorities. The status quo is forcing migrants in need of protection or improved economic prospects, who can greatly contribute to U.S. communities, to set on a dangerous journey, littered by organized crime and corrupt officials. Instead, our approach must be guided by the nations’ unequivocal commitment to upholding the right to apply for asylum and recommitting to expanding legal pathways for migrants and asylum seekers.

The Biden administration is right to seek the end of Title 42 and related measures enacted by the previous administration. But in doing so, we must recommit to a more humane and expansive system of legal options for migrants at all U.S. ports of entry, including the southern border. Such an approach would have enormous benefits to all Americans, both immigrants and U.S.-citizens, and increase trust in federal and state leaders. With the same steadfast commitment to global COVID vaccinations, the Biden administration must align its immigration decisions to our nation’s commitment to protecting the health of all, and that includes migrants and their families.

Daniel López-Cevallos is an associate professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – FROM GOV.TEXAS.GOV

OPERATION LONE STAR READIES SECURITY FORCES AHEAD OF TITLE 42 ENDING

May 5, 2023 | Austin, Texas | Press Release

Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard are continuing to work together to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between ports of entry.

Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to over 371,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 27,000 criminal arrests, with more than 25,000 felony charges reported. In the fight against fentanyl, Texas law enforcement has seized over 385 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission.

Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps left by the Biden Administration's refusal to secure the border. Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and the nation due to President Joe Biden's open border policies.

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS FROM OPERATION LONE STAR:

Governor Abbott joined Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Wednesday to discuss New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ false, incendiary claims about Texas’ migrant busing mission. Noting that the Biden Administration expects up to 13,000 illegal immigrants to cross the border each day when Title 42 ends next week, the Governor said busing migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities continues providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overrun border communities.

“The fact of the matter is that there are more people coming across the border every single day than there are migrants who are in Chicago or New York,” said Governor Abbott. “This is not a Texas problem; this is a United States problem. It’s the responsibility of New York or Chicago or the entire country to deal with the problem caused by Joe Biden and his open border policies.”

In response to President Biden’s plan to deploy 1,500 troops to the border—primarily to do paperwork for 90 days—Governor Abbott noted that through Operation Lone Star, up to 10,000 Texas National Guard soldiers deployed to the border to keep Texans safe.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE - From Fox News

ABBOTT ACTIVATES 'TEXAS TACTICAL BORDER FORCE'; 545 MORE NATIONAL GUARDSMEN DEPLOYED BEFORE TITLE 42 EXPIRES

Texas National Guard deploying to border 'hotspots' to intercept, turn back migrants

By Danielle Wallace

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced a new Texas Tactical Border Force ahead of the expiration of the Title 42 public health order, which helped block migrants from entering the U.S.

In response to "Joe Biden’s reckless border policies," the Texas National Guard is loading Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s to deploy specially trained National Guard members to "hotspots along the border to intercept, to repel and to turn back migrants who are trying to enter Texas illegally," Abbott said at a press conference from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

In a statement, the Texas National Guard said it activated 545 more service members at locations around the state Monday to "reinforce the border mission in anticipation of the end of Title 42 immigration restrictions."

"These additional forces will bolster the thousands of Texas National Guard service members already assisting local and state law enforcement agencies to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between the ports of entry," the Texas National Guard said in a statement Monday. "We have expanded our capabilities to include boat teams that patrol hundreds of river miles, drones and helicopters that detect illicit activity from the air, and brush teams, security points and roving patrols that block and interdict illegal smuggling (drugs, weapons and people) into Texas."

Abbott was joined by Texas Border Czar Mike Banks, Texas National Guard Adjunct Gen. Thomas Suelzer and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw in making the announcement.

"President [Joe] Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world saying that the United States border is wide open, and it will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally. President Biden’s open border policies is going to cause a catastrophic disaster in the United States," Abbott said.

"According to the Biden administration itself, they anticipate about 13,000 people coming across the border illegally every single day," the governor added. "If you extend that out over the course of a year, it means it will be about 4,700,000 people coming across the border a year. That will mean there will be more people coming across the border illegally than there are residents of the massive city of Chicago."

The Texas Tactical Border Force is meant to bolster Operation Lone Star, which Abbott said has turned back 37,000 people who already came across the border illegally, arrested about 27,000 dangerous criminals, including "cartel gang members" who are wanted for crimes like murder, and seized "enough fentanyl that would have been enough to kill every man, woman and child in the United States."