the *DON* JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 5/6/24... 14,852.48 4/29/24... 14,860.44
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
*(THE DOW* JONES INDEX: 5/6/24... 38,765.78; 4/29/24... 38,239.81; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)**

LESSON for MAY SIXTH, 2024

SINKO de MAYO

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo... not, as some would believe, the Mexican version of Independence Day but, rather, a sort of second Independence Day commemorating the overthrow and execution of the imperialist regime of Maximillian of France – who exploited the American Civil War to take over the government and the country until said date when he was deposed and shot.

The actual Mexican Independence Day, when the Spanish were thrown out, occurred on Sept. 16, 1810 .

What most Americans (and some Mexicans) celebrate as Cinco de Mayo was the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Puebla – Mexico's attack upon the French occupiers on May 5, 1862 wherein “a small army of Mexican patriots and peasants were victorious over a French force. Although in 1863 France finally took the Mexican capital and installed a five-year regime led by Emperor Maximilian,”(USA Today, Attachment One), “the Battle of Puebla's importance lies in that it strengthened the Mexican spirit after it prevented French Emperor Napoleon III from conquering the country.” In no little part, however, it was the threat of Americans threatening to enforce their Monroe Doctrine once the Civil War concluded that sent the French army packing, leaving Sad Max to be executed by the rebels,

Now however, battered by a rising tide of refugees excaping crime, poverty and oppression at home... Mexico, for many, but also the rest of Central and South America and even interlopers from across the sea who have found it easier to slip into the country, then travel north and cross over illegally... Mexican-American relations are at their lowest ebb, especially across the border states.

Most of these migrants have been seeking better lives for themselves and their families... as immigrants have done in America since Plymouth Rock... but there have also been drug cartel smugglers, MidEast terrorists and common criminals whose depredations upon Americans have resulted in a backlash fully exploited by the Men of MAGA and by Congress – where border security has been an ongoing bone of contention.

The plight of the inhabitants on both sides of the border, furthermore, has been enhanced by the regional “megadrought” as has devastated farms, forests and families and contributed to the “draw up the drawbridges” ethos popularized by Gov. Greg Abbptt (R-Tx).

Ongoing megadrought has meant there wasn’t enough water to irrigate co-op members’ 34,000 acres of sugarcane, and that effectively “put an end to sugarcane farming in the south Texas borderlands” according to the liberal Guardian U.K. (April 30, Attachment Two)

Sugarcane’s demise in Texas is indicative of many agricultural areas’ water woes. Increasingly dry farms find themselves vying with other farms, cities, industries and mining operations for dwindling resources. In 2022, the Guardian now recalls, “drought decimated Texas cotton and forced California growers to idle half their rice fields. Water disputes are also on the rise as decreased flows in the Colorado River and other vital waterways pit state against state, states against native nations and farmers against municipalities.”

“That story is playing out all across the western US,” said Maurice Hall, senior adviser on climate-resilient water systems at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Per the 1944 treaty, Mexico is obligated to deliver 1.75m acre-feet of water to the US in any given five-year cycle (the current cycle ends in October 2025).

“This thing worked pretty good up until 1992,” said Uhlhorn, when “we got into a situation where Mexico was not delivering their water” due to extraordinary drought – a scenario that played out again in the early 2000s. In 2022, Rio Grande reservoirs fell to treacherously low capacities. A storm eventually dumped rain mostly on the Mexican side; what fell in Texas “was enough water for maybe one irrigation, but you’d have to starve your other crops” in order to water sugarcane, Uhlhorn said.

GUK interviewed Texas A&M agricultural economist Luis Ribera. who said: “It’s not that Mexico is holding the water because they are bad neighbors. They’re using it” because drought has plagued both sides of the border.

While hydrologists and diplomats rassle over the declining water supply, said Dale Murden, a grapefruit and cattle farmer, farmers must adjust to a thirstier reality. That might include using recycled water and tools like moisture sensors, finding better irrigation techniques and planting more drought-resistant crop varieties. And they may have to reconcile themselves to the fact “you won’t be able to do [certain things] any more just because there isn’t water”.

Climate change... and its effect upon both the American and Mexicon economies and the resultant migration issues ares a significant (and often partisan) political issue in both nations. Mexicans go to the polls on June 2^nd, five months before the November contest – already presumed to be between incumbent Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump – and unlike the colossus to their north, Mexicans cannot vote to re-elect President Andrés Manuel López Obrador... popular because of his social programs

Instead, and rather out of the ordinary for a heavily Catholic country where the status of women has surpassed that of the Yanqui north, June’s two primary aspirants are former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum of the president’s Morena party which continues to hold a healthy lead over Xóchitl Gálvez, nominated by a coalition of opposition of parties. (AP News, April 29^th, Attachment Three)

(Morena has seized the progressive agenda from the long-lived PRI whose loosely economically planned, vaguely protectionist glory days of the early 20th century are little more than a faint memory. Its leader, President Peña Nieto, is thoroughly neoliberal and easily one of the Western Hemisphere’s most hated heads of state.)

Far back, Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the small Citizen Movement party trails both women.

López Obrador significantly raised Mexico’s minimum wage and increased spending on social programs, most of which are popular direct cash transfer programs. Sheinbaum has benefitted from her mentor’s popularity throughout the campaign and promised to continue his programs... promising “better salaries, with better pensions, without raising taxes.”

So popular has Obrador been with the Mexican lower, working and middle classes that Gálvez, Sheinbaum’s most serious competitor, “stressed that she, too, would maintain the popular, but costly programs if elected. The former senator and tech entrepreneur reminded voters that she knew poverty growing up and was able advance in part because of a scholarship.

“I am a woman who comes from below, who knows poverty and knows how poverty hurts and the time that it steals from you,” Gálvez told the AP.

On the environment and climate change, Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, pointed to her efforts as mayor, such as putting solar panels on the rooftops of Mexico City’s sprawling wholesale market and adding more electric buses and bike lanes.

As president, she said, she would work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help Mexico adapt to climate change. “But she also defended López Obrador’s construction of a huge new oil refinery that she said would help Mexico reduce its gasoline imports. She warned that Gálvez would try to privatize the deeply indebted state oil company, known as Pemex.

Gálvez said the private sector would be critical in Mexico’s clean energy transition, to which... during a recent debate... Sheinbaum took to calling Gálvez “the corrupt one.”

An April 10-13 poll of 1,600 Mexicans by Mitofsky Tendencias for newspaper El Economista gave Sheinbaum, who represents the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), 51.4% support. Galvez, the candidate representing a three-party opposition coalition of ideologically diverse parties, with an estimated 26.7% of the vote and Maynez trailing.

Over the past few weeks, however, Preaident Obrador... whether for economic reasons or to blunt the prospect of an another Trump presidency, has offered a helping hand to President Joe by ramping up enforcement south of the Rio Grande.

Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border are down more than 40 percent since December and have remained relatively stable through the first four months of 2024, “bringing a modest reprieve for President Biden on an issue regarded as a liability to his reelection campaign. (Washington Post, April 30^th, Atachment Five)

U.S. officials speaking to the Post said that the crackdown on migrants by the Mexican government was the biggest factor. “Using military patrols and highway checkpoints, Mexican authorities have been intercepting roughly 8,000 U.S.-bound migrants per day, according to officials in both countries.”

Mexico launched its campaign at the behest of U.S. officials after illegal crossings soared in December to nearly 250,000, an all-time high, further eroding Biden’s poll ratings on border security.

Justly concerned that Donald Trump might regain the Presidency, Obrador pulled the pin on his own refugees (and an increasing number of Central and South Americans, Asians, MidEasterners... even a few terrorists here and there. Trump continued to criticize Biden’s immigration record at campaign rallies, but the relative calm along the border has eased some of the pressure on the president to announce harsher enforcement measures, “which could anger some Democrats.”

While liberals are searching for humanitarian justification of an open border, MAGA is fomenting distraction. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) claimed that his state-run crackdown, Operation Lone Star, was t redirecting smugglers to easier routes farther west.

Biden and Obrador discussed migration during an April 28 call, according to a joint statement released Monday. The two leaders discussed “how to effectively manage hemispheric migration” and “strengthen operational efficiency on our d border,” the statement said.

The decline in Mexican border crossing was exceeded by dis-migration from Venezuela, “which has plummeted at the U.S. border and moved largely to ports of entry. It is unclear why Venezuelan migration has dropped more steeply than that from other nations” said the W (WOLA) *Attachment Seven”.

The nationalities for which encounters increased the most were chiefly South American:

· Brazil (87 percent more than January)

· Peru (67 percent)

· Colombia (65 percent)

· Ecuador (50 percent)

· El Salvador (31 percent)

The nationalities for which encounters decreased the most were:

· Turkey (72 percent fewer than February)

· India (56 percent fewer)

· Venezuela (24 percent fewer—and 85 percent fewer than in December)

· Russia (15 percent fewer)

· Cuba (7 percent fewer)

The top nationalities crossing between ports of entry and ending up in Border Patrol custody were:

· Mexico (35 percent of the total; 28 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024)

· Guatemala (17 percent; 14 percent during 2024)

· Ecuador (8 percent; 7 percent during 2024)

· Colombia (8 percent; 7 percent during 2024)

· Honduras (6 percent; 8 percent during 2024)

The top nationalities reporting to ports of entry were:

· Mexico (27 percent; 26 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024)

· Cuba (26 percent; 24 percent during 2024)

· Haiti (23 percent; 16 percent during 2024)

· Venezuela (11 percent; 18 percent during 2024)

· Honduras (4 percent; 5 percent during 2024)

See latest migration messages and musings as well as many charts, stats and graphs here.

The White House has considered utilizing Biden's executive authority to block migrants at the border, Reuters has reported, but such a move could trigger legal challenges and backlash from some Democrats. (See Attachment Eight, April 29^th)

Lopez Obrador attributed the reduced arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border in part to social programs Mexico has backed in other Latin American countries from where migrants originate. But U.S. and Mexican officials have cited increased enforcement by Mexico “as a factor contributing to the decrease in crossings.”

ABC (May 4, Attachment Nine) explained the “major shift in demographics at the border” as a consequence of COVID.

“Before the pandemic, roughly 9 in 10 migrants crossing the border illegally (that is, between ports of entry) came from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — the four countries closest to the border.” Those countries no longer hold the majority: As of 2023, for the first time since the U.S. has collected such data, “half of all migrants who cross the border now come from elsewhere globally.”

Some countries that previously sent negligible numbers of migrants to the U.S. border have seen staggering increases. “In fiscal 2019, the total number of people from the northwest African nation of Mauritania apprehended at the border was 20. Four years later, that number was 15,260. For migrants from Turkey, the number went from 60 to 15,430.”

“Fundamentally, our system is not equipped to deal with migration as it exists now, not just this year and last year and the year before, but for years preceding us,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview with NBC News. “We have a system that was last modified in 1996. We’re in 2024 now. The world has changed.” And for saying that, he’s being impeached!

The U.S. only has the capacity to deport people quickly and in large numbers to Mexico and the Northern Triangle, according to a senior CBP official who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. Deportations are expensive and logistically challenging — they require airplanes, personnel and time to arrange for travel documents, and so on — and there is no such infrastructure in place, the official said, to deport people en masse to Africa, Asia or even South America.

Like money, politics... as ever... is of concen.

“Democrats are preparing an aggressive new immigration strategy months after Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill aimed at easing record-high illegal crossings.” (NBC, Attachment Ten)

“A Department of Homeland Security official with knowledge of the discussions said the White House would most likely invoke power reserved for the president in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president discretion over who is admitted into the U.S.

“Using that authority, Customs and Border Protection would be directed to block the entry of migrants crossing over from Mexico if daily border crossings passed a certain threshold. The tactic is similar to a provision of the bipartisan border security bill from February,”... a bill, again, killed by Republicans.

Presidents Joe and Andy... the former remaining under “intense political pressure from all sides to address the impact of surging border crossings ahead of (his) presidential election this year” while the latter rides or sails off into a Baja or Acapulco sunset in advance of the two lady lucha libre June second – but still hoping for a deal that will seal the deal for Sheinbaum... concluded their April 28^th conversation (above) by agreeing upon a joint statement promoting “concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights.” (New York Times, 4/29, Attachment Eleven)

A “senior administration official” told the times that these concrete measures might include “stronger enforcement measures to prevent railways, buses and airports from being used for illegal border crossing and more flights taking migrants back to their home countries,” – again, given the likelihood of cost overruns as more and more migrants from more and more distant “home countries” are joining the Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans at border encampments. “(E)ven some of the president’s most fervent supporters in liberal cities are demanding that he do something to stanch the flow of migrants...” as some activists and other administration officials believe Mr. Biden “is nearing a decision to announce an executive action that could impose dramatic new limits on asylum seekers” – taking a page from the old playbook of Trump and Stephen Miller, despite apprehensions at the border fallng from 250,000 in December to 140,000 in February and 137,000 in March (above and Attachment Eight).

Even the dropoff hasn’t had much effect on the way that American voters now view and, in November, will likely judge Biden’s immigration policies.

According to a Pew research poll (conducted in January, just as the numbers were starting to drop off), “80% say the U.S. government is doing a bad job handling the migrant influx” as the issue has “strained government resources, divided Congress and emerged as a contentious issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.” (See Attachment Twelve for particulars, charts and graphs.)

Just 18% of the Pewtie-poll respondents said the U.S. government was “doing a good job dealing with the large number of migrants at the border, while 80% (89% of Republicans) say it is doing a bad job, including 45% who say it is doing a very bad job.”

A Texas poll taken by the Texas Politics Project at U.T. Austin shows that the state’s voters approve of Gov. Gret Abbott’s policies which a critique from the Center for Immigration Studies (May 3^rd, Attachment Thirteen) includes erecting border barriers at the Rio Grande (Trump’s great, big, beautiful wall), busing migrants to northern cities, criminalizing illegal entries into the state, and suing the administration over the president’s border policies.

Immigration, which thirteen percent called the gravest problem facing America, trailed only inflation (at 16%) and led “the economy” (10%) and “border security” (another nine percent, making immigration and border issues “the biggest problem facing the country by 22 percent of respondents.” Sub-categories included national security, crime and effects of migrants on the economy and culture.

“The “root causes” idea came in dead last, at 5 percent.”

Other scholars, statisticians and poll-scrutinizers... noting that migrations slow down in winter only to shoot up come spring and summer may be concerned by the anemic Mexican economy, which grew only 0.2% in the first quarter of 2024.

There is a sprinkling of good news among the bad. As average temperatures soar around the world and wildfires rage across the Americas, “in Mexico, where more than a quarter of the country suffers from drought, the number of wildfires has remained steady since 2012.” (GUK, May 1^st, Attachment Fifteen) Despite an overall decline in agricultural revenues, the timber industry remains strong and entrepreneurs are looking into marketing other products... even the 113 different kinds of wild edible mushrooms identified in the regions in and around Ixtlán.

Carlos Castaneda must be grinning in his grave!

But a U.S. News/Reuters survey (April 29^th, Attachment Sixteen) disputed even the weak figures cited by El Pais... “ten financial institutions” finding that Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew only 0.1% in the quarter, the same rate as in the previous quarter, and the lowest since the third quarter of 2021, seasonally adjusted figures showed.

And as cartel crime continues to escalate... now gripping the hitherto secure tourist industry with the carjacking and murder of an American and two Australians in Enseńada... CBS is further deterring tourists and impelling migration with disclosures of clandestine burial pits and crematoria where the Mexicans that Mexico doesn’t want have been hidden away from inquiring foreign minds.

Volunteer searchers told the American network they have found a clandestine crematorium on the edge of Mexico City, the latest grim discovery in a nation where more than 100,000 people are listed as officially missing. The cartels and other organized crime gangs often use drums filled with diesel or caustic substances to burn or dissolve bodies to leave no trace — but up to now, there has been little evidence of that in Mexico City; attributable, some say “to the city's dense population, notoriously snarled traffic, extensive security camera network and large police force.” (Attachment Seventeen)

And as attacks and assaults on American installations and civilians escalate and reports of kidnappings and murders by “coyotes” similarly escalate, President Obrador has sent six hundred troops to the border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon; a region formerly dominated by the Zetas drug cartel, which was known for its violent tactics.

“While the Zetas' influence has waned due to leadership arrests, factions like the Northeast cartel and Zetas Old School remain active, and the border area is now contested by splinter and rival groups,” an international security expert told Border Report, an outlet which reports on news about the Mexico-U.S. border. (Newsweek, Attachment Eighteen)

These recent developments have impacted elections in both countries as Obrador and his Morena party has been attacked for the Presidnt’s "hugs, not bullets" policy for dealing with cartels, which involves avoiding confrontations with them and instead seeking to address the socioeconomic roots of organized crime.

However, his apparent attempts to humanize the cartels have sometimes stoked controversy, Newsweek added just as cartel killers were robbing and slaughtering the three tourists—last week he described the country's cartels and gangs as essentially "respectful people" who "respect the citizenry" and mostly kill one another.

Obrador last month refused to fight drug cartels on U.S. orders as part of what he called a "Mexico First" policy, explaining, "We are not going to act as police officers for any foreign government." (AP News Attachment Nineteen)

Another criminal facet has complicated the picture... the growing number of states criminalizing abortion, surrogate parenthood and... in the pipeline... contraception. The proposal by Candidate Trum to “monitor” pregnant women at the Federal level has been seen, as some, to be the beginnings of both a Federal criminalization or supportive of proposed legislation making it a crime of a woman to travel from a pro-life to pro-choice state for the procedure.

This has compelled pregnant women to not only flee their state of residence, but the entired United States. Most go nearby, with Mexico and the Caribbean being destinations of choice... the year before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled the criminalization of abortion by the northern state of Coahuila unconstitutional. This decision set a precedent that led to decriminalization at the federal level in 2023.

Clinics in Mexico do not require proof of residency, so solid numbers about who they are treating are hard to come by. But providers in Mexico report they have been seeing more Americans (The Conversation, May 1, Attachment Twenty) and the founder of the Guanajuato-based Las Libres, or The Free Ones estimated that her organization had sent abortion pills to approximately 20,000 women in the U.S. since the Dobbs decision.

Manufacturers, like abortionists, are enjoying a Mexican revival as a consequence of rising wages and production costs in China, as well as both political and public antipathy to imports from the ChiComs.

CNN calls the phenomenon “nearshoring”, which is when companies bring production facilities closer to home markets. As nearshoring continues and global supply chains are reorganized, Mexico’s manufacturing sector has an opportunity for long-term success, according to Alberto Ramos, head of Latin American economics research at Goldman Sachs, who told CNN that, whereas Mexico and China have been competing for the US manufacturing market for years, the shifting US-China relationship, means that Mexico looks poised to pull ahead.

“Mexico surpassed China as the top exporter to the US in 2023,” CNN noted (April 28, Attachment Twenty One). Those exports were driven by manufacturing, which comprises 40% of Mexico’s economy, according to Morgan Stanley.

US imports from Mexico continued to increase in February, according to April 4 trade data released by the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, Chinese exports to the US were down 20% in 2023, compared to 2022.

Cars, for one example, are a major export for Mexico, as are car parts for repairs and/or American production.

Mexico is a global hub for car factories, hosting plants from major companies operating in the US, including General Motors, Ford, Stellantis and nearly a dozen more. “Free trade agreements like the USMCA mean companies in the US, Mexico and Canada face fewer barriers moving, selling and buying parts across North America.”

Moreover, as November approaches, President Biden “told steelworkers in Pittsburgh recently that the US government should consider tripling tariffs on Chinese steel. And Trump has proposed a potential 60% tariff on Chinese goods if he returns to the presidency.”

USMCA has also altered the dialectic on goods coming into, as well as out of, Mexico, The South China Morning Post (April 30, Attachment Twenty Two) has reported that tariff hikes, “levying 5 to 50 per cent in additional import costs, have kicked in for 544 products entering Mexico. The higher rates only apply to countries without free trade pacts with the Latin American country, which includes China.”

Affected products include steel, aluminium, textiles, clothing, musical instruments and furniture.

So, as Americans enjoy Cinco Mayo (and Mexicans enjoy marketing cars, musical instruments and tequila to the Yankees), 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.

The focus on drinking and eating has 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. (AP News, May 4^th, Attachment Twenty Three)

“By the 1980s, corporations and beer companies had co-opted the day to reach the growing U.S. Hispanic market,” Axios (Attachment Twenty Four) reported… adding that: "Cinco de Mayo is a day to celebrate the resilience, culture, and heritage of generations of Mexican Americans," President Biden posted on X last year.

“Cinco de Mayo may be boozier than New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day,” Fortune reported a survey findings. (Attachment Twenty Five)

Some party-time Attachments included...

President Joe and Jill

Jared and Ivanka (but not Donald)

Our Lesson: April Twenty Ninth through May Fifth, 2024

Monday, April 29, 2024

Dow: 38,386.09

Hamas releases more hostage videos as pressures mount on President Joe and Israeli PM Bibi – squeezed between his hard right and families who say “put the lives of the hostages first.” Bombings and starvation continue in Gaza; well-fed, wealthy students at elite universities take up the Islamist cause, ordinary students worry about their graduation parties, many lost their high school celebrations to the plague. Ramblin’ man Blinken cooks up yet another hostages for ceasefire deal he promises will be “generous”.

The week begins with bad weather, especially in the Midwest where tornadoes, floods and hail crash down on Sulphur, OK while DC warms up to 90°. Bird flu is spreading to cattle and dolphins; humans cope with new epidemics of previously extincted measles.

Taking a day off from Stormy Court to campaign, fundraise and eat, former President Trump is blindsided by a new menace... one of his top VP prospects, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) proudly declaims that she shot an “untrainable” puppy – more or less wiping out her prospects.

In Charlotte, NC, eight cops and Federal marshals are shot by a sniper barricaded in a house – four die and the usual suspects on crime, guns and mental illness raise their voices.

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Dow: 37,818.92

Stormy trial resumes with lotsa lawyers on the stand... explaining Michael Cohen’s banking machinations. Trump, stuck in the freezing courtroom, complains that the trial is all about “bookkeeping; you have a lawyer and... he’s a lawyer.” Judge Marchan fines him $9,000 and says he may jail him if he keeps insulting the witnesses; the defendant/candidate, under his politician’s cap says that the government should “monitor” pregnant women in red, abortion ban states, to be sure they don’t sneak off and kill their babies.

The FCC holds its tongue on TikTok but fines Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T for collecting data on Americans and reselling them on the dark web to Russian criminal gangs and other “bad actors”. With the 2024 EGOs over, good actors compete for Tonys... some of the nominees are famous (Eddie Redmayne, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Lange) and 73 year old Dorian Harewood gets his first nod, after fifty years’ futility, for “The Notebook”.

Book of the month is Frank Bruni’s “Age of Grievance” wherein he calls much of the political, economic and social discourse “noise” and adds: “We confuse zeal with values, anger with conviction.”

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Dow: 37,903.29

It’s May Day so, whether in honor of Russia despite rejecting Communism or China, Djonald UnConvicted enjoys a break from court while the talking heads squawk and suckers gawk as peripheroids spread gossip and The Man elaborates on his new “Mommy Monitor” proposals.

Abortion fighters win one, lose one. Florida’s six week and jail edict goes into effect and the preggers are fleeing, but with the rest of the Southeast deep red, they’ll have to go to Mexico. But the Arizona legislature decides that adhering to a law from 1864 creates bad PR, so they repeal it.

Happy Joe doesn’t exactly decriminalize the wicked weed, but he de-felonizes it from Class One (heroin. LSD) to Class Three... hoping that this will get him back the youth vote he’s been bumbling and stumbling away. Around the rich kids’ colleges, politicians roar that “outside agitators” (not the precious little heirs to flatulence and fortune) are seeking to create “discomfort and discord” and call in the cops to clear out their little tent cities from Columbia to UCLA.

WalMart closes its Urgent Medical Care clinics in poor, rural areas... leaving the MAGAproles to just go ahead and die. People whom nobody wants...

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Dow: 38,226,66

Hamas rejects Blinky’s “generous” deal, reiterating that their only solution is a Final Solution for the Jews. This inspires Bibi to ramp up plans to invade Rafah and kill more Palestinians. Most Joneses shrug... these people are never going to change, they say.

Also espousing rejectionism, Djonald UnChanged says that HE will not accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses. (The parallels between the campus riots, the One Six and what will happen in 2025 are growing clearer.) Between listening to lawyers in the Stormy studio, he finds time to expound on his monitor and incarcerate women, causing queasy RINOs to counsel: “First, you have to get elected.”

In bridgy news, Norwalk repairpersons start working on burned out I-95 overpass, retrievers finally pull the remains of the fifth victim out of the Baltimore wreckage and the fallen Boeing slide washes up on the shore... conincidentally in front of the beach home of one of the lawyers suing the company.

Friday, May 3, 2024

Dow: 38,765.78

Stormy storms continue battering the MidWest with tornadoes, hail and flooding; Stormy trial resumes with testimony by her attorney Keith Davidson, who proffers proof that Michael Cohen paid her off. Cohen also says that Djonald UnMasked resenting shelling out the hush money, so he had to front the $130,000 himself and submit a bill, which designation as “legal expenses” constitutes the fraud of the fraud.

Lone wolves ramming college protestors explained in terms of “mental health” while frat bros re-raise the American flag pulled down by liberals. Polls say America is doing “too much to help Israel” as bipartisan politicians seeking Jewish votes fend off left and right wing neo-Nazis.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) indicted for $600,000 fraud in collusion with Mexican and Azerbaijani banks.

After settling her conservator lawsuit, Brittney Spears twists her ankle, then accuses tabloids of filching her likeness with “bespoke AI” to pretend to give interviews and denounce things and people. President Joe names 19 Medal of Freedom winners including Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Medgar Evers (but Britney is not among them).

Saturday, May 4, 2024

Dow: Closed

May the Fourth be with yoy... it’s Star Wars Day. Boeing, despite recent catastrophes and near-catastrophes is hoping to shoot Americans into space and USAF is installing AI on fighter jets for pilotless war.

College riots escalate to gunfire as cop discharges with his “non-dominant hand” but doesn’t hit anybody as 70 liberal Democratic Congressthings oppose anti-anti-Semite resolution.

In courtrooms and press conferences, Rep. Cuellar, denying corruption, says he’ll run for re-election while Hope Hicks calls Trump’s “Access Hollywood” groping video a turning point and authorities charge two juveniles with dumping party garbage overboard after their Florida video goes viral. Trump also scarpers to Florida for a big bux fundraiser and calls for Prosecutor Jack Smith to be prosecuted for prosecuting the Ex...

Sunday, May 5, 2024

Dow: Closed

...while MTG takes more steps towards ousting Speaker Mike who now needs the support of Democrats to get anything done and Congressman Mike Lee (R-Ut) denounces aid to Israel and Ukraine as liberal warmongers. But Tom Cotton (R-Ar) says he supports Johnson... and Israel.

Round and round the Sunday talkshows: Senate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) says that since Roe v. Wade fell, democracy can also fall. (60 Minutes) Mayor Adams says free speech protects democracy but violence has to be stopped. Rep. Jamaal Bowman disagrees, saying police are going too far/ A Kent State ahead?

“This Week” roundtablers decry extremists who hand out leaflets saying “Death to Amrica”. Polls are cropping up as numerous as cicadas... Lee predicts Trump will win because students are preparing guillotines to decapitate the Jews while Bidenauts say that 20% of Team MAGA will desert or just stay home if their hero is convicted. Support for RFK Junior is up to twelve percent and rising.

The Dow was up, up, up but the Don was down again. The reason... higher unemployment, bad for workers but good for the Fed which, believing it will halt or at least slow inflation, leaves interest rates unchanged. (Fewer and fewer Americans are able to buy homes, so they rent and... because rents are rising too, go live on the street. State and local governments, afraid and ashamed of being embarrassed, are passing more laws to lock them up... or kill them. Meanwhile, public protest is turning mean with Gen. Z embracing anti-Semitism while both Jews and Muslims are acting badly, not to mention the usual Russians, Chinese, Iranians etc. Polls show many voters despise both major party candidates which is why RFK Junior tops 10% even though he’s nuttier than a contaminated pack o’goobers... goofier, even, than Trump.

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)

Negative/harmful indices in RED. See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES		(60%)
CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS by PCTG.			SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 [revsd. 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE	NEXT	LAST WEEK	THIS WEEK	RESULTS by STATISTIC.
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	4/29/24	+0.13%	6/24	1,501.89	1,503.91	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 29.79 nc .83
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	4/29/24	+0.033%	5/13/24	669.95	670.17	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 39,492
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	4/29/24	+2.56%	6/24	600.31	584.92	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/ 3.8 3.9
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.16%	5/13/24	236.23	235.85	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 6,757 768
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.09%	5/13/24	250.27	250.05	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 12,768 779
Workforce Participation Number Percent	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.343% +0.0014%	5/13/24	302.27	302.27	In 161,840 853 Out 100,082 088 Total: 261,922 941 http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 61.79
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	4/29/24	+0.32%	5/24	151.43	151.43	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.70
OUTGO	(15%)
Total Inflation	7%	1050	4/24	+0.4%	5/24	962.47	962.47	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.4 nc
Food	2%	300	4/24	+0.1%	5/24	273.80	273.80	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1
Gasoline	2%	300	4/24	+1.7%	5/24	233.15	233.15	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +1.7
Medical Costs	2%	300	4/24	+0.5%	5/24	290.49	290.49	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.6
Shelter	2%	300	4/24	+0.4%	5/24	264.72	264.72	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.4
WEALTH
*Dow* Jones Index	2%	300	4/29/24	+1.38%	5/13/24	320.75	325.16	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 38,239.61 765.78
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	4/29/24	-4.34% +1.42%	6/24	142.13 277.27	135.96 281.21	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M): 4.38 4.19 Valuations (K): 384.5 393.5
Debt (Personal)	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.08%	5/13/24	264.24	264.02	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 75,925 958
GOVERNMENT	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.25%	5/13/24	408.56	409.58	debtclock.org/ 4,807 819
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	4/29/24	=1.94%	5/13/24	305.29	311.22	debtclock.org/ 6,766 637
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	4/29/24	+0.058%	5/13/24	387.70	387.48	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 34,695 715
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	4/29/24	+0.11%	5/13/24	397.49	397.06	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 99,895 100,004

TRADE	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	4/29/24	+0.16%	5/13/24	298.12	297.65	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 8,280 293
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	4/29/24	-2.05%	6/24	163.34	159.99	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 263.0 257.6
Imports (in billions))	1%	150	4/29/24	-1.50%	6/24	165.05	167.52	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 331.9 327.0
Trade Surplus/Deficit (blns.)	1%	150	4/29/24	+0.72%	6/24	305.05	302.85	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 68.9 69.4

SOCIAL INDICES		(40%)
ACTS of MAN	(12%)
World Affairs	3%	450	4/29/24	-0.1%	5/13/24	448.02	447.57	As Japanese economy craters, Elon Musk goes to China seeking profits to be made... somehow. Mixed news for Brazil... 75 die in record flooding but, at Copacabana Beach, Madonna gives a free concert attended by 1.5 million..
War and terrorism	2%	300	4/29/24	-0.3%	5/13/24	285.95	285.09	SecState Blinken scurries to and fro trying to deliver a “Generous” deal but Netanyahu says he’ll invade Rafah anyway and Hamas rejects overture as Gaza garbage piles up, prompted plagues. College students continue to riot, Israel bans Al Jazeera. Russia celebrates advances in Ukraine battleb
Politics	3%	450	4/29/24	-0.1%	5/13/24	478.10	477.62	President Joe de- (but not un-) criminalizes weed as Trump travels between Florida fundraisers and Stormy trial in Gotham (see last week’s Lesson) - saying he won’t call for violence in 2024... if he wins. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) blows up her Veep chances by shooting an “untrainable” puppy
Economics	3%	450	4/29/24	+0.2%	5/13/24	442.80	443.69	IRS hiring more agents to bust bad billionaires. FTC opens prosecution of “monopolous” Amazon. FCC sends TikTok sell or lose bill to Senate. FED leaves interest rate unchanged, igniting Dow splurge. President Joe denounces “trickle downs” while President Trump denounces “Biden stagflation”. Sony launches takeover bid for Paramount. Five Twenty One clothing chain goes bankrupt, as does the National Transplant foundation, stiffing dying Americans impoverished by medical bills. Book-of-the-Week’s Frank Bruni (“Culture of Grievance”) says Americans “confuse zeal with values, anger with conviction”. Convicted: Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, once the world’s largest crypto company.
Crime	1%	150	4/29/24	-0.2%	5/13/24	236.14	235.67	Eight cops and marshals shot, four killed in Charlotte standoff.. Ten civilians shot at Miami party. 14 year old school shooter shot in Wisconsin. L.A. cops declare war on flash mob felons as they start targeting gun shops. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) indicted for fraud.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	4/29/24	-0.1%	5/13/24	386.42	386.03	The week begins with floods, hail and Texas tornadoes and ends with... floods, hail and tornadoes. Sulphur, OK and Turkey, TX hard hit. And hot hot heat in the East. Largest outbreak of noisy cicadas since 1803 (but they’re good to eat, when fried.
Disasters	3%	450	4/29/24	-0.2%	5/13/24	418.83	419.67	Fallen Delta passenger slide washes up at beachfront home of anti-Boeing lawyer. Body of fifth and final Baltimore bridge victim recovered and repairers re-open I-95 in Norwalk, CT after fire. A ways north, heroic Hartford, CT barbers save little girl running into traffic. Restorers restoring Notre Dame after five years and keep working on the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX		(15%)
Science, Tech, Education	4%	600	4/29/24	-0.1%	5/13/24	635.27	634.63	USAF producing new (Boeing) pilotless fighter jet that decode ambient conditions are in the works; ASA nerds work to bring social media to space as Congress moves to ban TikTok and FCC fines Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile for selling customer data to the dark web so Russian hackers can steal their identities and money. Police clear out college campus “Little Gazas” and NYC Mayor Adams blames “outside agitators” for causing “discomfort and discord”.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	4/29/24	+0.1%	5/13/24	647.47	648.12	Florida’s six-week abortion ban takes effect but Arizona legislators overturn 1864 law... to the relief of women and most Republicans. Djonald UnMenstruating says state governments should “monitor” preggers to prevent them from escaping to blue states or foreign countries to kill their babies.
Health	4%	600	4/29/24	+0.1%	5/13/24	465.27	465.74	With attention diverted by bird/cow,dolphin/human flu, measles is making a comeback. King Charles returns to public life after cancer diagnosis. WalMart closes its Urgent Care Clinics, leaving blue state poor and red state rurals to die in agony. Ford recalls 243,000 Mavericks with rogue taillights. Indonesian orang-utan cures wound with spit up leaves – doctors and drug carels race to synthesize. Helle Barry comes out in support of menstruation (under attack from the Church Police).
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	4/29/24	-0.1%	5/13/24	466.94	466.47	At Stormy trial, Judge Marchan fines Djonald UnSilenced for removing his gag, Hope Hicks calls Access Hollywood video a turning point, Israel calls Al Jazeera a pimp for Hamas and bans it.
CULTURAL and MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS			(6%)
Cultural Incidents	3%	450	4/29/24	+0.2%	5/13/24	528.27	529.33	In busy sports week, NBA playoffs down to Elite Eight, Caitlin Clark makes scores 21 in WNBA (but Indiana loses), Trainer Kenneth McPeek wins Derby Weekend double with filly Thorpedo Anna at Friday’s Oaks, then Mystik Dan by a nose for the roses; Kyle Larson wins NASCAR by even closer nose. EGO done, Tony nominees include good actors Eddie Redmayne, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Lang...
Misc. Incidents	3%	450	4/29/24	+0.2%	5/13/24	512.06	513.08	Bad actor tourist kicks buffalo at Yellowstone. Nice chiropractor fixes giraffe’s bad neck. Generous Chinese loan two healthy pandas to San Diego Zoo. With Notre Dame cathedral nearing reconstruction and renovations begin on the Queen Mary (docked in Long Beach, DA) RIP “Rebel Rouser” Duane Eddy, Tim Leary patron Peggy Mellon Hitchcock, second Boeing whistleblower Josh Dean. Murdered?

The Don Jones Index for the week of April 29th through May 5, 2024 was DOWN 7.96 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 USA TODAY

HOW MEXICO CELEBRATES CINCO DE MAYO

By Alexa Juliana Ard

The Battle of Puebla – Mexico's victory over France on May 5, 1862 – is often celebrated and remembered with a reenactment in which a small army of Mexican patriots and peasants were victorious over a French force. Although in 1863 France finally took the Mexican capital and installed a five-year regime led by Emperor Maximilian, the Battle of Puebla's importance lies in that it strengthened the Mexican spirit after it prevented French Emperor Napoleon III from conquering the country.

ATTACHMENT TWO – FROM the GUARDIAN U.K.

MEGADROUGHT FORCES END TO SUGARCANE FARMING IN PARCHED TEXAS BORDERLAND

The state’s last sugar processing mill closed because there’s just not enough water in the Rio Grande to between the US and Mexico

By Lela Nargi Tue 30 Apr 2024 07.00 EDT

Tudor Uhlhorn has been too busy auctioning off agricultural equipment to grieve the “death” of Texas’s last sugar mill.

“I’m as sad as anyone else,” said the chairman of the board of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers cooperative, which owns the now-shuttered mill in Santa Rosa, a small town about 40 miles from Brownsville. “I just haven’t had a whole lot of time to mourn.”

In February, the cooperative announced that it would close its 50-year-old sugarcane processing mill, the last remaining in the state, by the end of this spring. It didn’t even make it to the end of the season, with most workers employed until 29 April. Ongoing megadrought meant there wasn’t enough water to irrigate co-op members’ 34,000 acres of sugarcane, and that effectively puts an end to sugarcane farming in the south Texas borderlands.

Co-op leadership blame this on ongoing shortages related to a US water-sharing agreement that splits Rio Grande River water with Mexico. If only Mexico had released water from its reservoirs to American farmers as decreed by a 1944 treaty, Uhlhorn told the Guardian, sugarcane might have been saved. Phone calls and emails to various Mexican consulates were not returned.

But sugarcane’s demise in Texas is indicative of many agricultural areas’ water woes. Increasingly dry farms find themselves vying with other farms, cities, industries and mining operations for dwindling resources. In 2022, drought decimated Texas cotton and forced California growers to idle half their rice fields. Water disputes are also on the rise as decreased flows in the Colorado River and other vital waterways pit state against state, states against native nations and farmers against municipalities.

“That story is playing out all across the western US,” said Maurice Hall, senior adviser on climate-resilient water systems at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). And irrigated agriculture, “which uses the dominant part of our managed water supply in most of the arid and semi-arid western US, is right in the middle of it”. Sugarcane may be the first irrigated crop to go under in the lower Rio Grande. But it probably won’t be the last.

By early March, the mill had harvested the last sugarcane crops from about 100 area producers, including from the 7,000-acre farm Travis Johnson works with his uncle in Lyford, Texas. His family has farmed this land for 100 years, but sugarcane – a lucrative crop thanks to government subsidies – was a new addition about 20 years ago.

As the lower Rio Grande’s notoriously fierce winds gusted through his phone, Johnson sounded resigned to the end of his family farm’s sugarcane era. For the near future, he’ll be growing more of the cotton, corn and grains that fill out the rest of his acreage. “It was nice to have another crop we could rely on,” he said. “Sugarcane was something that we could harvest and get money for during a time when we were spending money on our other crops.”

Though sugarcane was a reliable cash crop, it is also a water hog. In a place like the lower Rio Grande, where average rainfall is 29 inches or less a year, sugarcane requires up to 50 inches of water a year. It cannot grow here without irrigation. The co-op’s sugar mill churned out 60,000 tons of molasses and 160,000 tons of raw sugar annually, and that’s also a water-heavy business.

“So many of the steps along that process require a massive amount of water,” starting with washing cane when it comes in from the field, said journalist Celeste Headlee, whose Big Sugar podcast explored Florida’s exploitative sugar industry. (The bulk of US sugarcane is commercially in only two other states, Florida and Louisiana; less water-intensive sugar beets are grown in cooler states like Minnesota and North Dakota).

Per the 1944 treaty, Mexico is obligated to deliver 1.75m acre-feet of water to the US in any given five-year cycle (the current cycle ends in October 2025).

Lack of water caused Texas growers to plow under thousands of acres of sugarcane during the last growing season. “So now [the farmers are] down to 10,000 acres and we’re no longer viable,” explained Uhlhorn about the decision to end production. “Even if we had the best yields ever, with our fixed costs, the mill would have lost millions of dollars.”

The Texas A&M agricultural economist Luis Ribera said: “It’s not that Mexico is holding the water because they are bad neighbors. They’re using it” because drought has plagued both sides of the border. As David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, elaborated, the entire Rio Grande [Valley] faces these challenges “from source to sea. Users on both sides of the border are going to have to define water efficiencies and conservation strategies to mitigate these pressures.” In other words, said Travis Johnson, the mill closure “is probably going to be a wake-up call for farmers in our area, whenever we do get water again, to try to conserve it as much as possible”.

In the immediate post-closure period, Uhlhorn and the cooperative members are selling off equipment to settle debts and trying to find replacement jobs for mill staff at places like SpaceX and the Brownsville Ship Channel. The facility employed 100 full-time workers and supported another 300 part-time laborers. The cooperative also reportedly shipped all remaining sugar from its warehouses more than 600 miles away to the Domino refinery in Chalmette, Louisiana, one of the hemisphere’s largest sugar processors.

The Santa Rosa sugar mill was a vital cog in an industry that generated an estimated $100m annual in economic impact from four counties in the lower Rio Grande. The loss of jobs and community revenue might well extend to the valley’s $200m citrus industry, which also is struggling to meet its water needs and survive.

“I wish I could tell you we had all the answers and we were geniuses, and we were going to avoid what happened to the sugar mill. But I can’t,” said Dale Murden, a grapefruit and cattle farmer. “Water going into the spring and summer is as low as it’s ever been, and some water districts have already notified customers they’re out [of water] for the year. Without rains and inflows and cooperation from Mexico, we are in serious trouble.”

The International Boundary and Water Commission, which is responsible for applying the 1944 treaty, began negotiating a new provision to it – called a “minute” – in 2023, with the aim of “bringing predictability and reliability to Rio Grande deliveries to users in both countries”, a spokesperson wrote in an email.

Vanessa Puig-Williams, EDF’s Texas water program director, said that if the new minute focuses on the science of how much water is actually available on both sides of the border, that would be an opportunity “to think more innovatively and creatively about how we can conserve some of those water rights”.

Either way, Michel said farmers must adjust to a thirstier reality. That might include using recycled water and tools like moisture sensors, finding better irrigation techniques and planting more drought-resistant crop varieties. And they may have to reconcile themselves to the fact “you won’t be able to do [certain things] any more just because there isn’t water”.

Chelsea Fisher, a University of South Carolina anthropologist who studies environmental justice conflicts, said lessons relevant to the current water crisis can be found throughout agricultural history. “Something that you notice across societies that manage to farm sustainably for at least several centuries is that they’re emulating relationships that already exist in nature – whether that means copying the way that wetlands recycle nutrients, whether it’s dryland farming that is very much in sync with the ways that water naturally gathers in certain places,” she said.

In fact, Johnson plans to stop growing crops that require irrigation. Instead, he’ll focus only on those that can be grown with naturally available moisture. “I don’t think [the water situation] just amazingly gets better overnight,” he said.

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Hall said that the water crisis was pushing growers to ask: “What is the future that we want? And how do we move toward that future, recognizing with a clear-eyed view what the real hydrology is? … People want to continue doing what they’ve been doing. But at some point, undesirable things are going to happen. Things like sugarcane and industries and whole communities going away. Farmers who are willing to listen to what the science is telling us is going to happen, and to think about how we can do things differently: that is where the real innovation at scale is going to happen.”

Reporting for this piece was supported by a media fellowship from the Nova Institute for Health

ATTACHMENT THREE – FROM the ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO’S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES DISCUSS SOCIAL SPENDING, CLIMATE CHANGE IN 2ND DEBATE

Updated 1:08 AM EDT, April 29, 2024

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s leading presidential candidate repeatedly touted the social programs of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and walked a fine line between supporting the national oil company and promising a clean energy transition in the second debate Sunday night ahead of the June 2 election.

Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum of the president’s Morena party continues to hold a healthy lead over Xóchitl Gálvez of a coalition of opposition of parties and Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the small Citizen Movement party.

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She called the model of government that he started and she has committed to continuing “humanist, an honest model, protector of our patrimony, with better salaries, with better pensions, without raising taxes.”

Even Gálvez, Sheinbaum’s most serious competitor, stressed that she, too, would maintain the popular, but costly programs if elected. The former senator and tech entrepreneur reminded voters that she knew poverty growing up and was able advance in part because of a scholarship.

“I am a woman who comes from below, who knows poverty and knows how poverty hurts and the time that it steals from you,” Gálvez said.

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Álvarez Máynez, a former congressman, promoted his own initiatives to reduce Mexicans’ work week from six to five days, provide paternity leave and increase vacation. He said that despite the social spending of the current administration, young children receive a fraction of what they should because “they don’t vote.”

As president, she said, she would work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help Mexico adapt to climate change. But she also defended López Obrador’s construction of a huge new oil refinery that she said would help Mexico reduce its gasoline imports. She warned that Gálvez would try to privatize the deeply indebted state oil company, known as Pemex.

Gálvez said the private sector would be critical in Mexico’s clean energy transition. She added that Mexico was losing foreign investment opportunities because foreign companies require access to clean electricity produced with renewables. She promised to make Pemex an efficient company, something successive administrations from various parties have failed to do.

Álvarez Máynez said that Mexico remains overly dependent on fossil fuels and that the country’s future is in wind and solar power. He promised to put solar panels on all schools and health centers.

Gálvez once again was the aggressor in the debate, trying repeatedly to paint Sheinbaum as untrustworthy. This time she took to holding up a variety of placards while Sheinbaum spoke calling her a liar. Sheinbaum, in turn, took to calling Gálvez “the corrupt one.”

ATTACHMENT FOUR – FROM REUTERS

MEXICO'S PRESIDENTIAL FRONTRUNNER SHEINBAUM WIDENS LEAD IN APRIL POLL

By Reuters April 24, 2024 10:42 AM EDTUpdated 7 days ago

MEXICO CITY, April 24 (Reuters) - Former Mexico City mayor and ruling party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum increased her lead in the race for the presidency, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday, some 40 days before the election on June 2.

An April 10-13 poll of 1,600 Mexicans by Mitofsky Tendencias for newspaper El Economista gave Sheinbaum, who represents the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), 51.4% support.

Sheinbaum's closest rival is Xochitl Galvez, the candidate representing a three-party opposition coalition of ideologically diverse parties, with an estimated 26.7% of the vote.

A third candidate from the smaller Citizen's Movement opposition party, Jorge Alvarez Maynez, received 9.3% in the poll. Another 12.6% did not declare their preferences.

Sheinbaum's lead over Galvez increased from a month ago, when she received 50.5%, Galvez 28.8% and Alvarez Maynez 4.8%.

Mexicans are set to pick a successor to popular President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who by law is limited to one six-year term, as well as scores of other elected positions across the country.

The poll also showed that 51% said it would be best for Mexico, at this point in time, for MORENA to continue as ruling party.

If she wins the June 2 election, Sheinbaum, a scientist, will be the nation's first female president and remain in office until 2030.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – FROM the WASHINGTON POST

A QUIETER BORDER EASES PRESSURE ON BIDEN, WITH A HAND FROM MEXICO

By Nick Miroff April 30, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

Comment272

SAN DIEGO — Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border are down more than 40 percent since December and have remained relatively stable through the first four months of 2024, bringing a modest reprieve for President Biden on an issue regarded as a liability to his reelection campaign.

Crossings often increase sharply during early spring, but that did not happen for the first time since Biden took office.

In April, U.S. border agents have encountered about 130,000 migrants who entered illegally from Mexico, a level that is high by historical standards but lower than February and March, according to the latest U.S. enforcement data obtained by The Washington Post.

Migration patterns are shifting from Texas west toward Arizona and California, making the stretch of rocky desert a primary target for migrant crossings.

U.S. officials say a crackdown on migrants by the Mexican government is the biggest factor. Using military patrols and highway checkpoints, Mexican authorities have been intercepting roughly 8,000 U.S.-bound migrants per day, according to officials in both countries.

Mexico launched its campaign at the behest of U.S. officials after illegal crossings soared in December to nearly 250,000, an all-time high, further eroding Biden’s poll ratings on border security.

Former president Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee for the November election, continues to criticize Biden’s immigration record at campaign rallies, but the relative calm along the border has eased some of the pressure on the president to announce harsher enforcement measures, which could anger some Democrats.

Crossings typically increase during spring when seasonal hiring picks up in the United States. The only other time this century that crossings declined during the springtime months was 2017, after Trump took office promising to deport millions, said Adam Isacson, a border security analyst who tracks monthly enforcement data at the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C.-based advocacy group.

“This spring has been an anomaly,” Isacson said. “It’s gotten much, much harder for migrants to make it to the U.S. border.”

U.S. border officials say the next several weeks will be a key test, because May has often been a peak month for illegal entries. The number of migrants stopped by Mexican authorities in recent months far exceeds the number Mexico has deported, indicating there may be hundreds of thousands biding time until the crackdown fades.

“The real question is when does the dam burst in Mexico?” Isacson said.

Signs of a potential upswing are already evident in the San Diego area, where smugglers have been sending more and more groups of migrants from South America and Asia to cross through the mountains. In recent weeks, the San Diego sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has surpassed others in Arizona and Texas to become the busiest along the southern border for the first time since 1997.

The decline in crossings this spring has been pronounced in Texas, where illegal entries are down about 50 percent. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has claimed that his state-run crackdown, Operation Lone Star, is redirecting smugglers to easier routes farther west. Biden officials point to other explanations, noting that the Mexican states opposite the Texas border are notorious for migrant killings and kidnappings.

Erin Waters, a spokeswoman for CBP, said in a statement that the agency “remains vigilant to continually shifting migration patterns and will continue to adjust operations as necessary.”

Some migrants from Colombia avoid the Mexican highway checkpoints by flying into the Tijuana airport from the Mexican resort city of Cancún, where they can travel as tourists. Ecuadorians fly to El Salvador and travel north from there, according to U.S. officials. Peruvian migrants have been flying to Tijuana, but the Mexican government has imposed new visa restrictions that take effect May 6 — one reason U.S. officials think more Peruvians may be attempting to cross the U.S. border now.

Mexican enforcement along the south side of the border remains spotty. At a steep mountain pass east of San Diego known as the Valley of the Moon, for its rugged, lunar terrain, smugglers driving vans and trucks drop migrants at a popular crossing point where the U.S. border wall ends. Border Patrol cameras monitor the groups as they hike down the mountain amid boulders and thorny cactuses to turn themselves in to U.S. agents, the first step in applying for U.S. humanitarian protection.

It’s less than a mile to a roadside meeting point along U.S. Interstate 8 where U.S. border agents have set up a makeshift waiting area with latrines and drinking water. Nonprofit and church groups arrive from San Diego to deliver food and firewood for the bonfires migrants build to stay warm. The Border Patrol transports families with children first, so single adult migrants may spend hours — sometimes days — waiting for a ride.

On a recent weekday morning, South American migrants shivered in the cold alongside smaller groups from China, India and Turkey. A few families with small children took refuge inside crude shelters and tents. Acrid smoke from bonfires burning plastic and garbage wafted through the camp.

Many of the nationalities arriving to the San Diego area are the same that crossed through the Yuma, Ariz., area in 2022 and early 2023. Smugglers have shifted to routes west, CBP officials say, due to shifting Mexican enforcement as well as cartel infighting.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a migration expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, said month-to-month changes in border crossings are less important than what she described as a “paradigm shift” toward “the globalization of border crossings.”

More than 80 percent of the migrants encountered by U.S. authorities along the southern border in 2021 were from Mexico and Central America, CBP data shows. This year it’s dropped to 50 percent.

“There has been a fundamental change in who is coming, and how they’re coming,” said Cardinal Brown. That makes it harder for the U.S. immigration system to provide due process to asylum seekers and impose consequences — deportations — for those who don’t qualify for protection, she said.

The Biden administration has increasingly turned to Mexico for help. Mexico has agreed to take back up to 30,000 migrants per month — the first time it has agreed to accept significant numbers of non-Mexicans.

Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador discussed migration during an April 28 call, according to a joint statement released Monday. The two leaders discussed “how to effectively manage hemispheric migration” and “strengthen operational efficiency on our d border,” the statement said.

U.S. officials say they have sent roughly 700,000 migrants back to their home countries or Mexico since the Biden administration lifted pandemic-era border controls nearly a year ago, the biggest deportation operation since 2011.

“CBP continues to work with our partners throughout the hemisphere, including the Government of Mexico, and around the world to disrupt the criminal organizations and transportation networks who take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Waters’s statement said.

Migrants from India and Colombia sit around a fire in Jacumba Hot Springs on Saturday. The Biden administration has increasingly turned to Mexico for help in managing crossings at the southern border.

In December, when the budget of Mexico’s immigration agency’s ran low, tens of thousands of migrants rode freight trains to the U.S. border facing little resistance.

The chaotic mass crossings supercharged Republican attacks on Biden. CBP suspended entries at several U.S. ports of entry for rail and freight cargo, putting pressure on Mexico, and after a call with López Obrador, Biden sent a team led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to Mexico City on Dec. 27.

Mexico remains sensitive to the perception that it’s carrying out the dirty work for the United States by stopping migrants, but its government has been more outspoken about the results of its crackdown.

In a statement to The Post, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the drop in illegal crossings along the U.S. southern border was the result of “coordinated actions by several governmental agencies taken by Mexico.”

The statement said Mexico will “provide alternatives to seekers of asylum and those looking for labor opportunities,” a reference to the record numbers of migrants applying to live and work in Mexico because they can’t reach the United States.

They may not stay long. The Biden administration is allowing nearly 1,500 migrants per day to make appointments to go to a U.S. border crossing using a government mobile app, CBP One, and start the process of applying for U.S. humanitarian protection. It can take several months to secure an appointment, and some of those taken into custody after crossing illegally said they lost patience with CBP One or feared for their safety in Mexico.

Central American nations, especially Guatemala and Honduras, are the focus of the Biden administration’s “Root Causes Strategy,” led by Vice President Harris. The number of Central Americans stopped at the U.S. border fell 30 percent from 2021 to 2023, according to Marcela Escobari, a Biden adviser working on the Root Causes plan.

Biden officials are watching three major upcoming elections in Latin America that could upend what they recognize as fragile gains in their border management efforts. Mexico will elect a new president on June 2. Polls show López Obrador protégé and former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum with a comfortable lead. U.S. officials worry privately that Mexican enforcement could wane during the country’s presidential transition.

Then there are the elections Venezuela scheduled for July 28. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro replaced the late Hugo Chávez in 2013, and about 750,000 Venezuelans have reached the United States over the past three years, a record. U.S. officials believe many more Venezuelans could opt to leave if Maduro stays in power.

The U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 is another concern. CBP officials saw a sharp increase in illegal crossings in late 2016 when smugglers pushed migrants to make haste for the U.S. border, urging them to cross ahead of a Trump crackdown.

Maria Sacchetti in Washington contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT SIX – FROM

A06 X30/27 DUPE A`11

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – FROM WOLA

WEEKLY U.S.-MEXICO BORDER UPDATE: MEXICO CRACKDOWN, NO SPRING MIGRATION INCREASE, TEXAS, GUATEMALA

by Adam Isacson 3/29/24

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

· Mexico’s intensified enforcement delays the United States’ expected spring migration increase

Migration at the U.S.-Mexico border usually increases in springtime. That is not happening in 2024, although numbers are up in Mexico and further south. Increased Mexican government operations to block or hinder migrants are a central reason. Especially striking is migration from Venezuela, which has plummeted at the U.S. border and moved largely to ports of entry. It is unclear why Venezuelan migration has dropped more steeply than that from other nations.

· Insights from CBP’s February reporting about the border

Migration at the U.S.-Mexico border increased by 8 percent from January to February; the portion that is Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants grew by 13 percent. February’s levels were still on the low end for the Biden administration. Preliminary March data indicate no further increases this month.

· Is Texas’s crackdown pushing migrants to other states?

Texas’s governor, an immigration hardliner, is claiming credit for a westward shift of migration toward Arizona and California. Uncertainty over a harsh new law—currently blocked in the courts—could be leading some migrants to avoid Texas, but the overall picture is more complex. Migration declined slightly in Arizona in February and is still dropping there in March, while four out of five Texas border sectors saw some growth in February.

· Migration on the agenda of Guatemalan President’s visit to Washington

President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala, in his third month in office, paid his first official visit to Washington, meeting separately with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The White House touted $170 million in new assistance to Guatemala and the operations of a U.S.-backed “Safe Mobility Office” that seeks to steer would-be migrants toward legal pathways. In 2023, Guatemala’s previous government expelled more than 23,000 U.S.-bound migrants, most of them from Venezuela, back across its border into Honduras.

THE FULL UPDATE:

MEXICO’S INTENSIFIED ENFORCEMENT DELAYS THE UNITED STATES’ EXPECTED SPRING MIGRATION INCREASE

“The spring migration increase is underway,” read WOLA’s March 8 Border Update. This statement reflected early reports of a 13 percent increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border from January to February. (Those early reports were correct, as discussed below.)

However, this increase has leveled off or may even be reversing in March. That rarely happens in spring, a season when the border usually sees a jump in migration as temperatures warm, but not to extremes.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 6,307 migrants per day at the U.S.-Mexico border during the first 21 days of March, including the approximately 1,450 per day who made CBP One appointments at border ports of entry, according to slides posted by Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at his March 26 morning press conference.

That preliminary March average is smaller than CBP’s daily average in February (6,549, more statistics below). If this holds—we’ll find out in the second half of April, when CBP releases final March numbers—then 2024 could be only the second year this century in which migration declined from February to March. (The other year was 2017, when migration dropped sharply in the three months after Donald Trump’s January inauguration.)

Meanwhile, on March 25 Mexico’s government published data through February showing that its migration authorities encountered almost exactly 120,000 migrants in both January and February. Before January, Mexico’s monthly record for migrant encounters was about 98,000. This is evidence that Mexico’s government has stepped up interdiction of migrants in its territory so far in 2024.

See charts and graphs here

A New York Times analysis found that Mexico’s government’s ability and willingness to help control migration flows make it “a key player on an issue with the potential to sway the election” in the United States. However, “behind closed doors, some senior Biden officials have come to see López Obrador as an unpredictable partner, who they say isn’t doing enough to consistently control his own southern border or police routes being used by smugglers.”

Meanwhile, migration continues at high levels further south. Officials in Panama reported that the number of migrants crossing the Darién Gap so far in 2024 has now exceeded 101,000. At the end of February, the number stood at 73,167; this means that the March pace in the Darién Gap remains, as in January and February, at a bit over 1,200 people per day. Of this year’s migrants, nearly two thirds (64,307) are citizens of Venezuela.

The March data show that U.S. encounters with migrants from Venezuela continue to be far fewer than the past two years’ monthly averages. Venezuelan migrants’ numbers dropped sharply in January and have not recovered: they totaled 20,364 in January and February combined, just over one-third of what they were in December alone (57,850). Meanwhile, Mexico reported 56,312 encounters with Venezuelan citizens in January and February—almost 3 times the U.S. figure.

That points to a strong likelihood that the Venezuelan population is increasing sharply within Mexico right now. The Associated Press confirmed that Mexico’s increased operations to block migrants have many Venezuelan citizens stranded in the country’s south, including in Mexico City, which is within the geographic range of the CBP One app and its limited number of available appointments.

U.S. authorities’ encounters with Venezuelan migrants haven’t just dropped in aggregate terms. The percentage of Venezuelans crossing between ports of entry has also fallen, from a strong majority to just 37 percent since January. This means that a majority of Venezuelan migrants are now making CBP One appointments.

Meanwhile, this week Mexico’s government reached an agreement with Venezuela’s government to facilitate aerial deportations to Caracas. As part of the deal, some of Mexico’s largest corporations with presences in South America would employ Venezuelan deportees, paying them a “stipend” of US$110 per month for a six-month period. “We’re sending Venezuelans back to their country because we really cannot handle these quantities,” said Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena.

At his March 26 press conference, López Obrador added that he is seeking to expand this program to citizens of Colombia and Ecuador. Participants in a “Migrant Via Crucis” march through Mexico’s southernmost state, Chiapas, told EFE that they had no interest in this offer.

That annual Easter week march of migrants near Mexico’s southern border—not exactly a “caravan,” but an organized protest to urge the Mexican government to allow them to keep moving northward—has walked about 20 miles through Chiapas, the country’s southernmost state. By March 26, its numbers had reportedly dwindled to about half of the approximately 3,000 participants with which it began.

INSIGHTS FROM CBP’S FEBRUARY REPORTING ABOUT THE BORDER

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) provided updated data late on March 22 about migration through February at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Search this data at cbpdata.adamisacson.com.)

It revealed that

· Border Patrol apprehended 140,644 migrants in February, up 13 percent from January but still the 7th-fewest apprehensions of the Biden administration’s 37 full months.

· 49,278 migrants came to ports of entry, 42,100 of them (1,452 per day) with CBP One appointments. This is similar to every month since July 2023, as CBP officers tightly control the flow at ports of entry.

· Combining Border Patrol and port-of-entry encounters, CBP encountered 189,922 migrants at the border in February, an 8 percent increase over January.

In late February, press reports indicated that the Biden administration was considering new executive actions at the border, like limits on access to asylum or a ban on crossings between ports of entry. (See WOLA’s February 23 Border Update.) But then nothing happened: Politico reported on March 25 that the White House has stood down “in part, [due] to the downtick in migration numbers” so far this year. (Executive actions are not off the table, however. Axios reported that “President Biden is still considering harsh executive actions at the border before November’s election.”)

The top nationalities of migrants arriving at the border in February were:

· Mexico (33 percent of the month’s total; 28 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024)

· Guatemala (13 percent; 11 percent during 2024)

· Cuba (7 percent; 6 percent during 2024)

· Colombia (6 percent; 6 percent during 2024)

· Ecuador (6 percent; 5 percent during 2024)

· Haiti (6 percent; 4 percent during 2024)

The nationalities for which encounters increased the most were chiefly South American:

· Brazil (87 percent more than January)

· Peru (67 percent)

· Colombia (65 percent)

· Ecuador (50 percent)

· El Salvador (31 percent)

The nationalities for which encounters decreased the most were:

· Turkey (72 percent fewer than February)

· India (56 percent fewer)

· Venezuela (24 percent fewer—and 85 percent fewer than in December)

· Russia (15 percent fewer)

· Cuba (7 percent fewer)

The top nationalities crossing between ports of entry and ending up in Border Patrol custody were:

· Mexico (35 percent of the total; 28 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024)

· Guatemala (17 percent; 14 percent during 2024)

· Ecuador (8 percent; 7 percent during 2024)

· Colombia (8 percent; 7 percent during 2024)

· Honduras (6 percent; 8 percent during 2024)

The top nationalities reporting to ports of entry were:

· Mexico (27 percent; 26 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024)

· Cuba (26 percent; 24 percent during 2024)

· Haiti (23 percent; 16 percent during 2024)

· Venezuela (11 percent; 18 percent during 2024)

· Honduras (4 percent; 5 percent during 2024)

Of February’s encountered migrants, combining Border Patrol and ports of entry:

· 60 percent were single adults (55 percent during the first 5 months of fiscal 2024), principally from Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Ecuador, and Colombia

· 34 percent were members of family units (40 percent), principally from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, and Cuba

· 5 percent were unaccompanied children (5 percent), principally from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti

Data table

Border-zone seizures of fentanyl totaled 1,186 pounds in February, the fewest fentanyl seizures at the border in any month since June 2022. After five months, fiscal year 2024 fentanyl seizures total 8,021 pounds, 27 percent fewer than the same point in fiscal year 2023. This is the first time that fentanyl seizures have declined since the drug began to appear in the mid-2010s. Ports of entry account for 85 percent of this year’s fentanyl seizures. (See WOLA’s March 8 Border Update for a more thorough exploration of drug seizure data through January.)

IS TEXAS’S CRACKDOWN PUSHING MIGRANTS TO OTHER STATES?

Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border into nine geographic sectors. Between March 2013 and June 2023, the sectors with the largest number of arriving migrants were consistently in Texas. That changed in July of last year, shortly after the end of the Title 42 policy.

Since then Tucson, Arizona, has been the Border Patrol’s busiest sector. The principal nationalities arriving there so far in fiscal 2024 have been Mexico, Guatemala, “Other Countries,” Ecuador, India, and Colombia.

Data table

As of January, San Diego, California has been the number-two sector. The principal nationalities arriving there in fiscal 2024 have been “Other Countries,” Colombia, China, Mexico, Brazil, and Ecuador. (The prominence of “Other Countries” points to a need for CBP to add more detail to its public dataset.)

Weekly data from the Twitter accounts of Border Patrol’s sector chiefs indicate that while Tucson is experiencing decreases in migration this year, San Diego has remained largely steady.

The New York Times reported on the movement of migration away from the Texas border. Though the picture is complex, it concluded, the Texas state government’s high-profile crackdown on migration is a factor. Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a pro-Trump critic of the Biden administration’s border and migration policies, has been claiming credit for the geographic shift.

In less than three years, under a framework called “Operation Lone Star,” Texas state law enforcement has carried out the following measures using state funds. Most of these face challenges in federal and state courts.

· arrested and jailed 13,000 migrants, mainly for misdemeanor trespassing

· placed 107,800 migrants released from CBP custody on buses bound for six Democratic Party-governed cities

· deployed thousands of police and national guardsmen to the border

· built dozens of miles of fencing, while placing sharp concertina wire along the Rio Grande to block asylum seekers from turning themselves in to Border Patrol

· placed a “wall of buoys” in the middle of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass

· sought to forbid Border Patrol agents from cutting the concertina wire, and denied agents’ access to the riverfront park in Eagle Pass

· pursued legal actions against El Paso’s four-decade-old Annunciation House migrant shelter

In December, Abbott secured passage of S.B. 4, a law that would empower Texas police and guardsmen to arrest people anywhere in the state on suspicion of having crossed the border improperly. If found guilty, defendants would have the choice of prison or deportation into Mexico.

Early in the morning of March 27, a federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel decided, by a two-to-one margin, to maintain a stay on S.B. 4, preventing it from going into effect while the Court considers legal challenges from the Biden administration Justice Department and from the ACLU and partner organizations.

The court will hear arguments on S.B. 4’s constitutionality on April 3. At stake is whether states can devise and implement their own independent immigration policies, and whether there is any validity to the claims of politicians, like Abbott, that asylum seekers and other migrants meet the constitutional definition of an “invasion.”

Mexico’s government filed an amicus curiae brief in federal court in support of the ongoing challenge to S.B. 4. Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena told the Washington Post that her government would place “increased vigilance and controls” along the Texas border to prevent Texas state authorities from carrying out their own deportations without Mexico’s permission.

Very high levels of migration into Texas through December appeared to indicate that Operation Lone Star was having no deterrent effect. It is possible, though, that the more recent shift to western states could reflect migrants and smugglers entering a “wait and see mode” amid uncertainty over S.B. 4., a law that has been “on again, off again” as courts have lifted and reimposed stays in recent weeks.

February data, and an El Paso municipal government “ dashboard,” do show increases in migration in four out of five Texas sectors, so the lull may be fleeting.

Across from El Paso In Ciudad Juárez, the Casa del Migrante, one of the city’s principal migrant shelters, “has been filling up in recent days as families and single adults looking for an opportunity to seek asylum in the United States are again arriving in Juarez in large numbers,” according to Border Report. Rev. Francisco Bueno Guillen, the shelter’s director, said it “went from being 20 percent full a couple of weeks ago to 75 percent capacity as of Monday.” The city’s municipal shelter is also three-quarters full.

In El Paso on March 21, a group of migrants on the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande pushed their way past Texas state National Guard personnel blocking access to the border wall, where they hoped to turn themselves in to federal Border Patrol agents. Video showed a chaotic scene.

A Texas law enforcement spokesman told the New York Times that the increase in migration to Border Patrol’s El Paso sector reflects more migrants crossing into New Mexico, which is part of that sector—not Texas. There is no way to verify that with available data.

MIGRATION ON THE AGENDA OF GUATEMALAN PRESIDENT’S VISIT TO WASHINGTON

Guatemala’s reformist new president, Bernardo Arévalo, visited the White House on March 25, where he met separately with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Migration—of Guatemalans, and of other nations’ citizens transiting Guatemala—was a central topic in both of Arévalo’s conversations.

This is the first presidential visit for Arévalo, who took office on January 14. He and Vice President Harris reportedly discussed “providing lawful pathways to migrants, increasing cooperation on border enforcement, and…U.S. support for Guatemala’s migration management efforts.” A White House release stated that the Biden administration plans to provide Guatemala with an additional $170 million in security and development assistance, pending congressional notification.

Vice President Harris touted the administration’s “Root Causes Strategy,” which she claimed has created 70,000 new jobs, helped up to 63,000 farmers, supported 3 million students’ education, and trained more than 18,000 police officers and 27,000 judicial operators in all of Central America.

The leaders announced no changes to the U.S.-backed “Safe Mobility Office” (SMO) in Guatemala that links some would-be migrants to legal pathways. The prior administration of President Alejandro Giammattei (whose U.S. visa has since been revoked amid corruption allegations) had reduced the SMO’s scope to serve only citizens of Guatemala. On a visit to Guatemala the week before, Mayorkas noted that the Guatemala SMO has “already helped more than 1,500 Guatemalans safely and lawfully enter the United States” via existing programs, principally refugee admissions.

The head of Guatemala’s migration agency, who worked in the government that left power in January, resigned on March 26. The reason for Stuard Rodríguez’s departure is not known. “Rodriguez made several reports during his administration of the increase of migrant expulsions, especially of Cubans and Venezuelans,” noted the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre.

In 2023, under the Giammattei administration, Guatemalan authorities reported pushing back into Honduras more than 23,000 migrants, more than 70 percent of them Venezuelan. As of February 13, Guatemala’s 2024 expulsions count stood at 1,754.

So far in 2024, the U.S. and Mexican governments have deported20,018 citizens of Guatemala back to their country by air, more than 5,000 above the total at the same time in 2023. The United States has returned 18,437 people on 154 flights, while Mexico has returned 1,632 on 15 flights.

Asked during his visit to Washington whether he believes that border walls work, Arévalo told CBS News, “I think that history shows they don’t. What we need to look for is integrated solutions to a problem that is far more complex than just putting a wall to try to contain.”

OTHER NEWS

· The six construction workers presumed dead in the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge were people who had migrated from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. CASA of Maryland is collecting donations to support their families.

· 481 organizations (including WOLA) sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants in the United States, to halt deportation flights and maritime returns to Haiti, and to increase the monthly cap on access to humanitarian parole for people still in the country, where governance is near collapse.

· At the London Review of Books, Pooja Bhatia combined a narrative of Haiti’s deteriorating security situation with an account of the challenges that Haitian asylum seekers face at the U.S.-Mexico border. Bhatia reported from the dangerous border in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and highlighted the role of humanitarian workers and service providers, including staff of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the principal author of the above-cited letter.

· NBC News highlighted the dilemma of migrant women who were raped by criminals in Mexico while en route to the United States, and now find themselves in states like Texas where, following the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision, it is illegal to obtain an abortion. Often, the rapes occur while migrants are stranded—usually for months—in Mexican border cities as they await CBP One appointments.

· Despite a crushing backlog of cases, the number of U.S. immigration judges declined in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, from 734 to 725. That means “each judge has 3,836 cases on average,” pointed out Kathleen Bush-Joseph of the Migration Policy Institute. (That number is greater if one uses TRAC Immigration’s higher estimate of the immigration court backlog.)

· The International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project now has 10 years of data about deaths of migrants: 63,285 known cases worldwide between 2014 and 2023, including a high of 8,542 in 2023. In its 10-year report, IOM counted more deaths in the Mediterranean (28,854 deaths), Africa (14,385), and Asia (9,956) than in the Americas (8,984).

· CBP released body-worn camera footage of the February 17 death, apparently by suicide, of a man in a holding cell at a Laredo, Texas checkpoint. The footage does not show the exact circumstances of how the man died because “the video recording system at the Border Patrol checkpoint was not fully functioning at the time of the incident.”

· In Tucson, Arizona, local authorities now believe that federal funds—made possible by Congress passing a budget over the weekend—will arrive in time to prevent the closure of shelters that receive migrants released from CBP custody. The prospect of “street releases” in Tucson and other Arizona border towns is now unlikely.

· Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh and Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute explained that many of today’s proposals to restrict asylum access and otherwise crack down on migration will not work because the U.S. government can no longer “go it alone.” Reasons include the diversity of countries migrants are coming from and the policies of other governments, such as varying visa requirements, refusals to accept repatriations, and the Mexican government’s unwillingness to receive expelled migrants from third countries.

· At Lawfare, Ilya Somin of the Cato Institute dismantled an argument that has become increasingly mainstream among Republican politicians: that asylum seekers and other migrants crossing the border constitute an “invasion” and that states have a constitutional right to confront them with their own security forces. Somin warns that the “invasion” idea, if upheld, could allow border states “to initiate war anytime they want,” and permit the federal government to suspend habeas corpus rights.

· Conservative politicians and media outlets are going after the non-profit shelters that receive migrants released from CBP custody in U.S. border cities, along with other humanitarian groups, noted Miriam Davidson at The Progressive. Tucson’s Casa Alitas and El Paso’s Annunciation House have been subject to aggressive misinformation and legal attacks so far this year.

· “I think the migrants that we encounter, that are turning themselves in, yes, I think they absolutely are, by and large, good people,” Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens told CBS News’s Face the Nation. But “what’s keeping me up at night is the 140,000 known ‘got-aways’” so far this fiscal year.

· At the New York Review of Books, Caroline Tracey documented an abandoned, unpopular plan to construct a massive Border Patrol checkpoint on I-19, the highway between Tucson and the border at Nogales, Arizona. The case highlighted the tension between security concerns and economic and human rights considerations.

· As Mexican farmworkers migrate to the United States, often on temporary work visas, Mexico is facing its own farm labor shortages and is considering setting up its own guest-worker program for citizens of countries to Mexico’s south, the Washington Post reported.

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – FROM REUTERS

US, MEXICO TO CLAMP DOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, LEADERS SAY

Six Takeaways

By Ted Hesson and Raul Cortes April 29, 20245:14 PM EDTUpdated 3 days ago

WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY, April 29 (Reuters) - The United States and Mexico plan to clamp down on illegal immigration at their shared border, leaders from both countries said on Monday, vowing to disrupt irregular crossings that have reached record levels in recent years.

In a phone conversation on Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said their administrations would soon take steps to decrease illegal crossings while also addressing the economic and security problems that cause people to migrate.

"In the short term, the two leaders ordered their national security teams to work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights," the leaders said in a joint statement

Biden, a Democrat seeking another four-year term in the Nov. 5 election, has toughened his approach to border security in recent months as immigration has emerged as a top concern among voting-age Americans.

Republicans, including Biden's opponent, former President Donald Trump, have criticized the president for rolling back restrictive Trump-era border policies and failing to stem higher levels of illegal crossings.

The White House is also discussing ways to provide temporary legal status and work permits to immigrants in the U.S. illegally who are married to American citizens, which could serve as a political counterbalance to restrictions at the border.

Biden backed a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill earlier this year that would grant him new authority to turn away migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, but Republicans rejected the measure after Trump came out in opposition.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that the Biden administration still supports the bill but that "we're always going to look at our options."

Mexico will hold a presidential election on June 2 although immigration is not a top voter concern, opens new tab, according to public opinion polls. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador's successor in the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), remains the frontrunner to win the election.

Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday he had spoken with Biden about keeping the countries' border open to legal immigration "but not allowing irregular migration."

The U.S. Border Patrol caught, opens new tab a monthly record of 250,000 migrants crossing illegally in December, but numbers have dropped significantly since then, with 137,000 arrests in March.

Lopez Obrador attributed the reduced arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border in part to social programs Mexico has backed in other Latin American countries from where migrants originate.

U.S. and Mexican officials have cited increased enforcement by Mexico as a factor contributing to the decrease in crossings.

ATTACHMENT NINE – FROM ABC

THERE’S BEEN A MAJOR SHIFT IN DEMOGRAPHICS AT THE BORDER. HERE’S WHAT’S BEHIND THE CHANGE.

By David Noriega and Aarne Heikkila and Adiel Kaplan Updated Sat, May 4, 2024 at 9:29 AM EDT

JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Shortly after dawn, in the desert east of San Diego, a group of migrants huddled around a campfire. They had come together on this desolate stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border from four different continents: Young men from India shared snacks with women from Nicaragua, while a man from Georgia stood next to a family from Brazil.

A volunteer with a local humanitarian group hauled over a beverage cooler filled with papers: legal information printed in 22 different languages. As he handed them out — in Gujarati, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian — he said, “Welcome to the United States.”

This is the new normal of migration to the southern border: What was once mostly a regional phenomenon has become truly global, with the share of migrants coming from the four closest countries dropping and the number from elsewhere around the world increasing.

An NBC News analysis of newly released data from the Department of Homeland Security shows a fundamental shift. Before the pandemic, roughly 9 in 10 migrants crossing the border illegally (that is, between ports of entry) came from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — the four countries closest to the border. Those countries no longer hold the majority: As of 2023, for the first time since the U.S. has collected such data, half of all migrants who cross the border now come from elsewhere globally.

The greatest numbers have come from countries farther away in the Americas that have never before sent migrants to the border at this scale. In the 2019 fiscal year, for example, the number of Colombians apprehended illegally crossing the border was 400. In fiscal 2023, it exploded to 154,080 — a nearly four-hundred-fold increase.

But they come, too, from countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and every region in Asia. There have been dramatic increases in the number of migrants from the world’s most populous countries: Between fiscal 2019 and 2023, the number of migrants from China and India grew more than elevenfold and fivefold, respectively. And some countries that previously sent negligible numbers of migrants to the U.S. border have seen staggering increases. In fiscal 2019, the total number of people from the northwest African nation of Mauritania apprehended at the border was 20. Four years later, that number was 15,260. For migrants from Turkey, the number went from 60 to 15,430. The list goes on: More than 50 nationalities saw apprehensions multiplied by a hundred or more.

Experts and U.S. government officials attribute this explosive growth in large part to the pandemic, which provoked mass migration around the world, adding serious challenges to an immigration system already beleaguered by a decade of severe backlogs. Another major factor is the massive expansion of transcontinental smuggling networks, itself fueled by widespread digital technology.

These shifting migration flows account for a significant portion of the record-breaking numbers at the border that have dominated this year’s election cycle. They amount to a major reorganization of global migration patterns — and a paradigm shift for U.S. immigration policy and international relations.

A sophisticated Chinese snakehead network illustrates a new era in migration

The landscape around Jacumba Hot Springs, a town of fewer than 600 people near the eastern edge of San Diego County, is rocky and mountainous. The steel border fence stops at several points where the ground rises into sharp, ragged inclines dotted with boulders, leaving spaces easy for migrants to squeeze through. Border authorities routinely block these gaps with razor wire only for smugglers to snip them open again.

One afternoon in March, a group of about 30 migrants from China clambered through one such gap and into the United States. Among them was Wei Bin, a middle-aged man from the port city of Tianjin who traveled with his 14-year-old son. Wei said the economic damage wrought by the pandemic, coupled with China’s repressive zero-Covid policies, had led him to the conclusion that his home country offered no viable future for his son.

So they took off for the United States. In an interview with NBC News, Wei described their 45-day journey: They flew first to Ecuador, one of the few countries in the Americas that accept visa-free travel from China, and from there they moved painstakingly north.

The trip was arranged by Chinese smugglers known as snakeheads. Wei never saw his snakeheads, and he knew nothing about them — he communicated with them exclusively via WeChat and paid for everything online. The smugglers’ services cost him around $10,000 per person, and in return, he received precise instructions on where and how to meet with an interlocking series of local contacts, often members of pre-existing criminal smuggling networks based in each of the countries he traveled through. It was these smugglers — Ecuadorians, Colombians, Mexicans — who did the actual work of moving Wei and his son from one place to another.

The journey was not easy. Somewhere in Colombia, the first snakehead stopped responding to Wei’s messages, scamming him out of thousands of dollars and leaving him stranded until he got the contact for a new snakehead from another Chinese migrant on the trail. And while Wei and his son were in a small boat circumventing a portion of the infamous Darien Gap — a dense stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama — they watched another boat full of migrants capsize.

“I would not recommend anyone undertake the route that we just took,” Wei said. “It’s too perilous.”

China offers one of the most illustrative examples of this new era of global migration. Between 2014 and 2022, the average number of Chinese citizens who crossed the southern border without papers in a given year was around 1,400. In 2023, that number grew to 24,050.

This would not have been possible without transcontinental smuggling networks like the ones used by Wei and his son. Though these networks have existed in some form for decades, they have grown dramatically in scale and organization.

“Different networks often specialize in specific nationalities,” said Adam Isacson, an expert on migration to the U.S.-Mexico border at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank. “So if you’re Somali, you arrive in Quito and join a group of Somalis that’s already underway. One smuggler hands you off to another, and the network of relationships goes all the way up to the U.S.-Mexico border.”

The industry owes much of its growth to technology. The world’s migrants are now equipped with cheap smartphones that allow for frictionless communication and payments. Smugglers advertise widely on TikTok, WeChat, WhatsApp or whichever platform is popular in the country they’re targeting.

NBC News obtained access to the WeChat profile of one Chinese snakehead who claims to have moved over 100 people to the U.S. in the last year. He regularly posts videos of migrants on the trail meant to entice new customers. The videos make the journey look easy: smiling men flashing a thumbs-up outside hotels in Mexico, families riding calmly on buses. In one video, a woman crosses the border into the U.S. and shouts, “We finally crossed!” in Mandarin as her small child shouts joyfully in the background.

Experts and U.S. law enforcement officials describe these networks as loosely but intricately connected, comprising both illicit actors and legitimate businesses like travel agencies and bus lines. At certain key junctures, they are controlled by the most powerful criminal organizations in the Americas.

The Colombian side of the Darien Gap, for example, was recently taken over by the Gulf Clan, a notoriously violent narco-paramilitary cartel widely thought to be the largest cocaine exporter in the world. As a result, the Darien jungle, once considered nearly impassable, is now a route for mass migration traversed by hundreds of thousands of people a year. The opening up of this stretch of jungle alone likely accounts for a substantial share of the rise in global arrivals at the border.

“In 2021, the gateway to the Darien was just local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people working as guides.” Isacson said. “By 2022, the Gulf Clan took over, and you suddenly had a clear route. They were advertising, there were people there ready to take your money, and it was all much more organized.”

It was this vast, global network of interlocking smugglers that moved Wei and his son along their way to the U.S. They eventually made it to Tapachula, in southernmost Mexico, where they boarded a domestic flight to Tijuana. There, once again, they were in the hands of powerful criminal organizations: According to U.S. officials, the smuggling business on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border is currently dominated by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.

Along with the larger group of about 30 Chinese migrants, Wei and his son spent the night in a run-down safehouse minutes from the border. “Conditions were very poor, and we only got the basics, like water and soup,” Wei said. “If we wanted anything more, we had to pay.”

The next day, smugglers piled them into a three-row van, drove them to the border, pointed at the gap in the fence, and told them to walk across.

An inflection point to overhaul an ill-equipped system

In the last decade, there have been two paradigm shifts on the border, according to current and former U.S. immigration officials. The first began in 2014, with the arrival of unprecedented numbers of families and children from the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador).

In a break from decades’ worth of migration coming almost entirely from Mexico, these migrants did not attempt to evade the Border Patrol. Instead, they willingly surrendered in order to apply for asylum — and they quickly overwhelmed a system designed for something else entirely.

“Our existing infrastructure, processes and personnel were no longer matching what was happening on the ground,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former longtime official with DHS and Customs and Border Protection.

The system was optimized to apprehend and quickly deport single adults from Mexico. It was badly ill-equipped to process families and children and move them through complex legal asylum proceedings. Immigration courts were soon bogged down in yearslong backlogs.

The second paradigm shift is happening now. Beginning around 2018, there were spikes in the number of migrants from Cuba, then Haiti, then Venezuela. Then the pandemic happened: Economies cratered and borders closed, and when they reopened, it unleashed pent-up waves of migration across the globe. And that initial surge triggered by the pandemic is now sustained by the smuggling networks that greatly expanded to facilitate it.

This has piled more weight onto an already buckling system. The U.S. only has the capacity to deport people quickly and in large numbers to Mexico and the Northern Triangle, according to a senior CBP official who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. Deportations are expensive and logistically challenging — they require airplanes, personnel and time to arrange for travel documents, and so on — and there is no such infrastructure in place, the official said, to deport people en masse to Africa, Asia or even South America.

The position of Mayorkas and the Biden administration is that these problems can only be meaningfully addressed by a congressional overhaul of the immigration system, such as the one proposed in February in a now defunct bipartisan Senate bill.

“We cannot process these individuals through immigration enforcement proceedings very quickly — it actually takes sometimes more than seven years,” Mayorkas told NBC News. “The proposed bipartisan legislation would reduce that seven-plus-year waiting period to sometimes less than 90 days. That’s transformative.”

Even with a reformed system, the U.S. would remain a single country confronting a phenomenon that directly involves a large share of the world.

“To manage regional migration flows, you need to get the cooperation of a few countries,” Brown said. “To deal with hemispheric migration flows, you need about 20 countries. To deal with global migration flows — now you’re talking about hundreds of countries.”

Those countries need persuading to do anything from restricting visas to physically interdicting migrants with armies and police forces. And many countries, especially those historically hostile to the U.S., are reluctant to be persuaded.

Nicaragua, for example, allows visa-free travel from more than two dozen African countries and several from Asia as well; that makes it a major point of arrival in the Americas for migrants who then move north to the U.S.-Mexico border. And some geopolitical adversaries — notably China — do not routinely accept deportees from the U.S. Though Mayorkas told NBC News he is engaged in high-level talks with Chinese officials to change that, such an agreement would only partially fix a small part of a much bigger problem.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Brown said. “We have to recognize that what’s happening at our border is a microcosm of what’s happening everywhere. This is not a U.S.-Mexico border problem. This is now a worldwide issue.”

Crackdowns and Loopholes

Shortly after Christmas, when border crossings once again hit record highs, Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an official state visit to Mexico City. In the weeks that followed, Mexico’s National Guard cracked down on migrant routes.

This immediately and substantially reduced the number of people who managed to get across the border. But average daily crossings remain high compared to prior years, and in the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, the drop was negligible.

Sam Schultz, a humanitarian volunteer who lives near the border and delivers supplies to migrants every day, said smugglers now simply avoid the National Guard patrols and send migrants to more remote and rugged crossings.

In the last few months, Schultz has learned a lot about how people the world over find their way to these isolated mountains.

“They’re very aware of what they’re getting into and where they’re going,” he said. “This was never true before everybody had a phone in their pocket.”

Schultz said crackdowns — whether by American or Mexican authorities — ultimately do little to deter migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S.

“Any person on American soil — and it doesn’t matter how they got here — is allowed to start due process on an asylum case,” Schultz said. “Anyone. So as long as that is true, people are going to attempt to cross the border and get on American soil. Why would it ever be any other way?”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

ATTACHMENT TEN – FROM NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON — Democrats are preparing an aggressive new immigration strategy months after Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill aimed at easing record-high illegal crossings along the southern border, according to officials who discussed the plans with NBC News.

At a White House meeting last week, key administration officials and top Democratic lawmakers discussed a path forward that would include forcing votes that Republicans would be likely to oppose, two sources said. The discussions included potential executive actions within the coming weeks, three sources said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York attended the meeting, which covered other topics but focused largely on immigration, the sources said.

The purpose of the discussion was to ensure alignment between Democrats on an issue the party seeks to capitalize on ahead of the November election, when the party will seek to take back control of the House and defend its control of the Senate and the White House.

In one potential scenario, Senate Democrats would take the lead by calling up various pieces of legislation, perhaps even parts of the bipartisan deal negotiated by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., James Lankford, R-Okla., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and trying to pass them by a process known as unanimous consent — to which any single senator can object.

“Democrats have made clear that the situation at the border is unacceptable," Schumer said in a statement. "That’s why we worked in a bipartisan fashion to craft the strongest border security bill in a generation, endorsed by the border patrol union."

He blamed Republicans and former President Donald Trump for the deal's falling apart and said: "Republicans need to get serious about fixing the border and ignore Donald Trump. After all, you can’t say it’s an emergency and then refuse to take action."

After that process, the Biden administration would then most likely launch yet-to-be-determined executive actions that it has privately discussed for months, the sources said. The White House has also sought input from immigration advocacy groups ahead of any potential executive order.

Some advocates are worried that the new policy would be too restrictive on asylum, said two immigration advocacy leaders who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A Department of Homeland Security official with knowledge of the discussions said the White House would most likely invoke power reserved for the president in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president discretion over who is admitted into the U.S.

Using that authority, Customs and Border Protection would be directed to block the entry of migrants crossing over from Mexico if daily border crossings passed a certain threshold. The tactic is similar to a provision of the bipartisan border security bill from February.

A former DHS official and an immigration advocate pointed out that advocacy groups are likely to argue in court that 212(f) does not give the president the authority to shut down the border. But the former DHS official said that even if the Biden administration is enjoined, invoking 212(f) would show a willingness to try to take control of the border, an area in which President Joe Biden is struggling ahead of his re-election battle against Trump.

An NBC News poll released last month found that immigration is one of the top concerns for voters this year, just 28% of whom approve of Biden's handling of border security and immigration.

No formal decisions have been made, and a number of actions are on the table. Advocacy groups and DHS officials have been led to believe that an order could be announced as early as this week but more likely at the end of May or in early June, two sources involved in discussions said.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement, “The Administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades.”

The spokesperson added: “No executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected. We continue to call on Speaker Johnson and House Republicans to pass the bipartisan deal to secure the border.”

Biden sharply criticized Senate Republicans during his State of the Union address in March for blocking the bipartisan security deal they initially led the charge on after Trump opposed it.

“I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill,” Biden said, facing jeers from Republican lawmakers in the chamber. “He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. It’s not about him or me. It’d be a winner for America.”

Democrats in swing districts immediately launched ads attacking Republicans, with Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., — who flipped a seat held by disgraced former GOP Rep. George Santos — urging others to “go on offense” ahead of November.

Suozzi’s playbook is one that Murphy urged other Democrats to follow.

“Suozzi messaged aggressively on the issue, running ads that highlighted his support for a secure border and legal pathways to citizenship,” Murphy wrote at the time in a memo obtained by NBC News. “He flipped the script on his Republican opponent.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – FROM the NEW YORK TIMES

BIDEN AND MEXICO’S PRESIDENT VOW COMBINED ACTION ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

President Biden is under intense political pressure, including from within his own party, to address migration before the election.

By Michael D. Shear and Hamed Aleaziz April 29, 2024

Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Hamed Aleaziz from Healdsburg, Calif.

President Biden and the president of Mexico on Monday vowed combined action to prevent illegal immigration as Mr. Biden remains under intense political pressure from all sides to address the impact of surging border crossings ahead of the presidential election this year.

In a joint statement, Mr. Biden and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said they had ordered their national security aides to “work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights.”

The statement, which followed a phone call between the two leaders on Sunday, did not specify any actions under consideration. A senior administration official declined to elaborate on what the United States and Mexico might “immediately implement.” But the official said the possibilities under discussion included stronger enforcement measures to prevent railways, buses and airports from being used for illegal border crossing and more flights taking migrants back to their home countries.

The issue could be a deciding factor in whether Mr. Biden stays in the Oval Office for another four years. Polls of both Republicans and Democrats in recent months indicate that the situation at the border is a serious concern. And even some of the president’s most fervent supporters in liberal cities are demanding that he do something to stanch the flow of migrants.

The president’s latest plan to do that — with a highly restrictive immigration bill that had some bipartisan support — fell apart over the last several months as Republicans in the House blocked it. Mr. Biden had called for the legislation to be passed alongside financial aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, but when Congress finally reached a deal on the funding earlier this month, the border legislation was not included.

That leaves Mr. Biden with few options to address either global migration patterns that have changed dramatically or an American immigration system that both parties admit has been dysfunctional for decades.

More on U.S. Immigration

· Deportation Flights to Haiti: Immigration officials sent dozens of Haitians back to their home country, according to three government officials, in the first deportation flight conducted by the United States government in months to this country, which has been gripped by widespread violence.

· Work Permits: Long-term undocumented immigrants — and their employers — are feeling left out by the Biden administration’s recent policies that allow most migrants who had recently crossed the border to work legally.

· A Makeshift Refuge: A campsite in the California wilderness, run by a 22-year-old volunteer, has became a first stop for people seeking food, water and warmth as they waited to be apprehended by border authorities.

· Iowa’s New Law: Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill that will make it a state crime for a person to enter Iowa after having been deported or denied entry into the United States. The new law joins Iowa with Texas in seeking to enforce immigration limits outside the federal system.

Some activists and administration officials believe Mr. Biden is nearing a decision to announce an executive action that could impose dramatic new limits on asylum seekers, drawing on the same legal authority that President Donald J. Trump saw as the best way to keep immigrants out of the country when he was in office.

Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, had long pushed for a broad interpretation of part of the federal code, known as 212(f), to enable the president to block migrants from even stepping foot across the border into the United States.

People familiar with the discussions underway at the White House and in the Department of Homeland Security say officials are talking about a presidential proclamation that could cite that section of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides the president authority to suspend immigration for anyone determined to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Administration officials have refused to give any timeline on whether Mr. Biden could announce an order shutting down asylum at the border. The president said as much in an interview that aired on Univision on April 9.

“There’s no guarantee that I have that power all by myself without legislation,” Mr. Biden said. “And some have suggested I should just go ahead and try it. And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court.”

Border officials have struggled to contend with the surging numbers at the southern border, particularly in December, when border agents made nearly 250,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing illegally.

Since then, the Biden administration has worked closely with Mexico to ramp up enforcement. Those efforts appear to have paid off, for now. In February, border agents made more than 140,000 apprehensions, and in March the number was slightly lower — with over 137,000 arrests.

The kind of executive action Mr. Biden has talked about worries people who advocate for migrants. They say the use of a blunt legal tool is likely to deny migrants the reasonable rights to claim refuge in the United States when they flee danger or torture in their home countries.

“We’ve seen how policies designed to deter and punish people who are coming to the U.S. to seek protection do not achieve their stated goal of stopping people from coming,” said Robyn Barnard, senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, an immigrant advocacy group. “More of the same tired and unlawful policies that the former president Trump attempted are not smart or real solutions for the problems we face.”

Administration officials point to the fact that the president implemented a series of proposals aimed at increasing legal immigration into the United States from countries that have been hit hard by war, famine, climate change and political instability.

But critics say those programs, while positive, could be overwhelmed by other actions that impose broad new restrictions.

“The president should be looking at tools that have actually reduced unauthorized migration, like his own parole pathways, not another symbolic asylum ban,” said Andrea Flores, a former Biden administration official and current vice president for immigration policy at FWD.us, an advocacy group.

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear

Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy. More about Hamed Aleaziz

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – FROM PEW

(See website for charts and graphs)

HOW AMERICANS VIEW THE SITUATION AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER, ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

80% say the U.S. government is doing a bad job handling the migrant influx

The growing number of migrants seeking entry into the United States at its border with Mexico has strained government resources, divided Congress and emerged as a contentious issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Americans overwhelmingly fault the government for how it has handled the migrant situation. Beyond that, however, there are deep differences – over why the migrants are coming to the U.S., proposals for addressing the situation, and even whether it should be described as a “crisis.”

Factors behind the migrant influx

Economic factors – either poor conditions in migrants’ home countries or better economic opportunities in the United States – are widely viewed as major reasons for the migrant influx.

About seven-in-ten Americans (71%), including majorities in both parties, cite better economic opportunities in the U.S. as a major reason.

There are wider partisan differences over other factors.

About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say violence in migrants’ home countries is a major reason for why a large number of immigrants have come to the border.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are 30 percentage points more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to cite this as a major reason (79% vs. 49%).

By contrast, 76% of Republicans say the belief that U.S. immigration policies will make it easy to stay in the country once they arrive is a major factor. About half as many Democrats (39%) say the same.

For more on Americans’ views of these and other reasons, visit Chapter 2.

How serious is the situation at the border?

A sizable majority of Americans (78%) say the large number of migrants seeking to enter this country at the U.S.-Mexico border is either a crisis (45%) or a major problem (32%), according to the Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 16-21, 2024, among 5,140 adults.

Related: Migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high at the end of 2023. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to describe the situation as a “crisis”: 70% of Republicans say this, compared with just 22% of Democrats.

§ Democrats mostly view the situation as a major problem (44%) or minor problem (26%) for the U.S. Very few Democrats (7%) say it is not a problem.

In an open-ended question, respondents voice their concerns about the migrant influx. They point to numerous issues, including worries about how the migrants are cared for and general problems with the immigration system.

Yet two concerns come up most frequently:

§ 22% point to the economic burdens associated with the migrant influx, including the strains migrants place on social services and other government resources.

§ 22% also cite security concerns. Many of these responses focus on crime (10%), terrorism (10%) and drugs (3%).

When asked specifically about the impact of the migrant influx on crime in the United States, a majority of Americans (57%) say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime. Fewer (39%) say this does not have much of an impact on crime in this country.

Republicans (85%) overwhelmingly say the migrant surge leads to increased crime in the U.S. A far smaller of Democrats (31%) say the same; 63% of Democrats instead say it does not have much of an impact.

Government widely criticized for its handling of migrant influx

For the past several years, the federal government has gotten low ratings for its handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Note: The wording of this question has been modified modestly to reflect circumstances at the time).

However, the current ratings are extraordinarily low.

Just 18% say the U.S. government is doing a good job dealing with the large number of migrants at the border, while 80% say it is doing a bad job, including 45% who say it is doing a very bad job.

§ Republicans’ views are overwhelmingly negative (89% say it’s doing a bad job), as they have been since Joe Biden became president.

§ 73% of Democrats also give the government negative ratings, the highest recorded during Biden’s presidency.

For more on Americans’ evaluations of the situation, visit Chapter 1.

Which policies could improve the border situation?

There is no single policy proposal, among the nine included on the survey, that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say would improve the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. There are areas of relative agreement, however.

A 60% majority of Americans say that increasing the number of immigration judges and staff in order to make decisions on asylum more quickly would make the situation better. Only 11% say it would make things worse, while 14% think it would not make much difference.

Nearly as many (56%) say creating more opportunities for people to legally immigrate to the U.S. would make the situation better.

Majorities of Democrats say each of these proposals would make the border situation better.

Republicans are less positive than are Democrats; still, about 40% or more of Republicans say each would improve the situation, while far fewer say they would make things worse.

Opinions on other proposals are more polarized. For example, a 56% majority of Democrats say that adding resources to provide safe and sanitary conditions for migrants arriving in the U.S. would be a positive step forward.

Republicans not only are far less likely than Democrats to view this proposal positively, but far more say it would make the situation worse (43%) than better (17%).

Building or expanding a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was among the most divisive policies of Donald Trump’s presidency. In 2019, 82% of Republicans favored expanding the border wall, compared with just 6% of Democrats.

Today, 72% of Republicans say substantially expanding the wall along the U.S. border with Mexico would make the situation better. Just 15% of Democrats concur, with most saying either it would not make much of a difference (47%) or it would make things worse (24%).

For more on Americans’ reactions to policy proposals,

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM CENTER for IMMIGRATION STUDIES

Latest Texas Poll Shows Strong Support for Governor’s Border Policies

Migrant busing, lawsuits, SB 4, and the wall are all really popular in the Lone Star State

By Andrew R. Arthur on May 3, 2024

Nationally, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a lot of heat for his border policies, be it busing migrants to northern cities, criminalizing illegal entries into the state, suing the administration over the president’s border policies, and erecting border barriers at the Rio Grande, but a recent poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas (UT) shows that his stance is playing well in the one place that really matters — with the voters in his state.

That poll was conducted between April 12 and 22 and surveyed 1,200 registered voters in the Lone Star State, with a margin of error of +/- 2.83 percent.

“What Would You Say Is the Most Important Problem ...”. Respondents were asked what the most important problem facing the country today is, and inflation came out on top, the choice of 16 percent of those polled. “The economy” finished third, at 10 percent, meaning that financial concerns combined were viewed as a national problem by more than a quarter of those polled.

Sandwiched between inflation and the economy, however, was “immigration”, the choice of 13 percent of respondents, and directly following the economy was “border security”, at 9 percent. Combined, therefore, immigration and border issues were viewed as the biggest problem facing the country by 22 percent of respondents.

Texas being Texas, the pollsters then asked respondents what the biggest problem facing their state was, and that order above was more than reversed: 20 percent — one-fifth of all respondents — identified immigration as the biggest issue facing Texas, and 19 percent said it was “border security” — 39 percent all told.

The two pocketbook issues — inflation and the economy — were identified as the most important issue facing Texas by just 9 percent and 6 percent of respondents, respectively, for a total of 15 percent.

That itself is remarkable, given that its more than 400 miles between Amarillo (in the panhandle) and the closest point at the Southwest border (in Langtry on the Rio Grande), and hours in driving distance from the border to major metropolitan centers like Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston. And yet, all Texans are all feeling the heat from what’s happening at the international boundary.

Border Concerns. UT then asked respondents their thoughts on whether they deemed the number of migrants attempting to cross the Southwest border “a crisis”, “a very serious problem, but not a crisis”, “a somewhat serious problem”, “not much of a problem”, or a subject on which they didn’t have an opinion.

In response, 48 percent of those polled deemed illegal immigration at the Mexican border a crisis, 23 percent stated that it was a serious problem, 19 percent deemed it a somewhat serious problem, and just 8 percent believed it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Those responses were fairly consistent with polling done two months earlier in February, which indicates that Texans by and large are concerned about the border and that not much the Biden administration has done of late has ameliorated those apprehensions.

More telling, however, was the next question, which asked respondents in each camp whether their concerns were related to one or more of six specific impacts of illegal migration.

In response, 59 percent of those who deemed the border a crisis had concerns about the strains those migrants are having on local resources; 57 percent about their impact of national security; 56 percent about crime; 53 percent their impact on the economy; 36 percent on the effect that they would have on U.S. culture; and 31 percent about the effects on the migrants and their wellbeing.

The ”somewhat concerned” cohort put the wellbeing of the migrants at the top of their list (a 37 percent response), followed by local resources (28 percent), culture (25 percent), crime (23 percent), national security (22 percent), and the economy (21 percent).

Interestingly, both the “not too concerned” and the “not concerned at all” folks were most concerned about the impact those migrants would have on American culture (an 18 percent and 20 percent response, respectively), followed by economic impacts for those who were not too concerned about illegal migration (17 percent) and the impact on the migrants themselves for those who aren’t concerned at all (14 percent).

Those responses deserve a much fuller analysis than I can offer here, but it’s safe to say that the nearly half of Texas voters who believe the border is a full-blown crisis have high levels of anxiety with nearly every negative aspect of illegal immigration.

Proper Federal Response. Respondents were next asked what the federal government should do about illegal immigration, and more than half — 52 percent — strongly supported increasing Border Patrol resources, while 81 percent in total supported such a move to one degree or another (just 13 percent opposed such action).

That was the most popular response, followed by 72 percent who supported increasing the number of immigration judges and other staff; 70 percent who want to penalize businesses that hire unauthorized aliens; 67 percent who want to increase deportations of those already here; 63 percent who want to expand opportunities for aliens to come here legally; an equal percentage (63 percent) who want to expand the Southwest border wall; 57 percent who want to make it harder for “asylum seekers” to obtain temporary legal status here; 56 percent who want to increase resources available for migrants; and just 41 percent who want to send aid to migrant-sending countries.

That latter response to illegal migration, of course, is the basis of the Biden administration’s “root causes” strategy of expanding economic opportunities for would-be illegal migrants in Central America, and in that vein, it should be noted that 46 percent oppose shipping aid abroad to stem illegal migration.

It’s especially curious, however, that exactly equal percentages of respondents support both expanding legal immigration opportunities and “building the wall”, but even more notable is that equal percentages of respondents (29 percent in each case) oppose such action.

Plainly the opinions of Texas voters about what the administration should do to stem the tide of illegal migrants are all over the map, but what’s clear is that they want something done.

That said, when asked which of these options would be most effective, a plurality (19 percent) chose the wall, followed by expanding opportunities for aliens to come legally (16 percent), increasing deportations (13 percent), expanding Border Patrol resources (also 13 percent), and making it harder for asylum seekers to temporarily stay (10 percent).

The “root causes” idea came in dead last, at 5 percent.

Support For Texas’ Border Policies. Finally, respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed various initiatives the state of Texas has taken to secure the Southwest border.

“Deploying additional state police and military resources to the border between Texas and Mexico”—the key component of “Operation Lone Star”, which Abbott implemented beginning in March 2021 — was the most popular among Texas voters in this poll, with 69 percent of respondents in support and 25 percent in opposition.

In second place was “constructing and/or repairing walls or physical barriers on the border between Texas and Mexico”, supported by 65 percent of the respondents in the UT poll, and opposed by 28 percent.

I’ll skip over the third most popular state initiative for a moment to go to the fourth-place finisher, “placing buoys and barbed wire at the Rio Grande River to deter migration”, again part of Lone Star, which was supported by 58 percent of those polled (36 percent of whom opposed).

President Biden is likely not relying on Texas’ 40 electoral votes in November, but this is likely bad news for an administration currently suing the state in federal court for the right to remove both the buoys and portions of the wire in Maverick County (Eagle Pass and its environs).

Next in popularity is “suing the federal government over federal immigration policies”, which enjoys the support of more than half — 54 percent — of Texas voters polled. That is an option the state has definitely chosen with gusto, albeit with mixed results (at best).

“Paying to bus foreign migrants awaiting their asylum hearings to other parts of the country outside Texas”, a policy Abbott implemented beginning in April 2022 to the dismay of the mayors of Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and other “sanctuary” jurisdictions, was supported by just over half, 51 percent, of respondents. On the flip side, just 39 percent of those polled opposed the busing scheme.

The least popular Texas policy polled was “preventing U.S. Border Patrol agents from accessing parts of the Texas-Mexico border”, which a majority (51 percent) opposed and just 31 percent supported.

To the best of my knowledge, the only area the state had barred agents from entering was Shelby Park, in Eagle Pass, and even then only during a Supreme Court showdown over CBP’s right to cut the Maverick County wire in January.

Which brings me to the third most popular Texas state border initiative in the UT poll: “Making it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to be in Texas in most circumstances”, which actually drew a surprising amount of support given all the folderol nationally — and locally — that has surrounded it.

The initiative in question is Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), which would, inter alia, make it a misdemeanor for an alien to cross the border into Texas illegally. SB 4 was supposed to go into effect on March 1, but thus far the Biden administration has successfully blocked its implementation in federal court.

Despite that fact (or possibly in part because of it) 62 percent of Texas voters in this poll supported the law, compared to just 30 percent who opposed criminalizing illegal status. That 2-to-1 margin likely doesn’t sit well with the Texas Democratic party, which has branded SB 4 a “racist ... anti-immigration law”.

Operation Lone Star and the other state border initiatives described above have cost Texas taxpayers billions of dollars, and yet they still garner widespread support from voters. That’s because, as the UT poll reveals, Texans are uniquely concerned about the implications — on their state and the nation — of insecurity at the U.S.-Mexico line.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – FROM EL PAIS

MEXICO’S ECONOMY GROWS 0.2% IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE YEAR

Latin America’s second economy continued its good streak and reported slight growth, supported by dynamic trade and tourism

By KARINA SUÁREZ Mexico - APR 30, 2024 - 15:11 EDT

Mexico’s economy registered slight growth in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the previous three months. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 0.2% from January to March, driven by the services sector, which includes trade and tourism, according to the report published this Tuesday by the national statistics bureau Inegi. The quarterly growth implies a moderate acceleration compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, when GDP grew only 0.1%. Mexico’s GDP continued its good streak and the results exceeded analysts’ forecasts.

Domestically, the services sector recorded growth of 0.7% compared to the previous quarter, while the primary sector, which represents activities such as agriculture and fishing, fell 1.1%. Industrial activity also reported a decrease of 0.4%. Compared to the same period last year, seasonally adjusted figures show that the country’s GDP rose 2%, the lowest annual rate in the last nine quarters.

The director of Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, said on her social media accounts that despite being above expectations, Mexico’s GDP growth in the first quarter was low for an election year. “With this and high inflation, Mexico still has the risk of falling into stagflation,” she pointed out. The expectations of the Ministry of Finance outline that the Mexican economy will grow in a range of between 2.5% and 3.5% this year. According to this source, GDP growth will be a consequence of greater consumption, the completion of infrastructure works and growing external demand by the United States.

2023 was the third consecutive year in which the country’s economic growth exceeded the projections of market analysts at the beginning of the year.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – FROM GUK

FEWER WILDFIRES, GREAT BIODIVERSITY: WHAT IS THE SECRET TO THE SUCCESS OF MEXICO’S FORESTS?

More than half of the country’s forestry is in community and Indigenous hands – and from CO₂absorption to reducing poverty the results are impressive

By Linda Farthing in Ixtlán, Mexico Wed 1 May 2024 05.00 EDT

Dexter Melchor Matías works in the Zapotec Indigenous town of Ixtlán de Juárez, about 1,600ft (490 metres) above the wide Oaxaca valley in Mexico, where community forestry has become a way of life. Like him, about 10 million people across the country live in and make a living from forests, with half of that population identifying as Indigenous.

As average temperatures soar around the world and wildfires rage across the Americas, in Mexico, where more than a quarter of the country suffers from drought, the number of wildfires has remained steady since 2012.

A sign outside Ixtlán sawmill and furniture factory reads: ‘In this community, private property does not exist. The purchase or sale of communal land is forbidden.’

More than half of Mexico’s forests are in community and Indigenous hands, a situation unlike anywhere else in the world, which, according to experts, helps explain why the country has done better at controlling large fires.

“There are more wildfires south of here because they have a lot of small private properties,” says Melchor Matías, a community forest manager. “They just don’t have the capacity to monitor their forests as we can.”

Worldwide, an estimated 36% of remaining intact forest landscapes are on Indigenous land. Studies show that not only do community-controlled forests absorb more C0₂ than those under government or private control, but deforestation rates are lower. They also suffer less during severe water shortages, greatly reducing wildfire risk.

Ixtlán’s long, narrow territory of 19,000 hectares (47,000 acres) encompasses snowy mountain peaks and lush lowland jungles with cloud forests in between. Rather than clearcutting, vertical ribbons of pine and oak between six and eight hectares (15 and 20 acres) are logged in strips down mountainsides, enabling the forest to regenerate naturally.

Logging operations are closely regulated by Ixtlán’s community forestry enterprise, which wrested forests away from a private concession in 1982. Ixtlán’s success had been happening all over Mexico since, after 1970, communities took advantage of state forestry reforms and subsidies to exert greater local control.

Of the more than 21,000 communities with forest ownership in Mexico, about 1,600 engage in sustainable logging, mostly in the southern part of the country.

For forest enterprises such as the one in Ixtlán, maximising profits has never been the principal goal. “Our interest is in creating jobs,” says the conservation scientist Guadalupe Pacheco-Aquino. In the second-poorest state in Mexico, relatively well-paid rural jobs like those community forestry creates in Ixtlán are a rarity. “Forestry has been instrumental in helping people to get out of poverty.”

Investment in public works such as roads and schools and generating local income through profit-sharing round out the community forestry enterprises mandate. “These businesses engage with the market but are not market-driven,” says David Bray, professor emeritus of earth and environment at Florida International University. “They are successful because of favourable state policies, high and stable prices for wood products and their sophisticated levels of community governance.”

Our structure has the advantage that everyone who has an interest in the outcome has a voice

Guadalupe Pacheco-Aquino, scientist

A mostly male community assembly directs Ixtlán’s logging and a sawmill and furniture factory. Being a voting comunero, as assembly members are known, brings considerable obligations and status. It is an inherited position, generally passed from father to son. “That is beginning to change,” says Pacheco-Aquino, “as more fathers are leaving the position to their daughters”.

Decision-making is grounded in Indigenous customs that put the group’s interests above the individual, value elders’ knowledge, and prioritise consensus. Political parties are excluded. Instead, technically skilled senior members represent all the local families and participate in every significant decision.

The sawmill operated by the community forestry enterprise in Ixtlán de Juárez. Photograph: Linda Farthing

“From a business point of view, even though we now have a consulting committee to accelerate decision-making, this system takes a lot more time. That is the disadvantage,” says Pacheco-Aquino. “But our structure has the advantage that everyone who has an interest in the outcome has a voice.”

Melchor Matías says: “With so many bosses, it was difficult to adjust at first. But gradually, you get used to how it works, and its benefits for the community outweigh the amount of time involved.”

Noemí Cruz Hernández is the manager of the community’s furniture factory. The forestry engineer supervises 40 employees who make tables, benches and chairs from the high-quality pine grown in Ixtlán’s tropical montane forests. The operation is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

“We mostly sell school furniture to the state government, but we’re working on becoming more independent. We just opened our second retail store in Oaxaca city,” she says. Using forest revenues to diversify its economy, Ixtlán now has a community-run petrol station, food store, water bottling facility, credit union, and an ecotourism inn, generating the sustainable economic development Mexican communities need.

In Ixtlán, workers are paid minimum wage, plus benefits, for 48 hours a week. “Our biggest problem is turnover,” Cruz Hernández says. “We train people, and then they leave for better opportunities elsewhere.”

People leaving the area is an issue in Ixtlán, even after establishing a local university – Universidad de la Sierra Juárez – in 2005 that emphasises forestry and conservation programmes. However, migration rates are lower than in other rural communities.

Many of Joaquin Aquino’s classmates have left. A driver, he had a chance to go to Canada but remained to help care for his sick father. Aquino, who has a four-year-old son, now works for Ixtlán’s ecotourism project. “I was able to stay because of community forestry. It has benefited all of us, as well as the towns around us,” he says. “There is much more income to go round. And protecting the forests means we have something to leave to our children.”

Despite a steady flow of remittances from elsewhere in Mexico and the US, economic hardship persists in Ixtlán. However, extreme poverty has fallen by more than half since 2010.

Samuel Bautista Aquino is a 16-year-old with three more years of high school ahead of him. The money his mother and older sister make running a small food business falls short of supporting Samuel and his two younger siblings.

Samuel had to leave school and now acts as a tourist guide. As he crouches to show a visitor a tiny forest flower, he says: “I want to go to university and learn more about plants and trees, but especially about mushrooms.” There have been 113 different kinds of wild edible mushrooms identified in Ixtlán.

Forest inspections are a regular occurrence. “We have never had problems with illegal logging,” says Melchor Matías. Mexico’s community forests often suffer even lower deforestation rates than the country’s protected areas.

According to Bray, given the urgency of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, this kind of forestry management stands out as an example of the positive outcomes of Indigenous and local control over forests. “Community forests capture more carbon than strictly conserved protected areas, mostly by storing it in wood furniture and lumber for construction,” says Bray. “When Indigenous and local communities control their forests, humans and the land benefit.”

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – FROM US NEWS

MEXICO'S ECONOMY CONTINUED WEAK GROWTH IN FIRST QUARTER, POLL SHOWS: REUTERS POLL

By Reuters April 29, 2024, at 10:55 a.m.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's economy continued to grow at a weak rate in the first quarter, due largely to a drop in manufacturing and agriculture that was only partially offset by services, according to a Reuters poll on Monday.

The median estimate of 10 financial institutions was that the gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.1% in the quarter, the same rate as in the previous quarter, and the lowest since the third quarter of 2021, seasonally adjusted figures showed.

If the estimate is confirmed, Latin America's second-largest economy will have grown for 10 consecutive quarters.

At a yearly rate, GDP will have grown 2.1%, below the 2.5% registered in the previous quarter, according to the poll.

Mexico's statistics agency INEGI will publish GDP growth data for the first quarter of 2024 on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Noe Torres; Additional reporting by Gabriel Burin in Buenos Aires; Editing by Peter Graff)

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – FROM CBS

CLANDESTINE BURIAL PITS, BONES AND CHILDREN'S NOTEBOOKS FOUND IN MEXICO CITY, SEARCHERS SAY

Volunteer searchers said they have found a clandestine crematorium on the edge of Mexico City, the latest grim discovery in a nation where more than 100,000 people are listed as officially missing.

It's the first time in recent memory that anyone claimed to have found such a body disposal site in the capital. Collectives searching for missing persons say that drug cartels and other organized crime gangs often use drums filled with diesel or caustic substances to burn or dissolve bodies to leave no trace — but up to now, there has been little evidence of that in Mexico City.

Ceci Flores, a leader of one of the groups of so-called "searching mothers" from northern Mexico, announced on social media late Tuesday her team had found bones around a charred pit on the outskirts of the city.

Flores said the team had found bones, clandestine burial pits, ID cards and children's notebooks at the site in a rural area of the city's south side.

"I am not looking for justice, just for a mother to know where to tuck her son in for the last time," she wrote. "I want to cry, this country is not right."

Mexico City prosecutors issued a statement saying they were investigating the find to determine the nature of the remains found, and whether they were human. The prosecutors office said it was also reviewing security camera footage and looking for possible witnesses.

The discovery, if confirmed, would be a political embarrassment for the ruling party, which has long governed Mexico City and claims the capital has been spared much of the drug cartel violence that afflicts other parts of the country.

That is largely due to the city's dense population, notoriously snarled traffic, extensive security camera network and large police force, which presumably make it hard for criminals to act in the same way they do in provincial areas.

But while the city is home to 9 million residents and the greater metropolitan area holds around 20 million, large parts of the south side are still a mix of farms, woods and mountains. In those areas, it is not unheard of for criminals to dump the bodies of kidnapping victims, but they seldom burn or bury them.

Volunteer searchers like Flores often conduct their own investigations, sometimes relying on tips from former criminals, because the government has been unable to help. The searchers have been angered by a government campaign to "find" missing people by checking their last known address, to see if they have returned home without advising authorities.

Activists claim that is just an attempt to reduce the politically embarrassing figures on the missing.

The searchers, mostly the mothers of the disappeared, usually aren't trying to convict anyone for their relatives' abductions. They say they just want to find their remains.

The Mexican government has spent little on looking for the missing. Volunteers must stand in for nonexistent official search teams in the hunt for clandestine graves where cartels hide their victims. The government hasn't adequately funded or implemented a genetic database to help identify the remains found.

Victims' relatives rely on anonymous tips, sometimes from former cartel gunmen, to find suspected body-dumping sites. They plunge long steel rods into the earth to detect the scent of death.

If they find something, the most authorities will do is send a police and forensics team to retrieve the remains, which in most cases are never identified. But such systematic searches have been rare in Mexico City.

At least seven of the activists searching for some of Mexico's more than 100,000 missing people have been killed since 2021.

In March, a group of relatives searching for missing loved ones said they discovered around two dozen bags containing human remains in a clandestine cemetery at a ranch in El Salto in the western state of Jalisco. In the same region in February 2023, 31 bodies were exhumed by authorities from two clandestine graves.

In 2018, a woman named Maria told CBS News she joined a group of volunteers to look for the remains of her son, who she saw grabbed off the street and thrown into a white van.

"They had taken him. He was in a truck a street away," she said. "Like I have my son, others have their children, their siblings, their spouses, their parents. There's every kind of person. That's why we're here — to search."

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – FROM NEWSWEEK

By Alia Shoaib

Mexico has sent 600 troops to areas on the border with the U.S. following an uptick in violence, including an attack on a military installation and mass kidnappings.

The Mexican soldiers have been sent to the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, which border Texas, according to Border Report, an outlet which reports on news about the Mexico-U.S. border.

An international security expert told the outlet that the region was formerly dominated by the Zetas drug cartel, which was known for its violent tactics.

While the Zetas' influence has waned due to leadership arrests, factions like the Northeast cartel and Zetas Old School remain active, and the border area is now contested by splinter and rival groups, the expert said.

In recent weeks, the area has seen a surge in violence.

Mayoral candidate Noe Ramos Ferretiz, who was seeking reelection, was killed in Tamaulipas, in what local media reported was a knife attack.

A Mexican army installation was also attacked in the town of Miguel Aleman in Tamaulipas, and armed clashes between gangs were reported to have taken place in the area.

And in Nuevo Leon, dozens of people were reported to have been kidnapped, of which many have since been released or rescued.

Speaking about cartel violence in the region, Michael Ballard, vice president of intelligence for Virginia-based Global Guardian, told Border Report: "The Zetas are not a congruent entity anymore, but some offshoots are quite active. We are seeing major factions operating in cities along the border,

"It's a small slice of what they used to control, but those two states are still among the primary routes for heroin and cocaine to make its way to the border and the U.S. There's a reason why border cities and states remain hotly contested and you have a lot of violence."

Ballard said that while the levels of control and violence are lower than they were under the Zetas, "make no mistake, they are still dangerous, and we broadly recommend against travel to Veracruz or Tamaulipas unless it's absolutely necessary."

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is known for his "hugs, not bullets" policy for dealing with cartels, which involves avoiding confrontations with them and instead seeking to address the socioeconomic roots of organized crime.

However, his apparent attempts to humanize the cartels have sometimes stoked controversy—last week he described the country's cartels and gangs as essentially "respectful people" who "respect the citizenry" and mostly kill one another.

Experts and activists say that cartel violence has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Mexicans and forced many to flee their homes.

Obrador last month refused to fight drug cartels on U.S. orders as part of what he called a "Mexico First" policy, explaining, "We are not going to act as police officers for any foreign government."

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – FROM AP NEWS

MEXICO’S PRESIDENT SAYS HE WON’T FIGHT DRUG CARTELS ON US ORDERS, CALLS IT A ‘MEXICO FIRST’ POLICY

BY MARK STEVENSON

Updated 5:14 PM EDT, March 22, 2024

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Friday he won’t fight Mexican drug cartels on U.S. orders, in the clearest explanation yet of his refusal to confront the gangs.

Over the years, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has laid out various justifications for his “hugs, not bullets” policy of avoiding clashes with the cartels. In the past he has said “you cannot fight violence with violence,” and on other occasions he has argued the government has to address “the causes” of drug cartel violence, ascribing them to poverty or a lack of opportunities.

But on Friday, while discussing his refusal to go after the cartels, he made it clear he viewed it as part of what he called a “Mexico First” policy.

“We are not going to act as policemen for any foreign government,” López Obrador said at his daily news briefing. “Mexico First. Our home comes first.”

López Obrador basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one. He offered to help limit the flow of drugs into the United States, but only, he said, on humanitarian grounds.

“Of course we are going to cooperate in fighting drugs, above all because it has become a very sensitive, very sad humanitarian issue, because a lot of young people are dying in the United States because of fentanyl,” the president said. Over 70,000 Americans die annually because of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are mainly made in Mexico from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China.

López Obrador’s view — like many of his policies — harkens back to the 1970s, a period when many officials believed that Mexican cartels selling drugs to gringos was a U.S. issue, not a Mexican one.

“For decades, past administrations in Mexico have thought the war against drug cartels was basically a U.S. problem,” said security analyst David Saucedo, noting that Mexican domestic drug consumption, while growing — especially methamphetamines — is still at relatively low levels.

“On the other hand, the drug cartels provide jobs in regions where the Mexican government can’t provide economic development, they encourage social mobility, and generate revenue through drug sales to balance trade and investment deficits.”

López Obrador has argued before against “demonizing” the drug cartels, and has encouraged leaders of the Catholic church to try to negotiate peace pacts between warring gangs.

Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.”

He has also sometimes appeared not to take the violence issue seriously. In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: “I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,” suggesting they should get a good spanking.

Asked about those comments at the time, residents of one town in the western Mexico state of Michoacan who have lived under drug cartel control for years reacted with disgust and disbelief.

“He is making fun of us,” said one restaurant owner, who asked to remain anonymous because he — like almost everyone else in town — has long been forced to pay protection money to the local cartel.

“The president said out loud what we had suspected for a long time, that his administration is not really fighting the drug cartels,” said Saucedo, the security analyst. “He has only decided to administer the conflict, setting up what may have to be a crusade against the cartels in the future that he won’t have to fight.”

López Obrador has also made a point of visiting the township of Badiraguato in Sinaloa state, the home of drug lords like Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, at least a half dozen times, and pledging to do so again before he leaves office in September.

It’s also a stance related to prickly nationalism and independence. Asked in November why he has visited the sparsely populated rural township so many times, López Obrador quoted a line from an old drinking song, “because I want to.”

The president has imposed strict limits on U.S. agents operating in Mexico, and limited how much contact Mexican law enforcement can have with them.

but it did note the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions Friday on a Sinaloa Cartel money-laundering network in which the proceeds of fentanyl sales were used to buy shipments of cell phones in the United States, which were then sold in Mexico.

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, credited “strong partnership with the government of Mexico, with which we coordinated closely and for which, we are grateful,” in investigating that case.

While Mexico has detained a few high-profile gang members, the government’s policy no longer matches what Mexican drug cartels have become: extortion machines that make much of their money, not from trafficking drugs, but extorting protection payments from businessmen, farmers, shop owners and street vendors, killing anyone who doesn’t pay.

They take over legitimate businesses, kill rival street-level drug dealers, and murder bus and taxi drivers who refuse to act as lookouts for them.

The cartels control increasingly large swathes of territory both in northern Mexico — their traditional base — and in southern states like Guerrero, Michoacan, Chiapas and Veracruz.

It is unclear if peaceful coexistence was ever possible with Mexican drug gangs. While some regions have produced marijuana or opium poppies for at least 50 years, the illegal trade always brought violence.

López Obrador claims the “Mexico First” policy is needed to reduce domestic violence. Last year, he claimed Mexico saw a drop of 17% in homicides under his administration. But in fact homicides had already fallen about 7% from their mid-2018 peak when López Obrador took office in December of that year. The president is essentially taking credit for a drop that started under his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The most reliable annual count shows that homicides in Mexico declined by 9.7% in 2022 compared to 2021, the first significant drop during the current administration. Mexico’s National Statistics Institute said there were 32,223 killings in 2022.

The country’s homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from about 28 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate in 2021 was about 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – FROM THE CONVERSATION

MEXICO EMERGES AS A DESTINATION FOR AMERICANS SEEKING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES – NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME

By Alejandra Marquez Guajardo Published: May 1, 2024 12:30pm EDT

When its six-week abortion ban went into effect on May 1, 2024, Florida joined nearly two dozen other U.S. states that ban abortion or greatly restrict it.

These laws came into effect after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade ended nearly 50 years of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

Florida health officials in 2023 reported more than 84,000 abortions statewide, including nearly 7,800 from out-of-state residents.

The Tampa Bay Times recently reported that about 2 in 5 abortions in Florida over the past six years occurred in the first six weeks of pregnancy, meaning that roughly 60% of the procedures performed over that time frame would be illegal under the new restrictions.

The new laws in Florida and other states are sending some Americans across the border into Mexico to access an abortion, where the procedure was legalized in recent years.

Clinics in Mexico do not require proof of residency, so solid numbers about who they are treating are hard to come by. But providers in Mexico report they have been seeing more Americans.

In 2022, Luisa García, director of Profem, an abortion clinic in the border city of Tijuana, told NPR that the percentage of patients coming from the United States had jumped from 25% to 50% in just the two months following the Dobbs decision.

Different paths

In recent years, the U.S. and Mexico have each struggled over access to abortion care, with the two countries moving in opposite directions.

The year before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled the criminalization of abortion by the northern state of Coahuila unconstitutional. This decision set a precedent that led to decriminalization at the federal level in 2023.

Change has since been slow. Only 13 of Mexico’s 31 states have modified their penal codes to reflect the court’s resolution, with Jalisco being the latest state to do so, in April 2024.

Unlike in the U.S., federal laws in Mexico do not automatically overrule local ones. But Mexican women living in states where abortions are illegal can still have one in a federally run hospital or clinic. And the federal statute protects the staff of those facilities from punishment.

Marea Verde movement

A crucial force behind the legalization of abortion care in Latin America is a movement called Green Tide, or Marea Verde, which emerged in Argentina and expanded across the region over the past two decades.

Although it began as a collective fight for abortion rights, Green Tide has grown to encompass issues such as the prevention of violence against women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as femicide – the violent death of women motivated by gender.

Expansion of abortion access in Mexico

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022, Mexican organizations offering abortions have expanded locations to increase choices for Mexican and U.S. residents seeking care. For example, Fundación MSI opened its newest clinic in Cancún late last year.

It chose this location intentionally, MSI’s Latin America regional managing director told the health news website Stat. Cancún’s status as a popular tourist destination means that multiple U.S. airports offer direct flights for about US$400 round trip. In-person abortion services range from $250 to $350. MSI’s website caters to Americans by offering information in English and featuring links to search for flights.

In Mexico, an ‘acompanante’ often accompanies other women who want to terminate their pregnancy but don’t know where to turn or fear hostility at public clinics. AP Photo/Maria Alferez

To assist those traveling to Mexico, Mexican and American abortion rights groups created the Red Transfronteriza, a transnational network that supports those crossing the border in search of care but whose primary mission has become the shipping of misoprostol and mifepristone, the pills generally used to induce abortions, into the United States.

One group that is part of the network on the Mexican side of the border is Guanajuato-based Las Libres, or The Free Ones. In September 2023, its founder estimated that her organization had sent abortion pills to approximately 20,000 women in the U.S. since the Dobbs decision.

Red Necesito Abortar, or I Need to Abort Network, was founded in 2017 by Sandra Cardona and Vanessa Jimenez in the northern city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, to help those seeking abortion services.

History of abortion, US-Mexico border

Although the Dobbs decision brought renewed attention to the issue, the relationship between the United States and Mexico and people from both countries seeking abortions has a long history.

Women’s studies professor Lina-María Murillo, who studies the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and teaches a course on global reproduction, explains that abortion in the United States was legal and performed by midwives before the Civil War. In the following decades, declining birth rates and gender inequality led to restrictions across the country and a nationwide ban in 1910.

As Murillo’s research has documented, criminalization led women seeking abortions to travel to Mexico more than a century ago.

These border crossings ultimately declined as Mexican abortion restrictions were enforced and clinics shut down by the late 1960s. At the same time, U.S. activists and doctors contributed to the narrative that portrayed Mexico as a dangerous place where “back alley” abortions were performed by “butcher” physicians. Murillo argues that these myths contributed to a loosening of abortion restrictions in several U.S. states like California and New Mexico, helping set the stage for Roe v. Wade.

As elections loom closer in the United States, abortion will likely take center stage once again – including in Florida, where a referendum to reverse the six-week ban will be on the November ballot.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – FROM CNN

MANUFACTURING IN MEXICO IS HAVING ITS MOMENT. THE US IS BUYING IN — AND SO IS CHINA

By John Towfighi, CNN Published 9:40 PM EDT, Sun April 28, 2024

As US supply chains decouple from China, Mexico’s manufacturing sector is emerging as a winner.

Manufacturing in Mexico is attractive for companies that experienced pandemic-era supply chain snarls or want to decrease reliance on trade between the US and China amid geopolitical uncertainty.

That’s called nearshoring, which is when companies bring production facilities closer to home markets.

As nearshoring continues and global supply chains are reorganized, Mexico’s manufacturing sector has an opportunity for long-term success, according to Alberto Ramos, head of Latin American economics research at Goldman Sachs, who spoke with CNN.

Ramos said Mexico and China have been competing for the US manufacturing market for years, but amid a shifting US-China relationship, Mexico looks poised to pull ahead.

Mexico surpassed China as the top exporter to the US in 2023. Those exports were driven by manufacturing, which comprises 40% of Mexico’s economy, according to Morgan Stanley.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told CNN’s Julia Chatterley that supply chains have made the US economy over-reliant on the Chinese economy in the past.

“The challenge for us is how do you create more resilience in your economy and in trade? Because right now, the way trade has been operating, our supply chains have been so entangled and they have created so much concentration in the Chinese economy, that we all feel extremely vulnerable because the supply chains are fragile,” Tai said.

Solution, go to Mexico

Amid shifting geopolitics and competition, US and Chinese companies both see potential in Mexican manufacturing: Low labor costs, geographic proximity to American markets and the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement — a free trade accord established in 2020 that makes trade in North America more cost-effective and efficient — are all factors contributing to a potential boom.

Made in where?

While US policy intends to decrease reliance on China and “create more resilience” in US trade, moving supply chains can be tricky.

In fact, the US drive to disengage from the Chinese economy might be enabling China to access new markets and avoid US tariffs.

Cars are a major export for Mexico, and they illustrate much of what’s happening.

Mexico is a global hub for car factories, hosting plants from major companies operating in the US, including General Motors, Ford, Stellantis and nearly a dozen more.

Virtually every American auto manufacturer depends on parts from Mexico to build its cars or trucks, because those parts can be substantially cheaper than those made in the US.

Free trade agreements like the USMCA mean companies in the US, Mexico and Canada face fewer barriers moving, selling and buying parts across North America.

A diversion from free trade is tariff policy: In 2018, the US hiked tariffs on imports from China, which makes it more expensive for Chinese goods to enter US markets and dissuades companies from relying on Chinese supply chains.

Cars require tens of thousands of parts, which can be made in any number of places. And while Mexico’s manufacturing sector is increasing exports to the US, Chinese companies might be using Mexico as a route to avoid US tariffs on Chinese goods, according to Xeneta, an ocean freight rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform.

Shipping container exports from China to Mexico were up nearly 60% in January compared to a year ago, according to Container Trade Statistics analyzed by Xeneta.

The surge in exports from China to Mexico suggests the possibility “that the increase in trade we are witnessing is due to importers trying to circumvent US tariffs,” Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta, wrote in a March 15 research note.

An April report by Moody’s Analytics said that while Mexico has increased its manufacturing output, production may be boosted by goods manufactured outside of the country.

The increase in Mexican exports to the US has “been roughly matched by simultaneous and closely correlated growth in Mexican imports from China,” according to S&P Global Market Intelligence country risk analysts Jose Enrique Sevilla-Macip and John Raines.

Goldman’s Ramos said there is an economic incentive to move production to Mexico to avoid tariffs. “It’s a way to circumvent the policy objectives that were behind the enactment of tariffs,” he told CNN.

On Capitol Hill, the possibility that Chinese steel is ducking US tariffs has garnered attention from lawmakers. The Biden administration announced that it is working with the Mexican government to prevent China and other countries from evading US tariffs on steel and aluminum via US imports from Mexico.

As early as February, Tai inquired about “the lack of transparency” around Mexico’s steel and aluminum imports from “third countries” during a meeting with Raquel Buenrostro, Mexico’s secretary of economy.

Concerns of tariff evasion are drawing a response from the US president — and will continue to beyond November’s election. The USMCA is set to be reviewed in 2026.

Both US President Joe Biden and his challenger, former President Donald Trump, espouse goals to grow domestic manufacturing, but they diverge on how to go about doing so.

Biden told steelworkers in Pittsburgh recently that the US government should consider tripling tariffs on Chinese steel. And Trump has proposed a potential 60% tariff on Chinese goods if he returns to the presidency.

“With both US presidential candidates vying to win important Midwestern swing states that have significant auto industries, the issue of US-Mexico-China trade will only increase as the 2024 presidential campaign unfolds,” S&P Global’s Sevilla-Macip and Raines said.

A gradual shift

While supply chains are shifting, moving factories isn’t always that simple. It can take significant investment, from time to money to people. The companies that are moving forward, though, are creating long-term opportunities for the Mexican manufacturing industry.

“It certainly feels like things are booming in Monterrey,” a city in northern Mexico, said Christoffer Enemaerke, a portfolio manager at RBC. On a recent trip there, he told CNN, “we met with companies and experts in the real estate industry and the feedback was that nearshoring is likely to be a multi-year driver of growth for Mexico, particularly in the northern part of the country.”

Tesla (TSLA), for example, said last year that it would build a new plant in Monterrey. “We’re super excited about it,” CEO Elon Musk said during an investor day for the company, adding that the plant would add capacity, rather than replace capacity elsewhere.

Sentiment on the ground is exciting, but most investment flows are yet to be seen, Ramos told CNN.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley see the value of Mexico’s exports to the United States growing from $455 billion to about $609 billion in the next five years.

That also makes Mexico an attractive base for many Chinese companies. EV maker BYD, a global competitor to Musk’s Tesla, announced in February plans for a major expansion in Mexico.

While BYD doesn’t currently sell cars in the US market, a move to Mexico would provide better access to the Mexican market while preparing the company for a potential move into the US.

“Chinese investment and exports to Mexico are highly likely to become a headline issue ahead of the 2026 scheduled review of the USMCA,” Sevilla-Macip and Raines said.

Until then, though, places like Monterrey continue to reap the rewards.

Monterrey, said RBC’s Enemaerke, “feels booming, new and vibrant, more so than other industrial cities I’ve been to, which have mainly been in Asia.”

CNN’s Michael Nam contributed to this report

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – FROM SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

CHINA’S EXPORTS TO MEXICO ARE GETTING HEAVIER TARIFFS – IS IT A SIGN OF MORE TO COME?

· Mexico has established new or higher tariffs on a long list of imports, directly affecting China and raising questions over what else could be in store

· Pressures mounting on Latin American country to limit its trade relationship with China, especially in role as ‘springboard’ to US market

By Kinling Lo Published: 9:00pm, 30 Apr 2024

New tariffs from Mexico could be an ill omen for Chinese exporters as global supply chains shift, with the Latin American country looking to balance its economic interests against pressures from the US over its relationship with the Asian manufacturing powerhouse, analysts said.

Tariff hikes, levying 5 to 50 per cent in additional import costs, have kicked in for 544 products entering Mexico. The higher rates only apply to countries without free trade pacts with the Latin American country, which includes China – its second-largest trading partner and a growing source of shipments over the last two years.

“[The tariffs are] to provide certainty and fair market conditions to domestic industrial sectors that face vulnerability derived from practices that altered and affected international trade,” read a Mexican government statement from April 20 regarding the change.

An unwinnable conflict? The US-China trade war, 5 years on

Affected products include steel, aluminium, textiles, clothing, musical instruments and furniture.

The tariffs present a new hurdle for Chinese businesses as they search for new export destinations, with traditional supply chains altered after escalations in economic tensions with the US.

Mexico has been seen as a “springboard” for Chinese products to enter the American market since the beginning of the China-US trade war in 2018. The Latin American country has also become a prime destination for the US’ “nearshoring” policy, intended to relocate supply chains to neighbouring states.

Annual growth in container shipping between China and Mexico increased by 34.8 per cent in 2023 compared to a 3.5 per cent jump in 2022, according to shipping data platform Xeneta. At the same time, Mexico has overtaken China as the US’ biggest trading partner.

While the Mexican government said the new tariffs were intended to “balance changes in the market to avoid economic distortions” to its domestic industries, geopolitical and trade experts named pressure from Washington as another factor.

Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at Hinrich Foundation, said there is growing concern in Washington that the growth in Mexico includes “Chinese goods that are not undergoing any manufacturing in Mexico, but only circumventing trade rules and tariffs”.

To help stop growing trade flows and – probably – demonstrate resolve to Washington, Mexico has started applying tariffs

Deborah Elms

She added that the US is wary of “undesirable goods” like fentanyl and other illicit substances crossing borders as new trade routes settle in.

“To help stop growing trade flows and – probably – demonstrate resolve to Washington, Mexico has started applying tariffs,” Elms said.

Liu Xuedong, professor in economics and engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, also sees Mexico’s move as a result of prodding from Washington, as lawmakers from both US parties put forward a proposal in March to reimpose a 25 per cent per cent tariff on Mexican steel amid concerns from US trade groups about a surge in imports.

Unravelling China’s role in the US fentanyl crisis

Chinese steel exports to Latin America reached a record high in 2023 according to industry association Alacero, while steel production in the region fell almost 4 per cent year on year.

Mexico’s Ministry of Economy announced a provisional compensatory duty of 31 per cent on Chinese steel nail producers in March at the conclusion of an anti-dumping investigation that started the previous September.

“In the long run, I don’t think the Mexican authorities would continue to increase the tariff rates,” Liu said, adding Chinese companies that have already moved to Mexico would be minimally impacted. Most of the companies in question, he said, are not involved in steel or aluminium and would otherwise be exempted from tariffs.

These tariffs aim to protect domestic industry from the tsunami of Chinese imports. My guess is they will be revised upwards

Jorge Guajardo

However, Jorge Guajardo – Mexican ambassador to China from 2007 to 2013 – said he thinks China could expect more tariffs from Mexico and other developing countries, as politicians look to appease domestic players who have grappled with increased competition.

“These tariffs aim to protect domestic industry from the tsunami of Chinese imports. My guess is they will be revised upwards in the future,” said Guajardo, now a partner at Dentons Global Advisors in Washington.

Last August, Mexico applied tariffs to 392 items, covering nearly 90 per cent of Chinese exports. Although four were removed from the list in April’s round of increases, another 156 were added, with a majority having their percentages raised. Footwear and toilet bowls, for instance, will now face a 35 per cent tariff when imported to Mexico.

These import duties will not apply to goods originating from countries with an existing free trade agreement – most notably the US – and will not affect industrial production in certain sectors like auto parts.

Both Mexico and the United States have presidential elections this year – Mexico in June and the US in November – and the races are drawing attention to potentially drastic transformations of supply chains down the line.

Donald Trump, former US president and presumptive Republican candidate for this year’s contest, has said he would target cars made in Mexico by Chinese companies with a 100 per cent tariff.

Guajardo said there could be greater repercussions for trade between Mexico and China following the elections.

“My guess is all candidates will be in favour of erecting further tariffs against Chinese imports,” he said. “They all face an outcry from domestic manufacturers [over] unfair competition from depressed Chinese prices.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – FROM AP NEWS

IT’S CINCO DE MAYO TIME, AND FESTIVITIES ARE PLANNED ACROSS THE US. BUT IN MEXICO, NOT SO MUCH

Updated 11:17 AM EDT, May 4, 2024

The United States is gearing up for Cinco de Mayo. Music, all-day happy hours and deals on tacos are planned at venues across the country on Sunday — May 5 — in a celebration with widely misunderstood origins that is barely recognized south of the border.

In the U.S., 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 dance, with whirling dancers wearing shiny ribbons with 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.

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, 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.

THIS YEAR’S CELEBRATIONS

May 5 this year falls on a Sunday, an ideal day for many people to relax and enjoy the day. There are celebrations planned across the country, especially in places with large Mexican American populations.

Among the festivities In California, San Jose will host a parade and festival featuring live music, dancers and lowrider cars, while in San Francisco there will be a festival at District Six.

An outdoor market in El Paso, Texas, will feature a car show, vendors and live music from Krystall Poppin, Ka$h Go Crazy and 2 Sexy Ashley.

In New Orleans, there will be celebrations on Saturday and Sunday at Fat City Park, with two stages and eight bands, as well as a taco-eating contest.

Across the country, bars and restaurants are promoting their Mexican fare and specials including all-day happy hours. For something different, New York even has a floating Mexican restaurant on a yacht that cruises the Hudson River.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – FROM AXIOS

WHY AMERICANS CELEBRATE CINCO DE MAYO MORE THAN MEXICANS

By Kelly Tyko

In the U.S., where it's celebrated with tacos, tequila and margarita specials, Cinco de Mayo is often incorrectly believed to be Mexico's Independence Day.

Reality check: Cinco de Mayo — or, in English, May 5 — marks a Mexican victory over France 50 years after Mexico's independence.

• Mexico's Independence Day is celebrated on Sept. 16.

The big picture: It is a bigger holiday in America than it is in Mexico.

• "Cinco de Mayo is a day to celebrate the resilience, culture, and heritage of generations of Mexican Americans," President Biden posted on X last year.

By the numbers: 59% of those celebrating Cinco de Mayo said they planned to purchase alcohol for the day, according to a Numerator survey of more than 5,100 consumers.

• That's higher than the 53% buying alcohol for New Year's Eve and 44% buying for St. Patrick's Day, the survey found.

When is Cinco de Mayo 2024?

Since May 5 falls on a Sunday this year, some businesses will run weekend promotions.

Cinco de Mayo history facts

Flashback: Cinco de Mayo marks the anniversary of the May 5, 1862 Battle of Puebla and the victory by Mexican troops over French troops.

• David Hayes-Bautista, author of "El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition," said for years Latinos celebrated the holiday with parades of people dressed in Civil War uniforms and gave speeches about how the Battle of Puebla was part of a larger struggle for the abolition of slavery in the U.S., Axios' Russ Contreras explains.

Where is Cinco de Mayo celebrated?

In Mexico, the day is mainly celebrated in the Mexican state of Puebla, where the 1862 battle took place.

• The anniversary of the victory is known as El Día de la Batalla de Puebla, which translates in English to "The Day of the Battle of Puebla."

• It is not observed throughout Mexico and is not a federal holiday.

How the U.S. celebrates Cinco de Mayo

Between the lines: Cinco de Mayo started catching on in the U.S. in the 1960s, when Mexican American activists raised their profile, per History.com.

• By the 1980s, corporations and beer companies had co-opted the day to reach the growing U.S. Hispanic market.

• There is typically a pay-per-view boxing match involving a famous Mexican or Mexican American boxer around the Cinco de Mayo weekend each year.

• Cities across the U.S. also hold events for Cinco de Mayo and some sports teams like the Albuquerque Isotopes, a New Mexico Minor League Baseball team, hold special holiday games.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – FROM FORTUNE

CINCO DE MAYO MAY BE BOOZIER THAN NEW YEAR'S EVE AND ST. PATRICK'S DAY, A SURVEY FINDS

With Cinco de Mayo soon approaching, it's a good time to clear up a few misconceptions about the celebration that for many Americans...

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – FROM PBS

BIDEN AND FIRST LADY HOST WHITE HOUSE CINCO DE MAYO RECEPTION

May 6, 2024 1:37 PM EDT

... because President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will host a White House celebration for Cinco de Mayo on Monday May 6^th... as if POTUS is wasting time in Margaritaville: but who besides maybe Sean Hannity will complain?)

The event is scheduled to begin at 5:15 p.m. ET. Watch in the player at the website.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM A28 X67 FROM HOLA

The DJI could not determine how former President Trump celebrated the holiday, or didn’t, but Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner spent Cinco de Mayo in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Ivanka took to social media to share a photo of herself and her husband dressed up for the occasion.

Ivanka Trump shares adventurous post commemorating Earth Day

Ivanka Trump wears a little blue dress for date night with Jared Kushner

Their post was made up of two images (urls above), showing different angles of the couple. In it, both are dressed up for an elegant outing, with Ivanka wearing a red long gown with a dip in the chest, some heels, and her hair styled in waves. Jared wore a traditional black tux. “Celebrating love and the magic of Mexico,” Ivanka captioned the post, adding a Mexican flag in the form of an emoji.

Cinco de Mayo is a date that’s very popular in the United States, and that has come to represent Mexican-American culture. Historically, it celebrates the Battle of Puebla, where Mexico defeated the French Empire in the year 1862.

Over the past weekend, Ivanka and Jared attended other events, including a party at Carbone Beach celebrating the Miami Grand Prix. The party took place this past Saturday, and was a star-studded affair, with celebrities like Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James, Elon Musk, and more in attendance.

PG FROM the Conversation20 Comments

TOPDOG1

1 day ago

STOP THE INVASION. No visa. No entry. Democrats for mass deportation. This is a problem for Mexico just as much as us. They deport hundreds of thousands annually. We should do the same.

Troy Scott

22 hours ago

The problem with mass deportation is that many of these countries don't want them back and refuse to take them. Unless we can fly C130's over Venezuela and shove them out the back we are stuck with them.

Dee Spence

14 hours ago

The mexican army is to say the least outgunned and at a disadvantage in intel since there are probably more cartel in the field then real soliders . The truth more work for then againest (goverment broke) (cartel unlimited funds) = bigger corruption ..

Leon Snow

22 hours ago

all these Gaza protests and there are a lot of people dying on the border...mostly around Texas where mules have to change tactics and rob their clientele

Teresa McDaniel

22 hours ago

Get rid of them, the best way possible.

Jacque Sheet

1 day ago

"Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is known for his "hugs, not bullets" policy for dealing with cartels...."

Somehow, the Spanish translation roughly equates to "thugs, with bullets".......

Robert

17 hours ago

How about acting as police for your own country. Had to believe their president is actually that braindead.

Silver 831cali

16 hours ago

If the U.S would solve it's own problem with drugs then Mexico wouldn't have that problem.

Buckwylde

3 hours ago

Mexico has everything, great food, beautiful climate, sunny beaches everyone wants to go, a colorful and vibrant culture, oil up to their ears, gorgeous women and hard working people. Everything but the rule of law. It's a precious thing folks, let's not lose it.

Edward Lobb

3 hours ago

The country is owned by lawyers, elected officials, and appointees in government agencies, most of whom are also lawyers. Radical political forces use lawyers to get what they want.

Blacksheep 6

23 hours ago

About time. They should be policingthe border constantly. If not, bus them back into Mexico.

Flip Florida

2 hours ago

Obrador is part of the problem. There are things he just doesn't discuss. So many people along the border, feeding and giving them shelter as they wait to try and cross the border (again). Violence was bound to reach these temporary shelters.

Mumbling Biden & Trump.

4 hours ago

Biden welcomes new Democrat voters.