Tag Archives: Costa Rica

Associated Press: Trump administration releases people to shelters it threatened to prosecute for aiding migrants

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The Trump administration has continued releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to nongovernmental shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.Here's The Average Price of a 6-Hour Gutter Upgrade in Minneapolis

Border shelters, which have long provided lodging, meals and transportation to the nearest bus station or airport, were rattled by a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that raised “significant concerns” about potentially illegal activity and demanded detailed information in a wide-ranging investigation. FEMA suggested shelters may have committed felony offenses against bringing people across the border illegally or transporting them within the United States.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continued to ask shelters in Texas and Arizona to house people even after the March 11 letter, putting them in the awkward position of doing something that FEMA appeared to say might be illegal. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump administration releases people to shelters it threatened to prosecute for aiding migrants
The Trump administration has been releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to nongovernmental shelters along the U.S. border with Mexico after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.

https://apnews.com/article/border-shelters-laredo-phoenix-trump-releases-afc2f4d2ca786161e7bb4b03f54033fa

USA Today: How will Trump’s tariffs affect grocery store prices? We explain.

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“The short answer is yes, prices are going to go up,” said David Ortega, a food economist and professor at Michigan State University. “They may not skyrocket for all imported products, but they will go up. Tariffs are a tax on imports, so by definition, they are inflationary.”

While higher tariffs could still be coming after a 90-day-pause, the baseline 10% tariff on all goods, plus higher duties on Chinese products already in effect are a big increase in food costs for American’s budgets, said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at The Consumer Federation of America.

“The 10% ‘default’ tariffs alone represent a truly historic federal tax increase, maybe the largest in my lifetime, with a highly regressive impact,” Gremillion said.

How will Trump’s tariffs affect grocery store prices? We explain.
How will Trump’s tariffs or the threat of more tariffs affect grocery store prices?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/how-will-trump-s-tariffs-affect-grocery-store-prices-we-explain/ar-AA1Eco8Y

New York Times: A Venezuelan Is Missing. The U.S. Deported Him. But to Where?

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The immigrant does not appear on a list of people sent to a prison in El Salvador, and his family and friends have no idea of his whereabouts. He has essentially disappeared.

Ricardo Prada Vásquez, disappeared Venezuelan immigrant

In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful.

The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.

That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world.

But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.

https://archive.is/5WSq8

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Looks for More Countries to Take Migrants

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Officials say they have asked several countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe

These people came to the United States in search of a better life, as many millions have done over the past 250 years.

And their reward? Trump is forcibly exporting them to whatever third-world country will take them.

The Trump administration is pursuing agreements with several more countries to take migrants deported from the U.S., according to officials familiar with the matter.

Immigration officials are seeking more destinations where they can send immigrants the U.S. wants to deport, but whose countries are slow to take them back or refuse to. Their desired model builds on a one-time deal the administration struck with Panama in February, under which they sent a planeload of over 100 migrants, mostly from the Middle East, to the Central American nation. Panama then detained the migrants and worked to send them to their home countries.

The officials are in conversations with countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, but aren’t necessarily looking to sign formal agreements, the people said.

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Among the countries the U.S. has asked to take the deportees are Libya, Rwanda, Benin, Eswatini, Moldova, Mongolia and Kosovo.

Exclusive | U.S. Looks for More Countries to Take Migrants – WSJ

Libya, Rwanda, Benin, Eswatini, Moldova, Mongolia and Kosovo? How inhumane can they get?

Deutsche Welle: Former Costa Rican President Arias says US revoked visa

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If you’d like to visit the U.S., be forewarned: Only Trump suck-ups need apply.

Former Costa Rican President and Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias said Tuesday that the United States had revoked his visa to enter the country, just weeks after he criticized President Donald Trump on social media.

“I received an email from the US government informing me that they have suspended the visa I have in my passport. The communication was very terse, it does not give reasons. One could have conjectures,” Arias told reporters.

In a social media post on Facebook in February, the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner said Trump was behaving like “a Roman emperor.”

“It has never been easy for a small country to disagree with the US government, much less so, when its president behaves like a Roman emperor, telling the rest of the world what to do,” he wrote.

“In my governments Costa Rica never received orders from Washington, as if we were a ‘Banana Republic.'”

Arias’ post, just ahead of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Costa Rica in February, also labelled the US “a nation in search of an enemy.”

Former Costa Rican President Arias says US revoked visa

Former Costa Rican President Arias says US revoked visa

Miami Herald: ‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments

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Anything to get the numbers up, so that Trump & cronies can claim to be doing something!

Federal authorities in South Florida have recently detained at least 18 Cubans during scheduled immigration appointments, local attorneys say, highlighting that a group that has historically enjoyed special immigration benefits is not immune to the Trump administration’s intensified mass deportation efforts.

Among the Cubans recently detained is Beatriz Monteagudo, 25, her friend Johan Ariel told the Miami Herald. The pair texted each other daily. But the last message he received from Monteagudo was March 10. The Cuban woman, who got an I-220A after entering the U.S. in January 2024, was heading to her required check-in appointment in Miramar.

Ariel quickly grew worried that he hadn’t heard from her following the appointment. When he searched the ICE detainee locator service online, her name showed up. Then came Monteagudo’s call.

When she called Ariel from the detention facility, she told him she was with about 18 others who had also been taken into custody after showing up for their routine appointments. Monteagudo told him she wasn’t told why they were there, aside from officers mentioning the laws had changed.

That’s a blatant lie. No laws changed. Trump and ICE are now retaliating again people who have properly complied with the process up to this point. Most of these Cubans crossed the border after they had arranged appointments to do so with immigration officials.

To date, neither Monteagudo nor Ariel have gotten answers, he says. And this week, Monteagudo, who was living in Miami, was transferred to a detention facility in San Diego.

Transferring detainees to remote prisons is a favorite ICE tactic to make it difficult / impossible for family members and attorneys to assist the detainees.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments
Beatriz Monteagudo and Laura de la Caridad Sanchez are two Cuban women detained by ICE after routine appointments in Miramar. More than a dozen others were also possibly detained.

‘Deport every person under the sun’: ICE detains Cubans during immigration appointments