C’mon, let’s see your USA! USA! USA! chant, say the Pledge of Allegiance and mouth the words to the national anthem after removing your cap and placing your right hand over your heart. And you better damn well stand up too. Otherwise, you’re not a‘Murican.
don't test me
You got a Harley to go along with that? Otherwise, not ‘murican.
I don't do guns or bikes, I'm more of a McDonalds 'murican.
Careful, you’ll blow up like a tick and need our expensive healthcare sooner rather than later. Have you heard of kale?
I'm not a pussy, I'm not afraid of a little saturated fats, high sodium, and corn syrup.
Now we’re talkin! Just get some tobaacky and some Budweiser and you’re goldenrod.
Not bud light tho 🤣
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it"
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Smugglers are bringing migrants to a remote Arizona border crossing, overwhelming US agents
By ANITA SNOW
Today
LUKEVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — Gerston Miranda and his wife were among thousands of migrants recently arriving at this remote area on Arizona's southern border with Mexico, squeezing into the United States through a gap in the wall and walking overnight about 14 miles (23 kilometers) with two school-aged daughters to surrender to Border Patrol agents.
“There is no security in my country," said the 28-year-old from Ecuador, who lost work when his employer closed due to extortion by criminals. "Without security you cannot work. You cannot live.”
A shift in smuggling routes has brought an influx of migrants here from countries as diverse as Senegal, Bangladesh and China, prompting the Border Patrol to seek help from other federal agencies and drawing scrutiny to an issue critical in next year’s presidential elections.
With hundreds of migrants crossing daily in the area, the U.S. government on Monday indefinitely shut down the nearby international crossing between Lukeville, Arizona, and Sonoyta, Mexico, to free Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the port of entry to help with transportation and other support. The agency also has partially closed a few other border ports of entry in recent months, including a pedestrian crossing in San Diego and a bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Critics of the move, including Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the state's two U.S. senators, the governor of Mexico's Sonora state and the leadership of the nearby Tohono O’odham Nation, said it could harm trade and tourism. Hobbs urged President Joe Biden to reassign the 243 National Guard members already in the Tucson sector to help reopen the Lukeville crossing.
The morning after it was closed, about a dozen Border Patrol agents in olive green uniforms watched over some 400 migrants who had spent the night by the towering wall of steel bollards, wrapped in shiny Mylar blankets they later discarded among saguaro cactus and Palo Verde trees.
Three or four times as many CBP field operations officers in navy blue uniforms helped the migrants into white vans for a short drive to a canopied field intake center. From there, agents took migrants for processing to the Border Patrol’s Ajo station, a half-hour north, or to other locations such as Tucson.
U.S. authorities have been so short-handed in Arizona that they have used charter flights to transfer some migrants from Tucson to three Texas border cities for processing, according Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that analyzes flight data.
Federal air marshals who provide security on commercial flights, and even Federal Protective Service officers who guard U.S. government buildings, are being diverted to the border, officials have said, without saying exactly where they are going.
“We are seeing a lot of different kinds of uniforms down here,” humanitarian aid worker Tom Wingo said in Lukeville.
Nonprofit groups worry about the migrants' well-being.
“This is a humanitarian crisis that’s happening in our own backyard,” said Dora Rodriguez, chairperson of the Tucson nonprofit Humane Borders, which keeps water tanks on the border for migrants. “There are hundreds of people, including infants and children, who are stranded in remote areas of the desert for days.”
The Lukeville area's popularity as a place to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. emerged in recent months. It's one of the most striking examples of migrants shifting to a remote area, putting the Border Patrol on its heels. In 2019, Antelope Wells, New Mexico, became a popular spot. This year also has seen hundreds of migrants camping in the mountains of Jacumba Hot Springs, California, waiting for agents to process them.
Because Lukeville is so remote, Border Patrol staffing is light, so traffickers in the region controlled by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel steer people there. The arrivals last week included 41-year-old Luiz Velazquez, his wife and their three children from Zacatecas, a Mexican state plagued by drug cartel violence.
Heat-related illness was a major concern several months ago when daytime temperatures climbed into the triple digits. The worry now is overnight temperatures in the 40s, in a place where the closest hospitals and nonprofit migrant shelters are nearly two hours away.
Chris Clem, a retired Yuma, Arizona, sector chief, said it is part of smugglers’ strategy to stretch agents as thinly as possible, forcing highway checkpoints to close and other resources to be diverted for processing migrants. The remoteness creates “enormous strain” on the Border Patrol, he said.
Art Del Cueto, a Tucson-based vice president with the National Border Patrol Council, said the union wants stricter measures to deter migrants from coming. He said it’s not so much a matter of too few agents, but one of too many migrants.
Heading into next year’s presidential elections, the border is a top issue for voters, especially Republicans, and immigration issues could be a liability for Biden, a Democrat, as he runs for reelection.
A national AP-NORC poll conducted in November found about half of U.S. adults say increasing security at the U.S.-Mexico border should be a “high priority” for the federal government, with 3 in 10 calling it a “moderate priority.” Republicans were more likely than Democrats to call it a high priority.
Biden’s approach to immigration combines new legal pathways to enter the country with more restrictions on asylum for those who cross the border illegally. Former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner for the 2024 nomination, has promised even tougher hardline immigration policies in a second term.
Additional funding for border security has been held up in Congress over a package to provide additional aid to Israel and Ukraine in their wars against Hamas and Russia.
John Modlin, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector chief, said Friday that the agency made 18,900 arrests for illegal crossings the previous week in the sector that includes most of Arizona's border with Mexico. That translates to a daily average of 2,700 arrests, well above October's daily average of less than 1,800 and barely 700 in December 2022.
The 2020 census listed Lukeville's population as 35, but the mobile home park where many residents lived now appears abandoned, with boarded up buildings and a scattering of old manufactured homes. A previously busy service station and store that sold ice and snacks to travelers was closed indefinitely on Monday.
The Lukeville border crossing is also popular among U.S. residents driving from Arizona to the popular resort of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point. Nicknamed “Arizona’s beach," it is about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of the border on the northern shores of the Sea of Cortez.
Americans who want to travel to Puerto Peñasco now must cross through Nogales, a three-hour drive to the east, or San Luis, a two-hour drive to the west.
Alfonso Durazo, the governor of Mexico's Sonora state has asked officials of both countries to “undertake all necessary efforts necessary to resume as soon as possible the extraordinary commercial, tourist and social relationship that have historically distinguished Sonora and Arizona."
"The solution is not to close border crossings,” Durazo said.
___
Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Maria Verza in Mexico City and Rebecca Santana and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Arizona's governor is sending the state's National Guard to the border to help with a migrant influx
By ANITA SNOW
1 hour ago
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona's governor on Friday ordered the state's National Guard to the border with Mexico to help federal officials manage an influx of migrants.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said she issued the executive order because “the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe.”
“I am taking action where the federal government won’t,” Hobbs said.
It was unclear when the troops would arrive at the border and exactly how many would be mobilized.
Hobbs asked President Joe Biden's administration a week ago to mobilize 243 Arizona National Guard troops already in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector that includes Lukeville, Arizona, to help federal officers reopen the border crossing that was indefinitely closed Dec. 4.
Customs and Border Protection has said shutting down the official crossing was necessary to allow personnel stationed there to help Border Patrol agents manage the hundreds of migrants illegally crossing in that area daily.
Although remote, the crossing is a popular route for Arizonans traveling to the Mexican resort of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of the border on the northern shores of the Sea of Cortez.
Hobbs said the National Guard members will be stationed at multiple locations along the southern border, including around Lukeville.
There, they will support state and local agencies engaged in law enforcement, including interdiction of illegal drugs and human trafficking.
The San Miguel crossing located farther east on the Tohono O'odham Nation is also seeing hundreds of migrant arrivals daily, but tribal officials said the National Guard would not be stationed on the reservation.
“We are in close communication with Governor Hobbs on this issue," said Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. "We made clear that no National Guard would be deployed to the Nation and her office has agreed. Today’s action by the Governor is a necessary step in addressing the current crisis at the border.”
Hobbs said the Biden administration had not responded to her request that the U.S. government reimburse Arizona for border security spending.
Customs and Border Protection officials said they did not have an immediate response to the governor's decision.
The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, National Guard confirmed Friday afternoon it was activating members.
Major Gen. Kerry L. Muehlenbeck, who oversees the Arizona National Guard, noted that in September it wrapped up a 30-month active-duty mission providing support to law enforcement agencies in southern Arizona.
Muehlenbeck said the earlier mission provided logistics, administrative, cyber, and medical support.
U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who represents southern Arizona, said he disagreed with Hobbs' executive order.
"But I do appreciate that Governor Hobbs has rejected the brutal and cruel tactics of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott who have taken advantage of this crisis to inhumanely and illegally use migrants as political pawns and to politicize and pander instead of working on real solutions,” Grijalva said in a statement.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do!
It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do!
The Spanish speakers can network a little easier. Speaking Romanian you have a disadvantage.
The migrants crossing the border from the South are from all over. Port a Prince was an odd one, Afghanistan was another. It's become a pipeline because the other countries funnel them through so they dont have to worry about them.
It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do!
And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration. If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors?
It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do!
And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration. If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors?
Yes it’s a small amount but still illegal so I guess they get a pass and they don’t work they beg!
It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do!
And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration. If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors?
Yes it’s a small amount but still illegal so I guess they get a pass and they don’t work they beg!
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The racism and ahistoricism of Trump’s ‘poison the blood’ rhetoric
Donald Trump doesn’t hate immigrants. He married two women who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Nor is he particularly insistent about immigrants having children in the United States. His three oldest children were born to Ivana Trump, who at the time had not yet become a citizen. His youngest child was born in March of the year that Melania Trump got her citizenship.
So when Trump talks about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as he did over the weekend, we don’t need to pretend that he is offering a sober observation about shifts in the country’s population. He is, instead, making a demagogic appeal to Americans who — like so many Americans before them — view newcomers with fear or anger.
Despite their almost uniformly being descendants of immigrants themselves.
The country is experiencing unusually high levels of immigration, which exacerbates those fears (and increases Trump’s ability to leverage them for political purposes). These figures are often misinterpreted, it’s worth noting, with only a percentage of those stopped at the border (many of whom are seeking asylum) being released until legal hearings that will determine if they are granted the right to remain in the country. Many of those apprehended are deported; this was particularly true under the pandemic-triggered policy that allowed law enforcement to deport immigrants quickly. (Many tried to reenter soon after, driving up the number of apprehensions.)
The country in recent years, though, has not experienced unusually high levels of immigrants — that is, foreign-born residents of the United States. Historical comparisons are tricky, given the spottiness of records over the country’s history. But it seems safe to say (using separate historical assessments compiled by Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute) that the percentage of the population that was born outside the United States has increased since immigration laws were loosened in the late 1960s but are not at the highs seen a century ago.
The assessment offered by Pew suggests that more than one-fifth of the country was born outside the United States 100 years ago. According to 2023 numbers from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey even adding 10 million immigrants to the population wouldn’t result in 20 percent of the population being born outside the country.
A central difference, of course, is the places of origin for those immigrants. Until immigration laws were loosened in the 1960s, the vast majority of immigrants to the United States came from Europe. In recent decades, they have come from Latin America (particularly Mexico) and Asia. Immigration from Europe is relatively low.
But, 100 years ago, that did not mean that immigrants from Europe were welcome. There was a huge backlash against immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in particular; the arrival of large numbers of Italians triggered anti-Catholic rhetoric and even violence. (You could have asked Tucker Carlson’s ancestors about that.)
Race is intertwined here. Those new arrivals a century ago weren’t seen as non-White, exactly, but were seen as “racially inferior,” as researchers Cybelle Fox and Thomas Guglielmo wrote in 2012 — unclean, dangerous. Those Eastern European immigrants were often seen as physically distinct from “White” Americans in a similar way to how Hispanic and Asian immigrants are viewed as distinct today.
Trump is typically unsubtle about this. In 2018, The Washington Post reported on his disparaging of immigrants from Africa and other places with large non-White populations as unwelcome, and he lamented that more people weren’t coming from northern Europe.
The most obvious and immediate response to the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country is to point out that the United States is inextricably constituted of immigrants and their children. We don’t live in Finland; we live in a country where the only native resident population is Native Americans and no other family can claim to have been here longer than about 400 years. Trump’s rhetoric is a bit like complaining about someone pouring tap water into the pond behind a dam.
It’s particularly hollow given how immigrants are underrepresented in positions of power. In Congress, for example, only about 3 percent of members were born outside the United States, according to Pew, compared with 16 percent of the population. Only about 15 percent of the members of Congress are immigrants or children of immigrants, about half the rate of the population overall.
A 2017 report looking at the effects of immigrants on the economy nonetheless found that the country is increasingly dependent on immigrants and the children of immigrants to fill jobs. The chart below, from my book about generational change in the country, shows how the share of workers who are third-generation Americans or higher has plunged since the baby boom. Increases in the workforce come from immigrants and their children.
The American population is growing because of immigration. It’s a signal advantage we enjoy, the reason that our population — unlike, say, China’s — isn’t contracting, exacerbating economic problems.
This article has extrapolated a lot of information about immigration from Trump’s comments when, again, his intent is less complicated. He’s simply amplifying his base’s fears of the perceived decline of traditional White Christian America. That he is the child and the grandchild of immigrants, married two immigrant women, and has four kids with immigrant parents — a by-no-means-uncommon situation — is simply waved away.
It’s useful to remember, though: Had he married a Catholic from Eastern Europe a century ago, he might have been the target of similar demagoguery.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Weird that republicans went home instead of negotiating w/ Biden on the border… it’s almost as if they have zero interest in working on a solution…. I wonder why.
“Biden has asked Congress for new legislation to address migration at the border since his first week in office, but Trump and his loyalists have demanded extreme measures that Democrats have, in the past, refused. With Republican refusal to fund Ukraine, Biden has said he is eager enough to get funding to Ukraine that he is willing to negotiate, but Johnson sent the House home until January 9 without a deal.
Now it seems Republicans don’t want their own names on any such deal, likely recognizing that such an outcome would take away an issue they hope to exploit in 2024.They want Biden’s name alone on any new policies or, failing that, to be able to blame him for not taking unilateral action.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation.
In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane.”
Weird that republicans went home instead of negotiating w/ Biden on the border… it’s almost as if they have zero interest in working on a solution…. I wonder why.
“Biden has asked Congress for new legislation to address migration at the border since his first week in office, but Trump and his loyalists have demanded extreme measures that Democrats have, in the past, refused. With Republican refusal to fund Ukraine, Biden has said he is eager enough to get funding to Ukraine that he is willing to negotiate, but Johnson sent the House home until January 9 without a deal.
Now it seems Republicans don’t want their own names on any such deal, likely recognizing that such an outcome would take away an issue they hope to exploit in 2024.They want Biden’s name alone on any new policies or, failing that, to be able to blame him for not taking unilateral action.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation.
In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane.”
We know “why.” It’s not rocket science. But hey, nothings being done.
New migrants face fear and loneliness. A town on the Great Plains has a storied support network
By JESSE BEDAYN
Today
FORT MORGAN, Colo. (AP) — Magdalena Simon's only consolation after immigration officers handcuffed and led her husband away was the contents of his wallet, a few bills.
The hopes that had pushed her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son’s small frame clutched to her chest, ceded to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado’s eastern plains, where some locals stared at her too long and the wind howls so fiercely it once blew the doors half off a hotel.
The pregnant Simon tried to mask the despair every morning when her toddlers asked, “Where’s papa?”
To millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in the past few years, stepping off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be constant companions. What Simon would find in this unassuming city of a little more than 11,400, however, was a community that pulled her in, connecting her with legal council, charities, schools and soon friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants.
In this small town, migrants are building quiet lives, far from big cities like New York, Chicago and Denver that have struggled to house asylum-seekers and from the halls of Congress where their futures are bandied about in negotiations.
The Fort Morgan migrant community has become a boon for newcomers, nearly all of whom arrive from perilous journeys to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a paycheck big enough for food, an attorney and a roof; placing their kids in school; and navigating a language barrier, all while facing the threat of deportation.
The United Nations used the community, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Denver, as a case study for rural refugee integration after a thousand Somalis arrived to work in meatpacking plants in the late 2000s. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories.
In the last year, hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County. More than 30 languages are spoken in Fort Morgan’s only high school, which has translators for the most common languages and a phone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches.
The demographic shift in recent decades has forced the community to adapt: Local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others how to drive, ensure kids are in school and direct people to immigration attorneys.
Simon herself now tells her story to those stepping off buses. The community can't wave away the burdens, but they can make them lighter.
“It’s not like home where you have your parents and all of your family around you,” Simon tells those she meets in grocery stores and school pickup lines. “If you run into a problem, you need to find your own family.”
The work has grown amid negotiations in Washington, D.C., on a deal that could toughen asylum protocols and bolster border enforcement.
On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary seeking shelter for Mary to give birth and being turned away until they were given the stable.
Before marching down the street singing a song adaption in which migrants are seeking shelter instead of Joseph and Mary, participants signed letters urging Colorado's two Democratic senators and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck to reject stiffer asylum rules.
A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now, many migrants work inside dairy plants.
When area businesses were raided several times in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, seats sat empty in schools and gaps opened on factory lines.
"That really changed the the understanding of how deeply embedded migrants are in community," said Jennifer Piper of American Friends Service Committee, which organized the posada celebration.
Guadalupe “Lupe” Lopez Chavez, who arrived in the U.S. alone in 1998 from Guatemala at age 16, spends long hours working with migrants, including helping connect Simon to a lawyer after her husband was detained.
One recent Saturday, Lopez Chavez sat in the low-ceilinged office of One Morgan County, a nearly 20-year-old migration nonprofit. In a folding chair, Maria Ramirez sifted through manila folders dated November 2023, when she'd arrived in the U.S.
Ramirez fled central Mexico, where cartel violence claimed her younger brother's life, and asked Lopez Chavez how she could get health care. Ramirez's 4-year-old daughter — who pranced behind her mother, blowing bubbles and popping the ones that landed in her brown curls — has a lung condition.
Ramirez said she would work anywhere to move from the living room they sleep in, with just a blanket on the floor as cushioning.
In the offices resembling a hostel's well-loved communal space, Lopez Chavez cautioned Ramirez to consult a lawyer before applying for health care. Sitting aside Ramirez were two settled migrants offering support and advice.
“A lot of stuff that you heard in Mexico (about the U.S.) was you couldn’t walk on the streets, you had to live in the shadows, you’d be targeted,” said Ramirez. “It’s beautiful to come into a community that’s united."
Lopez Chavez works with new migrants because she remembers shackles snapping around her ankles after she was stopped for a traffic violation in 2012 and turned over to the U.S. immigration authorities.
“I just wanted to leave there because I’d never been in a cage before,” Lopez Chavez said in an interview, her eyes filling with tears.
At her first court hearing, Lopez Chavez and her husband stood alone. At her second hearing, after Lopez Chavez was connected to the community, she was flanked by new friends. That wall of support allowed her to keep her chin up as she fought her immigration case before being granted residency last year.
Lopez Chavez now works to cultivate that strength across the community.
“I don’t want any more families to go through what we went through,” said Lopez Chavez, who also encourages others to tell their stories. "Those examples give people the idea: If they can manage their case and win, maybe I can too."
In Fort Morgan, train tracks divide a mobile home park, where many migrants live, and the city's older homes. Some older migrants see new arrivals as getting better treatment by the U.S. and feel that is unfair. The community can't solve every challenge, and hasn't laid the last brick on cultural bridges between the diverse communities.
But at the posada event, crowded in the One Morgan County offices, the assurances of community itself showed through the eyes of partygoers as children in cultural regalia danced traditional Mexican dances.
Among those bouncing around the long room was 7-year-old Francisco Mateo Simon. He doesn't remember the journey to the U.S., but his mother, Magdalena, does.
She remembers how ill he became as she carried him the last miles to the border. Now he spits out armadillo facts between the nubs of incoming front teeth in their mobile home, then points to his favorite ornament on their white, plastic Christmas tree.
“That's our brand new tree,” said his mother, as her eldest daughter practiced English with a kids' book.
“It's new,” she repeated, “It's our first new tree because in the past we've only had trees from the thrift store.”
___
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays.
I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry.
The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays.
I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry.
Not to mention that the house repubs have repeatedly withheld a vote for greater funding for immigration judges to clear the current backlog as well as make quicker determinations in current time.
The repubs are not a serious party. Unless you want to know about Hunter’s laptop. Have you heard about it?
The former is too good a talking point at election time, and the latter is too good for their wallets, so why on earth would the GOP want to solve either?
The former is too good a talking point at election time, and the latter is too good for their wallets, so why on earth would the GOP want to solve either?
Maybe give every immigrant a gun as a welcome gift to ‘Murica?
The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays.
I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry.
I suppose in fairness, the GOP doesn't want to help the Ukraine against Putin either, so not negotiating w/ Biden on the border and Ukraine assistance is self serving on many levels.
Everyone be sure to vote Republican next fall so this doesn't happen again.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Why not (V) (°,,,,°) (V) ?
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LUKEVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — Gerston Miranda and his wife were among thousands of migrants recently arriving at this remote area on Arizona's southern border with Mexico, squeezing into the United States through a gap in the wall and walking overnight about 14 miles (23 kilometers) with two school-aged daughters to surrender to Border Patrol agents.
“There is no security in my country," said the 28-year-old from Ecuador, who lost work when his employer closed due to extortion by criminals. "Without security you cannot work. You cannot live.”
A shift in smuggling routes has brought an influx of migrants here from countries as diverse as Senegal, Bangladesh and China, prompting the Border Patrol to seek help from other federal agencies and drawing scrutiny to an issue critical in next year’s presidential elections.
With hundreds of migrants crossing daily in the area, the U.S. government on Monday indefinitely shut down the nearby international crossing between Lukeville, Arizona, and Sonoyta, Mexico, to free Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the port of entry to help with transportation and other support. The agency also has partially closed a few other border ports of entry in recent months, including a pedestrian crossing in San Diego and a bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Critics of the move, including Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the state's two U.S. senators, the governor of Mexico's Sonora state and the leadership of the nearby Tohono O’odham Nation, said it could harm trade and tourism. Hobbs urged President Joe Biden to reassign the 243 National Guard members already in the Tucson sector to help reopen the Lukeville crossing.
The morning after it was closed, about a dozen Border Patrol agents in olive green uniforms watched over some 400 migrants who had spent the night by the towering wall of steel bollards, wrapped in shiny Mylar blankets they later discarded among saguaro cactus and Palo Verde trees.
Three or four times as many CBP field operations officers in navy blue uniforms helped the migrants into white vans for a short drive to a canopied field intake center. From there, agents took migrants for processing to the Border Patrol’s Ajo station, a half-hour north, or to other locations such as Tucson.
U.S. authorities have been so short-handed in Arizona that they have used charter flights to transfer some migrants from Tucson to three Texas border cities for processing, according Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that analyzes flight data.
Federal air marshals who provide security on commercial flights, and even Federal Protective Service officers who guard U.S. government buildings, are being diverted to the border, officials have said, without saying exactly where they are going.
“We are seeing a lot of different kinds of uniforms down here,” humanitarian aid worker Tom Wingo said in Lukeville.
Nonprofit groups worry about the migrants' well-being.
“This is a humanitarian crisis that’s happening in our own backyard,” said Dora Rodriguez, chairperson of the Tucson nonprofit Humane Borders, which keeps water tanks on the border for migrants. “There are hundreds of people, including infants and children, who are stranded in remote areas of the desert for days.”
The Lukeville area's popularity as a place to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. emerged in recent months. It's one of the most striking examples of migrants shifting to a remote area, putting the Border Patrol on its heels. In 2019, Antelope Wells, New Mexico, became a popular spot. This year also has seen hundreds of migrants camping in the mountains of Jacumba Hot Springs, California, waiting for agents to process them.
Because Lukeville is so remote, Border Patrol staffing is light, so traffickers in the region controlled by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel steer people there. The arrivals last week included 41-year-old Luiz Velazquez, his wife and their three children from Zacatecas, a Mexican state plagued by drug cartel violence.
Heat-related illness was a major concern several months ago when daytime temperatures climbed into the triple digits. The worry now is overnight temperatures in the 40s, in a place where the closest hospitals and nonprofit migrant shelters are nearly two hours away.
Chris Clem, a retired Yuma, Arizona, sector chief, said it is part of smugglers’ strategy to stretch agents as thinly as possible, forcing highway checkpoints to close and other resources to be diverted for processing migrants. The remoteness creates “enormous strain” on the Border Patrol, he said.
Art Del Cueto, a Tucson-based vice president with the National Border Patrol Council, said the union wants stricter measures to deter migrants from coming. He said it’s not so much a matter of too few agents, but one of too many migrants.
Heading into next year’s presidential elections, the border is a top issue for voters, especially Republicans, and immigration issues could be a liability for Biden, a Democrat, as he runs for reelection.
A national AP-NORC poll conducted in November found about half of U.S. adults say increasing security at the U.S.-Mexico border should be a “high priority” for the federal government, with 3 in 10 calling it a “moderate priority.” Republicans were more likely than Democrats to call it a high priority.
Biden’s approach to immigration combines new legal pathways to enter the country with more restrictions on asylum for those who cross the border illegally. Former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner for the 2024 nomination, has promised even tougher hardline immigration policies in a second term.
Additional funding for border security has been held up in Congress over a package to provide additional aid to Israel and Ukraine in their wars against Hamas and Russia.
John Modlin, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector chief, said Friday that the agency made 18,900 arrests for illegal crossings the previous week in the sector that includes most of Arizona's border with Mexico. That translates to a daily average of 2,700 arrests, well above October's daily average of less than 1,800 and barely 700 in December 2022.
The 2020 census listed Lukeville's population as 35, but the mobile home park where many residents lived now appears abandoned, with boarded up buildings and a scattering of old manufactured homes. A previously busy service station and store that sold ice and snacks to travelers was closed indefinitely on Monday.
The Lukeville border crossing is also popular among U.S. residents driving from Arizona to the popular resort of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point. Nicknamed “Arizona’s beach," it is about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of the border on the northern shores of the Sea of Cortez.
Americans who want to travel to Puerto Peñasco now must cross through Nogales, a three-hour drive to the east, or San Luis, a two-hour drive to the west.
Alfonso Durazo, the governor of Mexico's Sonora state has asked officials of both countries to “undertake all necessary efforts necessary to resume as soon as possible the extraordinary commercial, tourist and social relationship that have historically distinguished Sonora and Arizona."
"The solution is not to close border crossings,” Durazo said.
___
Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Maria Verza in Mexico City and Rebecca Santana and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona's governor on Friday ordered the state's National Guard to the border with Mexico to help federal officials manage an influx of migrants.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said she issued the executive order because “the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe.”
“I am taking action where the federal government won’t,” Hobbs said.
It was unclear when the troops would arrive at the border and exactly how many would be mobilized.
Hobbs asked President Joe Biden's administration a week ago to mobilize 243 Arizona National Guard troops already in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector that includes Lukeville, Arizona, to help federal officers reopen the border crossing that was indefinitely closed Dec. 4.
Customs and Border Protection has said shutting down the official crossing was necessary to allow personnel stationed there to help Border Patrol agents manage the hundreds of migrants illegally crossing in that area daily.
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Although remote, the crossing is a popular route for Arizonans traveling to the Mexican resort of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of the border on the northern shores of the Sea of Cortez.
Hobbs said the National Guard members will be stationed at multiple locations along the southern border, including around Lukeville.
There, they will support state and local agencies engaged in law enforcement, including interdiction of illegal drugs and human trafficking.
The San Miguel crossing located farther east on the Tohono O'odham Nation is also seeing hundreds of migrant arrivals daily, but tribal officials said the National Guard would not be stationed on the reservation.
“We are in close communication with Governor Hobbs on this issue," said Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. "We made clear that no National Guard would be deployed to the Nation and her office has agreed. Today’s action by the Governor is a necessary step in addressing the current crisis at the border.”
Hobbs said the Biden administration had not responded to her request that the U.S. government reimburse Arizona for border security spending.
Customs and Border Protection officials said they did not have an immediate response to the governor's decision.
The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, National Guard confirmed Friday afternoon it was activating members.
Major Gen. Kerry L. Muehlenbeck, who oversees the Arizona National Guard, noted that in September it wrapped up a 30-month active-duty mission providing support to law enforcement agencies in southern Arizona.
Muehlenbeck said the earlier mission provided logistics, administrative, cyber, and medical support.
U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who represents southern Arizona, said he disagreed with Hobbs' executive order.
"But I do appreciate that Governor Hobbs has rejected the brutal and cruel tactics of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott who have taken advantage of this crisis to inhumanely and illegally use migrants as political pawns and to politicize and pander instead of working on real solutions,” Grijalva said in a statement.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The migrants crossing the border from the South are from all over. Port a Prince was an odd one, Afghanistan was another. It's become a pipeline because the other countries funnel them through so they dont have to worry about them.
from: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/us/where-immigrants-come-from-cec/index.html
And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration.
If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors?
Your boy is literally echoing Adolf Hitler.
https://community.pearljam.com/discussion/292176/hunter-biden-laptop-controversy/p19
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This is fine... proly.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The racism and ahistoricism of Trump’s ‘poison the blood’ rhetoric
Donald Trump doesn’t hate immigrants. He married two women who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Nor is he particularly insistent about immigrants having children in the United States. His three oldest children were born to Ivana Trump, who at the time had not yet become a citizen. His youngest child was born in March of the year that Melania Trump got her citizenship.So when Trump talks about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as he did over the weekend, we don’t need to pretend that he is offering a sober observation about shifts in the country’s population. He is, instead, making a demagogic appeal to Americans who — like so many Americans before them — view newcomers with fear or anger.
Despite their almost uniformly being descendants of immigrants themselves.
The country is experiencing unusually high levels of immigration, which exacerbates those fears (and increases Trump’s ability to leverage them for political purposes). These figures are often misinterpreted, it’s worth noting, with only a percentage of those stopped at the border (many of whom are seeking asylum) being released until legal hearings that will determine if they are granted the right to remain in the country. Many of those apprehended are deported; this was particularly true under the pandemic-triggered policy that allowed law enforcement to deport immigrants quickly. (Many tried to reenter soon after, driving up the number of apprehensions.)
The country in recent years, though, has not experienced unusually high levels of immigrants — that is, foreign-born residents of the United States. Historical comparisons are tricky, given the spottiness of records over the country’s history. But it seems safe to say (using separate historical assessments compiled by Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute) that the percentage of the population that was born outside the United States has increased since immigration laws were loosened in the late 1960s but are not at the highs seen a century ago.
The assessment offered by Pew suggests that more than one-fifth of the country was born outside the United States 100 years ago. According to 2023 numbers from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey even adding 10 million immigrants to the population wouldn’t result in 20 percent of the population being born outside the country.
A central difference, of course, is the places of origin for those immigrants. Until immigration laws were loosened in the 1960s, the vast majority of immigrants to the United States came from Europe. In recent decades, they have come from Latin America (particularly Mexico) and Asia. Immigration from Europe is relatively low.
But, 100 years ago, that did not mean that immigrants from Europe were welcome. There was a huge backlash against immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in particular; the arrival of large numbers of Italians triggered anti-Catholic rhetoric and even violence. (You could have asked Tucker Carlson’s ancestors about that.)
Race is intertwined here. Those new arrivals a century ago weren’t seen as non-White, exactly, but were seen as “racially inferior,” as researchers Cybelle Fox and Thomas Guglielmo wrote in 2012 — unclean, dangerous. Those Eastern European immigrants were often seen as physically distinct from “White” Americans in a similar way to how Hispanic and Asian immigrants are viewed as distinct today.
Trump is typically unsubtle about this. In 2018, The Washington Post reported on his disparaging of immigrants from Africa and other places with large non-White populations as unwelcome, and he lamented that more people weren’t coming from northern Europe.
The most obvious and immediate response to the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country is to point out that the United States is inextricably constituted of immigrants and their children. We don’t live in Finland; we live in a country where the only native resident population is Native Americans and no other family can claim to have been here longer than about 400 years. Trump’s rhetoric is a bit like complaining about someone pouring tap water into the pond behind a dam.
It’s particularly hollow given how immigrants are underrepresented in positions of power. In Congress, for example, only about 3 percent of members were born outside the United States, according to Pew, compared with 16 percent of the population. Only about 15 percent of the members of Congress are immigrants or children of immigrants, about half the rate of the population overall.
A 2017 report looking at the effects of immigrants on the economy nonetheless found that the country is increasingly dependent on immigrants and the children of immigrants to fill jobs. The chart below, from my book about generational change in the country, shows how the share of workers who are third-generation Americans or higher has plunged since the baby boom. Increases in the workforce come from immigrants and their children.
The American population is growing because of immigration. It’s a signal advantage we enjoy, the reason that our population — unlike, say, China’s — isn’t contracting, exacerbating economic problems.
This article has extrapolated a lot of information about immigration from Trump’s comments when, again, his intent is less complicated. He’s simply amplifying his base’s fears of the perceived decline of traditional White Christian America. That he is the child and the grandchild of immigrants, married two immigrant women, and has four kids with immigrant parents — a by-no-means-uncommon situation — is simply waved away.
It’s useful to remember, though: Had he married a Catholic from Eastern Europe a century ago, he might have been the target of similar demagoguery.
The racism and ahistoricism of Trump’s ‘poison the blood’ rhetoric - The Washington Post
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We don't get nasty enough. Unfortunately that is what works now in dumbassmerikkka
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2023?publication_id=20533&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&r=1e604
“Biden has asked Congress for new legislation to address migration at the border since his first week in office, but Trump and his loyalists have demanded extreme measures that Democrats have, in the past, refused. With Republican refusal to fund Ukraine, Biden has said he is eager enough to get funding to Ukraine that he is willing to negotiate, but Johnson sent the House home until January 9 without a deal.
Now it seems Republicans don’t want their own names on any such deal, likely recognizing that such an outcome would take away an issue they hope to exploit in 2024. They want Biden’s name alone on any new policies or, failing that, to be able to blame him for not taking unilateral action.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation.
In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane.”
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FORT MORGAN, Colo. (AP) — Magdalena Simon's only consolation after immigration officers handcuffed and led her husband away was the contents of his wallet, a few bills.
The hopes that had pushed her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son’s small frame clutched to her chest, ceded to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado’s eastern plains, where some locals stared at her too long and the wind howls so fiercely it once blew the doors half off a hotel.
The pregnant Simon tried to mask the despair every morning when her toddlers asked, “Where’s papa?”
To millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in the past few years, stepping off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be constant companions. What Simon would find in this unassuming city of a little more than 11,400, however, was a community that pulled her in, connecting her with legal council, charities, schools and soon friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants.
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In this small town, migrants are building quiet lives, far from big cities like New York, Chicago and Denver that have struggled to house asylum-seekers and from the halls of Congress where their futures are bandied about in negotiations.
The Fort Morgan migrant community has become a boon for newcomers, nearly all of whom arrive from perilous journeys to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a paycheck big enough for food, an attorney and a roof; placing their kids in school; and navigating a language barrier, all while facing the threat of deportation.
The United Nations used the community, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Denver, as a case study for rural refugee integration after a thousand Somalis arrived to work in meatpacking plants in the late 2000s. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories.
In the last year, hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County. More than 30 languages are spoken in Fort Morgan’s only high school, which has translators for the most common languages and a phone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches.
The demographic shift in recent decades has forced the community to adapt: Local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others how to drive, ensure kids are in school and direct people to immigration attorneys.
Simon herself now tells her story to those stepping off buses. The community can't wave away the burdens, but they can make them lighter.
“It’s not like home where you have your parents and all of your family around you,” Simon tells those she meets in grocery stores and school pickup lines. “If you run into a problem, you need to find your own family.”
The work has grown amid negotiations in Washington, D.C., on a deal that could toughen asylum protocols and bolster border enforcement.
On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary seeking shelter for Mary to give birth and being turned away until they were given the stable.
Before marching down the street singing a song adaption in which migrants are seeking shelter instead of Joseph and Mary, participants signed letters urging Colorado's two Democratic senators and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck to reject stiffer asylum rules.
A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now, many migrants work inside dairy plants.
When area businesses were raided several times in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, seats sat empty in schools and gaps opened on factory lines.
"That really changed the the understanding of how deeply embedded migrants are in community," said Jennifer Piper of American Friends Service Committee, which organized the posada celebration.
Guadalupe “Lupe” Lopez Chavez, who arrived in the U.S. alone in 1998 from Guatemala at age 16, spends long hours working with migrants, including helping connect Simon to a lawyer after her husband was detained.
One recent Saturday, Lopez Chavez sat in the low-ceilinged office of One Morgan County, a nearly 20-year-old migration nonprofit. In a folding chair, Maria Ramirez sifted through manila folders dated November 2023, when she'd arrived in the U.S.
Ramirez fled central Mexico, where cartel violence claimed her younger brother's life, and asked Lopez Chavez how she could get health care. Ramirez's 4-year-old daughter — who pranced behind her mother, blowing bubbles and popping the ones that landed in her brown curls — has a lung condition.
Ramirez said she would work anywhere to move from the living room they sleep in, with just a blanket on the floor as cushioning.
In the offices resembling a hostel's well-loved communal space, Lopez Chavez cautioned Ramirez to consult a lawyer before applying for health care. Sitting aside Ramirez were two settled migrants offering support and advice.
“A lot of stuff that you heard in Mexico (about the U.S.) was you couldn’t walk on the streets, you had to live in the shadows, you’d be targeted,” said Ramirez. “It’s beautiful to come into a community that’s united."
Lopez Chavez works with new migrants because she remembers shackles snapping around her ankles after she was stopped for a traffic violation in 2012 and turned over to the U.S. immigration authorities.
“I just wanted to leave there because I’d never been in a cage before,” Lopez Chavez said in an interview, her eyes filling with tears.
At her first court hearing, Lopez Chavez and her husband stood alone. At her second hearing, after Lopez Chavez was connected to the community, she was flanked by new friends. That wall of support allowed her to keep her chin up as she fought her immigration case before being granted residency last year.
Lopez Chavez now works to cultivate that strength across the community.
“I don’t want any more families to go through what we went through,” said Lopez Chavez, who also encourages others to tell their stories. "Those examples give people the idea: If they can manage their case and win, maybe I can too."
In Fort Morgan, train tracks divide a mobile home park, where many migrants live, and the city's older homes. Some older migrants see new arrivals as getting better treatment by the U.S. and feel that is unfair. The community can't solve every challenge, and hasn't laid the last brick on cultural bridges between the diverse communities.
But at the posada event, crowded in the One Morgan County offices, the assurances of community itself showed through the eyes of partygoers as children in cultural regalia danced traditional Mexican dances.
Among those bouncing around the long room was 7-year-old Francisco Mateo Simon. He doesn't remember the journey to the U.S., but his mother, Magdalena, does.
She remembers how ill he became as she carried him the last miles to the border. Now he spits out armadillo facts between the nubs of incoming front teeth in their mobile home, then points to his favorite ornament on their white, plastic Christmas tree.
“That's our brand new tree,” said his mother, as her eldest daughter practiced English with a kids' book.
“It's new,” she repeated, “It's our first new tree because in the past we've only had trees from the thrift store.”
___
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-us-caravan-migration-5d0846e553799a0f4d9155ccefba89e0
I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry.
The repubs are not a serious party. Unless you want to know about Hunter’s laptop. Have you heard about it?
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The immigration crisis is like gun violence...
The former is too good a talking point at election time, and the latter is too good for their wallets, so why on earth would the GOP want to solve either?
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Everyone be sure to vote Republican next fall so this doesn't happen again.