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Latin America has some of the most overcrowded jails in the world. With prisoners crammed into tiny cells by the dozen, social distancing is impossible and poor medical facilities mean any outbreak of coronavirus would spread like wildfire. The United Nations has urged governments to do more to protect inmates and has suggested the most vulnerable be temporarily released to ease overcrowding. Chile, Colombia and Nicaragua have announced they will move thousands of prisoners into house arrest with priority given to the elderly, pregnant women and those with underlying conditions. Brazil has already started moving inmates over 60 into house...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has almost entirely cleared out its migrant shelters over the past five weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, returning most of the occupants to their countries of origin, official data showed on Sunday. In a statement, the National Migration Institute (INM) said that in order to comply with health and safety guidelines, since March 21 it had been removing migrants from Mexico’s 65 migrant facilities, which were harboring 3,759 people last month. In the intervening weeks, Mexico has returned 3,653 migrants to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by road and air with...

NEW YORK - Ulises García went from being a waiter to working at a laundromat. Yelitza Esteva used to do manicures and now delivers groceries. Maribel Torres swapped cleaning homes for sewing masks. The coronavirus pandemic has devastated sectors of the economy dominated by immigrant labor: Restaurants, hotels, office cleaning services, in-home childcare and hair and nail salons, among others, have seen businesses shuttered as nonessential. The Migration Policy Institute found that 20% of the U.S. workers in vulnerable industries facing layoffs are immigrants, even though they only make up 17% of the civilian workforce. And some of those immigrants,...

President Donald Trump said Monday that the coronavirus hasn't slowed his administration's goal of completing the border wall by next spring. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, updating reporters during the daily press briefing, said 164 miles out of 450 miles of fencing planned along the nearly 2,000-mile Mexican border is on track to be completed by the end of 2020. "Our contractors are extremely focused,' Semonite said. Some senate Democrats want to know why the wall on the southern border is still being built during the coronavirus pandemic and amid strict national social distancing guidance. Semonite...

Southern States Push to Reopen With Economic Pressure Rising (Reports). The GOP governors of three southern states have decided to ease coronavirus restrictions, permitting businesses to open. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced that by Friday of this week, residents will be able to return to some semblance of daily life and will be able to go to the gym, get haircuts, pedicures, massages, and tattoos, the New York Times reports. By next week Monday, restaurants will be open for dining, and Georgians will also be allowed to go to the movies. Bars and night clubs will remain closed for the...

About-face in Columbus, New Mexico not affecting construction of steel bollard fence at Mexican border. Conservationists are claiming a small victory after the removal of a dozen trailers that would’ve housed crews working on a nearby stretch of border wall. The trailers were hauled off to undisclosed locations after activists, residents and some public officials complained of a heightened risk of COVID-19 spread posed by the influx of dozens of out-of-town workers into Columbus. “We take this as a win for our community and our families. We have bought some time, but we remain ever vigilant because they could very...

MEXICO CITY/PORT-AU-PRINCE - Mexico and Haiti have detected coronavirus infections among migrants deported recently from the United States, officials said on Tuesday, part of a growing trend of contagion among deportees. The new infections come after an outbreak among deportees to Guatemala, where the government at the weekend linked almost a fifth of all cases of the new coronavirus in the country to flights returning migrants from the United States last week. All three affected countries have far fewer confirmed cases of the disease than the United States. Three Haitians who arrived in the Caribbean country two weeks ago tested...

The U.S.-Canada border restrictions will be extended for another 30 days as both countries continue to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Saturday at a press briefing. "This is an important decision and one that will keep people on both sides of the border safe," Trudeau said. The restrictions took effect on March 21, banning any nonessential travel between the two countries. The U.S. has similar restrictions with the southern border, which allow trade to continue but have slowed down passenger traffic in ports of entry that are typically very busy. As of Saturday, Canada...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday that the border between Canada and the U.S. likely won't reopen to nonessential travel anytime soon as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread. “There’s a recognition that as we move forward there will be special thought given to this relationship. But at the same time we know that there is a significant amount of time, still, before we can talk about loosening such restrictions,” Trudeau said at a daily briefing, according to Reuters. Asked Wednesday if he is considering relaxing restrictions at the border with Canada, President Trump said “our relationship with...

Pandemic or not, Border Patrol intends to award the contract to construct the initial 32 miles of border wall in the Laredo area by mid-May... When construction begins will depend on how much land is acquired. “So we won’t necessarily be acquiring all of the land to start the project, but we need to acquire sufficient real estate to allow the project to start,” he said. Federal agents have been working to convince local landowners to sign right of entry documents so that they can survey their properties without having to go through court proceedings, saving time and possibly leading...

HOUSTON - Elsy was on the phone in an immigration detention center when guards showed up with face masks and forms to sign. The asylum-seeker from El Salvador and others had resorted to tearing their T-shirts into face coverings after a woman in their unit tested positive for COVID-19. But the guards would not give out the masks until the detainees signed the forms, which said they could not hold the private prison company running the detention center in San Diego liable if they got the coronavirus, according to Elsy and two other detainees, including one who read the form...

Border security is crucial to our nation’s efforts to control the coronavirus, and President Trump has a proven track record of effectively protecting our borders. Despite intense political opposition for over three years, the president has managed to significantly expand and strengthen the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and we remain on pace to reach the goal of 450 miles of new barriers by the end of the year. He’s also used his executive authority to close loopholes in our immigration system that had previously been widely exploited by illegal immigrants. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people —...

For Aldo Martinez, a paramedic in Fort Myers, Fla., who often works a 37-hour shift, the long days have become routine since the coronavirus pandemic broke out -- several of his colleagues have had to self-quarantine out of fears they may have been exposed to COVID-19. Aside from filling in for his colleagues, tending to the dozens of calls he receives each day, and keeping himself safe on the job, Aldo feels an extra degree of pressure as one of more nearly 680,000 young immigrants whose ability to work in the country would be threatened if the Deferred Action for...

Four Democrat congressmen, three of whom represent districts along the U.S. southern border, demanded the Trump administration halt border construction amid the coronavirus pandemic and direct the funds instead to fight the outbreak. In the letter dated Wednesday to the heads of the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, Reps. Raul Grijalva, Filemon Vela and Ann Kirkpatrick and House Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson demanded border wall construction immediately cease to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. "At a time when we are all taking extraordinary steps to limit the death toll and economic devastation...

SAN DIEGO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn’t let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation’s asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health. “The agent told us about the virus and that we couldn’t go further, but she didn’t let us speak or anything,” said Reyes, 35, who was shuttled to a crossing March 24 in Reynosa, Mexico, a violent border city. She tried to get home to...

Guatemala has asked the US to limit the number of people it puts on planes for deportation to Central American countries to 25, down from 60 to 90. Two people had to be taken to hospital after they tested positive for coronavirus upon getting off a deportation flight. Guatemala says it is concerned deported migrants from the US - which has the highest number of cases in the world - will spread the virus to Guatemala. Guatemala has had 70 confirmed cases. In an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading throughout the country, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has banned...

“This is what happened on 9/11 — on steroids. Mexico has locked down a lot of their country … and then they [migrants] think if they come to the U.S., they’re going to catch the virus.” To put this in perspective, in February border officials apprehended 30,000 illegal aliens, whereas in May of last year they apprehended a whopping 132,000 illegals. Yet at the current rate of an estimated 150 apprehensions per week, border officials are slated to apprehend fewer than 1,000 by the end of the month... “The onslaught of the coronavirus has not only sent the global economy...

President Donald Trump has used emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic to implement the kind of strict enforcement regime at the U.S. southern border he has long wanted, suspending laws that protect minors and asylum seekers so that the U.S. government can immediately deport them or turn them away. Citing the threat of “mass, uncontrolled cross-border movement,” the president has shelved safeguards intended to protect trafficking victims and persecuted groups, implementing an expulsion order that sends migrants of all ages back to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes. U.S. Border Patrol agents do not perform medical checks when they...

Santiago (AFP) - Latin America is heading into "a deep recession" in 2020, with an expected drop in the region's GDP of 1.8 to 4.0 percent due to the coronavirus pandemic, the UN economic commission for the region said Friday. "We are at the beginning of a profound recession. We're faced with the largest fall in growth that the region has had," said Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL). Latin America was already struggling economically, with feeble growth of just 0.1 percent in 2019. As with other parts of the...

The women detained at the for-profit jail in the small, rural town of Jena, Louisiana, hail from all corners of Latin America. Some are asylum-seekers who fled repressive regimes. Others are lawful U.S. permanent residents who were picked up by immigration authorities after serving time in prison. Some are mothers and even grandmothers. Right now, they're all terrified. Like many of the more than 35,000 immigrants currently in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, the women held at the LaSalle detention center in Jena feel powerless to shield themselves from the highly contagious coronavirus, which has killed more than...