African migrants arrive at Texas border and fan out across the country

United States Customs and Border Patrol is facing a new wrinkle in their efforts to control and manage the flow of migrants across the U.S.’s southern border: a sudden influx of asylum seekers from countries in Africa. The Associated Press reports that migrants from Africa are flocking to the U.S.-Mexico border after flying into South and Central American countries.

In one recent week, border patrol apprehended at least 500 African migrants in the Del Rio sector of the border — twice the number border patrol apprehended in all of fiscal 2018 across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Like those immigrants coming to the border in migrant caravans, the African migrants have a plan once they hit the U.S. border. After being processed, they typically fan out to 16 U.S. cities, according to the Washington Examiner, where communities of African refugees are thriving, helped along by non-profits at the border that provide newly processed asylum seekers with paid transportation.

Most African migrants appear to be escaping human rights abuses and violent dictatorships on their home continent. Most, Border Patrol says, are from the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola, as well as Cameroon. The AP adds that, in recent weeks, border patrol has processed asylum seekers from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Sudan.

A report about the Republic of the Congo, published by the U.N.’s Joint Human Rights Commission, claims that there have been “at least 324 victims of extrajudicial or summary executions, 832 victims of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, 173 victims of rape or other sexual violence (114 women, 58 children and one man), and 431 victims of forced labor. The civilian population has been the main victim of the worsening security situation in these territories.”

The widespread violence, the U.N. says, is threatening to create a “mass displacement” of civilians; that “mass displacement” may have already begun.

Increased number of migrants from Africa turning up at US southern border

Thousands of Africans from Cameroon, Congo and other violence-plagued countries are preparing to cross over the southern border of the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection reports.

• Border agents from the Del Rio area of Texas sounded the alarm on May 31 about a group of 116 African migrants, sitting on the US side of the Rio Grande, waiting to be arrested.
• Then, in early June, agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, detained another group of Central African families. In all, more than 500 Africans in a single week crossed the Del Rio border zone.
• Late in June, agents arrested yet another 310 mostly Haitian and African migrants.
• Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records. The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Until recently, African migrants headed to Europe, but the European Union has slammed the door on them. Now African migrants who head to Europe face indefinite detention in facilities on the north coast of Libya. According to the United Nations, these detention centers are “an outrage to the conscience of humanity.” Toilet facilities are nonexistent, food is crawling with maggots, many adults succumb to severe malnutrition and rape and torture are commonplace.

That’s why many African migrants are coming to the United States. They’re cobbling together airfare to Ecuador (which has a no-visa policy) and then trekking through Panama, north through Central America to the US border.

The African migration is indicative of how much larger the humanitarian crisis at the southern border could get.

[New York Post]

From Libya to Texas, tragedies illustrate plight of migrants

They are trapped in squalid detention centers on Libya’s front lines. They wash up on the banks of the Rio Grande. They sink without a trace — in the Mediterranean, in the Pacific or in waterways they can’t even name. A handful fall out of airplanes’ landing gear.

Migrants are often seen as a political headache in the countries they hope to reach and ignored in the countries they flee. Despite a wave of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis pouring into Europe, daily reminders of migrants’ plights are back on front pages.

The U.S.-Mexico border has become a flashpoint amid President Donald Trump’s ambitions to build a wall to keep out migrants. Many children caught crossing are stuck in squalid, unsanitary detention centers. Children have also been separated from parents in custody. Critics call such policies inhumane, heartless and “un-American.”

Around the world, a record 71 million people were forcibly displaced in 2018, according to a report last month by the U.N. refugee agency, in places as diverse as Turkey, Uganda, Bangladesh and Peru.

Despite the rhetoric about migration crises in Europe and the U.S., the top three countries taking in refugees are Turkey, Pakistan and Uganda. Germany comes in a distant fifth.

A 20-year-old who fled war in his homeland in sub-Saharan Africa two years ago survived the airstrikes, gunfire from militia members trying to keep migrants inside the compound, torture for ransom by traffickers and a sinking boat in the Mediterranean. He is now sleeping outside the Tajoura detention center in Libya along with hundreds of other migrants and awaiting a second chance to go to sea.

“I faced death in Libya many times before. I am ready to die again. I already lost my brothers in the war in my country,” he told The Associated Press. He didn’t want his name used because the militia fighters who shot at him are still guarding the compound.

[AP]

Four EU countries to take rescued migrants after Med standoff

 Four European Union countries have agreed to take in 64 African migrants rescued by the German ship Alan Kurdi and stranded at sea for almost two weeks, the Maltese government announced on Saturday.

The ship, operated by the humanitarian organization Sea-Eye, had been refused entry by Italy and Malta. Both countries had insisted it was Libya’s responsibility to take in the boat, Sea Eye said earlier in the week.

The Maltese government said that through the coordination of the European Commission, the migrants will be redistributed among Germany, France, Portugal and Luxembourg.

In March, Malta received 108 migrants after a small tanker which rescued them was hijacked by some of the migrants themselves. Maltese soldiers stormed the vessel and escorted it to Malta. Three teenagers have since been taken to court and are under arrest. 

[Reuters]

US prosecutors to retry volunteer who gave humanitarian aid to migrants

Federal prosecutors in Tucson, Arizona announced they will seek to retry Scott Warren on two charges of harboring undocumented immigrants. In lieu of another trial, which is currently slated for November 12, prosecutors also offered Warren a plea deal on Tuesday, offering to drop the harboring charges if he pleads guilty to aiding and abetting illegal entry without inspection.

Warren was arrested in January 2018 and accused of giving two migrants from Central America—Kristian Perez-Villanueva of El Salvador and Jose Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday of Honduras—food, water, and a place to sleep for three nights. He is a volunteer with No More Deaths, an advocacy organization that works to stop migrant fatalities that occur as they cross the dangerous stretch of Arizona desert along the southern border. Warren testified that his crimes amounted to nothing more than human kindness.

Prosecutors argued during the initial proceedings that the case was “not about humanitarian aid,” but that Warren had intentionally worked “to shield illegal aliens from law enforcement for several days.” Border Patrol agents testified that they observed a conversation between the two migrants and Warren in which he pointed to the mountains nearby. Although they admitted they could not hear the contents of the discussion, they said they assumed he was coaching them on how to avoid a Border Patrol checkpoint.

Several founders of No More Deaths provided their own supporting testimonies, explaining that they developed legal protocols for their volunteer work in line with those of the International Red Cross.

[Reason]