The Justice Department on Wednesday sued Texas over a new law that would allow police to arrest migrants who enter the U.S. illegally, taking Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to court again over his escalating response to border crossers arriving from Mexico.
A top U.S. delegation is to meet with Mexico’s president Wednesday in what many see as a bid to get Mexico to do more to stem a surge of migrants reaching the U.S. southwestern border.
The federal government would be barred from immigration policies that separate parents from children for eight years under a proposed court settlement announced Monday that also provides families with temporary legal status and short-term housing aid.
The Biden administration announced it has waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers.
Migrants rushed across the Mexico border Thursday, racing to enter the U.S. before pandemic-related asylum restrictions were lifted in a shift that threatens to put a historic strain on the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.
Forty-eight people died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer in the sweltering Texas heat, one of the worst tragedies to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico to the U.S. Sixteen people were hospitalized, including four children.
Migrants attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border at the highest level in two decades as the U.S. prepares for even larger numbers with the expected lifting of a pandemic-era order that turned away asylum seekers.
The Smuggler’s Inn, a bed-and-breakfast on the U.S.-Canada border that officials say is a magnet for illegal border crossings, was the setting of a case heard Wednesday at the Supreme Court.