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(Daily Caller News Foundation) Texas will build its own border wall as migrants continue illegally entering the state, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

Abbott hosted a border security meeting with Texas law enforcement officials to discuss how they can combat illegal entry at the border,accordingto Abbott.

Abbott criticized the Biden administrations policies for causing an increase in illegal migration to the southern border.

I will announce next week the plan for the state of Texas to begin building the border wall in the state of Texas, Abbott said, the American-Statesman reported.

The Biden admin promised to end border wall construction, but continued seizing Texans land through April for new sections of the wall to be installed, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

President Bidens open-border policies have led to a humanitarian crisis at our southern border as record levels of illegal immigrants, drugs, and contraband pour into Texas, Abbott said in a statement.

The Biden administration threatened Tuesday to sue Abbott if the state follows through with plans to close federal facilities holding migrant minors operating in the state, the DCNFreported. The Biden administration argued Abbotts disaster declaration discriminates against the federal government by targeting facilities it contracts with.

While securing the border is the federal governments responsibility, Texas will not sit idly by as this crisis grows, Abbott added. The state is working collaboratively with communities impacted by the crisis to arrest and detain individuals coming into Texas illegally.

Customs and Border Protection officialsapprehendedover 180,000 migrants at the southern border in May,accordingto the agency. Nearly 51,000 of migrants apprehended in May were encountered along Texas Rio Grande Valley sector and another 40,000 were apprehended in the Laredo and Del Rio sectors.

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Texas will build its own border wall in response to ...

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 22:31

Morocco and Spain tradednew accusations on Monday in a diplomatic row triggered by theWestern Sahara territorial issue that led this month to amigration crisis in Spain's enclave in northern Morocco.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described Morocco'sactions in appearing to relax border controls with the enclaveof Ceuta as unacceptable and an assault on national borders.

Morocco's Foreign Ministry meanwhile blamed Spain forbreaking "mutual trust and respect", drawing parallels betweenthe issues of Western Sahara and Spain's Catalonia region, wherethere is an independence movement.

The dispute was sparked by Spain admitting Western Saharaindependence movement leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatmentwithout informing Rabat.

"It is not acceptable for a government to say that we willattack the borders, that we will open up the borders to let in10,000 migrants in less than 48 hours ... because of foreignpolicy disagreements," Sanchez said at a news conference.

Most migrants who crossed into Ceuta were immediatelyreturned to Morocco, but hundreds of unaccompanied minors, whocannot be deported under Spanish law, remain.

The influx was widely seen as retaliation for Spain'sdecision to discreetly take in Ghali.

Morocco regards Western Sahara as part of its own territory.

The Algeria-backed Polisario seeks an independent state in theterritory, where Spain was colonial ruler until 1975.

Describing Spain as Morocco's best ally in the EuropeanUnion, Sanchez said he wanted to convey a constructive attitudetoward Rabat but insisted that border security was paramount.

"Remember that neighbourliness ... must be based on respectand confidence," he said.

Morocco's foreign ministry said in a statement that Spainviolated good neighbourliness and mutual trust and thatmigration was not the problem.

Rabat added that it has cooperated with Madrid in curbingmigrant flows and in countering terrorism, which it said helpedfoil 82 militant attacks in Spain.

The case of Ghali "revealed the hostile attitudes andharmful strategies of Spain regarding the Moroccan Sahara," theministry said in a statement.

Spain "cannot combat separatism at home and promote it inits neighbour," it said, noting Rabat's support for Madridagainst the Catalan independence movement.

Separately Ghali, who has been hospitalised with COVID-19 inLogrono in the Rioja region, will attend a high court hearingremotely on Tuesday from the hospital, his lawyers office said.

Morocco, which has withdrawn its ambassador to Madrid, hassaid it may sever ties with Spain if Ghali left the country thesame way he entered without a trial.

(REUTERS)

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Morocco's action in migrant crisis was 'unacceptable ...

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building during the virtual National Bar Association meeting in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 27, 2021.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Vice President Kamala Harris released a sweeping strategy on Thursday to address the root causes of migration amid the recent surge in illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

The strategy states that the pandemic and "extreme weather conditions" have exacerbated the root causes of migration, which includes corruption, violence, trafficking and poverty.

The announcement comes as the administration faces a southern border crisis, with migrant detentions hitting 20-year highs in recent months.

More than 1.1 million apprehensions have been recorded during the first six months of this fiscal year, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And a record high of nearly 190,000 apprehensions were recorded in June alone.

While the Biden administration has sent millions of vaccine doses and hurricane relief to Central America, Harris noted that providing such short-term relief is "not enough to alleviate suffering in the long term."

Instead, the vice president's strategy promises more sustained efforts to address motivations for migration, including refocusing engagement with Central America.

"In Central America, the root causes of migration run deep and migration from the region has a direct impact on the United States," Harris wrote in a cover letter discussing the plan. "For that reason, our nation must consistently engage with the region to address the hardships that cause people to leave Central America and come to our border."

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration's diplomatic efforts to address the causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and she visited the U.S.-Mexico border in June as a part of those efforts.

The strategy is the vice president's most recent step to address these root causes, and is a core component of the Biden administration's broader plan released Tuesday to establish a "fair, orderly and humane immigration system."

The plan is broken down into five pillars but it does not provide a detailed timeline or policy actions to be taken. The pillars include addressing economic insecurity and inequality, combating democratic corruption and promoting respect for human rights.

The plan also addresses gang violence and crimes, and combating sexual and gender-based violence.

Harris noted that the United Nations and the governments of Mexico, Japan and South Korea have committed to joining the effort to address the motivations of migration from Central America.

"The United States cannot do this work alone," Harris wrote in the cover letter. "Our Strategy is far-reachingand focuses on our partnerships with other governments, international institutions, businesses, foundations, and civil society."

On Tuesday, the White House also released a "Collaborative Migration Management Strategy," which President Joe Biden ordered in February. It outlines how the U.S. will work with other countries to "manage safe, orderly and humane migration" in North and Central America.

Efforts include expanding job opportunities and protections in countries where migrants leave, ensuring that border management is secure and humane and creating more legal pathways to come to the U.S.

Dozens of migrants of Central American and Mexican origin sleep on the esplanade of the National Institute of Migration near the El Chaparral border crossing, waiting for U.S. authorities to let them enter to begin their humanitarian asylum process in this country.

Stringer | picture alliance | Getty Images

Republicans have slammed the Biden administration over its immigration policies, claiming that its roll-back of several policies issued under former President Donald Trump have encouraged illegal migration to the U.S.

Democrats and immigration advocates have also mounted pressure on Biden, calling for him to ensure the humane treatment of migrant children and families at the border and lift a Trump-era public health order known as Title 42.

The health order has allowed border officials to expel migrants without giving them the chance to claim asylum.

On Monday, the Biden administration also announced that it would speed up deportations for some migrant families through "expedited removal," which allows immigration authorities to deport a migrant without a hearing before a immigration judge.

The speedy deportation procedure will specifically apply to family units who are not deported to Mexico under Title 42 and fail to qualify for asylum, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.

That decision drew further criticism from advocates on the left.

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Vice President Kamala Harris unveils strategy to address illegal immigration at the border - CNBC

In a globalised world, migration begets migration. Those who are well-off migrate to metros or the West to seek better career opportunities. They may invest their earnings in apartments in large cities. Their investment drives construction that drives further migration: these apartment are likely to have been built by economic migrants from Chhatisgarh or Bihar.

However, as the pandemic has shown, the two migrants arent equal: the elite migrant could retreat into Zoom calls and work from home, while the marginal migrant was left stranded. A life of dignity, always precarious for the poor, became impossible after the lockdown.

What might they do to recover their dignity? One way to do so is to vote with their feet, i.e., to stay in their home communities as much as possible and migrate only when the destination guarantees that their rights will be respected. Both options are fraught with danger, especially when the lands back home are captured by the powerful, whether local or distant and when their gram sabha and other political institutions cannot protect their rights in the destination cities.

These are some of the questions emerged from the citizens jury we called the Janta ka Faisla we organised in Raipur from July 11-July 15. The forum offered migrants the opportunity to participate in a deliberative exercise that addressed the challenges of Indian society. At a Janta ka Faisla, the jury assisted by a support staff delivers a verdict after hearing representations from experts across civil society, academia and officials from the government. The jury is in the drivers seat and actively questions the experts. As a result, the normal power relationship between migrants and elites is reversed, with the migrants sitting in judgment and experts acting as advisors.

Our first Janta ka Faisla demonstrated that migrants have a keen appreciation of their situation and the larger political economy in which they live their lives. For example, while they recognise that work sponsored by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guaratee Scheme restores some of their agency, it creates further problems: who will take care of their children while they have to travel substantial (if still local) distances for MNREGA-related work? Nutritional support for children has to go hand in hand with livelihood support for adults.

The jurors posed these questions directly to Amarjeet Bhagat, Chhattisgarhs minister of food and civil supplies and TS Singh Deo, the state health minister. Their answers are on record, but it is the spirit of questioning and judgment that we want to focus on.

Democratic life comes with rights as well as duties. Elections and parliaments are the best-known institutions in democratic life, since all citizens have the right to vote and also the civic duty to do so. Besides electoral institutions, we also have the law. In some countries such as the US, the law is an essential part of civic life, with every citizen serving on juries and delivering judgments.

Jury duty is often seen as a chore, but it serves an important purpose: it reiterates that in a democracy, the people are sovereign and it offers a visceral experience of enacting that sovereignty and of bearing witness to the acts of their fellow citizens. In short, jury duty distributes the act of representation and recognises that each of us have the capacity to represent all of us.

In India, we arent accustomed to treating migrants as full citizens. We dont protect their rights and we certainly dont allow them to represent us or sit in judgment on the actions of the powerful or the state. But the Janta ka Faisla showed clearly that a jury of migrants can not only take on the burden of being a collective witness, their perspective adds insights that are missing from the views of the powerful who are routinely represented in the media.

Take healthcare, for example. The jury noted that they keep being redirected from public to private health institutions and back for different things like tests, medicines and other services. Why cant all these services be housed in one organisation in each city? In asking these questions, the Janta ka Faisla jury exhibited the kind of platform thinking for which an IT consultant would charge crores of rupees. If nothing else, such questions enable a process of human-centred design that will help build institutions that work for all of us.

The Washington Post has a tagline: Democracy dies in darkness. While agreeing with that claim, we ask a natural follow up question: whose light will dispel the darkness? Our experience with the Janta ka Faisla suggests that the capacity to throw light on our collective affairs should be widely distributed and that members of marginalised communities are as capable of revealing the truth as the most powerful in the land.

Gangaram Paikra is the Director of Chaupal in Surguja, Chhattisgarh.Rajesh Kasturirangan is the CEO of Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom.Biraj Patnaik is the Executive Director of the National Foundation for India.

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What a peoples jury on the migrant crisis taught us about the gaps in Indian democracy - Scroll.in

In December 2018 the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, cut short his Christmas holidays to go to the Channel and stare at boats. Two hundred illegal migrants had crossed from France in the previous two months and Javid, buckling to public pressure, declared a major incident. On that basis his successor, Priti Patel, should cancel any holiday plans for the foreseeable future. The number of migrants coming in through this illegal route reached more than 2,000 in June, setting a new record. And this is just the start. The summer crossings are under way and the British government seems to have no idea what to do about it.

The figures themselves could not be clearer. The number of migrants arriving across the Channel in illegal boats last year was four times higher than it was the year before (1,844 in 2019 against 8,400 in 2020). And the number for 2021 so far has already exceeded last years total. To date more than 9,000 migrants have arrived by boat this year, and the daily record of migrants crossing was broken on 19 July when at least 430 made the journey.

There are many possible responses to this. One is to say: so what? The UK has a population of more than 66 million, so what is a few hundred extra people coming in every few days?

There are quite a number of answers to that. The first is that Britain has borders. It also has a legal immigration and asylum system. But the Channel crossings are now a parallel asylum system one that privileges people who have broken the law, paying the smuggling gangs around 5,000 each to break into Britain illegally, safe in the knowledge that once they are in (or just on a British vessel) they will be allowed to stay.

This is great for the trafficking gangs, who have a good business model going the same one that led to the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean. Experience there suggests that as the British coastguard do more and more of the smugglers job, the gangs send out less and less seaworthy vessels. The current model aids the smugglers and incentivises law-breaking.

The second reason is that contrary to the dreams of the open borders left, these people are not going to add to the wonderful diversity of Britain. Most of them will end up entering the black economy. Almost all will be a drain on the British taxpayer. Few if any will ever return in taxation what they will take out in benefits. And even if you are one of those who believes that a little generosity is a good thing, why favour such a grotesquely unfair system?

Because of all the terrible ways to run an asylum system, a first over the Channel in a dinghy competition is the worst. These migrants come from a bewildering array of countries across the Far East, Middle East and Africa. Recent weeks have seen an upsurge in arrivals from Vietnam. Some will have legitimate asylum claims; many will not. And the majority will continue to be young Muslim men, sent by their families to make money in Britain to send back home. Among last years arrivals 74 per cent were aged between 18 and 39, and 87 per cent were male. It may be easy to see how this benefits the migrants. But how exactly does it benefit Britain?

So the flow should be stopped for a whole range of reasons. Yet the British government seems stuck in some terrible indecision about the matter which is strange because it is not as though similar questions have not faced other developed countries in recent years.

Of course our political mainstream continues to find immigration and asylum distinctly icky subjects to deal with. They fear accusations of racism, or coming across as uncaring or ungenerous. Yet perfectly decent, liberal democracies have found ways to dissuade illegal migration into their countries. None of them have become totalitarian backwaters.

When Australia faced a problem with people trying to arrive there illegally by boat in the last decade it embarked on a very successful policy to stop the flow. This was based on deterring people and letting them know that if they paid the smugglers to get them in they would be wasting their money. Australia achieved this by turning the boats around and by offshoring, meaning that the migrants are put on remote islands to have their cases adjudicated there. The advantage of this system is that it prevents the problem all liberal democracies have encountered, which is that once someone is in (even illegally) they are afforded rights that basically make it impossible to expel them. Australia has solved the problem of illegal boat arrivals because the government took the necessary action.

Countries closer to home have also managed to get their illegal migrant entries down to a minimum. Denmark, for instance, passed 114 new restrictions on immigration and asylum between 2015 and 2019. Under a conservative government and now under a left-wing government, these restrictions have proved not only popular with the public, but wildly successful. When the country cut the benefits available for non-EU immigrants arriving into Denmark, it immediately cut the number trying to come in as evidenced by the fact that when the policy was briefly reversed the effect was also reversed. Denmark does not want to be a draw for migrants and it has successfully ensured that it no longer is. The number of asylum seekers trying to enter the country has fallen by more than ten times from what it was six years ago.

So what is the British government doing about our problem? Well, currently it appears to be stuck in a stasis of its own creation. Back in March the Home Secretary announced a raft of new proposals to tackle illegal migration. But, as during the last Labour government, it looks like our current leaders are talking tough to please the public while doing almost nothing. Conservative MPs I have spoken to say that the Prime Minister is prevaricating, and that without backing from him the Home Secretary cannot go out on a political limb. Meanwhile, almost 600 people were intercepted trying to break into our country this past weekend.

What should the government be considering? There should be a whole raft of measures to repel the boats. They should start with turning around the vessels at sea which is what the Greek border authorities now do. Since they started turning around boats at the beginning of 2020 they have seen a near complete halt in crossings, with no reported loss of life or injury and with no halt in the number of British tourists wanting to take their holidays in the country. Why should the Greeks be able to do in the Aegean what we pretend is so unthinkable in the Channel?

Currently the British authorities find every reason to avoid doing what they need to do. The French navy effectively shadows many of the migrant vessels until they are into UK waters and then the UK Border Force guides the boats to safety in Britain. Thus the UK Border Force has effectively become an arm of the smugglers network. The smugglers send their boats out a little way and the British taxpayer does the rest. If there is a genuine legal problem with turning the boats around then the British government should change the law, ignoring the irrelevant fringe of activists who always object to us having borders.

Instead the UK authorities appear to be going the other way. This month the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would not prosecute migrants illegally steering boats across the English Channel, which is exactly the wrong message. The message the British government should be sending out is clear: dont cross if you do you will be prosecuted and returned. At present the government likes to talk of the evils of the smuggling networks. But thats the easy part. The message must be conveyed that if you pay the smuggling gangs, you are breaking the law and will be wasting your familys money to make a journey that will always be unsuccessful.

The government should also be putting all its weight behind Australian-style offshoring arrangements to process people picked up on the boats. Every time this is suggested there is some handkerchief--sniffing among those who profess themselves embarrassed to live in a country that would even consider such a thing. But since the anti-restrictionists have come up with no answers of their own other than let them in, theyll have to put up with answers tried and tested by our respected allies.

Finally, the government should be honest about why this is happening. France could solve this problem overnight if they agreed to take back anyone illegally crossing the Channel. Presently the British government doesnt like saying this, for fear the French government will do even less than it currently does to stop the boats. But there is no reason why people should be passing through multiple safe countries, including France, and then illegally crossing to enter another safe country. This allows migrants to choose from Europe as from a buffet cart, with Britain a particularly attractive option. The fact that there is a bottleneck at the French coast should be a problem for the French authorities before it is a problem for the British.

But what this comes down to is a test of political will at the top of the British government. In fact, it comes down to the question of whether Boris Johnson is simply a political opportunist or not. If he is, then all that stuff he said in recent years about taking back control was just a handy phrase, rattled off because he thought it might help him win. If he means it, then he must get control of this countrys borders. In the realm of sovereignty, nothing matters more.

At present the government seems not to mind, or thinks the problem is too complicated, nasty or small. But the longer it delays, the worse the problem will get. If 20,000 illegal migrants crossing the Channel is permissible then why not 30,000 or 50,000? What is the tolerable limit? Perhaps we will soon see.

In the meantime the government is relying on French beach patrols to protect Britains borders, and is now actually paying the French to police their own beaches. It is a ludicrous, unsustainable situation. And it is not what the electorate expected when it voted for this Conservative government led by this Conservative Prime Minister.

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Turning the tide: how to deal with Britain's new migrant crisis - Spectator.co.uk