Tag Archives: Mexico

U.S. to give Americans COVID-19 vaccines before discussing sharing with Mexico: White House

By Steve Holland and Dave Graham

WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Monday downplayed the prospect of sharing coronavirus vaccines with Mexico, saying it is focused first on getting its own population protected against a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

The remarks by White House press secretary Jen Psaki came hours before Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is expected to ask U.S. President Joe Biden to consider sharing some of its COVID-19 vaccine supply.

“The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated. And once we accomplish that objective we’re happy to discuss further steps,” Psaki said at a White House news conference.

The two leaders are due to hold a virtual meeting later on Monday that is also likely to encompass immigration and trade.

Biden has predicted the United States will have enough supply by late July to inoculate all Americans. U.S. authorities have administered 76.9 million doses to date, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enough for 23% of the population to get the two doses recommended for full protection under the vaccines that have been deployed so far.

Mexico has vaccinated roughly 2.5 million doses so far, enough for about 1% of the population, according to data compiled by Reuters. Officials have been frustrated by bottlenecks in supply and raised concerns that wealthy countries are hoarding vaccines.

According to Reuters reporting, Mexico would aim to pay back Washington once pharmaceutical companies have delivered on their orders.

Mexican magazine Proceso said Lopez Obrador had asked Biden for help on vaccines in January.

“We’d like to get an answer on a request that we’ve already made … about the vaccines,” Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference on Monday. “Provided he’s of the view the matter should be addressed. We must be respectful.”

IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY

Immigration, security, climate change and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal were also likely to feature in talks, said Lopez Obrador, a left-wing nationalist.

Mindful of pressure to curb unlawful immigration, Lopez Obrador said on Saturday he wants Biden to help secure U.S. work permits for Mexicans and Central Americans, saying the United States needed another 600,000-800,000 workers.

On Monday, Lopez Obrador said he wanted to broker an agreement that covered all kinds of workers, including “professionals.”

The two leaders could also discuss Lopez Obrador’s efforts to strengthen a state-run electricity utility, the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

The Mexican president has cast the legislation as a matter of national sovereignty, arguing that past governments skewed the electricity market in favor of private operators.

Business groups have condemned the bill, saying it risks violating the USMCA and endangers Mexico’s renewable energy targets because it puts wind and solar generators at a disadvantage against the CFE, a heavy user of fossil fuels.

(Reporting by Dave Graham, Steve Holland and Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and David Alire Garcia; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Giles Elgood and Aurora Ellis)

First asylum-seekers from Mexico’s Matamoros border camp enter U.S.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. officials on Thursday brought a first group of people from the Matamoros migrant camp at Mexico’s border with Texas into the United States, where they will be allowed to carry out their asylum applications, migrant rights organizations said.

Some camp residents have lived there for more than a year under former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings.

President Joe Biden’s administration has said a new process will gradually allow thousands of MPP asylum seekers to await courts’ decisions within the United States, and some migrants last week were permitted to cross into San Ysidro, California.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 27 migrants crossed the bridge from Matamoros into Texas on Thursday morning.

Francisco Gallardo, who runs a migrant shelter in Matamoros and provides humanitarian aid at the camp, welcomed the news but said the transfer of asylum-seekers to the United States should have come sooner.

“It’s good that they are doing it, but unfortunately coming late,” he said.

Freezing temperatures at the U.S.-Mexico border had made the Matamoros camp a priority, the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday.

Mexico’s migration institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Frances Kerry)

U.S. extends travel restrictions at land borders with Canada, Mexico through March 21

By David Shepardson and Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. land borders with Canada and Mexico will remain closed to non-essential travel until at least March 21, the one-year anniversary of the restrictions to address COVID-19 transmission concerns, the U.S. government said Friday.

The new 30-day extension is the first announced under President Joe Biden and comes as the White House has been holding meetings about potentially tightening requirements for crossing at U.S. land borders in North America, officials said.

Canada has shown little interest in lifting the restrictions and recently imposed new COVID-19 testing requirements for some Canadians returning by land crossings.

On Jan. 26, the U.S. government began requiring nearly all international air travelers to get negative COVID-19 test results within three days of travel, but has no similar requirements for land border crossings.

In an executive order issued last month, Biden directed U.S. officials to “immediately commence diplomatic outreach to the governments of Canada and Mexico regarding public health protocols for land ports of entry.”

It added U.S. agencies should submit a plan to Biden within 14 days “to implement appropriate public health measures at land ports of entry.”

“The plan should implement CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, consistent with applicable law, and take into account the operational considerations relevant to the different populations who enter the United States by land,” it said.

Biden also directed a similar review of sea travel and to “implement appropriate public health measures at sea ports.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Ted Hesson, Editing by Franklin Paul and Bill Berkrot)

U.S. begins admitting asylum seekers blocked by Trump, with thousands more waiting

By Mimi Dwyer and Ted Hesson

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Reuters) – The United States will on Friday begin rolling back one of former President Donald Trump’s strictest immigration policies, allowing in the first of thousands of asylum seekers who have been forced to wait in Mexico for their cases to be heard.

President Joe Biden pledged while campaigning to immediately rescind the Trump policy, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Under the program more than 65,000 non-Mexican asylum seekers were denied entry and sent back across the border pending court hearings. Most returned home but some stayed in Mexico in sometimes squalid or dangerous conditions, vulnerable to kidnapping and other violence.

Now they will be allowed into the United States to wait for their applications to be heard in immigration courts. The effort will start slowly, with only limited numbers of people being admitted on Friday at the port of entry in San Ysidro, California.

It will expand to two additional ports of entry in Texas, including one near a migrant encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, in the coming week, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.

The administration estimates that only 25,000 people out of the more than 65,000 enrolled in MPP still have active immigration court cases and is set to begin processing that group on Friday. But it has cautioned that the efforts will take time.

Biden officials say they expect eventually to process 300 people per day at two of the ports.

The Biden administration is treading carefully, wary that the policy shift could encourage more migrants to trek to the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. officials say anyone who seeks to enter and is not a member of the MPP program will be immediately expelled.

A group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Biden on Feb. 10 that said allowing MPP migrants to enter the United States “sends the signal that our borders are open.”

The United States, Mexico and international organizations have scrambled in recent days to figure out how to register migrants online and by phone, transport them to the border, test them for COVID-19 and get them to their destinations in the United States, people familiar with the effort said.

The fast-moving process and lack of information from U.S. officials has frustrated some advocates eager to assist the effort.

The situation has taken on urgency as a winter storm has brought frigid temperatures to much of the southern United States and northern Mexico.

Migrants in the sprawling Matamoros encampment have reported children and families struggling to stay warm in makeshift tents lacking insulation or other protection from the cold. The camp has grown in recent weeks as migrants anticipate the end of the MPP program, but DHS has said that processing will not begin there until Feb. 22.

On Thursday, Honduran asylum seeker Antonia Maldonado served hot chocolate from a steaming pot on a stove made from the inside of a washing machine to other asylum seekers in Matamoros shivering in the near freezing weather.

She has been taking goodbye photographs and making plans to leave with her partner, Disón Valladares, a fellow asylum seeker she met on the journey to Matamoros.

“He wants me to go first, and I want him to go first,” she said. They are hopeful that once they enter the United States they will be able to marry.

Those seeking asylum may not have their cases resolved for years due to COVID-related immigration court closures and existing backlogs, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the pro-immigrant American Immigration Council.

The delay would give the Biden administration time to reverse some Trump policies that sought to make it harder to obtain asylum, he said.

In the meantime, migrants will be released to the United States and enrolled in so-called “alternatives to detention” while awaiting their hearings, a U.S. official said last week. Such programs can include check-ins with immigration authorities as well as ankle bracelet monitoring.

(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer in Los Angeles, Ted Hesson in Washington and Laura Gottesdiener in Matamoros, Mexico; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Wallis)

Texas energy freeze stretches to sixth day, raises Mexico’s ire

By Jennifer Hiller

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Texas’s freeze entered a sixth day on Thursday, as the largest energy-producing state in the United States grappled with massive refining outages and oil and gas shut-ins that rippled beyond its borders into neighboring Mexico.

The cold snap, which has killed at least 21 people and knocked out power to more than 4 million people in Texas, is not expected to let up until this weekend. The deep freeze has shut in about one-fifth of the nation’s refining capacity and closed oil and natural gas production across the state.

The outages in Texas also affected power generation in Mexico, with exports of natural gas via pipeline dropping off by about 75% over the last week, according to preliminary Refinitiv Eikon data.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the state’s natural gas providers not to ship outside Texas and asked state regulators to enforce that ban, prompting reviews.

The state’s electrical grid operator, ERCOT, was trying to restore power as thermal generators – those powered by natural gas, coal and other fuels – lost the capability to provide power as valves and pipes froze.

It is unclear whether Abbott or regulators will be able to enforce a ban on interstate or cross-border shipments. Abbott’s request to the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, set up a game of political football, according to a person familiar with the matter, between groups that do not have the authority to interfere with interstate commerce.

Texas exports gas via pipeline to Mexico and via ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from terminals in Freeport and Corpus Christi. It also supplies numerous regions of the country, including the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.

The ban prompted a response from officials in Mexico, as U.S. gas pipeline exports to Mexico fell to 4.3 billion cubic feet per day on Wednesday, down from an average over the past 30 days of 5.7 billion, according to data from Refinitiv.

The Mexican government called the top U.S. representative in Mexico on Wednesday to press for natural gas supplies as power cuts there have hit millions of residents.

While the storm is moving out of Texas, freezing temperatures remain and refining operations in particular might take days, if not weeks, to resume.

“The oil and gas industry is finally getting some power into these fields. The Delaware Basin is getting back online and gas is starting to move out of it,” Christi Craddick, Texas railroad commissioner, said on Wednesday night during an emergency meeting.

Nonetheless, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were near their highest since Jan. 8, 2020. Natural gas futures hovered near a three-month peak. Next-day prices at Waha hub in the Permian basin in West Texas eased from all-time peak of $209.75 per mmBtu.

BIG OPERATIONS IN TEXAS

Texas is the nation’s biggest fossil fuel energy producer, but its operators, unlike those in North Dakota or Alaska, are not used to frigid temperatures.

The state accounts for roughly one-quarter of U.S. natural gas production. As of Feb. 10, Texas was producing about 7.9 billion cubic feet per day, but that fell to around 2 billion on Wednesday, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

Overall U.S. natural gas output also slumped to the lowest level since January 2017. One billion cubic feet of gas can supply about 5 million U.S. homes per day.

About 4 million barrels of daily refining capacity has been shuttered and at least 1 million barrels per day of oil production is also out.

The Houston Ship Channel, a key export waterway, was shuttered again on Wednesday evening, but that was because refineries were not loading enough vessels and not due to the weather, a Houston Pilots dispatcher said.

“We have two departures at 09:30 (local time) this morning and two inbound vessels who are waiting for the water levels to come up,” the dispatcher said.

Next-day power for Thursday at the ERCOT North hub, which includes the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, were mired near a record high of $8,800 per MWh hit in the last session. Prices were below $50 per MWh before the cold blast.

(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller and Gary McWilliams in Houston; additional reporting by Marianna Parraga and Diego Ore in Mexico City and Scott DiSavino in New York; editing by Richard Pullin and Jonathan Oatis)

Migrants in Mexican camp brave icy nights, chance to enter U.S. nears

By Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Roberto Manuel wore two shirts, three jackets and four pairs of pants to brace himself for subzero temperatures in Matamoros, the Mexican city opposite Texas, where he lives in a flimsy tent while waiting to resolve an asylum claim in the United States.

“It was cold last year, but not like this with ice,” the 43-year-old said on Tuesday evening by phone from the encampment, where he is among about 1,000 migrants, most from Central America, hoping to be granted refuge across the border.

Manuel, from Nicaragua, has lived there a year and a half under former President Donald Trump’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program that makes asylum seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings.

He is hopeful that President Joe Biden will make migration policies more humane, ending the uncertainty of his life in limbo on the border so he can make plans to work with a friend in Miami.

In fact, Biden’s administration has said a new process will gradually begin in coming days to allow thousands of MPP asylum seekers to await courts’ decisions within the United States, a policy change that should eventually empty the camp. But Manuel said he is fuzzy on the details.

For now, there is just the stinging cold, even in his layers, which has plunged swathes of northern Mexico and the southern United States into chilling temperatures and left millions of people without power.

“Everything froze – the water we cook with, even clothes became stiff with ice,” Manuel recalled from the previous night, when sleet pummeled the plastic tarps slung over camping tents as extra protection from the elements.

Even in the daytime, icicles clung to tent roofs and shards of ice glittered on the ground, a video filmed by another camp resident showed.

“How are we surviving the cold? With the embrace of God, nothing else,” said Sandra Andrade, 44, of El Salvador, narrating the video.

Her daughters, ages 8 and 11, left the camp a few months ago to join their uncle in Boston, and Andrade said she was relieved they were spared the deep freeze.

“If they had been here in this icebox, they would be crying from cold every night,” she said in an interview. Even she has had trouble sleeping, kept awake by the noisy wind stirring up the flaps of tents and tarps.

Now with Biden in office, Andrade said she hopes to be able to soon reunite with her daughters, although she worries the brutal cold snap could put a dent in the new plan.

“If it’s causing a slowdown in sending the vaccine, imagine a process like this,” she said.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Marguerita Choy)

COVID-19 cases falling in U.S., Canada, but still rising in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil: PAHO

BRASILIA (Reuters) – COVID-19 infections are finally decreasing in the United States and Canada after weeks of unrelenting rise, but in Mexico cases and deaths continue to increase, particularly in states that drew tourism in the holiday season, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In South America, Colombia reported the highest incidence of cases, followed by Brazil, where the city of Manaus is still seeing exponential increases in both cases and deaths, PAHO director Carissa Etienne said. Three new variants have been detected in 20 countries of the Americas, though their frequency is still limited, she said in a briefing.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Mexico’s president disputes rights concerns over trapped asylum seekers

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) – President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador brushed away concerns on Friday about the living conditions of thousands of asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico under a U.S. program that President Joe Biden is scrambling to unravel.

Humanitarian organizations have documented cases of attacks, extortion, kidnapping, and sexual violence against those in the program. Most are from Central America and many live in shelters and cramped apartments in dangerous border towns or in a squalid tent city in Mexico’s far northeast.

Lopez Obrador disputed the accounts, saying he had “other data” and that his government would release a report on the migrants next week.

“We have been taking care of the migrants and we have been careful that their human rights are not affected,” Lopez Obrador told a news conference.

“…It’s nothing like it was before, when they were kidnapped and disappeared. We have been attentive and we have protected them.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, under Biden’s new administration, said on Wednesday it would end all new enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, which since 2019 has forced more than 65,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings, sometimes for months or even years.

The announcement did not specify what will happen to the tens of thousands currently waiting in Mexico under the program, saying only that they “should remain where they are, pending further official information from U.S. government officials.”

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener; editing by John Stonestreet)

Mexico aims to make up for Pfizer vaccine shortfall with others

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday the government aimed to compensate for a reduction in deliveries of COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer Inc with those from other providers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday it was in advanced talks with Pfizer about including its vaccine in the agency’s portfolio of shots to be shared with poorer countries.

Mexico had been expecting weekly deliveries of some 400,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE. As a result of the U.S. drugmaker’s WHO agreements, Mexico would for now only be receiving half that total, Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference.

It was not clear how long the reduction would last. Pfizer did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is currently the only one being administered in Mexico, which has reported the fourth-highest death toll from the pandemic worldwide.

Mexico has also signed deals to acquire vaccines from Britain’s AstraZeneca Plc and China’s CanSino Biologics. Mexico has approved the AstraZeneca shot and expects to have it by March. It is still reviewing the CanSino vaccine.

Lopez Obrador also noted Mexico was about to complete its review of a Russian vaccine, and would soon have it available, an apparent reference to the Sputnik V product.

Mexico suffered a setback to its drive to inoculate the public with the news over the weekend that the official in charge of the program, Miriam Veras Godoy, had stepped down for personal reasons, according to the health ministry.

(Reporting by Raul Cortes; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

COVID-19 tests: Central America’s latest tool to stop migrant caravans

By Sofia Menchu and Lizbeth Diaz

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – As the first groups from Central America headed toward the Guatemalan border on Thursday as part of a caravan aiming to reach the United States, regional governments are using coronavirus measures as the latest tool to curtail migration.

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico issued a joint declaration this week imposing coordinated health measures to deter migration, including requirements to produce negative coronavirus tests at border checkpoints.

The tightening by Mexican and Central American authorities, coupled with pandemic-linked U.S. border restrictions in place since March, represent a sweeping effort to use public health regulations to deter movement along one of the world’s busiest migration routes at a time when a fierce second wave of coronavirus is sweeping the region.

In Mexico, the pandemic has killed nearly 137,000 people and the capital’s hospitals are spiking with COVID-19 cases.

This week’s caravan, slated to depart Honduras on Friday, would be the first of the year.

Yet, Central American and Mexican authorities are stepping up efforts to stop migrants well before the U.S. border, which will likely be a relief for Biden, whose aides have privately expressed concerns about the prospect of a growing numbers of migrants seeking to enter the United States in the early days of his administration.

On Thursday, Guatemala cited the pandemic in order to declare emergency powers in seven Guatemalan border provinces migrants frequently transit through en route to the Mexican border. The measures limit public demonstrations and allow authorities to disperse any public meeting, group or demonstration by force.

Honduras and Guatemala have also announced they will deploy thousands of soldiers to preemptively stop caravan members not complying with health regulations.

“We barely have food to eat, how do they think we are going to pay for these (coronavirus) tests?” said 29-year-old Ulises Santos from El Salvador, who is hoping to join the caravan.

Central America is reeling from economic crises, high rates of violence, and the devastating fallout of two major hurricanes that battered the region in November.

Migration experts say the public health measures are part of a broader effort by Central American and Mexican authorities, under pressure from Washington, to stop migrants before they reach U.S. territory.

“The U.S. border is moving further and further south,” said renowned Honduran human rights activist Ismael Moreno.

“The goal (of local police) is to stop migrants, whether through repression, threats, extortion, or requirements to present a COVID-19 test.”

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala, additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Honduras, Jose Torres in Tapachula, Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Diane Craft)