migrants

McALLEN, Texas —  When a bus carrying 42 migrants from the Texas-Mexico border rolled to a stop in Los Angeles this month, activists and local politicians were quick to excoriate Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.“It is abhorrent that an American elected official is using human beings as pawns in his cheap political games,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass wrote in a statement.But 1,600 miles away in the Texas border city of McAllen, where the migrants had boarded the bus, Abbott had an unexpected collaborator: Sister Norma Pimentel, a…

The story begins arrestingly, with the tale of a migrant, a well-connected man in his thirties, who finds himself on the losing side of a long-running war in an Asian country. His wife is killed in the fighting and he becomes a refugee, taking a boat out from the Turkish coast to Greece. His eventual destination is Rome, but after a harrowing journey, their boat is turned back from Sicily and lands in Tunisia. Eventually, after many adventures, the man does get to Rome. Migrants who undertook the crossing from…

Global media have been obsessed with the search for the missing submersible Titan, four of whose five occupants spent $250,000 each to get close to the famous wreck of the Titanic. In Germany, where I live, the German Press Agency (dpa) described the underwater voyage as a “modern adventure” that became a “life-threatening nightmare.” At Spektrum der Wissenschaft, we wrote about a “race against time.” And our English-language sibling publication, Scientific American, covered the “perils of deep-sea exploration.” The U.S.…

SACRAMENTO —  They saw themselves in the video that Florida officials offered up as proof of their consent to travel to California, but they said it’s not what it seemed. They were happy, yes. That part was true. They had finally made it to America after traveling thousands of miles over the span of three months from their home in Venezuela. They walked until their feet bled and caught a bus or a train when they could. Sometimes they went days without eating and collapsed with exhaustion.The young husband and wife had…

A busload of migrants sent by the state of Texas arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the action on social media, saying the transportation of migrants to L.A. was “much-needed relief” for the border.The group of 42 people, including a number of minors, arrived after a 23-hour bus ride without food or water, according to Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of communications for immigrant rights group CHIRLA. “Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of…

EL PASO —  María had traveled more than 2,800 miles from Venezuela to reach the United States in early May. Once crossing the border, however, she’d only made it four blocks, to a shelter at Sacred Heart Church, in downtown El Paso.Like many asylum seekers released on parole by Customs and Border Protection, she had no money to pay for a plane or bus ticket, she said. She slept in the church shelter, and then in the alley outside, for three weeks, until a woman approached and said she would fly María on a private jet to…

Florida officials took responsibility on Tuesday for chartered flights that transported migrants to Sacramento, following days of silence since the first group landed in California on Friday.The transport had been lambasted as potentially illegal by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who raised the potential for kidnapping charges in a Twitter message directed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday.Florida officials pushed back on the allegation that the migrants had been transported against their will or under misleading…

California officials are considering filing civil and criminal charges for what they call “state-sanctioned kidnapping” against whoever is responsible for flying migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border region to Sacramento on two planes the last few days.According to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the two planes carrying migrants from South America were chartered by the state of Florida, the very state whose Legislature recently passed a bill calling for prison time for anyone caught transporting undocumented immigrants.…

SACRAMENTO —  Gov. Gavin Newsom took his feud with Gov. Ron DeSantis to new heights on Monday, seemingly threatening him with kidnapping charges after California officials say South American migrants were sent to Sacramento by the state of Florida as a political stunt.Newsom, a Democrat, cited state kidnapping laws in a tweet to the Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful, whom he called a “small, pathetic man.”“This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?” Newsom said in the tweet, referencing…

Hello, it’s Monday, June 5, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:TOP STORIES State of Florida appears to have arranged to send migrants to SacramentoMore than a dozen migrants from South America who were recently flown on a chartered jet from New Mexico and dropped off in Sacramento were carrying documents indicating that their transportation was arranged by the state of Florida, the California attorney general’s office said Sunday.The documents appear to show that the flight was arranged through the…