World

EL PASO, United States — Pandemic-era controls barring migrants from claiming US asylum expire at midnight Thursday amid fears of chaos at the Mexican border, with a tough new policy spelling uncertainty for thousands seeking refuge in America.

Large numbers of migrants, mostly from the Americas but some as far away as Asia, were on both sides of the US-Mexico frontier on Thursday as US troops arrived to handle the expected surge of mainly poor people.

Some made last-minute tries to ford the narrow but fast-moving Rio Grande River near Brownsville, Texas, hoping that they might simply be released into the United States after turning themselves into the Border Patrol.

“I hope to be able to stay in this country,” said 29-year-old Ecuadoran Jimmy Munoz, just after climbing onto US soil.

“But I have doubts and fears that they will let me.”

For more than three years the 3,200 kilometre frontier with Mexico has been regulated by Title 42 — a health provision designed to keep COVID infections at bay by turning people away before they made a claim for asylum.

But with the formal ending of the COVID emergency, that rule will be lifted at the stroke of midnight in the US capital — and new restrictions will take its place.

Glitchy app 

Those new regulations, crafted by the administration of President Joe Biden as it seeks to alleviate pressure at the border, require asylum-seekers and other migrants to request entry from outside the country.

Five-year bans or criminal charges will be levied against those who try to sneak in.

The US has pledged to set up processing centers in other countries, and is creating special refugee programmes for certain countries like Haiti as well as expanding temporary work permits.

But as the looming shift inflames America’s already heated immigration debate, and amid swirling misinformation, how they will play out remains in question.

Asylum-seeking migrants are required to seek interview appointments via a smartphone app — though users report it is glitchy at best, presents a hurdle for those without working phones or wifi, and that Customs and Border Patrol can only set 1,000 appointments a day.

“It’s amazing that an app practically decides our lives and our future,” Jeremy de Pablos, a 21-year-old Venezuelan who has camped out in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez for weeks, told AFP.

Meanwhile, US cities along the border girded for the policy shift, still unsure what it would mean for them after seeing thousands of migrants appear on their streets monthly over the past three years.

“We don’t know what’s coming in the next day, we don’t know what’s coming in the next 10 days,” said Oscar Leeser, the mayor of El Paso, Texas, routinely one of the busiest border crossings.

“We know that they’ll continue to come and we’ll continue to make sure that we help them,” he told AFP on Wednesday.

Sticks and carrots 

For much of the last year, border agents intercepted more than 200,000 migrants each month, most of whom were later expelled.

But some were allowed to register and continue into the US, and many found ways to stay there, keeping the promise alive for other migrants.

Many come from Mexico and three impoverished central American countries, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — though in recent years there has been a jump in people from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Haiti.

The Border Patrol has also seen thousands show up each month from Russia, India, China, Brazil and elsewhere.

While Biden was heavily criticised from the left for maintaining the Title 42 policy implemented by his predecessor Donald Trump for over two years, he is now under attack from the right for lifting it, with critics predicting a surge in border crossings.

Trump — Biden’s leading Republican challenger for the presidency in 2024 — suggested on Wednesday that the coming change would be a “day of infamy”.

“You’re going to have millions of people pouring into our country,” he said during a town hall aired on CNN, though he gave no evidence for the figure.

The White House has sought to balance sticks with carrots.

“Our overall approach is to build lawful pathways for people to come to the United States, and to impose tougher consequences on those who choose not to use those pathways,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

That threat appeared percolate through to some migrants in Matamoros, over the border from Brownsville, Texas.

Venezuelan Andres Sanchez told AFP he would not be chancing an illegal river crossing.

“We will lose all rights to legal process. They can automatically throw us back,” he said.

ISLAMABAD — Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was remanded in custody for eight days on Wednesday by an anti-graft court as violent nationwide protests over his arrest erupted for a second day.

Khan was arrested on Tuesday during a routine hearing in the capital Islamabad and whisked away to an unknown location overnight before appearing behind closed doors in a specially convened court at police headquarters.

The drama follows months of political crisis during which Khan, who was ousted in April last year, has waged an unprecedented campaign against the country's powerful military.

"If they think that the arrest of Imran Khan will demoralise us, then they are hugely mistaken," said Niaz Ali in Peshawar, where several monuments and government buildings have been torched.

"We stand with Imran Khan and will support him till death."

Ali Bukhari, a lawyer for Khan, told AFP by phone that the court had approved eight days of physical remand of Khan demanded by the country's top graft agency.

Afzal Marwat, another of Khan’s lawyers, earlier said Khan was in “good spirits” but had complained of being hit on the back of the head and leg by paramilitary forces who arrested him.

The former cricketing superstar, who remains wildly popular, has previously said the dozens of cases brought against him are part of an effort by the struggling government and military establishment to prevent him from returning to power.

His arrest has brought thousands of his supporters to the streets in cities across the country, where police have attempted to quell crowds with tear gas.

At least six people have died in protest-related incidents, police and hospitals reported, including one person who died from smoke inhalation after a multistorey building was set on fire in Lahore.

Confrontation with military 

Khan’s arrest came hours after the military rebuked him for alleging that a senior officer had been involved in a plot to kill him.

Pakistan politicians have frequently been arrested and jailed since the country’s founding in 1947, but few have so directly challenged a military that has staged at least three coups and ruled for more than three decades.

Criticism of the military establishment is rare in Pakistan, where army chiefs hold significant influence over domestic politics and foreign policy, and have long been accused of interfering in the rise and fall of governments.

“The senior army leadership is uninterested in repairing the rift between itself and Khan,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre.

“So with this arrest it’s likely sending a message that the gloves are very much off.”

Internet cut, exams cancelled 

The interior ministry had ordered mobile internet services cut and restricted access to social media sites Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the country’s communications agency said.

Authorities have ordered schools closed across the nation — with end of year exams cancelled for students.

Hundreds of police officers have been injured across the country, while in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab nearly 1,000 people have been arrested and the army ordered to deploy to keep peace.

“At a time when we are already struggling to feed our children, further uncertainty has been created,” Farooq Bhatti, a van driver, told AFP in Rawalpindi.

Some protesters took out their wrath on the military, torching the residence of the corps commander in Lahore and gathering outside the entrance to the army’s general headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi and pelting it with stones.

On Wednesday, the military’s media wing released a statement warning of a “strong reaction” against those who attack military and state installations”.

Overlapping crises 

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a press conference there was “no political vendetta” surrounding Khan’s arrest.

The case that led to his detention was brought by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s top anti-corruption body, which said he had ignored repeated summons to appear in court.

“Whenever he was summoned to court, he would do so at his own leisure, and only after being given a final warning,” said Tarar.

Pakistan is deeply mired in an economic and political crisis, with Khan agitating for early elections while the government is weighed down by security and economic turbulence.

He has been increasingly outspoken against the establishment, relying on near-fanatical support from the huge crowds that accompany his public appearances to protect him from arrest.

At a weekend rally in Lahore, Khan repeated claims that senior intelligence officer Maj. Gen. Faisal Naseer was involved in an assassination attempt last year during which he was shot in the leg.

The military’s Inter-Services Public Relations wing in a statement rejected “this fabricated and malicious allegation”.

The government says the assassination attempt was the work of a lone gunman, who is in custody and who confessed in a video controversially leaked to media.

DOUALA — English-speaking separatists in Cameroon admitted on Tuesday they had shot dead a journalist by mistake when targeting an army commander in the restive Northwest region.

Anye Nde Nsoh, who worked for The Advocate weekly newspaper, died in a bar in the regional capital Bamenda on Sunday, Mezam department prefect Simon Emile Mooh said in a statement.

"A group of armed terrorists ... cowardly and coldly murdered" the 26-year-old, Mooh said.

The national authorities use the term terrorist for the separatists fighting for independence.

"He was shot in a bar. We do not know if he was the target or just a collateral victim," The Advocate's publisher Tarhyang Enowbikah Tabe told AFP.

But Capo Daniel, a leader of the "Ambazonians", who have proclaimed local independence, said the separatists did kill the journalist by mistake.

"The target was a commanding officer" of the army "who frequented the bar", Capo Daniel said, admitting "an error over his identity".

"It was a case of mistaken identity," he said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

"The target was a commanding [army] officer... who visits that particular bar," said Capo Daniel.

"The operation was carried out by Ambazonian forces."

An army officer who asked not to be named told AFP that Capo Daniel calls himself the "commander" of the group's Dark Forces, and is one of the senior separatist leaders living in exile.

WASHINGTON — The man accused of killing eight people at a Texas shopping mall recently obtained large Nazi tattoos, praised other mass shooters and wrote just ahead of his attack that he would “fight hate with more hate”.

Mauricio Garcia, the 33-year-old who police say opened fire with an assault rifle on shoppers at the Allen Premium Outlets mall on Saturday, posted his diaries, photographs of his tattoos and cryptic warnings of his coming attack on the Russian social media site OK.RU.

His diaries expressed hate for women, Jews and “diversity”, rarely commenting on his own Hispanic ethnicity.

He also posted pictures of his guns, body armour, and patches of skulls and the initials for “Right Wing Death Squad” popular with far-right militias.

But there was no indication that Garcia was a part of any group or had the support of anyone else in his Saturday attack.

Garcia was shot dead by a police officer shortly after launching his attack on the busy mall in the suburb north of Dallas, authorities said.

His victims included three members of a Korean-American family, two sisters of elementary school age, an Indian-American engineer, a security guard at the mall and a 32-year-old man.

MSNBC reported that US law enforcement were examining Garcia’s web pages on OK.RU as part of their investigation into the killing.

There were strong indications that the page labelled “PsycoVision5”, using a logo of a smiley face with a Hitler-style moustache, was Garcia’s.

It included extensive personal pictures, photos of his identity papers, a traffic ticket, and other personal items that closely tied him to the page.

Garcia posted photos of tattoos he obtained last month, including a large swastika on his chest and the logo of the Nazi Party’s Waffen SS paramilitary body.

He also posted images of modern neo-Nazi groups, which he apparently took from the Internet, writing next to them “My kind of people”.

There was no indication he belonged to such a group, however.

In his writings he identified himself with “incels”, men whose relationship failures lead them to despise women.

His Hispanic ethnicity sparked questions about how he could support the white supremacy ideology of Nazis.

But Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University who studies extremism, said it was not strange for a person who is not considered white in some communities to subscribe to white supremacist extremism (WSE).

“The very category of whiteness is always changing. & neo-Nazi, WSE movements are not only about race,” she wrote on Twitter.

Some ethnic minorities may identify or see themselves as white, she wrote.

“Some are attracted to other parts of the supremacist beliefs — the misogyny, the Christian supremacy,” she said.

TAIPEI — Taiwan is expecting a fast-tracked $500 million weapons package from Washington this year to make up for delays in arms procurements, the island's defence minister said on Monday.

The self-ruled, democratic island lives under constant threat of an invasion by China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory to be seized one day — by force if necessary.

With Beijing increasing its sabre-rattling towards the island, Taiwan's key ally the United States in September approved the Taiwan Policy Act — which would see new legislation provide billions in military aid to Taipei.

But there have been reported delays in delivering weapons, and Taiwan's Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng on Monday confirmed that Washington has been discussing a separate, and fast-tracked, weapons package with Taipei.

"The use of the $500 million package is aimed at prioritising supplying us with spot goods [available for immediate delivery] over any delay or late delivery in our arms procurement," Chiu told lawmakers when questioned in parliament about the "military aid" package.

“It should be implemented this year,” he said, adding that the $500 million package “is not counted into [previous] arms sales” and that Taiwan would be asking first for its “priorities”.

However, he did not elaborate on what type of equipment would be prioritised in the $500 million weapons package, saying only that the details would be thrashed out by both sides soon.

“For the delayed arms sales, they will make up by providing some of their spot goods or simulators or training equipment,” he said. “So when the arms are delivered in the future, we can start using them right away.”

The United States has for decades sold weapons to Taiwan. 

But the decision in September goes a step further — providing US security assistance to the tune of $4.5 billion over four years, a move that has infuriated Beijing. 

There have been some roadblocks in deliveries.

Taiwan’s defence ministry revealed last year it was looking for replacements after Russia’s war in Ukraine led to a shortage of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

Last week, the ministry announced it was notified by Washington that the first of the 66 advanced new F-16V fighter jets it had previously ordered from the United States would come “out of the factory” in the third quarter next year.

This puts it almost a year behind schedule, and was blamed on pandemic-spurred supply disruptions.