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New York Times
8 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Britain Moves to Curb Migrant Trafficking, and Ease Anger at Home
British authorities on Wednesday imposed sanctions on more than a dozen people and organizations suspected of smuggling migrants into Britain, cutting them off from the country's financial system and barring them from entering. It was the first use of a new legal authority aimed at disrupting the human-trafficking networks run by gangs and organized-crime syndicates that transport desperate migrants into the country. The migrants' journeys often conclude with the dangerous crossing of the English Channel in small, rickety boats. It was also the latest attempt by Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government to confront growing political anger about the rising number of migrants trying to cross the channel. While overall migration, including foreign students and workers, is down, the number of migrants arriving in small boats has spiked to about 42,000 this year as of June 30 — a 34 percent increase over the same period last year. The British Foreign Office said the 25 people and criminal organizations targeted on Wednesday had been supplying the small boats, producing fake passports and specializing in moving money outside traditional financial networks to facilitate the illegal movement of people. Among them were a person who the government said ran safe houses along the smuggling routes and seven people reported to be involved with the Kavac Gang, a Balkan-based group that it said created fake passports. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has called the crackdown part of the country's moral duty to stop the crossings. 'From Europe to Asia, we are taking the fight to the people smugglers who enable irregular migration, targeting them wherever they are in the world and making them pay for their actions,' he said in a statement Wednesday morning. 'My message to the gangs who callously risk vulnerable lives for profit is this: We know who you are, and we will work with our partners around the world to hold you to account.' Mr. Starmer's Labour government has been under increasing pressure since he promised during his campaign to reduce the flow of illegal migration. Small boats account for only about 5 percent of overall immigration into Britain, but the images of migrants jumping off the boats onto the beaches have become a potent political issue. Conservative politicians and their supporters have seized on the growing presence of migrants to attack the prime minister. In Epping, a town at the edge of London, several angry protests erupted in recent weeks after an Ethiopian migrant living in a hotel was charged with sexual assault. It was the latest in a series of protests in Britain about hotels catering to migrants. Chris Philp, the member of Parliament who speaks for the Conservative Party on migration issues, called the sanctions an ineffective and insufficient response and said the government should immediately deport anyone arriving in the small boats. 'The truth is you don't stop the channel crossings by freezing a few bank accounts in Baghdad or slapping a travel ban on a dinghy dealer in Damascus,' Mr. Philp said. 'Swaths of young men are arriving daily, in boats bought online, guided by traffickers who laugh at our laws and cash in on our weakness.' Advocates for migrants welcomed the new efforts on trafficking, in part because they target traffickers and not migrants themselves. But they cautioned that the relatively modest sanctions would probably do little to dissuade people desperate to leave their homes. 'The men, women and children risking their lives in small boats are often fleeing places like Sudan, where war has left them with nowhere else to turn,' said Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, a British-based organization that works with refugees and asylum seekers. 'People do not cross the channel,' he said, 'unless what lies behind them is more terrifying than what lies ahead.' British officials said the new sanctions were part of a broader effort to return more migrants to their home countries if they do not qualify for asylum or refugee status. Since Mr. Starmer's election last summer, the British government has returned 35,000 migrants, according to the Foreign Office, an increase of 13 percent over the previous year. This month, Mr. Starmer announced an agreement with President Emmanuel Macron of France to bolster enforcement to prevent the small boats with migrants from leaving French beaches in the first place. But migration experts say all of Mr. Starmer's efforts face significant challenges and may have little impact on the flow of people. Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said that many smuggling networks operated almost entirely in other countries, outside British jurisdiction, where the sanctions would have little real-world impact. He also said that Mr. Starmer's promise to 'smash' the gangs would be difficult to fulfill because the groups rely heavily on middlemen working in the informal money-transfer network known as Hawala, which operates outside traditional financial systems. Mr. Walsh said many countries, including Pakistan and India, had tried to combat the middlemen without much success. 'The gangs are pretty difficult to smash,' Mr. Walsh said. 'They are highly decentralized. They are highly adaptive.'
Washington Post
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Star witness against Kilmar Abrego García was due to be deported. Now he's being freed.
The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots into a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony. Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to 'deadly conduct' in the Texas shooting, and is now the government's star witness in its case against Abrego. The government illegally deported Abrego to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador in March, and stonewalled for weeks after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States. Officials flew the Maryland resident back into the country this month, but only after a grand jury had indicted him for migrant smuggling, in part because of Hernandez's testimony. In court, prosecutors have identified their main witness as the 'first cooperator.' But a federal agent also testified this month that the main cooperator owned the vehicle that Abrego was allegedly using to smuggle migrants when the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped him in 2022. The Department of Homeland Security has identified Hernandez as the registered owner of the SUV Abrego was driving in that incident. That traffic stop is the centerpiece of the criminal investigation. Hernandez is among a handful of cooperating witnesses who could help the Trump administration achieve its goal of never letting Abrego walk free in the United States again. In exchange, he has already been released early from federal prison to a halfway house and has been given permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year. 'Otherwise he would be deported,' Peter Joseph, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, testified at Abrego's criminal hearing June 13. The government is also likely to give him a work permit, the agent told the court. Abrego's mistaken deportation in March to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center with more than 200 other deportees revealed the risks associated with the Trump administration's efforts to quickly fulfill the president's campaign promise to carry out mass deportations. But the Justice Department's decision to spare Hernandez shows that officials are also willing to keep serious offenders in the United States to meet their particular goals. Abrego has no prior criminal arrests or convictions. Hernandez was going to be deported a sixth time in the coming months. Then federal agents showed up a few weeks ago, asking about Abrego. 'It's wild to me,' said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. 'It's just further evidence of how the government is using Kilmar's case to further their propaganda and prove their political point.' Hernandez's criminal history and recent transfer to a halfway house in return for his testimony match the agent's description of the main cooperating witness. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment about the agreement to release Hernandez or on his criminal record. Hernandez's court-appointed lawyer, Javier Martinez, did not respond to requests for comment. Hernandez testified during the grand jury proceedings that led to the recent indictment against Abrego, who has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege that Abrego, 29, was a driver for a business that transported thousands of undocumented immigrants from Texas to states such as Maryland for money. Joseph testified that Hernandez told investigators he met Abrego around 2016 when he was living in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland. He alleged that they'd both worked as drivers for undocumented immigrants. Federal records show that more than 60 percent of convicted smugglers are U.S. citizens with little to no criminal history, and drivers are often low-level operatives in need of quick cash. After Hernandez moved to the Houston area, the two kept in touch. Both are from El Salvador. Hernandez is nearly a decade older than Abrego. Abrego crossed the southern border illegally in 2011 as a teenager, court records show, after he said he'd received multiple death threats from a gang. Immigration officers detained him for several months in 2019 after a Maryland police detective alleged he was an MS-13 gang member. The detective, who made the claim after an encounter with Abrego at a Home Depot parking lot, was later fired and indicted over misconduct in an unrelated case. Abrego's lawyers have said he was never a member of any gang. Abrego was released after an immigration judge ruled he should not be deported to El Salvador because his life could be threatened by the gangs that had sparked his decision to flee to the United States in the first place. Hernandez's criminal record dates at least to 2015, when police in Chesterfield County, Virginia, arrested him for public drunkenness and he paid a small fine. He has been arrested or in prison every year since, according to federal, state and county records reviewed by The Post. Houston police arrested him in 2016 for cocaine possession, but court records show prosecutors dismissed the case because of an issue with the search. Police in College Station, Texas, arrested him in 2017 for driving while intoxicated with a handgun in the car. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving and was punished with 60 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. He also forfeited the gun to the state. An immigration judge in Texas ordered him deported in February 2018 and he was sent to El Salvador that month. Two months later, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Hernandez after he waded across the Rio Grande into Texas. He pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to 30 days in prison. Federal court records show he was deported in May 2018. But Hernandez always seemed to find a way to get back in. By December of the next year, he had surfaced again, this time, in Mississippi. An officer had pulled over the vehicle he was riding in, and suspected Hernandez was helping smuggle migrants. The van held more passengers than seat belts and a large piece of cardboard was blocking the back window. Seven passengers were undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, and some admitted they had paid hundreds of dollars for rides north. Federal investigators said Hernandez admitted that he was in the United States illegally. He said he was running a business called 'Transs Express' that offered rides from Texas to South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Atlanta for $350 per person. He said he had started out as a ride-app driver in Maryland but there was too much competition, so he moved to Texas and started his own company. Hernandez sat in the front passenger seat, while his partner's unlicensed 18-year-old brother drove. The man told investigators Hernandez paid him $400 to help transport the migrants. Hernandez later pleaded guilty to illegally transporting migrants and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in 2020. It is unclear what happened after Hernandez finished that sentence, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to questions about his immigration history. On a December afternoon in 2022, Hernandez was 'highly intoxicated' and had just argued with his wife, according to Montgomery County Sheriff's Office records released in response to a public records request from The Post. Hernandez was riding around a Texas community known as The Woodlands with a friend at the wheel of a pickup truck. The friend told authorities Hernandez pulled out a silver handgun and, from the passenger seat, began to shoot out the window. It was before 4 p.m. and with neighbors nearby. Then, he fell asleep. Sheriff's deputies pulled over the truck. One deputy wrote that Hernandez was 'too intoxicated to give his side of the story.' Authorities said they recovered 11 spent shells and several rounds of live ammunition. 'Jose kept on saying he did nothing wrong,' the report said. Authorities charged him with deadly conduct with a firearm, a third-degree felony, in part because he was shooting in a residential neighborhood with a person only 50 feet away, and he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in state prison. After his sentence was up, federal prosecutors charged Hernandez with reentering the United States illegally after having been convicted of a serious crime. That crime carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years and hefty fines. Hernandez asked the federal judge for leniency, noting he had already been in state prison for two years. 'All I want is to go back to my country and to go back to my family,' Hernandez said. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen asked why Hernandez had been in state prison. His lawyer recounted the shooting but noted that nobody had been injured. 'Oh,' the judge said. Hanen granted the prosecutor's request that Hernandez serve 30 months in federal prison. He was nearing the end of that sentence, and facing imminent deportation, when ICE officers wrongly deported Abrego in March. The Supreme Court ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego's return to the United States in April, around the same time that federal investigators heard about Hernandez and began interviewing him in prison. An indictment was filed under seal on May 21, and Abrego was brought back in early June. Abrego's defense lawyers have disparaged Hernandez as a 'snitch' and a 'two-time felon,' though records show he has been convicted of at least three felonies. Others caution that Hernandez may fear deportation to the same Salvadoran prison where Abrego ended up. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes ruled on June 22 that Abrego was eligible for release from criminal custody, saying the government had failed to prove that he posed a flight risk or a danger to the community. She wrote that she put 'little weight' on the claims of Hernandez and other cooperators based on their records and interest in avoiding deportation. But the government has given conflicting signals about what could happen to Abrego next. Federal officials have said Abrego will not be freed pending trial, and that he would be transferred into immigration custody. A government lawyer told the federal judge in Maryland, who first ordered Abrego's return, on Thursday that immigration authorities would initiate civil proceedings to remove him to a third country. Top Justice Department and White House officials, meanwhile, have insisted there is no chance they would remove him from the country before his criminal trial. Pointing out what they described as those 'directly contradictory statements,' Abrego's lawyers made an unusual request Friday: to keep him in criminal custody until July 16, when a judge has scheduled a hearing to more fully explore the issue. They noted that both departments had worked together to secure an indictment against Abrego. The departments had also worked together to free Hernandez. Steve Thompson and Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.
New York Times
27-06-2025
- New York Times
Two Men Are Sentenced in Smuggling Deaths of 53 Migrants in Texas
Two men were sentenced on Friday for their roles in the deaths of 53 undocumented migrants, six of whom were children, in what prosecutors said was one of the deadliest migrant smuggling cases in recent years along the country's southern border. The defendants, Armando Gonzales-Ortega, 55, and Felipe Orduna-Torres, 30, were found guilty in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in March of conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants resulting in death and related charges. Mr. Orduna-Torres was sentenced on Friday to life in prison and Mr. Gonzales-Ortega was sentenced to 83 years in prison. Three years ago to the day — June 27, 2022 — a worker for a paving company followed the sounds of screaming along a road on the outskirts of San Antonio and found a trailer full of migrants, many of whom were lifeless and some gasping for air. The tractor-trailer was abandoned in a debris-filled area between train tracks and salvage yards on a day when the temperature reached more than 100 degrees. The trailer did not have air-conditioning and migrants tried to claw their way out. Those who died were 'essentially cooking alive,' prosecutors said. Eleven people survived. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Japan Times
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
Trump administration will put Abrego on trial before deporting him again
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is planning to deport migrant Kilmar Abrego for a second time but does not plan to send him back to El Salvador, where he was wrongly deported in March, a lawyer for the administration told a judge on Thursday. The deportation will not happen until after Abrego is tried in federal court on migrant smuggling charges, a White House spokesperson said. "He will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he's committed," the spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, wrote in a post on X. Sean Hecker, a lawyer for Abrego in the criminal case, accused the White House and the Justice Department of making "contradictory statements." "No one has any idea whether there are concrete plans for our client, or what those plans are," Hecker said in a statement. Earlier on Thursday, Justice Department lawyer Jonathan Guynn said during a hearing in federal court in Maryland that the United States does not have "imminent plans" to remove Abrego, a Salvadoran national, from the United States. If deported, Abrego would be sent to a third country and not El Salvador, Guynn said. He did not name the country. Abrego was deported and imprisoned in El Salvador in March despite a 2019 judicial decision barring him from being sent there because of a risk of persecution. The Trump administration brought Abrego back to the United States this month to face federal criminal charges accusing him of transporting migrants living illegally in the United States. He has pleaded not guilty. The case of Abrego, 29, who had been living in Maryland with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and their young son, has become a flashpoint over Trump's hard-line immigration agenda. The federal judge overseeing Abrego's criminal case ordered him released ahead of trial as early as Friday, but the Trump administration has said it plans to immediately take him into immigration custody. Abrego's lawyers have asked that he be kept in Maryland and that the Justice Department, which is prosecuting the criminal case, and the Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration proceedings, ensure he is not deported while the criminal case is pending. Federal judges in Maryland, where Abrego is suing over the March deportation, and Tennessee, where criminal charges were filed, are both yet to rule on Abrego's requests. Robert McGuire, the top federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes at a hearing in the criminal case on Wednesday that he would coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security as best as he could but ultimately could not control their decisions about where to house Abrego and whether to deport him.
The Herald
23-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald
Abrego Garcia ordered released pending trial on migrant smuggling charges
A US judge on Sunday ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant returned to the US earlier this month after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, released on bail pending his criminal trial on migrant smuggling charges. However, the decision by US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee does not necessarily mean Abrego, as he prefers to be known, will go home to his family. The judge had acknowledged at a June 13 court hearing that Abrego was likely to be placed in immigration detention even if he is released. Abrego, a Maryland resident whose wife and young child are US citizens, was deported on March 15 to El Salvador, despite a 2019 immigration court ruling that he not be sent there because he could be persecuted by gangs. Officials called his removal an 'administrative error', but for months said they could not bring him back. Critics of US President Donald Trump pointed to Abrego's case as evidence his administration was prioritising increased deportations over due process, the bedrock principle people in the US, whether citizens or not, can contest governmental actions against them in the courts. Trump, who has pledged to crack down on illegal immigration, said Abrego belongs to the MS-13 gang, an accusation his lawyers deny. The justice department brought Abrego back to the US on June 6 after earlier securing an indictment charging him with working with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the US illegally. Prosecutors said Abrego, 29, picked up migrants from the US-Mexico border more than 100 times, and transported firearms and drugs. Abrego has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers said the Trump administration brought the charges to cover up their violations of Abrego's rights, and said the alleged co-conspirators cooperating with prosecutors should not be trusted because they are seeking relief from deportation and criminal charges of their own. In her ruling on Sunday, Holmes said the government failed to show Abrego posed a danger to the community or was unlikely to appear in court, scheduling a hearing for Wednesday. In a separate civil case, Greenbelt, Maryland-based US district judge Paula Xinis is investigating whether the Trump administration violated her order to facilitate Abrego's return from El Salvador. The US Supreme Court unanimously upheld the order. Reuters
