CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A Mexican television journalist has been shot to death in Juárez, reportedly suffering 11 gunshot wounds. Prosecutors in Chihuahua state said journalist Arturo Alba Medina was found gunned down in his car along a downtown Juárez street. State prosecutors pledged to investigate the killing, which they said occurred late Thursday night. Officials
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Families are spreading bulks of marigold petals, lighting up candles for their loved ones and some are even wearing colorful skull makeup. It’s Día de los Muertos. The Mexican holiday, also known as Day of the Dead, extends over the first two days of November and has nothing to do with Halloween. It’s an ode
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Mattel is back with its Día De Muertos Barbie doll and it’s once again generating backlash. The doll, the second in Mattel’s “La Catrina” collection of Barbies, was designed to celebrate the annual centuries-old Mexican folk tradition, Día de Muertos, sometimes called Dia de Los Muertos. It’s celebrated during the first two days of November,
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The strong scent of marigolds fills the air as Magaly Saenz leans over photos of loved ones to place a special bread offering on the altar in her bakery. The sweet pan de muerto bread is one of many offerings that Saenz places on her community altar every year, but the pandemic has brought a
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HOUSTON, Texas — Top Trump administration officials visited Texas five days before Election Day to announce they have nearly completed 400 miles of U.S.-Mexico border wall, trying to show progress on perhaps the president’s best-known campaign promise four years ago. RELATED STORY: Texas landowners facing coronavirus pandemic and land seizures for border wall While most
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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — At least three people have died as Hurricane Zeta pounded New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast with heavy rains and howling winds before rapidly making its way through Mississippi and Alabama with strong gusty winds, heavy rains and dangerous storm surge. Zeta left a trail of destruction before turning
Continue Reading Joe Biden is pledging that if he’s elected president, he will sign an executive order to form a task force that will focus on reuniting the 545 immigrant children who’ve been separated from their families. The pledge was mentioned in a digital ad the campaign has started airing in the key states of Arizona, Florida,
Continue Reading RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas — Within the last six months, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the U.S., the Trump administration filed 75 lawsuits to seize private land along the U.S.-Mexico border for the border wall, according to data from the Texas Civil Rights Project. In the final days of the presidential election, President Donald Trump,
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EL PASO, Texas — A record surge in coronavirus cases is pushing hospitals to the brink in both the cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, confronting health officials in Texas and Mexico with twin disasters in this tightly knit metropolitan area of 3 million people. Health officials are blaming the spike on family gatherings,
Continue Reading A longer look at “Selena: The Series” has arrived. On Monday, Netflix released the full trailer for the series coming in December. In the trailer, actress Christian Serratos (“The Walking Dead”) plays the Tejano star in various stages of her career, from the early days of her rise until her tragic death at age 23.
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A curfew was set to take effect Friday night in Juárez as part of new restrictions imposed for the next two weeks in Chihuahua state because the region is experiencing a major surge of Covid-19 infections. The overnight curfew in Juárez will run from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day.
Continue Reading Dora Melara heads into remote parts of Honduras, looking for clues in cases she never imagined would take this long to solve. Sometimes, the people she’s seeking are nowhere to be found. “There are places where you practically have to climb mountains to get there. And when you arrive, they say, ‘He doesn’t live here
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UPDATE, Oct. 21: Juárez Mayor Armando Cabada was hospitalized Wednesday for treatment of Covid-19 following his diagnosis earlier this week of having contracted the virus for a second time. In a social media post, the mayor said his doctor found inflammation of his lungs, which led to the decision to hospitalize him for observation. Cabada
Continue Reading WASHINGTON, DC — Immigration experts are expecting an increase in the number of migrants journeying to the US-Mexico border in the coming months following the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Latin America. As countries put lock downs in place earlier this year, the number of Central Americans migrating north dropped. From March to
Continue Reading SAN DIEGO, California — Lawyers have not been able to reach the parents of 545 children who had been separated from their families by U.S. border officials between 2017 and 2018, according to a new court filing. Hundreds of parents may also have been deported without their children. The filing from the Justice Department and
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EL PASO, Texas – The city of El Paso’s Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebration is going virtual this year because of the pandemic. The free, family-friendly event will be held from Oct. 26 through Nov. 6 and will include a variety of online programs and events created by the city’s
Continue Reading WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two cases involving Trump administration policies at the U.S.-Mexico border: one about a policy that makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings and a second about the administration’s use of money to fund the border wall. The justices’ decision to hear
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WASHINGTON, DC — Travel restrictions on the United States’ shared borders with Mexico and Canada have been extended through Nov. 21 due to concerns over the spread of Covid-19, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf announced on Twitter Monday morning. “We are working closely with Mexico & Canada to identify safe criteria to ease the restrictions in
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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A former Sunland Park militia leader convicted of impersonating a U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to almost two years in prison. Federal prosecutors said 45-year-old James Christopher Benvie received a sentence Thursday of 21 months in prison followed by a year of supervised release. He had faced as much
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WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up President Donald Trump’s policy, blocked by a lower court, to exclude people living in the U.S. illegally from the census count that will be used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives. Never in U.S. history have immigrants been excluded from the
Continue Reading TUCSON, Arizona — U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 458,000 people in fiscal year 2020, marking a sharp decline from 2019 but not straying far from previous years despite the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement posture. The number of encounters — meaning people illegally crossing the border or presenting at a port
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MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Mexico’s president has published an open letter to Pope Francis calling on the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for abuses of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico in the 1500s. In the letter, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also asks the pope to lend Mexico ancient pre-Hispanic Mexican or colonial-era documents. “The Catholic Church, the Spanish
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Chihuahua state officials said Monday the government is rolling back the reopening of the economy in the northern portion of the state due to dramatic increases in coronavirus cases in the city of Juárez. The rollback restrictions put in place Monday afternoon are resulting in the immediate closure of bars and
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LAFAYETTE, Louisiana — Ripping tarps off damaged roofs and scattering massive piles of storm debris in the wind and water, Hurricane Delta inflicted fresh damage in Louisiana along the same path of destruction Hurricane Laura carved just six weeks earlier. Delta hit as a Category 2 hurricane with top winds of 100 mph (155 kph)
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ALAMOGORDO, New Mexico – Border Patrol agents in Alamogordo discovered nearly three pounds of cocaine hidden in a pick-up truck’s battery during an inspection stop on Thursday. According to the Border Patrol, a Ford F-150 truck approached the Alamogordo immigration checkpoint along U.S. Highway 54. A canine alerted agents to the possible presence of narcotics
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EL PASO, Texas – U.S. Border Patrol agents in the El Paso sector discovered at least seven stash houses and arrested eight suspected human smugglers over the past month, the agency announced Monday. More than 100 migrants were also taken into custody in connection with the stash houses, where they were “rescued from harsh and
Continue Reading WASHINGTON, DC — Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus, according to two former health officials. The action has so far caused
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UPDATE: LORDSBURG, New Mexico – Border Patrol agents arrested a 28-year-old Phoenix man in connection with a human smuggling incident and agent-involved shooting that happened late Friday outside Lordsburg. Agents from the Tucson and El Paso sector arrested the man without incident at his home over the weekend. The man has not been identified. The
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EL PASO, Texas – A woman’s body was pulled from a canal along the Cesar Chavez Border Highway near Yarbrough on Saturday morning, the El Paso Fire Department said. Water rescue units from the Fire Department assisted the U.S. Border Patrol in retrieving the body from the south-central El Paso waterway. Six divers took part
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EL PASO , Texas — A veteran of the U.S. Navy and Army National Guard who served a tour of duty during the Persian Gulf war finally came home to his family earlier this month after surviving a much different kind of struggle which lasted for 20 years. Frank De La Cruz has considered himself
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