Tijuana, Mexico
CNN
 — 

Estefanía Rebellón knows the trauma that stems from being forced to flee your home for safety. She understands the fear and uncertainty felt by the more than 70 million migrant and forcibly displaced children around the world.

She was a migrant child, too.

“My family’s case is the case of many refugees and migrants at the border. It was never a choice for our family to leave our home. We were forced out of it,” Rebellón, 32, said.

She was 10 when her family fled Cali, Colombia, because of death threats to her father, who had been forced into hiding. They settled in Miami, and with the support of teachers at school, Rebellón thrived. Now, through her nonprofit, Yes We Can World Foundation, she provides education for children living in limbo in shelters at the US-Mexico border.

Rebellón moved from Miami to Los Angeles when she was 21 to pursue an acting career. In 2018, she was so moved after volunteering in migrant camps in Tijuana that she put her career on hold.

“There were no schools set up to help these kids. They were walking around the camps barefoot,” she said. “I couldn’t forget about what I had just seen. And I was like, ‘I literally have to go back.’”

Rebellón and her partner, Kyle Schmidt, used about $1,000 of their savings to buy tents and supplies and set up a makeshift school at the border. They enlisted volunteer teachers to provide learning opportunities in the camps.

“We set up a school overnight and … told just a couple of kids,” Rebellón said. “It spread throughout the camp, and we had like over 50 kids surrounding us.”

In the months that followed, when those families living in the camps were moved to shelters, Rebellón and Schmidt wanted to continue offering educational services.

“I thought, “Why don’t we turn a bus into a mobile classroom, and we could take it to all the different shelters?” Rebellón said. “We literally just Googled and YouTubed how to convert a bus into a mobile classroom.”

Over the next year, Rebellón and Schmidt bought and gutted a bus, partnered with shelters, and drove the transformed bus over the border. Their goal: to provide bilingual educational programs to keep children in school.

“All the families that we work with and all the children that we work with on a daily basis are legally seeking asylum,” Rebellón said. “They’re going through all the processes that are being required of them.”

Rebellón’s organization hires professional teachers and tailors their curriculum to the specific needs of each student. The program has been accredited by the education secretary in Mexico and serves children ages 3 to 15 – a crucial period for education, Rebellón says.

Despite the challenges she faced as a migrant child, she says she was lucky to have teachers who advocated for her and guided her along the way.

Many migrant children do not have this support and often fall through the cracks and miss valuable school time. Many have been on the road for months, if not years, and have difficulty attending school because they are often in transit, without a permanent home. Safety, economic instability, poverty, lack of transportation, and perceived legal status are also factors.

“People don’t realize that this is such a long process for families,” Rebellón said. “It’s not just like you arrive at the border, you seek asylum, and your life is all rainbows. It takes decades and a lot of work and a lot of pain.”

Rebellón’s family navigated a decades-long legal process to obtain political asylum and later US citizenship. Her parents, both lawyers by trade, were forced to abandon their careers in Colombia and take on new jobs in the US to support their family of five. Her mother worked multiple jobs as a caregiver and her father worked nights at Walmart. He has worked there full time for nearly 20 years.

“Any time I get a chance, I share my immigration story with (the kids),” Rebellón said. “I always want the kids that come through our programs to realize that being a migrant is not something they need to be ashamed of.”

Today, Yes We Can Foundation educates 250-300 kids a day through its four school locations along the border and three mobile school buses. Since 2019, Rebellón says the group has served more than 3,100 migrant children from 10 countries.

Their program runs Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. School runs for the entire year, with no summer breaks. They also provide free uniforms, backpacks, and school supplies. Lessons focus on common core instruction in the subjects of language arts, math, and science as well as addressing practical and immediate needs like how to translate basic information including phone numbers and addresses.

“I want our efforts to be something permanent,” Rebellón said. “And that when it’s all said and done, we will be proud to look back and say that we were there when people needed us the most.”

Want to get involved? Check out the Yes We Can World Foundation website and see how to help.

To donate to Yes We Can World Foundation via GoFundMe, click here

Mexico City
CNN
 — 

Last month, as the Biden administration scrambled to manage the latest wave of migrants overwhelming the US southern border, top US immigration authorities crossed into Mexico for an emergency meeting.

Seated around a Ciudad Juárez conference room, the officials and their Mexican counterparts drafted a 15-point plan to help defuse the flashpoint – most of it a checklist of actions for the Mexican government. Notably, according to a readout from Mexico’s federal immigration agency, Mexico agreed to carry out more costly deportations of the migrants gathering on their side of the border – a move that some believed would dissuade disorderly crossings.

The measures, which also specified Mexican efforts to clamp down on the crush of migrants riding north on railcars, are the latest in a series of policy shifts in Mexico that have alleviated, if slightly, the massive political headache in Washington caused perennially by migration. Analysts in both countries see a pragmatic bargain: as Mexico increasingly carries the weight of US immigration strategy, the Biden administration has granted rare leeway to the country’s divisive but popular leader.

“Mexico has real leverage in the relationship with the US. And right now that leverage is around migration,” said Andrew Selee, the president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Sharing nearly 2,000 miles of land border and a history of important economic exchange, Mexico and the US have long held intertwined immigration policies that adapted as international migration patterns shifted. When George W. Bush made his first trip out of the US as president in 2001, it was to the ranch of Vicente Fox, the Mexican leader, to discuss a new era of cooperation on border issues, like trade, drugs, and the northward flow of Mexicans, who at that time comprised the bulk of undocumented border-crossers.

But as spiraling violence and desperate economic conditions fueled years of mass migration out of Central America and the Caribbean to the US, overpowering the country’s legal intake system, the stretch of Mexican territory in between became a critical “buffer state,” said Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America.

“The Mexico southern border pretty much was the US southern border,” Meyer said.

Under pressure from several US administrations, Mexico has repeatedly sent resources to its border with Guatemala over the past 10 years to formalize migration routes and detained record numbers of migrants at newly installed checkpoints as they made their way north.

At the helm of Mexico’s latest immigration coordination with the US has been President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist leader who in 2018 campaigned on resistance to doing the US’s “dirty work” on migration. His political calculus has changed swiftly since then.

Under the threat of crippling tariffs from then-President Donald Trump, López Obrador agreed in 2019 to allow asylum applicants to wait out their claims inside Mexico under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, roiling activists who said it forced migrants into dangerous living conditions.

During the pandemic, when the US employed a public health measure known as Title 42 to turn around many asylum seekers at the border, López Obrador agreed to receive many of the migrants, reversing a long-standing position in the country and straining the resources of Mexico’s own border cities. In May, as the US ended the use of Title 42, López Obrador continued to allow the returns on “humanitarian grounds.”

“I think these more recent steps really do cross another line because it is not just stopping people from coming to the United States, which has been the more enforcer role,” Meyer said.

“It is actually allowing people deported from the United States to either stay in Mexico, or in this case now, actually maybe actively returning them back to their home countries for the United States,” she said.

Details on the deportation plan announced last month have been limited. In a news conference from Washington on Friday, Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena said that Mexican authorities were carrying out six flights each week to return migrants to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Bárcena added that officials were “exploring” the possibility of expanding the returns to Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia.

It was unclear where the deportation flights were taking place and when they had begun. It also couldn’t be learned if the migrants being returned had already been deported from the US or if they had pending asylum claims. Stakeholders in Mexico told CNN last week that there had not appeared to be any significant change in the pace of repatriation flights in the country’s north.

A spokeswoman for Mexico’s federal immigration agency declined to provide more details on the deportations.

But the announcement may already have had the effect of discouraging migrants from crossing to the US without the appointment required to seek an asylum claim. In the weekend that followed the meeting, the number of migrants encountered by border authorities entering the US near El Paso, Texas, fell by about 30%, CNN has reported.

Last Wednesday, López Obrador also announced that he was planning a summit with officials from several Latin American and Caribbean countries “whose populations are migrating” to be held in the coming days. Mexico also last month agreed to urge countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — which have limited diplomatic relations with the US — to take back their citizens deported at the border.

“What we are looking for is to reach an agreement to confront the migration phenomenon by addressing the causes,” López Obrador said at a news conference. “We have to align ourselves.”

The recent cooperation between the two countries has come with a busy schedule of shuttle diplomacy. Last week, Bárcena held meetings in Washington with Senate leaders and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security advisor. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Mexico this week along with other cabinet secretaries and meet with López Obrador.

For Mexican negotiators, the country’s increased responsibilities have often been conditioned on a US commitment to grow the ways that migrants can enter the country legally, like through temporary work visas and a recently expanded humanitarian parole program that the Biden administration says has allowed tens of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who meet certain conditions, including a local sponsor in the US, to fly into the country and secure work authorization.

Last month, ahead of the announcement around Mexican deportations, Mexico’s foreign minister told Bloomberg in an interview that the US and Mexico were nearing an agreement with the United Nations to pre-screen tens of thousands of migrants in Mexico for entry into the US under the parole programs. The US has opened similar processing centers in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson told CNN that the organization is “regularly in contact with US and Mexican authorities including on how we can provide support to possible future initiatives.”

“Politically for the Mexican government, they can’t do enhanced enforcement without showing that they are also fighting for the well-being of migrants and for legal opportunities, because it is a country with a history of migration to the United States,” Selee said.

A free hand for Lopez Obrador?

Still, some analysts see a more cynical incentive behind the cooperation, arguing that the Biden administration has largely turned a blind eye to elements of López Obrador’s agenda that would have typically drawn rebuke.

“López Obrador very quickly understood that if he gave into Biden’s request for support he would have significant political capital to ensure that US pressure on a number of either bilateral issues or domestic Mexican policy issues would be constrained,” said Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington who has been a critic of the current administration.

Detractors point to democratic backsliding in a number of López Obrador’s positions: an attempted reform of the country’s independent election authority, frequent criticism of the judiciary and the press, and the capitulation of state powers on policing and transportation to the military.

The election reform, which was passed earlier this year but later blocked by the Mexican Supreme Court, diminished the country’s independent election authority, cutting its workforce across the country and limiting its autonomy ahead of a presidential vote next year.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans marched on the capital against the policy in the largest opposition protest of López Obrador’s presidency. Critics decried it as a dangerous erosion of democratic institutions.

But in Washington, the Biden administration was unusually muted. In a statement following the February protests, Ned Price, a senior adviser to Blinken, described “a great debate on electoral reforms on the independence of electoral and judicial institutions that illustrates Mexico’s vibrant democracy.”

“We respect Mexico’s sovereignty. We believe that a well-resourced, independent electoral system and respect for judicial independence support healthy democracy,” Price said.

If Mexico had less leverage in its relationship with the US, “I think that you’d see greater public pressure from the State Department, from the White House, on the slippery slope of democratic erosion that we’re seeing in Mexico,” Sarukhán said.

“I think the United States should be invested in Mexico’s democratic strength because if not, what you’ll have in Washington sooner or later is someone asking the question, ‘Who lost Mexico and why?’” he added.

CNN
 — 

The governing party called it a ceremonial passing of the baton. But the opposition lambasted it as a “passing of the scepter.”

Constitutionally barred from running for reelection, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sought to show last month, in a very public way, that presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum has his blessing. So he handed his hoped-for successor an actual baton, in a ceremony outside a Mexico City restaurant not far from the National Palace – the seat of the country’s executive power.

Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor and longtime political ally of Lopez Obrador, hit all the right notes in thanking him. Accepting the baton along with the leftist Morena party’s presidential nomination, Sheinbaum said she would assume “the full responsibility of continuing the course marked by our people, that of the transformation initiated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”

When Mexicans go to the polls next June, they will choose between two women for president – a first in the country’s history. Only four days before Morena nominated Sheinbaum, Mexico’s opposition coalition Broad Front chose another formidable female candidate, former senator Xochitl Gálvez from the conservative PAN party.

It’s not the first time Mexico sees women running for the presidency; before Sheinbaum and Gálvez, were six other female presidential candidates. But with the two major political sides nominating women, this is the first time that it’s practically a given that starting in December 2024, Mexico, a country previously known for machismo, will be run by a woman.

Still, some critics say the outgoing Lopez Obrador’s shadow looms over the contest.

Meet the candidates: Sheinbaum and Galvez

Gálvez’s rise in Mexican politics has been meteoric; this spring, she said she wasn’t even the favorite of the PRI, PAN and PRD, the parties that now form the Broad Front coalition. It was a public spat with Lopez Obrador himself – who regularly attacked her as a “wimp,” “puppet,” and “employee of the oligarchy” in news conferences – that ultimately rocketed her into the spotlight.

In June, Gálvez went viral when she attempted to enter the National Palace with a judicial order that granted her the right to reply to the president, after successfully suing López Obrador. “This is not a show,” she told reporters at the doors of the National Palace. “The law is the law, period.”

The daughter of an indigenous father and a mixed-race mother, Gálvez served as the top official for indigenous affairs under former President Vicente Fox before becoming a senator. Unfiltered and irreverent, she described herself in an interview with CNN en Español as “an all-terrain, 4-by-4, kind of woman.”

In some respects, she appears progressive. Gálvez has advocated in the Mexican Congress for the rights and welfare of indigenous groups and Afro-Mexicans, and in a regional forum earlier this year in Monterrey, said that oil-rich Mexico should shift to renewable energy. “We haven’t done it because we are dumbasses,” Gálvez unapologetically said.

She has also said leftist Lopez Obrador’s pension for all senior citizens should continue, and proposes what she calls a “universal social protection system” of welfare programs for a large portion of the middle and lower classes.

But when it comes to security and the fight against organized crime, Gálvez’s three-pronged plan is muscular, based on what she describes as “intelligence, heart and a firm-hand”: strengthening local and state police and giving them access to intelligence, advocating for and protecting victims, and respecting the rule of law.

Macario Schettino, a political analyst and Social Science professor at ITESM, a renowned Mexican university, describes Gálvez’s political momentum as impressive, considering that only a few months ago, she wasn’t even considered a candidate with a national profile. “She barely begun to register in political terms, and she’s already had great growth. Many people in Mexico still don’t know her. She is going to grow [..] in popularity,” Schettino said, “While Claudia Sheinbaum can no longer move from where she is because she is already known by most Mexicans.”

Sheinbaum, a physicist with a doctorate in environmental engineering, would also be the first president with Jewish heritage if she wins, although she rarely speaks publicly about her personal background and has governed as a secular leftist.

She is currently ahead in most polls, and will be a formidable opponent to beat. Not only does Sheinbaum have the full support of the governing party, she has also long enjoyed the spotlight as mayor of Mexico’s most important city for the last five years until her resignation in June to run for the presidency.

On policy, Sheinbaum has vowed to continue many of Lopez Obrador’s policies and programs, including a pension for all senior citizens, scholarships for more than 12 million students and free fertilizers for small farm owners. But the high-profile ex-mayor rejects criticism of her close political alignment with the president. “Of course we’re not a copy (of the president),” she said in July.

Still, she does not shy away from touting the principles they share: “For everybody’s good, let’s put the poor first. There cannot be a rich government if the people are poor. Power is only a virtue when it’s used to serve the people,” Sheinbaum said, repeating the same campaign slogans Lopez Obrador has used for years.

Schettino believes the immensely popularly Lopez Obrador views Sheinbaum as his extension in power. He points to their party Morena’s roots in the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party that governed Mexico for more than seven decades until 2000, which came to be known as “The Dinosaur,” and the Party of Democratic Revolution that branched off from it.

In 2012, Lopez Obrador created Morena as a political party. Schettino describes the party today as a “tyrannosaurus” under Lopez Obrador’s influence – representing what he says is the current leader’s desire for a successor to hew closely to his own agenda. “President López Obrador, a dinosaur who not only is a dinosaur, but also has the vocation of a tyrant. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay in power,” Schettino said.

“I believe that he built Claudia’s candidacy,” Schettino said.

López Obrador however has repeatedly dismissed accusations of authoritarian leanings or that he favors a candidate he will be able to control. Earlier this year, Lopez Obrador denied he had any favorites among his party’s hopefuls or that he was pushing for one candidate or another behind the scenes.

He has also said that he is going “retire completely” after his six-year term in office comes to an end. “I am retiring, I will not participate in any public event again, of course. I am not going to accept any position, I do not want to be anyone’s advisor, much less am I going to act as a chief. I am not going to have relations with politicians. I am not going to talk about politics,” the president told press in February.

CNN
 — 

The United Nations Security Council has greenlit the deployment of an armed multinational force to Haiti, as the Caribbean nation wrestles with rampant gang violence and political paralysis.

The decision follows repeated calls for military assistance by Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the United States have also strongly urged the international community to back such a mission.

Thirteen members of the council voted in favor of the resolution, with Russia and China abstaining.

Though approved by the powerful UN Security Council, the force would not formally be under UN control. It is expected to be led by Kenya, which has pledged 1000 police to spearhead the mission. Several of Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors – Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, and Jamaica – have also offered support to the mission.

The “multinational security support” force will have a 12-month mandate in Haiti. The timing of its arrival is not set yet and more countries have been invited to participate. The resolution also calls for a global stop to arms sales to Haiti, except for approved security purposes.

An adviser to Haitian Prime Minister Henry, Jean-Junior Joseph, told CNN that the government welcomed the vote, adding, “We await with impatience the mission to combat general insecurity.”

Warring gangs control much of Port-au-Prince – Haiti’s capital city and main port – choking off vital supply lines to the rest of the country. Gang members have also terrorized the metropolitan population, forcing some 200,000 people to flee their homes amid waves of indiscriminate killing, kidnapping, arson and rape.

The mission is expected to strengthen local security and to reinforce the Haitian National Police in its pursuit of the gangs. Haiti’s security forces already receive some international support but remain understaffed and outgunned.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 22, Prime Minister Henry told fellow nations that it was “urgent” that the Security Council approve a military mission to reestablish order. Violence has exacerbated broader instability across the country, Henry said, noting that inflation has soared past 50%, leaving 4.9 million Haitians struggling to eat – a dismal new record for the country.

In a statement the same day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the international community to support the plan and to provide assistance, including personnel, and said Washington was ready to provide “robust” financial and logistical assistance.

The Security Council has found itself in repeated deadlock in recent years amid deepening geopolitical rivalries. A statement by the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described Monday’s decision on Haiti as “historic” and said the mission “speaks to the UN’s ability to galvanize collective action.”

Speaking in the Security Council after the vote, China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun said his country had “a cautious and responsible approach” toward authorizing the use of force – but that in the case of Haiti, China’s abstention represented a “constructive position” toward the resolution.

Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia criticized the move in remarks to the council, saying “that sending the armed forces of another state to any country even upon its request is an extreme measure that must be thoroughly thought through,” but noted “some positive elements” to the approved resolution.

Both Russia and China expressed approval of the resolution’s arms embargo.

Critics of the mission have previously pointed to scandals associated with UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti, including allegations of sexual abuse and the introduction of a deadly cholera epidemic, which killed nearly 10,000 people. Some Haitians also question the mandate of Prime Minister Henry, who took leadership of the country after President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021.

Henry has said that Haiti’s long-overdue elections cannot be held until the country reaches a basic level of security.

The United Nations’ special representative in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, said her office would support the mission “within the limits of its mandate,” while emphasizing that “unlike recent international missions deployed in Haiti, the MSS mission is not a UN mission.”

CNN
 — 

At least 11 people were killed and two people seriously injured on Sunday after the roof of a church in northern Mexico collapsed, officials said.

Preliminary reports indicate that about 100 people were inside the building in Ciudad Madero at the time of the incident, according to a statement from security services in the state of Tamaulipas. Thirty people were believed to be buried in the rubble, Reuters reported.

At least 60 people were injured, with two people sustaining serious injuries, Tamaulipas security spokesperson said.

Units from the National Guard, State Guard, Civil Protection and the Red Cross were assisting in the rescue operation.

Bishop Jose Armando Alvarez, from the diocese of Tampico, said the roof of the church collapsed while worshipers were taking communion, Reuters reported. He urged other members of the community to pray for survivors.

“In this moment the necessary work is being carried out to pull out the people who are still under the rubble,” Bishop Armando said in a recorded message shared on social media, according to Reuters.