Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico has spent $17 million to remove over a half-million tons of sargassum seaweed from its Caribbean beaches, and the problem doesn’t seem likely to end any time soon, experts told an international conference Thursday.

The floating mats of algae seldom reached the famed beaches around Cancun until 2011, but they’re now severely affecting tourism, with visitors often facing stinking mounds of rotting seaweed at the waterline.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Roberto Escalona Moreno says he witnessed a double murder on the street last week near the hostel where is staying. The Cuban immigrant has been assaulted, and his friends have been shaken down by police, he says.

Moreno, 22, is among more than 30,000 migrants who are pressing for asylum in the U.S. but are stuck in Mexico’s drug- and gang-infested border cities under Trump administration policies intended to stem the flow. They say the months of waiting are increasingly putting them in harm’s way.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — About 100 Mexican soldiers and immigration agents raided a freight train in the southern state of Chiapas on Thursday and detained dozens of Central American migrants riding atop the cars.

Such raids had been rare since the last crackdown on migrants in 2014. But under increasing U.S. pressure to reduce the flow of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans through Mexican territory, Mexico’s government has stepped up enforcement.

27 June 2019; AFP: A shocking photograph of a Salvadoran man and his baby daughter drowned in the Rio Grande fueled a surge of emotion around the world Wednesday -- as US Democrats furiously denounced Donald Trump's immigration policies.

"Trump is responsible for these deaths," said Beto O'Rourke, one of several Democratic White House hopefuls who took to Twitter to lash out at the president.

XALTIANGUIS, Mexico (AP) — What now passes for the law in Xaltianguis, a little town on the road to Acapulco, arrived with a car bomb and butchery.

A heavily armed vigilante force took over the town in the Mexican state of Guerrero last month by driving out a rival band, blowing up a car with gas cylinders and cutting up the body of one of two fallen foes.

MEXICO CITY, June 17 (Xinhua) -- The Popocatepetl volcano outside Mexico's capital has spewed ash columns up to eight km high during a series of discharges on Monday, the National Coordination of Civil Protection (CNPC) reported.

The first explosion occurred at 6:44 a.m. local time (1144 GMT) and sent a column of ash between four and five km into the air, which caused ash to fall in five localities surrounding the volcano in the central states of Mexico, Morelos and Puebla.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s immigration chief resigned Friday and the country’s prisons director was swiftly nominated to replace him, as the country embarks on a crackdown on irregular migration through its territory in response to U.S. pressure.

The National Immigration Institute said in a brief statement that Tonatiuh Guillén thanked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the opportunity to serve the country, but it did not give a reason for why he presented his resignation.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — At the small migrant Juventud 2000 shelter near the border, a Honduran expressed disappointment Sunday over the agreement between Mexico and the United States to more aggressively to curtail migration from Central America.

But Edwin Sabillon Orellana of Honduras said he and his family will stick with their effort to seek asylum in the U.S.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Before U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly suspended the threat of tariffs against Mexico, companies were rushing cars, appliances and construction materials across the border to beat Monday’s deadline.

Mexican-made tiles were piled up on the pavement next to a warehouse in New Mexico. A furniture factory and a jalapeno exporter fretted about a huge financial hit next week. And hundreds of semi-trailers carrying medical devices, televisions and Toyota pickups idled in line Friday at the truck crossing in Tijuana.

MEXICO CITY, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The Mexican government blocked the bank accounts of 26 individuals and businesses who are allegedly involved in trafficking migrants and organizing illegal caravans, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Finance Ministry applied a methodology that linked the migrant caravans heading to Mexico from October 2018 till now, as well as the economic resources via money transfers.