Bolivia’s special crime unit is investigating the circumstances of the death of at least seven students, who fell from their fourth-floor university building after a metal railing collapsed. Five other students were seriously injured in Tuesday’s incident at the El Alto University near the capital, La Paz. Video footage prior the incident showed a crowd of students pushing and shoving on a narrow walkway when the rail suddenly gave way, sending the victims plunging to the concrete below.  Some students managed to cling to others near the edge of the walkway before being pulled to safety.    The victims ranged in age from 19 to 27, according to Bolivia’s Special Force to Fight Crime. Reuter’s reports that local media said prior to the incident the students were involved in a tense meeting at the university, which included some physical altercations. 
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Peru is getting another weapon in its battle against the spread of COVID-19 on Wednesday. President Francisco Sagasti said his country will receive the first batch of 50,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Wednesday evening, with an equal amount arriving the rest of the week. Peru expects to receive five million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by June after reaching an agreement early last month.  Sagasti said Peru will now have two different vaccines to fight the virus, which has propelled the country to one the most impacted in Latin America. Peru began the first round immunization last month after receiving 300,000 doses of vaccine from China’s Sinopoharm laboratory. The Peruvian leader also said that doses of vaccine from the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative are pending.  The WHO program provides vaccines to low- and middle-income countries that have difficulty acquiring doses because of the limited global supply and logistical problems.  So far, Peru has confirmed more than 1,329,000 infections and 46,494 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Covid Resource Center. 
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As the United States loosens its immigration policies under President Joe Biden, leaders of Canada’s thriving tech sector may find they have to work a little harder to attract top international talent.“The effect of the Biden administration is not seen as yet,” says Toronto-based financial services executive Soumya Ghosh.Nevertheless, Canadian tech firms have been clear beneficiaries of America’s restrictive immigration policies under former President Donald Trump, finding themselves able to hire highly skilled workers from around the world who might otherwise have headed for jobs in the United States.The influx of skilled workers helped to make Toronto the fastest-growing center for technology jobs in North America in recent years, according to a January 2020 report by the U.S. business analysis firm CBRE, a global service and investment firm. Canada’s Pacific coast city of Vancouver also made the top five, along with San Francisco, New York and Seattle.FILE PHOTO: An employee works at Shopify’s headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 22, 2018.Standouts in the Canadian tech sector include homegrown companies such as e-commerce company Shopify which says it supports 1.7 million businesses in 175 countries. The ease of hiring international talent has also made Canada more attractive to global giants such as Google which in February 2020 announced plans to triple its workforce in the country.While Trump’s stated policy goal was to prioritize high-skilled workers under a “merit-based” immigration system, U.S. visa issuance fell for almost all categories of recipients during his administration, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.The Biden administration said this week it has still not decided whether to extend a Trump-era temporary ban on new H-1B visas, the most commonly used visa under which highly skilled tech workers can come to the United States.But even if some immigration restrictions are lifted, analysts in Canada believe there are other reasons their sector will continue to attract top talent.’Cost advantage’“Canada also has a cost advantage,” argued Ghosh, who is vice president and Canada market unit head for banking and capital markets at Capgemini Financial Services. “In addition to being in the same time zone as the U.S., U.S.-based employers also can leverage the Canadian tech talent pool being in the same time zone at a lower cost.”The global coronavirus pandemic has also benefited the sector, according to Alexander Norman, co-founder of TechTO, a resource center for newly arrived tech workers in Toronto.“Canada has always produced talent but over the last several years that talent has decided to stay home and build new companies here,” Norman told VOA. “We are starting to see the result of this switch with leading tech companies in many different sectors.”Norman’s co-founder on TechTO, Jason Goldlist, said the widespread shift to telework because of the pandemic has also been a factor.“COVID shifted many professional industries online, but none more than tech,” he said. “Now, they can work for a huge company like Twitter from anywhere they want. Including their hometown in Canada.”Commitment to immigrationBut for many tech experts and executives interviewed by VOA, no factor has been more important in Canada’s tech boom than its commitment to immigration, including robust refugee resettlement and a vibrant community of international students.“We have one of the best immigration systems in the world,” maintained Robert Asselin, a senior political adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his rise to power in 2015 and Canada’s budget and policy director under Finance Minister Bill Morneau from 2015 to 2017. “Mobility is possible. Second generation immigrants do better consistently.”Asselin, who was born and raised in a Francophone part of Quebec, said he credits Canada’s successes to the openness formed through a long-standing effort to be a multilingual country. Canada’s official languages are French and English.“We’re really good at integrating diversity and leveraging diversity as a strength, and when you think about the future of businesses you want all talent to come to your country,” he said.“I think that we’re one of the best places to immigrate from around the world. If people want to come here and have the best shot at success, I think we’re one of the best countries to do that.”Canada’s only land border is with the United States, making it relatively easy to prevent uncontrolled migration and focus on welcoming high-skilled workers and refugees at an orderly pace. Waves of mostly low-skilled migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border have been a polarizing factor in America’s immigration debate.Ghosh agreed that immigration has played a big role in the economic development of Canada.“When it comes to the technology scene, a lot of the development that has happened in the tech space, the demand from Canadian enterprises, quite significantly depends on smart people coming from different parts of the globe.”Diversity and inclusivity initiativesPart of this effort to court the world’s best and brightest includes diversity and inclusivity initiatives.In Halifax, the biggest city on Canada’s Atlantic coast, a tech start-up, Side Door, has a working group “that works internally on anti-racist and anti-oppression policies,” said CEO and co-founder Laura Simpson.Side Door works to link artists such as musicians and help them find venues. Simpson says the goal is “to connect artists with curators, venues, service providers and audiences to make booking, ticketing and payments easy, fair and transparent.”“If you’re trying to create a global company, how are you going to do that without having globally minded people?” she asked in an interview. “We’ve worked with recruits toward having a global workforce and now we work with people all over the world. And that’s the way of the future.”
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Bunny Wailer, a reggae luminary who was the last surviving member of the legendary group The Wailers, died on Tuesday in his native Jamaica, according to his manager. He was 73.
Wailer, a baritone singer whose birth name is Neville Livingston, formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh when they lived in a slum in the capital of Kingston.
They first recorded catapulted to international fame with the album, “Catch a Fire.” In addition to their music, the Wailers and other Rasta musicians popularized Rastafarian culture among better-off Jamaicans starting in the 1970s.
Wailer’s death was mourned worldwide as people shared pictures, music and memories of the renown artist.
“The passing of Bunny Wailer, the last of the original Wailers, brings to a close the most vibrant period of Jamaica’s musical experience,” wrote Jamaica politician Peter Phillips in a Facebook post. “Bunny was a good, conscious Jamaican brethren.”
Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, also paid tribute to Wailer, calling him “a respected elder statesman of the Jamaican music scene,” in a series of tweets.  
“This is a great loss for Jamaica and for Reggae, undoubtedly Bunny Wailer will always be remembered for his sterling contribution to the music industry and Jamaica’s culture,” he wrote.
While Wailer toured the world, he was more at home in Jamaica’s mountains and he enjoyed farming while writing and recording songs on his label, Solomonic.
“I think I love the country actually a little bit more than the city,” Wailer told The Associated Press in 1989. “It has more to do with life, health and strength. The city takes that away sometimes. The country is good for meditation. It has fresh food and fresh atmosphere – that keeps you going.”
A year before, in 1988, he had chartered a jet and flew to Jamaica with food to help those affected by Hurricane Gilbert.
“Sometimes people pay less attention to those things (food) but they turn out to be the most important things. I am a farmer,” he told the AP.
The three-time Grammy winner died at the Andrews Memorial Hospital in the Jamaican parish of St Andrew, his manager, Maxine Stowe, told reporters. His cause of death was not immediately clear. Local newspapers had reported he was in and out of the hospital after a stroke nearly a year ago.
 
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Officials in Jamaica say citizens and visitors to the island must now present a negative COVID-19 test result no greater than three days before their travel date this week. Right now, visitors to Jamaica have 10 days to submit a negative COVID-19 result to enter the island. The new initiative, which takes effect Thursday, is part of the government’s effort to curtail a surge in cases. Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ ban on funerals and burials for two weeks beginning March 7 through the 22 is attracting the most concern, with opposition politicians and funeral service providers saying the delay in burials will cause financial hardships.  The prime minister said funerals already scheduled through March 7 can proceed as planned, with a maximum of 15 people, including the funeral service staff.  The capacity at weddings is being reduced by half from 50 to 25 people. Jamaica also extended the ban on direct flights from United Kingdom to March 22. The latest restrictions come as Holness said the country has confirmed just over 1,800 cases in the past week. So far, Jamaica has confirmed more than 23,200 COVID-19 infections and 422 deaths since the start of the pandemic.  
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March 21st will mark a full year that the Canada-U. S. border has been closed to all but essential traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canada-U.S. border is the largest undefended boundary in the world at 8,891 kilometers. There are 117 legal points of entry that have been closed to tourist and personal, or “nonessential” travel, for almost a year, resulting in an 80% drop in border traffic. For generations, travelers from both countries have easily crossed the border for vacations, shopping trips and other excursions. That all stopped last March with the spread of the coronavirus. The only exceptions are for immediate family, those in long-term relationships or for compassionate purposes.  Those crossing for essential work or to transport commercial goods are also exempt. Suzanne Smith is in a unique position. She is the Canadian owner of “Betty Be Good,” two dress shops located just across the border in Washington State. Her stores employ seven Americans full time. She lives on the Canadian side in suburban Vancouver, a mere two blocks from the border. Since the closure, her business has decreased 40%.  
 
As an essential worker, she can cross the border and does so once or twice a week. However, she can only go directly to her two stores and literally nowhere else. Not even to a favorite eatery or to see her extended American family, unless they visit one of her stores. “It’s really difficult when you straddle two sides of a border with your life. You have restaurants that you enjoy. You have small businesses that you have supported over time. Things that become part of your life. And, you know, I have family there, as well. A lot of people are in that boat where they can’t see their family. I’m not unique in that I can’t see my family, either, unless they come to work,” Smith said.  On February 22, the Canadian government increased the requirements for Canadians, or permanent residents, who are nonessential travelers returning home by land. Now, those crossing the border must show a negative COVID-19 test within the previous 72 hours or proof they had the coronavirus in the previous 14 to 90 days, therefore having at least temporary antibody immunity. Travelers will then have to quarantine for 14 days.  Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, is hoping for a phased and safe reopening of the border.  “So, what I would like to see is testing out a pilot project. We’ve done that a lot in our region, and proving that it is possible for, let’s say, me as a traveler to submit my vaccine status to a border officer before I arrived there and in a seamless electronic manner. And that that should be sufficient enough for me to cross the border,” Trautman said.The Canadian government has also halted the 2021 Alaska cruise ship season.  The office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimates that $718.4 billion in all types of trade crossed the U.S.-Canada border before the pandemic in 2019.  
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Rather than talk of bigger walls, the American president did some fence-mending on Monday with his counterpart south of the border.U.S. President Joe Biden, in a virtual meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, noted “a long and complicated history between our nations that haven’t always been perfect neighbors with one another.” Biden, in the White House, told Lopez Obrador in Mexico City that “we’re safer when we work together — whether it’s addressing the challenges of our shared border or getting this pandemic under control.”  Biden explained that when he was vice president in the administration of Barack Obama, it was decided to “look at Mexico as an equal, not as somebody who is south of our border. You are equal.”  President Joe Biden, right, attends a virtual meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 1, 2021.Lopez Obrador, who appeared on video screens in the Roosevelt Room, said that “integration will strengthen both of our countries.” He also thanked Biden for wanting to base the relationship on respect and equality, adding that “we must keep on cooperating for further development based on independence and autonomy.” The meeting, not held in person because of the coronavirus pandemic, is intended to “usher in a new phase” of the bilateral relationship, according to the White House, noting the move to a different track from one pursued by the previous U.S. president.  Mexico’s President Manuel Lopez Obrador listens from the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, during a virtual bilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, who is in Washington, March 1, 2021. (Mexico’s Presidency Office/Handout via Reuters)During his four years in office, Donald Trump, who was succeeded by Biden in January, threatened Mexico with tariffs and a crackdown on migration, and claimed the southern neighbor would pay for a wall along their 3,100-kilometer-long common border.  Mexico did not pay for the wall and Trump on Sunday, in his first speech since leaving office, blamed Biden’s administration for leaving the border wall unfinished.  “They don’t want to complete it,” Trump said in an address to a conservative conference in Florida. “They don’t want to complete little sections in certain little areas.”  Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, Feb. 28, 2021.Trump also criticized his successor for dismantling other planks of his tough immigration and border policies and issued unsubstantiated warnings that Biden’s polices would lead to a renewed wave of mass illegal migration. Before Monday’s meeting between Biden and the Mexican president, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced steps to allow migrant families separated at the border to reunite and remain in the United States – a reversal of Trump’s approach, which some rights groups had compared to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.  U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, March 1, 2021.”We applaud Secretary Mayorkas’ commitment to remedy the torture and abuse of families who were separated from their children in immigration proceedings,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “Of course, the devil is in the details, and Secretary Mayorkas has to shed all the caveats and qualifications around his announcement and follow through with everything that’s necessary to right the wrong.”  Mayorkas, speaking to reporters at the White House earlier in the day, said the administration is “working around the clock to replace the cruelty of the past administration with an orderly, humane and safe immigration process. It is hard and it will take time.”  Mayorkas said the Trump administration “dismantled our nation’s immigration system in its entirety.”  FILE – Then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf testifies before a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing in Washington, March 3, 2020The Trump administration’s last homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, bristled at the criticism. He tweeted that Mayorkas’ assertion that there is no crisis at the southern border “defies, logic, reality, and the facts. Ask communities along the border.”  Mexico, which sent troops to its southern border with Guatemala under pressure from Trump, has been hosting about 70,000 people seeking asylum in the United States while they waited for dates in immigration courts. The Biden administration immediately suspended the program, known as Remain in Mexico, when the new president took office and subsequently announced an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out.  Tents used by migrants seeking asylum in the United States line an entrance to the border crossing, in Tijuana, Mexico, March 1, 2021.Biden, however, under pandemic protocols has kept in place the power to immediately expel anyone arriving at the border without an opportunity to seek asylum.  “The truth is that arrests at the border have been rising for four months now, largely under the assumption that a change in administration means a change in U.S. posture,” said Ryan Berg, an American Enterprise Institute research fellow whose focus is Latin America.  “Even if the Biden administration is right to push for major changes from the previous administration, such as allowing migrant families separated at the border to remain legally in the country, they will continue to struggle with the fact that many in the region are interpreting the message as now is the time to migrate to the United States. As we’ve seen historically, even small changes in policy can ignite the formation of caravans and an uptick in arrivals at the border,” Berg said. What long-term approach Biden will take toward Lopez Obrador, “whose help will remain critical in stemming the flow of migrants, especially after the pandemic,” remains a key question yet to be answered, Berg told VOA.  Mexico’s president is pitching a new “Bracero”-type immigrant labor program that could bring up to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the United States.  FILE – Workers — most of them from Mexico — load Christmas trees onto a truck at Hupp Farms in Silverton, Oregon, Dec. 5, 2019.Lopez Obrador is touting the “strength” and “youth” of Mexican laborers for a United States with an aging workforce. The original Bracero program allowed Mexicans to work temporarily north of the border amid labor shortages during World War II and for a couple of decades after the war.  Another serious issue confronting the neighboring countries is the common threat from transnational organized crime. The United States has appropriated several billion dollars over three years to equip and train Mexican forces to combat more than 200 brutally violent criminal gangs that, besides drug and weapons trafficking, are involved in human smuggling, kidnapping, extortion and cybercrime.  Mexico also is asking the United States to share its supply of coronavirus vaccines.  FILE – Residents of the Iztacalco borough follow a long, snaking line to receive doses of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V, during a mass vaccination campaign for Mexicans over age 60, in Mexico City, Feb. 24, 2021.”If President Biden wishes, he can give us an answer in the conversation about the vaccines,” Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday before his virtual meeting with the U.S. president. “We have to be respectful, but it’s a subject that matters a lot to us.” Trump signed an executive order in December mandating Americans have initial access to vaccines procured by the United States government.   The Mexican president has been vocal critic of the global inequity in the distribution of the vaccines.  “No,” bluntly replied White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, when asked on Monday by a reporter if Biden would agree to Lopez Obrador’s request. “The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated. And once we accomplish that objective, we’re happy to discuss further steps.”  Asked by a reporter in the Roosevelt Room, during the virtual meeting, about Lopez Obrador’s request for help, Biden responded, “We’re going to talk about that.”   
 
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A Canadian court is set to launch hearings Monday on whether a senior Huawei executive should be extradited to the United States.The U.S. wants Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the Chinese telecom’s founder and chief financial officer of the company, extradited to face fraud charges. She was arrested at Vancouver’s airport in 2018 and has been under house arrest in an area mansion since.Her arrest prompted China to arrest two Canadian citizens in apparent retaliation. China also cut imports of several Canadian products.The U.S. said Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company, Skycom, to skirt U.S. sanctions and sell equipment to Iran. Officials allege Meng misled HSBC bank about the company’s activity in Iran.Meng’s lawyers say her arrest was politically motivated and that the U.S used her as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China while Donald Trump was president. They plan to cite comments made by the former president as proof.They will also say Canadian officials questioned her without her having a lawyer present and forced her to provide access to her electronic devices before she was officially under arrest.They also say the U.S. is overreaching its jurisdiction by prosecuting a Chinese citizen for activity that happened in Hong Kong.The hearings are expected to last several weeks. 
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President Joe Biden is planning a virtual meeting Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues.Mexico’s president has said he intends during the meeting to propose to Biden a new Bracero-style immigrant labor program that could bring 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the United States.  A senior Biden administration official declined to say whether the U.S. president would back or oppose the proposal, saying only that both countries agree on the need to expand legal pathways for migration. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.The original Bracero program allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and for a couple of decades after the war. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of “their strength, their youth.”The Biden official said the meeting will enable Biden begin to institutionalize the relationship with Mexico, rather than let it be determined by tweets — a preferred form of diplomacy by his predecessor, Donald Trump.  The United States shares a trade agreement — most recently updated in 2018 and 2019 — with Mexico and Canada, which are its second- and third-biggest trade partners after China. The trade agreement could complicate López Obrador’s efforts to possibly defund and eliminate independent regulatory, watchdog and transparency agencies in Mexico.There are also questions of whether López Obrador will warm to Biden’s efforts to address climate change and move to cleaner energy sources. The Mexican president supports a measure to make that country’s national grids prioritize power from government plants, many of which burn coal or fuel oil.The Trump era was defined by the threat of tariffs, crackdowns on migration and his desire to construct a wall on the U.S. southern border, yet Trump appeared to enjoy an amicable relationship with his Mexican counterpart.
 
Mexico paid nothing for Trump’s cherished border wall, despite the U.S. leader’s repeated claims that it would. But López Obrador’s government did send troops to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to deal with an unprecedented wave of asylum-seekers bound for the U.S. Mexico hosted about 70,000 people seeking U.S. asylum while they waited for dates in immigration courts, a policy known as Remain in Mexico and officially as Migrant Protection Protocols.The Biden administration immediately began to unwind Remain in Mexico, suspending it for new arrivals on the president’s first day in office and soon after announcing that an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out.But Biden, through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has kept extraordinary pandemic-related powers in place to immediately expel anyone arriving at the U.S. border from Mexico without an opportunity to seek asylum.Mexicans and many Central Americans are typically returned to Mexico in less than two hours under Title 42 authority — so named for a section of a 1944 public health law. Biden aides have signaled they have no immediate plans to lift it.Yet Biden has also shown an openness to immigrants who previously came to the country illegally. He is backing a bill to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don’t have it. Biden also broke with Trump by supporting efforts to allow hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. illegally as young children to remain in the country.  López Obrador said Saturday that an aging United States will also need temporary immigrant workers from Mexico to sustain economic growth.”It is better that we start putting order on migratory flows,” he said he plans to tell Biden.
But pressures are building at the U.S. southern border with an increase in children crossing into the country without visas. This has created a challenge for the Biden administration. Border Patrol agents are apprehending an average of more than 200 children crossing the border without a parent per day, but nearly all 7,100 beds for immigrant children maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services are full.The Biden administration has also preserved a policy, imposed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, of quickly expelling people captured along the border and has tried to dissuade people from attempting the journey.”This is not the time to come to the United States,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a February briefing. “We need the time to put in place an immigration process so people can be treated humanely.”
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Haitians again took to the streets of Port-au-Prince Sunday in a massive protest to reject the government of President Juvenel Moise and protest a recent spate of kidnappings. The peaceful march, organized by Protestant pastors, included Haitians from all sectors of society, marchers said. It marked the fourth week of the country’s standoff between the president and the nation’s opposition movement.#Haiti Thousands fill the streets to participate in Protestant sector’s march against dictatorship and kidnappings ?Renan Toussaint #protestpic.twitter.com/KyCJ9wYMF8— Sandra Lemaire (@SandraDVOA) February 28, 2021“Today we proved to the world that the Haitian people are united. We are not divided,” anti-corruption PetroChallenger activist Reginald Dume told VOA.  “There is no difference between those who worship Voodoo, Catholics, activists, doctors, engineers,” he said. “Today it’s Haitians who are aware that we are facing huge problems and that we cannot accept dictatorship to continue.” The march took place as Haiti is experiencing political and security turmoil and a dispute over when President Jovenel Moise’s term should end. The U.S. and the United Nations, while they have backed Moise’s contention that he only has served four years of a five-year term, have called for elections this year.  On Feb. 7, Moise announced the government had thwarted an attempted coup. Three Supreme Court justices were sidelined. Last week, members of the U.N. Security Council expressed concern about Haiti’s worsening political instability.  Moise spoke to the Security Council defending the measures he has taken. “To reinforce the rule of law … in the absence of a functioning parliament, I had to adopt certain decrees that were necessary to combat organized crime, rampant insecurity and kidnapping,” Moise said in French.  As protesters made their way through the capital, they sang, played music and chanted “Mare Jovenel, Jojo Mele,” which translates to “Arrest Jovenel.” Using “Jojo,” a nickname for the president, “Jojo Mele” means “Jojo is in trouble.”Haitian protesters make their way through the streets of Port-Prince, Feb. 28,2021. (VOA/Matiado Vilme)They also chanted slogans against U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison and Helen La Lime, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative in Haiti and head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, BINUH.  Protesters decried La Lime’s assessment last week to the U.N. Security Council that 3,000 protesters participated in the Sunday February 21 march. They say the real number was tens of thousands.  
 
“Today we are not 3,000 people, we are 3 million in the streets, Mrs. La Lime! Thank you,” Dume said. The VOA Creole reporters on the scene Sunday estimated the crowd at tens of thousands. 
 
VOA Creole saw many signs in English among the massive crowd and one in multiple languages.  
 
“We say no to dictatorship in different languages because when you say U.N. they speak a lot of languages – this is in English and Spanish and Chinese and whatever –  because anyone who looks at us can understand that we say no to dictatorship,” a female protester holding a sign in multiple languages told VOA.#Haiti Here’s a protester who tells us in English what they are mad about #Protestant march. Criticism for @BINUH_UN@USEmbassyHaiti and @moisejovenel. The poster is in multiple languages including #Chinese ?Renan Toussaint pic.twitter.com/AI6qCoqd8s— Sandra Lemaire (@SandraDVOA) February 28, 2021Lawyer Andre Michel, who represents the Democratic and Popular sector of opposition groups, said he was thrilled with the turnout.  
 
“We are so proud because today it’s not just the opposition mobilizing. The people of Haiti are out here fighting for respect of the constitution. This is not just political,” he told VOA. “There are Protestants, Catholics, women, young people, the lower class, professionals, lawyers, doctors, union leaders. The nation is out here.” In the wealthy suburb of Petionville, protesters gathered near the luxury Karibe hotel, near the BINUH office. There, they sent a pointed message to the international community. 
 
“Today the situation we are living in is revolting,” Gedeon Jean, a lawyer and human rights activist, said, referring to indiscriminate kidnappings of people from all sectors of society. “We are asking Mrs. La Lime to stop supporting dictatorship. The role of the international community is to guarantee human rights, contribute to the preservation of democracy, so that people can eat and sleep and not be kidnapped.” 
 
Bertrand Sinal, a former member of the Chamber of Deputies, a house in Haiti’s parliament, also joined the protest.Protester holds sign that says « Mrs La Lime, Ambassador Sison stop supporting dictator. (VOA/Matiado Vilme)“I’m not walking as a politician I’m walking as a citizen activist and we want to tell Mrs. La Lime that since she can’t count, today she must say today there were three million people protesting, not 3,000, she must have made a mistake,” Sinal said.  
 
There were no police interventions during the march, according to VOA Creole reporters on the scene. Police accompanied protesters as they marched throughout the capital.   But in the neighborhood of Canape Vert, several people were injured in the late afternoon when a truck overturned on the protest route.  
 
“People started running, so I ran too and I hurt my foot and hand,” an eyewitness told VOA. “I heard (someone say) a car’s brakes went out and while I was running to protect myself, my leg hit a motorbike and I fell.”  
 
VOA also saw a burning tire blocking a road in Canape Vert. Residents who did not wish to be identified or photographed told VOA it was their way of protesting the killing of a prominent medical doctor and his child during a failed kidnapping attempt earlier on Sunday. Florence Lisene in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.
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Sunday’s legislative and local elections in El Salvador are seen as a referendum on whether to break the congressional deadlock that has tied the hands of upstart populist President Nayib Bukele.  El Salvador’s established political parties — the conservative National Republican Alliance party and the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front — are trying to retain their hold on congress and other key positions, a continuation of their control since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992.Anger with the parties that ruled El Salvador for nearly three decades swept the youthful Bukele into office in 2019, and frustration remains.  “I’ve come to vote for a change, to get rid of the corrupt ones and so our president can make a new country,” said Estela Jiménez, who arrived early at a polling place wearing a T-shirt with an “N” for Nayib.Bukele, 39, has blamed congress for blocking his efforts in everything from controlling crime to managing the coronavirus pandemic. His New Ideas party was favored in polls to pick up congressional seats and municipal councils.While popular with voters tired of the scandals associated with the two old-guard parties, Bukele has shown an authoritarian streak. Two years ago, Bukele sent heavily armed soldiers to surround the congress during a standoff over security funding, earning rebukes internationally.Bukele’s party complained Sunday that the country’s electoral tribunal had not issued the ID cards needed for the party’s poll watchers to participate.”This always happens. Now they say there are problems because the Supreme Electoral Council hasn’t allowed the New Ideas people in. I hope they solve this so I can vote, I’m not going to leave here without voting,” said Esteban Castellón, who was among the first in line to vote at a polling place in San Salvador, the capital.A total of 5.3 million eligible voters were electing all 84 seats in the unicameral Legislative Assembly, along with 262 municipal councils. Most polling places opened at 7 a.m., though some were delayed by as much as an hour and will close at 5 p.m. (2300 GMT).The conservative party known as ARENA holds 37 of the 84 seats in congress and controls 138 of the 262 municipal councils, while the leftist FMLN holds 23 congressional seats and 64 townships.With a majority in the Legislative Assembly, Bukele’s party would not only be able to advance the president’s agenda, but also name justices to the Supreme Court — another Bukele obstacle — as well as magistrates to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the attorney general, the prosecutor for the defense of human rights and others. Essentially his party could replace his loudest critics.Eduardo Escobar, executive director of the nongovernmental organization Citizen Action, said that if New Ideas wins a congressional majority, El Salvador would lose “that brake on the exercise of power from the legislature when legality or constitutionality is exceeded, (and) that brakes any attempted abuse, any arbitrary act that the executive wants to commit.””It would deepen the authoritarianism of the government Bukele leads,” Escobar said, though he acknowledged that Bukele’s popularity remains at stratospheric levels and the rejection of the traditional parties is nearly as high.  New Ideas’ popularity is because “in the 30 years of government under these parties, the people have not seen improvements in their lives,” said Escobar.
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Mexican authorities hope most of the asylum seekers living in a major encampment on the border will be allowed to enter the United States by the end of next week, according to a Mexican government source.
 
The migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the river from Brownsville, Texas, is currently home to just under 700 migrants, according to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR). The majority are asylum seekers who have been waiting in Mexico as their cases wind through U.S. courts under a program implemented by former President Donald Trump.  
 
One week ago, President Joe Biden’s administration began permitting members of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program to enter the United States to pursue their court cases. UNHCR spokeswoman Silvia Garduno said 27 people crossed the border from Mexico Thursday and 100 did so Friday, and that the agency hopes to continue this pace in the coming days.
 
The agency, along with the International Organization for Migration, is in charge of the logistics of registering and transporting migrants from the camp to the United States.
 
The Mexican government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the goal was for 500 migrants in the Matamoros camp to enter the United States by the end of next week.
 
Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) referred Reuters to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement that said the registration process “will be done as quickly as possible.”
 
In Matamoros, asylum seekers expressed optimism. “We’ve just received news that tomorrow we’re leaving!” said Honduran asylum seeker Josue Cornejo in a video recorded inside the camp Friday evening, which also shows his wife and daughters wiping away tears.
 
But as one tent city begins to empty in northeastern Mexico, another has sprung up on the other side of the country. In Tijuana, migrants encouraged by the news that some asylum seekers were being allowed to enter the United States have begun to camp out near the El Chaparral port of entry, across the border from San Diego, California.
 
Advocates say about 50 tents have been put up in recent days.  
 
Biden, a Democrat, is balancing pressure from immigration advocates to unwind the hardline immigration policies of his predecessor with concerns about rising numbers of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
 
To handle an anticipated rise in crossings, CBP said in a statement on Friday that it planned to open a facility in Eagle Pass, Texas. Plans for the new facility come after CBP announced on February 9 the opening of another temporary facility in Donna, Texas, to handle border processing while the agency’s permanent center in McAllen is renovated.
 
Under U.S. law, children who arrive at the border without parents or legal guardians have to be transferred quickly out of border patrol facilities and into government-run shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.
 
Separately, HHS is also scrambling to cope with the influx of new arrivals by opening emergency shelters and trying to speed releases of migrant kids to sponsors in the United States.
 
“There are no good choices here,” Biden told reporters Friday. “The only other options are to send kids back, which is what the prior administration did.”
 
Most migrants caught at the border, including families and individual adult asylum seekers, are still being rapidly expelled at the border under a Trump-era health rule in place since last March.
 
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The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michele Bachelet, is warning that new laws adopted by Nicaragua’s government are undermining fundamental freedoms and leading to a further erosion of the rule of law in the country.  
In a report submitted this week to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Bachelet said damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes Eta and Iota have worsened the socio-political and human rights crisis facing Nicaragua.  Furthermore, she said the passage of new restrictive laws is strangling peoples’ rights to freedom of association and expression.
Bachelet said the laws also are inhibiting political participation and due process, which is especially troubling as Nicaragua approaches general elections in November. She noted that earlier this month two prominent organizations promoting freedom of expression were forced to suspend operations because of a new “foreign agents” law.
“My Office has documented 117 cases of harassment, intimidation and threats by police officers or pro-government elements against students, peasants, political activists, human rights defenders and organizations of victims and of women,” Bachelet said.
The report also documents 34 cases of intimidation, threats, criminalization and campaigns to discredit media and journalists considered to represent the opposition.  Bachelet said arbitrary detentions of political opponents continue and Indigenous communities continue to face land invasions and violent attacks by settlers.
“Human rights violations perpetrated during the social protests of 2018 continue in all impunity. We have also received information as to a rise in femicides and high levels of pregnancy among young girls,” Bachelet said.
The high commissioner said the government must undertake necessary reforms to ensure free, fair and transparent elections. She urged the government to allow members of her staff to enter the country so they can monitor the human rights situation in the lead-up to November’s elections.  
Nicaragua’s Attorney General Wendy Carolina Morales Urbina rejected the high commissioner’s report, calling it a throwback to the interventionist policies of former colonial powers. She said the report was biased and lacking in objectivity.
Morales Urbina added that the government of Nicaragua denounces the report as yet another manifestation of imperial aggressions that have promoted crimes of hate, terrorism and destruction.    
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Arnel Joseph, the notorious leader of the Village de Dieu gang, was killed in a gun battle with police Friday in the town of L’Estere, near Gonaives in Haiti’s north, officials said.”He opened fire on a police patrol who had stopped his motorbike at a checkpoint. The police returned fire and Arnel Joseph was killed,” Frantz Exantus, Haiti’s secretary of state for communication, told reporters during an afternoon press conference.Pressed on how sure he was that it was the gang leader who was killed, Exantus said several police “technical services” had confirmed the identity of the body at the scene.The gang leader’s prison break from the Croix des Bouquets civilian jail Thursday shocked Haitians worldwide. Fear spread throughout the nation as people took to social media for information and to react, sharing photos and videos on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.In a statement emailed to VOA on Friday morning, Exantus described the jailbreak as “deplorable.”Who is Arnel Joseph?Joseph, in his 20s, had been Prison Civile de la Croix-des-Bouquets, Port-au-Prince, HaitiThe Prison Civile de la Croix des Bouquets, about 13 kilometers northeast of Port-au-Prince, is one of Haiti’s most modern and secure facilities.”There are some details [of the mutiny] that are not yet available, but what we can tell you is that the goal was to empty the prison,” Exantus told reporters. “Thanks to the vigilance of the police, that did not happen. The cellblock where Arnel Joseph was held had the most activity so that is where the police focused their attention.”According to Exantus, there were 25 deaths as a result of the mutiny, including six prisoners, Joseph among them. The prison inspector general, Hector Paul Joseph, also was killed during the gunfight.Exantus said before the jailbreak, 1,542 prisoners were in detention and there are now 1,125. Two hundred prisoners remain at large, and a nationwide search continues, law enforcement officials said. Sixty of those who escaped have been caught and are back in custody.Exantus said 17 firearms were recovered and that multiple tear gas cannisters were recovered in the prison yard.Notorious historyThe Croix des Bouquets prison is no stranger to controversy. It holds some high-profile detainees such as former member of Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies Arnel Belizaire, who is accused of illegal possession of firearms and conspiring against national security. The alleged coup plotters involved in the attempt to overthrow President Jovenel Moise on Feb. 7 are also detained there.Despite being a maximum-security facility, there have been multiple publicized jailbreaks. Most recently in July 2020, when Joseph escaped his prison cell and spent hours on the rooftop before being caught by prison guards and returned to his cell.Reaction from President MoiseShortly before the press conference to announce the gang leader’s death, Moise tweeted condemnation.”We CONDEMN the CROIX DES BOUQUETS jailbreak and urge the population to remain calm. The #PNH is instructed to take all measures to bring the situation under control,” he tweeted.We CONDEMN the CROIX DES BOUQUETS jailbreak and urge the population to remain calm. The #PNH is instructed to take all measures to bring the situation under control.#Haïti— Président Jovenel Moïse (@moisejovenel) February 26, 2021Earlier this week, he was criticized by United Nations, U.S., French, Chinese, Russian and Mexican representatives at a U.N. Security Council meeting for not getting gang violence under control and bringing those responsible to justice.International reactionA U.S. State Department spokesperson expressed sorrow over lives lost and urged the Haitian government to address security failures.”We saw reports of Arnel Joseph’s escape from Croix des Bouquets prison yesterday and were saddened by reports of lives lost,” the spokesperson told VOA.”We have consistently urged the Haitian authorities to take steps to strengthen the rule of law and the justice sector. This event underscores the need for the Haitian government to invest further in the Haitian National Police (HNP), including the prison system,” the spokesperson said.”It also highlights the importance of ending prolonged pretrial detention so the prison system can focus on securely detaining dangerous convicted prisoners like Arnel Joseph,” the spokesperson added. “The U.S. government, through our INL (Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) programs, has provided technical assistance, training and equipment, and funded construction to assist the HNP in improving the prison system.”The U.N. secretary-general’s special representative in Haiti, Helen La Lime, expressed concern.”I am deeply concerned with the mutiny and prison escape which occurred in Croix-des-Bouquets on 25 February 2021,” La Lime, who heads the U.N. Integrated Bureau for Haiti, told VOA.”While the prompt response of the Haitian National Police likely prevented the escape of more inmates, I encourage the police to speed up investigations on the circumstances surrounding this incident, redouble its efforts to reapprehend the escapees, and strengthen security around prisons throughout the country,” La Lime said.Democratic U.S. Congressman Andy Levin of Michigan slammed Moise for the jailbreak on Twitter.”This prison break massacre is a tragic sign of the rule of law collapsing in Haiti,” Levin tweeted. “Jovenel Moïse’s antidemocratic rule is costing Haitians their lives and eliminating any sense of safety.This prison break massacre is a tragic sign of the rule of law collapsing in Haiti. Jovenel Moïse’s antidemocratic rule is costing Haitians their lives and eliminating any sense of safety. https://t.co/nxPxlXyrJE— Rep. Andy Levin (@RepAndyLevin) February 26, 2021What’s next?Exantus said three commissions have been created to investigate the mutiny.One will be led by the inspector general of the national police, who will investigate administrative failures. A second judicial commission will be led by the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciare, the investigative unit of the national police force, to determine who should be charged. A third commission will be led by the penitentiary administration and will investigate what conditions led to the jailbreak and determine who was involved.Exantus told VOA he did not think the jailbreak would affect plans to hold elections later this year.
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Diplomats sat beside stacks of briefing papers, flanked by flags and emphasized their closeness. But they were geographically far apart Friday as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, because of the pandemic, started a new chapter in North American relations with virtual visits to Mexico and Canada in what was billed as his first official trip.Though symbolically important in any administration, the decision by President Joe Biden to dispatch Blinken to Mexico and Canada for the first visits, even virtually, is part of a broader effort to turn the page from a predecessor who at times had fraught relations with both nations. The three nations signed a revamped trade accord last year after then-President Donald Trump demanded a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.The secretary began his virtual visits with Mexico, a country Trump repeatedly disparaged in his campaign and early in his presidency, though relations turned more cordial under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.”I wanted to ‘visit,’ in quotation marks, Mexico first to demonstrate the importance that we attach, President Biden attaches, to the relationship between our countries,” Blinken told his counterpart, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.Secretary of State Antony Blinken, second from right, speaks during a virtual meeting at the State Department on Feb. 26, 2021, with Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau who is in Ottawa, Canada.Blinken’s meetings with Mexico and Canada, two of the largest U.S. trading partners, were expected to cover economic ground as well as efforts to fight COVID-19, which has prompted all three countries to close the borders to all but essential traffic.Biden last week participated in his first bilateral meeting, also virtual, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who at times had a frosty relationship with Trump. Biden disappointed some in Canada with his decision upon taking office to reverse Trump and revoke the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which President Barack Obama’s administration determined had only limited energy and economic benefits to the U.S. and conflicted with efforts to curb climate change.That didn’t come up in the public portion of Blinken’s meeting with Foreign Minister Marc Garneau, who welcomed Biden’s commitment to “renew U.S. leadership and diplomacy.” The secretary later met privately with Trudeau.Ebrard, for his part, welcomed Biden’s decision to reverse his predecessor and rejoin both the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization. He also praised the “initiatives” of the new administration, an apparent reference to the decision to set a new course on some immigration and border policies.”We understand that these are being done in recognition to the Mexican community,” he said, without mentioning any specific policy. “We are receiving them with empathy.”Biden ended Trump’s policy of requiring migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico or to pursue their claims in Central America. He also restored protection for people without legal status in the U.S. who were brought to the country as children, many of whom are Mexican, and is backing legislation that would enable them to seek citizenship.The Biden administration has begun processing the asylum claims of about 25,000 migrants who had been in Mexico, often in unsanitary and dangerous conditions, but has not lifted a policy, imposed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, of quickly expelling people captured along the border and has sought to discourage illegal migration.Just before his visit with Ebrard, Blinken conducted a virtual tour of the busy border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and said the administration is working with Mexico and Central American nations to ease the conditions that drive people to try to illegally reach the United States.”To anyone thinking about undertaking that journey, our message is: Don’t do it. We are strictly enforcing our immigration laws and our border security measures,” he said.
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U.S. Immigration officials are planning to deport to Haiti 13 Haitian nationals who were arrested in Florida along with a U.S. citizen.The U.S. Embassy in Haiti announced the arrests Thursday in a series of tweets posted in English and Haitian Creole.U.S. Immigration authorities arrested 13 Haitian nationals in Florida and processed them for removal. The suspected smuggler was taken into custody. Migrating illegally is dangerous and will prove a #FutileJourney. https://t.co/0uUIrgaZkw— U.S. Embassy Haiti (@USEmbassyHaiti) February 25, 2021″The suspected smuggler was also identified. Both vessels involved in the incident will be seized. An investigation by #DHS partners remains ongoing,” the tweet said.Adam Hoffner of the U.S. Border Patrol Miami Sector said agents responding to “a maritime smuggling event” found seven Haitian males and six females and a U.S. citizen on the shores of Dania Beach at the Cozy Cove Marina.In a joint effort with federal agents, the group was taken into Border Patrol custody.”The Haitian nationals were interviewed and processed for removal proceedings and subsequently turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO),” Hoffner told VOA via email.”The U.S. Border Patrol is investigating this case alongside our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) partners and will seek to prosecute any individuals who are identified as smugglers,” Hoffner said.Two vessels that were determined to be involved in the incident were also seized by U.S. Border Patrol.”We continuously warn migrants about the dangers associated with traveling by sea,” Hoffner said. “Smuggling organizations are not concerned with the safety of the people they are smuggling, rather they continue to put the lives of migrants at risk.”The Biden administration has faced criticism from the Haitian American community in Miami for failing to deliver on promises made during the 2020 election campaign to reverse some of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.On Feb. 24, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, indefinitely banned the Biden administration from enforcing a 100-day moratorium on deportations.Biden is proposing changes in the nation’s immigration laws that would allow 11 million people currently living illegally in the United States to be legalized.Haiti Ambassador to the United States Bocchit Edmond called on the Biden administration to work with Congress to find a more permanent solution.”We appreciate the efforts made by the Biden administration to get a 100-day moratorium on deportations. While we respect the last ruling of a federal judge on this issue, we do hope that the Biden administration with the help of the U.S. Congress will find a final resolution to this very sensitive issue impacting a number of Haitians. The human impact should be considered,” Edmond told VOA.
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U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet warns a proliferation of human rights violations around the world is eroding fundamental freedoms and heightening grievances that are destabilizing.Presenting a global update Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva,
Bachelet zipped through a long litany of global offenders. No region was spared. Few countries emerged with clean hands.  
 
She criticized repressive policies in powerful countries such as Russia, which she said enacted new legal provisions late last year that further limited fundamental freedoms.“Existing restrictive laws have continued to be harshly enforced, including during recent demonstrations across the country. On several occasions, police were filmed using unnecessary and disproportionate force against largely peaceful protesters and made thousands of arrests,” she said.
 
Bachelet noted problems in the U.S. with systemic racism. She took the European Union to task for anti-migrant restrictions that put lives in jeopardy. She denounced the shrinking civic space across Southeast Asia, condemning the military coup in Myanmar and death squads in the Philippines.  
 
She condemned corrupt, discriminatory and abusive practices in Venezuela, Honduras and other countries in the Americas that have forced millions of people to flee for their lives. She deplored the terrible suffering of millions of people victimized by conflicts in the Middle East.
 
Specifically, Bachelet expressed concern about alleged abuses committed by all parties in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. She called for a credible investigation into allegations of mass killings, extrajudicial executions, and other attacks on civilians, including sexual violence in the province.
 
“I am also disturbed by reported abductions and forcible returns of Eritrean refugees living in Tigray—some reportedly at the hands of Eritrean forces. At least 15,000 Eritreans who had taken refuge are unaccounted for following the destruction of their shelters. Coupled with growing insecurity in other parts of Ethiopia, the conflict in Tigray could have serious impact on regional stability and human rights,” she said.
 
Bachelet called on the Ugandan government to refrain from using regulations to combat COVID-19 to arrest and detain political opponents and journalists. And, she warned of the dangers posed by apparent official attempts in neighboring Tanzania to deny the reality of COVID-19.
 
“Including measures to criminalize recognition of the pandemic and related information. This could have serious impact on Tanzanians’ right to health. I note reports of pushbacks of hundreds of asylum seekers from Mozambique and the DRC, as well as continued reports of torture, enforced disappearances and forced returns of Burundian refugees,” she said.
 
Bachelet noted people in every region of the world were being left behind and excluded from development and other opportunities as the coronavirus pandemic continued to gather pace. She said building trust and maintaining and expanding freedoms were central to global efforts to contain and crush the coronavirus.
 
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The first asylum-seekers from a Mexican border camp that had become a symbol of Trump-era immigration restrictions entered the United States on Thursday under a new policy meant to end the hardships endured by migrants in dangerous border towns. The United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the initial group comprised 27 people who had been living in the makeshift camp in Matamoros opposite Brownsville, Texas. Some residents have lived there for more than a year under former President Donald Trump’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings. The first group of 27 migrants leave their camp towards the Gateway International Bridge to be processed and seek asylum in the U.S., in Matamoros, Mexico, Feb. 25, 2021.A new process under President Joe Biden will gradually allow thousands of MPP asylum-seekers to await courts’ decisions within the United States. Some migrants last week were permitted to cross into San Ysidro, California. Francisco Gallardo, who runs a migrant shelter in Matamoros and provides humanitarian aid at the camp, welcomed the news that the process had begun in Matamoros, but said it should have come sooner. “It’s good that they are doing it, but unfortunately coming late,” he said. Freezing temperatures at the U.S.-Mexico border had made the Matamoros camp a priority, the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday. Migrants at the camp have struggled to ensure proper hygiene and to protect themselves from organized crime in a state that is one of the most violent in Mexico. “The camp was a space that had multiple risks for the migrants,” said Misael Hernandez, a researcher on migration issues at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Mexico’s migration institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
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Burn patients in Haiti who need specialized care had to be transferred, after gang violence erupted near the burn care hospital in Drouillard, a Port-au-Prince neighborhood.Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says the violence is putting its patients at risk. 
 
“Severe burns require highly specialized care, and our Drouillard hospital is Haiti’s only specialized burn care center,” Dr. Alain Ngamba, MSF medical coordinator in Haiti, told VOA via email. “We are concerned about the consequences for patients who would otherwise have been admitted there.”  
 
MSF says the eruption of gunfire on February 23 sent staff members running for cover on hospital grounds. That’s when it was decided to relocate 21 patients to an MSF hospital in the Tabarre neighborhood of Haiti’s capital, once the shooting stopped. No staff or patients were injured during the violence, MSF told VOA.  
 Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres burns hospital in Drouillard, Haiti. (Photo: Lunos Saint Brave/MSF)Outpatient services for burn patients had been transferred out of Drouillard since February 13, after a first wave of gang violence. For now, only the emergency department of the hospital is open, but it is functioning at a reduced capacity and limited to accepting only life-threatening cases, MSF says. 
 
“The situation around our hospital in Drouillard has deteriorated, for patients and for staff,” Aline Serin, MSF head of mission in Haiti, said in a statement. “Faced with the recurrence of this violence, we have decided to move patients from our burn center and outpatient services to our trauma hospital in Tabarre, in order to ensure the protection of staff, the safety of our patients and continuity of their care.”  
 
MSF’s Drouillard location employs about 250 staff — a mix of Haitian and international MSF employees. Originally set up as a trauma center in 2011 to treat victims of violence, road accidents or burns, the hospital shifted its focus to specialized burn care in 2014.  
 
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit Haiti in March 2020, the Drouillard hospital temporarily shifted to treating COVID-19 patients between May and August. After August, the hospital reshifted its focus to burn care.  
 
“We are still working to set up an operating theater in our Tabarre hospital for our existing burns patients,” Ngamba told VOA. “We already treat trauma patients at our Tabarre hospital, so this does not leave many more places for burns patients. Currently we do not have the capacity to admit new patients with severe burns.”  
 MSF staff transfer burn patients out of Drouillard hospital to Tabarre trauma center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Photo: Avra Fialas/MSF)Gang violence has been a concern not only for Haitian authorities but also the international community, which raised the issue at a February 22 United Nations Security Council meeting.   
 
“We urge Haitian authorities to redouble their efforts to investigate and prosecute violent crime,” said Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the Acting Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.  
 
France’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Nathalie Broadhurst, also criticized Haiti’s government for lack of progress on curbing gang violence. 
 
“I ask this question straightforwardly: How is it possible today that Jimmy Cherizier [notorious Haitian gang leader] is still walking free?” Broadhurst said. “The fight against impunity must be the priority of the authorities.” 
 
Responding to the criticism, Haitian President Jovenel Moise cited progress in dismantling gangs and reducing violence in his speech to the U.N. Security Council. 
 
“Of 102 existing gangs, the government has dismantled 64 and is working to quickly to reestablish security,” he said. 
 
But as chronic insecurity continues in Port-au-Prince, MSF is calling for the respect of health facilities so that patients and staff can access them.  
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Workers from Latin America are already among the lowest paid in Britain. Now, advocates say the pandemic has left nearly half of them without a job, creating what some are warning is a new migrant crisis in Europe.  For VOA, Joana Ramiro reports from London.
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Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, is worth almost nothing these days. That’s forced the country’s citizens to figure out new ways to put food on their tables. Adriana Nunez Rabascall reports this story narrated by Cristina Smit.
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After 3½ years of living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, Honduran immigrant Alex Garcia finally stepped outside Wednesday, following a promise from President Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.Garcia, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the U.S. in 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St. Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.Sara John of the St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America said Garcia’s decision to leave the church came after Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared that he was no longer a deportation priority, and that the agency would not pursue his detention or removal.Garcia, in a statement, said he was separated from living with his family for 1,252 days. A crowd of about 100 people cheered as he and his family left the church Wednesday.”We are not done yet,” Garcia said. “There is still so much work that has to be done and I look forward to being able to join you all out there in the community and continue to fight for my permanent protection.”In his first weeks as president, Biden has signed several executive orders on immigration issues that undo his predecessor’s policies, though several Republican members of Congress are pushing legal challenges.Myrna Orozco, organizing coordinator at Church World Service, said 33 immigrants remain inside churches across the U.S., a number that should continue to drop.”We expect it to change in the next couple of weeks as we get more clarity from ICE or [immigrants] get a decision on their cases,” Orozco said.Others emergeOthers who have emerged from sanctuary since Biden took office include Jose Chicas, a 55-year-old El Salvador native, who left a church-owned house in Durham, North Carolina, on January 22. Saheeda Nadeem, 65, of Pakistan, left a Kalamazoo, Michigan, church this month. Edith Espinal, a native of Mexico, left an Ohio church after more than three years.In Maplewood, Pastor Becky Turner said Garcia has become a valued part of the church family.”The hearts of all of us at Christ Church are overflowing today,” Turner said. “God has answered our prayers for Alex Garcia to live freely, without the threat of being separated from his family.”Garcia’s exit came just two days after U.S. Representative Cori Bush, a St. Louis Democrat, announced she was sponsoring a private bill seeking permanent residency for Garcia. Bush said Wednesday that she would still push the bill forward.”ICE has promised not to deport Alex, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that they keep their promise,” Bush said in a statement.Garcia fled extreme poverty and violence in Honduras, his advocates have said. After entering the U.S. in 2004, he hopped a train that he thought was headed for Houston, but instead ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a town of about 17,000 residents in the southeastern corner of the state.He landed a job and met his wife, Carly, a U.S. citizen, and for more than a decade they lived quietly with their blended family.In 2015, Garcia accompanied his sister to an immigration office for a check-in in Kansas City, Missouri, where officials realized Garcia was in the country illegally. He received two one-year reprieves during Barack Obama’s administration. 
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A federal judge late Tuesday indefinitely banned President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a 100-day moratorium on most deportations.  U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a preliminary injunction sought by Texas, which argued the moratorium violated federal law and risked imposing additional costs on the state.Biden proposed the 100-day pause on deportations during his campaign as part of a larger review of immigration enforcement and an attempt to reverse the priorities of former President Donald Trump. Biden has proposed a sweeping immigration bill that would allow the legalization of an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. He also has instituted other guidelines on whom immigration and border agents should target for enforcement.  Tipton, a Trump appointee, initially ruled on January 26 the moratorium violated federal law on administrative procedure and the U.S. failed to show why a deportation pause was justified. A temporary restraining order issued by the judge was set to expire Tuesday.  Tipton’s ruling did not require deportations to resume at their previous pace. Even without a moratorium, immigration agencies have wide latitude in enforcing removals and processing cases.  But in the days that followed his ruling, authorities deported 15 people to Jamaica and hundreds of others to Central America. The Biden administration also has continued expelling immigrants under a separate process begun by Trump officials, who invoked public-health law due to the coronavirus pandemic.  The legal fight over the deportation ban is an early sign of Republican opposition to Biden’s immigration priorities, just as Democrats and pro-immigrant legal groups fought Trump’s proposals. Almost four years before Tipton’s order, Trump signed a ban on travel from seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations that caused chaos at airports. Legal groups successfully sued to stop implementation of the ban.It was not immediately clear if the Biden administration will appeal Tipton’s latest ruling. The Justice Department did not seek a stay of Tipton’s earlier temporary restraining order. 
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A federal judge has ordered the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to remain temporarily jailed after she was arrested and accused of helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar cartel and plotting his audacious escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, appeared by video conference for an initial court appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. The judge’s order came after Coronel’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he would consent to her temporary detention after her arrest at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather explained the charges to Coronel, who spoke to the judge through a Spanish interpreter. She said prosecutors had provided sufficient reason to keep Coronel behind bars for now and noted that her attorney had consented to the temporary detention. Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said the U.S. government believed that Coronel should remain jailed, arguing that she “worked closely with the command-and-control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel, particularly with her husband. Nardozzi said she conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs, knowing that they would be illegally smuggled into the U.S.  Nardozzi said Coronel had access to criminal associates, including other members of the cartel, and “financial means to generate a serious risk of flight.” If convicted, she could face more than 10 years in prison. Her arrest was the latest twist in the bloody, multinational saga involving Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Guzman, whose two dramatic prison escapes in Mexico fed into a legend that he and his family were all but untouchable, was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving life in prison.This photo shows the shower area where authorities claim drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman slipped into a tunnel to escape from his prison cell at the Altiplano maximum security prison, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City, July 15, 2015.And now his wife, with whom he has two young daughters, has been charged with helping him run his criminal empire. In a single-count criminal complaint, Coronel was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the U.S. The Justice Department also accused her of helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and participating in the planning of a second prison escape before Guzman was extradited to the U.S.  As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in recent court papers. They also said his “army of sicarios,” or “hit men,” was under orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who got in his way. His prison breaks became the stuff of legend and raised serious questions about whether Mexico’s justice system was capable of holding him accountable. In one case, he escaped through an entry under the shower in his cell to a milelong (1.6-kilometer-long) lighted tunnel with a motorcycle on rails. The planning for the escape was extensive, prosecutors say, with his wife playing a key role.  Court papers charge that Coronel worked with Guzman’s sons and a witness, who is now cooperating with the U.S. government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from the Altiplano prison to prevent his extradition to the U.S. The plot included purchasing a piece of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling him a GPS watch so they could “pinpoint his exact whereabouts so as to construct the tunnel with an entry point accessible to him,” the court papers say. Guzman was sentenced to life behind bars in 2019.  Coronel, who was a beauty queen in her teens, regularly attended Guzman’s trial, even when testimony implicated her in his prison breaks. The two, separated in age by more than 30 years, have been together since at least 2007, and their twin daughters were born in 2011.  Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was arrested in 2013 with one of his sons and several other men in a warehouse with hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Months earlier, the U.S. Treasury had announced financial sanctions against her father for his alleged drug trafficking.  After Guzman was rearrested following his escape, Coronel lobbied the Mexican government to improve her husband’s prison conditions. And after he was convicted in 2019, she moved to launch a clothing line in his name. Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, said Coronel “has been involved in the drug trade since she was a little girl. She knows the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel.” He said she could be willing to cooperate. “She has a huge motivation, and that is her twins,” Vigil said. 
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