Immigration

McALLEN (AP) — A judge blasted efforts by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shutter one of the oldest and largest migrant shelters on the U.S.-Mexico border in a scathing ruling Tuesday, accusing the Republican of "outrageous" conduct over his claims that the shelter encourages migrants to enter the country illegally.

WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced new asylum restrictions intended to reduce the number of migrants entering the country illegally, he was flanked by Texas officials from U.S.-Mexico border communities.

McALLEN — As Bishop Daniel E. Flores of the Brownsville Diocese held Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church Tuesday morning commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the Humanitarian Respite Center, news broke about President Joe Biden’s executive order that will restrict the number of asylum seekers entering the United States.

The city of Brownsville announced late Monday that Mayor John Cowen Jr. has been invited to the White House along with two other Rio Grande Valley mayors for a border-related announcement from President Joe Biden on Tuesday.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is moving its operations from Harlingen to Edinburg, the agency announced in a press release.

Since its inception in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star (OLS) immigration enforcement program has spent $11.2 billion arresting people mostly for misdemeanors, while the prosecution rate is much higher for U.S. citizens and nationals than migrants, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and ACLU Analytics.

Several Rio Grande Valley cities and humanitarian aid groups will soon receive millions in additional federal funding to help pay for providing humanitarian services to undocumented migrants.

WASHINGTON — A Texas state attorney told a federal appeals court that the state may have gone “too far” in passing a law that allows state officials to effectively deport immigrants, part of oral arguments Wednesday in the federal government’s push to block the law.

Texas' SB 4 sent the state swirling into confusion this week as the Supreme Court briefly allowed the immigration law to go into effect for several hours before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals placed the legislation's implementation on hold.

A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Texas to begin enforcing a law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally while a legal battle over the measure plays out.