Tag Archives: Nicaragua

U.S.-bound Central American migrants on the move in Mexico

Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States, take a shower in the Mapastepec city center, Mexico October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

By Delphine Schrank and Ana Isabel Martinez

MAPASTEPEC, Mexico/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Central American migrants clustered for the night on Wednesday in a southern Mexico town after advancing on their trek toward the United States, despite Mexico’s vows to hinder their progress under pressure from the Trump administration.

Thousands of men, women and children, mostly from Honduras, shuffled throughout the afternoon into the town of Mapastepec in Chiapas state, still more than 1,100 miles (1,770 km) from the U.S. border.

A migrant woman rests roadside with her child while traveling with a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States as they make their way to Mapastepec from Huixtla, Mexico October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

A migrant woman rests roadside with her child while traveling with a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States as they make their way to Mapastepec from Huixtla, Mexico October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

As nightfall came and rain began to pour, they camped out on sidewalks in the small town, wrapping knapsacks in plastic and huddling beneath awnings.

Their trek has drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has used the migrant caravan to fire up support for his Republican party in Nov. 6 congressional elections.

It has also prompted Washington to put pressure on the Mexican government to halt the migrants’ progress.

The caravan, which began as a march of a few hundred people from the crime-wracked Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Oct. 13, swelled into the thousands as it was joined by migrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Mexican immigration authorities have told the migrants they will not be able to cross illegally into the United States.

Alex Mensing of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that organized a previous migrant caravan that angered Trump in April, said on Wednesday the current caravan is comprised of about 10,000 people.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras is accompanying the caravan, which Mensing forecast would fragment in due course.

Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States, are seen dancing in the Mapastepec city center, Mexico October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America en route to the United States, are seen dancing in the Mapastepec city center, Mexico October 24, 2018. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

“It’s very unlikely that 10,000 people will arrive together at a border city between Mexico and the United States,” he told a conference call with reporters.

“There will be people who stay in Mexico, there will be people who go to different borders because everyone has their own plan and different support where they have family members.”

Migrants began departing Huixtla in the wee hours of the morning, fanning out for about a mile and half on the road toward Mapastepec. They walked in flip flops and old sneakers. Many hitched rides from hundreds of cars, trucks and public transportation.

A Chiapas church group said they cooked for a full day, then drove over an hour from the mountains to reach the caravan, where they handed out coffee, sugary bread and tamales, cornmeal patties stuffed with meat and vegetables.

Every time they stopped to serve, migrants flung their small packs aboard their pickup, hoping to catch a ride.

“No, no,” church volunteer Liz Magail Rodriguez said, pointing to the containers of food. “With these tamales, you’ll have energy to walk all day.”

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called U.S. Vice President Mike Pence “crazy” and “extremist” for accusing his government of financing the caravan. Pence said on Tuesday that the group was “financed by Venezuela,” without providing evidence.

Mexican authorities have tried to walk a fine line between responding to Trump’s demands to close its borders and respecting migrants’ rights.

Mexico’s interior ministry said in a statement on Wednesday evening that about 3,630 people are part of the migrant caravan in Mexico that was advancing from Huixtla, around 30 miles (50 km) north of the Guatemalan border, to Mapastepec.

Reuters could not independently verify how many people were in that group.

A separate group of least 1,000 migrants, mostly Hondurans, has been moving slowly through Guatemala toward Mexico. Some media have put the number above 2,000.

(Additional reporting by Jose Cortes in Mapastepec, Corina Pons and Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Writing by Michael O’Boyle and Daina Beth Solomon Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Tom Brown, Toni Reinhold)

Judge bars U.S. from ending protections for immigrants from four countries

Paint is seen on cars before members of the Teamsters Union participate in a tractor trailer caravan surrounding the LA Metro Detention Center in support of port truck drivers and others threatened by deportation if the courts or congress don't stop the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Kyle Grillot

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge in California barred the Trump administration on Wednesday from implementing a plan to end temporary protections for more than 300,000 immigrants in the United States from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan.

U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen issued a preliminary injunction in a suit brought by a number of immigrants with temporary protected status, or TPS.

The TPS designation offers protection from deportation to immigrants already in the United States, including those who entered illegally, from countries affected by natural disasters, civil conflicts, and other problems.

The government has failed to establish any real harm if “the status quo (which has been in existence for as long as two decades) is maintained during the pendency of this litigation,” Chen wrote in the order.

“Indeed, if anything, Plaintiffs and amici have established without dispute that local and national economies will be hurt if hundreds of thousands of TPS beneficiaries are uprooted and removed,” he said.

There are more than 263,000 TPS beneficiaries from El Salvador, 58,000 from Haiti, 5,000 from Nicaragua and 1,000 from Sudan, according to court documents.

The Trump administration has shown a deep skepticism toward the temporary protected status program and has moved to revoke the special status afforded to thousands of immigrants from a number of countries, including the four named in the suit.

Salvadoran immigrants covered by TPS will lose their protected status in September 2019, those from Haiti in July 2019, Nicaraguan immigrants in January 2019 and Sudanese immigrants in November 2019.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Paul Tait)

Magnitude 7 offshore quake shakes Central America, no damage seen

People play at La Pazon beach after a tsunami warning was lifted following a 7.0 magnitude undersea earthquake off the Pacific Coast of Central America, in La Libertad, El Salvador,

By Nelson Renteria

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – A strong earthquake off the Pacific Coast of Central America shook the region on Thursday just as a hurricane barreled into the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, but there were no immediate reports of any quake damage.

Emergency services in El Salvador said on Twitter it had received no reports of damage at a national level, but urged those living along the country’s Pacific coast to withdraw up to 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) away from the shore.

The 7.0 magnitude quake, initially reported as a magnitude 7.2, was very shallow at 10.3 kilometers (6.4 miles) below the seabed, which would have amplified its effect.

Its epicenter was located some 149 km (93 miles) south-southwest of Puerto Triunfo in El Salvador, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned that tsunami waves of up to 1 meter (3 feet) could hit the Pacific coasts of Nicaragua and El Salvador after the quake, but later said that available data showed the threat had passed.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency due to the quake and Hurricane Otto, which landed on the country’s southeastern coast earlier on Thursday, his spokeswoman said.

“We were serving lunch to the lawmakers and the earthquake started and we felt that it was very strong,” said Jacqueline Najarro, a 38-year-old food seller at the Congress in San Salvador. “We were scared.”

Earlier on Thursday, the Category 2 Hurricane Otto hit land near the southeastern coast of Nicaragua, where thousands had already been evacuated away from vulnerable coastal areas and into shelters.

(Additional reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala, Gustavo Palencia in Honduras and Ivan Castro in Nicaragua; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Sandra Maler and Simon Gardner)

Storm Otto moves out to sea after slamming Nicaragua, Costa Rica

A boat is seen near the Bluefields Port after Hurricane Otto hit southern Nicaragua at Bluefields, Nicaragu

By Ivan Castro

BLUEFIELDS, Nicaragua (Reuters) – Tropical storm Otto moved out to sea on Friday after battering Nicaragua and Costa Rica with hurricane-force winds and torrential rains, killing at least three people and forcing thousands to evacuate.

Otto landed as a hurricane but weakened rapidly after hitting the southeastern coast of Nicaragua and became a tropical storm by early Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, as dangerous flooding thrashed both countries.

In Costa Rica, President Luis Guillermo Solis said on Twitter that at least 3 people had died and some 2,500 people had been evacuated. He said rescue efforts continued.

Otto, the seventh Atlantic hurricane of the season, landed north of the town of San Juan de Nicaragua as a Category 2 storm on the five-rating Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, the Miami-based hurricane center said.

By Friday morning the storm was heading out to the Pacific Ocean with top sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph) and located about 115 miles (190 km) west southwest of Santa Elena, Costa Rica.

Soon after the storm had landed on Thursday, a 7.0 magnitude quake struck 93 miles (149 km) southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador, at a depth of 6.4 miles (10.3 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

There were no reports of major damage from the quake, but local emergency services ordered the coastal population to withdraw up to 0.6 mile (1 km) from the shore.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared a state of emergency because of the storm and the quake, said spokeswoman Rosario Murillo, who is also his wife.

Nicaraguan civil protection officials said the hurricane, which was moving west at 14 mph ( 22 kph), damaged homes and telephone lines but had not claimed any victims as of early Friday morning.

‘WE DON’T WANT TO DIE’

In Bluefields, a city in Nicaragua’s southeastern Mosquito Coast, rainfall began early in the morning. Hundreds had moved to storm shelters by Thursday evening.

“We left because we don’t want to die. We love our lives,” said 53-year-old Carmen Alvarado, who was hunkering down in a school in Bluefields. She was among the 206 people evacuated from the coastal community of El Bluff.

“The fear there is that we were surrounded by water,” said Senelia Aragon, 42, standing next to Alvarado, preparing a breakfast of flour tortillas with beans.

Bluefields, once an infamous pirate haunt, was smashed by Hurricane Joan in 1988, a devastating Category 4 storm that destroyed many of the town’s 19th century wooden houses.

On the Corn Islands, which face Bluefields and are popular with tourists, 1,400 people were evacuated to shelters, emergency services officials said. Another 1,000 people more moved from Punta Gorda, which lies south along the coast from Bluefields.

Government officials said people along the country’s southeast coast had refused to evacuate but declined to say how many.

The storm dumped about 6 inches to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm) of rain, with isolated amounts of 15 inches to 20 inches (38 to 50 cm).

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter, Natalie Schachar and Dave Graham, Additional reporting by George Rodriguez in San Jose; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Costa Rica gets 100 illegal immigrants a day hoping to get to U.S.

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis Rivera addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S. September 20, 2016.

By Hugh Bronstein

NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than 100 illegal immigrants are entering the small Central American country of Costa Rica every day, looking for “coyotes” to take them across the Nicaraguan border and on toward the United States, President Luis Solis said on Friday.

Eighty-five percent of the new arrivals are from Haiti by way of Brazil, where many settled after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake but whose construction jobs have disappeared now that the Rio Olympics are over and the country wallows in recession, Solis said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“The phenomenon has shifted quite significantly,” Solis said.

His government has set up centers that offer the migrants basic shelter and food, before they take the day-long bus trip through Costa Rica to the Nicaraguan frontier. Nicaragua does not allow the migrants to enter, so they are forced into the world of “coyotes,” or illegal guides, often linked to criminal gangs.

Solis said the 15 percent of arrivals who are not Haitians are Cubans as well as Africans and Asians who make their way across the Atlantic to Brazil and then trudge through Colombia and Panama to get to Costa Rica.

“Migration is a global phenomenon and it is not new. But something unexpected is happening, a refurbished flow of migrants is on the move in Latin America,” Solis said.

So far, Solis said, Costa Rica can handle the inflow and outflow of immigrants passing through the country.

The United States, however, responding to a surge in Haitian immigrants, will end special protections for them dating back to the devastating 2010 earthquake, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.

“What if they start deciding to stay on Costa Rica after hearing that the United States has changed its tolerance policy and is going to start deporting them?” Solis said. “That’s a concern.”

More than 5,000 Haitians have entered the United States without visas this fiscal year through Oct. 1, according to Department of Homeland Security officials, up from 339 in fiscal year 2015.

Panama’s president, Juan Carlos Varela, said this week that  Haiti’s economy and democracy must be fortified in order to stanch the rapid outflow of people from the impoverished island nation.

In February, Michel Martelly stepped down as president of Haiti without a successor. New elections are scheduled for Oct. 9.

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Meteorite Strikes Nicaraguan Capital

A huge explosion struck Managua, Nicaragua and officials say that a small meteorite caused it.

The meteor struck near the international airport just outside the city of 1.2 million people.  Officials say that the impact left a crater 39 feet wide and the impact shook the entire city.

Amazingly, no one was reported injured by the strike.

“We are convinced that this was a meteorite. We have seen the crater from the impact,” said Wilfredo Strauss of the Seismic Institute.  Strauss said that seismographs show a small wave when the meteorite hit the ground and a stronger one when the sound impacted the area.

Witnesses near the impact site say they heard a blast they thought was an explosion and then smelled something as if something had burned.

NASA had said last week that 2014 RC at the time of its closest approach should have been 25,000 miles from the planet and should have been over New Zealand at its closest approach.

Nicaragua Rocked Series Of Quakes

Residents of Nicaragua have been on edge for days after a series of earthquakes rocked the country.

A string of quakes that started Thursday night with a magnitude 6.1 quake has caused many residents to sleep on the ground outside of their homes in fear that a quake while they are sleeping would collapse their houses.

The country’s government has placed the nation on red alert and is urging them to continue sleeping outside until further notice.

The Thursday quake was followed by a stronger 6.6 magnitude quake on Friday.  Sunday night, 4.6 and 5.6 magnitude quakes kept most of the nation awake through the night.

“We didn’t sleep a wink last night,” Ana Maria Echaniz, 30, told the Associated Press. “It’s continuous anxiety, fear that comes and goes all the time.”

The first lady of Nicaragua, the government’s official spokeswoman, told state media that the recent activity has reactivated the Managua fault that caused a 6.2 magnitude quake in 1972 that killed close to 10,000 people.

One resident told the AP that the fear is so bad people jump in the night from a gust of wind because it “breaks the silence.”

Residents Flee Nicaraguan Volcano

Nicaraguan authorities are using army forces to evacuate people from the base of the San Cristobal volcano after it began to erupt Tuesday night.

The authorities declared an “amber alert” for a 2 square mile area around the volcano warning of the risk of major eruption. Airlines were also told to avoid flying over the western part of the country due to ash plumes. Continue reading →

Mass Evacuations At Nicaragua’s San Cristobal Volcano

The San Cristobal volcano began spewing ash and gas forcing the Nicaraguan government to evacuate around 3,000 residents from around the mountain.

Government officials say that up to 20,000 people could be displaced by the volcano. The volcano began to erupt on Saturday morning following the sound of violent explosions on the mountain. A 2.5 mile column of smoke and ash is being seen coming from the top of the mountain. Continue reading →