State regulators could approve coal plant settlement, sending $115M back to New Mexicans - Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
Public Regulation Commissioners approved a total of $115 million in refunds for those who get power from the Public Service Company of New Mexico.
As Source New Mexico’s Megan Gleason reports, this will come in the form of credits on utility bills for New Mexicans over the course of a year.
PNM agreed to pay back this money in a settlement over how the utility handled prices following the full closure of the San Juan Generating Station in 2022.
A year ago, the coal plant completely shut down. Since then, PNM customers have been paying the same rates, despite state officials and environmental advocacy organizations fighting for people to get credits on their utility bills after prices didn’t change.
It’s an issue that’s been ongoing in the New Mexico Supreme Court since June 2022. In August 2023, all parties agreed to a settlement.
PNM will return the $115 million to its customers over the span of 12 months. It will appear on utility bills as the “San Juan ETA Settlement Credit.”
PNM spokesperson Ray Sandoval said the utility hasn’t figured out a monthly breakdown of how much the credits will be on each monthly statement. Source NM calculated that between the over 525,000 residents and businesses PNM serves, it could add up on the higher end to roughly $220 in savings annually, or about $18 a month, per customer.
The settlement will also allow PNM to issue up to $360.1 million in Energy Transition Act bonds and enact safeguards from making New Mexicans pay annual interest rates on the bonds if they exceed a certain threshold.
A state judge sent the case back to the PRC on Sept. 14, giving Public Regulation Commissioners the authority to approve the settlement or not during Thursday’s meeting.
Governor announces funds for police recruitment – Megan Myscofski, KUNM
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Thursday that the state will put $57 million towards law enforcement recruitment across the state. That money will come from two state funds for law enforcement agencies.
That is on top of the $50 million allocated last year for recruitment.
This month, the governor signed a public health executive order meant to curb gun violence. That order called for more state police in Albuquerque. It also included a ban on open and concealed carry of firearms in public places, which was challenged in court and walked back a week later.
The state is set to distribute the funds [FRI 9/22]. The New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy expects to graduate its largest officer training class in November.
During last year’s gubernatorial race, both Lujan Grisham and Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti campaigned on supporting more resources for law enforcement. Lujan Grisham made $800,000 available for a new Law Enforcement Training Assistance Fund. She also appropriated $5 million for a new public safety complex in Sandoval County.
A grandmother seeks justice for Native Americans after thousands of unsolved deaths, disappearances — Matthew Brown, Associated Press
Yolanda Fraser is back near a ragged chain-link fence, blinking through tears as she tidies up flowers and ribbons and a pinwheel twirls in the breeze at a makeshift roadside memorial in a small Montana town.
This is where the badly decomposed body of her granddaughter Kaysera Stops Pretty Places was found a few days after the 18-year-old went missing from a Native American reservation border town.
Four years later, there are still no answers about how the Native American teenager died. No named suspects. No arrests.
Fraser's grief is a common tale among Native Americans whose loved ones went missing, and she's turned her fight for justice into a leading role with other families working to highlight missing and slain Indigenous peoples' cases across the U.S. Despite some early success from a new U.S. government program aimed at the problem, most cases remain unsolved and federal officials have closed more than 300 potential cases due to jurisdictional conflicts and other issues.
As she told her granddaughter's story, Fraser pushed past tears and began listing other names among the thousands of disappearances and violent deaths of Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
"My nephew Victor, my nephew Dane Fisher, my close relative Christy Rose Woodenthigh — and it just goes on and on," Fraser said. "It just became obvious that there's a pattern to all of it. There's a line between these Native lives and other lives. ... But our voice is getting louder. People are listening."
U.S. officials share frustration over the unsolved cases, which critics say reflects racial injustice, particularly when compared to the media frenzy that erupts when a white woman goes missing.
"The patchwork of jurisdictions makes it so hard to get started on these investigations. And when you lose time, your chances of solving these cases goes down," said Assistant Secretary of Interior Bryan Newland. "It's frustrating for everybody."
Federal law enforcement has jurisdiction over most Native American reservations, which often don't have their own police force yet experience people going missing at several times the rate of the rest of the nation. That's set against a backdrop of historical injustices that include massacres of Native Americans by U.S. troops, forced assimilation of Native children in abusive boarding schools and the removal of many tribes from their traditional lands.
Members of several victims' families joined Fraser recently to dedicate a billboard honoring victims along Interstate 90 just outside the town of Hardin where Stops Pretty Places died. The billboard lists four dozen missing and slain people and other victims on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations in southeastern Montana.
As the names were recited over a loudspeaker some relatives of victims cried as they leaned into one another.
"When we're divided we're not strong at all, but when we're together we're powerful," said Blossom Old Bull, whose son was killed in a car crash at 17 while being pursued by police whom the family blames for his death.
With backing from nonprofit groups and her family, Fraser hopes to erect similar billboards near reservations across the U.S. She wants to highlight the names behind crime statistics and for local officials to be confronted with the victims within their community.
Stops Pretty Places died in Big Horn County, just outside the Crow Indian Reservation and about 55 miles (89 kilometers) from Muddy Creek, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation community where Fraser largely raised her. She'd been missing for several days when her body was found at the edge of a fenced-in yard next to a busy road, one door down from where she'd last been seen with some friends.
For years, the family's pleas for an outside investigation went unanswered. This spring they learned county authorities had finally agreed to federal assistance. Agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit are now reexamining the case.
The unit was formed in 2021 by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland amid rising criticism over the mishandling of crimes involving Native Americans. Its agents have received 845 case referrals, primarily from victims' families, including 117 that were solved and 372 still under review or being investigated.
More than 350 were closed with no resolution, often because of jurisdictional issues that prevent federal agents from working off-reservation without an invitation from local authorities.
The Missing and Murdered Unit has only 15 agents, with plans to more than double that figure, officials said. Its caseload covers a small fraction of an estimated 4,200 unsolved cases nationwide among American Indians and Alaska Natives, with the victims ranging in age from toddlers to the elderly. Indigenous people account for 3.5% of missing persons in the U.S. — more than three times the percentage in the overall population, according to federal data.
Violent crimes reported against Native Americans more than tripled between 2010 and 2020, the Congressional Research Service reported in July, adding that improved reporting could have contributed to the increase.
"All these cases, they're really different but it all has to do with the same thing — the lack of law enforcement on reservations. the jurisdictional problems," said Melissa Lonebear, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council.
Adding to the challenges is the lack of reliable data on crime in Native communities. That's beginning to change. In New Mexico, the FBI has compiled a database of about 200 missing Native Americans. And a first-of-its-kind report released in Alaska last month listed 280 missing Alaska Natives and American Indians.
Requests for federal intervention have poured into the Missing and Murdered Unit in recent months as President Joe Biden's administration held a series of field hearings to solicit testimony about the crisis from tribal members, families of victims and survivors.
People travelled hundreds of miles including from Washington state and South Dakota to attend the hearing in Billings, Montana, where they erected oversized photos of victims at the back of a convention center ballroom. They told the commission of loved ones who had been shot in the back, killed in their own home or gone missing and never seen again.
Grace Bulltail, a member of the commission and one of Stops Pretty Places' aunts, said it's hard for many native families to step forward.
"When we're speaking, we know that they don't care. We know they're just waiting for us to stop talking. They've heard it before," Bulltail said, adding this is why some families remain silent. "But when there is such an injustice and disregard for our lives, we have to speak out."
The hearing also acted as a networking event, providing families the opportunity to trade tips on pushing investigations forward and bringing more attention to this crisis. Fraser traces the rise of her own advocacy to the brutal 2015 killing of Hannah Harris, whose partially clothed body was found on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation rodeo grounds near the town of Lame Deer days after she disappeared.
Tribal members said the search for Harris was botched by authorities, allowing her body to become so decomposed it prevented prosecutors from pursuing murder charges against one of the suspects in the case. Harris' birthday, May 5, was later designated by Congress as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls, which has since been expanded to include all missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.
When Stops Pretty Places died, Fraser reached out to Harris' mother – Fraser's cousin -- for guidance. As the case dragged on their extended family began organizing rallies, letter-writing campaigns and other actions to spur further investigations.
"We're not going to stop. They get tired of us sometimes, but that's OK," Fraser said. "We want to make noise."
Over 200 people are homeless after Tucson recovery community closes during Medicaid probe — Anita Snow, Associated Press
A huge addiction recovery community in Tucson, Arizona, shuttered suddenly this week, leaving more than 200 people homeless as Arizona investigates widespread Medicaid fraud largely affecting Native Americans, authorities said Thursday.
Ocotillo Apartments & Hotel, a rundown complex that was being used as a sober living community, closed Wednesday.
Details about what happened were sketchy. A copy of the notices telling people they had to leave referred to them as "Happy Times clients."
"We don't know much about the operation," said Andy Squires, spokesperson for the City of Tucson. "They city got called last week and our housing outreach people have been trying to help. Our response has largely been humanitarian."
Squires said the city was working with the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui tribes to find temporary shelter or treatment facilities where the former residents can stay.
An online search failed to turn up a web page or any other online presence for a recovery community called Happy Times. The phone number for Ocotillo Apartments & Hotel rang unanswered Thursday.
Neither Happy Times nor Ocotillo Apartments & Hotel appear on a list of Arizona providers that have been suspended by the state's Medicaid agency.
Heidi Capriotti, spokesperson for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System known as AHCCCS, said she had few details.
"Our care management team was dispatched to work on-site with the City of Tucson, trusted behavioral health and crisis providers, and tribal nations to establish an appropriate plan that would allow us to triage each individual's specific need," Capriotti said in a statement.
"This situation demonstrates the lengths bad actors will go to exploit the state's Medicaid program, defraud taxpayers, and endanger our communities," Capriotti said. "Situations like this are tragic, but also demonstrate that the Medicaid fraud prevention measures we've put in place are working to stop fraudulent billing and protect members from further exploitation."
The Tucson community's shutdown comes amid a massive investigation into billing fraud that state officials say has bilked Arizona out of hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars. Since top Arizona officials announced a crackdown in mid-May, the state has identified and suspended more than 300 providers on credible allegations of fraud.
While some providers have closed, others have appealed to stay open.
AHCCCS has instituted tighter controls, including a six-month moratorium for enrolling new behavioral health clinics for Medicaid billing. Site visits and background checks with fingerprinting are now required for high-risk behavioral health providers when they enroll or revalidate.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney General's Office are among agencies that have joined Arizona prosecutors in the investigation. The scams have had consequences for Native Americans from as far away as New Mexico and Montana, where state and tribal governments have warned people about phony rehab programs that operate mostly in the Phoenix area.
The Navajo Nation and the Blackfeet Nation in Montana declared public health emergencies to free up resources to help affected members. The Navajo Nation also launched a program called Operation Rainbow Bridge to help members get into legitimate programs or back to the reservation.
Addiction recovery is a challenge on reservations, where resources for residential treatment aren't always available.
The scams can be highly lucrative. In a federal case, a woman who operated a fake recovery program in Mesa, Arizona, pleaded guilty in July to wire fraud and money laundering after raking in over $22 million in Medicaid money between 2020 and 2021 for services never provided.
After a lull, asylum-seekers adapt to US immigration changes and again overwhelm border agents — Elliot Spagat, Associated Press
A group of migrants from China surrendered to a Border Patrol agent in remote Southern California as gusts of wind drowned the hum of high-voltage power lines, joining others from Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere in a desert campsite with shelters made from tree branches.
Their arrival Wednesday was another sign that agents have become overwhelmed in recent days by asylum-seekers on parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. In tiny Eagle Pass, Texas, nearly 6,000 migrants crossed from Mexico in to the U.S. in two days, prompting authorities to close one of the town's two official border crossings so those agents could instead help with the influx. Border crossings have closed recently for similar reasons in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.
After a dip in illegal crossings that followed new asylum restrictions in May, President Joe Biden's administration is again on its heels. Democratic mayors and governors are seeking more relief for hosting asylum-seekers and Republicans are seizing on the issue ahead of 2024 elections.
The Homeland Security Department said Wednesday it would grant Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 472,000 Venezuelans who were in the U.S. on July 31, easing paths to work authorization. That's in addition to 242,700 Venezuelans who already had qualified for temporary status.
The administration is also sending 800 active-duty military troops to the border, adding to 2,500 National Guard members there. It's expanding border holding facilities by 3,250 people to nearly 23,000, and extending home surveillance nationwide for families awaiting initial asylum screenings.
The administration renewed pressure — and blame — on Congress, which has long failed to agree on comprehensive changes to the nation's immigration system. The Biden administration is now asking Congress for $4 billion in emergency funding.
Homeland Security said in a statement that it was "using the limited tools it has available to secure the border and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system."
Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center's senior advisor for immigration and border policy, said it's normal to see a dip in illegal crossings after changes like those imposed in May, but that is usually short-lived once migrants see how things play out.
"People see what happened to the last group of people that tried and they're like, 'Oh, well maybe it's not as harsh as they say,'" Brown said.
An increase in families arriving at the border led to unacceptable conditions in two of the busiest Border Patrol sector, a court-appointed monitor reported to a federal court last week. Dr. Paul H. Wise said children as young as 8 years old were separated from parents during processing in South Texas, a practice that has been mainly used for boys 13 to 17.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was reviewing Wise's report, noting limited, temporary separations may occur during processing for safety reasons but they are nothing like the long-term separations under former President Donald Trump. Wise said even short-term separation can have "lasting, harmful effects."
In Eagle Pass, a town of 28,000 people, about 2,700 migrants crossed Tuesday and 3,000 Wednesday, according to Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber. Mayor Rolando Salinas declared the city a disaster area on Tuesday.
U.S. authorities closed a bridge and international railway in Eagle Pass on Wednesday to redirect staff. Union Pacific Railroad Co. said Thursday that thousands of rail cars cross the border there daily.
CBP told business leaders they have no estimate of when rail traffic would resume in Eagle Pass or when U.S.-bound commercial truck traffic would reopen at a bridge in El Paso. Traffic slowed at other border crossings.
"All along the border, we're experiencing large numbers of migrants, so you will see slowdowns and disruptions" at border crossings, said Dennis McKenzie, CBP deputy director for cargo and conveyance security. "It's all hands on deck."
In San Diego, a pedestrian crossing has been closed since Sept. 14 to direct staff to an area where migrants from Cameroon to Colombia are waiting between a double-layer border wall in San Diego. Volunteers are handing the migrants food and bottled water while they wait to be processed.
Near Jacumba Hot Springs, a town of less than 1,000 people with a small hotel and general store amid boulder-strewn mountains an hour's drive east of San Diego, migrants camps began forming last week for the first time since May.
Smugglers drive migrants to a spot in Mexico where the border wall ends. One of three camps in the Jacumba Valley is about a half-hour walk on a gravel road used almost exclusively by border agents. On Wednesday, none had stayed longer than one night, occupying tents that were left behind by others.
The Border Patrol gives migrants colored wristbands marking their arrival date to determine who gets shuttled first to a processing location. Campfires and juniper shrub shield migrants from evening chills. Some climbed atop boulders hoping to get a cellphone signal.
Angel Sisa, 40, left Ecuador's coastal region with his wife and two children, ages 15 and 13, selling his general store to escape death threats from criminals demanding monthly payments. The Sisa family paid smugglers to take them by plane and bus until they reached a hotel in Tecate, the nearest town in Mexico from the roadside drop where they crossed. They hope to settle in Minneapolis with family members who left Ecuador about a year ago.
Carlos Andres Vasquez, 37, flew from his home country of Colombia to Mexico City as a tourist and paid a smuggler $800 to be driven from Tijuana on a road filled with bumps and potholes before arriving near where they would cross into the U.S.
"They treated like cattle, like animals," Vasquez said. "They put 20, 18 of us in a van, women and children in front and we went in back."
He said he and other South Americans walked to the campsite Tuesday under a "very pleasant" Border Patrol agent's watch. Vasquez, whose father was killed and who left Colombia because of death threats, plans to settle with a friend in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and save money for his wife and children, ages 7 and 2, to join him.
___
Associated Press writers Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, Colleen Long in Washington and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed.
Albuquerque climate action demands more from industry and elected leaders - Emma B. Mincks, Source New Mexico
Ahead of this week’s massive climate action in New York City and around the world, hundreds in downtown Albuquerque gathered to express their demands.
The Albuquerque Climate Strike took place on Sept. 14 where people marched from Robinson Park to outside of The Clyde Hotel, where elected leaders and business stakeholders attended the New Mexico Advanced Energy Summit.
The Albuquerque climate event outside was put together by 23 local grassroots organizations in solidarity with hundreds of strikes taking place in over 100 countries. Additionally, 40 organizers involved with the Albuquerque event are in New York City to attend actions during Climate Week NYC.
The Albuquerque delegation led the march on Sunday in New York city, with a banner that read: “New Mexico is Burning Biden and MLG: Climate Action Now!”
The Albuquerque event’s theme addressed the need for legislators, businesses and communities to implement real changes immediately.
In front of the hotel, speakers highlighted frustration with what they view as political hypocrisy by New Mexico elected officials that are promising to expand oil, gas, hydrogen and nuclear as “safe” solutions for meeting the state’s Net Zero goal.
Jonathan Juarez, a youth media representative with YUCCA, is one of those organizers currently in New York. On Monday, Juarez and other local leaders led a march in the city during the international event.
In Albuquerque, Juarez (Laguna/Isleta) criticized New Mexico’s Net Zero plan because “through sequestration or offsets, the concept enforces this market-based approach to the climate crisis” that does not actually slow production or hold polluters accountable.
Alejandria Lyons, an organizer with New Mexico No False Solutions Coalition who also traveled to New York, said people inside The Clyde Hotel should understand that “real climate leaders don’t frack.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has led efforts to decarbonize the state by 2050 and directed state agencies “to shut down spills, leaks and waste in the oil and gas sector, which produces more than half of all carbon emissions in the state.”
One of those efforts from Lujan Grisham came through an initiative she pushed to make New Mexico a national “hydrogen hub,” a plan that saw limited support by state legislators, but is marching on with plans for the executive such as awarding state subsidies for hydrogen businesses and continuing to apply for billions in federal investment money into the new energy sector.
Juarez outlined how hydrogen uses water electrolysis, which he cites as 60% more energy intensive than burning coal or gas.
These “solutions” proposed by the industries themselves “will never never make up for the amount of carbon sent into the atmosphere through production,” Juarez argues.
Alternative solutions proposed at the rally included a People’s Climate Plan addressing the emergency in New Mexico and internationally.
Leona Morgan (Diné) said that “nuclear energy cannot exist without nuclear weapons” and talked about the science of contaminated water tables from leaching chemicals used in supposed “green” solutions such as hydrogen and nuclear.
Artists also performed at the event, highlighting that the heart of the protest was the soul.
Destiny Krupnick shared their poem “Lifeblood” about the history of land-theft and colonization in New Mexico, with emotive lines and statistics about violence against Native women, linking historical and ongoing brutality with the contemporary presence of extractive industry in New Mexico.
Freddy Flowpez, one of the musical performers, said he wanted to attend the event to “support mother earth and remind people to care.”
International students from United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico also attended the Albuquerque protest.
Lars Fattinger, a UWC-US student from Switzerland, wanted to join since it reflects his core values.
Most speakers highlighted the consequences of hydrogen, nuclear, oil, and gas expansions in the state as harming residents here in the “sacrifice zone” and around the world.
The energy summit was sponsored by fossil fuel companies. Juarez said, “giants like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Shell, and ConocoPhillips with local stakeholders like PNM and New Mexico Gas Company.”
He is concerned that while the proposed topic of the Summit is “technologies to mitigate the climate crisis” industry sponsorship negates the goal.
Feleecia Guillen, a student-climate-organizer from New Mexico, says that groups have been asking elected leadership to listen and “step up and take action for our climate” before it’s too late.
She referred to increasing global crises including extreme wildfires, flooding and environmental catastrophes worldwide in the past few weeks.
Guillen warns that quick and sustainable action is necessary because “we’re reaching a point where our leaders are going to have to listen to us.”
CYFD faces lawsuit over child killed by her father - Santa Fe New Mexican
New Mexico’s state child welfare agency is facing a lawsuit from a family whose daughter was beaten to death after she and her brothers were removed from her mother’s home and placed with her abusive father.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports Michael Garcia pleaded guilty Sept. 8 to second-degree murder in the 2021 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Diana McGrory. The civil lawsuit was filed in state district court on behalf of Diana and her siblings. It accuses CYFD of failing to protect them and argues that by not prioritizing the children’s safety, the agency violated their rights under the state constitution.
Garcia’s criminal history included domestic violence. He had an active warrant for his arrest when Diana died, according to the lawsuit, which also notes that before Diana was killed, Garcia was overwhelmed with parenting four young children who had special needs.
The lawsuit contends that neither the CYFD investigator nor a supervisor who worked on the family’s case was a licensed social worker. It seeks damages as well as a court order requiring CYFD to mandate training for investigators and ensure licensed social workers conduct investigations into abuse and neglect.
CYFD did not respond to requests for comment by the New Mexican.
Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands wave fees for National Public Lands Day - Bryce Dix, KUNM News
Saturday is National Public Lands Day and to celebrate, the U.S. Forest Service has waived all entrance fees for day-use recreation sites for the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands.
Dubbed as the nation's largest, single-day volunteer effort for public lands, National Public Lands Day is meant to encourage people to get outside.
According to a press release, it’s the 30th anniversary of the effort.
Though, before people decide to head out this weekend, Forest officials encourage recreationists to double check which recreation sites are included in the fee waiver.
Theweather forecast predicts Saturday will have a high of 80 F with a mixture of sunshine and clouds.
Biden's Democratic allies intensify pressure for asylum-seekers to get work permits - By Anthony Izaguirre Associated Press
As more than 115,000 migrants arrived in New York City over the past year after crossing the border from Mexico, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul begged President Joe Biden for one thing, above all others, to ease the crisis: "Let them work," both Democrats have said repeatedly in speeches and interviews.
Increasingly impatient leaders of Biden's party in other cities and states hammered the same message over the last month, saying the administration must make it easier for migrants to get work authorization quickly, which would allow them to pay for food and housing.
The Biden administration took one step toward granting that demand Wednesday, extending a temporary legal status to an estimated 472,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. that will make it easier for them to get work permits.
But expediting work permits for other groups might not be easy, either legally or bureaucratically, experts in the process say. Politically, it may be impossible.
It would take an act of Congress to shorten a mandatory, six-month waiting period for work permits for asylum-seekers who cross the border illegally. Such legislation seems unlikely. Biden already faces attacks from Republicans who say he is too soft on immigration, and his administration has pointed to Congress' inability to reach agreement on comprehensive changes to the U.S. immigration system as justification for other steps it has taken.
The Homeland Security Department has sent more than 1 million text messages urging migrants to apply for work permits, and on Wednesday the administration said it would aim to lower the application wait time for those that are eligible to 30 days, down from around 90 currently.
Those steps pleased Hochul and Adams, who said late Wednesday that he hoped the administration would also extend Temporary Protected Status to migrants from countries besides Venezuela. That designation is most commonly given to places where there is an armed conflict or natural disaster.
Gilberto Pozo Ortiz, a 45-year-old from Cuba, has been living, at taxpayer expense, in a hotel in upstate New York for the last three months. He says his work authorization is not yet in sight as social workers navigate him through a complex asylum application system.
"I want to depend on no one," Ortiz said. "I want to work."
In Chicago, where 13,000 migrants have settled in the last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently wrote Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to ask for parole for asylum-seekers, which, they say, would allow him to get around the wait for a work permit.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who declared a state of emergency over the migrant influx, wrote Mayorkas that work permits represent "an opportunity to meet employer needs, support our economy, and reduce dependency among new arrivals." And 19 Democratic state attorneys general wrote Mayorkas that work permits would reduce the strain on government to provide social services.
Chicago Alderman Andre Vasquez, chair of the City Council's Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, had said before the Biden administration's Wednesday announcement that the federal government had done "virtually nothing" to assist cities.
In the meantime, migrants unable to get work permits have filled up homeless shelters in several cities.
With more than 60,000 migrants currently depending on New York City for housing, the city has rented space in hotels, put cots in recreational centers and erected tent shelters — all at government expense. The Adams administration has estimated that housing and caring for migrants could cost the city $12 billion over three years.
"This issue will destroy New York City," Adams said at a community event this month. "We're getting no support on this national crisis, and we're receiving no support."
Advocates for migrants have objected to Adams' apocalyptic terms, saying he is exaggerating the potential impact of the new arrivals on a city of nearly 8.8 million people.
As frustrations mounted, Hochul had said her office is considering whether the state could offer work permits, though such a move would almost certainly draw legal challenges. The White House dismissed the idea.
Republicans have seized on the discord, putting Democrats on the defensive ahead of next year's presidential election.
Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said the calls for expedited work authorizations are more about political optics than practical solutions.
"They don't want to tell the electorate there's nothing we can do. No politician wants to say that. So they have kind of become the new squeaky wheel, saying, `Give us work authorization,'" he said. "Saying that is much easier than getting it. But it's sort of, you know, a good soundbite."
One step that most agree would be helpful is to provide legal assistance to migrants to apply for asylum and work authorization, though that has also proved challenging.
Nationwide, only around 16% of working age migrants enrolled in a U.S. Custom and Border Protection online app have applied for work permits, according to the White House. Since the introduction of the CBP One app in January through the end of July, nearly 200,000 asylum-seeking migrants have used it to sign up for appointments to enter the U.S. at land crossings with Mexico.
The White House might be reluctant to take steps that could be interpreted as incentivizing migrants to come to the U.S.
Arrests from illegal border crossings Mexico topped 177,000 in August, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss unpublished numbers, up nearly 80% from June. Many are released in the U.S. to pursue asylum in immigration court, while an additional 1,450 migrants are permitted into the U.S. daily through CBP One.
Many have gravitated to an underground economy.
Elden Roja, who has been sporadically working landscaping and other odd jobs for about $15 an hour, lives with his wife and children, 15 and 6, and about 50 others in a police station lobby in Chicago. When a fellow Venezuelan co-worker honked from a car he purchased, Roja laughed and said he would buy his own vehicle soon.
While the bureaucratic hurdles can be substantial, many migrants do make it through the process.
Jose Vacca, a Venezuelan, traveled with two of his cousins from Colombia, leaving their families behind to make the journey mostly by foot. Once in Texas, he was given free bus tickets to New York City.
The 22-year-old found a job there that paid him $15 an hour, under the table. After he got his temporary work authorization, his boss gave him an extra dollar per hour.
___
Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in Chicago and Karen Matthews in New York contributed.
A grandmother seeks justice for Native Americans after thousands of unsolved deaths, disappearances - By Matthew Brown Associated Press
Yolanda Fraser is back near a ragged chain-link fence, blinking through tears as she tidies up flowers and ribbons and a pinwheel twirls in the breeze at a makeshift roadside memorial in a small Montana town.
This is where the badly decomposed body of her granddaughter Kaysera Stops Pretty Places was found a few days after the 18-year-old went missing from a Native American reservation border town.
Four years later, there are still no answers about how the Native American teenager was killed. No named suspects. No arrests.
Fraser's grief is a common tale among Native Americans whose loved ones went missing, and she's turned her fight for justice into a leading role with other families working to highlight missing and slain Indigenous peoples' cases across the U.S. Despite some early success from a new U.S. government program aimed at the problem, most cases remain unsolved and federal officials have closed more than 300 potential cases due to jurisdictional conflicts and other issues.
As she told her granddaughter's story, Fraser pushed past tears and began listing other names among the thousands of disappearances and violent deaths of Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
"My nephew Victor, my nephew Dane Fisher, my close relative Christy Rose Woodenthigh — and it just goes on and on," Fraser said. "It just became obvious that there's a pattern to all of it. There's a line between these Native lives and other lives. ... But our voice is getting louder. People are listening."
U.S. officials share frustration over the unsolved cases, which critics say reflects racial injustice, particularly when compared to the media frenzy that erupts when a white woman goes missing.
"The patchwork of jurisdictions makes it so hard to get started on these investigations. And when you lose time, your chances of solving these cases goes down," said Assistant Secretary of Interior Bryan Newland. "It's frustrating for everybody."
Federal law enforcement has jurisdiction over most Native American reservations, which often don't have their own police force yet experience people going missing at several times the rate of the rest of the nation. That's set against a backdrop of historical injustices that include massacres of Native Americans by U.S. troops, forced assimilation of Native children in abusive boarding schools and the removal of many tribes from their traditional lands.
Members of several victims' families joined Fraser recently to dedicate a billboard honoring victims along Interstate 90 just outside the town of Hardin where Stops Pretty Places died. The billboard lists four dozen missing and slain people and other victims on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations in southeastern Montana.
As the names were recited over a loudspeaker some relatives of victims cried as they leaned into one another.
"When we're divided we're not strong at all, but when we're together we're powerful," said Blossom Old Bull, whose son was killed in a car crash at 17 while being pursued by police who the family blames for his death.
With backing from nonprofit groups and her family, Fraser hopes to erect similar billboards near reservations across the U.S. She wants to highlight the names behind crime statistics and for local officials to be confronted with the victims within their community.
Stops Pretty Places died in Big Horn County, just outside the Crow Indian Reservation and about 55 miles (89 kilometers) from Muddy Creek, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation community where Fraser largely raised her. She'd been missing for several days when her body was found at the edge of a fenced-in yard next to a busy road, one door down from where she'd last been seen with some friends.
For years, the family's pleas for an outside investigation went unanswered. This spring they learned county authorities had finally agreed to federal assistance. Agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit are now reexamining the case.
The unit was formed in 2021 by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland amid rising criticism over the mishandling of crimes involving Native Americans. Its agents have received 845 case referrals, primarily from victims' families, including 117 that were solved and 372 still under review or being investigated.
More than 350 were closed with no resolution, often because of jurisdictional issues that prevent federal agents from working off-reservation without an invitation from local authorities.
The Missing and Murdered Unit has only 15 agents, with plans to more than double that figure, officials said. Its caseload covers a small fraction of an estimated 4,200 unsolved cases nationwide among American Indians and Alaska Natives, with the victims ranging in age from toddlers to the elderly. Indigenous people account for 3.5% of missing persons in the U.S. — more than three times the percentage in the overall population, according to federal data.
Violent crimes reported against Native Americans more than tripled between 2010 and 2020, the Congressional Research Service reported in July, adding that improved reporting could have contributed to the increase.
"All these cases, they're really different but it all has to do with the same thing — the lack of law enforcement on reservations. the jurisdictional problems," said Melissa Lonebear, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council.
Adding to the challenges is the lack of reliable data on crime in Native communities. That's beginning to change. In New Mexico, the FBI has compiled a database of about 200 missing Native Americans. And a first-of-its-kind report released in Alaska last month listed 280 missing Alaska Natives and American Indians.
Requests for federal intervention have poured into the Missing and Murdered Unit in recent months as President Joe Biden's administration held a series of field hearings to solicit testimony about the crisis from tribal members, families of victims and survivors.
People travelled hundreds of miles including from Washington state and South Dakota to attend the hearing in Billings, Montana, where they erected oversized photos of victims at the back of a convention center ballroom. They told the commission of loved ones who had been shot in the back, killed in their own home or gone missing and never seen again.
Grace Bulltail, a member of the commission and one of Stops Pretty Places' aunts, said it's hard for many native families to step forward.
"When we're speaking, we know that they don't care. We know they're just waiting for us to stop talking. They've heard it before," Bulltail said, adding this is why some families remain silent. "But when there is such an injustice and disregard for our lives, we have to speak out."
The hearing also acted as a networking event, providing families the opportunity to trade tips on pushing investigations forward and bringing more attention to this crisis. Fraser traces the rise of her own advocacy to the brutal 2015 killing of Hannah Harris, whose partially clothed body was found on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation rodeo grounds near the town of Lame Deer days after she disappeared.
Tribal members said the search for Harris was botched by authorities, allowing her body to become so badly decomposed it prevented prosecutors from pursuing murder charges against one of the suspects in the case. Harris' birthday, May 5, was later designated by Congress as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls, which has since been expanded to include all missing and murdered Indigenous peoples.
When Stops Pretty Places died, Fraser reached out to Harris' mother – Fraser's cousin -- for guidance. As the case dragged on their extended family began organizing rallies, letter-writing campaigns and other actions to spur further investigations.
"We're not going to stop. They get tired of us sometimes, but that's OK," Fraser said. "We want to make noise."
This is what it's like to maintain the US nuclear arsenal - By Tara Copp Associated Press
The U.S. will spend more than $750 billion over the next decade to revamp nearly every part of its aging nuclear defenses. Officials say they simply can't wait any longer — some systems and parts are more than 50 years old.
For now, it's up to young military troops and government technicians across the U.S. to maintain the existing bombs and related components. The jobs are exacting and often require a deft touch. That's because many of the maintenance tasks must be performed by hand.
The Associated Press was granted rare access to nuclear missile bases and weapons production facilities to see how technicians keep the arsenal working while starting the government's biggest nuclear overhaul since the Cold War.
This is how they do it and who they are:
SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL
Because the U.S. no longer conducts explosive nuclear tests, scientists are not exactly sure how aging warhead plutonium cores affect detonation. For more common parts, like the plastics and metals and wiring inside each detonator, there are also questions about how the years spent in warheads might affect their integrity.
So workers at the nation's nuclear labs and production sites spend a lot of time stressing and testing parts to make sure they're safe. At the Energy Department's Kansas City National Security Campus, where warheads are maintained and made, technicians put components through endless tests. They heat weapons parts to extreme temperatures, drop them at speeds simulating a plane crash, shoot them at high velocity out of testing guns and rattle and shake them for hours on end. The tests are meant to simulate real world scenarios — from hurtling toward a target to being carted in an Air Force truck over a long, rutty road.
Technicians at the Los Alamos National Lab conduct similar evaluations, putting plutonium under extreme stress, heat and pressure to ensure it is stable enough to blow up as intended. Just like the technicians in Kansas City, the ones in Los Alamos closely examine the tested parts and radioactive material to see if they caused any damage.
RELYING ON OLD BLUEPRINTS
The lack of explosive tests — banned since the George H.W. Bush administration by an international treaty — has also meant that the scientists have been forced to rely on warhead designs that were created many decades ago.
That's because each of those original designs had been certified, and the best way to certify a weapon works as designed is to blow it up. Changing even one component introduces uncertainty.
Further complicating matters — because the weapons are so old — many of those original manufacturers and contractors have gone out of business. That has forced the nation's nuclear labs to reverse engineer old parts, such as a peroxide that was used to treat warhead parts, but is no longer in production. So lab technicians are working to reinvent it.
Re-engineering parts is getting easier with advances in computer-aided design and 3D printing. Kansas City technicians are experimenting with 3D printers to create some warhead parts, such as a micro-honeycombed, rubbery layer that will serve as a cushion for a warhead radar systems.
THE WORKERS ARE YOUNGER THAN THE WARHEADS
It's not unusual to see a 50-year-old warhead guarded or maintained by someone just out of high school, and ultimate custody of a nuclear weapon can fall on the shoulders of a service member who's just 23.
That is what happened on a recent afternoon in Montana at Malmstrom Air Force Base, where Senior Airman Jacob Deas signed a paper assuming responsibility for an almost 3,000-pound Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile warhead, as it was lifted out of the Bravo-9 silo and escorted back to base for work.
A sea swell of government retirements has meant that experience level in the civilian nuclear workforce has shifted dramatically. At the Kansas City campus, for example, just about 6% of the workforce has been there 30 years or more — and over 60% has been at the facility for five years or less.
That change has meant more women have joined the workforce, too. In the cavernous hallways between Kansas City's secured warhead workrooms are green and white nursing pods with a greeting: "Welcome mothers."
At Los Alamos, workers' uniform allowance now covers sports bras. Why? Because underwire bras were not compatible with the secured facilities' many layers of metal detection and radiation monitoring.