El Magonista | Vol. 10, No. 28 | July 21, 2022 - Mexico City Mayor Honors CMSC's Dreamers' Study Abroad Program with 'Keys to the City'

Translated from Google | Mexico.Eseuro.com

Most people think of the border as a distant line tracing the outside edge of the United States. That is not how the U.S. government sees it. The border is officially defined as a zone that extends 100 miles into the interior of the United States from all external boundaries.

In that huge area — it encompasses 10 states, such cities as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, and almost two-thirds of the nation’s population — the Border Patrol has expansive, nearly unchecked powers.

A recent Supreme Court decision, Egbert vs. Boule, underlined those powers. A Border Patrol agent approached a Turkish guest at an inn in Washington state. When the inn’s owner, an American citizen, asked the agent to leave, the agent shoved him against a car and then threw him on the ground. The man filed suit but the court ruled that even when the constitutional rights of an American citizen are violated by a federal agent, there is no right to sue if the violation occurred in the course of the agent’s official duties.

With that decision, the Supreme Court added to decades of precedents that have allowed the Border Patrol to barely abide by the Constitution, especially its 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches... READ MORE

By Max Rivlin-Nadler | KPBS | JUL. 18, 2022 | Photo by Jean Guerrero

Nancy Landa, who was born in Mexico and came to Los Angeles as a child, excelled in school and was the first-ever Latina student body president at California State, Northridge.

After college, she went on to work for a California State Assembly member. But one morning while driving to work in 2009, she was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for being in the country illegally — she had been brought to the country from Mexico by her parents. That night, she was deported to Mexico, with nothing.

In Tijuana, she had to begin building her life back from scratch, so she took the only job she could find at a customer service call center.

“For me, that was a blow,” Landa said. “Because I had a university degree, five years of working experience in the US, [I was] managing projects, and the best job I could get was answering phones.”

Landa still wanted to follow the dream she had in the US — obtaining a master’s degree in public policy. But to continue her studies, she had to get something called an apostille, a complicated verification process that Mexico uses to validate previous studies. She soon learned that not all of her college credits transferred... READ MORE

The collaboration signifies something of a reset between Mexico and the U.S.

Mexico on Tuesday agreed to contribute $1.5 billion to a joint initiative with the U.S. to improve infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a person familiar with the commitment.

The agreement came on the same day President Joe Biden hosted his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for a meeting in the Oval Office.

Part of their discussions were expected to include a commitment from the two countries to carry out "a multi-year, joint, U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure modernization effort for projects along the 2,000 mile border," a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Monday ahead of the meeting.

The infrastructure project is intended to improve processing and security along the border, the person familiar with the agreement said.

Biden alluded to Mexico's investment in remarks alongside López Obrador before their meeting, saying, "We're also making historic investments in infrastructure modernization across our 2,000-mile border with Mexico."

He noted the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law he championed last year was "delivering $3.4 billion to major construction projects at the ports of entry between our two countries to make our border safer and more efficient for people, trade and commerce... READ MORE

Some Trump administration officials had initial doubts that it was legal to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census but pressed forward and attempted to add it.

Trump officials tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census in a move experts said would benefit Republicans despite initial doubts among some in the administration that it was legal, according to an investigative report released Wednesday by a congressional oversight committee.

The report offers a smoking gun of sorts — a secret memo the committee obtained after a two-year legal battle — showing that a top Trump appointee in the Commerce Department explored apportionment as a reason to include the question.

“The Committee’s investigation has exposed how a group of political appointees sought to use the census to advance an ideological agenda and potentially exclude non-citizens from the apportionment count,” the report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said. 

It has long been speculated that the Trump administration wanted the citizenship question in order to exclude people in the country illegally from apportionment numbers. 

The report includes several drafts showing how the memo evolved from recognizing that doing so would likely be unconstitutional to coming up with other justifications for adding the citizenship question.

The apportionment process uses state population counts gathered during the once-a-decade census to divide up the number of congressional seats each state gets... READ MORE

Crouching for up to 10 hours between the furrows of a Nebraska field, Fausto Ríos, 17, could trim and separate 70 beets in a single minute with a small hoe. But he paid a steep price.

Under the scorching heat, sweat would bathe his entire body and blind him within minutes. When his legs began to weaken and the pain in his lower back felt as if he were being continuously stabbed, the Mexican immigrant had two tricks to motivate himself and avoid a scolding from his bosses: He had to stay upright as he “walked” on his knees, all the while thinking about getting paid at the end of the month. 

Despite the extreme hardships, the job was a godsend for him and millions of other young Mexican men, Ríos says. For immigrant laborers with little or no formal education and a lack of employment opportunities in their native land, laboring in the fields of "El Norte" offered a way out... READ MORE

By Maegan Vazquez, Betsy Klein & Kate Sullivan | CNN | JUL. 21, 2022
Photo from WH Twitter

(CNN) - President Joe Biden said Thursday that he's tested positive for Covid-19 but will continue to work while in isolation at the White House despite his mild symptoms.

In a video posted to Twitter, Biden told Americans that he is "doing well" and that his symptoms continue to be mild.

"I guess you heard, this morning I tested positive for Covid. But I've been double vaccinated, double boosted. Symptoms are mild and I really appreciate your inquires and concerns. But I'm doing well, getting a lot of work done. Going to continue to get it done and in the meantime, thanks for your concern and keep the faith. It's gonna be OK," Biden, who was unmasked while standing outside on the Truman Balcony, said in the 20-second video.

The mild symptoms and diagnosis protocol for Biden -- a double-boosted 79-year-old at high risk for experiencing severe illness -- will mean isolating and "working and resting" at the White House residence for the rest of the day, according to a senior administration official. This is the first time Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and he last tested negative on Tuesday, per White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Biden wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon that he is "doing great" following the positive test and said he called Pennsylvania politicians to send his regrets about having to cancel a scheduled trip to the commonwealth. The tweet was accompanied by an image of the President smiling at a desk, without a mask, in the residence of the White House... READ MORE

By Corinne Purtill | Los Angeles Times | JUL. 20, 2022
Photo by Jean-Francois Badias

From the start of the pandemic, patients and doctors alike have been frustrated by the sizable minority of coronavirus infections that turn into long COVID, a perplexing collection of lingering and often disabling symptoms that persist weeks, months or years after the initial infection subsides.

The condition has been reported in both children and adults; in those who had preexisting conditions and those in robust health; in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and those who experienced only mild symptoms during their initial infection.

A new study from researchers at USC offers some insights into the prevalence of long COVID and suggests some early clues for who might be more likely to develop long-term symptoms.

The study, published this month in Scientific Reports, found that 23% of people who had coronavirus infections between March 2020 and March 2021 were still reporting symptoms up to 12 weeks later.

Researchers recruited roughly 8,000 people, some infected and some not, to answer biweekly questions about their overall health and COVID-19 status. By the end of the yearlong survey period, they had a sample of 308 people who had gotten the disease at some point in the year.

After filtering out respondents with symptoms such as headache and fatigue prior to infection as a result of unrelated conditions like seasonal allergies, the team found that nearly 1 in 4 COVID-19 sufferers were still grappling with symptoms 12 weeks after becoming infected.

“These people are not able to do necessarily all the activities they would want to do, not able to fully work and take care of their families,” said Eileen Crimmins, a demographer at USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and a coauthor of the study.

“That’s an aspect of this disease that needs to be recognized, because it’s not really as benign as some people think,” she said. “Even people who have relatively few symptoms to start with can end up with long... READ MORE

Legal troubles, community colleges helped author Rafael Agustin find way forward.

The plight of undocumented students often gets told through the pursuits and failings of policy that can feel like alphabet soup – DACA, Prop 187, AB 540. 

Putting a face to those stories is important for us to be able to understand, in human terms, why California and the nation must chart a path forward for thousands of students who face uncertain futures.

Meet Rafael Agustin.

Having arrived in California at age 7 from Guayaquil, Ecuador, Agustin offers a rare glimpse into the world of an undocumented student in his new memoir, “Illegally Yours,” published by Grand Central Publishing and available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other retailers. 

Known for his work as a writer on the TV show “Jane the Virgin,” Agustin, 41, now serves as the CEO of the Latino Film Institute, which hosts the annual Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, as well as a statewide arts program called Youth Cinema Project that aims to close opportunity and achievement gaps by training future filmmakers. 

A graduate of UCLA’s prestigious theater program, his path to higher education was fraught with obstacles that remain for many students who have since walked in similar shoes. He credits his legal troubles and California’s community colleges for helping him find his way forward... READ MORE