Migrants left stranded in troubled resort as Mexico disperses them far from US border

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Migrants left stranded in troubled resort as Mexico disperses them far from US border

2025-01-08 03:51 Last Updated At：10:41

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

After walking for a couple weeks through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to Acapulco with the idea they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck on Monday.

Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place.

The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the center of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and last year succeeded in significantly reducing the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.

Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give them some defense from Trump’s pressures, said Guillen, who left the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.

Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.

On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the final hours of their holiday beach vacations while migrants slept in the street or tried to find ways to resume their journeys north.

“Immigration (officials) told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets. They won’t sell us anything.”

Castañeda, like thousands of other migrants, had left the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than a half dozen caravans of about 1,500 migrants each have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them made it very far.

Authorities let them walk for days until they’re exhausted and then offer to bus them to various cities where they say their immigration status will be reviewed, which could mean any number of things.

Some have landed in Acapulco, where about a dozen sleep at a Catholic church near the immigration agency offices.

Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday looking for information, but no one would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was desperate to leave, picked a van driver he judged to be the most trustworthy among various offering rides for up to five times the normal price for a bus ticket to Mexico City

Some migrants have discovered the permits authorities give them allow them to travel only within the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Other migrants have better luck.

On Sunday, the latest migrant caravan broke up after hundreds received free transit permits to go anywhere in Mexico for a specified number of days.

Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband were among them.

“We’re a little scared by the lack of safety getting on buses, that they’re going to stop us,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels frequently target migrants for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort them too.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus, and has allowed more migrants to leave southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates note that migrants are being taken to violent areas.

It’s a concern shared by the Rev. Leonardo Morales, the priest at the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration agency office.

He said that in November two or three immigration agency buses arrived with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend, two more arrived carrying all adults.

Even though Acapulco isn’t on the usual migration route and was unprepared to receive migrants, several priests have coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they’re going through a very difficult time, with a lot of needs, they arrive without money,” Morales said.

Migrants quickly realize that finding work in Acapulco is difficult. After Otis’ destruction, the federal government sent hundreds of soldiers and National Guard troops to provide security and start reconstruction. Last year, another storm, John, brought widespread flooding.

But violence in Acapulco hasn’t relented.

Acapulco has one of Mexico’s highest rates of homicides. Cab drivers and small business owners complain – anonymously – of rising extortion. Large companies have balked at rebuilding under the current circumstances.

Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have escaped the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.

“To an extent they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to (Mexico City) for work” or other places like Monterrey, an industrial city in the north with more work opportunities.

Now he doesn’t know what to do.

Associated Press writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.

California governor says Pacific Palisades wildfire has destroyed many structures as winds kick up

2025-01-08 10:27 Last Updated At：10:40

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A wildfire whipped up by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity residences Tuesday, burning homes and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, some of whom abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was in Southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by President Joe Biden, made a detour to the canyon to see “firsthand the impact of these swirling winds and the embers,” and he said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed.”

Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said about 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures were under threat.

And the worst could be yet to come. The blaze began around 10:30 a.m., shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the National Weather service warned could be “life threatening” and the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade. The exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported, officials said.

The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

“By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods," Newsom warned residents, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday. He declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday evening, 28,300 households were without power due to the strong winds, according to the mayor’s office. About 15,000 utility customers in Southern California had their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blaze. A half a million customers total were at risk of losing power preemptively.

The fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.

Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up.

Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.”

An Associated Press video journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood, which borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA, includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

An AP photographer saw multi-million dollar mansions on fire as helicopters overhead dropped water loads. Roads were clogged in both directions as evacuees fled down toward the Pacific Coast Highway while others begged for rides back up to their homes to rescue pets. Two of the homes on fire were inside exclusive gated communities.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school when he heard the fire was nearby. Meanwhile, he said embers flew into his wife's car as she tried to evacuate.

“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never witnessed anything like this in the 56 years he’s lived there. He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.

“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate. … I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”

The erratic weather caused Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. He remained in Los Angeles, where smoke was visible from his hotel, and was briefed on the wildfires. The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a grant to help reimburse California for the firefighting cost.

Some trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa were burned by late Tuesday, but staff and the museum collection remain safe, Getty President Katherine Fleming said in a statement. The museum located on the eastern end of the Pacific Palisades is a separate campus of the world-famous Getty Museum that focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.

Film studios canceled two movie premieres due to the fire and windy weather, and the Los Angeles Unified School District said it temporarily relocated students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season. Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May.

Watson reported from San Diego and Har from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Christopher Weber and video journalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.