Migrants break Guatemalan border gate, force their way into Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities said a group of about 350 migrants broke the locks on a gate at the Guatemalan border Friday and forced their way into southern Mexico to join a larger group of migrants trying to make their way toward the United States. The National Immigration Institute did not identify the nationalities of the migrants, but they are usually from Central America. A similar confrontation occurred on the same border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala last year.

The institute said the migrants were acting in a "hostile" and "aggressive" way, and accused them of also attacking local police in Metapa, a Mexican village that lies between the border and the nearby city of Tapachula. The group of 350 pushed past police guarding the bridge and joined a larger group of about 2,000 migrants who are walking toward Tapachula in the latest caravan to enter Mexico.

Claudia Jaqueline Sandoval, 43, from El Progreso, Honduras, was walking toward Tapachula with her 6-year-old daughter. Another son and a daughter are already in the United States. "I have been HIV positive for 16 years," said Sandoval, but her reason for going north was not just medical treatment. "It has been two years since I heard from my son" in the United States, and money is scarce, she said.

There are already several groups of migrants in the southern border state of Chiapas who have expressed frustration at Mexico's policy of slowing or stopping the process of handing out humanitarian and exit visas at the border. A group of several hundred Cuban, African and Central American migrants have been waiting at the immigration offices in Tapachula for documents that would allow them to travel to the U.S. border, where most plan to request asylum.

Some members of that group have scuffled with immigration authorities and broken windows at the offices in recent days, accusing officials of making them wait too long for papers. And another group of an estimated 2,500 Central American and Cuban migrants have been stuck for at least a week further west in the Chiapas town of Mapastepec, also waiting for papers.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/migrants-break-guatemalan-border-gate-force-their-way-into-mexico

Saudi Arabia Bankrolling Haftar's Bid To Seize All Of Libya

“Haftar would not be a player today without the foreign support he has received,” a Libyan affairs expert told The Wall Street Journal in a new lengthy profile of the Benghazi-based General Khalifa Haftar, whose Libyan National Army (LNA) is advancing this week on Tripoli. As Haftar consolidated power over much of the country's war ravaged east, also making huge gains in the past year over the south, he's all along enjoyed the political backing of an unlikely assortment of powerful countries that include the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France, and Russia. But the new WSJ report reveals his latest major external backer with endlessly deep pockets: ''Days before Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to seize the capital and attempt to unite the divided country under his rule, Saudi Arabia promised tens of millions of dollars to help pay for the operation, according to senior advisers to the Saudi government.''

Citing senior Saudi officials, the report reveals further the offer came during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, as part of a broader trip which took Haftar to European capitals where the perception was that the renegade general now militarily challenging the UN-backed Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) was crucial to negotiating a lasting power sharing settlement between the eastern and western halves of the country. The diplomatic meetings bolstered his status and resolve to take the whole country, even as lately the US and EU have vehemently called on him to halt the LNA's military advance, which lately included airstrikes on suburbs of Tripoli. But apparently, the Saudis and possibly other backers are actually funding the assault on Tripoli, and further securing weaponry. The WSJ continues: ''Mr. Haftar accepted the recent Saudi offer of funds, according to the senior Saudi advisers, who said the money was intended for buying the loyalty of tribal leaders, recruiting and paying fighters, and other military purposes. “We were quite generous,” one of the advisers said. The report also notes that with his so far rapid advance west, more previously reluctant European officials are jumping on the Haftar train. As we noted previously, "Libya's incoming strongman will send the oil out to Europe, and keep its migrants in." But the Saudis only very recently emerged as apparently Haftar's prime backer, putting into motion the bloody battle for Tripoli that has now been on for a week. The WSJ reports that Haftar's March trip to Riyadh included a key meeting with crown prince MbS: The following day, on March 27, he was welcomed in Riyadh by Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Undisclosed by the Saudi government at the time, he also met Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, along with Saudi Arabia’s interior minister and intelligence chief, according to two Saudi officials.''

And now the question remains, if the Saudis are now so aggressively backing him, will Washington be next to officially jump on the bandwagon? It should be noted that the likelihood is that he's already long been the CIA's man in Libya. What's not often stated outright is that Haftar is an American citizen, as recounted in a CNN profile this week: "Haftar is, to be polite, the ultimate pragmatist. He supported Moammar Gadhafi in his 1969 coup, then found himself in Langley, Virginia in the 90s where he gained US citizenship, before returning to overthrow Gadhafi in the 2011 conflict." While in exile in the US he lived a mere minutes from CIA headquarters: "As a military commander, Mr. Haftar broke with Ghaddafi in the 1980s and became part of a C.I.A.-backed effort to destabilize the Libyan regime. He then spent two decades in exile in the U.S., before returning to join the rebellion in 2011," according to the WSJ report.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/saudi-arabia-bankrolling-haftars-bid-seize-all-libya

>>6162502

I agree, they tend to shoot first ask questions later. Also it's not like these people have weapons, otherwise we would have heard something of them using them. Interesting how helpless they can be when they think it benefits them.