Author: Reporter

With a cheerful “soy Marcos,” Spanish for “I’m Mark,” Bishop Mark Seitz introduced himself to migrants eating soup in the shelter on the grounds of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, less than two miles from the Mexico-United States border. The migration crisis roiling the borderlands is literally in the backyard of the new chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration committee, a ministry started a century ago. Seitz will be the first border bishop to serve in this role in at least two decades; he says it will allow him to bring “a new energy to...

Since he began volunteering two months ago for weekend shifts at a clinic in one of this border city’s largest shelters, Dr. Brian Elmore has treated about 100 migrants for respiratory viruses and a handful of more serious emergencies. But it is a problem he has not yet managed to address that worries him the most – the worsening trauma that so many migrants carry after long journeys north that often involve witnessing murders and suffering from kidnappings and sexual assault. “Most of our patients have symptoms of PTSD — I want to initiate a screening for every patient,”...

President Joe Biden walked a muddy stretch of the Mexico-U.S. border and inspected a busy port of entry on January 8 during his first trip to the region after two years in office, a visit shadowed by the fraught politics of immigration as Republicans falsely blame him for an inflated number of migrants crossing into the country. At his first stop, the president observed as border officers in El Paso demonstrated how they search vehicles for drugs, money and other contraband. Next, he traveled to a dusty street with abandoned buildings and walked along a metal border fence that...

President Joe Biden is heading to the Mexico-U.S. border on January 8, his first trip there as president after two years of hounding by Republicans who have hammered him as soft on border security while the number of migrants crossing spirals. Biden is due to spend a few hours in El Paso, Texas, currently the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, due in large part to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries who are now subject to quick expulsion under new rules enacted by the Biden administration in the past...

It has been 90 years, but socialism is back in the Wisconsin Legislature. After taking their oaths of office on January 3, two freshman Assembly members made it their first order of business to revive a socialist caucus that has been dormant since the 1930s. As self-identified democratic socialists, a movement that has been regaining popularity in the U.S. with the help of young Democrats, Reps. Ryan Clancy and Darrin Madison plan to hold their own meetings to advance their policy goals while also caucusing with Assembly Democrats. In the Republican-controlled Legislature, however, the socialist caucus is a minority...

Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected House speaker on a historic post-midnight 15th ballot early on January 7, overcoming holdouts from his own ranks and floor tensions that boiled over after a chaotic week that tested the new GOP majority’s ability to govern. “My father always told me, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” McCarthy told cheering fellow Republicans. Eager to confront President Joe Biden and the Democrats, he promised subpoenas and investigations. “Now the hard work begins,” the California Republican declared. He credited former President Donald Trump for standing with him and for making late calls...