Border News

A federal immigration panel has granted political asylum to a man kidnapped from his African village as a child and forced to fight as a soldier in Uganda’s civil war. The decision put a stop to the government’s four-year effort to deport him. Bernard Lukwago said he escaped from the rebel group fighting against the Ugandan government and used a fake passport to travel to Germany, the Netherlands and ultimately the United States. Immigration agents detained Lukwago immediately upon his arrival and held him for two years while his asylum application was processed. He was ordered deported twice before a federal appeals court ordered the immigration panel to review his case.

Lukwago, now 21, said he is afraid he would have been killed if returned to his country, and the insurgent group that took him is still fighting in northern Uganda, where human rights groups say thousands of children have been kidnapped to use as soldiers or sex slaves.

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When a man speeding at 90 mph along a popular smuggling route in southern Arizona lost control of his car and flipped into a ditch, the undocumented-immigrant death toll hit 146, making this the state’s deadliest year on record. This summer, migrants crossing into Arizona have died at a rate of almost one per day, many of them suffering dehydration and heat exposure in remote stretches of desert.

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The Texas Legislature has passed a bill making human trafficking a second-degree to first-degree felony, punishable by a maximum penalty of life in prison. The new law also makes it a misdemeanor to transport a person inside a trailer. The bill’s authors said they wrote the legislation in response to the deaths of 19 undocumented immigrants found dead in a tractor-trailer near Victoria, Texas, earlier this year, in what was the deadliest case of human smuggling in U.S. history.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned 279 smuggled Pre-Columbian artifacts to the Honduran Ambassador last week at the Honduran Embassy in Washington, D.C. Acting Assistant Secretary Michael Garcia said the artifacts, including ornate figurines, bowls and pottery made by the Mayan culture between 600 and 900 AD, were purchased in Honduras and smuggled into the United States in 1998. Last year, a shopkeeper from Ohio and a Guatemalan national were indicted and successfully prosecuted in connection with the smuggling effort.

“These items are not souvenirs to be sold to the highest bidder, but cultural treasures that belong to the people of Honduras. I am pleased to return these precious items to their rightful owners,” Garcia said.