Mexican and U.S. authorities are pledging to prosecute those engaging in violence at the border, after a peaceful march in protest of long asylum processing times Sunday ended with a group of migrants breaking off and trying to cross and U.S. border patrol agents responding with tear gas.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Customs and Border Patrol personnel “were struck by projectiles thrown by caravan members,” and the agency said that prompted officers to use the tear gas “because of the risk to agents’ safety.”

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that authorities were able to contain a group of about 500 people who “in a violent manner” tried to cross the border near the San Ysidro crossing, and that those who are identified as participating would be immediately deported.

The statement said that in accordance with the Mexican government’s policy of respecting human rights and the non-criminalization of migration, it would not deploy military forces to control the migrants, but that it would reinforce the border points where people tried to break through.

The Tijuana government said officers arrested 39 people.

About 5,000 people — most of them from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — have gathered in Tijuana after traveling in caravans in search of asylum to escape poverty and violence in their homelands, and many are expressing frustration at long wait times for their cases to be heard. San Ysidro is the busiest U.S. land crossing, and authorities there currently process about 100 asylum seekers per day.

​The migrants’ arrival has been met by some opposition from people in Tijuana, where many shelters were already at capacity, and on the U.S. side of the border by increased security measures that include members of the military deployed there by President Donald Trump.

Amnesty International said what happened Sunday was predictable after Trump ordered the troops to the border and said he told them that if a migrant throws a rock, “consider it a rifle.”

“Families are frightened and soldiers are shooting tear gas at toddlers. We must choose to be better than this, and @realDonaldTrump expected nothing less when he deployed thousands of troops to the border with the order to shoot to kill,” Amnesty said on Twitter.

U.S. authorities closed the San Ysidro crossing to vehicle traffic in both directions as well as pedestrians for several hours before fully reopening late Sunday. About 100,000 people cross there each day.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said it is critical for leaders on both sides of the border to work together to “safely resolve the migrant crisis.”

“Our way of life relies on a safe, secure and functioning border,” he said. “From travel to shipping to daily commutes between San Diego and Tijuana, it is essential to our community.”

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum later tweeted a photo of himself with Faulconer and a similar message of regional unity, and said the people of Tijuana and San Diego “deserve all our effort.”

​Earlier Sunday, Gastelum said he will not allow bilateral relations to be broken by bad actions of the migrant caravan. 

“They are doing things outside of the law,” he wrote.

Gastelum has been outspoken against the migrants, and last week he declared a humanitarian crisis in his city as it struggles to accommodate them. Most of the migrants are being housed at a sports complex, where they face long wait times for food and bathrooms.

Trump has called on Mexico and countries farther to the south to take actions that would prevent such migrant caravans from ever reaching the U.S. border.

The Mexican Interior Ministry said Sunday that since October 19, it had sent nearly 2,000 Central Americans who were part of recent caravans back to their countries.

On Saturday, Trump said the migrants would not be allowed into the United States until a court approves their asylum claim, which would break from existing policy allowing asylum seekers to remain in the U.S. until an immigration judge hears their case.

But Mexico’s incoming government, which assumes power December 1, denied that it is willing to let U.S. asylum-seekers stay there pending the outcome of their cases in U.S. immigration courts, which could take years.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement. She ruled out that Mexico would become a “safe third country” for the migrants trying to reach the U.S.

Hours earlier, The Washington Post had quoted her as saying that the incoming administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution,” a plan dubbed “Remain in Mexico.”
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When Dan Katt opened Good City Brewing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2016 – a presidential election year – a trade war between the Trump administration and China was the furthest thing from his mind.

“I don’t think we even contemplated that that administration would exist,” he told VOA.

He also didn’t consider how one decision in particular – canning his beer for distribution instead of bottling it – would challenge his business growth. 

“We always planned to can our products. I don’t think we necessarily expected to have our single biggest expense – packaging materials – to be affected by tariffs.”

Katt’s cans are made of aluminum, and much of his supply comes from China. It’s now subject to a 10 percent tariff.

“The price of aluminum is a concern. When we buy, we buy in lots of about 215,000 cans at a time,” says Katt. “When we go back to market, which we’ll be doing very soon, we expect to see a price increase on cans.” 

The Trump administration imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to bolster U.S. producers of those metals and protect U.S. jobs in those industries. The tariffs are starting to impact many other segments of the U.S. economy, including the growing craft beer industry, that need aluminum and steel to make their products. 

President Donald Trump says the tariffs are working.

“We have taken historic action to bring back American jobs by cracking down on China’s very abusive trade practices, but that’s going to work out, taking in billions and billions of taxes from China – never happened before, but they want to make a deal and that’s good,” he told a large crowd of supporters at one of his final mid-term election rallies in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on November 5.

A U.S. Treasury Department report supports his views, showing government revenues from tariffs are up over 30 percent this year over last.

But Brian Kuehl disagrees with the president. 

“Tariffs are taxes on American citizens. When we put tariffs on steel and aluminum, it drives up the cost of steel and aluminum in the United States,” says Kuehl. He is executive director for Farmers for Free Trade, a nonpartisan group chaired by former Republican Senator Richard Lugar and Democratic Senator Max Baucus. Farmers for Free Trade is campaigning against the tariffs. 

“Farmers for Free Trade was founded to have a long-term vision about trade and speaking about trade regardless of who is in the White House,” says Kuehl, who argues that the tariffs do more harm than good to the U.S. economy.

For that reason, the group has launched a nationwide “Tariffs Hurt the Heartland” campaign. It includes an $800,000 multimedia advertising blitz as well as hosting public events across the country, profiling the negative impact of tariffs. 

During an event in Wisconsin, Dan Katt represented one of several businesses hurt by the trade dispute.

“We don’t think that the current trade war with China is going in the right direction,” says Kuehl. “We think it’s increasing costs for U.S. manufacturers, it’s increasing costs for U.S. farmers, and it’s decreasing export opportunities. We’re causing long-term damage to American agriculture and our ability to compete in foreign markets.”

A foreign market Dan Katt’s Good City Brewing doesn’t currently export to, but depends on not only for the aluminum to package his product, but also for steel used in the equipment that makes the beer.

“On a more significant level, we expect to see equipment prices – stainless steel – go up significantly,” he explained, standing in front of large shiny vats where the beer is brewed. “We do buy equipment, stainless steel, that comes through China. So that’s a concern for us as we look at continued growth and increased capacity.”

Good City Brewing is one of about 75 such companies now in Wisconsin, a state with a long history of beer production. Katt says his company will continue to grow regardless of the short-term impact of the tariffs, but he hopes the U.S. and China can reach an agreement on trade before he has no choice but to pass on the increased costs to those he needs most for his new and growing business to prosper: his customers.
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U.S. Department of Defense officials say a 25-year-old soldier from Leavenworth, Washington, was killed during combat operations in Afghanistan.

Army Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso died Saturday in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, while supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Loren Bymer said Sunday that Jasso was wounded by small arms fire and was immediately treated and evacuated to the nearest medical treatment facility, where he died of his wounds.

The incident is under investigation.

Jasso was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

He was on his third deployment to Afghanistan after enlisting in the Army in 2012.

Lt. Col. Rob McChrystal, Commander 2nd Battalion, said Jasso was a humble professional who will be deeply missed.

 
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State fire officials say the Camp Fire, which has killed at least 85 people in northern California, is 100 percent contained Sunday.

The Camp Fire has scorched nearly 62,000 hectares of land and destroyed more than 13,600 homes since it broke out November 8.

In the wake of what has been called the deadliest wildfire in California history, 249 people are still reported as missing north of San Francisco. Authorities have refrained from publicly estimating how many of the missing might have perished, but some who lived through the blaze have said the death toll will keep rising.

Rescuers are combing debris with rakes looking for clues about people who have been reported missing. More than 800 volunteers were out searching Friday.

A separate fire in Southern California that struck Malibu killed another three people. More residents in the Malibu area were allowed to return home Friday as crews worked to repair power, telephone and gas lines.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump implored Mexico and Central American countries Sunday to halt the stream of migrants heading to the United States, even as Mexico denied his claim it was willing to allow U.S. asylum-seekers to stay there until their cases were decided by American immigration courts.

“Would be very SMART,” Trump said on Twitter, “if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer).”

He claimed opposition Democrats “created this problem. No crossings!”

Trump said late Saturday that migrants at the southern U.S. border – most of them from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — “will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S.”

He added, “All will stay in Mexico. If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!”

But Mexico’s incoming government, which assumes power next Saturday, denied that that it is willing to let U.S. asylum-seekers stay there pending the outcome of their cases in U.S. immigration courts.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement. She ruled out that Mexico would become a “safe third country” for the migrants trying to reach the U.S.

Hours earlier, however, The Washington Post quoted her as saying that the incoming administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution,” a plan dubbed “Remain in Mexico.”

The White House said, “President Trump has developed a strong relationship with the incoming [Lopez] Obrador Administration, and we look forward to working with them on a wide range of issues.”

During the campaign for U.S. congressional elections in early November, Trump decried what he claimed was an “invasion” of immigrants trekking though Mexico toward the United States and dispatched several thousand U.S. troops to the border to block their path.

About 5,000 Central American migrants, many of them attempting to escape poverty and violence in their homelands, have arrived in recent days to Tijuana, just south of the western U.S. state of California, after making their way through Mexico via caravan.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city, which is struggling to accommodate the migrants. Most of the migrants are being housed at a sports complex, where they face long wait times for food and bathrooms.

Trump ordered that immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, other than through a normal port of entry, would be ineligible for asylum. But a U.S. judge temporarily suspended the order, a decision attacked by Trump.

 
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Polish national prosecutors said Sunday that they are dropping a criminal investigation into a reporter for a U.S.-owned broadcaster on suspicions of propagating fascism for having gone undercover to film neo-Nazis.

TVN, owned by Discovery, broadcast undercover footage in January that showed members of a Polish neo-Nazi group celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday in a forest in 2017.

The private broadcaster reported that agents with Poland’s Internal Security Agency on Friday evening visited the home of the cameraman who had gone undercover, Piotr Wacowski, and gave him the summons to appear in the investigation.

TVN said on Saturday that it considered the state action “an attempt to intimidate journalists,” and other commentators also criticized the move as an attack on media freedom.

On Sunday, national prosecutors issued a statement saying that it was “premature to prosecute the TVN operator” and that it was moving the investigation from the local prosecutor’s office in Gliwice to another city, Katowice.

The move against Wacowski comes amid rising concerns about the state of media freedom in Poland, where the populist ruling party has turned tax-funded public media into a propaganda tool and is looking for a way to limit foreign ownership of media companies. TVN has been critical of the government and is seen as particularly vulnerable.

The ruling party, Law and Justice, has faced international condemnation for a string of moves seen as un-democratic — from a Holocaust speech law passed this year, which was seen as an attack on freedom of speech and academic inquiry, to attempts to take control of the courts.

U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher warned Polish authorities last week that any attempt to restrict media freedom would harm the U.S.-Polish relationship.

TVN was bought for $2 billion by the U.S. company Scripps Networks Interactive, making it the largest U.S. investment ever in Poland. Scripps has since been bought by Discovery, Inc., which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Last year, Poland’s media regulator slapped TVN with a fine of nearly 1.5 million zlotys ($395,000 at today’s exchange rate) for what it alleged to be biased coverage of anti-government protests, a move some saw as an attack on media freedom. The regulator called it a “warning” to commercial TV stations, though in the end the fine was rescinded.

The party has also been making conciliatory moves toward extremist right-wing groups. On the Nov. 11 Independence Day holiday, top officials marched in Warsaw with far-right groups. Government officials have also publicly attacked independent monitors of xenophobia who have noted a rise of hate speech over the past year.  

 
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