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CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — Hundreds of Central American migrants crossed the Guatemala-Mexico border at dawn Thursday without resistance and began walking up a rural highway.

Some carried banners arguing that migrants were not the problem, but rather the result of poor governing.

It was a resurgence of a migrant caravan that had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican National Guardsmen posted along Suchiate river, which forms the border here.

Mexico began flying and busing members of the caravan back to Honduras on Tuesday.

Seven more buses left Mexico for Honduras on Wednesday, carrying 240 migrants back home, and two flights left with an additional 220 Hondurans, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said. By Wednesday, the number of people outside the Casa del Migrante in Tecun Uman was perhaps half of what it was at its peak Sunday night.

In previous caravans, Mexican authorities have allowed caravans to walk for awhile, seemingly to tire them out, and then closed their path.

The Associated Press

Hundreds of Central American migrants crossed the river into Mexico from Guatemala Thursday after a dayslong standoff with security forces.

Carrying US and Honduran flags at the head of the procession, they walked along a highway toward a waiting contingent of dozens of national guardsmen with riot shields and body armor and vans from the National Immigration Institute.

Jose Luis Morales, a Salvadoran leader of the caravan, said the migrants want to negotiate to be allowed to pass peacefully.

But Mexico has cracked down on the large caravans seen previously following intense pressure from Washington last year.

Thursday's movement was a resurgence of a migrant caravan that had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican National Guardsmen posted along Suchiate river, which forms the border here.

The national guardsmen awaited the caravan outside the community of Frontera Hidalgo, near Ciudad Hidalgo where the migrants crossed the Suchiate river at dawn.

Mexico began flying and busing members of the caravan back to Honduras on Tuesday.

Seven more buses left Mexico for Honduras on Wednesday, carrying 240 migrants back home, and two flights left with an additional 220 Hondurans, Mexico's National Immigration Institute said.

By Wednesday, the number of people outside the Casa del Migrante in Tecun Uman was perhaps half of what it was at its peak Sunday night.

In previous caravans, Mexican authorities have allowed caravans to walk for awhile, seemingly to tire them out, and then closed their path.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Dunbrody Archers turned out in force on Hook Head in Co Wexford on Wednesday to participate in a ceremony going back more than 300 years.

Chair of New Ross District Municipal Council, Cllr John Fleming explained the origin of the tradition of firing an arrow into the sea from the rocks beneath the world’s oldest operational lighthouse.

“The tradition dates from 1687 when the Mayor and the corporation of New Ross Town Council claimed their authority over the waters by travelling to Hook and shooting an arrow into the sea from Hook Head Lighthouse.”

Cllr Fleming explained that the Mayor of New Ross, casting the arrow into the sea symbolises the port of New Ross’s authority over the estuary of the Barrow and the Suir all the way down to Hook Head.

The members of Dunbrody Archers, founded in 2004 and now one of the largest archery clubs nationally, assisted Cllr Fleming in “the arrow ceremony” by unleashing a volley of arrows into the air at the historic lighthouse.

Cllr Fleming explained that Hook Head is renowned as the oldest intact working lighthouse in the world, dating from the fifth century when local monks lit fires on the headland to keep the ships at sea safe.

“Hook Lighthouse was built by the knight, Sir William Marshal and he also built the port town of New Ross along with Kilkenny Castle, Ferns Castle, Tintern Abbey and many other historical gems in the area,” he said.

“He married Isabel De Clare the daughter of Strongbow and Aoife and they became quite the medieval ‘power couple’ and it is thought that he built Hook Lighthouse to guide ships safely to his port town of New Ross.”

“The Hook Lighthouse tour incorporates 115 steps to the top of the lighthouse tower and features holograms illustrating the ancient history of the tower and the Hook area and spectacular views of the southern coast.”

Attorney General Dale Marshall is encouraging former owners of the Liquidation Centre building on Bay Street, The City to take possession of the items being stored if they were concerned about theft.

This advice comes on the heels of reports that some of the items that were removed from the building several weeks ago were stolen.

Confirming the report and without giving detail, Marshall told journalists on Tuesday that the stolen items have since been recovered.

“It is regrettable that would have happened. A report was made to me that there was an incident that the area where the things were being stored was broken into. I think the security measures have been upped so as to eliminate that. The things that were stolen have been recovered,” he said.

“So the sooner Mrs Ram takes possession of her belongings, the better for all of us. They are her things. We have moved them out, they are still her things. So she needs to come and take possession of them. Plain and simple,” added Marshall.

Government has compulsory acquired the Bay Street property, owned by prominent businesswoman Asha Mrs Ram Mirchandani, to facilitate construction of a Hyatt Hotel on that stretch of beachfront land.

During the week of November 18, the Ministry of Housing, with the assistance of the Royal Barbados Police Force, took possession of the Liquidation Centre building and subsequently began the process of removing and storing millions of dollars in stock.

This came shortly after Mirchandani held a ‘kick-me-out sale’ in an effort to get rid of some of the merchandise.

Maria Lopez spotted him at a bachata class. He checked off all her boxes. Superb dancer. Smart — he had an engineering degree. Tall, dark and handsome.

After a month of dating, he revealed he was in the country illegally. She too lacked legal status, though she had the relative protection of being in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Wordlessly, they pumped the brakes on their relationship.

Being without legal status under the umbrella of DACA has always been a risky proposition. Deportation always lurked in the background.

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But now that the program is under threat from an unfriendly White House — and currently at the mercy of a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court — life for its beneficiaries has become cloudier.

In May, Lopez, a 25-year-old San Jose resident, launched an Instagram account called YTienePapeles? (AndDoesHeHavePapers?)

The page is her attempt “to heal through humor,” she said. Sometimes she’ll create memes about crushing on people without legal status. One post pictured a crying toddler next to text that read: “When you find out your crush no tiene papeles.” Other times she’ll post syrupy sayings: “Unlike DACA, my love for you is permanent.”

The memes are relatable, Lopez said. “If you are undocumented and in the dating scene, you will definitely encounter this.”

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Relationships can provide a sense of security and comfort, but the uncertainty of DACA’s future can leave so-called Dreamers feeling just a bit more unsettled about the pursuit of them, said Harvard sociologist Roberto Gonzales.

“In our research, we’ve seen DACA beneficiaries victimized by partners who use their fragile status and their families’ status against them,” Gonzales said.

“Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America,” Gonzales’ book based on a 12-year project following 150 young people around the L.A. area, found that immigrants often felt their legal status could drive wedges into relationships.

Lopez, for example, had begun dating one young man in 2011 — a year before she joined the DACA program. He was the son of immigrants, Lopez said, who had legalized their status in the U.S.

After six years, around the time that President Trump announced his intention to wind down DACA, their relationship soured. Lopez said she did not expect to get married right away, but wanted to know if it was in the couple’s future. When she pressed her boyfriend, Lopez said, he asked: “Is citizenship the reason you want to be with me?”

And that was that.

Said Andrea Simon-Martinez, a 26-year-old DACA recipient who lives in New York: “Telling someone you’re undocumented, it’s like peeling off a Band-Aid, you want to do it sooner rather than later.”

Simon-Martinez was born in Mexico and was 6 years old when she overstayed her tourist visa. She said dating and looking for a serious partner takes a toll. In February 2018, she wrote a post about the anxiety of dating while “DACA-mented.”

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“I never know when to bring it up in conversations, and then it makes me feel like I’m leading them on,” she wrote. “It makes me feel like I’m being deceitful and keeping a big part of me hidden away.”

Juan Pacheco Marcial, a 23-year-old DACA recipient who attends Cal State Monterey Bay, said his legal status keeps him from dating seriously. He makes sure not to get too attached because of a feeling in his gut that, one day, he will be deported. And he won’t date another DACA recipient or person without legal status.

“When I date someone, I don’t see a future with them because I don’t even see a future for myself,” he said. “Of ... having a happy ending here in the United States.”

Marcial said he does not want children because of the cloud over his presence in the country. He said it’s the reason he broke up with a girlfriend who was a citizen.

“I feel that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I were to have a child and I were, for some reason, to get kicked out of this country and not be able to come back,” he said.

Jose Guevara-Johnson, left, and his husband, Stephen Guevara-Johnson, have breakfast at Antigua Bread in Los Angeles. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

“We’ve been through a really hard thing that most couples have not gone through at our age and made it out successfully,” Stephen Guevara-Johnson said. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

A year ago, Jose Guevara, 25, and Stephen Johnson, 29, got married.

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Guevara is a DACA recipient who was brought to the U.S. from El Salvador at age 10. Johnson was born and raised in a conservative Baptist family in North Carolina.

They met online two years ago. Guevara said he was upfront from the start — laying out his “baggage.”

“I have cancer and I’m a DACA recipient,” he revealed.

Johnson, whose work involves community organizing, said it didn’t bother him. After a couple of months of dating, Guevara was hospitalized and underwent treatment for leukemia — which he’s battled off and on since he was 15.

The possible end of DACA worried the couple. Guevara feared returning to El Salvador, partly because homophobia is prevalent there. But he felt he was becoming a burden to Johnson, who wanted to marry.

“It’s a lot of labor to love someone who is a DACA recipient,” Guevara said. “We are at the will of the government.”

But Johnson was determined.

“We’ve been through a really hard thing that most couples have not gone through at our age and made it out successfully,” Johnson said. “If we can make it through that, we can make it through anything.”

They are now legally the Guevara-Johnsons.

In San Francisco, Tony K. Choi said he would like to be able to love and date on his own terms.

A DACA recipient who is a creative writer for Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, Choi said his legal status is always part of the life calculations he makes.

“Marriage and immigration status are intrinsically linked to my romantic life,” the 31-year-old said.

Choi, who came to the U.S. from South Korea on a tourist visa at age 9, realizes marriage to a U.S. citizen is probably his best option for staying in the country, but he’s “incredibly millennial” and not looking to wed anytime soon.

Still, he said, he avoids dating DACA recipients or men who are in the country illegally. He had a crush on a man without legal status, but he willed himself to make a cold calculation.

“What is there to gain from this relationship?” Choi said.

Some DACA recipients said they’ve received marriage proposals from close friends who want to help. Others feel pressure from parents, other family members or older immigrants who repeatedly tell them to fall in love and marry someone who has legal status.

Lopez still remembers how, when she was 6, her grandmother sat her down and told her: “You have to marry someone with papers.”

“At 6, you don’t even know what that means,” Lopez said.

A few weeks ago, she posted a meme on Instagram with a picture of a distraught and teary-eyed SpongeBob SquarePants surrounded with bursting red hearts. The text read: “When you gotta end [it] with your favorite undocu-novio.”

RALEIGH — The federal judge who blocked the newest version of North Carolina’s voter identification law cited the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression” as she ordered officials not to enforce the law in 2020.

U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs’ decision was released Tuesday and prevents North Carolina from requiring voters to provide identification starting in 2020. The Republican leaders of the state House and Senate, however, have asked North Carolina’s Department of Justice to appeal.

The federal court advised last week that Biggs would formally block the photo ID requirement until a lawsuit filed by state NAACP and others is resolved. Her decision provided insight into why she blocked the law, which she said was similar to a 2013 law that a federal appeals court struck down in 2016.

That court said the photo ID and other voter restrictions were approved with intentional racial discrimination in mind, and Biggs said the newest version of the law was no different in that respect.

“North Carolina has a sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression stretching back to the time of slavery, through the era of Jim Crow, and, crucially, continuing up to the present day,” Biggs wrote.

Legislators received a breakdown of voter behavior by race before passing the 2016 law and used that data to target African American voters, the court wrote in striking down that law. The defendants said there’s no evidence of similar behavior before the most recent voter ID law.

But the same key lawmakers championed both bills, Biggs wrote. “ … they need not had racial data in hand to still have it in mind,” the ruling says.

The approval of the new version, known as S.B. 824, was “procedurally unobjectional,” Biggs wrote. But its closeness in time to the previous version; the fact that many of the same legislators were involved in both bills; the use of “unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps” and other issues “indicate that something was amiss,” she wrote.

The legislative history of the bill, including statements from its supporters, show that “rather than trying to cleanse the discriminatory taint” imbued in the previous voter ID law, lawmakers tried to circumvent state and federal courts, she wrote.

The photo ID law would have been effective with the March 3 primary. But the requirement would have been put into motion sooner than that with mail-in absentee voters, who also would have had to provide an ID copy.

The Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the North Carolina conference of the NAACP, said he was “overjoyed” by Biggs’ decision.

“Quite frankly, tears are coming to my eyes as I read the decision,” he said. Biggs’ “strong language is so appropriate” as the nation approaches the 2020 elections, Spearman said.

“I hope it is something that will encourage people who have not exercised their right to vote to cast their votes,” he said.

After losing one court battle over voter ID, Republicans put a question on the November 2018 ballot enshrining voter ID in the state constitution. The amendment passed with 55% of the vote. The legislature approved a separate law in December 2018 detailing how to implement that amendment. Legal challenges were filed almost immediately.

GOP legislators said they had to enact an ID law because voters had approved one. But Biggs, who was appointed to the bench in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, said the constitutional amendment was a cover for legislators that allowed them to present themselves as “faithful servants whose hands were tied.”

The argument that lawmakers had to pass this particular bill falls short, she wrote. “While the legislature may had to pass some form of photo voter-ID law, it did not have to enact one which suffers from impermissible defects,” she wrote.

The law did allow for more types of IDs to be used and allowed voters to get a free ID card or fill out a form explaining their “reasonable impediment” to obtaining one.

But legislators rejected an amendment allowing the use of public assistance IDs, which Biggs described as “particularly suspect.”

Republican legislators have urged the state DOJ to seek a stay of the temporary injunction, saying Biggs’ ruling was “inappropriate.”

Their attorneys sent a letter Monday saying it’s “imperative that you seek a stay of Judge Biggs’ injunction immediately to avoid irreparable harm to the state.”

A state DOJ spokeswoman didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the lawmakers’ request.

Jason Holder has been rested from West Indies' squad for the first two ODIs against Ireland, to be played in Barbados on January 7 and 9. This is the only change from the most recent ODI squad that completed a tour of India last month, with its strength dropping from 15 to 14.

"The decision was taken to rest Jason due to the heavy workload he has had over the last year," chief selector Roger Harper said in a statement. "With an important year ahead for West Indies cricket, we saw this as the best opportunity to give him a break to recharge his batteries and refresh his mind so he could be ready to perform at his best as our Test captain throughout 2020, as the number one ranked all-rounder in Test cricket and an important member of the team in the white ball formats."

The lack of major changes in the squad reflects West Indies' gains from their India tour. They lost both the ODI and T20I series against India by 2-1 margins, but pushed the hosts hard, with a number of the younger players showing promise for the future. Before that, the team played a full series against Afghanistan in India, completing a 3-0 ODI sweep and winning the solitary Test but losing 2-1 in the T20Is.

"The Afghanistan and Indian series told me that the team is making very positive strides," Harper said. "Winning the ODIs against Afghanistan, our first ODI series win for five years, followed by the very competitive performance in against India is testament to that. The team demonstrated a determination to compete and gave it every effort.

"Against India the batting was consistent and while the bowling had its moments, it is clear that we have to improve our 'death' bowling. However, the fact that the team played in such an organised and competitive manner consistently augurs well going forward.

"This series against Ireland offers us the opportunity to build on the performances in India, build confidence as a team and for individual players. Just like the series against Afghanistan, the Ireland series is an important one for us, one we must win."

The ODI series against Ireland, which concludes with the third match in Grenada on January 12, will be followed by three T20Is in Grenada (January 15) and St Kitts (January 18 and 19).

West Indies ODI squad: Kieron Pollard (capt), Sunil Ambris, Roston Chase, Sheldon Cottrell, Shimron Hetmyer, Shai Hope, Alzarri Joseph, Brandon King, Evin Lewis, Keemo Paul, Khary Pierre, Nicholas Pooran, Romario Shepherd, Hayden Walsh

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