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Migrants wait to be transported by border patrol to a detention center in Eagle Pass Texas, USA.

Reuters

White House prepares for migrant surge

The Biden administration is preparing to deploy an additional 1,500 troops to the US southern border for 90 days as it anticipates an influx of migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border. This comes ahead of next week’s lifting of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that has allowed the US to refuse to process asylum claims on public health grounds.

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Haitian migrants trek through the Darien Gap towards the border with Panama.

Reuters

Hard Numbers: Record Darién Gap crossings, Kazakhstan rolls up red carpet, scores face possible execution in Iran, India to judge “fakes”

250,000: Last year, a record 250,000 migrants crossed the harrowing Darién Gap between Colombia and Panamá, nearly twice as many as the year before. Venezuelan nationals accounted for 150,000 of those crossings. In a bid to lower these numbers, the Biden administration in October said it would accept 24,000 preregistered Venezuelan migrants at airports but would reject those who arrive illegally.

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U.S. President Joe Biden with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: Biden in Mexico, Japan's Kishida on tour, Ukraine’s eastern flank

What’s on the agenda at the “Three Amigos Summit”?

A meeting of North American leaders known as the "Three Amigos Summit" kicked off in Mexico City on Monday with US President Joe Biden, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, set to meet face-to-face for the first time since Nov. 2021 to chart a path forward on a range of thorny issues. Biden was greeted by his Mexican counterpart a day after making his first visit to the US southern border since becoming president. Indeed, the two have plenty to talk about. While Washington usually calls the shots when it comes to the US-Mexico relationship, AMLO will be looking to earn some concessions from Biden, who is desperately seeking help in dealing with a chaotic situation at the US southern border. This comes after Biden announced in recent days that Mexico had agreed to take in tens of thousands of Nicaraguan, Haitian, and Cuban migrants denied entry into the US in exchange for more work visas for Mexican laborers. Still, the White House might ask for more: While AMLO has agreed to take in an extra 30,000 migrants per month from these countries (plus Venezuela), some 90,000 people from these four places sought to cross the US southern border in November alone. Stopping the drug smuggling trade from Mexico into the US will also be high on the agenda as fentanyl overdoses continue to devastate American communities. Much of the remaining conversation will center on the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal: Ottawa and Washington have accused AMLO of exerting excessive state control over the energy market. Meanwhile, Canada-US ties have been strained since the Biden administration’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, passed last summer, included a slew of tax breaks for buying US-made electric vehicles, which Ottawa says will cripple its car manufacturing industry.

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally in Conroe, Texas.

Reuters

What We're Watching: Trump's tax returns set to go public, Japan stuns markets, Biden braces for migrant surge, India raises China alarm

Trump's tax returns set to be released

The House Ways and Means Committee voted yesterday to release Donald Trump's tax returns from 2015-2020 — a move the former president’s team has characterized as a politically motivated attack by Democrats in the House, who are set to lose their majority when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. It may be days before all the filings go public, but committee members revealed late Tuesday that the IRS failed to audit Trump during his first two years as president. A report issued late Tuesday also highlighted some information from the filings, including that Trump had positive taxable income in 2018 — for the first time in more than 10 years — and paid nearly $1 million in federal income taxes that year. But as of 2020? Trump had reverted to reporting negative income … and paid no federal income tax as a result. Democrats on the committee explained that they carefully followed the law with this vote, invoking a century-old statute, but some Republicans say this could lead to increased use of exposing private tax info for political means.

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The House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol holds their final meeting to vote on criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: Trump’s tough week, SCOTUS issues Title 42 stay, UK-Rwanda migrant deal is on

Jan. 6 panel recommends criminal charges for Trump

Donald Trump’s week got off to a rocky start on Monday, when the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol referred the former president to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. The referral is based on four alleged crimes related to the insurrection, including inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official congressional proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and conspiracy to make a false statement. It remains unclear whether the Justice Department – which is conducting its own investigation into the events of Jan. 6 – will take up the committee’s referral, which holds no legal weight. The panel also notably referred four Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is vying to become the next House speaker, to the House Ethics Committee for having ignored subpoenas to testify. But this is likely to have little effect because the committee, which is split evenly along party lines, rules by majority vote. Today, meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee will discuss whether to release Trump’s tax returns, which it finally has in its possession following years of legal wrangling. With the clock ticking on the Democrat’s House majority, the committee is expected to release the returns before Republicans take control next month. Attorney General Merrick Garland must now decide whether to charge Trump based on the historic recommendation by Congress.

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Migrants walk along a dirt trail after crossing the Rio Grande river into the US from Mexico in Roma, Texas.

REUTERS/Adrees Latif

US immigration policy: The unfixable political gift that keeps on giving for the GOP

If you had to pick a problem that US politicians keep failing to solve election after election, it might be immigration. Democrats and Republicans love to complain about how broken the system is — and yet always find a way to blame each other when there's an opportunity to fix it.

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GZERO Media

What We're Watching: K-pop in China, US ends Remain in Mexico, China vs. porcupine

South Korea’s top diplomat visits China

South Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin traveled to China this week for meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi – the first such high-level visit since Yoon Suk-yeol became South Korea’s new president earlier this year. They had plenty to discuss. China wants Yoon to keep his predecessor’s promises not to expand the use of a US missile defense system, not to join a US-led global missile shield, and not to create a trilateral military alliance that includes Japan. China also wants South Korea to stay out of a computer chip alliance involving Taiwan and Japan. South Korea, meanwhile, wants China to understand that it values Beijing as a top trade partner and wants to build stronger commercial ties. Yoon notably refused to meet US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her uber-controversial trip through Asia last week. But he’s also made clear that his predecessor’s commitments to Beijing are not binding on his government. The long-term economic and security stakes are high, but we will also be watching to see if South Korea has persuaded China to relax restrictions on the access of Chinese citizens to K-Pop, the South Korean pop music phenomenon. Seoul needs durable commercial relations with Beijing, and millions of Chinese music lovers need their South Korean boy bands.

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What We're Watching: VP Harris on Central America trip, FBI dupes crooks, India reverses course on vaccines

VP Harris tours Central America: US Vice President Kamala Harris this week embarked on her first official foreign trip since assuming that role, making stops in both Mexico and Guatemala. After immigration became a major political headache for the Biden administration, with Central American migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border in historic numbers in recent months, Biden tapped Harris to oversee issues related to the root causes of mass migration from Central America (which he distinguishes from the so-called "border crisis''). Harris, for her part, has been pushing the US private sector to invest more in the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — that are plagued by corruption and crime, and account for the bulk of migrants arriving at the US' southern border. Harris has also engaged in vaccine diplomacy to shore up support, announcing that the US will ship COVID vaccines to both Guatemala and Mexico. Immigration is a massive electoral problem for President Biden, with polls suggesting that 48 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the issue. Harris is trying to fix that. But analysts say that this trip is also an opportunity for the VP to bolster her own foreign policy bonafides as she looks at a future presidential run.

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