Los Angeles Times - 29.08.2019

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F

rom the roadside, Oswaldo Ortiz-Luna offered

a box of candy to the cars idling in the golden

dust of northern Mexico. His wife hawked an-

other box of sweets farther up the line of traffic,

perching their 18-month-old daughter on one

hip. Sticky fruit and tears smudged the baby’s cheeks.

As the sun went down, Oswaldo and his family of six

hadn’t yet sold enough candy for the roughly $6 they

needed to spend the night at a nearby shelter. They are

among the thousands of asylum seekers trapped just be-

yond the border under the Trump administration’s sig-

nature policy — “Remain in Mexico.”

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols — better

known as Remain in Mexico — Trump administration of-

ficials have pushed 37,578 asylum seekers back across the

southern U.S. border in roughly seven months, according

to Homeland Security Department reports reviewed by

the Los Angeles Times. One-third of the migrants were

returned to Mexico from California. The vast majority

have been scattered throughout Mexico within the last

60 days.

While their cases wind through court in the United

States, the asylum seekers are forced to wait in Mexico, in

cities that the U.S. State Department considers some of

the most dangerous in the world. They have been at-

tacked, sexually assaulted,

A TIMES SPECIAL REPORT

MIGRANTS CROSSthrough a gap in the border wall in June into El Paso, where U.S. officials are ready to take them into custody.

Carolyn ColeLos Angeles Times

Asylum policy on shaky ground

‘Remain in Mexico’ appears to violate U.S. law in practice, experts warn

[SeeAsylum,A10]

OSWALDO ORTIZ-LUNAsells candy in Mexicali in hopes that his family can get

shelter for the night. The family of six fled Guatemala due to threats from MS-13.

Dania MaxwellLos Angeles Times

By Molly O’Toole

reporting from mexicali, mexico

The homeless outreach
agency that was meant to
move hundreds of people
from the streets into hous-
ing, shelters or treatment for
mental illness and sub-
stance abuse has failed dra-
matically to meet the goals
of its contract with the city of
Los Angeles, according to an
audit released Wednesday
by Controller Ron Galperin.
The audit found that, de-
spite having more than
doubled its staff of outreach
workers in the last two years,
the Los Angeles Homeless
Services Authority missed
seven of nine goals during
the 2017-18 fiscal year and five
of eight last fiscal year.
“The goals that were set
by the city are not unreason-
able,” Galperin told The
Times. “Quite frankly, they
are [setting a] pretty low bar
to begin with. If you can’t
meet the low bar, that’s a
problem.”
Outreach workers were
supposed to place into per-
manent housing 10% of the
homeless people they as-
sessed. But in the fiscal year
that ended in June, they
placed only 4%, the audit re-
ported. The goal was 20% for
placing people in shelters,
but they achieved only 14%.
The discrepancies were
greater for referrals to treat-
ment: 6% for substance
abuse and 4% for mental
health. Both had goals of
25%.
At a news conference
Wednesday, Galperin called
those results “shocking.”
The authority’s “out-
reach is fundamentally lim-
ited because it is reactive in-
stead of being proactive,” he
said. “Much of the outreach
[SeeHomeless,A14]

AUDIT

RIPS L.A.

HOMELESS

SERVICES

AGENCY

City-county outreach

efforts intended to

move hundreds off the

streets fall far short of

goals, report finds.

By Doug Smith

let a gang sell drugs there,

Veracruz Gov. Cuitlahuac

Garcia said. The owner was

kidnapped before the bar

was set ablaze, he said.

The attack came almost

eight years to the day after

a similar fire at a casino in

the northern city of Mon-

terrey killed 52 people, and it

raised concerns that Mexi-

co’s criminal groups may be

returning to the kind of spec-

tacular acts of violence that

characterized earlier peri-

ods of insecurity here.

Mexico’s homicide rate is

at the highest level in its re-

corded history, with an aver-

age of 90 people slain each

day. Yet in recent years,

much of the violence has

played out like a low-inten-

MEXICO CITY — The
assailants locked the doors
and emergency exits. Then
they doused the strip club
with gasoline and set it on
fire.
The inferno that engulfed
the White Horse bar in
southern Mexico on Tues-
day night killed 27 people
and injured more than a doz-
en others. Photos taken af-
ter the flames were extin-
guished showed the bodies
of semi-nude women strewn
amid charred bar stools.
The attack, which took
place in the Gulf Coast city of
Coatzacoalcos, was prob-
ably an act of retaliation af-
ter the bar owner refused to

PEOPLE react after the fire at a bar in southern
Mexico that killed 27. The bar may have been tar-
geted after its owner rebuffed a gang’s overtures.

Angel HernandezAFP/Getty Images

Deadly bar attack

is Mexico’s latest

grisly violence

By Kate Linthicum

[SeeMexico,A4]

LONDON — A scant nine

weeks before Britain is due

to exit the European Union,

Boris Johnson has made his

first big power play as prime

minister — one that height-

ens the prospects of a chaot-

ic departure, a bruising gen-

eral election, or both.

The 55-year-old leader’s

decision Wednesday to sus-

pend Parliament as soon as

Sept. 9 came in the guise of

what would normally be a

dull procedural formality.

But with Brexit coming

down to the wire, Johnson’s

critics are calling it an as-

sault on the country’s un-

written constitution and tra-

ditions — “a very British

coup,” as one opposition

leader put it.

“It’s utterly remarkable,”

said Michael Gordon, pro-

fessor of constitutional law

at the University of Liver-

pool. “Fascinating and infu-

riating in equal measure.”

In effect, it’s a fight over

what has become an explo-

sive timetable. The pro-

Brexit prime minister’s

move narrows the already

tight window during which

lawmakers could seek to pre-

vent Britain leaving the EU

without a negotiated with-

drawal agreement.

Johnson insists he still

wants to strike a deal with

the bloc — although time is

growing very short — but

consistently couples that

with the threat that the split

will go forward whether or

not an accord is in place.

[SeeBrexit,A5]

Johnson decides to suspend

Parliament to further Brexit

By Christina Boyle

and Laura King

BRITISHPrime Min-

ister Boris Johnson has

infuriated the opposition

with his risky power play.

Jeff J MitchellGetty Images

Plan to settle

opioid lawsuits

is proposed

The Sackler family

and its embattled

drugmaker Purdue

Pharma support an

$11.5-billion payout

to resolve litigation

over the addictive

painkiller OxyContin.

BUSINESS, C

Dorian lashes

Puerto Rico

The growing storm is

the island’s first major

test of emergency

preparedness since

Hurricane Maria in

2017. NATION, A

Weather

Sunny.

L.A. Basin: 87/67. B

visited last week by dozens

of national and state

officials, who arrived in the

Sierra National Forest in a

Black Hawk helicopter.

There, in a stretch of forest

in Madera County, they

toured an illegal cultivation

site — believed to be run by

Mexican drug trafficking or-

ganizations that authorities

had raided the day before.

The site was just as the

growers had left it: Sleeping

bags and ragged clothing.

When California voters

legalized cannabis in 2016,

supporters of Proposition 64

hoped it would significantly

reduce the scourge of black

market weed cultivation,

particularly on public lands.

Yet nearly two years later,

illegal marijuana grows are

still rampant across wide

swaths of the national

forests in California, leaving

behind a trail of garbage, hu-

man waste, dead animals

and caustic chemicals.

Nearly all of these farms are

the work of Mexican drug

trafficking organizations,

posing dangers not just for

the environment but to hik-

ers and others who might

encounter them.

In 2018, law enforcement

in California removed

1,396,824 marijuana plants

and eradicated 889 outdoor

cultivation sites, most of

which were operated by

Mexican drug traffickers on

federal lands, according to

the Central Valley California

High Intensity Drug Traf-

ficking Area program.

“It’s a huge problem,”

said William Ruzzamenti,

executive director of the

Central Valley HIDTA,

which includes federal, state

and local agencies. “They’re

growing tens of millions of

plants every year on public

lands in California, and they

leave a huge mess when they

finish.”

One of these messes was [SeeMarijuana,A8]

Illicit pot farms still scar forests

Hopes that legalization would spare public lands haven’t panned out

By Piper McDaniel