Asylum

A port of entry at the US-Mexico border near San Diego will see the largest protest by one-time undocumented immigrants to date.

Edward Snowden made clear gestures in an open letter published in a Brazilian newspaper on Tuesday toward the prospect of working with Brazilian officials on their investigations into NSA spying programs, if he were granted permanent asylum there. Brazil's foreign ministry says it needs to see a formal request first.

“Credible fear” asylum claims from Indians nationwide have soared in the past four years – from 80 in fiscal year 2009 to 1,935 as of late June. An investigation by the newspaper the Arizona Republic suggests that some Indians who file for asylum at the border with Mexico by saying they face political persecution back home might simply be angling to gain entry to the United States. The report echoes conservatives’ fears that the credible fear claim is little more than a “loophole” in immigration law.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) accused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of allowing Mexican asylum seekers who claim they face “credible fear” of persecution back home to “game the system by getting a free pass into the U.S.” by granting them parole as they wait for court proceedings most don’t show up for. But the recent surge in asylum seekers comes from elsewhere.

Despite drug violence that has overwhelmed numerous states in Mexico, especially in those near the border with the United States, Mexicans seeking asylum based on a claim of fear of persecution back home are unlikely to be awarded it. Even as asylum requests along the US-Mexico border have more than doubled, the Department of Homeland Security says there hasn’t been a marked increase in applications from Mexican citizens.

DREAM 9 youths could be released later today as seven are granted asylum.

The Department of Homeland Security has given the nine young undocumented immigrants who left the United States for Mexico, their land of birth, and staged a protest at an Arizona border crossing upon trying to re-enter, what the Associated Press called a “tentative” approval of their asylum requests.

In reaction to Russia’s decision to grant NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum for one year, the White House said it was “extremely disappointed”, and several US senators bared their teeth in statements. John McCain said it was “a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States,” adding, “It is a slap in the face of all Americans.”

Edward Snowden will be allowed to live and work in Russia for at least one-year.

Members of the Cuban heavy metal band Hipnosis have shocked their government by requesting asylum in the US.

"He's planning to arrange his life here," said Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's lawyer in Russia. "He plans to get a job. And, I think, that all his further decisions will be made considering the situation he found himself in."

René Pérez, lead vocalist of the alternative group Calle 13, has in a series of tweets asked Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, Thom Yorke and Paul McCartney to lend him their private jets so that he can pick up Edward Snowden in Moscow and fly him to one of the Latin American countries where he has been offered asylum.

The US Olympic Committee will not support a boycott of the 2014 Sochi games.

The associate director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Langlois, told the Associated Press that the majority of asylum requests in the United States, which have nearly quadrupled in the last five years, have come principally from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Former NSA leaker praised the three Latin American countries which had granted him asylum in his speech in Moscow today. "These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless," he said.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday morning that an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Havana was following an unusual route. An Aeroflot spokeswoman hung up on a Moscow journalist who called to inquire into it.

Snowden accepted Venezuela's asylum offer.

Days after Nicolás Maduro announced his decision to offer “humanitarian asylum” to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the president of Venezuela said he had received a formal request from him. Snowden “will have to decide when to fly out here”, added Maduro.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who for two weeks has been holed up in Moscow’s international airport, won asylum offers from three different countries on Friday.

A rumor that Bolivian President Evo Morales was trying to smuggle NSA leaker Edward Snowden back to Bolivia on his plane turned into a diplomatic fiasco. Morales says the French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish governments revoked his access to their airspace, though those governments denied the claims. Accounts vary as to what happened next.

Aside from Ecuador, Wikileaks has now sent asylum requests on Snowden's behalf to representatives of Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, India, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.

The Venezuelan president said if Snowden applied for asylum in Venezuela, he would "almost certainly" be granted it.

Correa said Ecuador would choose not to ask the US Congress to renew the preferential trade deal and estimated the loss to trade at $23 million dollars, which he called a "pittance".

Relations between the US and Ecuador have been icy since WikiLeaks revealed a cable from the American ambassador in which she accused Correa of appointing a corrupt police official to a government post because the official could be easily manipulated.

Thirteen prison officers were indicted on charges they allowed gang activity to run rampant in Baltimore jail

Ecuador has granted political asylum to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said on Thursday, a day after the British government threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has no way of leaving his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London without being arrested, even if Quito grants him asylum shortly, lawyers say.