Nation and World briefs for June 27

GOP set for showdown immigration vote

WASHINGTON — House Republicans are set to vote Wednesday on a hard-fought immigration compromise between conservative and moderate GOP flanks, but the bill has lost any real chance for passage despite a public outcry over the crisis at the border.

Instead, lawmakers are expected to turn toward a narrow bill to prevent immigrant family separations in hopes of addressing that issue before leaving town for the Fourth of July recess.

GOP leaders set out to pass the sweeping immigration measure on their own, without Democratic input, after some members agitated for action. Now they are facing almost certain defeat, stung by their own divisions and President Donald Trump’s wavering support.

It remained unclear late Tuesday what the final version of the immigration legislation would contain. GOP negotiators had been working over the weekend on an amendment to tack on provisions to draw more support. But it was not expected to be included.

The broader bill includes trade-offs, including a multi-year path to citizenship for young immigrants who have been living in the U.S. illegally since childhood and $25 billion for Trump’s border wall. It also would stem family separations at the border by doing away with longstanding rules that prevents minors from being detained for more than 20 days; instead, children could be held in custody with their parents for longer stretches.

Missing Thai soccer team known for adventures together

MAE SAI, Thailand — The members of the Wild Boars are a team on and off the soccer field, traveling to competitions, cycling mountain roads and swimming in waterfalls together. Now, 12 of the boys and their coach are lost, together, in a flooded cave in northern Thailand.

The boys, ranging in age from 11 to 16 and hailing from schools across Chiang Rai province’s northern reaches, have been missing since they entered the sprawling Tham Luang Nang Non cave on Saturday afternoon, after a morning intrasquad match on a nearby field.

Leading the way as always was Ekapol “Aek” Chanthawong, their 25-year-old coach.

“Coach Aek is very dedicated to the team,” said Noppadon Kanthawong, whose 13-year-old son plays on the Wild Boars but decided to skip Saturday’s cave trip. “He would be there at the field waiting for kids to show up after school. It is a great way to keep healthy, away from screens and have friends. I can tell that they are very close to each other.”

Noppadon and his son were huddled Tuesday with other teammates and anguished relatives at the entrance to the cave awaiting any word from the navy SEAL divers and other rescuers working inside. Divers have been seeking a way forward through the cave complex’s chambers, but flooding and low visibility has hindered their progress.

Judge lets case against Manafort move forward

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Virginia rejected a bid by President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to throw out charges in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, clearing the way for a much-anticipated trial to start as scheduled next month.

The decision Tuesday by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III was a setback for Manafort in his defense against tax and bank fraud charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

It also hobbles a favored talking point of Trump and his legal team as they repeatedly attack Mueller’s investigation as overly broad and seek to undermine its legitimacy. Ellis’ skeptical comments and pointed questioning during a hearing, including his suggestion that prosecutors had pursued Manafort to get him to testify against Trump, had given the president and his supporters hope that the case might be dismissed.

Manafort, also facing separate charges in the District of Columbia, is the only one of the four Trump aides charged by Mueller who has opted to fight the allegations instead of plead guilty and cooperate.

He and his lawyers have repeatedly seized on the fact that none of the charges relate to allegations of Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates, the main thrust of Mueller’s public appointment order.

States sue to pressure Trump to reunite immigrant families

LOS ANGELES — Seventeen states, including New York and California, sued the Trump administration Tuesday to force it to reunite the thousands of immigrant children and parents it separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, as the legal and political pressure on the White House to reconnect families more quickly escalated.

The states, all led by Democratic attorneys general, joined Washington, D.C., in filing the lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, arguing that they are being forced to shoulder increased child welfare, education and social services costs.

“The administration’s practice of separating families is cruel, plain and simple,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in a statement. “Every day, it seems like the administration is issuing new, contradictory policies and relying on new, contradictory justifications. But we can’t forget: The lives of real people hang in the balance.”

Separately, immigration-rights activists asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to order that parents be released and immediately reunited with their children.

In a speech before the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration for taking a hardline stand on illegal immigration and said the voters elected President Donald Trump to do just that.

On both sides of Atlantic, migrants meet hostile reception

MILAN — On both sides of the Atlantic, migrants flooding across borders by the hundreds each day have met a hostile reception and governments unable to agree on how to cope with the arrivals. In Europe, where far-right parties have joined the governments in Italy and Austria and made gains elsewhere, even the most basic decision of which port would accept a ship filled with migrants has been fraught.

On Tuesday, yet another rescue boat loaded with migrants struggled to find safe harbor in the Mediterranean, while in Austria police cadets playing the role of desperate refugees rattled a chain-link fence demanding to be let in as part of a high-profile training exercise to test the mettle of a new border force charged with preventing an influx of migrants.

“We have had migratory crises in the past, but that is not what we are going through now. What we are living through now is a European political crisis,” French President Emmanuel Macron said after a daylong meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican during which they discussed the issue.

The European crisis mirrors the one in the United States, where a broad-ranging Republican immigration bill was set for a vote Wednesday, with little certainty that it would survive. With legislation in disarray and a global uproar over the separation of more than 2,300 migrant children from their parents, the Trump administration abruptly reversed a key element of its zero-tolerance immigration policy last week, halting the practice of separating immigrant families caught illegally crossing the border, but leaving more than 2,000 separated children in limbo in government-contracted shelters.

The standoffs in Europe involve multiple governments, all running their own immigration policies but with open borders among them.

Shelter chief fears migrant reunions could take months

AUSTIN, Texas — The chief executive of the nation’s largest shelters for migrant children said Tuesday he fears a lack of urgency by the U.S. government could mean it will take months to reunite thousands of immigrant children with their parents.

Juan Sanchez of the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs said the government has no process in place to speed the return of more than 2,000 children separated from their parents as part of the Trump administration’s recent “zero-tolerance” crackdown on illegal immigration.

“It could take days,” Sanchez said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “Or it could take a month, two months, six or even nine. I just don’t know.”

The communications staff at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t reply to a request for information about how long the process would take. During Congressional testimony on Tuesday, HHS Secretary Alex Azar declined to be pinned down on how long it would take to reunite separated families. “We have to expeditiously get children out of our care,” he said.

Sanchez said Southwest Key is “ready today” to do what it takes to reunite children with parents who have been arrested for trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. But he said his group is limited in what it can do because many parents’ cases will likely have to make their way through the legal system before the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement can give the go-ahead to put families back together.

Melania Trump plans another trip to see immigration centers

WASHINGTON — Melania Trump is planning another visit to immigration centers housing migrants who have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The first lady’s spokeswoman declined to release any details about the trip, including where or when she plans to go.

Mrs. Trump traveled to the border town of McAllen, Texas, last Thursday to meet with law enforcement and social services providers and tour a nonprofit center housing children who were detained under her husband’s policy of prosecuting all illegal border-crossers.

She also met with children at the center, but a stop at a Customs and Border Protection facility was scrapped because of heavy rain and flooding.

But the trip was overshadowed by a jacket she wore to and from Texas that said on the back: “I really don’t care, do u?”