LatinNews Daily - 03 June 2010

Cuba: On 2 June PJ Crowley, a US state department spokesman, said that the US government “continues to hope that prisoners of conscience will be released rather than just relocated, and as soon as possible". Crowley was asked for the US reaction to Cuba's transfers earlier this week of political prisoners to prisons closer to their families, following negotiations with the Cuban government and the Roman Catholic church in Havana. On 2 June the Democrat chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Eliot Rangel, was dismissive of the move, saying it was “insignificant_.it's like moving chairs on the Titanic", he quipped. A Republican Florida congresswoman,  Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, called the prisoner transfer “a farce" and said that the Cuban government “deserved neither praise nor credit".
 
Peru: On 1 June US President Barack Obama met his Peruvian peer, Alan Garcí­a during Garcí­a's official four-day visit to the US. The agenda for the meeting was inter-regional cooperation and the implementation of a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), signed in 2007. The presidents also reached an agreement that will aid the implementation of the FTA. The agreement is based on greater technology-related investment. The tougher topics of immigration and narco-trafficking were only briefly mentioned during the press conference. These areas are likely to form a major part of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's visit to Lima for the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting, on 6-8 June.
 
Mexico: On 27 May the Mexican state newsagency, Notimex, reported that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) was close to finalising its application to the US Supreme Court to overturn the controversial Arizona immigration law, SB1070. The DOJ, which refused to comment on the Notimex story, is reportedly going to base its case on the argument that the Arizona law is unconstitutional because it infringes upon the prerogatives of the federal government. The law, which does not come into force until the end of July, requires the police, “when practicable" and if they have reasonable suspicion, to check the immigration status of people they stop, detain or arrest for another reason. According to Notimex, anonymous DOJ officials made the point that under the US constitution only the federal government is responsible for border security. Two US newspapers, The Arizona Republic and The Los Angeles Times, have reported that the DOJ may also argue that the law is unconstitutional because it constitutes 'racial profiling', and would thus infringe the rights of Latinos living legally in Arizona. Matthew Miller, a DOJ spokesman, yesterday said that he could not confirm whether any DOJ decision was imminent.

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