DRUMBEAT — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Central American officials in Costa Rica on Tuesday, "[hoping] to enlist their cooperation on immigration and hear plans for reforms at home," reports Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times.  Blinken "is attending an annual meeting of foreign ministers from the eight-member Central American Integration System, an economic and political association of all Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic." Rep. Norma Torres (D-California), who worked with then-Vice President Biden to manage Central American aid under Obama, told Mariana Alfaro at The Washington Post that a successful partnership with the region will require an approach similar to the one Biden took as VP, when he would meet with Central American leaders "every six to eight weeks constantly" to check in: "That constant drumbeat is necessary. Unless we get that kind of commitment anything that we do would be a complete waste of money and effort on our part." 

MYNOR — Laura Brache of WFAE Charlotte tells the story of "Mynor," a Guatemalan father and grandfather living in North Carolina who helped his children cross the U.S.-Mexico border as unaccompanied minors. The journey began in the spring of 2014, when Mynor decided to pay a coyote to get his children into the U.S. as a last resort. "The kids’ journey from Guatemala to Charlotte was long, risky and expensive," Brache writes. "But both Mynor and his kids say his decision to bring them to the U.S. probably saved their lives." Between October 2017 and April 2021, more than 238,000 unaccompanied children were encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border, per agency data. Many of the parents of these children will have to figure out how to keep them in the U.S. legally, Brache writes — a court process Mynor’s family is currently going through. 

CAROLINAS — North Carolina’s 900,000 immigrants should be treated as neighbors, Pastor Parker Richardson of Elevation Church in Winston-Salem writes in an op-ed for the Winston-Salem Journal. But what does that look like in practice? Richardson points to permanent legal status for Dreamers, as well as a restitution-based pathway to citizenship for other undocumented immigrants, as solutions North Carolinians can support to "welcome the stranger." Just across the border, a South Carolina pastor is expressing a similar sentiment of welcome: In the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Pastor Adam Fitzgerald of Sardis Baptist Church in Swansea suggests that Gov. Henry McMaster should reconsider his recent executive order refusing to house unaccompanied minors apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border: "It’s time to set aside other political differences, abandon partisan entrenchments and work with everyone involved to craft a bipartisan solution that holds the good of these children as the first priority."