The United States has quietly resumed deporting some Mexicans on flights that carry them far from the southern border, U.S. and Mexican officials said, a move aimed in part at discouraging them from repeatedly trying to enter the United States.

The first flight to Morelia, a city in central Mexico hundreds of miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing, took off Tuesday with more than 100 Mexicans on board, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details.

A senior Mexican official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said flights were expected to continue regularly.

Tuesday's flight was the first of its kind in almost two years. US authorities are increasingly deporting Mexicans overland, near the border. But the number of Mexicans entering the United States has surged in recent months, prompting U.S. authorities to find stronger ways to discourage people from making the journey north.

The Biden administration is struggling to stem one of the largest waves of uncontrolled immigration in U.S. history, with people fleeing poverty, political instability and violence in Central America, South America and elsewhere. Last week, President Biden attempted to address a growing political liability by pleading with Congress to grant him the power to close the border.

The United States halted deportation flights for Mexicans in 2022 as officials turned their attention to the skyrocketing number of migrants arriving from countries such as Haiti and Venezuela.

But as a wave of deadly violence grips Mexico ahead of next year's presidential elections, more and more residents are fleeing. More than 56,000 Mexicans were apprehended by border agents in December, the highest number of Mexicans crossing the border since last spring.

“Mexicans are beginning to view security as an important issue for the presidential campaign,” said Andrew Rudman, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “So I suspect a lot of that is people feeling like they're not safe where they are.”

The flights are not just about deterrence. Mexican officials have requested the flights in the past so that migrants can be returned closer to their homes and so they can avoid crowded border towns. The flights also connect deportees to reintegration services, such as employment and shelter.

But migration experts and former immigration officials say the flights are also aimed at making it harder for people to cross again.

“The value to the U.S. is that it dramatically reduces the chance of someone returning unlawfully,” said John Sandweg, a homeland security official in the Obama administration.

The flight took place this week, a month after senior U.S. officials — including Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, and Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security — flew to Mexico City to strategize to slow the wave of illegal illegal activity. crossings.

In December, more than 11,000 migrants crossed the border on some days, a record.

The Obama administration struck a deal with Mexico in 2012 to deport Mexicans to the country's interior. The program, known as the Interior Repatriation Initiative, came about at a time when Mexicans made up the majority of migrants crossing the border and the number of crossings was low. significantly lower than today.

More than 46,000 Mexicans flew to the heart of the country between late 2019 and May 2022, according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization.

When arts organizations began shunning the Sackler family for its role in America's opioid crisis, it wasn't just American institutions that cut ties. Museums in Britain that had accepted Sackler's generosity were among the first to take action.

After London's National Portrait Gallery canceled a $1.3 million Sackler donation in 2019, the Tate museum group announced it would no longer seek the family's support. Other museums began talking about removing the Sackler name from their walls.

Soon, the Sackler Trust—a British nonprofit founded by members of the family that once owned Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin—announced that it stop all new philanthropic donationsand donations dropped dramatically.

The foundation continued to honor a number of existing commitments. But now donations appear to be growing again – and quickly. According to the latest accounts of the Sackler Trust, which were published this month, the nonprofit has committed approximately 5.2 million pounds (or $6.6 million) in 2022, consisting of 66 grants to institutions. That was almost four times more than the commitments made the year before.

As Britain's arts, sciences and education institutions face a cash crunch, fueled by high inflation and declining government support, some organizations appear to have accepted Sackler's funding – albeit at the risk of reputational damage offset by keeping the donations secret. to hold.

In previous years, the Sackler Trust listed grant recipients in its accounts. In 2018 for example it indicated including the Young Vic, the Old Vic and the Donmar Warehouse – three of London's most important theaters. Occasionally the trust was donated to recipients in the United States, including the Friends of the High Line and the New York Genome Center.

But the latest accounts do not say who the 2022 beneficiaries were, or where they are located. Instead, the document groups donations by area of ​​activity, with scientific organizations receiving the most money. A note said that including names would “expose the recipients to serious prejudice and hinder the furtherance of their charitable activities.”

Through a Trust spokeswoman, the Sackler family declined to comment.

Peter Grant, a lecturer at the Center for Charity Effectiveness at City University in London, said he would be “very, very surprised” if major British institutions took money from the Sackler family – even secretly – given the potential for criticism as discovered. But small organizations may decide it's better to accept a donation from Sackler than full shutter services, he added.

In emails, more than 30 cultural institutions that once accepted funding from the Sackler Trust – including the Royal Opera House, the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum – said they would not receive any money from the Sackler family in 2022 or beyond received.

The only exception was the Watermill Theater – a small theater in a village about 60 miles from London – which declined to comment. Although the Sackler Trust currently isn't listed as donor the Watermill's website gave the theater £500,000, about $635,000, in 2020. Two years later, the theater lost all its state subsidies due to a shake-up in government funding for the arts. thus endangering its survival.

Only one organization has that publicly admitted on receiving money from the Sackler Trust: Veterans Aid, a British non-profit organization that supports former soldiers experiencing financial, housing or other crises. Glyn Strong, the nonprofit's media adviser, said in an email that Veterans Aid has regularly received funding from the trust since 2016 and used it to help about 80 people overcome addiction each year.

“We view expenditures on rehabilitation/detox as the most appropriate use of these funds,” Strong said in an email, adding that Veterans Aid expected to continue receiving Sackler funding for the foreseeable future.

Beth Breeze, the director of the Center for Philanthropy at the University of Kent, said it was impossible to find out whether the Sackler Trust had actually increased donations in 2022 because the grants in the accounts could be legacies or multi-year liabilities which are only now being done. paid.

In any case, Breeze added, the trust's options were limited: Under British law, funds from grant-making trusts and foundations must be used for charitable purposes, so the Sackler family cannot withdraw money for personal use. According to Breeze, if the money were not given to educational, cultural and scientific nonprofits, they would simply sit in a bank account accruing interest.

When approached with a possible donation, she added, charity trustees would have to decide for themselves whether it was better to accept the money and use it “for good” or to leave it unused.

Federal prosecutors have charged Donald J. Trump with conspiring to undermine American democracy and mishandling nuclear secrets. But with these cases in limbo, Manhattan prosecutors are preparing as if they will be the first to try the former president on criminal charges — for covering up a possible sex scandal.

The Manhattan district attorney's office has begun contacting witnesses to prepare them for trial, including Michael D. Cohen, Trump's former fixer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He and at least two others involved in buying a porn star's silence about her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump are expected to meet with prosecutors in the coming weeks.

As the potential trial approaches, District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg has added one of his own most experienced trial lawyers on the team tasked with prosecuting Mr. Trump.

And in recent public appearances, Mr. Bragg has advanced the loftiest possible view of the case, portraying it as a clear example of election interference, in which a candidate defrauded the American people to win the White House in 2016. did this, prosecutors argue, by concealing an illegal payout to the porn star, thus concealing damaging information from voters just days before they went to the polls.

“The case — the core of it — is not about money for sex,” Mr. Bragg said in a radio interview last month, taking issue with the news media's longstanding characterization as a hush-money case. “We would say it involves conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York corporate filings to cover it up.” That is the heart of the matter.”

With this rebranding, Mr. Bragg is seeking to increase the importance of his allegations and draw a parallel with the highly consequential federal case in Washington, DC, in which Mr. Trump is accused of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. That trial will begin on March 4, three weeks before Mr. Bragg's case, but an appeal could extend into late spring or summer.

If the federal case is postponed by several months, Mr. Bragg would most likely be the first prosecutor to put a former U.S. president on trial, even though he has indicated he is willing to wait. Although he was the first to win an indictment against Mr. Trump, Mr. Bragg has said he will not “stand on ceremony” but will only encourage federal lawsuits to get ahead of his line.

Mr. Trump's role includes four 91-felony indictments, a civil fraud trial and a defamation case that together could cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. The cases play out against the backdrop of the battle for the Republican presidential nominee, which Trump is on course to pursue after a victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. His legal troubles have become a key part of his campaign as he portrays himself as a political martyr fighting the Democratic elite.

During the civil fraud trial this month, he delivered his own closing statement, combining his biggest hits from the campaign trail — his accusers are leading a “witch hunt,” the case is a “fraud against me” — with specific attacks on the case. against him. “We have a situation where I am an innocent man,” he said.

And when the judge during the defamation trial threatened to throw him out of the courtroom, the former president responded, “I would love it.”

While Trump is making the most of his varied campaign trail and courthouse appearances, delays are one of his most tried-and-true legal strategies. He has tried to bypass all four trials, hoping to complete the election without ever facing a jury.

But if Mr. Trump is to be judged — and he likely will be at least once before the election — there are advantages for him if Mr. Bragg is judged first. The prosecutor's indictment has boosted the former president's online fundraising this spring, sending his base into turmoil.

Even some Democrats have argued that the prosecution in Manhattan pales in comparison to that in Washington. They say the federal case would spotlight the worst day of Trump's presidency, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and include testimony from former senior aides who exposed the electorate to danger would remember. of having Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump may be more willing to face the witnesses in the Manhattan case, including Mr. Cohen, his former fixer-turned-adversary. In the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen made the $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Mr. Cohen has said he was acting on orders from Mr. Trump, who later repaid him by signing some White House checks.

Mr. Bragg has seized these checks and other documents and accused Mr. Trump of lying about the refund to Mr. Cohen to conceal its true purpose. The former president's company incorrectly classified the refund in its internal records as a “legal expense,” leading Mr. Bragg to charge Mr. Trump with 34 crimes for falsifying business records.

Mr. Trump, whose lawyers in the case include Susan R. Necheles and Todd Blanche, takes every opportunity to attack Mr. Cohen's credibility, calling him a “liar” and a “rat.”

And yet the jury in heavily Democratic Manhattan might well be sympathetic to Mr. Bragg's case. In 2022, a Manhattan jury convicted Mr. Trump's company of tax fraud, and some of the same prosecutors who led that trial will also handle the case against the former president himself.

Susan Hoffinger, head of the agency's investigative division, leads the team. Joshua Steinglass, a respected trial lawyer who, along with Ms. Hoffinger, led the successful effort to convict Mr. Trump's company, was recently added. They will be joined by Chris Conroy, who worked on the case longer than any other member of the team, and Matthew Colangelo, a former senior official at the Department of Justice.

The Manhattan case also poses a unique threat to Mr. Trump. Unlike the federal cases against him, which Mr. Trump could try to drop if he were to regain the presidency, Mr. Bragg's case is immune from federal intervention. In Manhattan, Mr. Trump would not be able to pardon himself, and if convicted he could face up to four years in prison.

Mr. Trump tried to have the case moved to federal court, but that failed. The federal judge who reviewed Mr. Trump's request ordered it stay in state court and appeared to endorse the legal theory underlying the prosecutor's case.

The state court judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, is expected to set the trial date at a Feb. 15 hearing.

By then, a Washington appeals court may have ruled on Trump's bid to have the federal election case dismissed. If the court rules against Mr. Trump, which is likely to happen, the case could go to trial even if Mr. Trump appeals to the Supreme Court. In that case, the federal special prosecutor who brought the case, Jack Smith, could appear before Mr. Bragg. (Because defendants have the right to attend their own trials, the two would not take place simultaneously.)

But if Mr. Smith's case remains stalled, Judge Merchan could stick with his current plan to start the trial in Manhattan on March 25. And if Mr. Bragg does indeed go first, his attempt to portray Mr. Trump as undermining the integrity of the presidential election could become even more important as he tries to convince the public of the validity of his case.

A lawsuit summarizing the case listed two other hush money payments during Trump's first campaign: one to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, and another to a doorman trying to sell. an embarrassing story about the candidate in 2015.

That pattern has led prosecutors to accuse the former president of something far more important than covering up sordid tabloid stories.

“It is a case of election interference,” Mr. Bragg said in a speech recent television interview.

After a humiliating loss in Iowa, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is beginning to signal that he is building an exit in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, an apparent acknowledgment of his dim prospects for defeating Donald J. Trump given his low standing. polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

So far this week, Mr. DeSantis has his eyes on 2028 with anecdotes about Trump supporters saying they would vote for him next time if he runs again in four years. He has admitted that Trump's landslide victory in Iowa on Monday made for a “good performance in terms of winning the nomination.” And he has openly admitted that he believes he made a strategic mistake by sidelining traditional media earlier in the campaign.

It all amounted to a kind of candor that Mr. DeSantis has not always shown in his public comments about the nominating contest — and a marked change in tone for a candidate who spent much of the past year boldly promising that he would win Iowa, that he lost. with 30 points.

On Thursday, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. DeSantis whether his campaign would hold up through the end of March. The Governor of Florida responded that things didn't necessarily go according to plan.

“Look, my goal is to win the nomination. If we had won Iowa, we would have been in a great spot,” Mr. DeSantis said, before suggesting that there would be no point in staying in the race if it became clear to him that he could not win.

“I don't want to be vice president, I don't want to be in the Cabinet, I don't want a TV show,” he said. “I do everything I can to win, and if at some point that doesn't work out for you, I recognize that. This is not vanity for me.”

Mr. DeSantis' comments indicate a hard truth is emerging: The former president may be on the verge of dropping out of the race. Mr. DeSantis is performing so poorly in New Hampshire, where voting takes place on Tuesday, that he is campaigning all weekend in South Carolina, where the primary will be held a month later and where he thinks he has a better chance. He follows Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, in both states.

Andrew Romeo, the communications director for the DeSantis campaign, reiterated that Mr. DeSantis was in the race “for the long haul,” across South Carolina and beyond.

His best hope to stay competitive, his aides say, is for Ms. Haley to lose her home state and retire on Feb. 24, leaving Mr. DeSantis with a one-on-one matchup against Mr. Trump. “No one will fund a bubble-wrap candidate who can't win her home state,” Mr. Romeo argued.

But Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories vote on March 5, is well poised for Mr. Trump to dominate, polls show, even in a two-person race against Mr. DeSantis. In that case, Mr. DeSantis may consider running again in 2028, the year after his term as governor ends.

On Tuesday, in South Carolina, Mr. DeSantis said Trump voters in Iowa had told him they would support him in four years. “They came to me and said, 'We want you in 2028, we love you, man,'” Mr. DeSantis told reporters.

He made similar comments during an interview with NBC News, saying, “People came up to me and said, 'I love you, man. This time I'm going to do Trump and next time you.' That's not what I wanted to hear, but by being there we made an impression and that's important.”

And during his interview with Mr Hewitt, he praised Mr Trump's performance.

“Obviously, if you win Iowa by the amount he won, that's what you want to do if you're going to win the nomination,” Mr. DeSantis said. He then expressed regret over his campaign's early strategy of limiting his media appearances to Fox News and other conservative outlets, acknowledging his failure to reach a large enough group of voters.

“I should have just blanketed, I should have gone to all the company shows, I should have gone to everything,” he told Mr Hewitt in a moment of introspection. “We had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader population.”

Although he has carved out his image as a conservative warrior in Florida by bashing traditional media, he and his team have also turned on Fox recently, accusing the company of trying to smear the former president.

Mr. DeSantis, who has campaigned relentlessly and without complaint for months, also indicated this week that the rigors of the race were beginning to wear him down — a rare admission. On Tuesday morning, Mr. DeSantis woke up in Iowa after his stinging defeat in the caucuses, flew to South Carolina for a rally and press conference, then traveled to New Hampshire to participate in an evening town hall event on CNN.

The next day, after two more campaign events in New Hampshire, a weary-looking Mr. DeSantis confessed to reporters that it had been “a rough patch.”

“By the time I walked on that stage last night for CNN, I mean, it was adrenaline,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And I thought, 'Okay, we've got to get through this.' ”

Maggie Astor And Nick Corasaniti reporting contributed.