The Little Mekong Night Market will return to University Avenue in St. Paul this weekend after a four-year hiatus.

Organizers say this year’s two-day event will be their biggest yet, featuring dozens of artists, food vendors and performances radiating out from the intersection of University and Western avenues.

“It’s bigger in terms of our footprint — we’re working with more private businesses to hold events on their property,” said VaMegn Thoj, executive director of the Asian Economic Development Association.

“We also anticipate our biggest turnout as well,” he added.

When it was last held in 2019, the event drew 30,000 people over the Fourth of July weekend.

This year’s Night Market will run from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday and from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday. A full list of attractions can be found at littlemekong.com.

The event, which was first held in 2013, has been canceled in past years because of the COVID-19 pandemic and costs associated with hiring police officers to provide security.

Organizers hope to make the Night Market experience a permanent attraction on University Avenue in coming years, with the Little Mekong Cooperative Market, Thoj said.

The AEDA is working to renovate its headquarters at 422 University Ave. W. to accommodate a marketplace for “food vendors, artists, makers, and micro-entrepreneurs to generate broad economic development,” according to its website.

The cooperative will celebrate “the many cultures of the neighborhood, while uniquely providing representation of St. Paul’s Southeast Asian communities along the Green Line corridor,” the website says.

Thoj said the organization has already raised $3 million in funding for the renovation and aims to begin construction in the first quarter of 2025, with plans to open six months to a year after work begins.

Once the cooperative is up and running, the AEDA is planning to redevelop its parking lot on Aurora Avenue into a residential and retail complex with outdoor public spaces.

“It’s a pretty sizable project,” Thoj said. “The return on this investment will be a thriving cultural business district on University Avenue.”

Planning for the project began six years ago, but work was interrupted by the pandemic, he added.

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By REBECCA SANTANA (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of arrests by Border Patrol agents of people illegally crossing into the United States fell in May to the third lowest of any month during the Biden presidency, while preliminary figures released Thursday show encounters with migrants falling even more in the roughly two weeks since the president announced new rules restricting asylum.

The figures are likely welcome news for a White House that has been struggling to show to voters concerned over immigration that it has control of the southern border. But the number of people coming to the border is often in flux, dependent on conditions in countries far from the U.S. and on smugglers who profit from global migration.

Border Patrol made 117,900 arrests of people entering the country between the official border crossing points in May, Customs and Border Protection said in a news release. That’s 9% lower than during April, the agency said. The agency said preliminary data since President Joe Biden’s June 4 announcement restricting asylum access shows arrests have fallen by 25%.

“Our enforcement efforts are continuing to reduce southwest border encounters. But the fact remains that our immigration system is not resourced for what we are seeing,” said Troy A. Miller, the acting head of CBP.

The U.S. has also benefitted from aggressive enforcement on the Mexican side of the border, where Mexican authorities have been working to prevent migrants from making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The figures are part of a range of data related to immigration, trade and drug seizures that is released monthly by CBP. The immigration-related figures are closely watched at a time of intense political scrutiny over who is entering the country and whether the Biden administration has a handle on the situation.

Immigration is a top concern for voters, with many saying Biden hasn’t been doing enough to secure the country’s borders. Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has made immigration a cornerstone of his campaign by saying he’s going to deport people in the country illegally en masse and take other measures to crack down on immigration.

After Biden announced his plan to restrict asylum access at the southern border, opponents sued, saying it was no different from a similar effort under Trump.