ICE is now detaining fewer criminals than ever in the US
This surge has resulted in over 50,000 individuals being held in ICE detention centers, the first time this figure has been reached.
Less than one-third of current ICE detainees are convicted criminals, with the majority arrested for non-criminal immigration offenses or having pending charges.
Internal documents indicate that only about one in ten ICE detainees from October to May were convicted of serious crimes like murder or rape.
Enforcement officials are reportedly facing pressure to meet daily arrest targets and expand efforts to detain and deport individuals in Democratic-run cities.
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The Guardian
2 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Texas Republicans bring redistricting bill to house floor after finally reaching quorum
Texas Republicans brought a bill to the floor of the state legislature on Wednesday to redraw the state's congressional districts, making quick use of their regained quorum after the return of protesting Democratic legislators. Democratic state representatives filed a series of amendments to the bill which were voted down, but used the process to raise objections to taking up redistricting before flood relief, to house rules which require a police escort when leaving the chamber and to the proposal itself, a mid-decade change which they argue reduces the voting power of people of color in service to Republican political gains and further gerrymanders the state at the cost of democracy. 'We're ready to meet Trump where he is, which is on a dirt road,' said Democrat Nicole Collier, livestreaming from a bathroom off the legislative floor. 'We're ready to get down and dirty.' Collier refused to sign a pass and permit a police escort for leaving the House floor, and has been trapped in the chambers as a result. While on a Zoom call with the Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and the Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, Collier said she was being told she had to end the live stream or face a felony charge, abruptly leaving the meeting. It is emblematic of the unusual resistance Democrats in Texas have put up to the redistricting bill, and the response of the Republican-controlled Texas government to that resistance. 'This bill intentionally discriminates against Black and Hispanic Texans and other Texans of color by cracking and packing minority communities across the state of Texas,' said Chris Turner, a Democratic representative from Arlington. 'It is a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act and the constitution.' Republican leaders rejected racial animus as an element of the redistricting, noting that it increases the number of districts with a Hispanic voting age majority from seven to eight. Based on voting results from 2024, five congressional seats would change party from Democratic to Republican under the new map, which they argue is legally allowed. 'You want transparency,' said representative Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who drafted the redistricting bill. 'The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance … We are allowed to draw congressional districts on the basis of political performance, as recognized by the US supreme court in Rucho v Common Cause. These districts were drawn primarily using political performance to guide the redrawing of districts.' The strong assertion that the genesis of the redistricting is about increasing the number of Republicans in Congress, and not to diminish the voting power of people of color, is an early defense to expected legal challenges to the proposal under the Voting Rights Act. 'When you say the word 'redistricting', I think you know there are going to be legal challenges,' Hunter said. Under the Voting Rights Act and longstanding court precedent, lawmakers needed to draw lines with great awareness of the racial composition of the electorate in order to avoid unconstitutionally packing them into single districts to reduce their influence on other districts, or to spread them across multiple districts – cracking – to dilute their voting strength as a group. Talk of a mid-decade redistricting began in Texas after the Department of Justice circulated a letter describing the use of race in the state's 2021 redistricting to be unconstitutional. Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, seized on this as a rationale to redraw district lines more advantageous to Republicans. Donald Trump has called for Texas and other states to redraw their lines for more partisan advantage, prompting California's governor, Gavin Newsom, and other Democratic governors to begin to counter with redistrictings of their own. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Democrats in the Texas house left the state last month, intent on denying a quorum to the legislature to block a vote on the redistricting bill. They abandoned their exile after the California legislature began advancing a redistricting bill of its own. In contentious discussion, state representative Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, ranking Democrat on the Texas house redistricting committee, pressed Hunter on the motivations behind the new map lines and on the absence of input from the Texas legislative into a map that would probably face a voting rights challenge. That drew a sharp response from Hunter. 'You left 17 to 18 days! You could have sat with me,' Hunter said. 'Now you're getting on the microphone saying why didn't I involve you? Well, I wasn't going to cross state lines to find ya! I was here … You own the walkout. You said you did that. But don't come into this body and say we didn't include you. You left us for 18 days.'
The Independent
4 minutes ago
- The Independent
Solving the asylum question is suddenly even more urgent
What next? As ministers digest the High Court ruling on the use of a hotel in Epping to house asylum seekers, they have very limited options in front of them, none of them good ones. The High Court should not be attacked for making a ruling that takes no account of politics or even practicalities, for that is not its job. It has, though, made a bad situation very much worse. It is hardly helpful to anyone, in such circumstances, for Nigel Farage to exploit a delicate and sometimes combustible situation by calling for more peaceful protests. From bitter experience, we know how such demonstrations can degenerate into minor disorder, or worse. In fact, given the force of the High Court judgment, there is even less need for such protests now. Instead, Mr Farage and his deputy, Richard Tice, as usual, are playing on the fears of people and behaving in a way that is irresponsible at best and dangerous at worst. Mr Farage's interventions in the riots last year only added to the campaign of disinformation underway, and most recently was made to apologise for claiming that the Essex police had 'bussed in' counter-demonstrators in Epping. The Conservatives, mesmerised by the rise of Reform UK, are in a constant losing battle to out-Farage Farage, and they should know better than to propagate myths about asylum seekers living in 'offensively luxurious' conditions, which was today's unhelpful sideswipe from former Tory MP Damian Green. The shadow home secretary Chris Philp and the shadow communities secretary James Cleverly should bear their share of the blame for the mess the asylum system is in, and offer some constructive alternatives and call for calm. They will not recover as a serious alternative party of government until they too come up with a plan for the asylum system. The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, often talks of such a thing, but it is yet to be seen. Meanwhile, her undeclared rival, Robert Jenrick, appears to be constantly dialling up tensions. The position is serious. Were the Bell Hotel the only place to be affected by the ruling, then it would not be such a challenge to relocate its 140 residents by the date set by the court of 12 September. However, the judgment also sets a clear precedent, albeit largely based in planning law, for the end of the use of hotels to provide emergency housing. It does so with near-immediate effect. That means some 32,000 individuals will need to be rehoused, at absurdly short notice. Already, local authorities controlled by Reform UK and the Conservatives are expected to bring their own cases, which, as the Home Office lawyers warned the High Court, will make the dilemma of finding shelter for them even more acute. In practice, too, it will encourage many more local protests and increase the pressure on police forces to maintain order. One other immediate effect will be to increase the pressure in areas where Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green councils may still try to stick to a 'refugees welcome' policy. This only creates a sense of unfairness that the task of finding shelter for the immigrants is not being properly shared across the country. And, in any case, all, including the refugees and other migrants affected, agree that using hotels is a far from ideal solution in any case. Contrary to some of the anti-refugee propaganda, these hotels, whatever their nominal star ratings, are unsuitable for long-term residence, and are not the lap of luxury. Concierge is not available. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work, they are given shelter and a minimal allowance to stave off destitution, some medical attention and, courtesy of some councils, access to some recreational activities. They are not cosseted in the way some seem to imagine. There is talk of the migrants being placed in flats, which would be relatively expensive, student accommodation, and houses of multiple occupation (HMOs). These create their own problems, particularly because the tendency will be for the irregular immigrants to be moved in disproportionate numbers to parts of the country where rentals are relatively low. The effect there will be to push rents up for the locals, and create more friction in host communities. It may also prompt more action by some local councils to frustrate the strategy, such as using their powers to block the conversion of houses across large areas into HMOs under Article 4 of the town and country planning acts. Even where HMO accommodation is found for families or smaller groups of asylum seekers, they will be more vulnerable to any aggressive demonstrations organised by neighbours alarmed by extremist misinformation about them. Such incidents will be much harder for the police to control. It may be that some form of emergency legislation will be required to delay the implementation of such High Court orders, although that in itself may not be constitutional. The only course then open to government is to redouble its efforts to process the backlog bequeathed to them by the previous administration, speeding up the grant of leave to remain for genuine refugees, or issuing deportation orders in expedited fashion for rejected claimants. It will take too long to build vast detention centres, while the old army barracks that have been commandeered in the past have been found to be completely unsuitable. The High Court has listened to the representatives of the people of Epping Forest and made its decision, and it is right that the judges should do so. Citizens have a right to have their cases heard impartially and have their grievances aired. The courts will no doubt soon be issuing many similar orders. Yet there are other people with a stake in these cases. Perhaps the most lamentable aspect of this latest episode in the migration crisis is that the voices of the immigrants themselves have been so rarely heard, and their plight disregarded. They have their human rights, too, enforceable by law – though many would cheerfully seek to deny them that. Indeed, the tendency in the media has been to demonise these fellow human beings as malevolent monsters determined to wreak crime and havoc in whatever neighbourhood they find themselves bussed to. Whether refugee or economic migrant, they are entitled to be treated properly in a civilised society, and not portrayed, as cynical politicians pretend, as an 'invasion' of 'fighting-age' men. They are not an alien army, but individuals who want a better life. Many would have preferred to stay put, were it not for war, persecution, famine and poverty. In a land such as Britain, with severe labour shortages, they have much to contribute, as have previous waves of immigrants. They could help to fix the 'Broken Britain' we hear so much about, and do the jobs that need doing. Yet they are all too often regarded as terrorists, rapists and murderers. The police at the hotel demos fare hardly any better, berated as 'paedo-defenders' and verbally and physically abused for doing their duty and preserving the King's Peace. The wider challenge for ministers now is to persuade the public that they are doing all they can to restore order to the asylum system – and to rebuild confidence in it. That task just got a lot more urgent.
The Independent
4 minutes ago
- The Independent
Judge shoots down Trump DOJ bid to unseal Epstein grand jury notes as ‘diversion' from releasing real Epstein files
The Department of Justice has struck out with all its requests to federal judges to unseal grand jury transcripts and other materials related to Jeffrey Epstein. A judge in New York on Wednesday denied the government's request to unseal the documents, noting that the content of grand jury transcripts in the sex offender's trafficking case 'pales in comparison to the Epstein investigative information and materials' already in the hands of the Justice Department. District Judge Richard Berman, who presided over Epstein's case before he died in his jail cell in 2019, agreed with another judge who last week had called the government's request a 'diversion' tactic to distract from public pressure against Donald Trump's administration to release the so-called Epstein files. 'The government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein file,' Berman wrote on Wednesday. 'By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be a 'diversion' from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government's possession,' he added. 'The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged conduct.' Wednesday's ruling follows a judge's rejection of the Justice Department's request for grand jury documents in the case against Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her conviction on sex trafficking charges tied to Epstein's crimes. In his 31-page opinion on August 11, District Judge Paul Engelmayer said nothing new would be revealed from the documents, and the public would instead 'come away feeling disappointed and misled.' Last month, Florida District Judge Robin Rosenberg said her 'hands are tied' when it comes to laws governing the release of grand jury transcripts, noting that the government's request falls outside the bounds of narrow exceptions. 'The government's request is not to assist with litigation in the New York federal proceedings,' she wrote. 'The government wants the petition to be granted so that it can release evidence to the public at large.'
