European leaders to ask EU for easier expulsion of foreign criminals
COPENHAGEN, May 22 (Reuters) - Nine European countries, led by Italy and Denmark, will on Thursday call on the European Union to make it simpler for member states to expel foreign criminals, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
European governments have expressed frustration with how the European Court of Human Rights uses the European Convention on Human Rights to block deportations and they want to see it revised.
The letter, which was prepared ahead of a meeting on Thursday between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, urges the EU to review how courts interpret the convention.
"We have seen cases concerning the expulsion of criminal foreign nationals, where the interpretation of the Convention has resulted in the protection of the wrong people and posed too many limitations on the states' ability to decide whom to expel from their territories," the letter said.
Member states should "have more room nationally to decide on when to expel criminal foreign nationals," it said.
The letter was signed by the leaders of Denmark, Italy, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Meloni and Frederiksen are scheduled to hold a joint press conference in Rome on Thursday.
Meloni's conservative bloc won power in 2022, vowing to crack down on migration. Denmark has introduced increasingly harsh immigration policies over the past decade.
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The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump's mass deportations
Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem's political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump's running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family's 'untrainable' hunting dog, a 14-month old wirehair pointer named Cricket. Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem's path forward on the national stage was unclear. But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump's warp speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president's hardline vision to carry out largest deportation campaign in American history. Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House's immigration agenda with fierce loyalty Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV style. Her approach has been hailed by supporters as a full-throttle push to 'Make America Safe Again' and condemned by critics as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences. The department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation's premier cybersecurity agency. Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump's comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration's deportation operations. And she has been front and center in many of the administration's most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges. 'Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,' Noem declared on X. At the department, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate. She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow. During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki. 'Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,' she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.) But it has hardly been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right of people detained by the government to challenge their detention, guaranteed in the constitution. When she claimed habeas corpus was the president's 'constitutional right' to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: 'That's incorrect.' Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump's 'central casting' cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda. DHS maintains that under Noem's stewardship, the department has returned to its 'core mission of securing the homeland'. 'The world is hearing our message,' said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. 'Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.' But critics say her approach marks a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department. 'The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,' said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. 'That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.' Noem's first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary. Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration's costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba. In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a 'sting operation' in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of 'Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members' while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent's head. 'Kristi Noem doesn't know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,' the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X. At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence 'meant the world' to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials. But even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry. Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an 'amazing' job protecting the homeland, but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged her not to 'cosplay Ice agent'. The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: 'She looks like I look right now, but she's out in the field with her gun being like: 'We're gonna go kick some ass.'' 'Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,' Kelly advised. Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image. As governor in 2019, she installed a 'six-figure TV studio' in the basement of South Dakota's capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem's office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state. 'Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,' said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem's political career. 'She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.' It's a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice. As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads that amplify the administration's message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to 'leave now' or the government will 'hunt you down'. DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government's 'CBP Home' app and estimated that 'thousands' more were leaving without notice. In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration's decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison holding scores of Venezuelan migrants deported from the US. Standing in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.' On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of 'flimsy, even frivolous, accusations' of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees. In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House repeat that their mass removal effort targets the 'worst of the worst'. 'We are focusing on dangerous criminals,' Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. 'We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.' But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed 'administrative errors' for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico. 'The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,' said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America's Voice. 'It's working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.' A self-described 'farm kid' who took over her family's ranch after her father's sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump's handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread. In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem famously gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota. 'At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,' Schaff said. Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump's rhetoric, especially on border security. Despite South Dakota's considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles north – Noem made the issue a top priority. 'South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,' she declared in an address last year. In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state's border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods. Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny. During her Senate confirmation hearing, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned her credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection. Noem acknowledged her nomination may have come as a 'bit of a surprise'. But she said she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his 'No 1 priority'. The job, she said, required someone 'strong enough' to carry out the president's hardline immigration agenda. So far, Noem has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an early interview, she vowed to leverage the 'broad and extensive' authorities at her disposal. With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration's feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets. Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids. She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump's immigration strategy, as well as 'border czar' Homan, both empowered by the president to help meet the administration's immigration crackdown. Though Noem frequently touts the administration's success removing, in the secretary's words, 'dirt bags' and 'sickos', the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: demanding that federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day. Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to 'turn the creative knob up to 11' as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was 'thankful for Secretary Noem's partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens'. She continued: 'The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.' As the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive deportation tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem's DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had 'unquestionably' violated a court order on deportations to third countries. In response to the growing number of challenges to the administration's immigration policies, Noem has largely channeled the president's defiant posture. 'Suck it,' she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed. While courts have hindered Trump's mass removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation. On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African, framing the order as a response to the recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages. In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the family of the Egyptian national charged in the attack into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process. 'The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,' said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on 'political basis alone,' reorienting the department around Trump's priorities. 'This isn't working like it's supposed to,' he said. On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled Congress is racing to deliver Trump his 'big, beautiful bill' that would unlock tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem's predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas – have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump's cabinet officials. Outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration's deportation polices have 'gone too far'. If Republicans lose the House in next year's midterms, Noem's leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny. One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem's resignation. 'The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,' Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said. Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump's orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump's vision – has some wondering whether she's looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump's heir is already taking shape. 'Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,' Rosenzweig said. 'I'll put it another way, Noem is the first DHS secretary who's running for president.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Can Pope Leo XIV solve the Vatican funding crisis? Here's how the Holy See manages money
Vatican City, the world's smallest country, is facing a significant budget deficit. The city-state primarily relies on donations, ticket sales from the Vatican Museums, investment income, and its real estate holdings to finance the Catholic Church's central government. And unlike other nations, the Vatican does not tax its residents or issue bonds. In 2022, the Holy See published a consolidated budget projecting 770 million euros, with the majority allocated to embassies worldwide and Vatican media operations. However, in recent years, revenue has fallen short of covering expenses. Pope Leo XIV now faces the challenge of securing the necessary funds to steer the Vatican out of its financial difficulties. Withering donations Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' U.S. bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (19.3 million euros) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the U.S. gave an average $27 million (23.7 million euros) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (88.6 million euros) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (66.8 million euros) during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million (41.2 million euros) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. New donors The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around 55 million euros ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of 30 million euros ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the U.S., no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the U.S., donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. Untapped real estate The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated 35 million euros ($39.9 million) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the U.S. and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
‘He's a bad guy': Trump backs decision to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to US to face charges
Donald Trump has called Kilmar Abrego Garcia a 'bad guy' and backed the decision to return him to the US to face criminal charges. Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador nearly three months ago under the Trump administration. He was returned to the US on Friday (6 June) and charged with trafficking migrants into the country. The charges relate to a 2022 traffic stop, during which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected him of human trafficking. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trump said: 'By bringing him back, you show how bad he is.' 'He's a bad guy,' he added.
