Venezuela Suspends Flights From Colombia to Prevent ‘Entry of Mercenaries'
Venezuelan Security Minister Diosdado Cabello on May 19 announced the suspension of flights from Colombia due to the possible entry of 'mercenaries,' days before the legislative and regional elections scheduled for May 25.
Cabello claimed these 'mercenaries' are part of a plan to destabilize the country.
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants
The US supreme court on Friday announced it would allow the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president's drive to step up deportations. The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani's order halting the administration's move to end the immigration humanitarian 'parole' protections granted to 532,000 people by Donald Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal from the country, while the detailed case plays out in lower courts. As with many of the court's emergency orders – after rapid appeals brought the case to their bench – the decision issued on Friday was unsigned and gave no reasoning. However two of the court's three liberal-leaning justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented. The court 'botched' its assessment of whether the administration was entitled to freeze Talwani's decision pending the litigation, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion. Related: Trump administration sets quota to arrest 3,000 people a day in anti-immigration agenda The outcome, Jackson wrote, 'undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending'. Jackson also said that 'it is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum pre-decision damage.' She added that those living under parole protections in this case now face 'two unbearable options'. One option is to 'elect to leave the United States and thereby, confront 'dangers in their native countries,' experience destructive 'family separation' and possibly 'forfeit any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their … claims', Jackson wrote. The other option is that they could remain in the US after parole termination and 'risk imminent removal at the hands of government agents, along with its serious attendant consequences'. To Jackson, 'either choice creates significant problems for respondents that far exceed any harm to the government … At a minimum, granting the stay would facilitate needless human suffering before the courts have reached a final judgement regarding the legal arguments at issue, while denying the government's application would not have anything close to the kind of practical impact.' Immigration parole is a form of temporary permission under American law to be in the country for 'urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit', allowing recipients to live and work in the US. Biden, a Democrat, used parole as part of his administration's approach to handling migrants entering at the US-Mexico border. Such a status does not offer immigrants a long-term path towards citizenship but it can typically be renewed multiple times. A report from the American Immigration Council found that halting the program would, apart from the humanitarian effect, be a blow to the US economy, as households in the US where the breadwinners have temporary protected status (TPS) collectively earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021 while paying nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes. Trump called for ending humanitarian parole programs in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in office. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subsequently moved to terminate them in March, cutting short the two-year parole grants. The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place migrants in a fast-track deportation process called 'expedited removal'. The case is one of many that the Trump administration has brought in an emergency fashion to the nation's highest judicial body seeking to undo decisions by judges impeding the president's sweeping policies, including several targeting immigrants. The supreme court on 19 May also let Trump end TPS that had been granted under Biden to about 350,000 additional Venezuelans living in the United States, while that legal dispute plays out. Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent then, while House Democrats condemned the supreme court's decision. In a bid to reduce unauthorized border crossings, Biden starting in 2022 offering limited extra pathways to come to the US legally, allowing Venezuelans who entered the US by air to request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a US financial sponsor. Biden expanded that eligibility process to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those countries. The plaintiffs in this case, a group of migrants granted parole and Americans who serve as their sponsors, sued administration officials claiming they violated federal law governing the actions of government agencies. Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the program's blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put the judge's decision on hold and the government appealed. Related: US immigration authorities collecting DNA information of children in criminal database The justice department told the supreme court that Talwani's order had upended 'critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry', effectively 'undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election' that returned Trump to the presidency. The plaintiffs told the supreme court they would face grave harm if their parole is cut short given that the administration has indefinitely suspended processing their pending applications for asylum and other immigration relief. They said they would be separated from their families and immediately subject to expedited deportation 'to the same despotic and unstable countries from which they fled, where many will face serious risks of danger, persecution and even death'. Speaking at the White House on Friday afternoon, Trump praised the decision, saying 'a couple of hours ago we had a great decision from the supreme court that's very important'. Reuters contributed reporting
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
An overwhelming majority of Venezuelans sent to Salvadoran prison were not convicted of US crimes. Trump admin was fully aware.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws. Advertisement As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession. Advertisement We conducted a case-by-case review of all the Venezuelan deportees. It's possible there are crimes and other information in the deportees' backgrounds that did not show up in our reporting or the internal government data, which includes only minimal details for nine of the men. There's no single publicly available database for all crimes committed in the U.S., much less abroad. But everything we did find in public records contradicted the Trump administration's assertions as well. ProPublica and the Tribune, along with Venezuelan media outlets Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates), also obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol. Those lists include some 1,400 names. None of the names of the 238 Venezuelan deportees matched those on the lists. The hasty removal of the Venezuelans and their incarceration in a third country has made this one of the most consequential deportations in recent history. The court battles over whether Trump has the authority to expel immigrants without judicial review have the potential to upend how this country handles all immigrants living in the U.S., whether legally or illegally. Officials have suggested publicly that, to achieve the president's goals of deporting millions of immigrants, the administration was considering suspending habeas corpus, the longstanding constitutional right allowing people to challenge their detention. Advertisement Hours before the immigrants were loaded onto airplanes in Texas for deportation, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that the Tren de Aragua prison gang had invaded the United States, aided by the Venezuelan government. It branded the gang a foreign terrorist organization and said that declaration gave the president the authority to expel its members and send them indefinitely to a foreign prison, where they have remained for more than two months with no ability to communicate with their families or lawyers. Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union's legal fight against the deportations, said the removals amounted to a 'blatant violation of the most fundamental due process principles.' He said that under the law, an immigrant who has committed a crime can be prosecuted and removed, but 'it does not mean they can be subjected to a potentially lifetime sentence in a foreign gulag.' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in response to our findings that 'ProPublica should be embarrassed that they are doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens who are a threat,' adding that 'the American people strongly support' the president's immigration agenda. When asked about the differences between the administration's public statements about the deportees and the way they are labeled in government data, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin largely repeated Advertisement As for the administration's allegations that Tren de Aragua has attempted an invasion, an analysis by Our investigation focused on the 238 Venezuelan men who were deported on March 15 to CECOT, the prison in El Salvador, and whose names were on a list first published by We interviewed about 100 of the deportees' relatives and their attorneys. Many of them had heard from their loved ones on the morning of March 15, when the men believed they were being sent back to Venezuela. They were happy because they would be back home with their families, who were eager to prepare their favorite meals and plan parties. Some of the relatives shared video messages with us and on social media that were recorded inside U.S. detention facilities. In those videos, the detainees said they were afraid that they might be sent to Advertisement They had no idea they were being sent to El Salvador. Among them was 31-year-old Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, who left Venezuela and his job as a youth soccer coach last July. His sister, Leidys Trejo Solórzano, said he had a hard time supporting himself and his mother and that Venezuela's crumbling economy made it hard for him to find a better paying job. Colmenares was detained at an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border in October because of his many tattoos, his sister said. Those tattoos include the names of relatives, a clock, an owl and a crown she said was inspired by the Real Madrid soccer club's logo. Colmenares was not flagged as having a criminal history in the DHS data we obtained. Nor did we find any U.S. or foreign convictions or charges in our review. Trejo said her brother stayed out of trouble and has no criminal record in Venezuela either. She described his expulsion as a U.S.-government-sponsored kidnapping. 'It's been so difficult. Even talking about what happened is hard for me,' said Trejo, who has scoured the internet for videos and photos of her brother in the Salvadoran prison. 'Many nights I can't sleep because I'm so anxious.' The internal government data shows that officials had labeled all but a handful of the men as members of Tren de Aragua but offered little information about how they came to that conclusion. Advertisement McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency is confident in its assessments of gang affiliation but would not provide additional information to support them. John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, 'for political reasons, I think the administration wants to characterize this as a grand effort that's promoting public safety of the United States.' But 'even some of the government's own data demonstrates there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality,' he said, referring to the internal data we obtained. The government data shows 67 men who were deported had been flagged as having pending charges, though it provides no details about their alleged crimes. We found police, court and other records for 38 of those deportees. We found several people whose criminal history differed from what was tagged in the government data. In some cases that the government listed as pending criminal charges, the men had been convicted and in one case the charge had been dropped before the man was deported. Our reporting found that, like the criminal convictions, the majority of the pending charges involved nonviolent crimes, including retail theft, drug possession and traffic offenses. Six of the men had pending charges for attempted murder, assault, armed robbery, gun possession or domestic battery. Immigrant advocates have said removing people to a prison in El Salvador before the cases against them were resolved means that Trump, asserting his executive authority, short-circuited the criminal justice system. Take the case of Wilker Miguel Gutiérrez Sierra, 23, who was arrested in February 2024 in Chicago on charges of attempted murder, robbery and aggravated battery after he and three other Venezuelan men allegedly assaulted a stranger on a train and stole his phone and $400. He pleaded not guilty. Gutiérrez was on electronic monitoring as he awaited trial when he was arrested by ICE agents who'd pulled up to him on the street in five black trucks, court records show. Three days later he was shipped to El Salvador. But the majority of men labeled as having pending cases were facing less serious charges, according to the records we found. Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, 23, was arrested in Chicago in August 2023 on misdemeanor charges for riding his bike on the sidewalk while drinking a can of Budweiser. His partner, Cherry Flores, described his deportation as a gross injustice. 'They shouldn't have sent him there,' she said. 'Why did they have to take him over a beer?' of ProPublica contributed data analysis. Adriana Núñez and Carlos Centeno contributed reporting.
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
New order by California judge protects some Venezuelan TPS holders from deportation
A federal judge has granted protection from deportation and work permits to as many as 5,000 Venezuelans who have Temporary Protected Status. U.S. District Judge Edward E. Chen in San Francisco on Friday granted an emergency motion filed by Venezuelan plaintiffs following last week's Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration can deport some Venezuelans on TPS while a challenge wends its way through the courts. Chen's order involves two key dates: Jan. 17, 2025, when Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at the time, extended TPS for Venezuelans until next year, and Feb. 5, when the new DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, announced she was revoking the extension. In an 11-page ruling, Chen ordered the government to uphold the rights of TPS holders who received government documentation — such as work permits and/or TPS renewals — under Mayorkas's extension between between those two dates. 'If DHS granted that extension, it must honor it and comply with the court's order,' said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who is among the lawyers representing the Venezuelans in the case. During Thursday's hearing, the government estimated that about 5,000 Venezuelans re-registered for TPS or work permits, a figure Chen referred to in his ruling. 'What we do know is that two of the named plaintiffs in our case do benefit from the order,' MacLean said. 'We also have named plaintiffs who fall outside the scope of Judge Chen's ruling—for example, those who received an automatic extension but only after February 5th. Additionally, we know there are people who made the effort to re-register but didn't receive any official notice in time to benefit from it.' The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Noem revoked TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans effective April 7 — stripping their right to work and exposing them to potential detention and deportation. Many affected individuals live in South Florida. After the Supreme Court ruling, Homeland Security updated its TPS guidance but has yet to clarify how it will implement the decision. On March 31, Chen blocked the Trump administration's attempt to revoke deportation protections for Venezuelans just days before their legal status was set to expire. Chen ruled that Venezuelan nationals with TPS could suffer 'irreparable injury' without a stay on their deportations. In April, a federal appeals court upheld Chen's stay, rejecting the government's request to lift it. However, on May 19 the Supreme Court issued a ruling favoring the Trump administration by allowing the termination of TPS to proceed while the case is litigated. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the lawsuit, which was filed by seven Venezuelans and the National TPS Alliance in federal court in San Francisco. The high court clarified that its order does not prevent ongoing challenges to Noem's decision to cancel work permits and other official documents set to expire on Oct. 2, 2026.
