Trump administration says it's working to return a Guatemalan man deported to Mexico
The Trump administration said in court filings Wednesday that it was working to bring back a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return.
The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge's order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely 'lacked any semblance of due process.'
Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents.
In a court filing Wednesday, government lawyers said that a so-called significant public benefit parole packet had been approved and was awaiting additional approval from Homeland Security Investigations. The designation allows people who aren't eligible to enter the U.S. to do so temporarily, often for reasons related to law enforcement or legal proceedings.
Officials in the Phoenix field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spoke with the man's lawyers over the weekend and are working to bring him back to the U.S. on a plane chartered by ICE, the court filing said.
An earlier court proceeding had determined that the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala. But he also feared returning to Mexico, where he says he was raped and extorted while seeking asylum in the U.S., according to court documents.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who called Murphy a 'federal activist judge,' said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was 'granted withholding of removal to Guatemala' and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was 'a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.'
Murphy's order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family.
Murphy's order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family.
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House's claim that it couldn't retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. Both the White House and the El Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him.
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The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
I got British citizenship via the five-year route. Labour's new 10-year rule will cause untold pain
There are many lies told by politicians when it comes to immigration in the UK, but none is bigger than the claim that it's all too easy. Too easy to enter Britain; too easy to be given handouts; too easy to acquire citizenship. The UK is presented as an inert country, passively receiving future Britons that it does not charge, test or, indeed, invite. The government's latest raft of policies to deal with the 'failed experiment' of 'open borders' is heavily influenced by this lie, as it is intended to make things harder for immigrants. One of those policies went broadly under the radar, a small technicality amid Keir Starmer's unsettling rhetoric, but it will have serious consequences. That policy is extending the period you're required to be settled in Britain before you can get permanent residency, and then citizenship, from five years to 10 years. As someone who became naturalised under the five-year route, my stomach sank when I saw the news. There is no automatic route to citizenship in the UK for foreigners, not through marriage to a British citizen or even birth on British soil to non-British parents; there has long been a residency requirement component. The 'settlement' route to citizenship is – or was – open to those who have worked and lived in the country legally for five continuous years, and their dependants. After that five years, one can apply for 'indefinite leave to remain' (ILR). After a minimum of a year on that status, one can apply for naturalisation, and then a British passport. If the government's new policies come to pass, the route to settlement will now take a minimum of 11 years, not including any time spent in Britain as a student or on other visas that don't count towards the settlement component. I know from experience that five years are already one long trial of keeping jobs against all odds and fighting sudden changes in the law. Doubling that time has ramifications that encompass everything from professional security to that supposed holy grail of immigration anxieties, 'integration'. The panic about settlement is misinformed by temporary patterns and faulty premises. After Brexit and the pandemic, the need to support struggling health and care sectors led to a short-term increase in work visas. And what counts towards immigration numbers includes category errors, such as students, as well as an underlying assumption that all those who enter on long-term visas with a potential for settlement will remain. A report from 2023 indicates that, of those on work routes in 2018, only 38% still had valid or indefinite leave to remain five years later. By this measure, not all workers and their families, not even half, are likely to remain in the UK and apply for citizenship – the punitiveness of the extension is disproportionate to the pain it will inflict. It is particularly gratuitously cruel as the 10-year limit will be applied retroactively. Those who came to the UK based on the understanding that naturalisation was an option, and made big life arrangements on that basis, now find themselves literally unsettled. Once the proposed new rules were announced, I received a flurry of correspondence and calls. 'I feel it is unfair,' Christine (not her real name), a skilled worker who was one year away from securing ILR, told me. 'Moving to a new country is not a life decision that anyone takes lightly,' she said. These are people who are keenly aware that they have no recourse to public funds and risk having to pack up and leave if they lose their jobs. Christine understood that uncertainty was part of the deal – but thought it could be weathered if she followed the rules, with the promised reward at the end of being 'accepted into British society'. Vulnerability is a point that recurred in conversations. Even for those happy in their work, the prospect of being in bondage to their employer for double the anticipated time seized them with a sense of precariousness. Workers' visas are tied to their employers. They can't just leave or look for another job, unless the new employer is willing to take on the cost and effort of sponsoring them. The new rules limit career prospects, and will expose people to the whims of bosses and employers. Every bad day at work becomes not just that, but a worry that your whole life in the UK may be over. Long-term sickness becomes not just a health calamity, but an existential one. Then there is the cost and administrative burden. Each extension or renewal of a visa can cost up to almost £2,000, in addition to the £1,035 annual NHS surcharge that migrants need to pay (on top of national insurance contributions). Over a period of 10 years, a family of four could pay almost up to £35,000 in health surcharges alone. There are other potential cascading costs. Children without ILR, for example, will enter the university system as overseas students, and may be treated as such for fees purposes. Many of these human consequences have not been thought through. We know this because one chilling aspect of the new policies is the lack of specificity beyond the headline summary. The extension comes with the caveat that some people will qualify 'sooner based on criteria yet to be decided', and that there will be a 'consultation' later this year. To anyone who has dealt with the Home Office, this working-it-out-as-you-go-along language augurs the sort of unclear process that one immigrant in the throes of challenging a Home Office error once told me was akin to 'climbing a crumbling staircase'. Above all, the rule changes show how little our politicians really care about integration. They constantly cite it as the epitome of what earns the right to be in the country and accuse immigrants of not holding up their end of the bargain. But being stuck on work visas for year after year amounts to the opposite of integration. It means you can't vote, cannot have recourse to public funds if needed, cannot fully lean in to British society and participate with a sense of safety and belonging, as you're constantly trying to minimise costs in case a change in circumstances means relocating. The policy creates a tier of second-class worker, a sort of migrant labourer welcomed for their work and paying of taxes, but shut out from the privileges enjoyed by British nationals. That's the real cost of this shortsighted and heartless change. Those who come to the country and build a life, have or bring children, become part of the fabric of society, and work continuously throughout their naturalisation time might soon be prevented for more than a decade from having a relationship with the British state that is defined by anything more than fear and anxiety. If there were ever a 'failed experiment', this is it. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Russia and Ukraine to talk about peace but are still far apart
ISTANBUL, June 2 (Reuters) - Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to sit down on Monday in the Turkish city of Istanbul for their second round of direct peace talks since 2022, but the two sides are still far apart on how to end the war and the fighting is stepping up. U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Russia and Ukraine make peace, but so far they have not and the White House has repeatedly warned the United States will "walk away" from the war if the two sides are too stubborn to reach a peace deal. The first round of talks on May 16 yielded the biggest prisoner swap of the war but no sign of peace - or even a ceasefire as both sides merely set out their own opening negotiating positions. After keeping the world guessing on whether Ukraine would even turn up for the second round, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Defence Minister Rustem Umerov would meet with Russian officials in Istanbul. The Russian delegation will be headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who after the first round invoked French general and statesman Napoleon Bonaparte to assert that war and negotiations should always be conducted at the same time. On Sunday, Ukraine launched one of its most ambitious attacks of the war, targeting Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Siberia and other military bases, while the Kremlin launched 472 drones at Ukraine, Ukraine's air force said, the highest nightly total of the war. The idea of direct talks was first proposed by President Vladimir Putin after Ukraine and European powers demanded that he agree to a ceasefire which the Kremlin dismissed. Putin said Russia would draft a memorandum setting out the broad contours of a possible peace accord and only then discuss a ceasefire. Kyiv said over the weekend it was still waiting for draft memorandum from the Russian side. Medinsky, the lead Kremlin negotiator, said on Sunday that Moscow had received a Ukraine's draft memorandum and told Russia's RIA news agency the Kremlin would react to it on Monday. According to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, the two sides will in Turkey present their respective documents outlining their ideas for peace terms, though it is clear that after three years of war Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart. Kellogg has indicated that the U.S. will be involved in the talks and that even representatives from Britain, France and Germany will be too, though it was not clear at what level the United States would be represented. Ukraine's delegation will also include its deputy foreign minister, as well as several military and intelligence officials, according to an executive order by Zelenskiy on Sunday. In June last year, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia. Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul will present to the Russian side a proposed roadmap for reaching a lasting peace settlement, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters. According to the document, there will be no restrictions on Ukraine's military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow's forces, and reparations for Ukraine. The document also stated that the current location of the front line will be the starting point for negotiations about territory. Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,100 square km, about the same size as the U.S. state of Ohio. Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. The United States says over 1.2 million people have been killed and injured in the war since 2022. Trump has called Putin "crazy" and berated Zelenskiy in public in the Oval Office, but the U.S. president has also said that he thinks peace is achievable and that if Putin delays then he could impose tough sanctions on Russia.
NBC News
6 hours ago
- NBC News
Trump shares unfounded conspiracy theory claiming Biden was 'executed' in 2020
President Donald Trump on Saturday night reposted a baseless claim on Truth Social that former President Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with clones or robots. The original post, made by an anonymous Truth Social user that often spreads outlandish claims, suggested that Biden was replaced with 'clones, doubles' and 'robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.' Trump published a link to that post to his nearly 10 million followers, without adding any additional context or explanation. The original poster's account has a little more than 5,000 followers. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday explaining why Trump shared the post and whether Trump believes Biden was executed in 2020. Trump has frequently taken to sharing misinformation and unproven conspiracy theories over the years. The president repeats false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, which led some of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Biden's victory. He also claimed — before backtracking — thatformer President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and, during the 2024 campaign,allegedthat Haitian immigrants were 'eating the pets.' All of those claims were debunked or otherwise proven false. Trump's circle, too, has spread conspiracy theories, with some of the top brass in the administration having spread misinformation about vaccines or the so-called 'deep state.' Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously repeated a debunked claim that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, and the FBI's director and deputy director have spread claims that the Biden administration and the 'deep state' weaponized the FBI against Trump. Biden revealed last month that he had been diagnosed with a metastatic form of an aggressive type of prostate cancer, as the former president and his top aides were already facing mounting scrutiny about his mental acuity and physical capabilities while in office and how forthcoming they had been with the country. The revelation of his cancer diagnosis initially prompted an outpouring of well-wishes fromDemocrats and Republicans, but it quickly shifted as Trump allies claimed Biden had hidden his cancer diagnosis. A spokesperson for Biden said at the time that the former president had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer before last month. Biden, since his diagnosis was made public , said on Friday he felt good and joked with reporters about the allegations of his supposed mental decline while in office. The repost Saturday joins a host of heightened attacks the president has brandished against Biden in recent weeks. Trump and House Republicans have scrutinized Biden's use of an autopen to sign some pieces of legislation and executive orders, using it to call into question Biden's mental state. Trump has gone as far as to claim that some pardons that Biden signed were not valid because they had not been signed with a real pen. NBC News has previously reported that the White House has used autopens to create signatures for decades.
