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Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Nadler staffer briefly detained by DHS in altercation at lawmaker's Manhattan office
Officers with the Department of Homeland Security briefly detained a staff member in Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-N.Y.) Manhattan office during an incident on Wednesday, as protests took place outside an immigration courthouse in the same federal facility as the representative's office. The incident, first reported by the news outlet Gothamist on Friday, was captured on video. In the recording, a DHS officer can be heard saying that members of Nadler's staff were 'harboring rioters' in their office while another officer cuffs a crying staffer. 'I'm a federal officer,' the DHS official said to a second staff member in the video posted by Gothamist, adding 'we have the right to check' the office. The second staff member, who can be seen initially blocking the officer's entry to a private area in the office, asked whether the officers had a warrant to search the space, to which the officer replied negatively. The staff member eventually acquiesced, allowing the officer to walk through the area. According to a statement from DHS, Federal Protective Service officers showed up at Nadler's office to 'conduct a security check' because they were 'concerned about the safety of the federal employees in the office' after hearing reports of 'incidents' nearby. The statement did not mention the issue of 'harboring rioters' that the officer referred to in the video. DHS officers identified themselves and entered the office, where they were met by four people who remained unnamed in the agency's statement. One of the individuals 'became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office,' the statement to POLITICO read, prompting the officers to detain the person in the hallway as they proceeded with their search. According to the statement, all parties 'were released without further incident.' Robert Gottheim, Nadler's co-chief of staff, confirmed to Gothamist that there was no arrest but otherwise declined to comment. Gottheim acknowledged a Saturday email from POLITICO, and said a comment would be forthcoming. The rare altercation between federal officers and congressional staff in a legislator's office comes amid growing friction over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and mass deportation efforts, which have sparked protests across the country and embroiled the administration in a battle with the courts over the legality of the president's policies. The incident is not the first clash between federal authorities and Democratic officials or the judiciary over immigration policy. The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan last month for allegedly assisting a man who is in the country illegally evade immigration officials who were seeking his arrest in her courthouse. Dugan pleaded not guilty to the charges in federal court earlier in May. White House border czar Tom Homan also threatened the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, suggesting he could become the next target for the administration's wrath after Evers' office issued guidance to state employees on how to deal with immigration authorities. 'Wait till you see what's coming,' Homan told reporters about Evers' message earlier this month. 'If you cross that line of impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that is a felony. And we'll treat it as such.' The incident at Nadler's office, which shares a federal building with an immigration courthouse in lower Manhattan, took place the same day as significant protests against the arrest of a Bronx high school student by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials the week prior. According to an NYPD spokesperson, 23 people were taken into custody during the Wednesday evening protests, while 18 people were given criminal court summonses and five were arrested and charged.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Nadler staffer briefly detained by DHS in altercation at lawmaker's Manhattan office
Officers with the Department of Homeland Security briefly detained a staff member in Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-N.Y.) Manhattan office during an incident on Wednesday, as protests took place outside an immigration courthouse in the same federal facility as the representative's office. The incident, first reported by the news outlet Gothamist on Friday, was captured on video. In the recording, a DHS officer can be heard saying that members of Nadler's staff were 'harboring rioters' in their office while another officer cuffs a crying staffer. 'I'm a federal officer,' the DHS official said to a second staff member in the video posted by Gothamist, adding 'we have the right to check' the office. The second staff member, who can be seen initially blocking the officer's entry to a private area in the office, asked whether the officers had a warrant to search the space, to which the officer replied negatively. The staff member eventually acquiesced, allowing the officer to walk through the area. According to a statement from DHS, Federal Protective Service officers showed up at Nadler's office to 'conduct a security check' because they were 'concerned about the safety of the federal employees in the office' after hearing reports of 'incidents' nearby. The statement did not mention the issue of 'harboring rioters' that the officer referred to in the video. DHS officers identified themselves and entered the office, where they were met by four people who remained unnamed in the agency's statement. One of the individuals 'became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office,' the statement to POLITICO read, prompting the officers to detain the person in the hallway as they proceeded with their search. According to the statement, all parties 'were released without further incident.' Robert Gottheim, Nadler's co-chief of staff, confirmed to Gothamist that there was no arrest but otherwise declined to comment. Gottheim acknowledged a Saturday email from POLITICO, and said a comment would be forthcoming. The rare altercation between federal officers and congressional staff in a legislator's office comes amid growing friction over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and mass deportation efforts, which have sparked protests across the country and embroiled the administration in a battle with the courts over the legality of the president's policies. The incident is not the first clash between federal authorities and Democratic officials or the judiciary over immigration policy. The FBI arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan last month for allegedly assisting a man who is in the country illegally evade immigration officials who were seeking his arrest in her courthouse. Dugan pleaded not guilty to the charges in federal court earlier in May. White House border czar Tom Homan also threatened the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, suggesting he could become the next target for the administration's wrath after Evers' office issued guidance to state employees on how to deal with immigration authorities. 'Wait till you see what's coming," Homan told reporters about Evers' message earlier this month. "If you cross that line of impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that is a felony. And we'll treat it as such.' The incident at Nadler's office, which shares a federal building with an immigration courthouse in lower Manhattan, took place the same day as significant protests against the arrest of a Bronx high school student by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials the week prior. According to an NYPD spokesperson, 23 people were taken into custody during the Wednesday evening protests, while 18 people were given criminal court summonses and five were arrested and charged.
Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
State begins rolling out expanded student visa vetting — starting with Harvard
The State Department has told U.S. consulates and embassies to immediately begin reviewing the social media accounts of Harvard's student visa applicants for antisemitism in what it called a pilot program that could be rolled out for colleges nationwide. The cable signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obtained by POLITICO, was sent late Thursday. It says consular officers should 'conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.' The policy, while primarily affecting students, will also include faculty members, researchers, staff members and guest speakers at Harvard. The policy will take effect immediately, per the cable. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The document puts into motion a proposal the Trump administration floated earlier this week for expanded social media vetting of all foreign students applying to U.S. colleges, pausing new appointments for student visa applicants in the meantime. Increased social media vetting did already exist, but it was previously primarily intended for returning students who may have participated in protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Notably, State Department leadership wants consular officers to consider 'whether the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to 'private' or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant's credibility.' The cable also instructs consular officers to inform applicants with private social media accounts that they could be viewed as evading vetting and request they make their accounts public while the Fraud Prevention Unit reviews their case. It also adds to the White House's battle with elite academic institutions over alleged mishandling of cases of antisemitism during campus protests in response to Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip against militant group Hamas. The cable specifically identifies antisemitism and antisemitic viewpoints as the focus for consular officers but does not spell out what specifically would rise to the level of inadmissible antisemitism in the eyes of State Department leadership. It says that the Harvard review process 'will also serve as a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants' and that 'this pilot will be expanded over time,' indicating it will likely reach other universities in the Trump administration's crosshairs. The new guidance comes as the U.S. government continues its showdown with Harvard for alleged failures to address antisemitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. The federal government has stripped Harvard of billions in research funding and entered in dueling litigation with the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school. It had also suspended Harvard's ability to enroll international students by briefly blocking visa applications before that decision was blocked by a federal judge. It also comes as the administration has targeted other academic communities, including Chinese nationals studying at U.S. colleges and universities. Rubio said Wednesday the administration would 'aggressively revoke' visas of Chinese nationals studying in sensitive fields, the potential implementation of which has flummoxed State Department officials.
Yahoo
2 days ago
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- Yahoo
A court halted his deportation. The Trump administration deported him 28 minutes later.
The Trump administration has admitted that it improperly deported another immigrant in violation of a court order — the fourth known case in which the administration deported someone erroneously or in breach of specific legal requirements. Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, had been in immigration detention since 2022 while deportation proceedings against him were pending. But on May 7, shortly after a federal appeals court ordered the government to keep him in the United States, immigration authorities deported him back to his native country. Matthew Borowski, a lawyer for Melgar-Salmeron, told POLITICO that he intends to ask the court to order the government to return his client from El Salvador and to hold government officials in contempt. In court papers this week, officials blamed a 'confluence of administrative errors,' including missed emails and an inaccurate roster of passengers on the May 7 deportation flight. The Justice Department declined to comment, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. The deportation of Melgar-Salmeron was first reported by the Investigative Post, a nonprofit news outlet in western New York. The episode is reminiscent of three other deportations that courts have declared illegal or improper in recent months: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was deported to El Salvador in violation of an immigration judge's order. Daniel Lozano-Camargo, a Venezuelan man who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court-approved settlement. A Guatemalan man, identified in court by the initials O.C.G., who was deported to Mexico in what the administration now acknowledges was an error because he was not given a chance to exercise his legal right to raise fears that he would be tortured there. In each of those other three cases, judges have ordered the administration to try to bring the deportees back to the United States so that they can receive due process. The administration says it is working to return O.C.G. but has resisted the orders to return Abrego Garcia and Lozano-Camargo, claiming they are powerless because the men are in Salvadoran custody. Melgar-Salmeron, who spent years living in Virginia, had been in immigration detention since 2022 following a prison sentence for possessing an unregistered shotgun, according to court records. Though he had originally also been charged with entering the country illegally, he was allowed to plead guilty in 2021 to only the firearms charge. After his prison sentence ended, Melgar-Salmeron was detained by immigration authorities while deportation proceedings against him were ongoing. In January 2024, the Biden administration put Melgar-Salmeron's proceedings on hold amid broader litigation over immigration policy. But in April, the Trump administration moved to lift that hold, court documents show. Melgar-Salmeron had a longstanding appeal pending at the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The administration asked the court to 'expedite' the appeal and indicated that it wanted to deport him by May 9 'at the latest' — but told the court it would not act before May 8. On the morning of May 7, a three-judge panel of the court ordered the government to keep Melgar-Salmeron in the United States while he pursued claims about fear of torture in his home country. Despite the court's order, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at a staging facility in Louisiana loaded Melgar-Salmeron onto a plane and deported him to El Salvador. The flight departed at 10:20 a.m. — 28 minutes after the court's order. Melgar-Salmeron is now in a Salvadoran prison, Borowski says. When the court learned about the deportation, it sent pointed questions to the administration about what had happened. The court demanded sworn declarations from ICE officials responsible for the man's deportation and an explanation of why the court's order to block his deportation was apparently not conveyed to the people who put him on the flight to El Salvador. The judges noted that the administration had assured them that Melgar-Salmeron would not be deported until at least May 8. They demanded to know why his deportation was abruptly advanced to May 7 less than an hour after their order. In a letter to the court on Wednesday, the administration acknowledged that the deportation was erroneous. Kitty Lees, a Justice Department attorney, said there had been a breakdown at multiple levels of the process. 'Several inadvertent administrative oversights led to Petitioner's May 7, 2025 removal,' Lees wrote, 'despite the express assurance made by the Government to this Court that it would forbear removing Petitioner until May 8, 2025.' Among the errors: ICE Air Operations, which arranges deportation flights, had always planned to deport Melgar-Salmeron on May 7, when it had a long-scheduled deportation flight on the books. He was listed on the manifest for that May 7 flight weeks in advance. But the Buffalo-based ICE office responsible for Melgar-Salmeron's case wrote a different date — May 9 — into his official file, a date that was relayed to the Justice Department and the court. On May 6 and May 7, ICE Air emailed a flight manifest that included Melgar-Salmeron to the Buffalo office responsible for his case. The spreadsheet was automatically forwarded to four Buffalo officers, but not the one assigned to Melgar-Salmeron's case, who didn't see it until the flight had departed. 'Due to an oversight, and because of the volume of emails received pertaining to removal flights, the … Buffalo officers who received the emails did not forward them to Petitioner's assigned … Buffalo officer,' Lees wrote. 'For an unknown reason,' when ICE was boarding people onto the flight, Melgar-Salmeron did not appear and was stricken from the manifest as a 'no-show,' Lees added. During a second sweep of the facility, they located him and 'escorted him onto the airplane,' but the manifest was never updated to reflect that he had been found. The haphazard circumstances around Melgar-Salmeron's case bear some of the same hallmarks of other high-profile deportations that judges have sought to reverse. In March, the administration deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a 2019 immigration court order that barred the government from sending him there because he could be at risk of violence at the hands of a local gang. A Justice Department lawyer acknowledged in court that the deportation had been improper, and a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his release from El Salvador's custody. The Supreme Court largely upheld that requirement and noted that the deportation had been 'illegal.' A different federal judge has also ordered the administration to facilitate the return of Lozano-Camargo, who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court-approved settlement agreement that protected certain immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors. (He is referred to in court papers with a pseudonym, but POLITICO previously identified him as Lozano-Camargo.) Abrego Garcia and Lozano-Camargo remain in Salvadoran prisons. The Trump administration has claimed in court that it has no ability to force the Salvadoran government to return them to United States custody. The administration, however, says it has taken steps to arrange a flight to bring back O.C.G., the Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico in February. The man claims he was raped and otherwise targeted for being gay during a previous stay in Mexico. Administration officials initially claimed in court that he was given a chance to raise fears about being sent back to Mexico, but they later retracted that assertion and admitted they have no evidence that he was ever asked about whether he feared violence there. A federal judge ruled that O.C.G. had been deported without proper due process and ordered the government to facilitate his return.
Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Wes Moore versus the cancel culture
LESSONS NOT LEARNED — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is headlining a dinner and fundraiser for South Carolina Democrats tonight, marking the first real political foray into a key early presidential state by one of the brightest stars in the Democratic Party. But if it was up to some South Carolina Democrats, he wouldn't be there at all. Moore, as POLITICO's Brakkton Booker reported this week, was the target of a failed effort to rescind his speaking invitation because of his recent decision to veto a slavery reparations bill in Maryland. Moore's position is squarely in the political mainstream — roughly seven-in-ten adults say descendants of enslaved people should not be repaid, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center poll. A more recent poll in California found nearly 60 percent opposed to cash reparations. Even so, the first-term governor, widely viewed as a top presidential prospect in either 2028 or beyond, was considered by some party leaders to have forfeited his right to address the party by virtue of staking out this one position. It's a reminder of how far the Democratic Party still has to go in diagnosing and addressing the weaknesses revealed by the 2024 election results — among them, the perception that Democrats have moved too far to the left, focused too much on identity group politics, spent too much time on language policing and became too dogmatic and intolerant of differing views, even within their own party. Moore's brush with the party's cancel culture puts him in the company of a number of other Democratic lawmakers who also have been stung by intra-party demands for ideological conformity. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton has faced harsh Democratic attacks for departing from party orthodoxy on the issue of transgender athletes. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democratic centrist in Washington state, has come under frequent fire for a variety of ideological transgressions, with surprisingly little consideration given to the political imperatives of representing a rural, Republican-oriented House district. The same is true of Maine Rep. Jared Golden, another House Democrat precariously perched in Trump Country. The buzz surrounding Original Sin, the recently published account of Joe Biden's ill-fated decision to run for a second term and the efforts made to hide his diminishment, has renewed attention to the fate of former Rep. Dean Phillips. The Minnesota Democrat was ostracized and essentially exiled from the party for raising questions about Biden's age and health and then challenging him in the 2024 primary — a debate that, in retrospect, the party desperately needed to have. The Trump-era GOP isn't exactly a party that brooks internal dissent either. But it hasn't recently emerged as a competitive impediment — the party is in a period of expansion, not contraction. The Republican brand is not nearly as damaged with voters. There's an important distinction in how the parties view their apostates. Dissent in the contemporary GOP is seen as disloyalty to Trump, who metes out his own political justice to wayward Republicans. There is no such figurehead in the Democratic Party, where dissenting views are characterized as moral failures, unworthy of public airing and perhaps deserving of exile. When Moore walks into dinner this evening, he'll almost surely be greeted warmly by the majority of the guests in the room. The effort to cancel his appearance failed, after all. But the mere attempt suggests the party still has a ways to go in understanding where it went off the rails. Moore is a combat veteran, a Black rising star, a dynamic talent and a landslide winner who is aligned with the party on most of its priorities. If his voice can be stifled, then the Democrats have completely missed the lessons of 2024. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's author at cmahtesian@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie. What'd I Miss? — State begins rolling out expanded student visa vetting — starting with Harvard: The State Department has told U.S. consulates and embassies to immediately begin reviewing the social media accounts of Harvard's student visa applicants for antisemitism in what it called a pilot program that could be rolled out for colleges nationwide. The cable signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obtained by POLITICO, was sent late Thursday. It says consular officers should 'conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.' The policy, while primarily affecting students, will also include faculty members, researchers, staff members and guest speakers at Harvard. — Trump allies urge crackdown on Cabinet secretaries meddling in GOP primaries: President Donald Trump's allies are fuming at Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for getting involved in Michigan's Senate primary, a race that now threatens to divide Republicans. Duffy is headlining a planned June 4 fundraiser for Rep. Bill Huizenga, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO — a move that puts Duffy at odds with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and 2024 Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. Duffy has also been advising Huizenga, according to a person familiar with the race. Duffy, according to the two people close to Trump, never cleared his political engagement with the White House political shop and has now drawn the ire of Trump's top political hands. The transportation secretary's move to fundraise for Huizenga has now prompted threats of a crackdown on Cabinet secretaries' political activities ahead of the midterms, POLITICO has learned. — White House convenes meeting to brainstorm new Harvard measures: The Trump administration is escalating its campaign against Harvard University — and looking for new ways to bring the storied institution to heel. The White House convened officials from nearly a dozen agencies on Wednesday to brainstorm additional punitive measures, according to one administration official and a second person familiar with the meeting, who were granted anonymity to share details. The administration official said that forthcoming actions are expected from the State, Treasury, Health and Human Services and Justice departments, among others, and could happen as early as next month. — Trump says he's fired National Portrait Gallery director amid Washington arts scene takeover: President Donald Trump said he was sacking the longtime director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, today, ending the 12-year tenure of the first woman to serve as the gallery's director. 'Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby (sic) terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery. She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post this afternoon. AROUND THE WORLD WARNING SIGN — French President Emmanuel Macron warned China that NATO could become more deeply involved in Asia if Beijing does not do more to stop North Korea from taking part in Russia's war on Ukraine. 'North Korea in Ukraine is a big question for all of us. If China doesn't want NATO to be involved in Southeast Asia, it should prevent [North Korea] from being engaged on European soil,' Macron said today during an address at a major defense summit in Singapore. France has long maintained that the transatlantic military alliance shouldn't expand its reach into Asia and led the campaign to block the opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan in 2023. 'I had objected to NATO having a role in Asia because I don't believe in being enrolled in someone else's strategic rivalry,' Macron said, hinting that Paris could revisit its stance. NE FUME PAS — France is banning smoking in areas where young people socialize including beaches, parks and sports facilities from July 1 to clamp down on the harmful habit and make it less attractive. The ban, which extends to bus stops, gardens and areas close to schools, is intended to 'denormalize tobacco and limit its attractiveness,' the French health ministry said today. The fine for smoking in such areas will reach €135. The move comes as data shows smoking is at a 'historically low level' in France and tobacco sales fell more than 11.5 percent last year. Nonetheless, tobacco consumption still kills 75,000 people each year, equivalent to 200 deaths per day in the country. The health costs amount to €150 billion per year. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP IT'S MARGINAL — Large farms dominate America's landscape, producing the grand majority of the American-made food that we consume. But in some pockets of the country, small farmers continue to subsist, living on increasingly tight margins in communities that are shrinking. One such place is a cattle branding farm in Nebraska that's the subject of a photo essay from Alyssa Schukar in The New Republic. Schukar goes into the Burdick farm and explains how cattle branding remains an industry in flux, relying on neighbors and high school wrestlers to get the job done. Parting Image Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
