Latest news with #deportation
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Cleverly at odds with Badenoch over ECHR
Sir James Cleverly suggested that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would not necessarily lead to more foreign criminals being deported, in an apparent split with Kemi Badenoch. The former home secretary said other European countries who were signatories to the convention were 'much better at deporting criminals' than Britain. He added that he was 'not convinced' that withdrawing from the ECHR was a 'silver bullet', as he warned of 'political activism' within the UK's own legal system. His comments come after Mrs Badenoch, the Conservative leader, launched a review on whether Britain should leave the ECHR, saying that she was 'increasingly of the view' that it would be necessary. The ex-contender for the Tory leadership also appeared to warn the Conservatives not to 'outbid' Reform UK by offering bolder and undeliverable promises to the electorate. Deporting foreign criminals Speaking at an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPE) event on Tuesday, Sir James said: 'The bottom line is, other signatories to the ECHR are kicking out foreign criminals much more than we are, and other countries that are not signatories to the ECHR are also struggling.' He told the event in London: 'I'm not convinced the ECHR is, on its own, a silver bullet.' Sir James added that he wanted to see how the party's review into the issue, led by Lord Wolfson, the shadow attorney general, 'pans out'. The MP for Braintree said: 'One of the points I would make, however, is that when I was home secretary, I noticed that we had one of the lowest deportation rates amongst our European neighbours. 'And when I asked, they'd say, 'Oh, you know, ECHR'. And I'm like, 'Yeah, but the other countries that are much better at deporting criminals than we are – much, much, much better – are also signatories to the ECHR. So what are they doing differently to us?' 'Unfortunately, the general election came along before I got a credible answer,' he added.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's immigration policies get strong backing in new poll
A majority of voters gave President Trump's immigration policies high marks, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Monday. Sixty percent of voters surveyed said they support Trump's efforts to close the border, including 89 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of independents and 34 percent of Democrats. Seventy-five percent of respondents also said they support the administration's efforts to deport criminals who are in the country illegally, including 93 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of independents, and 59 percent of Democrats. 'Huge majorities of Americans support the removal of criminals here illegally but also care about human rights and due process being observed,' the poll's director Mark Penn said. The same poll found that voters were divided over Trump's approach to immigration enforcement: 52 percent said the administration was 'doing the right thing' in enforcing its immigration policy, while 48 percent said it is 'going too far in its enforcement actions.' Nearly 60 percent of respondents said there needs to be more due process guaranteed hearings to prevent unfair deportations, while 41 percent said the government needs to act quickly to deport criminals from the U.S. The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll was conducted July 6-8 among 2,044 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll. The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
News24
5 hours ago
- Politics
- News24
Trump administration to deny US migrants bond hearings in ‘radical departure' to keep them detained
The Trump administration issued guidance to deny migrants bond hearings. Congress authorised spending to hold 100 000 people in detention facilities. Immigration authorities may also deport migrants to third countries quickly. The Trump administration is launching a new effort to keep immigrants who entered the US illegally detained by denying them bond hearings, an internal memo showed, a change that could further swell the numbers of those held. The guidance by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a portion of which Reuters reviewed, could be applied to millions of people who crossed the border illegally and are contesting their deportation. US President Donald Trump has vowed mass deportations, which he says are needed after high levels of illegal immigration under his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden. Congress passed a spending law this month that provides funding to detain at least 100 000 people, a steep increase over the record 58 000 in custody by late June. The Washington Post first reported the new ICE policy limiting bond hearing eligibility, citing an 8 July memo by its acting director, Todd Lyons. The guidance shared with Reuters called for ICE to interpret several immigration law provisions as 'prohibitions on release' after an arrest, adding the shift in policy was 'likely to be litigated'. Pedro Mattey/AFP It encouraged ICE prosecutors 'to make alternative arguments in support of continued detention' during immigration court hearings. The new policy appeared to reverse legal standards governing detention for decades, said Tom Jawetz, a former homeland security official in the Biden administration, calling it 'a radical departure that could explode the detention population'. The US Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. US immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours' notice, Lyons said in a memo, offering a preview of how deportations could ramp up. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will generally wait at least 24 hours to deport someone after informing them of their removal to a so-called 'third country', according to a memo dated Wednesday, 9 July. Herika Martinez/AFP ICE could remove them, however, to a so-called 'third country' with as little as six hours' notice 'in exigent circumstances', said the memo, as long as the person has been provided the chance to speak with an attorney. The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them 'without the need for further procedures'. The new ICE policy suggests Trump's administration could move quickly to send migrants to countries around the world. The Supreme Court in June lifted a lower court's order limiting such deportations without a screening for fear of persecution in the destination country. Following the high court's ruling and a subsequent order from the justices, the Trump administration sent eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam to South Sudan. Herika Martinez/AFP The administration last week pressed officials from five African nations - Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon - to accept deportees from elsewhere, Reuters reported. The Washington Post first reported the new ICE memo. The administration argues the third country deportations help swiftly remove migrants who should not be in the US, including those with criminal convictions. Advocates have criticised the deportations as dangerous and cruel, since people could be sent to countries where they could face violence, have no ties and do not speak the language. Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit against such rapid third-county deportations at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the policy 'falls far short of providing the statutory and due process protections that the law requires'. Third-country deportations have been done in the past, but the tool could be more frequently used as Trump tries to ramp up deportations to record levels. During Trump's 2017-2021 presidency, his administration deported small numbers of people from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala. Former president Joe Biden's Democratic administration struck a deal with Mexico to take thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, since it was difficult to deport migrants to those nations.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio's Geauga County continues its fight to keep ICE contract secret
Immigration officials, their backs turned to hide their identities, pose with an Australian citizen who faces possible deportation back to his home country. (Photo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) As masked federal officers raise fears by raiding workplaces and courthouses and detaining elected officials who object, Ohio's Geauga County is fighting to keep secret its contract to jail immigrants those officers arrest. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio last month sued Geauga County when the county failed to provide a copy of its contract to jail people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ACLU is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to issue a writ mandating that Geauga County, which is just east of Cleveland, turn over the contract. The ACLU contends that such a contract between two public entities is a public document. For its part, the county is arguing that only ICE can release it. In a court filing Tuesday, Geauga County lawyers said 'they have not denied that they possess these records at the time of this filing, and that they have asserted that the requested records are prohibited by disclosure under federal law, and therefore exempted from disclosure under the Ohio Public Records Act, specifically, RC 149.43(A)(1)(v).' The provision cited under the Ohio public records law says that state officials can't release 'records the release of which is prohibited by state or federal law.' However, Geauga County didn't cite any part of state or federal law saying that ICE detention contracts are exempt from release. As a general matter, government documents can usually only be withheld or redacted if they contain sensitive personal information, business secrets, would compromise a law-enforcement investigation or if their disclosure would endanger public safety or national security. None of the nine exemptions the Department of Homeland Security says it has from federal open records law appears to apply to the ICE contracts. Geauga County can't simply hide behind federal immigration officials to avoid its obligations under Ohio open-records law, said Amy Gilbert, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. 'Tellingly, Geauga doesn't dispute that it is withholding public records from disclosure,' she said in an email. 'The county's supposed reliance on ICE to tell it what to do does not relieve the county of this statutory duty. As a clear legal matter, their duty is governed by Ohio law.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Meanwhile, the lawfulness of ICE's conduct has been called into question elsewhere in Ohio — and across the country. ICE officers — some of them masked — on Tuesday handcuffed New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander when he asked to see the warrant they had to arrest a migrant who had appeared for a hearing at immigration court. The tactic in those and other courthouses has deprived migrants of a traditional safe space to engage with the legal system, critics say. Federal agents last week took U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground and handcuffed him as he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference. Noem, who has struggled to explain fundamental legal protections for individuals, oversees ICE. In Butler County in Southwestern Ohio, supporters of Emerson Colindres had been demonstrating outside the jail against his ICE detention. Born in Honduras, Colindres, 19, had been living on Cincinnati's West Side since he was eight. On June 4, the recent high school graduate and soccer standout was arrested during a routine ICE check-in. CityBeat on Tuesday reported that ICE had moved Colindres to a private jail in Louisiana — even though his attorneys a day earlier had filed a motion to stop the deportation. In a written statement, Ohio Immigrant Alliance founder Lynn Tramonte said that if the goal of President Donald Trump's mass-deportation program was to make people feel safer, it's not working. 'No one benefits when masked ICE agents arrest immigrants at their immigration court hearings, while they are following the process,' she said. 'When ICE tricks a high school soccer star into showing up for an appointment, and arrests him on the spot. That doesn't help anyone at all.' Tramonte added, 'Emerson Colindres has a U visa waiting for him. One branch of the federal government is processing it, while another branch of the same government is trying to deport him.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
ICE memo reveals Trump's plan to scrap bond hearings for migrants
Millions of migrants who entered the United States illegally will be forced to remain behind bars while their deportation proceedings continue for months or even years under a new Trump administration policy. The acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd M. Lyons, told agents in a July 8 memo that migrants will no longer be eligible for a bond hearing and should be detained 'for the duration of their removal proceedings.' Lyons (pictured) said the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department 'revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities' and determined that migrants 'may not be released from ICE custody.' The move, first revealed by The Washington Post, reverses legal standards governing migrant detention that have been held for decades and will boost the Trump administration's deportation blitz. Tom Jawetz, a former homeland security official in the Biden administration, called it 'a radical departure that could explode the detention population.' In the past, those who were marked for deportation have been able to request a bond hearing before a judge. If the judge granted the migrant a bond, he or she could be released into society as their deportation proceedings continued in the courts. As of last year, the majority of the 7.6 million migrants on ICE's docket were released, the agency's annual report revealed. But under the new guidance, those migrants will be forced to remain in detention centers, where the agency is currently holding about 56,000 migrants each day. The capacity, though, is expected to nearly double under the recently-passed Big Beautiful Bill , which allocates $45 billion over the next four years to lock up migrants for civil deportation proceedings. The new policy will apply to any migrant who illegally crossed into the country at the southern border over the past few decades, including those who came in record numbers during the Biden administration. In rare circumstances, migrants may still be released on parole - but that decision must be made by immigration officers and not judges, according to the memo. The Trump administration is justifying the reversal of its policy by citing a provision of immigration law that states that migrants 'shall be detained' after their arrest, which the memo says should be taken as a 'prohibition on release.' But the provision has long been interpreted as to apply only to those who had recently crossed the border - and in the memo Lyons even notes that the shift in policy is 'likely to be litigated.' In the meantime, he encouraged ICE prosecutors 'to make alternative arguments in support of continued detention' as immigration lawyers say they have already seen migrants being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the US. Those migrants now find themselves being deported to a 'third country' with as little as six hours notice if they have been given an opportunity to speak with an attorney. 'This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people,' said Greg Chen, the senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 'It's requiring the detention of far more people without any real review of their individual circumstances.' Immigrant rights groups also argue that the new guidance deprives migrants of their due process rights, with immigration lawyer and former ICE chief counsel for the Dallas, Texas area noting that migrants 'could be held indefinitely until they're deported.' Other attorneys have likened the new policy to a position taken by several immigration judges in Tacoma, Washington, who have denied hearings to anyone who crossed the border illegally. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle filed a suit in March challenging the judges' actions, arguing that their refusal to hold a bond hearing violated the migrants' rights, according to the Washington Post. Its original plaintiff Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez has lived in the state since 2009 and works as a farmer. He argued that his entire family are US citizens and he even owns the home where ICE officers arrested him in February for living in the country illegally. By April, a federal judge in Washington state found that he had 'no criminal history in the United States or anywhere else in the world' and ordered immigration officers to give him a proper bond hearing before a judge. The judge, though, denied him bond and he has since been deported back to Mexico. An attorney representing Rodriguez Vasquez now says the Trump administration's decision to deny migrants bond hearings is 'flagrantly unlawful' and argued that the policy 'is looking to supercharge detention beyond what it already is .' Those in favor of the policy change, however, have argued that it might discourage migrants from filing frivolous claims in hopes of being released into the community while their cases proceed through the backlogged immigration courts. 'Detention is absolutely the best way to approach this, if you can do it. It costs a lot of money, obviously,' said Mark Krikorian, the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies. 'You're pretty much guaranteed to be able to remove the person if there's a negative finding, if he's in detention.' Migrants who have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes were already subject to mandatory detention without bond, and this year, the Republican-led Congress added theft-related crimes to the list of those that are not bond-eligible. Government officials have also reopened family detention centers that the Biden administration shuttered due to security concerns, and have reinforced other facilities like the controversial 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention center in the Florida Everglades. Democrat lawmakers who were granted access to tour the hastily-constructed facility have lamented the tough conditions migrants housed there will face. Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz compared the facility to an internment camp and insisted 'there are really disturbing, vile conditions,' demanding the 'place be shut the hell down.' The lawmakers said more than 30 migrants were packed into cage-style cells with just three combination sink-toilets. Temperatures hovered in the mid-80s inside medical intake tents. Detainees have reported worms in the food, overflowing toilets, and 24-hour lockdowns in cages teeming with mosquitoes. But Kevin Guthrie, from the Florida division of Emergency Management, has since claimed the Democrats' were lying about the conditions of the facility to make it seem worse than it is.
