Latest news with #illegalaliens
The Independent
4 days ago
- General
- The Independent
DHS publishes a list of 500 sanctuary cities for ‘obstructing the enforcement' of Trump's deportation plans
The Department of Homeland Security has published a list of 500 sanctuary cities it claims are ' deliberately and shamefully obstructing' the Trump administration's deportation plans. A list of sanctuary jurisdictions, which includes cities, countries and states across the U.S., was posted to the department's website Thursday as the administration increases the pressure on communities it believes are standing in the way of President Donald Trump 's mass deportations agenda. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. 'Sanctuary jurisdictions including cities, counties, and states that are deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,' the department said. 'Sanctuary cities protect dangerous criminal aliens from facing consequences and put law enforcement in peril.' The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department.
CNN
5 days ago
- General
- CNN
Trump administration increases pressure on ‘sanctuary jurisdictions' with public list
The Department of Homeland Security is putting more than 500 'sanctuary jurisdictions' across the country on notice that the Trump administration views them as obstructing immigration enforcement, as it attempts to increase pressure on communities it believes are standing in the way of the president's mass deportations agenda. The department on Thursday published a list of the jurisdictions and said each one will receive formal notification that the government has deemed them noncompliant, and whether they're believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes. The list was published on the department's website. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a news release. The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted communities, states and jurisdictions that it says aren't doing enough to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump's campaign promises to remove millions of people in the country illegally. The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they have complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or if they had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department. Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated. Federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would then be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the federal government identified as 'sanctuary jurisdictions' and suspending or terminating the money, according to the executive order. If 'sanctuary jurisdictions' are notified and the Trump administration determines that they 'remain in defiance,' the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security are then empowered to pursue whatever 'legal remedies and enforcement measures' they consider necessary to make them comply. There's no specific or legal definition of what constitutes a 'sanctuary jurisdiction.' The term is often used to refer to law enforcement agencies, states or communities that don't cooperate with immigration enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide, but the agency often seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody. One way that the administration seeks to enlist state and local support is through 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement agencies. Those agreements allow local law enforcement agencies to assume some immigration enforcement duties and greatly expand ICE's capabilities. The number of those agreements has skyrocketed in just a matter of months under the Trump administration. ICE has about 6,000 law enforcement officers – a number that has remained largely static for years – who are able to find, arrest and remove immigrants it's targeting. By relying on local law enforcement, it can quickly scale up the number of staff available to help carry out Trump's mass deportations agenda. Communities that don't cooperate with ICE often say they do so because immigrants then feel safer coming forward if they're a witness to or victim of a crime. And they argue that immigration enforcement is a federal task, and they need to focus their limited dollars on fighting crime. The Trump administration has already taken a number of steps targeting states and communities that don't cooperate with ICE – and has met pushback in the courts. One executive order issued by Trump directs the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary to withhold federal money from sanctuary jurisdictions. Another directs federal agencies to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not 'abet so-called 'sanctuary' policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.'
Fox News
5 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Illegal aliens arrested in death of Air Force cadet candidate had suitcases packed: report
Packed suitcases were found during the arrests of two illegal aliens charged in the death of an Air Force cadet candidate over the weekend. Over Memorial Day weekend, 18-year-old Ava Moore was killed while kayaking on Lake Grapevine in Texas after she was hit by a jet ski. The suspected driver of the jet ski and a man who allegedly helped her flee, both illegal aliens from Venezuela, were arrested in Dallas Tuesday. Daikerlyn Alejandraa Gonzalez-Gonzalez, 22, was charged with second-degree manslaughter, a felony. Maikel Coello Perozo, 21, is accused of picking her up and fleeing. Authorities allege Perozo hit another vehicle while speeding off. He has been charged with a collision involving damage to a vehicle and hindering apprehension, both misdemeanors. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by FOX 4, the suspects were found with their bags packed at the time of their arrests. Perozo reportedly told police he helped Gonzalez flee so she could avoid being captured. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department led the investigation. President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security on Thursday slammed the previous administration for open-border policies it says led to the death of the Air Force cadet candidate. "Ava Moore was a patriot serving her country when she was killed by an illegal alien in a hit-and-run over Memorial Day weekend. This senseless tragedy was 100 percent preventable," DHS said in a post on X. "Daikerlyn Gonzalez and Maikel Perozo entered the U.S. illegally in 2023 and were released into our interior," the post continued. "The previous administration's open border policies have cost too many Americans their lives. President Trump and Secretary Noem will continue to stand with victims of illegal alien crime and their families." At a news conference Wednesday, Joshua Johnson, acting field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Emergency Removal Operations in Dallas, first confirmed the pair were present in the United States illegally. "It's my understanding that both the individuals crossed the southern border in 2023 or 2024," Johnson said. "They were arrested at the time of entry, processed on a notice to appear and then released on their own recognizance." He said ICE filed detainers for the suspects, and they will be processed for removal after criminal proceedings are concluded in Texas. Moore was remembered as a star basketball player whose lifelong dream was to be a four-star general in the military, according to her coach at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado. "You know, we talked throughout the course of the year that, at some point in her career, she was going to be a four-star general because she loved it," Ke'sha Blanton told FOX 4. "She made those around her better. "They took a bright, bright star from our lives." Moore was scheduled to begin as an Air Force cadet in the upcoming weeks and was part of the U.S. Air Force Academy's Class of 2029, the school confirmed.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Trump administration increases pressure on 'sanctuary jurisdictions' with public listing
The Department of Homeland Security is putting more than 500 'sanctuary jurisdictions' across the country on notice that the Trump administration views them as obstructing immigration enforcement as it attempts to increase pressure on communities it believes are standing in the way of the president's mass deportations agenda. The department on Thursday is publishing a list of the jurisdictions and said each one will receive formal notification that the government has deemed them noncompliant and if they're believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes. The list will be published on the department's website. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release. The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted communities, states and jurisdictions that it says aren't doing enough to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump 's campaign promises to remove millions of people in the country illegally. The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department. Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated. Federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would then be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the federal government identified as 'sanctuary jurisdictions' and suspending or terminating the money, according to the executive order. If 'sanctuary jurisdictions' are notified and the Trump administration determines that they 'remain in defiance,' the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security are then empowered to pursue whatever 'legal remedies and enforcement measures' they consider necessary to make them comply. There's no specific or legal definition of what constitutes a 'sanctuary jurisdiction.' The term is often used to refer to law enforcement agencies, states or communities that don't cooperate with immigration enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide, but often seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody. One way that the administration seeks to enlist state and local support is through 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement agencies. Those agreements allow local law enforcement agencies to assume some immigration enforcement duties and greatly expand ICE's capabilities. The number of those agreements has skyrocketed in just a matter of months under the Trump administration. ICE has about 6,000 law enforcement officers — a number that has remained largely static for years — who are able to find, arrest and remove immigrants its targeting. By relying on local law enforcement, it can quickly scale up the number of staff available to help carry out Trump's mass deportations agenda. Communities that don't cooperate with ICE often say they do so because immigrants then feel safer coming forward if they're a witness to or victim of a crime. And they argue that immigration enforcement is a federal task, and they need to focus their limited dollars on fighting crime. The Trump administration has already taken a number of steps targeting states and communities that don't cooperate with ICE — and has met with pushback in the courts. One executive order issued by Trump directs the Attorney General and Homeland Security Secretary to withhold federal money from sanctuary jurisdictions. Another directs federal agencies to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not 'abet so-called 'sanctuary' policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.'
CNN
15-05-2025
- Politics
- CNN
How immigration agents tried to build the case that Columbia University was ‘harboring aliens'
Teams of federal agents checked databases, obtained photographs, knocked on doors and heard what they thought was a woman speaking with an Indian accent. They also conducted days of surveillance and subpoenaed video footage and access card data as they tried to build a case that Columbia University was illegally sheltering students said to be harmful to the United States, newly unsealed court documents show. As the Trump administration began targeting foreign students in early March, immigration officers descended on the New York City neighborhood around Columbia University, culminating in a dramatic escalation with agents carrying out search warrants on university property. Court documents, including a newly unsealed search warrant affidavit, reveal authorities went further than previously known in their effort to target the students and the university. It became clear that the 250-year-old Ivy League institution itself — and not just individuals — was in the government's sights on March 14 when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told an audience, including President Donald Trump, at the Justice Department: 'Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus. That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia's handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes. This is long overdue.' Blanche spoke six days after government agents detained legal permanent resident and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil in front of his heavily pregnant wife at a university-owned apartment building. Reports of ICE agents on campus spread around Columbia, which told CNN at the time it 'has and will continue to follow the law,' and held a town hall for concerned students. But documents unsealed as part of an ongoing legal case now show the government had narrowed in on two students to use as evidence that Columbia was not following the law. An affidavit seeking the search warrants Blanche talked about reveals the Department of Justice issued a subpoena to Columbia 'requiring immediate production of certain records and communications.' Columbia, the affidavit said, had gathered the material but had not handed it over, necessitating searches of the homes of the two students the government said the university was 'harboring.' One of the students was Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD candidate in architecture, who was in the US on a student visa. The other was Yunseo Chung, a permanent resident born in South Korea who had lived in the US since she was 7. Lawyers for the women say they have no connections to each other. Neither has been apprehended. In March, Srinivasan received an email saying her visa had been canceled, and she told CNN she was trying to find out what happened when federal agents first came to her door. 'It was my roommate who heard the knock and immediately recognized (it as) law enforcement,' Srinivasan previously told CNN. 'She asked them, 'Do you have a warrant?' And they had to say 'No.'' Her American roommate declined to let the officer inside, in a sequence later used in the affidavit to indicate there was probable cause for a search. 'When agents knocked on the door … an unidentified female responded, with an accent that agents recognized as from India,' the affidavit said. 'The unidentified female would not open the door without a warrant and subsequently locked the deadbolt.' Srinivasan did not know why her visa was canceled, though it's now known it came at the same time as thousands of international students had their records changed in databases, leading to them being barred from classes and work, disenrolled from universities and even being advised to leave the country. When Srinivasan decided to leave the US rather than risk detention, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem celebrated and called her a 'terrorist sympathizer.' For Chung, the first indication she was being pursued came on March 8, when the Department of Justice emailed Columbia alerting them of an immigration warrant for her arrest. That was just three days after the college junior was detained during protest activity on campus when she was with a group that, according to the police, refused to leave. She was arrested on misdemeanor charges, which have since been dismissed. But DHS reported her to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who designated her a threat, along with Khalil, according to details in an undated Rubio memo. 'I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,' Rubio wrote in the memo, noting the two were set to be removed. The affidavit shows that government officers asked Columbia to allow them into Chung's university housing but were denied. At the time, Columbia would not permit access without a warrant signed by a judge. Chung also retained lawyers who notified the government she would not surrender. The federal agent who wrote the affidavit said he was not aware whether Chung had left her college apartment and that finding her there could be evidence of Columbia 'harboring an alien.' He acknowledged that Srinivasan had left the US for Canada, though erroneously saying her flight from New York's LaGuardia Airport took her to Montreal, when it was Toronto. But still he wrote in the affidavit: 'Columbia University has refused, and continues to refuse, to permit immigration officers to locate and arrest Ranjani Srinivasan and Yunseo Chung at their student housing and were and are thus concealing, harboring, or shielding from detection removable aliens, Ranjani Srinivasan and Yunseo Chung, or are conspiring to do so.' Nathan Yaffe, Srinivasan's former lawyer and part of the team representing Chung, said this made 'no sense.' 'It's incoherent to go to a judge and say, 'On March 8, we terminated this person's student status and within 72 hours that person had left the United States (but) we're going to pursue harboring charges against the institution where she used to reside,' he told CNN. 'That one is totally bizarre.' The search warrants were authorized by a District Court Judge on March 13. That evening, federal agents demanded entry to Srinivasan's apartment, with the warrants allowing them to search for any records such as a lease, flight tickets or emails and letters from Columbia staff that could be used as evidence. Srinivasan's roommate recorded the encounter on her cellphone. The video, obtained exclusively by CNN, shows masked Homeland Security agents entering the apartment. They tell the roommate they are there to 'search for anybody else in the apartment,' and ask if any of Srinivasan's belongings were in the apartment. The roommate responds that some items were still in her room. Srinivasan had left two days prior and taken most of her belongings, but some items remained. The agents told the roommate they were there to search for electronics and documents related to Srinivasan. The search lasted all of 3.5 minutes, and the agents left without taking anything. They also went to Chung's apartment and took nothing, according to a court filing from her attorney. Srinivasan told CNN: 'This affidavit confirms what I've long known: I was unlawfully targeted by law enforcement. DHS and ICE misrepresented my immigration status to obtain a search warrant — a violation of both legal process and personal rights.' She still wants to complete her doctorate. 'Columbia still has the opportunity to right this wrong by re-enrolling me and standing up for international students who are being targeted by unlawful government actions.' Chung is fighting the administration's efforts to deport her. A judge has, for now, prevented her from being detained, but she remains in hiding ahead of the next court date on May 29. CNN has learned that legal action is also continuing against Columbia. Several students and some university staffers have received instructions to retain documents from the school after Columbia was served multiple subpoenas, according to a person familiar with the investigation. According to an official familiar with the university's legal policy, 'Columbia complied when required by law.' CNN's Rachel Clarke contributed to this story.
