Latest news with #immigration
Fox News
23 minutes ago
- General
- Fox News
Dem county executive dings Trump admin over sanctuary jurisdiction designation
In a statement responding to the inclusion of Montgomery County Maryland on a list of sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S., County Executive Marc Elrich accused the Trump administration of seeking to criminalize immigrants and "create fear." President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a list of sanctuary jurisdictions. DHS issued the list on Thursday, the department noted in a post on X. "We are not in violation of federal law, and we will not be making changes based on political headlines. Montgomery County has always cooperated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in cases involving violent crimes, serious felonies, and threats to public safety. That has been and remains our policy," Elrich said in his statement. "This designation, like many other actions taken by this administration, is about criminalizing immigrants, not protecting public safety. We will not be complicit in efforts to stigmatize or target our immigrant communities," the Democrat declared. "These types of announcements are designed to create fear. But we do not govern by fear in Montgomery County. We govern by the law and by our values." U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrest of an MS-13 member in a press release earlier this month, noting multiple instances of the Montgomery County Detention Center failing to honor immigration detainers for the individual over the years, including just last month. "The Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville convicted Amaya of attempted motor vehicle theft April 4, and sentenced him to three years of confinement with two years, five months and 11 days suspended," the release noted of Salvadoran national Nelson Vladimir Amaya-Benitez. "On April 18, the Montgomery County Detention Center again declined to honor ICE's immigration detainer and released Amaya from custody." Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation Director Ben Stevenson acknowledged the "error." "This individual met the criteria we use to notify and coordinate with ICE due to a prior felony conviction and validated gang membership in the DOCR records. We failed to make this notification. We take full responsibility for this error," he said in a statement. "Montgomery County has stated consistently that we cooperate with ICE in cases involving individuals convicted of violent crimes, verified gang members, drug distributors & traffickers and other felony convictions. That policy remains in place." Elrich said during a media briefing that "we goofed on our part. We did not make a policy decision to let this person go." The Trump administration has been aiming to crackdown on illegal immigration and is seeking to remove many individuals from the country after massive numbers of people flowed across the U.S. border during President Joe Biden's administration.
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Trump Immigration Cases, It's One Thing in Public, Another in Court
During his testimony on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a swipe at Senator Chris Van Hollen, falsely accusing him of having had 'a margarita' with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—one of the Maryland Democrat's constituents, who was mistakenly sent to an El Salvador megaprison more than two months ago and who remains there despite the Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to facilitate his release. 'That guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gangbanger … and the evidence is going to be clear,' Rubio said of Abrego Garcia, repeating claims that have never been proved in court. 'He can't make unsubstantiated comments like that!' Van Hollen shouted over the pounding gavel of the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 'Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to the federal court of the United States, because he hasn't done it under oath.' Van Hollen's frustration centered on the frequent gap between what the Trump administration says about its mass-deportation campaign in court, where it is required to tell the truth, and what officials say in public as they attempt to blunt criticism of their immigration crackdown. By playing up the alleged criminality of deportees at every opportunity, they deflect attention from the more mundane issue of whether the government is following the law. [Read: A loophole that would swallow the Constitution] When the administration's attorneys appear before the court, and top officials are required to provide sworn testimony, the administration is more restrained and tethered to facts. Department of Justice attorneys insist that the administration is following judicial orders in good faith. They recognize errors made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even if they attempt to diminish their significance. And they provide data and logistical details about ICE deportations that they do not otherwise release voluntarily. Outside of court, President Donald Trump and his top aides depict deportees as terrorists and gang leaders regardless of whether they've been convicted of a crime. They admit no mistakes. And if judges rule unfavorably, they denounce them as 'communists' and 'lunatics' and suggest that they won't respect their rulings. Trump and his top officials have dispensed with the usual conventions regarding public comment on pending cases. This has been a theme of Trump's litigation approach for years—from the Manhattan hush-money trial to the January 6 investigations—and the top officials running his current administration have taken his cue. The political fight matters more than the legal one, one senior official told me. 'Instead of using the old playbook of saying 'no comment' because there's pending litigation, you have top officials that are using the avenues they have to fight back and speak directly to the American people about what this administration is trying to do,' said the official, who agreed to discuss the approach candidly on the condition that I would not publish their name. The official said the strategy is designed to challenge judges who are 'thwarting the duly elected president from implementing his policies.' Although issuing public statements about ongoing litigation 'is unusual,' the person said, 'that's exactly what everyone who is a supporter of the president is looking for from his senior team.' The White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended that strategy. 'We are confident in the legality of our actions and do not apologize for acting to protect the American people,' she told me in a statement. But the approach has at times left Department of Justice lawyers stuck between what Trump officials say publicly and their professional and legal obligations to make truthful statements in court. When a senior ICE official said in sworn testimony in March that Abrego Garcia had been deported to El Salvador because of an 'administrative error,' the Justice Department attorney who initially represented the Trump administration, Erez Reuveni, relayed that characterization to the court. When asked why the administration hadn't taken steps to correct the error and bring Abrego Garcia back, Reuveni said his client—the Trump administration—hadn't provided him with answers. The top Trump aide Stephen Miller soon began insisting publicly that Abrego Garcia's deportation was not, in fact, an error—the opposite of what the government admitted in court. Vice President J. D. Vance claimed that Abrego Garcia is a 'convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here,' even though he has no criminal convictions in the United States or El Salvador. Attorney General Pam Bondi cast the error as missing 'an extra step in paperwork' and said that Abrego Garcia should not be returned. Reuveni was fired. Bondi said he had failed to 'zealously advocate' for the government. 'Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,' she told reporters. Trump and his top aides have made statements outside court that have undermined the legal positions staked out by government attorneys—at times with more candor than his lawyers. The president acknowledged during an interview last month with ABC News, for instance, that he could bring Abrego Garcia back by placing a phone call to the Salvadoran president. [Read: How the Trump administration flipped on Kilmar Abrego Garcia] Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, told me Trump and his top aides 'really are saying whatever they want to say in public, and then after the fact, trying to figure out what that means for their litigation, instead of the other way around, which is where they figure out what they want to do in their litigation and then they mold their public statements to that.' U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who presides over the Abrego Garcia case, said during a recent hearing that Trump's claim was clearly at odds with his attorneys' contention that they could not compel a foreign government to release Abrego Garcia. Xinis also noted social-media statements by Department of Homeland Security officials saying Abrego Garcia will never be allowed to return to the United States. The judge said it sounded like an 'admission of your client that your client will not take steps to facilitate the return.' Jonathan Guynn, the government's attorney, said Trump's statement needed to be read with 'the appropriate nuance' and it was not 'inconsistent with our good-faith compliance.' 'What world are we living in?' Xinis said in frustration as Guynn ducked her questions. 'What sort of legal world are we living in?' Similarly, Trump officials have depicted Venezuelans sent to the prison in El Salvador as invaders and terrorists to justify the administration's attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But the majority have no criminal convictions in the United States, and at least 50 of the roughly 240 sent to El Salvador entered the United States legally and did not violate U.S. immigration law, according to a new analysis by the Cato Institute. When U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg asked about a statement by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—who said the megaprison in El Salvador was one of the tools it planned to use to scare migrants into leaving the United States—he questioned whether it was an admission that the U.S. government has control over the fate of the deportees it sends there. Another Justice Department attorney similarly argued that the statement lacked sufficient 'nuance.' 'Is that another way of saying these statements just aren't true?' Boasberg said. When Boasberg asked if Trump was telling the truth when he said he could get Abrego Garcia released with a phone call, the administration's attorney, Abhishek Kambli, said the president's statement should not be treated as a fact, but as an expression of 'the president's belief about the influence that he has.' Jeff Joseph, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me that Trump attorneys are twisting themselves into rhetorical knots because the administration officials conducting the deportation campaign are doing whatever they want, and coming up with a legal rationale later. The government attorneys have 'to sort of post hoc rationalize what they're doing,' Joseph said, 'but they're running afoul of the fact that it's actually against the law, and they just can't explain it.' 'They can't just come in and admit that they broke the law,' he added, 'so they have to come up with some sort of paltering way of addressing it.' The Abrego Garcia ruling and the Alien Enemies Act litigation have left legal scholars warning of a constitutional crisis. But a more tangible effect, attorneys told me, has been the erosion of the 'presumption of regularity'—the benefit of the doubt given to the government in court proceedings. It's based on the idea that federal officers and attorneys are operating in good faith, and not trying to achieve political goals through acts of subterfuge. As judges see the administration saying one thing in public and another in court, they have started to treat the government's claims with more skepticism and, sometimes, with outright suspicion of criminal contempt. A recent Bloomberg analysis found that the Trump administration has been losing the majority of its immigration-related motions and claims, regardless of whether the judges overseeing their cases were appointed by Democrats or Republicans. [Adam Serwer: 'A path of perfect lawlessness'] The White House is focused on political wins, and it has pushed back even harder at judicial oversight as the losses pile up. In a case challenging its attempts to send deportees to third countries if their own nations won't take them back, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled in March that the government had to give deportees time to challenge the government's attempts to send them to potentially dangerous places. Despite the order, Trump officials tried last week to deport a group of men from Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and other nations to South Sudan. Murphy ruled that the flight violated his previous order mandating due process—but the Department of Homeland Security still convened a press conference to recite the criminal records of the deportees, calling them 'uniquely barbaric monsters.' The White House made an emergency appeal of Murphy's ruling directly to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, bypassing the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Adam Cox, a constitutional law professor at NYU, told me that the Trump administration's approach marks 'a sweeping transformation of past practices.' But he said it has also affirmed the importance of the lower courts to function as a powerful fact-finding body at a time when other oversight mechanisms are weakened or under attack. The courts' ability to compel sworn testimony is crucial to helping the public sort through political rhetoric to understand what's actually true. 'A lot of the focus of public debate around courts and politics has been (understandably) focused on the Supreme Court and big legal rulings,' Cox wrote to me. 'But recent months have brought a nice reminder of just how important the well-developed fact-finding mechanisms of federal trial courts can be.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Washington Post
an hour ago
- General
- Washington Post
Trump might become the most pro-illegal immigration president ever
You might not have noticed it, but last week the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States surged by 350,000. Don't worry, an army of gangbangers and other criminals didn't charge the border. Rather, President Donald Trump simply decided to turn 350,000 legal immigrants into illegal ones. Trump has been fearmongering about an 'invasion' of unauthorized immigrants for years. Since retaking the White House, he has attempted to manifest those fever dreams into reality through a 'de-documentation' campaign. This is not an immigration agenda that targets criminals; it's one that criminalizes immigrants who have followed the law, by stripping them of their existing visas and work permits.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
ICE adopts new mission with potential impact on illegal immigrants
President Donald Trump has set immigration enforcement officials a lofty new target of conducting 3,000 arrests every single day in an ambitious effort to ramp up his deportation agenda. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the new goal is only temporary and the number of daily arrests expected under the Trump administration will continue to rise. 'Under President Trump's leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day,' Miller told Fox News' Sean Hannity. Trump's border czar Tom Homan (pictured) backed the ambitious new benchmark on Thursday morning, insisting: 'We've gotta increase these arrests and removals. The numbers are good, but I'm not satisfied. I haven't been satisfied all year long.' During Trump's first 100 days back in office, ICE officials arrested 66,463 illegal immigrants. More than 65,000 illegal immigrants were deported. Some 17,000 deportees had criminal convictions or charges ranging from driving under the influence to assault or weapons offenses. ICE has boasted removing gang members, murderers and child rapists. But the administration has faced significant pushback and legal hurdles with challenges to the legality of some of the deportation schemes, particularly those which saw foreign aliens sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison under the wartime Illegal Aliens Act. Other migrants have been banished to third party nations with little to no legal pathway to challenge their deportations. ICE deported 17,200 people in April alone - roughly 4,000 more than the number conducted in April 2024, under former president Joe Biden. There have been reports for months that Trump has been unsatisfied with the progress of agents on the ground, who have discovered that tracking down illegal migrants - particularly criminals - is more difficult and a slower process than they initially expected. Across the United States in immigration courts from New York to Seattle last week, Homeland Security officials began ramping up enforcement actions and carrying out mass arrests in an effort to boost their numbers. Three US immigration officials said government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work Monday, knowing full well that federal agents would then have a free hand to arrest those same individuals as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Inspect the ICE detention facility in Aurora. Repeat.
A sign in support of Jeanette Vizguerra, a nationally known immigration rights activist who is detained in the ICE facility in Aurora. (Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline) Few Trump administration agencies are so out of control as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE in recent months has disappeared people from American communities, a hallmark of unaccountable authoritarianism. The agency releases scant information to the public about its activities, and it withholds information even in court proceedings. Its agents wield the awesome power to deprive people of their liberty, and they've used that power to deposit hundreds of people in a brutal foreign prison, likely for life. Demand for oversight has rarely been so great, and no tool of ICE oversight should be left unused. Members of Congress have at least one method by which to oversee the agency — they can show up at ICE detention centers unannounced and perform inspections. But U.S. representatives and senators in Colorado exercise this authority too infrequently. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE ICE this year has undertaken aggressive immigration enforcement efforts as part of President Donald Trump's plan for mass deportations. In Colorado, which Trump made a particular focus of his anti-immigration program, the agency has undertaken several raids and other operations that have resulted in scores of people being held at its detention center in Aurora, operated by private prison company the GEO Group. People there are often denied constitutionally guaranteed due process, targeted for their exercise of First Amendment rights, and held without being charged with a crime, according to court documents and immigration advocates. About 12 detainees were removed from the Aurora facility to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Federal authorities have gone about this business with essentially no transparency. That's where oversight comes in. In 2019, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, tried to inspect the ICE facility after learning about poor health conditions there. He was denied entry, prompting him to pursue on-site oversight authority, which he helped secure in law. Members of Congress, according to language that is included annually in appropriations legislation, now have the authority to conduct unannounced oversight visits at Department of Homeland Security facilities. This was no empty gesture. Crow has routinely invoked the authority ever since, and he posts to his website reports about visits to the detention center in Aurora. His office has already completed two oversight visits this month. This is the same authority by which three U.S. representatives from New Jersey recently tried to conduct oversight at an ICE facility in that state. They were denied entry, and the Trump administration charged one of the lawmakers with a crime. But ICE's refusal to respect oversight authority is no cause to idle it. It's reason to assert it to its fullest extent. Crow should not be alone in conducting inspections in Aurora. Democratic U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado should also show up. Hickenlooper has expressed anger over the Trump administration's lawless approach to immigration enforcement, even suggesting in April that 'the country's going to rise up' in response. But to a reporter's question about what senators like him could do, he said, 'You want me to get my pitchfork?' No. But lawmakers can get inside a facility where Colorado residents, snatched off the streets by the federal government, now face unconstitutional removal to prisons run by foreign dictators, and at least demonstrate to ICE and the people of Colorado that they've got their eye on MAGA malfeasance in Denver's backyard. Other members of the U.S. House from Colorado can also exercise oversight of ICE. The detention center in Aurora sits in Crow's district, and territorial deference is doubtless a factor, especially among fellow Democrats. But Crow could arrange a multimember visit. The detention center in New Jersey sits in McIver's district, and two other members of Congress from neighboring districts had arrived to inspect the facility with McIver when they were denied entry. Strength in numbers sends a message that the members will do everything they can to hold an outpost of authoritarianism in Colorado to account. A member of Hickenlooper's staff accompanied a Crow staff member during one inspection in March. In response to questions from Newsline about whether they'd visited the Aurora facility, the six Democratic members of the Colorado congressional delegation — Bennet, Hickenlooper, Crow and Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen — responded in a joint statement: 'Oversight is a key part of our jobs, and a responsibility we don't take lightly. The Trump Administration's recent attempts to intimidate Members of Congress from conducting oversight of ICE detention facilities are alarming — and we will not back down. We are fully committed to providing the necessary oversight and transparency of the GEO ICE facility in Aurora to ensure these facilities are run in full accordance with the law, and our offices will continue to perform the critical casework to ensure detainees are treated fairly.' The oversight authority alone won't enable members of Congress to stop the abuses that ICE commits in Aurora. Crow helped establish the authority at a time when immigration advocates were most concerned about health conditions, not cancellation of basic rights. No facility walk-through can remedy the profound injustices at work there. But at a time when Democrats seem overwhelmed and impotent as the Trump administration dismantles constitutional order, every available counterweight should be applied with maximum force. 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