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USA Today
a day ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump's mass deportation scheme is an insult to all of us
Trump's mass deportation scheme is an insult to all of us | Opinion This is not the America immigrants who actually contribute to society, have the right documentation, show character and continue to play by the rules of the nation's immigration process deserve. Show Caption Hide Caption Trump administration detains Vietnamese who came as refugees after war After the Vietnam War ended 50 years ago, Republican and Democratic administrations shielded refugees from deportation. Donald Trump is changing that. As a nation, we shouldn't have to worry about a young man like Esro Garcia Mendez, the son of immigrants and a first-generation high school graduate in Florida's Palm Beach County. Mendez' character is evident. Instead of celebrating with friends after receiving his diploma, he rushed to HCA Palms West Hospital to be with his ailing father. Imagine a father's joy in sharing such a special moment. Esro kept a 4.0 grade-point average on the way to finishing high school, a goal he and his family shared as they clearly understood the importance of a high school degree. He doesn't want to stop there. He wants to enlist in the U.S. armed forces, another first that he believes will also make his family and community proud. Although his future seems bright, there's cause for concern. Trump's mass deportation scheme targets good people Specifically, there simply may be too many good folk like Mendez who will get needlessly ensnared in President Donald Trump's administration's mass deportation scheme that touts making numbers. Trump wants to deport 1 million immigrants a year, according to The Washington Post. According to NBC News, Trump officials have pushed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to pick up the pace by arresting 3,000 immigrants a day, an unpractical rate that will most likely include legal residents and U.S. citizens. Opinion: Manufacturing down, food expensive and ICE is deporting moms. Happy now, MAGA? Like those old Florida speed traps that coincidently popped up when some local official decides to make easy marks out of unsuspecting motorists, arrests, detainment and deportation seem more of a numbers game than sound public policy. Rule of law? Habeas corpus? How quaint. This White House is more ready to fend off pesky news coverage than to ensure anybody nabbed as a suspected illegal immigrant gets their day in court before deportation. This rush to meet numbers at the expense of decency, fair play, even legality, hurts ... us. How do you even prepare to talk about deportation? As a teenager taking the family car out on a Friday night, I can remember my dad telling me to obey local traffic laws and how to act if I were stupid enough to get pulled over by the police. There was no Black Lives Matter back then, cops weren't routinely shooting Black motorists at traffic stops, and the conversation didn't have a convenient "The Talk" label. Still, my parents did their job in trying to protect their wayward son. I did the same for mine, in far harsher times. Opinion: Dems can make all the demands they want on ICE arrests. They won't get answers. I can't imagine what the equivalent of The Talk is right now for anyone who can be considered a suspect for deportation. I mean, what steps can you take to prepare yourself when culture, dialect and skin color can make you a target, whether you're attending school, going to work or leaving church? What do you do when so-called rights don't apply? Keep your papers on you at all times? Don't make sudden moves in reaching for those papers? Know a good lawyer, the deportation equivalent of Benjamin Crump? Prepare your family in advance for self-deportation, if necessary? Could any of that have helped Maurilio Ambrocio, an evangelical pastor, father of five and landscaper living in the Tampa area? Outstanding member of the community. No criminal record. Arrested and detained. Or Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, in Tallahassee, charged with illegally entering Florida as an "unauthorized alien" despite having a U.S. birth certificate? Arrested and detained. It appears almost any "person of color" in the free state of Florida can get arrested, detained and possibly deported. How do we explain to anyone, much less rationalize to ourselves, how people are being snatched up only to "disappear" before being sent to El Salvador, South Sudan or God knows where else? This is not the America immigrants who actually contribute to society, have the right documentation, show character and continue to play by the rules of the nation's immigration process deserve. It's neither the type of country that befits its citizens who are quick to boast of freedom and liberty. We can't keep addressing a complex problem of immigration by simply trying to meet unrealistic deportation numbers. That should be an affront to us all. For the sake of Esro Garcia Mendez and so many like him, we must do better. Douglas C. Lyons is an editorial writer and columnist for The Palm Beach Post, where this column originally published. He can be reached at dclyons@
USA Today
28-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
50 years after Vietnam War, refugees swept up by Trump's immigration crackdown
50 years after Vietnam War, refugees swept up by Trump's immigration crackdown Despite criminal convictions, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have shielded them from deportation since the war's end decades ago. Show Caption Hide Caption Trump administration detains Vietnamese who came as refugees after war After the Vietnam War ended 50 years ago, Republican and Democratic administrations shielded refugees from deportation. Donald Trump is changing that. For over a month, a 43-year-old Vietnamese man has been sitting in a Louisiana detention center waiting to see whether he will be deported to a country he fled as a boy. Huy Quoc Phan, who has an American wife and kids, is among thousands of people who arrived as refugees after the end of the Vietnam War and are now being targeted for removal. The Alabama warehouse worker served 15 years in prison for his involvement in a robbery that led to a shopkeeper's death. His wife of six years, Amy, 39, said she knew of the crime, which took place when he was 17. 'I didn't hold it against him when I met him,' she said. 'I think people should be given second chances.' For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations agreed ‒ at least for immigrants from Vietnam, a country the United States left in disgrace five decades years ago. Although immigrants from other countries were routinely deported after serving time for crimes, the Vietnamese were allowed to stay. Not anymore. In his first administration, President Donald Trump sought to end that special treatment. Four months into his second term, he has stepped up efforts to deport as many immigrants as possible, including Vietnamese. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said people like Phan deserve to be deported because of their criminal past. 'Under President Trump and (DHS Secretary Kristi) Noem's leadership, ICE is continuing to protect Americans by detaining and removing criminal aliens," McLaughlin said in an emailed statement. Protections as refugees Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, these changes are leaving thousands of Vietnamese refugees like Phan in limbo, said Quyen Mai, executive director of the California-based nonprofit Vietnamese American Organization. 'We feel we got abandoned again,' he said. As of late May, the Trump administration had tried to remove at least one Vietnamese man to South Sudan, along with other migrants. On May 27, observers noted that at least one deportation flight appeared to have landed in Hanoi. Vietnam historically has not accepted deportations from the United States, except for a period during Trump's first administration. President Joe Biden largely halted such deportations when he came into office. Neither the Trump administration nor the Vietnamese government responded to questions about any changes to agreements for detaining Vietnamese immigrants or repatriating deportees. Although it's not clear how many Vietnamese immigrants will be affected, one Atlanta-based immigration attorney already represents more than a dozen now in detention. Through agreements between the nations, around 8,600 Vietnamese immigrants have been shielded from deportation despite prior convictions and removal orders, said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, an immigrant rights staff attorney at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Asian Law Caucus. After Black April in 1975, the first wave of 125,000 people fleeing Vietnam arrived in the United States. By 2000, nearly a million Vietnamese had settled here, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Most became permanent residents. 'The U.S. government made a commitment to the people admitted as refugees that they would be protected,' said Jana Lipman, a professor of history at Tulane University who studies Vietnamese refugee populations. Phan is among those who arrived as refugees before 1995, when the United States and Vietnam re-established relations 20 years after the end of the war. A lawsuit settled in 2021 has prevented extended detention for these early immigrants. The Biden administration limited their removal. The Trump administration now seeks to restart deportations. 'This is a huge impediment to the president's deportation program,' said Andrew Arthur, resident law and policy fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-leaning think tank. Vietnam has been among the countries most 'recalcitrant' to accept deportees, he added. And Trump's hardline removal policy looks forward rather than back to a a 50-year-old war, he said. Escape by boat Phan last saw Vietnam from a boat. He was born in 1982 to two farmers in Bến Tre, an agricultural province in southern Vietnam's Mekong Delta. His relatives, including his grandfather, fought for militias aligned with American-backed South Vietnam, according to his aunt's refugee application, which USA TODAY reviewed. They were sent to the new communist government's re-education prison camps and forced to do hard labor. Vietnamese officials seized part of their family's land. In the war-torn country, his parents made the decision to send a 7-year-old Phan with his aunt, Le Thi Phan, then 25, and her daughter, who was 3. After fleeing by boat, in 1989, they arrived in a Malaysian refugee camp, records showed. Two years later, American immigration officials accepted Phan and his relatives as refugees. He distinctly remembers his first sight of America. 'The U.S. lit up like a Christmas tree,' he told USA TODAY in a phone interview from a detention center. 'It was magical.' They settled in metropolitan Atlanta. He learned English, developing a Southern twang, and became his family's translator. He took care of two younger cousins. Bad choices and redemption Phan dropped out of school in 9th grade and went to live with other Vietnamese boys and men. He said he looked up to the wrong people. On July 3, 1999, then 17 and short on rent money, he and four others decided to rob a Vietnamese cafe. Detectives described them as customers who formed an 'ad-hoc robbing crew.' Several of the others beat the shopkeeper to death trying to get him to give up the money, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time. Phan was sentenced as an adult and served nearly 15 years in Georgia prison, records show. An immigration judge issued a final removal order in 2002, while he was in prison. He received his GED and technical training certificates while behind bars. Since his release, in 2015, his family said he's had no run-ins with law enforcement. Phan said he worked seven days a week at Little Caesar's and in a nail salon until he met Amy on an online dating site. He got a stable job at a warehouse so he could spend more time with her. Their family, now with a toddler, moved to Alabama last year to be closer to Amy's sister, before she died in February. Arrest and detention On April 14, while waiting for his 11-year-old stepson and 3-year-old son to wake up, he heard a knock on the door. At the start of spring break, he thought his stepson's friends had come to start playing early. Instead, it was ICE agents and U.S. Marshals, who put him in handcuffs. Amy awoke to her husband calling out from the living room, where she saw several agents around her husband in handcuffs. Phan was confused. His work authorization is valid through September. They brought up his teenage conviction. 'I did something wrong in the past, but nothing wrong now,' Phan said. For two days, his wife couldn't find him. He finally got a minute-long call to tell her he was headed to the LaSalle Detention Center, in Jena, Louisiana, where the Trump administration has sent other detainees, including former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil. In a TikTok video with over 940,000 views, Amy begged, 'Give me my husband back.' On a worn piece of paper addressed 'To Whom It May Concern,' his supervisor and nearly a dozen of his coworkers called Phan 'an honorable individual, a leader for the company, and a valuable member of the community.' They hoped the court took their letter into consideration. He received documents ordering him to leave the country, but he can't comply with those orders while he's in ICE custody. Amy, who hasn't been on a plane since she was a baby, now wonders what it might be like to live in Vietnam. Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@ or on Signal at emcuevas.01.
Qatar Tribune
25-05-2025
- Business
- Qatar Tribune
DOJ reaches deal with Boeing, avoiding felony conviction
Agencies The U.S. Justice Department said Friday it has reached a tentative agreement with Boeing that would let the company avoid prosecution in a fraud case tied to two deadly 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people. The agreement allows Boeing to avoid being branded a convicted felon and is a blow to families who lost relatives in the crashes and had pressed prosecutors to take the U.S. planemaker to trial. A lawyer for family members and two U.S. senators had urged the Justice Department not to abandon its prosecution, but the government quickly rejected the requests. Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims' fund that would be divided evenly per crash victim on top of an additional $243.6 million fine. The Justice Department expects to file the written agreement with Boeing by the end of next week. Boeing will no longer face oversight by an independent monitor under the agreement. Boeing will pay in total over $1.1 billion, including the fine and compensation to families and over $455 million to strengthen the company's compliance, safety, and quality programs, the Justice Department said. 'Boeing must continue to improve the effectiveness of its anti-fraud compliance and ethics program and retain an independent compliance consultant,' the department said Friday. 'We are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome with practical benefits.' Boeing did not immediately comment. Reuters first reported on May 16 that Boeing had reached a tentative nonprosecution agreement with the government. The agreement would forestall a June 23 trial date the planemaker faces on a charge it misled U.S. regulators about a crucial flight control system on the 737 MAX, its best-selling jet. Boeing in July had agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia spanning 2018 and 2019, pay a fine of up to $487.2 million and face three years of independent oversight. Boeing no longer will plead guilty, prosecutors told family members of crash victims during a meeting last week. The company's posture changed after a judge rejected a previous plea agreement in December, prosecutors told the family members. Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas said in 2023 that 'Boeing's crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history.' Boeing has faced enhanced scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration since January 2024, when a new MAX 9 missing four key bolts suffered a mid-air emergency losing a door plug. The FAA has capped production at 38 planes per month. DOJ officials last year found Boeing had violated a 2021 agreement, reached during the Trump administration's final days, that had shielded the planemaker from prosecution. That conclusion followed the January 2024 in-flight emergency during an Alaska Airlines' flight. As a result, DOJ officials decided to reopen the older fatal crashes case and negotiate a plea agreement with Boeing.
Straits Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Boeing reaches deal to avoid prosecution over 737 Max plane crashes
WASHINGTON - The US Justice Department said on May 23 it has struck a deal in principle with Boeing to allow it to avoid prosecution in a fraud case stemming from two fatal 737 Max plane crashes that killed 346 people. The agreement allows Boeing to avoid being branded a convicted felon and is a blow to families who lost relatives in the crashes and had pressed prosecutors to take the US planemaker to trial. A lawyer for family members and two US senators had urged the Justice Department not to abandon its prosecution, but the government quickly rejected the requests. Boeing agreed to pay an additional US$444.5 million (S$573.7 million) into a crash victims' fund that would be divided evenly per crash victim on top of an additional US$243.6 million fine. The Justice Department expects to file the written agreement with Boeing by the end of next week. Boeing will no longer face oversight by an independent monitor under the agreement. Boeing will pay in total over US$1.1 billion including the fine and compensation to families and over US$455 million to strengthen the company's compliance, safety, and quality programs, the Justice Department said. 'Boeing must continue to improve the effectiveness of its anti-fraud compliance and ethics programme and retain an independent compliance consultant,' the department said May 23. 'We are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome with practical benefits.' Boeing did not immediately comment. Reuters first reported on May 16 that Boeing had reached a tentative nonprosecution agreement with the government. The agreement would forestall a June 23 trial date the planemaker faces on a charge it misled US regulators about a crucial flight control system on the 737 Max, its best-selling jet. Boeing in July had agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the two fatal 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia spanning 2018 and 2019, pay a fine of up to US$487.2 million (S$628.8 million) and face three years of independent oversight. Boeing no longer will plead guilty, prosecutors told family members of crash victims during a meeting last week. The company's posture changed after a judge rejected a previous plea agreement in December, prosecutors told the family members. Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas said in 2023 that 'Boeing's crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in US history.' Boeing has faced enhanced scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration since January 2024, when a new Max 9 missing four key bolts suffered a mid-air emergency losing a door plug. The FAA has capped production at 38 planes per month. DOJ officials in 2024 found Boeing had violated a 2021 agreement, reached during the Trump administration's final days, that had shielded the planemaker from prosecution. That conclusion followed the January 2024 in-flight emergency during an Alaska Airlines' flight. As a result, DOJ officials decided to reopen the older fatal crashes case and negotiate a plea agreement with Boeing. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
CNBC
23-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Boeing, Justice Department reach deal to avoid prosecution over deadly 737 Max crashes
The U.S. Justice Department said Friday that it has reached a deal with Boeing to avoid prosecution over two crashes of the plane maker's 737 Max that killed 346 people. The so-called non-prosecution agreement would allow Boeing, a major military contractor and top U.S. exporter, to avoid being labeled a felon. The decision means Boeing won't face trial as scheduled next month. The Justice Department said it reached a deal with Boeing in a letter to victims family members, which was seen bc CNBC. Boeing and the DOJ didn't immediately comment. Boeing has been trying for years to put the two crashes of its best-selling Max planes — a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight less than five months later — behind it. The Maxes were grounded worldwide for nearly two years after the second crash, a pause that gave rival Airbus a head start to recover from the Covid pandemic. But families of the crash victims have criticized previous agreements as sweetheart deals for Boeing, called for more accountability from the company and said its executives should stand trial. In 2022, a former chief technical pilot for Boeing was acquitted on fraud charges tied to the Max's development. The aerospace giant reached a settlement in 2021 in the final days of the first Trump administration that shielded it from prosecution for three years. Under that deal, Boeing agreed to pay a $2.51 billion fine to avoid prosecution. That included a $243.6 million criminal penalty, a $500 million fund for crash victims family members and $1.77 billion for its airline customers. That 2021 settlement was set to expire two days after a door panel blew out of a nearly new 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on Jan. 5, 2024, after the aircraft left Boeing's factory without key bolts installed. But last year, U.S. prosecutors said Boeing violated the 2021 settlement, accusing the company of failing to set up and enforce a compliance and ethics program to detect violations of U.S. fraud laws. Last July, toward the end of the Biden administration, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to the criminal fraud charge in a new settlement. A federal judge later rejected the plea deal, citing concerns with a diversity, equity and inclusion requirements for choosing a corporate monitor. Under that 2024 deal, Boeing would have faced a fine of up to $487.2 million, though the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half that amount it paid under the previous agreement. The U.S. had accused Boeing of conspiracy to defraud the government by misleading regulators about its inclusion of a flight-control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two crashes. "Boeing's employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception," then-acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said at the time of the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. Messages revealed in an investigation into the Max's development showed the former top Boeing pilot who was found not guilty of fraud in 2022, Mark Forkner, told the FAA to delete the flight-control system known as MCAS from manuals and, in a separate email, he boasted about "jedi-mind tricking" regulators into approving the training material. Lawyers for victims' family members railed against last year's preliminary plea deal, equating it to a slap on the wrist for the corporate giant, which recently won a contract worth billions to built the next-generation fighter jet.
