Latest news with #undocumentedmigrants
CBS News
15 hours ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be arraigned on human trafficking charges in Tennessee
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was wrongly deported and then returned to the United States to face federal prosecution, will appear in a Nashville courtroom Friday for his arraignment after he was charged with participating in a yearslong conspiracy to traffic undocumented migrants into the country. Abrego Garcia faces one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens after a grand jury in Tennessee returned a sealed indictment against him in May. Those charges were made public last week when Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States to face those charges. If he is convicted, Bondi said he would serve his sentence at a federal prison and be removed to El Salvador after his sentence is completed. Federal prosecutors have asked a federal judge to detain Abrego Garcia as his court proceedings play out, arguing that he "poses a danger to the community" and is "a serious flight risk." They continue to allege that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that his attorney and family have denied, and said there is a "serious risk" that Abrego Garcia would intimidate witnesses. Abrego Garcia's lawyers have accused the Trump administration of abusing its power and engaging in "delay and secrecy" in the process of returning him to the U.S. A judge in Maryland ordered him returned to the U.S. in April, but the Justice Department declined to do so for months, only to bring him back days ago so he can be prosecuted. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of his attorneys, said Friday that he doesn't believe Abrego Garcia will be convicted. "There's no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy," he said. The indictment unsealed last week alleges that between 2016 and 2025, Abrego Garcia conspired with others to bring migrants from Latin American countries into the U.S., passing through Mexico before crossing the border into Texas. Prosecutors said that he and an unnamed co-conspirator would pick up the migrants in Houston and transport them to other places in the U.S. They claimed that Abrego Garcia and the co-conspirator devised "cover stories" to provide law enforcement if stopped, like that they were transporting people for construction work. Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators "knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands" of migrants who are not legally in the U.S., the indictment alleges. Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March after he was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Maryland, where he has lived since arriving in the U.S. in 2011. After the man and his wife sued over his removal, an immigration official with the Trump administration acknowledged that his deportation to El Salvador was an administrative error. In 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia a legal status known as withholding of removal. That protection forbade the Department of Homeland Security from removing him to his country of origin — El Salvador — because he was likely to face persecution from gangs. The Maryland judge ordered the Trump administration in April to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S., and that order was largely affirmed by the Supreme Court. But the administration resisted bringing him back to the U.S., arguing that the judge lacked the authority to demand it do so. Abrego Garcia had initially been held at El Salvador's supermax prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT. But he was transferred to a lower-security facility in April, the State Department said. Bondi said the Salvadoran government agreed to release Abrego Garcia to face the criminal charges in the U.S. after it was presented with a warrant for his release. Abrego Garcia's attorneys have also moved to keep the civil case seeking his return active, rebuking a Justice Department filing after his return to the United States last week claiming that a judge's order mandating his return has now been fulfilled and the case is now moot, calling the Trump administration's handling of his case "pure farce" in a court filing Monday. "Instead of facilitating Abrego Garcia's return, for the past two months Defendants have engaged in an elaborate, all-of-government effort to defy court orders, deny due process, and disparage Abrego Garcia," the attorneys wrote, asking the Maryland federal judge overseeing the case to start contempt proceedings and impose sanctions on the government. In response, the Justice Department said that it has "done exactly what plaintiffs asked for and what this court ordered them to do," in facilitating his return to the US," and said it would file a motion to dismiss the case next week. "The proof is in the pudding—Defendants have returned Abrego Garcia to the United States just as they were ordered to do. None of Plaintiffs' hyperbolic arguments change that or justify further proceedings in this matter," Justice Department attorneys wrote.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
What to know about Guantánamo Bay as Trump prepares more migrant transfers
As President Donald Trump pledges the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in U.S. history, his administration is planning to transfer potentially thousands to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, including hundreds from friendly European nations, starting as early as this week. U.S. officials shared the plans — which are subject to change — with The Washington Post, including some documents, on the condition of anonymity because the matter is considered highly sensitive. The White House declined to comment, but press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on social media that the plans are 'Fake News. Not happening.' If Trump's plans come to pass, it would be a marked escalation of his use of Guantánamo. Here's what to know about the facility. Guantánamo Bay is a military base that has been operated for decades by the U.S. Navy. It is the oldest overseas U.S. military installation and the only one in a communist country. It's located on the southeastern coast of Cuba, about 400 air miles from Miami. Guantánamo Bay was seized in 1898 by U.S. forces and their Cuban allies during their efforts to wrest the island from Spanish control. The United States formally established a naval base on the bay in 1903, after leasing 45 square miles of land and water from the newly independent Cuban government, according to the U.S. Navy. Since the 1960s, Guantánamo Bay has had its own power and water sources. The base has enabled both Navy and Coast Guard ships to operate in the Caribbean region. It has been used for a variety of purposes including fleet training, ship repair, disaster assistance, and search and rescue support. The prison that holds terrorism suspects at the base was established by President George W. Bush in 2002. It became most notorious for holding suspected terrorists and others captured on battlefields in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Since then, the base has been mired in controversy over allegations that the U.S. military tortured terrorism suspects, and it has faced scrutiny over the detention of hundreds of prisoners without formal charges. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden said they wanted to close Guantánamo. In late January, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. 'We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,' Trump said that month. At the time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said migrants would not be held with terrorism suspects and that the detention camp would be a place for detainees to stay temporarily while officials made travel arrangements for them to third countries if their home nations wouldn't accept them. The Post reported Tuesday that the foreign nationals under consideration for transfer to Guantánamo include citizens of Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey and Ukraine, and other parts of the world, including many from Haiti. The operation to move migrants has struggled to scale up amid legal, logistical and financial hurdles. In all, about 300 migrants total have been detained there, The Post reported in March. The U.S. government has deployed military planes to transport migrants, an effort that cost at least $21 million for the period between January and April, but only held 32 migrants as of mid-May, NBC reported that month, noting that many of them were likely flown back to the United States. DHS recently requested the expansion of a medium-security detention facility at the base from 140 to 300 detainees, The Post reported. While authorities could detain thousands more migrants there if tents put up by troops were equipped with utilities like air conditioning, Defense Department officials said in March that they held off on taking steps to fix them up for further use without the migrants to fill them. A document recently reviewed by The Post said that 'GTMO,' the government acronym for the base, 'is not at capacity.' Trump administration officials say the plan to send migrants to Guantánamo is necessary to free up capacity at domestic detention facilities, which have become overcrowded. Overall, ICE has detention capacity for about 40,000 people. Human rights groups — which say U.S. government agencies and private contractors have detained asylum seekers and refugees at Guantánamo facilities for several decades — have condemned Trump's plans to move migrants there. 'Migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports,' the Center for Constitutional Rights said in January, after Trump's announcement. In 1994, for instance, President Bill Clinton resumed the previous administration's use of the Guantánamo base for processing Haitian refugees and later ordered Cuban asylum seekers caught at sea to be held there. Later that year, the migrant population at the base's camps totaled 45,000, according to a government report. In 2024, the International Refugee Assistance Project released a report accusing the U.S.-run Migrant Operations Center at Guantánamo Bay, or GMOC, of detaining migrants fleeing Haiti, Cuba and other Caribbean countries throughout its history. Many of those refugees are intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea and then 'detained indefinitely in prison-like conditions without access to the outside world,' often 'with little to no transparency or accountability,' the report said. 'These refugees are forced to endure this treatment until a third country agrees to accept them for resettlement, even if they have family in the United States,' it said, adding that the process can take years. John Hudson, Alex Horton and Silvia Foster-Frau contributed to this report.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Live Updates: Supreme Court Seems Torn Over Judges' Power in Birthright Citizenship Case
While protesters denounced President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court justices mostly focused on nationwide injunctions during oral arguments in the case. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday in a case related to President Trump's executive order trying to end so-called birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented migrants. But the question before the justices was narrower: whether a single district court judge has the power to block a policy across the country. Here are four takeaways from the arguments. The case was not really about birthright citizenship. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 1:09 - 0:00 transcript During oral arguments on Thursday, Supreme Court justices were not considering the legal merits of an order signed by President Trump shortly after his inauguration that reinterpreted the meaning of the 14th Amendment, which has long been understood to grant automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil. The argument here is that the president is violating an established — not just one, but by my count, four established Supreme Court precedents. We have the Wong Ark case where we said fealty to a foreign sovereign doesn't defeat your entitlement. Your parents' fealty to a foreign sovereign doesn't defeat your entitlement to citizenship as a child. We have another case where we said that even if your parents are here illegally, if you're born here, you're a citizen. We have yet another case that says, even if your parents came here and were stopped at the border and — but you were born in our territory, you're still a citizen. And we have another case that says even if your parents secured citizenship illegally, you're still a citizen. So as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents. During oral arguments on Thursday, Supreme Court justices were not considering the legal merits of an order signed by President Trump shortly after his inauguration that reinterpreted the meaning of the 14th Amendment, which has long been understood to grant automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil. Credit Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times The justices were not considering the legal merits of Mr. Trump's order, even though it brought greater attention to the arguments on Thursday. Shortly after being sworn in to his second term, Mr. Trump signed an order that reinterpreted the meaning of the 14th Amendment, which has long been understood to grant automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil. The order seeks to deny citizenship to babies born to undocumented migrants and visitors without green cards. As a practical matter, that would start with agencies in the executive branch refusing them citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards. Multiple courts around the country have blocked the government from obeying that order, ruling that it is most likely illegal. They did so using universal injunctions, or orders that apply nationwide and cover people in similar situations who were not parties to the cases. At this stage, the Trump administration is challenging only the ability of courts to issue such orders. Still, the underlying issue came up several times. Several justices expressed skepticism about the legality of Mr. Trump's proclamation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for example, said that it violated, 'by my count, four established Supreme Court precedents.' No justice expressed clear support for the legality of the order. Justices asked about the history of universal injunctions. Image Justice Clarence Thomas suggested at times that nationwide injunctions did not have deep roots in American jurisprudence, although some scholars have challenged those assertions. Credit... Eric Lee/The New York Times Some of the justices — particularly its longest sitting member, Justice Clarence Thomas — seemed interested in the history of nationwide injunctions, suggesting at times that the practice did not have deep roots in American jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has rejected certain legal practices — most prominently, the constitutional right to abortion — by arguing that they were not traditionally recognized in U.S. law. At one point, Justice Thomas said the nation had 'survived until the 1960s' without the use of nationwide injunctions. While some legal scholars have challenged that assertion, pointing to examples of the tool's use as far back as 1913, Justice Thomas seemed to be expressing skepticism about the widespread use of the injunctions. Echoing that position, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, said that courts have typically worked by addressing claims filed by individuals. He noted that during the flurry of legislative changes enacted during the New Deal in the 1930s, one policy in particular prompted lawsuits from more than 1,000 separate plaintiffs. These days were different, Mr. Sauer said, pointing out that nearly 40 nationwide injunctions had been entered by a court in the past four months. He said the number of such injunctions had soared over the past five administrations, describing it as a 'bipartisan problem.' The justices also wrestled with practicalities. Image Jeremy M. Feigenbaum, New Jersey's solicitor general, pointed out that children of immigrants born in states without birthright citizenship might not be able to get Social Security numbers. Credit... Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times One of the major themes drawn out by lawyers for the plaintiffs was the practical effect of doing away with nationwide injunctions in a case that touched on an issue affecting all Americans. The lawyers worried that before the Supreme Court issued a final ruling on the question of birthright citizenship, there could be 'chaos on the ground' if some states were allowed to keep the practice and others states did not. Jeremy M. Feigenbaum, New Jersey's solicitor general, pointed out that if Mr. Trump's policy prevailed in certain states, children of immigrants born there might not be able to get Social Security numbers. That could become a problem, he suggested, if they later moved to states that did recognize them as citizens, particularly if they tried to apply for government benefits. Mr. Feigenbaum also noted that if a person's citizenship depended on what state they were in, there could be widespread confusion about their immigration status as well. He wondered aloud whether the children of immigrants might be subject to deportation in states that did not recognize birthright citizenship and yet be shielded from removal in states that did. Several worried about a potential loophole. Image Under a solution presented by D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, Justice Elena Kagan suggested the administration might choose never to appeal any of its losses to the Supreme Court. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times Justice Elena Kagan, noting that every lower court that has looked at Mr. Trump's birthright citizenship order so far has ruled that it is illegal, asked Mr. Sauer how such an issue could be definitively resolved without a universal injunction. Mr. Sauer proposed a world in which, after a legal issue 'percolates' among many different individual lawsuits in the lower courts, the Supreme Court eventually issues a ruling in one of them that becomes a binding precedent that resolves the rest. But Justice Kagan suggested that the Trump administration might simply choose to never appeal any of its losses to the Supreme Court. That, she said, would allow it to keep denying citizenship documents to the overwhelming number of babies who were born to parents who lacked the resources or wherewithal to sue. Mr. Sauer suggested that a class-action lawsuit might be the way to solve that problem, but he also acknowledged that the administration would most likely argue that the standards were not met to grant class certification to all children affected by Mr. Trump's order. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch remarked, 'Justice Kagan asked my questions better than I could have,' leading to a rare moment of laughter in the courtroom. He again pressed Mr. Sauer, 'How do you suggest we reach this on the merits expeditiously?' Justice Gorsuch went on to ask whether the administration intended to appeal to the Supreme Court after it lost — he said 'when' that happens, not 'if' — on the merits before an appeals court. 'If we lose?' Mr. Sauer replied. 'Yes, absolutely.'
