Trump Admits Smugglers Are Sawing Through His Border Wall

Shifting from previous claims that his signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would be “virtually impenetrable,” President Donald Trump on Saturday admitted “you can cut through anything,” even as he continues push for a structure that an internal Department of Homeland Security report says will cost $21.6 billion to complete

Trump was responding to a Washington Post report, published Saturday, that revealed smugglers have “repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools.”

“We have a very powerful wall. But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything, in all fairness. But we have a lot of people watching,” Trump told reporters.

View the complete November 3 article by Elizabeth Preza from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Report: Trump’s Travel Ban Could Get Bigger

The Trump administration is reportedly considering adding even more countries to the controversial travel ban.

President Donald Trump‘s travel ban has been one of the most contentious policies he’s enacted while in office, spurring widespread protests and a series of legal blocks before it was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018. But despite the controversy it inspired, the Trump administration isn’t backing down from the policy. In fact, they might be expanding it even further. CNN reports that the White House is reportedly mulling adding even more countries to the travel ban, which currently affects citizens from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, and Venezuela.

Per CNN, the travel restrictions would specifically target countries “that are not compliant with electronic documents and information sharing,” and fewer than five countries are currently under consideration for inclusion. The administration’s goal, one official told CNN, is to “bring governments into compliance by using the power of access to the United States.” The potential travel bans would not be imposed on all the affected countries’ citizens, but would rather be specifically tailored to each country. It is not yet clear which new countries would be affected by the ban, nor is it yet known if the countries will be majority-Muslim nations, which would further the perception that the travel ban specifically discriminates against Muslims. Continue reading “Report: Trump’s Travel Ban Could Get Bigger”

Trump administration working to close immigration ‘loopholes’ — but border is still a crisis, officials say

Washington Post logoEL PASO — Unauthorized migration across the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped significantly since a record influx of 140,000 people in May, but the border remains “in crisis” and Congress needs to act to address it, Trump administration officials said here Tuesday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents took 970,000 people into custody along the southern border in the past year — more than double the previous year’s total — including a “record-breaking” number of families, CBP’s acting commissioner Mark Morgan said. Border crossings in fiscal 2019 hit their highest number in more than a decade, despite a continuous drop in border crossings during the past four months, Morgan said.

Morgan, who spoke at a news conference in front of the steel-and-concrete border barrier that separates this Texas border city from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, railed against Congress for sitting “idly by” while immigration authorities grappled with historic influxes of migrants. Morgan said Congress instead should pass legislation that the Trump administration believes will deter future migration.

View the complete October 29 article by Robert Moore and Abigail Hauslohner on The Washington Post website here.

DOJ changed hiring to promote restrictive immigration judges

New practice permanently placed judges on powerful appellate board, documents show

The Department of Justice has quietly changed hiring procedures to permanently place immigration judges repeatedly accused of bias to a powerful appellate board, adding to growing worries about the politicization of the immigration court system.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests describe how an already opaque hiring procedure was tweaked for the six newest hires to the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals. All six board members, added in August, were immigration judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates. Some also had the highest number of decisions in 2017 that the same appellate body sent back to them for reconsideration. All six members were immediately appointed to the board without a yearslong probationary period.

“They’re high-level deniers who’ve done some pretty outrageous things [in the courtroom] that would make you believe they’re anti-immigrant,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and past senior legal adviser at the board. “It’s a terrifying prospect … They have power over thousands of lives.”

View the complete October 29 article by Tanvi Misra on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Administration Has Separated 1,556 More Migrant Children Than Previously Known

The Trump Administration revealed Thursday that an additional 1,556 children have been separated from their parents than previously reported, bringing the total number of family separations since July 2017 up to nearly 5,500. The new instances of family separation came to light after a judge ordered the Administration to deliver an accounting of every case.

About 200 of the 1,556 cases involved children under 5 years old, says the ACLU, which is leading a class-action lawsuit against the Administration. “We — naively, looking back — assumed the government was telling us about all the children they had separated,” Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney in the lawsuit, tells TIME. “I think what we’ve learned is that we need to continuously press the government to find out what they may not be disclosing.”

The ACLU’s class-action lawsuit has now expanded to include the 1,556 families along with the original 2,800 who were separated during former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Zero-Tolerance Policy. “At every stage of this case there have been shocking revelations,” Gelernt says. “In some ways, the real work is going to begin [now] because we have to try to find all these 1,500 families.”

View the complete October 26 article by Jasmine Aguilera on the Time website here.

ACLU says 1,500 more migrant children were taken from parents by the Trump administration

Washington Post logoThe American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Trump administration separated 1,556 more immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border than has previously been disclosed to the public.

The majority of the children were ages 12 and under, including more than 200 considered “tender age” because they were under 5 years old.

The ACLU said the Justice Department disclosed the final tally — which is in addition to the more than 2,700 children known to have been separated last year — hours before a federal court deadline to identify all children separated since mid-2017, the year President Trump took office.

View the complete October 24 article by Maria Sacchetti on The Washington Post website here.

Immigration Detention Is Dangerous for Women’s Health and Rights

Center for American Progress logoOverview

The health and rights of women and girls in U.S. immigration custody are regularly violated through inhumane treatment, including inadequate health care, neglect, and abuse.

Introduction and summary

The Trump administration has weaponized immigration policy. Moreover, the president’s own words have consistently insulted and demonized immigrants of color.1 These actions make clear who the administration deems valuable, deserving of respect, and worthy of compassion—and who can be discarded or ignored. This judgment about value and worth is starkly reflected in the administration’s treatment of immigrant women and girls, particularly those in immigration custody. Their stories of mistreatment and countless indignities show the harsh intersections of administration policies to cast immigrants—particularly immigrants of color—as undesirables undeserving of entry or humane treatment and to systematically erode women’s rights, particularly access to reproductive health care.

Lost in the heated public debate about immigration are the stories of individuals who suffer under the cruelty of the Trump administration—such as Teresa, whose story is detailed in a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from several immigrant rights organizations. Teresa was four months pregnant when she arrived at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 seeking asylum from El Salvador. She was placed in a holding cell for 24 hours, where she experienced pain and heavy bleeding. She told immigration officials multiple times that she was pregnant and bleeding, and her repeated requests for medical help were ignored. Next, she was transferred to Otay Mesa Detention Center, where she met with medical staff, but she was not transferred to a hospital for treatment. Only days later did detention staff confirm that Teresa had miscarried. Following her miscarriage, Teresa had serious complications, including heavy bleeding, weight loss, and headaches. Despite being told she would be given an appointment with a provider outside the detention center, Teresa was not, and she had to pay for medications from the facility’s commissary, which were later confiscated. Multiple requests to be released from detention for humanitarian reasons were denied, and four months after her miscarriage, Teresa was still in detention, still in pain, and still neglected by medical staff.2

View the complete October 21 article by Nora Ellmann on the Center for American Progress website here.

Trump Says Border Wall More Important Than Defending Kurdish Allies

As Turkey’s military actions intensify in northern Syria, Trump is defending his decision to abandon Kurdish allies by claiming he wants to focus his attention on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Some people want the United States to protect the 7,000 mile away Border of Syria, presided over by Bashar al-Assad, our enemy,” Trump wrote on Monday. “At the same time, Syria and whoever they chose to help, wants naturally to protect the Kurds. I would much rather focus on our Southern Border which abuts and is part of the United States of America. And by the way, numbers are way down and the WALL is being built!”

After an Oct. 6 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump announced U.S. troops would withdraw from northern Syria, giving tacit permission for Turkey to begin military action in the area. Trump abandoned Kurdish allies in the region who had been pivotal to America’s fight against ISIS, knowing Turkey would attack the Kurds.

View the complete October 14 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

They’re the refugees that Trump tried to stop. But now they’re here, and they’re ‘becoming Americans.’

Washington Post logoGRAPEVINE, Tex. — On the day that President Trump slashed refugee admissions to their lowest level in four decades, the arrival of a dazed traveler at Dallas’s international airport last month offered a quiet rebuke.

The newcomer was walking the final steps of an improbable 15,000-mile odyssey. There to greet him were four others who had followed the same epic path to an American life, along with a native-born citizen clutching a hand-drawn, red-and-blue sign: “Welcome to Texas!”

None would have been there had Trump had his way.

View the complete October 12 article by Griff Witte on The Washington Post website here.

Trump says acting Homeland Security chief McAleenan will step down

The Hill logoPresident Trump announced Friday night that Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan would step down from his position.

“Kevin McAleenan has done an outstanding job as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. We have worked well together with Border Crossings being way down,” tweeted Trump, who tapped McAleenan to lead the department earlier this year.

“Kevin now, after many years in Government, wants to spend more time with his family and go to the private sector,” Trump tweeted. “Congratulations Kevin, on a job well done!”

View the complete October 11 article by Brett Samuels and Jessica Campisi on The Hill website here.