Tag: Trump immigration

Trump team cannot get its story straight on separating migrant families

The following article by James Hohmann with Branne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website June 18, 2018:

THE BIG IDEA: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted last night. “Period.”

From left to right, John DeStefano, Kirstjen Nielsen, Jordan Karem, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Stephen Miller follow President Trump as they walk from the Oval Office to board Marine One. Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

This formulation is striking because President Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, was quoted in Sunday’s New York Times touting the crackdown. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry,” he said. “Period.”

DHS announced last week that around 2,000 children have been taken from their families during the six weeks since the policy went into effect, and officials acknowledge the number may be even higher.

More than a month after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Trump’s new “zero tolerance” policy to great fanfare, members of the administration continue to struggle with how to talk about it – alternating between defending the initiative as a necessary deterrent, distancing themselves, blaming Democrats, trying to use it as leverage for negotiations with Congress or denying that it exists at all.

Continue reading “Trump team cannot get its story straight on separating migrant families”

Instead of Trump’s propaganda, how about a nice ‘truth sandwich’?

The following article by Margaret Sullivan was posted on the Washington Post website June 17, 2018:

Last week was a particularly rough one for journalists and truth-seeking citizens.

President Trump declared the news media the nation’s worst enemy. And time after shocking time, his acolytes demeaned or threatened reporters for doing one of their most basic jobs: asking questions of those in power. Continue reading “Instead of Trump’s propaganda, how about a nice ‘truth sandwich’?”

Schiff: White House using migrant kids’ grief and tears to build border wall

The following article by Jacqueline Thomsen was posted on the Hill website June 17, 2018:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on Sunday that the Trump administration is using the “grief, the tears, the pain” of immigrant kids as “mortar” to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“What the administration is doing, they’re using the grief, the tears, the pain of these kids as mortar to build their wall,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Continue reading “Schiff: White House using migrant kids’ grief and tears to build border wall”

Rep. Paulsen on Child Separation

I listened to the audio of children separated from their families on our southern border and felt sick and horrified. The response of my GOP congressman, Erik Paulsen? On Twitter, he writes that he hopes the administration “reverses policies that lead to the separation of kids from their parents.” Hopes? Hope is something for Christmas gifts, the lottery, an early end to winter. It is entirely insufficient for a sitting congressman.

Katherine Bass, Edina
Minneapolis StarTribune, June 19, 2018

Trump systematically alienates the Latino diaspora — from El Salvador to Puerto Rico and Mexico

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website January 9, 2018:

Protesters gathered in front of the White House on Jan. 8 to defend Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans living in the U.S. (@nostredamnz/ Instagram)

THE BIG IDEA: A Manchurian Candidate who was secretly trying to alienate Hispanics would be hard pressed to do as much damage to the Republican brand as President Trump.

The administration announced Monday that it will terminate the provisional residency permits of about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the United States since at least 2001, leaving them to face deportation. Trump previously ended what is known as Temporary Protected Status for Nicaraguans and Haitians, and he’s expected to cut off Hondurans later this year. Continue reading “Trump systematically alienates the Latino diaspora — from El Salvador to Puerto Rico and Mexico”

Stoking Fears, Trump Defied Bureaucracy to Advance Immigration Agenda

The following article by Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis was posted on the New York Times website December 23, 2017:

The changes have had far-reaching consequences, both for the immigrants who have sought to make a new home in this country and for America’s image in the world.

WASHINGTON — Late to his own meeting and waving a sheet of numbers, President Trump stormed into the Oval Office one day in June, plainly enraged.

Five months before, Mr. Trump had dispatched federal officers to the nation’s airports to stop travelers from several Muslim countries from entering the United States in a dramatic demonstration of how he would deliver on his campaign promise to fortify the nation’s borders. Continue reading “Stoking Fears, Trump Defied Bureaucracy to Advance Immigration Agenda”

As Trump Tightens Legal Immigration, Canada Woos Tech Firms

The following article by Liz Robbins was posted on the New York Times website December 19, 2017:

Datalogue, a New York City start-up, decided to open a Montreal office rather than go through the expensive and uncertain process of trying to get visas for immigrant workers in the United States.CreditRenaud Philippe for The New York Times

A Flatiron district artificial intelligence start-up was recently looking to expand, adding new engineers who happened to know a niche computer language.

The people it hired hail from Morocco, Belarus, France, Georgia and Canada. But they are not working in New York. They are in Montreal, where immigration policies make it possible to get work permits within two weeks, and the Canadian tech industry is aggressively trying to woo foreign companies. Continue reading “As Trump Tightens Legal Immigration, Canada Woos Tech Firms”