Tag: Trump racism

Democrats take aim at Miller as questions persist about ‘sanctuary city’ targeting

House Democrats are sharpening their focus on White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, with key lawmakers saying he should be brought before congressional committees to testify about his role in recent policy controversies.

The talk of hauling Miller before lawmakers comes days after The Washington Post reported that he played a key role in a plan first discussed last year to release undocumented immigrants into “sanctuary cities” represented by President Trump’s Democratic critics. While the plan never came to fruition because of objections from agency officials, Trump has since embraced the idea.

With a spate of new vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security, including the departure last week of the secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, Miller has emerged as a key target for Democrats who see him as an influential survivor in an administration that has otherwise churned through personnel.

View the complete April 14 article by Mike DeBonis, Rachael Bade and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Sees an Obstacle to Getting His Way on Immigration: His Own Officials

WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller was furious — again.

The architect of President Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Miller was presiding last month over a meeting in the White House Situation Room when he demanded to know why the administration officials gathered there were taking so long to carry out his plans.

A regulation to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants — a change Mr. Miller repeatedly predicted would be “transformative” — was still plodding through the approval process after more than two years, he complained. So were the new rules that would overturn court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, berating Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

View the complete April 14 article by Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear on The New York Times website here.

Trump sanctuary city idea could help migrants stay in US

PHOENIX (AP) — An idea floated by President Donald Trump to send immigrants from the border to “sanctuary cities” to exact revenge on Democratic foes could end up doing the migrants a favor by placing them in locations that make it easier to put down roots and stay in the country.

The plan would put thousands of immigrants in cities that are not only welcoming to them, but also more likely to rebuff federal officials carrying out deportation orders. Many of these locations have more resources to help immigrants make their legal cases to stay in the United States than smaller cities, with some of the nation’s biggest immigration advocacy groups based in places like San Francisco, New York City and Chicago. The downside for the immigrants would be a high cost of living in the cities.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University announced this week that an analysis found that immigrants in sanctuary cities such as New York and Los Angeles are 20% less likely to be arrested out in the community than in cities without such policies.

View the complete April 14 article by Astrid Galvan and Morgan Lee on the Associated Press website here.

Trump says he has legal right to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities

President Trump tweeted on Saturday night that his administration has the legal right to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities and demanded it happen.

“Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities,” he wrote. “We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!”

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

View the complete April 13 article by Rachel Franzin on The Hill website here.

Trump says he is considering putting migrants in sanctuary cities

President Trump said Friday his administration is “giving strong considerations” to a controversial plan that would release migrants into so-called sanctuary cities, even though officials said the idea was never seriously considered.

In a pair of tweets, Trump accused Democrats of being “unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws” and suggested they should feel the consequences of what he has called the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We can give them an unlimited supply [of migrants] and let’s see if they’re so happy,” Trump said later Friday at a White House event where he doubled down on the idea. “They say ‘we have open arms.’ They’re always saying they have open arms. Let’s see if they have open arms.”

Aid Cuts Won’t Slow Central America’s Exodus

Cutting aid to impoverished countries will give desperate people more reasons to leave, not to stay, experts say.

LIMA, PERU — Experts agree that U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to halt some $500 million in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras likely won’t lessen the migration crisis at the United States’ border with Mexico.

“We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us,” Trump declared on March 29, when he announced the measure in retaliation for the supposed failure of the three Central American governments to stem illegal migration to the United States. “They set up these caravans in many cases; they put their worst people in the caravan. They’re not going to put their best in. They get rid of their problems and they march up here.”

But the money is actually intended to allow potential emigrants to stay at home by improving living conditions in the impoverished, violence-wracked countries, including by encouraging economic development and job creation, and helping to tackle rampant corruption and impunity.

View the complete April 9 article by Simeon Tegel, contributing author, on The U.S. News and World Report website here.

White House proposed releasing immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities, targeting political foes

White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

View the complete April 11 article by Rachel Bade and Nick Miroff on The Washington Post website here.

It’s Trump vs. Trump as immigration divides White House

The president is weighing — and reflecting — different opinions among his top advisers, including Stephen Miller and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

President Donald Trump is in a fight over immigration — with himself.

Trump denied on Tuesday that he is “cleaning house” at the Department of Homeland Security. But on Wednesday, the White House was eyeing a replacement for a senior DHS official whose job congressional Republicans are trying to save.

The president has also said he has no plans to renew the administration’s highly controversial migrant child separation policy — even as officials throughout the administration weigh a plan to make arrested border-crossers choose whether to “voluntarily” separate from their kids.

View the complete April 10 article by Eliana Johnson, Nancy Cook and Anita Kumar on the Politico website here.

Republicans Call ‘Expert’ To Whitewash Trump On Charlottesville

Republicans used a congressional hearing on the rising white supremacist threat to America to defend Trump and falsely claim that he didn’t praise Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville in 2017.

Instead of bringing serious witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Republicans invited Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America. Klein calls Arabs “filthy,” and his organization has welcomed white supremacist guests like Trump acolyte Steve Bannon to its events.

At the hearing, Klein was part of an exchange with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) in which he denied Trump’s infamous statement about the Charlottesville riot, describing neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”

View the complete April 9 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Twelve days of chaos: Inside the Trump White House’s growing panic to contain the border crisis

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was a loyal soldier for President Trump and often repeated his falsehoods, but it wasn’t enough to save her job. (Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

He had threatened to close the southern border and ordered a halt to foreign aid for three Central American nations. But as President Trump weighed his next move to respond to a mounting immigration crisis, he had another problem: His homeland security chief was in Europe on a week-long business trip.

The location of Kirstjen Nielsen, the embattled leader of the Department of Homeland Security, on April 1 was like a bad joke for a president who vowed to curb unauthorized immigration but was now showing signs of panic as border crossings spiked to the highest levels in more than a decade. Continue reading “Twelve days of chaos: Inside the Trump White House’s growing panic to contain the border crisis”