The real lesson Trump learned from Charlottesville

The following article by Annie Karni was posted on the Politico website August 5, 2018:

The president emerged from a low point of his presidency unscathed with his loyal voters, and has turned race into a key issue for the midterms — and beyond.

President Trump after Charlottesville rally in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan. Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The content of President Donald Trump’s dig at basketball superstar LeBron James might have been standard Trump fare — questioning the intelligence of a prominent African-American who has been critical of him — but the timing of the tweet made it stand out on Friday night.

The post landed almost exactly a year after the deadly clash between white nationalists and Black Lives Matter protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, when the president refused to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis outright.

That moment temporarily left Trump on an island, abandoned by Republicans on the Hill and corporate executives who had previously played nice with the president on his business councils, and was a low-water mark of his presidency — one that, according to presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “puts him in the dung heap of presidents who are completely insensitive of race in the United States.”

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Federal judge says Trump must fully restore DACA

The following article by Aris Folley was posted on the Hill website August 3, 2018:

Credit: Gili Getz / Movimiento Cosecha

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must fully restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In his 25-page opinion, Judge John Bates said the Trump White House had again failed to provide justification for its proposal to end the Obama-era program, under which nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children, known as “Dreamers,” have received work permits and deferral from deportation.

The judge also said in his opinion that he has agreed to delay his ruling to give the Trump administration 20 days “to determine whether it intends to appeal the Court’s decision and, if so, to seek a stay pending appeal.”

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Trump administration says it isn’t responsible for reuniting deported parents and children

The following article by Rebekah Entralgo was posted on the ThinkProgress website August 3, 2018:

The ACLU calls the administration’s refusal to reunite deported parents and children “remarkable.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Credit: Kevin Hagen, Getty Images

The Trump administration continues to wash their hands of any responsibility of solving a crisis of their own creation.

On Thursday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal judge that the government is not responsible for finding the over 400 parents separated from their children at the border who were deported and are no longer in the United States.

Instead, the government believes it is the responsibility of the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU), the organization suing the federal government, to reunify deported parents with their children.

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THE LATEST: Hundreds Of Families Remain Separated, Trump Goes After

Hundreds of children remain separated from their parents as a result of Trump’s cruel policy. Instead of doing more to reunite these families, the Trump administration wants to continue to push their anti-immigrant agenda. Now, he’s going after legal immigrants. Here’s the latest:

Hundreds of children remain separated from their families, many of whose parents have already been deported.

MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff: “Lots of other stuff going on today. Figured I’d remind everyone the Trump administration separated 2,551 migrant kids from their parents at the border. 572 of them are *still* separated. 410 have parents who were already deported. The government simply can’t find them.” Continue reading “THE LATEST: Hundreds Of Families Remain Separated, Trump Goes After”

Trump to Dems: I’ll ‘Shut Down’ Government Over Immigration

The following article by John T. Bennett was posted on the Roll Call website July 29, 2018:

Shelby has told president new wall funding likely capped at $1.6B

Credit: Kevin Dietsch-Pool, Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to shut down the federal government this fall unless Democrats give in to his border security demands, including by giving him billions more for his proposed southern border wall.

Should Democrats continue denying Trump his border barrier and other demands and the president make good on his high-stakes threat, it would be the third funding lapse of his tenure. It also would shutter the government just weeks before voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate — and the Trump-GOP agenda — come January.

“I would be willing to “shut down” government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!” he wrote.

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‘Deleted’ families: What went wrong with Trump’s family-separation effort

The following article by Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein and Maria Sacchetti was posted on the Washington Post website July 28, 2018:

Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody after the Trump administration scrambled to reunite separated families under a court-imposed deadline. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunify migrant families separated at the border, the government’s cleanup crews faced an immediate problem.

They weren’t sure who the families were, let alone what to call them.

Customs and Border Protection databases had categories for “family units,” and “unaccompanied alien children” who arrive without parents. They did not have a distinct classification for more than 2,600 children who had been taken from their families and placed in government shelters.

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Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody, though most separated families are reunited at court deadline

The following article by Nick Miroff and Samantha Schmidt was posted on the Washington Post website July 26, 2018:

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

At the expiration of a court deadline to reunite migrant families separated during its “zero tolerance” border crackdown, the Trump administration said Thursday that it has delivered 1,442 children to parents detained in immigration custody, and is on track to return all of those deemed eligible for reunification.

But 711 children remain in government shelters because their parents have criminal records, their cases remain under review or the parents are no longer in the United States, officials said. They added that 431 parents of those children have been deported.

Chris Meekins, an official at the Department of Health and Human Services, which has led the reunification effort, told reporters that “hundreds of staff have worked 24/7” to meet the court’s 30-day deadline. Administration officials said they would work with the court to figure out how to return the remaining children, including those whose parents have been deported.

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Hundreds of migrant children still separated from parents as deadline nears

The following article by Lydia Wheeler and Nathaniel Weixel was posted on the Hill website July 26, 2018:

© Getty Images

The Trump administration has just hours before its court-ordered deadline to reunite families it separated at the southern border, but a new court filing Thursday night shows there are still hundreds of parents who have not been reunited with their kids.

The government reported that is has reunited 1,442 children ages 5 and older with their parents who were in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and 378 have been “discharged in other appropriate circumstances,” including to a sponsor or to their parents in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody.

But there are another 711 children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement whose parents are either not eligible for reunification or unavailable.

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Tracking family separation at the border: 431 parents deported without kids

The following article by Rebekah Entralgo and Amanda Michelle Gomez was posted on the ThinkProgress.org website July 23, 2018:

The Trump administration claims it’s on track to reunite all “eligible” families they separated.

Trump ramps up scrutiny of legal immigrants

The following article by Lydia Wheeler was posted on the Hill website July 22, 2018:

President Donald Trump with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. credit: Evan Vucci/AP

The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to curb legal immigration, taking a series of actions in recent weeks that could lead to deportation for people already granted citizenship.

The director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — an office established in 2003 to process immigrant applications for visas, work permits, green cards and citizenship — told The Associated Press recently that the agency is hiring dozens of lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants who are suspected of having lied to officials during the naturalization process.

The office made public on July 5 a memo announcing its plan to start issuing notices to appear for a wider range of cases. Those notices, which require an immigrant to appear before an immigration judge on a certain date, can be the first step in deportation proceedings.

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