By Philip Pullella and Ahmed Eljechtimi RABAT (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Saturday that problems of migration would never be resolved by physical barriers but instead required social justice and correcting the world’s economic imbalances. Francis, starting a two-day visit to Morocco, also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to spread a moderate form…
By Jose Luis Gonzalez EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – Hundreds of migrants are being held in a chain link enclosure in El Paso, Texas as the number of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the city overwhelms U.S. Border Patrol facilities, the agency said on Thursday. The enclosure holds migrants crossing the border illegally in…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to close the U.S. border with Mexico next week, or at least large sections of the frontier, if Mexico “doesn’t immediately stop all illegal immigration coming into the United States” from the region. Trump has repeatedly vowed to close the U.S. border with Mexico in the…
By Mica Rosenberg (Reuters) – U.S. immigration arrests fell under President Donald Trump at the end of 2018 compared to the same period a year earlier, a drop authorities attributed to a growing need to deal with “alarming rates” of migrant families at the border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said on Thursday…
By Lizbeth Diaz and Jose Gallego Espina TIJUANA, Mexico/SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – Three asylum seekers due to be returned to Mexico after appearing in U.S. immigration court on Tuesday asked officials to let them stay in the United States because they feared for their safety while waiting out the process in Mexico. The requests are…
The U.S. Department of Defense is proposing to pay for President Donald Trump’s much-debated border wall by shifting funds away from projects that include $1.2 billion for schools, childcare centers and other facilities for military children, according to a list it has provided to lawmakers.
It is essentially up to Congress to go through the list and figure out which projects will not be affected, including military housing, barracks and projects that have already been awarded funding.
On a recent day, there were none of the usual signs of migrant traffic – no discarded water bottles, clothes or trash. The radio on a Border Patrol SUV driving along the divide was mostly silent.
To many locals and public officials familiar with the area, the $74-million structure just west of tiny Santa Teresa marks a surprising priority in the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall against illegal immigration, drugs and human trafficking.
The Democratic legislation – the Dream and Promise Act – isn’t just a sensible policy proposal, but it’s also good politics.
Trump’s budget asked for $8.6 billion to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, more than six times what Congress gave him for border projects in each of the past two fiscal years, and 6 percent more than he has corralled by invoking emergency powers this year after he failed to get the money he wanted.
In a blow to the Trump administration’s U.S.-Mexico border strategy, a federal court judge in California has expanded the number of migrant families separated at the border that the government may be required to reunite.
The 18-foot-high (5.5 meters) steel barrier is meant to deter illegal immigration. But its position inside the border has turned it into a destination for human smugglers trafficking large groups of asylum seekers fleeing poverty and violence.
“We never purposefully put a child in a cage,†DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said. Like you do when you just mistakenly caged some babies.
While Republicans join Donald Trump in ginning up fear and phony crises to keep their base riled up, Democrats are governing responsibly.
Trump’s Saturday morning golf outing – hours after he said the U.S. was under invasion – further demonstrated that his national emergency is a farce.Â
By Yeganeh Torbati and Kristina Cooke HOMESTEAD, Fla., SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Reuters) – For a growing number of migrant children, this is their first home in America: a sprawling campus dotted with beige buildings, massive white tents and metal trailers, next door to a U.S. Air Force base. The federal government is holding nearly 1,600…
Trump’s threat to go around Congress’ constitutional authority isn’t going over as planned with conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who busted him for “Trump to scam the stupidest people in his base for two more years.”
Beto O’Rourke is going straight after Donald Trump’s phony message that a border wall is necessary to keep the country safe.
In one social media post, Vitiello suggested the Democratic Party should be renamed as “NeoKlanist,†a reference to the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group, and in another Vitiello compared then-candidate Trump to the troublemaking Dennis the Menace newspaper comic character.
The reason that most of Trump’s rallygoers are from elsewhere is likely because the city of El Paso sees right through his immigration lies.
Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic Texas congressman who is considering a 2020 White House bid, will join a march Monday night to protest Republican President Donald Trump’s rally at the same time in the border town of El Paso.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Wednesday described a multi-pronged strategy for tightening the southern border with Mexico that did not focus mainly on a massive wall President Donald Trump demands, according to lawmakers who attended a classified briefing.
Trump continued to push his wall in a tweet earlier on Tuesday, vowing to “build a Human Wall if necessary.”
Trump’s border wall is not even part of the ongoing bipartisan negotiations to keep the government funded past the upcoming Feb. 15 deadline.
There is no appetite for a new Trump political stunt over his border wall – whether it’s another government shutdown or a phony emergency declaration.
The Trump White House held a meeting Friday on human trafficking. Before you get excited that this could be a sign of missing-in-action humanity on the part of the Trump administration, Trump is using this issue to advance his wall and try to paint Speaker Nancy Pelosi as someone who is advancing human trafficking.
But worried and silenced by the nation’s hardened attitude toward migrants, frightened workers face greater risk of falling victim to forced labor, trafficking, wage theft and debt bondage, advocates and officials told the Thomson Reuters Foundation during several trips over a five-month period.
Donald Trump is becoming so desperate to create a phony crisis on the southern border that he’s looking to fictional movie plots for help.
It’s not that Trump supporters don’t recognize that he is a dangerous liar. They do, as Ann Coulter demonstrates. They’re just okay with it.
In a major policy change, Trump’s administration said it would send non-Mexican migrants who cross the U.S. southern border back to wait in Mexico while their U.S. asylum requests are processed.
By Richard Cowan and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate shifted slightly closer on Tuesday to resolving a month-long partial government shutdown, but there was no sign of relief anytime soon for 800,000 federal workers who are furloughed or working without pay. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid the groundwork for a…
Immigrants and activists say facilities such as Adelanto, owned by Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc, the nation’s largest for-profit corrections company, deliberately skimp on essentials, even food, to coerce detainees to labor for pennies an hour to supplement meager rations.
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) formally asked the FBI to investigate Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for perjury.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer threw down on Trump and showed that the adults in the room aren’t playing on his wall shutdown.
Vice President Mike Pence was asked who are the former presidents who told Trump that they support the wall, and Pence couldn’t name a single one.
If Trump tries to declare a national emergency to build his wall, Democrats are already preparing legal challenges.
Trump is trying to say that he will build his wall out of steel instead of concrete, and Democrats have responded by telling him no wall.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) explained that Congress appropriates the funds, even in an emergency, so Trump can’t get any money for his wall without congressional approval.
The shutdown over Trump’s border wall is a “total and complete violation of what he ran on” and the U.S. is falling further into laughingstock territory.
Chris Hayes destroyed a Republican congressman on Thursday for asking the American people to pay for Donald Trump’s border wall.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that Senate Democrats are going to give Trump nothing, not one cent to fund his border wall.
Trump has lost his appeal to the Supreme Court to implement his ban on asylum seekers who cross the US-Mexico border illegally.
On the Senate floor, Democratic Senate Leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made it clear to Trump that he is never getting his wall.
Trump admitted defeat as top Senate Republicans and the White House said he will sign the funding deal with no wall money to keep the government open.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed that Trump be given a $1 billion immigration slush fund for his wall, and Democrats rejected the offer.
Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer said that it doesn’t matter when Trump tries it. There will be no border wall.
Donald Trump vowed to shut down the government over immigration as Republican strategists have figured out that his wall is toxic to the party.
Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is refusing to give Trump any money at all for his border wall. Democrats aren’t going to fund the wall.
By Kristina Cooke and Yeganeh Torbati SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. immigration authorities arrested 170 people between early July and late November who came forward to claim migrant children in government custody, according to official data released on Monday, a crackdown advocates say is discouraging relatives from volunteering to take in some of the 14,000…
House Democrats are firmly stating that they don’t want to give Trump a single penny to fund his border wall.
Trump responded to migrants who were trying to cross the border near San Diego, CA to apply for asylum by tear gassing kids.
Trump‘s plan to force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico is illegal and will likely be quickly struck down in court, as Trump is trying to break the law. The Washington Post reported, “According to outlines of the plan, known as Remain in Mexico, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico…
By Tom Hals (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court in California ruled on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue a program begun under former President Barack Obama that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children. The decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court…
Motel 6 will pay up to $7.6 million to Hispanic guests to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that it violated their privacy by regularly providing guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Pentagon officials declined a preliminary Trump administration request for the U.S. military to build facilities to house detained migrants as part of its new mission on the Mexican border, U.S. officials said.
As my colleague, Leo Vidal here at PoliticusUSA makes clear regarding Mr. Trump using the most blatant of racist ads to use as his closing argument for the mid-term elections by pinning it up on top of his Twitter feed: “It remains to be seen whether this will serve him — and his party —…
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States could send as many as 15,000 military troops to the border with Mexico, as he hardens his stance against a caravan of migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.
Trump is set to waste untold millions deploying troops to the border for a non-emergency. On Wednesday, the Pentagon told Reuters that about 7,000 troops could be deployed if needed. The Pentagon refused to discuss budget. We have no actual assessment of threat, and in any case, as the BBC pointed out, the caravan is…
The top U.S. general overseeing a deployment of more than 5,200 troops to the border with Mexico said on Tuesday that troop levels would rise further, but declined to say how high or estimate what the operation will cost.
“We wish we had a space dignified enough to offer our visitors,” said Zelfareli Cruz Medina, Niltepec’s mayor.
As she spoke, caravan members were stringing up garbage bags to use as tents in Niltepec’s main square. The warmth of the welcome in Niltepec stood in deliberate, stark contrast to Trump’s hostility, said Jorge Luis Fuentes, a senior town official.
Trump is desperate to change the subject after a week of right-wing violence, so he is sending 5,000 troops to the Southern border to scare voters about an imaginary immigration threat.
As they try to hang on to control of Congress, Republican candidates are following the lead of President Donald Trump and turning to rhetoric about immigrants as a tactic to motivate voters. The scope of that strategy emerges in a nationwide Reuters examination of ad buys, candidates’ social media posts and polling, as well as dozens of interviews with candidates, voters and campaign strategists.
By Phil Stewart and Delphine Schrank WASHINGTON/PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration may send up to 1,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday, as Trump hammered away at the issue of illegal immigration ahead of congressional elections. Trump’s threat was sparked by the advance of a caravan of Central…
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway couldn’t answer a reporter’s question about whether the Trump administration had evidence supporting its claim that Venezuela and possibly the Democrats were funding the caravan of migrants heading to the U.S.
Former Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro said that the latest caravan of Central American migrants moving through Mexico is proof that Trump’s immigration policies have totally failed.
US Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and pushing the Trump administration for answers on what’s going on with detained migrant kids behind held in a Texas tent facility.
By Delphine Schrank TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (Reuters) – Thousands of Central American migrants traveling together to enter the United States have hunkered down in shelters in a southern Mexico city along its border with Guatemala, according to local officials. The migrants pose a tough challenge to the Mexican government’s pledge to stop the illegal travelers’…
By Delphine Schrank TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (Reuters) – Hundreds of Central Americans in a U.S.-bound migrant caravan were stuck on Guatemala’s border with Mexico on Saturday as efforts began, under pressure from Washington, to send some home and stop their journey northward. Many of the migrants, the overwhelming majority fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras,…
Donald Trump said on Saturday that separating migrant families at the border could deter illegal immigration and that he was considering several options to tighten border security.
A tent city in the west Texas desert set up to hold immigrant children has expanded its capacity by nearly 10 times to 3,800 beds since it opened in June, officials said on Friday.
The Trump administration on Saturday said it would propose making it harder for foreigners living in the United States to qualify for permanent U.S. residency if they have received public benefits such as food aid, public housing or Medicaid.
The Trump administration’s plan to impose a quota system on U.S. immigration judges represents a “new and dark era,” the head of the judges’ union said on Friday.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must sit for questioning by lawyers for states that are suing the Trump administration over a planned question in the 2020 census that would ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens, a federal judge ruled Friday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw from a court agreement that puts strict limits on the U.S. government’s detention of migrant children and to hold the minors through their immigration proceeding is “inhumane,” said the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. This is another inhumane assault on families…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Thursday that it plans to withdraw from a federal court agreement that strictly limits the conditions under which authorities can detain migrant children, and proposed new rules that it said would enable it to detain minors during their immigration proceedings. The administration is targeting the Flores Settlement…
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday sought to speed up the deportation of illegal immigrants, telling immigration judges they should only postpone cases in removal proceedings “for good cause shown.”
A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit by border policy activists challenging the constitutionality of a U.S. government policy requiring advance permission to take photos or shoot film at ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, called Donald Trump’s family separation policy a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity is defined as a “deliberate act, typically as part of a systematic campaign, that causes human suffering or death on a large scale.â€
A judge has threatened Attorney General Jeff Sessions with contempt of court after he tried to deport a mother and child whose immigration case appeal is still being heard.
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) – A U.S. border patrol agent acquitted of murder for shooting a Mexican teenager to death across the Arizona-Mexico border is not immune from civil damages claims by the boy’s mother, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The dissenting judge from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision…
A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration must fully restore a program that protects from deportation some young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children, including accepting new applications for the program.
The U.S. government deported a Mexican woman on Friday who had lived in the country illegally for nearly two decades despite efforts by lawmakers to keep her in Florida with her husband, a Marine Corps veteran, and her two American children.
The U.S. government told a federal court judge on Thursday that volunteers and non-profit groups, rather than government officials, should take the lead in locating more than 400 immigrant parents who were separated from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border and deported from the United States.
A group of immigrant fathers, recently reunified with their sons and detained in Texas, have gone on hunger strike to demand their release, an immigrant rights group representing them said on Thursday.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) blasted the “deeply immoral and haphazard” Trump policy of “systemic separation of immigrant children from their parents without plans to reunite them,” saying the Trump policy “may essentially orphan hundreds of immigrant children.”
A senior official at the U.S. agency charged with caring for migrant children believed separating them from their parents carried “significant risk” of harm and said on Tuesday concerns had been raised internally before the Trump administration made it official policy.
“It isn’t every day that the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledges formally that the President of the United States lied in a speech to Congress. But that’s how I read a letter I received a few days ago from the department’s Office of Information Policy in connection with one of my Freedom of Information Act…
Photos: Protesters disrupted a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled “Oversight of Immigration Enforcement and Family Reunification Efforts” on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday.
During a joint news conference with the Prime Minister of Italy, Trump tantrumed and ranted about how a border security bill was needed, including his wall, even though Republicans lack the votes to pass what he wants.
The U.S. government said in court filings on Thursday that it lacked the technical capability to quickly provide states with information about children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigrants.
Other children were sent to detention centers to meet their parents but were returned “in tears” to government shelters because of scheduling problems, said Michelle Brané of the Women’s Refugee Commission on call with reporters on Thursday.
“I was haunted by tweets every single day. Like what is he going to tweet next?” Newman said at the time. “It’s bad … It’s going to not be OK.”
Activists and families held a march and sit-in to mark the “court-ordered deadline” for the Trump Administration to reunify thousands of families separated at the border, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(Reuters) – The Trump administration must face a lawsuit by states and advocacy groups over its plan to ask people who are filling out the 2020 census form whether they are U.S. citizens, a federal judge ruled on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan denied the administration’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which…
A federal judge in Boston on Monday rejected a bid by the Trump administration to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that its decisions to end temporary protections for immigrants in the United States from Honduras, Haiti and El Salvador were racially motivated.
More than 450 immigrant parents who were separated from their children when they entered the United States illegally are no longer in the country though their children remain behind, according to a joint court filing on Monday by the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We don’t know what their status is except they’re no longer in the system,” Campos said. “We don’t know where people are right now and it’s been a struggle to get information.”
New York and five other states on Wednesday filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from making cooperation with federal immigration authorities a condition for receiving millions of dollars in federal funding for law enforcement.
Hundreds of new sworn statements about life in U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention from children and parents detail challenging conditions.
“We now see many in CBP custody for three to six days,†up from two to three days in prior months, said Peter Schey, the lead attorney for plaintiffs in the Flores case.
When Yolany Padilla was released from immigration custody in Seattle last week, she assumed she would be quickly reunited with her 6-year-old son, who had been taken from her at the U.S.-Mexico border two months earlier.
