A federal judge has reportedly blocked Donald Trump‘s administration from fast-tracking the deportation of the people that has been detained till now, far from the southern border, and it has indeed been a blow to Trump’s mass deportation scheme. It has been ruled on Friday by U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb that attempts from the administration to speed up the deportation process create a “significant risk” that can possibly affect the immigrants in a negative way, especially those having legal permission to remain in the U.S.
Judge Jia M. Cobb has been appointed by Joe Biden during his Presidential term, granted a request from Make the Road New York, an advocacy group for immigrants, pausing a couple of policies introduced by Trump in January that made millions more immigrants in the country, eligible for deportation under expedited removal.
It is known that expedited removals are primarily being used for people who get arrested within 100 miles of the southern border, as well as within a 14-day period. The policies introduced by the President in the first week of his second Presidential term sought to expand such removals nationwide. He previously expanded the expedited removals around the country; however, it was rolled back by the then-President Joe Biden
Now, Cobb ruled that Make the Road New York had made a convincing argument that the extended application of the expedited removal doesn’t align with or go with the immigrants’ due process rights. She also said that she isn’t questioning whether expanding expedited removals is constitutional, but has just ruled the government needs to ensure it affords potential deportees due process.
“[The court] merely holds that in applying the statute to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who have not previously been subject to expedited removal, the Government must afford them due process. The procedures currently in place fall short,” Cobb wrote.
“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” she continued. She also reflected on the people who got affected by this process and said that they – “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment.”
The judge has henceforth restricted the expedited removal of immigrants with parole status earlier this month, saying that this action was necessary to change the game for people previously authorized to remain.
As per reports, the population of the country, solely considering immigrants, has dropped by 1.4 million between January and July, says the Pew Research Center and this has been combining forced removals and people leaving in fear.
On August 28, Noticias 23, the local Spanish-language Univision station in Miami–Ft. Lauderdale, received several frantic phone calls from immigrants detained at the Florida Everglades concentration camp, reporting that guards were assaulting and beating them.
In phone calls recorded by the outlet, immigrants at the facility—dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by President Donald Trump and his fascist supporters—said that at least four detainees were injured after guards deployed tear gas and began beating them.
“People started shouting because a relative had died, and they started shouting for freedom. At that moment, a prison team came in and started beating everyone,” said one of the detainees in one of the three phone calls.
He continued, “Right now, it’s unrest, and well, we have the helicopter overhead. Everyone here has been beaten up, many people have bled, brother, tear gas, we are immigrants, we are not criminals, we are not murderers.”Another detainee told the outlet, “There are helicopters up above and a lot of people are bleeding. They’re beating us, they’re mistreating us.”
In another phone call, an audible alarm screeched in the background as one of the immigrants pleaded through tears, “It’s the emergency alarm, please help us.”
Family members of immigrants at the facility also reported to Noticias 23 that guards were rioting. Univision/Noticias 23 sent a request for comment to the Florida state spokesperson who oversees the concentration camp, but as of this writing there has been no reply.
The riot at the concentration camp comes one week after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction barring any further transfers to the facility and ordering it to be shut down within 60 days. Williams’ decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental groups and the Miccosukee tribe of Florida, who argued that the facility violated several environmental laws and endangered local species and tribal resources.
The state of Florida and the US federal government have asked Judge Williams to put her order on hold pending an appeal from the state. As of this writing, Williams has not ruled on the stay request. But hundreds of detainees have reportedly been moved to other detention facilities.
It appears the judge’s decision to shut down the camp infuriated the guards, who have sadistically taken out their anger on the remaining immigrants at the facility.
While the camp was initially sold to the public as a cheap alternative to house up to 5,000 immigrants, it appears that at its height just under 1,000 people were imprisoned in the hellish facility. On a tour last week following Judge Williams’ decision, Florida Representative Maxwell Frost (Democrat) estimated that between 300 and 350 people were still being held at the camp.
On August 27, the Associated Press reported that in a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on August 22, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said the camp was closing down operations quickly.
“[W]e are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote to Rojzman, indicating that the rabbi’s services would not be needed at the camp.
Questioned by an AP reporter about the email at an event in Orlando, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did not dispute the account and indicated that the camp was no longer needed because the Department of Homeland Security was increasing the pace of deportations.
“Ultimately, it’s DHS’s decision where they want to process and stage detainees, and it’s their decision about when they want to bring them out,” DeSantis told AP.
The barbaric immigrant detention facility was hastily constructed two months ago in the middle of the Florida Everglades on a defunct airport tarmac. After construction was completed, Trump toured the facility with DeSantis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and the fascist White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Trump hailed the camp as a model to be emulated and openly mused that it could be used to imprison and deport US citizens: “But we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. … They are not new to our country, they are old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too. You want to know the truth.”As soon as the concentration camp opened, reports immediately emerged of cruel, inhumane and unlivable conditions. Overflowing toilets, humid tents filled with mosquitos and other insects, inedible food containing worms, and the denial of access to attorneys and medical care are just some of the abuses immigrants held at the facility have suffered.
Disease also appears to be spreading rampantly at the facility. Immigrants and guards have fallen ill from what appears to have been a massive COVID-19 outbreak that nearly killed Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, a 38-year-old Venezuelan man. Rivas Velásquez collapsed at the facility earlier this month after being denied medical care.
In addition to being a colossal human rights abuse, the concentration camp is also a tremendous waste of money. The state of Florida signed approximately $405 million in vendor contracts to build and operate the facility, and by July 2025 had already paid out about $245 million, according to the AP. Because of the judge’s ruling, the AP estimated the state stands to lose approximately $218 million.
Court documents submitted by the Florida Department of Emergency Management and reviewed by WPTV, the local NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, found that it could cost as much as $20 million to tear down the camp.
Reports of incident were denied by Florida and Ice officials as detainees say they were beaten and teargas was fired
Richard Luscombe in MiamiFri 29 Aug 2025 12.37 EDTShare
Guards at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail deployed teargas and engaged in a mass beating of detainees to quell a mini-uprising, it was reported on Friday.
The allegations, made by at least three detainees in phone calls to Miami’s Spanish language news channel Noticias 23, come as authorities race to empty the camp in compliance with a judge’s order to close the remote tented camp in the Everglades wetlands.
The incident took place after several migrants held there began shouting for “freedom” after one received news a relative had died, according to the outlet. A team of guards then rushed in and began beating individuals indiscriminately with batons, and fired teargas at them, the detainees said.
“They’ve beaten everyone here, a lot of people have bled.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/29/alligator-alcatraz-uprising-florida-immigration
A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status for Venezuelans while the case proceeded through court.
An email to the Department of Homeland Security for comment was not immediately returned.
The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it. Then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status for people from Venezuela.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that President Donald Trump’s Republican administration overstepped its authority in terminating the protections and were motivated by racial animus in doing so. Chen ordered a freeze on the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.
It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported. Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.
Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country.
In ending the protections, Noem said that conditions in Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program.
Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.
Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.
Immigrants have been racking up as much as $1,000 a day in fines if they disregard orders to deport, totaling more than $6 billion that the Trump administration now intends to collect.
Since Donald Trump returned to office, the Department of Homeland Security has issued roughly 21,500 fines, part of a pressure campaign to encourage millions of people to leave the country with a promise that the government would waive the fees against them.
In recent weeks, the government has threatened immigrants with lawsuits, debt collectors and massive tax bills if they don’t pay those penalties, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The new system, put in place by the Trump administration in June, means immigrants are not only at risk of arrest and forced removal from the U.S. but also crushing financial debt that is virtually impossible to escape. One immigration attorney told the WSJ that it amounts to “psychological warfare.”
DHS has issued past-due notices for unpaid fines with growing interest and threatened to garnish tax refunds, deploy private collection agencies and alert credit bureaus to delinquent payments owed by targeted immigrants, many of whom are low-wage workers, according to WSJ.
The agency has also suggested it could report unpaid fines to the IRS, which could then treat the balance as taxable income.
The message from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “is clear: if you’re in the country illegally, leave now or face the consequences,” a senior DHS official said in a statement to The Independent.
Under rules introduced in June, DHS officers can send letters threatening fees on noncitizens over failure to deport, and all rights of appeal could be eliminated if they fail to reply within 15 days.
The process is permitted under a law passed by Congress in 1996 as part of a wider immigration package. But over the last three decades, threats of fees — which can now reach up to $998 a day — have rarely been enforced. Officers instead focused on removal, rather than adding another layer of punishment.
But that changed under Trump, largely because the process for sending out threatening fines with potentially financially disastrous results is much easier, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigration policy research group.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to recoup “funds owed to Americans.”
“As part of the effort to fulfill President Trump’s agenda, Treasury’s Debt Collection Service is actively working with ICE to secure payment for all civil fines and penalties owed by illegal aliens to the U.S. government,” Bessent said on social media.
According to TV ads and social media announcements from DHS, immigrants who choose to “self-deport” will “not have to pay these fines.”
Instead, immigrants are offered “financial assistance up to $1,000” and “a free flight home,” as well as “the potential opportunity to return to the United States the legal, right way,” according to the agency.
Immigrants can do so using the CBP Home app, formerly the CBP One app, a Joe Biden-era product that allowed more than 1 million immigrants to begin their immigration process before reaching the country. The Trump administration has revoked legal status for all immigrants who entered the country with that app.
A senior DHS official told The Independent that “iIlegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to fly home for free and receive $1,000 stipend, while preserving the option to return the legal, right way.”
“It’s an easy choice: leave voluntarily and receive [a] $1,000 check or stay and wait till you are fined $1,000 [a] day, arrested, and deported without a possibility to return legally,” the official said.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association has called that promise “a deeply misleading and unethical trick.”
Under current law, anyone living in the U.S. for more than six months without legal permission cannot return as an immigrant for at least three years. Immigrants who were in the country for more than a year could be blocked from reentering for at least 10 years.
Immigrants with a record of deportation also are more likely to face lengthy waiting periods, or outright denials, when applying for future visas.
Noem has claimed that more than 1.6 million immigrants have “left” the country within the first 200 days of the administration.
In May, a Honduran woman who has lived in the U.S. for two decades was hit with nearly $2 million in fines for failing to leave the country after receiving a removal order in 2005.
“I live with anxiety… I can’t sleep… I don’t feel,” the 41-year-old mother-of-three U.S. citizens told CBS News.
Another woman — a mother-of-four in New York who has been living in the U.S. for 25 years and trying to get her removal order tossed so she can get a green card — had considered self-deporting out of fear that the Treasury Department would repossess her house, according to WSJ.
She faces more than $2 million in overdue penalties, with growing daily interest. She could also be subject to administrative costs totaling at least 32 percent of her fine, or more than half a million dollars, according to DHS.
To carry out the president’s plans for mass deportations, the Trump administration has pushed to “de-legalize” millions of immigrants who were granted humanitarian protections and other protective orders to legally live and work in the country.
More than 1 million people are at risk of being removed from the U.S. after the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for several countries.
Another 1 million immigrants who entered legally through the CBP One app also are at risk of being arrested and removed, while thousands of people with pending immigration cases are being ordered to court each week only to have those cases dismissed, and find federal agents waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors.
Those reversals have radically expanded a pool of “undocumented” people to add to Trump’s deportation numbers.
A former U.S. Border Patrol agent was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges that he had made immigrant women expose their breasts when he was processing their information using a computer webcam.
The incidents took place after the immigrants had been encountered by Border Patrol agents in August 2023 while crossing the southern border.
Shane Millan, 54, who pleaded guilty in March to two misdemeanor counts of deprivation of rights under color of law, had been working at a Border Patrol station at Wellesley Island in Jefferson County and was using the computer to get information from the immigrants during interviews over a webcam. He had been a border patrol agent for 17 years at the time.
According to federal court records, Millan was tasked with gathering the migrants’ biographical and other information and saving the data electronically so that they could remain in the United States pending further immigration proceedings. Although the immigrants had crossed the southern border, Millan was doing the work through a computer from upstate New York at a time when record numbers of migrants were entering the U.S. and the federal agency was overwhelmed.
According to prosecutors, Millan “repeatedly abused his authority by requiring female immigrants to expose their breasts during these video-conference sessions, ostensibly so that he could confirm whether they had any chest tattoos.”
Millan did not speak Spanish but used a translation app to learn phrases such as, “I will also need you to lift your bra, please,” and “I will need to verify once more, can you stand in front of the monitor and lift your shirt and bra again, please,” according to court records.
One of the women, who was carrying an infant, resisted when Millan told her to lift her shirt a second time. Court records indicate he told her that he would not sign her paperwork unless she showed him her bare chest again. She reluctantly placed her child on the floor and lifted her shirt.
“These sickening demands violated agency policies regarding voyeurism and strip searches, but the victims did not know that,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “(Millan’s) repeated instructions appeared legitimate, which is the lynchpin of a color of law offense, and multiple immigrants reluctantly complied with them.”
Acting U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III said: “Everybody deserves respect, and we will not tolerate the sexual exploitation of immigrants by members of law enforcement. Nobody is above the law.”
Prosecutors said Millan admitted requiring at least a dozen women to show him their breasts during the webcam processing. The misconduct was exposed after “multiple victims had the courage to come forward and report how they were exploited,” prosecutors said.When he was initially interviewed about the allegations in August 2023, Millan told investigators that he had asked only one woman to lift her shirt but never asked any women to remove their bras. In June 2024, after an investigation that lasted nearly a year, he confessed to what he had done, according to court records.
Millan’s attorneys, while noting his behavior was “disturbing” and “aberrant,” had asked the judge to consider a sentence of “supervision, rather than incarceration,” along with mental health counseling. They said that he had no prior criminal history and is having trouble finding a new job due to publicity about his case.
They also wrote in the sentencing memorandum that prior to his arrest last year, Millan’s “lifestyle was not only law-abiding, considering his family commitments, religious practices, and career, his lifestyle was devoted to caring for and protecting others.”
Making Amerika great again, one perverted bully-boy at a time!
Federal agents reportedly demanded to see the IDs of members belonging to two private contractor crews hired to battle the fire, which some 400 individuals are working to contain. Firefighters who spoke to the Times did so based on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation by the federal government.
“You risked your life out here to save the community,” one firefighter said. “This is how they treat us.”
Two firefighters in Washington state were arrested on Wednesday while combating the largest wildfire in the state.
The Bear Gulch fire has consumed nearly 9,000 acres since it began on July 6.
“Why the two firefighters were arrested is unclear,” The Seattle Times said. “But a spokesperson for the Incident Management Team leading the firefighting response said the team was ‘aware of a Border Patrol operation on the fire,’ that it was not interfering with the firefighting response and referred reporters to the Border Patrol station in Port Angeles.”
Federal agents reportedly demanded to see the IDs of members belonging to two private contractor crews hired to battle the fire, which some 400 individuals are working to contain. Firefighters who spoke to the Times did so based on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation by the federal government.
“You risked your life out here to save the community,” one firefighter said. “This is how they treat us.”
While waiting for their supervisor to arrive on Wednesday morning, the crews were confronted by federal law enforcement around 9:30 a.m. One of the firefighters told the Times they were instructed not to take video as they were asked to line up and present their IDs.
The Times added:
In a FaceTime video call from the other firefighter to The Seattle Times, firefighters in their gear were seen sitting on logs in front of federal officers. Some firefighters were dismissed back to their vehicles.
One firefighter attempted to walk over to his company vehicle to get something to drink and appeared to have been called back by federal officers.
In images shared by firefighters from the scene, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle is parked nearby. Officers wearing “Police” vests are seen arresting a firefighter, while another appears to be restrained.
According to one of the firefighters, they were denied the chance to say goodbye to the detained crew members.
“I asked them if his (family) can say goodbye to him because they’re family, and they’re just ripping them away,” the firefighter told the Times. “And this is what he said: ‘You need to get the (expletive) out of here. I’m gonna make you leave.’”
Since taking office again in January, President Donald Trump has implemented a crackdown on illegal and legal immigration. His administration has targeted farmhands, garment workers, international students, and other immigrants from various walks of life for deportation.
The Trump administration is reinstating a long-dormant practice of conducting “neighborhood checks” to vet immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship, expanding its efforts to aggressively scrutinize immigration applications, according to a government memo obtained by CBS News.
The neighborhood checks would involve on-the-ground investigations by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that could include interviews with the neighbors and coworkers of citizenship applicants.
The government investigations would be conducted to determine if applicants satisfy the requirements for American citizenship, which include showing good moral character, adhering to the U.S. Constitution and being “well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.”
To qualify for American citizenship in the first place, applicants typically must have lived in the U.S. for three or five years as legal permanent residents. They must also not have any serious criminal records, and pass a civics and English test. The process is known as naturalization.
The Trump administration’s memo upends a decades-old U.S. government policy. While the neighborhood investigations for citizenship cases are outlined in U.S. law, they can also be waived, which the U.S. government has done since 1991, government records show. Since then, the government has relied mainly on background and criminal checks by the FBI to vet citizenship applicants.
The USCIS memo immediately terminated the “general waiver” for neighborhood checks, directing officers to determine whether such investigations are warranted based on the information, or lack thereof, submitted by citizenship applicants. Officers retain the ability to waive the checks, according to the memo.
The directive said USCIS officers will decide whether to carry out a neighborhood investigation by requesting and reviewing testimonial letters from neighbors, employers, coworkers and business associates who know the person applying for U.S. citizenship.
The memo suggested that citizenship applicants should “proactively” submit testimonial letters, to avoid receiving requests for more evidence. The agency said failure or refusal to comply with a request for evidence could lead to a neighborhood investigation and “impact” applicants’ ability to show they qualify for U.S. citizenship.
While the Trump administration’s campaign to expand arrests of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally is frequently touted by the president and his top officials, its effort to tighten access to the legal immigration system has been implemented with less fanfare.
Over several months, the second Trump administration has frozen the refugee admissions program, ended Biden-era policies that allowed some migrants to enter or stay in the U.S. legally and added additional layers of vetting for legal immigrants requesting immigration benefits like green cards and U.S. citizenship.
In August alone, USCIS said it would more heavily scrutinize the “good moral character” requirement for U.S. citizenship and probe “anti-American” views and activities of those applying for green cards, work permits and other immigration benefits.
The Trump administration has argued the changes are needed to combat fraud and shore up U.S. immigration procedures that it believes became too lax and generous under Democratic administrations.
USCIS Director Joe Edlow, who was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year, said the new memo will “ensure that only the most qualified applicants receive American citizenship.”
“Americans should be comforted knowing that USCIS is taking seriously its responsibility to ensure aliens are being properly vetted and are of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States,” Edlow said in a statement to CBS News.
But pro-immigrant advocates and critics of the Trump administration said its policies are sending a chilling effect to immigrants across the country, legal and illegal alike.
“It sounds to me like the idea is to create a more intimidating atmosphere that discourages people from pursuing naturalization,” said Doris Meissner, who oversaw the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.
The now-defunct INS adjudicated citizenship requests until USCIS was created in 2003. Meissner said the government had largely discontinued neighborhood checks when she became INS commissioner in the 1990s because they were labor intensive and seldom yielded useful information from neighborhoods or other sources. She also said there are other guardrails in place to prevent bad actors from becoming citizens, including background checks.
“It was viewed as one of those anachronistic processes,” Meissner added.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/neighborhood-checks-citizenship-applications
The Department of Homeland Security is defending the First Amendment rights of a staffer who has come under fire for posts and political commentary related to the Capitol riot. Before joining DHS, Eric Lendrum (pictured right) likened the political fallout conservatives faced from the January 6, 2021 rally to slavery and the Holocaust.
He slammed Democrats for ‘cowering’ under their desks as thousands of angry Americans descended on the Capitol that day. ‘There’s something so gratifying about seeing the images of these members of Congress — especially the Democrats — crouching under their chairs, putting on those stupid, like, bubble masks, those anti-gas bubble masks, and then taking selfies,’ Lendrum said on an episode of his podcast The Right Take just days after the riot.
He also said in a 2021 blog post on the conservative website American Greatness: ‘American conservatives are, right now, on a course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany.’ The junior-level speechwriter at DHS also shared anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple platforms before joining the second Donald Trump administration. In an October 2022 podcast episode, he endorsed the far-right ‘great replacement theory,’ which is a belief that nonwhite immigrants are diminishing the influence of white people across the world.
While a spokesperson for DHS declined to comment on the social media activity of a junior staffer before joining the agency, they instead sent the Daily Mail a link to the text of the First Amendment of the Constitution when asked for comment. Lnedrum did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment on the reports detailing his online activity. Lendrum published on American Greatness until March 2025.
n his post-riot rant in 2021, he said conservative Americans are facing oppression like that faced by enslaved black people in America and Holocaust victims. ‘It has been said that the most surefire way to create an authoritarian regime is to completely dehumanize a significant portion of the population, so that their subsequent enslavement by the state will not face any larger resistance. It was true during slavery, it was true during the Holocaust, and it is true now,’ he wrote.
Lendrum has a relatively low profile, his employer and previous social media activity was first reported by NOTUS on Monday. The last time Lendrum posted to his X account was on the president’s birthday on June 14 this year when he published an image of himself alongside Trump. Lendrum has only 449 followers on X as of time of publication and appears to mostly use it recently to repost messages from Trump cabinet officials and allies. But he has used his X account in the past to share anti-immigrant sentiments.
He expressed lament with a New York Post headline saying that veterans were kicked out of hotels to make way for providing shelter to illegal ‘migrants’ during President Joe Biden’s term. ‘They are not migrants. They are not ‘undocumented.’ They are an invading army. The largest invasion in American history,’ Lendrum wrote on May 13, 2023 in a post to X. He added: ‘And what are you supposed to do with an invading army? Crush it, by any means necessary.’ Lendrum also claimed that asylum seekers are ‘scum.’
Before joining DHS, Lendrum also had a short stint as a press assistant at the Department of the Interior during Trump’s first term. ‘If I could work more closely with him, that is the one case in which I would ever go back into government work. Government work is not fun,’ Lendrum said in December 2022. And now, he’s back in Washington, D.C. for Trump’s second term working for one of the largest and most influential agencies in the federal government. A DHS speechwriter is responsible for preparing a myriad of public content for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her deputy. This includes ‘speeches, talking points, editorials, Congressional testimony, video scripts, web content and other written content,’ according to a description of the job.
