District of Columbia National Guardsmen have been involuntarily ordered to report to duty at the DC Armory tomorrow through September 25, according to a copy of the order I obtained. Their purpose is to “protect federal property” and “support federal and District law enforcement,” the order says.
The directive follows Trump’s executive order this morning declaring a “crime emergency” in DC, for which reason Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a press conference that he would be deploying the National Guard. Though it wasn’t clear from their remarks what specifically the Guard’s mission would be, the order leaked to me shows that it will include the same federal protection and support to law enforcement mission as in the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles (which I also reported on extensively).
“They are taking advantage of the fact that DC is not a state,” Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told me. “DC has even less control over its own affairs than other non-state US territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands.”
Unlike all U.S. states, DC doesn’t have a governor; so the president doesn’t need to seek their consent to activate the National Guard there.
“All but one of them are by default, under the command and control of their state governor or territorial governor — the sole exception is DC,” Nunn said.
Concerning as that seems, Guardsmen I spoke to regard the deployment as pointless political theater. (California Guardsmen made the same point to me about their deployment earlier this summer.)
“Huge waste of time and money when their focus is [supposed to be] saving money,” a DC National Guard source told me.
If the nearly half dozen Guardsmen I’ve spoken to about the deployment are at all representative, frustration with the order is widespread. (The memo I obtained, along with other details, leaked almost immediately.) As in the case of Los Angeles, the soldiers seemed most incensed by how performative and unnecessary they saw the mission as. This opposition apparently led some but not all Guardsmen to decline other requests to deploy voluntarily.
“I said no immediately because it’s like signing up for the Gestapo,” the Guard source said. “But I’m sure people will volunteer because they need the money or benefits from being on orders over 30 days.”
Before the Los Angeles Dodgers’ June 14 home game against the San Francisco Giants, Dominican American singer Nezza performed — defiantly, she said — “El Pendón Estrellado,” a Spanish-language rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” She said a team official explicitly demanded that she perform the national anthem in English but that she refused. (The Dodgers did not release a statement regarding Nezza’s performance or confirm her story that she violated the team’s wishes.)
Nezza’s performance, a protest against what Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been doing in Los Angeles, arose out of her imagining her parents “being ripped away from me,” she said. Not surprisingly, Nezza’s performance was polarizing, with some cheering and others expressing outrage. Among the responses was an editorial from CALÓ News demanding that the Dodgers support a community under attack from the federal government.
“Dodgers, your silence speaks volumes,” CALÓ News wrote Tuesday. “The Latino community of Los Angeles has shown up for the Dodgers. Where are you now that we need you?”
That question seems to have been answered Thursday when the team announced that it had turned away ICE agents who had attempted to enter Dodger Stadium’s parking lot. “They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization,” the team wrote on X.
A Harvard graduate has self-deported to Mexico alongside his husband amid fears about President Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown.
Francisco Hernandez-Corona, 34, and his United States citizen husband, Irving Hernandez-Corona, decided to leave the country because the federal government ramped up immigration enforcement, NBC10 Boston reported.
The couple traveled to Mexico’s west coast, arriving in Puerto Vallarta three weeks ago.
“We started seeing ICE everywhere and people sent to El Salvador,” said Francisco.
“There would be knocks at the door and [Francisco] would be scared and be terrified,” said Irving. “It was never our intention to leave under these circumstances. We left, basically fleeing.”
Francisco came to the U.S. when he was 10, sent by his father to cross the border with the help of a coyote. He described the journey through the desert as “the worst three days of my life,” adding, “Nobody asked me if this is what I want to do. I didn’t have a choice.”
https://www.newsweek.com/harvard-graduate-self-deport-mexico-2075881
Jeff Joseph, a 53-year-old immigration attorney in Colorado, has recently started taking precautions while traveling abroad that, at another time, he would have considered a little paranoid. He leaves his phone at home. Instead, he carries a “burner’’—a device scrubbed of his contact list and communications—in case U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers send him to secondary inspection or seize his electronics when he returns home. Joseph told me his knowledge of immigration law has left him with less confidence, not more, about the risks of crossing U.S. borders during the second Trump administration.
“Among immigration lawyers who are well versed in this, and who know what happens in secondary, there’s a level of anxiety and panic that we’ve never seen before,” said Joseph, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Myself included.”
…
Immigration attorneys also note Trump has curbed CBP officers’ ability to allow the entry of migrants or visitors using an authority known as “parole.” So travelers who do not qualify for admission to the United States are more likely to be handed over to ICE for detention and deportation. Although U.S. citizens cannot be denied entry to the United States, all other categories of noncitizens—even, in some cases, legal permanent residents with green cards—are at risk of being denied entry or deemed inadmissible by a CBP officer.
Are we now ruled by dictatorial edict? Only Congress can pass laws; the President gets to sign them only after both houses of Congress have passed them. Der Führer seems to think he can skip a few steps.
