Tag Archives: U.S. citizens

NBC News: Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization

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Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

Immediately after Zohran Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City last month, one Republican congressman had a provocative suggestion for the Trump administration: “He needs to be DEPORTED.”

The Uganda-born Mamdani obtained U.S. citizenship in 2018 after moving to the United States with his parents as a child. But Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., argued in his post on X that the Justice Department should consider revoking it over rap lyrics that, he said, suggested support for Hamas.

The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it has replied to Ogles’ letter, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of his claims about Mamdani, “Surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated.”

Trump himself has claimed without evidence that Mamdani is an illegal immigrant, and when erstwhile ally Elon Musk was asked about deporting another naturalized citizen, he suggested he would consider it.

The congressman’s proposal dovetails with a priority of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to strip citizenship from other naturalized Americans. The process, known as denaturalization, has been used by previous administrations to remove terrorists and, decades ago, Nazis and communists.

But the Trump DOJ’s announcement last month that it would “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” has sparked alarm among immigration lawyers and advocates, who fear the Trump administration could use denaturalization to target political opponents.

Although past administrations have periodically pursued denaturalization cases, it is an area ripe for abuse, according to Elizabeth Taufa, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

“It can be very easily weaponized at any point,” she said.

Noor Zafar, an immigration lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is a “real risk and a real threat” that the administration will target people based on their political views.

Asked for comment on the weaponization concerns, a Justice Department spokesperson pointed to the federal law that authorizes denaturalizations, 8 U.S.C. 1451.

“We are upholding our duty as expressed in the statute,” the spokesperson said.

Immigrant groups and political opponents of Trump are already outraged at the way the Trump administration has used its enforcement powers to stifle dissent in cases involving legal immigrants who do not have U.S. citizenship.

ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist engaged in campus protests critical of Israel, for more than 100 days before he was released. Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was also detained for two months over her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

More broadly, the administration has been accused of violating the due process rights of immigrants it has sought to rapidly deport over the objection of judges and, in cases involving alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court.

Denaturalization cases have traditionally been rare and in past decades focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the United States after World War II under false pretenses.

But the approach gradually changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Aided by technological advances that made it easier to identify people and track them down, the number of denaturalization cases has gradually increased.

It was the Obama administration that initially seized on the issue, launching what was called Operation Janus, which identified more than 300,000 cases where there were discrepancies involving fingerprint data that could indicate potential fraud.

But the process is slow and requires considerable resources, with the first denaturalization as a result of Operation Janus secured during Trump’s first term in January 2018.

That case involved Baljinder Singh, originally from India, who had been subject to deportation but later became a U.S. citizen after assuming a different identity.

In total, the first Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, with the Biden administration filing 24, according to the Justice Department spokesperson, who said figures for the Obama administration were not available. The new Trump administration has already filed five. So far, the Trump administration has prevailed in one case involving a man originally from the United Kingdom who had previously been convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. The Justice Department declined to provide information about the other new cases.

Overall, denaturalization cases are brought against just a tiny proportion of the roughly 800,00 people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

‘Willful misrepresentation’

The government has two ways to revoke citizenship, either through a rare criminal prosecution for fraud or via a civil claim in federal court.

The administration outlined its priorities for civil enforcement in a June memo issued by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which listed 10 potential grounds for targeting naturalized citizens.

Examples range from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture, to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government. There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”

The denaturalization law focuses on “concealment of a material fact” or “willful misrepresentation” during the naturalization proceeding.

The ACLU’s Zafar said the memo leaves open the option for the Trump administration to at least try to target people based on their speech or associations.

“Even if they don’t think they really have a plausible chance of succeeding, they can use it as a means to just harass people,” she added.

The Justice Department can bring denaturalization cases over a wide range of conduct related to the questions applicants for U.S. citizenship are asked, including the requirement that they have been of “good moral character” in the preceding five years.

Immigration law includes several examples of what might disqualify someone on moral character grounds, including if they are a “habitual drunkard” or have been convicted of illegal gambling.

The naturalization application form itself asks a series of questions probing good moral character, such as whether the applicant has been involved in violent acts, including terrorism.

The form also queries whether people have advocated in support of groups that support communism, “the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” or the “unlawful assaulting or killing” of any U.S. official.

Failure to accurately answer any of the questions or the omission of any relevant information can be grounds for citizenship to be revoked.

In 2015, for example, Sammy Chang, a native of South Korea who had recently become a U.S. citizen, had his citizenship revoked in the wake of his conviction in a criminal case of trafficking women to work at a club he owned.

The government said that because Chang had been engaged in the scheme during the time he was applying for naturalization, he had failed to show good moral character.

But in both civil and criminal cases, the government has to reach a high bar to revoke citizenship. Among other things, it has to show that any misstatement or omission in a naturalization application was material to whether citizenship would have been granted.

In civil cases, the government has to show “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt” in order to prevail.

“A simple game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn’t going to work,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration lawyer. “It’s going to require significant materiality for a judge to strip someone of their United States citizenship.”

Targeting rap lyrics

In his June 26 tweet, Ogles attached a letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to consider pursuing Mamdani’s denaturalization, in part, because he “expressed open solidarity with individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”

Ogles cited rap lyrics that Mamdani wrote years ago in which he expressed support for the “Holy Land Five.”

That appears to be a reference to five men involved in a U.S.-based Muslim charitable group called the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some activists say the prosecution was a miscarriage of justice fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ogles’ office and Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Speaking on Newsmax in June, Ogles expanded on his reasons for revoking Mamdani’s citizenship, suggesting the mayoral candidate had “failed to disclose” relevant information when he became a citizen, including his political associations. Ogles has alleged Mamdani is a communist because of his identification as a democratic socialist, although the latter is not a communist group.

Anyone speaking on Newsmax these days is an irrelevant fruitcake.

The Trump administration, Ogles added, could use a case against Mamdani to “create a template for other individuals who come to this country” who, he claimed, “want to undermine our way of life.” (Even if Mamdani were denaturalized, he would not, contrary to Ogles’ claim, automatically face deportation, as he would most likely revert his previous status as a permanent resident.)

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 29, Mamdani said calls for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported are “a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told they don’t belong in this city and this country that they love.”

Targeting Mamdani for his rap lyrics would constitute a very unusual denaturalization case, said Taufa, the immigration lawyer.

But, she added, “they can trump up a reason to denaturalize someone if they want to.”

McKinney, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the relatively low number of denaturalization cases that are filed, including those taken up during Trump’s first term, shows how difficult it is for the government to actually strip people of their citizenship.

“But what they can be very successful at is continuing to create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear,” he added. “They’re doing that very well. So, mission accomplished in that regard.”

Calls to strip Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship spark alarm about Trump weaponizing denaturalization
Past administrations, including Obama’s, have sought to denaturalize U.S. citizens, such as terrorists and Nazis. But advocates worry he could target political opponents.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/calls-strip-zohran-mamdanis-citizenship-trump-denaturalization-power-rcna216653

Fox News: Democrats fume over new plan to house illegal migrants in New Jersey, Indiana military bases

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Democrats said that move is ‘inhumane’ and would ‘jeopardizes military preparedness’

Military bases in both New Jersey and Indiana will soon be used by Homeland Security to house illegal immigrants, drawing a furious response from Democratic lawmakers.

Parts of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and Camp Atterbury in Indiana will be repurposed and used as “temporary soft-sided holding facilities,” the Defense Department told Fox News Digital, citing a decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

New Jersey Democrats blasted the decision, warning it would harm military readiness and urging Republicans to join them in helping reverse it. Both bases were previously used to house thousands of Afghan refugees following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and militarizes a radical immigration policy that has resulted in the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants and unlawful deportation of U.S. citizens, including children, across the country,” the group of Democrats said in a joint statement.

“Using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for ICE immigration raids in every New Jersey community. We have the greatest military in the world and using it as a domestic political tool is unacceptable and shameful.”

The statement was made by Reps. Herb Conaway, LaMonica McIver, Donald Norcross, Rob Menendez, Frank Pallone, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Josh Gottheimer and Nellie Pou as well as Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim. 

It is unclear when either site will open and a decision will depend on operational requirements and coordination with Homeland Security, the Defense Department said. 

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst is a joint military base operated by U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy — the only tri-service base in the country. Spanning 42,00 acres, it’s home to 45,000 military and civilian personnel, making it one of the largest and most strategically important on the East Coast.

Camp Atterbury is an Army and Air National Guard base near Edinburgh that spans 34,000 acres and has been used for training brigades and hosting large-scale operations. 

Under the Trump administration, Homeland Security has been using detention facilities to house migrants while they await asylum hearings or deportation. 

The lawmakers said that Hegseth wrote to Conoway informing him of the decision. Hegseth wrote in the letter that the move would not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or any other military requirements, per NJ Spotlight News. 

New Jersey is already home to Delaney Hall and the Elizabeth Detention Center which are being used as immigration detention facilities, although they are privately operated. Delaney Hall was the scene where Democrat Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested and charged with trespassing in a clash with federal immigration officials in May. Rep. LaMonica McIver, D‑N.J., was later federally charged for allegedly interfering with federal officers during the same incident.

The news comes two weeks after President Donald Trump signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law, which allocated between $150 billion and $170 billion towards immigration enforcement over the next several years, $45 billion of which was carved out to expand immigration detention facilities. The funds are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out the largest deportation operation in the nation’s history. 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration opened an immigration detention camp in Florida’s Everglades that is surrounded by alligators dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Democrats fume over new plan to house illegal migrants in New Jersey, Indiana military bases
Military bases in both New Jersey and Indiana will soon be used by Homeland Security to house illegal immigrants, furious Democrat lawmakers who oppose the move have announced.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/democrats-fume-over-new-plan-house-illegal-migrants-new-jersey-indiana-military-bases

Law & Crime: ‘Violates the First Amendment’: Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates who work for international court

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A federal judge in Maine on Friday barred the Trump administration from enforcing sanctions on two U.S. citizens and human rights advocates who work with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On April 11, Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan, a human rights nonprofit leader and lawyer, respectively, filed a 39-page lawsuit against President Donald Trump and several other members of his administration over an executive order that imposes sanctions on the ICC, prohibits certain interactions with designated ICC officials, and threatens both civil and criminal penalties for any such violations.

The lawsuit was premised on the idea that the sanctions “violate their First Amendment rights, and those of others like them, by prohibiting their constitutionally protected speech.” The plaintiffs, in late April, requested a preliminary injunction barring the government “from imposing civil or criminal penalties on them” for “provision of speech-based services” to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP).

Now, U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen, a Barack Obama appointee, has granted that requested relief in a 16-page order.

“[T]he Executive Order appears to burden substantially more speech than necessary,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the Plaintiffs have established likely success on the merits of their First Amendment challenge.”

The government argued Trump’s order advanced a “compelling” and “important” interest in “protecting the personnel of the United States and its allies from investigation, arrest, detention, and prosecution by the ICC without the consent of the United States or its allies.”

The judge, however, found the executive order too broadly written and mused that it “appears to restrict substantially more speech than necessary to further that end.”

In Executive Order 14203, titled, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” the 45th and 47th president said he was motivated by the ICC’s “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and [its] close ally Israel.”

The court takes stock of the president’s cited justification for issuing the sanctions, at length:

The Executive Order condemns the ICC’s investigations of U.S. and Israeli personnel and its issuance of arrest warrants for Israel’s current Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense. The Executive Order, emphasizing that neither the U.S. nor Israel is a party to the ICC’s founding treaty, asserts that the ICC’s conduct “threatens to infringe upon” U.S. sovereignty and “undermin[es]” the “critical national security and foreign policy work” of the United States, Israel, and other U.S. allies

But, the court notes, the plaintiffs’ work has nothing to do with the United States or Israel. Rather, the court explains, Smith’s work has focused on “the OTP’s investigation and prosecution of atrocity crimes against the ethnic minority Rohingya people in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.” And Radhakrishnan’s work has focused on “matters involving sexual and gender-based violence, particularly in Afghanistan.”

The judge then applies the executive order as written to the facts alleged by the plaintiff’s about their work for the ICC’s OTP.

“The Executive Order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the Prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States, Israel, or another U.S. ally,” the order reads. “The Government does not explain how its stated interest would be undermined—or even impacted—by the Plaintiffs’ services to the OTP related to the ICC’s ongoing work in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.”

Torresen goes on to say the plaintiffs’ “irreparable injury is presumed” due to the nature of a First Amendment claim. Here, the judge is essentially saying a violation of the free speech guarantee in the nation’s founding charter is a sufficient injury alone – and does not need to be extensively analyzed.

Notably, while the court notes the plaintiffs alleged Trump’s order “violates the First Amendment” and was in excess of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the court did not reach the IEEPA claim.

Finally, the judge balanced the equities – pitting the plaintiffs’ First Amendment injury against the defendant’s interest in “national security and foreign policy interests.” Again, the human rights advocates came out on top.

“I find the Government’s argument unpersuasive,” Torresen intones. “First, the Government has at least implied that injunctive relief is unnecessary because it does not intend to enforce the Executive Order against the Plaintiffs at all. It is hard to square that position with the Government’s assertion that an injunction would impede national security and foreign policy interests.”

In other words, the court says the government is trying to have things both ways by insisting they would never target the plaintiffs while also arguing an order barring them from going after the plaintiffs would be detrimental.

The court then returns to the factual record of the executive order’s stated goals and the plaintiff’s actual human rights work.

“Second, even putting that inconsistency aside, I find the Government’s argument unpersuasive for the same reasons that I find Section 3(a) fails intermediate scrutiny,” the order goes on. “The Government does not explain how the Plaintiffs’ continued services to the Prosecutor concerning atrocities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, or Afghanistan would impede national security and foreign policy interests concerning the United States and Israel.”

The court, in the end, barred the government from sanctioning the plaintiffs for their work with the ICC’s OTP.

“The Government is hereby enjoined from imposing civil or criminal penalties on the Plaintiffs under Executive Order 14203,” the order concludes.

Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates
“The Executive Order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the Prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States.”
‘Violates the First Amendment’: Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates who work for International Criminal Court

LA Times: Hiltzik: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke

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Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump’s deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers.

“What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?” he asked on Fox News. “Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. … There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.” Etc., etc.

No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn’t obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction.

Trump aide Stephen Miller concocts a fantasy about L.A.

The gist of Miller’s spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that “illegal aliens” are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It’s nothing but a Trumpian fantasy.

Let’s take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER.

The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans.

In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, “one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.”

Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study’s lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents.

The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants’ average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults.

ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it’s not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It’s due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited.

While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking.

According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. “Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,” the report observed. “During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.”

President Trump’s immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration’s tightening of the “public charge” rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status.

The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs.

Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren’t part of the public charge test.

Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients.

A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump’s 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office.

Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump’s rescinding “sensitive location” restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011.

That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January.

The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents “to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,” agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal.

The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents.

A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn’t grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas.

What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year’s enrollment of 408,083. Also not half.

With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go.

What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration’s determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled.

Then there’s fentanyl. The Trump administration’s claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won’t have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths.

What are we to make of Miller’s spiel about L.A.? At one level, it’s echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — “the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,” he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor.

At another level, it’s a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller’s ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services.

The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for most such services. They can’t enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks).

A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they’re eligible, such as food stamps, “at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.”

If there’s an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it’s hard to detect.

Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their “roving patrols” in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work.

Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he’s the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can’t justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?

Commentary: Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He’s blowing smoke
Will mass deportations make wait times at the ER get shorter and schools have more money? The truth is just the opposite

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-07-15/stephen-miller-says-americans-will-live-better-lives-without-immigrants-hes-blowing-smoke

Washington Post: ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings

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A memo from ICE’s acting director instructs officers to hold immigrants who entered the country illegally “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.

The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years. Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under Biden.

In the past, immigrants residing in the U.S. interior generally have been allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. But Lyons wrote that the Trump administration’s departments of Homeland Security and Justice had “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities” and determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote.

The provision is based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants “shall be detained” after their arrest, but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents.

Lyons, who oversees the nation’s 200 immigration detention facilities, wrote that the policy is expected to face legal challenges.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott issued similar guidance last week; that agency also did not respond to questions.

The sweeping new detention policy comes days after Congress passed a spending package that will allocate $45 billion over the next four years to lock up immigrants for civil deportation proceedings. The measure will allow ICE to roughly double the nation’s immigrant detention capacity to 100,000 people a day.

Since the memos were issued last week, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the United States, including in New York, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia. The Department of Justice oversees the immigration courts.

“This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people,” said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s requiring the detention of far more people without any real review of their individual circumstances.”

Immigration hawks have long argued that detaining immigrants is necessary to quickly deport those who do not qualify for asylum or another way to stay in the United States permanently. They say detaining immigrants might also discourage people from filing frivolous claims, in hopes of being released as their cases proceed in the backlogged immigration courts.

“Detention is absolutely the best way to approach this, if you can do it. It costs a lot of money obviously,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors enforcement. “You’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to remove the person, if there’s a negative finding, if he’s in detention.”

In its 2024 annual report, however, ICE said it detains immigrants only “when necessary” and that the vast majority of the 7.6 million people then on its docket were released pending immigration proceedings. Keeping them detained while their case is adjudicated has not been logistically possible, and advocates have raised concern for migrants’ health and welfare in civil immigration detention.

Immigrants are already subject to mandatory detention without bond if they have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes, and this year the Republican-led Congress added theft-related crimes to that list after a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, was killed by a man from Venezuela who had been picked up for shoplifting and not held for deportation.

Immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is expanding a legal standard typically used to hold recent arrivals at the southern border toa much broader group — including immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades. Many have U.S. citizen children, lawyers say, and likely have the legal grounds to defend themselves against deportation.

Forcing them to remain in detention facilities often in far-flung areas such as an alligator-infested swamp in Florida or the Arizona desert would make it more difficult to fight their cases, because they will be unable to work or easily communicate with family members and lawyers to prepare their cases.

“I think some courts are going to find that this doesn’t give noncitizens sufficient due process,” said Paul Hunker, an immigration lawyer and former ICE chief counsel in the Dallas area. “They could be held indefinitely until they’re deported.*

ICE is holding about 56,000 immigrants a day as officers sweep the nation for undocumented immigrants, working overtime to fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people in his first year. Officials have reopened family detention centers that the Biden administration shuttered because ofsafety concerns, stood up soft-sided facilities such as one in the Everglades, and begun deporting immigrants with little notice to alternative countries such as conflict-ridden South Sudan.

Immigration lawyers say the new ICE policy is similar to a position that several immigration judges in Tacoma, Washington, have espoused in recent years, denying hearings to anyone who crossed the border illegally.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle filed a lawsuit in March on behalf of detainees challenging the policy, arguing that their refusal to consider a bond hearing violated the immigrants’ rights.

The original plaintiff in the case, Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez, has lived in Washington state since 2009, works as a farmer and is the “proud grandfather” of 10 U.S. citizens, court records show. His eight siblings are U.S. citizens who live in California.

He also owns his home, where ICE officers arrested him in February for being in the United States without permission. In April, a federal judge in Washington found that he has “no criminal history in the United States or anywhere else in the world” and ordered immigration officers to give him a bond hearing before a judge. A judge denied him bond and he has since returned to Mexico, his lawyer said.

But that decision does not apply nationwide, lawyers said.

Aaron Korthuis, a lawyer in the case, said Rodriguez is typical of the type of immigrants who now face prolonged detention as they fight deportation in immigration courts. He called the government’s new interpretation of bond hearings “flagrantly unlawful.”

“They are people who have been living here, all they’re doing is trying to make a living for their family,” Korthuis said in an interview. He said the policy “is looking to supercharge detention beyond what it already is.”

ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond …
archived 15 Jul 2025 00:05:00 UTC

https://archive.is/vMvoj#selection-673.0-847.222

Axios: Trump ramps up deportation spectacle with new stunts and ICE funding

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The MAGA movement is reveling in the creativity, severity and accelerating force of President Trump’s historic immigration crackdown.

Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, deportations to war zones, denaturalization of immigrant citizens — are now being proudly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

  • It’s an extraordinary shift from Trump’s first term, when nationwide backlash and the appearance of cruelty forced the administration to abandon its family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants.
  • Six months into his second term — and with tens of billions of dollars in new funding soon flowing to ICE — Trump is only just beginning to scale up his mass deportation machine.

Trump on Tuesday toured a temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where thousands of migrants will be detained in a remote, marshland environment teeming with predators.

  • MAGA influencers invited on the trip gleefully posted photos of the prison’s cages and souvenir-style “merchandise,” thrilling their followers and horrifying critics.
  • Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer drew outrage after tweeting that “alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now” — widely interpreted as a reference to the Hispanic population of the United States.

Citing the millions of unauthorized immigrants who crossed the border under President Biden, Trump and his MAGA allies have framed the second-term crackdown as a long-overdue purge.

  • The result is an increasingly draconian set of enforcement measures designed to deter, expel and make examples out of unauthorized immigrants.
  • Some newer members of the MAGA coalition, such as podcaster Joe Rogan, have expressed deep discomfort with the targeting of non-criminal undocumented immigrants.

…

Denaturalization of U.S. citizens — once a legal backwater — is gaining traction as Trump and his MAGA allies push the envelope on nativist rhetoric.

  • The Justice Department has begun prioritizing stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when they’re charged with crimes and “illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process.”
  • But some MAGA influencers are pushing to weaponize denaturalization more broadly — not just as a legal remedy for fraud, but as a tool to punish ideological opponents.

…

Trump ramps up deportation spectacle with new stunts and ICE funding
Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, denaturalization of citizens — are now being embraced.

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/05/trump-migrants-alligator-alcatraz-denaturalize

Washington Post: Morale craters at State Department as mass layoffs loom

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called the agency “bloated,” yet as violence spiked in the Middle East, staff say they’ve been asked to work extra hours.

The Trump administration’s plan for mass layoffs at the State Department has left much of the workforce exasperated and embittered, tanking morale as extra demands were made to assist U.S. citizens seeking to flee the Middle East amid Israel’s war with Iran, employees say.

At the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department informed Congress in May that it planned to reduce its U.S. workforce by more than 15 percent — almost 2,000 people — as part of a sweeping reorganization intended to streamline what he has called a “bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources.” Separately, he has accused certain bureaus within the department of pursuing a “radical political ideology.”

Rubio had set a July 1 timeline for the dismissals, but execution of the plan is contingent on a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court, which is evaluating President Donald Trump’s sweeping attempt to fire federal workers across numerous government agencies. It’s unclear when the court could act.

Amid the wait, State Department staff were asked to work additional hours to help at-risk Americans as fighting between Israel and Iran stirred fears of a full-scale regional crisis. A task force, established on June 12 to manage evacuations, faced an even greater sense of urgency after Trump directed U.S. military intervention in the conflict.

Demoralize them, then make them work harder! That sounds so “Trumpian”!.

Morale craters at State Department as mass layoffs loom
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called the agency “bloated,” yet as violence spiked in the Middle East, staff say they’ve been asked to work extra hours.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/28/state-department-layoffs-trump-rubio

Also here:

Morale craters at State Department as mass layoffs loom
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called the agency “bloated,” yet as violence spiked in the Middle East, staff say they’ve been asked to work extra hours.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/morale-craters-at-state-department-as-mass-layoffs-loom/ar-AA1HAbuY