Problem is, not withstanding DHS’s endless lies to contrary, most of the people rounded up in these sweeps are NOT criminals.
A legal aid group has sued to preemptively block any efforts by the U.S. government to deport a dozen Honduran children, saying it had “credible” information that such plans were quietly in the works.
The Arizona-based Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) on Friday added Honduran children to a lawsuit filed last weekend that resulted in a judge temporarily blocking the deportation of dozens of migrant children to their native Guatemala.
In a statement, the organization said it had received reports that the U.S. government will “imminently move forward with a plan to illegally remove Honduran children in government custody as soon as this weekend, in direct violation of their right to seek protection in the United States and despite ongoing litigation that blocked similar attempted extra-legal removals for children from Guatemala.”
FIRRP did not immediately provide The Associated Press with details about what information it had received about the possible deportation of Honduran children. The amendment to the organization’s lawsuit is sealed in federal court. The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.
The Justice Department on Saturday provided what is perhaps its most detailed account of a chaotic Labor Day weekend involving the attempted deportation of 76 Guatemalan children. Its timeline was part of a request to lift a temporary hold on their removal.
Over Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration attempted to remove Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. alone and were living in shelters or with foster care families in the U.S.
Advocates who represent migrant children in court filed lawsuits across the country seeking to stop the government from removing the children, and on Sunday a federal judge stepped in to order that the kids stay in the U.S. for at least two weeks.
The government initially identified 457 Guatemalan children for possible deportation, according to Saturday’s filing. None could have a pending asylum screening or claim, resulting in the removal of 91. They had to have parents or legal guardians in Guatemala and be at least 10 years old.
In the end, 327 children were found eligible for deportation, including 76 who boarded planes early Sunday in what the government described as a first phase, according to a statement by Angie Salazar, acting director of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. All 76 were at least 14 years old and “self-reported” that they had a parent or legal guardian in Guatemala but none in the United States.
The Justice Department said no planes took off, despite a comment by one of its attorneys in court Sunday that one may have but returned.
Children who cross the border alone are generally transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the Health and Human Services Department. The children usually live in a network of shelters across the country that are overseen by the resettlement office until they are eventually released to a sponsor — usually a relative
Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.
Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and El Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.
Justice Department lawyers said federal law allows the Department of Health and Human Services to “repatriate” or “reunite” children by taking them out of the U.S., as long as the child hasn’t been a victim of “severe” human trafficking, is not at risk for becoming so if he or she is returned to their native country and does not face a “a credible fear” of persecution there. The child also cannot be “repatriated” if he or she has a pending asylum claim.
The FIRRP lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to the Florence Project that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the suit was initially filed last week.
Some children have parents who are already in the United States.
The lawsuit demands that the government allow the children their legal right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.
CBS News says that it will no longer edit interviews on its Sunday news show, “Face the Nation”, days after a complaint from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The broadcaster announced Friday it will now only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews, subject to national security or legal restrictions, on the show.
The decision comes after Secretary Noem claimed that CBS News had “shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth” when she appeared on August 31 to discuss Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador who has become a high-profile case in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Noem’s interview with “Face the Nation” was taped in advance. After it was aired, Noem claimed that an important section of the interview had been cut, and posted her full, unedited response on X.
In the full response, she made a series of unproven accusations about Abrego Garcia, alleging that he was a member of gang MS-13, a “wife-beater” and had solicited nude photos from minors. Abrego Garcia has denied the accusations against him.
In response to Noem’s accusations, CBS News said that four minutes of the secretary’s interview had been edited out for timing purposes.
On Friday, the network said it will now only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews on the show, meaning guests’ statements will not be edited, subject to legal or national security restrictions.
In a statement to The Independent, a CBS News spokesperson said: “In response to audience feedback over the past week, we have implemented a new policy for greater transparency in our interviews.
“Face the Nation will now only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews (subject to national security or legal restrictions). This extra measure means the television audience will see the full, unedited interview on CBS and we will continue our practice of posting full transcripts and the unedited video online.”
The spokesperson did not comment on whether Noem’s complaint had affected the decision.
Noem’s unedited interview was posted on CBS News’ website and on its YouTube channel.
The broadcaster’s change in editing policy is likely to renew claims that CBS is capitulating to the Trump administration, after settling with the president over his “60 Minutes” lawsuit.
Trump had accused the network of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the 2024 presidential election in favor of former vice president Kamala Harris after it aired different clips of her interview on “60 Minutes” and “Face the Nation.”
Trump repeatedly alleged that Harris’ interview was edited by CBS News at the direction of her campaign, which the network denied.
Ultimately, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, agreed to pay $16 million to Trump to settle the lawsuit.
The new CBS News editing policy raises the possibility that it would allow guests to spread unchecked falsehoods on “Face the Nation”. However, hosts will still be able to fact-check or challenge claims made by interview subjects, an anonymous CBS News employee told the Associated Press.
A delegation from Argentina, which arrived in the United States for a visa-waiver signing ceremony, was reportedly forced to return home empty-handed after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem failed to inform them that the event had been canceled.
Last week, a group of officials flew from Buenos Aires to Miami, where they were told by the Department of Homeland Security not to continue their trip to Washington, D.C., because the agreement – which would allow American and Argentinian citizens to travel between the two countries for up to 90 days without a visa – was “missing a signature,” a source told Axios.
In the end, the officials, including the head of Argentina’s tax and customs agency, Juan Pazo, spent two days in Miami and then returned home.
“Let’s just say this was not a great look from us,” a senior Trump administration official told Axios, adding that it was “embarrassing.”
The incident appeared preventable. Noem allegedly knew that the Visa Waiver Program signing would not take place because Secretary of State Marco Rubio had not fully approved it yet.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson referred The Independent to a post on X which pushed back on Axios’ reporting.
“As we told them there was no new or additional visa waver program related document pending a signature with Argentina,” the post read. “DHS looks forward to working with Argentinian officials going forward.”
In July, Noem visited Argentina with the intention of starting discussions to help the country reenter the Visa Waiver Program.
Relations between the U.S. and Argentina have warmed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Argentinian President Javier Milei has aligned himself with Trump, even calling Trump his “favorite president.”
“Under President Javier Milei’s leadership, Argentina is becoming an even stronger friend to the United States — more committed than ever to border security for both of our nations,” Noem said in July.
However, Noem signed a visa waiver accord with Argentina, indicating the two countries would work toward a more formal agreement, without the Secretary of State’s prior approval, Axios also reported.
That situation reportedly ticked off the Secretary of State. Weeks later, Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles sent a memo reminding administration officials to “clear the purpose and scope of any proposed call, conversation, meeting or trip with the [National Security Council] prior to engagement.”
The State Department has not been eager to sign a Visa Waiver Program agreement with Argentina because Milei has been battling a corruption scandal. Milei’s sister and close associates have been accused of profiting from a bribery scheme, which Milei has denied.
Rubio’s team reportedly wants to have more discussions with Argentina before striking an official agreement, according to Axios.
It is unclear whether a signature was missing from an agreement.
A Department of Homeland Security official denied that there was a new, or additional, agreement with Argentina pending a signature. “We look forward to working with them going forward,” an official told Axios.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused CBS News of selectively editing footage from her Sunday interview, cutting some of her remarks about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national who was mistakenly deported and returned to the U.S. to face separate charges.
In a statement on Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security said CBS “deceptively” edited the secretary’s answers, cutting about four minutes from the nearly 17-minute interview when it aired on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
“This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Noem said in a statement. “Instead, CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety.”
CBS News, however, maintains that the interview was edited to fit its allotted time slot in the hourlong broadcast and that the full interview was published online.
“Secretary Noem’s ‘Face The Nation’ interview was edited for time and met all CBS News standards,” a spokesperson for CBS News said in a statement to NewsNation partner The Hill. “The entire interview is publicly available on YouTube, and the full transcript was posted early Sunday morning at CBSNews.com.”
Noem’s accusation is the latest example of the administration’s ongoing feud with CBS and its parent company, Paramount.
Earlier this summer, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit with President Donald Trump over claims the news outlet favorably edited a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the 2024 election.
In Noem’s Sunday interview, sections of her responses cut for the live broadcast include allegations against Abrego Garcia that have not been substantiated and which his lawyers deny.
Those include allegations that the Maryland resident “was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater, and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors and even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off,” which Noem said in the section of the interview that DHS claims was removed from the live broadcast.
The DHS statement includes other sections of the CBS interview that reportedly did not air live on Sunday morning.
Earlier this week, attorneys for Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge to issue a gag order against Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to bar them from making “baseless public attacks” against their client, who faces human smuggling charges stemming from a traffic stop in 2022.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in a Thursday motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee that administration officials have targeted their client since he was released from prison, leveling “highly prejudicial, inflammatory and false statements.”
“To safeguard his right to a fair trial, Mr. Abrego respectfully renews his earlier requests that the Court order that all DOJ and DHS officials involved in this case, and all officials in their supervisory chain, including [Bondi and Noem], refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding,” the attorneys said in a 15-page motion to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw.
A DHS official pushed back against the gag order request.
“If Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not want to be mentioned by the Secretary of Homeland Security, then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes,” a DHS official told The Hill on Friday morning.
“Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator,” the DHS official continued. “The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story.”
“We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims,” the official added.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys were told their client could be deported to Uganda, but a federal judge said Monday that the administration is “absolutely forbidden” from removing Abrego Garcia until a hearing is held.
The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who had come to the U.S. without their parents, according to a letter sent Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the Central American country said it was ready to take them in.
The removals would violate the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s “child welfare mandate and this country’s long-established obligation to these children,” Wyden told Angie Salazar, acting director of the office within the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for migrant children who arrive in the U.S. alone.
“This move threatens to separate children from their families, lawyers, and support systems, to thrust them back into the very conditions they are seeking refuge from, and to disappear vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight,” the Democratic senator wrote, asking for the deportation plans to be terminated.
It is another step in the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, which include plans to surge officers to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, ramping up deportations and ending protections for people who have had permission to live and work in the United States.
Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Martínez said Friday that the government has told the U.S. it is willing to receive hundreds of Guatemalan minors who arrived unaccompanied to the United States and are being held in U.S. facilities.
Guatemala is particularly concerned about minors who could age out of the facilities for children and be sent to adult detention centers, he said. The exact number of children to be returned remains in flux, but they are currently discussing a little over 600. He said no date has been set yet for their return.
That would be almost double what Guatemala previously agreed to. The head of the country’s immigration service said last month that the government was looking to repatriate 341 unaccompanied minors who were being held in U.S. facilities.
“The idea is to bring them back before they reach 18 years old so that they are not taken to an adult detention center,” Guatemala Immigration Institute Director Danilo Rivera said at the time. He said it would be done at Guatemala’s expense and would be a form of voluntary return.
The plan was announced by President Bernardo Arévalo, who said then that the government had a moral and legal obligation to advocate for the children. His comments came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Guatemala.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest move, which was first reported by CNN.
Quoting unidentified whistleblowers, Wyden’s letter said children who do not have a parent or legal guardian as a sponsor or who don’t have an asylum case already underway “will be forcibly removed from the country.”
The idea of repatriating such a large number of children to their home country also raised concerns with activists who work with children navigating the immigration process.
“We are outraged by the Trump administration’s renewed assault on the rights of immigrant children,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “We are not fooled by their attempt to mask these efforts as mere ‘repatriations.’ This is yet another calculated attempt to sever what little due process remains in the immigration system.”
Santana, Seitz and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. AP writers Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/video-state-representative-turned-away-at-ice-facility/vi-AA1LBOka
