Tag Archives: Department of Homeland Security

El Mundo: Children of the Chinese political elite are no longer welcome in the United States

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The daughter of the supreme leader, Xi Mingze, was enrolled at Harvard University in 2010.

Chinese students studying abroad who return to their country are known as “haigui,” which literally means “returning home from overseas.” Although the same word has a homophone that is often referred to in a joking tone: “Sea turtles.” Many of these “sea turtles” are children of high-ranking officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who have been sending their offspring to study at the best universities in the West, especially in the United States.

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On Wednesday, Rubio directly targeted China. “The United States will begin revoking visas for Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” the secretary stated in a post.

This is so wrong. A “university”, as the word implies, mixes together a universe of students, faculty, and ideas. We don’t need government bureaucrats to censor what students and ideas we are exposed to. Nothing that a typical student is exposed to is classified or confidential — the textbooks can be purchased and shipped overseas, lecture notes are readily available on the internet, etc. This is a vengeful solution in search of a problem.

Children of the Chinese political elite are no longer welcome in the United States
Chinese students studying abroad who return to their country are known as “haigui,” which literally means “returning home from overseas.” Although the same word…

https://www.mundoamerica.com/news/2025/05/30/68395a32e4d4d86d068b4570.html

New York Times: Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans

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The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.

Be very afraid! If you value your privacy, an all-knowing, all-seeing government database is the last thing you want.

https://archive.is/4DyVk#selection-659.0-689.326

Daily Beast: Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who Is American Citizen

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Manu’s parents were undocumented, but she was born in the United States.

A 2-year-old American girl has been left stateless after the Trump administration deported her alongside her family.

Emanuelly Borges Santos, known to her family as Manu, was born in a Florida hospital in 2022. She has an American passport and a Social Security card. Nevertheless, Manu and her parents, who are both undocumented, were packed onto a plane with 94 others and shipped to Brazil in February, according to a report from The Washington Post.

When they arrived, Brazilian officials were shocked to find the American toddler among the deportees.

“We’d never seen another case like this,” federal police officer Alexsandra Oliveira Medeiros Reis told the Post.

Manu is currently living in Brazil on a tourist visa as the government tries to resolve the bureaucratic predicament of the girl’s citizenship. In the meantime, she’s living with no right to healthcare or schooling in Brazil. Her visa is set to expire within weeks.

Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who Is American Citizen
Manu’s parents were undocumented, but she was born in the United States.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-deports-2-year-old-girl-who-is-american-citizen

Newsweek: Mom in US for 22 years detained by ICE despite ongoing visa application

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A Georgia mother of three who has lived in the United States for more than two decades was taken into custody by federal agents on April 13, just a few blocks from her family’s home.

“She was a major part of our family, she did a lot for all of us, and it feels like our world has been thrown off its axle,” Guillermo Chavarria, 25, the oldest son of Jessica Flores Marin, 44, told Newsweek.

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Flores Marin entered the U.S. with Guillermo in 2003 through Texas. While Guillermo qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which granted him temporary protection from deportation, his mother remained undocumented. Despite this, she built a life in the U.S., paying taxes and eventually buying the family’s first home in 2014.

In December, she began the application process for a T visa, which protects victims of certain crimes who cooperate with law enforcement. Her unexpected detention occurred while the family was gathering paperwork for her case.

Mom in US for 22 years detained by ICE despite ongoing visa application
Jessica Flores Marin, 44, was taken into custody by federal agents on April 13, just a few blocks from her family’s home.

https://www.newsweek.com/jessica-flores-marin-detained-ice-visa-immigration-2078460

USA Today: Trump temporarily backs down on Harvard student ban as judge sides with college

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A Boston federal judge said at a hearing May 29 that she planned to issue a preliminary injunction that blocks the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign exchange students.

The comments from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs came as the Trump administration attempted to walk back its May 22 directive that immediately revoked Harvard’s participation in a federal exchange student program.

Trump temporarily backs down on Harvard student ban as judge sides with college
A federal judge plans to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from halting Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/29/harvard-protection-foreign-student-enrollment-trump-ban/83917871007

CBS News: Trump admin. shakes up ICE leadership amid frustration with deportation levels, sources say

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ICE leadership has faced intense pressure from the White House to increase arrests of migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally or under one of several temporary immigration programs the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle.

Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday on Fox News that the administration is pushing ICE to carry out “a minimum” of 3,000 arrests per day — a target that would amount to an unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement.

Trump administration shakes up leadership at ICE amid frustrations with arrest, deportation levels, sources say
The Trump administration is replacing the head of the ICE branch that carries out arrests and deportations, according to three sources.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-shakes-up-ice-leadership-over-deportation-levels

Talking Points Memo: The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy

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The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

When top Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatened on May 9 that the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in response to an “invasion” from undocumented immigrants, he was operating on a fringe legal theory that a right-wing faction has been working to legitimize for more than a decade.

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Hard-liners have referred to immigrants as “invaders” as long as the U.S. has had immigration. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.

Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.

The claim is Trump’s central justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport roughly 140 Venezuelans to CECOT, the Salvadoran megaprison, without due process. (The administration cited different legal authority for the remaining deportees.) The Trump administration contends they are members of a gang, Tren de Aragua, that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is directing to infiltrate and operate in the United States. Lawyers and families of many of the deportees have presented evidence the prisoners are not even members of Tren de Aragua.

The contention is also the throughline of Trump’s day one executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” That document calls for the expansion of immigration removal proceedings without court hearings and for legal attacks against sanctuary jurisdictions, places that refuse to commit local resources to immigration enforcement.

So far, no court has bought the idea that the U.S. is truly under invasion….

And therein lies the problem: The Trump regime is off pursuing an unconstitutional tangent to solve a problem that is improperly framed as an “invasion”.

It’s a long well-researched article. Please click on the link below and read the entire article.

The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
This article first appeared at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-invasion-invention-the-far-rights-long-legal-battle-to-make-immigrants-the-enemy

MSNBC: Trump admin regulators launch investigation into Media Matters, adding to pattern

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If it seems as if there have been a lot of new federal investigations into Democrats and their allies lately, it’s not your imagination.

But it’s important to remember that many of the White House’s political antagonists are, in fact, facing the kind of investigations that Trump has in mind. The New York Times reported:

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday opened an investigation into Media Matters, a liberal advocacy organization that has published research on hateful and antisemitic content on X, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. The regulator said in a letter sent to the organization that it was investigating the group, which is aligned with Democrats, over whether it illegally colluded with advertisers, according to the people.

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The public has learned in recent weeks that the administration — led by a president whose second-term “revenge tour” has been unsubtle — is also investigating and/or prosecuting a variety of Democratic officials and candidates, including Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

This dovetails with the president directing the Justice Department to go after Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; which came on the heels of Trump pressing the Department of Homeland Security to investigate Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking DHS official. The president did this not because there’s evidence of Krebs or Taylor having done anything wrong, but because they defied him several years ago. They went on his enemies list, and now he’s exacting revenge.

Around the same time, Trump also directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s most important fundraising platform.

And did I mention the investigation into former FBI director James Comey? Because that’s underway, too.

Trump and his team are also going after law firms, universities and news organizations they consider political foes of the White House.

What’s more, given Ed Martin’s new responsibilities at the Justice Department, this overtly and abusive partisan pattern is likely to intensify.

So Trump hates everybody?

Axios recently noted, “In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Axios identified a list of perceived adversaries who fit what Trump ominously described as ‘the enemies from within.’ As president, he has taken steps to retaliate against virtually all of them.” That was two months ago. The problem is vastly worse now, and there’s no reason to believe conditions will improve anytime soon.

Trump admin regulators launch investigation into Media Matters, adding to pattern
If it seems as if there have been a lot of new federal investigations into Democrats and their allies lately, it’s not your imagination.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-admin-regulators-launch-investigation-media-matters-adding-patte-rcna208780

Alternet: ‘I don’t appreciate being lied to’: Judge threatens Trump admin with ‘serious consequences’

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POLITICO writer Josh Gerstein reports a federal judge is demanding the Trump administration explain what looks like misinformation they shared with the court.

Proclaiming “I will not be strung along,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes set a hearing this morning to determine if the Trump administration is trying to shutter three important Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversight offices in defiance of Constitutional arguments that only Congress has that power.

Reyes opted to set a follow-up hearing this morning after back-and-forth between the court and government attorneys at a May 22 hearing.

“I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Reyes said yesterday. “If that is indeed what has happened, there will be serious consequences.”

Attorneys for the Trump administration allegedly told the court last week that the U.S. ombudsman offices for the Citizenship & Immigration Services and the Office of Immigration Detention were still intact despite layoffs of hundreds of DHS employees, part-time employees and contract workers.

But a DHS staffer who department leaders had scheduled for termination submitted to the court an internal document saying “the entirety of the offices were eliminated.”

Reyes demanded DHS leaders immediately file statements to the court, under penalty of perjury, explaining the mixed information.

‘I don’t appreciate being lied to’: Judge threatens Trump admin with ‘serious consequences’

https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-judge

KRON San Francisco: Father of 4 detained by ICE at citizenship interview after living in US for 12 years

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A 31-year-old Danish national who was going through the naturalization process after living in the U.S. for more than 10 years was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during a routine appointment to finalize his citizenship, according to multiple media reports.

Kasper Eriksen, a green card holder with no criminal record, works as a welder in Sturgis, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife and four children. On April 15, he was unexpectedly taken into custody and later transferred to the LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana, Newsweek reported.  

The 31-year-old, according to his wife, Savannah Hobart Eriksen, first moved to the U.S. as an exchange student in 2009 and returned to Denmark.  

He returned to the U.S. legally in 2013 after he and his wife married and he began the legal process of becoming an American citizen. In September 2024, according to the outlet, the Eriksens received word that his application was under review, and, on March 7, an interview for his naturalization application was scheduled.  

ICE officials reportedly detained the 31-year-old for failing to file a single document, due in 2015, around the same time the couple lost their first child in a stillbirth. While grieving their loss, they forgot to file Form I-751, the Mississippi Free Press reported.  

If he needed to file an I-751 in 2015, then he received only a 2-year green card “with conditions” in 2013. I-751 is the “Removal of Conditions” filing.

So he’s been wandering around the U.S. for the last 9-10 years with an expired Green Card? It never occurred to him that something was amiss?

If he had filed everything on time and followed up as appropriate, he should have been a citizen by 2019 — about 6 years ago.

There must be more to this story. Given the current regime in Washington and its focus on deportation counts, that might not matter much. 🙁

Father of 4 detained by ICE at citizenship interview after living in US for 12 years
A 31-year-old Danish national with no criminal record who has been living in the U.S. for more than 10 years was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during a routine app…

https://www.kron4.com/news/national/father-of-4-detained-by-ice-at-citizenship-interview-after-living-in-us-for-12-years/amp