Tag Archives: Trump Administration

Raw Story: ‘We are alarmed’: University staff condemn Trump DOJ as president forced out

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More than 100 professors and staff from the University of Virginia signed an open letter on Friday opposing the efforts of the Department of Justice to force out university president Jim Ryan.

Ryan was the subject of a pressure campaign mounted by the Justice Department’s two top civil rights lawyers, Harmeet Dillon and Gregory Brown. The two layers reportedly asked Ryan to resign to resolve a federal inquiry into whether the university had shut down its diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

The New York Times reported that Ryan submitted his letter of resignation on Thursday and expressed “deep sadness” about his decision.

“We are alarmed by the attempted use of government power to impose an ideological agenda on an institution with a proud, 206-year tradition of liberty in thought and expression,” the letter reads in part.

“The forced installation of a new president under these circumstances would impede the exchange of ideas, set a dangerous precedent for the destruction of academic freedom, and cast a shadow on the integrity of the research and teaching conducted at the university,” it continues.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2672460735

India Currents: Racial Profiling & Immigration Crackdowns Strike Fear in Immigrant Communities Across America

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Immigrant communities in the U.S. are experiencing a growing sense of fear as masked federal agents, with no visible IDs, have been detaining immigrants in Los Angeles in a sweeping escalation of federal immigration enforcement that has prompted legal challenges and mass protests across America. Local officials and advocates are calling the crackdown unconstitutional—and a test of the nation’s democratic values.

The developments were the focus of a June 27 American Community Media (ACom) briefing that brought together legal experts, political leaders, and community advocates to examine the state’s response and avenues for effective resistance.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jeannette Zanipatin, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). “People are being arrested outside courthouses, at USCIS check-ins, and even during routine interviews— often without warrants, and sometimes without knowing who is arresting them.”

Zanipatin, an immigration attorney, noted that many of those detained have no criminal records. “This is racial profiling, plain and simple,” she said. “And it’s impacting all immigrant communities—Latino, Black, Asian, and more.”

California, long a stronghold of progressive immigration policy, has become the epicenter of federal enforcement. Former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who served from 2005 to 2013 and is now running for governor, condemned these tactics.

“This is not law enforcement. This is intimidation,” Villaraigosa said. “We’re seeing people in fatigues, flash-bang grenades, and masked agents dragging away gardeners, nannies, and even U.S. citizens.”

Racial Profiling & Immigration Crackdowns Strike Fear in Immigrant Communities Across America
California emerges as the epicenter of resistance to a sweeping escalation of federal immigration enforcement
Racial Profiling & Immigration Crackdowns Strike Fear in Immigrant Communities Across America

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Racial Profiling & Immigration Crackdowns Strike Fear in Immigrant Communities Across America
Immigration enforcement tactics Immigrant communities in the U.S. are experiencing a growing sense of fear as masked federal agents, with no visible IDs, have been detaining immigrants in Los Angeles […]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/racial-profiling-immigration-crackdowns-strike-fear-in-immigrant-communities-across-america/ar-AA1HALOH

CBS News: Kilmar Abrego Garcia asks to remain in federal custody, and Justice Dept. agrees

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported back to his home country and then returned to the U.S. for federal prosecution, may remain in federal custody, after his lawyers and prosecutors sparred over whether he would be deported immediately upon his release while awaiting a criminal trial.

His lawyers asked that a magistrate judge’s order granting him pretrial release not be issued until July 16, when he is scheduled to appear in court again for another hearing. In a filing Friday, prosecutors agreed to the delay. The court must still approve the request.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in a filing with the court that the Justice Department has been giving conflicting statements as to whether the Trump administration will move to deport him before he stands trial.

Give the poor guy his day in court!

Kilmar Abrego Garcia asks to remain in federal custody, and Justice Department agrees
The U.S. agreed to a request by Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys that his release order be delayed through July 16.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kilmar-abrego-garcia-remain-in-federal-custody-justice-department-agrees

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

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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

NBC News: Congress set to hand Trump billions to recruit more ICE agents

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The House-passed version of the Trump budget bill includes $8 billion to hire an additional 10,000 ICE employees over five years, with millions more for signing and retention bonuses.

President Donald Trump is on the verge of getting billions of dollars from Congress to recruit and retain agents to carry out the mass deportation campaign that was one of the central promises of his campaign.

Trump has been on a roll in his efforts to combat illegal immigration and remove undocumented immigrants from the country, and both advocates and critics of his plans say that bolstering border security and interior enforcement will make it easier for him to execute on his vision.

President Donald Trump is on the verge of getting billions of dollars from Congress to recruit and retain agents to carry out the mass deportation campaign that was one of the central promises of his campaign.

Trump has been on a roll in his efforts to combat illegal immigration and remove undocumented immigrants from the country, and both advocates and critics of his plans say that bolstering border security and interior enforcement will make it easier for him to execute on his vision.

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The House-passed version includes $8 billion to hire an additional 10,000 ICE employees over five years, boosting the agency’s ranks by nearly 50%, and $858 million more for signing and retention bonuses. At full employment of 30,000 people, the money would cover about $28,600 per employee. Customs and Border Protection would get $2 billion to spread around for such bonuses to its larger workforce, which currently can range as high as $30,000 for new recruits.

Congress set to hand Trump billions to recruit more ICE agents
The House-passed version of the Trump budget bill includes $8 billion to hire an additional 10,000 ICE employees over five years, with millions more for signing and retention bonuses.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/congress-set-hand-trump-billions-recruit-ice-agents-rcna214990

Newsweek: Are ICE agents using facial recognition phone app? What we know

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Immigration agents have been given access to a facial recognition app to identify people in the field, according to leaked emails.

The emails, exchanged between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) staff and contractors, allow officers to instantly compare biometrics like faces and fingerprints against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases, according to 404 Media.

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The emails say that the biometric tool is best used “to identify unknown subjects in the field,” which, along with the contributions from staff at Enforcement and Removal Operations, suggests that it is being used in the Trump administration’s attempts to ramp up the removal of migrants without legal status.

Are ICE agents using facial recognition phone app? What we know
One former ICE agent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about repercussions, told Newsweek ICE has always had that tech.

https://www.newsweek.com/ice-face-recognition-app-deportations-phone-immigration-2091619

Reason: How DHS Facial Recognition Tech Spread to ICE Enforcement

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More government agencies are using facial recognition for enforcement than ever before.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a smartphone app to identify people based on an image of their fingerprints or face, 404 Media reported Thursday, based on a review of internal ICE emails. The expanding and repurposing of this sophisticated technology, ordinarily used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when people are entering or exiting the country, is now being used on people living in the United States to meet mass deportation and arrest quotas imposed by President Donald Trump.

The app, Mobile Fortify, enables users to verify an unknown person’s identity in the field through contactless fingerprints and facial images on ICE-issued phones, according to an email sent to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel and obtained by 404. According to the emails, Mobile Fortify can identify a person by comparing a photo of their face across two databases—Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service database of people’s photos taken when entering the United States, and Seizure and Apprehension Workflow, described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an “intelligence aggregator” that brings together information related to searches and seizures. For fingerprint matches, the app uses DHS’s centralized Automated Biometric Identification System, which “holds more than 320 million unique identities and processes more than 400,000 biometric transactions per day,” according to the agency.

A report released by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in September 2024 attempted to call attention to concerns about accuracy, oversight, transparency, discrimination, and access to justice as facial recognition tools have quickly proliferated. Although facial recognition technology is now available to the public through commercially available tools, policies governing the federal government’s use of the technology have lagged behind real-world applications. Currently, there are no comprehensive laws regulating the federal government’s use of facial recognition technology and no constitutional provisions governing its use.

“Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down.“

How DHS facial recognition tech spread to ICE enforcement
Facial recognition technology, originally developed for border crossings, has been expanded to help drive mass deportation efforts.

https://reason.com/2025/06/27/how-dhs-facial-recognition-tech-spread-to-ice-enforcement

Newsweek: Trump administration terminates legal status for more than 500K immigrants

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The Trump administration has announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, impacting over 520,000 Haitian nationals residing in the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the designation will expire on August 3, 2025, with the termination taking effect on September 2, 2025. This decision reverses an 18-month extension granted under former President Joe Biden‘s administration, which would have extended protections until February 2026.

Trump administration terminates legal status for more than 500K immigrants
For more than a decade, Haitian TPS holders have been legally living and working in the U.S. following the 2010 earthquake.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-haiti-dhs-legal-status-tps-noem-2091814

ABC News: Trump administration expediting fines for those in the US illegally: Exclusive

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New rule will eliminate the 30-day warning period before fines begin.

The Trump administration is looking to speed up its ability to fine those in the United States illegally — up to $1,000 per day — according to a rule set to be published Friday in the Federal Register that was obtained by ABC News.

Currently, the government can alert those in the U.S. illegally 30 days before it starts issuing fines.

The rule proposed by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security allows the government to immediately start fining those in the U.S. illegally.

Trump administration eliminating warning period for fining those in the US illegally: Exclusive
Trump administration to speed up fines for those in the U.S. illegally — up to $1,000 per day — according to rule to be published Friday in the Federal Register.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-eliminating-warning-period-fining-us-illegally/story?id=123249981

Law & Crime: ‘Not free to do as it pleases’: Judge says Trump admin lacks authority to unilaterally shutter Job Corps

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A federal judge in Manhattan has halted the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the Job Corps training program — the nation’s largest residential career training program for thousands of low-income youth — while litigation on the matter continues.

U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday extended his temporary restraining order (TRO) by granting a request for a preliminary injunction in the case, reasoning that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) unilateral closing of the program created and authorized by Congress violated federal law.

‘Not free to do as it pleases’: Judge says Trump admin lacks authority to shutter Job Corps
A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s effort to shutter the Job Corps training program nationwide while litigation on the matter continues.
‘Not free to do as it pleases’: Judge says Trump admin lacks authority to unilaterally shutter ‘lifeline’ youth job training program