“A long sliver of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border that President Donald Trump is turning over to the Department of Defense would be controlled by the Army as part of a base, which could allow troops to detain any trespassers, including migrants, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The transfer of that border zone to military control — and making it part of an Army installation — is an attempt by the Trump administration to get around a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from being used in domestic law enforcement on American soil.
But if the troops are providing security for land that is part of an Army base, they can perform that function. However, at least one presidential powers expert said the move is likely to be challenged in the courts.”
The military should be focused on fighting and winning wars, not enforcing immigration policy.
“The Supreme Court..unanimously agreed that alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have a due process right to challenge President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to summarily deport them. At the same time, the majority lifted a temporary restraining order (TRO) that blocked those deportations, saying Venezuelans detained under the AEA must file habeas corpus petitions in Texas, where they are being held, rather than seeking relief in the District of Columbia under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
One of America’s powers is taking smart people from other countries and using their energies and insights. Trump is dampening that power.
“Kseniia Petrova’s path from a Harvard laboratory to an immigration cell began with frogs.
The Russian national who has been working as a researcher at Harvard Medical School failed to declare “non-hazardous” frog embryos she was carrying with her on her return to the US from France in February, Petrova’s attorney said. Rather than issue a fine, Petrova’s exchange visitor visa was revoked, and she was taken into custody.
Revoking Petrova’s visa was “a punishment grossly disproportionate to the situation,” her attorney, Greg Romanovsky, said, calling the error on the customs form “inadvertant.””
…
“an increasing number of student deportation threats involve the revocation of visas based on relatively minor offenses like years-old misdemeanors, according to immigration attorneys, or sometimes no reason at all.”
“”You gotta get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” Joe Rogan said on his hugely popular podcast this week. “This is kind of crazy, that that could be possible. That’s horrific.”
Rogan was alluding to Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernandez, who was shipped off to El Salvador’s notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) last month. Based largely on innocent tattoos, Hernandez’s supporters say, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mistakenly identified him as a member of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by President Donald Trump’s March 15 proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).”
“The Trump administration has, for the fourth time in history, invoked the war-time Alien Enemies Act of 1798, even though our nation is not at war—and its last use remains one of the most shameful episodes in American history.
That involved President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 in 1942. It was the basis for the internment of around 112,000 people of Japanese descent, 70,000 of whom were American citizens.”
…
“For years, we’ve endured constitutional conservatives’ bloviating about the importance of protecting the sacred principles enshrined in our Constitution. Those include the separation of powers—legislative, executive and judicial checks on one another—and due process. Many of these hypocrites are defending the administration’s policies and bashing a judge for halting the hasty airlift of accused criminal aliens to a prison run by a banana-republic strongman—a directive the president promptly ignored.
Perhaps most of these deportees are criminals and a threat (unlike peaceful Japanese residents who posed no threat whatsoever). They still deserve due process—their day in court, so to speak—to prove they have indeed violated the law. Constitutional conservatives of all people should understand that the government gets things wrong and individuals deserve protection from arbitrary actions by its agents.
We’ve already seen examples of immigrants who were deported based on the government allegedly mistaking a soccer tattoo for gang insignia. Let’s say you were walking around and, based on your attire or ethnic background, the police suspected you were a gang-banger and took you to jail. Wouldn’t your first call be to your lawyer? Don’t you deserve due process to prove you were a passerby before being shipped to Pelican Bay? (And non-citizens generally are considered persons under the Constitution—and also deserve due process.)
The administration isn’t just ignoring these constitutional due-process protections but seems to be actively mocking them. “What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of (Tren de Aragua)—what was their due process?”” asked Tom Homan, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Murder and rape always are horrific, but everyone still gets a trial to, you know, prove they actually committed the crime.”
“Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.
Lawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.”
…
“In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.”
…
“Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.
Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.”
It was knowable in advance that Trump’s illegal immigrant crackdown was not going to involve just criminals. People have no excuse for not knowing this and are part of the reason this is happening.
“The construction industry needs to attract 439,000 new workers this year to meet demand, otherwise costs will rise — putting some projects out of reach — per projections from the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group out Friday morning.”
…
“Immigrants make up about 26% of the construction workforce, per census data cited by Pew Research Center last fall.”
…
“An estimated 13% of construction workers are undocumented”