Deporting the spouses of US citizens is a net bad.
“An active-duty U.S. Army sergeant who has served in the military for 27 years, including in Afghanistan, said he still does not “understand why” his wife was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week in Texas.
In an interview with CBS News Sunday, Sgt. First Class Jose Serrano, 51, said his wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, was arrested by ICE on April 14 during an appointment at an immigration office in El Paso.
Rivera Ortega, who married Serrano in 2022, has been in the U.S. for over a decade, since 2016. She was granted a legal protection in 2019 that prohibits her deportation to her native El Salvador, U.S. immigration court documents show. But the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that Rivera Ortega entered the U.S. illegally, and Serrano said his wife has been informed she could be deported to a third country, like Mexico, where she has no ties….
If his wife is sent to Mexico, Serrano said he would likely not be able to see her without jeopardizing his military career, given restrictions on service members traveling to Mexico.
“We don’t know nobody in Mexico,” he said. “Plus, as a military, we’re not allowed to go to Mexico.
“Serrano, who was born in Puerto Rico, said his wife’s detention has exacerbated his mental health challenges, noting he has been treated previously for a traumatic brain injury, PTSD and depression.”
ICE whistleblower claims that the massive wave of ICE recruits are not being trained properly, and Homeland Security is lying about the extent of their training.
“The Senate early Friday morning approved Homeland Security funds to pay Transportation Security Administration agents and most other agencies, but not the immigration enforcement operations at the heart of the budget impasse that has jammed airports, disrupted travel and imposed financial hardship on workers.
The deal, which the Senate approved unanimously without a roll call, next goes to the House, which is expected to consider it Friday.
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The deal did not include any of the restraints Democrats have demanded as they sought to rein in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
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The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions in extra funds to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the immigration officers are still being paid despite the lapse.”
“”ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley previously said in a statement to USA TODAY. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints – skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
Early reports from some travelers indicated that ICE’s presence wasn’t doing much to improve conditions – and for some employees it may be more disruptive than helpful.
“The employees that actually work at the airport, they’re afraid of coming to work because they were afraid that their immigration status would cause them to be detained or removed from the airport,” Johnny Jones, secretary and treasurer of the Association of Federal Government Employees local 1040 representing TSA workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said in a March 24 press briefing. “A couple of restaurants did not actually open at the airport because they had no workers show up.”
While Harmon-Marshall doesn’t expect ICE’s presence to pose a risk to aviation security, it could have other adverse impacts. “What I do think their presence is going to do is intimidate the traveling public,” he said.”
Republican and Democratic senators had a deal that would fund all of Homeland Security except ICE, but Trump said no.
Trump is paying a French company one billion dollars to stop a wind farm project and instead invest in oil and gas projects because Trump has an irrational bias against wind energy. He thinks they are ugly.
“The Department of Homeland Security has hindered internal investigations amid scrutiny for its handling of President Donald Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration, the agency’s official watchdog warned in a letter to Congress.
DHS has been “systematically obstructing” investigations by withholding records, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said in a letter released Tuesday — hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem faced withering bipartisan questioning at a Senate hearing.”
“One of the issues here is that in the press, everything is conflated as being ICE. But Border Patrol had a big presence here, and, you know, Border Patrol are trained differently. They’re trained for operation at ports of entry, and it’s a different use of force policy, it is a different method of training. It’s a different environment totally. And I noticed Bovino himself came from the border patrol. He was acting like just a cowboy.”
“”Observing, following, and recording law enforcement are unambiguously protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Bier tells Reason. “They are not obstruction of justice. The right to record helps guarantee justice by ensuring accountability and an accurate record of events.”
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The guiding First Amendment principle behind these court decisions was most memorably expressed in the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Houston v. Hill, which struck down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote.”
“Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID.
But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.”