Category Archives: US immigration

Farm worker who died after California Ice raid was ‘hardworking and innocent’, family says

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Jaime Alanís, 57, died a day after falling off a greenhouse roof during an immigration raid of a cannabis farm

The farm worker who died from injuries he sustained after falling from a greenhouse roof during an Ice raid of a California cannabis farm was a “hard-working, innocent farmer” and the sole provider for his wife and daughter, his family says.

Jaime Alanís died a day after a frenzied immigration raid of Glass House Farms in Ventura county where authorities arrested at least 200 workers. The 57-year-old, who was from the town of Huajúmbaro in Michoacán, Mexico, is the first known person to die during the Trump administration’s enhanced immigration enforcement operations in southern California.

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Trump administration ordered to halt indiscriminate immigration stops in California over racial profiling concerns

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Judge issues temporary block in seven counties including Los Angeles after lawsuit accuses government of systematically targeting brown-skinned people

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.

Judge Maame E Frimpong on Friday blocked the administration from using what has been called unconstitutional tactics in raids after a lawsuit was filed by immigrant advocacy groups last week.

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Farm worker dies a day after chaotic immigration raid at California farm

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Jaime Alanis died after sustaining injuries during raid where authorities say they arrested about 200 people

A farmworker died Friday from injuries that he sustained a day earlier in raids on two California cannabis farm sites as US immigration authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with authorities.

Jaime Alanis’s death was confirmed in a social media post by the United Farm Workers advocacy group. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” the post read.

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US border czar says he doesn’t know fate of eight men deported to South Sudan

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Men from Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar were removed from the US and flown to the war-torn country

Tom Homan, the US border czar, has said he does not know what happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan after the Trump administration resumed sending migrants to countries that are not their place of origin, known as third countries.

“They’re free as far as we’re concerned. They’re free, they’re no longer in our custody, they’re in Sudan,” Homan told Politico on Friday. “Will they stay in Sudan? I don’t know.”

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South Sudan says eight deportees from the US are under government care

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Deportees include two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico

War-torn South Sudan has said it is holding a group of eight men controversially deported from the United States.

Only one of them is from South Sudan. The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.

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Spanish-language journalist still in Ice custody despite being granted bond

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Mario Guevara, arrested in Georgia while covering a protest, still detained after Ice refused his family’s bond payment

A week after an immigration judge granted him bond, a Spanish-language journalist who was arrested while covering a protest last month remains in federal custody.

Police just outside Atlanta arrested Mario Guevara while he was covering a protest on 14 June, and he was turned over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) several days later. He was being held at an immigration detention center in Folkston – in south-east Georgia, near the Florida border – when an immigration judge last week granted him bond.

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US supreme court clears way for Trump officials to resume mass government firings

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Justices lift lower court order that froze ‘reductions in force’ federal layoffs while litigation in case proceeded

The US supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume plans for mass firings of federal workers that critics warn could threaten critical government services.

Extending a winning streak for the US president, the justices on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had frozen sweeping federal layoffs known as “reductions in force” while litigation in the case proceeds.

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Trump ends deportation protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua

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DHS said it would terminate temporary protected status for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans

The Trump administration has ended temporary protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua in the latest phase of its effort to expel undocumented people from the US.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would end temporary protected status (TPS) for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in moves that will come into effect in about 60 days.

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Boxer Julio César Chávez Jr was a cartel henchman, Mexican prosecutors claim

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Prosecutors say Chávez treated gang rivals ‘like a punchbag’ after Ice arrested the former world champion in California

The Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr was a henchman for the Sinaloa drugs cartel and used his skills to pummel rival gang members “like a punchbag” before his recent arrest in the US, prosecutors in Mexico have alleged.

Chávez, 39, son of legendary world boxing champion Julio César Chávez Sr and himself a former middleweight titleholder, was arrested in California on Tuesday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who cited cartel affiliations, multiple criminal convictions and an active arrest warrant in Mexico for weapons trafficking and organized crime.

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US completes deportation of eight men to South Sudan after legal wrangling

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Eight were held for weeks at a US military base in Djibouti while their legal challenge played out in court

Eight men deported from the US in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the state department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”.

The men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone to the supreme court, which had permitted their removal from the US. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US.

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‘I want my vote back’: Trump-voting family stunned after Canadian mother detained over immigration status

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Family of Cynthia Olivera reconsiders support for president after Ice detained her at green card interview

The family of a Canadian national who supported Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants say they are feeling betrayed after federal agents recently detained the woman in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency – and began working to expel her from the country.

“We feel totally blindsided,” Cynthia Olivera’s husband – US citizen and self-identified Trump voter Francisco Olivera – told the California news station KGTV. “I want my vote back.”

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US judge clears path for eight immigrants to be deported to South Sudan

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Justice department says the men – including nationals from Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar – will be flown to South Sudan

Eight migrants lost their last-ditch effort to halt their deportation to South Sudan by the Trump administration on Friday, clearing the way for their imminent transfer after a judge in Massachusetts denied their request.

Lawyers for the justice department said the men were scheduled to be flown to South Sudan on Friday at 7pm Eastern Time after two courts considered the request on an emergency basis on 4 July, when courts were otherwise closed for the Independence Day holiday.

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El Salvador’s president denies that Kilmar Ábrego García was abused in notorious prison

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Nayib Bukele disputed claims of Ábrego García’s lawyers that he was tortured and deprived of sleep while in custody

The president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in the country before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.

Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.

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US supreme court clears way for deportation of migrants to South Sudan

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Court halts ruling that allowed migrants to challenge removal to countries where they could be in danger

The supreme court has allowed the Trump administration to deport the eight men who have been held for weeks at an American military base in Djibouti to war-torn South Sudan, a country where almost none of them have ties.

Most of the men are from countries including Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan.

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Kilmar Ábrego García was tortured in Salvadorian prison, court filing alleges

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New court documents allege physical and psychological torture at Cecot in one of first looks at conditions in prison

Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons, was physically and psychologically tortured during the three months he spent in Salvadorian custody, according to new court documents filed Wednesday.

While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.

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‘A win for humanity’: Trump’s asylum ban at US-Mexico border ruled unlawful

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President exceeded his authority and his proclamation of an ‘invasion’ at southern border is unlawful, court rules

A federal court has ruled that Donald Trump’s proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border is unlawful, saying that the president had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border.

As part of his crackdown on immigration, Trump abruptly closed the southern border to tens of thousands of people who had been waiting to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum, signing a proclamation on the day of his inauguration that directed officials to take action to “repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States”.

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Judge blocks Kristi Noem from ending temporary protected status for Haitians

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Homeland security secretary attempting to end legal status for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.

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Ice raids leave crops unharvested at California farms: ‘We need the labor’

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Trump’s immigration crackdown has made many immigrant farmworkers scared to go to work

Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura county, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally.

Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, have frightened off workers.

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Trump celebrates harsh conditions for detainees on visit to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

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President says immigration jail in Florida Everglades is a ‘little controversial, but I couldn’t care less’

Donald Trump on Tuesday toured Alligator Alcatraz, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience.

The president was chaperoned by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who hailed the tented camp on mosquito-infested land 50 miles west of Miami as an example for other states that supported Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

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Two men found guilty in deaths of 53 migrants in Texas sentenced to life in prison

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Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Garcia abandoned locked truckload of people in summer heat with no AC in 2022

Two men face spending the rest of their lives in prison after a federal judge sentenced them on Friday for their roles in the deaths of 53 people – including six children – who were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.

A federal jury in Texas had found the two men, Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Garcia, guilty of various charges at the conclusion of a trial in March. Federal judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Torres to life in prison and Ortega to 83 years of incarceration, essentially a life sentence.

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