Category Archives: US immigration

‘Confused and fearful’: New Yorkers grapple with Trump immigration policies

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Residents of Jackson Heights, one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods, are concerned the new ‘public charge’ rule will put families at risk

In a packed room in Jackson Heights – one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York and the US as a whole – cancer survivor Blanca Palomeque explains how the Trump administration’s new policies will force immigrants into making impossible decisions.

The 56-year-old from Ecuador, who was treated for ovarian cancer in the US before applying for her green card 11 years ago, explains how if the new “public charge” rule – which will penalize immigrants for using benefits – had been in place then, “I don’t know what I would have done”.

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Greta Thunberg joins young activists in climate protest outside White House – live

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Swedish teen climate activist and other youth advocates demand action from the US to address the climate crisis

A Taliban negotiating team has reportedly arrived in Russia just days after Trump said potential peace talks with the group were “dead.”

The AP reports:

Russian state news agency Tass cited the Taliban’s Qatar-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as saying the delegation had held consultations with Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for Afghanistan.

The visit also was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Taliban official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

This may well be the most terrifying thing you read on this Friday the 13th. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, told a group of donors last month that she got her moral compass from her father.

At a mid-August fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Ivanka Trump was asked to name the personality traits she inherited most from her parents.

Without much of a pause, Trump told the crowd of roughly 120 high-end donors that her mother gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman.

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Hundreds of Bahamian evacuees ordered off boat due to lack of US visas

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Crew said people without visas must disembark ferry to Florida because of CBP’s ‘last-minute call’ that they would not be admitted

More than a hundred Bahamian citizens desperate to escape the devastation of Hurricane Dorian were ordered off a ferry to Florida, sparking a dispute between US immigration officials and the operator of the vessel.

Related: Search for survivors of Hurricane Dorian continues in Bahamas

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Democrats condemn reported Trump plan to bar most refugees from US

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  • Administration officials reportedly aim to slash admissions
  • Beto O’Rourke: ‘We need more refugees, not fewer’

Leading Democrats have condemned reported moves by the Trump administration to effectively bar refugees arriving from most parts of the world.

As reported by the New York Times, the administration plans to cut back on a decades-old programme that each year admits tens of thousands fleeing war, persecution and famine.

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Trump’s Middle East envoy resigns amid Kushner’s stalling peace plan – live

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US president says Jason Greenblatt will be leaving to pursue work in the private sector after three years in administration

A CNN analyst neatly summarized Joe Biden’s continued dominance in the polls despite a series of embarrassing gaffes that many commentators predicted would affect his front-runner status.

Average of all polls this year of Biden v. Trump? Biden by 8. Average of all August polls, after all the gaffes? Biden by 10. That's the same as it is in the RCP average. Clinton lead in the RCP average against Trump at this point? 2.4 points... (1/?)

Maybe, it will change. Heck, we're over a year out. But the difference between what the numbers are saying and conventional wisdom (at least in some quarters) is stunning.

Meanwhile, Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he was wrong when he tweeted Sunday about the threat Hurricane Dorian posed to Alabama.

Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it! pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p

I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not! https://t.co/gO5pwahaj9

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More Cubans seek asylum in Mexico amid clampdown on legal path to US

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US-bound Cubans used to encounter far fewer obstacles on the migration passage, but that’s changed due to crackdowns

Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States.

On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel. The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to handover $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he’d be able to safely continue his passage north.

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Revealed: man force-fed in Ice custody at risk due to ‘substandard care’ says doctor

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Ajay Kumar, who is on a hunger strike while detained in El Paso, is receiving ‘abysmal’ treatment, doctor said in court documents

The life of an Indian asylum seeker on hunger strike in US detention is at risk because of the “abysmal” treatment he is receiving from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which began force-feeding him two weeks ago, a doctor warned in court documents filed this week.

Dr Parveen Parmar, chief of the division of global emergency medicine at the University of Southern California, said in an affidavit that the 33-year-old asylum seeker, Ajay Kumar, is receiving “the worst medical care I have seen in my 10 years of practice”.

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Trump says he is seriously looking at ending birthright citizenship – video

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The US president has said his administration is looking at ending the right of citizenship for US-born children of non-citizens and people who entered the country illegally. ‘We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby – congratulations, the baby is now a US citizen ... It’s frankly ridiculous,’ Donald Trump told reporters

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US customs outage delays thousands of travelers in airports across country

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Social media posts show serious congestion as ‘temporary’ issue affects hubs including JFK and LAX

Thousands of travelers at major US airports faced congested terminals and long lines on Friday due to a temporary computer outage that affected the US Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) processing systems.

Related: Passenger anger as tens of thousands hit by BA systems failure

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Vehicle drives into protesters outside US detention centre – video

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A vehicle drove into a line of protesters outside a detention centre in Rhode Island on Wednesday. Dozens of people were protesting against the contract between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Wyatt detention facility when a correctional officer swerved into the crowd. Officers at the scene then pepper sprayed the demonstrators. At least one person was taken to hospital with a broken leg

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Trump official: Statue of Liberty poem should mean ‘poor who can stand on own two feet’

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Ken Cuccinelli defends Trump’s decision to make it harder for migrants to be awarded residence if they got benefit programs

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has proposed a new interpretation of the famous welcome that appears on a placard at the Statue of Liberty.

The famous lines, taken from The New Colossus by the 19th-century New York poet Emma Lazarus, read: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

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More major US immigration raids likely despite outcry – report

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White House ordered Ice agents to identify targets across the US, report says, with focus on workplaces

More major raids aimed at picking up undocumented immigrants are likely soon despite a flood of outrage at a huge operation last week that saw more than 600 Latino workers detained at poultry plants in Mississippi.

Donald Trump’s White House has ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to identify more targets across the country, according to a report by CNN. The network said the raids would be specifically aimed at workplaces, just like those in Mississippi.

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Trump blames ‘violent’ video games as El Paso death toll rises to 21 – live

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Trump has turned his attention away from the shootings if his Twitter feed is any indication.

The president has instead been busy attacking China for harming America’s economy and repeating the (false) claim that US consumers are not covering the cost of his trade war:

....used currency manipulation to steal our businesses and factories, hurt our jobs, depress our workers’ wages and harm our farmers’ prices. Not anymore!

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Cory Booker, has dismissed Trump’s statement on the shootings this morning as woefully lacking.

The New Jersey senator specifically cited Trump’s focus on mental illness in his remarks. “Mental illness didn’t kill the people of Dayton,” Booker said. “People are too easily getting their hands on guns.”

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Running dry: the water crisis driving migration to the US – podcast

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Nina Lakhani explores how drought and famine are fuelling the wave of migration from Central America to the US. Plus: Emma Graham-Harrison on China and the Hong Kong protests

Victor Funez walks to a cemetery in Nejapa, El Salvador, every day and fills a three-gallon plastic pitcher with water before trudging home. He repeats this several times a day – it’s his family’s only source of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani met him as part of an investigation into how a lack of access to clean water is a major driver of migration from Central America to the US.

She tells India Rakusen that rising sea levels are destroying coastal towns in Honduras and how drought and famine have prompted a mass exodus from Guatemala. In El Salvador, meanwhile, corporate interests, corruption and gangs worsen the problems caused by the lack of clean water.

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US border wall seesaws allow children on each side to play together – video

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The architect and anti-border wall campaigner Ronald Rael has installed three pink seesaws on the US-Mexico border to allow families on each side to ‘meaningfully connect’ with each other and highlight the bond between the two countries. Rael says the seesaws have turned the wall into a ‘literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations’

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Trump says agreement reached with Guatemala to restrict asylum seekers

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Immigrant rights advocates say the ‘safe third country’ agreement is cruel and unlawful, though it could still be blocked

Donald Trump announced Friday that Guatemala was signing an agreement to restrict asylum applications to the US, a move that immigrant rights advocates said was cruel and unlawful.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the US border.

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Supreme court allows Trump to use $2.5bn in Pentagon funds for border wall

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Move allows administration to redirect money despite lawmakers’ refusal to provide funding

The US supreme court cleared the way for Donald Trump to use billions in Pentagon funds to build a border wall.

The decision allows the Trump administration to redirect approximately $2.5bn approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.

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Fear, confusion, despair: the everyday cruelty of a border immigration court

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At a federal immigration court in El Paso asylum seekers wait in limbo as a result of Trump’s policies

Judge Sunita Mahtabfar, presiding over the El Paso immigration court in south-west Texas, kicked off the hearing by asking the 16 asylum seekers a question.

“Is anyone here afraid to return to Mexico?” she said.

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Ocasio-Cortez wants ‘9/11-style commission’ on family separations

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  • Democratic congresswoman hosts event in New York district
  • Tells crowd Trump ‘sent me back to Queens’ with racist attack

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate child separation on the border with Mexico on Saturday, and said the US government has a life-long responsibility to children it severed from their parents, to provide them with mental health support.

Related: Bieber thanks Trump over A$AP Rocky but urges: 'Let those kids out of cages'

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Trump administration to continue deporting Venezuelans despite crisis

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  • US as yet unwilling to grant temporary protected status
  • Senators accuse Trump of ‘having it both ways’ over Maduro

The Trump administration has said it is not yet willing to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans, meaning it will continue to deport people back to a country it says is being destroyed by a tyrant.

The news comes amid a humanitarian crisis that could forcibly displace as many as 8.2 million people by the end of 2020, and the same month that the United Nations accused the Venezuelan government of killing thousands of its own citizens.

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