No movement on the Homeland Spending Bill….
Pressure on Democratic lawmakers due the Trump admin effort to continue their efforts vacuum up those in American illegally and legally ….
Trump administration expands ICE authority to detain refugees
The Trump administration has given immigration officers broader powers to detain legal refugees awaiting a green card to ensure they are “re-vetted,” an apparent expansion of the president’s wide-ranging crackdown on legal and illegal immigration, according to a government memo.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a memo dated February 18 and submitted in a federal court filing, said refugees must return to government custody for “inspection and examination” a year after their admission into the United States.
“This detain-and-inspect requirement ensures that refugees are re-vetted after one year, aligns post-admission vetting with that applied to other applicants for admission, and promotes public safety,” the department said in the memo.
Under U.S. law , refugees must apply for lawful permanent resident status one year after their arrival in the country. The new memo authorizes immigration authorities to detain individuals for the duration of the re-inspection process.
The new policy is a shift from the earlier 2010 memorandum, which stated that failure to obtain lawful permanent resident status was not a “basis” for removal from the country and not a “proper basis” for detention….
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A U.S. judge in January temporarily blocked a recently announced Trump administration policy targeting the roughly 5,600 lawful refugees in Minnesota who are awaiting green cards.
In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis said federal agents likely violated multiple federal statutes by arresting some of these refugees to subject them to additional vetting….
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Judge throws out ruling backing Trump mass detention policy
A federal judge on Wednesday vacated an immigration court ruling giving the Trump administration board powers to detain migrants, forcing them to give bond hearings and then possibly release thousands in custody.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sunshine Sykes excoriated Trump administration claims they are targeting the worst of the worst for deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are at times relying on shaky legal ground to detain migrants, wrote Sykes, an appointeee of former President Biden, and migrants are therefore entitled to a bond hearing to determine whether they may pursue their immigration case outside of ICE detention.
“‘Worst of the worst’ is an inaccurate description of most of those affected by DHS and ICE’s operations. Perhaps in utilizing this extreme language DHS seeks to justify the magnitude and scope of its operations against non-criminal noncitizens. Maybe that phrase merely mirrors the severity and ill-natured conduct by the Government. Even though these press releases might contain an inkling of truth, they ignore a greater, more dire reality,” she wrote…
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Sykes’s ruling, however, clashes with a decision last week by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which split 2-1 in determining their detention practices were legal….
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DHS shutdown talks hit a wall as GOP fumes
Discussions between the White House and Democratic leaders on funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have hit a wall as administration officials publicly slammed the minority party for refusing to make concessions.
Ever since Democrats sent the White House legislative text of their demands to reform how the administration carries out immigration enforcement on Feb. 7, negotiators have largely kept mum the details of the proposals and counterproposals that followed in the hopes of reaching an agreement.
That began to change Tuesday when the White House slammed Democrats in a series of public comments, accusing them of not being willing to make concessions as the funding impasse nears a full week….
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The state of talks has frustrated Senate Republicans, who believe the shutdown will last at least through President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday. They also believe the address to Congress was a driving force for Democrats to insist on a two-week continuing resolution for DHS that expired on Feb. 13.
“[Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.)] not wanting to engage. Their whole game here is political theater. This is about them wanting to keep it shut down through the State of the Union,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), a top Senate GOP leadership ally, who added talks are “not going great” at present…..
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ICE Has Taken Over Democratic Primaries
….With the year’s first primaries less than a month away, party strategists said they’ve had to recalibrate some candidates’ entire political strategy, devising not just a new position about Immigration and Customs Enforcement but a broader message that excites a Democratic base hungrier than ever for leaders who promise to fight the Trump administration.
“Everything changed,” said Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston and a Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District primary on March 17. “And, of course, therefore the campaign changed. And the people of this community want to see someone who gets it, who understands the emergency that we’re in, that we need new tactics and new approaches and that we cannot have a business-as-usual approach to dealing with a crisis like this.”
Biss, who said he has supported abolishing ICE since the first Trump administration, said voters in his district changed after Trump’s immigration enforcement action in the Chicago-area late last year, which he described as a de facto occupation by a hostile armed force. But the wide distribution of videos showing the killing of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January affected primaries almost everywhere….
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The increase in attention is the latest turn in the Democratic Party’s long-running debate over immigration enforcement. The debate is again pushing the party to take a more confrontational stand against Trump after a year in which some of the party’s more centrist factions argued it needed to moderate on the issue to win back independent voters…
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The centrist Democratic think tank Third Way is urging Democratic candidates to not campaign with “abolish ICE,” calling the position confusing and unpopular. It’s a position the group has held for years, dating back to when “abolish ICE” briefly roiled the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
“There’s no reason that we need to introduce this confusing bumper sticker to this situation right now when we do have unanimity in what we’re calling for in terms of reforms and overhauling what the actions are that these folks are taking against American citizens and against other folks that are in the country,” said Lanae Erickson, the group’s senior vice president for social policy, education and politics.
She compared Democrats’ calls to abolish ICE to pleas in 2020 to defund the police. “It is such a clear parallel where a slogan that sounded pithy gets picked up by a handful of people and then pasted to every Democrat in America, and it turned something that was a real opportunity to address the real injustices and issues into a politically toxic conversation that hurt Democrats electorally,” Erickson said….
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