Homeland Spending Budget Update….
Senate Democrats who voted to end the fall government shutdown are staring down a difficult decision over whether to back a stopgap measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) past the Friday deadline.
Negotiators remain far apart on a long-term deal for funding DHS, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) indicated plans to move forward on a second continuing resolution (CR) to fund the department.
DHS is the only department that hasn’t received its full-year funding for fiscal 2026 after Democrats demanded it include reforms to immigration enforcement practices in the midst of a firestorm over the crackdown in Minneapolis.
Whether Democrats agree to a CR remains a major question, with members saying they need to see major steps toward a long-term deal before greenlighting a short-term fix.
“My first reaction is not only ‘no,’ but ‘hell no,’” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) about another funding patch before deciding to keep the door open. “But I’m going to leave open the possibility that there’s some real, honest negotiations going to take place. We’ll see.” ….
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A Look at Homeland dention center warehousing…
“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month,” she wrote. “They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added, “Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”
Dilley, run by private prison firm CoreCivic, is located some 72 miles south of San Antonio and nearly 2,000 miles away from Ariana’s home. It is a sprawling collection of trailers and dormitories, almost the same color as the dusty landscape, surrounded by a tall fence. It first opened during the Obama administration to hold an influx of families crossing the border. Former President Joe Biden stopped holding families there in 2021, arguing America shouldn’t be in the business of detaining children.
But quickly after returning to office, President Donald Trump resumed family detentions as part of his mass deportation campaign. Federal courts and overwhelming public outrage had put an end to Trump’s first-term policy of separating children from parents when immigrant families were detained crossing the border. Trump officials said Dilley was a place where immigrant families would be detained together.
As the second Trump administration’s crackdown both slowed border crossings to record lows and ramped up a blitz of immigration arrests all across the country, the population inside Dilley shifted. The administration began sending parents and children who had been living in the country long enough to lay down roots and to build networks of relatives, friends and supporters willing to speak up against their detention.
If the administration believed that putting children in Dilley wouldn’t stir the same outcry as separating them from their parents, it was mistaken. The photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Ecuador, who was detained with his father in Minneapolis while wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a blue bunny hat, went viral on social media and triggered widespread condemnation and a protest by the detainees…..
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Homeland using Google….
The US government has found a frighteningly efficient way to keep tabs on citizens who criticize the government: just demand their personal data from Google.
According to recent reporting from the Washington Post, a 67-year-old retiree sent a polite email to an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security urging mercy for an asylum seeker facing deportation to Afghanistan. The man, identified only as Jon, had read about the Afghani native’s case, and his fear that he would be persecuted should he ever return to his home country.
“Don’t play Russian roulette with [this man’s] life,” Jon told lead DHS prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, in the email. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.”
Five hours later, per WaPo, Jon received a response — not from Dernbach or the DHS, but from Google.
“Google has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account,” it read. The email advised Jon that the “legal process” was an administrative subpoena, issued by DHS. Soon, government agents would arrive at his home.
The subpoena wasn’t approved by any judge, and it didn’t require probable cause. Google gave Jon just seven days to challenge it in federal court — not nearly enough time for someone without a crack team of lawyers on retainer. Even more maddeningly, neither Google nor DHS had sent him a copy of the subpoena itself, leaving Jon and his attorney in the dark.
“How do you challenge a subpoena you don’t have a copy of?” an attorney Jon consulted, Judi Bernstein-Baker, told WaPo.
As DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the newspaper in a statement, the law grants the department “broad administrative subpoena authority,” meaning legal demands from DHS officials don’t need to pass independent review.
“There’s no oversight ahead of time, and there’s no ramifications for having abused [administrative subpoenas] after the fact,” Jennifer Granick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union — which is representing Jon pro bono — told WaPo. “As we are increasingly in a world where unmasking critics is important to the administration, this type of legal process is ripe for that kind of abuse.”…
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