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Also see: Travel ban; DACA;
deportation; wall;
Muslims; race; Myanmar-Rohingya; Undocumented laborers; Kirstjen Nielsen; Statue of Liberty; Emma Lazarus;
U. S. Immigration ideal pre-2017: "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door"
Emma Lazarus, 1883
Father: Fred Trump, born 1905 in NewYork,
inherited wealth from his
father. Mother: Mary Anne MacLeod,
born in Scotland; a maid
(therefore
inelligible under Trump
immigration
plans, since she should
not pass
Trump's "merit-based"
argument. Grandfather:
Freidrich Trump [Drumpf], born
in "Bavaria"; apprentice
barber, and
therefore may be
ineligible under
Trump's merit-basing
system; restaurant
operator in Alaska, said
to own a
brothel [see 2016 article
link below] and
should not have passed
Trump
merit-based immigration
system. Grandmother:
Elizabeth Christ Trump (no
occupation noted;
housewife)
Undated:Was Donald Trump’s Mother an Illegal Immigrant?
Though her citizenship status was apparently incorrectly documented in the 1940
United States census, no evidence suggests Donald Trump's mother was ever in
violation of any immigration laws prior to her naturalization in 1942.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trumps-mother-illegal-immigrant/
Will Melania Trump’s Parents Become American Citizens via a Method Donald
Trump Hates?
Most Americans know that First Lady
Melania Trump isn’t from the United States. Both she and her family hail
from Slovenia (which was a part of Yugoslavia during Melania’s childhood).
Melania’s parents have long spent time in the United States with the Trumps. But
rumor has it that Melania’s parents may become American citizens through an
immigration path that Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized and even sought to
end.
February 24, 2018
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/will-melania-trumps-parents-become-american-citizens.html/?a=viewall
Article about
Freidrich Trump/Drumpf:
[Vowing to turn away immigrants and run America like his own business empire ...
Donald Trump] has been less vocal about the root of his success: a chain of seedy
brothels and restaurants setup by his immigrant grandfather Friedrich Drumpf.
Born in Germany, Friedrich took a boat to New York City at the age of 16 in 1885
to join his older sister and find work [ineligible chain migration].
U.S. Immigration info:
Refugees undergo
more rigorous screenings than any other individuals the government allows in
the United States. [As of 2017] it remains an extremely
lengthy and rigorous process, which includes multiple background checks;
fingerprint tests; interviews; health screenings; and applications with multiple
intelligence, law enforcement and security agencies. The average length of time
it takes for the United Nations and the United States government to approve
refugee status is 18 to 24 months [as of 2016/2017].
The U.S. Social Security Administration estimated that in 2010 undocumented
immigrants—and their employers—paid
$13 billion in payroll taxes alone for benefits they will never get. They
can receive schooling and emergency medical care but not welfare or food stamps.
Under the
1996 welfare law, most government programs require
proof of documentation, and even immigrants with documents cannot receive
these benefits until they have been in the United States for more than five
years [as of 2016/2017].
TPS (Temporary Protected Status) is an
immigration status allowed by Federal law for certain countries experiencing dire
conditions, such as a natural disaster, epidemic or war, and protects
individuals from deportation and authorizes them to work in the US (as of 2017). -- 2009 --
Back to top April 6:Q:Do illegal immigrants cost
$338.3 billion dollars a year? More than the Iraq war?
Claim:
"More than 43 percent of all
food stamps are given to illegals"
... preposterous. In March 2012, the most recent month for which
figures are available, a total of 46.4 million people
received food stamps,
so 43 percent of that number would be slightly less than 20 million.
For obvious reasons, the numbers of illegal immigrants is much trickier to
track. However, the most widely accepted number comes from the Pew Hispanic
Center, which
estimated that there were 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the United
States in 2010.
This statement has accurate figures, but fails to acknowledge that an unknown
number of the releases--including nearly three in four of the individuals
convicted of murder--were not at the administration’s discretion. Also missing:
Most of the tallied convictions weren’t for violent offenses; each released
individual didn’t skip out on prison time connected to criminal convictions; and
most released individuals still faced deportation.
The Facts:
--Unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for most major federally-funded safety
net programs
--Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits
even though many contribute to the system
--There are some federal programs that serve those in need, regardless of
immigration status
--State and local governments disproportionately bear the burden of supporting
undocumented immigrants --Many unauthorized immigrants have dependent children
or a spouse who are citizens and who may qualify for public benefits
--Immigration enforcement activity reduces the degree to which undocumented
immigrants access benefits for their families.
September 1: In a major policy speech on
immigration, Donald Trump criticized the government’s approach to the
undocumented population, sayings the feds don’t even know the scope of the
problem.
"Honestly we've been hearing that number for years. It's always 11 million. Our
government has no idea. It could be 3 million. It could be 30 million," Trump
said. "They have no idea what the number is. There is "absolutely zero
possibility" for the number to be just 3 million or as many as 30 million,"
according to Robert Warren of the Center for Migration Studies, a nonpartisan
immigration policy think tank.
"There is strong evidence that the number is 11 million, with a plausible margin
of error of plus or minus 1 million," he said.
September 24: There were only 188,000
Mexicans apprehended at the border last year, compared with 1.6 million in 2000.
"It's harder to sneak in," says Jeffery Passel from the Pew Hispanic Center.
"The cost of hiring a smuggler has gone up, [and] the enforcement practices have
pushed a lot of people who were trying to sneak in into more remote areas, so it
is more dangerous physically."
http://theweek.com/articles/650402/truth-about-americas-illegal-immigrants -- 2017 --
Back to top Spring 2011/Updated 2017: With so much controversy around the issue of
immigrants who are undocumented, it’s easy to overlook the fact that most of the
foreign-born people living in the United States followed the rules and
have permission to be here. Of the more than 43 million foreign-born people
who were living in the United States in 2014, around 44 percent were
naturalized U.S. citizens. Those who were not naturalized were either lawful
permanent residents, also known as green-card holders (27
percent of all foreign-born people), or immigrants who were unauthorized
(some 11 million people, representing
25.5 percent of all foreign-born people).
http://www.tolerance.org/immigration-myths
February 16:... senior Trump aides are
holding fast to their goal of strengthening immigration enforcement, the
president’s chief campaign promise. They have examined at least two options that
would not directly involve Trump, according to two immigration policy advisors
to the White House: a lawsuit brought by states, and new legal guidance that
details who is a priority for deportation.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-daca-20170216-story.html
February 26: DHS's Kelly promises softer stance on immigration,
travel ban
March 4: A federal judge in Seattle is giving the Justice Department two
more weeks to respond to a lawsuit regarding President Trump’s travel ban
executive order, the Associated
Press reported Saturday.
The suit alleges that the president’s Jan. 27 executive order is
barring legal residents from reuniting with their children, who have been halted
from coming to the U.S. The plaintiffs in the suit are seeking to make the
filing a class-action lawsuit.
District Court Judge
James Robart, the federal judge who blocked a major part of Trump’s
executive action last month, granted Trump’s Justice Department extra time to
respond, because the administration is planning to rescind the previous travel
ban and issue a new one that it says can stand legal muster.
March 6: President Trump's restrictiveimmigration policies are a mistake, say the vast majority of economists at
America's major corporations.
The National Association of Business Economics (NABE) surveyed 285 economists at
America's big companies like Wells Fargo (WFC),
AT&T (T)
and FedEx (FDX)
shortly after Trump took office.
March 7: Here's how the travel ban could affect your health
President Trump has made it clear that health
care and immigration reform are both big priorities for his administration.
But have you ever considered where these two huge issues intersect?
March 10: Congress needs to pass legislation that grants
American citizenship to undocumented immigrants who came to the US as
children, a Republican lawmaker said Friday.
March 15: Hours after a federal judge in
Hawaii issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against President Trump's
travel ban, U.S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang, in Maryland, issued a
nationwide preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the 90-day ban
against travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Chuang's
order denies the plaintiffs' request to block other parts of Trump's March 6
executive order, including the temporary ban on refugees.
April 12: President Donald Trump has appointed two hard-line
opponents of illegal immigration, who have held leadership posts at two
organizations labeled as hate groups, to high-level advisory jobs at federal
immigration agencies in the Department of Homeland Security
http://politicaldig.com/revealed-trump-immigration-advisers-linked-hate-groups/
April 18:Buy American and Hire
American: Putting American Workers First
On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed the
Buy American and Hire American Executive Order, which seeks to create higher
wages and employment rates for U.S. workers and to protect their economic
interests by rigorously enforcing and administering our immigration laws. It
also directs DHS, in coordination with other agencies, to advance policies to
help ensure H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid
beneficiaries.
USCIS is working on a combination of rulemaking, policy memoranda, and
operational changes to implement the Buy American and Hire American Executive
Order. We are creating and carrying out these initiatives to protect the
economic interests of U.S. workers and prevent fraud and abuse within the
immigration system.
https://www.uscis.gov/legal-resources/buy-american-hire-american-putting-american-workers-first
April 25: "Amid overall declining
unauthorized inflows, the Obama administration prioritized putting more people
in formal removal proceedings rather than permitting voluntary return, which
increases the range of punishments for those seeking to re-enter illegally," ...
"And during the Obama administration, as occurred with prior administrations,
sizable new border enforcement resources were provided by Congress."
May (undated): While illegal
immigration served as a flashpoint in the tumultuous campaign to succeed Obama,
there has been
little change in the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.
since 2009.
May 11: While conservatives did challenge
many of former President
Barack Obama’s policies on immigration and healthcare, experts say
the sheer number of lawsuits Trump is facing — and the success they are having
so far — is what’s unprecedented. ... Some experts say the pace of litigation
against the administration is the result of Trump’s heavy use of executive
orders. ... “The Democratic Party and their constituents have decided their
byword is going to be ‘resist,’ ” he [John Malcolm, director of the
[conservative think tank] Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal
and Judicial Studies] said. “No matter what the president proposes, they will do
everything they can to thwart him, including resorting to the courts.” [Of
course, this is not how Democrats see their efforts ... they're not talking
anger as much as unhappiness with Trump, his attitudes, behaviors, antagonism
towards the rule of law, etc.]
http://thehill.com/regulation/332858-lawsuits-piling-up-against-trump
May 20: What the Spike in Immigration
Arrests Might Mean for Detention Centers
With the nation’s courts backlogged, undocumented immigrants may be detained
longer than usual.
The results of his [Trump's] crackdown on unauthorized immigrants are becoming
clear: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland
Security’s enforcement arm, announced Wednesday that immigration arrests
increased by nearly 40 percent compared to the same period last year.
With removal proceedings moving at a glacial pace, deportations have actually
dipped by 12 percent this year—while more undocumented immigrants are being
arrested, fewer are actually being removed. Detainees, therefore, continue to be
held in facilities across the country—facilities which may soon be overwhelmed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/ice-arrests-increase-nearly-forty-percent/527427/
June 22: President
Donald Trump proposed Wednesday night reforming the welfare system by
putting into law a statute that has been the law of the land since 1996.
With a few exceptions, new immigrants already cannot access welfare programs
during their first five years in the US, per a 1996 welfare reform law signed by
President Bill Clinton.
Several categories of legal
immigrants are exempt from the five-year ban on accessing government welfare
programs, including children, refugees and veterans of the US military.
June 28: Immigrant Health-Care Workers in the United States
With health-care reform high on the legislative agenda and the implications of
immigration policy changes on particular populations in the news, the role of
the foreign born in medical occupations has become a topic of intense interest.
Immigrants represent a significant slice of this labor force, comprising almost
17 percent of the 12.4 million people in the United States working as doctors,
nurses, dentists, and in other health-care occupations in 2015.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigrant-health-care-workers-united-states
June 28:
President Donald Trump met at the White House with the victims of crimes
perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security
championed increased arrests, and the Department of Justice called for the
passage of a law that would up the penalties for undocumented immigrants who
attempt to reenter the country.
The day’s events meshed well with Trump's campaign rhetoric that illegal
immigration was a public safety issue, with criminals “roaming free to threaten
peaceful citizens,”
as he put it in one campaign speech.
There’s one catch: There's no evidence that undocumented immigrants commit
more crime.
The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. tripled between the 1990s and
2013, while violent crime declined 48% and property crime fell 41% over that
period.
July 31: An inspector general put a major dent Monday in President
Trump’s call
for 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 new deportation officers,
releasing a report saying the administration can’t begin to justify that
exceptional level of hiring.
Given the stringent standards and hiring rates, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection would have to receive a staggering 750,000 applications in order to
find 5,000 Border Patrol agents.
August 2:
Trump backs plan that would curb legal immigration ...
President Donald Trump threw his support Wednesday behind legislation
that looks to curb the level of legal immigration into the United States by
proposing a skills-based immigration system.
August 2:
Trump cast the proposal [to curb immigration] as a way to protect American
workers by reducing unskilled immigration ... "It has not been fair to our
people, to our citizens, to our workers," Trump said of the current immigration
system, specifically citing low-income and minority workers.
August 25: President Trump on Friday
pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff whose aggressive efforts to hunt
down and detain undocumented immigrants made him a national symbol of the
divisive politics of immigration and earned him a
criminal contempt conviction.
In a two-paragraph statement, the White House said that Mr. Arpaio gave “years
of admirable service to our nation” and called him a “worthy candidate for a
presidential pardon.”
August 26: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
blasted President Donald Trump's decision to pardon a former Arizona sheriff who
was accused of racially profiling Latinos.
August 26: 'A middle finger to America':
What people are saying about Trump's first presidential pardon ... President
Donald Trump's
pardon
of former Maricopa C0unty, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio received some mixed
reactions on Friday night, but lawmakers and civil-rights advocates largely
condemned the move.
Jeff Flake, the junior Arizona senator, said Trump should have let "the judicial
process ... take its course."
August 26: On the heels of Trump’s
controversial decision to pardon former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who
was convicted of criminal contempt, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates
issued a response that instantly went viral.
August 31:
The Trump administration is looking at whether the state attorneys general who
are pushing for a decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
would be willing to extend their deadline of September 5 for action from Trump,
according to two sources familiar with the matter ...
Hill sources say they don't expect a DACA fix to emerge right away when Congress
reconvenes next month, even if Trump scraps the program immediately before they
return.
https://dreamact.info/forum/showthread.php?t=77888
September 4: What is Daca and who are
the Dreamers? ... The Trump administration
announced last week that it planned to scrap Daca, the program that gives
temporary protection to undocumented migrants who arrived in the US as children.
October 4:
Acceding to a controversial pardon from President Donald Trump, a federal judge
has dismissed the criminal contempt of court case against former Arizona Sheriff
Joe Arpaio for defying a court order to stop profiling Latinos, multiple local
news reports said.
October 4: Trump, a Republican who has
promised to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, has praised Arpaio’s
crackdown on illegal immigrants in Maricopa County, Arizona, that drew
condemnation from civil rights groups.
October 17: The administration’s top
immigration enforcement official on Tuesday said his agency will vastly step up
crackdowns on employers who hire undocumented immigrants — a new front in
President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
http://www.newsverifier.com/ice-pledges-crackdown-on-employers/
October 17: A federal judge in Hawaii
has
blocked President Donald Trump's
revised travel ban one day before it was set to take effect. Judge Derrick
Watson said the travel ban -- Trump's third version of the policy -- "plainly
discriminates based on nationality." ... Tuesday's ruling does not impact the
restrictions on North Korea and Venezuela.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/17/politics/travel-ban-3-0-blocked/index.html
October 18: Trump's latest travel ban
blocked by second federal judge
US President Donald Trump's latest attempt to bar citizens of eight countries
from entering the US has suffered a second federal court defeat.
Judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued separate temporary restraining orders on
the open-ended travel ban.
Both judges cited Mr Trump's campaign description of it as a "Muslim ban".
The policy targets travellers from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and
North Korea, as well as some Venezuelan officials.
November 3: Detained 10-year-old girl with
cerebral palsy released from custody in Texas
The undocumented girl, brought to Texas from Mexico as a baby, spent nine days
in custody after border patrol officers followed her to a children’s hospital
Rosa Maria Hernandez left a shelter for unaccompanied minors in San Antonio on
Friday, nine days after she was taken there. After she had passed through an
interior checkpoint, officers had followed her to a children’s hospital in
Corpus Christi, waited outside her room and arrested her once she had recovered
from a gall bladder operation.
Soon after the Democratic US representative for San Antonio, Joaquin Castro,
tweeted that the Department of Health and Human Services and the contractor that
runs the shelter, BCFS, “are refusing to let me meet with Rosa Maria”, she was
released pending a decision on whether the deportation process against her would
continue.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/03/10-year-old-girl-deportation-texas-border-patrol-released
November 9: On Monday, as the Department of
Homeland Security prepared to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands
of Hondurans living in the United States, White House Chief of Staff John F.
Kelly called acting secretary Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them,
according to current and former administration officials.
November 9: "It is perfectly normal for
members of the White House team to weigh in on major decisions. The acting
secretary took input from the White House and other sources on the path forward
for TPS and made her decision based on the law. As former Secretary Kelly had
made a major TPS decision in May, acting Secretary Duke called him to discuss
his TPS decision-making process. During that call, now-chief of staff Kelly
reminded her that the TPS decision was hers alone to make as the acting
secretary." [per DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton]
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/politics/elaine-duke-hondurous-immigrants/index.html
November 9: The United States will end in
January 2019 a special status given to 5,300 Nicaraguan immigrants that protects
them from deportation, senior Trump administration officials said on Monday.
They also said the program known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, would be
extended until July 2018 for about 86,000 Honduran immigrants, but added it
could then be terminated.
The decision to end TPS for Nicaraguans is part of President Donald Trump's
broader efforts to tighten restrictions on immigration.Hundreds of thousands of
illegal immigrants from across Central America live and work in the United
States, but some are protected from the threat of deportation under the TPS
program.
Thousands from both Nicaragua and Honduras were given the special status in 1999
after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America. In all, TPS protects more than
300,000 people from nine countries living in the United States.
November 28: President Donald Trump hired
hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants to demolish a New York City
building in 1980 and paid them as little as $4 an hour without providing proper
safety equipment to do the job, court documents show.
The workers and their contractor, William Kaszycki of Kaszycki & Sons, sued
Trump for unfair labor practices in 1983. After litigation dragged on for 15
years, Trump ultimately paid $1.375 million to settle the case.
December 5: ICE deportation arrests soar
under Trump administration, drop in border arrests
The numbers released by the government Tuesday show that deportation officers
are taking Trump's call for an immigration crackdown to heart.
The federal government, in the most complete statistical snapshot of immigration
enforcement under President Donald Trump, say arrests by deportation officers
soared while Border Patrol arrests have plunged to a 45-year low.
December 24: A federal judge in Seattle has
lifted a ban on certain refugees with close U.S. ties that had been ordered by
President Donald Trump's administration.
U.S. District Judge James Robart on December 23 ruled in favor of the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Jewish Family Service (JFS) after they
argued the policy prevented people from some Muslim-majority countries from
reuniting with family living legally in the United States.
Under chain migration, relatives of immigrants with legal status receive
preferential treatment, and the diversity visa lottery program, which provides
visas to people from countries that have relatively few immigrants in the United
States.
January 8: The Trump administration
announced Monday that it will terminate the provisional residency permits of
about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the country since at least 2001,
leaving them to face deportation.
January 10: Federal immigration agents
stormed into nearly 100 7-Eleven stores nationwide in an unprecedented search
for undocumented workers under President Donald Trump, the Associated Press
reported on Wednesday.
And Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it is only getting started.
“This is what we’re gearing up for this year, and what you’re going to see more
and more of is these large-scale compliance inspections, just for starters,” Derek
Benner, acting executive associate director for ICE’s Homeland Security
Investigations, told the AP. “It’s not going to be limited to large companies or
any particular industry, big medium and small. It’s going to be inclusive of
everything that we see out there.”
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice-raids-7-eleven-management-777220
January 12: International organisations
including the UN and African Union, politicians and other Africans and
Caribbeans are outraged over US President
Donald Trump's
latest racist remarks.
The president criticised immigration to his country from
El Salvador,
Haiti and the African continent, by calling the group "shithole countries",
according to the US media.
"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Trump
asked at a meeting with congress members at the White House, reports said on
Thursday, citing people with knowledge on the conversation.
January 17: ICE's
7-Eleven Raids Won't Get Rid of Undocumented Workers. They'll Only Make Them
Less Visible ... Recent ICE raids could push undocumented immigrant laborers to
find less formal means of employment.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/ice-7-eleven-raids
January 24: They spoke out against
immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors
January 30: Trump claimed that the diversity visa lottery and family-based
migration made recent terrorist attacks in New York City possible, saying "these
programs present risks we can no longer afford" and that the diversity lottery
is "a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill,
merit, or the safety of our people."
But the statements are misleading and false, respectively.
February 4: Top labor boss says Trump is
right about broken immigration system, but wrong about fix
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, has joined other labor groups in
pushing for legal status for undocumented workers and an overhaul of legal
immigration.
I agree with him [Trump] on one thing: The immigration system in the country is
broken and needs to be fixed. We have a long-term fix and a short-term fix. The
first thing we have to fix is DACA and [Temporary Protected Status recipients]
because of what’s about to happen. But trying to create a "merit-based system"
that splits up families and gives more control to employers isn't going to fix
the system, it's going to make it worse.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/top-labor-boss-says-trump-right-about-u-s-broken-n844191
February 5: Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Scott Pruitt told an Oklahoma radio show in 2016 he believed
then-candidate Donald Trump was an “empty vessel” on the Constitution and the
rule of law.
The comment, which came during a White House meeting on the violent MS-13 gang,
was not well received in the room. Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican
who represents a district with thousands of federal workers, confronted Trump
about the remark and urged him to avoid another government shutdown.
February 6: Trump's cruel quest to rid
America of foreign-born workers
President Trump insists that the changes to immigration law he's proposing in
exchange for protecting DREAMers — a nickname for those illegally brought to
America as children — would make our country's immigration system, like
Canada's, more merit-based.
February 9: United States president Donald
Trump's immigration framework will end the diversity lottery visa to help reduce
green card backlog of high-skilled workers, the White House said on Friday amid
growing demands by Indian H-1B visa holders to remove the per country-limit on
its allotment.
February 9: Another Trump Staffer Resigns
Following Domestic Violence Accusations
White House speechwriter David Sorenson quit his job today after his ex-wife
Jessica Corbett accused Sorenson being emotionally abusive and violent during
their two-year marriage. Sorenson worked under senior policy advisor Stephen
Miller, and was previously a top policy advisor to Maine Gov. Paul LePage.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/another-trump-staffer-resigns-after-domestic-violence-claims.html
February 12: If it were up to Trump, these
U.S. Olympians wouldn’t have made history
February 14: President Trump rejects
bipartisan immigration efforts, compounding Senate bills on DACA
... the president’s demand that Republicans heed his criteria for any
legislation he would sign, including dramatic cuts in legal immigration, created
new doubts about whether the Senate could reach consensus.
February 16: Trump’s attempt to cast blame
on Democrats comes amid the Senate’s failure this week to pass four different
pieces of immigration legislation, including a
highly contested, hardline immigration bill embraced by Trump that received
only 39 votes and had no chance of passing. Despite having once proclaimed that
he would sign any immigration bill that landed on his desk, Trump came out
against a bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that many viewed as
the Senate’s best shot to shield Dreamers from deportation.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/02/trump-who-singlehandedly-ended-daca-says-democrats-have-abandoned-dreamers/
February 23: “The Snake”: Donald Trump
brings back his favorite anti-immigrant fable at CPAC
February 22: Trump threatens to pull
immigration agents out of California due to ‘sanctuary’ status
President Trump voiced frustration Thursday with California’s status as a
statewide sanctuary for illegal immigrants, including gang members, and said
he’s considering pulling federal immigration enforcement agents out of the state
as a response.
February 28: Since Sunday, federal immigration
agents in Northern California have arrested over 150 people alleged to have
violated immigration laws, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said
Tuesday. Half of them had criminal convictions, according to the agency.
In the same statement announcing the arrests, the ICE Deputy Director Thomas
D. Homan also lashed out at Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who had publicly
warned of the impending ICE operations the day before it began.
Undated:Was Donald Trump’s Mother an Illegal Immigrant?
Though her citizenship status was apparently incorrectly documented in the 1940
United States census, no evidence suggests Donald Trump's mother was ever in
violation of any immigration laws prior to her naturalization in 1942.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trumps-mother-illegal-immigrant/
March 8: International Women’s Day: Exposing
the Plight of Women in Immigration Detention
The mother and her two daughters who live here could disappear in minutes if
needed.
They're on the run from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"It was about a year ago," says one of the girls. "It was a regular day. My dad
dropped us off at school like usual." They wished him good luck, because on that
day, he was heading to a residency appointment with ICE.
It was a couple of months into the Trump administration and, despite
trepidation, there were few examples of nonviolent, nonfelon offenders being
deported.
So the girls said farewell to their father, expecting he'd pick them up after
school.
April 7: What Happened When Bush, Obama Sent
Troops to Mexico Border
Since he launched his run for president, Donald Trump has said things about
immigrants and the U.S.-Mexico border that no other U.S. president has. But now
he's reached directly into his predecessors' playbook by sending in the National
Guard.
When former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama deployed the Guard to the
border in 2006 and 2010, they were pushing Congress to pass wide-ranging
overhauls of immigration policy. Both overhauls failed. A 2011 government review
estimated the Bush and Obama deployments cost at least $1.3 billion.
Trump is also trying to reshape immigration law. But Congress so far has funded
a fraction of the border wall he promised during his campaign, so the president
said this week he wants 2,000 to 4,000 Guard troops on the frontier until the
wall goes up. Trump called the deployments crucial to helping the U.S. Border
Patrol, which after a drop-off last year has returned to apprehending about as
many people as it typically does.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/texas/articles/2018-04-07/what-happened-when-bush-obama-sent-troops-to-mexico-border
April 12: ICE raided a meatpacking plant.
More than 500 kids missed school the next day
Some of the students who didn't show up weren't directly affected by the raid,
said Stephanie Teatro, co-executive director of the Tennessee Refugee &
Immigrant Rights Coalition.
May 10:A few
days ago, after an arduous journey lasting several weeks, around 200 Central
Americans arrived at the end of their journey in Tijuana, on the border with the
USA, and prepared to ask for asylum.
The hundreds of asylum-seekers in the caravan who travelled across Mexico to
seek refuge in the USA represent a tiny fraction of the total number of
asylum-seekers in the USA. However, President Trump cited the caravan as the
reason for deploying the National Guard on the border with Mexico.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/americas-faces-of-the-migrant-caravan/
May 11: President Donald Trump unloaded on
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a heated cabinet meeting this
week, railing against her for failing to stop illegal border crossings.
Trump, who has growing increasingly frustrated by a spike in apprehensions at
the border and other legal setbacks, blamed Nielsen Wednesday for failing to do
enough to stop them, according to people familiar with the exchange.
May 11: Advisers
bad-mouth Nielsen as a ‘never Trumper’
The president, who demands the loyalty of his aides, is increasingly
disenchanted with his homeland security chief.
She’s the latest senior administration official to bear the brunt of the
president’s obsession with keeping “never Trump” Republicans out of his
administration, a preoccupation that hobbled efforts to recruit appointees to
the State Department and National Security Council early in Trump’s presidency
because of the number of experienced George W. Bush administration alumni who
signed letters opposing him during the campaign.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/11/kirstjen-nielsen-never-trumper-white-house-loyalty-583914
May 16: More Republicans sign DACA petition
after Ryan says not to behind closed doors
A group of moderate Republicans are backing a plan to bypass GOP leaders by
forcing a floor vote on four competing bills to preserve the Obama-era DACA
program, which protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as
children. Trump has decided to end the program, though it's currently tied up in
the courts.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/paul-ryan-house-daca/index.html
May 17: An immigration-overhaul advocacy
group backed by the influential Koch brothers is sending out a series of
political mailers aimed at backing pro-immigration members of Congress --
including a handful of Democrats.
The billionaire Koch brothers are some of the most prolific political donors,
and they traditionally back politically conservative causes and candidates.
May 18: The House of Representatives failed
to pass a massive farm bill Friday as Republicans were unable to shore up
support from their conservative members amid an ongoing party-wide fight on
immigration, rebuking GOP House leaders' who had predicted it would pass just
minutes before.
The conservative-driven bill -- which included the work requirements that Ryan
has coveted and pushed for -- was, at least for now, dead, sunk not because of
its actual content, but because of immigration, an issue that has roiled the
Republican Party for years.
May 20: Oakland mayor fires back at Trump:
'I am not obstructing justice'
In February, Schaaf issued a public
warning for the immigrant communities in her city about impending raids by
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the San Francisco Bay
Area, a move that earned her heavy criticism from the Trump administration.
"I wanted to make sure that people were prepared, not panicked, and that they
understood their legal rights," Schaaf wrote Friday of her decision back in
February.
Schaaf said as mayor, it's her "duty to protect my residents — especially when
our most vulnerable are unjustly attacked."
May 20: The New Mexico Democrat is hoping to
take that message to a new platform next year, leaving Congress to run to be
governor of her border state, where a win would position her to square off
directly with Trump on everything from National Guard deployments on the border
to his policies affecting legal and illegal immigration.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/20/politics/michelle-lujan-grisham-new-mexico-trump/index.html
May 22: President Donald Trump wrongly
blamed Democrats for a Trump administration policy that will separate parents
and their young children caught entering the U.S. illegally.
“We have to break up families,” Trump claimed, because of “bad laws that the
Democrats gave us.” But there is no such law. Instead, it’s the administration’s
decision to criminally prosecute all immigrants who cross the border illegally
that will cause children to be separated from their parents.
In early May, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
directed her department to refer all unauthorized immigrants who cross the
U.S. border to federal prosecutors. It’s in accordance with the Department of
Justice’s new “zero
tolerance” policy on illegal immigration at the Southwest border.
Parents would be sent to federal court under the custody of the U.S. Marshals
Service and then placed in a detention center, according to a DHS spokesperson.
Their children, minors who cannot be housed in a detention center for adults,
would be transferred to
the Department of Health and Human Services for placement in a juvenile facility
or foster care if they have no other adult relative in the U.S. who can take
them in.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/trump-blames-own-border-policy-on-democrats/
May 22: Facing dozens of migrants shackled
at their waist and ankles, public defender Miguel "Andy" Nogueras asked a
question he had rarely asked before last week: Have you been separated from your
children?
Last Thursday, a Central American woman was among several in the courthouse here
who said yes.
Nogueras asked how old her child is so that he could refer her to one of his
attorneys, and the answer haunted him for the rest of the day.
"Five years old," Nogueras told NBC News. "What kind of scars are we creating?
The child has to be asking, where's my mom? And that kid has to be scared. I
can't even fathom."
May 24: In Rio Bravo, Texas, a Border Patrol
officer shot an undocumented immigrant in the head Wednesday, killing her. Video
of the aftermath of the killing shows Border Patrol agents sealing off the scene
and detaining at least two people. The agents claim the officer fired in
self-defense after officers were attacked by “blunt objects.” An analysis by The
Guardian newspaper found that Customs and Border Patrol officers were involved
in nearly 100 “fatal encounters” since 2003, with the U.S. paying out more than
$60 million to settle lawsuits alleging wrongful death and other illegal
behavior by border guards.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/24/headlines/texas_border_patrol_agent_shoots_and_kills_undocumented_immigrant
May 24: The Trump administration has tapped
immigration hard-liner Ronald Mortensen to be the assistant secretary of state
for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
May 25: Trump’s Crackdown On Immigrant
Parents Puts More Kids In An Already Strained System
Until recently, families that illegally crossed
together generally faced deportation proceedings in civil court. But as of this
month, the Trump administration is
following a blanket policy of referring for prosecution all people who cross
illegally. The change means that
authorities send parents to jails run by the U.S. Marshals Services and their
children wind up in the same agency as minors who came to the U.S. without their
parents ― sometimes without their parents being able to locate them.
May 26: Trump criticizes separating families
at the border, despite his administration's support for policy that could lead
to separation
"Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children
from there (sic) parents ..."
This isn't the first time that the President has cast blame on Democrats for
policy that results in the separation of parents and children at the border.
May 26: President Trump on Saturday called
on Democrats to end a “horrible law” that he says separates children from their
parents when they cross the border -- and also accused them of “protecting MS-13
thugs.”
“Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children
from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S.” he tweeted.
May 27: The Office of Refugee Resettlement,
a federal agency tasked with placing thousands of immigrant children in sponsor
homes, reportedly lost track of 1,500 kids in the last three months of 2017.
The agency goes through a series of background checks of the sponsor before
transferring the child to ensure the child is safe from human traffickers and
smugglers, Wagner said.
May 31: Immigrants helped found more than
half of the U.S.'s 87 startup companies valued at more than a billion dollars in
2016, according to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy, with
the 11 biggest of those companies employing more than 17,000 people. The Trump administration
recently proposed to cancel an Obama-era visa aimed at helping foreign
entrepreneurs start new businesses in the U.S. The president and other advocates
for cutting immigration levels argue that immigrants are taking jobs from U.S.
workers, but in many instances, immigrants not only contribute to the U.S.
economy, but create more jobs for Americans.
https://www.axios.com/immigrant-founders-billion-dollar-companies-15277776-206bb073-2f74-4c14-94c9-841e4d12b1ed.html
June 5: ICE raids Ohio lawn and garden
business, arrests 114 ... as part of the Trump administration's growing
crackdown on employers suspected of hiring illegal immigrants.
June 8: Teenager from Iowa killed after ICE
returns him to Mexico
Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco came to America as a little boy and had a full life
in Des Moines, Iowa, his mother said. He had acquired
DACA status, attended high school and had family -- three siblings and a
1-year-old son, she said.
June 11:Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
issued this statement after the Trump Administration overturned precedent to
raise virtually insurmountable hurdles for domestic violence victims to seek
asylum in the United States after fleeing countries that do not protect women
from violence:
“The Trump Administration’s inhumanity and heartlessness know no bounds.
Republicans in the White House have just condemned countless vulnerable,
innocent women to a lifetime of violence and even death, just to score political
points with their base. This act of staggering cruelty insults our nation’s
values and our proud history as a land of hope and freedom for those fleeing
pain and persecution at home.
https://pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/pelosi-statement-on-trump-administration-ending-asylum-for-victims-of-domestic
June 17: Lock Kids Up – Trump’s Border
“Solution” for Prison Profits
There is no end in sight on Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy. Trump wants to use
the pain of these children as a way to negotiate for his “big, beautiful wall”,
which nobody wants to pay for. Speaker Ryan has an alternate proposal, which
involves incarcerating the entire family and then deporting them together.
Democratic members of Congress continue to press for a comprehensive immigration
plan, with an end to family separation, and a path to citizenship for DACA
recipients and others.
http://www.coloradopols.com/diary/109331/internment-camps-for-children-americas-choice#sthash.hn6ycCvE.dpbs
June 18: "In wire-mesh, chain linked cages
that are about 30x30, a lot of young folks put into them. I must say though, far
fewer than I was here two weeks ago.
"I was told that buses full (of children) were taken away before I arrived. That
was one of my concerns, that essentially, when you have to give lengthy notice,
you end up with a little bit of a show rather than seeing what's really going on
in these centers."
https://www.ksat.com/news/video-inside-cpb-s-processing-detention-center-in-mcallen
June 18: Chain link fences, mattresses on
the floor and families queuing to be processed — and oftentimes separated. These
are the photos of the processing detention center in McAllen, Texas, that the
Customs and Border Protection agency wants you to see.
June 18: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defended the Trump
administration's enforcement of its "zero tolerance" policy, despite widespread
outcry over treatment of children at the nation's border. Under the current
policy, anyone suspected of crossing the border illegally faces criminal
prosecution. Children traveling with adults are separated from their families
and taken into U.S. custody. U.S. protocol prohibits detaining children with
their parents because the children are not charged with a crime while the
parents are.
"Surely it is the beginning of the unraveling of democracy when the body that
makes the laws rather than change them asks the body that enforces them not to
enforce the law, that cannot be the answer," she said.
Nielsen added, "Illegal actions have and must have consequences, no more free
passes, no more get out of jail free cards. In communities every day, if you
commit a crime police will take you to jail regardless of whether you have a
family."
"We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this
country as a family unit are in fact a family," said Nielsen.
June 18: If President Trump’s new
“zero-tolerance” policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at
the border was intended to pressure Democrats, it is backfiring badly—among
Democrats, as expected, but among Republicans as well. Rupert Murdoch’s New York
Post, whose editorial page consistently backs the president,
wrote on Sunday that
“It’s not just that this looks terrible in the eyes of the world. It is
terrible.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/18/trumps-zero-tolerance-immigration-policy-puts-republicans-in-jeopardy/
June 18: Two-thirds of Americans disapprove
of the Trump administration's practice of taking undocumented immigrant children
from their families and putting them in government facilities on US borders,
according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Only 28% approve.
Those detained and separated from their families include people with little or
no criminal record who have lived in the US for years, such as Pablo
Villavicencio, a pizza deliveryman
arrested for being in the country illegally after he took food to a Brooklyn
military base.
In earlier years, ICE would have released many of these people on bond soon
after their arrest, allowing them to live with their families while awaiting
legal proceedings that can take years, Reuters reported.
June 20: In 2008, President George W. Bush
signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act into law, which
required unaccompanied minors from non-neighboring countries (all countries
except Mexico and Canada) to be turned over the Department of Health and Human
Services for resettlement within three days.
June 25: Parents who cross illegally from
Mexico to the United States with their children will not face prosecution for
the time being because the government is running short of space to house them,
officials said on Monday.
June 26: Trump immigration: Cost of migrant
detention v alternatives
Donald Trump has signed an executive order stopping family separation, but his
administration still plans to put families into detention if they try to cross
the border illegally.
July 1:Police
report assaults in Oregon on day of nationwide protests against Trump
immigration policy -- Officers were searching for weapons and handcuffed
at least two people.
July 3: In the face of nationwide protests
against his immigration policies over the weekend, President Trump
deployed his standard countermove: making false claims about his war on
MS-13. “I have watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of MS-13 & clean out
the toughest of situations,” Trump
tweeted.
“They are great!”
Trump’s vivid assertions about the Salvadoran-American gang have kept
fact-checkers busy. He
blamed the
Obama administration for having “allowed bad MS-13 gangs to form in cities
across U.S.” and then claimed that within a matter of months his administration
had deported
half of the gang’s members. His administration
described MS-13 as one of the most brutal gangs driving the international
drug trade, and this spring Trump
credited ICE with driving the gang’s members out of the country “by the
thousands.”
MS-13 uses particularly vicious tactics, but otherwise almost nothing in
preceding paragraph is true. To be sure, the gang is terrorizing a handful of
towns — located in areas like Long Island, New York; Montgomery County,
Maryland; Fairfax County, Virginia — largely targeting their own immigrant
communities. But the gang became a national focus primarily because Trump
promoted reports of grisly murders as proof that America desperately needs his
harsh immigration policies.
July 19: Trump's immigration policies were
supposed to make the border safer. Experts say the opposite is happening.
President Donald Trump has said that he wants immigration policy that secures
the border. But his aggressive policy has instead resulted in organized crime
groups preying on droves of desperate asylum seekers who have been turned away
by US authorities, according to people familiar with the smuggling operations.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/19/americas/trump-migration-border-smuggling/index.html
July 29: President Donald Trump threatened
to push the government into shutdown ahead of the coming appropriations deadline
in September if Congress does not fund his border wall and change the nation's
immigration laws.
"I would be willing to 'shut down' government if the Democrats do not give us
the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery,
Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We
need great people coming into our Country!" Trump tweeted Sunday.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/29/politics/donald-trump-shutdown-wall/index.html
September 2: Mollie Tibbetts disappeared
during an evening jog in Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18. After her body was
discovered last month, authorities identified the
suspect in her killing as an undocumented immigrant.
September 7: In the battle for control of
Congress, President Donald Trump's weapon of choice is fear.
At a rally for Republican Senate nominee Matt Rosendale in Billings, Montana, on
Thursday night, the president warned his faithful that Democrats would raise
their taxes, take their guns, block his wall, abolish the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency, open U.S. borders, end Social Security and cut
Medicare.
He's also warned supporters this summer that the outcome in November could spell
trouble for freedom of speech and religion and the First Amendment — and that if
the GOP loses, violence could follow.
September 17: While Pompeo said the U.S.
remains the most generous nation to refugees, the proposal was met with swift
outrage from refugee resettlement agencies and human rights groups like Church
World Service and Refugees International, calling it "appalling," "an affront to
American communities," and "a shameful abdication of our humanity in the face of
the worst refugee crisis in history."
By comparison, 53,716 refugees were admitted in the 2017 fiscal year, which
included nearly four months under President Obama until President Trump was
inaugurated on January 20, 2017. Obama had initially set a cap of 110,000
refugees, but once in office, Trump banned refugee admissions for 120 days and
then set a new cap of 50,000 refugees.
September 18: Despite Dangers, Intimidation,
Guatemalans Still Seek A Better Life In U.S.
Despite the Trump administration's immigration clampdown,
newly released
data show the number of Central American families and unaccompanied children
crossing the Southwest border illegally has risen sharply.
September 18: Trump has ... started to brag
about the number of people coming off food stamps, as shorthand for people
getting back to work and out of poverty. But
experts say the decline isn’t entirely due to better economic times. Many
states have rolled back waivers that relaxed work requirements during the
recession and allowed people to collect benefits for longer periods of time.
There have also been
reports that undocumented immigrants with children who are American citizens
have stopped applying for federal assistance for fear of Trump’s immigration
policies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/18/trump-economy-versus-obama-economy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a4f56d6ec38b
September 22: Continuing its efforts to
target some of society’s most vulnerable people, the Trump administration
announced Saturday it will seek to deny green cards to immigrants who are likely
to use public assistance, including housing vouchers and food subsidies.
September 22: Immigrants who benefit from
various forms of public assistance, including food stamps and housing subsidies,
would face sharp new hurdles to obtaining a green card under a proposed rule
announced by the Trump administration on Saturday.
Federal law has historically sought to exclude immigrants who are likely to
become a "public charge," but the proposed rule would expand the government's
ability to deny immigrants residency or visas if they or family members benefit
from aid programs, such as Medicaid Part D, a prescription drug program for the
elderly and disabled; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and
Section 8 housing vouchers.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/22/650808003/trump-administration-will-seek-to-limit-green-cards-for-immigrants-needing-publi
September 24: [From "why do people love -or
hate- Trump? Here Are The 20 Top Reasons "]
10.
He’s against open borders.
Most of world history is a tale of war and bloodshed and cruelty and suffering
due to the fact that people have an “us against them” mentality and divide
themselves into group, when the truth is that we’re all human and when you cut
us, we all bleed red. At a time when we’re making unprecedented technological
progress that brings us all together as one world, Donald Trump wants to build
walls rather than bridges. We are a nation of immmigrants—Trump is himself the
descendant of German and Scottish immigrants—but Trump wants to revers the tide
of history and keep us isolated, hateful, and paranoid.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/07/why-do-people-hate-trump/
October 1: Trump’s Child-Detention Crisis Is
Getting Worse
Under cover of darkness, the federal government has
been moving hundreds of children a week to a sprawling tent city near the Rio
Grande.
Three months after
Donald Trump gave in to global opprobrium and discontinued his
administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican
border, the stark impact of his zero-tolerance directive continues to unfold,
with reports emerging that, in the space of a year, the number of migrant
children detained by the U.S. government has spiked from 2,400 to over
13,000—despite the number of monthly border crossings remaining relatively
unchanged. The increase, along with the fact that the average detainment period
has jumped from 34 to 59 days, has resulted in an accommodation crisis. As a
result, hundreds of children—some wearing belts inscribed with their
emergency-contact information—have been packed onto buses, transported for
hours, and deposited at a tented city in a stretch of desert in Tornillo, West
Texas.
According to The New York Times, these journeys typically occur in
the middle of the night and on short notice, to prevent children from fleeing.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-child-detention-crisis-is-getting-worse
October 8: To attack Dems, Trump blasts
immigration bill that doesn’t exist
“Every single Democrat in the U.S. Senate has signed up for the open borders –
and it’s a bill. And it’s called The Open Borders Bill. What’s going on? And
it’s written by – guess who – Dianne Feinstein.”
October 11: Six months after US officials
separated them at the border, ICE put a 4-year-old girl on a plane to Guatemala
this week so she could be reunited with her father.
But there was one major problem, according to advocates who worked on the case:
The man didn't learn his daughter was coming until 30 minutes before her flight
was set to land in Guatemala City.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/11/us/ice-separated-families/
October 12: The top Democrats on the House
and Senate judiciary committees are calling on the Trump administration to turn
over an unredacted copy of the memo it used to justify its controversial
"zero-tolerance" policy of separating immigrant families caught crossing the
border illegally.
October 17: A new migrant caravan is heading
to the United States. And US President Donald Trump has already weighed in,
threatening to cut foreign aid to Honduras if the group isn't brought back to
the Central American country.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/americas/migrant-caravan/index.html
October 18: Trump Threatens to ‘Call Up the
U.S. Military’ If Mexico Doesn’t Stop Migrants
October 20: Trump lays blame of border
'horrors' at feet of Democrats, tells them to call him to make deal
But some warn that as Trump seeks to pump up his base, he could energize
opposition. Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research firm Latino Decision, said
an elevated immigration message could hurt Trump, too.
October 20: Thousands of would-be migrants
are stranded on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, after Mexican police
blocked their bid to reach the U.S.
On Friday some tried to force their way across the frontier bridge, reportedly
throwing rocks at riot police.
The officers used tear gas to push back the crowd, most of whom are from
Honduras.
October 29: President Donald Trump
characterized a group of migrants headed toward the United States as an invading
force, adding that the U.S military would meet them at the border.
"Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading
to our Southern Border," the president tweeted Monday. "Please go back, you will
not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process.
This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!"
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/29/trump-military-caravan-migrants-945683
October 31: Caravan No. 1 waits in Juchitán
hoping for transportation to Mexico City
Migrants want help getting to the capital where they wish to meet with lawmakers
Around 4,000 Central American migrants will remain in Juchitán, Oaxaca today as
they attempt to organize mass transportation to Mexico City.
At a meeting last night, members of the first and largest of the
three
migrant caravans now in Mexico formed a committee to negotiate with
authorities to try to secure buses to take the weary migrants to the capital.
The mainly Honduran migrants, including many women and children, are currently
camped out at a disused bus station in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec city that last
year was ravaged by a powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/caravan-no-1-waits-in-juchitan/
November 3:
The total price of President Trump’s military deployment to the border,
including the cost of National Guard forces that have been there since April,
could climb well above $200 million by the end of 2018 and grow significantly if
the deployments continue into next year, according to analyst estimates and
Pentagon figures.
November 4: TRUMP, on the practice of
allowing immigrants caught crossing the border illegally to stay in U.S.
communities as they await immigration hearings: "We're not doing releases.
What's been happening over years is they would come in, release them, and they
would never show up for their trial. And we now have 25 or 30 million people in
this country illegally, because of what's been happening over many years."
THE FACTS: It's nowhere close to 25 million to 30 million, nor has the number
increased much in recent years.
November 6: The hotel chain Motel 6 has
agreed to pay $7.6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit after multiple Motel
6 locations gave guest lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Sharing those lists led to arrests and deportations of an as-yet-unknown number
of hotel guests.
November 19: Shouting 'Mexico First,'
Hundreds In Tijuana March Against Migrant Caravan
The march is a foreboding sign for the migrants who have formed caravans to
cross Mexico in hopes of reaching the United States. Many, but not all, of the
migrants have come to Tijuana, which borders San Diego, to request asylum in the
U.S. They come primarily from Honduras, though some are from other Central
American countries. A number of the asylum-seekers say they can't return home
after receiving threats from street gangs such as MS-13 and the 18th Street
gang, as well as threats from government figures in their countries.
November 20: ... we ... don't think there'll
be any additional troops heading there. At one point, Defense Secretary Mattis
said, you know, we could send more troops. But at this point, it looks like it's
going to stick at roughly the 5,900 troops. And actually tonight, those troops,
the cost of them - the Pentagon just put out tonight the cost of this deployment
of 5,900 troops through December 15 - $72 million.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=669761220
November 20: Supreme Court Chief Justice
John Roberts offered a rebuke on Wednesday to President Trump's description of a
judge who ruled against Trump's new migrant asylum policy as an "Obama judge."
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,”
Roberts said in a Wednesday statement provided to Fox News. “What we have is an
extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right
to those appearing before them."
November 25: U.S.- Mexico border crossing at
San Ysidro closed; tear gas launched at migrants
The U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry was closed in both
directions Sunday after hundreds of migrants rushed the area, prompting federal
authorities to launch tear gas in an effort to get the group to disperse.
The confrontation highlights the escalating tensions along the border as
thousands of migrants from Central America poured into Tijuana in recent weeks
seeking asylum to enter the U.S.
President Trump has pushed to keep any migrants in Mexico as they await the
immigration process.
The incident marks a serious escalation in the tensions that have roiled Tijuana
in recent weeks as thousands of migrants from Central America have amassed there
with hopes for entering the United States. President Trump has vowed to seal off
the Mexican border in recent days and pushed to keep any migrants in Mexico as
they await the immigration process.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials closed southbound vehicle and
pedestrian crossings at noon Sunday. Northbound vehicle traffic processing at
San Ysidro also was suspended, and the pedestrian crossings at the San Ysidro
port of entry were closed.
November 26: The busiest U.S. border
crossing is open again this morning, after a confrontation forced it to close
temporarily Sunday, as frustration among thousands of migrants upset by the slow
pace of the U.S. asylum process boiled over. Yesterday, U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol
agents fired tear gas at hundreds of people, including women and
children, after some of them tried to force their way across the border between
San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
November 28: ... while they are often
referred to as asylum-seekers, few of the migrants from
Guatemala,
Honduras and
El Salvador —
the chief sending countries — are likely to end up winning asylum in the U.S.,
according to the study by academics at the National Center for Risk and Economic
Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at the University of Southern California,
and the Institute for Defense Analyses.
December 4: Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
is calling for the temporary removal of a state judge who allegedly helped an
undocumented immigrant to evade immigration authorities who were in a courthouse
waiting to detain him.
Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph is being investigated by a federal grand
jury for aiding other court personnel in arranging for Jose Medina-Perez, 38,
and from the Dominican Republic, to slip out of a back door of the courthouse
while agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement held a detainer for his
arrest. The incident occurred in early April.
"I don't believe she should be hearing criminal cases until that federal case is
resolved," Baker told reporters at the State House as quoted by the
Boston Globe. "Look, judges are not supposed to be in the business of
obstructing justice."
December 6: President Trump and
congressional Democrats are fighting over how much the U.S. government should
spend on Trump’s proposed border wall, risking
another government shutdown because of a dispute over immigration policy.
However those negotiations turn out, though, here’s the thing: The massive wall,
which Trump
has said would stretch
1,000 miles
across the U.S.-Mexico border, is very unlikely
to be built, at least at that size. Mexico is
not paying for it, and Congress is unlikely to put up much money for it.
You could call the wall’s meager prospects a major defeat for Trump, but that
risks missing the point. The wall is something of an abstraction. Trump, in his
two years in office, has already made U.S. policy much, much more resistant to
immigration — without Congress agreeing to his wall or really any of his
immigration ideas. There is no physical wall, but there are all kinds of new
barriers for people who want to come to the United States and for undocumented
immigrants who want to stay.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-hasnt-needed-the-wall-to-remake-u-s-immigration-policy/
December 7: Attorney general nominee William
Barr will fit right in with Trump’s immigration agenda
December 7: According to a
recent report, the Trump administration’s
proposed change to what’s known as the “public charge” immigration rule
would endanger $17 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals across the
United States. This could threaten some rural hospitals, which are already
facing an epidemic of closures, and leave many communities without a hospital
within a 35-mile radius.
https://truthout.org/articles/a-trump-immigration-rule-could-devastate-rural-hospitals/
December 12:
Dozens More Cambodian Immigrants to Be Deported From U.S., Officials Say
The Trump administration is preparing to deport the largest group yet of
legal Cambodian immigrants to the United States over the next few days,
according to human rights groups and an American official, continuing a wave of
deportation that has fallen heavily on refugees who fled the upheaval
surrounding the Vietnam War.
The new deportations include an expected 46 people who are scheduled to arrive
in Cambodia on Dec. 19, the American official said. The official spoke on
condition of anonymity to discuss details of deportations that had not been
officially announced.
Many of those being deported have few or no memories of Cambodia, as they were
part of an exodus fleeing Khmer Rouge massacres and were granted refugee status
in the United States. Some actually have green cards and have been convicted of
a felony while in the United States, though often from many years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/world/asia/trump-deport-cambodians.html
December 20: The Department of Homeland
Security announced new measures Thursday requiring asylum seekers at the border
to return to Mexico and wait while their claims are processed, possibly for
months or years ...
The policy is likely to face legal challenges, and federal courts have
repeatedly blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to tighten border controls
via executive action. Nonetheless, the deal amounts to a significant diplomatic
win for the administration, which has engaged in delicate talks to cajole
Mexico to become an immigration antechamber for Central Americans seeking U.S.
asylum.
December 20: Currently, most people
requesting asylum are allowed to stay in the U.S. — sometimes in detention —
while their claim is pending in immigration court. The new policy will send such
migrants to Mexico for the duration of that process.
Powers [Houston immigration attorney Ruby Powers] said migrant shelters in
Mexican border cities are already full and can hardly handle asylum applicants
who are told to return to Mexico and wait. She said immigration lawyers like her
will find it logistically difficult to assist clients with their immigration
cases since they will be in Mexico, some without phones or Internet.
"I think the ultimate plan is to prevent people from wanting to apply for asylum
so they won't come to the United States," Powers said.
The Mexican government, while affirming its own sovereign rights to determine
who enters the country, said it would allow the practice. Mexico also said it
would extend some rights and protections to the non-Mexican asylum-seekers on
Mexican soil who await immigration hearings in the U.S.
December 21: The Supreme Court on Friday
rejected a request from the Trump administration to restart an asylum ban that
would have prevented migrants who enter the country illegally from applying for
asylum.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar
placed a temporary hold on the Trump administration's new rules to cut off
asylum for migrants who enter the country illegally on Nov. 19. The Justice
Department took the unusual step of jumping straight to the Supreme Court to
reinstate the ban, but the justice turned down that request by a 5-4 vote.
December 25: Christmas Day migrant drop off:
ICE leaves at least 100 migrants in city's downtown
The migrants were dropped off in the afternoon and were being temporarily housed
at the former Rock House Cafe and Gallery, 400 W Overland Ave.,
said Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute.
"ICE gave us a heads up about an hour or two ago that we were going to get 200
folks Downtown," Corbett said. "This group right now is about 100, so we don't
know if we are going to get another 100 or if this is it for the day."
December 28: Trump threatens to seal off
US-Mexico border 'entirely' if Congress does not agree funding for a wall
Analysts have warned that closing the border would cost hundreds of millions of
dollars a day, with an estimated $558 billion in goods being transported across
the border in both directions last year.
Such a move would also cause chaos for the nearly half a million people who are
estimated to enter the US through its southern border each day.
As he doubled down yesterday, Mr Trump also reissued threats to shut off aid to
the three Central American countries from which a majority of migrants
attempting to enter the US originate.
March 29: Did the Trump Administration House
Undocumented Immigrants Under a Bridge in El Paso?
Alarming photographs emerged in March 2019, prompting renewed scrutiny of U. S.
President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
... we find the substantive claim — that crowds of undocumented immigrants had
been detained under a bridge in El Paso in March 2019 due to a backlog at the
nearest official immigration center — was true.
At a press conference held close to the Paso Del Norte bridge on 27 March,
Border Commissioner McAleenan said the U.S. immigration system’s “breaking point
has arrived,” adding that the agency was facing “an unprecedented humanitarian
and border security crisis” along the southwestern border, especially at El
Paso.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/el-paso-bridge-immigrants/
March 29: Fox News dominates coverage of
caged migrants in El Paso with anti-immigrant fearmongering, pro-government
spin, and calls for stricter laws
April 1: Authorities relocated hundreds of
illegal migrants temporarily held under a bridge to an indoor Customs and Border
Protection station in El Paso, Texas.
The hundreds of migrants caged underneath the Paso Del Norte Bridge in downtown
El Paso — a photo of which garnered widespread derision among Democratic
politicians —
are now in an indoor facility, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman
confirmed. From there, authorities will begin processing the migrants.
“Although aliens that were being held in the transitional area are being moved,
the building adjacent to Paso Del Norte will continue to serve as a processing
facility. The transition should be completed today,” the CBP spokesman
The decision to congregate hundreds of illegal aliens under the Paso Del Norte
Bridge was a result of overwhelmed detention facilities having nowhere else to
place them. Their resources already stretched thin, immigration enforcement
officials constructed fencing under the overpass as a temporary measure. Every
detainee was given food, blankets, tents and other basic necessities,
according to El Paso Sector spokesman Agent Ramiro Cordero.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/01/illegal-migrants-bridge-facility/
April 8: California Gov. Gavin Newsom
arrived in El Salvador to learn about the poverty and violence forcing thousands
to flee and demonstrate an alternative to what he called President Donald
Trump's demoralizing rhetoric about the Central American nation.
He kicked off his four-day trip Sunday with harsh words for Trump, who recently
moved to halt foreign aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and has mocked
people seeking asylum amid a surge of families and children arriving at the
U.S.-Mexico border. About 3,000 unaccompanied children and 12,000 family members
from El Salvador have arrived since October.
April 10: “While the Trump Administration
abdicates its responsibility in the region, California punches above its weight
class,” added Newsom. “We will be part of a multi-lateral solution.”
April 11: The wave of migration
driving Trump’s meltdown, explained.
To a certain extent, Trump’s tantrums about the border have become the
background noise of this administration. But this time is different — not just
because Trump is madder than ever, but because he has more reason to be worried
about unauthorized migration than he has ever had.
The past two months have seen a huge spike in unauthorized migration, especially
of families, into the US. The government’s capacity to handle an influx of large
groups of children and families was already under serious strain at the end of
last year. It’s now obviously overmatched — in what politicians of both parties
are recognizing as a humanitarian crisis.
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/11/18290677/border-immigration-illegal-asylum-central-america-mexico-trump
April 12: President Trump said on Friday
that his administration was “strongly” considering releasing migrants detained
at the border into mostly Democratic “sanctuary cities,” suggesting that the
idea should make liberals “very happy” because of their immigration policies.
“We might as well do what they always say they want,” Mr. Trump said if
Democrats do not agree to new immigration policies. “We’ll bring them to
sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it,” he said,
adding that California welcomed the idea of more people coming to the state.
April 12: California Gov. Gavin Newsom tore
into President Trump's proposal to send detained undocumented immigrants to
sanctuary jurisdictions on Friday, declaring the idea "unserious," "illegal,"
"asinine" and "sophomoric," among other things.
"It's ludicrous. It's petulant. I have a 7-year-old, he would be embarrassed,"
Newsom said. "It really is the sophistry of adolescence. It's not serious. It
lacks any rationale. It's insulting to the American people and to the
intelligence of the American people. It's un-American. It's illegal. It's
immoral. It's rather pathetic. I don't know what more I can say."
Newsom also labeled the president's statements "political theater" and a
"sideshow" that is "demoralizing" but also "par for the course."
May 22:
Last Monday, 10 days ahead of the E.U. elections, that hard line received
a pre-election boost, when President Donald Trump welcomed Orban to the White
House. Trump
told him in the Oval Office that “you have been great with respect to
Christian communities, you have really put up a block up” against non-Christian
immigrants.
http://time.com/5590134/hungary-foreign-minister-interview/ -- 2020 --
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