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    Trump news at a glance: ‘This is not justice’ – the uprising over Ice raids on LA

    Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Saturday pushed back against the protesters opposing immigration raids in Los Angeles: “A message to the LA rioters: you will not stop us or slow us down. @Icegov will continue to enforce the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, described the protests as a “violent insurrection”. During protests at a federal detention facility in downtown LA, David Huerta, a senior union official, was arrested in a police response that included teargas and flash-bangs. Hospitalised for his injuries, Huerta released a statement: “Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice.”Following are the key Trump administration stories of the day:National guard pitted against LA immigration raid protests The Trump administration will deploy the national guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles, the border czar, Tom Homan, said on Saturday, as an immigration crackdown in the area erupted into mass protests with police in riot gear deploying teargas at bystanders. Arrests by immigration authorities in Los Angeles come as Donald Trump and his administration push to fulfil promises to carry out mass deportations across the country.Read the full story‘Very serious consequences’ if Musk switched to DemocratsTrump warned Elon Musk on Saturday that he faces “very serious consequences” if he funds Democratic candidates following the pair’s epic public bust-up. He said in an NBC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday: “If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that. He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that.” Trump said he had no intention to speak to Musk and no wish to repair his relationship with Musk. “I’m too busy doing other things.”Read the full storyVance plays down ‘Elon flying off the handle’JD Vance said Elon Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Donald Trump. “I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear … Look, it happens to everybody. I’ve flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours … I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine.”Read the full storyTravel ban ‘racist and hostile’, says Iranian governmentTehran denounced the US travel ban on Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, saying it was a sign of a “racist mentality”. Donald Trump signed the executive order on Wednesday. Alireza Hashemi-Raja, an Iranian foreign ministry official responsible for Iranians abroad, said the measure – which takes effect on 9 June – “indicates the deep hostility of American decision-makers towards the Iranian and Muslim people”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Lauren Gambino profiles Kristy Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary: “Noem leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president’s hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.”

    An international neo-Nazi terrorist organization calling itself the Base is continuing to build in the US and planning a new paramilitary training event – as the FBI under Trump appointee Kash Patel has signalled it is no longer prioritizing investigations of far-right extremism. Ben Makuch reports
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 6 June 2025. More

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    Immigration raids in LA expand despite protests with teargas and flash-bangs

    US immigration authorities extended activity in the Los Angeles area on Saturday in the wake of protests at a federal detention facility and a police response that included teargas, flash-bangs and the arrest of a union leader.Border patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stood guard outside an industrial park in the city of Paramount, deploying teargas as bystanders and protesters gathered on medians and across the street, some jeering at authorities while recording the event on smartphones.“Ice out of Paramount. We see you for what you are,” a woman announced through a megaphone. “You are not welcome here.”One handheld sign said: “No Human Being is Illegal.”The boulevard was closed to traffic as US Customs and Border Protection circulated through the area. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) representatives did not respond immediately to email inquiries about weekend enforcement activities.Arrests by immigration authorities in Los Angeles come as Donald Trump and his administration push to fulfill promises to carry out mass deportations across the country.On Friday, Ice officers arrested more than 40 people as they executed search warrants at multiple locations, including outside a clothing warehouse where a tense scene unfolded as a crowd tried to block agents from driving away.The Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, said the activity was meant to “sow terror” in the nation’s second-largest city.In a statement on Saturday, Ice acting director Todd Lyons chided Bass for the city’s response to protests.“Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement,” Lyons said in a statement. “Make no mistake, ICE will continue to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and arrest criminal illegal aliens.”Protesters gathered Friday evening outside a federal detention center in Los Angeles where lawyers said those arrested had been taken, chanting: “Set them free, let them stay!”Other protesters held signs that said “ICE out of LA!” and led chants and shouted from megaphones. Some scrawled graffiti on the building facade.Federal agents executed search warrants at three locations, including a warehouse in the fashion district of Los Angeles, after a judge found there was probable cause the employer was using fictitious documents for some of its workers, according to representatives for homeland security investigations and the US attorney’s office.Advocates for immigrant rights say people were detained Friday by immigration authorities outside Home Depot stores and a doughnut shop. More

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    Trump warns Musk of ‘very serious consequences’ if he backs Democrats

    Donald Trump warned Elon Musk on Saturday that he faces “very serious consequences” if he funds Democratic candidates following the pair’s epic public bust-up this week.The warning, delivered in an interview with NBC News scheduled to broadcast on Sunday, follows days of feuding and threats after Musk called Republicans’ budget legislation an “abomination”.Trump told interviewer Kristen Welker his relationship with the tech mogul was over and warned Musk against choosing to fund Democrats after spending close to $300m in support of Trump’s re-election last year.“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News. “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” he added.Trump was also asked whether he had any wish to repair his relationship with Musk. “No,” he said. Asked whether he thought their relationship was over, he said: “I would assume so, yeah,” and said he had no plans to speak with his erstwhile sidekick.“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump said, adding: “I have no intention of speaking to him.”But he predicted that the spat had helped to unify the Republican party around him, saying the “party has never been united like this before. It’s never been. It’s actually more so than it was three days ago.”Musk’s opposition to the Republican budget bill, formally the “one big beautiful bill act”, would not, he predicted, affect its passage through Congress. The bill narrowly passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. However, some conservative Republicans share Musk’s concerns about the need for significant spending cuts and are considering making changes.The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and includes new spending for border security and the military. Republicans aimed to offset these costs with cuts to programmes such as Medicaid, food stamps and green-energy tax credits.Projections from the congressional budget office and independent analysts indicate that the bill would add between $2.3tn and $5tn to the deficit over the next 10 years. White House officials contend that the economic growth generated by tax cuts will offset the increased spending.Still, Trump told NBC he is “very confident” that the bill will pass the Senate before 4 July.“I think, actually, Elon brought out the strengths of the bill because people that weren’t as focused started focusing on it, and they see how good it is,” Trump said. “So in that sense, there was a big favor. But I think Elon, really, I think it’s a shame that he’s so depressed and so heartbroken.”He also accused Musk of being “disrespectful to the office of the president”.“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,” he said.Earlier, Musk deleted a post from X, the social media platform he owns, that asserted links between Trump and disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionQuestioned about the inflammatory post, Trump said: “That’s called ‘old news’, that’s been old news, that has been talked about for years. Even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It’s old news.”Musk has also retracted a threat to begin “decommissioning” SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft used by Nasa to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.The original threat came after Trump suggested he might cancel SpaceX’s federal contracts. On Saturday, the president said he hadn’t given the subject any more thought.“I’d be allowed to do that,” he said, “but I haven’t given it any thought.”Earlier on Saturday, JD Vance told interviewer and comedian Theo Von that Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Trump, but downplayed Musk’s attacks as being made by an “emotional guy” who got frustrated.“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” the vice-president said.But he added: “Look, it happens to everybody. I’ve flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.”“I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine,” Vance said.David Smith contributed reporting More

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    JD Vance says Elon Musk’s attack against Trump is a ‘huge mistake’

    JD Vance said Elon Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Donald Trump in a storm of bitter and inflammatory social media posts after a falling-out between the two men.But the US vice-president, in an interview released on Friday after the very public blowup between the world’s richest person and arguably the world’s most powerful, also tried to downplay Musk’s blistering attacks as an “emotional guy” who got frustrated.“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” Vance said.Vance’s comments come as other Republicans in recent days have urged the two men, who months ago were close allies spending significant time together, to mend fences.Musk’s torrent of social media posts attacking Trump came as the president portrayed him as disgruntled and “CRAZY” and threatened to cut the government contracts held by his businesses.Musk, who runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, internet company Starlink and rocket company SpaceX, lambasted Trump’s centerpiece tax cuts and spending bill but also suggested the president should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about Trump’s association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.“Look, it happens to everybody,” Vance said in the interview. “I’ve flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.”Vance made the comments in an interview with “manosphere” comedian Theo Von, who last month joked about snorting drugs off a mixed-race baby and the sexuality of men in the US navy when he opened for Trump at a military base in Qatar.The vice-president told Von that as Musk for days was calling on social media for Congress to kill Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, the president was “getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon, but I think has been very restrained because the president doesn’t think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk”.“I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine,” he added.Musk appeared by Saturday morning to have deleted his posts about Epstein.The interview was taped on Thursday as Musk’s posts were unfurling on X, the social media network the billionaire owns.During the interview, Von showed the vice-president Musk’s claim that Trump’s administration hasn’t released all the records related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.Vance responded to that, saying: “Absolutely not. Donald Trump didn’t do anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.”“This stuff is just not helpful,” Vance said in response to another post shared by Musk calling for Trump to be impeached and replaced with Vance.“It’s totally insane. The president is doing a good job.”Vance called Musk an “incredible entrepreneur”, and said that Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, which sought to cut government spending and laid off or pushed out thousands of workers, was “really good”.The vice-president also defended the bill that has drawn Musk’s ire, and said its central goal was not to cut spending but to extend the 2017 tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term.The bill would slash spending but also leave about 10.9 million more people without health insurance and increase debt by $2.4tn over the decade, according to the nonpartisan congressional budget office.Musk has warned that the bill will increase the federal debt and called it a “disgusting abomination”.“It’s a good bill,” Vance said. “It’s not a perfect bill.”He also said it was ridiculous for some House Republicans who voted for the bill to later object to some parts and claim they hadn’t had time to read it.Vance said the text had been available for weeks and said: “The idea that people haven’t had an opportunity to actually read it is ridiculous.”Elsewhere in the interview, Vance laughed as Von cracked jokes about famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s sexuality.“We’re gonna talk to the Smithsonian about putting up an exhibit on that,” Vance joked. “And Theo Von, you can be the narrator for this new understanding of the history of Frederick Douglass.”The podcaster also asked the vice-president if he “got high” on election night to celebrate Trump’s victory.Vance laughed and joked that he wouldn’t admit it if he did.“I did not get high,” he then said. “I did have a fair amount to drink that night.”The interview was taped in Nashville at a restaurant owned by musician Kid Rock, a Trump ally. More

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    Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump’s mass deportations

    Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem’s political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family’s “untrainable” hunting dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket.Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem’s path forward on the national stage was unclear.But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump’s warp-speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president’s hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House’s immigration agenda with fierce loyalty, Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV approach that supporters have hailed as a full-throttle push to “Make America Safe Again” and critics have condemned as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences.View image in fullscreenThe department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 people spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation’s premier cybersecurity agency.Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump’s comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration’s deportation operations.And she has been front and center in many of the administration’s most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges.“Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,” Noem declared on X.Away from the department’s Washington headquarters, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate.She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow.During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki.“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.)But it has not been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right, guaranteed in the constitution, that allows people detained by the government to challenge their detention. When Noem claimed habeas corpus was the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: “That’s incorrect.” Habeas corpus, the senator countered sternly, “was the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea”.Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump’s “central casting” cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda.DHS maintains that under Noem’s stewardship, the department has returned to its “core mission of securing the homeland”.“The world is hearing our message,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.”But critics say her approach is a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department.“The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. “That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.”The show and tellNoem’s first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary.Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration’s costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba.In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a “sting operation” in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of “Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members” while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent’s head.“Kristi Noem doesn’t know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,” the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X.At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence “meant the world” to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials.View image in fullscreenBut even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry.Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an “amazing” job protecting the homeland but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged the secretary not to “cosplay Ice agent”.The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: “She looks like I look right now, but she’s out in the field with her gun being like: ‘We’re gonna go kick some ass.’”“Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,” Kelly advised.Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image.As governor in 2019, she installed a “six-figure TV studio” in the basement of South Dakota’s capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem’s office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state.“Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,” said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem’s political career. “She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.”It’s a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice.As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads to amplify the administration’s message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion-dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to “leave now” or the government will “hunt you down”.DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government’s “CBP Home” app and estimated that “thousands” more were leaving without notice.In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration’s decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison.View image in fullscreenStanding in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.”On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of “flimsy, even frivolous, accusations” of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees.In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House have repeated that their mass-removal effort targets the “worst of the worst”. “We are focusing on dangerous criminals,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. “We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.”But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed “administrative errors” for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico.“The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “It’s working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.”Noem’s rise to Trump’s orbitA self-described “farm kid” who took over her family’s ranch after her father’s sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump’s handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread.In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem memorably gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota.“At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,” Schaff said.In the years that followed, Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump’s rhetoric, especially on border security.Despite South Dakota’s considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles (1,600km) north – Noem made the issue a top priority. “South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,” she declared in an address last year.In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state’s border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods in the state.Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her own state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny.View image in fullscreenDuring her Senate confirmation hearing in January, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned Noem’s credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection.She acknowledged her nomination may have come as a “bit of a surprise”. But, Noem said, she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his “No 1 priority”. The job, she said, required someone “strong enough” to carry out the president’s immigration agenda.So far, she has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an interview earlier this year, the secretary vowed to leverage the “broad and extensive” authorities of her office to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration’s feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets.Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids.She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, as well as “border czar” Homan, both empowered by the president to help achieve the president’s deportation goals.Though Noem frequently touts the administration’s success removing, in the secretary’s words, “dirt bags” and “sickos”, the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: they demanded federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day.Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to “turn the creative knob up to 11” as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record.Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was “thankful for Secretary Noem’s partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens”.She continued: “The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.”View image in fullscreenAs the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem’s DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had “unquestionably” violated a court order on deportations to third countries.In response to the growing number of challenges, Noem has largely channeled the president’s defiant posture. “Suck it,” she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed.While courts have hindered Trump’s mass-removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation.On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African. He said the timing was spurred by a recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages, for which an Egyptian national was charged.In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the suspect’s family into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process.“The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on “political basis alone,” reorienting the department around Trump’s priorities. “This isn’t working like it’s supposed to,” he said.View image in fullscreenOn Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans are racing to boost the department’s efforts by delivering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which includes tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump’s cabinet officials.But outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration’s deportation polices have “gone too far”. If Republicans lose the House in next year’s midterms, Noem’s leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny.One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem’s resignation. “The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,” Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said.Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump’s orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump’s vision – has some wondering whether she’s looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump’s heir is already taking shape.“Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,” Rosenzweig said. “I’ll put it another way: Noem is the first DHS secretary who’s running for president.” More

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    ‘I’m paranoid all the time’: surveillance and fear in a city of immigrants as White House ramps up deportations

    Two months after fleeing death threats in Colombia, Juan landed a construction job in New York. But on his first day, the bulky GPS monitor strapped to his ankle caught the manager’s attention. It wouldn’t fit inside standard work boots. The boss shook his head. “Come back when you’ve resolved your status,” he said.Since arriving in the US with his teenage daughter to seek asylum, Juan has lived in a state of constant anxiety. “It feels like I committed a crime, like they’re going to arrest me at any moment,” he said, speaking near the migrant shelter where they now live in Queens. Juan started wearing oversized pants to hide the monitor, a style he finds uncomfortable. “I’m paranoid all the time,” he said.Genesis, a 25-year-old from Panama, lives in the same shelter as Juan with her two-year-old. She has worn an ankle monitor for more than 18 months. “When I go to the park with my son, other parents don’t want their kids to play with him,” she said. The stigma of the monitor, she added, makes her feel like a bad mother. Genesis fled after members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal group from Venezuela, threatened her life there, she said.Juan and Genesis are among the more than 12,000 immigrants in New York enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) schemes called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) and the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP).View image in fullscreenMost of them are asylum seekers from Central or South America who came to the city seeking safety and the chance to work, according to a recent report from the American Bar Association, a national group of lawyers. They don’t have any criminal convictions, yet without legal status, they live under constant surveillance as their cases wend their way through the badly backed-up US immigration court system.Under ATD-ISAP, people can be monitored through GPS ankle bracelets, wrist-worn trackers, telephone check-ins or a mobile app called SmartLINK.The number of undocumented people under electronic monitoring related to their lack of immigration status alone is believed to have more than doubled since 2021, when the number in the US was about 85,000, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University, although the organization “advises the public to be extremely cautious” about data on this from Ice.Ice’s internal budget for ATD-ISAP has increased from $28m in 2006 to nearly $470m by the end of 2024.While attention in the second Trump administration has been on detention and deportation, electronic monitoring is still a significant factor in many immigrants’ lives and has been increasingly so in recent years.Ice promotes ATD-ISAP as a “humane and cost-effective” alternative to detention, but while it is certainly better than being locked up, lawyers and advocates argue it embeds unnecessary state control into homes, workplaces and public spaces, trapping people in cycles of fear, stigma and instability.View image in fullscreenThose assigned body-worn monitors often report skin irritation, discomfort and the need for frequent charging. When the battery runs low, the device emits a loud alert that draws unwanted attention. “People made comments while I was working at McDonald’s. I’m not a criminal,” Genesis said. Even routine activities like showering can trigger connectivity issues, leading to phone calls from ISAP officers or sudden demands for in-person check-ins.SmartLINK, by contrast, requires participants to submit geotagged selfies, typically once a week, rather than being tracked continuously throughout the day.ATD-ISAP is managed by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison giant Geo Group. In 2020, Donald Trump’s first administration awarded the company a five-year, $2.2bn contract.Regardless of the type of surveillance assigned, participants remain under acute risk of arrest and deportation. Some have started the asylum application process; others came relatively recently from Texas when that state was bussing asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities, and so far are merely trying to find their footing, perhaps a lawyer and some advice about starting the process to get papers and a work permit.View image in fullscreenThey are expected to report in person to the ISAP office with little notice. The office is located in a basement near Ice’s 26 Federal Plaza headquarters in lower Manhattan. Appointments are usually scheduled during working hours, forcing many to miss work, arrange childcare or lose out on daily wages, all while being in terror of arrest and summary detention.On weekday mornings, people can be seen lining up outside the building while anxious loved ones wait nearby. “It’s very difficult to have a normal life,” said a man from Guatemala whose wife has been monitored for three years. He asked to remain anonymous. “We can’t even leave the city,” he added.Some people enrolled in the ADP program were arrested amid record enforcement earlier this week, NBC reported, in a national ramping-up of efforts on the orders of senior Trump administration officials, including in New York.The effects of surveillance aren’t limited to those being tracked. Entire neighborhoods are feeling its presence.Liliana Torres, a psychologist who offers weekly mental health support in Spanish to newly arrived immigrants, said that cameras, patrol cars and even the sound of sirens regularly spark panic among her clients. “Everyday elements of the city become triggers,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis fear is especially felt in areas of the city such as Corona, home to New York’s largest Latin American immigrant community. Local business owners reported a noticeable drop in customers the first few months of the Trump administration.View image in fullscreen“People think they’re going to take all of us,” said a nail salon worker who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns around her legal status. “But we can’t afford to stay home. We have to work.”Vendors at Corona Plaza say police presence has increased in recent months, especially since the launch of Operation Roosevelt last fall, a citywide crackdown on unlicensed vending and sex work. The measures disproportionately affected undocumented residents. Neighbors and advocates worry the heightened enforcement signals deeper coordination between the New York police department and federal immigration authorities.“There’s a noticeable uptick in the use of digital surveillance tools, including social media monitoring and data-sharing with local agencies,” said Veronica Cardenas, an immigration attorney who left her role as an Ice prosecutor in 2023 after witnessing first-hand the treatment immigrants receive. “More people who would have previously been considered low priority are now at risk.”View image in fullscreenFear spreads online, too. “We see people on TikTok saying Ice is coming when it isn’t,” said Niurka Meléndez, founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA), a volunteer-run group that connects asylum seekers to legal and social services. “Or worse, spreading confusion about immigration law.”VIA has been leading a regular event called Miracle Mondays at the St Paul & St Andrew United Methodist church in Manhattan since 2022. Once considered sanctuary spaces, churches are no longer off limits to Ice, prompting VIA to take extra precautions. Event locations are now shared privately via WhatsApp, rather than being posted publicly on social media.In response to growing fears, the Venezuelan-led group has also started organizing legal clinics in neighborhoods such as Corona to reach those too afraid to attend the church. At one such event in March, dozens of Latin American migrants gathered to ask lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group how they could regularize their immigration status.“If I give birth here and they deport me, will they keep my baby?” asked Stefani, a Venezuelan woman eight months pregnant. One lawyer responded cautiously, explaining that while she would have the right to bring her baby with her, the government can still act in ways that disregard the law. Lawyers also handed out one-page notices saying that individuals with pending asylum cases cannot be detained without due process.View image in fullscreenLocal community groups such as Ice Watch have adapted to this new climate by educating communities about their rights. Ice Watch tracks immigration enforcement and sends real-time alerts via encrypted Signal chats across the five boroughs. Its members also conduct training to teach people how to recognize Ice agents, document encounters and support those being targeted. Social workers, English teachers activists and small business owners are often among those who attend.For Juan, who fled Colombia after gang members shot his father in the head, life in New York has come at the cost of constant paranoia and a sense that genuine safety remains out of reach. His 16-year-old daughter notices everything. “She sees how I live and blames herself,” he said. At times, they’ve talked about returning to Colombia, but the risk of being kidnapped and tortured by mobsters is very real for him and his family.“I fear something worse than death could happen if I go back,” Juan said.Despite the stress, he holds on to small signs of progress, such as watching his daughter attend school and slowly but steadily pick up English. “I need to give her at least the option to have a better life than I had,” he said. More

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    RFK Jr’s report calls farmers the ‘backbone’ of the US – but Trump’s cuts hurt them

    Independent and organic farmers say chaos created by the Trump administration’s cuts has hurt their businesses, even as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, praises small farms and regenerative agriculture.The split-screen for small and organic farms – which one farmer described as the administration “talking out of both sides of their mouth” – comes on the heels of the release of the “Maha” report. The White House document mentions farms, farmers and farming 21 times, and argues conventional agriculture has led to more ultra-processed foods.“Reading that report, it’s like a small-scale organic farmer’s dream,” said Seth Kroeck as he slammed the door on his 1993 F350 truck. Kroeck owns the organic Crystal Spring Farm, 331 acres (135 hectares) in Brunswick, Maine. “But then at the same time, [secretary of agriculture] Brooke Rollins’s name is on this – she’s proposing to cut two-thirds of the agriculture budget.”Kroeck had just finished planting 2,500 brussels sprouts and one-10th of an acre of specialty peppers. He still needed to fix a flat on a piece of farm equipment that day. He said small-scale farmers have promoted local, organic and whole foods for decades.While Kroeck is presumably the kind of farmer Kennedy would laud, all he finds is frustration with the administration, and actions that will “undoubtedly” make food more expensive.“We’re dealing with two personalities with our government,” said Kroeck.As conventional farmers decry the Maha report’s criticism of agricultural chemicals such as atrazine and glyphosate (the active ingredient in RoundUp), some organic and independent farmers have found that the meager government support they depend on has been upended by an administration that claims it wants to support them.“Farmers are the backbone of America – and the most innovative and productive in the world,” the report, led by Kennedy, argued. “We continue to feed the world as the largest food exporter. The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.”But by March, the administration had already cut a total of $1bn in programs that supported small farms that grow locally produced fruits and vegetables. For instance, they cut a program that helped tribal food banks provide healthy food and ended a $660m program that brought fresh local foods to school cafeterias. In just one example of impact, the cut quickly ended fruit and vegetable snacks in New York City schools.“This is a huge deal for small farmers,” Ellee Igoe told the New Lede publication in March. Igoe is a co-owner of Solidarity Farm in southern California. “We’re growing healthy food and providing it to local communities. And they are cancelling contracts without real reason. Out here, it feels like it is very politically motivated.”In just one example of direct impact to Kroeck, the Trump administration fired most of the staffers at Kroeck’s local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office, an arm of the US Department of Agriculture that provides technical assistance to farmers, including on-site visits. The staff shrank from six to one – only the director remains.“In my book, she’s a superwoman, but how long is that going to last?” said Kroeck. “And what farmer is going to want to take on new contracts when it’s going to take her months and months and months just to return a call?”Kroeck also criticized the Maha report for including apparently invented scientific references.“The citations in the report seem to be made up by ChatGPT – this is crazy,” said Kroeck, who said he’s not a cheerleader for occupants of ivory towers, but “we do have to have some standards”.Groups such as the Organic Trade Association have largely echoed Kroeck’s sentiments, noting that this is what the organic movement has been saying all along and they need money.“We’ve long known that health begins on the farm and encourage the administration to invest in meaningful policies that expand access to organic for consumers,” said co-CEO Matthew Dillon in a statement to the Guardian.While some organic farmers say their relationship with the government has always been tenuous, small farmers say chaos has only worsened that relationship. Coastal wild blueberry farmer Nicolas Lindholm said at least a portion of the funding he was expecting for the year – to mulch his blueberries with wood chips – was “dead in the water”.“My wife and I have an organic wild blueberry farm here on the coast of Maine,” said Lindholm.“Over the past five months, we had applied for three different funding programs – all different – and finalized them through December and into January – and as of February all three of them were basically frozen.” Like many farmers, Lindholm’s needs were time-sensitive: blueberries can only be mulched every two years because of their growing cycle.In addition to direct cuts by the administration, congressional Republicans proposed cuts to food programs that indirectly benefit farmers. House Republicans passed a bill proposing $300bn in cuts to food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), to fund tax cuts. They have also proposed cuts to a food program that helps new mothers and babies buy fruits and vegetables.The panic within conventional agriculture communities has also been pronounced – with pointed criticism of the report coming before it was even published. Corn and soybeans dominate American cash crops, accounting for $131.9bn in receipts in 2023, versus just $54.8bn in all fruits, vegetables and nuts combined.“It’s no secret you were involved in pesticide litigation before you became secretary,” said Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican senator for Mississippi, to Kennedy, leading into a question about the need for glyphosate (the active ingredient in RoundUp), and asking whether Kennedy could be impartial.Kennedy, who went on to pledge he would not put “a single farmer” out of business, said: “There’s nobody that has a greater commitment to the American farmer than we do – the Maha movement collapses if we can’t partner with the American farmer.” More

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    Iran blasts Trump for ‘racist mentality’ and hostility to Muslims over travel ban

    Tehran has denounced the US travel ban on Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, saying Washington’s decision was a sign of a “racist mentality”.Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reviving sweeping restrictions that echo the US president’s first-term travel ban, justified on national security grounds after a firebomb attack at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado.Alireza Hashemi-Raja, the foreign ministry’s director general for the affairs of Iranians abroad, called the measure – which takes effect on 9 June – “a clear sign of the dominance of a supremacist and racist mentality among American policymakers”.The decision “indicates the deep hostility of American decision-makers towards the Iranian and Muslim people”, he added in a statement the ministry released on Saturday.Apart from Iran, the US ban targets nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. A partial ban was imposed on travellers from seven other countries.Hashemi-Raja said the policy “violates fundamental principles of international law” and deprives “hundreds of millions of people of the right to travel based solely on their nationality or religion”.The foreign ministry official said the ban was discriminatory and would “entail international responsibility for the US government”, without elaborating.Iran and the US severed diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and relations have remained deeply strained since.The US is home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran. According to figures from Tehran’s foreign ministry, in 2020 there were about 1.5 million Iranians in the US.Trump’s executive order came days after Sunday’s attack at the Colorado rally, in which authorities said more than a dozen people were hurt. The suspect is an Egyptian man who had overstayed a tourist visa. More