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      This hockey town in Michigan has deep ties to Canada. Then came Trump’s tariffs

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      There are few entities that embody the close, fraternal ties between the US and Canada quite like the Saginaw Spirit junior ice hockey team.In a place whose fortunes have been more down than up in recent decades, the Dow Event Center hockey arena in Saginaw, Michigan, comes alive with more than 5,000 fans once these young stars take to the ice. A huge banner depicting the players adorns the main street into the city.Nearly all the players, aged 16 to 20, come from Canada, and stay with local Saginaw families during the regular playing season, which runs from September to April.“They are family, almost literally,” says Jimmy Greene, the Spirit’s vice-president of marketing and community relations, “because players come over here and stay with American families. It’s more than just sport.”One of the top prospects of this year’s National Hockey League entry draft is forward Michael Misa, the Spirit’s 18-year-old Canadian captain. Last year, the Saginaw Spirit won the Memorial Cup of the Ontario Hockey League for the first time. In the season that recently finished, the Spirit played 28 times on Canadian soil.So the fallout from Donald Trump’s tariffs regime on Canadian goods has been felt more keenly in Saginaw than most other communities – as has the fight over the Canadian election, with the US president’s jibes over Canada becoming the US’s 51st state looming over the contest amid a fierce backlash against such comments.“We’ve had this relationship for decades and all of a sudden, in the last couple of months, it’s been uprooted,” says Greene.“Of course, you’re going to be concerned because you just don’t know [what will happen next]. At some point, it’s going to end up costing us. I just don’t know what extent and by how much.”As the largest city in the northern half of Michigan located within a short drive of three Canadian border crossings, Saginaw has closer ties to Canada than perhaps any other community of its size. Canadian companies own close to 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of farmland in the county, and last year, Saginaw established its first sister-city ties with a Canadian counterpart.What’s more, it is a key political bellwether and manufacturing county that helped push Donald Trump over the line in last November’s presidential election, but today the community faces uncertainty around the trade war with Canada.Michigan, with its vast automotive manufacturing industry, is set to be affected by Trump’s trade battle with Canada more than perhaps any other US state.After Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canadian vehicles and parts – with some exemptions – Ottawa responded with its own 25% tariff on certain US automotive products. Canada says the tariffs are unjustified, but on 23 April Trump warned that the tariff figures could go up.While Trump has claimed the US doesn’t need goods produced by its northern neighbor, Canada buys more American products than any other country, at $356bn worth of purchases. Nearly 40% of Michigan’s exported goods go to Canada. In 2023, $1.7bn worth of goods made in the Saginaw metropolitan area were exported, one of the highest amounts for any Michigan city, with much of that sent to Canada.Nexteer Automotive employs around 5,000 people in Saginaw while Means Industries, an automotive parts company headquartered in the city, also has a base in London, Ontario. Repeated calls and emails sent by the Guardian to Saginaw’s chamber of commerce seeking information on specific local industries potentially affected by the tariffs were not responded to.‘Sport right now triumphs over politics’Saginaw is no stranger to economic ups and downs.On a recent Friday afternoon, the downtown area is almost dead. Despite the recent success of the hockey team, there isn’t a sports bar for blocks in any direction as most of Saginaw’s commercial activity is now concentrated around miles of strip malls north of downtown.For Brad Pyscher, an officer at a correctional facility and former union president who, on a recent Saturday afternoon, is manning the Saginaw county Republican party office in one of these strip malls, the tariffs on Canada were something of a shock.“People are concerned, and they hope this works itself out,” he says. “The shock and awe [of the tariffs] really took everyone by surprise.”The 54-year-old says he had voted independent all his life before backing Democrat Barack Obama, and then Trump for president in 2016.“The thing with Trump, whether you like him or don’t like him, there’s transparency,” he says. “I’m drawn to him because he is not a politician.”But Pyscher concedes that Trump could have negotiated with Canada before “hitting them with that shock and awe. I think it’s on purpose, to let the world know he can do it,” he says.“[With] Canada, it should have been negotiated a bit better, a lot better. I’m expecting the deals with Canada to come soon, and we can all put this behind us.”Trump has said one of his main motivations for issuing tariffs on Canada was to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the US. However, reports indicate the opposite may be happening. Last month, $11m worth of cocaine was seized at the Port Huron border crossing, 80 miles (130km) east of Saginaw – on its way into Canada. In December, around 1,000lb (450kg) of cocaine were also seized in a semi-truck attempting to enter Ontario from the same border crossing.Back in the world of ice hockey, Greene of Saginaw Spirit says he feels most people he interacts with have been able to park their political feelings, starting with the organization’s Canadian players, who have been essential to the team’s recent success.“I think we all made a concerted effort, while not to keep [the players] dumb and naive, we did enough to make them feel comfortable in our environment and away from the political stuff. We kept them in a mindset of sport,” he says.But Greene also realizes the strained ties with Canada fueled by the White House’s policies are a very real dynamic.“I’m not immune to the idea that at some point Canada had some hostile feelings towards us, but people have, until this point, been able to park the politics away from sport. I think sport right now triumphs over politics,” he says.“Because we play in Canada, and [because of] the tariffs. I’m more concerned about how they feel about us. Our feelings towards Canada have been and always will be favorable and friendly. I’m concerned not just because of the economic tariffs, but because of the emotions that come from that. I’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.”Saginaw residents are hoping the kind of fraternal ties that were on display across the city last May, when hundreds of Canadian hockey fans from as far away as Saskatchewan descended on the region for the Memorial Cup, won’t become a thing of the past.“Everybody’s been super friendly. You guys have been incredible hosts,” one Canadian hockey fan who drove 11 hours from Quebec for the tournament told local media. More

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      Canada has long been seen as the cool cousin next door. Here’s the truth | Noel Ransome

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      Canada has been canonized – safely, predictably.It’s the great, grave story we’ve exported – retold in economic rankings, stitched into tourism ads, held up in classrooms and cable news panels. We’re the cooler, mellower cousin nextdoor. The country that has it figured out. Where healthcare is universal, democracy is calm and diversity is politely managed.This image has been shared like a TikTok meme for decades – forwarded, favourited, lightly interrogated. Over time, we’ve become more vibe than nation; contradictions, history and horrors flattened into brand energy. Place that flag in your Twitter bio, mention how “we’ll never become like America,” and you’ve bought into the sauce. You’re not the problem, you’re proof the problem lives somewhere else.This kind of deception has always been fundamental to our story. But we need only a glimpse at our neighbour’s constitutional preamble – “We the people of the United States” – to get a hint of the delusion. Canada’s constitutional language, by contrast, never used the populist “we”. From the start, there was no sweeping assertion of collective identity. Instead, the Constitution Act, 1867, opened with:
      Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland …
      Granted, Canada’s constitutional framework evolved. But from the beginning, the difference in language spoke to the shaping of our identity – through agreements, compromises, legal frameworks, not a people-centered vision. This historical nuance, while subtle, now echoes in modern politics.All that to say: times are spooky for the average Canadian forced to define and defend Canada’s sovereignty. Spooky in ways that can cause one to reflexively feed into a myth, rather than confront the truth of who we are. The gap between our negotiated past and our branded present has never been more plain. Our current leaders are no exception.To any Canadian progressive, it’s stating the obvious to say that Justin Trudeau, the figure most associated with Canada’s progressive identity, was more committed to feeding the myth than confronting it. With his well-timed, photogenic smile – post-blackface, naturally – Trudeau was the perfect mascot. Our self-image personified: tolerant, polished, unthreatening. But branding aside, his government sidestepped moral clarity at home – from pipeline expansions and broken promises to Indigenous communities, to a foreign policy on Gaza that rarely strayed from Washington’s script. In moments that demanded progressive definition, he was formless.It would have been naive to think many Canadians would take Donald Trump seriously when he half-jokingly suggested in November 2024 that Canada become the 51st state. After all, those words came from someone familiar to us – a man and a Maga movement forged in the belief that something sacred was always being stolen. The enemy, the fuel for his fervor, shifted with the news cycle: migrants, trans youth, teachers, climate scientists, Muslims, Black Americans, DEI initiatives, and the very idea of truth.But the speaker of those words wore the same jacket as Pierre Poilievre, who, just before Trump’s threat, was the undeniable favourite among Canadians to become the next prime minister.His rhetoric tapped into the same fears and scapegoating, presenting itself as the antidote to a broken system. Poilievre ticked off his own list of Trump-style grievances: DEI initiatives? “Garbage.” Trans women in women’s spaces? “No place at all.” Immigration policies? “Destroying” a system that requires caps over compassion to curb economic and social pressure. It’s as if he were part of the same tired flock – one that targets the marginalized while promising to fix what he claims is broken. The popular sentiments of a supposedly morally superior land.And this isn’t new. In 2008, as the country prepared to confront the brutal legacy of residential schools, Poilievre dismissed the moment sanctimoniously, arguing that Indigenous people needed to learn “the values of hard work” more than they needed compensation for past abuses. That’s who was in line to lead the country, as anointed by our polls.In the end, his opponent Mark Carney was victorious. But it should be clear that a shift toward the Liberal leader isn’t clarity about who we are, as much as it is a hedge against a man who seeks to claim us from afar.Carney is no antidote – just a bandage. Cutting ministries for gender equality and disability rights isn’t healing; it’s harm. His economic nationalism is safer than the far-right’s bluster, but it’s closer to US centrism than a remedy.As one union representing more than 80,000 educators put it, the move signals “an unwise change of direction” for a country where vulnerable groups are already living in fear. And while Carney served as an executive at Brookfield Asset Management, the company faced accusations of violating Indigenous rights.What Canadians and others need to confront is that the Trump machine wasn’t purely fueled by cultural resentment. It was powered, in no small part, by the United States’ historic desire to promote and believe the best of itself – even when the evidence said otherwise.For me, as a Black Canadian, home has rarely been the gentle myth so many sing about. Always polite and tolerant it wasn’t. I’ve seen just as much of the opposite: unmarked graves, flickers of grief, and then silence. I’ve seen headlines and acknowledgments of systematic racism turn to indifference: police brutality, missing Indigenous women, gone like breath during our winters. And yes, I’ve seen the Proud Boys, too. Their founder, Gavin McInnes? Canadian.Canada holds beauty, but it harbours moral rot just as much as the neighbour it claims to rise above. Myth-making can’t save us. If we want to hold onto our sovereignty in this moment, maybe it’s time we stop lying like them – to others, and most of all, to ourselves.

      Noel Ransome is a Toronto-based freelance writer More

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      A plea to the West: help us save America’s democracy | Anonymous

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      Donald Trump and his political allies in Washington have undertaken far-sweeping actions to undermine the foundations of American democracy, while simultaneously pursuing policies that erode and disrupt eight decades of trust and cooperation with democratic allies in Europe, North America and Asia.While leaders in these countries grapple with what is happening in Trump’s America, they must now ask themselves a new and critical question of immense relevance – one that has never been asked before in the modern era:“As nations who were helped by America in world war two and who have depended on the United States for our security, do we now have an obligation to reciprocate and help tens of millions of Americans whose liberty is threatened? Should we – can we – do anything to help the American people in their moment of democratic peril?”Yes. I firmly believe that the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan have a historic obligation to the American people to do what they can to help us preserve our democracy. An America descending into authoritarianism also poses a threat to the democracies they lead.I have two memories that speak to how foreign democracies should think about what they see happening in the United States of 2025.When my mother passed away, I found a small ceramic teapot in her cupboard with gold lettering on the bottom that read: “For England and Democracy. This teapot was transported to the USA by the Royal Navy.” My mother had purchased it during the early days of the second world war to support Britain and its people. Ordinary Americans such as my mother were doing their part – however small – to support a democratic country besieged by Nazi Germany.During the cold war, I remember hearing American presidents deliver speeches that were highly critical of the Soviet Union. At the end of these remarks, they would sometimes take a moment to directly address “the Russian people”. Our presidents were saying: “We see you as victims of oppression. We know that you are suffering under a cruel regime, and we hope that someday, in some manner, you will be free from the yoke of Soviet communism.” I know that when these messages got through Russian jamming, they were heard and gave some degree of hope to large segments of the Russian population.These two memories tell me that fundamental bonds based on enduring values can exist between governments and peoples who are not citizens of that government. Freedom, democracy and the rule of law can be those values. They also say that in the modern world, ordinary citizens in one nation can take a range of actions to support governments and citizens of another country.Today’s America is a place of fear for many. Americans are afraid that their livelihoods will be destroyed by a president who exercises unconstitutional acts of political retribution against his “enemies”. His targets: universities, law firms, corporations, states, certain agencies of his own government, and any federal employee who dissents in public. The judiciary and the media have been targets of vicious verbal attacks from Trump and his allies in Congress, which are precursors of actual future assaults. Foreign students, permanent residents and immigrants are rounded up and deported using highly questionable methods.European, Canadian and Japanese leaders are having a difficult time adjusting to this new American reality. The muscle memory of 80 years of intense cooperation, and in some cases dependency on the United States, is very difficult to break.I know the questions these leaders must be asking in private: is the United States becoming our adversary and perhaps our enemy? Will we be alone in our battle against the authoritarians in Russia and China? Will Trump and Elon Musk use governmental power and immense personal wealth to undermine our own democracies by encouraging the growth of far-right, anti-democratic forces in our countries? How can we protect ourselves when the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world is in rapid retreat from justice, from economic reality, from science, from policies that protect global health, while it aggressively pursues actions that accelerate dangerous atmospheric warming to the detriment of all?The silence of European, Canadian and Japanese leaders in the face of the US’s democratic crisis is both understandable and deeply disappointing. But make no mistake, their silence is a betrayal of their historic obligation to the American people as well as their commitment to democratic forces the world over. There are at least three difficult steps these leaders should consider.First, they must form common cause with the American people – not our government – and publicly state what they are saying in private. American democracy is in peril from an increasingly lawless government in Washington. They need to acknowledge that if American democracy erodes and dies, democracies the world over will be less safe. For the first time in history, Americans need to hear a message from foreign democratic leaders in support of preserving and sustaining our 249-year-old republic. You owe us at least this if you believe in democracy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSecond, take steps that begin to isolate the United States in world diplomacy that indicate strong disapproval of Trump’s activities to curtail democracy and his efforts to strengthen ties to authoritarian governments such as Russia. Refuse to visit the United States and make it clear that the US president is not welcome in Europe, Canada and Japan. If the US slips further into authoritarianism or undermines your own democracies, consider suspending the G-7’s yearly meetings and taking further actions to indicate that diplomatic business as usual will not be the norm as the Trump administration pursues an anti-democratic path.Third, move aggressively to act as Trump attacks our great universities and science centers, weakens countless not-for-profit organizations including our national museums, cultural centers and public media, as he moves to destroy US humanitarian relief efforts, as he terminates prior US environmental commitments and repeals laws and regulations designed to slow the climate crisis. Invite Americans engaged in these endeavors to work directly with the people of Europe, Canada and Japan and your like-minded institutions to support these American entities because they are part of our democratic fabric. And they often better your own societies and help people the world over. Establish and encourage the creation of people-to-people initiatives that will bring Europeans, Canadians, Japanese and Americans closer together to carry on what Trump and his allies are either destroying or weakening.I know that taking these actions will be extremely difficult. Trump will respond with verbal assaults and irrational retaliation because his power is unchecked. He and his allies will accuse you of interfering in our domestic affairs. In forming common cause with Americans fighting for our democracy, I deeply regret that you will begin to understand the growing fear that grips all segments of our society, and the retaliation visited every day upon the American people and institutions Trump deems as “enemies”.Defending European, Canadian and Japanese economic interests from Trump’s obsession with tariffs and other harmful actions he may take in the foreign policy arena, though important, does not repay the historic debt that you owe the people of the United States to help us preserve our democracy. I ask you to understand that staying silent as Donald Trump weakens American democracy will not deter him from harming your democratic societies. And your silence can only serve to embolden him in his efforts to erode the democratic standards embedded in the US constitution.

      The writer is a former US diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous More

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      Trump hails achievements of first 100 days despite polls revealing American disapproval on economy – as it happened

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      Trump is speaking now at a rally in Warren, Michigan and he has fulsome praise for what he calls “the most successful 100 days of any administration in the history of our country”.A raft of opinion polls released this week shows that a majority of Americans disagree, strongly, expressing deep disapproval of his performance as president, and particularly his handling of the economy, which has been severely damaged by his chaotic imposition of tariffs against nearly even nation, except Russia.A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released on Tuesday shows that 45% of those asked to grade Trump’s performance as president gave him an F, 7% a D, 8% a C, 17% a B, and 23% an A.Half of independents said Trump deserves an F, and only a slim majority of Republicans gave him an A.This brings our coverage of day 100 of Donald Trump’s second term to a close. We will be back in the morning, as the next of 1,000-plus days dawn, but in the meantime we leave you with this list of the day’s developments:

      At Donald Trump’s rally in Michigan, his supporters reacted to the screening of a long video, set to ominous music, showing the harsh treatment of men he had deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador without due process by chanting”: “USA! USA!”

      As Trump defended his broadly unpopular handling of the economy, he criticized Fed chair Jerome Powell, saying: “I have a Fed person who’s not really doing a good job, but I won’t say that.” The businessman president who used bankruptcy law to rescue his failed enterprises six times added: “I know much more about interest rates than he does”.

      Trump mistakenly attacked the Michigan representative John James, calling the Republican he had endorsed “a lunatic” for trying to impeach him. That was someone else.

      Trump supporters praised by the president at a rally included the former member of a violent cult who founded Blacks for Trump, and a retired autoworker who once told people to read David Duke’s “honest and fair” book about race.

      The US Department of Justice has begun the first criminal prosecutions of immigrants for entering a newly declared military buffer zone created along the border with Mexico, according to court filings.

      Trump called Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos on Tuesday morning to complain about a report that the company planned to display prices that show the impact of tariffs. Trump told reporters later that Bezos “was very nice, he was terrific” during their call, and “he solved the problem very quickly”.

      The Trump administration has reached one trade deal already but won’t tell us who with until that country’s prime minister and parliament approve the deal, the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said told CNBC.

      The United States proposed sending up to 500 Venezuelan immigrants with alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador as the two governments sought to reach an agreement on the use of the nation’s notorious mega-prison, according to emails seen by CNN.

      Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Tuesday that offers temporary relief to automakers from the 25% tariffs he imposed in March in a previous proclamation. The measure gives automakers a break for two years to give them time to move auto production back to the United States.

      Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, accused the Trump administration of turning “one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue”, after he and other Joe Biden appointees were removed from the board of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

      Pete Hegseth has abruptly banished the Pentagon’s Women, Peace and Security program as part of his crusade against diversity and equity, dismissing it as a “woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” despite it being a signature Donald Trump achievement from his first term.

      Donald Trump surprised Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, by inviting her to speak during his address at Selfridge air national guard base on Tuesday afternoon.
      One notable feature of Tuesday’s Trump rally in Michigan is that it featured cameos from supporters of the president who have been fixtures of his campaign rallies for nearly a decade.Early in the speech, as he pointed to familiar faces, Trump recognized the Front Row Joes, a group of diehard supporters akin to groupies who have traveled the country to attend dozens of his rallies. He also shouted out Blake Marnell, a supporter who wears a “brick suit” in homage to Trump’s border wall and witnessed the assassination attempt last year in Butler, Pennsylvania.“There’s my friend, Blacks for Trump. I like that guy. He follows me”, the president said pointing into the crowd. “We love you, your whoile group has been so supportice over the years, I want to thank you”.“Everyone thinks I pay you a fortune”, Trump added. “I don’t even know who the hell he is, I just like him”.As I reported in 2020, the “Blacks for Trump” founder is Maurice Symonette, a.k.a. Michael the Black Man, a former member of a violent cult who posts anti-Semitic screeds and racist conspiracy theories online, and yet has been a featured member of the audience at Trump campaign events since 2016.Symonette was known as Maurice Woodside until 1992, when the black supremacist cult leader he followed, Yahweh ben Yahweh, was jailed for leading a conspiracy to murder 14 white people in initiation rites. Woodside was among the Miami-based Nation of Yahweh cult members charged in two of the murders, but he was acquitted. After the trial, he changed his last name to Symonette, which was his father’s surname, before eventually reinventing himself as Michael the Black Man.On his website, Symonette makes a variety of bizarre claims, including that Omar and other prominent Black Democrats, artists and athletes — including former President Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee, Colin Kaepernick, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. — are “DECEVING [sic] FAKE BLACK PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY INDIANS!” In a sermon now deleted from YouTube, he claimed that the Senate is controlled by a secret underground of “Cherokee Mormons.”Later in the speech, Trump called to the stage another supporter who has been a figure at rallies since 2016: Brian Pannebecker, a retired auto worker who told the crowd, “We have the greatest President, probably not just in our lifetimes, but in the history of this country!”Pannebecker’s brief cameo was clipped and shared on social media by an official White House account, despite the fact that it was first reported a decade ago that he had written a glowing review of David Duke’s book, “My Awakening”, in which he called the former Klansman’s work “honest and fair”. After reading the book, Pannebecker wrote in his online review, people “will be able to discuss the issue of race without the fear of being labeled a racist because you will have the facts and the truth on your side”.A federal judge in New Jersey ruled on Tuesday that Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia graduate and Palestine solidarity activist who was detained on 8 March in his apartment building in New York and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Louisiana, can move forward with his lawsuit claiming the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views.“This Court has habeas jurisdiction over this case” Judge Michael Farbiarz wrote. “And as set out in this Opinion, that jurisdiction is intact. It has not been removed.”“As I am now caring for our barely week-old son, it is even more urgent that we continue to speak out for Mahmoud’s freedom, and for the freedom of all people being unjustly targeted for advocating against Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife said in a statement. “I am relieved at the court’s finding that my husband can move forward with his case in federal court. This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom. But there is still more work to be done. I will continue to strongly advocate for my husband, so he can come home to our family, and feel the pure joy all parents know of holding your first-born child in your arms.”“The court has affirmed that the federal government does not have the unreviewable authority to trample on our fundamental freedoms,” Noor Zafar of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project said in a statment emailed to reporters. “This is a huge step forward for Mahmoud and for the other students and scholars that the Trump administration has unlawfully detained in retaliation for their political speech, and a rebuke of attempts by the executive to use immigration laws to weaken First Amendment protections for political gain.”The US Department of Justice has begun the first criminal prosecutions of migrants for entering a newly declared military buffer zone created along the border with Mexico, according to court filings, Reuters reports.At least 28 migrants were charged were charged in federal court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Monday for crossing into the 170-mile-long, 60-foot-wide militarized buffer zone patrolled by active-duty US troops.Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, visited the area last week and said it was the start of a plan to extend the buffer zone along the border.“The reason we are here today, at almost the 100-day mark of President Trump’s administration is because you’re standing on a National Defense Area, this may as well be a military base” Hegseth said in a defense department social media video posted online. “Any illegal attempting to enter that zone is entering a military base.”“As New Mexicans, we have deep concerns about the enhanced militarization of our borderlands communities” the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico in a statement last week. “The expansion of military detention powers in the ‘New Mexico National Defense Area’ – also known as the ‘border buffer zone’ – represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians.”The idea of militarizing the border has long been a dream of far-right politicians, like the failed Arizona senate candidate Blake Masters, who devoted a campaign ad to the idea in 2022.Trump has left the stage, and his supporters are filing out of the venue, which we are told by the pool reporter there has a capacity of 4,000, but was only about half or three-fifths full.One bizarre moment early in the speech that we would have heard a lot more about had the speaker been Joe Biden was when Trump tore into Representative John James, telling the crowd the Michigan Republican he had endorsed and campaigned with was “a lunatic”.“Some guy that I never heard of, John James. Is he a congressman? This guy? He said, he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to start the impeachment of Donald Trump”, Trump told the crowd. Many of his supporters in the room, and watching at home, were probably aware that the president, who celebrates his 79th birthday in six weeks, had confused James with Representative Shri Thanedar, the Michigan Democrat who did, in fact, introduce articles of impeachment against Trump on Monday.Trump has just finished speaking and departed to the strains of the Village People anthem YMCA. He spoke for about 90 minutes in what was a fairly typical rally speech and even told the crowd early on, “I miss you guys. I miss the campaign”.If there has been one constant theme throughout his time in office, it has been that he clearly loves the adulation of the crowd that comes from making campaign speeches far more than the work of governing.Trump just made the entirely false claim that, “for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction”.“For the first time ever, in, I think, ever, that they’re saying the country is headed in the right direction”, Trump added. “Has never happened before”.It is not clear why the president thinks this is true, or indeed if he does, but it is very clearly not true.In the latest nationwide poll, conducted from April 17-21 for the Associated Press by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the overwhelming majority of Americans said that the country is headed in the wrong direction (62% vs 37%).The latest Gallup poll, from earlier in April showed that just 34% were satisfied with the way things were going in the US, and 64% were dissatisfied. While those numbers were markedly better than last summer, when satisfaction was as low as 18% and dissatisfaction reached 80%, the majority still clearly says the country is headed in the wrong direction.It is also not true to say that American have never previously said the country was going in the right direction. Gallup found that 50% of the public said that things were going n the right direction at this point in George W. Bush’s first term in 2001. There was even more optimism in 1999, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, when the right direction number reached 70%.Defending his handling of the economy, which has been severely damaged by his trade war and the prospect of rising inflation, Trump just told his supporters in Michigan: “Inflation is basically down, and interest rates came down despite the fact that I have a Fed person who’s not really doing a good job, but I won’t say that. I want to be very nice. I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed. You’re not supposed to criticize the Fed; you’re supposed to let him do his own thing, but I know much more about interest rates than he does, believe me.”At his rally in Michigan, Donald Trump’s supporters reacted to the screening of a long video, set to ominous music, showing the harsh treatment of men he had deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador without due process by chanting “USA! USA”!”The video, first posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform X by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in March, shows 238 men accused of being members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, being taken from planes and confined in the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot.The images of the abusive treatment clearly delighted Trump, and his supporters. The fact that the men were not given an opportunity to contest the accusation that they are members of either Tren de Aragua or the Salvadoran gang MS-13, seemed not to trouble Trump.Instead, he accused Democrats of “racing to the defense of some of the most violent savages on the face of the Earth”.“They’re racing to the courts to help them”, Trump claimed, ignoring the fact that his own administration has admitted in court that at least one of the man deported, Kilmar Ábrego García, was sent there by mistake, in violation of an order issued during hjis previous term in office. The families of other men seen in the video have pointed to multiple errors in the interpretation of their tattoos as proof that they are gang members.Trump is speaking now at a rally in Warren, Michigan and he has fulsome praise for what he calls “the most successful 100 days of any administration in the history of our country”.A raft of opinion polls released this week shows that a majority of Americans disagree, strongly, expressing deep disapproval of his performance as president, and particularly his handling of the economy, which has been severely damaged by his chaotic imposition of tariffs against nearly even nation, except Russia.A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released on Tuesday shows that 45% of those asked to grade Trump’s performance as president gave him an F, 7% a D, 8% a C, 17% a B, and 23% an A.Half of independents said Trump deserves an F, and only a slim majority of Republicans gave him an A.“Today, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, spoke with the President of the United States, Donald J Trump”, a statement from the Canadian prime minister’s office said.“President Trump congratulated Prime Minister Carney on his recent election. The leaders agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment. To that end, the leaders agreed to meet in person in the near future.”Carney’s center-left Liberal party won Monday’s general election thanks to a wave of resentment about Trump’s threats to annex Canada and the imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports.“As I’ve been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country”, Carney said in his victory speech late Monday. As the crowd jeered and shouted “Never!” Carney agreed. “These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, never, ever happen”.As Canadian went to the polls on Monday, Trump posted what seemed like an endorsement of Carney’s rival, the Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, suggesting that the pro-Trump politician would help bring about Canada’s absorption into the United States. When the votes were counted, however, Poilievre, who had a commanding lead in the polls before Trump started talking about annexing the country, had not only failed to lead the Conservatives to power, he had even lost his own seat.Despite Carney’s office claiming on Tuesday that he and Trump had agreed to work together “as independent, sovereign nations”, White House officials insisted that Trump is still serious about his stated desire to make Canada the 51st US state.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked during a briefing for rightwing influencers if Trump was “truthing or trolling” when he says that he wants to annex Canada, and Greenland. “Trump truthing, all the way”, she replied. “And the Canadians would benefit greatly, let me tell you that”.Donald Trump surprised Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, by inviting her to speak during his address at Selfridge air national guard base on Tuesday afternoon.Trump, who came to Macomb county, Michigan, for an evening rally to celebrate what he calls the historic accomplishments of the first 100 days of his second term, despite widespread disapproval of his actions by a majority of Americans in a series of polls, announced a new fighter jet mission for the base outside Detroit, easing fears that the installation would be closed.For decades, Trump said, the base has “stood as a crucial pillar of North American air defense”.“In recent years, many in Michigan have feared for the future of the base. They’ve been calling everybody, but the only one that mattered is Trump,” he said. “Today I have come in person to lay to rest any doubt about Selfridge’s future.”Whitmer’s political standing was damaged earlier this month when she was photographed hiding her face from photographers in the Oval Office after Trump invited her to be present as he signed executive orders, two of which demanded investigations of critics who had served in his first administration.On Tuesday, she was careful to begin her impromptu remarks by saying that she had not expected to speak, and then praised the decision as a boon for the local economy, but did not praise Trump, as Republicans he invited to make remarks did.Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Tuesday that offers temporary relief to automakers from the 25% tariffs he imposed in March in a previous proclamation.The White House confirmed to Fox Business earlier that the new measure would give automakers a break for two years to give them time to move auto production back to the United States.The proclamation outlines a series of technical changes to the tariff regime, “to modify the system imposed in Proclamation 10908 by reducing duties assessed on automobile parts accounting for 15 percent of the value of an automobile assembled in the United States for 1 year and equivalent to 10 percent of that value for an additional year”.As we reported earlier, the changes will allow carmakers with US factories to reduce the amount they pay in import taxes on foreign parts, using a formula tied to how many cars they sell and the price.Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, accused the Trump administration of turning “one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue”, after he and other Joe Biden appointees were removed from the board of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.Emhoff, who is Jewish and spoke passionately against the rising tide of antisemitism during his time as the second gentleman, said he was informed on Tuesday that he had been removed from the museum’s council.“Let me be clear: Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous – and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve,” he said.“No divisive political decision will ever shake my commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education or to combatting hate and antisemitism. I will continue to speak out, to educate, and to fight hate in all its forms – because silence is never an option.”The New York Times reported that the Trump administration also fired Ron Klain, Biden’s first chief of staff; Susan Rice, national security adviser to Barack Obama, and Biden’s top domestic policy adviser; and Tom Perez, the former labor secretary who was a senior adviser to the former president.Trump defeated Harris, then the US vice-president, in November. Emhoff’s law firm recently struck a deal with the Trump administration to avert an executive order targeting its practice, a decision Emhoff is reported to have voiced his disagreement with.Pete Hegseth has abruptly banished the Pentagon’s Women, Peace and Security program as part of his crusade against diversity and equity, dismissing it as a “woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” despite it being a signature Donald Trump achievement from his first term.In a post on X, the US defense secretary wrote: “This morning, I proudly ENDED the ‘Women, Peace & Security’ (WPS) program inside the [Department of Defense]. WPS is yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops – distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.”Hegseth added that the program was “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists”, claiming: “Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”But the decision is raising some eyebrows, as the initiative was established during Trump’s first administration when he signed the Women, Peace and Security Act in 2017, making the US the first country in the world to codify standalone legislation on the matter.The Trump campaign even courted female voters by citing the initiative as one of its top accomplishments for women on its website.Attempting to square this circle, Hegseth later claimed the Biden administration had “distorted & weaponized” the original program. “Biden ruined EVERYTHING, including ‘Women, Peace & Security,’” he insisted.The Senate has confirmed billionaire investment banker Warren Stephens to be ambassador to the UK, backing Donald Trump’s nominee by 59 to 39.Stephens is chair, president and CEO of Stephens Inc, a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is a longtime contributor to Republican candidates, including Trump, having donated millions of dollars to support Trump’s campaigns and 2025 inauguration fund.Asked about negotiations with Congress over tax legislation, Trump said: “The Republicans are with us. I think we’ve got the big beautiful deal that’s moving along, and I think we’re going to have it taken care of.” He added:
      A very important element that we’re working on now, more important than anything with the border in good shape, is the fact that we want to get, and very importantly, the big beautiful new deal. If we get that done, that’s the biggest thing … And I think we’re going to get it done. We have great Republican support. If the Democrats blocked it, you’d have a 60% tax increase. I don’t think that’s going to happen. We have great support from Republicans. …
      The next period of time, I think, my biggest focus will be on Congress, the deal that we’re working on. That would be the biggest bill in the history of our country in terms of tax cuts and regulation cuts, and other things. More

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      Mark Carney Has to Deliver on Trump and the Economy After Canada Election Win

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      The Canadian prime minister achieved a stunning political upset, running on an anti-Trump platform and promising to revive the economy. Now, he needs to deliver. Canada’s banker-turned-prime-minister pulled off a political miracle, leading his party from polling abyss to a rare fourth term in power, and securing the top government job after entering electoral politics just three months ago.Mark Carney, the country’s new leader, told Canadians that he was the right person to stand up to President Trump and that, with his economics expertise, he knew how to boost the country’s lackluster economy and fortify it in turbulent times. Now he has to actually do all of that, and quickly, as his country moves from a prolonged period of political turmoil and faces the fallout of a trade war with its closest ally and economic partner: the United States. Mess at HomeWhen Mr. Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, announced in January that he would resign after 10 years leading Canada, he created a rare opportunity that Mr. Carney jumped at. But after Mr. Carney won the race to replace Mr. Trudeau in March as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, he also inherited a messy situation at home that he must now urgently take on. The Canadian Parliament has not been in session since before Christmas, after Mr. Trudeau suspended its activities to be able to hold the Liberal leadership election that elevated Mr. Carney. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pierre Poilievre Raised Canada’s Conservative Party, Only to Be Tossed From His Seat

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      Pierre Poilievre lost the vote for a constituency he has held for 21 years to a Liberal political neophyte. His populist approach may have been to blame.When protesting truckers rolled toward downtown Ottawa and proceeded to occupy the Canadian capital for four weeks, they got a welcome from a man waving to them from a highway overpass, his hands covered in knitted red mittens with white maple leaves on the palms.The man was Pierre Poilievre, who would become the leader of the Conservative Party and who until just recently was widely referred to as Canada’s next prime minister. Soon he will have a new title: ex-Member of Parliament.In a stunning upset, voters in Mr. Poilievre’s district (or riding, as it is known in Canada) turned him out of office on Monday. His embrace of the so-called Freedom Convoy of 2022, appears to have played a significant role in the defeat.Voters in this part of Canada have memories of that time — and not fond ones.With Ottawa paralyzed, local businesses forced to shut down and residents struggling to sleep amid the round-the-clock air horn blasting, Mr. Poilievre brought coffee and doughnuts to the truckers, who were protesting pandemic restrictions and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.On Tuesday, his support for the convoy, some leaders of which recently received criminal convictions, was a recurring complaint among voters in his district, Carleton.“Populist politics is not for me,” declared one voter, Rick Pauloski, who said he had supported Conservatives in the past.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Canada’s Liberal election: Carney’s triumph is a rebuff to Trump | Editorial

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      Canada’s astounding election comeback by the Liberals will hearten many outside its borders as well as within. The governing party’s Lazarus moment was sparked by a man who was not on the ballot – though he took the chance to reiterate that the country should become the 51st US state, implying that voters could then elect him.By then it was already clear that Donald Trump’s threats had backfired. Monday’s result was a clear repudiation of his agenda. For two years, the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre looked like a dead cert as the next prime minister, assailing Justin Trudeau’s government on issues including the cost of living, housing and immigration. His party built a 25-point lead. But within four months, Mr Trudeau’s resignation, his warning that Mr Trump’s “51st state” remarks were no joke, and the imposition of swingeing US tariffs, transformed the contest. Mr Poilievre lost his seat. The Liberals are embarking on a fourth term, though this time perhaps as a minority, under Mr Trudeau’s replacement Mark Carney.Mr Trump made Canada’s political and economic sovereignty the central issue. Mr Carney, a member of Mr Trump’s despised global liberal elite, pitched himself as the man for a crisis: an experienced technocrat from outside politics who guided Canada’s central bank through the great recession, and the UK’s through Brexit.Both Mr Poilievre and Mr Trump said that the Conservative leader was not Maga material. But he certainly appeared Maga-adjacent, moving further right and building an energetic base by embracing culture wars and attacking “wokeism”, pledging “jail not bail” and promising to cut international aid and defund the national broadcaster.His defeat was effected primarily by other parties’ supporters resolving to unite around the Liberals. The leftwing New Democrats lost around two-thirds of their seats, including that of their leader Jagmeet Singh, who has resigned – though they have retained enough to ensure a progressive majority in parliament. The Bloc Québécois saw a smaller fall, as Mr Trump’s aggression overshadowed separatist aspirations. But Conservative support actually rose. For the first time in almost a century, Canada’s two main parties each got over 40% of the vote.Mr Carney has plenty to celebrate, but limited room for manoeuvre over difficult terrain: “President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us,” he warned in his victory speech. He knows that Mr Trump takes advantage of perceived weakness. But the US president also nurses grievances. Mr Carney has promised to work more closely with allies in Europe and Asia. His diplomatic experience and international contact book will help.The external economic threat and internal cost of living crisis are inseparable. This campaign, thanks to Mr Trump, put the nation centre stage. But as prime minister, Mr Carney will also need to address society, and tackle the kind of underlying problems that have led to the triumph of Mr Trump and like-minded politicians elsewhere. He has promised to double housebuilding and create hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs, and wants to eliminate internal trade barriers. Opponents may well retort that Liberals have had three terms to realise their vision.Other politicians should be cautious about drawing lessons from this very particular contest. Canada faces a unique threat from the US, though it has economic leverage as well as vulnerability. This is, nonetheless, a welcome rebuff to American bellicosity and rejection of rightwing populism.

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      in US Politics

      Denied, detained, deported: the people targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green-card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested without due process in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March, denied release to attend the birth. He told an immigration judge that he and hundreds of other detainees were being denied rights the court itself had claimed to prioritize: “Due process and fundamental fairness.”View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student near Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, as first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen. The administration’s arcane justification is that his activism could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He is detained in Vermont. Democratic lawmakers have visited Khalil, Öztürk and Mahdawi but failed to secure their release.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother Columbia student, Chung, 21, sued the administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they wanted to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, 32, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”He was taken to the same Louisiana federal detention center as Khalil. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was a threat to national security, without providing details, and the state department had revoked his visa, while an immigration judge refused to release him.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the Indian citizen’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.View image in fullscreenKseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana. Her colleagues say her expertise is “irreplaceable” and Petrova said foreign scientists like her “enrich” America.Student visas revoked, then restored amid chaosMore than 1,400 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, in what the specialist publication Inside Higher Education called “an explosion of visa terminations”.Amid scant information and rising panic, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some were cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some could find no explanation. Then in the face of multiple court challenges, the administration in late April reversed course and restored legal statuses that had been rescinded en masse, but said it was developing a new policy. Uncertainty prevails.The legal rollercoaster came too late for this high-profile case:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of the University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. The Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Removed by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadorian man was removed to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But it is essentially defying a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing, to a brutal mega-prison, then later transferred to another facility. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge repeatedly and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis.He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans deported there. He has begged to speak to his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who insists he is not a criminal. The sheet metalworkers union chief, Michael Coleman, described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadorian prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández RomeroView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes Barriosskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the DHS, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting against the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country without due process because their countries of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody. She is possibly still in Panama trying to get a foothold.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Adam PeñaThis San Diego-based US citizen now carries his American passport and birth certificate everywhere with him and thinks he was sent one of the “time for you to leave” letters in error but because he represents clients in Ice detention locally. “I do believe this email was sent intentionally to immigration advocates around the country to instill fear and intimidation,” he told NBC news.Americans removedChildren who are seven, four and two and are US citizens were removed from the US in late April when their mothers were deported to Honduras. DHS said the two women chose to take their children with them but one of their lawyers told the Guardian that they were denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on deportation flights from Louisiana. A federal judge said it was “illegal and unconstitutional” to thus remove a US citizen “with no meaningful process”.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green-card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More