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    Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Venezuelan Deportations to Resume

    The solicitor general contended that a group of migrants had barricaded themselves inside a Texas detention center and threatened to take hostages.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday evening for permission to deport a group of nearly 200 Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members and detained in Texas.In a filing to the court, the administration contended that “serious difficulties have arisen” from the detention of the group of 176 migrants, who were shielded from deportation in an emergency overnight ruling by the court in mid-April.According to a declaration by a Homeland Security Department official included in the court filing, a group of 23 migrants had barricaded themselves inside a housing unit for several hours on April 26. The group threatened to take hostages and harm immigration officers, and tried to flood the unit by clogging the toilets, according to the filing.“The government has a strong interest in promptly removing from the country” gang members “who pose a danger to ICE officers, facility staff and other detainees while in detention,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing.The details of the episode, which had not been previously reported, occurred at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Texas, where migrants “barricaded the entrance doors of their housing unit using bed cots, blocked the windows and covered surveillance cameras,” according to a declaration by Joshua D. Johnson, a Homeland Security official and the acting director of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s Dallas Field Office.The group then “threatened to take hostages” and to “injure” ICE officers and facility staff members, and “remained barricaded in the housing unit for several hours,” Mr. Johnson said in the declaration.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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    Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

    Human rights groups have called conditions in the country’s network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.The planning for the flight to Libya has been tightly held, and could still be derailed by logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.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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    Trump Wavers When Asked About Due Process Rights and His Constitutional Duties

    President Trump repeatedly answered “I don’t know” when asked in a TV interview whether every person on American soil was entitled to due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.President Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that he did not know whether every person on American soil was entitled to due process, despite constitutional guarantees, and complained that adhering to that principle would result in an unmanageable slowdown of his mass deportation program.The revealing exchange, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” was prompted by the interviewer Kristen Welker asking Mr. Trump if he agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that citizens and noncitizens in the United States were entitled to due process.“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”Ms. Welker reminded the president that the Fifth Amendment says as much.“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said again. “It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Left unmentioned was how anyone could be sure these people were undocumented immigrants, let alone criminals, without hearings.Mr. Trump responded “I don’t know” one more time and referred to his “brilliant lawyers” when Ms. Welker asked whether, as president, he needed to “uphold the Constitution of the United States.”The comments came amid the many legal challenges to the administration’s agenda, especially Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign, and as top administration officials have begun to question the president’s obligation to provide due process. Mr. Trump has attacked judges, called for their impeachment and ignored a Supreme Court ruling directing his administration to facilitate the return of a migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly sent to a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.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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    Trump Administration Sues Colorado and Denver Over Immigration Policies

    The lawsuit, which names the governor and mayor as defendants, is the latest move by the White House to try to get local governments to cooperate more with its immigration agenda.The Trump administration sued Colorado and Denver on Friday, accusing the state, city and their leaders of impeding federal immigration actions, the latest salvo in the White House’s fight to compel local governments to help carry out deportations.The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Colorado and includes Gov. Jared Polis and Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver as defendants, specifically challenges state and city laws that restrict or prohibit cooperation with federal agencies.One state law prohibits officers from holding someone solely on the basis of a civil immigration detainer, a request that a detainee not be released. Other state laws prevent state and local officials from sharing information with federal immigration authorities and stop local jails from working with the federal government to house people detained for civil immigration violations.The lawsuit also challenges a Denver measure that bans the use of city resources to assist with immigration enforcement, and a 2017 executive order from the mayor that aimed to “establish Denver as a safe and welcoming city for all.”The lawsuit asks the court to rule the laws unconstitutional and prohibit their enforcement.“This is a suit to put an end to those disastrous policies and restore the supremacy of federal immigration law,” the lawsuit said.Many liberal-leaning states and cities have laws that keep local police departments mostly removed from immigration enforcement activity, as a way to build trust with immigrant communities. Democratic officials in several cities say that the policies help immigrants feel comfortable reporting crimes and interacting with health departments and schools.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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    Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Is Not Afraid of Trump Administration Immigration Warning

    Thomas Homan, the border czar, had said, “Wait to see what’s coming,” when asked about guidance sent to state workers about interacting with ICE agents.A dispute over a memo about how Wisconsin state workers should interact with federal immigration agents escalated this week into sharply worded warnings from the president’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.Mr. Evers and others interpreted comments by Mr. Homan to suggest that he and other elected officials could face arrest over local immigration policies, leading the Wisconsin governor to say he was “not afraid” of what he described as “chilling threats.”The Wisconsin dispute was the latest chapter in a long-running fight between President Trump’s administration and Democratic-led cities and states over whether local officials must cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.In Wisconsin, Republicans had for days pushed for Mr. Evers to rescind a message to state employees, issued on April 18 by the state’s Department of Administration. The single-page memo instructed workers to call a state lawyer if an ICE agent or other federal official visited their workplace. The memo told state workers to stay calm and notify their supervisors, to not immediately answer an agent’s questions and to not give them access to nonpublic areas. Chicago officials issued similar guidance to city workers earlier this year.Read the Memo to Wisconsin State WorkersRead Document 1 pageThe disagreement over the memo intensified outside the White House on Thursday when a person who identified himself as being from The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website, asked Mr. Homan why the government was not simply arresting “the leaders who are harboring and shielding” people who should be deported.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 Texas Borderland, Trump’s Immigration Push Suffers Its Worst Legal Defeat Yet

    Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is a Trump nominee with conservative credentials. But he found White House claims about a Venezuelan gang “invasion” went too far.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a bespectacled, soft-spoken 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, turned his high-backed leather chair toward a government lawyer at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, and asked a question. Can the president define what counts as an invasion, then declare that an invasion is happening, and then use a 1798 war powers law to expel the so-called invaders?“Yes,” answered Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer.Judge Rodriguez followed up: Wouldn’t that make Mr. Trump’s powers under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, “effectively limitless?”The question hinted at a groundbreaking ruling that Judge Rodriguez issued on Thursday when he found that Mr. Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that justified invoking the wartime law.The decision was the most sweeping ruling issued so far by a federal judge blocking the most aggressive prong of Mr. Trump’s effort, one that was already used to deport nearly 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. It comes after a Supreme Court decision in early April that Venezuelan detainees facing potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act could file lawsuits in the district courts where they were being held.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017.C-SPANThe result of the court’s order has been that challenges to a key piece of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which began in Washington, are spreading around the country, filling the dockets of federal judges and drawing tough and skeptical questioning — even from jurists with impeccable conservative credentials.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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    Timeline: How the Administration Deported Migrants Despite Judge’s Order

    <!–> [–><!–>The New York Times reconstructed how the Trump administration and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador struck a deal that led to the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –>The day before<!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Mr. Trump secretly signed an executive order invoking an 18th-century wartime law called […] More

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    5 Takeaways: Behind Trump’s Deal to Deport Migrants to El Salvador

    Internal documents and interviews with people familiar with the operation reveal how the White House seized on a wartime law to accelerate immigrant deportations.President Trump’s deportation in March of more than 200 alleged gang members from Venezuela to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador has emerged as a flashpoint in his administration’s use of wartime powers to expel immigrants.Lawyers for those deported say the March 15 operation circumvented due process and swept up those who are not gang members. The Supreme Court is now poised to weigh in on how the White House has sought to apply the Alien Enemies Act, which had previously only been invoked by presidents in time of war.A team of reporters from The New York Times reviewed court filings and government documents and interviewed government officials and lawyers for deportees and their relatives to reconstruct how the United States secured the deal with El Salvador and seized on the law to supercharge its deportation efforts.Here are five takeaways.El Salvador’s president pressed the U.S. for assurances that the deportees had gang ties.President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has championed President Trump and his immigration agenda and publicly celebrated the arrival of the deportees from the United States. But behind the scenes, Mr. Bukele expressed concern about who the United States sent to be imprisoned in his new Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, according to according to people familiar with the situation and documents obtained by The New York Times.During the negotiations, Mr. Bukele told U.S. officials he would take only what he described as “convicted criminals” from other countries. He made it clear that he did not want migrants from other nations whose only crime was being in the United States illegally.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