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    Judge Criticizes Government Inaction in Case of Migrants Held in Djibouti

    Judge Brian E. Murphy had ordered the Trump administration to offer due process to a group of men whom the government was trying to send to South Sudan.A federal judge expressed frustration on Monday night with the government’s failure to give due process to a group of deportees the administration is trying to send to South Sudan but is now holding in Djibouti, as he had mandated last week.“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than defendants anticipated,” the judge, Brian E. Murphy of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, wrote in his 17-page order. He added that if giving deportees remote proceedings proved too difficult, the government could still return the men to the United States.Judge Murphy’s earlier order, issued on Wednesday, mandated that six of the eight men be given a “reasonable fear interview,” or a chance to express fear of persecution or torture if they were sent on to South Sudan. At a hearing that day, he found that the government had violated another order that the deportees be given notice in a language they could understand, and at least 15 days to challenge their removal. Instead, the judge found they were given “fewer than 16 hours’ notice.”On Monday night, Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants in the case, confirmed that her team had not been given phone access to them. The Homeland Security Department’s public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The substance of Judge Murphy’s order was not surprising, as he rejected a motion from the government that he pause one of his earlier orders. But his criticism of the government’s delay in offering due process appeared to reflect his growing frustration in another contentious case in the back-and-forth between the Trump administration and federal courts.The day after Judge Murphy ordered that the migrants remain in U.S. custody, the White House called them “monsters” and the judge “a far-left activist.” Then, on Friday night, Judge Murphy ordered the government to “facilitate” the return from Guatemala of a man known as O.C.G., one of the original plaintiffs in the case.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 Seeks Extensive Student Data in Pressure Campaign to Control Harvard

    Harvard and the federal government are locked in a battle that boils down to turning over records on international students. But Harvard says it is also about the First Amendment.The latest confrontation between Harvard University and the Trump administration began last month with a far-reaching demand for data on international students.Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sent a letter to Harvard requesting, among other things, coursework for every international student and information on any student visa holder involved in misconduct or illegal activity.Harvard rebuffed parts of the request, and the Trump administration retaliated on Thursday. In one of its most aggressive moves so far against the university, the government said Harvard could no longer enroll any international students, who account for about one-fourth of its total enrollment.It also expanded its request for records to include any videos of international students, on campus or off, involved in protests or illegal or dangerous activity.The conflict has only further raised the stakes over the future of America’s oldest and most powerful university.The administration’s attempt to vacuum up vast amounts of private student data opens a new front in Mr. Trump’s crackdown on dissent from his political agenda. The strategy is aimed at realigning a higher education system the president sees as hostile to conservatives by stamping out what it says is antisemitism on campus and the transgender and diversity policies it says are rooted in “woke” ideology.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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    Can the Trump Administration Stop Harvard From Enrolling International Students?

    The Trump administration is relying on an obscure bureaucratic lever to stop the school, the latest in a series of aggressive moves.The Trump administration wants to halt Harvard from enrolling international students. But how can the federal government dictate which students a private university can and cannot enroll?The government has enormous power over who comes into the United States, and who doesn’t. For college and universities, the Department of Homeland Security has a vast system just to manage and track the enrollment of the hundreds of thousands of international students studying across the country at any given time.But a school needs government certification to use this database, known as SEVIS, for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. And this vulnerability is what the Trump administration is exploiting against Harvard.Homeland Security says that effective immediately, it has revoked a certification that allows Harvard to have access to SEVIS. Oddly enough, the students may still have valid visas. But Harvard is no longer able to log them into this all-important database.The announcement was a significant escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure Harvard to fall in line with the president’s agenda.Here’s what we know so far.How does Harvard use the SEVIS database?For each international student, Harvard inputs data into SEVIS to show that a student is enrolled full time, and thus meeting the terms of the visa that the student was issued.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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    Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Arresting International Students or Revoking Visas

    Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California provided temporary relief to some international students while a legal battle continues.A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s wide-reaching effort to detain and deport international students, barring the federal government from arresting those students or revoking their visas while the case plays out in court.Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, granted a temporary injunction protecting international students who were among the thousands whose visas were revoked earlier this year without clear justification, writing that government officials had “uniformly wreaked havoc” and “likely exceeded their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously” by the mass revocation of students’ immigration status.“The relief the court grants provides plaintiffs with a measure of stability and certainty,” Judge White wrote in the 21-page order. “That they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”Judge White’s ruling said that the order applied to all “similarly situated individuals” who participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is the system governing student visas. In the order, he expressed suspicion that the Trump administration was trying to place future visa “terminations beyond judicial review.”“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation,” Judge White wrote, “defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns. It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”The order comes hours after the Trump administration halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and it is likely that this nationwide order could at least in part prevent the Trump administration’s move from being enforced. More

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    U.S. Fights to Keep Mahmoud Khalil From Holding His Month-Old Child

    A judge ordered the Trump administration to let Mr. Khalil meet with his wife and infant son before a hearing on his immigration case. It was unclear whether they would be separated by plexiglass.On Wednesday evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent Mr. Khalil from holding his 1-month-old son.Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a leading figure in pro-Palestinian protests on the campus, have been fighting for days to win him what is known as a “contact visit” with his wife and child. Mr. Khalil, who is being detained in Louisiana, has not seen his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, in person since he was arrested in March, and has never met their son, Deen, who was born on April 21.On Wednesday, a New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, ordered the administration to allow Mr. Khalil to hold a single joint meeting with his wife and his lawyers. But it was unclear whether the judge’s order would permit Mr. Khalil to meet his son, given Trump officials’ reluctance to allow such a visit.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Their filing also included an affidavit from Brian Acuna, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans.“Because the facility does not house female detainees or minors, it is unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility,” Mr. Acuna wrote, adding that a contact visit had “never been offered to any other detainee.”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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    Rep. McIver Charged With Assault Over Clash Outside Newark ICE Center

    The Department of Justice also announced it was dropping a trespass charge against the city’s mayor stemming from the same episode.The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center and dropped a trespass charge against the city’s mayor that arose from the same episode, the department said Monday.Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, disclosed the move in a post on X, saying that the congresswoman, LaMonica McIver, had been charged “for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” when she visited the detention center with two other Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey on May 9.“No one is above the law — politicians or otherwise,” Ms. Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”She added that she had sought a resolution without bringing criminal charges, but that Ms. McIver had declined.In a statement on Monday, Ms. McIver blamed federal law enforcement for instigating the clash, saying that “ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation.”“The charges against me are purely political — they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight,” she said.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 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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    3 Lawmakers Involved in Newark ICE Protest Could Be Arrested, DHS Says

    The legislators were with Mayor Ras Baraka when he was arrested Friday outside an immigration detention facility. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said they could face assault charges.A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security suggested on Saturday that three Democratic members of Congress might face assault charges after a confrontation outside an immigration detention facility in Newark during the arrest of the city’s mayor, even as new details emerged that appeared to contradict the Trump administration’s account of the surrounding events.The three lawmakers — Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver of New Jersey — were inside the facility on Friday for what they described as a congressional oversight visit, which they have the right to conduct under federal law. The facility, Delaney Hall, received its first detainees last week and is eventually expected to hold as many as 1,000 migrants at a time.Soon after the legislators left the building on Friday afternoon, Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, was arrested by the head of Homeland Security Investigations in a brief but volatile clash that involved a team of masked federal agents wearing military fatigues and the three lawmakers. He was then taken to a separate federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the city and released five hours later.Precisely what led to Mr. Baraka’s arrest on federal trespassing charges, in a public area outside a facility that is owned by a private prison company, remains unclear. But much of what unfolded was recorded by journalists, as well as by cameras worn by law enforcement officials and videos taken by activists protesting nearby.Mayor Ras J. Baraka had pushed back against the Trump administration’s characterization of the events surrounding his arrest. “This is all fabrication,” he told reporters Saturday.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesTricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security spokeswoman, told CNN on Saturday that a body camera video showed “members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.”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