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      Newark’s Mayor Sues a Top Trump Lawyer, Claiming Malicious Prosecution

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      The mayor, Ras Baraka, is suing Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, who dropped charges against him soon after his arrest near an immigration jail.Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, a Democratic candidate for governor who was arrested last month outside an immigration detention center, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Alina Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, that argues that his arrest was motivated by political malice, not justice.The lawsuit also names Ricky Patel, a supervising agent with Homeland Security Investigations who led the arrest of Mr. Baraka on May 9 outside a 1,000-bed detention center near Newark Liberty International Airport that has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.Mr. Baraka’s lawsuit accuses the federal authorities of false arrest and malicious prosecution. It also accuses Ms. Habba of defamation.The suit comes as polling locations opened Tuesday for six days of early voting ahead of a June 10 primary that has pitted Mr. Baraka against five other Democrats.Last month, Ms. Habba, who was appointed by Mr. Trump to be the state’s top federal prosecutor, abruptly announced that she was dropping a trespassing charge against Mr. Baraka — a development that prompted a federal judge to publicly question the validity of the “hasty arrest” in the first place.“Your role is not to secure convictions at all costs, nor to satisfy public clamor, nor to advance political agendas,” the judge, André M. Espinosa, said in a rare and harshly worded rebuke of the U.S. attorney’s office that Ms. Habba leads and where he once worked as a prosecutor.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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      Aide to Rep. Nadler Is Handcuffed Amid Confrontation With Federal Agents

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      Captured on video, the episode occurred in the congressman’s Manhattan office, shortly after the aide observed agents detaining immigrants outside a courtroom.Federal officers entered Representative Jerry Nadler’s office in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday and handcuffed and briefly detained one of his aides. The confrontation happened shortly after the aide observed federal agents detaining migrants in a public hallway outside an immigration courtroom in the same building as the congressman’s office.The episode was recorded by someone who was sitting in Mr. Nadler’s office. In the video, an officer with the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is shown demanding access to a private area inside the office. The video was obtained by Gothamist, which earlier reported the confrontation.“You’re harboring rioters in the office,” the federal agent, whose name tag and officer number are not visible in the video, says to a member of Mr. Nadler’s staff.There were no riots reported on Wednesday at the federal building on Varick Street, though protesters and immigrant rights advocates gathered inside and outside the building earlier in the day. The immigration court is on the fifth floor and Mr. Nadler’s office is on the sixth.The agents entered Mr. Nadler’s office because they had been told that protesters were there and were concerned for the safety of his staff members, according to a statement on Saturday from the Department of Homeland Security.When they arrived, “one individual became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office,” the statement said. That person, an aide to the congressman, was detained so the officers could complete their safety check, according to the statement.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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      How ICE Is Seeking to Ramp Up Deportations Through Courthouse Arrests

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      Officials had largely steered clear of arrests at immigration courts out of concern that they would deter people from showing up for hearings.A hearing on Tuesday at immigration court in Van Nuys, Calif., was supposed to be routine for a young family from Colombia, the first step in what they hoped would be a successful bid for asylum.To their surprise, the judge informed the father, Andres Roballo, that the government wished to dismiss his deportation case. Taken aback, Mr. Roballo hesitated, then responded: “As long as I stay with my family.”Moments later, as they exited the courtroom into a waiting area, Mr. Roballo was encircled by plainclothes federal agents who ushered him into a side room. Other agents guided his shaken wife, Luisa Bernal, and their toddler toward the elevator.Outside the courthouse, Ms. Bernal collapsed on a bench. “They have him, they have him,” she wailed. “We didn’t understand this would happen.”Mr. Roballo’s arrest was part of an aggressive new initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants at immigration courts, the latest escalation by the Trump administration in its all-out effort to ramp up deportations.Agents have begun arresting migrants immediately after their hearings if they have been ordered deported or their cases have been dismissed, a move that enables their swift removal, according to immigration lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.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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      Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program

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      The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries.The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration, for now, to revoke a Biden-era humanitarian program intended to give temporary residency to more than 500,000 immigrants from countries facing war and political turmoil.The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”The ruling, which exposes some migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to possible deportation, is the latest in a series of emergency orders by the justices in recent weeks responding to a flurry of applications asking the court to weigh in on the administration’s attempts to unwind Biden-era immigration policies.Friday’s ruling focused on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s expansion of a legal mechanism for immigration called humanitarian parole, in which migrants from countries facing instability are allowed to enter the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.Earlier this month, the justices allowed the Trump administration to remove deportation protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.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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      JD Vance’s Campaign Plane Is Being Used for Migrant Deportation Flights

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      The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several countries in Central America.In its former life, the charter plane with the tail No. N917XA went by the moniker Trump Force Two.The ubiquitous red, white and blue livery logged thousands of miles last year as the campaign plane of JD Vance, who was elected as President Trump’s vice president in November.But that plane — the same one the campaign offered rides on to entice donors to give money — is now carrying out a much different and clandestine kind of task for the Trump administration.The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several Central American countries, according to public aviation logs and a group that tracks the flights.The Trump-Vance campaign rode to victory in part on its vow to undertake the largest deportation push in American history. The Trump administration has since expanded the range of people who can be targeted for removal, sped up the deportation process for others and, in some cases, tightened the rules for legal immigrants.In 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the plane was used for at least three deportation flights that took about 360 migrants to El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. The center obtained the data through a public records request.A fourth flight, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of what is known as its ICE Air program, was used to transfer about 144 migrants between detention centers in the United States.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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      U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says

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      Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.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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      Leader of Smuggling Ring Gets 10 Years After Indian Family Froze to Death

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      The family of four that used the network got disoriented and lost their way in 2022 while trying to reach the United States from Canada on foot in blizzard conditions.More than three years after a young Indian family froze to death trying to cross into the United States from Canada during a blizzard, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the convicted architect of the human smuggling network that they used to a decade in prison.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, a 29-year-old Indian national who lived in Florida, was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison for his role in the operation that ferried Indians into the United States via Canada. He will be deported after serving time, the Justice Department said.His convicted co-conspirator, Steve Anthony Shand, 50, a U.S. citizen from Florida, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.Prosecutors said during the trial that the men were part of a large-scale criminal operation that arranged for dozens of Indians to enter Canada on fake student visas, and then smuggled them into the United States over land.Mr. Patel orchestrated the logistics with other co-conspirators. Mr. Shand was the driver who met the immigrants south of the Canadian border and transported them to Chicago, according to the Justice Department. It said in a news release that the smugglers had charged $100,000 for passage from India to the United States.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, left, and Steve Anthony Shand were sentenced on Wednesday.Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Associated PressFor Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, and their 11-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, the journey in January 2022 ended in tragedy. Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their ice-encased bodies in the desolate borderland between Manitoba and Minnesota.The Patels were part of a group of 11 Indians who had set out from the tiny Canadian town of Emerson with instructions on how to cross the border on foot.They expected to meet on the American side a person who would deliver them to their destination, most likely Illinois, where they had family or friends. But the family was separated from the rest of the group and most likely struggled to stay on course in the dark, buffeted by winds that whipped up blinding snow.The wind chill temperature was minus 36 degrees and lower, and wind gusts were as high as 50 miles per hour during their trek, the Justice Department said. An autopsy determined that the family had died from exposure to the cold. The seven other passengers survived.The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a specialized unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“The callous disregard for life that led to the tragic deaths of an entire family will not be forgotten,” Jamie Holt, the special agent in charge in St. Paul, Minn., said in a statement on Wednesday.The sentencing took place in the northwestern Minnesota town of Fergus Falls, where a jury convicted the two men last fall of four counts each related to human smuggling, including causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. More

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      ICE, Shifting Tactics, Detains High School Student at N.Y.C. Courthouse

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      The detention of a 20-year-old Venezuelan appears to be the first reported instance of immigration officials apprehending a student in the city this year.When a 20-year-old from Venezuela was arrested last week at an immigration courthouse in New York, it was the first reported instance of a public school student in the city being apprehended by federal officials since the start of President Trump’s second term.It also signaled a shift in strategy by immigration authorities who are intent on expediting deportations.Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers last week began standing inside and outside of immigration courts across the United States in an effort to detain certain migrants who are appearing for scheduled hearings. Immigration lawyers said ICE officers — from San Diego and Los Angeles to Boston and Miami — were targeting migrants shortly after their cases were dismissed by judges. Government lawyers are requesting that the cases be dismissed in order to place the migrants in expedited deportation proceedings.Dylan, the New York student, was arrested on Wednesday in the lobby of a courthouse in Lower Manhattan by ICE officers who showed up at the city’s immigration courts in large numbers. Dylan’s last name was withheld at the request of his family, which fears retaliation from the government.Dylan, 20, was arrested after he showed up to court for what he thought would be a routine hearing.RaizaOn Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams fended off a barrage of questions about the student’s arrest.Mr. Adams, who oversees a school system serving thousands of immigrant students, sought to distance himself from Dylan’s apprehension, saying that the arrest was a federal issue beyond his purview because it did not happen on school grounds.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