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    Leaked Ice document shows worker detained in Hyundai raid had valid visa

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    At least one of the Korean workers swept up in a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia last week was living and working legally in the US, according to an internal federal government document obtained by the Guardian.Officials then “mandated” that he agree to be removed from the US despite not having violated his visa.The document shows that immigration officials are aware that someone with a valid visa was among the people arrested during the raid at the Hyundai factory and taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention for removal proceedings, where the people arrested remained on Tuesday before expected deportation flights back to South Korea.The document in question reports on the man’s case and was leaked exclusively to the Guardian. It was written by an Ice agent. The Guardian is redacting the identity of the man in question, who arrived in the US in June, because it has not been possible to reach him directly and it is unclear whether he has any legal representation.The document says that immigration agents from Atlanta “determined that [redacted] entered into the United States in [redacted], with a valid B1/B2 visa and [redacted] was employed at HL-GA Battery Company LLC as a contractor from the South Korean company SFA. From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.”The internal file describes “an actual crime”, according to Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney based in Georgia – but with the crime allegedly being committed by the government, not the immigrant in question. Kuck, who is representing a number of people arrested during last week’s raid, said it is illegal to detain a valid visa holder in this way.“This is outrageous,” Kuck said.The document contradicts claims by the agency that all 475 people arrested during the raid were working illegally or violating their visas. Attorneys scrambling in recent days to provide representation to the men detained had already claimed that immigrants with a valid working status were swept up alongside the people allegedly working unlawfully, and placed in removal proceedings. That view was backed up by an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive government matters.It is not yet clear whether other people with valid visas were detained in the raid, nor how many were actually alleged to be working illegally at the factory.Approximately 300 people arrested could be put on flights back to South Korea as early as Wednesday, according to one source familiar with events who requested anonymity to speak about what is going on behind the scenes. Non-Koreans arrested during the operation are expected to remain in Ice detention.Last Thursday, Ice led a raid at the Hyundai battery factory under construction in Ellabell, near Savannah, Georgia, and arrested nearly 500 people, the majority of whom were from South Korea, part of a $12.6bn investment program in Georgia by the company. Construction had to be halted on the plant that is designed to supply batteries for electric vehicles.A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal parent agency of Ice, said in a statement to the Guardian that: “This individual admitted to unauthorized work on a B1/B2 visa. He was offered voluntary departure and accepted it,” despite this being the opposite of what the leaked document says. When pressed for further clarification, DHS reiterated its first statement. Ice did not respond to a request for comment about legal workers being arrested.“This is a clear violation of the law in detaining somebody who is not lawfully detainable,” Kuck said. “That’s a crime – that’s unlawful imprisonment in the United States. This isn’t an accident. People go to prison for stuff like this.”According to the file written by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an agency within Ice, the man entered the US “with a valid B1/B2 visa”, which allows for some business-related activities and tourism. He was at the Hyundai factory as a contractor with a South Korean company.“‘ Voluntarily’ means something different in immigration than it does in the real world,” Kuck said. “When you basically leave under Ice custody, then you have immigration consequences that come with that, including the loss of visa and possibly an inability to return [to the US].”After the raid, additional Ice officers and agents were sent to the detention facility to process the sheer number of people arrested, according to the agency official who spoke to the Guardian.Although officials say that the people arrested were in some violation of immigration laws, many others with valid legal status were offered voluntary departure, the official claimed. The official added that it is unclear what will happen with any legal immigrants who refuse to be deported voluntarily, since there is “no legal mechanism to remove them if they are not in violation” of US civil immigration laws. There is no suggestion that the Korean man in question has a criminal record in the US.“The arrest itself is illegal and this just might be a way of pushing up [arrest] numbers and covering up mistakes,” the official added.The raid angered the South Korean government, which announced billions of dollars of investment in the US following a new trade deal between the countries. On Sunday, the South Korean and US governments negotiated a deal to take the arrested workers home.“These workers were put in incredibly vulnerable positions,” said Samantha Hamilton, a litigation attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. She emphasized that the men have ended up imperiled simply by taking up the opportunity of work on what was an ambitious international project.DHS and Ice did not respond to requests for comment on allegations that they are pressuring the detainees to agree to be deported. More

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      White House hits back after Democrats share alleged Trump ‘birthday note’ to Jeffrey Epstein – live updates

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      The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insists that a photograph of a sexually suggestive 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, bearing Donald Trump’s name and signature, released by House Democrats and published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is evidence that the president has been framed.“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false”, Leavitt wrote on X. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”The president’s spokesperson added that his legal team “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation”, against the Journal, which first reported the existence of the note and drawing.Leavitt also referred to the reporting that Trump contributed the signed drawing and note to a birthday album for the late sex offender as an effort “to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”Leavitt’s deputy, Taylor Budowich, chimed in on X with what he presented as definitive visual evidence that “it’s not his signature”, in the form of four images of Trump’s signature on cards inserted in copies of a book about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.However, it appears that all four of those signatures were from 2024, more than two decades after the 2003 birthday note, and it is a documented fact that people’s handwriting and signatures commonly change as they age.Andrew Feinberg, a White House correspondent for the Independent, posted two images of Trump’s signature from the years before 2003 on X, which appear closer to the one on the note to Epstein.Several speakers at the immigrants-rights news conference in Westlake quoted from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent.“I dissent. We all dissent,” the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said.Bass called the ruling “enraging” and said she had already directed the city to strengthen protocols prohibiting resources from assisting with federal immigration enforcement.“We will not and we will not participate in these cruel, inhumane tactics,” Bass said.She warned that undermining the personal liberties of Angelenos would impact all Americans.“The rule of law used to mean something not just to us, but to the Supreme Court, but now, with the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court has undermined the rights of millions,” she said.She added: “And how ironic is it that this same Supreme Court that ruled colleges cannot use race in the admissions process has now ruled that law enforcement can use race to conduct raids and detain people.”Another speaker, representing the ACLU, also quoted a part Sotomayor’s dissent that stated the situation in stark terms: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job”.Outside a Home Depot in a heavily Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, immigrant-rights advocates, joined by the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, warned that the supreme court had “effectively legalized racial profiling”.Cars honked in support as they passed signs that said “Keep Ice out of LA” and one that read simply: “fuck Trump.”“We are infuriated because the impacts will continue to show in our community”, Flor Melendez, the executive director of CLEAN Car Wash Worker Center and a plaintiff in the case. “We will continue to feel the pressure, because we could not depend on our legal system”.She said 81 car washes across the region have been raided since Trump’s crackdown began earlier this summer, some multiple times. At least 247 car wash workers were detained, she added.“The Supreme Court of the United States decided not to see this evil that has been visited on our people, not to hear the cries of all who have been victims and witnesses of these actions, and not to use the voice of the court to protect individual rights under the Constitution,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla), which was one of the organizational plaintiffs in this case.“Do the conservative justices not have eyes to see the video evidence, or are they not able to read our multiple collected declarations that we have provided”, Salas added. “Our evidence demonstrated that these are not calm and consensual engagements with individuals who voluntarily offer information about their immigration status”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insists that a photograph of a sexually suggestive 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, bearing Donald Trump’s name and signature, released by House Democrats and published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is evidence that the president has been framed.“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false”, Leavitt wrote on X. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”The president’s spokesperson added that his legal team “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation”, against the Journal, which first reported the existence of the note and drawing.Leavitt also referred to the reporting that Trump contributed the signed drawing and note to a birthday album for the late sex offender as an effort “to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”Leavitt’s deputy, Taylor Budowich, chimed in on X with what he presented as definitive visual evidence that “it’s not his signature”, in the form of four images of Trump’s signature on cards inserted in copies of a book about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.However, it appears that all four of those signatures were from 2024, more than two decades after the 2003 birthday note, and it is a documented fact that people’s handwriting and signatures commonly change as they age.Andrew Feinberg, a White House correspondent for the Independent, posted two images of Trump’s signature from the years before 2003 on X, which appear closer to the one on the note to Epstein.Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has denounced the US supreme court ruling that permits federal immigration agents to demand proof of citizenship from anyone who appears to be of Latin American origin or is speaking a foreign language in Los Angeles, a city with a population that is 35% foreign-born and where 56% speak a language other than English at home, in a county that is nearly 50% Latino.Newsom said, of the 6-3 ruling by the Republican-nominated majority:
      Trump’s hand-picked supreme court majority just became the Grand Marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles. This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws – it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American, including US citizens and children, to deliberately harm California’s families and small businesses. Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family – and every person is now a target – but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians.
      Two Republican senators announced on Monday that they are opening a congressional investigation of “the preparation for and response to” the deadly Palisades fire in Los Angeles by state and local officials in California, who are Democrats.The senators, Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said in a press release that the fire, which burned for 24 days in January and killed at least 12 people, “was more than just a horrific tragedy, it was an unacceptable failure of government to protect the lives and property of its citizens”.In a separate news release last week, Scott accused California Democrats of having “botched” the response to the California wildfires.However, the senate investigation appears to focus only on the fire in the affluent Palisades, where Scott was taken on a tour last month by a former reality TV star turned rightwing podcaster, Spencer Pratt, and not on the Eaton fire, which burned through Altadena, a less well-off suburb to the east.As soon as the investigation was announced, Pratt, a conservative Palisades resident, folded it into a partisan attack on California Democrats in a social media video. “Why is it that only Republicans are interested in finding out why a California city burned to the ground?” Pratt asked.The Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, announced three weeks ago that the city had been asked by the justice department to wait until federal investigation is complete to release its “after action report” on the Palisades fire.I’ve been speaking with Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, about the ruling from a federal appeals court today which upheld the defamation lawsuit by writer E Jean Carroll, and orders that Donald Trump still pay an $83m judgment.Tobias said that the ruling is significant because it affirms substantial “punitive damages” – which comprise around $65m of the total award to Carrol. These “send a message” to the president, according to Tobias, to avoid further defamation.While Tobias isn’t surprised by the ruling, characterizing Judge Lewis A Kaplan – who tried the case in the district court – as a “savvy, experienced jurist, who has resolved many high profile cases” – he fully expects the Trump administration to challenge the decision and attempt to appeal to the supreme court.Per my last post, Robert Garcia, a representative who serves as the ranking member on the House oversight committee, said that Donald Trump is lying about the existence of his birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein.In a video, posted to X, Garcia said that the president is “leading a White House cover-up”. The lawmaker from California added that committee members plan to review the documents that they received from the Epstein estate today.Democrats on the House oversight committee have released a scanned copy of a “birthday note” that Donald Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein, that was eventually compiled into an album of messages to celebrate Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.The sexually suggestive note to Epstein includes a conversation between Trump and the late sex offender, with a naked female silhouette drawn around it. The president’s signature is at the bottom of the note.“Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the note reads.The committee recently subpoenaed the Epstein estate for more documents as part of their investigation into the handling of the Epstein case. Trump has denied writing a letter for the birthday book, and even sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation when they first reported his contribution.Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin, of Illinois, called the “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago “a waste of money” and “another failed attempt at a distraction” in a statement today.Durbin, who also serves as the ranking Member of the Senate judiciary committee, said that the surge in immigration enforcement in the city is part of Donald Trump’s “campaign to arrest hardworking immigrants with no criminal convictions”.He added:
      To the hardworking immigrant families who are now scared to send your children to school, go to the hospital, or report crimes to the police: we stand with you … While the President exhibits disdain for immigrants, Chicago embraces them as family who help make our economy thrive and our city strong.”

      There have been a flurry of rulings today, with two particularly crucial decisions from the supreme court, in response to emergency requests from the Trump administration.

      First, the court allowed federal agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language – a victory for the administration’s hardline immigration agenda. Attorney general Pam Bondi praised the decision on social media, and said that immigration enforcement officers can “continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement”.

      The supreme court also allowed Donald Trump to fire a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today. It’s the latest decision in a spate of high-profile firings of Senate-confirmed officials in recent months. Chief justice John Roberts issued the ruling, which blocks a lower court’s ruling for the president to reinstate Rebecca Slaughter while the case plays out. A federal district court judge said last week that the administration had violated a federal law which prevents FTC members from removal without cause. Slaughter was one of only two Democratic appointees on the five-member board.

      Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in New York did uphold the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E Jean Carroll, and the $83.3m award, after Trump denied her claim that he raped her. The panel of judges also rejected the administration’s argument that the president is protected by the supreme court’s immunity ruling last year.

      The administration also filed an emergency request to the supreme court on Monday to block a lower court’s ruling, which stopped the administration from withholding billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid. An appeals court ordered the administration to spend the money, upholding the federal judge’s ruling last week, which ultimately prompted the request to the supreme court.

      Beyond DC, Trump has pledged more federal force in Chicago. It comes after weeks of deriding the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) posted on social media that an operation was under way to remove “dangerous public safety threats from American communities”.

      Trump goaded Pritzker on Truth Social earlier, and said that he wanted to “straighten” Chicago out while delivering remarks at the Museum of the Bible in DC. He also used the appearance to tout that DC was now a “safe zone”, since the federal takeover of the DC police and increased federal activity, citing Muriel Bowser’s compliance with the administration.
      Attorney general Pam Bondi called the supreme court’s decision to allow federal agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language a “massive victory”.She wrote on social media that immigration enforcement officers now can “continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement”.US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and air force general Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, arrived in Puerto Rico today as the Trump administration steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean.The arrival comes more than a week after ships carrying hundreds of US marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise.Puerto Rico’s governor, Jenniffer González, said Hegseth and Caine visited the US territory to support those participating in the training.“We thank President Trump and his administration for recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro,” González said in comments reported by the Associated Press.Hegseth and Caine met with officials at the 156th Wing Muñiz Air national guard base in Carolina, a city just east of the capital, San Juan.González said Hegseth spoke to nearly 300 soldiers at the base and thanked those he described as “American warriors” for their work.The visit comes as the US prepares to deploy 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels, a person familiar with the planning told AP on Saturday.Seemingly confirming earlier reports of incoming federal activity in Chicago, Ice has posted the following on X:
      CHICAGO: a sanctuary city that attracts and protects criminal illegal aliens to the detriment of law abiding citizens. In an ICE-led operation, we are here to remove these dangerous public safety threats from American communities.
      It comes as Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.Democrat Chuck Schumer returned to the Senate floor last week with some urgent questions. “Will Senate Republicans continue to kowtow to a leader they know is dragging the country down?” he demanded. “That they know is a pathological liar? Or will they, as the Founding Fathers intended, stand up to him? Will they help us fight America’s slide into authoritarianism?”It was a recognition of how Donald Trump has spent eight months seeking to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress and others. He has signed 200 executive orders – more than Joe Biden in four years – unleashed squadrons of national guard troops in Washington, turned investigators on his political foes and sought to bring academic, cultural, financial and legal institutions to heel.The capitulation has moved faster and further than even many of Trump’s critics expected and has left them looking for democratic guardrails that might yet constrain him. But as members of Congress returned to Washington this week, there were only flickers of hope that they might heed Schumer and reassert their usurped authority.Trump’s Republican party holds narrow majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate and remains overwhelmingly loyal to him. In May, during a debate on their signature tax and spending bill, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, called him “arguably the most powerful, the most successful, and the most respected president in the modern era of the United States”. Congress has in effect become his rubber stamp.Yet in recent days small fractures appeared in the edifice. Congressman Thomas Massie gained the support of fellow Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace on a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. Hours after Trump described the issue as a “Democratic hoax”, Greene shot back: “It’s not a hoax because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile.”Some Republicans’ patience is also wearing thin with Trump’s health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, over his moves to undermine vaccines and purge leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Senator John Barrasso, a doctor, told Kennedy that he was “deeply concerned” about his leadership on vaccines.In addition, several Republicans have faced blowback from voters during town halls in their district over the summer. Opinion polls show that Trump’s tax and spending megabill is the most unpopular major piece of legislation in a generation. And Friday’s dismal jobs reports reflected uncertainty around his economic agenda.If the trend continues, swing-state Republicans might be tempted to distance themselves from him in next year’s midterm elections and then treat him as a lame duck as the race for 2028 heats up.Thom Hartmann, a political analyst and author of the upcoming book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, suggests that Trump’s sway over Congress might be more fragile than it appears.
      The simple reality is that five or six Republicans in the House and two or three or four Republicans in the Senate could stop Trump in his tracks. They can put an end to this insanity.
      Increasingly, as public opinion is turning against him – he’s polling very negatively in virtually every aspect of his presidency, from the economy to the troops in the streets to destroying federal agencies – at some point some of these Republicans are going to look around and say, you know, maybe the way to ensure my own political survival is to challenge this guy. That day can’t come soon enough for me.
      Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week.On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.Trump wrote: “Our great West Point (getting greater all the time!) has smartly cancelled the Award Ceremony for actor Tom Hanks. Important move! We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!! Hopefully the Academy Awards, and other Fake Award Shows, will review their Standards and Practices in the name of Fairness and Justice. Watch their DEAD RATINGS SURGE!”Hanks had been scheduled to receive the 2025 Sylvanus Thayer Award later this month for his “service and accomplishments in the national interest”.Law enforcement officials on Sunday dismantled a peace vigil that had stood in front of the White House for more than four decades, an action taken on orders issued by Donald Trump two days earlier.The vigil targeted by the president was started in 1981 by William Thomas to promote nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts, and it is believed to be the longest continuous anti-war protest in the United States. For decades, volunteers would man the site, just in front of the White House gates in Lafayette Square, to prevent it from being taken down.A correspondent for the conservative network Real America’s Voice, Brian Glenn, asked Trump about the vigil on Friday. “Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms – it’s kind of morphed into an anti-America sometimes, anti-Trump at many times,” he said. Trump replied that he didn’t know about the tent and then turned to staff to say: “Take it down, right now.”Will Roosien, a 24-year-old who had been volunteering at the vigil on Sunday, told the Washington Post that officers arrived at 6.30am on Sunday and told him he had 30 minutes to remove a tarp under which he had been sheltering from the rain. He refused and told the Post he was detained while the officers dismantled the tent.“This is a disgrace, and you should all feel ashamed,” Roosien told the officers, according to video obtained by the Post. “Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for 44 years, someone has sat here, advocating for people around the world who we don’t know. Advocating for human rights. Advocating for peace.”Concurring with the decision, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors”.He added: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”Per my last post, the supreme court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, directing pointed criticism at its conservative majority.The administration “has all but declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction”, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor added. More

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      Trump administration begins new Ice operation in Massachusetts

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      The Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.DHS and its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm are calling the operation Patriot 2.0, modifying the name of a May deportation surge that led to the arrest of 1,500 people in the state, according to the reports.A spokesperson for DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The operation is expected to last several weeks, the New York Times said, quoting unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter. One of the sources told the Times that Patriot 2.0 was focused on targeting immigrants who had been released from custody despite Ice agents attempting to pick them up from local jails.It was not immediately clear how many federal officers were involved in the crackdown, which comes as Chicago braces for a Trump administration ramp-up of deportations in the third-largest US city.NBC10 Boston quoted a statement from a DHS spokesperson as deriding the Boston mayor Michelle Wu’s so-called sanctuary policies.“Sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but also place these public safety threats above the interests of law-abiding American citizens. ICE is arresting sex offenders, pedophiles, murderers, drug dealers, and gang members released by local authorities,” the statement reported by NBC10 said.Tensions between Wu and the Trump administration have been steadily building since March when Wu testified before Congress alongside three other Democratic mayors to defend their cities’ immigration policies – specifically so-called sanctuary city laws that limit state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Critics of these policies claim that sanctuary laws undermine federal law enforcement’s ability to arrest and deport individuals with criminal records.As part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, it has pushed for mass deportations and targeted “sanctuary cities” in particular.Wu has defended her city’s policies in a letter to US attorney general Pam Bondi: “The City of Boston is the safest major city in America,” she wrote. “Our progress is the result of decades of community policing and partnership between local law enforcement and community leaders, who share a commitment to making Boston a safe and welcoming home for everyone.”In response, the acting Ice director, Todd Lyons, said that the agency intended to “flood the zone, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions”.As the threat of federal actions looms, Wu said last week that her administration was actively preparing for the possibility of a federal national guard deployment.Wu also said her administration was reviewing relevant legal precedents and working “very closely” with community members “to ensure people know what’s happening and that this is not something that is needed or wanted or legally sound”.Anna Betts contributed reporting More

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      Trump says US will host next year’s G20 meeting at his Doral resort in Miami – live

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      Donald Trump just announced that the US will host the 2026 meeting of the G20 at his privately owned Doral golf course and spa in Miami.The president was joined by Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, for the announcement in the Oval Office.Trump initially did not mention that his Doral resort was the location, but confirmed it in response to a question from a reporter. The president then quickly moved to downplay concerns that he was using his office for personal profit, claiming that “we will not make any money on it” and that the location was chosen because “everybody wants it there”.The president was asked if he intends to invite Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to attend as an observer. He initially said that he had not yet considered that possibility, but has previously claimed that excluding Russia, over its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, was a mistake.Minutes later, Trump was asked again and said that both Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, were welcome to attend as observers. “I’d love them to, if they want to”, the president said. “If they want to, we can certainly talk”.Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, just announced that he will not end his re-election campaign, despite reports that he was recently offered a position in the Trump administration if he would do so.Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump just claimed that “a lot of illegal aliens, some not the best of people” were working at a factory in Georgia raided by immigration officers on Friday, resulting in nearly 500 arrests.However, a warrant for the raid on the HL-GA battery factory, which is being built to make car batteries for South Korean electric vehicles, identified just four “target persons”. The warrant was obtained and posted online by Politico.Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday authorizing the US Department of Defense to refer to itself as the “Department of War”, as part of an attempt to formalize his rebranding effort without the legally required act of Congress.According to a draft White House factsheet seen by the Guardian on Thursday, the order designates “Department of War” as a “secondary title”, as a way to get around the need for congressional approval to formally rename a federal agency.The move, to have the executive branch use a name for the department Trump called “much more appropriate”, restores a name used until 1947, when Congress merged the previously independent war department and navy department with the air force into a single organization, known as the National Military Establishment. In 1949, Congress changed the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense, and made the army, navy and air force secretaries subordinate to a single, cabinet-level secretary of defense.Referring to the creation of the defense department in 1949, the president said: “We decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense, so we’re going Department of War”.Trump also introduced the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, as “our secretary of war” and claimed that the name change “really it has to do with winning”, suggesting that the US military had somehow been hampered by the choice “to be politically correct, or wokey” and, as a result, failed to win “wars that we would’ve won easily”.The draft White House factsheet on Trump’s rebranding initiative implicitly acknowledged that only Congress can formally change the department’s name, saying that the order would authorize the defense secretary to propose legislation that would make the change permanent.Eric Adams, the sitting mayor of New York, has just announced a hastily scheduled event to begin 30 minutes from now in which he will “make an important announcement regarding the future of his campaign”. The event is scheduled for 4.30pm ET.Adams, who is running as an independent and trails in the polls, has previously denied reports that he is in talks with the White House over taking a role in the Trump administration in exchange for ending his apparently doomed re-election campaign.At a dinner with tech industry leaders last night, Donald Trump denied that he is encouraging Adams to drop out of the race to help New York’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, defeat Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who is the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November. Trump then immediately said that he would like Adams to drop out for that reason.The New York Times reported on Friday that Adams met in person with Trump’s friend and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the possibility of being nominated as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.Last year, federal prosecutors accused members of the Turkish government of a years-long influence campaign to cultivate and secure favors from Adams.In the federal indictment, the US attorney for New York’s southern district alleged that government officials and business leaders with ties to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, showered Adams with thousands in illegal foreign campaign donations and free or heavily discounted luxury hotel stays and flights around the world.Charges against Adams were dropped by the Trump justice department this year, over the strong objections of prosecutors who claimed that there was an explicit quid pro quo arrangement in which the mayor would cooperate with federal immigration enforcement in the city in return for corruption charges being dropped.Should Adams become the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, he would oversee diplomacy with the kingdom whose de-facto leader, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, US intelligence believes approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.Donald Trump plans to announce executive orders shortly in the Oval Office, with the theme we know most about so far being an instruction to rename the Department of Defense the “Department of War”.Until then, here’s a quick recap of some of the day’s key developments:

      Trump criticized the European Union’s decision to fine Google $3.46bn over antitrust concerns and threatened a wider trade probe against the EU in response to the move.

      Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr plans to announce that use of Kenvue’s popular over-the-counter pain medication Tylenol in pregnant women is potentially linked to autism, without including evidence for the claims, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

      Georgia is about to become the eighth state to send national guard troops to Washington DC to support Trump’s federal law enforcement big foot operation there, as the US capital sues the administration over its actions.

      Most of the 475 people arrested in a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raid at a Hyundai factory construction site in southern Georgia are Korean nationals.

      The federal Ice raid is being described as the biggest single Department of Homeland Security (DHS, the parent agency of Ice) enforcement operation at one side in the department’s history. The DHS was created after 9/11.

      Treasury secretary Scott Bessent called for renewed scrutiny of the Federal Reserve, including its power to set interest rates, as the Trump administration continues its efforts to exert control over the US central bank.

      Vladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes for Kyiv as Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a peace deal show little sign that are any closer to success.

      Trump is sending 10 F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico to bolster US military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean region. The action to send jets to be based in the US territory follows a deadly US missile strike on Tuesday on a boat that the administration insisted was carrying 11 Venezuelan drug traffickers.

      And the big economics news of the day was that the US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing the slowdown amid Trump’s tariff policy.
      Donald Trump has criticized the European Union’s decision to fine Google $3.46bn over antitrust concerns and threatened a wider trade probe against the EU in response to the move.“We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these Taxpaying American Companies,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform.Google’s fine for breaching the EU’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services marks the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the US company to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.The commission’s investigation found that Google had “abused” its dominant positions in the ad-technology ecosystem.Google said the decision was “wrong” and that it would appeal.Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr plans to announce that use of Kenvue’s popular over-the-counter pain medication Tylenol in pregnant women is potentially linked to autism, without including evidence for the claims, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.Kennedy, in a report, will also suggest a medicine derived from folate called folinic acid can be used to treat symptoms of autism in some people, the WSJ reported.Tylenol, whose active ingredient is acetaminophen, is a widely used pain reliever, including by pregnant women.The report, expected this month from the US Department of Health and Human Services, is likely to highlight low levels of folate, an important vitamin, and Tylenol taken during pregnancy, as well as other potential causes of autism, the report said.The health department and Kenvue did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.It is not the first time Kenvue or J&J have faced questions about the link between Tylenol and the condition. In 2023, a judge rejected claims the drug causes autism if mothers take it during pregnancy.The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says Tylenol is safe to use in pregnancy, though it recommends pregnant women consult their doctors before using it, as with all medicines.Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group formerly headed by Kennedy, has posted several times in recent weeks on social media site X about the potential link between Tylenol and autism.Georgia is about to become the eighth state to send national guard troops to Washington DC to support Donald Trump’s federal law enforcement big foot operation there, as the US capital sues the administration over its actions.Georgia governor Brian Kemp announced he would be sending 316 members of the state national guard to Washington later this month, in the latest indication that Trump’s law enforcement action there will drag on, the Associated Press reports.Kemp, a Republican, said he will mobilize the roughly 300 troops in mid-September to take part in Trump’s DC operation to relieve soldiers from elsewhere who deployed earlier.
      Georgia is proud to stand with the Trump administration in its mission to ensure the security and beauty of our nation’s capital,” Kemp said in a statement.
      Trump initially called up 800 members of the District of Columbia national guard to assist federal law enforcement in his unilateral action to impose federal resources on DC with the stated goal of cracking down on crime, homelessness and illegal immigration. Since then, seven other Republican-led states have sent troops – Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia.The nationwide debate over gerrymandered redistricting has come to Kansas, as the Topeka Capital-Journal wrote on Thursday.Republicans initiated efforts, on Donald Trump’s urging, to engineer mid-decade redistricting in Texas, to gerrymander district maps and gain an edge in next year’s midterm elections.In Kansas, Democratic congresswomen Sharice Davids, who sits in the house with three Republicans to represent the state’s four seats in the lower chamber, could be in difficulty if the district map is gerrymandered by the GOP.Davids spoke out on Friday, saying: “Under pressure from Donald Trump, Kansas state politicians are pushing an unprecedented mid-decade redraw to make the already gerrymandered maps even more extreme – breaking their promises and putting their own political power ahead of Kansans.”She added: “Their goal is clear: stack the deck in their favor because they know their policies aren’t popular, including their disastrous budget that rips 79,000 Kansans off their health care just to give billionaires massive tax breaks. Voters, not politicians, should choose their representatives. This potential gerrymander is clearly political, threatens our democracy, and deepens division in our country.”Donald Trump plans to announce executive orders today in the Oval Office, with the theme we know most about so far being an instruction to rename the Department of Defense the “Department of War”.Trump was initially expected to issue first orders at 2pm ET then more at 4pm ET, but the media has since been informed that a single event at the White House is now due to take place at 4pm ET.Some context from my colleague Hugo Lowell: The US president is expected to sign an executive order authorizing the rebrand of the Defense Department, the White House said, as part of an attempt to formalize a name change without an act of Congress.The order will designate “Department of War” as a “secondary title”, an administration official said, as a way to get around the need for congressional approval to formally rename a federal agency.But the order will instruct the rest of the executive branch to use the “Department of War” name in internal and external communications, and allows the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to use “secretary of war” as his official title.Hello, US politics live blog readers, it’s another busy Friday and there is much more to come, so stay with the Guardian for all the relevant news as it happens. Here’s where things stand:

      Most of the 475 people arrested in a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raid at a Hyundai factory construction site in southern Georgia are Korean nationals.

      The federal Ice raid is being described as the biggest single Department of Homeland Security (DHS, the parent agency of Ice) enforcement operation at one side in the department’s history. The DHS was created after 9/11.

      Treasury secretary Scott Bessent called for renewed scrutiny of the Federal Reserve, including its power to set interest rates, as the Trump administration continues its efforts to exert control over the US central bank.

      Vladimir Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes, upping the stakes for Kyiv as Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a peace deal show little sign that are any closer to success.

      Donald Trump is sending 10 F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico to bolster US military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean region. The action to send jets to be based in the US territory follows a deadly US missile strike on Tuesday on a boat that the administration insisted was carrying 11 Venezuelan drug traffickers.

      US jobs report. Our sister live blog run by the business team in London has closed now, so here’s our story on the big economics news of the day, that the US added just 22,000 jobs in August, continuing the slowdown amid Trump tariffs.
      Reuters notes that the arrests could exacerbate tensions between Washington and Seoul, a key ally and investor in the US, as the countries remain at odds over the details of a trade deal that includes $350bn of investments.Just last month, South Korea pledged $150bn in US investments – including $26bn from Hyundai Motor – at a summit for the nations’ leaders.The arrested workers were being held at Ice’s Folkston detention facility in Georgia, Schrank said. Most of the 475 people are Korean nationals, he said.Local Korean media said roughly 300 people detained were South Korean nationals.“It is our understanding that none of those detained is directly employed by Hyundai Motor Co. We prioritize the safety and well-being of everyone working at the site and comply with all laws and regulations wherever we operate,” a Hyundai spokesperson said in a statement provided to Reuters.Homeland security officials said the workers it arrested at the Hyundai facility in Georgia were barred from working in the US after crossing the border illegally or overstaying visas.The investigation took place over several months, Steven Schrank, special agent in charge of investigations for Georgia, said during a press briefing.“This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses,” he said in comments reported by Reuters.Schrank said there was a network of subcontractors on the site.A spokesperson at Hyundai’s battery joint venture partner, South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solutions, said in a statement it was cooperating and had paused construction work.The facility, a joint venture between LGES and Hyundai Motor, was due to start operations at the end of this year, according to LGES.With some 475 workers arrested, according to US immigration officials, the Ice raid at the Georgia Hyundai facility is the largest single-site enforcement operation in the Department of Homeland Security’s history, Reuters notes.Treasury secretary Scott Bessent earlier called for renewed scrutiny of the Federal Reserve, including its power to set interest rates, as the Trump administration continues its efforts to exert control over the US central bank, whose insulation from short-term political pressures is widely seen as key to its effectiveness.“There must also be an honest, independent, nonpartisan review of the entire institution, including monetary policy, regulation, communications, staffing and research,” Bessent wrote in the Wall Street Journal.He called for the Fed to leave bank supervision to other governmental authorities and to “scale back the distortions it causes in the economy”, including by bond purchases made outside of true crisis conditions.A US homeland security department spokesperson had earlier said that US immigration authorities executed a judicial search warrant at the Hyundai facility in Georgia on Thursday over unlawful employment practices and other alleged federal crimes.The spokesperson said in a statement provided to Reuters that Ice’s investigative arm executed the warrant as part of acriminal investigation.“This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy, and protecting workers from exploitation,” the spokesperson said.Following on from my last post, the White House said today that the Trump administration will enforce laws that require foreign workers have proper authorization to be in the United States, after immigration authorities raided a Hyundai facility in Georgia.“Any foreign workers brought in for specific projects must enter the United States legally and with proper work authorizations,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, quoted by Reuters.“President Trump will continue delivering on his promise to make the United States the best place in the world to do business, while also enforcing federal immigration laws.” More

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      Why Trump is targeting Boston and its Democratic mayor as part of his ‘immigration enforcement blitz’

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      Tensions between Michelle Wu, the mayor of Boston, and the Trump administration have been escalating in recent months over the administration’s aggressive immigration policies, with reports now signaling the possibility of a federal immigration enforcement surge in the city.The friction came to a head last week when the Trump administration reportedly began preparing an “immigration enforcement blitz” for Boston in the coming weeks, according to Politico.The report, which cited unnamed current and former administration officials, prompted a swift rebuke from Wu, who has in recent months become a vocal defender of sanctuary laws and immigrant protections.“Unlike the Trump administration, Boston follows the law – city, state and federal,” Wu said in a statement. “We are the safest major city in the country because all of our community members know that they are part of how we keep the entire community safe. Stop attacking cities to hide your administration’s failures.”This standoff has been steadily building since March when Wu testified before Congress alongside three other Democratic mayors to defend their cities’ immigration policies – specifically so-called sanctuary city laws that limit state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Supporters of the laws, including local leaders and police chiefs in jurisdictions that have them, argue that these measures can help build trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. Some studies have found that crime rates tend to be lower in sanctuary counties compared with those without such protections.Critics of these policies claim that sanctuary laws undermine federal law enforcement’s ability to arrest and deport individuals with criminal records.So-called “sanctuary cities” have become a central target of this Trump administration, as it pushes for mass deportations as part of its crackdown on immigration. In June, Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, sent letters to 32 US mayors, including Wu, demanding they end their sanctuary policies or face cuts to federal funding and possible legal consequences.Wu then issued a staunch defense of Boston’s policies in a letter to Bondi and in a subsequent press conference.“The City of Boston is the safest major city in America,” she wrote. “Our progress is the result of decades of community policing and partnership between local law enforcement and community leaders, who share a commitment to making Boston a safe and welcoming home for everyone.”The progress, Wu said, was in part a result of the city’s local laws, including the Boston Trust Act, which prohibits local police from engaging with federal immigration enforcement unless there is a criminal warrant and is “fully consistent with federal law”.“On behalf of the people of Boston, and in solidarity with the cities and communities targeted by this federal administration for our refusal to bow down to unconstitutional threats and unlawful coercion, we affirm our support for each other and for our democracy,” she wrote.After Wu’s remarks, the acting Ice director, Todd Lyons, said that the agency intended to “flood the zone, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions”.“Now you’re going to see more Ice agents come to Boston to make sure that we take these public threats out that she wants to let go back in the communities,” he said, vowing to make “America safe”.Patricia Hyde, Boston’s acting Ice field office director, echoed Lyons’s sentiment, warning that Ice was “not backing down” and that “the men and women with Ice, unlike Mayor Wu”, took an oath that they swore to uphold “to protect the cities and communities where we work and where we live, and that’s what we’re gonna do, despite the obstacles”.Wu fired back on social media and said she took an oath to uphold the US constitution, noting that she was sworn in with her hand on a 1782 Aitken Bible “also known as the Bible of the Revolution”.As the threat of federal actions looms, Wu said last week that her administration was actively preparing for the possibility of a federal national guard deployment. Such a move would mirror recent actions by the Trump administration in both Washington DC and Los Angeles.The administration sent national guard troops to Washington DC last month under the pretext of combating a supposed surge in violent crime – a claim that stands in contrast to the city’s current crime data. Earlier this summer, the administration also sent thousands of national guard troops to Los Angeles during protests against the administration’s immigration crackdown, a move a federal judge recently ruled as unlawful.“We are following what’s happening in other cities around the country very closely,” Wu told GBH’s Boston Public Radio last week. “Unfortunately, we have seen what it would look like if that should come to pass, and that this federal administration is willing to go beyond the bounds of constitutional authority and federal law.”Wu also said her administration was reviewing relevant legal precedents and working “very closely” with community members “to ensure people know what’s happening and that this is not something that is needed or wanted or legally sound”.She added that “in this moment, however we got here, every mayor of every major city is having to take preparations for the national guard coming in against their will”.Wu’s comments come as leaders in other Democratic-led cities around the country are also bracing for the possibility of national guard deployments or Ice surges in their communities.The Trump administration announced plans this week to ramp up immigration crackdowns and deploy federal agents to Chicago, sparking strong backlash from local leaders.On Thursday, JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, said he had been informed that expanded Ice operations would begin in and around Chicago this weekend, according to ABC News Chicago.Pritzker said earlier this week that he was “deeply concerned“ that Ice would target Mexican Independence Day celebrations on Saturday. So far, one independence day parade in North Chicago has been postponed. More

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      From Uncle Sam to social media memes: inside homeland security’s push to swell Ice ranks

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      The pinned post on the X account of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an image of Uncle Sam with the caption “We Need You.”“America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” the post reads. “We need YOU to get them out.”DHS posts on Instagram are similar. One pinned post features a highly produced video that starts with a family walking in a field and urges viewers to “defend” their “homeland”. Another displays an image of a younger and older man in military garb, designed to look like a first world war-era army recruitment poster. Under it, in big bold capital letters: “NO AGE CAP JOIN ICE NOW”. The caption: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.”The posts are part of the DHS’s push to quickly hire more than 10,000 new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers and 3,000 border patrol agents in order to meet the Trump administration’s aggressive arrest and deportation quotas.To meet those goals, the DHS has made several changes to its job and eligibility requirements in what experts say is a rushed attempt to expand its hiring pool – including appealing to a younger set of potential recruits. In addition to lowering the age minimum to 18, DHS is working to incentivize more hires with promises of forgiving up to $60,000 in college loans.And it has heavily invested in advertising on social media. In early August, 404 Media spotted Ice documents that solicited pitches from advertising companies that could help the agency “dominate digital media with messages that reflect the urgency and scale of Ice’s hiring effort”.Ice identified three audiences as its targets: former military and law enforcement; legal professionals; gen Z and early-career professionals. The deadline for companies to submit proposals was 11 August.It is unclear whether Ice has selected a vendor, though there have been no new posted contracts as of yet and Meta’s ad library, which is one of the few public repositories of brand advertising activity on social media, has no new entries for the DHS or Ice as of the publication of this article.Meanwhile, Ice and the DHS have already been ramping up their social media recruitment efforts on various platforms.Its photos and videos depict the US at war, with Ice and border patrol agents part of a heroic effort to save the country from criminals and predators, even though numerous studies have shown immigrants commit fewer crimes than those born in the US. Many of the ads conjure a feeling of nostalgia for a country that once was. And some have thinly veiled references to white supremacist messages.Marketing experts say that taken together, the various posts show a scattered strategy, probably because the agency is targeting such a wide array of audiences.The posts depict a country that the younger generation has never known, says Mara Einstein, the author of Hoodwinked, How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults. “This is a generation that has lived through permacrisis and has never known that shiny city on the hill that people of older generations think of when they think of the US,” Einstein said. “Even if you have a dual target, advertisers have to ask how do you talk to both of these people.”Many of the ads juxtapose Uncle Sam and other American symbols with images of mostly brown immigrants being arrested. On X, DHS regularly posts intentionally antagonistic memes commonly used in far-right corners of the internet in its responses to other people’s posts.The overall campaign strategy also appears to attempt to replicate in some ways the US army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign – likening the recruitment of immigration enforcement officers to a military recruitment campaign and an act of patriotism, experts say. One video shows supposed immigration officers training in a military facility and people jumping out of planes. The caption: “Hunt cartels. Save America.”In its latest video the DHS boasts about its 5,000th arrest in Los Angeles that starts with Hollywood-style footage of immigration officers putting on their military tactical gear and ends with a compilation of mostly brown men being arrested or detained.“The targeting of Black and brown immigrants with false information and using pictures of Uncle Sam as if this is military recruitment at the time of war is an unprecedented use of propaganda for civil immigration enforcement,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.“The social media messaging links this anti-immigration narrative to patriotism to some all-American identity,” Gupta continued. “But part of the American identity has always been this is a country that welcomes people that want to build something better.”While the messaging is muddled, the choice to post images or text that either enrage or excite an already polarized audience is a strategy that builds on Donald Trump’s ongoing success with capturing attention on social media by posting hateful and inflammatory content, according to Ramesh Srinivasan, aUCLA professor of information studies.“It’s a messaging strategy that has worked well within algorithmic systems that are optimized for content that is predicted to capture attention,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a negative populism that has been part of the Trump team’s strategy from the get-go.”The campaign also seeks to put a glossy sheen on the realities of working for Ice – making it look like a scene out of Bad Boys while simultaneously demonizing and dehumanizing America’s immigrant communities, experts say.It’s not a totally unprecedented approach to recruitment for the DHS to take but it’s historically been a far cry from the realities of working for Ice, according to Michelle Brané, a former DHS official under the Biden administration. “The recruitment videos have always looked like an episode of Cops, so these new videos are not necessarily that different,” Brane said. “It was always about: ‘We’re going to catch the bad guys,’ with videos of raiding a house, a car chase, wrestling someone to the ground. And that always seemed problematic.“Many people in the field were very dissatisfied with the day-to-day of their jobs,” Brané said of her time working at the DHS. “They did arrest criminals, but a very large part of their job is just processing regular people who have immigration violations or who crossed the border and are requesting asylum. But they’d insist, ‘That’s not the job I signed up for – I signed up to catch the bad guys.’”Experts worry that the rapid pace of recruitment, paired with the polarizing messaging the DHS is using will attract a group of people desperate for work who may share the xenophobic and anti-immigrant stances of the administration.“This feels like a multi-level marketing thing where you’re going to get the people who are really vulnerable and desperate and looking for some type of job who is willing to do this,” said Einstein.It may further push Ice, as an agency, into an extreme political posture, Gupta said.“What’s worrisome is that any folks that this kind of dehumanizing propaganda would work on are more likely to share xenophobic views of non-citizens,” Gupta said. “Combined with decreasing training and vetting practices by Ice as they look to speed up hiring creates a situation where the agency is likely to be hiring enforcement officers who have an explicit history of racism or don’t meet the usual standards of law enforcement officers.” More

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      Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

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      US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.That pause has now been lifted, according to public procurement documents, which list US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as the contracting agency.It means that one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons ever created – which was produced outside the US – is now in the hands of an agency that has repeatedly been accused by civil and human rights groups of violating people’s due process rights.The story was first reported by the journalist Jack Poulson on his All-Source Intelligence Substack newsletter.Neither Paragon nor Ice immediately responded to a request for comment.When it is successfully deployed against a target, the hacking software – called Graphite – can hack into any phone. By essentially taking control of the mobile phone, the user – in this case, Ice – can not only track an individual’s whereabouts, read their messages, look at their photographs, but it can also open and read information held on encrypted applications, like WhatsApp or Signal. Spyware like Graphite can also be used as a listening device, through the manipulation of the phone’s recorder.An executive order signed by the Biden administration sought to establish some guardrails around the US government’s use of spyware. It said that the US “shall not make operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person”. The Biden administration also took the extraordinary step of placing one of Paragon’s rival spyware makers, NSO Group, on a commerce department blacklist, saying the company had knowingly supplied foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists and journalists.Paragon has sought to differentiate itself from NSO Group. It has said that, unlike NSO – which previously sold its spyware to Saudi Arabia and other regimes – that it only does business with democracies. It has also said it has a no tolerance policy and will cut off government clients who use the spyware to target members of civil society, such as journalists. Paragon refuses to disclose who its clients are and has said it does not have insight into how its clients use the technology against targets.Spyware makers like Paragon and NSO have said their products are intended to be used to prevent crime and terrorist attacks. But both companies’ software has been used in the past to target innocent people, including individuals who have been perceived to be government enemies.John Scott-Railton, a senior research at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who is one of the world’s leading experts on cases in which spyware like Graphite has been abused by governments, said in a statement that such tools “were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights”.“Invasive, secret hacking power is corrupting. That’s why there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite,” he said, referring to a controversy in Italy that erupted late last year.Paragon broke off its ties to Italy after it was revealed that 90 people, including journalists and members of civil society, in two dozen countries, had been targeted with the spyware. The individuals who were targeted by the Italian government included human rights activists who have been critical of Italy’s dealings with Libya. Several journalists were also targeted, though it is still unclear who ordered those hacking attacks.The US government has in the past resisted using spyware technology made outside the US because of concerns that any company that sells technology to multiple government agencies around the world represents a potential security risk.“As long as the same mercenary spyware tech is going to multiple governments, there is a baked-in counterintelligence risk. Since all of them now know what secret surveillance tech the US is using, and would have special insights on how to detect it and track what the US is doing with it,” Scott-Railton said. “Short of Paragon cancelling all foreign contracts, I’m not sure how this goes away.”Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is dedicated to free speech advocacy, said news of the Ice contract compounded civil liberty concerns surrounding the “rapid and dramatic expansion of Ice’s budget and authority”. She also called on Congress to step in and limit the circumstances in which spyware could be deployed.“Spyware like Paragon’s Graphite poses a profound threat to free speech and privacy,” Farid Johnson said. “It has already been used against journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents around the world. The quiet lifting of the stop work order also raises the troubling prospect that parts of the executive branch are acting without adherence to the government’s own vetting requirements.” More

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      Judge orders US to halt deportation of hundreds of Guatemalan children

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      A US judge on Sunday ordered an emergency halt to a plan by the Trump administration to deport a group of nearly 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children back to their home country after immigrant advocates lawyers called the plan “illegal”.Attorneys for 10 Guatemalan minors, ages 10 to 17, said in court papers filed late on Saturday that there were reports that planes were set to take off within hours for the Central American country. But a federal judge in Washington said those children couldn’t be deported for at least 14 days, and after a hastily scheduled hearing on Sunday, she enforced that they needed to be taken off the planes and back to the Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities while the legal process plays out.Judge Sparkle L Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, began the Sunday afternoon hearing by ensuring that the justice department had received her expanded order and that government officials were aware of it. “I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” she said, adding that her ruling applies broadly to Guatemalan minors who arrived in the US without their parents or guardians.Government lawyers, meanwhile, maintained that the children weren’t being deported but rather reunited at the request of their parents or guardians – a claim that the children’s lawyers dispute, at least in some cases.“I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” Sooknanan said. She said that what she was hearing from the government lawyers “doesn’t quite line up” with what the children’s advocates had told her.Similar emergency requests were filed in other parts of the country as well. Attorneys in Arizona and Illinois asked federal judges there to block deportations of unaccompanied minors, underscoring how the fight over the government’s efforts has quickly spread.At the border-area airport in Harlingen, Texas, the scene on Sunday morning was unmistakably active. Buses carrying migrants pulled on to the tarmac as clusters of federal agents moved quickly between the vehicles and waiting aircraft. Police cars circled the perimeter, and officers and security guards pushed reporters back from the chain-link fences that line the field. On the runway, planes sat with engines idling, ground crews making final preparations as if departures could come at any moment – all as the courtroom battle played out hundreds of miles away in Washington.The Trump administration is planning to remove nearly 700 Guatemalan children who came to the US unaccompanied, according to a letter sent on Friday by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. The Guatemalan government has said it is ready to take them in.Melissa Johnston, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s program for unaccompanied children, sent an email to staff on Thursday calling for a halt to the release of all Guatemalan children except for those sponsored by parents or legal guardians in the US, according to a copy reviewed by Reuters and one of the former officials.Lawyers for the Guatemalan children said the US government doesn’t have the authority to remove the children and is depriving them of due process by preventing them from pursuing asylum claims or immigration relief. Many have active cases in immigration courts, according to the attorneys’ court filing in Washington.Although the children are supposed to be in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the government is “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture”, argues the filing by attorneys with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and the National Immigration Law Center.Migrant children traveling without their parents or guardians are handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement when they are encountered by officials along the US-Mexico border. Once in the US, the children often live in government-supervised shelters or with foster care families until they can be released to a sponsor – usually a family member – living in the country.In a legal complaint filed on Sunday, the National Immigration Law Center and Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights said the deportations would be a “clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children”.“Defendants are imminently planning to illegally transfer Plaintiffs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture, against their best interests,” the complaint read.The US Department of Homeland Security, Ice’s parent agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Guatemala’s foreign ministry declined to comment. More

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      ‘Nightmare’: family in shock after Ice moves LA teen out of state without their knowledge

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      The family of 18-year-old Benjamin Guerrero-Cruz was shocked when they found out that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had discreetly moved him out of California, according to California congresswoman Luz Rivas, who spoke with his relatives and reviewed federal detention records.Guerrero-Cruz, who was first detained in Van Nuys neighborhood while walking his dog, was transferred late Monday from the Adelanto detention facility in San Bernardino county to a remote holding site in Arizona without any notification given to his family.The next day, Ice prepared to send him to Louisiana, a key hub for deportation flights. At the last moment, however, Guerrero-Cruz was removed from the plane and returned to Adelanto, where he remains in custody, according to Rivas’s office.“The nightmare for him, his family, and thousands in similar situations is not over yet,” Rivas said in a statement. “I will not accept the current reality that ICE shuffles and transfers detainees without notifying their family to inflict psychological pain for all of those involved.“Benjamin and his family deserve answers behind Ice’s inconsistent and chaotic decision-making process, including why Benjamin was initially transferred to Arizona, why he was slated to be transferred to Louisiana afterward, and why his family wasn’t notified of his whereabouts by Ice throughout this process,” the statement continued.Rivas introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require Ice to contact a detainee’s immediate family within 24 hours of a transfer. Current rules only mandate notification in the event of a detainee’s death.According to the Department of Homeland Security, Guerrero-Cruz faces deportation to Chile after overstaying his visa, which obliged him to leave the US by 15 March 2023.The teen was initially arrested on 8 August and held in downtown LA for a week. One of his former teachers, Liz Becerra, visited Guerrero-Cruz at an Ice processing center in Adelanto, an hour and a half north of LA.She said that Guerrero-Cruz spoke about being surrounded by masked men while walking his dog, handed over to federal agents, and then brought to the metropolitan detention center in downtown LA. He was not allowed to shower or brush his teeth for a week, Becerra said.Once he was moved to Adelanto, he said he was being kept in a small cell with about two dozen other men with little access to food and water.This pattern of detainees being shifted between multiple sites reflects a broader practice under what the Trump administration is touting as the largest deportation initiative in US history.An analysis of Ice data by the Guardian found that in June this year, average daily arrests were up 268% compared with June 2024. It also found that, despite Trump’s claims that his administration is seeking out the “worst of the worst”, the majority of people being arrested by Ice now have no criminal convictions.As a result, detention facilities have been increasingly overcrowded, and the US system was over capacity by more than 13,500 people as of July. More