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      Judge Calls Mistaken Deportation of Maryland Man a ‘Grievous Error’

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      The Trump administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by inadvertently deporting a Salvadoran migrant to a notorious prison last month and then declaring there was little it could do to bring him back, a federal judge in Maryland said on Sunday.The strongly worded order by the judge, Paula Xinis, served two purposes: It offered a more detailed explanation of a brief ruling she issued on Friday, demanding that the White House bring the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States by the end of Monday. And it rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity.Over 22 pages, Judge Xinis took Trump officials to task for deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of a previous court order that allowed him to stay in the United States. Administration officials then argued that neither they nor she as the judge overseeing the case had any power to retrieve him from the prison.“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Judge Xinis wrote. “Having confessed grievous error, the defendants now argue that this court lacks the power to hear this case, and they lack the power to order Abrego Garcia’s return.”Moreover, Judge Xinis questioned the administration’s underlying claims that Mr. Abrego Garcia, 29, was a member of a violent transnational street gang, MS-13, which officials recently designated as a terrorist organization. The judge described those claims as being based on “a singular unsubstantiated allegation.”“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie,” she wrote, “and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”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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      Chinese Woman Detained in Arizona Border Station Dies by Suicide

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      A woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while in custody, according to a Democratic congresswoman.A Chinese woman detained by U.S. border officers for overstaying a visitor visa died by suicide while being held at a border patrol station in Arizona, a Democratic congresswoman said.The woman had been taken into custody in California after officers determined that she had overstayed a visitor visa, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington said in a statement, citing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. She was transferred to a patrol station in Yuma, Ariz., the statement said.Ms. Jayapal, a ranking member of the House subcommittee overseeing immigration, said initial reports from the agency had raised concerns about whether officers had properly conducted welfare checks on the woman. While welfare checks were logged, officials at the agency investigating the death could not verify whether the checks had actually happened, Ms. Jayapal said.“There is no excuse for why agents cannot verify if some of the necessary welfare checks occurred — or why some of the documented welfare checks were incorrectly reported,” Ms. Jayapal said, adding that she was concerned about the conditions in facilities where immigrants are detained.“Another preventable death only increases that concern,” she said.The woman had been in the country on a B-1/B-2 visa, according to the statement, a temporary visa for people visiting the United States for tourism or business.The Customs and Border Protection agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the agency confirmed the death of a 52-year-old woman to The Tucson Sentinel, and said that the woman had become “unresponsive in a cell” at the Yuma Border Patrol Station.Border Patrol staff provided medical assistance to the woman, the spokesman said in a statement to The Sentinel, and emergency medical services transported her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An office overseeing the agency’s conduct was investigating the incident, the statement said, and the agency also reported the death to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.The exact circumstances around the woman’s initial detainment were not immediately clear. Border Patrol officials for the Yuma sector, which includes parts of California and Arizona, said last week on social media that they had arrested two Chinese people, one of them a 52-year-old woman, in Needles, Calif., on March 26.According to the post, agents searched a minivan during a vehicle stop and discovered that two Chinese nationals were “illegally present in the U.S.” The agency had planned to charge the two people under a law that makes certain people ineligible to receive a visa or enter the country, including on the grounds of suspected money laundering or other criminal activity.More than $220,000 in cash was also seized from the van, and the agency said it believed the cash was linked to illegal activity. But it was not immediately clear on Friday whether the woman arrested in Needles was the same woman who died while in custody.Christine Hauser More

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      Joe Rogan, Voices on the Right Raise Alarm Over Trump’s Immigration Moves

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      Influential figures on the right have largely cheered on the opening months of the Trump presidency. But as the administration has rushed to carry out deportations as quickly as possible, making mistakes and raising concerns about due process along the way, the unified front in favor of President Trump’s immigration purge is beginning to crack.When the administration deported a professional makeup artist and accused him of being part of a criminal gang, the enormously popular podcaster Joe Rogan balked.“You’ve got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” Mr. Rogan, who endorsed Mr. Trump, said on his show “The Joe Rogan Experience.” He added that the case was “horrific.”When the administration arrested a former Columbia University graduate student who had been involved in campus protests, the far-right commentator Ann Coulter questioned the move.“There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?” Ms. Coulter wrote on social media.The dissenting voices, which have been limited mostly to commentators rather than elected Republicans, are remarkable because conservatives don’t often openly break with the president. And while the objections have largely been contained to tactics — not the overarching goal of ramping up deportations — the cracks show how seriously some conservatives are taking the administration’s aggressive and at times slapdash methods.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Tied Migrants to Gang Based Largely on Clothes or Tattoos, Papers Show

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      The Trump administration has granted itself the authority to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang on the basis of little more than whether they have tattoos or have worn clothing associated with the criminal organization, new court papers show.The papers suggest that the administration has set a low bar for seeking the removal of migrants whom officials have described as belonging to the street gang, Tren de Aragua. This month, the White House ordered the deportation of more than 100 people suspected of being members of the gang under a powerful wartime statute, the Alien Enemies Act, and have denied them any due process to challenge the allegations against them.In the court papers, submitted over the weekend, lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants produced a government document, titled “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” that laid out a series of criteria administration officials are required to meet to designate the men as members of Tren de Aragua.The document established a scoring system for deciding whether the migrants were in fact members of the gang, which is often referred to as TdA, asserting that eight points were required for any individual to be identified as a member.According to the document, any migrant who admitted to being a member of the gang was assigned 10 points, meaning that they were automatically deemed to belong to the group and were subject to immediate deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.But the document also asserts that officials can assign four points to a migrant simply for having “tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” and another four points if law enforcement agents decide that the person in question “displays insignia, logos, notations, drawings, or dress known to indicate allegiance to TDA.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Deportation Fight Reaches Supreme Court

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      The Trump administration asked the justices to allow it to use a wartime law to continue deportations of Venezuelans with little or no due process.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to use a rarely invoked wartime law to continue to deport Venezuelans with little to no due process.The emergency application arrived at the court after a federal appeals court kept in place a temporary block on the deportations. In its application to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the administration argued that the matter was too urgent to wait for the case to wind its way through the lower courts.In the government’s application, acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.”“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president,” Ms. Harris wrote. “The Republic cannot afford a different choice.”The case will offer a major early test for how the nation’s highest court will confront President Trump’s aggressive efforts to deport of millions of migrants and his hostile posture toward the courts. Mr. Trump has called for impeaching a lower-court judge who paused his deportations.The case hinges on the legality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump that invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The order uses the law to target people believed to be Venezuelan gang members 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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      A Video From Tufts Captures the Fear and Aggression in Trump’s Crackdown

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      The tactics on display in the arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk were not new — plainclothes officers, faces obscured — but as ICE actions ramp up, scrutiny may increase.Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen and a Muslim, was heading out to break her Ramadan fast with friends Tuesday night when she was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.The security video looked like a scene from an undercover sting operation against a 30-year-old Turkish graduate student in her white coat and backpack.Rumeysa Ozturk was walking down a street in Somerville, Mass., on Tuesday when she was surrounded by federal agents wearing dark sweatshirts, some of their faces obscured by black masks. As they pulled off her backpack and handcuffed her, the terrified student let out a cry. One officer explained, “We’re the police.”As the Trump administration ramps up its deportation efforts, critics say tourists, foreign students and other legal immigrants are being subjected to aggressive arrest tactics usually reserved for criminal suspects. They have been swarmed by teams of masked agents in masks, zip-tied and bundled into unmarked vehicles.The tactics are not particularly new. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to answer questions about tactics on Thursday, but former officials said federal immigration agents do wear street clothes to avoid giving away their presence before an arrest. They also can wear face coverings to avoid being singled out and doxxed online.Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration, said that plainclothes ICE agents have long been allowed to detain undocumented immigrants, though they are required to show their badges when making such arrests.What is shifting are the targets — immigrants with valid visas and legal status. In Ms. Ozturk’s case, supporters say she appears to have merely been a co-author of an editorial in a student newspaper criticizing Tufts’s support for Israel.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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      What We Know About the Detentions of Student Protesters

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      The Trump administration is looking to deport pro-Palestinian students who are legally in the United States, citing national security. Critics say that violates free speech protections.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the State Department under his direction had revoked the visas of more than 300 people and was continuing to revoke visas daily.Pool photo by Nathan HowardThe Trump administration is trying to deport pro-Palestinian students and academics who are legally in the United States, a new front in its clash with elite schools over what it says is their failure to combat antisemitism.The White House asserts that these moves — many of which involve immigrants with visas and green cards — are necessary because those taken into custody threaten national security. But some legal experts say that the administration is trampling on free speech rights and using lower-level laws to crack down on activism.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the State Department under his direction had revoked the visas of more than 300 people and was continuing to revoke visas daily. He did not specify how many of those people had taken part in campus protests or acted to support Palestinians.Mr. Rubio gave that number at a news conference, after noting that the department had revoked the visa of a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University. He did not give details on the other revocations.Immigration officials are known to have pursued at least nine people in apparent connection to this effort since the start of March.The detentions and efforts to deport people who are in the country legally reflect an escalation of the administration’s efforts to restrict immigration, as it also seeks to deport undocumented immigrants en masse.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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      Un tribunal de apelaciones mantiene el bloqueo de las deportaciones que invocan la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros

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      El tribunal dijo que, aunque se necesitaban más argumentos, los abogados de los migrantes probablemente tendrían éxito en sus alegaciones de que a los venezolanos se les había denegado el debido proceso.Un tribunal federal de apelaciones de Washington mantuvo el miércoles, por el momento, el bloqueo del uso por parte del gobierno de Donald Trump de una ley invocada de manera inusual para tiempos de guerra para deportar sumariamente a migrantes venezolanos acusados de pertenecer a una violenta banda.En una votación de 2 a 1, un panel del Tribunal de Apelaciones de Estados Unidos para el Circuito del Distrito de Columbia dijo que era probable que los migrantes venezolanos tuvieran éxito en sus alegaciones de que el gobierno no puede utilizar la ley de guerra, la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros, para trasladarlos sumariamente a una prisión en El Salvador sin una audiencia.“El plan de expulsión del gobierno niega a los demandantes siquiera un hilo del debido proceso, aunque el gobierno reconozca su derecho a la revisión judicial de su expulsión”, escribió la jueza Patricia A. Millett.La decisión asestó un duro golpe a los esfuerzos del gobierno de Trump por impulsar su programa de migración mediante la ley de guerra, pero la orden subyacente expirará de todos modos dentro de unos días. Es probable que el juez James E. Boasberg, presidente del Tribunal Federal de Distrito de Washington, vuelva a pronunciarse sobre la conveniencia de dictar una orden judicial de mayor duración.A mediados de marzo, Boasberg dictó una orden de restricción que prohibía al gobierno de Trump utilizar la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros para expulsar sumariamente a los venezolanos que, según él, pertenecen a la banda Tren de Aragua. Su orden no prohíbe al gobierno detener a esos hombres ni deportarlos tras las audiencias previstas en la ley de migración usual.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