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    Judge Tosses Out Biden Program For Undocumented Spouses

    The ruling issued by a federal judge in Texas struck down a new initiative aimed at helping undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens stay in the country.A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a new Biden administration program that sought to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to American citizens.The ruling, issued by Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, came months after 16 Republican-led states, led by Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit claiming that the administration lacked the legal authority to enact the program. In August, Judge Barker temporarily blocked the initiative, just days after it had gone into place.On Thursday, in a 74-page decision, he explained that the Biden administration did not have the authority to create the program, which would have been unlikely to remain in place after President-elect Trump took office in January.The Biden administration started the initiative, known as Keeping Families Together, in August, allowing undocumented immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens and had been in the United States for 10 years or more a chance to gain a green card without leaving the country.Read the Judge’s RulingA federal judge in Texas struck down a new Biden administration program that sought to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to American citizens.Read Document 74 pagesGenerally, immigrants who have entered the United States illegally must leave the country to complete the green card process, which can take years. The Biden program, which was in place for a week, allowed those who were married to U.S. citizens to remain in the country by granting them what the immigration system refers to as “parole,” a status that also protected them from deportation.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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    Read the Judge’s Ruling

    Case 6:24-cv-00306-JCB Document 120 Filed 11/07/24 Page 6 of 74 PageID #: 2962
    a foreign port or place or from an outlying possession.” Id.
    § 101(a)(13), 66 Stat. at 167.³
    c. Obtaining LPR status. – As today, status as an alien law-
    fully admitted for permanent residence (LPR or “green card” sta-
    tus) enabled an alien’s eventual naturalization as a U.S. citizen. Id.
    § 318, 66 Stat. at 244 (“no person shall be naturalized unless he
    has been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent res-
    idence”), codified as amended at 8 U.S.C. § 1429. The INA of 1952
    defined two processes for obtaining LPR status.
    First, an alien could apply for an immigrant visa at a U.S. con-
    sulate or embassy abroad, wait for one to become available and to
    issue, and then travel to a U.S. port of entry and be admitted for
    permanent residence under that visa. Id. §§ 101(a)(9) (consular
    officer), 203 (numerical limits), 211 (admission), 221 (consular is-
    suance), 66 Stat. at 166-67, 178–79, 181-82, 191–92. Aliens often
    had to wait their turn for immigrant visas to become available be-
    cause of annual limits on visa issuance. See id. § 201, 66 Stat. at
    175-76, codified as amended at 8 U.S.C. § 1151.4
    Second, an alien lawfully admitted to the United States in one
    status could, while here, adjust to LPR status. Under INA
    § 245(a), an alien “lawfully admitted to the United States as a
    bona fide nonimmigrant,” and who so entered the country, could
    petition for adjustment to LPR status upon certain showings re-
    lated to immigrant visas. Id. § 245(a), 66 Stat. at 217. But an alien’s
    parole from detention pending exclusion proceedings was not “an
    admission of the alien,” id. § 212(d)(5), 66 Stat. at 188, and thus
    did not allow the alien to petition to adjust to LPR status.
    ³ One exception was made, providing that LPR aliens were not “regarded”
    as “making an entry into the United States for purposes of the immigration
    laws” if they did not intend or reasonably expect to depart from the United
    States in the first place. Id.; see Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449 (1963) (inter-
    preting that clause). The need for that exception confirms that the term “en-
    try” itself refers to a physical movement into the country.
    4 Certain immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, however, have been ex-
    empted from immigrant-visa quotas. E.g., id. § 101(a)(27)(A), 66 Stat. at 169
    (“nonquota immigrants”); id. § 201(c), 66 Stat. at 176.
    -6- More

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    As Election Nears, Republicans Blame Child’s Rape on Immigration Crisis

    Wilson Castillo Diaz was arrested in New York in connection with the rape of a 5-year-old girl. On Friday, local Republicans blamed Democratic immigration policies.A Long Island man who was charged with raping a 5-year-old girl last month was in the country illegally, the police said Friday as local Republican officials sought to connect the disturbing case to the bitter debate over immigration just days before the presidential vote.The man, Wilson Castillo Diaz, 27, is a Honduran migrant who crossed into the United States via the Rio Grande Valley in 2014 before Border Patrol agents detained him, the police said. Mr. Castillo Diaz skipped an immigration hearing and was last living in Westbury, N.Y., the authorities said.Mr. Castillo Diaz was arrested on Oct. 22, but local officials did not publicize the case until Friday, days before the end of an election season in which immigration has played a central role.Former President Donald J. Trump has sought to stir nativist sentiment from the campaign trail, and the large influx of migrants in New York City has stoked fears of a surge in crime, though that largely has not been reflected by crime statistics.At a news conference on Friday, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive, said that the arrest of Mr. Castillo Diaz was the latest “illustration and evidence” of why authorities in his county closely watch for undocumented migrants.Mr. Blakeman, a Republican, said that the police waited more than a week to announce the arrest in order to protect the identities of the victim and her family.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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    Harris Came for a Fox News Interview, but Got a Debate With Bret Baier

    Vice President Kamala Harris may not get another debate with former President Donald J. Trump, but on Wednesday, she got one with Bret Baier.In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Mr. Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery and other areas that closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s regular attacks against her.At one point, Mr. Baier wondered if the vice president considered Mr. Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump because two recent Venezuelan migrants were charged with the crime.Mr. Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent with the kind of tough coverage of Ms. Harris that blankets Fox News’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers after a few seconds. His first interruption came within the first half-minute of their exchange.“May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”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 if Trump Wins Like This?

    If Donald Trump wins, the people who voted for him would have a range of reasons for putting him in office. There are a lot of potential Trump voters who don’t like him that much, or who really like only parts of his personality or platform and tolerate the rest.There are probably also those who have their own understanding of what they’re getting, possibly rooted in the way they felt about the Trump administration or feel about the Biden one. Some of this could be summarized by how Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, pitched it recently: “Look, you may not like Donald Trump personally, but you’ll like his policies a lot better than Kamala Harris’s. It’s a business decision.”But how Mr. Trump understands that decision could be different. If he wins like this, how it’s been, how grim he’s taken things across the last two years but especially lately, his explanation for the victory — and the consequences of that reasoning — might be different and darker than even many of the people who voted for him wanted.The way he’s talked about towns like Springfield, Ohio, and the Haitians who officials have said are there legally to work resembles deeply the rhythms of the 2016 campaign: grim conflation of real and fake problems, real people caught up in the gears of awful scrutiny and abuse, the building pressure on politicians and people often in very normal and modest circumstances, and Mr. Trump weaving everything into a fable to prove that he was right.In his campaign speeches, intermixed with the jokes and riffs, Mr. Trump often talks about political retribution, the threat of World War III, the ruin that the country’s become. In just one speech, he talked about how he would “liberate” Wisconsin from an “invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs and vicious gang members,” and about how immigrant gangs had “occupied” “hundreds” of towns and cities across the Midwest, leaving law enforcement “petrified.”Mr. Trump seems to have twisted the reason that programs like Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole exist — for instance, Haiti has been deemed too unstable and dangerous to return to — into a reason for the programs not to exist. “So we have travel warnings,” he said. “‘Don’t go here, don’t go there, don’t go to the various countries’ and yet she’s taking in the worst of those people, the killers, the jailbirds, all of the worst of the people, she’s taking them in.”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 Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is Marked by Nativist Attacks

    Former President Donald J. Trump escalated the nativist, anti-immigration rhetoric that has animated his political career with a speech Friday in Aurora, Colo., where he repeated false and grossly exaggerated claims about undocumented immigrants that local Republican officials have refuted.For weeks, Aurora has been fending off false rumors about the city. And its conservative Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, said in a statement on Friday that he hoped to show Mr. Trump that Aurora was “a considerably safe city.”But Mr. Trump has made debunked claims about Aurora, a Denver suburb, such a central part of his stump speech that he took a campaign detour to Colorado, which has not voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 2004, to make the case in person at a rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center.And during a meandering 80-minute speech Mr. Trump repeated claims, which have been debunked by local officials, that Aurora had been “invaded and conquered,” described the United States as an “occupied state,” called for the death penalty “for any migrant that kills an American citizen” and revived a promise to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process.That law allows for the summary deportation of people from nations with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.” It was far from clear whether the law could be used in the way that Mr. Trump was proposing.The false tale that Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, was occupied by armed Venezuelans stemmed from a dispute over housing conditions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In North Carolina Town Hall, Trump Makes a Series of Promises to Appeal to Veterans

    At the end of his town hall in North Carolina on Friday, former President Donald J. Trump was asked by a former Air Force pilot whether he would create a panel to keep “woke generals” out of the Defense Department.Mr. Trump not only agreed, but also went a step further. “I’m going to put you on that task force,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.The remark was the last in a series of promises the former president made as he answered preselected questions from voters in Fayetteville, N.C., an area with a large military population. It’s a dynamic that happens often at Mr. Trump’s events, in which he makes direct commitments on small and large issues to appeal to and energize his specific audience.He promised that his proposed missile defense system, an American clone of Israel’s Iron Dome, would be made in North Carolina. He pledged to raise military pay. And before taking a question, he promised to restore the name of nearby Fort Liberty, the largest U.S. military base, back to Fort Bragg, which honored a Confederate general from a slave-owning family. The name was changed in June 2023 as part of the U.S. military’s examination of its history with race.Attendees cheered as Mr. Trump arrived for the town hall at Crown Arena in Fayetteville, N.C.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesSitting onstage at the Crown Arena in front of several thousand people, many of whom said they were active-duty military service members or veterans, Mr. Trump took eight questions from audience members. Like the event’s moderator, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida and a veteran, the participants teed him up to offer lines from his stump speech. Many of the questions echoed his exaggerated and false claims about immigration, approved of his vow to conduct massive deportations of undocumented immigrants and acknowledged his fear-inspiring predictions of global war.All Mr. Trump had to do, largely, was agree. He repeated his false claims that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and made familiar attacks against the media.Mr. Trump earlier in the day toured parts of Georgia hit by Hurricane Helene, and he claimed that reporters were doing little to cover the storm and the Biden administration’s response.Ms. Luna, a proud and combative ally of Mr. Trump, took the ball and ran with it, and claimed that the administration’s response was intentional. “I do believe that they’ve intentionally, this is my opinion, not helped out those residents, because it’s red communities that are impacted,” she said. More

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    Mexican Military Fatally Shoots Six Migrants

    The country’s defense ministry said the military officers who opened fire might have mistaken the migrants for cartel members.At least six migrants were killed in southern Mexico on Tuesday night after military officers shot at the vehicle they were traveling in. The episode called attention to a growing concern in Mexico — ever more powerful armed forces that operate with little oversight — and a continuing one, the dangers faced by migrants in the country.Mexico’s defense ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the officers were doing “ground reconnaissance” in the state of Chiapas when they spotted a pickup truck traveling fast, and that the truck’s driver tried to evade the soldiers. Behind the pickup truck were two vehicles that the military said were similar to those organized crime groups in the region use: stakebed trucks, small flatbeds with fencing in the cargo area.The officers may have mistaken the migrants for cartel members, according to the ministry defense ministry.The military said the officers “heard explosions,” so two of them opened fire, bringing one of the trucks to a stop. It was carrying a group of 33 migrants from around the world. Four people died at the scene and two at a hospital, officials said. Ten others were injured. The rest were handed over to Mexican immigration officials.The military did not say whether the migrants were armed.The authorities did not immediately release the identities of the victims. A collective of migrant rights groups said in a statement that among the dead were four men, a woman and a girl. The targeted migrants, the statement added, came from Nepal, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Cuba.“These facts are neither accidental nor isolated,” the collective said. “They are a direct consequence of ordering military deployment to contain migratory flows under a logic of persecution and not of protection.”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