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      Springfield, Ohio, Sues Neo-Nazi Group, Saying It Intimidated Haitians

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      In the lawsuit, the city states that people associated with the group made death threats last year against those who expressed support for Haitian residents.The city of Springfield, Ohio, which was singled out by Donald J. Trump and JD Vance during the presidential campaign with false and outrageous claims about Haitian immigrants, has sued a neo-Nazi group that helped draw national attention to the small city in the first place.The suit, filed in federal court on Thursday, was brought by the mayor, Rob Rue, along with several city commissioners and Springfield residents. It says that Blood Tribe, a four-year-old neo-Nazi group, began a campaign of intimidation focused on Haitian immigrants in the city. It culminated last summer in “a torrent of hateful conduct, including acts of harassment, bomb threats and death threats” against locals who spoke in support of the Haitian residents.The plaintiffs cite the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it a crime to deny individuals their civil rights, and accuses Blood Tribe of ethnic intimidation and inciting violence. With the legal support of the Anti-Defamation League, the plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages and compensation for the thousands of dollars spent on extra security as Blood Tribe’s campaign unfolded.The suit does not mention Mr. Trump, who falsely claimed at a presidential debate in September that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating dogs and cats, nor Mr. Vance, who urged his “fellow patriots” to “keep the cat memes flowing.” But the suit says that Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of Blood Tribe, “gleefully took credit for the growing notoriety” of the false claims about Haitians in the city, “bragging on social media that the Blood Tribe had ‘pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.’”The suit did not name a lawyer for Mr. Pohlhaus, who could not be reached for comment.In recent years, between 10,000 and 20,000 Haitians had come to Springfield, a city of about 60,000 in southwestern Ohio, attracted by the substantial labor needs of the warehouses and manufacturing businesses in the area. While “the vast majority” of the Haitians are in the country lawfully and were “welcomed” by the city, the suit says, the arrival of so many newcomers in such a short time brought a range of challenges, putting serious demand on local hospitals, schools and housing.In posts on its social media accounts last July, Blood Tribe called the arrival of large numbers of Haitians an “act of demographic warfare,” that had “caused a significant strain on the good White residents of the city.” The suit charges that Blood Tribe members, who were masked, armed and brandishing swastikas, gathered at a local jazz festival and later outside the mayor’s home. It adds that the group spread the personal information of people who supported the Haitian community, in some cases putting home addresses on websites that drew men looking for drugs or sex.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 Tent City Is Rising at Guantánamo Bay

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      On Friday a military cargo plane transported deportees from El Paso, Texas, to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They are among the latest arrivals in the Trump administration’s week-old migrant relocation operation.Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, is the first senior member of the Trump administration to visit the migrant mission on the base.So far, none of the first arrivals have been taken to an emerging tent city that has been set up for migrants. Instead, they have been housed in the military prison.A Tent City Is Rising at Guantánamo BayThe Trump administration has moved more than 30 people described as Venezuelan gang members to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, as U.S. forces and homeland security staff prepare a tent city for potentially thousands of migrants.About a dozen of the men were brought in from El Paso, Texas, on Friday, as Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, arrived at Guantánamo. She is the first senior member of the Trump administration to visit the migrant mission on the base in southeastern Cuba.Ms. Noem was taken to the rooftop of the base’s aircraft hangar and observed as U.S. security forces led the deportees down the ramp of a C-130 military cargo plane to an awaiting minibus. Maj. Gen. Philip J. Ryan, the army commander overseeing the migrant mission, stood beside her in combat uniform, and a Chinook transport chopper could be seen in the distance.“Vicious gang members will no longer have safe haven in our country,” Ms. Noem said on social media, calling the men “criminal aliens.”Ms. Noem and a soldier watch from a distance as U.S. security forces take migrants off a cargo plane at Guantánamo Bay on Friday. An ICE policeman in civilian attire stands beside one recent arrival while other security personnel staff the arrival of the cargo plane, which came from El Paso, Texas.

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      Her Brother Disappeared in War 80 Years Ago. She Finally Got to Say Goodbye.

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      Margery Hop Wong last saw her older brother Sgt. Yuen Hop in 1943. He was a soldier missing in action, until researchers solved the mystery behind his death.When Margery Hop Wong bade her older brother goodbye in 1943, she was just a 12-year-old girl who loved it when he took her for joy rides in his used convertible around the apple orchards their family worked.Yuen Hop left their home in Sebastopol, Calif., a small town 55 miles north of San Francisco, at 19 to join the U.S. Army. His little sister never saw him again. She knew he had died in the war, but she did not know how. Or where. Or what had happened to his body.On Friday, Ms. Wong, now 94, sat in the front pew of a mortuary just south of her home in San Francisco, her brother’s remains in a casket draped in an American flag. Younger generations of the Hop family and military veterans filled the rows behind her as a singer led the group in “Amazing Grace.”For 80 years, Sergeant Hop was lost. Now, he was found.Yuen Hopvia the Hop familyMs. Wong was the youngest of seven children born to Gin and Chan Hop, immigrants from China who spoke Cantonese and struggled to communicate with their American-born children, who grew up speaking English.Life was difficult because of anti-Chinese sentiment fueled by the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882 to dramatically restrict Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants were regularly prohibited from living or working where they wanted, Ms. Wong recalled in an interview. She said her brother was proud to have scraped together money working as a mechanic and drying apples to buy a used convertible and tried to make life fun for his brothers and sisters.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 Plans Jan. 6 Pardons and Deportations as First Acts in Office

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said in a new interview that he will use the opening hours of his presidency to pardon people convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, begin deportations of undocumented immigrants and increase oil production.He also said during the interview, which Time magazine published on Thursday, that he might supporting getting rid of some childhood vaccines if data shows links to autism. He declined to answer a question about whether he had talked with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since the November election but said Ukraine should not have been allowed to fire U.S.-made missiles into Russia.Speaking of pardons in Jan. 6 cases, he said: “We’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office.” He said the pardons would go to “nonviolent” people who were at the Capitol, which was overrun by Trump supporters after he lost the 2020 election. “A vast majority should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely,” he said.The president-elect’s comments came during a wide-ranging interview conducted on Nov. 25 as part of the magazine’s choice of Mr. Trump to be its person of the year. In the interview, which the magazine said lasted more than an hour, the president-elect bragged that he had run a “flawless” campaign and that Democrats were out of touch with Americans.He also said he planed a “virtual closure of Department of Education in Washington,” though he did not explain what that meant. And he said that he might reverse President Biden’s expansion of Title IX protections, which includes prohibitions against harassment of transgender students.Americans “don’t want to see, you know, men playing in women’s sports. They don’t,” Mr. Trump said. “They don’t want to see all of this transgender, which is, it’s just taken over.”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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      Scholz Calls for Confidence Vote, in Step Toward German Elections

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      Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had few alternatives after his three-party coalition broke up, is widely expected to lose when Parliament takes up the measure on Monday.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called for a confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday, taking the first formal step toward disbanding the German government and leading to snap elections likely to oust him from office.The move, culminating in a parliamentary vote on Monday, became all but necessary in November, when the chancellor fired his finance minister, precipitating the breakup of his fragile three-party coalition.“In a democracy, it is the voters who determine the course of future politics. When they go to the polls, they decide how we will answer the big questions that lie ahead of us,” Mr. Scholz said from the chancellery in Berlin on Wednesday.Mr. Scholz expects to lose the vote. The collapse of the government along with the early election on Feb. 23 amount to an extraordinary political moment in a country long known for stable governments.The political turbulence in Germany and the fall last week of the government in France have left the European Union with a vacuum of leadership at critical moment: It is facing challenges from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the imminent return to the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States.Mr. Trump has threatened a trade war with Europe and has consistently expressed skepticism about America’s commitment to the NATO alliance that has been the guarantor of security on the continent for 75 years.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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      Giant Migrant Shelter Complex in Brooklyn to Close by March

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      The imminent closure reflects concern from New York City officials that President-elect Donald J. Trump will target the shelter because it sits on federal land.New York City officials announced on Tuesday that they will close a giant tent complex in Brooklyn that houses some 2,000 migrants, a pre-emptive step meant to fend off concerns that the shelter could be targeted by the Trump administration.Because the shelter, on Floyd Bennett Field, was built on federal land, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams increasingly feared that President-elect Donald J. Trump would revoke the shelter’s lease once he takes office in January — or assert the administration’s right to launch immigration raids on federal land.The Floyd Bennett Field shelter is among 25 shelters that will now shut down by March because of a steady decline in the number of migrants arriving over the past five months. Those include hotels across the city, two college dormitories in Upper Manhattan and a warehouse-turned-shelter at Kennedy Airport, as well as 10 hotels the city was paying to house migrants upstate.The slate of closures was yet another signal of how the city’s migrant crisis, which prompted the city to spend more than $6 billion over two years to house migrants, has continued to wind down. Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has been cautious about antagonizing Mr. Trump, did not name the president-elect as a reason for the closure of the Floyd Bennett Field shelter, the only one in New York City on federal land.City officials said that the lease would end by March, but that families would be moved out of the shelter by Jan. 15, just a few days before Mr. Trump is sworn into office.“We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response,” Mr. Adams said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Chad Chronister, a Florida Sheriff, as D.E.A. Administrator

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      The announcement of Sheriff Chad Chronister came after President-elect Donald J. Trump said that he would impose tariffs that would stay in place until Canada, Mexico and China halted the flow of drugs and migrants.President-elect Donald J. Trump on Saturday chose Chad Chronister, a veteran Florida sheriff, to be his administration’s top drug enforcement official, tasking him with delivering on campaign promises to curb the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the country.Appointed sheriff of Hillsborough County in 2017 by Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican who is now a senator, and re-elected twice, Sheriff Chronister has served on state and regional law enforcement boards, including the Florida Statewide Drug Policy Advisory Council.“For over 32 years, Sheriff Chad Chronister has served the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and received countless awards for keeping his community SAFE,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his choice.Mr. Trump repeatedly highlighted the opioid crisis during his campaign, framing it as a major national security threat. The president-elect has threatened to impose damaging tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada in an effort to curb migration and the trafficking of drugs, particularly fentanyl, across U.S. borders.As head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Sheriff Chronister will play a central role in addressing the escalating tensions surrounding fentanyl being brought into the United States.In response to the announcement, Sheriff Chronister posted on social media, “It is the honor of a lifetime to be nominated” for the position by Mr. Trump. He added, “I am deeply humbled by this opportunity to serve our nation.”The D.E.A., an arm of the Justice Department, said in its fiscal year 2025 budget request that 2023 was the highest year for fentanyl seizures since the agency’s inception more than half a century ago. In addition, the agency confiscated more than 77 million fentanyl pills and nearly 12,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. The agency has more than 10,000 employees, with offices in the U.S. and in more than 60 different countries. It has a budget of more than $3 billion.For comparison, Sheriff Chronister’s department in Florida, one of the largest sheriff’s offices in the state, has a 2024 budget of about $600 million and oversees more than 3,500 employees.Sheriff Chronister’s father-in-law, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., received a pardon from Mr. Trump in 2021. Mr. DeBartolo, a former owner of the N.F.L.’s San Francisco 49ers, pleaded guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion plot. Though he avoided prison, he was fined $1 million and was suspended for a year by the N.F.L. More

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      Trump Plans Tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico That Could Cripple Trade

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office, a move that would scramble global supply chains and impose heavy costs on companies that rely on doing business with some of the world’s largest economies.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump mentioned a caravan of migrants making its way to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to levy a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the border.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” the president-elect wrote.“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he added. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”In a separate post, Mr. Trump also threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States.“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More