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    ‘Cemetery of the living dead’: Venezuelans recall 125 days in notorious El Salvador prison

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    Arturo Suárez struggles to pinpoint the worst moment of his incarceration inside a prison the warden boasted was “a cemetery of the living dead”.Was it the day inmates became so exasperated at being beaten by guards that they threatened to hang themselves with their sheets? “The only weapon we had was our own lives,” recalled the Venezuelan former detainee.Was it when prisoners staged a “blood strike”, cutting their arms with broken pipes and smearing their bedclothes with crimson messages of despair? “SOS!” they wrote.Or was rock bottom for Suárez when he turned 34 while stranded in a Central American penitentiary prison officers had claimed he would only leave in a body bag?Suárez, a reggaeton musician known by the stage name SuarezVzla, was one of 252 Venezuelans who found themselves trapped inside El Salvador’s notorious “Cecot” terrorism confinement centre after becoming embroiled in Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade.After 125 days behind bars, Suárez and the other detainees were freed on 18 July after a prisoner swap deal between Washington and Caracas. Since flying home to Venezuela, they have started to open up about their torment, offering a rare and disturbing glimpse of the human toll of President Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crackdown in El Salvador and Trump’s campaign against immigration.View image in fullscreenSuárez said conditions inside the maximum security prison were so dire he and other inmates considered killing themselves. “My daughter’s really little and she needs me. But we’d made up our minds. We decided to put an end to this nightmare,” he said, although the prisoners stepped back from the brink.Another detainee, Neiyerver Rengel, 27, described his panic after guards claimed he would probably spend 90 years there. “I felt shattered, destroyed,” said the Venezuelan barber, who was deported to Cecot after being captured in Irving, Texas.Trump officials called the Venezuelans – many of whom had no criminal background – “heinous monsters” and “terrorists” but largely failed to produce proof, with many seemingly targeted simply for being Venezuelan and having tattoos.Norman Eisen, the executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is helping Rengel sue the US government for $1.3m, called the “abduction” of scores of Venezuelans a stain on his country’s reputation. “It is shocking and shameful and every patriotic American should be disgusted by it,” said Eisen, who expected other freed prisoners to take legal action.Suárez’s journey to one of the world’s harshest prisons began in Chile’s capital, Santiago, where the singer had moved after fleeing Venezuela’s economic collapse in 2016.One day early last year, before deciding to migrate to the US, Suárez watched a viral YouTube video about the “mega-prison” by the Mexican influencer Luisito Comunica.Bukele officials had invited Comunica to film inside Cecot as part of propaganda efforts to promote an anti-gang offensive that has seen 2%of the country’s adult population jailed since 2022. Suárez, then a fan of El Salvador’s social media-savvy president, was gripped. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could afford a package tour to go and visit Cecot?” he recalled joking to his wife. Little did the couple know that Suárez would soon be languishing in Cecot’s cage-like cells, sleeping on a metal bunk bed.View image in fullscreenAfter entering the US in September 2024, Suárez worked odd jobs in North Carolina. In February, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, he was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents and, in mid-March, put on a deportation flight, the destination of which was not revealed. When the plane landed, its passengers – who were instructed to keep its blinds closed – had no idea where they were. The penny dropped when one detainee disobeyed the order and spotted El Salvador’s flag outside. “That’s when we understood … where we were heading – to Cecot,” he said.Suárez described the hours that followed as a blur of verbal abuse and beatings, as disoriented prisoners were frogmarched on to buses that took them to Cecot’s cell block eight.Suárez said the men were forced to shave their heads and told by the warden: “Welcome to hell! Welcome to the cemetery of the living dead! You’ll leave here dead!”As he was dragged off the bus, Suárez, who is shortsighted, said he asked a guard for help because his spectacles were falling off: “He told me to shut up, punched me [in the face] and broke my glasses.”“What am I doing in Cecot?” Suárez recalled thinking. “I’m not a terrorist. I’ve never killed anyone. I make music.”Rengel had almost identical memories of his arrival: “The police officers started saying we were going to die in El Salvador – that it was likely we’d spend 90 years there.”Noah Bullock, the head of the El Salvador-focused human rights group Cristosal, said activists had heard very similar accounts from prisoners in other Salvadoran jails, suggesting such terror tactics were not merely the behaviour of “bad apple prison guards”. “There’s clearly a culture coming from the leadership of the prison system to inculcate the guards into operating this way, [into] using dehumanising and physical abuse in a systematic way.”View image in fullscreenSuárez said the Venezuelans spent the next 16 weeks being woken at 4am, moved between cells holding between 10 and 19 people, and enduring a relentless campaign of physical and psychological abuse. “There’s no life in there,” he said. “The only good thing they did for us was give us a Bible. We sought solace in God and that’s why nobody took their own life.”The musician tried to lift spirits by composing upbeat songs, such as Cell 31, which describes a message from God. “Be patient, my son. Your blessing will soon arrive,” its lyrics say.The song became a prison anthem and Suárez said inmates sang it, one day in March, when the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, visited Cecot to pose by its packed cells. “We aren’t terrorists! We aren’t criminals! Help!” the Venezuelans bellowed. But their pleas were ignored and the mood grew increasingly desperate, as the inmates were deprived of contact with relatives, lawyers and even the sun. “There came a point where we had no motivation, no strength left,” Rengel said.Only in mid-June was there a glimmer of hope when prisoners were given shampoo, razors and soap and measured for clothes. “They obviously wanted to hide what had happened from the world,” said Suárez, who sensed release might be close. One month later the men were free.Suárez said he was determined to speak out now he was safely back in his home town of Caracas. “The truth must be … heard all over the world. Otherwise what they did to us will be ignored,” said the musician, who admitted he had once been an admirer of Bukele’s populist campaigns against political corruption and gangs. “Now I realise it’s just a complete farce because how can you negotiate with human lives? How can you use human beings as bargaining chips?” Suárez said.A spokesperson for El Salvador’s government did not respond to questions about the prisoners’ allegations. Last week, the homeland security department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, dismissed prisoners’ claims of abuses as “false sob stories”.Suárez hoped never to set foot in El Salvador or the US again but said he forgave his captors. “And I hope they can forgive themselves,” he added. “And realise that while they might escape the justice of man they will never be able to escape divine justice.” More

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      Trump wants to ‘remake’ Fema, not eliminate it, Kristi Noem says

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      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Sunday that Donald Trump wants to have the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “remade” instead of eradicated entirely.In a new interview on Sunday with NBC, Noem defended the Trump administration’s response to the deadly Texas floods that have killed at least 120 people, saying: “I think the president recognizes that Fema should not exist the way that it always has been. It needs to be redeployed in a new way, and that’s what we did during this response.”Noem added: “I think he wants it to be remade so that it’s an agency that is new in how it deploys and supports states.”Her comments follow widespread criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the Texas floods as reports emerged of thousands of calls from flood survivors being left unanswered by Fema’s call centers due to unextended contracts.Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Fema did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line. The outlet also reported that Noem, who implemented a new policy that she personally signs off on contracts over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until five days after they expired in the middle of the floods.Noem decried the reports as “fake news”, saying: “That report needs to be validified. I’m not certain it’s accurate, and I’m not sure where it came from, and the individuals who are giving you information out of Fema, I’d love to have them put their names behind it because the anonymous attacks to politicize the situation is completely wrong.”Noem went on to acknowledge her policy of personally signing off on contracts worth more than $100,000, saying: “It’s not extra red tape, it’s making sure everything is getting to my level, and that it’s immediately responded to.”She also praised Fema’s response as the “best response” in years to the Texas floods, saying: “This response was by far the best response we’ve seen out of Fema, the best response we’ve seen out of the federal government in many, many years, and certainly much better than what we saw under Joe Biden.”Despite Noem’s defense of the agency and the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis, many have criticized Fema as the downsized agency has seen approximately 2,000 resignations and retirements since Trump’s inauguration.Speaking to the Guardian, Michael Coen, Fema’s former chief of staff, said: “I’m concerned that Fema is going to be at a disadvantage because they don’t have the resources to respond to the disasters we know could happen, which could be two or three concurrent disasters at the same time.“Fema has eroded capacity since President Trump became president. Staff have departed. There have been cuts to grant programs and they are going to be running into a financial challenge with the disaster relief fund, because the president hasn’t requested supplemental funding from Congress.”Since taking office, Trump has routinely threatened to disband the agency which was set up by Jimmy Carter in 1979 following states’ struggle to handle major disasters. In June, Trump said that he planned to start “phasing out” Fema after hurricane season and that states would receive federal aid to respond to natural disasters.“We’re going to give out less money,” Trump said.Last month, Noem also said that Fema “fundamentally needs to go away as it exists”, adding that states should have more responsibility when handling natural disasters.However, since the Texas floods, which mark Trump’s first major natural disaster since taking office in January, his administration’s rhetoric on eliminating Fema has appeared to shift.Earlier this week, upon being asked whether he still plans to phase out the agency, Trump said it was a matter “we can talk about later”. Similarly, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the federal government’s response to natural disasters was a “policy discussion that will continue”. More

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      Judge blocks Kristi Noem from ending temporary protected status for Haitians

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.The US district judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, however, said the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem did not follow instructions and a timeline mandated by Congress to reconsider the TPS designation for Haitians.“Secretary Noem does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation”, making her actions “unlawful”, Cogan wrote. “Plaintiffs are likely to (and, indeed, do) succeed on the merits.”Cogan also said Haitians’ interests in being able to live and work in the United States “far outweigh” potential harm to the US government, which remains free to enforce immigration laws and terminate TPS status as prescribed by Congress.Donald Trump has made a crackdown on legal and illegal immigration a central plank of his second White House term.Cogan was appointed to the bench by George W Bush, also a Republican.In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security spokesperson, said Haiti’s TPS designation had been granted following the 2010 earthquake in that country, and was never intended as a “de facto” asylum program.“This ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers,” she said. “We expect a higher court to vindicate us.”Federal courts blocked Trump from ending most TPS enrollment during his first term.Nine Haitian TPS holders, an association of churches and a chapter of the Service Employees International Union filed the lawsuit on 14 March, saying Noem did not do a required review of current conditions in Haiti before ending TPS early.More than 1 million people, more than half of them children, are displaced within Haiti, where gang violence is prevalent despite a United Nations-backed security mission that began last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“While the fight is far from over, this is an important step,” Manny Pastreich, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, whose members include Haitian TPS holders, said in a statement.Noem shares Trump’s hardline stance on immigration issues, and moved to end TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans as well as thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon.On 19 May, the US supreme court let TPS end for the Venezuelans, signaling that other terminations could be allowed.Noem has authority to grant TPS for six to eight months to people from countries experiencing natural disasters, armed conflict or other extraordinary events.The Haitian plaintiffs also claimed the suspension of their TPS status was motivated in part by racial animus, violating their constitutional right to equal protection.Trump falsely said in a September 2024 debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, sparking fear of retaliation against Haitians. More

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      ‘It’s time to wake up’: Padilla recounts being handcuffed at Noem briefing in emotional speech

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      Alex Padilla took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to deliver a deeply personal speech, formally entering into the congressional record his account of being restrained and forcibly removed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, in Los Angeles last week.In emotional remarks, Padilla described the encounter that he hoped would serve as a “wake up call” for Americans – a warning, he said, of how quickly democratic norms can slip away when dissent is silenced and power is unchecked.“If that is what the administration is willing to do to a United States senator for having the authority to simply ask a question,” Padilla said, “imagine what they’ll do to any American who dares to speak up”.In his floor speech, Padilla said he was in Los Angeles to conduct congressional oversight of the administration’s escalating immigration operations in the city. He was at the federal building that morning for a scheduled briefing with US northern command’s General Gregory Guillot about the president’s order to deploy US marines to the city as part of its response to protests against immigration raids that left Latino communities shaken and afraid.When he arrived, Padilla said that he was met at the building’s entrance by a national guardsman and an FBI agent. He was then escorted through a security screening and into the conference room where the briefing would take place.When he learned Noem was holding a press conference “literally down the hall” – and that it was the reason his own briefing was delayed – Padilla said he asked to attend. He and his colleagues had many outstanding information requests about the department’s immigration enforcement tactics, and he said he hoped he might learn something from the secretary.“I didn’t just stand up and go – I asked,” he said.According to Padilla, the guardsman and FBI agent then “escorted” him into the room where Noem was giving remarks to reporters. “They opened the door for me. They accompanied me into the press briefing room, and they stood next to me as I stood there for a while listening,” he said.When Noem declared that the federal law enforcement and military personnel would “liberate” Los Angeles from its Democratic governor and mayor – what Padilla called an “un-American mission statement” – he said he could no longer remain silent.“I was compelled, both as a senator and as an American, to speak up,” the senator said. “But before I could even get out my question, I was physically and aggressively forced out of the room, even as I repeatedly announced I was a United States senator, and I had a question for the secretary, and even as the national guardsmen and the FBI agent who served as my escorts brought me into that press briefing room, stood by silently, knowing full well who I was.”He was dragged into a hallway and forced onto the ground, Padilla recalled, his voice catching as he described being forced onto his knees and then his chest pressed into the ground. “I was handcuffed and marched down a hallway repeatedly asking, ‘Why am I being detained?’ Not once did they tell me why?” he said. “I pray you never have a moment like this.”As this was happening, Padilla said his thoughts turned to his family: “What will my wife think? What will our boys think?” And then to his constituents – those in a city already on edge, militarized against the wishes of the governor and local enforcement – how would they react when they saw the images of their US senator – the first Latino elected to the chamber from California – in handcuffs.When asked about Padilla’s removal during the press conference, Noem said she didn’t recognize the two-term senator and said he hadn’t requested a meeting. Noem and Padilla met for for 15 minutes following the incident, according to DHS.The FBI has said its agents believed Padilla was an attacker and responded appropriately. They blamed the senator for not wearing a pin identifying him as a member of Congress. The Guardian’s requests for comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the National Guard and the Secret Service were not immediately returned.In a statement on Tuesday, the White House dismissed Padilla’s floor speech as a “temper tantrum”.“Alex ‘Pay Attention to Me’ Padilla is bouncing from one desperate ploy for attention to the next,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, adding: “Whether or not Democrats like it, the American people support President Trump’s agenda to deport illegal aliens.”But Padilla, who noted he has never had a reputation as a “flame-thrower”, challenged his colleagues in both parties to consider what the episode revealed about the state of American democracy.“If you watched what unfolded last week and thought what happened is just about one politician and one press conference you’re missing the point,” he said. Democrats and some Republicans condemned the incident. But administration officials – and many Republicans – blamed Padilla, with the House speaker Mike Johnson suggesting he should be censured for his actions.Padilla accused Trump of being a “tyrant” who had ordered National Guard troops and US marines into Los Angeles to “justify his undemocratic crackdowns and his authoritarian power grabs”. He said Trump was surrounded by “yes men” and a pliant Congress who refused to reign in the president tries everything to “test the boundaries of his power”.“If Donald Trump can bypass the governor and activate the National Guard to put down protests on immigrant rights, he can do it to suppress your rights too,” he continued. “If he can deploy the Marines to Los Angeles without justification, he can deploy them to your state too. And if you can ignore due process, strip away first amendment rights and disappear people to foreign prisons without their day in court, he can do it to you too.”Padilla, the “proud” son of Mexican immigrants, warned that what is happening in his state could spread nationwide.“I refuse to let immigrants be political pawns on his path towards fascism,” he said. He described the situation in California as a “test case” for what could happen to “any American anywhere in the country”.As Padilla spoke in Washington, images emerged from New York where Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller and a candidate for mayor, had been arrested by masked federal agents as he visited an immigration court.“It’s time to wake up,” Padilla said, urging Americans to continue to peacefully protest the administration. “If this administration is this afraid of just one senator with a question … imagine what the voices of tens of billions of Americans peacefully protesting can do.”The Democrats in the chamber erupted in applause. More

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      How would recent events in America appear if they happened elsewhere? | Moira Donegan

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      At times the gesture can seem like a cliche, but I like to imagine, for the sake of perspective, how political developments in the United States would be covered by the media if they were happening in any other country. I imagine that Thursday’s events in Los Angeles might be spoken of like this:A prominent opposition leader was attacked by regime security forces on Thursday in the presence of the national security tsar, as he voiced opposition to the federal military occupation of the US’s second-largest city following street demonstrations against the regime’s mass deportation efforts.Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was pushed against a wall, removed from the room, and then tackled to the ground and handcuffed, reportedly by Secret Service and FBI agents, at a press conference in LA by Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. He was trying to ask a question about the deployment of marines and national guard forces to LA in his capacity as Angelenos’ elected representative. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, was later released; Noem, speaking to reporters after the incident, said both that she knew the senator and that agents tackled and detained him because neither she nor they knew who he was. In a video of the attack, Padilla can be heard identifying himself as a senator as Noem’s security forces begin to grab and shove him.Seconds later, after he has been pushed out of the room, Padilla can be heard yelling to the men attacking him: “Hands off!” The video cuts out after a man steps in front of the camera to block the shot, and tells the person filming, “there is no recording allowed here, per FBI rights,” something of an odd statement to make at a press conference. Several federal court decisions have upheld the right to record law enforcement.The violence toward a sitting senator is yet another escalation of the administration’s dramatic assertions of extra-constitutional authority, and another item in their ongoing assertion of the illegitimacy of dissent, even from elected leaders. In responding with violence toward the senator’s question, Noem, her security forces and by extension the Trump administration more broadly, are signaling that they will treat opposition, even from elected officials, as insubordination.They do not see senators as equals to be negotiated with or spoken to in good faith, because they do not believe that any of the people’s representatives – and certainly not a Democrat – has any authority that they need to respect. Padilla, like the people of Los Angeles and the people of the United States, was not treated by the Trump administration as a citizen, but as a subject.The attack on Padilla by security forces, and the viral video of him being tackled to the ground and handcuffed by armed men, has threatened to overshadow the content of Noem’s press conference, which underscored in rhetoric this same sense of absolute authority and contempt for dissent that the attack on the senator demonstrated with action.Noem was in Los Angeles to tout the administration’s military escalation against citizens there, who have taken to the streets as part of a growing protest movement against Trump’s mass deportation scheme, which has led to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) kidnapping of many Angelenos and left families, colleagues, neighbors and friends bereft of their beloved community members.The protests have been largely peaceful – Ice and police have initiated violence against some demonstrators – but the Trump administration has taken them as an opportunity to crush dissent with force. The deployment of the California national guard – in violation of a law that requires the administration to secure cooperation from the governor – and the transfer of 700 marines to the city has marked a new willingness of the Trump administration to use military force against citizens who oppose its policies.But to the Trump administration, the Americans who have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to Trump policies are no Americans at all. “We are not going away,” Noem said of the military occupation of Los Angeles. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists.” By this, she meant the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom, who are not socialists but Democrats.The term – “liberate” – evokes the US’s imperialist adventures abroad, in which such rhetoric was used to provide rhetorical cover for the toppling of foreign regimes, many of them democratically elected. The people’s elected representatives – be it Newsom or Bass or Padilla – are not figures they need to be “liberated” from. That is, not unless you consider the only legitimate “people” to be Trump supporters, and the only legitimate governance to be Republican governance.Trump, as he expands his authoritarian ambitions and uses more and more violence to pursue them, has made his own will into the sum total of “the will of the people”. All those other people – the ones marching in the streets, and trying to stop the kidnappings of their neighbors – don’t count.A few hours after Noem’s goons attacked Padilla, a federal district court judge ordered the Trump administration to relinquish control over the California national guard, agreeing with California that the guard had been illegally seized when Trump assumed control of the armed units without Newsom’s consent. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” said district judge Charles Breyer in a hearing on the case earlier that day. “It’s not that the leader can simply say something and then it becomes it.”The judge was pointing to the constitutional order, to the rule of law, to the guarantees, once taken for granted, that the president has limits on his power. He gave the Trump administration about 18 hours to hand control of the national guard back to the state of California. It was not immediately clear whether they would comply. Hours later, an appeals court placed a temporary block on Breyer’s order, returning control of the California national guard to Trump. So much for us having a “law and order” president.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Senator Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s LA press conference

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      Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles on Thursday.In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service agents.“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past against the men pushing him back toward the exit.“Hands off!” Padilla says at least three times. Outside the room, he is pinned to the floor and placed in handcuffs.Emerging afterward, Padilla, the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said he and his colleagues had repeatedly asked DHS for more information on its “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” but had not received a response to his inquiries.“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,” Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. “We will hold this administration accountable.”The extraordinary scene stunned his Democratic colleagues from Capitol Hill to California, though his actions drew criticism from Republicans, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who called for Padilla’s censure. It comes amid escalating tensions between California and the federal government, after Donald Trump deployed national guard troops and US Marines to LA to quell protests prompted by immigration raids, over the objections of the state’s governor and the city’s mayor.“I am shocked by how far we have descended in the first 140 days of this administration,” Adam Schiff, the junior senator from California said in a speech from the Senate floor shortly after viewing the video of the incident. “What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do? Is there no line they will not cross?”In a statement, the DHS said the senator “chose disrespectful political theatre” and disrupted a live news conference. They falsely claimed that Padilla had failed to identify himself and believed he was an attacker when he “lunged toward” Noem as she delivered remarks.“Mr Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the department said in a statement posted on X, adding that officers responded and “acted appropriately”.The deputy FBI director Dan Bongino accused Padilla of “not wearing a security pin” and said he “physically resisted law enforcement when confronted”.“Our FBI personnel acted completely appropriately while assisting Secret Service and we are grateful for their professionalism and service,” Bongino added.Noem was in Los Angeles to accompany federal agents on immigration operations in the area.Noem said Padilla’s approach “wasn’t appropriate” and that she wished he had reached out to her office before interrupting the event. Following the incident, she and the senator met for 15 minutes, according to DHS. Noem told reporters that they had a “great” and “productive” conversation and exchanged phone numbers.Democratic officials said they were stunned by what the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, described as the “manhandling” of a sitting US senator.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, called Padilla “one of the most decent people I know”, before adding: “This is outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful. Trump and his shock troops are out of control. This must end now.”Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, wrote on X that “watching this video sickened my stomach, the manhandling of a United States Senator, Senator Padilla. We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.”Jimmy Gomez, a California representative, wrote on X : “This isn’t just shocking, it’s a threat to the rule of law and democratic accountability. Sen Padilla is conducting oversight over the lawlessness of the Trump and the violations of the #RuleOfLaw. If this can happen to immigrant communities, it can happen to anyone.”Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, said: “This is disgusting. If this is how they treat Alex Padilla, a United States Senator, how do you think they’ll treat you?”Norma Torres, a California representative, lambasted the treatment of Padilla in an impassioned video, writing: “Let’s call it what it is: a disgraceful abuse of power. Senator Alex Padilla was dragged and handcuffed out for daring to question Secretary Noem. This wasn’t a threat – it was dissent. They’re not keeping us safe – they’re silencing us.”The clash with Padilla comes just days after the Democratic representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers after a clash with law enforcement at a May protest outside a detention facility in Newark. Democrats have cast the charges as a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate the opposition.As he exited the floor of the House of Representatives, Johnson said the senator had been at fault, accusing him of “charging a cabinet secretary at a press conference” and calling his actions “wildly inappropriate”.“A sitting member of Congress should not act like that,” he said. “It is beneath a member of the Congress, it is beneath a US senator.”Johnson said he believes Padilla’s behavior “merits immediate attention” by Congress and “at a minimum, it rises to the level of a censure”. More

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      Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump’s mass deportations

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      Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem’s political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family’s “untrainable” hunting dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket.Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem’s path forward on the national stage was unclear.But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump’s warp-speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president’s hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House’s immigration agenda with fierce loyalty, Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV approach that supporters have hailed as a full-throttle push to “Make America Safe Again” and critics have condemned as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences.View image in fullscreenThe department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 people spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation’s premier cybersecurity agency.Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump’s comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration’s deportation operations.And she has been front and center in many of the administration’s most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges.“Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,” Noem declared on X.Away from the department’s Washington headquarters, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate.She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow.During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki.“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.)But it has not been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right, guaranteed in the constitution, that allows people detained by the government to challenge their detention. When Noem claimed habeas corpus was the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: “That’s incorrect.” Habeas corpus, the senator countered sternly, “was the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea”.Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump’s “central casting” cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda.DHS maintains that under Noem’s stewardship, the department has returned to its “core mission of securing the homeland”.“The world is hearing our message,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.”But critics say her approach is a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department.“The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. “That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.”The show and tellNoem’s first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary.Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration’s costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba.In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a “sting operation” in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of “Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members” while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent’s head.“Kristi Noem doesn’t know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,” the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X.At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence “meant the world” to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials.View image in fullscreenBut even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry.Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an “amazing” job protecting the homeland but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged the secretary not to “cosplay Ice agent”.The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: “She looks like I look right now, but she’s out in the field with her gun being like: ‘We’re gonna go kick some ass.’”“Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,” Kelly advised.Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image.As governor in 2019, she installed a “six-figure TV studio” in the basement of South Dakota’s capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem’s office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state.“Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,” said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem’s political career. “She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.”It’s a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice.As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads to amplify the administration’s message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion-dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to “leave now” or the government will “hunt you down”.DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government’s “CBP Home” app and estimated that “thousands” more were leaving without notice.In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration’s decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison.View image in fullscreenStanding in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.”On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of “flimsy, even frivolous, accusations” of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees.In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House have repeated that their mass-removal effort targets the “worst of the worst”. “We are focusing on dangerous criminals,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. “We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.”But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed “administrative errors” for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico.“The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “It’s working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.”Noem’s rise to Trump’s orbitA self-described “farm kid” who took over her family’s ranch after her father’s sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump’s handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread.In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem memorably gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota.“At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,” Schaff said.In the years that followed, Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump’s rhetoric, especially on border security.Despite South Dakota’s considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles (1,600km) north – Noem made the issue a top priority. “South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,” she declared in an address last year.In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state’s border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods in the state.Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her own state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny.View image in fullscreenDuring her Senate confirmation hearing in January, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned Noem’s credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection.She acknowledged her nomination may have come as a “bit of a surprise”. But, Noem said, she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his “No 1 priority”. The job, she said, required someone “strong enough” to carry out the president’s immigration agenda.So far, she has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an interview earlier this year, the secretary vowed to leverage the “broad and extensive” authorities of her office to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration’s feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets.Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids.She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, as well as “border czar” Homan, both empowered by the president to help achieve the president’s deportation goals.Though Noem frequently touts the administration’s success removing, in the secretary’s words, “dirt bags” and “sickos”, the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: they demanded federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day.Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to “turn the creative knob up to 11” as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record.Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was “thankful for Secretary Noem’s partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens”.She continued: “The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.”View image in fullscreenAs the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem’s DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had “unquestionably” violated a court order on deportations to third countries.In response to the growing number of challenges, Noem has largely channeled the president’s defiant posture. “Suck it,” she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed.While courts have hindered Trump’s mass-removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation.On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African. He said the timing was spurred by a recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages, for which an Egyptian national was charged.In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the suspect’s family into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process.“The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on “political basis alone,” reorienting the department around Trump’s priorities. “This isn’t working like it’s supposed to,” he said.View image in fullscreenOn Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans are racing to boost the department’s efforts by delivering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which includes tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump’s cabinet officials.But outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration’s deportation polices have “gone too far”. If Republicans lose the House in next year’s midterms, Noem’s leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny.One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem’s resignation. “The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,” Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said.Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump’s orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump’s vision – has some wondering whether she’s looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump’s heir is already taking shape.“Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,” Rosenzweig said. “I’ll put it another way: Noem is the first DHS secretary who’s running for president.” More

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      US homeland security removes list of ‘sanctuary’ cities after sheriffs’ criticism

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      The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities and counties from its website following sharp criticism from a sheriffs’ association that said a list of “noncompliant” sheriffs could severely damage the relationship between the Trump administration and law enforcement.DHS on Thursday published a list of what it called sanctuary jurisdictions that it deemed were included in areas that have a policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The list prompted a response from the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents more than 3,000 elected sheriffs across the country and generally supports federal immigration enforcement.Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the association, said in a statement on Saturday that DHS published “a list of alleged noncompliant sheriffs in a manner that lacks transparency and accountability”. Donahue said the list was created without input from sheriffs and “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement”.Donald Trump had called for his administration to tally apparent sanctuary jurisdictions, in a late April executive order, saying the lack of cooperation amounted to “a lawless insurrection”.The DHS website listing the jurisdictions was offline on Sunday, an issue that Fox News host Maria Bartiromo raised with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on the talk show Sunday Morning Futures.“I saw that there was a list produced,” Bartiromo said. “Now, the list I don’t see anymore in the media. Do you have a list of the sanctuary cities that are actually hiding illegals right now?”Noem did not acknowledge the list being taken offline but said some localities had bristled.“Some of the cities have pushed back,” Noem said. “They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”Leaders of some cities publicly questioned the sanctuary label this week, including jurisdictions in southern California, Colorado and Massachusetts.San Diego city attorney Heather Ferbert told local outlets that San Diego – named on the DHS list – had never adopted a sanctuary policy and that the move appeared to be politically motivated.“We suspect this is going to be used as additional threats and fear tactics to threaten federal funding that the city relies on,” she said.Immigrant advocates and some Democrats say sanctuary policies help build trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement so that residents will be more likely to report crimes.At a hearing before a US House of Representatives committee in March, mayors from Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York City, which vote majority Democrat, said sanctuary policies made their cities safer and that they would always honor criminal arrest warrants.Noem, who shares Trump’s hardline anti-immigration views, said the department would continue to use the sanctuary tally. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The internet archive website Wayback Machine showed the list still online on Saturday. More

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      Trump administration sets quota to arrest 3,000 people a day in anti-immigration agenda

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      The Trump administration has set aggressive new goals in its anti-immigration agenda, demanding that federal agents arrest 3,000 people a day – or more than a million in a year.The new target, tripling arrest figures from earlier this year, was delivered to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) leaders by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, in a strained meeting last week.The intense meeting, first reported by Axios and confirmed by the Guardian, involved Ice officials from enforcement and removal operations (ERO) and homeland security investigations (HSI) – both separate offices within DHS. ERO is in charge of immigration enforcement, including arrests, detention and deportation, while HSI typically focuses on investigating transnational crime, such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and the spread of online child abuse.The 21 May meeting in Washington DC is the latest example of the increasing pressure being placed on officials nationwide to increase the number of arrests of immigrants, as the administration doubles down on its anti-immigration agenda.The latest phase of the crackdown includes new tactics, such as mandating federal law enforcement agents outside Ice to assist in arrests and transports, more deputizing of compliant state and local law enforcement agencies, and arresting people at locations that were once protected, like courthouses.“ This administration came into office with the illusion that they had been given a broad mandate to effectuate an aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, and they are doubling down now on that agenda,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director for the American Immigration Council. “ Public polling is showing decreasing support for Trump’s immigration agenda, as Americans wake up to the reality that mass deportation means arrests of our neighbors and friends, masked agents in our communities and people afraid to go to work and show up to school, in ways that undermine our local economies.”Helter-skelter action has led to citizens caught up in the dragnet, Ice skirting due process – to the chagrin of the supreme court and lower courts – over-crowding in detention centers, arrests based on ideology and officials deporting people to third countries.“The sweeping Ice raids and arrests are hitting families, longtime residents, children and communities in a way never seen before,” said Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center.As the number of people crossing the border into the US without authorization has plummeted even further than after the final Biden crackdown, operations in the US interior have increased.“Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe,” Tricia McLaughlin, the homeland security assistant secretary, said in a statement.But even if the new target is fulfilled, it’s a far cry from Trump’s election campaign pledges to deport 15m to 20m people, which itself is more than the estimated 11m undocumented population.Agents with the FBI, HSI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other federal law enforcement agencies have been co-opted from normal priorities to carry out immigration enforcement work. Current and former federal officials told the Guardian there is concern that important non-immigration-related investigations are falling by the wayside as a result.There has also been a huge escalation by local police and sheriff’s departments assisting, deputized by Ice to perform federal immigration arrests under a program called 287(g).Ice has also been targeting unusual places.On Tuesday, Ice and several other federal law enforcement agencies arrested roughly 40 people on the Massachusetts islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. The US Coast Guard transported those apprehended, Ice said, angering some residents, local media reported.The agency has also been arresting people at courthouses throughout the country – a trend that has troubled advocates and policy analysts.“We’re seeing the Trump administration take the unprecedented step of arresting non-citizens who are following the government’s rules and procedures, and showing up for their court hearings,” said Gupta. “ They are desperate to reach a certain number of arrests per day. And the only way they can find non-citizens easily and quickly is to go to the courthouses, where they [immigrants] are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do.”On Wednesday, sources told the Guardian that officials had arrested people at two separate immigration courts in New York City. The outlet the City observed seven people arrested in a lower Manhattan court.Internal documents accessed by the Washington Post show Ice officers in more than 20 states have been instructed to arrest people at courthouses immediately after a judge orders them deported or after their criminal cases are dropped and they try to leave.The number of people held in detention by Ice reached 49,000 by 18 May, an increase of more than 10,000 since Trump took office, with the agency using local jails and federal prisons to hold immigrants, amid overcrowding.Austin Kocher, an assistant research professor at Syracuse University who closely tracks immigration detention data, said of the 3,000 daily arrest quota: “ The big question for me is: where are they going to put people?”Meanwhile, last month, the Trump administration ordered immigration judges to quickly dismiss cases by denying asylum seekers a hearing. The directive “has nothing to do with efficiency – it’s about slamming shut the courthouse door on people who have the right to seek asylum and a fair day in court”, Shayna Kessler, the director of the Advancing Universal Representation initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, said.On Capitol Hill, the major spending bill passed by the House would balloon spending for immigration enforcement, at the US-Mexico border and in the interior, while cutting everyday services.“The administration is on a reckless spending spree, counting on Congress to bail them out for overspending hundreds of millions of dollars in private prison contracts with ties to top-level officials,” Franzblau said.He concluded: “It is beyond cruel to superfund Ice’s rampant violations of constitutional protections and expand the deadly immigration detention and enforcement apparatus.” More