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      Bomb threat shuts down Ohio city hall after Trump spreads baseless migrants rumor

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      The city of Springfield, Ohio, has closed down its city hall due to a bomb threat issued to multiple facilities.Springfield has been the subject of national attention in recent days after Donald Trump’s campaign and rightwing Republicans amplified a false social media rumor of the community’s Haitian immigrants eating local pets. There is no evidence to back up the claims.In a Facebook post on Thursday, city officials said that they were alerted to the bomb threat via an email at 8.24am, adding that the email was sent to “multiple agencies and media outlets”.“As a precautionary measure, the building has been evacuated, and authorities are currently conducting a thorough investigation. Our primary concern is the safety and well-being of our employees and residents. We are working to address this situation as swiftly as possible,” city officials said.They went on to add: “We ask the community to avoid the area surrounding City Hall vicinity while the investigation is ongoing and to report any suspicious activity to the Springfield police division. We appreciate your patience and cooperation as we work through this matter.”Trump even referenced the conspiracy theory in Tuesday night’s debate with opponent Kamala Harris. Trump repeated the inflammatory falsehood, saying: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” His move triggered a wave of anger and ridicule.That same day, JD Vance mentioned the rumor on X, which has also been flooded with AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by dogs, cats and ducks, some of which appear to be armed and in protection of him.Meanwhile, during a Springfield city commission forum on Tuesday, Aiden Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus, has asked Trump and Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio,” said Clark. More

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      Republicans spread unsubstantiated slurs about Haitian migrants in Ohio city

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      Prominent Republicans including the Trump campaign and JD Vance are sharing false and unsubstantiated claims that Haitian migrants in an Ohio city are eating pets and local wildlife.The salacious and often racist social media posts claim, without evidence, that migrants from Haiti to Springfield, Ohio, are stealing pets and local wildlife such as ducks and geese and are butchering them for food. Many of the posts, including one shared by the X account for the Republicans on the House judiciary committee, use images generated by artificial intelligence to show Donald Trump holding and protecting cats and ducks, casting him as a savior to the town. Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, shared a meme of two cats hugging one another that said, “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”The Springfield News-Sun reported on Monday that police have “received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten”.The claims appear to have originated from a commenter at a local city meeting, who said migrants were grabbing ducks from the park to kill and eat, and from local crime-watch Facebook groups. They were then shared on other social media platforms and made it into a headline in the Daily Mail.The misinformation about migrants in Springfield comes as the Trump campaign has sought to make immigration a key issue, tying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the towns unprepared for migrants arriving via the southern border. Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, went on Fox to say the Biden administration was to blame for “failing cities like ours and taxing us beyond our limit”.The city has seen a large number of migrants from Haiti, which has both helped the economy there with staffing concerns while also stretching the capacity of some services like clinics and schools, the New York Times reported. A Biden administration policy provided temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants, who have left their home country because of ongoing violence. Some estimates say as many as 20,000 people from Haiti have come to the city, the Times said.Last year, a migrant driving a van outside Springfield crashed intoa school bus, killing one child, which added fuel to the concerns some residents have had with migration. Housing costs have also increased, which has led to fewer options for low-income residents of all backgrounds, the paper reported.Residents at recent council meetings have appealed to their elected officials to better manage the new stream of residents. In now viral testimony, one woman said she and her husband might need to move from their home because of ongoing problems with “men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me” and throwing items in her yard.Some have also tried to tie a woman who was charged recently in Canton, Ohio, for allegedly killing and then eating a cat to the influx of migrants in Springfield, a different city more than 150 miles (241km) away. She does not appear to be a Haitian migrant.Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has spoken against Haitian migrants in Ohio for months and again posted about it on Monday. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he wrote, referring to Kamala Harris.The Trump campaign sent out an email on Monday blasting the vice-president for the unrest in Springfield, saying: “It’s all coming to your city if Kamala Harris is elected in November. It doesn’t have to be this way. Beginning on day one, President Trump will begin the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history – because he’ll always put America, and Americans, FIRST.”On Monday, the Ohio attorney general, Dave Yost, a Republican, announced he would use his office’s resources to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities”. He said his office would “exhaust all possibilities” to address the migrants. Among other complaints from residents, he said that the migrants were reportedly “killing wildlife for food”. More

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      ‘Dangerous and un-American’: new recording of JD Vance’s dark vision of women and immigration

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      Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.In an emailed response to the Guardian, Omar slammed what she called the “ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Mr Vance” as “dangerous and un-American”.Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.Now this latest recording raises renewed questions about Vance’s contribution to the Republican ticket, which is trailing behind Kamala Harris and her bid to be America’s first woman of color president.In the 2021 interview Vance also claimed men and boys in the US were “suppressed” in their masculinity and made racially charged remarks about American cities and his political opponents.Of Afghans who assisted US troops during the occupation of that country who were now seeking to come to America, Vance asked whether “certain groups of people can successfully become American citizens”, and said those hostile to Minneapolis’s Somali American community “don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in [their] own community”.At the same time, Vance claimed that “the left uses racism as a cudgel”, and that he had been a “little too worried” in the past about such accusations because they can be “career-ending” and “destroy a person’s life”.Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.The Guardian contacted the Vance campaign for comment but received no response.‘Racial and gender resentment’A video version of the podcast was published to YouTube on 20 September 2021, and events discussed in it suggest that it was recorded in the days immediately before. The liberal watchdog Media Matters had previously flagged the broadcast.At that time, Vance was a relatively new political candidate. He achieved national prominence as a writer in 2016, but on 1 July 2021 he announced his candidacy for the US Senate. That March, the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel donated $10m to Protect Ohio Values, a Pac established to support a potential Vance candidacy.View image in fullscreenThe recording was initially published as an episode of the podcast of American Moment, a rightwing 501c3 non-profit whose website says its mission is to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all”. At the time of the recording, Vance sat on the non-profit’s advisory board; he’s now listed under “board members emeritus” on the organization’s website.Vance’s hosts were American Moment’s president and founder, Saurabh Sharma, and its COO Nick Solheim. Introducing the discussion, Solheim speculated that Vance “may end up with some angry texts after this one. It was a very spicy episode.”In the recording, Vance repeatedly offered a dark vision of the lives of women who prioritized their professional careers.At about 39 minutes into the recording, when asked what he saw inside elite institutions like Yale Law School that made him view them as corrupt, Vance answered: “You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of starting a family and having children.”Vance added: “What they don’t realize – and I think some of them do eventually realize that, thank God – is that that is actually a path to misery. And the path to happiness and to fulfillment is something that these institutions are telling people not to do.“The corruption is it puts people on a career pipeline that causes them to chase things that will make them miserable and unhappy,” Vance said. “And so they get in positions of power and then they project that misery and happiness on the rest of society.”Minutes later, Vance adopted the perspective of a hypothetical professional woman to answer Sharma’s question about where “the racial and gender resentment comes from”.“OK, clearly, this value set has made me a miserable person who can’t have kids because I already passed the biological period when it was possible,” Vance began, “And I live in a 1,200 sq ft apartment in New York and I pay $5,000 a month for it.”He continued: “But I’m really better than these other people. What I’m going to do is project my, like, racial and gender sensitivities on the rest of them … even though the way that I think has made me a miserable person, I just need to make more people think like that.”Last weekend, Vance tried to clean up previously reported comments about childless women by claiming it was “sarcasm”.‘Soy boys who want to feed the monster’On the other hand, Vance depicted men and boys as “suppressed”, saying 52 minutes in that “one of the weird things about elite society is it’s deeply uncomfortable with masculinity”.Warming to the theme, Vance said: “This is one weird thing that conservatives don’t talk about enough … We don’t talk enough about the fact that traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood.”Assessing his young son’s habit of fighting imaginary monsters, Vance said: “There’s something deeply cultural and biological, spiritual about this desire to defend his home and his family.”He connected this with a hypothetical invasion: “If the Chinese invade us in 10 years, they’re going to be beaten back by boys like you who practice fighting the monsters who become proud men who defend their homes.”By contrast, for Vance, “They’re not going to be defended by the soy boys who want to feed the monsters.”“Soy boy” is a term, originating on the “alt-right”, which is used to impugn the masculinity of its targets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion‘The left uses racism as a cudgel’Looming over the conversation was the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which had been completed on the orders of Joe Biden on 31 August, just weeks before the recording was published.These events led the trio to discussions of immigration and asylum, in which Vance expressed doubts about the suitability of Afghan and Somali people for immigration to the US, even those who had assisted the US military overseas.At about 22 minutes into the recording, Vance mocked the claims of Afghan refugees to have helped the US military in its occupation, saying: “Apparently, Afghanistan is a country of translators and interpreters because every single person that’s coming in, that’s what they say is this person is: a translator and interpreter.”He attributed the idea that the US should grant asylum to those who helped US forces to “the fraudulence of our elites”, saying: “You talk to people who served in Afghanistan. And one of the things they will tell you is, yeah, a lot of the translators and interpreters who helped us were great guys.”Vance added, however, that “a lot of the interpreters who said they were helping us were actively helping terrorists plant roadside bombs, knowing our routes”, without substantiating the claim.Vance continued: “The idea that every person in Afghanistan, even those who said they were helping us, are actually good people is a total joke.”Vance expressed similar skepticism about another immigrant group, while characterizing himself and others as victims of the left.At about 25 minutes into the recording, Solheim said: “There’s like a whole section of downtown Minneapolis that they call Little Mogadishu. Like that’s what they call it. There’s nothing in English. People are frequently hatcheted to death in the street.”Solheim added: “I was just down there a couple of weeks ago. It’s like a totally different country.”View image in fullscreenReplying, Vance said: “The thing that I hate about this is the left uses racism as a cudgel. And I myself was guilty of being a little worried about that. Like, I don’t want to be called a racist because I knew it can be career-ending and they can destroy a person’s life.”Vance then asked, rhetorically, “Why don’t you want, you know, people getting hatcheted in the street in downtown Minneapolis? Is it because you’re a racist or is it because you don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in your own community?”“Like, obviously, the answer is the latter,” he concluded. “But the left uses racism as a cudgel to shut us up and to make it impossible to complain about obvious problems.”Last July, not long after being named as Trump’s VP pick, Vance suggested in a speech that Democrats would describe drinking Diet Mountain Dew as racist. The comment backfired and was widely mocked.‘You would be living in a craphole’Several times, the three steered assessments of migrant groups and their capacity for assimilation into negative personal commentary on the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.View image in fullscreenAt about 28 minutes in, Sharma said: “You know, thinking about the Minnesota example, specifically, that’s how you get someone like Ilhan Omar, who despises the country.”Vance replied, “I mean, [the US] gave her an incredible amount of opportunity and she has a complete lack of gratitude,” later adding: “My family has been here as far as I can tell for nine, 10, like many generations. I’ve never heard a person in my family express the ingratitude towards this country that Ilhan Omar does towards this country.“And look, this is the way the laws work. This country belongs to Ilhan Omar in the same way that it belongs to me,” Vance allowed.“But my God, show a little appreciation for the fact that you would be living in a craphole if this country didn’t bring you to a place that has obviously its problems, but has a lot of prosperity, too,” he concluded.Congresswoman Omar’s full response to the Guardian took Vance to task over the comments.“The ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Mr Vance is not just troubling – it’s dangerous and un-American. I love America fiercely, that’s why I’ve dedicated my life to public service,” she wrote.Omar added: “America deserves better than Vance’s hateful, divisive politics. We are a nation of immigrants, and we will continue to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – no matter how much it terrifies small-minded men like JD Vance.”Vance also talked about institutions like universities and the media as components of a “broken elite system”, and portrayed their inhabitants as enemies whom conservatives would need to reckon with.“There is no way for a conservative to accomplish our vision of society unless we’re willing to strike at the heart of the beast. That’s the universities.” More

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      Biden is lurching right on immigration. Democrats must be the party of Dreamers | Chris Newman

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      Joe Biden is making a huge mistake by lurching to the right on immigration, away from his base and toward Donald Trump and the Republicans. In trying to be seen as tough at the border, ending asylum and curtailing immigrants’ rights, he is forgetting what happened the last time a Democratic president did right by immigrants in a big way.It happened 12 years ago this week, in the summer of an election year. Barack Obama took bold executive action to expand rights for an entire generation of undocumented immigrants. It was the right thing to do – and it helped him immensely at the polls.The move was Daca – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The policy offered hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought here as children, known as Dreamers, renewable protection from deportation and permission to work legally. It was the most important advance for undocumented immigrants in more than two decades.Ever since Congress first comprehensively regulated immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, every generation since has seen immigrants fighting for legalization (or political equality) the way that previous generations moved from illegal to legal status. Germans, Jews, Irish, Italians, newcomers from across Asia – they were all Dreamers once. They all benefited from presidential leadership.During the Covid lockdown, I taught a course at the University of California, Los Angeles, on the history and legacy of Daca. My students – some of them Dreamers themselves – learned what a landmark achievement it was in the evolution of US immigration policy, while placing it within the long continuum of immigrants’ progress from “illegal” to “legal”. White nationalism and xenophobia are forever flaring up in our history, and immigrants are always the scapegoat. But until recently, US presidents have doused the flames of nativism while expanding the country’s capacity for inclusion and shared prosperity.On 15 June 2012, against the advice of his advisers, Obama stepped out into the Rose Garden to announce the new policy: if young people came forward and registered with the Department of Homeland Security, he would give them what some would call amnesty. Rather than being electrocuted on the so-called “third rail” of US politics for advancing immigrants’ rights, Obama won re-election with an overwhelming share of the Latino vote. His Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, looked cruel and even foolish by comparison. The incipient Tea Party movement was rattled.By November, after Obama secured a come-from-behind victory, Beltway pundits acknowledged that it had been a good idea to advance equal rights for undocumented immigrants. Even Sean Hannity of Fox News changed his tune and declared that he had “evolved” to support a “path to citizenship” for the longterm undocumented.This may seem like a forgotten memory from before the twin plagues of Trumpism and the pandemic threw politics as we knew it into a black hole. But Dreamers, their families, and their employers remember what Obama did. Daca gave about 600,000 young people the chance to plant roots and contribute to the national well-being. A small fraction of the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants finally caught a break and our economy and society didn’t collapse. Things actually got better.The biggest Daca myth is that it was a gift that a benevolent Obama bestowed on a needy and timid cohort of immigrants. On the contrary. Obama had stubbornly resisted using his deferred action authority, saying the constitution didn’t allow it. The Dreamers knew better; they found their own lawyers (I was one of them) to make their case, and they pushed the idea that the executive branch had every right to exercise discretion and its limited resources, particularly to recognize the inexorable fact that all immigrants’ status inevitably change over time.The reasons people come to America are very often different from the reasons they stay. Quite literally since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, constitutional values of inclusion have always powered through political forces of exclusion to expand the definition of who deserves equal rights.Emulating the gift that 1960’s civil-rights leaders bestowed on the country, Dreamers marched, fasted, protested and prayed. They had sit-ins and teach-ins. Significantly, they committed acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. They got themselves arrested and thrown into deportations. All to prove that Obama could and should use his presidential authority to expand protections for undocumented immigrants. They played political hardball too, vowing to take their support to whoever would listen to them – perhaps evenMarco Rubio, a senator from Florida, back when he was seen as a Republican who could be reasoned with.Unlike Biden, Obama began his presidency tacking hard to the right on deportations. He used his discretion to conscript police and sheriff’s departments across America into civil immigration enforcement. Imagine if all cops were compelled to check someone’s tax status with the IRS upon arrest – that is what Obama did with immigration. It is a decision he came to regret.While Obama carried out record deportations (significantly more than Trump), he resisted the Dreamers as long as he could. He spent his first term convincing the immigrant rights lobby to suspend their criticism of his deportations with the promise that he was pursuing a long shot “comprehensive” immigration deal with Republicans that would trade a harshly militarized border, workplace crackdowns and interior removals in return for a so-called path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented residents.Obama kept his end of the enforcement bargain by setting a record on expulsions that led immigrant-rights advocates and even The New York Times editorial page to label him “the Deporter-in-Chief”. While some in the administration winced at the moniker, Obama’s political advisors like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel likely rejoiced: by moving to the right on immigration, Democrats ostensibly took an issue away from Republicans, while making caricatures of Republicans as anti-Latino racists.But the Republicans kept demanding more – and getting it. And then they got Trump. Not long ago the Republican immigration agenda was more border personnel, workplace verification and scattered job-site raids. Now they’ve moved on to second world war-style detention camps, with the US military used to effectuate the mass expulsion of millions.What did Obama and the Democrats achieve by trying to out-tough xenophobic Republicans on immigration? Little to nothing. They’re still labeled the party of amnesty by the Maga media machine. And to their own fractured coalition, their position on immigration became incomprehensibly illegible.Most insidiously, their weakness coupled with their own record of deportations gave Trump and his party tacit permission to be even worse. Every capitulation by the Democrats on punishing immigrants is seized on by Republicans as ratification of their big lie – that the country is being invaded and that the only way to save America is to shut the border and drive the dangerous aliens out.What is the alternative? Remember Daca. Remember how it was achieved. By fighting back. Honor and learn from the courageous young immigrant civil rights leaders who – putting their lives and livelihoods at risk – pushed Obama into the one immigration action he can be proud of. At this dire moment for the country’s future, we need more courage, not less. From everyone, but especially from Biden.If he values his legacy, Obama should step up alongside those immigrant kids (now adults) who convinced him to do the right thing. He should urge his friend and successor, Biden to do the same: respect and protect immigrants’ rights, draw from their courage as the nation trembles with fear of the prospect of Trump seizing power again.It is not hyperbole to fear, as the current president is fond of saying, that US democracy itself is on the ballot in this election. If it is to prevail this November, Biden must learn the lesson from Daca and use his singular authority to expand the definition of who “we” are as Americans. If he does so, he and the country will be rewarded.
      Chris Newman is legal director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which advocates for immigrants and low-wage workers’ rights More

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      Arizona legislature overrules governor on proposal criminalizing non-citizens

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      The Republican-controlled Arizona legislature gave final approval Tuesday to a proposal asking voters to make it a state crime for non-citizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry, sending the measure to the 5 November ballot.The vote came as Joe Biden unveiled plans Tuesday to restrict the number of people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border, saying: “This action will help to gain control of our border, restore order to the process.”Arizona’s proposal, approved on a 31-29 vote by the state house, would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border without authorization. It would also give state judges the power to order people convicted of the offense to return to their countries of origin.The proposal bypasses the Democratic governor Katie Hobbs, who had vetoed a similar measure in early March and has denounced the effort to bring the issue to voters.House Republicans closed access to the upper gallery of the chamber before the session started Tuesday, citing concerns about security and possible disruptions. The move immediately drew the criticism of Democrats, who demanded that the gallery be reopened.“The public gallery should be open to the public. This is the people’s house,” said the state representative Analise Ortiz.House representatives voted along party lines, with all Republicans voting in favor of the proposal and all Democrats voting against it. Earlier, the Arizona senate also approved the proposal on a 16-13 party-line vote.Supporters of the bill said it was necessary to ensure security along the state’s southern border, and that Arizona voters should be given the opportunity to decide the issue themselves.“We need this bill and we must act on it,” said state representative John Gillette, a Republican.Opponents called the legislation unconstitutional and said it would lead to racial profiling, separating children from parents and creating several millions of dollars in additional policing costs that the state can ill afford.“It is not a solution. It is election-year politics,” said representative Mariana Sandoval, a Democrat.While federal law already prohibits the unauthorized entry of people into the US, proponents of the measure say it’s needed because the federal government hasn’t done enough to stop people from crossing illegally over Arizona’s vast, porous border with Mexico. They also said some people who enter Arizona without authorization commit identity theft and take advantage of public benefits.Opponents say the proposal will inevitably lead to racial profiling by police and saddle the state with new costs from law enforcement agencies that don’t have experience with immigration law, as well as hurt Arizona’s reputation in the business world.Supporters have waved off racial-profiling concerns, saying local officers would still have to develop probable cause to arrest people who enter Arizona between the ports of entry.Backers also say the measure focuses only on the state’s border region and – unlike Arizona’s landmark 2010 immigration law – doesn’t target people throughout the state. Opponents point out the proposal doesn’t contain any geographical limitations on where it can be enforced within the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe proposal is similar to a Texas law that has been put on hold by a federal appeals court while it’s being challenged. But the Arizona ballot proposal contains other provisions that aren’t included in the Texas measure and aren’t directly related to immigration. Those include making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for selling fentanyl that leads to a person’s death, and a requirement that some government agencies use a federal database to verify a non-citizen’s eligibility for benefits.Warning about potential legal costs, opponents pointed to Arizona’s 2005 immigrant smuggling ban used by then Maricopa county Sheriff Joe Arpaio to carry out 20 large-scale traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. That led to a 2013 racial-profiling verdict as well as taxpayer-funded legal and compliance costs that now total $265m and are expected to reach $314m by July 2025.Under the current proposal, a first-time conviction of the border-crossing provision would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. State judges could order people to return to their countries of origin after completing a term of incarceration, although the courts would have the power to dismiss cases if those arrested agree to return home.The measure would require the state corrections department to take into custody people who are charged or convicted under the measure if local or county law enforcement agencies don’t have enough space to house them.The proposal includes exceptions for people who have been granted lawful-presence status or asylum by the federal government.The provision allowing for the arrests of people crossing the border in between ports would not take effect until the Texas law or similar laws from other states have been in effect for 60 days.This isn’t the first time Republican lawmakers in Arizona have tried to criminalize people who aren’t authorized to be in the United States.When passing its 2010 immigration bill, the Arizona legislature considered expanding the state’s trespassing law to criminalize the presence of immigrants and impose criminal penalties. But the trespassing language was removed and replaced with a requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question people’s immigration status if they were believed to be in the country illegally.The questioning requirement was ultimately upheld by the US supreme court despite the racial-profiling concerns of critics, but courts barred enforcement of other sections of the law. More

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      Democrats decry Biden executive order turning away some asylum seekers

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      Progressive Democrats and immigration advocates have shared their outrage after Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that would turn away some asylum seekers.Biden’s order will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to enter the country legally when authorities have determined that the border is “overwhelmed”.The president said the order comes after Republicans rejected a bipartisan immigration deal that would have changed several areas of US immigration policy.“Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border,” Biden said during remarks on the order on Tuesday.“Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken fixed – to hire more border patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges.”US representative Nanette Barragán of California, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, said Tuesday morning that she was “disappointed” in Biden’s direction with immigration policy, the New Republic reported.View image in fullscreenCalifornia representative Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, said she was “disappointed at the enforcement-only strategies” announced by Biden.“Rather than address humanitarian issues at the border effectively and with the nuance they deserve, today’s actions will gut protections for countless migrants exercising their legal right to claim asylum,” she said.US representative Raúl Grijalva, whose Arizona district borders Mexico, said that the order is a “significant departure from President Biden’s promise of a more humane and just approach to immigration”.He added: “It tramples on the universal right to claim asylum and prevents migrants from attempting to legally access safety and security in the United States. It is ripe for legal challenges and antithetical to our values.”The American Civil Liberties Union denounced Biden’s executive order and said they will be challenging it in court.“The Biden administration just announced an executive order that will severely restrict people’s legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk,” the organization said in a post on X.Meanwhile, other Democrats have welcomed Biden’s actions as a necessary step to address the humanitarian crisis at the border.Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio told the Washington Post that he believes it is the “right direction”, adding: “I want to see more.” More

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      US justice department sues Oklahoma in challenge to immigration law

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      The US Department of Justice sued Oklahoma on Tuesday over a state law that seeks to impose criminal penalties on those living in the state illegally.The lawsuit in federal court in Oklahoma City challenges an Oklahoma law that makes it a state crime – punishable by up to two years in prison – to live in the state without legal immigration status. Similar laws passed in Texas and Iowa are already facing challenges from the justice department. Oklahoma is among several GOP states jockeying to push deeper into immigration enforcement as both Republicans and Democrats seize on the issue. Other bills targeting undocumented immigrants have been passed this year in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.The justice department says the Oklahoma law violates the US constitution and is asking the court to declare it invalid and bar the state from enforcing it.“Oklahoma cannot disregard the US Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Brian M Boynton, the US principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the justice department’s civil division, said in a statement. “We have brought this action to ensure that Oklahoma adheres to the Constitution and the framework adopted by Congress for regulation of immigration.” The Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, said the bill was necessary because the Biden administration was failing to secure the nation’s borders.“Not only that, but they stand in the way of states trying to protect their citizens,” Stitt said in a statement.The federal action was expected, as the Department of Justice warned Oklahoma officials last week that the agency would sue unless the state agreed not to enforce the new law.In response, the Oklahoma attorney general, Gentner Drummond, called the justice department’s pre-emption argument “dubious at best” and said that while the federal government had broad authority over immigration, it did not have “exclusive power” on the subject.“Oklahoma is exercising its concurrent and complementary power as a sovereign state to address an ongoing public crisis within its borders through appropriate legislation,” Drummond wrote in a letter to the justice department. “Put more bluntly, Oklahoma is cleaning up the Biden Administration’s mess through entirely legal means in its own backyard – and will resolutely continue to do so by supplementing federal prohibitions with robust state penalties.”Texas was allowed to enforce a law similar to Oklahoma’s for only a few confusing hours in March before it was put on hold by a federal appeals court’s three-judge panel. The panel heard arguments from both supporters and opponents in April, and will next issue a decision on the law’s constitutionality.The justice department filed another lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block an Iowa law that would allow criminal charges to be brought against people who have outstanding deportation orders or who previously have been removed from or denied admission to the US.The law in Oklahoma has prompted several large protests at the state capitol that included immigrants and their families voicing concern that their loved ones will be racially profiled by police.“We feel attacked,” said Sam Wargin Grimaldo, who attended a rally last month wearing a shirt that read “Young, Latino and Proud”.“People are afraid to step out of their houses if legislation like this is proposed and then passed,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      The unprecedented situation at the US-Mexico border – visualized

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      Record levels of migration are straining an immigration system left nearly broken by decades of congressional inaction.Republicans have spent years amplifying scenes of turmoil and tragedy at the southern border, but Democratic leaders are also worried now, particularly big-city mayors and blue state governors who are demanding more federal resources to shelter and feed an influx of migrants.With many voters now saying immigration is a top priority, what exactly is happening at the US border to make so many people concerned?There has been a surge of encounters at the US borderSince the pandemic there has been a spike in global migration, coinciding with Joe Biden’s presidency. Across the globe, people are fleeing war, political insecurity, violence, poverty and natural disasters. Many of those in Latin America, in particular, travel to the US in search of safety.View image in fullscreenIn the last three years, the number of people attempting to cross the US’s southern border into the country has risen to unprecedented levels.In the month of December 2023 alone, border patrol agents recorded 302,000 encounters (these include apprehensions and immediate expulsions), a new high. The monthly average from 2013 to 2019 was 39,000.Arrivals are coming from more countriesThe collapse of Venezuela, political instability in Haiti, violence in Ecuador, a crackdown in Nicaragua, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, repression in China and other conflicts have fueled a historic shift in migration patterns.Mexico was the single most common origin country for US border encounters in 2023, but Mexican nationals made up less than 30% of the total share, compared with more than 60% a decade ago.Their journey is more perilousNearly 9,000 people attempting to reach the US from the south have been recorded missing or dead in the Americas in the past 10 years, according to the Missing Migrants Project.Some never make it through the notorious Darién Gap at the southern end of Central America, where a US deal with Panama and Colombia to stop migrants in their tracks has caused an outcry.The vast majority of recorded fatalities (5,145), however, occur at the US-Mexico border crossing, according to the project’s data.Many of the deaths occurred in southern Arizona when people attempted to cross open desert, miles from any roads.Fatalities are also concentrated along the treacherous stretch of south-western Texas where the Rio Grande river becomes the borderline. Further inland, hundreds of deaths have been recorded in the sparse, humid scrubland around Falfurrias.View image in fullscreenTheir cases languish in courtsThe border rules are complicated: some people apprehended at the border will face expedited deportation, but others will enter formal deportation proceedings and qualify for temporary release into the US, with a date to appear before a judge.Resolving those immigration cases and asylum claims can take years. The backlog of immigration cases has grown steadily – there were an astounding 3.3m cases pending as of December 2023, but just 682 immigration judges. That means the average caseload is more than 4,500 per judge.In the meantime …People arriving often find themselves in unofficial camps all along the US border. Some are waiting to cross, others have been met by US border patrol, yet others have been turned away. Some border states such as Texas have put tens of thousands of people awaiting their asylum claims on buses and sent them to other states, including California and New York, without their knowledge or permission.As for Congress, it continues to argue over clamping down on unlawful border crossings and alleviating the deepening humanitarian crisis – an increasingly irreconcilable divide between those who want to expand the immigration system and those who want to restrict it.View image in fullscreen More