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    The AP’s win against Trump shows principles still have power in America | Margaret Sullivan

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    Given the constant flow of bad news – recession nearing, markets tanking, federal agencies run amok – a victory in court for a news wire service might seem trivial.But the Associated Press’s win against the Trump administration this week is meaningful for two reasons. It underscores the judiciary’s commitment to the first amendment, and it suggests that standing up for one’s principles may not be just a gesture made in vain.Here’s what the US district court judge Trevor McFadden – a Trump appointee – had to say about the AP’s being denied access to White House news events because of the organization’s editorial decision to continue using the term Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America:“The Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists – be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere, it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.”The Trump administration is appealing the ruling. It is not clear that a higher court will not overrule McFadden.But what is clear is that Julie Pace, the AP’s top editor, was right when she made the argument in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that more was at stake here than the name of a body of water. “It’s really about whether the government can control what you say,” Pace wrote.This administration wants to do that – and it is willing to punish those who don’t fall in line.Yet, courageous voices are out there. And sometimes, they make a difference.When Jaime Cook, the school principal in Sackets Harbor, New York, put out a heartfelt public statement about three students and their mother being abruptly taken to a Texas detention facility by federal agents, her words required the same kind of guts.“Our 3 students who were taken away by ICE were doing everything right,” Cook wrote. “They had declared themselves to immigration judges, attended court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process. They are not criminals.”Others found their voices, too. In this tiny town of fewer than 1,400 people – which happens to be a vacation residence of the US “border czar”, Tom Homan – nearly 1,000 people came out to protest last weekend. This week, the mother and three children were on their way back home.Courage mattered.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConsider, too, the words of the Princeton University president, Christopher Eisgruber, in an NPR interview about how that university plans to navigate the suspension of federal funding: “We make our decisions at Princeton based on our values and our principles.” When asked by a reporter whether that meant no concessions, as other universities have made to the Trump administration, Eisgruber responded with strength.“We believe it’s important to defend academic freedom, and that’s not something that can be compromised,” he said.Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University, which took a far different approach by capitulating to Trump administration demands, compared the universities to two law firms, one of which has capitulated to Donald Trump’s bullying while the other has refused to do so.“Princeton is making us [Columbia] look like Paul Weiss to their Wilmer Hale,” Wu wrote.These cases have something in common: a line in the sand and the courage to defend it.The same was true of the former Department of Justice prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, testifying before Congress, as he explained why he felt compelled to resign recently after federal corruption charges against the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, were abruptly dropped. Too many lines had been crossed, he said; he had no choice.“The day after I resigned,” Crosswell testified, “my sister had her first daughter and I want my niece to know the same democracy that I’ve known. That’s worth any cost.”None of this is easy. After all, Trump and those around him are famously vindictive. It’s not hard to understand why law firms, universities, school officials, news organizations and so many others have decided to avoid the fight and to rationalize the decision to give in or remain silent.But those mentioned here chose to act on principle. In so doing, they have the power to inspire the rest of us, which is likely to be important in the long run.Do brave words or principled resignations or expensive, possibly fruitless lawsuits really accomplish anything? Will they keep America’s teetering democracy from falling off a cliff?Maybe not. But everyone who cares about fairness, freedom and the rule of law ought to be grateful nonetheless for these demonstrations of integrity. Amid the darkness, they cast some faint light along our treacherous path.

    Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Mother and three kids released by Ice after protests from US ‘border czar’s’ hometown

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      A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures and protesters calling for their freedom.Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the children and their mother after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.She described the children as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.But authorities separately picked up and detained the family, as well as three other immigrants they said were without documentation. The family was moved to the Karnes county immigration processing center, a privately run detention facility in Texas, by 30 March.Cook’s letter said that the family had declared themselves to immigration judges, were attending court on their assigned dates and had been following the legal process.The release of the family was confirmed on Monday by local officials, school administrators, and the New York governor, Kathy Hochul.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHochul said in a statement that she had direct confirmation from Homan that “this family – a third grader, two teenagers and their mother – are currently on their way back to Jefferson county. I cannot imagine the trauma these kids and their mom are feeling, and I pray they will be able to heal when they return home.”The protests were organized with the help of the Jefferson county committee of the Democratic Party. Corey Decillis, committee chair, told NBC News that protestors had seen these raids “occur right in the last 60 days across the country, but when it happens in your backyard, I think that’s what garners people’s attention.” More

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      New York schools tell Trump administration they won’t comply with DEI order

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      New York state officials have told the Trump administration that they will not comply with its demands to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices in public schools, despite the administration’s threats to terminate federal education funding.Daniel Morton-Bentley, counsel and deputy commissioner of the state’s department of education, said in a letter dated Friday to the federal education department that state officials do not believe the federal agency has authority to make such demands.“We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion,’” he wrote. “But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of DEI.”Morton-Bentley also wrote state officials were “unaware” of any authority the federal Department of Education has to demand that states agree with its interpretation of court decisions or to terminate funding without a formal administrative process.The US Department of Education did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.The Trump administration on Thursday ordered K-12 schools nationwide to certify within 10 days that they are following federal civil rights laws and ending any discriminatory DEI practices, as a condition for receiving federal money. Federal funding comprises about 6% of the total funding for New York K-12 schools.“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement when the demand was made. He said many schools have flouted their legal obligations, “including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another.”The certification demand asked state and school leaders to sign a “reminder of legal obligations” acknowledging their federal money is conditioned on compliance with federal civil rights laws. It also demands compliance with several pages of legal analysis written by the administration.The demand specifically threatens Title I funding, which sends billions of dollars a year to US schools and targets low-income areas.Morton-Bentley wrote that the state education department (NYSED) has already certified to the federal government on multiple occasions that it is complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most recently in January. He said the federal department is basing its demands to end DEI programs on a faulty legal interpretation.“Given the fact that you are already in possession of guarantees by NYSED that it has and will comply with Title VI, no further certification will be forthcoming,” he wrote.He also said the administration’s stance is an “abrupt shift” from the one taken by the first Trump administration, citing comments in 2020 made by the then US education secretary, Betsy DeVos, that diversity and inclusion were “cornerstones of high organizational performance”. He wrote the administration has provided no explanation of why it changed positions.Critics of the certification demand said it conflicted with Trump’s promise to return education to schools and states.The threat of financial sanctions is similar to ones the Trump administration has been leveraging against colleges in its effort to crack down on protests against Israel that it deems antisemitic.New York state has similarly refused to comply with a demand by the Trump administration to shut down a program to fund mass transit in New York City with tolls on cars that drive into Manhattan. More

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      George Santos prosecutors seek seven-year prison term for campaign fraud

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      Prosecutors are seeking more than seven years in prison for disgraced former congressman George Santos after he pleaded guilty to federal fraud and identity theft charges.The US attorney for the eastern district of New York argued in a court filing on Friday that a significant sentence was warranted because the New York Republican’s “unparalleled crimes” had “made a mockery” of the country’s election system.“He lied to his campaign staff, his supporters, his putative employer and congressional colleagues, and the American public,” the office wrote. “From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives.”The office also argued that Santos had been “unrepentant and defiant” for years, dismissing the prosecution as a “witch-hunt” and refusing to resign from Congress as his web of lies was debunked.Even after pleading guilty before trial, prosecutors said his claims of remorse “ring hollow”, noting that he has not forfeited any of his ill-gotten gains or repaid any of his victims.“The volume of Santos’s lies and his extraordinary pattern of dishonesty speaks to his high likelihood of reoffending and the concomitant need to remove him from the community he has repeatedly victimized,” prosecutors wrote.The 87-month sentence proposed by prosecutors represents the high end of court guidelines in such cases. That would be roughly four to five years behind bars plus a mandatory minimum two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft, they said.Santos’ lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday, which was the deadline for both sides to submit their sentencing memos to court.A federal judge on Long Island is scheduled to hear arguments and decide on Santos’ sentence during a court hearing on 25 April.The once-rising Republican, who represented parts of Queens and Long Island, served barely a year in office before he was ousted by his House colleagues in 2023 – just the sixth congressperson ever expelled in the chamber’s history.Santos’ political demise came after it was revealed that he had fabricated much of his life story, leading to questions about how the political unknown had funded his winning campaign.The now-36-year-old cast himself as a wealthy businessman who had graduated from top colleges, worked at prestigious Wall Street firms and held a valuable real estate portfolio. In truth, he was struggling financially and faced eviction.Santos admitted in August that he duped voters, deceived donors and stole the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his own family members, to make donations to his congressional campaign.He was initially due to be sentenced in February, but a judge granted him a three-month reprieve to come up with more than half a million dollars in court fines.As part of his plea deal, Santos agreed to pay nearly $375,000 in restitution and $205,000 in forfeiture.Santos’s lawyers said at the time that he had little more than $1,000 in liquid assets and needed more time to build his newly launched podcast Pants on Fire in order to begin paying off the debt.Prosecutors maintain Santos profited handsomely from his infamy, arguing he has earned more than $800,000 from appearances on the video-sharing website Cameo and from a new documentary since his expulsion from Congress.Two of Santos’s campaign staffers have also pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection to the campaign financing scheme.Sam Miele, his former campaign fundraiser, was sentenced in March to one year and one day in federal prison. He admitted to impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide and charging donors’ credit cards without authorization while raising campaign cash for Santos.Nancy Marks, Santos’s former campaign treasurer, admitted she submitted to federal regulators bogus campaign finance reports filled with fake donors and even a fake $500,000 personal loan from Santos himself.The embellishments helped Santos hit campaign fundraising thresholds needed to qualify for financial backing from the national Republican party.Marks is due to be sentenced in May. More

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      Columbia protester suit raises questions about free speech rights: ‘Immigration enforcement as a bludgeon’

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      In a matter of days, Yunseo Chung was sent into hiding.On 5 March, Chung – a 21-year-old student at Columbia University – attended a sit-in to protest the expulsion of several students involved in pro-Palestinian activism at the famed New York university. Four days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents showed up at her parents’ home.When they couldn’t find her there, Ice sought help from federal prosecutors and searched her dormitory – using a warrant that cited a criminal law against “harboring noncitizens”. They revoked her green card and accused her of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests.On Monday, Chung sued Donald Trump and other high-ranking administrations to stop their targeting of her and other students. And on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport Chung, saying “nothing in the record” indicated that Chung posed a danger to the community.“After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” she shared in a statement to the Guardian after the ruling.Her location remains undisclosed, and Chung herself has remained shielded – for her own protection – from the public. But she has nonetheless made a powerful statement, by raising a simple question: if the administration can arbitrarily and unilaterally threaten immigrants over political views they disagree with, if it can disregard the free speech rights of lawful permanent residents – what limits, if any, remain on its power?“Officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung’s speech,” her lawyers write in the suit.Unlike some of the other students the administration has targeted for pro-Palestinian activism, including recent graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who led protests on campus, and Cornell PhD student Momodou Taal, who delivered speeches at his university’s pro-Palestinian encampment, Chung’s involvement in the movement was low-profile. She didn’t play an organizing or leading role in any of the protest efforts; she didn’t speak to the media about her activism.“She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns,” her lawyers write.Chung moved to the US from South Korea when she was seven, and has lived in the country ever since. She was a valedictorian in high school; at Columbia, she had contributed to a literary magazine and an undergraduate law journal. She has maintained a 3.99 GPA and interned with a number of legal non-profits including the Innocence Project.Last spring, Chung was one of hundreds of students and other activists who set up the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the university campus, and hundreds of others visited the space to attend speeches, community events and protests. As the university began meting out disciplinary actions against protesters, hundreds of students and faculty also joined in a walkout in solidarity with student activists, demanding amnesty to student protesters.View image in fullscreenIn May last year, Chung and other students faced disciplinary proceedings for posting flyers on school campus – but the university ultimately found that Chung had not violated policies, according to the lawsuit.After that, Chung continued her studies, and it wasn’t until earlier this month that she came onto immigration officials’ radar.Earlier this year, Barnard College, a sister school to Columbia, announced the expulsions of several protesters – amid a renewed, nationwide crackdown on student protesters that came following pressures from the Trump administration to tamp down pro-Palestinian activism on campus.Chung attended a sit-in demonstration calling on Barnard to reverse the expulsions. Chung became trapped between a crowd of students and New York police department officers investigating a bomb threat, according to the suit. She, and others, were charged by the NYPD for “obstruction of governmental administration”.Days later, immigration officials obtained a warrant to track down and arrest Chung. In a statement on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security characterized the sit-in she attended as a “pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College”.In a press conference after a hearing on Chung’s case Tuesday, Ramzi Kassem, one of her lawyers, said that Chung “remained a resident of the Southern District of New York” and had been “keeping up with her coursework” even amid Ice’s efforts to track her down and arrest her.In a lawsuit filed Monday, Chung’s lawyers wrote that the prospect of arrest and detention has “chilled her speech” – and note that the administration’s pursuit of non-citizen students had overall dampened free expression.“Ms. Chung is now concerned about speaking up about the ongoing ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza as well as what is happening on her own campus: the targeting of her fellow students,” the suit alleges.Scores of other students could also be silenced with similar threats, the suit argues. Faculty at Columbia and universities across the US have reported that international students and green card holders have been worried about attending classes, and are reconsidering plans to visit family, study abroad or travel for research.The administration has also placed immense pressure on universities to cooperate with its crackdown on protesters. Last week, the university agreed to overhaul its protest policies and hire an internal security force of 36 “special officers” who will be empowered to remove people from campus after the administration revoked $400m in funding for the university, which many faculty have taken as a dangerous capitulation that will endanger academic freedom.And the threat of deportation against her is a powerful one, the suit continues. If she is sent to South Korea, she would be arriving in a country she hardly knows – separated from her parents and community, and a sister who is about the start college as well.“Yunseo no longer has to fear that Ice will spirit her away to a distant prison simply because she spoke up for Palestinian human rights,” said Kassem in a statement to the Guardian. “The court’s temporary restraining order is both sensible and fair, to preserve the status quo as we litigate the serious constitutional issues at stake not just for Yunseo, but for our society as a whole.” More

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      We call on Columbia to stand up to authoritarianism | Open letter

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      To the Columbia University administration,As journalists who were trained by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and who are steeped in America’s long traditions of free speech and academic freedom, we write to you to express our horror at the events of the past week.The Trump administration has sent immigration enforcers into university-owned student housing and university public spaces at Columbia, has arrested and sought to deport Mahmoud Khalil – not for having committed any documented crimes, but for the thoughts that he has expressed; and has forced another student, Ranjani Srivasan, to flee to Canada after her visa was revoked, also apparently for thought crimes.It has sought to financially cripple the university by withholding $400m in federal funds. And it has demanded the university shut down or restructure departments it deems to be politically problematic, and that it alter its criteria for who to admit to incoming student cohorts.We come from diverse political backgrounds and worldviews; some of us were deeply alienated by last year’s campus protests around the war in Gaza, others of us were sympathetic to the students. Regardless of our political views, however, we firmly believe that the federal government should have no role in policing Columbia’s academic structures, in shaping course requirements and personnel choices made by the university, in dictating admissions strategies, and in terrorizing students for expressing political views that the first amendment clearly protects.Yet, astoundingly, all of these changes are now being accepted by Columbia University in the vain hope of deterring a predatory government from cutting off federal funds and decimating the university’s science research facilities. The university higher-ups have sold out students and faculty alike in their efforts to access federal dollars.We recognize that the fault here lies primarily with the Trump administration, which is stampeding away from democratic norms and, by the day, reinventing the US as an autocracy in the image of Orbán’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. We recognize, too, that universities such as Columbia are caught between a rock and hard place, damned if they cooperate with the Maga agenda and damned if they don’t.In such a dismal situation, courageously standing up for moral principles and academic codes would have been the honorable – and ultimately more effective – path to take. As Churchill famously said after England and France’s capitulation to Nazi demands at the Munich conference in which Czechoslovakia was dismembered: “You had a choice between dishonor and war; you chose dishonor and you shall have war.”Trump’s administration preys on weakness, and it is employing an extraordinarily effective divide and conquer strategy. We are seeing this in its assault on individual law firms, such as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which this week cried uncle and arranged a meeting with Trump, in which it agreed to do $40m of pro bono work for clients and issues of his choice in exchange for not having their security clearances revoked.That will, of course, only empower Trump and the justice department to ask more of the capitulating attorneys and also to go after additional law firms, seeking the same result – indeed, on Friday night, Trump released a memo directing the Department of Justice to do just that. We are seeing it with major media outlets – take, for example, ABC’s extraordinary decision to donate millions of dollars to the Trump presidential library to make an inconvenient Trump lawsuit disappear; or CBS’s decision to give the Trump team access to the transcripts of its pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Again, that will only empower Trump to demand further concessions from those companies in how they report on his Administration as well as to seek to kneecap the independence of other media outlets.And, of course, we are seeing it in the escalating war against academia. Columbia’s capitulation won’t end the nightmare that American research universities are facing, rather it will make it worse. For if an institution of the stature, and with the vast endowment resources, of an Ivy League school such as Columbia can be publicly humiliated and made to grovel for Federal crumbs, then every other academic institution in the country is rendered weaker and more open to political attack.Given this reality, we urge Columbia’s administrators to rethink their strategy in dealing with Trump’s authoritarian administration. We urge university administrators around the country to respond collectively rather than allowing themselves to be picked off one by one. And we urge Columbia alumni, of all political persuasions, to join with us in recognizing the enormous stakes in play here, and in demanding that this wonderful academic institution stand up for the values and the beliefs that have held steady since its founding more than 270 years ago. We urge alumni to call their political representatives to protest the assault on academic freedom, to contact Columbia University’s leadership to express their displeasure, and, if necessary, to withhold their donations to Columbia until such time as the university stiffens its spine in its dealings with the Trump administration.This is, we believe, one of the greatest crises facing academia in US history, and also one of the greatest assaults on free speech. How universities such as Columbia respond will determine whether universities remain independent or whether, ultimately, they end up simply serving as extensions of an increasingly authoritarian state.Sasha Abramsky
      Jason Ziedenberg
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      Tony Fong, Science editor
      Victoria Pesce Elliott
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      Amid fear and confusion in US immigrant communities, protest goes grassroots

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      On Sundays, Juan Carlos Ruiz gives his sermons while wearing a white robe. Although his English- and Spanish-speaking congregants at a Brooklyn-based church may not notice it, the neck of his robe is ripped, the cloth frayed. When asked about the tear in his robe, Ruiz gives a charming smile, remembering his 2018 arrest.That year, during the first Trump administration, Ruiz was participating in a protest to prevent the deportation of a prominent New York immigration activist. As tensions flared, cops began to rough up some demonstrators. Ruiz attempted to intervene. He and 17 others were arrested by police; his white alb ripped during the struggle.“They beat us for a long time,” Ruiz recalls. “But it exposed that, although New York is a so-called ‘sanctuary city’, in reality, the practice still existed of working hand-in-hand with the migrant police.”Ruiz is an important figure in New York’s immigrant activist space, one of many providing services and assistance to immigrants at risk of being targeted by federal authorities. Now Ruiz and others are continuing their work to help migrants – but with more urgency and determination under the second Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant full court press.View image in fullscreenAlthough the work is not new for many, immigrant rights activists in New York are adapting their methods, finding new ways to respond to the federal government’s attacks. Some groups are offering legal advice to immigrants navigating the backlogged and bureaucratic proceedings, even as the White House steers around due process; others are providing legal information, in case immigration officials come knocking; and others are providing food and basic assistance to those in need.There is deep confusion and much fear in many communities – both documented and undocumented, with advocates attempting to anchor those threatened by providing quick-response resources, information and – if necessary – physical refuge.“We are responsible for our own silence,” Ruiz said. If you do not stand up against injustice, he added, “we will be complicit in a system that is undermining all of us.”Before Ruiz’s Spanish-language service on Sundays, the church provides a hearty meal to people who attend. During the downtime, while young children laugh and chase each other around the church, many people will wait patiently to visit with the pastor in his office. They will inquire about their immigration cases or request help with their legal process.On one recent Sunday, a man kissed his baby and his wife, embraced Ruiz and broke down in tears after the pastor handed him an envelope. His work permit had finally arrived in the mail.“For me, my role is more to accompany, listen, maybe take the person’s hand and, as I accompany them, search for paths forward and solutions,” Ruiz said, with his distinctive central Mexican accent. “A lot of people, what they want, is just to be heard.”And Ruiz has heard it all. He has sat with immigrants who tell horror stories of the extremely dangerous journey through South and Central America. Others tell Ruiz about loved ones, who have died or been killed. Some migrants have fled their home countries due to political persecution; others are fleeing violence from organized criminal groups. Many also seek economic opportunities, with some leaving due to poverty driven by the climate crisis or weak, corrupt governments.The toughest aspect is seeing the “normalization of lies” about immigrants: “The lies that ‘having papers makes you superior,’ that ‘having a certain skin color makes you better’ or ‘less’. These lies undermine people’s dignity,” he said.Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, Ruiz noticed attendance at his Sunday lunches began to wane. On 20 January, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security released a memo allowing for Ice to conduct arrests and enforcement operations at “sensitive locations” or “protected areas”, including churches, schools and medical facilities. Legal challenges partially blocked the “sensitive locations” Trump memo but a nationwide chilling effect and fear lingers. However, life must go on.“I’ve been in this country for 20 years,” one woman from Mexico said, asking for her name to be withheld for fear of being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the federal agency that carries out deportations. Last month fear was rampant and she noticed the New York subway trains were emptier than usual on the way to work. “But we have to keep going. We have to go work because, here, no one is going to help us pay rent, no one is going to help us except ourselves,” she said.Ruiz became the pastor of the Good Shepherd church in 2018. Ever since, during moments of desperate need and heightened threats, he has periodically opened the church’s doors, offering sanctuary to migrants seeking refuge, motivated by his own experience as an immigrant and decades of activism.He arrived in the US at 16 from Mexico and was himself undocumented – “living in the shadows”, as he describes it – before going through the long process of obtaining legal status. At one point, immigration officials attempted to deport his brother. His family’s church intervened and stopped the deportation – a landmark event in Ruiz’s political, religious and personal development. His religious philosophy was further shaped by a longstanding tradition of progressive faith activism, having studied under liberation theology and leftwing Jesuit priests in Chicago and New Jersey.“We are a sanctuary church. This means that your body and blood, your dignity and your personhood, is also sacred,” Ruiz preached to his congregants during a recent Spanish-language sermon. “When there are unjust systems that distort that, one has the necessity to protest, or do whatever is possible, to dismantle those unjust systems.”In the first two months of the Trump administration, the federal government has significantly escalated its offensive against undocumented immigrants. Among its countless actions, the administration has stripped away asylum rights, sent migrants to the Guantánamo naval base to be detained, arrested a green card holder for political activism, issued quotas for Ice arrests and used the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants, despite a federal judge’s order. Ice arrested more than 32,000 people during Trump’s first 50 days.Some of the most vigorous challengers to the anti-immigrant agenda have been immigrant and civil rights organizations, including grassroots groups, rather than from Democratic lawmakers, whose resistance has been limited. And as activists routinely point out, the two recent Democratic presidents – Barack Obama and Joe Biden – leaned into the federal detention and deportation machine.“I correct people when they say that the system is broken, as if someone arrived and broke it,” Ruiz said. “I tell them: ‘No, the system has been designed to work this way’.”Community organizations and individuals are striving to protect each other.View image in fullscreenFor the past few years, the non-profit organization South Brooklyn Sanctuary has been providing assistance and advice to recently arrived immigrants in New York. The organization originated in the Good Shepherd church, and became independent in 2023 to formalize its work.“ We started in 2022 when Texas governor Greg Abbott first started bussing immigrants from the southern border to New York City as a political ploy,” said Emily Shechtman, co-founder and executive director of South Brooklyn Sanctuary. “It was an all-hands-on-deck, volunteer-run effort that included all sorts of support, like clothing, food, language classes, grocery distribution. And among that work was legal support.”One Saturday evening this month, the organization, in partnership with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid, provided “know your rights” training to a packed room of people, encouraging attendees to look out for their immigrant neighbors.South Brooklyn Sanctuary also runs a legal clinic for immigrants navigating the complex civil court system that adjudicates immigration cases. Unlike the criminal court system, immigrants are not guaranteed legal representation during procedures, so the group provides community support to better equip immigrants to represent themselves in court.“ Our goal is to train volunteers to help people fill out their own applications with attorney supervision, and to provide legal empowerment information so that recently arrived immigrants don’t feel steamrolled, overwhelmed and confused by what’s a very complex, bureaucratic and adversarial legal system,” Shechtman added.Some workshops do not just prepare immigrants to avoid arrest and navigate the immigration system, but they also prepare people for the worst-case scenario. An immigrant woman the Guardian spoke with attended a workshop on how to prepare for deportation if necessary. Although it is a scary lesson, she explains, it is best to be prepared. After the workshop, the mother gave a trusted friend copies of important documents and enough money for four plane tickets, two tickets for her young children to join her in Mexico, and a roundtrip flight for her friend to escort her children – if it comes to that.“After that, I felt a sense of peace,” the woman said. “We’ve come out on top in a country that is not our own, where we don’t speak the language, where we aren’t wanted. If I am deported to my own country, I can start anew.”On a sunny but chilly recent Friday evening, volunteers and staff from the New York Immigrant Coalition (NYIC) advocacy took to the streets with an initiative, sparked by Trump, to distribute pamphlets and cards explaining one’s legal rights in case Ice arrives. They went door to door in Sunset Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood primarily made up of Latin American and Chinese immigrants, many undocumented.The advocates made their way down the main avenue, talking to business owners, workers and pedestrians. They plan to visit other neighborhoods, too.View image in fullscreen“ Workplace raids were very common in the first Trump administration, and we expect them to scale [up],” said Wennie Chin, senior director of civic engagement at NYIC.The organization provides “know your rights” cards in 15 different languages.Chin also distributed signs for business owners to bar immigration officers from entering without the required warrant signed by a judge – explaining that agents brandishing a simple internal administrative order doesn’t cut it.“ We recruit members of the community who may have language capacity to do this level of outreach, and really make sure that we are reaching people where they are at,” Chin added.Later that evening, back at the Good Shepherd church in Bay Ridge, families gathered for music and dance lessons, a place of refuge, where people living with irregular legal status, can breathe a little easier.A boisterous group of more than two-dozen Spanglish-speaking children rehearsed mariachi music in the church’s main space. The mariachi group, armed with violins and guitars, travels around New York City, performing at community events, weddings and parties. As the kids filed out, excited to enjoy the rest of their Friday evening, the church space filled with the sounds of different music coming from the basement.There, about 30 girls, between five and 15 years old, were taking Mexican folk dance lessons. Their traditional colorful skirts swayed as they rehearsed Mexico’s national dance with loud footwork. After a long week of work, the girls’ visibly tired parents watched their daughters rehearse.“We come here, even though there’s fear,” said one father holding a baby. He gestured towards his daughter, a US citizen by birthright who was with the group of folk dancers. “We are not going to take this away from them because of the fear.”As their children danced, a group of 14 parents, all undocumented, mostly from Mexico, sat in a circle on the main floor of the church to discuss their perspectives on the current atmosphere. Some were vocal, some more shy, there was a mix of fear, courage, also anger at government anti-immigrant hostility and misinformation. All asked that their identities be shielded but all seemed relieved to be seen and heard.“We are not taking jobs away from people,” one father said. “It is also an absolute lie that we do not pay taxes. We pay taxes. We do not live here for free, we all work and pay rent.”Although the majority of their children are US citizens, when talking of Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, currently in legal limbo awaiting the US supreme court, the parents’ fear was palpable.And the children feel it, too, many said – not just because of news and rumors on social media, but in their own homes and schools.View image in fullscreenOne man’s young son, who loved to play soccer then go eat at his favorite restaurant, refused to go out for weeks, fearing that Ice would arrest his father during their regular weekend outings. Another woman’s daughter was being bullied at school, she said – a classmate was threatening to call Ice on her family. Although the mother was insistent on reporting the classmate to the school, her daughter deleted the bully’s messages, out of fear of escalating the situation.An eight-year-old girl came home from school telling her parents they were going to “deport everyone”. Her parents are of separate nationalities, Mexican and Guatemalan. “Which country are they going to send us to?” the girl asked.“It’s terrifying,” her mother said. “It scared me to hear small children talking about this. It’s a way of snatching away their innocence – they shouldn’t have to worry about this. And how do you explain this to a child?”Ruiz said that confusion and fear are part of Trump’s strategy – but the fight must go on.“ We cannot underestimate the power of a handful of people, willing to work for the common good,” Ruiz said. “We need to keep working, from whichever trench we find ourselves in.” More

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      ‘I am a political prisoner’: Mahmoud Khalil says he’s being targeted for political beliefs

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      In his first public remarks since being detained by federal immigration authorities, Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, spoke out against the conditions facing immigrants in US detention and said he was being targeted by the Trump administration for his political beliefs.“I am a political prisoner,” he said in a statement provided exclusively to the Guardian. “I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.”Khalil, a permanent US resident who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last spring, was arrested and detained in New York on 8 March by federal immigration authorities who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.The Trump administration, he said, “is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent” warning that “visa-holders, green-card carriers and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”The statement, which Khalil dictated to his friends and family over the phone from an Ice detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, railed against the US’s treatment of immigrants in its custody, Israel’s renewed bombardment of the Gaza Strip, US foreign policy, and what he described as Columbia University’s surrender to federal pressure to punish students.“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night,” the statement said. “With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”Khalil described his arrest at his university-owned apartment building in New York in front of his wife, Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant with their first child. The agents who arrested him “refused to provide a warrant” before forcing him into an unmarked car, he said.“At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety,” he said. “I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side.”He was then transferred to an Ice facility in New Jersey before being flown 1,400 miles away to the Louisiana detention facility, where he is currently being held. He spent his first night in detention, he said, sleeping on the floor without a blanket.In his remarks, Khalil said that in Louisiana, he wakes to “cold mornings” and spends “long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law”.“Who has the right to have rights?” Khalil asked. “It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.”“Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities,” he added.Khalil drew comparison between his current treatment in the US and the ways in which he said the Israeli government uses detention without trial to lock up Palestinians.“I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba,” he added, referring to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 after the creation of Israel.“I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights,” he said.“I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.”Khalil’s arrest ignited protests and caused alarm among free expression advocates, who view the deportation attempt as a violation of his free speech rights. Khalil has not been accused of a crime. His lawyers argue that the Trump administration is unlawfully retaliating against him for his activism and constitutionally protected speech. In an amended petition filed last week, they contended that his detention violates his constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and due process, and goes beyond the government’s legal authority.His attorneys are currently fighting in a New York court to have him transferred back to New York and to secure his release. A federal judge has blocked Khalil’s deportation while the legal challenge is pending.Throughout Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and since assuming office, Trump has repeatedly pledged to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, frequently framing such demonstrations as expressions of support for Hamas.Khalil, who has worked for the British embassy in Beirut, served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last year, mediating between the pro-Palestine protesters and university administrators.The Trump administration has accused the former student of leading “activities aligned to Hamas” and was attempting to deport him using a rarely invoked legal provision from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which gives the US secretary of state the power to remove someone from the US if their presence in the country is deemed to “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.Federal prosecutors are asking the New York court to order his challenge to his detention moved to Louisiana, where it would likely face more conservative judges.Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and member of Khalil’s legal team, said that what happens to Khalil will reverberate beyond his case. “The Trump administration has clearly signaled that this is their test case, their opening shot, the first of many more to come,” she said.“And for that test case, they chose an intrepid and deeply principled organizer who is beloved and trusted in his community,” Shamas said.After Khalil’s arrest, Trump said that it was just “the first of many to come” and vowed on social media to deport other foreign students he accused of engaging in “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity”.Khalil said in his statement that he has always believed that his duty “is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear”.“My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention” he said. “For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities.”He added: “That is precisely why I am being targeted.”Khalil also criticized Columbia University, arguing that university leaders “laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns – based on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.”The university has increasingly taken disciplinary actions against students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is stepping up its attacks on the school under the guise of fighting antisemitism, which it claims run rampant at the university. The administration is using the same argument to threaten dozens of others American universities with potentially crippling funding cuts.Students, Khalil said, have an important role to play in fighting back. “Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa,” he said.“In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.”He concluded: “Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”

      Read Khalil’s full statement here. More

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      Chuck Schumer postpones book tour stops amid shutdown vote backlash

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      The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has postponed several stops on a tour to promote his new book, citing security concerns, as the New York Democrat faces intensifying backlash over his vote to support a Republican-drafted spending bill and avert a government shutdown.Schumer was scheduled to participate in events in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York City and Philadelphia this week to discuss his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning, which is set to be released on Tuesday. The tour dates were expected to be rescheduled but the cancellation drew criticism from both political wings.Progressives erupted in fury over his decision last week to relent and help Republicans pass a stopgap funding bill many Democrats warned would hand Donald Trump and Elon Musk even greater discretion to slash government programs and services. Schumer had said Senate Democrats faced a “Hobson’s choice”: either vote for a “terrible” bill or shut down the government, which he argued would have been a far worse outcome for the party and the country.But Democrats are desperate for the party to stand up to Trump, as the administration embarks on a series of radical and potentially unlawful moves to slash the government, deport thousands of immigrants and launch a global trade war.“People are furious about Democrats not having a plan to fight Trump – and supposed ‘leaders’ folding [over] and over again,” Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement, accusing Schumer of attempting to “hide” from constituents. “We hope other Democratic senators continue meeting with their constituents and demand that their leadership fight with backbone.”Democrats have been organizing protests against Republican members of Congress, voicing their fury over the administration’s federal overhaul led by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” as well as their fears over Republican proposals that would probably result in cuts to safety-net programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.But this week, several Democratic groups are targeting Schumer and other Senate Democrats who voted for the spending bill. Some have staged protests outside of the minority leader’s Brooklyn home while others are calling on him to step down.In an interview with the New York Times, Schumer brushed aside questions about whether the self-described institutionalist was the right leader for this moment. The New York Democrat said he knew how to win seats and compared himself to an “orchestra leader” skilled at highlighting the diverse talent in his caucus. He said he encouraged the senator Chris Murphy, one of the sharpest Democratic critics of the second Trump administration, to ramp up his media appearances, and the independent senator Bernie Sanders to lead a cross-country “fighting oligarchy” tour.When asked about the prospect of a primary challenge, perhaps by the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as some have reportedly encouraged her to do, Schumer demurred, saying 2028 was “a long time away”.But Schumer’s decision to relent rather than fight has shaken his party’s activist base.After the vote last week, Indivisible, one of the major groups organizing against Trump, said it was time for new leadership in the Senate.“This is a painful decision, the gravity of which we take very seriously. Senator Schumer has contributed to and led many important accomplishments that Indivisible is grateful for,” Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible, wrote in a statement. “But with our democracy on the line, he let us, the country, and the Democratic party down.”The group is encouraging members to call their Democratic senators and ask them to pressure Schumer to “step aside”.The funding fight also exposed a deep rift with House Democrats, all but one of whom opposed the bill in a floor vote. On Friday, the congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, declined to answer a question about whether it was time for new leadership in the Senate. More