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    Muere Violeta Chamorro, presidenta de Nicaragua tras la guerra civil

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    En 1990 se convirtió en la primera mujer en dirigir un país centroamericano. Su presidencia llegó después de que la nación se viera sumida en luchas políticas.Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, quien llegó a la presidencia de Nicaragua en 1990 como una figura de unidad tras la guerra civil y fue la primera mujer elegida para gobernar un país centroamericano, murió el sábado por la mañana en su apartamento de San José, Costa Rica. Tenía 95 años.Su muerte fue confirmada por su hijo Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, quien dijo que llevaba muchos años delicada de salud.Violeta Barrios de Chamorro pasó al primer plano de la política nicaragüense tras el asesinato de su marido, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, director de un periódico, una figura crítica con los revolucionarios sandinistas de izquierda y un feroz opositor a un némesis compartido: la dictadura de la familia Somoza, que comenzó durante la presidencia de Anastasio Somoza García en 1936.Barrios de Chamorro fue presidenta en la década de 1990, al final de un periodo en el que el país había sido conmocionado por la guerra. La gestión cotidiana del gobierno la delegó a un yerno y se posicionó como un símbolo de unidad en un país profundamente dividido.Su agenda política generó rechazo tanto de la izquierda como de la derecha. Sin embargo, en los últimos años, las encuestas de opinión pública sugerían que era la figura más admirada de Nicaragua, un símbolo de reconciliación teñido en un aura de profunda fe católica similar a la de una virgen maternal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Move to Canada? Migrants Face ‘No Good Options’ After Supreme Court Ruling.

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      Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who entered the United States legally under a Biden-era program are now scrambling.On weekend mornings, the La Boulangerie Bakery in East Orange, N.J., is normally bustling with customers who come for its Haitian baked goods, cookies and coconut sweets.It was empty on Saturday, a day after a Supreme Court ruling made many Haitians and other immigrants who came to the United States legally vulnerable to deportation.“Look around,” said the owner, Rosemond Clerval, 50. “People are afraid.”The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal status from immigrants who qualified for humanitarian parole under a program that began in 2022 and 2023 under the Biden administration. It allowed certain immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States and stay for up to two years.Now, tens of thousands of immigrants who only recently fled instability in their home countries and thought they had found a temporary legal refuge in the United States are facing a daunting, new dilemma.Where to go from here?Some were making plans to move to Canada, rather than face being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Jeffrey Thielman, the president of the International Institute of New England, which works with refugees and immigrants in the Boston area and beyond.“They’re trying to figure out where else they can go,” Mr. Thielman said. “The bottom line is that these folks can’t go back to Haiti.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants

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      The US supreme court on Friday announced it would allow the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president’s drive to step up deportations.The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration humanitarian “parole” protections granted to 532,000 people by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal from the country, while the detailed case plays out in lower courts.As with many of the court’s emergency orders – after rapid appeals brought the case to their bench – the decision issued on Friday was unsigned and gave no reasoning. However two of the court’s three liberal-leaning justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented.The court “botched” its assessment of whether the administration was entitled to freeze Talwani’s decision pending the litigation, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion.The outcome, Jackson wrote, “undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending”.Jackson also said that “it is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum pre-decision damage.”She added that those living under parole protections in this case now face “two unbearable options”.One option is to “elect to leave the United States and thereby, confront ‘dangers in their native countries,’ experience destructive ‘family separation’ and possibly ‘forfeit any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their … claims”, Jackson wrote.The other option is that they could remain in the US after parole termination and “risk imminent removal at the hands of government agents, along with its serious attendant consequences”.To Jackson, “either choice creates significant problems for respondents that far exceed any harm to the government … At a minimum, granting the stay would facilitate needless human suffering before the courts have reached a final judgement regarding the legal arguments at issue, while denying the government’s application would not have anything close to the kind of practical impact.”Immigration parole is a form of temporary permission under American law to be in the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit”, allowing recipients to live and work in the US. Biden, a Democrat, used parole as part of his administration’s approach to handling migrants entering at the US-Mexico border.Such a status does not offer immigrants a long-term path towards citizenship but it can typically be renewed multiple times. A report from the American Immigration Council found that halting the program would, apart from the humanitarian effect, be a blow to the US economy, as households in the US where the breadwinners have temporary protected status (TPS) collectively earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021 while paying nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes.Trump called for ending humanitarian parole programs in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in office. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subsequently moved to terminate them in March, cutting short the two-year parole grants. The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place migrants in a fast-track deportation process called “expedited removal”.The case is one of many that the Trump administration has brought in an emergency fashion to the nation’s highest judicial body seeking to undo decisions by judges impeding the president’s sweeping policies, including several targeting immigrants.The supreme court on 19 May also let Trump end TPS that had been granted under Biden to about 350,000 additional Venezuelans living in the United States, while that legal dispute plays out.Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent then, while House Democrats condemned the supreme court’s decision.In a bid to reduce unauthorized border crossings, Biden starting in 2022 offering limited extra pathways to come to the US legally, allowing Venezuelans who entered the US by air to request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a US financial sponsor. Biden expanded that eligibility process to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those countries.The plaintiffs in this case, a group of migrants granted parole and Americans who serve as their sponsors, sued administration officials claiming they violated federal law governing the actions of government agencies.Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the program’s blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put the judge’s decision on hold and the government appealed.The justice department told the supreme court that Talwani’s order had upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry”, effectively “undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election” that returned Trump to the presidency.The plaintiffs told the supreme court they would face grave harm if their parole is cut short given that the administration has indefinitely suspended processing their pending applications for asylum and other immigration relief.They said they would be separated from their families and immediately subject to expedited deportation “to the same despotic and unstable countries from which they fled, where many will face serious risks of danger, persecution and even death”.Speaking at the White House on Friday afternoon, Donald Trump praised the decision, saying “a couple of hours ago we had a great decision from the supreme court that’s very important”.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      What is temporary protected status and who is affected by Trump’s crackdown?

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      Millions of people live legally in the United States under various forms of temporary legal protection. Many have been targeted in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.The latest move has been against people who have what’s known as “temporary protected status” (TPS), which grants people the right to stay in the US legally due to extraordinary circumstances in one’s home country such as war or environmental catastrophe.The Trump administration has in recent weeks announced its plan to end TPS for Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans and Cameroonians. The move may force more than 9,000 Afghan refugees to move back to the country now ruled by the Taliban. The administration also is ending the designation for roughly half a million Haitians in August.Here’s what to know about TPS and some other temporary protections for immigrants:What is temporary protected status?Temporary protected status allows people already living in the United States to stay and work legally for up to 18 months if their homelands are unsafe because of civil unrest or natural disasters.The Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation. It covers people from more than a dozen countries, though the largest numbers come from Venezuela and Haiti.The status does not put immigrants on a long-term path to citizenship and can be repeatedly renewed. Critics say renewal has become effectively automatic for many immigrants, no matter what is happening in their home countries. According to the American Immigration Council, ending TPS designations would lead to a significant economic loss for the US. The non-profit found that TPS households in the country earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021, and paid nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes.What is the latest supreme court ruling on Venezuelans?On Monday, the supreme court allowed the administration to end protections that had allowed some 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants to remain in the United States.Many Venezuelans were first granted TPS in 2021 by the Biden administration, allowing those who were already in the US to apply for protection from deportation and gain work authorization. Then, in 2023, the Biden administration issued an additional TPS designation for Venezuelans, and in January – just before Trump took office – extended those protections through October 2026.The Trump administration officials had ordered TPS to expire for those Venezuelans in April. The supreme court’s decision lifted a federal judge’s ruling that had paused the administration’s plans, meaning TPS holders are now at risk of losing their protections and could face deportation.What other forms of legal protection are under attack?More than 500,000 people from what are sometimes called the CHNV countries – Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – live in the US under the legal tool known as humanitarian parole, which allows people to enter the US temporarily, on the basis that they have an urgent humanitarian need like a medical emergency. This category, however, is also under threat by the Trump administration.In late March, the Trump administration announced plans to terminate humanitarian parole for approximately 530,000 Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians. In April, a federal judge issued a temporary order barring the elimination of the humanitarian parole program.But last week, the administration took the issue to the supreme court, asking it to allow it to end parole for immigrants from those four countries. The emergency appeal said a lower-court order had wrongly encroached on the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.US administrations – both Republican and Democratic – have used parole for decades for people unable to use regular immigration channels, whether because of time pressure or bad relations between their country and the US.The case now returns to the lower courts. For the California-based federal court, the next hearing is on 29 May. For the Massachusetts case, no hearings are scheduled and attorneys are working on a briefing for the motion to dismiss filed by the government, according to WGBH, a member station of National Public Radio in Massachusetts. The appeals court hearing will be the week of 11 July. More

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      Court Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Shuttering of Migrant Entry Program

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      A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Monday from ending a signature Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants from four troubled countries to enter the country and work legally.The administration moved in late March to shut down the program by April 24, which offered migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti temporary legal status in the United States. Judge Indira Talwani, of the Federal District Court in Boston, said the program’s termination put thousands of immigrants at imminent risk of deportation hearings once their legal status expires in less than two weeks.Judge Talwani blocked the wholesale shutdown of the program. Otherwise, she wrote in her ruling, the migrants would “be forced to choose between two injurious options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings.”Immigrant advocates hailed the decision as a win for those worried about the imminent stripping of their status.“This ruling is a victory not just for our clients and those like them, but anyone who cherishes the freedom to welcome,” said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy group. “Our clients — and our class members — have done everything the government asked of them, and we’re gratified to see that the court will not allow the government to fail to uphold its side of the bargain.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The judge’s decision came as the Trump administration has moved to end legal protections for migrants from many countries, including by shutting down a program granting legal status to Afghan and Cameroonian migrants. A separate effort to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans in the United States was also blocked by a federal judge.The Biden-era program allowed more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to fly into the United States and stay temporarily with access to work permits if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks. They were allowed to stay for up to two years.More than 500,000 migrants entered the country under the program. Biden officials said it was part of an effort to deter migrants from those countries from crossing into the country illegally, and encourage a legal pathway instead.Trump officials, announcing the move to end the program last month, said the program added to immigration problems in the United States by granting some protections to “a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status.” More

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      A Nicaraguan asylum seeker checked in with Ice every week. He was arrested anyway

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      It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Still, something felt off. The Trump administration had promised mass deportations, and in the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ice had asked him to do extra check-ins each weekend. “I even messaged the Ice office through my app, to ask if something was wrong,” Rojas said.His last check-in with Ice was on 5 February – all normal. On 8 February, they came for him.He was outside Great Clips in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. The barbershop had been crowded, so he put his name down for a cut and decided to wait in his car.Hours later, he was moved into the north-west detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation to Nicaragua – which he fled in 2018 amid a violent crackdown against nationwide anti-government protests. Rojas fears he’ll be targeted again.“I’m afraid to go back, I’m afraid for my life,” he told the Guardian. “I’m afraid I will never see my children again.”Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.View image in fullscreenLawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.Most of these people do not have criminal histories and have dutifully been complying with the government’s orders to routinely report to immigration officials. Some have pending asylum cases, or are appealing their deportation orders. Others, like Rojas, had been denied their claims to stay in the US, but were released on supervision.In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.“I just don’t understand,” Rojas’s wife, Dora Morales said. “Why would they want to arrest him now?Rojas had left Nicaragua with his uncle in September 2018.Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.Send us a tipIf you are connected to someone who has been deported or is in fear of deportation and have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian, please use a non-work device to call or text immigration reporter Maanvi Singh via the Signal messaging app at 929-418-7275.Rojas was well-known in his neighborhood, and he started to help organize protests and arrange transportation for those interested in attending.But as the demonstrations grew, so did the backlash. Police and pro-government paramilitary groups killed hundreds of students, human rights activists and journalists. His uncle was beaten and shot twice by Nicaraguan paramilitary officers.They had to leave, Rojas said. They went into hiding and eventually made their way out of the country, through Honduras and Guatemala before arriving at the US-Mexico border.“I never broke an immigration law,” Rojas said. He did exactly as he was directed – waiting a week in a notorious hielera – a frigid Customs and Border Protection holding cell where newly arrived immigrants slept on concrete floors. Then he was transferred to Phoenix, Arizona; flown to a detention center in Memphis, Tennessee; then Mississippi, where officials interviewed him to assess his eligibility for asylum in the US; and finally sent to Louisiana while his case was assessed.In July of 2019, a judge denied his asylum application, and he remained in detention while his lawyers appealed. And then – finally – in May 2020, as Covid-19 rapidly spread through the facility where he was held, Rojas’s fate changed. Following a class-action lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that Ice must consider the release of all detainees whose age or health conditions put them at elevated risk of Covid infection.Rojas is missing a kidney – a complication from a car accident when he was a child – and was especially at risk of complications from a coronavirus infection. So they let him go. “It was such a miracle,” he said.View image in fullscreenWhile Rojas was in detention, Morales and the couple’s two young sons, Alberto Jr and Matteo, had managed to escape Nicaragua as well. The family reunited in Spokane. He found work in construction, then on a ranch – and eventually, he was able to get a job as a mechanic at the Corwin Ford dealership in Spokane.“It was almost like some stereotypical, all-American dream. I mean, he was literally working for Ford!” said his friend Lizzy Myers. “He had just gotten this new lease on life, and he was really doing well.”Rojas and Morales had met – years ago – at church. He fell in love with her singing voice, and she managed to chat him up by asking for his help with English. In Spokane, the couple were once again able to attend mass together.Rojas began playing pick-up soccer with a local league. He’s been coaching his eldest in the sport as well. “And they are both improving so much – they are really getting quite good,” Rojas said. Last year, the family welcomed their newest member – baby Santiago – whom they baptized in Spokane’s St Peter church.Rojas’ lawyers reassured him that so long as he complied with Ice’s orders to routinely check in, and applied to renew his work permit each year, he’d be fine.“When the president won the election, he said he would arrest the criminals,” Rojas said. “I was worried. But also, I am not a criminal.”But then, Trump took office and rolled back a Biden-era memo prioritizing the deportation of people with criminal records or who posed threats to public safety. Now, all immigrants in the US without a legal status are subject to arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with Ice. To meet the president’s goal for “mass deportations”, immigration officials have become more indiscriminate in their enforcement, a Guardian analysis last month found.The US arrested more immigrants in February 2025 than any month in the last seven years. Still, no one in his community believed that Rojas would be one of them.“We were all just shocked,” said Susy Glamuzina, his close friend and co-worker. Glamuzina had rushed to Morales’s side as soon as Rojas was arrested and had been driving the family over to Tacoma to visit Alberto in detention. “I just thought, you know, he had a baby who was born here,” she said.View image in fullscreenTheir boss reassured Alberto he’d hold Rojas’s job until he returned, and offered to pitch in for his legal fees. Marcus Riccelli, a Democratic state senator representing Spokane, who played soccer in the same league as Rojas, heard about the case, offered to help find Rojas legal representation and called in a favor to help his family file paperwork to delay his deportation. Meanwhile, friends have jumped in to help Morales with childcare and connect their children – who had been struggling since Rojas’s arrest – with counselors to help them process the trauma.Glamuzina and his friends have already planned a party for when he returns home. “Alberto is really missed. We want him back. And I’ll tell you – if they need any personal testimonies for his case, I can have 20 people in Tacoma in a heartbeat.”A GoFundMe page for his legal fees started by Myers has so far raised nearly $17,000.The family has been using the funds to pay for legal fees, and their lawyers have filed a motion to reopen Rojas’ asylum case. They’re also hoping Rojas will be released soon.He worries about health complications due to his missing kidney if he were to contract any infections while in detention.Morales has chided Rojas for not eating enough. Mealtimes in the detention centre have been irregular, and Rojas has not been in the mood to eat.“I see my husband is getting thinner in detention,” she said. “And I told him, I don’t want to see you thinner, because it would make me sadder than I already am!”It has been difficult, for both of them, not to think about what will happen if he is deported.Morales said news that Rojas has been detained in the US has already spread through their town in Nicaragua, and she worries that government-appointed neighborhood committees will be waiting, ready to alert authorities of Rojas’s arrival. If he isn’t imprisoned or worse, Morales said she worries he could end up exiled – the Nicaraguan government stripped citizenship from hundreds of opponents.“I am preparing for the worst,” Rojas said. “I am praying and I am preparing myself spiritually for what is to come.” More

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      The Trump administration moved to end a program for migrants from 4 Caribbean and Latin American nations.

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      The Trump administration said Friday that it was ending a Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of people from four troubled countries to enter the United States lawfully and work for up to two years.The program offered applicants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they passed security checks and had a financial sponsor. They were allowed to stay for up to two years, which could be renewed.Billed “legal pathways” by the Biden administration, the program was first introduced for Venezuelans in 2022, and was expanded to nationals of the other three countries the following year.By the end of 2024, more than 500,000 migrants had entered the United States through the initiative, known as the C.H.N.V. program, an abbreviation of the countries covered by it.The work permits and protection from deportation conferred under the program’s authority, called parole, would expire on April 24.The program’s termination had been expected. On President Trump’s first day back in office, he ordered the Homeland Security Department to take steps to end it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.It will be effective 24 April.The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally. He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a 20 January executive order.Trump said on 6 March that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status. More

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      ‘Melt Ice’: protesters in New York rally against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies

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      Crowds of demonstrators including undocumented people took to the streets of downtown Manhattan on Thursday in a fierce show of resistance against Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies.The rally, which started at Foley Square and in front of the field office of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), came amid the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdowns.Speaking to the Guardian, Sergio Uzurin, a spokesperson for the grassroots movement NYC Ice Watch, said: “We’re helping to … escort undocumented folks so that they are not afraid.”“As much as the administration is trying to spread an atmosphere of fear, today is proving that some people are undocumented and unafraid to speak out about the social catastrophe that these deportations are causing,” Uzurin added.A 31-year-old undocumented man from Nicaragua who identified himself as Begea said: “We just need an opportunity to show what we could do … We are not criminals. We are just people coming to this country, looking for an opportunity, the opportunity we [lost] in our countries.”View image in fullscreen“It’s negative and really hard, what’s happening to us right now … We need the space to try to be better, to help our families, to support [and do] something good for this country,” Begea added.Echoing similar sentiments, an undocumented man from Oaxaca, Mexico, who identified himself as Alfredo Gayta said through a translator: “I am here to raise our voices against what is happening in New York. We have been treated as criminals and we are not criminals.”Wearing a white T-shirt with the Spanish words “Mis organ y mi sangre no tienen frontera” or “My organs and my blood have no borders”, Gayta said: “When we go out on the streets and are just walking, people would shout for us to leave the country, for us to go back to where we came from. We don’t really take it personally, it doesn’t really bother us. We just leave it in the hand of God.”Gayta went on to add: “The message that I want to give Trump is to give us an opportunity. We are here to work. He can see that we are not bad people. If he just gives us an opportunity, we can showcase that.”Throughout Foley Square, protesters, with some donning green bandanas around their faces, held handwritten signs that read “Melt Ice” as well as: “To get our neighbors, you have to get through us!”View image in fullscreenDave Schmauch, a member of the Freedom Socialist party, held a sign with a message to New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, who has in recent months taken a hardened stance against immigration. “Immigrants are not your get out of jail card!” the sign read, in reference to Adams’s own federal corruption charges, which the newest Trump-appointed justice department has ordered prosecutors to drop.“Today’s protest is just the beginning of what is starting to coalesce into a large, spirited, New York City immigrant solidarity movement,” said Shmauch, adding: “I want everybody to know that we say immigrants are welcome here. New York is an immigrant town and we are going to support and defend our neighbors.”Following several chants including: “Deny, defend, depose, all Nazis got to go!” and: “Every gender, every race, punch a Nazi in the face,” at least 100 protesters, with some beating drums, marched from downtown through the city’s upscale SoHo district, flanked by a heavy police presence that appeared to be twice their numbers.At least six arrests were made, with at least a dozen police appearing to surround one of the protesters as he was pinned to the ground. Around him, other protesters yelled: “Let him go!”Thursday’s rally came as Adams, a moderate Democrat, announced he would reopen an Ice office at the city’s Rikers Island jail. In 2015, an Ice office closed at the jail under the city’s sanctuary laws that impose limitations on the city’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.Also on Thursday, the newly appointed attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that the federal government was suing New York over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of having “chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”.At one point during the march, Begea stopped in front of the Jacob K Javits federal office building with a crowd of protesters, journalists and police looking on.Accompanied by a fellow protester who repeated after Begea in a call-and-response chant, Begea introduced himself to the crowd, at first quietly before his voice grew louder upon hearing the echoes of the protesters.“My name is Begea. I am a Nicaraguan citizen and I came to this country looking for an opportunity and freedom that I didn’t have in my country,” he said as he became visibly emotional.“We are only asking for the opportunity to be able to express our talent, our ability, to contribute to this country a grain of our help. We do not want to be treated like criminals. We want them to treat us like human beings,” he added.At the end of his chant, Begea raised his fist in the air.“La libertad,” he yelled.“La libertad,” the protesters yelled back. More