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    Judge rules Alien Enemies Act does not allow White House to deport alleged gang members

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    The 18th-century Alien Enemies Act does not authorize Donald Trump to deport Venezuelan immigrants alleged to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang, a federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday.The ruling from US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr is significant because it is the first sweeping and permanent injunction directly addressing whether the government can use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua. Other judges have issued similar but more limited and preliminary rulings.The decision applies only to migrants detained in Rodriguez’s judicial district, the southern district of Texas, which includes Brownsville, McAllen and Houston. Trump appointed Rodriguez to the federal bench in 2018.Trump invoked the act in March declaring Tren de Aragua (TdA) a foreign terrorist organization that was invading the US. The rarely used law allows the president to deport people without full due process in times of war. The law is supposed to apply whenever there is a war between the United States and a foreign nation and when there is “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States”.“While the Proclamation references that TdA members have harmed lives in the United States and engage in crime, the Proclamation does not suggest that they have done so through an organized armed attack, or that Venezuela has threatened or attempted such an attack through TdA members,” Rodriguez wrote in a 36-page opinion. “For these reasons, the Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful.”The Trump administration has relied on the law to aggressively deport Venezuelan migrants, defying temporary injunctions from other judges telling the White House to halt the removals.On 7 April, the US supreme court ruled that those being removed under the law needed to be provided adequate notice that they were being removed under the Alien Enemies Act so that they might be able to file a legal challenge. Less than two weeks later, the supreme court ordered a halt to a deportation of migrants in Texas after being presented with evidence they weren’t being given adequate chance to file their removals. More

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      White House uses newly revealed allegations to support refusal to return Kilmar Ábrego García to US

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      The legal team behind Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador, is demanding that the Trump administration “bring him back and give him a full and fair trial” as the administration releases new domestic abuse allegations.In a press release issued on Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cited allegations made by Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, that he abused her on several occasions in 2019 and 2020.Sura, a US citizen, filed a petition for protection against her husband in 2020, according to the new documents. She claimed to local police in Maryland that Ábrego García had kicked and verbally abused her, detained her against her will, and locked their children in a bedroom, among other accusations.She also claimed that, in 2019, he dragged her from a car by her hair. Ábrego García was never charged, according to Axios.The documents note that shortly after filing for the protective order in 2020, Sura asked the court to rescind it. She had said that their son’s birthday was approaching and Ábrego García had agreed to counseling.In response to the revelations from the DHS, Ábrego García’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told the Guardian that “the whole country has spent the last month talking about Kilmar Ábrego García, and speaking for or against Kilmar Ábrego García” and that “the one person who hasn’t yet had the chance to speak is Kilmar Ábrego García”.“The government needs to bring him back and give him a full and fair trial. They can introduce all of this evidence, and he can respond in his own voice,” he said.Sandoval-Moshenberg also noted to Axios that the allegations were not related to the deportation.This move from the DHS comes on the heels of the administration resurfacing a separate protective order Ábrego García’s wife filed in 2021, also alleging domestic violence. In a statement, Sura said she filed the order “in case things escalated” but said that “things did not escalate”.“I decided not to follow through with the civil court process,” she said in April.“No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for Ice’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation.”The Alliance for Immigrant Survivors argued in a letter last week that the White House had “weaponized” Sura’s decision to seek a temporary protection order in 2021 “in order to justify her husband’s illegal kidnapping and indefinite incarceration”.“To be clear, nothing in Kilmar Ábrego García’s history gives the government permission or an excuse to violate his right to due process or legitimize his illegal removal from the US,” the letter reads.The letter also said that the administration posted a court document online that exposed Sura’s family’s home address, forcing her and her children “into hiding”.“Attempts to traumatize and intimidate survivors, and turn their experiences into political theater, are unacceptable and damaging,” the letter adds.Despite a 2019 court order prohibiting him from being sent to El Salvador, Ábrego García was deported from the US to El Salvador in March. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which was recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization; just last month, the administration posted documents online to bolster their claim that Ábrego García is a gang member.Ábrego García’s lawyers say that he had never been convicted of a crime in the US or El Salvador. They, along with his wife and labor union, have also repeatedly denied that he is a member of MS-13.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShortly after the deportation, the Trump administration admitted in a court filing that it was the result of an “administrative error”. In the weeks since, administration officials have reversed course and insisted that Ábrego García was not wrongly deported.A federal judge, backed up by the supreme court, ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release and provide evidence of the actions it has taken to get him back.Trump officials have argued that US courts lack jurisdiction since Ábrego García is not a US citizen and no longer in the country. The legal fight over his return is ongoing.On Thursday, Senators Chuck Schumer, Chris Van Hollen, Tim Kaine and Alex Padilla said they would require the Trump administration to produce a report on wrongful deportations to El Salvador.Ábrego García entered the US illegally in 2012 and was arrested in March 2019 along with three other people while looking for work at a Home Depot in Maryland.Police officers at the Prince George’s county police department said at the time that the men were “loitering” and identified Ábrego García as a member of MS-13, citing his clothing and information from a confidential source.Ábrego García challenged the determination, arguing that it was “hearsay”.Later that year, an immigration judge ruled that Ábrego García could not be deported back to El Salvador because he faced a credible fear of persecution. He was granted a “withholding of removal” order, preventing him from being sent to the Central American country.But on 12 March 2025, Ábrego García was detained by Ice officers who his lawyers say “informed him that his immigration status had changed”. He was deported to El Salvador, without a hearing, three days later and sent to a maximum-security prison.The White House has also accused Ábrego García of human trafficking due to a 2022 traffic stop during which he was found driving eight people from Houston to Maryland. He was not charged with any infraction, according to DHS, but received a warning citation for driving with an expired license. His wife said in a statement that he worked in construction and that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites.Ábrego García has since been moved out of the mega-prison to another prison in El Salvador. More

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      North Carolina helps kids earn college degrees in high school. It’s a lifeline for immigrant families

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      Daniel is a high school senior in rural North Carolina. Soon, he will graduate with a high school diploma, an associate degree and a paralegal certification from a local community college. He’s just 17, but he’ll be able to apply for positions at law firms and begin earning an almost $50,000 salary straight out of high school.“The early college program really set me up for success because even though I’m young, I’ll be able to help financially support my family,” said Daniel, a first-generation Salvadorian American who is only using his first name to protect undocumented family members. “I’ve done all of this because of support from my mother and family. I owe everything I’ve accomplished to them and I want to give back.”It’s been a long road for Daniel, who was accepted into a competitive Cooperative Innovative high school while still in middle school. These small, public high schools are located on North Carolina community college campuses, and they enable teens to simultaneously work toward completion of a high school diploma and an associate degree. It’s one of three paths that eligible North Carolina high school students can take as part of Career and College Promise (CCP): a free, statewide dual enrollment program established by the North Carolina state legislature in 2011, and that also facilitates college transfer or further technical education. The program helped Daniel get ahead of the curve, and so far it’s paid off. The teenager was just accepted into Vanderbilt University.According to North Carolina educators who spoke to the Guardian, dual enrollment is one of the state’s best kept secrets – especially for first-generation Latino students like Daniel.And because CCP is open to all qualified high school students, the program offers an extraordinary benefit to undocumented young people. As college students, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most financial aid and otherwise considered “non-residents”, requiring them to pay out-of-state tuition at more than double the cost to residents. However, undocumented high school students participating in dual enrollment can attend up to four years of community college free of charge.But thanks to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant vision for the US, students from immigrant families are now afraid – and so too are North Carolina community college educators and administrators, who fear their schools will be targeted for their efforts to extend educational opportunities to Latino communities. For safety reasons, most of the students, educators and administrators who spoke to the Guardian chose to remain anonymous.Engines of equity and accessLatinos have been the fastest growing demographic in North Carolina since the 1990s, with young Latino citizens in particular accounting for much of the growth. Many of these young people are the US citizen children of immigrants or come from mixed-status families where only some family members have authorization to be in the US.But even with 30 years to adjust to shifting demographics, the education system in North Carolina was largely ill-equipped to serve Latino students – especially in rural communities where a large percentage of the state’s Latino population resides.One rural community college staff administrator responsible for Latino engagement has worked tirelessly over the last few years to reach students like Daniel, whom they helped usher through College and Career Promise. They see it as part of their job to spearhead efforts to bring bilingual programs and classes to their community college, hire members of the immigrant community to teach, and perform outreach at local Latino community events. They also work closely to problem-solve with individual students, whether that means referring an undocumented student to scholarship opportunities or walking a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipient through the process of obtaining employer-sponsored in-state tuition. Just a few short months ago, these were efforts the staff administrator would have trumpeted – but times have changed.“I am afraid it might call attention to us in a negative way,” they said. “I saw how parents were too scared to drive to schools in [North Carolina] … and how people knew which roads not to take due to the police presence. I don’t want to widely call attention to us as being immigrant-friendly when the goal of this administration is to quash that.”There are valid reasons to be fearful. The Trump administration’s targeting and defunding of institutions with DEI policies have led many to preemptively comply out of fear of losing federal funding, and now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) rescinded a previous policy warning against carrying out immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations”, schools are fair game for immigration raids. In recent weeks, hundreds of foreign college students have also had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, though it changed course and restored some students’ status after widespread media attention and court challenges.It was because of “serious concerns for the safety of students and the entire campus community” that officials from another North Carolina community college located in a mid-sized city initially spoke on the record, but later decided to remain anonymous. An administrator responsible for Latino student engagement there told the Guardian that when community colleges are forced to hide their efforts to make education more accessible, it also means hiding services from students and community members who need them the most.Alice Dolbow, a senior adviser at the North Carolina non-profit LatinxEd, issued an important reminder to schools now afraid to make these efforts public: helping immigrant and first generation students access higher education is “not against the law”. Her organization focuses on developing Latino education leaders in higher education.“I think many districts found themselves unexpectedly transformed by the increase in immigration,” Dolbow said. “Interestingly, community colleges are catching up at a much faster rate than our K-12 schools and our four-year universities. Programs like CCP are great for all students; they are engines of equity and access for all North Carolinians, including undocumented students. I want to be clear that any programs that happen to also help undocumented students access higher education are not ‘loopholes’. We are not ‘taking advantage of the system’. We are operating within the system and under the laws we have, and we are doing what the laws and system allow.”Latino students in the state – many of whom come from mixed-status families – are also a lifeline for North Carolina community colleges. Before 2020, community college enrollment in the state was on a slow decline. Then, 69,000 CCP students participated in dual enrollment during the pandemic. While community colleges don’t track the immigration status of students in the CCP program, it’s clear that more targeted outreach to the state’s young, growing Latino population can transform community college enrollment and the trajectory of Latino and immigrant families in the state.In many ways, community colleges are primed to serve immigrant communities. They offer flexible schedules; English classes for adults; continuing education; and curriculum programs that can lead to certificates, diplomas and degrees. In recent years, North Carolina has made considerable leeway to recruit Latino students of all kinds, in part, by hiring Latino educators to oversee Latino student engagement and outreach.“It is our job as community colleges to respond to the economic needs of the region, and it’s our job to educate the workforce that responds to those local economic needs,” explained the administrator from the mid-sized city. “If you have this growing population, it’s your job to serve them and by doing that, you are better serving your state.”There’s data to support the assertion. In 2018, the statewide network of 58 public community colleges that make up the North Carolina community college system partnered with population scientists to examine demographic shifts in the state. Latino student outreach was identified as a primary tool to increase community college enrollment and thus, help North Carolina remain competitive in the changing economy.The state has only three “Hispanic-serving Institutions” (HSI), defined in federal legislation as accredited, degree-granting public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education with 25% or more total undergraduate Hispanic full-time equivalent student enrollment. But that’s enough to rank North Carolina among the top 10 states in emerging HSIs, and each of North Carolina’s three existing HSIs are community colleges.‘College is … starting to feel impossible’Still, gaps in community colleges’ outreach, engagement and investment in Latino students become starkly visible when considering the experiences of undocumented students.Olivia, who is also using a pseudonym, is a North Carolina 18-year-old who benefited from dual enrollment as a high school student. After graduation, she’s struggled to pay the exorbitant cost of community college tuition as an undocumented student. Well-meaning community college administrators instructed her to apply for federal student aid, not understanding that her immigration status bars her from receiving it. Others referred her to scholarships she spent hours applying for, only to later learn the scholarships were only available to US citizens.“I feel like every year, I’ve learned about something different that I can’t do,” said Olivia, who came to the US when she was six months old. “I can’t legally work. I can’t get a driver’s license. I can’t leave the country. College is starting to feel like another thing that’s impossible. I’m starting to really worry that I have to give up on school.”Olivia’s dream is to be a pediatrician, but currently she can only afford one community college class a semester. To her parents, it appears as if she’s not working hard enough on her education.“But I’m working myself to the bone,” Olivia insisted. “I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere, and there’s a lot of pain in wanting to be something greater than you’re allowed to be.”Gabriela (also using a pseudonym) understands how hard it is to plan for the future when options are limited. When she was 14, she moved from El Salvador to North Carolina, where she became the first in her family to graduate from high school.CCP would have gone a long way to help the now 21-year-old toward her ultimate goal of becoming an elementary school teacher, but no one ever informed her of the program.Community college administrators who spoke to the Guardian said there are many challenges to getting the word on CCP out. Many high schools don’t have bilingual staff to inform parents of these opportunities. High school counselors tend to focus on advanced learning and programs for students who are headed to traditional four-year colleges instead of CCP.“As an adult, I’ve heard about all of these opportunities that would have made such a difference in my life. I’m 21 and starting from scratch,” said Gabriela. She is legally able to work in the US and has a job as a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school. Like Olivia, Gabriela has encountered administrators who were confused about why she didn’t qualify for in-state tuition. She told another administrator she was undocumented and that person later asked for her social security number.Working at a school only reinforces exactly what she wants to do professionally – and how that career path seems increasingly out of reach. Gabriela works at a school with many undocumented and mixed-status families. Under the Trump administration, many parents are afraid of participating in school life, fearful that something as innocuous as going on a field trip will require government-issued identification that they can’t provide and thus, potentially getting them on Ice’s radar.“I want to comfort them, but at any moment I know that I can be the one who is deported,” Gabriela said. “My work permit can be taken away at any moment, and what happens if I’ve enrolled in school? There are no good options. I want to remain hopeful, but I also feel like: do I really want to go back to school now? Putting myself through school will be such a sacrifice. What if I can’t do anything with my education?”North Carolina organizations such as UndocuCarolina and Pupusas for Education work to fill information and financial gaps in the state for undocumented students, Daca recipients and young people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But according to Glenda Polanco, too many North Carolina students are forced to make “decisions about their future out of desperation”.Polanco is the program director of Pupusas for Education, which started in 2016 to provide scholarships to undocumented students through food sales and has since turned into a non-profit organization to support Latino students. Polanco, now 32, was able to take advantage of early college as a North Carolina high school student, but she didn’t understand at the time that college classes would no longer be free after she graduated high school. If not for an extraordinary act of kindness in the form of a North Carolina couple who paid Polanco’s way through university, college would have been out of the realm of possibility.Polanco acknowledges that she was “lucky”. but says she can still remember moments of sheer panic about the cost of school and her future as an immigrant with a temporary status.“With the young people we work with … there is this daunting, insanity-provoking question: why does it have to be this hard?” Polanco said. “I don’t really have a good answer for them, and the anxiety and depression that comes with that uncertainty takes a toll. There is a psychological impact on the immigrant community – including on our parents. They want to give us the world, but none of us can really say what’s going to happen tomorrow.” More

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      We’ve never seen a more error-prone, incompetent presidency | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      As we pass the 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s second term, it’s time to take note of a key element of how this administration governs: by mistake. I’m being serious. Have we ever seen a more error-prone, incompetent and fumbling presidency? In their rush to implement a barely concealed authoritarian agenda, this administration is producing a litany of blunders, gaffes and slip-ups. At times, they’ll seek to hide those mistakes by projecting a shield of authoritarianism. At other times, they’ll claim the mistake as a method of walking back an unpopular authoritarian agenda item. Either way, it’s a unique style of rule, one that I call “rule by error”.On 11 April, for example, the White House’s taskforce on antisemitism sent Harvard University a letter detailing a laundry list of actions that Harvard would have to undertake if the university wanted to avoid having over $2bn of multiyear federal grants frozen by the government. But the actions were extreme and would have resulted in the end of Harvard’s intellectual independence. Days later, Harvard wrote back: “Nah, I’m good,” they told Trump’s people. (More precisely, they wrote that the university is “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration”.)Harvard’s response garnered much popular support against a bullying Trump administration, including a photo caption in the Onion that read: “Nation Can’t Believe It’s On Harvard’s Side.” Then, a few days later, several unnamed officials told the New York Times that the Trump administration’s letter, which had been signed by three officials from the administration and sent on official letterhead from an official email account, had been sent to Harvard by mistake. Oops.Maybe it was sent in error, which frankly still speaks poorly of this administration, but it’s also possible that as the wind began blowing favorably in Harvard’s direction, some in the administration were looking for a way out of the trap they had set for themselves.But that’s hardly the only error this administration has admitted to, nor is it the worst, not by a long shot. Kilmar Ábrego García, an Salvadorian man who lived in Maryland with his wife and five-year-old child, was grabbed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents on 12 March and deported three days later to El Salvador, despite having a deportation protection order forbidding him from being sent there. In a 7 April court filing, Robert Cerna, the acting Ice field office director, admitted that Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error”.Did owning up to this error result in the return of Ábrego García? Absolutely not. Trump’s administration continues to this day to defy the courts while doubling down on its own failures. During a recent Oval Office meeting between the US president and Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, White House aide Stephen Miller disputed even the existence of an error, despite all the evidence. “The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing that since has been relieved of duty,” Miller said, presumably referring in his tortured English to the fact that the administration fired Erez Reuveni, a career justice department attorney who represented the government in court during the Ábrego García case. The lesson here? You’re better off shooting the messenger than correcting your own mistake.If those errors aren’t enough evidence to constitute a philosophy of error, there’s still plenty more. What about the official notice the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent to some Ukrainian refugees in the United States. More than 240,000 Ukrainians have been settled in the United States under a program titled “U4U” that began under Joe Biden’s presidency. On 3 April, some Ukrainians, it’s unclear how many, received a notice telling them: “DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole,” referring to their legal status to stay in the country. “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate 7 days from the date of this notice,” the email said. Then it warned its recipients: “Do not attempt to remain in the United States–the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”This would unquestionably be a terrifying communication to receive. When CBS News, which first reported the story, asked DHS about the notice, the government replied: “A message was sent in error to some Ukrainians under the U4U program. The U4U parole program has not been terminated.” Sorry!Or how about the time when Nicole Micheroni, a US-born American citizen and immigration lawyer received an email from the Trump administration telling her to self-deport. “It is time for you to leave the United States,” the email read. “If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States.” Oops! They did it again.Or what about using the messaging app Signal to plan a bombing campaign, and then adding a journalist to this top-secret chat? Who hasn’t made this mistake before! And then done it again!How about the widely accepted fact that the calculation the administration has used to determine their outrageous and misguided tariff policy is just plain wrong. The American Enterprise Institute, a center-right thinktank, looked into Trump math and found that it inflates the tariffs that Trump assumes countries are levying on the US by four times. Then again, who cares!Remember when they told us that the US government was sending $50m of condoms to Gaza? The aid was actually sent to a province in Mozambique named Gaza and was earmarked for HIV and tuberculosis prevention. No condoms were part of the aid. Asked about the error, Elon Musk said: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” but then he repeated part of the lie by saying: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50m worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly.”There are plenty more mistakes (tariffs on penguins, anyone?), but you get the point. Trump constantly complains about the existence of some shadowy “deep state”, when in reality he and his entire administration ought to be in a deep state of shame, considering the constant stream of errors and blunders that constitute their rule. No wonder Trump’s job approval rating at the 100-day mark is at a piddly 42%, the second lowest of any president in the last 80 years, according to a new NPR/PBS/Marist News poll. (The lowest? Trump in his first term, by a single point.)People on the right often view Trump as some sort of political genius. Michael Moore, on the other hand, once labeled Trump an “evil genius”. But all I see is a man and an administration who use mistakes to cover up evil practices and use evil practices to excuse mistakes. That’s not genius. It’s dangerous. And if we don’t understand “rule by error” and how to dismantle it, we will all be doomed to live out its mistakes.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York More

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      Trump news at a glance: US and Ukraine sign long-awaited minerals deal; Noem doubles down on deportation threat

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      Ukraine and the US have signed a deal pushed by President Donald Trump that will give the US preferential access to Ukrainian mineral resources and fund investment in Ukraine’s reconstruction.The accord establishes a joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction as Trump tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.After fraught negotiations, which almost collapsed at the last minute, the agreement is central to Kyiv’s efforts to mend ties with Trump and the White House, which frayed after he took office in January.Here are the key stories at a glance:US and Ukraine sign minerals deal after months of negotiationsThe US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share revenues from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defense and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.Read the full storyKristi Noem says Ábrego García would be deported if returned to USKristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, said that if Kilmar Ábrego García was sent back to the US, the Trump administration “would immediately deport him again.” Ábrego García is a Salvadorian man who the Trump administration has admitted was mistakenly deported from Maryland last month. Noem’s comments come as a federal judge again directed the Trump administration to provide information about its efforts so far, if any, to comply with her order to retrieve Ábrego García from an El Salvador prison.Read the full storyTrump officials contacted El Salvador president about Ábrego García, sources sayBehind the scenes, the Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter.The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back.Read the full storyTrump pressures journalist to accept doctored photo as realDonald Trump lashed out at an ABC journalist in a tense TV interview to mark 100 days of his second term in office, in which among other confrontations he angrily pushed correspondent Terry Moran to agree with him that a doctored photo was actually real, telling him: “Why don’t you just say yes.”Read the full storyUS economy shrinks in first quarter of Trump 2.0The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, triggering fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown. Donald Trump, who returned to the White House promising to “make America great again”, sought to blame Joe Biden for the figure.Read the full storyUS supreme court open to religious public charter schoolsThe US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.Read the full storyColumbia student freed after federal judge orders releaseMohsen Mahdawi walked out of immigration detention after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release. The Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Detainees at an immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, sent the outside world a message as a drone flew by: SOS.

      The US is treading the path followed by democracies that descended into authoritarianism and dictatorship, former ambassadors to countries that underwent autocratic takeovers warned.

      The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 29 April 2025. More

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      Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

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      The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter.The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release.The contacts produced no new developments after Bukele rejected the outreach, the people said. The supreme court had ordered the administration to return Ábrego García to the US so that he would face immigration proceedings as he would have, had he not been sent to El Salvador.The discussions appeared to be an effort by the Trump administration to window dress the underlying legal case and build a paper trail it could reference before the US district judge Paula Xinis, who previously ruled that Donald Trump raising the matter in the Oval Office was insufficient.Ábrego García has since been moved out of Cecot, the mega-prison officials known as the terrorism confinement center, to another prison in El Salvador since the supreme court ruling which the administration has repeatedly tried to manufacture uncertainty around or otherwise misrepresent.The recalcitrance from the US administration to comply has been on display for weeks as senior Trump advisers have become increasingly determined to use it as a case to test the extent of presidential power and its boast that the courts have no practical way to ensure quick compliance with orders.At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he would “never tell” if he had been in touch with Bukele. CNN earlier reported Rubio has had discussions with Bukele directly. The New York Times reported there had been a diplomatic note sent to Bukele.“I would never tell you that. And you know who else I’ll never tell? A judge,” Rubio said as he sat next to Trump, adding it was “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president to the united states and the executive branch, not some judge”.And in an interview with ABC News that aired the night before, the US president himself said he “could” tell El Salvador to return Ábrego García.When it was raised to him that he had the ability to call Bukele and say “send him back right now”, Trump deflected responsibility. “I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want to do this,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe remarks could yet pose major headaches for the justice department in court as it prepares in the coming weeks to face a series of probing questions from Ábrego García’s lawyers, in writing and in depositions, about the administration’s efforts to comply with the supreme court ruling.By Trump saying that his lawyers had told him not to call Bukele, it could open the department up to bruising questions about whether they were deliberately flouting the order and place them in threat of contempt.After a closed-door hearing on Wednesday in federal district court in Maryland, Xinis refused the justice department’s request to extend a pause in discovery proceedings, ordering it to respond to questions from Ábrego García’s lawyers about his detention by this Friday.Xinis also said in an expedited deposition schedule that Ábrego García’s lawyers could interview up to six administration officials – including Robert Cerna, a top official at Ice, and Joseph Mazarra, the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security – by next Thursday. More

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      Judge re-ups demand that White House show efforts to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador

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      A federal judge on Wednesday again directed the Trump administration to provide information about its efforts so far, if any, to comply with her order to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from an El Salvador prison.The US district judge Paula Xinis in Maryland temporarily halted her directive for information at the administration’s request last week. But with the seven-day pause expiring at 5pm, she set May deadlines for officials to provide sworn testimony on anything they have done to return Ábrego García to the US.Ábrego García, 29, has been imprisoned in his native El Salvador for nearly seven weeks, while his mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint for Donald Trump’s immigration policies and his increasing friction with the US courts.The president acknowledged to ABC News on Tuesday that he could call El Salvador’s president and have Ábrego García sent back. But Trump doubled down on his claims that Ábrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang.“And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that,” Trump told ABC’s Terry Moran in the Oval Office.Police in Maryland had identified Ábrego García as an MS-13 gang member in 2019 based on his tattoos, his Chicago Bulls hoodie and the word of a criminal informant. But Ábrego García was never charged. His attorneys say the informant claimed Ábrego García was in an MS-13 chapter in New York, where he has never lived.The gang identification by local police prompted the Trump administration to expel him in March to an infamous Salvadorian prison. But the deportation violated a US immigration judge’s order in 2019 that protected him from being sent to El Salvador.Ábrego García had demonstrated to the immigration court that he probably faced persecution by local Salvadorian gangs that terrorized him and his family, court records state. He fled to the US at 16 and lived in Maryland for about 14 years, working construction, getting married and raising three children.Xinis ordered the Trump administration to return him nearly a month ago, on 4 April. The supreme court ruled on 10 April that the administration must facilitate his return.But the case only became more heated. Xinis lambasted a government lawyer who could not explain what, if anything, the Trump administration had done. She then ordered officials to provide sworn testimony and other information to document their efforts.The Trump administration appealed. But a federal appeals court backed Xinis’s order for information in a blistering ruling, saying: “[W]e shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.”The Trump administration resisted, saying the information Xinis sought involved protected state secrets and government deliberations. She in turn scolded government lawyers for ignoring her orders and acting in “bad faith”. More

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      Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi freed after federal judge orders release

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      Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student who was detained for his activism, walked out of immigration detention on Wednesday after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release.Mahdawi had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said Geoffrey Crawford, a US district judge, at a hearing on Wednesday, according to ABC News. “Mr Mahdawi, I will order you released.”Mahdawi was arrested by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview.He is one of a number of international students who have been detained in recent months for their advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. The Trump administration is attempting to deport them using an obscure statute that gives the secretary of state the right to revoke the legal status of people in the country deemed a threat to foreign policy.In his ruling, Crawford stated that the evidence before the court “suggests that Mr Mahdawi is neither a flight risk or a danger to the community, and his release will not interfere with his removal proceedings”.Crawford wrote that the government “failed to demonstrate any legitimate interest in Mr Mahdawi’s continued confinement” and that his “continued detention would likely have a chilling effect on protected speech”.Crawford ordered that Mahdawi be released from prison on bail, pending the resolution of his case in federal court.The order allows Mahdawi to continue residing in Vermont and to travel to New York to attend school and meet with his lawyers. His case in federal court will continue alongside separate immigration proceedings.Upon his release, Mahdawi , greeted supporters and thanked them for their support.“For anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope and faith in the justice system in America,” he said in a brief address. “We are witnessing the fight for justice in America, which means a true democracy, and the fight for justice for Palestinians, which means that both liberation[s] are interconnected, because no one of us is free unless we all are.”Shezza Abboushi Dallal, one of Mahdawi’s attorneys said outside the courtroom on Wednesday that “today’s victory cannot be overstated”.“The court’s order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to,” Abboushi Dallal said. “We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated.”Attorneys for Mahdawi, a lawful permanent US resident, argued that he was being unlawfully detained in “retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights” and say that it was “part of a policy intended to silence and chill the speech of those who advocate for Palestinian human rights”.The Trump administration is seeking to deport 34-year-old Mahdawi, claiming that his presence and activities in the US “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest”. Critics say that the crackdown that swept up Mahdawi constitutes an unprecedented assault on free speech.In new court filings submitted on Monday, the justice department included a two-page letter from Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, saying that Mahdawi’s activities and presence in the US “undermines US policy to combat antisemitism” according to NPR, and that his activities could “potentially undermine the peace process underway in the Middle East”.In a statement following Mahdawi’s release, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared: “No judge, not this one or another, is going to stop the Trump administration from restoring the rule of law to our immigration system.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week, the Vermont senate voted to condemn “the manner and circumstances” of Mahdawi’s arrest, and called for his immediate release.Several Democratic members of Congress – joined by Senator Bernie Sanders – rallied outside of the state department this week on his behalf.“He has used his voice to advocate for peace, justice and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis” Sanders said. “Not only was this action cruel and inhumane, most importantly, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional.”David Myers, a Jewish history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue efforts with Mahdawi, said he was overjoyed at the release of his friend. He called Mahdawi’s detention “a profound miscarriage of justice”.“Mohsen was such a clearcut case, given his extraordinary commitments to non-violence, dialogue across difference, and acknowledging the humanity of all,” he said in an email. “If it is a crime to embody such values, then the edifice of democracy in the United States has completely crumbled.”Mahdawi immigrated to the US over a decade ago and began attending Columbia University in 2021. According to his attorneys, last year, as a student at Columbia, he was “an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing”.Mahdawi, who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, spoke with NPR this week from the Northwest State correctional facility in St Albans, Vermont.“I’m centered, internally I am at peace,” Mahdawi told NPR. “While I still know deeply that this is a level of injustice that I am facing, I have faith. I have faith that justice will prevail.”Also this week, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that a lawsuit filed by the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is also challenging his detention and deportation order, can proceed.The Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri also remain detained and continue to fight against their deportation, which the Trump administration is pursuing on the same foreign policy grounds.Noa Yachot contributed reporting More