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      Undocumented builders face unchecked exploitation amid Trump raids: ‘It’s more work, less pay’

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      As the Trump administration ramps up its crackdown on immigration, undocumented workers in the construction industry claim raids and arrests have emboldened some contractors to cut pay and increase hours.Rogelio, a tile setter, works for various contractors in the the Tucson, Arizona, region. He is undocumented, and did not provide his full name.When Donald Trump returned to office in January, Rogelio said his employers cut their rates by 30% to 40%. Other laborers told him they had endured similar treatment.“They decreased the pay by piece because they know most of the tile setters don’t have social security numbers, so they take advantage of that. We are in their hands,” Rogelio told the Guardian. “It’s more work, less pay. We have no choice right now.“We’re struggling with bills. We’re struggling with food. We’re struggling with everything because we don’t get enough money to pay whatever we need to pay.”Many of the undocumented immigrants Rogelio knows are only leaving home to work, Rogelio said. “We have a lot of fear,” he told the Guardian. “We look for news in the morning to see if we’re able to go to work or not.”With approximately 2.9 million US construction workers – about 34% of the workforce – foreign-born, construction sector lobbyists have publicly urged the Trump administration to soften their hardline stance on immigration. “While the need for safe and secure borders is paramount, mass deportation is not the answer,” Buddy Hughes, chairperson of the National Association of Home Builders, said in a statement.Advocates for workers rights say some operators in the sector are using Trump’s crackdown to abuse undocumented workers.“Especially in construction, there’re a lot of subcontractors that take advantage of this situation by not paying them the fair wage or not even paying them at all,” said Laura Becerra, movement politics director of the non-profit Workers Defense Project based in Texas.Undocumented workers are unlikely to lodge an official complaint, she added. “Since people don’t want to say anything because they don’t want to be put on the radar, and they’re also getting retaliated against if they do say something.”The administration is pushing ahead with public raids on undocumented immigrant workers. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency is arresting an increasing number of immigrants without any criminal history, according to a Guardian analysis of federal government data.“It’s an attack,” Becerra said. “It’s taking a toll on families, families that need to make ends meet, that are already suffering from low wages and doing work no one wants to do.”In Tucson, undocumented workers are avoiding freeways, according to Rogelio. “Freeways are one of the worst places to drive right now because of all the police and border patrol and they look for mostly hispanic people to stop,” he said. “We are living day by day and not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow.”In some areas “there are spots where you can work with no problem,” he said. “But others, there are racist people living there and they don’t want us. They want our work, they want cheap labor, but they don’t want us.“We came here because we want to work and provide for our families. The only reason I’m here, personally, I have two kids who are American citizens. I’m not asking for any benefits from the government.”Reports from across the US suggest undocumented workers are facing unprecedented pressure.Savannah Palmira, director of organizing for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades district council 5, which covers workers in states around the Pacific north-west, said the threat of raids is making it harder for workers to organize.A roofing company in Washington was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) earlier this year after workers filed safety complaints, Palmira claimed, with the fear of retaliation stemming from that case spreading to other job sites, and leaving workers reluctant to speak out and file complaints against abusive work practices.“What contractors are doing is taking an opportunity to not be held accountable for their bad practices,” said Palmira. “The more and more people are starting to talk about workers getting taken advantage of, Ice is getting called on them. They’re taking a tool away from us to be able to put bad contractors on notice.”In Washington, another undocumented construction worker – who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation – said many of his coworkers were “thinking about going back to their countries” due to the reality of life in the US.“The last company I worked for took advantage of people in every situation,” he said, from dissuading injured workers from getting medical attention to denying overtime and breaks.“They say, you are undocumented, so they will pay you $10 an hour because you have no work permit,” he added. “And if not, they will tell Ice.”“In Washington state, immigrants make up 25% of the trades workforce in construction. With a consistent labor shortage and demand for housing constantly growing, residential construction needs all the skilled workers available,” a spokesperson for the Building Industry Association of Washington said in an email. “We’ve provided our members with guidance on how to legally employ immigrants, including verifying the identity and US employment authorization of all employees. We also generally support improving US Immigration policy to allow responsible and law-abiding undocumented worker a pathway to achieving citizenship.”Arizona Builders Alliance did not respond to multiple requests for comment.On a national level the construction industry has repeatedly warned of the negative impacts of immigration raids on what they claim has already been a severe labor shortage in US construction.Asked about contractors allegedly using the ramp up in immigration enforcement to cut pay and increase workloads, the National Association of Home Builders issued a statement from Hughes, its chairperson, which did not directly address the claims.“With the construction industry facing a deficit of more than 200,000 workers, policymakers must consider that any disruption to the labor force would raise housing costs, limit supply and worsen the nation’s housing affordability crisis,” Hughes said. “To address this pressing national issue, NAHB is urging Congress to support meaningful investments in our nation’s education system to encourage students to pursue careers in the skilled trades.“Policymakers should also support sensible immigration policies that preserve and expand existing temporary work visa programs while also creating new market-based visa programs that will accurately match demand with available labor.” More

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      US immigration officials release Iranian woman nabbed from her home’s yard

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      Federal immigration officials have released an Iranian woman whom they allowed to stay in the US without legal status for the last 47 years, until agents in tactical gear and unmarked vehicles suddenly nabbed her in front of her New Orleans home on 22 June – the day after American forces bombed Iran.A letter-writing campaign extolling decades of community service by Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, 64, and care for her neighbors in the quiet Lakeview section of the city helped get her case in front of Steve Scalise, the Republican US House majority leader, and then top Trump administration officials, Kashanian’s neighbor and longtime friend Connie Uddo said.“We got a little over 200 letters in just a week,” Uddo said. “People were calling constantly.”She recounted how Scalise, their community’s congressperson, “was inundated with phone calls and emails and said he had to take a look”. Scalise and his staff met with Kashanian’s family, researched her case, spoke with Trump administration officials and got it to federal immigration officials.Kashanian’s American husband of 35 years, Russ Milne, and their 32-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn, are now able to pick her up from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Basile, Louisiana – three hours west of New Orleans – and bring her home.Kashanian came to the US legally on a student visa in 1978, when she was just 17. She tried to stay beyond her visa by seeking asylum after the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution seized control of her home country in 1979. But court records show she was denied asylum in 1984 and lost her last appeal in 1993.She also tried to get permanent legal residency – colloquially known as a green card – in her 20s by marrying a US citizen, but she admitted it was a sham and got divorced. A federal court ruled in 2001 that the fraudulent marriage disqualified her from ever getting legal status by getting married, no matter how legitimate. The court acknowledged her marriage to Milne was “bona fide” but ruled that she couldn’t overcome the sham one from her 20s.Still, Stephanie Hilferty, a Louisiana state House member and Republican from the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, said Kashanian’s case deserved a second look. And she worked with Kashanian’s family to gather letters about Kashanian’s character and dedication to America, hoping to get them in front of Donald Trump.Scalise also spoke with Russ and Kaitlynn Milne about Kashanian’s case. Scalise then spoke with the Trump administration, ensuring that Ice officials reviewed her file and read the hundreds of letters Hilferty had collected.Kashanian’s court records show immigration officials ordered her deportation several times since 1983. But each time, they made her departure voluntary because of what the court called her “good moral character”. And for the last two decades, a judge allowed her to stay as long as she continued to follow the law and checked in regularly.She has no criminal record and her family says she’s never missed an immigration check-in appointment. But she was never able to attain legal immigration status despite obeying the rules the government and courts imposed on her so she could stay.Scalise’s office is planning to work with Kashanian’s attorney to help her pursue asylum or permanent residency under current immigration laws, which have changed since she first pursued those avenues four decades ago.The timing of Kashanian’s detention came just after the US’s 21 June airstrikes in Iran. Those bombings coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration.Kashanian’s Ice detention also came amid a nationwide crackdown by the agency, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunging many communities into fear and outraging civil liberties advocates. More

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      Ice ‘politically targeted’ farm worker activist Juarez Zeferino, colleagues say

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      Farm worker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, 25, was driving his partner to her job on a tulip farm north of Seattle one March morning when they were pulled over by an unmarked car. A plainclothes agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) emerged and shattered Juarez Zeferino’s front window before handcuffing him, his partner said.The officer drove Juarez Zeferino to a nondescript warehouse – the same one he and other activists had years ago discovered is an unmarked Ice holding facility. After his 25 March detention, dozens gathered outside to demand his release.Instead, he was transferred to the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he has been held ever since.Officially, Juarez Zeferino’s arrest was based on a deportation order. But the activist’s detention comes as the Trump administration has launched an aggressive crackdown against its perceived political enemies, including both immigrants and labor organizers.“We believe, no question, that he was a target,” said Rosalinda Guillen, veteran farm worker organizer and founder of Community to Community Development, where Juarez Zeferino volunteered.The young organizer has played an instrumental role in securing protections for Washington farm workers, including strengthened statewide heat protections for outdoor laborers mandating water breaks when temperatures top 80F, enshrined in 2023. In 2021, he and other activists also won a law guaranteeing farm workers overtime pay. And in 2019, advocacy from Juarez Zeferino and other campaigners about exploitation in the H-2A guest worker program prompted Washington to create the nation’s first-ever oversight committee for foreign workers.“He’s a very humble person, very quiet but yet very determined and willing to go to whatever extent to get victory for his people,” said Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union which Juarez Zeferino helped found.His successful track record has earned him renown in labor and immigrant justice circles across the country. Franks believes it also made him a “political target” for Trump.“We just have to look at the record of everybody that has been targeted by the Trump administration, from the students at Columbia to [the detention of immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra] in Colorado,” he said. “There’s already a track of people that have been targeted to silence them and to make sure that the people that look up to them get silenced.”Reached for comment, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that allegations of Ice politically targeting Juarez Zeferino were “categorically FALSE”, calling him “an illegal alien from Mexico with a final order of removal from a judge”.“The only thing that makes someone a target of Ice is if they are in the United States illegally,” she said.She said the activist, whom she called “Juan Juarez-Ceferino,” refused to comply with Ice during his arrest, and that officers used the “minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation” and protect themselves.In court, a DHS attorney also said Juarez Zeferino was noncompliant during his arrest, and claimed he was a flight risk because he had previously missed a court hearing.His lawyer Larkin VanDerhoef denied that his client was a flight risk, saying he was unaware of his missed court date. In court, he noted that Juarez Zeferino had received dozens of letters, demonstrating that he is a “positive force”.He said Juarez Zeferino complied with the officers who arrested him. “Lelo had opened his window to talk to officers and was asking to see their warrant for his arrest when they smashed his window,” he said, adding that a group of officers from not only Ice, but also border patrol, homeland security investigations, and the Drug Enforcement Administration worked together to arrest him.Juarez Zeferino’s detention has sparked concern among other immigrant workers fighting for better labor conditions, and since his arrest, others have also been detained. In April armed Customs and Border Protection agents raided a Vermont dairy farm and arrested eight immigrant laborers who were involved with a labor rights campaign. Last month, Ice also arrested farm worker leaders in New York.“This is a good strategy to squelch union organizing as well as farm worker advocacy, but it is horrifying to us that some of the people who make the lowest salaries in our country are being deported even as they provide the necessary workforce to keep our country fed,” said Julie Taylor, executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization which supports farm worker organizing.From a traffic stop to a deportation orderJuarez Zeferino was arrested on the grounds of a 2018 deportation order. It stemmed from a 2015 traffic stop by Bellingham, Washington, police officers who then turned him over to Ice.After the stop, Juarez Zeferino – then a minor – was detained for less than 24 hours. He later sued Bellingham and its police department saying that his arrest was the result of racial profiling; the city settled for $100,000.The farm worker activist’s friends and legal counsel said he was unaware of the deportation order, which was mailed to an address Juarez Zeferino provided but then bounced back to the government.“He wasn’t in hiding,” said Franks. “He was out in the open, doing media and serving on city commissions.”His lawyer VanDerhoef successfully had the order reopened in April this year – just one day before Juarez Zeferino was due to be placed on a deportation flight.But in May, an immigration court judge ruled that she had no jurisdiction to grant bond to Juarez Zeferino – a decision VanDerhoef quickly appealed.VanDerhoef said the judge’s ruling was based on an unusual legal interpretation by Tacoma judges, who routinely argue that they lack jurisdiction to issue bonds to immigrants who entered the country without a visa. He signed his client on to a class-action lawsuit focused on the issue.He also filed a motion to terminate the case against his client. In June, a court denied the motion, so the next step will probably be to apply for asylum in the US.“We’re basically weighing what other options he has, what he can apply for,” VanDerhoef said.Aaron Korthuis, an attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, who is representing Juarez Zeferino in the class-action lawsuit, said he did not doubt the activist was a political target.“A lot of what this administration is doing is attempting to send a message through its arrests [and] through its removals,” he said. “It shouldn’t shock anyone that who they are targeting for arrest is part and parcel of the larger effort to intimidate, exact retribution, and send a message.”VanDerhoef declined to comment on whether or not his client’s arrest was politically motivated, but said it was unsurprising that it had sparked concern about Trump’s immigration policies among other farm workers. “The last thing I want to do is cause any more fear or panic that is already high among immigrant communities,” he said. “But I do think this administration has shown that nothing is off the table when it comes to who they will target and also the tactics they use.”Experts say the Trump administration has violated court norms and ignored court orders in its attacks on immigrants. The president has also made life harder for immigration attorneys, including in a memorandum claiming they engage in “unscrupulous behavior”. And the sheer number of Ice raids conducted under his administration also makes it harder for such lawyers to do their jobs, said VanDerhoef.In the north-east US, Ice arrests have increased so much that officials are “running into space issues”, said VanDerhoef. The immigration prison where Juarez Zeferino is being held has so far exceeded its capacity that some people have been transferred without warning to facilities in Los Angeles and Alaska.The overcrowding also creates challenges when it comes to representation, VanDerhoef said. These days, visitation rooms are often so overbooked that he and other attorneys are facing “half a day waits” to meet with their clients.He worries that attorneys cannot keep up with the increase in Ice arrests. “There are not significantly more lawyers doing this work even though there are significantly more people being detained,” he said.‘Back to the struggle’Guillen, the veteran farm worker organizer, first met Juarez Zeferino in 2013, when he he was a 13-year-old who had recently arrived in the US from Mexico. He was so small that he looked more like he was 11, she said, but he was “a hard worker” and “fierce”.That year, Juarez Zeferino and about 200 workers on a Washington berry farm walked off the job demanding better working conditions and pay. Over the next four years, they organized work stoppages and boycotts, with Juarez Zeferino – who speaks English, Spanish and his native Mixteco – often serving as a spokesperson.In 2017, the workers were granted a union election, resulting in the formation of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farm worker union representing hundreds of Indigenous farm workers.It’s a “nightmare” organization for Trump, who doesn’t want to see immigrant laborers organized, said Guillen. “These are communities that normally are marginalized, fighting for their rights and winning,” she said.Since Juarez Zeferino’s arrest, calls for his freedom have met with an outpouring of support, Guillen said.“All the legislators know him, and there was immediate support for him in letters and calls,” she said.But she wishes Democrats would do more to fight for workers like him, including by trying to stop Ice arrests within Washington. “Democrats need to be bolder,” she said.Franks agreed, and said workers like Juarez Zeferino should obtain amnesty from Ice.“Just a couple years ago we were essential workers and the heroes but now we’re the terrorists and the criminals,” he said.Asked if she had visited Juarez Zeferino, Guillen said, “I can’t do it.” She worries about his health and wellbeing in the facility.Franks, too, said he was concerned that the “already skinny” Juarez Zeferino will become malnourished while in detention. But when he has visited the young activist, he said he was “trying to keep his spirits up”.“He’s still messing around and joking around,” he said. “And he’s like, ‘when I get out, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.’”Asked what is on that to-do list, Franks said Juarez Zeferino wants to be reunited with his family. “And he wants to get back to the struggle,” he said. More

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      ‘I want my vote back’: Trump-voting family stunned after Canadian mother detained over immigration status

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      The family of a Canadian national who supported Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants say they are feeling betrayed after federal agents recently detained the woman in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency – and began working to expel her from the country.“We feel totally blindsided,” Cynthia Olivera’s husband – US citizen and self-identified Trump voter Francisco Olivera – told the California news station KGTV. “I want my vote back.”Cynthia Olivera, a 45-year-old mother of three US-born children, thus joined a growing list of examples contradicting the Trump administration’s claims that the immigration crackdown it has spearheaded since the president’s return to the Oval Office in January has prioritized targeting dangerous criminals.Being in the US without legal status is generally a civil infraction rather than a criminal violation. Nonetheless, despite its claim that the immigration crackdown is mainly meant to rid the US of violent criminals, the White House has maintained that anyone in the US who lacks legal status is a criminal subject to deportationOlivera was unwittingly thrust under the weight of those policies after Trump spent his successful 2024 presidential campaign promising to pursue them, earning her husband’s vote along the way, according to what he told KGTV. She was just 10 when her parents brought her to the US from Toronto without permission, she said to the station.By 1999, US immigration officials at the Buffalo border crossing had determined Olivera was living in the country without legal status and obtained an expedited order to deport her. But she was able to return to the US by driving to San Diego from Mexico within a few months.“They didn’t ask me for my citizenship – they didn’t do nothing,” Olivera would later say to KGTV. “They just waved me in.”She recounted spending the next 25 years working in Los Angeles, paying taxes and providing for her family. KGVT reported that its investigative team scoured California and federal court databases, but the unit found no criminal charges under Cynthia Oliver’s name.In 2024, toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden’s administration granted her a permit allowing her to work legally in the US. She had also been navigating the process to obtain legal permanent US residency – colloquially referred to as a green card – for years.Nonetheless, instead of supporting the candidate Biden endorsed to succeed him, then vice-president Kamala Harris, Olivera’s husband supported Trump in November’s White House election. He told KGTV that Trump’s promises to deport criminals en masse appealed to both him and Cynthia. And, echoing other mixed immigration status families who have had members affected by Trump’s policies, the Oliveras did not believe she would be hurt by her lack of legal US residency.They learned she would in fact be affected by her immigration status when she went for a green card interview in Chatsworth, California, on 13 June. She was detained there by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, according to a change.org petition pleading for compassion on behalf of Cynthia.Olivera has since been transferred to an Ice detention center in El Paso, Texas, to await being deported.Speaking to KGTV over a video call from the El Paso facility, Olivera suggested her treatment was undeserved.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The US is my country,” Olivera remarked to the station in an interview published on 3 July. “That’s where I met my husband. That’s where I went to high school, junior high, elementary [school]. That’s where I had my kids.”But the Trump administration had little sympathy for Olivera, despite her husband’s support of the president, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that Cynthia was “an illegal alien from Canada”.Olivera had been “previously deported and chose to ignore our law and again illegally entered the country”, said the spokesperson’s statement, as reported by Newsweek. The statement noted that re-entering the US without permission after being deported is a felony, and it said Olivera would remain in Ice’s custody “pending removal to Canada”.Canada’s government commented to KGTV that it was aware of Olivera’s detention but could not intervene on her behalf because “every country or territory decides who can enter or exit through its borders”.Francisco Olivera, for his part, summed up his and his wife’s disillusion by saying: “My wife … up until [a couple of weeks] ago, was a strong believer in what was going to happen the next four years.”Cynthia Olivera, meanwhile, said she has told officials she and her husband are willing to pay for her to fly to Canada, where she plans to stay in Mississauga with a cousin. Yet there had been no immediate indication when she may be able to travel to Canada.As she fought back tears, Olivera said to KGTV: “The only crime I committed is to love this country and to work hard and to provide for my kids.” More

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      Federal judge again halts deportation of eight immigrants to South Sudan

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      A federal judge has briefly halted the deportations of eight immigrants to war-torn South Sudan, the latest twist in a case that came hours after the supreme court cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport the men to a country where almost none of them have ties.On Thursday, the nation’s highest court affirmed that US immigration officials can quickly deport people to countries to which they have no connection. Then on Friday afternoon, in an extraordinary Fourth of July hearing, the district judge Randolph Moss sent the case north from Washington to another judge in Boston. Moss concluded that the judge best equipped to deal with the issues was Brian Murphy, whose rulings led to the initial halt of the Trump administration’s effort to begin deportations to the eastern African country.Moss extended his order halting the deportation until 4.30pm Eastern time, but it was unclear whether Murphy would act on the federal holiday to further limit the removal. Moss said new claims by the immigrants’ lawyers deserved a hearing.The eight men awaiting deportation are from countries including Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan. All have been convicted of serious crimes, which the Trump administration has emphasized in justifying their banishment. Many had either finished or were close to finishing serving sentences, and had “orders of removal” directing them to leave the US.A lawyer for the men have said they could “face perilous conditions” upon arriving in the country. South Sudan is enmeshed in civil war, and the US government advises no one should travel there before making their own funeral arrangements.The administration has been trying to deport the immigrants for weeks. The government flew them to the US naval base in Djibouti but couldn’t move them further because Murphy had ruled no immigrant could be sent to a new country without a chance to have a court hearing.The supreme court vacated that decision last month, and then Thursday night issued a new order clarifying that that meant the immigrants could be moved to South Sudan. Lawyers for the immigrants filed an emergency request to halt their removal later that night.The case was assigned to Moss, who briefly barred the administration from moving the immigrants from Djibouti to South Sudan until his afternoon hearing concluded. He slightly extended that bar after he sent the case to Murphy. The administration has said it expected to fly the immigrants to South Sudan sometime on Friday. More

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      Trump expected to sign tax-and-spending bill in win for administration

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      Donald Trump is expected to sign his sweeping spending package into law on Friday during a Fourth of July picnic at the White House, setting up significant cutbacks on federal safety-net programs and increasing funds for aggressive immigration enforcement.Trump has touted the legislation’s passage as a “birthday present for America”, speaking before a crowd at a campaign-style rally in Iowa on Thursday evening, even as Democrats expressed their displeasure at the spending package.After months of deliberations, the bill passed by a single vote in the Senate and later passed the House with a 219 to 213 vote on Thursday, with only two Republicans voting against it. The sweeping legislation accomplishes what rightwingers have pushed for, for decades, as the Guardian explained this week, and provides Trump a huge legislative win.The bill, once signed into law, will significantly cut taxes, building on the 2017 tax cuts during Trump’s first term. Although temporary tax exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest are included, research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the bill is skewed to the rich, with the wealthiest in the US benefiting the most from the tax relief.Additionally, the law, once signed by Trump, will add new restrictions to Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled people, and Snap, also known as food stamps, which helps low-income people afford food. Researchers estimate that the Medicaid cutbacks will leave as many as 11.8 million people without healthcare, while 8 million people will lose their Snap benefits. Critics say that the Medicaid cuts will have massive ripple effects on healthcare nationwide.“This is highway robbery,” the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The bill Republicans just passed steals from you to give to the rich.”Proponents of the bill say that the Medicaid and Snap changes are designed to root out waste and abuse.Additionally, the spending package will allocate $170m to immigration enforcement, a monumental amount of money that will help support the Trump administration’s push to engage in “mass deportations”.“This disgraceful, anti-immigrant budget hands the Trump administration a blank check to further ramp up its shameful efforts to terrorize American communities and separate families,” said Nicole Melaku, the executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, an immigrants’ rights organization. “Instead of safeguarding people’s access to healthcare and wellness, the bill gives tax cuts to big corporations and funnels billions of dollars to hire more immigration agents, build more immigration jails and deny people their fair day in court.”Already, the Trump administration has engaged in widespread attacks on immigrant communities, by increasing resources to immigration enforcement operations.“This budget promises to supercharge US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests that disappear community members, leave children parentless and threaten constitutional and due-process rights for all of us,” said Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, alegal organization.A recent Guardian analysis shows that undocumented immigrants without any criminal history have been arrested at an exponentially increasing rate, after top White House officials instructed agents to increase arrests.Trump temporarily walked back some of Ice’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions after complaints from leaders in the farming and hospitality industries: last month, the Trump administration engaged in a short-lived pause on raids at farms, restaurants and hotels. But at Thursday’s event, Trump again brought up the idea of pausing large-scale enforcement on farms.“If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?” Trump said to the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. “We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.”In addition to tax cuts, restrictions on Medicaid and Snap and the aggressive supercharging of immigration enforcement, the bill seeks to end green energy incentives created under Joe Biden, seen as a further blow against efforts to combat the climate crisis.The US budget deficit will increase with this bill, leading to opposition by some Trump allies. The non-partisan congressional budget office estimates the bill will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034, leading to clashes with some rightwingers.One of the two Republicans who voted against the bill, Thomas Massie, said he opposed the spending bill “because it will significantly increase US budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Elon Musk, the rightwing billionaire who established the federal government’s office tasked with slashing federal spending during the first few months of the Trump administration, has also publicly called out the spending bill. Days before Congress passed the bill, Musk repeated his call for the creation of a new political party to oppose the Republicans and Democrats. More

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      Democratic lawmakers denied entry to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration jail

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      A group of Florida lawmakers were denied entry on Thursday into the new Florida-based immigration jail dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” one day after the first immigrant detainees began to arrive.Five Democratic lawmakers attempted to enter the facility, which was previously toured on Tuesday by White House officials, but were stopped by law enforcement officers from local agencies, according to the state representative Anna Eskamani in an interview with CNN.“This is a blatant abuse of power and an attempt to conceal human rights violations from the public eye,” the five said in a joint statement.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that the first detentions at the facility began on Wednesday, but did not respond to questions regarding the number of people detained so far.The controversial Everglades jail was quickly set up in a partnership between the federal and Florida state governments. Sitting approximately 50 miles (80km) west of Miami, the remote facility is managed by the state but in large part funded the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).“It might be as good as the real Alcatraz. A little controversial, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said on Tuesday after touring the site. During the tour, Trump joked about immigrants being pursued by snakes and alligators if they attempted to escape.Since Trump took office, Florida has been assisting the administration’s goals in rounding up a large number of immigrants to be detained and deported. Through a program called 287(g), local law enforcement agencies partner with DHS and become deputized to carry out immigration enforcement operations. According to the state government, Florida has more 287(g) deputizations than any other state in the US, which has allowed it to engage in widespread operations targeting immigrant communities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionImmigrants arrested by Florida law enforcement under the arrangement will be detained at the facility, DHS said.“You’ll have a lot of people that will deport on their own because they don’t want to end up in an Alligator Alcatraz, or some of these other places,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis said after touring the facility with Trump. “This is a model, but we need other states to step up.”Being undocumented in the US is not a crime; rather, it is a civil offense. Data analysis by the Guardian shows that there has been a dramatic nationwide increase in the arrest of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record. The White House has pressured immigration officials to arrest 3,000 people per day, with the reported goal of reaching one million a year.Two non-profit groups have sued DHS, claiming the site’s buildup is violating environmental policies. DHS said it expects the facility to expand quickly to 5,000 beds. More

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      El Salvador’s president denies that Kilmar Ábrego García was abused in notorious prison

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      The president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in the country before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.Bukele showed pictures and video of Ábrego García in a detention cell, adding: “If he’d been tortured, sleep-deprived, and starved, why does he look so well in every picture?”Ábrego García’s lawyers said last week that he had suffered “severe beatings”, sleep deprivation, malnutrition and other forms of torture while he was held in El Salvador’s notorious anti-terrorism prison, Cecot.Ábrego García said detainees at Cecot “were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day and minimal access to sanitation”.His lawyers say he lost 31 pounds during his first two weeks of confinement.They said that, at one point, Ábrego García and four other inmates were transferred to a different part of the prison, “where they were photographed with mattresses and better food – photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions”.Bukele made no reference to whether the photos he showed to claim Ábrego García wasn’t mistreated were taken in a nicer part of the prison.Bukele recently struck a deal under which the US will pay about $6m for El Salvador to imprison members of what the US administration claims are members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, two gangs, for a year. According to Maryland senator Chris van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Ábrego García while he was detained there, the Trump administration intends to provide up to $15m to El Salvador for the controversial detention service.Bukele’s remarks came as the Tennessee judge in Ábrego García’s human-smuggling complaint ordered both sides to stop making public statements, after Ábrego García’s legal team accused the government of attempting to smear him without evidence as a “monster”, “terrorist” and “barbarian”.Lawyers for Ábrego García argued in a court filing that the government had violated a local rule barring comments that could be prejudicial to a fair trial.“For months, the government has made extensive and inflammatory extrajudicial comments about Mr Ábrego that are likely to prejudice his right to a fair trial,” Ábrego García’s lawyers said in a filing.“These comments continued unabated – if anything they ramped up – since his indictment in this district, making clear the government’s intent to engage in a ‘trial by newspaper’.”The US district judge Waverly Crenshaw issued the gag order in a two-sentence ruling.Ábrego García’s legal team has accused the government of trying to convict him in the court of public opinion since it acknowledged that it had mistakenly sent him to a prison in El Salvador despite a court order barring the move.“As Mr Ábrego’s plight captured national attention, officials occupying the highest positions of the United States government baselessly labeled him a ‘gangbanger’, ‘monster’, ‘illegal predator’, ‘illegal alien terrorist’, ‘wife beater’, ‘barbarian’ and ‘human trafficker,’” the filing said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe attorneys singled out the vice-president, JD Vance, who they said had lied when he called Ábrego García a “convicted MS-13 gang member”.They also said that Trump administration officials had made 20 more public statements about their client when he was arraigned, including in remarks by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.They also said the attorney general, Pam Bondi, accused their client of crimes he hadn’t been accused of, including links to a murder case. In sum, the statements had asserted Ábrego García’s guilt “without regard to the judicial process or the presumption of innocence”, the filing said.According to the documents filed on Wednesday, officials within the prison acknowledged that Ábrego García was not a gang member, and that his tattoos did not indicate a gang affiliation.“Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Ábrego García’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine’,” according to the filing, and they kept him in a cell separate from those accused of gang membership.The prison officials, however, threatened to move Ábrego García into a cell with gang members whom officials said “would ‘tear’ him apart”.Separately, US prosecutors have agreed with a request by Ábrego García’s lawyers to delay his release from Tennessee jail over fears that the Trump administration could move to deport the Salvadorian national a second time.In a filing on Friday, lawyers for Ábrego García asked the judge overseeing a federal complaint that he was involved in human smuggling to delay his release because of “contradictory statements” by the Trump’s administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release.The justice department has said it plans to try the Maryland construction worker on the smuggling charges, but also that it plans to deport him but has not said when. 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