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      Biggest US labor unions fuel No Kings protests against Trump: ‘You need a voice to have freedom’

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      Recovery from a recent surgery for colon cancer will not stop James Phipps, 75, from attending Saturday’s No Kings demonstration in Chicago, Illinois. “I have a burning desire to be a part of the protest.” he said, “because that’s all I’ve done all my life.”Phipps, born in Marks, Mississippi, was involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960s from the age of 13, when he was part of racially integrating his local high school and organizing with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At 15, he became involved in the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU), which organized sharecroppers for better wages.At the time, the MFLU was organizing cotton pickers. “They were paid 30 cents an hour, working in the hot sun, 10 hours a day, which was $3, two and half cents per pound of cotton,” said Phipps. “It broke their necks, backs, pelvis and knees.”“They had no medical care,” he added. “That’s one of the key things in my mind right now.”Phipps, who now works in administrative support in Cook county, is a member of SEIU Local 73.He was thankful he had health insurance to cover his recent cancer surgery. The federal government shutdown continues, after Democrats demanded that Republicans address recent Medicaid cuts under Donald Trump and extend health insurance subsidies scheduled to expire at the end of the year. The expiration would set the stage for rapidly rising insurance premiums and risk driving an estimated 3.1 million Americans off health insurance.View image in fullscreen“You have greedy men thinking about one thing, and that’s about enhancing their pocketbook, their financial wellbeing,” said Phipps, who has also been alarmed by aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids in Chicago. The Trump administration has defended the raids with false and misleading claims about crime.“There’s no reason why you should walk the streets, taking people out of their home, and they’ve been here for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “I had Mexican neighbors live next door to me 41 years. They were some of my best friends in life. We coalesced with each other.“We were social with neighbors, with each other, and we loved each other. When one saw somebody died or there was a problem, we were already there.”There are parallels, Phipps said, between how immigrants are being treated under Trump to the discriminatory laws he grew up under in Mississippi.“The same struggle that Mexican Americans and people of color are going through, we went through that since 1619, especially in the south when we had Jim Crow,” he said. “If you dared do anything at that time to confront them about the way you were treated, you would end up being found in the river or lynched somewhere, so I identify with what is going on.”‘We didn’t want kings then, and we don’t want kings now’Some of the largest labor unions in the US are involved in organizing the No Kings protests, with more than 2,600 demonstrations planned across all 50 states, with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and American Federation of Teachers anchoring events.“Unions understand that a voice at work creates power for regular people at work. Unions understand that a voice in democracy creates power for regular folks, for working folks in a society,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “These are two of the main ways that regular folks have any power.“We and labor understand that you need to have a voice to have freedom. Freedom does not come without a voice.”While prominent Republicans and Trump administration officials have claimed the protests amount to “hate America” rallies – in stark contrast to Trump’s description of January 6 rioters as “patriots”. The Republican congressman Tom Emmer went so far as to suggest that Democrats were bowing to the “pro-terrorist wing of their party” by standing by demands that Republicans address recent Medicaid cuts and extend health insurance subsidies.Weingarten said the events were actually a response to abuses of power by Trump, and designed to express frustration over his administration’s failure to deal with issues such as soaring grocery and healthcare prices.“I love America and I resent anyone attempting to take away my patriotism because I want the promise of America to be real for all Americans,” she said. “That’s where labor is. They want the promise of America to be real for our members, and for their families, and for the people we serve.View image in fullscreen“Our founders were a rebellious lot who said, ‘We don’t want kings.’ And now 249 years later, people are saying, ‘No, we meant it.’ There’s a lot of things that we’ve changed in America, but one of the things that had stayed constant is we didn’t want kings then, and we don’t want kings now.”“The real threat to this country isn’t peaceful protesters. It’s politicians shutting down our government to protect billionaires and corporate greed,” said Jaime Contreras, executive vice-president for SEIU 32 BJ, which represents 185,000 janitors, security officers, airport workers and other service employees around the east coast of the US. “What’s ironic to me is you call peaceful protesters ‘terrorists’, but then the people who destroyed our nation’s Capitol building ‘patriots’.“On 18 October, SEIU members will be in the streets across the country as part of the No Kings [protests], because America belongs to the people, working people, not to billionaires or a few politicians who think they can rule like kings in a democracy like ours.” More

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      At least 11 detained after protesters and police clash outside Chicago Ice center

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      At least 11 people were taken into custody outside the Broadview Ice detention center in the Chicago area after heated confrontations between Illinois state police and protesters on Friday.Authorities had instructed demonstrators to remain in designated “protest zones”, but tensions escalated when officers moved to clear the roadway.According to the Chicago Tribune, at about 8am, protesters advanced toward the building. Within minutes, dozens of troopers equipped with helmets and batons moved in to push the crowd back. Officers tackled and dragged several individuals. Much of the clash was captured on video and posted to social media.At one point, protesters tried to intervene as a fellow demonstrator was detained. Later in the day, groups blew whistles at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entering and leaving the facility.As arrests took place, chants of: “Who do you protect?” echoed through the crowd during tense exchanges with police, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.Protester and congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh voiced frustration over the restrictions. “A free speech zone implies that everywhere else is not a free speech zone,” she told the Associated Press. Abughazaleh said she was struck in the face with a baton and witnessed an officer push a woman to the ground.The Broadview facility has been the scene of recurring unrest in recent weeks. Federal agents have previously used teargas and other chemical agents on protesters and journalists. Illinois state police reported that some participants blocked a nearby street on Friday and refused to move to the authorized protest area.Local officials have faced mounting challenges managing hundreds of demonstrators who gather outside the detention center, mainly on Fridays and Sundays. Federal agents have repeatedly used chemical irritants and so-called “less-lethal” rounds to disperse crowds.Protests began around 8am Friday, appearing to violate the recent directive of Broadview’s mayor, Katrina Thompson, limiting demonstrations to the hours between 9am and 6pm.Thompson has been outspoken in her criticism of federal agents’ conduct, saying, “This is not Putin’s Russia,” and calling on federal officials to cooperate with ongoing criminal investigations.On Monday, Thompson reduced the size of the designated protest area, an arrangement previously coordinated with state and county law enforcement, citing that last week’s demonstrations “degenerated into chaos” and disrupted the village’s 8,000 residents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFriday’s clash followed a court order issued a day earlier requiring federal agents in Illinois to wear body cameras during immigration operations, after multiple incidents involving pepper balls, smoke grenades and teargas against protesters and local police.JB Pritzker, Illinois’s governor, who has criticized the deployment of federal forces to the state, praised the ruling.“The idea that there’s any justification for people tossing teargas in the context of people’s protests, I think the judge reacted to that properly by ordering that now the federal agents are required to have body cameras on them because they clearly lie about what goes on,” Pritzker said.The Trump administration targeted Chicago with federal law enforcement in August, falsely claiming there had been a rise in crime in the city in recent years. Since then, there have been reports of Ice increasingly aggressive enforcement in communities, including helicopters hovering over apartment raids. More

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      Trump says six were killed in US strike on another boat allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela

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      Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard.“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”Trump wrote that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and said that it was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks” but did not provide any evidence. Trump said that defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the strike on Tuesday morning and also shared video footage of the strike, as he has with prior strikes.This marks the fifth deadly US strike in the Caribbean, according to the Associated Press since the beginning of September, and comes just weeks after Trump administration officials said that the US is now in a “non international armed conflict” with drug cartels.An internal Trump administration memo obtained by the New York Times earlier this month reportedly stated that Trump has deemed cartels engaged in drug smuggling as “non-state armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.The US has defendedthe boat strikes as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, which has been designated a foreign terrorist organization. The White House has argued that military action is a necessary escalation to disrupt the flow of drugs into the US.However, some lawmakers and human rights groups have questioned the legality of the attacks. In September, experts at the United Nations condemned the US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executions.“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the experts said. “Criminal activities should be disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.”Last week, Colombian president Gustavo Petro said that there were “indications” that one of the recently targeted boats was Colombian “and had Colombians onboard”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House quickly pushed back against Petro’s claims, demanding that he retract his statement, which the White House described as “baseless and reprehensible”.Also last week, an attempt in the US Senate to prevent further US strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats off the coast of Venezuela without congressional approval failed, after nearly all Republicans and Democratic Senator John Fetterman voted against the measure. More

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      Obama takes aim at companies cutting deals with Trump: ‘We have capacity to take a stand’

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      Barack Obama took aim at institutions and businesses who made deals or worked out settlements with the Trump administration, noting on a new podcast episode: “We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand.”In a talk with Marc Maron on the comedian’s last edition of his long-running WTF With Marc Maron, the former US president said institutions – including law firms, universities and businesses – that have changed course during the Trump administration should have stood by their convictions.Instead of bending to the administration, Obama noted that universities should say: “This will hurt if we lose some grant money in the federal government, but that’s what endowments are for. Let’s see if we can ride this out, because what we’re not going to do is compromise our basic academic independence.”He also noted that the organizations that did concede to Trump should be able to say: “We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that’s been cooked up by Steve Miller,” in reference to the top White House aide and architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policy.Obama, whose two terms preceded the first Trump administration, also said that companies should also have stood up against administration pressure campaign to turn back from diversity hiring.“We think it’s important, because of what this country is, to hire people from different backgrounds,” Obama said.Universities, law firms and other businesses have all reached agreements with the White House, including dropping DEI targets and agreeing to rein in campus antisemitism in exchange for restoration of federal funding. A series of powerful Washington law firms have also agreed to provide free legal services to the administration, while corporations have rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.Disney, a frequent target of political-ideological factions on the left and right, scrapped its internal “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” program for “Opportunity & Inclusion” to empower “all through access, opportunity, and a culture of belonging”.Elsewhere in the interview, Obama acknowledged that integrity comes at a price.“Sometimes it’s going to be uncomfortable,” he told Maron, referencing a joke that Maron made in his stand-up routine that Democrats annoyed the average American into fascism.“It cracked me up,” Obama said. “I wasn’t as funny about saying this, but four or five years ago I said: ‘Look, you can’t just be a scold all the time. You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging you’ve got some blind spots, too.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVulnerability, he said, comes in standing up for core convictions but not attempting to assert “that I am so righteous, and so pure, and so insightful, that there isn’t the possibility I’m wrong on this.“There was this weird progressive language,” he said, that implied a “holier than thou superiority that’s not different to what we used to joke about coming from the right and the moral majority … and certain fundamentalism that I think was dangerous”.Maron posted the final episode of his show on Monday after 16 years of hosting and with more than 1,600 installments that he’s broadcast from his Los Angeles garage. Obama brought the 62-year-old host, stand-up comic and actor to his Washington office for the last interview.Obama asked the initial questions. “How are you feeling about this whole thing?” he said, “transition, moving on from this thing that has been one of the defining parts of your career and your life?”“I feel OK,” Maron answered. “I feel like I’m sort of ready for the break, but there is sort of a fear there, of what do I do now? I’m busy. But, not unlike your job … I’ve got a lot of people who over the last 16 years have grown to rely on me.” More

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      ‘Cavalier and aggressive’: why are border agents flooding into US cities?

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      Border patrol officers have become ubiquitous footsoldiers in Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, and lawyers and human rights advocates worry that the agency is expanding its aggressive tactics into cities far from its conventional range.Led by Gregory Bovino, a particularly hardline Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sector chief from southern California, border patrol agents have become a daily presence in several major cities across the US.Earlier this month in Chicago’s Southwest Side, a border patrol shot a woman multiple times amid protests against the Trump administration’s militarized immigration raids in the city.This summer in Los Angeles, border agents on horseback swept through a public park downtown – riding alongside national guard troops and other agents in military vehicles. In southern California, videos of border patrol agents pinning down and beating 48-year-old landscaper ​​Narciso Barranco went viral.Agents have also made arrests in California’s agricultural Central Valley and at New York immigration courthouses. They have set up immigration checkpoints in Washington DC.Lawyers and human rights advocates say the agents, who are trained to block illegal entries, drug smugglers and human traffickers at the country’s borders, may be ill-suited to conduct civil immigration enforcement in urban communities.“The border patrol is certainly quite cavalier, and has been very aggressive historically as it goes about its enforcement responsibilities,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. They tend to do their work in rural places and isolated parts of the United States. And they generally are not trained in community interactions and policing.”View image in fullscreenUntil recently, the agency usually worked close to the southern US border – especially along the south-western border – though the department has long had the authority to conduct patrols more inland.Under a 1946 statute, Border Patrol agents have the ability to conduct warrantless searches within a “reasonable distance” – or up to 100 miles – from any international boundaries. Those boundaries include international land borders as well as coastlines – so in effect, their range encapsulates most US major cities – including LA, New York and Washington DC. Chicago falls within this 100-mile zone, because the Great Lakes are considered a maritime boundary.Nearly two-thirds of the US population lives within the zone.Still, García Hernández said, until recently, it was highly uncommon to see border patrol agents stray far from the south-western border.But now illegal border crossings are at a historic low, and the administration has deployed thousands of military personnel to the southern border, freeing up the Border Patrol, he said – ready and available as force multipliers in the administration’s deportation mission. The department currently has about 19,000 agents. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which encompasses the Border Patrol, is about 60,000 strong – making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), meanwhile, has about 5,500 immigration enforcement officers, plus an additional 7,000 agents tasked with investigating cross-border criminal activities. Though the agency is making a massive push to hire 10,000 more agents, that process is expected to take some time.It’s unclear exactly how many Border Patrol agents have joined up with Ice and other federal agents in raids targeting Chicago, Los Angeles and other big cities.DHS did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s query.As border agents stray away from their original mission, legal experts have raised concerns that they are bringing along with them a culture of combative enforcement. “CBP has a history of problematic treatment of people, in my opinion, perhaps worse than any other law enforcement agency,” said Deborah Anthony, a professor of legal studies at University of Illinois Springfield with an expertise in constitutional law and the legality of Border Patrol operations.The Border Patrol has long had “more leeway” with the US constitution’s fourth amendment’s protections against random and arbitrary stops and searches, Anthony said. They are able to set up checkpoints and, in some cases, roving patrols, she said – but these authorities are limited by law.Agents cannot pull people over without “reasonable suspicion” of an immigration violation, or search homes or vehicles without a warrant or probable cause.In recent deployments, however, agents appear to be flouting these restrictions. Earlier this month, Border Patrol agents, along with other federal agents, conducted a military-style immigration raid of an apartment complex in Chicago. Video evidence showed agents indiscriminately bursting through front doors.“All the evidence suggests there were egregious violations of rights, both in the treatment of people, in the lack of a warrant, in the breaking down of people’s doors, in what seems to be almost indiscriminate targeting of almost everyone in the building,” Anthony said.View image in fullscreenImmigrant advocates have had limited success in opposing this type of indiscriminate enforcement. In a January operation that took place shortly before Trump took office, plainclothes border agents poured into California’s Central Valley region, conducting random stops along the highway. In response, the ACLU sued the Border Patrol on behalf of the United Farm Workers union – and a federal district court found that the operation violated the fourth amendment.And in June a federal lawsuit from advocacy groups accused the Border Patrol, Ice and other agencies of violating rights by profiling street vendors, car-wash workers, day laborers and others, and making arrests without adequate cause – resulting in a temporary restriction against such enforcement in California and parts of the west coast.But proving such fourth amendment violations can be a big burden on advocates, said Anthony. And Border Patrol has a long history of aggressive enforcement tactics.“There’s evidence of everything from legal and constitutional violations to physical and sexual abuse and mistreatment, and very little recourse or accountability,” Anthony said. “Internal discipline within [the] Border Patrol is very problematic and that has been systematically the case for a long time now.”A 2023 report by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), migrant rights advocacy groups, detailed persistent human rights abuses without accountability within the agency. More

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      National guard begins Memphis patrols as senators in Illinois are turned away from Ice facility

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      As national guard troops patrolled in Memphis – Tennessee’s second-largest city – for the first time on Friday, Democratic US senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth said they had been barred from visiting an immigration enforcement building near Chicago.The senators stopped by the facility in suburban Broadview on Friday, requesting a tour of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility and to deliver supplies to protesters who have been demonstrating at the site for weeks.Their visit coincides with a ruling that the fencing installed at the site must be taken down. A federal judge late Thursday ordered Ice to remove an 8ft-tall (2.4 meters) fence outside the Broadview facility after the Village of Broadview said it illegally blocks a public street.Both senators spoke to the local NBC News affiliate while there and have pushed for answers and called for oversight into the conditions inside the facility.“We just want to go in and look at the facility and see what the conditions are and they would not let us in. It is shameful,” Duckworth said.“They’ve refused to tell us this information,” Durbin stated. “I’ve done this job for a few years now, I’ve never had this stonewalling by any presidential administration.”“What are you afraid of?” Duckworth said to reporters, referring to the government. “You don’t hide, you don’t run away when you’re proud of what you’re doing.”The senators said they have congressional oversight authority.“Something is going on in there they don’t want us to see,” Durbin said. “I don’t know what it is.”To the south, in Tennessee, at least nine armed guard members began their patrol at the Bass Pro Shops located at the Pyramid, a Memphis landmark, about a mile (1.6km) from historic Beale Street and FedExForum, where the NBA’s Grizzlies play.View image in fullscreenThey also were at a nearby tourist welcome center along the Mississippi River. Wearing guard fatigues and protective vests labeled “military police”, the troops were escorted by a local police officer and posed for photos with visitors.Trump has sent or discussed sending troops to other cities as well, including Baltimore; the District of Columbia; New Orleans; and the California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The federal government says the troops support immigration agents and protect federal property.The guard troops in Memphis remain under the command of the Republican governor, Bill Lee, who supports their use to further a federal crackdown on crime.By contrast, Trump has attempted to deploy national guard troops – including some from Texas and California – in Portland and Chicago after taking control of them himself, over objections from state and local leaders who say such interference violates their sovereignty and federal law. Federal courts in Illinois and Oregon this week blocked Trump’s efforts to send troops out in those cities.The US district judge April Perry in Chicago said the Trump administration had violated the 10th amendment, which grants certain powers to states, and the 14th amendment, which assures due process and equal protection, when he ordered national guard troops to that city.In a written order Friday explaining her rationale, Perry noted the nation’s long aversion to having military involvement in domestic policing.“Not even the Founding Father most ardently in favor of a strong federal government” – referring to Alexander Hamilton – “believed that one state’s militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution,” Perry wrote.“The court confirmed what we all know: there is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the national guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago,” the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said.An earlier court battle in Oregon delayed a similar troop deployment to Portland. The 9th US circuit court of appeals heard arguments in that case Thursday.Lt Cmdr Teresa Meadows, a spokesperson for US northern command, said the troops sent to Portland and Chicago are “not conducting any operational activities at this time”. More

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      Before Trump, ‘Dreamers’ were shielded from deportation. Here’s what’s changed

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      The Trump administration has once again put Dreamers on a rollercoaster ride.The federal government is sending mixed signals about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a popular program devised under Barack Obama that had until recently allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to live and work legally without serious risk of deportation.On one hand, in a new court filing, the federal government suggested it may eventually resume official consideration of initial Daca applications for the first time in years, which could let tens of thousands of people finally have their petitions processed.On the other, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has claimed that immigrants who say they are under the Daca umbrella “are not automatically protected from deportations”, as the program “does not confer any form of legal status in this country”.Such an approach has been used by Trump officials to justify detaining about 20 known Daca recipients during the new administration so far – despite no White House or DHS memo, regulation or executive order revealing a policy change.“We started hearing from those detained that when they tell Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents that they have Daca, the Ice agents say: ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter any more’,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant youth organization United We Dream.Here’s what to know about Daca, the “Dreamers” it protects, and how Donald Trump’s hardline immigrant agenda is upending that protection.Who are dreamers?“Dreamers” is a nickname for immigrants brought stateside as children, who do not have legal status. One estimate counts almost 2.5 million Dreamers in the US.The moniker refers to the Dream Act, proposed legislation that has been deliberated for decades in an attempt to offer Dreamers a pathway to legal immigration status. Lawmakers have introduced at least 20 iterations of the bill, but despite bipartisan support, no version has cleared both chambers of Congress.So-called Daca recipients are the subset of Dreamers who have been able to qualify for the Daca program. There are more than 525,000 active Daca recipients nationwide, the vast majority from Mexico, though beneficiaries come from countries around the globe.Daca recipients’ average age is 31 years old. California and Texas host the largest Daca populations by far, with 147,440 and 87,890 respectively.In 2023, more than nine out of 10 Daca recipients who were surveyed by national immigrant-focused organizations were either employed or in school. They reported that having Daca protections had made it possible for them to find jobs that paid better, work in fields that reflected their education and long-term career goals, get professional licenses and reach economic independence. The program had also opened the door for some beneficiaries to buy homes and cars.What is Daca?The Daca policy debuted on 15 June 2012 to address Dreamers’ need to work legally and be “lawfully present” in the US rather than hide from immigration enforcement and work under the table. To qualify, an applicant must have come to the country before they were 15 years old, have been aged 30 or younger on the date the Obama administration announced the program and have resided in the US since June 2007, among other requirements.Daca access is barred for anyone convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or three or more misdemeanors.Although the program has been a lifeline for many undocumented youth, it’s not a legal status or pathway to citizenship, and the antiquated cutoff dates for eligibility have made it so that Dreamers in high school now are less likely to qualify. At the same time, protracted litigation has long paused the processing of initial Daca applications.“I think it’s really important to understand how tragic it is that young people who are Americans in every sense but lack one piece of paper here not only aren’t getting a pathway to citizenship, but aren’t even getting these very basic and temporary deportation protections and work authorizations,” said Todd Schulte, president of the advocacy group FWD.us.Why Congress hasn’t done anything to provide more stability for Dreamers is the “billion-dollar question”, said Diana Pliego, senior strategist for campaigns at the National Immigration Law Center – especially, she added, when more than 80% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for them, and when it’s estimated that providing that would add about $800bn in US gross domestic product growth over a 10-year period.Where does the program stand now?Earlier this year, the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled in practice that Daca and work permit adjudications should restart as normal everywhere except Texas, where officials successfully argued the state was negatively affected by Daca recipients because of education and healthcare costs.The window has closed for appeals to the US supreme court, at least for the time being. Now, a district court will eventually decide how to implement the fifth circuit’s ruling, and in a recent court filing, the Trump administration outlined its vision for complying, in part through restarting initial adjudications of Daca petitions.Yet, simultaneously, the Trump administration said those proposals would “not limit DHS from undertaking any future lawful changes to Daca”, and for now, the status quo prevails.“This administration can do many things. So we’re just worried about creating an expectation or false hope for people with initial applications,” said Macedo do Nascimento.Trump tried to phase out Daca during his first administration but was ultimately stopped by the supreme court.What about Dreamers in Texas?Though they are likely to still receive deportation protections, there’s a risk that Texas Dreamers may lose both their work permits and their “lawful presence” designation, which would affect their economic prospects and could have larger immigration consequences.Who is being detained?Even as the Trump administration floats restarting initial Daca adjudications, it is arresting current Daca recipients as part of its mass deportation campaign.Evenezer Cortez Martínez – who came to the US when he was four years old and had a valid Daca permit through October 2026 – was deported to Mexico in March. He was eventually allowed to return to his wife and children in Kansas City, though he said: “I still have that doubt about whether it’s really true that I’m [back] here.”Similarly, in August, Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira was targeted in El Paso, Texas, in front of his children, his arm being dislocated during the chaos, before he was detained in New Mexico. DHS called him a “criminal illegal alien” because of a decade-old charge for marijuana possession as a teenager that was later reduced to disorderly conduct, and that had never stopped the agency from renewing his Daca protections.Cortez Martínez and Gamez Lira are two of 20 or so known Daca recipients who have been arrested, detained or deported this year.Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, has encouraged Daca recipients to consider voluntary deportation.To Pliego, that would be a loss for the US.“These are people who have built their lives here, who, you know, have been here since they were young kids,” she said. “This is their home. And so we’re losing longstanding community members who are contributing to the country, who are giving back in a lot of ways.” More

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      The quiet toll of Trump’s legal immigration crackdown: ‘I’m trying to stay afloat’

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      Kim Xavier, a senior associate at CoveyLaw, an immigration law firm based in New York, has spent much of the last year bracing herself for any Friday announcements that might affect her clients.So when Donald Trump announced on a recent Friday that he will impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, the timing was not totally surprising.“Every day, it’s like I’m trying to stay afloat. And every Friday, I’m just like, now what?” Xavier told the Guardian.Though headline after headline has highlighted the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Xavier said many Americans don’t realize the heightened uncertainty legal immigrants are facing – something that immigration attorneys like herself have to confront every day.“The perpetual fear that undocumented immigrants have dealt with their entire lives is now spread across the whole immigration system,” Xavier said. “This is something new, I think. This is something that a lot of people don’t understand.”Cracks and fissures have existed within the legal immigration system for years, long before Trump came into office. The last time Congress passed comprehensive immigration reform was 1986. In the nearly four decades since, those trying to immigrate legally often face ambiguous standards, outdated quotes and backlogs, along with other issues that appear administrative but can have a huge impact on a person’s ability to stay in the country.The difference seen over a generation is stark. “Even for people who have been through the immigration system, they’re like, ‘Oh, 30 years ago, I just came with a suitcase from Canada and I got my green card in three months’. It’s not like that any more,” Xavier said.The pathway to becoming a legal immigrant in the US is a narrow one. A person can get legal status through family – if a spouse, child or parent is a citizen – or through their employer, like H-1B holders, or through extraordinary talent. Though the US has offered legal status for humanitarian purposes, for asylum or refugees, the White House has dramatically cut down on these humanitarian pathways.The Trump administration has emphasizedthat its crackdown on immigration is targeted toward removing undocumented immigrants from the country.“Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: self-deport or we will arrest you,” assistant secretary for homeland security, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement last month.But the administration is reportedly trying to cut down on legal immigration too. A recent Reuters report said the White House is planning to cut the number of refugees the US takes in from 125,000 down to 7,500, with the majority of slots reserved for white South Africans.The administration also seems to be combing through the records of immigrants, including green card holders, for potential violations that weren’t considered deportable before his term. In September, an Irish green card holder living in Missouri was detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Kentucky because she wrote a bad check for $25 in 2015.Immigration attorneys like Xavier, who works solely with immigrants who have gone through the process legally, have seen how the ongoing scrutiny has had a chilling effect on legal immigrants who have lived in and even started families in the US.Hanging over the head of many of these immigrants is the threat of losing their legal status, even temporarily, because of what Xavier calls “operational inefficiencies”: ambiguous delays and unclear communication about applications have left lawyers scrambling to keep their clients’ legal status.Processing delays have been a major stress for Xavier’s clients, and can often leave legal immigrants in limbo. Lawyers don’t know when their client will hear back on an application, which can sometimes leave them stuck in the country.One client with a pending green card application applied for “advance parole”, which would allow her to leave the US and legally re-enter even as her green card application is under review. Because her father was undergoing quadruple bypass surgery, she applied for an expedited advanced parole to be with him after the procedure. But, “they still denied the emergency advanced parole,” Xavier said, so she couldn’t travel back home for his surgery.Xavier has also seen clients who have been living in the US for years and have had multiple visas get “soft denials” for renewals, meaning an application has been put on hold pending further documentary and scrutiny.Complicating the process for visa applicants is that the renewal process requires communication between two branches of the federal government: US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is under the Department of Homeland Security, and the consulate of their home country, which falls under the Department of State. Lawyers have said there can often be a lack of communication between the two that causes delays.Delays on application decisions can outlast certain “grace periods” the federal government gives to applicants for certain visas that allow them to legally stay in the country while they await renewal. This puts them at risk of being taken into custody or put into court proceedings when the grace period is up.The Trump administration also recently gave USCIS special agents law enforcement powers, including the ability to make arrests and execute search and arrest warrants, powers that the ACLU has said has never been given to the agency and is a way to “systematically restrict legal immigration and strip people of their legal status”.The added stresses and uncertainty has taken a heavy toll on both immigrants and their employers.“We hear about the erosion of legal immigrant pathways impacting Silicon Valley, but also innovative startups, it’s fashion designers who are using sustainable efforts, it’s architects. There are so many different industries that are impacted here,” Xavier said.Though the changes in immigration enforcement may seem insignificant for legal immigrants, the impact has been huge..“They seem little, they seem incremental, but it’s been a long time coming. It’s been built into the system, and now they are coming at lightning speed, often in different areas and under the radar of the mainstream public, that when taken together they are overwhelmingly detrimental,” Xavier said. “In Spanish, we have a saying that goes la gota que derramó el vaso – it’s the last drop that made the glass overflow. You have these little drops, but they’re coming, and by the time you know it, you’re flooded.” More