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    Deported over a speeding ticket? Dozens of US students’ visas abruptly revoked

    Lisa was eating takeout at a friend’s place when the email from her university landed. She clicked into her inbox and skimmed the message:“ISS [International Student Services] is writing to inform you that your SEVIS record was terminated …”The wording felt unfamiliar. She read it again, but it still sounded like a scam – absurd and unreal.Lisa is an international student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, just one month away from graduation. She asked to use a pseudonym due to concerns about retaliation and an ongoing legal case.Before going to bed, she found someone posted a similar notice on social media. It was through these posts that Lisa understood what the email had actually meant: with her Student and Exchange Visitor Information System record terminated, she was now considered out of status in the US. Staying could mean violating immigration laws.The Department of Homeland Security maintains the Sevis database that tracks international students and scholars on F, M and J visas. Once a Sevis record is terminated, a student’s legal status becomes immediately invalid. They must either leave the US within the grace period, typically 15 days, or take steps to restore their status. Otherwise, they risk deportation and future visa restrictions.She dug through comment sections. Joined group chats. Searched for patterns. One emerged: most of the affected students had been fingerprinted. Some had been cited for non-criminal offenses, but the messages they received said they had criminal records.That’s when she remembered: a year ago, she was driving home when she got two speeding tickets: one for speeding and another for failing to stop. She hadn’t seen the police car behind her until it was too late. To get the charges dismissed, she showed up in court, where she was fingerprinted.Lisa is one of several students across states who found their legal status revoked by the US government on 4 April, without prior notice or clear explanation. University statements show that at least 39 students have been affected, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, Stanford, Ohio State, the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky, Minnesota State University and the University of Oregon.An online self-reported data sheet created by affected students suggests the issue may be more widespread. Students from 50 universities reported their visas were canceled around 4 April, with many noting that they had prior records, some limited to citations or non-criminal offenses.View image in fullscreenThis secret wave of revocation came a few days after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the revocation of 300 or more student visas. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” he said at a news conference on 27 March, referring to students he described as national security threats.Lisa’s university had included a screenshot of her Sevis record in the message. Termination was logged on 4 April by a system administrator, with a note: “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.”Shenqi Cai, a California immigration attorney and managing attorney at Lashine Law, said she got the first call from a student on 3 April. “At the time, we thought it was a one-off. It seemed strange.”But by Friday, more cases kept coming in. She contacted designated school officials at several partner universities and confirmed that the terminations were visible in the Sevis system.Cai said this round of Sevis terminations appeared to be unprecedented. “Students weren’t given any chance to explain their situation. As long as the system flagged them, what we believe is a kind of criminal screening trigger, they were terminated under one broad directive.”Based on the information collected so far, Cai said about 90% of the affected students had been fingerprinted. But she explained that the criteria used to flag students can vary by state. “Each state defines these triggers differently. The thresholds are inconsistent. A student may be arrested in one state, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be convicted, because the power to decide guilt or innocence lies with the judge.”David, a Chinese student who completed his undergraduate degree, was immediately unable to continue working. He requested a pseudonym due to fears of retaliation and an ongoing legal case.In 2024, David was reported to police after a verbal argument with his partner. When officers arrived, they were still arguing, but there was no physical contact, he said. Because of a language barrier, his partner couldn’t clearly explain what had happened. David was detained overnight and later ordered to appear in court.“My partner wrote a statement to the prosecutor explaining it wasn’t domestic violence,” he said. The charge was eventually dropped. Court records show the case was dismissed with prejudice, and the judge ordered the arrest record and biometric data to be destroyed.Three years later, David received a Sevis termination notice.Unlike enrolled F-1 students, David is working under Optional Practical Training, a work authorization linked to the Sevis system. Once a Sevis record is terminated, that authorization ends and is nearly impossible to recover.David was nearing the end of his first year of employment when he got the notice on Friday. He scheduled a lunch meeting with his manager, who said the company would try to help him relocate to Canada. But because the termination took effect immediately, he was subjected to the 15-day departure rule.“I told my family, and they felt just as powerless,” he said. “But we don’t come from wealth, and there’s not a lot they can do.”Bill is facing the same dilemma. He graduated in December 2024 and is currently job-hunting. He asked not to use his real name due to a pending case.In early 2025, Bill hit another car while making a turn. At the time, his driver’s license had just expired. Police cited him for driving with an expired license. After renewing it, he followed the instructions and appeared in court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I went with a temporary license. The court staff were friendly,” he said. “One even joked, ‘This is no big deal, handsome,’ while taking my fingerprints and photos. It felt like a scene out of a movie.”His initial appearance only involved ID verification. When he asked if the hearing could be held that day, a staff member told him it was scheduled for May and suggested he come back then.“I thought it was fine. My license was updated, I just had to show up again.” But on 3 April, he suddenly received a notice from the school that his Sevis record had been terminated.Now, Bill has no idea what to do. Legally, he should leave the country immediately, but his case is still open and he’s required to appear in court in May. He doesn’t know whether showing up would put him at risk of detention.On 4 April, he met with his university’s international office. Staff there were willing to help, he said, but had few tools. They asked him to write a personal statement, which they promised to pass along to university leadership. The only formal support offered was a referral to a discounted lawyer – $150 an hour.View image in fullscreen“The dust of history falls on me, and it becomes a mountain. That’s all there is to it,” he said.By Sunday evening, the panic had spread. Three hundred students joined a Zoom info session hosted by Brad Banias, a federal court immigration litigator and former justice department trial attorney. Questions poured into the chat box: “Should we leave our apartments right now in case ICE shows up?” “Will an unpaid parking ticket be a problem?”Banias called the terminations a political move, not a legal one. “It makes me angry to see 19-year-olds just trying to study, and suddenly a parking ticket they didn’t even know about shows up on a criminal background check,” he said. “Don’t let them convince you it’s reasonable to leave the country over a parking ticket.”For Lisa, the future was just starting to take shape. She is about to graduate in one month, with a job offer and grad school acceptance. But now, she said she wasn’t even sure if she should go to class on Monday.Back in April 2024, she was pulled over in Madison for speeding. She hadn’t noticed the patrol car behind her right away, and by the time she stopped, two officers approached. One told her not to worry – it was her first offense, and all she needed to do was pay the fine. But the other issued two citations: one for speeding, the other for failing to stop.They told her it was just a miscommunication, something she could clear up in court.But that never really happened.“My first court date was just for ID,” she said. “They fingerprinted me, took a photo, measured my height. The judge barely said anything. No hearing, just a new court date.”She asked if the case could be resolved sooner and was told to schedule an online meeting. She did. During that meeting, the case was dropped. No record. They asked if she accepted. She said yes.Everything after that went smoothly: her work visa was approved, the company background checks cleared, and she had no trouble leaving and re-entering the country. She thought it was behind her.Then the email came.“I don’t know if I’m still allowed to graduate,” she said. “If I don’t get my degree, does the grad school still take me? Does the company push back the offer? Worst case, I don’t graduate. I go home and start college again. Four more years. And then what?” More

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    DoJ lawyer put on leave after not backing erroneous deportation of Maryland man

    A federal justice department attorney has been placed on leave by the Trump administration for purportedly failing to defend the administration vigorously enough after it says it erroneously deported a Maryland man to El Salvador, which a US judge called a “wholly lawless” detention.The action against justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni came after US district judge Paula Xinis had ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit, be returned to Maryland despite the Trump administration’s position that it cannot return him from a sovereign nation.The administration has appealed the case, and a ruling is expected as soon as Sunday night ahead of an 11.59pm Monday deadline for his return, which was set by the judge.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, went on Fox News Sunday and announced there that Reuveni was no longer actively working on the Abrego Garcia case or in the justice department in general.At a court hearing on Friday, Reuveni struggled to answer questions from the judge about the circumstances of Abrego Garcia’s deportation.Reuveni said he had raised questions with US officials about why the federal government could not bring back Abrego Garcia but had received no “satisfactory” answer. He acknowledged what he called an “absence of evidence” justifying Abrego Garcia’s detention and deportation.Of Reuveni, Bondi told Fox News Sunday: “It’s a pending matter right now. He was put on administrative leave by [deputy US attorney general] Todd Blanche on Saturday.“You have to vigorously argue on behalf of your client.”Reuveni’s supervisor, August Flentje, was also placed on leave, ABC News reported.The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.Reuveni and Flentje, who according to his LinkedIn page is the deputy director of the justice department’s office of immigration litigation, civil division, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Trump’s administration asserted in previous court filings that it had erroneously deported Abrego Garcia to his home country despite a previous court order prohibiting his removal.The White House and administration officials have accused Abrego Garcia of being a criminal gang member, but there are no pending charges. His lawyers have denied the allegation.Xinis, in a written order on Sunday explaining her Friday ruling, said “there were no legal grounds for his arrest, detention or removal” or evidence that Abrego Garcia was wanted for crimes in El Salvador.“Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless,” she wrote in the filing.Abrego Garcia had complied fully with all directives from immigration officials, including annual check-ins, and had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, the judge wrote.Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by immigration agents on 12 March and questioned about his alleged affiliation with the MS-13 gang, which he has denied.Abrego Garcia has been detained in El Salvador’s terror confinement center, colloquially known as Cecot, which the judge called “one of the most dangerous prisons in the western hemisphere”.The Trump administration has faced criticism in the US courts and elsewhere of its stepped-up enforcement against immigration rights. A judge in Washington DC is separately weighing whether the Trump administration violated a court order not to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members amid ongoing legal proceedings.Some of those deported have active asylum cases, and civil rights groups have argued the administration has failed to provide due process under the law.Bondi on Sunday vowed to continue the administration’s deportations, maintaining: “The best thing to do is to get these people out of our country.” More

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    As deportations ramp up, immigrants increasingly fear Ice check-ins: ‘All bets are off’

    Jorge, a 22-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela, reported in February to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon, for what he figured would be a routine check-in. Instead, he was arrested and transferred to a detention center in another state.Alberto, a 42-year-old from Nicaragua who had been granted humanitarian parole, checked in with Ice using an electronic monitoring program that same month. Three days later, he was arrested.Sergei and Marina, a young couple from Russia with a pending asylum case, went into an immigration office in San Francisco in March, thinking they needed to update some paperwork. Agents arrested Sergei and told Marina to come back in a few weeks.For years, immigrants of all sorts with cases in process, pending appeals or parole, had been required to regularly check in with Ice officers. And so long as they had not violated any regulations or committed any crimes, they were usually sent on their way with little issue. Now, as the Trump administration pushes for the mass arrest and deportation of immigrants, these once routine check-ins have become increasingly fraught.Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian estimates, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests, or about 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – may have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.The Guardian reviewed cases in the arrest data, which was released by the Deportation Data Project from UC Berkeley Law School, where people who had previously been released on supervision were now arrested, as well as cases of people with pending immigration proceedings who were arrested in their communities. According to immigration lawyers, these types of arrests are most likely to match arrests that are occurring during or shortly after check-ins – though the actual number of cases may be higher.View image in fullscreen“Essentially, these people are low-hanging fruit for Ice,” said Laura Urias, a program director and attorney at the legal non-profit ImmDef. “It’s just very easy to arrest them.”Under the Biden administration, immigration officials had been instructed to prioritize detaining and expelling people who posed threats to public safety, and had criminal records. There were arrests during Ice check-ins during the Biden administration, too. A Guardian analysis found there were 821 arrests per month, on average, in 2024 that appeared to have occurred during or right after check-ins. But officials often used their discretion to allow immigrants who weren’t considered a priority for deportation to remain in their communities, on orders of recognizance or supervision.One of Donald Trump’s first actions after he was sworn in for his second term was to broaden Ice’s mandate – now all immigrants without legal status are prioritized for arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with authorities.“Under this new administration, all bets are off,” said Stefania Ramos, an immigration lawyer based in Seattle. “So anyone with an Ice check-in appointment is frantic, looking for a lawyer, trying to figure out what they can do to protect themselves.”Attorneys and advocates cannot advise clients to skip check-ins because doing so would mean violating immigration regulations. And because these immigrants have been complying with Ice requirements, the agency knows their current home and work addresses. Many under Ice supervision had been ordered to wear ankle monitors or use facial recognition apps to check in – and allow the agency access to their real-time whereabouts.But lawyers are advising clients to prepare for the possibility that they could be detained at check-ins, and to bring someone, either a family member or an attorney, along with them.Jorge, the 22-year-old from Venezuela, had been checking in with Ice every three months while awaiting a court date to assess his asylum case. “Truly, I was never afraid I’d be arrested, because I did everything right,” he said on the phone, from the detention center in Tacoma where he is now being held.When an immigration official in Portland summoned him to sign some paperwork on 20 February, he had no reason to think he’d be relocated to a detention center one state over. “The truth is, this is so crazy,” he said. “I have a clean record. That’s why I voluntarily went to Ice.”In detention, he’s seen glimpses of the news that the president has declared war on Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, that Venezuelan men with no criminal convictions were being sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. “I’m afraid,” he said. He isn’t from the state in Venezuela where Tren de Aragua operates, and he has no tattoos – which the government has spuriously cited as evidence that men are members of a gang. “But I don’t know what to think. It feels like I am being unjustly imprisoned simply for being Venezuelan.”Jorge had himself fled violence back home. He had first escaped to Colombia in 2022, but he had found it impossible to make money and survive there. That year, he continued north, through the Darién jungle, to Panama, but eventually decided to return home to Venezuela when he realized the US was enforcing its “remain in Mexico” policy, sending migrants arriving at the southern border back to Mexico. “I was back for only three months, but I was living a nightmare. I had to leave,” he said. He witnessed multiple homicides and was harassed by local law enforcement. “I was afraid for my life.”View image in fullscreenHe crossed through the Darién Gap again in 2023, and registered an asylum claim and was given a court date in 2025. In the two years since, he enrolled in community college and completed the accredited irrigation program in partnership with Portland Community College, worked as an advocate with the Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project and trained in emergency preparedness. He danced bachata and played on pick-up sports teams in town. “I left my family in Venezuela, but I found my community in Portland,” he said.“Now I feel despair. My future is literally hanging in the balance,” he said. On 20 March, a judge denied his appeal for bond – which means he will likely have to remain in detention until September, unless his lawyers are able to successfully appeal. Meanwhile, his friends have been raising money to cover legal expenses and commissary funds in detention.“I’m trying to keep courage,” he said. “But I don’t know why I’m here.”More than a dozen immigration lawyers, advocates and former immigration officials that the Guardian interviewed for this story said they have been hearing of similar cases across the country.ImmDef, which maintains a rapid response hotline for the families of people who have been detained, has received several calls from people who said their loved ones were arrested at check-ins. But the organization has also seen a number of cases where people went to their check-ins, and encountered no problems.“It hasn’t been consistent,” said Urias. “We haven’t seen much of a pattern, per se.”Ice did not respond to questions about whether its agents are increasingly arresting people at check-ins, or whether the frequency of these check-ins had changed, though the agency acknowledged it received the Guardian’s query.View image in fullscreenUrias was especially worried for one of her clients, a woman who survived domestic violence. She has a removal order but a pending application for a U-visa, which is offered to the victims of certain crimes.“She had been checking in with Ice since 2016, we actually survived the first Trump administration,” said Urias. Normally, Urias doesn’t accompany her to the check-ins but did so earlier this month. But then, the check-in happened without incident – and she was told to come back in a year. “It was a huge relief,” said Urias. “But also it feels like there’s no rhyme or reason why some people are ok, and others are picked up.”Lawyers and advocates said people such as Urias’s client – who have been given prior “orders of removal” by Ice, but were allowed to remain in the US because they had pending cases or appeals, because they had children or family in the US under their care, or because home countries weren’t accepting deportation flights – were among the most vulnerable to deportation at the moment.Ice always had the power to execute removal orders at any time – and now the agency seems particularly poised to wield that power.That’s what worries Inna Scott, an immigration attorney in Seattle, whose client had crossed into the US from Mexico as a teenager, and was issued a deportation order in 1997. But he has continued to live in the US since then. In 2021, he was able to get a permit to work legally in the US after complying with Ice’s orders to regularly check in.When he reported, as usual, in March this year, immigration officials told Scott that they would likely seek to enforce her client’s removal order from the 90s, and instructed them to return in a month. “My client has no criminal history and has been a well-behaved resident of the country for decades,” she said. “But now he’s all of a sudden subject to detainment.” Ice could reinstate his old deportation order without giving him any opportunity to make his case in front of an immigration judge.Scott said she wasn’t particularly shocked because Ice officials made similar arrests during the first Trump administration – which had also issued a broad mandate to deport anyone without legal status. “But it is unfortunate. These are people without any kind of criminal history. These are people who are not national security risks. They’re not fugitives, they are living their lives working lawfully, with their work permits,” she said. “And they’re still being uprooted from their lives and taken to a country they haven’t been to in decades.” More

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    Trump administration apologizes for telling Ukrainian refugees to leave US

    Donald Trump’s presidential administration has acknowledged and apologized after it says it accidentally informed some Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country’s invasion by Russia that they needed to leave the US because their legal status was being revoked.About 240,000 Ukrainians have been settled in the US as part of the Uniting for Ukraine – or U4U – program launched during Joe Biden’s presidency. But according to CBS News, some resettled Ukrainians received emails this week telling them that the US Department of Homeland Security would be terminating their legal protections.More than 20,000 Ukrainians who flew to Mexico at the start of the war were also allowed into the US, which allows DHS officials to offer temporary work permits and deportation protections to migrants on humanitarian grounds.“DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole,” read the notice dated 3 April, referring to the temporary legal status (TPS) granted to Ukrainians after Russia invaded its neighbouring state. “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate 7 days from the date of this notice.”If recipients failed to leave the US, the message warned, they would “be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States” and encouraged the recipients to sign up for self-deportation.“Do not attempt to remain in the United States – the federal government will find you,” the notice warned. “Please depart the United States immediately.”But the DHS said in a statement to the outlet on Friday that the notice had been sent in error to some Ukrainians under the U4U program. “The U4U parole program has not been terminated,” the DHS statement read. And the missive had been corrected with a follow-up message that said: “No action will be taken with respect to your parole.”Ukraine nationals have not been caught up in the cancellation of Biden administration immigration programs that include Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, and ordered them to self-deport by 24 April. Nonetheless, the rescinded notice caused panic with Ukrainians in the US who have been widely fearing that they could face the same cancellations affecting those of other nationalities.On Friday, a federal judge gave the Trump administration until the end of Monday to return a Maryland man who was inadvertently deported under a controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act to El Salvador in March.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJudge Paula Xinis ruled that federal officials had acted without “legal basis” when they arrested Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland legally, and deported him without due process.Administration officials have said there was little they can do to get Garcia returned, despite acknowledging that his deportation last month had been a mistake. The justice department said that it intended to appeal Xinis’s decision. More

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    Federal judge rules return of Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador prison

    A federal judge on Friday afternoon ordered the US to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison after a Trump administration attorney was at a loss to explain what happened.The wife of the man, who was flown to a notorious Salvadoran prison had earlier joined dozens of supporters at a rally before a court hearing on Friday, where his lawyers had asked the judge – Paula Xinis – to order the Trump administration to return him to the US.Xinis on Friday called Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation “an illegal act” and pressed US justice department attorney Erez Reuveni for answers. Reuveni had few, if any, to offer, conceding that Abrego Garcia should not have been removed from the US and sent to El Salvador. He could not cite any authority held by the Trump administration to arrest Abrego Garcia in Maryland.“I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you for a lot of these questions,” he said.Reuveni said, “I don’t know,” when asked why Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador, which has a history rife with human rights abuses.Abrego Garcia’s wife, US citizen Jennifer Vasquez Sura, hasn’t spoken to him since he was flown to his native El Salvador last month and imprisoned. She urged her supporters to keep fighting for him “and all the Kilmars out there whose stories are still waiting to be heard”.View image in fullscreen“To all the wives, mothers, children who also face this cruel separation, I stand with you in this bond of pain,” she said during the rally at a community center in Hyattsville, Maryland. “It’s a journey that no one ever should ever have to suffer, a nightmare that feels endless.”The campaign to reunite the couple will shift to a courtroom in Greenbelt, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.The White House has cast Abrego Garcia, 29, as an MS-13 gang member and assert that US courts lack jurisdiction over the matter because the Salvadoran national is no longer in the US.Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have countered that there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The allegation is based on a confidential informant’s claim in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived.Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation, described by the White House as an “administrative error”, has outraged many and raised concerns about expelling noncitizens who were granted permission to be in the US.Abrego Garcia had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the US, his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said. He served as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his journeyman license.He fled El Salvador around 2011 because he and his family were facing threats by local gangs. In 2019, a US immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador because he was likely to face gang persecution. He was released and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not appeal the decision or try to deport him to another country.Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura. The couple are parents to their son and her two children from a previous relationship.“If I had all the money in the world, I would spend it all just to buy one thing: a phone call to hear Kilmar’s voice again,” Vasquez Sura said. “Kilmar, if you can hear me, I miss you so much, and I’m doing the best to fight for you and our children.” More

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    Ukrainians who fled war fear deportation under Trump: ‘I am young, I want to live’

    Not long after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Danyil packed everything he could in a bag and traveled 15 hours by bus from the Zakarpattia region in western Ukraine to the Czech Republic.He fled the war at 17, just as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, forbade men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Now aged 20, he watches from the US as the war drags on. In December, Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 370,000 have been wounded in the war.“I didn’t want to die young,” said Danyil, whose last name the Guardian is withholding due to concerns for his safety if he returns to Ukraine now.His view of current, US-brokered negotiations are: “There are peace talks now but unless the Russian government is overthrown nothing is going to change. They will continue to bomb.”After 10 months of working in a Czech automobile plant in the northern region of Liberec, Danyil traveled to the US on 4 January 2023, thanks to a Biden administration program, Uniting for Ukraine, that offered a temporary sanctuary to Ukrainians fleeing the Russian aggression.But soon after Donald Trump took office again in January, he suspended the Uniting for Ukraine policy, pausing admissions under the program and barring those already in the US from renewing their two-year work permits and deportation protections.Weeks later, the Trump administration paused all immigration applications for further relief by those who arrived under Uniting for Ukraine and other Biden-era processes that relied on a policy known as parole and Trump has blocked pathways to permanent legal status.The moves have pushed hundreds of thousands into a state of insecurity after they were welcomed to a safe haven.As of December 2024, the US had 240,000 Ukrainians with US sponsors under the Uniting for Ukraine program, including Danyil, according to government figures obtained by the Guardian.Unable to renew their parole status or apply for another temporary legal status, Danyil and the other thousands of immigrants could lose their permits and could end up undocumented and vulnerable to deportation.Danyil said his parole status ended at the beginning of this year and while he has applied for renewal, he hasn’t received a response from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.“I don’t want to stay here illegally but I don’t want to go back to Ukraine. I am afraid, I am young, I want to live,” he said.Because Ukrainian newcomers were only given permission to live in the US for two-year increments, many applied for other legal shelters, including Temporary Protected Status (TPS).Earlier in January, Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, extended Ukraine’s designation for TPS through October 2026. As of September 2024, 63,425 Ukrainians had been granted TPS in the US.Danyil said he applied for TPS this March, but has not yet received a response.Trump has directed the Department of Homeland Security to re-evaluate TPS designations of all countries, and his administration has already announced it will phase out protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries under ongoing armed conflicts.In response, the agency has said that it would revoke the temporary legal status of more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans welcomed into the US under another Biden-era sponsorship known as CHNV.More recently, the US district judge Edward Chen in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from terminating the temporary protection program for 350,000 Venezuelan migrants.But with continued administration efforts to repeal protection for immigrants in the country, advocates are worried that officials could also discontinue Ukraine’s TPS designation, leaving Ukrainians afraid to go back to a country still at war with no other valid status in the US.“That’s what has really threatened the safety of over 240,000 Ukrainians,” said Anne Smith, the executive director at Ukraine Immigration Task Force, a nonprofit organization that has helped families from Ukraine find refuge in the US.“There’s a great danger of being deported, and if not deported, then placed in detention for a long time. Given the majority of the Ukrainians who came here on Uniting for Ukraine under humanitarian parole, there really are no legal avenues available to them unless either the Department of Homeland Security lifts the processing of applications suspension or Congress decides to act,” she added.On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, introduced a bill that would offer Ukrainians who were granted parole, like Danyil, a temporary guest status, regardless of when they arrived in the US.“When the war started, Republicans across the country opened their hearts and communities to desperately fleeing Ukrainians, even actively petitioning President Biden to protect them from deportation. So far, not a single Republican has cosponsored my bill. But I urge them to join this simple act of American compassion. Standing up to dictators and speaking out for victims of war should never be a partisan issue,” Durbin said in a recent press release.Illinois is now home to 57,000 Ukrainians brought to the US under Uniting for Ukraine and another 65,000 reside in New Jersey and New York.The Leonid Foundation, named after a Ukrainian man who was killed in Mariupol during the Russian assault of 2022, has helped more than 3,000 Ukrainian refugees relocate to New Jersey since the war started, according to Anna Move, the organization’s president.The foundation helped Danyil find a home in central New Jersey. He works mounting television sets in people’s homes and is saving money hopefully to go to college. Meanwhile, he assists wounded Ukrainian soldiers who come to the US to get their prosthetics.He said: “A lot of people like me dream of staying in the US because there’s an opportunity. I am afraid of going back, I’ve seen those soldiers.” More

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    Stephen Colbert on Trump administration’s deportations: ‘It’s goodbye, habeas corpus’

    Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s alleged “liberation day” of tariffs and the administration’s deportation of people without due process.Stephen Colbert“I don’t know about you, but I am feeling good about America!” joked Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, AKA April Fools Day. “Speaking of fools, Donald Trump” and his “price-raising, economy-breaking tariffs” on what the president is calling “liberation day”.“Yes, ‘liberation day,’” the Late Show host said. “I’m reminded of the immortal words of Patrick Henry: ‘Give me liberty or charge me an extra $10,000 for a Hyundai Elantra.’”“Like everything, he’s gotta make it a spectacle,” Colbert added, noting that Trump planned to unveil his tariffs in a Rose Garden ceremony. “Because when you elect a reality TV star, you get all your economic policy via rose ceremony.”Experts have warned that should the tariffs go into effect and other countries retaliate, the economy would almost immediately tumble into a recession that could last for more than a year. “So, if you have a retirement account, no you don’t,” said Colbert.“Republicans are already scrambling to pre-contain the damage, and they settled on this fun new metaphor,” he continued. That would be the “short-term pain” of remodeling a house, or as senator James Lankford put it: “a bit of a mess at the beginning but everyone has a long term look of where we’re headed”.“Way to connect to people suffering economic hardship, Republicans,” Colbert deadpanned. “You know that thing where you own a home but also have the money to remodel it? OK, you seem angry, let me try another analogy … let’s say one of your boats needs a paint job.”In other news, the Trump administration has done away with due process in deporting suspected “gang members” to El Salvador, even without any evidence. On Monday, the administration admitted that it deported a Maryland father and legal resident because of an “administrative error”; the administration also said they have no ability to bring him back now that he is in Salvadoran custody, arguing that Trump’s “primacy in foreign affairs” outweighs the interests of the deportee and his family.“If that stands, then it’s goodbye, habeas corpus,” said Colbert. “Trump’s primacy outweighs the courts. And don’t think that that only applies to folks like this detainee. If there’s no due process, we have no idea if any of these people are citizens, meaning that every single person on American soil is now at risk of being disappeared until the day that Trump and his goons are finally out of power.”The Daily Show“For weeks now, Ice has been rounding up any immigrant who they suspect is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua,” said Michael Kosta on Tuesday’s The Daily Show. “But this week, we found out that instead of sending these suspects to a trial or a hearing – you know, all the due process shit in the constitution – the Ice agents just fill out a checklist on the suspect. And if the suspect scores an eight or more, they get deported to an El Salvadoran prison.“Look, I’m not a legal expert,” said Kosta. “But I’d rather not be sentenced to life in a foreign prison with the same checklist system that Cosmo uses to decide if I’m good girl or bad girl hot.“And reading through the checklist doesn’t make me feel any better, either,” he continued, saying that one gets points for having a tattoo of a star, clock or Michael Jordan logo, or simply wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey.Kosta also touched on the story of the Maryland father granted protective legal status who was deported to El Salvador because of an “administrative error”.“Could it be that the geniuses who added Jeffrey Goldberg to the strike team group chat aren’t great at identifying the correct people?” he said. “If only there was a way that they could have presented this suspect before another person … someone who, and I’m just spitballing here, maybe could’ve judged whether or not the person could’ve been deported?“We can’t get one person out of a prison that we sent to that prison?” he added. “JD Vance is out there calling dibs on rare earth minerals underneath Greenland and Ukraine, but with El Salvador, suddenly they’re like: ‘Hey, sorry, no hablo español.’”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers looked ahead to Trump’s promised so-called “liberation day” of tariffs. “Ah yes, the day we’ll all finally be liberated from our 401ks,” he joked.Apparently, the Windsor knot is the preferred necktie style for members of the Trump administration. “And the preferred length is 84in,” Meyers joked.During a congressional hearing with public broadcasting officials last week, Republican lawmakers accused NPR representatives of pushing leftwing views. “I told you they were going to come after gay marriage,” Meyers said over a photo of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie.And at a rally in Wisconsin, Elon Musk encouraged people to have children because the birth rate is declining, and said that having kids “will make you feel happy”.“At least, the idea of them will,” said Meyers. “You know, just knowing you have 14 or 15 of them out there somewhere, it really warms your heart.” More

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    ‘Hope in my heart’: displaced Afghans in limbo as White House freezes refugee programs

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    View image in fullscreenThe 24-year-old Afghan woman wants to become a surgeon – and she had set her sights on training in the US.She wants to care for other women and girls, so they don’t have to be afraid to visit the doctor – so at least in one crucial aspect of their lives they won’t have to endure the unwanted advances, dismissive comments and blatant disrespect that she’s experienced from many of the men who have always surrounded her, first in her native Afghanistan and now in legal limbo in Pakistan.“I hope a lot that I will be a doctor in the future. I don’t know it will happen, but I hope,” she said. “It means that a woman is powerful, that if she wants to do something, she can.”Yet for the moment, she has no way to attend medical school anywhere. She can barely step outside the apartment in Islamabad where she and her two sisters, her teenage brother, and their mother spend each day terrified that police will arrest and deport them back to face Taliban rule.Simply as a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan her lifestyle would be severely restricted, but as Christians the whole family would literally be in mortal danger.Her family has documents from the United Nations Refugee Agency proving that they’re certified asylum seekers, and they were on the verge of getting the green light to come to the US.But to the Trump administration right now, these plans don’t matter – despite volunteer groups in Texas preparing for months to welcome them.To the police in Pakistan, where they are in exile, those UN documents don’t matter either. What matters is that the family is Afghan and is no longer wanted there.“Everywhere is policed. Every day, police come to our house. It’s too difficult for us,” said the woman in an interview over Zoom. The Guardian is withholding the family’s identity while they remain at risk.“In these days, we awake with a fear,” she said of her family. They have already been lying low in Pakistan for three years after fleeing Afghanistan.View image in fullscreenA few months ago, it seemed as though the family was finally on the cusp of relief, soon to fly to east Texas.“They were nearing the finish line. We didn’t have any certainty, they hadn’t actually been approved and travel wasn’t being scheduled yet. But we were right there – everything, all the screening, was done,” said Justin Reese, one member of a group of Texas volunteers who were getting ready to welcome the family.Then, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, one of his many immigration-related executive orders indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) – and with it, the family’s chance at reaching imminent safety.“By every metric, they have played by the rules and they are being treated like this,” said Reese. “It’s very damaging to them individually, and it’s damaging, I think, to the future security of the US, for us to be seen as this mercurial, as this incoherent.”A federal district judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effective ban on refugees coming to the US, offering those on the brink of resettlement a flicker of hope, but a circuit panel has now rolled back that decision, saying only people already approved must be allowed to come. And whether an administration ideologically opposed to refugee resettlement will resume the program at scale – or in any meaningful way – remains an open question, particularly after the state department has tried to terminate essential funding agreements with all of the US’s resettlement agencies for the entire fiscal year. That was even before the prospect of new Trump travel restrictions on Afghans entering the US, and before immigration officials suddenly paused green card processing for refugees already here.“I don’t know how you get to a place of suspending refugee resettlement as policy without a series of ideological turns that I don’t understand how to unwind,” Reese said.Before the ascent of Trumpism, USRAP enjoyed widespread bipartisan support for myriad reasons: its protection of American allies and related benefits to national security; its solidarity with “frontline states” such as Turkey and Colombia that are taking in so many of the world’s displaced people; its signal to other nations that the US cares about human rights.In fact, even before the refugee resettlement program was written into US law, organizations cropped up across the nation in response to the atrocities of the second world war – and the US’s role in rejecting refugees early on who then became victims of the Holocaust. These agencies welcomed displaced people from around the world, many fleeing communism from the Baltic states, Hungary or Vietnam.After Congress established a more universal, standardized refugee framework, general support for resettlement continued, even following the 11 September 2001 attacks that reshaped much of the US immigration system. Sometimes, scandals would arise within the program, but administrations would address them and move on.Then, in 2015, Trump ran for president and soon started trumpeting a narrative that refugees posed a security threat to American communities, despite them being some of the most thoroughly vetted newcomers in the country.“There [was] already a kind of deteriorating bipartisan support,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, the humanitarian organization, recalled of that moment.By fiscal year 2020, the first Trump administration had gutted the US’s refugee resettlement infrastructure and set the annual ceiling on refugee admissions at 18,000 – the lowest cap on record.When Joe Biden took office, his administration eventually rebuilt resettlement capacity in the US, with more than 100,000 people welcomed in his last full fiscal year in office.To do so, Biden made innovations, such as an initiative called the Welcome Corps, which invited Americans and green card holders to form private groups and financially sponsor refugees for resettlement in the US.“I think the idea of the Welcome Corps was that it was politically foolproof,” said Schacher, and that “because it relied on private funds and private individuals to step up … that these folks would push back against the Trump administration and make sure that folks still come. And they would step in if government funding was withdrawn. I think it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to work politically.”Reese and his family knew that they wanted to participate in the Welcome Corps. A software developer by trade, he had spent the better part of a decade learning about the politics and policy of offering refuge.Just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, he traveled to Greece to serve in a refugee camp with 20,000 residents representing 40 different nationalities. The corner of camp where he volunteered hosted mostly Afghans, and he returned home to east Texas with new friendships and phone numbers from within that community.So when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021, his phone started buzzing with alerts from worried Afghans whose loved ones were still stranded in danger. He sprang into action, attempting to cut through red tape to try to get desperate families in Afghanistan on US evacuation flights. It was frantic and exhausting.View image in fullscreen“Everything felt like an inch away and then a mile away at the same time, because you just knew if you just were smart enough or well-resourced enough, then you could make this happen,” he remembered.Simultaneously, the Afghan family of five he would eventually try to resettle through the Welcome Corps was fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power was the final straw that dashed any hope they had for stability in their homeland, though it was hardly their first brush with persecution.As members of the Hazara ethnic community, their people had long been victims of massacres and genocides, including by the Taliban at the turn of the 21st century. Having converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, the family had been targeted by their neighbors, beaten and forced to move many times. And as a household in which the patriarch died about a decade ago, the women had been subject to constant unwanted attention and harassment from unscrupulous men.“We miss, a lot, our country,” one of the daughters said. “We miss our memories that we had. But unfortunately we can’t go back because I have lots of bad memories from Taliban … situations, and it makes me sad.” As she described the family’s experience, she wept.Her family met Reese in person when they were all in Islamabad in late 2023. Until then, they had been names on a list for Reese, names he was still trying to help find refuge. After getting to know the family face to face, he wanted to bring them to his own community, where he thought their life experiences would resonate with people.He found willing volunteers back in east Texas. With 10 members, Reese’s Welcome Corps group is far larger than required and includes a veteran who served in Afghanistan, a missionary’s kid who grew up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple whose children work with Afghans abroad, and others uniquely equipped to help.Offers of housing and other support flowed in. And Reese’s commitment to sponsor the Afghan family made a huge difference in their lives, even as they remained in a precarious situation abroad. They suddenly felt as though they were waiting in Pakistan for a reason, and they stopped worrying as much about their future while imagining safety together in the US.“It made my family so happy,” one of the daughters said. In Texas, she hoped, “we can continue our studies and we can continue our lives without any worries”.Now Reese’s garage is full of donated household items from an online wishlist to outfit what would have been the family’s new home in Tyler, Texas. It’s unclear when or if the family will ever arrive – news Reese had to deliver personally.“I have a hard time talking about how it made us feel without being angry because I do feel that it’s not just unnecessary and harmful, but strategically incompetent,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody involved in turning [USRAP] off had to deliver phone calls like the ones that we had to over the last few weeks.”Despite the setback and the increasingly serious threats of deportation the family faces in Islamabad, one of the daughters expressed gratitude for “brother Justin”, as she calls Reese, and appreciates at least hearing an update on their case.Trump’s actions have made her “sad, but I hope”, she said, adding: “I have hope in my heart that this program will open again.” More