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      Trump’s sledgehammer message to Philadelphia is light on facts, heavy on fear

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      Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe? Donald Trump wanted to know which nickname his supporters prefer. “That’s the first time Sleepy Joe has ever beaten Crooked Joe!” he said with surprise, after asking the crowd to make noise for each contender.That, however, is not the branding exercise the former US president cares about most right now. On Saturday night he wanted his followers to go home with three words: Biden. Migrant. Crime.A month after his audacious campaign stop in the Bronx, New York, Trump held his first ever campaign rally in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy and another Democratic stronghold where Joe Biden won 81.4% of the vote in 2020.He had come with a sledgehammer message: Biden’s open borders have allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to pour into America, leading to a surge of violent crime in its major cities, hurting Black and Hispanic populations the most. And in the grand tradition of “law and order” Republicans, only Trump could fix it.“Few communities have suffered more under the Biden regime than Philadelphia,” he told thousands of supporters, many wearing “Make America great again” caps, at the event in a sports arena. “Under Crooked Joe, the City of Brotherly Love is being ravaged by bloodshed and crime.”The rally was staged at Temple University, in a historically Black area. Trump won just 5% of the vote in precincts within a half-mile radius of Temple’s main campus in the last election, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.But encouraged by opinion polls, his campaign has made wooing Black and Hispanic voters, who make up more than half of Philadelphia’s population, a priority this cycle. Even small gains could make all the difference in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.Several African American supporters were positioned behind Trump’s lectern in the Liacouras Center, against the backdrop of a gigantic Stars and Stripes. Attendees brandished signs with Trump’s police mug shot and the words “Never surrender”. An electronic sign flashed optimistically: “Philadelphia is Trump country.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenTrump painted a dystopian, often dishonest picture of “bedlam and death and terror”, a likely preview of his strategy for Thursday’s debate against Biden in Atlanta and the rest of his scorched earth campaign until November.“Murders in Philadelphia reached their highest level in six decades,” he said “Retail theft in Philly is up 135% since I left office. The convenience stores are closing down left and right. The pharmacies have to lock up the soap … You can’t buy toothpaste, you can’t buy a toothbrush, it takes you 45 minutes.” The crowd roared with laugher.In April the Pew Charitable Trusts’ annual “State of the City” report found that violent crime in Philadelphia is at its lowest level in a decade. The city’s homicide rate dropped six percentage points in 2023, in line with other cities of similar scale. But the number of property crimes did rise sharply over the same period.Crucial to Trump’s fear and fury election strategy is joining dots between crime and illegal immigration. It is a hot button issue after Republican governors in Texas and Florida chartered buses and planes to send thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities. Mayors have felt a strain on their resources and growing backlash from voters.Trump said: “Unbelievably Crooked Joe Biden is going around trying to claim that crime is down. Crime is so much up. First of all, we have a new form of crime. It’s called the Biden Migrant Crime, right? And all these millions of people that have come in, they’re just getting warmed up.”In fact last year violent crime fell to one of its lowest levels in more than half a century. FBI statistics show steep drops in every category of violent crime in every region in the first three months of 2024 compared to a year earlier.But at Saturday’s rally Trump, himself a convicted criminal, sought to turn reality on its head.View image in fullscreen“The FBI crime statistics Biden is pushing are fake,” he said without evidence. “They’re fake just like everything else in this administration.”The former president went on to use lurid, apocalyptic language to describe the alleged threat posed by undocumented immigrants. Many studies have found that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than US-born citizens.“Day after day, week after week, Joe Biden is releasing illegal criminals into our communities to rape, pillage, plunder and to kill,” he said. “Just this week, a 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray, was tied up, stripped, and strangled to death after walking to a 7-Eleven.”“… Charged with Jocelyn’s heinous murder are two illegal alien savages that Joe Biden recently set loose into our country. They came across our border claiming they feared for their lives in Venezuela.”At that a man in the crowd shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden!” – an ominous sign of how Trump’s rhetoric fires up his crowds. During his 85-minute speech, they shouted and shrieked and chanted “Build the wall!” and “USA! USA!”The Republican National Committee recently launched a website called “Biden Bloodbath” that highlights anecdotal incidents involving migrants in eight US states, including electoral battlegrounds such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Trump went on to cite the case of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother from Maryland allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant, and thanked members of her family for attending the rally. Telling another grim crime story in unsparing detail, he commented: “Like a scene from a horror movie.”Trump deployed a similar tactic in 2016 and believes it could resonate again. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March found that only about three in 10 Americans approve of Biden’s handling of immigration. A similar share approved of his handling of border security.View image in fullscreenSix people interviewed by the Guardian inside the arena in Philadelphia – all of whom were attending a Trump rally for the first time – expressed support for his proposed crackdown on border security and illegal immigration.Jim Leedom, wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “We the people are pissed off”, said: “He’s definitely going to clean that up good. The atrocities that are going on down there, the little girls being raped, the women being raped, the drug cartel has control of the whole area – Biden doesn’t seem to give a shit.”“None of that shit went on when Trump was in..”Leedom, 55, who owns a small manufacturing shop, voiced support for Trump’s plan to carry out the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in history.In recent weeks Biden has imposed significant restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum in the US while also offering potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people without legal status already living in the country. But the measures cut little ice here.Leedom, accompanied by his son Joseph, a 21-year-old engineering student voting in his first presidential election (he too will vote for Trump), commented: “He’s playing games. That doesn’t surprise me. He’s evil. There’s not enough water for a shower to wash the filth of Biden off.”Michael Krug, 53, was sporting a red T-shirt that said “Keep America great” and “Trump” but had attached a piece of blue sticky tape to hide the word “Pence”. He also wore a badge that said, “God, guns and Trump”.Krug, who works for a paint company, endorsed the “great replacement” theory that describes a supposed elite conspiracy to change the demographics of America, replacing and disempowering white people in favour of people of color, immigrants and Muslims.“Why is it that we don’t have a border any more and people can come just right in and they can get benefits and they can take money and they can take social services away from our poor people or our people that maybe need it?” he asked. “They’re doing it for the Great Replacement. They’re doing it for voters. They’re also doing it to change our culture.”Krug cited the false notion that undocumented immigrants are given voter registration cards, adding: “They’re prosecuting people for walking into the Capitol on January 6th, but they won’t prosecute people coming across the border, which is illegal. There’s a two tiered system of justice, which is not the American way it’s supposed to be. It’s got to change.”Jair Moly, 27, an African American man wearing a Maga cap, said: “You ain’t from here, don’t come here. You ain’t allowed here, don’t come here. Make America great again ‘24. Let’s go!”Asked why he intends to vote for Trump, Moly replied: “He’s real, he keeps it real. He’s not fake. There’s nothing fake about him. He keep it real and he pull no no punches and that’s what we need, America, punch you right in the face.”But Erwin Bieber, 71, a retired car salesman, suggested that a Trump defeat could lead to at least one case of reverse migration. “Initially I didn’t like the way he spoke years ago but I voted for him in 2016. I feel that the country is completely gone if we don’t put him into office. I think I’m going to leave America. If we get stuck with Biden, I’ll go to Mexico.”Democrats set up posters, billboards and kiosks in Philadelphia and on the Temple campus to promote Biden’s policies, including his efforts to forgive student debt, as well as to criticise Trump’s record with the Black community.State representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “I represent the community in Philly where Trump is currently ranting and raving. I can authoritatively say, my neighbors aren’t in that arena listening to his lies. But a bunch did show up to protest him, so I guess there’s that.” More

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      In South Carolina, Black voters are split on immigration

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      Republicans claim that their election-year rhetoric about immigration has a new audience in Black communities. North Charleston’s newfound racial complexity tests that claim.The working-class city of about 120,000 people is one of the most strongly Democratic in South Carolina, more so even than Charleston, its larger, storied neighbor to its south. It has also long been split almost evenly between Black and white residents. Immigration has been adding a third dimension to what was a two-way relationship.In the “neck” of the barbell-shaped city, between the primarily white northern neighborhoods and the primarily Black southern neighborhoods, are stretches where the shops advertise in Spanish and almost all the children getting off the school bus are Latino.About 2.5% of North Charlestonians identified as Hispanic in the 1990 census. That rose to 4% in 2000, 10% in 2010 and, on paper, about 12% today, with 8% “other”. But the current census figures are questionable, said Enrique “Henry” Grace, CFO of the Charleston Hispanic Association: “Forget about it. Because Hispanics don’t do the census. Whatever the census says, double it.”Immigration can be a tough topic to discuss in South Carolina’s Black community, which isn’t keen on offering white conservatives who regularly attack cities as “crime-infested” yet another reason to snipe at North Charleston, especially in an election year when immigration rhetoric on the right has become increasingly toxic.But it doesn’t mean they aren’t asking more from Democratic leaders. In early June, Joe Biden announced changes to border policy, significantly curtailing asylum claims in a bid for bold executive action on a campaign issue.The US president’s border order came with political pressure mounting on the president and Congress to resolve negotiations on a bill to change America’s immigration policies and stem undocumented migration. Some of that political pressure comes from big-city leaders like the mayors of New York and Chicago, after border state governors began shipping people who had crossed the border to them last year, straining the social services infrastructure.But the border action has an audience among Democrats in South Carolina, too.Biden was serving red meat to Democratic party loyalists at a January campaign speech in Columbia, South Carolina, talking about his appointment of Black judges and lowering Black unemployment rates, when he threw them one nugget of red-state steak. He complained that Republicans in Congress were thwarting legislation on the border – despite getting almost everything they wanted in the bill – at the bidding of Donald Trump in order to preserve it for him as a political issue.View image in fullscreen“If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” Biden said, to applause.As attendees awaited the president before the speech, Michael Butler, mayor of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a Democrat, expressed sympathy with this idea. “I would expect the president, if he’s elected a second time, to close the border,” Butler said.The population of both the city and county of Orangeburg, about 45 minutes north of North Charleston, is mostly Black, poor, rural and Democratic. Biden won 70% of Orangeburg in the 2020 primary – his best showing statewide – and two-thirds of votes in the November election.Without a careful message, this time could be different. Shipping border crossers to big cities seemed like a publicity stunt, but it was one that worked, in Butler’s view, to highlight how problems at the border are problems everywhere, including Democratic strongholds.“I empathize with those mayors,” Butler said. “They have to deal with the expectations of migrants, and the security of them. You know we’re the land of the free and the brave, and we believe in taking care of all citizens. But those borders need to be secured to protect the citizens.”Butler’s take on immigration isn’t uniformly held across the state.Some Black political leaders in North Charleston beam about how immigration has changed their communities. State representative JA Moore, a North Charleston Democrat, boasts of having the most diverse district in the state. “I’m proud of that,” he said. Moore pushes back, hard, against the suggestion that there’s tension between Black and Latino people about housing or jobs where he lives.North Charleston presents a more nuanced test of the Black electorate’s reaction to immigration, because the growth of its immigrant community has come with booming economic growth and overall population increases. Even so, Moore admits that some could conflate something like the rapid increase in housing prices with the rapid increase in immigration.“The housing market in general and in Charleston is higher than it was 10, 15 years ago,” Moore said. “And also the amount of Hispanics that are moving in has increased tremendously in the past 15 years. They see a Hispanic person move into their neighborhood, and they’re seeing the prices of the houses going up … People may be correlating the two.”Donald Trump is counting on those kind of inferences.Biden’s Republican challenger, known for his increasingly strident immigration rhetoric, responded to the border closure at a rally in the Las Vegas heat after Biden’s announcement, describing it as insufficient while arguing that the president is “waging all-out war” on Black and Latino workers. He falsely claimed that the wages of Black workers had fallen 6% since 2021.The international manufacturers that have driven growth aren’t hiring undocumented labor, said Eduardo Curry, president of the North Charleston chapter of the Young Democrats of South Carolina. “A lot of jobs here in Charleston are skilled labor jobs,” he said. “It’s not just … walk off the street and let me hire you.”The problem, Curry said, is that too few Black workers in North Charleston have the training to take those jobs, even as those employers are yearning for more labor. Working-class Black laborers instead compete with recent immigrants for jobs that require less formal education.Tension between Black and Latino people in North Charleston has been relatively low, but may be rising because of job competition, said Ruby Wallace, a job recruiter at a staffing agency in North Charleston that serves warehouses and distribution centers – working-class employers. “Hispanics are working for whatever they can get at this point,” she said. “And they’re doing a lot of work.”The North Charleston native said her staffing agency has lost 40% of its business year over year after some clients found it less expensive to hire undocumented labor through shady organizations.The neighborhood around the staffing agency has become populated primarily with immigrants, and the office, which has historically employed working-class and poor Black people, turns away undocumented applicants every day.A cottage industry of undocumented labor has emerged, undercutting legal operators by skirting federal E-Verify laws and omitting payments into workers’ compensation and unemployment taxes.Wallace has been reporting the violations she sees to the US Department of Labor, to no avail. “I’m trying to figure out, how is it possible for them to load people up and bring them, working here in South Carolina? Is it not illegal for them to do that?” she said.Republican messaging aimed at Black voters mixes threats about job losses with invective about immigration, crime and cities.Black voters are expected to ignore the racial undercurrent of attacks on cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia or most recently Milwaukee – a “horrible city” in Trump’s most recent tirade – while being receptive to the idea that undocumented people from Central and South America make those cities more unsafe.That hasn’t happened in North Charleston.North Charleston began assessing the city’s racial disparity in arrests and victimization in 2020. A majority of North Charleston’s immigrants are Latino. According to a report released in 2021, Hispanic suspects represented about 7.5% of arrests, while Hispanic residents comprised 10% of the city’s population that year.Violent crime increased during the pandemic in North Charleston, as it did in most cities with more than 100,000 residents. It has fallen since. But it is among the higher-crime cities in the state, with a murder rate about five times the national average.Keeping the peace in North Charleston has meant navigating racial tension in a city experiencing poverty and crime. Immigration adds a new element to that challenge.Reggie Burgess, 58, grew up in North Charleston and served on its police force for more than 30 years – five as its chief – before winning election as the city’s first Black mayor in 2023. He said he contends with a common trope: that undocumented immigrants bring with them an uptick in crime.But that depiction of immigrants as criminals is false; they are measurably less likely to commit crimes than the US-born. Burgess, who has witnessed the changes in his community first-hand, said he has had to meet with immigrants to discuss how they are too often victimized by other poor people who look like him.Back when Burgess was still chief of police in 2017, he found himself conducting role-playing exercises with Latino immigrants about identifying Black people, trying to build some trust with the community.“We would actually turn them backwards, and we’d turn them around real quick and say: ‘Look at this person,’ and turn ’em back around,” Burgess said. “I’d ask, can you give me a description of the person? We were trying to teach them to understand that a Black male was more than this Afro. You’ve got to [describe] a shirt, or this lanyard.”It became evident to Burgess 20 years ago that undocumented individuals were being targeted for robberies because they tended to work in cash trades, he said. That revelation led the city to start pushing the financial-services industry to provide banking services, and was the start of relationship-building exercises between civic leaders and immigrants.But the federal government doesn’t do enough to keep victims from being deported long enough to sustain prosecutions, he said, leaving undocumented individuals as easy targets for crime and exploitation.“The U visa is supposedly supposed to help us lock in the witness for a period of time,” Burgess said, describing a victim witness visa program. “And Hispanics and Latinos would fill out the form, and I’m thinking: ‘OK, we’re good.’ The next thing you know, they tell me the prime witness has to go back or got caught up at a traffic stop and is being deported.”Underlying this issue is unstable housing and endemic poverty.“There’s a lot of need in Charleston in the Hispanic community. Need for everything, housing, jobs, everything,” said Grace of the Charleston Hispanic Association.The undocumented community in North Charleston tends to be concentrated in an area of the city with trailer parks and affordable housing. They are too often living in substandard or overcrowded conditions, said Annette Glover, who operates an immigrant-oriented community ministry in North Charleston.North Charleston is part of a three-county metropolitan area of about 830,000 residents. Glover’s organization, Community Impact, assisted 86,387 people within that area last year, she said, with food, language training, housing assistance and other help. Most were immigrants. About 75% – to 80% were undocumented, she said. With that has come a fear of appearing on the government’s radar, even while applying for help from nongovernmental organizations like hers, she said.“We have found a way to actually get them to fill out applications, by allowing them to understand that we’re not going to be giving it to Ice or to anything like that,” she said.Burgess said economic conditions and education are stress points. “I mean, some of these neighborhoods, the [adjusted median income] is $29,000. And then you can go a little further up, and AMI is probably is $101,000,” he said. “And without education, there’s no options. You have to settle for whatever you get.”The gridlock in Washington DC on immigration has an impact on places like North Charleston.Biden’s move to close the border to asylum seekers is a short-term approach to a long-term problem, Burgess said.Without actual reform to the immigration system, undocumented immigrants will remain in the shadows.“We have to step back and push aside these little personal vendettas and squabbles in these parties, and think as Americans,” Burgess said. “My people came here in chains 400 years ago. We’re free now, right? Why? We’re free because the country said enough is enough. And they fought, brothers and sisters, fought each other, and they said: ‘OK, everybody’s free.’ They could do that in 1865. They can do the same thing in 2024.” More

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      Some immigrants celebrate Biden’s extension of legal status while others left out

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      Hundreds of thousands of immigrants had reason to rejoice when Joe Biden unveiled a highly expansive plan to extend legal status to spouses of US citizens but, inevitably, some were left out.Claudia Zúniga, 35, was married in 2017, 10 years after her husband came to the United States. He moved to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after they wed, knowing that, by law, he had to live outside the US for years to gain legal status. “Our lives took a 180-degree turn,” she said.Biden announced on Tuesday that his administration will, in the coming months, allow US citizens’ spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country for up to 10 years. About 500,000 immigrants may benefit, according to senior administration officials.To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years and be married to a US citizen, both as of Monday. Zúniga’s husband is ineligible because he wasn’t in the United States.“Imagine, it would be a dream come true,” said Zúniga, who works part time at her father’s transportation business in Houston. “My husband could be with us. We could focus on the wellbeing of our children.”Every immigration benefit – even those as sweeping as Biden’s election-year offer – has a cutoff dates and other eligibility requirements. In September, the Democratic president expanded temporary status for nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who were living in the United States on 31 July 2023. Those who had arrived a day later were out of luck.View image in fullscreenThe Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded hundreds of thousands of people from deportation who came to the United States as young children and is popularly known as Daca, required applicants to be in the United States on 15 June 2012 and to have been in the country continuously for the previous five years.About 1.1 million people in the US illegally are married to US citizens, according to advocacy group FWD.us, but hundreds of thousands won’t qualify because they were in the US for fewer than 10 years.Immigration advocates were generally thrilled with the scope of Tuesday’s announcement, just as Biden’s critics called it a horribly misguided giveaway.Angelica Martinez, 36, wiped away tears as she sat next to her children, ages 14 and six, and watched Biden’s announcement at the Houston office of Fiel, an immigrant advocacy group. A US citizen since 2013, she described a flood of emotions, including regret for when her husband couldn’t travel to Mexico for his mother’s death five years ago.“Sadness, joy all at the same time,” said Martinez, whose husband came to Houston 18 years ago.Brenda Valle of Los Angeles, whose husband has been a US citizen since 2001 and, like her, was born in Mexico, has renewed her Daca permit every two years. “We can start planning more long-term, for the future, instead of what we can do for the next two years,” she said.Magdalena Gutiérrez of Chicago, who has been married 22 years to a US citizen and has three daughters who are US citizens, said she had “a little more hope” after Biden’s announcement. Gutiérrez, 43, is eager to travel more across the United States without fearing an encounter with law enforcement that could lead to her being deported.Allyson Batista, a retired Philadelphia teacher and US citizen who married her Brazilian husband 20 years ago, recalled being told by a lawyer that he could leave the country for 10 years or “remain in the shadows and wait for a change in the law”.“Initially, when we got married, I was naive and thought, ‘OK, but I’m American. This isn’t going to be a problem. We’re going to fix this,’” Batista said. “I learned very early on that we were facing a pretty dire circumstance and that there would be no way for us to move forward in an immigration process successfully.”The couple raised three children who are now pursuing higher education. Batista is waiting for the details of how her husband can apply for a green card.“I’m hopeful,” Batista said. “The next 60 days will really tell. But obviously more than thrilled because every step forward is a step towards a final resolution for all kinds of immigrant families.”About 50,000 noncitizen children with parents who are married to US citizens could also potentially qualify, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. Biden also announced new regulations that will allow some Daca beneficiaries and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for work visas. More

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      Democrats agree Biden had to act on immigration – but they’re split over his asylum order

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      Democratic mayors, governors and members of Congress from the south-west to the north-east stood beside Joe Biden at the White House, when he unveiled an executive order temporarily sealing the US-Mexico border to most asylum seekers – the most restrictive immigration policy of his presidency.“We must face a simple truth,” the US president said. “To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”Those around him agreed, applauding the directive as a welcome, if belated, step. Yet for many Democrats not in attendance, the moment marked an astonishing retreat from just four years ago, when the president campaigned on dismantling the incendiary immigration policies of Donald Trump.Most Democrats accept that Biden had to do something to address an issue that has become one of his biggest political vulnerabilities. But the party, once united in furious opposition to Trump’s asylum clampdown, now finds itself divided over his course of action, split on both the substance of the policy and the wisdom politics.Biden is once again campaigning for the presidency against Trump, but the political climate has changed demonstrably.Unprecedented levels of migration at the south-west border, fueled by poverty, political upheaval, climate change and violence and amplified by incendiary Republican rhetoric, have rattled Americans. Polls show border security is a top – sometimes the top – concern among US voters this election season.The action, designed to deter illegal border crossings, was an attempt by the Biden administration to confront those concerns. But it also invited unwelcome comparisons to his predecessor, whose policies he was accused of “reviving” in a legal challenge brought last week by the American Civil Liberties Union.“It violates fundamental American values of who we say we are – and puts people in danger,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy organization. “It’s part of a trap that the Democrats are falling into – they’re buying the narrative the right is pushing on immigration.”For three years, Republicans have accused Biden of ignoring mounting concern over the south-west border, which they falsely claim is under “invasion”. But as the humanitarian situation has worsened, he has also been confronted by criticism from Democratic mayors and governors pleading for more federal help managing the record number of people arriving in their cities and states, especially during peaks in 2022 and 2023.Biden moved to act unilaterally after Republicans blocked – at Trump’s behest – an attempt to pass a bipartisan bill to restrict asylum. Congress also rejected a multibillion-dollar budget request from the White House for additional resources to manage the situation, raising questions about how authorities will enforce the new rule.Supporters of Biden’s latest policy, including border-state and swing-state Democrats, say the action will deter illegal immigration by encouraging people to seek asylum in an “orderly” manner at legal ports of entry. Even if the rule is blocked by the courts, they are ready to make the case to voters that Biden took decisive action when Republicans would not.“We all want order at the border,” said New York representative Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who flipped a House seat in a special election earlier this year after campaigning on more border security. “The American people want us to deal with immigration.”But progressives, immigration-rights advocates and some Hispanic leaders say that the new order not only suspends long-standing guarantees that anyone who reaches US soil has the right to seek asylum, it undermines American values. The president’s embrace of punitive policies, they argue, risks losing the support of key parts of his coalition.Biden knew the order would infuriate corners of his party – he addressed them directly in his White House remarks earlier this month, saying the goodwill of the American people was “wearing thin”.“Doing nothing is not an option,” he said. “We have to act.”But advocates and progressives say he can do more to protect undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country for decades, some for nearly their entire lives.They are urging Biden to use his bully pulpit to move the immigration fight beyond the border by using his presidential authority to shield more immigrants from deportation and create avenues for them to work legally. The White House is reportedly considering a future action that would protect undocumented spouses of American citizens from deportation.Last week the Biden campaign released a new ad marking the 12th anniversary of Daca – the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program established by the Obama White House in 2012 – as the Democrat runs for re-election and looks for ways to shore up support from Latino voters.The program provides temporary work permits and reprieves from deportation for hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, people brought without permission to the US as children.In the “Spanglish” ad, Dreamers tout a recent move by the Biden administration to extend health care coverage to Daca recipients while warning that Trump has threatened to end the program.“Ultimately, Congress needs to act to reform our immigration system,” Cárdenas said. “But until then, we need Biden doing everything he can to show that he still believes what he promised he would do when he came into office.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s policy, which took effect immediately, seeks to deter illegal immigration by temporarily blocking people who cross the US border outside lawful ports of entry from claiming asylum, with some exceptions. The order lifts when daily arrests for illegal crossing from Mexico fall to 1,500 per day across a seven-day average. The last time crossings fell below that threshold was in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic halted migration.The number of illegal border crossings has fallen in recent months, due in part to stepped-up Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. But officials say the level is still elevated, and worry the trend could reverse as the weather cools and a new Mexican president takes power weeks before the November election.Despite its failure, the bipartisan border security deal, negotiated with the blessing of the White House, underscored just how far to the right the immigration debate in Washington has shifted.The legislation included a wishlist of Republican border security demands aimed at keeping people out. Absent were any long-sought Democratic aspirations of expanding pathways to citizenship and work visas for the millions of undocumented people living in the US. Instead, Democrats tied the border deal to a foreign aid package opposed by conservatives.“That changed the contours of what had been a widely understood immigration framework,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, immigration policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, adding: “I’m not sure what the consensus or compromise border solution is anymore.”On the campaign trail, Democrats hope to capitalize on Republican resistance to the border deal by casting Trump as unserious about addressing illegal immigration at the border, his signature issue. But it may prove difficult for Biden to make inroads on what has long been one of the country’s most polarizing political issues.Polls consistently show deep public disapproval of how Biden has handled the border, with voters giving Trump, who has also faced sharp criticism for his immigration plans, a wide advantage.A CBS News poll found broad public support for the president’s executive order, including among Republicans, but they also believed illegal border crossings were more likely to fall under Trump than Biden.And a new Monmouth University poll last week found Biden’s standing practically unchanged by the action, with roughly half of Americans – 46% – saying it did not go far enough, compared with 31% who said it was about right. Just 17% said the order went too far.On Wednesday, a coalition of immigrant-advocacy groups led by the ACLU sued the Biden administration over the directive.“By enacting an asylum ban that is legally indistinguishable from the Trump ban we successfully blocked, we were left with no choice but to file this lawsuit,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU.The administration anticipated legal challenges. “We stand by the legality of what we have done,” the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a Sunday interview with ABC, adding that he would have preferred for Congress to act.Last week, a group of 18 progressive members of Congress sent a letter to Mayorkas asking the administration to reconsider the asylum rule on the grounds that it “puts asylum seekers at grave risk of unlawful removal and return to harm”.Despite their disappointment, Biden’s Democratic critics say Trump – who has said undocumented immigrants “poison the blood of our country” and is planning a sweeping mass-deportation campaign in a potential second term – would be far more dangerous.“The more American voters focus on the anti-immigrant, extremist policies that the right is pushing, the more they’re going to reject that vision,” Cárdenas said. But, she added: “Americans want to know, what’s the plan? What’s the strategy? What’s the vision? And I think it will serve Biden and Democrats better if they have an answer to the question of what it is they are for.” More

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      Drill, baby, drill … if you haven’t passed out from heatstroke

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      Hello!More than a dozen Donald Trump supporters collapsed at his rallies amid record high temperatures in the south-west in recent days – presumably missing Trump’s promise at the gatherings to gut Biden’s environmental policies and “drill, baby, drill”. So what would a Trump administration mean for those who hope the world can limit global heating and the climate crisis? We’ll take a look after the headlines.Here’s what you need to know …1. Hunter Biden convicted of gun chargesHunter Biden, the president’s son who has become a bete noire for Republicans, was found guilty of three charges relating to buying a gun while being a user of crack cocaine. Rightwing politicians and media have accused Hunter and his father of various corrupt acts, but a Republican-led House committee spent a year investigating the pair and failed to come up with any corruption charges. The judge will now decide on Hunter Biden’s punishment: the crimes are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although a lesser sentence is expected.2. Trump awaits his fateTrump was interviewed by probation officers on Monday, ahead of his sentencing in July. The probation interview typically serves to prepare a report on a convicted individual, which will then be considered by the judge when issuing sentence – which in this case could, in theory, include a prison sentence. Trump was convicted of 34 felony crimes related to him falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who claims they had an affair. He is due to be sentenced on 11 July.3. A warning for Republicans?Ohio’s sixth district went to Trump by 29 points in 2020 – but in a special election on Tuesday night, Republican candidate Michael Rulli triumphed by just nine points, which could suggest a lack of enthusiasm among voters. Elsewhere, Trump-endorsed candidates won primary elections in Nevada and South Carolina, including Nancy Mace, a congresswoman involved in the effort to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker: Mace had faced a vengeance-led challenge from a McCarthy-backed candidate, but won comfortably.Trump supporters drop in extreme heat waiting for their climate-denying kingpinView image in fullscreenLast week Trump and his campaign managed to send 17 supporters to the hospital after people wilted in 100F heat at his rallies in Arizona and Nevada. At the Phoenix event, Trumpers were forced to line up outside a megachurch venue for hours in the hot sun, and the stricken received only a brief mention from their leader, with Trump suggesting that people will not “be so thrilled” about waiting outside.The south-west is being blasted by record-breaking heat, with temperatures of 45C (113F) in the last week. Half of Arizona and Nevada were under heat warnings over the weekend, and given that extreme heat is accepted to be a consequence of the climate emergency, we might have expected a presidential candidate to talk up environmental efforts to limit global heating.Nah.“[Biden has] got windmills all over the place, every time you see a windmill going up you need tremendous subsidy, now it kills your birds, it ruins your landscape, ruins your value, if you have a house and you can see a windmill your house is worth half,” Trump told the crowd in Phoenix.He added: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”My colleagues Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor, who cover the environment, have previously reported on the Trump team’s plans to increase fossil fuel production in “a frenzy” of oil and gas drilling, while sidelining government climate scientists. In Phoenix, Trump repeated his pledge to scrap key parts of Biden’s climate plans, including rebates for people who buy electric vehicles. And just last week it emerged that Trump had promised lucrative tax favors to fossil fuel executives if they gave his campaign $1bn.Biden, for his campaign, has touted the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested a record $278bn in moving towards renewable energy sources, and in March claimed: “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.”But Oliver and Nina Lakhani also reported that Biden is weakening some of his previous climate plans – delaying a regulation to reduce emissions from gas power plans, and relaxing rules about how much carbon cars can emit.Both sides, then, could be doing more. But it’s worth taking into account one analysis that found a second Trump presidency could lead to an additional 4bn tons of US emissions by 2030.By the way: Trump has never been a fan of windfarms, and in May he said would scrap offshore wind projects on “day one” of his presidency. Part of Trump’s reasoning seems to be his incorrect belief that wind turbines cause cancer, while he has previously claimed – also wrongly – that wind turbines lead to whale deaths by making them “batty”.Of course, this wasn’t the first time Trump has expressed an interest in aquatic life, because …Shark!View image in fullscreen… the presidential hopeful has a fascination with, and loathing of, sharks. Trump has previously tweeted that he ranks sharks alongside the “losers and haters of the world”, while Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose silence Trump bought (and was convicted of fudging business accounts to pay for), has said Trump is “obsessed with sharks”. Daniels said he went as far to say: “I hope all the sharks die.”Clearly sharks were still on Trump’s mind this week. In Vegas, he went on a typically meandering monologue, musing whether it would be better to stay on board a sinking electric boat or to jump into shark-infested waters.“You know what I’d do if there was a shark, or you get electrocuted?” Trump asked the crowd. “I’d take electrocution every single time.” Please, please watch the full video.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWho had the worst week: Jesus ChristView image in fullscreenRiding high after his Easter resurrection, things took a turn for the worse for the Son of God this week when he was compared – and not for the first time – to Donald Trump.“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon’,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.”Trump has previously encouraged the comparison to Jesus.Out and about: El PasoView image in fullscreen“A gut punch.” “Political theater.” “Nonsensical.”That was the reaction from advocates in El Paso the day after Joe Biden announced a clampdown on asylum. Many worried about how the order would affect migrants fleeing violence, poverty and persecution in their home countries.I spoke with them as part of an incredibly well-timed immigration reporting workshop in El Paso, a historically liberal city in west Texas, where Spanish and English are spoken interchangeably and the border is a line many cross daily for work, school or to grab a bite.Many were skeptical. Juan Acereto Cervera, an adviser to the mayor of Juárez, the Mexican city across the border from El Paso, said the policy would do little to stop people from seeking a better life elsewhere.“Nothing’s going to stop the migration, nothing,” he said.That is the conundrum Biden faces as he tries to address an issue that poses both a serious policy challenge and a serious political threat to his re-election campaign.– Lauren Gambino, political correspondent, El Paso, TexasBiggest lie: Charlie KirkView image in fullscreenJoe Biden’s acceptance of the legal process in his son Hunter’s criminal case, and a promise that he wouldn’t pardon him, stands in contrast to how Trump reacted after his conviction of 34 felonies – which the former president has frequently and falsely claimed was orchestrated by the Biden administration.It also provides an example against the Republican-pushed claim that the elder Biden can, and does, rig the courts against Trump. Wouldn’t he have saved his own son?Of course not, say Trump allies, who have started to push a new conspiracy about the Hunter Biden conviction.“This is a fake trial trying to make the justice system appear ‘balanced’,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of conservative youth group Turning Point USA. “Don’t fall for it.” More

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      Mayorkas insists immigration order not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, defended both the timing and substance of Joe Biden’s new executive order to restrict immigration at the southern border, as the president faces criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the measure.The order, issued on Tuesday, tells officials to shut down asylum requests once the average number of encounters between legal ports of entry reaches 2,500 or more. If the number of encounters falls to 1,500 or fewer for seven consecutive days, the border would reopen two weeks later.During an interview on ABC News’s This Week, host Martha Raddatz noted that crossings had never reached the threshold of falling to 1,500 or fewer during Biden’s presidency – and Mayorkas declined to say whether he expected it to happen before election day.Mayorkas declined to give a concrete timeline on when to expect border crossings to meet the targeted threshold. Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans earlier this year over his handling of the border, but the charges were quickly dismissed by the Senate.“We are at a very early stage. Implementation, as you noted, has just begun,” Mayorkas told Raddatz on Sunday. “It’s early, the signs are positive. Our personnel have done an extraordinary job in implementing a very big shift in how we operate on the southern border.”Some Democrats have assailed the order as essentially a revival of the Trump administration’s asylum ban, which was struck down by federal courts. Biden also criticized the measure when he was a candidate for president.Mayorkas insisted on Sunday that the executive order was not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise.“What the president said then is what we are living today,” he said. “We are allowing individuals to access asylum through the ports of entry, pursuant to a program that we developed. We are allowing people to access asylum if they come from the countries of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”Republicans have dismissed the policy as insufficient and an election-year stunt. “This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire. And the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little, too late,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, said last week. But the Republican criticism comes after Republican senators twice blocked a sweeping bipartisan border security bill. Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s presidential election, had lobbied against the measure.Mayorkas defended the timing of the executive order, which came four months after the border bill first failed. He said the administration would have preferred for Congress to act.“The bipartisan deal was rejected once. We pressed forward again. It was rejected a second time. And then we developed this and have implemented it and we are at an early stage,” he said. “And let’s not minimize the significance of this move and the significance of operationalizing it. And it requires the cooperation of other countries which we have secured.” More

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      Arizona legislature overrules governor on proposal criminalizing non-citizens

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      The Republican-controlled Arizona legislature gave final approval Tuesday to a proposal asking voters to make it a state crime for non-citizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry, sending the measure to the 5 November ballot.The vote came as Joe Biden unveiled plans Tuesday to restrict the number of people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border, saying: “This action will help to gain control of our border, restore order to the process.”Arizona’s proposal, approved on a 31-29 vote by the state house, would allow state and local police to arrest people crossing the border without authorization. It would also give state judges the power to order people convicted of the offense to return to their countries of origin.The proposal bypasses the Democratic governor Katie Hobbs, who had vetoed a similar measure in early March and has denounced the effort to bring the issue to voters.House Republicans closed access to the upper gallery of the chamber before the session started Tuesday, citing concerns about security and possible disruptions. The move immediately drew the criticism of Democrats, who demanded that the gallery be reopened.“The public gallery should be open to the public. This is the people’s house,” said the state representative Analise Ortiz.House representatives voted along party lines, with all Republicans voting in favor of the proposal and all Democrats voting against it. Earlier, the Arizona senate also approved the proposal on a 16-13 party-line vote.Supporters of the bill said it was necessary to ensure security along the state’s southern border, and that Arizona voters should be given the opportunity to decide the issue themselves.“We need this bill and we must act on it,” said state representative John Gillette, a Republican.Opponents called the legislation unconstitutional and said it would lead to racial profiling, separating children from parents and creating several millions of dollars in additional policing costs that the state can ill afford.“It is not a solution. It is election-year politics,” said representative Mariana Sandoval, a Democrat.While federal law already prohibits the unauthorized entry of people into the US, proponents of the measure say it’s needed because the federal government hasn’t done enough to stop people from crossing illegally over Arizona’s vast, porous border with Mexico. They also said some people who enter Arizona without authorization commit identity theft and take advantage of public benefits.Opponents say the proposal will inevitably lead to racial profiling by police and saddle the state with new costs from law enforcement agencies that don’t have experience with immigration law, as well as hurt Arizona’s reputation in the business world.Supporters have waved off racial-profiling concerns, saying local officers would still have to develop probable cause to arrest people who enter Arizona between the ports of entry.Backers also say the measure focuses only on the state’s border region and – unlike Arizona’s landmark 2010 immigration law – doesn’t target people throughout the state. Opponents point out the proposal doesn’t contain any geographical limitations on where it can be enforced within the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe proposal is similar to a Texas law that has been put on hold by a federal appeals court while it’s being challenged. But the Arizona ballot proposal contains other provisions that aren’t included in the Texas measure and aren’t directly related to immigration. Those include making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for selling fentanyl that leads to a person’s death, and a requirement that some government agencies use a federal database to verify a non-citizen’s eligibility for benefits.Warning about potential legal costs, opponents pointed to Arizona’s 2005 immigrant smuggling ban used by then Maricopa county Sheriff Joe Arpaio to carry out 20 large-scale traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. That led to a 2013 racial-profiling verdict as well as taxpayer-funded legal and compliance costs that now total $265m and are expected to reach $314m by July 2025.Under the current proposal, a first-time conviction of the border-crossing provision would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. State judges could order people to return to their countries of origin after completing a term of incarceration, although the courts would have the power to dismiss cases if those arrested agree to return home.The measure would require the state corrections department to take into custody people who are charged or convicted under the measure if local or county law enforcement agencies don’t have enough space to house them.The proposal includes exceptions for people who have been granted lawful-presence status or asylum by the federal government.The provision allowing for the arrests of people crossing the border in between ports would not take effect until the Texas law or similar laws from other states have been in effect for 60 days.This isn’t the first time Republican lawmakers in Arizona have tried to criminalize people who aren’t authorized to be in the United States.When passing its 2010 immigration bill, the Arizona legislature considered expanding the state’s trespassing law to criminalize the presence of immigrants and impose criminal penalties. But the trespassing language was removed and replaced with a requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question people’s immigration status if they were believed to be in the country illegally.The questioning requirement was ultimately upheld by the US supreme court despite the racial-profiling concerns of critics, but courts barred enforcement of other sections of the law. More

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      Democrats decry Biden executive order turning away some asylum seekers

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      Progressive Democrats and immigration advocates have shared their outrage after Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that would turn away some asylum seekers.Biden’s order will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to enter the country legally when authorities have determined that the border is “overwhelmed”.The president said the order comes after Republicans rejected a bipartisan immigration deal that would have changed several areas of US immigration policy.“Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border,” Biden said during remarks on the order on Tuesday.“Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken fixed – to hire more border patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges.”US representative Nanette Barragán of California, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, said Tuesday morning that she was “disappointed” in Biden’s direction with immigration policy, the New Republic reported.View image in fullscreenCalifornia representative Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, said she was “disappointed at the enforcement-only strategies” announced by Biden.“Rather than address humanitarian issues at the border effectively and with the nuance they deserve, today’s actions will gut protections for countless migrants exercising their legal right to claim asylum,” she said.US representative Raúl Grijalva, whose Arizona district borders Mexico, said that the order is a “significant departure from President Biden’s promise of a more humane and just approach to immigration”.He added: “It tramples on the universal right to claim asylum and prevents migrants from attempting to legally access safety and security in the United States. It is ripe for legal challenges and antithetical to our values.”The American Civil Liberties Union denounced Biden’s executive order and said they will be challenging it in court.“The Biden administration just announced an executive order that will severely restrict people’s legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk,” the organization said in a post on X.Meanwhile, other Democrats have welcomed Biden’s actions as a necessary step to address the humanitarian crisis at the border.Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio told the Washington Post that he believes it is the “right direction”, adding: “I want to see more.” More