US immigration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 238 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump celebrates James Comey indictment as ex-FBI director says ‘I’m innocent: let’s have a trial’ – as it happened

      by

      This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, as the White House aide he installed as a prosecutor this week indicted the man Trump holds largely responsible for the Russia investigation.

      Trump celebrated the indictment of “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”, in a social media post that could be used as evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

      “I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either,” Comey said in an Instagram video statement. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month.

      Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”

      Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the justice department and the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce to investigate what he claimed is an organized campaign of political violence and domestic terrorism funded by Democrats.

      The House Democratic campaign arm believes their lawmakers have the advantage in the tense battle over government funding, after last week refusing to back a Republican plan to prevent a shutdown unless their demands on healthcare and other issues are met.

      We leave you with video of Hillary Clinton saying in a 2016 debate: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” He replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”
      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Donald Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month in federal court.The suit explains that Maurene Comey was “abruptly fired” on 16 July 16 from her job as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan despite an “outstanding” performance review just months earlier.The suit, which names the office of the president and the attorney general as defendants, says that they “fired Ms. Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”It goes on to allege that Trump’s hatred of her father, and the antipathy of Trump’s outside adviser Laura Loomer, were major factors in her wrongful termination.According to the suit:
      James Comey served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017. For the past nine years, President Trump has publicly criticized Mr. Comey for his actions while serving as FBI Director, and because after he was fired, Mr. Comey (i) wrote a memoir critical of President Trump, (ii) continued to publicly criticize President Trump and his Administration, and (iii) in May 2025 posted a message on social media that President Trump and others in the Trump Administration claimed to perceive as threatening.
      Following Mr. Comey’s May 2025 social media post and other critical statements, President Trump’s supporters called for Ms. Comey’s firing. Notable among those supporters is Laura Loomer, a social media influencer who, on information and belief, has political influence in the Trump Administration, including influence over the termination of federal employees. President Trump has publicly stated: “If you’re Loomered you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense.” On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.” Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”
      James Comey’s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.Troy Edwards wrote in an email to Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience parachuted into the job as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week that he was resigning “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.Edwards , who helped prosecute pro-Trump January 6 rioters later pardoned by Trump, was deputy chief of the national security section, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and handles some of the highest-profile espionage cases.James Comey, the former FBI director, professed his innocence in a video statement posted on Instagram on Thursday after he was indicted by the former White House aide Donald Trump appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week.“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he added.“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” he concluded.Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons.Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to get Trump elected president in 2016.Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to, in his words “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”.Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, concluded that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed plenty of evidence that the Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”.Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.While Mueller ultimately elected not to charge Trump’s son, Don Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia.When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting.The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”.One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place.It was Comey who, as FBI director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision.In that public forum, Comey said that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he had concluded, as a former prosecutor himself, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.That news conference offered Trump, who was then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack with glee, particularly after WikiLeaks published emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers.Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some mail was found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin.Although Comey then announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton dropped in the polls in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump.Another irony is that Comey, who has now been indicted by the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, is himself a former federal prosecutor in that office, who went on to serve as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and deputy attorney general under George W Bush before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, welcomed the indictment of James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during the George W Bush administration and was fired as FBI director by Donald Trump in 2017 after he told Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump as president in 2016.A justice department press release sent to reporters on Thursday began:
      Today, a federal grand jury has charged former FBI Director James Comey with serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information. The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.
      The indictment also alleges that Comey made a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001. Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment that statement was false.
      The statement was followed by a quote from Bondi, which was posted on her official X account earlier. “No one is above the law,” the attorney general said. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”“Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Patel added. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust. Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on.“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”Despite the intensity of those accusations from the most senior officials in the justice department, the statement included the following disclaimer, written in italics at the bottom of the page:“An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”In a sharp departure from the tradition that presidents should not comment on criminal cases, Donald Trump just celebrated the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, in terms that could make it even easier for Comey’s lawyers to argue that he is the victim of selective prosecution.The indictment came days after Trump forced out a career prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia who had determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and posted a public instruction to Bondi to replace him with a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, who could be trusted to prosecute Comey and other officials Trump holds a grudge against.“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” the president added.He then signed off with his political slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”As the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs remains in doubt, the president announced three more on Thursday.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” made in other parts of the World. Therefore, our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected.”In a separate post, he added: “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture.”Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Donald Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”Omar is a naturalized US citizen who was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, but Trump has frequently treated her criticism of him as an affront to the United States from someone he still regards as a foreigner.Trump brought up Omar on Thursday in the course of a rambling answer to a question about Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Democratic congresswoman. When Trump was asked by a conservative reporter if Crockett should face “consequences” for saying, “When I see Ice, I see slave patrols,” the president repeated the racist claim he frequently makes about Black leaders who challenge him: “she is a very low IQ person.”He then brought up Omar, whose name he mispronounced, unprompted.“This is a low IQ person, who I can’t I can’t believe is a congressperson, between her and Ilman Omar,” Trump said. “I met the head of Somalia,” he continued, “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back, and he didn’t want her.”As Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, doubled over in laughter, and other members of his cabinet chuckled, the president said again: “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”The White House was so proud of this quip that Trump’s special assistant, Margo Martin, posted video of it on an official government social media account.Omar responded by suggesting the president, who said last week he was not sure if Somalia even has a president, had made the whole thing up. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon. No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously,” she wrote on X.Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was in New York this week to address the United Nations, but he the US official he met with was not the president, but his advisor on African affairs, Massad Boulos, whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany.James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tweeted on Thursday.The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.Lindsey Halligan, the president’s former lawyer who was recently sworn in as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, asked a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony on 30 September 2020 before the five-year statute of limitations expires in the coming days. Comey’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee was related to his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was elevated to the post after Erik Siebert was forced out of the job for failing to bring indictments against Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Like Amazon Prime but with human beings’: inside Trump’s deportation machine – podcast

      by

      Near the 13th hole of a golf course in Alexandria, rural Louisiana, the Guardian US’s southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, could see ‘a telling image of where America is at the moment’. On one side, golfers teeing off on a scorching hot day; on the other, in the distance and through a fence, ‘lines of people shackled at the feet and hands, loaded on to planes’.They were people being held at the Alexandria staging facility, a detention and removal centre that has become central to Donald Trump’s deportation regime.The centre’s role was revealed by a Guardian investigation of leaked data, detailing tens of thousands of flights transporting immigrants across the US, carried out for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice).Laughland and the immigration reporter Maanvi Singh talk about what the investigation tells us about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies – and concerns about the denial of due process and the ‘disappearance’ of people from lawyers and their families.Is the chaos and the cruelty by accident, asks Helen Pidd, or is it by design? More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I was reborn’: Cincinnati imam reflects on 10 weeks in Ice custody after release

      by

      On a recent rain-drenched fall afternoon, the mood at the Clifton Mosque in Cincinnati was one of elation and relief.Last Friday, Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian imam and hospital chaplain who had been detained at a county jail for more than 10 weeks, was released and is expected to have his visa status fully returned.Soliman had been accused by US authorities of a variety of alleged terror-related charges in Egypt and faced deportation having fled the North African country in 2014 after being detained there for his work as a journalist.The legal about-turn marks a major blow to the Trump administration’s aggressive and often illegal deportation campaign that’s seen hundreds of thousands of people forced out of the US, often without due process.Soliman’s ordeal began during a regular check-in with immigration officials in Cincinnati on 9 July, when the 51-year-old from Cairo was subjected to an hours-long interview before being detained by an Ice agent and a representative of the FBI.“Eventually, they said, ‘We’re sorry to tell you that we will detain you.’ I was shocked,” Soliman says.“The Ice officer said that 24 hours ago there was a new order to detain everyone that comes to the Ice offices. He said: ‘I’m so sorry but it’s not my decision.’”Soliman was transported to the Butler county jail and held in freezing conditions for 12 hours in the jail’s waiting room, where he struggled to stay warm wearing just a T-shirt and pants.“The beds were rusted, and the only toilet was in a room with 13 or 14 other people around. It was traumatizing and dehumanizing,” he recalls.Things worsened when Soliman was put in isolation – a cell where he was separated from others and denied nearly all rights granted to other detainees – for five days. He says it followed an argument when Soliman’s request for a quiet space to pray was rejected by a correctional officer who then claimed Soliman failed to comply with a lockdown call, something the imam denies.“There is a multi-purpose room where Christian pastors and Muslim imams come to administer to people, but the officer told me to pray at the gym where people were playing basketball,” he says.“He grabbed my arms, I asked him to take his hands off me, then he pressed an emergency button and in seconds five or six officers rushed in and they handcuffed me.”Correctional officers at Butler county jail have been accused of abusing detainees in the past. In 2020, two men refugees detained by Ice at the jail filed a lawsuit against the jail and an officer, claiming that beatings resulted in serious physical abuse including the loss of teeth.Across the country, 12 people have died while in Ice custody since Trump took office in January.While in isolation, Soliman says he was denied commissary, meaning he could not order paid for food or other items, wasn’t allowed to contact his attorney, or to engage with visitors.“It was one of the most terrible experiences of my life. It was just as brutal as my detention in the torture dungeons in Egypt,” he says.“They treated us like inmates, not detainees.”He says he had one interaction with Richard Jones, the Butler county sheriff known for his long-held anti-immigrant and racist views.“[Jones] said [speaking of Soliman]: ‘I know this guy; he is very famous. You are in the news all the time.’ He didn’t ask me how I was.” According to figures previously provided by Jones, the jail could have expected to net around $5,000 in taxpayer money from Soliman’s detention.He says that nearly everyone he interacted with at the jail had crossed the southern border legally seeking asylum and were awaiting a court appearance to decide their case before being picked up by Ice officers in recent months. Some had been living in the US for decades; one had a son who served in the US Navy.But for Soliman, the threat of being deported was a constant worry.“The jail and its abuse was the least of my worries. My main fear was being put on a plane to Egypt and being tortured until I die. It never left my mind,” he says.“Every day in jail, I felt I was getting closer to that.”He says his experiences over the past several months have taught him that the country has changed, reminding him more of his life in Egypt. The Trump administration’s suing, taking to court and firing of more than a dozen immigration judges in recent months has widened fears that the US is falling deeper into an autocracy.“This government can do whatever they want; if they can take judges to court, if they can fire judges. This government could have sent me home without trial, without immigration court,” he says.“Ayman got his day in court because he could afford good lawyers, thanks to the generosity of the people who know and love him and strangers from around the country,” says Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance.“But there are hundreds of people just like him in immigration jail today, who also don’t deserve to be there. The US government is accusing them of things they aren’t guilty of, and they are facing deportation to countries where they will be harmed.”Soliman’s experience is ultimately a victorious one.“I was reborn. I couldn’t imagine sitting here today, talking freely.” He says he hopes that now his asylum status has been returned that his application for a green card, which would grant him permanent residency, could be completed within several months.“This is a real miracle.”Soliman lost his job as a chaplain at Cincinnati children’s hospital after his asylum status was revoked, but the hospital has since faced a wave of controversy after two chaplains were fired after they spoke out in support of Soliman.“I feel ethically obliged to go back [to work at Cincinnati Children’s hospital] for the families and patients. In the jail, I got 60, 70 letters from families I met [at the hospital]. It was my work as a chaplain that got people to empathize with me. They stood by my side; they fought for me.”Towards the end of a two-hour interview with the Guardian, a man enters the mosque to attend prayers. Seeing Soliman for the first time since before his detention, the worshipper is almost overcome with joy; tears fall down his face.“Alhamdulillah [Thank god], Alhamdulillah, you’re here,” he says. “You’re back.” More

    • 200 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

      by

      A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.The department previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying the shooting killed one detainee. It said two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.Official statements have lacked focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”The FBI said authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials said the investigation was continuing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, called the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said.Later, after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees, Cruz acknowledged that the motive of the shooter was not known.The attack comes amid fears the Trump administration plans a crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting people from visa holders to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told the Notus website that political “gamesmanship” was spiraling out of control, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”.“We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads the gun violence prevention group Giffords, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas Ice shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not Ice agents.” More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas Ice facility shooting: one dead and two injured, and ‘anti-Ice’ shell casings found

      by

      One detainee has been killed and two others injured in a shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas, officials said.Authorities have also confirmed that the shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. NBC News, citing multiple senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation, reported that the suspect has been identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn.The Dallas police department said officers responded to a call at approximately 6.40am on Wednesday.“The preliminary investigation determined that a suspect opened fire at a government building from an adjacent building,” the police said in a statement. “Two people were transported to the hospital with gunshot wounds. One victim died at the scene. The suspect is deceased.”Department of Homeland Security officials previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a corrected statement saying that the shooting killed only one detainee. It adds that two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.“The shooter fired indiscriminately at the Ice building, including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot. Three detainees were shot,” the department said.One of the detainees in critical condition is a Mexican national, Mexico’s foreign ministry confirmed in a statement. The ministry said they had contacted the victim’s family to provide support and legal assistance. “The consulate is in ongoing communication with the authorities in charge of the investigation and is waiting for authorization to visit the hospitalized Mexican citizen,” it reads.At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Joe Rothrock, the head of the FBI field office in Dallas, said that “rounds that were found near the suspected shooter contain messages that are anti-Ice in nature”.One of the unspent shell casings recovered was engraved with the phrase “ANTI ICE”, according to a post from the FBI director, Kash Patel.Authorities said the FBI was investigating this incident as an act of targeted violence. They said they were not releasing the identities of any of the victims at this time, but confirmed that no members of law enforcement were injured during the attack.Trump wrote on social media that had been been briefed on the shooting, calling it “despicable” that the shell casings contained anti-Ice messaging. He immediately cast blame for the shooting on “radical left Democrats”, instructing them, in capital letters, to “stop this rhetoric against Ice”.“The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped,” Trump wrote. “ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat. We have already declared ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization, and I will be signing an Executive Order this week to dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks.”There was no indication the shooter had any connection to any organizations, including antifa.At the news conference, the Republican senator Ted Cruz, who represents Texas, said “politically motivated violence is wrong”, adding that “this is the third shooting in Texas directed at Ice” or Customs and Border Protection.Parkland hospital in Dallas confirmed to the Associated Press that it had received two patients from the shooting. The hospital spokesperson did not have any details about their conditions.Earlier on Wednesday, Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, confirmed in a statement that the suspected shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and said details about the incident were “still emerging”, but confirmed that there were “multiple injuries and fatalities” at the Ice field office.“While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our Ice law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them,” Noem said. “It must stop.”Law enforcement officials told CNN that at least two of the victims were Ice detainees.Todd Lyons, the acting Ice director, told the network that the “scene is secure” and said three people were shot and taken to the hospital.An Ice spokesperson has also told NBC News that all three people shot were detainees.Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, said the agency was “fully engaged, in conjunction with our state and federal law enforcement partners, at the crime scene in Dallas”.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”.“I’m praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families,” the vice-president wrote on X.Vance alleged the suspect was a “left-wing extremist”, which has not been corroborated by law enforcement. A motive was still unknown as of Wednesday afternoon.“There’s some evidence that we have that’s not yet public, but we know this person was politically motivated,” Vance said, without providing or describing the evidence. “They were politically motivated to go after law enforcement.”John Cornyn, another Republican senator who represents Texas, called the shooting “horrific”.“While law enforcement investigates, I am keeping everyone impacted in my prayers,” he said. “My staff have been in touch with federal & local officials in Dallas, and we will make sure all resources are brought to bear in the investigation.”Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said in a statement that “Texas fully supports Ice”.“This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants,” he said. “We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”During the news conference, Eric Johnson, the mayor of Dallas, urged residents to “be patient, remain calm, and let our law enforcement partners, and our police department, do their job”. More

    • 225 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      A US haven for refugees was divided over Trump – now immigration crackdown has left a ‘community breaking’

      by

      It was 2022, and the Nepali flea market in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, buzzed with life –handmade hats and colorful flags hung outside the homes of families just yards from the market, who had built new lives after being expelled from Bhutan. Elderly men sat in circles, smoking cigars and playing folk songs, unwilling to let the past slip away.In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese people during a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Most fled to refugee camps in eastern Nepal, where many remained for nearly two decades. Beginning in 2007, about 85,000 were resettled across the US through a program coordinated by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the US government. Today, central Pennsylvania is home to several thousand Bhutanese refugees, with Harrisburg and nearby towns hosting one of the largest clusters in the country. That concentration carries political weight: Pennsylvania is a swing state, and Trump won it in 2024 by a slight margin.When I returned in July 2025, it felt like another world. The flags were gone. The elders no longer gathered outside. Flea markets and restaurants sat quietly. The change wasn’t about ageing or assimilation – it reflected a community unsettled by politics, as families struggled to make sense of immigration policies that had suddenly put Bhutanese refugees back in the crosshairs. Across central Pennsylvania, old cases have been reopened, removal orders issued, over two dozen Bhutanese refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, and families that once felt secure are now bracing for knocks at the door.View image in fullscreenThe Harrisburg office of Asian Refugees United (ARU) looked more like a campsite than a non-profit hub – backpacks in the corners, water bottles scattered on the floor. Robin Gurung, the soft-spoken executive director, had just returned from a youth camp. I asked what had changed after the 2024 election.“Everything,” he said. “Before the Trump administration, ARU focused on rebuilding lives, teaching leadership, suicide prevention, and youth civic action. Now we’re in rapid-response mode, helping families make sense of deportations.”With larger institutions caving in to the administration’s demands, ARU has struggled to find allies. “A lot of our partners don’t want to engage any more, fearing retaliation,” Gurung told me. “We don’t even have attorneys to guide families. We rely on a few groups, but immigrant communities are being left on their own.”He paused before adding that the political climate had reopened old wounds. “We survived as refugees because of community. We always showed up for each other. But that sense of community is breaking. We’ve never seen this level of division and suspicion.”The turmoil Gurung described stood in sharp contrast to the early years of resettlement, when Bhutanese families in Pennsylvania were carving out new lives. Among them was Binay Luitel, who arrived as a teenager in July 2008 as an early cohort of Bhutanese refugees in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and quickly came to see service as his way of giving back.After years in a refugee camp in Nepal, he entered the US through the refugee resettlement program during the Obama era, a time that seemed to embrace the promise of a multiracial America.View image in fullscreenAt just 23, Luitel enlisted in the US army and deployed to Afghanistan. “Growing up as a refugee, I always had a strong desire to serve in the military, but back home that opportunity didn’t exist for someone like me,” he said. “When the United States gave me not just a home but an identity, joining the military was an act of gratitude, a way to honor the gift of belonging.”After four years in uniform, he returned to Harrisburg, now a hub for Bhutanese refugees. Families were buying homes, opening businesses and preserving their culture. With friends and mentors, Luitel helped establish the Bhutanese Community in Harrisburg, a non-profit, community-based organization that aimed to help the Bhutanese refugee community integrate in Harrisburg and address mental health issues, eventually serving as its president.For Ashika Dhaurali, 20, those years of growth shaped her sense of home. A mental-health advocate who arrived at age six, she once canvassed for senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, convinced his progressive ideals matched her community’s hopes. Today, she feels betrayed.“I canvassed for Fetterman,” she said. “I believed in his ideals, but now he’s nothing but a disappointment.” She points to his silence on deportations, his endorsement of Ice enforcement on X, and his willingness to echo Trump’s rhetoric. Watching her neighbors targeted by Trump’s administration, and Democrats failing to defend them, has left her searching elsewhere. “I won’t be voting for Fetterman again. And if there’s a viable progressive candidate against him, a lot of us will be ready to canvass.”The fragile stability that Bhutanese refugees thought they had created has crumbled during Trump’s second administration, as Trump, in his first week of inauguration, banned all refugee entry and halted asylum cases. Ice raids have rattled households, deportations of many of their community members in Harrisburg, as well as across the US, have reopened old traumas, and what had felt like a safe enclave grew clouded with fear and suspicion.“There has been a degree of political division,” Binay admitted. “It has torn people apart.”For Ghanshyam, a small business owner, the split is moral as well. “Trump defies everything immigrants and refugees stand for,” he told me. “When you elect a president, it’s not just about economics, it’s about values. Do you really want to tell your kids you voted for a man who called immigrants rapists and murderers, who’s been found liable for sexual assault, and who’s declared bankruptcy seven times? That’s not a role model. Voting for him isn’t just bad policy, it’s a moral failure.”Others, like Aiman, 24, who asked not to use his last name for privacy, see it differently. He arrived during the Obama years and once voted Democrat, but by 2024, he had switched to supporting Trump. Inflation, border security, the wars abroad and what he viewed as relentless media persecution of then former president Trump shifted his loyalties.View image in fullscreen“When I saw our president constantly attacked and silenced, I started to see him as human – someone who persevered when everything was against him,” he said.For Aiman, America is less about belonging than duty. “We were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Citizenship means loyalty. Too many in our community never took that seriously.” Deportations, he admitted, were painful, but to him they were the consequence of broken laws. “Facts outweigh emotions,” he said, echoing rightwing commentators like Ben Shapiro.He even pointed to his own family. “Of course, I wish my brother could come here. But what good is that if, in the process, the whole country burns from the bottom up? I’d be happy to see him here, but not at the cost of destroying America.”Unlike older Bhutanese who hesitate to speak openly, Aiman doesn’t feel isolated. “A lot of my friends are Republicans now,” he said. “The only pushback I get is from college kids, who are too easily offended.” He’s part of a broader group of young men who, in recent years, have drifted toward conservative ideals.Dhaurali, the mental-health advocate, sees that shift as dangerous. “For our community, it has a lot to do with a false sense of patriotism. Because we’ve been deprived of it for so long, we want to embody it. To finally say: ‘I’m proud to be of this nation.’ But that’s why some have sided with Trump. Honestly, a lot of it comes from internalized hatred.”Hearing Aiman, I thought of my own uncle, who also voted for Trump but never admitted it publicly. In our community, politics isn’t just about policies; it’s about belonging. What appears to be a small division within the Bhutanese diaspora reflects a broader erosion of the sense of home that many immigrants and communities of color once felt.Dhaurali, though, doesn’t believe the story ends there. “What Trump’s administration is doing is testing our solidarity, our sense of belonging,” she said. “No, I don’t think I can ever stop believing. Especially with this community I’ve grown up in. I believe my generation is going to be the bridge between these old fears and the future we genuinely deserve.”Lok Darjee is a former Bhutanese refugee and freelance journalist covering politics, immigration, democracy and identity. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats urge Trump border czar investigation over bribery allegation

      by

      Democrats have urged treasury watchdogs to investigate reports that Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent in return for political favours.In the alleged scheme, Homan promised immigration-related government contracts when he joined the Trump administration in exchange for the money, according to unnamed sources quoted by multiple media outlets. The justice department subsequently shut down a bribery investigation.On Monday, Congressman Dave Min of California, a member of the House of Representatives oversight committee, wrote to treasury inspector general Russell George and treasury inspector general for tax administration Russell Martin to call for scrutiny of whether Homan reported the payment and whether it was connected to his private consulting firm.“History suggests that we should follow the money – especially if it went unreported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” wrote Min, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Fighting Corruption Taskforce. “Under federal law, all income, legal or illegal, must be reported to the IRS, including payments stemming from bribery.“Knowingly failing to report this income would likely violate federal tax law. Accordingly, I request that your offices investigate whether Mr Homan properly reported this payment on his 2024 federal tax return.”Homan oversees the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations of people in the country illegally. An unapologetic immigration hardliner, he explained a decision to defy a court order that barred the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members by stating: “I don’t care what the judges think.”Homan was previously an official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) under Barack Obama and its acting director in Trump’s first term. During Trump’s four years out of power, he ran a consulting business to help companies obtain immigration-related government contracts.In the recorded sting operation, Homan accepted a $50,000 bribe contained in a bag from the restaurant chain Cava, claiming he would keep the money in a trust until he had completed his service in the Trump administration, a source told the Reuters news agency.Homan was then investigated for bribery and other crimes but this was shut down after Trump took office, reportedly because he did not hold a government position at the time and because of the difficulty of proving that he had agreed to carry out any specific acts in exchange for the money.At a press briefing on Monday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that Homan had accepted such a payment. “Mr Homan never took the $50,000 you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight,” she told one reporter.“The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt added. She insisted that FBI agents and prosecutors found no evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing by the border czar.But Carol Leonnig, one of the MSNBC journalists who broke the story, responded on social media: “White House spokesperson says that Homan never took $50,000; we reviewed internal document saying Homan accepted the cash payment from undercover FBI agents in September 2024.”Political pressure on Homan is mounting. On Sunday Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, posted on the X platform: “The act was caught on camera. The administration must turn over the tapes to Congress. Every decision made by Homan must be scrutinized for possible corruption.”Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut added on Monday: “$50,000 cash in a bag – clearly Border Czar Tom Homan isn’t afraid to solicit personal payments in exchange for government favors. Trump leaders aren’t serving the country – they’re failing it, putting personal profit first. Another example of rampant corruption in this admin.”Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania wrote on X: “White House knew Homan had accepted $50K to influence contracts. They appointed him anyways. Then they disbanded the DOJ’s Public Integrity unit and quashed the Homan investigation. There’s no end to the corruption in Trump’s White House.” More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump border czar Tom Homan reportedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents

      by

      The FBI reportedly recorded Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents who were posing as business contractors last year.A new report from MSNBC on Saturday reveals that the agents recorded Homan, six weeks before the 2024 election, allegedly promising to assist in securing government contracts across the border security industry during Trump’s second term.Six sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that the FBI and justice department – then run by Joe Biden’s administration – had intended to hold off and assess whether Homan would follow through on his alleged promises after he was appointed as Trump’s border czar. However, the investigation stalled after Trump took office, and in recent weeks, officials appointed by Trump decided to close the case, according to MSNBC.According to the sources, a justice department official who was appointed by Trump called the case a “deep state” investigation.In a separate statement to MSNBC, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said: “This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and justice department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”They added: “The Department’s resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.”The White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson, told MSNBC the investigation was “blatantly political”. Jackson added that it was “yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country”.Homan was captured on video accepting $50,000 in cash at a meeting spot in Texas on 20 September 2024, according to an internal summary of the case reviewed by MSNBC and sources who spoke to the outlet.Four sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that multiple federal officials believed they had a solid criminal case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery. However, since Homan was not a public official at the time he accepted the money and Trump had not yet become president, his actions did not meet the criteria for a standard bribery charge.Officials eventually decided to continue monitoring Homan once he joined Trump’s second presidential administration. MSNBC reports that officials had been looking at four potential criminal charges including conspiracy, bribery and two kinds of fraud, before Trump’s new justice department shut down the investigation.Homan, who was previously the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during Trump’s first term, was appointed by Trump to run what he has described as the “biggest deportation” project the US has ever seen. Prior to his appointment as border czar, Homan was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the Washington DC-based thinktank behind Project 2025.After the MSNBC report was published, Adam Schiff, a California Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor, wrote on social media: “Border Czar Tom Homan was caught by the FBI accepting bribes – on camera – to deliver government contracts in exchange for $50,000 in cash. Pam Bondi knew. Kash Patel knew. Emil Bove knew. And they made the investigation go away. A corrupt attempt to conceal brazen graft.”In an angry outburst on his social media platform on Saturday night, Trump appeared to direct his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to appoint a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, so that she could seek criminal charges against Schiff and another of the president’s political rivals, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. Trump has demanded that both Schiff and James be prosecuted on mortgage fraud claims both deny.On Friday, the prosecutor who was serving as the district’s interim US attorney, Erik Siebert, was forced out, reportedly for refusing to bring charges against James, due to a lack of evidence. Trump insisted on Saturday that he had fired Siebert for political reasons. Late Saturday, Trump announced that he would nominate Halligan, his former personal lawyer and a one-time contestant in the Miss Colorado USA beauty pageant now serving as a special assistant to the president, to replace Siebert. More