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    Denied, detained, deported: the people targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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    Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green-card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested without due process in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March, denied release to attend the birth. He told an immigration judge that he and hundreds of other detainees were being denied rights the court itself had claimed to prioritize: “Due process and fundamental fairness.”View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student near Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, as first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen. The administration’s arcane justification is that his activism could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He is detained in Vermont. Democratic lawmakers have visited Khalil, Öztürk and Mahdawi but failed to secure their release.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother Columbia student, Chung, 21, sued the administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they wanted to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, 32, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”He was taken to the same Louisiana federal detention center as Khalil. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was a threat to national security, without providing details, and the state department had revoked his visa, while an immigration judge refused to release him.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the Indian citizen’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.View image in fullscreenKseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana. Her colleagues say her expertise is “irreplaceable” and Petrova said foreign scientists like her “enrich” America.Student visas revoked, then restored amid chaosMore than 1,400 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, in what the specialist publication Inside Higher Education called “an explosion of visa terminations”.Amid scant information and rising panic, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some were cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some could find no explanation. Then in the face of multiple court challenges, the administration in late April reversed course and restored legal statuses that had been rescinded en masse, but said it was developing a new policy. Uncertainty prevails.The legal rollercoaster came too late for this high-profile case:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of the University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. The Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Removed by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadorian man was removed to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But it is essentially defying a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing, to a brutal mega-prison, then later transferred to another facility. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge repeatedly and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis.He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans deported there. He has begged to speak to his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who insists he is not a criminal. The sheet metalworkers union chief, Michael Coleman, described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadorian prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández RomeroView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes Barriosskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the DHS, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting against the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country without due process because their countries of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody. She is possibly still in Panama trying to get a foothold.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Adam PeñaThis San Diego-based US citizen now carries his American passport and birth certificate everywhere with him and thinks he was sent one of the “time for you to leave” letters in error but because he represents clients in Ice detention locally. “I do believe this email was sent intentionally to immigration advocates around the country to instill fear and intimidation,” he told NBC news.Americans removedChildren who are seven, four and two and are US citizens were removed from the US in late April when their mothers were deported to Honduras. DHS said the two women chose to take their children with them but one of their lawyers told the Guardian that they were denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on deportation flights from Louisiana. A federal judge said it was “illegal and unconstitutional” to thus remove a US citizen “with no meaningful process”.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green-card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More

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      US citizen wrongfully arrested by border patrol in Arizona held for nearly 10 days

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      Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.As the NPR affiliate Arizona Public Media, first reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson.According to a border patrol criminal complaint, on 8 April, a border patrol official found Hermosillo “without the proper immigration documents” and claimed that the young American had admitted entering the US illegally from Mexico. Two days later, the federal court document notes that Hermosillo continued to claim he was a US citizen. On 17 April, a federal judge dismissed his case.Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US. Since Donald Trump took office, the administration has emboldened immigration officers to arrest and deport undocumented people, including foreign students whose visas have been revoked, leading to a series of errors.“Under the Trump administration’s theory of the law, the government could have banished this U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison then refused to do anything to bring him back,” Mark Joseph Stern, a legal analyst for Slate, wrote on Bluesky. “This is why the Constitution guarantees due process to all. Could it be more obvious?”During his campaign for the presidency, the US president promised to carry out “mass deportations”. In the three months since he took office, several foreign tourists have been wrongfully detained, federal agents from other agencies have been deputized to engage in immigration enforcement and Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that Venezuelan gang members are a leading foreign invasion of the United States to give himself the power to expel immigrants to a notorious Salvadorian prison.According to AZPM’s report, Hermosillo was visiting the Tucson area from Albuquerque, got lost without identification and was arrested by border patrol officials near its headquarters in Nogales. Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s family made numerous calls looking for him before they discovered he was being held at the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility. After his arrest, the court docket shows, he was temporarily detained in the custody of the US marshals.After the family tracked him done, they provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card.“He did say he was a US citizen, but they didn’t believe him,” Hermosillo’s girlfriend’s aunt told AZPM. “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have, if they would have not got that information yesterday in the court, and gave that to Ice and the border patrol. He probably would have been deported already to Mexico.”Ice, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and Hermosillo’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFederal magistrate judge Maria S Aguilera dismissed the case on 17 April. Hermosillo was released later that evening.Since Trump stepped into office, there have been a rising number of US citizens detained by immigration officials around the country. But immigration officials’ detention of citizens is not new, and it has taken place across presidential administrations. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office found that from 2015 through 2020, Ice arrested 674 US citizens and deported 70 of them. And from 2007 through 2015, 818 US citizens were held in immigration detention, according to a 2016 analysis from NPR.In recent months, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign students, many for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests the administration call antisemitic . Among those swept up in that crackdown is Aditya Wahyu Harsono, an Indonesian student in Minnesota, who is married to a US citizen, arrested at his hospital workplace this month after his visa was secretly revoked. More

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      Denied, detained, deported: the most high-profile cases in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration has set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting asylum seekers and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March.View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally-protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials wearing masks and hoodies encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student in a suburb of Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, according to his lawyers and a video of the incident, first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen, his lawyer said.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother student at Columbia, Chung, 21, sued the Trump administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting against the university’s punishments of student activists, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they want to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”Less is known about the federal government’s claims against Doroudi but it is understood he was taken to the same Ice processing center in Jena, Louisiana, where Khalil is behind bars, NBC reported.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the citizen of India’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.Kseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana.Student visas revokedMore than 1,300 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US have had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, between mid-March and mid-April, Inside Higher Education has reported. The specialist publication called it “an explosion of visa terminations”.The schools and students have been given little information, but secretary of state Marco Rubio has lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some have been cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some can find no specific reason why their visa would be revoked. Many are from India and China, the Associated Press reported, and panic is setting in on campuses.High-profile cases include:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he is “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Momodou TaalTaal, a dual citizen of Britain and Gambia, was pursuing a PhD at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center, and was an outspoken activist on the Ivy League campus. He was suspended last year for his role in anti-Zionist protests. He sued the Trump administration over labeling foreign student protesters anti-Semitic and was told to surrender to immigration officials. He has since left the country.Deported by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadoran man was deported to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But then it essentially defied a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland from a brutal mega-prison in the central American country. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis. He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans also deported there. Sheet metalworkers union chief Michael Coleman described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadoran prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández Romeroskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes BarriosThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country because their nations of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More

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      Trump authorizes US military to take control of land at US-Mexico border

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      Donald Trump has authorized the military to take control of land at the US-Mexico border as part of the president’s broader efforts to crack down on undocumented immigration.The authorization came late on Friday in a memorandum from Trump to interior secretary Doug Burgum, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins, outlining new policies concerning military involvement at the US’s southern border.The memorandum, entitled “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions”, allows the US’s armed forces to “take a more direct role” when it comes to securing the boundary in question.“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats,” the order claimed. “The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”The memorandum added that the Department of Defense should be given jurisdiction to federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60ft-wide strip that stretches over California, Arizona and New Mexico. Doing that would give troops stationed there the legal right to detain immigrants accused of trespassing on what in effect is an elongated base – and unauthorized immigrants would be held in custody until they could be turned over to immigration agents.Military activities that could be carried out on federal land include “border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment”, according to the memorandum.After 45 days, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will assess the “initial phase” of the order. But at any time, Hegseth could extend the amount of federal land included in the memorandum.The ordered military takeover excludes Native American reservations, according to the memorandum.Friday’s order is the latest step from Trump in his administration’s ongoing focus on immigration enforcement, which has involved declaring a national emergency on the southern border.On Thursday, a US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration was allowed to require people who are in the country but not citizens to register with the federal government, a requirement that advocates say hasn’t been universally implemented since it was enacted as a law in the 1940s.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the new requirement on 25 February, adding that those who failed to report could face fines or possible prison time.The DHS’s announcement was widely seen as a workaround of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars US military troops from participating in most civilian law enforcement actions.One of the purported justifications for militarizing the US border most commonly cited by Trump and his Republican colleagues is that people crossing the border with Mexico without permission carry much of the fentanyl sold in the US. Yet official statistics show 90% of convicted fentanyl peddlers are US citizens. More

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      Mexico’s Sheinbaum wins plaudits for cool head in dealings with Trump

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      As Donald Trump swings his sights from one region to the next, upturning diplomatic relations and confounding allies, leaders of former US partners have clashed with him and come off much the worse.But so far, one – Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum – has emerged relatively unscathed.With the US-Mexico border and the trade, drugs and migrants that cross it a focus of the Trump administration, Mexico is under intense pressure. Yet while Sheinbaum has made some concessions, she has also charmed Trump and won plaudits at home, with approval ratings that touch 80%.“Sheinbaum has kept a cool head, and the capacity to hold firm and react to Trump,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political scientist. “But Mexico is in a situation of emergency with the US. And it will have to play this game for four years straight.”Sheinbaum led Morena, a leftwing populist party, to a landslide victory in June last year, and had barely taken power when Trump won re-election in November.Many wondered how Sheinbaum, a climate scientist before she became a politician, would handle the US president. But the two have struck up a relationship, with Trump describing Sheinbaum as a “marvellous woman” even as he claims Mexico is “essentially run by cartels”.Since Trump announced a plan to hit all goods imported from Mexico with a 25% tariff, citing its alleged failure to stop migrants and fentanyl entering the US, Sheinbaum has offered to negotiate, while avoiding gestures of obeisance – such as Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s trip to Mar-a-Lago – or defiance – like Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s tirade against Trump on X.Sheinbaum has also shown a willingness to do more on fentanyl, with Mexican security forces notching a record seizure just days after Trump’s announcement, and underlined that Mexico was already doing a great deal to keep migrants away from the US-Mexico border.View image in fullscreenAt the same time, she picked battles that allowed her to show strength to a domestic audience while avoiding direct confrontation with Trump himself – for example, threatening Google with a lawsuit after it bowed to Trump and renamed international waters in the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on Google Maps.She has pledged to expand legal action against US gun manufacturers who produce the majority of weapons used in Mexico, and implicitly turned Trump’s rhetoric on its head by warning that her country would not tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by US forces.“Sheinbaum found the sweet spot between the submission of Trudeau and the bravado of Petro,” said Pérez Ricart.The first real crunch came earlier this month, as the deadline for Trump’s tariff threat loomed.Sheinbaum was poised to announce retaliatory measures when last-minute talks defused the situation, with Trump agreeing to delay the tariffs for a month in exchange for Mexico sending 10,000 more soldiers to the border.It is unclear how those extra soldiers will reduce the flow of fentanyl, a substance so potent that only relatively small volumes are moved, and the great majority of which is trafficked through ports of entry by US citizens.“What I see is a show for the Mexican and American publics,” said Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to the US. “It’s clear that Trump is talking to his base and Sheinbaum to hers. But we don’t know what is happening in the conversations between them.”“The president bought time – but the negotiation is not over,” Bárcena added.The next deadline, on 4 March, for Trump’s tariffs will likely bring another round of feverish talks, as Mexico tries to convince the US of results made on fentanyl and migration.“But if we don’t know what they want or how they want to measure it, then Trump can keep threatening us from here to the end of his government,” said Bárcena.The US has also ratcheted up the pressure by adding six Mexican organised crime groups – including the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, two of the world’s biggest drug trafficking organisations – to its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs).While the designation of cartels as FTOs itself does not authorise US military action in Mexico, some fear it is a first step towards it.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth recently said “all options will be on the table” when it comes to dealing with the cartels. “Ultimately, we will hold nothing back to secure the American people,” he added.Meanwhile, Mexico’s economy edges towards recession. The mere threat of tariffs has already helped dragged growth projections down, with Mexico’s central bank predicting 0.6% GDP growth for 2025.That makes staving off tariffs and holding the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement together only more important for Sheinbaum.“For 30 years, Mexico anchored itself to a policy of trade and development in North America. It bet its growth, its identity, on integration into North America,” said Pérez Ricart. “And now this idea is being challenged. Trump doesn’t believe in it. This is a very delicate situation for Sheinbaum, and for the country.” More

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      All the executive orders Trump has signed so far

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      Donald Trump has signed dozens of executive orders in his first weeks back in office, including ending birthright citizenship, curbing DEI and “gender radicalism” in the military, and pardoning January 6 rioters.The US president promised in his inaugural speech that these orders would amount to a “complete restoration of America”.Here’s what to know about the executive orders Trump has signed since retaking the White House.ICC sanctionsThe order: Trump signed an order authorizing economic sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “improperly targeting” the United States and its allies, such as Israel.What Trump said: Trump has been a vocal critic of the ICC and said the court had “abused its power” in issuing warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes. “This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” Trump said.What it means: The order grants Trump broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.Read moreEnding ‘anti-Christian bias’The order: Trump signed an executive order attempting to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in the US government. The president announced the formation of a taskforce, led by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to end all forms of “anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the government.What Trump said: Trump said Bondi would work to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide”.What it means: The order is meant to reverse alleged targeting of “peaceful Christians” under Biden. Critics say it changes the traditional understanding of religious liberty, with Americans United for Separation of Church and State saying in a statement that Trump’s taskforce would “misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination and the subversion of our civil rights laws”.Read moreBanning trans athletes from women’s sportsThe order: Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sport. It directs federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as the prohibition of trans girls and women from participating in any female sports categories.What Trump said: “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”What it means: The order is the latest in a slew of Trump actions aimed at rolling back the rights of trans people. Trump also signed orders defining sex as “only male or female” and banning gender transitions for people under the age of 19.Read moreEnding Unrwa fundingThe order: Trump signed an executive order stopping funding for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and withdrawing US from the UN human rights council.What Trump said: The president criticized the entire United Nations as “not being well run” and “not doing the job”.What it means: In his first term, Trump cut Unrwa funding and withdrew from the UN’s human rights council. The Biden administration restored Unrwa funding and rejoined the council.Read moreImplementing tariffs on imports from Mexico, China, and CanadaThe orders: Trump signed three executive orders on 1 February placing tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to begin on 4 February.What the orders say: the Mexico order says that drug traffickers and the country’s government “have an intolerable alliance” that endangers US security. The China order says the country’s government allows criminal organizations to “launder the revenues from the production, shipment, and sale of illicit synthetic opioids”. The Canada order says that Mexican cartels are operating in that country, claiming the amount of fentanyl imported could kill “9.5 million Americans”.What it means: All three countries announced retaliatory actions. On 3 February, Trump agreed to postpone tariffs against Mexico and Canada for one month after they committed to increasing border enforcement. China has announced retaliatory tariffs on some American imports and an antitrust investigation into Google on 4 February after Trump’s tariffs took effect.Read moreCreation of a sovereign wealth fundThe order: Trump ordered the US treasury and commerce department to create a sovereign wealth fund. Such a fund, which requires congressional approval, would act as an investment fund for the country, operating outside the Federal Reserve and the treasury department.Trump offered few details about the fund, including where the cash would come from. His treasury secretary and the nominee for commerce secretary would spearhead efforts to create the fund. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told reporters the government would “stand this thing up within the next 12 months”.What Trump said: “We have tremendous potential,” Trump said. “I think in a short period of time, we’d have one of the biggest funds.”Trump also said that the fund could be used to facilitate the purchase of TikTok.What it means: More than 100 countries and 20 US states have sovereign wealth funds. Senior officials in the Biden administration had been quietly working on a sovereign wealth fund before the US election in November, according to multiple reports.Read moreMigrant detention center at Guantánamo BayThe order: Trump signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.What Trump said: Guantánamo could “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”, Trump said during the signing of the Laken Riley Act, another of his administration’s hardline immigration policies.What it means: The order is part of a broader effort to fulfill Trump’s promise to remove millions of people from the country.Read moreGender-affirming careThe order: Trump signed an order that attempts to end gender transitions for people under 19.What Trump said: “It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” reads the order.What it means: The order directs that federally run insurance programs, including Tricare for military families and Medicaid, exclude coverage for such care. The order calls on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue litigation and legislation to oppose the practice.Read moreReshaping the militaryThe order: Trump signed three executive orders on 27 January that would reshape the military: removing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, eliminating “gender radicalism” from the military, and reinstating soldiers who were expelled for refusing Covid-19 vaccines.What Trump said: “To ensure we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It’s going to be gone,” Trump said in Florida, according to CBS.What it means: Trump’s order does not yet ban transgender soldiers from the military, but directs the Pentagon to create a policy for trans members of the military.Read moreStart a process to ‘develop an ‘American Iron Dome”’The order: Trump signed an executive order on 27 January that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield, which the administration is referring to as the American Iron Dome.What Trump said: “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” the order said.What it means: Creating a short-range missile defense system akin to Israel’s Iron Dome would take years to build. The order calls for a plan from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, within 60 days.Read moreReview of disaster agency FemaThe order: Trump ordered a review of Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the disaster response agency, and suggested there is “political bias” in the agency. Trump previously criticized the agency’s response to Hurricane Helene.What Trump said: “Despite obligating nearly $30 billion in disaster aid each of the past three years, Fema has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most,” the order stated.What it means: A review council – which includes the secretaries of defense and homeland security, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem – will report to Trump within 180 days.Read moreDeclassifying MLK and JFK filesThe order: Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified documents on the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.What Trump said: “The federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.What it means: Trump made this promise during the election campaign and made a similar pledge in his first term, but ultimately heeded appeals from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.Read moreRemoving ‘barriers’ to AI innovation and investing in digital financial assetsThe order: During his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of all Biden policies on AI, to remove policies that “act as barriers to American AI innovation”. A second order called for a working group to start work on crypto regulations.What Trump said: “We must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas” to maintain the US’s dominant position in AI technology, the order states.What it means: Former PayPal executive David Sacks has been tasked with leading a group to develop an AI action plan. Meanwhile another working group will start work on crypto regulations.Ending birthright citizenshipThe order: On his first day in office, Trump targeted automatic citizenship for US-born children of both undocumented people and some legal immigrants.What Trump said: The order specifies that it would limit birthright citizenship if a person’s “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary”.What it means: Birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and any attempt to revoke it will bring immediate legal challenges. The order was temporarily blocked on 23 January, with the judge calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.Read moreskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPut a freeze on refugee admissionsThe order: Trump signed an order suspending the country’s refugee resettlement program starting on 27 January. Refugees maybe only be admitted on a case-by-case basis so long as their entry is in the “national interest”.What Trump said: The order cited “record levels of migration” to the US and said the country did not have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees”.What it means: Advocates say the move put lives in danger and has left families devastated. Thousands of refugees now stranded around the globe.Read moreLeaving the World Health OrganizationThe order: Trump signed an order to have the US exit the World Health Organization (WHO).What Trump said: “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen any more,” Trump said at the signing. He accused the WHO of mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises.What it means: The US will leave the WHO in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The US is the biggest financial backer to the United Nations health agency.Read moreRenaming the Gulf of MexicoThe order: Trump ordered two name changes: the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Mount Denali.What Trump said: “President Trump is bringing common sense to government and renewing the pillars of American Civilization,” the executive order said in part.What it means: Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America” and will rechristen Alaska’s Mount Denali as Mount McKinley.It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.Read moreRevoking electric vehicle targetsThe order: Trump revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Joe Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.What Trump said: “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Trump said.What it means: Part of an effort to repeal Biden’s environmental protections, Trump has also promised to roll back auto pollution standards finalized by Biden’s administration last spring.Read moreReclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fireThe order: Trump’s executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political hires, making it much easier for them to be fired.What Trump said: Aides to the president have long heralded mass government firings as part of an attack on the so-called “administrative” or “deep” state.What it means: Trump in effect reinstates “Schedule F”, an executive order he signed in the last year of his first term, seeking to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. (Biden rescinded the order.)Key aides to Trump have called for mass government firings. Project 2025 made attacks on the deep or administrative state a core part of Trump’s second term. The rightwing playbook called for civil servants deemed politically unreliable to be fired and replaced by conservatives.Read moreDeclaring a national energy emergency and ‘unleash’ oil production in AlaskaThe order: Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.What Trump said: The order means “you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem and we do have that kind of emergency,” Trump said. The order also says it is US policy for the country to “fully avail itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources”.What it means: The declaration would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. It is likely that the order, part of a broader effort to roll back climate policy, will face legal challenges.Read moreCreating a policy recognizing only two gendersThe order: Trump signed an order to remove “gender ideology guidance” from federal government communication, policies and forms. The order makes it official policy that there are “only two genders, male and female”.What Trump said: “Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination,” the order states.What it means: The order reverses a Biden-era executive action on the acceptance of gender identity.Read morePausing the TikTok banThe order: Trump signed an executive order temporarily delaying the enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok for at least 75 days.What Trump said: “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said at the White House, as he signed executive orders, according to the New York Times.What it means: Trump ordered his attorney general to not enforce the law requiring TikTok’s sale. Trump says the pause allows for time to chart an “appropriate course forward” to protect national security and not abruptly shut down the popular app. In his first term, Trump favored a TikTok ban, but has since changed his position due to factors including his own popularity on the app.Read moreRescinding 78 Biden-era executive actionsThe order: Trump ordered 78 Biden-era executive actions to be rescinded, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.What Trump said: “I’ll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration,” Trump told a crowd in Washington after his inaugural speech. He also said he would end policy “trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” and push for a “color blind and merit-based” society.What it means: The orders signal a reversal of Biden-era policy that prioritized implementing diversity measures across the federal government. Trump repealed orders signed by Biden advancing racial equity for underserved communities and the aforementioned order combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.Declaring a national border emergencyThe order: Trump signed an order at the White House declaring an emergency at the southern US border, along with several other immigration-related policies.What Trump said: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech.What it means: The executive action paves the way to send US troops to the southern border and makes good on campaign promises to implement hardline immigration policies. There are limited details about how the administration plans to execute its sprawling set of immigration actions that were all but certain to face legal and logistical challenges.Immigrant communities across the country are bracing for Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history”, beginning as early as Tuesday morning.Read moreIssuing pardons for January 6 defendantsThe order: Trump issued pardons for offenders and commutations related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He will direct the Department of Justice to dismiss cases currently in progress.What Trump said: “I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons, to get them out,” Trump said during his rally speech. “We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people, a lot of people.” Trump said he has pardoned about 1,500 defendants charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and issued six commutations.What it means: Trump made his pledge to issue pardons for those with convictions related to the January 6 Capitol attack a core part of his re-election campaign. On the campaign trail, Trump often featured the national anthem sung by prisoners in a Washington DC jail. There are more than 1,500 people federally charged with associated charges.With Trump back in the White House, justice department investigations into January 6 crimes are expected to cease.Read moreWithdrawing from the Paris climate agreementThe order: Trump issued an executive action withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris agreement, along with a letter informing the United Nations of the decision.What Trump said: “I am immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip-off” Trump said during a rally at the Capital One Arena. In his inaugural speech, Trump said he would use executive action to “end the Green New Deal”.What it means: In 2017, Trump exited the Paris agreement. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden rejoined. Monday’s order makes good on a Trump election promise to withdraw from the 2015 global treaty seeking to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.Exiting the Paris agreement is part of Trump’s broader efforts to roll back climate protections and policy. Trump has described Biden’s efforts to grow the US’s clean energy sector as “the green new scam”.Read more This explainer was first published on 29 January 2025 and is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects latest news developments. The date of the most recent update can be found in the timestamp at the top of the page. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy. This article was amended on 30 January 2025. A previous version said the birthright citizenship executive order affected children of immigrants in the country illegally. It applies to children both of undocumented people and some legal immigrants. The subheading of this article was amended on 6 February 2025. An earlier version incorrectly said Donald Trump had abolished the Department of Education. More

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      Trump says he would consider pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams

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      President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said in a far-ranging news conference that he would consider pardoning the embattled New York City mayor, Eric Adams. Separately he called on the Biden administration to stop selling off unused portions of border wall that were purchased but not installed during his first administration.“Yeah, I would” consider pardoning Adams, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, before saying that he was not familiar with the specifics of the charges Adams is facing.Adams is facing federal fraud and corruption charges, accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury travel perks valued at $100,000 along with illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. Multiple members of his administration have also come under investigation.Speaking at his first press conference since winning the election, Trump also threatened legal action against the Biden administration over sales of portions of border wall, saying he has spoken to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and other Texas officials about a potential restraining order.“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” Trump said. “It’s almost a criminal act.”Congress last year required the Biden administration to dispose of the unused border wall pieces. The measure, included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act, allows for the sale or donation of the items to states on the southern border, providing they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones. Congress also directed the Pentagon to account for storage costs for the border wall material while it has gone unused.“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming team as “a friendly transition”, he also took issue with efforts to allow some members of the federal workforce to continue working from home. Trump said that if government workers did not come back into the office under him, they would be dismissed.Trump was joined at the appearance by the SoftBank Group CEO, Masayoshi Son, who announced that the Japanese company was planning to invest $100bn in US projects over the next four years.It was a win for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, negotiate with foreign leaders and try to strike deals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on his Truth Social site last week, Trump had said that anyone making a $1bn investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals”.“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he wrote.Deals announced with much fanfare have sometimes failed to deliver on promised investments. But the announcement nonetheless represents a major win for Trump, who has boasted that he has done more in his short transition period than his predecessor did in all four years.“There’s a whole light over the entire world,” he said Monday. “There’s a light shining over the world.” More

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      Trump’s deportation plan would hurt families and economy, Senate hears

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      Donald Trump’s vow to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history would separate families and hurt the economy, witnesses testified during a Tuesday Senate hearing, as a top Republican on the committee warned that undocumented people living in the country should “get ready to leave”.The president-elect has outlined an aggressive second-term immigration agenda that includes plans to declare a national emergency and deploy the US military to round up and expel millions of people living in the country without documentation. Trump has also vowed to end humanitarian protections for millions of people who fled violence, conflict or other disasters in their home country.The hearing, convened by Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, set out to explore the economic and human toll of a large-scale deportation operation. But the session also revealed the ideological tensions that have for decades thwarted legislative attempts at immigration reform.“If you’re here illegally, get ready to leave. If you’re a criminal, we’re coming after you,” said Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee. When Republicans assume the Senate majority next year, Graham promised his party would bring forward a “transformational border security bill” that would expand capacity at detention centers, boost the number of immigration officers and “finish the wall”.Many of Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, including family separation, proved deeply unpopular during his first term in office. But a post-pandemic rise in global migration led to a surge of asylum claims at the US-Mexico border during the early years of the Biden administration. Americans strongly disapproved of Biden’s handling of the issue, and ranked immigration as a top election issue.The November election was a “referendum on the federal border policies for the Biden-Harris administration”, the senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and the ranking member on the judiciary committee’s immigration subcommittee, declared during the hearing.The Democratic senators insisted that there were areas of common ground between the parties – repeatedly stating their support for the removal of immigrants with criminal records and the need for better controls at the border. And they emphasized the broad support for protecting Dreamers, people brought to the country as children.“Instead of mass deportations, [let’s have] mass accountability,” said the senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s Democratic chair. “Let’s fix our broken immigration system in a way that protects our country and honors our heritage as a nation of immigrants.”Democrats turned to their witnesses – an immigration expert, a retired army major general and an undocumented prosecutor – to make the case that mass deportations would do far more harm than good.“The president-elect’s mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire US population,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, testified to the committee.An analysis by his group estimates that it would cost nearly $1tn to carry out Trump’s mass deportation plan and slash the annual GDP by between 4.2% and 6.8% – a level on par with the recession of 2008. Asked how Trump’s plans could impact Americans financially, Reichlin-Melnick said it would exacerbate inflation and cause food prices to rise.“A single worksite raid in 2018 under the Trump administration at a beef plant in Tennessee led to ground beef prices rising by 25 cents for the year that the plant was out of operation following the raid,” he said.Randy Manner, a retired US army major general and anti-Trump Republican, cautioned against using US troops to assist with a politically decisive domestic mission that he warned could undermine military readiness and erode public trust in the institution.“The US military is the best trained in the world for its war fighting mission, but it is neither trained or equipped for immigration enforcement,” he said.Among the witnesses invited to testify was Foday Turay, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia who fled Sierra Leone as a child and testified that he did not know he was undocumented until he went to apply for a driver’s license. He is shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.As a father, a husband, an immigrant and a prosecutor, Turay said the threat of mass deportations would affect him “on a personal level, on a community level and on a societal level.“If I were to be deported, my wife and our son would be left without money to pay the mortgage. My son would also be without a father,” he said. He also warned that the widespread deployment of immigration agents could chill the ability of law enforcement to pursue criminals.“As a prosecutor, I know how delicate the ties between law enforcement and immigrants can be if immigrants are afraid to cooperate with the police or prosecutors like myself because they’re afraid of deportation,” he added. “Mass deportation hurts all of us, our families, our community and our society.”Republicans invited Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was beaten, raped and killed in August 2023 during a hiking trip. Officials say the suspect in her death was in the US illegally after killing a woman in his native El Salvador. Trump, with the support of the Morin family, has cited the murder as part of his appeal for stricter border controls.“The American people should not feel afraid to live in their own homes,” Patty Morin told the committee. “We need to follow the laws that are already on the books, we need to close our borders. We need to protect American families.”Seeking common ground, the Democratic senator Peter Welch of Vermont asked Morin if she would support a deportation policy that targeted undocumented people with a criminal record while pursuing a legal remedy for those who have lived and worked in the US with no criminal record.“Are we saying it’s ok to come to America in an unlawful way?” Morin replied. “There has to be some kind of a line, a precedent, of what is lawful and what isn’t lawful.”The senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who has been sharply critical of Trump’s immigration proposals, accused his Republican colleagues of distorting data and conflating fentanyl deaths with immigration. Citing federal statistics, he said the vast majority – more than 80% – of people prosecuted for trafficking the drug into the country were US citizens.“If that’s a concern, then let’s address the heart of the concern and not just use it as a sound bite to further attack immigrants,” he said.Ahead of the hearing, Padilla was among a group of Democratic senators who sent a letter to the president urging Biden to extend humanitarian protections to certain groups and to expedite the processing of applicants for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which shields from deportation undocumented people brought into the US as children.“We urge you to act decisively between now and the inauguration of the president-elect to complete the important work of the past four years and protect immigrant families,” the letter said.Earlier this week, the White House released a memo outlining Biden’s priorities for his final days in office that did not include any reference to immigration-related actions. 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      How millions of US children would be hurt by Trump’s mass deportation plan: ‘Deep harm is intentional’

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      Donald Trump confirmed on Monday his intentions to make mass deportations a hallmark of his second term.That such measures would drastically upend the lives of the US’s immigrant communities is widely understood. But sweeping anti-immigrant policies would also be detrimental to American citizens – most notably the nearly 20 million US-born children of immigrant parents.“Mass deportations will be profoundly harmful to US citizen children,” said Andrew Craycroft, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.In 2022, one in four US children had at least one immigrant parent, and more than 4 million US citizens under age 18 lived with an undocumented parent.“These are millions of US citizen children who were born here, who have grown up going to your elementary schools and playing on your little league baseball teams, who are facing a very real danger of losing their parents,” said Kelly Albinak Kribs, co-director of the Technical Assistance Program at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.And while the mechanics by which the president-elect would actually execute his sweeping anti-immigrant agenda remain murky, there is little doubt that creating a climate of fear for immigrant communities is one of his administration’s top priorities – and one that will cause irreparable psychological damage to millions of US citizens.Deporting the parents of US-citizen children didn’t begin with Trump. However, past administrations took precautions to limit the trauma it caused, advocates and legal experts say.The Obama administration barred Ice raids from taking place in schools, childcare centers, hospitals and places of worship. Before that, the Bush administration required Ice to notify schools and child protective services in advance of a large-scale raid.Trump’s policies, on the other hand, appear to traumatize children by design to curb unwanted immigration. “Under Trump, previously and in the future, deep harm to children is absolutely intentional and in many ways is the entire point,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy.Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border separated at least 5,000 foreign-born children and hundreds of US citizen children from their parents. He also ramped-up interior enforcement measures, such as targeted worksite raids. In 2019, Cervantes visited towns in central Mississippi where Ice agents had arrested nearly 700 undocumented poultry plant workers, many of whom had US-born children attending nearby public schools.View image in fullscreen“The kids could see their parents being marched into white vans, handcuffed, as they were leaving school,” Cervantes said. “It was like a nightmare. And those kids, to this day, are still requiring a lot of mental health support.”Come January, Americans should anticipate a return to “draconian measures” such as family separation, said Kribs. Trump has also indicated desires to go after immigrants with legal status, expand the circumstances that allow for denaturalization and pursue unlawful measures that explicitly target the US-born children of immigrants like ending birthright citizenship.But how Trump would execute his more radical ambitions, including militarized mass deportations, is unclear.Such an operation would take a high degree of coordination, both between US agencies and with foreign governments, to pull off. A country like Mexico may accommodate receiving a few hundred people, “but it’s a completely different issue to talk about hundreds of thousands of people being sent back”, said Nando Sigona, professor of international migration and forced displacement at the University of Birmingham.It would also be expensive. According to Debu Gandhi, senior director for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, deporting workers would accelerate inflation, shrink the food supply, slow efforts to build affordable housing and squander taxpayer dollars in efforts to “deport mothers of US citizen children who [pose] no security threat”, Gandhi said.And then there’s the question of public opinion.Backlash again Trump’s 2018 family separation policies was widespread across the political spectrum, explained Lee Gelernt, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who led the lawsuit against “zero tolerance”. “If a second Trump administration does extreme things, we hope and expect the public will push back,” he said. “In his first term, I think they believed they had dehumanized the immigrant population to such an extent that the public would not push back even when little babies were torn away, but there was enormous pushback across the political and ideological spectrum.”Whether or not mass deportations occur, citizen children of immigrants will be adversely impacted by living in a constant state of fear.Research shows that the threat of parental separation alone can cause PTSD and toxic stress in young children. Under the coming administration, that stress will be especially pronounced in mixed-status families, where one or more parent lacks legal status. “It’s easiest to start with people who are wholly unprotected,” said Kribs.Anti-immigrant policies can also have a chilling effect by which immigrant parents, fearing arrest and separation, keep their citizen children home from school, refrain from signing up for benefits such as food stamps or health insurance, and avoid taking their citizen children to the doctor, said Sigona.View image in fullscreenMisinformation exacerbates immigrant parents’ fears that engaging with public services could jeopardize their status or their chances of acquiring permanent residency. The repercussions can be dangerous. “There were parents telling us about how they were making decisions about whether or not to take their kids to the emergency room in the middle of the night,” Cervantes said.Other citizen children may lose contact with the US entirely. If a parent facing deportation chooses to keep their family together, a citizen child will have to leave the US and resettle elsewhere – often in an unfamiliar country that their parent fled for reasons of safety or security.Existing guidance urges Ice agents to detain the parents of citizen children near their children’s residence, arrange for visitation rights, and give them time to make childcare arrangements – but this isn’t binding. “Broadly speaking, these citizen children don’t have the right to have their parent remain with them,” Craycroft said.“Children simply don’t have the same rights as adults,” echoed Cervantes, describing the discrepancy as one of the immigrant system’s biggest flaws.Knowing this, immigrant and child welfare advocates are prepared to have all hands on deck to combat what they see as an imminent crisis for millions of citizen children.“We are facing these next four years clear-eyed and ready to meet the challenge,” said the Young Center’s Kribs. “But there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak along the way.” More