#immigration-enforcement

#immigration-enforcement

President Donald Trump's zero-tolerance immigration policy split more than 5,000 children from their families at the Mexico border during his first term, when images of babies and toddlers taken from the arms of mothers sparked global condemnation. Seven years later, families are being separated but in a much different way. With illegal border crossings at their lowest levels in seven decades, a push for mass deportations is dividing families of mixed legal status inside the U.S.

Kermit Lynch has opened a shop in the North Bay. Photo: Clark Z. Terry Heads up: We sometimes link to sites that limit access to non-subscribers. Berkeley wine merchant Kermit Lynch has opened a new store the first expansion in its more than 50-year history at a shopping center in Larkspur. (San Francisco Chronicle) A professor's hidden camera caught a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate sabotaging another student's laptop, according to authorities who have charged the candidate with felony vandalism. (East Bay Times)

These and other stark reimaginings of Christ's birth are drawing praise and outrage as churches turn the Christmas tableau into a commentary on federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Their creators say they are placing the ancient story in a contemporary frame, portraying the Holy Family as refugees to reflect on the fear of separation and deportation that many families - including their own parishioners - are experiencing today.

The number of international tourists traveling to the United States has declined, with one exception, Mexico. After a dip at the beginning of the year, visitors from Mexico are back, and their numbers growing. In fact, those tourists are a bright spot this holiday season when many plan trips to visit relatives, enjoy entertainment and amusement parks and, of course, Christmas shopping in malls from San Diego, San Antonio, or El Paso, across from Ciudad Juarez.

More than 20 members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and homeland security officials after the Guardian revealed the VA is compiling a report on all non-US citizens employed by or affiliated with the government agency that will then be shared with other federal agencies, including immigration authorities. The lawmakers, led by Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez along with congressman Mark Takano of California

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it plans to create a militarized zone along the U.S.-Mexico border in California to support border security operations for three years, the latest in a controversial series of moves aimed at securing the border amid the government's immigration crackdown. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a written statement that the agency plans to transfer about 760 acres of public land in San Diego and Imperial counties to the Department of the Navy,

Tony Vara's feed is so eclectic that it's hard to describe. It feels like peak Gen Z. There are videos where he rants about Love Island. There are "get ready with me" posts where he's doing his makeup before going out. But he's also been working his way through the Bible-reviewing it like it's any other piece of content. He can clearly talk about anything.

One among said programs is Alternatives to Detention (ATD), which since 2004 has served as a "more humane" option for lower risk individuals facing removal from the United States, allowing those in the program to wait for their court date at home rather than being stuffed into a detention facility. The trade off, of course, is intense surveillance from ICE, through monitoring devices exclusively provided and operated by BI Inc.

Within weeks, there could be a halt to the Trump administration's practice of arresting immigrants at court hearings in San Francisco, if a district court judge rules in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union and other Bay Area groups challenging the practice. Immigration agents have for months arrested immigrants after their asylum hearings, placed them in federal custody, and tried to deport them to the countries they have fled from (and, as of late, to countries they have never been to).

It's called CollegeWatch. For this job, I am reading constantly about the topic - stories we're publishing, yes, but also stories from publications big and small. What quickly struck me is the power of the work coming out of campus publications, and how little we would know about the full scale of this assault if it were not for these student journalists.

These are good drivers, experienced drivers, but they get pulled over and the officer says their English isn't good enough,

Congressman Dan Goldman, Adriano Espaillat, and Nydia Velazquez revealed Monday that they are pushing new legislation that would stop ICE agents from stalking the halls of immigration and arresting immigrants as they attend their legally mandated court hearings. Photo by Dean Moses ICE agents have operated in New York with impunity for months now, and the best response many of our elected officials seem to offer is talk about what they want to do, rather than what they are doing, to protect New Yorkers.

"pointing weapons at the crowd and pushing witnesses back"

"at its core, USCIS must be an immigration enforcement agency."

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency-which handles services including citizenship applications, family immigration, adoptions, and work permits for non-citizens-started the contract with Palantir at the end of October, and is paying the data analytics company to implement "Phase 0" of a "vetting of wedding-based schemes," or "VOWS" platform, according to the federal contract, which was posted to the U.S. government website and reviewed by Fortune.

When concerned residents of the New Orleans metro area stepped out into the streets with their whistles and phone cameras over the weekend, ready to protest and document the Trump administration's unwelcome assault on immigrant communities, they faced both widespread digital surveillance by state and federal authorities and a vague state law that makes hindering federal immigration enforcement a crime punishable by up to one year of hard labor in a Louisiana prison.

A federal judge has allowed a Tufts University student from Turkey to resume research and teaching while she deals with the consequences of having her visa revoked by the Trump administration, leading to six weeks of detention. Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student studying children's relationship to social media, was among the first people arrested as the Trump administration began targeting foreign-born students and activists involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy.

A Brazilian-born woman with familial ties to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is being released from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody as she has contested possible deportation, her lawyer has said. Bruna Ferreira, a longtime resident of Massachusetts, received a $1,500 bond on Monday from an immigration judge at a Louisiana detention centre. Ferreira was arrested by ICE agents last month while driving to pick up her 11-year-old son in New Hampshire.

We have, after all, been warned over and over that organizations like ICE have been wanting to vastly expand their online operations, using the same vastly expanded budget that recently saw them purchase a new $7.3 million fleet of (Canadian made) armored vehicles. The online expansion of ICE, meanwhile, is not just in the name of locating more groups of undocumented immigrants to target, but also to compile sprawling digital enemies lists, creating databases of those who have expressed anti-ICE sentiment.

The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that anonymously tracks the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has sued the Trump administration for free speech violations after Apple removed the service from its app store under demands from the White House. The suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, asks a judge to declare that the administration violated the First Amendment when it threatened to criminally prosecute the app's developer and pressured Apple to make the app unavailable for download, which the tech company did in October.

"Although ICE raids may no longer dominate daily headlines, the threat to our Latino families documented or undocumented remains very real," Santa Barbara Eastside Society, which organizes the parade, said in a statement.

A man and his best friend are being reunited in Mexico on Friday, three months after being separated by immigration agents outside a Day Laborer Center about an hour east of Los Angeles. The Inspector General for California's massive prison system says a backlog of investigations into staff misconduct has ballooned to 10,000 cases. The governing body for high school sports in California is changing its bylaws in an effort to protect immigrant student athletes.

The big picture: Homeland Security officials started broadcasting a plan to target sanctuary jurisdictions from the start of President Trump's second term. This has put local leaders - because of the law, past litigation and public sentiment - directly at odds with Trump's mass deportation campaign. Driving the news: Homeland Security officials are getting a cold shoulder from local leaders as they decamp to New Orleans for "Operation Catahoula Crunch."

The Trump administration is targeting upwards of 2,000 Afghan immigrants, and ICE leaders are being required to report daily about how many detentions they've made in their regions,

Dozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration's latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day. The city's immigrant communities remain terrified and traumatized, advocates said, with many in hiding as people have been arrested in public spaces including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe's hardware stores, at bus stops, shopping malls and in residential areas around the city.

Immigration activists and lawyers say Somali residents have been pulled over, asked for their passports and detained by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week after President Donald Trump called the state's Somali immigrants " garbage " that should go back Somalia. "I have been getting calls all day and night from people who should not be at risk," said Cameron Geibnik, a Minneapolis immigration attorney who described talking to naturalized citizens or permanent residents scared of being detained.

The mask ban that was lifted during the outbreak to protect New Yorkers was never reinstated in full, and current events should compel New York state, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, to finally make certain the masks come off for good for anyone who does not truly need them. Today, we see people wearing masks for the commission of mischief and mayhem on both sides of the law.