The Biden administration on January 3 filed a lawsuit against Texas over its controversial immigration law that gives local law enforcement in Texas the authority to arrest migrants, arguing the state “cannot run its own immigration system.” The move comes after the Justice Department threatened last week to sue Texas if it did not back down from the measure. It marks the second legal action against the state this week, as President Joe Biden and Texas Governor Greg Abbott spar over the handling of the US-Mexico border. In December, Abbott, a Trump-aligned Republican, signed into law Senate Bill 4, which also gives judges the ability to issue orders to remove people from the United States. The White House has slammed the law – which is slated to take effect in March – as “incredibly extreme.”
In its lawsuit, the Justice Department argued that the measure undercuts the federal government’s “exclusive authority” to enforce immigration law. “Its efforts, through SB 4, intrude on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere with U.S. foreign relations. SB 4 is invalid and must be enjoined,” the complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, states.
The Justice Department requested that the measure be blocked. “SB 4 is clearly unconstitutional,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement. “Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and longstanding Supreme Court precedent, states cannot adopt immigration laws that interfere with the framework enacted by Congress. The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its responsibility to uphold the Constitution and enforce federal law.”
Earlier this week, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to remove razor wire at the US-Mexico border that was installed by Texas. The dispute is over whether the Border Patrol has the legal authority to cut concertina wire on the banks of the Rio Grande.
The state of Texas sued last year to stop the wire cutting, saying it illegally destroys state property and undermines security to assist migrants in crossing the border. A federal appeals court ordered Border Patrol agents to stop the practice while court proceedings play out, and the Justice Department has now filed an emergency application, asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision.
President Joe Biden moved to help children fleeing violence in Central America on March 10 even as he grappled with a surge of migrants at the US southern border that is taxing resources and exposing him to bipartisan criticism. White House border coordinator Roberta Jacobson told reporters the Biden administration is restarting the Central American Minors (CAM) program for children, which between 2014 and 2017 allowed children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to apply in their home countries to settle in the US. Then-President Donald Trump ended the program in 2017. It had allowed children under 21 years old with parents lawfully living in the US to apply for a refugee resettlement interview as a way to avoid making the dangerous journey by themselves to the US.
The move was the latest step taken by President Joe Biden as he tries to create a more humane situation along the border with Mexico. Mixed messaging by the Biden Administration, however, is leading to criticism from Republicans that he is encouraging migrants to make the dangerous journey to try to reach sanctuary in the US. “The Biden border crisis is real and is only going to get worse,” Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas said at a news conference held by House Republicans on March 10. At the same time, Democrats complain that President Biden is not moving fast enough to release children from Border Patrol custody.
US officials are urging people not to try to cross the border, warning they will be sent back. President Joe Biden has not reversed a Trump-era public health rule that allows border agents to expel most border crossers quickly but is not applying the policy to unaccompanied minors. “The border is not open,” said Roberta Jacobson, switching to Spanish on several occasions during a White House briefing to stress the point. The phrase was repeated in a call with reporters on March 10 by Troy Miller, the senior official performing duties as the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. Miller said agents on the U.S.-Mexico border encountered 100,441 migrants attempting to enter the country illegally in February, confirming the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019. Miller said more than 19,000 of those encounters were families, close to 9,500 were unaccompanied minors, and the remainder adults. Border officials said they also count repeat crossers in their numbers.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said members of President Joe Biden’s immigration team briefed him on a border visit they had and that they discussed how to speed up the processing of migrant children. A State Department representative said in a statement that the administration is set to resume processing CAM applications, starting with children whose cases were suspended under Trump and then opening up to new applicants. The department plans to reach out to parents starting as soon as March 15, the representative said. To date, the program has reunified almost 5,000 children with their parents.
US President Joe Biden on February 2 ordered a review of asylum processing at the US-Mexico border and the immigration system as he seeks to undo some of former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies. President Biden also created a task force to reunite migrant families who were separated at the border by Trump’s 2018 “zero tolerance” strategy. “We are going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families,” Biden said, as he signed the three immigration-related executive orders at the White House. The executive orders called for a dizzying array of reviews and reports that could trigger policy changes in the weeks and months ahead, but provide limited immediate relief to immigrants barred by Trump-era rules.
Immigration advocates have urged the new Democratic administration to quickly undo Trump’s policies but President Joe Biden’s aides say they need time to unravel the many layers of immigration restrictions and to put in place more migrant-friendly systems. “It’s not going to happen overnight,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on February 2. The cautious strategy reflects the tightrope President Biden is walking to reverse hardline Trump policies while simultaneously trying to prevent a surge in illegal immigration. Biden opponents could also derail or slow down his agenda with lawsuits if his administration moves too quickly and fails to follow proper procedures.
In a sign of the wary approach, President Joe Biden’s executive orders on February 2 did not repeal an order known as “Title 42,” which was issued under President Donald Trump to stop the spread of the Coronavirus and allows US authorities to expel almost all people caught crossing the border illegally. He did, however, mandate a review of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a Trump program that ordered 65,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US Court hearings. The Biden administration has stopped adding people to the program but has not yet outlined how it will process the claims of those already in it. Chad Wolf, former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary under Trump, said in an interview that halting the MPP program was a mistake because it had been an effective deterrent to illegal immigration. “If you do have a surge (of migrants), you’re taking one of your tools off the table,” he said in reference to the program.
The tone of President Joe Biden’s orders differed dramatically from former President Donald Trump’s incendiary immigration rhetoric depicting asylum seekers as a security threat or an economic drain on the US. “Securing our borders does not require us to ignore the humanity of those who seek to cross them,” reads the order dealing with asylum. But opposition from Republicans continues and lawsuits by conservative groups could potentially slow down Biden’s agenda. A federal judge last week temporarily blocked one of his first immigration moves, a 100-day pause on many deportations, after the Republican-led state of Texas sought an injunction.
Former President Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 while making border security a major theme of his campaign. If President Joe Biden fails to prevent surges in illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border, he could give ammunition to Republicans in the 2022 congressional elections, said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “This is the thing that rallied Donald Trump supporters,” she said. President Biden, on the other hand, pledged in his 2020 election campaign to move quickly to reunite parents and children separated at the southern border and the task force set up is aimed at fulfilling that promise. However, it will face a daunting challenge in trying to track down the parents of more than 600 children who remain separated, according to a January court filing in a related case. The children are living with relatives or in foster care, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the litigation told Reuters. The task force will be led by Alejandro Mayorkas, one of the senior officials said on February 1. The US Senate on February 1 confirmed Mayorkas as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, the first Latino and immigrant to hold that position.
President Joe Biden’s executive orders also called for a review of former President Donald Trump’s so-called “public charge” rule, which makes it harder for poorer immigrants to obtain permanent residency in the US. The review is expected to start the process to rescind it, according to two people familiar with the plan. President Biden’s asylum-focused order called on US agencies to address drivers of migration in Central America, expand legal pathways to the US and consider ending Trump-era asylum pacts with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. After the order, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a written statement the US intended to suspend and terminate the agreements, which sought to allow asylum seekers from other countries to be sent to those nations.
In his statement, President Donald Trump said any new refugees this year should be placed by the US State Department in parts of the country open to hosting them. “Newly admitted refugees should be placed, to the maximum extent possible, in States and localities that have clearly expressed their willingness to receive refugees” and “resettled in communities that are eager and equipped to support their successful integration into American society and the labor force,” Trump said. Critics say that President Trump has abandoned a longstanding US role as a safe haven for persecuted people and that cutting refugee admissions undermines other foreign policy goals. Trump’s Democratic rival and former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to raise refugee admissions to 125,000 a year if he defeats Trump, although advocates have said the program could take years to recover.
Tens of thousands of refugees have applications in the pipeline for the US, even as increased vetting by the Trump administration and the novel coronavirus have slowed arrivals for the 2020 fiscal year, which had an 18,000 quota. President Donald Trump’s 2021 plan allocates 5,000 slots for refugees facing religious persecution, 4,000 for refugees from Iraq who helped the US, and 1,000 for refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, leaving 5,000 for others. It bans refugees from Somalia, Syria, and Yemen except in “special humanitarian concerns,” citing the risk of terrorism.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on July 21 instructing the US Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the population totals that determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. It is an unprecedented move that seems to be an attempt to preserve white political power. The American Civil Liberties Union said immediately that it would sue and the action is likely to be met with a flood of legal challenges. The Trump administration appears to be on shaky legal ground, as the US constitution requires seats in Congress to be apportioned based on the “whole number of persons” counted in each state during each decennial census. The constitution vests Congress with power over the census, though Congress has since designated some of that authority to the executive. Republicans in recent years have been pushing to exclude non-citizens and other people ineligible to vote from the tally used to draw electoral districts. In 2015, Thomas Hofeller, a top Republican redistricting expert, explicitly wrote that such a change “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites”. The White House memo, titled “Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census,” argues that the term “person” in the constitution really means “inhabitant” and that the president has the discretion to define what that means. The memo also argues that allowing undocumented people to count rewards states with high numbers of undocumented people.
“My administration will not support giving congressional representation to aliens who enter or remain in the country unlawfully, because doing so would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government,” President Donald Trump said in a statement. “Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we should not give political power to people who should not be here at all.” Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said the House of Representatives would “vigorously contest” the order. “By seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census, the president is violating the constitution and the rule of law,” Pelosi said in a statement.
The Trump adminitration’s interpretation is likely to be strongly challenged in court. Experts have said that the idea of illegal immigration did not exist when the constitution was written. Immigration early in America was relatively “free and open”. US Customs and Immigration Services says on its website the federal government began to regulate it in the 19th century. “If those are the best arguments they have, they’re dead in the water,” said Thomas Wolf, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who works on census issues. “There’s no way to get around the fundamental command of the constitution, on the plain text of the constitution, to count everyone.” The legal rationale for the memo is so specious, Wolf said the motivation behind the memo might not be to enact it. He speculated the Trump administration may be trying to create uncertainty or confusion among immigrants already wary of responding to the census.
President Donald Trump on June 22 issued a proclamation suspending some employment-based visas, including H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, through the end of the year as the US struggles to weather the widening coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration is touting the move as a way to protect American jobs amid the highest unemployment rate since 1939, but the decision has been panned by a broad range of companies who say they cannot access the labor they need in the US and who warn that the move could lead them to move operations abroad. The order is part of a broad effort by the Trump administration to severely limit immigration into the US during the pandemic. It suspends H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, most H-2B visas for non-agricultural guest workers, many J-1 visas for exchange visitors like teachers, interns, au pairs and camp counselors, and L-1 visas used by companies to transfer foreign workers to locations in the US, officials told reporters on June 22. Food supply chain workers are exempt, as are workers whom the government deems essential to the fight against coronavirus The order will also extend Trump’s April 2020 edict barring green cards for family members of US citizens.
An administration official estimated that the restrictions as a whole would prevent some 525,000 people from entering the US through the end of the year, though immigration analysts say they expect the number to be around half that figure. The ban will still be in place on October 1, the start of the government’s new fiscal year, when H-1B visas are typically issued. “American workers compete against foreign nationals for jobs in every sector of our economy, including against millions of aliens who enter the United States to perform temporary work,” President Donald Trump’s proclamation says. “Under ordinary circumstances, properly administered temporary worker programs can provide benefits to the economy. But under the extraordinary circumstances of the economic contraction resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, certain nonimmigrant visa programs authorizing such employment pose an unusual threat to the employment of American workers.”
Immigration analysts and advocates have criticized the Trump administration for what they see as an effort to use the pandemic as cover to enact a number of restrictive immigration measures the administration has long wished to implement. Immigration hard-liners have pressured the administration for months to act to limit the number of foreign workers allowed into the US. The decision to temporarily suspend worker visas has even divided Congressional Republicans. In a May 27 letter addressed to President Trump, nine Republican senators, including close Trump ally Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, urged the president to reconsider limits on temporary foreign workers, saying that the move would hurt American businesses. “Guest workers are needed to boost American business, not take American jobs,” the letter read. But earlier in May, four Republican Senators wrote to President Donald Trump asking him to do the opposite and instead suspend temporary worker visas amid the pandemic.
In a major rebuke to President Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court has blocked the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle a program implemented by President Barack Obama in 2012 that has protected 700,000 so-called DREAMers from deportation. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion. Under the Obama-era program, qualified individuals brought to the US as children were given temporary legal status if they graduated from high school or were honorably discharged from the military, and if they passed a background check. Just months after taking office, President Trump moved to revoke the program, only to be blocked by lower courts, and now the Supreme Court. Roberts’ opinion for the court was a narrow but powerful rejection of the way the Trump administration went about trying to abolish the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. “We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. Here we address only whether the Administration complied with the procedural requirements in the law that insist on ‘a reasoned explanation for its action.’ “
In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions simply declared DACA illegal and unconstitutional. “Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch,” he said at the time. Sessions argued that the program should be rescinded because he said it was unlawful from the start. But, as Chief Justice John Roberts observed, the Attorney General offered no detailed justifications for canceling DACA. Nor did the acting secretary of Homeland Security at the time, Elaine Duke, who put out a memo announcing the rescission of DACA that relied entirely on Sessions’ opinion that the program was unlawful. As Roberts noted, Duke’s memo did not address the fact that thousands of young people had come to rely on the program, emerging from the shadows to enroll in degree programs, embark on careers, start businesses, buy homes and even marry and have 200,000 children of their own who are US citizens, not to mention that DACA recipients pay $60 billion in taxes each year. None of these concerns are “dispositive,” Roberts said, but they have to be addressed. The fact that they were not addressed made the decision to rescind DACA “arbitrary and capricious,” he wrote. And none of the justifications the administration offered after the fact sufficed either, including a memo issued by then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. That memo, said Roberts, was essentially too little, too late. An agency must defend its action based on the reasons it gave at the time it acted, he said, instead of when the case is already in court.
Chief Justice John Roberts also made clear that an administration can rescind a program like DACA, and indeed immigration experts do not disagree with that conclusion. The problem for the administration was that it never wanted to take responsibility for abolishing DACA and instead sought to blame the Obama administration for what it called an “illegal and unconstitutional” program. The Chief Justice did not address that issue. Instead, says immigration law professor Lucas Guttentag, the justices in the majority seemed to be saying, “Why should the court be the bad guy” when the administration “won’t take responsibility” for rescinding DACA by explaining clearly what the policy justifications for the revocation are? Joining the Roberts opinion were the court’s four liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor wrote separately in a concurrence to say that while she agreed that rescinding DACA violated the law for the procedural reasons outlined by the Chief Justice, she would have allowed the litigants to return to the lower courts and make the case that rescinding DACA also amounted to unconstitutional discrimination. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the principal dissent, accusing Roberts of writing a political rather than a legal opinion. Joining him were Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, with separate dissents also filed by Alito and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In a Twitter post, President Donald Trump blasted the decision as one of the “horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court.” President Trump also asked the question of if “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on the other hand, celebrated the decision, saying in a statement, “The Supreme Court’s ruling today is a victory made possible by the courage and resilience of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who bravely stood up and refused to be ignored.” In an interview with NPR, Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration senior official who oversees immigration and citizenship at the Department of Homeland Security, said President Trump is considering his options. “I do expect you will see some action out of the administration,” he said, adding: “He is not a man who sits on his hands.”
These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!
While the decision gives DACA and its hundreds of thousands of recipients a lifeline, the issue is far from settled. The court decided that the way President Donald Trump went about canceling DACA was illegal, but all the justices seemed to agree that the president does have the authority to cancel the program if done properly. As for the immediate future of DACA, the consensus among immigration experts is that there is not enough time for President Donald Trump to try again to abolish the program before January. Cornell Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, the author of a 21-volume treatise on immigration law, says, “It’s not remotely possible before the election. But if [Trump] is reelected, he almost certainly will try again” to cancel DACA. For now, though, more individuals eligible for DACA status may be able to apply. Marisol Orihuela, co-director of the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, notes that the administration has refused to accept new applications since 2017. But she thinks that will change now. “Our understanding is that the program is restored to what it was in 2012 when it went into effect,” she says. Guttentag, who teaches immigration law at Yale and Stanford University, says if President Trump is not reelected, a new administration could repair “much of the damage” that he says has been inflicted on immigrants during the Trump administration. But, he adds that the immigration system is “completely shattered” and needs “fundamental reform.”
A Federal Judge in California ruled against President Trump’s recent immigration executive order this week.
A federal judge on November 20 ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter how they entered the US, dealing a temporary setback to the President’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border. Judge Jon Tigar of the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally. “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Judge Tigar wrote in his order.
As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest part of the US border, President Donald Trump signed an executive order two weeks ago that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, Trump said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the US borders. Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal register, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment. But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the US, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.
After the judge’s ruling on Monday, Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who argued the case, said, “The court made clear that the administration does not have the power to override Congress and that, absent judicial intervention, real harm will occur.” “This is a critical step in fighting back against President Trump’s war on asylum seekers,” Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the other organizations that brought the case, said in a statement. “While the new rule purports to facilitate orderly processing of asylum seekers at ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection has a longstanding policy and practice of turning back individuals who do exactly what the rule prescribes. These practices are clearly unlawful and cannot stand.”
President Donald Trump, when asked by reporters about the court ruling on Tuesday, criticized the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the liberal-leaning court where the case will likely land, calling it a “disgrace.” He labeled Judge Tigar an “Obama judge.” Trump Administration officials signaled that they would continue to defend the policy as it moved through the courts. “Our asylum system is broken, and it is being abused by tens of thousands of meritless claims every year,” Katie Waldman, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, and Steve Stafford, the Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement. They said the president has broad authority to stop the entry of migrants into the country. “It is absurd that a set of advocacy groups can be found to have standing to sue to stop the entire federal government from acting so that illegal aliens can receive a government benefit to which they are not entitled,” they said. “We look forward to continuing to defend the executive branch’s legitimate and well-reasoned exercise of its authority to address the crisis at our southern border.”
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week: 1. Russian Woman Indicted for Attempting to Interfere in the 2018 Midterm Elections
A Russian national was indicted this week for attempting to use websites such as Facebook in interfere with the results of the 2018 Midterm elections to have candidates favorable to President Trump and the Republican party be elected.
A Russian woman who allegedly worked on funding online propaganda efforts to manipulate voters in the 2016 and 2018 elections was charged with a federal crime on October 19 as part of a broader conspiracy to hurt American democracy. Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States for managing the financing of the social media troll operation that included the Internet Research Agency, which special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators charged with crimes earlier this year. Prosecutors who unsealed the complaint Friday say she aided the Russian effort to “inflame passions” online related to immigration, gun control, and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March and the NFL National Anthem debate from December 2016 until May of 2018. The social media efforts specifically focused on the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, which left one counter-protester dead, and police shootings of African-American men, the complaint says.
NEW: Elena Khusyaynova, a Russian woman who works for an oligarch close to Putin has been charged with attempting to meddle in the 2018 midterm election. 2018, not 2016. Be woke people! https://t.co/Efc8Es84hp
The criminal charge says the Russians’ online manipulation effort focused on multiple political viewpoints and candidates but frequently zeroed in on the Republican Party’s most well-known leaders. In one effort to spread an online news article about the late Senator John McCain’s position on a border wall to stop illegal immigration, an alleged conspirator directed others to “brand McCain as an old geezer.” They also attempted to paint House Speaker Paul Ryan as “a complete and absolute nobody incapable of any decisiveness” and as a “two-faced loudmouth.” They aimed other efforts at stories about Jeb Bush, Senator Marco Rubio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pushed to “fully support” Donald Trump, and called Mueller “a puppet of the establishment,” according to the complaint.
The effort had an operating budget of $35 million, prosecutors say, and was allegedly funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and his companies. Prigozhin has not responded to a criminal charge he faces from Mueller for funding the scheme before the 2016 election. “The conspiracy has a strategic goal, which continues to this day, to sow division and discord in the US political system, including by creating social and political polarization, undermining faith in democratic institutions, and influencing US elections, including the upcoming 2018 midterm election,” said the criminal complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia. The online scheme directed its proponents to “effectively aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population,” prosecutors quoted one member of the effort saying. Khusyaynova also worked with Concord Management and Catering, another defendant in the Mueller probe, to take in funds. Concord is represented by lawyers in the US and is the only Russian defendant to plead not guilty so far. Khusyaynova had not been previously charged with a crime.
Federal authorities issued a warrant for her arrest on September 28. But it had been kept secret for the three weeks since then so it would not derail “other government efforts to disrupt foreign influence efforts,” a court filing released Friday said. Prosecutors did not elaborate. Prosecutors say Khusyaynova oversaw those financing, budgeting and expense payments of the corporatized propaganda effort, called “Project Lakhta.” The money came in from Concord, which received some of its funding from the Russian government to feed school children and the military, prosecutors allege. The millions of dollars allowed the Russians to buy social media analytic services, secure server space and domain names, and plant online advertisements and to stage political rallies and protests in the US. Sometimes, the Russians would use fake Americanized names like “Bertha Malone” or “Helen Christopherson” on Facebook, or handles like “@TrumpWithUSA” “@swampdrainer659” or “@UsaUsafortrump” on Twitter. One Twitter account the group ran, @wokeluisa, amassed 55,000 followers in one year, tweeting about Flint, Michigan’s drinking water crisis and encouraging voters to register in the 2018 midterm elections.
The new case marks the 27th time a Russian has been charged with a crime related to 2016 election interference or by Robert Mueller, whose mandate is to investigate those crimes. In another open case, the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign and spreading those documents online to influence the election. A 26th Russian national was indicted in June alongside now-convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for alleged witness tampering. Typically, criminal cases against Russian nationals hang in the court system with no progress after the initial charge, because the European nation does not extradite its citizens to the US when people are charged. The cases in effect allow the US to “name and shame” defendants, as court-watchers call the practice. The defendants are unlikely to ever appear in US court.
Overall, the revelation of these indictments shows that the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin have continued to engage in an elaborate campaign of “information warfare” to interfere with the Midterm elections next month and increase the chances that candidates favorable to the policies of US President Donald Trump will be elected. Thus far, President Trump has not reacted forcefully to the allegations, claiming that the charges against the Russian government are little more than a “partisan witch hunt” and that his administration will do nothing to implement measure meant to secure the integrity of the American electoral system during a pivotal time in the country’s history.
2. President Donald Trump Announced Intention to Withdraw from a 1987 Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia
President Donald Trump announced his intentions to withdraw the US from the INF treaty with Russia this week.
On October 19, President Donald Trump announced that the US would be withdrawing from a 31-year-old treaty with Russia that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons after he accused Russia of violating the agreement. “We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement, and we’ve honored the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement,” Trump told reporters in Nevada, “so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.” Signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in their landmark 1987 summit meeting, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) banned the US and Soviet Union from having “ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers,” and required the destruction of the missiles, launchers and “associated support structures and support equipment,” according to the State Department. The two countries eliminated 2,692 missiles after the treaty’s “entry-into-force” in 1988, the State Department said in a report on the effects of the treaty.
President Trump said that he will withdraw from a landmark arms control agreement the U.S. signed with the Soviet Union, accusing Russia of violating the pact. https://t.co/PMD1e9y8cR
Despite the fact that most international observers lauded the agreement as a positive step towards denuclearization and global peace, US officials in recent years have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of violating the agreement, as well as seeking to start a renewed nuclear arms race (despite the fact that the Russian government has reduced their own defense spending steadily since 2016). In testimony before Congress in 2017, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva said that military officials “believe that the Russians have deployed a land-based cruise missile that violates the spirit and intent” of the treaty. The Obama administration said Russia violated the INF treaty in 2014 by testing a ground-launched cruise missile. But the Obama administration “chose not to leave the agreement because of objections from the Europeans (particularly Germany) and out of concern that it would rekindle an arms race,” The New York Times noted.
Overall, the reaction to President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw from the INF treaty has been mixed. National Security Adviser John Bolton applauded the decision, stating that “the treaty was outmoded, being violated and being ignored by other countries. So under that view, exactly one country was constrained by the INF Treaty: the United States.” On the other hand, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Tass News agency that withdrawal from the treaty “would be a very dangerous step, which, I’m sure, won’t be just understood by the international community, but arouse serious condemnation of all members of the world community, who are committed to security and stability and are ready to work on strengthening the current regimes in arms control.” The end of the INF treaty could also weaken the New START Treaty, as NPR’s David Welna noted of the significant remaining arms reduction agreement with Russia, which was signed in 2010. New START includes a limit to 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles for each country.
The Trump Adiminstration was roundly criticized this week for its inaction regarding immigration policy.
The Trump administration has not settled on a plan for what to do if a migrant caravan arrives at the Southern border, despite threats by President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency or rescind aid from the countries whose people are journeying north. Top immigration officials and close Trump advisers are still evaluating the options in closed-door meetings that have gotten increasingly heated in the past week, including one that turned into a shouting match as the caravan of about 7,000 people pushes North, according to administration officials and others with knowledge of the issue. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the topic. The caravan, at least 1,000 miles away, comes on the heels of a surge in apprehensions of families at the border, which has riled President Trump but has also given him a fresh talking point to rally his rabid, far-right base ahead of the midterm elections just two weeks away. In a Twitter post, President Trump stated that the Mexican government is solely to blame for the caravan heading to the US border, and falsely claimed that individuals of Middle Eastern descent also make up a sizable percentage of the participants in the caravan.
Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!
Despite President Donald Trump taking up the issue on the campaign trail, many individuals in the President’s inner circle are grappling with the same problems that have plagued them for months, absent any law change by Congress. Some in Trump’s administration, like Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, advocate for a diplomatic approach using relationships with Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador and the United Nations to stop the flow of migrants arriving in the US. “We fully support the efforts of Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico as they seek to address this critical situation and ensure a safer and more secure region,” Nielsen said in statement earlier this week that noted her department was closely monitoring the possibility of gangs or other criminals that prey on those in “irregular migration.” On the other hand, others in the Trump administration such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton have called for a more forceful approach, including declaring a state of emergency (which would give the administration broader authority over how to manage people at the border), rescinding aid, or giving parents who arrive to the US a choice between being detained months or years with their children while pursuing asylum, or releasing their children to a government shelter while a relative or guardian seeks custody.
The ongoing tensions in the Trump Administration over the issue reached their peak last Thursday when Secretary Nielsen suggested going to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights in a meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly. National security adviser John Bolton, a longtime critic of the UN, exploded over the idea, the officials and people said. Nielsen responded that Bolton, not a frequent attendant of the immigration meetings, was no expert on the topic, they said. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said in a statement: “While we are passionate about solving the issue of illegal immigration, we are not angry at one another. However, we are furious at the failure of Congressional Democrats to help us address this growing crisis.”
Overall, events such as the migrant caravan illustrate the fact that President Donald Trump’s policy regarding the immigration crisis is a failure. The President’s hardline rhetoric towards immigrants who solely want to come to the US to seek a better life has contributed to the intense partisan rhetoric regarding US immigration policy and has made politicians in both parties even less likely to come up with a lasting solution to the issue. Additionally, President Trump’s bigoted rhetoric has done little more than to play into his far-right base and has encouraged the spread of xenophobic ideas in a rapidly-changing society.
4. Landmark Affirmative Action Case Goes to Trial This Week, Potentially Putting the Doctrine at Stake
A landmark affirmative action case dealing with Harvard’s affirmative action policy went to trial this week.
A lawsuit against Harvard brought on behalf of Asian-American students who failed to gain admission went to trial on October 16 in one of the most significant race-based cases in decades, with affirmative action policies across the country at stake. The lawsuit was crafted by conservative advocates who have long fought racial admissions practices that traditionally benefited African-American and Hispanic students. Their ultimate goal is to reverse Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, a landmark 1978 Supreme Court case that upheld admissions policies that consider the race of students for campus diversity.
The plaintiffs in the case are led by Edward Blum, a conservative activist who has devised a series of claims against racial policies, including an earlier affirmative action lawsuit on behalf of Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas and several challenges to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the critical vote in 2016 when the court last endorsed race-based admissions in the University of Texas case, was replaced by Judge Brett Kavanaugh earlier this month. Gorsuch succeeded the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who had opposed all affirmative action and criticized the University of Texas program, but died before that case was heard before the Supreme Court. The Students for Fair Admissions group Blum founded when he filed the Harvard case in November 2014 contends the university engages in unlawful “racial balancing” as it boosts the chances of admissions for African-Americans and Hispanics and lowers the chances for Asian Americans.
Harvard’s practices, said Edward Blum, are “the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants during the 1920s and 1930s.” That assertion has deeply resonated with some Asian Americans who fear they are held to a higher standard than other applicants to prestigious universities. Yet Asian-American advocates, representing a wide swath of backgrounds and educational experiences, have come in on both sides of the case. Some who back the lawsuit are seeking to end all consideration of race in admissions, while others, siding with Harvard, argue that universities should be able to consider race for campus diversity and that some Asian Americans, particularly those with ties to Southeast Asian countries, may have had fewer educational opportunities before applying to college.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a brief on behalf of 25 Harvard student and alumni organizations comprising blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and whites. The Legal Defense Fund calls the lawsuit an effort “to sow racial division” and emphasizes the Supreme Court’s repeated endorsement of the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Those subsequent rulings, however, turned on a single vote, either that of Kennedy or Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2006. The Trump administration, which is separately scrutinizing race-based admissions practices at Harvard through its Education and Justice departments based on a complaint from more than 60 Asian American groups, has backed Students for Fair Admissions.
Harvard, the country’s oldest institution of higher education, denies that it engages in racial balancing or limits Asian-American admissions. It defends its longstanding efforts for racial diversity as part of the educational mission and says admissions officers undertake a “whole-person evaluation” that includes academics, extracurricular activities, talents, and personal qualities, as well as socioeconomic background and race. Since the case was filed, both sides have mined similar statistical evidence and testimony but with sharply contrasting conclusions — all of which will now be presented before US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs, a 2014 Obama appointee. “Each party relies on expert reports to show the presence or absence of a negative effect of being Asian American on the likelihood of admission … and claims that there is substantial — or zero — documentary and testimonial evidence of discriminatory intent,” Burroughs said in an order last month rejecting requests from both sides to rule for each, respectively, before trial.
Here are the main events that occurred in Politicsthis week:
1. President Donald Trump Signs Immigration Executive Order Meant to Curtail the Separation of Migrant Children from Parents
On June 20, President Donald Trump on signed an executive order designed to keep together immigrant families who have been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, while also retaining his administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” President Trump said from the Oval Office, but at “the same time, we are keeping a very powerful border, but continue to be zero tolerance.” Trump’s executive order would keep most families together under the Department of Homeland Security, except in cases where an adult may pose a threat to a child. “You’re going to have a lot of happy people,” Trump further said as he signed the order. While the order could possibly work to quell the furor over the controversial practice of separating families at the border, it marks a stunning reversal for President Donald Trump, who has prided himself as being a hardline opponent of illegal immigration.
Vice President Mike Pence, who also appeared with Trump at the signing, said that the order would enable families to stay together in the immediate future, but added that it was still up to Congress to come up with a permanent solution, presumably as part of a larger immigration package. The executive order by President Donald Trump is certain to encounter legal challenges, much like President Obama’s 2014 immigration executive order. Some advocates will argue that children staying in detention centers violates the 1997 decision known as the Flores agreement. Although the Executive Order mandates that Attorney General Jeff Sessions request a US district court to modify the agreement, Trump acknowledged he could be headed for a fight. “There may be some litigation,” he conceded.
The separations at the border began earlier this year when Attorney General Jeff Sessions mandated that all people caught crossing into the US illegally be referred for criminal prosecution. Under that policy, adults were sent to jail under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, while children have been held in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Since the policy was implemented, over 2,000 children have been separated, according to government figures. The backlash, spurred by images of children crying, audio documenting the separation, and personal accounts from those experiencing it, was swift and intense and came from both sides of the aisle, as well as from international organizations and figures. Until June 19, the Trump Administration had been vociferously defending his immigration policy. President Trump insisted on June 18, that illegal immigrants were “infesting” the country, and asserted that the only other option was to release all the undocumented immigrants detained at the border. However, Trump insisted that his executive order was not a sign of his backing down. “The border’s just as tough,” he told reporters. “They can come in through ports of entry if they want. That’s a whole different story. And that’s coming in through a process, and the process is what we want.”
2. The US Withdraws from UN Human Rights Council, Alledging Anti-Israeli Bias
The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council on June 19 in protest of what it perceives as an entrenched bias against Israel and a willingness to allow notorious human rights abusers as members. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has sought major changes on the council throughout her tenure, issued a blistering critique of the panel, saying it had grown more callous over the past year and become a “protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” She cited the admission of Congo as a member even as mass graves were being discovered there, and the failure to address human rights abuses in Venezuela and Iran. “I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments,” she said during a joint appearance with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the department. “On the contrary. We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.” Haley went further to accuse governments with mediocre human rights records of seeking seats on the council to avoid scrutiny and then resisting proposals for reform. “When we made it clear we would strongly pursue council reform, these countries came out of the woodwork to oppose it,” Haley said. “Russia, China, Cuba, and Egypt all attempted to undermine our reform efforts this past year.”
The decision to leave the 47-nation body was more definitive than the lesser option of staying on as a nonvoting observer. It represents another retreat by the Trump administration from international groups and agreements whose policies it deems as out of sync with American interests on trade, defense, climate change and, human rights. Additionally, the decision leaves the council without the US playing a key role in promoting human rights around the world. “By withdrawing from the council, we lose our leverage and allow the council’s bad actors to follow their worst impulses unchecked — including running roughshod over Israel,” said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House committee that oversees the State Department. “However, this administration’s approach when it sees a problem is to take the United States off the field,” he added. “That undermines our standing in the world and allows our adversaries to fill the void.”
The US is midway through a three-year term on the council, which is intended to denounce and investigate human rights abuses. A U.S. departure deprives Israel of its chief defender at a forum where Israel’s human rights record UN human rights chief slammed the Trump Administration’s policy of separating migrant parents from their children after they enter the United States at the Mexican border, calling it “unconscionable” and akin to child abuse.
3. Latest Efforts to Hold Talks on Ending Sudan Civil War Fail
The most recent efforts to negotiate an end to South Sudan’s Civil War ended in failure this week as both sides refused to meet face-to-face.
The latest attempt at ending South Sudan’s five-year civil war failed on June 22, when President Salva Kiir rejected working again with rival Riek Machar after their first face-to-face meeting in almost two years. “This is simply because we have had enough of him,” government spokesman Michael Makuei said. The rivals met this week in neighboring Ethiopia at its prime minister’s invitation, shaking hands and being coaxed into an awkward embrace as they held direct talks. They shook hands again as regional heads of state and met to discuss the civil war in the world’s youngest nation. But it soon became clear that while South Sudan’s government was open to having the opposition in the vice president’s role, it would not accept Machar’s return to that post. Machar fled the country after new fighting broke out in the city of Juba in July 2016, ending a brief attempt at peace in which he returned to his role as Kiir’s deputy.
Opposition spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said “there was nothing agreed upon in the talks” but that the face-to-face meeting with South Sudan’s president was useful “because we are able to see violence in Salva’s eyes.” Gabriel also accused the East African regional bloc of favoring South Sudan’s government and putting its own interests ahead of “genuine peace,” adding: “This is completely disappointing.” The warring sides are to meet again on June 25 in Kenya. Machar will attend the Khartoum meeting, Makuei said. “We believe that peace is going to come in the coming one month or so,” South Sudan’s Cabinet affairs minister, Martin Elia Lomoro, told reporters even as observers expressed skepticism.
South Sudan’s civil war, which started just two years after the country won independence from Sudan, has continued despite multiple attempts at peace deals. Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have fled to create Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Millions of others still in the country are near famine, while the warring sides have been blamed for obstructing or slowing the delivery of desperately needed aid.
The latest attempt at a cease-fire in December was violated within hours. Both sides have been accused of widespread abuses such as gang rapes against civilians, including along ethnic lines. A number of South Sudan officials have been accused by human rights groups of profiting from the conflict and blocking the path to peace, and the US has threatened to withdraw aid to the country. Early this month the UN Security Council adopted a United States-sponsored resolution that threatens an arms embargo on South Sudan and sanctions six people, including the country’s defense chief, if fighting doesn’t stop and a political agreement is not reached. The resolution asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to report to the council on that by June 30.
4. Canadian Parliament Approves Bill Legalizing Marijuana
The Canadian government passed legislation allowing the recreational use of marijuana this week, become the second country in the world to do so.
On June 19, the Canadian parliament voted to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, making Canada the first G7 country to legalize marijuana. The law regulates its cultivation, sets limits on possession and prohibits marketing that would encourage consumption. When the law comes into effect, Canada will be the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to make it legal to puff marijuana for pleasure. Bill Blair, a Liberal Party member of the Canadian Parliament, stated that if the bill is passed this week, marijuana could be legal by September, lining up with a late-summer schedule proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month.
Concerns expressed about the bill by members of Parliament include how to keep marijuana away from children and how to address organized crime and traffic deaths related to marijuana use. The current bill restricts marijuana production, possession and sale to those over the age of 18. Canadian Senator Peter Harder acknowledged his colleagues’ reservations about the bill’s specifics in a statement on June 18. “Given the exceptional amount of work that went into the Senate’s study of this bill, I understand that some of these outcomes are frustrating for some,” he said. “I know that some of these frustrations are rooted in deeply held policy views and personal values and that much disagreement will not end with our vote on this message, whatever its result.”
Here are the main events that occurred in Politics this week: 1. US Expels 60 Russian diplomats in Response to UK nerve agent attack
The Trump Administration ordered the expulsion of 60 Russia diplomats this week, signaling a harder line approach to Russia.
On March 26, President Donald Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats the US identified as intelligence agents and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. President Trump took this action after the US joined the United Kingdom in accusing Russia of attempting to murder a Russian dissident and his daughter using a nerve agent on UK soil. The action comes just two weeks after the Trump administration leveled the first sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 US presidential election.”The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners around the world in response to Russia’s use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom, the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
British Prime Minister Theresa May called the move “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history.”We have no disagreement with the Russian people who have achieved so much through their country’s great history. But President Putin’s regime is carrying out acts of aggression against our shared values,” she said. “The United Kingdom will stand shoulder to shoulder with the EU and NATO to face down these threats.” As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced the actions on the part of the US and the UK, arguing that they are in violation of international law and will only worsen the already tense relationship between Russia and the West. As a retaliatory measure, the Russian government ordered the expulsion of 60 US diplomats and ordered the closure of the US Consulate in St. Petersburg for the foreseeable future.
2. Trump Administration Proposes Putting Question on 2020 US Census Asking Individuals Their Citizenship Status
The Trump Administration proposed adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census this week, sparking protest from states such as New York and California.
On March 26, senior officials in the Trump Administration announced that The 2020 census will ask respondents whether they are United States citizens, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, agreeing to a Trump administration request with highly charged political and social implications that many officials feared would result in a substantial undercount. The Justice Department had requested the change in December, arguing that asking participants about their citizenship status in the decennial census would help enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which aims to prevent voting rights violations. “Citizenship questions have also been included on prior decennial censuses,” explained officials. “Between 1820 and 1950, almost every decennial census asked a question on citizenship in some form. Today, surveys of sample populations, such as the Current Population Survey and the ACS, continue to ask a question on citizenship.”
Opponents of the citizenship question have argued in the past that it causes people to shy away from taking the census, and experts believe a drop in numbers could lead to an inaccurate count of the US population. “The inclusion of a question on citizenship threatens to undermine the accuracy of the Census as a whole,” wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA.) and her colleagues in an open letter sent to the Justice Department in January. “Given this administration’s rhetoric and actions relating to immigrants and minority groups, the citizen question request is deeply troubling,” they said. “Such a question would likely depress participation in the 2020 Census from immigrants who fear the government could use the information to target them. It could also decrease response rates from U.S. citizens who live in mixed-status households, and who might fear putting immigrant family members at risk through providing information to the government” said Feinstein and her colleagues in the letter.
In response to the proposed changes, 17 states announced that they would bring suit against the Trump Administration. Led by New York and California, the leadership in the 17 states feel that this proposal would negatively impact the distribution of federal resources to states with large populations of undocumented immigrants and place an unfair advantage to the Republican Party in terms of redistricting efforts after 2020. “The census numbers provide the backbone for planning how our communities can grow and thrive in the coming decade,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “California simply has too much to lose for us to allow the Trump Administration to botch this important decennial obligation. What the Trump Administration is requesting is not just alarming, it is an unconstitutional attempt to discourage an accurate census count.”
3. Protests Erupt Gaza in Opposition to the Continued Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Major protests broke out along the Israel-Gaza border this week, resulting in the deaths of 16 and international outcry against Israeli policies.
On March 30, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip participated in non-violent protests as part of the Great Return March. Palestinian participants soon began walking towards the fence that separates the strip from Israel and were met with live fire from the Israeli military that saw hundreds of people injured and 16 killed.
The protests were held to commemorate Land Day and demonstrate for the rights of Palestinian refugees to be resettled in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Secretary Avigdor Lieberman responded to the protests by claiming that Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, had sent women and children to the fence as human shields. Rather than expressing the grievances of Palestinians at large, the protests were to be seen in the context of long-standing tensions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The Israeli response drew widespread criticism around the world, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for an independent inquiry into Friday’s events. Additionally, several countries in the Middle East condemned the response to the protests by the Israeli government. Perhaps the country that most forcefully condemned the actions of Israel was Iran. In a Twitter post on March 31, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif stated that “On the eve of Passover (of all days), which commemorates God liberating Prophet Moses and his people from tyranny, Zionist tyrants murder peaceful Palestinian protesters – whose land they have stolen – as they march to escape their cruel and inhuman apartheid bondage.” On the other hand, the US blocked a UN Resolution denouncing the Israeli response and placed the blame squarely on the part of the Palestinian protestors.
Almost two weeks ago, President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia), arguing that a ban on immigration from these countries will improve national security and reduce the potential for terrorist attacks. President Trump’s executive action has sparked a major controversy in the US and has raised numerous questions. Overall, it can be argued that President Trump’s executive order is morally reprehensible and goes against nearly every value the US stands for. Here is a list of the reasons why Trump’s executive order is unethical, inhumane, and an example of public policy at its worst.
1. The action itself is unconstitutional and discriminatory
The executive order is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, which states that Congress or the Executive Branch will not put forward any laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Additionally, the Supreme Court also declared in the case of Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) that the federal government may not “aid or oppose any religion” through the policies that it seeks to implement. President Trump’s executive order clearly favors Christianity over Islam, as it states that the US will continue to take in Christian refugees from Muslim-majority countries as opposed to aiding Muslim refugees in Muslim-majority countries who face religious persecution.
The executive order also creates a negative precedent that may be used to justify future violations of civil rights and civil liberties of both Muslim-Americans and Americans who hold dual-citizenship from Muslim-majority countries. As such, one can conclude that the executive order by President Trump is a blatant violation of the US constitution and is a violation of civil rights and civil liberties.
2. None of the countries affected by the executive order were involved in past terrorist attacks on US soil.
In order to justify the actions, President Trump claimed that the countries included on the list were directly involved with the 9/11 Attacks and in numerous other terrorist activities in the US. In actuality, Trump’s statement is entirely false. For example, the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (countries that are not included in Trump’s executive order). Additionally, according to a report by the think tank New America, no individual from any of the seven countries committed any violent attacks on American soil. Additionally, the report further states that most terrorist attacks are not carried out by refugees, but instead by people who are already American citizens who became radicalized due to a multitude of factors such as continued economic inequalities, religious bigotry, and racism.
3. All of the countries on the list are victims of aggressive US foreign policy
Another common theme shared by all seven of the countries included in President Trump’s executive order is that they have been victims of aggressive US foreign policy over the years. Here’s a list of the countries and the actions by the US in each one:
• The US has followed an aggressive policy towards Iran since 1953, when the CIA participated in a Coup that removed the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power and gave Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, increased political powers in relation to the elected government of Iran. Over the next 25 years, the Shah ruled Iran as a brutal autocrat with full US-support, torturing and executing thousands of political opponents, attempting to force secularism and Western values on the Iranian people, and personally profiting off the selling of Iranian natural resources.
• The US and its allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States have played a major role in the escalation of the Civil War in Syria since 2011 by supporting rebel groups in opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, placing crippling sanctions against Syria, and by attempting to isolate the Assad government and turn international opinion away from it. Because of the policies of the US, the Syrian Civil War has steadily escalated, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of at least 10 million Syrian civilians. Additionally, the increased intervention by the US and its allies in Syria directly contributed to the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS and threatens to spark a conflict between the US-led coalition and the main allies of Syria such as Russia, Iran, China, and Hezbollah (a Lebanese political party that is primarily supported by the Shi’a Muslims of Lebanon and the Maronite Catholic Church).
•The US intervention in Libya in 2011 to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power has destabilized the country and has essentially turned it into a “failed state.” As a result of the US-led intervention, some 30,000 Libyan civilians were killed and the country is now beset with a continual civil war and is a breeding ground for extremist groups.
• The US has played a major role in support of the Saudi-led intervention in the Civil War in Yemen (which began in 2015 with the overthrow of the pro-Saudi Yemeni government) and their efforts to fight against the Houthis, a Shi’a group that is opposed to the Yemeni government (which has ruthlessly suppressed the Shi’a community in Yemen). The Saudi government has primarily targeted civilian areas and is considered by many to be guilty of committing war crimes against the people of Yemen. The US has supplied Saudi Arabia with military aid and has participated in numerous drone strikes in the country. As a result of the actions by Saudi Arabia and the US, close to 10,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed and the entire country is at risk of undergoing a severe famine.
•The US-led invasion of Iraq (which occurred after a dozen years of crippling sanctions against Iraq) resulted in the deaths of close to 500,000 people and permanently destabilized the country. Additionally, the actions of the US contributed to Iraq becoming a major stronghold for extremist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda and created a precedent for future US-led intervention in the country.
•The US has been involved in covert actions in Somalia since the start of the War on Terror 15 years ago. Since 2003, the US has launched some 20 raids and 21 drone strikes into Somalia in order to take out suspected terrorists. In 2016 alone, the US launched 13 strikes into Somalia, killing 215 people. Since their initial launch, the raids by the US into Somalia killed over 400 people and did little to restore stability to a country that has long been characterized as unstable.
•President Bill Clinton placed crippling sanctions against Sudan in 1997 due to their alleged connection to terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. In reality, the US-implemented sanctions against Sudan ended up negatively impacting ordinary people by denying them access to healthcare and negatively impacted the already-weak economy of Sudan. Additionally, the US blew up the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant (which manufactured over half of the country’s pharmaceutical products) in 1998. Although the attack was supposedly aimed at Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Al-Qaeda, no such link has ever been proven.
4. The executive order goes against all of the core values of the US
The US has historically prided itself on a reputation as a nation that takes in people in need and gives them the opportunity to have a better life free from fear and oppression. On the other hand, President Trump’s executive order goes against these values. As the well-known Iranian-American religious scholar Reza Aslan (who himself is an immigrant who came to the US in the early 1980s) noted, supporters of the executive order such as House Speaker Paul Ryan are hypocritical by not accepting immigrants and people in need because their ancestors came to the US for the very same reason that the refugees from war-torn regions and the immigrants from Muslim-Majority countries are coming to the US.
The issue of immigration reform in the United States has ignited a series of political debates over the last few years and has increased the partisan divide between both political parties. In the debate over illegal immigration, some argue that the proper solution is to enhance border security and to provide a program that establishes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. On the other hand, others argue that illegal immigration negatively impacts taxpayers, tarnish the public perception of immigrants, and jeopardizes the safety of law enforcement officials and citizens along the US-Mexican border. Additionally, opponents of comprehensive immigration reform argue that in effect, any reform would “reward lawbreakers” at the expense of immigrants who come to the United States through legal means. The issue of immigration reform has also resulted in several different proposals at the Congressional level by members of both political parties.
To address a number of issues surrounding illegal immigration, President Obama issued a series of executive orders in November 2014 meant to protect some 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow for a percentage of undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The response to President Obama’s executive actions has been mixed, with Democrats almost universally in favor and Republicans nearly unanimous in their opposition. In addition, the sweeping nature of the executive orders has led some to argue that President Obama’s actions are unconstitutional and represent an instance of executive overreach. In response to the allegations of the order’s unconstitutionality, several states have signed on to a federal lawsuit challenging the Obama Administration. Overall, it can be argued that President Obama’s actions are unconstitutional and represent an abuse of executive power.
The main point of contention against the Obama Administration’s executive actions on immigration is that they go against the principle of separation of power and usurp legislative authority regarding the implementation of immigration laws. The historical precedence regarding immigration law is that Congress has the authority to regulate immigration and legislate any laws surrounding it. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution goes on to entrust the legislative branch to “establish a uniform role of naturalization.” Such language confirms the fact that Congress is to have the primary power in establishing laws that determine how noncitizens are to become citizens of the United States. The idea of Congress having the power to regulate immigration has been upheld by the Supreme Court cases in many cases such as Henderson v. Mayor of New York and Arizona v. United States.
Additionally, President Obama using an executive order to influence existing law may set a precedent for future Presidents to use executive authority to address matters explicitly reserved for other branches of government.
Additionally, opponents of President Obama’s immigration executive order argue that his decision to not enforce existing immigration law is a violation of his Constitutional powers. Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Such guidelines mean that the President cannot nullify or not enforce laws that they do not agree with. An example of a law passed by Congress that President Obama has chosen not to support through his executive order is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA). The purpose of the Act was to improve border security by increasing the powers and responsibilities of agencies charged with monitoring visa applications. Additionally, the law gave federal agents increased latitude with deporting undocumented immigrants. Considering such factors, it can be argued that President Obama is acting outside of his Constitutionally defined powers by issuing the executive orders regarding immigration.
In conclusion, the debate over immigration reform has emerged as an important political topic over the past few years and has served to highlight the partisan divisions between both the Republican and Democratic parties. Numerous solutions were proposed to address the issue, but the stark divisions between both sides have thus far prevented any substantial reform from emerging. The executive orders issued by President Obama has added to the debate over illegal immigration and has raised numerous questions about the powers of the executive branch. It can be argued that President Obama’s executive order are in violation of the principles of separation of power and are in violation of the President Constitutional powers, in particular, their obligation to uphold and execute all laws. Only time will tell if the issue of immigration reform will become settled law and whether or not President Obama’s executive actions will be deemed Constitutional or not.
