There have been a lot of recent stories about the United States deciding to deny or revoke permission for foreigners to live, work, or just visit the nation. Our government’s behavior is a far cry from a nation that is supposed to cherish free speech and welcome the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
The lack of criminal records does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with Tren de Aragua, the lack of specific information about each specific individual actually highlights the risk they pose.
Robert Cerna, senior ICE official
Aministration: ‘Many’ Venezuelans sent to El Salvador prison has no U.S. criminal record (Miami Herald)
There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.
They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.
“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked.
“You are being detained.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean? For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”
Jasmine Mooney
I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped (The Guardian)
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil’s Letter from Detention in Full (Newsweek)
Suri’s plight started March 17, when upon returning home following a Ramadan meal celebration, he was approached by masked federal agents who identified themselves as part of the Department of Homeland Security. They informed him that the government had revoked his visa.
“He is here legally. There was no ongoing issue with his visa,” Eden B. Heilman,legal director of the ACLU of Virginia, told NPR.
The agents quickly took him into custody in front of his wife, Heilman said. But there was never any real explanation to Suri or Saleh about where he was going, what was happening or why, Heilman says.
Suri was never charged with any crime. But in just under 72 hours, he has been moved from one immigration center to the next, eventually landing in Louisiana where he is currently held. Both the speed and obscure nature of Suri’s arrest “is really alarming,” Heilman said.
Jaclyn Diaz
What we know about the case of detained Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri (NPR)
A French scientist has been denied entry into the United States, apparently because the scientist had expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy, the French Education Ministry said on Thursday.
“I learned with concern that a French researcher on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled,” Minister for Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste said in a statement to AFP.
The measure was apparently taken because the scientist had expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy, he added, but did not elaborate.
Reuters
French scientist denied entry into the US, French government says (Reuters)
More than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans had their temporary legal status revoked in the latest move by the Donald Trump administration to push his changes on immigration.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the move Friday. Now, those who have lost their status could be in line for deportations in about a month.
The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022. They arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.
Alex Land, Gisela Salomon
DHS pulls legal status for 500,000 Cubans, Venezuelans and others in latest Trump immigration crackdown (The Independent)
Let’s say you don’t like what the Trump administration is doing, or you don’t like Trump. You express these views on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
You take a two-week vacation in France. When you try to return to the United States, U.S. immigration agents arrest you. They detain you in solitary confinement. They don’t let you contact your family. They don’t let you contact a lawyer. Then they send you to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
But wait! You scream over and over. You can’t do this! I’m an American citizen!
Your screams have no effect.
Robert Reich
If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you. (Robert Reich)
Scott Boehmer 