Dallas-area ICE arrests of noncriminals skyrocketed
Why it matters: The surge follows a national trend that coincides with the Trump administration's decision on May 21 to triple ICE's arrest quota.
By the numbers: In January, ICE agents arrested 1,085 total people in the Dallas Field Office region, which includes North Texas, the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma.
As of June 26 — the most recent data available — the monthly arrest figure increased 59% to 1,726.
Zoom in: The monthly share of Dallas-area ICE detainees without criminal charges or convictions more than doubled, from 197 in January (18% of all arrests) to 524 (30%) in June.
The big picture: Nationwide, people without criminal charges or convictions made up an average of 47% of daily ICE arrests in early June, up from about 21% in early May, before the quota increase.
The other side: "The media continues to peddle this FALSE narrative that ICE is not targeting criminal illegal aliens," Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Axios.
McLaughlin added that 70% of ICE arrests were for immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges, but did not elaborate on that figure.
Between the lines: " ICE has the authority to arrest immigrants who are suspected of violating immigration laws, regardless of criminal history," writes Austin Kocher, research assistant professor at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and immigration expert, in an analysis of the new data.
"Nevertheless, the administration has gone to great lengths in the press and on social media to emphasize the criminality of people they are arresting. Both things can be true, of course."
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Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘There has to be a better way': CA Senator Alex Padilla to introduce immigration reform legislation
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USA Today
34 minutes ago
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Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) 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Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. 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He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
There seems no end in sight to asylum hotel protests - as five intense minutes by a roundabout in Norwich proved
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