Can Trump ban international students from Harvard?
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Chicago Tribune
12 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area children get deportation letters: Leave or ‘the federal government will find you'
Thirteen-year-old Xally Morales stared blankly at a letter she received from the Department of Homeland Security last month. She could not read the dozens of lines in English addressed to her. She arrived in the country from Mexico a little over seven months ago, crossing the southern border in search of safety. Xally knows very little English. 'They say I have to leave the country immediately,' the young teen whispered in Spanish, barely meeting anyone's eyes at a Chicago law firm on a recent Friday afternoon. No explanation. No hearing. And no time. The night she received the letter, she said, the family went into hiding after her older sister translated the letter for her. 'Trump wants me to go back to Mexico. But how can I do that alone?' Xally told the Tribune. 'I'm scared ICE will come for me.' Xally is one of at least 12 children in the Waukegan area — all unaccompanied minors from Mexico — who received sudden deportation letters from DHS last month, according to advocates. All of the girls legally entered the country within the past year under humanitarian parole as unaccompanied minors and were later reunited with undocumented parents or other family already living in the U.S. But despite that reunification, the girls are unable to be legally represented by their parents in immigration court due to the way they entered the country. Immigration advocates warn that these cases are becoming more common, with a growing number of children now receiving letters from DHS ending their humanitarian parole. They say this could signal a troubling shift under the Trump administration: a move to strip asylum protections from children, even those with pending claims, and accelerate the deportation of minors without due process. 'Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the Federal Government will find you,' the June 20 letter reads. Unless their families can find and afford scarce legal representation, the children could be at risk of getting detained or could be forced to face a judge alone, advocates and attorneys said. But an assistant secretary of DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to the Tribune said that 'accusations that ICE is 'targeting' children are FALSE and an attempt to demonize law enforcement.' McLaughlin added that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'does not 'target' children nor does it deport children.' The agency also does not separate families, she said in the statement. Instead, 'ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone safe whom the parent designates.' But questions regarding why letters are being sent to unaccompanied minors, like Xally, and what the protocol is to deport them, as stated in the letter, were left unanswered. Sitting next to her mother in the law office that afternoon, she held her hand tight. Since receiving the letter, the two had been staying at a Waukegan church because they were afraid that ICE agents would suddenly show up to their home and take Xally. Her mother, Francisca Petra Guzman, 48, arrived in the country in January, also as an asylum-seeker. The two, she said, ran away from domestic abuse and death threats. But churches are no longer a safe refuge. Instead, the pastor of the church, longtime activist Julie Contreras, escorted the mother and daughter to meet with a group of attorneys who could help them understand their options: return to the country they fled, possibly together to avoid detention, or remain in the U.S. for safety. 'As much as I tried, I couldn't provide for Xally in Mexico. I couldn't keep her safe,' Guzman said. 'Then my health started to decline. We had no other option than to come here.' Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, DHS began widely sending these letters. While the agency has always had the discretion to revoke any type of parole, the practice has expanded significantly under his administration, according to the legal and immigration experts. Minors, however, had not been targeted until now. Still, the letter may not mean that ICE will in fact show up to the family's home or their school to deport the children, said immigration attorney John Antia. Many of these children may qualify for other forms of legal protection, Antia said. The first step is meeting with an experienced immigration lawyer. That's something, however, that's often out of reach for families due to financial hardship or lack of understanding about their rights. 'Whether ICE can lawfully detain these children largely depends on each child's immigration status and individual circumstances,' Antia said. When he learned that Xally and other children were taking sanctuary at a Waukegan church after getting the letters, he offered to meet with them, attempting to ease their anxiety and fear. 'The reality is that under this administration, no one is safe anywhere. They (immigration authorities) are unpredictable and desperate to meet a quota even if it means detaining a child,' Antia said. 'This administration doesn't care whether you are in the hospital, whether you are in the courthouse, whether you are in your home, definitely not at church.' While Xally and her mother didn't leave the law office with clear answers about their future, they said they felt a small sense of hope. The attorneys said they would explore legal options to help Xally stay in the country, or at the very least, protect her from detention. They returned to the church, packed their bags and went home. The fear, however, lingers more than ever. Every morning, Xally wakes up wondering if agents will show up at her door the way they have been showing up to other homes in Waukegan and other cities near Chicago. The girl and her mother avoid going out altogether, spending most days watching TV, doing her nails, writing or reading. 'When I begin to feel anxious, I pray,' Xally said as she scrolled though a photo of her late father on her cellphone background. Her nails are painted in bright pink polish and glitter. She painted them while she was staying at the church with other children who received similar letters from DHS. She said she is used to living in fear since she lived in Mexico. Only briefly after arriving did she think her life would take a turn for the best. Xally still remembers the day she first saw Lake Michigan after arriving in the Chicago area. It was Sept. 19 of last year. Before that, she had spent nearly a month in a Texas federal facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, surrounded by other children who, like her, had crossed the southern border seeking asylum. 'More than scared, I was nervous and excited,' Xally said. She was eager to leave behind a life marked by pain and instability after her father died from COVID over five years ago. When her mother remarried, they found themselves trapped in an abusive household, her mother recalled. As the threats heightened, her mother desperately searched for a way to protect her youngest daughter. At first, she left Xally with her elderly grandmother in their impoverished Mexican hometown. But soon, Guzman realized her best option was to send Xally to the United States, where her older sisters — both U.S.-born — lived. Guzman herself had lived in the U.S. unauthorized as a teenager. It was where she met Xally's father. The couple decided to return to Mexico when Xally's grandfather was on his deathbed and they wanted to see one last time. Shortly after, Xally was born. With the help of Contreras, founder of United Giving Hope, an organization supporting immigrant families in suburban Illinois, Xally was granted humanitarian parole as an unaccompanied minor and successfully reunited with her older sisters in Waukegan. 'It was a new start for a young girl with big dreams,' Contreras said. 'She arrived at a place of safety every child deserves.' Over the past decade, Contreras has helped hundreds of children and mothers legally cross the southern border seeking asylum, assisting with paperwork and connecting them to attorneys to support their cases. But now, about a dozen of those children, including Xally, have received letters from DHS ordering them to leave the country. 'This is deeply concerning and alarming,' Contreras said. 'These children are not the criminals Trump claimed ICE would target. They are victims of human rights violations and are being terrorized. Even if ICE doesn't come for them immediately, the threat alone causes severe psychological trauma.' While Xally and her mother choose to endure the uncertainty, others cannot bear it and have opted to return to their native towns. Even when it means facing danger, Contreras said. Sixteen-year-old Daneli Mendez, who arrived in the Chicago area last October, decided to go back to her native Veracruz, Mexico. After staying at the church with Contreras for nearly a week, terrified that ICE would arrive and arrest her, Daneli told her family she would rather return voluntarily than risk detention. The girl has heard of others being detained in detention centers in poor conditions for undetermined amounts of time. Most recently, a 15-year-old Mexican boy was reportedly arrested by federal authorities and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, a notorious detention facility in Florida. On July 5, just a day after Independence Day, Contreras escorted Daneli to O'Hare International Airport and watched as the young girl boarded a flight back to the country she once fled. 'It's heartbreaking to see their dreams shattered. But this is about more than dreams, it's about their safety,' Contreras said. Daneli returned with nothing but a small backpack, a few English words she had learned, and a broken heart, leaving her family behind once again. 'She would much rather do that than be detained and deported,' Contreras said. Under U.S. immigration law, unaccompanied minors, children under 18 who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, are supposed to receive special protections. They are typically placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and granted humanitarian parole while their cases are processed. But in recent months, immigration advocates and attorneys say the system is being quietly dismantled. 'We're seeing more and more unaccompanied minors having their parole revoked and being thrown into immigration proceedings where they're completely unequipped to defend themselves,' said Davina Casa, pastor and leader of the Monarchy Organization. The group provides legal guidance and other services for immigrants in Illinois. Its main goal is to reunify families. Casas and Contreras have worked closely together to help Xally and other children arrive safely in the United States. What's more concerning, she said, is that in March, the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Only after 11 immigrant groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys, did a court order temporarily restore the funding, but the case is still ongoing. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. That same law requires safe repatriation of the children. But Casas is skeptical of that. Even if the funding has been restored, the demand can't keep up. In April, more than 8,300 children ages 11 and under were ordered deported by immigration courts. That is the highest number for that age group in any month since tracking began over 35 years ago, according to court data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as first reported by The Independent. Since Trump took office in January, judges have ordered the removal of over 53,000 immigrant children, according to the data collected. Most of those children are elementary school age or younger. Approximately 15,000 were under the age of 4, and another 20,000 were between 4 and 11 years old. Teenagers have also been affected, with 17,000 ordered deported, though that number is still below the peak seen in 2020, during Trump's first term. Some of the children are unaccompanied minors, like Xally and Daneli, but it's unclear how many, since immigration authorities stopped tracking that data years ago. In the Chicago area, it's hard to know how many children are currently being detained or deported, due to gaps in the available data. But according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Tribune, at least 16 minors were deported or left the U.S. after being booked in Chicago-area ICE detention centers during Trump's first 150 days back in office. Another seven cases are still pending. If all seven of those cases result in deportation, that would bring the total to 23 minors — about the same number as were deported in the final 150 days of the Biden administration. But the latest available ICE data doesn't capture any efforts since late June. When Xally learned that Daneli had returned home, she panicked. The two girls had spent a few nights at the church, confiding in each other the fear that few other young girls would understand. 'Would I have to do that too?' she asked herself. 'I don't want to. I like school here, I want to go back after summer break.' Xally is enrolled at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, where she would enter eighth grade if she stays in the country. Meanwhile, her summer has been shadowed by fear and uncertainty. Just days after receiving the letter, her family quietly marked her 13th birthday — no guests, no music, no gifts. She can't even go anymore to the beach, a place that once felt like the freedom and safety she and her mother had desperately sought after being released from federal custody.
Chicago Tribune
12 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Robert A. Pape: To prevent nuclear war in the Middle East, America needs to change its nuclear doctrine
The world is moving closer to the brink of nuclear war in alarming ways that are more dangerous and harder to anticipate than during the Cold War. The famous 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a harrowing near miss, but today's nuclear dangers are more complex. This is due to a variety of factors, particularly coming together in the Middle East: increasing tensions across the region, growing risks of nuclear proliferation, and now perils of surprise military attack during crises involving states with nuclear weapons or on the cusp of nuclear weapons. Israel's recent 12-day war against Iran is a harbinger of potentially growing nuclear dangers to come. For the first time in history, two nuclear armed states — Israel and the United States — bombed a state, Iran, with a major nuclear program that many believe is on the threshold of acquiring all the physical and technical capacities necessary to produce nuclear weapons within a matter of months. For sure, the 12-day war involved a series of attacks and counterattacks that were terrifying to live through, and there was great relief when they came to an end. However, the future is even more concerning. First, Israeli and American bombing did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program, as President Donald Trump astonishingly declared before he received bomb damage assessments. As is now widely agreed among U.S. defense intelligence, Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan did not eliminate Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Although uncertainly remains about Iran's next steps, there is little doubt that Iran could attempt to produce a 'crude' bomb in a matter of months. And it is important to understand, a 'crude' bomb means a Hiroshima-style weapon that could lead to the deaths of 80,000 people from the immediate effects of the blast. Second, future information about Iran's nuclear program is fraught with high degrees of uncertainty. From the beginning, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors to have tremendous access to monitor its nuclear enrichment program. True, these inspections have fluctuated over time and have never been as fully comprehensive as many would have liked. However, for decades, the quarterly IAEA reports have been crucial for high confidence assessments about the scale of Iran's enrichment program and whether vast amounts of enriched uranium have not been siphoned off to develop nuclear weapons. Now, Iran has reportedly banned IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities, and the fear and suspicion about a surprise nuclear breakout will grow over time. Third, and most important, the 12-day war shows that the fear of surprise attack is now fully justified. It is important to recall that the war started June 13 with a stunning, Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear sites. Israel's bolt-from-the-blue strike occurred without warning and while Iranian negotiators were preparing to meet with their American counterparts just days later. Given these events, Israel, the United States and Iran now face the specter of one of the most terrifying scenarios for nuclear war: the 'reciprocal fear of surprise attack.' That's a situation in which both sides of a potential conflict fear being attacked first, leading them to consider — and possibly launch — a preemptive strike to avoid being caught off guard. The most worrisome aspect is that striking first in these circumstances has an element of rationality. If one side thinks the other is preparing for a surprise attack, then attacking first, even if it carries risks, may be the best way to reduce one's own losses. Of course, nuclear war is so horrible that the reciprocal fear of surprise attack may never lead to an actual outbreak of war. If so, then the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would not be a problem in the first place. Alas, we need to take this danger seriously. What can be done? Although there are no perfect solutions to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack, there is one step that would significantly matter: For the United States, Iran and Israel to declare that they would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a crisis involving Iran. The general idea of 'no first use' pledges, as they are called, arose during the Cold War, but the United States has never been willing to make such a promise. At the time, this was thought of in the context of the U.S., Europe and Soviet contest in which America needed the implicit threat of the first use of nuclear weapons to offset the Soviet conventional military threat to U.S. nonnuclear European allies. The Middle East is clearly different. America's main ally, Israel, is a powerful nuclear weapons state and so does not rely on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter attacks on its homeland. For the United States, Israel and Iran to agree a limited no-first-use policy would not end the tensions over Iran's nuclear program. However, it would energize negotiations and avoid some of the worst ways that a nuclear war could inadvertently occur. The Nobel Laureate Assembly to Prevent Nuclear War taking place at the University of Chicago recently was a perfect place to begin a national conversation about the value of adapting U.S. nuclear doctrine to today's realities in the Middle East. If this assembly of the most brilliant minds on the planet could recommend this historic step in which the U.S., Iran and Israel each pledge they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the dispute involving Iran's nuclear program, this would be a meaningful step toward preventing nuclear war in one of the most dangerous regions in the world.
The Hill
12 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump administration turns hostile on Aspen Security Forum
The Trump administration's last-minute snub of the Aspen Security Forum this week betrays a growing animosity between the U.S. government and wider national security community. The Pentagon on Monday pulled senior Defense Department officials from the annual event —only a day before the start of the four-day summit in Colorado — claiming the bipartisan gathering 'promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the President of the United States.' The strong wording has alarmed some experts and former government officials, who see a growing tendency for the administration to cut off anyone who criticizes or so much as offers an alternative view to that of the current U.S. government — putting up a barrier between them and the decision makers. 'The Trump administration doesn't like dissent, I think that's pretty clear. And they don't like dissenting views at conferences,' a Republican political strategist and frequent forum attendee told The Hill. 'Causing a stir about perceived criticism of the Trump administration makes people afraid to cross them and lose access to the administration. They might be cut off from people who are implementing policies.' But the shunning of events on the national security and foreign policy circuit does no favors for the administration's national security goals, experts say, as they lend a platform to potentially different viewpoints that could be useful for Washington. Case in point, those that gathered at the mountain retreat were described as 'bewildered' by the decision due to the forum's well-known bipartisan agenda, with several former Trump administration officials slated to speak, according to the political strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 'It was a surprise because most of us were traveling to the conference when the announcement occurred,' they said. 'I think most people who attend the event frequently never viewed it as being partisan or anti-Trump. So it was bewildering and I think a little bit concerning.' The Aspen Security Forum, described as the 'premier national security and foreign policy conference,' is among the most high-profile such events and for years has attracted Republican and Democratic administration officials, business leaders, and analysts. During Trump's first term, several top officials including then-CIA chief and later Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the forum. This year's lineup included Mark Esper, an acting defense secretary in Trump's first term, Condoleezza Rice, a former national security advisor and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, and David Petraeus, the short-lived CIA director under President Obama. Speakers covered a range of issues that included the U.S. strategy on Taiwan, Russia's war in Ukraine, NATO, and how Trump's tariffs will affect Washington's alliances. More than a dozen pulled administration officials were set to appear on several panels, including Navy Secretary John Phelan. But the Pentagon suddenly declared they would not attend and would not do so moving forward as 'their values do not align with the values of the DoD,' according to spokesperson Sean Parnell. Only one administration official ended up attending the conference and they were not associated with the Pentagon: Adam Boehler, Trump's special envoy for hostage release. Even without the defense officials in attendance, panelists praised a number of Trump's recent moves, including his decision to offer lethal aid for Ukraine, the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and prompting NATO countries to foot more of the bill when it comes to defense spending. National security elites also appeared resigned that the norms and conventions that sprang up following World War II — which have dictated U.S. use of military force and how Washington addresses long-held partners and alliances — are now upended thanks to Trump. 'We have to recognize that we're probably not going back to exactly that system,' Rice, a co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group, said at the closing panel of the summit. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said he wasn't doing any hand-wringing over Trump's 11th hour snub, and was viewing the official pullout as just the new norm for at least the next three years. 'If they want to have a little bit of a culture war over this particular forum, I'm just going to view it as a reminder of how they view the world, as opposed to a major problem,' O'Hanlon said, referring to the administration's isolationist tendencies. 'They'll be willing to just hold a grudge if they decide you've slighted them or you're not of their worldview. And that's just the way it's going to be,' he added. O'Hanlon noted that as long as administration officials appear at some similar forums and are willing to engage, he doesn't see an issue. But should they stop attending any such events moving forward, that's a cause for concern. 'If they just occasionally feel a slight from somebody and pull out of this or that, that's one thing. If they stop being willing to engage in any kind of forum, unless you somehow prove that you're a complete MAGA Republican, that would be much more concerning.' Aspen organizers, meanwhile, have made clear their invitation to the Trump officials remains open. The political strategists said the organizers were more concerned about ensuring that there's a presence of government officials going forward at the event. 'This is a major security forum, it's an open exchange of ideas, and they made it very clear throughout the event that the officials are invited back anytime in the future,' they said. 'I think there's a hope that that they will come back next year.'
