Latest news with #Nicaraguans
Chicago Tribune
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with US
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital's airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects. But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip. 'Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,' Noem said. 'We've never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn't necessarily have to be the United States.' Asked about Noem's comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home. Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during U.S. President Donald Trump's first term in office. But 'we made it clear that our path was different,' Arévalo said. He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of 'solidarity.' The president's communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier. During Trump's first term, the U.S. signed such safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed 'safe.'
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's winning at the Supreme Court. Justice Jackson warns about 'troubling message'
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is on a winning streak of getting quick assistance from the Supreme Court after lower courts have put the brakes on his policies. That's prompted one of the three liberal justices to write that the court is sending a 'troubling message" that it's departing from basic legal standards for the administration. 'It is particularly startling to think that grants of relief in these circumstances might be (unintentionally) conveying not only preferential treatment for the Government but also a willingness to undercut both our lower court colleagues' well-reasoned interim judgments and the well-established constraints of law that they are in the process of enforcing,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote. Jackson was dissenting from the conservative majority's decision to give Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency complete access to the data of millions of Americans kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Once again, she wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, "this Court dons its emergency responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them." A district judge had blocked DOGE's access to 'personally identifiable information' while assessing if that access is legal. Jackson said a majority of the court didn't require the administration to show it would be 'irreparably harmed' by not getting immediate access, one of the legal standards for intervention. "It says, in essence, that although other stay applicants must point to more than the annoyance of compliance with lower court orders they don't like," she wrote, "the Government can approach the courtroom bar with nothing more than that and obtain relief from this Court nevertheless." A clock, a mural, a petition: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's chambers tell her story In a brief and unsigned decision, the majority said it weighed the 'irreparable harm' factor along with the other required considerations of what's in the public interest and whether the courts are likely to ultimately decide that DOGE can get at the data. But the majority did not explain how they did so. Jackson raised a similar complaint when the court on May 30 said the administration can revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the United States. Jackson wrote that the court "plainly botched" its assessment of whether the government or the approximately 530,000 migrants would suffer the greater harm if their legal status ends while the administration's mass termination of that status is being litigated. Jackson said the majority undervalued "the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending." The majority did not offer an explanation for its decision. In addition to those interventions, the Supreme Court recently blocked a judge's order requiring DOGE to disclose information about its operations, declined to reinstate independent agency board members fired by Trump, allowed Trump to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans and said the president can enforce his ban on transgender people serving in the military. Jackson disagreed with all of those decisions. The court's two other liberal justices – Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – disagreed with most of them. More: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson can throw a punch. Literally. The court did hand Trump a setback in May when it barred the administration from quickly resuming deportations of Venezuelans under a 1798 wartime law. Two of the court's six conservative justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – dissented. Decisions are expected in the coming weeks on other Trump emergency requests, including whether the president can dismantle the Education Department and can enforce his changes to birthright citizenship. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Justice Jackson warns Supreme Court is sending a 'troubling message'
Los Angeles Times
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with U.S.
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital's airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects. But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe-third-country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip. Asked about Noem's comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home. Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during President Trump's first term in office. But 'we made it clear that our path was different,' Arévalo said. He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of 'solidarity.' The president's communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier. During Trump's first term, the U.S. signed such safe-third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed 'safe.' Perez writes for the Associated Press.
San Francisco Chronicle
16 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Guatemala's president denies new asylum deal with US
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital's airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects. But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip. Asked about Noem's comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home. Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during U.S. President Donald Trump's first term in office. But 'we made it clear that our path was different,' Arévalo said. He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of 'solidarity.' During Trump's first term, the U.S. signed such safe third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed 'safe.'
Miami Herald
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship may affect Florida babies in July
The Supreme Court ruling on Friday curbing lower courts' power to limit President Donald Trump's directive to restrict birthright citizenship could have sweeping consequences in Florida, a state with one of the largest populations of immigrants in the country. The ruling, which doesn't take effect for 30 days, could mean that as of late July, babies born in Florida to parents who are undocumented or under certain visa categories might not be entitled to U.S. citizenship by birth unless there is a direct challenge in Florida's federal courts. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Miami Herald in a statement that the ruling 'takes a wrecking ball to the fundamental values long held in our nation that if you are born in the United States of America, you are by birth a U.S. citizen.' In a 6-3 ruling, the court threw out nationwide injunctions from federal judges in three states that limited President Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship while litigation is ongoing. The justices ruled that the lower courts' injunctions in those three states had been too sweeping and must be limited only to the parties that sued the Trump administration to reverse the president's citizenship order. The ruling does not weigh in on the constitutionality of Trump's arguments to limit birthright citizenship. The judges' injunctions will now only affect the jurisdictions where they were filed, leaving other states such as Florida subject to Trump's executive order. Friday's decision could have significant ramifications in Florida. One-fifth of the state's population is foreign born. Estimates also put the undocumented population between half-a-million and 1.2 million immigrants. 'The idea that a child born in the United States could be denied citizenship simply because of who their parents are strikes at the heart of our American values and our democratic ideals,' Levine Cava said. While Florida has a large Cuban population with a relatively direct path to permanent residency, it is also home to nearly one million people of mixed-status households from other nationalities — including Venezuelans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Dominicans — many of whom lack a legal pathway to citizenship. Officials, community leaders and advocates from South Florida expressed dismay and horror at the Supreme Court's decision and slammed Trump's executive order as an unconstitutional proclamation that leaves certain people's rights unprotected depending on where they live. READ MORE: Supreme Court allows Trump to end birthright citizenship in some parts of the country Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said that the decision was not 'just about court processes, but about who gets to be Americans.' She said the 14th Amendment creates 'stability, prevents statelessness, and fosters national unity. 'This isn't governance — it's an attempt to rule by decree, to fracture our national identity, to reshape who is an American to their warped vision, and to roll back hard-fought constitutional protections,' Bozzetto added. Adelys Ferro, Miami-based executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, called the ruling a 'politically biased decision toward granting the Trump administration what it was asking for.' For Ferro, the decision will be enormously damaging to Hispanic communities in Florida. 'It's a horrific situation,' she said, describing the ruling as effectively putting the 14th Amendment on hold, which she called 'terrifying.' Thomas Kennedy, an immigrant advocate with the Florida Immigration Coalition, said he worries about the ruling's potential impact on Florida's immigrant communities. 'We'll end up with a whole generation of second-class, non-citizens being born in Florida if this ruling stands,' Kennedy said. 'The Supreme Court is creating a caste system in the U.S.' Legal experts noted that for now, nothing will immediately change because the executive order doesn't take effect right away, and legal actions against the executive order are certain to be filed in federal courts between now and then. The plaintiffs could also be deemed a national class-action group, if a federal judge in a lower court certifies that, extending protections across the country. 'This is precisely the situation that the 14th Amendment was meant to avoid. Whether you have full rights as a U.S. citizen depends on where you were born,' said Michelle Lapointe, legal director of the American Immigration Council. 'We fought a civil war over this, and then all the trials and tribulations aftewards. thought we had left this all behind in our past.'
