Eighteen months into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the administration has systematically gutted the infrastructure within the federal government that for decades had worked to ensure that civil rights and anti-discrimination laws were being enforced—and has turned agencies “against the communities they were meant to protect,” as one researcher at Human Rights Watch said…
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The State Department announced the creation of a task force that targets so-called birth tourism, which aims to prevent people from traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas for the primary purpose of giving birth to secure U.S. citizenship for their children.
According to the State Department, the “Task Force to End Birth Tourism” reviews the activities of U.S. visa holders to monitor for potential activity it deems as “instances of birth tourism,” then revokes visas “of those who engage in or facilitate it.” The task force has already revoked more than 600 visas from foreign nationals, according to a government fact sheet.
The State Department did not disclose how the task force would be reviewing the activity, but said it analyzes information held by the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.
The new task forces come after President Donald Trump signed two executive orders last week aimed at limiting the scope of birthright citizenship, a key objective of his second term.
The first executive order expanded the definition of people the administration says are ineligible for birthright citizenship. The second executive order targeted “birth tourism,” in which foreign nationals travel to the U.S. to give birth so their children automatically receive U.S. citizenship. Trump called birthright citizenship “a disgrace” when signing the new orders.
“As President Trump has made clear, citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through the calculated exploitation of U.S. immigration laws,” the State Department said in a statement on the task force.
It is already illegal for people to obtain tourist visas “for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the
This past week, a notice posted by the Department of Homeland Security revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently entered into a $20 million no-bid contract with Compliant Technologies for “The G.L.O.V.E.” The contract comes as ICE takes advantage of the billions in funding that Congress has awarded the agency since Donald Trump returned to the presidency.
The acronym stands for “generated low output voltage emitter,” and it is exactly what it sounds like: an electrified glove that agents can trigger to deliver a pretty powerful, painful-looking jolt to anyone the officer has in their grasp.
The device is marketed as a de-escalation device, but the potential for widespread escalation and abuse seems pretty clear.
The device is marketed as a de-escalation device, but the potential for widespread escalation and abuse seems pretty clear. ICE has already demonstrated a willingness to excessively point — if not fire — guns and pepperballs at people, even when they are being clearly filmed by civilians and media alike. These gloves would allow ICE agents to hurt people in ways that could leave no marks and may be impossible for observers to notice or document.
What if, for example, an agent activates his gloves while holding someone down who has already been arrested and who is blocked from the public’s view by other agents? No weapon is pulled; the agent just touches a button on his gloved hand.
Alarmingly, the DHS notice listed the firm’s North American Industry Classification System code as “Other Spectator Sports,” a category the firm itself doesn’t use — it instead lists services such as “security guards and patrol services” — and whose definition it doesn’t appear to meet (which, if just an administrative screw-up, is an
$2,358 per person.
It’s a number that shows the impacts of President Donald Trump’s destructive economic agenda and bigoted anti-immigrant agenda in stark relief.
According to a new tool launched by the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the whopping amount American taxpayers are shelling out on average to fund Trump’s mass deportation push.
The progressive think tank’s new “Cost of Deportations Calculator” references the nearly $270 billion that Congress and federal agencies under Trump have already committed to immigration enforcement. The calculator basically shows the tremendous cost of Americans effectively underwriting the president’s depraved war on immigrants. (If you’re interested in getting wonky, check out the methodology here).
On its website, the institute lists various things that this huge pot of money could be going toward instead. For example, the organization estimated the money could fund 931,963 school teachers, more than 1 million firefighters or just under 12 million Americans on Medicaid.
And the calculator also allows users to cycle through all of the nation’s counties to get estimates about the taxpayer burden that Trump’s mass deportation agenda is placing on communities across the country.
Taken together, it’s a powerful tool in that it stands to remind Americans — who have already already shown broad discontent with the GOP’s handling of immigration and the economy — that the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant crusade comes with massive costs.
Human costs, primarily — as the growing death toll well proves. But financial ones, also.
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The federal immigration agent who fatally shot a man in Maine is facing allegations that are raising questions about the hiring standards at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Two former wives’ allegations against ICE agent David Brouillette are fueling the public relations disaster surrounding yet another death in the Trump regime’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. (The Associated Press, which extensively detailed the domestic abuse allegations, said Brouillette did not respond to its requests for comment.)
Brouillette fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national, during a traffic stop in Maine two weeks ago. The Department of Homeland Security’s official explanation for the shooting was that Guerrero tried to flee in his vehicle and that Brouillette shot him while “fearing for public safety.”
Amid public outcry — and recent polling showing that most Americans have little or no confidence in ICE — the Trump administration said it will investigate the matter. White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN on Sunday that the vetting process may have failed in this case and that the process is under review.
But the fact that people with disturbing backgrounds have been hired to work for ICE has been no secret whatsoever — and there have been heaps of evidence showing that the administration lowered ICE’s agency standards to aid Trump’s mass deportation push.
Last fall, NBC News reported that ICE’s hiring push led to some recruits being allowed to participate in training despite criminal backgrounds and having failed drug tests. In April, The Associated Press raised fresh concerns about ICE’s vetting practices, spotlighting various problematic hires. In response to the AP’s report, DHS told the outlet that vetting “is an
At the end of June, President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies lost — for now — the Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship. Vice President JD Vance said MAGA needed to keep fighting birthright citizenship after the ruling in Trump v. Barbara, but it’s set its sights on a different nativist victory, this time relying on a set of racist laws the high court approved back at the start of the 20th century.
Just two weeks after the ruling on June 30 didn’t go MAGA’s way, Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced H.R. 9724, the End Birthright Citizenship for Territories Act. The bill would deny children born on or after Jan. 1, 2027, in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands automatic citizenship unless at least one parent is already a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident. Griffith calls it a crackdown on “birth tourism,” and the bill doesn’t hide where its legal authority comes from.“The application under the Barbara case of birthright citizenship in the U.S. territories differs from what is established in the 50 U.S. States according to Supreme Court cases,” Griffith noted in a July 16 e-newsletter about the bill. “The birthright discrepancy between the territories and the States dates to legal cases beginning in the early 20th century known as the Insular Cases.”
Those Insular Cases are generally considered so racist that even Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch called them “shameful” back in 2022.
No matter how many times this country calls me a U.S. citizen, Washington still isn’t sure what to do with the place where I was born.
For those unfamiliar with the