blocks

Palestinians are turning to soup kitchens to feed their families as Gaza is gripped by a crippling food crisis because Israel is limiting the entry of aid trucks, despite the new ceasefire agreement.

Gaza residents say they fear a return to Israel’s full-scale bombing as they struggle to find food, water and medicine.

Oct. 31 (UPI) — A federal judge in Washington permanently blocked President Donald Trump‘s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for those who cast mail-in ballots.

The president lacks the authority to change federal election procedures because the Constitution places that authority with Congress and the respective states, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled on Friday.

“The president directed the Election Assistance Commission to ‘take appropriate action’ to alter the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of United States citizenship,” Kollar-Kotelly said in her 81-page ruling.

Because Trump does not have the authority to order the EAC to alter federal election procedures, Kollar-Kotelly permanently enjoined the EAC and others from enforcing the president’s directive.

The ruling arises from challenges to Executive Order 14,248 — Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which Trump signed on March 25.

In it, the president orders the EAC to require documentary proof of citizenship on the national mail voter registration form to ensure foreign nationals are not submitting votes via mail-in ballots.

State or local officials in turn would record the type of document used to show proof of citizenship.

The executive order also requires mail-in ballots to be received on or before election day for them to count.

The Democratic National Committee, League of United Latin American Citizens and League of Women Voters Education Fund filed the federal lawsuit against the president and the Republican National Committee to stop enforcement of the executive order.

“While the fight is far from over, we’re glad the court agreed that a president cannot ‘short circuit’ Congress and unilaterally use an illegal executive order to obliterate the rights of millions of voters,” said Marcia Johnson, who is chief counsel for the League of Women Voters, in a prepared statement.

Although Kollar-Kotelly blocked the enforcement of Trump’s executive order, other parts of the lawsuit are yet to be decided.

CHICAGO — An appeals court intervened Wednesday and suddenly blocked an order that required a senior Border Patrol official to give unprecedented daily briefings to a judge about immigration sweeps in Chicago.

The one-page suspension by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came before Greg Bovino’s first scheduled, late afternoon meeting with U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis at the courthouse in downtown Chicago.

Ellis had ordered the meetings Tuesday after weeks of tense encounters and increasingly aggressive tactics by government agents working Operation Midway Blitz. It has produced more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force.

Bovino told Fox News that he was eager to talk to Ellis. But government lawyers, at the same time, were appealing her decision. Lawyers for news outlets and activists who say agents have used too much force, including tear gas, have until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond in the appeals court.

Ellis’ order followed enforcement actions in which tear gas was used, including in a neighborhood where children had gathered for a Halloween parade last weekend on the city’s Northwest Side. Neighbors had joined in the street as someone was arrested.

“Halloween is on Friday,” she said. “I do not want to get violation reports from the plaintiffs that show that agents are out and about on Halloween, where kids are present and tear gas is being deployed.”

Bovino defended agents’ actions.

“If she wants to meet with me every day, then she’s going to see, she’s going to have a very good firsthand look at just how bad things really are on the streets of Chicago,” Bovino told Fox News. “I look forward to meeting with that judge to show her exactly what’s happening and the extreme amount of violence perpetrated against law enforcement here.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors filed charges against Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic congressional candidate, and five other people over protests at an immigration enforcement building in Broadview, outside Chicago. The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, alleges they illegally blocked an agent’s car on Sept. 26.

Abughazaleh said the prosecution was an “attempt to silence dissent.”

The Chicago court actions came as groups and officials across the country have filed lawsuits aimed at restricting federal deployments of National Guard troops.

President Trump’s administration will remain blocked from deploying troops in the Chicago area until at least the latter half of November, following a U.S. Supreme Court order Wednesday calling on the parties to file additional legal briefs.

The justices indicated they would not act before Nov. 17 on the administration’s emergency appeal to overturn a lower-court ruling that has blocked the troop deployments.

In Portland, Ore., a federal trial seeking to block a troop deployment got underway Wednesday morning with a police commander describing on the witness stand how federal agents at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building repeatedly fired tear gas at nonviolent protesters.

In Chicago, Bovino, who is chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, Calif., was to sit for a daily 5:45 p.m. briefing to report how his agents are enforcing the law and whether they are staying within constitutional bounds, Ellis said. The check-ins were to take place until a Nov. 5 hearing.

Ellis also demanded that Bovino produce all use-of-force reports since Sept. 2 from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz.

The judge expressed confidence Tuesday that the check-ins would prevent excessive use of force in Chicago neighborhoods.

Ellis previously ordered agents to wear badges, and she has banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She subsequently required body cameras after the use of tear gas raised concerns that agents were not following her initial order.

Ellis set a Friday deadline for Bovino to get a camera and to complete training.

Lawyers for the government have repeatedly defended the actions of agents, including those from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and told the judge that videos and other portrayals of enforcement actions have been one-sided.

Besides his court appearance, Bovino still must sit for a videotaped Thursday deposition, an interview in private, with lawyers from both sides.

Fernando writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge said the layoffs by the administration of US President Donald Trump seem politically motivated and ‘you can’t do that in a nation of laws’.

A United States federal judge in California has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to halt mass layoffs during a partial government shutdown while she considers claims by unions that the job cuts are illegal.

During a hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday, US District Judge Susan Illston granted a request by two unions to block layoffs at more than 30 agencies pending further litigation.

Her ruling came shortly after White House Budget Director Russell Vought said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that more than 10,000 federal workers could lose their jobs because of the shutdown, which entered its 15th day on Wednesday.

Illston at the hearing cited a series of public statements by Trump and Vought that she said showed explicit political motivations for the layoffs, such as Trump saying that cuts would target “Democrat agencies”.

“You can’t do that in a nation of laws. And we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law,” said Illston, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, adding that the cuts were being carried out without much thought.

“It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs, and it has a human cost,” she said. “It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston said she agreed with the unions that the administration was unlawfully using the lapse in government funding that began October 1 to carry out its agenda of downsizing the federal government.

A US Department of Justice lawyer, Elizabeth Hedges, said she was not prepared to address Illston’s concerns about the legality of the layoffs. She instead argued that the unions must bring their claims to a federal labour board before going to court.

‘Won’t negotiate’

The judge’s decision came after federal agencies on Friday started issuing layoff notices aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. The layoff notices are part of an effort by Trump’s Republican administration to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding that any deal to reopen the federal government address their healthcare demands. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on those demands and reopen.

Democrats have demanded that healthcare subsidies, first put in place in 2021 and extended a year later, be extended again. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill that was passed earlier this year.

About 4,100 workers at eight agencies have been notified that they are being laid off so far, according to a Tuesday court filing by the administration.

The Trump administration has been paying the military and pursuing its crackdown on immigration while slashing jobs in health and education, including in special education and after-school programmes. Trump said programmes favoured by Democrats are being targeted and “they’re never going to come back, in many cases.”

The American Federation of Government Employees and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees claim that implementing layoffs is not an essential service that can be performed during a lapse in government funding, and that the shutdown does not justify mass job cuts because most federal workers have been furloughed without pay.

A judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from requiring recipients of federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to comply with the president’s orders aimed at curtailing “radical indoctrination” and “gender ideology.”

The ruling is a victory for three Planned Parenthood affiliates — in California, Iowa and New York — that sued to try to block enforcement of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services policy document issued in July that they contend contradicts the requirements of the grants as established by Congress.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed to the bench by former President Obama, blasted the administration’s policy change in her written ruling, saying it was “motivated solely by political concerns, devoid of any considered process or analysis, and ignorant of the statutory emphasis on evidence-based programming.”

The policy requiring changes to the pregnancy prevention program was part of the fallout from a series of executive orders Trump signed starting in his first day back in the White House aimed at rolling back recognition of LGBTQ+ people and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

In the policy, the administration objected to teaching that promotes same-sex marriage and that “normalizes, or promotes sexual activity for minors.”

The Planned Parenthood affiliates argued that the new directives were at odds with the requirements of the program — and that they were so vague it wasn’t clear what needed to be done to follow them.

Howell agreed.

The decision applies not only to the handful of Planned Parenthood groups among the dozens of recipients of the funding, but also to nonprofit groups, city and county health departments, Native American tribes and universities that received grants.

The Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the program, declined to comment on Tuesday’s ruling. It previously said the guidance for the program “ensures that taxpayer dollars no longer support content that undermines parental rights, promotes radical gender ideology, or exposes children to sexually explicit material under the banner of public health.”

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Portland, ruling Saturday in a lawsuit brought by the state and city.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in the case. She said that the relatively small protests the city has seen did not justify the use of federalized forces and that allowing the deployment could harm Oregon’s state sovereignty.

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. She later continued, “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

State and city officials sued to stop the deployment last week, one day after the Trump administration announced that 200 Oregon National Guard troops would be federalized to protect federal buildings. The president called the city “war-ravaged.”

Oregon officials said that characterization was ludicrous. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the city has been the site of nightly protests that typically drew a couple dozen people in recent weeks before the deployment was announced.

Generally speaking the president is allowed “a great level of deference” to federalize National Guard troops in situations where regular law enforcement forces are not able to execute the laws of the United States, the judge said, but that has not been the case in Portland.

Plaintiffs were able to show that the demonstrations at the immigration building were not significantly violent or disruptive ahead of the president’s order, the judge wrote, and “overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”

“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote.

After the ruling, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said that “President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement — we expect to be vindicated by a higher court.”

Trump has deployed or threatened to deploy troops in several U.S. cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Memphis, Tenn. Speaking Tuesday to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, he proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces, alarming many military analysts.

Last month a federal judge ruled that the president’s deployment of some 4,700 National Guard soldiers and Marines in Los Angeles this year was illegal, but he allowed the 300 who remain in the city to stay as long as they do not enforce civilian laws. The Trump administration appealed, and an appellate panel has put the lower court’s block on hold while it moves forward.

The Portland protests have been limited to a one-block area in a city that covers about 145 square miles and has about 636,000 residents.

The protests grew somewhat following the Sept. 28 announcement of the Guard deployment. The Portland Police Bureau, which has said it does not participate in immigration enforcement and intervenes in the protests only if there is vandalism or criminal activity, arrested two people on assault charges. A peaceful march earlier that day drew thousands to downtown and saw no arrests, police said.

On Saturday, before the ruling was released, roughly 400 people marched to the ICE facility. The crowd included people of all ages and races, families with children and older people using walkers. Federal agents responded with chemical crowd-control munitions, including tear gas canisters and less-lethal guns that sprayed pepper balls. At least six people were arrested as the protesters reached the ICE building.

During his first term, Trump sent federal officers to Portland over the objections of local and state leaders in 2020 during long-running racial justice protests after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. The administration sent hundreds of agents for the stated purpose of protecting the federal courthouse and other federal property from vandalism.

That deployment antagonized demonstrators and prompted nightly clashes. Federal officers fired rubber bullets and used tear gas.

Viral videos captured federal officers arresting people and hustling them into unmarked vehicles. A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that while the federal government had legal authority to deploy the officers, many of them lacked the training and equipment necessary for the mission.

The government agreed this year to settle an excessive-force lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union by compensating several plaintiffs for their injuries.

Rush and Boone write for the Associated Press and reported from Portland and Boise, Idaho, respectively. AP writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.

The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.

ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.

The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.

The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.

“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.

Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.

But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.

The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.

U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.

Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.

The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.

Amy writes for the Associated Press.

The United States Supreme Court says it will hear arguments over President Donald Trump’s efforts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from her post. The court’s announcement means Cook will stay in the job for now.

The high court announced the decision on Wednesday.

The White House has been trying to remove Cook in the first-ever bid by a president to fire a Fed official, an unprecedented challenge to central bank independence.

The justices declined to immediately decide a Department of Justice request to put on hold a judge’s order temporarily blocking the Republican president from removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, while litigation over the termination continues in a lower court.

The justices said they would hear the case in January.

In creating the Fed in 1913, Congress passed a law called the Federal Reserve Act, which included provisions to shield the central bank from political interference, such as allowing governors to be removed by a president only “for cause”, although the law does not define the term or establish procedures for removal. The law has never been tested in court.

Washington, DC-based US District Judge Jia Cobb on September 9 ruled that Trump’s claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office, which Cook denies, likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the Federal Reserve Act.

Trump on August 25 said he was removing Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors, citing allegations that before joining the central bank in 2022, she falsified records to obtain favourable terms on a mortgage. Her term is set to expire in 2038.

Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump soon after. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give the president the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 ruling on September 15 denied the administration’s request to put Cobb’s order on hold.

Expansive view of presidential powers

In a series of decisions in recent months, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to remove members of various federal agencies that Congress had established as independent from direct presidential control despite similar job protections for those posts. The decisions suggest that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, may be ready to jettison a key 1935 precedent that preserved these protections in a case that involved the US Federal Trade Commission.

But the court has signalled that it could treat the Fed as distinct from other executive branch agencies, noting in May in a case involving Trump’s dismissal of two Democratic members of federal labour boards that the Fed “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” with a singular historical tradition.

Trump’s bid to fire Cook reflects the expansive view of presidential power he has asserted since returning to office in January. As long as the president identifies a cause for removal, Cook’s sacking is within his “unreviewable discretion”, the Department of Justice said in a September 18 filing to the Supreme Court.

“Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself – and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” the filing stated.

Cook’s lawyers told the Supreme Court on September 25 that granting Trump’s request, “would eviscerate the Federal Reserve’s longstanding independence, upend financial markets and create a blueprint for future presidents to direct monetary policy based on their political agendas and election calendars”.

A group of 18 former US Federal Reserve officials, Treasury secretaries and other top economic officials who served under presidents from both parties also urged the Supreme Court not to let Trump fire Cook.

The group included the past three Fed chairs, Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan. In a brief to the court, they wrote that allowing this dismissal would threaten the Fed’s independence and erode public confidence in it.

Cook took part in the Fed’s highly anticipated two-day meeting in Washington, DC, in September, at which the central bank decided to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point as policymakers responded to concerns about weakness in the job market. Cook was among those voting in favour of the cut.

Pressure on Fed

Concerns about the Fed’s independence from the White House in setting monetary policy could have a ripple effect throughout the global economy.

The case has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rates without regard to the wishes of politicians, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to function independently and carry out tasks such as keeping inflation under control.

Trump this year has demanded that the Fed cut rates aggressively, berating Fed Chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship over monetary policy as the central bank focused on fighting inflation. Trump has called Powell a “numbskull,” “incompetent” and a “stubborn moron”.

Sept. 18 (UPI) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to deport at least 600 Guatemalan children, rejecting claims by the Department of Homeland Security that the move was an effort to reunite them with their parents.

Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia said in his ruling that the administration’s claim that it was reuniting children with their parents “crumbled like a house of cards” because “there is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return to Guatemala.”

Kelly temporarily stopped the administration from transferring, repatriating, removing or otherwise aiding in the transport of any of the 76 Guatemalan migrant children that immigration authorities attempted to deport in the middle of the night during the Labor Day weekend.

Attorneys representing the children said they were notified by federal officials late at night that they were being “repatriated,” the ruling said.

The Trump administration pushed back on Kelly’s ruling

“This judge is blocking efforts to REUNIFY CHILDREN with their families,” Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in a statement to NBC News. “Now these children will have to go to shelters. All just to ‘get Trump.’ This is disgraceful and immoral.”

Kelly, appointed by President Donald Trump, referenced a report from the Guatemalan attorney general’s office in response to the administration’s plan to deport more than 600 children to the country. The report said no parents had requested the return of their children.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Trump’s administration from immediately deporting Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country, the latest step in a court struggle over one of the most sensitive issues in Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly comes after the Republican administration’s Labor Day weekend attempt to remove Guatemalan migrant children who were living in government shelters and foster care.

There was already a temporary order in place preventing the removal of Guatemalan children. But that was set to expire Tuesday.

Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, granted a preliminary injunction extends that temporary protection indefinitely, although the government can appeal.

There are also temporary restraining orders in separate cases in Arizona and Illinois, but those cases are much more narrow in the scope of children they cover.

Human rights groups say the government risks breaching international law by denying people the right to claim asylum.

A British court has temporarily blocked the deportation of an asylum seeker to France, dealing an early setback to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to return people who arrive in the United Kingdom on small boats.

The 25-year-old Eritrean man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, crossed the English Channel on August 12 and was due to be removed on Wednesday under a “one in, one out” pilot scheme agreed between the UK and France in July.

But on Tuesday, London’s High Court granted him an interim injunction preventing his removal, pending a full hearing of his trafficking claim.

Judge Clive Sheldon ruled: “I am going to grant a short period of interim relief. The status quo is that the claimant is currently in this country and has not been removed.

“So, I make an order that the claimant should not be removed tomorrow at 9am, but that this matter should come back to this court as soon as is reasonably practical in light of the further representations that the claimant … will make on his trafficking decision.”

“The removal takes place against the backdrop of the recently signed agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the French Republic.

“It seems to me there is a serious issue to be tried with respect to the trafficking claim and whether or not the Secretary of State has carried out her investigatory duties in a lawful manner.”

The case follows a decision by the UK’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – which identifies and assesses victims of slavery and human trafficking – asking the man to submit further evidence in relation to his claim.

The ruling is a setback for Prime Minister Starmer, who has made stopping small boat crossings central to his government’s agenda.

His approach has drawn criticism from rights groups, who accuse him of bowing to pressure from the far right following attacks on asylum-seeker accommodation.

The UK-France scheme is also seen by analysts as part of the government’s attempt to blunt the growing support of the anti-immigrant Reform UK party, which has been climbing in opinion polls.

Under the plan, people arriving in Britain would be returned to France, while the UK would accept an equal number of recognised asylum seekers with family ties in Britain.

Downing Street has defended the plan, calling it a “fair and balanced” system designed to reduce irregular migration.

It insisted it expects deportations to begin “imminently”, with the prime minister’s official spokesman saying “for obvious reasons we’re not going to get into a running commentary on operational details before that”.

Human rights groups say the government risks breaching international law by denying people the right to claim asylum in the UK.

TUCSON — A federal judge in Arizona temporarily blocked the Trump administration from removing dozens of Guatemalan and Honduran children living in shelters or foster care after coming to the U.S. alone, according to a decision Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez in Tucson extended until at least Sept. 26 a temporary restraining issued over the Labor Day weekend. Márquez raised concern over whether the government had arranged for any of the children’s parents or legal guardians in Guatemala to take custody of them.

Laura Belous, attorney for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, which represents the children, said in court that the minors had expressed no desire to be repatriated to their native Guatemala and Honduras amid concerns they could face neglect, possible child trafficking or hardships associated with individual medical conditions.

Lawyers for the children said that their clients have said they fear going home, and that the government is not following laws designed to protect migrant children.

A legal aid group filed a lawsuit in Arizona on behalf of 57 Guatemalan children and 12 from Honduras between the ages of 3 and 17.

Denise Ann Faulk, an assistant U.S. attorney under the Trump administration, emphasized that the child repatriations were negotiated at high diplomatic levels and would avoid lengthy prohibitions on returning to the U.S.

Nearly all the children were in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and living at shelters in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Similar lawsuits filed in Illinois and Washington seek to stop the government from removing the children.

The Arizona lawsuit demands that the government grant the children their right to present their cases to an immigration judge, to have access to legal counsel and to be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interest.

The Trump administration has argued it is acting in the best interest of the children by trying to reunite them with their families at the behest of the Guatemalan government. After Guatemalan officials toured U.S. detention facilities, the government said that it was “very concerned” and that it would take children who wanted to return voluntarily.

Children began crossing the border alone in large numbers in 2014, peaking at 152,060 in the 2022 fiscal year. July’s arrest tally translates to an annual clip of 5,712 arrests, reflecting how illegal crossings have dropped to their lowest levels in six decades.

Guatemalans accounted for 32% of residents at government-run holding facilities last year, followed by Hondurans, Mexicans and Salvadorans. A 2008 law requires children to appear before an immigration judge with an opportunity to pursue asylum, unless they are from Canada and Mexico. The vast majority are released from shelters to parents, legal guardians or immediate family while their cases wind through court.

The Arizona lawsuit was amended to include 12 children from Honduras who have expressed to an Arizona legal aid group that they do not want to return to Honduras, as well as four additional children from Guatemala who have come into government custody in Arizona since the lawsuit was initially filed Aug. 30.

Judge Márquez said she found it “frightening” that U.S. officials may not have coordinated with the children’s parents. She also expressed concern that the government was denying the children access to review by an experienced immigration judge, and noted that legal representatives for the children were notified of preparations for child departures with little notice, late at night.

“On a practical matter, it just seems that a lot of these things that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] has taken upon themselves to do — such as screening and making judicial determinations that should be made by an immigration judge with expertise and time to meet with a lawyer and meet with a child — is just surpassed by saying ‘we’re reuniting them’” with parents, Márquez said in court as she pressed Faulk for more information.

Billeaud and Lee write for the Associated Press.

Sept. 5 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration for now from ending Temporary Protected Status for more than 1.1 million migrants from Venezuela and Haiti.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco ruled that the change unlawfully “truncated and condensed” the timeline to end temporary legal protections and work permits for people who fled the two Latin American nations. He was appointed by President Barack Obama.

About 600,000 Venezuelans had their protections expire in April or on Sept. 10. They have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger since receiving their protected status in 2021. The ruling affects 500,000 from Haiti.

The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end the status for several countries. Separate litigation is ongoing for migrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua.

“This case arose from action taken post haste by the current DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to revoke the legal status of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders, sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries,” Chen wrote in a 69-page decision. “The Secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violates the law.”

The decision only temporarily halted the agency from deporting them. But Chen said he expects Venezuelans will be able to renew this status while the case goes through the courts, including appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court.

Earlier, he halted a TPS order for several hundred thousand Venezuelans. But the Supreme Court in May allowed the Trump administration to end the program as it goes through the courts.

Chen said his new decision concerned only preliminary relief, and the high court didn’t bar him from deciding on the case based upon its merits under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the rule-making process of the agency.

In planning to appeal, Noem said the government will “use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”

“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program. Its use has been all the more dangerous given the millions of unvetted illegal aliens the Biden Administration let into this country,” the statement obtained by CBS News read.

The Trump administration has argued that conditions in Venezuela and Haiti have improved sufficiently to end those protections.

TPS was established in 1990 to allow for temporary immigrant protections for people experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

“For 35 years, the TPS statute has been faithfully executed by presidential administrations from both parties, affording relief based on the best available information obtained by the Department of Homeland Security,” Chen wrote. “This case arose from action taken post haste by the current DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, to revoke the legal status of Venezuelan and Haitian TPS holders, sending them back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

When Donald Trump was president during his first term, he attempted to end TPS for several countries, including Haiti. Court cases were blocked during his presidency.

When Joe Biden was president, he designated Venezuela as part of TPS, covering 600,000 migrants. It was expanded to Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti and Ukraine.

Haiti was first designated the protection after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010. The nation faces widespread hunger and gang violence.

Two years later in 2023, he extended protections for those from Venezuela and Haiti.

When Trump became president again in January, Noem sought to reverse the extension for Venezuela and then sought to terminate the designation entirely. Haitians also were included, as well as those from other countries.

“As a matter of law, the Secretary lacked the implicit authority to vacate,” Chen wrote. “Even if she had such authority, there is no genuine dispute that she exceeded that authority.”

The National TPS Alliance and Venezuelan TPS holders in February challenged Noem’s decisions.

“From Day 1, Secretary Noem acted with a sole intent of stripping TPS-holders of their legal status whether or not there was a basis for it,” Emi MacLean, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This decision recognizes the illegality of that. As a result, TPS protections should go back into effect immediately.”

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States. It also keeps protections for about 500,000 Haitians.

Chen scolded Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for revoking protections for Venezuelans and Haitians that the judge said would send them “back to conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

He said Noem’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, and she exceeded her authority in ending protections that were extended three times by the Biden administration.

Presidential administrations have executed the law for 35 years based on the best available information and in consultation with other agencies, “a process that involves careful study and analysis. Until now,” Chen wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people in the United States, if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe for return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. The country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people, and left more than 1 million homeless. Haitians face widespread hunger and gang violence.

Their designations were to expire in September but later extended until February, due to a separate court order out of New York.

Noem said that conditions in both Haiti and Venezuela had improved and that it was not in the national interest to allow migrants from the countries to stay on for what is a temporary program. Attorneys for the government have said the secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program are not subject to judicial review.

Designations are granted for terms of six, twelve or 18 months, and extensions can be granted so long as conditions remain dire. The status prevents holders from being deported and allows them to work.

The secretary’s action in revoking TPS was not only unprecedented in the manner and speed in which it was taken but also violated the law, Chen wrote.

The case has had numerous legal twists, including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Chen temporarily paused the administration’s plans to end TPS for people from Venezuela. An estimated 350,000 Venezuelans were set to lose protections the following month.

The U.S. Supreme Court in May reversed his order while the lawsuit played out. The justices provided no rationale, which is common in emergency appeals, and did not rule on the merits of the case.

Venezuelans with expired protections were fired from jobs, separated from children, detained by officers and even deported, lawyers for TPS holders said.

The Supreme Court’s reversal does not apply to Friday’s ruling. The government is expected to seek a stay of Chen’s order as it appeals.

Last week, a three-judge appeals panel also sided with plaintiffs, saying the Republican administration did not have the authority to vacate protection extensions granted by the previous administration.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 3 (UPI) — A federal judge cited First Amendment rights Wednesday in an order blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold more than $2 billion in government funding from Harvard University.

U.S. Judge Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts restored the funding — in the form of grants and contracts — in response to a lawsuit brought by the university and employee groups. The lawsuit accused the President Donald Trump of leveraging the funding “to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard.”

Among the programs affected by the block in funding were research in science and medicine, including on radiation exposure, ALS diagnostics and tuberculosis treatment.

Trump attempted to withhold funding and block Harvard from admitting international students after taking issue with students’ anti-Israel protests over the war in Gaza. The administration accused Harvard of failing to crack down on anti-Semitism.

Burroughs said that while Harvard was wrong to not attempt to curtail “hateful behavior for as long as it did,” she doubts the administration’s stated aims.

“The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting anti-semitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting anti-Semitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,” she wrote.

In June, Burroughs granted a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s efforts to bar international students from enrolling at Harvard.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s emergency order follows a legal complaint brought on behalf of 10 children.

A United States judge has blocked the administration of US President Donald Trump from deporting unaccompanied Guatemalan children for at least the next two weeks, in the government’s ongoing hardline anti-immigration push.

The order, which was issued on Sunday in response to a complaint filed by a pro-immigrant advocacy group, came as some Guatemalan children were reportedly already put onto planes at a Texas airport and huddled inside.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s emergency decree followed a petition from the National Immigration Law Center in relation to 10 children aged between 10 and 17.

After initially preventing the deportation of the group, Sooknanan, who is based in Washington, DC, widened the order to include all Guatemalan children who had reached the US without a parent or guardian.

Sooknanan also brought forward a hearing about the issue on Sunday due to reports that some of the children were in the process of being removed from the US during the country’s Labor Day holiday weekend.

“I do not want there to be any ambiguity,” the judge said on Sunday, noting that her decision applied broadly to unaccompanied Guatemalan minors.

The flurry of legal activity came days after reports in the US media that the Trump administration was preparing to start child deportations to Guatemala this weekend, following an agreement with the Central American country.

Such a move would constitute a “clear violation of the unambiguous protections that Congress has provided them as vulnerable children”, according to the National Immigration Law Center’s legal challenge.

Although the children should be under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the US government was set on “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture”, the complaint added.

On Friday, Guatemala’s Foreign Minister Carlos Martinez confirmed that his country was willing to receive hundreds of children who were in the US.

Since the start of his second presidential term in January, Trump has attempted to start deporting refugees and immigrants en masse.

His administration’s anti-immigration actions, which have included sending hundreds of people to a notorious prison in El Salvador, have been beset by legal difficulties.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the most high-profile face of the Trump administration’s crackdown and a Salvadoran man legally residing in the US state of Maryland, was mistakenly deported in March. He was severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture in prison there, his lawyers say.

Abrego Garcia now wishes to seek asylum in the US. His lawyers told a judge in recent days that he fears further persecution and torture should the Trump administration succeed in deporting him to Uganda, as it plans to do.

Aug. 29 (UPI) — U.S. officials revoked visas already issued to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority ahead of next month’s United Nations General Assembly, the State Department confirmed Friday.

The department is also denying outstanding visa requests to members of the PLO and PA for undermining efforts at achieving a cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

Both directives are “in accordance with U.S. law,” and come directly from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the department said.

“The Trump Administration has been clear: it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” the State Department said in the statement.

“Before the PLO and PA can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism — including the October 7 massacre — and end incitement to terrorism in education, as required by U.S. law and as promised by the PLO.”

In July, the State Department sanctioned Palestinian officials from both groups for not complying with their “commitments under the PLO Commitments Compliance Act of 1989 and the Middle East Peace Commitments Act of 2002.”

The U.N. General Assembly opens on September 9 at the agency’s headquarters in New York City.

Rubio’s department accused both the PLO and PA members of undermining peace talks in Gaza by going outside of formal negotiations. The secretary said both must end appeals to international bodies such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice to “secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state.”

“Both steps materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks,” the department said in its statement.

Rubio said the United States remains open to negotiations and restoring the visas if the groups “meet their obligations and demonstrably take concrete steps to return to a constructive path of compromise and peaceful coexistence with the State of Israel.”

The news comes the same day officials in Britain banned Israeli government and military officials from attending an international defense and security event in London next month.

Israel’s war in Gaza is approaching the 700-day mark.

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces said it was declaring the area around Gaza City a combat zone as it stepped up military operations on the ground in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s plans to end protections for 600,000 people from Venezuela who have had permission to live and work in the United States, saying that plaintiffs are likely to win their claim that the Republican administration’s actions were unlawful.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that maintained temporary protected status designations for Venezuelans while they challenge actions by the Trump administration in court.

The 9th Circuit judges found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had no authority to vacate or set aside a prior extension of temporary protected status because the governing statute written by Congress does not permit it.

Then-President Biden’s Democratic administration had extended temporary protected status, commonly known as TPS, for people from Venezuela.

“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” Judge Kim Wardlaw, who was nominated by President Clinton, a Democrat, wrote for the panel. The other two judges on the panel were also nominated by Democratic presidents.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security blasted the decision as more obstruction from “unelected activist” judges.

“For decades the TPS program has been abused, exploited, and politicized as a de facto amnesty program,” the email read. “While this injunction delays justice and undermines the integrity of our immigration system, Secretary Noem will use every legal option at the Department’s disposal to end this chaos and prioritize the safety of Americans.”

Congress authorized temporary protected status, or TPS, as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the secretary of DHS to grant legal immigration status to people fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to that home country. The terms are for six, 12 and 18 months.

The appellate judges said the guaranteed time limitations were critical so people could gain employment, find long-term housing and build stability without fear of shifting political winds.

But in ending the protections soon after Trump took office, Noem said conditions in Venezuela had improved and it was not in the U.S. national interest to allow migrants from there to stay on for what is a temporary program. It’s part of a broader move by Trump’s administration to reduce the number of immigrants who are in the country either without legal documentation or through legal temporary programs.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco found in March that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration had overstepped its authority in terminating the protections. Chen postponed the terminations, but the Supreme Court reversed him without explanation, which is common in emergency appeals.

It is unclear what effect Friday’s ruling will have on the estimated 350,000 Venezuelans in the group of 600,000 whose protections expired in April. Their lawyers say some have already been fired from jobs, detained in immigration jails, separated from their U.S. citizen children and even deported.

Protections for the remaining 250,000 Venezuelans are set to expire Sept. 10.

“What is really significant now is that the second court unanimously recognized that the trial court got it right,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California representing plaintiffs.

She added that while the decision might not benefit immediately those people who have already lost their status or are about to lose their status, Friday’s ruling “should provide a path for the administration’s illegal actions related to Venezuela and TPS to finally be undone.”

A court declaration provided by plaintiffs showed the turmoil caused by the Trump administration and Supreme Court decision.

A Washington woman who worked in restaurants was deported in June along with her daughters, 10 years and 15 months old, after ICE officers told her to bring her children to an immigration check-in. The father of the baby, who is a U.S. citizen, remains in the U.S. while the woman tries to figure out what to do.

Also in June, a FedEx employee appeared in uniform at his required immigration check-in only to be detained, the court declaration states. He slept for about two weeks on a floor, terrified he would be sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. His wife cannot maintain the household on her earnings.

“I am not a criminal,” he said in the declaration, adding that “immigrants like myself come to the United States to work hard and contribute, and instead our families and lives are being torn apart.”

Millions of Venezuelans have fled political unrest, mass unemployment and hunger. Their country is mired in a prolonged crisis brought on by years of hyperinflation, political corruption, economic mismanagement and an ineffectual government.

Attorneys for the U.S. government argued the Homeland Security secretary’s clear and broad authority to make determinations related to the TPS program were not subject to judicial review. They also denied that Noem’s actions were motivated by racial animus.

But the appellate judges said courts clearly had jurisdiction in cases where the actions were unlawful. They declined to address whether Noem was motivated by racial animus.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

Administration has sought to prematurely end status for 600,000 Venezuelans, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

A federal appeals court has blocked an effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to end special protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling, which kept in place Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans. The status will remain in place as the legal challenges proceed through the courts.

Before leaving office, the Biden administration had extended TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026.

The Trump administration has sought to end the extension, meaning that the status would expire for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans, who were initially granted protection in 2023, in April of this year, and for approximately 250,000 Venezuelans, who were initially granted the status in 2021, by September.

That would leave those affected unable to legally work and vulnerable to deportation.

US District Judge Edward Chen had previously ruled in March that plaintiffs challenging the end of the protection were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration overstepped its authority.

Lawyers for affected Venezuelans had argued the administration had been motivated by racial animus.

At the time, Chen ordered a freeze on the termination. However, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling in an emergency appeal, temporarily allowing the administration to move forward in cancelling the status.

TPS targeted

Congress created Temporary Protected Status as part of the Immigration Act of 1990.

It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to individuals fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to their home country.

The Trump administration has increasingly targeted TPS recipients in its hardline approach to immigration, moving to terminate the programme for citizens of Haiti, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras and Nicaragua.

While the administration has the authority to choose not to renew TPS, several courts have ruled against efforts to change already designated timelines.

In Friday’s ruling, the judges wrote: “In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics”.