Noem

Several airports in California have refused to play a video featuring U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for delays due to the federal government shutdown.

The video, playing for travelers waiting in Transportation Security Administration security lines at airports across the country, comes as the government entered a third week of a shutdown after Congress failed to reach an agreement on funding legislation.

“It is TSA’s top priority to make sure you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe,” Noem says in the video. “However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government and because of this many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.”

Officials at multiple airports in California say they are not playing the video at their locations. They include: John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Hollywood Burbank Airport, San Diego International Airport, San José Mineta International Airport, Sacramento International Airport, Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport and San Francisco International Airport.

Officials from Los Angeles International Airport did respond to questions on whether the video was being played there.

Some airport officials have refused to play the video, calling it inappropriate. On Tuesday, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation called for Noem to be investigated for possibly breaking the Hatch Act by asking airports to play the video.

“Recent reports indicate DHS is using taxpayer dollars and federal assets to produce and air a video message featuring Secretary Noem, in her official capacity, making political attacks against Democratic Members of Congress,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) wrote in a letter addressed to the Office of Special Counsel and reviewed by The Times. “This message is not just false; it appears to violate the prohibitions contained in the Hatch Act.”

The act, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, is to “ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion,” as well as protect federal employees from political coercion at work.

Noem’s video was received by airports on Thursday and was followed up by a verbal request from DHS officials to play it at security checkpoints, multiple airport officials told The Times.

The reasons the video is not being shown for California fliers varies.

In Orange County, airport spokesperson AnnaSophia Servin said that Homeland Security requested, to the airport’s director, that the video be played, but a final decision has not yet been made. In Burbank, political messaging is prohibited, officials said. In San José, an airport spokesperson said there have been no shutdown impacts and therefore no reason to play the video.

At San Francisco International Airport, officials determined that the video wasn’t helpful.

“SFO limits messaging at our security checkpoints to information intended to help passengers be prepared to go through the security screening process,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Any content, whether in video or print form, which does not meet this standard, will not be shown.”

When The Times asked Homeland Security officials to respond to airports not playing Noem’s video, spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded with Noem’s video statement blaming Democrats.

But California airports aren’t the only locations choosing not to play Noem’s message.

Airports in Oregon, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle have also opted not to play it.

“We did not consent to playing the video in its current form, as we believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits use of public assets for political purposes and messaging,” said Molly Prescott, a spokesperson for the Port of Portland, which manages Portland International Airport, said in a statement.

Oregon law also prohibits public employees from politicking on the job.

“We believe consenting to playing this video on Port assets would violate Oregon law,” she said.

Officials in New York also pushed back against airing the video.

“It is inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” New York’s Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said in a statement. “The [Public Service Announcement] politicizes the impacts of a federal government shutdown on TSA Operations, and the County finds the tone to be unnecessarily alarmist.”

According to the Homeland Security website, more than 61,000 TSA employees continue to work despite a lapse in appropriations, and a lack of a paycheck to employees.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — Some airports around the country are refusing to play a video with a message from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in which she blames Democrats for the federal government shutdown and its impacts on TSA operations because of its political content.

Airports in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle and more say the video goes against their airport policy or regulations that prohibit political messaging in their facilities.

Various government agencies, in emails to workers and on websites, have adopted language that blames Democrats for the shutdown, with some experts arguing it could be in violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

The shutdown has halted routine operations and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions. Democrats say any deal to reopen the government has to address their healthcare demands, and Republicans say they won’t negotiate until they agree to fund the government. Insurance premiums would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

In the video, Noem says that TSA’s “top priority” is to help make travel pleasant and efficient while keeping passengers safe.

“However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” she continues.

The Transportation Security Administration falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Roughly 61,000 of the agency’s 64,130 employees are required to continue working during the shutdown. The Department said Friday that the video is being rolled out to airports across the country.

A DHS spokeswoman responded to a request for comment restating some of the message from Noem’s video.

“It’s unfortunate our workforce has been put in this position due to political gamesmanship. Our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

The Harry Reid International Airport, in Las Vegas, said it had to “remain mindful of the Hatch Act’s restrictions.”

“Per airport regulations, the terminals and surrounding areas are not designated public forums, and the airport’s intent is to avoid the use of the facility for political or religious advocacy,” the statement said.

Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said the county north of New York City won’t play the video at its local airport. In a statement, he called the video “inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” and said its tone is “unnecessarily alarmist” as it relates to operations at Westchester County Airport.

“At a time when we should be focused on ensuring stability, collaboration and preparedness, this type of messaging only distracts from the real issues, and undermines public trust,” he said.

Even in red states, airports weren’t showing the video for various reasons. Salt Lake City International Airport wasn’t playing the video because state law prohibits using city-owned property for political purposes, said airport spokesperson Nancy Volmer.

The airport in Billings, Mont., “politely declined” even though it has screens that could show the video with audio, assistant aviation director Paul Khera said Tuesday.

“We don’t want to get in the middle of partisan politics,” Khera said. “We like to stay middle of the road, we didn’t want to play that video.”

Gomez Licon writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colo. contributed to this report.

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Members of the U.S. Coast Guard will continue to get paid despite the government shutdown, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said they had found “an innovative solution” to ensure no paychecks are owed to those protecting America’s seas.

Noem did not explain the solution to pay the Coast Guard amid the political stalemate that has seen hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed.

“The brave men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard will not miss a paycheck this week as they continue to carry out their critical homeland security and military missions,” Noem said in a Monday statement.

The federal government shut down on Oct. 1 as Congress failed to pass an appropriations bill to keep it funded into the new year.

Democrats said they will only support a bill that extends and restores Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, arguing that failing to do so would raise healthcare costs for some 20 million Americans.

Republicans, who control the House, Senate and the presidency, are seeking a so-called clean funding bill that includes no changes. They argue that the Democrats are fighting to provide undocumented migrants with taxpayer-funded healthcare, even though federal law does not permit them from receiving Medicaid or ACA premium tax credits.

Coast Guard paychecks are paid by the Department of Homeland Security, while military troops are paid by the Department of Defense.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on time.

“We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social platform, while blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown.

“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” he said.

The Department of Defense will reportedly use about $8 billion of research and development funding from last year to pay service members on Wednesday if the government does not reopen by then.

The legality of shifting the Congress-approved funds was unclear.

Asked about the appropriation of the funds on Sunday during CBS News’ Face the Nation, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., replied, “probably not.”

“I think to pay the military during a shutdown would require legislation,” he said.

Oct. 6 (UPI) — Illinois and Chicago filed a lawsuit to block the Trump administration’s federal troop deployment to the state’s most populated metropolis as legal action looms in other states over the same issue.

The Illinois lawsuit filed Monday seeks to block federal deployment of National Guard troops and cited legal principles that limit presidential authority to involve American combat troops on U.S. soil.

“Illinois is taking the Trump Administration to court for their unlawful and unconstitutional deployment of military troops to our state,” Gov. JB Pritzker said on social media as he thanked state Attorney General Kwame Raoul for “helping defend the rule of law.”

In the complaint, the state named as defendants U.S. President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll.

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” the Illinois attorney general wrote in a court filing.

The state’s lawsuit expressed that the order to federalize troops “represents the exact type of intrusion on State power that is at the heart of the Tenth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution.

The complaint further pointed to widening issues of “economic harm” as the president’s unwanted federalization of American cities persists, and a noted lag in local tourism and other activity hurting state tax revenue.

On Saturday, Pritzker said the Trump administration issued him “an ultimatum” to “call up your troops, or we will.”

The governor said it was “absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will,” Pritzker wrote on Bluesky.

Illinois’ legal complaint stated that Trump’s deployment of federalized U.S. National Guard troops, including the rounding up of out-of-state units to deploy into other states, “infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance.” It added that it will “cause only more unrest, including harming social fabric and community relations and increasing the mistrust of police.”

Pritzker called the president’s action an “invasion” and urged U.S. citizens on Sunday to speak up and utilize smartphones in order to record military acts.

On Sunday, a legal memorandum filed by the U.S. Department of Defense revealed 400 troops from Texas were being sent to Portland, Chicago and other cities “where needed”.

“It started with federal agents … and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops,” said the two-term Democratic governor and rumored 2028 presidential candidate.

U.S. troops have been deployed by Trump in the nation’s capital and Los Angeles where legal challenges are pending as the administration seeks to further expand military presence in other American cities over inflated allegations of high crime.

“The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor, Monday’s lawsuit by Illinois stated.

Oct. 3 (UPI) — Protesters clashed with law enforcement agencies outside a U.S. Immigration and Enforcement detention site near Chicago hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited.

At least five people were arrested and are facing charges of aggravated battery to a police officer, as well as resisting and obstruction, a Cook County Sheriff’s Office official told CNN.

Surrounded by armed agents and a camera crew, Noem was on the rooftop of the center in Brookview, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago, WLS-TV reported.

She was accompanied by El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino.

Noem was seen directing protesters and media away from the area after arriving at 8 a.m. She left at 9:45 a.m.

The situation escalated shortly after 9 a.m. with pushing, shoving and arrests, WLS reported.

Not used were tear gas, pellets or other chemical substances but have utilized in the past, the Sun Times reported.

Counter-protesters were also in the area in support of ICE and federal agents.

Aldermen, previously arrested demonstrators and political candidates, during a 9 a.m. news conference there, demanded transparency and safety protocols.

About 100 to 200 protesters were in the area during the morning but by 11 am., there were more law enforcement officers than demonstrators, WBBM-TV reported.

During the protest, Broadview police officers, Cook County sheriff’s deputies and Illinois State Police troopers held them back.

Protesters chanted and held signs, including ones that said “ICE melts under resistance” and “Hate has no home here.”

“I’m not gonna look back and say I sat at home and did nothing,” Nocole Bandyk, who lives in a nearby suburb, told CNN. “It’s wrong … It’s just wrong what they’re doing. We are becoming a fascist authoritarian state and it’s wrong.”

ICE, under the direction of President Donald Trump, has ramped up enforcement in Midway Blitz Operation, which began Sept. 8. Since then, there have been more than 800 arrests, according to Homeland Security.

Protesters said they wanted to know about the conditions inside the ICE facility, and for officials to be allowed inside to inspect it.

Illinois Gov. JB Prizter again on Friday criticized the operation.

“Federal agents reporting to Secretary Noem have spent weeks snatching up families, scaring law-abiding residents, violating due process rights, and even detaining U.S. citizens,” Pritzker wrote on Facebook. “Secretary Noem should no longer be able to step foot inside the State of Illinois without any form of public accountability.”

In a statement to WLS-TV, he said: “Last time when the secretary was here, she snuck in during the early morning to film social media videos and fled before sunrise. Illinois is not a photo opportunity or war zone, it’s a sovereign state where our people deserve rights, respect and answers.”

Noem earlier went to Broadview Village Hall, asking to meet with the Mayor Katrina Thompson, but she was out of the building, village spokesperson David Ormsby said.

Noem posted on X that she was going into the municipal building “for a quick bathroom break.”

The mayor then went to the detention sites, accompanied by Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills and other officers, and asked to have the fencing around the site to be removed.

On Thursday, a free speech zone that consists of barricades was erected. Instead of congregating there, protesters went to another entrance, WGN-TV reported.

The village’s fire department describes it as “illegally built” fencing, and it would block firefighters’ access to areas on that street during an emergency.

Also, village officials have launched three criminal investigations into ICE actions.

The Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to the Department of Defense — which the Trump administration has informally changed to Department of War — requesting 100 active-duty troops be deployed across Chicago for the protection of ICE agents.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled for a second time that the Trump administration may cancel the “temporary protected status” given to about 600,000 Venezuelans under the Biden administration.

The move, advocates for the Venezuelans said, means thousands of lawfully present individuals could lose their jobs, be detained in immigration facilities and deported to a country that the U.S. government considers unsafe to visit.

The high court granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside decisions of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in an unsigned order Friday.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had overstepped her legal authority by canceling the legal protection.

Her decision “threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray and exposed them to substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families and loss of employment,” the panel wrote.

But Trump’s lawyers said the law bars judges from reviewing these decisions by U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security applauded the Supreme Court’s action. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized this protected status for people who are already in the United States but cannot return home because their native countries are not safe.

The Biden administration offered the protections to Venezuelans because of the political and economic collapse brought about by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary under Biden, granted the protected status to groups of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, totaling about 607,000 people.

Mayorkas extended it again in January, three days before Trump was sworn in. That same month, Noem decided to reverse the extension, which was set to expire for both groups of Venezuelans in October 2026.

Shortly afterward, Noem announced the termination of protections for the 2023 group by April.

In March, Chen issued an order temporarily pausing Noem’s repeal, which the Supreme Court set aside in May with only Jackson in dissent.

The San Francisco judge then held a hearing on the issue and concluded Noem’s repeal violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and and not justified.

He said his earlier order imposing a temporary pause did not prevent him from ruling on the legality of the repeal, and the 9th Circuit agreed.

The approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who had TPS through the 2023 designation saw their legal status restored. Many reapplied for work authorization, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a counsel for the plaintiffs.

In the meantime, Noem announced the cancellation of the 2021 designation, effective Nov. 7.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, went back to the Supreme Court in September and urged the justices to set aside the second order from Chen.

“This case is familiar to the Court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision once again reverses the legal status of the 2023 group and cements the end of legal protections for the 2021 group next month.

In a further complication, the Supreme Court’s previous decision said that anyone who had already received documents verifying their TPS status or employment authorization through next year is entitled to keep it.

That, Arulanantham said, “creates another totally bizarre situation, where there are some people who will have TPS through October 2026 as they’re supposed to because the Supreme Court says if you already got a document it can’t be canceled. Which to me just underscores how arbitrary and irrational the whole situation is.”

Advocates for the Venezuelans said the Trump administration has failed to show that their presence in the U.S. is an emergency requiring immediate court relief.

In a brief filed Monday, attorneys for the National TPS Alliance argued the Supreme Court should deny the Trump administration’s request because Homeland Security officials acted outside the scope of their authority by revoking the TPS protections early.

“Stripping the lawful immigration status of 600,000 people on 60 days’ notice is unprecedented,” Jessica Bansal, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, wrote in a statement. “Doing it after promising an additional 18 months protection is illegal.”

When my father was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border like an undocumented Road Runner back in the 1970s, la migra caught him more than a few times.

They chased him and his friends through factories in Los Angeles and across the hills that separate Tijuana and San Diego. He was tackled and handcuffed and hauled off in cars, trucks and vans. Sometimes, Papi and his pals were dropped off at the border checkpoint in San Ysidro and ordered to walk back into Mexico. Other times, he was packed into grimy cells with other men.

But there was no anger or terror in his voice when I asked him recently how la migra treated him whenever they’d catch him.

“Like humans,” he said. “They had a job to do, and they knew why we mojados were coming here, so they knew they would see us again. So why make it difficult for both of us?”

His most vivid memory was the time a guard in El Centro gave him extra food because he thought my dad was a bit too skinny.

There’s never a pretty way to deport someone. But there’s always a less indecent, a less callous, a less ugly way.

The Trump presidency has amply proven he has no interest in skirting meanness and cruelty.

“The way they treat immigrants now is a disgrace,” Papi said. “Like animals. It’s sad. It’s ugly. It needs to stop.”

I talked to him a few days after a gunman fired on a Dallas ICE facility, killing a detainee and striking two others before killing himself. One of the other wounded detainees, an immigrant from Mexico, died days later. Instead of expressing sympathy for the deceased, the Trump administration initially offered one giant shrug. What passed for empathy was Vice President JD Vance telling reporters, “Look, just because we don’t support illegal aliens, we don’t want them to be executed by violent assassins engaged in political violence” while blaming the attack on Democrats.

It was up to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem to try and show that the federal government has a heart. Her statement on the Dallas attack offered “prayers” to the victims and their families but quickly pivoted to what she felt was the real tragedy.

How ungrateful critics are of la migra.

“For months, we’ve been warning politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric about ICE law enforcement before someone was killed,” Noem said. “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about ICE has consequences…The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop.”

You might have been forgiven for not realizing from such a statement that the three people punctured by a gunman’s bullets were immigrants.

This administration is never going to roll out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants. But the least they can do it deal with them as if … well, as if they are human.

Under Noem’s leadership, DHS’ social media campaign has instead produced videos that call undocumented immigrants “the worst of the worst” and depict immigration agents as heroes called by God to confront invading hordes. A recent one even used the theme song to the cartoon version of the Pokémon trading card game — tagline “Gotta catch them all” — to imply going after the mango guy and tamale lady is no different than capturing fictional monsters.

That’s one step away from “The Eternal Jew,” the infamous Nazi propaganda movie that compared Jews to rats and argued they needed to be eradicated.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) as prisoners stand, looking out from a cell, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, in March.

(Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Noem is correct when she said that words have consequences — but the “violence and dehumanization” she decries against ICE workers is nothing compared to the cascade of hate spewing from Trump and his goons against immigrants. That rot in the top has infested all parts of American government, leading to officials trying to outdo themselves over who can show the most fealty to Trump by being nastiest to people.

If there were a Cruelty Olympics, Trump’s sycophants would all be elbowing each other for the gold.

Politicians in red states propose repulsive names for their immigration detention facility — “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, for instance, or “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana. U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, Trump’s top prosecutor in Southern California, has trumpeted the arrests of activists he claimed attacked federal agents even as video uploaded by civilians offers a different story. In a recent case, a federal jury acquitted Brayan Ramos-Brito of misdemeanor assault charges after evidence shown in court contradicted what Border Patrol agents had reported to justify his prosecution.

La migra regularly harass U.S. citizens even after they’ve offered proof of residency and have ignored court-ordered restraining orders banning them from targeting people because of their ethnicity. Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino continually squanders taxpayer dollars on photo ops, like the Border Patrol’s July occupation of a nearly empty MacArthur Park or a recent deployment of boats on the Chicago River complete with agents bearing rifles as if they were safari hunters cruising the Congo.

Our nation’s deportation Leviathan is so imperious that an ICE agent, face contorted with anger, outside a New York immigration court recently shoved an Ecuadorian woman pleading for her husband down to the ground, stood over her and wagged his finger in front of her bawling children even as cameras recorded the terrible scene. The move was so egregious that Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughin quickly put out a statement claiming the incident was “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE.”

The act was so outrageous and it was all caught on camera, so what choice did she have? Nevertheless, CBS News reported that the agent is back on duty.

Noem and her crew are so high on their holy war that they don’t realize they’re their own worst enemy. La migra didn’t face the same public acrimony during Barack Obama’s first term, when deportation rates were so high immigration activists dubbed him the “deporter-in-chief.” They didn’t need local law enforcement to fend off angry crowds every time they conducted a raid in Trump’s first term.

The difference now is that cruelty seems like an absolute mandate, so forgive those of us who aren’t throwing roses at ICE when they march into our neighborhoods and haul off our loved ones. And it seems more folks are souring on Trump’s deportation plans. A June Gallup poll found that 79% of Americans said immigration was “a good thing” — a 15% increase since last year and the highest mark recorded by Gallup since it started asking the question in 2001. Meanwhile, a Washington Post/Ipsos September poll showed 44% of adults surveyed approved of Trump’s performance on immigration — a six-point drop since February.

I asked my dad how he thought the government should treat deportees. Our family has personally known Border Patrol agents.

“Well, most of them shouldn’t be deported in the first place,” he said. “If they want to work or already have families here, let them stay but say they need to behave well or they have to leave.”

That’s probably not going to happen, so what should the government do?

“Don’t yell at people,” my dad said. “Talk with patience. Feed immigrants well, give them clean clothes and give them privacy when they have to use the bathroom. Say, ‘sorry we have to do all this, but it’s what Trump wants.’

“And then they should apologize,” Papi concluded. “ They should tell everyone, ’We’re sorry we’ve been so mean. We can do better.’”

Well, that ain’t happening, dad.

LONDON — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday she doesn’t think the detention of hundreds of South Koreans in an immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia will deter investment in the United States because such tough actions mean there is no uncertainty about the Trump administration’s policies.

The detention of 475 workers, more than 300 of them South Korean, in the Sept. 4 raid has caused confusion, shock and a sense of betrayal among many in the U.S.-allied nation.

“This is a great opportunity for us to make sure that all companies are reassured that when you come to the United States, you’ll know what the rules of the game are,” Noem said at a meeting in London of ministers from the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partnership focused on border security.

“We’re encouraging all companies who want to come to the United States and help our economy and employ people, that we encourage them to employ U.S. citizens and to bring people to our country that want to follow our laws and work here the right way,” she told reporters.

The detained Koreans would be deported after most were detained for ignoring removal orders, while “a few” had engaged in other criminal activity and will “face the consequences,” Noem said.

Newly appointed U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood welcomed Noem and ministers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to the 18th-century headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company for talks on countering unauthorized migration, child sexual abuse and the spread of opioids.

Mahmood, who was given the interior minister job in a shakeup of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Cabinet on Friday, said the ministers would “agree new measures to protect our borders with our Five Eyes partners, hitting people-smugglers hard.”

The far-flung countries are close allies with some common problems but also widely differ in their approaches to migration. The Trump administration’s program of street raids, mass detentions and large-scale deportations of unauthorized migrants has drawn domestic and international criticism and a host of legal challenges.

Noem says tough measures are an inspiration to others

Noem said there had not been disagreements among the ministers in talks focused on sharing information on criminal gangs, using technology to disrupt their networks and speeding extradition arrangements.

“I don’t think that the discussion today has covered politics at all,” she said. “It is what resources do we have that we can share so we can each protect our countries better?”

Noem said that “when we put tough measures in place, the more that we can talk about that and share that is an inspiration to other countries to do the same.”

She denied a plan to expand immigration raids and deploy the National Guard in Chicago, which has met with opposition from local and state authorities, was on hold.

“Nothing’s on hold. Everything is full speed ahead,” Noem told reporters, saying “we can run as many operations every single day as we need to, to keep America safe.”

Also attending Monday’s talks were Canadian Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Judith Collins, the attorney general and defense minister of New Zealand.

U.K. grapples with migrant crossings

Britain’s center-left Labor government is struggling to bring down the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, some 30,000 so far this year. It faces calls from opposition parties to leave the European Convention on Human Rights in order to take tougher action.

The government says it won’t do that, but may tweak the interpretation of the rights convention in British law. It has struck a deal with France to return some migrants who cross the channel and is working on similar agreements with other countries.

Mahmood said Monday that the U.K. could suspend issuing visas to people from countries that do not agree to take back their citizens with no right to remain in Britain, though she did not name any potential countries.

“We do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules, and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back,” she said.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

CBS News’ “Face the Nation” will no longer edit taped interviews after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem complained about how her remarks were cut in her last appearance on the Washington-based program.

The news division said Friday that the Sunday show moderated by Margaret Brennan will only present interviews live or “live to tape” in which no edits are made. Exceptions will be made when classified national security information is inadvertently stated or language is used that violates Federal Communications Commission broadcast standards.

“In response to audience feedback over the past week, we have implemented a new policy for greater transparency in our interviews,” a CBS News representative said in a statement. “This extra measure means the television audience will see the full, unedited interview on CBS and we will continue our practice of posting full transcripts and the unedited video online.”

The representative declined to comment on the reason for the policy beyond the statement.

But the timing makes it clear that CBS News is reacting to Noem’s complaints following her Sunday appearance in which she discussed the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongly deported to his native El Salvador. He was returned to the U.S., where he faces deportation efforts.

Noem wrote on X that “CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety.”

The comments cut from the “Face the Nation” appearance were potentially defamatory. Noem said that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and that he solicited nude photos from minors.

“Even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off, he was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children,” Noem said in the unedited version of the interview she posted on X.

The government has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of MS-13, which he has denied. A court has described the evidence of his connection as “insufficient.”

“Face the Nation,” which has been on the air since 1954, became the focal point in a legal battle between CBS News and President Trump last year. Trump sued CBS News for $20 billion, claiming the program deceptively edited a “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Face the Nation” ran a clip from the interview that differed from what appeared in the “60 Minutes” broadcast, which led Trump to claim that it was changed to aid Harris and damage his election chances.

Editing interviews for clarity and time restrictions of a broadcast is a common practice in TV news. While 1st Amendment experts said CBS News had done nothing wrong, parent company Paramount settled the case for $16 million to help clear the regulatory hurdles for its merger with Skydance Media. The merger was completed Aug. 7.

The policy change regarding live interviews will likely be seen as another capitulation to Trump administration, who has shown a willingness to use legal measures to punish or attempt to silence his critics in the media. It will also pose a challenge to “Face the Nation” producers who already operate in an environment where real-time fact checking can’t always keep up with the misinformation presented by guests on the program.

CBS News is expecting additional changes as Skydance is in serious talks to acquire the Free Press, the right-leaning web-based media company founded by former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss.

The deal is said to be nearing completion, according to people familiar with the discussions, and would include a prominent role for Weiss at CBS News, even though she has no experience in running a TV news organization.

Aug. 31 (UPI) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday confirmed the Trump administration plans to increase immigration resources in Chicago amid a planned federal crackdown on crime in the city.

In an appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Noem said Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be expanding operations in Chicago to “go after the worst of the worst in the country, like President [Donald] Trump has told us to do.”

She said the agency would be “focusing on those that are perpetuating murder and rape and trafficking of drugs and humans across our country, knowing that every single citizen deserves to be safe.”

Noem’s comments come after weeks of Trump leveraging federal resources — namely the National Guard — to target crime in cities he deems unsafe. He deployed troops to Washington, D.C., in August to crack down on crime, which he described as “out of control.”

Speaking Aug. 11 about the deployment, Trump called out other cities with high crime, including Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, Calif., and New York City. He followed that up Saturday with a Truth Social post calling Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “weak and pathetic,” saying he should straighten out crime or “we’re coming.”

In response to Trump’s threats to send National Guard troops to Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Saturday signed an executive order seeking to avoid militarization in the city. The order demands that Trump end “his threats to deploy the National Guard” to Chicago.

“I do not take this executive action lightly,” Johnson said during a signing ceremony. “I would’ve preferred to work more collaboratively to pass legislation … but unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of time. We have received credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our city sees some kind of militarized activity by the federal government.”

In an appearance on Face the Nation, Pritzker said no one in the Trump administration has reach out to him or any other officials in Chicago about a possible deployment of National Guard troops to the city, which he described as “an invasion.” He said federal agencies should coordinate with local law enforcement.

“But they don’t want to do that either, and I must say, it’s disruptive, it’s dangerous,” Pritzker said. “It tends to inflame passions on the ground when they don’t let us know what their plans are, and when we can’t coordinate with them.”

He said if Trump does send National Guard troops to Chicago, he’ll take it to the courts.

“Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency,” he said. “There is not.”

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that immigration operations will soon be expanded in Chicago, confirming plans for a stepped-up presence of federal agents in the nation’s third-largest city as President Trump continues to lash out at Illinois’ Democratic leadership.

Noem’s comments came a day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson struck back against what he called the “out-of-control” plan to surge federal officers into the city. The Chicago Police Department will be barred from helping federal authorities with civil immigration enforcement or any related patrols, traffic stops and checkpoints during the surge, according to an executive order Johnson signed Saturday.

The Homeland Security Department last week requested limited logistical support from officials at the Naval Station Great Lakes to support the agency’s anticipated operations. The military installation is about 35 miles north of Chicago.

“We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago … but we do intend to add more resources to those operations,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance CBS News’ ”Face the Nation.”

Noem declined to provide further details about the planned surge of federal officers. It comes after the Trump administration deployed National Guard troops to Washington, saying they were needed to target crime, immigration and homelessness, and two months after it sent troops to Los Angeles.

Trump lashed out against Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a social media posting Saturday, warning him that he must straighten out Chicago’s crime problems quickly “or we’re coming.” The Republican president has also been critical of Johnson.

Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, have denounced the expected federal mobilization, noting that crime has fallen in Chicago. They are planning to sue if Trump moves forward with the plan.

In his order signed Saturday, Johnson directed all city departments to guard the constitutional rights of Chicago residents “amidst the possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment by the federal government.”

Asked during a news conference about federal agents who are presumably “taking orders,” Johnson replied: “Yeah, and I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

Johnson also blocked Chicago police from wearing face coverings to hide their identities, as most federal immigration officers have done since Trump launched his crackdown.

The federal surge into Chicago could start as early as Friday and last about 30 days, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.

Pritzker, in an interview aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” said that Trump’s expected plans to mobilize federal forces in the city may be part of a plan to “stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections.”

Noem said it was a Trump “prerogative” whether to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago as he did in Los Angeles in June in the midst of protests there against immigration raids.

“I do know that L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action,” Noem said. “That city would have burned if left to devices of the mayor and governor of that state.”

Unlike the recent federal takeover of policing in Washington, the Chicago operation is not expected to rely on the National Guard or military and is focused exclusively on immigration, rather than being cast as part of a broad campaign against crime, Trump administration officials have said.

Chicago is home to a large immigrant population, and both the city and the state of Illinois have some of the country’s strongest rules against cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. That has often put the city and state at odds with the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

Johnson’s order builds on the city’s longtime stance, that neither Chicago nor Illinois officials have sought or been consulted on the federal presence and they stand against Trump’s mobilization plan.

During his news conference Saturday, Johnson accused the president of “behaving outside the bounds of the Constitution” and seeking a federal presence in Democratic cities as retribution against his political rivals.

“He is reckless and out of control,” Johnson said. “He’s the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.”

In response, the White House contended that the potential flood of federal agents was about “cracking down on crime.”

“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email Saturday.

Critics have noted that Trump, while espousing a tough-on-crime push, is the only felon ever to occupy the White House.

Madhani and Beck write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and Chicago, respectively.

Aug. 26 (UPI) — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday approved the seventh waiver intended to hasten construction of the border wall in Texas by sidestepping environmental reviews and other requirements.

The waiver applies to about five miles of a new 30-foot tall border wall in Starr and Hidalgo counties near the southern tip of the state, according to a department press release. The move is part of President Donald Trump‘s long-held goal of erecting a border wall along the southern border as part of his hardline approach to immigration.

With waiver in hand, Noem will be able to override the National Environmental Policy Act and other similar requirements. In a document justifying the move, Noem cited a high level of illegal border crossings and drug trafficking in the area. She wrote that in the last four years authorities had apprehended 1.5 million people trying to cross illegally and had seized more than 87 pounds of heroin, and more than 118 pounds of fentanyl, among other drugs.

However, the Center for Biological Diversity blasted the decision in a press release, citing figures showing that border crossings have plummeted over the last year. The center stated that the area is home to endangered ocelots, aplomado falcons, hundreds of migratory birds as well as plants that would be harmed by the wall.

“There’s a special cruelty in walling off national wildlife refuges that were created for conservation,”Laiken Jordahl, the center’s Southwest Conservation Advocate, said in the statement. “These lands exist to protect endangered species and connect fragmented habitat, not to be bulldozed for Trump’s wall.”

The center has previously sued the Trump administration over past waivers.

In July, the Noem signed a similar waiver for 17 miles of the barrier to prevent migrants from swimming across the Rio Grande. A month earlier, Noem took a similar action for a 27-mile stretch in Arizona near Tucson and another that extended into New Mexico.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has about 100 miles of the barrier in varying states of completion with money from previous appropriations, according to the announcement. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included $46.5 billion for the project that will fund secondary walls, waterborne barriers, as well as patrols, cameras, sensors and others.

Comedy Central’s “South Park” continues to target President Trump, and viewers appear to be loving it.

Ratings for the 27th season of the irreverent and often ribald animated series have surged, according to data from Nielsen and Comedy Central. The second episode, which premiered Aug. 6, scored 6.2 million viewers across the cable network and Paramount+, now the exclusive streaming home for the series, over the first three days.

The figure is 49% higher than the first three days for the season premiere, which debuted on July 23. The second episode scored 1.56 million viewers on Comedy Central, making it the highest rated episode since 2018, with nearly all of them in the 18 to 49 age group coveted by advertisers.

The new season of “South Park” launched amid the tensions between Comedy Central’s parent Paramount and the Trump White House. It also arrived after the show’s co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone scored a massive $1.5-billion five-year deal with Paramount for the streaming rights, which previously belonged to HBO Max.

Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit over Trump’s claim that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to aid her in the 2024 Election. First Amendment experts said the suit had no merit. But the settlement was seen as necessary for Skydance Media to get federal regulatory approval of its $8-billion acquisition of Paramount, which closed on Aug. 7.

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert joked that the settlement was a bribe. Days later he was told by CBS that his program was being canceled at the end of the 2025-26 season due to financial losses.

But “South Park” has not held anything back in its comedic takes on Trump, presenting him naked and in bed with the devil. Trump’s boast that Paramount is giving him $20 million in public service announcements as part of the “60 Minutes” settlement was also lampooned. (The company has not confirmed that such a deal was made for free ad time).

Cartman the podcaster in Comedy Central’s “South Park.”

(Comedy Central)

The second episode showed the president dressed in a white “Fantasy Island”-style suit with Vice President J.D. Vance as his diminutive sidekick. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was portrayed with a melting face and a trigger-happy response to puppy dogs. Both were were running gags throughout the espisode.

“South Park” regular Cartman became a conservative podcaster in the second episode and was seen sporting a hairstyle similar to that of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Parker and Stone will take a break this week as Comedy Central will air the very first “South Park” episode — 1997’s “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” — on Wednesday as part of a marathon for the series.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan visited Capitol Hill just weeks after Inauguration Day, with other administration officials and a singular message: They needed money for the White House’s border security and mass deportation agenda.

By summer, Congress delivered.

The Republican Party’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law July 4 included what’s arguably the biggest boost of funds yet to the Department of Homeland Security — nearly $170 billion, almost double its annual budget.

The staggering sum is powering the nation’s sweeping new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, delivering gripping scenes of people being pulled off city streets and from job sites across the nation — the cornerstone of Trump’s promise for the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Homeland Security confirmed over the weekend ICE is working to set up detention sites at certain military bases.

“We’re getting them out at record numbers,” Trump said at the White House bill signing ceremony. “We have an obligation to, and we’re doing it.”

Money flows, and so do questions

The crush of new money is setting off alarms in Congress and beyond, raising questions from lawmakers in both major political parties who are expected to provide oversight. The bill text provided general funding categories — almost $30 billion for ICE officers, $45 billion for detention facilities, $10 billion for the office of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — but few policy details or directives. Homeland Security recently announced $50,000 ICE hiring bonuses.

And it’s not just the big bill’s fresh infusion of funds fueling the president’s agenda of 1 million deportations a year.

In the months since Trump took office, his administration has been shifting as much as $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other accounts to pay for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, lawmakers said.

“Your agency is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Noem during a Senate committee hearing in the spring.

The senator warned that Homeland Security would “go broke” by July.

Noem quickly responded that she always lives within her budget.

But Murphy said later in a letter to Homeland Security, objecting to its repurposing funds, that ICE was being directed to spend at an “indefensible and unsustainable rate to build a mass deportation army,” often without approval from Congress.

This past week, the new Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, along with a subcommittee chairman, Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, requested a briefing from Noem on the border security components of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, which included $46 billion over the next four years for Trump’s long-sought U.S.-Mexico border wall.

“We write today to understand how the Department plans to outlay this funding to deliver a strong and secure homeland for years to come,” the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to the homeland security secretary, noting border apprehensions are at record lows.

“We respectfully request that you provide Committee staff with a briefing on the Department’s plan to disburse OBBBA funding,” they wrote, seeking a response by Aug. 22.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press the department is in daily discussions with the committee “to honor all briefing requests including the spend plan for the funds allocated” through the new law.

“ICE is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity,” she said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”

Deportations move deep into communities

All together, it’s what observers on and off Capitol Hill see as a fundamental shift in immigration policy — enabling DHS to reach far beyond the U.S. southern border and deep into communities to conduct raids and stand up detention facilities as holding camps for immigrants.

The Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies are being enlisted in what Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, calls a “whole of government” approach.

“They’re orienting this huge shift,” Bush-Joseph said, as deportation enforcement moves “inward.”

The flood of cash comes when Americans’ views on immigration are shifting. Polling showed 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a “good thing” for the country, having jumped substantially from 64% a year ago, according to Gallup. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now.

At the same time, Trump’s approval rating on immigration has slipped. According to a July AP-NORC poll, 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his handling of immigration, down slightly from 49% in March.

Americans are watching images of often masked officers arresting college students, people at Home Depot lots, parents, workers and a Tunisian musician. Stories abound of people being whisked off to detention facilities, often without allegations of wrongdoing beyond being unauthorized to remain in the U.S.

A new era of detention centers

Detention centers are being stood up, from “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida to the repurposed federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, and the proposed new “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana. Flights are ferrying migrants not just home or to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison but far away to Africa and beyond.

Homan has insisted in recent interviews those being detained and deported are the “worst of the worst,” and he dismissed as “garbage” the reports showing many of those being removed have not committed violations beyond their irregular immigration status.

“There’s no safe haven here,” Homan said recently outside the White House. “We’re going to do exactly what President Trump has promised the American people he’d do.”

Back in February, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee, emerged from their private meeting saying Trump administration officials were “begging for money.”

As Graham got to work, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a leading deficit hawk, proposed an alternative border package, at $39 billion, a fraction of the size.

But Paul’s proposal was quickly dismissed. He was among a handful of GOP lawmakers who joined all Democrats in voting against the final tax and spending cuts bill.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The United States and Argentina on Monday announced that they are working on a plan to allow Argentine tourists to again travel to the U.S. without a visa.

It probably will take two to three years before visa-free travel becomes a reality for Argentine passport holders, but the Trump administration’s move to kickstart the process marked a show of support for President Javier Milei, its staunchest ally in South America and a darling of conservatives around the world.

The gesture coincided with a visit by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, for closed-door meetings with Milei and his officials. Noem signed the statement of intent alongside Security Minister Patricia Bullrich in Milei’s office.

Noem, on horseback at the country’s sprawling Campo De Mayo army base and donning a cowboy hat and jeans, told reporters that the Trump administration would put Argentina on an “expedited path” to enrollment in the Visa Waiver Program.

Still, she cautioned that securing approval within the next year “would be very difficult,” according to a White House pool report.

The Department of Homeland Security praised Milei for reshaping Argentina’s foreign policy in line with that of the U.S.

“Under President Javier Milei’s leadership, Argentina is becoming an even stronger friend to the United States — more committed than ever to border security for both of our nations,” the statement said.

This first step toward waiving visa requirements for Argentines, it added, “highlights our strong partnership with Argentina and our mutual desire to promote lawful travel while deterring threats.”

The department cited Argentina as having the lowest visa overstay rate in the U.S. of any Latin American country.

Trump’s loyal ally in South America

The removal of rigorous U.S. visa requirements — particularly at a time when President Trump is tightening restrictions for foreign nationals — would offer a symbolic victory to Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who rose to power as a far-right outsider mimicking Trump’s war-on-woke rhetoric and skillful use of social media.

When he became the first world leader to visit Trump after the U.S. election, Milei pranced around Mar-a-Lago like an excited school boy.

At the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in Washington in February, he gifted billionaire Elon Musk a bureaucracy-slashing chainsaw to support his DOGE campaign to eliminate government waste.

When not riding the far-right, pro-Trump speaking circuit, Milei is focused on straightening out South America’s second-largest economy after years of turmoil under left-wing populist rule. Through tough budget cuts and mass layoffs, Milei has succeeded in driving down Argentina’s notorious double-digit inflation.

The last time Argentines didn’t require a visa to enter the U.S. was in the 1990s under another free-market devotee, the late former President Carlos Menem.

Menem’s neo-liberal reforms and pegging of the peso 1 to 1 to the U.S. dollar destroyed Argentina’s industry, exacerbating poverty in what a century ago was one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

In the crisis that followed, the U.S. reimposed visa restrictions in 2002 as young Argentines seeking to flee misery lined up at European embassies and began to migrate illegally to the U.S.

“Argentina has had the advantage of the program before, and they’re looking to get back on track and reenrolled,” Noem, who grew up on a farm in rural South Dakota, said while feeding sugar cubes to a dark brown horse named Abundance, according to the pool report.

When pressed about her talks with Milei, she was short on specifics, saying they discussed security partnerships and “the business we could be doing together.” She said she appreciated Milei’s “embrace” of Trump’s policies.

The Argentine presidency described Monday’s preliminary agreement as “a clear demonstration of the excellent relationship, based on trust” between Milei and Trump.

After riding Abundance through the grassy fields of the army base, Noem rejoined U.S. and Argentine officials for asado — the traditional meat-centric barbecue and a national passion.

She is the third member of Trump’s Cabinet to meet Milei in Buenos Aires this year, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Tough limits on travel to Trump’s America

More than 40 mostly European and wealthy Asian countries belong to the exclusive club that allows their citizens to travel to the U.S. without a visa for up to three months. However, border officers have the power to turn anyone away.

About 20 million tourists use the program each year. Currently, Chile is the only Latin American country in the program.

Overseas travel to the U.S. plunged in the early days of Trump’s return to the White House as tourists, especially from Latin America, feared being caught in the administration’s border crackdown. Some canceled travel plans to protest his foreign policy and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

But those numbers began to rebound in April, with more than 3 million international arrivals — 8% more than a year earlier — from countries other than Mexico or Canada, according to the International Trade Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In addition to clamping down on the southern border, Trump has put up additional obstacles for students, tourists and others looking to travel to the U.S.

His recently passed “big, beautiful” bill of domestic priorities calls for the enactment of a new “visa integrity fee” of $250 to be charged in addition to the cost of the visa itself.

Travel industry executives have expressed concern that the charge could drive away tourists who contribute more than $2 trillion annually and 9 million jobs to the U.S. economy, according to the International Trade Administration.

About a quarter of all travelers to the U.S. come from Latin America and the Caribbean, the agency says.

Arrivals from Argentina have jumped 25% this year — a bigger increase than from any other country.

Debre and Goodman write for the Associated Press. Goodman reported from Medellin, Colombia.

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.

June 17 (UPI) — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is resting in a Washington, D.C., hospital after suffering an allergic reaction on Tuesday.

Noem, 53, suffered an allergic reaction that required an ambulance ride and hospitalization.

“Secretary Noem … was transported to the hospital out of an abundance of caution,” DHS spokeswoman TriciaMcLaughlin told media.

Noem is “alert and recovering,” McLaughlin added without saying what caused the allergic reaction.

Secret Service agents were posted outside the hospital’s entrances.

Noem is the former governor of South Dakota and was nominated to President Donald Trump‘s cabinet after he took office in January. The Senate confirmed her in late January.

Noem has been instrumental in helping the Trump administration enforce federal immigration laws and last week was in Los Angeles during controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities there.

While speaking at a press event on ICE activities in Los Angeles on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., entered and began shouting a question for Noem, which prompted security to remove him from the press event.

Padilla afterward said he was not trying to upstage Noem, who met with him after the press event ended.

Trump had called up the California National Guard to protect federal buildings while ICE raids continue in Los Angeles, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed 700 Marines to help.

Noem also is in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she has recommended be disbanded.

She says the agency is ineffective, and Trump has said he intends to dismantle FEMA following the current tropical storm season.

June 15 (UPI) — Days after Sen. Alex Padilla was handcuffed and removed for interrupting a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Democratic lawmaker insisted the clash was not a calculated move for attention.

Noem held the news conference Thursday to provide an update on the federal government’s enforcement actions in Los Angeles pertaining to protests against recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Padilla, D-Calif., interrupted the news conference and demanded that Noem answer questions. In the moment, Noem called his interruption “inappropriate” and said she would speak with him after concluding the news conference.

The lawmaker was asked about the clash during an interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Padilla revealed he had been in the federal building for a scheduled briefing with representatives of the U.S. Northern Command, which had deployed troops to the city, when he learned Noem was having the press conference a few doors down. His briefing was delayed and so he asked if he could listen in on the news conference.

“Surprise, surprise, no substance came from that press conference, just political attacks. And when I heard the secretary, not for the first time in that press conference, talk about needing to liberate the people of Los Angeles from their duly elected mayor and governor, it was at that moment that I chose to try to ask a question,” Padilla said Sunday.

Padilla said he “needed to speak up” because Americans have seen numerous stories of hardworking people who are maybe undocumented but “otherwise law-abiding, good people” who are being subjected to the “terror” of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

“I couldn’t get a couple of words out before obviously you saw agents respond, hands on me pretty much immediately,” Padilla said. “And, look, everybody’s seen the video. You know what happened after that.”

Bash noted that DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin later accused Padilla of trying to “manufacture a viral moment.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Padilla said. “… It was an opportunity to ask a question and do my job as a senator, right, do my job as a senator in questioning the Cabinet secretary.”

Bash noted that CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell, who was an FBI agent, said that Noem’s security acted appropriately by removing him from the news conference. But Padilla disagreed.

“If that’s how they treat a senator trying to ask a question — here’s one of my big takeaways — then imagine not what they can do, what they are doing to so many people without titles,” Padilla responded.

Bash suggested that those who removed him might not have known has identity, even though he said early in the exchanges that he is a senator.

“Look, the whole Los Angeles press court — this is Los Angeles. This is my hometown. They know who I was,” he said. “And what does it say about the secretary to not know who the senator from California is, the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration? …. She came through the Senate for confirmation at one point.”

This will strike the literal-minded as illogical, but I think Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had a righteous point when he declared at a news conference with Southern California mayors that immigrants being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in communities like his “are Americans, whether they have a document or they don’t.”

“The president keeps talking about a foreign invasion,” Flores told me Thursday. “He keeps trying to paint us as the other. I say, ‘No, you are dealing with Americans.’”

California’s estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who have lived among us for years, for decades, who work and pay taxes here, who have sent their American-born children to schools here, have all the responsibilities of citizens minus many of the rights. Yes, technically, they have broken the law. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Constitution day after day, as his mounting court losses attest.)

But our region’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They care for our children, build our homes, dig our ditches, trim our trees, clean our homes, hotels and businesses, wash our dishes, pick our crops, sew our clothes. Lots own small businesses, are paying mortgages, attend universities, rise in their professions. In 2013, I wrote about Sergio Garcia, the first undocumented immigrant admitted to the California Bar. Since then, he has become a U.S. citizen and owns a personal injury law firm.

These Californians are far less likely to break the law than native-born Americans, and they do not deserve the reign of terror being inflicted on them by the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pointlessly but theatrically called in the Marines.

“So we started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons gang members, drug dealers,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ news conference last week, “but when you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”

And please, let’s not forget that when Congress came together and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform bill under President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it because he did not want a rational policy, he wanted to be able to keep hammering Democrats on the issue.

But it seems there is more going on here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their families. We seem to have entered the “punish California” phase of Trump 2.0.

“Trump has a hyperfocus on California, on how to hurt the economy and cause chaos, and he is really doubling down on that campaign,” Flores told me. He has a point.

“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor placed on this country,” Noem told reporters Thursday at a news conference in the Westwood federal building, during which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a question. “We are not going away.”

So now we’re talking about regime change? (As former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the use of military force aimed at displacing democratically elected leaders “is the very definition of a coup.”)

Noem’s noxious mix of willful ignorance and inflammatory rhetoric is almost too ludicrous to mock. It goes hand in hand with Trump’s silly declaration that our city has been set aflame by rioters, that without the military patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.

What we are seeing play out in the news and in our neighborhoods is the willful infliction of fear, trauma and intimidation designed to spark a violent response, and the warping of reality to soften the ground for further Trump administration incursions into blue states, America’s bulwark against his autocratic aspirations.

For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — probably illegally — of federal funding for public schools and universities, citing resistance to his executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, on immigration, on environmental regulations, etc.

And yet, because he is perhaps the world’s most ignorant head of state, he seems to have suddenly realized that crippling the California economy might be bad politics for him. On Thursday, he suggested in his own jumbled way that perhaps deporting thousands of the state’s farm and hospitality workers might cause pain to his friends, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for example, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)

“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years,” Trump said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that.”

Like a lot of Californians, I feel helpless in the face of this assault on immigrants.

I thought about a Guatemalan, a father of three young American-born children, who has a thriving business hauling junk. I met him a couple of years ago at my local Home Depot, and have hired him a few times to haul away household detritus. Once, after I couldn’t get the city to help, he hauled off a small dune’s worth of sand at the end of my street that had become the local dogs’ pee pad.

I called him this week — I have more stuff that I need to get rid of, and I was pretty sure he could use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two workers. He said hadn’t been able to work in two weeks but was hopeful he’d be able to return to Home Depot soon.

“How are your kids doing?” I asked.

“They worry,” he said. “They ask, ‘What will we do if you’re deported?’”

He tells them not to fret, that things will soon be back to normal. After he drove off, he texted: “Thank you so much for helping me today. God bless you.”

No, God bless him. For working hard. For being a good dad. And for still believing, against the odds, in the American dream.

@rabcarian.bsky.social @rabcarian

Lunging men are perceived as dangerous.

In an America that has long weaponized descriptions of how men of color look and move to justify use of force, that is especially true of dark men lunging at white women.

So when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said after Sen. Alex Padilla interrupted her news conference Thursday that “people need to identify themselves before they start lunging” — it’s hard to believe it wasn’t meant to be an intentionally loaded word, with loaded results.

For those of you who don’t watch Fox and other right-wing media, I’ll fill you in on how Noem’s description played out. Padilla, the Trumpian version of the story now goes, got what he deserved: He busted into a press conference uninvited, they say, pushed his way toward the stage and failed to identify himself.

Just ask my inbox.

“Here is what your article should have said,” wrote one fan of my column about the incident. “‘DEI appointee Senator Alex Padilla, dressed like a truck driver and acting like a potential attacker or mental case, burst into a press conference being conducted by a high ranking member of the Cabinet and started shouting and interrupting her.’”

Another reader put that dog-whistle racism more succinctly.

“No Juan above the law,” the reader quipped.

We’ll get to whether Padilla lunged or not and just how dangerous a lunge really is. But the larger issue is the alternate reality the Trump administration is building to cultivate fear and build support for a military crackdown. The ask isn’t that we believe Padilla was a threat, but that we believe that America has devolved into a immigrant-induced chaos that only the military can quell, and that Trump needs the powers of a king to lead the military to our salvation.

So the question isn’t really whether Padilla lunged or not — since, as the video shows, it’s clear he was nowhere close to Noem and had no intent to harm — but rather why Noem chose to call it a lunge.

“It was very disingenuous of Kristi Noem to make the claim that he lunged at her,” Joan Donovan told me. She’s an expert on disinformation and an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University.

“The Trump administration is salivating over a major contestation that would allow them to roll the military out into any old town,” she said. “They are making it seem as if without this kind of major intervention and excessive force, that these people are ungovernable.”

Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, is known to be a level-headed guy. My colleague Gustavo Arellano describes him as a “goody-two-shoes.”

But these aren’t level-headed days. Padilla said that he was in the federal building on Thursday for a briefing with a general, because for weeks he’s been trying unsuccessfully to get answers about how deportations are being handled.

That briefing was delayed by Noem’s news conference, and so — escorted by federal authorities who knew exactly who they were escorting, Padilla said — he went to listen to Noem in the hopes of getting some information.

Padilla said he got fed up listening to her remarks about criminals and invasions and tried to ask a question, while moving forward past the wall of television cameras. In the videos I’ve watched, multiple federal agents — seemingly some from Homeland Security and the FBI — block his way then begin pushing him back. Padilla seems to continue to push forward, but is overpowered and forced into the hallway. It’s here where he’s taken to the ground and cuffed.

It’s hard to see a lunge in there. And if there was one, it was from at least a good 10 feet away from Noem, at a minimum. Use-of-force expert Ed Obayashi told me that in situations such as this, law enforcement officers are expected to use their judgment on what is a danger.

“They were trying to keep him from approaching,” Obayashi said, pointing out it was the officers’ job to protect Noem. “They were trying to do what they could under the circumstances to prevent him from getting closer.”

But, he added, from what we can see in the videos, it doesn’t look like Padilla showed “intent” to cause harm and he was really far away. Distance makes a difference when judging whether a lunge is a threat.

“It doesn’t seem like he was going to rush up,” Obayashi said.

So, to be fair to officers who may or may not have at first realized they were manhandling a U.S. senator, they had a job to do and were doing it, even if a bit zealously.

But Noem knows better. It’s hard to imagine she didn’t recognize Padilla, who served on her confirmation committee and is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety.

And if she didn’t, her confidant and close advisor Corey Lewandowski certainly did. Padilla told the New York Times that he was being detained in the hallway “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski … comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

And of course, Padilla was yelling that he was a senator, and forcefully denies any lunge.

“I wasn’t lunging at her or anybody, and yes, I identified myself,” he said on CNN.

Noem, of course, could have said something in the moment to defuse the situation. She could have asked Padilla back into the room to answer his question. Padilla said the two met after the news conference and spoke for about 15 minutes, which means Noem knew his intentions when she later accused him of “lunging.”

So what could have been handled as an unfortunate encounter was instead purposely upgraded for propaganda purposes. Shortly after Noem’s statement, the White House press secretary posted on X that Padilla “recklessly lunged toward the podium,” cementing that narrative into right-wing conscientiousness.

For weeks, the Trump administration has been ramping up its war on dissent. Weeks before Padilla was handcuffed, U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) was indicted by a grand jury for “forcibly impeding and interfering” with federal law enforcement after a scuffle outside of a New Jersey ICE detention center. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested during the same incident, but charges were later dropped.

In April, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested inside her own courthouse after being accused of helping an immigrant appearing in her court to evade ICE officers by allowing him to exit through a public door.

And just before the Padilla incident, Noem claimed that federal agents would remain in Los Angeles despite protests, where hundreds have been cited or arrested. By Friday, Marines had been deployed in Los Angeles, with little clarity on whether their guns contained live rounds and under what circumstances they were authorized to fire.

“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city,” Noem said, right before Padilla interrupted.

Liberate an American city. With troops.

Quash dissent. With fear.

A survey last fall by PRRI found that 26% of Republicans say that “it is necessary for the progress of this country that the president has the power to limit the influence of opposing parties and groups.”

It also found that there is a “strong overlap among Americans who hold Christian nationalist and authoritarian views.”

“If it is the case that Trump and Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth are going to continue arresting Democratic representatives, then that is authoritarianism,” Donovan said. “Those are the people whose job it is to represent the common man, and if they can’t do that because they’re so bogged down with false charges or trumped-up charges, then we don’t live in a democracy.”

Padilla may have lost his trademark cool during that press conference, but Noem did not.

She knew exactly what she was saying, and why. A Padilla asking questions is a threat to Trump.

A Padilla lunging becomes a threat to society, one that only Trump can stop.