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Somalia's U.S. ambassador says his embassy has learned that U.S. immigration agents are planning to deport about 4,000 Somali nationals now living in the United States. "We learned through immigration sources that the total number of the Somalis that are in the books of [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to be removed are close to 4,000," Ahmed Isse Awad told VOA's Somali service Saturday. "Most of them are not in detention centers."

As the Trump administration expands its aggressive enforcement efforts against those who may have entered this country illegally, John Tsoukaris is responsible for implementing the president's new policies in New Jersey. Tsoukaris, the Newark Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said the administration's executive order that expanded the definition of "criminal aliens" has changed the rules of engagement for his agency. "The executive order basically expands who we should be arresting," he said during an interview in his 11th floor conference room in the federal building in Newark.

Video...Comic relief. Public service announcement: the border wall is even more problematic because animals and birds might be impacted. I wish I was kidding, but MSNBC ran a segment with biologist Jeff Corwin, where the latter said jaguars, the Mexican gray wolf, bats, and some birds might be impacted by the border wall’s construction. VIDEO “It would be an unprecedented environmental catastrophe,” said Corwin to host Craig Melvin. Melvin began the segments discussing Rep. Raul Graijalva (D-AZ) and the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit against the federal government over the border enforcement project. In California, the state legislature is considering...

NOGALES, Mexico—In the 35 years Gilda and Juan Francisco Loureiro have been running a shelter in northern Mexico for undocumented immigrants, they’ve never seen a week like this one. The shelter, called Albergue San Juan Bosco, is perched on a steep hillside looking over the busy border town of Nogales, Mexico. Its walls are painted bright turquoise and tangerine, and its wide-open double doors look west over low hills and Highway 15. Since they opened it, upward of 1 million people have slept there on their way to the U.S. But on the day I visited, it was almost empty....

Attorney General Jeff Sessions went to the border in Arizona on Tuesday and declared it a hellscape, a “ground zero” of death and violence where Americans must “take our stand” against a tide of evil flooding up from Mexico. It was familiar Sessions-speak, about drug cartels and “transnational gangs” poisoning and raping and chopping off heads, things he said for years on the Senate floor as the gentleman from Alabama. But with a big difference: Now he controls the machinery of federal law enforcement, and his gonzo-apocalypto vision of immigration suddenly has force and weight behind it, from the officers...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined syndicated Boston radio host Howie Carr on his broadcast Thursday, laying out the new path his Department of Justice is charting in the Trump era. New measures to crack down at the border were of particular focus in light of Sessions’s sweeping announcements in Nogales, Arizona Tuesday. Talk also turned to Sessions’ efforts to rebuild a Justice Department still largely staffed with holdover Obama-era appointees and career civil service employees, most of whom worked under the previous administration. Sessions’ continued crusade against so-called “sanctuary cities” made up the final portion of their conversation. “I’ve been...

The crackdown measures on illegal immigration Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled in Noagles, Arizona Tuesday continue to draw intense reactions spanning from abject horror to welcome relief. Professor and Washington Post contributor Daniel W. Drezner began the day by issuing a sincere apology for touching off a viral fake news scandal. Immediately after Tuesday’s announcement, Drezner tweeted that the Attorney General had described all “illegal immigrants” as “filth.” The tweet was quickly retweeted thousands of times and contributed to an outpouring of misdirected outrage at Mr. Sessions over his use of the word. In fact, as Drezner’s apology on the...

A conservation group and an Arizona congressman have filed what they say is the first federal lawsuit against the proposed border wall. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Tucson by the Center for Biological Diversity and U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a southern Arizona Democrat. Wildlife conservationists say the wall would be detrimental to rare animals such as jaguars and ocelots that are known to traverse the international line. The lawsuit seeks to require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put together a report on construction of the wall and the environmental impact of expanded operations on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Monorails, shipping containers and nuclear waste dumps are just some of the ways that US construction companies have interpreted Donald Trump’s call for an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful wall” to march 2,000 miles across the country’s border with Mexico. Up to 400 bidding contractors were expected to submit their schemes this week to the US Customs and Border Protection agency, in a militarised beauty pageant worthy of one of Trump’s own reality TV shows.

The wall along the Mexican border doesn’t have to be made of boring concrete slabs. It might be a “smart wall” filed with fiber optic cables designed to detect anyone trying to climb over or tunnel underneath it. Or it could resemble a medieval castle, with a notched top and turrets. It could be made of solar panels, or even be a work of art. These are among the ideas submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, which is considering bids to build a barrier of some kind between Mexico and the United States. This round of bids is actually...

Most Americans oppose funding President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a poll released Thursday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The president gets higher marks for efforts to boost defense spending and beef up the border patrol. Even many of Trump’s supporters reject his proposed budget cuts to scientific and medical research, the poll found. The poll results come at a crucial time. Congressional Republicans and Democrats are wrestling over whether to include a down payment for the wall — financed by U.S. taxpayers instead of Mexico, despite Trump’s repeated promises — in...

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told the Senate on Wednesday morning that he doesn't expect construction of a wall the full length of the U.S.-Mexico border — marking the abandonment of a central campaign promise by President Donald Trump. "It's unlikely that we will build wall or a physical barrier from sea to shining sea," Kelly testified to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. "We're not going to build a wall where it doesn't make sense. But we'll do something across the Southwest border." That's a direct contradiction of Trump's vow of a "big, beautiful wall" the full 2,200-mile...

At the end of a lonely country road in upstate New York, a taxi pulls up. Five people get out and stand uncertainly in the freezing rain - two men from Yemen, a woman from Eritrea and her two small boys. They've come to flee America through its northern border, in to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police waiting on the other side of the snowy ditch tell them they will be arrested if they cross at this unofficial border point. The two men, the woman and her sons take just a few steps over the invisible border and in...

The Trump administration is appealing a Hawaii federal judge’s ruling blocking President Trump’s revised travel ban. Attorneys from the Department of Justice appealed the earlier ruling on Thursday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The move comes a day after U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a longer-lasting hold on key provisions of Trump’s executive order.

Amid Democratic opposition, Republican leaders are retreating from President Donald Trump’s very popular campaign promise to build a border fence to block illegal immigration, drug smugglers, and criminals. A top GOP leader, Sen. Roy Blunt, told reporters on Tuesday that GOP leaders do not want to include Trump’s spending for the border wall in the spring budget, which is due by April 28. “All of the committees, the leaderships of the House and Senate, are working together to try to finalize the rest of the FY17 [budget spending] bill,” he added. “My guess is that comes together better without the...

Representatives from 13 states including 12 state attorneys general and one governor filed a motion in support of President Trump’s temporary travel ban. From the Dallas Morning News: Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday led a coalition of 13 states in filing a brief with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals defending President Donald Trump’s revised immigration order.In the brief, Paxton and representatives from 12 other states argue that the Trump administration’s new order is legal and falls under the president’s power over foreign affairs and national security. Those joining the brief included Paxton plus AG’s in the...

A leaked DHS document is at the center of Trump’s travel ban controversy. Evidence that has been central to the two Federal judges instrumental in the March 15th revocation of President Trump’s travel ban was recently found to be false. The leaked Department of Homeland Security document first came to light via the Associated Press, where it was detailed in a February 24th article and has been cited as integral to the decision making process for the judges. The most important thing to note regarding this new information is that the judges based their ruling on false information about the...

Musicians drummed and dancers strutted, but most of the people who turned out Saturday morning to march in honor of the late labor leader Cesar Chavez did not show up to party. They carried signs that read “#resiste” and chanted slogans declaring their opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration plans, such as “Say it loud, say it clear: Immigrants are welcome here.”

A convicted Palestinian terrorist and a key figure of the recent Women’s March will be deported from the United States after accepting a plea bargain that allows her to escape a prison sentence.Rasmea Odeh will be stripped of her U.S citizenship and forced to leave the country and return to Jordan after failing to disclose to immigration authorities that she had been imprisoned in Israel for committing two terror attacks.As part of her plea bargain, however, Odeh won’t have to spend time in U.S prison or detention, according to a statement on Thursday by the Rasmea Defense Committee.The terrorist-turned-activist rose to prominence in...

The FBI says authorities are aware that the federal judge in Hawaii who ruled against President Donald Trump’s travel ban has received threatening messages. FBI spokeswoman Michele Ernst said Thursday the agency is aware of reports of threatening messages against U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson and is prepared to help if necessary. Watson blocked the federal government from enforcing its ban on new visas for people from six mostly Muslim countries and its suspension of the nation’s refugee program. He issued his ruling last week hours before the travel ban was to go into effect.