Free Republic

Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis reportedly cited the incident involving members of the New York City Fire Department booing state Attorney General Letitia James and chanting in favor of former President Trump last month in suggesting that a racist culture persists at the FDNY.

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to fully restore an Obama-era initiative that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, requiring officials to open the program to new applicants for the first time since 2017. Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday that states the department will accept and adjudicate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) petitions from immigrants who qualify for the program but are not currently enrolled in it. Garaufis also instructed officials to...

A federal judge ruled on Saturday that acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf was unlawfully appointed, thus invalidating his suspension of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. NBC News reported that Judge Nicholas Garafus ruled that “Wolf was not lawfully serving as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security under the HSA [Homeland Security Act] when he issued the Wolf Memorandum" suspending the Obama-era program. ... The Government Accountability Office found in August that McAleenan had not been designated in the order of succession to replace former Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen and therefore could not legally...

CNA Staff, Oct 19, 2020 / 09:00 am MT (CNA).- A federal court ruled against the Diocese of Brooklyn on Friday in its case against new coronavirus restrictions which impose local limits on Mass attendance. The diocese had sued the state of New York on Oct. 8 over new public health restrictions that limited the size of gatherings in certain “hot spots” around the state, or localities where the new coronavirus has been spreading. Certain churches in Brooklyn and Queens were effectively limited to holding 10 or 25 people for indoor Masses, under the new rules. On Friday, a federal...

Seagram’s liquor heiress Clare Bronfman wept in court Friday as family members signed on to pay her whopping $100 million bond, so she can stay out of jail while awaiting trial for her role in an upstate sex-slave cult. Dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt and baggy slacks, a blubbering Bronfman, 39, wiped tears from under her glasses as Brooklyn federal court Judge Nicholas Garaufis reminded her mom and brother in law that they’re there to keep her honest. “I think she knows the responsibility as well,” said Basit Igtet, a Libyan entrepreneur who is married to Bronfman’s sister, Sara....

President Donald Trump’s administration must defend a lawsuit targeting his plan to end a program offering protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of children of undocumented immigrants. U.S District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York, narrowed but didn’t dismiss the suit on Thursday, finding that there was a “plausible inference” that it was illegally aimed at Mexicans. He previously blocked the U.S. government from ending the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and from halting the renewal process, but hadn’t decided whether to allow the case to proceed.

A Brooklyn federal judge said in court on Tuesday that he cannot make a decision regarding the status of young undocumented immigrants in the country on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program without considering President Donald Trump’s “incendiary” anti-Latino comments. “The statements that were made during the election cycle were extremely volatile,” said Judge Nicholas Garaufis in court, referring to Trump’s recurring comments that had painted Latinos with a broad negative brush. “This came from the top. This isn’t ordinary,” Garaufis added while DACA recipients in the audience nodded. “It’s not what we see from our leaders, I...