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Illegal immigrants signal they would prefer detention over deportation

Assistant to Trump: ICE is simply enforcing existing law

All but one of about 50 undocumented Mexican migrants at a meeting Saturday indicated they would rather risk detention and long court battles in the U.S. than return to Mexico voluntarily.
The majority of migrants at the meeting in Phoenix, which included Mexican officials, signaled in a show of hands that they were ready to fight deportation in U.S. courts.
“Even if that means detention for weeks?” asked former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda.
“Even if it takes months,” shouted one woman. “Even if it takes years,” another yelled. “We are here to fight.”
Mr. Castaneda and others want Mexico’s government to endorse a tough and perhaps risky strategy to battle an expected increase in deportations of their undocumented compatriots in the U.S. by underwriting the migrants’ legal struggle in the U.S. court system. By overwhelming already heavily burdened immigration courts, Mr. Castaneda hopes the legal system would break down, bringing deportations to a halt.
Mexico’s government hasn’t endorsed the strategy, but President Enrique Peña Nieto recently budgeted about $50 million to the country’s 50 consulates to help pay the costs of defending migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation.
Some are worried that President Donald Trump has decided to expand the type of undocumented migrants who are at risk of being deported, from the violent or dangerous people that the Obama administration targeted to migrants who have had minor brushes with law enforcement.
Mr. Trump on Sunday called it a “crackdown on illegal criminals,” adding in an early morning tweet that “Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”
The Phoenix meeting took place two days after the deportation of a Guadalupe García, a 36-year-old Mexican who lived in the U.S. for 22 years and has two U.S.-born children. Ms. García’s removal stoked panic and protests in immigrant communities.

oy Villa's music sales skyrocket after singer dons pro-Trump dress to Grammys

Joy Villa's music sales skyrocketed after the singer wore a pro-Trump dress at Sunday night's 59th annual Grammy Awards. When she arrived at the Grammys, Villa flung off a white frock to reveal a gown of patriotic red, white and blue that urged "Make America Great Again" and had "Trump" in sparkly letters on the back hem.
The 25-year-old's EP "I Make the Static" jumped to the top of Amazon's top digital paid albums and reached number seven on the iTunes top album chart after her red carpet appearance.
The singer explained her controversial look on Instagram.
"Go big, or go home. You can either stand for what you believe or fall for what you don't. Above all make a choice for tolerance and love. Agree to disagree," she wrote after her red carpet appearance.
The dress' designer, Andre Soriano, said on Instagram the gown is a "tribute [to] OUR President Of The United States Of America" adding the hashtag #MAGA.
Villa's look quickly prompted support from fans but she was also accused of trying to get attention.

DeVos attacks continue; critics incorrectly blame her for Twitter typo

Internet trolls on Sunday blamed new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for a typo on the department’s Twitter feed that misspelled the name of a prominent African-American sociologist, but a spokesman said the mistake was made by a longtime employee.
The tweet included a quotation attributed to W.E.B. Du Bois that incorrectly spelled the sociologist’s last name with an "e."
The mistake immediately drew hundreds of responses mocking the department's misspelling.
DeVos, a wealthy political donor, was confirmed last week as President Trump’s pick for Education secretary.
But she faced a difficult Senate confirmation process in large part because of her support for voucher programs and other alternatives to public education and because she purportedly never taught in a public school.
On Friday, DeVos’ third full day on the job, she was temporarily blocked by protesters from entering a District of Columbia public school.
By midday Sunday, the U.S. Education Department had posted a new tweet with the correct spelling and an apology. However, the post drew another round of critics because it included another typo, which was later fixed.
One commenter tweeted: "I love that your initial apology for a typo included a typo. We don't need any further proof that DeVos runs this account." 
Another post urged further rebuke by urging people to “make this go viral.”
Still, the department under DeVos leadership received some support amid the dozens of negative comments.
“As a public school teacher, it's important to embrace failures and learn from them. Slow down, it isn't a race. Proofreading helps,” one person wrote.
A spokesman for the Education Department said Sunday the misspellings had been made by a longtime department employee. He said a new review process was being put in place with additional staff to prevent future tweet errors.

Trump ally rips into Priebus, blames him for chaotic travel ban rollout

A longtime friend of Donald Trump said Sunday that the president should make some changes and the first move should be firing his chief of staff.
Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media, said in interviews with several news outlets that Reince Priebus was in over his head and blamed him for the poor rollout of Trump’s travel ban. He added that order in the White House might not be restored until Priebus leaves.
“It’s my view that Reince is the problem. I think on paper Reince looked good as the chief of staff — and Donald trusted him — but it’s pretty clear the guy is in way over his head,” Ruddy told The Washington Post.
“He’s not knowledgeable of how federal agencies work, how the communications operations work. He botched this whole immigration rollout. This should’ve been a win for Donald, not two or three weeks of negative publicity.”
Ruddy tweeted that he and Trump talked over drinks at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort late Friday, but Ruddy insisted he was only speaking for himself, and not Trump.
Ruddy spoke with The Post shortly after he told CNN he thought there was “a lot of weakness coming out of the chief of staff.”
Ruddy attempted to walk some of the comments he made on network, saying in a tweet that Priebus had briefed him on some of the "impressive" new White House plans. He also tweeted that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, was doing a terrific job.
According to the New York Times, Ruddy had told Priebus that he would stand by his criticisms, but would “meet up and have dinner in the near future.”
The White House defended the chief of staff after Ruddy’s comments.
“The president has made unbelievable progress in just his first 21 days, bringing back jobs, saving taxpayers money and securing the nation. Reince has successfully led the team that has implemented President Trump’s agenda,” White House deputy communications director Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Another senior White House official told the paper whether Ruddy’s comments were relevant, saying “This sounds like somebody with an ax to grind who has no real access to the president.”
Though Ruddy had criticism for Priebus, he sang the praises of White House press secretary Sean Spicer and other administration officials who were scrutinized about the travel ban.

Unhinged Left Cartoons

Actress Meryl Streep renews harsh criticism of Trump in emotional speech

Unhinged Left

In an emotional speech on Saturday night, actress Meryl Streep doubled down on her harsh criticism of President Donald Trump, and spoke of becoming a target at the Golden Globes in January.
At a fundraising gala for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT group, Streep referred to Trump's tweet after her Globes speech, in which he called the celebrated actress "overrated."
"Yes, I am the most overrated, over-decorated and currently, I am the most over-berated actress ... of my generation," Streep said.
Streep said she wished she could stay at home and "and load the dishwasher" rather than take a podium to speak out adding that "the weight of all these honors" she's received in her career compelled her to speak out.
"It's terrifying to put the target on your forehead," she said. "And it sets you up for all sorts of attacks and armies of brown shirts and bots and worse, and the only way you can do it is if you feel you have to. You have to! You don't have an option. You have to."
Streep was receiving the group's National Ally for Equality Award.
She clarified that she indeed likes football too after previously saying that football and martial arts weren't arts in her Globes speech.
The actress also praised the organization for defending LGBT rights.
Streep then spoke about cultures used to put men at the top, but that women, people of color and other minorities began achieving their deserved rights at some point in the 20th century. "We shouldn't be surprised that fundamentalists, of all stripes, everywhere, are exercised and fuming," she said.
Turning to Trump, she said: "But if we live through this precarious moment — if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn't lead us to nuclear winter — we will have much to thank this president for. Because he will have woken us up to how fragile freedom really is."
Streep said the country has now learned "how the authority of the executive, in the hands of a self-dealer, can be wielded against the people, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The whip of the executive can, through a Twitter feed, lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and all of the imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability."
"All of us have the human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the actress said.
"If you think people were mad," Streep said, "when they thought the government was coming after their guns, wait until you see when they try to take away our happiness."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Several GOP States Move to Block Their Own Funding to Sanctuary Cities

A number of GOP states have moved to introduce legislation to block their own state funding to so-called sanctuary cities.
The moves come in conjunction with President Donald Trump's executive order to block federal funding to cities that refuse to comply with federal immigration authorities.
The states include Idaho, Texas, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Cities nationwide including New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., have all adopted sanctuary status.

Amid protests over President Trump’s executive order aiming to block federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities, Republican legislators across the country are moving to deny their own funding to cities that refuse to comply with federal immigration authorities.
The Texas state Senate on Wednesday passed a measure to block state funding to cities in which law enforcement officials disregard federal immigration laws. The measure would require police agencies to hold anyone in custody until U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is able to verify their immigration status, or risk losing state funding.
Similar legislation has been introduced in Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Idaho and Pennsylvania. Other laws are likely to be introduced in the coming weeks. Many are inspired by Trump’s executive orders barring refugees and blocking all immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“What he’s doing is a great idea. We need to protect Americans, we need to protect Tennesseans,” state Sen. Mark Green (R), author of his state’s version of the sanctuary city ban, said in an interview. “We’re going to take it a step further and enhance what the president is doing and take state dollars from cities that decide, because they want to, to ignore ICE detainers.”Civil rights groups that oppose bans on sanctuary cities say the measures are questionable, and many promised to challenge the bills in court if they become law.
Local law enforcement agencies that decline to participate with federal immigration authorities say their approach helps them build trust with immigrant communities. If undocumented immigrants are afraid for their own safety, they are less likely to report crimes or cooperate with local police.
“Many cities and some states and other municipalities have made the decision that they’re not going to use their jails, their police officers, their city resources to do immigration enforcement,” Omar Jadwat, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants Rights Project, told The Hill last year. “And that is completely within their rights.”
Local law enforcement agencies are not required to enforce immigration statutes or to comply with detention requests from ICE. But the new round of state proposals would use state grant money as leverage to require local compliance.
Some of the new proposals go farther by holding local officials accountable for their city’s actions. In Ohio, a proposal backed by state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) — who is challenging Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) in 2018 — would charge officials with a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in prison, if an undocumented immigrant is charged with a crime.
A Florida proposal would require government officials to report possible violations to the state attorney general or risk expulsion from office. The Florida bill would fine local governments up to $5,000 a day for maintaining sanctuary policies.
North Carolina’s version would withhold tax revenues from natural gas, telecommunications and beer and wine sales from any locality that maintains a sanctuary policy. State lawmakers banned sanctuary cities in 2015, though that measure has no enforcement mechanism.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has already moved to block about $1.8 million in state grants to Travis County, where the local sheriff has implemented a sanctuary policy.
“I will not tolerate sanctuary city policies that put the citizens of Texas at risk,” Abbott said in a statement Thursday. “Elected officials do not get to pick and choose which laws they will obey.”
Trump’s order has already forced one local government, Miami-Dade County, to drop its sanctuary policy.
Since the day after Trump won election, Democrat-led states have pursued an opposite path in hopes of protecting undocumented residents, setting up likely legal clashes.
California legislators are working on a package of laws that would create legal defense funds for those swept up in immigration raids, while Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) ordered state agencies to avoid asking about immigration statuses of those with whom they come into contact.
“In California, immigrants are an integral part of who we are and what we’ve become,” Gov. Jerry Brown (D) told legislators in his state of the state address last month. “We will defend everybody, every man, woman and child, who has come here for a better life and has contributed to the well-being of our state.”
There is no legal definition of a sanctuary city, county or state. But hundreds of jurisdictions across the country — including the entire states of California, Connecticut, New Mexico and Colorado — label themselves as such.
Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Va.; Philadelphia; New York City; Boston; Baltimore; New Orleans and other major cities have all adopted sanctuary policies.