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Traveling in the Wake of Immigration Arrests

Having written about immigration before, we knew other, subtler changes were most likely already happening — from how immigration officers make their arrests and who they take in to the lives of those left behind. To understand those changes, we had to see enforcement on the ground.

We got our chance when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers allowed us to come along with them for a day in June.

We descended on loved ones while their pain was fresh felt intrusive. Yet an essential part of our work is explaining the complicated reality of enforcement — we wanted to see who the families were and how they think of themselves and la migra, as ICE is referred to by many Spanish speakers.

At the home of Fidel Delgado, his bewildered wife, Maria Rocha, seemed comforted that one of us was a Spanish speaker who identified as a reporter and was interested in telling their story. Tearful, their 21-year-old daughter, Ana, blurted out in English, “What are we going to do?”

Each man was shackled and led into an unmarked van with blacked-out windows. As they tried to understand the implications — will they have to leave the United States? — nobody could tell them anything for certain.

David Marin, the supervising officer who served as our guide, spoke at length about the way many of his officers feel vilified in Southern California, one of the country’s most immigrant-friendly regions. “We’re not evil,” Mr. Marin said. He spoke of his frustration under the Obama administration, when he said that just a year ago officers were hamstrung.

Meeting [the "loved ones"] would help us give readers a more nuanced understanding of how one arrest can affect several people — not just the pain they felt, but the financial ruin some feared because the main breadwinner had been taken away.

During one arrest, the officers debated whether they should take in a husband and wife together, leaving their U.S.-born teenage son in protective services. “You know what you’re doing,” Mr. Marin told the officers. “This is your call.”

It will be a thousand posts before I look at another of your word vomit posts.

123 arrested in immigration sweep across Texas

July 21 (UPI) -- Immigration officials arrested 123 people in an eight-day sweep across Central and South Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Friday.

The agency conducted the operation between July 10-19, arresting people in Austin, Harlingen, Laredo, San Antonio and Waco.

Ninety-three of those targeted had prior criminal convictions ranging from aggravated assault to domestic violence, ICE said. The rest had immigration violations.

Among the arrested were 102 from Mexico, 13 from Honduras, five from Guatemala, and one each from El Salvador, Jamaica and Cuba. There were 115 men and eight women.

"This operation was focused on targeting immigration fugitives and criminal aliens," Daniel Bible, field office director of Enforcement and Removal Operations in San Antonio, said in a statement. "Public safety remains a top priority for ICE. This was a focused eight-day enforcement operation over a large area, but we routinely conduct operations daily."

39 bodies, all with a pre-existing temperature of about 100 trapped in a van with no cirulation when it's 100+ degrees outside. The radiant heat must have reached at least 150 degrees. The van floor was flooded with human sweat. They were parboiled.

The UK and US economies will expand more slowly in 2017 than previously predicted, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
It said "weaker-than-expected activity" in the first three months of the year meant the UK would grow by 1.7%, compared with an earlier 2% forecast.
And the IMF revised down its US outlook from 2.3% to 2.1%.
However, its overall global economic predictions - of 3.5% growth in 2017 and 3.6% in 2018 - remain unchanged.
Meanwhile the outlook for several eurozone economies is brighter than initially thought, with countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain seeing growth forecasts revised up.
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF said the "pick-up in global growth" that it had anticipated in its previous survey in April remained "on track".
But it added that while the global growth projection was unchanged that masked "somewhat different contributions at the country level".
The UK growth forecast for 2018 remains unchanged at 1.5%, but US growth for next year is now predicted to come in at 2.1%, instead of the 2.5% previously forecast.
"While the markdown in the [US] 2017 forecast reflects in part the weak growth outturn in the first quarter of the year, the major factor behind the growth revision, especially for 2018, is the assumption that fiscal policy will be less expansionary than previously assumed, given the uncertainty about the timing and nature of US fiscal policy changes," the IMF said.
"Market expectations of fiscal stimulus have also receded."

He’s a billionaire construction magnate who likes shiny and expensive things and built a luxury tower block adorned with his own name: it’s not surprising that people have referred to Aras Agalarov as the Russian Trump.

Agalarov and his pop singer son Emin have known the Trump family for years, and emails released this week by Donald Trump Jr suggest the Agalarovs may have been a conduit for Russian efforts to help the Trump camp.

The emails, from Emin Agalarov’s publicist Rob Goldstone to Trump Jr, suggest Aras Agalarov had been given “high level and sensitive information” from Russia’s top prosecutor, that he wanted to pass on to the Trump campaign as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

The explosive email chain, tweeted earlier this week by Trump Jr, puts Agalarov and his son firmly at the centre of the Russia scandal around the Trump presidency.

Where Agalarov differs from Trump, however, is that he is publicity shy and rarely seeks the limelight, a feature of the delicate political climate for Russia’s super-rich, in which excess spending is acceptable only if done away from the media glare.

“Aras is a very careful, shrewd operator, and he will be absolutely horrified that his name has been dragged into this,” said one source in Moscow who knows the Agalarovs.

Emin Agalarov is vice-president of his father’s company and takes a day-to-day role in the business, but also has a music career on the side. Although he has good looks and a reasonable voice, there is a suspicion that his career may not have taken off had he not had a billionaire father behind him. Many of his concerts are either in Azerbaijan – where he was married to president’s daughter until they divorced a few years ago – or in Crocus Hall, owned by his father.

One theory is that the reason Aras Agalarov paid to host the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013 was so that he could have Emin perform at the ceremony, giving him one of the biggest stages of his career.

Miss Universe was also the highest profile interaction between Trump and the Agalarovs. Emin and Aras met Trump in Las Vegas to seal the contract, and Trump flew to Moscow for the contest.

It was during this trip that a controversial dossier compiled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele alleges the future president was filmed by Russian intelligence with prostitutes in the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Trump has denied the claims and they have not been verified. Trump did find time during the trip to take part in filming at the hotel for an Emin music video.

When the scandalous Steele dossier broke, Emin wrote on Instagram: “While the world tries to figure out what Donald Trump was doing in a hotel in Moscow during Miss Universe – I actually know because he was filming my music video ‘In Another Life’! At 7.00 am!”

The video features Emin dreaming about being surrounded by bikini-clad Miss Universe contestants, before he wakes up to be lectured by Trump and be told: “You’re fired”.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the short 2013 Moscow visit was that the Agalarovs were cemented as friends and confidants of Trump.

President Trump wrongly tweeted on Saturday that The New York Times had “foiled” an attempt by the United States military to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.

“The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi,” the president wrote. “Their sick agenda over National Security.”

President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will tell a Senate panel later that neither he nor any member of the Trump campaign team colluded with Russian officials over the US election.
He will say he had no improper contacts and had not relied on Russian funds to finance his business activities.
Mr Kushner released his opening statement ahead of the panel meeting.
The Senate, along with the House and a special counsel, are all investigating Russian interference in the election.
Mr Kushner, 36, is a senior adviser to the president and was in charge of the Trump campaign's digital strategy. He is married to Mr Trump's daughter, Ivanka.
Mr Kushner, who keeps a very low media profile, will attend a session on Monday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then appear before the House version on Tuesday.
In the statement he released on Monday to both congressional committees, he says: "I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government."
"With respect to my contacts with Russia or Russian representatives during the campaign, there were hardly any," he says, before going on to describe brief contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
At the end of the statement he speaks of "perhaps four contacts with Russian representatives".
He does refer to a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year. She had allegedly promised damaging material on Hillary Clinton.
Mr Kushner said he arrived late at the meeting, realised little of note was being discussed and that it was "time not well-spent".
He said: "I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for 10 or so minutes and wrote 'Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting'."
Mr Kushner said he had not spoken to the lawyer before or since and had forgotten about the meeting until an email exchange involving President Trump's son, Donald Jr, came to light last month.
He says: "No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted."
Mr Trump Jr said former campaign chief Paul Manafort was also at the meeting last June and that no compromising material on Mrs Clinton was provided.
Mr Kushner is not expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at the Congress meetings.
In his statement, he says: "I am happy to share information with the investigating bodies. I have shown today that I am willing to do so and will continue to co-operate as I have nothing to hide."
Mr Kushner is also not expected to be under oath on Monday. However, what he says could be used against him at a later date and may well be passed to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to help his investigation.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said: "There's a lot we want to know. We have a lot of ground to cover."
Mr Trump Jr and Mr Manafort had been scheduled to appear before Congress on Wednesday to testify but that has been delayed indefinitely as lawyers negotiate on the documentation and information to be discussed.
President Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia.
He continued his tirade against the investigation process on Sunday, tweeting: "As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!"
Russia has also denied any involvement.

STATEMENT OF JARED C. KUSHNER TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES

...Because there has been a great deal of conjecture, speculation, and inaccurate information about me, I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight....

When it became apparent that my father-in-law was going to be the Republican nominee for President, as normally happens, a number of officials from foreign countries attempted to reach out to the campaign. My father-in-law asked me to be a point of contact with these foreign countries. These were not contacts that I initiated, but, over the course of the campaign, I had incoming contacts with people from approximately 15 countries...

I must have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds from outside the United States. While I could not be responsive to everyone, I tried to be respectful of any foreign government contacts with whom it would be important to maintain an ongoing, productive working relationship were the candidate to prevail.

With respect to my contacts with Russia or Russian representatives during the campaign, there were hardly any. The first that I can recall was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in April 2016....I stopped into the reception to thank the host of the event, Dimitri Simes, the publisher of the bi-monthly foreign policy magazine, The National Interest, who had done a great job putting everything together.

Mr. Simes and his group had created the guest list and extended the invitations for the event. He introduced me to several guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. With all the ambassadors, including Mr. Kislyak, we shook hands, exchanged brief pleasantries and I thanked them for attending the event and said I hoped they would like candidate Trump’s speech and his ideas for a fresh approach to America’s foreign policy.

The ambassadors also expressed interest in creating a positive relationship should we win the election. Each exchange lasted less than a minute; some gave me their business cards and invited me to lunch at their embassies. I never took them up on any of these invitations and that was the extent of the interactions.

Reuters news service has reported that I had two calls with Ambassador Kislyak at some time between April and November of 2016. While I participated in thousands of calls during this period, I do not recall any such calls with the Russian Ambassador. We have reviewed the phone
records available to us and have not been able to identify any calls to any number we know to be associated with Ambassador Kislyak and I am highly skeptical these calls took place.

A comprehensive review of my land line and cell phone records from the time does not reveal those calls. I had no ongoing relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then. In fact, on November 9, the day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador.

Through my lawyer, I have asked Reuters to provide the dates on which the calls supposedly occurred or the phone number at which I supposedly reached, or was reached by, Ambassador Kislyak. The journalist refused to provide any corroborating evidence that they occurred.

I arrived at the meeting a little late. When I got there, the person who has since been identified as a Russian attorney was talking about the issue of a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting. Reviewing emails recently confirmed my memory that the meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote "Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting." I had not met the attorney before the meeting nor spoken with her since. I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to my attention recently.

There was one more possible contact that I will note. On October 30, 2016, I received a random email from the screenname "Guccifer400." This email, which I interpreted as a hoax, was an extortion attempt and threatened to reveal candidate Trump's tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins in exchange for not publishing that information. I brought the email to the attention of a U.S. Secret Service agent on the plane we were all travelling on and asked what he thought. He advised me to ignore it and not to reply -- which is what I did. The sender never contacted me again.

It has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in my own defense. I have tried to focus on the important work at hand and serve this President and this country to the best of my abilities. Over the last six months, I have made every effort to provide the FBI with whatever information is needed to investigate my background. As I have said from the very first media inquiry, I am happy to share information with the investigating bodies.

I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.