Public Support Grows for DACA Immigrant Program

PHOENIX — 

Corporate executives, Roman Catholic bishops, celebrities and immigrants have become unlikely companions in an effort to pressure national leaders to save an Obama-era program that shields young immigrants from deportation.

Immigrant groups have been staging daily protests in the scorching Phoenix heat, mobilizing people through phone banks in California, and demonstrating outside House Speaker Paul Ryan's church and office.

Archbishops around the country have been sending letters urging the president to maintain the program. The CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Starbucks and other companies also joined the effort, saying the economy will take a hit if the program is eliminated.

The campaign comes as President Donald Trump is weighing whether to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children to remain in the U.S. and legally work. The White House says Trump is expected to announce his decision Tuesday.

Job losses, deportation

Immigrants are bracing for the prospect of losing their jobs as their work permits end and possibly being deported if the president does away with the program.

Eli Oh of San Jose, California, said he was working as a waiter to pay for his nursing degree before he enrolled in the program.

Oh, 30, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades since his Korean parents overstayed their visas. He works as a nurse who responds to hospital emergencies, and he fears he'll be unemployed if his work permit goes away.

"I went from saving lives at a hospital and delivering health care, and now ... I might have to drive Uber to pay rent," he said.

Trump railed against the Obama program on the campaign trail, calling it illegal "amnesty." He later said it's been one of the most difficult issues he's dealt with.

Republican officials from 10 states have threatened to sue to stop the program. They gave the Trump administration a September 5 deadline to act, although the attorney general of Tennessee, Herbert Slatery III, said Friday that his state would no longer pursue the lawsuit.

To qualify, immigrants must have proof that they were brought to the U.S. before they reached age 16. They can't have a criminal record, and their work permits and deportation reprieve must be renewed every two years at the cost of nearly $500, plus costs to hire an attorney to help with the process.

Central to California

The issue is especially prominent in California, home to one of every four people covered by the program.

More than 200 people gathered outside the federal office building in Los Angeles on Friday, calling on Trump to continue the program. They chanted, "If they don't let us dream, we won't let them sleep," and "The people united will never be divided."

In Arizona, a coalition of immigrant rights groups set up a protest camp in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices near downtown Phoenix in the midst of a heat advisory and temperatures of nearly 110 degrees.

"We are calling on people of conscience that if you believe that this is an injustice, there's no room to stay silent. Silence allows for injustices to happen," Reyna Montoya told reporters Monday. Montoya said she was brought to Arizona as a teenager after her family fled political violence in Mexico.

In Wisconsin, the pressure extends specifically to Ryan, who has said previously he supports young immigrants. In a radio interview Friday, Ryan urged Trump to keep the program.

The immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera staged a protest outside Ryan's Roman Catholic church in Wisconsin on August 20. They planned a hunger strike starting Friday in front of his Milwaukee office and a march on Tuesday.

'I'm not scared'

Ilse Merlin of Racine, Wisconsin, said she was prepping for the worst by staying informed and active within the immigrant rights movement.

"I'm not scared because I have faith that my God is going to provide and he's going to protect. That might not sound very reasonable, I guess, to people that don't have faith, but for me, I think it's enough," Merlin said.

Merlin, 22, was brought to Wisconsin as a 5-year-old and has had protection from the program since it began. She said it changed her life by allowing her to get a job, which she used to pay for college.

She works as a youth director at her church and hopes to finish a bachelor's degree to become a teacher.

Others lending support for the program include celebrities such as TV mogul Shonda Rhimes and actress America Ferrera. Both took to Twitter to lend their support.

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DOJ: No Records Indicating Trump Tower Was Wiretapped

The Justice Department has said in a court filing that there is no evidence to support President Donald Trump's assertion that the previous presidential administration wiretapped his headquarters in New York City's Trump Tower.

In a motion filed Friday, the Justice Department said "both FBI and NSD [the Justice Department's national security division] confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017, tweets" made by Trump, alleging former President Barack Obama's administration eavesdropped on him before the 2016 election.

Trump's tweet read: "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

Trump added in another tweet, "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate."

Trump was referring to the breaking-and-entering scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, forcing him to resign in shame.

A spokesman for Obama, Kevin Lewis, responded to the tweets by saying Trump's allegation was "simply false."

Friday's motion was a response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a group called American Oversight, which pushes for government transparency.

After Trump's allegations on March 4, then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress in a House intelligence committee hearing that there was no evidence to support Trump's claim.

American Oversight noted Comey's remarks in its response to Friday's motion, stating, "The FBI and Department of Justice have now sided with former Director Comey and confirmed in writing that President Trump lied when he tweeted the former President Obama 'wiretapped' him at Trump Tower."

The American Oversight query was "broader than the subject" of Trump's March 4 tweets, Justice Department official G. Bradley Weinsheimer wrote in the motion, so the Department of Justice could not respond to other portions of the request.

The motion filed on Friday says the Justice Department response does not "confirm or deny" existence of other records that might be relevant to American Oversight's request but must be withheld due to national security concerns, including disclosing "intelligence sources and methods."

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UN Official: Trump’s Attacks on Media Done to Intimidate, Silence

GENEVA — 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media are part of a global trend of hostility to freedom of speech and damage the U.S. public interest, a U.N. human rights expert said Friday.

David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the freedom of expression, said Trump’s attacks, such as a Feb. 17 tweet listing news outlets that he considered “the enemy of the American People,” were not without purpose.

“They have concrete aims: to intimidate reporters into certain kinds of coverage, or clarify for his favored outlets what coverage he desires, or plant the seeds of doubt about news stories (such as the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller).”

The president’s broadsides also serve to silence criticism of his policies and to undermine the public’s right to know what the government was doing with their tax dollars, he said.

“The primary victim of Trump’s campaign against independent news is the American public. He may see it as valuable politically, but it’s wrong, and it risks doing long-term damage to a core value,” Kaye wrote in an article published on the Just Security online forum.

“When we tie together the jeremiads and rhetoric with what the Trump administration is doing in other governing spaces, the practice of attacking the press becomes clearer as policy than solely reckless rant,” he wrote.

Kaye’s analysis of Trump’s attacks on the media comes two days after U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein raised the question of whether Trump’s remarks amounted to an incitement to attack journalists.

“President Trump’s statements are indeed reckless, but they are consistent with a troubling trend of hostility toward open and honest government,” Kaye wrote. “And sadly, from the global perspective, it’s part of a general trend of hostility to freedom of expression, online and off.”

Freedom of the press existed, Kaye said, because the public had a right to information. He referred to an Aug. 4 press conference where Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanded that the “culture of leaking must stop.”

Sessions’ intent was not only to deter sources and whistleblowers but “to deprive the public of stories of the highest public interest” about the administration, Kaye said.

He said Trump was a “regular purveyor” of fake news, defined as “intentionally fraudulent information given to the public,” and his administration operated as if it had something to hide.

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Russia Accuses US of Plans for Unlawful Search

Russia's foreign ministry has accused the FBI of planning a search of its San Francisco consulate on Saturday, after ordering its closure Thursday.

A spokeswoman for the ministry, Maria Zakharova, said the search, which the United States has not confirmed, would "create a direct threat to the security of Russian citizens."

Zakharova said in a statement Friday, "American special services intend on September 2 to carry out a search of the consulate in San Francisco including of the apartments of employees who live in the building and have [diplomatic] immunity."

Black smoke

Meanwhile, the Associated Press has reported that firefighters were called to the site of the consulate, but not allowed to enter, after black smoke was seen billowing from a chimney. Firefighters determined that the fire was confined to a fireplace somewhere in the building.

A spokeswoman for San Francisco Fire Department, Mindy Talmadge, told reporters she did not know what people inside the building would be burning on a day when the outdoor temperature was around 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).

On Thursday, the United States ordered Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco and two other annexes by this weekend.

The move was in response to a demand from Moscow that Washington reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia.

"In the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians, we are requiring the Russian government to close its Consulate General in San Francisco, a chancery annex in Washington, D.C., and a consular annex in New York City," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement Thursday, adding that the deadline for the closures is September 2.

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White House says Trump's DACA announcement coming Tuesday

WASHINGTON — 

The White House said Friday that President Donald Trump would announce a decision Tuesday on the fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children — immigrants the president called "terrific" and said he loved.

"We love the dreamers, we love everybody," Trump told reporters Friday, using a shorthand term for the nearly 800,000 young people who were given a reprieve from deportation and temporary work permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program created by the Obama administration.

Asked what he would say to young immigrants who were awaiting his move, scared about their fate, he replied: "I think the dreamers are terrific."

Trump has been torn over what to do with DACA as he faces a Tuesday deadline set by a group of Republican state lawmakers who are threatening to challenge the program in court unless Trump ends it by that date.

"I think the decision itself is weighing on him, certainly," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.

Trump had slammed the program as illegal "amnesty" during his campaign and pledged to end it on his first day in office. But he has changed his rhetoric since the election, telling those covered they could "rest easy" and continuing to grant new two-year, renewable work permits.

Pondering options

Trump has spent the last week repeatedly cycling through his choices, according to several people with knowledge of the deliberations. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Many DACA advocates still expect the president to announce that he will halt the issuance of new work permits under the program, effectively phasing it out.

Another option under consideration would be for the White House to announce that it will allow the lawsuit to go forward and decline to have the Justice Department defend DACA in court, taking the matter out of their hands.

One person familiar with the discussions said the president was likely ultimately to choose to end or phase out the program. But the person said the president was looking for ways to soften the blow, such as ending the program at a future date in order to giving Congress time to come up with an alternative protection.

In the meantime, advocates and lawmakers have been trying to apply last-minute pressure with Twitter messages, public comments and events.

Ryan, Hatch

House Speaker Paul Ryan said he hoped the president would choose not to roll back DACA protections and instead give Congress time to act.

"These are kids who know no other country, who are brought here by their parents and don't know another home. And so I really do believe that there needs to be a legislative solution," he told Wisconsin radio station WCLO.

Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch also urged Trump not to revoke former President Barack Obama's efforts to protect "individuals who entered our country unlawfully as children through no fault of their own and who have built their lives here."

Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that he had a "great feeling for DACA" and said he'd be announcing a decision as soon as Friday afternoon and by Monday, at the latest.

Sanders later told reporters the White House was "in the process of finalizing" its decision and would be announcing it Tuesday.

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US Special Counsel Has Draft Letter From Trump on Comey Firing

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, has obtained a letter that President Donald Trump drafted laying out a rationale for firing FBI Director James Comey, according to U.S. media reports.

The reports say the letter was drafted before the May 9 firing of Comey but was never sent to the FBI director.

Instead, a different letter, written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which focused on Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server, was ultimately sent to the FBI director as a basis for his firing.

The New York Times, which first reported the story, said White House counsel Donald McGahn II thought some of the contents of Trump's letter were problematic, according to interviews the paper did with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter.

It reported that one of Trump's top political aides, Stephen Miller, drafted the letter at the urging of Trump during a weekend in May, when Trump and his team were at the president's private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

A Justice Department statement said the department had been fully cooperative with Mueller's investigation.

At the time Comey was fired, he was leading an investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election and possible Trump campaign collusion with Moscow aimed at helping Trump win. Comey's firing led to the appointment of Mueller as a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.

The probe has consumed the early months of Trump's White House tenure, even as Trump has branded the investigation a "witch hunt" and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset victory over Clinton, his Democratic challenger and a former U.S. secretary of state.

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Minority Votes Speak to Congressional Battle in Texas

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — 

The U.S. Supreme Court stepped into Texas’ congressional redistricting debate this week, temporarily halting a lower court order to correct two districts found to be drawn with racially discriminatory intent.

The Supreme Court’s stay is the latest turn in a contentious six-year battle over accusations of racially motivated redistricting in Texas.

Given Texas’ sizable congressional delegation, a resolution to the case could have a significant impact on upcoming 2018 midterm elections, potentially altering the Republican Party’s numbers in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As one of eight states nationwide with pending redistricting cases, Texas is a leading example of a broader debate over gerrymandering, which is the manipulation of district boundaries in an age of increasing partisan political tensions.

How districts are drawn

Congressional districts are based on population, not on physical areas. After the 2010 U.S. Census, congressional districts averaged about 711,000 people, with states gaining or losing seats based on shifts in population.

Those shifts can sometimes result in oddly shaped districts as the boundaries are redrawn. But critics say the process turns undemocratic when those lines are drawn to purposely include or exclude certain groups of voters to gain a political advantage.

“In modern-day redistricting, you choose your voters as opposed to your voters choosing the candidate,” Pete Gallego, a Democrat who represented Texas’s 23rd congressional district from 2013-2015, told VOA.

Gallego won the reliably Democratic district after it was redrawn in 2011, before losing the next two elections to Republican Will Hurd in 2014 and 2016 by just a couple thousand votes each time.

“I was able to buck that once — after that the district performed the way the drawers wanted it to,” he said.

Gallego said that when redrawing the district, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature “looked for Latinos that had a high incidence of turnout and they drew them out of the district. And then they looked for Latinos that had a very low rate of participation and it drew them in.

“So the state can stand in front of a federal judge and say well, it’s a very heavily Latino district and by population that may be true,” he added.

​Minority voting rights

But in mid-August, a federal court found previous redistricting violations in Texas’ 23rd District had been resolved, calling it a “Latino opportunity district.” The majority-Latino district is represented by African-American Will Hurd. If the court had ordered the boundaries to be redrawn, it was expected to be one of the most competitive congressional races in the nation.

The court ordered two Texas districts, the 27th and 35th, redrawn because the boundaries either diluted the voting strength of Latinos or relied too heavily on race when drawing the district lines.

Maintaining minority voting strength is a problem at all levels of government, said Ernest Herrera, a staff attorney for MALDEF, a nonpartisan Latino civil rights organization.

“We don’t really care what the party is that the minority group is voting for, what we care about is that they’re voting together for someone,” Herrera said. He explained that district boundaries cutting through communities can dilute the strength of Latino voters, depriving them of the ability to elect their candidate of choice.

The consequences of preserving minority voting strengths are considerable.

“In Texas, because the Republican leaders have gotten their advantage through discrimination, if you undo that, if you unscramble those eggs, if you draw districts that more fairly represent the African-American and Hispanic voting strengths, the political balance of the state starts to come into play, too,” said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, one of the groups involved in the challenge.

But assumptions about voting patterns can be problematic, Robert Stovall, chairman of the Republican Party of Bexar County, Texas, told VOA. Stovall pointed to Congressman Hurd in Texas’ 23rd District as an example.

“He’s neither white nor Hispanic. Will Hurd is a very sharp, good black man that has been elected two times to that district and those people know exactly who Will Hurd is, and they want him to stay there. To try to gerrymander this so these voters will go in there and vote for more Democrat-elected officials, it’s just twisting to their advantage,” Stovall said.

Minority groups suing the state to change those district lines have until Sept. 5 to provide a response to the state’s appeal.

The case could return to the U.S. Supreme Court even after that response, as both sides battle a ticking clock to the 2018 midterm elections.

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