Sin categoría
New York’s asylum dilemma: families restart every 60 days
Sally, a 12-year-old, was in tears this Wednesday. The eviction from the hotel where her Colombian family spent the past year prevented her from bidding farewell to her Girl Scouts group in their New York shelter.
“Forced to leave at 11 in the morning, and the class was at 6 in the evening, and she couldn’t attend anymore,” explains her mother, Karol Hernández, to AFP. Together with her husband Sebastián Arango and their 1.5-year-old baby, loaded with suitcases, they had to start the process from scratch at the administrative center set up in the Roosevelt Hotel to request new accommodation.
Amid winter hardships, with nearly 2,000 people relocated from tents in Brooklyn due to heavy rains, New York City, overwhelmed by the migrant crisis, began implementing new rules limiting families’ stay in the same shelter to a maximum of 60 days.
After this period, asylum seekers have to start anew to find a spot in one of the 200+ centers in the city, competing with newcomers.
“60 days is too short for someone arriving in the city because legal processes take much longer, for a work permit, to obtain Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” says 22-year-old Venezuelan Angelo Chirino, who arrived in November with his wife and one-year-old son.
Despite these challenges, more than 160,000 people, mostly Latinos, have arrived in the city in the almost two-year-long migrant crisis. Facing this growing influx, Mayor Eric Adams announced new restrictions on buses arriving with migrants and filed a lawsuit against bus companies for over $700 million in damages.
Like hundreds of families, 35-year-old Blanca, from Central America, had to leave the Row hotel on Wednesday, affecting her 14-year-old daughter’s schooling. Blanca has to start from scratch to secure new shelter, a process that can only be requested on the day of departure from the previous one.
“No one is helping me (with paperwork). I would have to pay (a lawyer), and how do I pay if I don’t have a job? With a job, I know I can get ahead with my daughters,” she says.
Sin categoría
Trump files $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times
U.S. President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which denounced the legal move on Tuesday as an attempt to silence the press.
In this new stage of his presidency, the 79-year-old Republican leader has escalated his long-standing hostility toward traditional media, repeatedly attacking critical journalists, limiting their access, or taking them to court.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, seeks $15 billion in damages, along with additional punitive compensation “in an amount to be determined at trial.”
The New York Times had reported last week that Trump threatened legal action over articles concerning a birthday letter allegedly sent by him to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The letter featured a typed message inside the outline of a nude woman. Trump denies that the accompanying signature is his.
“For too long, The New York Times has been allowed to lie, defame, and slander me freely — and that ends NOW!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Sin categoría
Maduro warns Venezuela would enter armed struggle if attacked by foreign forces
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stated on Friday that if his country were attacked, it would enter a phase of armed struggle, amid his claims of “threats” from the United States, which is conducting a military deployment in Caribbean waters near Venezuela’s coast under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.
Maduro emphasized that Venezuela is currently in the non-armed phase, which he described as political, communicational, and institutional, but added that if the country were somehow aggressed, it would move to a planned, organized armed struggle involving the entire population, whether the threat is local, regional, or national.
“We would enter a stage of armed struggle, in defense of peace, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and our people,” Maduro said during an event activating citizen militias, broadcast on state channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).
He also noted that Venezuela is currently in a phase of readiness and preparation to defend the country and will proceed to the deployment of defensive capacities, including training and retraining of the entire Venezuelan population.
Maduro described the Venezuelan people as pacifist yet warrior-like, asserting that “no one will enslave us, neither today nor ever.”
Sin categoría
USCIS gains law enforcement powers: Agents now authorized to investigate and arrest immigration violators
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), traditionally responsible for handling naturalizations, visas, residence permits, and work authorizations, is now expanding its role to include law enforcement powers, according to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Under the new directive, specially designated USCIS agents are now authorized to investigate, arrest, and bring to justice individuals who violate U.S. immigration laws. Previously, USCIS primarily managed administrative and bureaucratic processes, while enforcement responsibilities were handled by agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Illegal immigration has been a central issue under President Donald Trump’s administration, with DHS reporting that over 300,000 migrants have been arrested in the first six months of his presidency. However, the number of people who have crossed U.S. borders illegally in recent years remains controversial, with experts estimating between 8 to 10 million individuals.
The policy shift also comes amid heightened legal battles over immigration enforcement. Recently, a federal judge blocked the deportation of minors to Guatemala, who were moments away from boarding a flight. Trump’s aggressive measures, including large-scale raids in cities like Los Angeles, have faced multiple judicial challenges, some upheld and others overturned at various federal levels, including the Supreme Court.
According to the DHS statement, the expanded authority allows USCIS to “manage investigations from start to finish rather than referring cases to ICE,” aiming to reduce backlogs and combat fraud within the immigration system.
USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow will have the power to appoint and train special agents under the order signed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ensuring that the agency can effectively execute its newly granted enforcement responsibilities.
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