WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a ban on imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Xinjiang area of China, as well as all products made with those materials, citing human rights violations and the widespread use of forced labor in the region. The measure could have sweeping implications for makers of apparel […]
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WASHINGTON — Two whistle-blowers have accused contractors building President Trump’s border wall of smuggling armed Mexican security teams into the United States to guard construction sites, even building an illegal dirt road to speed the operation, according to court documents unsealed by a federal judge on Friday. The two employees, who were both contracted to […]
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DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Four years ago, President Trump took office with a pledge to build a towering wall on America’s border with Mexico — a symbol of his determination to halt immigration from countries to the south and build a barrier that would long outlast him. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said he hopes […]
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Two women who were detained in a small town in Montana after a Border Patrol agent heard them speaking Spanish at a convenience store have settled for an undisclosed amount after filing a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the A.C.L.U. of Montana said on Tuesday. The women, Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez, were […]
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When migrant families and unaccompanied children were crossing the border from Mexico by the hundreds of thousands in 2018 and 2019, they were often jammed into chain-link pens at a massive Customs and Border Protection facility in South Texas. The fetid, overcrowded conditions came to symbolize the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to border enforcement. “Children […]
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Saguaro cactuses, some nearly a century old, in shards on the desert floor. Jaguars, lost, because a metal wall has blocked their migratory path. Endangered species homeless because their critical habitats have been destroyed. Living and working along the U.S.-Mexico border means watching the surreal, slow-motion leveling of the wild and fragile ecosystems I’ve spent […]
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YUMA, Ariz. — It might be seen as a monument to the massive changes the Trump administration has brought to the country’s immigration system. Or it could be seen as a reason people are fighting fiercely to vote him out. Four years ago, President Trump promised voters he would build a big, beautiful wall. Whether […]
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U.S. border authorities have been expelling migrant children from other countries into Mexico, violating a diplomatic agreement with Mexico and testing the limits of immigration and child welfare laws. The expulsions, laid out in a sharply critical internal email from a senior Border Patrol official, have taken place under an aggressive border closure policy the […]
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McALLEN, Texas — The leadership of the Department of Homeland Security gathered on Thursday under the shadow of 30-foot, black-painted, steel bollards to promote the near completion of 400 miles of President Trump’s border wall. The politics of the moment, five days before the election, was lost on no one. “The only reason we haven’t […]
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Border Patrol agents shot and killed the driver of a car that had been carrying unauthorized immigrants in Laredo, Texas, on Friday, after the car reversed into an agent and pinned him against another vehicle, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The encounter happened at about 9:40 p.m. local time when Border Patrol agents, […]
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WASHINGTON — A Canadian national suspected of having mailed an envelope containing ricin to the White House was arrested on Sunday while trying to enter the United States from Canada, nearly a year after she had been deported from the United States for engaging in criminal activity, according to two American officials. Customs and Border […]
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NOGALES, Mexico — Illegal migration along the southwest border of the United States has surged after a period of stagnation, as economic hardship, made worse by the pandemic, has driven thousands northward seeking work. After plunging in the spring, when nations went into lockdown and shut down borders in an effort to curb the spread […]
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PARIS — No people has found the American lurch toward authoritarianism under President Trump more alarming than the Germans. For postwar Germany, the United States was savior, protector and liberal democratic model. Now, Germans, in shock, speak of the “American catastrophe.” A recent cover of the weekly magazine Der Spiegel portrays Trump in the Oval […]
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The Trump administration, which has pledged to use the full force of the government to protect federal property, expanded that effort on Thursday by sending a team of tactical border officers to stand by for duty in Seattle. The Special Response Team being deployed is similar to the tactical teams currently operating in Portland, Ore., […]
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In recent years, cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York have turned to Washington for help in combating gun violence and other crimes, arguing that only the federal government has the resources to tackle problems like guns being traded illegally across state borders. Now as President Trump has threatened to send federal agents to clean […]
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Something dangerous is taking shape within the Department of Homeland Security. We got our first glimpse of it last week in Oregon, when unidentified federal agents clad in camouflage and tactical gear descended on Portland, beat and tear-gassed protesters and pulled others into unmarked vehicles for arrest and questioning. Apparently cobbled together using personnel from […]
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The month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder published the best-selling book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.” It was part of a small flood of titles meant to help Americans find their bearings as the new president laid siege to liberal democracy. One of Snyder’s lessons was, “Be wary […]
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Thursday night marked the 50th consecutive night of demonstrations in Portland, Ore. The protests began after the killing of George Floyd — tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest police violence and racial injustice. Since then, the protests have grown smaller, but clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters have escalated […]
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