DES MOINES — When Sen. Kamala D. Harris arrived in Iowa for the first time since her attention-grabbing debate performance, she did so with a revamped stump speech and almost double her previous forces in Iowa and New Hampshire, all part of a retooled approach her campaign hopes will ensure her breakout moment fosters lasting momentum.
Harris’s campaign team says many of these changes were planned far earlier. But they are coming at a pivotal moment — just after the first Democratic debate and as the candidates are separating into more distinct tiers. Harris’s push to sharpen her message and expand her operation is shifting the overall dynamic of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In returning to Iowa this week, Harris abandoned a stump speech that centered on the vague notion of “speaking truth” and offered little clear reason for her candidacy. Instead, she is promoting the idea of a changing country — “our America” — in contrast with what she characterizes as President Trump’s effort to take the nation back into the past.
She has also begun embracing her controversial history as a prosecutor instead of shying away from it, telling voters that her record of taking on predators (she includes in that “big banks, big pharmaceutical companies, transnational gangs, and more”) equips her to prosecute the “predator living in the White House.”
And after months of criticism from Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire who said they felt she had not made them a priority, Harris has hired 35 additional staffers in Iowa in recent days, raising her total in the state to about 65 — one of the largest teams on the ground here, according to people familiar with Iowa campaign operations. She also hired 25 additional staffers in New Hampshire.
“I think, early on, she didn’t have much ground game in Iowa in general,” said Scott Putney, the chairman of the Pottawattamie County Democrats, who spoke before Harris at a campaign picnic in Council Bluffs. But now, he said, “they’ve got tons of organizers on the ground. You feel it.”
Harris has also made a less-tangible shift. In challenging former vice president Joe Biden on segregation and busing during the debate, the U.S. senator from California identified herself more clearly with the liberal activist wing of the party, a move that has boosted her in the primary polling but could carry risks with centrist voters.
At her appearance at a brewery in West Des Moines, the questions were not about race or her conflict with Biden, but about the importance of defeating Trump. Several voters said her assertive performance at the debate had convinced them that she could take on the president.
“That’s what we have to do — beat Trump,” said Don Palmquist, 79, a retired carpenter from the rural town of Stanton, Iowa. “She came across as somebody that’s very confident, and that’s going to be one of the requirements to do the job this time.”
Harris’s stepped-up presence in Iowa is a major change. Since her campaign began, Democratic activists here had complained that she hardly visited and did not have much of an organization in the state. Some had concluded that her strategy was to avoid expending resources in largely white Iowa and New Hampshire and instead hope to catch fire in states with more African American voters.
One of the first questions Harris fielded as she spoke to the news media Wednesday came from an Iowa journalist who asked how she would convince Iowans that she cares about the state. She said that she would continue to show up.
Her aides say her strategy always was to make a more concerted push in Iowa and New Hampshire over the summer. The Iowa buildup, for example, had been planned since March, they say, and she spent much of the past few months focusing on fundraising so she could fund the staff expansion.
More time spent on fundraising meant less time for trips to Iowa. Now, she will have made two trips to Iowa in 12 days and could make a third before the month is up.
But circumstances on the ground have changed as well. Biden’s lead among African American voters since he joined the race has proved more durable than many strategists expected, increasing the pressure on Harris to perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire to give her momentum as she heads into South Carolina and other Southern states.
In 2008, Barack Obama struggled to win over African American voters in the South — until he won in the Iowa caucuses, which showed black voters that he could capture majority-white states.
Until now, political strategists in Iowa have said Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had the biggest operations in the state. Many now say Harris has joined their ranks.
The Harris campaign hosted a barbecue Thursday beside the Missouri River, drawing a robust 500 people in a conservative part of the state. Many said they did not hold the infrequency of Harris’s visits to the state against her.
“It takes a long time to build a campaign up, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Derick Barnes, 30, an area resident who attended the barbecue. “But I think she’s going to be giving Iowa its due.”
At the same time, lingering questions from the debate, and from the early part of her campaign, have followed Harris through the state in recent days.
In the aftermath of her criticism of Biden for his opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1970s, she has fielded days of questions about her own stance on the issue.
After several days of varying answers, she was forced to clarify again Thursday, ultimately saying she would support federally mandated busing if a particular school district was resisting integration — but that, “thankfully,” the forces opposing desegregation in the 1960s are not at work today.
Her apparent shifts prompted Democratic strategist David Axelrod to tweet that Harris’s position, supporting voluntary but not mandatory busing in most cases, seemed to resemble Biden’s: “So what was that whole thing at the debate all about?”
Harris’s struggles on the question of busing also fit a criticism that emerged in the first months of her campaign, when some Democrats said she had trouble providing a clear vision of what she stood for.
After high-profile moments, she has sometimes had to clarify her positions, including her stance on whether private health insurance should be eliminated. When reporters asked in Iowa whether she was worried about a reputation for backtracking, Harris said that she had been “consistent” on the issues.
But most voters who attended Harris’s events did not raise those concerns. And though the Iowa trip did not make life easy on Harris — who encountered sweltering heat that caused an older woman to faint at a house party, as well as rain-induced schedule changes — some of the problems were encouraging. The church that her campaign had booked to host her town hall meeting Friday in Sioux City — an arrangement made before her debate performance — was supposed to hold about 150 people.
Instead, the event drew 300, leaving an overflow crowd on the lawn to listen to Harris’s revamped message over portable speakers.
Ms. Harris is also calling for stronger laws against housing discrimination; for more funding for financial literacy education; and for major changes in the calculation of credit scores, which lenders use to determine interest rates and eligibility for loans.
Currently, credit scores are based on payment history for things like credit cards, auto loans and mortgages, which many people of color don’t have. Ms. Harris’s plan would require credit reporting agencies to include rent, phone bill and utility payments in their calculations as well.
Her campaign projected that eliminating the homeownership gap would increase the median wealth of black households by about $32,000, and that of Latino households by about $29,000. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has announced a similar plan.
“Join me as we right what is wrong and write the next chapter of history in our country,” Ms. Harris said. “The fight of black women has always been fueled and grounded in faith and in the belief of what is possible.”
Ms. Harris’s speech — and a question-and-answer session afterward with the Rev. Al Sharpton and Michelle Ebanks, the chief executive of Essence Communications — also touched on health care, student loans and abortion.
This story was a collaboration between The New York Times and The El Paso Times.
CLINT, Tex. — Since the Border Patrol opened its station in Clint, Tex., in 2013, it was a fixture in this West Texas farm town. Separated from the surrounding cotton fields and cattle pastures by a razor-wire fence, the station stood on the town’s main road, near a feed store, the Good News Apostolic Church and La Indita Tortillería. Most people around Clint had little idea of what went on inside. Agents came and went in pickup trucks; buses pulled into the gates with the occasional load of children apprehended at the border, four miles south.
But inside the secretive site that is now on the front lines of the southwest border crisis, the men and women who work there were grappling with the stuff of nightmares.
Outbreaks of scabies, shingles and chickenpox were spreading among the hundreds of children who were being held in cramped cells, agents said. The stench of the children’s dirty clothing was so strong it spread to the agents’ own clothing — people in town would scrunch their noses when they left work. The children cried constantly. One girl seemed likely enough to try to kill herself that the agents made her sleep on a cot in front of them, so they could watch her as they were processing new arrivals.
A Migrant Jail
This story was a collaboration between The New York Times and The El Paso Times.
“It gets to a point where you start to become a robot,” said a veteran Border Patrol agent who has worked at the Clint station since it was built. He described following orders to take beds away from children to make more space in holding cells, part of a daily routine that he said had become “heartbreaking.”
The little-known Border Patrol facility at Clint has suddenly become the public face of the chaos on America’s southern border, after immigration lawyers began reporting on the children they saw — some of them as young as 5 months old — and the filthy, overcrowded conditions in which they were being held.
Overview
The main processing
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showers sat in an
adjacent yard.
Border Patrol Station
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Tents housed
detainees when the
influx was at its peak.
Chain-link fencing inside a
warehouseseparated children
and adults by gender.
By The New York Times | Aerial image by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Border Patrol leaders, including Aaron Hull, the outspoken chief patrol agent of the agency’s El Paso Sector, have disputed descriptions of degrading conditions inside Clint and other migrant detention sites around El Paso, claiming that their facilities were rigorously and humanely managed even after a spate of deaths of migrant children in federal custody.
But a review of the operations of the Clint station, near El Paso’s eastern edge, shows that the agency’s leadership knew for months that some children had no beds to sleep on, no way to clean themselves and sometimes went hungry. Its own agents had raised the alarm, and found themselves having to accommodate even more new arrivals.
The accounts of what happened at Clint and at nearby border facilities are based on dozens of interviews by The New York Times and The El Paso Times of current and former Border Patrol agents and supervisors; lawyers, lawmakers and aides who visited the facility; and an immigrant father whose children were held there. The review also included sworn statements from those who spent time at El Paso border facilities, inspection reports and accounts from neighbors in Clint.
The conditions at Clint represent a conundrum not just for local officials, but for Congress, where lawmakers spent weeks battling over the terms of a $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package for facilities at the border. The lack of federal investment, some argue, is why the sites have been so strained. But the reports of squalor prompted several Democratic lawmakers to vote against the final bill, which did not have oversight and enforcement provisions.
By all accounts, the Border Patrol’s attempt to continue making room for new children at Clint even as it was unable to find space to send them to better-equipped facilities was a source of concern for many people who worked there.
“I can’t tell you the number of times I would talk to agents and they would get teary-eyed,” said one agent, a veteran of 13 years with Border Patrol who worked at Clint.
Mary E. González, a Democratic state lawmaker who toured the Clint station last week, said that Border Patrol agents told her they had repeatedly warned their superiors about the overcrowded facility, but that federal officials had taken no action.
“They said, ‘We were ringing the alarms, we were ringing the alarms, and nobody was listening to us’ — agents told me that,” Ms. González said. “I genuinely believe that the higher-ups made the Clint situation happen.”
A Forward Operating Base
Architects designed the Clint station as a type of forward base — replete with fueling stations, garages for all-terrain vehicles and horse stables — from which agents could go on forays along the border.
The station was never intended to hold more than about a hundred adult men, and it was designed with the idea that migrants would be detained for only a few hours of processing before being transferred to other locations.
Officials have allowed reporters and members of Congress on controlled tours of Clint, but prohibited them from bringing phones or cameras inside, and from entering certain areas. But through interviews with dozens of people with knowledge of the station — including lawyers, former detainees and staff members — The Times was able to model the main areas where children were held: the station’s central processing area, with its cinder-block cells; a converted loading area and yard; and a warehouse on the property.
Processing Center
Processing Center
Children and toddlers were held for days in cinder-block cells with a single toilet. Beds were removed to make space, so they slept on the floor. Many fell ill.
At one point, this cell held 46 children, more than double its capacity.
10 feet
Exit to loading area
Interview room
Nurses’ station
Command center
Processing CENTER
Sick children were quarantined and sometimes held in this padded cell with no toilet.
Clint border
patrol station
Processing Center
Children and toddlers were held for days in cinder-block cells. Beds were removed to make space, so they slept on the floor. Many fell ill.
At one point, this cell held 46 children, more than double its capacity.
Exit to loading area
Interview room
Nurses’ station
Command center
10 feet
Sick children were quarantined and sometimes held in this padded cell with no toilet.
Processing Center
Children and toddlers were held for days in cinder-block cells. Beds were removed to make space, so they slept on the floor. Many fell ill.
At one point, this cell held 46 children, more than double its capacity.
Exit to loading area
Command center
10 feet
Sick children were quarantined and sometimes held in this padded cell with no toilet.
Parts of the site resemble what might be seen at many government buildings. Photographs in the hallway celebrate the work of the Border Patrol, showing agents on horseback and in all-terrain vehicles. A conference room features high-backed chairs upholstered with faux leather.
But the sense of normalcy fades away the deeper one goes into the station. A detachment of Coast Guard personnel, sent to assist overworked agents, stock an ad hoc pantry with items like oatmeal and instant noodles. Monitors in blue shirts roam the station, hired through an outside contractor to supervise the detained children.
Beyond the pantry, a door leads to the site’s processing center, equipped with about 10 cells. One day this month, about 20 girls were crowded into one cell, so packed that some were sprawled on the floor. Toddlers could be seen in some cells, cared for by older children.
One of the cells functioned as a quarantine unit or “flu cell” for children with contagious diseases; employees have at times worn medical masks and gloves to protect themselves.
A part of the processing area was set aside for detained children to make phone calls to family members. Many broke into tears upon hearing the voices of loved ones, episodes so common that some agents merely shrugged in response.
Loading Area and Yard
LOADING AREA
And Yard
Loading Area and Yard
Older children slept in a converted loading area, with access to a fenced yard and a single basketball hoop for recreation.
Storage for food and toiletries.
Fan
Clint border
patrol station
Loading area
Three-bed bunk beds lined one wall.
Trailer with showers
Basketball hoop
Yard
Sleeping mats
Portable toilets
10 feet
Loading Area and Yard
Older children slept in a converted loading area, with access to a fenced yard and a single basketball hoop for recreation.
Storage for food and toiletries.
Fan
Loading area
Trailer with showers
Basketball hoop
Three-bed bunk beds lined one wall.
Yard
Sleeping mats
10 feet
Portable toilets
Loading Area and Yard
Older children slept in a converted loading area, with access to a fenced yard and a single basketball hoop for recreation.
Three-bed bunk beds lined one wall.
Storage for food and toiletries.
Fan
Trailer with showers
Sleeping mats
10 feet
Portable toilets
Basketball hoop
Clint is known for holding what agents call U.A.C.s, or unaccompanied alien children — children who cross the border alone or with relatives who are not their parents.
Three agents who work at Clint said they had seen unaccompanied children as young as 3 enter the facility, and lawyers who recently inspected the site as part of a lawsuit on migrant children’s rights said they saw children as young as 5 months old. An agent who has worked for Border Patrol for 13 years — and who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation — confirmed reports by immigration lawyers that agents have asked migrants who are teenagers to help care for the younger children.
“We have nine agents processing, two agents in charge of U.A.C. care and we have little ones that need their diapers changed, and we can’t do that,” the agent said. “We can’t carry them or change diapers. We do ask the older juveniles, the 16-year-olds or 17-year-olds, to help us out with that.”
Warehouse
Trailer with showers
Warehouse
A tin-roof building that is used to store patrol vehicles was converted to hold families. As many as 200 people slept on cots and on the floor when bunks were full.
A tarp shaded part of the yard.
10 feet
Officers’ table
A.C. unit
Portable toilets
Clint border
patrol station
Chain-link fencing inside separated children and adults by gender.
Fan
WarehousE
Warehouse
A tin-roof building that is used to store patrol vehicles was converted to hold families. As many as 200 people slept on cots and on the floor when bunks were full.
Trailer with showers
10 feet
Officers’ table
A.C. unit
Portable toilets
A tarp shaded part of the yard.
Chain-link fencing inside separated children and adults by gender.
Fan
Warehouse
A tin-roof building that is used to store patrol vehicles was converted to hold families. As many as 200 people slept on cots and on the floor when bunks were full.
Trailer with showers
10 feet
Officers’ table
A.C. unit
Portable toilets
A tarp shaded part of the yard.
Chain-link fencing inside separated children and adults by gender.
Fan
As immigration flows change, the scene inside Clint has shifted as well. The number of children in the site is thought to have peaked at more than 700 around April and May, and stood at nearly 250 two weeks ago. In an attempt to relieve overcrowding, agents took all the children out of Clint but then moved more than 100 back into the station just days later.
Unaccompanied boys are kept in a converted loading area that holds about 50 people. Until a few weeks ago, older boys were kept in a tent encampment outside.
Families, including adult parents, were also sent to Clint earlier this year, and Representative Will Hurd, a Republican whose Texas district includes Clint, said that 11 adult males “apprehended that morning” were also being held at the site when he visited on June 29.
Before the influx of migrants began to wane in recent weeks, the agents said they had kept the families in a warehouse normally used to house A.T.V.s. It was converted into two holding areas initially intended to house 50 people each.
A Chief Agent Under Fire
At least two Border Patrol agents at Clint said they had expressed concern about the conditions in the station to their superiors months ago. Even before that, senior Homeland Security officials in Washington had significant concerns about the El Paso Sector’s brash chief patrol agent and his oversight of the facility over the past year, when tighter security along other sections of the border prompted a steep rise in migrant crossings along the section that runs from New Mexico through West Texas.
The situation became so severe that in January, officials at Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, took the unusual move of ordering the sector chief, Mr. Hull, to come to headquarters in Washington for a face-to-face meeting. The officials were concerned that Mr. Hull, an agency veteran who speaks with a pronounced Texas twang, had moved too slowly to put safety measures in place after the deaths of migrant children, according to a Homeland Security official. After the meeting, Mr. Hull moved forward with the new procedures.
But tension has persisted between Mr. Hull and officials in Washington, particularly in recent months, as the number of migrants continued to increase at his facilities. The officials believe that Mr. Hull and Matthew Harris, the chief of the Clint station, have been slow to follow directives and communicate developments at the facilities in their sector, according to two Homeland Security officials.
Mr. Hull is seen as a hard-liner on immigration issues. He has often been heard saying that migrants exaggerate the problems they face in their home countries.
Officials at the border agency declined multiple interview requests.
Last month, the acting head of C.B.P., John Sanders, ordered an internal investigation into the Clint facility. The investigation — which is being conducted by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the department’s inspector general — has examined allegations of misconduct.
As part of the review, investigators have conducted interviews and watched hours of video footage to see how agents treated detainees. So far, investigators have found little evidence to substantiate allegations of misconduct. But they have found that the facility is several times over capacity and has horrendous conditions.
The uproar over the site is drawing scrutiny on Border Patrol facilities that are some of the least-regulated migrant detention centers in the United States.
That is in part because they are intended in most cases to hold migrants for no more than 72 hours, before they are turned over to better-equipped facilities operated by other government agencies with stricter regulations on, say, the number of toilets and showers required. But the 72-hour limit has been frequently breached during the current migrant surge; some children have been housed at Clint for weeks on end.
Lawyers who visited the Clint station described children in filthy clothes, often lacking diapers and with no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap, prompting people around the country to donate supplies that the Border Patrol turned away.
But Mr. Hull painted a far different picture of his need for supplies in April, when the numbers of children held in Clint were soaring. Mr. Hull told commissioners in Doña Ana County in Las Cruces, N.M., in April that his stations had more than enough supplies.
“Twenty years ago, we were lucky if we had juice and crackers for those in custody,” Mr. Hull said, as quoted in The Las Cruces Sun-News. “Now, our stations are looking more like Walmarts — with diapers and baby formula and all kinds of things, like food and snacks, that we aren’t resourced or staffed for and don’t have the space to hold.”
An Inspector Arrives
One day in April, a man from Washington arrived unannounced around midday at the Clint station. He introduced himself as Henry Moak, and told the agents inside that he was there to inspect the site in his role as Customs and Border Protection’s chief accountability officer.
The Clint station was far over capacity on the day of Mr. Moak’s visit, bulging with 291 children. Mr. Moak found evidence of a lice infestation; children also told him about going hungry and being forced to sleep on the floors.
One girl, a 14-year-old from El Salvador, had been in custody for 14 days in Clint, including a nine-day stretch in a nearby hospital during which Border Patrol agents accompanied her and kept her under surveillance. Mr. Moak did not specify in his report why the girl had been rushed to the hospital. When the girl returned to Clint, another child had taken her bed so she had to sleep on the floor.
Two sisters from Honduras, one 11 and the other 7, told Mr. Moak that they had to sleep on benches in the facility’s hold room, getting their own cot only when other children were transferred out. “The sisters told me they had not showered or brushed their teeth since arriving at Clint station,” Mr. Moak said in his report. Showers had been offered twice during the girls’ time in custody, but the girls were asleep each time, his review showed.
Mr. Moak in the end stated that Clint was in compliance with standards.
One of a team of lawyers who inspected the station in June, Warren Binford, director of the clinical law program at Willamette University in Oregon, said that in all her years of visiting detention and shelter facilities, she had never encountered conditions so bad — 351 children crammed into what she described as a prisonlike environment.
She looked at the roster, and was shocked to see more than 100 very young children listed. “My God, these are babies, I realized. They are keeping babies here,” she recalled.
One teenage mother from El Salvador said Border Patrol agents at the border had taken her medicine for her infant son, who had a fever.
“Did they throw away anything else?” Ms. Binford said she had asked her.
“Everything,” she replied. “They threw away my baby’s diapers, formula, bottle, baby food and clothes. They threw away everything.”
Once at Clint, she told Ms. Binford, the baby’s fever came back and she begged the agents for more medicine. “Who told you to come to America with your baby, anyway?” one of the agents told her, according to the young woman’s account to Ms. Binford.
Border Patrol agents have said they have adequate supplies at Clint for most of the migrants’ needs. The facility lacks a kitchen, they said, so the ramen, granola bars, instant oatmeal and burritos that serve as most of the sustenance for migrants has been the best they could do.
Children sometimes could be seen crying, said one Border Patrol agent, who has worked for seven years at the Clint facility, but it most often seemed to be because they missed their parents. “It’s never because they’re mistreated; it’s because they’re homesick,” she said.
A Father Finds His Sons
Not long after Mr. Moak signed off on the conditions inside Clint, a man named Ruben was desperately trying to find his sons, 11-year-old twins who both have epilepsy.
The boys had crossed the border together in early June with their adult sister. They were hoping to reunite with their parents who had come to the United States earlier from El Salvador in order to earn enough money to pay for the boys’ epilepsy medications. They require daily injections and a strict regimen of care to prevent the seizures they began having at age 5.
But the twins were separated at the border from their sister and sent to Clint.
The first time they spoke to Ruben on the phone, the two boys sobbed intensely and asked when they would be able to see their parents again.
“We don’t want to be here,” they told him.
Ruben asked that his last name and the names of his sons be withheld for fear of retaliation by the American government.
Only later did Ruben learn that the boys had been given at least some of their epilepsy medication, and neither one had had a seizure. But one boy reported breaking out in a skin rash, his face and arms turning red and flaky. Both had come down with fevers and said they had been sent temporarily to the “flu cell.”
“There is no one to take care of you there,” one told his father.
It took 13 days after the boys were detained to speak to their father over the phone. A lawyer who had entered the facility, Clara Long of Human Rights Watch, met the boys, tracked down their parents, and helped them make a call. The boys were stoic and quiet, she said, and shook her hand as if “trying to act like little adults” — until they spoke to their father. Then, they could answer only with one- or two-word answers, Ms. Long said, and were wiping tears from their faces.
Much of the overcrowding appears to have been relieved at Clint, and overall arrivals at the border are slowing, as new policies make migrants, mainly from Central America, return to Mexico after they request asylum, as the summer heat deters travelers and as Mexico’s crackdown on its southern border prevents many from entering.
A Border Patrol agent who has long worked in the El Paso area said agents had tried to make things as easy as possible for the children; some bought toys and sports equipment on their own to bring in. “Agents play board games and sports with them,” he said.
But the Border Patrol long “took great pride” in quickly processing migrant families, and making sure children did not remain in their rudimentary stations for longer than 72 hours, the agent said. Clint, he said, “is not a place for kids.”
In the surrounding town, many residents were puzzled and sad at the news of what was happening to children in the station on Alameda Avenue.
“I don’t know what the hell happened, but they’ve diverted from their original mission,” said Julián Molinar, 66, a retired postal deliveryman who lives in a house facing the station. He served in the Army in Europe as the Berlin Wall came down, he said, and was dismayed that there was now talk of building a border wall near his home. As for the Clint facility, he said, “children should not be held here.”
Dora H. Aguirre, Clint’s mayor, expressed sympathy for the agents, who are part of the community in Clint and neighboring El Paso. “They’re just trying to do their job as a federal agency,” she said. “They are trying to do the best they can.”
The Red Cross said 16 guests stayed at their shelter at the Kerr McGee Community Center on West California Avenue Thursday night. There is also an evacuation center being set up at Burroughs High School.
The earthquake’s epicenter was 11 miles from Ridgecrest, California, which is just west of the Mojave desert. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake’s epicenter was 90 miles from Bakersfield.
Shaking from the quake was felt by millions of people across the region, including the greater Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas, USGS said.
have already been reported and seismologists say they’ll keep happening for weeks. Officials said Ridgecrest should feel more aftershocks on Friday.
Authorities declared a state of emergency in Ridgecrest Thursday as the rest of the county battled fires and damage.
The Red Cross said they will continue providing comfort and care to those affected in the area. Emergency operations services are also at Ridgecrest City Hall and the police department.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Latest on Southern California’s strongest earthquake in 20 years (all times local):
9:30 a.m.
A fire official says there were no fatalities or major injuries in Ridgecrest after the 7.1 magnitudes earthquake on Friday night.
Kern County Fire Chief David Witt also said Saturday there were no major building collapses but some structures could be weakened from the back-to-back quakes.
Friday’s quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the same area of the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.
Witt says there were some power outages and minor gas and water leaks in Ridgecrest, but no known damage outside the area.
He urged residents to get supplies ready in case another quake hits.
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9 a.m.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for a section of Southern California that saw significant damage after Friday night’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
The declaration provides immediate state assistance to San Bernardino County, citing conditions of “extreme peril to the safety of persons and property” in the county due to the earthquake.
State highway officials shut a 30-mile section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest — the area hit by two major temblors as many days — and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley.
Photos posted on Twitter by the state highway department shows numerous cracks in the road.
A spokesman for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services says crews were still assessing damages to water lines, gas lines and other infrastructure Saturday.
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12:15 a.m.
Small communities in the Mojave Desert are reeling from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake — the second major temblor in as many days to rock Southern California.
Authorities say Friday night’s shaker was centered near the town of Ridgecrest — the same area where a 6.4-magnitude quake hit on Independence Day.
Mark Ghillarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, says there are “significant reports of structure fires, mostly as a result of gas leaks or gas line breaks throughout the city.”
He also says there’s a report of a building collapse in tiny Trona. He says there could be even more serious damage to the region that won’t be known until first light on Saturday.
The quake at 8:19 p.m. was felt as far north as Sacramento and even in Las Vegas. It’s been followed by a series of sizeable aftershocks.
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10:30 p.m.
Authorities say a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted California has caused injuries, sparked fires, shut roads and shaken ball games and theme parks.
However, authorities say there are no deaths or major building damage reported from the quake, which struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday.
It was centered about 150 miles from Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest, which was still recovering from a 6.4-magnitude preshock that hit the region on Thursday.
There were reports of trailers burning at a mobile home, and State Route 178 in Kern County was closed by a rockslide and roadway damage.
But Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says it appears no buildings collapsed. He also says there have been a lot of ambulance calls but no reported fatalities.
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9:50 p.m.
An earthquake rattled Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning of the team’s game against the San Diego Padres.
The quake on Friday night happened when Dodgers second baseman Enriquè Hernàndez was batting. It didn’t appear to affect him or Padres pitcher Eric Lauer.
However, it was obvious to viewers of the SportsNet LA broadcast when the TV picture bounced up and down.
The quake registered an initial magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
There was no announcement by the stadium’s public address announcer.
Some fans in the upper deck appeared to leave their seats and move to a concourse at the top of the stadium.
The press box lurched for about 20 seconds.
The quake occurred a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake hit in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles.
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9:40 p.m.
Authorities are now reporting injuries and damage from a big earthquake that was felt throughout Southern California and into Las Vegas and even Mexico.
The quake that hit at 8:19 p.m. was given a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 to 7.1, but the measurements were being calculated.
It followed Thursday’s 6.4-mangitude quake that at the time was the largest Southern California quake in 20 years. Both were centered near Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.
Kern County fire officials reported “multiple injuries and multiple fires” without providing details. San Bernardino County firefighters reported cracked buildings and a minor injury.
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8:30 p.m.
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 has jolted Southern California, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, where a magnitude 6.4 quake struck on Thursday. The agency initially said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1.
The quake was felt downtown as a rolling motion that seemed to last at least a half-minute. It was felt as far away as Las Vegas, and the USGS says it also was felt in Mexico.
If the preliminary magnitude is correct, it would be the largest Southern California quake in 20 years.
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4 p.m.
Seismologists say there have been 1,700 aftershocks in the wake of the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years but the chances of another large temblor are diminishing.
A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s 6.4 quake, which struck in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest.
Zachary Ross of the California Institute of Technology says the number of aftershocks might be slightly higher than average. He also says a quake of that size could continue producing aftershocks for years.
The quake caused some damage to buildings and roads in and around Ridgecrest.
However, seismologists say it’s unlikely the quake will affect any fault lines away from the immediate area, such as the mighty San Andreas.
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1:20 p.m.
The city of Los Angeles is planning to reduce the threshold for public notifications by its earthquake early warning app, but officials say it was in the works before Southern California’s big earthquake Thursday.
The ShakeAlert LA app was designed to notify users of magnitudes of 5.0 or greater and when a separate intensity scale predicts potentially damaging shaking.
Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey says lowering the magnitude to 4.5 was already being worked on and had been discussed with LA as recently as a day before Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 quake centered in the Mojave Desert.
The shaking intensity levels predicted for LA were below damaging levels, so an alert was not triggered.
Mayor’s office spokeswoman Andrea Garcia also says the lower magnitude threshold has been in the planning stages and an update to the system is expected this month.
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7:05 a.m.
A vigorous aftershock sequence is following the strongest earthquake to hit Southern California in 20 years.
A magnitude 5.4 quake at 4:07 a.m. Friday is so far the strongest aftershock of Thursday’s magnitude 6.4 jolt, and was felt widely.
Seismologists had said there was an 80% probability of an aftershock of that strength.
Thursday’s big quake struck in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, which suffered damage to buildings and roads.
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9 p.m.
The strongest earthquake in 20 years shook a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on the July 4th holiday, rattling nerves and causing injuries and damage in a town near the epicenter, followed by a swarm of ongoing aftershocks.
The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 10:33 a.m. Thursday in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, California.
Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says multiple injuries and two house fires were reported in the town of 28,000. Emergency crews were also dealing with small vegetation fires, gas leaks and reports of cracked roads.
Witt says 15 patients were evacuated from the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital as a precaution and out of concern for aftershocks.
Police and firefighters were responding Saturday to a gas explosion at a strip shopping mall in the South Florida city of Plantation, authorities said.
Plantation Fire Rescue confirmed on Twitter that there are “multiple patients” from the incident.
News footage and social media video showed firefighters arriving at the mall. Windows were blown out of an LA Fitness. A section of the complex appeared to sustain significant damage, with shattered windows and scattered debris.
Plantation police tweeted: “All stores and businesses in the area of the Fountains Plaza and the Plantation Marketplace plaza near LA Fitness will be shut down until further notice until Fire Personnel can determine that it is safe to return. Please do not come into this area if possible.”
reported that the explosion occurred at The Fountains mall in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale.
Fire departments from Plantation, Davie, Lauderhill, Coral Springs, as well as Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue all responded to the scene. A triage area has been set up.
“A bomb just went off,” a man says in a video sent to the station.
The government had begun printing Census forms, the Commerce Department had publicly announced its legal surrender and Justice Department lawyers had rested their case in court. But President Trump wasn’t ready to give up the fight.
With a tweet that sent much of his administration scrambling over the July 4 holiday, Trump decided to unilaterally revive the government’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
It’s a move that fits into a long pattern of Trump going to the mat — and occasionally overruling his own administration — to force a fight over controversial issues. While the strategy has so far yielded mixed results, it nonetheless allows Trump to cast himself as a relentless change agent — an image that has become central to his reelection bid.
“We’re fighting very hard against the system, that’s a very difficult system but we’ll make a decision,” Trump told reporters Friday, adding that he was “thinking of” issuing an executive order to add the citizenship question to Census forms.
The Trump administration, which told a federal court Friday that it would reverse its plans and continue pursuing the citizenship question, faces long odds. The Supreme Court last week blocked the government from moving ahead with asking about citizenship, after saying the administration’s stated rationale was “contrived.”
Stung by that legal rebuke, and facing fast-arriving deadlines to move forward with the Constitutionally-mandated census, Trump’s government publicly decided to drop its effort to add the citizenship question. On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the decennial population tally, said the administration was abandoning its effort and had begun printing the census forms without the citizenship question.
Trump usually appeals negative rulings against him, often with the goal of reaching the Supreme Court — a strategy he described in transparent detail after his national emergency declaration in February.
“We’ll have a national emergency, and we will then be sued and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit,” he said in a February news conference in the Rose Garden. “We will possibly get a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling and then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake, and we’ll win in the Supreme Court.”
In the legal battle over the census, the high court did not serve as Trump’s buffer against lower courts. Opponents have argued before federal judges that the citizenship question would result in an undercount of millions of people who fear acknowledging that a noncitizen is part of their household. Hispanics would be disproportionately affected.
Roberts wrote in his opinion that the Commerce Department’s stated purpose for adding the question — that it was requested by the Justice Department to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — did not past muster.
But where his lawyers saw defeat, Trump saw an invitation to try again.
“I have a lot of respect for Justice Roberts, but he didn’t like it, but he did say, ‘Come back, “ Trump told reporters Friday at the White House. “Essentially he said, ‘Come back.’”
Heye said Trump will not hesitate to use negative court rulings to his political advantage, by casting himself as a victim of an unfair system.
“If you’re in Trump’s base, everything that he does reinforces his central argument that the system is rigged,” he said. “So if the court rules in his favor, it’s a big victory for Trump. If the court rules against him, Trump can say, ‘This is how rigged the system is against you.’ Win or lose, he still can move that argument forward.’’
While the base-first strategy has helped solidify Trump’s support, it’s not clear if the president’s approach does more harm than good for his electoral prospects.
But Trump’s willingness to push the limit to fight for his priorities might also come across as chaos to some moderate voters.
On trade, Trump revived a trade skirmish with China with new tariffs last year after his treasury secretary said publicly that the U.S. was “putting the trade war on hold.” Trump banned transgender troops from serving in the military and announced he was pulling troops out of Syria without getting buy-in from then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who abruptly resigned in December after the decision.
And on immigration, he has threatened to shut down the southern border, impose tariffs on Mexico, and reinstitute family separations.
Accusations that he is politicizing the Census, or sparking a potential constitutional crisis by defying a judge’s ruling to add a citizenship question, could add to the sense of White House disorder that has turned off swing voters, O’Brien said.
“Immigration is an issue where there is an overwhelmingly broad public consensus,” he said. “People support immigration as long as it’s well-managed, and they don’t want to see it politicized.”
Joe Biden let slip that his campaign was collecting dirt on his rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I mean, I get all this information about other people’s pasts, and what they’ve done and not done. And you know, I’m just not going to go there. If we keep doing that — I mean, we should be debating what we do from here,” Biden told CNN in a Friday interview, referring to the crowded field of two dozen White House hopefuls.
In May, Biden, 76, promised not to attack his rivals, saying: “I will not speak ill of any of the Democratic candidates, I will not do it.”
Although Biden said he wouldn’t use the opposition research, he made the comments while being grilled on the scrutiny his past approach to race issues is receiving.
Should Biden use the information, the change in strategy would mark a pivot from his attempt to craft an affable “Uncle Joe” persona and an abandonment of his promise to stay positive.
Before the attacks from Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker on Biden for his segregationist comments, the Democratic race for the White House had been relatively genteel.
With seven months still until the Iowa caucuses, the former vice president has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he is seeking the presidency because he wants “to restore the soul of this country” and “unite” the nation. He has also vowed to support the party’s eventual standard-bearer, who will be anointed at the Democratic National Convention next July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Iran’s foreign ministry says it will never be ready to negotiate now that the Trump administration has imposed new sanctions; Kristin Fisher reports.
Three GOP senators this week urged President Trump to reject what they describe as Iran’s ‘nuclear blackmail’ in the wake of the rogue nation’s violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement — and highlighted the use of a mechanism in the U.N. resolution enshrining the deal that allows for a “snapback” of sanctions.
“Regime officials have signaled they intend to creep towards a nuclear weapon, while demanding concessions and promising to ‘reverse’ their violations if their demands are met,” Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wrote in a letter Tuesday. “We urge you to reject their nuclear blackmail.”
Iran recently began stockpiling low-enriched uranium beyond agreed limits, in violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and have warned that more violations could soon be coming.
Given that it was United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 that endorsed the Obama-era deal, the Council could be the site of the next stage in deciding the embattled deal’s fate. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal last year, having described it as “the worst deal in history,” and the administration has since imposed waves of crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.
The senators urge Trump to invoke the so-called “snapback mechanism” in resolution 2231 that would restore sanctions on Iran’s uranium enrichment and missile development.
And while Security Council diplomats seek to work out how the U.S. will re-impose the sanctions given that it quit the deal last year, the letter from the senators notes that the U.N. resolution enables the original parties to the deal to revoke or snapback at any time.
“Paragraph 10 of the resolution defines the United States as a participant for the purpose of invoking the mechanism. We urge you to do so,” the senators wrote.
The lawmakers also call on the president to cease the use of “civil-nuclear waivers” that they say allows Iran to keep a nuclear status quo.
While there is another mechanism outside of the Security Council to deal with violations from the parties in the JCPOA, Tehran’s threats to enrich uranium mean the process of bringing the snapback mechanism into effect will sooner rather than later be tested.
From 2006 onwards the Council passed six resolutions that imposed severe sanctions on Iran in order to halt its nuclear ambitions by banning Iran from conducting nuclear research and developing ballistic missiles.
The senators letter also claimed that the deal “was built to enable Iranian cheating” and allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to flow into regime coffers, “allowing the Iranians to boost its military and terrorist activities regionally and globally, even as they maintained nuclear weapons infrastructure, periodically exceeded restrictions on nuclear materials.”
“That’s how the deal was always supposed to work, that’s how it did work, and that’s why it is imperative that the United States now respond forcefully to Iran’s systematic violations by ending civil-nuclear waivers and invoking the U.N. snapback,” the senators argued.
It is unclear how such a move would be received by America’s European allies at the Security Council — who opposed the U.S. departure from the deal, and who have fought to keep the compact intact.
Behnam Ben Taleblu a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C. told Fox News that if the snapback mechanism is used and resolution 2231 is done away with, “it would also mean the Rouhani government’s policy of playing both sides of the Atlantic against one another would have failed.”
A source familiar with the administration’s discussions on the use of snapback told Fox News that there are ongoing interagency talks happening now about using the mechanism.
An indication of the interagency discussions came earlier in the week from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose statement on Iran’s violation called on the international community to restore its longstanding requirement of not allowing any uranium enrichment for the regime’s nuclear program in light of Iran’s latest violation.
His statement pulled no punches as he noted that “no nuclear deal should ever allow the Iranian regime to enrich uranium at any level. Starting in 2006, the United Nations Security Council passed six resolutions requiring the regime to suspend all enrichment activity. It was the right standard then; it is the right standard now.”
A senior GOP congressional staffer told Fox News: “Snapback is quickly becoming the only game in town, now that Iran has violated the deal.”
The staffer told Fox that, even though the U.S. left the deal, the administration still has every right per the resolution to put the snapback mechanism into play.
“There’s no technical reason the Trump administration can’t just do it and quickly restore the international sanctions from before the deal,” the staffer stated, adding that some officials wanted to hold off while the Europeans negotiated with Iran to stay in bounds.
“Now that the Europeans have failed and the Iranians are engaged in nuclear blackmail, there’s no reason left to hold off.”
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday mass deportation roundups would begin “fairly soon” as U.S. migrant advocates vowed their communities would be “ready” when immigration officers come.
Trump, who has made a hardline immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and 2020 re-election bid, postponed the operation last month after the date was leaked, but on Monday he said it would take place after July 4.
“They’ll be starting fairly soon, but I don’t call them raids, we’re removing people, all of these people who have come in over the years illegally,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month said operations would target recently-arrived undocumented migrants in a bid to discourage a surge of Central American families at the southwest border.
ICE said in a statement its focus was arresting people with criminal histories but any immigrant found in violation of U.S. laws was subject to arrest.
Government documents published this week by migrant rights groups showed some past ICE operations resulted in more so-called “collateral” arrests of undocumented migrants agents happened to find, than apprehensions of targeted people.
Migrant rights groups said this generalized threat is harmful to communities, and the U.S. economy, as it forces adults to miss work and children to skip school out of fear they may be picked up and separated.
“We have to be ready, not just when Trump announces it, because there are arrests every day,” said Elsa Lopez, an organizer for Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a New Mexico group which educates migrants on their civil rights and creates phone networks to send alerts if ICE enters their neighborhood.
The threatened raids come after migrant apprehensions on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May before easing in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.
A rising number of migrants are coming from outside Central America, including India, Cuba and African countries. The Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol sector on Friday reported the arrest of over 1,000 Haitians since June 10.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Democratic lawmakers visited an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol station on Monday and said migrants were being held in “horrifying” conditions, with women told to drink out of a toilet.
To “dispel” what he called “the misinformation,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villareal put out a video showing fresh water available from a cooler and a faucet in a cell at a Tucson, Arizona, sector migrant processing center.
“We’re not forcing aliens to drink out of the toilet,” said Villareal, head of an area that in May apprehended nearly six times fewer people than the El Paso sector, a stretch of border that has borne the brunt of the migrant surge.
Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam
The price index idea, which the pharmaceutical industry and many medical providers have vigorously opposed, is still under review from the Office of Management and Budget and may begin as a five-year pilot program next year. But it would apply to only a small subset of the drug market, and would not affect the prices paid for more typical prescription drugs that are sold at retail pharmacies. An executive order on drug prices would most likely have no force of law on its own, but could direct the Department of Health and Human Services to pursue or expand this approach.
Outside of the doctor’s office or hospital, the federal government does not buy many medications itself. Under current law, Medicare’s main prescription drug program farms out its drug purchasing to private insurance companies, and is barred from negotiating with drugmakers directly. The federal government does buy drugs for some populations, including veterans and federal prisoners, but they represent only a small fraction of the nation’s drug market.
“The frustration that the U.S. pays much higher prices for drugs has been a persistent theme of this administration,” said Peter Bach, the director of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, in an email. “We will have to see what is ordered to understand what could actually be implemented by executive order. The scope will have to be pretty limited in that the government itself does very little purchasing of drugs. It is all done through intermediaries that we pay for the service.”
The Department of Health and Human Services published a white paper of possible drug pricing policies last year, and has begun rolling out regulations to help enact portions of it. Congress is also seriously considering a handful of measures related to drug pricing, some of which may become law this year.
A bill introduced by Senator Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, has not advanced to a committee hearing, but comes the closest to what the president described Friday. Mr. Scott’s bill would link a drug’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration to a requirement that the drug’s retail list price in the United States be no higher than the lowest price charged in Canada, France, Britain, Japan or Germany.
Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said many of the city’s residents are sleeping outside following the second powerful earthquake to hit their city in just two days.
“Many of them have experienced something that is very traumatic, somewhat unknown to most of them and many of them are sleeping outside tonight,” she said.
They are fearful to be in their homes and we are offering any services as noted earlier — we have places for people to shelter here, but many are choosing to just be with their neighbors in their sidewalks and driveways and some of them are in the streets,” she added.
The leaders of the region’s emergency services are coordinating aid and regional in the Ridgecrest area. Photo: CA Governor’s Office of Emergency Services
Megan Person, Director of Countywide Communications for the Bakersfield Emergency Operation Center, said 129 residents are currently sheltering at the Kerr McGee Community Center in Ridgecrest.
Media captionUS President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House
The Trump administration will continue to pursue a way of adding a citizenship question to the census, lawyers said in court filings submitted on Friday.
But administration lawyers failed to provide any legal justification for the census question by a court deadline.
The Supreme Court rejected the initial rationale for adding the question to the 2020 census as “contrived”.
The question is controversial because critics believe it will discourage immigrants from taking part.
They say that lower participation by immigrants could lead to an undercount of populations in Democratic districts, benefiting President Donald Trump’s Republican Party and altering how congressional seats are allocated and billions of dollars of federal funds distributed in those districts.
The Trump administration said it wanted to ask about citizenship to better enforce a law that protects the voting rights of minorities, but the Supreme Court dismissed that justification.
Why has the issue come back?
It appeared settled when government lawyers indicated they had dropped the question, and officials began printing the census without it.
That reportedly infuriated President Trump, who announced that his administration would pursue the issue.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
Critics say the question would lead to a problematic undercount of immigrants
But a deadline of 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Friday set by a Maryland district judge came and went, with no clear indication from the administration on how they planned to add the citizenship question.
Government lawyers said only that the justice and commerce departments had been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward”.
President Trump said on Friday an executive order was among the options he was considering to force the question on to the census.
“We have four or five ways we can do it,” Mr Trump told reporters, suggesting the administration could “maybe do an addendum” after getting a positive decision.
But legal experts say executive orders could not override Supreme Court decisions.
US media reported that the administration was considering using separate federal records to try to gather information about undocumented immigrants.
Why is the issue so important?
The question – “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” – has not appeared on a US census for all Americans since 1950, though it has been asked to some subsets of the population between 1970 and 2000.
The census is held every 10 years.
Democrats fear that if President Trump is successful, districts with high numbers of immigrants – such as major cities – will lose congressional representation, since census data is used to determine the distribution of federal funding and the number of congressional seats.
Congressional districts are drawn based on total populations rather than the number of legal citizens.
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday mass deportation roundups would begin “fairly soon” as U.S. migrant advocates vowed their communities would be “ready” when immigration officers come.
Trump, who has made a hardline immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and 2020 re-election bid, postponed the operation last month after the date was leaked, but on Monday he said it would take place after July 4.
“They’ll be starting fairly soon, but I don’t call them raids, we’re removing people, all of these people who have come in over the years illegally,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month said operations would target recently-arrived undocumented migrants in a bid to discourage a surge of Central American families at the southwest border.
ICE said in a statement its focus was arresting people with criminal histories but any immigrant found in violation of U.S. laws was subject to arrest.
Government documents published this week by migrant rights groups showed some past ICE operations resulted in more so-called “collateral” arrests of undocumented migrants agents happened to find, than apprehensions of targeted people.
Migrant rights groups said this generalized threat is harmful to communities, and the U.S. economy, as it forces adults to miss work and children to skip school out of fear they may be picked up and separated.
“We have to be ready, not just when Trump announces it, because there are arrests every day,” said Elsa Lopez, an organizer for Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a New Mexico group which educates migrants on their civil rights and creates phone networks to send alerts if ICE enters their neighborhood.
The threatened raids come after migrant apprehensions on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May before easing in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.
A rising number of migrants are coming from outside Central America, including India, Cuba and African countries. The Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol sector on Friday reported the arrest of over 1,000 Haitians since June 10.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Democratic lawmakers visited an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol station on Monday and said migrants were being held in “horrifying” conditions, with women told to drink out of a toilet.
To “dispel” what he called “the misinformation,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villareal put out a video showing fresh water available from a cooler and a faucet in a cell at a Tucson, Arizona, sector migrant processing center.
“We’re not forcing aliens to drink out of the toilet,” said Villareal, head of an area that in May apprehended nearly six times fewer people than the El Paso sector, a stretch of border that has borne the brunt of the migrant surge.
Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam
President Donald Trump — who used to mock predecessor Barack Obama for using the devices during speeches — said Friday that technical problems with the teleprompter during his “Salute to America” led to his head-scratching remarks about the Continental Army securing not-yet existent “airports” during the Revolutionary War.
“In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified Army out of the Revolutionary Forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington, commander in chief,” Trump said during his address Thursday — although the army was not named after Washington. It then got stranger.
“Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rocket’s red glare it had nothing but victory.”
Trump, speaking to reporters on the White House lawn en route to his property in Bedminster, New Jersey, acknowledged Friday he had some technical problems because of the soggy conditions during his speech.
“We had a lot of rain. I stood in the rain. The teleprompter went out,” he said in response to a question from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell. “It kept going on, and then at the end, it just went out. It went kaput!”
One of those moments was in the passage about 1775, he said.
“Actually right in the middle of that sentence, it went out. And that’s not a good feeling. You’re standing in front of millions of millions of people on television and I don’t know what the final count was but that (the crowd) went all the way back to the Washington Monument.”
The teleprompter screen had been “hard to look at anyway cause it was raining all over it.”
But Trump said he wasn’t letting the rain dampen his spirits about the event.
“I do the speech very well, so I was able to do it without a teleprompter, but the teleprompter did go out,” he said. “But despite the rain, that was just a fantastic evening.”
After years of Republican attacks, Teleprompters have gone on the offensive.
The setting could not have been more dramatic. It was the Fourth of July, and President Donald Trump was addressing the country from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As rain came down over Washington, D.C., and military aircraft hummed overhead, the president recounted some of the greatest deeds in the life of our nation.
The Armed Forces Chorus has just finished singing the Marines’ Hymn, and Trump was starting in on a section of his speech about how the U.S. Army emerged out of the Revolutionary War, going on to fight heroically in the War of 1812.
“It rammed the ramparts. It took over the airports. It did everything it had to do,” Trump said of the Continental Army. “And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.”
It was a rousing kicker after several lines of dry historical context. There was just one problem: “the airports.” As Trump himself pointed out earlier in the same speech, there was not an airplane — let alone many airplanes that would necessitate an entire port — until the 20th Century.
The slip up set the chattering classes buzzing Thursday night and Friday morning, filling the ordinarily sleepy post-vacation news cycle with think pieces about the larger significance of Trump’s faux pas and the inevitable Twitter memes.
“The Teleprompter went out,” Trump explained to reporters when asked about the slip up Friday morning. “It kept going on, and then at the end it just went out, it went kaput. So I could’ve said — and actually, right in the middle of that sentence, it went out. And that’s not a good feeling.”
That seemed to put everything to rest. It was a simple explanation for a seemingly innocuous gaffe — the kind any of us could be liable to make under the circumstances.
Then, as certain and inexorable as the passage of time itself, someone found a tweet, casting the shadow of a deeper, more sinister plot over the scene.
Why does @BarackObama always have to rely on teleprompters?
Let’s take a step back. Teleprompters are sheets of glass that stand on poles in front of and to either side of a speaker. The speech is projected onto the glass, allowing the speaker to read it without turning away from the audience.
Politicians of all stripes have used Teleprompters for decades. But Republicans spent years criticizing former President Barack Obama for leaning on the devices when he spoke rather than going off-the-cuff. The attack carried so much weight that some Republican presidential candidates eschewed the Teleprompter altogether during the 2012 campaign season.
“If you use it now, you’re like Obama,” media strategist Fred Davis told The Washington Post in October 2011. “It’s a negative because it’s a sign of inauthenticity. It’s a sign that you can’t speak on your own two feet. It’s a sign that you have handlers behind you telling you what to say.”
Indeed, many Republicans went on to make political hay of Obama’s penchant for speaking on-the-Teleprompter. Campaigning for the Republican nomination in 2012, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he could “tell the truth without notes better than he [Obama] can dissemble on a teleprompter.” Former Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) blamed one of her own verbal slip ups on her decision to “never again use President Obama’s teleprompter.”
Even then Vice President Joe Biden got in on the act after his Teleprompter blew over during a speech at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in May 2009.
“What am I going to tell the president when I tell him his Teleprompter is broken?” Biden quipped. “What will he do then?”
The 2009 incident is especially alarming, and it raises the same troubling question as Trump’s tweet from 2012: Was Trump’s faux pas Thursday a simple technical glitch?
Or is it possible that, after years of attacks from both the right and the left, Teleprompters have suddenly decided to go on the offensive?
Perhaps there are even deeper, more sinister, explanations, as national security commentator Malcolm Nance pointed out on Twitter:
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday mass deportation roundups would begin “fairly soon” as U.S. migrant advocates vowed their communities would be “ready” when immigration officers come.
Trump, who has made a hardline immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and 2020 re-election bid, postponed the operation last month after the date was leaked, but on Monday he said it would take place after July 4.
“They’ll be starting fairly soon, but I don’t call them raids, we’re removing people, all of these people who have come in over the years illegally,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month said operations would target recently-arrived undocumented migrants in a bid to discourage a surge of Central American families at the southwest border.
ICE said in a statement its focus was arresting people with criminal histories but any immigrant found in violation of U.S. laws was subject to arrest.
Government documents published this week by migrant rights groups showed some past ICE operations resulted in more so-called “collateral” arrests of undocumented migrants agents happened to find, than apprehensions of targeted people.
Migrant rights groups said this generalized threat is harmful to communities, and the U.S. economy, as it forces adults to miss work and children to skip school out of fear they may be picked up and separated.
“We have to be ready, not just when Trump announces it, because there are arrests every day,” said Elsa Lopez, an organizer for Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a New Mexico group which educates migrants on their civil rights and creates phone networks to send alerts if ICE enters their neighborhood.
The threatened raids come after migrant apprehensions on the southwest border hit a 13-year high in May before easing in June as Mexico increased immigration enforcement.
A rising number of migrants are coming from outside Central America, including India, Cuba and African countries. The Del Rio, Texas, Border Patrol sector on Friday reported the arrest of over 1,000 Haitians since June 10.
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Democratic lawmakers visited an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol station on Monday and said migrants were being held in “horrifying” conditions, with women told to drink out of a toilet.
To “dispel” what he called “the misinformation,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Roy Villareal put out a video showing fresh water available from a cooler and a faucet in a cell at a Tucson, Arizona, sector migrant processing center.
“We’re not forcing aliens to drink out of the toilet,” said Villareal, head of an area that in May apprehended nearly six times fewer people than the El Paso sector, a stretch of border that has borne the brunt of the migrant surge.
Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam
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