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The Trump administration this week pressed five African presidents to take in migrants from other countries when they are deported by the US, two officials familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Thursday.
The plan was presented to the presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon during their visit to the White House on Wednesday, according to a US and a Liberian official who both asked not to be named.
The White House and official spokespeople for the five nations did not respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear if any of the countries had agreed to the plan.
Since returning to office in January, US president Donald Trump has been pressing to speed up deportations, including by sending migrants to third countries when there are problems or delays over sending them to their home nations.
Judge to weigh blocking Trump on birthright citizenship despite Supreme Court ruling
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next hour or so.
We start with news that a federal judge will consider today whether to prevent president Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing his executive order limiting birthright citizenship after the US Supreme Court restricted the ability of judges to block his policies using nationwide injunctions.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyers are set to ask US district judge Joseph Laplante at a hearing in Concord, New Hampshire, to grant class action status to a lawsuit they filed seeking to represent any babies whose citizenship status would be threatened by implementation of Trump’s directive.
Granting class status would empower Laplante, if he is inclined to do so, to issue a fresh judicial order blocking implementation of the Republican president’s policy nationally.
The ACLU and others filed the suit just hours after the Supreme Court on 27 June issued a 6-3 ruling, powered by its conservative majority, that narrowed three nationwide injunctions issued by judges in separate challenges to Trump’s directive. The suit was filed on behalf of non-US citizens living in the United States whose babies might be affected.
Under the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump’s executive order would take effect on 27 July.
Looking to seize upon an exception in the Supreme Court’s ruling, the lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the decision allows judges to continue to block Trump policies on a nationwide basis in class action lawsuits.
In other developments:
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Donald Trump released an intemperate letter to Brazil’s president imposing a 50% tariff and complaining about the prosecution of his friend, former president Jair Bolsonaro, for the crime of simply trying to stay in office despite losing an election and then inciting a riot by his supporters to derail the transfer of power.
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Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, rejected Trump’s demand that the charges against Bolsonaro be dropped, and pointed out that Brazil has an independent judiciary and does not, in fact, have a trade imbalance with the US.
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Brazilians mocked Bolsonaro’s potential successor for supporting Trump, by remixing video of him in a MAGA hat on social media.
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Amid concerns that a wave of staff reductions threaten the core missions of Nasa, Trump announced that he is asking the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, to also serve as interim administrator of the space agency.
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Trump complimented the president of Liberia on his excellent English, revealing that he is unaware of that nation’s close ties to the United States, as a home for freed slaves.
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The US supreme court maintained a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to enter the state.
