Acting AG Blanche says Trump administration is nixing ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

(WASHINGTON) —  The Pentagon is preparing to surge as many as 5,000 troops to the Middle East — with some forces already in transit, according to two U.S. officials.

It’s a mix of Army paratroopers and Marines.

Among them are some 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, the Army’s premier ground combat unit based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

There are also two Marine units likely headed to the region, according to the two U.S. officials.  

The Airborne unit is designed to deploy on short notice and seize contested terrain by parachuting out of airplanes behind enemy lines.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they would jump out of planes for a mission. The last time the 82nd Airborne parachuted into combat was the invasion of Panama in 1989. Before that, they did four jumps in World War II.

It’s unclear where the troops will land or when they will arrive. It’s likely they would flow into established U.S. hubs such as Jordan or Kuwait.

Additionally, Marine forces are already moving into position, the officials said. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, a 2,200-strong crisis response force, is slated to reach the Middle East this week after a transit by sea from Japan, according to the two officials.

Another Marine unit, the 11th MEU — also a 2,200-strong force — has begun sailing from California toward Japan and could ultimately be redirected to the Middle East as part of the buildup, the officials said. But any contribution from that force would take weeks to materialize because of time taken to get to that part of the world by ship.

The Marines and paratroopers are apart of “light infantry” units, meaning they are not arriving with any notable arsenal of heavily armored vehicles such as tanks.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court appears poised to allow President Trump to turn away asylum seekers who approach ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, a decision which would reverse a lower court ruling that the policy likely violates federal law and international treaties.

A majority of the court’s conservative justices signaled during oral arguments in the case Tuesday that the administration should have broad leeway over border control and that asylum seekers who have not yet stepped foot on U.S. soil probably do not have a legal right to file a claim seeking protection.

“Do you think someone who comes to the front door of a house and knocks at the door has arrived ‘in’ the house?” Justice Samuel Alito asked. “The person may have arrived ‘at’ the house.”

Immigrant advocates insist the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says a noncitizen who “arrives in the U.S. … at a designated port of arrival” must be allowed to apply for asylum, includes those who have “reached the threshold” of America.

“If an immigration officer determines that an alien who is arriving in the United States has expressed a fear of future persecution, then the immigration officer shall refer them for a credible fear interview,” argued Kelsi Corkran, an attorney supporting asylum seekers.

From the start of his second term, Trump has effectively blocked the entry of all noncitizens at the southern border, including those seeking to apply for refuge from credible fears of violence and persecution.

“You can’t ‘arrive in’ the U.S. while you’re still standing in Mexico,” argued Assistant Solicitor General Vivek Suri. “It is entirely lawful for the executive branch to prevent aliens from reaching U.S. soil and claiming those protections.”

The dispute largely turns on competing interpretations of what it means to “arrive in” the country.

“How close do you have to be to the border?” asked Justice Amy Coney Barrett. “If it’s not crossing the physical border, what is the magic thing or the dispositive thing that we’re looking for where we say, ah, now that person we can say arrives in the United States?”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that regardless of where the line is drawn, the law stipulates that the government can prevent people from filing an asylum claim if it wants to. “The government’s presumably going to stop you on the other side of that line and prevent you from getting to wherever the line is. Right?” he asked.

The court’s three liberal justices were critical of the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law.

“Imagine a polite asylum seeker who wants to do everything by the book,” posited Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “He approaches the border but does not cross, precisely because the law says you are not supposed to enter the U.S. without authority. Why on earth would Congress have intended or meant for his asylum request to be discarded, not taken seriously, not entertained, but someone who manages to enter the U.S. unlawfully…and requests asylum gets their application entertained? “

“That doesn’t seem to me to make any sense,” Jackson added.

At the heart of the case is the so-called “turn back” policy from Trump’s first term that kept asylum seekers waiting in Mexico as a method of “metering” access at border crossings that faced overcrowding. Border officials contend it was a temporary policy, imposed only when conditions required.

While the administration voluntarily discontinued the practice in 2021 after a lower court deemed it unlawful, the government now wants the justices to approve the ability to reinstate the policy if necessary. Trump has invoked alternate legal authorities to support his current border crackdown.

Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, an immigrant rights group representing several asylum-seeker plaintiffs, said a ruling for the administration could have a major impact, even if not immediate.

“We have no doubt the administration is seeking a decision that will give them even more leeway to restrict the rights of people seeking asylum,” Crow said.

Tens of thousands of asylum seekers who arrived at the U.S. southern border during Trump’s first term were forced to remain in Mexico for weeks or months in sometimes harrowing conditions in hopes they might have a chance to be interviewed about their fears of persecution.

Nicole Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, an immigrant rights group and plaintiff in the case, says Congress had a more nuanced view when it drafted the law following the U.S. failure to accept Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

“The right to seek asylum at the border is a legal right and a moral right,” Ramos said. “The stakes are not theoretical. They are measured in lives.”

One of those lives was Benito, a Mexican asylum seeker who declined to give his last name to protect his identity and spoke through a translator at an event hosted by Al Otro Lado.

“I was partially tortured, had a lot of lesions, and emotional harm, and traumas and I’m still healing from that,” he said of the violence he was trying to escape. “I knew I could apply for asylum in that moment, on the side of Mexico, and so I did everything correctly. I came close; I told the [U.S.] immigration agents that I needed to apply for asylum because I was scared and thought I would be killed.

“I had scars on my body, on my face, and my head,” he said, “but they said to me that they couldn’t help me, couldn’t accept me.”

The court is expected to issue a decision on the Trump administration’s bid to resurrect the “metering” and “turn back” policy by the end of June.

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(WASHINGTON) — The two top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees are referring outgoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to the Department of Justice for perjury due to her testimony to congressional committees earlier this month, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland allege that Noem’s statements on a variety of topics including DHS following judges’ orders and a controversial multimillion-dollar ad campaign “appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress.”

In response to the letter, a DHS spokesperson said “Any claim that Secretary Noem committed perjury is categorically FALSE.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The DOJ has received the latest political stunt from the Democrats who should instead vote to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.”

President Donald Trump fired Noem the day after her testimony concluded and announced that he was appointing her to a new role as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Latin American countries the White House says is committed to cooperating with the U.S. in taking on drug cartels and securing the U.S. border. He said he had nominated Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to head DHS when Noem’s tenure ended on March 31.

The Democrats allege that Noem misled Congress when she said that DHS had followed court orders while federal judges have ruled a number of times that it had not.

They also cited her testimony over contracts for a $220 million DHS ad campaign and her assertion that Trump had signed off on it. A day later, Trump told Reuters, “I never knew anything about it.”

“New public reporting, however, indicates that those statements may have been false. It has been reported that not only did the Secretary “handpick” four companies for the ad campaign, but procurement records show the “ad work was awarded using ‘other than full and open competition,'” and the four companies were politically connected to Noem and her allies,” according to the letter. 

Durbin and Raskin also allege Noem misled Congress when she testified that top adviser Corey Lewandowski had “no authority” to make decisions for the department.

“Secretary Noem’s denial of Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contract approval may also have been false. It has been widely reported that Mr. Lewandowski asserts approval authority over contracts and grants that exceed $100,000.27 A similar approval process reportedly exists for policy decisions, and as a recently published document shows, Mr. Lewandowski’s signature is visible above Secretary Noem’s on a February 2025 document reversing temporary protected status for Haitians.”

Lewandowski is reportedly leaving his position as a special government employee. He did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on his future at DHS.

The Democrats also allege Noem made false statements about conditions in ICE detention centers adhering to federal detention standards while ICE internal audits documented “significant failures to meet medical care standards.”

And they say her assertion that ICE did not detain U.S. citizens is false and cited 170 cases of citizens being detained in some cases for days without an opportunity to prove their citizenship.

“Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes,” the letter says. “While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years.”

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