Biden’s letter to Trump wished him ‘all the best in the next four years,’ Fox reports
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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden wished President Donald Trump “all the best for the next four years” in the letter he left in the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, Fox News reported Wednesday.
Trump said Tuesday night that he opened the letter and called it “very nice.”
“Just basically, it was a little bit of an inspirational type of letter, you know? ‘Joy, do a good job. Important, very important, how important the job is.’ But I may, I think it was a nice letter. I think I should let people see it, because it was a positive for him, in writing it, I appreciated the letter,” Trump told reporters Tuesday evening.
Read aloud on Fox News Wednesday morning, the letter was addressed “Dear President Trump” and was two paragraphs long.
“As I take leave of this sacred office I wish you and your family all the best in the next four years. The American people – and people around the world – look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that in the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace, and grace for our nation,” Biden wrote Trump.
He closed with a prayer, “May God bless you and guide you as He has blessed and guided our beloved country since our founding.”
Trump appeared to discover the letter Biden left for him on Monday evening in the Oval Office when speaking with reporters.
When one asked whether he’d found the letter, Trump opened the drawer of the desk and found it, apparently for the first time. It was in a small white envelope with “47” written on the front and underlined.
“It could have been years before we found this thing. Wow, thank you,” Trump said.
Biden continued the tradition of leaving a letter for his successor — one Trump continued in 2020 when he left after his first term, turning over the office to Biden.
Trump also reflected on his return to the Oval Office, when asked by ABC News about how it felt to be back in the White House.
“What a great feeling, one of the better feelings I’ve ever had,” Trump said.
(WASHINGTON) — For the first time in U.S. history, military aircraft were used this past week to deport scores of undocumented migrants from the United States. Middle schools, Trump administration officials say, are now seen as places to target for immigration enforcement operations. And, according to President Trump’s “border czar,” every undocumented immigrant should worry they could be arrested at any time, even if they have no criminal record.
The “border czar,” Tom Homan, says it’s all part of the Trump administration’s effort to send a “clear” message: “There’s consequences [for] entering the country illegally,” he told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
“If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem,” he said.
More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are currently estimated to be living in the U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to take unprecedented action to remove as many of them as possible and stem the flow of more migrants coming to the southern border.
In his first several days in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the border, announced an end to the so-called practice of “catch and release” — when migrants claiming asylum are given court dates and then released pending those proceedings — and sought to overturn the long-held Constitutional right of birthright citizenship, a move that immediately faced legal challenges and was at least temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
As for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country, Homan said the administration will deport “as many as we can,” starting with threats to public safety threats and national security, Homan said.According to estimates released by House Republicans last year, based on government data, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in the country are convicted criminals or have charges pending against them. Government statistics indicate that in the past four years, hundreds of migrants were caught along the southern border with names matching known or suspected terrorists on a government watchlist. And Homan has said more than 2 million people were detected along the border but never captured, so authorities don’t know who they are or what threat some of them could pose.
According to statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security last year, a tiny fraction of those who reached U.S. borders in the prior three years had any kind of criminal record, and the vast majority of them involved nonviolent crimes, such as driving under the influence or previously entering the country illegally.
Homan told ABC News that the Trump administration is only “in the beginning stages” of carrying out its mass deportation plan, making public safety threats and national security threats a “priority,” but “as that aperture opens, there’ll be more arrests nationwide.”
And he warned that there will be “collateral arrests,” especially in the so-called “sanctuary cities” that he says are resistant to helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials locate and arrest undocumented immigrants already in local custody for other crimes.
“Sanctuary cities lock us out of the jails,” said Homan, who led ICE as acting director in Trump’s first administration.
According to Homan, that creates significant safety concerns: When an undocumented immigrant arrested for a serious crime is released by local authorities, instead of being deported, it “endangers the community.”
Nevertheless, Homan said that’s a time when ICE officers would likely make “collateral arrests.”
“When we find him, he’s going to be with others … [and] if they’re in the country illegally, they’re coming too,” he said.
He emphasized that anyone in the country unlawfully is “on the table.”
“It’s not OK to violate the laws of this country,” he said. “We have millions of people standing in line, taking the test, doing their background investigation, paying the fees that want to come in the right way.”
“So if you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem,” he said.
On Monday, during Trump’s first day in office, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive telling immigration authorities they could conduct operations in so-called “sensitive” areas that he said were off-limits during the Biden administration.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” he said in a statement.
Others, however, said the administration was simply creating fear within the immigrant community, with the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration saying that “turning places of care, healing and solace into places of fear and uncertainty … will note make our communities safer.
He said that as they prioritize national security threats and public safety threats, ICE officers might have to even go into schools because “many” members of gangs tied to South and Central America, such as MS-13, are between 14 and 17 years old.
In his interview with ABC News, Homan said that no other law enforcement agency is restricted from entering certain locations to promote public safety in the same way ICE has been.
“Name another agency, another law enforcement agency, that has those type of requirements, that they can’t walk into a school or doctor’s office or a medical campus,” he said. “No other agency is held to those standards.”
“These are well-trained [ICE] officers with a lot of discretion, and when it comes to a sensitive location, there’s still going to be supervisory review,” he said. “But ICE officers should have discretion to decide if a national security threat or a public safety threat [is] in one of these facilities.”
Homan said anyone already in the country unlawfully “should leave,” and those looking to claim asylum should “do it the legal way.”
“Go to the embassy, go to the point of entry,” he said. “You shouldn’t come to this country and ask to get asylum and the first thing you do is break our laws by entering illegally.”
In the meantime, Homan said the Trump administration is using not just the military but the “whole” government, including the Justice Department, to support its mass deportation plan, which allows ICE officers to concentrate on conducting enforcement operations.
But Homan acknowledged that the federal government won’t be able to remove every undocumented immigrant in the U.S., and that his “success is going to be based on what Congress gives us.”
ICE doesn’t currently have enough funding from Congress to detain all of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration says it hopes to arrest.
“I’m being realistic,” he said. “We can do what we can with the money we have. We’re going to try to be efficient. But with more money we have, the more we can accomplish.”
“What price [do] you put on national security?” he added. “When you … don’t secure that border, that’s when national security threats enter the country. That’s when sex trafficking goes up. That’s when, you know, that’s when the fentanyl comes in.”
As for what success practically looks like at the end of the Trump administration, Homan said: “Our success every day is taking a public safety threat off the streets or getting a national security threat out of here.”
(MEXICO) — The FBI extradited an alleged senior leader of the MS-13 gang who was on the agency’s “10 most wanted” list with the help of the Mexican government, FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday.
Patel said Mexican authorities arrested Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales — who Patel said is believed to be a “key senior leader” of the gang. Roman-Bardales is being extradited to the United States, Patel added.
Patel touted the arrest as a “major victory.”
“He was arrested in Mexico and is being transported within the U.S. as we speak, where he will face American justice,” Patel wrote in a post on X. “This is a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America.”
Roman-Bardales, 47, has been charged with several offenses for “his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members, as well as his role in drug distribution and extortion schemes in the United States and El Salvador,” the FBI said.
A federal arrest warrant was issued for Roman-Bardales in a New York court in 2022 after he was charged with conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists; narco-terrorism conspiracy; racketeering conspiracy; and alien smuggling conspiracy.
Mexican authorities got intelligence that Roman-Bardales was in Baxtla, Mexico. Mexican law enforcement was deployed to the area, where Roman-Bardales was identified and arrested, the FBI said.
Patel thanked Mexican partners for their help in bringing Roman-Bardales to the U.S.
“This crucial step enhances the safety of communities across America,” Patel said.
The arrest comes as President Donald Trump and his administration target gangs such as MS-13.
He discussed his efforts during his address to a joint session of Congress last month, mentioning the deaths of Jocelyn Nungaray — who was killed by two undocumented men from Venezuela — and Laken Riley — who was killed by an undocumented immigrant.
“All three savages charged with Jocelyn and Laken’s murders were members of the Venezuelan prison gang — the toughest gang, they say, in the world — known as Tren de Aragua. Two weeks ago, I officially designated this gang, along with MS-13 and the bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartels, as foreign terrorist organizations. They are now officially in the same category as ISIS, and that’s not good for them,” Trump said in his joint address to Congress.
Also, Trump’s administration is working to deport gang members from the U.S. Over the weekend, the Trump administration handed over more than 200 alleged gang members — including two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang — to El Salvadoran authorities. The move has raised questions as to whether the deportations could be in violation of a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking the removal of Venezuelans pursuant to the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
A man shouts at Rep. Chuck Edwards during a congressional town hall meeting on March 13, 2025 in Asheville, North Carolina/Sean Rayford/Getty Images
(ASHEVILLE, N.C.) — Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., was confronted by angry constituents during a town hall meeting on Thursday night about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping cuts across the government.
“How do you justify cuts to staff of the VA helping veterans, especially those with long term care needs,” asked one constituent who was met with a standing ovation from the raucous crowd in Asheville, North Carolina.
“So first of all, there have been no cuts to the staff at VA as of this point. Like him or not, Elon Musk has brought a lot of really smart people,” Edwards responded as he was met with a round of boos. Earlier this month, an internal VA memo indicated that the agency was preparing to lay off 80,000 from its workforce.
The interaction turned so contentious and hostile that Edwards had to be escorted out of the building.
“You don’t get to do this to us,” yelled another constituent.
Republican leadership has told their members to avoid in-person town halls like these after several members were grilled in their home districts.
Edwards, however, went against their advice on Thursday.
“”You see a lot of advice in Washington, D.C. from different folks saying, you know, ‘Republicans shouldn’t be out there doing town halls,’ and I’m thinking ‘why not?’ I love the people,” said Edwards.
The Trump administration is pushing forward with sweeping cuts with thousands of workers already having been laid off across the federal workforce – including Veteran Affairs, the IRS and the Department of Education.
Elon Musk split with the White House this week, suggesting that entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security could be on the chopping block next.
“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements, so that’s like the big one to eliminate,” Musk said earlier this week.
Those words have left some voters very concerned, with Edwards taking the brunt end of the attacks Thursday night.
“What are you doing to ensure the protection of our Social Security benefits,” asked on constituent to a round of applause.
Replied Edwards: “I’m not going to vote to dissolve your Social Security. I’m not looking to disrupt Social Security at all.”
