DOJ probing sheriff over undocumented immigrant’s release
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(NEW YORK) — In what appears to be part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against sanctuary cities, the Justice Department is investigating a sheriff in upstate New York who released an undocumented man later taken into custody by federal agents.
The US Attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York “is looking into the circumstances” surrounding the release by Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne of Jesus Romero-Hernandez, a 27-year-old Mexican citizen.
Romero-Hernandez pleaded guilty to a state assault charge and was sentenced to time served, necessitating his release. He left local custody in Ithaca before Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived to pick him up on a federal complaint charging him with illegally re-entering the United States after a prior removal.
Ithaca adopted a sanctuary law in 2017.
ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security Investigations later apprehended Romero-Hernandez.
“The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office in Ithaca, NY, a self-described sanctuary city, appears to have failed to honor a valid federal arrest warrant for a criminal alien with an assault conviction,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said. “I applaud the U.S. Attorney’s commitment to investigate these circumstances for potential prosecution.”
Tompkins County and the Tompkins County Sheriff’s office issued a joint statement refuting the DOJ’s claims.
The officials said ICE was “notified of when the individual in question was going to be released and had every opportunity to come to the jail to obtain the individual in question without any need for a pursuit or other incident.”
“There was no interference with federal immigration enforcement efforts. DOJ’s assertion that the Tompkins County Sheriff did anything to put federal law enforcement officers in danger is false and offensive,” the offices said.
Bove convened all 93 US attorney’s offices on a phone call on Thursday to convey that they should focus on surging resources toward immigration enforcement. He likened the threat posed by undocumented immigrants to the threat posed by terrorists.
It represents a significant shift for the Justice Department redirecting law enforcement resources away from previous national security priorities and toward immigration enforcement.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has invited China‘s President Xi Jinping to his inauguration in January, his spokesperson said Thursday.
Incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed reports about the invitation on Fox News on Thursday morning.
Asked if she could confirm if Trump has invited Xi to his inauguration, Leavitt said, “That is true, yes and this is an example of President Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just our allies, but our adversaries and our competitors, too. We saw this in his first term — he got a lot of criticism for it; but it led to peace around this world; he is willing to talk to anyone, and he will always put America’s interests first.”
Leavitt said it is “to be determined” if the Chinese president has RSVP’d, and that other world leaders are being invited as well.
CBS News was first to report that Xi Jinping had been invited.
In October, in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Trump called Xi a “brilliant guy.”
“He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not,” he said.
Trump has threatened to impose a 10% tariff on imports from China. He and Xi last met at the G20 summit in Japan in 2019.
Asked about the inauguration invitation Thursday as he made an appearance at the New York Stock Exchange, Trump wouldn’t comment on whether Xi has committed to attend.
“Well, I’ve invited a lot of great people. And they’ve all accepted. Everybody I invited has accepted,” Trump said.
“President Xi, as well?” reporters asked. Trump dodged, saying, “Very good relationship.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin telling him to make a deal now to end the war in Ukraine, threatening economic consequences if he doesn’t.
“It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.’ NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!” Trump wrote in a new social media post.
Trump indicated that if a deal isn’t made quickly, he would place high levels of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Russia.
“Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump said.
Trump then threatened that it can be done “the easy way, or the hard way.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night, Trump indicated he’d be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person.
“I’ll be meeting with President Putin,” Trump said, but didn’t say when that might happen.
Trump also indicated that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy was willing to come to the negotiating table, but is unsure if Putin would, too.
“He told me he wants to make a deal. He wants to make — Zelenskyy wants to make a deal. I don’t know if Putin does,” Trump said.
During the ABC News debate in September, Trump claimed he would settle the war between Russia and Ukraine before he got into office.
At one point, he had also signaled that the war would be over within 24 hours of becoming president.
Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — On his first day back in office on Monday, President Trump issued an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth, limit the definition of a “male” or “female” to their reproductive cells and potentially withhold federal funding from programs that acknowledge transgender people or “gender ideology.”
Medical and legal experts say the executive order rejects the reality of sexual and gender diversity, and are concerned about the implications it will have for intersex, nonbinary and transgender Americans.
Trump’s executive order declares sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female” and states that “gender identity” cannot be included in the definition of “sex,” and that “sex” and “gender” cannot be used interchangeably.
The executive order declares there are only “two sexes, male and female” and defines a “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” The order defines “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
“This one is shockingly out of step with what we know from science,” Kellan E. Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at health services network Whitman-Walker, told ABC News in an interview.
Baker noted that we’re accustomed to thinking of sex “as a fairly simple, binary, immutable thing,” but said science tells us it’s not that simple.
“Sex is not a singular, binary, immutable trait,” he said. “It is, in fact, a complex cluster of multiple traits, some of which align with each other and sometimes some of which do not align with each other.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”
Intersex populations are not noted in the executive order. Intersex people are those with variations in their sex traits such as genitals, chromosomes, hormones or reproductive organs, and differ from expectations of male and female anatomy.
The term intersex may also be categorized as “differences of sex development.” Not all conditions are noticeable at birth, according to MedlinePlus, a resource from the National Library of Medicine and therefore, may not be known until later in life.
“There are multiple different sex traits that make up this concept that we think of as sex,” Baker said. “They include, for example, chromosomes. They also include external genitalia, gonads, hormones.”
Baker also notes that sexual differentiation via reproductive cells doesn’t take place until about six weeks after conception, contrary to the definition stated by the executive order.
The order states that the definitions of sex are a response to “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex.”
“Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept,” the order reads.
Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer at LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal, told ABC News her organization is preparing for legal action against the executive order. She argues the order could force agencies to no longer recognize transgender or intersex people by restricting funding that promote “gender ideology.”
The order states that gender ideology “is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
It goes further to state, “Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity.”
“The current structure of our society is that there is federal funding throughout many of our essential systems, and so we don’t know, but it is certainly possible that the Trump administration is going to attempt to exclude or mistreat members of our community in many, many of these settings,” Pizer said.
The executive order also revokes a 2022 Biden administration rule in which the U.S. Department of State made it possible for people applying for American passports to select “X” to mark their gender.
The rule announced by then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the Transgender Day of Visibility and was designed to accommodate nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming individuals.
Lambda Legal was behind the effort to implement an “X” gender marker for passports. Their client at the time, Dana Zzyym, had been denied a passport because they were intersex and could not accurately pick between male or female on the application form, according to the organization.
“We’ll continue to stand with Dana and all intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people to defend their right to identity documents that accurately identify who they are, and their equal protection rights against targeting and exclusion by their own government,” it said in a statement posted to its website on Monday.
