Former top DOJ immigration official says she was removed with no explanation
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(WASHINGTON) — A former top Justice Department immigration official who was removed from her position by new DOJ leadership this week told ABC News that she did not receive any explanation for her removal.
Lauren Alder Reid was one of four top officials from the agency that operates the U.S. immigration courts who was removed from her post. She had been with the agency for more than 14 years.
“They did not give me any reason, other than not citing the 16 years of outstanding performance evaluation for lack of any discipline, administrative leave or reassignment in my entire career,” Reid told ABC News.
The firings come as President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of immigration executive orders after vowing on the campaign trail to clamp down on immigration and undo Biden-era policies.
When asked if she’s considering legal action, Reid, who was the assistant director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s office of policy, said that she and the others are considering all options available to them.
“It’s pretty hard to sit back and imagine that this could begin to happen, at will, to any employee throughout the government, especially when we’re talking about public servants who have dedicated their careers to try to make our country the best,” she said.
The Justice Department employs about 700 immigration judges who decide whether migrants seeking asylum in the United States can remain in the country legally. There is currently an historic backlog of 3.5 million cases.
Reid said drastic reform is needed to address the backlog, saying, “Congress needs to act.”
Asked what message her removal sends to other career officials in the federal government, Reid said that employees are fearful. “If fear is what they wanted, that’s what they’re getting,” Reid said.
Sen. John Thune; Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are poised to make a historic decision on Wednesday when they’ll gather behind closed doors to select their new party leader — and President-elect Donald Trump’s influence in undeniable as he insists that whoever be selected support his ability to install recess appointments to his Cabinet.
With Trump’s victory and Senate Republican’s majority secured, the lead up to the race has intensified the jockeying between the three major contenders for the position: Sen. John Thune, Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Rick Scott.
The leadership election, slated to occur just one day after the Senate returns from its monthlong election recess, will see Senate Republicans selecting their first new leader since 2007, when current Republican Leader Mitch McConnell first won the job. McConnell is the longest-serving party leader in United States history, but announced earlier this year he’d be stepping aside after the election.
Thune, a South Dakota Republican who currently serves as the No. 2 Republican, is somewhat of a front-runner in the race. He has served as the party whip for the last six years and in that time has notched a number of policy wins for the party, and has been working behind closed doors to whip support for the role for months. Thune said he keeps in regular contact with Trump and his team, but the two have at times had an icy relationship.
Running against Thune is Cornyn, a Texas Republican and another established GOP leader who served as the party’s whip for the six years prior to Thune before being term-limited out of the role. Though Cornyn has a slightly more conservative track record than Thune, he also faced ire from Trump for his support of the bipartisan gun safety bill that passed in the wake of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Also vying for the role is Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who just won reelection. Scott has attempted to brand himself as the most Trump-aligned of the contenders, but is less popular among some of his Senate colleagues after a stint atop the Senate GOP’s campaign arm in 2022 led to a less-than-successful night for Senate Republicans.
Trump won’t get a vote in this secret-ballot race, but his influence over it is palpable.
Many Republicans see Trump’s comfortable victory in Tuesday’s elections coupled with Senate Republicans’ new majority as a sweeping mandate to implement Trump’s policies, and as such, potential party leaders seem to be cozying up to Trump ahead of the vote.
Trump has not yet endorsed a specific candidate for the race, and it’s unclear whether he ultimately will. Instead, Trump has attempted to exert influence over the race by arguing that whoever is slated to fill the role supports a modification to what has become the Senate’s normal operating procedure to allow him to temporarily install appointments to federal vacancies without Senate approval during the Senate recesses.
“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner. Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Sunday.
Recess appointments are permitted by the constitution, and allow presidents to fill federal vacancies during Senate recesses. Though once a regular occurrence, the Senate has operated in such a way as to block all recess appointments since former President Barack Obama’s first term. Allowing recess appointments for Trump’s second term could allow controversial nominees who may otherwise fail to get the support they need from the GOP-controlled Senate to serve for nearly two years without Senate approval.
None of the top contenders have ruled out supporting the use of these recess appointments, and their responses to Trump’s post show how far each is willing to go to show that they’re on Trump’s side.
Though Thune said in an interview on Thursday that his “preference” would be for Trump to stay out of the Senate leadership race, he issued a statement Sunday night following Trump’s post affirming his commitment to installing Trump’s Cabinet, and not ruling out the appointments Trump is seeking.
“One thing is clear: We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments,” Thune said in a statement. “We cannot let Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats block the will of the American people.”
Cornyn meanwhile discussed the use of recess appointments with Trump prior to his post, per a source familiar. In a post on X Sunday afternoon, Cornyn affirmed his support, noting that if he is elected leader, he will keep the Senate in session continuously until nominees are confirmed.
“It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President @realDonaldTrump’s cabinet appointments. If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent. Additionally, the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments,” Cornyn wrote.
Almost immediately after Trump posted on Sunday, Scott posted on X that he was in lockstep with Trump on this policy.
“100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible,” Scott wrote, reposting Trump’s post.
A small handful of senators have come out publicly to endorse their chosen candidate.
Scott, for his part, has picked up endorsements from some of Trump’s most out-and-proud supporters in the Senate as well as a number of Trump-aligned outside voices, including Robert F. Kennedy and Elon Musk.
But this critical race has a very small constituency: only Republican senators serving in the incoming Senate get a vote. ABC News has not yet reported a projection in the Pennsylvania Senate race, but that means only about 52 people will get to cast ballots.
Senators are also shielded behind closed doors and by secret ballot in this race. In order to win the election, a candidate must amass a simple majority of the vote. If all candidates fail to get a simple majority, the lowest vote earner is eliminated from the process, and senators vote again.
Because of the secret nature of the vote, it’s unclear how much of an influence any outside factor, including Trump, will ultimately wield.
Newly elected incoming senators including Bernie Moreno of Ohio, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and John Curtis of Utah and Tim Sheehy of Montana will all be in attendance to cast votes.
Sen. JD Vance, who is now the vice president-elect, is also eligible to cast a vote in the election if he so chooses, but his team has not yet said whether he ultimately will attend Wednesday’s vote.
In addition to the closely-watched race for party leader, a number of other positions will also be selected during Wednesday’s vote. Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, is running unopposed to becoming the No. 2 Senate Republican. Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, and Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, are in a race to become the conference chair. Additional down-ballot races will also be voted on Wednesday.
Participants in the annual Christmas Parade march down Main Street, December 1, 2023, in Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas. The vast majority of rural Starr County, which follows the Rio Grande River border with Mexico, is Mexican American, and Spanish is the most commonly spoken first language. The area is a center for migrants crossing into the United States, but many residents have family on both sides of the border and cross legally on a regular basis. (Andrew Lichtenstein/ Getty Images)
(RIO GRANDE CITY, TX) — Starr County, Texas, voted predominantly Republican this month — for the first time in 100 years.
Home to some 75,000 residents across about 1,200 square miles, it has a relatively small footprint, in a state where everything is glorified for its bigness.
But it’s been making an outsized impression in national politics. Even after its historic flip from blue to red, a century in the making, it’s continued to garner headlines.
Last week, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered up 1,402 acres of Starr County to facilitate President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans.
In a letter to Trump dated Nov. 19, Buckingham said she’s offering the land, located along the border of Mexico, “to be used to construct deportation facilities.”
She has also proposed alternative uses for it, including as a site for detention centers.
“Now it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention center on there — a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country,” Buckingham said in a recent interview with Fox News.
The land, which Buckingham declared property of the state in 2023, adds to another parcel previously owned by the Texas General Land Office, bringing the southern border acreage that it controls in Starr County up to 4,000.
ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal visited Starr County to ask residents what issues and values most influenced them to vote for Republican candidates this year, instead of upholding their century-long blue streak.
“The economy is just driving, I think, everybody crazy,” said Becky Garza, the owner of Texas Cafe in Rio Grande City, the largest city in Starr County.
She explained that she used to complain about buying a box of eggs for $10, and now they’re $20.
“If things don’t get better, I might have to either cut staff, cut hours, or I’m going to start with cutting hours and then from there work it, maybe cut down, maybe cut the menu, you know, to keep the place open, you know, because I don’t want to lose my my customers,” Garza said.
And she doesn’t think she’s the only one who’s making those kinds of hard decisions, she told ABC News.
Jaime Escobar, the mayor of neighboring Roma, another city of Starr County, agrees. He suggested that residents are more influenced by the local economy than what’s being said in Washington, D.C.
“We no longer want to be considered just a poor community because we’re rich culturally,” he told ABC News. “We’re proud of our Mexican-American heritage, but we don’t — no longer want to be dependent just on the government.”
But with D.C. being invited into their backyard, it’s bound to bring the topic of migration and deportation to the forefront — even for those who may not have prioritized the issue during the election cycle.
Asked about how people might respond to a detention facility in nearby Starr County, Escobar said, “People don’t want families to be torn apart. That’s the last thing we want.”
“But at the same time,” he added, “we hope that Trump and his administration do the right thing and focus on the criminal element first, and then see how in the meantime, we’ll see how the policies can be implemented in a better way.”
Buckingham, on the other hand, believes that “folks who live down on the border feel really abandoned by those open border policies.”
She told ABC News, “They feel like it’s directly harming their communities, both their safety and their prosperity.”
In the same interview this week with ABC News, Buckingham also said that she would “absolutely” offer up even more of Texas, the way that she did Starr County.
“I have 13 million acres. If any of them can be of help in this process, we’re happy to have that discussion,” Buckingham said.
Trump has said he would carry out his mass deportation plans — a top campaign promise — by declaring a national emergency and using “military assets” to deport migrants currently living in the U.S. without legal permission.
He backed up his commitment with the choice of several immigration hard-liners to join his administration, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for secretary of homeland security and former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan as “border czar.” Both picks require Senate confirmation.
But with an estimated 11 million people presumed to be living in the U.S. without legal immigration status, the promises have raised questions of both feasibility and cost.
Removing them could cost billions of dollars per year, according to estimates from the American Immigration Council.
And while Republican-friendly areas of Texas might feel compelled to support the effort, other southern border states, like Arizona and California, have already expressed their disinterest.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live last week that she would not use state police or the National Guard to help with mass deportation.
“We will not be participating in misguided efforts that harm our communities,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the Justice Department — former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi — faces questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Democrats want to ask her about her vow to “prosecute the prosecutors — the bad ones” — referring to special counsel Jack Smith and other DOJ lawyers who investigated Trump.
Durbin raises concerns Bondi’s connections to Trump cases Durbin said he had concerns about Bondi’s work for Trump in his attempts to cast doubt on his 2020 election loss.
“You repeatedly described investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump, Trump as a witch hunt, and you have echoed his calls for investigating and prosecuting his political opponents. This flies in the face of evidence,” he said.
Durbin also as said he had concerns about Bondi’s controversial move to not investigate fraud claims against Trump University in 2016 when she was Florida’s attorney general.
“I also have questions whether you will focus on the needs of the American people rather than the wealthy special interests,” he said.
Durbin to challenge Bondi as hearing gets underway
In his prepared opening statement, top committee Democrat Dick Durbin will tell Bondi, “Ms. Bondi, you have many years of experience in law enforcement, including nearly a decade of service as attorney general in one of the largest states in the nation. But I need to know you would tell President Trump ‘No’ if you are faced with a choice between your oath to the Constitution and your loyalty to Mr. Trump.”
Trump says Bondi will end alleged ‘weaponization’ of DOJ
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump wrote in his announcement of Bondi for attorney general.
Bondi boosted Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud
Pam Bondi has developed a reputation as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most loyal defenders — a vocal political and legal advocate who represented Trump during his first impeachment, boosted his efforts to sow doubts about his 2020 election loss, and stood by him during his New York criminal trial. Read more about her background here.
Democrats to grill Pam Bondi over loyalty to Trump Bondi – Trump’s pick to head the Justice Department – has vowed, in a 2023 interview on Fox News, to ‘’prosecute the prosecutors – the bad ones’’ who investigated Donald Trump.
Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — whose members will question Florida’s former attorney general – has said ‘’she has echoed the President[-elect]’s calls for prosecuting his political opponents, and she has a troubling history of unflinching loyalty to the President-elect.”
