Migrants allowed in temporarily under Biden programs can be removed: DHS memo
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(WASHINGTON) — Migrants allowed into the U.S. temporarily under certain Biden administration programs can be quickly expelled, according to a memo sent by the Trump administration’s acting secretary of homeland security.
The memo, sent out Thursday night by Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman and obtained by ABC News, says that a migrant who has “been granted parole under a policy that may be paused, modified, or terminated” could be subject to expedited removal.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has the freedom to deport migrants covered by such “parole” programs — used to grant entrance to migrants under which for urgent humanitarian reasons.
The Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuela (CHNV) parole program allowed for certain migrants from those counties to apply for parole status into U.S. for up to two years. There were, however, conditions on the applicants, for example they needed to have a sponsor in the U.S. and be able to pass security vetting.
Both programs were swiftly done away with when President Donald Trump came into office earlier this week.
“The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country,” a DHS spokesperson said on Tuesday. “This was all stopped on day one of the Trump administration. This action will return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis.”
The memo, first reported by The New York Times, says it is up to an ICE agent to review an individual case and determine what enforcement is necessary.
“Take all steps necessary to review the alien’s case and consider, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether any such alien should be placed in removal proceedings; and Review the alien’s parole status to determine, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether parole remains appropriate in light of any changed legal or factual circumstances,” according to the memo.
The memo says for any person in the country legally who ICE is “aware of,” agents should take “all necessary steps to determine if they should be in the country
“Take all steps necessary to review the alien’s case and consider, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether to apply expedited removal. This may include steps to terminate any ongoing removal proceeding and/or any active parole status.”
The administration expanded its expedited removal authority to its “statutory maximum” — meaning someone who is in the country for less than two years can be removed without an immigration hearing — an interpretation of the law that immigration advocates say has never been used before.
“To maximize efficiency in the short term, DHS components may wish to prioritize aliens eligible for expedited removal who failed to apply for asylum within the statutory deadline,” the DHS memo said.
(WASHINGTON) — Calling it the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out sweeping moves Wednesday aimed at walking back environmental protections and eliminating a host of climate change regulations, some decades in the making.
Taken together, the agency’s actions indicate a wholesale reorientation of the agency away from government support of renewable energy, carbon reduction programs and air, water and soil regulations while threatening to gut the government’s past scientific findings at the core of most climate regulations.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin rolled out over two dozen policy announcements, through a series of press releases and public statements. The list of proposed changes includes rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production and a promise to work across the federal agencies to reevaluate the government finding that determined that greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane, not only heat the planet but are a threat to public health.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin wrote in a statement on EPA’s website.
The backlash from the environmental community was swift.
“If they get their way, they will wreck our air, our water, burn down our homes, and hand future generations an unlivable climate. From moms in the 1970s who wanted their kids to be able to play outside without getting asthma to young people in the 2020s who went on hunger strike to force Congress to pass a climate bill, generations of Americans have fought and sacrificed for these regulations,” the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement wrote in response.
“Corporate polluters are celebrating today because Trump’s EPA just handed them a free pass to spew unlimited climate pollution, consequences be damned. The Biden administration put the first-ever carbon limits on dirty coal and gas plants, cutting toxic air pollution, saving lives, and avoiding $270 billion in climate damages. Rolling back these protections is a direct attack on the communities that have been forced to breathe toxic air from polluting plants for decades,” climate advocacy organization Evergreen Action Senior Power Sector Policy Lead Charles Harper wrote in a statement.
Changes to the rules and regulations announced Wednesday will still have to go through the federal regulatory process and will likely have to stand up to numerous court challenges from environmental groups. However, today’s flurry of actions makes good on the president’s campaign promises to gut many of the long-established rules and regulations initially created to protect our water, air, soil and human health.
Endangerment finding
One of the most significant announcements was that the EPA would engage in the”formal reconsideration” of the agency’s endangerment finding.
In 2009, the EPA issued an “endangerment finding” determining that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and others, pose a danger to public health and the environment. This ruling, prompted by the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, gave the EPA the legal authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
This finding represents the legal underpinning for many regulations concerning greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions standards for vehicles, power plants and oil and gas production — all of which Zeldin said the agency would also reevaluate as it reconsiders the finding.
If the Trump Administration decides the endangerment finding is no longer applicable and that determination survives court challenges, 16 years’ worth of emissions regulations, including those enacted under President Biden, could be jeopardized.
Vehicle emissions standards
Zeldin also took aim at Biden-era vehicle standards, saying the EPA would terminate the tailpipe emissions regulations announced by the previous administration last year.
While the Trump Administration has repeatedly referred to these standards as an EV “mandate”, there was no such mandate put in place by the Biden administration.
The Biden Environmental Protection Agency implemented tailpipe emissions standards last March that established an average of allowed emissions across a vehicle manufacturer’s entire fleet of offered vehicles. The standards would have only impacted cars from model years 2027 to 2032 and allowed for a range of usable technologies, including fully electric cars, hybrids and improved internal combustion engines. These standards applied to light and medium-duty vehicles. A separate set of standards were released for heavy-duty vehicles.
As Zeldin’s EPA announced reconsideration of these standards, it released a statement saying, the regulations imposed, “$700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs,” alleging they took away, “Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.”
Impacts on coal
Another of the policies being reconsidered is the “Clean Power Plan 2.0,” which targets emissions from coal and natural gas power plants.
At the time, the agency claimed the new regulations would represent a massive reduction in pollution and save hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and public health costs as it would force power plants to control 90% of their carbon pollution through methods like carbon capture and tightened the emissions standards for toxic metals like mercury that are released from coal-fired plants.
In one of many press releases sent on Wednesday, the EPA called the rules “overreaching” and “an attempt to shut down affordable and reliable electricity generation in the United States, raising prices for American families, and increasing the country’s reliance on foreign forms of energy.”
Social cost of carbon
Also among the 31 actions announced by the agency is a revisiting of the “social cost of carbon,” with Zeldin saying the previous administration used the metric to “advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs.”
In 2010, the EPA under then-President Barack Obama released its first estimate for what it called the “social cost of carbon,” or SC-CO2. This metric meant to capture in dollars the long-term damage created by carbon dioxide emissions each year.
It estimated, in effect, the cost of damages related to climate change, including changes in agricultural productivity, human health, property damages from added flood risk, changes in energy costs and other considerations.
The Biden Administration later updated the estimate process to include consideration of additional factors, leading to an increase in the national SC-CO2. In December 2023, the Biden EPA updated the metric at a dramatically higher rate — $190 per ton of carbon, compared to the administration’s earlier estimate of $51 per ton.
“To Power the Great American Comeback, we are fully committed to removing regulations holding back the U.S.,” Zeldin said in the announcement.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Thursday will vote on Kash Patel’s controversial nomination to lead the FBI.
If confirmed, Patel will be the 18th Cabinet official approved by lawmakers since President Donald Trump’s inauguration one month ago.
Republicans have rallied around Patel, arguing he would bring reform to the nation’s top law enforcement agency they allege has been corrupted.
“Mr. Patel should be our next FBI director because the FBI has been infected by political bias and weaponized against the American people. Mr. Patel knows it, Mr. Patel exposed it, and Mr. Patel has been targeted for it,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said last week as the committee met to consider his nomination. The panel advanced Patel in a party-line vote.
Democrats, meanwhile, have objected to Patel up until the last minute. Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, held a press conference outside FBI headquarters on Thursday morning railing against Patel’s “bizarre political statements” on Jan. 6 to retribution.
He accused Republicans of “willfully ignoring red flags on Mr. Patel,” who he argued has “neither the experience, the judgment or the temperament” to be FBI chief for the next 10 years.
“Mr. Patel will be a political and national security disaster,” Durbin said.
Patel, 44, is a loyalist to the president and worked in a number of roles during Trump’s first administration, including acting deputy director of national intelligence.
Shortly after the November election, Trump indicated he would fire then-FBI Director Christopher Wray and tap Patel to take his place. Wray, first appointed by Trump in 2017, stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
Patel has been a vocal critic of the FBI for years, and previously said he wanted to clean out the bureau’s headquarters in Washington as part of a mission to dismantle the so-called “deep state.”
He faced pointed questions from Democrats on those comments and more — including support for Jan. 6 rioters and quotes that appeared favorable to the “QAnon” conspiracy movement — during his confirmation hearings last month.
Patel sought to distance from some of his past rhetoric, and told lawmakers he would take “no retributive actions” despite his history of comments about targeting journalists and government employees.
Patel, if confirmed, will take over an agency facing uncertainty and turmoil amid firings and other key changes.
The Justice Department’s sought a list of potentially thousands of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, ABC News previously reported, prompting agents to file a lawsuit to block the effort.
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(WASHINGTON) — Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has arrested over 32,000 migrants who are living in the United States without legal status since Jan. 21, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
