SACRAMENTO, California: California sued the Trump administration Monday over its decision to end a program that shields young immigrants from deportation, saying it would be especially hard hit because it has more of the immigrants brought to the US illegally by parents or by parents who overstayed visas than any other US state.
The lawsuit’s legal arguments largely mirror those already filed in a lawsuit last week by 15 other states and the District of Columbia. Attorney generals for the states of Maine, Maryland and Minnesota joined California’s lawsuit.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said California’s case is stronger than the first lawsuit, filed last week, because more than 200,000 of the 800,000 participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program live in the state.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that California has the most to lose,” he said, flanked by two program participants who were brought to the US as 4-year-olds who now attend college in the Sacramento area.
Rosa Barrientos, 23, of East Los Angeles, who is now attending California State University, Sacramento, said she “was given wings” by the program. If it ends, she said, “I don’t know what’s going to become of my life.”
She was joined by 21-year-old Eva Jimenez of Visalia, who is attending the University of California, Davis, and said she is terrified that the program might end.
The lawsuit alleges the Trump administration violated the constitution and other laws when it rescinded the program.
It was announced as Mexico’s top diplomat, Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray visited California’s state capital to meet with lawmakers and DACA recipients as part of a two-day trip.
California’s state lawmakers are also expected to soon unveil changes to a bill aimed at limiting state and local officials’ cooperation with federal immigration authorities. California already has some of the most protective laws in the country for immigrants detained by local law enforcement. The state has limited police’s ability to detain immigrants for federal deportation agents since 2014, and requires jailers to inform inmates if agents are trying to detain them.
Illinois recently passed more even protective legislation that bars law enforcement from detaining immigrants solely for deportation, said Shiu Ming Cheer, senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. A handful of cities including Chicago and San Francisco, meanwhile, are refusing to cooperate with new federal requirements for tougher immigration enforcement, prompting the Trump administration to threaten to withhold funding.
The lawsuit relied mainly on procedural arguments, saying federal law requires that such decisions be made for sound reasons and only after the public has a chance to make formal comments. It said the administration failed to follow a federal law requiring it to consider negative effects of the decision on small businesses.
The lawsuit also said the Trump administration and immigration officials could use information provided by program participants to deport them and prosecute their employers. That would amount to misusing sensitive information provided in good faith by program participants, the lawsuit claimed.
“We don’t bait and switch in this country,” Becerra said.
Though Maine is listed as a plaintiff, its participation happened because Democrat Attorney General Janet Mills signed the state up. She has frequently broken with Republican Gov. Paul LePage in joining other states in lawsuits that run counter to his conservative views on immigration and other issues.
LePage sued Mills earlier this year for abuse of power. Mills, a 2018 gubernatorial candidate, recently called on the Trump administration to maintain DACA. LePage is prevented from running again because he is in his second term and is prohibited from seeking a third one by the state’s term limit law.
The University of California has also filed a legal challenge to ending the program.
Unlike the lawsuit filed in New York last week by the other states, the new challenge does not make the argument that Trump’s decision was motivated by anti-Mexican bias.
Instead, it hones in on statements by Trump administration officials that the young immigrants in the program rob US jobs from Americans and that the program led to a surge of Central American immigrants.
US Attorney General Jeff Session announced last week that new applications for the program are being halted and that it the program will end in six months if Congress does not take action.
He said the administration was acting because President Barack Obama created the program without Congressional approval in what he called “an unconstitutional exercise of authority.”
California challenges Trump’s end to young immigrant program
California challenges Trump’s end to young immigrant program
Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre
The surface-to-surface missile has a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles), the Pakistani military said.
The launch of the Abdali Weapon System was aimed at ensuring the “operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters,” including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features, according to a statement from the military.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated the scientists, engineers and those behind the successful missile test.
Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk
- There was no immediate comment from Ukraine
MOSCOW: The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after he said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged residential buildings and injured at least five people, including two children.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor, announced his decision on his official Telegram account which showed him inspecting the damage to apartment buildings and giving orders to officials.
Kravchenko said one of the injured people, a woman, was in hospital in a serious situation.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.
US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US.
Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan
- Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
- Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs
SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”
Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say
ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.
