Faith leaders are calling on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately free a pair of pastors who advocates say were wrongfully detained by ICE agents in Texas on Thursday while traveling to a religious retreat.Pastor Nepthalí Zozaya Saucedo and his wife, pastor Cinthia Saraí Cardona Otero, were detained by federal immigration enforcers after arriving at McAllen International Airport.According to the couple and their church leaders, the longtime pastors at the Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel Assemblies of God congregation in Edinburg, Texas were on their way to a marriage retreat in North Carolina organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association when they were detained and taken to a US Border Patrol processing center in McAllen.At a Friday press conference hosted by leaders from the Assemblies of God and the Latino Christian National Network, LCN board member Sandy Ovalle said that the couple has valid R-1 religious worker visas.“We are calling for their immediate release, the protection of their due process rights, and an urgent oversight into ICE’s conduct,” Ovalle said. “No one should be pressured to give up their rights under the threat of losing their children.”A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Religion News Service that the pastors are “illegal aliens” who overstayed their visas.Addressing the conference by phone from the detention center, Nepthalí said that the couple was threatened with separation from their US citizen children if they did not sign papers authorizing their “voluntary” deportation.“They spoke with us about separation—to be separated from our children and even as married people,” he said, according to Religion News Service. “They spoke about how much time that we could end up spending here.”Speaking during the press conference, Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel senior pastor Sarai Martinez Luna said, “I think it’s very cruel that somebody that had no status for deportation be pressured to sign a voluntary deportation based on the separation of their children.”Friday’s news conference followed a Wednesday press briefing by faith leaders at the Texas Capitol in Austin to condemn the killings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán in Florida, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.“This is not of God. This is no peace that we want a part of because let’s be honest, this isn’t a peacekeeping initiative. This is a terror campaign with the mission of traumatizing our neighbors until they self-deport,” said Dan De Leon, senior pastor at Friends Congregational Church in College Station. “We don’t need terror. We need peace.”Elyse Rosenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women and Temple Beth Shalom in Austin said during the press conference that “throughout our history, we have repeatedly seen first-hand the consequences of governments exercising unchecked power on vulnerable populations.”Friday’s event also preceded nationwide vigils in more than 300 communities across the nation on Saturday to demand justice for the dozens of people who have been killed by federal enforcers or died in ICE custody during President Donald Trump’s second term.“We refuse to grieve quietly. We refuse to accept this terror and violence as inevitable," Crystal Cron, executive director of Presente! Maine, said ahead of the vigils. “Johan Sebastián should still be here with his wife and daughter—and instead, his name joins a growing list of people killed by an institution that treats our communities as disposable.”“This is bigger than one shooting,” Cron added. “We will not stop fighting until there is justice for the Durán Guerrero family and a total dismantling of this lawless, criminal agency that took him from them.”
President Donald Trump's escalating military campaign against Iran is achieving the “opposite” of its intended effect, according to a senior U.S. official cited in a New York Times report Saturday.“The official said the strikes have the opposite effect of what is intended, keeping Iran cohesive and allowing Iranian leaders to focus attention on an external threat,” the Times’ report reads.The assessment came after insiders leaked details to the Times about a Friday meeting between Trump and his top advisers and Cabinet members, where officials weighed whether or not to escalate the war further. According to the Times, few, if any, in Trump's inner circle believed intensifying the bombing campaign was wise.A separate senior official who was briefed on the discussion expressed doubts that resuming major combat operations would push Iran back to the table at all.The “private deliberations” focused on what officials warned was the Pentagon’s “shrinking inventory of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses,” the Times reported.“Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has cautioned privately that resuming major combat operations against Iran was doable but that it would dangerously deplete interceptors available to the military’s Central Command, which is responsible for operations in the Middle East, the officials said,” the Times’ report reads.Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a congressional committee that Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran had cost taxpayers $37.5 billion so far.The internal skepticism adds to a growing list of signs that the administration's approach to Iran isn't producing the results Trump has publicly promised, even as the financial and human costs of the conflict continue to climb.
Three-judge panel of Democratic appointees let stand lower court’s ruling that fee constitutes an unlawful tax A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by Donald Trump’s administration to halt a judge’s order preventing it from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined to put on hold a lower court judge’s 8 June ruling in a lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic state attorneys general, striking down the fee on the basis that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized. Continue reading...
Judge rejects administration’s request to lift injunction secured by several Democratic-led states on 25 JuneA federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump’s administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that will decide control of Congress.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president’s order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to pause the US district judge Indira Talwani’s ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. Continue reading...
The ruling on Saturday was the latest rebuke to President Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting. The government says it may take the case to the Supreme Court.
