Tag Archives: Immigrants

Government workers begin shutdown as Senate vote looms

The U.S. Capitol is lit during the second day of a shutdown of the federal government in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2018.

By Amanda Becker and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of federal workers began shutting down operations on Monday with the U.S. government closed and the Senate prepared to try again to restore funding, if only temporarily, and resolve a dispute over immigration.

As government employees prepared for the first weekday since the shutdown began at midnight Friday, U.S. senators were to vote at midday on a funding bill to get the lights back on in Washington and across the government until early February.

Support for the bill was uncertain, after Republicans and Democrats spent all day on Sunday trying to strike a deal, only to go home for the night short of an agreement.

Federal employees received notices on Saturday about whether they were exempt from the shutdown, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said. Depending on their schedules, some were told to stay home or to go to work for up to four hours on Monday to shut their operation, then go home. None will get paid.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said late Sunday that an overnight vote on a measure to fund government operations through Feb. 8 was canceled and would be held at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) on Monday.

Up until Monday, most federal workers were not directly affected by the shutdown that began at midnight on Friday.

The federal Office of Personnel Management said on its website on Sunday night that “federal government operations vary by agency.”

The Department of Defense published a memo on its website detailing who does and does not get paid in a shutdown and saying that civilian employees were on temporary leave, except for those needed to support active-duty troops.

The Department of Interior led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, offered no guidance on its website, which still had a “Happy Holidays from the Zinke Family” video near the top of the site. The department oversees national parks and federal lands.

The State Department website said: “At this time, scheduled passport and visa services in the United States and at our posts overseas will continue during the lapse in appropriations as the situation permits.”

Markets have absorbed the shutdown drama over the last week, and on Monday morning world stocks and U.S. bond markets largely shrugged off Washington’s standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback. U.S. stock futures edged lower.

‘DREAMERS’ DRAMA

The U.S. government has not been shut down since 2013, when about 800,000 federal workers were put on furlough. That impasse prevented passage of a needed funding bill centered on former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

The problem this time focused on immigration policy, principally President Donald Trump’s order last year ending an Obama program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gave legal protections to “Dreamer” immigrants.

The “Dreamers” are young people who were brought to the United States illegally as children by their parents or other adults, mainly from Mexico and Central America, and who mostly grew up in the United States.

Trump said last year he would end DACA on March 5 and asked Congress to come up with a legislative fix before then to prevent Dreamers from being deported.

Democrats have withheld support for a temporary funding bill to keep the government open over the DACA issue. McConnell extended an olive branch on Sunday, pledging to bring immigration legislation up for debate after Feb. 8 so long as the government remained open.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer objected to the plan and it was unclear whether McConnell’s pledge would be enough for Democrats to support a stopgap funding bill.

Congress failed last year to pass a complete budget by Oct. 1, the beginning of the federal fiscal year, and the government has been operating on a series of three stopgap spending bills.

Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where they have a slim 51-49 majority. But most legislation requires 60 Senate votes to pass, giving Democrats leverage.

Trump told a bipartisan Senate working group earlier this month that he would sign whatever DACA legislation was brought to him. The Republican president then rejected a bipartisan measure and negotiations stalled.

McConnell had insisted that the Senate would not move to immigration legislation until it was clear what could earn Trump’s support.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who is involved in bipartisan immigration negotiations, said McConnell’s statements on Sunday indicated there was progress in negotiations and he urged his Democratic colleagues to approve another stopgap bill.

(Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson and Damon Darlin; Editing by Peter Cooney and Jeffrey Benkoe)

IBM urged to avoid working on ‘extreme vetting’ of U.S. immigrants

IBM urged to avoid working on 'extreme vetting' of U.S. immigrants

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of rights groups launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to declare that it will not develop technology to help the Trump administration carry out a proposal to identify people for visa denial and deportation from the United States.

IBM and several other technology companies and contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, LexisNexis and Deloitte [DLTE.UL], attended a July informational session hosted by immigration enforcement officials that discussed developing technology for vetting immigrants, said Steven Renderos, organizing director at petitioner the Center for Media Justice.

President Donald Trump has pledged to harden screening procedures for people looking to enter the country, and also called for “extreme vetting” of certain immigrants to ensure they are contributing to society, saying such steps are necessary to protect national security and curtail illegal immigration.

The rights group said the proposals run counter to IBM’s stated goals of protecting so-called “Dreamer” immigrants from deportation.

Asked about the petition and whether it planned to work to help vet and deport immigrants, an IBM spokeswoman said the company “would not work on any project that runs counter to our company’s values, including our long-standing opposition to discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.”

The petition is tied to a broader advocacy campaign, also begun Thursday, that objects to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Extreme Vetting Initiative.

In an Oct. 5 email seen by Reuters, Christopher Padilla, IBM’s vice president of government affairs, cited the company’s opposition to discrimination in response to an inquiry about the vetting program from the nonprofit group Open Mic.

Padilla said the meeting IBM attended was only informational and it was “premature to speculate” whether the company would pursue business related to the Extreme Vetting Initiative.

Booz Allen Hamilton, LexisNexis and Deloitte did not immediately respond when asked about the campaign, which also highlighted their attendance at the July meeting.

ICE wants to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to determine whether an individual is a “positively contributing member of society,” according to documents published on federal contracting websites.

More than 50 civil society groups and more than 50 technical experts sent separate letters on Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security saying the vetting program as described was “tailor-made for discrimination” and contending artificial intelligence was unable to provide the information ICE desired.

Opponents of Trump’s policies ranging from immigration to trade have been pressuring IBM and other technology companies to avoid working on proposals in these areas from the Republican president’s administration.

Shortly after the presidential election last year, for example, several internet firms pledged that they would not help Trump build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations.

IBM is among dozens of technology companies to join a legal briefing opposing Trump’s decision to end the “Dreamer” program that protects from deportation about 900,000 immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.

“While on the one hand they’ve expressed their support for Dreamers, they’re also considering building a platform that would make it easier to deport them,” Renderos said.

CREDO, Daily Kos, and Color of Change also organized the petition.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington, additional reporting by Salvador Rodriguez in San Francisco, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and David Gregorio)

Trump slaps travel restrictions on North Korea, Venezuela in sweeping new ban

International passengers wait for their rides outside the international arrivals exit at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S. September 24, 2017.

By Jeff Mason and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Sunday slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding to eight the list of countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by critics and challenged in court.

Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted.

The measures help fulfill a campaign promise Trump made to tighten U.S. immigration procedures and align with his “America First” foreign policy vision. Unlike the president’s original bans, which had time limits, this one is open-ended.

“Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” the president said in a tweet shortly after the proclamation was released.

Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.

The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening. The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Oct. 18 and resulted from a review after Trump’s original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges.

The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list.

An administration official, briefing reporters on a conference call, acknowledged that the number of North Koreans now traveling to the United States was very low.

Rights group Amnesty International USA condemned the measures.

“Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” it said in a statement.

“It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the U.S. government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalized.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement the addition of North Korea and Venezuela “doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban.”

The White House portrayed the restrictions as consequences for countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed, the White House said.

A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen. Others did not, sparking the restrictions.

The announcement came as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on Oct. 10 over the legality of Trump’s previous travel ban, including whether it discriminated against Muslims.

 

NORTH KOREA, VENEZUELA ADDED

Trump has threatened to “destroy” North Korea if it attacks the United States or its allies. Pyongyang earlier this month conducted its most powerful nuclear bomb test. The president has also directed harsh criticism at Venezuela, once hinting at

a potential military option to deal with Caracas.

But the officials described the addition of the two countries to Trump’s travel restrictions as the result of a purely objective review.

In the case of North Korea, where the suspension was sweeping and applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants, officials said it was hard for the United States to validate the identity of someone coming from North Korea or to find out if that person was a threat.

“North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever,” one official said.

The restrictions on Venezuela focused on Socialist government officials that the Trump administration blamed for the country’s slide into economic disarray, including officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and their immediate families.

Trump received a set of policy recommendations on Friday from acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and was briefed on the matter by other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a White House aide said.

The rollout on Sunday was decidedly more organized than Trump’s first stab at a travel ban, which was unveiled with little warning and sparked protests at airports worldwide.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump told reporters about the ban: “The tougher, the better.”

Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed restrictions differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, officials said.

Somalis, for example, are barred from entering the United States as immigrants and subjected to greater screening for visits.

After the Sept. 15 bombing attack on a London train, Trump wrote on Twitter that the new ban “should be far larger, tougher and more specific – but stupidly, that would not be politically correct.”

The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from the six countries for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days to give Trump’s administration time to conduct a worldwide review of U.S. vetting procedures for foreign visitors.

Critics have accused the Republican president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing U.S. immigration law and stoking religious hatred.

Some federal courts blocked the ban, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect in June with some restrictions.

 

(Additional reporting by James Oliphant, Yeganeh Torbati, and Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

U.N. panel urges end to detention of would-be immigrants in U.S.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest an immigrant in San Clemente, California,

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – A U.N. human rights panel urged the United States on Monday to end widespread detention of would-be immigrants including asylum-seekers, saying the practice has “grown exponentially” and violates international law.

The holding of migrants and would-be refugees in custody is often “punitive, unreasonably long, unnecessary and costly” and should be used only as a last resort, the panel said in a 23-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Each year, an estimated 352,850 people are detained across the United States pending the outcome of their immigration proceedings at a cost of about $2 billion, it said.

The independent experts, who form the U.N. working group on arbitrary detention, were reporting on their mission last October at the invitation of the Obama administration.

“The Working Group is of the view that all administrative detention, in particular of immigrants in an irregular situation, should be in accordance with international human rights law; and that such detention is to be a measure of last resort, necessary and proportionate and be not punitive in nature, and that alternatives to detention are to be sought whenever possible,” the report said.

In Washington, a White House spokeswoman said “That’s a question for the U.N.” when asked to comment on the panel’s findings. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump has backed legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants, describing it as vital to protect American lives.

The U.N. experts interviewed 280 detainees during their visits to nine prisons in Texas, California and Illinois. Some were remote locations with limited access to legal services.

They reported seeing immigrants and asylum seekers held in “punitive conditions” comparable to those of convicted criminals despite their right to seek asylum under international law.

In some cases, the length of detention pending immigration proceedings was “unreasonable”, lasting from six months to more than one year without resolution.

The experts voiced concern at Trump’s executive order in January and an implementing memorandum that “lay the groundwork for expanding the existing detention system by increasing the number of individuals subject to immigration detention”.

“Under the order, apprehended individuals may be detained ‘on suspicion’ of violating federal or state law, which includes unauthorized entry,” they said.

They received information in March that the Department of Homeland Security was considering separating children from parents caught crossing the border, “in an attempt to deter illegal immigration from Mexico,” they said.

“This is particularly serious given the increasing trend of unaccompanied children migrating to escape violence and reunite with family members.”

 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

 

Exclusive: U.S. asks nations to provide more traveler data or face sanctions

Staff demonstrate the flow of passengers as they queue to X-ray shoes, mobile phone and bags at the security gates at Cointrin airport in Geneva, Switzerland, November 24, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Arshad Mohammed and Mica Rosenberg

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department will require all nations to provide extensive data to help it vet visa applicants and determine whether a traveler poses a terrorist threat, according to a cable obtained by Reuters.

Countries that fail to comply with the new protocols or take steps to do so within 50 days could face travel sanctions.

The cable, sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts on Wednesday, is a summary of a worldwide review of vetting procedures that was required under U.S. President Donald Trump’s revised March 6 executive order that temporarily banned U.S. travel by most citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries.

The memo lays out a series of standards the United States will require of other countries, including that they issue, or have active plans to issue, electronic passports and regularly report lost and stolen passports to INTERPOL.

It also directs nations to provide “any other identity information” requested by Washington for U.S. visa applicants, including biometric or biographic details.

The cable sets out requirements for countries to provide data on individuals it knows or has grounds to believe are terrorists as well as criminal record information.

Further, countries are asked not to block the transfer of information about U.S.-bound travelers to the U.S. government and not to designate people for travel watchlists based solely on their political or religious beliefs.

“This is the first time that the U.S. Government is setting standards for the information that is required from all countries specifically in support of immigration and traveler vetting,” the cable said.

The cable can be read here: (http://reut.rs/2untHTl).

The new requirements are the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration says it is taking to better protect the United States from terrorist attack.

However, former officials said much of the information sought is routinely shared between countries, including examples of passports and additional details about particular travelers that may present security concerns.

Some U.S. allies may worry about privacy protections if Washington is seen as seeking information beyond what is already shared, said John Sandweg, a former senior Homeland Security Department official now with the firm Frontier Solutions.

“I don’t think you can ignore the political aspects of the unpopularity of the current administration. That puts political pressure to stand up to the administration,” he said.

The cable lays out risk factors the U.S. government will consider when evaluating a country. Some of these are controversial and could be difficult for countries to prove to U.S. satisfaction, including ensuring “that they are not and do not have the potential to become a terrorist safe haven.”

Countries are also expected to agree to take back citizens ordered removed from the United States.

If they do not provide the information requested, or come up with an adequate plan to, countries could end up on a list to be submitted to Trump for possible sanction, including barring “categories” of their citizens from entering the United States.

The real worries for countries may not come until the results of this review are known, said Leon Rodriguez, the former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“Once they start making decisions I think that is where there is going to be a lot of anxiety,” he said, saying delays in visa processing for nations that do not pose much of a threat could start to hurt “ordinary business and personal travel.”

The most controversial of Trump’s immigration-related moves are two executive orders, challenged in federal court, which impose a temporary ban on travel to the United States for most citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

While the orders were initially blocked from being enforced, the Supreme Court on June 26 allowed the ban to go into effect for people from the six nations with no strong ties to the United States.

The cable requires countries to act quickly, but stressed that the United States would work with foreign nations to assess if they meet the standards and, if not, to come up with a plan to help them do so.

The cable asks that U.S. diplomats “underscore that while it is not our goal to impose a ban on immigration benefits, including visas, for citizens of any country, these standards are designed to mitigate risk, and failure to make progress could lead to security measures by the USG, including a presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of certain categories of foreign nationals of non-compliant countries.”

The cable says the U.S. government has made a preliminary determination that some countries do not meet the new standards and that others are “at risk” of not meeting them. It does not name these, listing them in a separate, classified cable.

The State Department declined comment on the cable, saying it would not discuss internal communications.

“The U.S. government’s national security screening and vetting procedures for visitors are constantly reviewed and refined to improve security and more effectively identify individuals who could pose a threat to the United States,” said a U.S. State Department official on condition of anonymity.

(Additional reporting by Julia Ainsley and Andrew Chung; Editing by Sue Horton, Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio)

Massachusetts challenges immigration detention in state court

A demonstrator holds a sign during a rally at the City College of New York (CCNY) to protest the immigration and deportation policies of the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – The state of Massachusetts on Tuesday asked its top court to find that state authorities lack the authority to detain illegal immigrants who come in contact with the legal system to buy time for federal authorities to take them into custody.

The hearing amounted to a challenge to requests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for courts and law enforcement agencies to keep illegal immigrants facing civil deportation orders in custody for up to 48 hours after their cases are resolved, a practice expected to step up under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The state argued that keeping someone in custody after his or her case is resolved amounted to a fresh arrest of the person without sufficient legal justification.

“Probable cause for civil removability is simply not a basis for arrest under Massachusetts law,” Jessica Barnett, an assistant state attorney general told the court. She noted that state law does not specifically give law enforcement agencies the power to arrest people facing civil deportation proceedings.

The U.S. Justice Department argued the detainer requests reflect basic practices of cooperation between various law enforcement agencies.

“From our perspective, all states have an inherent authority to police their sovereignty,” said Joshua Press, the lawyer representing the Justice Department.

The case was sparked by the arrest last year of Sreynuon Lunn, a man who Press said entered the United States as a refugee in 1985 and was ordered deported to Cambodia in 2008 after a series of criminal convictions.

Cambodia had declined to accept him and he was released. He was arrested in Boston on an unarmed robbery charge and ordered released in February after prosecutors failed to present a case. While he was waiting to be let out from his court holding cell, federal ICE officials took him into custody.

As a practical matter, his arrest by ICE makes the case moot but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed to take the case on premise that cooperation between law enforcement in the state and ICE would come up again.

Trump has made immigration enforcement a centerpiece of his presidency, vowing to wall off the Mexican border, deport an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the country and cut off Justice Department grants to cities that fail to help U.S. immigration authorities.

Attorneys for Lunn and the state largely agreed on the matter, with both sides contending that state agencies lacked authority to comply with the ICE detainer requests. But Lunn’s attorneys went further, arguing that the detainer process violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process because judges are not involved in issuing them.

“There is no fixing the constitutional problems here,” said Emma Winger, a public defense attorney representing Lunn.

Lunn’s attorneys have declined to answer questions about the status of the deportation case. The court did not immediately rule on the matter.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Marguerita Choy)

Germany deporting more ‘potential attackers’ after Berlin attack

Flowers and candles are pictured at the site where on December 19, 2016 a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near Kurfuerstendamm avenue in Berlin, Germany, January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany has deported 10 potential attackers since January as part of a tougher approach toward failed asylum seekers after one of them killed 12 people in an attack on a Berlin Christmas market, security sources said on Thursday.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and other top officials have been pushing for quicker deportations of those denied asylum, while working with Morocco, Tunisia and other countries to speed up the repatriation process.

Tunisian Anis Amri, a supporter of Islamic State, attacked the Berlin market in December after being denied asylum. He was shot dead by Italian police days later.

Shortly after the incident, German’s Joint Terrorism Prevention Centre (GTAZ), reviewed the open cases of all other “potential attackers” like Amri, the sources said.

“A total of 10 potential attackers have since been successfully deported in a joint effort with the affected German states,” said one of the sources.

The suspected militants were sent back to mainly North African countries, the sources said, without providing details.

The change in approach was agreed by de Maiziere and Justice Minister Heiko Maas at a meeting on Jan. 10, where both men agreed that the Amri case must not be repeated.

In Amri’s case, one of the obstacles to physically deporting him was Tunisia’s failure to issue replacement identification papers, despite the availability of finger- and handprints.

This month German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured a promise from Tunisia to take back 1,500 rejected Tunisian asylum seekers, with those who agreed to leave voluntarily eligible to receive government aid. Germany also offered Tunisia 250 million euros in development aid.

Merkel, who will seek a fourth term as chancellor in September, has come under fire for allowing more than one million refugees to enter Germany over the past two years.

De Maiziere vowed on Tuesday to continue pushing for legislative changes that would make it easier to detain and deport potential attackers following the Amri case. One proposed law also calls for use of electronic tags.

The security sources said state prosecutors in the past had sought to exhaust opportunities to prosecute potential attackers in Germany for various other infractions, but this had proven difficult and time-consuming.

The sources did not provide details on the 10 individuals deported or say whether they were related to the Amri case. German authorities have arrested at least two individuals who had contact with Amri before the December attack.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Dutch vote in test of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders of the PVV party surrounded by security as he votes in the general election in The Hague, Netherlands, March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

By Stephanie van den Berg and Toby Sterling

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The Dutch tested their own tolerance for immigration and Islam on Wednesday in an election magnified by a furious row with Turkey, the first of three polls in the European Union this year where nationalist parties are seeking breakthroughs.

The center-right VVD party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, 50, is vying with the PVV (Party for Freedom) of anti-Islam and anti-EU firebrand Geert Wilders, 53, to form the biggest party in parliament.

As many as 13 million voters began casting ballots at polling stations across the country that will close at 2000 GMT. A charged campaign, plus clear skies and sunshine meant high turnout was expected. National broadcaster NOS said that by 0930 GMT in the morning, turnout was at 15 percent, 2 percent ahead of the previous parliamentary election in 2012.

With as many as four out of 10 voters undecided a day before voting and a tight margin of just 4 percent between leading candidates, the outcome was unpredictable.

Wilders, who has vowed to “de-Islamicise” the Netherlands, has little chance of forming a government given that other leading parties have ruled out working with him. But a first place PVV finish would still send shockwaves across Europe.

The vote is the first gauge this year of anti-establishment sentiment in the European Union and the bloc’s chances of survival after the 2016 surprise victory of “America First” presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States and Britain’s vote to exit the EU.

“Whatever the outcome of the election today the genie will not go back into the bottle and this patriotic revolution, whether today or tomorrow, will take place,” Wilders said after voting at a school in The Hague.

Wilders won over Wendy de Graaf, who dropped her children off at the same school. “I hope he can make a change to make the Netherlands better.. I don’t agree with everything he says… but I feel that immigration is a problem,” she said.

France chooses its next president in May, with far-right Marine Le Pen set to make the second-round run-off, while in September right-wing euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany, which has attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, will probably win its first lower house seats.

Rutte, who has called the Dutch vote a quarter-final before a French semi-final and German final said a Wilders victory would be felt well beyond the Netherlands.

“I think the rest of the world will then see after Brexit, after the American elections again the wrong sort of populism has won the day,” he said.

Late opinion polls indicated a three percentage point lead for his party over Wilders’, with a boost from a rupture of diplomatic relations with Ankara after the Dutch banned Turkish ministers from addressing rallies of overseas Turks.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the Dutch of behaving like Nazis, and Rutte’s government expelled a Turkish minister who had traveled to the country to address Erdogan supporters at an impromtu rally without seeking permission.

“I think Rutte did well this weekend with the Turkey row,” said Dave Cho, a 42-year-old supply manager and long-time VVD supporter.

On Wednesday morning, two major publicly subsidized voter information websites were offline, targeted by a DDoS cyber attack.

It was not clear whether Wednesday’s attack was related to the row with Turkey, which also led to the temporary defacement of numerous small websites in the Netherlands.

Separately on Wednesday, several large Twitter accounts including that of the European Parliament, Reuters Japan, Die Welt, Forbes, Amnesty International and Duke University were hijacked temporarily, apparently by Turkish activists.

NO CLEAR WINNER, WEEKS OF BARGAINING

Unlike the U.S. or French presidential elections, there will be no outright Dutch winner under its system of proportional representation. Up to 15 parties could win a seat in parliament and none are set to reach even 20 percent of the vote.

Experts predict a coalition-building process that will take many months once the final tally is known.

Rutte’s last government was a two-party coalition with the Labour Party, but with no party polling above 17 percent, at least four will be needed to secure a majority in parliament. It would be the first such multi-party alliance since three in the 1970s. Two of those fell apart within 12 months.

In a final debate on Tuesday night, Wilders clashed with Lodewijk Asscher, whose Labour party stands to lose two-thirds of its seats in its worst defeat ever on current polling.

Asscher defended the rights of law-abiding Muslims to not be treated as second-class citizens or insulted, saying “the Netherlands belongs to all of us, and everyone who does his best.” Wilders shot back: “The Netherlands is not for everyone. The Netherlands is for the Dutch.”

Front-runner Rutte, who is hoping Dutch economic recovery will help him carry the election, has been insistent on one thing – that he will neither accept the PVV as a coalition partner nor rely on Wilders to support a minority government, as he did in 2010-2012.

“Not, never, not,” Rutte told Wilders.

(Additional reporting by Phil Blenkinsop and Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

South African police break up anti-immigrant protests

Somali nationals argue with police during clashes in Pretoria, South Africa, February 24, 2017. REUTERS/ James Oatway

By TJ Strydom

PRETORIA (Reuters) – South African police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse rival marches by hundreds of protesters in Pretoria on Friday, after mobs looted stores this week believed to belong to immigrants.

Anti-immigrant violence has flared sporadically in South Africa against a background of near-record unemployment, with foreigners being accused of taking jobs from citizens and involvement in crime.

Armed police had formed a barrier between rival crowds of citizens and non-nationals marching in Pretoria, but both sides began shouting at one another and brandishing rocks and sticks, prompting police to disperse the angry mobs.

Shops were shuttered in Marabastad, an area of western Pretoria where many foreign nationals have their stores, and roads were blocked as the marchers gathered. Some of the foreigners carried rocks and sticks, saying they were ready to protect their stores.

One Somali shopowner, 37, said he feared for his life. “My shops get looted a few times a year,” he said.

The marches follow the looting this week of at least 20 small businesses believed to belong to Nigerian and Pakistani immigrants. Residents said they had attacked the shops because they were dens of prostitution and drug dealing. Some said they had lost jobs to the foreigners.

A 34-year old South African, who declined to be named, said a Zimbabwean took his job at a manufacturing plant because he was willing to work for less.

“The police must leave us alone so we can sort them out,” he said, pointing at a group of foreign shop owners.

Random acts of violence, looting and destruction of property had occurred, Acting National Police Commissioner Khomotso Phahlane said.

“Over 24-hour period, 156 have been arrested,” Phahlane told a news conference, and “those inciting violence will face prosecution.” It was unclear how many of those in custody were South Africans and how many foreigners.

President Jacob Zuma condemned acts of violence between citizens and non-nationals, his office said in a statement on Friday. Zuma appealed to citizens not to blame all crime on non-nationals.

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba on Thursday acknowledged violence had flared up against foreigners this year, adding that “unfortunately, xenophobic violence is not new in South Africa.”

In retaliation, Nigerian protesters vandalized the head office of South African mobile phone company MTN in Abuja on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Nigeria’s foreign ministry said it would summon South Africa’s envoy to raise its concerns over “xenophobic attacks” on Nigerians, other Africans and Pakistanis.

(Writing by James Macharia, editing by Larry King)

Immigrants across the U.S. skip work, school in anti-Trump protest

A sign in the window of Ted's Bulletin Restaurant on 14th St proclaims it closed in honor of the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, D.C., U.S. February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

By Serena Maria Daniels and Marty Graham

DETROIT/SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – Businesses shut their doors, students skipped class and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in cities across the United States on Thursday to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Activists called “A Day Without Immigrants” to highlight the importance of the foreign-born, who account for 13 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 40 million naturalized American citizens.

Trump campaigned against the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, playing on fears of violent crime while promising to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and stop potential terrorists from entering the country.

While the number of participants in Thursday’s protests could not be determined, many sympathetic business owners closed shop and working-class immigrants forwent pay for the day.

“I told my English teacher that I wasn’t going to school, and she said she understood,” said Rosa Castro, a 13-year-old U.S. citizen in Detroit, who marched with her 26-year-old sister, one of several undocumented family members whose future she is concerned about.

Since taking office last month, the Republican president has signed an executive order temporarily banning entry to the United States by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all refugees. That order was put on hold by federal courts.

Immigrant rights groups have also expressed alarm after federal raids last week rounded up more than 680 people suspected of being in the country illegally.

In San Diego’s Logan Heights neighborhood, a 44-year-old undocumented business owner who identified herself only as Lucia for fear of deportation told Reuters she closed her nutrition shop for the day, costing her $200.

“Our community is frightened and cannot speak out,” she said. “Things are very bad for us with the new president.”

Advocates have called attention to cases such as one in El Paso, Texas, where federal agents arrested a transgender woman as she left a courthouse where she was seeking a protective order for domestic violence.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe wrote Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to express concern over immigration enforcement in his state, citing an NBC Washington report that agents arrested people outside a church that operates as a shelter from the cold.

Sympathy marches and rallies were held in cities including Raleigh, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas. Thousands joined demonstrations in Chicago and Detroit.

In the Los Angeles Fashion District – comprising some 4,000 apparel outlets, showrooms and manufacturers covering about 100 blocks of downtown – about half the shops in the area’s retail core were closed, along with about 40 percent of one of the large flower markets in the area, said district spokeswoman Ariana Gomez.

A Southern California grocery chain, Northgate Gonzalez Markets, said it gave employees at 41 stores and the corporate headquarters permission to use paid personal time off to participate.

In Washington, more than 50 restaurants were closed, including high-end eateries.

“As far as I’m aware, all of our immigrant employees chose to take the day off,” said Ruth Gresser, 57, who owns four pizza restaurants in the District of Columbia area. “We have three relative novices and an old lady making pizza,” she said, referring to herself.

At the Pentagon, about half a dozen food outlets were forced to close after staff members joined the protest, a Defense Department spokesman said.

The National Restaurant Association criticized the walkouts, saying in a statement that the organizers “disrupt the workplaces of hard-working Americans who are trying to provide for their families.”

In Austin, hundreds chanting “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here” marched from City Hall to the State Capitol, where lawmakers in the Republican-controlled body are considering a measure to punish sanctuary cities that shield immigrants from federal agents.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax, Gina Cherelus and Yahaira Jacquez in New York, Robert Chiarito in Chicago, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Serena Maria Daniels in Detroit, Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago, Lisa Baertlein and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Sharon Nunn in Raleigh, N.C., Marty Graham in San Diego and Idrees Ali, Liza Feria, Lacey Ann Johnson and Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andrew Hay)