The Jim Bakker Show

U.S. top court leaves intact ruling against Central America asylum seekers

A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., November 15, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria - RTX2TTHN

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped a turbulent debate over illegal immigration on Monday, turning away an appeal by a group of asylum-seeking Central American women and their children who aimed to clarify the constitutional rights of people who the government has prioritized for deportation.

The families, 28 women and 33 children ages 2 to 17 from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, had hoped the justices would overturn a lower court’s ruling preventing them from having their expedited removal orders reviewed by a federal judge.

That Philadelphia-based court said the status of the families, all apprehended in Texas and later held in Pennsylvania, was akin to non-citizens who are denied entry at the border and they were not entitled to a court hearing to challenge that decision.

Immigration has become an even hotter topic than usual in the United States since President Donald Trump took office in January. His administration has ordered construction of a border wall with Mexico intended to curb illegal immigration, and plans to expand the number of people targeted for expedited removal, a process that applies to non-citizens lacking valid entry documents.

The families have said they were escaping threats, violence and police authorities unable or unwilling to help in their home countries.

Lead plaintiff Rosa Castro fled El Salvador to escape years of rape, beatings and emotional abuse by the father of her son, who was 6 years old when they arrived in the United States in 2015, according to court papers. Lesly Cruz, who also arrived in 2015, fled Honduras to protect her daughter from sexual assault by members of the Mara Salvatrucha armed gang, the court papers said.

The families were apprehended in Texas within hours of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. After claiming asylum, they were determined by immigration judges to lack “credible fear” of persecution, and placed in expedited removal proceedings.

The families were detained at Berks County Residential Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania, where 12 women and their children remain. The others have been released under orders of supervision, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing them.

The women challenged in federal court the rejection of their asylum claims, alleging a violation of their right to due process under the U.S. Constitution.

In August, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said they may be treated the same way as non-citizens seeking initial admission to the United States, who do not have any constitutional rights of review if denied entry.

The women appealed to the Supreme Court.

There has been a 93 percent drop since December of parents and children caught trying to cross the Mexican border illegally into the United States, which U.S. officials attribute to the Trump administration’s tough policies.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

California judge questions Trump’s sanctuary city order

Avideh Moussavian, (R) a Policy Attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, speaks during a panel discussion promoting 'Justice and Equity in an Era of Indiscriminate Enforcement and Fear' at the National Conference on Sanctuary Cities in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Robin Respaut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California federal judge on Friday strongly questioned the U.S. Justice Department over whether to suspend an order by President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities for immigrants.

U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III questioned the purpose of the president’s order as he heard arguments from two large California counties and the Justice Department in San Francisco federal court. Both counties have asked for a nationwide preliminary injunction to the order.

As part of a larger plan to transform how the United States deals with immigration and national security, Trump in January signed an order targeting cities and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Sanctuary cities in general offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Sanctuary city is not an official designation.

Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose and several smaller Silicon Valley communities, sued in February, saying Trump’s plan to withhold federal funds is unconstitutional. San Francisco filed a similar lawsuit.

On Friday, the counties described the order as a “weapon to cancel all funding to jurisdictions,” said John Keker, an attorney representing Santa Clara County. “All around the country, including here, people are having to deal with this right now.”

Santa Clara County receives roughly $1.7 billion in federal and federally dependent funds annually, about 35 percent of its total revenues. The county argued that every day it is owed millions of dollars of federal funding, and its budgetary planning process had been thrown into disarray by the order.

The Justice Department said the counties had taken an overly broad interpretation of the president’s order, which would impact only Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security funds, a fraction of the grant money received by the counties.

The government also argued that there had been no enforcement action to date, and it was unclear what actions against the counties would entail.

Judge Orrick asked the government what was the purpose of an executive order, if it only impacted a small amount of county funding.

Attorneys for the government said the order had highlighted issues that the Trump Administration deeply cared about and a national policy priority.

To win a nationwide injunction, local governments must demonstrate a high level of harm, the Justice Department noted in court filings last month.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut; additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Civil liberties groups sue U.S., seek details on travel ban

Demonstrators participate in a protest by the Yemeni community against U.S. President Donald Trump's travel ban in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – Civil liberties groups on Wednesday said they were filing a series of lawsuits against the U.S. government seeking details on how federal agencies enforced President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The lawsuits were filed by local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union against U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security and cover their operations in 14 cities stretching from Portland, Maine, to San Diego.

The suits are an attempt to enforce requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) just days after Trump signed his first executive order limiting travel.

That Jan. 27 order, intended to fulfill a campaign promise to take a tough stance on immigration, first temporarily barred travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order, which also temporarily barred refugees, led to a weekend of chaos at U.S. airports with travelers barred from entering the country upon landing while thousands of people turned out to protest the measures.

A federal judge ordered a halt to enforcement of that ban and Trump followed up in March with a less-sweeping order that did not limit travelers from Iraq, but which has also been challenged in courts. Opponents said the orders violated the U.S. constitution’s prohibitions on religious discrimination, citing Trump’s campaign promises to impose a “Muslim ban.”

The Trump administration said the restrictions are legal and are necessary to protect U.S. national security.

The suits, filed in federal courts, seek disclosure of how many people have been detained or subjected to additional screening since the first executive order as well as the guidance that was provided to DHS staff about how to enforce the order.

“Customs and Border Protection has a long, rich history of ignoring its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and so these lawsuits are an effort to enforce its obligations,” said Zachary Heiden, legal director at the ACLU of Maine, in a phone interview. He noted that the ACLU filed its FOIA requests for information on Feb. 2.

Officials at CBP and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the suits.

In addition to Portland and San Diego, the suits cover CBP operations in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, Miami and Tampa. One suit filed in Florida covers the two cities in that state.

(Reporting by Scott Malone, editing by G Crosse)

Sessions visits U.S.-Mexico border to push migrant crackdown

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to law enforcement officers at the Thomas Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis Missouri, U.S. March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant

By Brad Poole

Nogales, Ariz. (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday to make his case for increased prosecutions of illegal immigrants.

Sessions, a long-time proponent of tougher immigration enforcement, told U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Port of Nogales, Arizona that more illegal migrants should be prosecuted as criminals.

Sessions said he was asking all U.S. attorneys to prioritize such cases.

It is normally the role of the Secretary of Homeland Security to meet border agents, but Sessions made the visit to highlight his focus on enforcing federal laws as dozens of U.S. cities try to shield illegal immigrants from stepped-up prosecution and deportation efforts.

“Why are we doing this?” the former U.S. senator said. “Because it is what the duly enacted laws of the United States require.”

Sessions said that each U.S. attorney would be required to designate a point person on border security prosecutions by April 18. The person in that position, known as a border security coordinator, would be directed to coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security, according to Sessions’ memo.

The directive did not go beyond existing laws, but Sessions said his order “mandates the prioritizations of such enforcement” by U.S. attorneys.

The Trump administration has threatened to cut off U.S. Justice Department grants to so-called sanctuary cities that fail to assist federal immigration authorities.

Police in such cities have argued that targeting illegal migrants is an improper use of law enforcement resources. Sessions has said a failure to deport aliens convicted of criminal offenses puts whole communities at risk.

Under U.S. law, anyone who harbors or transports an undocumented immigrant, has crossed the border illegally two or more times, resists an immigration officer’s arrest or commits travel document fraud is subject to criminal prosecution.

Other immigrants apprehended for crossing the border illegally face civil procedures, with deportation the only penalty.

He also said the Justice Department plans to add 50 more immigration judges in 2017 and 75 more in 2018. Immigration judges oversee civil immigration cases, where there is a backlog of over 540,000 pending cases due a shortage of judges.

(Writing by Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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)

Federal judge in Hawaii extends court order blocking Trump travel ban

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin (R) arrives at the U.S. District Court Ninth Circuit to seek an extension after filing an amended lawsuit against President Donald Trump's new travel ban in Honolulu. REUTERS/Hugh Gentry

HONOLULU (Reuters) – A federal judge in Hawaii indefinitely extended on Wednesday an order blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump’s revised ban on travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim countries.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson turned an earlier temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by the state of Hawaii challenging Trump’s travel directive as unconstitutional religious discrimination.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with a January executive order that caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February. Trump has said the travel ban is needed for national security.

In its challenge to the travel ban, Hawaii claims its state universities would be harmed by the order because they would have trouble recruiting students and faculty.

It also says the island state’s economy would be hit by a decline in tourism. The court papers cite reports that travel to the United States “took a nosedive” after Trump’s actions.

The state was joined by a new plaintiff named Ismail Elshikh, an American citizen from Egypt who is an imam at the Muslim Association of Hawaii and whose mother-in-law lives in Syria, according to the lawsuit.

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claim that the motivation behind it is based on religion and Trump’s election campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has,” Watson wrote on Wednesday.

Watson wrote that his decision to grant the preliminary injunction was based on the likelihood that the state would succeed in proving that the travel ban violated the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom protection.

Trump has vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives with the president’s pick – appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch – still awaiting confirmation.

(Reporting by Hunter Haskins in Honolulu; Additional reporting and writing by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Paul Tait)

California immigration forum highlights state’s red-blue divide

People protest outside before the start of a town hall meeting being held by Thomas Homan, acting director of enforcement for ICE, in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – Supporters and critics of President Donald Trump’s deportation policy packed a gymnasium in California’s heartland on Tuesday, trading jeers and ridicule during a raucous town hall meeting attended by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a pro-Trump Republican who enjoys strong backing in the region’s conservative suburbs, invited acting ICE Director Thomas Homan to address the public forum in the state capital.

The gathering got off to a boisterous start, with Jones’ opening remarks interrupted by shouts and heckling as he warned that spectators who continued to disrupt the meeting, attended by about 400 people, would be ejected.

About a dozen people were eventually escorted out of the hall.

Homan, whose agency has drawn fire for what some civil liberties advocates have criticized as heavy-handed tactics in rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, insisted ICE was acting in a targeted fashion against those with criminal records.

He said ICE was also focused on individuals who have violated final deportation orders or have returned after being removed from the country.

“We don’t conduct neighborhood sweeps,” he said over cat-calls. “I don’t want children to be afraid to go to school. I don’t want people to be afraid to go to the doctor.”

Still, he warned that ICE intended to “enforce the laws that are on the books.”

Democratic officials in the Sacramento area, home to about 2 million people in California’s Central Valley some 90 miles (145 km) east of San Francisco, have opposed the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and are leading a charge in the state legislature to fight his policies.

The division illustrates the complicated politics of the capital region, straddling jurisdictions where the predominantly liberal California coast bleeds into the more conservative interior of the state.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former top Democrat in the heavily blue state legislature, said at an earlier protest rally that ICE had failed to earn the community’s trust.

He called on Jones to end a county agreement with U.S. authorities in which jailed immigrants sought by federal agents for deportation are kept incarcerated beyond their scheduled release to allow ICE to take them into custody.

Among members of the public who spoke was Bernard Marks, 87, a Holocaust survivor, who said: “I spent 5 1/2 years in a concentration camp because we picked up people. Mr. Jones, history is not on your side.”

Another elderly participant, who identified himself only by his first name, Vincent, suggested those entering the United States illegally violated more than just immigration laws.

“How can an illegal alien get a job unless they’ve stolen a Social Security number,” he asked, visibly shaking with emotion after protesters yelled at him while he spoke.

Jones said earlier the town hall was an attempt to “find common ground by reducing conflicting information, eliminating ambiguity and reducing fear by presenting factual information.”

So many groups vowed to protest at the event that it had to be moved to a larger venue than originally planned.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Steve Gorman, Cynthia Osterman and Paul Tait)

Austria says wants exemption from EU migrant relocation system

Migrants wait to cross the border from Slovenia into Spielfeld in Austria, February 16, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria will seek an exemption from having to accept more asylum-seekers under an EU relocation system, it said on Tuesday, arguing that it has already taken in its fair share during Europe’s migration crisis.

The move is a new blow to the system that would cover only a fraction of migrant arrivals to the European Union and that has barely been implemented because of opposition led by Eastern European countries including Poland and Hungary.

It also coincides with a tightening of security and immigration rules by the centrist coalition government in Austria, where a wave of arrivals that began in 2015 helped fuel a rise in support for the far-right Freedom Party, which still leads in opinion polls.

“We believe an exception is necessary for Austria for having already fulfilled its obligation. We will discuss that with the European Commission,” Chancellor Christian Kern told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. “We will send a letter as quickly as possible and then begin discussions.”

Fewer than 14,500 asylum-seekers have been relocated from Greece and Italy, the first EU countries that many refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa set foot in, under the two-year EU plan that was supposed to cover 160,000 people and which expires in September.

“We are of the opinion … that the people in question here already sought an asylum application or arrived in Italy or Greece,” Kern said. “We must check whether we have already fulfilled our quota and discharged our obligation.”

Austria took in roughly 90,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population. More than a million migrants arrived in Germany that year, most of them having passed through Austria after crossing the Balkans from Greece.

Austria has repeatedly called on other EU countries to take their fair share, and has even backed the idea of financial penalties for those that do not.

The Commission granted Austria a temporary exception because of the large number of people it had taken in, but that has since expired.

“Austria is now expected to fulfill its legal obligation … to start relocating,” Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said.

The government has been seeking to erode support for the Freedom Party with a series of law-and-order measures and stricter immigration rules.

An “integration bill” agreed in cabinet on Tuesday would ban face-veils in public places and oblige unemployed refugees to perform jobs “of public utility” for no pay beyond their normal benefit payments.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; additional reporting by Waverly Colville in Brussels; Editing by Catherine Evans and Robin Pomeroy)

Exclusive: Immigration judges headed to 12 U.S. cities to speed deportations

A man, who was deported from the U.S. seven months ago, receives candy from his nephew across a fence separating Mexico and the United States as photographed from Tijuana, Mexico, March 4, 2017. Picture taken from the Mexican side of the border. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes/Files

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes, according to two administration officials.

How many judges will be reassigned and when they will be sent is still under review, according to the officials, but the Justice Department has begun soliciting volunteers for deployment.

The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona. They were chosen because they are cities which have high populations of illegal immigrants with criminal charges, the officials said.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, confirmed that the cities have been identified as likely recipients of reassigned immigration judges, but did not elaborate on the planning.

The plan to intensify deportations is in line with a vow made frequently by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for the judges’ reshuffle, an unusual move given that immigration courts are administered by the Department of Justice. A Homeland Security spokeswoman declined to comment on any plan that has not yet been finalized.

Under an executive order signed by Trump in January, illegal immigrants with pending criminal cases are regarded as priorities for deportation whether they have been found guilty or not.

That is a departure from former President Barack Obama’s policy, which prioritized deportations only of those convicted of serious crimes.

The policy shift has been criticized by advocate groups who say it unfairly targets immigrants who might ultimately be acquitted and do not pose a threat.

The cities slated to receive more judges have more than half of the 18,013 pending immigration cases that involve undocumented immigrants facing or convicted of criminal charges, according to data provided by the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review.

More than 200 of those cases involve immigrants currently incarcerated, meaning that the others have either not been convicted or have served their sentence. The Justice Department did not provide a breakdown of how many of the remainder have been convicted and how many are awaiting trial.

As part of the Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Justice Department is also sending immigration judges to detention centers along the southwest border. Those temporary redeployments will begin Monday.

‘AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING’

Former immigration judge and chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Schmidt said the Trump administration should not assume that all those charged with crimes would not be allowed to stay in the United States legally.

“It seems they have an assumption that everyone who has committed a crime should be removable, but that’s not necessarily true. Even people who have committed serious crimes can sometimes get asylum,” Schmidt said.

He also questioned the effectiveness of shuffling immigration judges from one court to another, noting that this will mean cases the judges would have handled in their usual courts will have to be rescheduled. He said that when he was temporarily reassigned to handle cases on the southern border in 2014 and 2015, cases he was slated to hear in his home court in Arlington, Virginia had to be postponed, often for more than a year.

“That’s what you call aimless docket reshuffling,” he said.

Under the Obama administration, to avoid the expense and disruption of immigration judges traveling, they would often hear proceedings from other courthouses via video conference.

The judges’ reshuffling could further logjam a national immigration court system which has more than 540,000 pending cases.

The cities slated to receive more judges have different kinds of immigrant populations.

Imperial, California, for example, is in one of the nation’s largest agriculture hubs, attracting large numbers of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico and Central America.

Bloomington, Minnesota, near St. Paul, is home to a large number of African immigrants, many of whom traveled from war-torn countries like Somalia to claim asylum in the United States.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Alistair Bell)

Exclusive: Canadian border authorities detaining record number of Mexicans

By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s border authorities detained more Mexicans in the first 67 days of 2017 than they did annually in any of the three previous years, according to statistics obtained by Reuters.

The spike comes immediately after Canada’s federal government lifted its visa requirement for Mexican citizens in December.

Many Mexicans looking north have shifted their focus from the United States to Canada as President Donald Trump vows to crack down on America’s undocumented immigrants, about half of whom are Mexican. On Friday, Reuters reported, immigration judges were reassigned to 12 U.S. cities to speed up deportation.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said it detained 444 Mexican nationals between Jan. 1 and March 8, compared with 410 for all of 2016, 351 for 2015, and 399 for 2014.

The CBSA can detain foreign nationals if it is believed they pose a danger to the public, if their identity is unclear or if they are deemed unlikely to appear for removal or for a proceeding.

The number of Mexicans turned back at the airport has risen, too – to 313 in January, more than any January since 2012 and more than the annual totals for 2012, 2013 and 2014.

With the visa requirement lifted, all that Mexicans need to come to Canada is an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA), obtainable online in a matter of minutes. But they cannot work without a work permit, and the eTA does not guarantee entry.

Canada issued 72,450 travel authorizations to Mexican citizens between Dec. 1, 2016, and March 10, 2017 – a significant increase compared with a similar period when visas were required.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Minister Ahmed Hussen has said his department is monitoring the situation.

“It would be premature to draw conclusions or to speculate on future policy at this point,” Hussen’s spokeswoman, Camielle Edwards, wrote in an email Friday evening.

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Leslie Adler)