Latest news with #sanctuary
CBS News
18 hours ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Trump administration can't require states to cooperate with ICE to get transportation funding, judge says
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from requiring almost two dozen mostly Democratic states to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to receive billions in transportation funding. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned in April his department may cut off grants to any recipients that fail to "cooperate generally with Federal authorities in the enforcement of Federal law" — part of a wider gambit to push back against "sanctuary" jurisdictions. A group of 20 states sued, arguing the administration doesn't have the legal authority to tie transportation dollars — which states rely on for upkeep of roads, airports and other infrastructure — to immigration enforcement. U.S. District Judge John McConnell sided with the 20 plaintiff states on Thursday, issuing a preliminary injunction that barred the government from enforcing the new immigration rules for "the States and their governmental subdivisions" while the lawsuit works its way through court. The policy, McConnell wrote, "is arbitrary and capricious in its scope and lacks specificity in how the States are to cooperate on immigration enforcement in exchange for Congressionally appropriated transportation dollars — grant money that the States rely on to keep their residents safely and efficiently on the road, in the sky, and on the rails." The Rhode Island judge added that "Congress did not authorize or grant authority to the Secretary of Transportation to impose immigration enforcement conditions on federal dollars specifically appropriated for transportation purposes." California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was one of the 20 plaintiffs, lauded the decision in a statement, saying President Trump has tried to "coerce state and local governments into doing his bidding." "President Trump is threatening to withhold critical transportation funds unless states agree to carry out his inhumane and illogical immigration agenda for him. He is treating these funds – funds that go toward improving our roads and keeping our planes in the air – as a bargaining chip," Bonta wrote. CBS News has reached out to the White House and Department of Transportation for comment. The Trump administration has threatened to cut off some federal funding to "sanctuary" jurisdictions, or cities and states that limit local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The administration argues these policies make it harder for agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend undocumented immigrants, including those with criminal records. But some jurisdictions say that if local police are forced to cooperate with ICE, immigrants may be less likely to trust police. In April, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from enforcing executive orders threatening to pull funds from "sanctuary cities." Duffy wrote on X earlier this week that his department "will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement." "And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don't expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding," Duffy added, likely referring to protests against ICE in Los Angeles and other cities.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sanctuary by Marina Warner review – the power of stories in an age of migration
Marina Warner begins this dazzlingly protean book with a distinctly mundane memory. It is the 1950s, she is a young teen, and the highlight of her week is going to the Saturday morning 'flicks' with a neighbour's slightly older daughter. One particular movie scene has stayed with her: it involves a man dressed in a vaguely historical costume who is fleeing for his life. Face contorted with terror, he makes it as far as the door of a cathedral, whereupon he knocks loudly and cries 'Sanctuary!' The door opens a crack, the man slides inside, and the Saturday morning audience breaths a collective sigh of relief. Even if the plot points remain hazy – is Robin Hood somehow involved? – the underlying principle needs no explaining. The fugitive has invoked the ancient right by gaining entrance to a designated sacred space. As long as he stays put his pursuers can't touch him. From these hyper-local beginnings, Warner sets out to explore and expand what 'sanctuary' means in an age when millions are on the move around the world, chased out of their homes by environmental disaster, economic collapse, war and political oppression. It is in these grim circumstances that she proposes a new concept of sanctuary, one built not from bricks and mortar or even tents and blankets, but by tales and their telling. Over the past 50 years of her distinguished career as a cultural historian, Warner has immersed herself in liminal literature, tracing the way that fairytales, playground chants, lullabies, fables, patter and ditties manage to evade the censor, slip under the radar, and slide into conversations without attracting too much attention. Now she suggests putting these folk forms to work, using them to build bridges and forge connections between arrivants (a term she prefers to 'migrants') and their often hostile hosts. It is at this point that sceptics might ask how Warner's proposed 'commons of wonder', filled with stories of myth and magic, can possibly help with the practical needs of displaced people more likely to be worried about clean water, healthcare, a job and, above all, the legal right to remain. This is a challenge that she knows well and has spent her career confronting. Her earliest books on the Virgin Mary (1976), Joan of Arc (1981) and, especially, female statuary (the magnificent Monuments and Maidens, 1985), all made the case for allegorical forms having a powerful conditioning effect on the way that people understand and experience their own lives. She got critical flak for it, as well as a great deal of praise. Decades on she shows no signs of being abashed, insisting as strongly as ever that storytelling can function as a 'binding agent' between strangers, creating spaces for concepts of justice and coexistence to develop. As back-up she deploys the British anthropologist Alfred Gell's useful phrase 'art as agency' to underscore her belief that telling stories has real-world consequences. This won't be enough to convince everyone, yet even the most literal-minded critic must admire Warner's commitment to making things happen. In 2015 she won the prestigious Holberg prize and used her £380,000 winnings to help set up Stories in Transit, a project designed to facilitate the exchange of stories between the young people, mostly men, who daily arrive in Sicily from the Middle East, the Maghreb, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the eastern Mediterranean. What might emerge, Warner wanted to know, if these travellers and their tales were encouraged to mix and mingle? Din from Guinea, where civil strife has destroyed his family, arrived in Sicily after a two-year trek by foot across the Sahara followed by a journey across the Mediterranean in a boat. During a Stories in Transit workshop he tells a traditional tale from home called The Huntsman, the King's Son and the Enchanted Deer, a spirited mashup of politics and magic, comedy and sorrow, with one tale nestled inside another in the manner of One Thousand and One Nights. What strikes the comparatist in Warner is the way that this Guinean tale echoes animal stories from both the medieval Arab world and the even older Aesop's Fables. Still, it is not where a story has come from that concerns her so much as where it is going. Over the course of several sessions, The Huntsman, the King's Son and the Enchanted Deer develops into a promenade piece, complete with puppetry, song and animated film. From here another arrivant, this time from Gambia, takes the spirit of Din's story and turns it into something quite distinct, a comic parable with music called One for You and One for Me. Sceptics once again might worry that this privileging of fantastical and shape-shifting narratives strikes the wrong note in a world where truth has become slippery and facts are optional. But Warner is ready for them, pointing out that the world in which the arrivants live is already fictional. Rhetorically marshalled into 'hordes' or 'swarms', these 'aliens' are routinely denigrated as 'scroungers' and even 'criminals'. The official maps that tell them where they have come from and where they should go are also imaginary, continually redrawn in the wake of colonial and nationalistic carve-ups that frequently take little account of linguistic, cultural and ethnic affinities. There is another reason Warner feels strongly about encouraging the arrivants to play fast and loose with the materials to hand. At every stage in their hazardous journey they have been required to narrate their life stories to officials in particular ways if they are to be allowed to proceed to the next stage in their search for sanctuary. The dates must be right, the dangers consistent, and motives must be pure, involving escape from tyranny rather than desire for a better job. To deviate from the first telling of an account is to risk deportation. As a result, suggests Warner, in an exquisitely attuned reading of the situation, arrivants are sealed into versions of themselves that take no account of their changing feelings and experience. It is in this context that making up stories becomes vital in ensuring a form of survival that is as psychically healthy as it is physically safe. Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling by Marina Warner is published by William Collins (£22). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
BBC News
5 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Woman scrambles to create 'forever home' for 180 sheep
A woman has told the BBC she is scrambling to build a "forever home" for 180 sheep and other farm Hubbard, who runs Lotus Lamb and Sheep Sanctuary, said she has to leave her "beautiful, idyllic" site in Woodmancote, West Sussex, by 11 July. Though an "incredible" donor has withdrawn part of her pension and bought the sanctuary some land, the 53-year-old said she needs £20,000 and other items to ready the site for the rescue sheep and other in-need animals. "We are just begging people for help," she added. "These animals are sentient beings. They feel. They grieve. They love. They cry." 'Sheep are lovely' The sanctuary - named after Lotus, a "very special" sheep that used to live inside her house - is home to many animals that have been neglected and abused "in the most horrendous way", said Ms Hubbard. She told the BBC she had rescued sheep that had been left in a field without shelter during winter and starved of water and food."If that was a field of dogs, everybody would be in uproar but because it is sheep people just go, oh, its just sheep." Ms Hubbard added: "Sheep are lovely. They give so much." "Some don't always want to snuggle, but they'll sit with you. They're just incredible." Another animal at the shelter, she continued, is a pig called Clarence that escaped a local slaughterhouse and lived wild in Henfield. He escaped death a second time after Ms Hubbard said she intervened and took him in when a local landowner planned to shoot him. "We literally want to help every animal we can," she said.
ABC News
7 days ago
- General
- ABC News
'They aren't dogs'. Misconceptions about mini pigs
A NSW pig sanctuary says she regularly hears from ill-advised owners adopting what they believe to be a mini-pig, only for them to grow into full grown hogs.
The Independent
12-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Democratic governors will defend immigration policies before Republican-led House panel
As President Donald Trump spars with California's governor over immigration enforcement, Republicans in Congress are calling other Democratic governors to the Capitol on Thursday to question them over policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform posted a video ahead of the hearing highlighting crimes allegedly committed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally and pledging that 'sanctuary state governors will answer to the American people." The hearing is to include testimony from Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Kathy Hochul of New York. There's no legal definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction, but the term generally refers to governments with policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Courts previously have upheld the legality of such laws. But Trump's administration has sued Colorado, Illinois, New York and several cities — including Chicago and Rochester, New York — asserting their policies violate the U.S. Constitution or federal law. Illinois, Minnesota and New York also were among 14 states and hundreds of cities and counties recently listed by the Department of Homeland Security as 'sanctuary jurisdictions defying federal immigration law.' The list later was removed from the department's website after criticism that it errantly included some local governments that support Trump's immigration policies. As Trump steps up immigration enforcement, some Democratic-led states have intensified their resistance by strengthening state laws restricting cooperation with immigration agents. Following clashes between crowds of protesters and immigration agents in Los Angeles, Trump deployed the National Guard to protect federal buildings and agents, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Trump of declaring 'a war' on the underpinnings of American democracy. The House Oversight Committee has long been a partisan battleground, and in recent months it has turned its focus to immigration policy. Thursday's hearing follows a similar one in March in which the Republican-led committee questioned the Democratic mayors of Chicago, Boston, Denver and New York about sanctuary policies. Heavily Democratic Chicago has been a sanctuary city for decades. In 2017, then-Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, signed legislation creating statewide protections for immigrants. The Illinois Trust Act prohibits police from searching, arresting or detaining people solely because of their immigration status. But it allows local authorities to hold people for federal immigration authorities if there's a valid criminal warrant. Pritzker, who succeeded Rauner in 2019, said in remarks prepared for the House committee that violent criminals 'have no place on our streets, and if they are undocumented, I want them out of Illinois and out of our country.' 'But we will not divert our limited resources and officers to do the job of the federal government when it is not in the best interest of our state, our local communities, or the safety of our residents,' he said. Pritzker has been among Trump's most outspoken opponents and is considered a potential 2028 presidential candidate. He said Illinois has provided shelter and services to more than 50,000 immigrants who were sent there from other states. A Department of Justice lawsuit against New York challenges a 2019 law that allows immigrants illegally in the U.S. to receive New York driver's licenses and shields driver's license data from federal immigration authorities. That built upon a 2017 executive order by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo that prohibited New York officials from inquiring about or disclosing a person's immigration status to federal authorities, unless required by law. Hochul's office said law enforcement officers still can cooperate with federal immigration authorities when people are convicted of or under investigation for crimes. Since Hochul took office in 2021, her office said, the state has transferred more than 1,300 incarcerated noncitizens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the completion of their state sentences. Minnesota doesn't have a statewide sanctuary law protecting immigrants in the U.S. illegally, though Minneapolis and St. Paul both restrict the extent to which police and city employees can cooperate with immigration enforcement. Some laws signed by Walz have secured benefits for people regardless of immigration status. But at least one of those is getting rolled back. The Minnesota Legislature, meeting in a special session, passed legislation Monday to repeal a 2023 law that allowed adults in the U.S. illegally to be covered under a state-run health care program for the working poor. Walz insisted on maintaining eligibility for children who aren't in the country legally, ___ Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Mo. Also contributing were Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, N.Y.; Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minn.; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.
