Skip to content
TRENDING:
Donald Trump
Advertisement

Articles by Stephen Dinan

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., listens as John Thune, R-S.D., speaks during a news conference with other Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. (Rod Lamkey/Pool via AP) **FILE**

Congress eyes another stopgap spending bill as talks drag on

With government money poised to run out Friday, Congress is eyeing yet another short-term stopgap bill to keep agencies' doors open while negotiators try to finalize a deal. Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber, said the need for a stopgap bill to avoid a shutdown while negotiations finish is "looking like more of a real possibility."

December 17, 2020
A statue of Robert E. Lee is on display on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 24, 2015. The statue was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Virginia in 1909. Lee served as a commander in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The move in South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds is prompting members of Congress to take a new look at Confederate images that surround them every day. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Robert E. Lee to be replaced by Barbara Rose Johns in Capitol Statuary Hall

Virginia's special history commission on Wednesday picked Barbara Rose Johns, a lesser-known civil rights pioneer who led an early school desegregation effort, as the figure it wants to send to Washington to replace the state's current statue of Robert E. Lee in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol.

December 16, 2020
Authorities pass a border wall construction site, in Mission, Texas, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. President-elect Joe Biden will face immediate pressure to fulfill his pledge to stop border wall construction. But he will confront a series of tough choices left behind by President Donald Trump, who's ramped up construction in his final weeks. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Stopping border wall would waste ‘billions of dollars’: DHS

Stopping construction on the border wall -- a key priority of the incoming Biden administration -- would waste "billions of dollars" in money already sunk into contracts to build hundreds more miles of wall, the country's border chief said Monday.

December 14, 2020
This July 26, 2018, photo shows people lining up to cross into the United States to begin the process of applying for asylum near the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico. A court-appointed committee has yet to find the parents of 628 children separated at the border early in the Trump administration. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) **FILE**

Illegal immigrant children soaring at the border: DHS

The number of young children being snuck across the border is rising, top Homeland Security officials said Monday, blaming a recent order by a federal judge for spurring some of the new wave.

December 14, 2020
Expelled migrants walk in Tijuana, Mexico, on Oct. 8, 2020. President Donald Trump’s reshaping of U.S. immigration policy may be most felt in his undoing of asylum. The suspension of asylum and the introduction of “express deportations,” as migrants call them, have accelerated a shift in who's crossing the border illegally: more Mexican men who come for economic reasons and far fewer from Central America, Africa and elsewhere who seek asylum. (AP Photo/Elliot Spagat) **FILE**

DHS, DOJ announce major overhaul of asylum system

Homeland Security and the Justice Department finalized a major overhaul Thursday of the asylum system, moving to give immigration officers and judges the ability to quickly toss the kinds of bogus cases that have surged in recent years as smugglers have figured out how to game the system.

December 10, 2020
Sun shines on the U.S. Capitol dome, Monday, Nov. 2, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) ** FILE **

House buys more time on full-year spending bill

The House on Wednesday approved a one-week extension of government funding and the Senate was expected to quickly follow suit as lawmakers from both parties eyed year-end deals.

December 9, 2020
In this Aug. 28, 2019, file photo, detainees talk on telephones at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif. The Trump administration has awarded four contracts worth billions of dollars to operate private immigration detention centers in California, less than two weeks before a new state law forbidding them takes effect. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

ICE: Criminal immigrants freed because of COVID going back to crime

ICE delivered a pointed I-told-you-so Tuesday to a federal judge who freed more than 250 undocumented immigrants from detention because of the coronavirus, revealing that in less than two months, at least six of them already stand accused of more crimes.

December 8, 2020
Border agents respond to a citizen’s report of individuals seen on a northbound freight train and apprehend 19 illegal aliens. "Our agents have seen aliens sustain major traumatic injuries from trains. I hope smugglers and aliens recognize how dangerous this is before someone loses their life or is severely injured.” Chief Patrol Agent Matthew J. Hudak said. (www.facebook.com/usbpchieflrt)

Illegal immigrants hop moving trains to evade capture

As President Trump's border wall, faster deportations and coronavirus border restrictions continue to bite, smugglers are looking for new ways to get their customers into the U.S. and to their destinations in the interior.

December 6, 2020
In this Aug. 13, 2019 file photo, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez answers questions from the Associated Press, as he leaves a meeting at the Organization of American States, in Washington. U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, that Hernandez met with an Honduran drug dealer in 2013 and agreed to facilitate the use of Honduran armed forces personnel as security for the dealer’s drug trafficking activities. In 2013, Hernandez was a congressman. He was elected president at the end of that year. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Honduras asks U.S. to grant deportation amnesty after hurricanes

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez asked the U.S. on Friday to renew the special Temporary Protected Status for some 44,000 of his citizens living here, saying his own country was battered by recent storms and can't be expected to welcome them back.

December 4, 2020
Protesters hold up signs during a rally supporting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, outside of the White House in Washington, on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) ** FILE **

DACA full restart ordered by federal judge

A federal judge late last week ordered the Trump administration to restore the DACA program back to what it was when President Obama created it -- including a backdoor pathway to citizenship that's already been used by more than 14,000 "Dreamers."

December 4, 2020