Stephen Dinan

CBP nabs ketamine smuggled in pictures of Jesus Christ

God may absolve us of our sins, but Jesus cannot hide them from Customs and Border Protection officers, who announced Tuesday they sniffed out a 9-pound shipment of ketamine someone tried to smuggle into the U.S. inside framed images of the Christ.

June 9, 2020

Immigration courts chief dinged for faulty budget projections

The Justice Department's inspector dinged the head of the immigration court system Tuesday for sending two warning emails to staff last year about looming budget cuts, saying he got it wrong and didn't "effectively" communicate with his own budget folks.

June 9, 2020

CBO: Trump team should get ‘a lot of credit’ for fast coronavirus stimulus

Congress' chief scorekeeper had high praise for the Trump administration Tuesday, saying its agencies managed to deliver coronavirus aid "incredibly quickly," helping moderate the worst economic effects of the COVID-19 downturn.

June 9, 2020

Trump Mexico pressure stopped on asylum seekers at border

The U.S. had just witnessed the worst month on record for illegal immigrant parents and children streaming across the southern border in May 2019, and an irate President Trump took to Twitter demanding Mexico do something about it -- or else face crippling tariffs.

June 8, 2020

Abolish ICE movement storms back amid defund police push

Anti-ICE protesters assaulted an immigration detention facility in California over the weekend, smashing windows and vandalizing vehicles, reviving the "Abolish ICE" movement that was, in many ways, the precursor to the current "Defund Police" effort.

June 8, 2020

Coronavirus-fueled deficit nears $2 trillion for 2020

Uncle Sam has added $1.2 trillion to the budget deficit over the last two months, according to the latest numbers Monday that detail how the government has used cash to try to combat the coronavirus pandemic and its economic catastrophe.

June 8, 2020

Coronavirus hospitalization rates down in Georgia, Florida back early reopening move

Georgia led the way in reopening its economy as Gov. Brian Kemp defied critics, including President Trump, by telling gyms and salons that they could do business again in late April.

June 7, 2020

ICE blames immigrant-rights lawyers for fomenting coronavirus hunger strike

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday blamed outside lawyers for fomenting a hunger strike among dozens of detainees at a California facility, and said they've been told at least one detainee was threatened with violence if he didn't take part.

June 6, 2020

Texas vote-by-mail expansion rejected by 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

A federal appeals court shot down a push to expand mail-in voting in Texas during coronavirus, erasing a lower court ruling, eviscerating the judge for a shoddy opinion, and saying it's up to states, not courts, to set voting rules.

June 4, 2020

Cristobal Francisco-Nicolas smuggled girl to be surrogate mom

Federal prosecutors this week announced they had won convictions and closed out a disturbing illegal immigration case in which an Iowa woman and her husband sneaked a girl into the U.S. with a plan to impregnate her and have her carry the baby as a surrogate.

June 4, 2020

Unemployment more lucrative than work for most would-be recipients in extension: CBO

Roughly 80% of recipients of expanded federal unemployment insurance would get more money from the benefits than they could expect to earn from a job if the emergency program is extended another six months, Congress' official budget scorekeeper said Thursday.

June 4, 2020

William Barr order clearing Lafayette Park to be probed by House committees

Four House committee chairs fired off a letter Wednesday demanding the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Interior Department and Homeland Security each answer for their personnel's roles in clearing protesters from Lafayette Park on Monday, ahead of President Trump's stroll to St. John's Church.

June 3, 2020

Police racism, bias toward blacks difficult to determine, researchers find

It's been six years since the Ferguson riots put a microscope on relations between police and black communities, and despite dozens of new studies on the matter, researchers say they're still no closer to a consensus on the role bias and racism play.

June 2, 2020

Border officers broke policy to separate families: Audit

Officers at border crossings between the U.S. and Mexico broke policy to separate dozens of illegal immigrant families during the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy in 2018, according to a new inspector general's audit released Tuesday.

June 2, 2020

Gerry Connolly, Democratic chairman, says Donald Trump made Secret Service ‘a tool of fascism’

The chairman of the House oversight subcommittee on government operations demanded Tuesday that the Secret Service explain its actions in clearing protesters from near the White House the night before, saying the agency "is not a tool of fascism."

June 2, 2020

Border agents deployed put down riot in Washington, D.C.

The Homeland Security Department said Monday it has deployed some of its border forces to downtown Washington, D.C. to help quell the unrest that's gripped the city over the last few days.

June 1, 2020

Judge Rudolph Contreras delays on Nancy Pelosi proxy-voting rules

A federal judge signaled Monday he's in no hurry to rule on whether the House's new rules allowing lawmakers to skip votes but pick a designated voter to speak for them are legal.

June 1, 2020

IRS doesn’t pursue wealthy tax cheats, leaving billions in unpaid taxes: Audit

The IRS is leaving tens of billions of dollars on the table by not pursuing wealthy Americans who fail to file their taxes, according to a striking new inspector general's audit Monday that said the tax agency left "hundreds of thousands" of cases unaddressed.

June 1, 2020

Trump H-2B visa decision splits small business, immigration crackdown supporters

Homeland Security and the Labor Department have transmitted recommendations to President Trump for next steps in his immigration pause, putting the White House on the clock for its next big decision about whether foreign workers will help or hurt the coronavirus recovery.

May 31, 2020

Activists sue over Trump’s coronavirus immigration pause

Immigrant-rights activists filed a lawsuit Thursday asking a federal judge to block part of President Trump's coronavirus immigration pause, saying that blocking the arrival of some children of U.S. residents could set them back decades in their quest to immigrate.

May 28, 2020