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ICE sent into frenzy to return longtime Trump golf employee mistakenly deported to Mexico
A longtime former employee at one of President Donald Trump's golf clubs was mistakenly deported to Mexico, The New York Times reported — sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a mad scramble to correct the error and bring him home.
"Alejandro Juarez stepped off a plane in Texas and stood on a bridge over the Rio Grande, staring at the same border that he had crossed illegally from Mexico 22 years earlier," reported Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz. "As U.S. immigration officials unshackled restraints bound to his arms and legs, Mr. Juarez, 39, pleaded with them. He told them he was never given a chance to contest his deportation in front of an immigration judge after being detained in New York City five days before."
As it turned out, the Department of Homeland Security had mistakenly put him on a deportation flight instead of sending him to a detention facility in Arizona ahead of his immigration hearing, to which he was entitled.
"Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge — a hearing Mr. Juarez never had," said the report. "ICE officials raced to decipher his whereabouts, exchanging bewildered emails and contacting detention facilities to pinpoint his location, according to internal ICE documents obtained by The New York Times. It is unclear how many other immigrants like Mr. Juarez have been erroneously removed, in part because ICE has not in the past tracked such cases."
Juarez "had worked for more than a decade at a Trump Organization golf club in New York," noted the report, and suddenly found himself expelled from the United States.
Similar administrative mistakes have happened on other occasions, most notably with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from his family in Maryland to the infamous CECOT megaprison in his home country, despite a court order prohibiting his removal there. After months of denying they had jurisdiction to repatriate him, the Trump administration finally did so, but then immediately hit him with flimsy gang charges, and started shopping around for any other country that would accept him, including several in Africa.
‘Awkward guy’: White House insiders fear Vance may do ‘more harm than good’ with speech
Hours before he is expected to speak at a Turning Point USA gathering in Mississippi, Vice President JD Vance did not get a vote of confidence from one White House insider.
According to a report from MSNBC’s Jake Traylor, Donald Trump's MAGA heir-apparent will attempt to step into the shoes of the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk by giving a speech and then taking questions at the SJB Pavilion on the University of Mississippi campus.
As Traylor wrote, Vance will attempt to mimic Kirk’s appearances on college campuses that came to an abrupt end during a visit to Utah Valley University.
The report notes that Vance’s performance will be “graded” against how Kirk was received, and there is some trepidation at the White House about whether he will pull it off.
With Traylor writing, “He will try to avoid the potential pitfalls that accompany an unpredictable, live college debate format that could lead to him seeming to diminish the office he now holds. And he will try to not be too obvious in his angling for a 2028 presidential bid,” one White House official attempted to downplay expectations by admitting, “There’s tons of risks.”
Vance has claimed, “I’m going to do exactly what Charlie did. {Kirk] would answer tough questions from the left and from the right, and so I want to do that, too,” which has MSNBC reporting, “White House officials and people close to Vance caution that simply playing Kirk may do more harm than good.”
”[Charlie] had unique skills,” one person admitted. “Vance can be an awkward guy on stage. He’s not going to be what Kirk was, he’s just different from that.”
According to the report, for Vance to advance his hopes of replacing Trump, he needs to get organizations like TPUSA on his side.
To political observers, "his proximity to Turning Point in recent weeks highlights his growing alliance with the powerhouse youth group amid early speculation of his own 2028 presidential run,” MSNBC is reporting.
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Extreme new Trump admin rules threaten to shutter even more hospitals
A pair of extreme new Trump administration rules aimed at functionally banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth could force even more hospitals to close down.
NPR reported Thursday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) drafted a proposed rule that would prohibit federal Medicaid reimbursement for medical care provided to transgender patients younger than 18 and prohibit the same from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for patients under 19.
Another proposed rule goes even further, blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth.
As Erin Reed, an independent journalist who reports on LGBTQ+ rights, explained, this “would effectively eliminate access to such care nationwide, except at the few private clinics able to forgo Medicaid entirely, a rarity in transgender youth medicine.”
The policies are of a piece with the Trump administration and the broader Republican Party’s efforts to eliminate transgender healthcare for youth across the country.
Bans on gender-affirming care for those under 18 have already been passed in 27 states, despite evidence that early access to treatments like puberty blockers and hormones can save lives.
As Reed pointed out, a Cornell University review of more than 51 studies shows that access to such care dramatically reduces the risk of suicide and the rates of anxiety and depression among transgender adolescents.
The new HHS rules are being prepared for public release in November and would not be finalized for several more months.
But if passed, the ramifications could extend far beyond transgender people, impacting the entire healthcare system, for which federal funding from Medicare and Medicaid is a load-bearing piece. According to a report last year from the American Hospital Association, 96% of hospitals in the US have more than half their inpatient days paid for by Medicare and Medicaid.
It is already becoming apparent what happens when even some of that funding is taken away. As a result of the massive GOP budget law passed in July, an estimated $1 trillion is expected to be cut from Medicaid over the next decade. According to an analysis released Thursday by Protect Our Care, which maintains a Hospital Crisis Watch database, more than 500 healthcare providers across the country are already at risk of shutting down due to the budget cuts.
Tyler Hack, the executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a transgender rights organization, said that the newly proposed HHS rule would be “forcing hospitals to choose between providing lifesaving care for trans people or maintaining the ability to serve patients through Medicare and Medicaid.”
“Today’s news marks a dangerous overreach by the executive branch, pitting trans people, low-income families, disabled people, and seniors against each other and making hospitals choose which vulnerable populations to serve,” Hack said. “If these rules become law, it will kill people.”
