WASHINGTON: The heads of US immigration agencies faced heavy criticism in Congress Tuesday as they defended President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation drive and fielded questions about the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
Trump acknowledged in the wake of the Minneapolis killings that a \u201csofter touch\u201d may be needed on immigration, and his administration announced concessions including the withdrawal of hundreds of officers from the Midwestern city.<\/p>\n
But the issue remains far from resolved, with Democrats demanding changes to the way the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducts its immigration sweeps and threatening to block its funding, while Trump\u2019s administration vows to maintain its deportation efforts, with backing from Republican lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president tasked us with mass deportation, and we are fulfilling that mandate,\u201d Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in his opening remarks during the Tuesday hearing on DHS oversight.<\/p>\n
He testified alongside Rodney Scott, the head of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Citizenship and Immigration Services director Joseph Edlow.<\/p>\n
Scott hailed efforts on the southern US frontier, saying CBP \u201cspent the last year rebuilding what was an intentionally broken border\u201d and that \u201cthe United States… enjoys the most secure border in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration officials faced a barrage of criticism and tough questions from Democratic lawmakers over the major crackdown on migrants in multiple US cities, which Republican representatives largely defended.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis administration and the agencies represented before us have shown a complete and utter disregard for the law and the Constitution,\u201d Democratic Representative Tim Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
Representative Eli Crane, a Republican, pushed back on criticism of immigration enforcement, accusing Democrats of seeking to \u201cdemonize ICE and Homeland Security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The heads of US immigration agencies faced heavy criticism in Congress Tuesday as they defended President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation drive and fielded questions about the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis. Trump acknowledged in the wake of the Minneapolis killings that a \u201csofter touch\u201d may be needed on immigration, and his administration …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93556,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93541\/revisions\/93556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}