Trump Secretly Created “Denaturalization” Team at Citizenship Agency |
Trump Secretly Created “Denaturalization” Team at Citizenship Agency
Donald Trump continues to turn every government organization he can into a tool for his mass deportation program.
Donald Trump’s administration has quietly transformed the agency overseeing legal immigration into yet another arm of the president’s mass deportation scheme.
An internal agency document reviewed by The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer revealed that the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that manages visas, green cards, naturalizations, and other aspects of the legal immigration process, has created a new “Tactical Operations Division.”
The roughly 80-person division consists of teams focused on denaturalization, “refugee re-vetting,” fraud detection and national security, and LPR operations, where officials are tasked with finding cases where they can rescind legal permanent residency status, according to Blitzer.
The division is overseen by Danny Andrade, who was selected to run the newly opened USCIS field office in Nashville.
Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst for USCIS, wrote on X Monday that the restructuring comes as the agency “lost thousands of employees last year.”
“Its application backlog is at a record high—nearly double its 2020 level. And its Fraud Detection division is larger than ever. Yet [USCIS Director Joseph Edlow] keeps finding new ways to shift agency resources from adjudication to deportation,” Pierce wrote.
UCIS’s workforce shrank 11 percent last year, as the agency has become a site for immigration arrests. In September, the Trump administration passed a new rule allowing USCIS to hire special agents for the purpose of making arrests. And the agency’s latest job listings are in search of so-called “Homeland Defenders.”
Trump Freaks Out Over Polls Numbers as Iran Tanks His Popularity
Donald Trump posted repeatedly on social media insisting he was actually super popular.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have hit more turbulence in the wake of a tense weekend that has apparently sent Donald Trump spiraling.
The two countries were close to brokering a new peace agreement late last week as the deadline on the two-week ceasefire drew closer. But that fell apart after the U.S. seized an Iranian cargo ship over the weekend. Trump, however, had other things on his mind.
The president was firmly cemented in la-la land by Monday morning, littering his Truth Social feed with surveys from pro-Trump pollsters that claimed Americans overwhelmingly supported the offensive (they don’t), and Newsmax stories that declared he had “already won the war.”
In at least one post, Trump decried widespread reports that Israel had convinced the White House to partake in its siege against Iran.
“Israel never talked me into the war with Iran, the results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON, did,” Trump wrote. “I watch and read the FAKE NEWS Pundits and Polls in total disbelief. 90 percent of what they say are lies and made up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged. Just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn’t like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing.”
“And if Iran’s new leaders (Regime Change!) are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future!” Trump added, openly boasting about influencing foreign governments.
U.S. involvement in the war was arranged following an auspicious February 11 meeting between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several U.S. and Israeli officials in the White House Situation Room, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
It was Netanyahu’s direct influence—and the ensuing pressure campaign—that thrust America into the war. U.S. military commanders advised Trump that components of Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran were “farcical,” but by that point, Trump had already been inspired to overthrow Tehran’s theocratic regime.
It’s likely that Netanyahu continues to hold the reins. Last month, Trump told The Times of Israel that the decision to end the Iran war will be a “mutual” decision he makes with the Israeli leader.
It is not clear exactly what the war in Iran has accomplished. Together, the U.S. and Israel have killed thousands of Iranian civilians and obliterated Iranian civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, 13 U.S. soldiers have died. The war also spiked the cost of living for people around the world, agitated international relations—particularly between the U.S. and longtime allies in the Western hemisphere—cost American taxpayers over $50 billion, and sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S.
Trump has previously stated that his primary objective in the war was to erase Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but his administration’s current battle assessments have stood in contrast to other attacks they boasted about as recently as last year.
Prior to the war—which never obtained congressional approval—Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, hitting Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan on June 22. At the time, the Trump administration claimed that the one-off air raid had set Iran’s program back by “years.”
Ex-National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent sparked a maelstrom in Washington when he resigned over the issue last month. Kent argued in his resignation letter that he could not “in good conscience” support the war in Iran. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he wrote at the........