WASHINGTON - U.S. senators and Trump administration officials have reached an agreement on a massive economic stimulus bill to alleviate the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, White House official Eric Ueland said early on Wednesday.
“We have a deal,” Ueland told reporters after days of negotiations on the package, expected to be worth $2 trillion.
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The Senate’s Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was expected to speak on the Senate floor shortly about the agreement.
The text of the pact was not expected to be available until later on Wednesday.
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The package had been expected to include a $500 billion fund to help hard-hit industries and a comparable amount for direct payments of up to $3,000 to millions of U.S. families, as well as $350 billion for small-business loans, $250 billion for expanded unemployment aid and $75 billion for hospitals.
It aims to cushion the economic blow from a pandemic that has killed more than 660 people in the United States and sickened more than 50,000, shuttered thousands of businesses, thrown millions out of work and led states to order 100 million people - nearly a third of the population - to stay at home.
The money at stake in the stimulus legislation exceeds what the U.S. government spends on national defense, scientific research, highway construction and other discretionary programs.
NEW YORK - Attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia sued President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to block a sweeping new rule to indefinitely detain migrant families seeking to settle in the United States.
FILE PHOTO: Migrant families turn themselves to U.S. Border Patrol to seek asylum following an illegal crossing of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo, Texas, U.S., August 23, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was the first in an expected flurry of litigation seeking to stop the rule, officially published on Friday, from taking effect in October.
“This new Trump rule callously puts at risk the safety and well-being of children. It undermines a decades-old agreement reached in court by the federal government to prevent the unlawful detention of immigrant children,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in announcing the lawsuit.
The White House did not immediately comment on Monday evening.
The new rule seeks to scrap a 1997 agreement, known as the Flores settlement, which puts a 20-day limit on how long children can be held in immigration detention.
The settlement was expanded in 2015 to apply not just to unaccompanied children but also to those traveling with their parents.
Trump administration officials say the detention limits have become a “pull” factor for migrants, who hope that if they show up at the U.S.-Mexico border with a child and ask for asylum, they will be allowed in pending a hearing in U.S. immigration court, a practice the president has called “catch-and-release.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the Flores settlement are likely to face more than just legal hurdles.
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Even if the courts allow the new rule to take effect, there are also practical problems: paying for thousands of additional family detention beds.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only three family detention facilities - two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania - that have between 2,500 and 3,000 beds, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said in announcing the rule last week.
More than 42,000 families, mostly from Central America, were arrested along the U.S. southern border just last month. The July arrest numbers are at record highs, even though they have dropped more than half compared with levels seen in May.
NOT ENOUGH BEDS
“Even if the number of border crossings doesn’t go back up in the fall, all this (new rule) would enable them to do is to detain a relatively small percentage of the arriving families for longer,” said Kevin Landy, a former ICE assistant director responsible for the Office of Detention Policy and Planning under the Obama administration.
Without more space, that practice is likely to continue, Landy said.
Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency could not comment on potential increases to the agency’s detention capacity.
Congress mandates how much ICE can spend on immigration detention, and the 2019 budget has $2.8 billion earmarked to pay for 49,500 beds for solo adults - but only 2,500 beds for parents and children.
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However, ICE is currently detaining more than 55,000 immigrants, a record high, a small percentage of them at family facilities, according to agency statistics.
ICE has also had a hard time finding communities willing to accept the construction of facilities, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former policy adviser at U.S. Customs and Border Protection now at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center.
It is also not clear how the family detention rule will work with another Trump administration policy pushing Central American families back to Mexico to wait out their U.S. court hearings there, she said.
A grizzly bear and her cub are seen at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, which gained new protections under legislation passed by the US SenateAFP/File
The US Senate approved a landmark expansion of protected lands Tuesday, the first major gain for conservationists in two years after repeated setbacks by the Trump administration.
The Senate voted 98-2 in support of the Natural Resources Management Act, which gives new or strengthened protection from mining and encroachment to more than two million acres (810,000 hectares), expands eight national parks and historic sights, and adds new national monuments and heritage areas.
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Habitats for wildlife from salmon to bighorn sheep gained new protections and an important conservation fund was made permanent, after the Trump administration left it unfunded last year.
"Public lands are among this nation's greatest treasures, and we are pleased to see that there is strong bipartisan support to protect these important outdoor spaces so they can be enjoyed and explored for generations," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, said that "the Senate's action today, including protecting two million acres of national park and other public lands, is further proof that these issues can, and should, be bipartisan."
The bill notably removes mining rights from areas close to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.
In California, it expands Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks, boosting efforts to build pathways for wildlife between protected landscapes.
Greater protections were authorized for several Native American sites.
In addition, it opens more federal lands to hunting and fishing.
The package of bills now needs approval by the House of Representatives.
It was the first significant success for environmentalists since President Trump came into office in January 2017 and began dismantling many protections for public lands set by previous administrations.
Trump has moved to open the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, shrank two national monuments in Utah to appease mining groups, reduced watershed protection laws and tried to force a hug increase in national park fees, which would have hurt poorer families.
One year ago, nearly every member of the National Park System Advisory Board resigned in protest against then-interior secretary Ryan Zinke, accusing him of gross neglect of the needs of national parks.
WASHINGTON - The United States is holding direct communications with members of Venezuela’s military urging them to abandon President Nicolas Maduro and is also preparing new sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on him, a senior White House official said.
FILE PHOTO: Venezuelan Colonel Jose Luis Silva, Venezuela’s Military Attache at its Washington embassy to the United States, is interviewed by Reuters after announcing that he is defecting from the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Washington, U.S., January 26, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
The Trump administration expects further military defections from Maduro’s side, the official told us at Reuters in an interview, despite only a few senior officers having done so since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president last month, earning the recognition of the United States and dozens of other countries.
“We believe these to be those first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger rocks rolling down the hill,” the official said this week, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re still having conversations with members of the former Maduro regime, with military members, although those conversations are very, very limited.”
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The official declined to provide details on the discussions or the level at which they are being held, and it was unclear whether such contacts could create cracks in the Venezuelan socialist leader’s support from the military, which is pivotal to his grip on power.
With the Venezuelan military still apparently loyal to Maduro, a source in Washington close to the opposition expressed doubts whether the Trump administration has laid enough groundwork to spur a wider mutiny in the ranks where many officers are suspected of benefiting from corruption and drug trafficking.
Members of the South American country’s security forces fear they or their families could be targeted by Maduro if they defect, so the U.S. would need to offer them something that could outweigh those concerns, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas think tank in Washington.
“It depends on what they’re offering,” Farnsworth said. “Are there incentives built into these contacts that will at least cause people to question their loyalty to the regime?”
Guaido says the May 2018 vote in which Maduro won a second term as president was a sham and on Jan. 23 invoked a constitutional provision to declare himself president, promising free and fair elections.
VENEZUELAN ASSETS
The U.S. government also sees European allies as likely to do more to prevent Maduro from transferring or hiding Venezuela government assets held outside the country, the U.S. official said.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks to soldiers while he attends a military exercise in Turiamo, Venezuela February 3, 2019. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS
Major European countries have joined the United States in backing Guaido but they have stopped short of the sweeping oil sanctions and financial measures that Washington has imposed.
At the same time, the Trump administration is readying further possible sanctions on Venezuela, the official said.
Previous rounds have targeted dozens of Venezuelan military and government officials, including Maduro himself, and last month finally hit the OPEC member’s vital oil sector. But the administration has stopped short of imposing so-called “secondary” sanctions, which would punish non-U.S. companies for doing business with the Venezuela government or the state oil monopoly PDVSA.
The U.S. official said that Washington had every tool available to apply pressure on Maduro and his associates “to accept a legitimate democratic transition.”
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The U.S. government is also weighing possible sanctions on Cuban military and intelligence officials whom it says are helping Maduro remain in power, a second U.S. official and person familiar with the deliberations have told Reuters.
Maduro’s government has accused Guaido, who has galvanized Venezuela’s opposition, of attempting to stage a U.S.-directed coup.
General Francisco Yanez of the air force’s high command became the first active Venezuelan general to recognize Guaido, but he is one of about 2,000 generals. Venezuela’s chief military attache to the United States also said he was defecting late last month.
Guaido has actively courted members of the military with promises of amnesty and preferential legal treatment if they disavow Maduro and disobey his orders, and Washington this week raised the prospect of dropping sanctions on senior Venezuelan officers if they recognize Guaido.
Maduro still has the support of the military high command, and now routinely appears in pre-recorded events at military bases where officers stand behind him and chant triumphal slogans such as “Loyal always, traitors never.”
U.S. Border Patrol said on Friday its resources were being stretched thin by larger and larger groups of Central American families left by smugglers in remote locations along the U.S. Mexico border.
So far in fiscal year 2019, which began last October, the Border Patrol has apprehended 60 groups of 100 or more migrants, compared with 13 during the entire 2018 fiscal year and just two large groups caught in the 2017 fiscal year, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official said on a call with reporters.
Until recently, most people caught crossing the border illegally were men from Mexico, but now Central American families and unaccompanied minors make up some 60 percent of those apprehended, data from the agency show.
Facilities built decades ago are struggling to cope with the influx of migrant families, many with young children, who are often in need of medical care.
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“Large bus loads of individuals are being bussed up to the border and we don’t have any infrastructure in that area,” the official said on the call with reporters.
Many of the migrants who may seek passage with smugglers in their journey through Mexico cross the border and turn themselves into U.S. authorities to seek asylum in the United States, a drawn-out court process that can take months or years to resolve.
The border patrol official said smugglers drop off large groups as a diversion tactic to tie up law enforcement resources in order to move drugs across other parts of the border.
The Trump administration has tried to curb access to asylum, including by starting a program that would require applicants to wait out their legal proceedings in Mexico.
Human rights advocates say increased border security and daily quotas put on asylum requests at ports of entry are among factors pushing large groups of migrants to cross the border in risky, remote areas.
U.S. lawmakers see 'progress' in border talks
Just how dangerous these crossings can be was highlighted in December when a 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died in U.S. custody after she and her father crossed in a large group in a remote area of New Mexico. Weeks later, an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died after crossing the border with his father near El Paso, Texas.
Overall, illegal crossings at the southern border have dropped dramatically compared to previous decades but in recent years the number of families and unaccompanied children heading to the United States has increased.
(For an interactive graphic titled 'Crisis on the Border?', see: here)
