Planned bill to ban already illegal practice is latest Republican step to spread falsehoods about immigration and voter fraud

Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.

Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.

Judge rules children in makeshift camps along US-Mexico border are in custody of government and subject to treatment standards

Children who wait in makeshift migrant camps along the US-Mexico border for border patrol to process them are in the agency’s custody and are subject to a longstanding court-supervised agreement that set standards for their treatment, a judge ruled.

The issue of when the children are officially in border patrol custody is particularly important because of the 1997 court settlement on how migrant children in US government custody must be treated. Those standards include a time limit on how long the children can be held and services such as toilets, sinks and temperature controls.

Companies accused of facilitating gun trafficking and and of being responsible for bloodshed that their guns contribute to in Mexico

A trial court in Arizona has ruled that the Mexican government may proceed in its trailblazing lawsuit against five US gun dealers, who stand accused of facilitating gun trafficking across the border into Mexico .

Mexico argues that the companies’ marketing campaigns and distribution practices mean that they are legally responsible for the bloodshed that their guns contribute to.

Wire barrier installed under governor’s border security program breached as migrants say they were forcefully pushed back

A group of migrants clashed with Texas national guard troops over a breach of barbed wire fencing in El Paso on Thursday as they waited to turn themselves in to federal border agents – underscoring the power struggle between the state and federal government over immigration law enforcement.

Video posted on social media showed migrants dragging away a temporary concertina wire barrier which was installed as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s controversial Operation Lone Star publicly-funded state border security program.

Residents and activists say no one is safe if law allowing police to arrest people for suspected illegal entry goes into effect

At the Sweet Co coffee shop in downtown Brownsville, the last city at the eastern end of the Texas border before you reach the ocean and Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket base or cross into Mexico, the vibe was chill but the mood was chilly.

Customers were as downcast as the wet weather outside on Wednesday, the day of a court hearing after contrasting legal rulings were made about a new law that will affect people in Brownsville, whether new migrants, US citizens, undocumented residents or others.

Law allowing state authorities to arrest people suspected of crossing US-Mexico border can proceed pending court challenge

The US supreme court on Tuesday declined to block a Republican-backed Texas law allowing state law enforcement authorities to arrest people suspected of crossing the US-Mexico border illegally, rejecting a request by President Joe Biden’s administration.

The administration had asked the justices to freeze a judicial order allowing the Texas law to take effect while the US government’s challenge to the statute proceeds in the lower courts. The administration has argued that the law violates the US constitution and federal law by interfering with the US government’s power to regulate immigration.

Republican denied hiding fact that the abuse she referred to in her State of the Union rebuttal had actually occurred during Bush era

In her first interview since delivering her widely ridiculed rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, Republican senator Katie Britt refused to apologize for invoking a story about child rape that she implied resulted from the ongoing crisis at the southern US border – even though the abuse occurred in Mexico while her party controlled the White House.

Britt , 42, appeared on Fox News Sunday and denied hiding the fact that the rape and sex trafficking case to which she referred had actually occurred during the presidency of George W Bush. She also made it a point to criticize what she called “the liberal media” for how it has covered her rebuttal to Biden’s speech on Thursday, which earned being parodied on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live.

Chopper in federal government’s border security mission went down near Rio Grande City, leaving two national guard soldiers and a border patrol agent dead

A helicopter flying over the US-Mexico border in Texas has crashed, killing two national guard soldiers and a border patrol agent, the US military has said.

Another soldier on board was injured.

The UH-72 Lakota helicopter was assigned to the federal government’s border security mission when it went down near Rio Grande City on Friday, the joint taskforce north said. The cause was under investigation.

The crash happened mid-afternoon while the helicopter was conducting aviation operations, according to the taskforce’s statement.

Thirty-three people attempting to cross the border into San Diego died in the Pacific Ocean from 2020 to 2023, study shows

Thirty-three people attempting to cross the US border drowned in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego after the Trump administration nearly doubled the height of the walls along the southern border, a staggering increase from previous years.

The number of drownings rose by 3,200% from 2020 to 2023, compared to 2016 to 2019, when just one person drowned, according to a study published this week. By 2019 the Trump administration had elevated the barriers around San Diego from 17ft to 30ft.