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.

About 50 people sent to island in 2022 in DeSantis’s ‘relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations’

A group of migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022 by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, can sue the plane company that transported them, a federal judge has ruled.

In a ruling issued last Friday, the US district judge Allison Burroughs said that the migrants who were shuttled from Texas to the wealthy liberal island in Massachusetts can proceed with their legal claims against Vertol Systems, the plane company which was contracted by Florida to carry out the flights.

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.

Ex-president’s description of meeting relatives of Ruby Garcia to spin anti-immigration narrative is ‘shocking’, sister says

Donald Trump used a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to describe meeting the family of a woman killed by an immigrant in order to spin a narrative about what he calls “Biden’s border bloodbath” – except Ruby Garcia’s family now say he never did.

Garcia, 25, was found shot to death on highway US-131 on 22 March of this year. Court records later showed that her boyfriend confessed to killing her and dumping her body.

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.

Karla Jacinto Romero says lawmakers lack empathy when using human trafficking for political purposes

Good morning US politics readers. A sex trafficking victim has criticized the Republican senator Katie Britt after the lawmaker inaccurately used her story in her rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as part of an attack on his border control policies.

In that speech, Britt described traveling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and cited the case of a woman who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times. The senator implied these were a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the border, which Republicans have sought to exploit as a campaign issue.

I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo – and that to me is not fair.

11am. Joe Biden will deliver remarks to the National League of Cities at the Marriott Marquis in DC.

11.45am. Biden will depart DC for Manchester, New Hampshire

2.30pm. The Senate intelligence committee has an open hearing on worldwide threats. The House rules committee will meet to prepare several measures for floor consideration.

2.30pm. Biden will deliver remarks on lowering costs for American families in Goffstown, New Hampshire.

3.35pm. Biden will participate in a campaign event in Manchester.

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.

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.