TRUMP DECLINES TO LOWER FLAGS FOR NEWSPAPER VICTIMS

Blanket detentions barred for those with claims of persecution in native countries

Annapolis, Md. — President Donald Trump has declined a request from Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley to lower American flags in honor of the fatal shooting of five employees of The Capital Gazette newspaper last week.

“Obviously, I’m disappointed, you know? … Is there a cutoff for tragedy?” Buckley said Monday afternoon. “This was an attack on the press. It was an attack on freedom of speech. It’s just as important as any other tragedy.”

Gov. Larry Hogan ordered Maryland state flags to be lowered to half-staff from Friday through sunset on Monday.

Through Maryland’s congressional delegation, Buckley put in a request to the White House over the weekend to lower the American flags.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday ordered the U.S. government to immediately release or grant hearings to more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have been jailed for months or years without individualized case reviews, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignored its own policy stating that asylum applicants who establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their native country must be granted a court hearing within seven days or released.

He granted a preliminary injunction preventing the government from blanket detentions of asylum seekers at five large U.S. field offices, including those currently held, pending resolution of the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued in March after finding detention rates at the offices surged to 96 percent in the first eight months after President Donald Trump took office in 2017, up from less than 10 percent in 2013.

The ACLU says the mass imprisonment of people seeking refuge while awaiting immigration court hearings stems from policies promoted by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that amounts to a deterrent to using the asylum provision. The policy, the ACLU argued, unlawfully denies asylum seekers as a group based on only one of the factors used to assess the danger an individual poses: how long they have been in the U.S.

“As the events of recent months make clear, the question of how this nation will treat those who come to our shores seeking refuge generates enormous debate,” Boasberg wrote in a 38-page opinion, an allusion to the administration’s family separation policy recently implemented and then abandoned amid international condemnation.

“This Opinion does no more than hold the Government accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Having extended the safeguards of the Parole Directive to asylum seekers, ICE must now ensure that such protections are realized,” Boasberg said.