The Trump administration has hit certain government officials from Burma and Laos with visa sanctions as punishment for both countries’ refusal to take back their citizens the U.S. is trying to deport, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Tuesday.
Going forward, the U.S. embassy in Rangoon, Burma, will halt the issuance of tourist and business non-immigrant visas to senior officials in the ministries of Labor, Immigration, Population and Home Affairs. In Laos, the U.S. mission will no longer grant tourist and business nonimmigrant visas to senior officials from the Laotian Ministry of Public Security.
The restrictions also apply to the officials’ immediate families, DHS said.
The sanctions come after a review by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who determined that Burma and Laos have “denied or unreasonably delayed” accepting citizens ordered removed from the U.S. They will remain in place until Nielsen notifies Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that cooperation on deportees has improved, according to DHS.
“The decision to sanction a recalcitrant country is not taken lightly,” the department said in a statement. “DHS makes significant efforts, in collaboration with the State Department, to encourage countries to accept the prompt, lawful return of their nationals who are subject to removal from the United States. Those efforts include diplomatic communications at the highest level of government.”
Tuesday’s announcement is not the first time the Trump administration has resorted to the use of visa sanctions against countries that don’t cooperate on deportations. Washington slapped Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cambodia in 2017 with varying levels of visa restrictions after then-acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke named all four as recalcitrant...
More than four decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pall over Iranians. A proud people with an enviable heritage have been systematically purged of their sense of identity and forced to think and behave like barbaric and intolerant Muslims.
While the repressive regime suffocates the entire Iranian strata, the conniving mullahs are working overtime to obtain the ultimate death weapon—the nuclear bomb—the most efficient and economical way of inflicting death on the masses of infidels.
The modern manifestation of the Islamic Caliphate has been reincarnated into the “the Islamic Republic” of Iran, which has been holding the Iranian people hostage for the past 40 years. The Islamists ruling the country hope to realize their expansionist master plan after defeating the people of Iran, and ultimately unleashing their reign of Islamic terror on the rest of the world in succession. Hence the importance of world support for the Iranian people (not because of altruistic and an unselfish regard for others, but as self-interest) cannot be overemphasized.
In 2009 and after enduring more than four decades of the Islamic regime, the great majority of the Iranian people decided to cast their ballots in the hope of affecting change within the system. The Islamic government completely accustomed to doing whatever it wished and ignoring the people, stole the election and declared the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner. Their blatant violation of this basic right to vote and choose the official infuriated the long-suffering masses who poured into the streets by the millions, demanding their votes be counted and honored. The response of the regime was to beat the demonstrators, arrest many and subject a great number to a raft of harsh treatment in prison.
Iranians deserve better than being manipulated by a bunch of devilish mullahs who have been riding on the back of the ignorant poor, while deceiving the poor and with empty promises of all the goodies that they are promised in the afterlife. Not a bad scheme for...
President Donald Trump pardoned two Oregon ranchers forced back into prison in 2016 to serve out the rest of the mandatory minimum sentence required under an anti-terrorism law.
“The Hammonds are multi-generation cattle ranchers in Oregon imprisoned in connection with a fire that leaked onto a small portion of neighboring public grazing land,” the White House said in a statement. “The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds’ responsibility for the fire was conflicting, and the jury acquitted them on most of the charges.
Dwight and Steven Hammond were convicted of committing arson on federal land in 2012 under an anti-terrorism law from 1996. The U.S. District Court judge who sentenced the ranchers believed the mandatory minimum sentence was too harsh, thus both men served short stints in prison.
The Hammonds served their time, but federal prosecutors appealed the case and a federal court overturned the 2012 judgement. The Hammonds were forced back into prison in 2016 to serve the rest of their sentences.
The Hammonds’ re-incarceration sparked an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon by brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy. An armed standoff between the Bundys and law enforcement ensued.
Protect the Harvest (PTH), agriculture advocacy group, has been lobbying the Trump administration to commute the Hammonds’ sentences, arguing forcing them back into prison was...
- A woman's body was found inside trash compactor at New York apartment block
- The 48-year-old was a resident of the block, and was pronounced dead at scene
- Police are waiting for the medical examiner to determine her cause of death
- Disgraced former congressman Anthony Wiener owned an apartment in building
- He and estranged wife Huma Abedin put the property up for rent in May 2017
- The listing was published the same day he pleaded guilty to sexting a girl, 15
A woman was found dead inside a trash compactor at a New York apartment block on Tuesday evening.
The 48-year-old, who police say lived at the premises, was found unconscious inside the machine, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police had been called to the block at 1 Irving Place in Union Square, where Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin own an apartment, just before 5pm.
She was found by a building maintenance worker, and her identity has been withheld until police notify her family.
A spokesman for the NYPD told DailyMail.com the woman's cause of death will be announced by the medical examiner.
Police do not yet know how she ended up in the trash compactor, but NBC reports her purse was found nearby.
Security footage also shows the woman walking into the apartment building shortly before she was found inside the machine, PIX11 reported.
Weiner and Abedin have owned an apartment at the address for 16 years, which was listed for rent at $11,900 a month on the same day he pleaded guilty to sexting a 15-year-old girl.
Abedin also filed for divorce that same day.
The listing, posted on May 19, 2017, was taken down just days later, though it is unclear as to whether the estranged couple found a renter, or if...
