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States have ramped up efforts to enact stricter immigration laws, group finds
CBSN
Efforts by state lawmakers across the U.S. to pass stricter immigration laws have increased significantly over the past four years under the Biden administration, according to a report released by a national civil rights group on Thursday.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S., found that state lawmakers have proposed 233 laws that the group considers to be "anti-immigrant" — up from 132 in 2023, 64 in 2022, 81 in 2021 and 51 in 2020.
Those proposals include measures to criminalize unauthorized entry into the U.S. at the state level, curb so-called "sanctuary" policies that limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities and address concerns about noncitizen voting attempts, which studies show are rare. Other measures have sought to crack down on the hiring of undocumented workers.
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More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
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More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
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In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.