The White House announced Monday a crackdown on “sanctuary cities” that defy Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, as the president closes in on his first 100 days in office.Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the administration would name and shame cities accused of blocking efforts to protect “American communities from criminal aliens.”The Republican leader will sign an executive order later Monday directing officials to publish a list of “jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws,” she told reporters.The announcement came with Trump celebrating major progress in honoring his election campaign promises to stem illegal border crossings from Mexico.The figures soared to all-time highs under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, and the Republican won the White House in part on promises to combat what he repeatedly claimed was an invasion of criminal migrants.But his popularity has since plunged, with more than 40 percent of Americans saying they “disapprove strongly” of him, according to a Washington Post-ABC opinion poll.Trump suggested pollsters and news organizations should be sued for fraud over the “fake news.”The president will this week be hailing his achievements in his first 100 days, claiming successes on the economy, foreign policy and government efficiency as well as on migration.Leavitt noted a 95 percent drop in encounters of undocumented migrants at the Mexico border — from 140,000 to 7,000 — in the 12 months from March 2024, when Biden was still in office.”America’s borders are now secure because of President Trump,” she said. “He has restored the rule of law, enforced our immigration laws and defended America’s sovereignty.”Trump’s election campaign rhetoric about taking on the alleged hordes of rapists and murderers resonated with voters concerned about illegal immigration.- Influx of migrants -As part of the drive to deliver on his pledges, Republicans in Congress are targeting “sanctuary cities,” which typically prohibit local officials from telling federal agents about undocumented immigrants if they are at risk of deportation.Lawmakers hauled the mayors of four such cities — Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York — over the coals at a hearing in March.And Republicans in the House of Representatives released a bill on Monday giving Trump powers to levy a host of onerous immigration charges — including a minimum $1,000 fee for asylum applications.In a sign of the emphasis the administration is placing on immigration, placards lined the White House lawn, each displaying the mugshot of someone the administration called an “illegal alien.”The word “arrested” was printed in capital letters above each photo and, below, the crime of which they were accused — from “first-degree murder” and “sexual abuse of a child” to “distribution of fentanyl.”An accompanying White House press release included a list of 100 individuals that it said were the “worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants” arrested since Trump took office.Trump has also sent troops to the Mexican border, imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for allegedly not doing enough to stop illegal crossings, and designated gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as terrorist groups.But Trump has butted heads with judges, rights groups and Democrats who say he has ignored constitutional rights in rushing to deport migrants, sometimes without the right to a hearing.Tom Homan, Trump’s point man on border security, told reporters Monday that “we have the most secure border in the history of this nation.”He was asked about deportation rates, which have lagged behind Biden’s numbers, despite Trump’s promised campaign of the largest mass removal campaign in US history.The government has not been releasing comprehensive data, but the Migration Policy Institute said it appeared on track to remove half a million people this year — fewer than the 685,000 deportations recorded in fiscal year 2024 under Biden. Homan argued that comparisons were bogus, since Biden’s deportation numbers included people removed at the border, and most of those people were now being stopped before getting in.

A multi-million-dollar US warplane fell off the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier into the Red Sea on Monday in an accident that injured one sailor, the Navy said.A tractor that was towing the fighter plane — a model that cost $67 million in 2021 — also slipped off the ship into the sea.”The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” the Navy said in a statement.”Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard,” it said. “All personnel are accounted for, with one sailor sustaining a minor injury.”The carrier and its other planes remain in action and the incident is under investigation, the Navy added. No details of recovery work were released.It is the second F/A-18 operating off the Truman to be lost in less than six months, after another was mistakenly shot down by the USS Gettysburg guided missile cruiser late last year in incident that both pilots survived.The Truman is one of two US aircraft carriers operating in the Middle East, where US forces have been hammering Yemen’s Huthi rebels with strikes since mid-March in an attempt to end the threat they pose to ships in the region.

Venezuela accused Washington Monday of “abduction” in the case of a two-year-old girl separated from her migrant parents, who were deported from the United States without her.The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the girl was placed in foster care to protect her from her parents, who it claimed were members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua drug gang.In a statement Monday, the foreign ministry in Caracas denounced “the abduction by US authorities of the young Venezuelan Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal, aged two” and called for her “immediate” return to her parents.Under US President Donald Trump, the DHS has carried out a crackdown on immigration, deporting thousands of primarily Latin American migrants that it says are undocumented and cancelling the legal status of others.The administration has said that many of those it has deported are members of criminal gangs, including Tren de Aragua, but has provided limited evidence to back that claim. Lawyers and family members of many deportees deny the allegations.The DHS did not say where it deported the girl’s parents to, but Venezuela believes her father was among about 250 men sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison for the country’s most violent criminals.In a statement Saturday, the DHS claimed the father, Maiker Espinoza-Escalona, was a Tren de Aragua “lieutenant” who “oversees homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house.”The girl’s mother, Yorely Escarleth Bernal Inciarte, “oversees recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution,” the DHS said.It said the girl was “taken off the deportation flight manifest for her safety and welfare. The child remains in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and is currently placed with a foster family.”The department branded both parents “criminal illegal aliens” and said their expulsion had been approved by a judge.Tren de Aragua has been designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the Trump administration, which has paid El Salvador millions of dollars to lock up nearly 300 deported migrants it claims are criminals and gang members.At least one of them, Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was found to have been wrongly deported, but both Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele have washed their hands of his case.Last week, Venezuelan prosecutors said they were investigating the “forced disappearance” of a citizen detained in the United States in January, but whose whereabouts are now “unknown.”

A US warplane went overboard into the Red Sea as a result of a Monday accident on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, the country’s Navy said.”The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” the Navy said in a statement.”All personnel are accounted for, with one sailor sustaining a minor injury,” it said, adding that the carrier and its air wing remain mission capable and that the incident is under investigation.The F/A-18E reached initial operating capability in the early 2000s and had a unit cost of more than $67 million as of fiscal year 2021, according to a Navy fact sheet.The Truman is one of two US aircraft carriers currently operating in the Middle East, where Washington’s forces have been hammering Yemen’s Huthi rebels with strikes since mid-March in an attempt to end the threat they pose to ships in the region.