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During Barack Obama's first three months in office, his administration took several tentative steps toward rehabilitating the U.S. relationship with Cuba. Up to now such ties have been dominated by unremitting hostility towards the Castro Regime of over the last five decades since the 1959 communist revolution as well as the installation of the U.S. embargo in 1962. On April 13, as a sign of a political opening, Obama lifted the restrictions that his predecessor, George Bush, had placed on Cuban-Americans' ability to send remittances at will back home and to visit their relatives on the island. He also relaxed rules governing the activities of the U.S. telecommunications industry there.
Such changes in policy, despite being heralded by some as the initial phases of a process to end the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, in reality fall short of accomplishing this feat. Rather, these controlled and very modest moves can only sustain the U.S.-Cuba standoff even if they serve to reignite a debate over the nature of Washington's relations with Havana. With Obama's reform deserving to be seen as only a minimum gesture of detente between the two foes. His efforts are more representative than a Mickey and Minnie mouse de-marche than a courageous move aimed at proving results. It is a fallacious view that upholding the embargo will give his administration a leveraged position with Havana. Nevertheless, Obama's recent actions are significant because they may serve to reopen discussions regarding an enormously important 1998 espionage case involving the apprehension, trial and sentencing of the "Cuban Five".
The Cuban Five
The "Cuban Five," Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez were volunteer members of the fourteen-member Wasp Network, La Red Avispa, which was headed by the Direccion de Inteligenica (DI), a branch of Havana's foreign intelligence service. The network was disbanded that year after FBI agents obtained evidence that the group was engaged in illegal espionage activities against violence prone anti-Castro organizations based in Florida. Four Wasp members are believed to have fled to Cuba before they could be apprehended and five other members cooperated with U.S. federal authorities by pleading guilty to being unregistered foreign agents and are currently serving time (29 years collectively) in federal prison.
The remaining five attracted brief media attention in the U.S. after having plead innocent to charges ranging from false identification to the far more serious accusation of conspiracy to commit murder. These detainees remain imprisoned after being found guilty by a jury. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to face intense international criticism for having committed human rights violations, which were allegedly carried out before and during the course of their trial. The perpetrators of these gross obstructions of justice were carried out by officials in the heavily politicized Miami Federal Attorney's office and a Federal Branch , including Joan Lenart, which were veritable "shock" troops for a radically right wing campaign to "get" the Cuban Five. The defendants were denied visitation with their families, had limited communication with their lawyers, and were also subjected to seventeen months of solitary confinement during the trial. The fate of the five now lies in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is due to decide in 2010 whether or not it will hear the defendants' appeal against the Bush administration's era charges.
The Cuban Five and Wasp Operations
A significant element of the case against the Cuban Five relates to their interaction with the Wasp Network, which was assigned to monitoring and infiltrating the virulent anti-Castro organization, Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR). BTTR was founded to help rescue Cuban refugees trying to flee the island by raft. Its tactics include broadcasting information such as the text of the UN Declaration of Human Rights from airplanes flying in international airspace, in order to encourage Cubans to stand up to the authorities. On February 24, 1996, the Wasp Network launched a fatal mission, Operation Scorpion, which was to later form the basis of the charges of alleged conspiracy of murder that was brought against the Cuban Five.
Having received secret radioed instructions from the DI, Hernandez gave orders to undercover operative Rene Gonzalez and another Wasp member, Jose Pablo Roque, that they were not to fly with the BTTR between February 24 and February 27, 1996. On February 24, three BTTR planes, flying over the Florida straits, crossed into international airspace then purportedly into Cuban airspace. Havana, over the course of several months, repeatedly asked the U.S. to stop the BTTR from attempting to breach Cuban airspace, due to the dire consequences that might be forthcoming. In fact, U.S. officials did communicate such information to the anti-Castro forces. While the U.S. authorities nominally did move to discourage such flights, as a consequence of Washington's basic inaction regarding these provocative moves, two Cuban military aircrafts were launched to intercept the three BTTR aircrafts; two were shot down with the loss of four lives. A subsequent investigation was ordered by the International Civil Aviation Authority to determine if the hostile aircrafts were in Cuban or international airspace when they were downed. The operation ultimately earned Cuba a unanimous condemnation by the UN Security Council in July 1996.
The DI, which opportunely was located in Miami, also sent Hernandez to oversee the success of Havana's efforts to penetrate U.S. military facilities. The overarching goal of infiltrating these bases was to report on the quantity and types of aircrafts arriving and departing from the bases, monitor U.S. military personnel in key zones, identify new communication devices which had been installed, establish radio frequencies, gauge physical security procedures being followed, as well as to identify those who could potentially be recruited as spies or serve as subjects of interest to the Cuban intelligence services. The DI also planned for two Wasp Network agents to penetrate the re-election campaign of hard line Cuban-American Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who was known to be aggressively opposed to the normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba. The purpose of this move was to gather information that could later be used to discredit, harass or neutralize him and other well-known Cuban-American congressional ideologues.
The FBI had been monitoring the Wasp Network since 1995, and in September 1998, it moved to dismantle the group by apprehending its members and unearthing the information that the intelligence organization had collected. U.S. federal prosecutors submitted more than 1,200 pages of detailed communication reports between the DI and the Cuban Five, which it had obtained from the computers being utilized by Wasp members.
The Case
In certain respects, the proceedings involving the Cuban Five were the longest of its kind in U.S. legal history. All told, 119 volumes of testimony and more than 20,000 pages of exhibits and evidence were presented. Great controversy surrounded the defendants' June 8, 2001 conviction on all charges. Since their 1998 arrests, they have remained incarcerated, awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court on whether it will review their case.
Central to the decision of the Cuban Five's defense team, led by Thomas Goldstein, has been the decision to appeal the verdict (filed January 30, 2009), based on the argument that the selection of the jury, and the environment in which the trial took place, prejudiced the proceedings. The equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution states that no one can dismiss jurors on the basis of race. In the filed appeal, defense lawyers claimed that prosecutors unfairly removed seven potential African American venire men from the jury pool. In the end, three African Americans jurors were selected, but no Cuban-Americans. However, the defense team will argue that the Cuban-American presence nevertheless was felt throughout the trial.
Moreover, despite the increasing silhouette in international law allowing for a person to be tried in a location different from that in which a crime was allegedly committed, federal district judge Joan A. Lenard, known for her right-wing proclivities, refused to grant a change of venue from Miami, even though this would have advanced the prospects of fair trial. The fact that Miami is home to many Cuban exiles that hold strong opinions and sentiments against the Castro regime in Havana failed to sway Lenard. As CNN reported at the time, the danger was that, "The pervasive and violent anti-Castro struggle of the Miami community would not only infect the jury with hostility but would cause jurors to fear for their (and their families') safety, livelihoods, and community standing if [they're] acquitted."
On its first appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with the defense's assessment and overturned the Cuban Five's convictions because the appellate judges felt that the trial took place in a prejudiced environment. In spite of this reasoning, the full Court of Appeals later disagreed with that judgment and reinstated the convictions of the Cuban Five, a move which now leaves the men to wait for the results from the Supreme Court's deliberations. The new judgment also expanded the charges pending against Hernandez to include conspiracy to commit murder, for his direct involvement in the 1996 shooting of the two BTTR planes, and the resulting four deaths of members of that organization. During their collective trials, the Cuban Five did not deny their covert service in favor of Cuba's DI, but rather tried to give the impression that, in fact it was they who were fighting against terrorism and protecting Cuba. Their defense was that they were monitoring the terrorist actions of Miami-based anti-Castro groups, who were actively involved in terrorist activities, and who they feared would attack their native country.
Guerrero, Hernandez and Labanino were all convicted of conspiring to commit espionage in the United States. Hernandez was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder based on his role in the February 1996 BTTR plane crashes and deaths of their four passengers (who were all U.S. citizens). All five have been convicted of conspiracy to act in the U.S. as agents of a foreign government without notifying the Department of Justice, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Hernandez has been sentenced to two life terms, Guerrero and Labanino each have been given one life sentence, Fernando Gonzalez has been sentenced to nineteen years and Rene Gonzalez is currently serving a fifteen-year sentence.
Human Rights Violations
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have criticized the U.S. government's policy regarding the Cuban Five and have accused it of perpetrating human rights violations against the group. Beginning with their arrest and subsequent trial three months later, the five Cuban defendants have been held without bail for a period of thirty-three months. They were incarcerated in solitary confinement cells for seventeen months with all contact between the defendants and their families cut off. Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, the wives of Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, were deported back to Cuba, and their requests for temporary U.S. visas were denied. The U.S. government justified its draconian treatment of the alleged culprits by stating it was exercising its legitimate authority to protect itself against covert spies and their affiliates. Evidence was presented at the trial, which revealed that both wives were in fact members of, or at least affiliated with the Wasp Network, and thus were labeled as bona fide threats to Washington's national security.
In August 2001, upon being found guilty, the Cuban spies were remanded to serve solitary confinement once again, this time for a period of forty-eight days, prior to their pre-sentencing hearings, and then, in March 2003, when they were sent to isolation cells on orders from the Bush Department of Justice. Justice continued to claim that the Cubans were still active threats to U.S. national security. Throughout this period, the Cuban inmates were prohibited from receiving correspondences from their families as well as their lawyers, which the defense contended was a clear violation of domestic and international law. These human rights violations have been submitted along with procedural complaints over aspects of the original trial, as part of the basis of the defense team's later appeal to the Supreme Court.
Cuba's Response to the Convictions
In Cuba, the defendants have become national icons and are today more commonly known as the "Five Heroes," serving as symbols of the political struggle between their native country and the U.S. Their images decorate the entire country, with posters as well as block-long murals invoking their names along with inspirational quotes from them, one of which says "volveran," meaning, "they will return". A mural honoring their service to Cuba was dedicated to the national heroes in Santa Clara, Cuba on March 13, 2009. The imprisoned Cubans have been transformed into major propaganda figures for Havana, with their personal virtues and willingness to sacrifice for their country praised and memorialized on postcards, factory walls, billboards, and in newspapers, as well as being invoked during formal ceremonies and in speeches by Cuban officials. Additionally, there are websites, such as the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, which points to the patent violations of justice during their trial and the unbalanced treatment of those the U.S. describes as spies. As a result, there is a clear sentiment in Cuba that justice is only blind when it is conducive to U.S. ideological interests.
As reported over NPR, the Cuban population regards the Cuban Five as heroes who are "prisoners of the empire, unjustly held in the United States." Cuban officials maintain that the incarcerated prisoners are Cuban nationalists and patriots who are enduring excessively harsh punishment, as a consequence of the ongoing hostility between the U.S. and Cuba. Many ordinary Cubans feel that the U.S. employs a double standard in its War on Terror, because as violent opponents of the Castro regime sometimes kill pro-Havana militants, the U.S. government casts a blind eye to these malicious crimes. Furthermore, these aggressors have launched repeated criminal acts of violence against Cuba, which have not been subject to the same rigid judicial standard as those who are avowedly pro-Castro. Elizabeth Palmero, the wife of Labanino, drafted a statement defending the cause of the Cuban Five, stating the reason why they are regarded as national heroes in Cuba, was that, "The [five] personify the resistance of the Cuban people. They personify the will of the Cuban people to decide their destiny to have the government that we wish."
Domestic and International Reactions
Five Latin American presidents, ten Nobel Prize Laureates, prominent intellectuals, religious figures, union leaders, head of legal and human rights organizations, artists, members of parliament, and leading civic personalities around the world have been calling for the release of the Cuban Five. There have been petitions, which have sought to win over the interest of both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Apologists for the actions of the jailed Cubans have hammered away at Washington's alleged violations of international law, due process and fair trial. All of these efforts have been focused on calling for the pardoning and release of the jailed Cubans and the granting of humanitarian visas to their deported wives to provide for visitation rights for them immediately.
The recent lifting of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans suggests that the U.S. may slowly be trying to create a new relationship with Cuba, replacing a policy which for so long has crippled relations between Havana and Washington. The current Cuban president, Raul Castro, has suggested a prisoner swap if need be, which should be staged in a manner that would send all of Cuba's political prisoners and their families to the United States in exchange for the five convicted Cuban spies. Yet it appears that quite a few of the Cuban political prisoners do not want to be part of such a deal, reflecting a distinct spirit of plurality that exists among the group. As the Washington Post has recently reported, some of these prisoners "prefer to stay in their homeland with their families and culture and fight for changes to the political system of their own country."
Taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court
Unlike other judicial chambers, the Supreme Court is vested with the authority to decide which cases will be heard. In a February 6, 2009 interview with their lawyer Thomas Goldstein and Democracynow.org, Goldstein claimed that the Wasp members did not steal any American secrets, and that its members were only trying to gather information on people violently opposed to the Castro regime. Goldstein also asserted in a comment to the press that the Cuban Five were "tried by jurors who took out their instinct for revenge over their anger at the Castro government and what they perceive it's done in Cuba." The defense team also claims, that Hernandez was wrongly convicted of a crime that he did not commit. Furthermore, Goldstein and the defense team feel that the defendants should have been charged as no more than unregistered aliens, which would have greatly reduced the length of their sentence. The Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case in June 2009, and if it does, it will decide the merits of the case in 2010. Until then, the Cuban Five will be serving their time and will remain a deep source of concern for all Cubans as they continue their struggle against what they perceive as American political prejudices.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Deanna Cox
Founded in 1975, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a nonprofit, tax-exempt independent research and information organization, was established to promote the common interests of the hemisphere, raise the visibility of regional affairs and increase the importance of the inter-American relationship, as well as encourage the formulation of rational and constructive U.S. policies towards Latin America.
A member of his legal team noted that "the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil."
Mahmoud Khalil and his lawyers on Wednesday affirmed their plan to fight an immigration court ruling that paves the way for his deportation, months after plainclothes agents accosted the lawful permanent resident and his US citizen wife outside their home in New York City.
"It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again," Khalil said in a statement.
"When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide," he continued. "Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people's liberation."
While President Donald Trump has a broad goal of mass deportations, his administration has targeted Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student with a valid green card, and other foreign scholars in the United States for criticizing Israel's US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court."
Federal agents arrested Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, in March. He wasn't released from a federal immigration facility until June. During his 104-day detention, his wife, Noor Abdalla, gave birth to their son. Over the past six months, he has been a part of multiple legal battles: his challenge to being deported in a Louisiana immigration court; a civil rights case before US District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey; and a fight for $20 million in damages.
In a Wednesday letter to Farbiarz—an appointee of former President Joe Biden who has already blocked his deportation while the civil rights case proceeds—Khalil's legal team explained that on September 12, Jamee Comans, an immigration judge (IJ), "issued three separate orders denying petitioner's (1) motion for an extension of time, (2) motion to change venue, and (3) application for a waiver, without conducting an evidentiary hearing."
"In denying petitioner's request for a waiver absent a hearing, as well as his motions for extension of time and for change of venue, the IJ ordered petitioner removed to Algeria or Syria... while reaffirming her decisions denying petitioner any form of relief from removal," the letter says. Khalil now has 30 days from September 12 to start an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).
Noting "statements targeting petitioner by name for retaliation and deportation made by the president and several senior US government officials," Khalil's lawyers "have ample reason to expect that the BIA process—and an affirmance of the IJ's determination—will be swift," the letter continued. "Upon affirmance by the BIA, petitioner will lose his lawful permanent resident status, including his right to reside and work in the United States, and have a final order of removal against him."
"Compared to other courts of appeals, including those in the 3rd and 2nd Circuits, the 5th Circuit almost never grants stays of removal to noncitizens pursuing petitions for review of BIA decisions. As a result, the only meaningful impediment to petitioner's physical removal from the United States would be this court's important order prohibiting removal during the pendency of his federal habeas case," the letter points out, referring to Farbiarz's previous intervention.
Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, and the national, New Jersey, New York, and Louisiana arms of the ACLU.
"When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailer all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result," CLEAR co-director Ramzi Kassem said Wednesday. "A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly free-falling credibility of the entire US immigration system."
In addition to calling out the Trump administration for its unconstitutional conduct, Khalil's lawyers expressed some optimism.
"We have witnessed a constant lack of humanity and allegiance to the law throughout proceedings in this farcical Louisiana immigration court, and the immigration judge's September 12 decision is just the most recent example of what occurs when the system requires an arbiter that is anything but neutral to do the administration's bidding," said Johnny Sinodis, a partner at Van Der Hout LLP. "As with other illegal efforts by the government, this too will be challenged and overcome."
"The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Congressional Democrats and victim advocates took aim Tuesday at President Donald Trump's gutting of federal programs combatcing human trafficking, belying campaign promises to aggressively target perpetrators of such crimes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday released an 18-page memo "detailing how the Trump administration has repeatedly sided with sex offenders and human traffickers over their victims—often rewarding sexual predators and elevating them to positions of power within the US government while crippling key offices, programs, and grants that combat sex crimes and support survivors."
This seemingly flies in the face of Trump's "Agenda 47" campaign platform, which vowed to aggressively crack down on human traffickers, and the groundswell of Trump supporters' unheeded calls for action and accountability in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Fighting child sex trafficking—both real and imagined—has long been an issue of passionate importance for the MAGA movement.
"Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
Noting that "Trump and his supporters have gone from demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files to doing everything in their power to prevent their release, openly tampering with potential witness Ghislaine Maxwell and calling the matter a 'Democrat hoax,'" the memo—titled Epstein Is the Tip of the Iceberg—begins by asking: "Trump began his second term promising to 'make America safe again.' But safe for whom? Law-abiding citizens or dangerous criminals?"
The memo notes that in the past seven months, Trump has:
Trump has also been found civilly liable for sexual abuse and has been accused of rape, sexual assault, or harassment by more than two dozen women.
Following whistleblower claims "that the Trump administration concealed information about the safety of unaccompanied Guatemalan children they tried to deport in the dead of night," Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday called for an oversight hearing to examine the US Office of Refugee Resettlement's "mass child deportation efforts and apparent lies under oath."
"The urgent call for a hearing comes after the disclosure alleged that at least 30 of 327 unaccompanied Guatemalan children the administration attempted to deport without due process 'have indicators of being a victim of child abuse, including death threats, gang violence, human trafficking, and/or have expressed fear of return to Guatemala,'" Padilla's office said in a statement Wednesday.
An investigation published Wednesday by The Guardian also detailed how the Trump administration "has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking."
Jean Bruggeman, executive director of the advocacy group Freedom Network USA, told The Guardian that “it’s been a widespread and multipronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options."
Numerous critics have warned of the dangers of Trump's diversion of federal resources and personnel dedicated to combating human trafficking to enforcing mass deportations.
As Raskin told Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel during a charged Wednesday hearing, "When Trump decided that rounding up immigrants with no criminal records was more important that preventing crimes like human trafficking of women and girls, drug dealing, terrorism, and fraud, you ordered FBI’s 25 largest field offices to divert thousands of agents away from chasing down violent criminals, sex traffickers, fraudsters, and scammers to help carry out Trump’s extreme immigration crackdown."
"You ordered hundreds of FBI agents to pore over all the Epstein files," Raskin said, "but not to look for more clues about the money network or the network of human traffickers, pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism, counterintelligence, or anti-drug trafficking duties to work around the clock, some of them sleeping on their office desks, to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared."
"Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are," Raskin added.
"Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth," said another economist.
As working-class Americans contend with a stalled labor market and rising prices under US President Donald Trump, economist Alex Jacquez warned Wednesday that the Federal Reserve's "small rate cut will do little to address Trump's economic turmoil."
"Driven by a stagnant job market, the Fed's move offers no real relief to American households, consumers, or workers—all of whom are paying the price for Trump's economic mismanagement," said Jacquez, who previously served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama and is now chief of policy and advocacy at the think tank Groundwork Collaborative. "No interest rate tweak can undo that damage."
Jacquez's colleague Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork, similarly said Wednesday that "President Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth. He's leaving families and workers high and dry—and no move by the Fed will save them."
The president has been pressuring the US central bank to slash its benchmark interest rate, taking aim at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed during his first term. Powell remained in the post under former Democratic President Joe Biden.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to lower the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points, from 4.25-4.5% to 4-4.25%. It is the first cut since December 2024, and Powell said the decision reflects a "shift in the balance of risks" to the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.
Daniel Hornung, who held economic policy roles during the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said in a statement that "beyond the Fed's September cut, the main story from the Fed's projections is a cloudy outlook for the economy and monetary policy over the rest of the year."
The cut came after Trump ally Stephen Miran was sworn in to a seat on the Fed's Board of Governors on Tuesday—which made this FOMC gathering "the most politically charged meeting in recent memory," as Politico reported.
The new appointee "was the only Fed official to dissent from the decision," the outlet noted. "Miran called for twice as large a cut in borrowing costs, and the Fed's economic projections suggest that one official—likely Miran—would support jumbo-sized rate cuts at the next two meetings as well—an estimate that is conspicuously lower than the other 18 estimates."
Hornung highlighted that "an equal number of members favor hiking, no further cuts, or one cut to the number of members who favor two more cuts, and one outlier member—presumably, President Trump's current Council of Economic Advisers chair—favors the equivalent of five cuts."
"Besides Miran’s outlier status, which sends concerning signals about continued Fed independence," he added, "the wide range of views on the committee is a reaction to the real risks that tariff and immigration policy pose to both sides of the Fed's mandate."
Federal immigration agents across the United States are working to deliver on Trump's promised mass deportations, despite warnings of the human and economic impacts of rounding up immigrants living and working in the country. The president is also engaged in a global trade war, imposing tariffs that have driven up prices for a range of goods.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced last week that overall inflation rose by 2.9% year-over-year in August and core inflation rose by 3.1%. Jacquez said at the time: "Make no mistake, inflation is accelerating and American families continue to feel price pressures across the board from children's clothing, to groceries, to autos. Rate cuts will not ease the inescapable financial pain that the Trump economy is inflicting on households across the nation."
That came less than a week after BLS revealed in its first jobs report since Trump fired the agency's commissioner that the US economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, and the number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward.
Jacquez had called that report "more evidence that Trump’s promises to working families have fallen flat."
Recent polling has also exposed how working people are suffering under Trump's second administration. One survey—conducted by Data for Progress for Groundwork and Protect Borrowers—shows that "American families are trapped in a cycle of debt," with 55% of likely voters reporting at least some credit card debt, and another 18% saying they “had this type of debt in the past, but not anymore.”
The poll, released last week, also found that over half have or previously had car loan or medical debt, more than 40% have or had student debt, and over 35% are or used to be behind on utility payments. Additionally, nearly 30% have or had “buy now, pay later” debt through options such as Afterpay or Klarna.