All posts tagged: enforcer

Trump fires homeland security chief and immigration-crackdown enforcer Kristi Noem

Trump fires homeland security chief and immigration-crackdown enforcer Kristi Noem

US President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency responsible for carrying out his sweeping immigration crackdown. According to multiple media reports, Trump was upset with Noem’s testimony at a Senate hearing this week where she said the president had approved a $220 million DHS advertising campaign in which she featured prominently. Trump in a post on Truth Social said Markwayne Mullen, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, would take over from Noem at the powerful department on March 31. Read more‘I spent almost four months in a prison cell’: Journalist Mario Guevara on covering ICE The president said Noem, 54, would become his special envoy for a new security initiative in the Western Hemisphere he called “The Shield of the Americas”. Noem “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”, Trump said. Trump described Mullin as a “MAGA Warrior” and said he will be a “spectacular Secretary of Homeland Security”. Mullin’s nomination will be subject to confirmation …

EU moves to blacklist Iran’s enforcer army – POLITICO

EU moves to blacklist Iran’s enforcer army – POLITICO

One of the arguments against putting the Revolutionary Guard on the terror list was fear of potential reprisals. Iran has repeatedly used a strategy of arresting Europeans to use as bargaining chips in international diplomacy, including former EU official Johan Floderus, who was released from the notorious Evin Prison in 2024. Paris has secured the release from Evin of two of its nationals — Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris — who are now under house arrest at the French Embassy in Tehran. “We need to send a strong signal,” van Weel said. The Revolutionary Guard “is the glue and the backbone holding this regime together, directing most of the violence, being in charge of most of the economic activity, whilst the rest of the country is in poverty, so I think it’s a key enabler of the atrocities that we’ve seen happening not only in Iran but also in the region,” he added. Separately, ministers meeting Thursday are expected to approve asset freezes and visa bans on 21 Iranian individuals and entities over the human …