“The Trump White House blocked the Justice Department from making a deal in October 2019 to pay for mental health services for migrant families who had been separated by the Trump administration,” NBC News reports.

“Three sources involved in the discussions who requested anonymity said the Office of White House Counsel made the decision to reject the settlement of a federal lawsuit after consultation with senior adviser Stephen Miller, the driving force behind many of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including family separations.”

“A federal judge said Chad Wolf was not legally serving as acting Homeland Security secretary when he signed rules limiting DACA applications and renewals, and those rules are now invalid,” CNN reports.

“Wolf in July issued a memo saying that new applications for DACA, the Obama-era program that shields certain undocumented immigrants from deportation, would not be accepted and renewals would be limited to one year instead of two amid an ongoing review.”

Lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration before and during its “zero tolerance” policy at the border now believe the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents is 666, higher than they told a federal judge last month, NBC News reports.

Stephen Miller has fleshed out plans in a NBC News interview to rev up President Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda if he wins re-election next week.

Miller “outlined four major priorities: limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas.”

The objective, he said, is “raising and enhancing the standard for entry” to the United States.

“The Trump administration is building new sections of a wall on the nation’s southern border wherever it can and as quickly as it can to try to meet the president’s goal of building 450 miles by the end of this year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“President Trump set the goal about a year ago and, to fulfill it, contractors are building largely on land the federal government already owns, including in areas where illegal border crossings have been relatively low in recent years. In some cases, the new wall is replacing a shorter border fence installed in the late 2000s. In other locations, new stretches of wall are being built where previous administrations opted for barriers designed to stop only cars or where the rugged terrain already serves as a natural barrier.”

“The Trump campaign’s communications director asserted on Friday that the reason some migrant families separated by the administration at the U.S. border have not been reunited is because the parents do not want their children back,” Politico reports.

Said Tim Murtaugh: “The fact is it’s not as simple as you make it sound or Joe Biden made it sound on the stage last night to locate the parents who are in other countries. And when they do locate them, it has been DHS’ experience that in many cases the parents do not want the children returned.”

“Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say they have yet to track down the parents of 545 children, and that approximately two-thirds of those parents were deported to Central America without their children,” NBC News reports.

“The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review President Trump’s attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants when calculating how congressional seats are apportioned among the states,” the Washington Post reports.

“The unprecedented proposal would have the effect of shifting both political power and federal funds away from urban states with large immigrant populations and toward rural and more Republican interests.”

“The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all illegal immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were ‘deeply concerned’ about the children’s welfare,” the New York Times reports.

“But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon.”

Said Sessions: “We need to take away children.”

“Rod Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were.”

“Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus,” the AP reports.

“The action has so far caused nearly 150,000 children and adults to be expelled from the country.”

“The Trump administration is preparing an immigration enforcement blitz next month that would target arrests in U.S. cities and jurisdictions that have adopted ‘sanctuary’ policies, according to three U.S. officials who described a plan with public messaging that echoes the president’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric,” the Washington Post reports.

The operation “could begin in California as soon as later this week. It would then expand to cities including Denver and Philadelphia.”

Three former administration officials told 60 Minutes that President Trump “pressured” government officials to direct $2 billion in contracts to Fisher Sand and Gravel to build sections of the border wall on private land that engineers say will likely fail.

“A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration acted within its authority in terminating legal protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to live and work legally in the United States, sometimes for decades, after fleeing conflict or natural disasters in their home countries,” the New York Times reports.

“The 2-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit effectively strips legal immigration status from some 400,000 people, rendering them deportable if they do not voluntarily leave the country. The decision affects the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries of a program offering what is known as ‘temporary protected status,’ which has permitted them to remain in the United States after being uprooted from their unstable homelands.”

Ivana Trump suggested that immigrants “don’t get jobs” and “steal and rape women” during an interview, The Independent reports.

Said Ms. Trump: “I am immigrant, but they have to come to the country legally, they have to get a job, they have to pay taxes like the rest of Americans.”

She added: “And they don’t get a job and they steal and they rape the women. That’s not our idea.”