Por Ray Sánchez y Priscilla Álvarez, CNN

Dos días después de que agentes de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas en Minnesota supuestamente derribaron a una cuidadora a domicilio procedente del África subsahariana al pavimento nevado y se la llevaron en una camioneta, una amiga cercana hizo el viaje de 2.200 km hasta un controvertido centro de detención de Texas donde se encuentra detenida.

“Se sorprendió muchísimo al verme”, dijo su amigo Justin, un cuidador a domicilio de 40 años que pidió no revelar su nombre completo por temor a represalias. “Nunca creyó que alguien supiera dónde estaba”.

Ella no está sola.

Decenas de solicitantes de asilo como ella, así como refugiados que pasaron un riguroso proceso de selección que duró años antes de ser admitidos en Estados Unidos, han sido arrestados en Minnesota en las últimas semanas, dicen abogados y defensores de inmigración.

Los inmigrantes son encadenados y trasladados en vuelos a centros de detención en Texas, donde se les obliga a relatar sus dolorosas solicitudes de asilo con poco o ningún contacto con familiares o abogados, según abogados y defensores. Algunos, tras días de entrevistas con agentes, han sido liberados en Texas sin dinero, identificación ni teléfono. Otros permanecen detenidos sin información sobre el motivo de su detención.

“Es realmente una campaña de terror. Está diseñada para asustar a la gente”, dijo Laurie Ball Cooper, vicepresidenta de programas legales estadounidenses del Proyecto Internacional de Asistencia a Refugiados. “Sé que ha habido muchas historias de desorganización. No estoy segura de que esta sea una de ellas”.

Tom Homan, el zar fronterizo del presidente Donald Trump, reconoció el jueves que el esfuerzo de control de inmigración en Minnesota necesitaba ser “arreglado” y dijo que su equipo estaba trabajando en un plan de reducción mientras agudizaba el enfoque de las operaciones en inmigrantes indocumentados con antecedentes penales.

Homan, enviado por la administración a Minneapolis para gestionar las operaciones de ICE tras el tiroteo fatal de Alex Pretti, dijo que no “todo lo que se ha hecho aquí ha sido perfecto” y que “se pueden y se deben hacer ciertas mejoras”.

Los refugiados provienen de países como Somalia, Etiopía, Afganistán, Siria, El Salvador, Venezuela y Rusia, afirmó Ball Cooper. Entraron a Estados Unidos legalmente, pero no pueden solicitar la permanencia hasta un año después de su admisión, como lo exige la ley estadounidense. Ball Cooper y otros defensores han estado en contacto con algunos de estos refugiados, quienes, según afirman, no han sido acusados ​​de delitos o infracciones migratorias que los expongan a un proceso de deportación.

“Conozco casos en los que la persona fue arrestada, detenida en Minnesota y subida a un avión (a Texas) en 90 minutos o menos”, dijo Ball Cooper a CNN, y agregó que los abogados y defensores en Minnesota y Texas se han visto obligados a luchar para conectarse con muchos de los refugiados.

El miércoles por la noche, un juez federal emitió una orden de restricción temporal que impide al gobierno de Trump arrestar o detener a refugiados reasentados en Minnesota mientras se tramita una demanda colectiva que impugna esta práctica. El juez también ordenó la liberación inmediata de todos los refugiados detenidos en Minnesota, así como la liberación de aquellos que fueron sacados del estado en un plazo de cinco días, y dio al gobierno 48 horas para proporcionar una lista de los refugiados detenidos.

Algunos refugiados en el caso están representados por el Proyecto Internacional de Asistencia a Refugiados y otras organizaciones legales y de defensa. La demanda y los abogados de los demandantes acusan

By Rachel Tashjian, CNN

Paris (CNN) — “The rest of the year is for reality,” said Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of what is perhaps Paris’s most eccentric couture house, Schiaparelli, minutes after his latest collection, featuring a densely feathered jacket with foot-high soaring wings for a collar, was unveiled.

Paris Couture Week, which the American designer’s Monday morning show kicked off, is for fantasy. For play. Not for escapism, per se – Roseberry’s Schiaparelli show, one of his finest and weirdest to date, vibrated with implications about our world’s rigid definition of beauty, with horns, feathers and splashes of neon – but for indulgence.

Couture, after all, is about imagining another, more outrageous reality for yourself. What if I dressed like a pre-code movie star (Valentino)? What if I got married in a dress of degraded flower petals (Dior)? What if I had a green drop waist shirtdress in a silk mousseline lighter than a sigh, with a matching robe, embroidered with mushrooms, by Chanel? Would I write more love letters? Make more demands? Host more seances? What extravagant actions can a life of astonishing clothes inspire?

It was a packed week, with major designer debuts at Chanel and Dior when Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson, showed couture collections for the first time within their new respective homes. It was also a time of legends remembered, as Armani Privé held its first show since the passing of Giorgio Armani and Valentino showed its first couture collection since the death of its founder Valentino Garavani earlier this month.

Both Blazy and Anderson, millennials with big brains, are yanking the fusty business of extraordinary clothes into the present – the former with a swell of empathy, and the other with a cerebral but intimate approach.

Blazy’s Chanel was a story of lightness that began with transparent silk mousseline pieces and flourished into dresses and suits and dresses ornamented with layers of feathers. The silk mousseline garments floated almost like ghosts or memories of Chanel designs past, including the famous skirt suit with its matching cardigan and Karl Lagerfeld modernisms like jeans with a tweed jacket, plus the iconic flap bag. A group of plain wool suits were equally as easy, especially one with almost no detail except an oval brooch at the neck and coordinating gems at the cuffs. Its simplicity was profound, and clearly the result of hours of labor and design. And what in a woman’s life today is simple, let alone light and breezy?

Jonathan Anderson knows how to seize an enormous stage – his designs, at Loewe and now at Dior, are commercially savvy but extreme, and he knows how to make his bonkers clothing pop up everywhere. Terming his collection a “Wunderkammer,” or a cabinet of curiosities, this was no bric-a-brac of details and stuff, but a combination of highly clarified silhouettes like bulbous gowns and dresses plus layers of tops and bottoms that slithered and puffed, with ornate details like jewelry in the form of bunches of cyclamen flowers, and miniature portraits-turned-brooches.

Anderson faced criticism online after his raucous menswear collection, shown during the men’s shows in Paris earlier this month, divided audiences. But the designer one-upped his haters by sending poesies of cyclamen as his show invitations, noting on Instagram that John Galliano, the hero of couture to many fashion fans, had brought the designer such a bouquet when he came to see his women’s ready-to-wear collection last fall. Galliano, who was famously fired from Dior in 2011, after making antisemitic comments in a bar in Paris, also attended the show, as well as Jean Paul Gaultier, a show of baton-passing if there ever were one. While Anderson’s clothes will undoubtedly entice a younger couture bu

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — Peering out the Greyhound bus window, Diann Droste saw the snow coming down fast and thick.

“I remember I was looking out the window and thinking, ‘I don’t know that this is good,’” Diann tells CNN Travel today. “I started to see cars in the ditches, and then I saw semis in the ditches. But I’m 16. And I don’t know what happens in a situation like that, so I just read my book.”

It was January 1973. Diann was a high school junior living in Waterloo, Iowa. She was on her way home from visiting her pen pal, who lived in Brainerd, Minnesota — “the real northern part of Minnesota, where it’s really cold.” The bus ride took more than 10 hours.

“Those Greyhounds make a lot of stops. There was one transfer where I got off the first bus and got on a second,” recalls Diann today. “My children think it’s unusual that I was riding Greyhound buses around the country when I was 16. But we didn’t have money for airplanes.”

Diann describes herself as “pretty fearless,” back then. Or maybe she was just “a teenager at a different time.” Either way, riding a Greyhound bus alone didn’t intimidate her — until the snow started. As the view out of the window disappeared into white, Diann tried to focus on the book in her lap.

“Snow is nothing unusual in the Midwest in January. But very soon, it was snowing hard and the bus was sliding,” she recalls.

The mood on the bus seemed to shift as well.

“I remember thinking these other people on this bus — and the bus was just about completely full — seem a little nervous,” says Diann.

Unexpected detour

There was a collective sense of relief when the bus arrived in the city of Albert Lea, Minnesota. The bus driver exited the interstate and parked outside a Holiday Inn.

“He stopped the bus and said, ‘We can’t go any farther. It’s not safe for me to drive, so we’re going to spend the night here,’” Diann recalls.

For Diann, panic set in immediately.

“Instantly, I thought, ‘Uh oh.’…I had no idea buses stopped like that.”

Diann didn’t have any money. That’s one part of this story her kids still can’t believe. She’d brought about $25 for the trip, and now, on the return leg, she only had a few dollars left.

She got off the bus, pulled her coat tight around her neck and looked at the other passengers. Everyone else headed straight into the motel. Everyone else also seemed much older — people who instinctively knew what to do when travel plans fell apart.

Diann spotted a pay phone and used a few of her remaining coins to call home. She told her mother what had happened but tried not to alarm her.

“When I told my kids this, I said, ‘Now, if that ever happens to you, call me. I have a credit card.’” Diann says. “But in 1972, ‘73 no one had a cell phone, not everybody had a credit card.”

Her mom didn’t have one. Albert Lea was still two hours from Waterloo, and the weather conditions were too dangerous for her mother to drive to pick her up.

“It was snowing in Iowa also and they were expecting up to a foot of snow overnight,” Diann recalls.

When she hung up, she feared she might be stranded for days.

Inside the Holiday Inn, Diann sat down in a chair in the hotel lobby, under the fluorescent lights. She watched as the other passengers lined up at the front desk, and got rooms.

“No one seemed to even notice me,” she says. “And they all got their rooms and left, and I was sitting in the chair.”

There were no families among the group. No young people — just what Diann thought of as “real adults.” And she was alone and unsure what to do.

“I can’t get a room, because I don’t have any money,” she told herself. She tried to stay calm and formulate a plan. She spotted a sign behind the desk advertising free breakfast.

Por Briana Waxman, CNN

Se espera que nieve, vientos dañinos e inundaciones costeras peligrosas afecten partes de los Apalaches del sur, las Carolinas y el sur de Virginia este fin de semana a medida que una poderosa tormenta invernal se intensifica rápidamente en la costa sureste.

Los impactos comenzarán a finales del viernes y se extenderán hasta el sábado, con nieve y ráfagas de viento huracanadas en partes de la costa de Carolina del Norte y Virginia para la noche del sábado. La costa de Nueva Inglaterra, en particular la zona este de Massachusetts, podría experimentar nieve y viento más tarde el fin de semana si la tormenta se acerca a la costa.

Se espera que un sistema de baja presión se forme cerca de la costa de Carolina del Norte a última hora del viernes, antes de fortalecerse rápidamente a medida que avanza hacia el norte el sábado, un proceso conocido como bombogénesis. A medida que la bomba ciclónica se intensifica, atraerá aire muy frío hacia el sur, lo que permitirá que caiga nieve en zonas donde no suele haber condiciones climáticas invernales significativas.

Más de 28 millones de personas en el sureste se encuentran bajo vigilancia y advertencia de tormenta invernal, incluyendo partes del norte de Georgia, las Carolinas y el sur de Virginia. Muchas de estas zonas aún se están recuperando de la mortal tormenta invernal del fin de semana pasado, que dejó carreteras cubiertas de nieve y hielo, interrupciones generalizadas en los viajes y cortes de electricidad prolongados.

Se espera que la nieve se acumule en partes de los Apalaches del sur, las Carolinas y el sur de Virginia desde la noche del viernes hasta el sábado a medida que la tormenta se fortalece rápidamente en alta mar.

Se esperan las nevadas más fuertes en el centro y este de Carolina del Norte hasta el sur de Virginia, donde se proyectan entre 12 y 25 cm de nieve. Es posible que se produzcan totales más altos a nivel local si se forman franjas estrechas de nieve intensa. Ciudades como Raleigh y Greensboro, Carolina del Norte, y Norfolk, Virginia, se encuentran entre las que corren el riesgo de acumulaciones significativas de nieve.

Más al sur, también se espera acumulación de nieve en partes de Carolina del Sur y el este de Georgia, donde las temperaturas se mantendrán lo suficientemente bajas como para que nieve. En general, se espera que los totales en estas áreas sean menores, pero incluso una pulgada o menos de nieve sería perjudicial en lugares como Atlanta, donde rara vez se experimenta el clima invernal.

El aire muy frío ya presente permitirá que la nieve se acumule rápidamente en toda la región, adhiriéndose a carreteras, puentes y superficies sin tratar, con poco derretimiento. Se espera que las condiciones de viaje se deterioren rápidamente una vez que comience a nevar, y las condiciones peligrosas podrían persistir hasta la mañana del domingo antes de que la nieve disminuya.

A medida que la tormenta se intensifica rápidamente en alta mar, los vientos poderosos empeorarán significativamente los impactos en el sudeste y el Atlántico medio.

Se esperan vientos más fuertes cerca de la costa, donde las ráfagas podrían alcanzar la fuerza de un huracán, o 120 kilómetros por hora, en partes de la costa de Carolina del Norte y Virginia para el sábado por la noche. Donde estos vientos coincidan con fuertes nevadas, es posible que se produzcan ventiscas, con visibilidad casi nula y viajes extremadamente peligrosos, especialmente en los Outer Banks de Carolina del Norte y el sureste de Virginia.

Más al interior, los vientos fuertes y persistentes seguirán planteando graves problemas. Se esperan ráfagas de entre 40 y 56 km/h desde Georgia, a través de las Carolinas y hacia e

By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — As President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has whisked through major US cities, trial-level judges attempting to restrain the frenzied actions of federal agents have been repeatedly slapped down by higher courts – sometimes with the help of judges the president put on the bench in his first term.

A series of rulings from the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts have overturned early victories secured by opponents of Trump’s immigration blitzes in California, Chicago and Minnesota.

The administration’s latest win came Monday, when a three-judge federal appeals court panel indefinitely paused a Minneapolis judge’s decision to put tight guardrails on how agents can respond to individuals peacefully protesting Operation Metro Surge, which has sparked intense opposition in the Twin Cities and led to the fatal shooting of two US citizens by federal officers.

The preliminary injunction issued earlier this month by US District Judge Katherine Menendez, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals concluded, was overbroad and vague and thus could not remain in effect for now. The two judges that voted to fully grant the administration’s request to shelve Menendez’s ruling were Trump-appointee David Stras and Bobby Shepherd, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

Trump and his allies have long complained that lower court judges have acted out of bounds in cases challenging his agenda, particularly in the immigration context, over which they argue he has broad, unreviewable authority.

Seizing on the appeals court ruling Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi attacked Menendez, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, as a “liberal” judge who “tried to handcuff our federal law enforcement officers, restrict their actions, and put their safety at risk when responding to violent agitators.”

“The 8th Circuit has fully agreed that this reckless attempt to undermine law enforcement cannot stand,” she said.

(The third judge on the panel, Bush-appointee Raymond Gruender, partially dissented, saying he would have kept intact part of Menendez’s ruling that barred federal agents from using pepper spray and other non-lethal munitions against peaceful protesters.)

The appellate court rulings reflect a basic legal reality: Losers can quickly become winners – if even in the short-term – as cases are reviewed by higher courts. But they also underscore the tricky position federal judges sifting through a variety of challenges to Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement efforts have found themselves in.

“District judges, both historically and just by practice, tend to be much more practical and functional in how they approach legal questions. A district judge thinks of him or herself oftentimes as a problem-solver,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“Circuit judges tend to be more removed from the ground and more removed from the urgency of a situation and really approach these cases more as legal abstractions in a context in which there aren’t really clear precedent because most of what the federal government’s doing is so unprecedented,” he added.

Trump’s imprint on the federal judiciary during his first term is also part of the equation. With the help of a GOP-controlled Senate, the president several years ago was able to appoint scores of conservative judges to the nation’s appeals courts – a key priority for former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who noted in an interview last year the “lasting impact”