US reliant on Taliban to allow citizens safe passage to the airport – defence secretary says
The US does not currently have the capability to evacuate large numbers of Americans who are outside Kabul – and troops are having to negotiate with the Taliban to allow people passage to the airport, the US defence secretary has said.
Speaking from the Pentagon, Lloyd J Austin III said the military was “laser focused” and “doing everything that we can to evacuate Americans, allies, Afghans who’ve worked alongside us, and also other courageous Afghans”.
But he added that the US is “not close to where we want to be” in terms of numbers of people flown out of the country.
He said “there have been some unfortunate incidents”, adding that “we continue to try to deconflict and create passageways for them to get to the airfield”.
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He said: “I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul.
“We do hear reports of people getting turned away from checkpoints. We’ve gone back and reinforced to the Taliban that they need to be allowed through,” he said.
Gen Austin added that the major issue for US forces currently was processing the people that are there “as fast as we can”.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A Milley, said the situation in Afghanistan “is still very dangerous, very dynamic and fluid”.
He said US troops were currently “in harms way”, adding: “Right now there are troops at risk, and we are the United States military, and we fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan.”
Taliban militants are in and around Kabul, Gen Milley said, but were so far not interfering in US missions.
Sky News US correspondent Mark Stone said the US evacuation plans were for 10,000 American citizens first, followed by Afghans who had worked alongside US forces.
Describing the news conference as a “very uncomfortable watch”, he said the plan “relies wholly on negotiating with the Taliban” and added that Gen Austin “did not look like a confident man”.
US President Joe Biden is giving an update on coronavirus measures, including the decision to start third vaccine jabs next month, but if he answers questions from reporters he is likely to be confronted with more concerns over the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
A farmer who fell from a greenhouse roof during an anti-immigrant raid at a licensed cannabis facility in California this week has died of his injuries.
Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die as a result of Donald Trump’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raids.
His niece, Yesenia Duran, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family’s only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The United Food Workers said Mr Alanis had worked on the farm for 10 years.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” the union said in a recent statement on X.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it executed criminal search warrants at Glass House Farms facilities on Thursday.
Mr Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly fleeing agents before he fell around 30ft (9m) from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.
Agents arrested 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, the DHS said in a statement.
Mr Alanis was not among them, the agency said.
“This man was not in and has not been in CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or ICE custody,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30ft. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
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Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly “assaulting or resisting officers”, the DHS said, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.
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In a statement, Glass House, a licensed Cannabis grower, said immigration agents had valid warrants. It said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation.
“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” it added.
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