White House chief of staff John Kelly said President Donald Trump is “somewhat embarrassed” by the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Kelly told National Public Radio in an interview that aired Friday the probe “may not be a cloud” over the White House, but it gets discussed.

Said Kelly: “When world leaders come in, it’s kind of like, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is here … who’s under investigation himself, and it’s like, you know, you walk in, and you know, the first couple of minutes of every conversation might revolve around that kind of thing.”

Kelly also spoke about the Trump administration’s efforts to fight illegal immigration. He said most people coming into the country illegally “are not bad people,” but said they won’t assimilate easily.

“They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm,” Kelly said. “They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. … They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills.”

While Kelly’s role in the administration appears to have diminished of late, he told NPR that he has a close relationship with Trump and said he has never considered leaving the White House.

“There’s times of great frustration, mostly because of the stories I read about myself or others that I think the world of, which is just about everybody who works at the complex, and wonder whether it’s worth it to be subjected to that,” he said.

He also said he wished he had been in his role sooner: “I think in some cases in terms of staffing or serving the president that first six months was pretty chaotic and there were people some people hired that maybe shouldn’t have.”
…

White House chief of staff John Kelly said President Donald Trump is “somewhat embarrassed” by the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Kelly told National Public Radio in an interview that aired Friday the probe “may not be a cloud” over the White House, but it gets discussed.

Said Kelly: “When world leaders come in, it’s kind of like, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is here … who’s under investigation himself, and it’s like, you know, you walk in, and you know, the first couple of minutes of every conversation might revolve around that kind of thing.”

Kelly also spoke about the Trump administration’s efforts to fight illegal immigration. He said most people coming into the country illegally “are not bad people,” but said they won’t assimilate easily.

“They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm,” Kelly said. “They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. … They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills.”

While Kelly’s role in the administration appears to have diminished of late, he told NPR that he has a close relationship with Trump and said he has never considered leaving the White House.

“There’s times of great frustration, mostly because of the stories I read about myself or others that I think the world of, which is just about everybody who works at the complex, and wonder whether it’s worth it to be subjected to that,” he said.

He also said he wished he had been in his role sooner: “I think in some cases in terms of staffing or serving the president that first six months was pretty chaotic and there were people some people hired that maybe shouldn’t have.”
…

Young undocumented immigrants seeking permanent status in the United States received an unexpected boost Thursday on Capitol Hill as a small group of House Republicans mounted a last-minute effort to bring up an immigration vote in Congress.

The group of eight Republicans — some freed from political considerations by upcoming retirements and others facing tough re-elections races — defied their own party leadership, quickly persuading 10 more Republicans to sign on to a petition that would force debate on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

With all 193 Democrats expected to sign on, Republicans will have to persuade just seven more members of their own party to join the petition to trigger a vote on several immigration bills on the House floor.

But Republican leadership said the effort would be wasted if the end result is a presidential veto.

“I think it’s important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday. These types of petitions are rare and seen as a threat to leadership’s ability to direct legislative action.

“It’s better to use the legislative process,” Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.

But that argument appears to be losing sway with House members who see an opportunity for legislative action in a mid-term election year. The growing group of House Republicans are joining Democratic colleagues who have long criticized Ryan for not bringing immigration bills up for a vote.

“This is about making sure we’re not consolidating power in the White House,” said Representative Mia Love, a Republican from Utah and one of the first lawmakers to sign petition.

The immigration issue had all but died after an effort to pass a DACA fix collapsed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

The program has been the focus of fierce negotiations on Capitol Hill since last September, when President Donald Trump announced he was ending the 2012 Obama-era program and called for a legislative fix.

The DACA program has shielded from deportation about 800,000 undocumented people who were brought to the United States illegally as children, mainly from Mexico and Central America. The U.S. Supreme Court gave DACA recipients a reprieve this spring when it declined to hear an appeal of several lower court rulings to maintain the program.

“The pressure point went away after the Supreme Court didn’t act — and I was happy that it gave more time to DACA recipients, but it took the pressure off here,” Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida, told VOA.

 “This is a way to bring it back. So this is very unique opportunity,” he said.

The lawmakers are pressing for a vote on a range of Republican, Democratic and bipartisan solutions to the status of DACA recipients, in addition to addressing concerns about border security and visa programs.

If the petition succeeds, the earliest the House could enter into debate on the bills would be in mid-June.

Under the rules of the so-called “Queen of the Hill” process, the bill with the most votes would be sent to the Senate.

“We believe that there’s going to be opportunities for members of all the different caucuses on the left and the right to vote on the bills they think are important — but the important thing is to have a full debate here,” said Representative Jeff Denham, a Republican from California who is leading the effort.

Several states have filed lawsuits against the DACA program. Those cases are expected to work their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court this summer. 
…

Young undocumented immigrants seeking permanent status in the United States received an unexpected boost Thursday on Capitol Hill as a small group of House Republicans mounted a last-minute effort to bring up an immigration vote in Congress.

The group of eight Republicans — some freed from political considerations by upcoming retirements and others facing tough re-elections races — defied their own party leadership, quickly persuading 10 more Republicans to sign on to a petition that would force debate on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

With all 193 Democrats expected to sign on, Republicans will have to persuade just seven more members of their own party to join the petition to trigger a vote on several immigration bills on the House floor.

But Republican leadership said the effort would be wasted if the end result is a presidential veto.

“I think it’s important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday. These types of petitions are rare and seen as a threat to leadership’s ability to direct legislative action.

“It’s better to use the legislative process,” Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.

But that argument appears to be losing sway with House members who see an opportunity for legislative action in a mid-term election year. The growing group of House Republicans are joining Democratic colleagues who have long criticized Ryan for not bringing immigration bills up for a vote.

“This is about making sure we’re not consolidating power in the White House,” said Representative Mia Love, a Republican from Utah and one of the first lawmakers to sign petition.

The immigration issue had all but died after an effort to pass a DACA fix collapsed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

The program has been the focus of fierce negotiations on Capitol Hill since last September, when President Donald Trump announced he was ending the 2012 Obama-era program and called for a legislative fix.

The DACA program has shielded from deportation about 800,000 undocumented people who were brought to the United States illegally as children, mainly from Mexico and Central America. The U.S. Supreme Court gave DACA recipients a reprieve this spring when it declined to hear an appeal of several lower court rulings to maintain the program.

“The pressure point went away after the Supreme Court didn’t act — and I was happy that it gave more time to DACA recipients, but it took the pressure off here,” Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida, told VOA.

 “This is a way to bring it back. So this is very unique opportunity,” he said.

The lawmakers are pressing for a vote on a range of Republican, Democratic and bipartisan solutions to the status of DACA recipients, in addition to addressing concerns about border security and visa programs.

If the petition succeeds, the earliest the House could enter into debate on the bills would be in mid-June.

Under the rules of the so-called “Queen of the Hill” process, the bill with the most votes would be sent to the Senate.

“We believe that there’s going to be opportunities for members of all the different caucuses on the left and the right to vote on the bills they think are important — but the important thing is to have a full debate here,” said Representative Jeff Denham, a Republican from California who is leading the effort.

Several states have filed lawsuits against the DACA program. Those cases are expected to work their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court this summer. 
…

A long line of people, winding past a chain-link fence and a turnstile, distinguishes the boundary separating San Luis, in the U.S. state of Arizona, and San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora, Mexico. Otherwise, it would just appear to be desert.

At the U.S. port of entry, temporary farm workers leave their families and queue up daily before dawn to catch a bus to the fields, just outside town. Residents from Arizona join them.

On one nearby date palm farm, men and women wear handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the fine desert sand and temperatures that reach 41 degrees Celsius; but, Mexican farmworker Juán González voices few complaints. The work is steady for 11 months of the year, he says, and the border is calm.“There aren’t many problems,” González said. “There’s crime, but not like in other large cities.”

While others describe a sense of tranquility on either side of the border, there is an underlying tension, too. Drug trafficking is of particular concern, but not everyone wants to talk about it.

​It’s complicated

A mix of workers on temporary visas, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens with Mexican family members, residents of San Luis, Arizona, say it’s normal to have a foot on both sides of the border.

Among the Latino-majority population, residents quietly acknowledge that the deployment of the Arizona National Guard to the area — to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in monitoring illegal activity — isn’t the worst idea but has a caveat: “if it’s for narco-trafficking and trafficking of persons.”

“It’s good to end that because it’s dangerous for anyone here along the border,” said Candelario Vizcarra, a San Luis farmworker who lives in Mexico.

“They don’t go and attack nobody,” added Greg, a U.S. citizen who works in sales. “It’s just to protect the borders, and I agree.”

Others with business ties in San Luis agreed with Greg, who didn’t want to share his last name with VOA. But they were careful not to voice their opinions out of concern they might appear to be anti-immigrant.

María Herrera, a minimum-wage farmworker, mother, and permanent resident in Arizona, agrees that drug trafficking is a problem and that it is affecting the town’s children, some as young as 12.

“They don’t have work, there is no work, there’s nothing,” Herrera said. “And their best option a lot of times is to go the easy route: rob, use drugs, or act as drug mules (carry drugs) across the border.”

Creating more well-paying jobs would be her suggestion. Absent that, Herrera is skeptical of the National Guard troops’ presence. She worries about the effect of a militarized border on the undocumented.

“Like all Latinos, we worry about what happens to other families like our own, because one way or another, many are family or relatives of some friend of ours that we have in common.

“In the worst cases, they’ll deport the father,” Herrera continued, “and the mother and kids remain here — protected by whom?”​

Common ground

In Calexico, California, 127 kilometers northwest of San Luis, across subtropical desert, a section of 9-meter bollard-style replacement fence towers over the palms and brush to its south. Border Patrol sector supervisor Jorge Rivera says he is grateful for the upgrade because of another issue: the safety of his agents.

“Criminal organizations come over and they attack us with rocks; they throw any type of object toward us to avoid us apprehending any type of illegal activity,” Rivera told VOA.

In fiscal 2017, the U.S. Border Patrol in the El Centro Sector of southern California reported 21 assaults against agents and seized more than 200 kilos of cocaine, 690 kilos of methamphetamine and 70,000 grams of heroin.

But unlike San Luis, some residents concerned about illegal immigration in El Centro bring up a line of reasoning more in tune with pro-Trump areas of the country, including the narrative that those crossing the border illegally are an economic burden on society.

“They are leeching our system, and I pay so much (in) taxes every month,” said Steve Andrade, who runs a security management company. “It … (makes me angry) that all my money goes to those people. … I get nothing out of it!”

Ironically, Andrade admits to once being homeless and an undocumented immigrant himself, crossing multiple times from Mexicali until he successfully evaded the U.S. Border Patrol and settled in California in the early 1980s.

He maintains the Mexican border town was different then.

“In my time, there was nothing, no opportunities … to even survive Mexicali,” Andrade said. “There were no shelters to help you or anything.”

Andrade makes his stance on the wall clear — “go for it!” — but others who claim illegal immigration is a danger have other ideas.

Bill DuBois, an El Centro-area resident and owner of a local firearms store, holds firm that “if one illegal crosser gets across, the border is not secure.” But unlike Andrade, the lifelong Californian doesn’t subscribe to the idea of a wall.

“The only way to solve the problem of illegal immigration is to make things better in the other people’s home countries,” DuBois said.
…

A long line of people, winding past a chain-link fence and a turnstile, distinguishes the boundary separating San Luis, in the U.S. state of Arizona, and San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora, Mexico. Otherwise, it would just appear to be desert.

At the U.S. port of entry, temporary farm workers leave their families and queue up daily before dawn to catch a bus to the fields, just outside town. Residents from Arizona join them.

On one nearby date palm farm, men and women wear handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the fine desert sand and temperatures that reach 41 degrees Celsius; but, Mexican farmworker Juán González voices few complaints. The work is steady for 11 months of the year, he says, and the border is calm.“There aren’t many problems,” González said. “There’s crime, but not like in other large cities.”

While others describe a sense of tranquility on either side of the border, there is an underlying tension, too. Drug trafficking is of particular concern, but not everyone wants to talk about it.

​It’s complicated

A mix of workers on temporary visas, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens with Mexican family members, residents of San Luis, Arizona, say it’s normal to have a foot on both sides of the border.

Among the Latino-majority population, residents quietly acknowledge that the deployment of the Arizona National Guard to the area — to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in monitoring illegal activity — isn’t the worst idea but has a caveat: “if it’s for narco-trafficking and trafficking of persons.”

“It’s good to end that because it’s dangerous for anyone here along the border,” said Candelario Vizcarra, a San Luis farmworker who lives in Mexico.

“They don’t go and attack nobody,” added Greg, a U.S. citizen who works in sales. “It’s just to protect the borders, and I agree.”

Others with business ties in San Luis agreed with Greg, who didn’t want to share his last name with VOA. But they were careful not to voice their opinions out of concern they might appear to be anti-immigrant.

María Herrera, a minimum-wage farmworker, mother, and permanent resident in Arizona, agrees that drug trafficking is a problem and that it is affecting the town’s children, some as young as 12.

“They don’t have work, there is no work, there’s nothing,” Herrera said. “And their best option a lot of times is to go the easy route: rob, use drugs, or act as drug mules (carry drugs) across the border.”

Creating more well-paying jobs would be her suggestion. Absent that, Herrera is skeptical of the National Guard troops’ presence. She worries about the effect of a militarized border on the undocumented.

“Like all Latinos, we worry about what happens to other families like our own, because one way or another, many are family or relatives of some friend of ours that we have in common.

“In the worst cases, they’ll deport the father,” Herrera continued, “and the mother and kids remain here — protected by whom?”​

Common ground

In Calexico, California, 127 kilometers northwest of San Luis, across subtropical desert, a section of 9-meter bollard-style replacement fence towers over the palms and brush to its south. Border Patrol sector supervisor Jorge Rivera says he is grateful for the upgrade because of another issue: the safety of his agents.

“Criminal organizations come over and they attack us with rocks; they throw any type of object toward us to avoid us apprehending any type of illegal activity,” Rivera told VOA.

In fiscal 2017, the U.S. Border Patrol in the El Centro Sector of southern California reported 21 assaults against agents and seized more than 200 kilos of cocaine, 690 kilos of methamphetamine and 70,000 grams of heroin.

But unlike San Luis, some residents concerned about illegal immigration in El Centro bring up a line of reasoning more in tune with pro-Trump areas of the country, including the narrative that those crossing the border illegally are an economic burden on society.

“They are leeching our system, and I pay so much (in) taxes every month,” said Steve Andrade, who runs a security management company. “It … (makes me angry) that all my money goes to those people. … I get nothing out of it!”

Ironically, Andrade admits to once being homeless and an undocumented immigrant himself, crossing multiple times from Mexicali until he successfully evaded the U.S. Border Patrol and settled in California in the early 1980s.

He maintains the Mexican border town was different then.

“In my time, there was nothing, no opportunities … to even survive Mexicali,” Andrade said. “There were no shelters to help you or anything.”

Andrade makes his stance on the wall clear — “go for it!” — but others who claim illegal immigration is a danger have other ideas.

Bill DuBois, an El Centro-area resident and owner of a local firearms store, holds firm that “if one illegal crosser gets across, the border is not secure.” But unlike Andrade, the lifelong Californian doesn’t subscribe to the idea of a wall.

“The only way to solve the problem of illegal immigration is to make things better in the other people’s home countries,” DuBois said.
…

The U.S. says it is looking for allied support to force Iran into new negotiations over its nuclear weapons development and military advances in the Middle East in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 international pact restraining Tehran’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is planning discussions with allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in an effort to win their support to pressure Iran to open talks, Reuters reported Thursday. A day earlier, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a congressional hearing the U.S. would “continue to work alongside our allies and partners to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, and will work with others to address the range of Iran’s malign influence.”

The U.S., according to a senior State Department official, already has started discussions with Britain, France and Germany — three other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal that unsuccessfully lobbied Trump to keep the U.S. in the deal — as well as Japan, Iraq and Israel.

“There will be an effort to go out globally and talk to our partners around the world who share our interests,” the official told Reuters. “That is the first stage. The composition of what happens when we sit down with the Iranians is several stages out.”

The official said the focus of the talks is to increase pressure on Iran “in a way that is constructive and conducive to bringing them to the negotiating table.”

Trump has vowed to soon reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were ended in 2015 when Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program, and stiffen them in hopes of forcing Iran into new talks. The earlier sanctions had hobbled the Iranian economy, and renewed sanctions could pose more problems.

“Iran will come back and say, ‘We don’t want to negotiate,'” Trump said Wednesday. “And of course they’re going to say that. And if I were in their position, I’d say that, too, for the first couple months: ‘We’re not going to negotiate.'”

“But they’ll negotiate, or something will happen,” Trump said. “And hopefully that won’t be the case.”

The U.S. leader said that if Iran restarts work on nuclear weaponry, there would be a “very severe consequence.”

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said in an opinion piece Wednesday in The Washington Post that the U.S. believes the Iran deal is a failure because Tehran, with sanctions lifted, used the economic windfall to create military chaos in the Middle East rather than improve the plight of its people.

“Rather than focusing on behaving responsibly, Tehran has poured billions of dollars into military adventures abroad, spreading an arc of death and destruction across the Middle East from Yemen to Syria,” Bolton said. “Meanwhile, the Iranian people have suffered at home from a tanking currency, rising inflation, stagnant wages and a spiraling environmental crisis.”

Bolton said Trump “has been willing to take unconventional action to turn momentum to America’s favor. The Iran deal is not an inescapable trap — it’s merely an inadequate deal that couldn’t withstand serious scrutiny.”
…

The U.S. says it is looking for allied support to force Iran into new negotiations over its nuclear weapons development and military advances in the Middle East in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 international pact restraining Tehran’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is planning discussions with allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in an effort to win their support to pressure Iran to open talks, Reuters reported Thursday. A day earlier, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a congressional hearing the U.S. would “continue to work alongside our allies and partners to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, and will work with others to address the range of Iran’s malign influence.”

The U.S., according to a senior State Department official, already has started discussions with Britain, France and Germany — three other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal that unsuccessfully lobbied Trump to keep the U.S. in the deal — as well as Japan, Iraq and Israel.

“There will be an effort to go out globally and talk to our partners around the world who share our interests,” the official told Reuters. “That is the first stage. The composition of what happens when we sit down with the Iranians is several stages out.”

The official said the focus of the talks is to increase pressure on Iran “in a way that is constructive and conducive to bringing them to the negotiating table.”

Trump has vowed to soon reimpose economic sanctions against Iran that were ended in 2015 when Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program, and stiffen them in hopes of forcing Iran into new talks. The earlier sanctions had hobbled the Iranian economy, and renewed sanctions could pose more problems.

“Iran will come back and say, ‘We don’t want to negotiate,'” Trump said Wednesday. “And of course they’re going to say that. And if I were in their position, I’d say that, too, for the first couple months: ‘We’re not going to negotiate.'”

“But they’ll negotiate, or something will happen,” Trump said. “And hopefully that won’t be the case.”

The U.S. leader said that if Iran restarts work on nuclear weaponry, there would be a “very severe consequence.”

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said in an opinion piece Wednesday in The Washington Post that the U.S. believes the Iran deal is a failure because Tehran, with sanctions lifted, used the economic windfall to create military chaos in the Middle East rather than improve the plight of its people.

“Rather than focusing on behaving responsibly, Tehran has poured billions of dollars into military adventures abroad, spreading an arc of death and destruction across the Middle East from Yemen to Syria,” Bolton said. “Meanwhile, the Iranian people have suffered at home from a tanking currency, rising inflation, stagnant wages and a spiraling environmental crisis.”

Bolton said Trump “has been willing to take unconventional action to turn momentum to America’s favor. The Iran deal is not an inescapable trap — it’s merely an inadequate deal that couldn’t withstand serious scrutiny.”
…

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday he thinks it’s time for special counsel Robert Mueller to conclude his criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Pence told NBC News, “In the interests of the country, I think it’s time to wrap it up.”

There is no indication, however, that Mueller is close to ending his year-long probe. His legal team has been negotiating with Trump’s lawyers over whether the president will sit for an interview and under what terms, such as the topics to be discussed, the length of the questioning and whether Trump would testify under oath.

If no agreement is reached, Mueller has suggested that he could subpoena Trump to testify under oath before a grand jury, which could spark a legal dispute that would have to be decided by the Supreme Court over whether a sitting president can be forced to testify.

“It’s been about a year since this investigation began,” Pence told NBC. “Our administration’s provided over a million documents. We’ve fully cooperated in it.”

Pence added, “I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.”

The vice president was asked about news that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, collected more than $2 million after the 2016 election by promoting himself as someone with access to Trump and someone who could provide insight into the new president’s thinking on policy issues.

But Pence called it a “private matter” and “something I don’t have any knowledge about.”
…