Trump seeks high court approval to speed deportations

WASHINGTON — The man slipped into the U.S from Tijuana, Mexico, and made it just 25 yards from the border before he was arrested.

A seven-month journey from Sri Lanka was over for Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam. Now he would be able to tell an American official why he had fled the place he had lived virtually his entire life: As a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, he had been beaten and threatened. He would seek asylum to remain in the United States.

His timing couldn’t have been worse.

His arrival coincided with the start of the Trump administration and its sustained effort to crack down on asylum-seekers. Officials rejected his claim in an initial screening and he was designated for rapid deportation, or expedited removal as federal law calls it.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether Thuraissigiam and others like him can be deported without ever getting to make their case to a federal judge. Arguments will take place Monday.

Biden wins South Carolina, hopes for Super Tuesday momentum

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Joe Biden scored a convincing victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, riding a wave of African American support and ending progressive rival Bernie Sanders’ winning streak.

The Vermont senator claimed second place, though his loss gave a momentary respite to anxious establishment Democrats who feared that the self-described democratic socialist would finish February with four consecutive top finishes.

Biden’s win came at a do-or-die moment in his 2020 bid as the moderate Democrat bounced back from underwhelming performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. The race pivots immediately to a new phase when 14 “Super Tuesday” states take the campaign nationwide early next week.

Biden’s allies almost immediately cast the South Carolina victory as proof that he should stand as the clear alternative to Sanders.

Sanders congratulated Biden on his first win and said it was nothing for his own supporters to worry about.

From wire sources

Empty streets, economic turmoil as virus alters daily life

TOKYO — The coronavirus has claimed its first victim in the United States as the number of cases shot up in Iran, Italy and South Korea and the spreading outbreak shook the global economy.

Governments stepped up efforts to contain the disease. Saudi Arabia closed Islam’s holiest sites to foreign pilgrims. In Japan, professional baseball teams played in deserted stadiums. The French government advised the public to forgo customary greeting kisses.

Ireland and Ecuador among the countries reporting their first cases Saturday. More than 85,000 people worldwide have contracted the virus, with deaths topping 2,900.

China recorded 573 new virus cases and 35 more deaths in the 24 hours through midnight Saturday, according to the National Health Commission. That raised the total for the country where the disease emerged in December to 2,870 deaths and 79,834 cases.

In the United States, a man in his 50s in suburban Seattle became the first coronavirus death on U.S. soil. Officials say they aren’t sure how the man acquired the virus because he had not traveled to any affected areas.

Trump says getting rid of “bad” people made him successful

OXON HILL, Md. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that his “journey” in the nation’s highest office would have been a failure had he not be able to rid the government of people he says are “bad.”

Trump came into office railing against what he and his allies call the “deep state” — career government employees and political appointees held over from prior administrations — claiming it was out to undermine him.

He said he has been replacing them with “people who love our country.”

“We have such bad people and they’re not people who love our country,” Trump told several thousand cheering and chanting supporters at the the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “We’re getting people who really love our country and it’s so important,” he said.

“And if I wasn’t able to fulfill that, no matter what other things we’ve done, I would not consider this journey to be a success,” he said. “So just remember that.”