25 FEB 26 SITREP

• Last night in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump delivered a State of the Union address highlighting the men’s gold medal Olympic hockey team and announcing that typical 401k balances had increased by at least $30,000 since he took office, along with a new retirement plan matching up to $1,000 annually for American workers.
• President Trump honored 100-year-old World War II veteran Buddy Taggart, who at age 17 served under General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific, fought in the Battle of Manila, was wounded by enemy machine guns in Luzon, helped liberate the largest internment camp in the Philippines 81 years ago, and received both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
• Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover was presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor for steering a Chinook helicopter into Madura’s heavily protected military fortress and descending swiftly under heavy protection to complete his mission.
• During the address, President Trump called on Congress to end sanctuary cities that protect criminal aliens and to enact penalties for public officials who block the removal of drug lords and murderers from the United States.

• In Rotherham, a town with a 3.7 percent Muslim population, 1,400 children were raped, and in Telford, a town with a 1.7 percent Muslim population, a police investigation identified 200 Muslim men involved in rapes and 1,000 victims, with 5 victims murdered, including cases where girls were burned alive.
• Survivor accounts detailed 12-year-old girls raped multiple times per day, rapes filmed for blackmail, police officers participating in abuse, police vehicles used to traffic victims, events referred to as cop nights, and torture in locations described as red rooms involving waterboarding, strangulation, and acts involving animals.
• In one case in Rotherham, police arrested 2 fathers attempting to retrieve their 13-year-old daughters from a house where 6 or 7 men were raping them, and in another case police arrested an 11 or 12-year-old girl for being drunk and disorderly while releasing the men accused of raping her.
• A government investigation published in 2014 confirmed police knowledge of the abuse, and Keir Starmer, who later became Prime Minister, had been head of the Crown Prosecution Service when decisions were made not to prosecute certain cases.

• A Biden-appointed District Court Judge, Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of removing illegal immigrants to third countries other than those designated on their orders of removal is unlawful, stating that the Department of Homeland Security had adopted a policy allowing it to take people and drop them off in parts unknown, which he wrote is not fine and not legal.
• Judge Murphy wrote that he would vacate the March Guidance as not in accordance with law, rejecting the Department of Homeland Security’s position that an alien need not await any DHS designation before seeking protection and citing a 2014 case stating that an applicant is not entitled to have the agency adjudicate claims related to a country that nobody is trying to send them to.
• Guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security in March stated that before third-country removals, the department must determine whether diplomatic assurances were provided that removed aliens would not be persecuted or tortured, and if the Department of State deemed those assurances credible, removal could proceed without further procedures unless the individual affirmatively stated a fear and established that persecution or torture was more likely than not.
• Judge Murphy declared that before effecting removal to any third country, Defendants must first seek removal to the designated country or specified alternative countries listed in the final order of removal or to the country or countries of citizenship, and that class members have the right to meaningful notice and a meaningful opportunity to raise a country-specific claim before removal to any third country.