AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Judge blocks Trump policy keeping asylum-seekers locked up

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked a Trump administration policy that would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up while they pursue their cases, saying the Constitution demands that such migrants have a chance to be released from custody.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Tuesday that people who are detained after entering the country illegally to seek protection are entitled to bond hearings. Attorney General William Barr announced in April that the government would no longer offer such hearings, but instead keep them in custody. It was part of the administration’s efforts to deter a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pechman said that as people who have entered the U.S., they are entitled to the Fifth Amendment’s due-process protections, including “a longstanding prohibition against indefinite civil detention with no opportunity to test its necessity.”

Immigrant rights advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project sued to block the policy, which was due to take effect July 15.

“The court reaffirmed what has been settled for decades: that asylum-seekers who enter this country have a right to be free from arbitrary detention,” Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said in a written statement. “Thousands of asylum-seekers will continue to be able to seek release on bond, as they seek protection from persecution and torture.”

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Trump transforms 2020 immigration debate – for Democrats

WASHINGTON (AP) — The intensity of President Donald Trump’s hardline approach to immigration hasn’t just pushed the Republican Party rightward — it’s also moving Democrats in ways that are profoundly transforming the immigration debate.

Gone are hopes for a big, bipartisan immigration overhaul once envisioned in Congress. With dire conditions taking hold at the border, and deportations stoking fear in immigrant communities, groups on the left are no longer willing to engage in the trade-offs that had long been cornerstones to any deal. That’s pushing the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to increasingly say they’ll rely on executive action to undo Trump’s policies and revamp the system that lawmakers have been unable to fix.

“The brutality of this administration has pushed this conversation to happen,” said Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream Action.

The group formed around protecting young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, but now sees that issue as a starting point, or “floor,” in the debate as the nation confronts harsh images from the border, including the deaths of migrant children and adults in federal custody.

“The world is bearing witness,” Jimenez said. “You’re seeing the pressure of this moment is pushing the conversation.”

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Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca has died at age 94

DETROIT (AP) — Lee Iacocca, the auto executive and master pitchman who put the Mustang in Ford’s lineup in the 1960s and became a corporate folk hero when he resurrected Chrysler 20 years later, has died in Bel Air, California. He was 94.

Two former Chrysler executives who worked with him, Bud Liebler, the company’s former spokesman, and Bob Lutz, formerly its head of product development, said they were told of the death Tuesday by a close associate of Iacocca’s family.

In his 32-year career at Ford and then Chrysler, Iacocca helped launch some of Detroit’s bestselling and most significant vehicles, including the minivan, the Chrysler K-cars and the Ford Escort. He also spoke out against what he considered unfair trade practices by Japanese automakers.

The son of Italian immigrants, Iacocca reached a level of celebrity matched by few auto moguls. During the peak of his popularity in the ’80s, he was famous for his TV ads and catchy tagline: “If you can find a better car, buy it!” He wrote two bestselling books and was courted as a potential presidential candidate.

But he will be best remembered as the blunt-talking, cigar-chomping Chrysler chief who helped engineer a great corporate turnaround.

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Libyan official says airstrike kills 40 migrants in Tripoli

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — An airstrike hit a detention centre for migrants early Wednesday in the Libyan capital, killing at least 40 people, a health official in the country’s U.N.-supported government said.

The airstrike targeting the detention centre in Tripoli’s Tajoura neighbourhood also wounded 80 migrants, said Malek Merset, a spokesman for the health ministry. Merset posted photos of migrants who were being taken in ambulances to hospitals.

Footage circulating online and said to be from inside the migrant detention centre showed horrific images of blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants’ belongings.

The U.N. refugee agency in Libya condemned the airstrike on the detention centre, which houses 616 migrants and refugees.

The Tripoli-based government blamed the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Khalifa Hifter, for the airstrike and called for the U.N. support mission in Libya to establish a fact-finding committee to investigate.

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Navy SEAL acquitted of murder in killing of captive in Iraq

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A decorated Navy SEAL was acquitted Tuesday of murder in the killing of a wounded Islamic State captive under his care in Iraq in 2017.

The verdict was met with an outpouring of emotion as the military jury also cleared Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of attempted murder in the shootings of two civilians and all other charges except for posing for photos with the body of the dead captive.

The case exposed a generational conflict within the ranks of the elite special operations forces and the outcome dealt a major blow to the prosecution of one of the Navy’s most high-profile war crimes cases.

After the verdict was read, the defence attorneys jumped up from their seats as Gallagher turned and embraced his wife over the bar of the gallery.

Gallagher, dressed in a Navy white uniform and sporting a chest full of medals, told reporters outside court that he was happy and thankful.

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Trump Facebook ads use models to portray actual supporters

NEW YORK (AP) — A series of Facebook video ads for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign shows what appears to be a young woman strolling on a beach in Florida, a Hispanic man on a city street in Texas and a bearded hipster in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., all making glowing, voice-over endorsements of the president.

“I could not ask for a better president,” intones the voice during slow-motion footage of the smiling blonde called “Tracey from Florida.” A man labeled on another video as “AJ from Texas” stares into the camera as a voice says, “Although I am a lifelong Democrat, I sincerely believe that a nation must secure its borders.”

There’s just one problem: The people in the videos that ran in the past few months are all actually models in stock video footage produced far from the U.S. in France, Brazil and Turkey, and available to anyone online for a fee.

Though the 20-second videos include tiny disclaimers that say “actual testimonial, actor portrayal,” they raise the question why a campaign that can fill arenas with supporters would have to buy stock footage of models. It’s a practice that, under different circumstances, Trump himself would likely blast as “fake news.”

Trump campaign officials declined repeated requests for comment on Tuesday. Political experts say that, while it’s not unusual for stock footage to find its way into ads, a presidential campaign should have been more careful.

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Trump says he will tap economists for 2 key Fed vacancies

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, who has criticized the Federal Reserve for not cutting interest rates, said Tuesday that he intends to nominate two economists to fill influential positions on the central bank’s Board of Governors.

Trump said he would name to the board Christopher Waller, who is executive vice-president and research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he has worked since 2009. He also tapped Judy Shelton, the U.S. executive director for the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Shelton was previously an economic adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

The planned nominations were announced by Trump in a tweet late Tuesday. Each must be confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s choices come after he has harshly and repeatedly criticized the Fed under Chair Jerome Powell for raising rates four times last year and for keeping rates unchanged this year. Trump has argued that the Fed, by keeping its benchmark rate in a range of 2.25% to 2.5%, is slowing economic growth and depressing the stock market.

This spring, Trump said he planned to nominate former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and conservative commentator Stephen Moore to the remaining two vacancies on the Fed board.

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2020 Census to be printed without citizenship question

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday started the process of printing the questionnaire without the controversial query.

Trump administration attorneys notified parties in lawsuits challenging the question that the printing of the hundreds of millions of documents for the 2020 counts would be starting, said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kelly Laco confirmed there would be “no citizenship question on 2020 census.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that while he respected the Supreme Court’s decision, he strongly disagreed with it.

“The Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question,” Ross said in a statement. “My focus, and that of the Bureau and the entire Department is to conduct a complete and accurate census.”

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Government photos show detained migrants pleading for help

HOUSTON (AP) — In one photo, one of 88 men in a cell meant for 41 presses a piece of cardboard against the window, with the word “help.” In another, a man lowers his head and clasps his hands as if in prayer. And in a third, a woman wearing a surgical mask presses both of her hands against the glass.

The images were released Tuesday by U.S. government inspectors who visited facilities in South Texas where migrant adults and children who crossed the nearby border with Mexico are processed and detained.

As public outrage grows over the conditions in which thousands of people — some no more than a few months old — are being held by the U.S. government, the report offered new cause for alarm. It quotes one senior government manager as calling the situation “a ticking time bomb.”

“Specifically, when detainees observed us, they banged on the cell windows, shouted, pressed notes to the window with their time in custody, and gestured to evidence of their time in custody,” the report says. BuzzFeed first reported on a draft version of the report, which blurs most faces in the photos.

An autopsy report also released Tuesday confirmed that a 2-year-old child who died in April had multiple intestinal and infectious respiratory diseases, including the flu. Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez is one of five children to die after being detained by border agents since late last year. Two of the other four also had the flu.

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Kaepernick stirs new controversy for Nike

NEW YORK (AP) — Nike’s sales have only grown since it seized attention with its ad campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. So, the shoemaker deferred to its star endorser when he raised concerns over a sneaker featuring an early American flag.

Nike pulled the Air Max 1 USA shoe, which included a Revolutionary-era U.S. flag with 13 white stars in a circle on the heel. Kaepernick reached out to Nike after learning they planned to release the sneaker to explain that the flag recalls an era when black people were enslaved and that it has been appropriated by white nationalist groups, a person familiar with the conversation told The Associated Press.

The person requested not to be named because the conversation was intended to be private.

Nike decided to recall the shoe after it had been already sent to retailers to go on sale this week for the July Fourth holiday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The decision caused an instant backlash among conservatives who accused Nike of denigrating U.S. history, with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey tweeting that he is asking the state’s Commerce Authority to withdraw financial incentives promised to Nike to build a plant in the state.