The nation in brief

Migrants in U.S. illegally on decline

WASHINGTON -- The number of migrants in the U.S. without legal status has declined to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The Pew Research Center said an estimated 10.7 million people lacked legal status in 2016, down from 11 million a year earlier and from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007 before the U.S. economy slumped. It is the lowest estimate since 2004, the report said.

The decline stems largely from a drop in the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. illegally, from nearly 7 million in 2007 to 5.5 million in 2016.

During the same period, the estimated number of migrants from Central America without legal status increased to nearly 1.9 million from 1.5 million.

The report comes as the Trump administration has cracked down on immigration and bolstered security on the Southwest border, where thousands of Central American families have arrived to seek asylum.

The report is based on U.S. Census Bureau data. It also noted an increase in the number of people without legal status from India and Venezuela and a decrease in those from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Korea and Peru.

Overall, immigrants without legal status are less likely to be recent arrivals, said D'Vera Cohn, a co-author of the report.

DeVos voices U.S. student aid warning

ATLANTA -- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday warned that the federal student aid program is a "looming crisis in higher education."

"The student-loan program is not only burying students in debt, it is also burying taxpayers and it's stealing from future generations," DeVos said at the Education Department's annual Federal Student Aid training conference in Atlanta.

DeVos blamed the rising debt on President Barack Obama's administration, noting that it chose in 2010 to lend directly to students.

However, Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, argues that cutting banks out of the federal lending program has had no bearing on the rise in student debt levels. He said DeVos' budget proposals thus far have not called for bold revisions of the existing program.

Convictions upheld in N.J. bridge case

NEWARK, N.J. -- A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld most of the convictions against two former allies of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case, a scandal that helped derail Christie's presidential hopes in 2016.

Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni were convicted in 2016 in the plot to cause traffic jams to punish a mayor for not endorsing Christie's re-election bid.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia dismissed a count of civil rights conspiracy for each defendant, but upheld convictions for wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and misapplying property of an organization receiving federal funds. Baroni and Kelly had sought to have all counts dismissed.

The civil rights count carried a 10-year maximum prison sentence, while the wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy convictions each carry a maximum of 20 years. The misapplying property charge is punishable by up to five years.

Both are expected to be resentenced. Kelly currently faces an 18-month sentence, while Baroni faces 24 months.

Kelly was the author of the "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email a month before three access lanes to the bridge were reduced to one without warning to local authorities.

A Section on 11/28/2018

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