Justice department directive comes amid slate of executive orders targeting US immigrants and asylum seekers

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• Trump’s immigration orders designed to sow chaos – ‘he wants you to feel afraid’

The US justice department is ordering federal prosecutors to target state and local officials who resist the administration’s planned mass deportation campaign, marking a dramatic escalation in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown just days after taking office.

The acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, directed prosecutors nationwide, in a document obtained by the Washington Post and the Associated Press, to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against officials in “sanctuary” jurisdictions for “harboring” undocumented immigrants or withholding immigration information from federal authorities.

Dubbed Stargate, it aims to construct data centers and infrastructure needed to power AI development

Donald Trump has unveiled what he called “the largest AI infrastructure project in history” – a $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that aims to build a network of data centres across the US.

The new partnership, dubbed Stargate, aims to construct essential data centers and computing infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence development and, according to Trump, create more than 100,000 American jobs “almost immediately”.