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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Selfishness Is Not a Virtue
By David French, Opinion Columnist, June 5, 2025
Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by Heritage Images, Glowimages and imagenavi/Getty Images
When Christianity goes wrong, it goes wrong in a familiar way.
Last Friday, at a town hall meeting in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst delivered a grim message to her constituents. In the midst of an exchange over Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” someone in the crowd shouted at Ernst, “People are going to die!”
Ernst’s immediate response was bizarre. “Well, we all are going to die,” she said.
True enough, but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand. Yes, we’re all going to die, but it matters a great deal when, how and why. There’s a tremendous difference between dying after living a long and full life that’s enabled at least in part by access to decent health care, and dying a premature and perhaps needlessly painful death because you can’t afford the care you need.
All of this should be too obvious to explain, and it would cost Ernst — who occupies a relatively safe seat in an increasingly red state — virtually nothing to apologize and move on. In fact, just after her flippant comment, she did emphasize that she wanted to protect vulnerable people. The full answer was more complicated than the headline-generating quip.
By the standards of 2025, Ernst’s comment would have been little more than a micro-scandal, gone by the end of the day. And if we lived even in the relatively recent past, demonstrating humility could have worked to her benefit. It can be inspiring to watch a person genuinely apologize.
When Christianity goes wrong, it goes wrong in a familiar way.
Last Friday, at a town hall meeting in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst delivered a grim message to her constituents. In the midst of an exchange over Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” someone in the crowd shouted at Ernst, “People are going to die!”
Ernst’s immediate response was bizarre. “Well, we all are going to die,” she said.
True enough, but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand. Yes, we’re all going to die, but it matters a great deal when, how and why. There’s a tremendous difference between dying after living a long and full life that’s enabled at least in part by access to decent health care, and dying a premature and perhaps needlessly painful death because you can’t afford the care you need.
All of this should be too obvious to explain, and it would cost Ernst — who occupies a relatively safe seat in an increasingly red state — virtually nothing to apologize and move on. In fact, just after her flippant comment, she did emphasize that she wanted to protect vulnerable people. The full answer was more complicated than the headline-generating quip.
By the standards of 2025, Ernst’s comment would have been little more than a micro-scandal, gone by the end of the day. And if we lived even in the relatively recent past, demonstrating humility could have worked to her benefit. It can be inspiring to watch a person genuinely apologize.
But we’re in a new normal now.
That means no apologies. That means doubling down. And that can also mean tying your cruelty to the Christian cross.
And so, the next day Ernst posted an apology video — filmed, incredibly enough, in what appears to be a cemetery. It began well. “I would like to take this opportunity,” she said, “to sincerely apologize for a statement I made yesterday at my town hall.” But her statement devolved from there.
“I made an incorrect assumption,” she continued, “that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.”
She didn’t stop there. “I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I’d encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
Remember, this was not a snarky, impulsive rejoinder. It was a considered response. She decided to film the statement and release it. There is no ambiguity — the video delivered exactly the message she wanted to send.
The fact that a sitting United States senator was that callous — and then tried to twist her cruelty into a bizarro version of the Christian gospel — is worth highlighting on its own as another instance of the pervasive “own the libs” ethos of the Republican Party. But Ernst’s fake apology was something different — and worse — than simple trolling. It exemplified the contortions of American Christianity in the Trump era.
Americans are now quite familiar with the “no apologies” ethos of the Trumpist right. They’re familiar with Trumpist trolling and with MAGA politicians and MAGA influencers doubling and tripling down on their mistakes. My former Times colleague Jane Coaston has even popularized a term — “vice signaling” — to describe MAGA’s performative transgressiveness. Trumpists think it’s good to be bad.
But why bring Jesus into it?
America has always been a country with lots of Christian citizens, but it has not always behaved like a Christian country, and for reasons that resonate again today. An old error is new. Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors.
To understand what I mean, let’s turn to a much darker time in American history, when Christianity and slavery existed side-by-side in the American South. In 1970, Wendell Berry published “The Hidden Wound,” a book-length essay about the profound damage that racism had inflicted on us all.
Reflecting on the Christianity of the slave-owning South, Berry wrote this passage, which is worth quoting at some length:
“First, consider the moral predicament of the master who sat in church with his slaves, thus attesting his belief in the immortality of the souls of people whose bodies he owned and used. He thus placed his body, if not his mind, at the very crux of the deepest contradiction of his life. How could he presume to own the body of a man whose soul he considered as worthy of salvation as his own? To keep this question from articulating itself in his thoughts and demanding an answer, he had to perfect an empty space in his mind, a silence, between heavenly concerns and earthly concerns, between body and spirit. If there had ever opened a conscious connection between the two claims, if the two sides of his mind had ever touched, it would have been like building a fire in a house full of gunpowder.”
The master hardened his heart to the plight of the slave by fundamentally rejecting the idea that his vertical faith in God carried with it a series of horizontal earthly obligations to love your neighbor as yourself, to do justice to the oppressed and to care for the vulnerable.
So long as the vertical relationship between God and man was secure, the horizontal relationship between men was of secondary importance, to the extent that it mattered at all. Why would this fleeting life matter when eternity was at stake?
Thankfully, we don’t live in such extreme times. We’re far from the dreadful days of slavery, and we’ve left Jim Crow behind, but I’m noticing a morphing of American evangelicalism back to the vertical, away from the horizontal, and that change is turning our gaze inward, to our own well-being above all, sometimes even to the exclusion of caring about the fate of others.
Let’s look at a different, more contemporary, example.
In April, I wrote about Paula White, one of Trump’s principal faith advisers, and her Easter offer of “seven supernatural blessings” in exchange for a suggested offering of $1,000. My piece was focused on the cohort of pastors and their Christian followers who behave more like Trump than like Jesus.
But I could have just as easily focused on the sheer selfishness of her message as well. Look again at the gifts White offered to her flock: “God will assign an angel to you, he’ll be an enemy to your enemies, he’ll give you prosperity, he’ll take sickness away from you, he will give you long life, he’ll bring increase in inheritance, and he’ll bring a special year of blessing.”
The emphasis is clear — look at what God will do for you. It’s all vertical. Honor God (by giving White a pile of cash), and he’ll make you healthy, wealthy and strong.
Consider also the evangelical turn against empathy. There are now Christian writers and theologians who are mounting a frontal attack against the very value that allows us to understand our neighbors, that places us in their shoes and asks what we would want and need if we were in their place.
But Christianity is a cross-shaped faith. The vertical relationship creates horizontal obligations. While Christians can certainly differ, for example, on the best way to provide health care to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, it’s hard to see how we can disagree on the need to care for the poor.
Put another way, when the sick and lame approached Jesus, he did not say, “Depart from me, for thou shalt die anyway.” He healed the sick and fed the hungry and told his followers to do the same.
Or, as the Book of James declares, “If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?”
Again, these passages do not dictate any particular policy, but they do tell us that we must try to meet the physical needs of the poor — here, on this earth — even if our souls are far more durable than our bodies.
People often ask me if I think the evangelical church has changed during the age of Trump or if its true nature is being revealed. There is not a neat yes or no answer. Certainly Trump’s rise has revealed the extent to which the will to power has always lurked in Christian hearts. When faced with a conflict between their stated principles and their access to power, millions of Republican Christians chose power over principle — and they are continuing to do so every day.
At the same time, some things have changed. An evangelical community that once celebrated, for example, George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program — the AIDS initiative that has saved an estimated 26 million lives — has now either applauded or stood by passively as Trump has decimated American foreign aid and damaged a program that was one of America’s greatest humanitarian accomplishments.
Ernst isn’t the chief offender here by any means. Nor do I think that she’s consciously trying to narrow Christian doctrine to the kind of purely vertical relationship that enables so much injustice. Senators aren’t theologians, and neither are columnists.
But politicians are weather vanes (as we’re all tempted to be), and there’s a foul wind blowing out of parts of American Christianity. Ernst’s first quip was a gaffe. Her apology video was no such thing. It was a premeditated effort to say exactly what she thinks Republicans want to hear.
Some other things I did
In my Sunday column, I explained why Trump has turned against the Federalist Society and why the judiciary — including Republican-appointed judges — is holding firm to its constitutional principles when the vast majority of Republican politicians have surrendered to Trump:
“Trump and I have something in common. We’ve both been thinking about why the judiciary has held firm when many other American institutions (especially conservative institutions) have collapsed. Why have a vast majority of conservative judges remained faithful to their legal philosophies when we’ve watched a vast majority of Republicans twist themselves into pretzels celebrating Trump for practices and policies they’d condemn in any other person or politician?
“I come from the conservative legal movement, I have friends throughout the conservative legal movement (including many Trump-appointed judges), and I think I know the answer, or at least part of it.
“The immense pressure that Trump puts on his perceived rivals and opponents exposes our core motivations, and the core motivations of federal judges are very different from the core motivations of members of Congress. Think of it as the difference between seeking the judgment of history over the judgment of the electorate, and to the extent that you seek approval, you place a higher priority on the respect of your peers than the applause of the crowd.”
On Monday, we published a conversation between my colleagues Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Cottle and me that tried to explain why politics feel so cruel these days. One reason is quite simple and connects with what I was just talking about — Trump is changing American evangelicalism more than American evangelicalism is changing Trump:
“There’s this very powerful argument that you choose among the lesser evils, especially when people are cynical about politics to begin with. But here’s the thing that’s interesting about human beings: We don’t like to be on Team Lesser Evil. No one’s running around chanting, ‘Lesser evil, lesser evil.’
“We want to be on the side that’s good. And if you can’t make Donald Trump good, you’ll just redefine Donald Trump as good. And this is part of what is all happening. If you can’t change the MAGA culture, they’re redefining the MAGA culture to try to assimilate it within Christianity or to assimilate Christianity into the MAGA culture. And so that’s why I think it’s quite clear to me why these attacks on empathy are now coming up several years into the Trump era. And it’s because it’s this long, slow process of ‘How do we make Trump good?’ Well, you can’t make Trump good, so how do you change our definition of what is good to meet Trump?”
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2) How the Trump Administration Banished Eight Men to Legal Limbo in Africa
Homeland Security is holding eight deportees under 24/7 guard at a U.S. military base in Djibouti. It’s unclear how long they’ll be there, or where they’ll be sent next.
By Mattathias Schwartz, Abbie VanSickle, Hamed Aleaziz and Eric Schmitt, June 6, 2025
Mattathias Schwartz, Abbie VanSickle and Hamed Aleaziz cover legal issues arising from President Trump’s deportation policies. Eric Schmitt covers U.S. military affairs.
Somewhere inside Camp Lemonnier, an American military base in the East African nation of Djibouti, eight men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, are under the guard of officers from the Homeland Security Department.
The Trump administration had planned to send the men, who had come to the United States years ago as immigrants from across the world, on to the war-torn country of South Sudan, an extraordinary gambit and part of President Trump’s broader plan for mass deportations. Then an order from a federal judge, on the other side of the planet in Boston, put a halt to the plan, at least for now.
And so for the past 16 days, the men have been in limbo, living and sleeping inside a modular, air-conditioned container that the military usually uses as a conference room. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have the detainees under “constant surveillance,” accompanying them on their trips to the bathroom and then searching them for contraband when they return, a D.H.S. spokeswoman said.
The detainees’ fate has emerged as a key test in the constitutional battle over the scope of due process. The White House is making a bold claim, arguing that handing immigrants a one-page document is sufficient to deport them to a dangerous country to which they have no previous connection.
A reconstruction of the men’s surreal journey from South Texas to Camp Lemonnier reveals a chaotic effort by the Trump administration to make an example of a group of immigrants the administration has termed “the worst of the worst.” At first, the detainees were told that they were going to be sent to South Africa, but hours later were told it would be South Sudan instead. What was to happen to them next — whether they were to have been imprisoned or set free — is unclear.
The judge, Brian E. Murphy of the District of Massachusetts, found that D.H.S. had given the men less than 24 hours’ notice before they were deported, in violation of a court order that migrants in their position be given a “meaningful opportunity” to voice a reasonable fear of torture.
Top military leaders at U.S. Africa Command were provided little more than a day’s notice that D.H.S. would be using one of their overseas bases as a way station for an immigration enforcement operation, according to a military official briefed on the matter.
The case has implications that could extend beyond the due-process rights of immigrants, according to Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a professor at Boston University School of Law.
“President Trump has floated the idea of sending people convicted of crimes out of the U.S., including American citizens,” she said. “What he’s trying now with the least sympathetic people, noncitizens who have been convicted of crimes, is a test of how much deplorable treatment and erosion of due process voters will stomach.”
To piece together the men’s story, The New York Times reviewed hundreds of pages of court and criminal records, and spoke with lawyers, officials and family members, as well as one detainee, still in custody, who was part of the group until officers pulled him aside before the plane departed. The Times also spoke with government officials with knowledge of the deportations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation.
A homeland security spokeswoman emphasized the seriousness of the detainees’ crimes. She said Judge Murphy’s order that the eight men should remain in U.S. custody was to blame for the operation’s logistical challenges, as well as health risks facing the D.H.S. personnel tasked with guarding them.
For now, no one knows how long the men will be held in Djibouti, or where they might be sent next.
Ngoc Phan, the wife of one of the detainees, said she and her husband had already planned to return to Vietnam, his native country, this year.
A U.S. citizen, she acknowledged that her husband, Tuan Thanh Phan, who came to the United States from Vietnam at age 9, killed someone in a gang altercation when he was 18, leading to a 25-year prison sentence and an order from an immigration court to leave the United States. But he had completed his sentence, she said, and was now resigned to returning to the country of his birth.
Instead, the government’s attempt to send him to a country on the brink of civil war had landed him on a U.S. military base, “loaded onto a plane in the middle of the night to be disappeared somewhere,” she said.
“How is that OK?” she asked.
Bound for Djibouti
The journey that took the men to Camp Lemmonier began on May 17, when 10 men arrived at the ICE detention center in Port Isabel, Texas, near the border with Mexico.
They were strangers, according to Ahmer Shaikh, a detainee who remained with the group for the next two and a half days.
They came from countries around the world — Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba, Myanmar. Only one was from South Sudan.
Court documents show that U.S. courts had convicted all the men of violent crimes; many had either finished or were about to finish serving their sentences. Mr. Shaikh, 57, a native of Pakistan, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for second-degree murder for his role in a fatal assault on a Virginia man.
They also had “orders of removal,” meaning the government had the legal authority to deport them.
At Port Isabel, Mr. Shaikh said in a phone interview, the men tried to make small talk. At the time, they believed they were being sent back to their home countries, he said, and so they shared plans for the lives they planned to build upon their returns.
Then, on May 19, three officers handed the men papers for them to sign and therefore acknowledge that they had been notified of their pending deportation — to South Africa.
Mr. Shaikh was shocked. In his mind, returning to Pakistan would have been hardship enough. He had lived in the United States for more than four decades and has a wife and three children, all American citizens.
Still, he said, “when I go to my home country, I do have at least a little bit of chance of survival.”
“I’ve never been to South Africa,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m getting into. I don’t know nobody in South Africa.”
Each member of the group refused to sign, Mr. Shaikh said, and the men were sent back to their quarters.
With that, the men became part of a lawsuit pending before Judge Murphy, who had issued an order that required the government to give “written notice” to any migrant facing deportation to a third country. They would then have a chance to voice a “reasonable fear” of torture. Then, if the government found that they had failed to demonstrate such a fear, they would have “a minimum of 15 days” to challenge the legality of their deportations in court.
But the actual process unfolded much faster.
“Guys, I’ve got good news for you and bad news for you,” an officer told the men that evening, according to Mr. Shaikh. “The good news is we are not going to deport you guys to South Africa. But we are going to deport you guys to South Sudan.”
Mr. Shaikh said the officer then informed them that he had not brought any papers notifying them of the removal, because he knew no one would sign them anyway.
That same evening, a lawyer for another one of the detainees, Nyo Myint, received two emails in quick succession from an ICE official in Texas, according to court records, with one-page forms stating that Mr. Myint, who was born in Myanmar, was being sent to South Africa, and then South Sudan. A line marked “signature of alien” was stamped “refused to sign.”
The form also stated that the officer had “served the alien a copy of this notice in person.” Mr. Shaikh said otherwise, recounting that the detainees were not provided paperwork about the change to South Sudan before they boarded the plane the following day.
D.H.S. did not respond to questions about the change in the men’s destination or the paperwork provided to them.
The next morning, May 20, Mr. Shaikh said, the men were loaded into a van and given new paperwork stating that they were being transferred to another immigration facility, in Louisiana. Instead, he said, they were driven to an airport.
Waiting on the tarmac was a Gulfstream V, a luxury long-range private jet owned by a charter company, according to public flight-tracking data that The Times was able to confirm using satellite imagery.
At that moment, Mr. Shaikh said, the men realized something was amiss.
“We all look in each other’s faces — we just look at each other,” he said. “Our faces just turned pale.”
As the others boarded the plane, Mr. Shaikh said, he and another man, an immigrant from South Korea, were pulled aside with no explanation.
“To this day, it’s a mystery,” he said. “Why? Why the two of us pulled out of that plane?”
He watched from the van as the plane took off.
‘Where Is the Plane?’
Before leaving Port Isabel, Mr. Phan had managed to call his wife. She alerted lawyers, who hurried to file an emergency motion for the judge to intervene. On the evening of May 20, Judge Murphy called a hearing to figure out what had become of the men.
“Where is the plane?” Judge Murphy repeatedly asked government lawyers.
“I’m told that that information is classified, and I am told that the final destination is also classified,” Elianis N. Perez, a Justice Department lawyer, replied at 6:06 p.m.
But by that time, the plane had already left U.S. airspace, according to a public flight-tracking website, bound for what was likely a refueling layover in Ireland.
At the hearing, Judge Murphy struggled to get information from the government about the rapidly evolving situation. Three times, he called a recess so Justice Department lawyers could try to get more information on the detainees’ whereabouts.
Finally, Judge Murphy said he would not order the plane to turn around but ordered the parties to reconvene the following morning, May 21.
At around 9:52 a.m. Eastern time that day, the Gulfstream landed at Camp Lemonnier, according to flight-tracking data.
A little more than an hour after the plane landed, Judge Murphy took the bench in Boston and announced that he believed the government had violated his order by giving the detainees so little notice before trying to deport them to South Sudan.
“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” he said.
At first, the government declined to disclose to Judge Murphy where the detainees had ended up.
“They’re sitting on a plane,” a D.H.S. official told the judge, explaining that their whereabouts was deemed too sensitive to discuss in open court.
The next day, in a social media post, Mr. Trump announced that “EIGHT of the most violent criminals on Earth” “remain in Djibouti.”
Mr. Trump’s post included an image showing mug shots of the men, their full names and the crimes for which they had been convicted.
It was a different situation than one in March when the administration had deported more than 200 Venezuelans, many without criminal convictions, to a prison in El Salvador. This time, the deportees had convictions for at least three murders, two attempted murders, two robberies and two sex crimes between them.
One of the men convicted of murder, Mr. Phan, had shot and killed a 19-year-old, Michael Holtmeyer, during a fight in a parking lot next to a fishing pier in Tacoma, Wash., in 2000. According to a police report, Mr. Phan, who was 18 at the time, said he “just shot into the crowd.” He pleaded guilty but said in court that he had acted in self-defense.
“I do not understand why Phan, or anyone like him should continue to have rights,” Mr. Holtmeyer’s mother wrote to the court in a victim impact statement then.
Still, Gerald Horne, the deputy county prosecutor who helped convict Mr. Phan, said in an interview that the attempt to send Mr. Phan to South Sudan “appears to me to be a sentence after his sentence.”
Despite the gravity of his crime, he said, Mr. Phan still deserved “some form of due process.”
At the hearing, Judge Murphy agreed, telling the government it could either fly the detainees back to the United States or figure out a way to set up interviews in Djibouti where the men would be given the chance to object to their deportations. Either way, he ordered that they remain in U.S. custody and be given access to a phone so they could contact their lawyers.
The military, now realizing that detainees would be on their base overnight, refused to take primary responsibility for guarding and housing them, a military official said.
Eleven ICE officers now guard the men, working 12-hour shifts in the face of risks to their health, according to a court filing by an ICE official. There are only six beds to be shared among the guards and two ICE officers who support the medical staff. Because they had not anticipated a long stay, they were not able to prepare for the trip by taking antimalarial medication. Some had fallen ill after exposure to smog from burn pits used by the military to dispose of waste.
D.H.S. agreed to set up the hearings on the base. “It is possible to do it,” Marcos Charles, an ICE official, told the court on May 21. “We’re going to have to look at how long it would take us to get it done.”
On Monday, D.H.S. said in a court filing that it had set up an interview room where the detainees could meet remotely with their lawyers, and had now provided them access to a satellite phone. But on Thursday afternoon, a lawyer for the men said her team had not yet heard from them.
Even as the Trump administration said it was taking steps to comply with Judge Murphy’s order, it was also going over his head. On May 27, it asked the Supreme Court to intervene and allow it to send the detainees to South Sudan. The court could rule at any time.
On social media, the administration blamed Judge Murphy for the deteriorating conditions, saying it was “outrageous” for him to put the “safety of law enforcement officers at risk for the sake of criminals.” The post did not mention that the administration had the option of bringing the men back to a detention center in the United States.
Mr. Shaikh remains in immigration custody, where he said he wondered about the fate of the eight men whose lives crossed briefly with his own.
“I think about those eight men every day,” he said.
On Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Phan received a phone call from her husband. “He sounded exhausted and said he can’t eat,” she wrote in an email.
The men wear shackles on their ankles, he told her. They are allowed to take them off every other day, when they use the shower, and have been told they will now be allowed a five-minute phone call to family every three days. He said that the guards were treating the detainees decently, but that everyone remained confused about why they were there in the first place.
“My husband wants to be deported back to Vietnam,” she wrote. “I am hoping that can happen.”
Reporting was contributed by Julie Tate, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Riley Mellen, Carol Rosenberg and Alain Delaquérière.
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3) Videos Show Chaos Around Israeli-Backed Gaza Food Sites
Danger and desperation are clear in imagery near the aid sites. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in at least two instances after Israeli troops opened fire near the sites.
By Sanjana Varghese, Arijeta Lajka, Nader Ibrahim and Lily Boyce, June 6, 2025
“According to the G.H.F., each box is meant to feed roughly five people and last for three days. Videos and interviews show that the boxes typically contain food like beans, rice and pasta. Some were reported to contain oil and flour.”
A new Israeli-backed food distribution system in Gaza has repeatedly turned deadly in its first week of operation.
Near one aid site, almost 50 people were killed in two large-scale shootings within the space of just three days, according to health officials in Gaza. In both cases, the Israeli military said its soldiers had opened fire nearby.
While very few videos captured the violence itself, an analysis of videos and satellite imagery by The New York Times showed the chaos that preceded as desperate Gazans sought aid.
In one video, taken at the crack of dawn as one site opened, Palestinians can be seen racing for food boxes before they run out. The video was shared by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israeli-backed aid organization that runs the site.
Israel restricts international journalists from reporting in Gaza except on some military embeds, and videos from the new distribution sites are limited.
To assess conditions on the ground, The Times analyzed imagery from multiple sources, including eyewitnesses, the Israeli military, the United Nations and the G.H.F.
The United Nations once ran around 400 sites from which it distributed aid across the enclave. Even then, it had to contend with Israeli restrictions, looting and lawlessness and the extreme difficulty of operating in a war zone.
The aid distributed under the new Israeli-backed system is a trickle after Israel lifted a nearly three month blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The Israel-based group has only four distribution sites, generally in more remote locations, and it is unclear how many are operational.
The shootings took place near the biggest G.H.F. site, in Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
Israeli officials say the new aid distribution system is intended to prevent the militant group Hamas from seizing food, fuel and other supplies. The United Nations says there is no evidence that Hamas systematically diverted international aid under the previous U.N.-coordinated distribution framework.
The scarcity of the G.H.F. sites and their relative remoteness mean that many people must often make arduous journeys to reach them — at times leaving empty-handed. Aid agencies have criticized the initiative for forcing Gazans to walk across military lines to reach food.
Another G.H.F. video, verified by The Times, shows crowds of people waiting at the Rafah distribution point as armed contractors pace in front of them. “Come back tomorrow,” the crowd is told.
Once they are near the distribution point, people are funneled through lanes of metal fencing on one side of the distribution center, and then emerge into an open area where boxes of aid are placed on tables or on the ground.
Those who manage to secure food exit through another lane. This video, provided by the U.N. and verified by The Times, shows people inside corridors at another distribution site in central Gaza, near the Netzarim corridor.
Ibrahim al Qardawi, a Gazan from Nuseirat, went to the site the day it opened to film what was happening.
“They’re humiliating people by making them go through these corridors to get to the distribution point,” Mr. al Qardawi said. “These corridors are only about a meter to a meter and a half wide.”
When the distribution site near the Netzarim corridor opened on May 29, crowds were dispersed quickly with stun grenades, captured in this video filmed by Mr. al Qardawi. It was unclear who used them.
The aid centers are run primarily by contractors working for private American firms tied to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. But the Israeli military, which invaded Gaza after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is still in control of much of the enclave, and its soldiers are deployed near the distribution points.
One of them posted an Instagram video on Tuesday showing soldiers in Rafah just over 1,000 feet from the largest aid site, which is behind a building shown at the end of the video. Another aid site can be seen earlier in the clip.
The shootings both took place on the narrow route to that site.
On Sunday, more than 20 people were killed, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, when Israeli soldiers opened fire near the site.
Two days later, at least 27 people were killed, according to the Red Cross and Gaza health ministry. The Israeli military said its forces had fired near people who were “deviating from the designated access routes” and who did not respond to warning shots. The statement said “additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects.”
One video verified by The Times shows people running as short bursts of gunfire are heard along Al-Rasheed road, near the Rafah distribution site, early Tuesday morning. Some are carrying bags of aid on their backs.
In announcements published on G.H.F’s Facebook page, the group said the Israeli military would be in the area and would prohibit anyone from approaching the aid site before 5 a.m. “The military considers anyone advancing into the square ahead of time as endangering their troops,” said Mohanad Keshta, a freelance journalist who shot the video above.
Some people begin waiting as early as 11 p.m. the night before in an area more than a mile away, he said. Others arrive after dawn prayers, around 4 a.m.
They are supposed to wait for 5 a.m., but the scramble often begins before then, Mr. Keshta said.
“They push each other, and some move in ahead,” he said.
After all the waiting and chaos, many come away with nothing.
Reports vary about what those lucky enough to secure a box find inside.
According to the G.H.F., each box is meant to feed roughly five people and last for three days. Videos and interviews show that the boxes typically contain food like beans, rice and pasta. Some were reported to contain oil and flour.
The G.H.F. said that it had distributed 5.8 million meals by the end of the first week, but it did not provide further details. After the shootings, the organization temporarily closed its aid sites before reopening two on Thursday.
“Restoration and reorganization,” were the reasons given.
Additional work by Eric Rabinowitz.
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4) ‘I Felt a Bullet’: Palestinians Recount Deadly Shooting Near New Gaza Aid Site
Nearly 50 people have been reported killed and 300 others wounded in incidents near the Israeli-backed distribution center, which was designed to keep food out of the hands of Hamas.
By Adam Rasgon, Bilal Shbair and Aaron Boxerman, June 6, 2025
Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem, and Bilal Shbair reported from southern Gaza
Palestinians taking away the dead after people came under fire near the aid distribution center in Rafah on Sunday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It was still unclear whether there were other sources of gunfire in the area. Asked who shot the Palestinians on Sunday, a military spokeswoman referred to an earlier statement that did not answer the question.
From a hospital bed in southern Gaza, Mr. Abdulal recalled the moments after being shot.
He forced himself to stand up and run to a nearby donkey cart and persuaded its owner to transport him to a field hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Red Cross said its 60-bed field hospital in Rafah, in southern Gaza, had collectively received 40 bodies on Sunday and Tuesday and 323 patients, most of whom had gunshot and shrapnel wounds and some of whom later died. On Tuesday, the hospital received the highest number of people wounded by weapons in a single episode since it was established over a year ago, the Red Cross said.
A field hospital operated by UK-Med in southern Gaza received 65 patients on Sunday and Tuesday, mostly with gunshot wounds and blast injuries, according to Mandy Blackman, a nurse overseeing the hospital’s operations.
Victoria Rose, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who was volunteering at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said dead and wounded people had streamed into the emergency room.
“It was so absolutely packed that people were being nursed on the floor,” she said.
Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, urged people on Sunday to disregard what he said were Hamas rumors about the new aid site. The military, he said, would investigate every incident and allegation.
Even though Israel has said the new system will prevent Hamas from accessing aid, the Israeli military and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have largely not checked the identifications of people arriving at the distribution site in Rafah, according to Palestinians who received aid there.
The Israeli military said the foundation was responsible for inspecting people entering the aid site. A spokesman for the organization emphasized that “trying to meter aid is going to get people hurt or killed” and said the group had not noticed an organized effort by Hamas to take its aid.
U.N. officials say there is little evidence that Hamas has systematically diverted relief. Critics in Israel have warned that the G.H.F. effort could be the first step toward establishing formal Israeli rule over Gaza.
A U.N. briefing paper circulated before the G.H.F. initiative was launched last week warned of “overcrowded distribution sites” and said that Israeli forces or American contractors might “use force to control crowds.” The memo also cautioned about the potential for “organized and opportunistic looting” near the hubs.
Jalal al-Homs, 35, said he left a tent in southern Gaza where his family was sheltering around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. Accompanied by his brother, he walked for two hours through darkness to Rafah, where he joined throngs of people trying to secure food. Israeli military vehicles, he said, could be seen in the distance, and drones could be heard hovering in the sky.
It was Mr. al-Homs’s fourth attempt this week to get a box, he said. On previous trips, he said, all the aid had been taken by the time he made it into the distribution site.
Mr. al-Homs said people were trying to push their way to the front of the crowd before the shooting began around 4:30 a.m. “It felt like it came from all over,” he said.
His brother was shot in the leg, he said, and taken to a hospital, where he underwent surgery.
Despite the danger, Mr. al-Homs said, he had few options other than returning to the distribution site so that he could feed his two sons and two daughters.
“This system isn’t just at all — it requires me risking my life for food,” he said.
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5) Who Leads the Israeli-backed Palestinian Militia in Gaza?
Yasser Abu Shabab, a Bedouin man in his 30s, holds sway in eastern Rafah, an area close to a key border crossing between Israel and Gaza.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 6, 2025
Palestinians carry aid packages in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Friday. Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press
Yasser Abu Shabab is the leader of a Palestinian militia in southern Gaza that Israeli officials say they have armed as part of an effort to undermine Hamas. Mr. Abu Shabab, whose group has denied receiving weapons from Israel, is a Bedouin man in his 30s. He holds sway in eastern Rafah, an area close to a key border crossing between Israel and Gaza.
For months, Palestinians and international humanitarian officials have accused him of looting aid trucks that made their way to distribution sites across Gaza, where hunger has been widespread.
Here is a look at Mr. Abu Shabab.
Why is Israel working with Mr. Abu Shabab’s militia?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that the Israeli government “activated” clans in Gaza opposed to Hamas at the advice of security officials. “What’s bad about it?” he said. “It’s only good and it only saves the lives of Israel Defense Force soldiers.”
Mr. Abu Shabab’s group, the Popular Forces, is believed to comprise a relatively small number of members. It is unclear how many people are in its ranks, but it is much smaller than Hamas.
Israel’s engagement with Mr. Abu Shabab, Israeli analysts said, underscored Mr. Netanyahu’s vacillation on who should take over the future administration of Gaza.
“If you think about who really can be an alternative to Hamas in Gaza, you have two options: either an Israeli military administration or the Palestinian Authority,” said Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former top Israeli military strategist, now retired.
Mr. Netanyahu, he said, does not want either, because a full occupation of Gaza would be costly, financially and politically, for Israel. And engaging with the Palestinian Authority, he said, would probably require a discussion about a Palestinian state, a prospect opposed by leading members of the Israeli government
“So they’re looking for other solutions,” General Brom said, describing the options as “dubious.”
Who is accusing Mr. Abu Shabab of looting aid?
Gazan transportation company owners, truck drivers, and international humanitarian officials have accused Mr. Abu Shabab of running a sophisticated operation, saying his group had looted trucks filled with sacks of flour.
Georgios Petropoulos, a senior United Nations official who was based in Gaza last year, called him “the self-styled power broker of east Rafah.”
In an interview in November 2024, Mr. Abu Shabab, thin and lightly bearded, denied he looted a large number of aid trucks, although he conceded that his men — armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles — had raided half a dozen or so since the start of the war.
“We are taking trucks so we can eat, not so we can sell,” he said, asserting that he was feeding his family and neighbors. “Every hungry person is taking aid.” He accused Hamas of being primarily responsible for stealing the aid, an accusation that Hamas has denied.
Still, truck drivers have said people who identify as being tied to Mr. Abu Shabab have intercepted them on aid deliveries and forced them to unload flour and other goods.
What is Mr. Abu Shabab’s militia doing in Gaza?
Referring to itself as the Popular Forces, the group started posting photos of its members wielding guns on its Facebook page in May.
In a video posted on Wednesday, Mr. Abu Shabab can be heard calling on people from eastern Rafah to return to their homes, saying that food, medicine and shelter would be provided. The footage features images of several tents that appeared to have been erected in the area.
He also can be heard saying that the Popular Forces are working under “Palestinian legitimacy,” a phrase that Palestinian Authority leaders often use to refer to their government.
The Palestinian Authority, the West Bank-based rival of Hamas, has declined to comment on reports of connections between Mr. Abu Shabab and its government. Maj. Gen. Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority security services, told The New York Times: “I will issue a statement clarifying everything soon, as the matter is complex and involves overlapping security, political, and — most importantly — humanitarian factors.”
In other posts, the Popular Forces claimed responsibility for safeguarding dozens of aid trucks entering Gaza, possibly an attempt to burnish its image among Palestinians in the enclave. “We confirm that 92 trucks were secured and entered areas under the protection of our popular forces, and exited safely under our supervision,” the group wrote on May 21.
The post did not clarify which organization hired the trucks to transport the aid, but the Popular Forces have said it had secured trucks for U.N. agencies.
How has Hamas dealt with Mr. Abu Shabab?
In November, Hamas security forces raided Mr. Abu Shabab’s neighborhood, killing more than 20 people, including his brother, according to Mr. Abu Shabab.
“They killed everyone they saw,” he said, adding that he had left the area before the Hamas forces showed up.
Official Hamas media reported at the time that its forces had killed 20 members of “gangs of thieves who were stealing aid.”
Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank.
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6) ‘A Big Slap in the Face’: Africans Jolted by Trump’s New Travel Ban
Seven of the 12 countries on President Trump’s new list are on the continent, where some said the policy was discriminatory and would unfairly affect their future.
By Ruth Maclean and Saikou Jammeh, Reporting from Dakar, Senegal, June 6, 2025
In Khartoum, the war-torn capital of Sudan, in March. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
When Africans woke up to the news this week that seven of the 12 countries on President Trump’s new travel ban list were African nations, the response, for many, was a mix of resignation and anger.
Resignation because several African nations were previously banned during Mr. Trump’s first term, including Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
Anger because they were unsure what African governments could do to get the ban lifted, if it would lead to family separations and how exactly each country landed on the list in the first place.
“I think it’s a discriminatory decision, a decision he’s taken out of racism,” Narciso Edjang, a 19-year-old medical student in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, said of Mr. Trump’s announcement.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the seven African nations Mr. Trump targeted in the travel ban announced on Wednesday night. The others are Chad, the Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. The ban goes into effect on Monday.
Mr. Edjang had hoped to one day study medicine in the United States, where, he said, training was much better than in Equatorial Guinea, a country that is rich in oil but mired in pervasive poverty and inequality.
Those hopes have now faded, he said.
Travel to the United States from Africa was already difficult for most Africans; visa applications are frequently rejected and fees are often prohibitively expensive. During Mr. Trump’s first ban, in 2017 — which was seen as targeting Muslim-majority countries — many students, professionals and refugees faced prolonged uncertainty as the legal challenges wended their way through court.
“This is a worrying decision for us Equatoguineans, because we know that when we travel, we always try to respect the rules,” said Juan Pedro, a 40-year-old teacher in Malabo.
Even Africans from countries not on Mr. Trump’s list were anxious about what the new ban might mean for them, fearing it could be extended to other nations on a moment’s notice.
“Regardless of whether I have been a law abiding resident in USA, regardless of my contribution to the USA in any capacity, I may be asked to leave or prevented from re-entry into the country,” Isaac Antwi, a scientist from Ghana who studied in the United States, wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
Mr. Trump’s announcement on Wednesday included partial bans on countries such as Sierra Leone, where many were shocked to learn they were no longer welcome to travel to the United States.
In the capital, Freetown, Joseph Bockarie, a metalworker with a sister in the United States, was trying to decide what to do. His sister had invited him to visit, and he has saved up money for the trip. He has a visa appointment next week, but now he is not sure he will show up. “I am afraid to be rejected,” he said. “I can’t imagine that trauma.”
The Trump proclamation identified Sierra Leone as a country where visitors frequently overstay their visas, though many in the West African nation speculated that it had been targeted because of its reputation as a narcotics hub.
“It’s a big slap on the face,” said Willcy Pratt, a resident of Freetown. He worried that it would affect his chances of visiting the United States someday, and said his government should do whatever it could to ensure it was not put on the list of fully banned countries.
On Thursday, the African Union called on the Trump administration to adopt a “more consultative approach” with the countries on the list. The group said it was concerned about the state of relations between the United States and African nations, which have been “carefully nurtured over decades.”
Since Mr. Trump took office in January, those relations have been strained. He imposed steep tariffs, throwing the future of a critical trade program into doubt. The Agency for International Development, which saved millions of African lives over decades, has been dismantled. Mr. Trump lectured South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in the Oval Office last month, on what he falsely claimed amounted to a genocide against white South Africans.
David Gilmour, the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, wrote on social media that 70 percent of the Equatoguineans who travel to the United States to study overstay their visas.
“Those Equatoguineans who have not respected U.S. immigration law are causing a problem that has restricted the travel of their fellow citizens,” he wrote. “If you know someone who is presently in the United States without a valid visa, tell them to return to Equatorial Guinea immediately.”
Margarita Mbang, a 24-year-old student at the University of Equatorial Guinea, acknowledged that some citizens from her country, when they arrive in the United States, “stay forever.”
Mr. Trump’s proclamation also criticized nations on the list for refusing to take back citizens who were flagged for deportation by the United States.
Neither the West African regional body known as ECOWAS nor the Central African one called ECCAS immediately issued statements about the travel ban. Chad’s president, Mahamat Idriss Déby, said that he had instructed his government to suspend visas for Americans in response to Mr. Trump’s decision.
“Chad has neither planes to offer nor billions of dollars to give, but Chad does have its dignity and pride,” he said in a statement.
Bright Simons, a policy analyst in Ghana, said African officials needed to recognize the “hyper-transactional and low-consultation model” of the Trump administration and try to keep up. “The rules of the game in Washington have changed,” he said. “Too many African embassies are staffed with people who can’t respond at the pace required with the skill necessary.”
The foreign minister of Sierra Leone, Timothy Kabba, acknowledged that in the past his country had refused to accept citizens in the United States who had been added to deportation lists. But that has changed since he took office in 2023, he said.
“Since I took over, we have accepted all identified affected persons,” Mr. Kabba said.
Some Africans said the ban presented an opportunity for African governments not only to push back against the Trump administration, but also to do better for all Africans.
Mohamed Kamara, a deliveryman in Freetown, Sierra Leone, called on his government to make sure there were enough jobs in the country for people to make a living. If there were, he said, there would be “no need for someone to go to another man’s country.”
“If there are job opportunities, there is no need to travel to hustle,” he said.
Samuel Obiang Mbana contributed reporting from Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, Joseph Johnson from Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Abdi Latif Dahir from Nairobi, Kenya.
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7) Trump’s New Travel Ban Is Rife With Contradictions
The Trump administration appears to have relied on a variety of considerations as it put together its latest restrictions.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, Published June 5, 2025, Updated June 6, 2025
Travelers at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday after President Trump’s announcement of a travel ban targeting a dozen countries. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
President Trump said on Thursday that his new travel ban against a dozen mostly African and Middle Eastern countries “can’t come soon enough.” He argued the ban would help prevent terrorist attacks and keep out those who overstay their visas.
But even by that logic, Mr. Trump’s ban is rife with contradictions.
“There’s no consistent set of criteria that would lead you to these 19 countries,” said Doug Rand, a former immigration official in the Biden administration, referring to the 12 countries and seven others that face restrictions but not a full ban. “You have a bunch of countries that seem to be politically motivated and then a bunch of random countries with a fig leaf of data to support their conclusion.”
The order, which goes into effect on Monday, bans travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. And it limits travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. It includes some exemptions, including people with existing visas.
Mr. Trump argued that the timing of the ban was spurred by a recent attack in Colorado on a group honoring hostages being held in Gaza in which an Egyptian man has been arrested and charged.
But Egypt — which is both a military partner and a critical mediator in negotiations between Israel and Hamas — was not on the travel ban list. Also omitted were nations that national security officials have long treated as pariahs, including Syria, where Mr. Trump has recently sought to improve relations.
Mr. Rand and other immigration experts noted that nations home to a higher number of people who overstay visas were left off the list.
Spain is not on there, even though more than 20,000 visitors from the nation overstayed their visas in the United States in the fiscal year covering 2023, according to government data, far more than the combined total for all seven banned African countries. Roughly 400 people from Chad, for example, stayed in the United States longer than their visa allowed during the same time period, according to government data.
Legal experts suggest that the travel ban appears devised to avoid legal flaws that slowed early versions during Mr. Trump’s first term in office.
But the White House has also indicated that working with Mr. Trump on his strategy for mass deportations was a way to avoid getting included. “Several countries have historically failed to accept back their removable nationals, complicating U.S. efforts to manage immigration and public safety,” according to Mr. Trump’s proclamation.
The White House also argued the nations on the list were “deficient” when it came to screening and vetting.
Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, pushed back on the notion the travel ban unfairly targeted predominately African or Middle Eastern nations.
“Can I help that some very dangerous countries are both Muslim and located in Africa and elsewhere?” he said. “No. I don’t get to pick that. That’s the reality. That’s the world we live in. I understand why people would say, ‘Oh, it’s a Muslim ban 2.0 or it’s just politics.’ The reality and the facts on the ground tell a very different story.”
Mr. Trump’s frequent references to increasing migration to Europe, a continent he has framed as a cautionary tale for America, raised concerns that the true intent of the ban was to cut off immigrants from mostly African and Muslim nations.
When he announced the restrictions on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump promised that his administration would “not let what happened in Europe happen to America.”
Sitting alongside Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany on Thursday in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said Mr. Merz’s country also has “a little problem too with some of the people that were allowed into your country.”
“We want to get them out now,” Mr. Trump said.
P. Deep Gulasekaram, a professor of immigration law at the University of Colorado’s law school, said that the effort appeared to be “performative national security theater.”
He said that Mr. Trump’s actions — including the attempted deportations of students protesting the war in Gaza, statements about Haitian migrants eating pets during the presidential campaign and the prioritizing of white South Africans to seek refuge in the United States — were pointed in one direction.
“This new proclamation is another step in trying to reclaim a white, Christian America, and capitalize by stoking the fires of racial and foreign threat,” he said.
Others said the selection of the countries on the list did not support the argument that the ban was about protecting Americans from attacks.
“If the ban had been preventing attacks, then why did those attacks not happen when the ban was lifted?” said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.
Mr. Bier said that consular officers vet immigrants seeking to enter the United States with visas and that people cannot enter the country based on their word alone.
“The idea that the government is blindly approving applicants from these countries is insulting to the consular officers,” he said. “It’s inaccurate as well.”
Ruth Maclean contributed reporting.
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8) Agents Use Military-Style Force Against Protesters at L.A. Immigration Raid
Armed agents in tactical gear threw flash-bang grenades to disperse a crowd in Los Angeles’s Fashion District. Later, agents fired less-than-lethal ammunition at protesters outside a detention center.
By Orlando Mayorquín and Jesus Jiménez, Reporting from Los Angeles, Published June 6, 2025, Updated June 7, 2025
David McDaniel said he was injured by a flash-bang grenade thrown by agents. He was assisted by bystanders and legal observers. Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times
Federal agents in tactical gear armed with military-style rifles threw flash-bang grenades to disperse an angry crowd near downtown Los Angeles on Friday as they conducted an immigration raid on a clothing wholesaler, the latest sign of tensions between protesters and law enforcement over raids carried out at stores, restaurants and court buildings.
The operation was one of at least three immigration sweeps conducted in Los Angeles on Friday. In another one, federal agents converged at a Home Depot where day laborers regularly gather in search of work.
The raid at the clothing wholesaler began about 9:15 a.m. in the Fashion District, less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall.
It was an extraordinary show of force. Dozens of federal agents wearing helmets and green camouflage arrived in two hulking armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles, and were soon approached by a crowd of immigrant activists and supporters. Some agents carried riot shields and others held rifles, as well as shotguns that appeared to be loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition.
Agents cleared a path for two white passenger vans that exited the area. A short time later, as officers boarded their vehicles to leave, a few agents lobbed flash-bang grenades at groups of people who chased alongside the slow-moving convoy. Some protesters had thrown eggs and other objects at the vehicles. At one point, the vehicles snagged and crushed at least two electric scooters that protesters had used.
More than 100 people were arrested at three locations in Los Angeles after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers executed four federal search warrants, according to federal officials. The operation drew immediate criticism from officials in Los Angeles, a Democratic-led city in a county where more than 30 percent of residents are immigrants.
“As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said in a statement, adding: “My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”
Hours after the raid, a second clash between protesters and federal agents broke out outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles, where those who were detained were taken. At one of the entrances, protesters chanted and approached the building as officers fired less-than-lethal projectiles and squirted what appeared to be pepper spray. Some protesters threw a chair and other objects, and appeared to spray-paint anti-ICE graffiti on the building.
By 7 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly, ordered demonstrators to disperse and a line of police in riot gear started to clear the area.
The morning raid took place at a business called Ambiance Apparel.
Omar Diaz, 26, was working inside when several agents entered the building and corralled the roughly 20 to 30 workers inside and lined them up against a wall.
“They interviewed us one by one,” Mr. Diaz said. “They would take us separately, ask us where we were born, and then they wanted our ID and our information.”
After being detained for about an hour, Mr. Diaz, who said he is a U.S. citizen, and a few others were let go. But some of his co-workers, who are mostly immigrants from Mexico and South Korea, remained with the authorities, Mr. Diaz said.
“My friend is still in there, too, so I’m worried about him,” Mr. Diaz said outside the front entrance of the building.
A group of activists aboard a truck repeated a list of rights over a loudspeaker, hoping those detained inside could hear them.
Gloria Miguel, an organizer with a local workers group, said she saw two women crying as the raid unfolded.
“The woman was crying: ‘My husband is in there. I need help,’” Ms. Miguel said in Spanish, adding that there was another woman who was crying because her father was inside.
Agents at the scene were wearing patches on their uniforms identifying themselves as being with the F.B.I., Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security Investigations, said on Friday that 44 people were “administratively arrested” and one person was arrested for obstruction.
An administrative arrest is a civil arrest that ICE utilizes to detain and, ultimately, try to deport people. Often, immigrants who are administratively arrested are placed into immigration court proceedings where the government pushes to remove people in front of judges. A growing backlog of cases, however, has meant that deportation cases can take years to resolve.
The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, said agents arrested David Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union, for impeding federal agents carrying out the raid by blocking their vehicle.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California leaders condemned the detention of Mr. Huerta, who is a well-known figure in the state’s labor movement.
“David Huerta is a respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people,” the governor said in a social media post. “No one should ever be harmed for witnessing government action.”
In recent weeks, ICE has ramped up enforcement across the country — boosting daily arrest numbers. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has said that ICE was looking to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day. The Trump administration has long targeted so-called sanctuary jurisdictions like Los Angeles, arguing that they would have to boost arrests in communities because they don’t have the same access to county jails, where they prefer to pick up immigrants.
Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. field office in Los Angeles, said the F.B.I. was supporting its partners with the Department of Homeland Security, under the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“As we have been asked to do, we are sending agents to participate in these immigration enforcement efforts,” Ms. Eimiller said. “That includes assisting in cities where major operations are already underway and where we have special agents embedded on operational teams with D.H.S.”
Officials did not detail any injuries. One man on the street said he was injured by a flash-bang grenade.
“They started throwing flash-bangs and blew everybody up with it,” the man, David McDaniel, said as he held his bloody foot. “I got shrapnel all over my body,” he added.
Mr. McDaniel said he was not part of the protest and was just trying to get by. Bystanders and legal observers assisted him as they waited for an ambulance.
Chief Jim McDonnell of the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that his agency was not involved in civil immigration enforcement efforts.
“While the LAPD will continue to have a visible presence in all our communities to ensure public safety, we will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations,” Chief McDonnell said, adding that the department would not attempt to determine anyone’s immigration status.
The Los Angeles police have had a policy in place since 1979 that bars officers from initiating police action for the sole purpose of determining someone’s immigration status. California law also prohibits state and local resources from being used to help with federal immigration enforcement.
The immigration sweeps in Los Angeles came one week after a similar operation in San Diego. Video of that raid showed federal agents using what appeared to be flash-bang grenades in an effort to disperse a group of people protesting the action.
That raid prompted members of Congress to write to the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, with questions about the tactics used by federal agents.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
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9) Haiti Reels as Trump Severs a Lifeline
Sick children, families and businesses are among the many people in Haiti, a country plagued by gang violence, likely to be hit hard by a U.S. travel ban.
By Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, June 7, 2025
Brad Mertens Joseph, 6, with his mother, Manise Tilus. He is one of hundreds of Haitians on waiting lists for surgery in the United States. Credit...Joseph family
Born in northeast Haiti with a heart defect, Brad Mertens Joseph is 6, has difficulty walking and is still in diapers.
His parents, accustomed to a dangerous nine-hour overnight bus ride to see cardiologists in the country’s violent capital, had finally found a solution to their son’s medical ailment, caused by a hole in his heart.
It involved open-heart surgery in Akron, Ohio, arranged by a nonprofit.
Those plans collapsed this week when President Trump issued an order banning people from a dozen countries, including Haiti, who don’t already have valid travel visas, from entering the United States
“When I heard that, I was really upset, and I wondered, ‘What are we going to do?’” the boy’s father, Dieudonné Joseph, said. “I was panicking, and I’m still panicking.”
The Josephs are among the many Haitians who are caught in the middle of Mr. Trump’s sweeping travel ban. From young professionals to medical residents to longtime visitors whose visas had lapsed, Haitians are bracing for the consequences of having a lifeline abruptly cut.
With its proximity to Florida, a long (often difficult) history with the United States, and grave political and social upheaval, Haiti has strong family and economic ties with its northern neighbor. People have businesses in both countries, and most middle-class Haitians have close relatives in South Florida or New York.
The ban was the latest in a series of blows the United States has dealt to Haiti, a nation currently overrun by gangs and in the throes of a security crisis, and which is heavily dependent on international aid organizations and remittances from migrants in the United States.
“We feel like not only Haiti has been hit very hard, but also the whole world has been hit very hard by this decision, especially those small countries who believed the United States of America were their best friends,” said Mr. Joseph, 42, who works at a bank.
If Brad does not receive the surgery, he is not likely to live past 30, said Dr. John Clark, a pediatric cardiologist at Akron Children’s Hospital who was set to treat the boy this summer.
More than 300 other Haitians, mostly children, are on waiting lists for surgery and are now unable to get treatment because they are barred from traveling to the United States, said Owen Robinson, the executive director of the International Cardiac Alliance, a nonprofit group based in the U.S. that arranged for Brad’s treatment in Ohio.
Finding enough doctors and hospitals in other countries to make up for the sudden loss will be extraordinarily difficult.
“If we could, we would,” Mr. Robinson said.
Haitian Hearts, an organization in Illinois, was hoping to secure travel for Suze Lapierre, 46, who had cardiac surgery in the United States 21 years ago and needs a valve replaced. She is unemployed, was forced to flee her home in Port-au-Prince, the capital, because of gang violence, and, with most hospitals in the capital closed, is out of any other options for her heart problem.
In announcing the ban, Mr. Trump said that he had decided to “fully restrict” people from Haiti because visitors from there overstayed their visas at least 25 percent of the time.
“I cannot be mad at Donald Trump; he is building his country, and he has the right to do it the way he wants,” she said in a telephone interview. “I believe we have to fix our own country.”
Haiti is engulfed in an extraordinary political, humanitarian and security crisis. Its last elected president was assassinated nearly four years ago and the resulting power vacuum created an opening for gangs, long supported by the country’s political and economic elite, to thrive.
The armed groups joined forces last year in an explosion of violence that forced more than 1 million people from their homes and killed more than 5,000 people last year.
The Trump administration recently declared the gangs terrorist organizations, a designation that helped land Haiti on the list of banned nations.
The Trump administration also rescinded an immigration designation known as temporary protected status that shielded more than 500,000 Haitians from deportation and revoked a program that had allowed more than 200,000 Haitians to move to the United States.
Mr. Trump’s proclamation said the secretary of state could issue travel waivers in cases that were in the “national interest” of the United States. Asked to clarify if that could apply to children with medical conditions, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security offered a statement that did not answer the question.
“President Trump’s action to limit the entry of foreign nationals from countries who have a significant terrorist presence, inadequate screening and vetting processes, and high visa overstay rates will help secure the American homeland and make our communities safer,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement.
The State Department said in a statement that there could be case-by-case waivers but added that it would not “get into hypotheticals or specific cases about application” of the president’s order.
In some ways, Haiti was already under a de facto travel ban: The main international airport in Port-au-Prince has been closed since November after gangs fired at several U.S. aircraft.
With the main airport closed, the U.S. embassy on limited staffing, and roads to another airport too dangerous, travelers have had to spend thousands of dollars to first go by helicopter to Cap Haitien, in northern Haiti, and then fly to Barbados, Jamaica or other countries with functioning U.S. embassies to obtain or renew the visas they need to enter the United States.
The onerous and expensive journey means many Haitians have visas that have now expired.
That has left families and businesspeople with tough choices, said Pierre A. Noel, executive director of the Haiti Development Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit.
Many Haitian professionals who have remained in Haiti through the turmoil had sent their children to safety in the United States and now risk long separations, he said. With graduation season in full swing, Haitian parents are at a loss about what to do.
People working in Haiti and currently traveling in the United States are having to make decisions now on whether they should go back home and when, he said. “And if they do go back, when would they next be able to see their family,” he said.
People with businesses that rely on unencumbered travel between the United States and Haiti are deciding whether to keep their companies afloat and retain their workers, he said.
Several Haitians interviewed expressed disappointment at the United States for, among other things, the well-known flow of illicit guns from Florida to Haitian gangs.
Still, many people also stressed that the travel ban underscores the need to strengthen the interim government ruling Haiti until a new presidential election can be held.
Cassandre V., 49, who lives in Port-au-Prince, said her visa expires in a year and is praying that her aging parents in the United States do not get sick. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be published because she did not have permission from her employer to speak to the news media.
“We feel like the States let Haiti down,” she said. “What is going on? Are they leaving us to die? Every one of us?”
Wolf Pamphile, executive director of the Haiti Policy House, a Washington-based research institute, said even Haitians with visas or U.S. residency are afraid to travel to the United States.
“This is a huge slap in the face,” Mr. Pamphile said. “This should be a defining moment for the Haitian government. What are they going to do?”
Haiti’s prime minister declined to comment and its presidential council — a committee formed to govern the country until elections are held — did not respond to requests for comment.
The Haitian Foreign Ministry, in a statement Thursday, said it was working to find a “rapid” solution, especially for businessmen and families divided between Haiti and the United States.
“This decision comes at a moment when the Haitian government is striving, with the help of its international partners, to fight the insecurity and to strengthen border security,” the foreign ministry said.
Humanitarian groups stressed that the ban would hamper their ability to train Haitian staff and government technocrats.
“If we want to not be an N.G.O. in Haiti forever, we need to be able to strengthen our relationship with the public sector,” said Sasha Kramer, executive director of SOIL, which works on improving Haiti’s sanitation.
Zanmi Lasante, an organization allied with Partners in Health, which runs medical facilities in Haiti, said at least 40 of its Haitian staff will be unable to attend training in the United States.
“We feel like we are on our own,” said Wesler Lambert, Zanmi Lasante’s executive director.
He said he would welcome senior members of the Trump administration to visit Haiti and “meet the inspiring people they are excluding and witness the lifesaving work they are jeopardizing.”
André Paultre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and David C. Adams contributed from Florida.
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10) Trump’s Ambition Collides With Law on Sending Migrants to Dangerous Countries
Previous administrations usually considered whether a transfer would endanger the migrant or create risks for the United States and its allies.
By Carol Rosenberg, Published June 6, 2025, Updated June 7, 2025
As the Trump administration ships migrants to countries around the world, it is abandoning a longstanding U.S. policy of not sending people to places where they would be at risk of torture and other persecution.
The principle emerged in international human rights law after World War II and is also embedded in U.S. domestic law. It is called “non-refoulement,” derived from a French word for return.
The issue came into sharp relief in the past month as the Trump administration has tried to deport migrants with criminal records to Libya and South Sudan, countries considered so dangerous that they are on the State Department’s “do not travel” list.
“What the U.S. is doing runs afoul of the bedrock prohibition in U.S. and international law of non-refoulement,” said Robert K. Goldman, the faculty director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s law school.
In a recent affidavit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the Trump administration’s efforts to send migrants to those two countries as part of a diplomatic push to improve relations. He acknowledged that the Libyan capital, Tripoli, was wracked by violence and instability.
To critics of the administration, the sworn statement shows that the United States is no longer considering whether a deportee is more likely than not to be at risk of abuse through repatriation or transfer to a third country.
State Department employees were also recently told to stop noting in annual human rights reports whether a nation had violated its obligations not to send anyone “to a country where they would face torture or persecution.”
The State Department said in a statement that it dropped that requirement to focus the reports on “human rights issues themselves rather than a laundry list of politically biased demands and assertions.”
“Enforcing U.S. immigration law, including removing those without a legal basis to remain in the United States, is critical to upholding the rule of law and protecting Americans,” the statement said.
A judge blocked the transfer of migrants to South Sudan, which is teetering on the brink of civil war, and the men were being held at a U.S. military outpost in Djibouti pending more court action.
The Trump administration is also in a showdown in another court over its transfer of Venezuelan deportees described as dangerous gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process.
“If they were sending them to Sweden, that would be a different thing than sending them to South Sudan, which is one of the most dangerous places on the planet,” said Michael H. Posner, the director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Mr. Posner, who was the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor from 2009 to 2013, said the United States could send someone from Cuba or Venezuela to another country if it had been determined at a hearing that the place was safe. “We should not be deporting people to third countries where they have no connections and where their lives will be in serious jeopardy,” he said.
The White House likens its crackdown on illegal migration to combating a national security threat from a hostile enemy. It has pressed military troops into service at the southwestern border and at a small detention operation for migrants at Guantánamo Bay.
But even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States abided by its non-refoulement obligation for prisoners it was holding at Guantánamo Bay, during a period when it flouted international law by torturing other detainees in secret overseas prisons called black sites.
In 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded that the United States would not repatriate Chinese citizens from the Uyghur Muslim minority who had been rounded up in the war against terrorism in 2001 and held at the military base at Guantánamo. The United States believed that the men would be at risk if they were sent to China.
Eventually, in 2013, the State Department found other countries to take in all of the Uyghurs.
In the past, State Department officials have essentially asked two questions to determine where a detainee could be sent: Would the destination be safe for the individual? Would the United States and its allies be safe if the person was sent there?
U.S. officials had to assess whether the receiving country could monitor the activities of the detainees to prevent them from endangering the United States or an ally. Officials were also required to assess whether a deportee would be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment.
The United States adopted the same approach to its efforts to send home Islamic State members or their relatives who were being housed in camps in northern Syria.
“Consistent with both longstanding policy and its legal obligations, the U.S. government cannot send people to a country where there are substantial grounds to believe that they will be mistreated,” said Ian Moss, a lawyer and a former senior counterterrorism official at the State Department.
In his affidavit, Mr. Rubio accused the courts that were reviewing deportation challenges of undermining U.S. foreign policy. He also said that plans to announce “expanded activities of a U.S. energy company in Libya” had been postponed.
Mr. Rubio did not mention whether any diplomatic agreements surrounding the proposed resettlement included guarantees about how the migrants would be treated.
“If these individuals are as dangerous as the administration represents them to be,” Mr. Moss said, “sending them to a conflict area or country where there is a lack of capacity to manage them undermines the national security justification.”
The State Department statement referred questions about “the removals process, including screening for credible or reasonable fear,” to the Homeland Security Department.
The eight men who were to be sent to South Sudan were at a holding site in Texas when they were informed of their destination. An immigration division official, Garrett J. Ripa, said in a sworn statement on May 23 that none of the men declared himself afraid to go.
Court records showed that an immigration officer gave the men a form that listed their intended place of deportation. None signed the document.
“By not signing, people are protesting being sent to a third country in the only way they know how,” said Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants in the case.
Administration officials had previously planned to deport one of the men to Libya, which has been so unstable that Congress has since 2015 not allowed detainees who are cleared for release from Guantánamo Bay to be sent there.
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11) Parents in Gaza Are Running Out of Ways to Feed Their Children: ‘All We Want Is a Loaf of Bread’
A New York Times article last year described two families struggling to keep their malnourished children alive in Gaza. Now, as Israeli restrictions keep out most aid, that’s even harder.
By Vivian Yee and Bilal Shbair, June 7, 2025
Vivian Yee reported from Cairo, and Bilal Shbair from Khan Younis, Gaza.
A food distribution line in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, in April. The territory is facing a hunger crisis. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
It had made sense to Nour Barda and Heba al-Arqan in November 2023 to try for another baby when a temporary truce had just taken hold in Gaza. Mr. Barda’s father, who had only sons, kept asking when he might have a granddaughter at last. Back then, the war seemed like it might end. Back then, there was food, even if it was not enough.
By the time Ms. al-Arqan found out she was pregnant last year, things in Gaza were much worse. When she gave birth to Shadia this April, there was so little to eat that Ms. al-Arqan, 25, had almost no milk to give. Now she holds Shadia at her breast just to calm her down, Mr. Barda said, knowing that nothing is likely to come.
It had been like this with Jihad, their son, who was born in 2023, two weeks after the war began. Their increasingly desperate efforts to find food when Jihad was six months old were described in a New York Times article about malnourished children in Gaza in April 2024.
But now she and her husband had two babies to keep alive at a time when Israel had blocked almost all aid from entering Gaza for nearly three months — 80 days of total siege beginning in March. Israel began to ease the blockade in May, but only a thin trickle of supplies has arrived.
The traditional United Nations-run system for delivering aid has faltered as looters and fighting have cut off safe routes for aid trucks, and a new, Israeli-backed aid distribution system has descended into controversy, chaos and violence. Though the group behind it says it has delivered nearly nine million meals so far, the United Nations says the assistance falls far short of what is needed for a population of two million people. Security at the new distribution sites is being provided by private American contractors, but the Israeli military is stationing forces nearby, outside the perimeter.
Born 5 pounds, 1 ounce, Shadia was weaker and smaller than her brother and had gained just seven ounces a month later, her parents said. She struggled to suck from the bottle, usually drinking only half of the single bottle of formula that aid groups can offer at a time, they said. Ms. al-Arqan has taken to drinking whatever her daughter does not finish, hoping the nutrients will help her produce milk, she said.
“Her birth brought me more anxiety than joy,” Ms. al-Arqan said. “History is repeating itself, but this time with my little girl.”
When Ms. al-Arqan managed to get some child nutritional supplements from an aid group in mid-May by waiting in line for six hours, aid workers evaluated Shadia by measuring her arm and concluded that the baby had moderate acute malnutrition, she said.
But after nearly 20 months of war, Shadia’s parents have no income or savings left to spend on milk or formula at the market. They survive on one meal a day: either a little lentil soup or rice and beans they get from charity kitchens in northern Gaza, where they have been living in a tent in the street for about six weeks.
Mr. Barda, 26, who worked as a baker at a pastry chain before the war and has not been able to find steady work since, cannot find flour in northern Gaza for less than about $23 a kilogram, he said. That puts bread, the base on which practically every meal in Gaza used to be built, out of reach.
“When we had Jihad, we still had some savings,” Ms. al-Arqan said. “Now we have nothing — no savings, no vegetables in the markets and no affordable flour.” Jihad’s name, after an uncle, means “struggle” or “striving.”
Jihad is no longer a baby. Now he asks constantly for food.
A few days ago, as he was about to go down for a nap, Ms. al-Arqan said she heard him drowsily murmuring: “Mama — dough and bread.”
“Every day, we lose more ways to survive,” she said. “My son is only asking for the bare minimum — a loaf of bread. We’re not asking for proper housing or clothes or even meat. All we want is a loaf of bread to stop the children’s crying. Is that too much to ask?”
Shadia is the apple of her grandfather’s eye; he had always wanted a girl in the family. Sometimes he takes her to sleep with him and his wife on their mattress in their tent, he said, whispering words of hope and affection in his granddaughter’s ears.
The younger Mr. Barda does not see cause for hope. Though he and his wife want more children, as is traditional in Gaza, they know they cannot feed more, he said.
“Our mood is broken,” he said. “We go through the same suffering all over again every day.”
To the south, in the city of Khan Younis, Hanaa al-Najjar has three children to feed, and little but lentils and dried pasta to feed them with.
The Times interviewed Ms. al-Najjar last year for the same article that described Mr. Barda and Ms. al-Arqan’s struggle to feed their baby. Ms. al-Najjar, now 31, had been left to take care of her children on her own after Israeli soldiers detained her husband as the family was evacuating a shelter on the Israeli military’s orders, she said.
After she ran out of formula, she was forced to feed her youngest, Muhanned, bread dipped in canned beans and lentil soup. His appetite suffered, and at less than 2 years old, he weighed half of what he was supposed to. He died in March last year.
Her elder son, Mohammed, now 8, had been hospitalized a few weeks before for fever and dehydration. Though he recovered, he has never been able to put on weight, Ms. al-Najjar said. He weighs a little less than 42 pounds — underweight by World Health Organization standards.
“He never gains any extra weight like other kids,” she said.
Now they live in a tent next to a graveyard in western Khan Younis. Ms. al-Najjar’s husband remains missing in detention.
Without wheat flour, she grinds up dried lentils and pasta to make something resembling bread. Mohammed struggles to digest it, she said, and is always constipated. She has not found any medication to treat his bowel issues.
For more than three months now, he has also had a bacterial infection on his scalp that doctors have been unable to treat, she said. It recently spread to his 10-year-old and 5-year-old sisters.
Mohammed is a cheerful child. But the evidence of his rocky health is right there on the back of his head, even if he wears an orange hoodie to hide it. There, his dark hair has fallen out in patches, leaving nothing but an expanse of seething red skin.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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