News Summaries in August 2025

“Judge Orders US to Halt Deportation of Hundreds of Guatemalan Children,” The Guardian, August 31, 2025

A federal judge in Washington August 31 ordered the Trump administration to stop a plan to deport nearly 700 Guatemalan children back to their home country. The children had arrived in the United States unaccompanied by their parents or guardians. Trump administration lawyers said the children weren’t being deported but rather reunited at the request of their parents or guardians, according to Guardian staff and news agencies. Lawyers for the children disputed that claim, at least in some cases. “I have conflicting narratives from both sides here,” said Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan. What government lawyers were saying “doesn’t quite line up” with what the children’s lawyers were saying, the judge said. Lawyers for the unaccompanied children – whose ages ranged from 10 to 17 – said there were reports that planes were set to take off within hours for Guatemala. Sooknanan ordered however that the children couldn’t be deported for 14 days. She directed that they be returned to the facilities of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during legal proceedings over the matter. A government lawyer said August 31 that the children had been taken off the planes and returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Lawyers in Arizona and Illinois also asked federal judges to block deportations of unaccompanied minors. The lawyers for the Guatemalan children said the U.S. government lacks authority to remove the children. They said the government is denying them due process by depriving them of the right to pursue asylum claims or other relief. They said many of the children have active cases in immigration courts. The government is “illegally transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture,” said a filing by the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights and the National Immigration Law Center. When migrant children traveling without parents or guardians are encountered along the U.S.-Mexico border they are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlment. Once in the U.S. they live in government-run shelters or with foster care families until they can be released to a sponsor, usually a family member, living in the U.S. According to the New York Times (“Judge Halts U.S. Effort to Deport Guatemalan Children as Planes Sit on the Tarmac,” August 31), about 2,000 children, most from Guatemala, are being held in dozens of shelters. The Guatemalan minister of foreign affairs, Carlos Ramiro Martínez, said Aug. 29 that his country had been coordinating with the U.S. and expected to receive more than 600 minors. Stephen Miller, the White House official overseeing the immigration crackdown, said on X that the Biden administration was to blame for the children being in the U.S. without their parents and that it had “orphaned” the children. He said a Democratic judge “is refusing to let them reunify with their parents.” At least some of the children facing deportation expressed fear about returning. Times reporters Miriam Jordan and Aishvarya Kavi noted that “hundreds of thousands of children, mainly from Central America, have crossed the southern border into the United States in the last decade, often seeking to join friends or relatives. Many of the minors have won the right to remain in the United States permanently by proving that they were abandoned or persecuted in their home countries.”

“Haitians Fueled Revival in Ohio, But Must Leave,” New York Times, August 19, 2025

Posted out of chronological order.

Thanks to the arrival of 10,000 Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, in recent years, the city rebounded. “They were welcomed by a Republican governor and business leaders who needed workers to power companies that had been enticed to invest millions there,” recounts Times reporter Miriam Jordan. “The newcomers staffed auto plants, packed ready-to-eat salads at Dole, and sorted packages at Amazon. They filled church pews, enrolled their children in schools and began to buy homes.” But the Haitians became a target for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, who along with his running mate J.D. Vance baselessly claimed they were stealing and eating pets. After the election Trump ended some humanitarian programs that let Haitians and other immigrants work and live legally in the United States. Employers in the Springfield area let go hundreds of Haitian workers. In February, thousands more are expected to lose their jobs when Trump ends their Temporary Protected Status, a program that protects people from deportation to countries in crisis. Many Haitian families now face the choice of either leaving the United States or staying without lawful status, forcing them into underground work and the constant threat of arrest and deportation. Some will try to go to Canada or to South America, previously a place of refuge. It’s not going to be good for Springfield either said Republican Governor Mike DeWine. The sudden loss of many workers will hurt the area. Businesses will struggle to keep operating and immigrant families who were self-sufficient will need support. “Across Springfield,” writes Jordan, “there are disquieting signals that there are not enough workers to fuel economic growth. Home sales have stalled. Rentals are no longer in demand.” Forced recently to fire hundreds of Haitians at its warehouse, Amazon in recent days has been texting former employees who are eligible to work, trying to get them to come back with the promise of “great pay” and “no interview.” Jamie McGregor, the head of McGregor Metal, said employers are bracing for further losses of employees that will have a “profoundly negative effect on our ability to function.”

“What Brazil’s Soy Moratorium Fight Means – and What Happens Next,” Associated Press, August 29, 2025

The future of Brazil’s soybean moratorium is uncertain, which environmentalists say poses the threat of a dangerous increase in the deforestation of the Amazon. AP’s Steven Grattan says a move in Brazil to suspend the moratorium “has scientists and environmentalists warning that losing the agreement could undermine years of progress in cutting deforestation in the Amazon.” The climate-friendly moratorium remains in effect for now while its fate is determined by government regulators and the courts. The government-endorsed moratorium is an agreement by major soy traders to avoid buying soy from Amazon land deforested after July 2008. It remains in effect until the participants agree it is no longer needed. Regulators are now reviewing whether the moratorium restricts competition. Powerful farm interests have complained about the moratorium. Ane Alencar of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute said it has been crucial in sharply reducing deforestation while letting soy producers maintain access to demanding markets. Some soy interests argue, however, that the moratorium has unfairly blocked small and medium farmers from markets. Cristiane Mazzetti of Greenpeace Brazil said “without the moratorium, soy could once again supercharge deforestation” and jeopardize rainfall on which all Brazilian farmers rely. Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre said “we should prohibit deforestation in the Amazon because it is very close to the point of no return.”

“ICE Threatens Immigrants Over $6.1 Billion in Fines,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2025

The Trump administration is moving to collect $6.1 billion in fines to immigrants it says have ignored deportation orders, threatening them with lawsuits, debt collectors and unaffordable tax bills if they don’t pay up. Since Trump returned to office 21,500 such fines have been issued. Critics say it’s psychological warfare meant to get recipients to self-deport. “With some immigrants overstaying by decades and penalties of as much as $998 a day, the fines routinely levied retroactively for five years amount to $1,820,352,” said Journal reporter Jack Morphet. He notes that some immigrants with removal orders later qualify to stay in the U.S. if their circumstances change, “which is why many remain in the country after being ordered to leave.” Typically migrants targeted have low wages. For example, Edward Cuccia, an attorney, said he represents a minimum-wage restaurant worker in Brooklyn who was ordered by a judge to leave the U.S. in 1998 but stayed. He received a $1.8 million fine in June. “Clearly, they’re not expecting to collect the money, they’re just scaring people.” He said he has ten clients with fines exceeding $1 million apiece. The Homeland Security Department also has said it could report unpaid fines to the IRS as potential income, the same way when a lender writes off credit card debts, mortgage defects, and medical bills the IRS regards the forgiven sums as taxable income. “Defending against the tax debt takes time, effort and tax knowledge, which many people in this situation may lack,” Keith Fogg, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School told the Journal. “It’s driving immigrants to the point where they feel like they will lose everything if they remain in the United States, so it’s better to cut their losses, pack up and self-deport,” said immigration attorney LaToya McBean Pompy. If the recipient of a fine does self-deport, their fine will be waived and they will receive a $1,000 “exit bonus.”

“Florida Cops Become a Deportation Force,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2025

No state has embraced the Trump administration immigration crackdown more than Florida, which has trained almost all of the officers in the Florida Highway Patrol in a program that allows them to detain immigrants they encounter in the course of their regular duties. It's the first state to do so. They can detain them if they have reason to think they are in the U.S. illegally. Since March, the patrol has apprehended more than 3,500 immigrants in the U.S. illegally. “Critics say the program is a recipe for racial profiling,” say Journal reporters Arian Campo-Flores, Scott Calvert and Elizabeth Findell. “A 2022 report by the American Civil Liberties Union said the program encourages officers to stop people on the pretext of traffic violations or minor offenses.” As an example of recent detentions, Sgt. Tony Kingery of the Florida Highway Patrol while driving through a commercial district in Lake Worth, Fla., spotted a white van missing its front bumper. He pulled the vehicle over and told the driver about the missing bumper and a broken taillight and asked for his driver’s license. The Hispanic driver who did not speak English handed over his Guatemalan consular card. Kingery asked if he was a U.S. citizen. A Hispanic passenger who did speak English told Kingery the driver’s papers were “in process.” Kingery ordered the driver out of the car and handcuffed him. He told him he had to check on him. ICE agents arrived a while later and checked the names of the driver and passenger, both Guatemalans. An agent told the 18-year-old passenger he was here illegally. “I’m not illegal,” he replied. “I’m going to school. I can’t go back to my country. I want to stay here to make money.” The 28-year-old driver had a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol, a suspended driving privilege and a notice to appear in court. He pleaded repeatedly to be allowed to call home to speak to his young son. “I’m afraid they are going to take me away,” he said in Spanish. Then, “he crouched down and retched,” the Journal said. “Troopers loaded both men onto a highway patrol pickup, which headed off to the Riviera Beach Border Patrol station.” Kingery then waited for a tow truck to come haul away the van. “Florida’s rollout effectively expands ICE’s footprint throughout the state,” the Journal said. The state has set aside almost $300 million for immigration enforcement work and has built an immigration detention center in the Everglades it calls "Alligator Alcatraz."

“Teen Who Shot Colombian Presidential Hopeful Sentenced to 7 Years at Youth Detention Facility,” Associated Press, August 27, 2025

A teenager who shot and killed Colombian presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay while he delivered a campaign speech was sentenced August 27 to seven years of detention at a youth rehabilitation facility. “The shooting alarmed Colombians, recalling some of the darkest chapters of the country’s drug-fueled violence,” AP said. Authorities have also arrested five other people but have not determined who ordered the attack or why. Uribe Turbay, a conservative, said his campaign was dedicated to ending violence in Colombia (see August 11 story below). His mother, a journalist, had been kidnapped by a cartel and killed during a rescue attempt.

“For Many Families, Every Meal Is a Struggle in Venezuela’s Economic Crisis,” Associated Press, August 27, 2025

Triple-digit inflation, low wages, the drop in foreign aid, and sharp cuts to food subsidies leave millions of Venezuelans struggling to put food on the table, says AP reporter Regina Garcia Cano. Many necessities including food have become unaffordable, and children are suffering the most, according to experts. For example, in Coro, Venezuela, 51-year-old Alnilys Chirino’s “tiny fridge and pantry are almost empty – a handful of peppers and wilting herbs, a kilo of rice, half that of beans, a bit of canned meat, some flour.” She must make those items stretch for days to feed her three teenagers. “They sleep, study, work, pray, and play hungry.” According to experts, a famine is not imminent in Venezuela but severe food insecurity means there will be lifelong physical and mental health challenges for the population. President Nicolás Maduro “has created economic conditions that largely limited people’s access to food nationwide, with the value of wages plummeting,” writes Garcia Cano. “Soup kitchens that fed thousands, mostly children, have been forced to close as he targets real and perceived opponents through a new law restricting the work of nongovernmental organizations.” In the case of Chirino’s family, it rarely eats protein. The children often skip school when hunger leaves them with headaches. The last time she bought meat – enough ground beef for maybe two servings – was in May. Along with headaches, the poor nutrition can lead to stunting, fatigue and other health issues in children. Overall, an estimated 80 percent of Venezuelans now live in poverty. Rev. Gilberto Garcia, whose Catholic church runs a soup kitchen, said “It’s becoming more difficult every day for people to access food of a certain quality. People eat, but they usually eat carbohydrates. And that’s how people survive.”

“Migration Drop Slows Labor Supply,” Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2025

“A virtual halt to unauthorized border crossings, plus stepped-up deportations and a souring climate for foreigners, means net migration this year could be negative for the first time in decades, some experts predict.” So writes Paul Kiernan of the Wall Street Journal in his column "The Outlook". In the long run, that "could limit the economy’s potential growth and generate wider budget deficits,” he says. The number of people entering the U.S. each year averaged 917,000 from 2010-2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That jumped to 3.3 million in 2023 and an estimated 2.7 million in 2024, “one of the biggest such surges in American history.” The conservative American Enterprise Institute estimates that in 2025 net migration will drop to negative 205,000. The reason is minimal illegal immigration and a rapid rise in out-migration of between 675,000 and 1.02 million above typical rates, assuming increased deportations and voluntary departures because of the Trump immigation crackdown. An influx of baby boomers powered the economy the last time net migration was so low, in the 1960s. “Now they are retiring, leaving the labor supply more dependent on immigrants,” Kiernan says. With zero net migration, the U.S. economy would sustainably be able to add only 24,000 non-farm jobs a month. That’s compared to an average of 155,000 a month from 2015 to 2024, according to calculations by Apollo economist Torsten Slok. It’s unclear though what the actual flow is of immigrants and emigrants -- and therefore what the current net migration figure is. The Pew Research Center said last week that net migration is now negative. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs predicts that net migration will steady at around 500,000 a year because it will be hard to scale up deportations more. But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said August 14 that 1.6 million unauthorized immigrants had left the U.S. in her first 200 days on the job. However, Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute said it’s “incredibly unlikely” that 1.6 million is a correct estimate. That’s because of problems using the Current Population Survey of the Census Bureau to guage the size of the immigrant population, she said. “While the decline in net immigration can’t be measured precisely, it is being felt,” Kiernan observed. “Between May and July, the economy added just 106,000 nonfarm payrolls, or 35,000 a month, the lowest three-month stretch since the Covid-19 pandemic.” Trump's immigration policies could subtract about 0.2 percentage point from economic growth in 2025 and 0.3 percentage point in 2026, a Journal survey of economists in July found. But the drop could be more severe in some sectors. Non-citizens made up an estimated 33 percent of maids and housekeepers in 2023, 30 percent of construction laborers, and 24 percent of landscaping workers. An estimated 42 percent of crop workers were immigrants without work authorization. With U.S. fertility rates near record lows, the population will start to shrink without positive net migration. "That would strain public finances and curb demand in some sectors such as housing." Says Tara Watson of the American Enterprise Institute: "Certainly economies can function with very low population growth. There's just less dynamism and less income per capita usually in the long run."

“Interactive ‘ICE Detention Map’ Shows 71% of Detainees Have No Criminal Record,” Straight Arrow News, August 20, 2025

Posted out of chronological order.

According to a new tool that visualizes all of the detention data of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on an interactive map of the United States, 71 percent of its 46,113 detainees have no criminal record. The data comes from a downloadable spreadsheet at the bottom of the “Detention Management” page on the ICE website. The privacy organization Lockdown Systems unveiled the new tool at a recent Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in Queens, New York. ICE updates the data every two weeks. Available at watchice.org, the new tool allows viewers to see detention centers and the ratio of criminals to non-criminals. The engineer who built the tool, Jennifer Helsby, says it challenges the assertion of President Donald Trump that “murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals” are the focus of his mass deportation program. Lockdown Systems said “you can use it to see where your local ICE detention facilities are, how many people are being locked up there, and how many of them don’t have criminal records.” For example, a privately run detention center in Tacoma, Washington, is tagged with a large red circle showing it was holding, 1,137 detainees, of which 39 percent, or 443 people, had criminal records. ICE assigns each detainee a threat level. Level 1 means the detainee may have aggravated felonies, a history of violence, ties to terrorism, or may be a threat to national security. Level 2 denotes less serious criminal records including fraud and weapon possession. Level 3 detainees have one or two non-violent misdemeanors. Those with no ICE threat level have no criminal convictions. A center in Louisiana, for example, was holding 921 people. A total of 84 people, or 9%, had criminal convictions and the rest had no ICE threat level. The data does not include ICE detainees held in foreign countries. [The map clearly lists the locations of detention centers and the number of criminal versus non-criminal detainees. It breaks down the number of people with the various ICE threat levels but I had trouble reconciling these totals with the total number of criminals.]

“Inside ICE, Trump’s Migrant Crackdown is Taking a Toll on Officers,” Reuters, August 27, 2025

Long hours and growing public outrage over the arrests of migrants are taking a toll on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. “Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s aggressive enforcement agenda,” said Reuters reporters Ted Hesson, Tim Reid and Nicole Jeanine Johnson. President Trump’s immigration czar Tom Homan said the stresses on agents should ease with the hiring of more personnel; the agency plans to hire 10,000 more officers. “I think morale is good,” said Homan. “I think morale will be even better as we bring more resources on.” Sharpening the complaints is the demand by the Trump administration that agents arrest 3,000 people a day, which is ten times the daily arrest rate under Joe Biden when he was president. In some cases agents have gone to the wrong address, increasing the chances of picking up the wrong person or putting an agent’s life in danger, said a current and two former ICE officials. In some cases ICE officials have been confronted by angry residents demanding that they identify themselves and chasing them away from their neighborhoods. The high quotas have led to detaining thousands of people with no criminal record. Also among those arrested are people who have had green cards a long time, others with legal visas and even some U.S. citizens. The number of people arrested by ICE who have no charges or convictions other than immigration violations rose to 221 people per day during Trump’s first six months in office, up from 80 per day last year under Biden, according to an analysis by the University of California, Berkeley, Law School. ICE agents “would prefer to go back to focused targeting,” said one former ICE official. “They used to be able to say: ’We are arresting criminals.’”

“Maduro Cites Rubio’s ‘Madness’ and Sends 15,000 Troops to the Border,” Bloomberg, August 26, 2025

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says he has deployed 15,000 troops to the states of Zulia and Tachira along the border with Colombia as President Trump has sent warships to the southern Caribbean. At least three U.S. warships carrying more than 4,000 sailors and Marines are set to approach the region to act against drug cartels. Maduro targeted U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Unfortunately this gentleman, with his madness and extremism, could lead President Donald Trump to the worst possible scenario in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Maduro said August 25. “We will emerge victorious from this situation.” A Venezuelan official said boats, aircraft and drones would be part of the operation. Maduro said Venezuelans over the weekend signed up in massive numbers to join militias in response to the American threat.

“U.S. Deportations Are Accelerating After a Surge in Immigration Arrests,” New York Times, August 26, 2025

As of the first week of August, Trump administration deportations reached almost 1,500 people a day, a rate not seen since the Obama administration. At least 180,000 people have been deported by ICE under President Trump in his second term. ICE is now on track to deport more than 400,000 in the first year of the current administration. That’s up from 271,000 in the year that ended in September of last year. But it’s far short of Trump’s announced goal of deporting one million people in the first year. Despite the fierce backlash against his deportations, Trump may be catching up to President Barack Obama, who immigration activists referred to as the Deporter in Chief, said Times reporter Albert Sun. Sun added however that the nature of Trump’s enforcement effort “has been very different. The hundreds of thousands removed under Mr. Obama were mostly recent border-crossers and ICE focused its arrests in the interior of the country on criminals.” Since May, almost all of the increase in arrests is of people without prior criminal convictions. The Trump administration has 60,000 immigrants in custody, moving them into crowded detention centers. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council that is a deliberate tactic. People held in detention “are more likely to have their cases end with a removal order and are also more likely to abandon their cases and agree to be deported,” Sun of the Times explained.

“Abrego Garcia Detained Again,” New York Times, August 26, 2025

The Trump administration indicated it planned to deport Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to Uganda after detaining him following his release from custody in the criminal proceeding filed against him in federal court in Nashville. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March. Immigration authorities did not say why he was being detained again or where he was being taken, his lawyer said. His lawyers have filed a petition in Federal District Court in Maryland to prevent him from being sent to Uganda. “The petition claimed that the Trump administration had re-arrested him without first giving him the opportunity to express ‘fears of torture and persecution in that country,’” said Times reporters Alan Feuer, Jazmine Ulloa and Chris Cameron. Judge Paula Xinis told Justice Department lawyers “your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States.”

“20-Hour Blackouts, Garbage-Lined Streets: This is Life Under Cuba’s ‘War Economy’, CNN, Aug. 22, 2025

The smell of garbage is overwhelming but it’s not because garbage collectors are on strike – it’s that they simply don’t come enough. That’s just another example of Cuba’s decline over the past year, along with blackouts and cuts in the water supply, said CNN reporter Gonzalo Zegarra. Cuban authorities are no longer trying to deny the economic crisis battering the island, he says. The government says the economy declined by 1.1 % in 2024. A United Nations estimate says it will contract another 1.5 % in 2025. Although slowing, inflation remains above the double digits. It’s common for blackouts to cover more than 40 percent of the country. The energy system suffers from a chronic lack of maintenance and investment. Last year’s hurricane season made the situation worse. An estimated one million people, 10 percent of the population, are dealing with gaps in the supply of water caused by shortages of energy for pumping water. Food is in short supply, and chicken has become a rarity in grocery stores. At the same time, there is a reduction in the supply of oil from Venezuela. The energy shortages are seen as reducing tourism. Between January and July a total of 1.58 million people visited Cuba, 83 percent of the total during the same period in 2024. The Cuban government largely blames the U.S. embargo on the island for its economic difficulties, as well as new restrictions imposed by the Trump administration and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s acknowledging the hardships. “You don’t defend the revolution by hiding the problems we have,” said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Pensioners have seen an increase in their monthly incomes but with limited impact on their purchasing power. The government “has not been able to present a credible strategy for overcoming the crisis,” said Cuban economist Mauricio De Miranda of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. He said the Cuban government “cannot move forward until it abandons the centralized administration model, which is closely tied to the political system.” What stands out is the paralysis, he added.

“Bolsonaro Planned to Seek Asylum in Argentina, Police Say,” New York Times, August 22, 2025

Brazilian police say former President Jair Bolsonaro planned to seek asylum in Argentina last year. A draft asylum request addressed to fellow right-wing leader President Javier Milei of Argentina said Bolsonaro was being persecuted politically, expected to be illegally imprisoned and feared for his life. Brazilian police said August 20 it was unclear whether the request was ever sent to Milei. They asserted that the request showed Bolsonaro was planning to skip out on the inquiry by Brazilian authorities of his alleged attempt to stay in power after losing the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro is under house arrest as he awaits trial on charges he plotted a coup. The trial is scheduled to start Sept. 2.

“Drone in Colombia Kills 12 in Police Helicopter,” Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2025

A drug trafficking gang used a drone August 21 to bring down a police helicopter carrying 12 people in the town of Amalfi in northwest Colombia. Drone attacks against Colombia’s beleaguered security forces are escalating, said Journal reporter Juan Forero. “Since the first attack by drone in Colombia in April of last year, the military here says there have been 301 strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles, more than two-thirds of them in Cauca and Norte de Santander provinces,” he said. The regions are filled with coca, the leaf used to make cocaine. Heavily armed militia fight each other over drug routes. At least 22 police and soldiers have died in the attacks. Drone technology is cheap and easily converted to military use. The attack that killed 12 people was staged by a militia of fighters led by Alexander Diaz Mendoza, who is known by his alias, Calarcá. The group is made up of former rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who did not disarm after a 2016 peace agreement with the Colombian government. “These are wealthy criminals, emboldened, showing off new uniforms and state-of-the-art weapons,” said the governor, Andrés Julián Rendón, of the Antioquia province in which the attack occurred. Armed groups have expanded across rural Colombia amid record-setting production of both cocaine and coca. Also on Aug. 21, a truck bomb detonated by the EMC Drug Group killed five civilians and injured dozens more people, according to the military.

“Florida Appeals Against Judge’s Order to Close ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Immigration Jail,” The Guardian, August 22, 2025

The state of Florida has appealed the order of a federal judge that a harsh immigrant detention camp in the Everglades close within 60 days because state and federal authorities broke environmental laws in setting it up. Florida will ask the U.S. Circuit Court in Atlanta to stay the order while the appeals process plays out. The judge’s ruling “pumps the brakes on Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda,” said Guardian reporter Richard Luscombe. An estimated 340 detainees were left at the camp that Florida officials call Alligator Alcatraz, which detainees say has inhumane conditions including extreme heat, insects, and a lack of food and functioning toilets. The camp has a capacity of up to 3,000. Advocates for immigrants say state officials have been moving detainees out of the facility in anticipation of the ruling. Lawyers for the state are expected to argue that federal laws including a requirement for an environmental impact statement do not apply because the facility was set up using state money. But Miami district court judge Kathleen Williams rejected that argument in her ruling. “The project was requested by the federal government; built with a promise of full federal funding; constructed in compliance with ICE standards; staffed by deputized ICE task force officers acting under color of federal authority and at the direction and supervision of ICE officials,” she said among other arguments tying the facility to the federal government. Lawyers who filed the lawsuit said they were cautiously optimistic the federal appeals court would uphold the order to close the facility. But it could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued a number of rulings favorable to the Trump administration. Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost of Florida praised the ruling of the judge. "The Everglades Immigrant Detention Center is nothing more than a state-sponsored, government-funded internment camp designed to keep Black and Brown immigrants in hellish conditions while Donald Trump pretends it makes our country safer," he said.

“Tariffs Could Lead Brazil to Take Its Rare Earths Off the Table,” New York Times, August 22, 2025

American assistance could help Brazil break the global chokehold China has on the supply of rare earths needed to build advanced technology. It could help Brazil “become a global powerhouse in the extraction and processing of rare earths,” writes Times reporter Ana Ionova. “And Brazilian rare earths could reduce American dependence on China, which controls about 90 percent of world supplies – and has shown itself willing to withhold them.” The millions of tons of rare earth minerals are needed to build drones, robots, electric cars, guided missiles and fighter jets, Ionova notes. In talks that haven’t been publicly divulged until now, the United States and Brazil have been quietly discussing how American investment “could help the South American country unlock these vast reserves of rare earths, the world’s second largest.” But the issue was thrust into the spotlight by the trade dispute that broke out when President Donald Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazil to try to stop its trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro on charges he attempted to retain power by attempting a coup. The U.S. signaled that access to the rare earths should be part of the trade talks. President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva accused the Trump administration of threatening Brazil’s sovereignty. “No one lays a hand,” he said. “This country belongs to the Brazilian people.” Brazil made clear it will now work with other countries including India to try to extract the rare earths. The Biden administration had been quietly working to help Brazil extract and process the chemicals, an enterprise only in the early stages. Biden officials made at least five visits to Brazil between 2022 and 2024, said one participant. He added that Brazil was a very willing partner in the discussions, which focused on obtaining technical assistance and American investment. Brazil’s ambitions extend to creating a domestic supply chain that encompasses mines, processing plants and magnet factories. In the months after Trump took office the top U.S. diplomat in Brazil, chargé d’affaires Gabriel Escobar, met with mining executives in Brazil to discuss a possible rare earths partnership. Two weeks after Trump threatened tariffs Escobar sought another meeting in which his tone was more insistent, said Raul Jungmann, one of the executives. “He made the United States’ interest in strategic critical minerals very clear, very explicit.” Ionova notes that “in Brazil, a country sensitive to foreign involvement in its resources, after decades of booms and busts in commodities like rubber and sugar, U.S. interest in rare earths made headlines and triggered anger and suspicion.” Trade talks have stalled amid Trump’s insistence Brazil drop its court case against Bolsonaro, which many in the country view as essential to continuing its democracy. “We’re still willing to negotiate, but Brazil won’t kneel before the United States,” said Lula. Brazil now seems to be going ahead with development plans without the United States. It is “studying its deposits with the help of a Spanish mapping firm and working toward improving its processing abilities through a public-private partnership backed by more than two dozen companies and research groups from around the world,” says Ionova.

“U.S. to Deploy Warships Against Drug Cartels,” Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2025

Donald Trump has given orders to the Pentagon to send three Navy warships to block drug cartels off the coast of South America. One warship is to be moved to near Venezuela. Trump is “expanding the Pentagon’s role in combating illegal drug smuggling and intensifying a U.S. confrontation with the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro,” said the Journal story reported by Lara Seligman and Brett Forrest. The vessels will have guided missiles to interdict drug shipments. The order will give the U.S. Navy a direct counternarcotics mission in Latin America, instead of the role it has played assisting the U.S. Coast Guard. Earlier this month, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare military options against Latin American drug cartels, which he had designated as foreign terrorist organizations in an executive order earlier this year. Also, the U.S. Justice Department has doubled to $50 million its reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro. The Venezuelan dictator said in a TV interview this week he is deploying 4.5 million militia members around his country.

“Reacting to Trump’s Threats, Mexico and Canada Draw Closer,” New York Times, August 21, 2025

Driven by President Trump’s extensive new tariffs and threats to their sovereignty, Mexico and Canada are talking about ways to team up. Two Canadian officials led a delegation to Mexico this month to meet with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to prepare for a fall visit by Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada. “What we have in common right now is a nefarious neighbor,” said Arturo Santa-Cruz, a North America relations expert from the University of Guadalajara. “It makes a lot of sense that we collaborate.” Historically, the two countries have not been remarkably close despite their link through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that included the United States, altered to become the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) touted by Trump. Mexico accounted for one percent of Canadian exports last year, and Canada three percent of Mexico’s exports. “In much of Ontario, for example, Mexican factories are viewed as job stealers,” say Post reporters Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Ian Austen. “As investments in auto plants flowed to Mexico and the southern United States over the years, production in Canada fell to 1.3 million vehicles last year from its peak of 2.9 million 25 years ago.” But Carney has stressed the importance of keeping all three countries in a trade agreement as has Sheinbaum. Even if Mexico and Canada can agree on an approach to continuing the trade deal while trying to avoid the perception the two countries are trying to gang up on the United States, Trump may choose not to honor the terms, said Carlo Dade of the University of Calgary School of Public Policy in Alberta. The review of the agreement is set for next year. “Some analysts and businesses also see hope for better trade, saying that Mr. Trump has at least somewhat respected the pact from his first term,” the Post says. A key point is that almost all of the exports traded under the agreement are free from the 25 percent U.S. tariffs imposed on Mexican goods and the 35 percent tariffs imposed on Canadian goods. A study by Moody’s Analytics found that the effective tariff rate for both countries is about 13 percent. Without the trade agreement that would increase to about 40 percent for Canada and 32 percent for Mexico, said Jesse Rogers of Moody’s Analytics.

“Interactive ‘ICE Detention Map’ Shows 71% of Detainees Have No Criminal Record,” Straight Arrow News, August 20, 2025

“Boston Defies Trump, Shields Migrants,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2025

The mayor of Boston is rebuffing threats by Trump officials to punish the city for its stance on immigration enforcement. Boston has been a major target for the Trump administration during its immigration crackdown. This month, the Justice Department included the city on a list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions it says aren’t providing enough help with enforcement. In a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Boston is obstructing federal law and demanded that the city submit a message by August 19 saying it would comply. Bondi sent similar letters to mayors in 30 other cities. “Here is our response: Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures,” Wu said during a public appearance at City Hall Plaza. “Boston follows the law, and Boston will not back down from who we are and what we stand for.” Bondi has threatened to pull funding from cities not sufficiently cooperative and to send in troops as occurred in the case of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Bondi “threatened criminal charges and prosecution of local leaders in her recent letters to public officials, who are predominately in blue areas,” said Journal reporter Roshan Fernandez. “You better comply, or you’re next,” said Bondi. In another exchange involving Wu, Trump border czar Tom Homan said “I’m coming to Boston; I’m bringing hell with me.” Wu replied “take a timeout.” She has defended the Trust Act, the city’s law that prevents local police from complying with federal immigration detention requests unless the person is wanted for a serious crime. The idea is to build trust between local police and immigrants, who may be more likely to report crimes and cooperate with police if they don’t fear being deported. Wu said in a written response to Bondi that “courts have consistently held, as recently as last month, that local public safety laws like the Boston Trust Act are valid exercises of local and fully consistent with federal law.” She faulted ICE for lacking transparency, saying her office had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in June for public records that hadn’t been answered and noting that local police in Boston do not hide their faces behind masks, referring to ICE agents who have been doing so when detaining immigrants.

“Haitians Fueled Revival in Ohio, But Must Leave,” New York Times, August 19, 2025

“Spain Adds Soldiers to Try to Beat Back Out of Control Blazes,” New York Times, August 19, 2025

Spain is boosting its army of firefighters by 500 soldiers and other European countries are sending in scores more to the country as it struggles to control blazes that have destroyed the largest amount of land since 2006, a total of 1,330 square miles. There are now 4,000 Spanish military personnel aiding local firefighters. “Officials consider 23 active fires to be especially serious, with many of the most worrying blazes mainly in the northwest of the country,” reported Amelia Nierenberg and José Bautista of the Times. “Until the heat wave subsides, we won’t be able to end this situation,” said Spain’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles. She said fires this year had “different characteristics due to climate change.” Temperatures were cooler in Galicia Aug. 18 after climbing to 109 degrees at the peak of the heat wave. A weather official said the heat wave had lasted more than two weeks, making it the third longest since data collection began in 1975. In Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain, the temperature reached 114 degrees August 18. “Analyses have shown that climate change has increased the likelihood of such abnormally high temperatures, which have contributed to the intensity of the wildfires this summer by making vegetation drier and more likely to ignite,” the Times said. The fires have killed at least eight people in southern Europe in recent days, some in related vehicle accidents. More than 31,000 people have been evacuated from their homes since August 12 because of the fires. Police have arrested 31 people and are investigating another 92 for a possible role in setting the fires. Parts of the Camino de Santiago, the religious pilgrimage trail, have been closed because of the fires.

“Socialism is Defeated in Bolivia for First Time in Two Decades,” Washington Post, August 18, 2025

Despite polls predicting two right-wing candidates would win the most votes and go to a second round, a centrist candidate and a right-wing candidate won the most support in Bolivia’s August 17 presidential election. Either way, the results were a resounding defeat for socialism in the country. “Centrist Senator Rodrigo Paz and right-wing former president Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga won the most votes Sunday, according to an unofficial early count that showed the two held a likely unassailable lead in a crowded race for president in this country of 12 million people,” reported Samantha Schmidt and Gabriel Diez Lacunza of the Post. Leftist President Evo Morales had dominated politics since his election in 2005 as the Bolivia’s first indigenous president. Support surprisingly surged for Paz, who appeared to win the most votes by offering a centrist alternative to left and right. He called for “a frontal assault” on corruption and changes to the economy “so that it belongs to the people and not to the state.” The socialist government of Morales has been credited with lifting millions of low-income Bolivians into the middle class. His long-term popularity helped his one-time ally, Luis Arce, the current president, win office. “But much as it did under his leftist Latin American contemporaries at the start of this century, government spending under Morales depended on an influx of cash from the global commodities boom,” the Post reporters said. “Everything changed after prices for Bolivia’s main export, natural gas, plummeted. Gas exports declined, imports rose, and the central bank began running out of dollars.” Unlike in the past, Bolivia now can only supply a small portion of its diesel fuel needs. People are sleeping in their cars to wait to get fuel amid widespread shortages. Inflation has jumped from 2 percent to more than 16 percent. People who rely on government subsidies have had to get into long lines to buy bread. Morales was blocked by a constitutional court from running for a fourth term. Arce decided not to run when support for his socialist government crumbled. The presidency now will be decided by a runoff election between candidates who studied at U.S. universities. Paz is the son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, who was in office between 1989 and 1993. He was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, when his father was in exile from Bolivia’s military dictatorship. Paz “has proposed offering major tax incentives and has argued that fuel prices should be determined by the market,” the Post said. He favors only a single term for presidents. He seemingly offers a new kind of politics, seeking to connect with the working class under the slogan “capitalism for all.” But “it’s just his father’s politics but from a younger generation,” said Cornell University political scientist Santiago Anria. Quiroga was briefly president between 2001 and 2002. A fierce rival of Morales and his now splintered former party, MAS (Movement Toward Socialism), Quiroga wants to negotiate $12 billion in financing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He also wants to privatize unprofitable state-owned companies. Bolivia is hungry for change. “We’re bankrupt, there are no jobs here, everything is more expensive, and the money is never enough,” said Jula Ayala Casa, who said she voted for Paz. “We have to get in line just to buy oil. There’s a line for everything.”

(Here is additional reporting on the election from “Two Decades of Leftwing Dominance End in Bolivia….”, The Guardian, August 18, 2025…) With over 95 percent of the vote tallied, Paz won 32.1 percent and Quiroga 26.8 percent. Analysts viewed the running mate of Paz, former police captain Edman Lara Montaño, as a significant draw for voters. He was known for exposing police corruption. “We will fight corruption head on, dammit!” Paz shouted to supporters election night. The runoff election between the two candidates will be held October 19. It was necessary because no candidate won 50 percent of the vote. Analyst Gonzalo Chávez Alvarez said the results are part of a well-established pattern in which voters swing from left to right and back again every 20 years. The leftist Morales was not a legally approved candidate in the race but nevertheless appeared to make a mark in that he urged supporters to cast null and void votes in protest of court rulings blocking him from a fourth term. A preliminary count found that 19.4 percent of the votes were null and void, compared to an historical average typically below 5 percent. Center-right tycoon Samuel Doria Medina, 66, won 19.9 percent of the vote and was the third-place candidate. He said he would back Paz in the runoff.

“Jury Finds Bakers on the Texas-Mexico Border Guilty of Harboring Illegal Workers,” New York Times, August 15, 2025

A Texas couple who owns a bakery on the border with Mexico is facing up to 10 years in prison and the loss of their legal status after a jury found them guilty of harboring undocumented workers. “The case was one of the first brought against business owners as Immigration and Customs Enforcement was ramping up arrests of undocumented workers,” wrote Times reporter Edgar Sandoval. “What is unsettling is that this case went to trial in the first place,” said Sylvia Gonzalez-Gorman, a political scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “Historically, large corporations found employing undocumented immigrants have had fines levied against them, not potential incarceration.” The couple, Leonardo Baez and his wife Nora Alicia Avila, are Mexican immigrants who hold green cards allowing them to live and work in the United States. The couple has owned the bakery in Los Fresnos, Texas, for 15 years. On Feb. 12, “investigators found eight undocumented workers who court documents painted as knowingly hired and sheltered by the couple,” Sandoval said. The workers were handcuffed and escorted out of the property. A week later, the couple reopened the bakery with seven legal workers, including family members. The couple told the Times they are hardworking immigrants who made sacrifices to realize the American dream. Leonardo Baez learned to make bread from a mentor, and then began selling it on the street. Baez borrowed money from members of his church to build up the business. Over time the couple built their own home. They now own the entire shopping center that includes the bakery. “A prison term could jeopardize all that,” noted Sandoval. The couple will be sentenced in November.

“Judge Orders ICE to Fix Conditions in New York Cells,” New York Times, August 14, 2025

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration August 13 to improve conditions in migrant holding cells in New York City without delay. Detainees there “have complained of squalid and overcrowded conditions,” said Times reporter Luis Ferré-Sadurní. The Trump administration indicated it will appeal the ruling. “This order and this lawsuit are driven by a complete fiction about 26 Federal Plaza,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She was referring to the 10^th floor migrant holding cells that are the subject of the court order. “The holding cells emerged as a flashpoint this summer, as migrants shared details of overcrowding so severe that some of them slept sitting upright or on the floor by toilets, which filled the cells with a ‘horrific stench,’ according to the lawsuit” filed by a detainee and supporting groups, said Ferré-Sadurní. Detainees said temperatures varied between stifling and freezing in the cells, which were meant to hold detainees for a few hours rather than the days and weeks they said they’ve been held there. They said they were given inedible meals. A 20-year-old woman from Ecuador said she was held for 10 days without access to sanitary pads during the five days she was menstruating. A Paraguayan detainee, Carlos Lopez Benitez, said an ICE officer mocked him for crying during his arrest and pressured him to self-deport. “We were not being treated like humans,” said Geovani Maradiaga Ochoa, a Honduran immigrant. He said he slept on the floor using his shoes as a pillow with lights never turned off. The judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, ordered that ICE provide clean-bedding mats for each detainee as well as soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste. He ordered ICE to permit private phone calls to lawyers within 24 hours of being detained and at least once every 12 hours after. He ordered that fewer detainees be held in the cells. An ICE official said detainees are usually transferred with 72 hours, that detainees were given two meals a day and permitted to receive medication and make legal calls if requested [Lopez Benitez, the Paraguayan detainee, said that he was never told he could request a call with his lawyers and said fellow detainees told him the same thing. Lawyers for detainees described a bureaucratic maze that made it impossible to contact clients or confirm that they were being held at 26 Federal Plaza.] The ICE official said the agency was holding 24 detainees in four holding cells with a capacity for 154 people. Judge Kaplan expressed skepticism about that claim during an August 13 hearing. “What is the history of the number of people in these rooms over, say, the last three weeks, day by day? You have that information, but you haven’t provided it.”

“’A Whole Spectrum of Hatred’: Women Face Increased Violence in Milei’s Argentina as Rights Are Eroded,” The Guardian, August 13, 2025

It had the reputation as a progressive bastion, but now protections in Argentina are being dismantled by a populist leader, and crimes against women are on the rise. In the case of Fernanda Soledad Yramain, she lay awake at night hearing a motorcycle circling the house where she was hiding. She kept saying it was her long-time boyfriend with whom she had ended a relationship a month earlier. In the final year of their relationship, her boyfriend, Francisco Timoteo Saldaño had turned violent. Her aunt Sandra and Soledad went to the police for protection. The police said these things take time but never called. She returned to the police station three times, certain that she would be killed. Hours after a fourth visit begging for protection, her boyfriend stabbed her to death with a butcher’s knife and then killed himself. Under far-right President Javier Milei, “protections for women are quickly being eroded,” said Guardian reporter Harriet Barber. Soon after he became president in December 2023, Milei dissolved the secretariat for protection against gender violence and closed the ministry of women. “For the first time in nearly 40 years, Argentina has no dedicated institution to prevent, punish and eradicate gender-based violence,” said Mariela Belsi of Amnesty International Argentina. Milei “drastically defunded” a program that provided psychological and financial assistance to victims of gender-based violence, wrote Barber. The 144 emergency hotline lost 42 percent of its staff by July 2024. Argentina in November was the only country to vote no on a UN General Assembly resolution to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls. Then Milei’s administration pledged to strike the aggravating factor of femicide from the penal code for cases in which a woman dies at the hand of a man based on her gender. Belski says that would “weaken the state’s ability to prevent and punish such crimes.” In the conservative province of Tucumán, where Soledad was murdered, advocates say legal protections for women already are being dismantled. Soledad Deza, a Tucumán lawyer, said there has been a sharp drop in protection orders issued in the province since Milei took power. She said that between January and September of 2024, family courts issued 4,856 orders, while criminal courts issued 754. In all of 2023, family courts issued 7,549 protective orders, and criminal courts 2,448. Police in Tucumán have stopped investigating why protective orders are needed in the first place, said Sofia Quiroga of the women’s rights group Equality Now. Meanwhile, there’s an increasing narrative that women are making up claims of gender-based violence. In 2024, senator Carolina Losada, supported by national justice minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona, introduced legislation to increase penalties for false accusations of gender-based violence. Deza, the lawyer in Tucumán, said “the credibility of victims is being challenged by the narratives of the Milei administration. These narratives have unlocked a whole spectrum of hatred and obstacles. This is simply an indirect threat, to discourage women from reporting crimes.” According to official data from the National Ombudsman office, 295 cases of femicide were reported nationally in 2024. The MuMaLá women’s organization said there was a 15 percent increase in femicides in the first four months of 2025 compared to the first four months of 2024. Barber of The Guardian said “The Tucumán state and police did not reply to requests for comment, nor did the Milei administration.”

“Colombian Presidential Hopeful Dies After Being Shot at Campaign Event,” Washington Post, August 11, 2025

Miguel Uribe Turbay, a senator from the conservative Centro Democrático Party, died August 11 two months after he was shot at a campaign event in Bogotá. The 39-year-old presidential candidate had been in intensive care ever since he was shot June 7 by a 15-year-old in the Fontíbon neighborhood for unknown reasons. “The incident shined a spotlight on political violence in Colombia ahead of presidential elections that will take place in May 2026,” said the story by Annabelle Timsit and Samantha Schmidt. His wife posted a statement vowing to take care of their children. “You will always be the love of my life,” said María Claudia Tarazona. “I pray that God will show me the way to learn to live without you.” Uribe Turbay was the grandson of former president Julio César Turbay Ayala. He had launched an early campaign as a “pre-candidate” for president, the Post reporters said. “He was an ally of ironfisted former president Álvaro Uribe, but the two were not related,” they noted. He was the son of journalist Diana Turbay, who was killed during a rescue attempt after she was kidnapped by members of the Medellín cartel. In the hours before he was shot, Uribe Turbay recalled his mother’s assassination at a public event; he said her killing “had marked his life and inspired his mission to end violence in Colombia,” the reporters said.

“Haiti Declares a 3-Month State of Emergency as Gangs Ravage Country’s Central Region,” Associated Press, August 9, 2025

The government of Haiti announced August 9 a state of emergency in the country’s central region because of surging gang violence. The region is known as Haiti’s rice basket. It “has been under attack in recent years, with gangs killing farmers or forcing them to abandon their fields as they raze nearby communities,” AP said. According to United Nations data, more than 1,000 people in the region have been killed, more than 200 injured, and 620 kidnapped from October 2024 to the end of June 2025, in the Artibonite and Central departments and nearby areas. More than 239,000 people in the central region have been displaced by gang violence, the U.N. said. Dozens of people in late April waded and swam across the Artibonite River, the largest river in Haiti, in a “desperate attempt to flee gangs,” AP said.

“Notorious Prison to House Detained Immigrants,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2025

The Trump administration is planning to house immigrant detainees in what was once known as the bloodiest prison in the country, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. More than 90 percent of the approximately 4,300 inmates at Angola are violent offenders and 70% of them are serving a life sentence, said the story by Michelle Hackman and Roshan Fernandez. “Critics say the arrangement would put people facing allegations of civil violations near those convicted of violent crimes,” they said. The administration expects that the facility will provide 450 beds for detained migrants. “The idea of placing people in a brutal prison for alleged violations of immigration law is profoundly disturbing,” said Eunice Cho of the American Civil Liberties Union. The prison sponsors a rodeo in an arena that seats 10,000 spectators. Inmates ride bulls and broncos. The rodeo includes an event called “Convict Poker” in which inmates are seated at a table while a bull runs loose. The last person sitting at the table wins. “In ‘Guts and Glory,’ inmates must remove a poker chip fastened to the head of a longhorn bull,” the Journal said. Inmate participation is voluntary. Proceeds from the event go for inmate recreational and educational programs. Since President Trump launched his mass deportation program, the administration has opened other immigration detention centers critics say subject inmates to cruel conditions. They include Guantanamo Bay and a facility in the Everglades its builders boastfully refer to as Alligator Alcatraz. There also are plans underway for a large detention center the Indiana governor calls the Speedway Slammer; a second large detention center in Florida; and a Ft. Bliss, Texas, detention center the Pentagon says will be the largest such facility in the U.S. Deportees also have been sent to the brutal CECOT detention center in El Salvador and overseas into countries with reputations for having brutal prisons. Many if not most of the migrants held at the large detention centers there do not have a record of violent offenses.

“Pentagon Announces Massive Migrant Detention Facility at Fort Bliss in Texas with 5,000 Beds,” Fox News, August 7, 2025

The Defense Department is planning to build the largest federal migrant detention facility in the United States at Fort Bliss in Texas, which is expected to have up to 5,000 beds for “illegal aliens,” said Fox News reporters Greg Wehner and Liz Friden. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said the facility will become the largest of its kind in U.S. history. “The new facility is being established to support President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect Americans against an invasion,” the Fox reporters said. Construction began in July with initial plans to hold 1,000 people by late August. After that, “we will finish construction for up to 5,000 beds in the weeks and months ahead,” Wilson said. Meanwhile, Mike Braun, the Republican governor of Indiana, says his state will build a detention facility called “the Speedway Slammer” at the Miami Correctional Center between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. The facility was named that in reference to Indiana’s history of racing, including the Indianapolis 500. It will house up to 1,000 migrants. “We are proud to work with President Trump and [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem] as they remove the worst of the worst with this innovative partnership,” said Braun. [In fact, many of those deported have no criminal record]. Funding for the project comes from the budget measure Trump signed into law last month. Previously, Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis opened the detention facility in the Everglades state officials call “Alligator Alcatraz.” It received funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and holds 2,000 people. Its capacity is expected to double. Florida may build a second such facility. Trump’s budget law is pumping tens of billions of dollars into constructing detention facilities (see next story).

“Set Up Like a Logistical Hub for Packages, But It’s for People,” New York Times, August 7, 2025

Deportation is fast becoming a vast operation financed with tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars that feed into the economies of local communities and fuel the earnings of for-profit imprisonment companies. Instead of packages collected at a central point and then distributed around the world, the units of delivery are deportees. They may or may not be here legally, are swept up off the streets of the U.S. and designated for expulsion from the country, and can then spend days in windowless rooms disconnected from the world not knowing where they are, according to Brent McDonald, Campbell Robertson, Zach Levitt and Albert Sun of the New York Times. Louisiana is the central collection point in the case of President Trump’s vast deportation enterprise, with the airport at Alexandria, Louisiana, at the heart of operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that includes 8 other ICE sites in the state. “With tens of billions of dollars in additional funding now directed toward ICE, Louisiana is at the leading edge of an expansive and aggressive nationwide effort to expel immigrants, far beyond the actions taken during the first Trump administration,” the reporters said. The Alexandria airport hub, at the center of a network of surrounding detention centers, is a template for what ICE must become, according to the agency’s head, Todd Lyons – a logistics juggernaut like Amazon or FedEx “but with human beings.” More than 21,000 people taken into custody by ICE have passed through the Alexandria facility since Trump returned to office. “More deportation flights have taken off from there than any other place in the United States, and more domestic ICE flights have passed through there than anywhere else, according to a widely cited database of ICE flights,” the Times said. Deportees are sent to places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador. Badar Kahn Suri, an Indian citizen who had a visa to do research at Georgetown University, was among those who arrived at the Alexandria airport one afternoon in March, and was marched off the plane in handcuffs and leg shackles. The U.S. State Department sought to deport him, saying his presence compromised “a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” His wife, a Palestinian-American, “had drawn the attention of pro-Israel activists for her sharp criticism of Israel on social media, and for her father’s former role as a government official in Gaza,” the Times said. “You won’t even believe something like that can exist,” said the 41-year-old Suri, who after three days at the Alexandria facility was handcuffed and shackled and taken alone in the back of a transport bus to a detention center in Texas. There, he slept on a plastic pallet in a common room. After 54 days a judge ordered his release on bond after the media spotlighted his case and the ACLU took it up; “the vast majority of those in detention do not get such support,” the Times said. At the overcrowded Richwood facility in the ICE Louisiana network, people slept on double and triple bunks stacked in a way that left no room to sit upright, said Adriana Mata Sánchez, who spent three months at the facility. She entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2001. She lived outside Ft. Worth working in meatpacking plants and raising a family for two decades. She’d been traveling through Mississippi on her way to Atlanta when the police pulled her over and handed her over to ICE. After months at Richwood and without a lawyer, she began to realize she could be there months more without a hearing -- and even with one be deported anyway -- so she decided to self-deport back to Mexico. “You’re starting to see a lot of people lose hope,” said Christopher Kinnison, one of the few immigration lawyers in Alexandria. “ICE has beaten them down so badly with the conditions of detention and just being stuck in prison for so many months that a lot of people, you know, they’re giving up.” Many of those detained have lived in the U.S. for years and have no criminal convictions. Some had traffic violations, others missed paperwork deadlines. Many were arrested in Philadelphia, New York, Virginia and New York and days later were behind razor wire in rural Louisiana. Their chances of getting out weren’t good because immigration judges in the region grant asylum at some of the lowest rates in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made it clear that it wants the detainees to self-deport. Meanwhile, local officials from both parties in Louisiana welcome the jobs the detention centers bring. Gerald Brown, the Democratic mayor of Richwood, says employees at the centers are earning higher wages and the town government’s revenues have increased. “We’ve been able to invest a lot more in our police department,” Brown said. For corrections companies, opportunities for expansion are growing because the Trump administration sees building more facilities and expanding existing ones as the answer to increasingly overcrowded centers. The new budget law gives ICE $45 billion for that purpose. GeoGroup and CoreCivic, the two largest private security companies, have announced plans to add at least 6,000 more detention beds. GeoGroup said it is “ready to continue to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.” In Texas, plans are underway at the U.S. Defense Department to build a 5,000-bed facility similar to the operation in Alexandria.

“Migrants Vanish Into ICE Detention,” Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2025

Frequent moves of detained migrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency are hindering the legal defense of those facing deportation, say Wall Street Journal reporters Ruth Simon, Elizabeth Findell and Tarini Parti. “Frequent transfers between detention centers, across the country or to multiple locations in a few days, have become commonplace in the second Trump administration” according to immigration lawyers, they note. “Many immigrant advocates say the transfers amount to denying a Constitutional right to due process, as they often place detainees far from their families and legal counsel, sometimes where they cannot access mandatory court hearings or even be located.” For example, ICE records initially showed that Felix Morales Reyna, a 28-year-old Mexican father, was held in Alvarado, Texas. But he was actually more than 200 miles away in Cushing, Okla. By the time a law firm representing him found where he was, he had been moved to Aurora, Colo., but his case had inexplicably been moved to Anson, Texas. His legal case was moved through at least three jurisdictions different from his physical location. “You’d file a bond motion and it would just get rejected as ‘We don’t have jurisdiction over that case,” said paralegal Andrea Avila. She said she refiled the bond motion 20 times. The frequent transfers depart from long-standing ICE policy limiting long-distance moves. Though attorneys acknowledge some moves are inevitable because detention centers have become overcrowded, they say the distance involved and the frequency is unprecedented and illogical. Those familiar with the operations say the number of transfers is consistent with the strategy of the Department of Homeland Security to release as few detainees as possible as they await deportation. A near-record 58,000 people are in ICE detention. The people familiar with ICE operations say making the legal process as grueling as possible could force detainees to drop their cases and agree to be deported. ICE officials are pressuring detainees to do that. Getting released on bond has become more difficult in immigration cases, which in turn can make it harder for detainees to gather evidence to submit an asylum claim. Guidance issued by the Trump administration in July aims to make millions who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border ineligible for bond, no matter how long they’ve been in the United States. In the case of Morales, the tactics involved kept him in custody long enough that a policy change occurred barring him from bond at all. “ICE does not disappear people,” said Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin. She said removal plain and simple is the appropriate process “due to an illegal alien with final deportation orders.” She added, “That said, DHS has a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the U.S. Constitution.” McLaughlin asserted that “any allegations that ICE is transferring illegal aliens to make the legal process as grueling possible are false.”

“Rwanda Takes 250 Deportees from the U.S., New York Times, August 6, 2025

A spokeswoman for the government of Rwanda said her country has agreed to take 250 deportees from the U.S. It has done so “in part because nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardship of displacements,” she said. The Trump administration has also sent deportees to South Sudan and the kingdom of Eswatini. Rwanda said it will integrate the deportees into its society. They will receive job training, health care and places to stay. The plan is reminiscent of a failed agreement between Rwanda and Britain, said Times reporter Eve Sampson. Britain in 2022 agreed to resettle asylum seekers in Rwanda and then spent years and hundreds of millions of pounds in an unsuccessful effort to make it happen.

“Trump’s ICE Uses New Way to Split Migrant Families,” New York Times, August 6, 2025

Trump administration officials have begun separating children from their families in small numbers across the United States as part of massive deportation program launched by the White House. The New York Times has uncovered at least nine such cases in which parents were separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders. Take the case of Evgeny and Evgeniia, for example. Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers told them that they had a choice. They could return to Russia and keep their eight-year-old son Maksim with them. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States, but Maksim would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children. “In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family,” said Times reporter Hamed Aleaziz. The last time the couple saw Maksim was on May 15 when ICE agents led them back into detention in New Jersey. Here’s how Aleaziz described that parting: “A few days, right?” Maksim begged his parents that day. “A few days?” His father said yes. The practice isn’t as widespread as during Trump’s first term when thousands of children were taken from their parents as they crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. “But the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come into the U.S. illegally,” said Aleaziz. The U.S. government has now determined that the couple cannot be sent back to Russia because it would be unsafe to do so. But they remain in detention as they await the next step from ICE, and their son is in a foster home. They are allowed to speak on the phone to their son, but his mother says she has no real answers when they are going to get him back home. “He is crying all the time,” she says. He carefully counted the days he was in the foster home in the early stages of being there. But his mother says he has now given up counting because he doesn’t believe he will be united with his parents. “It’s a constant grief and longing,” she says. Trump officials say they do not intend to keep the boy separated from his parents indefinitely. An ICE official said they will try to reunify children with their parents in their country of origin or in a third country.

“Cartels Stymie Mexico Deal,” Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2025

The determination of President Claudia Sheinbaum to prevent a U.S. drone attack in Mexico to destroy a fentanyl lab or a Special Forces operation to seize a drug lord faces the difficulty that cartels have made deep inroads into Mexican government. Sheinbaum wants to sign an agreement with the Trump administration to share intelligence and coordinate enforcement activity against the cartels and to preserve a key principle for the Mexican president – “respecting our territory.” But “incidents that underscore the penetration of organized crime in society and government risk weakening Sheinbaum’s hand” in preventing the kind of U.S. military style operations in Mexico threatened by Donald Trump, say Journal reporters Santiago Pérez and José de Córdoba. As an example, the Mexican military last October captured a cartel operative from China in the outskirts of Mexico City who was wanted by U.S. authorities. A Mexican judge placed him under house arrest while he awaited U.S. extradition on charges that included laundering some $150 million for Mexican gangs and smuggling huge amounts of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine. But in July he escaped through a hole in the wall in the house where he was being held by Mexico’s National Guard. The escape infuriated Sheinbaum who is under U.S. pressure to dismantle the criminal groups smuggling narcotics into the U.S. “He was granted house arrest with no grounds for it,” she said in July. “We’ve been insisting that there’s corruption in the judiciary.” Meanwhile, Trump is insisting that the cartels be destroyed as a condition for lifting tariffs on Mexican products. Mexico has taken such steps as sending 10,000 troops to the border with the U.S. , dismantling more than 1,000 synthetic drug labs, sending 29 cartel bosses to face justice in the U.S., and arresting thousands of alleged cartel members. Sheinbaum said July 31 she expects to sign an agreement with the U.S. soon. “But the extensive infiltration of local governments by gangs has undermined her attempts to project control,” the Journal said. It noted that the former security chief in the state of Tabasco was wanted on charges that he ran a criminal group. And in the state of Sinaloa, the Sheinbaum administration has struggled to contain violence. More than 1,500 people have been killed and another 2,000 are missing or believed to have been kidnapped in clashes among factions of the Sinaloa cartel.

“Brazil Ex-Leader Is Ordered Under House Arrest,” Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2025

Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the house arrest August 4 of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, saying he incited attacks on the court by violating a ban on his use of social media. The high court is trying him for allegations he launched a coup attempt to block the current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking power that included planning to assassinate him, Vice President Geraldo Ackmin, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, possibly using poison or grenades. The high court has clamped down on Bolsonaro as U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to intervene on his behalf to stop the trial, on grounds that he is the target of a witch hunt. The clampdown included fitting him with an ankle tag, banning him from going near the U.S. embassy, and preventing him from using social media. De Moraes said he violated the ban when he spoke by telephone over the weekend to Brazilians protesting the trial. “Bolsonaro’s message of support, hailing the rallies as an act of freedom, was widely shared on social media,” said Journal reporter Samantha Pearson. The U.S. State Department said it would ‘hold accountable all those aiding and abetting” the house arrest. “Let Bolsonaro speak!” it said, accusing de Moraes of trying to silence the opposition.

“Prominent Human Rights Group Flees El Salvador,” New York Times, July 18, 2025

Posted out of chronological order.

The human rights group Cristosal has shut down in El Salvador and its two dozen employees have left the country. Its director Noah Bullock blamed threats and harassment by the police. The closure “sends a chilling message to survivors of abuse, civil society and the press about the cost of standing up to power and denouncing corruption and human rights violations,” said Juanita Goebertus of Human Rights Watch. Salvadoran authorities arrested Cristosal’s anti-corruption director Ruth López in May. A well-known lawyer, she remains imprisoned. She led investigations into potential acts of corruption in the government of President Nayib Bukele. One case concerned the use of pandemic funds. Another looked at the use of public money to pay for the use of Pegasus software on phones to spy on journalists and rights groups. She was accused of illicit enrichment after her arrest. Times reporter Annie Correal said López “denied the charges and called for a public trial – shouting ‘I am a political prisoner’ – outside a hearing before being sent to prison in June, riveting the public to her case.” Another lawyer, Enrique Anaya, was arrested after he denounced her arrest and publicly called Bukele a dictator, a term Bukele himself has embraced. Bullock said other Cristosal employees have been monitored and visited by the police at night in what he described as “a new wave of repression.” Bullock said Cristosal has been threatened and surveilled for years, including with Pegasus software, but now feels it would have no legal recourse if employees are detained. “In the total absence of any institutions where we could defend ourselves – without minimal rule of law and due process – we felt we couldn’t continue to expose the organization and its staff.” Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 which remains in effect. It suspended normal due process and has involved the imprisonment of more than 80,000 people, most from mass arrests. Cristosal stood out among rights groups “for putting names and faces to the numbers, working closely with victims and families to bring to light arbitrary arrests and prison deaths,” Correal wrote. The state of emergency was originally intended to target violent street gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18 but “now is being used as a political weapon against political voices,” said Bullock. Bukele meanwhile has entrenched his political power by winning the right to run for re-election as many times as he wants (see following story). Journalists from the investigative news outlet El Faro also have left the country. Under the Biden administration, U.S. officials spoke out concerning human rights issues under Bukele but President Trump has remained silent.

“Autocrat or Godsend? Leader’s Power Splits El Salvador,” New York Times, August 5, 2025

How long can the enormous support Nayib Bukele’s presidency has last among the people of El Salvador as problems mount beyond those of the violence of murderous street gangs he has imprisoned? Bukele has freed Salvadorans from the hellish everyday violence or threat of violence they faced when the gangs had free rein. But “some Salvadorans are starting to ask for more from Mr. Bukele, including economic growth, basic social programs and help dealing with rising costs,” report Annie Correal and Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times. Since he became president in 2019, El Salvador’s economic growth has trailed that of nearby Nicaragua and Guatemala. It fell to 2.6 percent in 2024 compared to 3.5 percent in 2023 and in 2025 is expected to fall further to 2.2 percent. About a third of Salvadorans are impoverished. Bukele has faced “a spate of protests this year,” the Times says. The government ended a ban on metal mining, despite strong public opposition. That “led to a rare reproach from Catholic bishops, who gathered 250,000 signatures asking for the ban’s reinstatement.” The bishops were ignored. Noah Bullock of the human rights group Cristosal, whose employees recently fled the country, said that created “the sense that this government does what it wants and it imposes its model of development on the population without listening.” Then, the Salvadoran investigative outlet El Faro posted videos in which gang leaders said they had a secret pact with Bukele’s government to lower the murder rate. Bukele denied that, but the interviews were widely distributed, and the government tried to arrest El Faro’s journalists, who fled the country. In May, security forces arrested protestors outside Bukele’s residence who had peacefully objected to an eviction order that would affect dozens of farm families. Bukele accused the protestors of being influenced by “globalist NGOs” trying to undermine his government. “That sequence of events leads to a repressive crackdown that just fundamentally changes the relationship between the regime and the country” and has created an environment of fear and self-censorship, said Bullock. But Bukele has shored up his power for the long term. Gratitude over the fact that El Salvador is now one of the safest countries in the hemisphere because of Bukele’s crackdown on gangs – even as it imprisoned innocent people denied due process – led to the passage of legislation permitting Bukele to run for re-election as many times as he wants. The changes also lengthened the presidential term from five years to six years and allowed him to run for re-election sooner. “There are rare moments when leaders are able to solve an electorate’s existential crises, and when you can resolve them, you become wildly popular and the population will give you a blank check, for a time,” commented Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. But the blank check doesn’t last forever. The legislative changes “will protect him for the day that the electorate moves against him.”

“Billionaire’s Ads Target 3 Republicans in Florida,” New York Times, August 4, 2025

Starting in April, drivers and social media users in Miami began seeing mysterious billboards and digital ads targeting the current massive crackdown on undocumented immigrants. “Deporting immigrants is cruel,” said one of the ads, which included the faces of three Cuban-American Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos A. Gimenez, and Maria Elvira Salazar. Other ads followed targeting the controversial immigrant detention center in the Everglades Florida officials call Alligator Alcatraz (see next story). The anonymous funder of those ads, billionaire philanthropist Michael B. Hernández, has now decided to reveal himself. He’s spending millions, perhaps tens of millions, to “wake up the conscience” of Miami residents, especially Cuban Americans like himself. “He fears they fail to see parallels between the strongmen they fled and what he says is the United States’ eroding democracy,” said Times reporter Patricia Mazzei. “It is beyond troubling,” said the 73-year-old Hernández, a former Republican who was finance co-chairman of the 2014 reelection campaign of former Republican Governor Rick Scott and who donated millions to the 2016 GOP presidential campaign of Jeb Bush. Hernández hopes his ad campaign will unseat one of the three Cuban-American Republicans in the 2026 mid-term Congressional elections. But that won’t be easy given the strong Republican support in the area. Still, he says, “I have to leave a mark, an example to my family and my children.” He recently withdrew a $10 million donation to Miami Dade College and a $1 million donation to Florida International University to protest the repeal by Republican state lawmakers of a 2014 law he championed that allowed certain immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children to pay in-state tuition rates.

“Detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ on Day 9 of Hunger Strike Amid Growing Outcry Over Conditions,” NBC 6 South Florida, published July 31, 2025, updated August 4, 2025

Detainees protesting what they say are inhumane and dangerous living conditions have begun their ninth day of a hunger strike at the immigration detention center in the Everglades that Florida officials call “Alligator Alcatraz.” NBC6 South Florida reporter Jamie Guirola said “one of the detainees, Pedro Hernández, was hospitalized during the strike but continues to refuse food. His wife, Daimarys Hernández, said she’s terrified for his health and fears he could die in custody, or be deported back to Cuba, alone.” She said her husband was in prison, adding “we make mistakes, but we learn from them and fix things.” [The story does not say when he was in prison.] She said her husband came to the United States from Cuba in 2006, was detained in July during a routine check-in with ICE in Miramar, and hasn’t been home since. In a recorded phone call inside the facility, Pedro Hernández said “we’ve all been hungry since Tuesday [July 29]. I’m not going to eat another plate of food until they show us respect.” He pleaded for help. Democratic leaders held an emergency town hall meeting in Coconut Grove demanding changes at the facility. “People are not getting food, hygiene or medical care,” said one speaker. “These conditions are substandard and cause irreparable harm.” Days after the story was first posted Florida’s Division of Emergency Management issued a statement saying the allegations are false and that there is no hunger strike at the facility. Rick Scott, the Republican U.S. senator from Florida, praised the immigration policies of President Donald Trump and that things should be handled humanely.

“Brazil Duties Threaten to Raise Coffee Prices,” Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2025

Posted out of chronological order.

The 50 percent tariff President Trump has placed on products from Brazil is likely to increase prices for the type of coffee U.S. consumers prefer. Brazilian arabica beans are the source for roughly 35 percent to 40 percent of the coffee consumed in the U.S., says Journal reporter Kirk Maltais. “In fact, at over 40 million bags, Brazil produces more arabica coffee than the next five leading producers in the world combined,” Maltais said. “This includes countries like Colombia and Honduras, where U.S. coffee makers already buy a large portion of their output.” Rabobank analyst James Watson said “we don’t have an easy ability to replace Brazilian coffee. For the most part, most of what you drink is all arabica.” The next leading coffee producer in the world is Vietnam, but it produces robusta, a cheaper type of coffee that is common in instant coffee. Citi Research has noted that traders have rushed to bring more coffee into the U.S. ahead of a tariff, directing it away from other countries. It’s likely that importers will charge buyers more to ship coffee, and that domestic roasters in turn will pass that increase on to consumers. The average retail price for a cup of coffee in U.S. cities has risen 9 percent in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Judge Blocks Trump Administration from Ending Protections for 60,000 from Central America and Nepal,” Associated Press, August 1, 2025

A federal judge ruled July 31 to extend the Temporary Protected Status of 60,000 people from Central America and Asia, blocking a decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ending that status and making them subject to deportation. The people involved include those from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua. The Trump administration said in the case of Nicaragua and Honduras that the countries had made significant progress in recovering from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, one of the deadliest storms in the history of the Atlantic, said the AP story by Janie Har and Jaimie Ding. As a result, the protected status was no longer needed. Politico reported in a July 31 story by Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney that the judge in the case, Trina Thompson, said the decision by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "appeared rooted in racism." Thompson said "color is neither a poison or a crime." The Politico reporters said the administration is almost certain to appeal the ruling and may have reason for optimism it will be reversed on appeal because the U.S. Supreme Court has recently allowed temporary protected status to end in other cases.

“El Salvador Ends Term Limits, Letting Bukele Seek Re-Election Indefinitely,” New York Times, August 1, 2025

El Salvador has ended term limits on its presidency, freeing its highly popular leader Nayib Bukele to seek reelection indefinitely. Lawmakers in the country also voted to change the constitution by lengthening the presidential term from five years to six years. “It will be the people who decide, as many times as they wish, whether to continue supporting the path of transformation that our nation is experiencing,” said Ana Figueroa, the lawmaker who proposed the changes. “Many regional experts, human rights groups and others said they feared that the vote represented only the latest move to consolidate power in the hands of Mr. Bukele, who has used strongman tactics to crack down on violent street gangs that have long ravaged the country,” the Times said in a story reported by Francesca Regalado, Annie Correal and Alan Yuhas. Bukele has jailed many thousands of violent gang members, making El Salvador a much safer country and himself extremely popular. To do so he declared a continuing state of emergency that has allowed him to make arrests without due process. Rights groups say many of those arrested have no ties to gangs. Bukele “has gone after dissidents, carrying out arrests that have prompted some civil rights advocates and journalists to flee,” the Times said. He has positioned himself as Latin America’s closest partner to President Trump, agreeing to jail immigrants deported from the United States. American officials have found substantial evidence of negotiations between his government and MS-13 gang leaders; some expcerts say Bukele may want to bury that evidence by seeking the return of the gang leaders from the United States. He has denied having any agreement with the gangs.

Search This Blog

Latin American Lowdown

News Summaries in August 2025

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

News Summaries in December 2025

News Summaries in July 2026

News Summaries in June 2026