News Summaries in November 2025

  

Note to readers: summaries may sometimes be posted in two places, at least for a time, when older stories are involved. They temporarily will be placed at the top to call attention to them but also placed in chronological order farther down.  Summaries  of older stories no longer will say “posted out of chronological order.”  Thank you for your attention to this matter. 

“Hegseth Order on First Caribbean Boat Strike, Officials Say: Kill Them All,” Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2025

Two men clinging to a burning boat struck by a U.S. military rocket attack lost their lives when their bodies were blown apart by a second strike in which the Seal Team 6 commander followed the order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to leave no survivors. The Sept. 2 attack “was the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere,” wrote Post reporters Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima. Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers – a Trump administration contention some current and former U.S. officials and legal analysts deny – “an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,’ " said Todd Huntley, director of the national security law program at Georgetown University. People would be horrified if they saw the video of the blast from the follow-up attack that killed the two survivors, said a person who watched the live feed, the Post reported. In its defense of the second attack, the military’s Joint Special Operations Command said it was intended to sink the boat and remove a navigation hazard to other vessels, not to kill survivors. But some members of Congress say they think the Pentagon was deceptive in its description of events. “The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).  The Senate Armed Services Committee has announced on a bipartisan basis that it plans vigorous oversight “to determine the facts related to these circumstances.” A Pentagon spokesman wouldn’t answer questions about Hegseth’s order or details of the operation, saying “this entire narrative is completely false.” The Post’s Mariana Alfaro, Alex Horton, and Noah Robertson reported Nov. 30 (“Trump Says Hegseth Denied Issuing Order to Kill Boat Crew”) that Trump says he has “great confidence” Hegseth did not give a spoken order to kill all crew members. Trump said Hegseth told him he did not say that “and I believe him, 100 percent.” Trump said he would look into the issue and that he wouldn’t have wanted a second strike. The Post said the House Armed Services Committee also plans to conduct an inquiry. 

“Student Deported Despite Court Order,” Wall Street Journal (Associated Press), Nov. 29-30, 2025

A Babson College freshman who was trying to fly from Boston to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving was deported to Honduras instead, contrary to a court order, according to her lawyer. On Nov. 20, 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was told there was an issue with her boarding pass at Logan Airport, said her attorney, Todd Pomerleau. Immigration officials then detained her and within two days she was sent to Texas and then to Honduras (her wrists and ankles shackled, according to the Austin American-Statesman -- "ICE Deports Austin College Student Flying Home for Thanksgiving After Judge Issues Stay, Lawyer Says," Nov. 28, 2025).  She left Honduras at age 7. The day after her arrest, a federal judge issued an order barring the government from moving her out of Massachusetts or the United States for at least 72 hours. ICE didn’t reply to an email requesting comment on the violation of the order.  The Austin American-Statesman said she was deported by ICE 48 hours after her arrest. Her lawyer said the arrest was the first one he has worked on where a client was detained flying domestically, signaling an ICE expansion of arrests at airports. Pomerleau said the government  had violated several of Lopez Belloza’s rights to due process, including by impeding his right to communicate with her until after her deportation. 

“The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2025

The former president of Honduras, whom President Trump called a victim of persecution he now plans to pardon, helped oversee a decades-long trafficking conspiracy that ravaged his country, said Times reporters Santul Nerkar, Annie Correal and Colin Moynihan. Juan Orlando Hernández once bragged that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to let cocaine shipments pass through Honduras. “Investigators said that Mr. Hernández  went to pitiless lengths to cover his tracks,” the reporters noted.  “One accused co-conspirator was killed in a Honduran prison to protect the president, according to court documents. He used drug money to manipulate the vote in two elections, the documents said.” Prosecutors at the trial in New York in which he was convicted said Hernández “was key to a scheme that lasted more than 20 years and brought more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.” Drug traffickers knew they could pay a bribe to Hernández to avoid extradition to the United States, prosecutors said. A former gang leader who admitted being involved in the deaths of 78 people testified that he had bribed Hernández with $250,000. Hernández successfully ran for president in 2013 on the ticket of the conservative National Party. He relied on the world’s most powerful cartels to fund his campaign, prosecutors said.  He became president again in 2017 after an election so filled with allegations of fraud that days of violence followed and about two dozen people were killed in a military crackdown. Hondurans, united in disgust with poverty and widespread corruption during his presidency, chanted for his ouster not only at demonstrations but on huge migrant caravans marching north. Hondurans celebrated with fireworks when he was extradited in 2022 to the United States. Hernández said his investigation and trial were full of mistakes and injustices “that have become a lynching through the U.S. judicial system.” Trump said Nov. 29  that “many friends” had asked him to pardon Hernández and that he was a victim of political persecution but offered no evidence to back up that claim.

“Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2025

President Trump announced Nov. 28 that he will pardon the former president of Honduras who was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison. American prosecutors had asked the judge in the case, P. Kevin Castel, to make sure that the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, “would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and ‘the unfathomable destruction’ caused by cocaine,” said the Times report, authored by Annie Correal, Jeff Ernst, Shawn McCreesh and David C. Adams. The Times reporters wrote that “Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking.” The campaign has killed more than 80 people since it began in September.  “We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean, but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this,” said Todd Robinson, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department. In all caps, Trump announced “your upcoming pardon” to Hernández in a social media post that wished him congratulations. The news shocked Hondurans and U.S. authorities who won a conviction of Hernández after accusing him of taking bribes from the notorious former cartel leader “El Chapo” and of “running his Central American country like a narco state.”  A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who requested anonymity called the planned pardon “lunacy.” Mike Vigil, a former DEA official, said the move would imperil U.S. investigations into drug trafficking. “This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the  U.S. in the international community,” he told The Times. Trump also weighed in on the upcoming Nov. 30 presidential election in Honduras. He endorsed a former mayor named Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the conservative National Party, the party of Hernández. “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras,” Trump said. By linking Asfura to Hernández Trump could hurt Asfura’s chances of winning, said Leonardo Pineda, a Honduran analyst. 

 

“Peru to Declare a State of Emergency as Migrants Leaving Chile Trigger Backlash,” Associated Press, Nov. 28, 2025

The president of Peru said his government will declare a state of emergency Nov. 28 as Venezuelans fleeing a crackdown in Chile on undocumented immigrants move northward to try to enter his country. Hundreds of thousands of migrants escaping crises in their home countries have long traversed South America including by crossing the border with Peru to try to build lives in Chile – “one of Latin America’s most stable and prosperous nations,” said AP reporters Nayara Batschke and David Pereda Zavaleta. “But scores of people without legal status in Chile – mostly Venezuelans who fled their country’s economic ruin and authoritarian rule in recent years – are now also headed in the other direction as Chile prepares to harden its stance against immigration,” they wrote. As part of the state of emergency, Peru’s president, José Jaril, said he will deploy more armed forces along his country’s southern border. The ultraconservative candidate who is favored to win Chile’s Dec. 14 presidential runoff election, José Antonio Kast, filmed a video at Chile’s border with Peru last week warning undocumented immigrants to get out of his country while they still can. “If not, we will stop you, we will detain you, we will expel you. You will leave with only the clothes on your back.” With migrant families rushing north from Chile into Peru, their belongings stuffed in backpacks and garbage bags, Peruvian president Jaril made a trip to inspect border controls and boost security operations, to be followed by the declaration of a state of emergency by his cabinet. “Residents in Chile’s northern border towns reported growing chaos as crowds of people who left Chile but lacked permission to enter Peru were stranded in limbo,” the AP reporters said. Asked how the statements by Kast were affecting the outflow of migrants, the current Chilean Minister of Security Luis Cordero replied that “rhetoric sometimes has consequences. People cannot be used as a means to create controversy for the elections. Our main purpose is to prevent a humanitarian crisis.” 

“Colombia to Probe Military-Cartel Ties,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 25, 2025

A report by the Colombian media outlet Caracol alleges that certain leaders of the country’s army have helped a guerilla group that traffics drugs secretly buy weapons and evade detection by military authorities more broadly.  The revelations “have stoked fears that former guerilla fighters who now smuggle cocaine have infiltrated high levels of the security forces under President Gustavo Petro, a former member of a leftist guerilla organization,” said Journal reporter Kejal Vyas. Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez ordered an investigation to follow up on the findings of the report that detailed contacts between a guerilla group led by Alexander Diaz and Juan Miguel Huertas, a retired general who Petro later appointed as the army’s chief of personnel. “The Caracol report said documents showed an armed drug-trafficking group discussing making financial contributions to Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign,” Vyas wrote. Sanchez, the Defense Minister, said “I want to be emphatic: No illegal act will be tolerated in public forces, nor in the defense sector, not by those retired from the forces, nor by public or private officials.” Petro said the allegations against the senior military officers were false and an attempt to smear his government. Huertas, the retired general, denied offering any assistance or protection to members of armed groups and said he would cooperate with official investigators. The Trump administration has attacked Petro and described him as an “illegal drug leader.” Petro has portrayed the Trump administration’s attacks on alleged drug smuggling boats, which have killed more than 80 people, as extrajudicial killings. 

“Kremlin-Operated News Outlets Spread Misinformation in Mexico,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 2025

Russia is amplifying its efforts to spread information across Latin America that sews discord between the United States and its allies in the region, says an American diplomatic cable and a report by watchdog groups. The campaign, by the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, is particularly focused on Mexico, “the world’s largest Spanish-speaking nation and Washington’s biggest trade partner,” said Times reporter Maria Abi-Habib. American diplomats in April 2024 in Mexico City “raised alarms over ‘the sudden and dramatic expansion’” of RT in the country according to one cable. The cable called for more resources to counter the expansion of RT, which used to be known as Russia Today and beams television programming to various countries in different languages. “RT en Español” went from 191,000 views on X in 2022 to 715 million a year later. RT, widely blocked in the U.S. and Europe, scaled up its presence in Latin America, which has a potential audience of 670 million people. The cable referred to RT sympathizers in the Mexican government in the administration of then-President López Obrador. The Mexican government still includes officials sympathetic to Russia, Abi-Habib suggested in the Times story. It’s unclear whether the campaign is still trying to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Mexico but it continues publishing content in Spanish that discredits the U.S. One accusation is that the Ukraine and the U.S. are recruiting Mexican and Colombian cartels to fight Russia. Another linked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to the 2021 assassination of the Haitian president. RT also has had training sessions for journalists and students across Latin America, according to the German Marshall Fund, a research organization in Washington, D.C. Bret Schafer, a research fellow at the fund, said “This is the problem: you have the U.S. retreating from the information space globally, and in comes Russia.” The Trump administration closed Voice of America and an office that counters disinformation. “There remains a bit of a Cold War mentality about Russia taking it to the U.S. in their own backyard because they feel like the U.S. does it to them and their so-called sphere of influence,” said Schafer. “To gain influence, Latin America has long been seen as a priority for the Russians.” 

“Lawyer Who Defended Trump’s Immigration Policies Joins a Group Battling Them,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 2025

A lawyer who publicly exposed what he said were efforts by his Justice Department bosses to mislead or ignore federal judges is now part of a legal advocacy group challenging Trump administration policies. The lawyer, Erez Reuveni, worked at the Justice Department for almost 15 years, where his work often involved defending President Trump’s immigration policies. But then Reuveni became involved in the litigation surrounding the administration’s deportation earlier this year of migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Reuveni “filed a whistleblower complaint to Congress and government agencies, saying that a senior official, Emil Bove III, suggested the department should be prepared to ignore court orders to ensure the planes of migrants were shipped away,” said Times reporter Devlin Barrett. Bove denied the allegations, “though when pressed on particulars, he said he could not recall specific language that was used.” Reuveni also said his bosses ordered him to sign an appeals brief saying that a migrant who had been mistakenly deported to El Salvador was a terrorist despite the lack of evidence to support the accusation. Reuveni said he told them “I didn’t sign up to lie” and that because of his refusal to sign they placed him on administrative leave and eventually fired him.  Reuveni said he joined Democracy Forward because “all people have a right to safety, liberty, due process, and to me personally, it’s very important to fight the fight that articulates that point of view.” Reuveni’s complaint went to Congress before the confirmation hearing on Bove’s nomination to serve as a federal appeals court judge. Republicans accused Reuveni of involvement in a smear campaign to derail the nomination and confirmed Bove despite alarm and indignation expressed by Democrats, Barrett wrote. 

“Brazil Court Orders Start of Jail Term for Bolsonaro,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 2025

The Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, to begin serving a 27-year prison sentence at the federal police facility in Brasilia where he was taken Nov. 22 after trying to remove his ankle monitor while under house arrest at his home. Authorities feared Bolsonaro, convicted of trying to stage a coup including a planned assassination after he lost the most recent presidential election, intended to blend into a crowd of demonstrators that was to gather outside his home and to make his escape from there. Bolsonaro said he was trying to take the monitor off because his medications were causing hallucinations and paranoia and he feared it was being used to eavesdrop on him. Bolsonaro’s lawyers had asked that he be able to serve his sentence at home because of complications from a stabbing attack in 2018. Times reporter Ana Ionova said “analysts widely expect Mr. Bolsonaro to remain in prison for a short time before the Supreme Court ultimately allows him to serve out the rest of his sentence at home, though it is not yet clear just how long he may spend behind bars.” 

 

“DOJ Acknowledges Kristi Noem Made Decision to Continue Deportation Flights to El Salvador Despite Judge’s Order,” CNN Politics, Nov.26, 2025

A Justice Department court filing released Nov. 25 said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided to continue deportation flights in March carrying migrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT megaprison despite the order of US District Court Judge James Boasberg to turn the planes around. Boasberg “last week resumed his criminal contempt inquiry to find out which Trump administration officials were responsible for flouting his orders,” said CNN reporter Mary Kay Mallonee. Noem’s decision led to the migrants spending months in the jail where they were tortured, human rights groups said. [Interviews by New York Times reporters of a number of deportees after they had returned to Venezuela said that in their months in CECOT they were beaten, sexually assaulted and driven to the brink of suicide. Other Times coverage found that few of them had criminal convictions or were gang members, contrary to the claims of the Trump administration.] The DOJ filing said Noem decided that the deportees could be transferred to CECOT after receiving the legal advice of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, said Mallonee. DOJ asserted that “the Court’s written order did not purport to require the return of detainees who had already been removed, and the earlier oral directive was not a binding injunction, especially after the written order.” Boasberg said last week “I certainly intend to find out what happened on that day.” He said in a decision issued in April that “probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.” An appeals court put criminal contempt proceedings on hold but then earlier this month opened the way for them to restart. Boasberg said he may bring officials into his courtroom to require them to testify under oath. 

“Climate Talks End With Warnings but Few Plans for Action,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 2025

Global climate talks ended in Belèm, Brazil, Nov. 22 with a watered-down statement that was a victory for oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia. It “made no direct mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming,” said Times reporters Max Bearak and Lisa Friedman. “Activists said the weak deal heightened fears among many countries, particularly vulnerable island states, that the world is politically unwilling or unable to address climate change and its cascade of accompanying catastrophes,” they wrote. Former Vice President Al Gore said “petrostates and their political allies are doing everything they can to try to stop the world from making progress on solving the climate crisis.” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, opened the talks by calling on participants to agree on a road map to move the world away from fossil fuels. “In the end, there was no such plan,” the Times reporters said.  He had also called for nations to raise $25 billion to pay countries to preserve tropical forests that reduce greenhouse gases but pledges totaling only $5 billion were received.

“Big Banks Shelve $20 Billion Argentina Bailout,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2025

A $20 billion loan by private banks to the Argentine government, announced by the Trump administration as part of a successful strategy to strengthen the shaky election prospects of its ally Argentine President Javier Milei, isn’t happening. “Now, bankers are saying it’s no longer under serious consideration, according to people familiar with the conversations,” reported Wall Street Journal correspondents Alexander Saeedy and Justin Baer. The problem was that the banks – JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup – lacked guidance from the Treasury Department about what collateral and guarantees they could use to shield themselves from losses. Now, banks are focused on a plan to lend Argentina about $5 billion. Under this plan, Argentina would exchange a portfolio of investments for the dollars from the banks, according to people familiar with conversations about the arrangement. “Argentina would be expected to use the dollars to make a coming debt payment of around $4 billion in January, the people said,” the Journal reported. “Milei’s government would then later work with the banks to borrow billions of dollars from the bond markets” and then use that to pay back the $5 billion “likely within months.” But the banks could be caught if market conditions change and Argentina can’t sell the bonds or find other ways to repay the banks. Separately, the Treasury Department made available to Argentina another $20 billion to use to swap its currency for dollars. But it isn’t clear how much of that money Argentina has used to that end. “There is essentially no information on how that money is being used,” Brad Setser, a Treasury official during the Obama administration, told the Journal. “I think that is unusual given that this is the use of taxpayer money.” 

“Mexico’s Bullied Pageant Contestant Gets Payback by Capturing Miss Universe Crown,” Associated Press, Nov. 21, 2025

Fátima Bosch Fernández of Mexico was named Miss Universe 2025  Nov. 21 after being publicly berated by one of its hosts. The 25-year-old’s dramatic victory followed “a sharp-tongued scolding” of Bosch by the event’s national director for Thailand, Nawat Itsaragrisil, said AP reporter Tian Macleod. At a livestreamed sashing ceremony Nov. 4 for the more than 100 contestants,  Itsaragrisil “hectored Bosch for allegedly not following his guidelines for taking part in local promotional activities” and “called security when she spoke up to defend herself,” Macleod said. Bosch then “walked out of the room, joined by several others in a show of solidarity, including Miss Universe 2024, Victoria Kjaer Theilvig of Denmark.” Bosch told Thai reporters – the beauty pageant was staged in Bangkok – “what your director did was not respectful: He called me dumb. If it takes away your dignity, you need to go.” Nawat said he did not call her dumb but apologized, “appearing both tearful and defiant at the same time.” He said if anyone was affected and wasn’t comfortable “I am so sorry.” Then he turned to the contestants and said “It’s passed. OK? Are you happy?” Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said at a news conference that she wanted to recognize Miss Mexico for voicing disagreement in a dignified way. “It seems to me it is an example of how women should raise our voices,” Sheinbaum said. Separately, AP’s Fabiola Sánchez reported Dec. 5 that the bank accounts of the Mexican co-owner of Miss Universe, Raúl Rocha Cantú, were frozen by the Mexican government’s anti-money laundering office. It did so as part of an investigation into drugs, fuel and arms trafficking, according to an official. 

“Venezuela Accuses US of Using ‘Narco-Terrorism’ Allegations to Justify ‘Regime Change,’” The Guardian, Nov. 24, 2025

The Trump administration Nov. 24 officially designated a Venezuelan group called “Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns) a terrorist organization, a move some observers say may open the door for US military intervention in some form on Venezuelan soil. There are widespread doubts, however, about whether the group actually exists. Many suspect that the move is a pretext to remove Nicolás Maduro from the Venezuelan presidency, said Guardian reporter Tom Phillips. The Venezuelan government said there is no such group. It called the designation a “despicable lie” meant to justify an “illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela in the classic US regime-change format.” At least half a dozen major airlines have suspended flights in and out of Caracas. Reuters said Nov. 22 that four US officials told its reporters that Washington is set to launch a new phase of its Venezuelan operations in coming days. But Trump hasn’t made a decision on overthrowing Maduro, the news service emphasized. The Trump administration has stated that Maduro is the head of the Cartel de los Soles, which it calls a “narcoterrorist organization” that trafficks drugs into the United States and Europe. The New York Times reported Nov. 19 that a number of analysts say that Cartel del Soles is not really a group but a figure of speech that started in the 1990s describing Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money (“Trump Assails a Faux Cartel in Venezuela”). “There is no such animal,” Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group told the Times. “ But that doesn’t mean Venezuelan officials “are not up to their eyeballs in drugs.” 

“Bolsonaro Is Arrested After Saying He Tried to Melt Ankle Monitor,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 2025

Days before he was expected to begin serving a 27-year sentence for trying to stage a coup, Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro was arrested for trying to melt his ankle monitor in his home where he was under house arrest. Demonstrators were  expected to begin gathering several hours later outside his home on Nov. 22 to call for his release. Damaging the monitor, wrote Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, pointed to Bolsonaro’s intention to escape then, “facilitated by the tumult caused by the demonstration.”  Times reporter Ana Ionova noted that “worries that Mr. Bolsonaro might flee before he could be held to account for the failed coup plot are not new.” He has been linked to possible attempts to seek asylum in Argentina and Hungary. One of his sons living in the United States lobbied President Trump to help Bolsonaro, “stirring fears that Mr. Bolsonaro might flee there,” Ionova said. Bolsonaro, who is 70, said he tried to burn the monitor because his medications have caused hallucinations and paranoia that the device might be used to eavesdrop on him. Sons, allies, and his lawyers said Bolsonaro wasn’t trying to escape. He “would have no way of escaping,” said one of his lawyers. He “is an elderly man who suffers from serious health problems.” Supporters who gathered the evening of Nov. 22 chanted “amnesty.” His son Flávio Bolsonaro, a Brazilian senator, urged the crowd to have faith, said Ionova. “The light comes after the darkest hour.” 

“Vote Positions Chile for a Turn to Trump’s Side,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2025

Rising anger over crime and immigration is pushing mineral-rich Chile to the right, perhaps pointing to an alignment with President Trump, says Wall Street Journal reporter Samantha Pearson. Although Jeannette Jara of the Communist Party placed first in the country’s first round of presidential voting Nov. 16, she is widely expected to lose to José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative former congressman, in the Dec. 14 runoff vote. Jara won 27 percent of the vote compared to 24 percent for Kast. A candidate must win more than 50 percent of the vote to become president. “With other leftist candidates failing to garner support, Jara is widely expected to lose to Kast in next month’s runoff, polls show,” says Pearson. Seventy percent of the voters backed the four leading right-wing candidates. Other countries in South America whose leaders support Trump include Argentina and Bolivia. Pearson notes that “conservatives appear poised to do well in presidential elections in Peru and Colombia next year.” A Kast presidency in Chile would aid a Trump strategy of increasing investments in mining while seeking to lessen Chinese influence. Chile, among Latin America’s most prosperous and developed countries, has about a quarter of the world’s copper and a third of the globe’s lithium reserves, essential components for electric vehicle batteries. Like Trump, Kast calls undocumented immigration a threat to national security. He is “urging Chile to adopt tough border and deportation policies similar to those under Trump,” Pearson says. That message is popular in Chile because of growing concerns about crime and violence. Though still one of the region’s safest countries, “recent shootings in broad daylight and violent robberies – long a reality in Mexico, Brazil and other countries – have shocked voters." Crime and violence are major concerns for about 63 percent of Chilean voters. Only Peru had a higher percentage in an Ipsos poll of 30 countries in October. In many instances Chilean voters blame a recent big influx of immigrants, mainly from Venezuela, many of whom enter on foot though Chile’s distante northern border. People born outside Chile now make up almost 10 percent of its population. 

“Joy as Haitian Men’s Team Secures First World Cup Berth Since 1974,” Washington Post. Nov. 19, 2025

A 2-0 victory over Nicaragua by the Haitian soccer team Nov. 18 sent tens of thousands of Haitians into the streets of Port-au-Prince to celebrate the country’s first berth in the men’s World Cup in more than 50 years. Haitians closely follow the tournament since soccer is their most popular sport, but they typically support Argentina or Brazil because their team has had little international success. That changed with the victory over Nicaragua, which occurred in Willemstad, Curaçao, the team’s home base since Port-au-Prince came under gang control in 2024.  Schoolteacher Osma Joseph exulted in the win, coming as it did in a time of protracted violent chaos in his country. “It’s extraordinary, especially given the country’s chaotic situation,” he told The Washington Post. “It shows us the country will not perish.” Patrice Dumont, a Haitian sports commentator, said “this is a country with immortal vitality, redeeming itself even in its degradation.” The victory came on Battle of Vertières Day, a public holiday that marks the decisive 1803 victory by Haitians over French colonial forces. It established the independence of the world’s first Black republic. “The 2026 tournament will have a substantial Americas flavor,” noted Post reporter Wildlore Mérancourt. The co-hosts are Mexico, the United States and Canada, which qualify automatically. “Defending champion Argentina and five-time champion Brazil have played their way in, as have Colombia, Curaçao, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.” 

“Pressure on ICE to Deport Leaves Children Without Their Parents,” New York Times, Nov. 17, 2025

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers under pressure to increase the number of undocumented immigrants they deport are processing detainees hastily and putting them on planes without always asking if they want to take their children with them, according to immigration attorneys. It’s unclear how many parents have been deported without their children, but the number is believed to be growing. “We are seeing a disturbing rise in cases where mothers and families are deported without their children,” said Kelly Kribs, a lawyer with the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “The government’s actions are creating an atmosphere where families feel they have to choose between their due process rights to protections under immigration law and the security of staying together despite not knowing if they will be safe wherever they are returned to,” said Nan Schivone, legal director of the nonprofit Justice in Motion. In the case of Maribel Lopez, she was halfway through her morning shift in early September at the nutrition bar factory where she worked in central New York state when armed immigration agents raided the facility. She said that inside her purse were her work permit, Social Security card, and a letter from her lawyer on Cornell Law School stationery saying she had a pending asylum appeal and was lawfully in the United States and could not be removed. Lopez said an agent seized her phone and switched it to airplane mode. “Her wrists were bound, she said, and she was loaded into a van with other women,” said Times reporter Miriam Jordan. Taken to a Border Patrol facility in Oswego, New York, she handed over her documents including the Cornell letter and her toddler’s Social Security card. She told the agent her son was only two years old and needed her. But by the next morning she was in Texas and two days after that in Guatemala, the country she fled in 2018 after years of brutal abuse by her partner, the father of her two older children. Documents and reports attached to her asylum application stated that her partner “lashed her with belts, hurled glass at her and threatened to stab her,” wrote Jordan. At an asylum hearing in November 2019 she testified for four hours before an immigration judge about years of assault, beatings and other violence she said she suffered. But a government lawyer cross-examined her on the timing and sequence of events and her contact with law enforcement. The questions were challenging to follow for her and her count-appointed interpreter, her lawyer said. The judge ruled that her testimony was not credible, citing inconsistencies in what she said. Her bid for asylum was denied but she filed an appeal that is pending. That appeal was supposed to have protected her from deportation but did not and she went into hiding in Guatemala, separated from her two-year-old who is now under the care of her other two children, aged 21 and 23. In mid-September she was notified that she had been inadvertently removed from the United States and that steps would be taken to return her. On Nov. 12 she heard from the U.S. embassy that she would be returned the next day. But she will remain detained until her immigration case is decided. 

“I’m in Venezuela. This Is the True Cost of Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy,” New York Times,  Guest Essay, Nov. 21, 2025

“For all the deadly weapons floating off the coast, it seems increasingly clear that all the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Venezuela has done so far is create a potentially disastrous political trap.” That’s the assessment of Phil Gunson in a guest essay for the New York Times. He’s a senior analyst for the Andes region in the International Crisis Group. “If the administration fails to oust [Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro], as is its apparent goal, that will almost certainly grant the dictator a political victory and deal a lasting blow to the Venezuelan opposition. If it succeeds, and Mr. Maduro finally falls, it may plunge the nation, already in crisis, into a potentially violent breakdown. No matter what happens, everyone loses.” Trump’s aggressive moves seem to have stalled, at least for now. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wants to rid the hemisphere of leftist dictators but has played down the possibility of a ground invasion in Venezuela. Trump says he’s averse to foreign military entanglements. So the administration, Gunson says, seems to be engaged in a phony war that doesn’t put American soldiers in Venezuela but that is convincing enough to cause Maduro to flee or make his own military topple him. But the gunboat diplomacy doesn’t seem to be working. The safest bet for Maduro’s inner circle is to remain in power. They’d be reluctant to install opposition leader María Corina Machado in the presidency because she is their sworn enemy. And they “know full well the fate that awaits them if they fall afoul of Mr. Maduro’s security services.” If Maduro is swiftly ousted, Machado would face a power vacuum unless she and her allies have an unlikely secret deal with key figures in the Venezuelan military whose loyalty would be key to maintaining internal security. Otherwise, a power vacuum could lead to continuing internal conflict. And without a big U.S. military presence to maintain security, along with sustained diplomatic support from Washington to aid a Machado transition, Maduro’s ouster could lead to protracted violent chaos  spilling across Venezuela’s borders. “Having outsourced its strategy to a foreign power,” Gunson concludes, “the Venezuelan opposition can, for now, do little but brace for impact. When the American fleet sails away and the world’s attention turns elsewhere, they will be left – as the local saying goes – to pick up the broken plates.” 

“U.S. Ran a War Game on Ousting Maduro, Venezuela Fell into Chaos,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025

A war game run by government officials during the first Trump administration underscores the risks the U.S. now faces if its current pressure campaign to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is successful. “The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country,” said Times reporter Michael Crowley. President Donald Trump said Nov. 17 he was open to speaking with Maduro but wouldn’t rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela to stop its involvement in drug trafficking into the United States. María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Venezuelan opposition leader, said she stands ready to assume power with a transition plan she would implement on day one. Though analysts say Maduro stole the last presidential election from opposition forces led by Machado there’s much skepticism that the country would stabilize under her leadership. “The idea that you are going to be able to slot in a government and everything else will fall into place, I think is just fantasy,” said Phil Gunson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “You would have no command and control over the military and no police force,” said Douglas Farah, a national security consultant who was involved in war game exercises while a fellow at the National Defense University. “You’d have looting and chaos.” Tens of thousands of American troops probably would be needed to provide stability, he added. For her part, Machado has said she can assert full control of the country if Maduro leaves. She released a “Freedom Manifesto” Nov. 18 pledging to defend basis rights and hold Maduro’s government accountable for “crimes against humanity.” Armed groups could stand in Machado’s way, however. “Thousands of battle-hardened fighters who belong to neighboring Colombia’s National Liberation Army, or ELN, are based in jungles along the border,” noted Crowley. ELN has pledged to support Maduro and fight foreign forces in its region. Another possibility is that the disorder and conflict could trigger another wave of Venezuelan migration into neighboring countries already struggling to cope with millions of Venezuelan migrants. 

“More Immigrant Arrests in New York City, Border Czar Says,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025

Threatening to “flood the zone,” top border official Thomas Homan said Nov. 18 federal officials will ramp up immigration detentions in New York City. The Trump official said he was taking aim at the city because of its sanctuary policies preventing local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in most cases. “We know we have an issue there with public safety,” he said. “If they don’t want to assist and they want to keep pushing back and  impeding our efforts, then we’re going to just send more teams there.” New York leaders have been getting ready for the possibility Trump will send more National Guard soldiers or more immigration agents to New York City after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor.  New York City business leaders would have an important role to play, said the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul. She wants them to tell Trump their concerns about what a deployment could do to destabilize the city “and the outsize impact that this would have across America.” City officials also have been talking to officials in Chicago and Los Angeles to learn about confronting a surge in immigration agents. “Trump is looking for a fight,” said Ana María Archila of the progressive Working Families Party. “He wants the images of the fight in the streets.” Meanwhile, a federal agency has abruptly canceled naturalization ceremonies in a number of counties for those about to become U.S. citizens. It said county courts did not meet the requirements for conducting the ceremonies. The effect is that applicants probably will now have to travel to 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan to complete their citizenship requirements and get their naturalization certificates. That’s the same building that has offices for ICE, which Times reporters Ana Ley and Luis Ferré-Sadurni note “has become the epicenter of immigration arrests in the city.” 

“Catholic Group Sues Trump Administration for Access to Immigration Facility,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025

In a new example of Catholic activism on behalf of immigrants targeted  by  mass deportation, an Illinois Catholic advocacy group is suing to be able to minister to people at a detention center near Chicago. The suit by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership “is the latest to accuse the administration of creating unlawful, unsanitary and unsafe conditions at such centers,” said Times reporter Ashley Ahn. The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration has violated the religious freedom of detainees at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Ill. Ahn said that for more than a decade Catholic nuns and clergy members visited the facility every Friday during early morning visitor hours to offer prayer services and Communion, according to the lawsuit. They also prayed outside the facility’s front steps. But authorities began limiting access in September on grounds of safety and security and the “transitory nature” of Broadview. ICE erected a temporary fence to block access to the front steps, then barred nuns and clergy from entering the facility. “For Catholics, pastoral care isn’t optional,” said the executive director of the group, Michael Okinczyc-Cruz. Earlier this month U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement condemning “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” That statement “presented a united front with Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, who grew up in suburban Chicago and has been speaking in support of immigrants,” said Ahn. 

“Rationale for Deadly Boat Strikes is Misleading,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025

The U.S. has blown up at least 21 boats killing more than 80 people in the Caribbean and East Pacific but the Trump administration’s rationale for those attacks is “misleading,” according to Times reporter Julian E. Barnes. President Trump says the attacks are justified because of the large number of fentanyl deaths in the United States and because the boats come from Venezuela. But “the fentanyl used illegally in the United States does not come from Venezuela,” Barnes writes, based on what lawmakers and narcotics experts say. Nor was there any fentanyl on the boats the military has blown up. “This month, military officials told members of Congress in closed-door hearings that there was cocaine on the boats but no fentanyl,” Barnes says. “Fentanyl comes to the United States at legal ports of entry by U.S. citizens,” says Sara Jacobs, a Democratic House member from California. “So this is not even like how fentanyl gets to us.” More strikes on speedboats or even an attack inside Venezuela would not slow the fentanyl trade, she adds. Cocaine does pass through Venezuela – 200 to 250 tons each year, according to a 2020 estimate. But most of that goes to Europe through Trinidad or to Brazil. It’s estimated that less than 10 percent enters the United States. “The takeaway is that Colombia is a radically bigger cocaine problem than Venezuela, and has been for most if not all of the past 30 years,” said Jonathan M. Winer, a former U.S. diplomat with Steady State, an organization of former national security professionals who are critical of the Trump administration. U.S.-bound cocaine from Colombia travels via the Pacific or by air or by land, for the most part avoiding Venezuelan territory. “Venezuela is more of a trans-shipment point to Europe, and that doesn’t necessarily make it our problem in exactly the same way,” says Annie Pforzheimer, a former senior U.S. diplomat expert in counternarcotics and Venezuela. “Venezuela also is not a fentanyl node, so linkage to the idea that lethal action is justified because Americans are dying is so incredibly attenuated at this point.”

“Colombia’s Leftist Leader Faces Trump’s Wrath and Fallout at Home,” New York Times, Nov. 14 2025

Few leaders have been as willing to take on President Trump as openly as Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, says Genevieve Glasky of the New York Times. He has blocked deportation flights, exhorted U.S. soldiers to disobey orders, and accused the U.S. of murder in its military strikes on boats in the eastern Pacific. Most recently he suspended intelligence-sharing with the United States while its boat strikes continue. A  former rebel and veteran of Colombia’s protracted and  bloody internal conflicts, Petro is no stranger to defiance. He’s a lifelong critic of corruption and inequality, say those who know him. “His entire political life has been about taking risks,” said Susana Muhamad, a former environment minister. “Walking the edge of the abyss to push for change, to create tension, to expose what’s really going on.” As president he has pushed land distribution and environmental initiatives but his promise to bring lasting peace to a country that has seen decades of bloodshed is faltering. “Disillusionment has spread even on the left,” writes Glatsky. He has clashed with advisers and his “long, often digressive speeches – sometimes infused with conspiracy theories – deepen perceptions of a presidency adrift.” According to his supporters, the efforts to portray him as erratic or incompetent “are part of a coordinated backlash from political and media elites who resent his power,”  Glatsky also notes. Federico Gómez Lara of the Colombian political magazine Cambio says, however,  that although long targeted by elites, Petro takes it farther and feels that everyone is always persecuting him. Petro’s former education minister Alejandro Gaviria said there’s a sense of unease in the Bogotá establishment. “There’s a sense that the environment is becoming increasingly unstable.” 

“Peru: Bus Plunge Leaves at Least 37 Dead,” New York Times (Associated Press), Nov. 13, 2025

At least 37 people were killed and another 13 injured when a passenger bus fell into a deep ravine Nov. 12 after colliding with another vehicle in southern Peru, officials said. Walther Oporto, health manager of the Arequipa region, “told local radio that the bus hit a pickup truck and it went off a road on a curve, falling more than 650 feet to the banks of the Ocoño River." AP said that “the cause of Wednesday’s accident was not clear, but authorities have said reckless driving and excessive speed are behind many of these incidents."

“Federal Enforcement Agents Will Expand Enforcement Action in North Carolina to Raleigh, Mayor Says,” Associated Press, Nov. 17, 2025

Following a weekend in which immigration agents arrested more than 130 people in Charlotte, federal authorities will launch a similar operation in Raleigh,  said the mayor of that city, the  capital of North Carolina. “I ask Raleigh to remember our values and maintain peace and respect through any upcoming challenges,” said Mayor Janet Cowell. The federal Homeland Security Department said it is focusing on North Carolina because of  sanctuary policies limiting cooperation between  local authorities and immigration agents. Those policies exist in a handful of places, including Charlotte. The Charlotte crackdown “set off fierce objections from area leaders,” said the AP account, written by Erik Verduzco, Tim Sullivan and Gary D. Roberston. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, said “we’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color. This is not making us safer, it’s stoking fear and dividing our community.” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Border Patrol has arrested “over 130 illegal aliens who have all broken” immigration laws. The records of those arrested included gang membership, aggravated assault, shoplifting and other crimes, the agency said. But it “did not say how many cases had resulted in convictions, how many people had been facing charges or any other details,” the reporters said. Charlotte is now dominated by Democrats. It has a booming economy with a growing, racially diverse population that includes more than 150,000 foreign-born residents. In general, North Carolina county jails have long honored “detainers”  -- requests from federal authorities to detain an arrested immigrant for a limited time so agents can take them into custody. Mecklenburg County, in which Charlotte is located, did not honor those requests for several years until the state last year made it mandatory. The Department of Homeland Security said about 1,400 detainers in North Carolina had not been honored since October 2020, putting the public at risk.  "Democrats at all levels are choosing to protect criminal illegals over North Carolina citizens," said Jason Simmons, chairman of the state GOP. 

 

“Ecuadorans Vote for Sovereignty,” World Politics Review, Nov. 17, 2025

Voters in Ecuador rejected a proposal to allow the return of foreign military bases to the country, a move that would have paved the way for U.S. forces to return to an air base in Manta on the Pacific Coast. Nearly two-thirds of those casting ballots voted no on the measure, a blow to President Daniel Noboa. He said the step was necessary to fight back against drug cartels “that have engulfed the country in violence,” said World Politics Review. “Had it passed, it would have paved the way for U.S. forces to return to an airbase in Manta…which served as an American hub for counternarcotics operations until the leftist former President Rafael Correa refused to extend the lease in 2008.” Voters also rejected three other ballot proposals. They would have ended public funding for political parties, cut the number of lawmakers in parliament and created an elected body to rewrite the constitution enacted under Correa. 

“The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Bid to Control the Western Hemisphere,” New York Times, Nov. 17, 2025 

In a sharp shift, the Western Hemisphere has become central to U.S. foreign policy, says Times reporter Jack Nicas. President Trump this year pledged to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He’s bombing boats from South America, threatening military action against Venezuela, ordering punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas. Top administration officials “have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet,” Nicas writes. The major benefits of stronger control include ample natural resources, strategic security positions and lucrative markets. “The effect has been a reordering of politics up and down the Americas. Many leaders have twisted themselves to align with Mr. Trump – often winning major benefits in return – or bet their governments on defying him.” Just as President James Monroe aimed through his doctrine to keep European powers from meddling in the hemisphere, Trump is aiming through the so-called Donroe Doctrine  to establish U.S. primacy over leading global players China and Russia. It fits in with Trump’s view of the world as a turf battle akin to the neighborhood battles in New York where businessmen, politicians and mob bosses battled for turf. “Securing the block” has involved killing aid programs adopted to foster influence and good will in Latin America. Trump’s focus instead is “assembling a roster of allies” who will bend to his will and punishing those leaders who will not. The roster of those in his camp may be growing with Bolivia, Chile and Peru possibly drifting rightward. On the punishment list are Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Brazil is Trump’s strongest test case. Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on the country and imposed other sanctions to try to stop its criminal prosecution of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro,  the former president of Brazil. Current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized Trump and saw his own popularity grow. Brazil then sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup. Then Trump abruptly changed course. “He met with Mr. Lula and said he liked him, and now the two nations are negotiating an end to tariffs,” Nicas says.

“At Least 120 Hurt in Gen Z Protests Over Corruption and Drug Violence in Mexico,” The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2025

What began as a peaceful protest in Mexico City against corruption and drug violence that kills tens of thousands of Mexicans each year descended into violence Nov. 15. The demonstration involving thousands of Gen Z protestors resulted in “protestors pelting riot police with rocks and officers fighting back with shields, batons and fire extinguishers,” said Guardian reporter Tom Phillips. The security chief for Mexico City, Pablo Vazquez, said 100 police officers were injured, 40 of them requiring hospital treatment for bruises and cuts, and 20 protestors were harmed. “For many hours, this mobilization proceeded and developed peacefully, until a group of hooded individuals began to commit acts of violence,” said Vazquez. “There were also reports of disturbances in Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, where 47 people were detained and 13 people injured,” Phillips said, citing figures from authorities. Protestors honored the mayor of Uruapan in Michoacán state, Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, who was assassinated Nov. 1 after campaigning against drug trafficking gangs. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has high approval ratings but has drawn criticism for not doing more to protect the public against cartel violence. In the days leading up to the protests, which also occurred in other cities in Mexico, Sheinbaum said right-wing parties were trying to infiltrate the Gen Z movement and used bots on social media to increase attendance. “It is a movement promoted from abroad against the government,” she said. 

“Chile’s Presidential Race Heads to a Runoff Between a Communist and a Pro-Trump Conservative,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2025

A first-round presidential vote Nov. 16 has determined that either a Communist Party member or an ultraconservative veteran politician will become Chile’s next president. Jeannette Jara, a communist former labor minister and the candidate of Chile’s center-left coalition, won 26.8 percent of the votes. José Antonio Kast, a former legislator who is a devout Catholic opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion, won 24 percent of the vote. Had either exceeded 50 percent of the vote he or she would have won the presidency outright. Concern about crime is paramount. “Like her opponents, Jara has called security a top priority, promising plans to deport foreigners convicted of drug trafficking, boost controls along Chile’s borders and tackle money laundering,” said AP reporters Isabel Debre and Nayara Batschke. Kast, who urged the country’s fractured right-wing to unite behind him, “has vowed to deport tens of thousands of undocumented migrants and construct hundreds of kilometers of ditches and walls along Chile’s northern border with Bolivia to prevent people from crossing, particularly from crisis-stricken Venezuela,” the reporters said. 

 

“U.S. Marines Exchange Gunfire in Haiti with Suspected Gang Members,” Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2025

U.S. Marines in Haiti exchanged gunfire with suspected gang members the evening of Nov. 13, “in an incident that highlights the precarious security environment in the island nation,” said Post reporter Dan Lamothe. “Marines supporting embassy security operations were fired upon” in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and returned fire with no Marines injured, said Steven Keenan, a Marine Corps spokesman. The city is beset by violence committed by armed gangs, which control an estimated 85 percent of Port-au-Prince. The U.S. embassy is open for emergency services. In 2023, the U.S. State Department evacuated nonemergency U.S. government employees. It has instructed U.S. citizens not to travel to Haiti. 

“‘I Lost Everything’: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid But Never Charged With a Crime,” ProPublica, Nov. 13, 2025

An aggressive, middle-of-the-night raid by immigration agents on a Chicago apartment building that residents described as terrifying resulted in 37 arrests but no subsequent criminal charges, according to the investigative news outlet ProPublica. Some 300 agents from Border Patrol, the FBI and other agents swarmed the 130-unit complex the night of Sept. 30. White House aide Stephen Miller claimed the building was filled with Venezuelan gang members. He said the raid “saved God knows how many lives” and was “one of the most successful law enforcement operations that we’ve seen in this country.” ProPublica uncovered the names of 21 of the detained Venezuelan men and found no criminal records for 18 of them. Officials said they arrested two “confirmed” members of the violent Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. But ProPublica said prosecutors haven’t revealed any evidence that they were in fact gang members nor did they release their names. It said it did manage to identify one of the two, who denied being a member of the gang. In the raid, SWAT teams rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and threw flash-bang grenades. They zip-tied and detained many U.S. citizens for several hours. “During the raid, panicked tenants hid under beds, climbed into elevator shafts, and jumped out of windows, residents said,” according to the ProPublica team of reporters that included Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella and Mariam Elba. Mothers took out half-naked children, some barefoot, some wearing only diapers, one resident said. “They didn’t even give them a chance to put clothes on their kids,” she said. “Close to two dozen residents said agents entered their apartments without providing a warrant,” ProPublica said. “Many said agents had knocked down their doors.” Greg Bovino, the head of Border Patrol who led the raid, said “we’re not violating their rights. “We’re making it safe for them so they can live in a safe and secure neighborhood.” One of the detainees said he had a steady job and a pending asylum application and wasn’t accused of a crime or called a terrorist by those who detained him but was simply deported to Venezuela after leaving there nine years earlier. “I lost everything,” he said when reached by phone in Venezuela. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.” Some of the women and children were put on a plane and sent to Texas the next day and spent weeks in detention. Many of the men arrested asked after weeks in detention to be sent back to Venezuela. 

“Then They Came for the Dreamers,” Mother Jones, Nov. 11, 2025

The Trump administration, struggling to meet its goal of deporting 3,000 immigrants per day, is targeting the so-called Dreamers, people who were brought to the United States by their migrant parents as children. So writes Isabela Dias of Mother Jones magazine concerning those protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The program has had public and bipartisan support as a stopgap to permit recipients to remain in the United States while Congress works out a legal pathway for them to remain. That hasn’t happened. Dias cites cases in which DACA recipients are being locked up in detention for weeks. Twenty-seven-year-old Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira, for example, was surrounded by seven officers while dropping off his older children at his mother’s house in Horizon City, Texas, en route to taking his baby daughter to the doctor. His mother rushed out and pleaded with the arresting agents that her son, brought to the United States from Mexico as an infant, was protected under DACA, but they took him anyway. He was kept in detention for weeks until a judge ordered his release. The Department of Homeland Security said he had been arrested because he had pled guilty almost a decade ago to disorderly conduct from a reduced charge for marijuana possession. A Homeland Security spokesperson said DACA recipients “are not automatically protected from deportations” and “may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.” A number of other Dreamers “have been arrested, detained, and put in removal proceedings, despite having  protection from deportation under the policy,” says Dias. In September, the Home is Here advocacy group launched a tracker documenting cases of DACA recipients who have been detained or deported  from the U.S., counting nearly 20 cases so far. In one case, a recipient returning from a trip abroad was denied entry to the U.S. and flown to Mexico despite being authorized to travel. In another, a DACA recipient in Miami who is the father of two children has been detained since May. In October, the DACA status of a Filipino activist reportedly was revoked because he spoke out on social media in protest of the war in Gaza and the detention of pro-Palestine demonstrators. In another case, the government fought to keep a DACA recipient in custody even as it acknowledged she could not be deported. It argued that it could deport her after her DACA protection expires in the spring. Homeland Security called her a criminal, noting her conviction and other charges for disorderly conduct  in connection with civil disobedience actions, and an arrest for alleged trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia, a charge that was dropped. A judge ordered her release.  “For immigrants’ rights advocates, the arrest and detention of  immigrants with valid DACA protection is proof that the administration is trying to create something of a loophole: undermining the program’s core protections piecemeal without formally – and publicly – terminating it through regulation,” says Dias. One advocate expressed concern that the administration is condemning DACA, which has more than 515,000 recipients, to death “by a thousand cuts.”  The administration’s moves threaten to “disrupt every corner of DACA recipient’s lives – from their health care to their chance at education,” adds Dias. Federal regulators in June made final a regulation excluding DACA recipients from eligibility for health coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. In July the Education Department began investigating five universities concerning scholarships for DACA students. Also in July the Department of Homeland Security said DACA recipients “may be subject to arrest and deportation” and should consider self-deporting. DACA recipients have barely lived any part of their lives outside the U.S. 

“Welcome to the Planet’s Newest Oil Frontier,” CNN, Nov. 10, 2025

Countries across South America are ramping up oil extraction even as the continent struggles under the burdens of climate change and plots a clean energy path to the future. At the forefront are Brazil, Guyana and Argentina, says CNN reporter Laura Paddison. “It’s really incredible how fast and how much it’s expanding,” said Nicole Figueiredo de Oliveira concerning South America’s new oil frontier. She is the executive director of the environmental group Arayara. Paddison notes that “this new fossil fuel boom is happening just as the impacts of the climate crisis – driven by fossil fuels – are beginning to bite in ever more alarming ways. People in South America are dying in fires, floods, storms and droughts made longer and more catastrophic by climate change.” South America has the second largest reserves of oil and gas after the Middle East. Political instability and aversion to private investment kept it from taking advantage of those reserves at the start of the century, said Francisco Monaldi, a Latin America energy expert at Rice University. But because the oil extracted in South America is typically cleaner and cheaper, recent discoveries have stirred excitement. Brazil is the continent’s largest oil and gas producer, its output reaching levels never seen before in the region, says Monaldi. Crude oil became Brazil’s number one export in 2024, overtaking soybeans. Billions of barrels of oil may lie in a region where the Amazon River opens out into the Atlantic. But environmentalists are strongly opposed to drilling in the ecologically fragile region, fearing an oil spill could be catastrophic for its reefs and mangrove forests. The government favors drilling, however. Guyana has been transformed into one of the world’s fastest growing economies because of a 2015 offshore oil discovery. It now belongs “in the category of the countries of the Middle East,” said Monaldi. That could eradicate poverty but the phenomenon known as “resource curse” causes uncertainty about that. Huge windfalls can sometimes make life worse, not better, with oil development driving up living costs. Paddison notes that Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but “has descended into authoritarianism and economic crisis.” Argentina’s big hope for economic recovery under libertarian President Javier Milei is its huge shale region Vaca Muerta. However, environmentalists fear the impact of the chemical-heavy fracking procedure used to extract fossil fuels from shale. It’s predicted that oil demand is going to peak at the start of the next decade, which means an emphasis on fossil fuels could be unprofitable. But Gabriel Blanco, a professor at the National University of Central Buenos Aires, sees an implicit and sometimes explicit global consensus that oil exploitation “can and should continue for decades to come even in the face of a barreling climate crisis,” writes Paddison. 

“Catholic Bishops Rebuke U.S. ‘Mass Deportation’ of Immigrants,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2025 

In a rare and near-unanimous statement, U.S. Catholic bishops  expressed opposition Nov. 12 to the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. The bishops -- in a statement approved at their annual conference 216 to 5 with 3 abstentions – said that they “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.” The bishops said "we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity." They said they “pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” Times  reporter Elizabeth Dias said the last time they issued such a statement, called a special message, was in 2013 in opposition to the contraceptive coverage mandate in the Affordable Care Act championed by President Barack Obama. She noted that in recent months bishops have been pushing back against President Trump’s deportation tactics,   including by accompanying migrants to courthouses -- “but this action sends a particularly strong message not only to the administration, which includes many high-profile Catholics, but also to the millions of the church’s immigrant families.”  The statement expressed a number of concerns: “We are concerned when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants.  We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to schools and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.” The statement responds to a concern expressed by Pope Leo XIV last month that bishops give a united statement on the issue. 

“Migrant Boy, 3, Has Died in Caribbean Off Panama,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2025

A boat carrying 21 people capsized off the Caribbean coast of Panama’s Colón Province, resulting in the death of a 3-year-old child. The boat had been traveling not north toward the United States but toward Colombia, part of a trend toward reverse migration occurring since President Trump virtually sealed the U.S. border to migrants. It was the second known case of a child drowning on a route back to the home countries of migrants, said Times reporter Annie Correal. Panamanian officials estimate that more than 14,000 migrants this year have traveled on small boats along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts as part of a reverse migration route that seeks to avoid the treacherous jungle between Panama and Colombia known as the Darién Gap. Authorities have all but cut off that jungle route. Many of those undertaking reverse migration are Venezuelans who travel overland – “often from Mexico, occasionally all the way from the United States – and then pay around $300 per person for seats on small boats with outboard motors,” said Correal. They are taken as far as the Panamanian border and then board other boats for Colombia. The trip from the Panamanian city of Colón to the Colombian border can take as many as ten hours with those on board generally wearing life jackets but not receiving safety training. 

“U.S. Military Kills Six Men in Two More Boat Strikes, Hegseth Says,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2025

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military killed six men on two boats Nov. 9, citing “intelligence” as the reason for the attack but providing no evidence to support his claim that the three men aboard each of the two boats were smuggling narcotics. The strikes, which took place in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, increased the death toll in the U.S. bombings there and in the Caribbean to 76 people since early September. Hegseth said the two boats were travelling “along a known narco-trafficking transit route.” Times reporter Eric Schmitt said “a wide range of specialists in laws governing the use of force have denounced the killings as illegal because the U.S. military is not allowed to intentionally target civilians who pose no threat of imminent violence, even those suspected of being criminals.” President Trump says the strikes are legal because he has “determined” that the U.S. is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. 

“Exclusive: UK Suspends Some Intelligence Sharing with US Over Boat Strike Concerns in Major Break,” CNN, Nov. 11, 2025

The United Kingdom has stopped sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean. The reason: it believes US military attacks against such vessels are illegal and it does not want to be complicit, said CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand. “The UK’s decision marks a significant break from its closest ally and intelligence sharing partner and underscores the growing skepticism over the legality of the US military’s campaign around Latin America,” Bertrand wrote. The UK controls a number of territories around the Caribbean and for years has helped the US spot vessels suspected of carrying drugs so Americans could stop and board them and detain the crews and seize any drugs on board.  But UK officials stopped sharing intelligence over a month ago, concerned that US strikes on the boats, which have killed 76 people (see summary above), violate international law, sources told Bertrand. United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said in October that the strikes violate international law and are “extrajudicial killing.” The sources said the UK agrees. 

“Odd Argentine Export Tax Resists Repeal,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3, 2025

There’s renewed hope among agriculture exporters in Argentina that the radical right-wing government of Javier Milei will end or reduce taxes on their overseas shipments. Argentina’s president promised as much two years ago but his changes so far have been modest. Most countries promote or even subsidize agricultural exports, say Journal reporters Greg Ip and Silvia Frydlewsky. But the Argentine government depends on the revenue from export taxes more than any other major economy or staple-crops producer, according to the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Milei needs the revenue to keep the budget balanced, crucial to taming inflation, the cornerstone of his reform program,” the Journal reporters write. He also has to be wary of the reaction of the Trump administration because, when Argentina did suspend export taxes  in the case of soybeans, its soybean exports surged to the detriment of American soybean farmers. Export taxes were common among developing countries but many later dropped them. Argentina in the early 2000s decided to tax exporters because they were benefitting from the devalued peso and high commodity prices. Néstor Kirchner, then the president of Argentina,  decided to raise the taxes to finance increased spending. He said this would divert sales from foreign to domestic markets and hold down family food budgets. But Argentina’s agricultural industry can’t pass along the cost of the taxes to buyers because commodity prices are set in global markets.  By reducing profit margins, the taxes have led to less use of expensive patented seeds and fertilizers, leading to lower meat, milk and grain production. Argentine farmer Marcos Pereda has turned over more than half of his farm to a wildlife preserve. Infrastructure relating to agricultural exports such as roads, railroads and ports is less extensive and less well maintained in Argentina compared to Brazil and Chile. But the Milei government’s response to pressure from agriculture exporters to end the taxes has been limited to removing them for a few products and lowering them for others. Argentina’s minister of deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger, says export taxes “are definitely on the table” but that numerous taxes need addressing. 

“’You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison,” New York Times, Nov. 8, 2025

What do interviews by the Times of dozens of  men the Trump administration deported to a Salvadoran prison show? According to independent forensic analysts, their testimony about the treatment they received was credible and consistent and showed it met the United Nations definition of torture. Last March, the U.S. government sent more than 200 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, part of a strategy to ship migrants to third countries and deter them from coming to the United States.  “We interviewed 40 of the men who were imprisoned,” said the story by Julie Turkewitz, Tibisay Romero, Sheyla Urdaneta, and Isayen Herrera. “They described being beaten,  sexually assaulted by guards and driven to the brink of suicide.” Examples of their treatment included being shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed into unconsciousness. “They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours. One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods.” They said they were ignored by medical personnel, exposed to harsh lights 24 hours a day, and forced to drink from wells of fetid water. A White House spokeswoman presented with the findings of the Times investigation said President Trump “is committed to keeping his promises to the American people by removing dangerous criminal and terrorist illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American public.” She said without elaborating that the press should focus on American children “tragically…murdered by vicious illegal aliens.” El Salvador officials didn’t respond to a request for  comment. The Trump administration never released a list of the names of the 252 Venezuelan men held at the notorious CECOT prison or specified the crimes they committed. Working from a leaked list of the names they obtained, Times reporters found that only 13 percent of the men detained “seemed to have a serious criminal accusation or conviction in some part of the world.” Of the 40 men interviewed – searched out by Times reporters in their home cities and towns in Venezuela – only three had criminal accusations against them beyond immigration and traffic offenses. They were sent to the facility having received no or little due process and were told they were being returned to Venezuela. When they first  landed instead in El Salvador, Salvadoran officials boarded the plane and beat them, breaking noses, splitting lips, and bruising them, said one of the men. “If you raised your head even a little, they would knock it down with a blow.” Another said they were told “you’ll leave only in a body bag.” Many of the men said they were placed in a “crane” position in which they were made to kneel with hands cuffed behind their backs and guards then lifted them by their arms. According to the Times, detainees began cutting themselves with edges of metal and plastic pipes to use their blood to write protest signs.  In July, U.S. and Venezuelan officials agreed to a prisoner swap in which the men were released and returned to Venezuela, from which many of the men said they had fled to migrate to the U.S. because of repression by the Maduro government. In some cases they were returned to their homes escorted by Venezuela’s feared intelligence service. A U.S. federal appeals court in September blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants. “But the ruling does not prevent the government from using other lawful means to remove people from the United States, meaning Mr. Trump could send more people to prison in El Salvador,” the Times said. 

“DHS Friction Tests Deportation Push,” Wall Street Journal,  N0v. 8-9, 2025

Controversial aggressive tactics employed by the U.S. Border Patrol are winning  favor with Department of Homeland Security leaders at the expense of the more traditional approach of Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE). Longtime ICE officials want to rely on police research to develop target lists and prioritize people with criminal histories, according to Journal reporters Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey and Tarini Parti. But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and top aide Corey Lewandowski have chosen attention-grabbing approaches such as the one in Chicago that aim to pressure people to self-deport. The pair like the approach of Border Patrol veteran Greg Bovino who militarizes  enforcement and clashes with protestors. Department leadership liked what Bovino has done in Chicago  so much that they’ve fired several  ICE executives in field offices across the country and replaced them with more aggressive Border Patrol veterans. But some sources inside the department say Bovino has gone too far and is inciting a public backlash. A federal judge has made moves to rein him in. The flashier tactics yield lackluster results, they say, in that Bovino’s agents have later been forced to release many of the people they arrested because they are U.S. citizens or have other legal status to protect them from deportations. Noem and Lewandowski have used money from a $170 billion infusion from Congress to buy ten 737 jets from Spirit Airlines saying they will increase deportation flights – “and for their own  travel, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Journal reporters said. But officials learned that Spirit, now in bankruptcy, didn’t actually own the planes and that they don’t have engines, which need to be bought separately. Hiring contractors for flights would be cheaper, some officials said. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said the Journal’s reporting about the jet purchases wasn’t accurate but didn’t elaborate.  

“Measure to Block Use of Force in Venezuela Defeated,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 2025

The U.S. Senate Nov. 6 voted 51 to 49 to reject a resolution that would block military action by the Trump administration against Venezuela without congressional authorization. Two Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting it. The Republicans are Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “Strikes on boats? That is not what this is about,” said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. “This is about the prospect discussed by the president of a land invasion of a sovereign nation.” Previously, the Senate defeated a resolution requiring congressional approval for attacking so-called drug boats in the Caribbean. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Venezuela, “in the hands of Maduro, is an existential threat. Whatever power that President Trump would like to use to stop that, I think he has the authority.”  

“Brazil is Developing Its Own Fertilizer to Cultivate Defenses in Trade Wars,” Wall Street Journal, Nov.6, 2025

China is increasingly buying agricultural products from Brazil rather than the United States because of the trade war between Washington and Beijing. Brazil, meanwhile, faced with 50 percent U.S. tariffs on its own products, is counting on its globally dominant agriculture industry to carry it through the trade difficulties it has with Washington.  So the growing Chinese demand for its products helps. But Brazil has an Achilles heel, notes Journal reporter Samantha Pearson – fertilizer. It imports 90 percent of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium ingredients it needs from Russia, but that supply source is unstable because of its war with Ukraine and Western sanctions. “A solution lies in the world’s largest rainforest,” says Pearson. There, Toronto-based Brazil Potash Corp. is investing $2.5 billion to build a potash mine near the town of Autazes. Potash is a potassium-based fertilizer. The mine will tap into the Amazon Potash Basin, one of the largest in the world. The mine is projected to yield 2.4 million tons a year of potash starting in 2030. That’s enough to supply about one-fifth of Brazil’s potash needs. The entire basin has enough to make Brazil almost self-sufficient in potash. Brazil needs more fertilizer than other agricultural powerhouses in order to continue its current output. Year-round farming in Brazil depletes the nutrients of its soil. The clay in its soil makes it hard to retain fertilizer during heavy rains. But it isn’t easy to dig a giant hole into one of the world’s most environmentally and culturally sensitive regions, says Raphael Bloise, who directs the project in Brazil. Brazil Potash has finally won approval to go ahead after spending years fighting lawsuits and trying to win over local residents. It plans to mine only outside of  the lands of the Mura, an indigenous group. “Environmentalists warn that even legal mining could set a dangerous precedent in the Amazon, paving the way for deforestation, land grabbing and social conflict,” Pearson notes. According to critics, the roads, ports and power lines built as part of industrial mines also attract illegal loggers, wildcat miners and ranchers deeper into the jungle. But others say Brazil has to find a way to support the some 30 million people who live in its share of the Amazon, many of whom live in deep poverty. “Compared with farming, mining leaves a relatively small footprint,” Pearson says. The CEO of Brazil Potash, Matt Simpson, says “Brazil is a massive exporter of agricultural goods to China, but they’re exposed to all these geopolitical risks that impact their fertilizer supply – having a secure source of potash in their backyard is essential.” 

“At UN Climate Summit, World Leaders Say Time is Running Short to Stop the Worst Effects of Warming,” Associated Press, Nov. 6, 2025

The head of the United Nations Nov.6 opened a world summit in Brazil on climate change by blasting the United States and other countries for refusing to participate. US Secretary-General António Guterres criticized world powers he said “remain captive to the fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest.” Permitting global warming to exceed the crucial benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius would be a “moral failure and deadly negligence,” he said. Every “fraction of a degree higher means more hunger, displacement and loss." The world’s three biggest polluters – China, the United States and India – were missing from the preliminary gathering ahead of climate negotiations that begin next week, said AP reporters Isabel Debre and Mauricio Savarse. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, warned that the “window of opportunity we have to act is rapidly closing” and said there was “no greater symbol of the environmental cause” than the Amazon rainforest. It absorbs huge quantities of carbon dioxide that hastens global warming and is known as “the lungs of the world.” But it is shrinking because of wildfires and the encroachment of cattle ranching, logging and mining. Alluding to U.S. President Donald Trump, Lula said “extremist forces fabricate falsehoods to gain electoral advantage and trap future generations in an outdated model that perpetuates social and economic disparities and environmental degradation.” Trump booster Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, also is boycotting the meeting. Lula is proposing the creation of a new fund called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. It would pay 74 developing countries to keep their trees standing, relying on loans from wealthier countries and commercial investors. Brazil announced pledges of almost $5.5 billion Nov. 6 from Norway, Indonesia and a few other countries. It’s unclear whether major world powers will contribute. 

“Venezuela Military Coup Is Unlikely Even if U.S. Attacks to Oust Maduro,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 2025

Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro is adept at fending off coup challenges, writes Simon Romero of the New York Times. “When Venezuela was engulfed in unrest from 2017 to 2020, fueled in part by an economic crash and food scarcity, his government thwarted at least nine military mutinies,” Romero reports, based on information from  John Polga-Hecimovich, a Venezuela scholar at the U.S. Naval Academy. Maduro’s control over the armed forces stems in part from a climate of fear and paranoia. There are reports that officers branded as disloyal have been tortured in holding cells. Some senior military figures have died in prison. Chilean authorities claim Maduro’s government ordered the assassination of an exiled 32-year-old Venezuelan Army officer whose body was found buried under nearly five feet of  concrete. The Maduro government was vehement in denying responsibility. “Economic self-interest may also help hold back a rebellion,” Romero added. Senior military officers benefit from drug trafficking or unauthorized mining ventures, linking their fortunes to Maduro’s in a country facing widespread poverty and unemployment. 

“Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Presses Charges After Street Groping Incident,” Associated Press, Nov. 5, 2025

It’s an example of what Mexican women face every day, say AP reporters Fabiola Sánchez and Fernanda Figueroa – a drunk man groping President Claudia Sheinbaum as she walked down the street from the National Palace to the Education Ministry. Sheinbaum said Nov. 5 she decided to press charges and called on states to study their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults. She said Mexicans need to hear “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated.” She added that “if this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?” She said she had similar experiences when she was 12 years old and using public transportation to go to school. Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada announced overnight that the man had been arrested. Andrea González Martinez, 27, told AP that “it happens regularly, it happens on public transportation. It’s something you experience every day in Mexico.” AP noted without further explanation that during the first seven months of 2025 cases of femicide dropped almost 40 percent compared to the same period in 2024, citing figures from the Federal Security Secretariat. 

Trump Considers Military Options to Hit Venezuela,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 2025

Many of President Trump’s senior advisers are urging him to oust Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro from power, according to an extensive page one story New York Times story reported by David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Devlin Barrett.  He’s been given three options for military action against the authoritarian Venezuelan leader. One would involve airstrikes against military facilities, some of which might be involved in drug trafficking. The aim would be to collapse the support of the Venezuelan military for Maduro. If Maduro doesn’t feel protected, officials say,  he might flee the country or move around a lot more, making him more vulnerable to capture. But critics say that option might backfire and rally support for Maduro. A second option would be to send special forces to capture or kill Maduro. The administration would assert that such an approach is legal because it asserts that he is  the leader of a “narcoterrorist” gang. The third option involves sending U.S. forces to seize airfields and some of the country’s oil fields and infrastructure. The last two options involve greater risk to American commandos on the ground, especially if targeting Maduro in an urban area. Trump has been saying he will attack Venezuela and then saying he won’t. His top White House aide Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio favor the most aggressive options to oust Maduro while Trump himself is described as reluctant to consider attacks that could put American troops at risk. But he also is “deeply focused on Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves.” At the same time, White House officials say they want an updated legal analysis before taking any additional steps against Maduro.  

“A Mayor in Mexico is Gunned Down for Standing Up to Cartels,” Opinion, Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2025

When those who defy organized crime are left unprotected, the state loses its legitimacy, writes Mexican journalist León Krauze. This past Saturday during a traditional Day of the Dead celebration “Mexico’s cartels sent yet another clear and chilling message: We can and will act with total impunity as we settle scores with our enemies,” Krauze said. Their victim was Carlos Manzo Rodríguez, the mayor of Uruapan, gunned down minutes after walking with his son through the town’s central plaza. It’s the second largest city in the state of Michoacán, where cartel violence has grown more brutal in recent years. Cartels there “fight for control of everything: drug routes, farmland, transportation and even the prices of limes and avocados. Nothing moves without money being paid out. Anyone who refuses – or dares speak out – ends up dead.” Two weeks earlier, Bernardo Bravo was killed. He was president of the Apatzingán Valley Citrus Producers Association. His was one of the few voices publicly denouncing extortion networks that demand payments for every kilo of limes harvested, box sold, and truck leaving the orchards. He and Manzo had both asked for state and federal protection. Manzo called in recent months with a sense of urgency for the intervention of Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, asking her to visit Uruapan. Her security minister, Omar García Harfuch, vowed after what Sheinbaum called Manzo’s “vile killing” that there would be no impunity. But Krauze said Mexicans “have heard this kind of empty rhetoric before.” He said direct U.S. military intervention against the cartels in Mexico would be unwise. But he said Sheinbaum “needs to tackle the problem head-on – and think about how the United States might be able to help. Because when criminals decide who can live, it is not only the victims who die. It is the very hope for justice itself.” 

 

“Maduro’s Unbreakable Repression Machine Will Outlast Him,” New York Times, Nov. 4, 2025

Along with standard authoritarian tactics, Venezuela’s President Nicholás Maduro has employed “function fusion,” says Amherst College political science professor Javier Corrales. The strategy involves “granting existing institutions or groups the authority to perform economic roles traditionally reserved for other groups,” he writes. “This maneuver has allowed the Maduro regime to co-opt a critical mass of institutions and actors, turning them into fervent supporters of the status quo.” High-ranking members of the judiciary and the military run widespread business ventures, legal and otherwise. Military officers “run state-owned enterprises, establish private firms that profit from state contracts  and are involved in illicit smuggling networks involving gasoline, minerals and drugs. These soldier-businessmen make fortunes while the rest of society stands in line for food.” Meanwhile, “colectivos” tasked with organizing neighborhoods “have been weaponized as paramilitary shock forces. In exchange for suppressing dissent, these groups are granted unofficial license to loot,” says Corrales.  Maduro appears to have created power-sharing arrangements with dissident Colombian guerrilla groups involved in illegal mining and drug trafficking which provide basic state services in remote parts of Venezuela. The system of regime insiders Maduro has cultivated probably could push him out of power if they wanted to but even if they did  it’s unclear what would happen next. “Many would almost certainly be acting not with the intention of fomenting total regime change, but of trading out Mr. Maduro for another figurehead who would preserve the exclusive networks of patronage that sustain them.” Corrales concludes that even if a member of the opposition replaced Maduro it would not necessarily result in democracy. “A new state apparatus with institutional checks and balances would effectively need to be built from scratch – or the country’s new political winners could well recreate the deeply corrupt, coercive and unequal system that has so successfully entrenched Mr. Maduro’s rule.” 

“A Former Trump Golf Club Worker, Mistakenly Deported,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 2025

It’s the type of mistake people familiar with the deportation process say will occur more often – a former worker at a Trump golf club in New York mistakenly sent back to Mexico after being denied a chance to plead his case in immigration court. Immigration authorities were supposed to have sent 39-year-old Alejandro Juarez, who had crossed illegally from Mexico into the U.S. 22 years before, to a detention center in Arizona. “Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge – a hearing Mr. Juarez never had,” said Times reporters Luis Ferré-Sadurni and Hamed Aleaziz. “The sloppy handling of his case underscored the growing strain at an agency [ICE]  under mounting pressure from President Trump to accelerate the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants,” they added. “Critics warn that the missteps in his case could foreshadow mistakes poised to become more frequent as detentions expand.”  Juarez had been working seven days a week at two different jobs. His ten years at Trump’s Westchester golf club ended in 2019 when he was fired along with other undocumented workers. Left behind in Westchester County, N.Y., was his wife, Maria Priego, and children who are all U.S. citizens. Priego, working as a maid, was left to support their three youngest children, 10, 12 and 16. His oldest son, 20, is serving in the U.S. Marines. In 2022,  riding in his car with  his wife and two of his children, Juarez was pulled over and arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated. Juarez said he was charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced to three year’s probation. ICE became aware of him and requested that he check in periodically, which he did three times without complications, he said. He said some ICE officers thanked him for coming in and praised his English skills and expressed gratitude for his son’s military service. But he was detained during a Sept. 15 check-in in Manhattan with his wife sitting outside in a car not knowing what was happening. ICE recently contacted Juarez’s lawyer and was making arrangements to bring him back to the United States and keep him in detention until his immigration case is resolved, said Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin. But she said in the end he will be deported because he is a threat to public safety because of his driving arrest. The lawyer for Juarez, Anibal Romero, expressed hope that because his son is in the military he could be eligible for a type of relief known as "parole in place" traditonally provided to immediate relatives of those in the U.S. military. 

“U.S. Isn’t Planning Strike on Venezuela, President Says,” Wall Street Journal, Nov.1-2, 2025

Two weeks after suggesting ground strikes were possible President Trump said Oct. 31 that he isn’t  considering military attacks on Venezuela. “No, it’s not true,” he said when he was asked on Air Force One whether he was considering airstrikes on Venezuela. On Oct. 15, Trump said he was looking at ground strikes, noted Journal reporters Lara Seligman and Anvee Bhutani. He said then “We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea under control.” The Journal said Oct. 30 that the U.S. military had targets in Venezuela that included military facilities used to smuggle drugs. “If Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes, the targets would be chosen to send a message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down, U.S. officials said,” wrote Seligman and Bhutani. They noted that in June Trump said he would wait two weeks before deciding whether to take action against Iran and two days later ordered bombers to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.