Exclusive: US moving fighter jets to Middle East as Israel-Iran war rages
One of the officials said the deployments include F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter aircraft.
Two of the officials stressed the defensive nature of the deployment of fighter aircraft, which have been used to shoot down drones and projectiles.
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The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Appeals court keeps order blocking Trump administration from indiscriminate immigration sweeps
A federal appeals court ruled Friday night to uphold a lower court's temporary order blocking the Trump administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing Monday afternoon at which the federal government asked the court to overturn a temporary restraining order issued July 12 by Judge Maame E. Frimpong, arguing it hindered their enforcement of immigration law. Immigrant advocacy groups filed suit last month accusing President Donald Trump's administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California during the administration's crackdown on illegal immigration. The lawsuit included three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens as plaintiffs. In her order, Frimpong said there was a 'mountain of evidence' that federal immigration enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution. She wrote the government cannot use factors such as apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone's occupation as the only basis for reasonable suspicion to detain someone. The appeals court panel agreed and questioned the government's need to oppose an order preventing them from violating the constitution. 'If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion, they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion,' the judges wrote. A hearing for a preliminary injunction, which would be a more substantial court order as the lawsuit proceeds, is scheduled for September. The Los Angeles region has been a battleground with the Trump administration over its aggressive immigration strategy that spurred protests and the deployment of the National Guards and Marines for several weeks. Federal agents have rounded up immigrants without legal status to be in the U.S. from Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, and farms, many who have lived in the country for decades. Among the plaintiffs is Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, who was shown in a video taken by a friend June 13 being seized by federal agents as he yells, 'I was born here in the states, East LA bro!' They want to 'send us back to a world where a U.S. citizen ... can be grabbed, slammed against a fence and have his phone and ID taken from him just because he was working at a tow yard in a Latino neighborhood,' American Civil Liberties Union attorney Mohammad Tajsar told the court Monday. The federal government argued that it hadn't been given enough time to collect and present evidence in the lawsuit, given that it was filed shortly before the July 4 holiday and a hearing was held the following week. 'It's a very serious thing to say that multiple federal government agencies have a policy of violating the Constitution,' attorney Jacob Roth said. He also argued that the lower court's order was too broad, and that immigrant advocates did not present enough evidence to prove that the government had an official policy of stopping people without reasonable suspicion. He referred to the four factors of race, language, presence at a location, and occupation that were listed in the temporary restraining order, saying the court should not be able to ban the government from using them at all. He also argued that the order was unclear on what exactly is permissible under law. 'Legally, I think it's appropriate to use the factors for reasonable suspicion,' Roth said The judges sharply questioned the government over their arguments. 'No one has suggested that you cannot consider these factors at all,' Judge Jennifer Sung said. However, those factors alone only form a 'broad profile' and don't satisfy the reasonable suspicion standard to stop someone, she said. Sung, a Biden appointee, said that in an area like Los Angeles, where Latinos make up as much as half the population, those factors 'cannot possibly weed out those who have undocumented status and those who have documented legal status.' She also asked: 'What is the harm to being told not to do something that you claim you're already not doing?' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the Friday night decision a 'victory for the rule of law' and said the city will protect residents from the 'racial profiling and other illegal tactics' used by federal agents.
Reuters
19 minutes ago
- Reuters
US appeals court keeps bar on Los Angeles federal immigration arrests
Aug 2 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court late on Friday affirmed a lower court's decision temporarily barring U.S. government agents from making immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. Rejecting the Trump administration's request to pause the lower court's order, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that the plaintiffs would likely be able to prove that federal agents had carried out arrests based on peoples' appearance, language and where they lived or worked. President Donald Trump called National Guard troops and U.S. Marines into Los Angeles in June in response to protests against the immigration raids, marking an extraordinary use of military force to support civilian police operations within the United States. The city of Los Angeles and other Southern California municipalities joined a lawsuit filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union accusing federal agents of using unlawful police tactics such as racial profiling to meet immigration arrest quotas set by the administration. A California judge last month blocked the Trump administration from racially profiling immigrants as it seeks deportation targets and from denying immigrants' right to access to lawyers during their detention. In Friday's unsigned decision, the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely rejected the administration's appeal of the temporary restraining order. The judges agreed with the lower court in blocking federal officials from detaining people based solely on "apparent race or ethnicity," speaking Spanish or accented English, or being at locations such as a "bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc." The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the order a victory for the city. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now," she said in a statement. Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, welcomed the ruling in statement: "This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region."
Sky News
28 minutes ago
- Sky News
'Drone followed Gaza colleague home and wiped out his family', says British doctor
A British doctor who has just returned from Gaza says a drone followed her colleague home where it wiped out his family. Nada Al Hadithy also told Sky News presenter Matt Barbet. how one of her patients, a 21-year-old woman who was six months pregnant, lost her baby after she was "blown up in her tent". "Her husband was killed, she lost her eye, she had an open fracture, and both her legs were completely destroyed from the bomb blast," "This woman is completely emaciated, with no vitamins, no food. And one day her baby stopped moving." It comes after Donald Trump's Middle East envoy visited a food distribution site in Gaza. Steve Witkoff and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, toured a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site in the southern city of Rafah on Friday. The Israeli-backed American contractor's efforts to deliver food to the region have been mired in violence and controversy, with hundreds killed by Israeli fire while walking to such aid sites since May, according to eyewitnesses, health officials and the UN human rights office. Israel's military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approached its forces, while GHF said its armed contractors have only fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 2:47 Trump envoy Witkoff visits Gaza Ms Hadithy said the situation in Gaza is "absolutely desperate" and a school classroom's worth of children "are dying every single day". She said there was "a tangible difference in the amount of starvation and the emaciation of our patients" during the three weeks she was in Gaza, adding: "Even the severity of and relentlessness of the bombings was worse. "It was mass casualty after mass casualty, with people being blown up in their tents, which were meant to be in green zones. The situation was catastrophic." She said one colleague - who she described as "patient, joyful and hardworking" - was followed home one day by a quadcopter drone, according to eyewitness testimony from fellow medical workers. The drone "didn't kill him on the route where he was on his own, it waited until he was in his tent and greeted his three children and killed all of them", she added. During her time in Gaza, Ms Hadithy said she saw "emaciated children", adding: "So now you've got two million starving people in [an area] the same size as Exeter, which in our country and in our census in 2021 had 130,000 people in it. "That's two million people with no water, no sanitation, no food, no medical supplies." Ms Hadithy also said Gazan health workers themselves are starving. "Never before have I seen such dignified, committed people," she added. Read more: Sky News unveils pattern of deadly Israeli attacks on families Explainer: What does recognising a Palestinian state mean? In a post on X, Mr Witkoff said he had spent more than five hours inside Gaza to gain "a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza". He did not request any meetings with UN officials in Gaza during the visit, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 1:00 Aid dropped into Gaza The war began when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and abducted 251 others. Of those, they still hold around 50, with 20 believed to be alive, after most of the others were released in ceasefires or other deals. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between militants and civilians in its count. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has been approached for a comment.
