Four migrants dead, 20 missing after boat capsizes near Dominican Republic
SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (WAM)|At least four migrants have died and around 20 are missing after their boat capsized off the coast of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, local authorities announced on Friday.
17 people have been rescued from the boat, which had about 40 people on board. Among the rescued are both Dominicans and Haitians.
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Al Etihad
12-07-2025
- Al Etihad
Four migrants dead, 20 missing after boat capsizes near Dominican Republic
12 July 2025 14:12 SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (WAM)|At least four migrants have died and around 20 are missing after their boat capsized off the coast of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, local authorities announced on Friday. 17 people have been rescued from the boat, which had about 40 people on board. Among the rescued are both Dominicans and Haitians.
Khaleej Times
05-02-2025
- Khaleej Times
Another Guantanamo? Salvadorans divided on accepting US, other convicts
Salvadorans are split over the offer from President Nayib Bukele to take in prisoners from the United States, with some fearing it could turn the country into another Guantanamo Bay while others say the proposal could reap dividends. El Salvador's iron-fisted Bukele enjoys sky-high approval ratings for his sweeping crackdown on violent gangs, which has led to a sharp reduction in crime in what was once one of the world's most violent countries. Over 80,000 Salvadorans have been arrested since he declared a state of emergency in 2022, thousands of whom are being held at a sprawling new Terrorism Confinement Centre, Latin America's biggest penitentiary, with capacity for 40,000 inmates. On Monday, Bukele stunned Salvadorans and Americans alike by offering to incarcerate US convicts and deported prisoners alike at the maximum security prison on the edge of the jungle. Georgina Garcia, a 60-year-old stay-at-home mother, expressed alarm at the prospect. "Bukele is trying to clean the country of evil. How then could he then bring in more criminal people? He can't!" she told AFP in a square in the capital San Salvador. Sixty-year-old former guerrilla Juan Jose Ordonez, who was running some errands nearby, also believed it would be "wrong" to accept prisoners from other countries. "We do not need him to bring more criminals into this have enough social problems," he said. Ahead of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit this week, Washington had touted El Salvador a possible "safe third country" for expelled migrants whose countries do not accept US deportation flights. Bukele offered to lock up convicts "of any nationality" at the facility known as CECOT, where prisoners live crammed in windowless cells, sleeping on metal beds with no mattress, forbidden from having visitors and kept under watch 24 hours a day. Rubio said the proposal, which was cheered by President Donald Trump even as he acknowledged questions over the legality of deporting US prisoners, covered members of El Salvador's own MS-13 gang as well as the powerful Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Garcia said she feared that "Colombians, Haitians, Venezuelans" and other convicts would "corrupt this society even more, just as it is starting to straighten out". But some Salvadorans said the country stood to gain from housing foreign convicts for a fee that Bukele said would be "relatively low for the US" but "significant" for his debt-ridden nation. Newspaper vendor Juan Ascencio, 67, mused that "if there is money" in it, the scheme could be worthwhile. Others saw potential dividends for around 230,000 Salvadorans whose protection from deportation was extended by Trump's predecessor Joe Biden in his last days in office. The Trump administration has not yet touched the status of Salvadorans while stripping 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of the same protections. Retired army sergeant Jose Alberto Claros, 65, suggested that Bukele strike a deal with Trump to halt all deportations of Salvadorans and to "legalise our fellow citizens" in the United States. But one of El Salvador's main rights groups warned it would not stand by and watch the country become a "Guantanamo 2.0." On Tuesday, the United States began flying detained migrants to the notorious military base in Cuba, where hundreds of terrorism suspects were held for years after the 9/11 attacks, many without formal charges. Ingrid Escobar, director of the rights group Socorro Juridico Humanitario, warned of a similar lack of due process for prisoners in El Salvador.
Khaleej Times
06-11-2024
- Khaleej Times
Trump's mass deportation push expected to utilise military, diplomats and other govt workers
A resident holds a mobile phone showing a flier posted at a local social media account which reads "Foreigners & Haitians Out, There is no place in America for this filth!", in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, US, on September 24, 2024. — Reuters Donald Trump is expected to mobilise agencies across the US government to help him deport record numbers of immigrants, building on efforts in his first term to tap all available resources and pressure so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions to cooperate, according to six former Trump officials and allies. Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest, telling supporters America had given him an "unprecedented and powerful mandate". Trump backers — including some who could enter his second administration — anticipate the Republican president-elect will call on everyone from the US military to diplomats overseas to turn his campaign promise of mass deportations into a reality. The effort would include cooperation with Republican-led states and use federal funding as leverage against resistant jurisdictions. Trump recaptured the White House vowing a vast immigration crackdown. The centrepiece of his re-election bid was a promise to deport record numbers of immigrants, an operation Trump's running mate JD Vance estimated could remove one million people per year. Immigrant advocates warn that Trump's deportation effort would be costly, divisive and inhumane, leading to family separations and devastating communities. Trump struggled to ramp up deportations during his 2017-2021 presidency. When counting both immigration removals and faster 'returns' to Mexico by US border officials, Biden deported more immigrants in fiscal year 2023 than any Trump year, according to government data. But a deportation operation targeting millions would require many more officers, detention beds and immigration court judges. American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, estimated the cost of deporting 13 million immigrants in the US illegally as $968 billion over a little more than a decade. Tom Homan, a former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expected to join the new administration, said in a late October interview that the scale of the deportations would hinge on potential officers and detention space. 'It all depends on what the budget is,' he said. While the incoming Trump administration could benefit from experience gained during his first term, it could again encounter resistance from ideologically opposed government employees, including officers that screen migrants for asylum. The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant advocacy groups have been preparing for court battles if Trump again tests the bounds of his legal authority. Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who led the fight against Trump's contentious family separation policy, said more than 15 lawyers focused on immigration with the organisation's national office spent the year readying for the possibility of a Trump return. 'We definitely need to be coordinated and have more resources, because I think they will come in much more prepared,' Gelernt said. The State Department in particular could be one place where Trump acts more aggressively than during his first term, several Trump backers said. A key factor will be whether other countries will accept their citizens, an issue Trump faced with limited success during his first term. The Trump administration also struggled at times to convince other nations in the region — including Mexico — to take steps to stop migrants from moving toward the US-Mexico border. Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security under Trump, said the State Department was a 'roadblock' for immigration enforcement and that aggressive appointees will be key. Christopher Landau, a former US ambassador to Mexico from 2019-2021, recently said he was frustrated with the reluctance of some US diplomats to tackle immigration enforcement. "Nobody really thought that was their problem,' Landau said in an October panel discussion by the Centre for Immigration Studies, which favors restricting immigration. About half of ICE's 21,000 employees are part of its Homeland Security Investigations unit, which focuses on transnational crime such as drug smuggling and child exploitation rather than immigration enforcement. Several Trump allies said the unit would need to spend more time on immigration. HSI has distanced itself from ICE's immigration work in recent years, saying fear of deportation made it harder for its investigators to build trust in immigrant communities. Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's first-term immigration agenda, said in 2023 that National Guard troops from cooperative states could potentially be deployed to resistant states to assist with deportations, which would likely trigger legal battles. Trump plans to use a 1798 wartime statute known as the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged gang members, an action that would almost certainly be challenged in court. The law has been used three times, according to the left-leaning Brennan Centre for Justice: the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, when it was employed to justify internment camps for people of Japanese, German and Italian descent. The Brennan Center and others have called on Congress to repeal the law. "Many fear that a second Trump administration would seek to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country swiftly and without judicial review," Naureen Shah, the ACLU's deputy director of government affairs, wrote in late October. George Fishman, a former DHS official under Trump, said the Trump administration would need to prove the immigrants were sent by a foreign government. 'I worry a little about overpromising,' Fishman said.
