A weakened Hezbollah leads some in Lebanon to talk of peace with Israel as US pushes sides together
"Thanks to Hezbollah being weakened and defeated after the war with Israel, we are finally in a position to have this conversation about peace with Israel," Rami Naim, Lebanon affairs journalist and analyst for Jusoor News, told Fox News Digital. "In the past the intelligence investigated me and took me to jail because I said we want peace with Israel, but now I say it openly, yes, we want normalization, and yes, we want peace with Israel without fear." Naim was personally attacked by Hezbollah last year for his outspoken views.
The weakening of Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, and the election of Joseph Aoun as Lebanon's president in January 2025, represents a turning point in the country's political trajectory. After more than two years of political deadlock, Aoun's election was seen as a victory for the anti-Hezbollah camp, and has seemingly made the shift in public opinion regarding peace with Israel more palatable.
Touting the U.S. president, Naim said, "We believe Trump will put things back on track and work toward peace, aiming for a major peace deal between Lebanon and Israel, which will require increased pressure on Iran."
Interviews conducted by Jussor, a pan-Arab media outlet, have highlighted that many Lebanese citizens are now willing to consider normalization with Israel. One Lebanese man, interviewed on camera with his face showing, shared his hope: "I believe a day will come when there will be normalization with Israel. It will take time, but it will happen eventually."
Another interviewee echoed similar sentiments: "Israel wants peace. They don't want war. They are cleaning things up so war doesn't happen, and we want peace too. We're exhausted."
Morgan Ortagus, U.S. deputy special envoy for Middle East Peace, has emphasized the necessity of disarming Hezbollah to stabilize Lebanon and pave the way for peace in the region.
In an interview with Al Arabiya earlier this month, she described Hezbollah as a "cancer" within Lebanon that must be removed for the country to have any hope of recovery. She said, "When you have cancer, you don't treat part of the cancer in your body and let the rest of it grow and fester; you cut the cancer out." Ortagus also criticized Iran for fueling regional instability and dragging Lebanon into conflicts it did not seek. She noted, "The government of Lebanon didn't want to go to war with Israel. It was on Oct. 8, 2023, that Hezbollah and Iran decided to get into the war… people were forced into a war that nobody wanted to be in."
"We are grateful to our ally Israel for defeating Hezbollah," Ortagus said at a news conference in Beirut's southeastern suburb of Baabda after a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the Associated Press reported.
Naim said that while the public may be ready for peace, it is the Lebanese political elite that must take action. "We need America to keep pressure on Lebanon's corrupt politicians, who have enabled Hezbollah to rebuild its military capabilities… These politicians must publicly endorse peace. It's not just activists and journalists who should be saying it. The decision-makers must step forward."
Naim's call for international intervention underscores the continued importance of U.S. influence in Lebanon's political direction. "We have suffered under the Biden and Obama administrations, as well as those who have made compromises and deals with Iran behind our backs, disregarding our interests," Naim said.
"During Trump's first term, there was significant pressure on Iran, which had posed aggression in the region. However, when Trump left the White House, Iran rebuilt its capabilities and grew stronger. Now, we have big hopes for Trump's second term. His return to the White House would change the equation. What makes us optimistic about Trump is that he fulfills his promises and conducts negotiations from a position of strength, not weakness."
While there is growing support for peace with Israel, the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remains a significant hurdle. One man interviewed by Jussor News pointed out, "I believe the whole region is heading toward peace. But we have our demands – you can't have 500,000 Palestinians living here, then the Israelis come make peace and normalization, and leave them all here with us."
Another woman told Jussor: "We are for peace in Lebanon. Not fighting other people's wars which are not in Lebanon's interests. Neutrality, as our patriarch said: enough already. We shouldn't be looking for excuses or saying, 'We want to liberate Palestine' while we keep destroying Lebanon. The Palestinians told us, 'Relax, we don't need anything from you.'"
"The Lebanese people are divided, but not into two equal parts," said Naim. "The majority of the Lebanese people today are supportive of normalization and peace with Israel. This is no longer a taboo in Lebanon. Lebanese citizens can say today, 'I am supportive of peace and normalization because I have suffered from these failed wars. The Israelis want peace, and we want peace. We want to live in peace. So it's a win-win situation.'"
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USA Today
17 minutes ago
- USA Today
ICE detention is growing in the South. This state was the first.
Louisiana, long known for its 'prison economy,' now houses more ICE detention facilities than any other non-border state. WINN PARISH, LA – Far from the jazz clubs and nightlife of New Orleans, thousands await their fate inside immigration jails. Louisiana has more dedicated Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers than any other state besides Texas – nine total – after it converted nearly half a dozen correctional facilities to immigrant detention. Most are remote, scattered near farms and forests. Among the sites is a unique "staging facility" on a rural airport tarmac for rapid deportations. President Donald Trump is increasingly leaning on Republican-led Southern states to detain and deport millions of immigrants ‒ from "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Florida Everglades to the expansion of a sprawling Georgia immigration facility. Far from the U.S.-Mexico border, Mississippi has the ICE jail with the highest average daily population. But Louisiana was the first non-border state to surge immigration detention capacity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and Tulane University Law School. The state opened five new facilities to detain immigrants in 2019, during the first Trump administration, and vastly expanded the number of detainees during the Biden administration. Immigrants are sent here from all over the country, far from their families, communities and, often, their lawyers. The Trump administration has confined some of its highest-profile detainees in Louisiana, including now-released Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil and Harvard University scientist Kseniia Petrova. The state's largest immigration jail, Winn Correctional Center, is tucked deep into dense pine woods nearly five hours northwest of New Orleans. The site is so remote that, for years, online maps routinely sent visitors the wrong way down a dirt road. A warning sign cautions visitors: "This property is utilized for the training of chase dogs." Other states might follow Louisiana's example as more federal funds flow to ICE detention. Congress recently authorized the Trump administration to spend $45 billion over the next four years to expand immigration jails around the country. That's nearly four times ICE's previous annual detention budget. USA TODAY traveled to four of Louisiana's nine ICE facilities, hoping to see firsthand what life is like for immigrants detained there. But the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied multiple requests for a tour of any of the locations. In an emailed statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said ICE originally expanded its detention capacity in Louisiana "to address the increasing number of individuals apprehended at the border" under the Biden administration. "ICE continues to explore all options to meet its current and future detention requirements while removing detainees as quickly as possible from the U.S.," she said. Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, described the state as key to Trump's promised mass deportation campaign. "Louisiana really is the epicenter for a lot of what is currently taking place with this administration," Ahmed said. "It's an outcropping of a prison economy that Louisiana has survived on for a long, long time." Deportation hub far from the border Louisiana found its foothold as a deportation hub at the end of Trump's first term, when the administration was looking to expand immigrant detention. The state had reformed its criminal justice system in 2017, with bipartisan support, to reduce sentences for low-level offenders. That had the effect of dramatically decreasing the state's prison population and freeing thousands of incarcerated people – mainly Black men and women. At the time, the Black imprisonment rate was nearly four times the rate of White imprisonment in Louisiana, according to the ACLU. Louisiana eventually rolled back the reforms. But racial justice activists briefly celebrated a win. Then ICE came knocking. The first Trump administration, and later the Biden administration, wanted to detain more illegal border crossers. Louisiana offered advantages: empty prisons, employees already trained in corrections, and access to the Alexandria airport with a detention facility and a history of deportation flights. It also has some of the country's most conservative immigration judges, as well as a federal appeals court that, in immigration cases, often sides with the government, lawyers say. "Louisiana had the infrastructure already there," said Homero López, legal director of New Orleans-based Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, a nonprofit that provides free representation. "ICE comes in saying, 'Y'all have got the space. We've got the people. We'll pay you double what the state was paying.' That's why the expansion was so fast." Louisiana's rural communities offered advantages for ICE Many Americans know Louisiana by its crown jewel, New Orleans, the state's tourism mecca, where social norms and politics are as liberal as the flow of alcohol on Bourbon Street. But Louisiana is largely wooded, rural, proudly conservative and deeply Christian. County governments are called parishes and the poverty rate is the highest in the nation. "People want jobs and who's to blame them?" said Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University research assistant professor who studies immigration enforcement. "It's fairly easy to promise jobs by setting up a detention facility." Rural Louisiana used to make a living from oil and timber. Logging trucks still rumble down forested two-lane roads, but the decline in natural resources and price unpredictability drove some communities to look for new industries. Prisons and now immigration detention deliver good-paying jobs and economic development to places like Winn, Ouachita and LaSalle parishes. LaSalle was one of the first to see the potential. In 2007, local leaders in the parish seat of Jena – current population 4,155 – wanted to diversify the economy. A sprawling juvenile detention facility north of town sat empty. When GEO Group, the nation's largest private detention contractor, swooped in with an ICE contract in hand, local leaders welcomed the opportunity. "Not having to build an entirely new facility was probably a key factor to them locating here," said Craig Franklin, editor of the weekly Jena Times. Plus, "our advantage to a strong employee pool was likely a factor." In Ouachita Parish, the mayor and council of Richwood ‒ population 3,881 ‒ debated whether to approve an ICE detention contract. Mayor Gerald Brown didn't have a vote, but he supported the conversion to ICE detention, he said. "Richwood Correctional Center is one of our biggest employers," Brown told USA TODAY. "There was a lot of back and forth. We did town halls, and we had meetings." The town stood to gain new income as an intermediary between ICE and the private operator, LaSalle Corrections. When it was a jail, the town earned a $112,000 a year fee. Now that it's an ICE detention center, the town is getting about $412,000 a year. "The financial windfall for the community was something I certainly couldn't turn a blind eye to," Brown said. Remote ICE has consequences for the detained The willingness of rural communities to house ICE facilities is part of the draw to Louisiana, researchers who study immigration detention say. Another factor: When ICE tries to open new detention centers near big cities, the agency is often met with resistance from immigrant rights activists and residents with "not in my backyard" arguments. But attorneys say the rural locations have real consequences for the people detained. Data shows that having access to an attorney dramatically improves a detainee's chance of winning release and a chance at staying in the United States. But it's hard for attorneys to get to many of the facilities; Ahmed regularly drives three to seven hours to visit immigrant clients across the state. Baher Azmy, legal director of the New York-based Center of Constitutional Rights, represented Khalil, the Columbia University activist, during his more than three-month detention at the Central Louisiana Processing Center in Jena. He visited twice and said he was struck by its remoteness, the utter lack of space for attorneys to meet their clients and the no-contact family visitation conducted behind plexiglass. Accommodations were made for Khalil to see his wife and newborn baby in a separate room, after a court ordered it. "Getting there was an all-day proposition," Azmy said. "It reminded me of my early trips to Guantanamo," the military jail on the island of Cuba, where he represented clients accused of terrorism in the years after the 9/11 attacks. "The desolation, the difficulty getting there. The visiting conditions were better in Guantanamo than in Jena. As horrible as Guantanamo was, I could hug my client." According to ICE, rules and accommodations at different facilities can depend on their design and capacity, as well as contractual agreements. "Allegations that ICE detention facilities have improper conditions are unequivocally false and designed to demonize ICE law enforcement," McLaughlin said. "ICE follows national detention standards." Exponential expansion of ICE detention The United States has consistently grown its immigration detention through both Republican and Democratic administrations. But the average number of immigrants in detention on any given day has risen rapidly over the past six months, from roughly 40,000 people at the end of the Biden administration in January to more than 58,000 in early July. Under President Joe Biden, ICE moved thousands of migrants who sought asylum at the United States-Mexico border over to Louisiana detention centers, said the ACLU's Ahmed. Now, the centers are filled with people picked up in the country's interior. Nearly half of those in ICE detention in early July had no criminal record or pending charges, according to ICE data. They faced civil immigration violations. When determining whether to send a detainee to Louisiana, ICE considers bed space availability, the detainee's medical and security needs and proximity to transportation, according to an agency statement. The average daily population in Louisiana ICE facilities topped 7,300 in early July. That compares to roughly 2,000 ICE detainees in 2017 at the start of the first Trump administration, according to data collected by TRAC at Syracuse University. Some of that increase is due to a Trump administration decision to withdraw legal status from thousands of immigrants who arrived during the Biden administration and followed the rules then in place. "These are mothers. These are children. These are students. And these are individuals who often had status that was very much legal, that's then been taken away by the administration," Ahmed said. "So what we are seeing is the rendering of documented people to undocumented by the stroke of a pen of the United States government." More: He won asylum and voted for Trump. Now his family may have to leave. Three times this spring and early summer, Will Trim traveled to Richwood Correctional to visit his colleague Petrova, the Harvard scientist from Russia. He said the buildings looked "like warehouses, featureless beige buildings" encircled with razor wire, separated from a low-income neighborhood by a patch of woods. During his visits, few of the people he spoke with in the nearby town of Monroe knew that more than 700 immigrant women were being held locally. According to ICE data, on average, in July, 97% of the women in Richwood Correctional had no criminal record. "If they are being held without charge," he asked, "why is there double-barbed wire? Why is it hidden in the forest?" Dinah Pulver contributed to this report.
Los Angeles Times
17 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Medicaid searches, 10,000 new agents and immigrant arrest numbers: What's the latest with ICE?
News about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and arrests seems to flow as if emanating from an unending tap. That makes it difficult, at times, to pick up on important topics and issues. I'm going to use this space to highlight a few articles from my colleagues focusing on the potential growth of ICE in the coming years, new tools that federal agents can use to expand crackdowns, and what the actual numbers say. My colleague Andrea Castillo dove into the numbers and reality of an agent hiring spree. The massive funding bill signed into law this month by President Trump earmarks about $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement, including tens of billions for new deportation agents and other personnel. During his first term, when Trump called for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to hire 15,000 people collectively, a July 2017 report by the Homeland Security inspector general found significant setbacks. In 2017, ICE hired 371 deportation officers from more than 11,000 applications and took 173 days on average to finalize hires, the news outlet Government Executive reported. According to Cronkite News, Border Patrol shrunk by more than 1,000 agents after Trump left office in 2021. The Homeland Security inspector general concluded that to meet the goal of 10,000 new immigration officers, ICE would need more than 500,000 applicants. For CBP to hire 5,000 new agents, it would need 750,000 applicants. Castillo added that past and potentially future corruption, the prospect of lowering hiring standards and competition with other police agencies make Trump's hiring goal an uphill battle. For more, check out her entire article here. My colleagues Jenny Jarvie and Hannah Fry noted that the Trump administration is forging ahead with a plan to hand over the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients to Homeland Security personnel seeking to track down people living in the U.S. illegally. The huge trove of private information includes home addresses, Social Security numbers and ethnicities of 79 million Medicaid enrollees. The plan, which has not been announced publicly, is the latest step by the Trump administration to deliver on its pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day. California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff warned last month of potential violations of federal privacy laws as Trump officials made plans to share personal health data. Undocumented immigrants are not permitted to enroll in Medicaid, a joint federal and state program that helps cover medical costs for low-income individuals. However, federal law requires states to offer emergency Medicaid, coverage that pays for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to everyone, including non-U.S. citizens. Check out the full article here. Colleagues Michael Wilner and Rachel Uranga reported on the number of people picked up in the Greater Los Angeles area by Homeland Security. Federal authorities said earlier that 1,618 undocumented immigrants had been detained between June 6 — the start of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security operation in Los Angeles — and June 22. That total increased by nearly 1,200 arrests in just over two weeks. Trump deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines in the city days after the operation began amid heated protests. Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials have repeatedly criticized federal operations for terrorizing immigrant communities, where business has slowed and many have holed up in their homes. The president's immigration crackdown in Los Angeles has been a test case for his administration as it presses the bounds of executive authority, deploying federal agents and the military to a major metropolitan city with leadership hostile to its cause. For more, here's the complete article. Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage. Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew J. Campa, reporterKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump defied the world with truth — and upended the status quo
In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo. The unthinkable has become the banal. Take illegal immigration — remember the 10,000 daily illegal entries under former President Joe Biden? Recall the only solution was supposedly 'comprehensive immigration reform' — a euphemism for mass amnesties. Now, there is no such thing as daily new illegal immigration. It simply disappeared with common-sense enforcement of existing immigration laws — and a new president. How about the 40,000- to 50,000-soldier shortfall in military recruitment? Remember all the causes the generals cited for their inability to enlist soldiers: generational gangs, obesity, drugs and stiff competition with private industry? And now? In just six months, recruitment targets are already met; the issue is mostly moot. Why? The new Pentagon flipped the old, canceling its racist DEI programs and assuring rural, middle-class Americans — especially white males — that they were not systemically racist after all. Instead, they were reinvited to enlist as the critical combat cohort who died at twice their demographic share in Iraq and Afghanistan. How about the 'end of the NATO crisis,' supposedly brought on by a bullying United States? Now the vast majority of NATO members have met their pledges to spend 2% of GDP on defense, which will soon increase to 5%. Iconic neutrals like Sweden and Finland have become frontline NATO nations, arming to the teeth. The smiling NATO secretary-general even called Donald Trump the 'daddy' of the alliance. What about indomitable, all-powerful, theocratic Iran, the scourge of the Middle East for nearly 50 years? Although it had never won a war in the last half-century, its terrorist surrogates — Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis — were supposedly too dangerous to provoke. Now? Most of its expeditionary terrorists are neutered, and their leaders are in hiding or dead. Iran has no air force, no real navy, no air defenses and no active nuclear-weapons program. Its safety apparently depends only on the mood of the United States or Israel on any given day not to fly into its airspace and take out its missiles, nuclear sites, generals or theocrats at will. What happened to the supposedly inevitable recession, hyperinflation, stock-market collapse, unemployment spikes and global trade war that last spring economists assured us would hit by summer? Job growth is strong, and April's inflation rate is the lowest in four years. GDP is still steady. The stock market hit a record high. Trade partners are renegotiating their surpluses with the United States. It turns out that staying in the US consumer market is the top priority of our trading partners. It seems their preexisting and mostly undisclosed profits were large enough to afford reasonable symmetrical tariffs. For now, news of tax cuts, deregulation, 'drill baby, drill' energy policies displacing Green New Deal strangulation and $8 trillion to $10 trillion in potential foreign investment has encouraged — rather than deterred — business. Then there were our marquee elite universities, whose prestige, riches and powerful alumni made them answerable to no one. And now, after the executive and congressional crackdown on their decades of hubris? Supposedly brilliant university presidents have resigned in shame. The public has caught on to their grant surcharge gouging. Campuses have backed off their arrogant defiance of the Supreme Court's civil rights rulings. They are panicked about the public exposure of their systemic antisemitism. They are scrambling to explain away their institutionalized ideological bias and their tawdry profit-making schemes and mass recruitment of wealthy foreign students from illiberal regimes. So, the mighty Ivy League powerhouses are now humbling themselves to cut a deal to save their financial hides and hopefully return to their proper mission of disinterested education. What happened to the trans juggernaut of sex as a social construct and its bookend gospel that biological men could dominate women's sports? People woke up. They were no longer afraid to state that sex is binary and biologically determined — and that biological men who dominate women's sports are bullies, not heroes. Where are the millionaire scamming architects of BLM now? Where is the 'DEI now, tomorrow, and forever' conventional wisdom? Where are Professor Ibram X. Kendi and his $30,000 Zoom lessons on how to fight racism by being racist? They have all been exposed as the race hustlers they always were. Their creed that it is OK for supposed victims to be racist victimizers themselves was exposed as an absurd con. So, what flipped everything? We were living in an 'emperor has no clothes' make-believe world for the last few years. The people knew establishment narratives were absurd, and our supposed experts were even more ridiculous. But few — until now — had the guts to scream 'the emperor is naked' to dispel the fantasies. When they finally did, reality returned. Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
