A new mural in France shows the Statue of Liberty covering her eyes in a swipe at Trump
ROUBAIX, France — As statements go, it's a big one.
A towering mural in France of the Statue of Liberty covering her eyes is racking up millions of views online with its swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration and deportation policies.
Amsterdam-based street artist Judith de Leeuw described her giant work in the northern French town of Roubaix, which has a large immigrant community, as 'a quiet reminder of what freedom should be.'
She said 'freedom feels out of reach' for migrants and 'those pushed to the margins, silenced, or unseen.'
'I painted her covering her eyes because the weight of the world has become too heavy to witness. What was once a shining symbol of liberty now carries the sorrow of lost meaning,' de Leeuw wrote in a July 4 post on Facebook, when Americans were celebrating Independence Day.
Her depiction of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French people in the late 1800s, has inspired some sharp criticism.
Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican lawmaker from Tennessee, wrote in an angry post on X that the work 'disgusts me.' He said he had an uncle who fought and died in France, where U.S. forces saw combat in both World War I and World War II.
In an interview with The Associated Press, de Leeuw was unapologetic.
'I'm not offended to be hated by the Donald Trump movement. I am not sorry. This is the right thing to do,' she said.
The town stood by the work, with its deputy mayor in charge of cultural affairs, Frédéric Lefebvre, telling broadcaster France 3 that 'it's a very strong and powerful political message.'
Since returning to the White House amid anti-immigration sentiment, Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. People from various countries have been deported to remote and unrelated places like South Sudan and the small African nation of Eswatini.
Immigration is one of Trump's strongest issues in public polling in the U.S.
The mural in Roubaix is part of an urban street culture festival backed by the town. Roubaix is one of the poorest towns in France. It was economically devastated by the collapse since the 1970s of its once-flourishing textile industry that used to attract migrant workers from elsewhere in Europe, north Africa and beyond.
___
Sylvain Plazy, The Associated Press
Associated Press journalists Ahmad Seir in Amsterdam and John Leicester in Paris contributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
A man is halted climbing the US-Mexico border wall. Under new Trump rules, US troops sound the alarm
NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) — Inside an armored vehicle, an Army scout uses a joystick to direct a long-range optical scope toward a man perched atop the U.S.-Mexico border wall cutting across the hills of this Arizona frontier community. The man lowers himself toward U.S. soil between coils of concertina wire. Shouts ring out, an alert is sounded and a U.S. Border Patrol SUV races toward the wall — warning enough to send the man scrambling back over it, disappearing into Mexico. The sighting Tuesday was one of only two for the Army infantry unit patrolling this sector of the southern border, where an emergency declaration by President Donald Trump has thrust the military into a central role in deterring migrant crossings between U.S. ports of entry. 'Deterrence is actually boring,' said 24-year-old Army Sgt. Ana Harker-Molina, voicing the tedium felt by some fellow soldiers over the sporadic sightings. Still, she said she takes pride in the work, knowing that troops discourage crossings by their mere presence. 'Just if we're sitting here watching the border, it's helping our country,' said Harker-Molina, an immigrant herself who came from Panama at age 12 and became a U.S. citizen two years ago while serving in the Army. U.S. troop deployments at the border have tripled to 7,600 and include every branch of the military — even as the number of attempted illegal crossings plummet and Trump has authorized funding for an additional 3,000 Border Patrol agents, offering $10,000 signing and retention bonuses. The military mission is guided from a new command center at a remote Army intelligence training base alongside southern Arizona's Huachuca Mountains. There, a community hall has been transformed into a bustling war room of battalion commanders and staff with digital maps pinpointing military camps and movements along the nearly 2,000-mile border. Until now border enforcement had been the domain of civilian law enforcement, with the military only intermittently stepping in. But in April, large swaths of border were designated militarized zones, empowering U.S. troops to apprehend immigrants and others accused of trespassing on Army, Air Force or Navy bases, and authorizing additional criminal charges that can mean prison time. The two-star general leading the mission says troops are being untethered from maintenance and warehouse tasks to work closely with U.S. Border Patrol agents in high-traffic areas for illegal crossings — and to deploy rapidly to remote, unguarded terrain. 'We don't have a (labor) union, there's no limit on how many hours we can work in a day, how many shifts we can man,' said Army Maj. Gen. Scott Naumann. 'I can put soldiers out whenever we need to in order to get after the problem and we can put them out for days at a time, we can fly people into incredibly remote areas now that we see the cartels shifting' course. Patrols aimed at stopping 'got-aways' At Nogales, Army scouts patrolled the border in full battle gear — helmet, M5 service rifle, bullet-resistant vest — with the right to use deadly force if attacked under standing military rules integrated into the border mission. Underfoot, smugglers for decades routinely attempted to tunnel into stormwater drains to ferry contraband into the U.S. Naumann's command post oversees an armada of 117 armored Stryker vehicles, more than 35 helicopters and a half-dozen long-distance drones that can survey the border day and night with sensors to pinpoint people wandering the desert. Marine Corps engineers are adding concertina wire to slow crossings, as the Trump administration reboots border wall construction. Naumann said the focus is on stopping 'got-aways' who evade authorities to disappear into the U.S. in a race against the clock that can last seconds in urban areas as people vanish into smuggling vehicles, or several days in the dense wetland thickets of the Rio Grande or the vast desert and mountainous wilderness of Arizona. Meanwhile, the rate of apprehensions at the border has fallen to a 60-year low. Naumann says the fall-off in illegal entries is the 'elephant in the room' as the military increases pressure and resources aimed at starving smuggling cartels — including Latin American gangs recently designated as foreign terrorist organizations. He says it would be wrong to let up, though, and that crossings may rebound with the end of scorching summer weather. 'We've got to keep going after it, we're having some successes, we are trending positively,' he said of the mission with no fixed end-date. Militarized zones are 'a gray area' The Trump administration is using the military broadly to boost its immigration operations, from guarding federal buildings in Los Angeles against protests over ICE detentions, to assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida to plans to hold detained immigrants on military bases in New Jersey, Indiana and Texas. 'It's all part of the same strategy that is a very muscular, robust, intimidating, aggressive response to this — to show his base that he was serious about a campaign promise to fix immigration,' said Dan Maurer, a law professor at Ohio Northern University and a retired U.S. Army judge advocate officer. 'It's both norm-breaking and unusual. It puts the military in a very awkward position.' The militarized zones at the border sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that prohibits the military from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil. 'It's in that gray area, it may be a violation — it may not be. The military's always had the authority to arrest people and detain them on military bases,' said Joshua Kastenberg, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and a former Air Force judge. Michael Fisher, a security consultant and former chief of the Border Patrol from 2010-2016, calls the military expansion at the border a 'force multiplier' as Border Patrol agents increasingly turn up far from the border. 'The military allows Border Patrol to be able to flex into other areas where they typically would not be able to do so,' he said. The strategy carries inherent moral challenges and political risks. In 1997, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen was shot to death while herding goats by a Marine Corps unit on a border anti-drug patrol in the remote Big Bend Region of western Texas. Authorities say Esequiel Hernandez had no connection to the drug trade and was an honor student. The shooting stoked anger along the border and prompted an end to then-President Bill Clinton's military deployment to the border. In New Mexico, the latest restrictions barring access to militarized zones have made popular areas for hunting, hiking and offroad motorsports off-limits for recreation, leading to an outcry from some residents. Naumann said adults can apply for access online, and by agreeing to undergo a criminal background check that he calls a standard requirement for access to military bases. 'We're not out to stop Americans from recreating in America. That's not what this is about,' he said. Military-grade equipment At daybreak Wednesday, Border Patrol vehicles climbed the largely unfenced slopes of Mt. Cristo Rey, an iconic peak topped by a crucifix that juts into the sky above the urban outskirts of El Paso and Mexico's Ciudad Juárez — without another soul in sight. The peak is at the conflux of two new militarized zones designated as extensions of Army stations at Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The Defense Department has added an additional 250-mile (400-kilometer) zone in Texas' Rio Grande Valley linked to an Air Force base. The Navy will oversee the border near Yuma, Arizona, where the Department of Interior on Wednesday ceded a 32-mile (50-kilometer) portion of the border to the military. At Mt. Cristo Rey, the Homeland Security Department has issued plans to close a 1.3-mile (2-kilometer) gap in the border wall over the objections of a Roman Catholic diocese that owns much of the land and says a wall would obstruct a sacred refuge for religious pilgrimages. From a nearby mesa top, Army Spc. Luisangel Nito scanned the valley below Mt. Cristo Rey with an infrared scope that highlights body heat, spotting three people as they crossed illegally into the U.S. for the Border Patrol to apprehend. Nito's unit also has equipment that can ground small drones used by smugglers to plot entry routes. Nito is the U.S.-born son of Mexican immigrants who entered the country in the 1990s through the same valleys he now patrols. 'They crossed right here,' he said. 'They told me to just be careful because back when they crossed they said it was dangerous.' Nito's parents returned to Mexico in 2008 amid the financial crisis, but the soldier saw brighter opportunities in the U.S., returned and enlisted. He expressed no reservations about his role in detaining illegal immigrants. 'Obviously it's a job, right, and then I signed up for it and I'm going to do it,' he said. At Mt. Cristo Rey and elsewhere, troops utilize marked Border Patrol vehicles as Naumann champions the 'integration' of civilian law enforcement and military forces. 'If there's a kind of a secret sauce, if you will, it's integrating at every echelon,' Neumann said.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Trump's trip to Scotland as his new golf course opens blurs politics and the family's business
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland's northeastern coast rank among Donald Trump 's favorite spots on earth. 'At some point, maybe in my very old age, I'll go there and do the most beautiful thing you've ever seen,' Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, traveling to Scotland on Friday as his family's business prepares for the Aug. 13 opening of a new course it is billing as 'the greatest 36 holes in golf.' While there, Trump will talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a meeting he's said will take place at 'probably one of my properties.' The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the president also plans to visit a Trump course near Turnberry, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) away on Scotland's southwest coast. Using this week's presidential overseas trip — with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters — to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family's business interests. The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing that Trump's business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a 'working trip.' But she added that Trump 'has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport.' Trump family's new golf course has tee times for sale Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, his trip comes as the new golf course is about to debut and is already actively selling tee times. It's not cheap for the president to travel. The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the president is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. That's not to mention the military cargo aircraft that fly ahead of the president with his armored limousines and other official vehicles. 'We're at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn't seem to see much of a difference,' said Jordan Libowitz, vice president and spokesperson for the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'It's as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.' During his first term, the Trump Organization signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump's second term allows them. Trump's assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he's in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration continues to negotiate tariff rates for those countries and around the globe. Trump's first Aberdeen course has sparked legal battles Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area's cliffs. It has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump's company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers' views. And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals. Trump's company's initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he'd be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals. Golfers-in-chief Family financial interests aside, Trump isn't the first sitting U.S. president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play. Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery — then considered vital to national defense. The first U.S. president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough. Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it. Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said. John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. 'I'd say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House,' Trostel said. Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index — how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score — of a very strong 2.5, though he's not posted an official round with the U.S. Golf Association since 2021. That's better than Joe Biden's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an 'honest 13.' The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap. ___ Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.
CBC
6 hours ago
- CBC
Canada-U.S. trade deal hopes appear to fade after latest talks
Although U.S. President Donald Trump's Aug. 1 deadline is fast approaching, there is no sign of a breakthrough yet on a new Canada-U.S. trade deal after a week of talks in Washington, D.C. Ottawa continues to say it won't sign anything that isn't in Canada's best interest.
