Latest news with #massdeportations
Reuters
08-07-2025
- General
- Reuters
A million more Afghans could be sent back from Iran, Red Cross warns
GENEVA, July 8 (Reuters) - The Red Cross said on Tuesday it is bracing for another 1 million people to be sent back from Iran to Afghanistan amid mass deportations that humanitarians say are placing a heavy strain on the aid system. Over 1.2 million people have been returned to Afghanistan from Iran since the start of this year, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency, with the number of returns surging since Iran and Israel launched strikes on each other last month. Sami Fakhouri, Head of Delegation for Afghanistan at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said he witnessed bus loads of people returning to a border crossing at the Islam Qala border in Herat province in recent days. "(We) are anticipating that an additional one million people, possibly more, may return from Iran to Afghanistan by the end of this year," he told reporters at a Geneva press briefing, voicing concern about their futures with many having left their home country years ago and were now homeless. "The majority didn't have a say in coming back. They were put on buses and driven to the border," he said. Afghanistan is already battling a humanitarian crisis and aid groups worry that the new arrivals from Iran - on top of hundreds of thousands pressured to return from Pakistan - risks further destabilising the country. Fakhouri said the IFRC appeal for 25 million Swiss francs ($31.40 million) to help returning Afghans at the border and in transit camps is only 10% funded, voicing concerns about whether it could maintain support for people. Babar Baloch, a spokesperson at the U.N. refugee agency, said tens of thousands were arriving from Iran daily with over 50,000 crossing on July 4. He also voiced concerns about family separations. "The psychological scars are going to stay with Afghans who have been made to come back to the country in this way,' he said at the same press briefing. ($1 = 0.7963 Swiss francs)
Globe and Mail
04-07-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
U.S. Congress passes Trump's sprawling domestic policy bill
Congress has given its final approval to U.S. President Donald Trump's sprawling One Big Beautiful Bill Act, funding his mass deportations and border wall, cutting taxes, taking away health care coverage and food stamps from millions of low-income Americans, and cancelling programs to fight climate change. The House of Representatives passed the legislation 218 to 214 on Thursday afternoon after a session lasting nearly 24 hours, during which Mr. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson cajoled reluctant members of their Republican caucus and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries staged a record-breaking speech. The vote broke down mostly along party lines, with just two Republicans joining all Democrats to vote against the law. The President planned a White House signing ceremony at 5 p.m. on Friday, marking Independence Day, the deadline he imposed on his party to deliver the legislation. It is the first significant legislative achievement of his second term, in which he has so far tried to do as much as possible by executive order. 'What a great night it was. One of the most consequential Bills ever. The USA is the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, by far!!!' Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. In one fell swoop, the bill, which is expected to add US$3.3-trillion to the national debt over 10 years, will implement the core of his domestic agenda. U.S. Congress just passed Trump's massive tax and spending cuts bill. Here's what to know Over the next four years, it allocates US$46-billion for the wall on the Mexican border, US$45-billion for immigration detention facilities and US$14-billion to ramp up his program of rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants. It's a major funding increase for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which currently has a US$10-billion budget. ICE is expected to nearly triple its number of agents and spend more money annually than the entire military budgets of many countries. The bill also makes permanent the cuts to corporate and personal income-tax rates first passed in 2017, during Mr. Trump's first term, and adds temporary tax relief for tipped workers and a higher child tax credit. It further contains US$125-billion in defence spending, including US$25-billion for the 'Golden Dome' missile defence system Canada has asked to join. The legislation partly offsets these costs by cutting more than US$1.3-trillion out of health care and food aid. The steepest cuts will hit Medicaid, a program that provides government-funded health insurance to the poorest Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps. Smaller cuts will affect Medicare, the health insurance program for senior citizens and people with disabilities, and subsidies for people buying private insurance on the Obamacare markets. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 12 million people will lose health care and 4.7 million will lose food stamps as a result. The legislation also rolls back US$488-billion in subsidies for wind and solar electrical power projects, and electric-vehicle tax credits, while adding some new subsidies for burning coal. 'People will die. Tens of thousands, perhaps year after year after year, as a result of the Republican assault on the health care of the American people,' Mr. Jeffries thundered during his marathon speech, in which he described the bill as 'a crime scene' for its Medicaid and food-stamp cuts. Throughout the debate, Democrats pointed to analyses, including by Mr. Trump's alma mater at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, that 70 per cent of the bill's tax benefits would go to the top 10 per cent of income earners. Mr. Jeffries began speaking at 4:52 a.m. and continued for eight hours and 45 minutes, the longest anyone has spoken in the House, finishing at 1:37 p.m. The speech followed an all-night session during which Mr. Johnson spent nine hours on a single procedural vote to give himself and Mr. Trump time to lobby holdout Republicans. Tony Keller: Trump has yet to kill the golden goose that is the U.S. economy. But he's working on it The bill had originated in the House, which passed an earlier version in May by a single vote. But the Senate made a suite of changes – deepening both the tax and health care cuts, and adding to the debt required to finance the bill – meaning the House had to vote again. The Senate's changes complicated the legislation both for the handful of remaining fiscal conservatives in the Republican House caucus as well as for moderates. Mr. Trump used meetings, phone calls and public berating to cajole his caucus into line. 'MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT'S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!,' he wrote on Truth Social shortly after midnight. His policy chief, Stephen Miller, chimed in with tweets saying the bill will 'liberate America from invasion' and represented 'the moment to save civilization.' Mr. Johnson took a lighter touch, extolling the law's virtues before the final vote. 'If you're for a secure border, safer communities and a strong military, this bill is for you,' he said. In the end, the only Republicans to vote against were Thomas Massie, a Kentucky deficit hawk, and Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a swing district in Pennsylvania. Now, both Democrats and Republicans will try to win the messaging war on the legislation. A Quinnipiac University poll shows 55 per cent of respondents oppose the bill and 29 per cent support it, and Democrats will be hoping to leverage pain caused by safety-net cuts in Republican communities to argue that Mr. Trump has broken campaign promises not to roll back health care. Republicans, for their part, will be playing up the tax cuts and pushing the mass deportations as the fulfilment of Mr. Trump's central policy agenda. The bill also drove a wedge between Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, who spent US$277-million helping Republicans get elected last year. The Tesla billionaire, upset with the legislation's big-spending ways and its cut to electric-vehicle subsidies, is now musing about starting his own political party. Mr. Trump has fired back by saying Mr. Musk should be sent back to his native South Africa.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida Rep. Angie Nixon calls immigrant detention centers 'concentration camps' on CNN
State Rep. Angie Nixon said President Donald Trump is using "modern-day concentration camps" to carry out mass deportations. Nixon, D-Jacksonville, leveled that charge when she appeared on CNN during its coverage of Trump's visit to a South Florida detention center in the Everglades that state officials call "Alligator Alcatraz." The state also plans to set up a similar center in Northeast Florida at Camp Blanding in Clay County. The facilities will have capacity to hold several thousand people while they await deportation by the federal government. Nixon said Trump is "returning our country to the worst chapters in our history." "This isn't about safety," she said during an interview July 2 on CNN. "This is about Donald Trump building modern-day concentration camps in an effort to disappear people from their communities. Donald Trump's blueprint for America has now become broken families and barbed wire." The use of "concentration camps" to describe such facilities has been controversial. When Trump was running for election, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said last October in response to a question during a radio interview about Trump's pledge to conduct mass deportations that it would amount to creating a "concentration camp type situation" for holding undocumented immigrants. Five Republican members of the Duval County Legislative Delegation issued a joint statement at the time calling on Deegan to retract her comment and apologize for remarks that are "particularly harmful to Jacksonville's Jewish community and Holocaust survivors who understand the horrors of antisemitism firsthand." Deegan subsequently said she regretted using the term "concentration camp" and did not intend to diminish the horror of the Holocaust. She said she did not regret "calling out the inhumanity of treating immigrants, or any person, as less than human." Nixon said she calls the facilities" modern-day concentration camps" because they are inhumane and Trump made jokes about the prospect of alligators hunting anyone who tries to leave the Everglades center. "These are people's lives," she said after her appearance on CNN. During the CNN interview, Nixon was asked about Gov. Ron DeSantis saying "Alligator Alcatraz" will help carry out deportations by causing people to "self deport" back to their home countries rather than risk going to the facility. "So this is a force multiplier for the president's efforts," DeSantis said when he took Trump on a tour of the facility. Nixon said the facility will cost several hundred million dollars to operate. "Instead of ensuring that we don't have cuts to Medicaid, instead of ensuring that we're addressing issues like the rising cost of property insurance, instead of ensuring that we have quality schools for our children to go to, they want to blow racist dog whistles and push xenophobia instead of handling the things that Floridians and Americans care about," she said on CNN. Camp Blanding: Is work on center to detain 2,000 immigrants starting 'right after' July 4? Political alliance: Once rivals, Trump and DeSantis deepen bond with shared targeting of undocumented migrants During Trump's tour of the facility in the Everglades, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the partnership between the Trump and DeSantis administrations. "Florida was unique in what they presented to us, and I would ask every other governor to do the exact same thing," she said. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Lawmaker compares 'Alligator Alcatraz' to concentration camps
Daily Mail
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump hails new Florida migrant detention center
By Published: | President Donald Trump warned American criminals that they may be the next inhabitants of the 'Alligator Alcatraz' facility and deported out of the country. Trump raved about a migrant detention center built in the Everglades swampland and surrounded by alligators. It was designed to house illegal immigrants ahead of mass deportations. The president also expressed his desire to have more such facilities built around the country. And he mussed that home-born 'bad people' may be his next target as he wants to get them 'the hell out' of the United States. 'We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time,' he said. 'Some of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job.' It's not the first time Trump has speculated about deporting Americans convicted of crimes. In April, he suggested sending them to the notorious El Salvadorian prison currently holding migrants deported from the U.S. The idea resurfaced on Tuesday when Trump toured the remote, high-security design of the new center and promised it would soon house what he called 'the most menacing migrants, the most vicious people on the planet.' 'It is not a place I want to go hiking any time soon,' Trump said. 'Very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, the most vicious people on the planet. We're surrounded by miles of swamp land and the only way out is deportation.' Trump said he'd like to see similar facilities in 'many states,' adding Florida would getting a second one 'and probably a couple more.' 'At some point they might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time,' he added. 'The incredible thing is picking the site because the site was one of the most natural sites. It might be as good as the real Alcatraz. Well, that's a spooky one too. That's a tough site. So I really think it could last as long as they want to have,' he said. The president noted that 'I couldn't care less' that the facilities were controversial. Trump looked visibly pleased with the setup during his tour, observing stacks of bunk beds behind chain-linked fencing inside an air conditioned tent in a Florida swamp. Democrats have slammed the facility as a 'makeshift prison camp,' while environmentalists have questioned its impact on the local climates and Native Americans protested it being built on sacred ground. The controversial detention facility was spearheaded by Florida Republican leaders and garnered its nickname due to its location: it sits about 37 miles from Miami in the middle of a swamp surrounded by snakes and alligators — and in an area of the state that is prone to hurricanes. The $450 million-per-year detention facility, which will be able to hold up to 3,000 undocumented immigrants, was built in just seven days. There are only tents and trailers - no brick-or-mortar buildings. It was constructed on land belonging to Miami-Dade County and seized by state officials over local leaders' objections.
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'F*** you!' Trump vet grilled under oath on whistleblower's autocratic bombshell
Top DOJ officials were grilled on Capitol Hill following an explosive complaint from a fired DJ attorney alleging Emile Bove ordered his team to flout court orders to help Trump execute mass deportations. Former federal prosecutor John Flannery and Emily Bazelon, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, join MSNBC's Ari Melber to discuss. (Subscribe to Ari's YouTube now:
