Human Rights Glance
Gerson Turcios didn’t recognise the men standing next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York’s Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy – he did, but Jimmy hadn’t lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend for a while.
The men noted Turcios’s accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn’t answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre.
Mass deportation has been the defining mission of Donald Trump’s second presidency. In the year since he took office, ICE – United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement – has deported nearly a quarter of a million people from inside the US (half a million including from its borders) as part of an immigration crackdown. These forceful apprehensions, which have in some cases resulted in fatal shootings of potential deportees and bystanders, have resulted in protests – and sparked international outrage. Behind the statistics, though, are stories of hope and perseverance; of young immigrants who risked everything crossing rivers and deserts to build lives, start businesses and put down roots in communities that are now fighting to keep them.
America's two largest private prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, are reporting a combined $1.4 billion in quarterly revenue over the spring as immigration detention closes in on record levels.
A dramatic increase in immigration enforcement at US airports has reportedly placed the airline industry at odds with the Trump administration as workers decline to help federal officials arrest their targets – many of whom have pending applications for visas, asylum or green cards.
Israeli forces launched a large-scale operation in the Qalandiya refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday.
As first light reaches the scattered tents and animal pens of Ras al-Ahmar in the northern Jordan Valley, the silence is broken only by the cries of thirsty livestock waiting for water that no longer comes.
Israeli ministers and lawmakers led a march towards the Gaza Strip on Sunday, calling for the re-establishment of settlements in the Palestinian enclave.
Dr Mazen Rantisi, a 71-year-old Palestinian physician popularly described as the “doctor of the poor”, says he has suffered physical abuse and medical neglect since Israeli authorities detained him more than a month ago, Haaretz reported on Sunday.
