TV News LIES

A Canadian mother and her seven-year-old daughter, who has autism, have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas since Saturday, family members have said.

Relatives of Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Lucas say they were detained unlawfully. They are uncertain about what problem ICE found with their immigration paperwork.

Tania Warner and her daughter are both Canadians, with Warner originally from British Columbia. The Canadian broadcaster CTV News reported that they are being held at the notorious Rio Grande Valley Central processing centre in McAllen, Texas.

Warner, who is said to have moved to the US five years ago, lives in Kingsville, Texas, with her husband, Edward Warner, a US citizen.

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The U.N. human rights office Tuesday expressed concerns about possible “ethnic cleansing,” denouncing an acceleration of Israeli settlements and displacements of thousands of Palestinians in large parts of the occupied West Bank that has grown “more relentless” in recent months.

A new report from the office of Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, covers a yearlong period through the end of October and warns of expanded settlements in large parts of the West Bank and the forced displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians.

Since then, “the pace of the concerted efforts by the Israeli government to seize as much Palestinian land as possible — with as few Palestinians in it as possible — is only becoming more relentless,” Ajith Sunghay, the head of the rights office in occupied Palestinian areas, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

The Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva responded by saying that as far as Israel was concerned, the U.N. rights office “has lost all credibility.” It alluded to longtime allegations — backed often by the United States — of unfair bias against Israel and a relative disregard of other human rights situations around the world.

“It does not function as an impartial and neutral human rights office, but as the epicenter of vile anti-Israel activism,” the mission said in a statement, blasting a “U.N. anti-Israel narrative machine” that has produced several reports about Israeli settlements in recent months.

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Families arrive at the cemetery after sunset. They come carrying rugs and cushions, food and water, and candles or lanterns that they place on the small, freshly dug graves. Parents carefully clean the tombstones of their buried children. They arrange the spaces around them and settle in for the night—a quiet vigil that will continue until dawn.

The collective grief in Minab, Iran is unfathomable. At least 168 children, most of them girls aged between seven and 12 years old, were killed in a single strike on the Shajareh Tayyiba elementary school on February 28, in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

As the holy month of Ramadan comes to a close this week—a time when prayers carry special weight—families have continued to gather at the cemetery after iftar, the sunset meal to break the fast, to pray beside their dead children in the dark.

Amina Karimi, 42, lost her seven-year-old daughter, Leila, in the strike. She comes to the cemetery every night.

“Ramadan this year arrived carrying a grief I have never known before,” Karimi told Drop Site News. “I read the Quran in a low voice and recite prayers I dedicated to her, and I speak to her as though she can hear me.” She pauses. “Sometimes I close my eyes and recall her laugh, her voice, how she used to run at school, laugh with her friends, and how we used to dream of her future.” Karimi stays at the graveyard through the night despite the cold that cuts through her clothes. “The night is heavy and the cold bites. But the dim candlelight gives me some warmth.”

Evidence collected by human rights groups and media outlets strongly point to the U.S. conducting the Tomahawk missile strike—one of the deadliest single attacks on children in memory. Preliminary findings of an internal U.S. military investigation determined the U.S. was responsible and the school was likely bombed based on outdated targeting data. The Trump administration has not admitted to anything.

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A New York high school student who was detained at an immigration courthouse in May last year, sparking national outrage, was released on Wednesday.

Dylan Lopez Contreras, 21, of Venezuela was a freshman at Ellis Prep academy, a Bronx public school dedicated exclusively to students who have recently arrived in the US. It was the first widely known instance of a public school student being arrested by federal immigration agents.

On Wednesday, he was released from the Moshannon Valley Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, after 10 months in detention.“It is both a relief and a blessing,” his mother, Raiza Contreras, said. “All glory and honor belong to God, who opened doors and made the impossible possible.” He arrived home on Wednesday evening, according to his lawyers.

Contreras’s arrest last year shocked his community, and previewed the Trump administration’s indiscriminate approach to immigration enforcement. In an essay he wrote for the Guardian from Moshannon Valley, Contreras said that his life in detention was “uncomfortable, stressful and monotonous”.

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After spending two consecutive Ramadans behind bars, Leqaa Kordia was freed from US immigration detention on Monday, in what her lawyers have described as a "staggering" $100,000 bond.

Her legal team said the bond was "nonetheless...paid immediately". 

The 33-year-old Palestinian immigrant, whose home is in New Jersey, was released from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, after the Trump administration chose not to challenge what was a third release order by an immigration judge. 

It had previously appealed the first and second orders for her release.

"I’m free! I’m free! Finally, after one year," Kordia said as she walked out to a group of waiting supporters, with a Palestinian keffiyeh draped around her shoulders.

“There is a lot of injustice in this place,” she added. “There is a lot of people that shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Kordia's cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, told Middle East Eye on Tuesday that Kordia was in relatively good spirits and already at the mosque for Ramadan prayers by Monday evening.

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Israel is set to keep Al-Aqsa Mosque closed through the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr and beyond, Middle East Eye has learnt.

Sources familiar with the occupied East Jerusalem mosque’s affairs said Israeli authorities informed the Islamic Waqf, the body responsible for administering the site, of the decision in recent days.

Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, was closed by Israeli authorities earlier this month, citing the “security situation” amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The unprecedented closure, particularly during the month of Ramadan, has been condemned by Palestinians as the latest attempt by Israel to exploit security tensions to impose further restrictions and consolidate control over Al-Aqsa.

This has been the first Ramadan since Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967 that Palestinians have been unable to perform Friday prayers at the mosque.

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