Thursday, May 01st
Last update08:16:57 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
It’s Jackie Robinson Day on Tuesday, with every player wearing No. 42, teams holding ceremonies, ballparks showing video tributes, and Major League Baseball reminding America that he helped spearhead the Civil Rights movement in 1947 with the integration of its sport.
Yet, here we are 78 years later, and the African-American player population on opening-day rosters and injured lists this season is 6%. There are three Black managers. There is one Black general manager.
“It’s infuriating. I think it's the new kind of antisemitism. It's just using Jews in a very cynical way.”
This is what Israeli Columbia PhD student Sahar Bostock told Zeteo regarding the Trump administration’s arrest of Palestinian Columbia undergraduate Mohsen Mahdawi on Monday. And she’s not alone in feeling this way. Students and professors spoke fondly of Mahdawi, a green card holder who was detained at his scheduled citizenship interview.
Mahdawi was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank. As a child, he watched an Israeli soldier shoot and kill his best friend. After arriving in the US 10 years ago, he went to Lehigh University to study computer science, before transferring to Columbia to study philosophy. While there, he organized with Palestinian and Jewish students towards peace, served as Columbia’s Buddhist Association president, and co-founded the Palestinian Student Union, alongside now-fellow-detained classmate Mahmoud Khalil.
A Massachusetts-born immigration attorney is questioning how many people are being wrongly instructed by the federal government to self-deport after she says she received an email from the Department of Homeland Security telling her to leave the U.S. “immediately” because her “parole” was terminated.
Nicole Micheroni shared the email to her Bluesky account Friday, stating that she knew it was sent to her in error and so wasn’t worried, “but what about the people the emails were actually aimed at?”
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” reads the email attributed to DHS, which has sent out similar versions to non-U.S. citizens who entered the U.S. using the CBP One mobile app. That app was set up during the Biden administration to facilitate border crossings before it was canceled by President Donald Trump.
I never took DHS's scary-sounding notice that I had 7 days to leave the country too seriously, because it was obviously some kind of mistake. But what about the people the emails were actually aimed at? Let's talk a bit about immigration "parole" and what Trump is doing here.
Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by federal agents Monday while he was in a naturalization interview at an immigration office in Vermont.
Mahdawi, a Palestinian student and green-card holder, was arrested by agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Colchester, Vt., according to a court filing.
Mahdawi was a leader in the pro-Palestinian protests last spring, making him the latest such activist targeted by the Trump administration. The first and most prominent foreign-born student demonstrator now in immigration custody, Mahmoud Khalil, also attended Columbia.
“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian. His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional,” attorney Luna Droubi said.
The court filing said Mahdawi was targeted by a pro-Israel organization called Betar US, which said on social media that “visa holder Mohsen Mahdawi is on our deport list.”
Trump administration officials emphasized that Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said he does not “have the power to return him to the United States.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
Rain fell in sheets outside the unassuming Abingdon, Va., federal courthouse. Inside the brick building, set along a historic street, an eight day trial was reaching its conclusion. A years-long saga was finally coming to an end early Thursday afternoon.
In courtroom one, the two sides waited for the jury to return with their decision: Are five former corrections officers at Virginia's Marion Correctional Treatment Center liable for the death of Charles Givens, an inmate with health problems and severe mental disabilities?
Givens was found dead in his cell at Marion on Feb. 5, 2022. A year later, Kymberly Hobbs, Givens' grieving sister, sued for $15 million. She alleged that correctional officers Anthony Raymond Kelly, Gregory Scott Plummer, Joshua Jackson and William Zachary Montgomery participated in the savage beating of 52-year-old Givens, breaking his ribs that tore into his spleen, leading him to bleed out and die in his cell. Hobbs alleged in court filings that a fifth guard, Samuel Dale Osborne, didn't participate directly, but did not intervene to save Givens' life.
Amir Makled thought he was being racially profiled. A Lebanese American who was born and raised in Detroit, the attorney was returning home from a family vacation in the Dominican Republic when he said an immigration official at the Detroit Metro airport asked for a “TTRT” agent after scanning his passport on Sunday. Makled said the expression on the agent’s face changed. He felt something “odd” was happening.
“So I Googled what TTRT meant. I didn’t know,” Makled said. “And what I found out was it meant Tactical Terrorism Response Team. So immediately I knew they’re gonna take me in for questioning. And that’s when I felt like I was being racially profiled or targeted because I am Arab.”
But it quickly became apparent, Makled said, that the stop was different from the type of so-called random stop Muslims and Arab-Americans have become accustomed to at US airports. The plainclothes immigration officer said he knew who Makled was and what he did for a living, according to the lawyer; agents wanted to search his phone.
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