Thursday, May 01st
Last update08:16:57 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
The hospital was located in the Netzarim Corridor, which splits Gaza in two and was controlled by Israeli troops for most of the 17-month-long war. Israel moved to retake the corridor this week shortly after breaking the ceasefire with Hamas. The truce delivered relative calm to Gaza since late January and facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages.
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday eliminated numerous civil rights offices, ending oversight of its immigration policies and avenues for public complaints.
The department said it was conducting wide scale layoffs at DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which ensures the agency protects “individual liberty, fairness, and equality under the law” in its policies and actions.
DHS also fired staff for the offices of two major ombudsmen, which hear complaints and work to resolve disputes within the immigration system.
The Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman provides a platform for those to bring concerns about the immigration process, while the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is a route for the public to flag issues about the problems facing those held in immigration detention.
The DHS confirmed the move, accusing both entities of obstructing the department’s mission.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg vowed to determine whether or not the Trump administration knowingly violated his Saturday order to return hundreds of Venezuelan migrants that were, at the time, being flown to an El Salvadoran prison, where they presently remain.
Earlier this week, Trump prompted a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts when he called for Boasberg to be impeached.
At the hearing, Boasberg slammed the government’s language in some of its recent court filings as “intemperate and disrespectful,” adding that he could not recall ever encountering such a tone from U.S. government lawyers. One such filing accused the judge of “continuing to beat a dead horse” with his requests for more information from the Justice Department, which only responded in part, alleging that the judge’s orders were “immaterial.”
More than 30 pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) sued campus officials and several law enforcement agencies, alleging civil rights violations, wrongful arrests and excessive force during demonstrations last year.
A lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles superior court outlines the violence and significant injuries that UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment members experienced at the hands of police and counterprotesters from April to June of 2024.
The complaint accuses UCLA, the country’s top-ranked public university, of negligence during counterprotesters’ “brutal mob assault” against the encampment on 30 April as officials failed to intervene. The Washington Post and New York Times documented how law enforcement allowed hours of unchecked violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators who, along with college activists across the US, had set up Gaza solidarity camps.
The Justice Department failed Wednesday to provide information a federal judge requested about deportation flights of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, instead filing a request for a postponement to wait for appeals courts to block what it called a potentially “catastrophic” disclosure.
The filing escalated a legal clash over the deportations that has already led President Donald Trump to call for Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's impeachment and a rebuke of Trump by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Boasberg demanded information by noon Tuesday about the number of deportation flights on Saturday, the number of passengers and the foreign destinations. He asked for the information as he weighs whether the government defied his oral and written orders to halt the flights and potentially turn around flights in the air.
A Brown University medical professor was deported to Lebanon over the weekend despite having a valid US work visa, defying a judge’s order blocking her immediate removal from the country.
Federal prosecutors on Monday alleged that they deported 34-year-old Rasha Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” on her cellphone of prominent figures of Iran-backed Hezbollah. Alawieh told federal agents that she had recently attended the funeral of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective”, according to Reuters.
The case centering on Alawieh comes as Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has been escalating its immigration policies and targeting universities.
Russell T Davies has said gay society is in the “greatest danger I have ever seen”, since the election of Donald Trump as US president in November.
Speaking to the Guardian at the Gaydio Pride awards in Manchester on Friday, the Doctor Who screenwriter said the rise in hostility was not limited to the US but “is here [in the UK] now”.
“As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale,” he said.
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