Protesters flood US cities to fight Trump immigration policy

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People participate in the Families Belong Together march in Chicago on Saturday, June 30, 2018. (AP)
Updated 01 July 2018
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Protesters flood US cities to fight Trump immigration policy

  • Trump's “zero tolerance policy” led officials to take more than 2,000 children from their parents as they tried to enter the country illegally, most of them fleeing violence, persecution or economic collapse in their home countries
  • In Washington, an estimated 30,000 marchers gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in what was expected to be the largest protest of the day

WASHINGTON: They wore white. They shook their fists in the air. They carried signs reading: “No more children in cages,” and “What’s next? Concentration Camps?“
In major cities and tiny towns, hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered Saturday across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Protesters flooded more than 700 marches, from immigrant-friendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Wyoming. They gathered on the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention center where migrant children were being held in cages, and on a street corner near Trump’s golf resort at Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president is spending the weekend.
Trump has backed away from family separations amid bipartisan and international uproar. His “zero tolerance policy” led officials to take more than 2,000 children from their parents as they tried to enter the country illegally, most of them fleeing violence, persecution or economic collapse in their home countries.
Those marching Saturday demanded the government quickly reunite the families that were already divided.
A Brazilian mother separated from her 10-year-old son more than a month ago approached the microphone at the Boston rally.
“We came to the United States seeking help, and we never imagined that this could happen. So I beg everyone, please release these children, give my son back to me,” she said through an interpreter, weeping.
“Please fight and continue fighting, because we will win,” she said.
The crowd erupted.
In Portland, Oregon, police ordered participants in a march by Patriot Prayer to disperse after officers saw assaults and projectiles being thrown. Some arrests were made.
The problems occurred as two opposing protest groups — Patriot Prayer and antifa — took to the streets. People in the crowd were lighting firecrackers and smoke bombs and police used flash bangs to disperse the clashing protesters.
In Washington, D.C., an estimated 30,000 marchers gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in what was expected to be the largest protest of the day, stretching for hours under a searing sun. Firefighters at one point misted the crowd to help people cool off.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical “Hamilton,” sang a lullaby dedicated to parents unable to sing to their children. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys read a letter written by a woman whose child had been taken away from her at the border.
“It’s upsetting. Families being separated, children in cages,” said Emilia Ramos, a cleaner in the district, fighting tears at the rally. “Seeing everyone together for this cause, it’s emotional.”
Around her, thousands waved signs: “I care,” some read, referencing a jacket that first lady Melania Trump wore when traveling to visit child migrants. The back of her jacket said, “I really don’t care, do U?” and it became a rallying cry for protesters Saturday.
“I care!! Do you?” read Joan Culwell’s T-shirt as she joined a rally in Denver.
“We care!” marchers shouted outside Dallas City Hall. Organizer Michelle Wentz says opposition to the Trump administration’s “barbaric and inhumane” policy has seemed to transcend political lines.
“This is the issue crossing the line for a lot of people,” said Robin Jackson, 51, of Los Angeles, who protested with thousands carrying flags, signs and babies.
Singer John Legend serenaded the crowd and Democratic politicians who have clashed with Trump had strong words for the president, including US Rep. Maxine Waters who called for his impeachment.
The president took to Twitter amid the protests, first to show his support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as some Democrats called for major changes to the agency. Tweeting Saturday from New Jersey, Trump urged ICE agents to “not worry or lose your spirit” and wrote that “the radical left Dems want you out. Next it will be all police.”
He later tweeted that he never pushed House Republicans to vote for immigration overhaul measures that failed last week, contradicting a post three days ago in which he urged GOP congressional members to pass them.
In Trump’s hometown of New York City, another massive crowd poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in sweltering 90-degree heat, some carrying their children on their shoulders, chanting, “Shame!” Drivers honked their horns in support.
“It’s important for this administration to know that these policies that rip apart families — that treat people as less than human, like they’re vermin — are not the way of God, they are not the law of love,” said the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, an Episcopal priest marching in Brooklyn.
Though seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators packed the rallies, others were new to activism, including parents who said they felt compelled to act after heart-wrenching accounts of families who were torn apart.
Marchers took to city parks and downtown squares from Maine to Florida to Oregon; in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico; on the international bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico; even in Antler, North Dakota, population 27. People braved the heat in Chicago and Atlanta to march.
Some of the demonstrations were boisterous, others were quiet.
Five people were arrested outside an ICE office in Dallas for blocking a road. At least one arrest was made in Columbus, Ohio, when protesters obstructed a downtown street. Light-rail service temporarily shut down in Minneapolis as thousands of demonstrators got in the way of the tracks. A rally in Portland, Maine, grew so large that police had to shut down part of a major street.
But in Dodge City, Kansas, a 100-person rally led by a Catholic church felt more like a mass than a protest.
In rural Marshalltown, Iowa, about 125 people gathered for a march organized by Steve Adelmund, a father of two who was inspired after turning on the news on Father’s Day and seeing children being separated from their families and held in cages.
“It hit me in the heart. I cried,” he said.
“If we can’t come together under the idea of ‘Kids shouldn’t be taken from their parents,’ where are we?” he asked. “We have to speak out now while we can, before we can’t.”
Drum beats and horns sounded as thousands of protesters took to the streets of San Francisco.
“We came here to let the president know that this is not acceptable,” said San Francisco resident Barry Hooper, who attended with his wife and two daughters.
His 7-year-old daughter Liliana clutched a sign she made, saying, “Stop the separation.”
Three thousand miles away in Washington, protesters ended their march at the white-columned Justice Department. They stacked their protest signs, written in English and Spanish, against its grand wooden doors.
“Fight for families,” one sign demanded.


US citizen Joseph Tater leaves Russia after detention and psychiatric treatment, TASS says

Updated 7 sec ago
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US citizen Joseph Tater leaves Russia after detention and psychiatric treatment, TASS says

Tater was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for “petty hooliganism“
He was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer

MOSCOW: US citizen Joseph Tater, who was detained in Moscow last August and later sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment, has left Russia, the state news agency TASS said on Friday.

Tater, who according to a Kremlin source last month was one of nine Americans being held in Russia that Washington wanted returned in a prisoner exchange, was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for “petty hooliganism” after being accused of abusing staff at a Moscow hotel, something he denied.

Russian state news agencies later said he was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which carries up to five years in prison.

But on April 6 a court ordered Tater be removed from pre-trial detention, saying he was not criminally responsible for his actions after doctors diagnosed him with a mental disorder, according to state media.

TASS reported on Friday that Tater had been discharged from the psychiatric clinic where he was being treated. It cited unnamed medical sources as saying that the clinic had no grounds to keep him there and had let him leave for outpatient treatment.

TASS cited a law enforcement source as saying Tater’s current whereabouts were unknown, but that he had left Russia.

Germany’s Munich Re withdraws from climate initiatives

Updated 8 min 37 sec ago
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Germany’s Munich Re withdraws from climate initiatives

  • The groups all aim to help financial giants reach net-zero carbon emissions
  • “Climate related disclosures and associated administrative requirements have become very complex for international corporations,” said the firm

FRANFURT: German reinsurance giant Munich Re said on Friday it had withdrawn from several climate alliances but insisted that it would keep pursuing green targets independently.

It is the latest sign that major firms are going cold on such initiatives, amid concerns about their effectiveness and growing political opposition in the United States and elsewhere.

Munich Re said it had pulled out of the UN-backed Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, Climate Action 100+ and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

The groups all aim to help financial giants reach net-zero carbon emissions.

“Climate related disclosures and associated administrative requirements have become very complex for international corporations,” said the firm, which acts as an insurer for insurers.

“Moreover, they are disproportionate to the impact achieved in terms of climate protection.”

It also said there was an “increasing ambiguity in assessing private initiatives under the legal and regulatory regimes across various jurisdictions.”

The group, which last year booked a net profit of 5.7 billion euros ($6.5 billion), said it believed that it could pursue its climate targets “in a more focused and targeted manner on our own.”

“Climate protection remains an urgent priority for Munich Re,” it said.

“We continue to pursue our goal of contributing to the achievement of the Paris climate targets.”

The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and to 1.5 if possible.

The group said it had achieved or exceeded the interim targets that it had set itself for 2025.


Taiwan accuses China of carrying out ‘provocative’ military patrol near island

Updated 41 min 11 sec ago
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Taiwan accuses China of carrying out ‘provocative’ military patrol near island

  • Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military drills and patrols nearby
  • Taiwan’s defense ministry said that starting mid-afternoon Friday, it had detected 21 Chinese military aircraft

TAIPEI: Taiwan accused China on Friday of raising tensions in the region with a “provocative” military patrol involving warplanes and warships near the island, an unusual public rebuke in what are typically routine accounts of Chinese military activity.

Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of repeated Chinese military drills and patrols nearby. Since President Lai Ching-te took office last year China has held three major rounds of war games.

Taiwan’s defense ministry said that starting mid-afternoon Friday, it had detected 21 Chinese military aircraft, including J-16 fighters, operating with warships to carry out “so-called joint combat readiness patrols” and “harass the airspace and seas around us.”

“The Ministry of National Defense stresses that these acts are highly provocative, fail to pay proper attention to the maritime rights of other countries, bring anxiety and threat to the region, and blatantly undermine the status quo in the region,” it said.

Taiwan regularly reports such Chinese “combat patrols,” but does not generally attach such commentary to its statements.

China’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China says democratically governed Taiwan is its “sacred territory” — a position the government in Taipei strongly rejects — and that it has a right to carry out drills in Chinese territory.

Lai, who last month marked a year in office, is hated by Beijing, which calls him a separatist and has rebuffed his repeated offers for talks.

Lai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.


‘One hell after another’: US travel ban deepens despair for Afghans awaiting visas

Updated 06 June 2025
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‘One hell after another’: US travel ban deepens despair for Afghans awaiting visas

  • Trump’s sweeping new travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan, will go into effect from Monday
  • Thousands of Afghans have applied for visas to settle in US, either as refugees or under Special Immigrant Visa program 

KABUL: Mehria had been losing hope of getting a visa to emigrate to the United States but her spirits were crushed when President Donald Trump raised yet another hurdle by banning travel for Afghans.

Trump had already disrupted refugee pathways after he returned to power in January but a sweeping new travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan, will go into effect on Monday.

The ban changes little for most Afghans who already faced steep barriers to travel abroad, but many who had hung their hopes on a new life in the United States felt it was yet another betrayal.

“Trump’s recent decisions have trapped not only me but thousands of families in uncertainty, hopelessness and thousands of other disasters,” Mehria, a 23-year-old woman who gave only one name, said from Pakistan, where she has been waiting since applying for a US refugee visa in 2022.

“We gave up thousands of hopes and our entire lives and came here on a promise from America, but today we are suffering one hell after another,” she told AFP.

The United States has not had a working embassy in Afghanistan since the Taliban ousted the foreign-backed government in 2021, forcing Afghans to apply for visas in third countries.

The Taliban’s return followed the drawdown of US and NATO troops who had ousted them two decades earlier in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Taliban government has since imposed a strict view of Islamic law and severe restrictions on women, including bans on some education and work.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have applied for visas to settle in the United States, either as refugees or under the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program reserved for those who aided the US government during its war against the Taliban.

Afghans with SIV visas and asylum cases will not be affected by Trump’s new order but family reunification pathways are threatened, the Afghan-American Foundation said in a statement condemning the ban.

Some 12,000 people are awaiting reunification with family members already living in the United States, according to Shawn VanDiver, the president of the AfghanEvac non-profit group.

“These are not ‘border issues’. These are legal, vetted, documented reunifications,” he wrote on social media platform X. “Without exemptions, families are stranded.”

Refugee pathways and relocation processes for resettling Afghans had already been upset by previous Trump orders, suddenly leaving many Afghans primed to travel to the United States in limbo.

The Trump administration revoked legal protections temporarily shielding Afghans from deportation in May, citing an improved security situation in Afghanistan.

“We feel abandoned by the United States, with whom we once worked and cooperated,” said Zainab Haidari, another Afghan woman who has been waiting in Pakistan for a refugee visa.

“Despite promises of protection and refuge we are now caught in a hopeless situation, between the risk of death from the Taliban and the pressure and threat of deportation in Pakistan,” said Haidari, 27, who worked with the United States in Kabul during the war but applied for a refugee visa.

Afghans fled in droves during decades of conflict, but the chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops from Kabul saw a new wave clamouring to escape Taliban government curbs and fears of reprisal for working with Washington.

Pakistan and Iran have meanwhile ramped up deportation campaigns to expel Afghans who have crossed their borders.

The Taliban authorities have not responded to multiple requests for comment on the new travel ban but have said they are keen to have good relations with every country now that they are in power — including the United States.

Visa options for Afghans are already severely limited by carrying the weakest passport globally, according to the Henley Passport Index.

However, travel to the United States is far from the minds of many Afghans who struggle to make ends meet in one of the world’s poorest countries, where food insecurity is rife.

“We don’t even have bread, why are you asking me about traveling to America?” said one Afghan man in Kabul.

Sahar, a 29-year-old economics graduate who has struggled to find work amid sky-high unemployment, said the new rules will not have any impact on most Afghans.

“When there are thousands of serious issues in Afghanistan, this won’t change anything,” she told AFP.

“Those who could afford to travel and apply for the visa will find another way or to go somewhere else instead of the US.”


Dutch election set for October 29 after government falls

Updated 06 June 2025
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Dutch election set for October 29 after government falls

  • Far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled out of the ruling coalition, bringing down the government
  • The vote in the EU’s fifth-largest economy and major global exporter will be closely watched in Europe

THE HAGUE: The Netherlands will hold snap elections on October 29, authorities announced Friday, after far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled out of the ruling coalition, bringing down the government and sparking political chaos.

“We have officially set the election date: the... elections will take place on Wednesday 29 October 2025,” Interior Minister Judith Uitermark wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“In the coming period, I will work with the municipalities and other stakeholders to prepare so that this important day in our democracy goes smoothly,” added the minister.

The vote in the European Union’s fifth-largest economy and major global exporter will be closely watched in Europe, where far-right parties have made significant electoral gains.

Polls suggest Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) is running neck-and-neck with the Left/Green group of former European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans.

The liberal VVD party stands just behind in the polls, suggesting the election will be closely fought.

The election was prompted by the dramatic withdrawal of Wilders and the PVV from a shaky ruling coalition in a row over immigration policy.

Wilders grumbled that the Netherlands was not fast enough to implement the “strictest-ever” immigration policy agreed by the four-way coalition – and pulled out.

He had stunned the political establishment in the Netherlands by winning November 2023 elections by a significant margin – clinching 37 seats out of the 150 in parliament.

The fractured nature of Dutch politics means no one party is ever strong enough to win 76 seats and govern with an absolute majority.

Wilders persuaded the VVD, the BBB farmers party, and the anti-corruption NSC party to govern with him – but the price was to give up his ambition to become prime minister.

The PVV has apparently lost some support since that election, with recent surveys suggesting they would win around 28 to 30 seats.

But the issue after the coming election will be: who will enter into a coalition with Wilders and the PVV?

There was widespread fury with the far-right leader for bringing down the government over what many saw as an artificial crisis.

Far-right parties have been on the rise across Europe. In May, the far-right Chega (“Enough“) party took second place in Portugal’s elections.

In Germany, the anti-immigration far-right AfD doubled its score in legislative elections in February, reaching 20.8 percent.

And in Britain, polls show the anti-immigration, hard-right Reform UK party of Nigel Farage is making significant gains following a breakthrough in local elections.