In Asia’s Catholic heartland, Filipinos remember ‘compassionate’ Pope who renewed their faith

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Updated 29 April 2025
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In Asia’s Catholic heartland, Filipinos remember ‘compassionate’ Pope who renewed their faith

  • Pontiff visited Philippines in 2015, in aftermath of deadly Super Typhoon Haiyan
  • His Manila mass that drew more than 6 million people was largest papal gathering in history

MANILA: The death of Pope Francis has stirred an outpouring of grief across the Philippines, as many remember his compassionate leadership during one of the nation’s darkest times.

The Argentine pontiff, leader of the Catholic Church since March 2013, died at his residence, Casa Santa Marta, in the Vatican on April 21. He was 88 years old.

In the Philippines, home to Asia’s largest Catholic population, the pope is adoringly referred to as “Lolo Kiko,” or Grandpa Kiko.

He left an indelible mark in the country after a historic four-day visit in January 2015, when he celebrated an open-air mass in Manila that drew more than 6 million devotees, making it the largest papal gathering in history.

But many among the Philippines’ 85 million Catholics were deeply moved by his visit to Tacloban City in central Philippines during the same trip, braving heavy rain to conduct a mass in memory of the more than 6,000 people who perished in Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

“When he visited Manila and Tacloban, especially after the devastation of (the) typhoon, it deeply touched the hearts of so many. He didn’t come as a distant leader, but as a father who wanted to personally console and strengthen us,” Alfredo Navarro III, a seminarian from the diocese of Balanga, told Arab News.

“Filipinos love Lolo Kiko so much because he has shown real concern for us. Not just in words, but in action. He has made it clear that he understands our struggles and is familiar with our culture.”

For Navarro, Pope Francis was a beacon of hope “in a world where it sometimes feels like God is absent because of wars, conflicts and so many struggles.”

“Watching Pope Francis live out the Gospel in such a simple yet powerful way made me realize even more deeply that God is truly present, even in the most broken parts of our world. Through him, I felt God’s love reaching out to me and to everyone,” he said.

“Because of Pope Francis, I feel a stronger calling to be a sign of that same love — to be more present to others, especially to those who are last, the least and the lost.”

World leaders and hundreds of thousands of people bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral at the Vatican on Saturday, where he was eulogized as a pope of the people.

Many young Filipinos took to social media to mourn his passing, honoring him as an inspiration and a figure who renewed their faith.

“I do not claim to be a model Catholic. I never was and I do not think I will ever be. But his words, his actions, the way he saw Christ in the last, the least and the lost was fuel to my faith. It was grace made real, alive and living,” Marion Bais Guerrero wrote on Facebook.

Filipino sociologist Athena Charanne Presto said on X that Pope Francis “made being Catholic less morally suffocating, less burdened by contradiction.”

“This is heartbreaking news for the faithful and for those like me who only slowly found their way to faith because someone at the helm reminded us that the Church could also be a place to breathe.”

In Pope Francis, Raymond Zabala saw a leader who touched the lives of many, even those who are not Catholics.

“He respects all people regardless of their religion or status and in the same manner people from other religions respect him as well. I know of some friends who are non-practicing Catholics who are deeply saddened by his passing,” he told Arab News.

“His passing reminded us of the values of kindness and compassion.”


’Highly undesirable’: Dutch host NATO during political crisis

Updated 4 sec ago
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’Highly undesirable’: Dutch host NATO during political crisis

THE HAGUE: For a small country like the Netherlands, organizing a NATO summit is a big endeavour at the best of times. The government collapsing three weeks beforehand has not exactly made life easier.
With whole districts and key roads blocked for weeks, and schools and businesses closed, the usually serene seaside city of The Hague has certainly felt the force of the impending summit.
To much grumbling, even some cycle lanes have been shut down, usually unthinkable in the land of bikes.
Dozens of trees have also been uprooted to make way for the temporary buildings housing the thousands of delegates and journalists attending the summit.
For the Netherlands, welcoming 32 world leaders including US President Donald Trump is quite simply the biggest event it has ever hosted in terms of security.
The country is deploying some 27,000 police officers, around half its total force.
And all of this while Dutch politics is still reeling from far-right leader Geert Wilders’s withdrawal from the government in a row over immigration.
The sudden departure of Wilders and his far-right Freedom Party brought down a shaky coalition, with fresh elections now slated for October 29.
“It is highly undesirable to host such an important summit when the government has fallen and new elections are expected,” Claes de Vreese, political communications professor at the University of Amsterdam, told AFP.
It borders on embarrassing, stormed outgoing foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, describing the withdrawal of Wilders three weeks before the summit as “scandalous.”
Fortunately, noted De Vreese, the Dutch parliament gave its green light to the defense spending increases at the center of the summit.
“This gives weight and legitimacy to the participation” of outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof at the summit, said the expert.
But as the government is a lame-duck administration, the next government will have to find the cash.


Speaking of cash, the estimated cost of the NATO summit is 183.4 million euros ($211 million), or just over one million euros per minute, according to Dutch daily AD.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has chopped back the leaders’ meeting to just two-and-a-half hours on Wednesday morning, reportedly to appease Trump, not known to love lengthy summits.
At least Rutte himself will feel at home.
The NATO boss is a born-and-bred “Hagenaar” (citizen of the Hague), still has a house in the city and is often seen at weekends on his bike or shopping at his local supermarket despite his move to Brussels.
And despite the government collapse complicating matters, it is really NATO taking on the bulk of the organization.
“We’re not hosting the summit, that’s the secretary general,” said Schoof.
“But the host country does play an important role. The whole world will be looking at the Netherlands,” Schoof told reporters.
Much of the attention will naturally be on Trump — although there is a question mark over his appearance given the US strikes on Iran.
It falls to Noordwijk, a peaceful coastal resort between Schiphol Airport and The Hague, to host the US president, who will stay in a sumptuous hotel overlooking the North Sea — if he turns up.
His route in has been completely blocked off since Sunday — like several others in the city.
Some frustrated citizens of The Hague have asked why the summit couldn’t be held in Veluwe, a national park with no one around — or even at the airport.
At an anti-NATO protest the weekend before the summit, Alfons Vryland, a 54-year-old teacher, noted the irony of holding a military alliance meeting in the self-styled City of Peace and Justice.
“I’m embarrassed that they’re here talking about war instead of peace in my country, in this city,” Vryland told AFP.
Jan van Zanen, the city’s amiable mayor, sought to reassure everyone, from the crisis-hit PM to the average Hagenaar.
“I know people think that I’m a magician as mayor of The Hague, but I couldn’t prevent the government collapsing,” he told AFP.
“The impact (of the government falling) is there, but where we can, we’ve limited it to the utmost,” he said.
“Yes, the Netherlands is ready.”


Japan Prime Minister Ishiba to skip NATO summit, source says

Updated 9 min 18 sec ago
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Japan Prime Minister Ishiba to skip NATO summit, source says

TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is planning to cancel his attendance at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in the Hague, a source with direct knowledge said on Monday.
Broadcaster Fuji Television said Ishiba was canceling the trip because a planned meeting between NATO and a group of four Indo-Pacific nations (IP-4) would likely not take place, and because a meeting with US President Donald Trump was also unlikely.
South Korea and Australia, which along with the US and Japan make up the IP-4, have also said their leaders would not attend the NATO summit meeting.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will represent Japan, the source said, declining to be identified because the plan is not public.


Emaciated after 5 years in prison, Belarusian dissident Tsikhanouski vows to fight on

Updated 25 min 30 sec ago
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Emaciated after 5 years in prison, Belarusian dissident Tsikhanouski vows to fight on

  • Siarhei Tsikhanouski was sentenced to 19 years and six months on charges widely seen as politically motivated

VILNIUS: Siarhei Tsikhanouski is almost unrecognizable. Belarus’ key opposition figure, imprisoned in 2020 and unexpectedly released on Saturday, once weighed 135 kilograms (298 pounds) at 1.92 meters (nearly 6’4”) tall, but now is at just 79 kilos (174 pounds).
On Saturday, Tsikhnaouski was freed alongside 13 other prisoners and brought to Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania, where he was reunited with his wife, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and their children. Speaking to The Associated Press the day after, Tsikhanouski tries to smile and joke, but struggles to hold back heavy sighs recalling what he endured behind bars.
“This is definitely torture,” Tsikhanouski told The Associated Press in the first sit-down interview since his release. Prison officials “kept telling me: ‘You will be here not just for the 20 years we’ve already given you.’ We will convict you again,’” he said. “They told me that ‘You would never get out.’ And they kept repeating: ‘You will die here.’”
One of Belarus’s most prominent opposition figures, Tsikhanouski said he “almost forgot how to speak” during his years in solitary confinement. He was held in complete isolation, denied medical care, and given barely enough food.
“If you had seen me when they threw only two spoons of porridge onto my plate, two small spoons …” he said, adding that he couldn’t buy anything anything in the prison kiosk. “They would sometimes give me a little tube of toothpaste, a little piece of soap as charity. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn’t.”
A prominent voice of dissent
Now 46, Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger and activist, was freed just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Keith Kellogg became the highest-ranking US official in years to visit Belarus, Moscow’s close and dependent ally.
Tsikhanouski, known for his anti-Lukashenko slogan “stop the cockroach,” was arrested after announcing plans to challenge the strongman in the 2020 election and shortly before the campaign began. He was sentenced to 19 years and six months on charges widely seen as politically motivated. His wife ran in his stead, rallying crowds across the country. Official results handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as a sham.
Lukashenko has since tightened his grip, securing a seventh term in disputed January 2025 elections. Since mid-2024, his government has pardoned nearly 300 prisoners — including US citizens — in what analysts see as an attempt to mend ties with the West.
Tsikhanouski credited US President Donald Trump with aiding his release.
“I thank Donald Trump endlessly,” Tsikhanouski said. “They (the Belarusian authorities) want Trump to at least, a little bit, somewhere, to meet them halfway. They are ready to release them all. All of them!”
Many are still behind bars
Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets in the aftermath of the August 2020 vote. Thousands were detained, many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures either fled the country or were imprisoned.
At least 1,177 political prisoners remain in custody, according to Viasna, the oldest and most prominent human rights group in Belarus. Among them is Viasna’s founder, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.
Also behind bars are Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a close ally of Tsikhanouskaya and charismatic leader of that year’s mass protests.
A surprise release and an emotional reunion
Tsikhanouski called his release “a dream that’s still hard to believe.” On Saturday, he said, guards removed him from a KGB pretrial detention center, put a black bag over his head, and handcuffed him before transporting him in a minibus. He and other prisoners had no idea where they were going.
“To be honest, I still can’t believe it. I was afraid I’d wake up and everything would still be the same. I don’t believe it, I still don’t believe it,” he said, pausing frequently and wiping away tears.
Tsikhanouski’s children — his daughter, aged 9, and 15-year-old son — didn’t recognize him when they were reunited.
“We came in and my wife said to my daughter, ‘Your dad has arrived,’” he said, crying. “At first she couldn’t understand, and then she rushed in — she was crying, I was crying ... for a very long time. My son too! These are emotions that cannot be described.”
Tsikhanouski, who says his health has deteriorated behind bars, plans to undergo a medical examination in Lithuania. He says cold and hunger were “the main causes of illness” that affected nearly all political prisoners in Belarus, who were subjected to “especially harsh conditions.”
“There were skin diseases, and everyone had kidney problems from the cold — and no one really understood what was happening,” Tsikhanouski said. “Blood came out of my mouth, from my nose. Sometimes I had convulsions — but it was all because of the cold, that terrible cold when you sit in those punishment cells.”
“There is no medical care in prison — none at all, just so you know …” he said.
Tsikhanouski said conditions slightly improved after the February 2024 death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a prison colony.
“When Alexei Navalny died, I thought, that’ll probably be me soon … And then something changed. It was clear that someone at the top said, ‘Make sure he doesn’t die here. We don’t need that problem.’ It got just a bit softer ... At some point, word came down: Tsikhanouski must be kept alive, not killed.”
Pointing the finger at Putin
Tsikhanouski blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for propping up Lukashenko, both during the 2020 protests and to this day.
Russia supports Belarus’s economy with loans and subsidized oil and gas. In return, Belarus has allowed Moscow to use its territory to launch troops and weapons into Ukraine, and hosts Russian forces and nuclear weapons.
Tsikhanouski expressed strong support for Ukraine, calling the Kremlin a common evil for both countries.
“If it weren’t for Putin, we would already be living in a different country. Putin recognized Lukashenko’s victory in the election, he called black white. That is, he refused to see the falsifications,” Tsikhanouski said. “They help each other. Because of Putin, this illegal government is still in Belarus.”
Some analysts have speculated that by releasing the charismatic and energetic Tsikhanouski, Belarusian authorities may be trying to sow division within the opposition. But Tsikhanouski insists he has no intention of challenging his wife’s role as the internationally recognized head of the Belarusian opposition, and he calls for unity.
“Under no circumstances do I plan to criticize any Belarusians, condemn or complain about anyone,” he said.
Tsikhanouski says he will not stop fighting and wants to return to active work as both a political figure and a blogger. But he is skeptical that Lukashenko, now 70, will step down voluntarily, despite his age.
“I don’t know anymore — will he go or won’t he?” Tsikhanouski said. “Many people say nothing will change until he dies. But I’m still counting on democratic forces winning.”


NATO leaders gather Tuesday for what could be a historic summit, or one marred by divisions

Updated 23 June 2025
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NATO leaders gather Tuesday for what could be a historic summit, or one marred by divisions

  • US President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts are gathering this week for what might be a historic summit
  • NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was optimistic for an agreement to dedicate 5 percent of GDP to defense spending

THE HAGUE: US President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts are due to gather Tuesday for a summit that could unite the world’s biggest security organization around a new defense spending pledge or widen divisions among the 32 allies.
Just a week ago, things had seemed rosy. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was optimistic the European members and Canada would commit to invest at least as much of their economic growth on defense as the United States does for the first time.
Then Spain rejected the new NATO target for each country to spend 5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense needs, calling it “unreasonable.” Trump also insists on that figure. The alliance operates on a consensus that requires the backing of all 32 members.
The following day, Trump said the US should not have to respect the goal.
“I don’t think we should, but I think they should,” he said. Trump lashed out at Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government, saying: “NATO is going to have to deal with Spain. Spain’s been a very low payer.” He also criticized Canada as “a low payer.”
Spain was the lowest spender in the alliance last year, directing less than 2 percent of its GDP on defense expenditure, while Canada was spending 1.45 percent, according to NATO figures.
Then Trump ordered the bombing of nuclear installations in Iran. In 2003, the US-led war on Iraq deeply divided NATO, as France and Germany led opposition to the attack, while Britain and Spain joined the coalition.
European allies and Canada also want Ukraine to be at the top of the summit agenda, but they are wary that Trump might not want President Volodymyr Zelensky to steal the limelight.
A short summit, decades of mutual security
The two-day summit in The Hague involves an informal dinner Tuesday and one working session Wednesday morning. A very short summit statement has been drafted to ensure the meeting is not derailed by fights over details and wording.
Indeed, much about this NATO summit is brief, even though ripples could be felt for years.
Founded in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed by 12 nations to counter the threat to security in Europe posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, notably via a strong US presence on the continent.
Dealing with Moscow is in its DNA. Keeping the peace outside the Euro-Atlantic area is not.
NATO’s ranks have grown to 32 countries since the Washington Treaty was signed 75 years ago. Sweden joined last year, worried by an increasingly aggressive Russia.
NATO’s collective security guarantee — Article 5 of the treaty — underpins its credibility.
It’s a political commitment by all countries to come to the aid of any member whose sovereignty or territory might be under attack. Trump has suggested he is committed to that pledge, but he has also sowed doubt about his intentions. He has said the US intends to remain a member of the alliance.
A civilian runs NATO, but the US and its military hold power
The United States is NATO’s most powerful member. It spends much more on defense than any other ally and far outweighs its partners in terms of military muscle. Washington has traditionally driven the agenda but has stepped back under Trump.
The US nuclear arsenal provides strategic deterrence against would-be adversaries.
NATO’s day-to-day work is led by Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister.
As its top civilian official, he chairs almost weekly meetings of ambassadors in the North Atlantic Council at its Brussels headquarters. He chairs other “NACs” at ministerial and leader levels. Rutte runs NATO headquarters, trying to foster consensus and to speak on behalf of all members.
NATO’s military headquarters is based nearby in Mons, Belgium. It is always run by a top US officer.
Ukraine’s role at the summit is unclear
With Trump demanding greater defense spending, it’s unclear what role Ukraine will play at the summit. Zelensky has been invited, but it’s unclear whether he will have a seat at NATO’s table, although he may take part in Tuesday’s dinner. Russia’s war in Ukraine usually dominates such meetings.
More broadly, NATO itself is not arming Ukraine. As an organization, it possesses no weapons of any kind. Collectively, it provides only non-lethal support — fuel, combat rations, medical supplies, body armor, and equipment to counter drones or mines.
But individually, members do send arms. European allies provided 60 percent of the military support that Ukraine received in 2024. NATO coordinates those weapons deliveries via a hub on the Polish border and helps organize training for Ukrainian troops.
NATO’s troop plans
A key part of the commitment for allies to defend one another is to deter Russia, or any other adversary, from attacking in the first place. Finland and Sweden joined NATO recently because of this concern.
Under NATO’s new military plans, 300,000 military personnel would be deployed within 30 days to counter any attack, whether it be on land, at sea, by air or in cyberspace. But experts doubt whether the allies could muster the troop numbers.
It’s not just about troop and equipment numbers. An adversary would be less likely to challenge NATO if it thought the allies would use the forces it controls. Trump’s threats against US allies — including imposing tariffs on them — has weakened that deterrence.
The US is carrying the biggest military burden
Due to high US defense spending over many years, the American armed forces have more personnel and superior weapons but also significant transportation and logistics assets.
Other allies are starting to spend more, though. After years of cuts, NATO members committed to ramp up their national defense budgets in 2014 when Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the NATO allies agreed to make 2 percent of GDP the minimum spending level. Last year, 22 countries were expected to hit that target, up from only three a decade ago.
In The Hague, the allies were expected to up the ante to 3.5 percent, plus a further 1.5 percent for things like improving roads, bridges, ports and airfields or preparing societies to deal with future conflicts. Whether they will now remains an open question.


ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their child

Updated 23 June 2025
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ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their child

  • The husband says Paola Clouatre accompanied her mother illegally into the country from Mexico more than a decade ago
  • Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day

BATON ROUGE: Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn’t know how to tell his children where their mother went after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month.
When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.
His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day.
Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show.
To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get.
Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country illegally more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other’s names on their arms.
After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the US Adrian Clouatre said he is “not a very political person” but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the US
“I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right?” he said. “But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that’s always been a way to secure a green card.”
Detained at a green card meeting
The process to apply for Paola Clouatre’s green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.
Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had “no idea” about her mother’s missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said.
Adrian Clouatre recalled that a US Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a “ploy.”
Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping.
Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to “do the right thing” and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs.
“It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”
The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola’s deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said.
Less discretion for military families
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre “is in the country illegally” and that the administration is “not going to ignore the rule of law.”
“Ignoring an Immigration Judge’s order to leave the US is a bad idea,” US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre’s case. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.”
Prior to the Trump administration’s push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation.
USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the US to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran’s spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said.
But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain “protection from deportation” for family members.
“I think it’s bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”
Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are “not the proper authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”