AFP USA

It’s a story of revenge, corruption and a quest for power — William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” was playing Friday inside the curfew zone set up to control protests in Los Angeles.Theater-goers with a valid ticket for the performance in Downtown LA were exempted from the overnight lockdown that has left much of the city center looking as ghostly as the banquet in Shakespeare’s play about the prince of Denmark.”The Los Angeles Mayor’s Office has updated guidance on the Downtown LA area curfew and has granted an exception to allow individuals with tickets to an indoor venue to attend that event as scheduled,” said an announcement on the Center Theatre Group’s website.”Center Theatre Group, The Music Center, and the surrounding streets have not been directly impacted by protest or law enforcement activity.”Protests sprang up in Los Angeles last week over President Donald Trump’s increased immigration raids as anger grew in the sprawling multicultural city.Violence flared, notably on Sunday when autonomous cars were set on fire and rocks were burled at police, but the demonstrations have been mostly peaceful.Trump, who has repeatedly exaggerated the scale of the protests, deployed 4,700 soldiers, including active duty Marines, in what he says is a necessary step to bring order.Opponents accuse him of a power grab and say troops have no place in policing civilian protest.A “No Kings” movement promises protests in more than 2,000 places across the country, including a large demonstration in Los Angeles, on Saturday.

Minutes after an immigration judge rejected his asylum case earlier this week, Oscar Gato Sanchez was arrested as he exited a federal courthouse in Houston.”I’m a Cuban citizen unjustly arrested,” he told AFP as plainclothes officers led him away on Monday. His aunt Olaidys Sanchez, a 54-year-old legal resident of the United States, sobbed against a nearby wall.  Her nephew was placed in an unmarked gray vehicle that took off with sirens blaring, heading towards an immigrant detention center in Conroe, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Houston, according to official documents.Gato Sanchez is now among dozens of migrants detained there, awaiting deportation. In recent weeks, there has been an uptick of immigration enforcement operations at courthouses, as thousands of migrants pursue the asylum process by attending hearings. Agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enter the court facilities unidentified, migrant advocates say, and those who do wear badges often cover their faces. Since President Donald Trump returned to power in January, ICE has been authorized to conduct enforcement activities in courts. AFP journalists have also witnessed arrests at courthouses in New York. In late May, US media published footage from a court in San Antonio, Texas, where a woman who had just been arrested cried out to ask anyone in earshot to pick up her children from school. Meanwhile, a young boy tried to comfort his mother as they were loaded into a vehicle to be taken away. Gato Sanchez entered the United States in December 2023. Like many other migrants, he turned himself in to authorities after arriving and was freed on condition that he appear in court at a later date. He filed an aslyum petition in May 2024 and went on Monday to the Houston court, where a date was to be set for a hearing on his case.Instead, a judge rejected the petition, after a public prosecutor said it was “no longer in the best interest of the government,” said Bianca Santorini, a lawyer who began representing Sanchez immediately after his arrest. “If you’re here without legal status, as soon as your case gets dismissed, the case doesn’t exist anymore, the asylum application doesn’t exist anymore,” she told AFP. “So as soon as he walks out, he’s here with nothing pending,” and it’s at that vulnerable moment that the arrest occurs, she added. – Respecting rules – Santorini believes ICE now has informants inside the courtroom. “They’re not walking to every person who walks out of court and saying ‘let me see your paperwork, let me see what happened.’ They already know when people walk out of court what happened,” she said. Even though he had an aslum applicaiton pending, Gato Sanchez will not get his day in court, despite the Constitution guaranteeing such a right, she added. “It doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. It doesn’t guarantee you get to stay, but it guarantees you have a day in court. Give me the day in court,” she said.The majority of immigrants present themselves in court in good faith, said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of the immigrant-rights organization FIEL.”Most of these people are following some sort of law, whether it’s asylum law or even showing up to court. They’re here trying to do the right thing, to try to see if they can fight their case,” he said. In Los Angeles, an ICE operation targeting undocumented workers outside a home improvement store set off demonstrations and clashes that resulted in Trump’s controversial decision to send in the US National Guard and Marines. Espinosa said some Americans had welcomed the anti-immigrant raids and complained about the people being detained. “But when they’re serving us, when they are being the backbone of our economy, nobody complains,” he said. 

A South Carolina man convicted of a 2005 double murder was put to death by lethal injection on Friday, the fourth execution in the United States this week.Stephen Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 pm (2234 GMT) at the state prison in Columbia, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said in a statement. Stanko had a choice between his method of execution — firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection.He chose lethal injection.  Stanko was convicted of the 2005 murders of his girlfriend, Laura Ling, 43, and Henry Turner, a 74-year-old friend.He also raped Ling’s teenage daughter and slit her throat but she survived and testified against him at trial.In a final statement read by his attorney, Stanko said he was “truly sorry for the pain and loss that I caused.”Sorry is never enough but that does not mean it should not be said.”Stanko was the fourth Death Row inmate executed in the United States this week.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and called on his first day in office for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”John Hanson, 61, was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on Thursday for carjacking and kidnapping Mary Bowles, 77, from a mall in the city of Tulsa and then shooting her to death along with a witness, Jerald Thurman.Hanson had been serving a life sentence for bank robbery in a federal prison in the state of Louisiana but the Trump administration approved his transfer to Oklahoma so he could face the death penalty.Anthony Wainwright, 54, convicted of the 1994 murder of Carmen Gayheart, 23, a nursing student and mother of two young children, was put to death by lethal injection in Florida on Tuesday.Gregory Hunt, 65, convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of his girlfriend, Karen Lane, 32, was executed by nitrogen gas in Alabama that same day.There have been 23 executions in the United States this year: 18 by lethal injection, two by firing squad and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as an execution method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

Pro-Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained in US detention Friday despite an expected release, his lawyer said, following reported accusations of inaccuracies in his permanent residency application.US District Judge Michael Fabiarz had issued an order Wednesday that the government could not detain or deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil posed a national security threat.The order gave the government until Friday to release Khalil. But by Friday afternoon, the Trump administration “represented that the Petitioner is being detained on another, second charge,” the judge wrote.The Department of Homeland Security has provided the court with press clippings from various American tabloids suggesting Khalil, who is married to a US citizen, had failed to disclose certain information about his work or involvement in a campaign to boycott Israel when applying for his permanent resident green card, ABC News reported.”The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family,” Khalil attorney Amy Greer said in a statement, referring to the US holiday observed on Sunday.”Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”Since his March 8 arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump’s willingness to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism.At the time a graduate student at New York’s Columbia University, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.Authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation.His wife Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth to their son while Khalil was in detention. 

An Afghan man pleaded guilty on Friday to plotting to carry out an attack on US election day on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) group, the Justice Department said.Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested in the central US state of Oklahoma in October, several weeks before the November 5 presidential election.He pleaded guilty in a federal court in Oklahoma City to charges of conspiring to provide material support to IS and attempting to receive firearms and ammunition to carry out an attack.He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy charge and up to 15 years in prison for the firearms charge.”By pledging allegiance to IS and plotting an attack against innocent Americans on Election Day, this defendant endangered lives and gravely betrayed the nation that gave him refuge,” US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.”Today’s guilty plea guarantees he will be held accountable, stripped of his immigration status, and permanently removed from the United States.”Tawhedi and a co-conspirator, Abdullah Haji Zada, sought to buy two AK-47 rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition to carry out a “mass-casualty attack” on November 5, according to court documents.The seller turned out to be an undercover FBI employee.  Zada, 18, pleaded guilty in April to the firearms charge and is awaiting sentencing.According to the criminal complaint, Tawhedi entered the United States in September 2021 on a special immigrant visa.

Less than a month after it began receiving migrants, a controversial detention center run by a private firm has been the scene of protests, violence, and escapes, sources said Friday. Soon after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inked a billion-dollar, 15-year contract to outsourcing giant Geo Group to transform an industrial estate near the international airport in Newark, New Jersey into a 1,000-bed detention center.In May, the center – Delaney Hall – began receiving migrants arrested by ICE and facing deportation, despite objections from area residents and local politicians.Late Thursday, detainees at the center began a protest against detention conditions, according to Mustafa Cetin, a lawyer for an asylum seeker being held there.”I have talked to my client yesterday and he told me that roughly 50 detainees were protesting against their conditions,” Cetin told AFP.”They were getting aggressive and it turned violent.” Cetin slammed the Geo Group and ICE for their performance, decrying “a lack of planning and accountability.”US media reports and footage circulated late Thursday showed protesters trying to block an ICE van in front of Delaney Hall and clashing with police. A senior official with the US Department of Homeland Security meanwhile confirmed to AFP on Friday that four detainees “had escaped” from the center the night before.”Additional law enforcement partners have been brought in to find these escapees,” the official said.Newark’s mayor, Democrat Ras Baraka, said Friday that he was concerned about reports of events at Delaney Hall, “ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees.” “This is why city officials and our congressional delegation need to be allowed entry to observe and monitor, and why private prisons pose a very real problem to our state and its constitution,” he said in a statement. The detention center has become one of the latest flashpoints in Democrats’ fight against Trump’s crackdown on what he calls an “invasion” of undocumented migrants. Baraka himself was arrested and briefly held last month after he tried to enter the detention center, closely guarded by ICE agents and security personnel.Following the dispute that broke out between elected officials and federal agents, Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver was also charged with assaulting law enforcement officers, something she has dismissed as “purely political.”

Roughly 200 US Marines took up position in Los Angeles on Friday to protect federal property and personnel after protests in the city against immigration raids. The deployment of the Marine Corps — typically deployed abroad as a rapid strike force — is highly unusual for domestic crowd-control scenarios inside the United States.- Why were they called? -Protests began last week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted raids in and around Los Angeles. The gatherings were mostly peaceful but there were also incidents of vandalism and aggression towards ICE agents and local police.Some demonstrators breached curfews as they rallied by the downtown Federal Building and the nearby Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison holding immigrants.President Donald Trump first took the controversial step of “federalizing” thousands of California National Guard troops — sending them to the area against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.Shortly after, on Monday, the Trump administration announced that about 700 active-duty Marines would also be sent to Los Angeles.- What will they do? -US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which has responsibility over US armed forces operating in North America, said the Marines will protect federal personnel and property.Major General Scott Sherman, who is leading the Los Angeles mission, said two companies of Marines were taking up position at the Wilshire Federal Building. Sherman said the Marines would “hold off crowds” as needed.Military members cannot arrest protesters as that is a law enforcement activity.But NORTHCOM said Marines could “temporarily detain an individual to stop an assault of, to prevent harm to, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties.”- Could they get more power? -The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the use of US federal troops such as Marines for domestic law enforcement activities.But that would change if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, which lets the president deploy federal troops to suppress a violent rebellion on US soil.It was last used during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 following the acquittal of police officers involved in the beating of motorist Rodney King.Under the Insurrection Act, federal troops have the power to conduct searches and arrest people suspected of breaking the law.Trump has notably not ruled out using the act.”If there’s an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it,” he said this week. “We’ll see.”

US rapper Kanye West showed up at a Manhattan federal courthouse Friday to support music mogul Sean Combs, who is on trial for alleged sex trafficking and racketeering.West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, never entered the courtroom; he briefly watched the proceedings in an adjacent room on closed-circuit video with one of Combs’s sons and then left.When asked by broadcaster ABC whether he was there to support Combs, the 48-year-old West nodded and replied: “Yes.”His brief appearance came one day after a former girlfriend of Combs wrapped up her testimony.The woman, speaking under the pseudonym Jane, delivered emotional, graphic details about how he allegedly pressured her into drug-fueled sex sessions with escorts.Her description closely tracked with the testimony of a previous star witness, Combs’s longtime girlfriend Casandra Ventura, who said the encounters were called “freak-offs.”In her testimony, Jane described traveling to Las Vegas last year on a well-known rapper’s private plane, and that she had recommended a male escort to that rapper and his girlfriend.For nearly a month, jurors in the Manhattan court have heard a series of witnesses describing the influence the 55-year-old Combs exerted over staff and ex-girlfriends. Combs faces life in prison if convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking.The music mogul has pled not guilty to the charges against him, with his lawyers arguing that what prosecutors deem to be sex trafficking was in fact consensual.The trial is expected to continue at least through June.

Russia, China and Iran are amplifying disinformation about protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles, researchers said Friday, adding to a surge of domestically generated falsehoods and conspiracy theories.The findings from researchers at the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard illustrate how foreign adversaries of the United States are exploiting deep divisions in American society as a tactic of information warfare.NewsGuard said Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-affiliated sources have published around 10,000 posts and articles about the demonstrations that recently erupted in Los Angeles, advancing false claims framing the city as “ground zero in an American apocalypse.”Seizing on the political rift between President Donald Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom, pro-China accounts on X and Chinese platforms such as Douyin and Weibo have peddled unfounded claims that California was ready to secede from the United States and declare independence.Meanwhile, Tehran-based newspapers have peddled the false claim that popular Iranian singer-songwriter Andranik Madadian had been detained by the National Guard in Los Angeles, in an apparent effort to portray the United States as an authoritarian state.NewsGuard quoted Madadian, better known by his stage name Andy, as denying the claim, stating: “I am fine. Please don’t believe these rumors.” Russian media and pro-Russian influencers, meanwhile, has embraced right-wing conspiracy theories, including the unfounded claim that the Mexican government was stoking the demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies.”The demonstrations are unfolding at the intersection of multiple vulnerabilities such as eroded trust in institutions, AI chatbots amplifying false claims about the unrest, political polarization, and a rollback of safety and moderation efforts by major platforms,” McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with NewsGuard, told AFP.”As a result, foreign actors have a wide-open playing field to flood the zone with falsehoods at a faster rate and fewer barriers compared to previous moments of unrest,” she added.The apparent alignment across the three countries was noteworthy, Sadeghi said.”While Russia, China, and Iran regularly push their own unique forms of disinformation, it’s less common to see them move in such a coordinated fashion like this,” she said.”This time, state media outlets have escalated their messaging to advance their geopolitical interests and deflect attention from their own domestic crises.” The disinformation comes on top of false narratives promoted by US-based influencers.In recent days, conservative social media users have circulated two photographs of brick piles they claimed were strategically placed for the California protesters to hurl at police and inflame violence.The photos were cited as proof that the protests were fueled by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has long been a bogeyman for the far right.But AFP’s fact-checkers found that one photo was lifted from an online marketplace, where a Malaysian hardware dealer uploaded it years ago, while the other was snapped near a construction site in New Jersey.”Every time there’s a popular protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue,” the Social Media Lab, a research center at the Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote on the platform Bluesky.”The fact that these types of fake images are used isn’t a coincidence. It’s part of a pernicious (and) persistent narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic.”