AFP USA

A Venezuelan woman who went through hell to emigrate to America is going back to her troubled homeland, saying that living in fear is no life at all.Deisy — who declined to give her last name for safety concerns — will uproot her three children, sever all the links she made in America and brave the economic misery and other turmoil she fled in the first place.That’s how terrified she is, every day, all day, of being scooped up in one of the raids the Trump administration is carrying out in its relentless crackdown on people without papers.”What I thought was a dream has turned into a nightmare,” said Deisy. “The situation is total chaos. Who wants to be arrested in a country that is not theirs?”Trump was elected last year in large part on his pledge of a historic wave of deportations, and he is delivering.Any day now, transplanted Chicago resident Deisy, 37, and her kids will join the growing number of people deporting themselves to avoid falling into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.In recent months ICE agents have stepped up arrests and the targets have included 252 Venezuelans who were sent handcuffed to a notorious prison in El Salvador without court hearings, on allegations they belong to a powerful Latino crime gang called Tren de Aragua.The detainees, their lawyers and advocacy groups insist the men have no ties to that organization.- Peace of mind ‘priceless’ -Deisy arrived in the United States in 2019 after an arduous trip from Panama, where she had emigrated six years earlier to find work.In her hometown of Maracay in the north of Venezuela, she could not make a living so she made the heartbreaking decision to leave her children with her mother and set out in search of a better life for all of them.After crossing the border with Mexico on foot, she turned herself in to the US authorities and was released with the obligation to appear later in immigration court.Her first taste of Chicago was grueling. She had little money, spoke no English and had no papers. But she stuck it out.In order to live and send money back home, she worked in construction — demolition, to be exact — and drove an Uber.Life back home seemed like a much worse alternative, as is the case for many migrants in the United States. The United Nations says nearly eight million people have left Venezuela in the past decade because of an economic meltdown in the once prosperous, oil-rich country, which suffers from acute shortages of food, medicine and other basic needs. And President Nicolas Maduro is accused of acting like a repressive leftist dictator who tolerates no dissent and steals elections.Now, what Deisy fears is not leaving but staying.Not long ago the immigration authorities picked up a work colleague whose status is the same as hers — living in the US with an asylum request pending.The Trump administration has pledged to revoke a special temporary status that Joe Biden’s administration granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans that shielded them from deportation.They include Deisy’s children, who joined her in 2022, and her husband, a Venezuelan she met in the United States.”We live in fear that we will be stopped on the street,” Deisy said. “We don’t want to be deported to a jail with criminals, where they treat us all as if we were members of Tren de Aragua.”Going home is not easy. Besides uprooting the family, Deisy has to pay for the trip and deal with messy paperwork. For instance, many Venezuelans have had their passports seized by US authorities.After considering several options she has decided to fly with a travel agency that specializes in people like her, Venezuelans going home. It is running 60 flights a month — 70 percent more than before Trump was inaugurated.”Life in Venezuela is rough, but my husband and I do not seek to be rich. And I think I prefer peace and quiet, the stability of being at home,” said Deisy. “For us, peace of mind is priceless.”

Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide pro-Palestinian campus protests, was released Friday from a federal detention center.Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, has been in custody since March facing potential deportation.”This shouldn’t have taken three months,” Khalil, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, told US media outside an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana hours after a federal judge ordered his release.”(President Donald) Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this,” he said. “There’s no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”The Department of Homeland Security criticized District Judge Michael Farbiarz’s ruling Friday as an example of how “out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining our national security.”Under the terms of his release, Khalil will not be allowed to leave the United States except for “self-deportation,” and faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country.Khalil’s wife, Michigan-born dentist Noor Abdalla, said her family could now “finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Maumoud is on his way home.””We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” added Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while her husband was in detention.- Visas revoked -Since his March 8 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of Trump’s campaign to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism.At the time a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, Khalil was a prominent leader of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.Following his arrest, US 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 the detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation.Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.Rubio argues that US constitutional protections of free speech do not apply to foreigners and that he alone can make decisions without judicial review.Hundreds of students have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records.Farbiarz ruled last week that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil poses a national security threat.The government has also alleged as grounds to detain and deport Khalil that there were inaccuracies in his application for permanent residency.Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which is among the groups representing Khalil, welcomed the release order.”This is an important step in vindicating Mr Khalil’s rights as he continues to be unlawfully targeted by the federal government for his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights,” Sinha said. 

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely paused Donald Trump’s bid to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students as the US president said a “deal” with the Ivy League school was in the works.The order by District Judge Allison Burroughs will allow international students to continue to attend the elite universtity while a lawsuit filed by Harvard plays out in the courts.Trump, who has cut federal grants for Harvard and tried a host of different tactics to block the institution from hosting international students, said that his administration has been holding negotiations with Harvard.”Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their largescale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution,” Trump said in a post Friday on Truth Social.”We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so,” he said. “If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country.”Trump did not provide any details about the purported “deal.”The Trump administration has sought to remove Harvard from an electronic student immigration registry and instructed embassies to deny visas to international students hoping to attend the Massachusetts-based university.Harvard has sued the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to block the efforts, arguing that they were illegal and unconstitutional.Harvard previously secured two temporary restraining orders from Burroughs against the government’s move to bar international students, and the judge extended it with a preliminary injunction on Friday.International students accounted for 27 percent of total enrollment at Harvard in the 2024-2025 academic year and are a major source of income.In court filings, Harvard argued that Trump’s actions were “retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”Alongside the campaign against foreign students, the Trump administration has also cut around $3.2 billion of federal grants and contracts benefiting the university and pledged to exclude it from any future federal funding.Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday ordered mass layoffs at Voice of America and other government-funded media, moving ahead with gutting the outlets despite legal disputes and criticism that US adversaries will benefit.Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter named to a senior role at the US Agency for Global Media, said the notices were a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”Lake said in a statement that she would work with the State Department and Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”Trump issued an order in March that froze Voice of America (VOA) for the first time since it was founded in 1942.Termination notices were sent to 639 employees on Friday, after previous offers of voluntary departures and dismissals of contractors.Some 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though Congress had already appropriated funding.The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.”Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice,” said the three complainants, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the “decimation of US broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by US backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.””It is a dark day for the truth,” she wrote on X.Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.One outlet preserved by the mass cuts has been Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba and enjoys support from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who became a leader of pro-Palestinian campus protests.Khalil, a legal permanent US resident who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, has been in custody since March facing potential deportation.District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered Khalil’s release on bail during a hearing on Friday and he will be allowed to return to New York while his deportation case proceeds.”After more than three months, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home,” his wife, Michigan-born dentist Noor Abdalla, said in a statement.”We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” added Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while her husband was in detention.Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which is among the groups representing Khalil, welcomed the release order.”This is an important step in vindicating Mr Khalil’s rights as he continues to be unlawfully targeted by the federal government for his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights,” Sinha said. “We’re confident he will ultimately prevail in the fight for his freedom.”Since his March 8 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump’s campaign to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism.At the time a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.Following his arrest, US 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.Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.Rubio argues that US constitutional protections of free speech do not apply to foreigners and that he alone can make decisions without judicial review.Hundreds of students have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records.Farbiarz ruled last week that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio’s assertions that his presence on US soil poses a national security threat.The government has also alleged as grounds to detain and deport Khalil that there were inaccuracies in his application for permanent residency.

The US Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for American victims of attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank to sue Palestinian authorities for damages in US courts.The court issued a unanimous 9-0 decision in a long-running case involving the jurisdiction of US federal courts to hear lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).Americans killed or injured in attacks in Israel or the West Bank or their relatives have filed a number of suits seeking damages.In one 2015 case, a jury awarded $655 million in damages and interest to US victims of attacks which took place in the early 2000s.Appeals courts had dismissed the suits on jurisdiction grounds.Congress passed a law in 2019 — the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (PSJVTA) — that would make the PLO and PA subject to US jurisdiction if they were found to have made payments to the relatives of persons who killed or injured Americans.Two lower courts ruled that the 2019 law was a violation of the due process rights of the Palestinian authorities under the US Constitution but the Supreme Court ruled on Friday to uphold it.”The PSJVTA reasonably ties the assertion of federal jurisdiction over the PLO and PA to conduct that involves the United States and implicates sensitive foreign policy matters within the prerogative of the political branches,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.The PA announced in February that it would end its system of payments to the families of those killed by Israel or held in Israeli prisons, responding to a long-standing request from Washington.In 2018, during his first term as US president, Donald Trump signed into law rules suspending financial assistance to the PA as long as it continued to pay benefits to Palestinians linked to “terrorist” entities, according to the criteria of the Israeli authorities.

NATO struggled Friday to overcome a block from Spain on a new defence spending deal that US President Donald Trump has demanded for a summit next week.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday threw a last-minute hand grenade into preparations for the gathering in The Hague by coming out strongly against the agreement. In a blistering letter to NATO chief Mark Rutte, Sanchez said that committing to a headline figure of five percent of GDP “would not only be unreasonable, but also counterproductive”.The outburst from Madrid’s centre-left leader has sparked fury from other NATO members who fear it could derail the carefully crafted compromise designed to keep Trump happy at the summit.Ambassadors held a round of negotiations at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, but broke up without a deal being reached. Several diplomats said talks could drag on through the weekend in an effort to reach a breakthrough or the start of the summit on Tuesday.”There is no clarity yet,” one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. In a bid to satisfy Trump’s demand to spend five percent of GDP on defence, NATO chief Rutte has corralled allies towards a diplomatic trade-off.  That would see them agree to coughing up 3.5 percent on core military needs, and 1.5 percent on a looser category of “defence-related” expenditures such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.As a string of reluctant European capitals fell into line, officials believed they were comfortably on track to reach the deal for the Hague summit.Washington’s allies fear that Trump — who has previously threatened not to protect countries he thinks don’t spend enough — could blow a hole in NATO if he doesn’t get what he wants. Spain has been one of the lowest spending NATO countries on defence in relative terms.The country is only set to hit the alliance’s current target of two percent this year after a 10 billion euro ($11.5 billion) injection.Sanchez is facing a difficult balancing act of aligning with NATO allies and cajoling his junior coalition partner, the far-left alliance Sumar, which is hostile to increasing military spending.

American R&B singer Chris Brown on Friday pleaded not guilty in a UK court to a charge stemming from an alleged London nightclub brawl in 2023.Brown, 36, in a navy blue three-piece suit and tie and wearing glasses, stood in the dock as the charge was put to him, replying: “Not guilty, ma’am.”The singer, who is on £5 million ($6.7 million) bail, made no comment as he arrived earlier to find a large group of photographers gathered outside the central London court.He spoke only during the hearing to confirm his name and date of birth and enter his plea to the charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.He smiled and waved to fans in the public gallery as he left.A five to seven-day long trial was fixed to start on October 26, 2026.Currently on the UK leg of an international tour, Brown spent nearly a week in jail last month before being released on bail.Police arrested the star at a five-star hotel in the northwestern city of Manchester hours after reportedly flying in by private jet.Under the terms of his bail, he will forfeit the £5 million guarantee if he fails to return for court proceedings.Judge Tony Baumgartner gave him the green light to continue his scheduled tour which began on June 8 in Amsterdam.The singer, who had a troubled relationship with Barbadian singer Rihanna, is next due to perform in London on Saturday ahead of dates in Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin and Glasgow.The tour will continue in France and Portugal in early July before a string of concerts in the US, wrapping up in Memphis in the US in October.Brown is charged in relation to an assault in which the victim was allegedly struck several times with a bottle before being pursued, punched and kicked.The alleged incident took place at the exclusive private member’s club Tape in Hanover Square in London on February 19, 2023 while Brown was touring in the UK.- Grammy winner -Other bail terms include that he should surrender his passport if he is not travelling.He is also required to live at a specific address known to the court and is not permitted to visit the nightclub where the alleged assault took place or contact the alleged victim, Abraham Diah.Shortly after being released from prison in May, Brown posted an Instagram story referencing his “Breezybowl” tour.”From the cage to the stage. Breezybowl,” he posted.Brown appeared in the dock at Friday’s London hearing with co-defendant Omololu Akinlolu, 39, also a US national, with whom he is jointly charged.Akinlolu also entered a not guilty plea to the same charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent. Both men are also jointly charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm .They will enter pleas to that charge on July 11, the court was told.Brown also faces a third charge of having an offensive weapon, a bottle, in public.The Grammy-winning singer is known for mid-2000s hits such as “Kiss, Kiss”.He rose from a local church choir in Virginia to sudden fame with his rich R&B voice and later rap.

The United States is experiencing its first significant heat wave of the year, beginning Friday across the Great Plains and expanding into parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).The extreme heat is expected to intensify as it shifts to the East Coast early next week, with temperatures reaching the highest level on the NWS’s HeatRisk tool: Level 4, or “Extreme.””Numerous daily record highs and warm lows are likely,” the NWS said. “Light winds, sunny days, and a lack of overnight cooling will significantly increase the danger.”The capital city Washington could see highs of 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) on Monday and 101F on Tuesday.This level of heat can be dangerous for anyone without access to effective cooling and hydration, especially those engaged in prolonged outdoor activity, the NWS warns.Designated cooling centers — including recreation centers and libraries — will be open during business hours, the mayor’s office announced. Homeless residents will have access to shelters.Overnight lows may remain around 80F in urban areas such as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.Fueled by human-caused climate change, 2024 was the warmest year on record globally — and 2025 is projected to rank among the top three.

Former Ajax and Dutch international footballer Quincy Promes has been extradited from Dubai to the Netherlands, prosecutors said Friday, after a conviction for smuggling more than a tonne of cocaine.A Dutch court sentenced the former winger in February 2024 to six years behind bars, finding him guilty of helping to smuggle 1,363 kilogrammes (3,000 pounds) of cocaine from Brazil in 2020.In a separate case, the 33-year-old had already been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay compensation for stabbing his cousin over a stolen necklace.An appeal is ongoing in both cases.A spokeswoman for prosecutors confirmed to AFP local media reports that Promes was on his way to the Netherlands after the extradition.Promes was arrested in Dubai in March 2024 but Dutch prosecutors said that was for a local offence unrelated to the cases in the Netherlands.He won 50 caps for the Netherlands, scoring seven goals, and was part of the side that lost to the Czech Republic in the last 16 of the Euro 2020 championships, which was played in 2021 due to Covid.He has not worn the orange jersey since.In 2019, Promes joined Dutch giants Ajax in Amsterdam, after a 15-million-euro ($17.2 million) transfer from Spanish La Liga outfit Sevilla. In 2021, he left the Dutch capital for Moscow and has played for Spartak ever since, following a previous stint from 2014-2018, during which he was named Russia’s footballer of the year.