Theme: Migration

The Latino vote shift that helped elect Trump in 2024 now stands as a central part of the Republican defeat, driven by complaints over prices and the immigration crackdown. Latinos voted en masse for Democrats in Tuesday’s elections, from Texas to California, according to AFP. An NBC exit poll cited by the agency put the Democratic victory at about 30 percentage points among Latino voters. The agency attributes the shift to unfulfilled pledges of lower prices and an aggressive immigration crackdown affecting Latinos themselves.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the UK’s plan to make some refugees wait up to 30 years to apply for settlement raises significant concerns. The government kept a wait of up to 30 years for refugees who arrived by irregular routes and created an exemption allowing care workers to apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years. UNHCR said extended settlement waits, short-term stay arrangements and limits on access to citizenship could undermine refugees’ security and ability to integrate.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) posted on X on Tuesday, Election Day, that anyone who votes illegally will be found, tracked, arrested and prosecuted, and that there will be no escape. Non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, cannot vote in federal, state and most local elections, according to the US government’s official page with election rules. The Supreme Court denied a request from the Trump administration to set aside contested votes in California until voters’ citizenship could be verified, without detailing its reasons. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 50,925 immigrants were detained by ICE in August 2026 alone, a record for the Republican administration.

Hongkongers moving to the United Kingdom under the British National (Overseas) visa scheme, known as BN(O), will be exempt from plans to double the qualifying period for settlement to 10 years, according to an official announcement. The exemption retains stricter English-language requirements and tighter rules on criminal records, alongside existing conditions: five years of continuous residence and passing the Life in the UK test. On Monday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood outlined plans to overhaul immigration rules, under which migrants would no longer gain the right to live permanently in the UK almost automatically after five years.

Britain’s government set out before Parliament the “earned settlement” model, which ends the almost automatic grant of permanent residence after five years. People earning more than £50,271 a year and some public service workers, such as doctors, nurses and teachers, will be able to settle after five years; others will wait 10 years as the new default. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said settled status “until now has been given almost automatically” and that, “from today, it must be earned.” People found to have breached immigration rules will have to wait at least 20 years to settle, and anyone who arrived by small boat or another clandestine means faces an additional 10-year wait, which could reach 30 years. The new rules are due to come into effect next year and do not affect people who already have settled status.

France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed at the National Assembly that the country is holding technical discussions with the Taliban authorities to return Afghans in an irregular situation. Nuñez cited Germany as a precedent and said some of these Afghans may pose threats to public order, making it a priority to be able to return them. Green MP Léa Balage accused the government of a beginning of normalization of diplomatic relations with a regime that commits crimes against humanity and practices gender apartheid. France has not had diplomatic relations with the Taliban since the group’s return to power in August 2021, and a diplomatic source said the talks do not call that position into question.

Under the new rules, most foreign workers will have to wait 10 years to settle in the UK, while higher earners can qualify sooner, and refugees who arrive on “small boats” may wait as long as 30 years for residency, according to Al Jazeera.

Britain will require some migrants to wait 10 years or more before they can settle, while granting concessions to some care workers to defuse a political row. The sweeping reforms to the immigration system were unveiled on Monday.

At least seven migrants have died aboard a boat carrying 139 people bound for the Canary Islands after a storm hit. Rescuers reached the boat early on Monday, about 150 km from Arrecife. Five bodies are missing at sea and two have been recovered.

Five Britons detained in France on suspicion of harassing migrants were fined, expelled and banned from entering the region for six months on Sunday, November 2, according to French authorities. An aid group had accused them of violence against undocumented migrants, but investigations found no evidence of violent offenses, prosecutor Charlotte Huet said in a statement on Sunday.

The Taliban government expressed concern on Monday over reported United States (US) plans to deport more than 150 Afghans from the US to Pakistan for eventual return to Afghanistan, with advocacy groups warning of the risk to their lives. The Taliban government urged on Monday that the United States (US) “act responsibly” in the deportations, saying it was ready to address the issue constructively.

More than 300,000 people have been displaced in Yemen by the intensification of fighting in the west of the country, the vast majority over the past two months, according to the United Nations, as reported by Le Monde. The UN called on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and humanitarian workers and to guarantee safe and unimpeded humanitarian access, particularly in hard-to-reach areas of Taiz.

Five Britons arrested on Thursday in Dunkirk on suspicion of violence against migrants were banned from appearing in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments for six months for carrying weapons, Le Monde reported. They drove along the coast in a minibus they had nicknamed “the battle bus” and livestreamed images of intimidation against migrants on a social network, according to the newspaper.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Phuket to demand that Thai authorities end the activities of the Chabad movement in the country and take action against alleged illegal economic activities by foreigners, including Israeli-linked organizations, according to the Times of Israel. The protest came several days after Thailand revoked the citizenship of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, the head of the Chabad movement in the country, for using his American passport to travel abroad.

The administration of United States (US) President Donald Trump is planning to deport Afghans detained in the US back to their home country via Pakistan, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press (AP). Among those facing deportation are relatives of Afghans who worked with the US military in its 20-year war against the Taliban, which is back in power, according to NBC News.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US government was not involved in the preparations for Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure from Brazil, according to G1: “We were not involved in any of the agreements or preparations he made to leave the country. At least, the US government did not directly participate in any of the actions carried out.” Rubio confirmed that President Donald Trump authorized conditional entry (parole) if Flávio arrived at a US point of entry: “The president made clear that, if he arrived in the United States through a point of entry, he would receive conditional entry authorization (parole). And that is what happened.”

More than 150 Afghan immigrants are expected to be deported from the United States, in what would be one of the largest single expulsions of Afghans ever organized by the country, the Jerusalem Post reported. Dozens are already detained in Louisiana and the first deportation flight could depart as early as Monday, according to The New York Times, cited by the Jerusalem Post. The removals will take place through Pakistan because Washington lacks diplomatic relations with the Taliban, a US official told Reuters.

Britain’s Home Office canceled the electronic travel authorization (ETA) of academic Andreas Malm on Wednesday, saying his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good”, according to Middle East Eye.

Up to an estimated 50,000 people crossed into Kenya, according to local authorities cited by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), following clashes between the armies of southern Ethiopia’s Somali and Oromia regions; UNHCR deployed an emergency team to Moyale.

The United States Department of Homeland Security asked Icelandic web hosting company FlokiNET to take down a site with information about tens of thousands of its employees, according to Al Jazeera. In a letter cited by the outlet, the department says the content is live and “places more than 40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking, and physical harm.”

White House communications adviser Jason Miller confirmed that he was responsible for arranging the private jet used in Senator Flávio Bolsonaro's escape to the United States, after his defeat in Brazil's presidential election, according to Brasil 247. In a report cited by CNN Brasil, The New York Times recorded that the jet was arranged by a White House communications staffer.

Fighting in southern Ethiopia has pushed some 50,000 people across the border into Kenya since clashes erupted last week, the United Nations said, citing local authorities. Fatima Mohammed-Cole, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative for Kenya, said up to 50,000 people have crossed into Kenya, according to local authorities. The clashes pit the armies of the Somali and Oromia regions against each other.

The Argentine government confirmed that Senator Flávio Bolsonaro crossed the Brazilian border on the night of Tuesday, October 27 and boarded a private plane bound for Ecuador, according to Opera Mundi. Forty minutes later, at 11:30 p.m., the senator, his wife and their two daughters boarded a Gulfstream G400 from Baires Fly in Puerto Iguazú, with Guayaquil listed as the destination, according to Brasil de Fato. From Guayaquil, the jet took off at 6:22 a.m. Brasília time, with an expected arrival at the executive airport in Opa-locka, Miami, around 10:40 a.m., according to flight-tracking site FlightAware, cited by Brasil de Fato.

Approximately 36,000 people crossed from Ethiopia into Kenya fleeing conflict in and around Moyale, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kenya, with food, clean water, shelter, sanitation and healthcare as the most urgent needs. Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights reports about 40,000 refugees in Moyale, with more than 15,000 in eight temporary shelters.

South Africa halted a new directive for processing asylum applications after violent protests broke out in Johannesburg and Durban, according to DW. The suspension of asylum applications followed recent unrest, France 24 reported.

British officials have begun discussions with the EU about a long-term relationship that could include a return to free movement, the business secretary said, according to the Guardian. The focus of the negotiations is the EU summit in November, to seal an agreement easing some trading restrictions and a youth mobility deal, the newspaper reported. The Independent says the UK is already holding talks about a possible return to freedom of movement.

More than 14,000 Ethiopians have fled deadly fighting in southern Ethiopia into neighbouring Kenya, humanitarian officials said, amid fears that clashes between rival communities have killed more than a dozen people, according to TRT World. The Kenya Red Cross said more than 10,900 displaced people were being accommodated at six temporary camps in the border town of Moyale, while another 4,000 were staying with relatives and host families.

The UN has told Palestinian officials it will stop receiving Palestinians returning from Egypt and coordinating their entry into Gaza from mid-November, citing security risks and repeated Israeli arrests, according to Drop Site News, which quotes a senior source, in a report carried by Middle East Eye. The decision followed Israel's arrest of a Palestinian cancer patient and her daughter on Tuesday, when the Rafah crossing reopened after a suspension of about 10 days prompted by the detention of another returnee.

A mob of about 50 people beat a foreign national to death on Thursday in central Durban, a South African port city that is a flashpoint for anti-migrant sentiment, police said.

Total fees paid to smugglers on sea routes to Europe reached between US$ 388 million and US$ 509 million in 2025, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated, according to AllAfrica. Around 190,000 to 209,000 people were smuggled along the four main sea routes to Europe in 2025.

Earlier this month, the United States announced it would suspend eight technology firms, including Microsoft and India’s Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies, from hiring skilled international workers on a permanent basis through a widely used visa pathway, according to the BBC. New and pending applications under the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) have been frozen — a big blow to Indians, who hold a majority of H-1B visas.

To US President Donald Trump, Springfield, Ohio, crystallises the country’s problems after years of unchecked immigration, according to the BBC. He once repeated the false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in the city. In June, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 350,000 Haitians.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kept deportation protections in place for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was set to end on Monday, and said an announcement on the program “will be made at the appropriate time”, according to The Guardian. Until then, Ukrainians and Sudanese covered by those measures “retain protection”, the department said in a written statement.

US President Donald Trump blamed immigration for the unrest in France, saying Paris will be a Muslim city very soon: “The whole world was coming in, and as you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal,” he said, adding: “We closed our borders. He didn’t.” Vice President JD Vance, a day earlier, wrote on X that “Western liberals imported the third world into France”. The Saturday protests, called over rising fuel prices and falling purchasing power, escalated in several cities, leaving a historic town hall torched and 1,800 arrests, according to The Guardian.

Twelve migrants died on Monday while attempting to cross the Aegean Sea, six of them whose bodies were found after their boat collided with a police vessel, authorities told The Hindu. A baby and four women were among the six people who died off the island of Lesbos in the collision, a coast guard official told AFP. The other six dead — five men and a woman — were on a small boat that capsized off the island of Samos; another 14 people from the boat, one of them a presumed Iranian organiser, were rescued.

US President Donald Trump said France is burning and that immigration has shattered the country, urging border closures, according to The Hindu. Vice President J. D. Vance wrote that Western liberals imported the Third World in the name of diversity while ignoring questions of assimilation and compatibility.

The Indian Embassy in Riyadh on Sunday urged Indian nationals in Saudi Arabia to follow updated safety directives issued by the Saudi authorities for people receiving emergency alerts through the National Early Warning Platform for Emergencies. The instructions, shared on social media, advise people to remain calm, follow official directions and move to the nearest safe place inside a building, preferably an interior room away from windows, until the danger has passed, according to The Hindu.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said hospitals across Yemen are struggling to treat a sharp rise in people wounded along several front lines. Front-line hospitals in Marib, Taiz and on Yemen's Red Sea coast saw unprecedented numbers of weapon-wounded patients, with some admitting more than 700 casualties in a single week, according to the ICRC, in an Al-Monitor report based on Reuters. The fighting pits the Iran-backed Houthis against Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces. More than 200,000 people have been displaced since the fighting resumed in recent weeks, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM).

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia are visiting Ceuta months after more than 70,000 migrants arrived from Morocco, France24 reported. The visit has divided residents and risks reigniting diplomatic tensions with Morocco, which claims sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Moroccan navy vessels entered Spanish waters off Ceuta without permission after late July’s mass migrant crossing, according to Reuters, in a text republished by The Straits Times. Sánchez played down the incidents, calling them isolated.

Brazilian journalist Rogério Tomaz Jr., known for his criticism of the government of Argentine President Javier Milei, was barred from entering Argentina on Monday upon landing at Aeroparque airport in Buenos Aires, according to Agência Brasil. Migration authorities cancelled his permanent residence and imposed a five-year re-entry ban.

US immigration agents searched the home of Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar on Monday morning in the Washington, DC, area as part of a “criminal investigation”, according to the BBC. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant for the home, a US justice department spokesperson told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. Omar was born in Somalia and came to the US aged eight, fleeing war. She was first elected to Congress in 2018 and is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump.

At least 139 people, including children, died after a boat carrying 305 migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which released the toll on Sunday, in information from the Associated Press (AP) republished by NBC News. At least 84 people remained missing, in one of the deadliest crossings from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.

A boat sinking off Djibouti overnight on October 8-9 killed at least 109 migrants, including 15 children, and left 116 missing, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The vessel, carrying 350 people from Djibouti to Yemen, capsized north of the town of Obock. IOM teams are on the ground with local authorities providing emergency aid, according to The Hindu.

South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs withdrew the September 28 directive on the intake of asylum applications following violent anti-immigration protests in Durban and Soweto, a directive that implemented the July Constitutional Court ruling in the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town case, according to AllAfrica.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday, October 8, that he would ask US President Donald Trump to withdraw federal immigration agents from the city, according to Le Monde. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says the agents were trying to arrest a Dominican immigrant with a prior conviction for grand larceny.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it will hire 15,000 people in the US and will not be impacted by the new green card curbs, according to the Hindustan Times. The crackdown on green card sponsorship by technology firms drew praise from Trump allies and fury from Democrats, according to the same outlet.

Federal agents shot a man in New York City on Thursday, according to the New York police department. The shooting took place in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx. According to the Hindustan Times, the shots were fired by immigration officers carrying out an enforcement and removal operation.

Anti-migrant protests turned violent in Soweto, Johannesburg, and Durban on Thursday, with dozens of cars set ablaze and foreign-run businesses forced to close, according to police. Acting national police commissioner Puleng Dimpane said 10 vehicles were torched in Johannesburg and 14 in Durban, where three people were arrested. The protesters oppose a July Constitutional Court decision that removes procedural barriers to seeking asylum, including for people who entered South Africa irregularly. Government spokesperson William Baloyi attributed the violence to deliberately false information about the ruling and said it does not automatically grant refuge, permanent residence or rights to undocumented migrants.

The Donald Trump administration opened a historic investigation into J-1 visa fraud at nine US universities, with subpoenas already issued, according to the Department of Labor, in a report by the South China Morning Post. The announcement was made on Thursday by Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito, at an event alongside Vice-President J.D. Vance, and names Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State University and MIT. The administration singled out China as the focus, warning that Beijing need not break into US research labs if institutions leave their doors open.

A bill introduced by Representative Beth Van Duyne proposes raising the maximum fine for serious H-1B violations from $35,000 to $250,000 and extending the minimum ban on employers found responsible from three years to 10 years, according to The Times of India. The bill, the H-1B Visa Fraud Crackdown Act, has been introduced in the House and sent to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the deportation of migrants from the US to third-party African countries is against the law and exploits suffering to deter migration, according to the BBC. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, more than 500 people have been sent to African countries where they are not citizens, the group says, citing US data. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said “third country removals are an essential public safety tool that remove the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our streets”.

The United States (US) suspended some of the world’s largest IT outsourcing firms — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini — from the Permanent Labour Certification Programme, per an announcement by Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling, alongside Vice-President J.D. Vance. The Department of Labour is also suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the programme.

More than 200,000 people have left their homes in Yemen since the recent fighting began, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) released on Wednesday, in a Reuters text republished by the Jerusalem Post. Displacement surged from 76,000 in mid-September to more than 200,000, nearly all of them fleeing since the fighting started in early September. The Houthis seized the country’s entire Red Sea coast last month from forces of the internationally recognized government, based in Aden.

About 223,000 Ukrainians left the country between January and June 2026, according to Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service, in data obtained by TASS. The flow follows years of departures: about 7 to 8 million in 2022, around 180,000 in 2023, 460,000 in 2024 and 302,000 in 2025, according to TASS.

Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing will visit Malaysia in the next few days, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Tuesday, October 6, according to CNA. Talks are expected to focus on Malaysia’s plan, announced in July, to return about 5,000 Myanmar nationals. The first group of nearly 1,500 returnees arrived in Myanmar on Sunday, although Malaysia has not said how many Rohingya were among them.

The Argentine government launched a citizenship-by-investment program, presented by Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Cabinet chief Diego Santilli during the Argentina Week business event in Paris, with applications starting in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to DW. In a statement, the Economy Ministry said the announcement is part of Argentina's drive toward international openness and reforms aimed at attracting capital.

Greece has urged the EU to allow member states to temporarily suspend asylum applications during periods of mass migration, according to Al Jazeera. The proposal was submitted to EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday during the Justice and Home Affairs Council, also according to the broadcaster. Ministers also approved a new return regulation on Thursday allowing member states to establish return hubs outside the EU, also according to Al Jazeera.

European Union interior ministers met in Luxembourg on Thursday to discuss ways to strengthen border controls and curb undocumented migration into the 27-member bloc, according to Deutsche Welle.

A year-old deal between France and Britain to return migrants crossing the Channel illegally on small boats has come to an end, the UK interior ministry said on Wednesday. The deal was agreed last year under Keir Starmer, then UK prime minister, as part of a post-Brexit reset and to ease tension between the neighbours. According to UK figures, some 1,500 people had been returned to France and just under the same number had in turn been accepted by Britain, RFI reported, citing AFP.

The UK government has announced that the pilot “one in, one out” agreement with France to send back some migrants who cross the Channel has been scrapped. A pilot programme between the UK and France that aimed to curb the number of people crossing the English Channel in small boats to migrate to Britain has been scrapped, Britain’s government said on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the UK Home Office said the pilot with France to remove asylum seekers in exchange for an equal number of legal migrants is no longer processing new cases.

The United States (US) Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume deportations of migrants to countries that are not identified in their removal orders. The court’s three liberal justices dissented, without comment, from the decision to allow the deportations to resume. The court also said it is adding the case to its merits docket and will hear arguments in December.

More than 145,000 people are displaced across eight governorates in Yemen since the escalation on the west coast in June, for a total of 145,308 people or 24,218 households, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The total rose by 15,870 people since September 21 — up more than 12 percent in one week — with Taiz hosting 81,444 displaced people, more than half the national total.

Malaysia began on Tuesday deporting about 1,500 Myanmar nationals under a repatriation program, the first phase of a plan that could reach 5,000 people, according to Reuters. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said current conditions do not support a safe and sustainable return and that it was not involved in identifying those returned, while Malaysiaʼs Interior Ministry said the measure covers 1,476 nationals identified by the government of Myanmar.

The European Union (EU) announced on Saturday a 710 million euro package for people hit by crises, natural disasters or conflict, most of it for Africa, according to Le Monde. Of the total, 380 million euros go to sub-Saharan Africa for protecting vulnerable migrants, supporting voluntary return and reintegration, strengthening migration governance and responding to forced displacement. Another 252 million euros come from the emergency aid reserve for conflict, forced displacement, epidemics and natural catastrophes, including people in sub-Saharan Africa, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Ukraine to prepare for the coming winter.

Tens of thousands of people protested in Madrid on Saturday over the government’s handling of the Ceuta migrant crisis, in a rally organised by Sociedad Civil Española and backed by the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox, according to Al Jazeera. The government put attendance at 20,000, while organisers said 180,000; demonstrators called for an early election. At the end of July, more than 70,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco, and most were later returned.

The White House detailed the cuts: 11 rescissions of budget authority totaling $810 million, the largest being $567 million appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide social services to illegal immigrants. The administration confirmed the use of a pocket rescission for nearly $1 billion of the most harmful government spending.

United States immigration agents fanned out across southwest Kansas this week, a region with a large concentration of feedlots and slaughterhouses, and the effect on the meat industry was immediate, according to Reuters, in a text republished by MarketScreener. The prospect of arrest kept much of the largely immigrant workforce away, forcing beef processing plants to slow down and backing up cattle. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated that 90,000 cattle were slaughtered on Thursday, down 16% from a week earlier. Cattlemen’s associations say the immigration operations are having a chilling effect on documented workers and will push up the price of beef.

More than 55,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to Chad this year, with arrivals through the border areas of Adre and Tine rising to 400 people a day, about 20 times the daily rate of previous months, according to the United Nations (UN) refugee agency (UNHCR), cited by Al Jazeera. The UN says it has received only 20 percent of the $1.6 billion needed for the response, a gap of $1.28 billion, Al Jazeera reports.

The head of the United Nations (UN) refugee agency warned on Friday, 25 September 2026, that conditions for long-displaced people in Western Sahara are getting worse and their humanitarian needs remain starkly underfunded, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), in a dispatch carried by RFI. Displacement in the territory has lasted more than half a century, with generations of Sahrawi refugees growing up in Tindouf and in nearby camps, according to AFP.

Nearly 130,000 people have been forced from their homes in Yemen over the past three weeks, including an estimated 71,000 children, most of them in Taiz, according to UN News, citing the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Of nearly 2,900 children screened in areas with safe humanitarian access, more than one in four was acutely malnourished and around 200 had severe acute malnutrition, according to UN News.

Poland stopped registering asylum applications on the border with Belarus in March 2025 and has kept the measure in place for 18 months, the Associated Press reports. Warsaw wants the European Union (EU) to authorize temporary suspensions of asylum applications in cases of “instrumentalized” migration, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on September 16 a proposal for a European framework to respond to “planned and weaponized” migration, the Associated Press adds.

Amnesty International has called for the abolition of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in a report published on Thursday, September 24, 2026, according to the organization itself. The report “We Had Whistles, They Had Guns” documents widespread human rights violations by ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agencies during immigration operations in Chicago, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, New Orleans and Washington, DC, the group reports. Le Monde confirms the nongovernmental organization’s (NGO) appeal, citing the documented violations.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet adopted on Thursday, September 24, 2026, a decree-law banning the burqa and niqab in schools and capping at 30% the share of pupils without Italian proficiency per class starting next year, according to Al Jazeera and confirmed by ANSA. Non-compliance carries a fine of up to 1,000 euros — and the decree takes effect immediately but needs parliamentary ratification within 60 days.

An investigation by the consortium coordinated by Forbidden Stories has obtained a copy of the agreement under which Eswatini takes in deportees from the United States, according to France 24, which is part of the consortium. The document, signed on 14 May 2025 by Prime Minister Russell Dlamini, provides for the kingdom to receive 160 people removed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in exchange for $5.1 million to “reinforce border and migrant migration capacity”. Four planes have brought 32 deportees to the kingdom over a year; they are held without charge at the Matsapha maximum-security prison, and only five have returned to their home countries.

More than a year after they were deported from the United States and sent to El Salvador under an agreement neither government ever made public, 11 Salvadoran men are still unaccounted for, and their families are demanding to know where they are being held, according to an investigation by the consortium The Deportation Project, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, which includes RFI and G1. The men arrived in San Salvador on military flights chartered by Donald Trump’s administration between March and April 2025, on the same aircraft that carried 252 Venezuelans, all of them presented by both governments as dangerous criminals. They were taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), the maximum-security prison built during Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on the country’s gangs, and held incommunicado, without a lawyer and without a legal process. The Venezuelans were sent home four months later; the Salvadorans remained in detention. Rights groups later established that 36 Salvadorans had been on those flights, and families have identified 11 of them. The terms of the deal emerged in September 2025, when documents from the Trump administration surfaced in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward: Washington had agreed to pay El Salvador $4.76 million to hold Venezuelan and Salvadoran deportees at Cecot. Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that only 10 percent of the Salvadorans had records in the United States for violent or potentially violent crimes. In June 2026, El Salvador confirmed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that Elmer Concepcion Romero Janes, one of the 11, was being held incommunicado at Santa Ana prison, without saying what he was accused of, and prosecutors gave his family a certificate stating that he has no criminal record in El Salvador. Lawyers representing nine of the 11 identified families filed a complaint against the Salvadoran state for enforced disappearance. “The crime starts in the United States and continues in El Salvador,” said Kelvi Zambrano, one of those lawyers. El Salvador’s government did not respond to requests for access to the prisons or to the consortium’s questions.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, that a failure of Morocco’s border controls was to blame for the mass entry of migrants into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta. He said Spain was investigating what happened in July and had asked Rabat for “actions and also for answers because it is also clear that its border control failed”, in an interview with the US broadcaster CNN in New York, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Le Monde. More than 70,000 migrants entered Ceuta on 30 and 31 July 2026 in an unprecedented and deadly rush, AFP reported. Most returned to Morocco in the following hours; several thousand remained in the enclave, where the situation has since deteriorated, leading to episodes of violence and almost daily demonstrations by residents. A Spanish police report seen by AFP said the number of Moroccan police officers around the border crossing was “clearly smaller than usual” and that officers “made no serious attempt” to stem the surge, based on satellite images, open-source videos and testimonies from migrants. Speaking in parliament on 3 September 2026, Sánchez had said Madrid needed to ask Morocco for “explanations and changes” to avoid a repeat, while stressing there was no “solid proof” that Morocco had orchestrated the influx, according to AFP and Le Monde.

Austin police on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, released video of the response to the shooting of Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, a Venezuelan man wounded by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on Sunday, September 20, while he was delivering for DoorDash. The footage, presented at a news conference by Police Chief Lisa Davis, shows agents approaching Garcés Pérez and first responders treating him, but not the moment the agent fired, according to CBS Austin. The ICE officer who fired had been issued a body camera but was not wearing it, according to two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials who spoke to NBC News; a second agent’s camera in the same vehicle captured partial footage that does not include the shooting. Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said her client returned to a hospital with severe pain and difficulty moving his left arm before being taken back to the Pearsall detention centre, with the bullet still lodged in his back, according to CNN. Austin police’s special investigations unit is examining the case alongside the Texas Department of Public Safety.

A US federal judge blocked the deportation of Venezuelan Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, 20 September 2026, and still held with a bullet lodged in his back, according to his lawyer. The order by Judge Orlando L. Garcia, of the federal court in San Antonio, instructs Bobby Thompson, warden of the South Texas ICE Processing Center, to bring Garcés Pérez to a hearing on 30 September 2026; it was signed on Monday, 21 September, according to KXAN. Because his attendance is mandatory, he cannot be removed before the hearing, said his lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, who filed a federal lawsuit seeking a stay of removal and his release, according to the BBC. Travis County District Attorney José Garza wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Director David Venturella asking that the removal be paused while the shooting investigation continues, because Garcés Pérez is a central witness, according to Fox News. Congressman Joaquin Castro demanded his release from detention.

The US Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Monday, 21 September 2026, to review the ruling that freed Indian researcher Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown University, who advocated for Palestinian rights and opposed Israel’s war in Gaza, according to The Georgetown Voice and Al Jazeera. The petition, docketed as Trump v. Khan Suri, asks whether federal immigration law barred a lower-court judge from ordering the release of a noncitizen held while removal proceedings are under way, and argues that rulings such as the Fourth Circuit’s give detainees a route to challenge deportation outside immigration courts. Suri, who holds a J-1 exchange visa, was detained in March 2025 by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and spent 58 days in custody; Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered his release in May 2025, and in July 2026 the Fourth Circuit ruled 2-1 that he should remain out of detention. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the ruling is “practically disastrous”; the Third Circuit, in January 2026, in the case of activist Mahmoud Khalil, and the Second Circuit, in July, in the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, reached the opposite conclusion, and the Justice Department asked the court to take Khalil’s case as well. Suri also faces a separate immigration case, which opened on 15 September 2026, to decide whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can deport him.

Venezuelan Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on a street in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, September 20, 2026, was readmitted to hospital after protests and pressure from Texas lawmakers over his health, because the bullet lodged in his back had not been removed, according to El País. He had said on a call during a press conference on Monday, September 21, that the bullet fractured his collarbone and was not taken out because it sits close to his spine, and that at the ICE processing centre in Pearsall, where he is being held, he received only a painkiller in the early hours. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said he was stable when he was transferred, and his lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, disputes the official account of an irregular entry: she says Garcés entered with authorisation in 2024 and applied for asylum, and that the deportation order was issued in absentia because a hearing notice went to his old address. Austin congressman Greg Casar has demanded that ICE not deport him, and the city saw a second night of protests.

Nearly 130,000 people have been displaced across seven governorates in Yemen since the Houthi offensive on the Red Sea coast began, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM): the agency’s latest data, from September 20, 2026, record 129,438 displaced people, or 21,573 households, against 118,086 counted on September 18 — an increase of 11,352 people in three days. Taiz hosts the largest number, with 73,494 displaced people, followed by Lahj, Aden and Al Hodeidah, and by Sunday evening, September 20, 3,106 people had crossed the Red Sea to Djibouti. “The numbers keep climbing,” said Othman Belbeisi, IOM Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, who said many families have already been displaced more than once. Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said 28 airstrikes hit three provinces in the previous 24 hours and put the cumulative total since the escalation began at 760 — a figure without independent confirmation.

Moroccans vote on Wednesday in the first parliamentary election since the youth-led protests that filled the country’s streets in late 2025, with 7,288 candidates from 27 parties competing for the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, according to Africanews and Al Jazeera. Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch of the National Rally of Independents (RNI), elected in 2021, is trying to hold on to office. The Gen Z 212 movement, named after the country’s dialling code, began on Discord after eight women died at a public maternity hospital in Agadir and went on to demand that the budget go to hospitals and schools, criticising the stadiums built for the 2030 World Cup; Akhannouch’s resignation never came, and the government responded with higher health and education spending and incentives for young candidates, according to Middle East Eye and The Washington Institute. People aged 18 to 24 are about 12 percent of the population but only 4 percent of the country’s 15.8 million registered voters, according to Africanews. In July, about 72,000 Moroccans crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, according to Middle East Eye; Rabat denies organising the crossings.

Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, the Venezuelan man shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Austin on Sunday, said in a phone call to a Monday press conference that an unmarked SUV sideswiped him twice before he realised agents were trying to stop him, and that they only then switched on their lights and sirens. According to the account published by the Texas Tribune, he asked to pull over somewhere safer than traffic under a freeway and an agent said no; he then felt one shot to his back. The hospital that treated him told him it would not remove the bullet because it sits too close to his spine, he said. Attorney Kristin Etter filed on Monday in federal court in San Antonio for his release and to block his deportation: he does not dispute the removal order but wants a chance to apply for a U visa, an immigration status for crime victims. Garcés Pérez entered the United States in 2024 through the CBP One app run by Customs and Border Protection, applied for asylum and received a work permit, according to his lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch; he updated his address with the immigration court, but the hearing notice went to an old address and the removal order was issued without him being notified. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says he has a final removal order and is in custody awaiting deportation.

US president Donald Trump hosted New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, on Monday and praised a rival he once called ‘my little communist’: ‘Hopefully, you’re going to be a great mayor,’ Trump said at a press conference after about an hour of closed-door talks, according to AFP, the Hindustan Times and USA Today. It was their third meeting since Mamdani’s election. The mayor said he raised the fate of Haitians who lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and now face deportation; Trump acknowledged the issue was raised and made no commitment. The two agreed to start technical talks between City Hall and the White House on federal funding for the 12,000-home project over the Sunnyside Yard rail depot in Queens, which Mamdani puts at more than $21bn in federal grants. Mamdani said he told Trump all press would be welcome at their joint appearance, on the same day major TV networks kept up their boycott of the president’s coverage.

Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, the Venezuelan man shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Austin on Sunday, is being held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall and still has a bullet lodged in his back, according to the office of his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, cited by NBC News. The attorney says his wife and family have not been allowed to see him and have received no information about his condition or whereabouts. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says he is under a final order of removal and in custody pending deportation, and the shooting is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the FBI.

Anti-immigration protesters attacked a car at the port of Ceuta on Sunday, throwing eggs and stones and smashing its windows, believing it carried pro-migrant activists, according to the Portuguese newspaper Público and RTP, citing Reuters. Police detained at least one person. The damaged car belonged to Ceuta Assembly deputy Julia Ferreras, according to the local party Ceuta Ya, cited by Público. Protesters were waiting for the arrival of the Pamplona-based group Negu Gorriak (Right to a Roof), which planned to distribute humanitarian aid to migrants; according to RTP, lawyer Rafael Borrego and human rights lawyer Sofía Cánovas were also in the vehicle. More than 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the enclave in late July; most were returned, but about 2,500 remain in the city.

Police in Evanston, a Chicago suburb, said they are investigating a Sunday case in which a man was detained by federal immigration agents and ended up in a hospital with injuries to his head, neck and teeth, and that agents later determined he was not the person they were seeking and that he is a US citizen. According to the police account, the agent who spoke to officers identified himself as a federal agent conducting a fugitive investigation and said the man refused to provide identification and resisted detention. Witnesses told police they believed the agents were with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request for comment, according to The Guardian. The case came the same day an immigration agent shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said 164 people were killed and 516 wounded in Yemen between September 13 and 18, 680 killed or wounded in the week, and that it has recorded 3,672 casualties since August 6, including 674 deaths and 2,998 injuries. Lahj province in the southwest accounted for 58 deaths and 226 injuries in six days. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 129,438 people have been displaced across seven provinces and that 11,352 left their homes in just three days since September 18.

An ICE agent shot and wounded Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan who was delivering food for DoorDash, on Sunday afternoon in north Austin, Texas, according to NBC News and The Associated Press. Austin police took part in neither the operation nor the shooting, Chief Lisa Davis said, reporting a wound to the torso and a serious but stable condition; city council member Mike Siegel says the agent rammed his vehicle into the victim’s car before firing at least five times.

The Department of Homeland Security says Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez is under a final order of removal, entered the country under the Biden administration and is in federal custody pending deportation, with the shooting investigated by HSI and the FBI, according to NBC News. Democratic members of Congress demanded an independent investigation and the release of body-camera footage, and at night the Texas Department of Public Safety used tear gas against protesters at the scene, NBC News reports.

The United States has deported around 25,000 people to third countries under secretive deals, according to AFP, The Guardian, France24 and the Washington Post, which published a joint investigation. The Guardian describes people sent to countries they have no link to.