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asylum seekers
World Braces for Outcome of Trump-Harris Election
From Palestine to Ukraine to the southern U.S. border, people expressed fears of how a Donald Trump victory could adversely affect them.
Nov 05, 2024
People, governments, and rights groups around the world watched with bated breath as Americans headed to the polls Tuesday to elect a new president in a tight contest whose results are fraught with implications on a wide range of issues, from the climate emergency and migration to support for Ukraine and international trade.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is facing off against former Republican President Donald Trump in a knife-edge race whose outcome may not be known until after Election Day.
In the Middle East, there are fears that a second Trump administration could be even worse for Palestinians, more than 160,000 of whom have been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israel's U.S.-backed assaults on Gaza and the West Bank.
While Harris has promised that she won't change President Joe Biden's "unwavering" support for Israel—which includes approving tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid and diplomatic cover like multiple vetoes of United Nations cease-fire resolutions—Trump has encouraged Israel, which is on trial for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice, to "finish what they started" and "get it over with fast."
Ammar Joudeh, a resident of the heavily bombed Jabalia refugee camp in obliterated northern Gaza,
toldAl Jazeera Monday: "If Trump wins, disaster has befallen us. Trump's presidency was disastrous for the Palestinian cause. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and normalization with Arab countries increased."
"If Trump wins, we'll be displaced to the Sinai Peninsula [in Egypt]," he added. "Israel has already enacted much of Trump's plan to displace us from northern Gaza. If Trump takes office again, he'll finish the plan."
Wafaa Abdel Rahman, who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said that "as a Palestinian, the two options are worse than each other. It seems to us as Palestinians like choosing between the devil and Satan."
"If Trump wins, I believe that the war will be resolved in Israel's favor quickly and more violently," she added. "Trump policy is clear and known to us as Palestinians. However, Harris will complete what her successor started and adopt the same position as her party, and thus we will remain in a long-term war without a resolution. In both cases, the result is death for Gaza, but in the second case, it will be a slow and more painful death."
Meanwhile in Israel, recent polling shows Trump—who is so popular with Israel's right that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named a planned community in the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights after him—with over three times the support of Harris.
The big question in Iran is whether the winner of the U.S. election will pursue a path toward diplomacy or potential war. Tehran-based political analyst Diako Hosseini toldAl Jazeera on Tuesday that "pursuing diplomacy with Trump is much harder for Iran due to the assassination" of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, which was ordered by the former Republican president in January 2020.
"However, if a potential Harris administration is willing, Iran would not have any major obstacles for direct bilateral talks," he added. "Nevertheless, Iran is well and realistically aware that regardless of who takes over the White House as president, diplomacy with Washington is now considerably much more difficult than any other time."
Migrants and asylum-seekers have expressed alarm over Trump's plan for even tougher bans, border closures, and mass deportations than occurred during his first term. Trump has vowed to carry out "the largest deportation operation in American history" and reinstate first-term policies targeting asylum-seekers and people from Muslim-majority nations.
Flor Ramirez, a community navigator at the advocacy group Arise Chicago, toldSouth Side Weekly Monday that migrants are once again experiencing the "collective fear" they felt during Trump's first term.
"It was a fear that cut through our family. I had to talk to my bishop, to tell him that if I got deported, if I could please leave him a notarized letter that he would take care of my children, because my biggest fear at that time was that my children... would be separated," she said.
In Asia and Europe, the prospect of crippling tariffs imposed by Trump is stoking fear of negative economic implications, including a weakened euro.
"Tariffs will seriously dampen the [European Union's] economic growth," Zach Meyers, assistant director of the Center for European Reform, toldFortune on Sunday.
Ukrainians and their backers are also bracing for the possibility that a President Trump would end or dramatically cut aid to Ukraine, which is fighting to defend itself against a nearly three-year Russian invasion and the occupation. Harris supports continued aid to Ukraine. Trump says he will prioritize ending the war quickly—an objective he
claims he could achieve "in 24 hours."
Far-right Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and Trump, who are mutual admirers, said Sunday that Europe will have to rethink its support for Ukraine if the Republican wins, as the continent "will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone." Orbán opposes military aid to Ukraine.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance—who is also a U.S. senator from Ohio—has proposed letting Russia keep the Ukrainian territory it has occupied and establishing a "heavily fortified" demilitarized buffer zone along the war's front line. Ukraine would be forced to accept neutrality under the plan.
Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin—who favored Trump in the 2016 contest against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton—Harris' campaign said the proposed "Trump-Vance-Putin plan for Ukraine is a surrender plan."
"Trump won't say he wants Ukraine to win because he's rooting for Vladimir Putin," a Harris campaign spokesperson said in September."
While some Ukrainians say they want Trump to win because they believe he could help end a war of attrition that's claimed at least tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, others fear the implications of a possible end or precipitous reduction of U.S. aid.
In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, one produce vendor with relatives living under Russian occupation, recently toldCBS News that "for us, it's a matter of survival."
"We are really strong. We will hold on," she said. "We hope America will keep helping us, and not abandon us."
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'A Disgrace': Italy Issues New Detention Order for Ship Saving Lives in Mediterranean
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said a representative for Doctors Without Borders.
Sep 26, 2024
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it plans to appeal the latest detention orders placed by Italian authorities on its search and rescue vessel, Geo Barents, arguing the directives were aimed at preventing it from saving the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said Juan Matias Gil, a representative for the organization, which is also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The latest orders against the group and its ship were issued on Monday, days after MSF helped 206 refugees disembark in Genoa, Italy on September 19.
After that rescue, the group received a distress alert from a plane that monitors the passage of asylum-seekers across the Mediterranean, where thousands of people have drowned in the past decade while attempting to reach Europe after fleeing violent conflicts, political unrest, and poverty.
The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center gave the Geo Barents crew approval to proceed to the overcrowded wooden boat detected by the plane, which was holding around 110 people from Syria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt.
But as MSF was about to complete the rescue, with just 20 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat that had been donated by Italy arrived at the scene.
"They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team," said Fulvia Conte, search and rescue team leader for MSF.
The group said the order, which requires the Geo Barents to be detained at a port for 60 days, is based on "twisted logic" and MSF's "alleged failure to comply with instructions from unreliable and often dangerous Libyan coast guards," said Judith Sunderland, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who was aboard the Geo Barents as it completed the rescue.
"It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
"People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the E.U.-backed Libyan Coast Guard," said Gil. "It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
Sunderland noted that earlier this month, a judge lifted a previous 60-day detention order against the ship, with Italian authorities claiming MSF had caused "a dangerous situation by rescuing dozens of people from the water at night."
"The judge concluded the rescue had been 'urgent and unavoidable' and the detention jeopardized the organization's humanitarian objectives," wrote Sunderland.
Even though MSF had approval to complete the rescue on September 19, the first detention order was issued under the Piantedosi Decree, a law introduced in 2023 which requires non-governmental rescue ships to sail to the assigned port after a rescue, without picking up people from other boats in distress.
The second order was issued Monday following an in-depth inspection of Geo Barents by the Port State Control, which said it found eight technical deficiencies on the vessel.
Conte said such inspections "are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean."
"This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don't operate anytime soon," she said. "We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of HRW, said the latest orders suggest the Italian government is doing everything in its power "to stop NGO rescue ships from operating in the Mediterranean because rescuing migrants gets in the way of Italy's (and the E.U.'s) preferred approach of using the risk of drowning as a deterrent to migration."
MSF has helped rescue more than 91,000 people in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including 12,540 people who have been saved by the Geo Barents crew since 2021.
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said in 2023 that the punishment and criminalization of people working to save refugees from drowning was "a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," after the Italian authorities brought criminal charges for "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration" against nearly two dozen rescue crew members and rights advocates.
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'It's a Disgrace': Biden Weighs Making Temporary Asylum Limits Harder to Lift
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," said one campaigner.
Sep 04, 2024
Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum, senior administration officials are reportedly considering making the policy—which was meant to be temporary—much harder to lift.
Biden's June directive invoked Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
The policy shuts down asylum requests when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points may allow migrants to seek asylum when the seven-day average dips below 1,500.
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law."
The changes under consideration would reopen entry only after the seven-day average for migrant encounters remains under 1,500 for 28 days.
"The asylum ban itself is arbitrary and duplicative. It has no relation at all to a person's asylum claims, meaning even a person with an extraordinarily strong claim would be denied for crossing at a time when many others, potentially thousands of miles away, are doing the same," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
"There is no doubt that we need to rethink the current asylum system, which would include giving it an infusion of resources so that people don't have to wait five years for a decision," he continued. "But cutting it off to whole swathes of people for reasons unrelated to their claims isn't a fix."
"The move to make the asylum restrictions semi-permanent would effectively rewrite U.S. asylum law, which since it was created in 1980 has mandated that all people on U.S. soil be permitted to request humanitarian protections, regardless of how they got here," Reichlin-Melnick added.
U.S. officials say Biden's order has resulted in a dramatic decrease in asylum claims.
According toThe New York Times:
Since Mr. Biden's executive order went into effect, the number of arrests at the southern border has dropped precipitously. In June, more than 83,000 arrests were made, then in July the number went down further to just over 56,000 arrests. Arrests in August ticked up to 58,000, according to a homeland security official, but those figures still pale in comparison to the record figures in December when around 250,000 migrants crossed.
Migrant rights advocates condemned the new rules. Less than two weeks after Biden issued the order, a coalition of rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing the policy was illegal and endangered migrant lives.
"We already know how devastating the Biden asylum shutdown is and it should be ended immediately rather than expanded," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA's director of refugee and migrants rights, said Wednesday on social media. "High numbers of people being denied their human rights is not a sign of success, it's a disgrace."
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