“No right is safe”: Liberal SCOTUS justices issue dire warnings after birthright citizenship decision

Blaise Malley
Fri, June 27, 2025 

 Salon.com


WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: (L-R) U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and U.S. Associate Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson listen as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.More

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Friday cleared the way for the federal government to potentially enforce an executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The court’s dissenters — the three liberal justices — said the decision, even though it did not address the legality of the executive order itself, not only undermines judicial authority but poses a broader threat to constitutional protections.

The 6–3 ruling in Trump v. CASA doesn’t determine whether former President Trump’s executive order, which sought to deny birthright citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants or those with temporary status, violates the 14th Amendment. Instead, it curtails the power of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions, which can block executive policies from taking effect while litigation proceeds.

In blistering dissents, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in dissent by Elena Kagan, accused the court of abdicating its role as a check on unlawful government power.

“Few constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone,” Sotomayor wrote, “but this is one.” Recalling that only once before—Dred Scott v. Sandford—had the federal government attempted to strip birthright citizenship from a category of people born in the United States, Sotomayor observed that the principle has since stood unchallenged for over a century. “There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today.”

“With the stroke of a pen,” Sotomayor wrote, “the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution.”

Sotomayor accused the court of going along with a “shameful” request by the government to continue enforcing a policy that multiple lower courts have found likely unconstitutional. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” she warned.

Justice Jackson offered a similarly stark warning: “Courts must have the power to order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop. To conclude otherwise is to endorse the creation of a zone of lawlessness … where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.”

“Stated simply,” Jackson wrote, “what it means to have a system of government that is bounded by law is that everyone is constrained by the law—no exceptions.” Allowing the executive to apply the law as it sees fit, so long as they are not party to a case against the government, she added, “carves out a huge exception … that could turn out to be a mortal wound.”

Opinion

Sotomayor Warns No One Is Safe After Birthright Citizenship Ruling

Robert McCoy
Fri, June 27, 2025 
THE NEW REPUBLIC



In dissenting opinions, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson excoriated the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling on birthright citizenship, which restricts courts’ ability to keep the Trump White House from carrying out its lawless orders.

At issue was whether lower courts can issue “nationwide injunctions” halting Trump’s anti–birthright citizenship order from being enforced against anyone, and not just those challenging the order in court or living in a jurisdiction where it’s being challenged.

While not acknowledging the constitutionality of the executive order, which denies automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and those with temporary status, the majority opinion stated that such injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

Justice Sotomayor had choice words for this ruling, which seemingly provides Trump powerful ammunition in his attacks on civil liberties. She was joined by Justices Elena Kagan as well as Jackson, who also wrote a dissenting opinion.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” Sotomayor’s dissent read. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from lawabiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

Sotomayor used an analogy to illustrate the absurdity of granting the government’s request to strike down nationwide freezes on plainly unlawful orders: “Suppose an executive order barred women from receiving unemployment benefits or black citizens from voting. Is the Government irreparably harmed, and entitled to emergency relief, by a district court order universally enjoining such policies? The majority, apparently, would say yes.”

Sotomayor torched her conservative colleagues for caving to Trump: “With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution,” she wrote. “Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.”

Jackson began her dissent by noting she agrees “with every word of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent,” and decided to file hers to emphasize that the court’s ruling poses “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Trump’s request to do away with universal injunctions, Jackson wrote, “is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior” and “to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution.”

In granting that wish, Jackson wrote, the majority has permitted Trump to act not unlike a monarch, giving “the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.”

By placing “the onus on the victims to invoke the law’s protection,” the court has created circumstances in which “a Martian arriving here from another planet would … surely wonder: ‘what good is the Constitution, then?’”

The court’s decision marks “a sad day for America,” Jackson said, requiring judges, faced with Trump’s lawlessness, “to look the other way” and permit “unlawful conduct to continue unabated.”

Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Where do other countries stand?

Luis Barrucho

 - BBC World Service
Fri, June 27, 2025 


The US gives automatic citizenship to anyone born in the country, but this principle is not the norm globally

 [Getty Images]

President Donald Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship has been allowed to proceed while lawsuits against it make their way through the courts.

A Supreme Court ruling on Friday has curbed the power of federal judges to block presidential orders, allowing for the birthright citizenship policy to start in 30 days.

For nearly 160 years, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution has established the principle that anyone born in the country is a US citizen.

But as part of his crackdown on migration numbers, Trump is seeking to deny citizenship to children of migrants who are either in the country illegally or on temporary visas.

The move appears to have public backing. A January poll by Emerson College suggests many more Americans back Trump than oppose him on this.

But how does this compare to citizenship laws around the world?
Birthright citizenship worldwide

Birthright citizenship, or jus soli (right of the soil), is not the norm globally.

The US is one of about 30 countries - mostly in the Americas - that grant automatic citizenship to anyone born within their borders.

In contrast, many countries in Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa adhere to the jus sanguinis (right of blood) principle, where children inherit their nationality from their parents, regardless of their birthplace.

Other countries have a combination of both principles, also granting citizenship to children of permanent residents.

[BBC]

John Skrentny, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, believes that, though birthright citizenship or jus soli is common throughout the Americas, "each nation-state had its own unique road to it".

"For example, some involved slaves and former slaves, some did not. History is complicated," he says. In the US, the 14th Amendment was adopted to address the legal status of freed slaves.

However, Mr Skrentny argues that what almost all had in common was "building a nation-state from a former colony".

"They had to be strategic about whom to include and whom to exclude, and how to make the nation-state governable," he explains. "For many, birthright citizenship, based on being born in the territory, made for their state-building goals.

"For some, it encouraged immigration from Europe; for others, it ensured that indigenous populations and former slaves, and their children, would be included as full members, and not left stateless. It was a particular strategy for a particular time, and that time may have passed."

Shifting policies and growing restrictions

In recent years, several countries have revised their citizenship laws, tightening or revoking birthright citizenship due to concerns over immigration, national identity, and so-called "birth tourism" where people visit a country in order to give birth.

India, for example, once granted automatic citizenship to anyone born on its soil. But over time, concerns over illegal immigration, particularly from Bangladesh, led to restrictions.

Since December 2004, a child born in India is only a citizen if both parents are Indian, or if one parent is a citizen and the other is not considered an illegal migrant.

Many African nations, which historically followed jus soli under colonial-era legal systems, later abandoned it after gaining independence. Today, most require at least one parent to be a citizen or a permanent resident.

Citizenship is even more restrictive in most Asian countries, where it is primarily determined by descent, as seen in nations such as China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Europe has also seen significant changes. Ireland was the last country in the region to allow unrestricted jus soli.

It abolished the policy after a June 2004 poll, when 79% of voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring at least one parent to be a citizen, permanent resident, or legal temporary resident.

The government said change was needed because foreign women were travelling to Ireland to give birth in order to get an EU passport for their babies.

Rights groups had feared a constitutional court ruling in the Dominican Republic would strip tens of thousands of citizenship, mostly of Haitian descent [Reuters]

One of the most severe changes occurred in the Dominican Republic, where, in 2010, a constitutional amendment redefined citizenship to exclude children of undocumented migrants.

A 2013 Supreme Court ruling made this retroactive to 1929, stripping tens of thousands - mostly of Haitian descent - of their Dominican nationality. Rights groups warned that this could leave many stateless, as they did not have Haitian papers either.

The move was widely condemned by international humanitarian organisations and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

As a result of the public outcry, the Dominican Republic passed a law in 2014 that established a system to grant citizenship to Dominican-born children of immigrants, particularly favouring those of Haitian descent.

Mr Skrentny sees the changes as part of a broader global trend. "We are now in an era of mass migration and easy transportation, even across oceans. Now, individuals also can be strategic about citizenship. That's why we are seeing this debate in the US now."
Legal challenges

Within hours of President Trump's order, various lawsuits were launched by Democratic-run states and cities, civil rights groups and individuals.

Three federal judges ruled against Trump, issuing nationwide injunctions to block the orders from taking effect.

Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

In a win for President Trump, though, on 27 June, the Supreme Court ruled against nationwide injunctions.

In the majority opinion delivered by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court said: "Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts."

Because of the ruling to limit injunctions, Trump's birthright citizenship order will be able to take effect 30 days after the court's opinion was filed, the court said.

It will apply to the 28 states that did not participate in the lawsuit.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the merits of the birthright citizenship order itself at some date in the future.

Most legal scholars believe it likely would be found unconstitutional.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that birthright citizenship is the "law of the land" and the order is "patently unconstitutional".

What's next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court's ruling

TIM SULLIVAN and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Fri, June 27, 2025 

AP


FILE - Mairelise Robinson, a U.S. citizen who is 6 months pregnant, attends a protest in support of birthright citizenship, outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The legal battle over President Donald Trump's move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite the Republican administration's major victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions.

Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent.

The high court's ruling sends cases challenging the president's birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president's policy remains uncertain.

Here's what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court's ruling and what happens next.

What does birthright citizenship mean?

Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally.

The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the amendment states.

Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the U.S. after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., no matter their parents’ legal status.

It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of U.S. law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats

Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship

Trump's executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily. It's part of the hardline immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration.”

Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” – saying it means the U.S. can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally.

A series of federal judges have said that’s not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect.

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom.

In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed” Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship.

Is Trump's order constitutional? The justices didn't say

The high court's ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge's authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president's authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters.

But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump's bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.

“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges’ decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is “very confident” that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case.

Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps

The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps.

The Supreme Court's ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump’s order.

But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor.

“It’s not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,” said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned the court's dissenting opinion, urged the lower courts to “act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court’s prompt review" in cases “challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order.”

Opponents of Trump's order warned there would be a patchwork of polices across the states, leading to chaos and confusion without nationwide relief.

“Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century," said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports refugees and migrants. “By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear.”

____

From Bruce Lee to Marco Rubio: 

A (SHORT) list of celebrity birthright citizens

Christopher Cann,

 USA TODAY
Sat, June 28, 2025 

The Secretary of State, several former presidential candidates and martial arts icon Bruce Lee all became American citizens at birth because of birthright citizenship, which the Supreme Court has now thrown into limbo.

On the first day back in office, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States to parents in the country temporarily or without legal authorization – a move several judges quickly blocked nationwide.

On June 27, the Supreme Court lifted temporary blocks preventing Trump's order from taking effect, but left it to lower courts to consider the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Whether Trump will ultimately be able to repeal the longstanding legal precedent that grants citizenship to all children born on American soil is unclear.

Here are some well-known actors and politicians who would not have been American citizens when they were born if birthright had not existed.

Marco Rubio

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies in front of the Senate Committee on Appropriations – Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2026 for the Department of State in Washington, D.C., on May 20, 2025.More

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, is the son of Cuban immigrants who did not become naturalized U.S. citizens until 1975, years after their son was born.

Rubio has previously said he does not agree with repealing birthright citizenship

.
Diane Guerrero

Actress Diane Guerrero from the TV series "Orange is the New Black" reacts as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform during a visit to Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada November 21, 2014.More

Actress Diane Guerrero, who starred in the hit television show "Orange is the New Black,” was born to undocumented immigrants from Columbia who were deported when she was 14, she told NPR in 2019.

In an interview with the outlet, she said, “This is a country of immigrants. People forget – they like to forget that their ancestors came here with the same dream, with the same hopes, with the same fears. And it's unfair to say that because people are coming later that they don't deserve to be here.”

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, was born in South Carolina to immigrants from the Punjab region of India, according to her autobiography.

In 2015, she told The State news outlet that her parents were in the United States legally but did not become naturalized citizens until after her birth, and the non-partisan American Immigration Council considers her a U.S. citizen because of her place of birth.

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee who stars in the Fists of Fury, is seen on a stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Chinese file at a post office in Zhengzhou. Bruce Lee (R), who stared in the Fists of Fury, is seen on a stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Chinese film at a post office in Zhengzhou, central China's Henan province, Sept. 1, 2005.More

Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon who starred in films such as "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury," was born in San Francisco while his parents were traveling with the Chinese Opera.

The National Archives notes that under birthright citizenship he was considered a citizen ‒ though he would not be under Trump's revision to the law. "Lee’s parents filed for a Return Certificate on his behalf … enabling him to return to the United States if he later wished to do so. Lee did return at the age of 18 and grew into the iconic martial artist and film star known across the world."

Kamala Harris

Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship may have been designed explicitly against his November rival for the presidency, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

David Bier, of the Libertarian Cato Institute, posted on X the day Trump signed the order: "As I predicted, Trump's birthright citizenship EO includes a Kamala Harris clause, specifically designed to deny the legitimacy of her US citizenship as the child of someone with a temporary status."

Trump's order specifies that someone wouldn't be entitled to birthright if their mother was on a temporary visa ‒ like the student visa Harris' mother was on at the time of her birth ‒ and their father wasn't a citizen, as hers wasn't.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., Oct. 27, 2024.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech billionaire and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, told NBC News in 2023 that his father never became a U.S. citizen and his mother only naturalized after he was born.

Ramaswamy, who Trump endorsed in next year's Ohio gubernatorial race, has repeatedly called for an end to birthright citizenship.

Contributing: Maureen Groppe, Eduardo Cuevas, Sara Chernikoff, Ramon Padilla and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY


Opinion

As an immigrant, I don't expect shortcuts. Birthright citizenship is our right. | Opinion

Tanay Raje
Fri, June 27, 2025

“Welcome home.”

That’s what a border protection agent said to me after a recent vacation. His words struck a chord with me because he acknowledged that the United States was my home. The irony of the situation being that I am not a U.S. citizen, I am an immigrant.

As an immigrant, I often wonder whether I’m truly accepted in the country where I’ve spent the past 21 years of my life.

Now the decision by the Supreme Court on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order makes me question that even more. Trump ordered an end to automatic citizenship for those born here ‒ unless at least one of the child's parents is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.

And while the court’s June 27 ruling didn't deal with the birthright citizenship question directly, their 6-3 decision lifted a temporary block on the president’s unjust order – allowing it to partially go into effect in 30 days.

Opinion: Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship – but that's not the real case

That order was the latest attempt to alienate immigrants and erase the immigrant history that built this nation. It undermines the idea that any immigrant, legal or not, can ever truly belong in America.

When I immigrated to this country as a child, I was once welcomed with open arms and integrated into the culture. However, for years, it’s felt like my country has been slowly closing its doors to immigrants like me. While attacks on undocumented immigrants have often dominated the headlines, legal immigrants have been quietly targeted as well through backlogs, unnecessary barriers and, more recently, executive actions.
Aging out of legal immigration visa

Tanay Raje graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He is now working as an engineer at a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia. Tanay is also a member of Improve the Dream, one of the more than 250,000 children of long-term visa holders, raised and educated in America.More

My family immigrated to the United States when I was 5 years old on the H-1B visa. My father was invited to work here because of his skills in IT, and we eventually settled in Pittsburgh.

Like many immigrant families, we built a life here. I went to school, made friends and followed the typical American path. That path eventually led me to Pennsylvania State University, where I earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.

But on my 21st birthday, I aged out of my parents’ immigration status because as far as immigration rules were concerned, I wasn’t a child anymore. In a cruel twist of fate, four months later my parents received their green cards. That small gap meant they would become permanent residents, while I was forced to start over from the back of a broken immigration system.

Opinion: I joked about getting deported. In Trump's America, it's not funny.

I first realized that I was different from my friends in high school when I wasn’t allowed to get a job and help support my family. In college, this realization became even more apparent when I had to switch to an F-1 student visa and had to legally prove that my “home” address was in India, not in Pittsburgh where I lived with my family.

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Once I graduated and wanted to enter the workforce, I was denied most job opportunities ‒ not because I am unqualified, but because companies could not or would not sponsor immigrants. Every piece of paperwork I filed had to be absolutely perfect. Something as minor as a technical error on the immigration forms could have, and once nearly did, jeopardize my entire immigration status.

Because of that four-month gap, I will continue to be treated as a visitor in the only country I have ever known and called home.
Growing hostility toward immigrants

I share this to make a simple but important point: Despite what the headlines might suggest, legal immigration is anything but easy.

When the Biden administration announced in 2024 protections for Dreamers who as kids were brought to the United States illegally, I questioned the omission of children like me who continue to be left behind.

Trump’s executive order reinforces this message of exclusion by taking it even further and signaling that none of us belong here.

People rally outside the Supreme Court for birthright citizenship on May 15, 2025.

Although the executive order does not apply directly to me, because I was born in India, it could have changed everything for my younger brother, who was born in Detroit. If this executive order had been in effect when he was born, he would not have been granted citizenship and he would be just like me, stuck in limbo and questioning his sense of acceptance.

The executive order reflects the growing hostility toward all immigrants, regardless of how they arrived. Over the past decade, the national rhetoric has grown more cynical and suspicious of all foreigners. Immigrants are increasingly portrayed as threats, as job takers and outsiders, even when we are contributing to industries America depends on or are the only ones willing or capable of performing a job.

I do not expect a shortcut. I do not expect special treatment. But I do expect the country that I love to treat me and people like my brother as if we belong here.

Because this country was founded by immigrants, and her promise should still include all of us.

Tanay Raje graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He is now working as an engineer at a sterile pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia. Tanay is also a member of Improve the Dream, one of the more than 250,000 children of long-term visa holders, raised and educated in America.

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.

UN commission says Syria must end violence against Alawites and protect places of worship

Associated Press
Fri, June 27, 2025 


Mourners gather around the coffin of a victim of Sunday's suicide bombing at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church, during a funeral service held at al-Saleeb Church in the al-Qasaa neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. 

(AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)


BEIRUT (AP) — The head of a U.N. investigative commission on Friday called commitments made by the new authorities in Syria to protect the rights of minorities “encouraging” but said attacks have continued on members of the Alawite sect in the months since a major outbreak of sectarian violence on Syria’s coast.

Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that the current Syrian government — led by Islamist former insurgents who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad — had given his team “unfettered access” to the coast and to witnesses of the violence and victims’ families.

“Disturbingly, reports continue to circulate of ongoing killings and arbitrary arrests of members of the Alawite community, as well as the confiscation of the property of those who fled the March violence,” he said.

Pinheiro's commission also “documented abductions by unknown individuals of at least six Alawite women this spring in several Syrian governorates,” two of whom remain missing, and has received “credible reports of more abductions,” he said.

Pinheiro also called on authorities to put in place more protections for places of worship after Sunday’s suicide bombing attack on a church outside of Damascus. The attack, which killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more, was the first of its kind to take place in the Syrian capital in years.

The Syrian government has said that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of the Islamic State group and that they thwarted a subsequent attempt to target a Shiite shrine in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb in Damascus.

“Attacks on places of worship are outrageous and unacceptable,” Pinheiro said. “The authorities must ensure the protection of places of worship and threatened communities and ensure that perpetrators and enablers are held accountable.”

Assad was deposed in a lightning rebel offensive in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.

In March, hundreds of civilians, most of them from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs, were killed in revenge attacks after clashes broke out between pro-Assad armed groups and the new government security forces on the Syrian coast.

Pinheiro said his commission had documented scattered “revenge attacks” that happened before that, including killings in several villages in Hama and Homs provinces in late January in which men who had handed over their weapons under a “settlement” process set up for former soldiers and members of security forces under Assad, believing that they would be granted an amnesty in exchange for disarmament, were then “ill-treated and executed.”

He praised the interim government’s formation of a body tasked with investigating the attacks on the coast and said government officials had told his team that “dozens of alleged perpetrators” were arrested.

Pinheiro said the government needs to carry out a “reform and vetting program” as it integrates a patchwork of former rebel factions into a new army and security services and enact “concrete policies to put an end to Syria’s entrenched cycles of violence and revenge, in a context where heightened tensions and sectarian divisions have been reignited.”

COVID-19 origin still ‘inconclusive’ after years-long WHO study

Al Jazeera
Fri, June 27, 2025 

The World Health Organization (WHO) says efforts to uncover the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic are still ongoing and incomplete, as critical information has “not been provided”.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “all hypotheses must remain on the table” to determine the cause of the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, after an expert group investigating its origins reached an unsatisfying conclusion in its final report released on Friday.

“We continue to appeal to China and any other country that has information about the origins of COVID-19 to share that information openly, in the interests of protecting the world from future pandemics,” Tedros said.



The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions worldwide, with countries enforcing lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. With the first cases detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, information from the country is seen as key to preventing future pandemics.

In 2021, Tedros launched the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a panel of 27 independent international experts.

Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said on Friday that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.

But she added that after more than three years of work, SAGO was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for detailed information made to the Chinese government.

“Therefore, this hypothesis could not be investigated or excluded,” she said, however adding, “It was deemed to be very speculative, based on political opinions and not backed up by science.”

Venter also said there was no evidence to prove that COVID had been manipulated in a lab, nor was there any indication that the virus had been spreading before December 2019 anywhere outside of China.

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines sit in boxes at Borinquen Health Care Center on May 29, 2025, in Miami, Florida [Joe Raedle/Getty Images via AFP]
‘Remains inconclusive’

In 2021, a group of experts from the WHO first travelled to Wuhan to examine the origins of the virus with their Chinese counterparts.

By March of that year, their joint report found that the most likely hypothesis was from bats to humans via an intermediate animal.

However, that investigation faced backlash for lacking transparency and access, and not taking the lab-leak theory seriously.

CHINESE ISSUED COVID DNA CODE JAN 2020

After that, SAGO was launched.

According to the SAGO report, “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic [a disease spread between animals to humans] spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host”.

“Until more scientific data becomes available, the origins of how SARS-CoV-2 entered human populations will remain inconclusive,” Venter said.

“Understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how it sparked a pandemic is needed to help prevent future pandemics, save lives and livelihoods, and reduce global suffering,” she added.

Tedros said it was a “moral imperative” to determine how COVID began, noting that the virus killed at least 20 million people, wiped at least $10tn from the global economy and upended the lives of billions.

Takeaways from interviews with families forever changed by diseases that vaccines can prevent

LAURA UNGAR
Fri, June 27, 2025 

Katie Van Tornhout sits with her son, Cain, at home in Lakeville, Ind., on May 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)


SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — In the time before widespread vaccination, devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems.

Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others. Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy pushes immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from public officials, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, running the federal health department.

“This concern, this hesitancy, these questions about vaccines are a consequence of the great success of the vaccines – because they eliminated the diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore you don’t value the vaccine.”

Anti-vaccine activists even portray the shots as a threat, focusing on the rare risk of side effects while ignoring the far larger risks posed by the diseases themselves — and years of real-world data that experts say proves the vaccines are safe.

Some Americans know the reality of vaccine-preventable diseases all too well. Here are takeaways from interviews with a few of them by The Associated Press.

Getting a disease while pregnant can change two lives.

Janith Farnham has helped shepherd her daughter Jacque through life for decades. Jacque, 60, was born with congenital rubella syndrome, which resulted in hearing, eye and heart problems at birth. There was no vaccine against rubella back then, and Janith contracted it in early pregnancy.

Though Janith, 80, did all she could to help Jacque thrive, the condition took its toll. Jacque eventually developed diabetes, glaucoma, autistic behaviors and arthritis.

Today, Jacque lives in an adult residential home and gets together with Janith four or five days a week. Janith marvels at Jacque’s sense of humor and affectionate nature despite all she’s endured. Jacque is generous with kisses and often signs “double I love yous,” even to new people she meets.

Given what her family has been through, Janith finds it “more than frustrating” when people choose not to get children the MMR shot against measles, mumps and rubella.

“I know what can happen,” she said. “I just don’t want anybody else to go through this.”




Delaying a vaccine can be deadly.

More than half a century has passed, but Patricia Tobin still vividly recalls seeing her little sister Karen unconscious on the bathroom floor.

It was 1970, Karen was 6, and she had measles. The vaccine against it wasn’t required for school in Miami where they lived. Though Karen’s doctor discussed immunizing the first grader, their mother didn’t share his sense of urgency.

“It’s not that she was against it,” Tobin said. “She just thought there was time.”

Then came a measles outbreak. After she collapsed in the bathroom, Karen never regained consciousness. She died of encephalitis.

“We never did get to speak to her again,” Tobin said.

Today, all states require that children get certain vaccines to attend school. But a growing number of people are making use of exemptions. Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said fading memories of measles outbreaks were exacerbated by a fraudulent, retracted study claiming a link between the MMR shot and autism.

The result? Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

Preventable diseases can have long-term effects.

One of Lora Duguay’s earliest memories is lying in a hospital isolation ward with her feverish, paralyzed body packed in ice. She was three years old.

It was 1959 and Duguay, of Clearwater, Florida, had polio. It was one of the most feared diseases in the U.S., experts say, causing some terrified parents to keep children inside and avoid crowds during epidemics.

Given polio’s visibility, the vaccine against it was widely and enthusiastically welcomed. Given polio’s visibility, the vaccine against it was widely and enthusiastically welcomed. But the early vaccine that Duguay got was only about 80% to 90% effective. Not enough people were vaccinated or protected yet to stop the virus from spreading.

Though treatment helped her walk again, she eventually developed post-polio syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder that worsens over time. She now gets around in a wheelchair.

The disease that changed her life twice is no longer a problem in the U.S. So many children get the vaccine — which is far more effective than earlier versions — that it doesn’t just protect individuals but it prevents occasional cases that arrive in the U.S. from spreading further and protects the vulnerable.

When people aren’t vaccinated, the vulnerable remain at risk.

Every night, Katie Van Tornhout rubs a plaster cast of a tiny foot, a vestige of the daughter she lost to whooping cough at just 37 days old.

Callie Grace was born on Christmas Eve 2009. When she turned a month old, she began having symptoms of pertussis, or whooping cough. She was too young for the Tdap vaccine against it and was exposed to someone who hadn’t gotten their booster shot.

At the hospital, Van Tornhout recalled, the medical staff frantically tried to save her, but “within minutes, she was gone.”

Today, Callie remains part of her family’s life, and Van Tornhout shares the story with others as she advocates for vaccination.

“It’s up to us as adults to protect our children – like, that’s what a parent’s job is,” Van Tornhout said. “I watched my daughter die from something that was preventable … You don’t want to walk in my shoes.”

____

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 1959

AMERIKAN DEPORTATIONS ARE POLITICAL REPRESSI0N

Ice arrests of US military veterans and their relatives are on the rise: ‘a country that I fought for’

José Olivares
Sat, June 28, 2025 

THE GUARDIAN


This undated photo provided by Alejandro Barranco shows, from left to right, Emanuel Barranco; Alejandro Barranco, a US marine veteran; Narciso Barranco, his father, who was beaten by immigration agents and arrested at a landscaping job; and Jose Luis Barranco.

Photograph: AP

The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May.

Jermaine Thomas’s deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members’ relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.

As the Chronicle reported, Thomas was born on a US army base in Germany to an American citizen father, who was originally born in Jamaica and is now dead. Thomas does not have US, German or Jamaican citizenship – but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency deported him anyway to Jamaica, a country in which he had never stepped foot.

Thomas had spent two-and-a-half months incarcerated while waiting for an update on his case. He was previously at the center of a case brought before the US supreme court regarding his unique legal status.

The federal government argued that Thomas – who had previously received a deportation order – was not a citizen simply because he was born on a US army base, and it used prior criminal convictions to buttress the case against him. He petitioned for a review of the order, but the supreme court denied him, finding his father “did not meet the physical presence requirement of the [law] in force at the time of Thomas’s birth”.

From Jamaica, Thomas told the Chronicle: “If you’re in the US army, and the army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there – and your child makes a mistake after you pass away – and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be OK with them just kicking your child out of the country?”

He added, in reference to his father: “It was just Memorial Day [in late May]. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”

In recent months, US military veterans’ family members have been increasingly detained by immigration officials, as the administration continues pressing for mass deportations.

A US marine veteran, during an interview on CNN, said he felt “betrayed” after immigration officials beat and arrested his father at a landscaping job. The arrested man had moved to the US from Mexico in the 1990s without documentation but was detained by Ice agents this month while doing landscaping work at a restaurant in Santa Ana, California.

In another recent case, the wife of another Marine Corps veteran was detained by Ice despite still breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter. According to the Associated Press, the veteran’s wife had been going through a process to obtain legal residency.

The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to detain and deport people nationwide. During a May meeting, White House officials pressed Ice to increase its daily arrests to at least 3,000 people daily. That would result in 1 million people being arrested annually by Ice.

Following the tense meeting, Ice officials have increased their enforcement operations, including by detaining an increasing number of people with no criminal record. Being undocumented is a civil infraction – not a crime.

According to a recent Guardian analysis, as of mid-June, Ice data shows there were more than 11,700 people in immigration detention arrested by the agency despite no record of them being charged with or convicted of a crime. That represents a staggering 1,271% increase from data released on those in Ice detention immediately preceding the start of Trump’s second term.

In March, Ice officials arrested the daughter of a US veteran who had been fighting a legal battle regarding her status. Alma Bowman, 58, was taken into custody by Ice during a check-in at the Atlanta field office, despite her having lived in the US since she was 10 years old.

Bowman was born in the Philippines during the Vietnam war, to a US navy service member from Illinois stationed there. She had lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her permanent residency was revoked following a minor criminal conviction from 20 years ago, leading her to continue a legal battle to obtain citizenship in the US.

Previously, Bowman was detained by Ice at a troubled facility in Georgia, where non-consensual gynecological procedures were allegedly performed on detained women. In 2020, she had been a key witness for attorneys and journalists regarding the controversy. According to an interview with The Intercept from that year, Bowman said she had always thought she was a US citizen.

In another recent case, a US army veteran and green-card holder left on his own to South Korea. His deportation order was due to charges related to drug possession and an issue with drug addiction after being wounded in combat in the 1980s, for which he earned the prestigious Purple Heart citation.

Purple Heart veteran self-deports to South Korea after 48 years in US

Karissa Waddick, 

USA TODAY
Fri, June 27, 2025 


An Army Veteran and Purple Heart recipient who has lived in the U.S. for more than four decades self-deported to South Korea after immigration officials said he would otherwise be forcefully removed from the country.

Sae Joon Park's removal order was related to drug possession and bail jumping charges he received more than 15 years ago when he was suffering from PTSD, his attorney Danicole Ramos, told USA TODAY.

Park, a 55-year-old green-card holder, boarded a plane from Hawaii to South Korea on Monday, June 23, and will wait in the country while his legal team works to reopen his case.

Park’s departure is the latest in a series of high-profile deportations of military veterans that have come as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement across the country.

“I can't believe that this is happening in America," Park told NPR before he left. “That blows me away, like a country that I fought for."

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Park’s removal was based on his “extensive” criminal background.

“President Trump and Secretary Noem have been clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S,” McLaughlin said. “If you come to our country and break our laws, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you. That’s a promise.”

Since his return to office, Trump has urged ICE officers to deliver “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” invoked wartime powers to stymie immigration, and packed detention centers to the brim with immigrants, more than 40% of whom do not have a criminal record. ICE officials have snatched thousands of people off work sites and streets and, in some cases, agents have deported undocumented immigrants during routine court check-ins.

In May, border czar Tom Homan estimated the administration had deported roughly 200,000 people since January.

Why did Sae Joon Park self-deport?

Park moved to the U.S. at age 7 on a green card, his attorney said. After high school, he enlisted in the army, and was deployed to Panama, where he fought in the 1989 operation to overthrow the country’s de facto leader.

He was shot twice during that conflict, was honorably discharged, and received a Purple Heart for his bravery. But that’s where his problems began. Park turned to drugs for relief from PTSD-related nightmares and one night, was arrested for buying crack cocaine. He later skipped a court-scheduled drug test and served more than two years in prison, his attorney said.

When he got out, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents revoked his green card. Park appealed the decision and was allowed to remain in the U.S. so long as he checked-in annually with immigration agents.

That was until early June. At his check-in, ICE officials told Park they would detain him if he did not leave the country within weeks, Ramos, his lawyer said.

Sae Joon Park was shot twice while fighting in the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, known as Operation Just Cause. He received a Purple Heart for his bravery.

“I get it. I broke the law and everything, but I think this is a little severe what they’re doing to me after I paid my dues after I did my time for the offense that I did,” Park said to Hawaii News Now before he left for South Korea. “I thought I was doing my part to do whatever I have to do to be a good citizen and do everything right to stay in this country.”

Ramos said new case law could help overturn Park’s convictions. He has submitted a request to the Queens County District Attorney’s Office in New York to lower Park’s bail-jumping conviction to a misdemeanor, which he says could provide a pathway to reopen the removal case and bring Park back to the U.S.

“It’s a story of redemption,” Ramos said. “War shows the need for society to give second chances.”

Can military veterans be deported?

Former members of the Armed Services aren’t immune from deportation.

A Government Accountability Office report published in 2019 found that 92 veterans were deported between 2013 and 2018, 85% of whom were legal permanent residents and 30% of whom had applied for naturalization.

ICE, the report said, is required to take additional steps to remove noncitizens who served in the military, including considering the person’s overall criminal history, evidence of rehabilitation, family and financial ties to the United States, employment history, health, and community service.

Sae Joon Park, 55, with his son.

It’s unclear how many veterans have been deported since Trump took office or if the administration has been following those policies.

In a June 24 letter to Trump administration officials, sent just a day after Park’s departure, nine Democratic members of Congress requested information on the servicemembers facing immigration proceedings and the policies being implemented to assist them.

They estimated that upwards of 10,000 veterans have been deported.

“These individuals have demonstrated their commitment to our nation through their military service, and the prospect of their removal from the country they swore to defend raises serious questions about our nation's obligations and values,” they wrote.

Contributing: Trevor Hughes

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:

L.A. Army veteran with Purple Heart self-deports to South Korea under threat of deportation

Seema Mehta
Fri, June 27, 2025

LOS ANGELES TIMES

An Army veteran who grew up in Van Nuys and was awarded a Purple Heart self-deported to South Korea this week as he was threatened with being detained and deported by federal immigration forces.

On Monday, veteran Sae Joon Park, who legally immigrated from South Korea when he was seven years old, grew up in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley and held a green card, flew back to his homeland under threat of deportation at the age of 55. He said he is being forced to leave because of drug convictions nearly two decades ago that he said were a response to the PTSD he suffered after being shot during military action in Panama.

“It's unbelievable. I'm still in disbelief that this has actually happened,” Park said in a phone interview from Incheon early Wednesday morning. “I know I made my mistakes … but it's not like I was a violent criminal. It's not like I'm going around robbing people at gunpoint or hurting anyone. It was self-induced because of the problems I had.”

Asked to comment on Park, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park has an "extensive criminal history" and has been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport.

Park said he suffered from PTSD and addiction in the aftermath of being wounded when he was part of the U.S. forces that invaded Panama in 1989 to depose the nation’s de facto leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

But now Park, a legal immigrant, is targeted by federal authorities in President Trump’s recent immigration raids that have prompted widespread protests in Los Angeles and across the nation. Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,600 immigrants for deportation in Southern California between June 6 and 22, according to DHS.

A noncitizen is eligible for naturalization if they served honorably in the U.S. military for at least a year. Park served less than a year before he was wounded and honorably discharged.

Since 2002, over 158,000 immigrant service members have become U.S. citizens.

As of 2021, the Department of Veteran Affairs and DHS are responsible for tracking deported veterans to make sure they still have access to VA benefits.

Park’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States. He followed her a year later. They first lived in Koreatown, moved to Panorama City and then Van Nuys. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988.

Struggling at first to learn English and acclimate with his classmates, he eventually became part of the Southern California skateboarding and surfing scene of the 1980s, which is when television editor Josh Belson met him. They have been close friends ever since.

“He’s always got a smile, a very kind of vivacious energy about him,” said Belson, who attended a nearby high school when they met. “He was the kind of person you wanted to be around.”

After graduating, Park said he wasn’t ready to attend college, so he joined the military.

“The Army provided not only turning me into a man, but also providing me with the GI Bill, so you can go to college later, and they'll pay for it. And the fact that I did believe in the country, the United States,” he said. “So I felt like I was doing something honorable. I was very proud when I joined the military.”

Park’s platoon was deployed to Panama in late 1989, where he said they experienced a firefight the first night there. The following day, he said he was carrying an M-16 when they raided the house of one of the “witches” Noriega allegedly followed. He said they saw a voodoo worship room with body parts and a cross painted in blood on the floor.

While there, he heard gunfire from the backyard and returned fire. He was shot twice, in his spine and lower left back. The bullet to his spine was partially deflected by his dog tag, which Park believes is the reason he wasn't paralyzed. A military ambulance was delayed because of the firefight, but a Vietnam veteran who lived nearby rescued him, Park said.

“I just remember I'm just lying in my own pool of blood and just leaking out badly. So he actually went home, got his pickup truck, put me in the back of his pickup truck with two soldiers, and drove me to the hospital,” Park said.

He was then evacuated to an Army hospital in San Antonio. A four-star general awarded him a Purple Heart at his bedside. Then-President George W. Bush visited wounded soldiers there.

Read more: More immigrants opt to self-deport rather than risk being marched out like criminals

Park spent about two weeks there, and then went home for a month or so, until he could walk. His experience resulted in mental issues he didn't recognize, he said.

“My biggest issue at the time, more than my injuries, was — I didn't know what it was at the time, nobody did, because there was no such thing as PTSD at the time,” he said. Eventually, “I realized I was suffering from PTSD badly, nightmares every night, severe. I couldn't hear loud noises, and at that time in L.A., you would hear gunshots every night you left the house, so I was paranoid at all times. And being a man and being a tough guy, I couldn't share this with anyone.”

Park started self-medicating with marijuana, which he said helped him sleep. But he started doing harder drugs, eventually crack cocaine. He moved to Hawaii after his mother and stepfather’s L.A. store burned during the 1992 riots, and married. After Park and his wife separated, he moved to New York City, where his addiction worsened.

“It got really bad. It just got out of control — every day, every night, all day — just smoking, everything,” Park said.

One night, in the late 2000s, he was meeting his drug dealer at a Taco Bell in Queens when police surrounded his car, and the dealer fled while leaving a large quantity of crack in his glove compartment, Park said.

A judge sent Park to rehab twice, but he said he was not ready to get sober.

“I just couldn't. I was an addict. It was so hard for me to stay clean. I'd be good for 30 days and relapse,” he said. “I'd be good for 20 days and relapse. It was such a struggle. Finally, the judge told me, 'Mr. Park, the next time you come into my courtroom with the dirty urine, you're gonna go to prison.' So I got scared.”

So Park didn’t return to court, drove to Los Angeles and then returned to Hawaii, skipping bail, which is an aggravated felony.

“I did not know at the time jumping bail was an aggravated felony charge, and combined with my drug use, that's deportable for someone like me with my green card,” he said.

U.S. Marshals were sent looking for Park, and he said once he heard about this, he turned himself in in August 2009, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of his two children.

Read more: Abcarian: Wasn't the president supposed to be deporting criminals?

He served two years in prison and said immigration officials detained him for six months after he was released as he fought deportation orders. He was eventually released under “deferred action,” an act of prosecutorial discretion by DHS to put off deportation.

Every year since, Park was required to check in with federal officials and show that he was employed and sober. Meanwhile, he had sole custody of his two children, who are now 28 and 25. He was also caring for his 85-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia.

During his most recent check-in, Park was about to be handcuffed and detained, but immigration agents placed an ankle monitor on him and gave him three weeks to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He is not allowed to return to the United States for 10 years. He worries he will miss his mother’s passing and his daughter’s wedding.

“That's the biggest part. But … it could be a lot worse too. I look at it that way also,” Park said. “So I'm grateful I made it out of the United States, I guess, without getting detained.”

“I always just assumed a green card, legal residency, is just like having citizenship,” he added. “I just never felt like I had to go get citizenship. And that's just being honest. As a kid growing up in the United States, I've always just thought, hey, I'm a green card holder, a legal resident, I'm just like a citizen.”

His condition has spiraled since then.

"Alright. I'm losing it. Can't stop crying. I think PTSD kicking in strong," Park texted Belson on Thursday. "Just want to get back to my family and take care of my mother ... I'm a mess."

Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

 SS Nemesis

Divers visit mysterious 1904 shipwreck more than 500 feet underwater

Kerry Breen
Fri, June 27, 2025

Divers in Australia completed a historic dive on a century-old shipwreck, exploring the remains of the craft in the "pitch-black ocean depths" off the coast of Sydney, a diving organization said on social media.

The Sydney Project Dive Team, a group of trained divers who work to discover and document shipwrecks, conducted the first-ever dive to the SS Nemesis, a craft that sank in 1904 while carrying coal. All 32 people aboard the ship people died in the sinking, the dive team said. The ship sank on a stormy night, according to Australia's New South Wales Environment and Heritage agency. The sinking happened too quickly for lifeboats to be launched, the agency said.

The shipwreck site was only discovered in 2022, the agency said. The wreck lies on the seafloor about 16 miles off the coast of Sydney. A remotely-operated vessel identified the ship as the Nemesis in 2023. But the depth of the wreck made learning more about it difficult. The Nemesis is about 525 feet underwater, the dive team and heritage agency said

The trip to the wreck was also chronicled in a detailed post by a dive team member.

The bridge of the SS Nemesis. / Credit: Sydney Project

The mission to the site faced some obstacles. On June 7, the group gathered at 4 a.m. local time to try to dive to the site, but were hindered by stormy weather conditions. On June 18, weather conditions were clearer and allowed for divers to "attempt one of the deepest technical wreck dives off the Australian coast," the dive team said.

There is no light once divers get about 390 feet underwater, the dive team said. That meant the divers traveling to the Nemesis were working in complete blackness, following a line that had been dropped to the wreck. It took two tries to get the line in place and ensure the divers could safely follow it to the wreck.

The divers were able to use lights to illuminate their work. There was crystal-clear visibility, the dive team said. The divers worked in two teams of two to survey the wreck, starting at its "crushed and crumbled" bow and traveling to the bridge, filming smoke stacks and other distinctive features. The team had just nine minutes to survey the shipwreck.

A piece of decking from the SS Nemesis. / Credit: Sydney Project

There was coal scattered across the wreck site, the dive team said, but no artifacts like plates, cutlery or personal articles were visible. Photos also show fish and other sea life in the area.

The most time-consuming part of the trip was the ascent to the surface, the dive team said. It took the divers six hours to slowly work their way to the surface and decompress safely.

Another mission to the shipwreck site is being planned, the dive team said. That mission will involve completing a scan of the wreck to build on the information gathered by the remote vessel in 2023.

'Deceit, dishonesty, betrayal': The wrongful conviction that haunted Johnnie Cochran

Christopher Goffard
Sat, June 28, 2025 
Los Angeles Times

Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, former head of the Black Panthers in Los Angeles, insisted he was framed for the murder of a schoolteacher.

 (Joe Kennedy / Los Angeles Times)

He was an uncommonly dangerous man, in the FBI’s eyes, a combat-toughened killer who had returned from Vietnam to wage war on the Establishment.

"We are going to drive the pigs out of the community,” Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, the 21-year-old leader of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles, told a reporter in 1970.

Pratt was stout, compact and level-eyed, with a raspy drawl bespeaking his childhood on the Louisiana bayou. He envisioned a violent end at the hands of police, whom he cast as an occupying army in African American neighborhoods. "The next time you see me, I might be dead.”
When he went on trial in 1972 — on charges he murdered a white schoolteacher, execution-style, during a robbery — he insisted he was being framed.

His defense attorney, a young Johnnie Cochran Jr., initially dismissed Pratt’s talk as paranoia. But Cochran would later describe the case as “a twilight zone of deceit, dishonesty, betrayal and official corruption.”

Pratt’s conviction kept him behind bars for 27 years, and the case haunted Cochran, who believed Pratt was innocent and who had made a mistake at trial that prosecutors skillfully exploited. In the authorities' war against perceived subversives, it would be years before it became clear how brazenly they had cheated.

Attorney Johnnie Cochran, left, would describe Pratt's murder prosecution as "a twilight zone of deceit, dishonesty, betrayal and official corruption." (Jim Ruymen / Pool photo)

“It looked on the surface like a really straightforward murder case,” said Stuart Hanlon, now 76, the radical San Francisco defense attorney who took up Pratt’s appeal as a law student and pursued it doggedly for decades.

The victim was Caroline Olsen, 27, who was with her husband on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968 when a pair of gunmen approached demanding money. The men ordered the couple to lie face down, then began opening fire. She was fatally wounded; her husband was struck but survived. The robbers got $18.

The investigation stalled, and Pratt was not a suspect until 1970, when Julius "Julio” Butler, a beautician and former police officer, implicated him. Butler had been a Panther himself, and had resented Pratt's elevation as Los Angeles leader.

The state’s star witness, Butler testified that Pratt had dropped by his beauty shop and announced he was going on a “mission” and later pointed to an article about the Santa Monica shooting to confirm it was his doing.

Cochran asked Butler if he had ever been a police informant. Butler flatly denied it.

Devastatingly for the defense, Olsen’s widower pointed to the defendant and said: "That’s the man who murdered my wife.”

Cochran argued against the reliability of cross-racial witness identification, particularly under conditions of stress, and put on the stand a witness who had seen Pratt in the Bay Area around the time of the killing. He also put on Pratt, who had been decorated for heroism during two tours in Vietnam with the Army, and who showed what Cochran called a “soldier’s contempt” for whomever shot the helpless Olsen in the back.

At a 1996 news conference in Los Angeles, Cochran and other attorneys call for a new trial for Pratt. (Nick Ut / Associated Press)

Cochran thought it was a winnable case, but he introduced an exhibit that backfired terribly. It was a Polaroid, given to him by Pratt’s brother, who insisted it had been taken a week after the shooting. It showed Pratt with a beard, which contradicted the widower’s initial description of the shooter as "a clean-shaven black man.”

Prosecutors countered with a Polaroid employee who said the film had not even been manufactured until five months after the crime, a blow to the defense’s credibility that left jurors doubting Pratt’s other claims.

It took jurors 10 days to find him guilty of first-degree murder. The sentence was 25 years to life. "You’re wrong. I didn’t kill that woman,” Pratt erupted. "You racist dogs.”

Pratt spent the next eight years in solitary confinement. He was shuttled among prisons, and eventually allowed conjugal visits; his wife gave birth to two children. At a series of unsuccessful parole hearings, the panel waited for him to say he was sorry. He insisted he hadn’t done it.

“The last person I killed,” he would say, “was in Vietnam.”

Supporters of Pratt rally for his release outside a Los Angeles courthouse in April 1996. (Susan Sterner / Associated Press)

There was much the authorities had not shared with Pratt’s defense team. They did not reveal that Olsen’s widower had previously identified another man as the shooter. (The man had been in jail at the time and could not have done it.)

Nor did they reveal the scope of the star witness’ work as an informant for law enforcement officials. Based on FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Pratt’s lawyers pieced together a picture of Butler’s intimate involvement with the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. County district attorney’s office in dozens of cases.

To FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the Panthers had been the most dangerous group in the country, homegrown terrorists with stockpiles of weapons and alarming Maoist rhetoric. His secret COINTELPRO program was a campaign of spying, wiretaps and sabotage aimed at crushing perceived subversives and thwarting “the coalition of militant black nationalist groups.”

“Geronimo was targeted by the FBI because he was a natural leader,” Hanlon said.

As Hanlon pieced together documents, it became clear that Butler had been helping. Rejecting appeal after appeal, however, courts ruled that Butler had not been an informant — he had been “a contact and nothing more,” according to one judge — and that Pratt did not deserve a new trial.

He was still considered dangerous. “If he chooses to set up a revolutionary organization upon his release from prison, it would certainly be easy for him to do so,” a prosecutor said at one parole hearing. “He does have this network out there.”

When defense lawyers brought their evidence to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti in 1993, they presented it as a chance to undo the injustice his predecessors had sanctioned two decades earlier. But Garcetti’s review dragged on for years, and the attorneys turned again to the courts.

"He was more likely framed than he was the person who actually committed the crime," former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said recently of Pratt. (Ken Lubas / Los Angeles Times)

This time, the courts granted a hearing. Because the L.A. County Superior Court bench was recused — the original prosecutor was now an L.A. County judge and a probable witness — the case was transferred to Orange County Superior Court. For Pratt’s supporters, this provoked a chill. What hope did they have in a staunchly conservative county?

But Judge Everett Dickey surprised them.

"It's clear that this is not a typical case," Dickey said. "It cries out for resolution.”

This time, Pratt’s team was armed with evidence never heard at the original trial. They had the testimony of a retired FBI agent who supported Pratt's claim that he had been in Oakland during the killing.

They knew that the D.A.’s office had allowed Butler to plead no contest to four felonies in exchange for probation, around the time he testified against Pratt.

And they had an index card, recently discovered by one of Garcetti’s investigators in the office files, that listed Butler as a D.A. informant. It was filed under B; it had been there all along.

"It had never been turned over to the defense. How could they have not turned this over?” Garcetti said in a recent interview. “I couldn’t find anyone who would fess up to the fact that, 'Yeah, we had that document in the files.’”

Still, Garcetti’s prosecutors downplayed the card's importance. Butler was not an informant, they argued vehemently, but merely a “source.”

In late 1996, Cochran finally got a chance to confront Butler. He had waited years. Butler had become an attorney and an official at a prominent Los Angeles church. He insisted he had been merely a “liaison” between law enforcement and the Panthers.

Cochran asked him his definition of informant. He admitted he had told the FBI that Pratt had a submachine gun. He said his definition of an informant was someone who supplied accurate information.

"So under your own definition, you were informing to the FBI?" Cochran asked.

"You could say that," Butler said.

Pratt beams after his release from an Orange County jail in June 1997. (Kim Kulish / Getty Images)

Dickey threw out Pratt’s conviction, concluding that Butler had lied and that prosecutors had hidden evidence that could have led to Pratt's acquittal.

Pratt was released on bail in June 1997, to the cheers of his supporters.

"The greatest moment of my legal career,” Cochran called it.

Pratt flew home to Morgan City, La., “to see my mama and my homefolks,” he said. "It wasn't easy getting here.”

He said he wanted to hear rain on the tin roof of his childhood home.

Pratt’s legal ordeal was not over, however. Garcetti appealed, saying he had found no evidence pointing to Pratt’s innocence. He did not drop the case until an appeals court sided with Pratt in February 1999. The following year, Pratt won $4.5 million in a false-imprisonment lawsuit against the city of L.A. and the FBI. He bought a farmhouse in Imbaseni, Tanzania, where he enjoyed the companionship of Pete O’Neal, a former Black Panther who had fled the U.S. in 1970.

O’Neal found him dead at home in May 2011. Pratt had been hospitalized with high blood pressure, a condition that had plagued him for years, but had torn out his IVs and gone home. He hated confinement. He was 63.

"We always say, 'The system works,’ but no, the system only produced the right result because Geronimo and the community and a band of lawyers fought the system. The system doesn’t work by itself,” said Mark Rosenbaum, one of the lawyers who helped with Pratt's appeal. "They took away half of his life. And they couldn’t break him.”

So, who killed Caroline Olsen? Hanlon believes the killers were other Black Panthers — a pair of heroin addicts known to feed their habit with armed robbery. They died violently in the 1970s, one by gunfire, the other impaled on a fence during a burglary.

In a recent interview, Garcetti, one of the defense team’s primary antagonists for years, said that his views on the case have evolved. In retrospect, he regrets fighting to keep it alive.

"He was more likely framed than he was the person who actually committed the crime,” Garcetti said.

Since leaving office, he said, he has learned more about the U.S. government’s tactics against disfavored groups in the 1960s and ’70s.

“I have read enough to know the FBI, from the top down, were working to isolate any quote-unquote leader in the Black Panther movement, and it wouldn’t shock me to learn that they went after people who really hadn’t committed a crime that they were bent on removing from the scene."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

EU plans to add carbon credits to new climate goal, document shows

Sat, June 28, 2025 

FILE PHOTO: EU Parliament backs higher targets on renewables and energy savings, in a bid to quickly end Europe's reliance on Russian gas.

EU almost on track to reach 2030 climate goal

EU almost on track to reach 2030 climate goal


By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Commission is set to propose counting carbon credits bought from other countries towards the European Union's 2040 climate target, a Commission document seen by Reuters showed.

The Commission is due to propose a legally binding EU climate target for 2040 on July 2.

The EU executive had initially planned a 90% net emissions cut, against 1990 levels, but in recent months has sought to make this goal more flexible, in response to pushback from governments including Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, concerned about the cost.

An internal Commission summary of the upcoming proposal, seen by Reuters, said the EU would be able to use "high-quality international credits" from a U.N.-backed carbon credits market to meet 3% of the emissions cuts towards the 2040 goal.

The document said the credits would be phased in from 2036, and that additional EU legislation would later set out the origin and quality criteria that the credits must meet, and details of how they would be purchased.

The move would in effect ease the emissions cuts - and the investments required - from European industries needed to hit the 90% emissions-cutting target. For the share of the target met by credits, the EU would buy "credits" from projects that reduce CO2 emissions abroad - for example, forest restoration in Brazil - rather than reducing emissions in Europe.

Proponents say these credits are a crucial way to raise funds for CO2-cutting projects in developing nations. But recent scandals have shown some credit-generating projects did not deliver the climate benefits they claimed.

The document said the Commission will add other flexibilities to the 90% target, as Brussels attempts to contain resistance from governments struggling to fund the green transition alongside priorities including defence, and industries who say ambitious environmental regulations hurt their competitiveness.

These include integrating credits from projects that remove CO2 from the atmosphere into the EU’s carbon market so that European industries can buy these credits to offset some of their own emissions, the document said.

The draft would also give countries more flexibility on which sectors in their economy do the heavy lifting to meet the 2040 goal, "to support the achievement of targets in a cost-effective way".

A Commission spokesperson declined to comment on the upcoming proposal, which could still change before it is published next week.

EU countries and the European Parliament must negotiate the final target and could amend what the Commission proposes.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Could France's hesitation derail the EU’s 2040 emissions reduction target?

RFI
Fri, June 27, 2025 

France's President Emmanuel Macron holds a press conference after working sessions at the European Council in Brussels on 26 June, 2025.

Despite positioning itself as the guardian of the landmark climate agreement signed in Paris in 2015, France is sending mixed signals when it comes to fulfilling the EU’s ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The 27 members are expected to agree on figures at a meeting next week.

The European Union has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and claims to have already reduced emissions by 37 percent compared to 1990, the reference year for its climate targets.

Last year, the European Commission announced its intention to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent relative to 1990 levels by 2040.

Brussels must now reach agreement on interim targets for the period between 2030 and 2040, with proposals expected to be unveiled on 2 July. However, striking the right balance will prove a significant challenge.

Finding a compromise on this will be an important step ahead of this year’s global Cop30 climate conference in Belem, Brazil in November.

France falling short of climate targets as emissions dip slows

The gathering comes as average global temperatures in the past two years exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark set under the Paris climate accord a decade ago.

Nations are currently divided between keeping the bloc's ambitious emission targets. Some want to separate the 2035 and 2040 goals, scale them down or have more flexibility to meet them.

(with AFP, newswires)