‘It’s been chaotic’: Trump’s immigration crackdown prompts worries from industry groups

Priscilla Alvarez, 

CNN
Sat, August 8, 2026 



Masked ICE agents stands guard outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, during a protest against the transfer of detainees on May 26. - Andres Kudacki/AP

Industry groups ranging from construction to agriculture are raising concerns with the Trump administration over its ongoing immigration crackdown, arguing it is undercutting President Donald Trump's agenda and weakening the economy, according to multiple groups who spoke with CNN and sources close to the White House.

Worker shortages have been a years-long problem for multiple industries, but the recent abrupt push to end deportation protections for 1.3 million people who had been legally working in the US and the aggressive immigration enforcement push nationwide are exacerbating an already challenging issue, industry representatives say.

Those industry groups — which are generally supportive of other parts of Trump's economic agenda — are taking their immigration concerns directly to the administration, including the departments of Homeland Security, Labor, and Agriculture, as well as the White House.

Within the administration, the tug between industry concerns and immigration enforcement has prompted internal disagreements over how to pursue other types of enforcement, like at worksites, according to three sources familiar with the ongoing debate. One source close to the White House called the back and forth and consistent influence of lobbying on decisions "a bit manic."

Caught in the middle is Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who is already under fire from some corners of the president's base for appearing too soft on immigration.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin listens during a cabinet meeting at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, on July 31. - Jacquelyn Martin/AP

"A workforce that's an illegal workforce only grows illegal activity. It doesn't grow the economy in the long term. It's a short-term solution, but it's going to be long term problems," Mullin said at the National Governors Association meeting last week, citing conversations with labor and industry groups to find solutions.

His remarks at the gathering, where he also called for changes to employment visa programs to address worker shortages, sparked fierce pushback from influential MAGA voices. "I am so fed up with Markwayne Mullin," far-right Trump ally Laura Loomer wrote on X.

Hours after the event, Mullin posted on X: "NO amnesty for illegal aliens. Ever. We are a nation of laws. If you are illegally present in the United States of America—you will be detained and deported. Period."

But the episode underscored the delicate balance for Trump of pressing ahead with mass deportations — including, for example, construction workers — while trying to fulfill other promises like lowering housing prices.

"He ran on creating more housing supply," said Jim Tobin, president and CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, one of the country's largest trade organizations. "These two things might be working against each other at the moment. But we continue to make our case."

Trump officials haven't offered any assurances in return, Tobin said, other than a commitment to immigration enforcement.

Asked by CNN to respond, a Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement: "If people want to come to our country to work, they need to do that by coming here the legal way. The assertion that the only way we can support industries is by allowing unvetted illegal aliens and foreigners to remain in the country is grossly false and lazy."

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said, "There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force," adding that "Trump will continue growing our economy, creating opportunity for American workers, and ensuring all sectors have the legal workforce they need to be successful."

CNN also reached out to the departments of Labor and Agriculture for comment.
The impact of ending TPS

Over the last week, immigration enforcement has ramped up against people who had a form of humanitarian relief known as Temporary Protected Status, which allows beneficiaries to legally live and work in the United States, marking the latest in a string of moves that directly impact employers.

"The TPS push has been really big," said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum. "That's really unsettling for business and the economy."

Haitians, for example, tend to be concentrated in industries such as elder care and manufacturing, while Salvadorans at risk of losing TPS are more likely to work in construction.

Murray stressed that employers want to work with the administration and comply with its demands but also can't have their workforce decimated overnight without a plan.

Immigration hardliners argue that the American workforce should be prioritized — which industry groups largely echo, with the caveat it takes time to build toward that — and that there needs to be a larger crackdown on employers through worksite enforcement.

"I'm not naïve enough to believe that it would be politically and logistically possible to raid every factory and farm in the United States in the next few weeks and deport everyone that's there," said Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "But worksite enforcement has to be part of the overall strategy for it to be successful."

It can take months, if not years, to prepare for a worksite operation, which is often based on an ongoing criminal investigation. ICE Homeland Security Investigations will generally serve notice of intent to audit a company's immigration paperwork; perform that audit; and, if issues arise, kick off a criminal investigation.

An agent passes meat being prepared during a raid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Glenn Valley Foods meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 10, 2025 in a still image taken from a video. - US Immigration and Customs Enf/Reuters

White House border czar Tom Homan has publicly said he expects HSI to do more of it.

"It's been made clear they're going to do this," he said at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced immigration.
'Chaotic' for construction industry

Trump pledged to bring down home prices and create more housing. But for more than a year, the nation's homebuilders have told administration officials that their immigration policies keep that from happening.

The residential construction industry is short between 200,000 and 400,000 workers, Tobin said. That comes after decades of underinvestment in skilled trades and technical jobs, all while older workers weren't backfilled by younger Americans. The result: foreign-born workers fill the gaps.

Foreign-born workers made up more than a quarter of the construction workforce in 2024, a record high, according to NAHB data. The share is even higher among certain trades: more than half of drywall and ceiling installers, plasterers, roofers, painters and flooring installers are immigrants.

Trump's immigration agenda wasn't a surprise, Tobin said. But that hasn't stopped builders from pointing out tensions with other policy goals. The cost of building, and ultimately selling, a home depends on land prices, supply chains and materials costs — and having enough labor to keep the job moving.

"The more we squeeze labor, the more we're going to increase home prices," Tobin said.

The construction industry is grappling with multiple immigration enforcement actions, including the expiration of TPS.

"It's been chaotic," Associated Builders and Contractors president and CEO Michael Bellaman told CNN. "When employers have people who have been here a number of years, like a couple decades, and they've been productive, they know them well and want to do right by them, but options are limited."

Homes under construction in Cypress, Texas, on August 3. - Mark Felix/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tobin and Bellaman said their organizations have raised the issue with the White House, and at Labor and DHS. Homebuilders from across the country also visited Capitol Hill during a recent conference, also visited Capitol Hill during a recent conference, Tobin said. Much of their frustration stems from going days without crews showing up, since they fear their sites will be raided next.

"We hear from our members routinely, and it seems like over the last couple of months, those voices have become louder," Tobin said.

One of the key issues for general contractors is the administration's approach to people who have temporary permissions to live and work in the US, including those who are beneficiaries of TPS or seeking asylum, according to Brian Turmail, vice president of Association & Industry Image at Associated General Contractors of America.

Employers will ensure that their workforce is in status one week and then, the next week, learn that they lost their permissions because they were stripped by the administration, he said.

"All of these enforcement activities are happening at a time where there's at least one segment of the industry going full gas and it's hard to find labor and we don't have a good pipeline to replace the labor that we currently have," Turmail said, citing the demand for data centers.

Republicans divided over solutions

Some Republicans viewed the dramatic drop in unlawful crossings at the US southern border as an opportunity to introduce legislation solving for the workforce challenges faced by agriculture, which has struggled to get access to worker visas for sectors that need labor year around.

In a late July letter to the secretaries of Labor, State, and Homeland Security, GOP lawmakers raised concerns regarding the H-2A agricultural guest worker program, which allows foreign nationals to fill seasonal jobs, and urged action to "address growing processing delays, regulatory imbalances, and structural barriers that are threatening the program's effectiveness for agricultural producers across the United States."

Among the signers was House Committee on Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, who introduced a farm bill that proposes a path to temporary legal status for some undocumented farmworkers.

"Fixing the H-2A program is the missing piece and necessary for broader enforcement to be effective," a House agriculture committee aide told CNN. "We can't be constantly balancing protecting our laws and protecting our food security."

"We don't want there to be a bullseye on agriculture's back. That's the position ag is in right now because they don't have a legal alternative to step in and fill in the void," the aide said.

The bill, however, sparked backlash from immigration hawks in the GOP, including the House Freedom Caucus.

But Trump has previously acknowledged the challenges in the agriculture industry and the administration has tried to make some inroads to extend the program to sectors who have been unable to access H-2A visas, like dairy.

"The biggest thing with dairy and what's unique with dairy is cows have to be milked 365 days a year and multiple shifts during the day… If workers were to disappear, those cows still need to be milked. You have to be able to move the milk. There are animal concerns, there are economic concerns," Trey Forsyth, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at the National Milk Producers Federation.

"It affects access to dairy products, and cost of dairy products flows all the way through the supply chain to consumers" Forysth said.

CNN's Rachel Siegel contributed to this report.






Trump Voter Faces Intense Online Mockery After Admitting ‘Regret’ As Haitian TPS Removal Ruins His Businesses

Favour Adegoke
Mon, August 10, 2026 

THE BLAST


Aaron Schwartz - Pool via CNP / MEGAAaron Schwartz - Pool via CNP / MEGA

Key takeaways
The Trump administration officially ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians in America, leading to fears of deportation and impacting businesses like Chef Creole in Miami.

A Donald Trump voter has become the subject of heavy scrutiny after revealing that his restaurant, which serves Haitian cuisine, is suffering due to the president's actions.

In candid remarks made during an interview, the businessman shared that he might have to close down two stores due to the billionaire politician's latest move to cancel TPS protections for Haitian migrants in America.

The comments have led to major mockery of the Donald Trump voter, who also admitted he regrets supporting the president after believing having him in power would be great for businesses.

Trump Voter Says He Is About To Lose His 'Future' In The Hospitality Business

The Trump administration officially stripped Haitians in America of humanitarian protections that allowed them to live and work legally while in the US.

The move was confirmed on August 5, when US District Judge Ana Reyes revealed that her order, which prevented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from removing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti, had lapsed.

This means that now, Haitians in the US are at risk of being arrested and deported back to their home country, with some businesses already being impacted by this reality.

In a recent interview, Wilkinson Sejour, the owner of the Miami restaurant Chef Creole, lamented the move by the Trump administration, stating that it has severely affected his livelihood due to fears that his establishment might become a target for ICE raids.

"The end of TPS for me means that my future in the hospitality business is almost going to be non-existent," Sejour said, per reports.

The chef, who has been in business for over 34 years, with a booming clientele, shared that he had lost his entire management team in seven locations due to the removal of TPS and may be forced to shut down two of his stores, as customers desert the area out of fear.

The Restaurant Owner 'Regrets' Voting For The President

On Sunday, August 2, officers with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement took a man on a scooter into custody right outside Sejour's restaurant in Little Haiti

The owner of the iconic Miami establishment explained that the highly visible arrest instantly triggered panic.

False rumors of an active restaurant raid spread rapidly through the neighborhood, heavily intensifying the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty already gripping the local immigrant community.

When asked what he would say to Trump, whom he admitted to voting for in the 2024 election, Sejour responded by revealing why he voted for the politician, noting that it was due to Trump's business experience.

"He sold to me that he is a businessman and that he would be making business decisions," he stated.

The interviewer then asked Sejour if he "regrets" his vote, to which he responded, "Yes, I do."

The Restaurant Owner Came Under Heavy Scrutiny Online For His Remorseful Remarks

Despite how remorseful Sejour sounded, critics online slammed the businessman for voting for Trump.

Many directly accused him of contributing to the unrest and fear in his community, especially after Trump infamously accused Haitians of eating cats and dogs during his 2024 presidential campaign.

One critic stated, "Typical Trump voter…when it impacts them, then they have concerns. But f-ck everyone else."

"Trump said Haitians were eating the cats and dogs. What was this guy thinking?" another asked in bewilderment.

A third person wrote, "And his dumb -ss is getting exactly what he voted for. And note the regret is only because it affected his business not the Nazi tactics of ICE that has resulted in deaths of innocent people."

"I don't live far from one of his locations; in fact, I was there a few days ago," another critic began. "I have several Haitian friends, and my wife is Haitian. I'm not eating there again. Voting for someone who ended TPS for the very community his restaurant serves isn't something I can look past."

Trump Voter Pleads For Fiancée's Release After ICE Arrest

Chef Sejour is just one of many Trump voters whose lives the politician's actions have negatively impacted since the beginning of his second term as president.

In another development, Texas businessman and lifelong Republican John Gannon shared that he deeply regrets voting for Trump after ICE officers took his fiancée.

The 75-year-old made the confession in an interview with CBS News, sharing that his plans to marry Yasmin Suarez Reyes, 45, had been ruined after her arrest in July while at Houston's international airport.

"I voted for Trump," he admitted. "They are picking up law-abiding citizens. They're destroying families, jobs."

When asked to share what he would say to Trump if given the opportunity, Gannon noted that he would confront the president by asking, "What are you doing?"

He clarified his stance by explaining that while he supports strict law enforcement, the government must distinguish between dangerous individuals and everyday working citizens.

"Go after the criminals," Gannon continued. "We're all for that. But leave the mom and pops and the kids alone. Man, he's destroying families."

The Trump Voter Was Mocked Online For His Comments About His Fiancée's ICE Arrest

Just like Sejour, Gannon has also received his fair share of online mockery for his revelations, with many going as far as scrutinizing his relationship with a much younger woman.

One individual on X wrote, "Another example of a Republican who was happy to vote for a man who promised mass deportations as long as it didn't impact him. He likely dgaf about any of the horrendous ICE-related cases involving thousands of migrants & protesters. Sorry, but he gets no sympathy from me."

A second critic wrote, "Entitlement and privilege ooze from this guy. He thinks he's better than everyone else and should not be affected by the politicians and policies he supported. This is MAGA."

‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: ICE’s detention crackdown swamps the courts

Kyle Cheney

POLITICO

Mon, August 10, 2026 

LONG READ


An immigrant is detained by ICE agents as he exits an immigration courtroom hearing at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York, on June 6, 2025. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images


It all started with a two-page memo — a seemingly mundane reinterpretation of a complex immigration law.

Months later, ICE agents whisked away Yair Vargas Torres, shuttling him across three states — and attempting to move him to a fourth — before a federal judge ruled that his detention without bond was illegal. Vargas, who had been granted humanitarian parole in the U.S. in 2022 and settled in Chicago, was separated from his family for 50 days.

Vargas, 31, was able to call his wife about an hour after he was taken into ICE custody. "She was crying, my kids were crying," he said in an interview. "I only had like five minutes with her [on the phone]. I simply told her — take care of the kids."

There are thousands of cases like his — more than 16,000 times in the past year, judges have ruled against ICE's detention tactics. About two-thirds of those rulings stemmed from the policy change in that two-page memo, which broadened the reach of a 1996 detention statute in ways no prior administration had ever attempted.

The flood of cases has stretched the judiciary to a breaking point across the country. Thousands of rulings, from hundreds of judges rushing to respond to the individual cases in front of them, have added up to an overwhelming rebuke of Trump's unprecedented policy.

"The third branch of government is saying no. We're not going to do it this way," U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said in an interview.

POLITICO has reviewed thousands of ICE detention cases and spoken with more than a dozen detainees, lawyers and judges at the heart of this historic controversy. They described the extraordinary strain ICE's policy has placed on the courts, triggering tens of thousands of emergency lawsuits nationwide — each one a race to file and to decide.

"I didn't go into it saying, 'I'm going to free all these people,' but … we've got to get to these cases right now. Get to the cases right away," said Judge Troy Nunley, the chief judge in the Eastern District of California.

Biery and Nunley are among the 469 judges who concluded that the policy contained in the July 8, 2025 ICE memo was an illegal distortion of long-settled detention policy.

Biery's courthouse typically gets 1,500 civil lawsuits a year. This year, they hit 4,000 by May — a deluge driven by the thousands of people locked up — without a chance to plead their case — under a novel legal theory that even President Donald Trump's first administration declined to adopt.

"We've never seen anything like this in my career," the Clinton-appointed judge, who took the bench in 1994, told POLITICO from his San Antonio courthouse.

The Trump administration has defended the new policy and brushed off the courts' overwhelming rejection of it, attributing its losses to "activist judges" and arguing that it'll be vindicated in appeals and by the Supreme Court.

"This administration remains fully determined to carry out the president's immigration priorities," the Justice Department said in a statement to POLITICO. "Legal challenges from activist judges will not deter the Department of Justice from enforcing the law and restoring order to our immigration system."

Asked whether the administration had any concerns about the impact of its mass detention policy on the families of those held by ICE, particularly U.S. citizen spouses and children, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded simply: "No."

The July 8, 2025, two-page memo from ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, sounded innocuous enough: "Interim Guidance Regarding Detention Authority."

But it was the beginning of an all-out siege on the American justice system — one that would upend tens of thousands of lives, fracture decades of trust between the courts and the Justice Department, overwhelm court dockets in every corner of the country and provoke a lopsided rebuke from judges of every ideological stripe. Soon, it will reach the Supreme Court.

The memo — which would later be endorsed by the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Justice Department-controlled body that binds executive-branch immigration judges — was an effort to erase the due process rights of millions of immigrants who have resided in the U.S. for years, even those without criminal records and people who have attended all of their ICE check-ins or immigration court proceedings.

Vargas was one of them. He said he fled Colombia after the gangs who ran his small town accused him of being an informant for the military. Vargas took his wife, 7-year-old and newborn to Mexico and hired a coyote to shuttle them across the border into the U.S. in 2022. They immediately turned themselves in to immigration authorities and were released with asylum paperwork and an ICE check-in date scheduled for three years later — December 2025.

When he arrived for that check-in, his name was the only one called.

"I remember [an ICE official] telling me that unfortunately, all the people that showed up were going to be detained by ICE, because that was the order from the president of the United States," Vargas recalled.

Then they took him to a detention facility — his first of three, in three states. "That's when the odyssey began," Vargas said.

Until this administration, someone in Vargas' shoes would likely not have been detained at all. And if he was, he first would have been afforded a bond hearing — a chance to prove to an immigration judge that he presents no threat to the public and would attend his immigration proceedings.

Every prior president applied mandatory detention without bond only to people apprehended soon after crossing the border or who were deemed to be dangerous, not for those who had built law-abiding lives — married U.S. citizens, had children, held jobs, paid taxes — since they arrived.

ICE's new memo erased that distinction. Now, even people who had lived in the U.S. for years were treated as though they had just crossed the border and were "seeking" to enter the U.S., no matter where they were apprehended or how many years ago they arrived.

Remir Gutierrez Montiel had been in the U.S. for two years and was employed as an Amazon delivery driver, before ICE agents grabbed him while he was chatting with a neighbor outside their home last September. His wife was cooking breakfast and didn't know what had happened. She filed a missing person's report and didn't hear from him for three days.

Gutierrez fled Venezuela at 16 after participating in student protests against the repressive regime of Nicolás Maduro. After spending years working their way through Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, he and his wife crossed the U.S. border in 2023. They were released on humanitarian parole while they pursued asylum, living quietly in Chicago until agents confronted him.

"We're detaining everyone," Gutierrez recalled the agents telling him when he was detained last September. "Your work permit does not give you status to be here.

Gutierrez recalled his response: "I'm not going to run."

The thousands of similar cases that have landed in federal court over the past year included: the mother of four U.S. citizen children, including a nursing 6-month-old; a father and owner of a roofing company who has lived in Minnesota since 2019 with no criminal record; a 22-year-old, pregnant Mexican woman who had lived in the U.S. since she was 6; and scores more like them.

Gutierrez said he waited two months at a detention facility in Brazil, Indiana, hoping to plead his case to an immigration judge, before ICE officials abruptly awakened him and said, with no explanation, that he was being released. "I thought they were lying. I didn't believe it until I was able to leave," he recalled.

It was his 25th birthday.

Wherever ICE has gone over the past year, mountains of lawsuits have followed. Enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Chicago led to a sharp increase in so-called "habeas petitions" in California and Illinois courts. The opening of Alligator Alcatraz in Florida sent habeas cases surging there. New Jersey has seen an explosion of cases lately, and Texas courts routinely field dozens of new petitions every day.

But nowhere was hit harder than Minnesota. Thousands of federal agents descended on the state this past winter to detain and deport as many targets as possible. Operation Metro Surge drew intense protests that galvanized public opinion against the administration's deportation policy, especially after agents killed two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

As tension rose on the streets, a crisis began unfolding in the courts.

"The enormous ramp-up in such a small window of time. I just don't know of a precedent anywhere, at least in modern times," U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, who until July 1 was the chief of Minnesota's federal district court, said in an interview.

Schiltz, an avuncular George W. Bush appointee who clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said he spent the months of Operation Metro Surge essentially glued to his phone.

Schiltz began staffing his office in shifts so that someone was always available to receive habeas petitions. Biery, too, described the toll on court staff, whom he called the "infantry" of the court system. The goal, both men said, wasn't to simply rubber stamp victories for ICE detainees, but to ensure their claims were considered before it was too late.

"We wanted to make sure they got heard," Schiltz said.

ICE detainees must file habeas petitions in the federal court district where they're being held — a particular challenge because of ICE's penchant for whisking detainees to other states while they seek out lawyers who can locate them and quickly file lawsuits before they're moved again.

"All of our judges, we were up in the wee hours of the morning doing these cases because we had never seen these before. It was all hands on deck," Nunley, an Obama appointee, recalled. And the strain extended to staff, not just judges.

When habeas cases began cresting in Nunley's district, the courts there were already underwater thanks to a shortage of judges and the region's rapidly growing population. The district had four immigration habeas cases in 2021. In May of this year alone, it had 675.

And while many federal judges say they've moved at record speed to respond to detainees' cases, immigrants' lawyers say it varies from courthouse to courthouse. Despite some judges' efforts to adjust and meet this frantic moment, others are more plodding, taking weeks or even months to resolve habeas petitions. In the meantime, immigration courts — which are part of the executive branch — are issuing deportation orders at a blistering pace.

"The immigration judges seem to know they're in a race and the district judges don't," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration attorney who represents Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man illegally deported by the Trump administration last year.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said his practice has evolved dramatically in the second Trump term. He now has five attorneys dedicated entirely to habeas cases, which used to be rare. His firm guarantees prospective clients that it will file a petition within 24 hours.

Even the Justice Department has struggled to keep up. The Trump administration has bungled or outright defied an extraordinary number of court orders, and has simply thrown in the towel in hundreds of cases. Judges have grown increasingly frustrated and alarmed, distrustful of the Justice Department's representations and increasingly doubtful that ICE is acting in good faith.

"There has been an undeniable move by the Government in the past month to defy court orders or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights," U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, a Clinton appointee, wrote in January, at the height of Operation Metro Surge.

After it reached a boiling point, Schiltz catalogued more than 90 orders, just from his district, with which ICE had failed to comply. Another judge in New Jersey compelled the Justice Department to make its own catalogue of violated court orders.

Judges have rebuked the administration for violating rules on detaining pregnant or nursing women, drawing upwarrants to justify arrests retroactively, subjecting detainees to flawed or unconstitutional bond hearings, and increasingly deporting people in violation of court orders.

In an age of hyperpartisanship and social media-fueled information silos, judges say courts are an imperfect but rare exception — where facts matter and must be reckoned with.

"The judiciary is the glue that's holding the country together," Schiltz said. "I do believe that's true right now."

The Trump administration has expressed no concern about the courts' extraordinary rejection of its detention policy, attributing those losses to "activist" judges who refuse to let Trump carry out the agenda voters chose.

In the administration's view, articulated by the Justice Department in thousands of habeas cases, the expansion of mandatory detention is an assertion of maximal authority that has been available to — but unused by — every administration since Bill Clinton's. Just because Trump's ICE has opted to exercise this authority doesn't make it illegal, the administration argues.

"This administration's immigration enforcement is about restoring law and order and ensuring our immigration system operates for the safety and benefit of the American people," the Justice Department said in its statement. "The Department of Justice will continue to enforce the law fairly and consistently."

In their view, Congress could not possibly have intended to establish a system in which someone arrested at the border must be detained without bond but someone who had evaded detection for years inside the country couldn't be. Trump administration officials also say prior administrations — especially Biden's — released too many people who would typically have been subject to mandatory detention, granting them humanitarian parole. They cast the new ICE policy as an antidote to Biden's leniency.

About 54 federal district judges across the country have agreed with the administration's position on mandatory detention. That's a small minority, but those judges — about three-quarters of whom are Trump appointees —say the law is simply on the president's side.

When one detainee argued to U.S. District Judge Joshua Divine that the "overwhelming majority" of federal judges had rejected the administration's approach, the Missouri-based Trump appointee had an answer.

"The overwhelming majority of district courts sometimes get the law very wrong," he wrote. "What governs this case is the text of the statute, not what other district courts have concluded."

Responding to written questions from POLITICO, Divine — a Trump appointee confirmed by the Senate a year ago — said he does not mind being in the minority among his colleagues.

"Although I was a new judge, it never bothered me to have to disagree with hundreds of other rulings. My oath demands that I rule according to what I understand the text to say," Divine said. "As a textualist judge, I stress to my clerks never to be afraid to stand alone. Not too long ago, textualism itself was a minority view."

Divine added that he drafted his opinion siding with the administration before surveying the field for contrary views. "As a judge, it's my job to focus on the statutory text that exists," he said. "What policy consequences follow from that text is the concern of Congress and the President."

Divine has seen his view echoed by two federal appeals courts, but six have since gone the other way.

That patchwork of appeals court rulings is the type of split that only the Supreme Court can settle. The Justice Department and ACLU have already asked the justices to intervene. The court could hear a case in its next term.

"The law is on our side," the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, citing its record at the Supreme Court on matters restricting asylum and temporary protected status for people the administration is seeking to deport.

"ICE is NOT slowing down."

"Families are scared," said Kelli Stump, an Oklahoma-based immigration lawyer. "They need someone to yell at and they're yelling at me."

"I cry a lot," she said. "I sit there as a human doing what I can do."

Everyone on the receiving end of ICE's amped-up detention philosophy — detainees themselves, their lawyers and the judges who hear their cases — described the past year as both logistically and emotionally draining. Every case is existential for the people being detained as well as their families and communities. That makes the work weightier for both attorneys and judges. And there are more cases than attorneys or judges were ever equipped to handle.

"Some people start shaking in my office when you talk about what they went through," said Todd Pomerleau, a Boston-based immigration attorney who has handled more than 150 habeas cases. "The same stories about the food, how ice cold it was, the lights were on all hours of the day, how they're rattling the cell bars late at night. Making noises, slamming doors. It's almost like everyone has PTSD."

Pomerleau helped spearhead "The Habeas Project," a New England-based coalition that pairs immigration lawyers — who have typically worked in administrative proceedings and immigration courts — with experts in federal litigation.

Nunley, the California-based judge, pulled in judges from Washington, Hawaii and other parts of California to help shoulder some of the habeas caseload. Schiltz, in Minnesota, leaned on judges from Missouri, Nebraska and North Dakota for assistance.

Schiltz and Biery both said they've experienced a surge in threats of violence against judges.

"There were some death threats and stalky emails. 'Who is this old judge, he's senile.' That goes with the territory," Biery said, describing the response to his emotional ruling in the case of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old Minnesota boy whose detention by ICE was captured in a viral photo showing him scared, in a bunny hat on a snowy suburban street with an immigration agent gripping his tiny backpack.

"I've been a judge for 20 years now. We have never had a period of time when we are facing more threats to us, to our safety, to our families, to our staff. It is just an acrid, poisonous atmosphere out there," Schiltz said.

While the legal dispute grinds on, ICE is once again picking up the pace of arrests, which could lead to yet another surge in lawsuits from the people it has detained.


Ankle monitors, arrests and lost jobs: Inside the new realities many Haitians in the US are facing

Catherine E. Shoichet, 

CNN
Mon, August 10, 2026 

After receiving an ankle monitor during a check-in Sunday at an ICE field office in Blue Ash, Ohio, Haitian immigrant Monsanto Maler became emotional and collapsed outside. Now that a Supreme Court decision has cleared the way for the end of their deportation protections, advocates say many Haitians have been required to wear the ankle monitors. "It's so humiliating," says Vilès Dorsainvil of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, one of the men comforting Maler in this photo. - Carol Guzy

A nurse who's no longer allowed to work at one of the city's top hospitals hunkered down in her Boston home, afraid ICE could be in the neighborhood.

A man in Ohio collapsed to the ground in tears after leaving an ICE check-in wearing an ankle monitor.

And residents in eastern Maryland came upon a jarring sight: cars left behind at gas stations with their engines still running.

"They've been arresting people left and right — some people in the middle of the streets. … We have people who went to the grocery store to cook for their kids and didn't return home," said Dr. Marie D. Fouché, founder and executive director of Safe Harbor Circles, an organization in Salisbury, Maryland, that provides support to immigrants.

In the weeks since the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end deportation protections for roughly 350,000 Haitians, and in the days since a lower court judge took a key legal step that made it official, a new reality has started to come into focus in communities that had been holding out hope for a last-minute reprieve.

Fear and confusion are widespread among former holders of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, who had been allowed to work legally in the United States for years as part of the program and suddenly find themselves vulnerable to detention and deportation.

"Now we have no protection," said Vilès Dorsainvil, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield. "Anything can happen any time."

Co-Founder and Executive Director of Haitian Community Help and Support Center Vilès Dorsainvil says many have felt humiliated by the ankle monitors authorities are now issuing. "These are things that should be put on criminals," he says.

 - Jim Vondruska/REUTERS/REUTERS

Federal authorities have been tight-lipped about details of this phase in the administration's immigration crackdown, repeatedly stating that they won't discuss ongoing or future operations. They haven't released data about how many Haitians have been detained since TPS ended. And as of Saturday, advocates who closely track deportation flights hadn't logged any bound for Haiti in the past two weeks.

But Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last week that operations targeting Haitian TPS holders were underway.

"We're going after them right now. … These individuals can either self-deport, or we will arrest you and send you back. It's that simple," he told NewsNation on Tuesday.

Enforcement targeting former TPS holders, including Haitians, kicked up in late July and is expected to be ongoing, two sources with knowledge of the operations told CNN.

At least five people contacted the Haitian Bridge Alliance advocacy organization last week reporting loved ones who were detained across the US, according to Guerline Jozef, the organization's executive director. Callers reported arrests of former TPS holders, who often were driving when they crossed paths with ICE, in Arizona, California, Indiana and Maryland, she said.

"The fear is that the numbers will increase. Enforcement always happens, even when we don't hear it on the news. It is happening on a daily basis within the community," she said.
Letters leave a community on edge

Residents of one of the nation's most recent — and well known — Haitian enclaves say they haven't yet seen an increase in ICE arrests. Springfield drew national attention after President Donald Trump baselessly accused Haitians there of eating pets during a campaign debate in 2024. And some have speculated that the Midwestern city and its some 15,000 Haitians residents would be a focus of arrests after TPS ended.

Leaders in Springfield say the growing ICE presence many fear hasn't yet materialized. Hundreds of Department of Homeland Security letters arriving in the mail, however, have put the community on edge.

The streets of Little Haiti in Brooklyn, New York, have been noticeably quieter since the recent end of protections that allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians to work legally in the US. - Ryan Murphy/AFP/Getty ImagesMore

"Please come to the office listed below at the time and place indicated in connection with an official matter," the letters read, according to a copy Dorsainvil shared with CNN.

Those who've reported to ICE offices after receiving the notices have been outfitted with ankle monitors that allow authorities to track their location, Dorsainvil says, and many have been assigned court dates in about a month.

The ankle monitors are part of a frequently used ICE program known as "alternatives to detention." But Dorsainvil says for many Haitians in Springfield, the devices evoke the painful history of shackles worn during slavery, and that he and other advocates unsuccessfully attempted to convince authorities the monitors weren't necessary.

Now, he says, many Haitians find themselves facing not only the social pressures of being unable to work and provide for their families, but also the psychological pressure of dehumanizing treatment.

"It's so…humiliating," he says.

Philbert Viaud, a Haitian resident of Columbus, Ohio, departs an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office with an ankle monitor after an appointment in Cincinnati on August 2. - Carolyn Kaster/AP

Photos and video captured by journalists outside an ICE office in Blue Ash, Ohio, on Sunday showed a man who was overcome with emotion after leaving with a monitor on his left ankle. Monsanto Maler has lived in the US since 2023 and said he left Haiti because he didn't feel safe, according to photojournalist Carol Guzy, who photographed Maler collapsing in tears as Dorsainvil comforted him.

"He was confused," Dorsainvil says. "He was asking us how long he would need to wear it. We couldn't answer this."

The letters and ankle monitors have exacerbated an already tense situation, says Marjory Wentworth, a board member of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center who also works with G92, a faith-based organization advocating for immigrants in the community.

"It's terrifying… the emotional and psychological stress on these individuals and these families," she said.

And it's hard to know what to do to help, Wentworth says. On Sunday morning, she says, crowds of demonstrators stood outside the ICE office in Blue Ash, chanting "immigrants are welcome here" and singing "We Shall Overcome" to show support to Haitians who had check-ins that morning.

"These people are from our community, and they need to know that we care," Wentworth said.

Asked about the letters and ankle monitors, a DHS spokesperson told CNN that TPS was always intended to be temporary and invoked the administration's self-deportation program, which offers stipends to undocumented immigrants who choose to leave the country.

"What we would say now is it's closing time which means you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," the spokesperson said. "The good news is it's not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home."

This nurse says returning to Haiti isn't an option

But a 29-year-old nurse in Boston told CNN that returning to Haiti now is out of the question for her and many others who fled the Caribbean nation after a devastating earthquake in 2010 only to watch in horror from afar as gang violence has made the country increasingly dangerous.

"There are no jobs. Most of the hospitals are taken over by gangs or have been destroyed, and … the economy's not good. We don't have leaders or a government. It's just very unsafe," said the nurse, who asked to remain anonymous because now, without TPS, she fears for her safety.

She's spent more than half of her life in the US and has been working as a nurse at one of Boston's top hospitals for eight years until last week, when she was forced to take a leave of absence after her work permit expired.

Dealing with the possible end of TPS ever since the Trump administration first announced its termination, she says, has been like going through a never-ending cycle of the stages of grief.

An attendee holds a sign during a rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall in New York, on July 9. Protesters called for Congress to pass a measure that would extend TPS for Haitians. - Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

"I've gotten angry, I've been in denial, I've been frustrated…and every time I think that, 'OK, I'm accepting that this is it, this is the reality,' you go back through it again," she says. "I feel like this thing has been hanging over my head for years. And I've tried to find a proper pathway to get me out of it, but it just feels like there wasn't one."

These days, she's focusing her efforts on looking for nursing jobs abroad, and hoping another country will give her a chance to use the skills she trained so hard to learn before immigration crackdowns in the US intensify further.

"They're losing a lot of us — a lot of people like me. We're willing to work. We're ready. We work very hard, and it feels like we're not needed, we're not valued, and all our years of service have gone (unnoticed)," she says.
'Affecting the economy, big time'

Many businesses have been devastated by the loss of Haitian employees in recent weeks, according to Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition.

The organization represents CEOs and associations in manufacturing, healthcare, elder care, construction, agriculture and hospitality. And Shi says at least two of its members were particularly hard hit by the end of TPS for Haitians: a resort hotel in Florida that lost more than 150 workers, and a senior center in Massachusetts that lost more than 50 employees.

It's already having ripple effects, she says, noting that some nursing homes are now considering closing wings because they're short-staffed after losing so many workers.

"The American workers that are on the team are not just missing their colleagues and team members, but also they're burning out. They're carrying way more extra load because a quarter of the workforce is gone," she said.

Advocates and local leaders say they've been observing the absence of Haitians on the streets of many communities, too.

In Salisbury, which has become a hub for Haitians who work in nearby factories and farms, ICE recently started detaining people in parking lots and other areas immigrants frequent, according to Fouché of Safe Harbor Circles.

The uptick in arrests prompted many Haitians to go into hiding, she says. "People are not coming out."

Members of the Word of Life Center, a church and hub of the Haitian community, sing and pray August 2 during a service in Salisbury, Maryland. - Luis Andres Henao/AP

The streets in Haitian neighborhoods of New York City have also been noticeably quieter. David Duchatellier says business has plunged at his travel agency in Cambria Heights, which also provides money transfer services.

"You don't see people walking around as they used to. They're staying inside because they're not working. They're not going to the supermarket to buy food. And that's affecting the economy, big time," he says.

A Haitian American who's lived in the US for more than 50 years, Duchatellier says he's been writing to members of Congress to urge them to come up with a legislative compromise to help Haitians, and he hopes Trump's advisers will tell him how much a crackdown on Haitians will harm the US economy.

"You didn't cause this, but you can solve it, once and for all. … Nobody's giving him this advice right now. I wish I could just sit with him for just five minutes," Duchatellier says.

There's still an opening for the administration to change course, he says.

A Honduran woman poses for a portrait outside a Perdue Farms poultry plant in Salisbury, Maryland, where she worked for more than two decades before losing her job last year after her TPS expired. - Luis Andres Henao/APMore

But many seem to be running out of hope.

Fielding a growing number of calls from Haitians unsure of where to turn is overwhelming, says Judith Polidor, who works as a paralegal in Brooklyn's Little Haiti neighborhood.

"It's sadness all day. … They are crying. … Everybody has an emergency. … They need somebody just to listen," she says, "even though you cannot do nothing."

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Sharif Paget, Shimon Prokupecz, Linh Tran, Maria Santana, Hira Humayun, Hyan de Frietas, Kaanita Iyer and Caitlin Stephen Hu contributed to this report.

INDIA

The tipping point of change

Jawed Naqvi 

Published August 11, 2026

DAWN

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

DISCUSSIONS are happening about how so many of the young protesters that rocked the Modi government recently came from families that have been faithfully voting for the right-wing prime minister. A crucial fact that seems to elude the discussants is that liberal or communist or fascist ideologues are not hatched in hatcheries. Unlike Narendra Modi, they are not ‘non-biological’ beings that gatecrash our earthly world.

To begin with, it would be useful to bear in mind that the jailed left-wing student leader Umar Khalid had transcended to secular left politics from circumstances in which his father was a member of a major Muslim revivalist body.

Likewise, Neha Bora, president of the pro-communist All-India Students’ Association who fasted for 23 days at the protest, tells you sans demur that she broke away from a family tradition of voting for the Muslim-baiting BJP. The flow can be in the opposite direction too. Howard Fast, as the despairing chief of the US Communist Party, famed for writing the story of Spartacus, the slave rebel of Rome, became a Buddhist seeker after abandoning Marxism.

Numerous such examples abound in the Indian intellectual pantheon of progressivism and regression, which we can discuss. A scene is vivid from my childhood in which the migration to progressive politics would seem facile despite the good intentions. It was a balmy morning in Mustafabad, a village of erstwhile Shia taluqdars in the heart of Uttar Pradesh.

Some young men and women in the joint family had recently got the first university degrees. Marxism was in the air in university campuses in the 1960s. That morning the tea was of just the right temperature, its bouquet flavourful. Three bespectacled young men from among the learned ones were steeped in a discussion that straddled Marx, Nehru, Josh and Neruda.

The men were wrapped in embroidered woollen shawls over spotless white muslin kurta-pajama attires when the mehtrani, the woman carrying human refuse in an open reed basket, walked past. Other than putting the handkerchiefs on their faces briefly, the men remained unabashedly unperturbed in their intellectual chatter.

A follower of Dalit politics would have reacted differently to the brutal absurdness of the frame. Indian communists added B.R. Ambedkar and the sickening caste angle to their class analysis grudgingly, only recently harnessing it to the dialectical quiver. These early activists had the theory but not the praxis, which would take years to arrive, or perhaps not.


It’s not clear that most of the youth who defied the fierce police assault the other day had, in fact, crossed the tipping point from their social reality.

Thus, it’s not even clear that most of the youth who defied the fierce police assault the other day to scare the hell out of a stubborn authoritarian government had, in fact, crossed the tipping point from their social reality. A Buddhist would call the migration nirvana — the blowing out of greed, hatred and ignorance.


Collectively, the youth displayed a healthy mix of all three characteristics. When and if they reassemble it could be a different variety of mix. Arvind Kejriwal had held out a similar promise when his Aam Aadmi Party stop­ped the Hindutva juggernaut in Delhi in 2015.

The ‘Modi wave’ had taken care of Maharashtra and Haryana state polls in quick succession. Kejriwal stopped the BJP chariot in Delhi. Then something equally important occurred. He rejected the offer of support from the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, and people were emboldened to believe that the time had come to separate religion from politics as the constitution ordains. Then in a crude display of regressive religiosity, he started holding election campaigns from Hindu temples and wooed senior voters with offers of free Hindu pilgrimages.

One doesn’t have to agree with T.S. Eliot who says: “Youth is cruel and has no remorse. And smiles at situations it cannot see.” But youth is a handy demographic factor with an uncertain political trajectory. Not long ago, taking on the same Modi establishment, a courageous woman had single-handedly instigated the downfall of Modi’s minister accused of sexual transgressions. But the same charges failed to secure the conviction of a BJP muscleman.

However, there again is the unforgettable instance of determined and seasoned farmers who forced the cancellation of Modi’s prized anti-farm laws. It is heartening to remember, therefore, that the Cockroach leaders have committed themselves to deter violations of citizen’s voting rights by a wayward election commission. The youth are committed to take on the hopelessly compromised corporate media that misreported the protests.

Keeping company in the progressive transition of Khalid and Bora are some very eminent intellectuals of the subcontinent. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s path from traditional Islamic education to becoming one of South Asia’s most iconic Marxist intellectuals highlights a fascinating evolution. Majro­­oh Sultanpuri was destined to become a hakim, for which he had acquired a degree. Then he turned towards left politics and endured isolation and even jail for his beliefs.


I recently saw lovely pictures of Faiz’s daughters on a holiday in Sri Lanka. Had DPT been around, they would have in all likelihood been in India for he had the magic of fixing visas for all manner of progressive Pakis­tanis. Devi Prasad Tripathi came to JNU from the RSS stable. He became a staunch member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist and won the election as student union president when he was arrested and jailed during the emergency. Many political stalwarts left the RSS to become leftists and are leading critics of the Modi establishment.

Kaifi Azmi became a progressive writer after early inspiration from the valour of Imam Husain. And, Iran has shown that a just battle can harness religious motifs to thwart a powerful aggressor. “Dekhna Kaifi nishan-i-hurriyat lahraega/ Jab jahan ko azm-i-Sher-i-Karbala mil jayaega” (‘Watch, O Kaifi, the banner of freedom shall flutter high/ Once the world finds the Lion of Karbala and joins his battle cry’). Kaifi’s pre-Marxist verses presaged the retreat of imperialism not far from the site of the students’ protest. And Iran’s left? They’re cohabiting with imperialism.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026

PAKISTAN

Goods, oil transporters strike continues

Kalbe AliAamir 

Shafaat Khan 

Published August 11, 2026 

DAWN

KARACHI: A driver passes between trucks parked at the Shireen Jinnah colony terminal, as a wheel-jam strike called by goods transporters affected the movement of cargo across the country for a third consecutive day. Talks between transporters and the government are expected to continue today.—PPI

• Next round of talks with govt today

• KCCI offers to mediate between both sides

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI: Talks between striking transporters and the government continued until late Monday night with both sides holding firm on their demands as the deadlock persisted, mainly over fuel pricing and taxes.

The next round of negotiations will be held today.

As oil tankers, edible oil tankers, trailers, goods transport trucks, etc. went off the road on Friday night ahead of the scheduled strike from Saturday, the government offered talks with the collective body of the striking transporters.

As the first round of talks held on Monday morning remained inconclusive with both sides unwilling to yield any ground, the second round of negotiations commenced later in the afternoon. The transporters have presented three main demands, each related to different ministries.

The first demand, to increase the permissible weight for 10-wheeler vehicles to 35 tonnes from the current 27.5 tonnes, as well as reduce toll tax rates, relates to the National Highways Authority (NHA) and the communications ministry.

The other demand was that diesel pricing should be revised on a monthly basis, as daily price revisions disturb their business planning. The third demand of the transporters relates to customs duties and income tax.

The government side was jointly led by Communi­cations Minister Aleem Khan and Petro­leum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik. It included relevant officers from the FBR, ministries, ports and shipping, federal secretaries, and transport secretaries of the four provinces.

Meanwhile, the strikers gathered under the platform of the All Pakistan Goods Transport Ittehad alliance, which includes representatives of various associations.

The spokesman for the alliance, Advo­cate Moham­mad Owais Chaudhry, told Dawn that negotiations between the transporters and the government were underway, but no decision had been reached so far. “We have clearly presented our position before the government and will not show any flexibility on it,” he said.

He added that the government had to accept the transporters’ demands for the strike to end.

Meanwhile, a senior official in the government negotiating team said the daily fuel adjustment had been made due to volatility in international markets and was not a local issue.

However, the government was considering lowering toll tax for heavy vehicles, while the axle load could also be amended.

KCCI offer

In Karachi, businessmen and exporters have warned that continued suspension of cargo movement would hit industrial production, supply chains, exports and the country’s overall economic activities.

Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) President Muhammad Rehan Hanif, in a statement issued on Monday, urged the federal as well as all provincial governments to immediately engage representatives of the transport sector at the highest level.

He warned that any prolonged disruption in the movement of goods and petroleum products could have a cascading impact on industrial production, availability of raw materials, delivery of finished products, fuel supplies, domestic commerce and export shipments.

He asked stakeholders in the transport sector to consider the enormous damage being caused to the country by the strike. He urged them to call off the strike in the larger interest of Pakistan, expressing hope that the government would engage with them and that their legitimate demands could be discussed and resolved through negotiations.

“The KCCI is ready to play its role as a mediator,” Mr Hanif said.

Pakistan Textile Council (PTC) Chairman Fawad Anwar, in a letter to the prime minister, said the strike from Saturday could severely affect Pakistan’s textile and apparel supply chains and export shipments.

He highlighted that Pakistan’s textile and apparel industry relies heavily on uninterrupted transportation to move imported and locally sourced raw materials to manufacturing units and to ensure finished export consignments reach ports on time.

The PTC chairman acknowledged that the transporters’ demands involved matters requiring coordination among different levels and departments of the government. However, he cautioned that the economic cost of the continuing deadlock would increase with every passing day.

He requested PM Shehbaz Sharif to bring the relevant government authorities and representatives of the transport sector together to secure an early resolution of the strike.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026

World Bank unhappy over fund diversion from Balochistan

Khaleeq Kiani 

Published August 11, 2026 

DAWN

Internally displaced flood-affected people shift husk for their animals in a flood-hit area following heavy rains in Dera Allah Yar town of Jaffarabad district in Balochistan province on September 7. — AFP

ISLAMABAD: Expressing serious displeasure over reputational challenges, the World Bank has warned that redirecting funds from a multi-billion-rupee resilient housing programme for the flood-affected population to infrastructure projects would further aggravate poverty in Balochistan.

“Based on the socio-economic profile of the eligible household, the risk is not simply that households remain without housing assistance; rather, it is that existing vulnerabilities become mutually reinforcing and deepen over time,” the World Bank said in detailed communication to the federal and Balochistan governments.

In this case, 84 per cent of eligible beneficiaries are ultra-poor and vulnerable, with 28pc earning less than $30 and another 26pc earning between $31 and $70 per month, while 39pc are tenants, 37pc are daily-wage labourers and 8pc are small farmers. These groups typically have limited savings, weak access to formal credit, few productive assets and low capacity to absorb shocks, WB said.

After meetings with the federal minister for planning, the chief minister of Balochistan and others following the capping of housing support at 62,966 first-tranche beneficiaries as of June 22, 2026, and subsidy support to 97,000, World Bank’s country director Boloromaa Amgaabazar expressed concern over the decision as well as the handling of issues pertaining to fraud and corruption.

Cautions exclusion could deepen poverty, disaster risks, social tensions

She wrote to the federal secretaries for economic affairs and planning, as well as the secretary of Balochistan, that the capping and redirection of housing support was leaving 119,049 verified and eligible households without identified financing support. Its public disclosure before the finalisation of a jointly agreed communication strategy with the bank had also created risks, as households that had completed verification and signed the project undertakings might continue to expect housing assistance.

She wrote that 66,120 exclusion-related grievances had been registered in the project grievance management system on or before the agreed cut-off date. Therefore, each complainant should be contacted individually and formally notified of the decision.

“Written acknowledgment, or other verifiable evidence confirming delivery and receipt of the communication, should be obtained and shared with the bank for review. A credible and transparent grievance resolution process is essential to mitigating legal, operational, and reputational risks associated with eventual closure of the component,” Ms Amgaabazar wrote.

With the capping of housing support, eligible but excluded households may face a compounding cycle of vulnerability that not only reinforces poverty but increases it, raises disaster risk and undermines long-term recovery and resilience, diminishing the objectives with which the project was initiated.

With limited resources, families may be forced to divert income from essential needs such as food, healthcare and education towards continued temporary shelter repairs, while also resorting to debt or the sale of productive assets to cope.

At the same time, families unable to rebuild resilient homes may remain in damaged or unsafe structures, leaving them more exposed to recurring floods, storms, earthquakes and heatwaves.

On top of that, the exclusion of verified eligible beneficiaries may also generate grievances, perceptions of inequity and unfairness, and continued erosion of trust in government institutions and development programmes, risks that have been observed in other housing reconstruction operations.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026

PAKISTAN

Equal citizens

Editorial 

Published August 11, 2026

DAWN

The major issues of minority communities were identified as forced conversion and kidnapping of girls and women. — AFP/File

AUG 11 occupies a special place in our history because it was on this day in 1947 that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah set out what citizenship in the new state ought to mean. Addressing the Constituent Assembly, he spoke of a country in which people were free to go to their temples, mosques or other places of worship, and where religion, caste or creed would not determine their standing before the state.

He insisted that citizens should enjoy equal rights, privileges and obligations, and that discrimination between communities had no place in the order Pakistan was attempting to build. These remarks formed part of a wider vision of government based on law, impartiality, protection of life and property, and the safeguarding of religious belief.


It is fitting, then, that minority rights activists will gather outside Mazar-i-Quaid in Karachi today to recall that promise and demand that it be honoured. The Minority Rights March has put forward 11 demands, including stronger safeguards against forced conversions, protection from the misuse of blasphemy laws, greater political representation, removal of discriminatory material from textbooks, protection of minority properties and places of worship, and expanded access to education and employment.

Organisers have also called for constitutional amendments allowing non-Muslim citizens to qualify for the offices of president and prime minister. Whether every demand commands consensus is a matter for democratic debate. But the principle from which they proceed — that citizenship should not be graded according to faith — should not be controversial in a republic that continues to invoke Jinnah as its founding authority. The delay in a written NOC for the march deserves attention. Peaceful assembly is a right, not a favour.

The gap between Jinnah’s principle of equal citizenship and present realities cannot be ignored. It is especially troubling because these protections were articulated at the birth of Pakistan itself. Religious minorities continue to face mob violence, attacks on their places of worship, forced conversions and social and economic exclusion.

Laws intended to protect religion have at times been weaponised through false accusations, with consequences extending far beyond the courtroom. Even where the state guarantees equality, social prejudice and institutional barriers make that guarantee fragile in practice. National Minority Rights Day must be more than a ceremonial observance.

It should prompt the state to examine where law, policy and public culture continue to fall short of the standard articulated on Aug 11, 1947. Jinnah did not ask minorities to be grateful for protection; he described equal citizenship as a fundamental principle. Pakistan cannot honour that principle through speeches alone. It will honour it when every citizen, regardless of faith, can claim the same dignity, security and political belonging.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026

Tel Aviv’s subterfuge

DAWN
Editorial 

August 11, 2026 

THE Gaza peace plan championed by US President Donald Trump and his Board of Peace has encountered major turbulence, as the American leader’s Israeli friends have rejected the deal. On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, after a cabinet meeting, said his military would not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is “genuinely disarmed”.

These verbal gymnastics indicate that Tel Aviv has no intention of ending its occupation of the Strip. Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons to a Palestinian committee last month, and the disarmament process and Israeli withdrawal were supposed to take place in tandem. Trump had then said the development was “monumental”. It seems his Israeli allies do not share his enthusiasm. Israel does not play by the rules, and shifts the goalposts when things are not going its way. Hamas says it remains committed to the plan.

From the Nakba to the Oslo Accords to the present day, it is the Arab side that has been expected to make all the compromises, while Israel is treated like a spoilt child and given whatever it wants by its powerful Western supporters whenever it throws a tantrum. Its rejection of the Trumpian peace plan is the latest example of this hypocrisy.

Trump does not like to take no for an answer. But both in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israelis have been constantly sabotaging his attempts to end hostilities. Will the American leader put pressure on Tel Aviv to honour its pledges vis-à-vis Gaza? The excuse that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will not want to be seen giving concessions to the Palestinians before the Zionist state’s October elections is flimsy. Peace and rehabilitation in Gaza cannot be held hostage to internal Israeli politics.


Israeli provocations and oppression had created the grounds for the last two Intifadas, as well as the October 2023 Hamas attacks. When Tel Aviv cuts off all avenues for peaceful resolution of the dispute, and commits to never accepting an independent Palestinian state, then violence will be the unfortunate outcome, as the Arabs resist by any means necessary. Sadly, it appears that Israel thrives in an atmosphere of violence, and is uninterested in peace. This is the reality unless it changes its tune on the Gaza peace plan.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026

Commodifying life

Abrahim Shah

August 11, 2026 

DAWN

The writer is a civil servant and an alumnus of Cornell University and the University of Oxford.

THE ongoing tumult in the Middle East has generated varied notes of discourse. Pakistan and its armed forces deserve all plaudits extended to them for their incessant efforts towards peace.

But beneath these multiple narratives was one particular strand so conspicuous that it went nearly unnoticed. Almost every shifting tide in the conflict was measured in financial outcomes and the impact on global stock markets. The notion of peace itself — including numbers of lives lost — took a position of diminished significance in relation to the vagaries and movements of capital markets.

The preponderance today of global finance under the Washington Consensus is undisputed. What necessitates critical inquiry is how this sheer dominance emerged, and how the very concept of loss, violence and peace is reduced to financial calculations, predictions and number crunching.

Multiple writers have sought to engage with this query. Critics like David Harvey and Wendy Brown trace the financialisation of the everyday to neoliberalism and the writings of Friedrich Hayek and his disciple Milton Friedman. Michael Hudson, the author of The Bubble and Beyond, identifies the financial sector with ‘rentier overhead’ and the creation of ‘balance sheet wealth’ which has displaced industrial output.

A more rigorous intellectual pursuit, however, draws us to the works of Karl Polanyi, an Austro-Hungarian economic historian who perhaps wrote the most seminal work of his time. The Great Transformation, written in 1944, traces the emergence of the market economy in Western Europe and America and predicts the exact eclipse of the sociopolitical sphere by the economic as we witness almost everywhere today.


As per Polanyi, the market economy is built on fictitious commodities.As per Polanyi, the market economy is built on fictitious commodities.

Polanyi’s thought requires far more than an op-ed to do it justice, but his fundamental tenets help address the question raised at the start of this piece. For Polanyi, the market economy is built on fictitious commodities — the morbid transformation of land, labour and money into commodities meant for consumption, trade and generating value. This change, according to Polanyi, commodifies and alters the very essence of human society.

Our individuality and relationship with the self is subsumed by our productivity as human capital. Land, which holds a far broader definition than merely the physical sites we occupy, and includes, instead, the entire environmental milieu, becomes an object to be exploited to extract surplus. Polanyi would explain the environmental crisis in these terms as well.

Taken together, this fundamental alteration of the essence of humanity is the ‘great transformation’ which heralds the establishment of the market economy and serves as the point of rupture between the past and the contemporary. We are now, according to Polanyi, in the throes of the market forces of capitalism.

The process remains yet incomplete. And this is where we are drawn to the present state of things. Polanyi contends that the forces of this transformation are inexorable in their magnitude. Human society is now subject to the whims and vagaries of these forces, and since the very elements that made us human now stand altered, ruin awaits civilisation.

While this dire prognosis is as yet elusive, it raises a fundamental question regarding our humanity and social relations. In Polanyi’s tracing of the erosion of the human essence, one begins to comprehend how war, death, peace and stability find traction, justification and valida-

tion in the ‘unhuman’ — spreadsheets, bull runs, and panic. That is the inevitability of the ‘great transformation’, triggered by the bir­th of fictitious commodities — land, labour and money.

A seemingly trivial narrative about markets panicking, or investors scrambling, is thus loaded with the burden of history and the seismic changes that have altered world society and how this society views itself. The framing of this narrative becomes of critical import as a result, since it gives us objectives and metrics by which we view progress, success and progress, even well-being.

Returning to the overpowering of the social and political by the economic also nudges us towards associated lines of inquiry: neo-colonialism, debt traps and political contestation subsumed by obscure technical jargon. These are all questions that deserve critical engagement on these pages. For now, we remind ourselves of the existential battle humanity fights. Not (as yet) with robots, but with the invisible matrix of finance, hot capital and the erosion of the very essence of what makes us human.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2026