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    ‘I escaped one gulag only to end up in another’: Russian asylum seekers face Ice detention in the US

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    For most of the four years of Joe Biden was in office, citizens of Russia and other post-Soviet states seeking asylum in the US were generally released into the country while they awaited hearings on their claim in immigration court.But since last summer, many have been detained upon entering the US, and some of them have been held for more than a year, lawyers, activists and detainees say. Some children have been separated from their parents.“My Russian clients tell me, ‘Now our prison is 80% Russian, the remaining 20% are from rotating nationalities who stay for a while,’” said immigration attorney Julia Nikolaev, who has been advocating for detainees’ rights alongside representatives of the Russian opposition. “Only Russians and a few other post-Soviet nationals remain in detention until their final hearings.”Alexei Demin, a 62-year-old former naval officer from Moscow, was detained in July of last year.In the last 20 years, Demin rarely missed an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in the Russian capital. He had become concerned almost immediately after Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power, he said. For years, he criticized Putin’s regime on Facebook, and he was detained twice at protests. Still, he never imagined that he would end up fleeing his homeland for fear that Putin’s regime would imprison him. Or that he would end up imprisoned in the US.When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a colleague asked Demin why he wasn’t enlisting to fight. He replied: “If I go, it will be on Ukraine’s side.” Soon, as the crackdown on dissent in Russia intensified amid the war, Demin and his wife, like many others who had long openly opposed Putin, fled to the US to seek political asylum. For years, Russians have been among the top five nationalities granted asylum.The couple arrived in the US in the summer of 2024, after securing an appointment through CBP One, the app launched by the Biden administration (and since then shut down by Donald Trump) allowing asylum applicants to schedule to meet with immigration officials. At their appointment, Demin and his wife were detained, separated and sent to detention centers in different states. They haven’t seen each other since.His predicament, Demin said, was “a trap and a blatant injustice”.“This is how the US treats people who protest against Russia’s policies,” he said in a call from a detention center in Virginia in January.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) does not release public data on the number of people from post-Soviet countries it holds in detention. But Nikolaev said that law enforcement officials have privately acknowledged to her that asylum seekers from those countries are being held longer.Other activists say they have seen similar patterns. The non-profit Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR) has played an active role in assisting detainees in immigration detention centers, finding lawyers and working with the government officials.Dmitry Valuev, president of RADR, said it was an issue that affected not only Russians, but also citizens of several other post-Soviet countries.There have been reports that some immigrants arriving from post-Soviet states are facing increased scrutiny over fears they are connected to Islamist terrorist organizations. It’s unclear what prompted US authorities to keep the Russian asylum seekers in detention. One theory is that immigration officials are targeting Russians and other post-Soviet nationals as spies.Eric Rubin, former US ambassador to Bulgaria who also served as a deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow, said that the complicated history of US-Russia diplomacy can hurt Russian asylum applicants.“When you meet Russians in the United States, obviously you need to wonder whether some of them are actually working for Russian intelligence. Some of them are, most of them are not,” said Rubin.Nikolaev isn’t so sure. “Russian spies can enter the country with European passports, visas and all the right documents,” she said.Nikolaev in January took her concerns to US government officials, alongside Ilya Yashin, a leading Russian opposition figure. They met with officials at the national security council, who requested a list of separated families, Nikolaev said.The Department of Homeland Security, Ice and the national security council did not respond to repeated questions about detention policies or the specific cases outlined in this article.In a statement, the White House said that the duration of cases varies based on legal proceedings and any protections sought. The White House also said there had been “zero instances of children from any of the countries you mentioned being separated from their families by US immigration authorities in this entire fiscal year”.View image in fullscreenBut Galina Kaplunova, 26, an illustrator and anti-Putin activist, was detained and separated from her child and mother at the US border last August.In the summer of 2024, Kaplunova’s husband, a Kremlin supporter, had threatened to take her child away and report her to the police for her political activism, Kaplunova said. A native of St Petersburg, she had been detained multiple times at protests and had volunteered in opposition leaders’ campaign offices. Two days after her husband made the threat, Kaplunova, her four-year-old son and her mother fled to the US.At the US border with Mexico, Ice agents separated Kaplunova from her son, she said. He was placed in foster care, while she and her mother were sent to different detention centers in separate states.After being separated, her son was placed with a Mexican American family, she said. He didn’t speak English, so communicated with them through Google Translate.“I fled Russia so they wouldn’t take my child or jail me. But the US did,” she said.About two months after being detained and separated, Kaplunova was released and reunited with her son, she said. It was a miracle, she said.Now Kaplunova and her son now live in California. Her mother is still detained. Her son is afraid of being abandoned. Whenever she tries to discuss his time in foster care, he simply says he doesn’t remember it.“It’s as if he erased that part of his life so he wouldn’t have to remember it,” she said.He learned some English in foster care, but refuses to speak it with his mother.“Maybe he associates English with something bad, something negative,” she said.Valuev, the president of RADR, said that long periods of detention can hurt applicants’ asylum cases. Hiring a lawyer from within a detention center is nearly impossible due to the lack of internet access, he said. “Detainees are given a list of contacts, but most of these numbers don’t answer the phone,” he said.Additionally, many detainees have no access to materials for their asylum cases because their documents were stored on computers and phones that were confiscated.Vladislav Krasnov, a protest organizer and activist from Moscow, said he spent 444 days in a Louisiana detention center. Krasnov fled Russia in 2022 after Putin announced a draft. He crossed the border with the CBP One appointment and was swiftly detained. Now free, he is still waiting for a court hearing to review his asylum case.Reflecting on his experience, he said he was shocked by the welcome he got in the United States. “I escaped one gulag only to end up in another,” Krasnov said.He was also angry at Russian opposition leaders for not paying attention to his plight until recently.“Last summer, I watched Yulia Navalnaya hugging Biden in the Oval Office. Then she talked on the phone with [Kamala] Harris, and Harris declared that America supports people fighting for Russia’s freedom. To put it mildly, I had a complete breakdown at that moment, sitting in detention,” Krasnov said.About 300 detainees from Russia and other post-Soviet countries filed a lawsuit last November, calling their detention discriminatory, and demanding freedom for people they argue were held without a justification. A federal judge ruled in February that the court lacked the jurisdiction to review the detention policy and dismissed the case.View image in fullscreenAmong those mentioned in the lawsuit was Polina Guseva, a political activist and volunteer on the team of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Guseva arrived in the US in July 2024, applied for asylum and was sent to a detention center. She said Ice officers at the Louisiana detention facility where she’s being held “openly say that Russians are not being released”.Still, she does not regret coming to the US, she said, adding safety concerns in Russia left her with no other choice.“Two thoughts help me a lot. First, better to be here than to be raped with a dumbbell in a Russian prison,” Guseva said. “And second, my friend Daniil Kholodny is still in prison in Russia. He was the technical director of the Navalny Live YouTube channel. He was tried alongside Alexei Navalny in his last trial and sentenced to eight years. He has been imprisoned for more than two years now. If he can hold on, why shouldn’t I?”Alexei Demin, the former naval officer and longtime protester, was supposed to have his first asylum court hearing reviewing his asylum case in early February, but the hearing was rescheduled to mid-April because of the judge’s sickness. By that time, he will have been in detention for more than 300 days. More

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      ‘Will Trump give up the store?’ Edward Fishman on how US economic warfare works – and doesn’t

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      Edward Fishman’s first book, Chokepoints, is a study of American economic warfare. Densely reported but fast-moving, the book examines recent US sanctions policy regarding Iran, Russia and China, and how the dollar’s dominance of international financial systems has allowed administrations to pursue political aims.Fishman’s own service under Barack Obama, at Treasury, Pentagon and State, stands him in good stead. So does teaching at Columbia and being a Washington thinktank fellow.As Chokepoints comes out, Donald Trump is beginning talks with Russia aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Russia is seeking relief from US sanctions, which Trump seems inclined to give, and Ukraine and Europe are increasingly isolated from the US.“The record of the first Trump administration on Russia is not particularly strong,” Fishman said, diplomatically, when asked what the US might expect from a president widely held to be in thrall to Vladimir Putin – and speaking before Trump’s spectacular Oval Office argument with Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and subsequent suspension of US military aid.Fittingly, as the author of a history of modern sanctions, Fishman looked back to look forward – and did not find encouraging signs.View image in fullscreenIn 2018, “under pressure from Congress, Trump imposed sanctions on Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate in Russia … Deripaska owned Rusal, which is the largest aluminum company in Russia, and produced almost 10% of the world’s aluminum. And overnight, basically, aluminum prices skyrocket, Rusal stock collapses, and there’s significant chaos in metal markets.“And Trump gets all these calls from the Russians, from CEOs, saying, ‘What are you doing? Stop.’ And he just pulls back the sanctions.”Years later, that episode is “concerning” to Fishman, “for a few reasons. One is, I think it signals to Russia that as soon as [Trump’s US faces] even the slightest amount of blowback, he will cave, even absent any concessions. It wasn’t like Putin gave any political concessions [in 2018]. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, we’re gonna free these prisoners overnight, we’re gonna stop this bombardment in Ukraine,’ because there was a low, simmering conflict being fought at the time. Trump just pulled back the sanctions.“And after that is when Russia shifts basically all of its foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro and the yuan, the Chinese currency, and gold. So that was the key moment. Putin realizes [about Trump], ‘This guy, he doesn’t have the stomach to do anything, but also he’s so erratic.’ I think that was when the US lost leverage it needs with Russia, though I think it contributed to Putin underestimating the sanctions he would face in 2022”, from Biden, when he ordered a full invasion.US sanctions have hurt Russia deeply – and therefore should be among Trump’s strongest cards to play. Typically, he has been inconsistent. Usually friendly to Moscow, on Friday, Trump used his social media platform to say that because Russia was “absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield” he was “strongly considering large scale” sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire could be reached.Fishman pondered the issue: “Do I think that Trump will give up the store? I don’t know … I would say I’m not confident that he’s going to get a just peace in Ukraine. But I’m not yet saying, ‘This guy is failing, we’re about to give up everything to Russia in exchange for nothing,’ though I think it’s possible and it’s certainly what the Russians want. It’s very clear they want to cut a deal with Trump that basically couches sanctions relief as a favor to the US, to say, ‘We should have open trade and investment with you. It’s good for America. It was Biden who put on all these restraints. He was just restraining US-Russia relations for no good reason.’“They want to basically get the US to give up their biggest bargaining chip before full negotiations over Ukraine even start.”Fishman studied at Yale, Cambridge and Stanford after 9/11. He noticed that “Iran’s nuclear program shot to the top of the foreign policy agenda”, even though “it was very obvious that the US was not willing to fight another war in the Middle East. And as a result, a number of people were thinking, ‘OK, what do we do about it?’”Joining the US government, Fishman found himself looking for a good book on sanctions.“I had an interesting mix of roles. Some were in the action, doing sanctions, diplomacy, and in others I was more of an adviser to really senior people. I worked for Secretary of State John Kerry and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey … And what I noticed was in the Situation Room, when the top leaders were discussing US foreign policy, whenever it turned to economic warfare, sanctions, etc, the level of conversation was so low, and I think it was because most people in the room had no idea what sanctions were.“It felt arcane. It felt mysterious. And so a big goal [with Chokepoints] was to demystify this and to create a way for average people just to read a book and say, ‘OK, I get it enough that I can develop my own opinions.’”The book is written to keep the reader moving, short chapters introduced with journalistic flourishes. Character traits are sharply noted, short anecdotes from lives away from work help present diplomats and bureaucrats in sharp relief.The importance of the sanctions policy such characters have shaped over the last 20 years is hard to overstate. The first part of Fishman’s book concerns the Iran nuclear deal, reached under Obama through diplomacy and economic pressure, meant to stop the Islamic Republic getting the bomb, dumped by Trump in 2018. Fishman also considers Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the US-led response – one subject of angry debate in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy visited last week – then switches to how Obama and Trump approached China.Fishman is a proud Obama alum but he is not afraid to apportion criticism.“Trump was significantly less risk-averse than Obama was when it came to sanctions. And I think that hopefully the Obama-Russia section [of Chokepoints] shows that in some ways, that risk aversion did not serve American interests.“The Obama administration also toward the end started to become quite concerned about China building islands in the South China Sea, all kinds of other aggressive acts. I think some Obama people would say this was too late in the administration to do anything about it but I would have been surprised, honestly, if you had seen a kind of frontal assault on Chinese economic aggression, even if Obama had more time.“So I think the benefit of Trump, with respect to China, was that he showed us that we have more leverage than we think we do, that we have more flexibility to actually push back against things that China was doing to hurt American interests, because I think it was well documented that Chinese IP theft was one of the ways that they were damaging American business interests, damaging the US economy, and we really hadn’t done anything about it.“So I do think that what Trump got right on China was that you can punch back without necessarily destroying the relationship … the US-China relationship didn’t really collapse during the Trump administration until the very end, until Covid, because they had signed the phase one trade deal in January 2020.“The thing that strikes me about the first Trump administration, and I think is going to be true about this one, is that Trump … on most issues, he vacillates. And China’s one of them. He goes back and forth from being extremely tough to being like, ‘Xi Jinping is my best friend.’”Trump is inconsistent toward other countries too, particularly those he threatens with tariffs, adversaries and friends alike, as demonstrated this week by 25% tariffs slapped on Mexico and Canada, then partially delayed.“Tariffs are taxes on imports,” Fishman said. “Let’s say we were to impose a tariff on Russian oil of 20%. That would mean that US companies could buy Russian oil, but if they were to do so, they’d have to pay a 20% tax. So a US refinery, down the street from me in New Jersey, could pay a tax to the US government to buy that Russian oil.“A sanction would be basically saying you can’t buy any oil at all. So a tariff is a significantly weaker form of a sanction. Historically, as a result, tariffs have not been used for national security reasons. They’re an economic bargaining chip. Sometimes you use tariffs to protect important domestic industries.“What Trump has done is basically just made tariffs yet another weapon in the US economic arsenal, alongside sanctions and export controls. And I think that’s OK. But it’s important for people to realize that tariffs are a significantly weaker tool than sanctions or export controls, so the idea of using them to address key national security problems is somewhat ludicrous.“Trump recently threatened tariffs on Russia. We import $2bn or $3bn worth of goods from Russia. So what good is that going to do? The tariff threat against the Brics countries – a lot of these things don’t make a lot of sense. I think he has a fixation with tariffs. Let’s see if one of his red lines is crossed, if he actually just relies on tariffs, or if there’s sanctions too.”A “chokepoint” is a point at which trade can be squeezed: physically, in corridors such as the Bosphorus or the Panama canal, electronically, through financial networks from which the US can freeze enemies out.“Geographic chokepoints have never fully lost their relevance,” Fishman said. “With the invention of the airplane, there are ways to ship commodities without access to chokepoints. But a lot of things, like oil, still travel by sea or by pipeline. And so that’s why the Bosphorus today is still a really important chokepoint. The Suez canal is very important, and the Strait of Hormuz.“What’s different about economic warfare today is that throughout almost all of human history, up until 20 years ago, cutting off any of these chokepoints would have required taking a navy vessel and parking it there, and saying, ‘OK, thou shall not pass.’ The difference now is you can have an official in the treasury department sign a document and block a chokepoint from thousands of miles away. That’s why you’ve seen this sort of unchained economic warfare, because it’s not like military force, it’s not like you’re actually putting US troops and US ships in harm’s way.”Trump has implied willingness to use US troops, to seize the Panama canal or Greenland. Fishman sees actual deployments as a possible consequence of Trump fueling a breakdown of economic order.“The thing I worry about, about some of Trump’s rhetoric, not just about Panama but Greenland … is that I think that we are certainly headed toward a breakdown in globalization. I think that in order to regain a sense of economic security, we’re going to see an erosion of economic interdependence.”Economic nationalism is on the rise. Fishman worries that “Trump may be driving us towards deploying these weapons of economic warfare not just against the Chinas and Russias of the world, but against Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Colombia, Brazil – all these different countries he’s threatened tariffs and sanctions against.”His book ends on a pessimistic note. In conversation, he warns: “History shows us that when states can’t acquire markets and resources through open trade and finance, that’s when wars break out. They try to conquer them. If you have that mindset, if you say, ‘We don’t feel like we can access these resources unless we physically plant our flag there,’ then that’s not a world that any of us is going to be happy living in.”

      Chokepoints is out now More

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      Trump administration to drop case against plant polluting Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

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      The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods.The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 in a bid to substantially curb the plant’s emissions of a pollutant named chloroprene, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. A trial had been due to start in April 2025 following lengthy delays.Community leaders in Reserve had expressed grave concerns about the case’s future following Trump’s return to the White House after the president moved to gut offices within the EPA and justice department responsible for civil rights and environmental justice.On Friday, 84-year-old Robert Taylor, a resident in Reserve who has lost a number of family members to cancer, described the move as “terrible” for his community.“It’s obvious that the Trump administration doesn’t care anything for the poor Black folk in Cancer Alley,” Taylor said. “[Trump’s] administration has taken away what protections we had, what little hope we had.”Filings show that parties involved in the litigation, including lawyers for Denka and DuPont, met on Wednesday and agreed jointly with the US justice department to dismiss the case.The EPA referred all questions about the lawsuit to the US justice department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.DuPont did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A spokesperson for Denka did not respond to questions from the Guardian but issued a statement thanking the Trump administration and lauding Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, for his “unwavering support”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe chemical firm pointed to a $35m investment in emissions offsets and said “the facility’s emissions are at an historical low”. The company “remains committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business”, the statement added.According to the complaint filed in 2023, emissions from the plant pose “an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare”. The lawsuit had specifically singled out the risk to children living near the plant and those attending an elementary school situated close to the plant’s fence line. It noted that average readings at an air monitor near the school between April 2018 to January 2023 showed that those under 16 could surpass the EPA’s excess cancer risk rate within two years of their life.On Friday, Taylor vowed to continue pushing back against pollution.“We are going to fight them and prepare ourselves to keep going. We were preparing for the worst, and I don’t know how it could get any worse now that the government has totally abandoned us, it seems.” More

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      DoJ investigation into cases against Trump marked by vested interests

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      Donald Trump’s investigation into the criminal cases brought against him during the Biden administration, including the special counsel prosecutions, will be overseen by a group of justice department officials who all have vested interests that could undercut even legitimate findings of misconduct by prosecutors.The new attorney general, Pam Bondi, has taken steps in recent weeks to create the “weaponization working group” to carry out Trump’s day one executive order directing the department to review possible abuses of the criminal justice system over the past four years.Bondi’s group, according to her memo laying out its structure, will be composed of the attorney general’s office, the deputy attorney general’s office, the office of legal policy, the civil rights division and the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia as it examines cases that angered Trump.The investigation is already politically charged because the group is tasked with sending reports to Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, an arrangement that deputizes the justice department to the White House in an unusual way.But the involvement in various adversarial litigation against the Biden administration by the lawyers leading the five offices conducting the investigation – notably into former special counsel Jack Smith’s team that indicted Trump – give rise to a tangle of possible conflicts.The problem with conflicts is that they could undercut any conclusions finding impropriety even if they are colorable claims, such as the allegation that a top prosecutor once tried to strong-arm a defense lawyer into making his client give evidence to incriminate Trump.And for all of the discussion by Trump’s allies that there should be some civil or criminal proceedings against members of the previous administration, an actual or perceived conflict of interest, could risk a judge dismissing any attempt to pursue claims in court.The justice department did not respond to a request for comment.The possible conflicts are varied: some of the justice department officials were defense lawyers in the very cases they will now be investigating, while others signed onto positions defending Trump in civil and criminal matters.Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general nominee, pledged to consult about any potential conflicts with career attorneys. But some of those career attorneys were recently fired – and replaced in at least one instance by a lawyer who worked for Blanche when he defended Trump.Bondi’s possible conflict arises with the special counsel prosecutions, after she signed on to an amicus brief that supported Trump and urged the federal judge in Florida who oversaw the classified documents case to dismiss the charges because Smith was illegally appointed.The deputy attorney general’s office will soon to be led by Blanche and his principal deputy Emil Bove, who were the lead defense lawyers for Trump in the special counsel prosecutions as well as the New York criminal trial – meaning they faced off directly with the Biden justice department.The head of the justice department’s office of legal policy, Aaron Reitz, was formerly in Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s office, which joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its controversial initiative to address violence and threats against school administrators.The head of the justice department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, was most recently the principal at the Dhillon Law Group, which Trump and the Republican National Committee retained as counsel in various civil litigation matters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd, if confirmed to the role, the acting US attorney in Washington, Ed Martin, would be investigating the very prosecutors and the FBI agents he personally faced off with as a defense lawyer for multiple people charged in connection with the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.Martin has separately come under scrutiny because, after he became the acting US attorney, he dismissed a case against one of his ex-January 6 rioter clients before he had formally withdrawn from the representation.He later explained to the presiding US district judge that it was an oversight and he had simply forgotten to remove his name as the “counsel of record” when that client decided to appeal the case and retained a new lawyer.But it remains unclear whether Martin has actually withdrawn himself as the defense lawyer after the court notified him that he was not permitted to file a removal request because his membership with the DC bar – partly the jurisdiction he oversees as acting US attorney – had lapsed.The overlapping vested interests also extend past the justice department to the White House itself, the final destination for the weaponization group’s findings, according to the executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office.Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy orchestrating the immigration crackdown, will receive the final report. Coincidentally, one of Miller’s lawyers during the investigations into Trump was John Rowley – who was also part of the Trump legal team.Also on the wider Trump legal team was Stanley Woodward, now serving as a top lawyer in the White House chief of staff’s office.Woodward was the lawyer pulled into a contentious meeting in 2022 convened by Jay Bratt, a senior prosecutor on the special counsel team who allegedly suggested Woodward’s application to be a DC superior court judge would be derailed if he did not convince his client, Trump bodyman Walt Nauta, to testify against Trump. More

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      Top US prosecutor quits over pressure to investigate Biden climate spending

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      A top federal prosecutor has quit after refusing to launch what she called a politically driven investigation into Biden-era climate spending, exposing deepening rifts in the US’s premier law enforcement agency.Denise Cheung, head of criminal prosecutions in Washington, resigned on Tuesday after Trump appointees demanded she open a grand jury investigation into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants based largely on an undercover video, multiple people familiar with the matter told CNN.The directive came from the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove through Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for Washington DC US attorney. Officials wanted Cheung to investigate EPA contracts awarded during Biden’s tenure and freeze related funding, CNN reported.In her resignation letter, Cheung wrote to Martin that she and other prosecutors had determined there was insufficient evidence to warrant grand jury subpoenas, even if senior officials cited the Project Veritas video as justification.“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” Cheung wrote to Martin. “You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day ‘doing nothing’ except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted.”The dispute stems from the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin’s claim last week about $20bn in climate law funding being held in a Citibank account.The resignation adds to broader upheaval within the justice department, where prosecutors considered unaligned with current leadership have faced termination, particularly those involved in January 6 investigations. More

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      Cruelty and staggering financial costs: why expanding Guantánamo is a grave mistake | Karen J Greenberg and Mike Lehnert

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      Nine days into the country’s 47th presidency, Donald Trump issued an executive memorandum that contained his latest mass deportation plan. The three-paragraph, 148-word order called for a migrant facility located at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be expanded “to full capacity”. The US president later said the camp would house 30,000 migrants.Troop deployments quickly followed and on 4 February, the first planes carrying a few dozen migrants arrived at Guantánamo, with officials sending more each day.If the past is any guide, rather than accelerating Trump’s drive for unprecedented mass deportations, the Guantánamo migrant detention plan is destined to repeat the cruelty, confusion, protracted legal battles and staggering financial costs that have defined US detentions at Guantánamo since the September 11 attacks.Today we know Guantánamo mainly as the detention facility that held a total of 780 war on terror detainees over the past 23 years. The cruelty of Guantánamo has been exhaustively documented, notably in the 2023 UN special rapporteur’s report on the detention facility which described “the depth, severity, and evident nature of many detainees’ current physical and psychological harms”, both those still in Guantánamo and those who had been released as constituting human rights violations.Instead of acting as an effective deterrent, Guantánamo has become a worldwide symbol of US hypocrisy.View image in fullscreenThe US has also found it impossible to bring to trial those who are charged with conspiring in the attacks of September 11. In sum, once detention in Gitmo was set up, it has seemed doomed to perpetual limbo, all too easy to fill up and nearly impossible to empty.And the prison complex, which currently holds 15 prisoners, has served taxpayers poorly as well. It now operates at an astounding estimated cost of $44m – per prisoner per year – up from $13m in 2019 when the prison held 40 detainees. Every ounce of water used on the base must be created by a single desalinization plant. Food, construction material and all other supplies must be brought in by barge. Troops for security and logistics support must be deployed. Medical personnel as well.The war on terror’s prison is not the only warning sign from the past. For decades before September 11, Guantánamo served as a warehouse for migrants, a zone where laws were conveniently pushed aside, and legal resolution remained elusive.Originally established as a coaling station in 1903, the island military base took on a new role in the 1990s when Cubans, and then Haitians fleeing the overthrow of the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, were apprehended at sea while seeking asylum in the United States.Culminating in Operation Sea Signal, 50,000 migrants were detained over time, with 24,000 in place at the peak, housed in vast expanses of tent cities where conditions were dangerously unsanitary, legal processes slow to nonexistent, and treatment of the migrants reportedly harsh. Despite the Clinton administration’s promises of processing their cases for asylum, most of the Haitians were summarily returned to Haiti. Cubans as well often remained in legal limbo in one “sad camp” or another.Since then, the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) has continued to serve as a holding facility for migrants apprehended at sea. In 2020-2021, the MOC held an average of 14 detainees at a time. By 2024, 37 migrants were housed there, reportedly living in legal limbo, under unsanitary conditions and reported mistreatment and abuse.View image in fullscreenThe sense of deja vu is unsettling. Tom Homan has referred to those who will be sent to Guantánamo as “the worst of the worst”, the same words used by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, when he first set up the post-9/11 prison camp. Tellingly, the first troops sent last week to facilitate the new operations were marines from Camp LeJeune, just as they had been after September 11. And the essential policy parallel holds as well: an administration has given up trying to tackle complex policy problems and has instead embraced viral images of shackled prisoners and tough-talking soundbites that energize its political base.Guantánamo makes a mockery of our claim that we are a nation of laws, prudence and common sense. It has become a global symbol of the US inability to address complex challenges, in this case the unprecedented level of mass migration under way worldwide, with an eye towards a realistic, long-term solution. Nor is there a compelling argument that the threat of detention at Guantánamo will deter those seeking asylum from fears of persecution in their home countries and are willing to risk the dangers of the migration routes.In a 1996 after-action manual based on interviews with military personnel who had served at Guantánamo during the detention operation of the 1990s, the authors made a series of recommendations. The manual highlighted the need to clarify the “legal basis for the operation” and “for understanding the nature and scope of the mission at the outset”.Such clarity, Gen Joseph Hoar, the head of USCentcom at the time wrote, was “paramount”.The general’s warning was ignored after September 11. It is absent today as well in the rapid, indiscriminate, legally vague and underprepared operation currently under way.It’s time to finally take a lesson from the past. The throughline of Guantánamo represents one thing and one thing only: it exists outside the law. It is ineffective, exorbitantly expensive, and will not solve complex, insufficiently addressed policy messes. Using it to tackle migration will lead predictably not to solving a problem but to creating new ones.

      Karen J Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days

      Mike Lehnert (MajGen USMC ret) served as the joint task group commander of the Cuban and Haitian migrant camps during Operation Sea Signal (1995) and the first joint task force commander of JTF GITMO (2002) More

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      Trump names oil and gas advocate to lead agency that manages federal lands

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      Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of US oil and gas.If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda alongside the interior secretary Doug Burgum, who leads the newly formed National Energy Council that Trump says will establish US “energy dominance” around the world. Trump has vowed to boost US oil and gas drilling and move away from Joe Biden’s focus on the climate crisis.The former interior secretary David Bernhardt relocated the land bureau’s headquarters to Colorado during Trump’s first term, leading to a spike in employee resignations. The bureau went four years under Trump without a confirmed director.The headquarters for the 10,000-person agency was moved back to Washington DC under Biden, who installed the Montana conservationist Tracy Stone-Manning at the bureau to lead his administration’s efforts to curb oil and gas production in the name of fighting the climate crisis.Sgamma will be charged with reversing those policies, by putting into effect a series of orders issued last week by Burgum as part of Trump’s plan to sharply expand fossil fuel production.Burgum ordered reviews of many of Stone-Manning’s signature efforts, including fewer oil and gas lease sales, an end to coal leasing in the country’s biggest coal fields, a greater emphasis on conservation and drilling and renewable energy restrictions meant to protect a wide-ranging western bird, the greater sage grouse. Burgum also ordered federal officials to review and consider redrawing the boundaries of national monuments that were created under Biden and other presidents to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.Sgamma said on social media she was honored to be nominated.She said she greatly respects the agency’s work to balance multiple uses for public lands – including energy, recreation, grazing and mining — with stewardship of the land. “I look forward to leading an agency that is key to the agenda of unleashing American energy while protecting the environment,” she wrote on LinkedIn.But environmentalists warned that Sgamma would elevate corporate interests over protections for public land. “Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that Sgamma has “breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profit”.The Wyoming governor, Mark Gordon, said Sgamma’s nomination was an “excellent choice”.“I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement.Trump nominated Brian Nesvik to lead the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which also is under the interior department and helps recover imperiled species and protect their habitat.Nesvik until last year led the Wyoming game and fish department, where he pushed to remove federal protections for grizzly bears. That would open the door to public hunting for the first time in decades after the animals bounced back from near-extinction last century in the northern US Rocky Mountains.The Biden administration in its last days extended protections for more than 2,000 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, a move that was blasted by Republican officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. More

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      Trump announces 25% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum

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      Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum on Monday, ramping up his controversial bid to boost the US economy by hiking taxes on imports from overseas.The modified US duties will be enforced “without exceptions or exemptions”, the president declared, dashing the hopes of countries that hoped to avoid them.Trump first imposed steep tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum during his first presidency. The action announced on Monday night ends exemptions granted to certain countries, and increases the duty rate on aluminum.The changes are not due to come into effect until 4 March, however, according to a White House official – raising the prospect of the Trump administration brokering deals with governments seeking reprieve.Countries including Australia have already been making their case and Trump later said he would give “great consideration” to Australia’s request for an exemption to the steel tariffs due to that country’s trade deficit with the US.Trump first trailed his latest tariff actions on Sunday, adding that he would also announce a further set of reciprocal tariffs later in the week, drawing warnings of retaliation from trade partners.“The steel and aluminum tariffs 2.0 will put an end to foreign dumping, boost domestic production and secure our steel and aluminum industries as the backbone and pillar industries of America’s economic and national security,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, told reporters.“This isn’t just about trade. It’s about ensuring that America never has to rely on foreign nations for critical industries like steel and aluminum.”Trump will also impose a new North American standard requiring steel imports to be “melted and poured” and aluminum to be “smelted and cast” within the region to curb US imports of minimally processed Chinese and Russian metals that circumvent other tariffs.Trump and his allies, who repeatedly claimed that tariffs could “Make America great again” when fighting to regain the White House, believe that higher taxes on imported steel and aluminum will help shore up US industrial heartlands.The US president said he would announce plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on other countries over the next two days. He signed two proclamations as he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office: one ending waivers granted by Joe Biden to steel and aluminum tariffs instituted during his first term, and the other raising duties on both metals to 25%.He also raised the prospect of future US tariffs on cars, semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals from markets across the world.Asked about the possibility of other countries retaliating against US tariffs, Trump said: “I don’t mind.”Canada’s industry minister said the US tariffs were “totally unjustified”, with Canadian steel and aluminum supporting key US industries including defense, shipbuilding, energy and autos.“This is making North America more competitive and secure,” Francois-Philippe Champagne said in a statement. “We are consulting with our international partners as we examine the details. Our response will be clear and calibrated.”The European Commission said it saw no justification for the tariffs and said President Ursula von der Leyen would meet US vice-president JD Vance in Paris on Tuesday during an AI summit.In South Korea, the industry ministry called in steelmakers to discuss how to minimize the impact of tariffs.Ahead of a meeting with Trump on Wednesday, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was preparing to offer to cut Indian tariffs in a range of sectors that could boost US exports to the country, government officials in Delhi said.Trump has previously called India a “very big abuser” on trade, and his top economic adviser Kevin Hassett singled out the country as having “enormously high” tariffs in a CNBC interview.This latest wave of tariffs is different than the one imposed by the White House on China last week, which hit all goods traveling from the country to the US with an additional 10% duty. He also threatened Canada and Mexico with the same blanket tariffs, at higher a rate of 25%, only to agree to a one-month delay before pulling the trigger.Trump signed proclamations that raised the tariff rate on aluminum imports to 25% from the previous 10% that he imposed in 2018 to aid the struggling sector. His action reinstates a 25% tariff on millions of tonnes of steel imports and aluminum imports that had been entering the US duty-free under quota deals, exemptions and thousands of product exclusions.The proclamations were extensions of Trump’s 2018 section 232 national security tariffs to protect steel and aluminum makers. A White House official said the exemptions had eroded the effectiveness of these measures.About a quarter of steel used in the US is from overseas, with Canada, Brazil and Mexico as the top providers. South Korea, Japan and Germany are also key markets.China, hit by a 25% steel tariff during Trump’s first administration that was maintained under Joe Biden, is not a significant exporter of steel to the US. But it is the largest exporter of steel to the world, dominating the global market with typically cheaper products. Some countries then export their own steel products, at higher rates, to markets including the US.Trump’s fixation with tariffs has alarmed economists, who have warned their imposition may derail his repeated promises to rapidly bring down prices for millions of Americans.But Trump has defended his strategy, claiming they could raise “trillions” of dollars for the US economy – and that even the mere threat of import duties can prompt countries to bend to his will. “Tariffs are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want,” he said last week.Reuters contributed to this story More

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      Trump to announce 25% aluminum and steel tariffs as China’s levies against US come into effect

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      Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.The move on steel and aluminum brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties.The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the US, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminum.Trump’s rollout of tariffs has been widely criticised and prompted volatile market reactions and fear of more to come. Beijing has lodged a complaint with the World Trade Organisation, but otherwise has been muted in its response. The tariffs imposed by Trump are far below the level he had threatened during the election campaign, and analysts have said China was prepared for them.Beijing’s actions – which also include investigations into several US companies including Google – were seen by analysts as measured and allowing room for negotiation.Amid wider pushback against Trump’s economic heavy-handedness, French President Emmanuel Macron warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with the US president. “I already did so, and I will did (sic) it again.”Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a “top priority” for the US, saying: “Is the European Union your first problem? No, I don’t think so. Your first problem is China, so you should focus on the first problem.”Macron said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” he said.He said the EU must be ready to react to US actions, but stressed that the 27-nation bloc should mainly “act for ourselves”. “This is why, for me, the top priority of Europe is competitiveness agenda, is defence and security agenda, is AI ambition, and let’s go fast for ourselves.“If in the meanwhile, we have [a] tariff issue, we will discuss them and we will fix it.”Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.The European Commission said on Monday it would react to protect EU interests, but said it would not respond until it had detailed or written clarification of the measures. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement.Trump has also flagged tariffs against Taiwan’s semiconductor industry – which he has repeatedly and without evidence accused of stealing US business. Taiwan now appears to be scrambling to prevent that happening. This week senior economic officials will fly to the US to meet their counterparts. Taiwan’s government and state-run petroleum company are also reportedly taking steps to buy more US gas and oil to reduce Taiwan’s trade surplus – a key factor cited by Trump in enacting tariffs.Reuters contributed to this article. More