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      in US Politics

      Trump cuts threaten futures of 250,000 children of migrant farm workers: ‘We felt like crying’

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      When Regina Zarate-Garcia was a child, she recalled being uprooted from one school district and planted in another as often as the seasons changed.Zarate-Garcia, now 18, was born in Salinas, California, to farm workers from Mexicali, a city just south of California on the US-Mexico border. “I remember my parents getting home and seeing their pants splashed in strawberries, mixed with that familiar smell of pesticides,” she recalls.Her family’s life followed California’s planting and harvest seasons: starting school in Monterey county, where her parents worked April through November in the strawberry fields, then moving to Inyo county near the Nevada border – or sometimes back to Mexico – while her parents chased winter jobs or tried to live frugally while unemployed.It took a toll on her. She described the isolation of struggling through a disrupted school curriculum alone, while her parents, exhausted from long days in the fields, and unable to read English, could offer no help. “My kindergarten teacher told my mom that I was gonna flunk,” Zarate-Garcia said.Then came a turning point: her mother learned about the Migrant Education Program (MEP), a federal initiative that supports children whose families move from place to place for seasonal agricultural work.From first grade onward, Zarate-Garcia went to after-school tutoring, Saturday school, summer enrichment, speech and debate tournaments, college readiness workshops, and was provided lunch, snacks, mentors and a community of kids who were navigating similar educational disruptions, cultural and language barriers, as well as social isolation.“I didn’t feel like I had two different worlds coming against each other, and I felt more like a cohesive world that we were building together,” said Zarate-Garcia. The MEP opened up the doors that got her where she is now: studying biology as a freshman at University of California San Diego.But the future of this safe haven for the more than 250,000 eligible migratory children and youth, like Zarate-Garcia, is now in jeopardy and could be slashed under the Trump administration. If this happens, Zarate-Garcia fears the American dream will be out of reach for future generations of kids whose parents’ labor forms the backbone of the country’s economy and food system.View image in fullscreenTrump’s 2026 budget, which is set to be debated by Congress this fall, proposes eliminating all funding for the MEP, a program that has been in place for nearly 60 years. (This budget is separate from the Republican budget bill passed this summer, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.)‘The migrant program changes lives’The MEP was also thrown into chaos this summer, when the Trump administration abruptly froze nearly $7bn in congressionally approved education funds from the 2025 budget. The funds were eventually released in late July after a coalition of 24 states, including California, sued the Trump administration, and 10 Senate Republicans signed a public letter urging the White House to release them.Nowhere would the impact of these proposed cuts be felt more than in California, where one out of three migrant students in the US lives. In California, the MEP serves nearly 80,000 youth ages three to 21, most of whom live in rural areas. In Monterey county, an agricultural region about two hours south of San Francisco where Zarate-Garcia was born, there are more than 10,000 students who are eligible for this support.“The migrant program changes lives,” said Constantino Silva, senior director of migrant education services at the Monterey county office of education in Salinas.He knows this firsthand; Silva too went through the program. Born in Michoacán, Mexico, Silva remembers his family traveling to the US embassy in Mexico City when he was six to obtain green cards before resettling in King City, California, where his father laid the pipes to irrigate crops.“We have the misfortune of having the word ‘migrant’ in our title,” Silva said of the cuts to the MEP.The justification for targeting the migrant program’s funding is that it is deemed costly, ineffective and harmful to students’ stability, arguing it encourages mobility and allows ineligible non-citizens to strip resources from US university students.But that’s not true, Silva says, explaining that agricultural work is by its nature seasonal and migratory.“Being migratory is really difficult,” Silva said, describing the toll on children who are always “the new kid”, out of place, and struggling with disrupted schooling. Families often live two or three families to a house, moving whenever work dries up. Farm labor, he added, is grueling, low-paid and unpredictable, leaving entire families at the mercy of the weather and crop cycles.Food insecurity, inadequate or nonexistent healthcare, and chronic absenteeism combined with inconsistent credit transfers from one school district to another often puts these kids at high risk of school failure or dropout. A number of studies have found migrant children and youth to have high rates of grade repetition and about 50% drop out of high school.The US Department of Education doesn’t track graduation rates for students in the Migrant Education Program, so it’s hard to get accurate data on how many kids follow their parents into the fields versus moving on to better-paying jobs. US federal labor law allows farm worker children to pick crops with their parents’ consent, outside school hours, from as young as age 12.The program was set up to address some of these disadvantages. Silva said he flourished in the program and runs through a list of teachers, vice-principals, principals, program directors, assistant superintendents and a superintendent, all of whom found success in education because of their childhood experience in the program.“We look back on it and say: ‘Had it not been for that, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.’” said Silva. “‘This is where I can be myself and not feel out of place, where I’m safe to say that I don’t know, that I’m not sure, that I have questions.’ That’s the type of environment that we create for the migrant students.”Support beyond the classroomSilva says the key part of the program – along with all the tutoring, socializing and yummy snacks he got – was that his mother also received parent education services that helped her advocate for him as they navigated the US education system, even after he no longer qualified for the program.Starting at three years old, Silva’s team visits children’s houses to get parents reading bilingual books to their children, empowering “parents to be the first teacher”.Silva said they don’t check children’s legal status before providing services, but said that many students are US citizens, like Zarate-Garcia, or residents with legal status, like him.“It’s worth investing in these children’s future, because it’s America’s future,” said Silva, whose own job is now on the line due to the cuts.In Salinas, many children of farm workers assume they will follow their parents into the fields; becoming an attorney or doctor seem beyond their possible horizons. But starting in third or fourth grade, Zarate-Garcia said the MEP drew a different path – literally – on the floor out of chalk to change these narratives.Each summer, MEP staff sketched a giant game of hopscotch in chalk, each square a milestone: grades one through five, middle and high school and graduation. A student volunteered to stand there in a cap and gown waving at Zarate-Garcia as she hopped across a milestone, living proof of what was possible. Beyond that, new boxes branched out – college, university, trade school, the military – options that once felt out of reach.For Zarate-Garcia this unlocked possibilities: “It showed you the timeline of everything and really put it into perspective for the kids.”View image in fullscreenAfter-school tutoring provides students with academic support, meals like flautas and burritos, and a safe place to be while parents work, while also engaging parents through monthly activities and parent-teacher nights.Zarate-Garcia spent seven years doing speech and debate tournaments, which taught her about teamwork, how to write argumentative essays, do research backed by credible sources, defend her claims, enunciate, project her voice and debate in a way that is respectful.Zarate-Garcia found that she loved public speaking, storytelling and improvising speeches on the spot: “I could make my voice into something powerful. I could make a language that I always struggled in, into something powerful.”The program also helped students buy presentable outfits for their debate tournaments.Her team even won second and third place at county and state level speech and debate tournaments over the years. Now, Zarate-Garcia aspires to become a pediatric oncologist.“The power of your voice is something that nobody else can take away,” she said. Once you have an education, nobody can take that away from you.”When Zarate-Garcia found out about the budget cuts, she was volunteering in the MEP’s summer program and the kids were all practising a dance to show their parents. “Honestly, we felt like crying,” she said, realizing that all the kids she coaches in speech and debate – kids who look up to her – may never thrive without the crucial support that she benefited from.“You meet these kids that have so much potential, but their potential can’t be tapped into because they don’t have that support at home … It’s just so disappointing.” More

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      in US Politics

      When even Ben & Jerry’s can’t speak out, it’s clear: the era of corporate responsibility is over | Austin Sarat

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      When the history of this era is written, there will be much to say about the behavior of large corporations. And none of it will be good.As the Trump administration has ramped up its assault on American democracy, many corporations have chosen to look the other way or to curry favor with the president. They have fired employees who were too outspoken in their criticism of Donald Trump – ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talkshow, after Kimmel’s remarks about Maga’s reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk, is the latest example.Or corporations have muted their brand’s identification with progressive causes.One casualty is Jerry Greenfield, co-founder and namesake of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. This week, he resigned from the company.He did so because, he said in a statement, the politically outspoken company had been “silenced”.The consumer goods company Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, for a reported $326m. At the time, it agreed to respect the company’s independence.No more, according to Greenfield.“Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important,” Greenfield noted in explaining his resignation. But, he said: “Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.”Ben & Jerry’s crossed swords with Unilever last year when it sued the company for allegedly fighting its calls for a Gaza ceasefire and an end to US military support for Israel.The 2024 suit claimed that Unilever had threatened to dismantle the ice-cream company’s independent board and punish members if Ben & Jerry’s issued a call for a ceasefire. (Unilever said it rejected “the claims made by B&J’s social mission board”. Its motion to dismiss the lawsuit is pending.)Another flare-up occurred in March of this year, when, according to Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever fired its chief executive, David Stever, over his work to advance the company’s “social mission”.If those allegations are true, Unilever would not be alone in trying to avoid offending the Trump administration or its supporters. This is just the latest sign that the era of corporate social and political responsibility is over.Ice-cream lovers will now have to choose between their taste buds and their consciences.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires that business leaders recognize, as Harvard Business School explains, that they “have a responsibility to do more than simply maximize profits for shareholders and executives. Rather, they have a social responsibility to do what’s best – not just for their companies, but for people, the planet, and society at large.”The CSR movement really took off about 40 to 50 years ago when businesses realized that they could carve out a niche and attract investment from people who wanted to make money and stay true to their values. Ben & Jerry’s was founded in 1978 during the heyday of CSR, by Greenfield and Ben Cohen.It was upfront about the issues it cared about and the values it sought to promote. The list was long, but it included racial justice, refugee rights, climate, LGBTQ+ rights and democracy.The Association of Corporate-Citizenship Professionals traces the roots of CSR back to the 18th century. At that time, religious groups would not invest, and would urge their members not to invest, in businesses that did not advance their values. Those included the slave trade and businesses that supplied the instruments of war.Fast forward to the start of the 20th century, when in 1928, the Pioneer Fund became one of the first mutual funds to promote socially responsible investing, which meant avoiding companies producing alcohol or tobacco, or promoting gambling. Almost a century later, the Business Roundtable included in its statement on the purpose of a corporation the following: “We commit to … supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.”Some progressives have criticized CSR, describing it as a charade and a public relations tactic that left the profit motive intact and did not require substantial changes in the way companies did business. But Ben & Jerry’s did more than brand itself as interested in social justice and political equality.As its 2024 lawsuit made clear, Ben & Jerry’s has wanted to take political stands even if it meant that it would lose some customers. A year earlier, in March 2023, as Newsweek reports, Cohen “shocked many” by speaking out against the US providing military aid to Ukraine.” (An ally said he opposed Russia’s invasion but wanted a diplomatic solution.)While from time to time, the company has been accused of not living up to its values, not surprisingly, conservatives have targeted Ben & Jerry’s for being “woke”. Some have tried to organize a boycott to protest what they see as its radical left politics.That’s perhaps why Unilever apparently wanted to pull back Ben & Jerry’s activism.What we are witnessing now in the way of corporate acquiescence to the rise of authoritarianism is a familiar story. There are plenty of examples.Take Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. There, as the political economist Gábor Scheiring argues: “Since 2010 Orbán has been using the momentum created by popular anger at the failures of liberal policies to build up his own system: authoritarian capitalism. A system that is deeply illiberal but capitalist: private property and the profit logic still dominate, but the state bureaucracy and its institutions are subdued to the enrichment of the preferred national economic elite.”There is ample evidence that Trump is succeeding in that same endeavor. That’s why the era of corporate social responsibility is over. Greenfield’s departure is just the latest evidence.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      in US Politics

      How Trump has turned the legal system ‘on its head’ to meet deportation goals

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      The Cuban asylum seeker referred to in court papers as EC could not believe his luck, and neither could his lawyers.They had come to immigration court in Miami in late spring expecting only incremental progress in a case that had been grinding away for more than three years. Yet here was the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lawyer telling the judge the government was dropping its deportation demands. It seemed EC had won, eligible at last for a green card and permanent residency in the United States.“I was a little taken aback that they were essentially conceding the point,” his lawyer, Javier Taveras, said. “But it was very welcome news.”The judge granted the dismissal and instructed EC, whom the Guardian is not identifying in line with his lawyers’ desire to protect his identity, to wait in the next room while court staff drew up a written order.EC’s team did not know, though, that just the day before, the DHS had issued guidance to its attorneys to look for cases that could be dismissed – not because the government intended to relax its hardline stance on deportations but rather the opposite. The Trump administration was looking to short-circuit the normal judicial procedure and make it easier to arrest, detain and deport migrants by taking them out of the jurisdiction of the court system and reclassifying them as emergency cases requiring immediate enforcement action.In other words, down was suddenly up, and what a day earlier would have been an unequivocal victory for EC was now very bad news indeed. Agents with US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (Ice) slapped him in handcuffs directly outside the courtroom. Taveras’s team raced back to the judge to demand that the case be reopened on the grounds that their client had been deliberately misled, still hoping that the judge might feel similarly himself.“As an officer of the court, the government lawyer can’t argue one thing knowing that what is intended is another,” Taveras charged. “They basically lied to the court.”The judge, though, refused to revisit the decision. Days later, EC’s lawyers and his American wife learned he was in detention at the opposite end of the country, in Tacoma, Washington, under threat of “expedited removal” – a category that, before Trump, was largely reserved for new arrivals, most of them apprehended at or near the border, not people like EC who have been in the country for years and have given the authorities no cause for concern.Chaos in immigration courtsIt wasn’t just EC and his lawyers who were blindsided. In case after case, starting in late May, immigration lawyers around the US have been stunned to see cases they have worked on for years disappear into a black hole and their clients subjected to perils they never imagined. Lawyers from four different states and multiple jurisdictions described how the world they knew – of fixed rules and procedures even in a messy, heavily backlogged system – had in effect vanished overnight, leaving hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of whom have spent years working their way through the courts, at risk of an abrupt reversal in their fortunes.“I was shocked,” Taveras said. “If they can change the rules and move the goalposts mid-game, what are we even doing here?”Dismissing cases in this way may just be the beginning. According to a broad cross-section of immigration professionals, including lawyers, former judges and former federal officials, the administration’s full ambition is not just to bend the rules to fulfill deportation quotas, but to dismantle the immigration court system as it has been configured for the past 40 years – and with it an important plank of the justice system as a whole.“This is about making the executive branch the dictator,” said Ashley Tabaddor, a former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges who served as a senior DHS lawyer under the Biden administration.View image in fullscreenThe attack, Tabaddor and others say, is being mounted on multiple fronts: eliminating courthouses as safe spaces where immigrants can appear in good faith without fear of arrest; eliminating the possibility of bail for immigrants ordered into detention; gutting the infrastructure of help desks and orientation programs designed to help immigrants who cannot afford a lawyer and cutting funds that provide legal representation to unaccompanied children; limiting the independence of immigration judges and firing those who do not appear to be in line with the administration’s desire to hasten deportations; and eroding if not eliminating a carefully erected firewall between the DHS, which is in charge of immigration enforcement, and the justice department, which administers the immigration courts.“All of this shows a callousness and complete disregard for people’s humanity,” Tabaddor added. “They want to be able to deport people like they are shooting fish in a barrel.”In response, the justice department office responsible for the immigration courts confirmed it had rescinded more than 20 policies, which it argued were “unfounded in law or discouraged the timely completion of cases” and added: “Reducing the immigration court backlog is one of the highest priorities for the agency.”The DHS, for its part, defended the arrest of immigrants at courthouses, calling the policy “common sense” since Ice could be sure of finding its targets there and could be sure, too, that they were unarmed since they had passed through courthouse metal detectors.“We aren’t some medieval kingdom,” the DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “There are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law. Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.”The second Trump administration began making some of these moves out of the gate, but the big shift, immigration professionals say, came in May, when Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff in charge of immigration policy, demanded a dramatic increase in deportations from a few hundred to 3,000 a day.While Ice began aggressive new sweeps of immigrant workers, starting in Los Angeles, administration officials issued policy guidelines greatly diminishing the leeway many of those immigrants had to be able to stay in the country.Days after the DHS told its lawyers to press for dismissals of slow-moving asylum cases so they could be reassigned as emergency deportations, two senior immigration court administrators, one in Los Angeles and another in Florida, issued instructions on behalf of the justice department’s executive office of immigration review (EOIR) essentially ordering judges not to stand in the DHS’s way.EC’s family told him about the transfer to Washington state three days later. The government, he said, did not update him.Taveras and his team also made every effort to be with EC when he was summoned for a “risk interview” to assess the dangers he might face back in Cuba. But they were given no notice, and their client was told he would have to face the interview alone if he didn’t want to wait several more weeks in detention for a new date.View image in fullscreenEC is one of tens of thousands of immigrants that the Trump administration has moved long distances around the country, a Guardian investigation has found, a practice at odds with past Ice protocols that immigration advocates say seems designed to limit detainees’ access to their constitutional rights.Another bewildering change that Hayden Rodarte, an immigration specialist with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, and other immigration lawyers say they have seen involves the government’s handling of residency permits for family members once an immigrant has been granted asylum. By law, spouses and minor children have the same right to stay in the US, but increasingly they are subject to close scrutiny and multiple in-person interview appointments, any one of which can lead to arrest and expedited deportation proceedings for reasons that can be hard to anticipate.Rodarte said he now advises close family members they might be better off remaining undocumented, because the risk of claiming their legal due has become “huge”.“What looks at first like a blessing turns into safety planning,” he said. “The administration is using systems that are supposed to protect people as traps and is weaponizing as many pieces of the immigration system as possible to put people on Ice’s radar for the sheer purpose of removing them.”Rodarte likened these tactics to the family separation policy that the first Trump administration pursued in 2017-18, the difference this time being that the separation is not occurring at the border but in homes, workplaces, schools and courthouses. “The upshot is the same,” he added. “This is about cornering humans and making them suffer as much as possible.”Administration critics say it is also making a mockery of the very concept of immigration law. “Defending people against removal proceedings is the heart of what we practice,” said Lisa Anderson, a lawyer in Los Angeles. “If you change that, people are no longer being afforded due process.”A similar argument is at the heart of a federal lawsuit, filed in July, which calls the new courthouse guidelines “arbitrary and capricious” and accuses the Trump administration of breaking multiple federal laws as well as violating the constitution’s due process clause. (The government is yet to respond.)EC is one of eight lead plaintiffs named in the suit, which the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center is spearheading on behalf of two other immigrant rights organizations. It estimates that “hundreds and possibly thousands” of immigrants had their cases dismissed in immigration court and were reassigned for emergency deportation between late May and mid-July. The total number at risk is likely to be much higher – as high as 300,000, according to Tabaddor, based on the number of people working their way through the system.“It’s the first time we’ve seen anything like this at this magnitude,” she said.It was also the first time, she said, that an administration had taken aim at immigration judges. In memo after memo from the justice department’s EOIR, judges have been told that if they do not stick to guidelines of what Trump’s justice department regards as impartial decision-making and “fidelity to the law” they risk losing their jobs – and many of them have.Out of about 750 immigration judges who were serving in January, more than a hundred have been fired, according to court dockets and data collected by a professional union. To address what was already a chronic backlog of cases, the administration has proposed sending in hundreds of military lawyers to serve in their place, offering just two weeks’ training to familiarize them with the relevant areas of the law.View image in fullscreenMany of the veteran judges who have been dismissed granted asylum in a high percentage of cases – sometimes 90% or higher, according to a Syracuse University website that tracks the data. Immigration experts say those rates can depend on jurisdiction as much as personal temperament, but the justice department has decried them as “statistically improbable outcome metrics” for which the judges involved merit professional discipline.The judges themselves were given no reason for being fired, according to at least half a dozen who have shared the short email they received, other than article II of the constitution, which details the president’s executive powers. Some have spoken out to denounce their treatment as arbitrary, unfair and an attack on the rule of law.It’s a sentiment that Tabaddor echoed based on her own 15-plus years on the immigration court and, before that, as a lawyer representing the federal government. “My entire life has been dedicated to the principles of justice and integrity … and humanity, and it feels like I just watched my child being murdered,” Tabaddor said. “Everything has been turned on its head. What’s happening in immigration court is just another symptom of a full-frontal assault and takeover of the Department of Justice. This is not normal. This is not defensible.”The justice department declined to respond.Targeting the judges themselvesThe immigration courts as they are known today were created in 1983 to separate out the functions of immigration enforcement, then still housed within the justice department, and the adjudication of cases. In other words, judicial independence and the constitutional right to due process were the core reason for the courts to exist at all. “They did a study and concluded it doesn’t pass the laugh test to have the same people wearing the enforcement hats and making the final decisions about people’s future,” Tabaddor recounted.The system was far from perfect, and immigration judges enjoyed only what the EOIR described as “quasi-judicial functions”, meaning they were regarded as legal administrators more than full justices. Still, they enjoyed significant job protections and could only be removed for cause.That began to change during the first Trump administration, which pushed to decertify the National Association of Immigration Judges, essentially the judges’ union, that had acted as a guarantor of the judges’ job security and with it their independence. The lone Democrat on a key federal review body denounced the decertification as an exercise in “legal gymnastics”, but it went through at the tail-end of Trump’s first term on a party-line vote.View image in fullscreenThe second Trump administration came in with guns blazing, immediately firing the top leadership of EOIR. It also went after immigration judges themselves, as it did against large swaths of federal workers, designating them “inferior officers” – meaning they needed to defer to more senior political appointees confirmed by the Senate – and firing large numbers of them at will.It wasn’t just senior judges with high asylum approval rates that came under the axe. Senate Democrats noticed the administration was failing to convert roughly half of the newest judicial appointees at the end of their probationary period – in almost all cases ditching the ones who had previously worked as lawyers representing immigrants and keeping the ones who had worked in immigration enforcement.Then, starting in May, came a series of unprecedented rulings and memos from the EOIR. One stripped judges’ ability to grant bail in detention cases. Another set a dauntingly high standard for determining whether Salvadorian nationals faced a legitimate fear of imprisonment and torture if returned home – despite that country’s well-documented history of human rights abuses.The upshot was, once again, to constrain rank-and-file immigration judges’ room for maneuver. An 22 August memo from EOIR’s acting director, Sirce Owen, warned that judicial independence “is not a license to ignore a clear directive from a proper appellate authority … [Immigration judges] do not possess intrinsic, free-floating equitable authority”.The instruction to allow the government to reassign asylum and other ordinary immigration cases, even without cause, fits into the overall pattern of imposing limits on how judges can rule while nominally continuing to defer to their independent authority. Immigration lawyers now routinely petition judges to allow their clients to appear in court remotely so they don’t have to run a gauntlet of Ice agents at the courthouse. But judges are increasingly denying those requests.“Some court judges seem to be in collusion with immigration officials to make these arrests,” said Priscilla Olivarez, a San Antonio-based attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. She said she routinely sees between 10 and 15 Ice officers in the hallways of one of the courthouses where she appears. “It is clear this is calculated,” she added, “to stoke fear in our communities, create misinformation, and prevent people from accessing their right to seek asylum and the different types of relief that stem from it”.The DHS did not respond directly to the charge that it was coordinating with judges, saying only: “The average illegal alien gets far more due process than most Americans.”Recategorizing asylum cases and expediting deportation was not unheard of before this summer, but advocates say it would happen on a case-by-case basis and usually when the contours of a case had changed in a fundamental way – for example, if evidence emerged of a past violent crime. Sometimes, incoming administrations have instructed immigration courts to prioritize certain cases in line with their policy goals – a practice known as “docket shuffling” – but never in a way that threatened the futures of hundreds of thousands of people.View image in fullscreen“All concept of what we as attorneys do, of the rule of law, of what is ethical and what is legal – they’ve blown past all of that,” said Rodarte, the San Francisco lawyer. “They’re even blowing past court orders. They’re doing what they want and saying if you don’t like it, come at us … They’re turning a blind eye to the rules to meet their deportation goals at whatever cost.”What the government’s own immigration lawyers make of the sweeping policy changes they are expected to carry out is not entirely clear. In appearances at two different Los Angeles-area immigration courts recently, some demonstrated a maximalist approach to arguing against asylum, pressing for deportation no matter what, while others took time to show understanding for migrants who have been in the country a long time and face challenges from the burden of paying for an immigration lawyer to caring for sick family members.In one of the hearings, the DHS lawyer, whom the Guardian is not naming because of concerns that her job might be at risk, said the government had no issue with a Mexican couple arguing to stay in the United States because their deportation would create “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” for their US-born disabled son.As the hearing was winding down, Anderson, the lawyer representing the family, turned to her opposing counsel and said: “I imagine you guys are quite busy.”The government lawyer, mindful perhaps of the announced presence of a reporter, offered a nervous giggle, but no answer. 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      Dozens of workers penalized after Charlie Kirk shooting, from journalists to Jimmy Kimmel

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      In the aftermath of the far-right activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, dozens across the United States have been fired, suspended or disciplined over social media posts about Kirk and his death, as employers and public officials crack down on remarks they deem “inappropriate”.After Kirk, 31, was shot and killed on 10 September while speaking at Utah Valley University, members of the Trump administration called on the public to expose anyone appearing to be “celebrating” his killing.“Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” JD Vance said. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”Over the past week, conservative activists and politicians have been circulating and publicizing social media posts about Kirk and his death that they deem inappropriate and that they claim celebrates or mocks Kirk’s death. Similarly, they have waged pressure campaigns urging employers to take action against the individuals.Civil liberties groups and free speech advocates have warned that the wave of firings and expulsions risks chilling free expression and could infringe on first amendment protections.Here are some of the people who have reportedly been affected by the crackdown so far:Government workersThe US Secret Service placed an employee on leave last week after reportedly writing in a Facebook post that that Kirk “spewed hate and racism on his show”, adding: “At the end of the day, you answer to GOD, and speak things into existence. You can only circumvent karma, she doesn’t leave,” according to CBS News.A spokesperson for the agency confirmed to the Guardian: “This employee was immediately put on administrative leave, and an investigation has begun.”The Secret Service “will not tolerate behavior that violates our code of conduct”, the spokesperson added.Fox News also reported that an employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was placed on administrative leave over an Instagram post describing Kirk as “the literal racist homophobe misogynist”.A Fema spokesperson told the Guardian that the “employee’s words are revolting and unconscionable” and that the employee “was immediately placed on administrative leave”.“We expect all public servants to uphold the highest standard of professionalism, respect and integrity,” they added.The US Coast Guard also said last week that it was “aware of inappropriate personal social media activity” made by one of their employees “regarding recent political violence” and that they were “actively investigating this activity and will take appropriate action to hold the individual accountable”.Media and entertainmentOn Wednesday evening, news broke that Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show had been suspended “indefinitely” after comments he made about the shooting of Kirk.In a recent broadcast, Kimmel had suggested that “many in Maga land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”, which prompted complaints from the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr.Carr said: “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Hours later, ABC, owned by Disney, announced that Kimmel’s show would be “pre-empted indefinitely” after the affiliate operator Nexstar called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive”.This came as last week MSNBC fired its senior political analyst Matthew Dowd after he suggested on air that Kirk’s own rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him. Dowd’s remarks were condemned by MSNBC as “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable”.In a subsequent Substack article on Friday, Dowd confirmed that MSNBC had fired him and said: “The Right Wing media mob ginned up, went after me on a plethora of platforms, and MSNBC reacted to that mob.”The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said on Monday that she was also fired over a series of social media posts “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns” following Kirk’s killing.Meanwhile, PHNX Sports, an Arizona sports network, confirmed that it had parted ways with one of its employees over comments related to Kirk’s death, according to multple reports. Several outlets have reported that it was one of PHNX’s sports writers.AcademicsAcross the country, US educators and employees of educational institutions are being fired or placed on leave over social media posts about Kirk and his death.At Clemson University in South Carolina, the university said on Monday that it had fired an employee “due to their social media posts” and also later announced that two faculty members had been dismissed over social media posts in response to Kirk’s killing that the school deemed “inappropriate”.The university did not disclose the content of the posts.Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, had publicly urged the university to terminate the employees.“Free speech doesn’t prevent you from being fired if you’re stupid and have poor judgment,” Graham said.In Tennessee, the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn called for an employee at Middle Tennessee State University to be fired for reportedly writing in a post that they had “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk’s death.The university confirmed to the Tennessean that the employee was terminated.Texas State University ended the enrollment of a student who mocked Kirk’s assassination during a campus memorial event.At Texas Tech University, a student was also reportedly expelled after a video showed her disrupting a vigil for Kirk and shouting “F–k y’all homie dead, he got shot in the head.”The Texas Education Agency reported that it was investigating about 180 complaints against teachers accused of posting inappropriate remarks online about Kirk’s death, according to the Texas Tribune.The state’s teachers union called the investigations a “political witch-hunt against Texas educators”.The University of Mississippi fired a staffer who they said “re-shared hurtful insensitive comments on social media” regarding Kirk’s killing. Florida Atlantic University also reportedly placed a tenured professor on leave over sharing posts about Kirk’s politics in the wake of the assassination, according to the Palm Beach Post.The American Association of University Professors has condemned the wave of disciplinary measures.“The AAUP notes with great alarm the rash of recent administrative actions to discipline faculty, staff, and student speech in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk” they wrote. “We write to remind leaders of colleges and universities of their fundamental duty to protect academic freedom and the absolute necessity to ensure that the freedom to discuss topics of public import without constraint is not curtailed under political pressure.”And not only universities have been affected. Public school teachers in at least 15 states including Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Idaho, Ohio, Oregon, Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida and Missouri have also been suspended or fired over posts about Kirk after his killing.And in New Jersey, local outlets report that a​​ school district was forced to shelter in place last week after receiving violent threats following a controversial social media post about Kirk’s killing falsely attributed to a district employee.Visa holdersThe US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced that “visa revocations are under way” for individuals in the country on visas who are “cheering on the public assassination of a political figure”.“Prepare to be deported,” Rubio said. “You are not welcome in this country.”The state department did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for details on whether there have been any visa revocations in connection with comments about Kirk.AirlinesOver the weekend, the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said that American Airlines had “immediately grounded” pilots accused of celebrating Kirk’s death and “removed [them] from service”.“This behavior is disgusting and they should be fired,” Duffy said. “Any company responsible for the safety of the traveling public cannot tolerate that behavior.”He added: “We heal as a country when we send the message that glorifying political violence is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!.”In a statement to the Guardian, American Airlines said it condemned “violence of any kind” and that “hate-related or hostile behavior runs contrary to our purpose, which is to care for people on life’s journey.“Employees who promote such violence on social media were immediately removed from service,” they added. “We will continue to initiate action with team members who display this kind of behavior.”Duffy also praised United Airlines for taking similar action and placing one of their pilots out of service for reportedly celebrating Kirk’s death.“They must be fired,” Duffy said. “There’s no room for political violence in America and anyone applauding it will face the consequences. ESPECIALLY those we count on to ensure the safety of the flying public.”United Airlines told the Guardian that they have “been clear with our customers and employees that there’s zero tolerance for politically motivated violence or any attempt to justify it” and that they’ve “taken action on employees in this regard”.CNN also reported that Delta Air Lines also suspended employees “whose social media content, related to the recent murder of activist Charlie Kirk, went well beyond healthy, respectful debate”.The airlines did not disclose details about the posts.Healthcare workersOn Saturday, the University of Miami’s health system announced that it had fired an employee over what they described as “unacceptable public commentary”.“Freedom of speech is a fundamental right,” the health system said. “At the same time, expressions that condone or endorse violence or are incompatible with our policies or values are not acceptable.”The statement did not elaborate on the remarks made.In Michigan, a nurse was reportedly placed on leave for making controversial remarks about Kirk’s death, and another healthcare worker in Virginia was also reportedly fired over for similar reasons.The Boston Globe reported that a Massachusetts-based biomedical research center fired an employee who allegedly posted a “deeply offensive” comment about Kirk’s killing.Other workersEmployees in various other industries are also facing backlash over social media posts related to Kirk’s death.The Carolina Panthers reportedly fired a public relations staffer for social media posts about Kirk and his death.“The views expressed by our employees are their own and do not represent those of the Carolina Panthers,” the organization said. “We do not condone violence of any kind. We are taking this matter very seriously and have accordingly addressed it with the individual.”A junior strategist at Nasdaq was also fired for social media posts related to Kirk’s shooting.“Nasdaq has a zero-tolerance policy toward violence and any commentary that condones or celebrates violence,” the company said in a post on X.The law firm Perkins Coie told Bloomberg Law that they fired a lawyer who posted a message on social media that criticized Kirk after his death.The New Orleans and Toledo fire departments have said that they have launched investigations into employees accused of making insensitive posts about Kirk.In Illinois, a burger restaurant reportedly fired its general manager over a social media post about Kirk’s killing and meanwhile in Michigan, an Office Depot employee was also fired after allegedly refusing to print flyers related to Kirk.On Monday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, threatened to prosecute the Office Depot employee. More

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      Donald Trump’s base is fraying. Are Democrats up to the moment? | Lloyd Green

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      The 2024 presidential election was a disaster for the Democrats. Donald Trump managed to shake loose the party’s base. Latino voters, Black voters and young Americans swung away from Kamala Harris, resulting in Trump’s first popular vote plurality in three tries. Less than a year later, the shifts may yet prove transitory. Looming cuts to healthcare, rising unemployment and sticky inflation may be yielding buyers’ remorse. Whether the Democrats are up to the moment is an open question.Regardless, the new “American Golden Age”, promised by the president and his minions, is looking more like stagflation for the many and a booming stock market for the few. Topline youth unemployment stands at 10.8%, according to the Trump-maligned Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment rates for young men (11% ), Black youth (14.3%), and Hispanic youth (12.6%) are even higher.With midterms less than 14 months away, the president and his party ought to be concerned. The Democrats narrowly lead on the generic ballot, despite being unloved, incompetent and in disarray. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval remains underwater, hovering between -7% and -8% on average, according to the Silver Bulletin.Disapproval among Latino voters is starker. Immigration and masked Ice agents have soured voters on the administration’s real gains in securing the border: according to one new poll, the incumbent stands 20 points underwater with Latinos.The latest YouGov poll, meanwhile, pegs Hispanic disapproval of Trump at 65%. Among Black Americans, the figure is 84%. White Americans disapprove of him, 50-47. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from August reports that only one-third of Hispanics approve of Trump.Yesterday seems so far away. In November, Trump fought Harris to a near draw among Hispanic voters, 48%-51%. In 2020, they went for Joe Biden 61%-36%.Hispanic people were not alone in moving toward Trump. Americans under 50 and Asian Americans markedly shifted, too. Black communities demonstrated political restlessness as well. Against Harris, Trump garnered 15% of Black voters – up from 8% four years earlier. Among Black men, the change was even more glaring.Hispanic voters do not, of course, march in lockstep with the Democratic party or its establishment. George W Bush won four in nine Hispanic votes in 2004. John Kerry proved a dud. In 2008, Hispanic voters opted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, the eventual nominee. In both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, they showed greater early preference for Bernie Sanders, a proponent of Medicare for all.A commanding win by the senator from Vermont in the 2020 Nevada presidential caucus sent the Biden campaign reeling. The failed one-term President Biden finished 25 points behind Sanders in that contest.The Great Recession and Covid-19 left deep scars. In June 2022, the Democrats lost a key race in south Texas. Mayra Flores, a Republican newcomer, triumphed in a special election and flipped control of a long-held Democratic seat. A coda, Flores failed to win re-election the following November, and again lost in 2024.Fast forward to the current New York City mayoral race. There, younger voters and Hispanic voters comprise Zohran Mamdani’s political core. His victory in the Democratic primary was as much about economic dissatisfaction and uncertainty as demographic and generational change.Overall, Hispanic Americans show the highest workforce participation rates. Lunch-bucket issues possess greater salience. Social issues generally receive less attention from non-college graduates than they do from white Democratic PhDs. As a corollary, what plays well in the faculty lounge is seldom a winner outside those Ivy-covered precincts.The Latino vote is in flux. Trump’s promises to secure the border and crack down on illegal immigration proved less controversial among large swaths of Hispanic voters than Democrats had hoped. Rather, inflation and the kitchen table concerns carried the day for the GOP as Harris refused to distance herself from her boss.In south Texas, thousands of traditional Democrats cast their lot with Trump. Republican redistricting efforts in the Lone Star state now hinge upon those trends continuing, a debatable but plausible premise.The S&P 500 and Nasdaq set new records almost daily. Yet Trump’s promise to “end inflation” and start “saving our economy” beginning on “day one” looks increasingly empty. His unilaterally imposed tariffs bite.Democrats have plenty of material to work with. Their capacity to eventually deliver a coherent message is another matter.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Trump’s take on a court decision on tariffs is bonkers – even for him | Steven Greenhouse

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      Just hours after an appeals court ruled that it was illegal for Donald Trump to impose his unpopular across-the-board tariffs on dozens of countries, he posted a frantic, over-the-top rant that declared: “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”So here the president of the United States was asserting that if the courts torpedoed his tariffs, then the US, the most powerful nation on earth, would be destroyed, would “literally” be kaput. Trump seemed to suggest that court rulings that blocked his beloved tariffs would have the destructive power of, say, 100 hydrogen bombs.Call me naive, but I never cease to be amazed when Trump says such egregiously false and ludicrous things. OK, I sometimes forget that he’s the guy who said that noise from wind turbines causes cancer. After narrowly winning the presidency a second time notwithstanding the 30,573 Trump lies, falsehoods and misleading claims in his first term, Trump evidently thinks he can say anything, no matter how false or foolish, and get away with it. As part of his tariff fight, Trump also blurted this absurdity: if the courts don’t uphold his tariffs, “we would become a Third World Nation.”Trump’s statement that ending tariffs will destroy the US is totally bonkers because the US became the world’s richest nation and has largely prospered for nearly 250 years (despite occasional slumps) before Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. In the months before then, the US had solid GDP growth, low unemployment and declining inflation – the Economist magazine even called the US economy “the envy of the world”. But now Trump says that if the courts give a thumbs down to his favorite plaything – I mean weapon – to bang other countries over the head with, it would end the US. Even Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of the conservative National Review, called that “lunatic stuff”.The truth is that if the courts block Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, that would be good news for the US economy. It would prevent Trump’s tariffs from further pushing up inflation and slowing economic growth. By giving a thumbs down to Trump’s tariffs, the courts might be doing him a huge economic and political favor because his tariffs, and the inflation they are fueling, have been dragging his dismal approval ratings even lower.On 29 August, the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose his Liberation Day tariffs. The court said that act doesn’t give presidents the authority to slap sweeping tariffs on other countries. Trump has appealed the ruling to the supreme court, which might rule on the tariffs this fall.The court of appeals repeatedly noted that the constitution gives Congress, not presidents, the power to impose tariffs. It further noted that the Emergency Act doesn’t mention the word “tariffs” even once among the tools the act authorizes presidents to use to deal with emergency trade problems. (That appellate ruling overturned the bulk of Trump’s tariffs: the blanket 10% to 50% tariffs on exports from more than 70 countries. The court didn’t rule on Trump’s product-specific tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto parts.)As part of his conniptions over the appeals court ruling, Trump also warned of fiscal disaster, complaining that the US would lose hundreds of billions of dollars if his tariffs were halted. But Trump conveniently forgets that it’s embattled US consumers who will be paying most of those hundreds of billions as they pay Trump’s tariffs, essentially import taxes on furniture, cars, coffee, electronics and other foreign goods.In using his hysterical language, Trump evidently had one audience in mind: the supreme court’s six conservative justices who have repeatedly ruled his way. Trump’s goal is evidently to scare the bejesus out of those justices – he hopes that by shrieking “You’ll Destroy the Country If You Rule Against Me,” that will persuade them to overturn the appellate court’s decision and uphold his tariffs. (The appellate court let the tariffs remain in force to allow time for appeal.)So far in his second term, Trump has a remarkable batting average with the supreme court’s six rightwing justices, who seem astonishingly subservient and supine vis-a-vis the most authoritarian, power-grabbing president in US history. The justices have used their emergency docket to grant Trump administration requests 18 times in a row, often vacating injunctions that lower courts put in place to stop what they saw as Trump’s rampant lawlessness. In repeatedly siding with Trump, the supreme court has scrapped lower court injunctions in several highly controversial cases, provisionally letting Trump fire the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, gut the federal Department of Education, and give Doge – with its staff of twentysomethings – access to the highly private social security information of hundreds of millions of Americans.Trump is no doubt worried that the supreme court, though submissive so far, will overturn his tariffs. Many conservative and libertarian scholars and lawyers oppose his tariffs as both harmful and illegal. Not only do they dislike the tariffs for pushing up inflation and disrupting global supply chains, but they see Trump’s tariffs as anti-free market and mucking up the US and world economies.When Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs, he invoked a national emergency, saying the US trade deficit and other countries’ tariffs were urgent problems undermining the US economy. Admittedly the trade deficit and other countries’ tariffs are a problem, but in no way do they constitute a national emergency, especially since the US economy was seen as “the envy of the world” before Trump went hog wild with his tariffs. (There’s no denying that the flood of imports from China and other low-wage nations badly damaged many communities in America’s industrial heartland two and three decades ago.) Wouldn’t it be great if, in this tariff litigation, the supreme court stood up to Trump and issued a candid ruling that told him: “Sorry, Mr President, your supposed national emergency is hogwash, a pretext for you to pursue your destructive tariff obsession”?The supreme court’s justices shouldn’t let themselves be cowed, bullied or fooled by Trump’s talk that the nation will be destroyed if they nix his tariffs. Trump is like the boy who cried wolf, forever crying catastrophe if he doesn’t get his way. It’s time for the court and the nation to wise up to Trump’s lies, hype and shenanigans.Virtually every non-Trumpian economist agrees that Trump’s tariffs have hurt the US by increasing inflation, undermining GDP growth, creating huge headaches for corporations and seriously damaging the US’s relations with other nations. The justices shouldn’t buy Trump’s calamitous warnings that if they overturn his tariffs, the world will end.If the justices declare his tariffs illegal, it certainly won’t be a “disaster” for the US, as Trump has claimed. But it might be a disaster for Trump’s ego and for his dangerous dream of having an authoritarian presidency wholly unchecked by the other branches of government.If the supreme court rules against Trump’s tariffs, let’s hope that will serve as a much-needed first step to the court’s developing the backbone to rule many times more against Trump’s authoritarian and lawless actions.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      They managed to get accepted to US universities. But they’re still stuck in Gaza

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      Within days of 7 October 2023, much of Maryam’s world had been wiped out: her home in Gaza City, her children’s schools, and the Islamic University of Gaza, where she was a graduate student in physics, were all destroyed by airstrikes. In early December, Maryam’s mentor – Sufian Tayeh, a prominent Palestinian scientist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza – was killed along with his family in an Israeli strike.The professor has been a “father figure” to her, Maryam told the Guardian. When she learned of his death, she remembers closing the physics notebooks she had grabbed as she fled her home and thinking her studies would be over. “My entire world had collapsed,” she said.But as she repeatedly fled Israel’s bombs, Maryam sought ways to keep not only her family alive, but also her dream of becoming a physicist. While living in a tent in Rafah, with no stable access to internet or electricity, she learned of a spot near the border where she could get a faint internet signal from Egypt. Despite the risks, she started going there to research opportunities abroad, eventually managing to earn admission to a fully funded PhD program at the University of Maryland. After deferring her start date by a year, she was meant to start this month.But Maryam remains in Gaza. She is one of dozens of students from the devastated territory who have been admitted to US universities and colleges but are stuck, advocates say, after the Trump administration suspended nearly all non-immigrant visas for Palestinian passport holders.As part of its campaign against US universities, the administration has made it more difficult for international students to travel to the US, and claims it has revoked the visas of thousands of foreign students already in the US over unspecified violations.But for Palestinians in Gaza, the policy change is uniquely devastating.“I will never forget the moment I received the message confirming my acceptance into a fully funded PhD program. I rushed back to our tent to hold my children tightly and tell them the good news – that we would survive this nightmare,” said Maryam, who is using a pseudonym to protect her and her family. “Everything came crashing down again when I heard about the suspension of visa processing. It felt like my dreams had been destroyed once more.”Leila, a 22-year-old from Gaza City, was four years into a five-year engineering program when the war started. She would walk up to two hours a day to find wifi, relying on solar power to charge her phone, and managed to apply and be admitted to a university in the north-western US as a transfer student. (Leila is also a pseudonym, and she asked that the Guardian not publish the name of the university.)Then came the news that all visas were suspended. “We are just stuck in Gaza right now,” she told the Guardian in a series of voice memos.A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement that the department had suspended the processing of nonimmigrant visas for Palestinian Authority passport holders “while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to vet individuals from Gaza” and that it will “take the time necessary to conduct a full and thorough review”.“Every visa decision is a national security decision,” the spokesperson added.According to a cable viewed by the Associated Press, department officials said the new restrictions were intended “to ensure that such applications have undergone necessary, vetting, and screening protocols to ensure the applicants’ identity and eligibility for a visa under US law”. The suspension doesn’t apply to Palestinians who hold passports from other countries – unless they are found to have ties to the Palestinian Authority, or the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Student Justice Network, a US-based collective formed after Donald Trump signed orders in January targeting international students, has been supporting students from Gaza who are seeking to continue their interrupted studies abroad. But of the dozens of students the group says it has helped with university and visa applications, only a handful have made it to the US. (They declined to provide more specific numbers.)Securing a visa to travel to the US from Gaza was an arduous process even in quieter times. Before the war, Palestinians in Gaza had to secure appointments at US embassies outside the territory – usually Egypt or Israel. Obtaining a permit to travel to Israel has been impossible since the war began, while the border with Egypt has remained largely closed.International students have been targeted with a series of federal actions aimed both at Palestinian students specifically and the broader community of more than one million foreign nationals studying in the country.The state department has enlisted consulates overseas into the effort. Earlier this year, it paused all student visa appointments. They have resumed, but prospective students are now being subjected to additional vetting for, among other things, “anti-American” views.But for Palestinians the restrictions are blanket. “Every single one of them has been impacted by this,” Majid said of the students her group has been helping who were meant to start their studies this fall. “There’s no clear understanding as to when their applications will be processed, and this affects their ability to attend their universities on time – and in some cases it could actually impact whether or not they’re able to maintain their scholarships.”Looking elsewhereThomas Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, told the Guardian that Maryam was one of two physics students from Gaza admitted to the university last year. But getting them out of Gaza proved so difficult that the university ended up deferring the students’ admissions by a year as they tried to get visa appointments.Maryam was able to book an interview at the US embassy in Egypt, and Cohen offered to personally pay for her way there – but the border was shut down when Israeli forces took control of it in May 2024. She was still looking for a way out when the US announced the suspension of visas for Palestinians.Cohen said he tried all he could to help Maryam and the other student – because their academic records earned them a spot at the university but also because he understood that the opportunity could save their lives. He spoke of the Holocaust survivors in his own family, and those who “didn’t survive because they had no way to leave” Nazi-occupied Poland.Cohen is now advising the students to pursue opportunities in Europe or Canada. Even if they were to get a visa to the US, “the political climate we’re in, it’s dangerous for Palestinians”, he says.Majid, of the Student Justice Network, said the group had also been encouraging the students they support to pursue options in other countries. But even if they gain admission elsewhere, the border with Egypt remains sealed shut as Israel has intensified its military campaign.“These are students who have gone through two plus years without an educational infrastructure,” Majid said, noting that all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.“Think about having applied to university when you were 17 or 18, and then think about applying under bombardments, and starvation, and with limited resources, and having your documents destroyed, and having lost your family members,” she added. “To yank these fully funded opportunities away from them is devastating.” More