Modest investments abroad could advance America's interests at home - by preventing pandemics from reaching our shores, by expanding markets for U.S. goods, by promoting democracy and freedom - all for less than 1% of the federal budget each year.
The new president's actions have raised eyebrows at Leinster House, although nobody is yet saying a word. This goes to the sometimes tense relationship between a Head of State and the Government.
When Israeli missiles destroyed entire homes in my neighborhood in southern Lebanon's city of Tyre, we decided it was time to save our lives again. More than 227,549 people had crossed the three official border points from Lebanon into Syria, according to the latest numbers from the United Nation's International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The UNHCR's spokesperson, Babar Baloch, described the area as an unmarked graveyard for thousands of desperate Rohingya refugees, noting that some 5,000 are thought to have drowned at sea over the last decade.
Recently, as the world becomes increasingly hostile to my community, I have been haunted by the feeling that every horizon is a wall. Last Thanksgiving, when the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Burma, a temporary immigration pathway that over 3,000 Burmese immigrants are relying on, a friend of mine remarked that we fled a tyrant only to run into the arms of a worse one.
The new policy rescinds a 2010 memo that said failing to apply for status as a lawful permanent resident within a year of living in the United States is not a basis for detaining refugees who entered the country legally. Two Trump administration officials wrote in the new directive that the previous guidance was incomplete and that the law requires DHS to detain and subject those refugees to a new set of interviews while in detention.
He was arrested because on February 15, 2025, he was out for a walk in his neighborhood when he got lost and wandered onto a woman's porch, who called the police. He was using a curtain rod as a walking stick, which officers demanded he drop. When he didn't, they tased, beat, and arrested him.
The memo was filed as a part of documents submitted in a federal court case tied to refugees who were arrested in Minnesota. In it, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow and ICE acting Director Todd Lyons direct their agencies to "detain and inspect" refugees who do not "voluntarily return to DHS custody for inspection and examination" to be a legal permanent resident at the one-year mark of being in the country.
Juan Nicolás has been detained at Dilley since January, where his mother said he's been consistently sick. According to reports compiled by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Univision's Lidia Terrezas, and Juan's mother, at about 3 a.m. on Sunday, Juan suffered a "medical episode" where he was "choking on his own vomit." He was rushed to a hospital on Monday night and diagnosed with bronchitis.
Dulcie and her family, who live in the Twin Cities metro, are afraid every day when they leave for work and school. "All of my friends are staying at home. No one comes out. It gets to me," said Dulcie, who declined to use her last name because she fears retribution from federal agents, who have been detaining citizens and legal immigrants.