SANTIAGO, Chile: More than 280 people were arrested in Chile during protests condemning Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the government said Saturday.
Authorities arrested 284 people, including 31 minors, Public Security Minister Martin Arrau said on X.
Pinochet led a dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990 that left more than 3,200 dead or missing. Tens of thousands were tortured or imprisoned.
Tehran: Iranian authorities have arrested a number of people accused of appearing in a rare video waving the flag of an outlawed opposition group, state television said Sunday.
Videos circulating online in recent days showed individuals riding motorbikes on empty streets in Iran while waving the white-and-red banner of the banned People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK).
On Sunday, state television said authorities had identified and arrested “all the individuals who appeared in this clip” and that they were “associated” with MEK, without specifying how many.
It said the motorcade had been travelling near the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, but it was not clear when the footage was recorded.
Founded in the 1960s in opposition to Iran’s then Western-backed shah, the MEK was outlawed after the 1979 Islamic revolution and later fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces during the Iran-Iraq war.
The group has for decades advocated regime change in Iran from abroad, while Tehran has accused its members of cooperating with its arch-enemy, Israel.
Iran has been at war with the United States since February 28, when US-Israeli strikes killed the Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with senior military officials.
Iran retaliated with attacks across the region as the conflict spread.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people during July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.
The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass deportations agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked a public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.
The July arrest tally of 49,571 marks a 15% jump from 43,021 arrests a month earlier and a 70% increase from 29,241 in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in Minnesota, according to government data that was provided by ICE to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Associated Press.
Immigration arrests the month before Trump entered office hovered a little over 8,000 a figure largely made up of immigrants transferred from city or state jails and prisons and turned over to ICE to remove from the country. During Trump’s first year in office the numbers started climbing as the administration loosened restrictions on where and who ICE could arrest while it also infused the agency with billions of dollars.
By December, the number of arrests jumped to more than 40,177, according to the data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
In the aftermath of two fatal shootings in Minnesota in January that sparked protests and an uproar from Democratic lawmakers, arrests began to fall to nearly 30,000 in February. After remaining stagnant for months, the numbers of people arrested in June jumped to more than 43,000 and then to roughly 49,500 in July.
In his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pledged to keep ICE out of the headlines, suggesting that the administration’s immigration crackdown might take a softer approach. But his tenure has been marred by a number of fatal shootings of immigrants in encounters with ICE officers. And the figures show Mullin hasn’t shifted the agency from President Trump’s vision for mass deportations.
Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, in a sign of how important those states have become to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Both states have leaned heavily into cooperation agreements with ICE called 287g agreements that allow local and state law enforcement to essentially operate as arms of federal immigration enforcement.
The spike in arrests comes as the agency, infused with billions of dollars last summer by Congress, has also hired 12,000 new deportation officers and investigative agents.
Santana writes for the Associated Press.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pitching a plan to help shield local police officers who make immigration arrests from possible financial consequences if they are accused of on-duty misconduct.
The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.
ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since President Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.
Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.
One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.
“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.
ICE outlined the plan in a document informing industry officials that it is considering hiring a contractor to help provide outreach, training and communications support for its so-called 287(g) partnerships with local departments, which are named for a section of a 1996 immigration law. The contractor would hire the insurance vendor and process the reimbursements, among other tasks.
ICE has asked for industry feedback by Thursday. The proposed timeline for launching the program and its estimated cost are unclear.
ICE had no immediate comment on the plan.
During Trump’s second term, ICE has offered generous financial incentives to participating local agencies, increasing the number who have partnered with the federal government, as well as the number of arrests.
Nearly 1,600 agencies in 32 states now have agreements to participate in ICE’s task force model, in which trained local officers can interrogate, arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to ICE data.
Departments qualify for funding to help cover expenses like their officers’ pay, equipment and vehicles. With encouragement from state and local Republican officials, agencies in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia have been among the leaders.
Arrests made through such programs jumped to an average of 3,000 per month in the first two months of 2026, according to the most recent ICE data provided to the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. That compares to a monthly average of 250 in 2024 under President Biden.
As local officers increasingly carry out federal immigration work, they and their departments have expressed concerns about the civil liability that could result from claims alleging excessive use of force, wrongful arrest and illegal search and seizure, among other things.
That’s because insurance policies that cover their local work may not apply. Pennsylvania’s risk pool, for instance, recently made clear that it would exclude “proactive immigration enforcement activities” from coverage, forcing several participating counties to search for other insurance options.
Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said he found insurance to cover his 13 deputies participating in the program at a cost of $20,000 in annual premiums.
“I want to make sure the guys are additionally covered, so we had to spend the money,” he said, adding that federal funding would cover the cost.
Federal officers usually enjoy legal immunities and a government-funded defense when they face lawsuits. But those protections may not always apply to local officers, which has heightened their concerns over liability and the need for insurance.
Although civil lawsuits are the main concern, professional liability insurance typically helps cover legal fees for officers facing criminal investigations as well.
Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Assn., said ICE’s plan sounds promising and that he was eager to speak with ICE about how the plan would work.
Smith said he has shared concerns with ICE that some sheriffs are reluctant to join the partnerships because of the potential liability at a time when immigration enforcement faces intense public protests and media scrutiny. Smith said others who are partnering with ICE have already started facing legal claims tied to their immigration work, which can be costly whether or not deputies are ultimately found to have done anything wrong.
“Right now, any time you are working on immigration there is going to be a much higher potential for there being problems and having suits and issues,” he said. “They’re recognizing that it is a different environment. And I think trying to be good partners with us as best they can.”
Under their agreements, ICE warns local departments that they are responsible for the costs of incidents that give rise to liability. But it seeks to reduce the risk by saying local officers performing ICE-authorized functions are “acting under color of federal authority,” which would bar lawsuits against individual officers.
The agreements also state that local officers who face civil lawsuits can ask the U.S. Department of Justice to represent them, and that ICE will generally support their requests. But the final decision on whether to do so rests with the department.
Foley writes for the Associated Press.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Tuesday announced two Iranian diplomats would be expelled from France. The move comes in retaliation for incident last month in Tehran in which two French diplomats were arrested. File Photo by Radek Pietruszka/EPA
Aug. 18 (UPI) — France will expel two Iranian diplomats in retaliation for an attack on a pair of French diplomats in Tehran in July, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Tuesday.
After first telling a French regional newspaper group of his plans, Barrot confirmed the story with a social media post in which he declared, “I had announced that this intolerable act would be followed by consequences. It has been done.
“Two Iranian diplomats in France will be expelled in the coming days.”
The move deepens the standoff between Paris and Tehran over the July 19 incident, in which France says Iranian agents “deliberately assaulted” and detained without reason two French diplomats in Tehran.
Barrot said the two were questioned for hours and, in one case, “assaulted,” calling the incident “an extremely serious and unacceptable attack on the integrity of our agents [which] cannot go unpunished.”
After the pair returned to France, Iran declared them persona non grata and ineligible to re-enter the country.
On Tuesday, Barrot denounced that decision and followed through with his threat of retaliation while claiming the diplomats were attacked because of France’s support for the Iranian people in their struggle against repression.
“The Iranian people, a great people, are the primary victims of this period of extreme tension in the Middle East, caught in a vise between the bloody repression of the January 2026 protests and the [U.S.-Israeli] bombings,” he wrote.
“It is precisely because France stands alongside the Iranian people, supporting its artists, scientists, and researchers, that two French diplomats were scandalously and deliberately assaulted last July 19.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said the two were banned because they had taken part in a “secret meeting” with suspects of a major case involving “foreign infiltration and interference.”
The ministry told the semi-official IRNA News Agency the diplomats’ activities were “in violation of international law, especially the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.”
Iran contended the move was made because the French government “has not taken any action to rectify their behavior and guarantee the non-recurrence of such conduct weeks after the disclosure of their illegal behaviors.”
The arrest comes after an attack on activist Nadia Beller, who says she was targeted for her opposition to conservative reforms and corruption.
Published On 18 Aug 202618 Aug 2026
Bolivia has arrested a prominent adviser to several right-wing political leaders in Latin America on suspicion of plotting a murder.
Fernando Cerimedo was arrested on Tuesday following an attack on lawyer and political activist Nadia Beller. The consultant has worked on political campaigns for Argentina’s President Javier Milei, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz.
The Argentinian national was arrested in Bolivia at an airport, trying to travel to his home country.
Security videos captured Beller standing in front of a hotel in Santa Cruz when two men dressed as delivery drivers walked up the stairs, shot her from close range, took some of her belongings, and left her behind as she lay on the ground.
Beller, who was four weeks pregnant, believes she was targeted for her opposition to a pack of unconstitutional laws under Decree 5503, which were being prepared by Cerimedo and the government, and for witnessing high-level corruption.
Decree 5503 introduces radical economic reforms, such as eliminating state fuel subsidies, that target policies put in place under Bolivia’s former socialist government.
Beller is also understood to have had a romantic relationship with Cerimedo. She admitted to her relationship with him in a video appearance from her hospital bed, and highlighted Cerimedo’s significant political influence.
She said she decided to speak out as she believes that “until I speak directly to the Bolivian people, they are going to finish what they attempted to do. They are going to end up taking my life”.
Bolivian Vice President Edmand Lara said the attack “threatens life, democracy, and freedom of expression” in a news conference where he called for an impartial investigation “without any kind of favoritism”.