citizen

What began as banter between fans during a contentious playoff game took a darker turn when a woman threatened to call ICE on a Southern California man during Tuesday’s National League Championship game between the Dodgers and the Milwaukee Brewers.

The exchange began when Dodgers fan Ricardo Fosado trash-talked nearby Brewers fans moments after third baseman Max Muncy clobbered a solo home run in the top of the sixth inning to give visiting Los Angeles a 3-1 lead.

Fosado repeatedly asked, “Why is everybody quiet?” to distraught Milwaukee fans in a social media clip that has since gone viral.

One fan, identified by Milwaukee media as an attorney named Shannon Kobylarczyk, responded by threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Fosado.

“You know what?” she asked a nearby fan. “Let’s call ICE.”

Fosado, a former Bellflower City Council candidate, told Kobylarczyk to “call ICE.”

“ICE is not going to do anything to me,” said Fosado, who noted he was a war veteran and a U.S. citizen. “Good luck.”

On the video, the woman then uses a derogatory term to question Fosado’s masculinity, remarking, “real men drink beer.” Fosado was instead enjoying a fruity alcoholic beverage.

Fosado then told Kobylarczyk one last time to call ICE before calling her an idiot, punctuating the remark with an expletive.

An email to Fosado was not immediately returned Thursday.

Fosado told Milwaukee television station WISN 12 News that the incident “just shows the level where a person’s heart is and how she really feels as a human being.”

The station also confirmed that Kobylarczyk’s employment with the Milwaukee-based staffing firm Manpower had ended.

Kobylarczyk also reportedly stepped down from the board of Wisconsin’s Make-a-Wish chapter.

Fosado did not escape unscathed, however. He said he and a friend were ejected from the game shortly after the exchange.

The Dodgers ended up winning the game 5-1 and led the best-of-seven series, 2-0. The series now shifts to Dodger Stadium, with the first pitch of Game 3 is scheduled for 3:08 p.m. Thursday.

Sept. 29 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the release of a U.S. citizen who was considered wrongly detained in Afghanistan.

The United States’ top diplomat announced the return home of Amir Amiry in a statement on Sunday.

“We express our sincere gratitude to Qatar, whose strong partnership and tireless diplomatic efforts were vital to securing his release,” he said.

The Taliban on Sunday also confirmed the release of Amiry from prison.

Afghanistan’s foreign ministry posted photos of U.S. special envoy Adam Boehler with its minister, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, on X, calling Amiry’s release “a positive step” in diplomacy.

The conditions for Amiry’s release were not stated.

Qatar’s foreign ministry earlier confirmed Amiry’s release from Afghan detention, stating he was en route to Doha and would be leaving for the United States at a later time.

“Qatar remains committed to advancing mediation efforts aimed at achieving peaceful solutions to conflicts and complex international issues — an approach rooted in the state’s foreign policy, which prioritizes dialogue as a strategic choice for promoting regional and global peace and stability,” it said in a statement.

Amiry was reportedly detained in December 2024.

The release comes after two U.S. citizens held by the Taliban were released in a prison swap with the United States in January. In March, an American citizen detained in Afghanistan since 2022 was also released.

Amiri is the fifth US citizen held by the Taliban government in Afghanistan to be freed this year.

An American citizen who had been detained in Afghanistan since December has been released through Qatari mediation.

The release of Amir Amiri, who was on his way back to the United States on Sunday, is the fifth US citizen to be freed by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who returned to power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of US-led forces from the country after 20 years of occupation and war.

Negotiations lasted several months after Qatari officials secured an initial meeting between Amiri and the US special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, sources with knowledge of the matter told Al Jazeera. The breakthrough that secured his release was reached this weekend, they said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed Amiri’s release, saying it marked the US government’s determination to protect American nationals from wrongful detention abroad.

“While this marks an important step forward, additional Americans remain unjustly detained in Afghanistan,” he said. “President [Donald] Trump will not rest until all our captive citizens are back home.”

Rubio did not provide details as to why or where Amiri was detained.

The other four American citizens released this year are Ryan Corbett, William McKenty, George Glezmann and Faye Hall.

Qatar, a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, also helped in the release of a British couple on September 19. They were imprisoned for months.

Qatar has been assisting the Trump administration in mediating the release of captives since Taliban forces seized Kabul on August 15, 2021, after the US-backed government collapsed and its leaders fled into exile. 

While no country in the world formally recognises the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, Doha has maintained diplomatic channels with the Taliban to facilitate dialogue and provide an avenue for sensitive negotiations.

With the Taliban barring women from college in her native Afghanistan, Bahara Saghari set her sights on pursuing higher education in the United States.

Saghari, 21, practiced English up to eight hours per day for several years, eventually winning an offer to study business administration at a private liberal arts college in Illinois. She was hoping to arrive this fall, but her plans were derailed again, this time by President Trump’s travel ban.

“You think that finally you are going to your dream, and then something came up and like, everything’s just gone,” Saghari said.

Thousands of students are among the people affected by the Trump administration’s travel ban and restrictions on citizens from 19 countries, including many who now feel stranded after investing considerable time and money to come to the U.S.

Some would-be international students are not showing up on American campuses this fall despite offers of admission because of logjams with visa applications, which the Trump administration slowed this summer while it rolled out additional vetting. Others have had second thoughts because of the administration’s wider immigration crackdown and the abrupt termination of some students’ legal status.

But none face bigger obstacles than the students hit with travel bans. Last year, the State Department issued more than 5,700 F-1 and J-1 visas — which are used by foreign students and researchers — to people in the 19 ban-affected countries between May and September. Citizens of Iran and Myanmar were issued more than half of the approved visas.

U.S. still the first choice for many

Pouya Karami, a 17-year-old student from Shiraz, Iran, focused his college search entirely on the U.S. No other country offers the same research opportunities in science, he said. He was planning to study polymer chemistry this fall at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, but he had to shelve those plans because of the travel ban.

Karami deferred admission until next year and is holding out hope. He is still preparing for his embassy interview and reaching out to U.S. politicians to reconsider the travel ban’s restrictions on students.

“I’m doing everything I can about it,” he said.

The full travel ban affects citizens from 12 countries spanning Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. It blocks most people from obtaining new visas, although some citizens from the banned countries are exempt, such as green card holders, dual citizens and some athletes. Seven other countries have tighter restrictions that also apply to student visas.

When Trump announced the travel ban in June, he cited high visa overstay rates and national security threats from unstable or adversarial foreign governments as reasons for putting countries on the list. He has called some of the countries’ screening processes “deficient” and said he plans to keep the ban in place until “identified inadequacies” are addressed.

‘This kind of breaks my heart’

In Myanmar, the family of one 18-year-old student made his education their top priority, saving paychecks for him to go abroad for college. They risked their stability so he could have the chance to live a better life, said the student, who asked to be identified by only his nickname, Gu Gu, because he is worried about being targeted by the Myanmar or U.S. government for expressing criticism.

When he shared a screenshot of his acceptance letter to the University of South Florida in a family group chat, it exploded with celebratory emojis, Gu Gu said. He had been waiting for visa appointments to be announced when, one night, his mother woke him to ask about news of a U.S. travel ban. In an instant, his plans to study at USF this fall were ruined.

Many students his age in Myanmar have been drafted into the military or joined resistance groups since the military ousted the elected civilian government in 2021. While a civil war rages, he had been looking forward to simple freedoms in the U.S. like walking to school by himself or playing sports again.

“I was all in for U.S., so this kind of breaks my heart,” said Gu Gu, who was unable to defer his acceptance.

Students forced to look elsewhere

Saghari, the Afghan student, postponed her July visa interview appointment in Pakistan to August after learning of the travel ban, but ultimately canceled it. Knox College denied her request to defer her admission.

She later applied to schools in Europe but encountered issues with the admissions process. A German university told Saghari she would need to take another English proficiency test because an earlier score had expired, but taking the test the first time was already a challenge in Afghanistan’s political climate.

She has been accepted to a Polish university on condition she pay her tuition up front. She said her application is under review as the school validates her high school degree.

Amir, a 28-year-old Iranian graduate who declined to provide his last name for fear of being targeted, wasn’t able to travel to the U.S. to take a position as a visiting scholar. Instead, he has continued to work as a researcher in Tehran, saying it was difficult to focus after missing out on a fully funded opportunity to conduct research at the University of Pennsylvania.

His professor at Penn postponed his research appointment until next year, but Amir said it feels like “a shot in the dark.”

He’s been looking at research opportunities in Europe, which would require more time spent on applications and potentially learning a new language. He still would prefer to be in U.S., he said, but he isn’t optimistic that the country’s foreign policy is going to change.

“You lose this idealistic view of the world. Like you think, if I work hard, if I’m talented, if I contribute, I have a place somewhere else, basically somewhere you want to be,” he said. “And then you learn that, no, maybe people don’t want you there. That’s kind of hard to deal with it.”

Seminera writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Todd Feathers contributed to this report.

My dad’s passport is among his most valuable possessions, a document that not only establishes that he’s a U.S. citizen but holds the story of his life.

It states that he was born in Mexico in 1951 and is decorated with stamps from the regular trips he takes to his home state of Zacatecas. Its cover is worn but still strong, like its owner, a 74-year-old retired truck driver. It gives Lorenzo Arellano the ability to move across borders, a privilege he didn’t have when he entered the United States for the first time in the trunk of a Chevy as an 18-year-old.

The photo is classic Papi. Stern like old school Mexicans always look in portraits but with joyful eyes that reveal his happy-go-lucky attitude to life. He used to keep the passport in his underwear drawer to make sure he never misplaced it in the clutter of our home.

At the beginning of Trump’s second term, I told Papi to keep the passport on him at all times. Just because you’re a citizen doesn’t mean you’re safe, I told my dad, who favors places — car washes, hardware stores, street vendors, parks, parties — where immigrants congregate and no one cares who has legal status and who doesn’t.

“Exagera,” my dad replied — Trump exaggerates. As a citizen, my dad reasoned he now had rights. He didn’t have to worry like in the old days, when one shout of “¡La migra!” would send him running for the nearest exit of the carpet factory in Santa Ana where he worked back in the 1970s.

Then came Trump’s summer of deportation.

Masked migra swept across Southern California under the pretense of rounding up criminals. In reality, they grabbed anyone they thought looked suspicious, which in Southern California meant brown-skinned Latinos like my father. The feds even nabbed U.S. citizens or detained them for hours before releasing them with no apology. People who had the right to remain in this country were sent to out-of-state detention camps, where government officials made it as difficult as possible for frantic loved ones to find out where they were, let alone retrieve them.

This campaign of terror is why the ACLU and others filed a lawsuit in July arguing that la migra was practicing racial profiling in violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. A federal judge agreed, issuing a temporary restraining order. The Trump administration appealed, arguing to the Supreme Court that it needed to racially profile to find people to kick out of the country, otherwise “the prospect of contempt” would hang “over every investigative stop.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed.

In a 6-3 vote, the justices lifted the temporary restraining order as the ACLU lawsuit proceeds. L.A.’s long, hot deportation summer will spill over to the fall and probably last as long as Trump wants it to. The decision effectively states that those of us with undocumented family and friends — a huge swath of Southern California and beyond — should watch over our shoulders, even if we’re in this country legally.

And even if you don’t know anyone without papers, watch out if you’re dark-skinned, speak English with an accent or wear guayaberas or huaraches. Might as well walk around in a T-shirt that says, “DEPORT ME, POR FAVOR.”

The ruling didn’t surprise me — the Supreme Court nowadays is a Trump-crafted rubber stamp for his authoritarian project. But what was especially galling was how out of touch Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion was with reality.

Kavanaugh describes what la migra has wrought on Southern California as “brief investigative stops,” which is like describing a totaled car as a “scratched-up vehicle.” A citizen or permanent resident stopped on suspicion of being in this country illegally “will be free to go after the brief encounter,” he wrote.

The justice uses the words “brief” or “briefly” eight times to describe what la migra does. Not once does he mention plaintiff Brian Gavidia, the U.S. citizen who on June 9 was at a Montebello tow yard when masked immigration agents shoved him against the fence and twisted his arm.

Gavidia’s offense? He stated he was an American three times but couldn’t remember the name of the East L.A. hospital where he was born. A friend recorded the encounter and posted it to social media. It quickly went viral and showed the world that citizenship won’t save you from Trump’s migra hammer.

Would Kavanaugh describe this as a “brief encounter” if it happened to him? To a non-Latino? After more cases like this inevitably happen, and more people are gobbled up by Trump’s anti-immigrant Leviathan?

Brian Gavidia stands in a parking lot next to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park. A video of him having his arm twisted and held by an immigration officer against a wall despite being a U.S. citizen went viral. He’s currently a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit alleging the Trump administration is violating the 4th Amendment with indiscriminate immigration raids.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Anyone who applauds this decision is sanctioning state-sponsored racism out of apartheid-era South Africa. They’re all right with Latinos who “look” a certain way or live in communities with large undocumented populations becoming second-class citizens, whether they just migrated here or can trace their heritage to before the Pilgrims.

I worry for U.S.-born family members who work construction and will undoubtedly face citizenship check-ins. For friends in the restaurant industry who might also become targets. For children in barrios who can now expect ICE and Border Patrol trucks to cruise past their schools searching for adults and even teens to detain — it’s already happened.

Life will irrevocably change for millions of Latinos in Southern California and beyond because of what the Supreme Court just ruled. Shame on Kavanaugh and the five other justices who sided with him for uncorking a deportation demon that will be hard to stop.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor recounts Gavidia’s travails in her dissent, adding that the Real ID he was able to show the agents after they roughed him that established his citizenship “was never returned” and mocking Kavanaugh’s repeated use of “brief.”

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

I will also dissent, but now I’m going to be more careful than ever. I’m going to carry my passport at all times, just in case I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even that is no guarantee la migra will leave me alone. It’s not a matter of if but when: I live in a majority Latino city, near a Latino supermarket on a street where the lingua franca is Spanish.

And I’m one of the lucky ones. I will be able to remain, no matter what may happen, because I’m a citizen. Imagine having to live in fear like this for the foreseeable future for those who aren’t?

There’s nothing “brief” about that.

NEW YORK — It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it goes into the history books or is added to museum exhibits. But whether something even gets remembered and how — particularly when it comes to the history of a country and its leader — can become complex, especially when the leader is Donald Trump.

The latest example of that came Friday, when the Smithsonian Institution said it had removed a reference to Trump’s 2019 and 2021 impeachments from a panel in an exhibition about the American presidency. Trump has pressed institutions and agencies under federal oversight, often through the pressure of funding, to focus on the country’s achievements and progress and away from things he terms “divisive.”

The Smithsonian on Saturday denied getting pressure from the Trump administration to remove the reference, which had been installed as part of a temporary addition in 2021. The exhibit “will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history,” the museum said in a statement.

In a statement that did not directly address the impeachment references, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: “We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.”

But is history intended to highlight or to document — to report what happened, or to serve a desired narrative? The answer, as with most things about the past, can be complicated.

American stories

The Smithsonian’s move comes as the Trump administration has asserted its dominion over many American institutions, such as removing the name of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship, pushing for Republican supporters in Congress to defund the Corp. for Public Broadcasting — prompting its elimination — and getting rid of the leadership at the Kennedy Center.

“Based on what we have been seeing, this is part of a broader effort by the president to influence and shape how history is depicted at museums, national parks and schools,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “Not only is he pushing a specific narrative of the United States but, in this case, trying to influence how Americans learn about his own role in history.”

It’s not a new struggle, in the world generally and the political world particularly. There is power in being able to shape how things are remembered, if they are remembered at all — who was there, who took part, who was responsible, what happened to lead up to that point in history. And the human beings who run things have often extended their authority to the stories told about them.

In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders such as Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared.

Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation.

“If they don’t control the historical narrative,” he said, “then they can’t create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.”

Framing history

In the United States, presidents and their families have used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester’s book on her husband’s 1963 assassination, “The Death of a President.” Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the effects of paralysis on his body and his mobility.

Trump, though, has asserted far greater control — a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the facts, whether he calls for it directly or not.

“We are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens — as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,” said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. “So part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it’s very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.”

Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate — one not beholden to the president’s loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was “concerned and disappointed” about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said that museum directors “should have red lines” and that he considered one of them to be the removal of the Trump impeachment panel.

While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum’s offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump’s outlook on history and his role in it — earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” — shows how important those matters are to people in authority.

“You might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this … why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?” Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: “The legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.”

Hajela and Italie write for the Associated Press.

The family of a United States citizen who was killed in a settler attack in the occupied West Bank is calling on the administration of President Donald Trump to open its own investigation into the incident.

Relatives of Khamis Ayyad, 40, who died in the town of Silwad, north of Ramallah, on Thursday, confirmed on Friday that he was an American citizen and called for justice in the case.

Ayyad — a father of five and a former Chicago resident — was the second US citizen to be killed in the West Bank in July. Earlier that month, Israeli settlers beat 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet to death in Sinjil, a town that neighbours Silwad.

Standing alongside Ayyad’s relatives, William Asfour, the operations coordinator for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), described the killing as “murder”.

“We demand a full investigation from the Department of Justice,” Asfour said. “An American citizen was killed. Where’s the accountability?”

According to Mahmoud Issa, the slain 40-year-old’s cousin, settlers torched cars outside Ayyad’s home around dawn on Thursday.

Ayyad woke up to put out the fire, but then the Israeli army showed up at the scene and started firing tear gas in his direction.

The family believes that Ayyad died from inhaling tear gas and smoke from the burning vehicles.

‘How many more?’

Settler attacks against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, which US officials have described as “terrorism”, have been escalating for months, particularly since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023.

The Israeli residents of illegal settlements have descended on Palestinian communities, ransacked neighbourhoods and set cars and homes ablaze.

The settlers, protected by the Israeli military, are often armed and fire at will against Palestinians who try to stop them.

The Israeli military has also been intensifying its deadly raids, home demolitions and displacement campaigns in the West Bank.

Just this past month, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approved a non-binding motion to annex the West Bank.

And on Thursday, two top Israeli ministers, Yariv Levin and Israel Katz, called the present circumstances “a moment of opportunity” to assert “Israeli sovereignty” over the area.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to carry out a brutal assault in Gaza, which rights groups have said amounts to a genocide.

CAIR-Chicago’s Asfour stressed on Friday that Ayyad’s killing is not an isolated incident.

“Another American was killed in the West Bank just weeks ago,” he said, referring to Musallet.

“How many more before the US takes action to protect its citizens abroad? Settlers burn homes, soldiers back them up, and our government sends billions to fund all of this.”

The US Department of State did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.

No arrests in Musallet’s case

Last month, Musallet’s family also urged a US investigation into his killing.

But Washington has resisted calls to probe Israel’s abuses against American citizens, arguing that Israeli authorities are best equipped to investigate their own military forces and settlers.

Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, called on Israel to “aggressively investigate the murder” of Musallet in July.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” he wrote in a social media post.

But more than 21 days after the incident, there has been no arrest in the case. Since 2022, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 US citizens. None of the cases have resulted in criminal charges.

Ayyad was killed as Israeli forces continue to detain US teenager Mohammed Ibrahim without trial or access to his family.

Mohammed, 16, has been jailed since February, and his family says it has received reports that he is drastically losing weight and suffering from a skin infection.

On Friday, Illinois State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid called Ayyad’s death part of an “ugly pattern of settler colonial violence” in Palestine.

He called for repealing an Illinois state law that penalises boycotts of Israeli firms.

“We need action. Here in Illinois, we have a law that punishes companies that choose to do the right thing by boycotting Israel,” Rashid told reporters.

“This shameful state law helps shield Israel’s violence and brutality from consequences.”

Sayfollah Musallet, a Palestinian American, was killed by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on July 11, just days before his 21st birthday. His death is one of nearly 1,000 killings involving settlers this year, and his US citizenship has helped draw rare calls for a US investigation. Could this case shift how Washington responds to settler violence in the occupied West Bank?

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The United States sent five migrants it describes as “barbaric” criminals to the African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration’s largely secretive third-country deportation program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

The U.S. has already deported eight men to another African country, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. The South Sudanese government has declined to say where those men, also described as violent criminals, are after it took custody of them nearly two weeks ago.

In a late-night post on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the five men sent to Eswatini, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived on a plane, but didn’t say when or where.

She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

The men “have been terrorizing American communities” but were now “off of American soil,” McLaughlin added.

McLaughlin said they had been convicted of crimes including murder and child rape and one was a “confirmed” gang member. Her social media posts included mug shots of the men and what she said were their criminal records and sentences. They were not named.

It was not clear if the men had been deported from prison or if they were detained in immigration operations, and the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to requests for clarification.

Four of the five countries where the men are from have historically been resistant to taking back some citizens when they’re deported from the U.S. That issue has been a reoccurring problem for Homeland Security even before the Trump administration. Some countries refuse to take back any of their citizens, while others won’t accept people who have committed crimes in the U.S.

Like in South Sudan, there was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country. Civic groups there raised concerns over the secrecy from a government long accused of clamping down on human rights.

“There has been a notable lack of official communication from the Eswatini government regarding any agreement or understanding with the U.S. to accept these deportees,” Ingiphile Dlamini, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy group SWALIMO, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

It wasn’t clear if they were being held in a detention center, what their legal status was or what Eswatini’s plans were for the deported men, he said.

An absolute monarchy

Eswatini, previously called Swaziland, is a country of about 1.2 million people between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies and the last in Africa. King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986.

Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed political dissent, sometimes violently.

Pro-democracy protests erupted in Eswatini in 2021, when dozens were killed, allegedly by security forces. Eswatini authorities have been accused of conducting political assassinations of pro-democracy activists and imprisoning others.

Because Eswatini is a poor country, it “may face significant strain in accommodating and managing individuals with complex backgrounds, particularly those with serious criminal convictions,” Dlamini said.

While the U.S. administration has hailed deportations as a victory for the safety and security of the American people, Dlamini said his organization wanted to know the plans for the five men sent to Eswatini and “any potential risks to the local population.”

U.S. is seeking more deals

The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Leaders from some of the five West African nations who met last week with President Trump at the White House said the issue of migration and their countries possibly taking deportees from the U.S. was discussed.

Some nations have pushed back. Nigeria, which wasn’t part of that White House summit, said it has rejected pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.

The U.S. also has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, but has identified Africa as a continent where it might find more governments willing to strike deportation agreements.

Rwanda’s foreign minister told the AP last month that talks were underway with the U.S. about a potential agreement to host deported migrants. A British government plan announced in 2022 to deport rejected asylum-seekers to Rwanda was ruled illegal by the U.K. Supreme Court last year.

‘Not a dumping ground’

The eight men deported by the U.S. to war-torn South Sudan, where they arrived early this month, previously spent weeks at a U.S. military base in nearby Djibouti, located on the northeast border of Ethiopia, as the case over the legality of sending them there played out.

The deportation flight to Eswatini is the first to a third country since the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

The South Sudanese government has not released details of its agreement with the U.S. to take deportees, nor has it said what will happen to the men. A prominent civil society leader there said South Sudan was “not a dumping ground for criminals.”

Analysts say some African nations might be willing to take third-country deportees in return for more favorable terms from the U.S. in negotiations over tariffs, foreign aid and investment, and restrictions on travel visas.

Imray and Gumede write for the Associated Press. Gumede reported from Johannesburg. AP writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has called on Israel to probe the killing of 20-year-old American citizen Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by settlers in the occupied West Bank, calling the incident a “terrorist act”.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said on Tuesday that he asked Israel to “aggressively investigate” the killing of the Florida-born Musallet, who was visiting family when he was attacked in the Palestinian town of Sinjil.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Huckabee wrote in a social media post. “Saif was just 20 yrs old.”

Huckabee’s strongly worded post marks a rare critical stance towards Israel by the US envoy, a staunch Israel supporter, who has previously said, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”

But the US ambassador’s statement stops short of backing the Musallet family’s demand for Washington to launch its own probe into the killing.

Critics say Israel rarely holds its settlers or soldiers accountable for abuses against Palestinians. Musallet was the ninth US citizen to be killed by Israel since 2022. None of the previous cases has led to criminal charges.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project said Israel should not be trusted to “investigate the extremist settlers it enables at every turn”, renewing calls for an independent US probe.

Israel’s government cannot be trusted to investigate the extremist settlers it enables at every turn.

Saif was a US citizen. Our government must conduct its own independent, thorough, and transparent investigation as it would if an American were killed in any other country. https://t.co/oGnLSl5ic6

— IMEU Policy Project (@imeupolicy) July 15, 2025

Another Palestinian, identified by health officials as Mohammed Shalabi, was shot dead by settlers during the same attack that killed Musallet on Friday.

Israeli settlers have been intensifying their assaults on Palestinian communities in the West Bank since the outbreak of the war on Gaza in 2023.

Often protected by the Israeli military, settlers regularly descend from their illegal settlements onto Palestinian towns, where they ransack homes, cars and farms and attack anyone who may stand in their way.

Several Western countries, including top allies of Israel, have imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli officials and groups over settler violence.

Trump lifted sanctions related to settler attacks, put in place by his predecessor, Joe Biden, after returning to the White House earlier this year.

The US provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually.

Over the past few days, several Congress members have called for accountability for Musallet.

Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, called the killing of Musallet “shocking and appalling”.

“The Israeli government must thoroughly investigate this killing and hold any and all settlers responsible for the brutal death of Mr Musallet accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” he said in a statement.

Congressman Maxwell Frost, who represents a district in Florida, also decried the “cold-blooded murder”.

“As our country’s self-proclaimed peacemaker, Donald Trump has a moral and constitutional obligation to direct the State Department to conduct a thorough investigation and, more importantly, to demand full justice and accountability for those responsible for this heinous act,” Frost said in a statement.

“Our country must ensure the protection and safety of Americans abroad.”

On Friday, Israel said it was “investigating” what happened in Sinjil, claiming that the violence started when Palestinians threw rocks at an Israeli vehicle.

“Shortly thereafter, violent clashes developed in the area between Palestinians and Israeli civilians, which included the destruction of Palestinian property, arson, physical confrontations, and stone-throwing,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

But Musallet’s family has disputed any account of “clashes”, saying that a “mob” of settlers surrounded the young Palestinian American for three hours during the attack and prevented medics from reaching him.

Florida’s Republican politicians have been largely silent about the killing of Musallet. The offices of the state’s two senators, Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Since Musallet was killed on Friday, Scott has shared several social media posts in support of Israel.

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called on Moody, Scott, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Congresswoman Laurel Lee, who represented Musallet, to condemn the killing of the US citizen.

The advocacy group said the officials’ silence is “complicity”, not neutrality.

“When American citizens like Saif are killed overseas, especially by Israeli settlers backed by the Israeli government, looking the other way sends a dangerous message: that some American lives simply don’t matter,” CAIR said in a social media post. “We demand better.”

Funerals have been held for the two Palestinians, including a US citizen, who were killed by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on Friday. The family of Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death, is calling on the US State Department to investigate and hold the perpetrators to account.