BOSTON — A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston in effect converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban.
Casper rejected the administration’s argument that the lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be implemented. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers.
The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” she wrote.
Among other proposed changes, Trump’s order would have required people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote, prevented mail ballots from being counted if they arrive after election day, even if they were postmarked by then, and punished states that failed to comply by withholding certain federal money.
In a statement, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James said she was grateful the court had blocked Trump’s “unconstitutional attempt to seize control of our elections” and would continue to defend voting rights in this year’s midterm elections.
“Generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it,” she said.
Requests for comment sent to the White House and Department of Justice were not immediately returned.
It was the latest in a string of rulings against the elections executive order Trump signed just months after taking office for his second term. He has since signed another executive order on elections, seeking to create a national voter list and limit mail balloting. That directive also faces multiple legal challenges.
In the fall, a federal judge in Washington overseeing a separate challenge to the first election executive order by civil rights and Democratic Party-aligned groups blocked the government from taking steps to include the proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voter registration form. That judge later barred the secretary of Defense from requiring documentary proof of citizenship when military personnel register to vote or request ballots.
In an apparent nod to the difficulty of implementing a proof-of-citizen requirement by executive order, Trump is pushing legislation in the Republican-controlled Congress to create such a mandate. The SAVE America Act has passed the House but has stalled in the Senate, leading Trump to advocate for eliminating the filibuster that is blocking the legislation.
On Wednesday, he abruptly canceled the expected signing of a bipartisan housing bill, saying he won’t do so until Congress passes his proof of citizenship requirement for voting.
The president and many of his Republican allies have been promoting the narrative that voting by noncitizens is a major problem, when in fact it’s quite rare. The federal voter registration form already requires people to attest that they are U.S. citizens, and violating that is punishable as a felony that can lead to prison or deportation.
In another major voting case, the U.S. Supreme Court is due to issue an opinion soon on whether mail ballots must arrive by election day. That could immediately change the rules in 14 states that allow grace periods ranging from days to weeks if the ballots are postmarked by election day.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration that sought to block what it called L.A.’s “illegal” sanctuary city law.
In a weekend ruling, U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin granted the city’s motion to dismiss the complaint, which alleged that the city ordinance violates the intergovernmental immunity doctrine by regulating and discriminating against the federal government.
Olguin ruled that the government’s allegations were “insufficient to establish that the Ordinance violates the intergovernmental immunity doctrine,” but granted the administration permission to file an amended complaint by July 3.
“The Ordinance does not directly regulate the federal government,” Olguin said in his ruling. “Rather, it ‘controls the actions of [the City’s] own agents and agencies.’”
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although the administration could refile its complaint, L.A.. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto celebrated the dismissal as a legal victory.
“This order reinforces the well-established principle that local governments have the authority to decide how to use their personnel and resources,” Feldstein Soto said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed by the Trump administration in California’s Central District federal court last June, said the country is “facing a crisis of illegal immigration” and that its efforts to address it “are hindered by Sanctuary Cities such as the City of Los Angeles, which refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.”
The lawsuit came as immigration agents descended on Southern California, arresting thousands of immigrants and prompting protests across the region.
“The situation became so dire that the Federal Government deployed the California National Guard and United States Marines to quell the chaos,” the lawsuit states. “A direct confrontation with federal immigration authorities was the inevitable outcome of the Sanctuary City law.”
The law was proposed in early 2023, long before Trump’s election, but it was finalized in the wake of his victory in November 2024.
Under the ordinance, city employees and city property may not be used to “investigate, cite, arrest, hold, transfer or detain any person” for the purpose of immigration enforcement. An exception is made for law enforcement investigating serious offenses.
The ordinance bars city employees from seeking out information about an individual’s citizenship or immigration status unless it is needed to provide a city service. They also must treat data or information that can be used to trace a person’s citizenship or immigration status as confidential.
“The goal of this ordinance, and of LAPD’s immigration-related policies … is to encourage victims of and witnesses to crime to feel safe coming forward to seek help from LAPD regardless of their immigration status,” Feldstein Soto said in her statement. “It does not obstruct or impede lawful federal immigration enforcement operations.”
The government in its original filing said that Trump campaigned and won the 2024 presidential election on a platform of deporting “millions of illegal immigrants.” By enacting a sanctuary city ordinance, the City Council sought to “thwart the will of the American people regarding deportations,” the lawsuit states.
“The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment — as the challenged law and policies do — thereby discriminating against the Federal Government,” the lawsuit says.
Trump’s Department of Justice contends that L.A.’s sanctuary city ordinance goes much further than similar laws in other jurisdictions by “seeking to undermine the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts.”
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.
“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”
The decision is a major legal setback for President Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.
“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.
The department referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment.
The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that Homeland Security help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.
The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five unnamed U.S. citizens, had alleged the revamped SAVE program violated Americans’ privacy and voting rights. The groups also alleged the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by ignoring transparency requirements about the changes to the system.
“The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification,” the judge wrote. “So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”
Plaintiffs attorney Nikhel Sus told the court during the October hearing that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls.
“They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database,” said Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Sus said Monday he sees Sooknanan’s ruling as an “across the board victory” and noted the plaintiffs were pleased the judge’s ruling reinforced their argument that the federal government doesn’t have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across agencies.
Swenson and Hussein write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.
A federal immigration judge has granted asylum to a woman orphaned in Iran in the 1970s and adopted by an American war veteran, whom immigration officials threatened this year with deportation to the country with which the U.S. is now at war.
Judge Andrew Fishkin’s ruling probably ends a months-long ordeal for the California woman, one of thousands adopted from abroad who were never granted citizenship because of bureaucratic loopholes between adoption and immigration law.
The woman has lived in the United States since she was adopted by American parents as a toddler and has no criminal record. The Associated Press is not naming her because she worries her legal situation remains tenuous as the administration has time to appeal. A federal judge has allowed her to use a pseudonym, “Ms. S,” in her challenge to the government’s determination of her immigration status.
The woman received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security in February that ordered her to appear for removal proceedings, saying she is subject to deportation because she overstayed her visa in March 1974 at 4 years old.
The woman, 56, described what came next as a terrifying and humiliating few months.
She grew up in a Christian, military family on a farm in Wisconsin and was taught to be patriotic. But the documents she received from the government described her as an “alien;” some said she did not understand English, which is the only language she speaks.
Immigration officials told her she was being arrested, but was released and tracked with an ankle monitor. She bought new pants to try to hide it and taught herself not to cross her legs in work meetings, terrified it would threaten the corporate job in healthcare she’s held for almost two decades.
They fingerprinted her and took her DNA. She said she was obviously weeping in the mug shot they snapped of her.
She prepared herself to be detained: She put her bills on autopay and gave her friends a key to her home.
Her lawyer, Emily Howe, said the government had the power to agree she is an American citizen.
“Instead they treated her like a terrorist, like she was the worst of the worst criminals,” Howe said. “It felt very Big Brother, very Orwellian.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the record on an individual case.
The Associated Press profiled the woman in 2024 as part of a story about how many international adoptees were left without citizenship because their American adoptive parents failed to naturalize them.
The woman’s parents were living in Iran, where her father was working for a U.S. government contractor, in the 1970s. He was retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel. He’d been held for years a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II.
The couple found the toddler at an orphanage and returned to the U.S. with her in 1973 and soon completed the adoption. At that time, parents had to separately naturalize adopted children. The woman’s parents have since died.
She didn’t learn she hadn’t been naturalized until she applied for a passport at 38 years old. She still doesn’t know how the oversight happened. She searched her father’s papers and found a letter from a lawyer, dated 1975, that said he was working with immigration officials, “it appears this matter is concluded,” and billed her father for his services.
She filed a federal lawsuit this month trying to prohibit the government from removing her and forcing it to grant her citizenship.
She has long believed she should be considered a U.S. citizen: She has a Social Security card, and a driver’s license and has been legally allowed to work and pay taxes for decades. It’s only the immigration agency that denies she is a citizen. She suspects her paperwork was lost, probably when militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Fishkin seemed to agree: He wrote in his ruling that documents from that embassy are not available to her or to the U.S. government. He declared her a refugee, entitled to work in the U.S. His ruling puts the woman on a pathway to being recognized as a citizen.
She’d felt hopeful, she said, when she learned her court date before Fishkin was scheduled for her late father’s birthday. She always felt like she needed to protect not only herself but also her father’s legacy. He was a conscientious military official, she said, who would not have knowingly allowed such a glaring oversight that left his daughter in legal limbo.
California voters are deeply divided over the trustworthiness of state elections heading into Tuesday’s primary, with most Democrats but less than half of Republicans expressing confidence in the electoral process, according to a new poll.
The polarized view follows a years-long campaign by President Trump and his Republican allies to question the legitimacy of American elections, especially in California and other blue states. It also follows robust efforts from liberal leaders, elections officials and voting rights experts to denounce Trump’s claims as baseless.
Overall, registered voters in the state — which skews heavily Democratic — expressed confidence in local election officials by a 2-to-1 margin, with 65% expressing confidence and 31% expressing a lack of confidence, according to the poll released Tuesday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.
However, those figures shift dramatically when sorted by political party, and even more when parsed by partisan leaning.
For example, 79% of Democratic voters expressed confidence in local officials running a secure and fair election, compared to 62% of independent voters and 42% of Republican voters, the poll found.
While 82% of voters who identified as strongly liberal expressed confidence, just 38% of voters who identified as strongly conservative did so.
A volunteer assists Melani Hurwitz at a polling location Monday at the Cal State Long Beach Walter Pyramid.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s clearly a partisan issue, and it is being promoted by the president and others who are his followers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls. “Strong conservatives and the Republicans are the least confident, and a lot of them are saying [they are] not at all confident. That’s a pretty extreme statement.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said he expected Republican confidence to be even lower given Trump’s decade of undermining trust in elections, especially in liberal, diverse states such as California. But he said neither Trump’s narrative nor public sentiment about election security — which generally shows voters are more confident “when their side wins” — reflects reality, which is that “our elections are administered well.”
“There’s very little evidence of manipulation or of fraud or even of incompetence,” Hasen said. “Anyone who looks objectively would see that there are numerous safeguards to ensure we have free and fair elections in California.”
Trump has long contended without evidence that voter fraud is pervasive among undocumented immigrants and in states, such as California, that use mail ballots, and blamed his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on such fraud despite experts rejecting the claim and Trump’s own allies and lawyers being unable to prove it.
A voter casts their vote inside the Westchester Family YMCA Annex on Monday.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has tried to implement strict new requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship and to limit or bar mail-in voting, and called for greater federal or Republican Party control over state-run elections. In February, he said that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” in “at least 15 places” where they lose.
Democratic leaders, elections experts and voting rights advocates have all pushed back. They’ve backed their assurances that the state’s elections are safe with lawsuits to block Trump’s efforts to assert federal control. They also warn that his administration may try to intervene anyway, including by sending federal immigration agents to polling locations or intercepting or invalidating mailed ballots.
Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring federal agents and other law enforcement from interfering with local and state elections officials or confiscating ballots, voter rolls or voting machines without a warrant. Newsom said California voters were experiencing “legitimate anxiety” over election integrity given the threats from the Trump administration and the recent actions of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a MAGA-backed Republican candidate for governor who recently seized hundreds of thousands of ballots as part of what he said was an investigation into potential fraud in last year’s election.
An election worker collects extracted vote by mail ballots to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center in City of Industry.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Newsom said he expects Trump to interfere with the upcoming election as well because “every single thing that Donald Trump is saying only suggests that he will do more, not less, to intimidate and to impact the outcome of this election,” but that the state stands ready to respond.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta last week said that his office is preparing for “all different types of scenarios” involving federal interference, from ballots being seized to immigration agents showing up at polling locations.
“We are currently monitoring any potential risks or threats, and we’re ready for any possibility,” he said.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) last week blasted the U.S. Postal Service for issuing a proposed rule to implement Trump’s mail ballot changes, despite the ongoing litigation. In April, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) helped convene a pair of “shadow hearings” in California where fellow House Democrats and a panel of experts shot down Trump’s claims about widespread fraud and expressed confidence in state elections.
A Berkeley IGS Poll from a year ago found that California voters support requiring first-time voters to show ID to prove citizenship in order to register, and that most supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot. However, another Berkeley IGS Poll from last month found that strong majorities of California voters believe American democracy is under attack or being “tested.”
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said that overall confidence, “despite a sometimes volatile state and national narrative,” was “gratifying.”
“Election officials take connection to their community seriously. We recognize that our job is to facilitate their voting experience, and that voter participation is key to election security,” Logan said. “Regardless of party affiliation, our role as election officials focuses on the function and process of ensuring the voice of the electorate is heard and that compliance with the election laws adopted in our state is achieved.”
Jesse Salinas, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Elections Officials and the registrar of voters in Yolo County, said local elections officials are “proud to be a steady source of trust at a consequential moment,” and stand ready to “open our doors to any voter who wants to see firsthand how our elections work and to answer any questions they may have.”
Times staff writer Iris Kwok contributed to this report.
After their work permits expired, an immigration attorney near San Diego was fired and a nurse in the East Bay area was placed on unpaid leave.
Both depend on work permits and legal protection afforded under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program created by President Obama in 2012 for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. But recent processing delays at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are leaving many DACA recipients vulnerable to arrest and deportation as their two-year work permits expire.
“It’s definitely an attack on the program,” said the lawyer, Maria Fernanda Madrigal. “My first thought was, ‘Oh, they’re so clever. They weren’t able to end the program through the courts, so this is what they’re doing.’”
The agency did not explain what’s causing the processing delays. Spokesperson Zach Kahler wrote in a statement that “under the leadership of President Trump, USCIS is safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens.”
DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country, he said.
During his first term in office, Trump tried unsuccessfully to rescind DACA.
This time around, his administration has simply weakened its benefits.
And last month, a precedent-setting decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals, which will apply to immigration judges across the country, said having DACA is not enough to protect someone from deportation.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE arrested 650 DACA recipients between Jan. 20, 2025, and April 30, nearly 90% of whom had been charged with or convicted of a crime. The spokesperson did not say how many have been deported.
DACA recipient Javier Diaz, center, is welcomed by his neighbors including Martha Avelar, right, in South Los Angeles after returning home from a detention center in Texas in July 2025.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
But in a February letter to U.S. senators, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency had deported 86 DACA recipients between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025. Federal judges have ordered the agency to return some, including Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento mother who was deported a day after her green card interview.
Lawmakers are expressing alarm that DACA’s promise of protection is being undermined.
Last month, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee held a forum on the Trump administration’s “all-out assault on DACA.” The forum featured Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez, who testified that he had been forced to fire a police officer because their work permit renewal was not processed on time.
Last week, members of the House from California’s Central Valley, including Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), sent a letter to Homeland Security and Citizenship and Immigration Services leaders, urging them to expedite DACA processing.
“Our offices have seen a substantial increase in constituent cases involving pending renewals, with many remaining unresolved for more than six months,” the letter continued. “These extended processing times are creating avoidable hardships for our communities and our economy.”
California has more than a quarter of the nation’s approximately 500,000 DACA recipients, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services figures. On average, they are 31 years old.
To qualify for DACA, applicants had to pass background checks and meet certain educational or work requirements.
During a news conference ahead of the DACA forum last month, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reflected on the day in June 2012 when DACA applications first opened. He said parents of young immigrants asked him if it was safe for their children to sign up for the program, which required admitting their lack of legal status and home address.
“Are you sure that the government won’t use that information against us at some time?” he remembered them saying. “I said, ‘Follow the law exactly as it is written and announced in the executive order, and we’ll stand by you. Just believe in us to do that.’”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), foreground, speaks during a Homeland Security oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
“Well, I didn’t anticipate the current president and what he is now doing,” Durbin continued.
Sarah Krieger, a former Citizenship and Immigration Services official who is now senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, said processing delays were caused, in part, by the agency temporarily pausing an automated system for processing DACA and other applications.
Krieger said that “streamlined case processing” was turned off about a month after Trump took office last year, in order to audit whether each process had sufficient security checks. The automated system was turned back on a couple of months later but was modified to include more manual security checks. Krieger left the agency last July.
Turning off the automated system was “a purposeful choice that doesn’t increase national security,” she said. “All it does is slow things down.”
Citizenship and Immigration Services recommends that applicants submit their paperwork and pay the $555 fee between 120 and 150 days before their benefits expire.
Among those who did so are two nurses who work for Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. Both requested anonymity out of concern over their immigration status.
One of the nurses, who came to the U.S. from the Philippines as a toddler, said she applied for renewal on Dec. 1. Her work authorization expired April 15.
Kaiser placed her on a 30-day unpaid leave of absence, after which she would be fired. Eventually, her work permit was renewed, but only after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and two other members of Congress lobbied the federal government on her behalf.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) speaks during a news conference on the DACA program on May 12 outside the U.S. Capitol.
(Graeme Sloan / Getty Images)
Padilla said his office has fielded requests from hundreds of DACA recipients this year.
Another Kaiser nurse, who also submitted her renewal paperwork in December, is still waiting. She has been on unpaid leave for nearly a month.
The nurse, who is from South America, said one Citizenship and Immigration Services officer told her it could take up to 10 months for her renewal to be processed.
The nurse is pregnant and she and her husband just bought a house. Losing her job would mean losing her healthcare and maternity leave benefits.
“I’ve spent years caring for others in my community, paying taxes, contributing to a healthcare system,” she said. “I worked through COVID and it’s heartbreaking to feel like you’re so easily discarded.”
Another DACA recipient, Elsa Sanchez, 35, of Georgia has maintained DACA status since 2012 and says she always follows the recommendation to submit the renewal application at least 120 days before the expiration date.
For the last three renewals, she said, she was approved within a week or two. This time, her work permit and DACA expired on April 1, more than four months after she submitted her application.
Elsa Sanchez, whose work permit expired because of DACA renewal delays, at her home in Atlanta.
(Emilie Megnien / Associated Press)
The healthcare IT company where Sanchez works as a senior customer success manager allowed her to take a 60-day unpaid leave of absence but said it would have to terminate her employment afterward.
Sanchez’s unpaid leave was set to run out on June 1. On May 20, she got notice that her DACA renewal had finally been approved. But by then Sanchez, a single mom, had had to pull funds out of the college savings account for her 19-year-old daughter, who is attending a local university. She put the money toward her nearly $2,000 rent and food.
“I feel so relieved and grateful,” she said in an Instagram video announcing the news. “I know that a lot of us are still being affected by these delays. I wish that I could share my approval with all of you and that we would all be celebrating today.”
Others have also turned to social media to share their experiences and swap resources. Madrigal, the fired attorney, pivoted to making daily videos. On Tuesday, she shared “day 35 of unemployment.”
“Some days look like big emotions and uncertainty,” she wrote. “Other days look like walks, toddler activities, cooking dinner and ending the night with tostadas. Trying to find joy and normalcy in the middle of it all.”
Rights groups have described the move as a “blatant abuse of power”.
Published On 27 Apr 202627 Apr 2026
Bahrain has stripped dozens of people of their citizenship for allegedly supporting Iranian attacks on the country.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior announced on Monday that it had revoked the citizenship of 69 people, some of whom were related, after accusing them of sympathising with Iran and “colluding with foreign entities”. The move comes after Tehran carried out strikes on facilities in Bahrain as part of the war launched against Iran by Israel and the United States.
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The directive, issued by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, stated that all 69 people were “of non-Bahraini origin”. Under Bahraini law, a person can be stripped of citizenship if they are deemed to have caused harm to the country or shown disloyalty.
The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the move as “dangerous” and a clear violation of international law.
The organisation said the individuals had not been publicly identified, and it remained unclear whether they had been arrested, whether they were inside or outside Bahrain, and whether they held another nationality.
Iranian strikes
Tehran began striking its Gulf neighbours on February 28, shortly after Israel and the United States began the war by launching attacks on Iran.
Tehran accused the targeted countries of allowing the US to conduct its strikes from their territory. Iran’s retaliatory attacks reportedly caused significant damage to US military sites across the region, including a Navy base in Bahrain, which was hit by missiles and drones.
Iran ceased its attacks on Gulf neighbours on April 9, following the introduction of a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. Negotiations to permanently end the war are ongoing three weeks later.
Bahrain’s Shia population has long accused authorities of marginalising them. During the Arab Spring in 2011, mass protests against the country’s leadership broke out. The Bahraini government has long blamed Iran for fomenting unrest against it.
