Migration

US President Donald Trump has appeared on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes just months after he won a $16m settlement from the broadcaster for alleged “deceptive editing”.

In the interview with CBS host Norah O’Donnell, which was filmed last Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence and aired on Sunday, Trump touched on several topics, including the ongoing government shutdown, his administration’s unprecedented crackdowns on undocumented migrants, the US’s decision to restart nuclear testing, and the trade war with China.

Trump, who regularly appears on Fox News, a right-wing media outlet, has an uneasy relationship with CBS, which is considered centrist.

In October 2020, the president walked out of a 60 Minutes interview in the lead-up to the 2020 election he lost, claiming that the host, Lesley Stahl, was “biased”.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview:

The interview took place one year to the day after Trump sued CBS

The president’s lawyers sued CBS owner Paramount in October 2024 for “mental anguish” over a pre-election interview with rival candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed had been deceptively edited to favour Democrats and thus affected his campaign.

CBS had aired two different versions of an answer Harris gave to a question on Israel’s war on Gaza, posed by host Bill Whitaker. One version aired on 60 Minutes while the other appeared on the programme Face the Nation.

Asked whether Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, listened to US advice, Harris answered: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

In an alternative edit, featured in earlier pre-broadcast promotions, Harris had given a longer, more rambling response that did not sound as concise.

The network argued the answer was edited differently for the two shows due to time restrictions, but Trump’s team claimed CBS “distorted” its broadcasts and “helped” Harris, thereby affecting his campaign. Trump asked for an initial $10bn in damages before upping it to $20bn in February 2025.

Paramount, in July 2025, chose to settle with Trump’s team to the tune of $16m in the form of a donation to a planned Trump presidential library. That move angered journalist unions and rights groups, which argued it set a bad precedent for press freedom.

Paramount executives said the company would not apologise for the editing of its programmes, but had decided to settle to put the matter to rest.

The company was at the time trying to secure federal approval from Trump’s government for a proposed merger with Skydance, owned by Trump ally Larry Ellison. The Federal Communications Commission has since approved the merger that gives Ellison’s Skydance controlling rights.

On October 19, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, US special envoy to the Middle East, were interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

He solved rare-earth metals issue with China

After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea last Thursday, Trump praised his counterpart as a “strong man, a very powerful leader” and said their relationship was on an even keel despite the trade war. However, he blamed China for “ripping off” the US through its dominance of crucial rare earth materials.

Trump told 60 Minutes he had cut a favourable trade agreement with China and that “we got – no rare-earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone”, referring to Chinese export restrictions on critical rare-earth metals needed to manufacture a wide range of items including defence equipment, smartphones and electric vehicles.

However, Beijing actually only said it would delay introducing export controls for five rare-earth metals it announced in October, and did not mention restrictions on a further seven it announced in April this year. Those restrictions remain in place.

Xi ‘knows what will happen’ if China attacks Taiwan

Trump said President Xi did not say anything about whether Beijing planned to attack autonomous Taiwan.

However, he referred to past assurances from Xi, saying: “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’, because they know the consequences.”

Asked whether he would order US forces to action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump demurred, saying: “You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that … I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows.”

There are mounting fears in the US that China could attack Taiwan. Washington’s stance of “strategic ambiguity” has always kept observers speculating about whether the US would defend Taiwan against Beijing. Ahead of the last elections, Trump said Taiwan should “pay” for protection.

He doesn’t know who the crypto boss he pardoned is

When asked why he pardoned cryptocurrency multibillionaire and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao last month, Trump said: “I don’t know who he is.”

The president said he had never met Zhao, but had been told he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Zhao pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in connection with child sex abuse and “terrorism” on his crypto platform in 2023. He served four months in prison until September 2024, and stepped down as chief executive of Binance.

Binance has been linked to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial, and many have questioned if the case is a conflict of interest.

In March 2025, World Liberty Financial launched its own dollar-pegged cryptocoin, USD1, on Binance’s blockchain and the company promoted it to its 275 million users. The coin was also supported by an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates, MGX Fund Management Limited, which used $2bn worth of the World Liberty stablecoin to buy a stake in Binance.

This part of the interview appeared in a full transcript of the 90-minute interview, but does not appear in either the 28-minute televised version or the 73-minute extended online video version. CBS said in a note on the YouTube version that it was “condensed for clarity”.

Other countries ‘are testing nuclear weapons’

Trump justified last week’s decision by his government to resume nuclear testing for the first time in 33 years, saying that other countries – besides North Korea – are already doing it.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” Trump said, also mentioning Pakistan. “You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report – they don’t have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do.”

Russia, China, and Pakistan have not openly conducted tests in recent years. Analyst Georgia Cole of UK think tank Chatham House told Al Jazeera that “there is no indication” the three countries have resumed testing.

He’s not worried about Hamas disarming

The president claimed the US-negotiated ceasefire and peace plan between Israel and Hamas was “very solid” despite Israeli strikes killing 236 Gazans since the ceasefire went into effect. It is also unclear whether or when the Palestinian armed group, Hamas, has agreed it will disarm.

However, Trump said he was not worried about Hamas disarming as the US would force the armed group to do so. “Hamas could be taken out immediately if they don’t behave,” he said.

Venezuela’s Maduro’s ‘days are numbered’

Trump denied the US was going to war with Venezuela despite a US military build-up off the country’s coast and deadly air strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking ships in the country’s waters. The United Nations has said the strikes are a violation of international law.

Responding to a question about whether the strikes were really about unseating Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said they weren’t. However, when asked if Maduro’s days in office were numbered, the president answered: “I would say, yeah.”

US government shutdown is all the Democrats’ fault

Trump, a member of the Republican Party, blamed Democrats for what is now close to the longest government shutdown in US history, which has been ongoing since October 1.

Senators from the Democratic Party have refused to approve a new budget unless it extends expiring tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans and unless Trump reverses healthcare cuts made in his tax-and-spending bill, passed earlier this year.

The US president made it clear that he would not negotiate with Democrats, and did not give clear plans for ending the shutdown affecting 1.4 million governent employees.

US will become ‘third-world nation’ if tariffs disallowed

Referring to a US Supreme Court hearing brought by businesses arguing that the Trump government’s tariff war on other countries is illegal and has caused domestic inflation, Trump said the US “would go to hell” and be a “third world nation” if the court ordered tariffs to be removed.

He said the tariffs are necessary for “national security” and that they have increased respect from other countries for the US.

ICE raids ‘don’t go far enough’

Trump defended his government’s unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and surveillance on people perceived to be undocumented migrants.

When asked if the raids had gone too far, he responded: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by [former US Presidents Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.”

Zohran Mamdani is a ‘communist’

Regarding the New York City mayoral race scheduled for November 4, Trump said he would not back democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, and called him a “communist”. He said if Mamdani wins, it will be hard for him to “give a lot of money to New York”.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents they are legally protected from prosecution and local officials cannot arrest them.

Fox News host Will Cain questioned Miller during an October 24 interview. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Cain said, “talked about interfering with, arresting, ICE agents in Illinois”.

Cain asked Miller under what federal authority the Trump administration could arrest Pritzker if the governor tried to arrest ICE agents.

“To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties,” Miller said. “And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”

Miller said his answer applied to any local or state official “who conspires or engages in activity that unlawfully impedes federal law enforcement conducting their duties”.

The day before Miller’s comments, Pritzker signed an executive order establishing the Illinois Accountability Commission to document federal law enforcement actions and refer possible law violations to local and state agencies for investigation. Chicago is the latest target in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and agents have arrested more than 3,000 people there.

Pritzker acknowledged in an October 16 interview that “federal agents typically have federal immunity, but they’re not immune from the federal government holding them accountable and responsible”.

His statement is less sweeping than Miller’s, and Pritzker noted that the federal government can prosecute federal agents.

Immigration agents, like other law enforcement officers, have broad protections when conducting official duties. That doesn’t mean they can’t be held legally accountable if they break state or federal law.

“Federal officials are not categorically immune from state criminal prosecution, even while on duty,” Bryna Godar, a lawyer at the University of Wisconsin’s State Democracy Research Initiative, wrote in a July 17 report.

When contacted for comment, the White House pointed PolitiFact to an October 23 letter that US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote to California officials.

“The Department of Justice views any arrests of federal agents and officers in the performance of their official duties as both illegal and futile,” Blanche wrote.

He cited several federal laws and provisions, including the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The clause limits when states can prosecute federal agents who break state law, but it does not act as blanket immunity, legal experts said.

Miller’s statement is “wrong on its face”, Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University constitutional law professor, wrote in his October 27 newsletter.

The federal government can prosecute immigration agents who break the law

Federal immigration agents can’t break the law with impunity.

In 2024, a federal judge convicted and sentenced to federal prison a US Customs and Border Protection agent for using excessive force against two people at the southern border. Department of Homeland Security watchdog officers investigated the case.

The federal government has cited its power to hold agents accountable in court arguments. After a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy at the southern border in 2010, the Justice Department said in a 2019 Supreme Court brief that the federal government investigates allegations of excessive force by agents “and may bring a federal criminal prosecution where appropriate”.

Non-government organisations can also sue the federal government for its agents’ actions. Several groups in Chicago, including journalism organisations, sued the Trump administration saying federal agents are using “a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians”.

In that case, federal District Judge Sara Ellis ordered immigration agents not to use tear gas and other riot control tactics unless people are posing an immediate threat. If the agents are going to use tear gas, they are required to give a verbal warning first.

After reports that agents weren’t following the court order, Ellis ordered Gregory Bovino, the senior Border Patrol official overseeing the federal immigration actions in Chicago, to meet with her every weeknight to report all confrontations officers have with the public. A federal appeals court has since temporarily paused Ellis’s order.

Vladeck wrote that even if the Trump administration does not investigate or prosecute immigration agents who might have broken the law, it doesn’t mean the federal government doesn’t have the power to do so.

Pritzker said his state’s commission seeks to document actions that could be prosecuted in the future.

State governments aren’t barred from prosecuting federal agents

State governments can also prosecute immigration agents if they break state law. However, there is a limitation known as supremacy clause immunity, which comes from the US Constitution’s clause that says federal law supersedes conflicting state laws.

Protections against state prosecution for federal agents date back to a 1890 Supreme Court decision. David Neagle, a US marshal assigned to protect a Supreme Court justice, shot and killed a man who assaulted the justice. California arrested Neagle and charged him with murder. The Supreme Court ruled that the state couldn’t prosecute Neagle because he was carrying out official duties.

Generally, federal agents are protected from state prosecution if their actions were authorised by federal law, and if the actions were “necessary and proper” for agents to fulfil their duties.

A federal court ruled in 1990 that a customs agent was immune from state charges for speeding while driving during a drug operation. The agent acted under US laws and was justified in concluding speeding was necessary to fulfil his duties, the court said.

But a US marine wasn’t given immunity in 1990 after he killed a person in a car accident while he was driving in a military convoy in North Carolina.

“In short, while Supremacy Clause immunity grants federal officials a partial shield from state prosecution, that immunity is not absolute,” Godar wrote.

Contrary to Miller’s statement, Vladeck wrote, it’s not a felony “for local or state authorities to arrest someone who they have probable cause to believe committed a state crime”.

If a state brought charges against federal immigration agents, the court would have to determine whether an officer reasonably would have thought the actions were necessary to carry out federal duties.

“That’s a generous standard, to be sure,” Vladeck wrote. “But it is by no means a get-out-of-prosecution-free card.”

Our ruling

Miller said: “To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”

Immigration agents, like other law enforcement officers, have broad protections when they’re conducting official duties. But they’re not immune from prosecution if they break state or federal law.

The federal government can and does prosecute federal officers who break the law.

States can’t prosecute agents for breaking state law if the agents were acting under the reasonable confines of their official duties. But those restrictions aren’t absolute.

The statement contains an element of truth; federal immigration agents have some immunity from state prosecution. But the protections aren’t as sweeping as Miller made them sound, giving a different impression. Federal agents can and have been prosecuted by states.

We rate Miller’s statement Mostly False.

Candidate Kat Abughazaleh decried the charges as ‘political prosecution’ amid a Trump standoff with Democratic cities.

A Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives has been indicted by the Department of Justice in connection with a protest in front of a federal immigration facility in Illinois.

On Wednesday, in a post on social media, Kat Abughazaleh, 26, announced that she had been charged alongside five other protesters.

“This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights,” Abughazaleh, a progressive influencer and journalist, said in the post. “I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.”

Currently, Abughazelah is running for an open seat representing Illinois’s ninth congressional district, to the north of Chicago. She is slated to appear on the Democratic primary ballot in March.

Federal prosecutors, however, have accused her and her co-defendants of having “physically hindered and impeded” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at a detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

The indictment said they surrounded a government vehicle, “banged aggressively”, stopped the agent from driving forward, and etched “PIG” on the body of the vehicle. It further alleged that the group broke the vehicle’s side mirrors and a windshield wiper.

Abughazaleh was charged with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer” and “assaulting, resisting or impeding” a federal agent for the September 23 incident.

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

— Kat Abughazaleh (@katmabu.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T16:55:30.610Z

Those charged alongside Abughazelah include Michael Rabbitt, a Democratic politician in Chicago’s 45th Ward, and Catherine Sharp, a Democrat running for a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

The charges come as the administration of President Donald Trump surges federal agents to Democrat-run cities as part of a large-scale deportation drive.

Several Democratic lawmakers have been charged after participating in counterprotests, including Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and US Representative LaMonica McIver. Baraka has since seen the charges against him dropped.

Trump has also sought to deploy the National Guard to several cities, including Chicago, but has been repeatedly blocked by the courts. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the Chicago case, which could have wide-ranging implications for the future of such deployments.

A federal appeals court was also set to hear a Trump administration challenge on Wednesday to a lower court’s ruling barring the National Guard deployment to Portland, Oregon.

As part of those cases, the Trump administration has faced scrutiny over its treatment of immigrants and protesters alike.

The administration has also been criticised for comparing protesters to “terrorists” and pursuing disproportionate charges in court.

Even Abughazelah’s opponent in the 2026 Democratic primary, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, was among those condemning Wednesday’s indictment.

“The only people engaged in violent and dangerous behavior at Broadview have been ICE,” Biss said in a statement carried by the local news site Evanston Now.

Biss noted he had also protested the “kidnapping of our neighbours” at the facility multiple times.

“Now, the Trump Administration is targeting protestors, including political candidates, in an effort to silence dissent and scare residents into submission,” Biss said. “It won’t work.”

The United States has revoked the visa of Nigerian author and playwright Wole Soyinka, who became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

Speaking at Kongi’s Harvest Gallery in Lagos on Tuesday, Soyinka read aloud from a notice sent on October 23 from the local US consulate, asking him to arrive with his passport so that his visa could be nullified.

The author called it, with characteristic humour, a “rather curious love letter” to receive.

“We request you bring your visa to the US Consulate General Lagos for physical cancellation. To schedule an appointment, please email — et cetera, et cetera — in advance of the appointment,” Soyinka recited, skimming the letter.

Closing his laptop, the author joked with the audience that he did not have time to fulfil its request.

“I like people who have a sense of humour, and this is one of the most humorous sentences or requests I’ve had in all my life,” Soyinka said.

“Would any of you like to volunteer in my place? Take the passport for me? I’m a little bit busy and rushed.”

Soyinka’s visa was issued last year, under US President Joe Biden. But in the intervening time, a new president has taken office: Donald Trump.

Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has overseen a crackdown on immigration, and his administration has removed visas and green cards from individuals whom it sees as out of step with the Republican president’s policies.

At Tuesday’s event, Soyinka struck a bemused tone, though he indicated the visa revocation would prevent him from visiting the US for literary and cultural events.

“I want to assure the consulate, the Americans here, that I am very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka said.

He also quipped about his past experiences writing about the Ugandan military leader Idi Amin. “Maybe it’s about time also to write a play about Donald Trump,” he said.

Nobel Prize winners in the crosshairs

Soyinka is a towering figure in African literature, with a career that spans genres, from journalism to poetry to translation.

He is the author of several novels, including Season of Anomy and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, as well as numerous short stories.

The 91-year-old author has also championed the fight against censorship. “Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth,” he wrote.

He has lectured on the subject in New York City for PEN America, a free speech nonprofit. As recently as 2021, he returned to the US to present scholar and former colleague Henry Louis Gates Jr with the nonprofit’s Literary Service Award.

But Soyinka is not the first Nobel winner to see his US visa stripped away in the wake of Trump’s return to office, despite the US president’s own ambitions of earning the international prize.

Oscar Arias, a former president of Costa Rica and the winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize, also found his visa cancelled in April.

Arias was previously honoured by the Nobel Committee for his efforts to end armed conflicts in Central American countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

While the letter Arias received from the US government gave no reason for his visa’s cancellation, the former president told NPR’s Morning Edition radio show that officials indicated it was because of his ties to China.

“During my second administration from 2006 to 2010, I established diplomatic relations with China, and that’s because it has the second-largest economy in the world,” Arias explained.

But, Arias added, he could not rule out the possibility that there were other reasons for his visa’s removal.

“I have to imagine that my criticism of President Trump might have played a role,” Arias told NPR. “The president has a personality that is not open to criticism or disagreements.”

Soyinka likewise has a reputation for being outspoken, both about domestic politics in his native Nigeria and international affairs.

He has, for example, denounced Trump on multiple occasions, including for the “brutal, cruel and often unbelievable treatment being meted out to strangers, immigrants”.

In 2017, he confirmed to the magazine The Atlantic that he had destroyed his US green card — his permanent residency permit — to protest Trump’s first election in 2016.

“As long as Trump is in charge, if I absolutely have to visit the United States, I prefer to go in the queue for a regular visa with others,” he told the magazine.

The point was, he explained, to show that he was “no longer part of the society, not even as a resident”.

In Tuesday’s remarks, Soyinka reaffirmed that he no longer had his green card. “Unfortunately, when I was looking at my green card, it fell between the fingers of a pair of scissors, and it got cut into a couple of pieces,” he said, flashing his tongue-in-cheek humour.

He also emphasised he continues to have close friends in the US, and that the local consulate staff has consistently treated him courteously.

His work had long caused him to face persecution in Nigeria — though, famously, during a stint in solitary confinement, he continued to write using toilet paper — and eventually, in the 1990s, he sought refuge in the US.

During his time in North America, he took up teaching posts at prestigious universities like Harvard, Yale and Emory.

Targeting ‘hostile attitudes’

The Trump administration, however, has pledged to revoke visas from individuals it deems to be a threat to its national security and foreign policy interests.

In June, Trump issued a proclamation calling on his government tighten immigration procedures, in an effort to ensure that visa-holders “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.

What qualifies as a “hostile attitude” towards US culture is unclear. Human rights advocates have noted that such broad language could be used as a smokescreen to crack down on dissent.

Free speech, after all, is protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and is considered a foundational principle in the country, protecting individual expression from government shackles.

After Arias was stripped of his visa, the Economists for Peace and Security, a United Nations-accredited nonprofit, was among those to express outrage.

“This action, taken without explanation, raises serious concerns about the treatment of a globally respected elder statesman who has dedicated his life to peace, democracy, and diplomacy,” the nonprofit wrote in its statement.

“Disagreements on foreign policy or political perspective should not lead to punitive measures against individuals who have made significant contributions to international peace and stability.”

International students, commenters on social media, and acting government officials have also faced backlash for expressing their opinions and having unfavourable foreign ties.

Earlier this month, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino voiced concern that members of his government had seen their visas cancelled over their diplomatic ties to China.

And in September, while visiting New York City, Colombian President Gustavo Petro saw his visa yanked within hours of giving a critical speech to the United Nations and participating in a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The US Department of State subsequently called Petro’s actions “reckless and incendiary”.

Separately, the State Department announced on October 14 that six foreign nationals would see their visas annulled for criticising the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close associate of Trump.

Soyinka questioned Trump’s stated motives for cancelling so many visas at Tuesday’s literary event in Lagos, asking if they really made a difference for US national security.

“Governments have a way of papering things for their own survival,” he said.

“I want people to understand that the revocation of one visa, 10 visas, a thousand visas will not affect the national interests of any astute leader.”

Trump administration is seeking to deport Abrego Garcia to West African country, in move decried by lawyers.

A federal judge in the United States has requested assurances from the administration of President Donald Trump that officials will not deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia while an injunction barring his deportation remains in place.

The demand from District Judge Paula Xinis on Monday comes after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filed a notice last week of a plan to deport Abrego Garcia to the West African nation of Liberia.

She asked why the government is not instead deporting Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, a Salvadoran man living in the United States, where he has said he is willing to go because the government there has promised he would be welcomed as a legal immigrant and not re-deported to El Salvador.

“Any insight you can shed on why we’re continuing this hearing when you could deport him to a third country tomorrow?” Xinis asked government lawyers.

Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration March, in violation of a 2019 court order barring him from being sent back to his homeland.

He was returned to the US under a judge’s order in June, but swiftly charged with human smuggling in Tennessee. He is seeking dismissal of that case.

Administration officials have repeatedly accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, a claim that has never been proven in court.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have said he is being targeted for political retribution.

Responding to the plan to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg called the move “cruel and unconstitutional”. He noted that Abrego Garcia has no ties to the country.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to deport individuals unable to be sent to their homelands to so-called third countries. Advocacy groups have argued that the deportations violate due process rights and that immigrants are being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations.

Abrego Garcia has separately applied for asylum in the US.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech delivered on October 23rd, launched family support initiatives aimed at boosting Russia’s population. Essentially, the initiatives are not new ideas, but reiterating them demonstrates the Kremlin’s unprecedented and renewed commitment to the earlier promises of reversing population decline within the framework of creating investment opportunities and working for economic growth.

Putin, attending the first meeting of the Council for the Implementation of State Demographic and Family Policy, made several points, including the following:

– outlined concretely comprehensive steps and created conditions that enable the birth of as many children as possible in Russia. A family with three or more children should be considered as a minimum standard. At the same time, it is also essential to encourage students in the system of higher education to combine studies with family life.

– suggested, without delay, providing financial support for families as an underlying factor for strengthening the demographic policy. It is necessary to work on incentives such as maternity capital, preferential loans, flat-rate benefits for low-income families, and low-interest mortgages.

– trashed side, in absolute terms, migration to replace the native population, which often sacrifices national identity and culture, and, importantly, could cause internal political instability.

– advocated strongly for addressing the demographic challenge by supporting large family traditions and preserving genuine Russian family values.

It is important to regularly analyze the effectiveness of the measures in the sphere of family policy, improving the system of social support to make it as transparent as possible, understandable, and convenient for families with children. This approach guarantees the future, preserves the ethno-cultural balance in Russian society, and strengthens Russia’s sovereignty.

Demographic complexities and implications

There are several complications in Russia’s demography policy, although officials and demographers keep analyzing family support measures currently in effect and identifying and scaling up the most effective of them. At least, for the past decade, Russia’s approach has simply not been working perfectly well as expected. Accurate statistics and population surveys reflecting the realities are needed for correct managerial decisions.

There is a constant temptation to use maternity capital to resolve various other issues. Naturally, families with children always face many of them; they are endless. Considerable efforts have been taken to raise the level of population, but with little results. Russia’s population figures are seriously staggering, with researchers and demographers pegging it at approximately 142 million. 

In the first place, Russia has a relatively high death rate, influenced by health issues and lifestyle factors. In the second place, the birth rate has been declining over the years, contributing to a natural decrease in population. Third, emigration, especially among young professionals and specialists, is due to a lust for better economic and living conditions outside the Russian Federation.  

Moscow, the capital city of Russia, is currently under reconstruction. Alternatively, the city periphery (outskirts), the new micro-region where residential apartment blocks are undergoing construction, needs serious migrant labor. Moscow city mayor Sergey Sobyanin reiterated that the municipal administration needed 250,000 (a quarter of a million) to work on the construction sites (fields). In addition, many are required for tidying up the city. Sobyanin complained that there was a shortage of labor. St. Petersburg, the second largest city, and other major cities are constantly complaining and stuck with new construction projects.

On one hand, Putin, in his October 23rd speech, indicated categorically his opposition to raising population by naturalizing citizens from the Central Asian republics. On the other hand, Putin, during the second Russia–Central Asia Summit, held in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, considered aspects of agreements encompassing migration of Central Asian citizens to Russia as a logical continuation of the close partnership within the framework of regional collaboration. 

Regrettably, legalizing 1.5 million (the majority from former Soviet republics) and transferring them to the Arctic and Far East regions to boost employment and systematically engage this labor in the production spheres is extremely hard for the Russian government. A well-coordinated and controlled ‘immigration’ could be one of the surest ways to allow population growth and comprehensive sustainable development and economic growth. 

Russia’s Logical Decision

In Putin’s candid views: “Different countries respond to this demographic challenge in various ways, including encouraging uncontrolled and even chaotic migration to replace the native population.” As a result, nations often sacrifice national identity, culture, and internal political stability.

Therefore, Russia opposes migrants replacing the native population, as contained in the speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was explicitly made clear that offsetting falling birth rates with immigration is destructive to internal stability and national identity. There stands the only option: Russia will support family values as the foundation of its society, rather than following in the footsteps of countries that try to solve demographic issues by replacing their native populations with “chaotic migration,” according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As the Netherlands gears up for a snap parliamentary election on October 29, less than halfway through parliament’s usual four-year term following the collapse of the ruling coalition, the likelihood of another win for the country’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is mounting.

An outright win is next to impossible. The Netherlands has always had a coalition government formed by a minimum of two parties due to its proportional representation electoral system, under which seats in parliament are awarded to parties in proportion to the number of votes they win.

The PVV, headed by Geert Wilders, also won the most votes in the last election in November 2023. It then partnered with three other far-right parties – the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), New Social Contract (NSC), and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) – to form a coalition government.

But in June, PVV made a dramatic exit from the coalition government over a disagreement on immigration policy. PVV had wanted to introduce a stricter asylum policy that included closing borders to new asylum seekers and deporting dual nationals convicted of crimes, but the other parties demanded further discussions.

In a dramatic move, Wilders took to X to announce that the failure by other parties to agree to PVV’s plans meant it would leave the coalition.

Coalition partners slammed this decision and accused Wilders of being driven by self-interest. VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz said at the time that Wilders “chooses his own ego and his own interests. I am astonished. He throws away the chance for a right-wing policy”.

Following the pull-out, Prime Minister Dick Schoof – an independent – announced that he would resign and a snap election would be held this month.

Then, in August, the NSC’s Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp also resigned after he failed to secure support for new sanctions against Israel over its war in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in Gaza City. In solidarity with Veldkamp, other NSC party members left the coalition, leaving only two parties remaining.

Now, with an election imminent, opinion polls suggest the PVV will secure the most seats in the 150-seat parliament. While a winner needs 76 seats to form a government, no single party ever makes it to that figure, which has led to a history of coalitions.

According to a poll by the Dutch news outlet, EenVandaag, on October 14, the PVV is projected to secure 31 seats. The centre-left Green-Labour alliance (GroenLinks-PvdA) is polling at 25 seats, and the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is polling at 23.

PVV’s former coalition partner, the centre-right VVD, could take 14 seats and the BBB, four. So far, the NSC is not projected to secure any seats at all.

Immigration fears

At the end of September, EenVandaag polled 27,191 people and found that the main sticking point between voters – and, hence, between the leaders, PVV and GroenLinks-PvdA – is immigration. Half of all voters said it was the key issue on which they would be voting this year. Housing was the second-most important issue at 46 percent, and “Dutch identity” came third at 37 percent.

While the PVV is firmly anti-immigration and wants to impose a much stricter border policy and asylum laws, GroenLinks-PvdA would prefer to allow a net migration figure of 40,000 and 60,000 migrants per year.

Tempers are running high over this issue. Last month at The Hague, a right-wing activist known as “Els Rechts” organised an anti-migration protest that attracted 1,500 attendees. According to reports, protesters threw stones and bottles at the police, set a police car alight and smashed windows of the left-wing Democrats 66 (D66) party offices.

While left-wingers argue that the immigration issue has been wildly hyped up by the far right, they are losing control of the narrative.

Esme Smithson Swain, a member of MiGreat, a Dutch non-governmental campaign group that calls for freedom of movement and equal treatment for migrants in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera that the far right in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom, more widely, had “constructed a narrative that there is a migration crisis”.

“They’ve managed to construct this idea of a crisis, and that distracts our attention away from populism, away from arms trades, away from social services and the welfare state being sold off.”

Whatever its merits, the right-wing message that immigration is at the root of many social ills seems to be taking hold. The far-left, pro-immigration BIJ1 party, which rejects this message, is not projected to win any seats at all in this election.

Immigration “is a key term especially for right-wing political parties to win the election”, Noura Oul Fakir, a candidate for the BIJ1 party, told Al Jazeera. “We don’t focus on it because we look at everything that’s been going on from a systemic point of view, that every form of oppression is interlinked … This fight for equality and justice, it’s about more than just immigration, but it’s also interlinked with other issues that we see nowadays.”

People ‘more emboldened to express racist views’

By January 1, 2024, the Netherlands was hosting 2.9 million migrants (16.2 percent of the population), compared to the average across European Union member states of 9.9 percent (44.7 million people in total).

Similarly, Germany hosts 16.9 million migrants (20.2 percent of the population); France, 9.3 million (13.6 percent of the population); Spain, 8.8 million (18.2 percent of the population); and Italy, 6.7 million (11.3 percent of the population), according to figures from the EU.

Mark van Ostaijen, an associate professor in public administration and sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, explained that immigration has become a mainstream talking point in “housing, care, educational and cultural policy domains”.

For instance, the Netherlands is currently short of 434,000 homes, including for 353,000 asylum seekers and 81,000 Dutch first-time buyers, according to figures commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO).

Immigration has, therefore, been blamed for what is seen as a housing crisis.

According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 316,000 migrants arrived in the country in 2024, 19,000 fewer than in 2023. But CBS also found that population growth is still mainly down to net migration, with the largest number of migrants coming from Ukraine and Syria.

“I think this is indeed something that will continue the electoral legitimacy of far-right parties, or right-wing parties, even more, given the fact that the Netherlands was already quite leaning towards the conservative angle,” van Ostaijen told Al Jazeera.

“This will be a topic that will haunt our politics and our democratic decision-making and discourse for quite a while,” he said.

Anecdotal evidence bears this out. Fakir has noticed a change in the experiences of immigrant residents she and her colleagues have spoken to in the country following the growth of the PVV.

“In their personal life [they have seen] a noticeable shift where people feel more free or emboldened to express racist views, both online and in real life. Others are telling them those classic things of ‘go back to your own country, or you’re not Dutch’,” she said.

For Nassreddin Taibi, a recent graduate who works as a political analyst and plans to vote for GroenLinks-PvdA, the anti-immigration protests at the Hague “further cemented polarisation among Dutch voters” and have caused centrist parties to fall into line with the right-wing narrative.

“These protests have influenced the discourse in the sense that centrist parties now say that cutting immigration is necessary to win back trust of voters in politics,” he said.

Nearly half of voters still undecided

While the far-right PVV is projected to win the most seats in this election, it will still face an uphill journey to form a government, as other parties such as the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) have ruled out joining a coalition government.

Furthermore, the PVV’s leader, Wilders, has not escaped controversy with his Islamophobic comments and anti-migration stance despite the rise in anti-immigration sentiment across the country as a whole.

Notable incidents over the years include Wilders’ likening of Islam to Nazism in 2007 and his reference to the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as “fascist” in a letter to a Dutch news outlet. His letter and comments led to Wilders being prosecuted for inciting hatred and discrimination, which he denied. In 2011, he was acquitted by a judge who ruled that his comments had fallen within the scope of free speech.

More recently, in August this year, Wilders posted an image on X that depicted a smiling, blonde and blue-eyed woman, representing the PVV; and a wrinkled, angry-looking elderly woman wearing a headscarf, representing the PvdA. It was accompanied by the words: “The choice is yours on 29/10.”

Aan U de keuze op 29/10 pic.twitter.com/royhcInDlm

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) August 4, 2025

Fake news and misinformation have also driven the rise in far-right narratives, analysts say.

The Facebook page ‘Wij doen GEEN aangifte tegen Geert Wilders’ (We are NOT filing charges against Geert Wilders), which claims to be a PVV supporters’ page boasting 129,000 followers, said it does not intend to be “discriminatory, hateful, or incite violence”, but has nevertheless posted AI-generated images of this nature.

In one such image, which received 1,700 likes, a white family is seemingly being harassed by men of colour.

In another, a white woman is seen in a supermarket paying for groceries while surrounded by Muslim women wearing hijabs and niqabs, with the caption: “No mass immigration, no Islamisation, no backwardness of the Dutch.” The post received 885 likes.

While the outgoing home affairs minister, Judith Uitermark, has said the government is examining new ways to combat fake news, she added that the Netherlands is somewhat protected from the rise of extremism by its proportional representation system, under which no one party ever wins a majority.

Still, the Dutch Data Protection Authority has warned voters not to use AI chatbots to help them decide who to vote for.

And a large number are still deciding. EenVandaag found that some 48 percent of voters are still undecided about which candidate they will choose. If the GroenLinks-PvdA can disengage from right-wing talking points and, instead, focus on its own policies more, it may perform better than expected, analysts say.

This will be no easy task, however.

“We find ourselves doing this also as a civil society organisation, as campaigners, trying to fight off the narrative and fight off the kind of populist ideals of the far right faster than we can push for our own agenda as well. And I think a lot of the time that leaves left-wing parties in the Netherlands seeming a bit hollow,” Swain said.

Still, she says that she is holding out hope for this election, despite what feels like a “vast and growing far-right bulk of the population”.

“I think it’s very easy to kind of feel that division between ‘us and them’. Us campaigning on the left and this growing mass of the far right,” Swain said.

“We need to tackle fighting the influence of lobbying and of fake news in our political structures. And I think that becoming more united as a population would naturally fall from that.”

Jose Raul Mulino says the visa-removal policy is ‘not coherent’ with the ‘good relationship’ he hopes to have with the US.

Panama President Jose Raul Mulino said that someone at the United States Embassy has been threatening to cancel the visas of Panamanian officials.

His statements come as the administration of US President Donald Trump pressures Panama to limit its ties to China.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his weekly news conference, Mulino said — without offering evidence — that an official at the US Embassy is “threatening to take visas”, adding that such actions are “not coherent with the good relationship I aspire to maintain with the United States”. He did not name the official.

The US Embassy in Panama did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has previously declined to comment on individual visa decisions.

But in September, the US Department of State said in a statement that the country was committed to countering China’s influence in Central America. It added that it would restrict visas for people who maintained relationships with China’s Communist Party or undermined democracy in the region on behalf of China.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration revoked the visas of six foreigners deemed by US officials to have made derisive comments or made light of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month.

Similar cases have surfaced recently in the region. In April, former Costa Rica President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias said the US had cancelled his visa. In July, Vanessa Castro, vice president of Costa Rica’s Congress, said that the US Embassy told her her visa had been revoked, citing alleged contacts with the Chinese Communist Party.

Panama has become especially sensitive to the US-China tensions because of the strategically important Panama Canal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama in February on his first foreign trip as the top US diplomat and called for Panama to immediately reduce China’s influence over the canal.

Panama has strongly denied Chinese influence over canal operations but has gone along with US pressure to push the Hong Kong-based company that operated ports on both ends of the canal to sell its concession to a consortium.

Mulino has said that Panama will maintain the canal’s neutrality.

“They’re free to give and take a visa to anyone they want, but not threatening that, ‘If you don’t do something, I’ll take the visa,’” Mulino said Thursday.

He noted that the underlying issue — the conflict between the US and China — “doesn’t involve Panama”.

The measure comes after the US added Mali to its list of African countries required to post bonds of $5,000 and $10,000.

Mali has imposed visa bond requirements on United States citizens identical to those Washington placed on Malian travellers, in a tit-for-tat response to moves that its government has condemned as a violation of bilateral agreements.

The Foreign Ministry in Bamako announced the reciprocal measures on Sunday after the US began requiring Malian nationals seeking business or tourist visas to post hefty bonds of between $5,000 and $10,000 starting on October 23.

Mali said the US programme breaches a 2005 accord guaranteeing long-term visa access between the two nations, and vowed to apply the same financial barriers to US passport holders under the principle of reciprocity.

In a statement released by its Foreign Ministry, Mali said it “has always collaborated with the United States of America in the fight against irregular immigration, with respect for law and human dignity”.

The dispute highlights escalating tensions as the administration of US President Donald Trump deploys visa restrictions as diplomatic leverage to pressure African governments on immigration enforcement and deportation cooperation.

Mali is among seven African countries facing the bond requirements under a year-long pilot scheme that the US State Department says targets nations with high visa overstay rates.

Mauritania, Sao Tome and Principe, and Tanzania were also added to the programme alongside Mali in late October, while Gambia, Malawi and Zambia were added earlier.

Trump immigration moves

Travellers subject to the bonds must pay up front through a US Treasury Department portal, and can only enter and exit the US through three designated airports.

The money is refunded if visitors depart on time, but forfeited for overstays or asylum applications. Consular officers determine individual bond amounts based on applicants’ circumstances.

The US justified the pilot by citing national security concerns and US Department of Homeland Security data showing more than 300,000 business and tourist visa holders overstayed their authorised periods in 2023.

Critics warn the fees – imposed atop standard $185 visa costs – could deter legitimate travel and harm the US tourism economy ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Mali said it was interested in “fruitful cooperative relations”, but was introducing the measure against US citizens attempting to travel there in the spirit of reciprocity.

The visa bonds are the latest immigration measure following months of efforts by the Trump administration to pressure African nations into accepting deportees, including those not from their own countries.

Several governments have received expelled migrants in exchange for payments or political favours, while others faced swift punishment for refusal.

Burkina Faso had all visa services suspended at its US Embassy after rejecting demands to accept third-country deportees, forcing residents to travel to neighbouring Togo for applications.

South Sudan initially had visas for all passport holders revoked following a deportation dispute, though it later accepted eight people from Asian and Latin American countries.

Eswatini agreed to receive up to 160 deportees for $5.1m in US funding, while Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda have also accepted expelled migrants under bilateral arrangements, according to diplomatic sources.

Protesters at the Broadview Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility near Chicago scuffled with police Friday morning. A day earlier a federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to the state of Illinois, saying the administration was providing “unreliable evidence” on supposed threats to federal agents.

Trump administration continues to send individuals to countries where they have no ties amid mass deportation push.

The United States has sent a second so-called “third-country” deportation flight to the tiny southern African nation of Eswatini, shrugging off human rights concerns.

Eswatini’s government confirmed on Monday it had received ten deportees from the US who were not nationals of the kingdom. That came after five other deportees from the US were sent to Eswatini in July.

The White House confirmed the deportations on Monday, saying the individuals had committed serious crimes.

Neither the US nor Eswatini confirmed the nationalities of the individuals who arrived on Monday. However, US-based immigration lawyer Tin Thanh Nguyen said they included three people from Vietnam, one from the Philippines, and one from Cambodia.

Rights groups have condemned the treatment of the first group of deportees sent to Eswatini — which included individuals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba , and Yemen — saying they were kept in solitary confinement and not given access to lawyers.

Nguyen said he was representing two of those who arrived on Monday and two others previously sent to Eswatini, but he remained unable to speak with any of them.

“I cannot call them. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access,” he said in a statement provided to Reuters news agency.

Amid its mass deportation push, the Trump administration has increasingly relied on sending deportees to third countries when they cannot legally send them to their homeland.

Rights advocates have challenged the practice, fearing it can leave those expelled stranded in countries where they do not speak the language and may not be afforded due process.

The Trump administration has also sent “third country” deportees to South Sudan, Ghana, and Rwanda.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the latest group of deportees sent to Eswatini had been convicted of “heinous crimes”, including murder and rape.

“They do not belong in the United States,” Jackson said.

Activists in Eswatini, a small mountain kingdom bordering South Africa, have also condemned the government’s secretive deal with the US. They have launched a legal challenge in hopes of scuttling the agreement.

For its part, the Eswatini department of correctional services has maintained that it is “committed to the humane treatment of all persons in its custody”.

The department said the individuals would be kept in correctional facilities until they could be repatriated to their home countries.

Officials accuse Trump of ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’ use of National Guard in latest effort to stop deployment.

Illinois has become the latest state to launch legal action in hopes of blocking United States President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard.

The lawsuit filed on Monday by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the city of Chicago officials came just hours after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to the state’s largest city, Portland.

Trump has sought to expand the use of the US military during his second term, including to aid in domestic immigration and law enforcement. That has come amid a wider effort to portray Democratic-run cities as violence-ridden and lawless.

In a post on X, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker decried Trump’s latest plan, which would involve federalising 300 of the state’s National Guard troops and deploying another 400 from Texas, as “unlawful and unconstitutional”.

Attorney General Raoul said US citizens “should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly for the reason that their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor “.

Since taking office in January, Trump has already deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in the state of California and the federal district of Washington, DC, and has floated sending troops to at least eight other major cities.

In September, a federal judge ruled the Trump administration ” wilfully ” broke federal law by deploying guard troops to Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids.

In the Oregon case, Judge Karin Immergut temporarily blocked Trump’s plan to deploy 200 National Guard troops from neighbouring California, saying anti-immigration enforcement protests there “did not pose a danger of rebellion”.

Karin also chided the Trump administration for appearing to disregard an order she had issued just a day earlier.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said on Sunday. “Why is this appropriate?”

Under US law, the US military cannot be used for domestic law enforcement unless the president deems the situation an insurrection and invokes the insurrection act. However, the National Guard can be used in a support capacity for federal law enforcement agents in some instances.

Despite the legal setbacks, Trump has remained defiant.

Speaking to US military commanders last week, Trump referred to “civil disturbances” as the “enemy within”. He further vowed to straighten out US cities “one by one”.

In one particularly remarkable statement, Trump said: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military”.

Beyond the National Guard, the Trump administration has surged federal law enforcement and immigration agents to cities across the country.

In Chicago, protesters have frequently rallied near an immigration facility outside of the city, where they arrested 13 people on Friday.

On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said that federal agents shot a woman in Chicago’s southwest.

A department statement said the shooting happened after Border Patrol agents patrolling the area “were rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars”. The woman, who survived the shooting, was taken into federal custody soon afterwards .

Thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa wait near the coast in Tunisia for an opportunity to make the treacherous voyage across the Mediterranean. Under an agreement signed with the European Union, the Tunisian government does what it can to stop them. NGOs and migrants accuse the Tunisian coastguard of deliberately sinking migrant boats at sea, leaving those on board to drown. Others say migrants are regularly bused out to the desert and abandoned. We investigate these allegations and meet the humans caught in the crossfire of a political battle over migration.

A court in Manchester in the United Kingdom has sentenced seven men to prison terms ranging from 12 to 35 years for the systematic sexual abuse of two teenage girls in Rochdale, in the north of England, between 2001 and 2006.

Mohammed Zahid, a 65-year-old market trader and the group’s ringleader, received the longest sentence on Wednesday after being convicted of multiple counts of rape and other sexual offences against both victims.

Six other men, aged between 39 and 67, were also convicted following a four-month trial that concluded in June.

They formed part of what would later be referred to as “grooming gangs” by UK media and be used in toxic public discourse by the far right as a means to demonise British Asians and Muslims.

The girls, who did not know each other, were both 13 years old when the abuse began.

Prosecutors presented evidence that the victims, both from troubled family backgrounds, were initially offered gifts, money, and places to stay. The abuse escalated as they were taken to various locations across the town, where they were given alcohol and drugs before being sexually assaulted by the members of the group.

Both victims provided impact statements during the three-day sentencing hearing. One described how the abuse had affected every aspect of her life, from her physical and mental health to her ability to form relationships. The other said that, at the time, she believed all men would expect sex from her and urged other victims to come forward regardless of how much time had passed.

The case represents part of ongoing legal proceedings addressing historical child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, which first came to public attention in the early 2010s. Local authorities and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have acknowledged failures in their duty to protect the victims.

Stephen Watson, the chief constable of GMP, issued an apology in April 2022, admitting that the force had been “borderline incompetent” in the way it managed the issue. The force, along with other local institutions, had failed to act despite warnings, according to a 2022 government-commissioned report, which led to an impression that the local council and police were downplaying “the ethnic dimensions of child sexual exploitation”.

Estimates from a 2014 report suggested the number of victims who may have been exploited by men primarily of Pakistani heritage in such cases is at least 1,400.

However, the vast majority of sexual cases in the UK continue to be perpetrated by white men.

The issue was raised again in the UK earlier this year when US tech billionaire Elon Musk began using his X account to accuse Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being complicit due to his role as head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time. The government rejected the allegations.

Other figures later seized on the issue, explicitly linking the perpetrators’ ethnicity to their crimes and blaming a culture of permissiveness towards minorities for blocking investigations, despite evidence to the contrary.

Far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known widely as Tommy Robinson, frequently campaigned on the issue, blaming the UK’s Muslim community and accusing the government of a cover-up, and got Musk’s backing due to his belief that Robinson, who has been repeatedly convicted of other crimes, was blowing the whistle on the issue.

Musk called for a new national inquiry into the rape gangs, as did some politicians. Starmer initially said an inquiry had taken place and the recommendations needed to be implemented, but later changed his position and backed the calls.

Starmer told the BBC that another transparent inquiry would help improve public confidence in authorities. “That, to me, is a practical, common-sense way of doing politics,” he said.

A preliminary report released in June by Baroness Louise Casey said data on the issue was poor and in many cases non-existent, which made determining whether any ethnic group was overrepresented very difficult.

“If you look at the data on child exploitation, suspects and offenders, it is disproportionately Asian heritage,” Casey said. “If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.”

Following Casey’s report, then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government had accepted the report’s recommendations, including the strengthening of rape law and protection for children.

Speaking in the House of Commons in June, Cooper added: “While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings, because, as Baroness Casey says, ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities.”

China is rolling out a new visa aimed at attracting foreign talent in the fields of science and technology.

The K visa comes into effect from Wednesday, following a proclamation last month by the State Council, China’s cabinet.

The visa has attracted particular attention in light of United States President Donald Trump’s tightening of the eligibility rules for the H-1B, which Silicon Valley heavily relies on to recruit skilled labour from overseas.

What is the goal of the K visa, and how does it work?

The Chinese government has cast the visa as part of its efforts to attract foreign talent to boost the country’s competitiveness in science and technology.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun on Tuesday said the visa’s purpose was to “promote exchanges and cooperation” between science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent from China and other countries.

The visa is the latest in a series of recent reforms intended to make China more attractive to foreigners, including streamlined visa processing and the introduction of a redesigned permanent residency card.

“From the 1980s to the 2010s, China used to lose talent to developed countries such as the United States,” Zhigang Tao, a professor of strategy and economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, told Al Jazeera.

“Now the task is to keep local talent and also attract some global talent.”

Chinese officials have said the K visa, which will be open to graduates of recognised universities and young professionals engaged in STEM-related fields, will offer more flexible conditions than existing options.

The main advantage of the visa is that, unlike previous skilled migrant programmes, it does not require sponsorship by an employer.

However, many key details of the visa remain unclear, including duration of stay and unspecified requirements related to age, educational background and work experience.

Is the K visa likely to attract foreign talent?

Edward Hu, immigration director at consultancy Newland Chase in Shanghai, said there has been strong interest in the visa, with inquiries up more than 30 percent since August.

Hu said there has been particularly strong interest from prospective applicants in India, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the US.

“The K visa fills a gap in China’s talent system by lowering entry barriers for younger STEM talents – complementing the existing R visa, which targets top-tier experts,” Hu told Al Jazeera, referring to the visa as a “strategic move” to position China as a top destination for early-career STEM talent.

The R visa, introduced in 2013, is aimed at “high-level and professional” foreigners who are “urgently needed” by the state, and requires sponsorship by an “inviting organisation”.

Still, China’s drive to expand its talent pool with the K visa faces challenges.

While China has made moves to open to foreigners, the country is still far less internationalised than the US.

Unlike the US, China rarely grants citizenship to foreigners.

While Chinese permanent residency is more feasible to obtain, it is still only granted to a tiny fraction compared with the roughly one million non-US citizens who receive green cards each year.

Chinese work environments also present a language barrier for English-speaking applicants when compared with their Silicon Valley counterparts.

Michael Feller, chief strategist at Sydney-based business consultancy Geopolitical Strategy, said Chinese companies would need to offer English-language roles and “international-style” work schedules to compete with US firms.

“I can’t imagine many foreign graduates interested in the ‘9-9-6’ work-life balance that many Chinese firms are known for,” Feller told Al Jazeera, referring to the 72-hour workweek famously endorsed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

What does the K visa have to do with the H-1B?

While China’s drive to recruit talent has cast Trump’s crackdown on immigration in sharp relief, there is no direct link between the introduction of the K visa and his moves to rein in access to the H-1B.

Beijing officially unveiled its visa on August 7, weeks before Trump announced the introduction of a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications, sending shockwaves through the tech sector, especially in India, the source of about 70 percent of visa recipients.

However, many observers have suggested that the US’s inward turn could be to the benefit of other countries seeking to attract talent, including China.

“The K visa is incredible timing from China’s perspective,” Feller said.

“It’s unlikely that Beijing knew that Washington was about to hike the fees for its own H-1B visa category, but it certainly gives the K visa added impetus in the global war for talent.”

Hu of Newland Chase said he expected the shift in policy around the H-1B to “significantly boost” the appeal of the K visa, “positioning it as a timely alternative for affected talent”.

“The K visa offers a low-cost, sponsor-free pathway – aligning with the global surge in STEM talent demand and making China a more accessible option,” he said.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry official says the Trump administration plans to deport about 400 Iranians.

An Iranian official says the United States plans to deport hundreds of Iranian citizens in the coming weeks, with the first 120 deportees expected to arrive in Iran within days, as US President Donald Trump continues his immigration crackdown.

Hossein Noushabadi, director general for parliamentary and consular affairs at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Tasnim news agency on Tuesday that US immigration authorities plan to deport about 400 Iranians.

Noushabadi said the first planeload of Iranian nationals would arrive “within the next one or two days” after a stop in Qatar. Qatari authorities did not immediately comment on his remarks.

Noushabadi said most of the Iranian nationals targeted had entered the US without documentation, primarily through Mexico, while some faced other immigration issues.

The deportations, which have not yet been publicly acknowledged by the Trump administration, come as tensions remain high between the two countries after the US joined its ally Israel in bombing Iran during a 12-day June conflict.

They also come as part of a wide-reaching crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers in the US, with Trump pledging to carry out the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.

Noushabadi said on Tuesday that US authorities had unilaterally made the decision to deport the Iranian nationals without consultations with Iran.

But the New York Times, citing anonymous Iranian officials, reported that the deportations were “the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries”.

The US news outlet said some of the Iranians had volunteered to leave after being in detention centres for months, while others had not.

A US-chartered flight took off from Louisiana on Monday and was scheduled to arrive in Qatar late on Tuesday so the deportees could be transferred to a Tehran-bound flight, a US official said.

The White House and the US Department of State did not immediately respond to requests from the Reuters news agency for comment.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has set out to deport a record number of people living in the US.

However, his administration has struggled to increase deportation levels, even as it has created new avenues to send migrants to countries other than their own.

In February, the US deported 119 people from different countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of an agreement between the two nations.

The UK government plans to introduce digital ID cards to curb illegal immigration, requiring employers to verify workers’ status. The scheme has faced strong opposition over its effectiveness and privacy concerns. Al Jazeera’s Ruby Zaman tells us more.

New Delhi, India — Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there.

So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would mean a stint on California’s West Coast.

Now, Gupta is 29, and her dreams lie in tatters after US President Donald Trump’s administration upended the H-1B visa programme that tech firms have used for more than three decades to bring skilled workers to the US.

Trump’s decision to increase the fee for the visas from about $2,000, in many cases, to $100,000 has imposed dramatic new costs on companies that sponsor these applications. The base salary an H-1B visa employee is supposed to be paid is $60,000. But the employer’s cost now rises to $160,000 at the minimum, and in many cases, companies will likely find American workers with similar skills for lower pay.

This is the Trump administration’s rationale as it presses US companies to hire local talent amid its larger anti-immigration policies. But for thousands of young people around the world still captivated by the American dream, this is a blow. And nowhere is that more so than in India, the world’s most populous nation, that, despite an economy that is growing faster than most other major nations, has still been bleeding skilled young people to developed nations.

For years, Indian IT companies themselves sponsored the most H-1B visas of all firms, using them to bring Indian employees to the US and then contractually outsourcing their expertise to other businesses, too. This changed: In 2014, seven out of the 10 companies that received the most H-1B visas were Indian or started in India; In 2024, that number dropped to four.

And in the first six months of 2025, Gupta’s TCS was the only Indian company in the top-10 H-1B visa recipients, in a list otherwise dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple.

But what had not changed until now was the demographic of the workers that even the above US companies hired on H-1B visas. More than 70 percent of all H-1B visas were granted to Indian nationals in 2024, ranging from the tech sector to medicine. Chinese nationals were a distant second, with less than 12 percent.

Now, thousands across India fear that this pathway to the US is being slammed shut.

“It has left me heartbroken,” Gupta told Al Jazeera of Trump’s fee hike.

“All my life, I planned for this; everything circled around this goal for me to move to the US,” said Gupta, who was born and raised in Bageshwar, a town of 10,000 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

“The so-called ‘American Dream’ looks like a cruel joke now.”

‘In the hole’

Gupta’s crisis reflects a broader contradiction that defines India today. On the one hand, the country — as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government frequently mention — is the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

India today boasts the world’s fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), behind just the US, China and Germany, after it passed Japan earlier this year. But the country’s creation of new jobs lags far behind the number of young people who enter its workforce every year, widening its employment gap. India’s biggest cities are creaking under inadequate public infrastructure, potholed roads, traffic snarls and growing income inequality.

The result: Millions like Gupta aspire to a life in the West, picking their career choices, usually in sectors like engineering or medicine, and working to get into hard-fought seats in top colleges – and then migrating. In the last five years, India has witnessed a drastic rise in the outflow of skilled professionals, particularly in STEM fields, who migrate to countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US.

As per the Indian government’s data, those numbers rose from 94,145 Indians in 2020 to 348,629 by 2024 — a 270 percent rise.

Trump’s new visa regime could now effectively close the pipeline of those skilled workers into the US. The fee hike comes on the back of a series of tension points in a souring US-India relationship in recent months. New Delhi is also currently facing a steep 50 percent tariff on its exports to the US — half of that for buying Russian crude, which the US says is funding the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade officer and founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that the hardest-hit sectors after the new visa policy will be “the ones that Indian professionals dominate: mid-level IT services jobs, software developers, project managers, and back-end support in finance and healthcare”.

For many of these positions, the new $100,000 fee exceeds an entry-level employee’s annual salary, making sponsorship uneconomical, especially for smaller firms and startups, said Srivastava. “The cost of hiring a foreign worker now exceeds local hiring by a wide margin,” he said, adding that this would shift the hiring calculus of US firms.

“American firms will scout more domestic talent, reserve H-1Bs for only the hardest-to-fill specialist roles, and push routine work offshore to India or other hubs,” said Srivastava.

“The market has already priced in this pivot,” he said, citing the fall of Indian stock markets since Trump’s announcement, “as investors brace for shrinking US hiring”.

Indian STEM graduates and students, he said, “have to rethink US career plans altogether”.

To Sudhanshu Kaushik, founder of the North American Association of Indian Students, a body with members across 120 universities, the Trump administration’s “motive is to create panic and distress among H-1B visa holders and other immigrant visa holders”.

“To remind them that they don’t belong,” Kaushik told Al Jazeera. “And at any time, at any whim, the possibility of remaining in the United States can become incredibly difficult and excruciatingly impossible.”

The announcement came soon after the start of the new academic session, when many international students – including from India, which sends the largest cohort of foreign students to the US – have begun classes.

Typically, a large chunk of such students stay back in the US for work after graduating. An analysis of the National Survey of College Graduates suggests that 41 percent of international students who graduated between 2012 and 2020 were still in the US in 2021. For PhD holders, that figure jumps to 75 percent.

But Kaushik said he has received more than 80 queries on their hotline for students now worried about what the future holds.

“They know that they’re already in the hole,” he said, referring to the tuition and other fees running into tens of thousands of dollars that they have invested in a US education, with increasingly unclear job prospects.

The landscape in the US today, Srivastava of GTRI said, represents “fewer opportunities, tougher competition, and shrinking returns on US education”.

Nasscom, India’s apex IT trade body, has said the policy’s abrupt rollout could “potentially disrupt families” and the continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

The new policy, it added, could have “ripple effects” on the US innovation ecosystem and global job markets, pointing out that for companies, “additional cost will require adjustments”.

‘They do not care for people at all’

Ansh*, a senior software engineer at Meta, graduated from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), one in a chain of India’s most prestigious engineering school, and landed a job with Facebook soon after that.

He now lives with his wife in Menlo Park, in the heart of the US’s Silicon Valley, and drives a BMW sedan to work. Both Ansh and his wife are in the US on H-1B visas.

Last Saturday’s news from the White House left him rattled.

He spent that evening figuring out flights for his friends — Indians on H-1B visas who were out of the country, one in London, another in Bengaluru, India — to see if they could rush back to the US before the new rules kicked in on Sunday, as major US tech firms had recommended to their employees.

Since then, the Trump administration has clarified that the new fees will not apply to existing H-1B visas or renewals. For now, Ansh’s job and status in the US are secure.

But this is little reassurance, he said.

“In the last 11 years, I have never felt like going back to India,” Ansh told Al Jazeera. “But this sort of instability triggers people to make those life changes. And now we are here, wondering if one should return to India?”

Because he and his wife do not have children, Ansh said that a move back to India — while a dramatic rupture in their lives and plans — was at least something they could consider. But what of his colleagues and friends on H-1B visas, who have children, he asked?

“The way this has been done by the US government shows that they do not care for people at all,” he said. “These types of decisions are like … brain wave strikes, and then it is just executed.”

Ansh believes that the US also stands to lose from the new visa policy. “The immigrant contribution is deeply sprinkled into the DNA of the US’s success,” he said.

“Once talent goes away, innovation won’t happen,” he said. “It is going to have long-term consequences for visa holders and their families. Its impact would reach everyone, one way or the other.”

India’s struggle

After the announcement from the White House on Saturday, Prime Minister Modi’s principal secretary, PK Mishra, said that the government was encouraging Indians working abroad to return to the country.

Mishra’s comments were in tune with some experts who have suggested that the disruption in the H-1B visa policy could serve as an opportunity for India — as it could, in theory, stanch the brain drain that the country has long suffered from.

GTRI’s Srivastava said that US companies that have until now relied on immigrant visas like the H-1B might now explore more local hiring or offshore some jobs. “The $100,000 H-1B fee makes onsite deployment prohibitively expensive, so Indian IT firms will double down on offshore and remote delivery,” he said.

“US postings will be reserved only for mission-critical roles, while the bulk of hiring and project execution shifts to India and other offshore hubs,” he told Al Jazeera. “For US clients, this means higher dependence on offshore teams — raising familiar concerns about data security, compliance, and time-zone coordination — even as costs climb.”

Srivastava noted that India’s tech sector can absorb some returning H-1B workers, if they choose to return.

But that won’t be easy. He said that even though hiring in India’s IT and services sector has been growing year-on-year, the gaps are real, ranging from dipping job postings to new openings clustered in AI, cloud, and data science. And US-trained returnees would expect salaries well above Indian benchmarks.

And in reality, Kaushik said, many H-1B aspirants are looking at different countries as alternatives to the US — not India.

Ansh, the senior engineer at Meta, agreed. “In the US, we operate at the cutting edge of technology,” whereas the Indian tech ecosystem was still geared towards delivering immediate services.

“The Indian ecosystem is not at the pace where you innovate the next big thing in the world,” he said. “It is, in fact, far from there.”

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof joins Talk to Al Jazeera at a pivotal moment for Europe and the Middle East. After his coalition collapsed, he reflects on leading the Netherlands through crises at home and abroad.

From the war in Gaza and sanctions on Israel to NATO, migration and United States President Donald Trump’s stance on Ukraine, Schoof gives rare insight into how the Netherlands navigates global fault lines. A politically unaffiliated leader and former intelligence chief, he speaks candidly about power, justice and Europe’s future.

The decision of the Trump administration to raise H-1B visa fees to $100,000 has predictably evoked strong responses in the US and other parts of the world. The Trump administration signed a proclamation on September 19, 2025.

 The Trump administration’s announcement has predictably received strong support from a section of Republicans—especially those belonging to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) camp.One of the countries that is likely to be impacted by this decision in more than one way is India. Indians received over 70% of the H-1B visas issued in 2024 and happened to be the largest beneficiary of the program. Chinese nationals received 12% of the H-1B visas and happened to be the second largest beneficiary of the program. Also, several Indian companies, like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, have been amongst the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B visa.

China’s K Visa: The Symbolic Importance

While the US has announced this decision, China has said that it will be introducing a K Visa—which will take effect on October 1, 2025. The K visa will be an addition to the existing 12 visa types issued by China.

The visa seeks to attract talented professionals who have graduated from reputable institutions in China and other countries, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Management (STEM) disciplines. In a statement, China’s Ministry of Justice said:

          ‘Barring specific age, educational background, and work experience requirements, applications for K visas do not require a domestic employer or entity to issue an invitation, and the application process will also be more streamlined.’

The symbolic importance of the K Visa, at a time when the US, along with other countries like Australia, is becoming more inward-looking in terms of immigration policies, is important. It remains to be seen if the K visa is successful in attracting talented professionals, especially from countries that do not have cordial ties with China.

It has been argued that IT companies may also seek to take advantage of the K visa by setting up operations in China. They are, however, likely to remain cautious, given the unpredictable global geopolitical situation.

Could the K-1 Visa help China in attracting international students?

The K Visa could make China a favored destination for international students—especiallystudents from parts of Asia and Africa. While US soft power has diminished in recent years, China has been taking various steps to enhance its soft power. One important tool for the same has been attracting international students.

 Given the revision in immigration policies of countries like the US, Australia, and Canada, international students from these countries have already been looking for alternatives. It would be pertinent to point out that European nations—especially Germany, France, and Spain—have been seeking to attract international students as well as professionals. Apart from liberalizing student procedures with the objective of attracting students who could contribute to innovation and R&D, several European nations, especially Germany, are beginning to introduce English-speaking courses. Other countries like the UAE and Singapore have also been making attempts to attract international students.

Conclusion

While the overall impact of the K visa remains to be seen, as discussed earlier, the timing cannot be ignored. It is unrealistic to start comparing this scheme with the H-1B visa since the US remains a favored destination for professionals from different parts of the world. Apart from this, many commentators have been arguing that the recent fee hike by the Trump administration is not feasible and will need to be revised.