Migration

The scheme, which government says will curb undocumented immigration, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum.

The United Kingdom has announced plans to introduce a digital ID scheme in a bid to curb undocumented immigration.

Announced by the government on Friday, the scheme will see the digital ID of British citizens and residents held on phones. The government said there will be no requirement for individuals to carry their ID or be asked to produce it, but that it will be “mandatory” for workers.

The UK has long resisted the idea of Identity cards, which were abolished after World War II, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is under pressure to tackle immigration that populist forces claim is uncontrolled.

The free digital ID would include a person’s name, date of birth, and photo, as well as information on their nationality and residency status.

It will be “mandatory as a means of proving your right to work”, a government statement said.

“This will stop those with no right to be here from being able to find work, curbing their prospect of earning money, one of the key ‘pull factors’ for people who come to the UK illegally,” it added.

The digital ID will also make it simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare, while streamlining access to tax records, the statement said.

“Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK… It will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits,” Starmer said. “It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

‘Digitally excluded’

The plans, which the government had previously said it was considering, drew criticism from across the political spectrum.

The centrist Liberal Democrats said they would not support mandatory digital ID where people are “forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives”.

Liberal Democrats cannot support mandatory digital IDs. People shouldn’t be criminalised just because they don’t want to hand over their private data. pic.twitter.com/mEzV7s9vUf

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) September 25, 2025

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, wrote on X that her party “will oppose any push by this organisation or the government to impose mandatory ID cards on law-abiding citizens”.

“We will not support any system that is mandatory for British people or excludes those of us who choose not to use it from any of the rights of our citizenship,” she added.

The far-right Reform UK party called the plans a “cynical ploy” designed to “fool” voters into thinking something is being done about immigration.

It also sought to tap into longstanding British suspicions regarding national ID schemes, which are common in most of Europe.

“It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us,” said Reform leader Nigel Farage.

I am firmly opposed to @Keir_Starmer’s digital ID cards.

It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us.

The state should never have this much power.

— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) September 25, 2025

In the 2000s, the Labour Party, then led by Tony Blair, attempted to introduce an identity card, but the plan was eventually dropped by Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, after opposition called it an infringement of civil liberties.

However, with populist narratives regarding immigration now rife, the government appears to be betting that such concerns will override the longstanding opposition.

The timing of the announcement appears no coincidence, coming as Labour prepares to hold its annual conference.

A petition demanding that ID cards not be introduced had collected 575,000 signatures by early Friday, but recent polling suggests majority support for the move.

According to UNHCR, more than seven million Syrians remain displaced inside the country.

The United Nations has said that one million Syrian refugees have returned to their country since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last December, while warning that funding for humanitarian operations is falling.

“In just nine months, one million Syrians have returned to their country following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government on 8 December 2024,” the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday.

The agency added that 1.8 million people displaced within Syria during its nearly 14 years of civil war had also returned to their areas of origin.

Nearly half of Syria’s pre-war population of 13 million was displaced by the conflict that began after the Assad regime’s crackdown on peaceful antigovernment protests as part of the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

Challenges for returnees

While describing the mass returns as “a sign of the great hope and high expectations Syrians have following the political transition in the country,” UNHCR said many of those heading back are struggling to rebuild their lives.

“Destroyed homes and infrastructure, weak and damaged basic services, a lack of job opportunities, and volatile security are challenging people’s determination to return and recover,” the agency said.

According to UNHCR, more than seven million Syrians remain displaced inside the country and more than 4.5 million are still abroad. It urged greater investment in stabilisation efforts and increased support for vulnerable families.

Call for humanitarian support

“The international community, private sector, and Syrians in the diaspora must come together and intensify their efforts to support recovery and ensure that the voluntary return of those displaced by conflict is sustainable and dignified and they are not forced to flee again,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

A recent UNHCR survey found that 80 percent of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq want to return home one day, with 18 percent saying they hope to do so within the next year.

“They have endured a lot of suffering in the past 14 years and the most vulnerable among them still need protection and assistance,” Grandi said. “Sustained support to hosting countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Türkiye is equally critical to ensure returns are voluntary, safe and dignified.”

UNHCR warned that funds for humanitarian operations are dwindling. Inside Syria, only 24 percent of the required funding is available, while for the wider regional Syria response, just 30 percent of the requested funds have been provided.

“This is not the time to cut back support for the Syrian people and their push for a better Syria for them and the region,” the agency said.

Lilongwe, Malawi – In the rural valleys of Malawi, where homes are built of mud and grass, and electricity is scarce, Tamala Chunda spent his evenings bent over borrowed textbooks, reading by the dim light of a kerosene lamp.

During the day, he helped his parents care for the family’s few goats and tended their half-acre maize field in Emanyaleni village, some 400km (249 miles) from the capital city, Lilongwe. By night, he studied until his eyes stung, convinced that education was the only way to escape the poverty that had trapped his village for generations.

That conviction carried him through his final examinations, where he ranked among the top 10 students in his secondary school.

Then, this May, a letter arrived that seemed to vindicate every late-night hour and every sacrificed childhood game: a full scholarship to the University of Dayton in Ohio, the United States.

“I thought life was about to change for the first time,” Chunda told Al Jazeera. “For my entire family, not just myself.”

News of the award brought celebration to his grass-thatched home, where family and neighbours gathered to mark what felt like a rare triumph. His parents, subsistence farmers battling drought and rising fertiliser costs, marked the occasion by slaughtering their most valuable goat, a rare luxury in a village where many families survive on a single meal a day.

Distant neighbours even walked for miles to offer their congratulations to the boy who had become a beacon of hope for the children around him.

But just months later, that dream unravelled.

The US embassy informed Chunda that before travelling, he would have to post a $15,000 visa bond – more than 20 years of the average income in Malawi, where the gross domestic product (GDP) per person is just $580, and most families live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

“That scholarship offer was the first time I thought the world outside my village was opening up for me,” he said. “Now it feels as if I’m being informed that no matter how hard I work, doors will remain sealed by money I will never have.”

A sudden barrier

Chunda is one of hundreds of Malawian students and travellers caught in the sweep of a new US visa rule that critics say amounts to a travel ban under another name.

On August 20, 2025, the US State Department introduced a yearlong “pilot programme” requiring many business (B-1) and tourist (B-2) visa applicants from Malawi and neighbouring Zambia to post refundable bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 before travelling.

The programme, modelled on a proposal first floated during the Trump administration in 2020, is intended to curb visa overstays. But Homeland Security’s own statistics suggest otherwise.

In 2023, the department reported that Malawian visitors had an overstay rate of approximately 14 percent, which is lower than that of several African nations not subject to the bond requirement, including Angola, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

“It is the equivalent of asking a farmer who earns less than $500 a year to produce 30 years’ worth of income overnight,” said Charles Kajoloweka, executive director of Youth and Society, a Malawian civil society organisation that focuses on education. “For our students, it is less of a bond and more of an exclusion order.”

A US embassy spokesperson in Lilongwe told local media that the bond programme was intended to discourage overstays, and said it did not directly target student visas.

While student visas, known as F-1s, are technically exempt from the bond requirement in the pilot phase of the programme, in practice the situation is more complicated, observers note.

International students on F-1s are allowed to enter the US up to 30 days before their programme start date. However, for those needing to arrive prior to that – for orientation programmes, housing arrangements, or pre-college courses, for instance – they must apply for a separate B-2 tourist visa.

That means that many scholarship recipients need tourist visas to travel ahead of the academic year. But without funds to secure these visas, the scholarships can slip away.

For students entering the US on tourist visas with the intention of changing their status to F-1 once they are there, this is legally permissible, but it must be approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The visa bond requirements make this pathway much more complicated for Malawian students.

Even for those who manage to raise the funds, there is no guarantee of success. Posting a bond does not ensure approval, and refunds are only granted if travellers depart on time through one of three designated US airports: Logan in Boston, Kennedy in New York, and Dulles outside Washington.

Kajoloweka added that the policy also places extraordinary discretion in the hands of individual consular officers, who decide which applicants must pay bonds and how much.

Students in limbo

For decades, programmes such as the Fulbright scholarships, the Mandela Washington Fellowship, and EducationUSA have created a steady pipeline of Malawian talent to American universities.

“Malawi depends on its brightest young minds acquiring skills abroad, especially in fields where local universities lack capacity,” said Kajoloweka. “By shutting down access to US institutions, we are shrinking the pool of future doctors, engineers, scientists, and leaders … It is basically a brain drain in reverse.”

The visa bond has strained decades of diplomatic and educational ties between the US and Malawi, a relationship built by programmes dating from the 1960s and reinforced by sustained investment in education and development.

Last month, Malawi’s foreign minister, Nancy Tembo, called the policy a “de facto ban” that discriminates against citizens of one of the world’s poorest nations.

“This move has shattered the plans most Malawians had to travel,” said Abraham Samson, a student who had applied for US scholarships before the bond was announced. “With our economy, not everyone can manage this. For those of us chasing further studies, these dreams are now a mirage.”

Samson has stopped monitoring his email for scholarship responses. He feels there is little point, believing that even if an offer were to arrive, the overall costs of studying in the US would remain far beyond his reach.

Section 214(b) of US immigration law already presumes every visa applicant intends to immigrate unless proven otherwise, forcing students to demonstrate strong ties to their home country.

The bond adds another burden, wherein applicants must now prove both their intention to return and that they have access to wealth beyond the means of most.

Hope on hold

The situation is even more difficult for small business owners.

One businessman has spent two decades creating his small electronics import company in Lilongwe, relying on regular trips to the US to identify cost-effective suppliers.

In the aftermath of the mandate, the $15,000 visa bond has disrupted his plans, forcing him to buy from middlemen at outrageous prices.

“Every delay eats away at my margins,” he explained, speaking under the condition of anonymity to protect future visa prospects. “My six employees rely on me. If I can’t travel, I may have to send them home.”

Civil society groups, such as the one Kajoloweka helms, are mobilising against the policy. The group is documenting “real-life stories of affected students,” lobbying both locally and internationally, and “engaging partners in the United States and Europe to raise the alarm”.

“We refuse to let this issue quietly extinguish the hopes of Malawian youth,” he said. “This bond is a barrier, but barriers can be challenged. Your dreams are valid, your aspirations are legitimate, and your voices matter. The world must not shut you out,” he added, speaking generally to Malawian youth.

Meanwhile, back in his village, Chunda contemplates a future far different from the one he had imagined. His scholarship to the University of Dayton sits unused, a reminder of an opportunity denied.

“I thought life was about to change for the first time,” he lamented. “For my entire family, not just myself. I now have to look elsewhere to realise my dream.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

The new plan follows a proclamation on Friday requiring a $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications.

The White House has released a proposal that would rework the H-1B visa selection process to favour higher-skilled and better-paid workers, according to a Federal Register notice.

The new proposal released on Tuesday followed a White House proclamation on Friday introducing a $100,000 fee for the visas.

The new process, if finalised, would give heavier weight to applications by employers who pay high wages if annual requests for the visas exceed the statutory limit of 85,000, the notice said. The move aims to better protect US workers from unfair wage competition from foreign workers, it said.

United States President Donald Trump launched a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January, including a push for mass deportations and trying to block citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born in the US. In recent days, his administration has intensified its focus on the H-1B programme, popular with technology and outsourcing companies for hiring skilled foreign workers.

The administration said on Friday that it would ask companies to pay $100,000 per year for each H-1B visa. Some big tech companies warned visa holders to stay in the US or quickly return, sparking a chaotic scramble to get back to the US. The White House later clarified the fee would apply only to new visas.

On Wall Street, tech company stocks have not responded well to the looming changes. Shares in Amazon, which sponsors the most H-1B visas of any company, have tumbled by almost 5 percent over the past five days.

The planned regulation posted on Tuesday would change an existing lottery process to obtain the visas if demand surpasses supply in a given year, creating wage tiers through which higher-paying jobs would have a better chance of being selected.

The process to finalise a regulation can take months or even years. The notice suggested that the new rules could be in place for the 2026 lottery, meaning before a March registration period.

The total wages paid to H-1B workers were expected to increase to $502m in fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, the notice said, citing US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates.

Those wages would increase by $1bn in fiscal 2027, $1.5bn in fiscal 2028 and $2bn in fiscal 2029-2035, it said.

An estimated 5,200 small businesses that currently receive H-1B visas would suffer a significant economic impact due to loss of labour, DHS said.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which issued the proposal, will give the public 30 days to comment starting on Wednesday, the notice said.

Slowing job market

The heightened requirements were proposed as a new AP-NORC poll was released that suggested about six in 10 US adults think companies see a major benefit from immigrants entering the US workforce, up from four in 10 in March 2024.

According to the poll, 51 percent of US adults said a “major” benefit of legal immigration is that US companies get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology.

The new proposal comes as job growth stalls in the US.

In August, the economy added only 22,000 jobs, according to the most recent jobs report released by the Department of Labor.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cited Trump’s hardline immigration policy as a reason for a slowdown in the jobs market and part of the central bank’s rationale for cutting interest rates by 25 basis points last week, the first cut since December.

US President Donald Trump accused the UN of aiding uncontrolled migration and told the General Assembly a ‘UN-funded assault’ was taking place against Western countries and their borders.

Dutch police deployed water cannons and tear gas to disperse a protest in The Hague. The protesters were rallying for immigration restrictions and stricter policies for asylum seekers.

Nasscom says the one-day deadline could have ‘ripple effects’ on the US innovation ecosystem, and global job markets.

India’s leading trade body says the one-day timeline for implementing a new $100,000 annual fee on H-1B worker visas in the United States was a matter of “concern”.

Nasscom, representing India’s $283bn IT and business process outsourcing industry, on Saturday said the policy’s abrupt rollout would affect Indian nationals and disrupt continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

“A one-day deadline creates considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world,” Nasscom said in a statement, a day after US President Donald Trump announced the fee, which comes into force from Sunday.

H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills – such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers – to work in the US, initially for three years, but extendable to six years.

India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved beneficiaries.

.@RNamb @sangeetagupta29 @doshikavita @shivendra_1969 @nasscomgtd pic.twitter.com/bSfCjDutjs

— nasscom (@nasscom) September 20, 2025

The new H-1B measure, which will likely face legal challenges, was announced alongside the introduction of a $1m “gold card” US residency programme.

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

Nasscom added that policy changes of this scale were best “introduced with adequate transition periods, allowing organisations and individuals to plan effectively and minimize disruption”.

US officials on Friday said the change to the H-1B programme would ensure that companies would only sponsor workers with the most rarefied skill sets. However, such a prohibitive fee will likely vastly transform the H-1B system, which was created in 1990 and awards 85,000 visas per year on a lottery system.

Supporters of the H-1B programme say it brings the best and brightest to work in the US, creating an edge against foreign competitors. Critics have long charged that companies have abused the programme, using it to pay lower wages and to impose fewer labour protections.

Tech entrepreneurs – including Trump’s former ally Elon Musk – have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the US does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.

However, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: “All the big companies are on board.”

Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Some analysts suggested the fee may force companies to move some high-value work overseas, hampering the US’s position in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race with China, which at 11.7 percent of total H-1B visas ranks a distant second, according to government data.

Following the White House’s announcement, major US tech firms Microsoft, JPMorgan and Amazon advised employees holding H-1B visas to remain in the US, according to internal emails reviewed by the Reuters news agency.

The new fee marks the Trump administration’s most high-profile attempt to overhaul the country’s temporary employment visa system. Since taking office in January, he has launched a broad crackdown on immigration, including efforts to limit certain forms of undocumented immigration.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s foreign ministry on Saturday said its officials would “comprehensively assess the impact of these measures on the advancement of [South Korean] companies and professional talents into the US market and engage in necessary communication with the US”.

Hundreds of South Koreans were detained during a US immigration raid on a Hyundai-LG battery factory site in the state of Georgia this month.

Fee paid by companies set to transform high-skill work visa system, upon which technology sector relies heavily.

United States President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation requiring a $100,000 application fee for companies seeking to sponsor workers H-1B visas.

Trump signed the proclamation during an event in the Oval Office, while also introducing a separate “gold card” visa for individuals to pay $1 million to expedite their immigration.

Administration officials said the change to the H1-B programme would assure that companies would only sponsor workers with the most rarified skill sets.

“We need great workers, and this pretty much ensures that’s what’s gonna happen,” he said.

However, such a prohibitive fee will likely vastly transform the H-1B system, which was created in 1990 in an effort to boost industries with high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math.

The visas are reserved for people with bachelor’s degrees or higher and have historically been awarded via a lottery system.

The programme has come under increased scrutiny from the Trump administration amid a wider crackdown on immigration, which Trump has tied to boosting domestic labour.

As part of that campaign, the Trump administration has also sought to introduce more restrictive policies on international students studying in the US, including requiring access to social media accounts and a ban on foreign travellers from several countries.

The administration has previously considered changing the H-1B visa rules to favour higher-paying employers, essentially doing away with the lottery system.

Supporters of the H-1B programme say it brings the best and brightest to work in the US, creating an edge against foreign competitors.

Critics have long charged that companies have abused the programme, using it to pay lower wages and to impose fewer labour protections.

The technology sector would be the hardest hit by any major change.

This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas, with more than 10,000 awarded. The company was followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google.

Geographically, California has the highest number of H-1B workers, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Meanwhile, India was the largest beneficiary of H-1B visas last year, accounting for 71 percent of approved beneficiaries. China was a distant second at 11.7 percent, according to government data.

The H-1B visas are approved for a period of three to six years.

A federal judge ruled that terminating Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans violates laws on government conduct.

The United States government has, for a second time, asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency order allowing it to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The Department of Justice on Friday submitted an emergency application asking the nation’s top court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the authority to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the migrants.

“So long as the district court’s order is in effect, the Secretary must permit over 300,000 Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so even temporarily is ‘contrary to the national interest’,” the Justice Department argued in its filing to the court.

In May, the Supreme Court sided with the Donald Trump White House, overturning a temporary order from US District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that had blocked the termination of TPS while the case moved through the courts.

On September 5, Chen issued his final ruling, concluding that Secretary Noem’s decision violated a federal law regulating the conduct of government agencies.

“This case is familiar to the court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this court’s orders on the emergency docket,” the Justice Department told the Supreme Court.

“This court’s orders are binding on litigants and lower courts. Whether those orders span one sentence or many pages, disregarding them – as the lower courts did here – is unacceptable.”

Millions of people have fled Venezuela in recent years due to political repression and a crippling economic crisis spurred in part by US sanctions against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Before leaving office, the administration of former US President Joe Biden had extended TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026.

TPS, created by the US Congress in 1990, grants people living in the US relief from deportation if their home country is affected by extraordinary circumstances such as armed conflict or environmental disasters.

An individual who is granted TPS cannot be deported, can obtain an employment authorisation document and may be given travel authorisation. A TPS holder cannot be detained by the US over their immigration status.

UK High Court ruled against Eritrean man in case that tested new ‘one in, one out’ migration scheme.

An Eritrean man who has been fighting to stay in the United Kingdom is set to be deported to France after losing a High Court bid to have his removal temporarily blocked.

The 25-year-old Eritrean man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, crossed the English Channel in August and was originally due to be removed on Wednesday under a “one in, one out” pilot scheme agreed between the UK and France in July.

But London’s High Court granted him an interim injunction on Tuesday, preventing his removal, pending a full hearing of his trafficking claim.

The man told the court he fled Eritrea in 2019 because of forced conscription before ultimately making his way to France. In France, he went to Dunkirk, on the English Channel, where he stayed in an encampment known as “the jungle” for about three weeks before travelling to the UK.

The UK’s Home Office opposed the bid to temporarily block the man’s removal and, at a hearing on Thursday, the High Court agreed, saying there was “no serious issue to be tried in this case”.

The judge, Clive Sheldon, said the man gave inconsistent accounts of his allegations of trafficking.

“It was open to [the Home Office] to conclude that his credibility was severely damaged and his account of trafficking could not reasonably be believed,” the judge said.

The man is set to be deported to France on Friday at 6:15am local time (05:15 GMT).

UK puts new plan into action

As the court was ruling against the Eritrean man, the UK interior ministry, the Home Office, was actively testing out its new scheme, deporting a man from India to France. The man, who arrived in the UK on a small boat in August, was sent to France on Thursday on a commercial flight.

This deportation was the first under the partnership between the UK and France, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying it provided “proof of concept” that the deal works.

“We need to ramp that up at scale, which was always envisaged under the scheme,” Starmer told reporters at a news conference alongside US President Donald Trump.

Under the “one in, one out” plan between the UK and France, people arriving in the UK would be returned to France, while the UK would accept an equal number of recognised asylum seekers with family ties in the UK.

Downing Street has defended the plan, calling it a “fair and balanced” system designed to reduce irregular migration.

UK charities have condemned the scheme.

The “cruel policy targeting people who come here to seek safety” was a “grim attempt … to appease the racist far-right,” Griff Ferris, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, told the news agency AFP.

Anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise

While Starmer has made stopping small boat crossings central to his government’s agenda, anti-immigrant sentiment has continued to rise in the UK.

Up to 150,000 people marched through central London over the weekend in a protest organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Four police officers were seriously injured during the protest, with a glass bottle appearing to have smashed against a police horse at one point.

Tens of thousands of migrants have arrived annually on UK shores in recent years. At least 23 people have died so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official French data.

Herat, Afghanistan – At the Islam Qala border, the relentless wind carries stinging dust that clings to skin as temperatures soar to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), transforming the ground into a scorching furnace.

Families huddle in narrow strips of shade, children protecting their faces with scarves as they await assistance.

For many, this harsh landscape represents their first glimpse of home after years in exile.

Since September 2023, more than four million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan, almost 1.5 million of them in 2025 alone. Simultaneously, International Organization for Migration (IOM) data reveals nearly 350,000 Afghans were displaced within the first four months of the year, including internal displacement and cross-border migration.

This mass movement stems primarily from deteriorating economic conditions and escalating climate change impacts.

In Iran, Afghans were not merely temporary workers; they were vital to the economy, filling essential roles in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing. Their departure has created significant gaps in Iran’s workforce, while those returning face profound uncertainty in Afghanistan.

“Now I have nothing – no job, no home, and no one to turn to,” says Maryam, a widow with two children, who had lived in Iran for six years.

Despite suffering from kidney problems, her greatest pain comes from watching her 15-year-old son, Sadeq, search for work instead of attending school. He keeps his educational aspirations secret to spare his mother additional worry. For Maryam, this unspoken dream weighs heavier than any physical ailment.

The World Bank’s 2025 Development Update indicates Afghanistan’s economy remains precarious.

The massive influx of returnees has intensified unemployment pressures, with an estimated 1.7 million additional young people expected to enter an already overwhelmed labour market by 2030. Without substantial investment in skills development, entrepreneurship, and job creation, many may be forced to migrate again.

Since 2024, IOM has provided skills training to nearly 3,000 returnees, internally displaced people, and vulnerable host community members. The organisation has also supported more than 2,600 businesses — 22 percent of which are owned by women — helping to generate almost 12,000 jobs, including over 4,200 for women.

While these initiatives bring crucial stability and dignity, they represent only a fraction of what is needed. With increased funding, IOM can provide greater stability, reduce repeat migration risks, and help returnees rebuild dignified lives.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.

Human rights groups say the government risks breaching international law by denying people the right to claim asylum.

A British court has temporarily blocked the deportation of an asylum seeker to France, dealing an early setback to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to return people who arrive in the United Kingdom on small boats.

The 25-year-old Eritrean man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, crossed the English Channel on August 12 and was due to be removed on Wednesday under a “one in, one out” pilot scheme agreed between the UK and France in July.

But on Tuesday, London’s High Court granted him an interim injunction preventing his removal, pending a full hearing of his trafficking claim.

Judge Clive Sheldon ruled: “I am going to grant a short period of interim relief. The status quo is that the claimant is currently in this country and has not been removed.

“So, I make an order that the claimant should not be removed tomorrow at 9am, but that this matter should come back to this court as soon as is reasonably practical in light of the further representations that the claimant … will make on his trafficking decision.”

“The removal takes place against the backdrop of the recently signed agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the French Republic.

“It seems to me there is a serious issue to be tried with respect to the trafficking claim and whether or not the Secretary of State has carried out her investigatory duties in a lawful manner.”

The case follows a decision by the UK’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – which identifies and assesses victims of slavery and human trafficking – asking the man to submit further evidence in relation to his claim.

The ruling is a setback for Prime Minister Starmer, who has made stopping small boat crossings central to his government’s agenda.

His approach has drawn criticism from rights groups, who accuse him of bowing to pressure from the far right following attacks on asylum-seeker accommodation.

The UK-France scheme is also seen by analysts as part of the government’s attempt to blunt the growing support of the anti-immigrant Reform UK party, which has been climbing in opinion polls.

Under the plan, people arriving in Britain would be returned to France, while the UK would accept an equal number of recognised asylum seekers with family ties in Britain.

Downing Street has defended the plan, calling it a “fair and balanced” system designed to reduce irregular migration.

It insisted it expects deportations to begin “imminently”, with the prime minister’s official spokesman saying “for obvious reasons we’re not going to get into a running commentary on operational details before that”.

Human rights groups say the government risks breaching international law by denying people the right to claim asylum in the UK.

Fatma Ali and her children find hope after reuniting with husband and father Shamoun Idris amid Sudan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.

A Sudanese father who had lost contact with his wife for 18 months has been reunited with his family after recognising them in an Al Jazeera news report.

Shamoun Idris lived with his wife, Fatma Ali, and their children in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, until the city became a battleground between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in August 2023, a few months after the war in Sudan started.

As the war intensified and shelling increased near their home, the couple decided that Fatma would try to escape Khartoum with their children. Shamoun would stay behind and protect the house as RSF forces advanced, looting homes and attacking civilians.

“I decided that they should leave,” Shamoun told Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who reported on the initial story featuring Fatma and their children. “I stayed behind to guard the house. We thought the war would end soon and they would be able to return.”

But soon after, and with the violence in the capital increasing, Idris was also forced to flee. In the process, both Shamoun and Fatma lost their phones and were unable to contact each other, with no knowledge of where the other was.

The couple became two of the 7,700 Sudanese people searching for missing relatives, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“I kept telling the children he was somewhere, just unable to reach us, but, in fact, I was completely at a loss, and I was wondering what really happened to him. I couldn’t focus on the children or on him being missing,” said Fatma.

Reunion

Fatma and the children eventually reached Sennar, south of Khartoum, where they sheltered in a school.

Meanwhile, Shamoun searched for them in vain, until he eventually saw an Al Jazeera news report from February about missing relatives.

In the report was his wife, Fatma.

“I said, ‘Man, this is my family!’ I said, ‘I swear, it’s my family.’ It was such a huge surprise,” Shamoun said.

As Fatma listened to her husband tell the story of their recent reunion, she began to cry, overwhelmed with the emotion of Shamoun’s absence.

She said her hope now is for the family to rebuild their lives. “I hope we can go back and return to our previous life. I knew my children would be OK as long as I was with them, but for their father to be gone, that was a real problem.”

“Our children went to school and were very happy. Not one of our children was out of school; they even went to private schools, not public ones,” she said. “Now, it’s been more than two years since they saw the inside of a classroom, except as somewhere to shelter.”

Since being reunited, Shamound has found a small plot of land in Sennar, where he has built a little shack for the family.

It has no door to keep out rain, wind or sun, but thousands of other displaced people in Sudan do not have any shelter at all.

For now, Shamoun and Fatma are grateful for the little privacy and freedom it provides, and for being together.

Antifascist campaign group Hope Not Hate condemns speeches at Saturday’s rally in London as ‘extremely disturbing’.

Britain will “never surrender” to far-right protesters who use the national flag as cover for violence and intimidation, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer says after violent scenes at one of the country’s largest far-right demonstrations in decades.

More than 110,000 people marched through central London on Saturday in a protest against immigration led by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Some attending the Unite the Kingdom rally clashed with police. Twenty-six officers were injured, and at least 24 people were arrested, according to the Metropolitan Police.

In his first public comments since the rally, Starmer said on Sunday that peaceful protest was a fundamental value in Britain, but he condemned assaults on police officers and intimidation against marginalised communities.

“People have a right to peaceful protest. It is core to our country’s values,” he said. “But we will not stand for assaults on police officers doing their job or for people feeling intimidated on our streets because of their background or the colour of their skin.”

He added: “Britain is a nation proudly built on tolerance, diversity and respect. Our flag represents our diverse country, and we will never surrender it to those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear and division.”

Islam is the ‘real enemy’

Saturday’s protest was marked by nationalist symbols, scuffles and inflammatory speeches. Footage showed police on horseback pelted with bottles while baton charges were used to push back Robinson supporters and allow about 5,000 counterdemonstrators to leave the Whitehall area of central London safely.

A stage was erected for speeches from a lineup of far-right figures. Leading the charge was Robinson, who told the crowd: “It’s not just Britain that is being invaded. It’s not just Britain that is being raped.”

“Every single Western nation faces the same problem: An orchestrated, organised invasion and replacement of European citizens is happening,” he added.

International speakers included French politician Eric Zemmour, who echoed the views put forward by Robinson. “We are both subject to the same process of the great replacement of our European peoples by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture,” he said, citing the great replacement conspiracy theory that white Europeans are being deliberately replaced by people from other ethnicities.

“You and we are being colonised by our former colonies,” Zemmour added.

Similarly, Belgian far-right politician Filip Dewinter declared: “It has to be clear that Islam is our real enemy. We have to get rid of Islam. Islam does not belong in Europe, and Islam does not belong in the UK.”

Other speakers included Danish People’s Party leader Morten Messerschmidt, German Alternative for Germany MP Petr Bystron and Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski.

Tesla CEO and X Chairman Elon Musk also made an appearance by videolink, telling protesters the UK needed an “urgent change in government” and warning them to “fight back” or “die”.

Police, government and antifascist groups condemn violence

The rally came amid a wave of far-right violence in recent months, including arson attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers.

Experts said these incidents, fuelled by conspiracy theories, xenophobia and online disinformation, have intensified concerns over the rise of far-right movements across Britain and Europe, which often spill over into rioting and violence.

Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Matt Twist said the violence directed at officers was “wholly unacceptable”. He added: “There is no doubt that many came to exercise their lawful right to protest, but there were many who came intent on violence.”

British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood also condemned the violence, warning that anyone taking part in criminal acts would “face the full force of the law”.

Starmer’s remarks followed calls from the antifascist group Hope Not Hate and several MPs urging the government to act against the surge in far-right mobilisation. Hope Not Hate described the protest as “extremely disturbing”.

“While the turnout was significantly smaller than the millions claimed by Lennon and his supporters, it appears to be the largest far-right demonstration ever seen in Britain,” the group said.

“For anyone worried about the rise of far-right activism and the normalisation of viciously anti-migrant, anti-Muslim sentiment, it could be a sign of dark times to come,” it added.

LONDON — A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy showing a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel has appeared outside a London court.

The mural depicts a protester lying on the ground holding a blood-splattered placard while a judge in a traditional wig and black gown beats him with a gavel. Banksy posted a photo of the work Monday on Instagram, his usual method of claiming a work as authentic. It was captioned “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.”

While the artwork does not refer to a particular cause or incident, activists saw it as a reference to the U.K. government’s ban on the group Palestine Action. On Saturday almost 900 people were arrested at a London protest challenging the ban.

Defend Our Juries, the group that organized the protest, said in a statement that the mural “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed” by the government ban. “When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent, it strengthens it,” the statement said.

Security officials outside the courthouse covered the mural Monday with sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers, and it was being guarded by two officers and a CCTV camera.

Banksy began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the world’s best-known artists. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.

Banksy’s work often comments on political issues, with many of his pieces criticizing government policy on migration and war.

At the Glastonbury Festival last year, an inflatable raft holding dummies of migrants in life jackets was unveiled during a band’s headline set. Banksy appeared to claim the stunt, which was thought to symbolize small boat crossings of migrants in the Channel, in a post on Instagram.

The artist has also taken his message on migration to Europe.

In 2019, “The Migrant Child,” depicting a shipwrecked child holding a pink smoke bomb and wearing a life jacket, was unveiled in Venice. A year prior, a number of works including one near a former center for migrants that depicted a child spray-painting wallpaper over a swastika were discovered in Paris.

Banksy has also created numerous artworks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the years, including one depicting a girl conducting a body search on an Israeli soldier, another showing a dove wearing a flak jacket, and a masked protester hurling a bouquet of flowers. He also designed the “Walled Off Hotel” guesthouse in Bethlehem, which closed in October 2023.

Last summer, Banksy captured London’s attention with an animal-themed collection, which concluded with a mural of a gorilla appearing to hold up the entrance gate to London Zoo.

For nine days straight Banksy-created creatures — from a mountain goat perched on a building buttress to piranhas circling a police guard post to a rhinoceros mounting a car — showed up in unlikely locations around the city.

Doye writes for the Associated Press.

Melbourne, Australia – A far-right “anti-immigration” march escalated into a violent attack on a sacred Indigenous site in Melbourne last weekend, raising serious questions about police conduct and institutional responses to neo-Nazi groups in Australia.

The march on Sunday, which saw members of the self-described neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) lead chants of “Australia for the white man”, culminated in a group of 50 men storming Camp Sovereignty – the site of a historic Aboriginal burial ground in the city.

The attack left four people injured, with two hospitalised for severe head wounds.

The “March for Australia” protest against mass immigration came just one week after more than 350,000 people marched across Australia in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

Far-right and neo-Nazi connections were evident in the organisation of the march.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), prominent far-right figure Hugo Lennon, an associate of the neo-Nazi NSN, was listed as an original organiser before being quietly removed from the event’s Facebook page days prior.

In a statement released a day before the march, Thomas Sewell, leader of the NSN, declared, “March for Australia is about stopping immigration. No illegal actions or gestures will be performed by our members on the day.”

For some, the ensuing violence at Camp Sovereignty made clear the event’s underlying intentions.

“The rally was never about immigration but an excuse to parade white supremacist ideas in Australia,” said Ilo Diaz from the Centre Against Racial Profiling.

‘We knew they were coming back’: The assault on Camp Sovereignty

The Camp Sovereignty protest site occupies the “Kings Domain” parkland area in central Melbourne.

The camp is considered a sovereign embassy of Australia’s First Nation people and a sacred space dedicated to honouring Indigenous ancestors and healing generational trauma within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, particularly the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

Established in 2006 by elders Robbie and Marg Thorpe, Camp Sovereignty marks the site of an Indigenous ceremonial place and burial ground, and has come to symbolise ongoing Indigenous resistance in Australia, advocating for an end to genocide and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and land rights.

Nathalie Farah, who said she was kicked in the stomach during the attack on the camp, said the threat from the far right was evident hours before the violence took place.

“Earlier that morning, Tom [Sewell] and a couple of his mates walked through Camp Sovereignty,” Farah told Al Jazeera.

“They wanted to walk through the sacred fire. We knew that they were going to come back. The police knew they were coming back,” Farah said.

At approximately 5pm local time, a large group, led by Sewell, armed with poles and pipes, charged the camp.

Video footage shared on social media showed the attackers, most dressed entirely in black, charging towards the camp and assaulting anyone in their path as they tore down First Nation flags and inflicted damage to the site.

The Black Peoples Union, an Indigenous political organisation, said the attackers chanted “white power” and racial slurs while stamping on the camp’s sacred fire – which is kept burning to honour the Indigenous ancestors buried at the site – and trampling on the Aboriginal flag.

Video clips of the attack showed the men and younger youths specifically targeting women at the camp.

“I had what looked like a 15-year-old boy rip my hair, throw me to the ground and smash into my face with his fists. He did it with a smile on his face,” a 30-year-old teacher said in a witness statement to the Black Peoples Union.

Naarm Frontline Medics, a volunteer medical group, alleged police arrived at the camp only after the attackers fled, and claimed officers “came with pepper spray drawn on the victims of the assault, not the attackers”.

The medics also accused officers of having “actively obstructed the victims ‘ access to emergency medical care”.

Victoria Police confirmed they made no arrests at the site.

A ‘globally networked’ threat

Researchers note the attack on Camp Sovereignty was not an isolated incident but part of a growing, internationally connected, far-right threat.

The White Rose Society, which monitors far-right extremism, told Al Jazeera the neo-Nazi NSN group is “heavily networked with the international far right” through groups such as Terrorgram and 764/COM, with leaders “playing a prominent role in the international active club network”.

“Australian fascists and neo-Nazis have extensive reach on social media to an international audience, contributing to neo-Nazi news sites that promote anti-Semitic content,” the group said.

The NSN did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

The group’s Telegram channel displays multiple videos showing members training in combat techniques and chanting “white men fight back”, content that is also promoted across their TikTok accounts and official website.

The camp attack has highlighted concerns among some regarding the selective condemnation of far-right violence from official institutions in Australia.

Australia’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, Jillian Segal, who was appointed to lead efforts against anti-Semitic actions in Australia, has yet to issue a statement addressing the neo-Nazi violence.

Segal also declined to address the role of neo-Nazis in the “March for Australia” protest, telling reporters at a conference: “I don’t want to comment on any particular incidents as I think this goes beyond any particular incident.”

In July, Segal said she had no involvement in a major donation by a company co-directed by her husband to Advance Australia – a conservative lobby group that rails against immigration, pro-Palestinian protests, and the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Aboriginal Senator Lidia Thorpe, a Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman, condemned what she called institutional hypocrisy in dealing with the far-right in Australia.

“Why are the authorities allowing this to happen? Why is the prime minister allowing this to happen?” Senator Thorpe said.

Thorpe has demanded a full investigation into the attack on Camp Sovereignty and has directly linked the slow police response to systemic racism in Australian society.

“We see how the Victorian Police treat Aboriginal people every day on the streets. There needs to be a full investigation on the infiltration of the neo-Nazi movement into not only the Victorian police force, but every so-called police force in this country,” Thorpe said.

“I’m sure there’s a lot more members of the NSN that wear badges amongst the police force,” she added.

The March for Australia rally proceeded with a significant police presence last weekend. Videos and witness accounts show police officers walking alongside the demonstrators.

When counter-protesters attempted to block NSN members from joining the main rally, video footage shared by the NSN and anti-fascist organisers showed police using pepper spray, but only on counter-protesters.

Political commentator Tom Tanuki said this selectivity fitted a pattern of police conduct that “invariably” sides with the far right.

“I wasn’t surprised to see them, as depicted in my video, defending NSN’s entry into the rally and pepper-spraying people out of the way,” Tanuki said.

A statement released before the march by Victoria Police declared, “Anyone thinking of coming into the city to cause trouble, display hateful behaviour, breach the peace or confront others will be met with a strong police response.”

A measure of accountability

More than 48 hours after the attack on Camp Sovereignty, NSN leader Sewell was arrested and charged. On Friday, he was denied bail by a court in Melbourne. Five other NSN members were arrested and released on bail.

Despite the arrests, authorities have not classified the attack on Camp Sovereignty as a racially motivated hate crime, which has prompted condemnation from Aboriginal leaders.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Senator Thorpe stated unequivocally: “Camp Sovereignty is our place of worship. For the authorities, even the federal parliament and the prime minister, not to see this as a hate crime, to refuse to name it and treat it as one, shows we have a serious problem in this country.

“It’s racism in itself not to call it what it is,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe connected the violence to Australia’s colonial legacy.

“The war has not ended for our people,” she added.

“We have over 600 Aboriginal deaths in custody with no one held accountable. 24,000 of our children have been taken from their mothers’ arms. They’re locking up our babies from age 10; 93 percent of the child prison population are our children. The genocide continues.”

Despite the attack, Camp Sovereignty remains, and a nationwide day of action has been called by Aboriginal resistance organisation The Blak Caucus on September 13, to show solidarity with the camp.

Egypt says forced Palestinian displacement a ‘red line’ as Qatar calls it a ‘extension’ of Israel’s policy of violating Palestinian rights.

Egypt and Qatar have expressed strong condemnation over remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the displacement of Palestinians, including through the Rafah crossing.

In a statement on Friday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the comments as part of “ongoing attempts to prolong escalation in the region and perpetuate instability while avoiding accountability for Israeli violations in Gaza”.

In an interview with the Israeli Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, Netanyahu claimed there were “different plans for how to rebuild Gaza” and alleged that “half of the population wants to leave Gaza”, claiming it was “not a mass expulsion”.

“I can open Rafah for them, but it will be closed immediately by Egypt,” he said.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry reiterated its “categorical rejection of forcibly or coercively displacing Palestinians from their land”.

“[Egypt] stresses that these practices represent a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes that cannot be tolerated,” the ministry added.

The statement affirmed that Egypt will never be complicit in such practices nor act as a conduit for Palestinian displacement, describing this as a “red line” that cannot be crossed.

‘Collective punishment will not succeed’

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also fiercely criticised Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them an “extension of the occupation’s approach to violating the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people”.

“The policy of collective punishment practised by the occupation against the Palestinians … will not succeed in forcing the Palestinian people to leave their land or in confiscating their legitimate rights,” it said in a statement.

It stressed the need for the international community to “unite with determination to confront the extremist and provocative policies of the Israeli occupation, in order to prevent the continuation of the cycle of violence in the region and its spread to the world”.

The war of words comes as Egypt and Qatar continue to lead mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel, seeking to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said Netanyahu’s comments were “incredibly controversial” since it’s the Israeli government which has outlined that “it wants the Palestinians out of Gaza”.

“The condemnation from both Qatar and Egypt is essentially telling Israel this is all a part of its larger plan, that Israel is the one that waged war on the Gaza Strip, that the continuation of crimes against the Palestinian people and the total closure of the Rafah border crossing is the reason why they’re imprisoned in Gaza, not because of anything else,” she said.

“It is Israel that single-handedly created this policy.”

Seoul demands protection for nationals, investors as Trump’s immigration crackdown sees hundreds detained in ICE raid.

South Korea has complained after United States immigration officials detained hundreds of workers during a raid on a Hyundai-LG battery plant being built in the state of Georgia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul on Friday demanded the rights of its investors and citizens be respected following the raid the previous day, which forced construction of the factory to be suspended.

The episode highlights the disruptive effect President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is having on his efforts to attract foreign investment. The Hyundai-LG plant is part of the biggest foreign investment in the state of Georgia.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of US law enforcement,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lee Jaewoong, said in a statement.

Since Trump returned to power in January, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids.

The president has said he wants to deport “the worst of the worst” criminals. But ICE figures show a rise in the detainment of non-criminals.

Lee did not specify exactly how many South Koreans were detained, calling the number “large,” but media reports suggested that 300 or more had been taken into custody.

The Atlanta office of the US Justice Department agency ATF said in a post on X that up to 450 people in total had been detained.

The Korea Economic Daily reported that as many as 560 workers at the Hyundai Motor facility and LG Energy Solution (LGES) had been detained.

Of that number, some 300 are South Korean nationals, according to the Reuters and AFP news agencies, citing South Korean media and unnamed sources.

A South Korean government official told Reuters that the detainees were being held at an ICE detention facility.

Lee said the ministry is taking active measures to address the case, dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and planning to form an on-site response team centred on the local mission.

In July, Seoul pledged $350bn in US investment to ease tariff threats from Trump, who was elected last year on a promise to lead the largest migrant deportation programme in US history.

A federal appeals court ruled on September 2 that the Trump administration cannot use an 18th-century law to quickly deport suspected gang members.

Its decision largely hinged on the administration’s assertion that the Venezuela-based gang Tren de Aragua had invaded the United States.

“Applying our obligation to interpret the (Alien Enemies Act), we conclude that the findings do not support that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred,” the ruling said.

The conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision effectively blocks the government from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act’s fast-track process to deport people it says belong to the gang. Such an invasion or incursion is a necessary condition for the US to deport people using the law.

Here are five things to know about the Alien Enemies Act, the court’s ruling and what could come next:

How did the Trump administration use the law before the ruling?

On March 15, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which lets the president detain and deport people from a “hostile nation or government” without a hearing when the US is either at war with that country or the country has “perpetrated, attempted, or threatened” an invasion or raid legally called a “predatory incursion” against the US.

That same day, the Trump administration deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the Center for Terrorism Confinement, or CECOT, a maximum-security El Salvador prison. An investigation by ProPublica and other news organisations found the vast majority of the men had no criminal records. And none of the men’s names appeared in a list of alleged gang members kept by Venezuelan law enforcement and international law enforcement agency Interpol.

In July, as part of a prisoner exchange between the US and Venezuela, the men deported from the US and held in CECOT were returned to Venezuela.

Several legal challenges followed after Trump’s invocation of the law. But the September 2 appellate court’s ruling is the first to address whether Trump legally invoked it.

What did the appeals court say about an invasion?

The court said Tren de Aragua has not invaded or carried out a predatory incursion against the US.

The appellate court disagreed with Trump’s March assertion that “evidence irrefutably demonstrates that (Tren de Aragua) has invaded the United States.” To determine whether Tren de Aragua had invaded or carried out a predatory incursion, the court had to define what each of those terms meant.

“We define an invasion for purposes of the (Alien Enemies Act) as an act of war involving the entry into this country by a military force of or at least directed by another country or nation, with a hostile intent,” the ruling said.

As for a predatory incursion, the court said the term “described armed forces of some size and cohesion, engaged in something less than an invasion, whose objectives could vary widely, and are directed by a foreign government or nation”.

The court ruled that a country “encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organised force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States”.

The court said the mass migration of Venezuelan immigrants did not constitute an armed or an organised force.

Was any part of the ruling favourable to the Trump administration?

The court said it does not have the power to rule on the accuracy of the information the Trump administration presented about how closely Tren de Aragua is tied to the Venezuelan government led by President Nicolas Maduro.

But the court ruled that Tren de Aragua can be considered a government or nation for the law’s purposes, assuming Trump’s assertion is true that the group is being led by the Venezuelan government.

Nevertheless, the court ruled, there’s no invasion.

Trump’s assertion about the Maduro administration’s links to Tren de Aragua was contradicted by an intelligence community assessment.

“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables (Tren de Aragua) to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the National Intelligence Council said in an April report.

In May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired two National Intelligence Council officials who wrote the assessment, according to The Washington Post.

What did the court say about due process?

The appellate court said, based on available information, an updated process the government is using to inform people they will be deported under the law seemed to follow due process requirements. However, it asked the lower federal court to rule on what constitutes sufficient government notice.

In May, before the government updated its notification process, the US Supreme Court ruled in an unsigned opinion that the Trump administration hadn’t given immigrants who it said it would deport under the Alien Enemies Act enough time to exercise their due process rights.

At the time, the government had given immigrants about 24 hours’ notice that they would be deported without information about how to contest the deportation. The Supreme Court asked the appellate court to determine how much notice is necessary for the government to uphold immigrants’ constitutional due process rights.

While the case was being decided by the appellate court, the Trump administration updated the document it gives immigrants as notice that they will be deported under the law. Part of the change included giving immigrants seven days to challenge the deportation.

What will likely happen next?

The appellate court’s decision stops Alien Enemies Act deportations in the three states in its jurisdiction: Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Other courts could use the ruling as precedent in their decisions.

The Trump administration can appeal the appellate court ruling either to the full appeals court or to the US Supreme Court. The White House didn’t specify whether it would appeal or to which court.

“The authority to conduct national security operations in defence of the United States and to remove terrorists from the United States rests solely with the president,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said. “We expect to be vindicated on the merits in this case.”

The Pacific island will resettle up to 354 former detainees Canberra says have ‘no legal right to remain in Australia’.

The Australian government has agreed to pay the small Pacific island nation of Nauru some $1.6bn to resettle former detainees who have “no legal right to remain in Australia”, in the latest iteration of Australia’s controversial offshore detention policies.

Both governments signed a secretive deal last week under which Nauru will resettle up to 354 people who have no legal right to stay in Australia in exchange for an initial 408 million Australian dollar payment ($267m) and about 70 million Australian dollars ($46m) each year thereafter.

Independent Senator David Shoebridge said a “snap Senate hearing” on Wednesday night revealed that the “agreement with Nauru to send asylum seekers there” could cost the Australian government up to 2.5 billion Australian dollars ($1.6bn) over 30 years.

Labor’s new anti-fairness bill will take away the natural justice rights of refugees and migrants. pic.twitter.com/WDi7bVH30h

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) September 4, 2025

The Senate hearing came after Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced last week that he had signed a memorandum with Nauru’s president “for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru”.

“It’s in both nations’ interest to move through this as efficiently as we can,” said Clare Sharp, head of immigration from the Department of Home Affairs.

“It’s in Nauru’s interest, because money doesn’t flow until people arrive,” she said.

With an estimated population of some 12,500 and a mainland measuring just 21 square kilometres (8.1 square miles), Nauru is among the world’s smallest countries.

Nauru’s President David Adeang said in a statement on Sunday that the agreement with Australia will “support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience”.

Jana Favero, deputy CEO of the Melbourne-based Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the deal with Nauru was “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous”.

Favero said the broad wording in the deal could enable many thousands of people to be deported from Australia.

“That’s tens of thousands of lives at risk – not the tiny number the government would have Australians believe,” Favero said in a statement.

Australian immigration officials said there are no guarantees all 354 people – including some convicted of serious crimes – will be deported to Nauru, with the Pacific island making the final decision.

Australia’s government has struggled to find a way to deal with immigrants who have no other country to go to when their visas are cancelled. The country’s High Court ruled in 2023 that indefinite detention was unlawful if deportation was not an option, leading to the release of 220 people.

The number of people in that situation in Australia now numbers 354, government officials said.

In February, Australia paid an undisclosed sum for Nauru to accept three immigrants convicted of violent offences, though legal challenges have reportedly stalled their transfer.

Nauru was one of two countries Australia initially sent asylum seekers to when it first began its controversial offshore detention programme in 2001.

In June 2023, the last refugees remaining on Nauru returned to Australia after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fulfilled an election promise to end offshore detention.

In January this year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found Australia’s offshore policy had violated two provisions of the legally-binding 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – one on arbitrary detention and one protecting the right to challenge detention in court.

Nauru has in recent years turned to other migration-related schemes in attempts to revive its economy, which historically has relied on thriving exports of phosphate, a key ingredient used in fertiliser. But those supplies have long dried up, and researchers today estimate 80 percent of Nauru has been rendered uninhabitable by mining.

Last month, Nauru’s government announced it had welcomed its first new citizens under an Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Programme, which provides citizenship and a passport for a minimum investment in the country of $105,000.

The government hopes to raise tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from the programme, which would help the island nation adapt to rising sea levels, as some of its close neighbours, including Tuvalu, face existential threats from rising sea levels.