Havana declares two days of mourning for the Cubans killed in US’s operation to capture Nicolas Maduro.
Published On 5 Jan 20265 Jan 2026
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The government of Cuba has announced that 32 of its citizens were killed during the raid by the United States to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas.
It said on Sunday that there would be two days of mourning on January 5 and 6 in honour of those killed and that funeral arrangements would be announced.
The operation follows a series of clashes and attacks linked to ISIL, which is feared to be making a resurgence.
Published On 31 Dec 202531 Dec 2025
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Turkiye’s government says it has detained more than 100 ISIL (ISIS) suspects in nationwide raids, as the group shows signs of intensified regional activity after a period of relative dormancy.
Turkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the Wednesday morning arrests in a social media post, saying Turkish authorities rounded up 125 suspects across 25 provinces, including Ankara.
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The operation is the third of its kind in less than a week during the holiday season, and follows a deadly shootout on Tuesday between Turkish police and suspected ISIL members in the northwestern city of Yalova.
“Those who seek to harm our brotherhood, our unity, our togetherness … will only face the might of our state and the unity of our nation,” wrote Yerlikaya.
Tuesday’s clash killed three Turkish police and six suspected ISIL members, all Turkish nationals. A day later, Turkish security forces arrested 357 suspected ISIL members in a coordinated crackdown.
‘Intensifying’ anti-ISIL operations
Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul earlier this week, said Turkish forces have “intensified their operations” against ISIL sleeper cells during the holiday period, a time when the group has previously staged attacks in the country.
In 2017, when the group still held large swaths of neighbouring Syria and Iraq before being vanquished on the battlefield, ISIL attacked an Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s celebrations, killing 39 people. Istanbul prosecutor’s office said Turkish police had received intelligence that operatives were “planning attacks in Turkiye against non-Muslims in particular” this holiday season.
On top of maintaining sleeper cells in Turkiye, ISIL is still active in Syria, with which Turkiye shares a 900-kilometre (560-mile) border, and has carried out a spate of attacks there since the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad last year.
The United States military has waged extensive strikes against ISIL in central and northeastern Syria this month, killing or capturing about 25 fighters from the group over the past two weeks, according to the US Central Command.
What comes next is a mystery, but I’d like to share a note of appreciation as 2025 fades into history.
If you came to Greater Los Angeles from Mexico, by way of Calexico, Feliz Navidad.
If you once lived in Syria, and settled in Hesperia, welcome.
If you were born in what once was Bombay, but raised a family in L.A., happy new year.
I’m spreading a bit of holiday cheer because for immigrants, on the whole, this has been a horrible year.
Under federal orders in 2025, Los Angeles and other cities have been invaded and workplaces raided.
Immigrants have been chased, protesters maced.
Livelihoods have been aborted, loved ones deported.
With all the put-downs and name-calling by the man at the top, you’d never guess his mother was an immigrant and his three wives have included two immigrants.
Not to be outdone, Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem proposed a travel ban on countries that are “flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.”
The president’s shtick is to rail mostly against those who are in the country without legal standing and particularly those with criminal records. But his tone and language don’t always make such distinctions.
The point is to divide, lay blame and raise suspicion, which is why legal residents — including Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo — have told me they carry their passports at all times.
In fact, thousands of people with legal status have been booted out of the country, and millions more are at risk of the same fate.
In a more evolved political culture, it would be simpler to stipulate that there are costs and benefits to immigration, that it’s human nature to flee hardship in pursuit of better opportunities wherever they might be, and that it’s possible to enact laws that serve the needs of immigrants and the industries that rely on them.
But 2025 was the year in which the nation was led in another direction, and it was the year in which it became ever more comforting and even liberating to call California home.
The state is a deeply flawed enterprise, with its staggering gaps in wealth and income, its homelessness catastrophe, housing affordability crisis and racial divides. And California is not politically monolithic, no matter how blue. It’s got millions of Trump supporters, many of whom applauded the roundups.
But there’s an understanding, even in largely conservative regions, that immigrants with papers and without are a crucial part of the muscle and brainpower that help drive the world’s fourth-largest economy.
That’s why some of the state’s Republican lawmakers asked Trump to back off when he first sent masked posses on roundups, stifling the construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors of the economy.
When the raids began, I called a gardener I had written about years ago after he was shot in the chest during a robbery attempt. He had insisted on leaving the hospital emergency room and going back to work immediately, with the bullet still embedded in his chest. A client had hired him to complete a landscaping job by Christmas, as a present to his wife, and the gardener was determined to deliver.
When I checked in with the gardener in June, he told me he was lying low because even though he has a work permit, he didn’t feel safe because Trump had vowed to end temporary protected status for some immigrants.
“People look Latino, and they get arrested,” he told me.
He said his daughter, whom I’d met two decades ago when I delivered $2,000 donated to the family by readers, was going to demonstrate in his name. I met up with her at the “No Kings” rally in El Segundo, where she told me why she wanted to protest:
“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said.
Mass deportations would rip a $275-million hole in the state’s economy, critically affecting agriculture and healthcare among other industries, according to a report from UC Merced and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
“Deportations tend to raise unemployment among U.S.-born and documented workers through reduced consumption and disruptions in complementary occupations,” says a UCLA Anderson report.
I’m a California native whose grandparents were from Spain and Italy, but the state has changed dramatically in my lifetime, and I don’t think I ever really saw it clearly or understood it until I was asked in 2009 to address the freshman convocation at Cal State Northridge. The demographics were similar to today’s — more than half Latino, 1 in 5 white, 10% Asian and 5% Black. And roughly two-thirds were first-generation college students.
I looked out on thousands of young people about to find their way and make their mark, and the students were flanked by a sprinkling of proud parents and grandparents, many of whose stories of sacrifice and yearning began in other countries.
That is part of the lifeblood of the state’s culture, cuisine, commerce and sense of possibility, and those students are now our teachers, nurses, physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs and tech whizzes.
If you left Taipei and settled in Monterey, said goodbye to Dubai and packed up for Ojai, traded Havana for Fontana or Morelia for Visalia, thank you.
Christmas celebrations return to Bethlehem as thousands gather in Manger Square for the first time since 2022.
Thousands of people have gathered in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve for the first public celebrations since 2022 after the city cancelled or muted festivities for two years out of respect for the thousands killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Families filled Manger Square in the occupied West Bank city as a giant Christmas tree returned to the plaza, replacing a nativity display used during the war that showed baby Jesus amid rubble and barbed wire, symbolising the devastation in Gaza.
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The celebrations were led by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic leader in the Holy Land, who arrived in Bethlehem from Jerusalem in the traditional Christmas procession and called for “a Christmas full of light”.
Clergymen and alter boys wait ahead of Christmas service in the Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity (R) in the biblical city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank on Christmas eve on December 24, 2025. (AFP)
Scout bands from towns across the West Bank marched through Bethlehem’s streets, their bagpipes draped with tartan and Palestinian flags.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, its forces have carried out near-daily raids across the West Bank, arresting thousands of Palestinians and sharply restricting movement between cities.
Palestinians say the intensified military presence, road closures and checkpoint delays have deterred visitors, paralysing the tourism sector on which Bethlehem’s economy depends.
The vast majority of those celebrating were local residents, with only a small number of foreign visitors.
Unemployment in Bethlehem surged from 14 percent to 65 percent during the genocidal war on Gaza, Mayor Maher Nicola Canawati said earlier this month. As economic conditions deteriorated, about 4,000 residents left the city in search of work, he added.
Israeli raids and settler attacks
The return of Christmas celebrations comes despite continued raids and large-scale military incursions across the occupied West Bank, even after a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has been repeatedly violated by Israeli forces, took hold in October.
The raids often entail mass arrests of Palestinians, home searches and demolitions, as well as physical assaults that sometimes lead to deaths.
Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have reached their highest level since the United Nations humanitarian office began recording data in 2006. The attacks have involved killings, beatings and the destruction of property, often under the protection of the Israeli military.
Earlier on Wednesday, more than 570 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem under police protection, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Palestinians say such incursions violate the longstanding status quo governing Islam’s third-holiest site.
Israel’s security cabinet has also signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.
The United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and other countries condemned the move on Wednesday.
“We call on Israel to reverse this decision, as well as the expansion of settlements,” said a joint statement released by the UK, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain.
“We recall that such unilateral actions, as part of a wider intensification of the settlement policies in the West Bank, not only violate international law but also risk fuelling instability.”
OXNARD — A father who has become the sole caretaker for his two young children after his wife was deported. A school district seeing absenteeism similar to what it experienced during the pandemic. Businesses struggling because customers are scared to go outside.
These are just a sampling of how this part of Ventura County is reckoning with the aftermath of federal immigration raids on Glass House cannabis farms six months ago, when hundreds of workers were detained and families split apart. In some instances, there is still uncertainty about what happened to minors left behind after one or both parents were deported. Now, while Latino households gather for the holidays, businesses and restaurants are largely quiet as anxiety about more Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids lingers.
“There’s a lot of fear that the community is living,” said Alicia Flores, executive director of La Hermandad Hank Lacayo Youth and Family Center. This time of year, clients usually ask her about her holiday plans, but now no one asks. Families are divided by the U.S. border or have loved ones in immigration detainment. “They were ready for Christmas, to make tamales, to make pozole, to make something and celebrate with the family. And now, nothing.”
At the time, the immigration raids on Glass House Farms in Camarillo and Carpinteria were some of the largest of their kind nationwide, resulting in chaotic scenes, confusion and violence. At least 361 undocumented immigrants were detained, many of them third-party contractors for Glass House. One of those contractors, Jaime Alanis Garcia, died after he fell from a greenhouse rooftop in the July 10 raid.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, in mirror, works on a customer’s hair as Silvia Lopez, left, owner of Divine Hair Design, waits for customers in downtown Oxnard on Dec. 19, 2025.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The raids catalyzed mass protests along the Central Coast and sent a chill through Oxnard, a tight-knit community where many families work in the surrounding fields and live in multigenerational homes far more modest than many on the Ventura coast. It also reignited fears about how farmworker communities — often among the most low-paid and vulnerable parts of the labor pool — would be targeted during the Trump administration’s intense deportation campaign.
In California, undocumented workers represent nearly 60% of the agricultural workforce, and many of them live in mixed-immigration-status households or households where none are citizens, said Ana Padilla, executive director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. After the Glass House raid, Padilla and UC Merced associate professor Edward Flores identified economic trends similar to the Great Recession, when private-sector jobs fell. Although undocumented workers contribute to state and federal taxes, they don’t qualify for unemployment benefits that could lessen the blow of job loss after a family member gets detained.
“These are households that have been more affected by the economic consequences than any other group,” Padilla said. She added that California should consider distributing “replacement funds” for workers and families that have lost income because of immigration enforcement activity.
An Oxnard store owner who sells quinceañera and baptism dresses — and who asked that her name not be used — says she has lost 60% of her business since the immigrant raids this year at Glass House farms.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Local businesses are feeling the effects as well. Silvia Lopez, who has run Divine Hair Design in downtown Oxnard for 16 years, said she’s lost as much as 75% of business after the July raid. The salon usually saw 40 clients a day, she said, but on the day after the raid, it had only two clients — and four stylists who were stunned. Already, she said, other salon owners have had to close, and she cut back her own hours to help her remaining stylists make enough each month.
“Everything changed for everyone,” she said.
In another part of town, a store owner who sells quinceañera and baptism dresses said her sales have dropped by 60% every month since August, and clients have postponed shopping. A car shop owner, who declined to be identified because he fears government retribution, said he supported President Trump because of his campaign pledge to help small-business owners like himself. But federal loans have been difficult to access, he said, and he feels betrayed by the president’s deportation campaign that has targeted communities such as Oxnard.
“There’s a lot of fear that the community is living,” said Alicia Flores, executive director of La Hermandad Hank Lacayo Youth and Family Center in downtown Oxnard, on Dec. 19, 2025.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“Glass House had a big impact,” he said. “It made people realize, ‘Oh s—, they’re hitting us hard.’ ”
The raid’s domino effect has raised concerns about the welfare of children in affected households. Immigration enforcement actions can have detrimental effects on young children, according to the American Immigration Council, and they can be at risk of experiencing severe psychological distress.
Olivia Lopez, a community organizer at Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, highlighted the predicament of one father. He became the sole caretaker of his infant and 4-year-old son after his wife was deported, and can’t afford child care. He is considering sending the children across the border to his wife in Mexico, who misses her kids.
In a separate situation, Lopez said, an 18-year-old has been suddenly thrust into caring for two siblings after her mother, a single parent, was deported.
Additionally, she said she has heard stories of children left behind, including a 16-year-old who does not want to leave the U.S. and reunite with her mother who was deported after the Glass House raid. She said she suspects that at least 50 families — and as many as 100 children — lost both or their only parent in the raid.
“I have questions after hearing all the stories: Where are the children, in cases where two parents, those responsible for the children, were deported? Where are those children?” she said. “How did we get to this point?”
Robin Godfrey, public information officer for the Ventura County Human Services Agency, which is responsible for overseeing child welfare in the county, said she could not answer specific questions about whether the agency has become aware of minors left behind after parents were detained.
“Federal and state laws prevent us from confirming or denying if children from Glass House Farms families came into the child welfare system,” she said in a statement.
The raid has been jarring in the Oxnard School District, which was closed for summer vacation but reopened on July 10 to contact families and ensure their well-being, Supt. Ana DeGenna said. Her staff called all 13,000 families in the district to ask whether they needed resources and whether they wanted access to virtual classes for the upcoming school year.
Even before the July 10 raid, DeGenna and her staff were preparing. In January, after Trump was inaugurated, the district sped up installing doorbells at every school site in case immigration agents attempted to enter. They referred families to organizations that would help them draft affidavits so their U.S.-born children could have legal guardians, in case the parents were deported. They asked parents to submit not just one or two, but as many as 10 emergency contacts in case they don’t show up to pick up their children.
Rodrigo is considering moving back to Mexico after living in the U.S. for 42 years.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
With a district that is 92% Latino, she said, nearly everyone is fearful, whether they are directly or indirectly affected, regardless if they have citizenship. Some families have self-deported, leaving the country, while children have changed households to continue their schooling. Nearly every morning, as raids continue in the region, she fields calls about sightings of ICE vehicles near schools. When that happens, she said, she knows attendance will be depressed to near COVID-19 levels for those surrounding schools, with parents afraid to send their children back to the classroom.
But unlike the pandemic, there is no relief in knowing they’ve experienced the worst, such as the Glass House raid, which saw hundreds of families affected in just a day, she said. The need for mental health counselors and support has only grown.
“We have to be there to protect them and take care of them, but we have to acknowledge it’s a reality they’re living through,” she said. “We can’t stop the learning, we can’t stop the education, because we also know that is the most important thing that’s going to help them in the future to potentially avoid being victimized in any way.”
Jasmine Cruz, 21, launched a GoFundMe page after her father was taken during the Glass House raid. He remains in detention in Arizona, and the family hired an immigration attorney in hopes of getting him released.
Each month, she said, it gets harder to pay off their rent and utility bills. She managed to raise about $2,700 through GoFundMe, which didn’t fully cover a month of rent. Her mother is considering moving the family back to Mexico if her father is deported, Cruz said.
“I tried telling my mom we should stay here,” she said. “But she said it’s too much for us without our dad.”
Many of the families torn apart by the Glass House raid did not have plans in place, said Lopez, the community organizer, and some families were resistant because they believed they wouldn’t be affected. But after the raid, she received calls from several families who wanted to know whether they could get family affidavit forms notarized. One notary, she said, spent 10 hours working with families for free, including some former Glass House workers who evaded the raid.
“The way I always explain it is, look, everything that is being done by this government agency, you can’t control,” she said. “But what you can control is having peace of mind knowing you did something to protect your children and you didn’t leave them unprotected.”
For many undocumented immigrants, the choices are few.
Rodrigo, who is undocumented and worries about ICE reprisals, has made his living with his guitar, which he has been playing since he was 17.
While taking a break outside a downtown Oxnard restaurant, he looked tired, wiping his forehead after serenading a pair, a couple and a group at a Mexican restaurant. He has been in the U.S. for 42 years, but since the summer raid, business has been slow. Now, people no longer want to hire for house parties.
The 77-year-old said he wants to retire but has to continue working. But he fears getting picked up at random, based on how abusive agents have been. He’s thinking about the new year, and returning to Mexico on his own accord.
“Before they take away my guitar,” he said, “I better go.”
Commercial premises among buildings facing demolition as military incursions intensify near Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab.
Israeli forces have begun demolishing shops in the vicinity of the Qalandiya refugee camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, as part of a wider military incursion across several Palestinian neighbourhoods, witnesses and medical officials say.
The raids, which began early on Tuesday, have extended into the nearby town of Kafr Aqab, where Israeli troops deployed in large numbers, carried out house searches and forcibly evicted residents from their homes, according to local media reports.
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The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its medical teams treated at least three people injured during the raids in Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab. The injuries included a bullet wound to the thigh, wounds caused by shrapnel from live ammunition, and injuries resulting from physical assault.
The Jerusalem governorate reported that at least three Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire, in addition to dozens of cases of suffocation caused by the firing of tear gas and stun grenades, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Several Palestinians were detained during the large-scale incursion that was also accompanied by the deployment of military vehicles and bulldozers.
Among those arrested are Anan Mohammed Taha and his father, Mohammed Taha, residents of the Qalandiya refugee camp, Wafa said.
‘Intimidation’ and ‘anxiety’
Residents said Israeli forces ordered several families to evacuate their homes, with at least three houses converted into temporary military outposts in Kafr Aqab. Homeowners were reportedly told the operation would continue until at least Wednesday morning.
Israeli forces also stormed the youth club inside the Qalandiya refugee camp and turned the facility into a military base, according to Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent.
Journalists covering the operation were also targeted, including Al Jazeera Arabic reporters, with Israeli forces firing stun grenades and tear gas canisters in their direction during the raid in Kafr Aqab.
According to the Jerusalem governorate authorities, stun grenades were also fired directly towards students in the area as they were returning home from school, while private surveillance cameras were seized.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Kafr Aqab, said Israeli forces are continuing to “intimidate” Palestinians.
“They have raided Palestinian stores, Palestinian shops, and they’ve destroyed some of the plaques, some of the advertisement billboards that were here”, in an attempt to further cripple the Palestinian economy, Ibrahim said.
“This is part of the anxiety that Palestinians live through day in and day out as these Israeli raids continue on a daily basis,” she added.
Israeli incursions across the West Bank average “60 raids per day”, Ibrahim said.
In addition to the demolitions, Israeli forces confiscated goods from commercial shops in the Qalandiya refugee camp, Kafr Aqab and parts of northern Jerusalem, citing alleged unpaid municipal taxes.
Most Palestinians living in these areas hold Jerusalem residency identification cards. Residents say they are subject to high municipal taxes while receiving few basic services.
Separately, confrontations were also reported in the town of Beit Furik, east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli forces stormed the area.
Syrian state television denounces the Israeli incursion as another violation of the nation’s sovereignty.
Israeli forces have advanced into the Quneitra area of Syria’s occupied Golan Heights and set up two military checkpoints, an Al Jazeera correspondent on the ground reports.
The Israeli military operation on Saturday took place in the villages of Ain Ziwan and al-Ajraf in the southern part of the country.
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For months, Israeli forces have conducted near-daily incursions into southern Syria, particularly in the Quneitra governorate, carrying out arrests, erecting checkpoints, and bulldozing land, all of which have prompted growing public anger and unrest.
Syrian state television said the Israeli incursion was a violation of Syrian sovereignty, noting that the army used five military vehicles to set up the checkpoint in Ain Ziwan.
The latest raid comes one day after Israeli forces advanced towards the towns of al-Asha, Bir Ajam, Bariqa, Umm al-Azam and Ruwayhina in the southern Quneitra countryside, according to the Syrian News Agency (SANA).
Dozens of Syrians on Friday protested the Israeli incursion in the city of al-Salam in the Quneitra Governorate, condemning the ongoing Israeli attacks against citizens and their properties.
The demonstrators, part of a group called “Syrians with Palestine”, held banners denouncing what they stated were repeated Israeli violations of Syrian lands.
Despite a reduction in direct military threats, the Israeli army continues to carry out air raids that have caused civilian casualties and destroyed Syrian army sites and facilities.
Over the past year, Israel has launched more than 600 air, drone or artillery attacks across Syria, averaging nearly two attacks a day, according to a tally by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED).
Israeli military incursions have become more brazen, more frequent and more violent since Israel expanded its occupation of southern Syria following the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Disengagement accord
After al-Assad’s fall, Israel declared the 1974 Disengagement Agreement – brokered after the 1973 war, in which Syria failed to regain the occupied Golan Heights – void.
The agreement had established a UN-patrolled buffer zone, which Israel has since violated, advancing deeper into Syrian territory.
Citing al-Assad’s flight, Israel says the accord no longer applies, while carrying out air raids, ground incursions, reconnaissance flights; setting up checkpoints; and arresting or disappearing Syrians. Syria has not responded with attacks.
In September, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa stated that Israel had conducted more than 1,000 air attacks and more than 400 ground incursions in Syria since al-Assad was overthrown, describing the actions as “very dangerous”.
Syrians believe that the continuation of these violations hinders efforts to restore stability in the region and undermines attempts to improve the economic situation in southern Syria.
Al Jazeera visited Quneitra in recent weeks and spoke to Syrians about Israeli incursions and abductions there, which have stoked fears.
Syria and Israel are currently in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israel’s air raids on its territory and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
In the background, the United States has been pushing diplomatic efforts to restore the 1974 deal.
