refugee

CLARKSTON, Ga. — After fleeing the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Antoinette landed in the Atlanta area last November and began to find her footing with federal help.

Separated from her adult children and grieving her husband’s death in the war, she started a job packing boxes in a warehouse, making just enough to cover rent for her own apartment and bills.

Antoinette has been relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, for her weekly grocery trips.

But now, just as life is starting to stabilize, she will have to deal with a new setback.

President Donald Trump’s massive budget law, which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, slashes $187 billion — or nearly 20% — from the federal budget for SNAP through 2034. And separate from any temporary SNAP stoppages due to the federal shutdown, the law cuts off access completely for refugees and other immigrant groups in the country lawfully. The change was slated to take effect immediately when the law was signed in July, but states are still awaiting federal guidance on when to stop or phase it out.

For Antoinette, 51, who did not want her last name used for fear of deportation and likely persecution in her native country, the loss of food aid is dire.

“I would not have the means to buy food,” she said in French through a translator. “How am I going to manage?”

Throughout its history, the U.S. has admitted into the country refugees like Antoinette, people who have been persecuted, or fear persecution, in their homelands due to race, religion, nationality, political opinions, or membership in a particular social group. These legal immigrants typically face an in-depth vetting process that can start years before they set foot on U.S. soil.

Once they arrive — often with little or no means — the federal government provides resources such as financial assistance, Medicaid, and SNAP, outreach that has typically garnered bipartisan support. Now the Trump administration has pulled back the country’s decades-long support for refugee communities.

The budget law, which funds several of the president’s priorities, including tax cuts to wealthy Americans and border security, revokes refugees’ access to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities, starting in October 2026.

But one of the first provisions to take effect under the law removes SNAP eligibility for most refugees, asylum seekers, trafficking and domestic violence victims, and other legal immigrants. About 90,000 people will lose SNAP in an average month as a result of the new restrictions narrowing which noncitizens can access the program, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“It doesn’t get much more basic than food,” said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that supports U.S. refugees. “Our government invited these people to rebuild their lives in this country with minimum support,” Soerens said. “Taking food away from them is wrong.”

Not just a handout

The White House and officials at the United States Department of Agriculture did not respond to emails about support for the provision that ends SNAP for refugees in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

But Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced levels of immigration to the U.S., said cuts to SNAP eligibility are reasonable because foreign-born people and their young children disproportionately use public benefits.

Still, Camarota said, the refugee population is different from other immigrant groups. “I don’t know that this would be the population I would start with,” Camarota said. “It’s a relatively small population of people that we generally accept have a lot of need.”

Federal, state, and local spending on refugees and asylum seekers, including food, healthcare, education, and other expenses, totaled $457.2 billion from 2005 to 2019, according to a February 2024 report from the Department of Health and Human Services. During that time, 21% of refugees and asylum seekers received SNAP benefits, compared with 15% of all U.S. residents.

In addition to the budget law’s SNAP changes, financial assistance given to people entering the U.S. by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of HHS, has been cut from one year to four months.

The HHS report also found that despite the initial costs of caring for refugees and asylees, this community contributed $123.8 billion more to federal, state, and local governments through taxes than they received in public benefits over the 15 years.

It’s in the country’s best interest to continue to support them, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency.

“This is not what we should think about as a handout,” she said. “We know that when we support them initially, they go on to not just survive but thrive.”

Food is medicine

Clarkston, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb, is home to thousands of refugees.

(Renuka Rayasam/KFF Health News)

Food insecurity can have lifelong physical and mental health consequences for people who have already faced years of instability before coming to the U.S., said Andrew Kim, co-founder of Ethnē Health, a community health clinic in Clarkston, an Atlanta suburb that is home to thousands of refugees.

Noncitizens affected by the new law would have received, on average, $210 a month within the next decade, according to the CBO. Without SNAP funds, many refugees and their families might skip meals and switch to lower-quality, inexpensive options, leading to chronic health concerns such as obesity and insulin resistance, and potentially worsening already serious mental health conditions, he said.

After her husband was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Antoinette said, she became separated from all seven of her children. The youngest is 19. She still isn’t sure where they are. She misses them but is determined to build a new life for herself. For her, resources like SNAP are critical.

From the conference room of New American Pathways, the nonprofit that helped her enroll in benefits, Antoinette stared straight ahead, stone-faced, when asked about how the cuts would affect her.

Will she shop less? Will she eat fewer fruits and vegetables, and less meat? Will she skip meals?

“Oui,” she replied to each question, using the French for “yes.”

Since arriving in the U.S. last year from Ethiopia with his wife and two teen daughters, Lukas, 61, has been addressing diabetes-related complications, such as blurry vision, headaches, and trouble sleeping. SNAP benefits allow him and his family to afford fresh vegetables like spinach and broccoli, according to Lilly Tenaw, the nurse practitioner who treats Lukas and helped translate his interview.

His blood sugar is now at a safer level, he said proudly after a class at Mosaic Health Center, a community clinic in Clarkston, where he learned to make lentil soup and balance his diet.

“The assistance gives us hope and encourages us to see life in a positive way,” he said in Amharic through a translator. Lukas wanted to use only his family name because he had been jailed and faced persecution in Ethiopia, and now worries about jeopardizing his ability to get permanent residency in the U.S.

Since arriving in the U.S. last year from Ethiopia, Lukas has been visiting the Mosaic Health Center in Clarkston, Ga., to address diabetes-related complications. Food stamps allow him and his family to afford fresh vegetables like spinach and broccoli.

(Renuka Rayasam/KFF Health News)

Hunger and poor nutrition can lower productivity and make it hard for people to find and keep jobs, said Valerie Lacarte, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

“It could affect the labor market,” she said. “It’s bleak.”

More SNAP cuts to come

While the Trump administration ended SNAP for refugees effective immediately, the change has created uncertainty for those who provide assistance.

State officials in Texas and California, which receive the most refugees among states, and in Georgia told KFF Health News that the USDA, which runs the program, has yet to issue guidance on whether they should stop providing SNAP on a specific date or phase it out.

And it’s not just refugees who are affected.

Nearly 42 million people receive SNAP benefits, according to the USDA. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that, within the next decade, more than 3 million people will lose monthly food dollars because of planned changes — such as an extension of work requirements to more people and a shift in costs from the federal government to the states.

In September, the administration ended a key report that regularly measured food insecurity among all U.S. households, making it harder to assess the toll of the SNAP cuts.

The USDA also posted on its website that no benefits would be issued for anyone starting Nov. 1 because of the federal shutdown, blaming Senate Democrats. The Trump administration has refused to release emergency funding — as past administrations have done during shutdowns — so that states can continue issuing benefits while congressional leaders work out a budget deal. A coalition of attorneys general and governors from 25 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Oct. 28 contesting the administration’s decision.

Cuts to SNAP will ripple through local grocery stores and farms, stretching the resources of charity organizations and local governments, said Ted Terry, a DeKalb County commissioner and former mayor of Clarkston.

“It’s just the whole ecosystem that has been in place for 40 years completely being disrupted,” he said.

Muzhda Oriakhil, senior community engagement manager at Friends of Refugees, an Atlanta-area nonprofit that helps refugees resettle, said her group and others are scrambling to provide temporary food assistance for refugee families. But charity organizations, food banks, and other nonprofit groups cannot make up for the loss of billions of federal dollars that help families pay for food.

“A lot of families, they may starve,” she said.

Rayasam writes for KFF.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s government on Friday criticized the U.S. refugee policy shift that gives priority to Afrikaners, the country’s white minority group of Dutch descent.

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a ceiling of 7,500 refugees to be admitted to the United States, a sharp decrease from the previous 125,000 spots and said Afrikaners would be given preference over other groups.

U.S. President Trump has claimed that there is a “genocide” against Afrikaners in South Africa and that they are facing persecution and discrimination because of the country’s redress policies and the levels of crime in the country.

It’s one of the contentious issues that has seen diplomatic relations between South Africa and U.S. hit an all-time low, with Trump suspending all financial aid to South Africa and setting one of the highest tariffs for the country’s exports to the U.S.

The South African government’s international relations department said Friday that the latest move was concerning as it “still appears to rest on a premise that is factually inaccurate.”

“The claim of a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa is widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” spokesman Chrispin Phiri said.

Phiri said that a program designed to facilitate the immigration and resettlement of Afrikaners as refugees was deeply flawed and disregarded the country’s constitutional processes.

“The limited uptake of this offer by South Africans is a telling indicator of this reality,” Phiri said.

The U.S. notice, which signifies a huge policy shift toward refugees, mentioned only Afrikaners as a specific group and said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 budget year “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

Trump’s asylum offer for Afrikaners has sparked divisive debate in South Africa, but has been largely rejected even by many in the Afrikaner community.

This week, a group of prominent Afrikaners including politicians, activists, writers and businesspeople penned an open letter rejecting the notion that Afrikaners needed to emigrate from South Africa.

“The idea that white South Africans deserve special asylum status because of their race undermines the very principles of the refugee program. Vulnerability — not race — should guide humanitarian policy,” they wrote in the widely publicized letter.

However, some Afrikaner groups continue to be very critical of the South African government’s handling of crime and redress policies even though they reject the “white genocide” claim.

An Afrikaner lobbyist group, Afriforum, on Thursday said that it doesn’t call the murder of white farmers a genocide, but raised concerns about white people’s safety in South Africa.

“This does not mean AfriForum rejects or scoffs at Trump’s refugee status offer — there will be Afrikaners that apply and they should have the option, especially those who have been victims of horrific farm attacks or the South African government’s many racially discriminatory policies,” AfriForum spokesman Ernst van Zyl said.

While it’s unclear how many white South Africans have applied for refugee status in the U.S., a group of 59 white South Africans were granted asylum and were received with much fanfare in May.

Magome writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 31 (UPI) — The Trump administration will permit a record-low 7,500 refugees into the United States during the 2026 fiscal year, with most spots allocated to White South Africans.

The number, a drastic drop from the 125,000 that the previous Biden administration had set for 2025, is expected to be swiftly challenged by Democrats and human rights and immigration advocates.

The announcement was made Thursday, with the presidential determination being published in the Federal Register.

According to the document, the Trump administration said the number “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

The document specifies that “admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners,” in line with President Donald Trump‘s February executive order that sought to penalize South Africa over a land expropriation law allowing the government to confiscate land if it was in the public interest and in a few specific cases without compensation.

Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Black-majority South Africa would use the law to take land from White Afrikaners. He has said that they were victims of “racial discrimination” and “large-scale killings.”

South Africa has repeatedly refuted the characterization.

In May, the first 49 Afrikaners granted refugee statues by Trump arrived in the United States.

About two weeks later, tensions flared between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Trump at the White House as the American leader said he had heard “thousands of stories” about violence against White South Africans in the country.

The International Refugee Assistance Project criticized the Trump administration for issuing the decision without consultation with Congress, as required by law. It also rebuked the administration for reserving admissions mostly for Afrikaners, at the expense of at-risk refugees.

It said the Trump administration was valuing “politics over protection.”

“Today’s announcement highlights just how far this administration has gone when it comes to abandoning its responsibilities to displaced people around the world,” IRAP President Sharif Aly said in a statement.

The 7,500 is the lowest since Trump set the refugee limit at 15,000 for fiscal year 2021, during his first term.

The Trump administration will limit the number of refugees admitted to the US to 7,500 over the next year, and give priority to white South Africans.

The move, announced in a notice published on Thursday, marks a dramatic cut from the previous limit of 125,000 set by former President Joe Biden and will bring the cap to a record low.

No reason was given for the cut, but the notice said it was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.

In January, Trump signed an executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Programme, or USRAP, which he said would allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.

The previous lowest refugee admissions cap was set by the first Trump administration in 2020, when it allocated 15,000 spots for fiscal year 2021.

The notice posted to the website of the Federal Register said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.

In February, the US president announced the suspension of critical aid to South Africa and offered to allow members of the Afrikaner community – who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers – to settle in the US as refugees.

South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was later expelled after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle”.

In the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and claimed white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.

The White House also played a video which they said showed burial sites for murdered white farmers. It later emerged that the videos were scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.

The tense meeting came just days after the US granted asylum to 60 Afrikaners.

The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other White South Africans are being persecuted.

On his first day in office on 20 January, Trump said the US would suspend USRAP to reflect the US’s lack of “ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans” and “protects their safety and security”.

The US policy of accepting white South Africans has already prompted accusations of unfair treatment from refugee advocacy groups.

Some have argued the US is now effectively shut to other persecuted groups or people facing potential harm in their home country, and even former allies that helped US forces in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

“This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling,” Global Refuge CEO and president Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said on Thursday. “It lowers our moral standing.”

“At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility,” she added.

Refugees International also slammed the move, saying it “makes a mockery of refugee protection and of American values”.

“Let us be frank: whatever hardships some Afrikaners may face, this population has no plausible claim on refugee status – they are not fleeing systematic persecution,” Refugees International said in its statement.

The South African government has yet to respond to the latest announcement.

During the Oval Office meeting, President Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Trump’s] head”.

Earlier this year, Ramaphosa signed a controversial law allowing the government to seize privately-owned land without compensation in some circumstances.

While the country does not release race-based crime figured, figures published earlier this year showed that 7,000 people were murdered in South African between October and December 2024.

Of these, 12 were killed in farm attacks and only one of the 12 was a farmer. Five others were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is restricting the number of refugees it admits into the country to 7,500 and they will mostly be white South Africans, a dramatic drop after the U.S. previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.

The administration published the news Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.

No reason was given for the numbers, which are a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling set under the Biden administration of 125,000. The Associated Press previously reported that the administration was considering admitting as few as 7,500 refugees and mostly white South Africans.

The memo said only that the admission of the 7,500 refugees during 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

BALTIMORE — The U.S. government plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia and could do so as early as Oct. 31, according to a Friday court filing.

The Salvadoran national’s case has become a magnet for opposition to President Trump’s immigration crackdown since he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, in violation of a settlement agreement.

He was returned to the U.S. in June after the U.S. Supreme Court said the administration had to work to bring him back. Since he cannot be re-deported to El Salvador, the U.S. government has been seeking to deport him to various African countries.

A federal judge in Maryland had previously barred his immediate deportation. Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit there claims the Trump administration is illegally using the deportation process to punish him for its embarrassment over his mistaken deportation.

A Friday court filing from the Department of Homeland Security says that “Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent.” Its national language is English, its constitution “provides robust protections for human rights,” and Liberia is “committed to the humane treatment of refugees,” the filing asserts. It concludes that Abrego Garcia could be deported as soon as Friday.

The court filing assessment is in contrast to a U.S. State Department report last year that detailed a human rights record in Liberia including extrajudicial killings, torture and serious restrictions on press freedom.

“After failed attempts with Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Liberia, a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland,” a statement from attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg reads. “Costa Rica stands ready to accept him as a refugee, a viable and lawful option. Yet the government has chosen a course calculated to inflict maximum hardship. These actions are punitive, cruel, and unconstitutional.”

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager, but in 2019 an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he faces a “well-founded fear” of violence from a gang that targeted his family, according to court filings. In a separate action in immigration court, Abrego Garcia has applied for asylum in the United States.

Additionally, Abrego Garcia is facing criminal charges in federal court in Tennessee, where he has pleaded not guilty to human smuggling. He has filed a motion to dismiss the charges, claiming the prosecution is vindictive.

FIFA confirms change of name to Afghan Women United, dropping ‘refugee’ from the team name ahead of the tournament.

A FIFA-organised tournament involving the Afghanistan women’s refugee team has been moved from the United Arab Emirates to Morocco, the world football governing body said, with the four-team friendly competition set to begin on Sunday.

The “FIFA Unites: Women’s Series” tournament, originally scheduled to run from October 23-29 in Dubai, also features the national women’s teams of the UAE, Chad and Libya.

The Afghanistan women’s refugee team’s creation stems from the Taliban’s ban on women’s sports following their takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, prompting players to flee the country, fearing persecution.

“FIFA would like to thank the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FMRF) and looks forward to working together to host a successful tournament,” FIFA said in a statement.

The governing body also confirmed that the Afghanistan women’s refugee team has chosen a new official name, “Afghan Women United,” following consultation with FIFA.

Prior to the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan had 25 women players under contract, most of whom now live in Australia. Afghanistan’s men’s team continues as normal.

Yusuf Abdullahi stood beside the only well left in his town, its rim ringed with rust and water tinted a cloudy brown. For decades, the people of Bultu Briya, a village in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State, had pulled their lives from this liquid in the ground, whether drinking, cooking, or watering their animals. But now, he said, the well has turned against them.

When the rains came last year, children who drank from the well fell sick with diarrhoea and clutched their stomachs in pain. The community had no choice but to abandon it forever. 

In Bultu Briya, desertification has seeped into the very veins of the villagers’ lives. Runoff washes through the encroaching sand each rainy season, leaching minerals like potassium into the water and leaving it contaminated, according to villagers, who claim it has made the water poisonous. More than 2,000 people once relied on this well, but many have already gone to nearby towns, across the border into the Niger Republic, and even as far as Libya, chasing survival in places where the sand has not yet stolen the water.

Behind Abdullahi, the desert stretched out in ridges of sand where millet fields once ripened and acacia trees once stood. The land that fed generations is now barren, and its people scattered. 

Bultu Briya was not always like this. Half a century ago, the Sahara Desert stopped far to the north, and life here followed the rhythm of the rains. In the 1980s, families could still fill their granaries with millet and sorghum. Children herded goats through pastures that turned green after the storms, and wells ran deep enough to sustain people and livestock.

That world has since vanished. 

Over the past four decades, the Sahara has expanded by nearly 10 per cent, pushing its southern edge steadily into the Sahel. In Nigeria alone, desertification currently threatens 11 of the country’s 36 states, with dunes advancing at an estimated 0.6 kilometres per year. In Yusufari, a local government area of Yobe State, satellite analysis shows that between 1984 and 2021, vegetation cover shrank by over 90 per cent, while surface water declined by more than 70 per cent.

Land cover change in Yusufari from 1984 to 2021

Graphics by HumAngle/CCIJ (2022), Data: Landsat Landcover analysis

By the early 2020s, the shifting dunes had crept so close to Bultu Briya that fields that were once heavy with grain were reduced to ridges of sand, and the acacia trees that anchored the soil were uprooted one by one.

The sand has already consumed neighbouring villages. In Tulo-Tulo and Bula-Tura, dunes pressed so close that families abandoned their homes. In Zakkari, a town 30 miles away, residents say they have not harvested a whole crop in more than seven years.

“When we were growing up, there was no desert here,” said Mohammed Bukar, 51, who has lived in Zakkari all his life. “As children, we cut grass for our livestock. Now farming is finished. Before, we filled a granary. Now we can’t even fill a sack.”

Scarcity of resources like food and water forced many of his neighbours to leave long ago. Some boarded buses bound for Lagos or Abuja, while others slipped quietly into the Niger Republic, hoping for better soil. Those who remain survive on what little their goats can graze. “We sell our animals just to eat,” Bukar said.

As armed conflict, extremist violence, rural terrorism, and economic despair uproot locals in the heart of the Sahel, a catastrophic climate collapse is accelerating transnational mobility. A HumAngle investigation, involving cross-border reporting and interviews with climate refugees in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic, reveals that the phenomenon driving families away from home is beyond just war, as climate crises toughen up. Matched with open-source analyses and satellite imagery investigation, the on-the-ground reporting shows how desert encroachments, poisoned or vanishing water resources, and extreme weather are making communities unlivable across the Sahel, sparking a refugee crisis driven by a hostile climate.  

The exodus

In many villages across northeastern Nigeria, the story is more chilling: As the desert advances, the farms collapse, the water dries up or becomes contaminated, and people leave. Some journeys are short. Families in Yobe, for instance, walk across the border into the Niger Republic, where relatives have settled in refugee-like encampments. Others are longer and more perilous. In Bultu Briya, 31-year-old Sani Bagira was preparing for his third attempt to reach Libya.

In his first attempt, he walked through Niger to Agadez and then paid smugglers for a ride north. It took him a week to reach Libya. He worked for two years as a farmhand, harvesting tomatoes and melons, before returning home with his savings. But the money was gone. His second journey lasted four years. He says he had no choice but to try again this time. But it was not rosy at their destination either.

“In Libya, they don’t love us,” he said. “They cheat us, they shoot us. You work three months and they throw you out without pay. But at least there, you can eat. Here, nothing.”

He rubbed his palms together, dry and cracked from years of farm work that no longer yields gain. “If we had food and water, we would never go,” he said, sitting on a low stool outside his mud-brick home, referring to his home town in Nigeria, “but here, we would die.” 

In 2022, the United Nations Refugee Agency predicted and warned that countries across the Sahelian states might face a new wave of conflict and mass displacements driven by rising temperatures, resource scarcity, and food insecurity. These predictions are turning into a dangerous reality as described, and the human toll is devastating, as many communities live in ruin or are devoid of human existence.

“Rising temperatures and extreme weather in the Sahel are worsening armed conflict, which is already destroying livelihoods, disrupting food security, and driving displacement,” said the global agency’s Special Advisor for Climate Action, Andrew Harper, in the report. “Only a massive boost in collective climate mitigation and adaptation can alleviate the current and future humanitarian consequences.” 

The report examined 10 Sahelian countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Senegal. It stated that unchecked climate emergencies like floods, droughts, and heatwaves will force more people to leave their homes for a saner world. 

HumAngle interviewed scores of locals trapped outside their homes, desperately searching for food and water sources, fertile lands and safer places to trade and thrive. While some showed interest in returning home to re-establish their lives, others said home was not a place to return to, as it reeks of ruins and devastation. 

Lukmon Akintola, the knowledge associate at the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, elaborated on the UN Refugee Agency’s predictions, stressing that transboundary climate migration is not the real problem but the lack of management on the part of authorities. The climate mobility expert believes that the best way to contain the climate-driven refugee crisis is to have conscious policies, such as planned relocation and climate adaptation schemes. He said that transboundary crises might emanate from these movements without conscious efforts. 

“Why are they moving? The lack of water? Build boreholes for them. Why do they want to move? There is desert encroachment. How can we build trees? But while we are trying to do that, do we have some sustainable solutions? Building trees is a nature-based solution,” he advised, noting that the government can adopt short-term solutions while planting trees for the long term.

“One way to manage people moving in and out is to help them adapt to their current location. Invest in adaptation strategies, starting from a blueprint or a policy, but also, like I said, engage with them. What do you want? Would you like to migrate? So I’m saying that even if they want to move, it will be because their agency decides to, and they are moving with the right knowledge.”

‘Without water, there’s no life’

Water is the difference between staying in one’s place and leaving in much of the Sahel; in Yobe State, it is the difference between life and death.

At the abandoned well in Bultu Briya, 45-year-old Yaana Mohammed pointed to the empty shaft. Built decades ago with World Bank funds, the well is now condemned. Villagers stopped using it after the water killed four animals: a ram, a cow, and two goats.

The well is located beside a potassium-contaminated pond, which leaves its water tinged with potassium. 

“It is not good to drink,” said Mohammed. “But that’s all we have.” He raised his voice, as if speaking to an unseen official. “We have called the government many times. They came, they assessed, but nothing happened. For the sake of Allah, give us a borehole. Without water, there is no life.”

Locals told HumAngle that they now trek five to seven kilometres in search of safer water. Some walk to Kuwaska and Bula Modu, nearby villages with solar-powered boreholes and hand pumps. Those with motorcycles, cows, or camels carry jerry cans. The rest go on foot, trudging under the sun with plastic containers balanced on their heads. 

“We are in dire need of this water,” Abdullahi said.

While Mohammed and hundreds of his fellow villagers struggle for water, billions of naira earmarked for environmental protection, including projects meant to halt desertification, continue to vanish without accountability.

At the centre of this story is the National Ecological Fund, established in 1981 as Nigeria’s flagship program to confront erosion, flooding and desert encroachment. It was meant to be a lifeline for communities like Bultu Briya, but it has become a cash cow for political elites over the decades. Billions flow into the fund each year. In 2023 alone, more than ₦8 billion (about $5 million) was directed to the three northeastern states most vulnerable to desertification: Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. However, audits have repeatedly shown that the money rarely reaches the ground.

Yobe offers a unique case study. In 2020, state officials announced a three-million-tree planting scheme, budgeted at ₦3 billion ($2 million), to create green shelterbelts around towns like Bultu Briya and Zakkari. Such belts, if implemented, could have slowed the encroaching dunes.

While the plan looked ambitious, on the ground, there was nothing.

Villagers remember a brief appearance and launch of the project and a token distribution of seedlings to officials present for the launch. The government dubbed the place Dasuwa forest, giving hope to the community of a new expanse of forest area in the Lawan Kalam community in Yobe State. But most of the plants dried up during the dry season without water. 

When we visited what was supposed to be the Dusuwa Forest in August 2025, we confirmed that the project had effectively disappeared. Except for a handful of dried seedlings in sight, the supposed forest is without trees. 

“The government has a way of launching the project during the rainy season so that the seedlings can survive with human efforts. But as soon as it’s the dry season, nobody monitors the plants and they quickly dry up,” says Usman Adamu, a youth leader in Yobe state.

In Bultu Briya, where dunes have contaminated the water, villagers said the tree planting scheme never reached them. Yusuf, a community member, explained that while they heard of trees being planted in other villages, Bultu was left out entirely. 

Despite this, Yobe secured an even bigger climate project in 2024. The African Development Bank gave the state a $50 million loan to plant 40 million trees, more than ten times the scale of the failed scheme. The announcement infuriated communities that had never seen a grove since the first project.

“If they cannot plant three million trees, how will they plant forty million?” asked Adamu.

When asked about these failures, Yobe State’s Ministry of Environment insisted the government is taking steps to combat desert encroachment. Officials pointed to partnerships with the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, the UN Development Programme, and World Bank–backed initiatives like ACReSAL and the SOLID project. They also cited an advocacy tour to desert-prone LGAs and a tree-planting competition to reward residents who nurture seedlings.

However, the ministry did not address the central question of accountability, especially the one asking why the 2020 tree-planting project was left unmonitored, why the seedlings dried up, and who, if anyone, was held responsible.

On the question of water, the Ministry of Water Resources distanced itself from responsibility. “Only the Ministry cannot solve the issue,” a message forwarded to our reporter from a Ministry of Water Resources official read. “However, the local government council is responsible for solving the issue. As I am speaking to you now, no complaint from that village has reached us.”

But villagers say they have been calling for boreholes and clean water for years, and that officials came to “assess” the situation without bringing relief.

Speaking on the mishandling of climate financing in Yobe state, Lukmon of the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, a US-based organisation, found a gap in how the tree-planting schemes were funded. He noted that it is clear some funds channelled to tackle climate shocks in Yobe took the top-down approach, meaning that the funders only engaged the state actors and ignored affected locals.

“I would say the agency of local actors is vital to address climate mobility. You don’t just pass it from top to bottom. You need to work with people on the ground, a bottom-up approach. This is highly intersecting with existing challenges, and one of the ones that we have mentioned is that there is a big problem of ungoverned spaces, a big problem of poor socio-economic realities, and the climate change issue is just exacerbating these existing issues,” he stressed.

A sea of sand

The Yusufari local government is primarily arid, with agricultural activity limited to its southernmost regions. The predominant vegetation is Shrub/Scrub, a low-growing, woody plant community that includes grasses and herbs, adapted to the dry conditions. Trees are sparse, consisting of individual, drought-resistant desert species found in patches within the shrubland. Satellite analysis indicates vegetation covers less than 10 per cent of the land surface.

What villagers describe in Yusufari is visible from space. Satellite data shows that the northern part of Yobe has become one of the most fragile environments in the Sahel.

NASA’s GRACE satellites, which measure underground water, reveal that while some parts of the Sahel region have gained water in recent years, Yusufari has not. Its groundwater levels have stayed flat for two decades. That means wells are not being replenished the way they are in nearby areas.

On the surface, the story is the same. A land cover analysis by the European Space Agency shows that Yobe has about 12 per cent of its land dedicated to cropland, the highest share in the entire corridor. But satellite records reveal that Yobe, unlike its neighbours, is losing much of the farmland that sustains its people. 

Over the past 20 years, vegetation in Borno, Yobe’s neighbour to the east, has actually increased, and even Diffa and Zinder across the border in Niger have shown signs of improvement. Yobe, however, has gone in the opposite direction, with satellite data indicating a loss of nearly a quarter of its vegetation cover in just two decades. This makes the state especially vulnerable to desert-induced land degradation, since most of its population depends directly on farming for food and survival. 

“From above, the view is unmistakable,” said GIS analyst Mansir Muhammed, who led the study. “Yusufari is an island of villages in a sea of sand. In this kind of condition, environmental displacement is just inevitable.”

Pressure across borders

The effects of environmental collapse in areas like Bultu Briya and Yusufari are an exodus. But most are leaving the frying pan for the fire. 

Farmers in Adamawa’s Ganye town are now crossing into Cameroon, where they clash with local communities over land and water resources. In Yobe, villagers who flee into the Niger Republic face hostility from hosts who are also battered by drought. Migration flows in both directions. Cameroonians, fleeing their climate shocks, are moving into Nigeria’s Adamawa state. The influx has strained schools, markets, and water sources. The competition for resources is feeding suspicion between neighbours.

In Niger, desertification is close to a permanent threat, with over 50 per cent of the land showing signs of degradation, according to environmental assessments. A World Food Programme report noted that the country loses nearly 100,000 hectares of productive land to erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and frequent droughts and floods yearly. The human toll is that about 2.2 million people are acutely food insecure, while an estimated 1.5 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition and 400,000 more from severe malnutrition.

Cameroon, too, is feeling the pressure. Communities in the northern regions bordering Nigeria and the Sahel face declining rainfall and increasingly erratic seasons. Competition for water, pasture, and arable land is intensifying and leading to localised conflicts that echo across the porous national borders.

Satellite imagery shows that those who flee Yusufari into neighbouring areas of Chad and northern Cameroon are likely to meet with advancing aridity and competition for land. Data from the Living Atlas’s World Atlas of Desertification, analysed using United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) metrics, classifies the entire Yusufari belt, stretching across Nigeria into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, as an arid zone highly “susceptible to desertification.” In other words, migration along this corridor often leads people from one fragile landscape into another that is equally at risk.

Even where conditions look slightly better, the relief is often short-lived. Diffa and Zinder in Niger have shown some signs of greening and water recovery, but their soils remain fragile and dry. For instance, satellite imagery indicates that Diffa alone is nearly 80 per cent bare land. And the northern regions in Cameroon struggle with the same aridity as Niger. 

Hostile sky, horrible land

When Abubakar Mohammed of Borno state decided to move to Cameroon, the climate of drought and dune crises was at its peak. The season carried a smell of scorched earth, he said, but beyond that, repeated sounds of gunfire from Boko Haram terrorists were enough reason to leave. Mohammed had been a farmer in Borno all his life. But the rains grew erratic over the years, the lake receded, and the soil cracked under the sun’s relentless glare. Then came Boko Haram.

“They came at night,” Abubakar recalled, his voice low. “We heard the shouting, the shots. They burned the storehouse. We ran with nothing.” His family joined a stream of neighbours heading east, toward the border with Cameroon. The journey was long, the air thick with fear and the uncertainty ahead. The culprit for this mass exodus is a deadly combination of climate and conflict, two intertwined forces setting families apart and homes shattered in the northeastern region of Nigeria.

Abubakar’s forceful migration is a macrocosm of this deadly crisis, but he’s obviously not the only one moving with the violent climatic wind toward the Cameroon border. Farming was once stable back home, but that changed with a noticeable shift in the weather. “The water we had the previous year was not the same this year,” he lamented, pointing to a severe change in rainfall patterns. This water scarcity wasn’t just a natural phenomenon; it was exacerbated by massive tree felling, a direct contributor to desertification and drought. As the land dried up, the competition for water and viable grazing land turned deadly.

This is where the conflict began. The drying farmlands of the north pushed herdsmen south, forcing them to trespass on cultivated lands to feed their cattle. “They will come and put their cattle in people’s farms,” Abubakar said, describing a situation where dialogue was no longer an option. When farmers like him tried to protest, the response was swift and violent. “If we talk, they fight us. And some were killed as a result.” 

The conflict wasn’t a minor inconvenience; it was a full-blown crisis that cost Abubakar his two brothers and his elder brother. This brutal violence, coupled with a breakdown of law and order where “even soldiers know about the situation,” left him and his family with no hope for safety or justice. Their home was burned, and they were forced to flee for their lives. The six-day journey to Cameroon was a desperate escape from a land that no longer supported them.

For 25-year-old Christiana Yusuf, the decision to leave was not made in a single night of violence, but over years of watching the land betray her. In Adamawa State, her small plot had once yielded enough maize to feed her children and sell at the market. But the rains had shifted, arriving late and ending early. When they did come, they came in torrents, washing away seedlings in muddy floods.

“First the drought, then the floods,” she said. “We could not plant in time. We could not harvest enough. And then the fighters came.”

The Boko Haram fighters turned already fragile livelihoods into impossible ones. Markets closed. Roads became dangerous. Even tending to a field became a gamble with life. By the time Abubakar and Christiana reached the Cameroonian frontier, they were part of a much larger exodus. In the Far North Region of Cameroon, local authorities and aid agencies were already struggling to cope with the influx. Many new arrivals came from Nigeria’s Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, areas hit hardest by the twin crises of climate and conflict.

In Cameroonian villages like Fotokol and Kousseri, Nigerian families found shelter in makeshift camps or with host communities. But the welcome, though warm, was strained. “We share what we have,” said a Cameroonian farmer interviewed by aid workers, “but the land is not enough for all of us now.”

Now in a camp in Cameroon, Christiana still clings to her identity as a farmer, growing small patches of maize and onions. “My body is used to farming,” she said. Even in a new country, the scars of climate-induced conflict and loss of livelihood run deep. Abubakar learned to live in the camps with ration cards and water queues. Christiana tried to keep her children in school, but classrooms were overcrowded, with few teachers. The host communities, affected by erratic rains and climate disruptions, struggled to absorb the newcomers. Back home, competition for land, water, and grazing intensified. In some areas, especially in Yobe state, disputes between farmers and herders, fueled by climate-driven scarcity, erupted into violence, displacing even more people.

We spoke of scores of Nigerians who fled to Cameroon, especially in the Adamawa and Far North regions. All of them echoed one fact: The twin forces of climate and conflict driving them away from home persist. Although their host communities might be hostile to them, they said, going back home is never an option. For both Abubakar and Christiana, Cameroon was not an end, but a pause. They dream of returning to Nigeria, to a land that can once again sustain them. But they know that return is a dangerous fantasy without peace and a climate they can depend on.

“I want to go home,” Abubakar said, “but home must be safe. And the land must live again.”

Until then, they will remain among the thousands whose lives have been reshaped by the collision of two forces, one born of human conflict and the other of a changing planet. In the Lake Chad Basin, neither shows signs of relenting.

From frying pan to fire

Interestingly, the Niger Republic is both a transport hub and a destination for many migrants fleeing climate hostility in northeastern Nigeria. When most locals from Nigeria flee to Niger, they find the place not quite different; the climate shocks in the country terrify its citizens, just as in Yobe, Borno or Adamawa. While many have resorted to starting their lives all over again in Niger, others, like Sani, will only stop where the grass is greener. Sani would stay for a few months in Niger before finding his route to Libya, through Agadez. His reason? “Niger’s extreme weather is not any better.”

Many young Nigerian climate migrants have ventured into illegal gold mining in the Djado area of Nthe iger Republic. They would labour for days under the hellish weather before touching a gold cut. The terrain is hazardous, as terrorists exploit it, and host communities are not exactly welcoming. Water resources are the bone of contention, even on the Djado mining site. In rural communities, water is scarce, just as in villages in the Yusufari axis of Yobe state. This condition puts migrants in a tight situation, competing with local Nigeriens for limited resources. 

“We were working in atrocious conditions,” said Mahamadou Ibrahim, a local miner from the Maradi region, who claimed to have worked with dozens of Nigerian climate migrants on the Djado gold site. “I’ve never seen a site as difficult as Djado.” According to him, the main difficulty was the lack of water. Najib Harouna, another miner in Djado, described the situation to our correspondent: “First of all, you have no shelter. These are makeshift sheds, built with straw reinforced with plastic.  If it rains, all the rain pours down on you, and you can always hear gunfire in the vicinity. And then, there are the abuse and exploitation.

“Some well owners take people to drive them into the bush, do a week or two weeks digging, if you haven’t found anything, you can’t leave, unless you pay them what they spent on you.”

The gruelling conditions of working on the Djado mining site forced Sani to Libya, but when he got there, a more appalling situation brought him back to his home country. But there is more to the danger of moving to another man’s land in the name of climate hazards: continual communal clashes.

Locals in the Niger Republic told our correspondent that they often brawl with Nigerians seeking greener pastures over land and water resources. Ironically, Nigerian climate migrants are moving to communities in Niger facing similar issues to what pushed them beyond borders. What the locals told HumAngle matched a 2021 study by the International Organisation for Migration on how climate change is driving internal migration within towns in the Niger Republic and even beyond the country’s borders.

IOM’s investigators interviewed over 350 rural households in Niger and 147 internal climate migrants who had moved from different areas to Niamey. The study showed that rising temperatures (75.5 per cent), droughts (63.9 per cent), and strong winds (34.6 per cent) are the climatic drivers of forced displacements and migrations in the country.

“85 per cent of the population of Niger depends on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, environmental and climate shocks such as droughts, floods, wildfires, erratic rainfall, and desertification are intensifying and impacting the livelihoods of communities. This is causing a growing number of people to leave their homes,” said Barbara Rijks, IOM Chief of Mission in Niger.

Way forward through COP

Sahelian states have been spotlighted as hotspots for extreme climate crises. During COP29 in Baku, African leaders tried to negotiate immediate climate financing to contain the region’s hostile climate shocks and environmental setbacks. Although a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) was established to raise $300 billion annually by 2035, the conference failed to deliver effective mechanisms to support the Sahel in combating climate hostility.

According to UNHCR, over 129.9 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, with the Sahel contributing significantly due to compounding climate shocks and governance failures. The report noted how weak institutions, corruption, and limited capacity to manage conflict have hindered effective climate response, exacerbating forced migration and instability. Climate analysts reviewing the outcome of COP29 have urged the summit to prioritise African-led resilience strategies and transboundary climate adaptation risks (TCARs). Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the analyst said the stakes for the Sahel are higher than ever, as African leaders call for binding standards for transparent governance and inclusive climate finance.

Climate mobility expert Lukmon said COP30 must confront the widening climate reality gap by scaling adaptation and financing resilience using a bottom-up approach. For the Sahel, the expert noted, this means investing in community-led solutions, strengthening governance frameworks, and ensuring that climate action translates into tangible protection for those most at risk.

“At the core of COP is the ability to discuss various aspects of climate change and forge partnerships. It is crucial to highlight that human mobility in the context of climate change is a growing reality, encompassing more than just forced displacement. Those of us working in this space prefer the term ‘mobility’over ‘migration’ to address related issues, including planned relocation,” he said.

Dorcas Ekupe and Amma Mousa contributed cross-border reporting/research. Mansir Muhammed analysed satellite images and illustrated maps. Satellite imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.

Jerardyn sat quietly on the bus, her mood relaxed as her eyes scanned the fleeting horizon of Southern California one August afternoon.

But as the U.S.-Mexico border wall, a towering barrier of steel pillars, came into view, she began taking big, deep breaths. Her heart began to race as she clutched her immigration documents and tried to hide her anxiety from her two youngest children traveling with her. She caught what she believed would be her last glimpse of the United States for now.

A refugee from Venezuela, Jerardyn, 40, entered the United States last year with her family, hoping to obtain asylum. But this was before President Trump took office and launched immigration raids across Southern California, shattering her sense of safety. She lived in fear that immigration agents would detain her or, worse, send her family back to Venezuela, where they risked facing retribution from the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Jerardyn bathes Milagro in the basement of a church in South Los Angeles, where she found refuge with her four children, daughter-in-law and the family’s dog.

So after eight months of living in the basement of an L.A. church, she made a painful decision. She would migrate again. This time she’d voluntarily move back to Mexico with her two youngest kids, leaving behind her two eldest, who are applying for asylum.

She planned meticulously. She withdrew her asylum application from immigration court. She found an apartment outside Mexico City. She filled two boxes with toys, clothes and shoes to ship to Mexico ahead of her departure. She bought bus tickets to Tijuana and plane tickets to Mexico City.

The bus ride from Los Angeles to Tijuana had been smooth, but as they pulled into the National Institute of Migration, Mexico’s border immigration office, she felt a sense of dread.

Milagro plays with Pelusa, the family’s dog, in the church basement.

Jerardyn, right, prepares for their move to Mexico as her daughter-in-law styles Milagro’s hair.

Jerardyn and son David, 10, say goodbye to his brother Jahir, 18, at the bus station in Huntington Park on Aug. 16, 2025.

Milagro holds onto her eldest brother, Jesus, at the bus station as she prepares to move to Mexico in August.

“I’m panicking,” she said.

She hadn’t expected to face Mexican immigration officials so soon. She tried to self-soothe by telling herself that no matter what, she would figure it out.

“I’m going to make it in any country because I’m the one doing it.”

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Gathering her bags and suitcase, she shepherded Milagro, 7, and David, 10, into the empty line and handed her Venezuelan passport to an immigration officer. He gave her a stern look and pulled Jerardyn and her children away from the counter and into another room.

Would Mexico deport her to Venezuela? Or grant her some mercy? All she knew was that the doors leading to Mexico were, for now, closed.

Jerardyn grew up in a comfortable, middle-class family in a seaport city, the youngest of eight, and was doted upon by her father. She had aspirations of becoming a social worker, but at 15, she became pregnant. Her parents initially disapproved, but her father, a former police officer, came around after she told him she would name her firstborn after him.

Jerardyn asked that her last name not be published, for fear of retribution for fleeing Venezuela, an act viewed as treason by the government. Her children are being identified by their middle names.

With help from her parents, she earned a certification to become a medical technician. But after her second son, Jahir, was born, her father died, upending her life.

When she was 22, Jerardyn said, she was assaulted by a man who had hired her to do some office cleaning, an ordeal that left her scarred. Violence became rife in Venezuela, as family members got caught up in illegal activity. A nephew she helped raise since he was young was shot by a police officer in front of her, she said.

Jerardyn comforts Milagro on the bus bound for the border with Mexico, after they said their goodbyes to family members.

Conditions in Venezuela continued to worsen. The economy collapsed, bankrupting an auto parts shop she had been running with her husband. By the time Milagro was born in 2018, their relationship had become strained, and they were no longer a couple.

As corruption ran rampant in Venezuela, Jerardyn learned that government officials were kidnapping teens. It wasn’t long before her oldest son, Jesus, then 17, became a target.

During a nationwide power outage in 2019, Jesus went out to buy gasoline around 10 a.m. but never returned. Panicked, she went looking for him, but no one knew where he was.

Frantic, she prayed to God for his safe return. At midnight, government officials released him.

Jerardyn and her children David and Milagro wait at Tijuana International Airport for their flight to Mexico City on Aug. 17, 2025.

Jerardyn, who lovingly refers to her children as her pollitos — baby chicks — concluded they were no longer safe in their homeland. So without notifying her family, she fled with the children to neighboring Colombia. Milagro was 4 months old.

“No one knows what you live through in your country,” she said of her decision to escape Venezuela. “If I had stayed there, my kids could have died from hunger, suffered psychological torture, kidnappings, so many things…. I’m just trying to save them.”

Aid workers in Colombia helped the family relocate to Lima, Peru, where Jerardyn worked as a server and in clothing stores.

Jerardyn, center, sleeps on the flight to Mexico City with her two youngest children, David and Milagro.

David and Milagro bundle up while Jerardyn waits for the landlord to let them into their new apartment in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City

She made one foray back to Venezuela during that time — attempting to obtain passports for her children. But that effort backfired. Government officials detained her and her children in a white room and forced her to pay the equivalent of $3,000 to be released, with no passports for David and Milagro.

Peru did not prove to be a refuge either. The country was growing increasingly hostile to Venezuelan immigrants, and her sons faced bullying in school. So after four years of living abroad, she began researching what it would take to travel through the Darien Gap, the dangerous strip of jungle linking Central and South America.

She made a list of what they needed to pack to survive.

Altogether, there were six on the journey through the Darien Gap — Jerardyn, her four children, her daughter-in-law, and Pelusa, a dog they had found in Peru. She was especially worried about David, who was 8, and Milagro, then 5.

The jungle was “a living hell,” she recalled, a place where people lost their humanity. Migrants robbed other migrants. Travelers were left injured and abandoned by their families. Jerardyn and her kids had to hike past decomposing bodies, an image she cannot shake. They could hear snakes slithering past their tent when it was not raining, which it often did.

It took the family five days to cross the jungle. She was certain that if one of them died, she would have stayed behind too.

After a month traveling through Mexico, they arrived in the capital covered in dirt, their sandals worn down from the miles behind them. Jesus’ feet were bloody. A taxi driver recommended they visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They arrived at 6 a.m., exhausted and penniless.

After the morning Mass, Jerardyn kneeled and prayed for her family’s safety and a pathway to a life in Mexico, while they waited to enter the U.S.

A pathway soon emerged. A friend helped her settle in Texcoco de Mora, a town northeast of Mexico City. Jerardyn began working at a salon and enrolled Milagro and David in school. Jesus and Jahir hawked vegetables at street markets, and her daughter-in-law worked at a restaurant. Every day, they tried to land a CBP One appointment, which would allow them to enter the U.S. legally to seek asylum.

By a stroke of luck and persistence, the family secured a coveted appointment on Dec. 11, 2024. They continued north to Nogales, Mexico, and suddenly Jerardyn was seeing the U.S. southern border for the first time.

Moments later, she heard a U.S. immigration official voice the words she had long awaited: “Welcome to the United States.”

Immigration raids had been roiling Los Angeles for more than a month when Jerardyn went to Mass one Sunday in July. Having just finished her overnight shift cleaning up a stadium after a concert, she smiled tiredly as she joined her children in the front pew at the church in South L.A. She hugged them as Pastor Ivan began preaching about immigrants and how they shape communities.

Before the raids, the pews would be filled with dozens of families. Now, only a handful of people sat scattered around.

Pastor Ivan’s voice boomed as he urged the congregation to pray for families torn apart by the raids. After a prayer, Jerardyn stood, picked up the collection basket and began gathering donations for the church. She had given Milagro and David a few dollars, which they dropped into the basket.

Milagro walks down the aisle at the South L.A. church.

The church became their haven in January after Jerardyn spent a night homeless. Along with her kids, she had originally been staying with the father of her children, who arrived in the U.S. from Venezuela on his own years ago. But after an argument, he kicked her out of the apartment, forcing her to find a new refuge for herself and her kids.

Pastor Ivan, whose church The Times is not naming because Jerardyn’s family members still reside there, said the church has a history of sheltering immigrants, including Afghans, Haitians, Mexicans and Venezuelans. The pastor said he lived in the U.S. for a decade without documents and knows firsthand the plight of migrants.

“They feel that everything is closing up around them,” he said. But the church’s role is to not stay silent, he said, and instead, to offer help and compassion.

That is why Jerardyn and her family began to slowly build a semblance of a normal life in the church’s basement. David and Milagro attended school nearby, where Milagro was praised for picking up English quickly.

But the family found everyday life stifling. In the basement, Jerardyn felt like they were hiding from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Once, when the school notified her that immigration agents were nearby, she panicked, she said, wondering whether they would seize her children.

David sits at the kitchen table as Jerardyn cleans up in the church basement.

In the eight months they lived there, she had taken her children on public transit only six times. Once, on the metro, a homeless woman pulled her pants down in front of them and urinated. Another time, on a bus, a man became visibly irritated while she spoke Spanish to another passenger.

In the most jarring incident, Jerardyn and David watched from a bus window as immigration agents detained a woman. Suffering panic attacks, the boy would wake up crying from nightmares in which Jerardyn was the one arrested. She shed tears thinking of the stress she was placing on her children.

In the church, she spent several nights mulling over whether to leave the U.S. She would lie on the carpet, alone, in tears, and ask God for answers. But the choice became clear, she said, when David told her he wanted to return to Mexico.

In her request to close her asylum case at immigration court, she carefully wrote out a translated version of a plea to the judge.

“I am requesting voluntary departure because my children and I are experiencing a very stressful situation,” she wrote, recounting how she and David watched a woman get detained. Milagro loved going to school but suffered from anxiety too. “For me it is difficult to make that decision, but it is preferable to leave voluntarily and avoid many problems and even so in the future I can get my documents in the best way and return to this country legally. Thank you very much.”

The judge approved her request. Jesus, 23, and Jahir, 18, would continue to seek asylum and live at the church, with support from Pastor Ivan, who assured Jerardyn they would be safe.

When it came time to say goodbye as they boarded the bus for Tijuana, Jerardyn told Jesus to look out for Jahir. She hugged Jahir, caressed his head, and told him to listen to his older brother. Milagro pressed her small face into Jesus’ stomach and held him tightly until it was time to board. She then sobbed quietly in her mother’s arms as the bus pulled away.

There are no clear numbers yet on how many migrants have opted to self-deport this year. In a statement, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app.” The app offers to pay for one-way tickets out of the U.S., along with a $1,000 “exit bonus.”

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the Trump administration has pushed hard to get people to leave on their own, as the White House appears to be falling short of its goal of 1 million deportations a year. The raids, courthouse arrests and threat of third-country removals are compounding a climate of fear.

“Some of the high-profile moves that this administration has taken [have] been aimed at trying to scare people into self-deporting,” she said.

At the immigration office in Tijuana, Jerardyn, Milagro and David were placed in a white room with one window and told they would be deported because Jerardyn did not have a visa to stay in Mexico.

As they waited, Jerardyn started to pace the small room, which was reminiscent of the one Venezuelan officials had placed her in when they extorted money from her. She had no luggage or phone. Mexican officials had taken them.

As the officials questioned her, she said, she maintained that she had committed no crimes and that she knew she had rights to travel into the country. Somehow, Milagro and David remained calm, eating tuna and crackers provided by the officials.

Jerardyn and her children were released by Mexican immigration authorities after being fingerprinted at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border in August.

The family waited for more than three hours before the officials returned with news: They could stay. All were granted temporary status for a month while Jerardyn sought legal status. Officials fingerprinted them, staining their fingers green, took their pictures for documents that would allow them to travel freely and — 12 hours after leaving Los Angeles — let them leave for their flight to Mexico City.

Because of her preparations, Jerardyn had a job lined up at the hair salon where she previously worked. But a big question mark was Gonzalo. She had met him in Texcoco and they had become close. He showered her children with adoration and care. He asked to marry her, and she had said yes. But when she departed for the U.S. just days later, the distance became too difficult, and they broke off their engagement.

When she and the kids returned, Gonzalo met them at the airport in Mexico City, and the children hugged him in greeting.

Now that she was back, Jerardyn hoped that she and Gonzalo would rekindle their romance. At first they did, easily falling back together, holding hands while strolling through the streets.

Jerardyn, Gonzalo, Milagro and David, center, walk through the town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico, on Aug. 17, 2025.

Jerardyn, left, chats with a neighbor at her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.

Jerardyn shares a laugh with Gonzalo during a family dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.

Jerardyn and Gonzalo walk through town after dinner in Texcoco, Mexico.

At her new two-bedroom apartment, Jerardyn unloaded air mattresses that would serve as beds until she could afford real ones. She made a note of what she would need to buy. A fridge. A trash can and bath mat. A couch for the kids to relax on after school.

One Sunday, the family walked through Texcoco’s crowded central plaza, the air warm and scented with cooking meats and sweets. They navigated around the vendors and chatting families sitting on benches and enjoying snacks. Her children were smiling, and Jerardyn was at peace, something she hardly ever felt in the U.S.

She was finally back in “mi Texcoco,” she said. This feeling of tranquility reminded her of the first time she left Venezuela, when she no longer feared that the government would take her children from her.

“I feel free, complete peace of mind, knowing I’m not doing anything wrong, and I won’t be pursued,” she said.

Jerardyn stares out of the bedroom at her new apartment.

During her first week back, Jerardyn and the children made the trek into Mexico City, where she found herself nearly asking for directions in English, only to remember that everyone spoke her language too.

She returned to the Basilica, her family’s first stop in Mexico City, and gave thanks to the Virgin Mary for guiding her safe journey. The three bowed their heads and knelt in prayer. David prayed for the well-being of his brothers.

That first week, she signed her children up for online English classes at a nearby academy. She worked on a client’s hair, her first gig. She also started therapy to begin sorting through everything she has lived through.

Milagro roller-skates outside her family’s new home in Texcoco, Mexico.

One crisp August morning, Jerardyn helped Milagro slip into the in-line skates Jesus had given her as a parting gift. The little girl had carried them in her pink backpack all the way from L.A., and she wanted to show them off.

In the safe, enclosed space of the apartment complex, where the buildings were painted vibrant shades of red, yellow and blue, Milagro went slowly at first, using a pillar to make turns and the wall as a stop. But as she settled into a flow, she began to speed up, making the turns smoothly on her own.

Milagro cuddles up to a new stuffed toy, a gift from her cousin, right, inside her family’s new apartment in Texcoco, Mexico.

A few times, she fell with a huff. But with her mother looking on, she’d pick herself back up and keep going.

Athens, Greece – Greece has drawn criticism and concern from rights groups and a United Nations office after passing what it considers to be the European Union’s strictest refugee deportation policy earlier this month.

The law was put to use on September 12, when three Turkish citizens were convicted of illegal residence and handed stiff jail sentences. Two men were given two years of imprisonment and fines of 5,000 euros ($5,870), while the third, aged 19, the youngest of the group, was handed a 10-month prison sentence.

Athens plans to test-drive the law through a likely minefield of legal challenges in the coming months. Humanitarian organisations say the measure unfairly includes children and stigmatises refugees and migrants as criminals.

Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum Thanos Plevris told Parliament on September 2 that the law was “the strictest returns policy in the whole EU” and claimed there was “a lot of interest from European countries, especially EU members, to adopt this law as a law that will force an illegal migrant to return”.

Rights groups, which are gearing up to challenge the legislation, say it far outshoots a draft Returns Regulation the European Commission wants to make binding on all member states by June 2026.

The new law has shortened deadlines and raised penalties for unauthorised residence.

For example, rejected asylum applicants will be fitted with ankle monitors and given just two weeks to remove themselves voluntarily. If they do not, they face, like the two Turkish nationals, a 5,000-euro ($5,870) fine and between two and five years of confinement in closed camps.

Children, more than a fifth of arrivals this year, are not exempt. If people wish to appeal, they have to do it in four days.

“We always claim that it’s not legal to put children in detention,” said Federica Toscano from Save the Children. The law is “not aligned with the [UN] Convention on the Rights of the Child”, and is “absolutely challengeable”.

The Greek Ombudsman, an independent authority monitoring public services, also objected to the law’s maximum reprieve of 60 days, down from 120, so children can complete their school year.

The Ombudsman suggested the law sets out to prove the proposition that all undocumented people are criminals.

Ankle monitors, it said, which are not mentioned in the draft Returns Regulation, “deepen the view of migrants as criminals and put their treatment on a par with that reserved for indictees, convicts and prisoners on leave”.

“Refugees are entitled to effective access to international protection without punishment for violating migration policy,” says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Under the Geneva Convention, “the quest for asylum … is not a criminal offence, but a human right”.

The EU approves about 45 percent of asylum applications on average.

Of the remainder, 90 percent end up staying on European soil because there is no effective policy to return them, say European officials.

“Without a returns policy, no migration policy has any meaning,” said Greece’s then-migration minister, Makis Voridis, presenting the new proposals in Parliament’s European Affairs Committee on May 15.

Irregular entry into the country has been raised to a felony. Anyone arriving without documents can be detained for two years, up from 18 months.

A provision that legalises anyone after seven years of undocumented residence is being abolished.

Greece’s predicament

Plevris has defended the hardened law, arguing that Greece guards external EU borders.

“It’s easy to defend borders when there’s three or four countries people have to cross to get to you. Compare us to other first reception countries,” he said.

Since 2015, Greece has been the arrival point of 46 percent of more than 2.8 million undocumented people entering Europe, according to UNHCR.

Many have moved on to other EU member states, but because of EU rules, rejected asylum seekers or asylum recipients who lose their protected status would be returned to their country of arrival in the EU for deportation.

Greek officials admit they do not expect refugees and migrants to spend five years in detention. The draconian rules, they say, are designed to force them to return voluntarily once they are convicted.

That is because it is legally difficult to deport anyone forcibly.

The law has a second aim – to deter what Greece views as so-called economic migrants travelling to Europe when there are Geneva Convention signatories closer to home.

“It’s a massive programme that costs a lot of money and involves a whole web of private actors. So I think that would be pretty difficult to set up,” said Hope Barker, who works for the Global Strategic Communications Council, a nongovernmental group seeking to influence environmental and migration policy.

Greece’s Union of Administrative Judges objected that the law did not define flight risk, leaving incarceration decisions to the discretion of the police. The law “needs to provide a comprehensive list of criteria, not an indicative one”, it said.

The Council of Bar Associations of Greece also weighed in with objections to tightened deadlines for appeal and the criminalisation of undocumented entry.

“Danger to life and limb vastly outranks whatever law is broken by entering Greece illegally,” it said.

The EU’s guinea pig?

Repeatedly, these bodies pointed out, the new law violates the existing EU Returns Regulation, which dates back to 2008, but observers of EU migration policy say the European Commission is deliberately allowing Greece to push the boundaries.

“Greece has become something of a testing ground for many EU measures, especially on the Greek islands,” Amnesty International’s Olivia Sundberg told Al Jazeera, citing the Closed Controlled Access Centres built to house thousands of asylum seekers.

“In a lot of ways, Greece is a place that has tested things out before they became EU law, and if they worked well, they were carried over into [EU] directives,” she said.

The EU is now looking for ways to implement returns.

“There is this whole push for what they call ‘innovative solutions’,” said Barker. “So one of these is obviously return hubs in third countries, another is getting people to sign up to voluntary returns,” she told Al Jazeera.

Italy has been testing third-country hubs through a deal with Albania, but Italian courts have ordered some of the asylum seekers sent there for processing returned to Italy.

Greece’s law casts a wider net, suggesting returnees should seek protection in any safe country closer to their country of origin.

But Greece’s Ombudsman has objected to this.

Passing the burden “allows a return process to a country the returnee doesn’t come from, or hasn’t passed through and has no connection to, except that it is geographically close to his country of origin. In this case, it’s no longer a ‘returns’ procedure but a ‘displacement’ procedure”, the Ombudsman said.

Some observers say Europe is in danger of falling short of its own human rights charter.

“Migration is becoming a rule of law issue rather than an implementation of law issue,” said Amnesty’s Sundberg.

Others point out that Europe is an ageing continent in need of more workers to sustain its tax base and social security systems in the coming decades.

“How are we going to create an environment of reception of the people we need, when we take this type of measure?” asked Lefteris Papayiannakis, who heads the Greek Council for Refugees, a legal aid charity. “If you can’t attract them, what’s your next move?”

Besides, he said, the measures exude desperation.

“You’re creating an impression now that you’re not in control. But if we compare the situation now with 2015, or the [flight of] Ukrainians in 2022, it’s a completely different situation,” Papayiannakis said.

“How can you justify being up in arms now about a very small number of migrants compared to the number … you’re going to need?”

Move part of broader immigration crackdown as ruling Labour Party comes under pressure from hard-right Reform UK party.

The United Kingdom’s Labour government has said it is suspending a scheme enabling registered refugees to bring family members into the country amid soaring support for the far right in opinion polls.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on Monday that she was “temporarily” suspending new applications to the refugee family reunion route as the government draws up new rules set to be introduced by spring next year.

“The system has to be controlled and managed based on fair and properly enforced rules, not chaos and exploitation driven by criminal smuggler gangs,” she said.

Under the current system, an asylum seeker granted indefinite leave to remain in the country can bring in children under the age of 18, and their partner if they can prove they have been in a relationship for at least two years.

Cooper told Parliament that increasing numbers of family reunion applications had placed pressure on housing across the country, with many applying to bring relatives over within about a month. One of the planned reforms would mean longer waiting periods before applying.

Refugee charities blasted the move. Safe Passage, which supports child refugees, accused the government of “giving in to far-right pressure”, saying that it would leave children fleeing war and persecution in countries like Afghanistan, Sudan or Iran “trapped in danger”.

🚨 SHOCKING: The UK Government has temporarily suspended all new refugee family reunion applications.

The consequences will be devastating for the children we support, who’ve now been stripped of almost every safe route to join their loved ones. pic.twitter.com/YErszylNft

— Safe Passage International🧡 (@safepassageint) September 1, 2025

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Far from stopping people taking dangerous journeys to cross the Channel, these changes will only push more desperate people into the arms of smugglers in an effort to reunite with loved ones.”

Far right whipping up anger

Cooper announced the move as Labour faced a bumpy return to Parliament after a summer break that has seen anti-immigration protesters repeatedly targeting hotels housing asylum seekers in various parts of England – most recently in Epping, northeast of London, on Sunday.

Facing pressure from Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party, which has whipped up anger over people arriving in small boats over the English Channel from France, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that he will accelerate plans to empty the asylum hotels.

Accused of moving too slowly, the government has been eager to demonstrate it is tackling a problem left by previous Conservative-led administrations by brokering return deals with other nations and speeding up the processing of asylum claims.

Cooper said that the UK and France will start implementing a “one in, one out” pilot scheme later this month, with the former sending refugees and asylum seekers to the latter in exchange for approved applicants.

“Applications have also been opened for the reciprocal legal route, with the first cases under consideration subject to strict security checks,” she said, adding that “family groups” would be prioritised under the deal with France.

The government will also establish a new independent body to deal with appeals as tens of thousands of people in asylum accommodation are currently awaiting a decision, Cooper said.

She added that the current average waiting time for appeals to be heard is 54 weeks.

Neighbour Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers since Russia invaded in 2022.

Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink could be cut due to the Polish president’s veto of a refugee aid bill, a Polish deputy prime minister said, as a conflict between the government and head of state deepens and undermines the once ironclad support of its war-torn neighbour.

Poland pays for Ukraine to use Starlink, which provides crucial internet connectivity to the country and its military as they try to push back invading Russian forces.

Right-wing Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Monday vetoed a bill extending state financial support provided to Ukrainian refugees and unveiled plans to limit their future access to child benefits and healthcare.

However, Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said the vetoed legislation also provided the legal basis for providing Starlink to Ukraine.

“This is the end of Starlink internet, which Poland provides to Ukraine as it wages war,” he wrote on X.

Centrist Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticised the veto. But his government does not have the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to overcome the move.

“We cannot punish people for losing their job — particularly not innocent children. This is the ABC of human decency,” Labour Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bak wrote on X.

Gawkowski, stressed that Nawrocki veto jeopardised Ukraine’s use of Starlink.

“We want to continue paying for internet by satellite for Ukraine. Unfortunately, this disastrous decision by the president greatly complicates things, and we will have to inform our partners that this support will finish at the end of September,” he told the PAP news agency.

Nawrocki’s spokesperson however, told the Reuters news agency that the basis for paying for Starlink could still be restored if parliament adopts a bill proposed by the president by the end of next month.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, around one million refugees have settled in neighbouring Poland. Most of them are women and children.

Poland is a key supporter of Ukraine and a major transit route for Western aid but public attitudes towards Ukrainians have hardened.

Nawrocki, a staunch nationalist, had promised to cut social welfare benefits for Ukrainians during the campaign ahead of his election victory on June 1.

“I will not change my mind and I think that (this aid) should be limited only to Ukrainians who are committed to working in Poland,” Nawrocki, who took office this month, told reporters on Monday.

Nawrocki also said Ukrainians who do not work in Poland should not be allowed to receive free medical treatment as they do now.

“This puts us in a situation in which Polish citizens, in their own country, are less well treated than our Ukrainian guests,” he said.

Gawkowski said that Poland spent 77 million euros ($90 million) between 2022 and 2024 to buy and subscribe to Starlink systems for Ukraine.

A Ukrainian diplomatic source told the Reuters news agency that Kyiv was analysing the possible impact of the move on Ukrainians in Poland, adding they believed “their rights will be protected no less than in other EU countries”.

Ukrainian refugees are currently eligible to receive the monthly family benefit of 800 zlotys ($219) per child if their children attend Polish schools. Other EU countries such as Germany have also proposed cutting benefits recently.

In Poland, the president can propose bills and veto government legislation. The government can similarly also block the president’s proposals.

PM’s office says the weapons transfer to the Lebanese army marks the start of a wider disarmament campaign.

Lebanon has launched a plan to disarm Palestinian groups in its refugee camps, beginning with the handover of weapons from Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut.

The prime minister’s office announced on Thursday that the weapons transfer to the Lebanese army marks the start of a wider disarmament campaign. More handovers are expected in the coming weeks across Burj al-Barajneh and other camps nationwide.

A Fatah official told the Reuters news agency the arms handed over so far were only illegal weapons that had entered the camp within the previous day. Television footage showed military vehicles inside the camp, though Reuters could not verify what type of weapons were being surrendered.

The initiative follows Lebanon’s commitment under a US-backed truce between Israel and Hezbollah in November, which restricted weapons to six state security forces. Since the November 27, 2024, ceasefire agreement, Israel has continued attacking Lebanon, often on a weekly basis.

The government has tasked the army with producing a strategy by the end of the year to consolidate all arms under state authority.

According to the prime minister’s office, the decision to disarm Palestinian factions was reached in a May meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Both leaders affirmed Lebanon’s sovereignty and insisted that only the state should hold arms. Lebanese and Palestinian officials later agreed on a timeline and mechanism for the handovers.

For decades, Palestinian groups have maintained control inside Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, which largely operate outside state jurisdiction. The latest initiative is seen as the most serious effort in years to curb the presence of weapons inside the camps.

Palestinian resistance movements grew out of displacement and political exclusion after the creation of Israel in 1948, when some 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes.

Over the years, groups including Fatah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) established a presence in Lebanon’s camps to continue armed struggle against Israel.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon remain without key civil rights, such as access to certain jobs and property ownership. With limited opportunities, many have turned to armed factions for protection or representation.

The disarmament push also comes as Hezbollah faces what analysts describe as its greatest military challenge in decades, following Israeli strikes in 2024 that decimated much of its leadership.

More than 25,000 people have crossed the Engilsh Channel to the UK in 2025, the highest total this early in the year.

More than 25,000 people have crossed the English Channel into the United Kingdom so far this year, marking the fastest pace of arrivals since records began in 2018 and piling pressure on the UK’s Labour government as anti-immigration sentiment is stoked by the political right wing.

Figures released on Thursday show that nearly 900 refugees and migrants made the crossing in 13 small boats on Wednesday alone, bringing the total number of arrivals in 2025 to 25,436. It’s a perilous journey that has resulted in dozens of deaths over the years.

The milestone is likely to intensify political scrutiny over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s handling of undocumented migration. His government has pledged tougher action on smuggling networks, with Starmer vowing to “smash the gangs” responsible for transporting people across the Channel.

Opposition politicians have seized on the latest numbers to criticise Labour’s approach.

“Almost 900 people crossed the Channel yesterday, meaning 25,000 people, mainly young men, have crossed the Channel this year. [And] 2025 is the worst year on record so far, and the Labour Government are doing nothing to stop the crossings,” said Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.

He added: “Their 17 in, one out deal with France will not even make a dent – it would take 10 years for [Home Secretary] Yvette Cooper to deport the illegal immigrants that have arrived since the start of this year alone under her so-called deal, which still hasn’t started.”

Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced “one in, one out” returns of asylum seekers earlier this month. The pilot programme sets out that for every person returned, a different individual would be allowed “to come here via a safe route: controlled and legal, subject to strict security checks and only open to those who have not tried to enter the UK illegally”, Starmer said at the time.

Philp also reiterated his party’s proposal to immediately detain and deport new arrivals, warning that continued legal challenges under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) could force a Conservative government to consider withdrawing from it, a threat they have often made in and around the Brexit years when the party was in government.

Radical right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage echoed those criticisms, writing on social media: “898 illegals crossed the English Channel yesterday. This means more hotels, more costs and more people who should not be here. The public have had ENOUGH!”

A series of violent far-right demonstrations have been held recently outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping, north of London.

Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a hardline anti-immigration platform and has been executing it during his second term with raids and deportations of immigrants,  recently praised the UK government’s efforts, saying it was “doing a fantastic thing” by addressing the issue, though he admitted knowing “nothing about the boats”.

As a Christian who smuggled Bibles into my home country of Iran, I became a target of the country’s Islamist regime, which imprisons and sometimes kills those who invite Muslims to convert. After living under house arrest for two years, I fled as a refugee and was ultimately resettled to the United States.

I experienced true religious freedom for the first time in my life in this country, of which I am now a proud, grateful citizen — and that’s why I am shocked by the ways that my government is now treating my Iranian congregants, who have been detained by masked officers, separated from their families and threatened with deportation to a country that would kill them for their Christian faith. What I have witnessed gives me flashbacks to Tehran, and I believe that America must be better.

Two families who are a part of the Farsi-speaking evangelical congregation that I pastor in Los Angeles have been detained in recent weeks. First, a couple and their 3-year-old daughter, who are in the process of seeking asylum because they fear persecution if they were returned to Iran. They were detained at their court hearing in downtown Los Angeles on June 23. The entire family is now being held in South Texas.

The next day, I received a call from a woman in my church. Like me, she had been forced to flee Iran for Turkey when her involvement in Iran’s underground churches was exposed.

When the woman and her husband found themselves in a desperate situation in Turkey last year, they were not offered the option to fly to the U.S. as resettled refugees as I had been in 2010. Instead, they flew to South America, made a treacherous journey north and waited in Mexico for an appointment they reserved on a U.S. government app, CBP One, to be able to explain their situation to officers of the U.S. government.

Once lawfully allowed in with provisional humanitarian status, they found our church — where they could be baptized and publicly profess their faith in Jesus — and legal help to begin their asylum request. They received their work authorization documents and found jobs. Their first asylum hearing in immigration court was scheduled for this September.

When President Trump returned to office, however, his administration both suspended all refugee resettlement and canceled humanitarian parole for those who had been allowed to enter via the CBP One app. Many parolees received menacing letters instructing them to self-deport or face prosecution, fines or deportation. But these letters also noted that these instructions did not apply to those who had “otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain,” such as a pending asylum application.

That’s why I was so shocked to receive a call from the woman in my congregation informing me that her husband had been detained by masked immigration officers on the street, just a few blocks from our church. I rushed over and began to film the shocking scene: First he was detained by masked officers, and then she was. I asked if they had a judicial warrant, but if they did, they would not show me. The woman experienced a panic attack and was taken to a hospital but discharged into ICE custody; she is now hours away in a detention center in California. Her husband is in a detention center in Texas.

It’s not just these two families who are affected. My community of Iranian Christians is terrified of being detained and deported back to Iran, where they fear being killed for their faith. Some have lost jobs because they fear leaving their homes. Others lost jobs because their work authorization, tied to humanitarian parole, was abruptly terminated.

I believe that America is better than this. This behavior reminds me disturbingly of what I fled in Iran. But I know that most Americans do not support this, nor do most fellow evangelical Christians: Many evangelicals voted for Trump because he pledged to protect persecuted Christians — not to deport them. While most evangelicals want those convicted of violent crimes detained, one-quarter or less of us say that about other immigrants, and 7 in 10 believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. I have been overwhelmed by the support of English- and Spanish-speaking sister congregations of our church, by the outreach of Christians from across the country and by a recent biblically rooted statement of many California evangelical leaders.

Now, Congress has passed legislation to exponentially increase the funding for detaining and deporting immigrants. Trump’s administration has been clear that anyone in the country unlawfully — including more than a million who were here lawfully until his administration abruptly canceled their status — is at risk of deportation. According to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 80% of those vulnerable to deportation are Christians; some, like those in my church, would likely face death if deported to their home countries.

I hope and pray Trump will reverse course on these policies, going after those who genuinely present a public safety threat but having mercy on others, especially those who fled persecution on account of their faith. And until he does make that policy shift, I plead with Congress to pass real immigration reforms that would halt these horrifying detentions and deportations.

Ara Torosian is a pastor at Cornerstone West Los Angeles.

Crisis compounded after United States, which provided 40 percent of UNHCR funding last year, slashed its contribution.

More than 11 million refugees risk losing access to humanitarian aid owing to a “dramatic” funding crisis, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The extent of UNHCR’s funding shortfall was revealed in a report released on Friday, which said it had so far received only 23 percent of this year’s goal of $10.6bn, projecting an overall budget of only $3.5bn by the end of the year to meet the needs of 122 million people.

“Our funding situation is dramatic,” Dominique Hyde, director of external relations for UNHCR, said.

“We fear that up to 11.6 million refugees and people forced to flee are losing access to humanitarian assistance provided by UNHCR.”

While countries that have slashed contributions were not named in the report, the crisis has been compounded by a major reduction in funding from the United States, which provided 40 percent – more than $2bn – of the agency’s total donations last year.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump’s administration has made funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its aid programmes worldwide in what it says is part of its broader plan to remove wasteful spending.

UNHCR said it has had to stop or suspend about $1.4bn worth of aid programmes, including a 60 percent reduction in financial aid and emergency relief supplies in many countries, including Sudan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.

Critical areas such as medical aid, education, shelter, nutrition, and protection are among the services suffering deep cuts, said the report, entitled “On the Brink: The devastating toll of aid cuts on people forced to flee”.

In Bangladesh, where Rohingya refugees have lived for years in overcrowded camps, education for some 230,000 children is at risk of being suspended.

Women and girls are disproportionately affected by UNHCR funding cuts, with the agency having to cut one quarter of its support for programmes on gender-based violence.

Women and girls in Afghanistan are the hardest hit by cuts, according to the report.

“Protection activities have been slashed by over 50 percent, undermining programmes on women’s empowerment, mental health and prevention and response to gender-based violence,” said Hyde.

Globally, UNHCR is downsizing by a third, cutting 3,500 staff positions at its Geneva headquarters and in regional offices.

The report comes after the UN’s 2025 Global AIDS Update warned last week that Trump’s halt to foreign funding could reverse “decades of progress” on HIV/AIDS. If funding is not replaced, the world could see six million extra HIV infections and four million more AIDS-related deaths by 2029, it said.

A federal judge barred the Trump administration from using its ban on travelers from some countries to keep 80 already-vetted refugees from entering the United States.

In a decision late Monday, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead in Seattle said President Trump’s June order banning the entry of people from 12 countries “expressly states” that it does not limit the ability of people to seek refugee status.

“In other words, by its plain terms, the Proclamation excludes refugees from its scope,” the judge wrote.

Barring refugees from entering the U.S. would limit their ability to seek refugee status and therefore run counter to the Republican president’s order, the judge said.

He ordered the administration to immediately resume processing 80 “presumptively protected refugees” that were rejected based on the travel ban.

The State Department did not immediately have comment Tuesday.

Whitehead also set out a framework for the government to vet refugees from the countries covered by the travel ban and other countries who were denied entry when the president suspended the nation’s refugee admissions program within hours of taking office on Jan. 20.

The decision left thousands of refugees who had already gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America stranded at various locations around the world, including relatives of active-duty U.S. military personnel and more than 1,600 Afghans who assisted America’s war efforts.

Some individual refugees sued, along with refugee aid organizations who said the administration froze their funding. They later asked the judge to make the case a class-action lawsuit so that the rulings could apply to other refugees facing similar circumstances.

In May, Whitehead said the suspension likely amounted to a nullification of congressional will, since Congress created and funded the refugee admissions program. He issued a preliminary injunction in February barring the federal government from suspending refugee processing and refugee aid funding.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit put most of that decision on hold in March, finding the administration was likely to win the case because the president has broad authority to determine who is allowed to enter the country.

Boone and Thanawala write for the Associated Press.

PTSD, anxiety and depression higher in refugee children

Sameer tells Al Jazeera,“Scenes of those things which I witnessed had a very bad effect on me and still when I remember, it [makes] me upset.”

Research with refugee children finds the prevalence of emotional disorders to be generally higher than in non-refugee children.

According to one study, the overall prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was 23 percent (one in four) in refugee children, that of anxiety disorders was 16 percent (one in six) and that of depression was 14 percent (one in seven).

“One of the things about trauma is it keeps you on this very high state of alert,” says Trickey. “And I think those without refugee status, they’re living this constant fear of being returned to the place they fled.”

But not all children experience trauma the same way, Trickey adds.

“A more important risk factor, a predictor of PTSD, is not how big the event was, but it’s what you make of it. Were you afraid? Did you think someone was gonna die?

“And different children will find different things frightening. There’ll be some people that actually experience the most awful things and seem pretty unaffected, and they do OK. There’ll be some people that seem to be doing OK, and then they have, we can sometimes call it, latent vulnerability. And later on in life, that’s when they develop difficulties.”

Ventevogel tells Al Jazeera that often, in younger children, there may be more issues with withdrawal, because they cannot verbalise how they feel, for example where “a child withdraws, stops playing with other children, or a child shows in play, in the way the child enacts issues, that there is something not OK.

“It’s not diagnostic, but this can be an indication that there is something deeper,” Ventevogel says.

Trickey explains that during a trauma-focused therapy session, a boy he was working with described what he was going through by comparing his brain to a wastepaper bin stuffed with “scrunched-up pieces of paper” that represent “all the bad things” he had been through.

“And as I walk to school, they fall in front of my eyes. And when I lie down and go to sleep, they fall into my dreams,” the boy told him. “But when I come and see you, we take them out of the bin, and we unscrunch them. Then we read them through carefully, then we fold them up neatly, and then we put them back in the bin. But because they’re folded up neatly, it means they don’t fall out the top, and I’ve got more room in my head to think about other things.”

For Sameer, his ability to cope came down to his mindset. “With the passage of time, I became used to the situation and I feel confident and fine now. And I hope, whatever problems or difficulties I face in the future, I will overcome and hopefully things will get normal.”

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – The sound of children at play echoes through the verdant lanes of one of the dozens of refugee camps on the outskirts of Cox’s Bazar, a densely populated coastal town in southeast Bangladesh.

Just for a moment, the sounds manage to soften the harsh living conditions faced by the more than one million people who live here in the world’s largest refugee camp.

Described as the most persecuted people on the planet, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh may now be one of the most forgotten populations in the world, eight years after being ethnically cleansed from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar by a predominantely Buddhist military regime.

“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the sprawling camps in May.

The UN chief’s visit followed United States President Donald Trump’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has stalled several key projects in the camps, and the United Kingdom announcing cuts to foreign aid in order to increase defence spending.

Healthcare in the camps has suffered as the severe blows to foreign aid bite.

‘They call me “langhra” (lame)’

Seated outside his makeshift bamboo hut, Jahid Alam told Al Jazeera how, before being forced to become a refugee, he had worked as a farmer and also fished for a living in the Napura region of his native Myanmar. It was back then, in 2016, that he first noticed his leg swell up for no apparent reason.

“I was farming and suddenly felt this intense urge to itch my left leg,” Alam said. “My leg soon turned red and began swelling up. I rushed home and tried to put some ice on it. But it didn’t help.”

A local doctor prescribed an ointment, but the itch continued, and so did the swelling.

He soon found it difficult to stand or walk and could no longer work, becoming dependent on his family members.

A year later, when Myanmar’s military began burning Rohingya homes in his village and torturing the women, he decided to send his family to Bangladesh.

Alam stayed behind to look after the cows on his land. But the military soon threatened him into leaving too and joining his family in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The 53-year-old has been treated by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, in the Kutupalong region of Cox’s Bazar since arriving, but amputation of his leg seems likely. While some doctors have said he has Elephantiasis – an infection that causes enlargement and swelling of limbs – a final diagnosis is yet to be made.

Along with the disease, Alam has to also deal with stigma due to his disability.

“They call me ‘langhra’(lame) when they see I can’t walk properly,” he said.

But, he adds: “If God has given me this disease and disability, he also gave me the opportunity to come to this camp and try to recover. In the near future I know I can start a new and better life.”

‘The word “Amma” gives me hope’

Seated in a dimly lit room in a small hut about a 10-minute walk from Alam’s shelter, Jahena Begum hopes aid organisations will continue supporting the camps and particularly people with disabilities.

Her daughter Sumaiya Akter, 23, and sons, Harez, 19, and Ayas, 21, are blind and have a cognitive disability that prevents them from speaking clearly. They are largely unaware of their surroundings.

“Their vision slowly began fading as they became teenagers,” Begum says.

“It was very difficult to watch, and healthcare facilities in Myanmar could not help,” said the 50-year-old mother as she patted her daughter’s leg.

The young girl giggled, unaware of what was going on around her.

Begum’s family arrived in Cox’s Bazar about nine months ago after the military in Myanmar burned their house down.

“We made it to the camps with the help of relatives. But life has been very hard for me,” said Begum, telling how she had single-handedly brought up her children since her husband’s death eight years ago.

Doctors from MSF have given her children spectacles and have begun running scans to understand the root cause of their disability.

“Right now, they express everything by making sounds. But the one word they speak, which is ‘Amma’, meaning mother, shows me that they at least recognise me,” Begum said.

“The word ‘Amma’ gives me hope and strength to continue trying to treat them. I want a better future for my children.”

‘The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional’

Clad in a blue and pink striped collared shirt and a striped brown longyi – the cloth woven around the waist and worn by men and women in Myanmar – Anowar Shah told of fleeing Myanmar to save his life, on top of losing a limb to a mine blast.

Shah said he was collecting firewood in his hometown Labada Prian Chey in Myanmar when his leg was blown off by the landmine last year.

Myanmar is among the world’s deadliest countries for landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties, according to a 2024 UN report, with more than 1,000 victims recorded in 2023 alone – a number that surpassed all other nations.

“Those were the longest, most painful days of my life,” said the 25-year-old Shah, who now needs crutches to get around.

“Losing my leg shattered everything. I went from being someone who provided and protected, to someone who depends on others just to get through the day. I can’t move freely, can’t work, can’t even perform simple tasks alone,” he said.

“I feel like I’ve become a burden to the people I love. The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional, it’s deep. I keep asking myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”

More than 30 refugees in the camps in Bangladesh have lost limbs in landmine explosions, leaving them disabled and dependent on others.

All parties to the armed conflict in Myanmar have used landmines in some capacity, said John Quinley, director of rights organisation Fortify Rights, in Myanmar.

“We know the Myanmar junta has used landmines over many years to bolster their bases. They also lay them in civilian areas around villages and towns that they have occupied and fled,” he told Al Jazeera.

Abdul Hashim, 25, who resides in Camp 21 in Cox’s Bazar, described how stepping on a landmine in February 2024 “drastically altered his life”.

“I have become dependent on others for even the simplest daily tasks. Once an active contributor to my family, I now feel like a burden,” he said.

Since arriving in the camp, Hashim has been in a rehabilitation programme at the Turkish Field Hospital where he receives medication and physical rehabilitation that involves balance exercises, stump care, and hygiene education.

He has also been assessed for a prosthetic limb which currently costs about 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka ($412). The cost for such limbs is borne by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“Despite the trauma and hardship, I hold onto some hope. I dream of receiving a prosthetic leg soon, which would allow me to regain some independence and find work to support my family,” Hashim said.

So far, a total of 14 prosthetic limbs have been distributed and fitted for camp inhabitants by the aid group Humanity & Inclusion, who have expertise in producing the limbs in orthotic workshops outside the refugee camps.

Both Hashim and Shah are a part of the organisation’s rehabilitation programme, which has been providing gait training to help them adapt to the future, regular use of prosthetic limbs.

Tough decisions for aid workers

Seeking to ensure refugees in the camps are well supported and can live better lives after fleeing persecution, aid workers are currently having to make tough decisions due to foreign aid cuts.

“We are having to decide between feeding people and providing education and healthcare due to aid cuts,” a Bangladeshi healthcare worker who requested anonymity, for fear his comment could jeopardise future aid from the US, told Al Jazeera. 

Quinley of Fortify Rights pointed out that while there are huge funding gaps because of the aid cuts, the Rohingya refugee response should not fall on any one government and should be a collective regional responsibility.

“There needs to be a regional response, particularly for countries in Southeast Asia, to give funding,” he said.

“Countries connected to the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) in the Middle East could also give a lot more meaningful support,” he said.

He also recommended working with local humanitarian partners, “whether it’s Bangladeshi nationals or whether it’s Rohingya refugee groups themselves” since they know how to help their communities the best.

“Their ability to access people that need support is at the forefront, and they should be supported from governments worldwide,” he said.

For the estimated one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, urgent support is needed at this time, when funds grow ever scarce.

According to a Joint Response Plan drawn up for the Rohingya, in 2024, just 30 percent of funding was received of a total $852.4m that was needed by the refugees.

As of May 2025, against an overall appeal for $934.5m for the refugees, just 15 percent received funding.

Cutting the aid budgets for the camps is a “short-sighted policy”, said Blandine Bouniol, deputy director of advocacy at Humanity & Inclusion humanitarian group.

It will, Bouniol said, “have a devastating impact on people”.