Donald Trump

My definitive overview of the first six months of Trump’s “war on migrants”, with a particular focus on the administration’s recent and truly alarming drive to deport, to third countries, migrants with criminal records, who have served prison sentences, often for serious crimes. The administration claims that it is being forced to act because these ex-prisoners’ home countries won’t take them back. However, even if this is sometimes true, it is essentially an intractable political problem, to which the answer cannot, and must not be to eviscerate the post-WWII consensus — involving the Refugee Convention and the Torture Convention — that there must be robust mechanisms preventing foreign nationals from being deported, either to their home countries, or to third countries, where they face the risk of torture or death. I also examine how Trump’s declared pursuit of migrants with criminal records (roughly 4% of the 11 million undocumented migrants in the US) is a smokescreen seeking to disguise a blunter and much more violent truth — that all eleven million are a target, because entering the US illegally is being regarded as a crime worthy of deportation. I also examine how there must always be a balance between a desire to stem uncontrolled immigration and the need for a significant number of immigrants to do numerous essential jobs, and run through the sordid back story of the administration holding Venezuelan migrants at Guantánamo, and then sending others on a one-way trip to a mega-Guantánamo in El Salvador, on the basis of allegations about their criminality that were largely exposed as lies. I proceed to explain how this new focus on finding migrants with criminal records and sending them on a one-way trip to third countries (South Sudan and Eswatini in the last week) has been cynically implemented to forestall any sympathy for these men, to enable a program that can be effected without attracting the outrage it deserves, with its horrific echoes of the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” policies in the “war on terror”, which may well also constitute the reviled international crime of enforced disappearance. I end with some good news, with polls showing that Americans are increasingly turning against Trumps’s excesses, although that alone is not sufficient to prevent an ever-increasing humanitarian and moral disaster without serious resistance.

My report about the disturbing news that, in recent weeks, around 60 migrants, from 26 countries including the UK, have been flown to Guantánamo, apparently reviving the use of detention facilities on the naval base, which began with the arrival of 178 Venezuelans in February, but then tailed off after legal challenges, and after the administration was embarrassed by research establishing that, although they were all described as dangerous gang members, this was demonstrably untrue. In a new twist, seeking to overcome these earlier embarrassments, the Department of Homeland Security has published a list naming 26 of these men, and alleging that all of them, including the British national, have been convicted of serious crimes, although, via an internet search, I was unable to verify any of these claims. What the administration’s intention is remains unclear, but two options seem probable. Sending men with criminal convictions to Guantánamo (if these claims are true) may enable the administration to claim that it can hold them without charge or trial, replicating the model used in the existing “war on terror” prison, or it may be a prominent way to deport them to third countries, as recently happened when eight men from a variety of countries, all allegedly with criminal convictions, were sent to an unknown fate in war-torn South Sudan. Drawing analogies with the “extraordinary rendition” program of the Bush administration, and the often flawed resettlements of Guantánamo prisoners in third countries under Obama and Biden, I examine a recent and commendable New York Times investigation into the 58 countries that administration officials have approached, or want to approach, regarding taking in migrants who are not their own nationals. I also discuss the seven countries who have already agreed, and raise the alarm about the threat of the worst abuses of the “war on terror” being revived under Trump and his senior officials, who seem particularly motivated not to safely repatriate migrants, but to defy protections against torture or even death by sending them to unsafe destinations where any rights they should have will be unenforceable. I also sound a similar alarm about the increasing expansion of unaccountable hit squads “disappearing” people on the US mainland, and the creation of new detention facilities, reminiscent of Guantánamo, with “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida as the first example, and highlight the very real prospect that, without ferocious resistance, the $175 billion allocated to ICE in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will lead to a horrendous police state expansion of “disappearances” and gulags across the entire country. As I state in my conclusion, “Resistance is necessary, by all means available.”

Photos from, and my report about the 30th coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and in London, Brussels, Mexico City and Belgrade on July 2, 2025. As we continue to call for justice for the 15 remaining prisoners in the “war on terror” prison, I point out how our vigils are assuming increasing importance because of the “Gitmoization” of Donald Trump’s vile, racist “war on migrants”, in which new detention facilities are being established on the US mainland that look suspiciously like Guantánamo, or even like concentration camps, with the first notable example having just opened in the Florida Everglades, gleefully dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” I also point out how the horrors of the “war on terror” that are being replicated in Trump’s USA extend to the “extraordinary rendition” program that is being revived through the deportation of migrants to uncertain fates in third countries, with the most recent alarming example being the deportation of eight migrants from various nationalities to the war-wracked country of South Sudan.

The remaining 15 “war on terror” prisoners at Guantánamo have largely been forgotten, although detention facilities at the naval base have been cynically used by Donald Trump in the “war on migrants” he declared when he took office five months ago. While Trump’s interest in Guantánamo has largely waned, migrants are still being sent there, with the latest including a group of Haitians who were subsequently deported back to Haiti, on the same day that it was reported that the Trump administration was planning to send 9,000 new migrants to Guantánamo, including 800 Europeans. The claim was dismissed as “fake news” by the White House, but it seems to me that the officials who leaked the documents did so in an effort to derail the proposals by enraging European allies, which seems to have been successful. I also report on a letter to Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth by 15 lawmakers, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, calling for the prison’s closure, and I also reflect on Guantánamo’s sordid history, and its still tainted present, to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which was yesterday.

Five days since Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, which led to immediate military retaliation, I examine the shameful hypocrisy of the west, which has been insisting yet again that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, even though Israel is very clearly not the victim in this scenario, having launched its unprovoked attack on the spurious basis that Iran was about to secure nuclear weapons. In particular, I note how, 20 months ago, the west’s unconditional support opened the door to all the horrors that have been taking place ever since, and especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which, until this latest development, had become so severe that western leaders were finally beginning to condemn Israel. Shamefully, as the situation in Gaza deteriorates still further, the west’s sudden indifference is especially despicable. I also focus on the crucial role of the US, under Donald Trump, who faces a divided Republican Party — on the one hand, fanatical supporters of Israel, and neo-cons who have long hoped to wage war on Iran, and, on the other, opposition from MAGA isolationists within his own Party who support his “America First” policy, which was supposed to eschew any further involvement in ruinously expensive foreign wars. I also mock Israeli efforts to make themselves the victims, as they finally face some blowback from their monstrous actions over the last 20 months, and I end by examining whether one imminent problem, not much discussed, is that the supply of the very expensive weapons for this type of conflict may soon run out.

In an update on the legal challenges to the Trump administration’s decision, three months ago, to invoke the little-used Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send 238 Venezuelans on a one-way trip to El Salvador’s CECOT prison for alleged terrorists, I look at a recent ruling by Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District Court in Washington, D.C., in which, after comparing the treatment of these men to the lawless ordeal endured by K., the lead character in Franz Kafka’s novel “The Trial”, he ordered the administration to arrange for the men to have habeas corpus hearings. Judge Boasberg did so because of the failure of the administration to demonstrate that they had made any efforts to establish whether, as they alleged, these men were members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, noting that “significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.” The administration, predictably, has appealed Judge Boasberg’s ruling, which will now make its way to the D.C. Circuit Court, where, back in April, one appellate judge memorably declared that, the last time the Alien Enemies Act was used (in the Second World War), “Nazis got better treatment than has happened here.” I also look at how Trump’s “war on migrants” — and his use of the CECOT prison — has been influenced by the “war on terror”, the prison established at Guantánamo by George W. Bush, and the CIA’s “black site” torture program, and I also examine the well-chronicled lack of evidence against these Venezuelan men, the troubling manner in which many of them were sent to El Salvador even though they had ongoing immigration appeals, and the recent revelation that some of them also had Temporary Protected Status. Introduced under Joe Biden, TPS applied to hundreds of thousands of migrants, but it has also been under fire from Trump, and in two recent cases the Supreme Court, alarmingly, complied with his requests to strip these and other protections from nearly 900,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, which could lead to another tsunami of detentions and deportations.

Photos from, and my report about the coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US and in London, Brussels and Mexico City on June 4, 2025. The “First Wednesday” vigils have been taking place on the first Wednesday of every month for the last 29 months, and will continue while the prison is still open. I also run through the horrors of Guantánamo under Donald Trump, usurped as a theater of performative cruelty in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office, until he took more interest in sending migrants on a one-way trip to the CECOT prison, a mega-Guantánamo for alleged terrorists in El Salvador. I also point out that Trump’s indifference towards the 15 men still held in the “war on terror” prison — who include the men allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks and previously regarded as the most significant terrorists in US history — ironically reveals how Guantánamo is no longer of any relevance, although that won’t, sadly, help any of the men still held either secure their freedom or anything resembling justice.

YouTube clips from my recent interview with Misty Winston on Due Dissidence, plus links to the whole 90-minute interview on Rumble, X and Substack, in which we discussed the forgotten “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, where 15 men are still held, Donald Trump’s grotesque “war on migrants”, in which he has used Guantánamo as a location for performative cruelty, and the even more alarming deal he reached with El Salvador’s dictator, Nayib Bukele, to send migrants on a one-way trip to Bukele’s mega-Guantánamo, the CECOT prison that wouldn’t exist without the template for indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial that was provided by the Bush administration at Guantánamo. I was particularly concerned to highlight the similarities between “the war on terror” and the “war on migrants,” both of which explicitly involve, or involved imprisoning people without any form of due process, claiming a national emergency as justification, and to stress quite how alarming it is that this template has been extended to potentially encompass millions of hapless migrants in the US. As I said to Misty, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that, in Donald Trump’s white supremacist America, no one of color is safe anywhere.

Last week, after starving Palestinian civilians for eleven weeks, and bombing them relentlessly for the last two months, Israel stepped up its aggression, launching “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” with even more savage bombing, and announcing its intention to militarily occupy the whole of Gaza, to erase every remaining building, and to force the surviving population into a concentration camp in the south, prior to an illusory program of “voluntary migration.” Plumbing unparalleled depths of depravity, after 19 months of unbearable horror, Israel’s genocidal endgame has finally provoked condemnation from its allies in the west, who, until now, have whispered barely a word of dissent. The foreign ministers of 22 countries and three senior EU officials issued a strongly-worded demand for the resumption of aid to prevent mass starvation, while the governments of the UK, France and Canada specifically threatened “concrete actions” if Israel continued its “wholly disproportionate” escalation, its starvation policies and its plans for the “permanent forced displacement” of the population, which, as they noted, “is a breach of international humanitarian law.” Words mean nothing to Israel, of course, and, if its allies are serious, they must follow up with arms embargoes, sanctions and more, but it remains noteworthy that so many countries are now turning against Israel, no doubt because the extent of its renewed escalation of hostilities and the impact of its starvation siege are so severe that they have suddenly become aware that they need to be seen to have made the right noises for when, inevitably, there will be a legal and moral reckoning. Hopefully, this turning of the tides is significant, reinforcing the recent warning, by opposition politician Yair Golan, that Israel, which is “kill[ing] children as a hobby”, that it “is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was”, and the admission by an Israeli Foreign Ministry official that “the world is not with us” and that “No one will want to be identified with Israel.”

An urgent update on the situation in Gaza, as Israel launches “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, which can only be regarded as its “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem”, with all the historical echoes that entails. Israel’s plan, announced 12 days ago, is to militarily occupy the whole of the Gaza Strip, to destroy all its remaining buildings, and to drive the surviving population to the south, to be held in a concentration camp where vetted individuals, subjected to biometric screening, will be allowed food, provided every two weeks, but only at the barest of subsistence levels to prevent death by starvation. Via posts from those trapped in Gaza, I report on the unprecedented escalation of military activity over the last two nights, as the severity of the attacks, and the death toll, have, shamefully, matched the scale and intensity of the earliest days of the genocide. I condemn western leaders for their continued inaction, and reserve particular contempt for Donald Trump, who, in his four-day tour of the Gulf, failed to say or do anything to help the Palestinians by calling for a renewed ceasefire and the resumption of desperately-needed humanitarian aid to stave off mass starvation, even after Hamas obliged him by releasing the US-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander. Instead, he revived his absurd proposal to remake Gaza — this time as a “freedom zone”, rather than “the Riviera of the Middle East” that he proposed in February, and has continued to endorse the “voluntary migration” of the entire population. Is he wilfully complicit, or just a rambling and incoherent fool? Sadly, no one even seems to know.