| President Trump signs executive order to end family separation. Amid growing reaction at home and abroad to the US administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border, President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to end the practice. The order instructs officials to maintain a “zero-tolerance” policy of criminally prosecuting people who cross the border illegally, but to “maintain family unity” by detaining parents and children together. The order also directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to go to court to seek a modification to a 1997 court settlement which prohibits the detention of children for more than 20 days. Legal experts told the New York Times it was unlikely courts would agree to the request. “They are substituting jailing children with their families for separating children from their parents, and that is not any sort of solution to family separation,” Kate Voigt of the American Immigration Lawyers Association told the Guardian. | | |
| Hungary passes anti-immigrant laws. Hungary’s parliament on Wednesday passed a series of laws, officially called “Stop Soros”, that criminalize a range of activities by individuals or groups that support asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants. The laws allow the government to impose prison terms on individuals or groups who help undocumented migrants gain status to stay in the country. “Criminalizing essential and legitimate human rights work is a brazen attack on people seeking safe haven from persecution and those who carry out admirable work to help them”, said Amnesty International’s Europe Director, Gauri van Gulik. Parliament also passed constitutional amendments stating that an “alien population” cannot be settled in Hungary, making it more difficult for asylum-seekers who have travelled through other countries to qualify for refugee status. Last month, UNHCR called on the government to withdraw the bills. | | |
| UN releases report on siege of Syria's Eastern Ghouta. A high-level UN inquiry said on Wednesday that the siege of Eastern Ghouta, which lasted more than five years, had been “barbaric and medieval” and was marked by actions against civilians that amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The 23-page report, released yesterday, found that by the time government forces declared Eastern Ghouta recaptured on 14 April, some 140,000 people had fled their homes and roughly 50,000 had been evacuated to Idlib and Aleppo. The report is to be formally presented next week at the 38th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. | | |
| African asylum seekers brave Latin America route to reach US. Over the last several years, according to this Al Jazeera report, a growing number of African migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as people from Asia and the Middle East, have attempted to reach the United States via Latin America. Despite the length of the journey and the risks involved, many consider it less dangerous than the sea route to Europe via Libya. Al-Jazeera details the journey of a Cameroonian man and his wife who traveled to Tijuana, Mexico. | | |
| European leaders to attend emergency meeting on migration Sunday. An informal “mini-summit ” is set to take place in Brussels on Sunday with representatives of Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Malta and the Netherlands. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from her interior minister to find a solution with EU partners on how to treat people who have already registered an asylum claim in one country but move to another. The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, has threatened to turn away asylum seekers from Germany’s border as of 1 July if they have already registered in another EU country. | | |
| At least 60 dead after rubber dinghy sinks in Mediterranean. Rights groups in Sicily have interviewed survivors of a boat that capsizing last week off the coast of Libya. The 40 survivors arrived in Italy Tuesday night aboard the Diciotti, an Italian coastguard ship, after being rescued by the US Navy. The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) put the death toll at 60, while the human rights association Medu said the dinghy had been carrying 117 people, which would put the death toll at over 70. “I have never seen such frightened and traumatized eyes after a landing,” said Teo di Piazza, the coordinator of MSF psychologists. “The people had no strength left.” | | |
| Ahmed Badr, a writer and former refugee from Iraq, got together with actor Ben Stiller to recreate his favourite childhood dish: chicken shawarma. Ahmed describes the moment his mother began screaming when she heard the family would be resettled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “You’re transported somewhere else, and you’re reminded not only of the food but the people that prepared it,” Ahmed says after biting into a shawarma. | | |
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