September, 12 2019, 12:00am EDT
Trump Administration's Asylum Ban Could be a Death Sentence for People Seeking Safety
Today, Amnesty International condemned the Supreme Court's decision allowing the Trump administration's asylum ban to temporarily proceed. Charanya Krishnaswami, the Advocacy Director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, stated:
"The asylum ban the Supreme Court has upheld could be a death sentence for people in search of safety and protection. The asylum ban is grounded in an ideology of hatred and xenophobia, and it cannot stand.
WASHINGTON
Today, Amnesty International condemned the Supreme Court's decision allowing the Trump administration's asylum ban to temporarily proceed. Charanya Krishnaswami, the Advocacy Director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, stated:
"The asylum ban the Supreme Court has upheld could be a death sentence for people in search of safety and protection. The asylum ban is grounded in an ideology of hatred and xenophobia, and it cannot stand.
"Every person has the right to seek safety: this is a moment that will prove itself infamous, when the country turned its back on those it used to welcome and chose to ignore people's humanity."
Next week, Amnesty International will travel to South Texas to seek access to the secretive port courts that have been built for assembly-line proceedings for asylum-seekers subject to the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy, under which the U.S. government forces people to stay in Mexico while they ask for asylum in the United States.
Background and context:
Amnesty International has documented the dangers that people seeking asylum face, not just in their countries of origin, but also on their journeys to safety. We have previously found that LGBTI-identifying asylum-seekers from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras face tremendous risks of sexual assault, violence, and harm on their journey north. The ban could mean that LGBTI-identifying people would be forced to seek protection in places where they are at grave risk of harm.
Amnesty International has also found that Mexico's asylum system is ill-equipped to respond to the number of people who could be forced to seek protection there. Amnesty International's investigation found that far from providing asylum-seekers safety, the Mexican government instead routinely detains them and deports them into harm's way. Recent actions by the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, including the deployment of National Guard troops throughout the country to crack down on asylum-seekers, have made the situation even more dangerous for asylum-seekers. According to official numbers, Mexico's deportation numbers increased from from 53,747 January to June 2018 to 71,376 in the same period in 2019.
Under the "Remain in Mexico" program, Amnesty International has found that asylum-seekers who are forced to wait in Mexico are subject to grave harm, including kidnapping, assault, and extortion by the very authorities who are supposed to protect them.
This release is available online at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/trump-administrations-asylum-ban-could-be-a-death-sentence-for-people-seeking-safety/
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Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Microsoft Workers Arrested After Occupying C-Suite to Protest Israel's Use of Azure in Gaza
"Brad Smith is the face of human rights at Microsoft," said one No Azure for Apartheid protester. "And yet Microsoft every day continues to abet this genocide."
Aug 27, 2025
Seven current and former Microsoft workers were arrested Tuesday after occupying the office of president Brad Smith to protest the company's complicity in "the first AI-powered genocide" as Israel kills and ethnically cleanses hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
The protesters gathered at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington and declared a "Liberated Zone" inside Building 34, which they renamed the Mai Ubeid building in honor of a Palestinian software engineer killed by Israel in Gaza in 2023. Demonstrators sounded noisemakers, draped banners, and delivered a "People's Court Summons" to Smith. They chanted, "Microsoft, Microsoft, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!"
Seven protesters who locked themselves inside Smith's office were arrested by Redmond police. Other current and former Microsoft workers joined community members at a rally outside the building.
"Microsoft continues to militarize its campus to harass, brutally attack, and violently arrest its workers and community members," No Azure for Apartheid organizer and former Microsoft worker Abdo Mohamed told the Seattle Times.
The arrests came on the same day that Bloomberg revealed that Microsoft asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for intelligence on pro-Palestinian protesters targeting the company, worked with local law enforcement in a bid to thwart demonstrations, and deleted internal emails containing protest details and words like "Gaza."
Tuesday's action followed a protest last week at which around 20 No Azure for Apartheid activists were arrested after setting up an encampment on the grounds of Microsoft headquarters. Earlier this month, protesters staged a demonstration at a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands that is reportedly being used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to plan airstrikes on Gaza.
The No Azure for Apartheid protesters are calling on Microsoft to "cut ties with Israel, call for an end to the genocide and forced starvation, pay reparations to the Palestinians, and end the discrimination against workers."
"We are here because Palestine must be free, the genocide must end, the apartheid must end, and everything that's happened to the Palestinian people over the past 75 years must end," declared one No Azure for Apartheid organizer in a video of Tuesday's occupation that was posted online. "It must end and this is how we must end it. We must occupy the people who are letting it happen."
"We are here today not because we want to be here, it's because we need to be here," he said. "Brad Smith is the face of human rights at Microsoft. And yet Microsoft every day continues to abet this genocide."
"Every Palestinian phone call in the last few years has been stored on Microsoft servers," he continued as the other protesters shouted, "Shame!"
"That is a disgrace! That is untenable! There is no way to justify that," the protester asaid. "Every time we have come with these problems... Microsoft has dragged their feet."
The activist also pointed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the IDF's largest intelligence unit.
"Satya has dragged his feet. Brad has dragged his feet. Satya met with the head of Unit 8200 and that led to this plan to store Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft servers," he said.
A a joint investigation published earlier this month by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealed that Unit 8200 is storing 11,500 terabytes of data containing roughly 200 million hours of Palestinians' phone call recordings on the Azure servers in the Netherlands. According to the article, former Unit 8200 head Yossi Sariel traveled to Microsoft headquarters in 2021 to meet Nadella.
"What happens as a result is that every phone call is recorded, it is transcribed from Arabic, it is translated, and it is used for targeting," the protester said.
Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation detailed how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by US tech giants including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Open AI—which makes the popular ChatGPT chatbot—for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition to US tech, the IDF uses its own AI system called Habsora to automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before. A November 2023 investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call cited an Israeli intelligence source who said that Habsora has transformed the IDF into a "mass assassination factory" in which the "emphasis is on quantity and not quality" of kills.
Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, IDF officers were told they could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no effective limits on civilian harm. This led to massacres in which dozens or more civilians were killed in single strikes, often using US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.
Microsoft said earlier this month that it has launched an investigation into how Unit 8200 is using Azure. This, after the company said in May that an internal review "found no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and [artificial intelligence] technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza."
Big Tech's profiteering from Israel's annihilation of Gaza and occupation, settler colonization, and apartheid in the West Bank has sparked numerous protests, including by employees of complicit companies. At least dozens of workers at companies including Google, Meta, and Microsoft have been fired for Palestine advocacy. Others have resigned in protest.
Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft software engineer, was fired after organizing an October 2024 "No Azure for Apartheid" vigil. Microsoft engineer Ibtihal Aboussad and another worker, Vaniya Agrawal, were fired after interrupting speeches by company executives.
Responding to Tuesday's protest, Smith said, "Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today—storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office... that's not okay."
"There are many things we can't do to change the world, but we will do what we can and what we should," Smith added. "That starts with ensuring that our human rights principles and contractual terms of service are upheld everywhere, by all of our customers around the world."
Tuesday's protest came as the IDF ramped up Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—the US-backed campaign to conquer and occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians—and amid a worsening famine that has killed hundreds of people, many of them children.
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As Trump Eyes Chicago Takeover, Progressives Say 'We Must Fight Back'
"This is not about fighting crime," said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. "This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals."
Aug 27, 2025
Progressive voices and Democratic leaders this week are letting it be known they will not take President Donald Trump's threat to target the city of Chicago for his next federal takeover and deployment of federal troops lying down.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday, alongside Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and US Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), held a press conference to let Trump know that Chicago residents want no part of his plan to deploy the military into their city.
"The last thing that Chicagoans want is someone from the outside of our city, who doesn't know our city, trying to dictate and tell us what our city needs," said Johnson. "As the mayor of this city, I can tell you that Chicagoans are not calling for military occupation."
Pritzker, meanwhile, bluntly warned Trump against sending troops to his state's largest city.
"This is not about fighting crime," Pritzker said of Trump's plans to deploy the military in Chicago. "This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals."
Illinois politicians weren't the only ones who are vowing to resist Trump's designs on Chicago, as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) warned that the president had ambitions to deploy troops to all major American cities.
"First it was LA, then DC, and now Chicago," she wrote in a social media post Tuesday. "None of us are safe from Trump's authoritarian rule. We must fight back against this takeover of our cities."
Progressive organization Our Revolution, has started circulating a petition demanding that Congress vote against any Trump request to extend his control over the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department beyond the legally allowed period of 30 days.
Progressives' vows of defiance come as The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting new details about Trump's designs on the Windy City. According to the paper, the administration is planning to use a suburban naval base just outside the city to house federal immigration officials and potentially National Guard troops starting in September.
An email sent this week by US Navy Cpt. Stephen Yargosz obtained by The Chicago Sun-Times claimed that the deployment will be focused on "downtown Chicago," despite the fact that the downtown area is not where most violent crimes in the city occur.
Yargosz also said in his email that there are "not many details" right now about deploying the National Guard in Chicago, but "mainly a lot of concerns and questions."
The Chicago Sun-Times report also noted that all of these plans are being done without any input from or consultation with local officials, who have said that they are completely in the dark about what the president is plotting.
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Denmark Summons Trump Diplomat Over Report of Covert Operations in Greenland
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen noted that the US has so far not denied the reports by Denmark's public broadcaster.
Aug 27, 2025
The top US official in Denmark arrived at the country's foreign ministry Wednesday after being summoned for talks about a recent report that US citizens with ties to the Trump White House have carried out a covert "influence" campaign in Greenland.
Denmark's foreign minister on Wednesday called upon Mark Stroh, the charge d'affaires in Denmark, after the main Danish public broadcaster reported that at least three people have been attempting to sow discord between Denmark and Greenland, an autonomous territory that is part of the Danish kingdom.
President Donald Trump has long expressed a desire to take control of Greenland, and has suggested he could use military force even though Denmark is a close ally and fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Danish officials and Greenlanders have dismissed the idea, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warning the US that it "cannot annex another country."
"We want to be independent. So we are not for sale," resident Karen Cortsen told NPR earlier this year as the outlet reported that 85% of people in Greenland and Denmark opposed the president's push to "get" the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island.
According to the main Danish public broadcaster, the Trump administration has sought to reverse widespread public opposition to his plan, with at least three people connected to his administration carrying out covert operations to "foment dissent" in Greenland.
The broadcast network, DR, reported that eight government and security sources believe the individuals are working to weaken relations between Greenland and Denmark, compiling lists of Greenlandic citizens who support and oppose Trump's plans, and trying "to cultivate contacts with politicians, businesspeople, and citizens, and the sources' concern is that these contacts could secretly be used to support Donald Trump's desire to take over Greenland."
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement that "any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable."
"We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark," Rasmussen said, adding that he had "asked the ministry of foreign affairs to summon the US charge d'affaires for a meeting at the ministry."
Trump has not yet confirmed an ambassador to Denmark. PayPal cofounder Kenneth Howery, a close friend of Trump megadonor Elon Musk, has been named as his nominee for the position.
Frederiksen told Danish media that "the Americans are not clearly denying the information presented by DR today, and of course that is serious."
"We have made it very clear that this is unacceptable," said the prime minister. "And it is something we will raise directly with our colleagues in the United States—who, if this were untrue, could very easily dismiss the claims."
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