Dzenneta Bogdanowicz never imagined she would witness the construction of a wall in the middle of nowhere, just two kilometres from her front door. “It’s right there, so close. And of course, it’s bad for business,” the 60-year-old Polish hotelier tells IPS outside the wooden guesthouse and restaurant she runs in Kruszyniany. It’s a village […]

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 27 2025 – On 6 December 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court made an unprecedented decision: with just two days to go before a presidential runoff expected to bring a far-right, Russia-sympathising candidate to power, the court took the extraordinary step of annulling the election due to evidence of massive Russian interference. It was the first time an EU member state has cancelled an election over social media disinformation. It may not be the last.

Romania’s six-month electoral crisis, which finally concluded on 18 May with centrist Nicușor Dan’s runoff victory over far-right nationalist George Simion, offers both a stark warning and a glimmer of hope for democracies worldwide. The crisis began when Călin Georgescu, an obscure far-right candidate who’d consistently polled in single figures, shocked the political establishment by coming first in the November 2024 presidential first round with close to 23 per cent of the vote. A NATO-sceptic and Russia sympathiser, Georgescu benefited from what was later revealed to be a sophisticated disinformation campaign orchestrated by a ‘state actor’ widely understood to be Russia.

The interference wasn’t crude or obvious. Russia had spent years building a meticulously designed disinformation ecosystem, exploiting many Romanians’ deep-seated frustrations with economic hardship, widespread corruption and political stagnation. With over 22 per cent youth unemployment, wages among the EU’s lowest and trust in institutions at historic lows, Romania presented fertile ground for anti-establishment appeals. The timing of the interference was surgical: it was activated at the most politically opportune moment to maximise impact.

What distinguished Romania’s experience from previous Russian interference campaigns in votes from Brexit and Donald Trump’s first victory to elections in nearby Georgia and neighbouring Moldova was that authorities identified and acknowledged the manipulation while the electoral process was still live. Declassified intelligence documents revealed a massive campaign on TikTok, including AI manipulation and bot-driven activity, designed to tilt the election in Georgescu’s favour. Disinformation exploited legitimate grievances to seed elaborate conspiracy theories that portrayed Romania as a victim of EU, NATO and western elites. The European Commission subsequently launched proceedings against TikTok for failing to properly assess and mitigate risks to election integrity.

Both the first-round results and the court’s decision to annul the election triggered protests that laid bare Romania’s deep social divisions. Immediately after the results were announced, thousands of students and young people gathered in Bucharest’s University Square chanting ‘No fascism, no war, no Georgescu!’. When the election was cancelled, Georgescu’s supporters denounced it as a manoeuvre to prevent their victory. Amid intense polarisation, authorities arrested several armed men heading to Bucharest to participate in protests with axes, guns, knives and machetes in their vehicles.

When the rescheduled election took place in May 2025, it delivered another dramatic upset. With Georgescu barred from running, George Simion of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians emerged as the far-right standard-bearer, winning the first round with almost 41 per cent of the vote. The runoff became a referendum on Romania’s future direction: on whether it would continue its European orientation or pivot towards the regressive, Moscow-friendly stance taken by leaders of countries such as Hungary and Slovakia.

Russia’s disinformation campaign didn’t stop with the election annulment. Instead, it redoubled its efforts to sow distrust and further polarise voters, including through AI-generated smear campaigns against Dan.

Dan’s victory with almost 54 per cent of the vote provided reassurance to Romania’s western partners, but the margin was uncomfortably narrow. More troubling still, Simion refused to accept defeat, challenging the results at the Constitutional Court on unsubstantiated grounds of electoral fraud and alleging ‘foreign interference’ by France, Moldova and ‘others’. When the court quickly threw out his case, Simion called his defeat a coup, echoing dangerous Trump-like rhetoric that is becoming all too common around the world.

Romania’s experience exposes both the resilience and fragility of democracy in the digital era. The institutional response – from the Constitutional Court’s decisive action to civil society’s mobilisation – showed that democratic safeguards can function under extreme pressure. Yet the fact that around 40 per cent of voters backed far-right politicians reveals the depth of public disillusionment.

Many Romanians still feel cheated and denied their say. This sense of grievance provides fertile ground for divisive narratives to take deeper root, while neither the economy nor politics are currently in good enough shape to deliver on people’s rightful expectations.

Romania’s electoral saga serves as a cautionary tale. It points at both the vulnerabilities that can be exploited and the defences that can be mounted. Sophisticated disinformation campaigns can indeed be identified and countered – but only through vigilant institutions, engaged civil society and citizens committed to democratic values. The price of failure isn’t just political crisis but lasting damage to the foundations of democracy.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact [email protected]

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By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, May 27 2025 – Researcher Edilso Reguera and his team began studying electric battery manufacturing in 2016, but in 2023, they ramped up efforts to develop a lithium-based prototype for motorcycles.

Commissioned by the Mexico City government in 2022, “we developed the battery from scratch. We are the most advanced research group in the country. We tested it on motorcycles, and it works well,” Reguera explained to IPS in his small office. He is an academic at the Center for Research in Applied Science and Advanced Technology Cicata, part of the National Polytechnic Institute, located in the northern part of the capital.

The research began with funding from the city government, and Cicata took charge of designing, producing, and testing the capacitor batteries.”We developed the battery from scratch. We are the most advanced research group in the country. We tested it on motorcycles, and it works well.” — Edilso Reguera

In the laboratory, where around 40 students and researchers collaborate, staff analyze materials and examine substances using equipment with near-unpronounceable names, collectively worth thousands of dollars.

The Mexican government plans to promote energy storage in renewable plants and electromobility, making projects like Cicata’s crucial.

“A battery is a storage device, so it works well for multiple applications,” said Reguera, who also heads the National Laboratory for Energy Conversion and Storage under the newly created Ministry of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation.

But this vision remains aspirational in Mexico, where only two photovoltaic projects currently include storage systems. While the government has ambitious plans to boost the sector, details remain unclear.

Despite the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) having storage goals since 2004, only two private projects currently have such systems.

One is the Aura Solar III photovoltaic plant, owned by Mexican company Gauss Energía, which has been operating since 2018 in La Paz, the capital of the northwestern state of Baja California Sur. It has a generation capacity of 32 megawatts (MW) and a storage capacity of 10.5 MW.

The other is the La Toba solar park, owned by U.S.-based Invenergy, operational since 2022, also in Baja California Sur, with 35 MW of generation and 20 MW of storage.

This approach allows for savings in energy consumption and costs, as well as backup for the power grid, which is currently under strain due to insufficient generation and maintenance.

Additionally, since wind doesn’t blow constantly and sunlight is only available during the day, renewable energy requires storage capacity to compensate for variability and ensure a stable supply.

Andrés Flores, energy policy director at the non-governmental Iniciativa Climática de México, highlighted the urgency of the issue.

“We are in a high-risk situation, heavily dependent on gas for generation. Due to climate factors, we are already experiencing blackouts,” the expert told IPS.

He explained that Mexico has limited generation capacity and low power reserves, meaning “there is a need to invest in storage to minimize these risks, improve operational flexibility, and integrate more renewables in the near future.”

Flores authored the study Energy Storage in Mexico: Analysis and Policy Proposals, published in January, which identified key challenges, including a 2-gigawatt deficit in operational reserves, limited capacity during peak consumption hours, and concentrated issues during evening and nighttime demand.

The study also found little clarity in energy planning regarding the deployment of storage systems.

The private photovoltaic plant Aura Solar III is one of only two facilities in Mexico equipped with a battery bank for energy storage. Credit: Gauss Energía

Ambitions

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, in office since October, presented the 2024-2030 National Electric Sector Strategy a month later, followed in February by the Plan for Strengthening and Expanding the National Electric System, which are interlinked.

The February plan aims to boost the electricity sector through measures such as adding 574 MW across five photovoltaic plants with capacitor batteries, representing a public investment of US$ 223 million. These plants are expected to come online by 2027.

In the same vein, the Federal Electricity Commission is advancing the bidding for phase II of the Puerto Peñasco photovoltaic plant, located in the namesake town in the northern state of Sonora. This phase will add 300 MW of capacity, backed by 10.3 MW in battery storage. The plant’s first phase (120 MW) has been operational since 2023. Once completed in 2026, the full project will deliver 1,000 MW at a cost of US$1.6 billion.

For Karina Cuentas, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology, the lag in energy storage stems from a lack of government support.

“We’re behind because not enough funding is allocated to technological development. We have all the tools to make progress, but it’s very difficult due to a lack of resources. There’s enthusiasm because the plan has been presented, along with the roadmap and scenarios to achieve it,” she told IPS from Ensenada, in the northwestern state of Baja California.

“The optimal storage solution for renewables is batteries,” she emphasized.

As president of the non-governmental Mexican Energy Storage Network—a group of around 200 specialists in the field—Cuentas believes progress will depend on “the rules of the game.”

A regulatory framework for energy storage has been in effect since March, but its implementing regulations may take up to two years to finalize, potentially delaying project development.

Additionally, critics argue that the regulation classifies storage backup as part of power generation itself and imposes restrictive guidelines on its applications.

Mexico has an installed capacity of 89,000 MW, and during the first quarter of this year, nearly 61% of electricity generation depended on fossil gas, followed by conventional thermoelectric (6%), wind (nearly 6%), hydroelectric (4.6%), solar photovoltaic (4.2%), coal-fired (3.3%), nuclear (3.2%), gas turbine (3.1%), and geothermal (1.2%).

Renewable energy sources have an installed capacity of over 33,000 MW but contribute only 21% of the electricity. To the current mix, the government’s plan would add 21,893 MW to the national energy grid, aiming to increase clean energy from the current 22.5% to 37.8%.

The electricity sector has suffered from the fossil fuel dependency of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration (2018-2024), who stalled the energy transition—a situation his ally and successor, Sheinbaum, seeks to correct.

The fishing community of San Juanico, in the municipality of Comondú, Baja California Sur, has a hybrid power plant since 1999 combining wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and a diesel generator for electricity supply. Credit: CFE.

Forgotten Potential 

For over a decade, various studies have highlighted the potential of energy storage systems in this Latin American country, home to 129 million people and the region’s second-largest economy after Brazil.

The Federal Electricity Commission identified at least 169 sites in 2017 with potential for pumped-storage hydropower, but it never invested in this method, which is now difficult to implement due to current drought conditions and insufficient reservoir levels.

Civil society organizations estimate that storage capacity could reach 500 MW for industrial projects and 18 MW for residential photovoltaic systems by 2030.

The government’s National Electric System Development Program for 2024-2038 outlines the deployment of seven gigawatts (GW) of storage systems between in 2024-2028 and eight GW in 2028-2038, but without specifying concrete projects or operational mechanisms.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), which represents major energy consumers, recommends incorporating storage into long-term energy planning and incentivizing its deployment. To this end, it suggests continuing regulatory reviews, implementing policies to promote battery recycling, and adopting measures for the trade of used energy storage systems.

The uncertainty surrounding energy storage progress in Mexico is evident in places like Cicata, where experts have called for stronger support.

“Having domestic technological development brings strength, improves the economy, and creates Mexican industrial companies without relying on foreign technology. Technological development is a matter of national security,” said researcher Reguera.

This year, his priorities include developing a sodium-based battery—safer and cheaper than lithium but with lower energy storage capacity—and securing around three million dollars to build a pilot plant capable of assembling about 500 catalysts daily.

Meanwhile, Cuentas, an energy storage expert, expressed hope that “mechanisms will be put in place to foster technological development in the country. With a more modern grid, variability wouldn’t cause as much disruption—it should withstand renewable energy fluctuations. It’s crucial to have more renewable generation and a strengthened grid.”

Finally, Flores, an energy policy specialist, proposed drafting a dedicated storage program and roadmap.

“There needs to be clarity in their plans. There are complementary options, integrating storage with large-scale traditional and renewable generators. For solar and wind energy, having storage facilities would be ideal,” he suggested.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, May 27 2025 – In the past, Shakespeare famously wrote in his play Henry VI that the first step for those seeking power was to “kill off the lawyers”. Today, the first step taken by those seeking power is to hide the numbers and control the message.

Various government leaders have adopted a political strategy that involves suppressing basic data, vital information and the statisticians and scientists who collect, analyze, and disseminate these numbers.

Without access to neutral data, objective information, and technically sound analyses, populations are left ill-informed and unable to express dissent. Censorship is often used to suppress numbers that may contradict the goals of government officials in controlling the message.

To gain power over a society, essential economic, social, health, environmental and demographic data, along with any resulting reports, are being suppressed. This suppression is achieved by failing to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate objective information on levels and trends.

Without access to neutral data, objective information, and technically sound analyses, populations are left ill-informed and unable to express dissent. Censorship is often used to suppress numbers that may contradict the goals of government officials in controlling the message

Statisticians, scientists and others responsible for collecting and reporting data are being dismissed, threatened or silenced. Knowledge-producing institutions that conduct studies are being defunded and reduced in size.

Many governments use various methods, such as internet censorship, media control and surveillance, to hide the numbers and control the message. These tactics restrict access to information, shape public opinion, and monitor online activity.

The primary strategy of many government leaders today is to hide numbers and control the message. Anything that contradicts their message is labeled as false, fake news, lies or treason, leading to legal action, criminal penalties and imprisonment for dissenters and those who publish what officials deem false news.

In countries like Cuba, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Myanmar, North Korea and Turkmenistan, for example, the media serves as a mouthpiece for government officials. Other countries, including Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Hungary, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen, use harassment, surveillance, and detentions to control the media and the message.

In Russia, key demographic statistics on births, deaths, marriages and divorce have been classified following a decline in birth rates.

For about four decades, the Russian total fertility rate has remained well below the replacement level, estimated at approximately 1.4 births per woman in 2024, and the number of births has declined to record lows.

Detailed population data are no longer being published, leading to a lack of publicly available demographic statistics since March 2025.

Russian officials note that despite their country being the largest in the world, their population is decreasing every year because of their below replacement fertility rates.

After decades of population growth, Russia’s population peaked at nearly 150 million in 1990 and has been largely declining since then.

Russia’s current population of about 144 million is projected to continue declining, reaching about 126 million by the close of the century according to the United Nations medium variant projection. Without migration, however, Russia’s population in 2100 is projected to decline to 88 million, or about 60% of its current size (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

To combat declining birth rates, Russian authorities have restricted access to abortions and contraception. They have implemented measures such as banning what they refer to as “child-free propaganda” and promoting traditional family values. Also, they recently announced a ban on TV series and films where women prioritize their careers over having children.

Similarly, in the United States, government leaders are reducing and silencing agencies that collect, analyze, and report vital information.

The communication platforms of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for example, have gone silent. Crucial health data have been removed from public access and many of the CDC newsletters have stopped being distributed.

Alerts about disease outbreaks, which were previously sent to health professionals subscribed to the CDC’s Health Alert Network, have not been dispatched since March. Also, US officials have cut funding, dismissed staff, and denied negative data reports.

Although some federal health websites have been restored, others are still down after some numbers were purged. CDC has acknowledged that its website is being changed to comply with the executive orders of the president.

Another agency that has experienced staff firings and funding cuts, which has created a danger for public safety and well-being, is the country’s National Weather Service. Those reductions have impacted the collection of vital data used to make forecasts and the staff who analyze the data to issue critical warnings about hazardous and extreme weather.

To control the message, US government officials have reduced funding, fired and silenced staff, and openly dismissed the consequences of their actions.

Government officials deny any negative data and findings on levels and trends that are reported. They also dismiss anything they don’t enjoy hearing by saying those treasonous scientists, statisticians and others are spreading false rumors. And they often blame previous administrations for issues that they cannot dismiss.

Data on the economic effects of the recently announced US tariffs, including increased prices for consumers and businesses, are also being hidden, denied, downplayed or dismissed.

In contrast to the views of leading economists and many of those in the business community, administration officials deflect legitimate criticisms by saying tariffs will help domestic industries, reduce trade deficits and benefit national security and strategic independence.

Efforts to eliminate administration-declared waste, fraud, and abuse have hindered data collection, analysis and dissemination, laid off or put on leave tens of thousands of federal government employees, led to disruptions in services, and adversely affected research and development at various agencies. Troubling information is hidden from the public, and justifications for policy changes and staff layoffs are often confusing, illogical or simply outright lies.

For example, the numbers on the proposed reductions in government funded services and programs, such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food benefits to low-income families, coupled with the huge tax benefits to the wealthy are explained away by the use of jingoistic rhetoric, irrelevant issues, political illogic and empty promises.

Also similar to Russia, US government officials wish to raise the country’s low fertility rate, which in 2024 was about 1.6 births per woman. Besides blaming women for the country’s low birth rate, some officials have referred to prominent women without children as “childless cat ladies” and are promoting the return to traditional roles for men and women in American society.

Administration officials are proposing a modest financial incentive of about $5,000 for women to have a baby. Also, a bill proposed by the US House would provide $1,000 to children born between 2025 and 2028 that could be invested on their behalf.

The US population, approximately 342 million in 2025, is continuing to increase in size, after having more than doubled since 1950.

However, again, similar to Russia, the future growth of the US population depends on migration. The US Census Bureau reports that without migration, the country’s population is projected to decline by about a third by the close of the century.

Also, according to the United Nations medium variant projection, the US population is projected to reach approximately 420 million by the end of the century. Without migration, however, the US population in 2100 is projected to decline to 268 million, or approximately 78% of its current size (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under Article 19 of that Declaration, everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart news and express opinions.

Also, during the past several decades, many countries, especially in Europe, recognized that it was essential to ensure that national statistical systems would be able to produce appropriate data and analyses that adhered to certain professional and scientific standards.

In 1994, the United Nations Statistical Commission adopted the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. Two decades later, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Fundamental Principles, stressing the critical role of high-quality official statistical information in analysis and informed policy decision-making and in support of sustainable development, peace and security.

In sum, to promote informed policy decision-making and prevent governments from hiding data and controlling the message, transparency, objectivity and accountability are crucial. These qualities are necessary for holding government officials accountable and ensuring the public is informed with objective, reliable and timely data and analyses.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of many publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE. US, May 26 2025 – On May 21, I was in the Seattle immigration court accompanying a young mother from a South American country who was applying for asylum to a routine hearing. Local media had reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested several people there the previous day.

Immigration courts have long seemed to be relatively safe places where immigrants were unlikely to be arrested, because they were already in the immigration legal system. [EOIR] [ICE]

While we were waiting, a group of four Haitians with a four-month-old baby sat down across from us. When I heard them speaking Kreyol and French, I introduced myself as someone who had lived in Haiti. We chatted briefly about their country and the immigration situation here, and smiled at the baby. Then they were called into court before us, and when they emerged, they seemed unperturbed by whatever was the outcome of their hearing.

This infernal Catch-22 is showing immigrants who have escaped from dangerous places that they have mistakenly entrusted their hopes to yet another gratuitously cruel police state for migrants. It is falsely branding all of them as criminals and dumping them into a rent-a-gulag of private for-profit prisons

However, when they walked out of the waiting room, they were surrounded by a group of burly men in Northwest-style outdoor wear and ball caps who proved to be agents of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations. The officers wore nothing that identified them as ICE or police, and I did not see them display any badges or warrants. They operated quietly, apparently trying not to attract public attention. They did not arrest the baby and its father, but took the mother and the two other men.

The arrestees looked stricken but did not resist, and I don’t believe the police handcuffed them. The father was left holding the baby in a basket, stunned and unbelieving. Further down the hall, another group of officers arrested a man who spoke to them in Spanish, asking them not to arrest him and crying. They put handcuffs and leg shackles on him and wrestled him onto an elevator.

This brought the young woman I was accompanying and myself to tears, as it was designed to do. Fortunately, though, her case was not dismissed. She was granted a future court hearing and was not detained by ICE.

As they were designed to do, the arrests left other witnesses, many with children, fearing that they could be next. Remember, this is not a court where people had to go because they were accused of crimes; they were there to make their cases for asylum or other protections, or to change their address. They were following authorized paths of immigration.

Staff from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle non-profit law office, circulated through the Federal Building explaining the new situation: the courts are now dismissing some immigrants’ cases at the request of the government. This might seem like a good thing for the immigrants, but it’s not: without an active case, most of these immigrants have no immigration status.

They are now vulnerable to being grabbed by ICE and placed in expedited removal, a form of rapid deportation without recourse to a judge. This provides la migra, as they are known in Spanish, with a new, unforeseen way to terrorize immigrants. [NWIRP]

The strategy of the Trump administration for immigrants with pending cases requesting authorized statuses such as asylum seems to be to deploy a variety of ways of questionable legality to summarily reject and remove them, or to make life so miserable here that the immigrants “self-deport”.

National and international media have reported similar arrests of immigrants after dismissing their cases across the country. [Anguiano & Singh 5/22/2025] As CBS News pointed out, expedited removal can be used to summarily deport immigrants “who entered the U.S. with the government’s permission at legal entry points”.

So it could possibly be applied to the nearly one million immigrants who entered the U.S. using a cell-phone app introduced by the Biden administration, which allowed them to enter with authorization. [Montoya-Galvez & Cavazos 5/23/2025] Hundreds of thousands who entered under the auspices of other government programs may also be at risk.

This is not an immigration policy; it is the business end of an ethnic cleansing policy. It dovetails nicely with the long-term imperative of white sado-nationalists such as Trump’s Make America Great Again movement to try to reverse what they call “The Great Replacement” of white U.S.-born citizens by immigrants of color from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

As historian Mae Ngai of Columbia University told me in an interview, “I think there’s too many brown people in this country for [the Trump administration’s] tastes — that’s what it all comes down to.” [Costantini 1/16/2019]

The Department of Homeland Security has introduced other new operations to threaten immigrants as well. In Nashville, Tennessee, the state Highway Patrol is reportedly running joint operations with ICE officers on the streets of immigrant neighborhoods.

According to New York Times columnist Margaret Renkle, ICE has been throwing “a wide, seemingly race-based net” to catch people who might appear to be immigrants with flurries of traffic stops for minor infractions by the state patrol. These stops allow ICE to check the immigration status of large numbers of local residents and detain some of them. [Renkl 5/22/2025]

Nashville is a city with a two-thirds Democratic electorate in a heavily Republican state. State Senator Jeff Yarbro told Renkle: “They were basically pulling someone new over every two minutes. That’s not a ‘public safety operation.’” And Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell commented: “What’s clear today is that people who do not share our values of safety and community have the authority to cause deep community harm.”

On top of other forms of arbitrary deprivation of immigrants’ rights, these new attacks are destroying any sense of safety for people who are trying to follow the rules. They already seem to be resulting in more fearful immigrants skipping appointments, and then being subject to even more certain arrest and removal.

This infernal Catch-22 is showing immigrants who have escaped from dangerous places that they have mistakenly entrusted their hopes to yet another gratuitously cruel police state for migrants. It is falsely branding all of them as criminals and dumping them into a rent-a-gulag of private for-profit prisons. More detainees will likely be rendered to El Salvador, Libya, South Sudan, and other human-rights-free zones and held without due process or habeas corpus.

The Statue of Liberty wept.

* * *

Notes

For the past 40 years, I have volunteered with immigrants. Since the first Trump administration, I have accompanied them to court and other official appointments. Accompaniment is organized by local immigrant justice and human rights groups, and usually entails working with attorneys (which I am not) to support and inform immigrants, and interpreting between English and their languages (in my case, Spanish and French).

Immigration courts are run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the Department of Justice. They are administrative courts and not part of the judiciary branch. [EOIR]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the police agency within the Department of Homeland Security that enforces immigration laws in the interior of the country, while Customs and Border Protection (which includes the Border Patrol) handles enforcement from the border up to 100 miles inland. [ICE]

References

Dani Anguiano & Maanvi Singh. “Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’”. London: The Guardian, May 22, 2025.
https://theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/22/ice-arrests-immigration-courts

Peter Costantini. “Manufacturing illegality: An Interview with Mae Ngai”. Foreign Policy In Focus, January 16, 2019.
https://fpif.org/manufacturing-illegality-an-interview-with-mae-ngai

Legal Information Institute. “habeas corpus”. Cornell Law School, no date
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus

Camilo Montoya-Galvez & Nidia Cavazos. “ICE ending migrants’ court cases in order to arrest and move to deport them”. CBS News, May 23, 2025.
https://cbsnews.com/news/ice-ending-migrants-court-cases-arrest-move-to-deport-them

Margaret Renkl. “The ICE Raids in Nashville Aren’t About Public Safety”. New York Times, May 22, 2025.
https://nytimes.com/2025/05/22/opinion/ice-raids-nashville-immigrants.html

By Catherine Wilson
LONDON, May 26 2025 – Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza has wiped out hospitals, schools, homes, water, and food, reducing the Palestinian territory to a wasteland and leaving a death toll of more than 53,000 people. But an equally lethal campaign has been unleashed against the foundations of Palestinian society and identity.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has targeted libraries, repositories, and institutions of Palestinian culture and heritage in a mission to eradicate the history, literary accomplishments, and political and social existence of Palestine as a place and people.

“The losses in Gaza are vast, incalculable, as we are still in the throes of a genocidal war that has already destroyed 70 percent of the Gaza Strip and killed or maimed 10 percent of its embattled population,” Raja Khalidi, Co-Administrator of the Khalidi Library, an Arab public library founded by the Khalidi family in East Jerusalem more than a century ago, told IPS. “So has the Israeli war machine in Gaza and the West Bank wrought indiscriminate destruction that threatens erasure of Palestinian written, architectural, and archaeological cultural heritage.”

In a recent report on the destruction of libraries, archives, and museums in Gaza since the conflict erupted in 2023, the solidarity organization Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (LAP) stated that “the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza impoverishes the collective identity of the Palestinian people, irrevocably denies them their history, and violates their sovereignty.”

“The greatest loss remains the normalization of the daily massacres of Gazans, including children. Every Palestinian life is a record, a history. The Zionist war machine realises this and the targeting of children, in particular, is an attempt at destroying the future narrative of Palestine,” Ahmad Almallah, a Palestinian poet who grew up in Bethlehem and now lives in Philadelphia in the United States, told IPS.

Palestinian children live their lives under Israeli siege in Gaza, December 2024. Credit: Hosny Salah

Bordered by Israel to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Gaza comprises 365 square kilometers of land that is home to about 2.1 million Muslim and Christian Palestinians who have lived under siege for more than half a century. Many Palestinians fled to Gaza following Israeli dispossession of their villages and homes during the Al-Nakba, or the ‘Catastrophe,’ in 1948. Then the territory was part of Egypt. Israel subsequently seized Gaza during the Six-Day War of 1967 until 1993, when the Oslo Accords made way for it to be administered by the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamic resistance organization, Hamas, then took power in 2005. Its launching of a raid and attack within Israel in October 2023, which resulted in the death of 1,200 Israelis with 251 taken hostage, triggered the current Gaza war. Since then, the IDF has sustained a relentless military onslaught leading to the obliteration of every facility for human habitation in Gaza and the escalation of a humanitarian crisis due to lack of food, water, shelter, and medical services.

While a ceasefire began on 19 January, disputes between Israel and Hamas about progress in hostage and prisoner exchanges led to the ceasefire fracturing on 18 March. The IDF resumed its offensive with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu further threatening to annex parts of Gaza.

This month UNESCO reported that Israel had destroyed 107 important cultural sites in the Palestinian enclave, including historic buildings, mosques, churches, and museums. And last year, LAP detailed the damage and destruction of 22 libraries and archives, including Gaza’s Central Archives, which contained valuable documentation of the enclave’s 150-year history. The Diana Tamari Sabbagh Library, which held tens of thousands of books, was also destroyed, as was the Omari Mosque and Library, which was built in the 7^th century and held a major collection of rare books dating to the 14th century. Four university libraries in Gaza also suffered damage, including the Al-Quds Open University Library and the Jawaharlal Nehru Library of Gaza’s Al-Azhar University. Historical records destroyed in Gaza include those that proved Palestinian land and property ownership.

“Several years ago, the occupation destroyed the National Library in Gaza, razing its towering structure to the ground. With its destruction, the dream of creating a repository for both ancient and modern Palestinian works was obliterated. The site that once promised to preserve a rich cultural heritage became little more than a platform for displaying political party flags and leaders’ portraits,” Palestinian novelist Yousri al-Ghoul wrote in January.

The Omari Mosque in Gaza, portrayed in 2022, before its destruction by an Israeli attack in December 2023. Credit: Dan Palraz

The current conflict continues attempts to erase Palestinian history and identity that began during the Al-Nakba when Palestinian homes and their contents were looted and destroyed.

“As a child of the first intifada in Palestine, even words, the raw material for books, were very dangerous toys to play with. The Israeli occupation banned using the word ‘Palestine,’ and children and teenagers caught inscribing the word on a wall were either shot dead or arrested and subjected to torture. But that didn’t stop Palestinians from writing the word and piling on it poems, literature, and personal and natural history,” Almallah said.

Together with this loss, Palestinian writers, intellectuals, artists, and journalists have been killed, putting in jeopardy the continuity of knowledge and culture within society and its transmission to the next generation. Those who have lost their lives since 2023 include the writer Abdul Karim Hashash, who has written many books on Palestinian poetry and culture, and Doaa Al-Masri, Librarian at Gaza’s Edward Said Library.

In 2016 the International Criminal Court identified the desecration of a people’s cultural heritage as a war crime in a case about Islamist attacks on UNESCO-protected monuments in Timbuktu in Mali. Subsequently, in 1954, the Hague Convention, an international treaty stipulating the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts, was established and has now been signed by 136 countries.

More recently, South Africa included allegations of cultural dispossession in the case it launched in 2023 of genocide by Israel in Gaza in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It will likely take the court years to reach a ruling. But in January last year, it issued initial orders to Israel to prevent and punish acts and public incitement to commit genocide by its military, an order that Israel continues to ignore.

“The international community has failed Palestinians; it has failed Gaza now! It has not done anything to stop the genocide and the massacring of children. I don’t expect they will do anything to save our books. But despite all Zionist attempts to silence them, we are witnessing Palestine becoming part of world heritage; Palestine is now everywhere!” Almallah declared.

In the meantime, there are important institutions in the region taking action to ensure the tactics of erasure will not succeed.  In Jerusalem, the Khalidi Library, which is home to a rich collection of thousands of books and Islamic manuscripts representing an Arab literary heritage over many centuries, is a testament to cultural resilience. It also conducts extensive manuscript conservation, restoration, and digitization work and has been a pillar of vibrant Palestinian scholarship, thought, and writing since the early twentieth century.

Khalidi emphasized that, looking ahead, in any reconstruction plan for post-war Gaza, “the first task will be for competent organizations, such as UNESCO, to launch a proper survey of the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza… then ensure the future preservation and restoration or digitization of salvaged collections.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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