U.S. declares genocide in Sudan, imposes sanctions on paramilitary leader   The Washington Post January 7, 2024 By  Katharine Houreld   Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces used systematic murder and sexual violence in its war in Sudan, the U.S. government says as it sanctions RSF’s chief, Hemedti.   Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, pictured in 2019, has been sanctioned by the U.S. government as his paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are accused of genocide in Sudan. (Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images)     The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces is committing genocide in Sudan, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday, and the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned its chief, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, universally known as Hemedti.   “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a  statement .   “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies,” Blinken said, concluding “that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.”   The war between the RSF and Sudan’s military has plunged parts of the nation of 50 million  into a spreading famine , created the world’s largest  refugee crisis  and sucked in fighters from neighboring nations. The death toll is unknown — large parts of the country have no internet or phone network — but U.S. officials  estimated  last year that about 150,000 people had been killed.   The genocide designation and sanctions announcement will further tarnish Hemedti’s international image, already damaged by a drumbeat of reports that the RSF and its allied militias have engaged in a spree of gang rapes, looting, ethnic cleansing, kidnapping, enslavement, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Commanders frequently post videos boasting about their exploits, or showing them abusing villagers.   Once, Hemedti had hoped to be a future leader of Sudan, portraying himself as a champion of democracy against the autocratic military, a bulwark against Islamists in the military and a defender of human rights. Last year, after the RSF stormed across vast swaths of Sudan, he embarked on a victory tour of African nations. He was received by leaders in nations from Kenya to South Africa to Ethiopia — all diplomatic heavyweights on the continent.   Hemedti presides over a sprawling family empire estimated to be worth billions of dollars and encompassing gold, weapons, property and holding companies — much of it based in the United Arab Emirates, which has been supporting the RSF. Before the conflict erupted, Hemedti himself was wealthy enough to personally pledge over $1 billion to help stabilize the Sudanese Central Bank in the aftermath of Sudan’s economic crisis.   Since then, his forces have carried out an orgy of looting throughout the country that has taken crops, gold, vehicles and so much cash from the banking system that citizens are chronically short of paper money. The United Nations’ World Food Program alone has had more than $60 million worth of food looted; 85 other aid organizations have also been attacked and looted at a time  when children are starving to death .   Reporters for The Washington Post  interviewed  families that had had members kidnapped and held for ransom by RSF soldiers, and witnessed RSF soldiers selling hundreds of looted vehicles at a time in markets. His forces still control gold mines that previously operated in partnership with the Wagner Group before it was fully taken over by Moscow.   On Monday, the United States  accused Russia  of fueling both sides in Sudan’s conflict. The United States says Russia values gold from Sudan and other nations because it helps Russia evade international sanctions.   The RSF was not immediately available to comment on designation of genocide or the sanctions. A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity avoid preempting the announcement, said Hemedti accepted command and control of his forces at talks in Geneva last summer, where he pledged to abide by a code of conduct that would protect civilians. That promise was not honored.   The Sudanese military has also engaged in war crimes, the U.S. State Department says, amid numerous reports from witnesses of indiscriminate airstrikes that have killed civilians, extrajudicial executions and ethnically targeted arrests. It has also frequently obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid, although that has partly eased in recent months.   “The famine was created by the RSF … but perpetrated by the SAF [Sudanese Armed Forces],” the U.S. official said in exasperation. Both sides have hit civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and places of worship.   Before the war, the RSF and Sudanese military were allies. In 2021, the two forces had cooperated to overthrow a fledgling civilian-military government that had been in power for two years, since massive protests helped topple longtime dictator Omar el Bashir. Bashir was wanted by the International Criminal Court — also for genocide — for crimes his forces committed during a previous war in the western region of Darfur. The Rapid Support Forces grew out of tribal militias that supported the military against rebel forces during that time.   Copyright 2025 The Washington Post   Genocide Watch comment: When it was UN Security Council President in December 2024, why did the US refuse to introduce a strong UN Security Council resolution to re-establish a UN/African Union Mission in Sudan? The draft resolution would have authorized deployment of 10,000 troops and 715 police with the mandate to protect civilians and arrest those charged by the International Criminal Court.  This draft resolution with an accompanying letter signed by over 100 NGOs and faith leaders in the International Religious Freedom Roundtable and Alliance Against Genocide was sent to every member of the UN Security Council in July 2023 and monthly to every UN Security Council President since then, including to the US State Department. Instead in December, the US supported a weak resolution introduced by the United Kingdom urging more humanitarian aid but without any troops to protect civilians. Even that resolution was vetoed by Russia. This indifference to genocide is very much like the US equivocation and failure to support intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

© UNICEF/Patrick Brown | A child at an internally displaced persons (IDP) centre in Myanmar. (file) The security situation in Myanmar continues to remain highly volatile, with intensified airstrikes across multiple regions leading to dozens of civilian casualties, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday.       Between 15 and 17 January, airstrikes and clashes in the southeast reportedly resulted in nine deaths and left 31 others injured.   In Rakhine state, three airstrikes in Mrauk-U Township on 18 January reportedly killed 28 people and injured a further 25, while in the northwest, airstrikes last week reportedly claimed the lives of 19 civilians and injured approximately 41 others. OCHA expressed grave concern for the safety of civilians, highlighting the heightened risks faced by conflict-affected communities amid the violence and limited access to essential services.   It reiterated its call for all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and ensure the protection of civilians. The situation in the southeast Asian nation has been in freefall since Myanmar’s military – known as the Tatmadaw – overthrew the democratically elected government  and arrested key political and government leaders in February 2021. At least 6,000 civilians have been killed  since the military takeover, and countless more injured, including many who lost limbs to landmines  and unexploded ordinance (UXO). Deadly journeys for safety The crisis has disproportionately affected vulnerable populations, including the mostly-Muslim Rohingya minority, with hundreds risking dangerous journeys at sea to flee persecution and violence. According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR , between 3 and 5 January, some 460 Rohingya arrived in Malaysia and Indonesia after weeks at sea . Ten people reportedly lost their lives during the journeys. Just three weeks earlier, another 115 refugees had arrived in Sri Lanka, having lost six people at sea. “ Saving lives must be the first priority, ” said Hai Kyung Jun, Director of UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, applauding countries receiving and supporting the vulnerable refugees. © UNICEF/Naing Linn Soe | In 2024, over 7,800 Rohingya risked their lives attempting to escape Myanmar by boat across treacherous seas. Worrying trend UNHCR also warned that as the situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, more people are expected to flee in the coming months. In 2024, over 7,800 Rohingya attempted to escape Myanmar by boat – an 80 per cent increase from the previous year. Among those making the journey, children accounted for 44 per cent of passengers, up from 37 per cent in 2023. UNHCR urged States to focus on protection at sea, meeting humanitarian needs and addressing false narratives and hate speech against refugees and asylum-seekers arriving on their shores. “ We call on all States to continue search and rescue efforts and make sure that survivors receive the assistance and protection they need ,” Ms. Jun added. Severe underfunding Myanmar’s spiralling crisis is being further exacerbated by severe underfunding of humanitarian operations, leaving millions without critical support. Humanitarians estimate that nearly 20 million people – more than a third of the total population – will require assistance this year. Among them, 6.3 million children and 7.1 million women. Despite the urgent need, the humanitarian response remains drastically underfunded. In 2024, only 34 per cent of the $1 billion required was received, leaving an estimated 1.4 million people without prioritized support. For 2025, humanitarians have appealed for $1.1 billion  to provide life-saving aid to 5.5 million of the most vulnerable people. “The people of Myanmar cannot afford a repeat of this underfunding in 2025 – they need decisive action from the international community, including more resources, and they need it now, ” said Marcoluigi Corsi, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator ad interim for Myanmar. Copyright © 2025 United Nations

Elon Musk giving Nazi salute on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025 ... screenshot from TV broadcast Red Flag Alert for Genocide: USA Jan 20, 2025 Today was a hard day for many people, especially immigrants and trans* people, groups whose rights and dignity have been assailed and threatened by Donald Trump and the Republican Party for almost a decade now. We at the Lemkin Institute were particularly horrified, however, to watch billionaire Elon Musk, the most powerful man on earth with unfettered access to the new US president, give a Nazi salute not once, but twice during his inauguration speech. While some apologists are claiming that this was not a Nazi salute, but rather a mistake, a wave to the audience, or a 'Roman salute' (which is also associated with the "alt-right" anyway), many Holocaust and genocide historians have weighed in that Musk most certainly was intentionally using the Nazi Salute. All of us who have studied the Third Reich know a Nazi Salute when we see one. We can debate, however, why Musk may have done this. Was he so caught up in the sense of victory that his true leanings came out in a moment of forgetfulness? Was he stupidly and vapidly cos-playing triumph from films and other popular depictions of Hitler? Was he signalling his intentions to fellow-travelers? Was he seeking to undermine the president? Whatever he was doing, it was a frightening start to the second Trump administration. As we note in our Red Flag Alert, we have learned to take powerful men at their word when they signal genocidal leanings. Musk's gesture cannot be and must not be explained away. The Trump administration must be made to address this head-on and to take clear steps to distance itself from Musk and other neo-Nazis. So, despite our warnings about Republican hate speech and genocidal language during Trump's presidential campaign, we are surprised to be issuing a Red Flag Alert for the United States of America on the very first day of the second Trump term as president. Elon Musk's clear use of the Nazi salute during his speech has given us no other option. The use of an antisemitic genocidal signal by the world's most powerful man, who has engaged in racism and antisemitism in the past, cannot be taken lightly or written off as a mistake. Please read our full statement below. In Peace and Solidarity, Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey Red Flag Alert for Genocide - United States of America The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention is without words after the billionaire Elon Musk gave the Nazi salute twice during his speech at the inauguration of President Donald Trump in the United States of America. Musk’s act is a frightening signal of things to come, an offense to the nation, and, possibly, an effort to embarrass and weaken an aging Donald Trump, making him vulnerable to a Musk takeover. In light of Musk’s important influence on the new administration, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is issuing a Red Flag Alert for genocide in the United States. We at the Lemkin Institute had no misperceptions about the possible threats of a Donald Trump presidency, particularly to the rights of refugees and the LGBTQ community, as well as the likelihood that America’s weakened democratic institutions will be undermined if not completely destroyed by an administration that is formed by people who have lauded autocrats and dictators in other regions of the world. We made this clear in our Statement on Genocide and the US Presidential Election on 4 November 2024. However, we did not expect to be issuing a Red Flag Alert for genocide on the very first day of President Trump’s presidency after one of his closest advisors gave the Nazi salute twice to a crowd of cheering Americans. We remind Americans that many of their fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers died fighting the Nazi regime during World War II in the name of the aspirational goals of the United States to be a beacon of liberty. The memory of those lost fighting fascism is honored by memorials in most US cities and towns – their names sit on street signs and their faces are remembered in portraits in the houses of patriotic Americans proud of their anti-fascist history. They were heroes. Many of the victims of Nazi terror and Nazi genocide found a safe haven in the United States after 1933, including Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term genocide and who was the driver behind the adoption of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations in 1948. Lemkin, who was Jewish and Polish, lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust. That Elon Musk, an unelected figure close to the president, should feel free to flash the Nazi salute on inauguration day, a day that this year coincides with Martin Luther King day, is hard to fathom. It is an insult to this country, to its Constitution, to its veterans, and to the many survivors of the Holocaust who created new lives and new families within our safe borders. Should Mr. Musk argue that he “did not mean” to flash the Nazi salute, or that he was doing some other arm gesture, we ask Americans to respond with critical thinking. Is it possible that any person – especially in South Africa (where support for Nazism was very strong) or the USA (where the History Channel has introduced almost all but the youngest generations to the Nazi salute) – is unaware of this salute or what it means? We ask Americans to try it out: The salute is not at all a “natural” gesture of the arm as it moves the hand from the heart into a wave to an audience. It is almost impossible that this was an unfortunate mistake. Finally, can we really believe that someone who is so often in the public eye would risk an arm gesture – twice – that looks almost exactly like the Nazi salute while he is supposedly celebrating Donald Trump’s election to president? We strongly believe that Elon Musk’s gesture was intentional. We will be happy to be proven wrong. Nazism must be fought everywhere it rears its head. It imbues more generic forms of fascism with racialized fantasies of natural hierarchies of humanity and always calls for the elimination of certain groups from society in the name of self-preservation. Racialist fascism is at heart a genocidal process that often starts with one group and moves on to others. Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist movement in Germany saw Jews as its principal and cosmic enemy, although Jews constituted less than 1 percent of the German population. Jews were singled out – along with the Roma-Sinti people – for total annihilation. But the Nazis, as part of their genocidal remaking of Germany, also targeted a host of other groups for sterilization, torture, murder, and ‘partial’ elimination, such as gays, trans people, Jehovah’s witnesses, black Germans, communists, socialists, trade unionists, Social Democrats, the physically disabled, people deemed to be mentally ‘unfit,’ and many more. The Polish nation was slated for a 75% decimation and was to be rendered a permanent slave class. The Nazis began their genocidal process by targeting their primary political enemy, the German Communist party and its members. The popularity of this terror campaign among pliant, timid middle class Germans, who were staunchly anti-communist, weakened German institutions and paved the way for Hitler to institutionalize his dictatorship, which eventually sought to root out all difference and all dissent from the German social body. We know now that Hitler brought ruination on Germany, destroying those same middle class families with war and economic devastation, and burdening the entire nation with responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews alongside the massive casualties experienced by all sides in the war. Germany will be branded by Hitler, World War II, and the Holocaust for as long as it exists. We cannot forget these facts. The worst mistake any American can make at this time is to believe that Musk is stupid or to be pliant and timid in the face of this provocation. At the Lemkin Institute we have learned that we must absolutely take leaders, and people in positions of great power, like Elon Musk, at their word when they signal allegiance with hate groups through signals or through speech. Musk’s Hitler salute cannot and must not be swept under the rug. The US press, cowed as it has been under President Biden, cannot be trusted to cover the new president’s administration with any backbone or honesty. It is up to the American people to defend the Constitution and this country’s core values against all threats. Trans people, refugees, and migrants are not the threats. The billionaires with close ties to our new president who flash the Nazi salute and seek to replace the old elites with a new caste – that is the real threat to America. We hope that President Donald Trump will see this threat for what it is and that he will have enough love of country to do what any patriot would do in his shoes: Repudiate Musk and strip Musk of the position and the access that he has been granted, assuring the American people that a Trump Presidency will not serve to empower present-day Nazis of any stripes. PDF DONATE The Lemkin Institute has a reputation for offering a frank and balanced analysis of the threat of genocide around the world. We can do this because we are independent of large funders, governments, political parties, and the agendas of the world's current institutions. We welcome individual donations, 100 percent of which go directly to funding the infrastructure needed to continue this work, including newspaper subscriptions, website platforms, and general operating costs. We all have full-time jobs outside of our Lemkin Institute work, which severely limits our capacity. Our dream is to be able to hire one or two full-time program managers to help keep us organized, to ensure that our high quality work continues to make it out the door, and to offer administrative continuity across volunteer cohorts. We hope you will consider donating towards that goal. Follow Us on Social Media Follow on Facebook Follow on Instagram Follow on YouTube Follow on LinkedIn Follow on X (Twitter) Get our latest updates Add your email... Subscribe Check out our website   Copyright 2025 The Lemkin Institute

Twenty-two States Sue to Stop Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order The New York Times Jan. 21, 2025 President Trump signed a series of executive orders in the first hours of his term.Credit ...Doug Mills/The New York Times The lawsuit to block the president’s executive order is the first salvo in what is likely to be a long-running legal fight over immigration policy. By Mattathias Schwartz  and Mike Baker Reporting from Philadelphia and Seattle. Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Trump in two federal district courts on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Eighteen states and two cities, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., challenged the order in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is “automatic” and that neither the president nor Congress has the constitutional authority to revise it. Four other states filed a second lawsuit  in the Western District of Washington. Mr. Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship was “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led one of the legal efforts along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts. “Presidents are powerful,” he said, “but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.” Nick Brown, the attorney general in Washington, said Mr. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to 150,000 newborn children each year. “It would render them undocumented at birth. It could even render them citizens to no country at all,” said Mr. Brown, whose state was joined by Oregon, Arizona and Illinois. On Monday, in the opening hours of his second term as president, Mr. Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would extend even to the children of some mothers in the country legally but temporarily, such as foreign students or tourists. Mr. Trump’s executive order asserts that the children of such noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus aren’t covered by the 14th Amendment’s longstanding constitutional guarantee. The order flew in the face of more than 100 years  of legal precedent , when the courts and the executive branch interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing citizenship  to every baby born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The courts recognize only a few exceptions  — such as the children of accredited diplomats , and children born in U.S. territory that is under the control of an occupying army. “It’s so outlandish that it’s almost assured to be struck down,” predicted Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, who expressed shock at the order’s breadth. Even former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a foreign student when she was born, might be impacted. “The person who drafted this order was not doing Donald Trump any favors.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Mr. Trump’s order would mean that more than 20,000 newborn children would lose their citizenship each year in his state alone. Mr. Trump is “trying to keep a promise that he made during the campaign,” Mr. Bonta said. “We’re trying to keep a promise to uphold the law.” A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. There are signs the judiciary could be divided on the issue. Judge James C. Ho, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has been more sympathetic to some of Mr. Trump’s arguments, likening unauthorized immigrants to an invading army. That comparison has also been made by lawyers for the State of Texas and another declaration  by Mr. Trump that illegal crossings at the southern border amount to an “ongoing invasion.” Still, that appeals court does not hear cases originating in Massachusetts, and other courts are unlikely to even consider the Trump administration’s arguments about constitutional interpretation without a new law from Congress, said Gerard Magliocca, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He cited recent cases where the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch can’t single-handedly address the biggest political controversies, known as “major questions.” “If that’s true of student loans or Covid-19 rules or whatever, you’d think it would be true of citizenship as well,” he said. “The states are right and the courts are probably going to agree with them.” The plaintiffs in the suit filed in Massachusetts included New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Additional suits were filed by a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, and another by Lawyers for Civil Rights. The order on birthright citizenship does not take effect for 30 days, unlike Mr. Trump’s first-term attempt to ban travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries, which led to airport chaos. The timing means that executive-branch agencies can work through how to implement the order while the courts decide on its legality. Mr. Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said his team continues to review Mr. Trump’s executive orders and expects the state will be involved in more litigation in the future. But, he added, the state is not going to sue over objectionable-but-legal moves by the Trump administration, such as pardoning most of those charged for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “I have no interest in continuing to sue the president of the United States, whether it’s Donald Trump or whoever the next president is, but it is my oath to defend the Constitution,” Mr. Brown said. Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order, he added, was “plainly illegal.” Tracey Tully and Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting from New York. Mike Baker  is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle.  More about Mike Baker Copyright 2025 The New York Times Company

By Dr. Gregory Stanton In the heart of Africa lies Darfur, a region plagued by a history of war and genocide. The "international community's" eyes should again turn toward the resurgence of genocide in Sudan. But the UN and African Union seem to be either blind, deaf, or paralyzed. The Call for Action Woman from the city of Al-Junina in West Darfur cries after receiving news about the deaths of her relatives as she waited for them in Chad on November 7, 2023 [El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters] The ghostly echo of past genocide still reverberates in the hills and valleys of Darfur. Following genocide in 2003 - 2005, a genocide that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, mass graves serve as stark reminders of the consequences of inaction. As Sudan is now engulfed by an even more deadly crisis, the time for proactive measures is now. Genocide prevention cannot be a mere slogan; It must be a concrete commitment to forceful action. A History of Genocide Generals Burhan (SAF) and Hemedti (RSF) Creator/ YASUYOSHI CHIBA | Credit/ AFP via Getty Images Darfur's history is marred by ethnic bloodshed. The Darfur conflict, rooted in longstanding struggles for resources and power, has led to a humanitarian catastrophe of immense proportions. Despite futile efforts to broker peace agreements and stabilize the region, the specter of mass atrocities looms like death over Darfur. The "international community's" failure to honestly address the root causes of the Sudanese conflict has only exacerbated the civil war. The war in Darfur is driven by racism and imperialistic greed. Arab Sudanese led by the Arab Gathering, an Arab supremacist elite that has ruled Sudan since 1982, intend to drive black Africans out of Darfur, take control over their grazing and farm land, and exploit Darfur's rich deposits of gold, rare earths, and oil. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the renamed murderous Arab Janjaweed of the 2003 - 2005 genocide, are again carrying out genocidal massacres of the Massalit, Fur, and Zaghawa black African ethnic groups in Darfur. They are led by the same leader who led the Janjaweed, the billionaire former camel trader General Hamdan (Hemedti). RSF massacres have terrorized hundreds of thousands of people from black African ethnic groups into forced displacement into Chad, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Russia's mercenary Wagner Group profits from gold mines in Darfur owned by the United Arab Emirates and the RSF and also from the ancient gold mines of Kush controlled by the Sudanese government east of Khartoum. With these dual interests, Russia is arming and financing both sides in the civil war. The Sudanese government thanked Russia for its veto of a weak UN Security Council Resolution in December 2024 that called for more humanitarian aid to Sudan. Russia invoked Sudanese national sovereignty to reject such aid. The Imperative of Accountability Accountability is the cornerstone of preventing genocide. Holding perpetrators responsible for their actions sends a powerful message that crimes against humanity will be punished. By establishing robust accountability mechanisms and supporting international tribunals, we can deter future atrocities and break the cycle of war and genocide that plagues Darfur. The leaders of the genocide in Sudan should be charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. They should be arrested by police that are authorized by the United Nations as part of a 10,000 troop UN/African Union Force with a mandate to protect civilians, not just observe while they are slaughtered. When the current Sudanese military government is overthrown and replaced by an elected civilian government, these genocidal leaders should also be tried and convicted by courts in Sudan. Genocide and crimes against humanity are crimes of Universal Jurisdiction in Europe, Senegal, Argentina, the USA, Canada, Australia, and other countries. If these war criminals flee to countries with Universal Jurisdiction, they should be immediately arrested and tried for their crimes. Embracing Early Warning Systems Early warning systems are the linchpin of effective genocide prevention. By monitoring indicators of potential genocide, international and regional organizations can take preemptive action to avert catastrophe. Investing in intelligence gathering and analysis is not just a strategic imperative; it is a moral imperative. The lessons of history have taught us that ignoring early warning signs only leads to atrocities. Darfur stands at a crossroads between hope and despair. The path the UN, African Union, ECOWAS, the US, the EU, and NATO choose will define not only the fate of this region but also our commitment to upholding human rights and human dignity. As we confront the crisis in Darfur, let us remember that the prevention of genocide is not just a lofty ideal—it is a moral duty that we owe to our fellow human beings. Let Darfur not again be a symbol of our failure, but a testament to our resolve to prevent genocide and safeguard the sanctity of human life.

People take refuge at an abandoned school transformed into a shelter after being forced to leave their homes due to a gang attack in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitian activists on Thursday demanded that other countries temporarily stop deportations to their country due to a surge in gang violence and deepening poverty. Tens of thousands of people have been deported to Haiti in the past month, mostly from the Dominican Republic, whose president recently pledged to deport some 10,000 migrants a week. The Caribbean country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has deported nearly 61,000 migrants to Haiti in the past month, according to the latest government figures. In October, the U.S. deported 258 Haitians, while Turks & Caicos, Jamaica and the Bahamas deported a combined total of 231, according to Sam Guillaume, a spokesperson for Haiti’s Support Group for Returnees and Refugees. He noted that many of those deported to Haiti remain homeless. “A lot of them can’t make it back home because their neighborhood is controlled by gangs,” he said. As a result, some deportees are temporarily living along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic in hopes of crossing again. Gangs now control 85% of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and gunmen have been relentless in attacking once peaceful communities. The deportees now join the more than 700,000 people left homeless by gang violence in recent years. Among that group are more than 12,000 who fled neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince following attacks last month, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. Those held for deportation in the Dominican Republic are being forced into crowded jails with no water, no food and no beds, and when they defend their rights, they are sometimes tear-gassed, Guillaume said. “People are being treated like criminals,” he said. He added that some organizations helping Haitians in the Dominican Republic also are being attacked. Julio Caraballo, spokesman for the Dominican Republic’s migration office, denied accusations that the government is mistreating detained migrants. Copyright 2024 Associated Press

Birthright Citizenship Defined America. Trump Wants to Redefine It. The New York Times Magazine Jan. 18, 2025 The 14th Amendment made the U.S. a place where every child was born equal under the law. That might be about to change. Credit...Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomas By  Marcela Valdes When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, it defined the United States nearly as deeply as the nation’s founding documents. “It’s certainly the most important change in the Constitution since the Bill of Rights,” the historian Eric Foner told me. The amendment grants citizenship to almost everyone born inside the country — a rare policy for an advanced economy in the 21st century. Among the 20  most developed countries  in the world, only Canada and the United States allocate citizenship using the legal principle of jus soli, the right of soil. President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to overturn territorial birthright citizenship. “We’re going to have to get it changed,” he told NBC News during his first extended interview after winning the election in November. “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.” Trump has said that he will release an executive order denying birthright citizenship to the children of “illegal aliens” on the first day that he takes office. Members of his team have told The New York Times that his administration will not issue passports and Social Security cards to children born to undocumented parents. [Genocide Watch comment: This policy is part of Trump's racist program to return the United States to a pre-14th Amendment, pre-civil war white-supremacist society.] These moves will inevitably be challenged in court, where the fate of birthright citizenship is likely to be decided. Efforts to end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized migrants date back more than four decades, but Trump’s return will most likely present one of the greatest challenges in the 14th Amendment’s 157-year history. Legal arguments that were once regarded as fringe have moved to the mainstream. The Supreme Court has proved itself willing to break with historical precedent in cases involving other conservative priorities, like abortion and presidential immunity. And Trump, who campaigned on the idea of restricting birthright citizenship, is entering office with a majority of the vote. If Trump follows through on this promise, it would represent a triumph for a certain vision of America. The United States has always wrestled with two strains of nationalism , explains Gary Gerstle, a historian at the University of Cambridge. On the one hand, “ civic nationalism” imagines America as a country open to everyone, regardless of faith, color or creed. At the same time, “racial nationalism,” Gerstle writes in his book “American Crucible,” imagines America as a place where white people are better suited for self-government and where nonwhite people —  which at one time included Southern  and Eastern Europeans — “could never be accepted as full-fledged members.” “These competing ideologies of what constitutes an American are often present in the minds of the same people,” Gerstle said. That may be especially true now, when the inheritors of a more exclusive nationalism are not just white Americans. Angered by the challenges posed by rising global migration — circumstances that have already led several other industrialized nations to replace birthright citizenship with less welcoming laws — many Black, Asian and Latino Americans would also like to see citizenship allocated along blood and family lines, too. The battle over birthright citizenship will be a fight between these two nationalisms, as it was when the 14th Amendment was proposed. Absorbing Millions of Immigrants The 14th Amendment is not fundamentally about immigration. It is about equality. Before the amendment passed, men and women of African descent could not be citizens, even if they were not enslaved. As Foner documents in his history “Reconstruction,” after the Civil War, many Americans — including President Andrew Johnson — thought that the country’s four million Black residents should remain barred from citizenship. “ This is a White Man’s Country; Let White Men Rule,” read a Democratic campaign badge in 1868. When the 14th Amendment was ratified — granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — it turned the United States into a multiracial democracy for the first time. Cristina Rodríguez, a law professor at Yale University, has described it as “ our constitutional reset button .” “It prevents tiers of membership from arising in American society,” Rodríguez told me. This is why she has argued that the amendment embodies “an anti-caste or anti-subordination principle.” But its relevance to immigration policy remained open to debate until the Supreme Court decided the case of Wong Kim Ark in 1898. At the time, Chinese immigrants were explicitly banned from becoming American citizens. But when asked if a man born to Chinese immigrants in California could claim citizenship, the Supreme Court ruled he could — because he was born on American soil. To decide otherwise, Justice Horace Gray noted in the majority opinion, “would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.” Those thousands soon turned into millions. Between 1870 and 1900, 12 million immigrants came to the United States — the vast majority from Europe. Born into citizenship without restriction, their children and grandchildren later became part of America’s “Greatest Generation.” Between 1901 and 1920, the country admitted another 14.5 million immigrants. Though these mass migrations triggered a wave of nativism, the nation was nevertheless able to quickly assimilate the new arrivals. And together with the established Native, Black, Latino and Anglo populations, these new Americans and their descendants helped the United States develop a booming industrial economy and win two world wars. The absorption of millions of immigrants was part of what made the new superpower unique, then and now. Most countries in Europe privilege family ties in determining citizenship — and they struggle more with the assimilation of immigrants. In Germany, for example, a strict adherence to the principle of jus sanguinis (the right of blood), which allocates citizenship based on bloodlines , left the country with a threat to its status as a liberal democracy in the 1980s. By then, there were millions of German-born noncitizens, the children and grandchildren of guest workers recruited from Turkey and elsewhere during the 1950s and 1960s. To fix this ballooning problem, Germany modified its laws in 1999 to grant birthright citizenship to children whose parents met a residency requirement. The United States has never had this trouble. Whether their parents are from Estonia or El Salvador, children born in the United States grow up as American citizens . A 2015  report  on the integration of immigrants by the National Academy of Sciences found that “birthright citizenship is one of the most powerful mechanisms of formal political and civic inclusion in the United States.” ‘Who Belongs and by What Terms’ Many legal scholars contend that the application of territorial birthright citizenship to all immigrants has been a settled matter in the United States since the Wong Kim Ark decision in 1898. But this assurance belies a more uncomfortable history studded with nationalism and noxious forms of racism. “We have grappled in every generation, as we are doing today, with the question of who belongs and by what terms,” Martha S. Jones, a historian of citizenship at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “Citizenship has always been highly contested and changeable in this country.” From 1907 to 1922, American women were stripped of their citizenship if they married foreign nationals. Indigenous Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924. Residents of the American territories Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands were granted citizenship by Congress throughout the 20th century. During World War II, more than 80,000 citizens of Japanese descent were held without trial in “internment camps.” The current challenges to birthright citizenship have their roots in the 1980s, when two Yale professors, Rogers M. Smith and Peter H. Schuck, began to write about the possibility that birthright citizenship might not apply to the children of unauthorized migrants. At the time, they regarded it primarily as an academic challenge, they told me. “The question was so novel that we were concerned that people would think that it wasn’t of any substantive significance,” Smith said, adding that he had always opposed actually changing the policy. Their 1985 book, “Citizenship Without Consent,” did not take a stand on the issue, and it has never been reprinted. Nevertheless, it captivated conservatives who appreciated its argument that Congress did not address the issue of children of unauthorized migrants when it wrote the 14th Amendment in the 1860s and that it retained the power to resolve the ambiguity through legislation. In 1991, when Representative Elton Gallegly, a California Republican, sponsored a bill trying to restrict the Fourteenth Amendment, he referred to Schuck and Smith’s work. California, Gallegly said, had been enriched by the arrival of Latinos, Asians and others, but the  rise in illegal immigration  was a burden to law enforcement, medical facilities, schools and social welfare agencies. When considered together with the expanded welfare state, he said, the effects of birthright citizenship laws were “clearly harmful.” He also noted that it was harder to deport unauthorized parents if they had children who were citizens. Gallegly’s bill died in committee, but support for the idea of restricting the application of the 14th Amendment grew. The epithet “anchor babies” gained traction in the early 2000s as a way to suggest that undocumented parents had children in the United States primarily to ward off deportation. For three years beginning in 2013, Texas  stopped issuing birth certificates  for some children of unauthorized migrants. Unlike Schuck and Smith, most legal scholars believe that changing birthright citizenship requires ratifying a new constitutional amendment, a process that takes years and is unlikely to succeed. So many proponents of restriction would like to see the Supreme Court issue a decision that defines the amendment more narrowly. If Trump issues an executive order, it could force that court battle. A New Constitutional Reset In North and South America, where territorial birthright citizenship is standard, the policy has been a tool for strengthening statehood, said Maarten Vink, the co-director of the Global Citizenship Observatory, since it breaks immigrants’ links with their home nations and fosters deeper ties to their adopted country. But the identities of these nations are now well-established, and as the global population turns more transient, more countries have tossed out  jus soli. Since 1980, England, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand have all redefined citizenship so that it falls primarily along blood lines. In each case, new laws followed a rise in immigration from less developed regions of the world. “What these things have in common with each other is that basic anxiety over rapid social change and the feeling of not being in control of change,” Bryan Fanning, a professor of migration and social policy at the University College Dublin, told me. Wars, political upheavals, climate change and advances in communications and transportation have supercharged migration. According to the United Nations, the number of refugees and asylum-seekers in the world has more than  quadrupled  since 1980, reaching 44.5 million by the end of 2023. This trend has affected the United States intensely. Millions of immigrants entered America around the turn of the 20th century, but at rates starkly slower than today. According to the Economic History Association, from 1870 to 1920, new arrivals  numbered  between 260,000 to 892,000 people a year. But the U.S. Border Patrol encountered more than two million migrants a year along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, 2023 and 2024. “There’s a reason all developed countries have gotten rid of it,” Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing group that advocates drastically slowing migration, said about birthright citizenship. “If we had 500 kids a year born to tourists or students or illegal aliens, there would be no reason to even have this debate.” Krikorian wants American citizenship limited to children with at least one parent who is a citizen or legal permanent resident, but even he favors implementing a  “statute of limitations”  that would automatically grant citizenship to those born in the United States after they’ve lived in the country for a given period, like 10 years. Australia and France both have policies like this in place. Without this sort of safeguard, the United States risks the creation of an underclass composed of millions of native-born residents who are banned from full participation in our nation’s economy and politics. That new “constitutional reset” could leave us with the kind of unequal society that the 14th Amendment was intended to prevent. But any change to the amendment will have profound implications for America’s future. The 14th Amendment defined the United States as a pluralist democracy where, at least in theory, every child was born equal. To narrow its scope would be to concede that America cannot, or will not, uphold that principle.   Marcela Valdes  is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, writing primarily about Latino and Latin American politics and culture.  More about Marcela Valdes Copyright 2025 The New York Times Company

Statement by UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder A group of children look out of the window of a school in Port Sudan. Photo - UNICEF/UNI653974/Elfatih PORT SUDAN, 15 January 2025  –  “As I wrap up my visit to Sudan, where the conflict rages on unabated, at least 120 people were reportedly killed following shelling in Omdurman on 13 and 14 January. Early reports indicate that there were children among the casualties. Just days before, between 7 and 8 January, 23 children were reportedly killed and nine injured by shelling in Khartoum State. These are only a few examples of unconscionable violence against children. Since the conflict broke out in April 2023, thousands of children have been killed or injured, and sexual violence and child recruitment have been widely reported, with devastating consequences. “As the conflict spread into new areas between June and December 2024, more than 600 incidents of grave violations against children were reported. A staggering 80 per cent of them were accounts of killing and maiming, primarily in Darfur, Kordofan and Khartoum States. “Hunger and disease outbreaks also stalk the most vulnerable children across Sudan. Famine is occurring in hot spots in at least five locations in Sudan – Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al Salam camps in North Darfur, and in host communities and camps for the internally displaced in the Western Nuba Mountains. Estimates indicate that five additional areas could be affected between now and May, with a risk of famine in 17 other locations, threatening the survival of hundreds of thousands of malnourished children. “UNICEF estimates that 770,000 children under five will suffer from the deadliest form of malnutrition, severe acute malnutrition, in 2025. I visited a stabilization centre in Port Sudan where some of these children are being treated and witnessed firsthand how critical it is to reach them with timely, lifesaving care. “We are doing everything we can to deliver aid to children and their families across Sudan. In 2024, UNICEF and partners delivered psychosocial counselling, education, and protection services to 2.7 million children and caregivers in Sudan. We reached over 9.8 million children and families with safe drinking water, screened 6.7 million children for malnutrition and provided lifesaving treatment for 422,000 of them. “The ongoing conflict makes delivering lifesaving supplies throughout the country incredibly difficult as permit approvals, checkpoints and consignment inspections can delay the journeys drastically, in addition to security challenges. We continue to call on the Government of Sudan, and all other concerned parties, to help ensure sustained, unimpeded, and safe access to reach children wherever they are in Sudan. “An end to the conflict is the only way to ensure that the children of Sudan can access lifesaving humanitarian aid, regain a sense of safety, and have a chance at rebuilding their futures free from the horrors of war." Copyright © UNICEF

Reports come after Reuters reported on dozens of UAE flights landing on air strip used to funnel weapons to Sudan. Sudanese citizens celebrate following an announcement by the army that it took over the city of Wad Madani in Port Sudan, Sudan on 11 January 2025 (Reuters/Ibrahim Mohammed Ishak) Published date: 12 January 2025 Videos and photos have surfaced online reportedly showing a warehouse of Emirati ammunition and missiles in Wad Madani, Sudan , after the country's military captured the strategic city from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The videos show members of Sudan's military walking around the warehouse, which is filled with large boxes, and one Sudanese soldier saying the weapons all originate from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Middle East Eye reached out to the UAE's embassy in Washington DC for comment on these videos, however, the embassy didn't respond by the time of publication. On Saturday, the Sudanese military said it, along with allied armed groups, captured Wad Madani, the capital of Sudan's al-Jazira state. For a year, the city was under the control of the RSF, the paramilitary force currently fighting the Sudanese army in a civil war that has been ongoing since April 2023. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemeti, acknowledged defeat in Wad Madani but continued to say that the war was not over. “We lost Wad Madani, but we will reclaim it. People just need to regroup, reorganise and reassess themselves,” he said, as quoted by Al Jazeera. The war in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the RSF has displaced over 11 million people, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), with more than eight million people on the brink of famine according to the UN. US declares genocide in Sudan On Tuesday, the US government announced that it was declaring that a genocide is taking place in Sudan, and moved to sanction the RSF's Dagalo and his relatives. The RSF has been accused of widespread atrocities and human rights abuses across the state, with Middle East Eye reporting multiple cases of sexual assault carried out by the paramilitary group. Fighters from both sides of the conflict have also been profiting from the war through the smuggling and sale of vital goods including food, fuel and medicine.  Foreign countries have also been involved with the war, including the UAE which has backed the RSF forces. Sources previously told Middle East Eye that Emirati military support for the RSF has kept the group "in the fight and allowed them to sustain it, with no end in sight." Reuters reported in December that dozens of flights from the UAE landed at an airstrip in Chad that has been used to funnel arms across the border into Sudan. A UN panel of experts in January 2024 said, citing "credible" allegations, that the UAE was providing military supplies to the conflict through the Chad air strip. The UAE has denied this, saying that it has sent aid to Sudan, but not weapons. A western official previously told MEE on the condition of anonymity that many US officials viewed the UAE as the “enabler” of the war. However, the administration was always “too distracted” to seriously press Abu Dhabi over this support. Copyright © 2014 - 2025. Middle East Eye. All rights reserved.

Milan Jevtic, Rajko Calmic, Ostoja Perisic and Dejan Milanovic were charged with committing crimes against humanity for their alleged involvement in capturing and killing 31 men and boys from Srebrenica in 1995. Hana Vranac, January 13, 2025 Srebrenica. Photo: BIRN. The Bosnian state prosecution announced on Monday that it has filed an indictment charging Milan Jevtic, Rajko Calmic, Ostoja Perisic and Dejan Milanovic with the capture and execution of a group of 31 Bosniak men and boys who were shot at Jasikovaca after the fall of ​​Srebrenica in July 1995. The four indictees allegedly committed the crime while serving as battalion commanders and members of the Milic Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army. Perisic is also charged with the individual executions of survivors, and Jevtic and Milanovic with individually executing one prisoner each. In July 1995, more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were killed in a series of massacres by Bosnian Serb forces, and over 40,000 women, children and elderly people were expelled – a crime that was classified as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. Copyright BIRN 2015

© Al-Saudi Maternity Hospital Al Fasher hospital in Darfur lies partially destroyed following artillery strikes in October. (file) The conflict in Sudan is taking an “even more dangerous turn for civilians”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Friday. His warning comes in the wake of reports that dozens were brutally killed in ethnically targeted attacks in Al Jazirah state in the southeast, and amid reports of an imminent battle for control of the country’s capital, Khartoum. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a rival military, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting since April 2023 in what Mr. Türk called a “senseless war”. Desperate situation worsens As they “battle for control at all costs…direct and ethnically motivated attacks on civilians are becoming increasingly common ,” he noted. “The situation for civilians in Sudan is already desperate, and there is evidence of the commission of war crimes and other atrocity crimes . I fear the situation is now taking a further, even more dangerous turn,” he said. Attacks on camps In the last week alone, his office, OHCHR , documented at least 21 deaths in just two attacks on camps in Al Jazirah, located some 40 kilometres from the state capital, Wad Madani.   However, the actual number of attacks directed at civilians, and of civilians killed, are likely to be higher.  On 10 January, at least eight civilians were killed in an attack on Taiba Camp, and at least 13 women and one man were abducted. Houses were burnt and livestock, crops and other property looted, while dozens of families were displaced.  The next day, at least 13 civilians were killed, including two boys, in an assault on Khamsa Camp.  Authorities promise investigation The attacks came in the context of the recapture of Wad Madani by the SAF. Reports suggest they were carried out by the Sudan Shield Forces led by Abu Aqla Keikal, a former RSF commander who defected to the other side last October.  The attacks reportedly targeted the Kanabi, a historically marginalised group comprised mainly of Nuba and other African tribes . Mr. Türk noted the Sudanese authorities’ assurance that the attacks would be fully investigated and those responsible brought to justice, and that an investigation committee has been established. “Retaliatory attacks – of shocking brutality – on entire communities based on real or perceived ethnic identity are on the rise, as is hate speech and incitement to violence. This must, urgently, be brought to an end,” he said . Violence captured on video OHCHR received three videos that document scenes of violence, including unlawful killings. They were reportedly filmed in Wad Madani, with men in SAF uniforms visibly present. In the videos, victims were dehumanised and denigrated as “Wassekh” (dirt), “Afan” (mould), “Beheema” (animal) and “Abnaa E-dheif” (bastards), and summary executions were hailed by perpetrators as “Nadhafa” (a cleaning operation).  Concern for North Darfur Serious concerns also persist for civilians in North Darfur, where ethnically motivated attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias against African ethnic groups, particularly the Zaghawa and the Fur, continue to exact a horrific toll.  Separately, some 120 civilians were reportedly killed and more than 150 injured in drone attacks in the city of Omdurman, on 13 January, allegedly launched by the SAF on a market in the Ombada Dar es Salam square, an RSF-controlled area. End the fighting Mr. Türk reiterated his call for the fighting to end, and for the warring sides to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.  He also warned the proliferation of militia recruitment and mobilization of fighters – largely along ethnic lines – risks unleashing a broader civil war and inter-communal violence. Appeal to warring sides “ The SAF and the RSF are responsible for the actions of groups and individuals fighting on their behalf ,” he said.  He urged them to “take immediate measures to ensure the protection of all civilians, including by taking all feasible measures to avoid or at the very least minimise harm to civilians in the conduct of hostilities.” Prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into all reports of violations and abuses are crucial, he added.  Copyright © United Nations

The New York Times Jan. 17, 2025 Thomas Homan is poised to be the White House “border czar” in Donald J. Trump’s second term, tasked with carrying out what could be the largest deportation of immigrants in American history.Credit ...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times By Alexandra Berzon  and Hamed Aleaziz In 2016, Thomas D. Homan was a frustrated immigration bureaucrat ready to call it quits. A former border patrol agent with a lawman’s steely demeanor, he had been an odd fit for the Obama administration. Top officials would call on him when they wanted a hard-liner’s take. But his proposals — including an early version of the controversial family separation policy to deter migrants — were often rejected. In the years since, Donald J. Trump’s rise has fully unleashed Mr. Homan and his ideas. I n Mr. Trump’s first administration, Mr. Homan helped make the family separation policy a chaotic reality. And in the second, Mr. Homan is poised to be the White House “border czar,” tasked with making good on the incoming president’s promise to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history. Mr. Homan’s ascent completes his transformation from dutiful official in a Democratic administration to full-throated Trump world fixture. Where he once signed off on transgender care guidelines and the Obama administration’s targeted immigration policy, he now endorses far-right theories about immigration and elections. He has boasted that he is completely unbothered by criticism of the family separation policy. When he was first approached about joining a second Trump administration, Mr. Homan says he told Mr. Trump that he was so angry about the border that “I’ll come back for free.” Mr. Homan, whose post does not require Senate confirmation , has acknowledged his mission is virtually impossible, much less in four years. Mr. Trump has vowed to remove all of the roughly 11 million people in the country illegally — which experts say is far-fetched and would be shockingly disruptive if carried out. Yet Mr. Homan has described plans for a methodical and aggressive campaign. He has said he intends to focus on deporting “the worst first” — people arrested over crimes unrelated to immigration, people who already have deportation orders, and two million others he deems security risks. But he has also promised that the effort’s reach would eventually be broader. He says he already has met with technology executives about tools to find undocumented immigrants, like facial-recognition software or license-plate readers. He has proposed a hotline for people to report neighbors they suspect are living in the country illegally. He has threatened to arrest state and local leaders who try to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And if ICE officers can’t rely on local help, they will go into communities to find their targets, he has said. At times, Mr. Homan, who is 63, has tempered Mr. Trump’s talk of using the military or emergency powers for what the president-elect said could be a “bloody story.” Yet Mr. Homan has made clear his goal is the same: deporting as many people as possible, and conceding nothing to his critics. “The talk is tough but it has to be tough,” Mr. Homan told The New York Times in an interview. “Everything I say I mean.” Pursuing Smugglers, Not Immigrants Mr. Homan grew up in West Carthage, a conservative farming town in upstate New York about 40 miles from the Canadian border, and was a police officer there, following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. By the 1990s, he was an immigration enforcement agent, working to disrupt smugglers along the southern border. His colleagues remember him as empathizing with migrants who were inadvertently swept up. “We certainly didn’t treat them like hard-core criminals,” said Hank Woodrum, Mr. Homan’s boss in the Phoenix office of what was then the equivalent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “And that was his thought, too.” As he advanced, Mr. Homan was seen by rank-and-file officers as a trusted and amiable boss and as one of their own. By 2013, when he was head of deportation operations and immigration enforcement at ICE, colleagues in Washington said he reliably executed the Obama administration’s policies. “Tom’s extreme rhetoric is made for cable TV,” said Jeh Johnson, the former homeland security secretary, who said he once counted Mr. Homan as a trusted adviser. “Though he did not agree with everything I concluded, he was prepared to support it,” Mr. Johnson said. “I counted on Tom to tell me the realities of enforcement on the ground, in the streets and cities, and he did.” Mr. Homan was tasked with selling the Obama administration’s approach to enforcement, including prioritizing immigrants with criminal records rather than targeting all immigrants in the country illegally. “It makes sense to me, it’s the right thing to do,” he told a House committee in 2013, laying out a case that Democrats, including those in the Biden administration, often make. “If we’re built to remove 400,000 people, let’s make that 400,000 count.” In 2015, he signed a memo setting standards of care for transgender detainees. It recommended guidance on how to ask someone what they identify as, and on handling their housing preferences, privacy and safety concerns and access to hormone treatments. As treatment of transgender detainees became a partisan issue, Mr. Homan has tried to distance himself from the memo. Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, he said he was ordered to sign it after an argument with Alejandro Mayorkas, then the deputy homeland security secretary. Mr. Mayorkas has denied that . In his interview with The Times, Mr. Homan reiterated his account of pushing back on the memo but said he couldn’t remember what he objected to. “Our responsibility is everybody in our custody needs to be protected,” he said. “I just thought it went too far.” “My job as a career law enforcement officer, not a political appointee, is to work within the political framework provided,” he added. But Mr. Homan said his discontent was simmering. In the summer of 2016, he watched Mr. Trump lay out plans to crack down on illegal immigration, including building a wall on the southern border. “Everything he said on illegal immigration was right on target,” Mr. Homan wrote in a 2020 book. But he assumed Mr. Trump would lose. By October, he said, he had become so disgusted by the idea of serving under another Democrat that he submitted his retirement notice and accepted a lucrative private sector job. Empowered by Trump Mr. Homan quickly showed his support for Mr. Trump’s policies.Credit ...Doug Mills/The New York Times In January 2017, during his retirement party, Mr. Homan got a call from John Kelly, the incoming homeland security secretary, who said the new president wanted Mr. Homan to serve as acting director of ICE. He agreed and quickly backed Mr. Trump’s policies, declaring that the agency would enforce the law against any undocumented immigrant — not just those with criminal records. He also embraced the performative parts of the job. At a 2017 event in Sacramento, Calif., a hub of resistance to Trump’s immigration policies, he sat next to the local sheriff and told a raucous crowd that ICE wasn’t “going anywhere.” The burly, scowling Mr. Homan’s tough talk delighted Mr. Trump, who admiringly called him “nasty” and “mean.” In April 2018, Mr. Homan, along with two other senior leaders, recommended to the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, a policy that led to the separation of families at the border. Typically, families were not charged with illegal entry. They were either released while awaiting a court date or detained briefly before being allowed into the country. The new policy was meant to keep immigrants from crossing in the first place. Jeff Sessions announced the policy that led to the separation of families at the Southern border alongside Mr. Homan.Credit ...Gregory Bull/Associated Press Weeks later, Mr. Homan stood next to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as Mr. Sessions announced the policy. Some 3,000 children were removed from their parents and put in shelters . The impact on families and jarring images of upset children  prompted widespread outrage and a political crisis for Republicans. Mr. Trump and his party ended the policy after just over a month. Later, when his nomination to the top ICE role stalled in the Senate, Mr. Homan retired. He remained angry and defiant, blaming the episode on an overzealous left — “the same people who have no problem with separating a baby from the mother’s womb and killing it,” he said in 2023 . Mr. Homan said his time pursuing traffickers at the border, and seeing children die trying to cross, cemented his confidence in what he calls a “zero-tolerance” policy. ”That changed me forever,” he told The Times. “I truly believe a secure border saves lives because they don’t make that journey. They don’t put themselves in harm’s way.” Embraced by the Right Mr. Homan defended Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and began to embrace theories and figures once considered fringe as a paid contributor on Fox News.Credit ...Richard Drew/Associated Press After leaving government, Mr. Homan found welcoming allies and an income in Mr. Trump’s political movement. He became a paid Fox News contributor, defending Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and, for the first time, publicly expressing sharply right-wing views on immigration . He contended that the Biden administration had created an “invasion” at the border “by design,” to increase the population of Democratic cities and bolster their political power. These assertions echoed parts of the “great replacement theory,” the once-fringe notion that elites want to disempower white Americans by replacing them with immigrants. In a congressional hearing last January, Mr. Homan acknowledged that he had no evidence to support the statement and flatly rejected the replacement theory, which has roots in white nationalism. But speaking to to the Rods of Iron Ministries, a far-right Christian group, in October, he did not denounce the label. “Call it what you want. There’s got to be a reason to unsecure the border,” Mr. Homan said. In his interview with The Times, Mr. Homan said he didn’t think of the theory he espoused as the same as the racist trope. “It’s a future political benefit that may be awarded to one party,” Mr. Homan said. “To me it’s not a race issue.” Mr. Homan also became a regular speaker on the election-denial circuit, and in 2023, became chief executive of the America Project, an organization co-founded by Michael T. Flynn, a promoter of conspiracy theories, and Patrick Byrne, a leading financier of election denial groups. Mr. Homan has fully denounced the Obama-era policy that immigrants who crossed the border illegally should not be prosecuted as criminals.Credit ...Scott Stephen Ball for The Washington Post, via Getty Images Mr. Homan spun off an immigration-focused project two months later but continued to speak at America Project events. In the interview, Mr. Homan said he did not endorse any racist or antisemitic ideas and refused to say whether he believed the 2020 election was stolen. He left America Project because he wanted to focus solely on immigration issues, he said. “You will never find a statement I made that attacks any nationality or religion,” Mr. Homan said. He opened a consulting business that has worked for companies seeking immigration-related contracts, including those poised to benefit from Mr. Trump’s policies. At one point he was paid between $100,000 and $150,000 to lobby in Texas for Fisher Industries, a construction firm that last year secured a $225 million contract with the state to build a section of border wall. (Mr. Homan said he would stay out of discussions about specific contracts, focusing instead on policy, to avoid accusations of conflicts of interest. He said he was shutting down his consulting business.) In preparing to return to government, Mr. Homan contributed to Project 2025 , the policy blueprint so controversial during the campaign that Mr. Trump distanced himself from it. And in speeches and interviews with right-wing influencers, he presented his vision for a new deportation campaign that repudiates the policies he once executed. “We’re going to have the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen, ” Mr. Homan told Benny Johnson, a right-wing commentator. “And I’m not going apologize for it.” Alexandra Berzon  is an investigative reporter covering American politics and elections for The Times.  More about Alexandra Berzon Hamed Aleaziz  covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy.  More about Hamed Aleaziz A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 21, 2025, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Behind Family Separation Prepares for Mass Deportations. Copyright 2025 The New York Times Company