Trump administration to review AUKUS submarine pact with Australia and Britain
Canberra has downplayed a decision by the US to formally review the AUKUS defence pact with Australia and Britain. The agreement, spanning decades, would ultimately equip Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Signed under the previous Biden administration, AUKUS will be judged on whether it aligns with the 'America First' agenda under current President Donald Trump. This comes as American shipyards struggle to meet demand for submarines in the US Navy and as Washington pushes its allies to spend more on defence. Nick Harper reports.
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Straits Times
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Trump urges Iran to make a deal, warning next attacks will be ‘more brutal'
A building that was hit by Israeli air strikes north of Tehran, Iran, on June 13. PHOTO: EPA-EFE Trump urges Iran to make a deal, warning next attacks will be 'more brutal' Follow our live coverage here. US President Donald Trump on June 13 urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear programme, saying that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel. 'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Mr Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Israel launched strikes against Iran on June 13, saying it had targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders during the start of an operation to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon. REUTERS More to come Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
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Soldiers, Strykers and 100-degree temps: Inside Trump's border military zone
FILE PHOTO: A Stryker armored vehicle stands near U.S. military personnel and Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Sunland Park, New Mexico, U.S., March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo SANTA TERESA, NM - The weapons system atop a drab green U.S. Army Stryker swivels, its camera shifting downward toward a white Ford F-150 driving slowly along the U.S.-Mexico border. Under the watchful eye of the 26-ton armored vehicle perched on a sand dune above them, humanitarian volunteers are driving the dirt road next to the border wall to see if they can continue to search for migrant remains inside one of two military zones established along the border by the Trump administration in April and May. Soon, they get their answer. It's not long before an unmarked gray pickup appears, makes a U-turn in the sand, and puts on its siren, here in the desert 5.6 miles (9 km) west of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico border crossing. The driver pulls alongside, introduces himself as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and tells the volunteers they can no longer be there. James Holman, founder of the Battalion Search and Rescue group, whose volunteers also hand water to migrants through the bars of the barrier, acquiesces. Then he vents his frustration. "We're ramping up all this military and taking this public land away, it doesn't make sense, and it's theater, it's deadly, deadly theater," says Holman, 59, a former Marine. They are in one of two so-called "National Defense Areas" set up along 260 miles (418 km) of the U.S. southern border in New Mexico and Texas as part of the Trump administration's military buildup on the border. U.S. President Donald Trump has long shown interest in using the military for civilian law enforcement, sending Marines to Los Angeles this week in their first domestic deployment in over 30 years. The border military zones are one of his most audacious attempts yet to use troops trained for overseas combat in roles normally carried out by Border Patrol or local police. The Army has not made public the zones' boundaries. The New Mexico area may run over three miles into the United States, in places, based on 'restricted area' warning signs in English and Spanish posted along State Road 9 parallel to the border. The zones are classified as U.S. Army installations, giving troops the right to temporarily detain and question migrants and other civilian trespassers caught in the areas. Their primary mission is to detect and track illegal border crossers as part of the Trump administration's quest for '100% operational control' of the border at a time when migrant arrests are near an historic low. Along the international boundary, Reuters saw warning signs posted inside the United States around 45 feet north of the border barrier around every 100 meters, facing south. That meant if you had crossed the border and could read them, you were already in the zone. Migrants caught illegally crossing the border into the zones face new trespassing charges on top of unlawful entry to the country, with combined penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute them for trespassing have floundered. Starting in May, federal judges in Texas and New Mexico have dismissed trespassing charges against migrants caught within the area and acquitted a Peruvian woman brought to trial, ruling there was no evidence they saw signs before entering the zone. Illegal border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration controls. Trump, who banned people from claiming asylum on the southern border shortly after starting his second term in January, nonetheless says the military areas are needed to repel an "invasion" of human traffickers and drug smugglers. BORDER BUILDUP In the past four months Trump raised the number of active-duty troops on the border to 8,000 from 2,500 at the end of the Biden administration, according to the U.S. Army. Presidents since Richard Nixon have used regular troops and reservists for support roles on the border. Trump has taken it a step further. The Bureau of Land Management in April transferred 110,000 acres (172 square miles) of land in New Mexico, an area seven times the size of Manhattan, to the U.S. Army for three years to establish a first zone. A second was created in May with a transfer of International Boundary and Water Commission land in Texas. The areas are satellites of the Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss Army bases in Arizona and Texas, respectively. That gives troops the right to hold and question civilian trespassers without the need for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. The law lets a president deploy federal forces domestically during events like civil unrest. Some 105 Stryker combat vehicles and around 2,400 troops from the 4th Infantry Division deployed from Colorado Springs in March. They rove in armored personnel carriers across New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Reuters saw Strykers concentrated in a roughly 20-mile ribbon from El Paso west to Santa Teresa, one of the 2,000-mile border's busiest and most deadly areas for migrant crossings. The 8-wheeled vehicles, used by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now by Ukraine in its war with Russia, can be seen parked under a bridge to Mexico, atop a landfill and on a ridge above a gap in the border wall. Their engines run 24/7 to cool crews in the 100 F. (38 C.) plus heat. Vehicles are unarmed but soldiers have personal weapons. Crews take shifts operating the joystick-controlled camera systems that can see for two miles (3.2 km) and have night vision, according to the Army. A person familiar with Strykers, who asked not to be named, said the work was 'monotonous' but said it gave soldiers 'a sense of purpose.' Troops have alerted Border Patrol to 390 illegal crossings in the nearly two months since the first zone was established. They made their first detentions on June 3, holding 3 'illegal aliens' in New Mexico before handing them over to Border Patrol, according to Army spokesperson Geoffrey Carmichael. Border Patrol arrested 39,677 migrants in the El Paso sector in the fiscal year to April, down 78% from the year-earlier period. 'COVERED BY DESERT SAND' Sitting outside his juice bar in Sunland Park, Harold Gregory says he has seen a sharp drop in migrants entering his store or asking customers for a ride since Strykers arrived. "We feel safer," said Gregory, 38. "They do kind of like intimidate so there's not so many people come this way." In neighboring Santa Teresa, trade consultant Jerry Pacheco says the optics of combat vehicles are not good as he tries to draw international firms to the town's industrial park. 'It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer,' says Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program. 'I think having the military down here is more of a political splash.' About 90 miles (143 km) west, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson said he saw five Strykers briefly positioned in a gap in the border barrier on his ranch. He welcomes the zone as an extra layer of security and has testified to the U.S. Congress on illegal border crossers destroying barbed wire fences, cattle thieves driving livestock into Mexico and a pickup stolen at gunpoint by drug smugglers. He is unsure if his home, or over half his ranch, is inside the area but has been assured by U.S. Border Patrol he can continue to work land ranched by his family since 1918. 'I don't know, I don't think anyone knows,' says Johnson, 37, a former Border Patrol agent, of the zone's boundaries. He says the Army has not communicated rules for hunters with permits to shoot quail and mule deer this fall in the military area, or hikers who start or end the 3,000-mile (4,800 km) Continental Divide Trail within it. The Army has been seeking memoranda of understanding with local communities and agencies to continue activities in the New Mexico zone, said Nicole Wieman, a U.S. Army spokesperson. "The MOU process for commercial and recreational activities, such as hunting, mining and ranching, is complex," Wieman said. Jenifer Jones, Republican state representative for Johnson's area, said Americans can keep doing what they did before in the zone. 'They can carry their firearms as they would have prior,' said Jones, who welcomed the troops to her 'neglected' area where only a barbed-wire fence separates the two countries in places. To the east in Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, State Representative Sarah Silva, a Democrat, said the zones have created fear and apprehension 'I see this as an occupation of the U.S. Army on our lands,' said Silva. Back in desert west of Santa Teresa, Battalion Search and Rescue leader Abbey Carpenter, 67, stands among dunes where the group has discovered the remains of 24 migrants in 18 months, mostly women. She is concerned the area could be absorbed into the military zone. "Who's going to look for these remains if we're not allowed out here," she said, showing the jaw and other uncollected bones of a woman her group reported to local authorities in September. "Will they just be covered up by the desert sands?" REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
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'Suited and booted' immigration officials may stoke Club World Cup anxiety
Soccer Football - Club World Cup - Rose Bowl prepares for Club World Cup in California - Pasadena, California, U.S. - June 11, 2025 A ticket office is shown ahead of the opening game between Paris St Germain and Atletico Madrid REUTERS/Mike Blake NEW YORK/MEXICO CITY - U.S. Customs and Border Protection has promised to be "suited and booted" at the first round of Club World Cup soccer matches, as the curtain-raiser event for next year's World Cup kicks off amidst anxiety from some fans in the United States. The tournament starts in Miami on Saturday as soccer great Lionel Messi and his MLS team Inter Miami play Egypt's Al Ahly, as protests over U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies continue across the country. "CBP will be suited and booted, ready to provide security for the first round of games," the department wrote in a widely reported social media post that added to some fans' concerns over attending the Club World Cup. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment over the now-deleted post. Tom Warrick, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary, told Reuters that while it is a normal practice for agencies like ICE and CBP to provide surge capacity security at major sporting events, the language from the post caused understandable alarm. "I suspect it was just a moment of inattention before somebody cleared a message that someone else should have said, 'Oh, whoa, wait a minute, we need to change the messaging'," said Warrick, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. "They may also need to change the security posture because very clearly, you know, uniformed officers or people in tactical gear are going to be looked at very differently, especially by a sporting event that is of such interest to people who come from countries that have citizens that have been the target of some of Trump's immigration enforcement measures." Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles this week in response to civilians protesting against his immigration policies, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement ramps up raids to deliver on his promise of record-level deportations. California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders said the deployment was unnecessary, while Trump defended his decision, saying the city would be in flames if he had not done so. Protests so far have been mostly peaceful. "I'm scared because things have got ugly. But let's hope that things calm down a bit and let us enjoy the games," said bricklayer Tono, who was originally from Monterrey, in northern Mexico, and now works in Los Angeles. The 25-year-old, who has been in the United States for five years and declined to share his last name, said he and his friends had tickets to see Liga MX side Monterrey, who play all three of their group-stage matches at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. "If things get uglier, we'll talk about it, after all we have time to decide," he said. The Club World Cup will see 32 teams competing in 12 stadiums across the United States, after world soccer's governing body FIFA expanded the format in a billion-dollar gamble to revolutionise the club game. The tournament is a curtain-raiser for the 2026 World Cup, as organisers try to fan enthusiasm for the quadrennial global spectacle in the soccer-ambivalent U.S., which is co-hosting next year's finals with neighbours Canada and Mexico. Jorge Loweree, managing director at U.S. advocacy group American Immigration Council, said that soccer owes some of its growing popularity in the U.S. to immigrants. "It's reasonable to expect that lots and lots of folks that just want to attend these events are either immigrants themselves here permanently, temporarily - even folks that may be undocumented," he told Reuters. "It's perfectly reasonable to be scared. We haven't seen large-scale immigration enforcement actions at sporting events like this historically, but this is also a moment that is not like any other moment in history in the U.S." REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
