The US v the ICC: Why is Trump going after the court?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is facing one of the deepest crises in its history. United States President Donald Trump sanctioned lead prosecutor Karim Khan earlier this year, grinding the court's work to a crawl. Khan is now on leave as he faces a sexual misconduct investigation. How is the court functioning in his absence, and what does it mean for the future of international accountability?
In this episode:
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Amy Walters, Sonia Bhagat and Ashish Malhotra, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Mariana Navarrete, Khaled Soltan, Kisaa Zehra, Remas Alhawari and our guest host, Natasha DelToro. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
As Trump raises deportation quotas, advocates fear an expanding ‘dragnet'
Washington, DC – There were shackles at her wrists. Her waist. Her ankles. The memory of being bound still haunts 19-year-old Ximena Arias Cristobal even after her release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Nearly a month after her arrest, the Georgia college student said she is still grappling with how her life has been transformed. One day in early May, she was pulled over for a minor traffic stop: turning right on a red light. The next thing she knew, she was in a detention centre, facing a court date for her deportation. 'That experience is something I'll never forget. It left a mark on me, emotionally and mentally,' Arias Cristobal said during a news conference on Tuesday, recounting her time at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. 'What hurts more,' she added, 'is knowing that millions of others have gone through and are still going through the same kind of pain'. Rights advocates say her story has become emblematic of a 'dragnet' deportation policy in the United States, one that targets immigrants of all backgrounds, regardless of whether they have a criminal record. President Donald Trump had campaigned for a second term on the pledge that he would expel 'criminals' who were in the country 'illegally'. But as he ramps up his 'mass deportation' campaign from the White House, critics say immigration agents are targeting immigrants from a variety of backgrounds — no matter how little risk they pose. 'The quotas that they are pushing for [are] creating this situation on the ground where ICE is literally just trying to go after anybody that they can catch,' said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy group. She explained that young, undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, are among the most vulnerable populations. 'In the dragnet, we're getting long-established, deeply rooted Dreamers and other folks that have been in the United States for a long time,' Cardenas explained. An avid runner who studies finance and economics at Dalton State College, Arias Cristobal is one of the 3.6 million people known as Dreamers. Many were sent to the US as children, sometimes accompanied by family members, others alone. For decades, the US government has struggled with how to handle those young, undocumented arrivals to the country. In 2012, then-President Barack Obama announced a new executive policy, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). It provided temporary protection from deportation for younger immigrants who had lived in the US since June 2007. About 530,000 Dreamers are protected by their DACA status. But Gaby Pacheco, the leader of the immigration group said that number represents a small proportion of the total population of young immigrants facing possible deportation. Some arrived after the cut-off date of June 15, 2007, while others have been unable to apply: Processing for new applications has been paused in recent years. Legal challenges over DACA also continue to wind their way through the federal court system. 'Sadly, in recent months multiple scholars and alumni have either been arrested, detained and even deported,' Pacheco said. She noted that 90 percent of the Dreamers that her organisation is supporting during their first year of higher education have no protections under DACA or other programmes. All told, she said, the last few months have revealed a 'painful truth': that 'Dreamers are under attack'. But advocates like Pacheco warn that the first months of the Trump administration may be only a harbinger of what is to come. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller informed ICE agents that the Trump administration had increased its daily quota for immigration arrests, from 1,000 per day to 3,000. The current draft of Trump's budget legislation — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — would also surge an estimated $150bn in government funds towards deportation and other immigration-related activities. The bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives and is likely to be taken up in the Senate in the coming weeks. Both actions could mean a significant scale-up in immigration enforcement, even as advocates argue that Trump's portrayal of the US as a country overrun with foreign criminals is starkly out of step with reality. Studies have repeatedly shown that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes — including violent crimes — than US-born citizens. Available data also calls into question Trump's claims that there are large numbers of undocumented criminal offenders in the country. The rate of arrests and deportations has remained more or less the same as when Trump's predecessor, former President Joe Biden, was in office, according to a report by the TRAC research project. From January 26 to May 3, during the first four months of Trump's second term, his administration made an average of 778 immigration arrests per day. That is just 2 percent higher than the average during the final months of Biden's presidency, which numbered about 759. The number of daily removals or deportations under Trump was actually 1 percentage point lower than Biden's daily rate. All told, Pacheco and Cardenas warned that the pressure to increase arrests and deportations could lead to increasingly desperate tactics. The administration has already rolled back a policy prohibiting immigration enforcement in sensitive areas, like churches and schools. It has also sought to use a 1798 wartime law to swiftly deport alleged gang members without due process, and revoked temporary protections that allowed some foreign nationals to remain in the country legally. In an effort to increase immigration arrests, the Trump administration has also pressured local officials to coordinate with ICE. Drawing on section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has even delegated certain immigration powers to local law enforcement, including the right to make immigration arrests and screen people for deportation. In one instance in early May, the Tennessee Highway Patrol coordinated with ICE in a sweep of traffic stops that led to nearly 100 immigration arrests. Another large-scale operation in Massachusetts in early June saw ICE make 1,500 arrests. Swept up in that mass arrest was Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18-year-old high school student on his way to volleyball practice. His arrest sparked protest and condemnation in Gomes Da Silva's hometown of Milford, Massachusetts. Cardenas pointed to those demonstrations, as well as the outpouring of support for Arias Cristobal, as evidence of a growing rejection of Trump's immigration policies. 'I think we are going to see more and more pushback from Americans,' she said. 'Having said that, it is my belief that this administration has all the intention to implement their plans… And if Congress gives them more money, they're going to go after our communities.'
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Family of suspect in Colorado firebomb attack held in immigration custody
Federal officials in the United States have taken into custody the family of a man suspected of attacking a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, over the weekend. In a video on Tuesday, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the family of Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 'This terrorist will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,' Noem said in the video. 'We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.' Police have accused the 45-year-old Soliman of throwing Molotov cocktails into a crowd that had gathered for an event organised by Run for Their Lives, a group calling for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza. According to an affidavit, Soliman yelled 'Free Palestine' while hurling the incendiary devices. The firebombs injured 12 people, three of whom remain hospitalised. Police have said Soliman planned the attack for more than a year. He is facing federal hate crime charges. 'When he was interviewed about the attack, he said he wanted them all to die, he had no regrets, and he would go back and do it again,' J Bishop Grewell, Colorado's acting US attorney, said during a news conference Monday. Soliman said that he acted alone and that nobody else knew of his plans. But officials with the administration of US President Donald Trump said they will investigate whether his wife and five children were aware of the suspect's intentions. Administration officials have also highlighted the fact that Soliman, an Egyptian national, was in the US on an expired tourist visa, tying his arrest — and that of his family — to a larger push against undocumented immigration. 'The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorism,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. 'Under the Trump administration, aliens will only be admitted into the United States through the legal process and only if they do not bear hostile attitudes towards our citizens, our culture, our government, our institutions or, most importantly, our founding principles.' Soliman's family includes a wife and five children. The official White House account on the social media platform X indicated that they 'could be deported by tonight'. 'Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed's Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,' Tuesday's post read. The attack comes amid rising tensions in the US over Israel's continued war in Gaza, which United Nations experts and human rights groups have compared to a genocide. It also comes less than two weeks after the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC. Jewish as well as Muslim and Arab communities have reported sharp upticks in harassment and violence since the war began. Trump and his allies have used concerns about anti-Semitism as a pretext to push hardline policies on immigration and a crackdown on pro-Palestine activists. 'This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland,' Trump said in a social media post on Monday. But the president and his supporters have themselves faced allegations of leaning into anti-Semitic rhetoric. And his administration's push to expel foreign nationals has caused alarm among civil liberties groups. The administration is currently attempting to deport several international students involved in pro-Palestine activity, including a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk. Her legal team argues that Ozturk appears to have been arrested for co-signing an op-ed calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Ozturk was released from immigrant detention in May following a legal challenge, but she continues to face deportation proceedings.
Qatar Tribune
4 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Donald Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill' faces rocky ride in Senate
Agencies US senators have kicked off weeks of talks that are certain to be fierce as they take on the mammoth policy package President Donald Trump hopes will seal his legacy, headlined by tax cuts slated to add up to $3 trillion to the nation's debt. The Republican leader celebrated when the House passed his 'big, beautiful bill,' which partially covers an extension of his 2017 tax relief through budget cuts projected to strip health care from millions of low-income Americans. The Senate now gets to make its own changes, and the upper chamber's version could make or break Republicans' 2026 midterm election prospects – and define Trump's second term. But the 1,116-page blueprint faces an uphill climb, with moderate Republicans balking at $1.5 trillion in spending cuts while fiscal hawks are blasting the bill as a ticking debt bomb. 'We have enough (holdouts) to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,' Senator Ron Johnson, one of half a dozen Republican opponents to the bill, told CNN. Democrats – whose support is not required if Republicans can maintain a united front – have focused on the tax cuts, mostly benefiting the rich on the backs of a working class already struggling with high prices. The White House says the legislation will spur robust economic growth to neutralize its potential to blow up America's already burgeoning debt pile, which has ballooned to $36.9 trillion. But several independent aalyses have found that – even considering growth – it will add between $2.5 trillion and $3.1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the combined effects of tax cuts and cost savings would be a giant transfer of wealth from the poorest 10% to the richest 10%. Republicans muscled the measure through the House by a single vote on May 22 by a combination of bargaining vote holdouts on policies and deploying Trump himself to twist Speaker Mike Johnson is now pleading with the Senate not to alter the bill too much, as any tweaks will need to go back to the lower chamber. The Senate wants to get the bill to Trump's desk by U.S. Independence Day on July 4 – an ambitious timeline given Republicans' narrow three-vote majority and wide faultlines that have opened over the proposed specifics. Independent analysts expect that around seven million beneficiaries of the Medicaid health insurance program will be deprived of coverage due to new proposed eligibility restrictions and workrequirements. Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans oppose cutting Medicaid – including Trump himself, as well as some Republicans in poorer states that rely heavily on federalwelfare. Senate moderates are also worried about proposed changes to funding food aid that could deprive up to 3.2 million people of vital nutritionsupport. One thing is almost certain – Trump himself will get involved at some point, though his negotiation tactics may be more subtle than they were when he threatened 'grandstanders' holding up the tax bill in the House. Trump took to his Truth Social website on Monday to decry 'so many false statements (that) are being made about 'THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL''and to falsely claim that it would not cut Medicaid. 'The only 'cutting' we will do is for Waste, Fraud and Abuse, something that should have been done by the Incompetent, Radical Left Democrats for the last four years, but wasn't,' he said. One more wrinkle for Trump: tech billionaire Elon Musk, no longer one of his closest aides but still an influential commentator, has already broken with the president to criticize the mega-bill. 'A bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both,' Musk said in a CBS interview criticizing itseffect on debt.
