During Agni Keli, a fire-throwing ritual in Mangaluru, India, shirtless men hurl burning palm fronds at each other to honour the Hindu goddess Durga. Devotees risk burns but believe prayer protects them from serious harm.
A Palestinian man who led peaceful protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a student at Columbia University, and was recently detained during an interview about finalising his US citizenship, has said he’s “in good hands” at the Vermont prison where he is being held.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was arrested on April 14 in Colchester, Vermont. He met on Monday with US Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, a Democrat.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestine activities. In the first week of his presidency, Trump pledged to deport students who joined protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that swept US university campuses last year.
“I’m staying positive by reassuring myself in the ability of justice and the deep belief of democracy,” Mahdawi said in Welch’s video posted on X. “This is the reason I wanted to become a citizen of this country, because I believe in the principles of this country. ”
I met with Mohsen Mahdawi today.
Listen to his message. pic. twitter. com/MU280oAQ9T
Welch’s office said Mahdawi was being detained at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St Albans, Vermont. His case is scheduled for a status conference on Wednesday. His lawyers have called for his release.
The US Justice Department has not said why he’s being detained. The New York Times reported April 15 that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a memo that says Mahdawi’s activities could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process. Rubio did not provide any evidence of this.
Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. It gives the US power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
Khalil says he is a political prisoner. He also missed the birth of his son after being refused temporary release to attend the birth, his wife Noor Abdalla said on Monday.
Abdalla said that she gave birth to the couple’s first child in New York without Khalil present after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made the “purposeful decision” to make her family suffer.
An immigration judge ruled April 11 that Khalil can be forced out of the country as a national security risk, after lawyers argued the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His lawyers plan to appeal.
A US immigration judge in the state of Louisiana ruled last week that Khalil, who was detained last month, can be deported – setting a precedent for the administration to proceed with its efforts to deport dissenting foreign students, despite them being in the country legally and not being charged with any crime.
Trump has also threatened to halt federal funding for schools, colleges, and universities if they allow what he called “illegal protests”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have increased global financial stability risks.
This warning was part of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report released on Tuesday, as world financial leaders meet in Washington to discuss the uncertainty caused by the tariff policies.
The IMF pointed out that Trump’s tariff rate surged past levels reached during the Great Depression, which saw tariffs rise as high as 60 percent during one of the worst economic periods in modern history, a downturn that led to more than 12 million Americans losing their jobs.
The global ripple effect took the spotlight in the IMF’s report. “Global financial stability risks have increased significantly, driven by tighter global financial conditions and heightened economic uncertainty,” the IMF said.
The fund projects a slump in US economic growth at 1. 8 percent for the year — a downturn from its previous forecast of 2. 7 percent and down a full percentage point from this time last year.
China is also forecast to grow more slowly because of imposed US tariffs, looming additional tariffs on goods including pharmaceuticals, and Beijing’s reciprocal tariffs on US goods. The IMF now expects it will expand 4 percent in 2025, which is more than a half-point decrease from previous forecasts.
In Europe, the IMF forecasts that the 20-country eurozone will see 0. 8 percent growth this year and 1. 2 percent in 2026. The new report is a 0. 2 percent decline from its forecast at the beginning of the year.
The IMF also forecasts a decrease in Mexico for the year, with growth falling by 0. 3 percent for 2025. But it expects that it will rebound next year with 1. 4 percent growth. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the organisation of 191 member nations is expecting a 1. 4 percent decrease in growth from its 2024 forecasts, but it does expect growth to bounce back in 2026.
“I don’t recall another instance in my professional life where a single act by a president or prime minister has resulted in such a sudden downgrade in growth in a matter of weeks,” Stuart Mackintosh, executive director of the financial think-tank Group of Thirty, told Al Jazeera.
The bond markets recently surged in the US earlier this month after Trump’s tariffs went into effect. As a result, interest rates went up in other countries around the globe, causing borrowing to become more expensive in other countries, too.
“Emerging market economies already facing the highest real financing costs in a decade may now need to refinance their debt and fund fiscal spending at higher costs,” the IMF said.
The IMF also said that other geopolitical risks such as military conflicts could further spur uncertainty.
The concerns echo those of other prominent economists around the globe who expect a downturn. Goldman Sachs said it expects “very low US growth of 0. 5 percent” and said chances of a recession next year are 45 percent, according to the investment bank’s “tariff induced recession risk” report released on Monday.
Earlier this month, a survey of macroeconomic forecasts conducted by the National Association for Business Economics showed that more than half of respondents believe the probability of a recession in 2025 could be as high as 49 percent. Economists at JPMorgan now believe that the chances of recession are 60 percent.
“The increased likelihood of a global recession and the likelihood of an American recession is up. It’s gone up. We have to deal with that. When you think about the consensus position of US economists, that shifted dramatically,” Mackintosh added.
“In the fall of last year, a majority of US business economists thought that there would be no recession this year. Indeed, most consensus positions viewed the US economy as the strongest advanced economy in the world, and that could only get better. Unfortunately, after ‘Liberation Day’, they got worse. ”
The US Federal Reserve has also forecast that growth will weaken this year, to 1. 7 percent. This comes as the president has pushed for the central bank to cut interest rates, which Fed Chair Jerome Powell has refused to do. Last week, Trump said that Powell’s exit can’t come soon enough and asserted that if he asked Powell to leave the role, he would. Powell has continually said that he would serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in May 2026.
“The idea that America was ‘better before’ is one of our oldest myths. ” Rotimi Adeoye says the Trump administration’s nostalgic push to return the US to a past economic era is a recurring theme in American history, one that often comes at the expense of the marginalised.
The first Latin American pope has died. We look at his legacy, reforms and what his death means for the Catholic Church.
On April 11, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student and lawful United States permanent resident, can be deported. Not for committing a crime. Not for violating immigration rules. But for his political speech – specifically for helping organise a peaceful Gaza solidarity encampment at his university.
The government’s case against Khalil is hinged on Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a Cold War-era provision that permits the deportation of any noncitizen whose presence is deemed a potential threat to US foreign policy. The evidence the government submitted against him was a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asserting – without proof – that Khalil’s “beliefs and associations” could “adversely affect U. S. foreign policy interests”. Ironically, the document itself admitted that Khalil’s actions were “otherwise lawful”.
And yet, it was enough. The mere invocation of “foreign policy” or “national security” now operates like a legal incantation, overriding First Amendment protections, due process and even common sense.
Khalil’s case is not an outlier. It is the leading edge of a broader strategy to silence dissent in the US – particularly dissent critical of Israeli policies or sympathetic to Palestinian rights – using various legal tools. This use and abuse of the US legal system sets a dangerous precedent that in the long run will harm American democracy.
Dozens of international students and scholars – many from Muslim-majority countries or racialised communities – have also been subjected to surveillance, detention and deportation, often without any allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
Among them is Badar Khan Suri, a visiting academic at Georgetown University and Indian citizen who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at his home in Virginia and later transferred to Texas. He remains in detention, facing removal based on his family ties. The father of his American wife used to work as an adviser to the Gaza government.
Another example is Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar and doctoral student at Tufts University who was detained after co-authoring a newspaper opinion piece related to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. A US immigration judge has since denied her release, labelling her a “flight risk and a danger to the community”.
Another recent case is that of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder and Columbia student protest leader who was arrested by ICE agents when he went for his US citizenship interview. He now faces deportation to the occupied West Bank, which he said would be “a death sentence”, given that he has lost family and friends to Israeli military violence.
Then there’s Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian PhD candidate at Cornell University who filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration, arguing that executive orders targeting pro-Palestinian activists violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights. Despite suing preemptively and being legally represented, Taal’s efforts were ultimately undermined by jurisdictional manoeuvring and executive pressure. His emergency injunction was denied by a federal judge on March 27, and days later, he self-deported, saying he no longer trusted the courts to protect him even with a favourable ruling.
There is also Yunseo Chung, a South Korean-born Columbia student and US permanent resident who narrowly avoided deportation thanks to a preemptive federal court injunction. Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian engineering PhD student at the University of Alabama, was quietly detained with no explanation. Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian student at Columbia, fled to Canada after ICE agents visited her apartment. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later released footage of her departure, labelling her a “terrorist sympathiser”.
In this campaign of political persecution, the Trump administration has largely relied on immigration courts, which are not part of the independent federal judiciary under Article III of the US Constitution.
They are administrative tribunals housed within the executive branch, specifically, the Department of Justice. Their judges are appointed by the attorney general, lack tenure and are subject to political oversight. The procedural protections available in Article III courts – such as full evidentiary hearings, impartial review and constitutional due process – are substantially weakened in immigration courts.
While federal courts may scrutinise whether an arrest or deportation violates constitutional protections – like the First Amendment or equal protection – immigration judges are often empowered to rule based on vague assertions of “foreign policy concerns” or “national security interests” with little to no requirement for concrete evidence. This dual-track legal system allows the government to bypass the constitution while maintaining the appearance of legality.
There have been numerous calls to reform this system from legal scholars, human rights organisations and even former immigration judges. Proposals have included moving immigration courts out of the Department of Justice and into an independent Article I court structure to ensure judicial impartiality.
However, these reforms have consistently failed, largely due to congressional inaction as well as political resistance from successive administrations that have benefitted from the system’s malleability. The executive branch has long viewed immigration courts as a tool of policy enforcement rather than neutral adjudication.
While this crackdown has so far focused on noncitizens with legal status, it could soon extend to naturalised Americans. US law allows the revocation of citizenship in cases of fraud, membership in terrorist organisations and other crimes. In his first term, Trump created a dedicated “Denaturalization Section” within the Department of Justice to pursue citizenship revocations. About 700,000 immigrant files were investigated with the aim of bringing 1,600 cases to court.
Trump has now signalled that he intends to pick up his denaturalisation drive where he left off. If he deploys this legal tool against critical voices, this would mean that even citizenship may no longer offer protection if one’s political views fall out of favour with the government.
As the Department of Justice, DHS and ICE have worked together on the campaign against dissent, they have received public support from nonprofit organisations. Groups like Betar and Canary Mission have taken public credit for identifying international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism and urging their deportation.
Betar claims to have compiled a list of foreigners it labelled as “jihadis” and submitted it to the Trump administration. Canary Mission, meanwhile, launched a project called “Uncovering Foreign Nationals”, which publishes the names and photos of international students it accuses of anti-Semitism or anti-Israel activism – effectively creating a blacklist.
While there is no official confirmation that DHS or ICE have acted directly on these materials, the close timing between these campaigns and government enforcement has raised serious concerns that these politically motivated private groups are shaping federal immigration enforcement without transparency or accountability.
The US portrays itself as a beacon of liberty, a nation governed by the rule of law, where freedom of speech is sacred. But Khalil’s case – and the others like it – paint a starkly different picture. If your residency, citizenship, education or even physical freedom can be revoked for peacefully expressing political views, then speech is no longer a right. It is a conditional privilege.
This is more than a legal overreach. It is a moral crisis for American democracy. When free speech becomes contingent on political loyalty and when private blacklists shape federal enforcement, the foundational values of liberty, pluralism and equality before the law are being dismantled.
What American democracy urgently needs is congressional action to establish judicial independence in immigration courts, stronger First Amendment protections for noncitizens and full transparency around the government’s reliance on private ideological actors. Anything less risks enshrining a two-tiered system of rights and, ultimately, a country where dissent itself is deportable.
This is not just a test of immigration policy. It is a test of democracy – and of the very soul of the nation itself.