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RIO DE JANEIRO — Clutching an oversized knife onstage during a recent campaign stop, Brazilian presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro vowed to inflict chemical castration on “rapists and child abusers,” drawing thunderous applause.

The tough-on-crime message comes as Bolsonaro seeks to appeal to women, who account for 53% of the electorate and played a decisive role in handing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a narrow 2022 victory over Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Women are starting to have a perception of their role in elections,” said Rachel Ripani, co-founder of the movement Levante Mulheres Vivas, or Rise Alive Women. “They’re seeing their vote as something that they don’t want to be manipulated.”

Polls show Lula with a narrow lead over Sen. Bolsonaro in the Oct. 4 vote, but neither candidate is expected to win outright, making a runoff likely. Both have been courting swing voters, including women, with proposals to combat gender-based violence, a major campaign issue as violence against women reaches record levels and several high-profile cases draw attention.

“We’re building a Brazil (…) free of femicide, where no woman, inside or outside the home, lives under the threat of violence,” Lula told heads of state at last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York. “This is a cause that the entire world needs to embrace.”

More than one in three women in Brazil was a victim of sexual or gender-based violence over the course of a year, the highest number since tracking began in 2017, according to a 2025 report by the think tank Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. In 2025, 1,571 women were victims of femicide, the highest annual total since Brazil defined the crime in law in 2015, the forum said. Femicide is defined as the killing of a woman in a domestic setting or out of contempt for women.

Cases over the past year have drawn widespread public condemnation, including the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Copacabana; the death of a woman after her ex-boyfriend ran her over, trapped her beneath his car and dragged her over concrete for one kilometer, and the alleged killing of a military police officer by her husband, a member of the same institution.

Feminists are seeking guarantees

Along with chemical castration, Sen. Bolsonaro proposes expanding spaces that provide shelter for victims of violence and the creation of an AI assistant that would allow victims to file reports, request a protective order, and receive guidance and support.

Meanwhile, Lula pledged to expand protections introduced during his administration, particularly at the end of last year after a series of cases sparked demonstrations. Those measures include real-time monitoring of perpetrators of violence wearing electronic ankle bracelets.

Both Lula and Sen. Bolsonaro have advocated for tougher penalties for those who commit the crimes of violence against women, measures that would require parliamentary approval.

Aware of women’s electoral weight, activists are seeking to leverage that power to seek guarantees that such promises will not later be shelved.

Feminist groups are asking that candidates sign a letter committing to tackling gender-based violence as a priority and voting for a bill that seeks to criminalize misogyny, conducting surveys to define priorities, spotlighting female candidacies on websites and putting forward a shared legislative agenda.

Carmen Silva, a 61-year-old feminist who lives in the northeastern city of Recife, said this year her group Forum of Women of Pernambuco has two priorities: defending the limited right to abortion and a pledge to tackle the problem of gender-based violence through a multipronged approach including the introduction of education programs.

“Of course it’s easier to get commitments during the electoral period, but when women candidates are elected, we will cash in on those demands,” she said. “It’s not only about guaranteeing that women aren’t assassinated, but about giving them the possibilities of living a dignified life.”

Experts say part of the problem is a lack of funds to deploy protective measures and enact laws that already exist, an argument put forward by feminist candidates such as Luciana Boiteux, who is running for Rio’s state legislature.

“We have enough laws. As lawmakers, we will be vigilant with regards to the execution of these public policies,” said Boiteux at a recent campaign event in front of Rio de Janeiro State University.

Unequal representation by women

As with efforts to combat violence against women, calls for increased political representation cross party lines.

Despite Brazilian women’s electoral weight, only around 19% of lawmakers and senators are women. Brazil also has Latin America’s lowest level of female representation in politics, according to a study by Esfera Institute.

“Women have a long history of social mobilization in Brazil, but lately it became clear to these movements that the state matters and that they need to dispute that power,” said Marlise Miriam de Matos Almeida, a political scientist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

“Feminist movements have understood that it’s necessary to organize the female vote and mobilize forces to transform this quantitative power into something that allows more women to be elected,” she said.

The assassination of local councilwoman Marielle Franco inspired some Black women to run for office, Matos Almeida said, but political violence and insufficient resources continue to hinder the participation of women in politics.

The number of female candidates for Brazil’s lower house dropped by 24% in 2026 compared to 2022, according to the Chamber of Deputies.

Ripani said her movement is willing to work across party lines as long as candidates and those elected declare support for their policies.

“The priority for this election is voting for more women who fight for women,” she said. “We need to vote for people who understand our experience.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Light streamed through stained-glass windows in a former church, illuminating long white tables where weary men gathered. Johnny Henderson was glad for the rest. The 71-year-old — who has one arm, heart disease, and vision problems — slept on the street the night before.

Henderson is a regular at the St. John Center men’s day shelter. So are a great-grandfather in a wheelchair who has prostate cancer, a 54-year-old with four psychiatric disorders, and a 66-year-old with a walker who wears a hospital bracelet warning “fall risk.”

All are potential candidates for permanent, government-subsidized apartments under a “Housing First” approach, a model rooted in the belief that people need a stable place to live before addressing other problems. But the approach that’s been central to federal government policy for more than a decade is disappearing under President Donald Trump’s administration. The upheaval, providers and advocates say, threatens the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the nation.

“Housing is healthcare,” said St. John executive director Ra’Shann Martin, whose organization provides housing and outreach in addition to the shelter. “The longer people stay unhoused, the more fragile they become.”

Housing organizations across the U.S. that depend on federal funds are now reluctantly making changes to comply with new government policies that favor a “Treatment First” approach and short-term “transitional” housing — changes they fear will push people with extreme health risks back on the street or keep others, like Henderson, there.

Planned housing projects have been scrapped in communities such as Corbin, Kentucky. Less housing is available for homeless people in places including Santa Cruz County, California. And in cities such as Louisville, nonprofits are looking at making some permanent housing temporary, including most of St. John’s 200 apartments.

U.S. homelessness numbers have trended upward

Across America, nearly 750,000 people were homeless last year, according to an estimate compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That number is down slightly from 2024 but up 31% from 2019.

The portion considered chronically homeless — having a disability and long-term or repeated episodes of homelessness of at least a year — has also risen since 2019. It’s now about a quarter of the total.

Overall, research shows, roughly half of homeless adults live with a disability, up to two-thirds have mental illness, and 2 in 5 have substance use disorder. Rates of disability, heart disease, and diabetes are two to three times higher than in the general population.

In Louisville, outreach specialist Angel Sivado said such statistics are reflected in the people she serves, whose living conditions make it extremely difficult to care for themselves, get to doctors, or keep up with medications.

On a recent day, she parked a St. John van near a fast-food restaurant and hiked into the woods to visit a couple living in a tent. Later, she and a colleague walked toward encampments surrounded by trees just off a highway, yelling “outreach” over the low roar of cars.

One of their main jobs is to shepherd clients through the process for getting housing.

“They’re not just homeless people; they’re people,” Sivado said. “They’re somebody’s son. They’re somebody’s mother. They’re someone’s daughter.”

Occasionally, Sivado savors a victory. Before heading home, she stopped under a downtown overpass to see James Myers, 66, who is blind, has congestive heart failure, and is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. She told him he should be in an apartment soon.

“I’m tired. I mean, the streets will beat you down, and I think they put a few years on me,” he said, standing near his busted guitar. “I can’t wait to get off the street.”

Others are not so lucky. Henderson, the St. John regular, survived a train accident that cost him an arm and led to a yearslong opioid addiction. Recently, he’s been dealing with heart disease, an eye problem, spinal surgery, and auditory hallucinations.

“I’m going to die sleeping outdoors,” he said, choking up. “But I got nowhere to go.”

The Trump administration favors ‘Treatment First’ and short-term housing

Each person’s path to homelessness is unique. Determining the “best” solutions depends on the lens used to judge what’s best. The answer may be different if the goal is reducing overall homelessness, helping people into the job market, spending as little taxpayer money as possible, improving health outcomes — or just keeping people alive.

The Housing First idea was pioneered by a New York nonprofit in the 1990s and has been at the heart of federal homelessness policy since 2013. Today, there are roughly 173,000 “permanent supportive housing” beds for chronically homeless people, and 235,000 for other populations, including veterans. These are long-term apartments paired with voluntary services. Tenants often must contribute 30% of their income, after certain expenses, to rent and utilities.

Studies have consistently shown that Housing First programs keep people stably housed. Some research says they do so better than other models, including “Treatment First,” which favors mandatory services for addiction and serious mental illness. But findings on health outcomes have been mixed.

Last year, Trump signed an executive order calling for an end to federal support for Housing First policies. His proposed budget for fiscal 2027 calls for eliminating the federal initiative that goes mostly to Housing First programs. The administration favors housing lasting up to two years, during which people would be required to get treatment.

“Housing First has failed our most vulnerable and enabled addiction,” HUD said in an email. “HUD’s proposed reforms seek to address the root causes of homelessness and advance recovery, self-sufficiency, and competition that drives accountability.”

Many opponents of Housing First policies don’t think services including addiction and mental health treatment should be optional.

“That is the biggest difference between Housing First and not Housing First,” said Devon Kurtz, the director of public safety policy for the Cicero Institute. Kurtz is also concerned that permanent supportive housing was becoming a “one-size-fits-all approach,” including for populations better served by transitional housing.

Service providers say short-term housing won’t work for some people

Service providers acknowledge that transitional housing is a good option for some people, such as those getting on their feet after evictions. But they say most chronically homeless people can’t pull their lives together within two years and would likely wind up homeless again.

“If you want to gradually work on reducing social services that are funded by the federal government, OK,” said Jennifer Clark, CEO and executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Louisville, which offers permanent and transitional housing. “But you cannot make a huge sweeping change and big cuts and take an ax to everything and think that there aren’t going to be consequences for some people who are really in need.”

John Franklin, 58, said transitional housing wouldn’t work for him. He spent nearly 14 years on the streets dealing with severe alcoholism, and it took a long time to adjust to normal life. He now gets by on disability, as a throat cancer survivor with heart failure, and can’t imagine either having to fully pay for housing or surviving the streets.

“I could not make it,” said Franklin, who shares a permanent supportive apartment in suburban Louisville with his orange tabby, Moe. “This is my safe haven.”

Housing First provides homes and other help

The welcome mat outside Phillip Sieveking’s permanent supportive apartment says “Home Sweet Home,” a sentiment precious to him after a couple of years on the streets.

Sieveking lives at St. John’s Sheehan Landing, a complex with 80 furnished one-bedroom apartments plus a clinic space, food pantry, meeting rooms, and a community garden that he spends much of his free time tending.

The former chef has diabetes but didn’t take care of it while homeless. Doctors had to amputate part of one leg. On a recent morning, he put on his prosthetic, grabbed his crutches, and slowly made his way to the garden to check on the roses, sunflowers and vegetables.

He credits his caseworker with encouraging him to keep up with medical care and navigate systems for getting disability and food benefits. He also attends meetings at the complex, including one where residents discuss wellness and sobriety while working on art projects.

“They have helped me, you know, go from being homeless to being a part of society,” said Sieveking, 47. “I feel blessed to be here.”

In New Jersey, Tatiana Velez has been in permanent supportive housing since 2021, soon after connecting with the Camden Coalition, which serves people with complex health and social needs.

After spending 18 years in prison for robbery, she had lived in abandoned buildings and struggled with opioids for a couple of years. Velez had never signed a lease or opened a bank account when, in her late 30s, she learned she was pregnant and decided she was ready to make changes.

“I didn’t know what it was to have a roof over my head or pay the bills,” said Velez, who receives disability payments for psychological and educational disabilities.

She now shares a first-floor suburban apartment with her daughter, 5, and a formerly homeless cat named Snowball. A preschool graduation certificate hangs on the wall.

Policy changes rock communities

After HUD tried to rework its homelessness grants to fit the administration’s favored policies, a consortium of local governments and advocates for homeless people sued. A federal judge agreed with them. But this month, an appeals court said the administration could move ahead.

Meanwhile, Trump’s proposed budget calls for eliminating the $4 billion Continuum of Care program, which in 2024 awarded money to 6,500 projects. At that time, more than 60% went to permanent supportive housing, mostly to continue existing efforts. Just 1% went to transitional housing.

Trump’s proposed changes have left homelessness organizations scrambling to figure out how to alter their housing strategies so they can keep getting federal money.

“It’s like psychological warfare the last two years, trying to figure out how to navigate these changes that are looming right over us,” Martin, the St. John director, said.

Dr. Robert Ratner, director of housing for health in Santa Cruz County, California, said losing permanent supportive housing funds would exacerbate problems caused by the winding down of another federal program: pandemic-era emergency housing vouchers. People set to lose those vouchers are being prioritized for available housing, meaning the county can’t help as many people who are homeless now.

A similar dynamic is playing out at The Delores Project in Denver, which serves women and transgender and nonbinary people. Program leaders expect people already in the permanent housing on their campus will stay because they won’t have access to vouchers to move out into the community. That will mean fewer spots for new people.

In Louisiana, the state housing agency applied to redirect federal money away from rental assistance and toward the establishment of a 200-bed shelter with strict mandates for participants. That effort was rejected by local coalitions in charge of the money, but local housing advocates worry it’s a harbinger of what’s to come.

Some communities are seeing planned projects nixed. For 18 months, Volunteers of America Mid-States worked with Eastern Kentucky University and others on a permanent supportive housing project in Corbin that would have included childcare and access to college classes. “That project is now dead,” said CEO Jennifer Hancock.

Many nonprofit leaders feel forced to shift toward transitional housing. In Louisville, St. Vincent de Paul and Family Health Centers-Phoenix Health Care for the Homeless are looking at converting some permanent supportive housing apartments into transitional units. St. John would only be left with Sheehan Landing after converting its 120 community apartments to transitional housing.

The result for people like Henderson? More time on the streets as they grow older and sicker.

“The lady in the housing office told me, she said, ‘Mr. Henderson, you got a stent in your heart. You got one eye and one arm. Something’s going to have to happen for you.’”

But with “just a little life left,” he said, it may not happen soon enough.

CHICAGO — The U.S. can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque — an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights — on the grounds that he is a threat to national security, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday.

Salah Sarsour was detained in Milwaukee in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. A federal judge ordered Sarsour’s release in June, saying he raised a “substantial” claim that the Trump administration was targeting him for speaking out against Israel and advocating for Palestinian rights.

Sarsour called the ruling “deeply disappointing,” but said he intends to appeal.

“I will continue fighting to defend the right to free speech and to stay in the country I have called home for more than three decades,” Sarsour said in a statement.

Government attorneys say Sarsour’s decades-old convictions in Israel make him a threat to national security and accuse him of lying on his green card application. Judge Jayme Salinardi, with the Chicago Immigration Court, found him removable on foreign-policy grounds but tossed out the government’s claim that Sarsour lied to immigration authorities.

Sarsour says he fears for his life if he is deported to the West Bank

Sarsour, who was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was imprisoned in Israel in 1988 after confessing to throwing a Molotov cocktail and stones at Israeli military personnel. In 1995, he was convicted of attempting to possess weapons. Sarsour denies committing those crimes. His attorneys say he was tortured and coerced into confessing in both instances.

Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, does not have a criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived since 1993. His attorneys say the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s convictions in Israel since he arrived.

Deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” Sarsour told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

One of his attorneys, Patrick Taurel, told the AP that Sarsour’s earlier treatment by Israeli authorities is “probably a good indicator of what awaits him” if he is deported.

At a status hearing Wednesday, Taurel pressed the judge to specify that Sarsour can only be deported to Israel or the Palestinian territories. Jordan, a country to which Sarsour has no connection, is listed as a possible destination on the order of removal.

Sarsour was instructed by immigration officers to list Jordan as his home country on an immigration form because his preferred entry — “Palestine” — is not a fully independent, unified state. But he “has no right to reside in Jordan,” Taurel said.

Salinardi declined, calling it an issue to be addressed on appeal.

Attorney says Sarsour will fight deportation

Taurel said Wednesday that Sarsour is being unfairly targeted.

“If Salah can be deported for his speech in support of Palestinian rights, anyone can face the same fate,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo in June 2025 invoking a rarely used immigration provision saying Sarsour could be deported on the same grounds as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both advocates for Palestinian rights whom the Trump administration has tried to expel, according to court documents.

Before the judge’s ruling, Taurel said Sarsour would need to demonstrate on appeal that he could be tortured again if he were deported.

“It’s a very high bar, although I think we can meet it in this case, given what Salah has already experienced, and given the government of Israel’s treatment” of others like him, Taurel said.

A notice of appeal is due within 30 days. Salinardi did not schedule a new hearing and announced he is retiring and that Judge Craig Defoe will oversee the case going forward.

Sarsour says he was tortured and coerced into confessions

Jawad Boulos, who represented Sarsour when he was convicted in Israel, testified in August that Sarsour was coerced into confessing and that he wasn’t convicted of any charge tying him to a terrorist organization. He said Sarsour was tortured by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.

The Department of Homeland Security challenged Boulos about the torture allegations, questioning how he could know it was true.

Sarsour’s current defense team has asked why U.S. authorities waited until this year to detain him. Taurel said the government has known about Sarsour’s imprisonment in Israel for decades and that he has not concealed that from immigration authorities.

Experts on forced confessions and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons also testified in Sarsour’s defense. Israeli military courts have faced repeated scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and the high conviction rate of Palestinians. Israel rejects the claims.

In June, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered Sarsour released from ICE custody saying he could have a case arguing the U.S. government detained him in retaliation for protected speech. Further, Hanlon said, government attorneys had not explained why Sarsour was suddenly considered a threat after decades as a lawful permanent resident.

The Trump administration has appealed Hanlon’s ruling.

Sarsour, who has Type 2 diabetes, lost more than 30 pounds while detained by ICE, and his blood sugar levels were checked only once a month, putting him at risk of organ failure or death, his attorneys said.

An investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed federal lawsuits with similar allegations of medical neglect.

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer argued Tuesday that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she killed her three children, a striking turn after a lengthy trial that focused more on her mental state than on whether she took their lives.

“This entire case is based on speculation,” attorney Kevin Reddington said during the first hearing since Clancy’s trial ended Sept. 4 with a deadlocked jury. They were split 11 to 1 in her favor.

During that trial, Reddington didn’t dispute that Clancy killed the children at the family’s home in 2023. Instead, the defense sought to persuade the jury that the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse was not criminally responsible because of mental disease, a rare condition called postpartum psychosis.

Clancy’s lawyer now says there is not enough evidence to prove she did it

But at Tuesday’s hearing, Reddington changed strategies and sought to persuade Judge William Sullivan — the same judge who presided over the first trial — to acquit Clancy.

There is, Reddington contended, not enough evidence “that this woman killed those children.” He pointed to matters ranging from her condition when she was found badly injured and bleeding in the yard outside her home, to her lack of memory of what happened when she woke up in a hospital. At the first trial, her now ex-husband and first responders testified that they arrived at the house and discovered she had tried to take her own life right after killing the children.

“Where is the admission? Where does she say that she did this?” Reddington said, going on to recap his arguments that she also was psychotic and delusional at the time of the children’s deaths. He didn’t offer alternative theories or evidence about who might be responsible.

Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham called his argument “laughable,” pointing to witness testimony that Clancy said she heard voices instructing her to kill her children. Clancy was the only one home at the time with the children and her DNA was found on exercise bands used to strangle them, she added.

“For the first time, the defendant is arguing that there is no evidence she did this,” Buckingham said. “I’d suggest to you the entire record is voluminous as to information supporting the fact that she did this.”

During trial Paul Zeizel, a clinical and forensic psychologist and defense witness, testified that he overheard her saying a disembodied male voice told her she had no choice but to kill the children and then herself.

Before trial Reddington filed a motion in which he said Clancy would be willing to stipulate in writing “to her involvement in the underlying conduct resulting in the death of the three young children.”

The judge didn’t immediately rule on the motion, and no trial date was set.

The prosecution maintains that Clancy knew her actions were wrong when she used exercise bands to strangle 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan Clancy. They said she contrived to get her husband out of the house that evening by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.

It’s still unknown whether Clancy will face a second trial

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to retry Clancy, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said after the hearing. They could choose to retry her on first-degree murder charges or pursue lesser charges, including second-degree murder or manslaughter, or drop the case entirely.

“We are going to do what we can for the children,” Cruz told reporters outside court. “That is what this case is about.”

Sullivan said he wanted to set a new trial date, but both sides pushed back — arguing that the judge should rule on several motions in front of him first.

Initially the defense urged the court to set a new trial date soon. But on Tuesday, Reddington told Sullivan he couldn’t see having a new trial before June due to his schedule.

Legal wrangling over the holdout juror is also unresolved

Clancy’s attorneys have asked the judge to dismiss the criminal case, a motion that will be heard Nov. 2.

Among other things they have argued that the judge should have ousted the one juror who favored a murder conviction after the jury foreperson complained he was refusing to listen to the law on reasonable doubt.

The juror, Michael Desronvil, has said through his lawyer that he had no doubts about his stance. Desronvil told Fox News’ Hannity in a brief video statement Monday that “the whole focus has been on me, but we want to reel everything back and put the focus on the three angels,” meaning the children.

Among other motions that was pushed back was a Commonwealth request for a gag order that would bar attorneys and their supporters “from making extrajudicial statements to the media that would have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the criminal proceeding.”

Reddington has given a series of interviews since the mistrial and held walking news conferences almost every day during the proceedings. Prosecutors, in contrast, never talked to reporters.

The case is still capturing attention

The livestreamed trial generated intense public interest and drew attention to maternal mental health after childbirth. About a dozen Clancy supporters, most dressed in pink, stood outside court Tuesday waiting for her.

Clancy remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.

She could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted of murder. If acquitted, the judge could have ordered her confined to a mental health facility.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration can resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, the Supreme Court agreed Tuesday.

The one-page emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, as is typical in such cases. Although the justices cleared the way, for now, for the swift removals to continue, the court also announced that it would fast-track the case and hear oral arguments about it in December, setting up a final ruling on the issue next year.

The court’s three liberal justices noted that they would have denied the government’s request to resume the deportations.

The decision was a victory for the administration, which has made sending immigrants to so-called third countries, including those that have faced allegations of human rights abuses, a major part of its mass deportation efforts.

The deportation flights had been blocked in recent weeks, however, after a federal court ruled the administration could not deport migrants to third countries unless they were given an opportunity to contest their removals, including to voice concerns that they might be persecuted or tortured abroad.

The justices’ ruling means that the administration can, for now, continue its program and conduct rapid deportations including to countries such as Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound, and beaten by police, according to reporting by the New York Times.

The Supreme Court had weighed in previously on the administration’s efforts to send immigrants to third countries.

In May 2025, the Trump administration asked the justices to step in and clear the way for third-country deportations after a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked the administration from sending people to countries not their own — in that case South Sudan — without the chance to object.

In a one-paragraph ruling, the court’s conservatives allowed the administration to continue the deportations over the noted dissents of the three liberals.

Since then, the Trump administration has continued to deport immigrants under the program, including to authoritarian countries with histories of human rights abuses. So far, the administration has sent more than 25,000 people to third countries as part of its mass deportation efforts, according to a social media post by James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. Among the countries were Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Central African Republic.

Some immigration and human rights experts have asserted that the third-country deportations may be part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to encourage immigrants lacking legal status to leave on their own, rather than face the fear of being sent to a country where they have no ties.

In his brief, Solicitor General D. John Sauer characterized the third-country deportation program as “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”

Sauer wrote that the appeals court ruling had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations,” including canceled deportation flights and disrupted delicate diplomatic negotiations with other countries.

Lawyers for a group of immigrants challenging their removals said in a brief that the Trump administration had ignored “the significant harm resulting from deporting thousands of longtime U.S. residents, many with no criminal history, to third countries without regard to the persecution or torture they face there.”

They argued that the Trump administration could avoid any delays in its deportation program simply by “providing the notice and opportunity to be heard that the law requires.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Tuesday banning local, state, and federal law enforcement officers from using gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to people.

The ban on shock gloves will take effect next year and remain in place until 2030. It comes weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved to equip its officers with the gloves, which are designed to gain compliance from combative individuals. Last month, the agency awarded a nearly $17 million contract to buy 6,000 pairs.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety, and livelihood of American families,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state.”

The law is the latest example of how Democratic-led states have been pushing back against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts since he took office last year. In California, lawmakers passed at least two dozen bills this year seeking to fortify immigrants’ rights, restrict cooperation with federal immigration agents, and tighten regulations on immigrant detention facilities, among other things.

Nationwide, 17 states with Democratic-led legislatures have passed a total of more than 100 pro-immigrant bills this year, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill tracking software Plural. The most common purpose is to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents.

Democratic California Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins said she introduced the shock-gloves legislation to “put a pause” on law enforcement’s use of the devices while the state examines their potential risks. The law requires the state’s Justice Department to study their safety and report to lawmakers by 2029.

“There’s a lot of unrest and a lot of uncertainty,” she said in an interview. “A lot of people are scared.”

The law will again test the state’s authority to restrict federal agents amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A federal judge earlier this year blocked the state’s first-in-the-nation law barring federal officers from wearing face coverings, deeming it too selective because it applied to local and federal law enforcement but exempted state officers.

Lawmakers passed a new bill this year to make the ban apply to all officers. Newsom signed that legislation.

Kevin Johnson, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said courts are likely to ultimately rule that the state cannot bar federal officers from wearing shock gloves or face coverings. The laws are well-intentioned, he said, but likely conflict with the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which generally sets federal law as supreme over conflicting state law.

“The state has very limited, if any, powers in dictating to the federal government how its officers are armed,” he said.

California law enforcement groups broadly opposed the ban.

Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper, a Democrat and former state lawmaker, said banning shock gloves “really makes no sense” because they are among the nonlethal tools officers can use if necessary.

“When the federal government does something, the state Legislature wants to ban it,” he said at a news conference. “They’re making our job harder.”

Sharp-Collins said ICE’s plan to use shock gloves was the catalyst for the ban. But she cited their use by other officers, including a case in which a Kentucky family alleges a man died after being tased and shocked with the gloves dozens of times while in law enforcement custody in 2024.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who wrote last year’s mask ban, also authored this year’s measure to expand it to state officers.

“California must use every available tool to stand up for our communities under attack from ICE’s secret police terror campaign,” he said in a statement after it passed the Legislature.