Category: Nation World News Wires

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch officials are preparing for the United States to impose a tough new round of sanctions on the International Criminal Court as it seeks to dismantle the global tribunal over what the Trump administration sees as overstepping its authority.

Officials in the court’s host country, the Netherlands, have been notified that the sanctions are imminent and are looking at ways to help the tribunal keep operating, including paying staff, protecting witnesses, and maintaining the detention facility, diplomatic and government officials with knowledge of the briefings told the Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Washington has already sanctioned more than a dozen current and former staff members, including half of the court’s sitting judges, in what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described as a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court.”

The U.S. and Israel have strongly objected to the court’s arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over the war in Gaza. The U.S. also has opposed investigations into its military actions in Afghanistan.

Like Russia, China, India, and Israel, the United States is among countries that have never joined the panel, with Washington citing fears of politically motivated prosecutions of its military. The court currently has 125 member states.

The sanctions could prevent the court from accessing financial and IT services, and even paying its U.S. employees. When the court’s former chief prosecutor was sanctioned in 2025, he lost access to his Microsoft email, his bank accounts were frozen, and he was barred from entering the United States.

According to two sources familiar with the situation, U.S. officials warned their Dutch counterparts that sanctions would be levied as early as Monday and encouraged the court’s host state to withdraw from the institution.

Two U.S. officials told the AP that more ICC sanctions may be coming, but stressed that the scale and scope of the penalties had not yet been finalized and that no announcement is expected this week. The officials were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The ICC was established in the Hague in 2002 as the court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. It takes on cases when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory.

U.S. officials did not immediately reply to a request for comment. “The Trump Administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement when announcing sanctions on the court president last month. “We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty.”

The ICC has been preparing for months for the possibility of sanctions. Earlier this year, the court migrated off Microsoft products onto a German software provider, according to three ICC staff members who were not authorized to speak on the record. The tribunal has also changed insurance and other financial providers to companies without a footprint in the United States, they said.

Dutch and court officials are hoping for a six-month grace period before the sanctions come into effect, arguing that the institution needs time to sever itself from American companies, which could face huge financial penalties if they are found to be in violation.

Beyond migrating to European-based alternatives, the Netherlands and the European Union have few options to protect the institution.

The EU “blocking statute” can be used to protect European court staff by preventing European companies from complying with the U.S. measures, though it’s unclear whether the statute would shield the ICC itself, because it’s an international body, not a European one. EU citizens are entitled to a basic bank account, but that doesn’t provide access to credit cards or U.S. payment facilities.

A small but growing number of the global tribunal’s member states have announced plans to leave the institution in recent months, including Venezuela and Chad.

Chad specifically cited the United States in its decision to withdraw. Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul said in a statement that during a phone call with a U.S. official in July, “the American side expressed its concerns regarding the functioning of this institution and requested that Chad reconsider” its membership.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice.

ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on Sept. 15, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change. Several lawyers contacted by the Associated Press confirmed their clients vanished from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation Friday.

The move represents a stark departure from previous practice and highlights the hardline nature of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, leaving thousands of detainees exceedingly hard to trace and potentially unable to exercise all of their legal options.

The practice, which applies to detainees who have received final orders of removal from an immigration court, could speed deportations by making last-minute legal challenges harder to pursue, immigration lawyers said. Nearly 16,000 people who were arrested and booked into ICE detention in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the overall bookings, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project based at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA.

The practice does not apply to detainees held at a detention facility in Adelanto, Calif., or at temporary holding facilities in Minneapolis, New York City, or suburban Chicago, the sources said. Judges have ordered ICE to list detainees in those facilities in the online locator promptly upon their arrival, as part of litigation over their detention practices.

Lawyers, relatives distressed by lack of information on detainees

The effort to hide their locations adds to the ways in which the Trump administration has made life harder for detainees and their families as it has increased pressure on them to waive appeals and agree to deportation.

ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it. The statement said detainees with final removal orders were being prioritized for deportation, even as ICE faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts stopping individual removals.

As a result of the change, lawyers and relatives lost track of their clients and loved ones without explanation, which is especially concerning because detainees are frequently moved to new facilities before deportation, said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” he said. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has argued that people who are subject to final removal orders have received due process. That usually means an immigration judge has ordered their removal after a hearing, including cases when immigrants fail to show up, and the decision was affirmed on appeal or not appealed.

Detainees with final removal orders still have options to appeal

Still, those detainees have options to challenge their detention and removal, including seeking to reopen the case or by bringing what’s known as a habeas petition asking a judge to release them on constitutional grounds. Federal judges have granted thousands of rulings ordering that detainees be released or granting bond hearings.

ICE detention facilities held more than 65,000 people as of early July, the most recent available data. Around 30% of them likely have final removal orders, said Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project.

More people have been issued final removal orders after failing to show up for hearings in recent months because the administration’s immigration courts have taken steps to make it harder to participate in and to reopen such cases, she said.

“To me, it’s just another iteration of disappearing people,” she said. “Why would we do that in the United States of America? It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”

Some with final removal orders also have legal protections against deportation to their countries of origin based on the likelihood they would be tortured or persecuted. Many of them are facing removal to third-party countries where they have no ties and their disappearance in ICE’s system will make legal challenges harder, lawyers said.

Lawyers say clients have vanished from ICE locator system

ICE initiated the online detainee locator system in 2010 to allow relatives, lawyers, and the public to search for people in custody. Previously they had to call ICE regional offices or individual facilities to try to track them down.

Many advocates and lawmakers have complained that the system updates too slowly and contains too much inaccurate or missing information, allowing ICE to shield the locations of detainees for days or weeks. Minors, people who have been held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for less than 48 hours, and detainees who are being transported are not in the system, among others.

But the exclusion of detainees with final removal orders has no apparent parallel, several immigration lawyers said. Atenas Burrola Estrada, a deputy program director with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said that “every single one of our clients who has a final order has disappeared from the locator,” including 17 in all as of Monday.

Among those disappeared from the locator system are eight Somali men being detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to one of their attorneys, My Khanh Ngo, of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said the change could make it “nearly impossible” for people to challenge their removals in some cases.

“If you can’t find your client, don’t know what’s happening to your client, you can’t get that information to the court to stop their removal,” she said.

AUSTIN, Texas — A Venezuelan man shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was in custody Monday at an ICE detention center in Texas after he was released from a hospital with a bullet still lodged in his back, the man’s attorney said.

Speaking by phone during a news conference, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez said doctors didn’t remove the bullet because it’s near his spine. He said ICE pressed for him to be released quickly from the hospital so it could move him to a detention center. He said he had received no pain medication or treatment there, and had slept on the floor, before eventually being given a “pill” by a nurse on Monday.

Perez, 28, was making a DoorDash delivery in Austin on Sunday when his car was “sideswiped” twice by ICE officers in an unmarked truck, immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch told reporters Monday.

An ICE officer shot Perez in the back of the neck before officers pulled him from his car, she said. He was taken to a hospital, Lincoln-Goldfinch said, but was released later Sunday into ICE custody with the bullet still inside him.

“I am not doing well due to the gunshot wound, and I have not received the medical attention that I require,” Perez said, speaking in Spanish over the phone as his wife translated during the news conference.

Perez was being detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, about 130 miles southwest of Austin, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. She said Perez told her in a prior phone call that he was being interrogated.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has released little information and has not said what prompted the shooting. In a statement early Monday, the department said it was investigating the shooting of a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally who “had a final order of removal.”

Homeland Security did not immediately respond to email messages seeking further comment on the shooting.

Perez entered the U.S. legally in 2024 as an asylum seeker and had a valid work permit, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. She said a judge issued a deportation order for Perez after he missed a hearing in immigration court because the hearing notice was sent to a former address.

“Not that being out of status would justify any of this at all,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said of the shooting in a social media post.

The shooting occurred amid a surge in ICE enforcement across the U.S. during President Donald Trump’s second term. During the summer, it reported more than 50,000 monthly arrests in July and August — a first for the agency.

Immigration officers have come under intense scrutiny amid a series of shootings during the crackdown. At least four people have been fatally shot by federal officers during immigration enforcement operations this year.

Local advocates, leaders of the civil rights group the League of United Latin American Citizens, and two Democratic congressmen who represent parts of Austin called during the news conference for the creation of an independent body to review use-of-force incidents by ICE and refer suspected crimes to prosecutors.

They also urged Congress to ban ICE officers from making traffic stops, saying the officers are undertrained and too quick to resort to violence.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat, has said he wants local police to have a role in investigating the shooting. Watson said it wouldn’t be appropriate for ICE to investigate on its own.

The area beneath an overpass where a large crowd of protesters had gathered Sunday near the shooting scene was quiet Monday. Trash-filled plastic bags were left below concrete pylons marked with anti-ICE graffiti.

Amid discarded police tape, people left candles, flowers, and a sign that read “Justice for Wilber.”

CAIRO — A senior official with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels is warning countries against joining Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s revived civil war, telling the Associated Press on Sunday that his group has assured the Trump administration that it won’t attack U.S. vessels in the Red Sea.

Mohamed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, said Washington reached out to the rebels after their rapid advance down Yemen’s western coast to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait earlier this month.

“We confirmed that we are not targeting the United States, or any other nation, in the strait, with the sole exception of the Saudi enemy,” he told the AP in a Zoom interview from the rebel-held Yemeni capital, Sanaa. “That remains the case.”

U.S. President Donald Trump last weekend said his administration has “had discussions” with the Houthis, but did not say when. “The Houthis called us, and they don’t want to fight with us,” he said. “They would much prefer not having us involved, and they’re letting most ships go through.”

The AP later reported that Oman hosted a meeting between U.S. and Houthi representatives last weekend, citing a Houthi official and another individual familiar with the talks. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

However, al-Bukhaiti only confirmed indirect contacts with U.S. officials through longtime mediator Oman, which brokered a 2025 ceasefire between the Houthis and the Trump administration. That ended a weekslong U.S. bombing campaign against the rebels in return for them ceasing attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea.

“The goal of our military operations is not to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but rather to ensure freedom of navigation through it for everyone, including Yemen,” he said.

Houthis claim they can fight a war on multiple fronts

Al-Bukhaiti said the rebels have the capacity to fight a war on multiple fronts “should any nation become implicated in the aggression against Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia.”

“Today, Yemen is capable of waging battle — not merely an internal conflict, but an international one as well,” he said.

He said the Houthi attacks against neighboring Saudi Arabia will persist until Riyadh ends its decade-long blockade on rebel-held areas in Yemen and allows vessels to reach Houthi-controlled ports on the Red Sea. Then they will be ready to negotiate, he said.

Al-Bukhaiti blamed Saudi Arabia for the latest escalation of violence in Yemen, which he said erupted after an airstrike blamed on the Saudi-led coalition fighting the rebels hit the Sanaa international airport. The strike prevented an Iranian flight carrying a Houthi delegation to land. The flight was a Houthi attempt to challenge the coalition’s air and naval blockade.

The Houthis responded with missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia, including one that targeted Riyadh on Saturday before being intercepted. Saudi officials said debris from a Houthi drone also killed one civilian and injured others.

The Houthis also declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, attacking Saudi-linked vessels and oil facilities inside the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter.

The Saudis and their allies have long struggled to contain the Houthis, and may be tempted to seek a diplomatic solution to halt attacks. That might ultimately require U.S. concessions to Iran, the only country with leverage over the Houthis. But Washington’s negotiations with Tehran over their own war fell apart weeks ago.

“We have not closed the door to peace,” Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, the top executive body, said in a speech Sunday marking the anniversary of their 2014 takeover of Sanaa.

The U.S., which bombed the Houthis under the Biden and Trump administrations, has shown no interest in getting involved militarily this time around.

The rebels believe power has shifted in their favor

The rebels’ advance inside Yemen seized the crucial port city of Mokha and key Red Sea islands that allow them to better monitor shipping traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb, through which some 12% of world trade normally passes.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, long divided into factions, withdrew but have vowed to regroup.

The escalation ended a 2022 ceasefire that largely ended fighting in Yemen’s civil war, which started when the Houthis swept in from their mountainous heartland and seized much of northern and central Yemen, including Sanaa, 12 years ago.

The Saudi-led coalition entered the war the following year on behalf of the internationally recognized government. The civil war killed at least 150,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

Now, with Houthis in control of Yemen’s western coast overlooking the Red Sea shipping corridor, “the balance of power has shifted in favor of the Sanaa government,” al-Bukhaiti said, referring to the rebels’ de facto authorities there.

“Ultimately, (Saudi Arabia) lost its most critical card: the west coast,” he said.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, days after the North threatened to bolster its nuclear deterrent capabilities and respond to what it called U.S. hostilities.

The launches were the latest in a series of weapons demonstrations by North Korea even after U.S. President Donald Trump scaled back a joint military exercise with South Korea last month in an apparent effort to revive diplomacy with the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

The two missile launches — about three hours apart — were conducted from North Korea’s eastern coastal Wonsan area. The first missile flew about 280 miles while the second one flew more than 370 miles, both toward the North’s eastern waters, South Korea’s military said.

The missiles eventually ended up in the sea. South Korea’s presidential office urged North Korea to immediately halt ballistic missile launches that are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions. The South’s military said it maintains readiness to repel any provocations by the North under a solid alliance with the United States.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said it detected a suspected North Korean missile earlier Sunday but that the weapon did not land in its territorial waters.

North Korea escalates pressure on U.S.

Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, earlier shrugged off Trump’s overture, saying that shortening the drill wouldn’t change its “provocative, aggressive nature.” North Korea’s military later launched about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently following through with a previous threat to respond to the U.S.-South Korean drill.

On Friday, Kim’s sister slammed another recent U.S.-led multilateral maritime exercise in the region as a “frantic military move” by the Americans meant to prolong their hegemony in the Asia-Pacific area. The “Pacific Vanguard” exercise brought together the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

She claimed that “regular U.S.-led war rehearsals” are the main source of worsening tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the region.

“Our will to defend our sovereignty will be expressed in clearer action and there will be never ever change in the course of intensifying the nuclear war deterrence,” she said.

Earlier this month, North Korea conducted what it called a joint live-fire drill involving missiles, artillery, and drones, a day after the United States, South Korea, and Japan wrapped their five-day trilateral military drill that North Korea described as a provocation. North Korea said its drill included firing different types of weapons simultaneously, likely aiming at developing the ability to overwhelm South Korean and U.S. air defenses.

Chances of a swift resumption of U.S.-North Korea talks are unclear

Kim Jong Un has been focusing on expanding his nuclear arsenal after his earlier high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.

When Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Korea, he cited what he called a good relationship with Kim, who has called such drills invasion rehearsals.

Emboldened by his advancing nuclear arsenal and deepening ties with Russia and China, experts say, Kim likely thinks he now has greater leverage in possible fresh diplomacy with Trump. Earlier this year, Kim said he could return to talks if the U.S. drops its “hostile policy” against his country and respects what he calls the North’s status as a nuclear state.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, a liberal who advocates improved ties with the North, said on Friday that a resumption of U.S.-North Korea talks would be “an important starting point” toward boosting chances for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

“What is clear is that President Trump wants dialogue and I’ve also been encouraging President Trump to seek dialogue” with Kim, Lee told reporters.