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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

April 12, 2025 - 12 avril 2025

Canada must disentangle from the US national security regime, and protect rights, freedoms and the vulnerable

ICLMG 11/04/2025 - During this election season, the original pretence for the tariffs and annexation threats from US President Trump — the supposed “protection of the northern border” from exaggerated concerns and straight-up lies over drug smuggling and irregular migration — and the emergency measures put in place in response, must not go unchallenged.

As a coalition that came together in the wake of the rushed adoption of the Anti-terrorism Act in 2001 and the surge in security powers, surveillance, racial profiling and civil liberties violations that followed, and has worked to protect fundamental freedoms for the last 23 years, the ICLMG has several warnings for Canadian voters: We have seen this before, and we must oppose the knee-jerk expansion of security powers and greater security integration with the United States.

Trump’s threats are definitely worrisome. However, we mustn’t let fear dictate our actions. We must protect ourselves, but that can’t be done at the expense of rights and freedoms. By that we mean: we will not be protected if our own rights and freedoms are further eroded. 

The Canadian national security apparatus has consistently transformed fears into more powers and resources for themselves, leading to the explosive expansion of surveillance powers, the militarization of our borders, the criminalization of dissent, or the erosion of due process in the courts. Most recently, we saw this with the Countering Foreign Interference Act, which was adopted in record time in summer 2024 with little study or debate, despite it making wide-ranging changes to Canadian legislation that undermine free expression, international cooperation, the ability to challenge government decisions, and increases surveillance and data collection powers. 

Now we are seeing it again in Canada’s Border Plan, whipped up in response to the Trump administration’s threats: $1.3 billion invested in the securitization of Canada’s border to try to appease the US president’s overhyped concerns about fentanyl and migration at the northern border, that are largely based in exaggerations and lies and, in any case, actually appear to be a red herring to conceal his predatory economic and trade goals.

The result is a flurry of new security measures with little clarity and next to no transparency, that once in place will not be undone. This includes the installation of 15 new surveillance towers, the purchase of drones, mobilization of Black Hawk helicopters, all equipped with various forms of surveillance tools; the commitment of 10,000 frontline personnel to the border; the creation of a supercharged Joint Operational Intelligence Cell, to better share intelligence between Canadian agencies, including the RCMP, CBSA and CSIS, and with allies, primarily the United States; investing $200 million in Public Safety Canada and the Communications Security Establishment - Canada’s version of the US' National Security Agency - for increased surveillance activities; and the politically-motivated expansion of the terrorist entities list to include, for the first time ever, transnational criminal organizations.

All of this serves to ramp up the securitization — surveillance, information sharing, law enforcement and arrests/detention — of Canada’s response to putative migration and fentanyl “crises.” Not only are migrants and asylum seekers being scapegoated but their search for protection and a better life is being conflated with criminality. This approach undermines the fact that these are human rights and public health issues that should be addressed through improved and extended social programs and rights protections; not border guards, spies and Blackhawk helicopters. 

The measures being proposed only serve to further entangle Canada in the United States’ national security regime at a time when doing so is even more dangerous than usual, with threats of annexation, and the weaponization of American national security tools against migrants and asylum seekers, as well as those who protest in support of Palestinian human rights, among other highly-charged political and social issues. 

This entanglement is not new: over the past decades there have been multiple efforts by Canada and the US to integrate their security apparatuses, from plans for “Fortress North America” to the ill-fated Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the eventual signing, in 2011, of the less ambitious but still problematic “Beyond the Border” agreement by then-prime minister Stephen Harper and then-US president Barack Obama.

Under the most recent Liberal government, Canada continued to collaborate with the US in a manner that is detrimental to Canadians’ rights and safety. For example, CitizenLab reported in late February, 2025, that since 2022, Canada has been quietly negotiating a bilateral agreement with the US under the US CLOUD Act which would allow US law enforcement to issue warrantless data requests and surveillance orders directly to tech companies and other entities in Canada, without oversight from Canadian courts. The negotiations are ongoing despite Trump’s threats to Canada.

We need to demand that the government take action to disentangle Canada’s national security from the authoritarianism evident in the United States, and enact measures to protect the rights of people in Canada.

There are clear, concrete actions the government can take to do so. They include:

• Revisit and restrict information-sharing agreements, including the exchange of watchlists and other intelligence, with US and other foreign national security agencies, including other Five Eyes nations, unless absolutely necessary for people’s safety.
• Stop negotiations for the Canada-US CLOUD Act agreement.
• Cancel the Safe Third Country Agreement: we cannot be complicit in sending individuals seeking asylum protection back to the US when we know that they will not go through a fair process, risk having their rights violated, and face abusive detention, including at Guantanamo Bay, and likely deportation without recourse.
• Reconsider the billion dollars being shifted into border security, and instead determine where it can be better placed based on the actual needs of people in Canada. 
• Update Canadian laws and policies to protect against government surveillance, including facial recognition and online data scraping, to protect against efforts to undermine encryption, and to regulate artificial intelligence tools (especially for national security purposes). 
• Resist pressure to expand the use of anti-terrorism measures. This includes the recent decision to add criminal organizations to the discretionary, politicized and due process-violating terrorist entities list, which also problematically stretches the definition of terrorism.
• Protect freedom of expression and dissent, including by denouncing repression south of the border — such as the denial of entry into the US of a Canadian author allegedly based on his anti-genocide advocacy, and the efforts to deport student activist Mahmoud Khalil — and by amending vague and overly-broad Canadian “national security” laws that allow surveillance, sharing of information or arrest for simply engaging in acts of free expression.

The next federal government should also hold a public consultation on the future of Canadian national security policy, given this new international context.

We also need better accountability and transparency. It is worth noting that while a ‘Fentanyl Czar’ was appointed in a matter of weeks, the government had failed to provide any updates on the establishment of the new Public Complaints and Review Commission (PCRC), which would serve as an independent watchdog for the activities of the RCMP and CBSA. Legislation to enact the PCRC passed in October 2024, but Public Safety Minister David McGuinty hasn’t mentioned it once since being appointed, despite media inquiries.

It’s important to remember that Canada’s national security apparatus has been used to violate the rights of Canadians many times: from complicity in the torture and detention of Canadians abroad such as Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abousfian Abdelrazik; illegally collecting private data and monitoring our online activities; to spying on, harassing and arresting journalists, Indigenous land defenders, and anti-genocide protesters as well as violently dismantling camps; and using AI and facial recognition tools without authorization and oversight.

The Trump presidency is a present and devastating warning of the dangers of building a massive and powerful national security and law enforcement system: you never know in whose hands it could land. And we must not let this hostile neighbour distract us from the abuses of power in our own country.

Instead of further integrating our national security with that of the US, now is the time to chart our own path based on upholding human rights and civil liberties, providing protections to the vulnerable, and investing in social programs that create and protect real human security. Source

Brian Murphy: The Future is Now

ACTION Amnesty International: Canada: End the Safe Third Country Agreement

For a Canada as welcoming as we are

ICLMG signed on alongside 200+ organizations to say: Canadian federal party leaders must uphold the rights of refugees and migrants during the 2025 federal election campaigns

CCR 03/04/2025 - Dear Party Leaders,

Elections are a perilous time for marginalized groups. At a time of significant national political and economic insecurity and amidst a cost-of-living crisis that affects us all, refugees and migrants have been frequent targets. As the federal election approaches, we are writing to seek your commitment to reject this scapegoating, and defend and strengthen one of Canada’s best traditions: protecting refugees and welcoming newcomers.

Political leaders play a critical role in upholding the rights of immigrants and refugees. This responsibility is particularly important today, when we see the rise around the world of xenophobic fear-mongering about people who move in search of a better life for their families. Canada is not immune to these narratives.

But while people may differ on policies, there still remains a broad consensus that Canada is strengthened by immigration, respect for human rights and being open to the world. Going into the federal election, we know this precious consensus is under attack, and you have both the opportunity and the obligation to remind Canadians why it is important to preserve it. We therefore ask you to embrace both language and policies that honour newcomers and their contributions to our country, and ensure they continue to feel safe and welcome in our communities.

We urge you to ensure that, throughout the election campaign, your party’s platform and messaging about refugees and immigrants champion:



• The rule of law, including upholding the right to asylum and the fundamental protections guaranteed to all by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
• Our shared humanity and the need to treat all newcomers with the dignity and welcome we all deserve.
• The principle that refugees and immigrants strengthen our communities and not just our economy.
• The belief that Canada finds opportunity through diversity.
• The responsibility of political leaders to speak up for those marginalized in our society.

At a time when our sovereignty is under threat, when Canadians are challenged to rally behind what makes us distinct and binds us together as a nation, we ask you to defend our core values as a welcoming country. As people in Canada mobilize from coast to coast to coast to stand up against attacks on our country, refugees and immigrants are already part of this collective response and must be embraced and recognized as such.

In communities across Canada, people show up for other people. We welcome newcomers as neighbours, as colleagues, as friends. We urge you to run an election campaign that reflects this, and to commit to building an immigration system, indeed a country, as welcoming as our people are.

Canadian Council for Refugees (for its 222 members)

Amnesty International Canada

Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers Sign & List of signatories

Tim McSorley: Government Proposal to Fight “Online Harms” Presents Dangers of its Own

We launched our 20th anniversary publication "Defending Civil Liberties in an Age of Counter-terrorism and National Security" on Sept 11, 2024. You can read the full PDF or get a physical copy here. Since, we shared two texts from the publication per News Digest to make sure they all get the attention they deserve. These are the last two texts of the publication!

ICLMG 2024 - Over the past two decades, many of us have come to rely on online platforms for basic necessities, communication, education and entertainment. Online, we see the good – access to otherwise hard to find information, connecting with loved ones – and the bad. It often combines the harms we know so well, including hate speech, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, the sexual exploitation of minors, bullying and incitement to violence, with new forms of harassment and abuse that can happen at a much larger scale, and with new ways to distribute harmful and illegal content.

Many social media sites have committed to addressing these harms. But business models that focus on engagement and retention – regardless of the content – have proven ineffective at doing so, with some studies showing that it is in their business interest to continue feeding the most controversial content. When these online platforms do remove content, researchers have documented that it is often those very communities that face harassment that face the most censorship. Governments around the world have also used the excuse of combating hate speech and online harms – such as “terrorist content” – to enact censorship and silence opponents, including human rights defenders.

The Canadian government had been promising to address this issue since 2019, framing it explicitly around fighting “online hate.” The government eventually released its proposal to tackle online harms in late July 2021, alongside a public consultation. There were immediate concerns with the consultation taking place in the dead of summer with an imminent election on the horizon. When the election was called a few weeks later, round tables with government officials who could answer questions about the proposal were canceled.

While the government’s approach was bad, the proposal itself was worse. As cyber policy researcher Daphne Keller described it, Canada’s original proposal was “like a list of the worst ideas around the world – the ones human rights groups… have been fighting in the EU, India, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and elsewhere.”

ICLMG’s central concern with the government’s approach has been around the inclusion of “terrorist content.” Since 2001, we have seen how the enforcement of anti-terrorism laws has led to the violation of human rights, especially because its definition can be twisted to suit political ends. Yet under the government’s initial proposal, social media companies would have been expected to identify “terrorist” content through mass surveillance, act on any content reported by users within 24 hours or face penalties up to millions of dollars, and required to automatically share information with law enforcement and national security agencies, both privatizing and expanding the surveillance and criminalization of internet users. The proposal even put forward new warrant powers for CSIS that would go far beyond addressing “online harms.” It was a recipe for racial and political profiling, particularly of Muslims, Indigenous people and other people of color, and for the violation of their rights and freedoms.

In February 2022, the Ministry of Heritage released a “What We Heard” report in which they recognized many of the valid concerns with the government’s approach. They announced a new consultation process led by an expert advisory group that would review these concerns and propose advice on what the government’s approach should be.

Various groups, including the ICLMG, continued working together to respond to the government’s proposals and to develop ideas on how best to fight online harms. We published op-eds and met with government officials and MPs. In March 2023, we helped draft a group position document on core guiding principles for any future legislation, including “red lines,” that was sent to the Minister of Heritage and shared with opposition critics.

Nearly two years after sharing its initial proposal, in late March 2024, the government introduced Bill C-63 to create the Online Harms Act. The bill has proven controversial in large part because it also seeks to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act in ways that raise civil liberties and human rights concerns.

Specifically in regards to online harms, though, the analysis and advocacy of the ICLMG and others has resulted in a much better bill than would have been expected in 2021. In particular:

• While still including seven different categories of harms, it no longer proposes a simple “one-size fits all” approach.
• There is no explicit requirement that would require platforms to monitor all content in order to identify and remove harmful posts.
• The main focus is on the regulation of platforms, in the form of obligations to create and follow online safety plans, and not on policing all users.
• Except for content that sexually victimizes a child, there is no requirement for mandatory reporting of content or users to the RCMP or CSIS.
• There are no proposals to create new CSIS warrant powers.
• There are greater rules around platform accountability, transparency and reporting.

However, there remain serious areas of concern:

• The proposed category of “content that incites violent extremism or terrorism” is, by its nature, overly broad and vague.
• Given there is a nearly identical, and more specific, harm of “content that incites violence,” a terrorism-focused harm is unnecessary and redundant.
• While not explicitly requiring platforms to proactively monitor content, it does not disallow such actions either.
• Platforms would be required to preserve data relating to posts alleged to incite violence, violent extremism or terrorism for one year, so that it is available to law enforcement if needed for an investigation.
• The proposed Digital Safety Commission, which would enforce the rules under the Online Harms Act, is granted incredibly broad powers with minimal oversight.
• A lack of clarity around hearings and investigations could allow for malicious accusations of posting “terrorist content,” and uncertainty around recourse for those whose content is erroneously taken down by platforms.

This is clearly a complex problem, and it is easier to point out flaws than to develop concrete solutions. What appears clear, though, is that empowering private online platforms to carry out greater surveillance and content removal not only fails to address the heart of the issue, but creates more harm. Instead, governments must invest in offline solutions combatting the roots of racism, misogyny, bigotry and hatred. Just as importantly, governments must address the business models of social media platforms that profit from surveillance and use content that causes outrage and division as a way to drive engagement and to retain audiences. So long as there is profit to be made from fuelling these harms, we will never truly address them. Source

Tim McSorley is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Version française : La proposition du gouvernement visant à lutter contre les « préjudices en ligne » présente ses propres dangers

Xan Dagenais & Tim McSorley: In Closing

Le 11 septembre 2024, nous avons lancé notre publication 20e anniversaire « Défendre les libertés civiles à l’ère de la sécurité nationale et de la guerre au terrorisme ». Vous pouvez lire le PDF complet ou obtenir une copie papier ici. Depuis, nous avons partagé 2 textes de la publication dans chaque Revue de l'actualité afin de garantir qu'ils reçoivent l'attention qu'ils méritent. Voici les derniers textes de la publication!

ICLMG 2024 - We hope this overview of the last 20 years provided a glimpse of the ICLMG’s efforts, in collaboration with so many partners, to curb the impact of government measures that seriously infringe on our rights in the name of “national security” and “anti-terrorism.” We also hope this publication renewed – or sparked – your commitment to the struggle for the protection and promotion of civil liberties from the negative impact of national security and the “War on Terror.”

The concepts of “law and order” and “national security” have been used on the territory now called Canada since European settlers decided that this land was theirs. The RCMP was created – then as the North-West Mounted Police – in large part as a paramilitary force to surveil, control and displace Indigenous people; a role they are still playing to this day.

The words “terrorism” and “threats to national security” are powerful. Thanks to years of relentless fear mongering by governments and the media, they elicit automatic condemnation of whoever is stamped with those labels. As a result, these labels have become a very effective tool to discredit and repress any group, movement or person who opposes government policies and actions, and fights for justice and collective liberation.

As our contributors have shown, we cannot simply reform anti-terror laws and the national security apparatus to fix its abuses and the erosion of civil liberties. Given that the Criminal Code already covers all violent crimes, there is no need for or benefit to anti-terror and national security laws and tools.

Governments justify their actions in the name of “security” but neglect to deal with the root causes of the violence they purport to address. We need to shift away from national security – the preservation of the sovereignty and the power of the state – and focus on human safety.

The threat to civil liberties has grown over the last 20 years and recent events have led to renewed concern: the genocide in Gaza perpetrated in the name of countering terrorism, as well as the wrongful conflation of support for Palestinian lives and rights with support for hate or terrorism; the expansion of rights-violating anti-terror tools that perpetuate systemic racism, such as the Terrorist Entities List, to “fight racism” in Canada; the dangers posed by emerging new technologies like biometrics, spyware and artificial intelligence; the ever- expanding definition of “national security;” and the endlessly growing powers and resources of national security agencies.

We are witnessing a resurgence in fear-mongering and othering of Muslim, Arab and Chinese communities reminiscent of the early days after 9/11 and during the Cold War. We are also seeing the growing use of anti-terrorism discourse, laws and agencies by authoritarian regimes to silence dissent; they point at the behaviour of liberal “democracies” in the ‘War on Terror’ and say: “They did it – so can we.”

The struggle to protect civil liberties undertaken 20 years ago is more necessary than ever. We believe our coalition has been instrumental in the fight against the abuses of the national security apparatus but, to do this work, we need all the help we can get.

Want to join the struggle?

Follow the ICLMG on social media, subscribe to the News Digest and check out the Take Action section on our website at iclmg.ca.

Organizations are more than welcome to join the ICLMG coalition. Contact us for all details through iclmg.ca/contact‑us.

With your support, we hope we won’t need to be around anymore in 20 years.

Thank you! Source

Xan Dagenais is the Communications and Research Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Tim McSorley is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Version française : En conclusion

UN experts urge end to ISIL-related arbitrary detention in North-East Syria and accountability for international crimes

OHCHR 07/04/2025 - The political transition in Syria is a valuable opportunity to end the arbitrary, inhumane and indefinite detention of around 52,000 people in relation to the conflict with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), UN experts* said today.

“We note the agreement on 10 March with the Syrian Democratic Forces in North-East Syria, who guard the detainees, to join Syria’s new national institutions. We urge Syria and other countries to build on this momentum by ending arbitrary detention and bringing to justice anyone suspected of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity,” they said.

Around 9,000 male ISIL suspects are detained without due process of law, including 5,400 Syrians, 1,600 Iraqis, and 1,500 people from 50 other countries. The vast majority of these detainees continue to be held incommunicado without information on their fate or whereabouts.

In addition, some 42,500 individuals are arbitrarily held in camps, including family members and associates of ISIL suspects, as well as refugees, internally displaced persons, and victims of human trafficking. Of these, 60 percent are children, and the rest are mostly women. Hundreds of adolescent boys have been forcibly separated from their mothers and are held in prisons or “rehabilitation” centres. While almost 40 percent of the 42,500 people in camps are from Syria and 40 percent from Iraq, about 8,000 people come from 50 other countries.

“These people have been held without legal process for at least six years, in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions, contrary to international law. Tens of thousands of innocent children have suffered physical violence and psychological harm, when they should be assisted as victims of terrorism and serious human rights violations. Many women are also vulnerable, including victims of sexual and gender-based violence,” they said.

The experts made six recommendations for action.

First, they urged all countries [that means you, Canada] to urgently repatriate their nationals, as required by international law, rehabilitate and reintegrate them, or prosecute them where applicable, in line with international law and Security Council resolutions. “We are concerned many countries have abandoned their citizens or have even arbitrarily revoked their citizenship,” they said. They also recommended voluntary third-country resettlement be considered for those at risk of serious violations if returned to their home countries.

Secondly, Syria’s caretaker authorities should plan for the safe, dignified and voluntary reintegration of Syrian detainees, who are not criminal suspects, back into their communities. Security Council resolution 2254 (2015) calls for the release of any arbitrarily detained persons, particularly women and children.

Thirdly, the political transition must include an independent and impartial process for bringing to justice anyone suspected of international crimes, while guaranteeing fair trial, avoiding the death penalty and ensuring prison conditions meet international standards.

“Addressing ISIL atrocities should be part of a broader, Syrian-led transitional justice process involving the accountability of all State and non-state actors, truth-seeking, reconciliation and reparation for victims, in full respect for international law,” the experts said. “The international community should provide technical and financial support on request. States should also exercise universal jurisdiction where possible, utilising the evidence gathered by the international mechanisms for Syria and Iraq.”

Fourthly, there should be clear pre-conditions for lifting counter-terrorism sanctions on Syria, including progress on accountability and human rights, to ensure sufficient resources and conditions for reconstruction and stabilisation.

Fifthly, foreign states must cease destabilising Syria’s transition, including illegal cross-border attacks by Türkiye in the north-east, which have displaced almost 100,000 people, and Israeli attacks and creeping occupation in the south.

Finally, in the interim, the humanitarian, protection and security needs of all detainees must be guaranteed, including victims of enforced disappearances.

“We deplore recent disruptions of humanitarian assistance in the camps, which endanger security, and urge States to guarantee adequate funding,” they said.

“All of the above measures must be sensitive to gender, age, disability and other intersectional vulnerabilities and needs,” they said. Source

‘Guantánamo on steroids’: Inside a prison for suspected Islamic State members in Syria

Nineteen Years of Injustice: Demand Freedom for Huseyin Celil

URAP 26/03/2025 - Today marks 19 years since Canadian citizen and Uyghur human rights activist Huseyin Celil was unjustly extradited to the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Celil arrived in Canada in 2001 with his wife, Kamila Telendibeava and child after fleeing China. In November 2005, Huseyin received Canadian citizenship. The following year, Huseyin and his family travelled to Uzbekistan in March. Chinese law enforcement became aware of Mr. Celil’s visit to Uzbekistan and informed the authorities to kidnap and arrest him. Three months later, he was extradited to China, where he was charged with separatism and terrorism-related activities, with a conviction of separatism in 2006.

Despite ongoing calls for his release, Mr. Celil remains imprisoned, facing severe human rights violations. The Canadian government must take immediate and decisive action to bring him home and fulfill its duty to protect Canadian citizens abroad. After a deeply flawed trial lacking due process, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Chinese government has refused to recognize Mr. Celil's Canadian citizenship, denying him consular access in clear violation of international legal norms.

The legal issues surrounding Mr. Celil's case are stark. He was subjected to a trial lacking transparency, with credible reports of torture and human rights abuses. China’s refusal to acknowledge his Canadian citizenship has further undermined his legal rights, obstructing Canadian officials from providing consular support. Additionally, the absence of due process has left Mr. Celil without legal recourse. Despite repeated diplomatic engagements and public advocacy, the Chinese government has shown no willingness to engage in good faith. Canada’s response to date has also been inadequate. While statements of concern have been issued, tangible diplomatic actions remain insufficient. Furthermore, the Government of Canada’s continued acceptance of the Chinese government's narrative of Mr. Celil’s “dual citizenship” only serves to legitimize his unjust detention. [...]

Nineteen years of imprisonment is a profound miscarriage of justice, and Mr. Celil must not continue to suffer for his unwavering advocacy of Uyghur human rights. As a matter of legal obligation and moral responsibility, decisive action on behalf of the Government of Canada is imperative. It is no longer sufficient to rely on diplomatic rhetoric—the time has come for concrete measures to secure Mr. Celil’s freedom and uphold the fundamental principles of human rights and the rule of law. Read more - Lire plus

The Copernic Affair: The professor accused of a Paris bombing

Al Jazeera English 31/03/2025 - Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian professor, has spent nearly 20 years defending himself against accusations of involvement in a 1980 bombing of the Copernic Street synagogue in Paris. The twists and turns of his case raise serious questions about justice, accountability, and the possibility of a wrongful accusation.

In this episode:

• Dana Ballout, documentary producer
• Alex Atack, journalist and audio producer

ICYMI: ICLMG reiterates its support for Hassan Diab, wrongfully convicted in unfair trial

ACTION Send a letter to the Carleton University administration and Board of Governors

ACTION Send a letter to the Canadian Minister of Justice and the Canadian government

Iran-born Canadians denied US entry

IranIntl 28/03/2025 - Canadian citizens born in Iran are being blocked from entering the United States after undergoing questioning at the border, the Canadian daily newspaper Globe and Mail reported citing immigration lawyers and advisers.

The report said that after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office on Jan. 20 mandating enhanced scrutiny of foreign nationals Iranian-Canadians have faced heightened border security.

The report highlighted specific cases since that time, citing immigration lawyer Melissa Babel, who described two Iranian-Canadians who were recently denied entry.

According to Babel, both individuals, who had lived in Canada for decades, were questioned closely about their military service in Iran. US border agents asked them to provide proof that they had never served in the Iranian military, which is a major concern due to the US designation of the Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization​.

One of the men, who frequently traveled to the US for business, was denied entry and later found that his Nexus card—used for expedited US border processing—had been canceled. The other man, traveling with his Iranian-Canadian wife and Canadian-born daughter, was also refused entry​.

The report cited legal experts who have called on Ottawa to issue a travel advisory warning that Canadian citizens and residents from Iran risk being denied entry, having their visas or Nexus cards revoked, or even being detained or deported when traveling to the US.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported citing informed sources and an internal memo that the Trump administration is considering issuing sweeping travel restrictions for the citizens of dozens of countries as part of a new ban.

The memo lists a total of 41 countries divided into three separate groups. The first group of 10 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea among others, would be set for a full visa suspension​. Source

Activists Occupy Global Affairs Office, Call For Israel Arms Embargo

The Maple 07/04/2025 - Over one hundred Jewish activists and allies took over the lobby of a Global Affairs Canada (GAC) building on Queen Street West in Toronto on Friday, demanding immediate action to address Canada’s support for Israel. 

The activists’ message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and all political parties was that Palestinian rights need to be a focal point in the ongoing federal election. 

“We are here today to let our elected officials, Mark Carney, Mélanie Joly and Pierre Poilievre know that they still have blood on their hands [...] The top demand is to stop arming and funding the Israeli war machine,” Gur Tsabar, a spokesperson for Jews Say No to Genocide, told The Maple. 

“It is to let them know that Palestine is a federal election issue.”

Demonstrators gathered at the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Garden near the GAC building early on Friday morning. At around 8:30 a.m., the crowd entered the GAC building wearing t-shirts and holding banners that read “Jews for Free Palestine,” “Jews Say No to Genocide” and “Stop Arming Israel.” 

They sat in the lobby chanting “arms embargo now” and displayed a banner that read “1,256 Palestinians murdered in Gaza since Mark Carney took office.” The protesters then exited to Queen Street West to continue their demonstration. “We are making it a federal election issue where we are going to be there every step of the way when they are campaigning,” said Tsabar.

In March 2024, the Liberal government promised to pause future arms exports to Israel due to concerns about Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Despite this, in August 2024, the United States government announced that a Quebec-based company would serve as the primary contractor for a “possible” $83 million high-explosive mortar cartridge sale to Israel. 

On Sept. 10, 2024, Joly stated “we will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza,” and said she was in contact with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS), the company named in the contract. However, the arms-monitoring group Project Ploughshares revealed in March that the United States Department of Defence (DOD) website listed the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) as the recipient for a contract in September 2024 to provide the U.S. with artillery propellants, which would ultimately be shipped onward to other destinations, including Israel.

The contract is an amendment of a larger deal for the general supply of artillery propellants to the U.S. military that dates back to 2019 and is valued at a total of $1.79 billion. CCC, a Crown corporation, signed the contract on behalf of GD-OTS in Valleyfield, Quebec, which is the sole-source supplier of the artillery propellants under contract. 

The September contract amendment was signed before Israel and Hamas agreed to a three-phase ceasefire plan in January. But the Israeli government has since refused to move beyond phase one of that plan, and is working to implement U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza.

It remains uncertain whether or not the Liberal government was aware of the artillery propellant agreement before Project Ploughshares highlighted it. In response to inquiries from The Maple, GAC stated that the government is in communication with the involved parties. The ministry did not respond to a question about whether or not it was aware of the contract amendment’s existence before Project Ploughshares published its report.

Israel’s war on Gaza has so far killed more than 60,000 people and has been denounced as genocidal by a UN special committee, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a growing number of genocide studies scholars. Read more - Lire plus

NEW ACTION Joly stop arming genocide

NEW National March on Ottawa - Saturday April 12 at 2PM

More Indigo 11 charges dropped but real criminals remain free



Last of Indigo 11 receive conditional discharges with probation for 12 months

Grad student who fled U.S. says claims about her alleged support of Hamas are 'absurd'

OCHA, UNICEF, UNOPS, UNRWA, WFP, WHO and IOM: World must act with urgency to save Palestinians in Gaza, top UN officials say

OCHA 07/04/2025 - For over a month, no commercial or humanitarian supplies have entered Gaza. 

More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck. 

Over 1,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured in just the first week after the breakdown of the ceasefire, the highest one-week death toll among children in Gaza in the past year.

Just a few days ago, the 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme during the ceasefire had to close due to flour and cooking gas shortages.

The partially functional health system is overwhelmed. Essential medical and trauma supplies are rapidly running out, threatening to reverse hard-won progress in keeping the health system operational.

The latest ceasefire allowed us to achieve in 60 days what bombs, obstruction and lootings prevented us from doing in 470 days of war: life-saving supplies reaching nearly every part of Gaza.

While this offered a short respite, assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low.

We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.

New Israeli displacement orders have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee yet again, with no safe place to go. 

No one is safe. At least 408 humanitarian workers, including over 280 from UNRWA, have been killed since October 2023.

With the tightened Israeli blockade on Gaza now in its second month, we appeal to world leaders to act – firmly, urgently and decisively – to ensure the basic principles of international humanitarian law are upheld. 

Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire. Source

Amid escalating horror, UN experts urge States to take concrete action to end impunity for Israel

Israeli massacre in Gaza’s Shujayea as residential tower targeted

Israeli soldier tells CBS News he was ordered to use Palestinians as human shields in Gaza

Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN

More journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct 7 2023 than in the US Civil War, the two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined

Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

Under Primacy, Weapons Sales Will Always Supersede Human Rights

Quincy Institute 09/04/2025 - The U.S. government’s expressed commitment to human rights is routinely undermined by its actual commitment to maintaining America’s global military primacy.



Since the 1970s, Washington has cast itself as a defender of global human rights, when Congress passed laws to bar the U.S. from providing security assistance to human rights violators. 

Yet America’s interest in human rights has long been sublimated to the logic of hegemony, from Cold War containment to the Global War on Terror and beyond. Congress has still never successfully voted to block a weapons sale. Today, the myth that American power upholds human rights lies buried beneath the rubble of Gaza.

This research brief traces the emergence of human rights within U.S. foreign policymaking in the waning decades of the Cold War — alongside Washington’s rise to the top of the global arms trade — and surveys the various U.S. government efforts to codify human rights considerations in the practice of U.S. foreign policy, particularly arms sales, through the Biden administration. This history reveals how American leaders, regardless of political party, have consistently instrumentalized human rights concerns to target perceived adversaries, while tossing aside such concerns when they apply to U.S. partners. 

After Israel invaded Gaza following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, the Biden administration failed to place any meaningful conditions on weapons sales to Israel, despite Israel’s conduct showing clear violations of international and U.S. law. The Trump administration has since expanded America’s unconditional support for Israel.

Even as the world becomes increasingly multipolar, the defense establishment remains intent on maintaining U.S. military primacy. In clinging to this pursuit, human rights will remain an afterthought, selectively invoked by U.S. leaders when they do not threaten the military-industrial complex and arms sales. Only a sober recalibration of America’s approach to our new geopolitical reality — including a foreign policy of military restraint — can bring about a deeper commitment to human rights in Washington. Read more - Lire plus

Yemen is acting responsibly to stop genocide and the U.S. is bombing them for it

The Real Outrage in Yemen

Trump ICC sanctions order challenged in US court by human rights advocates

Hamas Launches Unprecedented Legal Case in Britain, Demanding the Government Remove its Terror Designation

Drop Site News 09/04/2025 - In an extraordinary legal filing submitted Wednesday in London, Hamas argued that the British government should remove its designation of the movement as a proscribed terror group and recognize its legitimate role as a Palestinian resistance movement engaged in a struggle for self-determination and liberation. A top political leader of Hamas rejected allegations that the movement is an anti-semitic terror organization, asserted that Hamas poses no threat to Western nations, and argues that the political organization has never engaged in an armed operation outside the boundaries of historic Palestine.

“Hamas is not a terrorist group. It is a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project,” wrote Mousa Abu Marzouk—head of international relations for Hamas, and the applicant for the claim to the U.K. home secretary—in a signed and submitted witness statement provided to Drop Site. “We also look outwards to draw inspiration from the glorious tradition of all those peoples and groups who have resisted colonialism, occupation and imperialism in the name of justice, dignity, and human equality,” referencing historical struggles against colonialism and imperialism from across the world. The legal summary prepared by lawyers representing Hamas highlights the African National Congress in South Africa and Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army in Ireland as historical analogues to Hamas and the fight for Palestinian liberation.

Marzouk charged that Hamas has been subjected to a concerted smear campaign about its official position, including support for a Palestinian state defined by the borders that existed prior to Israel’s invasion and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in June 1967—and the subsequent violent campaign of annexation of Palestinian land that continues to this day.

“The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century,” Marzouk added. “Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people. It is perhaps out of colonial guilt that Britain fears that one day, those it oppresses will strike back against the sponsors of the Zionist entity. Britain should have no such fear.”

Hamas enlisted a team of British lawyers to represent its appeal to the British Home Secretary and to challenge the movement’s terror designation, which went into effect in 2021. The British government designated the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, a proscribed group in 2001, but not the political movement as a whole. When it formally added Hamas to the list of designated terror groups in 2021, the Home Office asserted: “The government now assess[es] that the approach of distinguishing between the various parts of Hamas is artificial. Hamas is a complex but single terrorist organisation.”

In a document provided to Drop Site News, summarizing their legal arguments, Hamas’s legal team noted that it represents the group pro bono, because accepting payment would be illegal under British law. “Hamas does not deny that its actions fall within the wide definition of ‘terrorism’ under the Terrorism Act 2000,” the lawyers asserted. “Instead, it notes that the definition also covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and indeed the British armed forces.” [...]

In their case summary, Hamas’s lawyers argue that Britain has a legal duty to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity and to work to end the Israeli occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories. “Proscription is contrary to Britain’s obligations under international law,” the lawyers wrote. “Hamas is the only effective military force resisting – and seeking to end and prevent – the ongoing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity being committed by the Zionist State against the Palestinians in Gaza. Its continued proscription is purposefully – and in any event practically – inhibiting the efforts of the Palestinian people to use military force to end and prevent those ongoing acts of genocide.”

Hamas’s lawyers also argued that the terror group designation has stifled honest debate about Hamas’s aims and actions, because within the purview of the British government’s policies, any speech that ostensibly supports a terrorist organization is effectively criminalized. “Rather than allow freedom of speech, police have embarked on a campaign of political intimidation and persecution of journalists, academics, peace activists and students over their perceived support for Hamas,” the lawyers argued. “People in Britain must be free to speak about Hamas and its struggle to restore to the Palestinian people the right to self-determination.”

Magennis argues, “Even if the British government wants to try to restrict the speech of Hamas themselves, it's possible to support the application without supporting the organization, because you think that the current proscription regime is preventing people from talking more openly about what a nuanced, peaceful solution might look like.”

The U.K. home secretary has 90 days to answer Hamas's petition. If Cooper rejects it—and maintains the terror designation for the political organization—the case would go before a tribunal for an appeal. That ensuing legal process could still overturn the designation. Read more - Lire plus

Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported, Immigration Judge Rules

Zeteo 11/04/2025 - An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled on Friday that Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil can be deported on the basis of a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that says he has personally determined Khalil poses “adverse foreign policy consequences” to the US.

Khalil, clean-cut but pale, with ACLU attorney Nora Ahmed at his side, listened as Judge Jamee Comans said the Trump administration’s evidence – which primarily relied on a two-page letter from Rubio – was sufficient to deport him under a rarely used legal provision in immigration law.

“There is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even an attorney general overruling the Secretary of State on matters of foreign policy,” said Judge Comans as she made her ruling. One supporter in the courtroom began to cry as the judge announced her decision.

The case is widely seen as a bellwether for whether the government can deport people for constitutionally protected speech, with momentous implications. Khalil, a green card holder, has been detained at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in rural Jena, Louisiana, since he was arrested by immigration authorities on March 8 at his Columbia University-owned housing in New York.

Khalil has not been charged with a crime. Instead, the Trump administration alleged that his presence poses adverse “foreign policy consequences.” It later added an allegation that Khalil obtained his visa by misrepresentation in not mentioning his work for an office of the British Embassy and membership in two organizations.

Khalil’s lawyers argue that he is being targeted over constitutionally protected speech criticizing the US and Israeli governments over the war in Gaza and the treatment of Palestinians. Khalil will not immediately be deported; his attorneys have until April 23 to file evidence supporting why he should have relief from deportation. At the end of the hearing, Khalil asked to make a statement on the record. He stood and addressed the court directly.

“I would like to quote what you said last time that there's nothing that's more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles [was] present today or in this whole process,” he said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court – 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me [is] afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.” Read more - Lire plus

Pressed for evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, government cites its power to deport people for beliefs

ACTION Release Mahmoud Khalil!

Michigan Lawyer Detained at Detroit Airport by Tactical Terrorism Response Team, Phone Seized; He Represents Pro-Palestine Protester

The New McCarthyism Was Started by Liberals

Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters

Trump Appears to Be Targeting Muslim and “Non-White” Students for Deportation

The Intercept 08/04/2025 - The Trump administration is expanding its campaign against international students to target not just those active in pro-Palestine advocacy, but also students entirely uninvolved in protests and campus activism.

With little or no justification, the Trump administration is revoking the visas and immigration statuses of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program, leaving them vulnerable to detention and deportation, according to attorneys representing international scholars who have filed new lawsuits against the Trump administration.

In some cases, the government has gone after students with minor infractions or misdemeanors on their record, or, for others, no criminal history at all. Several immigration attorneys have also told The Intercept that the bulk of their clients are from Muslim-majority countries or other countries in Asia and Africa. And new lawsuits filed in California also allege the government’s deportation attempts appear to be targeting students who are “African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Asian.

It will take days for immigration attorneys to sift through the waves of new cases. In late March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed media reports that at least 300 visas had been revoked in its “Catch and Revoke” program, and said that number would rise daily. Immigration attorneys who spoke with The Intercept on Monday estimate the number of student visa revocations may have risen into the thousands in recent days.

While the Trump administration’s most-publicized attacks on students have revolved around free speech rights with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of students for protesting or writing opinion journalism, the recent rush of revocations aligns with Trump’s wider, xenophobic campaign against immigrants and immigration.

“It’s a concerted effort to go after people who are from countries and religions that the Trump administration wants to get out of the country,” said Johnny Sinodis, a San Francisco-based immigration attorney who filed a lawsuit on Monday in California against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of a targeted student.

This new string of attacks on international students began over the weekend, ensnaring students at a wide swath of colleges and universities — such as Colorado State University, St. Cloud State University, North Carolina State University, Kent State University, and throughout the University of California system in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Irvine, and San Diego. Many of the ensnared students do not attend universities that have previously been targeted by the Trump administration over allegations of “antisemitism,” such as Columbia, Tufts, or Cornell. Read more - Lire plus

List of U.S. universities where international students and faculty have faced visa revocations, detentions, or deportation orders under the Trump administration

Tufts University declares support for student detained by ICE, seeks immediate release

Trump Is Trying to Deport Students Who Show Up in a ‘Criminal Records Check.’ But Many Have Never Been Convicted

Trump officials to monitor immigrants’ social media for "antisemitism"

El Salvador And The Dark Lessons of Guantanamo

CECOT, the Salvadoran slavery-prison now used for migrant renditions, reflects 2002-4-era Gitmo—with some updates

Forever Wars 07/04/2025 - BY NOW, you’re likely well aware of the Trump administration's "deportations" of migrants to El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), where torture is rampant, confinement can be indefinite, and slave labor such a feature that right-wing President Nayib Bukele posts about it. 

I have "deportation" in quotes because, by design, many if not most of those "deported" are Venezuelan, so they're not going back to their country of origin. That makes the experience of these 238 people something better understood as an extraordinary rendition. Extraordinary rendition was a feature of the George W. Bush-era CIA, involving a cooperative third country—often charming places like Bashar Assad's Syria, Moammar Gaddafi's Libya, or Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan—taking custody of detainees who were not going to get anything like a trial. They were going to get tortured. 

Those in custody, lacking the ability to contest their detention, become whoever those caging them say they are. There is a reason that the T in CECOT translates to Terrorism. A great deal of very recent history demonstrates how claiming someone is a terrorist unleashes upon them the State of Exception—and more recent history shows that more often than not, the perpetrators will get away with it. We're seeing that on display not only in El Salvador but, horrifically, in Palestine.

Via my friend Adam Serwer, 60 Minutes reports that more than 75 percent of those the Trump administration has rendered to CECOT appear to have no criminal record. They wouldn't deserve to be in a torture-enslavement detention center even if they did, but still. It's not accurate to say these are cases of mistaken identity, since mass deportation is not the kind of enterprise that is interested in drawing distinctions. The point is to assert the authority to inflict the most catastrophic treatment upon an out-group, under cover of a claim that such people are dangerous, while insisting that no lawful authority can stop it. They can be gay makeup artists, but once they pass into the custody of Trump and then Bukele, they are retconned through propaganda to be gang members, criminals, terrorists. 

It's impossible for me not to see the shadow of Guantanamo Bay in so many cases of indiscriminate arrest and transfer to a horrific, lawless prison. Long before CECOT existed, people entered into the custody of the United States military at Guantanamo because foreign intelligence agencies dumped their undesirables there, or as the result of vendettas with people who used the U.S.' bounty offers to settle scores. Ironically, Trump's earlier plan to vastly expand Guantanamo's migrant detentions has stalled. But CECOT reflects an important difference that indicates the Trump people have learned from what the Bush administration perceived as a vast judicial overreach opposing Guantanamo.

At the dawn of the War on Terror, the Bush administration established Guantanamo to be a place beyond the reach of the law. The Least Worst Place by Karen Greenberg—another friend—is a good resource on this. Various Justice and Defense Department lawyers had no problem contradicting one another when it came to Guantanamo. Guantanamo Bay could be foreign soil, beyond the reach of habeas corpus when ACLU attorneys filed claims on behalf of the men inside. And it could be American soil when it came time to immunize its military personnel from the Federal Torture Statute that governs conduct by U.S. officials overseas. Think of Guantanamo like quantum legal superpositioning. 

But starting in 2004 and culminating in 2008, federal courts—and, in a handful of major rulings, the Supreme Court—rejected Bush's assertion that those at Guantanamo possessed neither legal rights to challenge their detention nor redress to seek it in U.S. federal court. I want to be clear that judicial constraints on Guantanamo were never as robust as Bush feared and as the detainees hoped. The recognition of habeas corpus applying at Guantanamo did not actually free detainees from Guantanamo. But it did empower (again, I don't want to overstate this) what's become known as the Gitmo Bar—the defense attorneys who kept legal pressure on Bush's three successors to charge or release the detainee population. 

It's important to remember that the courts have typically deferred to the executive branch throughout the War on Terror. But once judges lost patience with Bush's argument that the courts could have no role at Guantanamo, what remained was the reality that the Guantanamo population was in U.S. custody. That meant that U.S. officers at Guantanamo would be obligated and in a position to respect the court's rulings with regard to detentions. 

CECOT solves that problem. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, rendered by the Department of Homeland Security to CECOT nearly a month ago, is the victim of what the Justice Department has acknowledged is an administrative error. But the Justice Department just as quickly asserted that his rendition can have no remedy, because Abrego Garcia is not in their custody. Then it punished the attorney who conceded Abrego Garcia's rendition represented an error. 

In this regard, CECOT is an opportunity for the Trump administration to have what the Bush administration meant Guantanamo Bay to be: a place truly beyond the reach of the law. It represents a reset to the ambitions of the first stage of the War on Terror, one that learned from the reversals of the subsequent stages. After all, no court ever injuncted the U.S. from extraordinary renditions—and we will never know basic information about those renditions, including just how many people the U.S. rendered. 

The Trump administration's claims that it has no power to deliver people like Abrego Garcia from CECOT insults your intelligence, since Trump is paying Bukele to cage the Venezuelans and more broadly the U.S. has vast amounts of other foreign-policy influence over El Salvador. Such insults will become legal facts if and only if U.S. judges accept them. 

The ACLU's Lee Gelernt tells 60 Minutes that he's going to challenge the CECOT claims in court—something that seems to take the shape of insisting deportations not be renditions—much as he did the Bush administration's claims on Guantanamo. The history of Guantanamo indicates that judicial intervention will probably not be enough to free people from CECOT. But it just as clearly shows that if left unchallenged, CECOT will swallow ever larger numbers and groups of people. "[T]his exchange with El Salvador introduces a new market sector in the globalized carceral economy," Andrew Kornfeld and Esul Burton wrote last week, "the trade of incarcerated migrants." Source

Trump administration deports more alleged gang members, avoiding Alien Enemies Act

US Supreme Court lifts order blocking deportations under Alien Enemies Act

Trump admin must ‘facilitate’ return of man erroneously deported to El Salvador, Supreme Court says

DoJ Won’t Comply With Order on Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Tattoos that will get you deported

Senators urge end of Guantanamo's use

Defendant in U.S.S. Cole Bombing Case Signs Plea Offer

Homeland Security revokes legal status for migrants who entered U.S. using CBP One app

AP 08/04/2025 - Migrants who were temporarily allowed to live in the United States by using a Biden-era online appointment app have been told to leave the country “immediately,” officials said Monday. It was unclear how many beneficiaries would be affected.

More than 900,000 people were allowed in the country using the CBP One app since January 2023. They were generally allowed to remain in the United States for two years with authorization to work under a presidential authority called parole.

“Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” the Department of Homeland Security media affairs unit said in response to questions.

Authorities confirmed termination notices were sent to CBP One beneficiaries but did not say how many. They were urged to voluntary self-deport using the same app they entered on, which has been renamed CBP Home.

“It’s time for you to abandon the United States,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote to a Honduran family that entered the U.S. at the end of last year. The Associated Press reviewed the email received Sunday.

Others shared the same email on social media platforms.

Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit organization that provides legal aid to migrants, said some who received the revocation letters are from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico.

CBP One was a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s strategy to create and expand legal pathways to enter the United States in an attempt to discourage illegal border crossings. By the end of December, 936,500 people had been allowed to enter with CBP One appointments at border crossings with Mexico. President Donald Trump ended CBP One for new entrants on his first day in office, stranding thousands in Mexico who had appointments into early February.

Trump has ended and revoked temporary status for many who benefited under Biden’s policies. Homeland Security said Monday that Biden’s use of parole authority — more than any president since it was created in 1952 — “further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history.”

Homeland Security said last month that it was revoking another form of parole for 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who flew to the country at their own expense with a financial sponsor. It ends April 24.

The Trump administration has also announced an end to Temporary Protected Status for 600,000 Venezuelans and about 500,00 Haitians, though a federal judge temporarily put that on hold, including for about 350,000 Venezuelans who had been scheduled to lose TPS on Monday. TPS is granted in 18-month increments to people already in the U.S. whose countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife. Source

ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’

Trump’s Border Czar Faces Backlash in His Hometown for Locking Up a Local Family

Top I.R.S. Officials Said to Resign After Deal to Give ICE Migrants’ Data

The Shocking Far-Right Agenda Behind the Facial Recognition Tech Used by ICE and the FBI

Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.

Mother Jones 04/2025 - One evening in March 2017, Hoan Ton-That, an Australian coder building a powerful facial recognition system, emailed his American business partners with a plan to deploy their fledgling technology. “Border patrol pitch,” the subject line read. He hoped to persuade the federal government to integrate their product with border surveillance cameras so that their newly formed company, later named Clearview AI, could use “face detection” on immigrants entering the United States.

An immigrant to the United States himself, Ton-That grew up in Melbourne and Canberra and claimed to be descended from Vietnamese royalty. At 19, he dropped out of college and, in 2007, moved to San Francisco to pursue a tech career. He later fell in with Silicon Valley neoreactionaries who embraced a far-right, technocratic vision of society. Now Ton-That and his partners wanted to use facial recognition to keep people out of the country. Certain people. Their technology would put that ideology into action.

Clearview had compiled a massive biometric database that would eventually contain billions of images the company scraped off the internet and social media without the knowledge of the platforms or their users. Its AI analyzed these images, creating a “faceprint” for every individual. The company let users run a “probe photo” against its database, and if it generated a hit, it displayed the matching images and links to the websites where they originated. This made it easy for Clearview users to further profile their targets with other information found on those webpages: religious or political affiliation, family and friends, romantic partners, sexuality. All without a search warrant or probable cause.

A diehard Donald Trump supporter, Ton-That envisioned using facial recognition to compare images of migrants crossing the border to mugshots to see if the arrivals had been previously arrested in the United States. His Border Patrol pitch also included a proposal to screen any arrival for “sentiment about the USA.” Here, Ton-That appeared to conflate support for the Republican leader with American identity, proposing to scan migrants’ social media for “posts saying ‘I hate Trump’ or ‘Trump is a puta’” and targeting anyone with an “affinity for far-left groups.” The lone example he offered was the National Council of La Raza, now called UnidosUS, one of the country’s largest Hispanic civil rights organizations.

By the end of Trump’s first presidential term, Clearview had secured funding from right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, one of Elon Musk’s earliest business partners, and signed up hundreds of law enforcement clients around the country. The company doled out free trials to hook users, urging cops to “run wild” with searches. They did. Many departments then bought licenses to access Clearview’s faceprint database.

Since Clearview’s existence first came to light in 2020, the secretive company has attracted outsize controversy for its dystopian privacy implications. Corporations like Macy’s allegedly used Clearview on shoppers, according to legal records; law enforcement has deployed it against activists and protesters; and multiple government investigations have found federal agencies’ use of the product failed to comply with privacy requirements. Many local and state law enforcement agencies now rely on Clearview as a tool in everyday policing, with almost no transparency about how they use the tech. “What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal,” the privacy commissioner of Canada said in 2021. In 2022, the ACLU settled a lawsuit with Clearview for allegedly violating an Illinois state law that prohibits unauthorized biometric harvesting. Data protection authorities in France, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands have also ruled that the company’s data collection practices are illegal. To date, they have fined Clearview around $100 million.

Clearview’s business model is based on “weaponizing our own images against us without a license, without consent, without permission,” says Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

In December, Ton-That, the face of Clearview since it was forced from the shadows, quietly stepped down as CEO and took on the role of president. In February, he abruptly resigned his new position, though he retains a board seat. When Mother Jones wrote Ton-That, who is now the chief technology officer at Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, with questions for this story, he replied: “There are inaccuracies and errors contained in these assertions. They do not merif [sic] further response.” Ton-That refused to elaborate. Clearview declined to comment.

Replacing him as co-CEOs were Richard Schwartz, a co-founder of the company and a former top aide to Rudy Giuliani, and Hal Lambert, an early Clearview investor who runs a Texas financial firm known for its “MAGA ETF”—an exchange-traded fund that screens companies for their political contributions and buys into those that vigorously back Republicans. A top Trump fundraiser who served on the president’s 2016 inaugural committee, Lambert told Forbes in February that he planned to help the company pursue “opportunities” with the new administration, citing Trump’s mass-­deportation agenda and anti-immigration policies.

Clearview is already well positioned to capitalize on Trump’s xenophobic plans. Today, one of the company’s top customers is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a relationship cemented during Joe Biden’s presidency, as the agency inked bigger deals with the startup. Under the Biden administration, ICE records show, the agency deployed Clearview widely, even as officials there charged with monitoring the technology were in the dark about how it was being used and by whom. As the agency executes Trump’s emboldened mission—“Border Czar” Tom Homan has vowed to unleash “shock and awe” against undocumented immigrants—the dragnet surveillance outlined by Ton-That during the company’s earliest years may already be underway. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.)

During Biden’s presidency, the trappings of oversight still existed. But Trump has fired many of the inspectors general who review the use of technology such as Clearview and guard against abuse. And Trump’s early actions have shown his administration has little regard for the legal, congressional, and constitutional guardrails that have constrained his predecessors.

Immigrants aren’t the only people at risk. With Trump pursuing “retribution” against his political enemies, Clearview offers a range of frightening applications. “It creates a really disturbingly powerful tool for police that can identify nearly every person at a protest or a reproductive health facility or a house of worship with just photos of those people’s faces,” says Cahn.

No federal laws regulate facial recognition, and many federal agencies have deployed Clearview for years with little accountability. Consider that the FBI—now run by Kash Patel, who has claimed FBI agents incited January 6, pledged to target journalists, and penned a book containing the names of officials he planned to settle scores with—is another major federal customer. Patel’s new deputy director, Dan Bongino, is a conspiratorial right-wing influencer who has used violent rhetoric about liberals and called for jailing Democrats. (The FBI declined to comment on its use of Clearview or on Bongino’s extremist views.)

I’ve reported on Clearview for years. This story, based on interviews with insiders and thousands of newly obtained emails, texts, and other records, including internal ICE communications, provides the fullest account to date of the extent of the company’s far-right origins and of the implementation of its facial recognition technology within the federal government’s immigration enforcement apparatus. It reveals how Ton-That, who obsessed over race, IQ, and hierarchy, solicited input from eugenicists and right-wing extremists while building Clearview, and how, from the outset, he and his associates discussed deploying the tech against immigrants, people of color, and the political left. All told, this new reporting paints a chilling portrait of an ideologically driven company whose powerful surveillance technology is now in the hands of the Trump administration, as it bulldozes democratic institutions and executes an authoritarian takeover. Read more - Lire plus

Google Is Helping the Trump Administration Deploy AI Along the Mexican Border

Civil Society Organisations Face Backlash After Trump, Musk Link USAID Grantees to ‘Terrorism’

Health-Policy Watch 25/03/2025 - Civil society organisations (CSOs) globally face investigation, restrictions and harassment in dozens of countries after US President Donald Trump claimed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was run by “radical left lunatics” and Elon Musk claimed that several grantees supported terror organisations.

This is according to a recent survey carried out by the EU System for an Enabling Environment (EU SEE), which documents the experiences of 54 organisations, and draws on information from two global surveys involving almost 1000 CSO respondents.

There have been calls for investigations of CSOs that receive US funding in nine countries including Brazil and Hungary, and increased harassment of CSOs in 13 including Peru, Paraguay and Russia. Six countries are considering restrictions on foreign funding, including Guatemala and India.

The Nigerian National Assembly has launched investigations into the activities of USAID and nonprofits in the country “following the recent statement by a US Senator that USAID funds [terrorist group] Boko-Haram in Nigeria”, according to a Nigerian CSO.

“An investigative committee set up on 20 February 2025, by the House of Representatives will focus on the activities of CSOs in the Northwestern part of the country,” the respondent said. “If not objectively carried out, the investigation may become part of an ongoing process of attack on civil society and push for stiffer regulations, a common trend which started in 2015 and continues until today.” 

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, alleged publicly that “USAID funds had been misused by journalists, independent media, and other civil society actors as part of a global money laundering operation”, according to a CSO from that country, which said his statements “are part of a broader pattern of stigmatisation and discrediting of civil society”.

“The most reported impact by far is increased criticism and stigmatisation of international funding,” according to EU SEE. Read more - Lire plus

Defending humanitarian aid in terms of national security obscures its real purpose

Under Trump and Musk, billionaires wield unprecedented influence over US national security

The Guardian 06/04/2025 - Just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched its New Glenn rocket, named for John Glenn, the Mercury astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth. Around 2am on 16 January, the 30-story rocket powered by seven engines blasted off into the Florida night from Cape Canaveral’s historic launch complex 36, which first served as a Nasa launch site in 1962.

The flight’s end was marred by a failure to bring the booster rocket back for further use, but the successful launch and orbit still marked a watershed moment for Blue Origin in its bid to compete with SpaceX, the company owned by Elon Musk, for dominance over American spy satellite operations. During the Trump administration, it is likely that both companies will play significant roles in placing spy satellites into Earth orbit, which could mean that the United States intelligence community will be beholden to both Bezos and Musk to handle the single most complex and expensive endeavor in modern espionage.

In fact, Musk and Bezos are in a position during the Trump administration to personally exert significant influence over the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the rest of the US national security apparatus. The two pro-Trump billionaires have already been awarded massive contracts with the US intelligence community, including some that predate Trump’s first term in office.

The emergence of Musk, Bezos and a handful of other pro-Trump billionaires as key players in US intelligence marks a radical change in US spy operations, which have traditionally been controlled by career government officials working closely with a few longstanding defense and intelligence contractors, giant corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX and Northrop Grumman that are adept at lobbying both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. But with Musk, Bezos and other pro-Trump Silicon Valley figures gaining an edge through their personal ties to Trump, civil servants in the intelligence community may be reluctant to deny them ever-larger contracts, especially since Trump has already fired several inspectors general who investigated Musk’s businesses in other areas of the government.

Anticipating big rewards, Musk is reportedly joining forces with other pro-Trump billionaires to try to carve up the defense and intelligence business. SpaceX is working with Palantir, a hi-tech data analytics intelligence contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of the most prominent rightwing figures in Silicon Valley; Anduril, a new defense contractor founded by 32-year-old pro-Trump tech bro Palmer Luckey; and several other Silicon Valley firms to form a consortium geared towards loosening the grip of the defense industry’s traditional players.

Tech leaders eager to get into intelligence contracting have long complained that the business has become so consolidated around a few big players that it is nearly impossible for outsiders to compete, leading to a lack of innovation. “Consolidation bred conformity,” argued Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir, in a widely read public memo, The Defense Reformation.

Swapping one oligarchy for another

It is hard to separate Silicon Valley’s calls for breaking up the oligarchy now controlling the defense and intelligence business from the eagerness of pro-Trump tech bros to grab as much power and cash as possible while creating a new oligarchy of their own. Read more - Lire plus

12 'terrorists' killed in drone strikes by Pakistani forces, nine civilian deaths reported

The Hindu 30/03/2025 - Twelve terrorists have been killed, while nine civilians lost their lives when security forces conducted drone attacks on militant hideouts in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

The "counter-terrorism operation" on Saturday (March 29, 2025) morning targeted terrorists' hideouts in the remote hilltop area of Katlang in the Mardan district, a provincial government statement said.

Rescue 1122 spokesman Muhammad Abbas told PTI they shifted seven men and two women to Mardan Medical Complex from a protest site on the Mardan-Swat Motorway on the instructions of the district deputy commissioner.

The spokesman said the bodies were beyond recognition and were badly mutilated. Locals from the area claimed those killed were shepherds from Swat district. The spokesman said locals in protest placed the bodies on the motorway and closed it for a few hours. It was, however, reopened after negotiations. The spokesman said the bodies after negotiations were handed over to Rescue Service 1122 for DNA tests.

Another official said 12 terrorists were killed during the operation. Mohsin Baqir, a militant with a bounty of PKR 7 million on his head, and his second-in-command Abbas, with a bounty of PKR 5 million, were killed in the operation. The statement issued on Saturday said the operation was based on "credible intelligence" about armed militants using the location as a hideout and transit point.

Twelve terrorists have been killed, while nine civilians lost their lives when security forces conducted drone attacks on militant hideouts in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

The "counter-terrorism operation" on Saturday (March 29, 2025) morning targeted terrorists' hideouts in the remote hilltop area of Katlang in the Mardan district, a provincial government statement said.

Rescue 1122 spokesman Muhammad Abbas told PTI they shifted seven men and two women to Mardan Medical Complex from a protest site on the Mardan-Swat Motorway on the instructions of the district deputy commissioner.

The spokesman said the bodies were beyond recognition and were badly mutilated. Locals from the area claimed those killed were shepherds from Swat district.

The spokesman said locals in protest placed the bodies on the motorway and closed it for a few hours. It was, however, reopened after negotiations. The spokesman said the bodies after negotiations were handed over to Rescue Service 1122 for DNA tests.

Another official said 12 terrorists were killed during the operation. Mohsin Baqir, a militant with a bounty of PKR 7 million on his head, and his second-in-command Abbas, with a bounty of PKR 5 million, were killed in the operation.

The statement issued on Saturday said the operation was based on "credible intelligence" about armed militants using the location as a hideout and transit point. It said "several high-value targets linked to ongoing militant activities in the region" were killed in the operation.

"Unfortunately, subsequent reports have confirmed the presence of non-combatants, including women and children, at the periphery of the target zone, resulting in tragic civilian casualties," the statement said.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur said the death of civilians during the operation was highly condemnable and tragic.

Terming it an "excruciating and regrettable development", the statement said every effort was made to avoid any "collateral damage". "However, the complex terrain, the deliberate tactics of militants to embed within civilian populations, and the fog of war can sometimes lead to unintended consequences," it added. Read more - Lire plus

Trump administration weighs drone strikes on Mexican cartels

This is Repression: Annual State of Protest UK Report 2024

Article 11 & Netpol 03/2025 - Gathered together, we hope that this “State of Protest” report captures a twelve-month period when a crackdown on freedom of assembly in England and Wales came into increasingly sharp contrast with the British government’s professed values of “individual liberty” and “the rule of law”. This report draws on the previous in-depth work by the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), funded by the Article 11 Trust, on the policing of these protests. [...]

Framing Palestine solidarity as ‘terrorism’

During 2024, the police appear to have grown increasingly willing to use counterterrorism powers against pro-Palestine demonstrators. Matt Jukes, the national head of Counter Terrorism Policing, reported that between October 2023 and October 2024 there had been over 80 arrests for terrorism offences directly related to the war in Gaza, stating that “roughly half of these relate to protest activity”. He also said there had been a 7% increase from the previous year in referrals to Prevent, the state’s highly controversial “anti-radicalisation” programme. Arrests for alleged terrorism offences at protest marches have mainly been conducted under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which criminalises “inviting support for, or expressing an opinion or belief, that is supportive of a proscribed organisation”. These powers have been used against anyone the police consider is expressing support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, who were added to the list of proscribed terrorist organisations in 2001.

The legislation is extremely vaguely worded and police officers have interpreted it in the broadest possible terms. For example, section 13 of the Terrorism Act criminalises anyone who wears an item of clothing, or displays an article that could “arouse reasonable suspicion that he [sic] is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”. As Netpol’s “In Our Millions” report shows, the broad interpretation of police as to what constitutes “glorifying” proscribed ‘terrorist’ organisations has resulted in people being unpredictably and inconsistently arrested for little more than wearing particular colours or styles of clothing, or displaying writing in Arabic on placards, banners and clothing. In February 2024, two women charged with wearing images of paragliders on stickers on their clothing were convicted under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. It was argued that the stickers could be a reference to the use of paragliders by Hamas to carry out bombings, even though the trial judge commented that there was “no evidence that any of these defendants are supporters of Hamas, or were seeking to show support for them.” Both received a 12-month conditional discharge. In January 2024, three people were arrested under section 13 at a London march for handing out leaflets stating ‘victory to the Palestinian people’s just war of national liberation’. Yet these leaflets had been given out at every previous march, without a warning or other reaction from the police.

In October 2024 following another march in central London, after Israel’s regional war had expanded into Lebanon, government ministers were reported offering support for police action against protesters who show support for Hezbollah, which was fully proscribed in 2019. The evidence for this was weak: it came after one man was arrested for allegedly shouting support for the organisation. In November 2024 one of the founders of the Jewish Network for Palestine, Professor Haim Bresheeth, a former Israeli soldier and the son of Holocaust survivors, was arrested in London “on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation” at a weekly protest outside the residence of the Israeli ambassador in London. This appears to relate to comments he made suggesting Israel “cannot win against Hamas” – a viewpoint shared only days earlier by the world’s oldest defence think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute. Bresheeth was released under investigation.

To most people, there is a world of difference between actively seeking to recruit people to an armed militia and saying “resistance is not terrorism” or expressing an opinion as to whether Israel is capable of defeating Hamas. Yet apparently no such precision exists under the Terrorism Act. These cases also demonstrate a haphazard and uneven approach to applying anti-terror laws, with the police applying great discretion as to who is targeted and what is criminalised. Read more - Lire plus

George Monbiot: Vilified, arrested, held incommunicado: that’s the price of protest in Britain today

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

UK police chiefs draw up plans for national counter-terrorism force

People-smuggling gangs should be treated like terrorists, Starmer to tell global summit

OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES

Accountability

Responsabilisation

Fatal error: 20 years on, the Met still has questions to answer about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. A new drama investigates the tragedy

Attacks on dissent

Attaques contre la dissidence

The hazardous machinations of Canada’s mining elite

Milei’s Fire Sale of the Patagonia and the Mapuche people’s fight for life

Criminalization of dissent

Criminalisation de la dissidence

Un candidat vert aux élections fédérales pourrait faire face à la prison

Sri Lankan police detain youth under anti-terrorist laws for opposing Gaza genocide

Encryption

Chiffrement

Mozilla survey on global encryption

Freedom of expression

Liberté d'expression

Bubble Zone Bylaws: CCLA Writes to Toronto City Council to Raise Charter Concerns

Ottawa protest 'bubble' bylaw may spark legal challenge, city staff warn

UJFP : Solidarité avec les associations et les militant·es poursuivi·es pour leur soutien au peuple palestinien!

Webinar: Freedom of Expression, Public Engagement, Democracy: What Can We Expect for the Next Ten Years?

Freedom of religion

Liberté de religion

Ligue des droits et libertés: Un pas de recul s’impose avec le projet de loi 84

Freedom of the press

Liberté de la presse

Turkey says Swedish journalist detained on terror charges and for ‘insulting the president’

Three Things Reporters Would Ask Poilievre. If They Could

AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists

Press Coalition Challenges Trump’s Executive Order Threatening Press Freedom and Legal Representation

Migrant and refugee rights

Droits des migrant.es et des réfugié.es

Canadian detained for 11 days by U.S. immigration speaks out for others stuck in limbo

What To Do If Border Police Ask To Search Your Phone

Police

Ligue des droits et libertés : Trois décès aux mains de la police les 29 et 30 mars – Les enquêtes de la police sur la police continuent

Privacy and surveillance

Vie privée et surveillance

Italian government approved use of spyware on members of refugee NGO, MPs told

In Turkey, new technologies reinforce repression

Podcast: Is your phone listening to you?

Online Tracking is Out of Control—Privacy Badger Can Help You Fight Back

Miscellaneous

Divers

Webinar: More Militarism is Not the Answer

NATO, more militarism no defence against US expansionists

Attacks on NGOs in the European Parliament – 570+ Organisations Join Forces to Defend Civil Society

Georgia: Drop Repressive ‘Foreign Agents’ Bill

Luigi Mangione says government violated due process, should not be allowed to seek death penalty

Global: Recorded executions hit their highest figure since 2015

Trump purges national security team after meeting conspiracist

ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC

Canada: Abolish rights-violating terrorist entities list!

On October 15, 2024, the Canadian government placed the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network on Canada’s terrorist entities list. While ostensibly a tool to protect the safety and security of people in Canada and internationally, the list is an arbitrary political tool that undermines freedom of association, of expression and due process in the courts. Its effectiveness as a national security tool has never been demonstrated in a manner that justifies its use.

Due to these deep flaws, and more, the ICLMG has consistently called for the list to be abolished since the Canadian coalition’s founding in 2002. Please join us in urging the Canadian government to abolish the rights-violating terrorist entities list once and for all. Thank you!

Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Le Canada doit abolir la liste des entités terroristes! & partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

CSIS isn't above the law!

In recent years, at least three court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.



Send a message to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable, and for parliament to support Bill C-331, An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (duty of candour). Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.

Canada must protect Hassan Diab!

Send an email using ICLMG’s one-click tool and share widely!

Letter in English + Lettre en français

Sign and share the LeadNow petitions to protect Hassan from further injustice

Petition in English + Pétition en français

For more information on the case of Hassan Diab, read our webcomic, watch our animated version of the comic, or visit justiceforhassandiab.org.

Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now!

On January 20, 2023, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown ruled that Canada must repatriate Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria. On February 6, 2023, the Canadian government filed an appeal and asked that the Brown ruling be set aside and placed on hold while the appeal plays out. This is unacceptable. 

Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts, including bombing by Turkey’s military. United Nations officials have even found that the conditions faced by Canadians in prison are akin to torture. Please click below to urge the federal government to repatriate all Canadians illegally & arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay.

Please share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

21 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now!

December 10, 2023 - ironically Human Rights Day - marked the 21st "anniversary" of the arrest of Mohamed Harkat under Canada's rights-violating security certificate regime. For Mr. Harkat, it's been two decades of fighting deportation to torture, 16 years of harassment and intrusive surveillance, arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, secret trials, PTSD: enough is enough! We call for justice for Moe Harkat now! Watch - Visionnez

TAKE ACTION: Stop Moe Harkat's deportation to torture!

ACTION: Arrêtez la déportation vers la torture de Mohamed Harkat!

Reform Canada's extradition law now!

Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.



Click below to send a message to urge Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!

Version française: Le Canada doit réformer la loi sur l'extradition! + Partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Phone PM Justin Trudeau

TAKE ACTION: Justice for Hassan Diab!

Just Peace Advocates' action: Write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau: Say “No" to a second extradition of Hassan Diab

Canada must protect encryption!

Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.



Click below to send a message to urge Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!

Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir

Protect our rights from facial recognition!

Facial recognition surveillance is invasive and inaccurate. This unregulated tech poses a threat to the fundamental rights of people across Canada. Federal intelligence agencies refuse to disclose whether they use facial recognition technology. The RCMP has admitted (after lying about it) to using facial recognition for 18 years without regulation, let alone a public debate regarding whether it should have been allowed in the first place. Send a message to Prime Minister Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair calling for a ban now.

Thanks to the support of our members and donors in the second half of 2024 we have been able to work on the following:

• Bill C-20, the Public Complaints and Review Commission Act - which has been adopted and will finally create an independent watchdog for CBSA
• Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 and the very problematic Artificial Intelligence and Data Act
• Bill C-63: The concerning Online Harms Act
• Bill C-70: The new and highly controversial Foreign Interference law
• Bill C-353: The Foreign Hostage Takers Accountability Act
• Palestine and the right to dissent
• Canada’s terrorist entities list
• Monitoring the implementation and review of the authorization regime for international assistance to vulnerable populations in areas controlled by “terrorist” groups
• Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
• Repatriation of all Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
• Justice for Dr Hassan Diab
• Mohamed Harkat & Security certificates
• Work with the international Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
• The UN Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) Canada assessment
• The UN Cybersecurity Treaty & the EU AI Convention

What we have planned for 2025!

The coming year will present many challenges, old and new. Much of our successes from this past year will continue to need follow-up, as we track the establishment of the new CBSA review body, and push back against new foreign interference laws and attempts to silence protest. There are also the challenges we will face with the incoming US government, which is already playing out its promises to increase the securitization of the US-Canada border with more police, drones and facial recognition surveillance. This will place the rights of all travellers, but especially asylum seekers searching for protection and better living conditions, at risk.

We’ll also have our own election in Canada this year, and ICLMG will be working to both make sure the public is aware of the parties’ track records on civil liberties and national security, as well as to secure commitments to protect our rights from candidates and the new government once it is in office.

We will continue our work on these issues and much more in the next year:

• Pressuring lawmakers and officials to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security as well as opposing the discourse of “countering terrorism” to repress dissent, such as protests in support of Palestinian rights and lives
• Co-creating a mechanism to monitor how the new Countering Foreign Interference law is used, as well as continue pushing back against xenophobic fear-mongering
• Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for good privacy law reform
• Addressing the lack of regulation on the use of AI in national security, including proposed exemptions for national security agencies
• Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
• Fighting for Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada’s extradition law
• Monitoring the implementation of the authorization regime for organizations that provide international assistance to vulnerable populations in areas controlled by “terrorist” groups
• Pushing back on the false narrative depicting migrants and refugees as security risks, and advocating for rights protection and accountability for border agencies, including by monitoring the creation of a new CBSA and RCMP watchdog and complaint body
• The return of the rest of the Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
• The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities
• Greater accountability and transparency for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
• Advocating for the repeal of the terrorist entities list, the Canadian No Fly List, and for putting a stop to the use of the US No Fly List by air carriers in Canada
• Keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest
• And much more! Read more - Lire plus

Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG.