Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ sweeping immigration crackdown, a lack of European involvement in Russia-Ukraine peace talks, and India reversing its cybersecurity app mandate.
‘We Don’t Want Them’
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will suspend all immigration applications for people from 19 “high-risk” countries, effective immediately. Within 90 days, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must draft a prioritized list of immigrants for review and, if necessary, removal—including those seeking green card requests or citizenship applications.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ sweeping immigration crackdown, a lack of European involvement in Russia-Ukraine peace talks, and India reversing its cybersecurity app mandate.
‘We Don’t Want Them’
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will suspend all immigration applications for people from 19 “high-risk” countries, effective immediately. Within 90 days, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must draft a prioritized list of immigrants for review and, if necessary, removal—including those seeking green card requests or citizenship applications.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a sweeping travel ban in June that barred nationals from 12 countries (Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) from entering the United States and placed restrictions on nationals from seven others (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela).
“We don’t want them,” Trump said at the time, citing national security concerns. Many of these nations have some of the world’s poorest economies and suffer unstable governments.
At the time, no action was taken against immigrants already in the United States. But with Tuesday’s new mandate, all immigrants from these countries will now face greater scrutiny—even if they arrived before the travel ban was in place.
USCIS’s order is the latest U.S. crackdown on immigration following last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., one of whom was killed. The suspect, who has pleaded not guilty to murder, was an Afghan national who entered the United States legally during the Biden administration and was granted asylum in April, during Trump’s second term. In response, Washington announced that it would prioritize the deportation of Afghan citizens who were previously ordered to leave the country.
Also last week, USCIS stated that it would reexamine green card applications for people from countries “of concern,” pause all asylum requests, and halt visas for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces during the Afghanistan War. Such pauses could affect more than 1.5 million people with pending asylum applications and another 50,000 individuals who received asylum grants during former U.S. President Joe Biden’s term.
“Nothing is off the table until every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said on Monday.
Critics have pointed to Trump’s sweeping immigration measures as evidence of the administration’s xenophobic policies and rhetoric. On Tuesday, Trump delivered a tirade against Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage” and insulting U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia. Somalia is one of the countries facing a full travel ban and is affected by the USCIS order.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said during a televised cabinet meeting. “Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Rubio snubs the alliance. NATO foreign ministers gathered in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss threats to European security—with one notable absence. For what is likely the first time in 22 years, the United States’ top diplomat did not attend the ministerial meeting. Although NATO chief Mark Rutte maintained that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was still “very much involved” in the proceedings, his empty chair highlighted how Washington is not relying on its European partners to negotiate a peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war, much to the chagrin of Kyiv’s European allies.
The White House blindsided Europe last month by proposing a 28-point peace plan without Ukrainian input. Since then, a flurry of U.S. diplomacy—from a meeting in Florida with Ukrainian negotiators to talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin—have failed to include a European delegation. “For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kalla said last month.
Yet as of now, such a plan remains out of reach. On Wednesday, Moscow said it had accepted some of Washington’s proposals but remained opposed to several others. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov did not specify which elements were under discussion, though he confirmed that high-level talks on Tuesday stretched into early Wednesday morning. Previously, Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede some of its territory to Moscow, limit its military, and pledge not to join NATO—all deemed red lines by Kyiv.
Tech about-face. New Delhi scrapped a mandate on Wednesday requiring all phones made for users in India to preinstall a government app within 90 days. The app, called Sanchar Saathi, was intended to “identify and report acts that may endanger telecom cybersecurity.” But after manufacturers including Apple and Samsung announced on Tuesday that they would resist the order, Indian authorities were forced to issue an about-face.
India informed several major telecommunications companies of the required software update last week and formally confirmed the mandate on Monday. But the announcement quickly sparked condemnation, with opposition leaders and tech companies warning of privacy concerns.
Sanchar Saathi has the ability to track a phone’s location, and digital advocacy groups have suggested that it could be used for mass surveillance. Indian Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia tried to dismiss these concerns, saying, “Snooping is neither possible nor will it happen with the Sanchar Saathi safety app.” But government reassurances were ultimately not enough to appease Big Tech.
“This is a welcome development,” the Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian digital rights advocacy group, wrote on X. “For now, we should treat this as cautious optimism, not closure, until the formal legal direction is published and independently confirmed.”
Hong Kong’s crackdown. The death toll from last week’s devastating high-rise apartment fire in Hong Kong has risen to 159 people, police said on Wednesday, with another 31 individuals still unaccounted for. Twenty-one people have been arrested so far on suspicion of manslaughter or making false statements; however, none of these individuals are government officials.
Several residents of Hong Kong have turned to social media to demand more accountability. In response, local authorities have cracked down on free expression, arresting at least two citizens, and Beijing’s national security office has accused “hostile foreign forces” of using anti-China sentiment to exploit the tragedy. China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 to crush political dissent.
“The city’s response to the fire has confirmed Hong Kongers’ fears that the city’s political culture is now indistinguishable from that of the mainland,” FP’s James Palmer wrote in China Brief this week, pointing to how Hong Kong’s actions have mirrored Chinese practices of censoring coverage, detaining critics, and relying on scapegoats.
Odds and Ends
In the 1983 film OctopussyJames Bond uses his deft spy skills to covertly swap a priceless Fabergé egg for a fake replica. Last month, a New Zealand resident took a slightly different approach. According to police on Wednesday, a 23-year-old man stole an ornate Fabergé octopus pendant from Auckland’s Partridge Jewelers … by eating it. The roughly 3-inch-tall golden egg—encrusted with 183 diamonds and two sapphires—encases an 18-karat, diamond-adorned gold octopus, in an homage to the classic movie’s antagonist. Now, though, the egg rests in the stomach of a suspected thief; that is, until nature takes its course.
