China to host Hamas, Fatah for Palestinian unity talks

WASHINGTON: Ten “high-threat illegal aliens” have arrived at Guantanamo and are being held at the notorious American base in Cuba, the Pentagon said Wednesday, without providing details on their alleged offenses.
President Donald Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” at the base, which is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but which also has a history of being used to hold migrants.
“These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination,” it said.
Officials said Tuesday that flights to the base had started, as part of what the Trump administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration that has also included immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.
The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.
The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed.
Conditions there have prompted outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety.”

NEW YORK: A federal judge in Manhattan said the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art must face a lawsuit claiming it did nothing to help Jewish students who locked themselves in a library for protection from pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
US District Judge John Cronan ruled on Wednesday that the private college must face claims it violated federal and New York civil rights laws by subjecting Jewish students to “severe and pervasive” antisemitic abuse that did not qualify as constitutionally protected speech.
Cronan, appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, also said the 10 plaintiffs can seek punitive damages and an injunction to end what they called an antisemitic, anti-Israel campus environment. The judge dismissed some other claims.
Cooper Union and its lawyers did not immediately respond to request for comment. Lawyers for the students had no immediate comment.
Many US colleges and universities have faced lawsuits claiming they encouraged or permitted antisemitism after Hamas fighters attacked Israel in October, 2023, precipitating an Israeli assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Some have settled, including Harvard University last month and New York University last July.
Cronan ruled one week after Trump issued an executive order to push colleges to report possible antisemitic conduct by foreign students, to help authorities “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account” any perpetrators.
Jewish students said that at the Oct. 25, 2023 Cooper Union rally, demonstrators stormed past security guards and banged loudly on the library’s doors and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, making hateful chants and carrying antisemitic signs.
The students said school administrators did nothing during the 20-minute ordeal, and told law enforcement to back off even as the school’s president left the building through a back door.
They said Cooper Union’s fostering of a hostile educational environment violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funds recipients from allowing discrimination based on race, religion and national origin.
Some demonstrators told media at the time of the protest they were not targeting individual students, and were not engaged in antisemitism.
Cooper Union argued that the demonstrators engaged in political speech protected by the First Amendment, and there was no proof it was deliberately indifferent to the harassment.
But the judge said he was “dismayed” by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the students could have hidden elsewhere or left, and that it did enough by locking the library doors.
“These events took place in 2023 — not 1943 — and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment,” Cronan wrote.
“The physically threatening or humiliating conduct that the complaint alleges Jewish students in the library experienced is entirely outside the ambit of the free speech clause,” he added.