Mexico has launched a massive deployment of 10,000 troops to cities and towns on the border with the United States. Videos and photos posted on social media by Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) showed military and National Guard troops lined up boarding transport planes and rows of army trucks rolling out in the predawn darkness Feb. 4 from bases in Mexico City, Tlaxcala and other cities. Large contingents were also mobilized to Mexico's southern border in the Yucatan. The response—dubbed "Operativo Frontera Norte"—is part of an agreement reached the previous day between US President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum postponing trade tariff threats for a month. (El Paso Times, Peninsula360)

In Episode 263 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the moves by the unconstitutional Trump regime to consolidate a dictatorship over the United States—attempting to seize autocratic control over the bureaucracy, and (in a case of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism) weaponizing concern with anti-Semitism to suppress free speech while institutionalizing indifference to (and consciously enflaming) all other forms of racism. And this as Elon Musk (a private-sector oligarch given extra-legal power over government functions) tells a rally of the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland that Germany has "too much of a focus on past guilt." It took Hitler mere weeks to establish a dictatorship after coming to power, whereas with Mussolini it took some three years. We shall soon find out how long it will take in the United States—unless the country can find the wherewithal to resist.

President Trump has ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed facility to hold migrants at the notorious US naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his mass deportation campaign. The US base has been used to house terrorism suspects since 2002, becoming synonymous with torture and unlawful imprisonment. The US has secretively detained refugees and migrants intercepted at sea at Guantánamo Bay for decades, but the facility has not previously been used for people apprehended on US soil or at this scale.

Five Quaker groups filed a lawsuit Jan. 26 to stop immigration agents from conducting raids on houses of worship. The complaint alleges that the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy that allows Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to conduct searches and arrests at schools and religious institutions violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a video released on social media Jan. 28 she has been placed under investigation by the Prosecutor's Office over her government's surprise release of a Libyan national who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Italian police arrested Osama Najim, the head of the Tripoli government's Judicial Police, in the city of Turin nine days earlier. Najim, popularly known as "Almasri," serves as director of a network of detention centers where systematic abuse and human rights violations have been repeatedly documented in a reports by the UN Human Rights Council. Mediterranea Saving Humans NGO stated that the arrest "came after years of complaints and testimonies from victims, which were sent to the International Criminal Court." Yet Najim was released after just one day, and arrived at Tripoli International Airport on Jan. 21. Queried about the release, Italian authorities cited "procedural irregularities" in his arrest. However, media commentators have widely pointed to Rome's arrangements with Tripoli to block migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy's shores.

During his first days back in office, Donald Trump rapidly started implementing his hardline migration agenda, including by declaring a state of emergency at the US southern border. The move allows his administration to access billions of dollars to expand the building of a border wall and to deploy the military and national guard to the area. Around 1,500 active duty soldiers are already being deployed. Trump also reinstated the controversial "Remain in Mexico" program from his first administration. This policy, which requires people to wait for asylum appointments in Mexico, helped to create a now-perennial humanitarian crisis in northern Mexico. The Trump administration has also shut down CBP One—a cell phone app for scheduling asylum appointments—leaving thousands of people stranded in Mexico, and suspended the US refugee resettlement program, as well as cancelling travel plans for refugees who had already been approved to enter the country. Trump's promised mass deportation of millions of undocumented people has yet to get underway, but his administration has begun laying the groundwork for expanded immigration raids—potentially including on schools, churches, and hospitals—and has threatened to prosecute any local officials who don't comply.

Attorneys general from 22 states filed a lawsuit Jan. 21 challenging US President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. Central to the lawsuit is the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States..." The clause was interpreted by the Supreme Court in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark as granting citizenship to all babies born in the country. The US follows the jus soli (right of the soil) principle, conferring citizenship based on birth within the country's territory, as opposed to the jus sanguinis (right of blood) principle, which confers citizenship based on whether at least one parent is a citizen. Trump's order would end birthright citizenship for babies born in the US to parents who entered the country illegally or temporarily.

The Peshawar High Court issued an interim order on Jan. 10 preventing the forced repatriation of around 150 Afghan singers and musicians who fled to Pakistan after the Taliban's return to power in 2021. Justice Wiqar Ahmad, who presided over the case, instructed the government to issue a decision on the musicians' asylum applications within two months. The court said that if the asylum claims are not resolved within 60 days, the interior ministry should grant permission for the petitioners to stay for a period sufficient to reach a final decision. The court also allowed the musicians to apply to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to process their asylum claims.