Migration

Investigative journalist Lydia Emmanouilidou examines how AI and surveillance technologies, such as facial recognition, drones, surveillance towers, and phone data extraction, are deployed at borders like the US-Mexico and EU-Greece frontiers, as well as in Greek refugee camps, to monitor and control migrants and refugees. She highlights their dual use for claimed search-and-rescue efforts and securitization, but reveals evidence of pushbacks, rights violations, biases against non-white individuals, and deadly detours forced on migrants, contradicting official humane narratives. Emmanouilidou critiques the lack of transparency, GDPR non-compliance, profiteering by companies like Israeli firms Elbit and Octopus, and the chilling effects on humanitarian aid and asylum seekers' lives.

Board members of the South Texas Builders Association say intensified ICE raids on construction sites under Trump’s second term have created a construction crisis by removing thousands of immigrant workers from the labor force. More than 9,100 immigrants have been arrested in South Texas (45,000 statewide), slowing projects from roughly six months to eight to twelve months and forcing builders to seek extensions on loans amid severe labor shortages. Economists and the Economic Policy Institute note that falling immigration is one factor in Texas’ stalled 2025 job growth, even though immigrants account for a disproportionately large share of U.S. economic output, prompting contractors to press officials in Austin and Washington for policy changes while trying to train new workers themselves.

Selon plusieurs ONG, la tempête Harry, qui a frappé la Méditerranée centrale et les côtes italiennes du 19 au 21 janvier, aurait provoqué la disparition d’environ 1 000 migrants, bien au-delà des 380 cas initialement avancés par les gardes-côtes italiens. Les canots partis principalement de la région de Sfax en Tunisie auraient été pris dans des vagues jusqu’à 16 mètres et des vents violents, et de nombreux convois entiers n’ont jamais regagné la côte, laissant des centaines de familles sans nouvelles de leurs proches. Quelques survivants et corps ont été retrouvés (notamment un homme de Sierra Leone agrippé à une épave et le corps d’une femme repêché par l’Ocean Viking), renforçant la crainte qu’il s’agisse de l’une des plus grandes tragédies migratoires récentes en Méditerranée centrale.