Authoritarian governments, including the Trump administration, are reorienting AI safety provisions away from protecting the public toward coercing support for the regime.
Hundreds of far-right activists gathered in Portugal on Saturday for the annual “Remigration Summit” advocating for the mass deportation of immigrants. Former U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino and white nationalist leader Jared Taylor were VIP guests alongside elected officials from Germany and Spain’s far-right parties. In an interview ahead of the event, Bovino cited Nazi Germany’s lead general, Erwin Rommel, as an inspirational figure.
“Remigration is basically the policy response to the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory,” says Charles R. Davis, a journalist based in Vienna, Austria. Davis explains “great replacement” as a theory that there is a “global elite plot, typically by Jews,” to replace white people in Europe and North America with immigrants. “It’s an argument for mass deportations,” not just of recently arrived immigrants, but of “those who were allowed in over the last hundred years who were not really, as they see it, European or American,” says Davis. “This is basically rooted in Nazi ideology.”
Patience is a virtue that researchers have linked to many parts of well-being. But it’s also something that needs a bit of practice and training – and can be undermined by instant, easy gratification.
Hundreds of immigrants detained at the ICE jail known as Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, have been on a hunger and labor strike for nearly two weeks. They are protesting the conditions at the jail, including spoiled food that has had maggots in it, overcrowding and inadequate medical care. Detainees are also forced to work for around $1 per day. In retaliation against the strike, guards at Delaney Hall have reportedly beaten participants, and family visitation was temporarily suspended. The strikers are demanding their release from the ICE jail and that the most vulnerable populations are freed first.
Detainees’ family members, along with immigration advocates and anti-ICE protesters, have been rallying outside Delaney Hall since the strike began. Democracy Now!’s María Taracena was outside Delaney on Tuesday. She spoke to a man who had just been released from detention, a community organizer, a lawyer and family members who were waiting to visit their loved ones inside the ICE jail.
Police have erected barricades half a mile around Delaney Hall, “making it more and more difficult to go and visit those who are on labor and hunger strike,” says Natalie, a New Jersey volunteer with the mutual aid group Eyes on ICE. “I was trying to see my father. He recently got put in,” says the daughter of a man being held in Delaney Hall. She is struggling to find legal support for her father. “He does not deserve to go to another country when he belongs in this one.”