Category: 2. World

In a quiet, leafy suburb of Toronto, a 30-year-old Afghan woman spends most afternoons on the phone, hoping she can reach her two younger siblings and father.

They are not in Afghanistan, but instead just miles away, across the border in the US, held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.

The three have been there in crowded cells for months, stuck in what their lawyers say is a bureaucratic limbo between Canada and the US.

They are eligible for asylum in Canada because they have immediate relatives who are legal refugees in the country, but can only file their claim at the land border – and US officials insist that they will only be released if they enter Canada by air, which they can’t do without a visa, their US lawyer told the BBC.

That visa application is currently under review and they remain stuck, currently unable to make a claim in Canada and facing deportation from the US.

From her home near Toronto, “Asal” says she has tried everything to get them released. The BBC is using an alias because her family belongs to an ethnic and religious minority group facing persecution in Afghanistan.

She has hired attorneys in both countries to press their case and even offered to cover the costs of ICE agents escorting them to the Canada-US border, to no avail.

The family’s case illustrates how some asylum seekers have been caught in rapidly changing policies under the Trump administration, their lawyers and experts say. It also raises questions about whether Canada has a responsibility to expedite entry for people in ICE detention who have ties to that country.

In the meantime, Asal’s family members could be sent back to Afghanistan or a third country not of their choosing – “the scariest move of all”, argues their American lawyer Jodi Goodwin. That option “puts them at risk of being sent to God knows where, with no assurances of protection,” she said.

The father had worked with US troops as a contractor, Asal said, making him a potential target for the Taliban if deported back to Afghanistan.

For the last eight months, Ms Goodwin has been working to stop US authorities from sending the family to their native country.

Meanwhile, their lawyers in Canada have been pressing authorities to grant the visas they need to get on a plane. Under an immigration pact between Canada and the US – the Safe Third Country Agreement – migrants without a visa must claim asylum at a land border crossing.

Asal speaks with her detained family when she can. ICE allows online “visitations”, and she often gets through to her 18-year-old sister.

On a recent call, made using an iPad that she shares with around 80 other cellmates, her sister offered details of her daily life – her struggle to get a good night’s rest, her habit of doing the laundry just to keep busy – before she bursts into tears.

In Canadian legal filings shared with the BBC, she states that she has been “shocked” by the conditions in ICE detention.

“Every aspect of our life is controlled, even though we are not criminals,” she said.

She describes being strip searched, served “nearly inedible” food and how inmates who refuse to eat are threatened with “solitary confinement”.

The BBC sought comment from ICE. Administration officials have previously defended reports of poor conditions in migrant detention facilities in the US as false.

Asal and other family say they struggle to get information about the well-being of those detained, including the youngest brother who was admitted to hospital for 10 days due to seizures and who is now back in ICE detention.

The first part of the family, which included Asal and two siblings, arrived in Canada in February 2023, she told the BBC.

It was their preferred destination after reluctantly fleeing Afghanistan as violence rapidly escalated after the Taliban took over.

They trekked to Iran and from there to Brazil then up to the US, where they were held by ICE for four days before heading to the northern border and crossing into Canada via Roxham Road, at the time a well-travelled but unofficial crossing between New York state and Quebec. Once in Canada, they successfully filed for asylum.

“It is safe. There is security, and the community is good,” Asal said.

In August 2024, more family members were able to leave Afghanistan and arrived in Canada following a similar path.

But by the time the final group – her mother and father, and her three siblings – made the trip, politics in North America had shifted.

Roxham Road – that unofficial route for thousands of asylum seekers entering Canada between 2017 and 2023 – had been closed, and the US was struggling to deal with a surge of migrants at its southern border.

After unsuccessfully trying legal options to enter the US from Mexico, in December Asal’s family remaining members paid to be smuggled across the border, where they then surrendered to authorities.

In February, Asal’s mother and one of her sisters were released shortly after Trump took office and signed an executive order expanding the detention and deportation of migrants, and made their way to Canada.

But the remaining three are still in ICE custody, with US authorities refusing to release them under the new rules, Ms Goodwin says.

The fact they weren’t released along with the others in February came down to bad timing.

Ms Goodwin says an official told her “they just didn’t get to their paperwork in time”.

In response to questions from the BBC about the family’s case, a senior official with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says, “ICE would happily return them to their origin country” should they request a voluntary departure.

They add that the US “is NOT going to pass off illegal aliens seeking asylum from our country to Canada and vice versa. This is part of being good neighbors and partners”.

Adam Sadinsky, one of the family’s Canadian lawyers along with Toronto-based Maureen Silcoff, said Canada has an opportunity to allow this family to be reunited.

“We don’t want Canada to be complicit in this treatment, and the potential result that they could be sent to any number of countries with their own abysmal human rights record,” he tells the BBC.

Mr Sadinsky also argues that allowing them to enter Canada would be in line with the Safe Third Country Agreement, which contains exemptions aimed at reuniting families.

In a statement to the BBC, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it would not comment on the family’s case, citing privacy legislation.

The case poses a conundrum for Canadian officials, says immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

Mr Kurland, who is not involved with their case, told the BBC that allowing entry to the family could set a precedent for others in ICE detention with ties to Canada. “How can you say ‘yes’ to just one family, and then, ‘no’ to everyone else?”

But he adds that he believes both Canada and the US have a responsibility to at least ensure the family is not sent back to Afghanistan.

“It’s cruel for the US not to rule out the Kabul flight,” he said. “The Americans know what is in store, because they were right there in Kabul for over 20 years.”

For now, Asal and her family in Canada continue to agonise about the case, wishing for a reunion.

“Trust me when I say that I cannot sleep most of the night,” she said.

But she is hopeful Canadian officials come through and “that they will not leave us alone in this situation”.

Israeli forces are intensifying their attacks on the outskirts of Gaza City, residents say, as the military steps up preparations for a ground offensive to conquer it.

Hospitals said women and children were among more than 30 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the city on Wednesday, most of them in the north and west.

The Israeli military’s chief of staff vowed to “continue striking Hamas’s centres of gravity until it is defeated” and its hostages freed.

The UN and aid groups said the Israeli operations were already having “horrific humanitarian consequences” for displaced families sheltering in the city, which is home to a million people and where a famine was declared last month.

Meanwhile, Israeli protesters took part in what they called a “day of disruption” to press their government to immediately agree a deal that would end the war in return for the release of all 48 Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Hospital officials said Israeli strikes and gunfire across the Gaza Strip had killed at least 46 people since midnight.

Gaza City’s Shifa hospital said it had received the bodies of 21 people, including five killed when an Israeli warplane targeted an apartment in the western Fisherman’s Port area.

One of the strikes killed the parents and two sisters of three-year-old Ibrahim al-Mabhuh, his grandmother said.

Umm Abu al-Abed Abu al-Jubein told Reuters news agency that she had found him buried underneath the rubble of a destroyed column in the home where the displaced family from the nearby town of Jabalia had been sheltering.

“He is the only one that God saved… We woke up to the boy screaming,” she said.

First responders said Israeli drones also dropped incendiary bombs in the vicinity of a clinic overnight in the northern Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, where troops and tanks were reportedly advancing.

Videos posted on social media overnight appeared to a fire next to an ambulance inside the Sheikh Radwan Clinic’s compound, and another ambulance ablaze on a nearby street.

Residents also told Reuters that Israeli forces dropped grenades on three schools in Sheikh Radwan being used as shelters for displaced families, setting tents ablaze, and detonated armoured vehicles laden with explosives to destroy homes in the east of the neighbourhood.

“Sheikh Radwan is being burnt upside-down. The occupation [Israel] destroyed houses, burnt tents, and drones played audio messages ordering people to leave the area,” said Zakeya Sami, a 60-year-old mother of five.

The Israeli military said it was checking the reports.

During a visit to Gaza on Wednesday, the military’s Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, told troops: “We have entered the second phase of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to fulfil the objectives of the war.”

“Returning our hostages is both a moral and national mission. We will continue striking Hamas’s centres of gravity until it is defeated.”

Hamas denounced what it called the “operations of systematic destruction” by Israeli forces in Gaza City, saying they constituted “an unprecedented violation” of international law.

UN agencies and their humanitarian partners in the Gaza Site Management Cluster said the announcement of intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza City on 7 August was “having horrific humanitarian consequences for people in displacement sites, many of whom were earlier displaced from North Gaza [governorate]”, which includes Jabalia.

They warned that many households were unable to move due to high costs and logistical challenges, as well as a lack of safe space. And they said forcing hundreds of thousands to move south could amount to forcible transfer under international law.

Since 14 August, more than 82,000 people had been newly displaced, according to the cluster. Most people moved towards the crowded coast. Only a third have left for southern Gaza, as the Israeli military has instructed.

The military has told them to head to the al-Mawasi area, saying medical care, water and food will be provided. However, the UN has the tent camps there are overcrowded and unsafe, and that southern hospitals are operating at several times their capacity.

On Tuesday, five children were killed while queuing for water at a tent camp in al-Mawasi. Witnesses said they were struck by an Israeli drone.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that a strike in the area had targeted a “key Hamas terrorist” and that that it was “aware of claims regarding casualties as a result of the strike”. The incident was “under review”, it added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s intention to conquer all of Gaza after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down in July.

The hostages’ families fear the offensive will endanger those held in Gaza City and want the prime minister to instead negotiate an agreement that would secure their release.

Regional mediators have presented a proposal that would see 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead hostages released during a 60-day truce. However, Netanyahu has said he will only accept a comprehensive deal that would see them all freed and Hamas disarmed.

On Wednesday, Israelis demanding an immediate deal set fire to tyres and rubbish bins and damaged parked cars in Jerusalem.

Thirteen were arrested after they climbed on the roof of the National Library and displayed a banner that said: “You have abandoned and also killed.”

Some hostages’ relatives addressed a large crowd near the prime minister’s residence.

They included Ofir Braslavski, the father of Rom Braslavski, 21, who was seen emaciated and injured in a video sent by his Islamic Jihad captors in early August.

“My son Rom is dying, starving, and tortured. You can see in his eyes that he no longer wants to live. There is nothing harder a father can witness when he cannot do anything,” he said, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

“How is it possible that a month after my son’s video was released, showing the horrors there, the government leaves him there? And the prime minister wants to conquer more territory? I can’t understand that.”

US President Donald Trump, who helped broker the previous ceasefire and hostage release deal in January, wrote on social media: “Tell Hamas to IMMEDIATELY give back all 20 Hostages (Not 2 or 5 or 7!), and things will change rapidly. IT WILL END!”

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 63,746 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The ministry also says 367 people, have so far died during the war as a result of malnutrition and starvation, including six over the past 24 hours.