Diana Baptista

From federal workers to foreign students, the Trump administration is using surveillance tech to track and target critics of his agenda – creating a "chilling effect" on free speech, a privacy expert told Context.

The Trump administration has said it will begin screening the social media of immigrants and visa applicants for what it called anti-Semitic activity, which will serve as grounds to reject their immigration requests.

There is growing opposition to the exploitation of critical minerals like cobalt and lithium, according to research by the Institute of Development Studies, a research organization affiliated with the University of Sussex in Britain.

The study comes as the global race intensifies to secure those minerals for the clean energy transition.

Last year was the worst on record for internet shutdowns as governments increasingly used digital blackouts to control and suppress citizen rights, according to a report by Access Now.

The internet advocacy watchdog documented 296 shutdowns in 54 countries, leading to disrupted communications, economic challenges, and restricted access to vital services.

While African nations sacrifice health and education services to repay foreign loans, wealthy polluting countries owe the continent more than 50 times more than Africa's total debt for damages caused by climate change, according to a new report by international charity ActionAid.

ActionAid calculated that Africa is owed around $36 trillion in climate reparations by rich countries against $646 billion owed by the continent to wealthy nations, private creditors, and global financial institutions.

Climate change is fast upending home insurance rates in the United States – almost regardless of where one lives.

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles area wildfires, California's largest private insurer requested significantly higher rates for homeowners from May as it dealt with costly claims, while there were widespread reports that insurers were dropping customers before the disaster first struck in early January.

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing ahead with mass deportation plans targeting some 11 million undocumented migrants.

Trump launched military deportation flights to Latin America, invoked a wartime law to quickly deport immigrants alleged to be gang members without court hearings.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened Mexico with tariffs to stop the flow of undocumented migrants to the United States, data shows that Mexico has already been enacting a tough crackdown on migration for more than a year.

On February 1, Trump agreed to a 30-day pause on a 25% additional tariff on imports from Mexico in return for 10,000 members of the Mexican National Guard to stem the flow of illegal migration and drugs in the country's northern border.

To supercharge his mass deportation crackdown, U.S. President Donald Trump plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law to quickly deport immigrants alleged to be gang members, without court hearings.

Trump also wants to expand a detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay to hold some 30,000 migrants and end Temporary Protected Status for about 348,000 Venezuelans, who could then be deported.

After waiting for seven months, Nicaraguan migrant Aldo is only two numbers away from being assigned an asylum appointment through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app.

Aldo left his country in February, desperate to find a job in the United States to provide for his eight children and has been waiting for an appointment in Mexico while he builds houses and works the corn fields.

For the human smugglers who ferry migrants northwards from Central America, the return of Donald Trump is a welcome New Year gift that promises to supercharge their business.

"Bless Donald Trump for winning," said one people smuggler, who talked to Context on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from Mexico's authorities as well as its drug cartels.